Revelation: Part 13

When was the Church first mentioned? By Jesus Christ when he asked his apostles who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am. And Peter for once, took his foot out of his mouth, and said accurately who he was. You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.

And, boy, I can just see Peter. You know, he was the extremist. And that’s why Jesus said, blessed are you, Peter son of John, literally. He said for flesh and blood did not show you, but my father in heaven.

So he was putting him down a little. And he said and upon this rock, his profession of faith, is the rock. He said, I say also to you, that you are Peter, the original Greek, petros, which is masculine of the word for stone. You know, roughly translated means a little stone.

And today we would have said, I say to you, that you are rocky. That would have been a good approximation of the name. But he said, but upon this rock, petra, I will build my Church. And that’s the first time he ever mentioned the word Church.

The first time in the Bible the Church had ever been mentioned. Nothing was known about it before then. He said upon this petra, I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Now, in Greek grammar, and I suppose the same in any other, that for one word to modify another, it has to be of the same gender.

Petra is neuter. Petras is masculine. So any first grade Greek student knows that the rock on which the Church is built is not Peter. That’s why the catholic Church should have taught them Greek instead of Latin.

The thing is the Church was first mentioned there, and the Church began when the means of the Church’s creation came. What is the Church? For by one spirit, we have all been baptized into one body whether bond or free, rich or poor. And we’ve all been made to drink of one spirit.

For the body is not one member, but many. For we being many are one body in Christ. That’s the Church. The Church began when the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost.

And for the first time, took permanent residence in believers. And he, though, they didn’t feel it, though you didn’t feel it, this happened to you, too. He took you and, boom, baptized you into such a union of life with Jesus Christ, that you became bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, that’s the Church. Every believer is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh and that’s the true Church.

Now we have many denominations today. There’s nothing wrong with that. As long as it doesn’t get in the way of what the real Church is. The real Church is made of -made up every believer that’s been baptized into union with Christ by the Holy Spirit.

So the Church is the creation of the Holy Spirit. And so when it says that the lampstands are flaming and they also have the seven spirits of God, now the Church is completely filled and perfected by the presence of the Holy Spirit. In a way, it could never have been on the earth, okay. Now, this is a wonderful thing.

It says the seven spirits of God. Did you know that in a prophecy, in Isaiah 11:2, that the Holy Spirit predicted, it’s a prediction about the coming of the Messiah 750 years before he was born. But it says Isaiah 11:1, then a shoot will spring from the stem of jesse, and branch from his roots will bear fruit. The spirit of the Lord will rest on him.

The spirit of, number one, first of all, it’s the spirit of the Lord, that’s the first characteristic. Second characteristic, the spirit of wisdom. Third, understanding. Fourth, the spirit of counsel.

Fifth, the spirit of strength. Only this word, in the Hebrew means power, raw power. The spirit of knowledge and the spirit of the fear of the Lord. All right, now let’s look at that.

How many characters you got there? First of all, number one, the spirit of Yahweh. It’s the word Jehovah or Yahweh. So that’s the first characteristic of the Holy Spirit.

So when we’re talking about the seven spirits of God, it’s talking about the perfection of his character. And I believe Isaiah 11:2 talks about it. So the first thing is he’s the spirit of Yahweh. Okay, what does that emphasize?

His deity. The Holy Spirit is God. Second, the spirit of wisdom. The fact that he would have, the Holy Spirit has, the infinite knowledge of how to apply understanding things.

And third, the spirit of understanding. He understands all things. Fourth, the spirit of counsel. He’s even called the counselor by the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then in verse five though, it uses a word in Hebrew that means all power. It says the spirit of power. This emphasizes his what? Omnipotence.

Six, the spirit of knowledge, that emphasizes his omniscience, which means he knows all things. And the spirit of the reverence of the Lord. So there you have seven characteristics, that are, I believe, what is being referred to back, let’s go back to Revelation 4 now. When it talks about the seven spirits of God, it’s talking about his complete perfection.

He’s co-equal and co-eternal with God the father and God the son. You know, the mystery about the Trinity is not that there are three personalities. There are. I mean, there are three personalities in the godhead, clearly distinguished.

God the father, God the son, God the Holy Spirit. The mystery is around how three can be so one, you see. And yet that’s all the way through the Bible. You know, it’s interesting that, here I go chasing rabbits, but I can’t resist it.

What is the number one confession of faith for an Israelite? Hear, o Israel! The Lord our God is one. All right, I’m gonna turn there.

That’s Deuteronomy 6:4. Now I’m gonna bring out a few points from the Hebrew. Hear, o Israel! Yahweh, Lord.

Yahweh is our God. Elohim, plural. Yahweh is singular. Elohim is plural.

And then it says the Lord or Yahweh, singular, is echad, one. Now there is a word in Hebrew for absolute one. And there’s another word that means one that you would use in the sense of one, well, forgive me, God, for this illustration. But one, a bunch of bananas.

In other words, it’s one, but there’s plurality in it. You see what I mean? And that’s the word that’s used. So even in the number one confession of Israel, it shows that, yes, God, Yahweh is one.

And, yet, he is Elohim, plural, and our Yahweh is echad. In other words, he’s one in essence, but with a concept of plurality within that oneness. Isn’t that mind blowing? Because it’s always there.

I mean, look at genesis. Let us make man in our image. I mean, what are we talking about? At the end of chapter 11, verse 2 in Isaiah, literally it says, he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

He will delight in the reverence of the Lord. And the Holy Spirit is the one who leads all worship, all true worship. The Holy Spirit delights in giving the ability to have a reverent, respect of God. All right, now back in chapter 4, verse 6.

And before the throne, there was, as if it were, a sea of glass like crystal; and in the center and around the throne, were four living creatures full of eyes is front and behind. It says, and here is one that really can throw you. It says that around the sea of glass and the throne are four living creatures. Well, let’s read on about those living creatures.

It says around the throne are four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind. And the first creature was like a lion, the second creature like a calf or an ox, and third creature had a face like that of a man, and the fourth creature was like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the almighty, who was, who is, and who is to come. And when the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne, to him who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders will fall down before him who sits on the throne, and will worship him who lives forever and ever, and will cast their crowns before the throne, saying, worthy art thou, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for thou didst create all things, and because of thy will they exist, and were created.

You see, the Bible says it is the living word. And these four living creatures are like the living word, they’re representations of the living Word of God that constantly reminds us of the multifaceted glory of Jesus Christ. And it says one is like a lion. I believe that’s symbolic of the Gospel of Matthew.

Because there he is presented as the son of David, the lion of judah. And so that shows, you see, it took God four different accounts to bring out all of the beauty of the person and the work of Jesus Christ. And I believe that these gospels will live forever in heaven as living words that constantly remind us of Jesus. And it says the next living creature is like an ox, a servant.

What Gospel presents Jesus with an emphasis of him being a servant? The Gospel of mark. It emphasizes that. The other one has a face like a man.

The Gospel of Luke emphasizes the perfect humanity of Jesus. The last of the four is like a flying eagle in the heavens. That’s the Gospel of John. It emphasizes his heavenly origin.

It emphasizes that he is, well, it begins where everything ought to begin. In the beginning, was the word and the word was with God, and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. Now let me give to you straight from the Greek.

Here is what it would mean to a Greek. In beginning, there always was, it’s the imperfect tense of the word for being and imperfect tense in Greek means continuous action before time. Before. So it says in beginning, there always was the word.

And it says in beginning. There’s no definite order. It doesn’t say in the beginning. In the Greek it says in beginning.

And that emphasizes that the beginning is meant to be something that can be thought about. And it helps us to think back to the father’s point in time and space that we can conceive. It invites us to do that. In beginning?

What beginning? Well, the beginning for you is the farthest point in eternity back that your mind can conceive. And then he locks your thought right there, that preposition. It locks your thought at that farthest point back in eternity that you can conceive.

And he says there always was before that the word. And then the next clause, that emphasizes his eternal existence. The next clause emphasizes something else beautiful. It says and the word always was…

Pros ton theon, which means face to face with God. The word always was face to face with God. What does that tell us? His independent personality.

Because to be face to face with someone, you got to be a separate person. And then the last statement, and the word always was God. As to his essence, he’s always been God. That emphasizes his deity.

So the Gospel of John emphasizes his heavenly origin from the beginning to the end. Now, these four living accounts of the person of Jesus Christ, are the four living creatures that will constantly lead us to remember what it cost to bring us there. And I’ll never get tired of hearing it either. And he says that they constantly say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the almighty, who was, who is, and who is to come.

And who are they talking about? Jesus. And when the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne, to him who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders will fall down before him with -who sits on the throne, and will worship him who lives forever and ever, and will cast their thrones before -their crowns before his throne. Why do they do that?

You see, there’s going to be all kinds of people in heaven. There’s gonna be an ex-tugboat captain who was a bartender on bourbon street.

There’s going to be people a lot more colorful than that in heaven. In fact, there’s gonna be prostitutes. There’s gonna be all kinds of criminals. There’s gonna be all kinds of people in heaven.

But there’s one kind that will not be there. You know that? Boasters. There will not be any boasters.

No one will ever boast I’m here because I helped God out a little.

So if you’ve got that idea, let’s cleanse you right now. I mean, I can baptize you and hold you under a little while.

When I baptize people in the Jordan, I have a good time with this particular passage. This is John the baptist speaking. And he says in Matthew 3, in verse 7, but when he saw many of the pharisees and sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, now remember this is like addressing the national council of churches’ heads and all of that.

You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Boy, he was really -he was really diplomatic. Therefore bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance; and do you suppose that you can say to yourselves, we have Abraham for our father; for I say to you, that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. And the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; and every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove his sandals; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. How many different baptisms are in that one verse? Three. Water, the Holy Spirit, and fire.

John said and this is the way they translate it. I baptize you with water for repentance. Now carefully think about what he’s saying here. He is — the way it’s translated, it means that the baptism is what brings repentance.

Right? He says I baptize you with water for repentance. Well, if you hold him under long enough, it will produce repentance.

But, you see, in the Greek, in the preposition, by the context, it can be translated for or because of. And that’s the way it should have been translated. I baptize you with water because of repentance. You see, if baptizing with water caused repentance, he wouldn’t have called, listen, these guys from Jerusalem, they come out — the pharisees, they were standing in line to be baptized.

If baptized them in water would have given them repentance, he wouldn’t have said you brood of vipers. Why are your here? I’m not gonna baptize you. Bring forth fruit, worthy of repentance that shows that you’ve repented.

Because he couldn’t baptize them until they had believed in repentance. So baptism doesn’t save you. It’s something that you do after you have believed and repented. Got it?

I think that it’s -it’s so all inspiring the description that he gives of what we’re gonna see when we first are snatched up to heaven. We’re gonna see all of these things. The absolute overwhelming sense of the beauty of God’s character. The — we’re going to see God’s throne turn from one of reminder of his mercy and his covenant, it’s gonna change to one of judgment and thunder and lightning.

And we’re going to see the Church interceding for what is about to come. Because now we’re priests, and we’re gonna have an active role in everything. And we’re not just gonna be sitting up on a cloud playing a harp, that just never appealed to me. We’re gonna be very active priests.

And we’re gonna have representations of what Jesus did and how we got there. And every time we think about it, we want to take it off. It was maybe novelly won with an act of faith. But we know that we’d never have anything if it didn’t come from Jesus Christ.

If you have the guts to be a real revolutionary, come forward right now and accept Jesus Christ as your real revolutionary, and he’ll make a revolutionary that will change lives.

As I prepared for this week’s program, I was again struck by the speed with which events are moving into the scenario the prophets predicted for the end times. I believe we’re there. People on the street are talking about what all of these things mean. Folks that wouldn’t darken the door of a Church or pick up a Bible are now very curious.

This may be our greatest opportunity, maybe even our last opportunity, to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ before we’re silenced by political correctness. The message that God has given me is more important now than it’s ever been, for the Church and for the nation.