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| Three Foundational Blessings
Loved, Freed, and Made
A. Introduction Our meditation for this morning is based on Revelation I: 5-6, a wonderful ascription of glory and song of exultation with which John ascribes praise to the Lord Jesus: Let me read…"To Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood, and made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen."
This whole year you have been meditating on the theme: “That ye should show forth the praises of God (1 Peter 2:9). Our topic for today is entitled “hree foundational blessings-Loved, Freed and Made” a message directly from the heart of the Book of Revelation. This book was written to encourage believers in a time of persecution. It is the unveiling of Jesus Christ and our relationship to Him.
I think it is tremendously important for us to recall that although it is obviously a book of special prophetic value, looking into the future-a door is opened in heaven, and in the early chapters, a door opened on earth. They show us the church of the first century. They explain some of its problems, the difficulties that ordinary Christian people like ourselves were encountering day by day and what it cost them to be believers. It details for us how far some of them fell short of the standard. For reading the seven letters to the churches in chapters 2 and 3 of this book, you would never get the impression that it is an ideal church. They are people who have problems. They are locked up with their sins. They need, Christians as they are, a reminder of the important foundational blessings on which their faith is based. And John, passionately fond of threes helps us in his preoccupation with triadic themes to get us back in touch with our roots. For example, in his opening passage of Chapters 2 and 3, he speaks about grace from Him who is, and was, and who is to come (1:4). He then goes on to describe the Lord Jesus in a threefold way: He is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, the ruler of kings of the earth (1:5). And then he uses three verbs that I want us to think about today. He says : To Him who loves us; to Him who has freed us from our sins; and finally, to Him who has made us a kingdom, priest to His God and Father, to Him be glory for ever and ever. (1:6)
I want us to wait with this: He loves us. Think about the people who first received this message. Many of them had no assurance of love. The first century was a loveless world. Many of the folk who received this marvelous book, and were encouraged by it, were slaves. They had no family background. They could not look back to parents who loved them. They had nobody who loved them on earth. But they rejoiced in the fact that there was one who loved them in heaven. "He loves us."
And it is important to see also that they could rejoice in the fact that He not only loves us, but He frees us. It was not only a loveless world, but it was a world of bondage and tyrannies and oppression. People were in captivity all over the first-century world. They felt, as some of them did, that they were under the dominion of the stars; others felt that they were under the dominion of different kinds of tradition. All of them were terrified that they were under the dominion of death. There was not a soul in the pagan world of the first century who could smile at death. It was the most awful, sinister, terrifying prospect. Life would end. They did not view it casually and indifferently in the way that some people did in our modern society. They faced up to it realistically and honestly, and they admitted that it was awful.
But the early Christian people could say, "We are loved, in a love-less world, in a world that cares little for children, and mothers and women and slaves-regarding them as things-we are loved by Jesus Christ, and we matter to Him." What is more, we are free. We are not in chains like our contemporaries. Those chains have been broken. The prison doors have been opened. He has freed us from our sins in His own blood, and He has made us into the people we really ought to be and want to be.
And then He has made us. It is not only that we are released from something that has held us in the past, but we have been made into the people that God wants us to be. We are made a kingdom of priests. And in the first century world, nobody was making anything that really mattered. People were conformed to a type; and it is like that now, today. It is only Jesus Christ who can make a person. It is only Jesus who has that creative power to recreate something new. Our Savior Himself said, "The devil destroys. He is a murderer ." He comes to rob us of life. But it is the Lord Jesus who is the creator, who can make your life and make my life the kind of life we really want it to be in our better moments, and the life that God certainly wants it to be, as He speaks to us in His Word
Let us pray:
B. He loves us The first foundational blessing is based on the verb ‘love’……”To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, he has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father-to him be glory and power fore ever and ever! Amen (1:5b-6). This is the first verb we will encounter in our reading today (1:6). Within the opening chapters of the Book of the Revelation (i.e. Chapters 1, 2 and 3) we will find a reference to love although these chapters are primarily concerned with the church in that contemporary situation. Before the vision is seen of the things that are to come, John is shown the things that are; and the first thing that arrests his attention is, "Him who loves us. .."
i. It is costly love It is costly love. There is sacrifice at the heart of this love. It is not love in word only. It is not the love of a teacher who has marvelous ideas, though He is the most superb teacher this world has ever known. It is not just the love of somebody who has a glorious moral upright example, though He had that, holy and harmless and undefiled as He certainly was. But it is the love of one who paid the greatest price. The German philosopher Goethe said "Blood is a very precious juice." He gave Himself. And it is costly love because He loves us and has freed us from our sins. How? "By His blood." It is the demonstration of His love. It shows us in the most certain of ways how much He cares for us; how much He longs to release us, and what a value He puts on our lives. The cross of Christ not only shows us the depravity of man, how cruel men could be, and how sick in their sinning they could be, but it says something to us also about the dignity of man. Man is made in the image of God; that in the heart and mind of God, man is worth saving, that you and I are worth saving. God loves us, and it is a costly love, the love of Christ.
ii. It is unrequited love Although God willingly gave of this love to us, yet, in Revelation 2:4 we read one of the most shattering things about this love: that even in the church it is unrequited love. A love that is freely given but never responded to. "Yet I hold this against you: You (who understood this costly love of Christ) have forsaken your first love. Now is not that astonishing? A love that gave of itself, and yet these people in this first church that is addressed in this group of churches in Asia Minor, they have got so much, they have so many skills and gifts and talents, and yet they have lost the thing that matters most of all. It is unrequited love.
Have we lost the first love that we had? Perhaps there is a growing conviction in our hearts that we really did not love Jesus as we should. That perhaps we have lost that first love. If that is so, let us be comforted. The foundational blessing of his love should make us do one thing.
iii. It is corrective love Look at 3: 19, "Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent.” If we have been uncomfortable before the Lord’s words, let us be comforted that this is a sign of his love upon us. He loves us enough to check us, and rebuke us, and chastise us. It is all part of His wonderful ministry to us. It may be that we have not loved Him as we ought to have loved Him, and yet He loves us, and goes on loving us. He does not love us for the love He can get; He loves us because He can't help loving us. It is His nature to love us; and He loves us so much that He has corrected us.
Yes, He loves us enough to check us and correct us. Note that the word love used here is in the present tense. It is not that He loved us once, at the cross, and demonstrated it by the shedding of His blood; but that this love is unchanging, even though our love changes and we don't love Him as we ought to love Him. We abandon, like the church at Ephesus, our first love; but He goes on loving us, and He checks us and He reproves us and tries to bring us back to Himself.
C. He frees us The second foundational blessing is based on the verb ‘free’. The early Christians needed freedom and so do we. We need the freedom from a host of different tyrannies. And in these opening chapters of the Book of the Revelation, we realize that this freedom is both negative as well as positive. In Chapter 1 we read that freedom is given for sins…”To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, he has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father-to him be glory and power fore ever and ever! Amen (1:5b-6)”. But if you look on to chapter 5, you will find the positive side. Freedom is bound up with the concept of being freed not only from sin but also for God. Let us read Revelation 5:9-10…You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God and they will reign on the earth.”
Not only are we freed from our sins, but we are freed for God: and this is vitally important. It is not enough to know that you are liberated and free from the things that have held you in bondage in the past: the glorious thing is that He takes us on. Yes, we can look back and see that we have been let loose because of all that Christ did for us on that wondrous cross and by His mighty resurrection. But we are redeemed and ransomed for God: that is the positive side of it. Just a negative kind of separation is in itself inadequate; it is not satisfying; it is not fulfilling. It is vital that we have it, but we must recognize also that we are separated for Him.
There are some people whose lives are made up of a series of negative prohibitions, and they certainly have been freed from a whole host of things; but to what positive extent are we made free for God? For example in the church at Laodicea, people had to be released from apathy, indifference; and arrogance. Revelation 4:17…You say, I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing. I have need of nothing. That is the Laodicean bondage to apathy and self sufficiency. The Laodicean had to be freed from being self- satisfied. They had to be released into hungering and thirsting for God and his righteousness. The Laodicean had to be freed from its avarice: saying "I am rich." They had to be freed from its bondage of the purse and released into the purity of God.
D. He makes us The third foundational blessing is found in the verb ‘make’. And what are we made? What is His purpose for us? His purpose is to make us "a kingdom of priests." There is an echo here, obviously, of the promise that God made to His people when He brought them out of bondage from Egypt. I am referring to Exodus 19. Exodus 19 reminds us that the Hebrew people were loved, and were freed from their sins, and then God made them to be a priestly kingdom…Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites (Exodus 19:5-6).. He said, I will make you a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation" (Exodus. 19: 6). You don't really understand the Book of the Revelation aright unless you see it as a marvelous mosaic of Old Testament quotations and sayings and ideas and images that are woven to produce this glorious theme, under the Spirit of God, of the conquering and victorious Christ. He said that all that happened to those people in Old Testament times was happening to us; and God's purpose for them was that they should be a kingdom of priests. He makes us.
And so the wonderful truth really is this: in the light of His love to us, and the fact that at the cross we are free, He has made us a kingdom of priests. Be what you are! Realize your potential. Fulfill your destiny in Christ.
i. The crown rights of the Redeemer Let us unpack this truth. What does He make us? First of all as members of a privileged kingdom-a kingdom of priests. This is better than "kings and priests". What we have here is a kingdom of priests. We have a King already and we belong to a kingdom. This means that we must acknowledge his rule over our lives. We are a kingdom of priests. We must say "yes" to the King. We must admit His rights over us. It is saying, .'Lord, I am not my own. You have every right over me" As someone put it in a covenant service…”Put me to what thou wilt” I am no longer my own, but Thine… Put me to what Thou wilt... Let me be exalted for Thee, or brought low for Thee;
Of course, to be members of a privileged kingdom is not only to acknowledge His rule and to admit His rights over every single part of our lives-our business life, our home life, our church life, our leisure life -but it is also to accept His riches. We belong to a king. Be what you are. Take the riches. Fulfill your destiny in Christ.
ii. A Kingdom of Priests We are not only members of a privileged kingdom, but we are also partners in a responsible priesthood. We are called to be a nation of priests. As 1 Peter 2:9 says…But you are chosen people a royal priesthood, a holy nation a people belonging to God that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. But, you know, it is a very serious thing to be a priest in New Testament terms. Malachi 2 tells us what a priest is in the purpose of God. In the last book of the Old Testament, just as this is the last book of the New Testament, we have the portraiture of a priest; in other words, what we should be like, in the purposes of God.
Malachi 2: 5-7 says this of a priest: .'My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him; this call for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth, and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many from sin”. For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, and from his mouth men should seek instruction-because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty".
a. Worshipper Do you want to be that kind of priest? I mean, that is the priesthood of all believers. What was a priest, then? Of course, the priest was a worshipper- “He revered me and stood in awe of my name." I am afraid we live in trivial society, and the danger is that it has invaded the church. We no longer talk in reverent and solemn and fearing terms of the God who is great and holy and majestic and powerful. We are flippant about His awe. The priest was a man who walked softly in the presence of God. This is one of the characteristics of the priest. This is what He has made us: people who really do worship and adore him.
b. Example Then the priest was an example. "He walked with me in peace and uprightness." He walked with me: " nothing false was found on his lips." and from his mouth men should seek instruction-because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty. Yes, he could say the right thing; but the power was not just in his word but in his life, and he lived as a good example. He was a pastor, the priest. It says, "men should seek instruction from his mouth." Do you live so near to the Lord, loved by Him, freed from your sins, made into a priest, that people seek you out? That you are approachable. In the days of His flesh people sought out the Lord Jesus, because when they were in need they just had to get into His presence, because they knew that He would help them. This is the priest- hood of all believers.
c. Evangelist Finally, the priest was an evangelist-"He turned many from their sins." My friends, be what you are. This is what the passage is saying to us. If we are this, if this is what we are made, be what you are. You say, "How can I be? " In the power of this Christ who shed His blood, and was raised from the dead for you, and sent His Holy Spirit into your hearts and lives to enable you to fulfill your obligations; to be the kind of Christian you really want to be. It is at the foot of that cross; it is at the mouth of that empty tomb, that we realize again, as we meet the living Lord Jesus, that He will make us all that we want to be and all that we long to be, and all that we ought to be, and all that the world in its best moments says we should be. And if we were, perhaps then we should turn many from their iniquities. Holiness of life is the most powerful evangelistic force in the world. |
