Revelation 19:11-16

March 28, 2021

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 20:50 in the audio file.

Series: Just Conquer #52

Introduction

At a minimum it is a great disappointment when you learn later on that you’ve been missing a key perspective that would have at least changed how you thought about what you were doing even if it didn’t change what you were doing itself. It’s like when I realized that manliness, and marriage, are meant for fruitfulness. Relational/romantic connection and sanctified pleasure and even carrying on the tradition of struggling with car seats are all good, but love produces (kids are just the most obvious fruit in the field). I didn’t begin to walk around with the fruitfulness mindset until I’d already been married for a decade.

It is my conviction, based on my own experience as a disciple of Christ and based on my observation of disciples as a shepherd and based on more and more reading of the Bible, that we don’t use Jesus’ names enough. I do not mean using “Jesus” necessarily; He has many names. I certainly don’t mean using His name as punctuation in prayers. Of course using Jesus’ name happens in vain, and it’s worse from religious hypocrites than from cursing rebels. I’m not promoting adding a Jesus veneer, like a Lordship laminate, ironed over top of everything. Yet I still think there would be a good kind of casual recognition of just how easy it ease for Jesus to be Lord.

This is not necessarily an eschatology problem, though I have spent more time around Futurists—those who think most of the Apocalypse is still to happen in the future—and the general posture of said Futurists is doctrinally occupied and temporally unsettled. There is a similar disconnect for many for whom marriage is still in the future. They think they will change as needed once they say, “I do.”

But even if you have things that will need to be figured out then, there isn’t a Then when the switch to flip suddenly appears. Even though I believe Jesus will reign on earth in a different way than He currently sits with all authority on His throne in heaven (per Matthew 18:18), a Futurist should not think, or speak or live like, that a switch will flip on Jesus being King of kings and Lord of lords.

That is not a Christian truth per se, it is a cosmological reality that Christians accept and announce. We’re the ones who confess that Jesus is Lord (Romans 10:9), and while that confession is spiritual, the spiritual is not something we only practice in Christian or private or spiritual places, such as church, home, or our hearts. In other words, Jesus is Lord is not limited to being a personal or private thing. Perhaps we have gotten our own emphases out of order; it is more amazing that this Lord is Savior than that this Savior is Lord. He is the King-Priest. Yes, we are still in our sins without His work as High Priest, but He rules the world no matter what, and we should talk about it. He shall be named. It is harder for us to enunciate His name than it is for His name to be exalted.

The Logos wears lordship as easily as the sun wears light. His name is so great that it rises more easily than rain falls. His will will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, and every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth (Philippians 2:9-11), and all His enemies will become His footstool (Psalm 110:1), whenever He wants.

His effortless Lordship comes to mind like Aslan’s evident superiority throughout Narnia. His kingship has no weak spots, even if not everyone recognizes his glory. His is a reign that always feels like a when not a whether or not. As a lion Aslan copies the Lion of the tribe of Judah whose throne and armies have no reasonable rival.

Jesus’ effortless Lordship also comes to mind from “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Of the many memorable images that Jonathan Edwards uses, his quote from Revelation 19:15 about “the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Al[...]