HEAVENLY HOPE

Sermon Summary (6/2/19) “Heavenly Hope” (Rev 13:1-8;16-18)

We need stories to give us hope.  The original “Star Wars” was subtitled “A New Hope.”  We may not be physically threatened living around Fulton, but there are times in everyone’s life when we need stories of hope. 

Certainly it was true of the children of Israel and the early Christians with the exile to Babylon, the Greek and Roman oppressions, Nero’s invasion of Judea, killing a million Jews, enslaving a hundred thousand, and destroying the Temple.  Then persecuting the Christians throughout the Roman Empire.  Stories of hope were needed.

At the end of the first century, the vision of the Heavenly Christ to John that we know as “The Revelation” was such a story of hope.  We miss the message of hope if you misinterpret the text.  For most mainline theologians, It is mainly a story written to the people of John’s time in an apocalyptic genre with only the last four chapters as futuristic. 

Chapter 13’s Dragon and beast were Satan and his disciple, the Roman Empire centered in Rome, code name “Babylon,” the previous city that destroyed the Temple.  The mark of the beast, 666, the number of a person, using Hebrew letters as numbers points to Nero. 

Revelation’s middle chapters alternate between heaven where God rules, and earth where Satan, the Dragon and the beast reigned.  The vision presents us with choices, to choose heaven where choirs sang or earth where people wailed.  The Kingdom of God, place or joy; or the empire, a place of pain.  Heaven, a place of hope, or the empire, a place of despair.  The story is calling us to choose hope!

We all need a story of hope.  Everyone has a story and we need to shape it to be a story of hope.  Part of my story is that “The worst thing is never the last thing and Easter changes everything.”  God is real.  It takes far more faith not to believe than to believe.  And if God is real, it makes sense that He would want to reconcile his creation to himself, and it makes sense that he would do so by becoming like us and do so with the greatest act of love one can for another, and that is to give his life for me.  And then demonstrate his glory through Easter.  And if God would do that, then I can believe the promises that he has made through his Son Jesus Christ.

I can believe “because I live, you will live also”; “that I go to prepare a place for you.. And I will come again to take you to where I am.”  We will be in the arms of Jesus.  We will see our loved ones again.  Just as Revelation is a story of hope, so is our Christ-Centered story.