Sound The Trumpet : John's Glorious View of Jesus (Part 3) Series on Revelation

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“John's Glorious View of Jesus (Part 3) Series on Revelation”
by Art Sadlier
April 21st, 2020

I remind you that we are listening to John speaking about his view into Heaven of our Glorified Lord. John sees Christ walking up and down in the midst of His churches. We stated that there are at least seven things Christ is doing today as He walks up and down in the midst of the churches.

Last week we saw two of those things.

First - We see Him ever present with His church to empower and bless.

Second - We see Him interceding for His church as our Great High Priest.

Today we see a Third thing He is doing. He is in the midst of His church to purify it.

Now John moves from the priestly clothing of Christ, "And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle" (Verse13), to the Person of Christ, "His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters" (verse.14,15). In these verses we see the Lord of the church, purifying and purging His church.

The Lord of the church is serious about a pure church. He is totally committed to making His church pure. "That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish" (Eph.5:26,27). You can view that process underway in 1Cor. 11:30-32, "For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world."

The Lord is merciful, gracious, patient and long suffering, but He will not allow unconfessed sin to continue in the life of a believer, nor in the life of the church.

Peter said, "For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?" (1 Peter 4:17). Before a church can preach against sin, it must be pure itself. Before a church can preach repentance it must repent of its sin. That is a principle for both individual believers and for local churches.

Notice, the judge of the church is the Lord Himself. We see the purity and holiness of Christ in verse 14, this white of course speaks of His sinlessness, His absolute Holiness. "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look upon iniquity" (Hab. 1:13). Our Lord cannot, and will not tolerate sin, the unsaved will be consigned to Hell forever because of their sin.

The Lord will not tolerate unconfessed sin in the lives of His people, nor in His church. We are told in 1 Jn. 1:9, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

In 1 Cor. 11:30-31, we see the believer's very life is in jeopardy if he continues in unconfessed sin, "For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.

"His eyes were as a flame of fire", (vs.14). Sin cannot escape the all-seeing eye of Christ. He sees the secrets of the heart, He sees behind closed doors and the fire of Christ's judgment will fall on unconfessed sin. Both the individual believer and the church collectively will not escape the Lord's chastening for failure to deal with sin. We see in chapters two and three that some churches lose their candlestick. (their status as a church) because of unrepented sin.

"And His feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace". The Lord is in the midst of your church, walking up and down in your midst, ready to trample on unconfessed sin. He will spare neither you nor your church any stroke, no trouble, no heartache, no sickness or distress to bring you to the place of repentance. Do you see how serious Christ is about a pure church?

Why is it so important? Unconfessed sin comes between Christ and His people, it prevents His love and His mercy and grace and His presence from being our portion. How quickly and completely he will cleanse and forgive our every sin if only we will turn from it.

I would like us to observe something important before we leave these verses. We have here a description of our Glorified Lord. No one knows what our Lord looked like during His physical presence on earth, the Bible gives no details whatsoever. We know our Lord did not have long hair. Paul said, "Doth not even nature itself teach you, that if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him" (1 Cor.12:14). Paul would not have said that if Christ had long hair, remember Christ appeared unto Paul.

By the way, all of the Roman statues of men dating back to that era, had short hair.

Every picture of Jesus is a fraud and a misrepresentation of Him. Those pictures must grieve our Lord, if you want to be pleasing to the Lord, you might want to remove from your walls any pictures you may have of Him.

Fourth - We see Christ speaking authoritatively to the church. "And His voice as the sound of many waters" verse 15. I believe John is implying that the voice of the Lord was like the pounding of the surf on the rocks of Patmos.

His voice is the voice of authority, the voice of power. The same voice that will one day speak and the graves of all the ages will open up and thrust out their victims. It is the voice of Christ speaking to His church, speaking through His Word, speaking by His Spirit, speaking with authority.

The great tragedy of the hour is that much of the Evangelical Church no longer hears the Word of God as its final authority. Sound Doctrine (the teachings of Christ) is no longer of primary importance, in many churches it has little or no place, this is the rejection of the Words of Christ.

The seeker friendly, purpose driven church, is following a man-made program for the church that is nothing less than the rejection of the purpose and pattern of Christ for the church, as found in His Word.

Churches are FILLED TO OVERFLOWING, easy believism is welcomed by the natural man. Salvation without repentance and a change of life, is the desire of every unregenerate heart at some point in their lives, you can build a church on that, but it will not be the church of Jesus Christ. The end result is that those churches will lose their candlestick, and will cease to be the Church of Jesus Christ.

When we get to Revelation 2 and 3, we will see Christ removing the candlesticks of those church that depart from His Word. We go back constantly to Mt.7:21-23.

The church is called out of the world, it is called to be separate from the world, to go outside the camp bearing His reproach. It is warned not to love the world, the church is not to bring the world into the fellowship of the church.

The church is to go out into the world and preach the Gospel, win men and women toChrist, baptize them and bring them into the fellowship to be discipled. To reverse that plan of our Lord is to bring the tares in among the wheat and to bring leaven into the loaf, it will destroy the church.

Today, I believe much of the Evangelical Church is in the late stages of apostasy. The problem began some years ago when the Word of God began to be marginalized, the church stopped listening to her Lord. Entertainment took the place of teaching sound doctrine, pragmatism took the place of our Lord's plan for the church. Bigness became more important than orthodoxy and faithfulness.

If we are to have any hope of experiencing the blessing of God in our churches and our lives, we must once again make the Word of God our only rule of faith and practice. It must return to the center of our lives and church and everything we do. John 14:21, "He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him."

Do not look for revival without preparing the ground, and paying the price that revival requires. Genuine revival is not a short-cut to a church getting thoroughly right with God and His Word.

Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13