From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

Rev 22.12-21: From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I am coming.  
“I am he Alpha and the omega” (v 13) : Jesus who is speaking, is God the son.  He judges with the full authority of God himself. Remember what we have already stated about Jesus: he is “LORD” , the Word who became flesh,  and was born of the virgin Mary.  He was crucified, dead, buried.  He rose again and ascended to the father.  

This Jesus is coming back.  The same Jesus. who in his life on earth enabled people to see God’s glory.  The Jesus who was born in Bethlehem; the one who lived he kingdom. The Jesus who died for our sins, (John has already seen is the Lamb that was slain); this Jesus who has risen again and is the victor – he is coming back.  

We can expect his demeanour to have changed.  He comes as the Lion of Judah, with all the power of God, in full victory. But the Lion still looks like a lamb (Rev 5. 5-6)  so his values are unchanged. We can expect the coming Jesus, the Judge of all the earth, to be passionate about God’s Kingdom; to be opposed to all impurity, oppression and violence.  To desire to bring healing.  The fruits of the tree are for the healing of the nations. (Rev 22.2)   

Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus of History; and the Alpha and the Omega, the Lion and the Lamb, the Christ of faith are one and the same.   He has the authority of the Alpha and the Omega; and he has the values of Jesus.   And he is coming back.

I am coming soon.   
A matter of timing.   What does “soon” mean?  “See, I come quickly!” (Phillips)

Image: © G Lilly

is a good translation. The Greek word suggests a sudden or rapid event rather than an imminent one. If the hearers around 70AD thought it meant “in the next couple of years” or even “in the next seven years” they were wrong.  How do we square “soon” with the millennium, the seven year tribulation?  Some of these values have to be symbolic.  Because if they are all to be taken at face value, they contradict one another.  It is more consistent with the rest of the New Testament – where in Mt 24. 41f for example, Jesus talks about two women grinding wheat: “one will be taken and the other left” – to say that we don’t know the day or hour when the Lord will come.  I am all for keeping this simple.  Jesus says he is coming again – today that has to be sooner than it was 2000 years ago.  But “suddenly” is the same every century.   We need to be ready.

My reward is with me…v. 14f 
Jesus comes to judge the living and the dead.   Rev 20. 11-15 describes judgement day.  The lamb on his throne; books are opened.  Some are registered in the books. Others are not, and they are thrown into the lake of fire.  Judgement separates people into two clear groups. He rewards people according to what they have done. Michael Wilcock says that means “What they have done with Jesus” and “what they have allowed him to do through them”.   

1. Inside.  “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.”   Rev 7. 14 talks about the people who have “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”  It is in an encounter with Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, that we become clean.  

Now “Wash their robes” is present tense.   So Jesus is not just talking about a single act in past time but a continuing action. “All cleansing from sin whether the sin of unbelieving days or the sin committed by disciples of Christ is accomplished only by the blood of Christ. Eternal life and a blessed destiny are found only through the atoning work of Christ.”  (G E Ladd)  

There has been a lot of attention on court decisions in the past few weeks, on both sides of the Atlantic.  This is  a legal judgement.   Those who wash their robes have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city.  The sad history of humanity involves eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and being thrown out of Eden, unable to eat the fruit of the tree of life.  But that curse has been reversed.  Through what we do with Jesus, we are in – healed, for eternity.

2. Outside are the dogs, those who practise magic arts, the sexually immoral,

Dogs_and_heat by Iwoelbern PD the murderers, the idolaters” and liars.  Outside means outside the city.  Outside of the City, separated from god, is a dreadful existence: Rev 20. 14, and 21. 8 describe it as a lake of fire and the second death.  A lake of fire, a second death, locked out of the city, are different ways of describing the same thing.  John finishes off by using – as we should too – one simple word for the dreadful consequences of not doing the right thing with Jesus: Outside.   

"Dogs adn Heat" by "Iwoelbern"  PD image

Dogs in ancient times were often half-wild creatures that appeared to scavenge what they could find, and nobody wanted.  Not the pampered pooches of today!  For Judaism they were unclean animals, the lowest of the low, and  represented the gentiles.  But for John dogs represent the godless of any nation, in contrast to men of all nations have washed their robes and made themselves white.  

Five groups are specifically singled out
Sorcerers – There a number of ancient practises that people still use today, that involve using supernatural forces to do one or more of three things.   To help you remember (and avoid) them  I will call them three K's
1. Kontrol – trying to harness or channel “Spiritual power” or energy to control things in the physical world: various forms of healing such as Reiki; and the use of charms and incantations to gain protection or prosperity – or to hurt other people.  God has given us prayer in the name of Jesus, spiritual authority in his name, and a scientific world that includes medicine and skills like counselling.  To look in places other than science or the Bible and the Holy Spirit for healing or power is to toy with sorcery
2. Knowledge – trying to find out the future through things like tarot, palm-reading and astrology; I saw on FB this week, someone posted a “what age will you die?” app.  That seems like a laugh if it says you will live to be 99 (which is the result my friend got)!  But scary if it suggests you won’t live past your next birthday.  So if it’s on the internet and it says it can tell you who your soulmate is, whom you will marry, whether you’ll get pregnant this year or who or what you were in a previous life, avoid it.  It’s the thin edge of the sorcery wedge! 
3. Kontact – trying to get in touch with people who have died.  Losing someone you live is a terrible thing.  We spend ten or maybe fifty or sixty years getting to know someone, making a place for them in our hearts, and then they are not there.  Learning to live with the gap they leave is incredibly hard – and as a Pastor I can tell you there is no good time to lose a loved one.  We need to let them go.  To keep trying to contact the dead, is to have our finger on the self destruct button.
Fornicators – are those who indulge their sexual appetites, with the same sex or with the opposite sex.  Those who give in to our society’s prevailing tendency which is to say “if you feel like doing something, do it.  
Murderers – literally people with a thirst for blood.  
Idolaters – people who worship (literally hire themselves to serve)  idols.  People who sell their inner lives to anyone or anything other than God himself.
Those who love and practise lies – in particular the lies that the Roman Empire, or the world we live in today, try to pass off as truth. 

So there’s a judgement: a clear division between those on the inside – who “wash their garments” expressing trust in what Jesus has done for us; and those who haven’t, who are outside – with the actions and attitudes of the “World” still sticking to them.

So what?
Remember, to faith is more than simply thinking something is true: it is the solidness of things hoped for.  We believe that from his place at the right hand of the Father, Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead. What solid difference does that make to our lives. 
Mission:  “The spirit and the Bride say come (v. 17); let the one who hears say come.  Who are the spirit and the bride talking to?   The answer is in the second phrase which says let him who is thirsty come. In other words it is the mission of the church in the power of the spirit to say come and drink the water of life.
Warning. v 18f and not to add anything to or remove anything from the prophecy.  We can add, when we stick our interpretations over the top of the pages of this prophecy.  There have been dozens of different interpretation of revelation.  We make it complicated.  The world is in a mess, and the Church has a battle on its hands in every generation.  But Jesus is the Victor and Jesus will return to judge.   And we can take away, when we ignore it completely or try to  reducing its big themes to the level of a comment of the state of the Roman world.  Take it seriously
Expectancy.   We respond “Amen, come Lord Jesus.  Maranatha is an ancient prayer of the Church. To cry “Come, Lord Jesus!”  is to remind ourselves that however much we look to see God’s Kingdom come on earth, in the here and now, we look forward to the final triumph of the Kingdom, when Jesus returns and judges the living and the dead.  
Grace. And we experience the grace of the Lord Jesus.  The future is there; the future is bright. It is filled with Jesus and his Kingdom.  But we don’t live in the future. We live in the present.   We live for the future. But we live in the present. And in the present we receive the grace of God: his favour; his joy-bringing presence; his gifts.

© Gilmour Lilly February 2017