Merry Christmas blog readers! This is kind of a crazy week to write GRIP Thoughts, partially because I’m on holidays, but mainly because we’ve read from five different books of the Bible in the past week. As great as they all are, I’m not going to write about all of them.
I just spent a week at Briercrest Seminary studying Biblical interpretation and we actually spent a fair amount of time in the first few chapters of Revelation. Revelation is a pretty exciting book. I remember working at a restaurant when I was younger and having a conversation about Jesus with another of the employees. He was familiar with some parts of the Bible and claimed that he had read the book of Revelation. He then proceeded to say some words that I would never forget. He said, “That’s the most pimped out book I’ve ever read!” Haha. How do you even respond to that?
Now as much as those might not be the words I would use to describe the book of Revelation, it is a pretty intense book with a lot going on. In fact, there’s so much going on in it that I own a parallel commentary of the book that presents the four main views about its content, passage by passage, over the course of 544 pages! There are a lot of opinions on this book and what the smaller details mean. As much I have an opinion (which I always do) on many of the minor details, I want to take the next couple paragraphs to reflect on something beautiful that we can see going on in the first three chapters.
After the introduction in chapter one, where John thinks he’s going to die because He’s seen Jesus, the next two chapters consist of letters to seven specific churches. If you compare these seven letters, they all follow a very similar format. They begin by offering a description of Jesus and His character and then move on to a very personal charge and encouragement to each church.
Every letter contains an “I know” statement through which Jesus expresses His awareness of exactly what is going on both in that church in general and also in the hearts of all the people that are a part of it. When I read these letters, I get this overwhelming sense of Jesus’ very personal connectedness to each and every church. This can be a little bit daunting when you think about a perfect and holy God being able to see your thoughts and know exactly what is in your heart, but mostly it’s exciting and encouraging to know that Jesus is intimately involved in His church and cares about what’s going on in it.
I don’t have the time to comment on each of the seven churches, so I want to take a look at the letter to the church in Ephesus in chapter two. For this church, the letter starts off relatively well. Jesus is commending them for all the good that they’re doing, but then all of the sudden in verse four He changes tones and says that they “have forsake the love [they] had at first”. How is it that they’ve forsaken this love and yet are doing all this good? It makes me think about how I can often “do good” and live the life I know I should but forget to make Jesus and His love a part of it. Our faith and our good can become so routine and normal.
I don’t want to be like that. I want to do good, but in the context of a love with Jesus that is always at the center.
-Ryan Guerra
(Associate Pastor)