A glorious vision of Christ – a sermon on Revelation 1v1-20 by Rev. Colin Pretorius.

It’s a bit cold at night at the moment, but if you were to go out tonight when it’s nice and dark and you look up at the sky, you’ll see something amazing – the heavenly expanse that the Lord God created. And if you were to go out into the countryside where the lights of the cities and towns disappear and you look up, the sight will be even more amazing – and it’s still more amazing when you get to see that same sky through a telescope. A few weeks ago there were some images captured by a space telescope and when you see the detail in those, you cannot help but be amazed at the power of the One who created them all. You get the same sort of feeling when you see the Northern or Southern lights. Such sights tend to overwhelm our senses. At such times we can perhaps understand how in 1885 Carl Gustav Boberg was inspired to set the following words to a traditional Swedish melody:

Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the works Thy hand has made

and we can certainly join in the chorus

…then sings my soul, my Saviour God to Thee: how great Thou art, how great Thou art!

But beloved in our Lord Jesus, the majesty that’s displayed even in glorious images of the night sky or the most beautiful flower cannot begin to compare with the vision that the apostle John saw on the island of Patmos. For it wasn’t some created thing that he saw, but a vision of the risen Christ, the One through and for whom everything was created. And as we go through this text we’ll see just how glorious this vision was. We’re going to briefly look at the first couple of verses as they put not only our text but the whole of the book into the proper perspective. Then we’ll look at John’s vision of the risen Christ and at our response

• The setting of the book;
• The vision; and
• Our response.

….