Unfading Glory

Sermon Transcript

Today is that Friday that many Christians throughout the world set aside to reflect on the death of Christ. It comes every year, just like Easter Sunday. More regularly, every Sunday comes, and on every Sunday, Christian churches gather to worship the same God for the same basic reasons and in the same basic way. Much of the Christian life is learning to do the same things over, and over, and over again. The Christian hope for the future, even, is that we will spend eternity doing the same thing, over, and over, and over again. Now how could anyone be excited about that? Isn’t it more exciting to ponder new adventures? Perhaps, but have you ever noticed that it’s possible to get bored of trying new things? Like what if you watched the first episode of a show, then decided you wanted something new and exciting, so you switched to another pilot episode of another show, then to another pilot episode of another show? You’d always be getting something new, but at some point might you not stop to think, “Why can’t I find a show that’s good enough to keep watching?” And when you do find a show that’s good enough to keep watching, do you really complain that you’re still watching the same show 4 seasons later?

 

Tonight as we reflect on the death of Christ we’re looking at one sentence from the book of Revelation that runs from the second half of Revelation 1:5 through verse 6, and in this sentence we see the apostle John, the author of the book of Revelation, not only telling us that something will happen over, and over, and over again, but telling us that he wants something to happen over, and over, and over again. He’s found something so good that he says he wants it to happen “forever and ever,” and what he wants to happen forever and ever is for Jesus Christ to receive glory and dominion. What would that look like? It would look like worship, whereby we give him glory. And it would look like submission, whereby we acknowledge his dominion. That’s the cry of John’s heart, because Jesus is worthy of eternal worship and submission. If we spend this life and eternity giving him glory and submitting to his dominion, we will be eternally happy. It will never get old and boring. Why is Jesus worthy of such worship and submission? John gives us three reasons in this text: First, he loves us. Second, he freed us from our sins. Third, he made us a kingdom. 

 

He loves us

 

The short section of scripture on which we’re focusing begins with the words “To him who loves us.” The “him” here is Jesus Christ, and we know that from earlier in verse 5, where John explicitly names Jesus Christ. And the first thing John says about him here is that he loves us: “To him who loves us.” Before we talk about his love, though, let’s briefly consider who the “us” is to whom John refers when he says Jesus Christ loves us. Clearly it’s the same “us” as the “us” who Jesus has freed from our sins by his blood, and the “us” who he has made a kingdom in verse 6, but again, who is that “us”? Well if we look back at verse 4, John tells us specifically to whom this book is written: To the seven churches that are in Asia. In the Bible a church is not a building; no one writes letters to buildings. Rather, a church is an assembly of baptized believers in Jesus Christ meeting in a particular place for the proclamation of God’s word and the administration of God’s ordinances: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. There were apparently seven such churches in Asia at that time to whom John was writing, and they are listed in verse 11 of chapter 1: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, we’re proud to see Philadelphia on the list (though it’s obviously a different city from ours), and finally, Laodicea. 

 

But as the book unfolds, we detect pretty quickly that while John wrote to those churches, he did not write exclusively for those churches. The number seven has symbolic significance in the Bible, and it generally connotes completeness. These seven churches, then, are representative of all the churches, and we can see that for example when Jesus speaks to the church in Pergamum, one church, and nonetheless says, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev 2:17). Though writing to one church, the Spirit is speaking to all the churches. And so here, who is the “us” who Jesus loves? It is us who comprise his churches.

 

Jesus has a special love for the people of his churches. There is a sense, of course, in which Jesus loves everyone–he is truly God, and God is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. He sends his rain and makes his sun to shine on both the righteous and the unrighteous. There is a general benevolence in God to all created being, and certainly we see this in Jesus in his time on earth. He healed the sick, cleansed lepers, gave sight to the blind, proclaimed good news to the poor, welcomed the children, and even when his enemies nailed him to a cross, he did not exercise his divine power to punish them or call down fire from heaven upon them. So Jesus loves all in some ways, but he loves us, those of us who are here tonight who comprise his churches, in a unique way. It’s similar to how I as a husband am required by God to love all people, but also to love my wife in a unique way. In fact, scripture itself makes that very analogy when it says: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church, and gave himself up for her” (Eph 5:25). In other words, husbands love your wives in a unique way, just as Christ loved the church in a unique way: He gave himself up particularly for her.

 

Sometimes Christians may struggle to say this because they’re afraid it comes off as arrogant: “Jesus loves us, not them.” But again, we aren’t saying he doesn’t love others in some way, and would anyone really call my wife arrogant if she said I loved her in a special way? That’s all we’re saying. And if you really get the whole picture, you’ll see it’s even less arrogant than that. When my wife says I love her in some special way, it is because she is specially lovable: She’s godly, kind, joyful, faithful, generous, diligent, intelligent, outwardly beautiful, and much more. But Jesus committed himself to love us when there was nothing lovable in us, and scripture is explicit on this point: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person⁠—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die⁠— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:6-8).

 

Furthermore, the offer of his love is made to all who hear this message. If you are here tonight and you are not yet a believer in Jesus Christ, it is not true that the love of Christ is somehow hermetically sealed off from you, such that you have no access to it. If you are here tonight hearing this message he is already loving you in this way: He is speaking to you, calling you to himself, and if you will just repent of your sins and rest upon him alone for salvation, you will know his special love for you too.

 

He loves us, verse 5 says. It’s interesting that John doesn’t even say he loved us, past tense, though that’s certainly true. But here, writing of the risen and exalted Jesus, John says he loves us, present tense. Jesus loves his church right now, on this 3rd day of April, 2026, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time. If you are a true believer in Jesus Christ tonight, you are, at this moment, dear to Jesus. He loves you. Yes, you, right now, however weak, however strong, however sinful, however righteous, however afflicted, however prosperous, however depressed, however joyful, however doubtful, however faithful–he loves you. As the great theologian John Owen said, “In a word, there is not the meanest, weakest, or poorest believer on earth whom Christ does not prize more than all the world besides.” Consider just some of the ways Jesus is loving us presently.

 

The first one that comes up in Revelation is that he speaks to us. His speech to the churches begins in chapter 2, and it is still him speaking by his Spirit today when the scriptures are read and rightly preached. This is one of the things that happens when someone becomes a Christian: They begin to read the Bible and hear biblical preaching with a sense that it is Jesus himself speaking to them. So Paul could tell the Ephesians that Jesus himself came to them preaching peace to those who were far off, and peace to those who were near (Eph 2:17). Though by then he had ascended into heaven, Jesus came and preached to them through those who preached the gospel to them. 

 

When we look at the letters in Revelation, we can see in his speech that Jesus reveals himself to us, he encourages us, he warns us, and he makes promises to us. Jesus speaks to us today that we might see him for who he really is, with all his glory. It is loving of Christ to do that because he doesn’t want us to miss that which is truly glorious, like the loving friend telling their friend of the new restaurant with the best dish in the city. Jesus is saying, “I love you, and so I want you to see the greatest possible glory: Mine.” But he knows it’s hard to walk by faith, and so he encourages us along the way by telling us that he loves us, that he’s with us, that he sees our patient endurance, and he’s pleased with us. He also sees our remaining sins, and he loves us too much to give us over to them. He has some hard words for the seven churches in Revelation, and he also speaks to us challenging, convicting words, words that sometimes make us feel worse about ourselves as we’re forced to face the reality of our sin, but he chooses to do that rather than leave us to be hardened in our sin and end up facing his judgment. Do you receive his warnings, his conviction, his rebukes to you, as his love for you? That’s what they are. And, finally, he makes promises to us. “To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God,” (Rev 2:7) he says, and he will not fail to keep his promises.

 

Jesus is loving us presently by speaking to us. He’s also loving us presently by speaking about us to his God and Father. He is interceding for us, scripture tells us, which means he is praying for us, that all the benefits of his work would be applied to us, that we’d be kept from the evil one, that our sins would be forgiven, and that ultimately we’d be with him where he is, to see his glory forever. He’s praying for us even when we fail to pray, and he’s praying for us in the most important ways that we fail to consider. For the past two weeks a pastor I look up to and admire has texted me almost every day telling me ways he’s praying for me. It’s encouraged me to know that a man who could have so many other things on his mind is thinking of me. How much better news is it, then, that the very son of God, the one with the name above all names, our Lord Jesus, is now praying for us. The late pastor Robert Murray M’Cheyne once said, “If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me.” 

 

And, finally, Jesus is loving us presently by shepherding us. This includes giving his churches the gift of undershepherds called elders. Through their ministry, and lamentably, at times in spite of it, Jesus, the chief shepherd of the sheep, is loving us now by guiding us, protecting us, and keeping us for the final salvation he will bring to us. He is worthy of our eternal worship and submission because he loves us. And, next, he is worthy of our eternal worship and submission because he freed us from our sins.

 

He freed us from our sins

 

I mentioned that his loving us is present tense in this verse, but his freeing us from our sins is past tense. He loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood. The reference to his blood there is why we are gathered on this Friday night. In the Bible the blood of a sacrifice represents the life of that sacrifice–so Leviticus 17:11 says that “it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.” The bare fact of what happened on the original Good Friday is that Jesus died, but when the Bible records the fact, it doesn’t merely speak of his death. It speaks of his blood, and in so doing it associates Jesus’ death with the long history of sacrifices that came before him.

 

Chief among those sacrifices that came before him was the sacrifice of the passover lamb. When the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, God sent plagues on the king of Egypt when he refused to let his Israelite slaves go free. He sent ten such plagues, but the final one was the worst of them all. In the final plague, God took the life of all the firstborn children, but he also made a way for the Israelites to save their firstborn sons by slaughtering a lamb, and then wiping the blood of the lamb on their doorposts. God said to them: “When I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt” (Exodus 12:13). Though judgment was coming on the land, the way for the people of Israel to escape the judgment was through the blood of a lamb. It was as though the lamb had died in their place. And God not only passed over their houses, but God then freed them from their slavery in Egypt and made them a nation under his good, loving, and wise authority.

 

The blood of that lamb freed the people of Israel from the judgment on the firstborn, and ultimately from their slavery in Egypt. But Jesus is worthy of eternal glory and submission because he has freed us from our sins by his blood. He has freed us from the penalty of our sins. The judgment coming on Egypt was the death of the firstborn sons, a severe judgment, no doubt. But the judgment God has pronounced on all sin is the judgment of hell–eternity in conscious torment apart from the favorable presence of God. Mere bodily death is merciful in comparison to the reality of hell. To even just imagine unending, conscious, torment, from which there is no escape, is almost too weighty, too painful, for us to think of it for very long. And it should feel weighty to us. It should bring pain to us to imagine such a fate for ourselves and others we love. And yet, we must think of it, because scripture is clear that it is God’s judgment on sin, and equally clear that all of us are sinners. If the judgment seems too severe to you, at least consider how far removed we are from the pure, perfect, undiluted justice that is God. We have a measure of justice in us because we are made in his image, and it causes in us a kind of hatred, or wrath, toward the evils to which we are most sensitive: child trafficking, genocide, abuse, racial supremacy, but imagine if your sense of justice was pure, perfect, and infinite, such that you saw every sinful thought and desire with piercing clarity, and we can then perhaps begin to imagine how just the sentence of hell is on our sins.

 

How can we be freed from this penalty? Well, how do we normally try to be freed from a penalty? We may try to excuse our sins, perhaps by appealing to our personality, or our upbringing. More commonly, we try to cover our sinful deeds with good deeds: Sure I’ve gotten some things wrong in my life, but I’ve also done my best to help others and make their lives better, and I’ve always believed in God, some may say. Perhaps we’d even resolve to do better going forward. But none of these things can free us from the penalty of sin. No good deeds can cover up for our sinful deeds; God sees not only our sinful deeds, but our sinful thoughts and desires, with perfect clarity, and holy displeasure. Not only that, but as soon as we go to try to do better, we find ourselves sinning again. We cannot free ourselves from the penalty of sin, and it is an eternal, awful, penalty.

 

But Christ…Christ has freed us from our sins by his blood. By offering his innocent, righteous blood for us on the cross, he paid the penalty our sins incurred! On the cross he suffered the conscious torment of hell, as the wrath of God was poured out on him for our sins, and his life was of such infinite value that his death satisfied the demand of God’s justice against our sin. The penalty for all the sins of all God’s people has now been paid, such that it would be unjust of God to turn around and punish those same sins in us. Jesus was already punished for them! He has freed us from the penalty of our sins by his blood.

 

But he’s also freed us from the power of our sins by his blood. As long as we stood condemned under God’s law, we were separated from God. So far from being free agents, we were under a different lord, a different master, like the Israelites, before God rescued them and brought them to himself, were under the Egyptian Pharaoh. But we were not slaves to a Pharaoh; we were slaves to sin. That’s why even if we had resolved to do good, we would have kept sinning, and I trust you’ve experienced this phenomenon. Left to our own strength, not only would improvements to our life not cover our past sins, but we can’t improve ourselves. Of course, if you are used to committing theft, you can choose instead to give generously to others, and that would be a kind of improvement. But until that improvement springs from love for God, it is not an improvement that is pleasing in his sight. It would be like someone from an enemy nation remaining part of that enemy nation and continuing to fight a war against the king of another nation, but while doing so, he brings the king dinner. The act itself is kind, but it’s still proceeding from a heart of rebellion. We were born with rebellious hearts that are enslaved to sin, and slaves don’t have the power to free themselves.

 

But, slaves can be purchased and thus set free, or to use biblical language, slaves can be ransomed, and that is what Jesus has done for us by his death on the cross. With the demand of God’s justice satisfied, we were reconciled to God, and in being reconciled to him, we came back under this good, loving, authority, like the Israelites were freed from Pharaoh’s authority to be restored to God’s good, loving authority. Do you see what that means, brothers and sisters? It means you not only no longer need to fear God’s condemnation for the sins that remain in you; it means you can put to death that sin that remains in you! It’s no longer your master! When sin comes calling, you don’t have to pick up the phone!

 

Some of you may struggle to believe that tonight because what you see is the sin that remains in you, and you see certain sins that seem to come up again and again and not go away. I’m ashamed of how quickly my heart still seems to just revert to covetousness, envy, unbelief, and hostility toward some who have sinned against me in the past. We should expect to struggle against sin as long as we are in these bodies, but we should not expect that to be a perpetually losing battle. Are you tempted to give up tonight? Don’t. Jesus has freed us from our sins by his blood. And, finally, he is worthy of eternal glory and submission because he has made us a kingdom.

 

He made us a kingdom

 

So verse 6 says he has made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father. In Exodus 19:5-6, after God brought his people Israel out of slavery in Egypt, he said, “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’” He told Israel they would be to him a kingdom of priests, like we see here, but notice the big “if” at the beginning of those verses: If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant…you shall be to me a kingdom of priests. That was indeed a big if, because as the story of the rest of the Bible shows us, Israel did not obey God’s voice. Far from keeping his covenant, they broke his covenant, and so they did not become to him a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

 

Instead, from Israel, God brought one Israelite, Jesus Christ, who did obey his voice, such that now all who are united to him by faith are a kingdom, priests to his God and Father. There is no “if” in verses 5-6. Jesus has successfully made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father. It is a kingdom, as Jesus said, that is “not of this world” (John 18:36), and therefore the way the citizens of that kingdom operate is very different from the way the world operates. Instead of conquering by the sword, later in the book of Revelation we read that Jesus’ kingdom people conquer by the blood of the lamb, and the word of their testimony, for they love not their lives, even unto death (Rev 12:11). As we remember the death of Christ on our behalf, let us also remember the call upon us to love not our lives, even unto death. Let’s hold out the word of Christ to a world under his judgment, and whether the world threatens us, condemns us, or ignores us, let’s keep going, following our shepherd, Jesus, from the cross to our heavenly home.

 

The world remains in rebellion against our king, but his kingdom is made visible in his churches, those assemblies of his people who submit to him as their king. Though there were seven churches to whom John wrote, he says Jesus has made us a kingdom because each of those churches has been charged by Jesus to exercise the keys of his kingdom, declaring what the good news of his kingdom is, teaching the laws of his kingdom, and administering the discipline of his kingdom. In his letters to the churches he rebukes the church in Pergamum because they have some who hold false teaching (Rev 2:15), and he rebukes the church in Thyatira because they tolerate sexual immorality and idolatry in their midst (Rev 2:20). Jesus’ authority is the wisest, most loving authority under which we could ever live, and that’s what we communicate when we are willing to exercise the authority he has given us as his churches. He has made us a kingdom.

 

And the particular kind of kingdom he’s made us is a kingdom of priests. A priest is simply one who serves God. In Israel there was a particular priestly class, priests set apart from the rest of Israel for the service of God. They offered the sacrifices on the altar, they lit the candles inside the temple, they changed out the bread that was kept in the temple, they declared people or foods clean or unclean, and they taught God’s law to the people. But now here we see that Jesus has made all his people, all those who comprise his church, priests, only now that he has offered himself to God as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, and has freed us from all our sins by his blood, our priestly work is no longer one of offering blood sacrifices. Now our priestly work is offering all of ourselves to him, for his service, and the aspect of that on which this text focuses is offering to him praise.

 

And so it ends with this ascription of glory and dominion to Jesus, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father. In ascribing such glory and dominion, John is revealing to us his own desire, that Jesus would receive all glory and dominion forever. That’s interesting, because in reality, Jesus was already risen and exalted into heaven, to the position of highest glory, and highest authority. So what’s John saying when he says to him be glory and dominion forever and ever? He’s saying he wants Jesus to be treated this way! He’s saying he desires, he prays, and he labors that Jesus would be glorified, worshiped, and submitted to as the one with dominion, forever. 

 

Imagine again not only doing one thing forever, but worshiping and submitting to one person forever. Perhaps you’ve admired a person for a time–a professional athlete, an artist, an actor. But then what happens? The athlete retires, the next artist comes along, the actor dies, and you find another. And submission? To a person? Forever? Isn’t the dream we’re sold to climb the ladder so we don’t have to submit to anyone outside ourselves? But here John is saying there is one who is worthy of eternal adoration and eternal submission. He says not only that it must be this way; but he wants it this way, that this Jesus Christ would get glory and dominion forever and ever. There’s no fear of exhausting his glory; there’s no fear of his dominion going on too long. There could be nothing better than for him to be glorified forever, and to reign forever. No cynicism toward his glory necessary; no resistance to his authority necessary. Worship him, submit to him, and work and pray for him to be glorified and submitted to forever. He loves us, he has freed us from our sins by his blood, and he has made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father.