First Presbyterian Church Of Baton Rouge

As the years rolls by and as the Spirit works in you, you should not only experience a greater degree of victory over sin but also an increased hatred for sin. Some of you, as you’ve grown, have come to realize that with each passing year you learn to trust yourself less and less. It can actually feel, in this case, like sin is becoming more of a problem. But maybe your sin problem seems bigger now because you’re seeing it more clearly and that’s leading you into humility. Be encouraged when your conscience convicts you, Christian, and do not ignore God’s working in you.

This Christmas, each one of us will have a chance to make the words true for someone else. We can be the proof in the gospel declaration, “The Son of God has made us his kinfolk forever. He wants us with him always. The baby in the manger means, ‘It is good, so good, that you exist.’

The cross is the tree of life restored to us. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus reaches backwards in time as well as forwards. He redeemed the people of God who lived before him, who awaited him, though they only knew him in shadows and yearning. In taking all our death upon himself, Jesus reaches back to the very beginning of our human living and dying. In taking the hell due to us, Jesus undoes the curse and opens eternal life to us once more. The killing cross becomes the tree of life returned to us.

The God who flung galaxies across the field of space will touch, personally and directly, each eye that cries. He will take tears as his own. The God who hears the thunderous cataract of the multitude in praise, attunes to each sigh of his beloved. He attends to us like a father, like a spouse, like a friend. This is our God. We feel him do this from time to time in these dark days. Sometimes by the presence of his comforting Spirit. Sometimes through those he sends us. Revelation assures us that more is coming. None of these tears are lost. They will all be cared for.

No matter how much theology I read, I cannot scrub out the clear warning in passages like this one from Revelation. There is a judgment. There will be a lake of fire. No can survive it on his own merits. Jesus, however, has made a way. Will we answer his call and rely on him alone?

 The Church appears as a guttering and flickering flame in the West. But, this is the hour to which you have been called. For such an hour, the Church needs strength, courage, boldness, an unwavering confidence and a steady gaze to conquer. We must not fear to look into the eyes of the beast, clearly proclaiming the truth, genuinely imitating the pattern placed before us. And, come what may, our hope is the very hope that we commemorate every Lord’s Day. The hope of the resurrection, that out of death comes life.

Paul expresses several times a joyful loop of giving in Corinthians. God gave his only Son to the world in Jesus Christ. Believers receive that gift of mercy with our whole hearts. We give thanks for such grace. At the very same time that we do, we get sent into ministry. God gives. We give. And then the recipients give thanks back to God for the love and salvation we shared. God gets glorified. Then, he pours out more grace into us and through us to others, and the loop of love and praise continues like a wonderful music.

The multitude of believers arrive before the throne out of the great tribulation of life in a rebellious and wayward world. This is the communion of the saints. All believers of all times and places gather from every tribe and corner of the earth. With one voice, their differences are universally translated into harmony, adorned in brilliant robes. These dazzling robes are lives washed white in the blood of the Lamb. Washed with faith that has endured through the years. And now they receive the consolation of God.

Many commentators believe the horsemen of Revelation 6 represent God’s removing of his restraints on human depravity. Our natural tendencies get to progress without being checked. We lust and covet. We seek to acquire and possess. We hurt and kill each other to get it or protect it. A balanced peaceful life and economy disappear. The weak get trampled first, then the rest. Death has a field day. All this occurs when the Sovereign God lets us finally have what we demand.

Lesser gods are not worthy. But the Lamb who was slain and yet lives, he is the one who opens the scroll. He is the one who staked his life on a redeeming future. To the degree that we join our hearts and voices to his worship, our faith will flourish. And to the degree that are our faith flourishes, we will live in peace and hope. And to the degree we live in such trust, the world will be drawn to the gospel of the one true God, the Lamb on his throne. 

At the top of a rollercoaster, you see the entire park laid out before you. Revelation is the same, laying all of the previous books of the Bible out before us and firing our imagination with a vision that will exhilarate us through all of the shaking and rolling in life that will come.

The Laodiceans were strong. They had significance in the city where they lived. They had resources. They had right beliefs. But they had grown complacent. They had their comforts and their distractions, and they really liked not needing anyone else. Sometimes they liked not needing a savior. But Jesus was having none of that.

First love doesn’t have to be cartwheels and euphoria. But recovering first love means keeping a line open and clear between where it all started and where you are now. It means scribbling a little star at the bottom of a page or on a bulletin, or even finding a star emoji so you can tell your Lord Jesus, “I really like you. I have for so long. I still do.”

The letters to the angels of the churches call us to examine our lives. What are we putting ahead of Christ? What good things are we substituting for him? What compromises have we agreed to make with the empire? How might we be keeping a true faith and yet colluding with destruction?