Revelation 1The Revelation of Jesus Christ

This revelation is from Jesus Christ (verse 1) and it is of Jesus Christ (verse 2). He is both the source and the subject.

Revelation (Greek apokalypsis) means “uncovering, disclosing, revealing” what God makes known. The word is used exclusively of revelations from God: always supernatural, glorious, godly, otherworldly and awesome!

“Show … made it known … saw.” This is a book of pictures, and we have to learn to see God’s pictures.

We are blessed because we’re reading this aloud! We’re blessed because we hear the words of this book. “Take to heart” means this book is meant to affect our emotions. Why? “The time is near.”

John calls his own book “prophecy,” and he sends it to seven churches, to known groups of people. It is a letter of prophecy.

Yay, the Trinity! The game in these verses is find the Trinity: the One “who is, and who was, and who is to come,” “the seven spirits before his throne,” and “Jesus Christ.”

“Him who is, and who was, and who is to come” appears in 1:4, 1:8, 4:8, 11:17 and 16:5. It contains three forms of the verb “to be,” playing off the name of Yahweh, “I am,” which God gave Moses in Exodus 3:14.

“The seven spirits” (or “the sevenfold Spirit”) is a way of naming the one Holy Spirit (3:1, 4:5, 5:6); John draws it from Zechariah 4 and Isaiah 11:2. This name is used only in the heavenly throne-room scenes. When the Spirit deals with John directly he is called “the Spirit” (1:10, 4:2, 14:13, 17:3, 19:10, 21:10).

Our understanding of God must move us to praise. Look at what John says about Jesus:

“The firstborn from the dead” points to Jesus’ resurrection, and to your resurrection.

“The ruler of the kings of the earth.” That’s not future tense. He is presently the Ruler. Some of the kings don’t know it yet, but they will. Give it a few chapters! See Isaiah 55:4.

“To him who loves us.” In the ancient world, little-g gods were benevolent or wrathful, but not personal and loving.

“Has freed us from our sins.” You are no longer a slave to sin! “Loves” is present tense; “freed” is past tense: the freedom happened at once and is always effective. To believers persecuted and practically enslaved by Rome, this was a needed reminder that they were free in Jesus.

“Made us to be a kingdom and priests.” We are kings and priests in God’s kingdom, just as God called Israel in Exodus 19:6.

“Look, he is coming” here and “Look, I am coming soon!” in 22:12 are the book’s beginning and ending. The return of Christ is imminent, right at the door.

“With the clouds” comes from Daniel 7:13, and it looks forward to Revelation 19, where He splits the sky with the armies of heaven and sets everything right.

“Every eye will see him … all peoples on earth will mourn because of him” comes from Zechariah 12:10. Jesus used the same words in Matthew 24:30.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega” expresses the eternal nature of our God, just like “who is, and who was, and who is to come.” He was there before the beginning, and He will be there at the end. See 21:6 and 22:13.

“The Lord God … the Almighty” appears nine times in Revelation: 1:8, 4:8, 11:17, 15:3, 16:7, 16:14, 19:6, 19:15, 21:22.

“Almighty” means Lord of Hosts: Lord of armies, Lord of battle. The title appears 321 times in the Old Testament, 242 of them in the prophets. Calling God “the Almighty” is a call back to the prophets. The Lord of Hosts returns!

John uses personal, family language: “your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance.” His encouragement to us: your inheritance as a believer includes the kingdom and patient endurance. You can make it.

Patmos is a small island off the coast near Ephesus, in modern Turkey: small, but substantial enough for John to be self-sustaining there.

“The Lord’s Day.” The church is already worshiping on Sunday, not Saturday. Cool.

“In the Spirit” is a heightened sense of spiritual awareness, where the Spirit of God envelops you and you can see into the spiritual realm.

Jesus wanted this to be a circular letter, passed from church to church. He called out these seven churches by name to strengthen them.

People in the ancient world had to picture things far more than we do. We have endless images and media, so we don’t work hard to picture anything. John’s readers would picture this easily, unlike us, because they knew the prophets these details come from.

“Someone like a son of man” is the divine title given to the Messiah in Daniel 7:13.

“A robe reaching down to his feet” shows the priesthood and holiness of Jesus: the Great High Priest!

His hair is from Daniel 7:9, the Ancient of Days. His eyes and feet are from Daniel 10:6. His voice is from Ezekiel 1:24.

The sword from His mouth returns in 2:12, 2:16, 19:15 and 19:21: the Word of God as a sword (Ephesians 6:17, Hebrews 4:12).

His shining face anticipates Revelation 21:11–22:5, where the sun is no longer needed because Christ lights up everything!

John falls down before Jesus and is not corrected for falling down. Jesus is worth falling down in front of. And the powerful hand that was holding the stars now rests on John.

That’s two references to the Beginning and the End in 17 verses: “Alpha and Omega” in verse 8 and now “the First and the Last,” a title Yahweh uses of Himself in Isaiah 44:6.

Yahweh is “the living God” throughout the Old Testament, and now Jesus is “the Living One.” In 18 verses we already have two references to the resurrection: “firstborn from the dead” in verse 5, and “I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever,” which echoes Deuteronomy 32:40.

Picture Jesus with the keys on His belt: the keys of death and Hades. Death is going to die. See 1 Corinthians 15.

Like God’s command to Moses to “write,” and to many of the prophets. God has people write things down because people 2,000 years later are going to need to read them.

“What is now” is Revelation 2–5; “what will take place later” begins in Revelation 6.

7 stars = the 7 angels of the churches. 7 lampstands = the 7 churches: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.