Remember the book of Revelation is the revelation of Jesus Christ. So more than anything else we are getting a picture, a full description, of who Christ is. Revelation 1 is especially pinpointing that issue. Yesterday we saw who He is. We saw He is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, He’s the ruler of the kings of the earth and in Revelation 1:8 we see he is the Alpha and Omega.
Today we will look at what He has done. These are things that Christ has done or is going to do. The very early portions of this book pinpoint this for us. It wants us to know what Christ has done and what He is doing for us.
So, we go return Revelation 1:5, where it says, “To Him who loves us,” so let’s start with the fact that He loves us. I don’t think we understand the full gravity of that. The fact that He loves us. What a wonderful thought. In other religions they have deities, of course these are mythological deities, these deities never love those who follow them and worship them. Those who worship them, these ancestors or these false deities or Allah in the case of Islam, they worship these deities or these spirit beings because they are afraid of them. They want to keep them happy, and they want to appease them. There is no concept really of a close personal relationship with these false spirit beings. There is certainly no love coming from those deities to those people. That’s just the opposite with our Father and with the Son. He loves us, and all that he does for us is because he loves us. When we speak of His love for us, we are always reminded of the most familiar Scripture in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son.” The motivation for the redemption of humanity, and the motivation for Christ coming, is the love of God and the love of the Son. So, we find that He loves us.
Secondly, as we move on, we find that He, “released us from our sins by His blood.” We are going back to the same thing. Love is the motivation. The action is that He “released us from our sins by His blood.” That’s an unusual way to say it in Scripture. We’re used to the terms like atonement or other such words like redemption. Releasing us is an interesting way of saying it, isn’t it? We are captivated by sin. We are captured. We’re slaves to sin. Something had to be done to release us from that power of sin. What could that possibly be? Well, it could only be the blood of Christ. So, the love of God motivated Him to send His Son. The Son came for the express purpose of setting us free from the sin that overpowered us and captured us and doomed us. He has released us by His blood. So, we go right back to the consistent teaching all the way back to Genesis 3, and all the way to the end of the scriptures that Jesus Christ died for us. His blood was shed for us.
Then we move on to a third thing He has done in Revelation 1:6, and it says, “and He has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father,” and so He has not only saved us and loves us, but he has made us a people. A people that are a kingdom. A kingdom of priests. Priests worship God. They come before God, and they lead in that kind of worship. So, we are a kingdom, not of an army per se, but a kingdom of priests, a kingdom of worshipers to God. So, the Lord has formed his people, and that is something else he has done.
He is not done yet! We go to Revelation 1:7, “Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who have pierced Him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. So, it is to be. Amen.” So, we find that He is also coming again . . .
