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Sacred Signs and Symbolism in the English Bible · Reformed Thinking

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Pitch your children's Sunday school classroom.
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Look at the walls. You are almost guaranteed to see
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a specific image pinned up somewhere on a bulletin board.
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Oh yeah, definitely a drawing of a lamb.
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Right. And the animal is always pure
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white, incredibly fluffy, with these big soft eyes usually
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resting in a green Meadow. Or being carried over the
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shoulders of a smiling shepherd. Yeah, I mean, it looks like a
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plush toy. It evokes feelings of safety,
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gentleness, maybe a little bit of rural nostalgia.
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So you see that image and your modern mind immediately files it
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under the category of, well, sweet and harmless.
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Which is the cultural default, you know, we domesticate the
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imagery until it loses all of its original weight.
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Well, welcome to Reformed thinking.
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Today we are taking a massive stack of notes on the nature of
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symbolism in the English Bible, and our mission for this deep
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dive into the source material is to figure out how to read these
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physical science. Yeah, without turning the text
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into a subjective guessing game. Because you know when a 1st
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century person heard the word lamb, they did not think of a
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petting zoo. No, they thought of a knife.
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Right. They thought of a stone altar
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slick with blood. They thought of the visceral,
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sharp smell of a burning sacrifice.
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So to call someone a lamb in that era was not a compliment
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about their gentle personality. Yeah, it was a horrifying
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declaration that this person was going to bleed.
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That contrast right there highlights the central problem
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we are tackling. You are looking at an ancient
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text written to a specific people in a specific historical
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context. OK.
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And the physical signs used in the text.
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So lambs, doves, feet, golden lampstands, these are objective
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instruments of divine communication.
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God uses the visible physical world to communicate strict,
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unbending truth. But modern readers look at those
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signs through a modern lens, and the diagnostic waters get
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incredibly muddy. I.
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Really do. Right.
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And before we even look at specific symbols, we have to
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establish the method for reading them.
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You have to know the rules of the game before you play.
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That is a crucial starting point.
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I was looking through our notes and there are two massive
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ditches on either side of the road when it comes to reading
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biblical imagery. 2 extreme errors.
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Let's start with the first one, which is rationalistic
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literalism. So rationalistic literalism is a
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method that flattens biblical images until they become dead,
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useless ornaments. It treats the Bible like a
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sterile encyclopedia, you know, or a raw data set.
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If the text mentions a tree, the rationalist sees only botanical
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data. If it mentions a river, it is
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just topographical information. I see this approach strips all
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the redemptive meaning out of the text, reducing divine
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communication to flat historical trivia.
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Is like reading a poem about a sunrise and criticizing the
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author for not including the exact thermal radiation
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temperature of the sun. Right, you were missing the
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entire point of the communication.
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But then on the opposite end of the spectrum, you have the
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second error, which I think is far more common today.
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Mystical excess. Mystical excess is what happens
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when a reader tears the images away from grammar, away from
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historical context, and away from authorial intent.
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They untether the words from reality and turn the text into a
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playground for their own private imagination.
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You see this constantly in church history.
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Consider the medieval quadriga. Break that down for us.
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What was the medieval quadriga? It was a method of
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interpretation where scholars would invent 4 different layers
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of meaning for a single word. 4 layers, yeah 4.
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And none of them were grounded in the actual sentence.
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Imagine reading a historical account of a military battle.
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A scholar using this method would tell you that the horses
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represent your soul OK, and the swords represent prayer and the
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mud represents earthly sorrow. That sounds completely
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arbitrary, like you can make the text say whatever you want it to
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say. Precisely.
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It makes the reader the supreme authority over the text.
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Today you see the exact same thing when people spiritualize
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every physical object they read about to fit whatever subjective
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feeling they had that morning. That brings up an analogy I was
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sketching out. Reading a biblical symbol is
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like reading a highly specific legal will left by a wealthy
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relative not looking at a Rorschach inkblot test.
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I like that comparison. Yeah, because when a
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psychologist holds up an inkblot, you can say this
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inkblot looks like a butterfly to me, or it looks like a storm
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cloud, right? There is no wrong answer.
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Because the goal is to reveal your internal psychology, but
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you do not get to do that with a legal will.
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You cannot look at a clause giving a house to your sibling
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and say, well, to me this clause represents my inner peace.
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You would be laughed out of the probate court.
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You have to ask what the author intended the document to
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communicate. The author's intent is the only
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thing that matters. That is a highly accurate way to
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frame it. To keep us out of the inkblot
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trap, we have a specific safeguard.
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It is called the Westminster principle, which is Scripture is
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the best interpreter of Scripture.
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A symbol is governed by the immediate text around it, the
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wider biblical Canon, and the person of Jesus Christ.
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So it is anchored. Yes, symbols do not excuse you
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from doing hard grammatical work.
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They actually require it. I want to pause here because I
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read a philosophical claim in our notes that stopped me in my
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tracks. The argument is that God is the
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author of both history and language.
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Therefore, when he uses a tree, a river, or an animal in
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Scripture, it is a covenantal sign, not an arbitrary literary
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device. But I have to push back a little
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here. Are we saying the physical world
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was actually designed for the theological truth?
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We are. That feels massive.
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Is God really looking at the animal Kingdom and orchestrating
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biology just to set up a metaphor?
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Yes, that is the necessary implication of a sovereign
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Creator. God is not looking down at human
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language in the 1st century, scratching his head and saying a
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lamb. That is a convenient cultural
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metaphor. I will Barrow that to explain
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atonement. So he did not just find it lying
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around. No, it is the other way around.
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God designed the animal Kingdom, and He orchestrated human
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history specifically so that when the time came, the physical
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object would perfectly house the theological truth.
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So the physical world is the theater of his glory.
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The symbol is an objective reality woven into creation.
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Precisely if we grasp that we can apply this method to one of
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the most famous titles in the New Testament, we are shifting
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the scene to the muddy banks of the Jordan River early in the
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1st century. OK, setting the scene.
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John the Baptist is standing in the water.
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Jesus of Nazareth walks toward him, and John points at him and
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declares, Behold the Lamb of God.
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Let's set the geopolitical stage for that specific moment.
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This is John chapter 1. Israel is under brutal Roman
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occupation. Very brutal.
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The political and social pressure is immense.
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You have Roman garrisons in the cities, oppressive taxation, and
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constant threats of violence. Many Jewish groups of that era,
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like the Zealots, wanted a military Liberator.
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They wanted a general. Right.
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They wanted a geopolitical conqueror to ride in, slaughter
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the Roman legions, and establish an earthly throne in Jerusalem.
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And John the Baptist shatters those political expectations
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with a single phrase. He does not point to a general.
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He does not point to a politician.
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He points to a sacrificial animal.
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Which brings us back to the visceral contrast we started
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with. John is pointing to a creature
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destined for the altar. I was looking at the Old
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Testament timeline in our research and it blew my mind.
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How early this preparation? Started it goes way back.
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We are just talking about Moses in the Exodus.
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This goes all the way back to the beginning of Genesis.
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Walk us through the mechanics of how this symbol was built over
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centuries. It starts with the first
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generation of humans. Look at Genesis 4.
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Abel approaches God with an offering from his flock.
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Cain brings the fruit of the ground.
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And there's a clear distinction there.
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A massive 1 God accepts Abel's offering, which involves the
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shedding of blood, and rejects Cain's bloodless offering.
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Right there, at the dawn of history, the principle is
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established. Approaching a holy God requires
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a life given in place of another.
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Then you move forward to Genesis 22.
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This is the horrifying, beautiful account of Abraham and
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Isaac on Mount Moriah. Abraham binds his promised son,
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raises the knife, and God stops him.
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Isaac had asked the crucial question on the way up the
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mountain. You know, here are the fire in
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the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?
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Such a heavy question. It really is, Abraham answers,
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that God will provide for himself the lamb.
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And God does provide a substitute, a ram caught in a
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thicket. The substitute takes the place
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of the sun. The sun lives because the animal
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dies. And then, centuries later, you
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get the Passover in Egypt. This is where the physical
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reality gets incredibly stark. God is sending the final plague,
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the death of the first born. The only way for an Israelite
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family to survive the night is to slaughter a lamb, drain its
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blood into a basin, take a hyssop branch and paint the
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blood on the doorposts of their house.
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Think about the sensory experience of that night, the
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bleeding of the animals, the sharp metallic smell of fresh
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blood. The physical labor of painting.
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The exactly. And then the terrifying wait in
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the dark, hearing the wailing of the Egyptian households where
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the plague struck, while knowing that the judgement of God was
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passing over your house exclusively because of the blood
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on the door. Wow.
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It was an objective barrier between the family and divine
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wrath. It wasn't about the family
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inside being morally superior to the Egyptians, it was purely
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about the presence of the substitutes blood.
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And it does not stop there, right?
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Once they are out of Egypt, the entire Levitical system is built
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on. This the daily temple sacrifices
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were an industrial scale operation of substitution.
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Every single morning and every single evening, a lamb was
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slaughtered on the bronze altar. Just nonstop.
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Day after day, year after year, century after century, it was a
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constant, inescapable visual and auditory drum beat teaching
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Israel to unbending truth. Sin brings death, and access to
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a holy God requires a bloody substitute.
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And finally you reach the prophet Isaiah, hundreds of
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years before Christ, writing the staggering poetry of Isaiah 53.
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He speaks of a coming servant who was led like a lamb to the
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slaughter, bearing the iniquities of us all.
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He takes all of that altar imagery and applies it to a
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human person. So when John the Baptist stands
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in the Jordan River and says, behold the Lamb, he is pulling
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all those historical threads, Abel, Abraham, Passover, the
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daily sacrifices Isaiah into a single knot and pointing
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directly at the Carpenter from Nazareth.
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Now look at the specific grammar John uses to describe what this
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lamb does. He says who takes away the sin
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of the world. The Greek phrasing here is
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absolutely crucial. Takes away means actual removal.
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It is an act of carrying off of a burden.
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It does not mean mere sympathy. Let's dig into that distinction
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because it changes everything. A lamb that sympathizes with you
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cannot save you. Jesus does not look down from
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heaven at human misery. Shed a tear and say well I feel
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so bad for what you were going through.
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No, he steps into the misery and bears it away.
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He removes the objective guilt. If he only offered sympathy, the
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legal penalty for rebellion would still remain.
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And notice the word sin is singular.
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In John's declaration, he does not say takes away the sins
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plural, as if he's picking up individual bad habits 1 by 1.
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Takes away the sin of the world. Right.
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It gathers the totality of human rebellion, the entire corrupted
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state of fallen humanity, into one massive crushing burden.
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And the text clarifies that sin here is an objective legal guilt
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before a holy God that requires substitutionary atonement.
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This cuts directly against the grain of how modern society
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talks about human problems. We love to rename sin.
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We call it brokenness or or trauma or social conditioning or
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a psychological wound requiring therapeutic management.
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We soften the language. We do, but the lamb symbol
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shatters that therapeutic language.
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You don't need a slaughtered lamb for a psychological wound.
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You need a lamb for a lethal legal conviction.
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The problem is legal. It carries a death sentence and
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it requires blood. That is the hard, unbending
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truth housed within the symbol. John identifies the necessary
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sacrifice. OK, so John knows the sacrifice
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is needed and he knows what the title means, but logistically,
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how on earth does a 1st century Jew standing in a river
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definitively know that this specific man is the guy?
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That is a great question. I mean, Jesus had no Halo.
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He looked like an ordinary tradesman from Galilee.
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How does John know? John explicitly states in the
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passage that he did not figure this out through his own
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brilliant intuition or theological deduction.
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He did not know Jesus in his official messianic capacity
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until he saw a specific promised sign, the dove right?
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God told him beforehand, the one on whom you see the Spirit
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descending from heaven and remaining, that is the man.
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I want to push back on the hierarchy, the scene in the
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Jordan River. Put yourself in the sandals of
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the crowd watching this. John the Baptist is the one
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doing the baptizing. He is the one standing in the
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river, administering the religious right, drawing massive
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crowds out into the wilderness. Yeah.
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He is the visible leader. By every human metric, John is
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the central figure of the movement.
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Does that dynamic threaten to over shadow Jesus?
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That is a natural human assumption to look at the guy
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with the microphone, or in this case the guy doing the
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baptizing, and assume he's the focal point.
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But making John the center completely misses the authorial
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intent of the gospel. OK, the Baptist's entire
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function is self effacing witness.
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He is violently opposed to his own fame.
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I look at it like a highway signpost.
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John is essentially a massive neon sign pointing to a
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destination. When you were driving across the
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country and you see a sign that says, you know, Grand Canyon, 10
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miles, you do not pull your car over.
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Get out and start taking pictures of the Signpost.
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You would look ridiculous. Right.
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You follow it to where it is pointing.
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John's greatness is that he refuses to let people stop at
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him. He forces them to look at the
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lamb. John even states it plainly.
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He says he who comes after me ranks before me because he was
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before me. Even though John was born first
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chronologically in human history, he recognizes that
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Jesus possesses eternal priority.
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Because he is the pre existent word.
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Yes, this leads to the contrast the passage makes between the
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two baptisms happening in that water.
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Let's breakdown that contrast. You have John's baptism and
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Christ's baptism. John's baptism is outward water.
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It is preparatory. It is subordinate.
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It calls for repentance, a turning away from dead works,
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but the water itself cannot actually wash away the objective
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guilt we discussed earlier. It gets the people ready.
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Exactly. Christ's baptism, on the other
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hand, is inward. It is effectual.
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He's the one who will pour out the Holy Spirit, which actually
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regenerates the human heart. And the visible confirmation of
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this is the descent of the Spirit.
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John says he saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove.
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We have to pay attention to the grammar again here.
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It is a simile like a dove. This prevents the crude
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literalism we warned against in the beginning.
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The third person of the Trinity did not turn into a literal bird
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with feathers and a beak. The visible manifestation took a
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descending, hovering form that communicated specific truths
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through the likeness of a dove. So why a dove?
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What is the mechanical connection there?
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It signals heavenly origin, permanent anointing and divine
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approval. And just like the Lamb, it
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forces us to look backward into the Old Testament.
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Back to Genesis again. Yes, in Genesis 1, the Spirit of
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God is described as hovering over the dark, chaotic waters of
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creation, bringing forth life and order.
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I see the connection. And later, after the
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catastrophic judgement of the global flood, Noah sends out a
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dove. When the dove returns with an
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olive leaf, it signals that the judgement waters have receded
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and a renewed, cleansed world is emerging.
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So when the Spirit descends like a dove over the waters of the
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Jordan River and rests on Jesus, it is a massive signal.
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It is declaring a new creation, a new beginning for humanity is
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launching right here in this river.
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Precisely, and notice the Trinitarian shape of the entire
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event. The Father speaks the promise to
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John beforehand, establishing the condition.
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The spirit descends visibly in the likeness of a dove.
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And the sun is standing in the water, being identified as the
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substitute. All three persons of the Godhead
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are actively authenticating this singular moment in history.
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That scene is incredibly beautiful.
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We have the Lamb on earth, standing in the muddy water,
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preparing to take away thin. That is the beginning of His
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earthly ministry. But as we move to the next
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section of our notes, we are presented with a massive,
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jarring shift in the scene. It is quite the whiplash.
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We are jumping from earthly ministry to heavenly majesty.
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Decades have passed. Is now around 1895.
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Another John. The Apostle John sees the same
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Christ after his resurrection and ascension.
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This is the opening chapter of the Book of Revelation.
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The imagery shifts drastically. We go from a bleeding substitute
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to a terrifying ruling judge. We have to understand the
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geopolitical reality of 1895 to grasp why this vision is given.
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The Apostle John is exiled on the penal island of Patmos.
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It is a harsh, rocky prison colony.
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A brutal place to be sent. And a Roman emperor at the time
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is demission, and he has initiated A systematic
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persecution of the Christian Church.
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Demission was particularly brutal because of his ego,
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right? Unlike some previous emperors
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who were deified after they died, Demission demanded to be
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worshipped as a living God. He took the title Dominus E
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Deus, which translates to Lord and God.
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He demanded that his subjects acknowledge his absolute
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supremacy. The original audience receiving
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this vision from John consists of seven localized churches in
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the province of Asia Minor, which is modern day Turkey.
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Situated along a Roman postal route.
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Yes, and these specific congregations are facing extreme
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crushing pressure from three different directions.
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Breakdown those three sources of pressure for us.
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First, you have the totalitarian Roman state demanding
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participation in the imperial cult.
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Second, you have hostility from local synagogues that have
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rejected Jesus as the Messiah and are reporting Christians to
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the Roman authorities. And the third. 3rd, you have
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internal false teachers infiltrating the churches trying
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to convince believers that compromising with the
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surrounding Pagan culture is acceptable.
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I really want to pause on that third pressure, the internal
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temptation to compromise, because we need to understand
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the daily texture of their lives.
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The threat to these early Christians wasn't just the overt
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terror of being thrown to the lions in an arena, though that
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was a real fear. It was intense, daily economic
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ruin. Economic exile is often more
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effective than physical execution.
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If you lived in a city like Sayatira, your entire livelihood
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depended on trade guilds. If you are a Baker, a tent
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maker, a metal worker, you belong to a Guild, and these
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guilds regularly held feasts dedicated to the local Pagan
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gods. You couldn't avoid them.
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Right. If you, as a Christian, refused
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to participate in the idolatrous feast, you were kicked out of
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the Guild. You couldn't work.
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You couldn't sell your goods. You couldn't feed your family.
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The pressure to just pinch a little incense to the emperor
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and say Caesar's Lord if your kids wouldn't starve was
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immense. And that is the exact
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environment into which Revelation Chapter 1 is spoken.
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Knowing that context, I have to ask the skeptical question.
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Modern scholars often look at the bizarre imagery of
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Revelation and conclude it is just an encrypted political
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cartoon. Is John just using weird symbols
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to give these battered, starving Christians an underground pep
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talk? Like a coded message.
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Yeah, is he writing in codes so the Roman guards won't
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understand it? That view reduces the text to a
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political manifesto, and we must aggressively reject it.
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It is a massive error of modern historical critical scholarship.
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Apocalyptic literature in the Bible is not a subjective fever
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dream, and it is not an encrypted political cartoon.
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So what is it? It is heavily disciplined by the
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rest of the Canon. The imagery John uses is not
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random. It is drawn directly from the
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Greek Septuagint translations of the Old Testament prophets,
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specifically Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah.
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So it is highly structured theology, not arbitrary code.
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It is a highly structured, objective, pastoral message.
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Its primary purpose is to establish Christ's absolute act
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of sovereignty over human history and over his local
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churches. To give them reality.
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Yes, the vision is designed to pull back the curtain and show
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these suffering believers the true reality of the cosmos.
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It makes the mission's Imperial cult look like a cheap,
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pathetic, fading imitation of true authority.
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It is a reality check. It is telling the believers in
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Thyatira and Ephesus do not fear the tribunal of Rome, fear the
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eternal tribunal of the Son of Man.
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That sets up the anatomy of the glorified Christ perfectly to
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comfort the persecuted believers who are losing their jobs and to
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seriously warn the compromising ones who are attending the Pagan
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feasts. The Apostle John has shown the
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actual terrifying appearance of this sovereign Judge, and the
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text forces the reader to look at his anatomy piece by physical
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piece. Christ is introduced as one,
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like a Son of Man. Again, this is not a random
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phrase thrown in for poetic effect.
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It is a direct extraction from Daniel Chapter 7.
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By using the specific title, the text is asserting His absolute
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deity and His eternal dominion. He is the pre-existing king who
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approached the Ancient of Days and received a Kingdom that will
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never be destroyed. And John sees him wearing a
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specific garment. The Greek word is poder, right?
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A long robe reaching all the way down to the feet.
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Yes, the Codai. In the ancient world, this
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garment functions as the attire of both the high priest and a
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magistrate. It signifies ultimate authority
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and mediation. Notice he is not standing there
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in a loincloth ready to be sacrificed.
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That work was finished by the lamb.
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He is standing there in the garments of a judge, ready to
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execute priestly oversight and judicial inspection over his
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house. I love how the grammar forces
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you to experience this vision. Look at verses 14 through 16.
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He uses a literary device called polysenditon, which is the
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repetitive use of the conjunction, and the text says
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his head and his hairs were white like wool, and his eyes
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were as a flame of fire, and his feet like under fine brass, and
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his voice as the sound of many waters.
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It completely alters the pacing of the reading.
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It slows the reader down. It functions exactly like a slow
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panning camera in a suspense film.
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The director will not let you see the massive scale of the
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hero or the terrifying reality of the judge all at once.
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That is a great visual. The camera pans up the boots,
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then it stops on the hands, then it pans up to the face.
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The text forces the reader to stop and look at the head and
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the eyes and the feet in the mouth.
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It builds this massive, suffocating weight of terror and
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majesty. You cannot just glance at him
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and move on to the next paragraph.
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Let's decode those specific anatomical features using the
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Old Testament, because we need to understand the mechanics of
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each symbol first. The eyes, like a flame of fire.
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The Greek is phlox pyros. What does fire do to an object?
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It consumes the dross and illuminates the dark.
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This represents an omniscient, searching gaze.
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It is a gaze that pierces straight through congregational
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hypocrisy. He sees the secret compromises
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happening in the trade guilds. You cannot hide your idolatry
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from eyes of fire. Then the camera pans down to the
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feet. Feet of fine brass.
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I want to talk about the physics of this metal because it
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matters. The word is Ciao colabano.
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It describes an alloy glowing like it has been refined in a
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furnace. In the Old Testament Tabernacle,
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the altar of sacrifice, where the animals were slaughtered and
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burned, was overlaid with bronze or brass.
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Why? Because it has a massive melting
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point. Right, it can take the heat.
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It can withstand extreme sustained heat without
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liquefying, unlike gold or silver.
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So when the text says his feet are glowing brass, it means his
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steps are unbendingly holy. He has walked through the
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ultimate furnace of God's wrath. He survived it, and now he is
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fully prepared to trample ungodliness within his own
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congregations. The imagery is severely heavy.
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Then we hear his voice, like the sound of many waters.
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Think of standing next to Niagara Falls or standing on a
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Cliff during a massive ocean storm with crashing surf.
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The noise is physical. It vibrates in your chest.
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You literally cannot hear yourself think.
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That is the point. His voice drowns out all human
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opinion. It silences the cultural noise
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of the Roman Empire, it silences the imperial propaganda of
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demission, and it silences the smooth arguments of the false
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teachers inside the church. His authority is absolute.
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And finally the sharp 2 edged sword coming out of his mouth.
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This represents the objective word executing justice.
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A sword from the mouth signifies that he destroys his enemies
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simply by speaking. He speaks reality into existence
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and he speaks judgement. It cuts through the lies and
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convicts the human conscience. So we have this terrifying,
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glorious judge, but what is the specific environment where he is
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walking? He is not just floating in a
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cosmic void detached from humanity.
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He is standing directly in the middle of local congregations.
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This brings us to the architecture of the local
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church. John sees 7 separate golden
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lampstands. The Greek phrase is
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Heptolichnius croesus. This represents a massive
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architectural shift from the Old Testament worship structure.
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How so? In the Mosaic Tabernacle and the
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later temples, there was only one lampstand, B7, branched
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menorah. That single lampstand
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represented the centralized national identity of Israel.
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You went to one geographic location, Jerusalem, for the
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centralized presence of God. But here in Revelation, that
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singular imagery is multiplied into distinct, localized,
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visible assemblies. The church is no longer a single
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political nation state situated in the Middle East.
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It is a network of individual local outposts scattered across
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the Roman Empire and eventually across the globe.
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And Christ is walking directly in the midst of them.
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I want to focus on the nature of a lampstand for a moment because
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the mechanics of a lamp teach us the theology of the Church.
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Think about how a lamp actually functions.
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It does not generate its own fire.
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It is not a generator. It has no internal power source.
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It is just a vessel designed to hold and elevate light that is
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given to it from the outside. That is a crucial observation.
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The light of the Church comes exclusively from the Holy Spirit
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through the objective preaching of the Word.
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The Church has no internal self-sustaining source of
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illumination. It cannot invent its own truth.
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And it just holds the light. Yes, the fact that the
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lampstands are made of gold shows that the church is highly
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valued, purchased by the blood of the Lamb.
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But the fact that it is a lampstand carries a severe
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warning. It's light can be removed if it
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stops holding up the truth. Christ threatens to remove the
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lampstand of Ephesus if they do not repent.
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So the church holds the light, but what about the leadership?
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The text says he holds seven stars in his right hand.
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Christ himself decodes this symbol at the end of the chapter
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and says the stars are the angels or the messengers, the
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ministers of the seven churches. I have to ask, doesn't
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portraying human pastors as shining stars in the hand of God
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elevate human leadership a little too highly?
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That sounds like it could. In our modern context, we see
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celebrity pastor culture constantly crashing and burning.
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This imagery feels ripe for abuse.
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It would be ripe for abuse if you ignored the specific
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safeguard embedded in the text. The stars are held in Christ's
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right hand. The Greek phrase is dexy, a
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chair. The right hand signifies
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absolute sovereign ownership. Ownership.
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Yes, it means security. The ministers are safe from the
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final wrath of the Roman emperor because Christ holds them.
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But it primarily signifies strict, terrifying
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accountability. He owns them, they do not own
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the church. Our sources draw a hard, severe
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line right here. The church does not belong to
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the surrounding culture, it does not exist to mirror the society,
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and the church absolutely does not belong to the pastor.
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It belongs exclusively to the Son of Man.
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He holds the leaders in his grip, he evaluates their
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doctrine, and he holds them accountable for the purity of
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the lampstand. This moves us into the practical
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implications. What does this dense, ancient
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apocalyptic symbolism mean for a congregation gathering on Sunday
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morning? Today, the sources move from the
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ancient text into modern corrections, arguing that this
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vision acts as a devastating critique of how modern believers
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often operate. The text demands A radical shift
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in contemporary practices. The material identifies 3 very
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specific applications for today based on these symbols.
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The first is a total uncompromising rejection of
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seeker sensitive, market driven pragmatism.
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This is where the rubber meets the road.
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This is where my mind goes to a specific analogy.
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Many modern churches operate exactly like a corporate
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marketing department launching a new product.
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They act like a focus group. Checking the analytics.
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Right. They are constantly surveying
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the demographic, checking the attendance analytics, tweaking
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the worship music to sound like the radio, softening the message
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to avoid offending the local sensibilities, all to tailor a
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religious product that pleases the consumer.
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It is customer service religion. But look at the text of
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Revelation. This text treats the local
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church like a military outpost or an embassy receiving orders
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from a reigning king. Tailoring the church to please
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the culture is like a military outpost on the front lines
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deciding to run a customer satisfaction survey among the
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invading army, asking them what color uniforms they prefer.
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It is absurd. It really is.
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If the church is a golden lampstand owned by a judge with
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eyes of blazing fire, you do not get to dilute the theology to
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attract the ungodly. Doing so is not clever outreach.
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It is treason against the King walking in the room.
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The second application deals with how we view divine
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revelation itself. The sources argue strongly for
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the preservation of cessationist theology based on this text.
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Let's unpack the mechanics of that term.
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Cessationism is the belief that the miraculous sign, gifts, and
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specifically the giving of new canonical revelation, new
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prophecy, have ceased. The Canon of Scripture is
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permanently closed. How does this specific vision in
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Revelation One prove that point? Looking at Jesus handles the
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symbols at the end of the vision, Jesus explicitly decodes
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the imagery for John. He says the stars are the angels
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of the seven churches, and the lampstands are the seven
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churches. By defining the symbols himself,
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Jesus establishes an objective barrier.
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He closes the door. He closes the door on modern
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attempts to invent new subjective prophecies.
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So he leaves no room for the medieval quadriga or modern
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mystical excess. Right.
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We do not need a modern visionary claiming to have a
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fresh word from God to guess what the lamp stands mean.
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The Lord already interpreted it, and He commanded John to write
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it down. It is settled.
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Our job is to read the completed text, do the hard grammatical
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work and obey it. We are not called to seek new
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mystical experiences. We are called to to rest in the
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sufficient closed Canon of Scripture.
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That makes total sense. It roots the believers in the
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objective text and the third application.
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The necessity of rigorous biblical church discipline.
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This is the most unpopular topic in the modern church.
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It is unpopular, but it is entirely necessary if you
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understand the anatomy of the Son of Man.
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If Christ's eyes are flames of fire, he sees the secret sins of
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the congregation. He sees the moral compromises,
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the hidden financial corruption and the false doctrine being
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whispered in small groups. And we often try to cover that
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up. We refuse to practice church
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discipline right turn a blind eye to unrepentant sin.
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And we usually do it using the vocabulary of compassion.
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We say, well, we need to be loving or we need to be
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tolerant, so we ignore the sin. The text warns that this kind of
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false compassion is deadly. Turning a blind eye to
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unrepentant sin in the name of tolerance is actually inviting
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the sharp 2 edged sword of his mouth to wage war against that
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assembly. True love for the congregation
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means maintaining the purity of the lampstand.
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If you refuse to discipline false teaching or unrepentant
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behavior, Christ Himself will come and remove the lampstand
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from its place. Discipline is the immune system
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of the local church. It is how a church stays alive.
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We've covered massive ground today, bringing this entire
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discussion full circle. We started on the muddy banks of
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the Jordan River with a bleeding sacrifice, the lamb taking away
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the objective guilt of the world, and we ended on the rocky
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cliffs of Patmos with an exalted judge inspecting the purity of
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his local lamp stands. And the unifying thread running
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through both of those scenes is that biblical symbols are not
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given to satisfy academic curiosity.
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They are not there to decorate religious language and they are
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not there to make sermons sound poetic.
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They are objective realities. Objective realities that demand
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a response from the human conscience.
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The lamb at the Jordan requires absolute trust.
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You cannot save yourself. You possess A lethal legal guilt
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and you desperately need the substitute.
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And the ascended Son of Man in revelation demands holy fear and
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doctrinal fidelity. He is not a distant passive
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observer. He is the sovereign who actively
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inspects his people. As we wrap up this deep dive
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into the source material, we want to leave you with a final
32:57
provocative thought to Mull over.
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We've spent an hour talking about lambs, doves, bronze
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altars, and lampstands. Think about the most common
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physical objects around you today.
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Like what? Look at bread, look at water.
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Look at rocks and trees. What if the God who authored
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history designed those physical objects from the very beginning
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of creation specifically to prepare your mind to understand
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understand the work of Jesus Christ?
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What if a tree isn't just a biological plant, but a physical
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prophecy of a wooden cross designed before time began?
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What if water isn't just a chemical necessity for
33:31
hydration, but a tangible lesson embedded in reality about the
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necessity of spiritual cleansing?
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The next time you read the English Bible, do not skip over
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the physical objects, do not flatten them into dead data, and
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do not turn them into a subjective inkblot test.
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Look at them closely. The glorious reality of the
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Savior is hiding in plain sight, waiting for you to do the hard,
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rewarding work of digging it out.