Week 52: Jesus, Day 1

Read:
Revelation 1:1-8
Psalm 106

Reflect:
 This week the Devo takes on a very particular task. This is the final week of our Walk through the Bible year, and with it we give special attention to the one Person that has in fact been mentioned every week, though He has not yet received His own particular week. We also consider Him, however, in light of the way He is presented to us in the final book of the Bible. And thirdly, here in the season of Advent, we also wish to do justice to the wonderful Gift of Christmas. So here goes.
 The Book of Revelation is presented to us as “the revelation of Jesus Christ.” It is a prophetic message that comes to the Church from the Lord of the Church, delivered by two messengers: an angel, and John (Rev 1:1). Remarkably little is told us about either of these two messengers; they are important to the book only to the extent that they simply bear testimony to “all” they have seen and heard (1:2). Their value is that they pass on the full value of the Word of the Lord.
 Protestants are often less comfortable than other types of Christians with angels, except maybe at Christmas. The Bible teaches that they are servants of God, whose home is heaven even as our human home is earth, and that they assist the earthly work of God at times. They know and rejoice in God’s holy will in a way that is a wonderment to us, since we still struggle with the selfishness that prevents our unhindered listening to God’s voice of love and command. Thus they seem particularly charged with helping to get across to us the clarity of God’s Word at times when it is hard for earthlings to hear it. And so in the events of Jesus’ birth, Gabriel secured Mary’s attention for a message that was literally unbelievable; and later an angel choir found a rapt audience of shepherds with whom to share the joy of God’s grace. Maybe instead of picturing angels with harps, we should see them carrying hearing aids for the deafened ears of the children of Adam and Eve! Their message is usually disruptive and inconvenient: not the arrival of happy times, but of the saving act of God. And so it is in today’s passage: an angel warns us to “listen up!” – because God is going to save.
 In a real sense this “revelation of Jesus Christ” is also about Jesus. And as Pastor Jim shared last week, the name Jesus means “God saves” – not, for instance, “happy days are here again.” As the Gospels begin with the story of Jesus’ coming, so in Revelation the Church looks forward to Jesus bringing this particular age to a conclusion. And it is indeed all about Him. As we learned over and over again in our study of the Old Testament, Israel was never able fully to grasp the salvation that God offered, even with the repeated injunctions of the prophets. In many ways this failure clarified the need for the disclosure, the revelation, of something completely unheard of among humanity: that God Himself would arrive to save His people, and indeed the whole world. Verses 4-6 of our passage remind us eloquently of Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection, and verses 7-8 remind us that what remains is still very much about Him. Salvation seems never to be obvious to us humans; it always seems to come to us out of left field, with tremendous energies of God, and of angels, directed at getting us to “listen up” (v. 3). But for those who do listen up, life is never again the same.

Respond:
Because God means really to save and not just to assuage, our service to Him and to His Gospel can mean interruptions and disruptions as He directs our energies away from our own “great ideas” and toward His own plan for the ages. Are you ready to be interrupted this Christmas, in order to share God’s love in an unexpected way?

Pray:
“To Him who loves us, and released us from our sins by His blood, and who has made us to be a kingdom, priests to God His Father – to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

- D.D.