Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, I want to challenge you to think about the book of Revelation and what it means when the Apostle John tells us that we are a kingdom and a priesthood to serve God and the Father. Yes, we are kings and priests, the book of Revelation tells us. And the book of Revelation tells us that we are kings and priests now to serve the Lord our God.

What does that mean? What implications does that have for our daily life here on earth, for our life in the church, for our life in our culture and world too? We are looking at the book of Revelation in our own congregation now, in our worship services. And boy, it's been just a rollicking good time. As we've done so, because the book of Revelation is not always as it is presented to be on Trinity Broadcasting or in many of the congregations around the United States.

It's not just about Revelation, Red Heifer, Rapture, Rants. No, the book of Revelation is much, much more. And it tells us, for example, as a major motif, as a major theme all through the book of Revelation, that we are indeed kings and priests to our Lord and God. And we're looking at chapter 1, verses 4 through 8. So let me look at these with you and let me read these verses for you.

We've already dealt with some of them earlier, but I want to deal in particular with verses 5 through 8 today. But let me read the entire context. Revelation chapter 1. We're very early in the book of Revelation, verses 4 through 8.

John, to the seven churches in the province of Asia, grace and peace to you 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, the ruler of the kings of the earth, to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and has made us to be a kingdom, kings and priests, to serve his God and Father, to him be glory and power for men. 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.

I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. Oh, what great and powerful verses those are. And we looked at verses 4 through 5a last week, looking at the Trinitarian God of the Bible as he is presented in those opening verses. But today, I want us to look at verses 5b through 6, to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and has made us to be kings and priests, to serve his God and Father. To him be glory and power forever and ever.

Amen. And this is a doxology, listeners. A doxology, doxos, and logos combined to mean words of praise. Doxos is praise. Logos is words.

So when you put them together in a doxology, you have words of praise. These words of praise introduce us to the motif of worship in the book of Revelation, lush, ubiquitous throughout Revelation. So many people miss this. They glide over it on their way to the Antichrist. Everybody's looking for the Antichrist.

Oh, dear listener, find Christ first, okay? Don't miss Christ on your way to the Antichrist. Revelation is intended to lay a pattern for us in our worship, which is a thing that is stubbornly ignored by the happy, clappy churches today. Worship is not just raising your hands in the air, closing your eyes, and singing meaningful lyrics to yourself. This is not the sum and substance of worship.

No, worship is much, much more. The worship of the contemporary modern church, I'm afraid, as I've experienced it, as I've seen it take place, is an inch wide and an inch deep. It is very shallow and very narrow and very small. If we look to the book of Revelation, we see a much wider and broader and encompassing term of worship for us. This pattern for worship that we have in the book of Revelation is a thing that is stubbornly ignored by the contemporary church.

We have songs and doxologies and motions of worship, creatures and costumes, liturgy and locale. All of these things have pertinence for our worship today, and this doxology is an opening salvo, if you will, in the array of patterns for worship that we have in the book of Revelation. It's not an airy-fairy extraneous fluff to be breezed over on our way to the good stuff like raptures, great tribulations, 666 beasts, right? That's what everybody wants to ransack the book of Revelation for. We're not here to plunder Revelation for our own prophetic speculations and titillations.

No, I'm afraid that we have lost this feeling for worship. That the early church, as I go back and I read some of the early church fathers and some of the early patterns of liturgy that we have in the early church, yes, that word liturgy only means and everyone, if you have more than one element in your worship service, then you have a liturgy. And the only question that remains then, is it a biblical liturgy? Is it one that Christ lays down for us in the New Testament in books like the book of Revelation or the book of Hebrews? Or Paul has great sections on worship in chapter 14 and 15 of 1 Corinthians, for example.

So we do have patterns for worship in the New Testament. What is necessary for our worship then? We have some of it indicated for us here in this doxology. That, for example, glory and dominion be given Jesus Christ forever. Dominion be given Jesus Christ forever.

Glory and dominion, remember one of the great motifs of Revelation is that dominion is our destiny as Christians. Dominion is our destiny as children of Christ. And even our dominion is taken through worship. It's not through electing conservative representatives to Congress. It's not through electing a conservative president.

It's not through clinging to and maintaining our rights, our Second Amendment rights or our First Amendment rights. No, we take dominion in our worship. We take dominion by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony. These are the weapons of our warfare to take dominion. And so we need to pay attention to what Revelation has to tell us about our worship, because by it we take dominion.

And we do it now. We do it in our own day and time. This is what it means to be a king and a priest, dear listener. It's not for some far-off, literal thousand-year dispensation. No, we take dominion here and now.

We are kings and priests here and now. And most of modern, contemporary, mainline Christianity, evangelical Christianity in the United States has ignored this dominion, this glory and dominion to Jesus Christ is not random either. It's not randomly disposed, but rather because, as the text says, he has freed us from our sins by his blood. And that's recalling the altar in the temple of the Old Testament, but as Hebrew so eloquently occurs, is now accomplished by Christ in that greater heavenly temple. We are referred throughout Revelation to the heavenly temple.

Our worship here on earth is meant to be patterned up the worship after the worship of the worship in heaven, dear listener. Additionally, as the text tells us, he has made us, that is, Christians, our Lord's own, to be kings and priests to God, to his God and Father. We are kings and priests right here and now. That's the preferable translation. The King James has it.

And God hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father. He has made us kings and priests rather than, as you have in the ESV or the NIV, a kingdom consisting of priests, right? No. God has made us kings and priests. And to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

Amen. Now, we'll see that chapter 20 of Revelation will further elaborate and amplify this very thing for us, where, as chapter 20 of Revelation says, we come to life and reign with Christ for a thousand. Now, once more, that's not some far-off event following the great tribulation and the second coming of Christ. No.

The idea that we are reigning with Christ for a thousand years is now, dear listener, I submit that you think about this, that you examine what we're saying here in our study of Revelation, because there is and has been for millennia an alternative to this idea of a literal 12,000-year reign that comes after some supposed great tribulation. And in fact, we are reigning now as kings and priests. Are you a priest before God now? Can you pray for other saints? Can you pray for yourself?

You don't need another priest to intercede. You're a priest now. Well, you're also a king now. You also reign and you take dominion of the world around you by worshiping the blood of the saints, through the testimony of the saints as well. All of these things are the means by which we take dominion and conquer here and now.

Dominion is our destiny. That's one of the major motifs of Revelation. Dominion is our destiny. It is now. We are kings and priests to God our Father now.

And so, consequently, one of the major motifs we'll learn throughout the book of Revelation, how to take dominion more skillfully and joyfully and effectively as we learn to worship in Revelation. Ha-ha, dear brothers and sisters, do you see how Christ indeed is the focus of the book of Revelation? Well, let's also look at verse 7 then, because there we see in chapter 1, verse 7, which reads in indeed a psalm, if you will, of the New Testament, of the book of Revelation, look, he is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him. And all of the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him, so shall it be.

Amen. You see how prayerful, how worshipful that is? You have a good translation of that section. You have it in a hymnic form, in hymnic lines, because it indeed is a poetic hymn of the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the overarching motifs in verse 7 and of Revelation in general is Christ's return, characteristic of the genre of apocalypse too.

We looked at this in previous lessons. He sounds the first note here, John does, in Revelation by invoking one of the most familiar biblical images for judgment, that is the clouds. A biblical image throughout scripture for judgment, the clouds. God judged Pharaoh and he protected Israel from the clouds. He judged the nations of the earth, so many of them, did he not?

Babylon, Israel itself, or Nineveh. In fact, all nations our Lord has judged from the cloud. Just one example here from the book of Nahum, the Old Testament book of Nahum, chapter 1. And there it says, the Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful.

The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. So the prophet Nahum. Well, the commentator, David Chilton, I recommend his commentary on Revelation to you.

David Chilton, in his book, his commentary on Revelation, he puts it this way, and I quote him, This is the glory cloud, God's heavenly chariot by which he makes his glorious presence known. The cloud is a revelation of his throne as he comes to protect his people and destroy the unquote. Well, dear listener, this judgment will be unavoidable. Revelation will have it. No other reason for the destruction of the wicked and the vindication of the righteous will be able to be postulated, but the judgment.

And it won't be because of satellite TV that every eye will see him, right? That's according to one dispensational writer. How trivial, how small, how narrow that the Lord's second coming will be visible to all that every eye will see him because he'll be broadcast on TV. Don't give me that triviality. No.

Are you going to buy commercial space? Oh, wouldn't you like to have commercial space? Oh, now we have a time for a commercial break. So the Lord's going to have to pause his second coming because of commercials, right? No, the Lord will appear to every eye.

Every eye will see him, not because of television, but because of a supernatural act of God's revelation. It will be because the ineluctable force of the wicked's defeat and the unlikely triumph of the church that every eye will see it and they will say, praise the Lord. Amen, right? So John particularizes one group there in this text, right? Every eye will see him, even those who pierced him.

Oh, even those who pierced him. That is the Jews. Revelation is in part about the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and we'll be unpacking this for you as well. Yes, those of you that cast the whole book of Revelation into the future are just plain dead wrong. The book is in part be about the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.

This single event was enough for any Jew without biblical blinders on as so many evangelicals have today. But the Jew of the first century without biblical blinders could see undeniably, undeniably, God visiting his wrath upon those who exclaim so enthusiastically to pilot his blood be on us and on our children. Remember that from the book of Matthew, right? So be careful what you ask for. He will hold them accountable, well, for Christ's blood, not only in his crucifixion, but in their continued persecution of his followers, in those synagogues of Satan that we'll look at as we unpack the letters to the seven churches.

Revelation will make good that self-malediction of the people by destroying the earthly Jerusalem to make room for the true city where God's name dwells, that is the heavenly Jerusalem. John is so emphatic about this at the beginning of his book at the beginning of the apocalypse. He will say, even so, amen. He will conclude Revelation with that, right? Come, Lord, even so, amen.

Our Lord adds his own emphatic conclusion then to our introduction as well with verse 8. And here we see the eternal transcendent God of redemptive history encompassing all and being sovereign over all, Alpha and Omega. That's what we mean in verse 8, where our Lord says, I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is and who was and who is to come. Mighty, all, dear listener, everything is under his will and his ordainment too. I am the Alpha and the Omega.

All is under his will. And this means more too than so many evangelicals. They just go around shrugging and saying, oh, well, God's in control, right? God's in control. God's still in control.

And they throw up their hands and they say, I'm just going to wait for the rapture. Yeah. No, God is on his throne. God's still on his throne. God's still in control.

All these trite cliches that mean nothing. And it's just a cop-out excuse for Christians not to do anything and not to take part in the world around them here and now and not to take dominion. That is defeatist resignation. And it's characteristic of so many of the revelation red heifer rapture Christians that we see around us today that are waiting for the future, waiting to find out when the great tribulation is going to be, waiting to find out when they're going to be raptured. And in the meantime, the beast is already here and it's eating your lunch, Christian.

God is vitally, intimately shepherding you here and now. That's the idea of him being the Alpha and the Omega. God is intimately shepherding you and his church and all of history towards his ends and his final conclusion. He expects you to be a part of it. It doesn't mean you throw up your hands in frustration and exasperation when things don't go your way on the field of play.

And then you go back up into the stands and say, oh, well, God's still in control. He's still on his throne. No, that's an empty cliche. It's a cop-out. It means that your vital engagement in redemptive history has value and consequence.

When God says, I am the Alpha Omega, it means that your vital engagement and action in redemptive history has value and consequence, no matter how insignificant and unpredictable it may seem at the moment to you. The forces of wickedness and evil are strong indeed. At times they seem invincible. This is how it appears to the world and as well, why lost weak people throw in their lot with the beast, but it's not meant for you. And it wasn't meant for the first century Christians.

This is why John is writing to them. Why our Lord is opening up the apocalypse to them, to encourage them, to strengthen them, that they might fight and take dominion. That God is Alpha and Omega in Revelation means that you are a victor by definition, that you are an overcomer, that you are a conqueror, that you are one who triumphs despite the appearances. Paul puts it this way, doesn't he, in Romans chapter 8, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, right?

Isn't that a motif? So the book of Revelation, the idea of tribulation, the idea of tribulation, yeah, a great tribulation that you're looking for that comes after some fictional rapture. No, tribulation is here and now, and you cheat the saints who suffer tribulation by saying there's going to be some great tribulation later. No, our brothers and sisters all across the globe, and maybe you someday as well, dear listener, will experience the tribulation of the church. So don't cheapen and discount it by saying a great tribulation will come later.

The church is experiencing tribulation now. Brothers and sisters all across the Middle East, whether it be in Iran or Syria or these obscure Muslim countries where we don't know the names and the faces, but our Lord certainly does, who are being sacrificed, who are being burned, who are being crucified, who are being cut off at the head This is tribulation, brothers and sisters, that our brothers and sisters all across the globe are experiencing now, and you may be called to experience that. And Paul goes on to say, shall tribulation or distress or puristic famine or nakedness or danger or sword separate us from the love of Christ?

Paul says, as it is written, for your sake we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things, Paul says, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. That's the motif of revelation, brothers and sisters, that the blood of the Lamb is by the means by which we conquer, that the witness of our testimony indeed is how we conquer. And Paul says that in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am sure, Paul says, that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. That's one of those motifs. That's one of those themes we see all through the book of Revelation, brothers and sisters. And Paul nails it here. He kind of sums up one of the major themes, one of the major motifs of the book of Revelation, that indeed we are conquerors.

And this is one of those things that is not meant to be left to days to come to the thousand year reign of Christ. Get off your hands, get off your thumbs now, dear listener, and begin conquering, begin taking territory, begin taking dominion. And you don't have to run for political office. You don't need to get out and vote. You don't need to take up your Second Amendment rights.

This is not how we conquer. The Lord has given us the means by which we conquer, hasn't he? For indeed, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. They're not fleshly, are they? But they are spiritual to the pulling down of strongholds.

The Apostle Paul got it. The Apostle John got it. And our Lord reveals to us how we conquer. And so I just encourage you to take a new look at worship, for example, because the structure of our worship has given to us in the New Testament. We're not just left to worship as we please, the things that make us feel good.

Just because we feel good in worship doesn't mean we're worshiping appropriately, because God has given us modes, methods, and forms to use in our worship services. That is, he has given us a structure and liturgy by which we worship. And I just encourage you to look at this, because the book of Revelation has those forms and patterns that the early church, for example, used. I'm not saying that the full-blown liturgies of some of the churches that are practicing them now, here and now, have retained or recaptured those. No, I say we need to go back to the New Testament.

We need to go back to the early church fathers, to the early church, and re-embrace some of those forms and some of those ways of worshiping, so that we know that God is pleased, too. It's good that you feel good in worship, and indeed, worship is meant to renew us, but it is also meant then to please God. When we please God in our worship, as he says in the Old Testament, it is a sweet savor in his nostrils. Is your worship a sweet savor in God's nostrils? Just because you feel good doesn't mean it is in God's sight.

So we need to look at some of the patterns and liturgies and forms that we have in the book of Revelation, so that we might indeed please God in our worship. And when we do that, we will find that there is a reciprocal avenue, there's a reciprocal road, a reciprocal river, if you will, of pleasing and glory and dominion. Our worship as well for us. Oh, what a delight worship is. I love going to church on Sunday and worshiping the way that God has given us in the Scriptures, and the book of Revelation, in part, gives us some of that form.

Well, you can experience some of that on Sundays at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church, because we meet for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. And if you haven't crossed our threshold yet, I encourage you to do so and find out who we are, what we are, and how we indeed are approaching the book of Revelation as we plumb its depths, not just looking for red heifers and raptures and antichrists and seven-year tribulations and helicopters that are locusts, these kinds of things. No, we are looking at the book of Revelation for all that it has to offer.

And we meet for worship once again on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. And you can call us for further information or some comments. Perhaps this pleases you. Perhaps it enrages you a bit. I can understand where it might, as it does fly in the face of so much of what's presented as the book of Revelation these days.

If you want to give us some comment on these things, some insight, go ahead and give me a call at area code 208-523-0196. And I'll be glad to give you a call back and give you more information too if you want. That's New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church at area code 208-523-0196. 208-523-0196.