Intro: Keep Confident & Carry On

The year was 1939. The place, London, England. And as German bombers reigned destruction on that great city, of all people a British graphic designer thought he had an idea that would capture people's imaginations and raise morale and use his small skill to contribute to the war effort. And so he designed a poster that is ubiquitous now but was little known then. This poster, "Keep Calm and Carry On." How many of you have ever seen a version of this poster? Well he was so excited about it and so convinced that this would really make a difference in the war effort that he went to the printing office, the government printing office said, "This is gonna be great. Let's print two and a half million copies of these posters." And so they did.

And then he showed a sample to his superiors in the British government propaganda office and they looked at him and said, "That'll never work. It'll never catch on." Because in times of war people don't want a simplistic message. In times of war people don't want something that could potentially sound patronizing and so we're not going to put it up. And they destroyed, destroyed, pulped, recycled all two and a half million of these "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters. Or so it was thought. Late in the year 2000 in an old used bookstore in the downtown city area of London, the proprietor of the bookstore and his wife discovered in the basement one surviving "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster. And they thought it was great and then after 9/11 happened in 2001 they thought people need to hear this message.

And so they framed it and put it on the wall behind the cash register and the rest is history. It went viral. It caught on and spread all over the world as people resonated with this message and now there's even all kinds of takeoffs like this one "Keep Calm and Have a Cupcake." How many of you live by this motto? Basically when the tough gets going the tough have big goods. That's your motto in life. Or like this one "Stay Alive and Avoid Zombies." I like that one too. That's good advice. But I love the original the most because who doesn't need to hear this message especially right now? Watch the news. It's crazy man. What do you see? Middle East wars, the refugee crisis, North Korean threats, the horrifying persecution of Christians, climate change, financial turmoil, wars and rumors of wars, and earthquakes.

It's no wonder that end-of-the-world prophecies are picking up to new heights. Just the other day the New York Daily News had this headline "Some say the world will end today so buy this paper if it's the last thing you do." It's kind of funny but I got to tell you as a pastor honestly I'm troubled by what I see in so many believers and that is what you could call a "doomsday mentality." There's such a sense of hopelessness and despair and pessimism about the world's future and about the country's future and about their own personal future and their children's future and this leads to discouragement and it leads to sin and all kinds of risky behaviors and that's why we need to really dig into this important book of the Bible starting this morning.

Grab your message notes that look like this as we begin a brand new study in the book of Revelation. We call it the seven because it's based on the seven letters to seven churches in Revelation chapters 2 and 3. If you don't want to use these message notes as Mark said you can download the TLC Twin Lakes Church app and the message notes are right there. There's a little button where you can email the notes to yourself and take notes so you can always have your notes right with you on your portable device.

The book of Revelation is very relevant to us today because it was written to people whose world was turning upside down and if you study what Jesus says in these seven letters of the book of Revelation I guarantee you will finish this seven-week study with a new sense of blessing, a new sense of confidence, a new sense of courage, a new sense of hope, a new sense of optimism. How can I guarantee that? Well let me show you. The book of Revelation is sort of the original keep calm and carry on but it kicks it up a notch to keep confident and carry on. Not just keep calm, not just kind of zen out, not just kind of be serene and have a smile pasted on your face or keep a stiff upper lip. It's no, be energized, be confident, be blessed because of what you can know about God's plan for the future.

I want to show you something. I want to kick off this study by reading one of the very first verses in the book of Revelation, verse 3 of chapter 1. We're gonna put it on the screen. It's also in your notes and let's read this verse out loud together because this has a promise for you. Are you ready? Are you ready? Alright, here we go. Let's read this out loud together. "Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear and take to heart what is written in it because the time is near." Did you just see what that just said? That's a promise of blessing if you study this book of the Bible. It's the only book of the Bible with an explicit promise of blessing if you study it.

And this doesn't just mean kind of vague blessing. Kind of like, "I feel blessed today. I feel lucky. I feel happy." It's not just that. It's, "You will be blessed because you will know that God has a plan for good. You'll be blessed because you will know that Jesus Christ is returning to earth to recreate the earth into the perfect Eden that he designed it to be originally." Man, that's a blessing. "You will be blessed because you'll know that God knows about your current problems and struggles and troubles and he cares for you. So you will be blessed only one problem. The book of Revelation, for those who want to get this blessing, is a psychological obstacle, right? Because it is sort of notoriously hard to understand.

When it comes to the book of Revelation, most people are either one of two things. They're either intimidated by it or they're infatuated by it. You know what I mean by that? Either they're intimidated by it. They kind of tiptoe around it like, "Oh, those symbols and the Armageddon and the Antichrist and the Mark of the Beast, I don't get it so I'm just gonna like pretend it's not the Bible and never ever study it." Or they're infatuated by it and they're so into it that they become kind of like Trekkies or you could call them like Revvies because they're into the Antichrist and the Beast instead of Spock and Kirk and they go to conventions and everybody else looks at that and goes, "Oh, that's kind of weird." And so, intimidated or infatuated? No, I want to move from intimidated or infatuated to inspiring. I want to move Revelation from mystifying to meaningful.

So how are we going to do that? Here's what we're gonna do today. Let's get oriented to this, the very last book of the Bible written, the very last book of the Bible in your Bibles. I want to give you the historical context, the literary context. It's gonna help make the book come alive to you and then for the next seven weeks, having established this introduction, we're gonna study these seven letters to Revelation in chapters two and three and you are going to be blessed. You are going to see your hope level just escalate. Why? Well, let me explain the book this way. When I was in journalism school, we had what they called six clarifying questions and this was just drilled into our heads. When you're doing an investigative report or a newspaper article about anything, ask these six questions, "Who, what, where, when, why, and how?" And if you ask those questions, they will explain anything. But don't leave one of those questions out. Who, what, where, why, and how.

And so let's do that when we look at the book of Revelation right now. Are you ready for this? Are you ready for this? Ben, you are gonna have to be sharp here because we're gonna rock this. So put on your seat belts, get out your pencil and pen. Let's go. Let's start with who wrote the book of Revelation. Well, it was the Apostle John. He was one of the 12 original disciples. He was one of Jesus's best friends. But watch this. By the time he wrote this book of the Bible, he is a very old man. In fact, he's the last surviving Apostle. All the others are dead. Most have been killed for their faith. He is lonely and he is exiled, exiled where? Where was this written? And where was this written to? Right? Well, when he wrote this, John was living on the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea.

Now, these days when you think of an island in the Aegean, what do you think? What comes to mind? Probably some picture like this, right? Some vacation island, like club meds, somebody bringing you nice cold drinks, you know, in the afternoon you're on a sun chair. Patmos was more like this island. What is this island? Shout it out. What is this? It is Alcatraz. And what kind of an island was this? It was a prison island. And that's what John was at. He was in prison on this prison island called Patmos because he was a Christian leader. That was his crime. Now, here's what Patmos looks like today. It's still very barren. It's rocky. Here's an aerial shot. It is surrounded by the sea. They didn't have to put walls up on Patmos. The walls of the prison of Patmos was the unpassable sea.

And by the way, that's why I think if you're familiar at all with the book of Revelation, you know that whenever the sea is mentioned in the book of Revelation, curiously it's mentioned negatively. And when John sees the new heaven and the new earth, he says, "There is no longer any sea." And I read that and I get bummed out because when I think of sea, I think of the Monterey Bay, you know. And I think of dolphins and whales cavorting and the marine sanctuary. But that's not what John thought of when he thought of the sea. To John, the sea was nothing but negative. To John, the sea was nothing but a barrier. To John, the sea was a prison wall. And so what he's saying when he says that symbolically is, "There's no more walls. There's no more prison. There's nothing separating you anymore from your loved ones."

So if that's what Patmos looked like and that's where John was, where is this island? I want to orient you. Here's a map of the Mediterranean. And just kind of to get oriented, do you see the boot of Italy and Rome there? And then you go to the right and you see the peninsula of Greece. And you go a little more to the right there and you see Turkey. Let's zoom in on modern Turkey. This part of Turkey looks and feels a lot like where we live, the central coast of California. In Bible times it was called Asia Minor. Well the island of Patmos is offshore and as the book starts, John says he has a vision. And he's been given words from Jesus for the Christians in seven specific cities near the coast.

Now these seven cities were on kind of a loop road, kind of like a UPS delivery route. And that's exactly what it was. William Ramsey, who's a famous archaeologist and scholar, said this was an ancient mail route, kind of a pony express route, and when they would deliver mail they would go to these seven cities clockwise around this loop road in order. And that's the reason these cities are in that order in the book of Revelation. Sometimes people over interpret it. They're like, "I know why they're in this order because these are the ages of the church throughout history." No, that's because that's the order you got to them on the road. But why did they need to hear all of this? Well that brings you to when this was all written. Scholars say probably about 96 AD.

And here's why this is very important. This was an intense time for Christians. They'd already lived through Nero, who was insane and persecuted Christians after a huge fire destroys much of Rome. Nero blames the fire on Christians and orders Christians to be thrown to animals or burned at the stake or crucified or even dipped in oil, tied to stakes, and lit on fire while they're still alive to light his gardens at night. Suffice it to say, very, very bad guy, very tough time for believers. But after him there were a few years of peace, even though there were pagan prophecies, not Christian, but pagan prophecies, the Cybelean oracles that predicted that Nero would come back and he would come back and he would be evil again all over the place. So there was this sense of doom hanging over all of the Romans and especially the Christians.

But then it gets bad again under a Caesar named Domitian. Now Domitian starts out good. You can even see from this early carving of his face kind of this noble simple look to him, but then something happens. He goes crazy, he gets power hungry in these later carvings of Domitian. You can just see this arrogance in him and he starts his own cult, his own religious cult, and it wasn't subtle. His cult was "worship me." He orders people to call him "dominus et deus," which means "Lord and God." So those self-esteem lessons really worked and he persecuted Christians and actors. Those were the two groups somehow that bugged him. He persecuted Christians and actors. I'm not making this up, he made mimes illegal. So I'm saying it wasn't all bad. No, just kidding, but that's true. He did do that and times were dark for the Christians and so they need encouragement and that brings us to what is the book of Revelation? How does it help those Christians in that place and that time?

Well the word itself "revelation" in the original, it's the Greek word apokolipsis. Now what English word do you think we get from this Greek word? Shout it out. Apocalypse or apocalyptic? Now when you hear the word apocalypse, what kind of images spring to your mind? What kind of movies? What kind of books when you hear the word apocalypse? I want you to turn to a couple of people near you and share what comes to your mind when you hear the word apocalypse. You have five seconds, go. Three, two, one. Alright, I want you to shout it out here so I can hear you. What sort of things come to your mind when you hear the word apocalypse? Shout it out. That's good. Disaster, destruction, somebody, I think I heard somebody say burning cars. Okay, that's true, that kind of image. What else comes to your mind? Yeah, the news headlines somebody said. What kind of movies come to mind? Dune, do doomsday, apocalypse now. Yeah, what else? Mad Max, right? So you've got all these horrifying images of destruction and disaster and did you know that's not at all what the word apocalypse originally meant? That's what it's come to mean in English but originally the Greek word apocalypse, all it means is uncovering, unveiling, revealing, kind of like the curtain is being pulled back so you can see what's been hidden behind the curtain.

And so what is the book of Revelation revealing? It's not a horror story about Armageddon, it's actually a hope story about heaven. That's really what it's revealing. What it's revealing is the unseen spiritual reality behind your struggles here on earth. The unseen spiritual battle behind the headlines. It's saying that there is on a cosmic level there is this conflict going on between good and evil and you are a part of that battle. Now do you see how motivating that is just on its face just right there? I mean if you know that you're a part of the unseen cosmic battle between good and evil then every act of kindness you do you are winning that battle on kind of a skirmish level. You're contributing to that battle. Then every time you resist temptation it's not just about you falling out of temptation or not it's about you contributing to the cosmic battle. And so this is very exciting very thrilling stuff but it gets even better than that because what it does is it gives you this 10,000 foot aerial view of what you just see down here in the trenches and it says when you see it from up here what becomes so obvious is that God wins. God's victory is absolutely inevitable.

Now let me just show you something. Yeah come on like that's a plot that is exciting. This is exciting stuff. I was watching a World War II era documentary and they showed this soldier right on the ground during World War II and the invasion onto the Normandy beaches and they interviewed him and some other soldiers you know 50 years later who were there then and they said we all thought that there was no way we could win. We thought we're going into the biggest trap in the history of warfare. Why? Because they were in the trenches. All they saw were the foxholes and the carnage and the chaos. Then very clever juxtaposition in this documentary they then went to the Allies who were flying above the battle and they talked to some of those pilots 50 years later and they said we all had smiles on our faces because we knew there was no way we could lose. What was the difference? It was the same day. It was the same war but those soldiers those airmen they saw it from a 10,000 foot aerial perspective and they realized wow we're going to win this war.

You see that's what the book of Revelation does for you. It says look at it from a 10,000 foot level and you're going to win. God wins. Does anybody here need to hear that God wins in your life? You know you may have not come into this thinking to yourself what I really need in my life today is to know how to interpret the book of Revelation. That's like my top need right now. You may have walked in going man my top need right now is to know how to restore broken relationships, how to survive a divorce, how to get over this thing besetting sin, this addiction. I need to know how to restore relationships with my kids. I need to know how to get rid of these anxieties but the book of Revelation helps so much with that because it says you're in the trenches right now that's all you can see and it looks so bad but the big view is this God has a plan for you even now and ultimately there will be victory inevitably. Be assured of that.

Now how is this message communicated in the book of Revelation? Well it uses a lot of symbolic language and this is kind of what messes people up because they go wow the message that God wins is great why doesn't it just say that? God wins the end. Why all of the horns and symbols and stars and seven golden lampstands I don't get that. Well listen to this all these symbols were perfectly clear to the original readers 2,000 years ago. It's when we look back at them now we don't understand their context, their cultural context that we kind of have to scratch our heads so all you have to do is kind of climb back into their shoes and it's so much clearer. Some of you are looking at me with a blank stare. Let me explain it this way.

Look at the screen here's a political cartoon that's contemporary and it's completely symbolic. There are no words on this cartoon yet you know exactly what it's about. Shout it out. What does the donkey stand for? The Democrats. What does the elephant stand for? The Republicans. Now think about this a little bit harder. Why in the world is the donkey in blue and the elephant in red? Anybody know? Because of red states and blue states. The Democrats are blue states, the Republicans are red states on the political map and since this is a contemporary drawing of the donkey and the elephant in a boxing ring duking it out it's probably referring to what event that's coming up? The presidential election. Now how in the world did you know that? That's that there's no way you know it because it's just so much a part of our culture you don't even know when you were taught that but it's completely symbolic.

Now imagine an archaeologist finding this 2,000 years from now and if he had no explanation he'd go apparently people in the 21st century for maybe religious reasons dressed animals in human clothing and put them in rings and they fought together he would have no idea. Well that's kind of like the book of Revelation it's filled with images like this obscure to us clear to them. One quick example Revelation 3.1 Jesus says these are the words of him who holds what? The seven stars. Now watch this in Revelation it explains one layer of meaning he says the seven stars are the leaders of the seven churches. One thing you'll discover though in Revelation is that often most of the time there are beautiful layers of meaning like poetry and there was a layer of meaning to this that would have been obvious to every man woman and child who was reading this book back then just like that Democratic Republican donkey elephant cartoon I'll show you what I mean.

That Emperor Domitian who called himself Lord and God called his son the son of the Lord and God and to commemorate his birth he put out coins with his son enthroned on a world and yes it's a globe it might surprise you but people in the time of Jesus knew the world was not flat they knew it was round and around his hands swirl seven stars. You see in Roman culture the seven stars the seven visible planets stood for the known universe. The point of this coin was the son of God who is destined to control the universe and who sits on the world as his throne and deserves your worship is who? Domitian's boy. But Jesus is saying in this verse, "huh-uh, that crazy Emperor and his son do not control the heavens and the earth my father and I control the heavens and control the earth and control the leadership of your churches you are in good hands you're in good hands."

Now why do you think they said it in symbols like this instead of coming right out and saying Domitian's nuts? Because John's already in prison. If there would have been super ultra read it in writing criticism of the Emperor surely he would have been killed instantly and the book of Revelation never would have been written. But this way any official who was at least a little bit sympathetic to John could say I didn't see anything in there that I thought was a problem you see? And so this is why it's written in this symbolic imagery. If you love decoding symbols, if you love investigating history's mysteries you'll really dig this study because there's a lot more of this to come in the book and in these studies but more importantly you need to look past what the window is framing and see what the window kind of is all about and that is that God wins he has a plan and it's going to be okay.

Now that leads right into the why on page two. Why was this written in the first place? Well let me explain it with a true story. There was a little town in the state of Maine named Flagstaff and here's a picture of Flagstaff in 1950. Isn't that a cute little town? Very picturesque. Well in 1950 the people living in this town got the word that the town was going to be flooded, a dam was going to be built and something happened to the psychological health of the town. In the months before it was to be flooded all improvements and repairs in the whole town were stopped and you can see it's starting to deteriorate in these pictures because what was the use of painting a house it was just going to be covered with water in six months. You know why why fix a broken window? Why repair anything when the whole village was just going to be wiped out?

And so week by week the whole town became more and more ruined. A man who actually lived in Flagstaff Maine during this time had a great quote he said "where there is no faith in the future there is no power in the present." Isn't that good? Where there's no faith in the future there's no power in the present. Well Jesus Christ is seeing these early Christians and you could say the headlines in their mental paper written by Caesar say there's a flood that's gonna cover you. You get this early Christian movement I am gonna flood you with persecution you're doomed and Jesus is seeing their hope in the future they're draining them of power in the present and so he sends some words through John to them to say yes there will be trouble yes floods and earthquakes and wars are headed your direction no I am NOT going to minimize that no I'm not going to promise you that life is going to be perfect and flawless but all those headlines are burying the lead because here's the lead headline God wins there's hope you've got a future and then he goes on to say therefore here is how to live in the crazy present while you wait for the beautiful future.

And I want to show you this three themes come up again again and in the book of Revelation and these are three things you need to know if life is tough for you right now if you barely got yourself to church this morning and I'm glad you came because God wanted you to hear this and if you're thinking life might get tough it just might get tough later on hint there's a guarantee at will you're gonna need to know this too all right these are three themes all throughout the book of Revelation number one stay centered stay centered on the face of your beloved Victor Frankel survived a Nazi concentration camp and in his famous book man's search for meaning he talks about how he did it one dark night he was trudging through snow with men in his camp and the Auschwitz guards were brutally prodding them on when one of the old men turned to Franklin said I am sure glad our wives can't see us now and for some reason that negative comment did something positive to Victor Frankel he started thinking about his wife he actually started picturing his wife from whom he'd been separated months before when he was put into Auschwitz he started picturing her pretty smile and her keen mind and her sparkling eyes and by the end of that all-night march he felt hope was kind of germinating in his heart as he thought of his wife in the months to follow many men much stronger than Victor Frankel died in that concentration camp but he kept going and he says in his book he's convinced it was because every day every moment he chose to fix his imagination on his wife and that gave him reason that gave him meaning that gave him hope that gave him purpose to survive so he could see his wife again.

Now why do I bring that up here Victor had an interesting quote he said I understood how a man with nothing left may still know bliss in the contemplation of his beloved and he says he finally understood the point of faith before this he was a secular Jew who was an agnostic at best if not an atheist and he did not understand his religion but then he said finally I understood an old Jewish proverb the angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of God's infinite glory and he said now I understand how if I could gain so much meaning from the face of my wife how somebody who believes in a God who's all-powerful and who loves them could be infinitely inspired if they focus on him and that sentence right there described so much of what happens in the pages of the book of Revelation the Saints and the angels and the martyrs stay centered on the majesty of Christ.

There are these amazing descriptions of Jesus all through Revelation they start in verse 10 of chapter 1 and I want you to look at these because these just build and build and build John starts by telling how the story started he says on the Lord's Day I was in the spirit and that just means it was Sunday and John was worshiping and this shows you the power of worship when you worship God what it does is it recalibrates your perspective gets you focused on him again and it says I was in the spirit and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet then verse 12 I looked around to see the voice that was speaking to me go to verse 13 and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man and that phrases from the book of Daniel and it's talking about the Messiah he was dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet with a golden sash around his chest and that's a reference to Exodus 28 these are the high priestly garments he was the Messiah he was a high priest.

Verse 14 the hair on his head was white like wool as white as snow in that culture white or gray hair denoted wisdom I am so happy to say and and his eyes were like blazing fire and that meant brilliant insight go to verse 16 and his face was like the Sun shining in all its brilliance what an awesome picture right and that image is meant to just wash over you with its greatness and the book of Revelation keeps coming back to these descriptions of Jesus again and again and again Revelation 2 9 Jesus is the first and the last the one who was dead but has come to life Revelation 3 7 Jesus is he who is holy he who is true the one who has the key of David who opens doors and no one will shut and who shuts doors no one's opens and it just goes on and on and on and these descriptions keep building and building what they mean is this Jesus is more powerful Jesus has has more insight Jesus is longer-lasting Jesus is wiser Jesus is greater Jesus has more majesty than any Caesar than any of your problems than any of your obstacles than anything you could possibly face you may be facing a king your opponent may be a Lord but he is the King of Kings and he is the Lord of Lords you may feel like doors are just slamming in your face right now but he is the one who opens doors that no one can shut.

You know one of the things I loved about one of the songs that Lily chose for our worship service is it kind of went through the book of Revelation it took out some of these descriptions of Jesus Christ these are all from the book of Revelation what I love about this is Revelation paints this picture of Jesus the King of Kings the Lord of Lords the majestic God and then it says yet that God that same majestic God is the one who looks at you lost in your sin and I just want you to think for us just a second of some sin in your life that you're ashamed of that you regret and it's so dismal right it's so putrid and dark and horrible well that same majestic God that the angels worship for eternity left his glory to free you from sin by his blood and that's why John is just captured by this vision and he sings along with the Saints and martyrs and the angels in the book of Revelation worthy is the lamb who was slain worthy is the one who conquered the grave worthy is the one who broke the power of sin and darkness worthy is the one who rules the nations with truth and justice who shines like the Sun and all its brilliance and yet freed us from our sins by his blood sacrifice John is absolutely overwhelmed so stay centered on him.

Here's the power of this I heard an old southern preacher one time say and I can't say it like he said it but I love what he said he said some of you need to stop telling God about your problems and start telling your problems about God don't you love that some of you need to stop being obsessed with your problems and they fill every waking moment to the point where they even fill all your prayers God and there's this problem this problem this part that's good to take your problems to God but sometimes you need to stop telling God your problems and start telling your problems about God that there's somebody greater than all these anxieties that are worrying me greater than all the sins I regret and that is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords who loves me and gave his life to save me.

This is why in the book of Revelation the vision of the New Jerusalem the vision of the new heaven and the new earth the vision of death and disease and disaster being destroyed the vision of Jesus as King of Kings and Lord of Lords that is what motivates to stay centered on that and then the second thing you need to hear when you're growing through tough times is this stay consistent stay consistent I saw this post the other day at the Peachtree 10k which is a race in Georgia the American runner thought he had won the race and so he stopped running just before he got to the finish line to kind of like go yay I win and the British runner scooted past him and beat him and the Brit posted this please to take the win today at the Peachtree 10k always run through the line and the book of Revelation was written to stay don't stop run through the line you know what somebody here today needs to hear that so would you turn to somebody look him in the eyes and say don't stop run through the line would you do that for me don't stop run through the line don't stop don't give up you see some of the churches that Jesus addresses in the book of Revelation's they they were cocky they were lazy they stopped running they were kind of like we're good we got this we don't need to grow spiritually anymore and some of the other churches gave up and stopped they stopped because they were demoralized they were discouraged but either way they're stopped and maybe that's you you feel stopped well Jesus says at the end of each of the seven letters to everyone who overcomes who to the very end keeps on doing things that please me I will give power over the nation's 12-step groups have slogans like keep coming back step by step one day at a time you know those are all right out of the Bible keep putting one foot you know here's the point of this what do you do with an end of the world prophecy because there is that aspect of the book of Revelation well Jesus does not say the end is near so freak out and go to the army surplus store and buy survival gear no he tells him just stay consistent one foot in front of the other step by step don't give up keep doing the little things that are good stay centered stay consistent and the third reason that Revelation is written might surprise you Jesus says to you and me stay challenged and I don't want you to miss this stay challenged seven times in two chapters Jesus says one phrase he who has an ear let him hear what the spirit says to the churches do you get that you understand that phrase he has an ear let him hear what the spirit says to the churches that's saying these things are being said to these real churches that existed a real place in history but if you're reading these things you need to hear them because they're for you too this is saying as we do this study don't go it's a good thing Jesus said that to those ancient churches because they were messed up don't go man it's a good thing this is in the Bible because that church down the street man they need to hear this they are totally cuckoo you know don't look down the pew and go I'm glad this is in the Bible because that person I hope they're listening they really need to hear this now this is saying this is here for you this is here for you so every day you open the Bible during this series will you pray God give me an open mind and a soft heart will you agree to say that because I'll tell you something not everything Jesus will say to you in these seven letters will affirm everything you're doing and everything you're believing and everything you're thinking right now some of the words of Jesus in these seven letters are comforting but some of the words of Jesus in these seven letters are disturbing and to get anything out of this study you need to be receptive to the idea that sometimes God's word is disturbing do you agree with that sometimes God's word is disturbing in Revelation Jesus says this again and again those whom I love I rebuke and discipline so be earnest and repent that word for repent just means change your mind and direction living Bible translates it change your mind and attitude are you open to that are you open to changing are you open to repenting are you opening to change your mind there's no point in doing this study if you're not but if you are open to change you will be changed if you dare to do this you can see the components of the seven-week study there in your notes every week in the weekly worship services for the next seven weeks I'll cover that week's passage in the book of Revelation and in the weekly small groups watch this you're gonna watch a video that we filmed on location at each of the seven churches in ancient Asia Minor or Turkey as it is right now and that's gonna explain that passage a little bit more and then the daily book reading in the book that I wrote just for the series the seven that explains even more so that by the time of the group discussion you're gonna be totally prepped with everything you need to know about that passage and I say this because if you've been thinking about going deeper getting into small groups this studies for you but revelation so intimidating I don't understand it first nobody understands it the playing feels pretty level and secondly the weekly messages the small group videos the daily readings totally prep you for what you'll be discussing in the small groups no worries and the discussion of the small groups are not going to be like who do you think the Antichrist is you know would you name your child Damien have you seen the omen it's not gonna be weird stuff it's just gonna be very practical how does this impact you type stuff so if you've been waiting to get into a group there cannot be a better time sign up outside then the last weekend of October we're gonna do service projects in our community on make a difference day in other words there's so much good stuff you can get more details on our website but in seven weeks it'll be over done in seven weeks and we will never repeat it we won't so get into it now we start with week one next week.

I'm gonna close with this the big picture to the book of Revelation is that God wins Jesus returns to make all things right but you have to understand the emotion behind this I've given you a lot of information in this study today but Revelation is a book drenched with emotion it captures your imagination and the best way I know that to get you to feel a little bit of what Revelation is about to show you this little video a little girl knows her daddy is coming home from war in the Middle East she just doesn't know when get out some Kleenex and watch this 11 year old Carly the softball field is more than just a place to play it's become a place of solace something to fill the void while her dad sergeant Mike Clark has been deployed for nine months sergeant Clark has been overseas serving our country in Iraq and Kuwait but this isn't the first time the Clark family has been without dad mom Jamie says sergeant Clark's biggest fear while he was away not death or injury but that Carly then just four years old wouldn't remember him.

This time though Carly knew her dad was coming home just not exactly when but he was and much sooner than she thought she had as Carly's team any a crush oh three came into bat sergeant Clark made his way in family friends even umpires in on the surprise ready to stop the game as soon as sergeant Clark stepped onto the field a moment nine months in the making timed perfectly not a dry eye in the stands as father and daughter were reunited again we know he's coming back we know he's coming back we just don't know when but we know this it will be timed perfectly and that same embrace will be your embrace as you see the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords who was the lamb slain for the sins of the world including you returning to restore the earth to what he meant for it to be all along see here's the big picture you can no matter what you're going through keep confident and carry on knowing God wins God wins don't be like those British propaganda directors who decided the message needed to be a lot more complicated keep it simple and focus on Christ.

Let's pray Heavenly Father thank you for your revelation thank you that when our brains get foggy you clear them up with these visions of spiritual reality that yes there is a struggle a real struggle but you are ultimately in control in the meantime God help us all to turn our focus to you be our vision instead of the visions of headlines and chaos and fear and God maybe some of us for the first time are want to say in their hearts with me right now God I don't understand all of this but what I understand I like I want to place my trust in you to know you I want to place my trust in the King of Kings in the Lord of Lords who set me free by his blood and lives to be with me now God help me to believe more help me to see more clearly as we study these words in the next seven weeks. In Jesus' name, Amen.