We have two scripture readings tonight. The first is from Psalm 89, and the second is from Revelation chapter 1. So if you'd turn with me first to Psalm 89. We will take up the reading at verse 24 and read down through verse 37. Psalm 89, beginning our reading at verse 24. This is a great psalm of God's promise to David, but also in the latter part of the psalm, after verse 37, a questioning of God's people as to why the promise that David's son would ever sit on his throne seems to have failed. But here we are reading the part of the psalm where God is making his promise to David, and it is God who speaks in verse 24. My faithful love will be with David, and through my name his horn will be exalted. I will set his hand over the sea, his right hand over the rivers. He will call out to me, you are my Father, my God, the Rock, my Savior. I will also appoint him my firstborn, the most exalted of the kings of the earth. I will maintain my love to him forever, and my covenant with him will never fail. I will establish his line forever, his throne, as long as the heavens endure. If his sons forsake my law and do not follow my statutes, if they violate my decrees and fail to keep my commands, I will punish their sin with the rod, their iniquity with flogging. But I will not take my love from him, nor will I ever betray my faithfulness. I will not violate my covenant or alter what my lips have uttered. Once for all I have sworn by my holiness, and I will not lie to David, that his line will continue forever, and his throne endure before me like the sun. It will be established forever like the moon, the faithful witness in the sky. And then turning over to Revelation chapter 1, we'll read the first nine verses. Revelation chapter 1, beginning at verse 1. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testifies to everything he saw. That is the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it because the time is near. John, to the seven churches in the province of Asia, grace and peace to you from him who is and who was and who is to come and from the seven spirits before his throne and from Jesus Christ who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and has made us to be a kingdom and priest to serve his God and Father, to him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen. Look, he is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be. Amen. I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. So far the reading of God's word. We turn tonight to the book of the Revelation primarily for our consideration, and it is a book that for many of us has a number of mysteries and evokes a number of questions. When one reads the book of the Revelation very frequently, there are many points at which we may pause and say, now what exactly is the Lord revealing to us at this place? But while we may from time to time have questions about particular points in the book of the Revelation, The message of the book as a whole is really crystal clear. And the message of the book as a whole is God is faithful. God is in charge. God knows what He's doing. And He will do all things well. God is faithful. And therefore, people of God, take heart. People of God, be encouraged that your God is faithful and serve him so that you may overcome the struggles that you face in this life. So the book of the Revelation is written above all else to encourage us and it was certainly written to encourage those churches in Asia Minor to which it first came. Those churches were relatively new churches in what is modern-day Turkey. They were certainly churches that were facing all sorts of difficulty. As we remember, some of the issues addressed in the letters to the seven churches in chapters 2 and 3 of the book of the Revelation, we know that in some places they were experiencing severe persecution and had suffered that severe trial to any congregation of some people falling away from the faith. In other churches, we read about struggles with heresy, as if it were not bad enough that there were forces outside of the church attacking and grieving them. There were also those forces inside the church, seeking to lead them away from the truth. And we read, they were also facing in some of the churches immorality, those who had fallen from the standard of living to which Christians were called in grievous ways. So these were churches that were struggling, struggling in almost all the ways imaginable that one can struggle. And to these churches, God came with a word of encouragement. And that word of encouragement begins right at the outset of the letter where John, speaking in the name of the Lord, blesses the people. You see that there, don't you, in verse 4. Grace and peace to you. This is a regular way in which the apostles began their letters with a word of blessing, a word of encouragement, a word of promise to the people of God. Sometimes we may think that it's just one of our Dutch Reformed peculiarities that our service begins with a blessing from the minister. But it's not a peculiarity. It's a following of apostolic practice. It is good and right that the people of God should hear from their God those perhaps most encouraging words that what God has for you as his people is grace and peace. It's always tempting, isn't it, that when we take part in the worship service, those parts that are familiar and repeated, we begin to take for granted and begin to let our minds rush on to the next thing. But this is a crucial part of apostolic ministry and of the worship of God when God meets with His people and says, whatever your fears, whatever your worries, know that my grace is with you. My peace is upon you. And so right at the beginning of the book of the Revelation, there's this encouragement to us. We serve a God who has grace for us, who has peace for us. And John says that grace and peace comes from our triune God. from him who is and who was and who is to come and from the seven spirits before his throne and from Jesus Christ who is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth. Now here is a Trinitarian blessing in a somewhat unusual form, but here the Father is described as the one who is and was and is to come. It's a testimony to his true divinity, to His supremacy, to His eternality, to His sovereignty. Our Father is in charge. He's the one who is and who was and who is to come. There are echoes of Isaiah 43 in this passage. And in Isaiah 43, 10, we read, Before me no God was formed, says the Lord, nor shall there be any God after me. I am the Lord. And that's what's declared here. Our Father, who is and was and is to come, is able to say to us and to minister to us His grace and His peace. And then several times in the book of the Revelation, we have reference to the seven spirits before His throne, which is a way of speaking about the Holy Spirit in His work and in His ministry. Seven in the book of the Revelation is the number of fullness. It's the completeness of the Spirit who is all-seeing, seven eyes before the throne, we're told in Revelation 5, and is all-powerful, seven horns before the throne. So the Spirit pronounces a blessing upon us in the fullness of His knowledge of who we are and what we'll endure, in the fullness of His power to come and to bless. He says grace and peace to us. And then we read, from the second person of the Trinity, but here in the third place mentioned, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. It's an amazing thing that when John speaks of God Almighty, Father, Spirit, he also speaks of Jesus. The eternal Son who was incarnated and shared our nature and now has raised our nature so that the third person mentioned here, the second person of the Trinity has a name for us, a human name, one with us, Jesus, who came that we might have grace and came that we might have peace. And tonight I'd like to focus our sermon on the titles or the descriptions given to Jesus here. these three remarkable titles or descriptions given to our Lord. Our encouragement, our blessing comes from Jesus Christ, the one who is the faithful witness, who is the firstborn from the dead, who is the ruler of the kings of the earth. He is the faithful witness. First thing we can say about that is it means he is the truth teller. What Jesus Christ says to us is true, is reliable. He said of himself, I am the way, the truth, and the life. We have seen the fullness of God's truth in him. And the testimony that he bears is a faithful testimony, an utterly reliable testimony. If we would know the truth, we must look to Jesus Christ. He is the truth teller. And that's why we in our Reformed heritage have been so insistent about the authority, the reliability of the Word of God. It's why our confessions have said that the Scriptures are infallible. Against them, nothing can be alleged. It's why our Heidelberg Catechism defines true faith as believing all things that God has revealed in His Word. Jesus Christ has come as the revealer of God to tell the truth. And it is a wonderful encouragement for us to know that he is a faithful witness. He has not told us anything untrue. But altogether, what he has said is the reliable word of God, so that we might know with certainty where and how God has spoken. This is an important point in our day. It's an important point in every age. But there are many who would suggest that Jesus was a good man, a noble man, an inspiring man, a wise man. There are many who would say he was a prophet. But they are not willing to say of him that he was the eternal son of God and therefore the final faithful witness of God's whole truth. Joseph Smith thought that Jesus was a prophet, but he had something more to say. He was a fuller prophet than Jesus. Muhammad said that Jesus was a prophet, but Muhammad said he had a fuller truth to reveal than Jesus had. But here in Revelation chapter 1, we are taught clearly that Jesus is the faithful witness that all the truth of God has been revealed to us through him, and we can rely upon him. We can rely upon him to tell us the truth about God. And the great truth that is highlighted here in this title for Jesus, and the great truth that the book of the Revelation wants to impress upon us, is that God is faithful. That's sometimes a hard truth to believe and hold on to. Is God faithful in difficult times? Is God faithful when we're sick, when we're frail? When we're suffering in the body? Is God faithful in a world which can have tsunamis? Some of you may have read that the Archbishop of Canterbury, after the word of the tsunami came through, said it's hard even to believe in a God when we live in the kind of world where there are tsunamis. It's kind of shocking. And yet, we do face struggles of all sorts which can try our faith and make us wonder, is God faithful to His promises? Does He keep His promises? Psalm 89 is a psalm that particularly raises that question for us. Did God keep his promise to David? You may have noticed we sang two psalms related to promises to David. David is the king who was the focal work of God's redemptive purpose for Israel in the Old Testament. He rose up David to be a model, in some ways, of the Messiah to come. Was God faithful to David? Well, what's interesting, it seems to me, is that here in Revelation 1, in these descriptions and titles given to David, John is picking up phrases precisely from Psalm 89 and is saying, in effect, Jesus is great David's greater son. In Jesus, we see all the promises made to David fulfilled. And so if there was ever a question as to whether God was faithful to David, in Jesus we can see his faithfulness. Look at verses 35 and 37 of Psalm 89 if you've kept that part of your Bible open. Once for all I have sworn by my holiness, and I will not lie to David, that his line shall continue forever, and his throne endure before me like the sun. it will be established forever like the moon, the faithful witness in the sky. The moon is a faithful witness to God's creative power, to God's handiwork, to His lordship over all of creation. The moon is the faithful witness in the sky. And Psalm 89 says there'll be a faithful witness on earth too, The throne of David, enduring forever. And who sits on that throne? Who is the son of David? Who is the one who will reign forever on David's throne? Our Lord Jesus Christ. He's the faithful witness. He's the one who testifies to us above all else. God keeps his promises. God preserves his people. God works out in history, sometimes when we can't see or understand how it's happening, His purpose. Think of those centuries when the promise seemed to have failed to David, to Israel, and there was no king. Think of the burden upon the people of God as decade by decade and century by century went by. What is God doing? Where is the promise of His coming? And so, too, we have wrestled with those questions in the many forms of suffering, great and little, that have beset history in the centuries now, two millennia since our Lord Jesus ascended into heaven. And the question comes, where's the promise of his coming? And John, all the way back in the first century, wanted to say to us, Don't you worry. God is faithful to his promises and we have a faithful witness. Jesus Christ enthroned on David's throne assuring us that our God is faithful. And therefore, because God is faithful and Jesus Christ was faithful and Jesus Christ remains the faithful witness to the faithfulness of God, we are called to be faithful. We are encouraged to be faithful. It makes sense for us to be faithful. John describes himself in chapter 1, verse 2, as a witness to God's faithfulness. And interestingly, in chapter 2, I think it is, Chapter 2, verse 13, we have a reference to Antipas, a believer at the church in Pergamum who was martyred for his faith, and John describes him as a faithful witness. Antipas in a city where Caesar was worshipped as God, where there was a great temple built to Zeus in the shape of a throne. Antipas said, Jesus is God come in the flesh for our redemption. Jesus is David's son. Jesus sits on David's throne in glory. And Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And I will bear faithful witness to that truth, though you kill me. And that's what happened to Antipas. And the book of the Revelation puts this before us as the people of God to say, as Christ was faithful in his witness to the faithfulness of God, will you be faithful? Will you live for your God? Will you hold to his truth and speak his truth and lift up his truth as the light in a dark place? That's what we're called to do and to be. So Jesus is first of all the faithful witness. then he is the firstborn from the dead. You notice again in Psalm 89, verse 27. God says of David, I will appoint him my firstborn. I will appoint him my firstborn. You know, Moses, speaking for God, had said to Pharaoh in Exodus 4, verse 22, Let my people go to worship me, for Israel is my firstborn. But Israel was over and over again a failure and a disappointment. And then David was raised up as God's firstborn. You are my son, this day I have begotten thee. Psalm 2, first of the kings of Israel. But the kings of Israel were a disappointment and a failure. And then God sent Jesus Christ, His own true Son, His own eternal Son. The Son of whom He could say at every moment in Jesus' life, You are my Son in whom I am well pleased. And this Jesus, though He died for our sins, was raised up. He's the firstborn of God, but in a special and glorious way. He's the firstborn from the dead. He has conquered death for His people. He is the Lord of life. That's what this is saying. He's the firstborn from the dead. that he might be life for you and for me. And in that life, we see God's faithfulness to his promise to save a people. It was only in the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ that you and I could be saved. That's the gospel truth. That's the truth that, again, the world too often doesn't want to hear. That's the truth that too often, perhaps in the church, we pass over quickly. But that's the fundamental truth that only in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ do you or I have any hope. Apart from that, we are sinners, lost and hopeless and helpless. But in Jesus Christ, the firstborn from the dead, we will live. He is the truth and He is the life. That's what this passage says to us. And he's loved us. He's loved us with an everlasting love. And he's freed us from the sin that beset us and was going to kill us. There in the middle of verse 5 we read, To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and has made us to be a kingdom and priest to serve his God and Father. To him be glory and power forever and ever. He loved us and He freed us by His blood that we might be His people. That we might live for Him. He is the firstborn from the dead that we might have life in His life. And therefore that we might be, as the whole rest of the book talks about, overcomers, conquerors, victorious in Him. So that the world cannot overwhelm us. The devil cannot claim us. Sin cannot control us. because we have the power of a resurrection life in us from the Savior. God is faithful. He said He'd save a people. And He's done it among us. You should have confidence in that God and in His faithfulness for you today and for tomorrow and throughout your lives. I didn't have much confidence when I set out for church tonight. I said to Mary Ellen, it doesn't really matter how good this sermon is, There won't be anybody there. But you see, you're faithful. You're here. You're serving the Lord. You're waiting upon him and upon his word. And it's a wonderful thing that that life should live in us and grow and develop in all of the circumstances that we face. And then thirdly, we read that Jesus is the ruler of the kings of the earth. This, too, is taken from Psalm 89, that same 27th verse. I will appoint him my firstborn, the most exalted of the kings of the earth. Jesus is the ruler of the kings of the earth. That's an amazing statement, isn't it? Think of how amazing it must have been to those little churches in Asia Minor. in every one of those seven cities of Asia Minor, they would not have had to walk very far from their front door to see some temple or some idol or some recognition of Caesar and all of Caesar's power, all of Caesar's splendor, all of Caesar's claims to dominance. They were just a little people. And yet here John says to them, don't be discouraged. No matter how few in number you are, no matter how little influence you seem to have, no matter how much the world seems to go on without paying any attention to you, your Christ, your Jesus, is the ruler of the kings of the earth. Not someday, but today. Now, at this moment, He's in charge. Nothing happens, nothing happens but under his sovereign care. He's a king now, and the kingdom over which he rules now is a kingdom often of suffering. You see that verse 9. I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus. It's not the kind of kingdom most people want. A kingdom of suffering. A kingdom of patient endurance. It's a kingdom that John knew all too well. He was in exile. on that little island of Patmos. Think about that for a moment. John, the beloved disciple. Perhaps the person who on earth Jesus was closest to in terms of the bonds of fellowship and human companionship. The one who had traveled with Jesus so closely now that Jesus is ruler of the kings of the earth and John has been declared an apostle what glory must come to John in this world right palaces wealth but no it's exile it's suffering it's loss why so that he can be a witness so that he can say, I follow the path of my master for whom there was first suffering and only later glory. You see, that's the kingdom to which we're called now under the rule of Jesus Christ. The kingdom of living in this fallen world, of trying to function in this fallen world so that we may bear witness as lights in this dark world so that those who live in darkness may be called into the marvelous light of Christ's kingdom. That's the calling that's upon us in light of the kingship of Jesus Christ now. But John also wants to remind us that not very long from now the kingdom will come in its fullness of glory. Not very long from now every eye shall see him even those who pierced him. Every eye will see him and his glory will be revealed. And as the book of the Revelation talks about so wondrously at the end, there'll be a new heaven and a new earth, splendid beyond description. And the Lamb will be at the center as its life and its light. That's the hope that is ours, no matter how great the tribulation and suffering in this world. And so Jesus Christ, through his apostle John, speaks to us as the faithful witness. And he says, know that your God is faithful. Know that your God is the God of grace and peace in our Lord Jesus Christ. Know that no matter how great your suffering at any moment will be, God has not forgotten you. But promises to you truth and life and faithfulness in his kingdom. Now, in its phase of suffering, but not so long from now, in the display of its glory forever. Your God is faithful. He was faithful to his promises to David. Today, David's son is ruler of the kings of the earth. And we cannot even begin to imagine the glories that will yet be revealed. And so, people of God, as you have a faithful God, so in his power live faithfully for him to the glory of Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth. Amen. Let us pray. O Lord, our God, how we do thank and praise you that you do encourage us, that you encourage us with yourself and with your promises and with the wonders that you have accomplished in our Lord Jesus Christ. And so we do pray, O Lord, that you would build up our souls in faith. That we would listen to the truth as it is in Jesus Christ. That we would know the life as it is in Jesus Christ. That we would know the power of his kingdom to sustain us and to use us as his kings and priests in this world. Thank you for the matchless gifts that you have given us. and sustain us in your service no matter what the difficulties we face. For we pray in Jesus' name, amen.