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Revelation 22:17: ‘Come!’

^“17 The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come!’ Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.” NIV

As we have seen, in this final chapter of Revelation, there is a repeated emphasis on the theme that Jesus is coming soon. In response to this, John’s prayer is (and it should be the prayer of the whole church): ‘’Amen. Come, Lord Jesus’’ (20). But there is also, in the seventeenth verse, the gracious, and repeated, invitation to the ‘’thirsty’’ to ‘’come’’ and ‘’take the free gift of the water of life.’’ These words surely draw from the well of Isaiah 55. Verse 1 of that chapter says:

‘’Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.’’

 Words of Jesus are also brought to mind:

‘’If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink’’ (John 7:37).

The invitation stands for all the spiritually thirsty today. Jesus will not fail to deliver on His promise. You and I can prove its truth. Salvation is a free gift. Let the church echo this message, and repeat it throughout the world. As the old hymn says, ‘Now none but Christ can satisfy…’

Revelation 22:16-17: Jesus is.

¹⁶ ‘I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.’¹⁷ The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come!’ Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. “NIV

Jesus is everything we could ever want or need. He is what our starving souls are hungering for, if we but knew it.  In John’s gospel, 7 ‘’I am’’ statements made by Jesus are recorded. Most commentators would see an implicit claim to divinity in Jesus’ use of this great Old Testament Name for God.

I was reflecting on the fact that John also wrote ‘Revelation’, and there are a number of ‘’I am’’ sayings of Jesus in this last section of the book:

‘’I am coming soon!’’ (7, 12 & 20);

‘’I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End’’ (13; see 21;6. Note that Jesus and God speak the same words, and we know that both share the throne);

‘’I am the Root and Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star’’ (16; see 5:5, 2:28; Romans 13:12).

Richard Bewes writes regarding this last statement:

‘…here is a title of Jesus to make the most pessimistic heart thud with expectation! A new age is going to dawn, and it will be Christ who ushers it in… The bright Morning Star is there before our gaze. And tomorrow belongs to us!’ ‘The Lamb Wins’ pp.149/153.

‘This Morning Star is a sign of the dawning of a new day after a long night of tribulation – a sign of the new day of the kingdom of Jesus Christ.’ Tom Hale: ‘Applied New Testament Commentary’, p.997.

Revelation 22:7-15: ‘Outside’

⁷ ‘Look, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy written in this scroll.’⁸ I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I had heard and seen them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who had been showing them to me. ⁹ But he said to me, ‘Don’t do that! I am a fellow servant with you and with your fellow prophets and with all who keep the words of this scroll. Worship God!’¹⁰ Then he told me, ‘Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this scroll, because the time is near. ¹¹ Let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong; let the vile person continue to be vile; let the one who does right continue to do right; and let the holy person continue to be holy.’¹² ‘Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. ¹³ I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.¹⁴ ‘Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. ¹⁵ Outside are the dogs, those who practise magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practises falsehood.NIV

There are people who preach that no-one will be excluded from God’s Kingdom. We might like to think that, but it’s not congruent with what we have read in ‘Revelation’ (and still read in this last chapter), and it doesn’t fit with what we read in the rest of the Bible. In the end, there will be those who find themselves ‘’Outside’’ (15) God’s glorious future. They will be there because of their refusal to repent of their sins and trust in Jesus. Just as in the story of Noah and the ark, there will come a day when God shuts the door (Genesis 6:16). Only those cleansed by Christ’s blood (14) are free from sin and therefore confident to enter. Those truly saved show it in sanctified lives (15). By their fruits they are known.

Revelation 22:20: Agreeing with God.

²⁰ He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. NIV

In an article on prophetic preaching, Lee Eclov described the work of one artist, Cody F. Wilson, who has painted Isaiah, Jeremiah and Jonah standing on stilts. They have a different vantage point on life to everyone else. He goes on to say:

‘From their high stilts, prophetic preachers insist that people absorbed with the present refocus on the future God has promised. In some circles, eschatology has gotten a bad name. It is good and noble to explore the perichoresis of the Trinity but you better steer clear of “rapture” or “tribulation” or “the Rider on the white horse.” It can come off as the trailer trash of theology, all lurid speculation, the Bible’s “olde curiosity shop.” But prophets, while certainly not having the end figured out, “searched intently and with the greatest care” in trying to understand the future God promised in Christ. Our prophetic preaching should make room for some searching with great care. We do them a disservice if we pay less attention to their visions than they did. We will certainly not understand all the mysteries of Daniel, Zechariah, or Revelation, but how is it that some preachers have never preached any of them?

Prophetic preaching today needs to stand on stilts sometimes and look off into the future to the Second Coming, to the new heavens and new earth, and, yes, to hell. The future God has promised sounds a unique warning to complacent or sinful people who might not hear any other alarm.

But even more important than the warning to the complacent is the hope God’s saints so sorely need. Christians—at least young Christians—may not think all that much about heaven, but God’s people need to know all that God says about the future he has planned for us. They need biblical details, not just a sanctified version of ‘pie in the sky by and by.’ Prophetic preaching gives God’s people an ear for the voice of the archangel and the trumpet call of God. It gives anxious disciples Jesus’ word, “Do not let your hearts be troubled … . I am going to prepare a place for you.” Prophetic preaching takes Christians fixated on the week ahead to a high place from which they can see, with John, “a new heaven and a new earth,” and hear the voice that says, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people … . There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” ‘

The last recorded words of Jesus in the Bible are: ‘’Yes, I am coming soon’’ (20). John articulates what the response of the church should always be: ‘’Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.’’

 These are the words of one in agreement with God; one who says, ‘Yes Lord, we want the future you have for us.’

Revelation 22:7,12, 20: A repeated refrain.

⁷ ‘Look, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy written in this scroll.’

¹² ‘Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done.

²⁰ He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. NIV

Three times in the last few verses of this book Jesus states that He is ‘’coming soon.’’ If the thought is repeated it must be important.

Someone may say, ‘Well, it’s two thousand years since John wrote these words, and Jesus still hasn’t come. That seems like a long time to me!’ But the Bible is its own interpreter and here are some words which help to shed light on things:

‘’But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief’’ (2 Peter 3:8-10a).

God has a different perspective on time to us. From heaven’s perspective, it’s only a couple of days since Jesus stood on this planet. ‘’Soon’’ He will return.

I heard a denominational leader say recently that the reason why so many Christians in other cultures are evangelising and church planting with such urgency is because they really believe Jesus is coming soon. But, he said, we don’t.

By and large that is true. Perhaps we need to remind ourselves afresh of our need to live in the future tense.

Revelation 22:6-9, 18–19: Building on Rock.

^“6 The angel said to me, ‘These words are trustworthy and true. The Lord, the God who inspires the prophets, sent his angel to show his servants the things that must soon take place.’⁷ ‘Look, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy written in this scroll.’⁸ I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I had heard and seen them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who had been showing them to me. ⁹ But he said to me, ‘Don’t do that! I am a fellow servant with you and with your fellow prophets and with all who keep the words of this scroll. Worship God!’

¹⁸ I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: if anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll. ¹⁹ And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the Holy City, which are described in this scroll.” NIV

To build on the Word of Christ is to build on Rock, whereas to build a life on any other foundation is disastrous (Matthew 7:24-27). As part of Scripture, ‘Revelation’ is ‘’trustworthy and true’’. This doesn’t mean we can understand everything in it, but it does mean we should treat it with the utmost respect, along with the rest of Scripture (18,19). This includes obeying all that we see we need to do as we read its pages (7, 10).

As a faithful ‘preacher’, the angel would not accept any honour that was not due to him, but called John (and through him every person in the church) to ‘’Worship God’’ alone (9).

Let every other preacher take note. We should:

• Have confidence in the truth of God’s Word;
• Call people to have faith and obedience in it;
• Seek to decrease that the Lord may increase.

As the Westminster Shorter Catechism says: ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever

Revelation 22:3:Full employment.

^“3 No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.”NIV

‘’The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.’’

 In the New Living Translation, this reads: ‘’and his servants will worship him.’’

 In the Bible worship involves service. It isn’t just singing to God or praying to God, but it is also living wholeheartedly for him. It’s obedience; it involves doing His will. It embraces the whole of life. As Jock Anderson wrote in his book, ‘Worship the Lord’, God wants worship that is living, and living that is worship. David Pawson once said that for the Christian the whole of life is sacred, and the only thing that is secular is sin. Everything we do should be offered to God as worship, and if we can’t offer it to Him, we ought not to be doing it.

In the future renewed universe, we won’t be sitting around on fluffy white clouds playing harps! We will be fully employed. Here is the evidence in Revelation. We will have ample opportunity to worship God with our service. We who belong to Him, and who will have been made like Him (‘’…his name will be written’’ on our ‘’foreheads’’) will know the privilege of serving Him for ever.

Revelation 22:1-6: All things new.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb ² down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. ³ No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. ⁴ They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. ⁵ There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.⁶ The angel said to me, ‘These words are trustworthy and true. The Lord, the God who inspires the prophets, sent his angel to show his servants the things that must soon take place.’ NIV

At the moment I am reading a book with a friend. It is entitled, ‘The Ordinary Hero’, and is written by Tim Chester. Towards the end he has a chapter headed ‘A renewed world of life’. Here are a couple of quotes from it. The first one is by the eminent twentieth century preacher, Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones:

‘As I understand it, what is commonly described as ‘heaven’ in the Scripture is what we should regard as the intermediate state, not the final state, not the eternal state…Our eternal state is not going to be lived in the heavens, in the air, in some vague nebulous spiritual condition…Heaven in an eternal sense going to be ‘heaven on earth’. Heaven on earth-that is where we shall spend eternity, and not as disembodied spirits, for the whole man shall be redeemed, the body included. A concrete body must have a concrete world…You and I, the redeemed, will dwell in our glorified bodies on a glorified earth under the glorified heavens.’ (He was commenting on Romans 8:18-23 at the time).       Tim Chester goes on to say: ‘At the end of history, heaven will be united with earth. Christians don’t go up to heaven. John sees the heavenly Jerusalem ‘coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband’ (Revelation 21:2). The presence of God comes to earth.’

 How can we be sure this will happen? God doesn’t lie (verse 6). God is as good as His Word.

Revelation 22:1-2: Rivers of living water.

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb ² down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” NIV

Eden was well-watered. Here is another echo from the beginning of the Bible story. But reading this caused me to think about the words of Jesus:

‘’If a man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’’ (John 7:37/38)

Some translations say ‘’rivers’’ rather than ‘’streams’’.

 An old Pentecostal hymn contains this verse: ‘Rivers is thy promise, this shall be our plea; Less than this can never meet our cry for thee. Tired of lukewarm service, and the loss it brings, we would live entirely for eternal things.’

Every Christian today can be a walking foretaste of God’s great future for the universe. Everywhere we go, the river of the Holy Spirit, flowing ultimately from God the Father and the Son, can stream out of us, flooding the world with healing, and feeding it with ‘’fruit’’. This is the out-going nature of the Christian life. It’s natural course takes it beyond ourselves, and our own sense of blessing, to water and refresh every environment we move in.

Note ‘’the throne of God and of the Lamb’’ (1,3). Jesus is fully worthy to share the Father’s throne. Indeed, God and Christ are one (John 10:30).

PRAYER: Lord, please may this be true of my, that I will both be blessed and made a blessing – everywhere I go.