February 25 Sermon: Freed By His Blood
book is to consistently have in front of you that the point, the focus of the book is Jesus. That is what we're going to be focusing on as we go through this final book in Holy Scripture, and if we didn't get a sense of the supremacy of Jesus in those first three verses last week, we absolutely and most certainly see that idea in what we have read this morning. These five verses absolutely show us the supremacy of Jesus, they show us His authority, they show us the point here is that Jesus is Lord, that he has authority, that he is over all things and that he is at the center of the book of Revelation. The purpose of this book, as we talked about last week, is to bring comfort to the people of God. They are going to be facing persecution, and so John writes this letter to these seven churches in Asia, as we will see here in just a minute, to let them know what is coming. They should expect persecution, but he is speaking words of comfort and words of victory to these churches.
February 18 Sermon: The Revelation of Jesus Christ
It's fun to be a part of when something is revealed to people who are unexpected, when they are waiting for something, and my mind immediately goes to those renovation shows that are on television. While watching those shows, you get insights into what the owners of the house would like to have done to update their home. And then we're taken along on the process of remodeling, but we're never really given the full view. During the course of the heart of the show we're given some updates but we don't ever see the full finished project, and the shows are edited in such a way that we have a very good idea of what the exterior and the other rooms are supposed to look like, what they might look like, but we don't really see the full thing until we get to the end. And then, right before the final commercial break, we get a preview of the reaction of the owners of the home and they're gasping. We are excited to see the full reveal.