Real quick, our fearless leader, by the way, hi, welcome. Glad you're here. If you missed it, welcome. Really glad that you're here. Our fearless leader, Clint Leavitt, is down for the count, and I just think it might be good to pray for him really quickly. Would you join me and really pray with me?

Lord Jesus, we thank you for our pastor, and we pray for his back, and we pray, God, for healing. You can do that, and we ask that as your people in the name of Jesus right now. We pray, if nothing else, Lord, for relief of pain. We pray for good doctors and wisdom, and we pray for long -term wholeness for Clint and his back. Thank you for our friend and our brother and our pastor. Bless him today. In the name of Jesus, amen.

Christmassy. Do you know the word? My house and my neighborhood have been looking more Christmassy since December the 1st. Yeah? Christmassy, it's a word that means ornaments, deck the halls, mistletoe. Christmassy. Let me hear you say ham. Y 'all can do better. Let me hear you say ham.

Ham. Candy canes. Candy Jingle bells. Jingle Christmassy. Christmassy. You guys got it. Santa. Reindeer. Elves on sheep. Shelves. Christmassy. If you, it's all right.

If you had gone to Netflix and said holiday movie, that's what it would give you. If you go to ChatGPT and type in Advent, Christmas season, these are the images it will give you. But if you went to the Bible and you started looking around, you would get a very different set of images. The ax laid at the root of the tree. The sun and the moon turned to blood. The sun and the moon turned to blood. The earth shaking. Christmassy.

Beasts growling. A virgin screaming. Prophets trumpeting. Christmassy. Bones marching. Heavenly armies. The justice thundering from on high. Christmassy. Fa la la la la.

Now, I sometimes feel like we celebrate two holidays. And they're named the same name. And they happen on December the 25th. And one of them my neighbors recognize. It's about nostalgia and good times. We could go together to Costco, pick up an Advent calendar. It'll have a sled and some snow and little chocolates when you open the doors. No reference to the gospel. Because you don't need it.

And then there's this whole other day where I can get an Advent calendar, but the point is the gospel. And the chocolates just remind me that the word of God is sweet. Where we light candles every week that count down to the end of the world, because that is a huge part of Advent, not just that there was the first Christmas, that the Father sent the Son, that the Word became flesh, that Jesus came as a baby because he loved us so much, not just the present Christmas, that right now, and I mean right now, the Spirit is inviting you into peace, hope, love, and joy. Amen. Like you've never experienced them.

But also, the last Christmas that will ever come, when the King comes back, the one who was and who is and who is to come. That's what this is about. Which means that Revelation might be the most Christmassy book of the Bible. If you would, turn with me to the back. We're going to be in the back of the Bible today, if you've got a Bible.

Revelation chapter 1, verse 9. The words will be behind me. If you don't have a Bible, we love buying people Bibles. Talk to Daniel. He will make that happen.

Revelation chapter 1, starting at verse 9, and it goes like this. I, John, your brother, who share with you in Jesus the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos, because the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, Write in a book what you see, and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.

And then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands. And in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe, with a golden sash across his chest. His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace.

His voice was like the sound of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars. From his mouth came a sharp, two -edged sword, and his face was like the sun, shining with full force.

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last. And the living one. I was dead. And see, I am alive forever and ever. I have the keys of death and Hades.

Now, write what you have seen. What is and what is to take place after this. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches. And the seven lampstands are the seven churches. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Trust Jesus. He is in control.

That is a good summary of this entire book. But also the passage we just read. If you have never read Revelation before, it is somewhere between a letter and a work of art. It is a message to the church. But it is also full of really interesting, beautiful images, and metaphors, and symbols, and tantalizing details.

And there are some churches who love this book. And who read this book, and get really interested in the details. They want to spend a lot of time trying to figure it out. And they will make charts. You may know some of these churches. And they will explain to you, this is what this is, and this is how this works, and this is how the end of the world, and when it is going to happen.

And somewhere in there, it seems like they kind of miss the point. This is not a book of riddles and mad libs that we have been given to kind of bide our time before Jesus comes back. This is a book about the triumph of God. About the absolute victory of Jesus Christ. Over everything. Anything and everything that would threaten you.

The end. And so we can trust him, because he is absolutely in control. Whether we are in misery, or in majesty, or dealing with God's mission.

John is in misery. He says that outright. I, John, this is verse 9, your brother, in persecution. That word in Greek is thlipsis. It is not literally persecution. It is a word about suffering and sorrow, and my current day is bad, and my future days are going to be bad for kind of a while. It is a word about misery.

I am in a miserable situation, John says. I am not riding from a place of comfort or privilege, and you guys are in this with me. We are brothers and sisters in this. It is a bad time. We are also brothers and sisters, he says, in the kingdom. So Revelation dances a lot with these two ideas. The kingdom, which is not here yet. Yes, and misery, which is our present experience.

But the kingdom, which is definitely coming, and misery, which is kind of where we are at right now. And in the middle of those two things is patient endurance. Which is the last thing John says we are brothers and sisters in. That is how we are going to make it, if we are going to make it. By the grace of God, patient endurance through this miserable season to the kingdom.

Why is John so miserable? He is on an island. This is the island. It is called Patmos. And you guys, who live in Arizona, are like, that sounds nice. Island, off the coast of Greece, Turkey. Because we live in a time of cruise ships and airplanes. We could go there, hang out for a week, then fly away. That is not John's situation.

He is on Patmos because he is forced to be on Patmos. Basically, the Roman government does not like him. And they do not like him because he is so good at talking about Jesus. He is so good at talking about Jesus that people are starting to follow Jesus. And local authorities and big authorities are like, this is going to be a problem. Because these people are starting to follow a very different Lord. These people are starting to live by a very different code of ethics. These people are going to ruin society as we know it.

So I am going to put this guy on an island. We are going to make sure he does not get out. The history of the church would tell you that John was first tortured almost to death with boiling oil. And once they could not kill him, they put him on the island. So John is in a bad situation. He is on this island. Instead of being in prison, they do not bother building walls because you cannot get out. And they do not give you food or water or shelter or clothes. That is on you to figure out.

So this is John's situation as he writes this letter. And as he gives us this vision of a whole different world.

I do not know the name of the island you are on. It might be hope. And it might be despair. You might feel great today. And you may feel like you are surrounded by peace. And you may feel like you are surrounded by peace. And you might feel like you are surrounded by an ocean of turmoil and fear. Like there is no way out.

You may feel like there is joy coming for you in just a couple of days. And Christmas and it is going to be great. And you might also underneath all of that feel some anxiety about how you are going to pay for it. Or what you are going to do or how you are going to deal with your family. Or like what is going to happen next and where I am going to live and what is going to go on with my work and my job. A lot of the time when we stop long enough to sit and think, we start to think that maybe we are isolated and alone. And there is a lot of things that threaten us.

John is far away from people he really cares about. Those people are in Turkey. Which is over there.

And there are seven churches. You can blank out that. Seven churches that John knows and loves. They have family. They have friends there. And he is writing this letter to these people. Some of those churches are doing great. Some of those churches are in need of encouragement. Some of those churches are making very bad choices. There are people in there who are a mess. Who have forgotten who God is.

And he is writing this letter to all of these people. To people like you and me. Some of us in a mess, some of us making bad choices, some of us making good choices. And these words are a sharp two -edged sword in our lives, inviting us into a different kind of life. But when you are stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere, it is hard to remember that God is in control.

And John tells us, look, if you want to transcend your current situation, if you want to see beyond a human horizon, pray. Get in the Spirit and you will see that God will eventually give you a vision. A vision of a different life. That the God of the universe will meet you here and now and will say to you what he says to me. I can give you life, even here. I can change this situation, even here. I can transform anything. I've got the keys. The keys to death and life and heaven and hell.

When John was in the middle of nowhere and God met him, do you think he could do that for you today?

John was in the middle of nowhere. There was no hope for his life. And God gave him a vision of something else. Do you think he can do that for you today? Trust Jesus. He is in control.

The vision John gets is one of majesty.

Outrageous, over -the -top, what Jesus reveals to him. We only read a little bit. This sounds weird. It gets a lot weirder. I promise you that. If you ever read this book, you'll go, oh, Luke read one of the normal parts. That's absolutely true. John hears a voice. That's what it says. And the voice sounds like a trumpet. It's loud and it's musical.

And John turns and when he turns, he expects to see a voice or a speaker or maybe a trumpet. And what he sees is something else. That's a really common thing in the book of Revelation. You'll think you know what God's up to. You'll think you know what's about to happen next. You'll think you know everything there is to know. And you turn around and you find out, oh. Oh, it turns out God's way bigger than I imagined. It turns out he's got so much more in store for me than I ever could have hoped for or imagined. I'm just starting to understand. He's just getting warmed up.

So John turns around and sees something totally different. He starts to immediately have to repent. That's a thing that happens when we have a vision of God. Our lives have to turn around to really get in line with what he's doing. And in the darkness, John sees first light, a bunch of lamps. And then. Then, someone in the middle, some figure, like the son of man, it says, and he is terrifying. Just unbelievable power is radiating out of this person.

His face looks like the sun shining with full force. You and I can't look at an eclipse, which is the sun shining with very little force. We will go blind. This is stronger than the sun radiating out of the face. Of the risen Lord Jesus. His feet look like metal that's been superheated in a furnace. Like fine bronze that is white hot, it says. His eyes, his face, the little John can make out in the bright, bright light. His eyes look like fire. His hair is pure white like snow, like wool.

And he's wearing a foot -length robe like a priest in the Old Testament. Like one of the Roman figures. He's wearing a sash like one of the priests in the Old Testament. Like one of the Roman leaders. Like one of the Roman leaders. He's dressed with authority and somehow his clothes don't burn up. And John sees all of this shining, terrifying power and he falls to the ground like a corpse.

That sounds about right. We hear son of man in this passage. Verse 13. We hear that phrase and we think, oh, Jesus calls himself the son of man all the time. All the time in the Gospels. If the thing that Jesus loves to refer to himself as, the son of man. And John, church history would tell us, is a disciple of Jesus. They were friends. John knows Jesus. John has walked with Jesus.

They went camping. They had hummus together. They would have cookouts together. This is a real thing. They would chat. They would talk. They would go on adventures. They sat at dinner parties. John saw Jesus do incredible things. John knows that Jesus is God in the flesh. He has seen it for himself. He's seen Jesus crucified and raised from the dead. John turns around and goes, I've never seen Jesus look like this.

I've never seen Jesus look like this. Still human. Still with feet and a face and hands. But way, way more powerful than I've ever been allowed to see before. Something has been revealed to John. The risen Lord Jesus. No longer a sneaky rabbi. No longer saying stuff like, hey, I healed you, but don't tell anybody about it. No longer saying stuff like, hey, I know what you saw on the mountain, but please, like, let's not make a big deal about that. Like, casually making food for thousands and going like, it was the 12 guys. They were bringing you the food. Right? Just sort of doing it undercover. God under, sort of raps. Now it's time.

In the Old Testament, the Son of Man, that phrase, is a really strong thing. We're used to it with Jesus, so it tends to sound like a human person that we know. But in the Old Testament, this comes from books like Daniel or even Hebrew fan fiction like Enoch. These great books of the Bible where all of a sudden you're hearing stuff like, there's this guy, the Son of Man. He rides on the clouds. He has the power of God at his fingertips. He shines brighter than you could imagine. He is flashing with lightning all the time.

He is connected to before time and before creation. He can make Adam's children right again. He will crush the nations. He will destroy oppressors. He will raise up God's people. He will deliver. He will liberate. He will redeem. We are waiting for that guy, the Christ, the Messiah, the Son. The Son of Man. Everyone is waiting. And Revelation mashes up these things even with Old Testament descriptions of God. So it's even bigger, even better, even more dangerous.

When Jesus in the New Testament would use phrases like Son of Man, people would hear it and go,

oh. So like the Incredible Hulk is in there. When are you going to bring him out? And they would wait. And consistently when you read the New Testament, you're like, the disciples keep saying like, okay, so when, like is it like, like when are you going to, you know, like, like, when is he, when, when is he going to smash? Like, when's that, when is the time that like, you're going to restore the nation of Israel? Is it now, Lord? Do you want us to call down fire from the sky? Like, is it time? Do we wreck people now? And Jesus is very laid back about it all the time. Like they've misunderstood what the Son of Man is. It's not time yet. And now all of a sudden, it's time. The Son of Man has come.

Reality is about to be rolled back. Books are going to be opened. And he says, I've got all the keys. Nobody can open doors that I close. Nobody can close doors that I open. Absolute and total power. A couple of weeks ago, we were singing a song. It's one of the Christmas songs that happened. We were singing these words. And afterward, Annalise was saying, you know, it's kind of hard to connect this with the Jesus we know, which is true. Christmas carols manage to do a lot of theology really, really fast, and they make it rhyme. So Christ by high. Highest heaven adored. Christ the everlasting Lord. Laid in high and behold him come. Offspring of the virgin's womb. Veiled in flesh the Godhead see.

Hail the incarnate deity. Pleased as man with men to dwell. Jesus, our Emmanuel.

We forget at Christmas. We hear these stories so often. We hear about a baby. We think about it. We're talking about Jesus who is truly human. If you read Revelation, it's very easy to believe that he's God. After a little while. It would be hard to remember. He's also like a real person who lived and walked and died and ate fish with people. But Jesus was truly human. He was really born. He really lived. He really bled. He really ate. He really died. He has to be human or he cannot save us. He has to live the life we should have lived. He has to die the death we should have died. He has to be baptized. He has to be raised so that we can be baptized into his baptism and raised with his resurrection. 100 % human, Jesus Christ. Also, 100 % God. He has to be God or he cannot save us. He has to be infinitely powerful. He has to die infinitely. He has to be raised infinitely. He has to be beyond comprehension. He has to be the judge and the lawgiver that he might free us from the judgment and from the law.

Fully God. Fully man. Two natures, one person. Jesus Christ. Not created. Before all time. This is the one that John sees. This is the one we trust. This is the one we worship at Christmas. The one who holds the stars in his hand puts that hand on John. I don't know if you saw that. This is verse 17. He falls to the ground like a dead man and the hand, which just a second ago was holding the stars themselves, is pulling him up and saying, Hey, don't be scared. It's still me. The hand that held the stars is the hand that gets crucified and stabbed with a nail. The hand that pulls Peter out of the ocean when he's drowning is the hand that holds the stars. The hand that gives us communion is the hand that holds the stars. This is incredible good news. We have God with us. We have God in the flesh.

Trust Jesus. He's in control.

Jesus is speaking and John is listening. And first we hear a trumpet. That's what the voice sounds like. And then a second later, it sounds like something else. Like you never really know what that voice is going to sound like. Like many waters all of a sudden in this description of Jesus. Have you ever stood at the base of a waterfall? You ever heard a billion small sounds become one giant sound? So loud that you can't hear anything else? So powerful you feel it pushing the air and you away? Have you ever stood by the ocean? With many waters crashing into each other, grinding at the seashore? That sort of sense of immense, infinite power? You don't just hear it. You feel the sound of that. That's what the voice of God is like here.

And out of his mouth comes a sword. You would expect the sword in his hand. You would not expect a sword from the mouth period. When you look at medieval paintings of this, they are fantastic. Google it. Swords and tons just mixing with each other. Like. Yeah. It's just, it's a, it's quite a thing to see. People don't really know how to draw this. And you think to yourself, how, what does he describe? Like, what are we doing here? And all I would say is, have you ever been to the Grand Canyon? Describe it. Have you ever swam and snorkeled with the Great Barrier Reef? Explain it to me. Have you seen the Northern Lights? Have you been to space? Explain those things. Words fail. And those are normal, natural things that we know. John is doing. He's doing the best he can with some very weird words. But one of the things we do understand about the voice is it's powerful. And another thing we understand, it's sharp. Jesus doesn't come holding a sword to stab and kill his enemies. All Jesus has to do is talk. The voice that spoke reality into creation is speaking to John right now. It's speaking to you and me right now. And it's calling John into mission. It's saying, look, I've got a job for you to do. People are going to need to hear this. They're going to need to see what you see. So you're going to have to do the best job you can. Again, writing it all down. There needs to be a message to the seven churches. You need to see what I've seen. You need to show people what I've seen. They need to know the end of the story has been written. They need to know that for those who are in Christ Jesus, words like Armageddon and Apocalypse are not bad words. They are fantastic words. Because we know that the end of this is actually the beginning of something else. A new heavens and a new earth. And when the end of the story has been written, sit on an island in the middle of nowhere and be pretty confident that God is in control. That it's just a matter of time. Whether you're at the end of your rope or the end of time, God is with you. The hand that holds the stars. This is definitely an image of creation. You may have noticed that there's seven stars. That there's seven churches. That there's seven lamps. There's a lot of sevens in the book of Revelation. He's a big fan of that number. There's also sneaky sevens. If you start paying attention, like Jesus got described with seven particular things. There's going to be more of them as you go on. It's a number about creation. It's a number about completion and wholeness and perfection in the Bible. But in the ancient world, there were seven stars. You looked up at the sky and you couldn't see Pluto. But there were seven stars that moved around a lot. The rest of them pretty much stayed put. And they named those seven stars Planetes, which is the Greek word that means wanderer. They would wander around. And where those stars were when you were born basically told you what your life was going to look like. Whether you liked it or not. Where those stars were on a Tuesday, that's what's going to happen to you. Where those stars go on Friday, that's whether you're going to get divorced or married. That's whether you're going to make money or be dirt poor. Whether you're going to be a king or nothing. The stars are in control. They named these stars after the gods because of how much power they had over your life. Jesus holds these in his hand.

Rome loved the image of the seven stars. They were big fans. They believed in those gods. And so they actually put them on coins. Like you and I put stuff on coins. Pictures of George Washington and Abe Lincoln. Words like liberty and truth and justice and peace and unity. An image of an eagle holding both peace and arrows. Rome was not a democracy. So when Rome had coins, it was more a statement of who is in charge. That is the guy who's in charge. His name is Caesar, which is really his title. This is Domitian. And he decided to print a coin in his time. On the last day of his life, on the left is one side of the coin. On the back, I don't know if you can see it, there's a baby. And there are seven stars around the baby who sits on the world. And it says, the divine Caesar, son of the emperor.

This is his son who was born. And he thought that would be a really fun thing for the rest of the world to know. My son was born king of the world. And I just want to be clear, he's king of everything. He holds reality in his hand because he also is God. Caesar has no idea about Jesus. No clue. There's a couple of Christian things popping up here and there. Like some guy named John. He makes sure that guy ends up in a Roman exile colony. Stuck on an island in the middle of the ocean. This is the guy who's in charge. And John makes it really, really clear in the way he chooses to tell the story. That there's another Lord. That someone else is in charge. And that you might have to walk around with these things in your pocket. And you might have to spend these things to get food or money and acknowledge this symbol as valuable. But there will come a day when it's really clear who holds the stars. Is it any wonder that guy got thrown into exile? Any wonder they wanted to kill him? Any wonder the message of Christmas sounded so revolutionary to the Roman government? We know who really rules the world. We know who really holds the stars. We know the end of this story. There was a chaplain in World War II whose name was David... And for some reason I'm forgetting his last name. Help me out. David H .C. Reid. Thanks. He was a Scottish guy in World War II. And was a chaplain and got captured at Dunkirk. And was in a German POW camp and then another German POW camp and then another... He kind of bounced around. And all the camps were terrible because they were run by Nazis. And so he's having a very bad time. He's stuck in prison. Walking around and people are hoarding the little food that they can get and the clothing they can get. And they're miserable people. And he's watching folks who have no joy in their lives and no hope in their lives who are wasting away physically or treated badly. They're miserable and they can't imagine a better future. They get no news from the outside and as far as they know the Germans are conquering the whole world. And he says in situations like that when you have to preach sermons or talk to people there's not like a long conversation. They just go, do you seriously still believe in God? And then you have to figure out how to talk about it. He said one day after a long time in the camps he was walking by a fence and on the other side of the barbed wire fence there's another Scottish guy. They start talking in Gaelic which the Germans can't understand. And the Scottish guy says, hey, the war's over. The Germans surrendered.

He had some kind of radio. He'd heard news from the outside. The Germans didn't even know yet. So David goes back into the middle of camp the news spreads like wildfire. It's over. The Germans surrendered. It won't be long now. And pretty quickly everything changes. People stop hoarding stuff because why? What power do I have in camp? What would be the value of keeping this little bit of food for myself? People start forgiving old wounds and grievances because why? This is going to be over. We need to solve this. We're not going to be here much longer. And all of the Germans who are looking on this see a bunch of people start celebrating and telling jokes and just completely completely transformed overnight even though they're still in charge even though the walls are still there. Because the end of the story has been written. And we know it. Even if not everybody else does. And that gives us a very different kind of life. That's the message John has to preach. The message he writes to you and to me. The end of the story has been written. And that is good news for those who are in Jesus Christ. That there will come a day when bodies are restored. When lives are restored. When wholeness and peace and joy come to reign on earth. That sickness is done away with. That every tear is wiped from our eyes. When you and I find ourselves sitting under a tree in a beautiful place. It's just a matter of time. The end of the story has been written. That is the mission that you and I are called into. To invite other people into this life to trust Jesus. Because he's in control whether we're dealing with misery or the majesty of God. We know that we have this mission to trust Jesus. Because he's in control. That's how the Bible says Merry Christmas. Lord Jesus, come soon.