All right, so let's dig into Revelation now.
We're gonna get into chapters one, two, and three.
So John as you know,
he's on the island of Patmos.
Jesus appears to him.
And when Jesus appears to John,
he falls over as if dead
because well, Jesus is perfect.
He's holy.
He hates sin.
John realizes he's like you and me, he's a sinful being.
He falls over as if dead but Jesus helps him up
and says to him "Peace be with you".
Because remember this book is all about peace
if, if you remember that truth.
The truth that Jesus wins.
So then Jesus gives over to John
these specific things to write down to those seven churches
across the water in modern day Turkey.
And as he writes to each one of these churches,
there's something very specific
that Jesus has John write each and every time.
Let me give an example.
So in chapter two,
Jesus is writing through the pen of John
to the church in Pergamum.
And he says to the believers there,
"If you will hold firm, fast in your faith,
"I will give to you a white rock with a new name on it".
And so what this means is something
we can't understand by ourselves.
You have to know the history of the culture behind it.
You see, Pergamum was the capital city in the area
and so that means that the government was there
and all court cases were there.
And they had jurors, kind of like how we have.
And there's a way that they gave their vote.
If the person they found to be guilty,
they displayed a black rock, the juror.
And if they thought the person was innocent,
they displayed the white rock.
And so Jesus says to those believers,
"You remain faithful to me,
"I'm going to declare you innocent.
"If you remain faithful to my love,
"my mercy, my forgiveness is yours".
How peaceful that would've been to them.
But I think my favorite personal thing that Jesus had
written was the church in Laodicea.
You see, they were a wealthy city but one thing they
didn't have was a great water supply.
So next to them was a city called Colossae
and they had a crisp, cold mountain runoff water
and then, they also had another city Hieropolis near them
and they had medicinal hot baths.
So you have cold water here, you have hot water here
but Laodicea had no fresh water supply.
They shipped in their water from hot springs
and by the time it got to their city,
it was this disgusting, lukewarm, kind of hot water.
And so Jesus says this to that city, very personal.
He says,
"I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot.
I wish you were either one or the other.
So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold,
I'm about to spit you out of my mouth".
And the Greek there means to like
just kind of violently spit out.
Now, that seems kind of strange.
Why would God say that he wishes they were hot or cold?
We get the hot part, being on fire in your faith.
We get that.
But cold?
Why would God want someone to be cold in their
in their connection with God?
Well if someone's cold,
you know that they don't have faith.
You know that that's someone I should pray for,
someone I should witness to,
someone I should reach out to because you know where
they're going away from God. But if someone's lukewarm,
they're about to lose their faith and they can walk away
from God and people might not notice.
So Jesus wrote this very specific thing that would've
meant something in their hearts
because of their water supply.
Because Jesus knows their needs.
And God knows yours.
He knows your needs.
He knows what's going on in your heart and in your life
and God doesn't want you to be like the Laodiceans.
He doesn't want you to get complacent in your faith
and just get so comfortable in life, you forget about God.
That's what they did.
Wake up.
"Get on fire," Jesus is saying.
And soak up that flame of faith in God,
in your prayer life,
in your worship life,
in your devotion life because God knows what you need.
He knows what you need.
He's always, always there for you.
Now if you're hearing this and you go, "Man,
"if I'm reading chapters one, two, and three of Revelation,"
and I encourage you, do that this week.
Read the first three chapters.
In fact, do it today.
You will go, "I don't think I would've ever gotten that
"out of that white rock or the lukewarm water."
Let me give you a resource.
So this is a really great book.
It comes from the People Bible Series.
Every book of the bible is, got a devotional aspect
or a digging into it aspect,
a small section of scripture and an explanation.
I encourage you, Google it, check it out,
find the People's Bible Revelation book
and it can give you a lot of insight
so that you can dig into Revelation
and understand the one truth that God wants you to get.
Jesus wins.
He won your salvation.
He loves you.
He cares about you.
He knows what's going on specifically in your life.
And he's always, always there for you.