Revelation 22:6-21
Let’s look to God’s word. This
is Revelation chapter 22, beginning at verse six. It says, and he
said to me, this is John, Jesus said to him, these words are
trustworthy and true. The Lord, the God of the spirits
of the prophets has sent his angel to show his servants what
must soon take place. And behold, I am coming soon.
Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of
this book. I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things.
And when I heard them, These things I fell down to worship
at the feet of the angel who showed them to me. But he said
to me, you must not do that. I am a fellow servant with you
and with your brothers, the prophets, and with those who keep the words
of this book. Worship God. And he said to me,
do not seal up the words of this prophecy of this book for the
time is near. Let the evildoer still do evil
and the filthy still be filthy and the righteous still do right.
and the holy still be holy. Behold, I am coming soon, bringing
my recompense with me to repay everyone for what he has done.
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning
and the end. Blessed are those who wash their
robes so that they may have the right to the tree of life, that
they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs,
the sorcerers, and the sexually immoral, and the murderers, and
the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.
I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these
things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant
of David, the bright and morning star. The spirit and the bride
say, come. And the one who hears says, come.
And let the one who is thirsty come. Let the one who desires
to take the water of life without price. I warn everyone who hears
the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to
them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book.
And if anyone takes away from the words of the book, of this
prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life
and in the holy city, which are described in this book. He who
testifies to these things says, surely I am coming soon. Amen. Come Lord Jesus, the grace of
the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. This is God’s word. May he bless
it. When you read Bible stories to your kids, they often have
questions that come to their minds that we don’t think about.
For example, you read the story of Noah, and you read all the
little details of Noah’s, the account of Noah and Genesis.
One of the questions that always comes to mind is, if Noah was
building an ark for about 100 years, what was everybody else
doing? It’s a good question, isn’t it?
There’s a Dutch artist who has put together this little book.
It’s about Noah’s Ark, and it has virtually no words in it,
just pictures. My kind of book. And the pictures
are quite dramatic. And they paint a picture, they
tell a story in the picture of Noah faithfully hammering, faithfully
nailing, faithfully sawing, faithfully working on this giant boat. I
mean, after all, who builds a big boat for 100 years in the middle
of the desert when no rain is in sight? only someone who knows
what God is up to and it’s part of a greater plan. What’s the
rest of the world doing? Well, in these pictures, in this
picture book, while Noah and his sons are doing all this work
faithfully to God, probably looking like the craziest people on earth,
the surrounding countryside is covered with people who are fighting
They are drinking, they are carousing, and they are living raucous,
wild, ungodly lives while Noah is faithful to God. And isn’t
that a picture, really, of our culture today? While we serve
God, while we’re in worship services, while we’re faithfully raising
our children and doing all the things God asks us to do, life,
the world around is much like the time of Noah, unfaithfully
spending their days in things that do not please God. And so
there’s quite a parallelism there between the end times now and
the end times, as it were, in Noah’s day. Noah hammered and
nailed and don’t you think from time to time people said, hey
Noah, what you doing? I’m building an ark. What you
building an ark for? And they poked fun, they made fun, they
did all the rest, maybe as some of us experience in the Christian
life. But he said, there’s a storm coming, and this boat is going
to save my family. And that’s in a sense what we
do in the Christian life. We tell people about the greater
ark. There is a savior Jesus, and
if you put your faith and hope and trust in him, you will escape
the wrath that is to come. Couldn’t help but think of y’all’s
plight at the door here. Somebody must have pushed the
button and y’all were stuck outside the door. I can see y’all looking
in the window, but there’s a time when preaching is gonna end,
isn’t there? There’s a time when there will be no more opportunity
to preach and to tell the gospel. And as the account of Noah says
really sharply, I think, in Genesis, it says, and God shut the doors
of the ark. That was after he put Noah and
his family in. There’s going to be a time when the door is
shut. And, you know, like y’all were peeping in the window out
there hoping to get into the church tonight. Far worse, right? It’s one thing to be locked out
of the church, because, you know, you can just text somebody. I suppose
that’s what y’all did. Somebody came and got you. But for the
door to be shut, the preaching of the gospel is over. It is
time for judgment. That’s the situation we find
ourselves in. And so John is sort of wrapping
up his letter here, and he speaks about a couple of important themes
that we ought to remember. The first thing he speaks of
here is the Word of God, and he speaks to it all through these
handful of verses at the end. But he says some important things
about the Word of God. We remember Paul’s letter to
Timothy where he says, We remember Peter’s Words that the scriptures did
not come from the will of men But holy men of old as they were
carried along by the Holy Spirit. They wrote down the Word of God
and as God brought it to them. And so we have the scriptures
from the spirit of God. And as John was caught up in
the spirit, he was given an eyewitness opportunity to see into heaven,
to see into the future and to see the end times. And what he
says to us at the beginning of our passage tonight in 22, starting
at six, We hear about the trustworthiness of these words. They are trustworthy
and true. So you say, are the end times
as portrayed in the book of Revelation, are they to come to pass? Are
they the real events of human history, redemptive history?
And what’s the answer? The answer is absolutely. These words are
trustworthy and true. God has given us this for our
edification, our comfort, our hope. But you say, oh, there’s
been some fanciful things in here. There’ve been some mighty
wars. There’ve been some grand visions. There’ve been glimpses
into heaven. We’ve had a peek into the throne
room of God. We’ve had a peek into the end times. Are these
things true? Are they trustworthy? Are they
from God? And what’s the answer? The answer is yes, absolutely. God has sent his angel. He sent
John. He’s written these words down
as verse six tells us, to show his servants what must soon take
place. And so we can trust the word
of God. We can believe the word of God. Verse seven seems to
say something important to us about it as well. Behold, I’m
coming soon, Jesus says. He’ll say that three times. That’s
something we’ll peek at in just a moment. But he says, blessed
is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.
Don’t you think Noah had some fits of, am I crazy? Don’t you think he put his hammer
down and said, what in the world am I doing? Why am I building
a boat for a hundred years in the middle of a desert when no
rain is in sight? Why do we keep doing church in the 21st century?
And why are a handful of us here on a Sunday night when the rest
of the world is down at the shopping mall, they’re eating out, they’re
sitting at home flipping their cable channels, they’re watching Sunday
night football, they’re doing all kinds of things, they’re
getting ahead on their week, why in the world are we doing this?
Well, because God says it’s the right thing to do. He says it’s
the scriptural thing, the biblical thing, it’s the way of Christianity.
Sometimes we just have to keep on going even if the world says
y’all are a bunch of loons. Y’all are wacko. Y’all are crazy.
The Word of God, we believe, is trustworthy. And so we hold
fast to the things that are written in this book. Well, there’s something
else about the Word of God that comes up. Don’t add to it. Don’t
take away from it. Don’t tamper it. We don’t need
to say a whole lot here, but we’ve got folks in our culture
that have added to the Word of God. love Jesus, plus do all
the things the elders of the church say. You know, whether
it’s how long your hair can be, how short your skirt can’t be,
or, you know, what kind of card games you can play. You know,
we’re in the South, right? We don’t drink, smoke, cuss too,
and hang out with those, or go with girls that do, that kind
of thing. And so we say Jesus plus, This equals everything,
equals gospel. And sometimes we add to it in
our own Christian circles. We have other religions in this
country, maybe some that start with an M, where they’ve added
to the word of God. We know that others who come
knocking on our doors periodically say they have the real word of
God, but Jesus says don’t tamper with it. It’s good enough. Great. It’s perfect. It’s what I intended.
Don’t add to it. Don’t take away from it. Don’t
mess with it. Hear the word, listen to the word, do the word,
and I will bless you, the word says to us. So just a thing or
two there about the word of God. Another theme that we find in
this passage is something about those inside and those who are
outside. Look at verse 14. It’s another
one of those beatitudes. Blessed are those who wash their
robes so they may have the right to the tree of life and they
may enter the city by the gates. And then it goes on to list outside
are the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers,
the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. We’re living in an era where
all dogs go to heaven, as it were. Right? We’re living in
an era where we’re supposed to be open and accepting in the
church. We don’t talk about sin anymore, right? That’s a big
no-no. We don’t want to offend people.
We don’t want to hurt their self-esteem. We definitely don’t want to tell
people how to live because that’s legalism, right? We don’t want
to be judgy. We don’t want to be legalistic.
And we basically say any stray dog can come in the church, be
who you are, live how you will, But that’s not the way it goes,
is it? We just had someone join the church this afternoon, this
evening, and you take seven vows, and I think those seven vows
are full of questions. There’s probably about 30 questions
in our seven vows of membership. They should have just numbered
them 1 to 32 instead of 1 to 7, because there’s so many questions.
But we take a vow to believe the word. We take a vow to submit
to the church. We take a vow to strive to live
a holy life. We take a vow to strive to follow
Jesus in the world as best we can by the help of the spirit.
We take vows to do these things. And Jesus says, if you follow
the word, you’ll have entrance in heaven. the city gates, you’ll
enter the city by the gates. Now, y’all understand what he’s
getting at there, right? How do bad people get in the
city? They climb the wall, right? Now, remember how thick the wall
is, 200 feet thick, how high it is, you’re not getting over
this one. This is a big wall, a thick wall, a great wall, a
wall like the likes of which no one has ever seen before,
as the saying goes these days. But this is a city for only the
people of God. Blessed are those, verse 14 says,
who wash their robes so they may have the right to the tree
of life. They may enter the city by the
gates. Wouldn’t it be nice to live in
heaven and we don’t have to sleep with one eye open? Or one of
you was telling me they sat in the doctor’s office this week
with a lady who said, I’ve got a, was it a big revolver in the
nightstand? We won’t have to sleep with a
butcher knife under the pillow anymore. We won’t have to sleep
with a baseball bat in the corner. We won’t have to check the windows
at night. In this holy city will only be
holy people, and holy people only do holy things. And so to
be inside, not outside, is a wonderful thing. And finally, just The
last thing to briefly touch on is Jesus is coming soon. And he says so three times. If
you have a red letter edition of the Bible, which who knows
what you think about that, you can see it very easily. But if
you look at verse seven, verse 12, and also verse 20, he says
three times in the short little section, behold, I am coming
soon. So what do you think Jesus is going to do? He’s going to
come pretty soon. Now, you gotta define soon, because
how long has it been? Oh, it’s been about 2,000 years.
We try to figure out Jesus is coming. Maybe some of y’all read
that book in the 1980s, 88 Reasons Why Jesus Is Gonna Come Back,
and guess what? 1988, and then it was recalculated,
reconfigured. People all over the years have
tried to figure out when Jesus is coming. Even he doesn’t know,
only the Father knows, and he’ll tell him when to come. Meanwhile,
Time is short. Meanwhile, the day of the Lord
is at hand. Meanwhile, Jesus is coming soon. It’s the next thing in the list
of chronological events in redemptive history. We don’t know when.
He could tarry another 2,000 years. And soon is soon for the
Lord, and in those days, what does Peter say, a day A thousand
years is like a day in the eyes of the Lord. And so we may think
he’s been tarrying a little long, but in his eyes, the one from
all eternity, it’s not been that long just yet. And so until he
comes, we, like Noah, we keep hammering, we keep sawing, we
keep laboring in the kingdom, we keep telling people about
the arc of safety, which is Jesus Christ. And as redemptive history
continues to unfold, We look with one eye to the heavens that
Jesus is coming soon. Surely I am coming soon. He says,
remember the Apostle Paul, he ends a Bible book or so that
he wrote this way. He uses the word Maranatha. Lord
Jesus. And sometimes as we see the aches
and the pains of this world, we think about our prayer list
this night and what various families we know and love are going through.
What’s one of the greatest prayers? You know, dear God, please, please
heal this person or that person. That’s a great prayer, right?
We love to see God’s people healed. But one of the greatest prayers
we can pray is come Lord Jesus, come make it all new. Fix what
has been broken. And so we look for his appearing.
Let’s look to God in prayer for a moment. Lord, we’re grateful
that your word teaches us not to hang on to this world so tightly
because heaven and earth will pass away. We’ll live forever
in a new heavens and a new earth. And we can’t wait for that day.
We thank you that in Christ, we are hidden with God in Christ
and we have an eternal salvation, an eternal arc of safety. We
thank you that we are inside because we have been washed clean
by the precious blood of Christ And hear our prayers now as we
make them in Jesus name. Amen