The Revelation 1:16 | Episode #1011

August 25, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

The Revelation 1:16

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years.

I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life.

I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day,

especially today.

In Jesus name says he had in his right hand the seven stars, which is the word that goes out to the churches.

We'll talk about that later.

And out of his mouth when a sharp two edged sword and that is a picture of his word, his spoken word coming out.

And it is a sword and it does cut and it does divide and it defines what is true and, and what is God and what is not true and not God.

And I, I, I, I deal with this so much because if you read John, if you read Peter, if you read Paul,

if you read these books of the Bible, if you read Jesus's brother James,

there is an emphasis on the supremacy,

the authority,

the inerrancy of God's revelation.

It's important,

it's important to understand John. When he saw his Lord in heaven, out of his mouth came a double edged sword,

the word of God out of his mouth.

When he speaks, he speaks the word of God. You know, Jesus said the words I say to you, they are spirit and life.

Peter says to whom shall we go and where shall we go?

For you got the words of life.

They understood that what Jesus said to them was life.

And so as a pastor and as,

as pastors of God's Word all the time,

every time, over and over,

we have to, we have to continue to place the supremacy and the authority of God's Word before his people because it's, it's, it's worthy to be trusted,

it's worthy to be followed,

it's worthy to be known,

it's worthy to be memorized, it's worthy to be put to work.

And when John sees Jesus in heaven after 40 or 50 years,

he's noting the things that meant something to him.

His God is holy,

His God is royal.

His God's all knowing,

His God's all seeing.

His God's able to define that which is right and wrong and judge it Properly.

His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength.

I had this discussion with somebody recently. I can't remember who I was talking to.

But that countenance that you're seeing here that's being discussed is called the Shekinah glory of God,

okay? That is the glory of God that radiates from his. His very being,

okay?

Now,

there's one other creature that can possess the Shekinah glory of God in its fullness. There's another creature that can possess it, but he can't possess it in its fullness because that creature can't know God in his fullness because he's not made in God's image.

That creature is an angel.

They have the glory of God upon them, but they don't have the Shekinah glory upon God like you do.

Now, here's the cool thing. The minute you're born again, the Bible says that you have the mantle of the Holy Spirit upon you,

okay?

Which means in the spiritual,

you shine.

Did you know that?

Meaning everything that's spiritual can see the glory of God upon you.

There's a problem with that.

Everything that's spiritual knows who you are.

Well, a lot of times you don't even know who you are.

That's a problem because it makes you a target.

Which you are makes it so that the Father has to put a hedge of protection around you with his angels, which he does.

But it also makes it such that you cannot be loved by the world or anything in the world.

And if you try to love the world, then the love of the Father is not in you.

It's not.

The glory of God is upon you,

whether you act like it or not.

You ever run around with somebody who didn't know how strong they were,

how smart they were, or however. Whatever they were,

it was so cool. Except when you realized it, you know, they might do something stupid because they don't know what they're doing.

Am I right?

I was that way when we first got married, Kathleen and I.

Her dad was,

well,

a genius as far as fixing things.

He was the head of the F16 shop at Danley Field.

He was over a wing of F16 fighters. He could take F16 part down to the. Down to the screws and then put it back together.

Man, he could fix things. He invented things, all kinds of stuff.

He knew how to tear things down and fix them all over the house. My dad was a lawyer. He didn't know how to fix anything.

Her dad had to get it right or the F16 didn't. Fly. My dad practiced what he did.

Okay?

He practiced law.

Kathleen, for some reason, expected me to be able to fix everything.

Are you with me?

She sure did.

She showed it. She expected me to fix everything.

Now there was a problem.

I was really, really strong back then.

The older I get, the more my fingers don't want to work and my strength goes away.

But there were all these new tools that they'd come out with right when I got married, you know, like wrenches and pliers and screwdrivers and stuff like that. Things I'd never seen before, knew nothing about.

In fact, I got many of them for my. For my wedding gifts.

Whole packs of them. They were brand new on the market. Nobody'd ever seen them before.

Kathleen would want me to go fix something,

and I would break it.

I could break something in an instant. I could break a light bulb. I mean, I broke stuff all the time. Just breaking stuff all the time.

I'm sure it frustrated Kathleen a lot. In those days,

I didn't know how to use what I had, and I didn't know what I had.

And sometimes applied way too much pressure to fix anything.

You know, that's what you're like when you walk around with the Shekinah glory of God on you.

You got all the power and no clue how to use.

Comes time to, you got to figure out how to use it.

Now, I don't break things as much,

and they come out with something else new called YouTube Y and you can look and spend figure out how to fix things.

All of a sudden,

it's really cool.

All of a sudden, I can't put a fifth 16 together, but I can screw something into the wall or something,

he says.

And when I saw him,

I fell at his feet as dead.

That's called worship,

by the way. When we build the new church, there's going to be altars all across the front of it,

but there's also going to be some carpet.

And at the very front, it'll be really nice carpet,

so you don't have to come and get on your knees. You can actually come and get on your face.

I've not asked y' all to do that here.

There's been a lot of things done on this floor,

and no matter how many times Tina cleans it,

just not quite sure that we ought to be laying face down on it. You know what I'm talking about?

Just ain't quite sure about it.

But when we get to the new church, we're going to have a place for you to Lie prostrate. But before God. You mean during church?

Yeah, during church,

as it ought to be.

He's seen Jesus for the first time. And what does he do?

He falls on his face as if he's dead.

But he capitalized, laid his right hand on me, saying to me,

do not be afraid.

I am the first and the last.

Same thing he told O Jonah.

Same thing he told Joshua.

Same thing he told Moses on the mountain.

Do not be afraid.

Do not be afraid.

I'm the first and the last.

I am he who lives and was dead.

And behold, I am alive forevermore.

See, John saw God,

and he saw Jesus in his glorified body for the first time.

And even though he knows it's Jesus,

it's still God.

And he knew Jesus in his man part.

And he knew that Jesus was God because he's already told us many times he knew it.

But then when he sees him,

then he's really God.

He's really God.

And he falls on his face as if he's dead.

Now Jesus,

he sees John as John.

See, for Jesus,

it's still his buddy John.

John hadn't changed a bit for Jesus.

He didn't have more expectation or less expectation of him. He knew John as John.

He knew John as his friend. He knew John because he loved John.

So when John falls on his face as if dead,

does he deserve to be worshiped that way? Absolutely.

Is Jesus all that much interested in that right now?

No.

It's his friend John.

Do not be afraid.

I'm in the first and the last.

I was dead and now I'm alive.

I live forevermore.

And I have the keys of hell and death, or Hades and death.

What he's saying is I make the decisions.

That's what he said when he left the first time.

We see that in Matthew 28, 1820, Jesus came to them and said, all authority in heaven, on earth has been given to me.

Therefore go and make disciples,

baptizing them in the name of the Father and Son, the Holy Spirit,

and teaching them all the things that I've commanded you. And truly I am with you to the very end of the this age.

What age?

The church age.

Now he's announcing the end of the church age, how it's going to work,

how this age is going to take place.

And he says, I have the keys to heaven and hell.

I have the keys to Hades and death.

I control these things.

I not only am authority in heaven, I'm not only the one over all things on the earth, I'm over All the things that are judgment.

I have that authority and power.

I decide who lives and dies.

Write these things which you have seen and the things which are and the things which will take place after this. Now, this is key. There's some keys here.

He's saying,

I'm going to tell you about the things that are,

which is the church age.

And then I'm going to tell you the things that must take place,

which means I'm going to tell you. Not things that can happen. I'm going to tell you things that are going to happen.

He keeps giving us these understandings.

There's a church age, and then there's the end. There's a church age and then there's the end.

The mystery of the seven stars which you saw in my right hand and the seven golden lampstands. The seven stars are the.

Now remember,

whenever you read that word,

it's one of those words that's what transliterated.

So when you read transliterated words, there's three of them in the Bible that trip people up really bad.

Angelos,

Baptismo and decana.

Okay?

All right.

Baptismo means to be immersed,

okay? It was translated baptism,

because if they translated John the Immerser and said that Jesus immersed them,

then they'd have been killed and they wanted to live,

okay?

Because back then, everybody was what?

Everybody was sprinkled? Nobody was immersed. Only these crazy Anabaptists in Holland and parts of Austria and Switzerland. All these crazy folks in those areas.

Only they believed in immersion.

So they changed the word from translating what it mean to. They just made it into an English word, baptismo.

The other word is decana.

And that's the group of people that run the church, right?

No, it means minister or servant.

Okay?

So in the church, you've got two positions. You've got elders or pastors or shepherds.

And those people deal with the spiritual issues of the church. And you've got deconi who deal with the physical issues of the church, the physical needs of the church.

All right? They're ministers,

okay?

Two positions, two places.

All right?

Why? Because we live in a spiritual world and a physical world, and you got to have people who are in charge of those things and. And leading the church in those areas.

Right,

Angelos?

I don't know why they transliterated this.

Maybe because they had a bunch of fat babies with wings and they explained what they were.

Okay? I don't have any idea.

You know, women with two wings.

Y' all know there's only one place in the Bible that has women a Woman with two wings, right?

It's in the Revelation. We'll get to it.

She's quite clearly a demon.

Okay.

All the angels that's got wings are men. And they got six of them, if they got any.

Did y' all know that everywhere in Scripture, they're all men and they got six of them, if they got any.

I don't know if you know or not. The archangels are Michael,

Gabriel and Lucifer.

Angelos means messenger.

And it's important because if you read this, there's not seven angels for the seven church ages.

There's seven messages for the seven church ages.

There' a messenger. And by the way, we're going to get the messages.

We're going to get the stars.

He's saying the seven stars are the seven words I'm about to give the church.

This is the epistle to the Church written by Jesus.

Did y' all know there was an epistle written to the church by Jesus? You know what an epistle is? A letter.

First Corinthians, Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians.

Right?

It's a letter to the church.

Well,

Peter wrote some letters to the church. John wrote some letters to the church. James wrote a letter to the church,

Paul wrote a bunch of letters to the church.

And Jesus writes a letter to the church.

Did you know that?

It's called chapter two and three of the Book of the Revelation.

It's seven messages to the whole church.

Now, when I'm going through that and you're acting bored about it, I'm just telling you that that's very important.

When is Jesus going to come down and, like, crush things? My eyes have seen the glory. I mean, when's that happening? You know,

I want to see some fire and some brimstone and, you know, I want to see some crushing of some things.

I want to see Jesus. Jesus coming in like the crimson tide rolling in. I know. I mean, you know what? I'm. Jesus. My daughter just got up and left right in the middle of it because she went to Auburn.

All right?

But, but. But that's what we want to see.

This is a. This is a very sweet letter by Jesus to us so we can kind of know the game plan.

And he starts out by just actually just talking to us.

The mystery of seven stars, which you saw my right hand.

And the seven gold lampstands, the seven stars of the angels.

The angels of the seven churches are the messages of the seven churches.

And the seven lampstands, which you saw are the seven churches. It's the presence of God among his people. The seven churches. Now, he's going to tell them,

if you do what I say,

my presence is going to be with you.

If you do not do what I say, I'm going to remove my presence from you.

And so before we move to next week and we begin to deal with these churches,

you need to understand that there's two things that he is doing with these churches,

okay? He's given them a message,

and he's given them his presence.

Are you following me?

He's given them a message,

and he's given them his presence.

All right,

you need to hear this.

If you receive his message,

you keep his presence.

If you reject his message,

he removes his presence.

All right,

now that's going to be important because when we get to the church. What time is 8:30. Thank you.

Thank you. We got many smarty pants now in the church. Okay. All right.

When we get to it.

When we get to it,

you need to hear this.

He's going to come in and say,

I've got a word of encouragement for you to most of them. He's going to have a word of admonition to them,

and then he's going to say,

this is what I want from you,

okay?

And he says, if you. If you do what I say, I'm going to give you this.

And they're great promises.

And then he says, but if you don't,

I'm removing my presence.

And the seven churches can be tr. Can be applied three different ways.

We'll discuss this a little next week.

They can be applied to the literal ages they're talking about,

and we'll kind of go through those two. Okay.

Even as a history major, I find them not quite as fun as the other two.

Okay?

I love history. But,

you know, this is 33 A.D. to 246 A.D.

i mean, okay, when I say that to y', all, I don't know most of it. And I know most of y' all sitting there going, what does AD Stand for?

What is he talking about?

You know,

it's kind of like when I was looking at Rome when we were in Italy, and I was looking around, I said, you know, that's the road that Caesar walked down doing this.

And I was about to say that, y', all, look, this is the road. And I thought,

they do not care whether that was the road Caesar walked down or not. I'm not bringing it up. I'm just going to notice it and enjoy it myself,

you know,

so I'm not going to get into that. But the other two ways are really, really important.

And I think they're the message that Jesus really gave to us that are important.

The two other ways that you can apply it is you can apply it to individual churches.

Like, you'll see, and you'll say, this church does this. And you go,

I went to that church in Columbus one time. You know, you're sitting there going, I've been there,

all right?

And you'll see that. You can see how God's presence gets removed or his blessing gets given when they do what he says.

And then the other way that you can apply it is to you personally, because you're the church too,

right? You're the temple of the Holy Spirit. You're the body of Christ.

And so you can see how people, and even in your own life, how you've been walking with God and been in his presence,

and then you've not done what he said and you've really felt his presence.

Yeah. Dissipate.

And so when you're kind of studying this,

I want you to think about that for you,

because it's the powerful message of Jesus to the churches which is really the most intimate and complete message that Jesus actually gave to the church is found in this book.

And that's before all the plagues and the fire and brimstone and the dragon stuff.

And it's actually probably more important for us than any of the other passages because the rest of it really don't deal with us.

And I'll show you that, too.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years.

I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life.

I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day,

especially today in Jesus name.