Revelation 1

Today’s Passage: Revelation 1

The book begins by telling you exactly what it is, who it came from, whom it is for, and what it will cost you to ignore it, and it does all of that in three verses. Then it turns into a letter with a proper greeting, the way any first-century letter would, except that the greeting comes from the One who is and was and is to come, and it breaks open in the middle into praise that could not be held back. Then John tells you where he is and why, and what happened to him on a particular Sunday morning. He heard a voice behind him like a trumpet. He turned to see who was speaking, and what he saw laid him flat on the ground. Seven golden lampstands, and walking among them One like the Son of Man, robed and sashed, His hair white, His eyes fire, His feet burning bronze, His voice like the sea, seven stars in His hand, a sword from His mouth, His face like the sun at noon. This is the Jesus who had eaten fish on a beach with these men. John, who had leaned on His chest at supper, falls at His feet like a dead man. And then comes the moment the whole chapter has been walking toward, and it is not the fire or the sword. It is a hand laid on a terrified man’s shoulder and a voice saying, “Do not be afraid.” Everything else in these twenty-two chapters is going to be read in the light of that hand. Read this chapter slowly, and do not hurry past the end of it.

As you read, hold this: The risen Christ walks among His churches in blazing glory, and to a man lying at His feet like a dead man He says first of all, Do not be afraid, because He was dead and is alive forever and ever and holds the keys of Death and of Hades.

Revelation 1:1–4 (BSB)

¹ This is the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants what must soon come to pass. He made it known by sending His angel to His servant John, ² who testifies to everything he saw. This is the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. ³ Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and obey what is written in it, because the time is near. ⁴ John, To the seven churches in the province of Asia: Grace and peace to you from Him who is and was and is to come, and from the seven spirits before His throne,

Look at the chain of hands in the very first verse, because it tells you the standing of what you are about to read. God gave it to Jesus Christ. Christ made it known by sending His angel. The angel brought it to His servant John. John testifies to everything he saw and wrote it down for the churches. Nothing here originated on Patmos. This is not one man’s religious experience, offered for what it is worth. It is “the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ,” handed down a chain that begins at the throne. And notice again whose revelation it is. Not John’s revelation, and not primarily a revelation about the future. It is the revelation of Jesus Christ, and He is both the one who gives it and the one it unveils.

There is a phrase in verse one that readers have argued over for a very long time, and it is worth saying honestly right at the start rather than letting it nag at you for twenty-two chapters. God gave this “to show His servants what must soon come to pass,” and verse three adds, “because the time is near.” Christians read that nearness in different ways. Some take it to mean that the great weight of what follows fell within a generation. Some take it as the settled New Testament conviction that we have been living in the last days since the resurrection, so that the next great event on God’s calendar is always the return of Christ, however long the waiting feels. Some hear in it the perspective of heaven, where a thousand years are as a day. This study will not settle that for you, and it does not need to, because the effect the words are meant to have is the same in every reading: live as though your Lord could arrive before this letter is finished being read.

Then comes the first of seven blessings scattered through this book, and it falls on two kinds of people at once, on the one who reads the scroll aloud and on those who hear it and keep (τηρέω) tēreō, pronounced tay-REH-oh. Strong's G5083, to keep, guard, watch over, obey. Tēreō means to guard, to watch over, to keep something safe and to keep on doing what it says. It is the word for a soldier keeping watch over a prisoner and for a man keeping a treasure under his roof, and John reaches for it constantly. In the upper room the Lord had said that whoever has His commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Him. In the letters to the seven churches, the promise comes to the one who keeps His works to the end. Here, and again at the very close of the book, the blessing rests on the one who keeps the words of this prophecy. Weigh what that does to the way you read. There is no blessing in this book pronounced on the one who works out the chronology. Not one. The blessing goes to the person who hears it read out in a room full of ordinary believers and then goes home and lives differently: refuses the incense, keeps the faith when it costs him his trade, holds his tongue about his neighbor, loves the brother he has been quietly resenting, and keeps his eyes on the throne. If these twenty-three days make you a more confident arguer and not a more faithful witness, we will have missed the blessing entirely. it. That single word tells you what Revelation is for. Not to be solved. Not to be diagrammed. Kept.

Revelation 1:5–8 (BSB)

⁵ and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To Him who loves us and has released us from our sins by His blood, ⁶ who has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father—to Him be the glory and power forever and ever! Amen. ⁷ Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him—even those who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. So shall it be! Amen. ⁸ “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and was and is to come—the Almighty.

John begins a perfectly ordinary letter greeting and cannot finish it. Grace and peace, he says, from the Father, from the seven spirits before His throne, and from Jesus Christ. And then three titles arrive, and each of them is aimed straight at the fear of a persecuted church. He is “the faithful witness (μάρτυς) martys, pronounced MAR-toos. Strong's G3144, a witness, one who testifies to what he has seen. Martys is the ordinary Greek word for a witness, the man who stands up in court and says what he saw. There is nothing dramatic about it in itself. But look at what history did to that word, and the reason it happened is right here in this book. In a world where saying what you had seen about Jesus could get you exiled, ruined, or killed, the witnesses kept saying it anyway, and within a couple of generations the Greek word for a courtroom witness had become the word for one who dies for the faith. Our English word martyr is that same word, carried over unchanged. And the title is given first to Jesus Himself: He is the faithful witness, the One who told the truth about God in front of the authorities of this world and was killed for it. Antipas in chapter two is called by the same name. What John is quietly doing for these frightened congregations is putting them in the best possible company. If it costs you something to say what you know about Christ, you are not being punished for doing it wrong. You are standing exactly where He stood, and He came out of that grave. ,” which is what these believers were being asked to be, at some cost. He is “the firstborn from the dead,” which means the grave has already been opened from the inside once, and He is the first of a harvest, not the only one. And He is “the ruler of the kings of the earth,” which is a staggering thing to write from a prison island under Caesar’s authority. Say it slowly and hear how it would have landed in Smyrna. There is a King over the kings, and He is ours.

At that point John simply stops writing prose and breaks into praise, and the church has been singing his words ever since. “To Him who loves us and has released us from our sins by His blood, who has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father.” Notice the tense of the first verb: He loves us, present, ongoing, right now, not merely loved us once at Calvary and moved on. Notice what the blood did: it released us, the word for setting a prisoner loose from his chains. And notice what we were made into. A kingdom. Priests. These are people who could not get a fair hearing in their own town, and God calls them royalty and clergy. Blessed be His name for that.

Then verse seven lifts its head and looks down the whole length of history: “Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him.” This is not a scheme, it is a certainty, and John is weaving two Old Testament threads together in one sentence. The clouds and the coming are from Daniel’s night vision, where One like a son of man is brought before the Ancient of Days and given a kingdom that will never end.

"In my vision in the night I continued to watch, and I saw One like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into His presence. And He was given dominion, glory, and kingship, that the people of every nation and language should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed." Daniel 7:13–14 (BSB)

And the piercing and the mourning are from Zechariah, in a passage so tender it is hard to read steadily.

"Then I will pour out on the house of David and on the people of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and prayer, and they will look on Me, the One they have pierced. They will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for Him as one grieves for a firstborn son." Zechariah 12:10 (BSB)

So when He comes, no one will miss it. Every eye. Even those who pierced Him. And there will be mourning, though Zechariah’s mourning is the mourning of a spirit of grace poured out, the weeping of people who finally see what they did and to whom they did it. Then, as if to sign the promise, God Himself speaks in verse eight, and it is the only time in the book the Lord God speaks directly in the first person until the very end. “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” First letter and last, and everything between. He was there before the first page of history and He will be there after the last, and He is the Almighty, the one who holds all things in His hand. Fix that title in your mind. In nine verses’ time, Someone else will take it.

Revelation 1:9–12 (BSB)

⁹ I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance that are in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and my testimony about Jesus. ¹⁰ On the Lord’s day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, ¹¹ saying, “Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.” ¹² Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me. And having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands,

Hear how he introduces himself. He was one of the Twelve. He had leaned against the Lord at the last supper and stood at the foot of the cross and run to the empty tomb. He could have opened with any of it. Instead he says, “I, John, your brother and partner.” Brother, and partner in three things held together in one breath: the tribulation (θλῖψις) thlipsis, pronounced THLIP-sis. Strong's G2347, pressure, affliction, tribulation. Thlipsis is a physical word before it is ever a theological one. It means pressure, squeezing, crushing weight, the sort of thing that happens to grapes in a press or to a man in a crowd. Greek writers used it for a stone pressing down on a body. Do not make a technical term out of it here, and do not let anyone else make one out of it for you either. John is not handing his readers a label for a period on a chart. He is telling seven ordinary congregations that he is under the same weight they are under, and he uses the plain word for it. The New Testament uses this same word for hunger, for poverty, for imprisonment, for grief, and for the ordinary hard grinding of a believer’s life in a world that does not want him. The Lord Himself used it the night before He died: in the world you will have thlipsis, but take courage, I have overcome the world. That is the register John is writing in. If you are being squeezed today, in your health or your household or your work or your own weary heart, this verse is not describing somebody else’s future. It is describing your Tuesday, and it puts an apostle beside you in it, and both of you inside the kingdom. and kingdom and perseverance that are in Jesus. Not tribulation or kingdom, as though a Christian must choose which era he lives in. Both at once, right now, with endurance as the thread that ties them. The kingdom is real while the pressure is on. That is the shape of the Christian life between the resurrection and the return, and John is not writing down to these people from a higher rung. He is in it with them, on a rock in the sea.

And then, on the Lord’s day, the ordinary Sunday of a man who has no congregation to preach to, it happens. He is in the Spirit, and a voice like a trumpet comes from behind him. A trumpet in the Old Testament is the sound at Sinai, the sound of God summoning His people and announcing something that cannot be ignored. The voice does not explain itself; it gives an order. Write it on a scroll and send it to the seven churches, and it names them one by one, in the order the road runs. Then John turns around to see who is speaking, which is a beautifully human detail, and what he sees first is not a person at all. Seven golden lampstands. Any Jew would know that shape at once, because a lampstand of pure hammered gold had stood in the tabernacle and burned in the temple, and Zechariah had seen one in a vision too. But here there are seven of them, separate, standing in a circle. Verse twenty will tell you what they are. They are the churches. Those seven small, harassed, unimpressive congregations are the golden lampstands of God in the province of Asia, and their one job is to hold up light in a dark place.

Revelation 1:13–16 (BSB)

¹³ and among the lampstands was One like the Son of Man, dressed in a long robe, with a golden sash around His chest. ¹⁴ The hair of His head was white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes were like a blazing fire. ¹⁵ His feet were like polished bronze refined in a furnace, and His voice was like the roar of many waters. ¹⁶ He held in His right hand seven stars, and a sharp double-edged sword came from His mouth. His face was like the sun shining at its brightest.

Now look where He is standing. Among the lampstands. Not above them at a distance, not waiting for them at the end of the age, but walking in the middle of them, close enough to trim a wick. Before John tells you anything about His appearance he tells you His address, and His address is His churches. Whatever else the terrifying description is about to do to you, do not lose that. He is in the room.

Then the description, and every single line of it has been borrowed from the Old Testament, so do not try to picture it as a painting. Try to hear it as a chord. The long robe and the golden sash are priestly clothing, the dress of one who serves in the sanctuary. The white hair is the hardest and most wonderful detail in the chapter, because there is only one figure in all of Scripture whose hair is described that way.

"As I continued to watch, thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took His seat. His clothing was white as snow, and the hair of His head was like pure wool. His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze." Daniel 7:9 (BSB)

That is the Ancient of Days, and there is no ambiguity about who He is. John looks at Jesus of Nazareth and sees the hair of the Ancient of Days. Take that in. This is not a hint. In Daniel 7 the One like the Son of Man comes to the Ancient of Days; here the Son of Man wears His appearance. The rest of the description comes from the last vision Daniel ever saw, and the resemblance is close enough that John surely meant you to notice.

"I lifted up my eyes, and behold, there was a certain man dressed in linen, with a belt of fine gold from Uphaz around his waist. His body was like beryl, his face like the brilliance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of polished bronze, and his voice like the sound of a multitude." Daniel 10:5–6 (BSB)

Eyes like fire, and nothing in the seven churches will be hidden from them; in the very next chapter He tells Thyatira that He is the one whose eyes are like a blazing fire and He searches minds and hearts. Feet like bronze glowing in a furnace, which is the picture of a judgment that cannot be resisted and a stability that cannot be shifted. A voice like the roar of many waters, which anyone who has stood near a great falls or a winter sea will understand at once: not a voice you argue with, a voice that fills everything. Seven stars held in His right hand, His hand of power and favor, and verse twenty says the stars are the angels of the seven churches, so whatever exactly that means, His churches and their messengers are held. A sharp double-edged sword coming out of His mouth, which is worth noticing carefully: the weapon of this King is His word, spoken, and it cuts both ways, dividing truth from falsehood in His own churches before it ever goes out against the nations. And a face like the sun shining at its brightest, which is the one detail you cannot look at directly. Peter and James and John had seen that face once before, on a mountain, and had not known what to say.

Revelation 1:17–20 (BSB)

¹⁷ When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. But He placed His right hand on me and said, “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last, ¹⁸ the Living One. I was dead, and behold, now I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of Death and of Hades. ¹⁹ Therefore write down the things you have seen, the things that are, and the things that will happen after this. ²⁰ This is the mystery of the seven stars you saw in My right hand and of the seven golden lampstands: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

Here is the summit of the chapter, and if you carry nothing else away from today, carry this. John falls. Not to his knees in reverence; he goes down “like a dead man,” which is what every man in Scripture does when the glory of God comes near, from Daniel by the river to Isaiah in the temple to Peter in the boat saying, “Go away from me, Lord.” There is no such thing as a casual encounter with the risen Christ. And this is not a stranger. This is the disciple who knew Him best, the one who had leaned on His chest, and he goes down like a corpse.

And then the hand. The same right hand that holds seven stars comes to rest on a frightened old man lying face down on a rock in the sea. Do not rush this. Of all the things the risen and glorified Lord of the universe could have said first, standing in unbearable light with a sword in His mouth and fire in His eyes, He says, “Do not be afraid.” That is the first word out of His mouth in this book. Everything terrible that is coming in the next twenty-one chapters, every seal and trumpet and beast and bowl, is spoken to a church that has already been told this, by a Christ whose hand is already on them. The book was not written to frighten you. It was written to a frightened man by a Lord who steadied him first.

Then He tells John who He is, and it is impossible to overstate what He claims. “I am the First and the Last.” Nine verses ago the Lord God said, “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” and now Jesus takes the twin of that title for Himself, and it is a title the God of Israel had guarded jealously. “The Living One” is not a description of vitality; it is the name of the God who has life in Himself and gives it. And then the sentence no one else who ever lived could speak: “I was dead, and behold, now I am alive forever and ever.” He does not say He escaped death or avoided it. He went into it, all the way down, and He came out the other side alive, and He is never going back. And having gone through it, He came out holding something.

“And I hold the keys (κλείς) kleis, pronounced KLICE. Strong's G2807, a key, authority to open and shut. Kleis is simply the word for a key, the thing that locks and unlocks a door, and in Jewish thought the picture had immense weight. In Isaiah the key of the house of David is laid on the shoulder of God’s servant, so that what he opens no one shuts and what he shuts no one opens. The Lord had used the image in the Gospels of keys of the kingdom, and He uses it again in chapter three of this book, and at the end of the book an angel comes down with a key in his hand. A key is authority in its most concrete form. It is not influence over a door; it is control of it. So what John is being told, flat on the ground, is that the door out of the grave is not stuck, is not lost, is not held by anyone else, and is not going to be opened by force from the inside. It is going to be opened by the Man standing over him, at the hour He chooses, because it is His door and He owns the key. Every funeral a Christian ever attends is attended by that fact. Every fear of dying meets it. Praise God for a Savior who went down into the dark on purpose and came back up with the keys on His belt. of Death and of Hades.” Sit with that a long moment. Death is the end of a life; Hades is the realm of the dead, the place from which no traveler had ever returned. And the keys to both are in the hand of Jesus Christ. Not in the hand of Caesar, who could kill a Christian in Smyrna but could not hold him. Not in the hand of the enemy of our souls. Not in the hand of blind chance or of the disease that runs in your family. If you have stood in a hospital corridor or beside an open grave, you know that no other verse in Scripture will do at that hour, and this one will. The One who holds those keys wept at a friend’s tomb before He opened it. The keys are in the right hand of a man who was dead.

Then the commission, and it is the last calm thing in the chapter: “write down the things you have seen, the things that are, and the things that will happen after this.” Christians have read that threefold phrase in more than one way, some as a table of contents for the whole book and some as a general charge to write the whole vision down, and it is not necessary to settle it in order to obey it. And He ends by explaining His own imagery, which is a kindness worth noticing, because it tells you He is not trying to be obscure. The stars are the angels of the seven churches. The lampstands are the seven churches. He says it plainly. The very first symbol in the book is interpreted for you in the very first chapter, which is a gentle lesson in how to read the rest: watch, wait, and let the text tell you what it means before you decide.