Here's Ann Graham Lotz. I think we're challenged, as the early church was, to refocus on Jesus, refocus on His gospel, on His greatness, and His glory. And that's where we're going. That's the outline. Thank you for joining us this week on Living in the Light with Bible teacher Ann Graham Lotz.
In the first century AD, Christians were experiencing very hard and turbulent times. Frankly, the same could be said about living in today's day and age. We're heading in that same direction. We're experiencing very similar, dangerous, confusing, and sometimes dark days. But in today's message, there's hope.
And Anne has a challenge for you. She believes it's time to refocus on Jesus. And she takes us to Revelation chapter 1 to show us how to step back and refocus. Because Jesus is coming soon. Here's Ann with today's message.
coming and we need to be ready.
So I ask now your blessing on the message, Lord, please give me the words to express what I feel you've put in my heart. And I pray this, please, for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen. Where is your focus? Where is your focus in life?
You can tell some what your focus is when what you talk the most about, where you spend your time, how you spend your money. And Jesus said in Matthew 6 verse 22, the eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. And he's talking about our focus. If our focus is on him, if our focus is zeroed right in on the things of Jesus, then our whole life falls into perspective, doesn't it?
Everything just sort of falls into place. And I want to use this illustration. I hope I can do it. I've never shared this publicly before, But, you know, old age is something. My daddy said, old age is not for sissies.
And in this last little bit, I've been challenged with double vision. Anybody here have double vision?
So I noticed it when I was at the beach one year, and I was watching people walk down the beach. And I said, you know, that's so interesting. Those people are dressed alike. And their dogs are alike. And then I thought, I saw that so many times.
And finally, I closed one eye and said, oh, my goodness. There's only one person there and one dog instead of two of everything, you know, and but I see double and Mara helps me get through the airport. I can't read the signs.
So when I drive just for your comfort or when I watch TV, I use glasses that pull my eyes together.
Okay. But double vision makes life confusing and it actually is exhausting. You're trying so hard to see.
So there are 425 of us here, but you look like 850. And the person next to you is dressed just like you. It's not quite that bad. You're fairly close up. Double vision is an issue physically for me, but it also is an issue for us spiritually.
And right now, I'm going to be honest. I feel like I don't just have spiritual double vision, but triple vision, quadruple vision. You know, I want to see what's going on in Israel. I want to see what's going on in Russia. I want to know what's going on in China.
I want to know what's going on in Washington. Maybe I don't want to know what's going on in Washington, D.C., but if you do that, if you keep focused on all these things, it becomes confusing and it's exhausting. My challenge to you is to refocus on Jesus. and I have to constantly not only remind myself, but just pull my focus back into him and him alone. In the first century AD, the Christians were going through all sorts of things.
So if we think our world is in turmoil, theirs was in turmoil. The emperor Domitian was on the throne in Rome. He declared himself to be God, demanded to be worshiped. He poured out persecution on the Christians. He fed them to the lions, and he burned them at the stake.
He crucified them on crosses. And so their world was filled with confusion and danger, and darkness had come in. And to keep it from coming into the church, to keep it from coming into the individual believers' lives, God gave the apostle John a vision of Jesus that we call the book of Revelation at the end of our Bibles. And I'm going to present this a little bit differently. I actually shared a message from this passage last year, but I want to share it a little bit differently because I think we're challenged as the early church was to refocus on Jesus, refocus on his gospel, on his greatness and his glory.
And that's where we're going. That's the outline. So open your Bibles to Revelation chapter one, and we're going to look at this and I'm going to stretch it a little bit if I can take that Liberty because verse one says the revelation of Jesus Christ. And I know that's applying to this book that's the last in our Bibles, but I want to apply it to this entire book from Genesis to Revelation. This is the revelation of Jesus Christ.
I'm not going to take you through every book of the Bible, but in Genesis, he's the creator of all things. And in Exodus, Jesus is revealed as a liberator And Leviticus he the sacrificial spotless lamb who takes away our sin And in Numbers he our leader In Deuteronomy he prophet like Moses who would be raised up to deliver his people from bondage Joshua, he's captain of the Lord's host. Judges, he's the righteous judge. Ruth, he's the kinsman redeemer. I'm not gonna go through all in Proverbs.
He's the wisdom of God, the Psalms. He's our song in the night. The shepherd that leads us beside still water, song of Solomon. He's the lover of our souls. and Isaiah, the wonderful counselor, almighty God, prince of peace, everlasting father.
Ezekiel, he's the man seated on the sapphire throne. Matthew, he's the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies. He's the Messiah. He's the king. Mark, he's the servant.
Luke, he's the son of man. John, he's the son of God. Acts, he's the head of the church. Romans, He's the fulfillment of the law. And Hebrews, he's the great high priest who ever lives to make intercession for us.
And Revelation, when the sky unfolds and he comes back, written on his thighs, the name, the word of God. Revealed from Genesis through Revelation. King of kings, Lord of lords. And in this day and time, when everything is just crashing and crumbling and turning so dark and so evil and so desperate, But we need to refocus on the end of the story. Jesus is coming back.
And I believe it's imminent. And this is the revelation of Jesus Christ. And this revelation from Genesis to Revelation is recorded by apostles and prophets. Prophets in the Old Testament, apostles in the New Testament. And John says in verse 2, he's the apostle that wrote this down.
This is his eyewitness testimony of what he saw and what he heard. 49 times in the book of Revelation, John says, I saw with my own eyes. And 28 times, he says, I heard with my own ears. For us, Revelation is prophecy, but for John, it was history. He said, I saw it and I heard it.
And all of scripture is inspired like that. It's a living word that the prophets in the Old Testament, the apostles in the New Testament, this is God's word through them to you and me at this critical hour in human history. And so John was giving his testimony. If I can do that for a moment, if he were here, he would say something like this, that I was a disciple of John the Baptist. And one day I was standing beside the Jordan River with John.
And he said, look, there goes the Lamb of God. That's Jesus of Nazareth. He's the fulfillment of all of those sacrifices Leviticus told us about. The Lamb of God who would die, be sacrificed to shed his blood for the remission of our sins. and I stopped following John the Baptist and I became a disciple of Jesus for three years.
I saw him in many different situations. I saw him walk on water. I saw him with a word, calm the wind and the waves. I saw him give sight to a man born blind. I saw him cleanse the lepers.
I saw him raise the dead. But I'll never forget, Thursday night, I was there with the other disciples. We had a supper together and then he took us across the Kidron Valley to the Garden of Gethsemane. He asked me to pray with him. I went to sleep.
When I woke up, I saw with my own eyes the Roman soldiers placing him under arrest. And they bound his hands and they took him off to put him on trial. And because I'm a member of the high priest family, I fought at a distance. I slipped inside the courtyard. And with my own eyes, I saw Jesus placed on trial before the former high priest, Annas.
And then I saw as he was placed on trial before the acting high priest Caiaphas and then the full Sanhedrin. And I heard with my own ears as they convicted Jesus of Nazareth for blasphemy. Nothing more, nothing less, just claiming to be God in the flesh. About five o'clock in the morning, they took him to the judgment hall and they put him on trial before the Roman governor, Pilate. He went on trial before Pilate.
Pilate said, this man is innocent, but the religious leaders wouldn't accept that verdict. and so he sent him to Herod. Herod had fun with him and then he sent him back to Pilate. He said, this man is innocent. Pilate had him for the third Roman trial and Pilate said, this man is innocent.
He's innocent of all charges but the religious leaders had whipped up the crowd so now the crowd was rioting outside the judgment hall. Crucify him, crucify him. And Pilate, I'll give you Barabbas. I'll give you a real murderer but this man has done nothing wrong. Seven times, did you know that?
at least seven different times the Roman court said, this man is innocent. This man is innocent of all charges.
So much for Roman justice because I saw Pilate turn Jesus over for flogging where they beat him to the point that his flesh and blood just was ripped from his body. And when they finished, you could hardly recognize him as a man, much less identify who he was. And then I saw with my own eyes as Pilate washed his hands of responsibility and said, this man is innocent, but you can crucify him. And I saw as he took his cross up to the place of execution, and they laid him down on the cross and drove spikes through his hands and to his feet and then raised the cross and planted it in the ground like a tree, I saw Jesus of Nazareth crucified on a Roman cross. And I just stood there and watched for six hours.
One point he noticed me and asked me to take care of his mother, which I was glad to do the rest of her life. And at the end of the six hours, I heard him shout out in a loud voice, it is finished. And I saw with my own eyes, Jesus bow his head and he just refused to take the next breath. I saw Jesus give his life on the cross. Do you understand my life fell apart?
I thought he was the Messiah. I thought he was the redeemer of Israel. I thought he was God walking the earth in a human body And he had died like some criminal on a Roman cross So I went back to that upstairs room with the other disciples and we locked the door and we barred the windows We were terrified the Romans would come get us. And in our grief, the hours just ran together and it was Sunday morning. And I heard somebody banging on the door and I thought the Romans had come to get us.
Then I heard a woman's voice. It was Mary. I opened the door and she said something about grave robbers. She had been to the tomb and it was empty. The stone was rolled away.
Peter and I had the same thought. We looked at each other. We ran through that open door. We ran through those early morning streets of Jerusalem. We came to the tomb and the stone was rolled away, just like Mary said.
And I went inside that tomb and I will never forget what I saw. Nothing except for the grave clothes. And the grave clothes were lying there like an empty cocoon. You know, I was at Bethany when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. And Jesus told Lazarus' sister Martha to unwrap him from all those grave clothes.
And by the time Martha finished unwrapping Lazarus, the grave clothes were lying there like a pile of stinking rags. The grave clothes in the tomb of Jesus were not lying there as though they had been unwound from the body and the body taken off naked. They were lying there as though the body had evaporated up through them. And I knew Jesus had risen from the dead. But I was more confused than ever.
So I went back to that upstairs room, locked the door, barred the windows. Sunday afternoon, I heard with my own ears that familiar voice say, Peace, it is I, being unafraid. and I turned and I saw with my own eyes Jesus of Nazareth standing in front of me. I saw the wound on his brow where the thorns had been and the wounds in his hands and feet where the nails had been and he invited me to reach out and touch him and I'm here to tell you, I have seen Jesus Christ risen from the dead. But I also saw him 40 days later on the Mount of Olives when he was blessing us, he reached out his hands and then his feet began to lift up off the ground and he began to float up through the air and went through the clouds of glory.
I saw with my own eyes Jesus ascend into heaven. But that's not all I've seen.
So the gospel is good news. The gospel is that God became flesh in Bethlehem. and grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man. And when you look at him, he told Philip, you've seen the Father. And we saw him in every conceivable situation.
And the gospel is that at the end he gave his life. He was the Lamb of God, sacrificed to take away the sin of the world. But God raised him from the dead. He ascended into heaven. and he sits at the right hand of the Father, and the gospel is not finished.
The good news is that Jesus is coming back, and I, John, have seen it.
So let me tell you what I've seen. I've seen wars on a worldwide scale so devastating that the blood of those shed killed in battle rises to the height of a horse's bridle. I've seen armies gathering together to make war against each other and annihilate themselves. I've seen demons flooding the earth. I've seen stars falling out of the sky.
They look like missiles. And I've seen mountains falling into the sea and I've seen a beast rise up out of the sea to rule the world and a false prophet who does miracles in his name and a dragon who gives them both power. I've seen angels. and I've seen the souls of those who are slain standing on the altar saying, How long, Lord? And then I've seen the sky unfold and I've seen a rider on a white horse come back whose name is Faithful and True, King of Kings, Lord of Lords.
I've seen Jesus come back to rule and reign on this earth and I've seen a new heaven and a new earth. And listen to me, what I have seen is around everything, under everything, on everything, above everything, at the beginning of everything, at the end of everything is Jesus Christ. Stay focused on Jesus, especially when the world is careening apparently out of control. But we know from the end of the story, we know from the gospel that the world is not falling out of control. It's falling into place.
And it's falling into place at the feet of Jesus. How would we know all that if we didn't read our Bibles? Verse 3, blessed are you when you read. And it says the words of this prophecy, but I'm going to apply that from Genesis to Revelation. Blessed are you when you read your Bible.
and it doesn't mean just read it one time. It means when you continuously read it, you continuously study it, you continuously apply it, you continuously live it out. Blessed are you and the blessing is that you and I are focused on Jesus in the midst of all of this mayhem. It's like we're just running through all of it under the banner of the cross and we know where we're going. We know the end of the story.
We have purpose. We know that in the end, Jesus wins. It's all going to be okay.
So refocus on the gospel. When was the last time you shared the gospel with somebody who's never heard it? Or somebody who has but maybe they just ignored it Don leave it just to your pastor or people like Franklin or the professional evangelist. It's your privilege. You don't have to lead people to Christ the first time you open your mouth, but you just tell them what Jesus means to you.
When Mary Magdalene came back and she stuck her head in the door and the angels were there. And I think they must have been staring hard over her shoulder. And so she turned and looked and she saw the person she thought was a gardener and back of her and it was Jesus. But what I want to point out is that she followed the gaze, I think, of the angels. And I think when you and I are focused on Jesus, people are going to follow our gaze.
And they're going to maybe ask questions, want to know how can you have peace when the world is just coming apart like this? How can you have joy when your circumstances are just disease and death and divorce and disasters and whatever it is, and yet you still have joy? Tell other people about Jesus. Share the gospel. And I don't know that you'll do that.
You won't refocus on the gospel if you're not yourself focused on him.
so the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave so that we might know what's coming but also what's been what is and it's our hope so refocus on the gospel refocus on his greatness his deity verses four and five grace and peace due from him who is who was and is to come from the seven spirits before his throne and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, ruler of the kings of the earth. If you can just sort of take my word for it for a minute. Grace and peace from him who is, was, and is to come. That's the one we think of God the Father. The seven spirits before his throne, that's the Holy Spirit.
Number seven is perfection, and the Holy Spirit is perfect because he is God from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, firstborn from the dead.
So I point that out because Jesus is God. He's a member of the Godhead, God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, God the Son.
So in Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, in the beginning, God created everything, God the Father. Verse 2, the Spirit hovered over the face of the deep, God the Holy Spirit. Verse 3, and God said, let there be light, and there was, and all the way through Genesis 1, you have that little phrase, and God said, and whatever he said was so. And we think, well, that's nouns and pronouns and, you know, coming out of the mouth of God until we get to the gospel of John chapter 1, verse 1, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. And verse 14 says the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we've beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father.
Jesus is God.
So you refocus on his greatness, on his deity. Don't make him smaller than he is. We can become so familiar with him that we lose sight of his greatness. He is God, but he is also man.
So the next verse, five, to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood. In his humanity, he's the savior who gave his blood, was crucified, died to redeem you from your sin. He's that Levitical lamb who was sacrificed to make atonement for your sin. And he's made us to be a kingdom and priest to serve our God and father. To him be glory and power forever and ever.
He's the Lord that rules our lives. He makes us a kingdom of priests so that we can serve God. He's the one that rules our lives, giving us purpose and meaning so that our lives have eternal value and eternal fruit and we have something to show for our lives when we get to heaven. And thirdly, in verse seven, he's the king who's coming for us. Look, he's coming in the clouds and every eye will see him.
So this is my point in his humanity. He is God, but he's also man. In his humanity, he's the savior who redeemed you. the Lord who rules your life so you can fulfill God's purpose for your life. God has a purpose for you.
Do you know that? And he's the Lord that will rule your life so you can fulfill that purpose. And he's the king one day who will return just for you. And you say, and, you know, he's coming back for a whole big crowd. I'll just be one of the bunch.
So if I can illustrate it this way, Mar and Traynor were just at the beach. I think it was full moon. I didn't ask you if you actually went out on the beach, but on the eastern coast, if you go to the beach, the moon comes up over the water, okay, because we're on the Atlantic Ocean. It comes up over the water, and when you do that, you stand at the beach, and the moon is coming up. You have a moonbeam that comes right to you, but if Mara's 100 feet down the beach, then she has a moonbeam that comes right to her, and if trainer's 100 feet on the other side of her, then he has a moonbeam that comes right to him.
So we each have our own moon. I don't know how it works, okay, but I just know I have mine. When Jesus comes back, I don't know how this works, but he's coming just for you. John chapter 14, he said, I'm coming to receive you to myself. You're going to have him as though he's coming for no one but you.
You can hear Living in the Light with Ann Graham Lotz weekly and for ways to experience the God-filled life as you pursue your personal Bible study, go to anngramlotz.org and she'll help you get started with free resources you can use and share with others. Join us here each week for Living in the Light.
