This Sunday, January 29, we’ll be looking at Revelation 2:18-29 in our series “What Jesus Thinks About Religion.”

This Sunday, January 22, we’ll be looking at Revelation 2:12-17 in our series “What Jesus Thinks About Religion.”

As I prepare for our sermon series on “What Jesus Thinks About Religion” from Revelation, here is a partial reading list I have used as I research:

David E. Aune, Revelation 1-5; Revelation 6-16; Revelation 17-22. (WBC, 1998)

Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge, 1993)

Richard Bauckham, Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (T & T Clark, 1993)

GK Beale, The Book of Revelation (NIGTC, 1999)

GR Beasley Murray, Revelation (NCB, 1981)

GB Caird, Revelation (BNTC, 1985)

GB Caird, The Revelation of St. John the Divine (Harper, 1966)

RH Charles, Revelation (ICC, 2 vols., 1920)

Gordon Fee, Revelation (NCC, 2011)

Colin J. Hemer, The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia in their Local Setting (Eerdmans, 1989)

Leon Morris, Revelation (TNTC, 1987)

Robert H. Mounce, The Book of Revelation (Eerdmans, 1998)

Grant R. Osborne, Revelation (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, 2002)

Michael Wilcock, The Message of Revelation (IVP, 1975)

Beale, Gregory K. “The Purpose of Symbolism in the Book of Revelation” CTJ 41 (2006): 53-66

Frankfurter, David “Jews or Not? Reconstructing the ‘Other’ in Rev 2:9 and 3:9″ Harvard Theological Review (2001): 403-425

Koester, Craig R. “The Message to Laodicea and the Problem of Its Local Context: A Study of the Imagery in Rev 3.14-22″ New Test. Stud. 49 (2003): 407-424

Royalty, Jr., Robert M. “Etched or Sketched? Inscriptions and Erasures in the Messages to Sardis and Philadelphia (Rev. 3.1-13)” JSNT 27.4 (2005): 447-463

Svigel, Michael J. “Christ as Arche in Revelation 3:14″ Bibliotheca Sacra 161 (April-June 2004): 215-31

Trudinger, Paul “O AMHN (Rev. III:14), and the Case for a Semitic Original of the Apocalypse” Novum Testamentum (1972): 277-279

Wiarda, Tim “Revelation 3:20: Imagery and Literary Context” JETS 38/2 (June 1995): 203-212

Wong, Daniel K. K. “The Pillar and the Throne in Revelation 3:12, 21″ Bibliotheca Sacra 156 (July-August 1999): 297-307

Iwan Whiteley, PhD Dissertation, “A Search for Cohesion in the Book of Revelation, with Specific Reference to Chapter One” (University of Wales, 2005)

This Sunday, January 15, we’ll be looking at Revelation 2:8-11 in our series “What Jesus Thinks About Religion.”

One of the strange delights of living in a country where you did not grow up is the joy of exploring a whole different sporting culture.

For instance, take basketball. Well, when I went to school, basketball was played as distinctly second-rate also-ran game. For an Englishman I was not that bad. But I remember an American we had with us who was on our team and seemed to spend the whole time running up and down putting the thing in the appropriate basket. I could catch, pass, but throwing the ball through the rim was a whole different ‘ball game’.

I find that games which I played growing up can engross me when I watch them, if I have a moment to spare, even on TV. But if I did not play it myself, it’s all I can do to stop myself from yawning. But watching games ‘live’ is a different experience. Baseball watched live is great. So is ‘hockey’, by which designation is meant what the English call ‘ice hockey’.

Anyway, ‘Tebowing’. Tim Tebow is a fantastically successful American quarterback for the Broncos.

Kneeling sportsmen

Not only is Tebow immensely successful, he is also, by every possible objective public record, a Christian. Not only is he a professing Christian, but he seems remarkably at ease in his ‘own skin’ about this, and is happy to talk about his faith without sounding creepy or pious in that greasy shuddery sense that we all loathe. Now, to the title: ‘Tebowing’ is what Tim Tebow has become known for outside of throwing footballs very fast and accurately. After a touchdown (read ‘Try’ for Rugby), or a particularly successful play (read ‘move’), Tim Tebow will go down on one knee as a public expression of thanks to Jesus Christ. If you YouTube ‘Tebowing’ you will find not only Tim Tebow doing it, but a slew of imitators, either mocking him (mercifully few) or good humouredly aping him.

Tim Tebow is the most prominent currently, but he has not been alone among American sports stars using the platform given to him to witness to the gospel. There probably are equivalents in England, and there is the wonderful work of Christians In Sport. Jason Robinson, the retired England Rugby star, had something of a similar platform and witness, though he was much quieter about it, but it does come out in his autobiography.

Seize the opportunity

All this to say, ‘Physical training is of some value’ (1 Timothy 4.8). Bible scholars among us will know that the word Paul chooses there for physical training is the word that originally referred to the ancient habit of training in the games. So Paul is at least referencing a whole fairly serious training system, the ‘gymnastics’ of the ancient world, in some way, if no doubt tangentially and generally.

While, appearances to the opposite in this article, I have spent most of the last 20 plus years of my life getting educated and trained and experience in ‘preaching the word’ so that I can do that as excellently as God will allow me to his glory, I also can’t help but wonder whether we should (as part of the diverse gifting of the church) continue to find ways to trumpet those among us whose muscles bulge and who are freakily unusually genetically gifted in a physical sports sense. I’ve bowed on one knee before, but it’s not all over the internet or on YouTube. And the life of a sports star may be brief, but if we can identify, train and equip people to make the most of that platform… Well, may ‘Tebowing’ continue.

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The above article was written for Evangelicals Now and published in their news publication for January 2012.

I recently taught a class at Wheaton College on the subject of preaching apocalyptic literature, and we looked at two particular types, Zechariah and Revelation. As I begin a sermon series Sunday on Revelation 2-3, I thought I would share with you what I discussed with the class. Yesterday I wrote in Part I about preaching apocalyptic literature, and today’s post, Part II, is about preaching specifically on Revelation.

PART II:

When considering whether to preach Revelation in a congregation, you have to bear in mind the passionate feelings that some have towards certain interpretations of the millennium as well as the overall scheme of the book. There are many aspects of the book of Revelation about which frontline scholars disagree too, “Does Revelation expect the nations to be won from satanic deception and converted to the worship of God, or does it expect them to persist under rebellion until they perish under God’s final judgment?”  “…the evidence seems to point both ways and commentators seem unable to give equal weight to all of it,” RJ Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge, 1993), pages 103, and 241-242.

So, for instance, it’s helpful to begin by distancing yourself and the Bible from clearly unhelpful and ungodly interpretations of Revelation while at the same time also laying out a range of options which different well meaning godly Christians have adopted and may adopt. You can say something like, “There are very broadly speaking two different approaches to Revelation, one right and the other wrong. The wrong approach is to view Revelation as holding some esoteric meaning that is not revealed anywhere else in the Bible. That’s wrong because Revelation is really saying the same thing as the rest of the Bible but it is saying it in some interesting and very different ways. You need to have this sense of the genre of Revelation to be able to interpret it right. Reading Revelation the same way you read Romans is like interpreting ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ as about someone called Lucy flying in the sky which had literal diamonds.  The right approach, then, is to view Revelation as preaching Christ and the gospel but doing so in a more poetic, colorful way, like a surrealist painting or a piece of poetry not in the form of a systematic theology.  Now, within this very broadly speaking right approach there are various options, and these may include…”

That said, even with such a generally helpful pastoral approach as that you may find that in certain situations discretion is the better part of valor and it is simply unhelpful to preach through Revelation because a particular congregation would not be able to take the cognitive dissonance of accepting that there are legitimate different approaches to the book. For instance, you might want to say that within the broadly speaking right way of looking at the book of Revelation there are at least four different kinds of approaches but then give pros and cons for each of them. You could say something like, “One is to say that everything in this book has already happened. The trouble with that is that some of it clearly hasn’t – like the final triumph of Jesus Christ and the new heaven and earth. The second is to say that everything in this book is still to happen. The trouble with that is that some of it clearly has happened, like some of these letters we are about to get into to will show you. The third is to say that Revelation maps out in detail all the events from then until now and the second coming of Jesus. The trouble with that is no two people agree over what the metaphors refer to, it’s a highly subjective approach to the book, and tends to be biased towards the western culture and history from which the interpreters hail. The fourth approach is to say that the whole book is symbolic; this approach is loved by those who don’t think that Jesus is literally going to return again. As we’ll see some of this book is extremely literal, while other parts are highly symbolic.”

I’ve never preached through Revelation as a whole book in a congregation, though I have preached Revelation 2-3 and will do so again beginning Sunday, January 8, 2012.

I recently taught a class at Wheaton College on the subject of preaching apocalyptic literature, and we looked at two particular types, Zechariah and Revelation. As I begin a sermon series Sunday on Revelation 2-3, I thought I would share with you what I discussed with the class. I will do this in two parts today and tomorrow, first by looking at preaching apocalyptic literature, then by looking specifically at Revelation.

PART I:

First, what is preaching?

JI Packer said that the Bible is God preaching. If that is the case then the task of the preacher is to ‘re-preach it.’ This approach is sometimes called expository preaching, expositional preaching, or explicatory preaching. Expository preaching is understood in terms of content, not method (expository preaching does not = ‘going verse by verse’, or ‘three points and a poem’). The aim of the preacher is to let God speak through His Word and address us today by the work of the Holy Spirit to the glory of God. When the Bible is taught God speaks. The best preaching is one that has a ‘prophetic edge’, that is, there is a sense not only that this is an academic lecture but that there is a spiritual dynamic whereby it seems as if God is speaking directly to us (for He is). This approach to preaching is not ‘modernistic’ or ‘enlightenment captivated’ but the same approach that was used by Jesus and the apostles (see Greg R. Scharf, “Were the Apostles Expository Preachers? Old Testament Exposition in the Book of Acts,” Trinity Journal, Volume 31 NS, No. 1, Spring 2010, pages 95-113). 

Should you preach apocalyptic literature?

If you like ‘graphic novels’, surrealist paintings, Batman: Dark Knight, and want any answers to the angst of a post-911 world, apocalyptic literature is for you…

Apocalyptic literature has something of a confused reputation because of the sensationalism accorded to it by various popular media and Christian teachings. In reality, apocalyptic literature is saying the same thing as the rest of the Bible but in a different way. In particular, its way of presenting truth, appealing to the poetic, and speaking to feelings of oppression or exile, is potentially especially helpful for people today. 

There are many different kinds of apocalyptic literature in the Bible so to avoid preaching it at all would be challenging if a preacher has any ambition to preach the whole counsel of God. Apocalyptic literature is not only found in the book of Revelation, but the second half of Daniel, Zechariah, parts of 2 Peter, Jude, end of 1 Thessalonians, second chapter of 2 Thessalonians, the so-called Olivet discourse in the gospels (Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21). 

What is apocalyptic literature?

Apocalyptic means ‘revealing’, ‘uncovering’, or a ‘laying bare’.  Biblical apocalyptic literature is not as distinct from prophecy as it might at first seem (the book of Revelation describes itself as a prophecy, Revelation 1:3; dissertation by Kathleen M. Rochester, St John’s College Durham, Prophetic Ministry in Jeremiah and Ezekiel). Revelation, and other New Testament apocalyptic literature, should be read less against the background of intertestamental  apocalyptic literature (which most think tended to be pseudonymous and projecting prediction by appearing to have been written before the event) than Old Testament prophetic and apocalyptic literature like Daniel and Zechariah.   

Apocalyptic literature has the same message as the rest of the Bible but presented in different ways. Apocalyptic literature tends to be more poetic, colorful, less prosaic. It deals with symbolism and numbers with certain symbolic meanings. For instance, the numbers 7, 4, and notoriously 666 (7 is the number of perfection due to its connection with the 7 days of creation; 4 is perhaps the number of the whole earth due to its relation to the four rivers that ran out of Eden to water the garden; 6 is the number which almost makes perfection; and 666 therefore is God saying that humanity has not made it but has fallen short of the required standard). Apocalyptic literature has a sense of wanting to communicate the unseen reality of the spiritual realm all around us, the vision of Isaiah 6, or Daniel’s Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, or the throne room of Revelation 4 and 5. 

How do you preach apocalyptic literature?

Bob Fyall, Senior Tutor in Ministry at Cornhill, Scotland, gives five principles on practically preaching apocalyptic literature in a church context:

1. Fit apocalyptic literature into the Big Picture of the Bible
2. Deal with apocalyptic literature faithfully and imaginatively
3. Link the present with the eternal
4. Link apocalyptic literature with other genres in the Bible
5. Preach Christ 

On Sunday, January 8, we begin our new sermon series “What Jesus Thinks About Religion.”  We’ll be looking at the letters to the seven churches of Asia in the book of Revelation.

“The Spirit of Christmas” sermon series on joy, love and unity from Philippians 2:2 is now available online:

December 18, The Spirit of Christmas: Joy

Christmas Eve Service, The Spirit of Christmas: Love

Christmas Day Service, The Spirit of Christmas: Unity

We were very grateful to have Dr. Philip Ryken, President of Wheaton College, join us New Year’s Day with a message from Romans 8:18-21, “From Vanity to Glory.” This sermon is also available online.

As we come to the end of 2011, I write to tell you a story. It is a story of “Heaven’s Compound Interest.”

During World War 2 many little girls and boys became homeless. My great-grandmother and great-grandfather helped one such little child.

After the war had finished, a daughter of one refugee in London came to the attention of my great-grandparents. She worked hard and showed unusual intelligence. Unfortunately, her father didn’t have the means to send her to university. My great grandparents decided to do it for her. The text from the Bible that came to their mind was from Ecclesiastes — you may remember we studied it this year at College Church — “Cast your bread upon the waters.” They had no particular hope that their investment in this one little child would make much difference. But they felt it was the right thing to do, so they “cast their bread upon the waters.”

This child grew up, did well at school, went back to Switzerland and later became the vice-president of a world-renowned international relief organization in Geneva.

I only know this story because when I was a child this same family that my great-grandparents had helped made sure that from time to time our little family had a much-needed vacation. I did not know why they were so kind to us until I asked my grandmother about it, and she explained that it was because her parents had “cast their bread upon the waters.”

As you come to the end of 2011, look around for opportunities to do the same. College Church invests in hundreds of children every week and for them to continue to receive their “daily bread,” they need all of us to cast our bread upon the waters. If we do, by the law of Heaven’s Compound Interest, it will produce much more in return than ever we could imagine.