Revelation 1:1–3 Part 2 The Word of God Revealed in Christ

Rev­e­la­tion 1

¹The Rev­e­la­tion of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his ser­vants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and sig­ni­fied it by his angel unto his ser­vant John:

²Who bare record of the word of God, and of the tes­ti­mony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw.

³Blessed is he that read­eth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are writ­ten therein: for the time is at hand.

Ok, here we are in day two of our study of the first three verses in the book of Revelation.

Let’s go over what we have cov­ered so far.

We know that Christ is the Word of God who was here in the beginning.

We know that it was by this Word all things were made.

Let’s now explore the work of Christ on earth.

Why is Christ called the son of God if He is the Word of God and one with God?

Keep it in your mind that the Word of God was MADE flesh.

John 1

¹⁴And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begot­ten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

MADE — Strong’s 1096. gino­mai ghin’-om-ahee a pro­lon­ga­tion and mid­dle voice form of a pri­mary verb; to cause to be (“gen”-erate), i.e. (reflex­ively) to become (come into being), used with great lat­i­tude (lit­eral, fig­u­ra­tive, inten­sive, etc.):–arise, be assem­bled, be(-come, –fall, –have self), be brought (to pass), (be) come (to pass), con­tinue, be divided, draw, be ended, fall, be fin­ished, fol­low, be found, be ful­filled, + God for­bid, grow, hap­pen, have, be kept, be made, be mar­ried, be ordained to be, par­take, pass, be per­formed, be pub­lished, require, seem, be showed, X soon as it was, sound, be taken, be turned, use, wax, will, would, be wrought.

Christ was the word in the begin­ning but the word made here lit­er­ally means to gen­er­ate or assemble.

The Word of God was lit­er­ally turned into the flesh or man — the sec­ond Adam.

When satan tempted Christ in the wilder­ness, a clear dis­tinc­tion was drawn between Christ as the son and Christ as the Word. We will look at the temp­ta­tions and pay close atten­tion to the way that Christ responds to those temp­ta­tions.

Matthew 4

¹Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilder­ness to be tempted of the devil.

²And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was after­ward an hungred.

³And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, com­mand that these stones be made bread.

⁴But he answered and said, It is writ­ten, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro­ceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Satan is refer­ring to Christ as the son of God or the Word made flesh. Christ how­ever when respond­ing to the temp­ta­tion does not respond as the son who lit­er­ally could have turned the stones into bread. Christ responds with the WORD say­ing that man does not live by bread alone. The answer that Christ gives here is pow­er­ful and a full rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the clear dif­fer­ence between the under­stand­ing of man and the wis­dom and power of God almighty.

The Word of God is the only sus­tain­ing force in the uni­verse. It is the only thing that is eter­nal Heaven and earth shall pass away, but the Word of GOD will remain forever.

⁵Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and set­teth him on a pin­na­cle of the temple,

⁶And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thy­self down: for it is writ­ten, He shall give his angels charge con­cern­ing thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.

⁷Jesus said unto him, It is writ­ten again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

Again Christ responds to satan with the Word. Christ did not have to prove any­thing by being the son of God. His stand against satan in the wilder­ness was a clear indi­ca­tion that the vic­tory was already in Christ. The pur­pose of Christ, the Word of God made flesh was not to show him­self to be the son of God, it was to ful­fill the WORD of God in the flesh.

⁸Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceed­ing high moun­tain, and sheweth him all the king­doms of the world, and the glory of them;

⁹And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and wor­ship me.

¹⁰Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is writ­ten, Thou shalt wor­ship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

¹¹Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and min­is­tered unto him.

Here Jesus is again respond­ing with the Word but He is doing so as the son.

The son of God is the son of man. God did not send His word to act as God because it already is God. It has all power. He sent His word to be the ful­fill­ment of who God is in the flesh. In other words, Christ lived as you and I are sup­posed to live. He did not trans­gress the Word, He walked by its power. Christ was not emnity against God even though the flesh itself is.

When you under­stand the power of the risen Lord and who He is, you will find it eas­ier to let His will be accom­plished within you.

The fol­low­ing verses clearly depict Christ as both the son of man and the Word of God.

⁴I have glo­ri­fied thee on the earth: I have fin­ished the work which thou gavest me to do.

⁵And now, O Father, glo­rify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.

⁶I have man­i­fested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.

⁷Now they have known that all things what­so­ever thou hast given me are of thee.

This verse shows Christ as He was on the earth, pray­ing to the Father with all humility.

Notice how­ever that Christ says glo­rify me together with thine own self, with the Glory which I had before the world was. Christ was not act­ing as God. He was act­ing as the ful­fill­ment of God’s Word that is God.

Who is He now?

He is who He always was. The Word of God is seated at the right hand of God and the Body of Christ is seated with Him