Challenging And Comforting At The Same Time
REVELATION 1:9-20
9 I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the king- dom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. 10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet 11 saying, “Write what you see in a book 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.”
12 Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turn- ing I saw seven golden lampstands, 13 and in the midst of the lamp- stands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. 14 The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, 15 his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. 16 In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.
17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, 18 and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. 19 Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this. 20 As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.
Revelation is an account of a vision that a man named John was given
by the Holy Spirit. John has then given us a written account of what he saw and experienced—Revelation is the result of much subsequent reflection on those experiences. If you’ve ever tried to explain a dream to someone else, you know how hard it is to convey into simple words the immediacy and emotion of the experience. The imagery of Revelation is vivid and at first obscure; one of the keys to understanding it is to simply read the book over and over, and see how images explain images.
As the vision opens, John sees Jesus in the midst of seven golden lampstands, which we shortly learn are the seven churches. (The image of the lampstand will be important later, in chapter 11. And note how it draws on what Zechariah saw in Zechariah 4 [see the reading for 1/5].)
John is afraid, but Jesus graciously puts his hand on John’s shoulder and tells him not to be afraid and that his task is to write down the content of the vision and share it with the seven churches in Asia.
Note that Jesus is in the midst of his churches. He will subsequently give John a message for each of the seven churches individually (chapters 2-3), messages he is able to give because he is right there with them. The fact of his presence is both challenging and comforting.
Jesus’s presence is challenging because Jesus knows the truth about us. One of the central themes of Revelation is truth, and nothing is hidden from God.
But Jesus’s presences with his churches is also comforting, because he knows the truth about our situation and wants to encourage us to keep going—to hang on until the end and to persevere.
If you are headed in the wrong direction, repent! (Repent means nothing more than “turn around.”) If you are doing the right thing, keep going! The Lord is with you.