Trying to Keep Your Balance: Preaching the Revelation—Some Reflections (Part 5 of 5)
No doubt the book had meaning for the original recipients. After part four our concern as we conclude this series is this: What is the significance of the book for us in the twenty-first century?
V. CONSIDER THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BOOK
Only by paying attention to the setting, style, symbolism and structure of the book are we then ready to ask: What is the significance of the book? How does it speak to us today? I have chosen to spend less time on this today because if we get the above right then the significance will certainly become clearer. There can be no shortcuts taken in the previous four categories without risking missing God’s intended meaning of this great book. If we are not willing to follow the first four categories, then we must not preach Revelation.
The Book of Revelation was not written to satisfy our curiosity about the future. We must not use it to work out in detail a schedule leading up to the end of the world. It was not given to us to scare the hell out of people. All who have done this, contemporary authors included, have been wrong, without exception.
By placing this book in the contexts of Christ’s first and final comings, John impressed upon his audience an awareness of the Christian life and mission. It was a context in which Christians were called upon to choose between holy living and unholy living. Revelation asks the Church today: Are you going to be seduced by the whore or are you going to be a faithful and pure bride. No compromise is allowed. There were no shades of gray in the book. Throughout, John sets up stark contrasts between good and evil and invites believers to make a choice. Christians are exhorted to choose between two clearly opposed sides.
Accordingly, there are three areas where we need to strive to keep the balance.
A. We need to keep the balance between the indicative and the imperative. Indicatives abound in Revelation. There are statements made about God, Christ, evil, the Church. They express reality; they express truth; this is what I mean when I use the word “indicative.” And these truths about God and Christ provide the foundation for all of the imperatives, that is the commandments.
John adopts several strategies to exhort Christians. Let me give some of the ways in which he does. He exhorts them through numerous imperatives: repent; do deeds; be faithful; be watchful; listen. He exhorts them in describing them: they are the people of God; servants; saints; called; chosen; and faithful. He exhorts them by rebuking and commending (“I know your works . . .”). He exhorts them by promising and threatening. He exhorts them through the seven beatitudes found in the book (“Blessed are . . .”) and he exhorts them in the of lists of virtues and vices (14:4-5; 21:8,27; 22:15). There are approximately one hundred paragraphs in Revelation and eighty per cent of them contain one or more kinds of imperative.
B. We need to keep the balance between the corporate and the personal. The Christian life is a life-in-community. American culture worships individualism, but a reading of Revelation shows us that it is imperative that we maintain a balance between the personal and the corporate.
The Christian is never viewed in isolation from others. Note that each of the messages in chapters two and three begin with a call to the whole church (“to the angel of the church in Ephesus” and then the church as a whole is evaluated) but each one ends with a call to the individual: “to the one who overcomes, I will give to that person . . .”
Satan’s efforts to destroy the Church in its early days are referred to in Revelation 12 and when he is unable, according to Revelation 13 he turns his attention to individual Christians (e.g., “If anyone is to be carried into captivity . . . If anyone has wisdom, let him calculate the number of the beast . . .”).
The messages are addressed not simply to the churches but also to their individual members; both the praise and the blame and the promises of reward and loss apply to the individual members as well as to congregations. The individual’s victory over evil depends, in part, upon the faithfulness of the Church as a whole as well as the influence of the Church also depends upon the individual members.
The book teaches that only the Church corporate can be designated as “eternally secure,” while the individual believers who make up the church maintain their position only as they remain faithful to their original commitment by God’s grace. Revelation does not teach a radical individualism in which the importance of the community is diminished or denigrated. The individual Christian is always the individual-in-community. As a hostile and seductive world is confronted, the Christian life is a life lived out in close relationship with Christ within the Christian community. We are a band of pilgrims journeying home under God’s grace.
C. We need to keep the balance between the local and the global. As the Church seeks to carry out its mission, the Dragon will do all in its power to afflict and/or seduce the Church locally and globally. Satan and God have one thing in common: they both want this world and its inhabitants.
It is significant that the term used most frequently for Christians is the word “saints” and that the phrase “those who dwell upon the earth” (the “earthdwellers”) is the one that is used most to describe non-Christians. The saints and the earthdwellers are found throughout the world. Time and again we read such a phrase as “tribe, language, nation and people,” or “the four corners of the earth,” or “the earth and the sea.” There is no institution, structure, group, power, system that Satan will not use to control the world.
John says to the Church of his day and to the Church of our day: Because of the world’s sinful, seductive and suppressing ways, God calls upon the saints to remember that their vocation is to be a Christian and that their specific task is that of witness.
Every major section of Revelation reminds Christians and congregations of their responsibility to be involved in mission locally and globally (Rev. 1:5b-6; 22:17). Wherever you have a word spoken about Christ by Christians, there should be lives which authenticate the spoken words. Wherever you have acts done in the name of Christ by Christians, there is the need for words to be spoken about Christ. In Revelation there is a blending of lifestyle and verbal evangelism.
The reminder in Rev. 1:5b-6 that we are a kingdom of priests is a reminder to be concerned for witness to the whole world. Priests represent God before a watching world. John’s brothers and sisters no longer dwelled in safe and secure Jerusalem. They found themselves walking the streets of Rome and Ephesus and other metropolitan centers as well as rural areas. There is no use pretending to be a disciple of Jesus if we are unwilling to walk the streets of Rome because it is scary, difficult, corrupt, and intimidating. Jesus belongs in Rome; he belongs in Rome in spite of its persecuting and perverse ways. There is no use pretending to be his disciples if we are dodging Rome. A call to be witnesses to God’s grace is at the heart of such images.
G.R.Beasley-Murray (The Book of Revelation, p. 181) observed that “…the Church has something more important to do than simply to survive. It is set in the world to bear witness to men, even when the witness is resisted with force. The darker the hour, the more need for the Churches to be what they are: lamps, through which Christ’s light shines. Witnesses may be crushed, and lamps put out, but in the end both witness and light achieve their desired object: men give glory to God.”
Before I close, there is one more balance that I need to share; it is one not found on the study guide but it is, I believe, a critical one—the balance between the good news and the bad news—a word of gospel and a word of judgment . . . a word of gospel and a word of judgment.
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