The End is the Beginning

 

Text: Revelations 22:12-21

Focus: Invitation to Christ

Function: to see how the invitation is open to all

¹²“See, I am coming soon; my reward is with me, to repay according to everyone’s work. ¹³I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”

¹⁴Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. ¹⁵Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

¹⁶“It is I, Jesus, who sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.”

¹⁷The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.”
And let everyone who hears say, “Come.”
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

¹⁸I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book; ¹⁹if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away that person’s share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.

²⁰The one who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.”

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

²¹The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.

Today we are looking at the last passage in the bible.

It ends with “Come Lord Jesus, and God’s grace be with you. And that seems to be the beginning of our salvation.

I love the ending of the bible because it focuses on God’s love -demonstrated in Jesus Christ-, grace and God’s word.

I don’t mean the Bible. I mean Jesus Christ, whom the scriptures say, is the Word of God in human flesh.

It is an important distinction to make. We mistakenly place the Bible supreme as our source of faith because we call it the Word of God, but the bible calls Jesus the Word of God and we are to worship Jesus.

I think that is why at times I have been guilty of worshiping the bible, or my limited knowledge of it, over worshiping the Jesus that all the scriptures point us to.

This is a sort of mixed passage. There are both words of judgment and words of blessing in this passage. It is interesting to note that the lectionary actually culled out the judgment passages except for the first verse where Jesus proclaims to us that he is coming to judge the earth, or in this passage, to repay according to everyone’s work.

We believe that because of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, we are forgiven the sins that we have committed when we place our faith in Jesus Christ.

So, according to scripture in 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 we read that our judgment will be in reference to our reward, not our sins. The metaphor he uses is about the works that we do will be tested by symbolically, and if they are based on Christ’’s teachings to love others, they will survive the fire. But the bad works that we have done will simply be destroyed by the fire and will not count against us except for the loss of the chance of heavenly reward that our greed costs us.

Jesus told us to lay up treasure in heaven instead of earth. Every greedy person is going to be disappointed when it comes to heavenly reward if they refused to be generous with their resources, grace, mercy and love.

The rest of the judgment passages are excluded from our assigned reading, but I included them for ease of reading.

This morning I want to focus on verse 17:
¹⁷The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.”
And let everyone who hears say, “Come.”
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

It reminds me of a great theme in scripture, and that is the free and generous nature of God’s love and provision for those who rest in God.

The passage from Revelations reminds me of a similar scripture in Isaiah:

¹Hear, everyone who thirsts;
    come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without price.
²Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread
    and your earnings for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
    and delight yourselves in rich food.

The prophet is showing us the possibility of what happens when we rest in God.

And the passage has an underlying meaning for everyone, and that is that everyone is welcome regardless of who they are. Specifically, he mentions their financial status He doesn’t tell us who is going to pay for all this food, but to rest in God’s abundance.

I suppose the miracles of feeding the 5,000 Jewish people in Matthew 14 and the feeding of 4,000 non-Jewish people in Matthew 15 is a direct fulfillment of this power behind what this prophecy proclaims.

In our passage today we read the words of invitation from God the Holy Spirit and the Church -called the bride-, to call us to come into the presence of Christ.

One of my favorite Easter Anthem’s is “The Holy City.”

It chronicles the story of redemption, the terror of the cross and the power of the invitation to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

One of my favorite rendition is the one sung by Jim Neighbors, you know, Gomer Pyle, but he had a fantastic baritone voice.

Because of Jim Neighbor sexual orientation, sadly, the majority of Evangelicals believe he is in hell right now because he was born gay. And yet, they rejoice to hear him sing that song. And when I hear him sing it, I realize something about the song. He believes it. He knows, according to the third verse, and he sings it with a great emphasis as he belts out “And all who would might enter and no one is denied.”

I love to worship God along with the artist as I sing along in my car with the stereo going full blast. When I get to that line, I oftentimes tear up and weep a little bit when I realize the scope and expanse of God’s grace.

So I go back to the text, and let anyone who wishes take of the water of life as a gift.

That is God’s gift to us.

I am reminded of Jesus and the woman at the well.

She was divorced or widowed 5 times and was living with a man outside of marriage.

Many people are not generous with grace and would not believe that a woman like that deserved God’s mercy because she seemed to be unrepentant in her sinful ways.

But that is not the way Jesus saw her. He offers her living water. The water of life without cost. The water that will quench the longing of a thirsty soul. He gave it to her without any judgment or criticism or call to repentance. He just blessed her with living water and used her to be the evangelist that brought His saving grace to the whole town of foreigners.

And that water that He gives not only quenches the thirst but flows out of us to be the same healing mercy that the world needs.

So, the end of the book is an invitation to beginning a walk with Christ’s life giving power inside of us.