Sermon Cloud

Intro

The last time I was here in this capacity we talked about how to remain faithful in troubled and uncertain times. We saw that God's providence, his provisions, and his promises were our assurance, encouragement and motivation for being able to remain faithful in the face of uncertainties and trouble. We saw also in verses 1-3 that one aspect of God's provision is his revelation, not only of the future but more importantly of himself. Well, between verse 3 and 4 the situation of the churches in Asia had not improved, and in the last 6 weeks neither has ours. We are weeks away from an election no one can predict and our country is still in a war that has no determinable end. On a more personal level, we face difficulties at home, at school and at work. You may be faced with a difficult decision at school about how to behave and wonder what other kids will think of you if you chose to follow what God says is right. Maybe you have a hard class or assignment and your not sure you'll be able to do well. At work, your boss asks you to do something you know is unethical, even if it may not be quite illegal, and your not sure that disagreeing won't have a negative impact on your future there. We're not immune here or at home. We've lost a very important member of our family recently. Our economic security has been shaken by an almost 1500 point drop in the stock market in two weeks. People are on loans and loosing their homes. Plans for the future are forced into a holding pattern, and jobs.... What about the future of our jobs? Just this week I really realized that my family is not immune from all this as Spotsylvania has decided to cut over 3million dollars from the educational budget. What if my wife is one of the people who gets laid off?

When such questions plague our minds we are tempted to turn to worldly solutions. Its natural, we have been trained to think in those ways by hours of education, formal and informal. We look to presidents and parties, to doctors and health experts, to proper investment schemes and stable financial institutions. Just the other night I received an email from one of my own financial institutions that illustrated this for me very well. Let me read you a bit.

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Dear David Fischer,

We understand how recent events in the financial markets have caused many of you to become concerned about your investments and your family's future. [We want] to assure you that our company is sound and ready to help.

A stable foundation
[We continue] to have no direct exposure to the U.S. real estate market and the associated complex financial securities that are at the root of this liquidity crisis. Our capital structure and liquidity are strong and stable, and we continue to safeguard our clients' assets with the following protections...

 A valuable resource
With the recent turmoil in the markets, we realize it's easy to get caught up in the news of the day. As always, we remind you to stay diversified and remain focused on your investment goals rather than short-term market volatility. Take advantage of [our] personal service and online resources to help you make prudent decisions in these turbulent times...

Thank you for investing with... and putting your trust in us.

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None of these things are bad in themselves. They may all be examples of responsible living. They are fine as far as they go, but do they go far enough? Just how stable a foundation do they provide and just how valuable are their resources? What if, by means of them, a person was able to gain the whole earth, and the heavens as well? Would that provide a truly stable foundation? Isa 34:1-4 predicts that heavens will be rolled up like a scroll. And Rev 6:12-17 speaks of the renovation of the created order in similar words:

When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, ¹³ and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. ¹⁴ The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.

No, there is nothing stable about this life or this world or any of the things it offers. And above all it can never offer us the one thing we need most in the face of uncertainty and trouble: peace. Jesus said it best in Jn 14:27: Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

Notice that! The peace Jesus promises to give is not "as the world gives." The world offers no real, lasting peace. It only offers temporary, fleeting, and ultimately life robbing comfort.

But in the opening of our passage this morning, John tells the churches to whom he writes, that there is both grace and peace available. Look at verse 4 "John, to the seven churches that are in Asia, Grace to you and Peace..." He goes on to tell them where it comes from, provides an example of how it comes, and then leaves us with the reason why it comes to the people of God. But as we begin lets stop here and ask a fundamental question: what are grace and peace? What is their substance, or nature? It will do us no good to move on until we have answered the question of what it is we are talking about.

The substance of grace and peace (What are they?)

Grace is a word with which we are so familiar that there is a danger of tossing it around without ever really knowing what it is. The word has a vast array of meanings in Scripture, so what are we to make of it here. In the context to which John is writing, I believe, we are to understand it to as God's inexhaustible, all-sufficient, provision which enables us to face any and every circumstance with faith and hope. Similar to what Paul speaks of in Php 4, when he says that he has discovered the secret to contentment in all things. He goes on to tell the Philippians church that his God would provide all their needs according to his riches in Christ Jesus. Isn't this just what the churches needed? They faced many challenges, loss of spiritual fervency, poverty, suffering and death, doctrinal error, immorality, hypocrisy, and weakness. But it wasn't just these failures that demanded grace. Some of the churches had persevered and remained faithful. Yet we need grace as much, maybe even more in good times. Just as the church in Laodicia would discover when things are good we risk falling into spiritual pride and self-confidence. Thinking we were rich and need nothing only to find the truth that we are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. Each of the churches needed grace to meet their present as well as eternal needs and each of us is in equally dire need of such grace. Yes, we live in this life by grace just as we will live in the next life by grace. As the Hiedleburg Catechism says, "Jesus Christ is my only hope in death, and life."

When I came home from Calvin College in 1997 after a very difficult year there wasn't a single one of the faults of the churches in Asia which I just listed which I had not faced and by which I had not been, or nearly been mastered. As I swirled about in my own, mostly self inflicted, pain that summer I came to a conclusion that would alter the direction of my entire life. I realized that grace was a very important concept in the Christian life, but that for me it was nothing more than that-a concept. I'm not saying I wasn't saved but I didn't understand grace in any practical way, and really even as a concept I couldn't have explained it. So I set about trying to discover it by my usual means-reading.

I want to state for the record right here that we can learn much about grace from books and those things can be useful parts of discovering grace, but we only really discover grace itself when we encounter it, or perhaps more accurately when it encounters us, in the midst of suffering. That's what Paul found out and related in 2Cor 12. It was in the midst of suffering, divinely ordained suffering by the way, that he discovered the truth that "[God's] grace is sufficient for you..." And for those out there who are facing pain and suffering today, I want you to know that it doesn't matter if that pain is inflicted upon you from somewhere else, or whether it is self-inflicted. It doesn't matter how intense it is, or how long it has been. God's grace is sufficient for me and it is sufficient for you. Hold on to that for just a moment, and I'll come back to it.

What about peace? When we think of peace the first thought that probably comes to mind is the absence of war or external conflict. That's involved, but it isn't the primary biblical meaning. One can have biblical peace, but still face external conflicts. We see this in 2Kings 22:20 where God tells King Josiah that he shall be gathered to his grave in peace. But we find out in the next chapter that Josiah dies in battle. So unless we are prepared to call the reliability of God and his word into question it would appear that "in peace" did not mean the absence of war or external conflict. Peace or no peace is not related to our external circumstances at all actually. This is evident from the letters to the churches in Smyrna and Philadelphia, in chapters 2 and 3. The church at Smyrna is told specifically that they are going to suffer, even unto death. While God tells the church in Philadelphia that he will preserve from the tribulation which is coming on the rest of the world. Yet John's prayer for peace is for both these churches.

So if biblical peace isn't the absence of external conflict, and it isn't based on circumstances, what is it and what is it based on? I think the best place to find an answer is James 4, so hold your place and turn there. James asks a simple question: what causes fights and quarrels among you? He answers that it is our desires which war within us. The word James uses here for desire is used 5 times in the Bible, twice here, and every time it is used it carries a negative connotation. The word itself would be readily recognized by any of us, it is the word hedone, from which we derive the term hedonism or hedonist. It is our demand for pleasure, in one form or another, that stimulates all our external conflicts. And it is the removal of these conflicts, the internal conflicts of our desires, not primarily of wars or even anxiety to which this prayer for peace is directed. I think St. Augustine put it best when he said "you have created us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless till it rests in thee." This restfulness does not result from the assurance that God will remove all our suffering, or grant all our desires, even at some future point. But rather it is rooted in our abiding and growing desire for God himself, and his meeting of that desire.

And this is the most important point with regard to these two words. You see, we speak, and it seems that John speaks, of these two things as objects, as qualities which God bestows upon us. But beloved, the grace and peace of which John speaks are not objects, they are not qualities but they are the presence of Christ himself in us, through the Holy Spirit as we abide in him.

In Heb 10:29 the Holy Spirit is called explicitly the "Spirit of Grace." In John 14:27 Jesus says, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you..." But the the 12 preceding verses and by name in verse 26 Jesus is talking about giving his disciples the Holy Spirit! The Spirit and Peace are synonymous here, and else where. And in chapter 16 Jesus says that he has said all these things "that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world." This grace and peace are not things, they are not feelings, they are the communication of the very one who gives them to us. Which takes us to our next point, that is, the source of grace and peace.

(v4-5&8) The source of grace and peace (Where do they come from?)

John goes on in verses 4 and 5 to tell us that this grace and peace is "from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. Grace and peace come from the Triune God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is from "him who is and who was, and who is to come." This title is an undeniable reference to the covenant name of God which he gave to Moses at Mount Sinai in Ex 3:14 "YHWH, I AM." This name emphasizes, in the words of the shorter catechism, that God is infinite, eternal and unchangeable in all his many perfections.

It is from the "seven spirits before his throne." In calling him "the seven spirits" or as some translations have "the sevenfold spirit" he is using the number seven, as is so often the case in the Bible in general, and Revelation in particular, to signify his completeness, seven being the number of completion. So he is declared to be perfect, complete, or Holy Spirit. And while some people believe this refers to angels, no where in all the bible are either grace or peace said to flow from angels. That this refers to the Holy Spirit should be even more evident when we recognize, as already mentioned, that grace and peace are not qualities from God, but the Holy Spirit himself. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son alone, not from the angels.

John finishes his description of the source of grace and peace with "Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the first born of the dead and the ruler of kings on earth." He does this because for us, Christ is the center of all our worship, as we see shortly. The title "faithful witness primarily refers to Christ's perfect revelation of God. Col 1:15 tells us that he is the exact image of God in flesh. There is no other God behind Jesus Christ, he represents God to us perfectly and faithfully. In addition to this, as we will see, he is the faithful witness in that he was obedient in his witness even unto death. Unlike we, who are so often faithless, and shrink back in our testimony, and who fail so miserably to image God to a world in need him, Jesus Christ has done so perfectly and faithfully.

He is the first born of the dead. This is not a temporal reference here. Jesus was not the first to rise from the dead in time. We can think of the saints who rose from the dead at the crucifixion according to Matt 27:52. We can think of Lazarus and the widow of Nain's son in the NT. We can think of the widow of Zarapheth's son whom Elijah raised, or the Shunamite woman's sons who Elisha raised in the OT. No, when John calls Jesus the first born of the dead he is referring to his preeminence. As Paul says once again in Col 1:18 "he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent." This title refers to Christ's supremacy over all things visible or invisible.

He is the ruler of kings on earth. This title indicates Christ's supremecy over every earthly regime. At a time when Christians faced systematic persecution by the Roman government, this was an important source of comfort. Whatever they might face at the hand of earthly rulers, the Lord they suffered with and for was supreme over all and so they could know that there suffering or deliverance was in his hands and for his glory.

Each of these three titles individually points to the Christ's perfection and complteness. He is perfect in his witness, he is perfect in his person and he is perfect in his rule. But corporately they also point to his perfection as they demonstrate his three-fold office as prophet (faithful witness), priest (as the first born of the dead he is also the preeminent offering) and King (ruler of kings on earth).

The answer to where grace and peace come from is also the explanation of why they are so valuable. All of these designations of God have in common a theme of completeness. This, together with reference to all three persons of the Trinity emphasizes that the source and substance of sufficient provision, fulfillment, is the one who is, in himself, infinitely, eternally and unchangeably complete. This should fill us with confidence that there is no end or change to this grace and peace so long as we abide in Christ.

(v5-6) The circumstance of grace and peace (How do we get them?)

How then do we acquire and maintain these valuable commodities. There are several ways, we call them means of grace. Chief among them are the preaching of the word and the right administration of the sacraments. But in verse 6 we find another of these mediators. After his profound description of God in verses 4-5, John cannot contain himself and breaks into a doxology at the end of verse 5 and into verse 6. This is not a random or unconcious outburst of praise but rather the appropriate response to a proper vision of God and an illustration of one of the primary ways grace and peace come to us-worship.

I quoted Augustine earlier where he speaks of our hearts resting in God. Many people know that statement, but fewer know how it begins. Augustine begins that sentence by saying "man desires to praise you... you have prompted him, that he should delight to praise you." Then he says "FOR you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they rest in you." One of the primary means by which grace and peace come to us is in worship.

Just this week I was listening to a CD Bryan gave me on worship in which the speaker talked about the ability for worship to transform us by mediating grace to us. He told the story of a woman who's daughter was in the hospital with a serious, life threatening condition and how she went home and began to play the hymn we sang a couple weeks ago "A Debter To Mercy Alone." As she was played and sang that song over and over God ministered to her.

I've experienced this same thing on numerous occasions. Several years ago a close family friend was diagnosed with category 5 brain cancer. We prayed diligently and, by God's grace, it went into remission for a couple years. But then it came back and she finally lost her battle... well, more accurately she embraced God's providence with grace and dignity. The point is that during that time I found great comfort from the music of the group Indelible Grace, many of which we will be learning here as Bryan and I transition in the role of worship team leader. In particular I found the hymns "Whate'er my God Ordains Is Right" and "Dear Refuge of My Weary Soul" to be sources of great grace and peace as I declared the truth I believed in a context that also gave full recognition to the grief I was feeling.

Even this weekend I have found my need of this. I have to be honest with you, preparing to preach still scares me a lot. I can get very anxious sometimes, not always, but sometimes, and for some reason this week was particularly difficult. There were some other things at play at well which I won't go into here, but I finally had to sit down and play through a few of those hymns, like "Be Still My Soul" and "Come Thou Fount."

I do not wish to leave the impression that just going through the motions of singing songs will supply the grace and peace we are talking about. As the speaker on the CD I mentioned rightly pointed out, our worship must be coupled with faith. And that faith must be centered on Christ, as we see here in verse 6. John focuses on 3 or possibly 4 aspects of Christ's person and work, depending on how you view things. I'm going to take them as 3 things.

The first, and foundational thing John directs his adoration toward is Christ's love for us. This should be the foundation of all our praise to God. As a matter of fact, love is the sum and substance of Grace and Peace. John states this succinctly and profoundly in his first epistle when he says "Behold, what manner of love the Lord has lavished upon us." The love, the grace which Christ has for us is beyond all we could ever have asked or imagined. For Jesus himself points out that "greater love has no one than this, that he would lay his life down for a friend." And yet, "while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son." How much more love could he show us?

John tells us how much more. He has not only reconciled us to God by his death, but he has freed us from our sins by his blood. The supreme evidence of the depth of God's love for us is the sacrifice of his son. Everyone who's life is hidden in Christ is a new creation, his debt of sin has been canceled having been nailed to the cross, and he has been freed not only from guilt but from present bondage to sin.

I have to pause here to emphasize this. You see, as I alluded to earlier when I mentioned my difficult year at Calvin College, I am well acquainted with the bondage of besetting sins. I knew such bondage for so long, that though I knew God could deliver me, I honestly had despaired of whether he would ever do so. I can remember crying out into the star-lit sky begging God to deliver me and weeping because I knew it would not happen. This is the first time I have preached so specifically about God's deliverance from sin. And for the first time I can tell you that God stands ready and willing to deliver you with no sense of hypocrisy. I can't tell you how long it will take, but I can tell you that I am evidence of God's redeeming power, and I stand ready to come along side you, as I believe many others here do as well. We want this church to be for you a safe harbor in which rest.

Finally Jesus Christ has made us a kingdom and priests. I believe John is saying the same thing here that Peter says in his first epistle. God has made us a royal priesthood. What does that mean and why is it signficant. What it means is this. Simply, that we are a kingdom means that we are those who have come under the royal authority and protection of the king of kings. This means that God will subdue all our enemies in his time, and it means that we must submit to his direction.

So often when we hear about the priesthood of all believers, the focus is on our immediate access to God. And that is an important part of it. It is an essential element of the grace and peace we receive from the triune God. Far to often I have heard this idea put forth espousing that we no longer need to be under the authroity of church leaders. This I believe is a dangerous and damnable heresy, and in no way what the reformers meant when they spoke of it. But the essential thing about our priesthood is that we have a ministry to carry out. As one commentator I read put it "the essential thing about priests is that they mediate." What do they mediate? They mediate reconciliation with God to men, and prayers for men to God. Which brings us to our final point.

(v7) The purpose of grace and peace (Why does God give them?)

What is the purpose of the grace and peace John prays for his readers? Why does God give us grace and peace. I believe the answer to this is found in verse 7. John says, "Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen."

John speaks of the return of Christ. So certain is this return that John speaks as though it is happening presently. And this return is a return in glory and for judgment. He comes with the clouds, which is a common image of God's glory and majesty. This is almost a direct quote of Matt 24:30 where Jesus elaborates saying "They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory." That he comes in judgment is clear from Rev 6:15-17 where the kings of the earth cry out that the day of the great day of the wrath of him who sits on the throne and of the lamb has come. This would have provided great comfort, peace you might say, to churches facing the uncertainty of life, almost 70 years after his departure. Surely the delay of Christ's return was part of the reason for the loss of spiritual fervor addressed to the church at Ephesus. And it can provide comfort for us as we look forward to the long awaited return of our Lord.

But it provides no such comfort to those outside the family of God. The peoples of the earth, John tells us, will wail on account of him when he comes, but they will not repent. Again, Rev 6:15-17 tells us what their cries will be. "Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. ¹⁶ They called to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! ¹⁷ For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?" They will find it to late to repent. For even when they see him return in glory and judgment, with their very own eyes, which they have said so many times would convince them, even with all this they will not repent. For they will find that ultimately the problem is not one of lack of belief (they will believe) but of failure to love. Though they will know with certainty the truth, they will rather be crushed by the rocks then broken by the stone the builders rejected which has become the corner stone.

So why are we granted this grace and peace? That we might fulfill our duties as priest to mediate reconciliation with God to men, and prayers for men to God. Another word for mediate here would be minister. Listen to what Paul says in 2Cor 5:18-19 "All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore we are ambassadors (mediators) for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, BE RECONCILED TO GOD!" And here is the glorious message we bring to those around us, and which we must implore them to believe, that "God made him who knew NO sin!, to be sin for us, so that IN HIM we might become the righteousness of God!!!"

We are not called, friends, to simply share the gospel, but to implore people to be reconciled to God by being united to and found in Christ Jesus, not having a righteousness of their own that comes from the law and which can never bring peace with God, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to Scripture alone, to the glory of God alone! With such a message how is it that we, that I can be so timid and so half-hearted in my appeal to those who are dying? Is it perhaps because I have not grasped the depth of it myself? How about you, have you? I am afraid that we will never grasp the depths of the riches of the glory of this message so long as we continue to believe that the grace and peace of God which has been granted unto us has been granted so that we might bask in its warmth and enjoy a life of rest and relaxation. It has been granted to us that we might minister reconciliation to men on behalf of God.

And that we might offer up prayers to God on behalf of men. For this is the other part of our responsibility as a priests of God. How often, and with what degree of fervency do we pray for the lost? Do you beloved, ever weep over them? Do you ever consider your friends and loved ones who have passed into eternity without Christ and weep? Does it spur you on to pray with anguish for those who remain but who are dead men walking? I must admit that, though I have had tastes of this, I fall far short of it. Rhonda and I were watching CSI on Thursday and one of the long time, main characters was killed. I found myself closer to tears over the loss of a fictional character on television than I often do over friends and family who's souls hang in the balance, who if they were weighed today would be found wanting. Beloved, this ought not to be so!

Conclusion

This passage concludes with a declaration, "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is and who was and who is to come. The Almighty." When I began preparing this message I was convinced that this was the Father speaking, since it is he who was earlier called "the one who is and who was and who is to come." As I conclude this morning I am convinced that this is a reference to Jesus Christ. I'm not going to explain how I came to that conclusion, but I'm convinced it is true. This verse establishes that Jesus Christ is one with the Father in essence, and it ends the section on the same focus it began it on in verse 1 and has had throughout and which we must begin, continue, and end on-Jesus Christ.

Beloved we cannot succeed in our mission without the grace and peace which not only come from but are in their very nature our Lord Jesus Christ's indwelling us by his Holy Spirit. This is the promise of God to everyone who believes. We must abide in this promise because apart from him we can do nothing. Were it not for that grace and peace I would not have finished writing this sermon. I would not have the strength to stand here this morning to deliver it to you. And you and I would not have the ability to draw the next breath or the one after that, or the one after that with which we might declare the glorious praises of him who loves us and has freed of from our sins by his blood. It is my sincere prayer that this week we will abide in him, and breath out grace and peace to everyone we meet, at work, at school, at home, at play, at the grocery store and everywhere in between. Because he is coming, and at that point it will be to late. Today is the day of salvation, now is the time of God's mercy. Let us declare it with every breath we draw. Amen!