It’s hard to know what to make of Revelation.  It can feel daunting, and not just because there’s so much going on, so many things to try to keep track of.  If you’re going to try to read Revelation, read together with someone, or in a small group.  Get a commentary or overview from a trusted source to help aid your work of understanding.  And as you read together, pray.

There are more than enough terrifying things in Revelation to cause us to put the Bible down and not come back for a long time.  And there are wonderful, beautiful things that so dazzle and lift us that we can every so often begin to have the sense of being very near the throne of God.  What the angel shows John, and us, today, has that power: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb” (22:1).  Zechariah, long before, had written: “On that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem” (Zc 14:8).  Oh, I’ve got peace like a river, in my heart.  What was it Jesus said?  “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (Jn 7:38).

John couldn’t have seen it without the help of the angel.  An angel, remember, is God’s messenger.  John, also, is a messenger.  Remember you also, are messengers: given the Holy Gospel, the Good News of salvation.  Oh, we know we’re supposed to share it, through our words, our choices and actions, by how we live with others outside this building, with each other, and with God.  And still we can feel stymied about just who to approach, and how, and when.  Evangelism ought to be so simple; invitation seems like it ought to be so simple, yet it seems so often so hard.

This river that the angel shows John—it isn’t as if this is the first time such a river has ever been mentioned, described, or seen.  The river of the water of life.  Yes, please.  Isaiah heard from God that He would “extend peace to [Jerusalem] like a river” (Is 66:12).  Jerusalem is shorthand for God’s own people, the faithful remnant saved out of the great tribulation.  Peace like a river.  Peace from God.  Waters of life.  Earlier in Isaiah, God had lamented over His people who had rejected Him: “If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river” (Is 48:18).  Living according to God’s living Word brings peace, like a river.  People want God, sometimes.  They would like that peace from God.  If, to have God’s peace, they would have to sacrifice and abandon their own way, the satisfaction of their own innate inclinations . . . well, God’s waters probably weren’t going to be enough, anyway.  God is so far away, and what has He done for us lately?  Sometimes someone asks for our love, our attention and concern, and we don’t want to give it.

Ezekiel, also, was shown the river, flowing “from under the threshold of the temple toward the east” (Ezek 47:1), getting deeper the further it flowed.  Along the banks, Ezekiel saw “a great number of trees” (Ezek 47:7).  Ezekiel’s angel companion explained that the river would flow into the Dead Sea, making it teem with life.  Some of you have been to the Dead Sea.  From the pictures I’ve seen, there could be nothing more hostile to life, but that’s the power of God, isn’t it?—life where there wasn’t the least thought, the least possibility, the least hope of life.  God overcoming every obstacle, changing the most hostile place into a place rejoicing, abundant with new life, God’s gift: the river of the water of life, clear as crystal—not muddied by the turbulence of life in this age, not muddied by our divided heart’s turbulent desires, always at cross-purposes.

John tells us, “On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.  And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (22:2).  The tree of life—we hadn’t heard about or seen it since the Garden; that tree had been there all along, too.  I like to think that its fruit looked even lovelier than that of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  But it wasn’t to the tree of life to which the serpent was calling—not to life!  Twelve crops, John tells us—fruitfulness itself, abundance itself!  Twelve is another of the biblical numbers for completion, blessing, abundance, strength, wholeness.  Twelve crops—one for each month of the year: ever-bearing, never failing.  Never failing life . . . sounds like eternal life, God’s life.

The tree of life, its “leaves for the healing of the nations.”  You know, come to think of it, we have seen that tree, since the Garden.  It was there at Skull Hill; a river flowed from the tree, a river of life, and the fruit of that tree was for life: Christ, the Living Word of the Living God.  The leaves are for healing, the leaves of the book, the Word of God.  What is God’s Word for?  To condemn?  To lock us up in guilt?  It is for our healing.  The serpent beckoned us to believe we were just as good as God.  Christ shows us how far we are from God, and how near God is to us, arms open to receive us, if we would come to Him.

Ezekiel, taking in the green glory of the vision, is told that: “Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river.  Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail.  Every month they will bear fruit, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them.  Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing” (Ezek 47:12).  Their leaves will not wither, so also sings the first psalm, singing of the way of the righteous, like trees planted by streams of water, water from the holy place, from the throne.  By that water comes prospering.  It is the water of God that causes those trees to be fruitful, to fulfill their purpose, glorifying God and enjoying Him forever.  Fruit every month, the angel tells Ezekiel—the fruit that God causes does not depend upon external circumstances—the fortunes and misfortunes of life in this world.  The fruitful are fruitful not because they have a fantastic job or an ample bank account.  The fruitful are not fruitful because all is going superbly at work or in their family or with their health.  The fruitful are fruitful because God makes them fruitful, because they are planted, rooted, by the river of God, drawing up His waters into them, thriving.  They cannot be uprooted, there.

Ezekiel saw the river flowing from under the threshold of the Temple.  The angel shows John that the river begins at “the throne of God and of the Lamb.”  John recorded Jesus saying, long before, “Anyone who believes in me may come and drink!  For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart’” (Jn 7:38).  The waters are the gift of the king, from the king’s own heart; the king has opened the spring for us, for our sake, for our healing, fruitfulness, and blessing, so that we, being made fruitful by those waters, may ourselves be a blessing.  Beloved, how shall we be an even greater blessing to one another in the coming year?  How may we be an even greater blessing to our neighbors, our community, our fellow human beings?  What do people need?  Food?  Housing?  Healthcare?  Work?  Yes, all these, and there remain too many who seem to be suffering from a lack of one or more of those blessings.  What people need most is someone dependable, someone who is there for them, a resource, a friend, a candid counselor, a sympathetic ear, someone who can offer them healing and help them up when they’ve stumbled under their load.  When we direct ourselves and others to such living, we are walking in the footsteps of Jesus.

John is being shown the fulfillment of the Promise.  He shares with us what he has seen.  “No longer will there be any curse,” he writes; “The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him” (22:3).  We are accustomed to the idea that, in the life to come, we will be where God is: heaven.  We aren’t quite sure how to envision heaven or imagine it, except that it will be wonderful, bright, joyful, and elsewhere.  What John has been telling us is that, in the world to come, the restoration that comes after the Day of the Lord, God will be where we are; it isn’t so much that we will go to Him, though we shall: it seems more accurate, biblically, to say that He will come to us, and stay.  Before He came each time only to go back—always there but not always seen, or heard, or felt.  In that new world, the glory of God, the palpable presence, will be among us, in our very midst—the glory-throne of the glorious God and the glory of the Lamb.  Never again will we  feel separated, distant, or forgotten.  We will know, always, ever after, that God is with us.

We “will see his face,” John tells us, “and his name will be on their foreheads” (22:4).  Let’s get to that last part momentarily.  Remember first, though, that God Himself had told Moses—than whom no human being had ever been closer to God, with whom God spoke as friend to friend (Ex 33:11)—God told Moses that no one could see God’s face and live.  That wasn’t a threat: it was a simple statement of reality.  The glory-presence of God, the totality of God, was more than the human frame could endure.  So God, being gracious and kind, allows Moses to see God’s from behind.  But we want to see His face!  How can we have a relationship with someone whose face we never see?  Our relationships depend upon faces, expressions, emotions.  How can we see the face of the living God, though?  Through the Lamb.  The Lamb has the face of God because the Lamb has the face of Christ Jesus, who tells us that to see him is to see the Father (Jn 14:9).

But “to see” also means to understand, and to understand means somehow to have a part in, to participate in.  “His name will be on their foreheads.”  Is that like a tattoo or something?  Is that like those marks everybody was getting, earlier in Revelation (13:16), or the marks the angel was making in Ezekiel’s vision (Ezek 9:4)?  In the Bible, the Name means much more than the combination of letters by which someone is called.  The Name is the character of the person, who that person is, at heart.  John tells us God’s name will be on our foreheads—that’s about the highest part of our bodies, when we stand upright like human beings.  The name will be on our foreheads—the first, highest part of our thinking, reflecting, discerning, choosing, and acting—we’re not guided by the back of our head or the bottom of our feet.  The Name will be the guiding principle in our living—automatic, natural, beautiful, just, and good.  We will exhibit God’s character, exactly as God intended from the beginning.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I like the night.  My most productive time of day is before noon, but my most peaceful, reflective time of day begins with twilight, that first hour of darkness: it’s a blessing, for me!  So, when John also tells us “There will be no more night” (22:5), I confess that my first reaction is “Oh, no!”  Zechariah also had said, centuries before, “On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness” (Zc 14:6).  Oh no!  Northerner that I am, I love cold, frosty darkness!  Let’s remember, though, that night and darkness are John’s way of talking about aimlessness, lacking the way, being off the way that leads to God.  “I am the light of the world,” Jesus tells us (Jn 8:12).  John fills in some of what he means: “They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light” (22:5).  The light of a lamp, even the light of the sun, for John, have been substitutes, ultimately completely inadequate substitutes, but also helpful pointers, to the divine reality.  Lamp and sun had been useful for pointing to what we had been lacking, pointing to what Jesus was going to make available to us, to what we would have in him: the true light, complete and perfect light, in which we can rest secure; perfect, enduring peace.

On that day, we will be in the light; we will display God’s own character in our own thinking, desiring, choosing, and actions; we will experience and enjoy the fullness and abundance of the perfect healing that comes with God’s living Word; we will rejoice in the cool, clear waters, playing like happy children under the eyes of our loving Father, and the Lamb who was slain.  Beautiful!  Oh, for that day.  Even the bravest and boldest of us, even the most devoted, could be excused for reading all John has to say, all that he saw, and coming away thinking it’s a wonderful dream.  Ah, wouldn’t it be lovely?

We don’t know what to make of Revelation.  John understands.  I doubt even he understood it all.  There were parts that may have seemed too incredible even for him!  “The angel said to me, ‘These words are trustworthy and true.  The Lord, the God who inspires the prophets, sent his angel to show his servants the things that must soon take place’” (22:6).  Hold on to the vision, this mysterious gift from God.  Blessed assurance!

Soon.  Soon, when?  Soon, how?  God’s soon isn’t our soon, as we know, yet it won’t be long, and God’s long, we know, is really long!  “Look, I am coming soon!  Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy written in this scroll” (22:7).  He is on his way.  The Word shall be fulfilled, whether in our own time or centuries from now; the Word is always trustworthy.  What then, about us?  What are we to do?  Keep the words of the prophecy: treasure them up in our hearts and live the Living Word of God.  Only keep striving to live His law of loving obedience, and leave the rest to God.  The old king lamented there was nothing new under the sun.  God says, behold, I make all things new.

Praise be to the power, wisdom, glory, grace, and love of His mighty name, now and forever and unto ages of ages.