20230709 - Revelation 1 part 2

With Thanksgiving and praise and worship.

We pray, Lord that you would bless us.

Um As we look into your word, we help ask that you imprint it on our hearts. Lord

and all, all God's people said,

man,

Amen.

Does anyone have an idea what Amen means in the Bible

when we finish our prayers? Why do we say Amen

in some churches?

When a pastor sits up here, he says anything that the congregation likes,

they shout out Amen.

It's such a simple word and I think we've gotten so accustomed to it.

It's lost its meaning in a lot of ways.

It's just kind of what you say in certain situations.

It's like if you pass somebody in the street, you say, how are you?

Standard response? Oh, I'm good. I'm doing well. Thanks. How are you?

That's

not really what we mean, is it maybe sometimes,

but a lot of times it has nothing to do with whether we're actually good or not.

We just say we're good.

Do you actually care about the random stri stranger

in the street that you cross when you say,

how are you, are you really wanting to hear how they are.

Do we actually care how they're doing?

I think most of the time

we don't. It's just what you say in that moment. It's what we've been taught.

It's how we learn what is rude or not rude. What good manners are?

Amen can kind of turn into that. It's just what you say at the appropriate time

as I was starting to do this,

I was looking at all these different kind of cool pictures of the word Amen.

I even had Julie looking at a few of them.

And after thinking about it, of what one to kind of put up there. That would be cool.

I thought this one was maybe the most appropriate for how we treat this word dull,

pointless, so plain that you might just pass it over.

So what is Amen?

Does it deserve to be talked about? Even

if you noticed last week that where I

finished up wasn't actually where verse six ends.

We ended with this

to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his

blood and made us a kingdom priest to his God and father to him,

be glory and Dominion forever and ever.

That's where we left it

according to I think basically all translations though verse six ends

with one more word that I didn't include last week,

the word Amen.

But

the reason I didn't include it is because it

really should be at the beginning of verse seven.

So that's where we're gonna start today.

What should be the start of Revelation one verse seven?

And that is

Amen.

I'm sure when you read Revelation One you probably just skimmed right over the Amens

to get to the kind of more meteor parts, right?

It's OK. Every commentary I read even did the same thing.

None of them that I looked at talked about. Amen at all, but God puts it there.

So it must mean something,

maybe it's just something small

even then it would be important. But I think it means more than that.

So what does Amen mean?

Many of us have been taught? I think that it simply means so be it.

But I think if we dig in it's actually more than that,

it means it's firm or true,

but we will learn today. It's deeper even than that.

So first off,

guess how many Amens there are in revelation?

Anybody wanna take a guess

you'd think seven, right?

And there might be.

But actually there's a lot of debate about the Amens in the Bible in, in

revelation here as to how many there actually are different manuscripts,

say different things.

Some have as many as 10 in there.

Many of the modern day Bibles that we have.

They say that there's nine in there,

there's even a few other more obscure translations

that have seven or eight in there.

So

if you get rid of the ones that have a lot of textual manuscript

uh questions about them,

there are most likely

seven

which based on all the other sevens in the book that we keep seeing would make sense.

And even if there are more, they're used differently than these core seven,

I'll give you a little example of kind of what's going on here

to show what I mean.

So I'll tell you a sentence, say something like this.

The shepherd took care of lots of cattle and

one cow one night figured out how to escape

or another sentence,

one teenage cow was trying to jump out the window of

his parents' house to go hang out with all his cattle friends

or

one cow was extra angry with Deborah for not leaving him alone.

So he gently tried to show her the way to the rest of the cattle

or

one more.

Bessie. The cow was so tired of the rest of the cattles moving.

He jumped over the gate and was never seen from him again.

Ok? I have one last one here.

I was driving down the street when the car in front of me, hit a tire and flew in the air

and crashed right down in front of me. And I yelled holy cow.

Every one of these sentences that I just read has the word cow in them.

So they must all belong to the same category, right?

Are they all talking about a large animal that produces milk and gives us juicy steak

or is one here despite being the exact same word cow that's used,

not talking about an animal at all.

The word cow is used in all of these sentences,

but they're not all talking about cows in the same way.

This is how the amens in revelation are.

There are seven for sure supposed to be in the tax amens

that all are in the same specific context that we're gonna get to.

We're gonna talk about in a little bit

the rest, even if they are supposed to be in the text,

which like I said is debatable to begin with

the seven that are there for sure.

They're just,

these other extra ones are descriptive

rather than interjections or exclamations.

So they're used completely differently like the word cow was in that last sentence.

So if we look ahead to verse 18, what do most of your Bibles say in revelation? One?

If we read the King James, it says this revelation 1, 18, I am he that liveth

and was dead and behold, I am alive forever more. Amen

and have the keys of hell and hate and of death.

If we look at the ESB or many other modern translations,

we get this same exact verse says and the living one I died and behold,

I am alive forevermore and I have the keys of death and Hades.

No. Amen.

It doesn't seem to belong in this verse both in context and

repeated patterns of how this word is used in the Bible.

That again, we're gonna look at shortly

is specifically in revelation.

So the ESB for example, leaves it out here.

So

erase it from your memories completely

because I don't think it should be there in that one.

At the end of revelation. We have another questionable amen. In the text.

In revelation 22 we read this.

He who testifies to these things says Shirly I coming soon, amen called Lord Jesus.

So we have an Amen there.

Then we read the next verse and it says the

grace of the Lord Jesus be with all amen again.

Why is it repeated?

What does it mean there?

It doesn't seem to have much meaning in that place and it is almost never found in any

of the end of the letters of any epistles that you see in the New Testament Galatians,

I think is the only one that actually ends in Amen.

All the other ones don't do that.

Um Normally the letters in the New Testament.

If we had revelation here as just another letter in the New Testament,

it would end like the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all period.

So here at the end of a revelation, some translations have this amen and in the book,

but this doesn't seem to belong.

It may and I'm not gonna fight anybody about it. It, but it doesn't seem to fit

and then when you take into account,

the original manuscript evidence that I mentioned,

it's dicey at best that the Amen should be there.

I'm not gonna bore you with that. I should have done a fire hose here.

I'm not gonna turn on the fire hoses again, but

it doesn't seem to belong there.

So those two that we just looked at don't seem to belong and

that leaves us in most translations with seven that do seem to belong.

These don't have any textual questions about them.

So I'd like to look at those seven now real quick and see how they're used.

So the first two are in our verse today. Revelation 17,

it says, Amen, behold, he is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him,

even those who pierce him, all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him even so.

Amen.

So this says, it is a sure thing

that Jesus is coming.

The Amen is associated with the coming of Christ.

So what does Amen mean in the Bible? And especially in revelation?

The answer to that is actually in revelation 3 14,

revelation 3 14 says and to the angel of the church in Leo de,

right? The words of the Amen,

the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation.

Amen means it is faithful and true. You can count on it. It's firm.

Jesus is the Amen because he is the faithful and true witness.

A lot of time churches yell out amen when they like something or it feels good,

but that's not what it means in Hebrew.

In the original Hebrew. It's more like an oath. I swear.

This is so what I'm telling you, I promise is the truth

to me. This connects us with the name of God that we talked about. Last week.

I am that I am

or like we saw it translated in a way in the Greek last week, he is who was,

who is and who is to come

because of who God is. Everything he says

that will happen must because I am that I am.

The Amen here is similar, Jesus is faithful and true.

So in revelation, it has to come to be amen.

I attest to it being true, it will come to pass. Amen.

This occurrence in revelation three here,

the word Amen is actually not one of the seven because no one is actually saying Amen.

It's not an exclamation here. They're attributing it to Jesus almost like a name.

Like when we said holy cow before,

it's not in the same context even though it's the same word.

So

it is important though.

And this gives us partially a meaning and a framework to understand the other.

Amen because Jesus is the amen.

So if we go back

to our words

and we reread the first two amens in this context, now,

I think it makes even more sense.

Revelation 17 with the kind of

um meaning of Amen. It would say it is faithful and true.

Behold, he is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him,

even those who pierced him and all tribes of the earth will whale

or mourn on account of him even so it is faithful and true.

So those are the first two. Amen.

The next amen

is in revelation five. I have to skip ahead a few chapters.

It says, and the four living creatures said amen.

And the elders fell down and worshiped.

They keep saying it's faithful and true. Amen. Amen.

This is an amen to the rule of Jesus.

We have to back up a little bit,

a couple of verses in revelation five to see the context of what's going on.

But it becomes pretty clear.

I think revelations 5, 12 through 13 says,

saying with a loud voice worthy is the lamb who

is slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and,

and honor and glory and blessing.

And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under

the earth and in the sea and all that is in them saying

to him who sits on the throne and to the lamb

be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever.

And then we get to the verse 14 and the four living creatures said, amen.

This is an amen to the rule of Christ.

The first Amens. We read, it's faithful and true that he's coming on the clouds.

I'm jumping ahead,

but we're gonna find out in a few minutes that

Jesus is coming on the clouds to receive the kingdom

that coming on the clouds is the ascension of Jesus to the father.

Here in revelation five,

Jesus has come to the father and he's received that kingdom.

He rules, he has the kingdom.

So the elders are proclaiming

amen.

Next up for the Amens is the next one we see is revelation seven.

It says, saying, Amen,

blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and

power and might be to our God forever and ever.

Amen.

In this saying, we also have two amens.

These are the 4th and 5th ones, all in this verse

which also support our verse seven today that

we're talking about in chapter one that,

that should and can also contain both Amens in one verse,

not as the ending to verse six and then the ending to verse seven separately.

But they should be together in verse seven.

Here in revelation seven, we see these two amens bracketing once again,

seven things, blessing, glory, wisdom, thanks, giving honor, power and might.

These seven things are given to God on the throne with the lamb.

So what is this an amen of

in the context of chapter seven?

It's that Jesus rules again,

he comes to the father and he rules, that's what the faithful witness and amen.

Is all about in the Book of Revelation.

The next amen is towards the end of revelation revelation 19 4 and says,

and the 24 elders and the four living creatures

fell down and worshiped God who were see,

who was seated on the throne saying amen.

Hallelujah.

So this is right after the judgment of the Harlot.

So Jesus has come, he is judged.

20230709 - Revelation 1 part 2 - 1

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