The Book of Revelation: Part 2

Revelation 1:9-20 (BSB)

We are in week two of our sermon series on the Book of Revelation, or as John referred to it in his introduction: the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ. There is a lot to cover in this second half of chapter one, so let’s get started by reading verse 9, which says:

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. 

John was no stranger to tribulation or to the perseverance needed to follow Jesus. The Island of Patmos that John mentions is a Greek island in the Aegean Sea. He’s not on an island vacation, though. The Romans exiled people there because of its remote location. You can visit it today (it’s a busy cruise port) and see the natural cave in the hillside where John is thought to have written this book, halfway above the island’s harbor. Today, on the top of the hill, is the Monastery of St. John, a Greek Orthodox monastery, which maintains the ‘Cave of the Apocalypse,’ making it available to visitors.

This island may have had a beautiful view, but without a doubt, John was in prison. In Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (published in 1563), it tells how he ended up there. “From Ephesus he was ordered to be sent to Rome, where it is affirmed he was cast into a cauldron of boiling oil. He escaped by miracle, without injury. Domitian afterwards banished him to the Isle of Patmos, where he wrote the Book of Revelation. Nerva, the successor of Domitian, recalled him. He was the only apostle who escaped a violent death.”

It is truly miraculous that he survived the boiling oil, but that is clearly because the Lord still had a vital task for him to complete. We don’t know how old John was when he died, only that he lived to old age and is the only disciple who died of natural causes.

Still, he was no stranger to tribulation. Being thrown into boiling oil would certainly be horrifying. Being banished to a remote island would have brought many trials to him, especially at his old age. We don’t know what else he suffered during his lifetime of following Jesus. But as we read the Gospels and his own writings, we can see that he had markedly changed from the “son of thunder” who wanted to call down fire on people and asked to be seated next to Jesus in the resurrection. He clearly became a humble servant of the Lord. Even to the fact that he identifies himself not as an apostle but as a brother and partner in suffering for his faith in Jesus.

But as we move forward in this book, it’s good to keep in mind that tribulation is an expected result of following Jesus. If we can remember that, then as we read about the tribulation and suffering that is prophesied about, it won’t seem so out of the ordinary or unusual. 

I like what Alexander MacLaren says about this verse. He says, “It has not ceased to be a hard thing to be a real and thorough Christian. A great deal in the world is against us when we try to be so, and a great deal in ourselves is against us. There will be ‘tribulation’ by reason of self-denial, and the mortification and rigid suppression or regulation of habits, tastes, and passions, which some people may be able to indulge, but which we must cast out, though dear and sensitive as a right eye, if they interfere with our entrance into life. The law is unrepealed-’If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him.’”

I agree with MacLaren, and I think problems arise when we mistakenly believe that following Jesus is easy. It’s not easy, and nowhere does the Bible tell us it is supposed to be. In fact, it spends a great deal of time warning us about how difficult it is and how much self-denial and discipline are required to follow the Lord. John knew this, and each of his writings, maybe most of all this book, urges us to wholeheartedly love and imitate Jesus above all other things, and persevere in our faith. To do that requires that we die to ourselves.

But as we do so, we will find we are in partnership with John and other believers. As members of the family of God, John is our “brother and partner in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance that are in Jesus.” We can rejoice that we may count him our brother, as we too follow Jesus wherever He leads us.

Back to the text, John begins his testimony of the vision he saw. In Revelation 1:10-20, he writes:

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,

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.

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.

There is a lot to go through, so let’s unpack it a few verses at a time. Verse 10 says, “On the Lord’s day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet.” 

John was worshiping “in the Spirit” on the Lord’s day. This day was the first day of the week, which is the day that Jesus was resurrected according to John 20:1, and when the early church would meet together according to Acts 20:7. Until recently, most Christians referred to Sunday as the Lord’s day. This day is not referring to the Jewish Sabbath. As the Benson Commentary says, “On the Lord’s day—On this our Lord rose from the dead. On this the ancients believed he would come to judgment. It was therefore with the utmost propriety that St. John on this day both saw and described his coming.”

John is worshiping and hears a very loud voice. If wonder if the trumpet was the loudest instrument he could think of to compare it to? At any rate, it was very loud. John hears it and turns and sees the glorified Jesus standing there. Even though we were told in the beginning of this letter that the revelation or message was delivered to John through an angel, it does not mean that every figure John sees in the vision is an angel. Within this vision, John can see Jesus directly. This is important, and it will come up again.

And as verse 11 says, the voice says, “Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.”

Scholars have pointed out that these seven are not the only churches that existed then. As Ellicott notes in his commentary, “There were more than seven churches in Asia Minor; but the number selected indicates completeness. Thus, though having special reference to the conditions of those churches, the epistles may be regarded as epistles conveying ever appropriate lessons to the churches of succeeding ages.”

Now, let’s read again what John saw, starting with verse 12: “Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me. And having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands.”

The lampstands are particularly interesting, and this isn’t the only time we see something like this. In Exodus 25:31-32, when God is giving the instructions for the temple, God instructs them to make a one-piece, seven-pronged lampstand. That’s similar to the description in Zecheriah 4:2, when the prophet says, “I see, and behold, a lampstand all of gold with its bowl on the top of it, and its seven lamps on it with seven spouts belonging to each of the lamps which are on the top of it.”

The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary says: “Here the seven are separate candlesticks, typifying, as that one, the entire Church, but now no longer as the Jewish Church (represented by the one sevenfold candlestick) restricted to one outward unity and one place.”

Again, we see that the old things from the temple are not being continued. Just as the temple curtain was torn in two when Jesus died, these seven individual lampstands are also showing us that the old system is gone. Not that the law is abolished, but as Jesus said, the law is fulfilled in Him. We see that these lampstands are still the symbol for believers, but the format has changed. I think this is very important to note.

So, surrounding the voice that was speaking to John were these seven lampstands. “And among the lampstands,” he says, picking back up in verses 13-15, “was One like the Son of Man, dressed in a long robe, with a golden sash around His chest. The hair of His head was white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes were like a blazing fire. His feet were like polished bronze refined in a furnace, and His voice was like the roar of many waters.”

It is clear that this description is of Jesus Christ. I think John doesn’t name Him outright because he’s telling us what he experienced and thought when he first turned and looked. He didn’t know at first what he was seeing. Would you?

This “One like the Son of Man” was dressed in a long garment that could be described as both kingly and priestly. I think it’s safe to read symbolism into the description and show how each carries meaning. The golden sash around the chest sounds like the garment the Old Testament high priests wore. And “the head of Him and His hairs,” as the literal Greek text says, are “white like wool, as white as snow.” That could signify that all of Him, not just His hair, was completely pure and unblemished. Next, His eyes like a flame of fire could allude to the fact that God is a consuming fire, refining us from our sin. And finally, His feet and voice, as Matthew Henry notes, “may denote the firmness of his appointments, and the excellence of his proceedings. His voice as the sound of many waters, may represent the power of his word, to remove or to destroy.”

And in addition to all that, verse 16 tells us, “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.”

First of all, we see that the number seven is clearly very significant. This letter is written to seven churches; the One speaking is surrounded by seven golden lampstands; and in His right hand are seven stars. The number seven will be mentioned many more times throughout this book.

The stars will be explained in a moment but note that out of His mouth came a sharp sword. As Ellicott explains, “There need be no doubt about the meaning here: the imagery of the Bible elsewhere is too explicit to be mistaken; it is the sword of the Spirit, even the word of God, which is here described; it is that word which is sharper than any two-edged sword, and which lays bare the thoughts and intents of the soul.”

And His face was as bright as the sun shining at its brightest. I think we can’t overstate just how bright that brightness would have been. We should remember John is writing this from the Mediterranean Sea, where the everyday, ordinary sun bouncing off the ocean would have been a blinding sight. So how much brighter was Jesus’ face? It would have been very difficult to see properly because of the brightness.

When John saw the glorified Jesus, he was understandably frightened, for John then says in verses 17-18, “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, 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.”

When John turned and saw who was speaking, he “fell at His feet like a dead man.”

I wonder if we’ve lost this proper understanding of the overwhelming majesty of the Lord. When you think of Jesus, do you consider His glory, or do you picture Him as meek and mild? But let me ask you something. Do you suppose our personal vision of Jesus affects our adherence to His commands?

Even John, the self-described ‘Disciple whom Jesus loved,’ fell down at Jesus’ feet when he saw His glory. But then, Jesus reached out His right hand to touch him with the same hand that had held the stars. He reassured John and told him not to be afraid. He said, “I was dead, and behold, now I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of Death and of Hades.”

Multiple times in the book of Isaiah, as well as two more times in this letter, the Lord declares about Himself: “I am the First and the Last.” We should understand, though, that when the Lord describes Himself in this way, He’s speaking about eternity. He means that there is none who existed before Him and none who will exist after Him. Just as He says in Isaiah 44:6, which says, “Thus says the LORD, the King and Redeemer of Israel, the LORD of Hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God but Me.’”

He was dead, meaning He had died. But now He lives for all eternity. And the reason why is because He holds “the keys of Death and of Hades.”

MacLaren points out that Hades is not the same word as Hell. He says, Hades is “the dim unseen regions in which all the dead, whatsoever their condition may be, are gathered. The Hades of the New Testament includes the paradise into which the penitent thief was promised entrance, as well as the Gehenna which threatened to open for the impenitent.”

But because Jesus holds the keys, that means that we believers do not have to fear death. As MacLaren adds, “because [Jesus] has the keys, He will not leave His holy ones in the fetters. And for ourselves, and for our dearest, we have the right to think that the darkness is so short as to be but like an imperceptible wink of the eye; and ere we know that we have passed into it, we shall have passed out.”

All that John is seeing and hearing must have been so overwhelming, and not just because John is quite old, but maybe that is why Jesus then tells him, in verse 19, “Therefore write down the things you have seen, the things that are, and the things that will happen after this.”

About a dozen more times John will be told to write these things down, and it seems he begins to do so immediately based on what we read later in the letter. Not only is there much to remember, but this way John knows he is supposed to share this vision with others.  

Then, finally, Jesus explains two of the mysteries He speaks of, much in the same way He explained the meaning of different parables He told. He says in verse 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.”

I think we all understand that the seven lampstands represent the seven churches John is going to write letters to. That’s very clear. But the seven stars being “angels of the seven churches” is a bit more complicated, don’t you agree?

It seems like there are a couple of ways of interpreting this. Some people believe that the seven angels are the seven leaders of those seven churches. The reason they think they’re people is because the Greek word for angel also means messenger. In Luke 9:52, it says, “He sent messengers on ahead, who went into a village of the Samaritans to make arrangements for Him.” They think these messengers are similar to what happens in Luke 10:1, which says, “After this, the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of Him to every town and place He was about to visit.” They could be correct, and these stars in His hands could be human messengers who are leading these seven churches.

I don’t know that we can say for sure, though, because usually in the New Testament, the word angel refers to a heavenly being. And outside of the possibility of it meaning a human messenger in these letters in chapters 2 and 3 of this book, every other occurrence of angel in Revelation clearly refers to a heavenly being. So, the other way we can interpret “angel” is by taking it literally; the seven angels are assigned by God to seven different churches.

Remember, too, that Jesus originally said these angels were stars. In other places in the Bible, angels are also called stars. But probably most importantly, in Revelation 12:4, it says, “His tail swept a third of the stars from the sky, hurling them to the earth.” Most people understand the stars to be angels in that verse. So, just based on consistency, I think it’s worth considering that the angels are angels and not human leaders of these churches.

I also think it’s very telling that at the start of this book, even though Jesus is doing the revealing and He’s the One being revealed, He begins by sending His angel to John. The book starts with Jesus giving this message through an angel to John so He’s showing us that heavenly angels play a part in the order of communication. Angels are actively involved. So, when Jesus speaks of “the angels of the seven churches,” it seems to me that the most logical reading is that He is referring to heavenly beings. Next week, as we move to chapter 2, we will go through the first of these letters and discuss this possibility a bit more.

For now, I want us to stop here and really picture all that John has described. Can you picture Jesus Christ in His glorified form? The thing I want us to consider, though, is how John came to be given this vision. Do you remember how he started this? He said he heard the Lord’s voice and saw Him while he “was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.” John was worshiping the Lord when he heard Him. Let me ask you: do you want to hear from the Lord? Do you have things you need Him to speak to you about? If so, then let me encourage you to do what John was doing.

If you feel like the Lord is silent, do you need to make time for Him to speak to you? Or do you need a fresh vision of who He is? Is your picture of the Lord one that you created, or one that is an accurate picture of who He really is? 

I am afraid that some people have created in their mind a god who they think is Jesus, but their god is merely a man made in their own personal image; someone they can speak for and interpret however they wish. That is not who Jesus is. He is the Almighty. He is the God who is, who was, and who is to come. He holds the keys of death and Hades. His eyes are flames of fire. When you picture Jesus Christ in His glorified form, what is your response? Can we do anything but fall to our knees in reverent awe at His majesty?  

If we see Him as He truly is, we will fall down at His feet in worship, for we will know that we are unworthy.

Yet for all His majesty and glory, He reaches out His right hand and tells us not to be afraid.

As we go through this book, my prayer is that the Holy Spirit will unveil even more of Jesus Christ to our hearts and minds so that we may see Him as He truly is, and full of faith, we may persevere through whatever tribulations we face.

Let us worship the Lord and pray:

Lord Jesus, when we think about Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place—all we can say is, “What are humans that You are mindful of us?” We are in awe of You and Your infinite glory. And we are in awe that You reach out and touch us, showing us that You love and care for us. Help us to more fully understand just how majestic You are so we can, not only follow and obey Your Word, but so we can trust in Your ability to help us endure whatever tribulations we may face, knowing that Your right hand is right there to reach out and help us to persevere. In Your name we pray. Amen.