Lord, as we come this morning, we are grateful that we have this time before You, Lord, to remember You. We have been challenged that soon You are returning, and we will be able to see You face to face. Lord, we want it to be a glorious time.
Lord, we pray this morning that You will show us Yourself as we go into Your Word. We pray for words that give life, revelation, and response in our hearts, because it is a living Word. Lord, it is not just words; they are living words. Make them living in our hearts today, Lord. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Could we turn to Revelation, the book of Revelation, chapter 1, King James?
The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto Him, to show unto His servants things which must shortly come to pass;
and He sent and signified it by His angel unto His servant John;
who bare record of the Word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw.
Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein:
for the time is at hand.
John to the seven churches which are in Asia:
Grace be unto you, and peace, from Him which is, and which was, and which is to come;
and from the seven Spirits which are before His throne;
and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth.
Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood,
and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father;
to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him:
and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. Even so, Amen.
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
Well, I have been sharing on this opening letter. This letter was given from God to His Son, and He said, “Son, I am sharing this with You, and I want You to share it with My own that You have bought with Your blood.”
So the Lord Jesus Christ, through the angel, shares it with John, who is more like a scribe, taking down this letter to pass it on to us. So be aware, brothers and sisters: this is not an ordinary letter. This is not an ordinary book. This comes from God. It is a letter from God to you, and it is telling you about Christ.
It is all about Christ from beginning to end. But this letter in particular is written, brothers and sisters, to make us aware that this One who died for us at Calvary, rose from the dead, and ascended back to the throne is not going to remain there. He is going to come back—come back for His church, come back for His own.
And brothers and sisters, in this Word that God gave, He said, “The time is at hand.” Now, I am going to have to take a few minutes to review, because a lot of you were not here these past two Sundays. So give me a little grace here this morning, I pray.
The first message mainly was to awaken us to the time in which we are in, the days in which we are in. The time is at hand. This Word was given a couple of thousand years ago. The time was at hand then. How much more must it be at hand now?
Our Lord was not trying to tease us when He said the time was at hand, because really, if you study the coming back of our Lord Jesus Christ—His parousia, His presence—you will find it is in two stages, as our brother recently shared at the conference.
The first stage is when the Lord comes from the throne to the cloud. There are overcomers, as we see in Revelation 12, who will rise to the throne first. Well, the time is at hand. It could happen at any moment.
There are other prophecies yet to be fulfilled, but they will be fulfilled during the second stage of His coming back. This includes the great tribulation and a manifestation of the Antichrist. Brothers and sisters, the time is at hand, and the Lord Jesus wants us to be ready for Him, ready for His return.
Now, He is looking for His bride. That means that we need to be ready for His return.
This letter says it will be a blessing if you read and keep the words of this prophecy. It is a blessing, brothers and sisters, because it is talking about our blessed hope.
Our blessed hope in Titus 2:13 is that we wait for the blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is our blessed hope.
As I mentioned, in Revelation 12 it will begin with the birth of the man child, exalted to the throne. They will meet the Lord there. Now these are, as we find out in Revelation 12, overcomers.
There is a condition for being able to be raptured immediately to the throne and not remain behind to have to go through the tribulation. There is a condition there, and it is overcoming.
In that chapter it says very simply, these are the ones that overcame by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto death. That is a normal Christian. That is what a normal Christian should be: depending on His blood daily, having the testimony of the Lord in their life—not just words, but reality—and loving not their life unto death, being willing to be a living sacrifice for the Lord.
There is a condition to be ready for Him to come. In Luke 21:36, it says, “Watch and pray, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass.”
And brothers and sisters, if you have been reading the news, you know it must be soon. We have Ahmadinejad and the whole Khomeini movement saying that Israel cannot remain on this earth, and it is their intention to see that they are totally destroyed. They are building the weapons to do it. It cannot be far away.
But brothers and sisters, this world is not in Khomeini’s hand. It is in our Lord Jesus’. It is He who will make all the decisions. But this lets us know that the time indeed is at hand, and we need to be awakened to the hour in which we live.
We know that there is also a blessed hope even for saints who have already passed in the Lord. That blessed hope is that, when we come before the judgment seat, He will be able to say to us, “Enter into the joy of the Lord, because you have been faithful. You have followed Me all the days of your life.”
Enter into the joy of the Lord, and be able to reign and rule with Christ, as we see in the book of Revelation, during the millennial period. Now, the millennial period is also referred to as the wedding feast of the Lamb.
So it is the wedding feast. “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding feast,” it says. But again, there is a condition.
Last time we shared about the ten virgins. The wedding feast is ready. The bridegroom is ready. And they went out to meet Him. The five wise ones had extra oil, and they were able to enter into that wedding feast. The other five were not.
That extra oil simply means being full of the Holy Spirit, full of the Spirit. We shared last week that the thing that keeps us from being full of the Spirit is our self-life. That has to be dealt with.
That is the work the Lord is doing today. John said, “I must decrease, and He must increase.” I guess that is a good way of saying it. So there is a condition there once again.
But we have this blessed hope. We are waiting for His return. He is coming soon, and we want to be in that party that will welcome Him, meet Him at the throne.
That is where we are in this room today. As I said last week, not waiting to die, but waiting to meet the Lord at the throne. That is what is on our hearts.
Well, how are we going to be prepared, brothers and sisters? How are we going to stay in that condition and maintain that prepared heart before the Lord? We have the motivation, but where is the power?
I mentioned four things last week. First is the constraining love of the Lord: to know the constraining love of the Lord. Now, do you know the constraining love of the Lord? Have you sensed the constraining of the Lord in your life this week, even maybe this very morning?
The constraining love of the Lord just says, “Look, you cannot continue to live your life the way you have been doing it. You need to come back to Me.”
What you are doing may not change, but the attitude in which you do it will be quite different. The way in which you do it will be quite different, because instead of leaning on yourself and your own strength, it will really be My life being manifested in you as you live this life.
If you sense that constraining love saying, “Hey, the time is at hand, and I want you to get ready,” that is the constraining love of the Lord in our hearts.
Then I spoke of grace. This letter says, “Grace and peace be unto you.” Grace, brothers and sisters—how are we going to be ready? It will be the grace of God.
It was the grace of God by which you came into salvation, but it is the grace of God by which we walk our everyday life. Do you know the grace of God? Do you know what the grace of God is?
A lot of times we think it is just a free gift of salvation. In a sense, that is true, because we do not earn it by good works, do we? There is nothing that we can do other than confess our sins and give our lives to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is our Lord and Savior. He paid the price. That is grace.
But grace is more than that. You are saved because you have Christ in your heart. That is why you are saved. He died for you. He did the work that was necessary on Calvary for your salvation, but you now have Christ in you, living in you.
That is the way in which we are able to live, be ready, and maintain our readiness: to have that Christ daily as you go through your daily life.
“Lord, I cannot do this, but You can. Lord, this temptation is before me, and I will sink under it. But You are in me, Lord. It is You. You are my grace. Overcome this.”
It is recognizing that the Lord Himself is your grace in everyday life.
Thirdly, we need to be in His purpose. We need not only to serve Him as our Lord, but to know His heart and serve Him with our heart.
Brothers and sisters, His heart has been from the beginning to have this bride. This bride is a very practical thing. It is not just a theory. It is not just a dream. One day, boom, we are the bride. The bride has to be worked out on earth in a practical way now.
It will come, and it will happen. Revelation 21 will happen. But the Lord wants us to understand that if we are going to know what it is to be His bride, we have to know it now.
That means being an active part of the body of Jesus Christ. The body of Jesus Christ will be the matured bride. So that means we need to be actively involved in the body of Jesus Christ.
Not just being active, active, but really, brothers and sisters, serving one another in Christ, serving the Lord, and serving His house; encouraging one another and praying for one another. It is not about me, Lord. It is about Your bride. That is practical, and we need to enter into that.
The fourth thing I mentioned, that I started on, is that we need to continually remember Jesus Christ. We need a continual remembrance daily in our hearts of this One who has died for us, Jesus Christ.
You know, the Lord knows we need this. That is why we have the table every Sunday. He said, “As often as ye do this, do it in remembrance of Me.”
He knows, brothers and sisters, we can get deterred in this life that we live in. He knows that the cares of life can suffocate our life for Him. He knows that the temptations of life are strong. He knows that the enemy works in everything around us to pull us away from Him.
And He is saying, “The one thing that will keep you in freshness is to remember Me. Just remember. Just remember.”
Have you ever pulled out your old photographs? You ever pull out those old photographs and remember your children when they were little? Remember the old aunts and uncles? Remembering is precious in your heart.
Well, brothers and sisters, the Lord says, “You need to remember Me.” That will keep you. That will help keep you. That is why this table needs to be taken in living reality in our hearts. When we come on Sunday morning and say, “Lord, I have come to remember You.”
Well, that is what I want to talk about this morning. If we look back at Revelation 1, verse 5, John makes it clear who this letter is from.
And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness,
and the first begotten of the dead,
and the prince of the kings of the earth.
Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood,
and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father;
to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him.
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord,
which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
Jesus Christ. Remember Him.
First, it is Jesus. We see Him, frankly, as John presents Him, as the One that we kind of know about already—the One who was and the One who is in our lives today. And he says we need to look at Jesus.
Now, who is Jesus? The angel, talking about the birth of our Lord Jesus, said, “Thou shalt call His name Jesus: for He shall save His people from their sins.”
You will call Him Jesus, for He will save you from your sins. Brothers and sisters, I know there are many religions in this world, but there is only One Person who can save you from your sins, and that is Jesus Christ.
The world is trying to tell us differently. Even the church today is trying to tell us differently. “It does not matter. There are different ways to God.” That is not true. It is a lie. It is a lie of the enemy. Brothers and sisters, there is only One. It is Jesus.
The angel declared it: only Jesus can save the people from their sins. That is His name: Savior. Savior. It is Jesus Christ.
Jesus is also the fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14:
Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,
and shall call His name Immanuel.
God with us. Brothers and sisters, this Jesus is God with us. He is the full representation of God. He is God with us. He represents God to us. He is the testimony of God to you, and He is that witness.
What this is saying is, God is with you. When you have Christ, you have God with you. He is your Savior. He is God: Son of Man, Son of God.
He came as a man to die in your place—Son of Man—but He is also the Son of God. That is who you have appropriated when you accepted Jesus Christ. Only He can take that burden of sin off your heart.
I want to say this this morning: if there is anyone in this room who has not yet had Jesus Christ as their Savior, today is the day of salvation. I would not wait, because I think the time is short, and I think He is coming soon.
Brothers and sisters, we never know when we might be taken and not be anymore. We need to be ready. And to be ready, you have to be His. You have to be saved in the beginning.
He is the Christ, also the Anointed One. He was the One whom God commissioned to do this work of salvation, this work that was done on Calvary’s cross.
As our brother Jim mentioned this morning, it is not only saving us from our sins, but a complete new creation in Christ: the old man being crucified in Christ, and a new creation in you. This is a new creation in you.
I do not know if you have been awakened to that or not, but there is. It is this Christ, the Anointed One, who carried out that work.
Brothers and sisters, it is Christ, the Anointed One, who at Calvary’s cross, in death, overthrew all the works of the enemy. Another version says He disarmed the enemy when He went into hell. He disarmed him.
Now He has the keys of hell and death. They are now in His hands. He is in control. He is the Christ.
Now, is He your Christ? Is He in control? Is He reigning and ruling in your life? Is Jesus, your Savior, also your Christ—the Anointed One—to do the work in you, to make it real in you?
He is the Christ. The work being done in you is the High Priest’s work, I know that, but He is the Christ. He is the One with all authority and has the keys of hell and death over your life.
We must submit to Him. Not only as our Savior—you know, we like Jesus, we love Jesus—but sometimes we resist Christ. That is the point. Let us take Him fully. Let us give ourselves to Jesus.
Then it goes on to say that He is the faithful witness. Who is this faithful witness? It is the Son of God. It is Jesus Christ.
In Colossians 1:15, you need to know that it says He is the full expression of the Godhead. He is the outward expression.
John said, “We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” Brothers and sisters, He is the expression of God.
Do you want to know who God is? Do you want to know what God is like? Do you want to have a relationship with Father God? Well, you need to know Jesus Christ, because that is the only way you are ever going to know Him.
In the Godhead, they have determined that Jesus Christ would be the full expression, the outward expression, of who the Godhead is. He represents the entire Godhead fully and completely in His expression of the Godhead.
There is no one else. He is the One. He is the expression. He is the witness. He is witness of God. He is the witness to the Godhead. He is the witness to Their love, Their character, Their grace, Their mercy, Their power, and Their might.
He is the witness to all of these things. That is who we come to. He is the witness. And not only that, He is a faithful witness.
You know, all of His life He said, “I can only do what the Father tells Me to do. Whatever He wants Me to say, that is what I say.” He is a faithful witness. He always did the Father’s will.
He was not only a witness, brothers and sisters, but He was a faithful witness. This is the One we have to remember.
Now, brothers and sisters, God wants us to be a faithful witness. This has got to be practical. When we see the Lord Jesus Christ, something should happen to us.
When we see Jesus, we should be saved. When we see the Christ, the Anointed One, we should accept His work and come under His authority. When we see the faithful witness, that should cause us also to become a faithful witness.
That is why we need to behold Him. That is the way in which we are transformed. The Word of God says we are transformed from glory to glory. How? Simply by seeing Him. That is the way: transformed into a faithful witness.
Then it says that He is the firstborn from the dead. Do you know Jesus is the firstborn from the dead? I think Jerry Holder knows that this morning.
He is the firstborn from the dead. Death tried to eliminate our Lord Jesus Christ. Death tried to hold Him in hell, and it could not.
It says that He overthrew all the principalities and powers—all the demonic beings, however many they are. Brothers and sisters, they were all trying to hold Him in death, and they could not.
In His weakness, our Lord Jesus triumphed over death and has those keys, as I mentioned before, of hell and death. He has disarmed our enemy.
He still allows him to work, but death is the thing that he really had over us. If he could bring us into death without Jesus Christ in our life, then he had won.
Christ has disarmed him. He has the keys of hell and death. Death could not hold Him, and death will not be able to hold you, brothers and sisters. He has overcome death.
I am not just talking about physical death. I am talking about spiritual death. Often we sense it in our daily lives, just a death that seems to come upon us, a heaviness.
Brothers and sisters, the only answer is that Jesus Christ is the firstborn from the dead. He has overcome. He has overthrown death.
You know, I was out this morning, and it was just a confirmation when I looked at those Scriptures in Joshua 4 and 5. They came to that Jordan River.
The Jordan River was overflowing, brothers and sisters. It was at raging flood stage when they came. They had been in the desert for forty years, and now they were ready to go into the promised land, to really possess Christ, to really know Him. That is the analogy.
But there was something in the way, and it was the Jordan River, and it was death. The Jordan River represented the rage of death, and it stood against them. There was no way across. Death had them in its hold. They could not enter that promised land.
It represents spiritual death in your life and my life. I do not know if you have ever been to that place, but that place where death just seems to have you.
But brothers and sisters, what was the response? It says the priests put their feet into the Jordan River. They had to take a stand.
Our sister took a stand this morning, as has been testified concerning her husband. They had to take a stand, and they stood in that raging river, the priests.
And the rivers receded and dried up in their presence. Why? Because they took the appropriate stand. They had the ark on their shoulders. That is why.
It was not them. It was not even their stand, so to speak. It was because they were holding up the ark before this power of death. And they said, “What do you have to do with this ark? How can you stand against this ark?”
The ark represents the overcoming, powerful work of our Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary’s cross. It represents Christ. He had overcome death on Calvary. This was looking forward to that.
Death could not hold them back in its grip. Death could not keep them out of the promised land, because when they took that stand, they had the ark on their shoulders. The firstborn from the dead was there, and the rivers receded.
Brothers and sisters, death cannot stand up to our Lord Jesus Christ. The spirit of death cannot quench us and take us out as long as we keep the ark on our shoulders. Keep the One who is the firstborn from the dead. Remember Him. Remember Him: the firstborn from the dead.
Well, it goes on to say that He is ruler of kings of the earth. Psalm 2 says the kings of the earth set themselves against the Lord. He laughs.
You know, the kings of the earth think they are the ones in power. I remember years ago when I went to Washington, D.C., as a representative. It had something to do with public housing at the time, because that is what I was working in.
And he said, “Jerry, there is one thing you need to know about Washington, D.C. Nothing else matters but power. If you have the power, then you can do what you want to do. Power is the issue, and up here it is all about power.”
I have always remembered that. Man thinks he is in control. Man thinks he can work it out.
We have two people who want to be president in the United States. They tell us they have a solution. I will tell you, they do not—neither one of them. Now, I have my preference, but I will tell you that only the King is in control.
Brothers and sisters, this nation has turned away from the One who raised it up, and we are paying the price. But the Lord says, “If My people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray.” That is what we need to be doing.
Well, I have gotten a little away. But the kings think they are in charge, but they are not.
Daniel 4:17—I like this. You know the book of Daniel. One of the testimonies given in the book of Daniel is from God.
Nebuchadnezzar thought he was the man. He had the big golden statue. The Lord said, “I am going to take you down for seven years. For seven years you are going to be like a madman. You will not even know who you are.”
And He did. Then He raised him back up. This Word says, “That the living may know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will.”
That the living may know that the Most High rules over the kingdom of men and gives it to whomever He will. He raised up Nebuchadnezzar for the whole purpose of saying, “Look, I am the One in charge. I am the King.”
Now, brothers and sisters, do you know Christ as your King? Sometimes there are things that happen in our life that we do not understand, and we begin to wonder and maybe even doubt.
Brothers and sisters, your King is in control. When you know the King, regardless of whether you understand what is going on, you know He is there. You know He is the King. You know He is in charge.
What a great relief that is. That brings peace to our hearts. He is the King of your life, and we need to know Him in that way.
What a mess man has made. What we are faced with in the age we are living in is the spirit of Islam, the spirit of Antichrist. But the enemy is also using humanism.
I noticed a plaque on Johnson-Willis. It kind of surprised me. It talked about one of their surgeons. He was a great surgeon and a great humanist.
Now, humanism is basically doing things for the good of man. “I am going to do what is good for man,” being kind to your brother, these kinds of things. It is humanist.
The whole thing is, though, it is all about man. Man is the center of humanism, not God. That is the issue. That is the problem.
The spirit of humanism is really moving greatly in this nation. It is saying, “We can do what we want to. We do not need God. If it feels good, if it looks good, it is all right.” That is humanism.
Well, the Lord laughs. He is the King. We need to know Him that way. Remember: He is the King.
Then it goes on to say in that same verse 5, “Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood.”
To Him that loves us. Brothers and sisters, do you doubt that? Do you doubt that God loves you? When things are not quite going your way, when He does not seem to meet your expectations, does that bring doubt into your heart about His love for you?
Brothers and sisters, He loves you. He gave His life for you. He paid for your sins. That is what it says: He washed away our sins in His blood.
Do you think He is going to abandon you at this point? He has promised. Our brother talked about the covenant He has made with us. He will not abandon His covenant. He is true to His Word. He is going to bring you through to what He wants. He loves you.
Now, His love is not quite like human love, phileo love. We know phileo love is based more on friendship. In other words, “I love you because you love me. I love you because, man, we get along so great together. I love you because you do nice things for me, and I will return that same love to you.”
There is a condition on our love. It is conditional, kind of. I love the ones that love me. I love the ones that are like me, think like me, do things like me, and have the same interests. That is phileo love.
But the Lord’s love is agape love. It is totally selfless. Regardless of your condition spiritually, regardless of your circumstances, God’s love does not change for you. You hear me?
Even those who may be running as fast as they can from the Lord—He has not changed His love for you. He is still calling out.
I shared a long time ago about the whippoorwills in the evening. You hear those whippoorwills: “Whippoorwill, whippoorwill, whippoorwill.” If you start thinking about it, it almost drives you crazy listening to a whippoorwill, because he does not stop.
You are waiting for a breath from this thing. Listen next time to the whippoorwill. They say that sometimes a whippoorwill will call over a thousand times without a breath. They are just calling out, calling out, calling out. They are looking for their mate. They are looking for the one they love.
You know, the Lord is like that whippoorwill. He is just calling out, calling out His love. Brothers and sisters, it is unconditional love.
That does not mean He agrees with all the things that we are doing, but He loves us enough that He can come in, in hopes that we will respond to His love and allow Him to correct us.
Well, He loves us. You need to know this One who loves you. You need to know He loves you. This is not a casual relationship. This is not just a friendship. He does call us friends, but it goes far beyond that. It is love.
The apostle John gets very personal. He said, “This is the One who has washed us from our sins in His own blood.” He has washed us from our sins in His own blood.
I hope you realize, brothers and sisters, that only the blood of Jesus Christ can deal with your sins. He dealt with our sins first when we accepted Him because He shed His blood.
But it also says that if we sin after we are saved, He is faithful and just to forgive us if we confess our sins. Why? Because He has already paid the price for that sin. He was judged because of that sin.
He has washed us in His own blood.
He goes on to say He has made us kings and priests unto Him. I do not want to get too far ahead. I will take a few more minutes.
A kingdom of priests. Now, brothers and sisters, He does not say a multitude of priests. He says a kingdom. We are priests.
We are not a multitude of priests, each one serving Him in our individual ways. We are a kingdom of priests. We are under the government of the King, and He governs the way in which we serve Him and one another.
We should enter into that service. It is a great privilege. Brothers and sisters, you need to know that if you look in the Old Testament, many of the children who rebelled at Mount Sinai were not allowed to be priests anymore. They were eliminated from the priesthood.
Who was made a part of the priesthood? The Levites. Only the family of Levi, because they stood with God in that rebellion. They said, “No, we are on the Lord’s side.”
They even had to deal very seriously with their brothers and sisters, with the sword. But they were faithful to God. They were the priests.
That priesthood did not change until the Lord Jesus Christ came and died for you and me and made you a priest. He says, “You are a priest.” What a privilege has been returned to us through Jesus.
But it is the kingdom of priests. We serve together under one Head. We serve under the anointing of the Holy Spirit together: the kingdom of priests.
We are called to serve, brothers and sisters. We serve in many different ways. A lot of service is not outward. It is not speaking. It may be just going to see Jerry Holder and praying with Fay.
A lot of hidden stuff is going on, I know, in the assembly with brothers and sisters: encouraging one another, giving them that cup of water, just a little word of encouragement, a little word of correction. These are the things, brothers and sisters. We are a kingdom of priests.
Then John cannot hold himself back any longer. He has seen this Jesus. He has seen this Christ, the firstborn from the dead.
He has seen the One who loves us and has set us free from our sins by His blood, and he just has to worship. He says, “To Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.”
Does seeing Jesus bring you to worship? If you see something of His glory—as Jesus, as the Christ, as the Anointed One, as the faithful witness, as the firstborn from the dead, as the ruler of the kings of the earth, as the One who loves you and has poured out His blood for your sins—if you see that, if you really see it, does it not bring you to worship?
Oh, sometimes we make Jesus so familiar that we do not appreciate Him anymore. Let us not do that.
Brothers and sisters, He is close to us and calls us His friend, but He is the Lord. He is the King. He is the Almighty. We need to recognize that and worship Him, as John did.
Then John reaffirms. He says, “Behold, this One that I have been talking about is going to be coming in the clouds, and everybody will see Him. All the kindreds of the earth will see Him, and they also which pierced Him.”
Now, this thing about all who pierced Him will see Him refers back to Zechariah 12:10, a prophecy in Zechariah 12:10.
It says to the Jews that they will realize that Jesus, whom they crucified and would not accept, is the Christ. It will come at the end of the tribulation.
I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplications:
and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced,
and they shall mourn for Him.
At the end of the great tribulation, when the Lord Jesus comes back as lightning in the sky and all see Him—even those who pierced Him—they will mourn because they will recognize that He is the One who was their Messiah, and they pierced Him and rejected Him.
But brothers and sisters, the glorious part is that is not the end. It says all Israel will be saved. Their hearts will be turned to the Messiah, and they will recognize Him. They will say, “Yes, Lord.”
I had to think about that a while. I said, “Lord, does this just apply to those Jews who were there, who pierced You and rejected You?” Of course, the Roman soldiers actually did the crucifixion.
And I had to say, “Lord, I think there really is an application to me.” Who pierced the hands of our Lord Jesus Christ? Who nailed the nails into His hands and feet?
You see him or her every time you look in the mirror. That is who pierced Him.
Some people want to blame the Roman soldiers, some the Jews. But brothers and sisters, I think we all here in this room know that it is our sins. It is our sins that were the nails driven into His hands and feet, and we did it.
We were the rebellious ones. We were the ones who were rejecting the Messiah in our lives. We would not respond to Him until, by grace, one day He was able to touch your heart in such a way that He opened your eyes to see this Jesus, and you accepted Him as your Savior.
Brothers and sisters, it is our sin. It talks about in Hebrews that if we willfully sin, we tread underfoot the blood of Jesus. We have to be careful about sin. We really do, in these days.
The enemy really wants us to fall back into that old way of sinning. Remember, it is those things that put our Lord Jesus on the cross. He died for our sins.
You know, the scars are still in His hands and feet. Brothers and sisters, when we see Him, I think we will be reminded of two things: one, the depravity of our own hearts; the other, the great love of Christ. How He loves us.
Well, then there is this declaration: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord, which is, which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.”
Ephesians says that in the fullness of times, He will sum up everything in Jesus Christ. That is what this says. He is the beginning and the end of all things. He is the beginning and end of God’s purpose.
He is the beginning and end of life for you and me. Our lives will be transformed. He is the beginning and the end. You see Him as your beginning, as your end. He is the beginning and the end.
And eternally, He will bring us to His full purpose. We need to yield to the Almighty One, brothers and sisters.
What this says to me is that Christ is really everything. Do you want to know what life is about? Life is not about your job. It is not about your family. It is not about the things that we hold precious and dear.
Life is really the Lord Jesus Christ. If He is a part of that family, yes. If He is a part of your job, yes, then it has meaning. It is reality. He is the beginning and end.
He is working in our lives today, brothers and sisters. He has begun, and He will finish in you as well. We need to see the One who is the beginning and the end.
So this morning, I would like to end by saying a few more thoughts. Please, brothers and sisters, remember Him. Remember Him.
Remember His constraining love. Respond to that constraining love. I think it is speaking to you right now.
His grace is given. You have Christ in you. Respond. Live by that life.
Be a part of His purpose.
Brothers and sisters, I think if we continually keep our eyes on Him—fresh revelation of Him every day—it may be the same revelation, but it is deeper. It is fuller. It is greater. Each day of our lives, from glory to glory.
This is the One John was familiar with, and he has called us to remember Him. This is the One we are familiar with. He works every day in our lives: Jesus Christ.
When we come to this table, this is the One we remember. This is the One we are more familiar with.
Brothers and sisters, next time I want to share with you the One we are probably not as familiar with, the One that John was not that familiar with.
He had known the Lord. He was the one who leaned on the Lord’s breast. He was the closest one to the Lord. He was the only one at the Lord’s crucifixion.
He is the one who lived the longest testimony from among the apostles. The apostle of love, they called John. He knew this Christ.
He knew Him as He walked this earth. He knew Him when He rose from the dead and appeared back to him. He knew the risen Christ, and he saw Him ascend back to the throne. He saw part of it anyway, until He reached the cloud.
He was familiar with this Jesus. But I want you to read the rest of chapter 1.
You will see One that, when John saw Him, he fell at His feet as dead. It was different. This was a different One than he had known much about before.
This is the One that we need to see. It is the key to the book of Revelation.
Lord, we look to You. We thank You, Lord, that You have caused us this day to just remember who You are.
Lord, there is nothing that has been said that is new. But Lord, You are always new. May You always be fresh in our lives.
Lord, open these words to us. Make them real. May we respond to Your Word, Lord. In Jesus’ name. Amen.