Daily Bread for Dec 25, Rev 1-3

Today’s readings are Rev 1-3.

Revelation brings the narrative arc of the Bible to its climactic ending. The story began in the Garden with God declaring everything "good" except for man to be alone. Adam falls into sin, evil enters into the creation and the storyline of the entire Bible becomes a documentary of how God will redeem His children through the sacrifice of His only Son, reconciling them to Himself and restoring everything back to "good."

Revelation can be cryptic and hard to interpret. Perhaps the best way to read it is to look at the big picture rather than trying to discern the meaning of all the math, the significance of the symbols and the determining present-day equivalents of countries, kings and leaders mentioned. In the end, Revelation tells us God is victorious and His kingdom is established for all eternity in a new heaven and a new garden (the new earth). The result is a new creation that exceeds the old one in every way.

Revelation was written by John in the later years of the first century. It is expressly written as the words of Christ to seven churches.

The first chapters start out with an affirmation of Christ. They describe letters written to each of seven churches. It would be a mistake to think the messages to the churches are unique to those churches and have no application to us. The seven churches are a diverse lot, representing all possible flavors of churches that comprise the body of Christ. As such, they have their parallels in today’s church as well.

By the near-end of the first century, regardless of seeing all the miracles and hearing all the phenomenal teaching of Christ and the apostles, the new church has fallen into some of the same traps into which the Jews had fallen. A few churches are doing OK, a few more are struggling and a few more are stumbling. One, Laodicea, seems to have wholly shut Christ out of their services. The familiar passage about Jesus standing at the door and knocking (Rev 3:20) is not a gospel invitation as many understand it to be. The door Jesus is knocking on is not the oft-depicted door of a lost soul’s heart. It is the door of the church! Jesus is saying, “You’ve left me out of your services! Is anyone listening? Open the door and bring me back in!” Could there be a better representation of the state of some churches today?

Still, the churches, despite their shortcomings are proclaimed the "lampstands" (Rev 1:12-13) and Christ walks among them, a sign of the faithfulness of God, even when His church is struggling. There is a clear warning that suffering is on the way for all the churches, not due to their failure, but because it is part of His plan for the last days, which we are in presently and have been since the ascension of Christ (Rev 3:10-13).

Despite its weaknesses, shortcomings and oppression, we should see that the church survives to the end. It will not fade away or die. It is not threatened by outside and ungodly forces that would like to see it vanish. The culture may ignore it, even attempt to be rid of it. God will preserve it. We know this is true because it survives until the end-times as we see in these chapters.