Yeah, this morning we're gonna talk about emotion that we go through in life that is a Sometimes it's not fun. You know that idea when you're a kid when you're a great spheres is that moment where you have to be picked for something You know I'm talking about and the sad thing is I'm around like kid I was awkward like clumsy. I couldn't play out I was grabbing about it to my dad because I was in fourth grade We're playing church league basketball and I could tell I got put on the team of kids that could not do this I was grabbing my dad my dad's like dad, you know what no matter what like you're gonna be getting picked your whole life Like there's gonna be selection your whole life You're gonna be evaluated your whole life And that doesn't help out like when you're like the kid who I can't even dribble a basketball Like is this okay my rest of my life like selection is just part of life And it's it's frustrating But think about it is we're we're kidding some time I'm on PE or on the playground But as an adult like we start to learn what it looks like when we might realize what's it like to get like that for When I was a kid in high school I really really really wanted to work at this guitar store and I'm her being terrified about applying and someone having the ability Say yes or no to like a grown-up dream I mean what I didn't know is always gonna do is take the trash and vacuum the floor I mean anybody can do that. Maris might argue with my vacuuming skills But I mean selection just happens and I got applied for something three or four months ago to get into a program That I was I mean a selection happens and it happens on a few different things like when we're being selected or when we're applying Or we're getting picked or something like that.
It's past present in future Right they're gonna look at our past behavior like when you're a kid you're playing kickball If you're that kid you can always kick it really far people know that and remember that right if you're the kid who always misses the ball Falls over because you kick with so much like force they're gonna remember that right like your past behavior your past your past Performance is looked at there's this there's this present thing that goes on in his moments of selection too though It's like who knows you like what do they know about you are they willing to vouch for you? Then there's a future like what are the expectations? What are the hopes of this person? I remember I just we've been through this we know what this feels like hey I think this person could do really really good Let's give them a shot and then also the piece of this it also goes on and so many times we realize that especially as we grow older There's that tension.
There's an inside person here. We need inside man We need somebody who is willing to maybe bend the rules a little bit for the sake of us We try to find somebody hey there's that one phone call I can make and that person can call that person It's this inside or knowledge piece to it It's so it's not just this outside piece There's also who knows the most about the truth of what's going on the best way I ever experienced this I've seen this was when I learned something when mare's not we're living in Kentucky We lived in the middle of horse country and while we lived in horse country I learned a little bit about horse racing and I mean I Rewise we're only an hour and a half away from Bo's real I know we're losing it down says that you know you're horse racing the way horse racing works You go to the gas station and you buy that racing from the big huge newspaper that prints out all the stuff like this Is what this horses name is this what this jockey's name is this is how this horse does on on dry ground This is how this hurt horse does on wet ground and you're supposed to make a calculated response to it well We'll give you a little secret here some people might not know is anybody here been to church Hill Downs where the Kentucky Derby is It's a little bit different than you expected wasn't it like church Hill Downs like the Kentucky Derby like you've seen see biscuit on these horse movies Church Hill Downs is in the neighborhood like you get your gun out of your car before you walk out The real place is in Lexington at Keneland close to where Meredith and I lived and the thing is all the folks who went to Keneland all the time They told you you didn't need the racing form that was helpful Well, what you really wanted to do if you want to make make a good pick on your horse and your jockey is you went to this little Diner that was behind their racetrack every morning. I get sick started You had biscuits and gravy with a bunch of guys through this tall or there this tall and this big around like you The horse trainers were there the owners the jockeys the stable boys and they start talking about this horse got sick last night Or you could see the jockey walking you can tell he'd been out way too late the night before like they had inside line Like they knew what was up and so many times when we talk about selection It's helpful to have that inside line. We're talking we're finishing up our revelation series today We're having that conversation about in and out so many times there's a handful of questions when we came to revelation all of us We're really hoping to jump into if you've not you might have noticed we've not talked about those yet Because we need to have an informed view but this this Sunday we're finishing a series up We're talking about who's in we're talking about who's out we're talking about where does that dividing line happen Chad But also windows that dividing like when does this whole book take place like we want to know about this Early on the series I told you the story about when I was a kid I was so scared at the end of the world I kept my clothes in my bed at night because for some reason I thought Jesus would come back at night And they want to have him in my underwear like when does this happen Chad and there's also this tension point about Jesus We want you to come back come back, but not when I'm around so I still have cool stuff I want to do I need to do my cool stuff before we come back.
Let's be honest We've all done this before so we're talking about those things today But so much of what the way we've talked about this and we've read this book this summer has been us saying hey We want to come to this as a real book of scripture is a normal book of scripture We don't want to put the dividing lines on it that we've always had was how do we read revelation like we read Colossians? Or the gospel of Mark or the book of Exodus or so how do we read revelation? It's just a normal book of the Bible What do we see what do we encounter? What do we learn about Jesus?
How do we experience Jesus? We just come at it normally And we found ourselves in this book now in a very very different way because we've just read it as normal people who are looking at a normal Book of the Bible But today the time has come to talk about in or out So let's jump in to scripture We're reading the very very end of revelation today the very very back thing the last of verses So you open your Bible you come from the TVs behind me. We're gonna read 22 Chapter 22 from verse 10 to the end of the Bible nobody gets that joke So last verse verse verse it's done after this like there's the smart people stuff after it Okay, I'm sorry. I'm not gonna say that Sanders 11 It didn't work in 830 either so I'm giving up on it This is what it says so then he instructed me do not seal up the prophetic words in this book for the time is near Let the one who is doing harm continue to do harm Let the one who is vile continue to be vile But the one who is righteous continue to live Righteously but the one who is holy continue to live holy look I'm coming soon bringing my reward with me to repay all people according to their deeds I'm the alphan the Omega the first and the last the beginning and the end Blessed are those who wash their robes They will be permitted to enter through the gates of the city and eat the fruit from the tree of life Outside the city of the dogs the sorcerers the immoral the murderers the idle worshippers and those and all who love to live a lie I Jesus have sent my angel to give you this message for the churches I am both the source of David and the heir to his throne I am the bright morning star the spirit and the bride say come let anyone who hears this say come with anyone who is thirsty come Let anyone who drinks freely from the water of life And I saw him we declared everyone who hears the words the prophecy written this book If anyone adds anything to what is written here God will add that person to plagues describing the book and if anyone removes any of the words in this book of prophecy God will remove That person shared in the tree of life in the holy city that is scribing this book and he who is a faithful witness to all these things says Yes, I am coming soon.
I'm in come Lord Jesus and the grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's holy people No, we've talked about this this summer, but revelation it functions almost in loops This is the seventh sermon in this series This is the seventh weekend in this series This is also the seventh blessing in revelation Remember revelation numbers are important and seven means for things to be whole to be complete to be fulfilled This is the complete blessing of Jesus on his people and every single time We kind of make one of these laps around this racetrack when we come to that pit stop what we find is worship That's what we focused on this summer is reading those passages of worship reading those passages where God's vision for this world His vision for his people inside this world are expanding gradually at every single turn This is the final blessing the complete full blessing Jesus says I'm alpha and omega the first and the last the beginning and the end I'll give you a little bit of Bible trick here when you read something in scripture and it's repeated Whatever is in the middle is really important and we find this exact same verse I'm now alpha and omega the first and the last at the beginning the end in chapter one We find it now in chapter 22 at the end of this blessing That's these things that are contained in the middle or wrapped up in the truth of alpha and omega beginning and end first and last It's the way that we should interpret this and what Jesus is saying here is like I hold time in my hand The time is a different thing is a different concept But the truth of the beginning and the truth of the end are happening simultaneously in who I am right now I look at time in a different way and at the beginning and the end and everything is in the middle of it is fully present in The person of Jesus Christ begins to give us a peek into this idea of the role of time and revelation We read about two groups of people and we read about the robe washers and the outsiders this is the lesson of those who are washing their robes and We find this concept in revelation in a few places but every single time we found it until this point is actually spoken about in the past tense But if we Translate and interpret this verse literally it says blessed are those people who are washing their robes now But this is done in the present tense Remember way back beginning the summer the sermon from chapter 4 about the 24 elders who were always casting down their crowns before God It's an eternal permanent action that happens in the present for all eternity This is the exact same thing blessed are the people who are always purifying themselves for the sake of the presence of God Times a little bit different in this place not talking about the future is talking about the present It's purifying for the sake of worship but also about people who see this new life lived out in a new context in the place They are at that moment. We also read about these people call that outsiders just a list of four so they're outside the city the sorcerers So these are the people who believe that they can manipulate the way the world works outside of God The immortal taking on a classic a biblical perspective of what idolatry looks like we talked about this role last week some The the murderers and the idol worshipers that ties it in at the end of verse 15 It says all of those who love to live a lie That they are on the outside of this city the people who love and who practice falsehood This isn't an accidental thing. They've gotten themselves into this is about intention This is about willfulness. These are the folks who have brought who've bought completely into the erroneous lies of evil Satan as he is deceiving These are the people who are a consistent witness to the falsehood of their own power They are not focused on Jesus.
They are focused on themselves They're willing to deceive to lie and to be part of the worldwide practice of deception and lies to do this It describes them in a pretty word is become politically charged in the last week for us But it says these are the dogs The sorcerers the immorold the murderers and the idol worshipers all those who love to live a lie And that word what they what John is doing is in this one verse He is encapsulating every single Old Testament conversation and thought in verse about what does it mean to not be pure? You know I have a dog I have a 13 pound dachshund who most people know about and she's wild and she has the ability older She gets the crazier she gets and the more active she gets but I'm looking around a lot of friends and this room We all have dogs at the house, right? Okay, then there were the weird ones that the dog sleep in bed with them Like okay, okay now sometimes like she goes through phases where I can believe that this is an empty or animal Who's living with me? But they I mean in the Hebrew concept like a dog like this would not happen to a good Jewish person They would not that's that is a completely unclean animal that you should not even be around it This this John is literally bringing in the entire Old Testament teaching about impure in One verse is Consolidating all of it together and saying these are the people who live outside of the boundaries of God's eternal city And they live out there because every single thing they do involves lies like they love to tell a lie This isn't a vague moral is I remember talking to a friend of mine They're telling a story about their kid and about how they realized that mom or dad accidentally said something that wasn't true And that's all that person that means mom or dad is bad That means bad people go to hell like and they get really really worked up This isn't this idea of like we we are broken we are falling we will accidentally do things that are outside of the will of God This is not about that.
This is not some like secret list of do's or don'ts that Jesus has you don't pull out his pocket one day This is about willful intention But people who are trying to make sure others don't focus on Jesus and what he is doing John paints this picture sculpts this end of this is who is in and this is who is out That's kind of a different thing than the way most of us probably come to this right? The story of in in this story of out and Jesus gives us an idea of when this happens Because that's also part of revelation is we can look at this and say hey, I'm not gonna be around her in this I'm not gonna have to worry about this so much But from the very beginning since he instructed me do not seal up the prophetic words in this book for the time is near You know all throughout the Old Testament Remember prophecies are told the last part of the prophecy instruction is seal this up for the time has not yet come And now we hear the very end of revelation saying do not seal this up This is the right time for this This is 2000 years ago So either they were lying or this is a different conception of time than me or you are used to dealing with remember Jesus said I'm a alpha and you know mega the beginning and the end the first and the last Time is different to me because this message is about living in our lives now this message is about this dwelling in our lives Now this message about it needing to be real and our time right now and how it affects us See this makes in or out a little bit tougher doesn't it? And she was even inserts himself in our story even more though He says I am the root of David the bright morning star He places himself as part of the lineage of God's people active and alive in our world by him saying that he's saying that I work through My people saying I came to this earth through my people but that in or out that in our out of us David was a complicated person wasn't he you might remember earlier this year we dare our sermon series in some some interesting Situation so about that the rated R. This arm is remember the emails going out.
Hey kids go to kids world That best she was sermon. I told you I don't like David right now I can't handle him because I'm seeing what he did even as gnarly as David was God's line came through him this in our house different than we expect but God comes through his people and God works through his people So if this is the right time right now and we are his people here and now How do we look at ourselves and how do we read this is not just the final story? But read this as our current story. How do we apply this how we put ourselves into this?
Because if we're gonna live in a world filled with both God's truth and evil's lies We're gonna need the presence of Jesus if we're gonna live in a world that's full of Holy Spirit possibilities But also a world in which we're going to have to do battle with Untruth we're gonna need the presence of Jesus remember last week You can't be a victor if you haven't gone to battle like this is not an easy life that stepped out for us But all throughout revelation We've seen is this this line between truth and untruth between being centered in who Jesus is and then making your own attempts to be centering in yourself Those are the stories we've seen repeated over and over and over again. We stay we stay close to this truth We stay connected to this truth by simply chasing Jesus By knowing that he's going to show us what this truth looks like we do like the presence of Jesus it cleanses us it empowers us To be those people who are consistently watching themselves clean Consistently allowing the presence of God to come over them and affects them and purify them and makes them new This isn't moralism. This isn't a secret list of do's or don'ts But this is about knowing and following truth that helps us define our end in our out So three questions for us to think about as we finish today But we also we finished this book together is this the first one are you regularly putting yourself in or out of the presence of Jesus? And we talk about being in the presence of God a lot how much we talk about being out about we actually put ourselves outside Of the presence of God.
What are the things that we do that take us away from God's presence? Are we finding? Truth about ourselves as we seek the presence of God the good truth, but also the uncomfortable truth What and what do we do when we find out the truth about ourselves? I say this a lot if God's not asking to change your mind lately you might not be following him that good because we cannot encounter him and stay the same This is something consistent.
It's going to be moving throughout our life This growing relationship is we allow Jesus to go deeper and deeper and deeper into our heart and our soul Are we conscious of how we are regularly taking ourselves into the presence of God or the things that we do that put us outside of the Presence of God are you referencing yourself as a child of God or yourself referencing trying to be your own center? For chapter four of Revelation was about who's in charge Am I in charge or am I going to let him be in charge? He's actually at the center. He actually has the ability to fix these things He actually is literally standing on top of the chaos of life in this picture of the throne room Am I going to reference myself with my relationship to God or am I going to self-reference myself when things get tough?
Where do I go and how do I respond to those things? The last thing is this how are you being part of bringing God's future promise of Jesus into your own present world because God's Future world has promised future and our present life and our present mission is completely related. It's a concrete matter to us It's the mission of the church and it's not saying that we're gonna go and be perfect people and self-isolate and just and keep ourselves away From everything that we don't like that was the experiment of the Old Testament and it failed miserably Instead it's about us understanding and slowly learning the true character of who God is of who Jesus is and how that interacts in our world And then going and living in the places where we are and being the presence of God And some of us feel like we spend our days in places where it's easy to be the presence of Jesus Christ And some of us play you go and spend our life in places where it's really hard to be the presence of Christ in circumstance I chat I'm not sure how well my job goes with the presence of Jesus Christ I'll tell you what I think sometimes the best moments we can have as real Christians is when we realize the places where we are Are not native to the presence of Jesus Christ One of the most spiritually informative times in my life when you're gonna laugh so hard I was growing so much with Jesus my prayer life was astounding and I worked my prayer life out as I was the nighttime Stockboy at a liquor store in Granblue, Louisiana You tell you what I made a lot of six packs out of 24 packs while I was praying I still like there's there's a Work bench in the back room in that liquor store. There was like an altar.
I wouldn't trade that ten months for anything It's sometimes I think that we grow closer to the presence of Jesus when we're in environments where it is non-native How are you bringing up the truthful presence of who Jesus is and where you are it's our life. It's our mission It's also our evangelistic witness to simply speak about the presence of Jesus And what that does and what that means because we know the one who's completely true and we know the one who has complete ability to change things In this last section is the oldest prayer of the Christian church this Amen Come Lord Jesus if you remember you might have grown up to church that had the banners on the wall I'm talking about church banners that word mayor nasa It's the oldest prayer the church that come Lord Jesus all we have to do is be able to pray that we're come Lord Jesus Come and your spend your presence into where I am right now and where I need it But also come and send your presence into this world around me and we can say that prayer we can pray that prayer We can say come Lord Jesus Because it's our confession that we don't have the ability to fix our own problems and we don't have the ability to fix the problems of the world But we know the one person who actually does have that ability and he can fix those things And he can fix things in ways that we can't in ways that we typically won't come up with on our own The things that are big to us are little to him Come Lord Jesus And in or out looks really different when we step back and look at the whole picture It doesn't deny anything we probably grew up with It actually expands it for us to realize that this is a lot deeper Come Lord Jesus in or out and Jesus has the inside line. He knows the secret He has the scoop he knows what's actually going on not just what we have interpreted and we think is what's going on Makes it in or out a lot more of an honest affair doesn't it? Makes also a lot more of an honoring affair to who we are and where we've been in life and what we've gone through So we can say that come Lord Jesus with our own brutal heartfelt truthful and a holy honesty Come Lord Jesus Jesus.
Thank you so much for being an honest God to us For being big enough For wrapping us up with who you are Jesus We all have things we have to wait down Got our own attempts to be self-centered and self-referenced happen because we're broken And God we pray that you will fill the cracks of that life You will fill the cracks of those lies that have been whispered into our ears as lies that affected us physically and spiritually and emotionally You'd fill those up with your holy presence God teach us the power of just a simple words. Come Lord Jesus