"To Him Who Loves Us" -- Revelation 1:4-8
Tuesday, February 12, 2008 at 02:19PM 
The Thirty-Second and Final in a Series of Sermons on the Book of Revelation
In many ways, the Book of Revelation is the most practical book in the New Testament. Hopefully, these words don’t come as much of a surprise now at the end of our series as they might have at the beginning. Because Revelation is filled with apocalyptic symbolism and is difficult to interpret, we easily lose sight of the fact that this is the last book in the canon of the New Testament and that it is given to Christ’s church for a very practical reason–through the testimony of Jesus Christ to his church we will be prepared to face those things which are yet to come.
We complete our series on the Book of Revelation and do something a bit different from our usual practice. Although we have touched upon a number of important points of application throughout this series, now that we have completed our survey of the entire book, we are a much better place to go back and summarize several of the main points of application given us by John. Since Revelation contains the testimony of the Risen and Ascended Jesus Christ to his church, we are, in effect, given our instructions about what to do until the Lord returns. And so now that we have seen the whole panorama of redemptive history from the vantage point of the end, we are much better equipped to apply Jesus’ testimony to our own situation. At the end of the day, what does the Book of Revelation say to us?
Throughout this series many of you have told me that the Reformed (amillennial) interpretation of Revelation has removed the “scary” character of this book, while at the same time preserving the mystery which is truly here. Many of you have told me that this was a difficult series because it is very hard to “unlearn” the dispensational way of reading this book that so many of us grew up with. Now that we have seen that the Book of Revelation is a divinely-given commentary upon all those redemptive historical themes which are left open-ended in the Old Testament, it should be clear that Revelation is not given to us to speculate about end times, or so we can connect the things it contains to current events.
Rather, Revelation is given to us to show us the big picture of redemptive history. In other words, Revelation is like the box-top to a puzzle. Having seen the whole picture, it is certainly much easier to understand how the individual pieces fit together. And the big picture is simply this: Jesus Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, he is the Lord of history, as well as Lord of his church, he is directing all things toward the goal he has foreordained, which is his second coming, the defeat of all of enemies, including Satan, and to establish the new heaven and earth as our eternal home. Studying the Book of Revelation is like reading the last chapter of a good mystery novel first. Having read the last chapter, we know what will happen to all of the characters. We know that the story has a happy ending and that the bad guys will get their just desserts in the end.
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Reader Comments (2)
Thanks for the excellent series on Revelation. I've read almost all of them - I have 4 or 5 to go, but I've got them all on my hard drive in PDF format. Your book on Amillennialism literally changed my life and this series was even more good reinforcement. Thanks for your other sermon series as well!