Today we are in Revelation 1:9, and we are looking at the things that it’s telling us about Christ. We’re going to be moving into the descriptions of Christ. What a description it is!
Let’s start with John in Revelation 1:9, “I, John, your brother and fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance which are in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos.” John is telling us about his own personal life. He is an old man. We know he is probably in his mid-90s by now. He outlived the other apostles by years. He is the only one of the apostles that was not martyred, although tradition tells us that he was persecuted, and was put into a vat of boiling oil of some sort at some point. We are not exactly sure about that. At this point in time, John is in exile on this island of Patmos because of the gospel. He says, “because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.” The Spirit, probably means that the Lord is now going to give him a vision and the book of Revelation will be made up of vision that the Lord gives John. He says, on the Lord’s day, which could be Sunday, could simply mean an idea of the Lord’s day in the future, the day of the Lord, we’re not positive about that. He says, “and I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet, saying, ‘Write in a book what you see, and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.” So, the Lord I saying, I have a message for these seven churches, this message will be expanded to all churches at all times, but immediately to these seven churches and I want you to write in a book what I’m going to give you.
So, as John does that, something wonderful happens in Revelation 1:12, “Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands; and in the middle of the lampstands.” Let’s stop there for a moment. He is in the spirit in the Lord right now, which probably means he is having a vision. It is possible the Lord took him physically to heaven to see these things, it’s also possible the Lord took him spiritually by taking his spirit to heaven to see these things, or it’s possible that he simply received a vision of all the things he is going to see. We don’t have to nail that down, but we do know this is a miraculous revelation that he is being given from God, and that revelation begins with a description of Jesus Christ. We’ve seen Christ in the Bible, especially the gospels, where the four gospels tell us about the earthly life of Jesus and many things about him, but there is nothing quite like this particular description of Jesus in all the rest of the Bible. This is Christ in all of His glory and all of His splendor and there are many different pictures here. I want you to note that much of this is probably symbolic. So don’t press it too hard. As a matter of fact, he says this appearance of him was like, in Revelation 1:13, “and in the middle of the lampstands I saw one like a son of man.” John speaks of the word like as a comparison and he does that time and time again going through these next several sentences. So, we know that John is trying to describe the indescribable. He sees Christ and he describes what he can describe, but he can only describe so much. Often, he compares Jesus with something else, and so Jesus in this case is like the son of man so there is an appearance here of humanity. Jesus, although he is in his glory and splendor here, still retains something of his humanity, his appearance as a man. As far as we know he will have an appearance of a human being throughout all of eternity. So, he sees him like the son of man, and he is, “clothed in a robe reaching to the feet.”
