In his sermon 'Letters from a King,' Dr. John Snyder explores the opening chapters of Revelation, emphasizing the significance of the letters addressed to the seven churches. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing Jesus Christ's sovereignty and the need for believers to realize their identity as bond servants. Dr. Snyder highlights the necessity of approaching the letters with the right attitude, advocating for a large 'measuring cup'—a metaphor for being open and eager to receive God's word. He warns against treating sermons as mere emotional experiences and stresses the importance of letting God's Word have full access to our lives. The sermon urges believers to remove any idols from their hearts that might hinder their relationship with Christ and to be genuinely responsive to the divine messages they receive. Ultimately, the sermon encourages a deeper understanding and application of the scriptures, fostering a closer relationship with Jesus Christ as the faithful witness and ruler.

We'll begin in verse 1 and then read down through just the first part of verse 12. Revelation chapter 1. The revelation of Jesus Christ, sorry I'm reading from the New American Standard, they'll probably have some little different word order for us. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his bond servants, the things which must soon take place and He sent and communicated it by his angel to his bond servant John Who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ even to all that he saw Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy and heed the things which are written in it For the time is near John to the seven churches that are in Asia grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come. And from the seven spirits who are before His throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth, To him who loves us and released us from our sins by his blood and he has made us to be a kingdom Priests to his God and father to him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever amen Behold he is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him Even those who pierced him and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him.

So it is to 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 fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and Perseverance which are in Jesus was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day and I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet saying write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches to Ephesus to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea. Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me.

Well may the Lord add his blessing to our time and his word you may be seated It's very good to be here with you I really only met Scott just I don't know. I always I lose track of time All right, I think like I met Scott like a year ago, but it's actually probably five or six. And I have really enjoyed his friendship. He's very gracious, you know, and it's good to meet you, the people that he serves. I want to try to be, by the grace of the Lord, a help to all of us.

It's a little daunting when someone calls you and says, I just finished preaching through a passage, would you come and preach on the passage? I'm like, but you just finished, you know, so I could just sit up here and say, ditto, you know, what Scott said, so do it. But I do wanna talk about a couple of things today that I think that by the help of the Lord, it might really help all of us to be very careful with the great privilege you've been given to be a church that has seven letters written to it by the king. So this morning we're going to look at that opening statement of John in verse 12, I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me. Then later after lunch we're going to have the first look at the promises that Christ gives at the end of each letter.

You know that each letter ends with basically the same goodbye. The same P.S. Blessed are those who overcome because and then there's a promise and all those promises relate then to eternal life. So we're going to talk about the need to overcome this afternoon. This evening we're going to look at the provision in Christ so that every Christian will overcome.

Let me start with kind of a simple question for you this morning. Have you finished with the seven letters? I know that Scott is finished. I asked him last night when we were having supper, you know, so where are you at? I'm you know, I wondered was he in chapter 6 already Where you at?

So you're just going to start chapter 4 next week, right Scott? Oh In a couple weeks. All right. Okay. So have you finished with this with the seven letters?

It is somehow ingrained in every person that sits in a church building I don't know how it gets there that what God really wants from you when a pastor preaches a series of sermons is for you to understand the passage and go home and study the passage a little for yourself like the Bereans and to really appreciate the passage and in a sense to be emotionally moved by the passage and then talk to each other about the passages and Then that's it Have you really understood that the goal of God writing you these letters and giving you a pastor to speak about these letters is that you would make room for every one of the seven letters in your church? In you? It's not easy, is it? It's real work to make room for the Word of God in the practical day in and day out stuff of life. My life is already full.

But Every time I come to the scripture, I am required for love of my King, and by the help of my King, if I have to take a spiritual pickaxe to John Snyder's life and find room for what he just said, then I'm duty bound to do that. Now I want us to help us do that this weekend and so we're going to look at those overarching things. But this morning just really kind of an illustration to help us. First of all, it is important when reading letters to remember two things that are different about letters than about books. Okay, two things.

Who the letter is for and who the letter is from. Who the letter is for. When you get a letter in the mail, where's the first place you look on it? I never look at the postage first. Do you?

Do you ever look at the postage stamp first? You know when you bring letters inside and they say anything in the mail for me, do you say hold on I'm still looking at the postage stamps? I don't even look at who it's from first. First thing, right to the middle of the letter. Who's it for?

Now it's a little tricky right now because we have my son and his wife are living in our upstairs of our house temporarily. They're moving out soon. They just got married last year during all the COVID craziness and so they tell their friends that they let their parents live in their basement. Alright so we're grateful and we have he married a young lady named Sarah and we have a daughter named Sarah So we have two guys in the house named John and two ladies in the house named Sarah So when the mail comes in now the Snyders have to be a little extra careful We've opened a lot of Amazon boxes that belong to other people right When you come to these letters Unlike coming to a book you want to look at who it's for. Now, visited with Scott and his family last night, they had us over for supper, and if I were to have seen a book on his desk, you know, an old Pearton book that I wanted to read, I could have gone over and picked that book up and read a couple of pages and said Man, you know, I think I'm gonna get this book but if I saw a personal correspondence a personal letter to Scott I would never go and Open up a letter and say well, I'll read a few pages of Scott's letters.

I might pick up one of Scott's books off of his desk and take your pastor's book and read a few pages and say, you know what? That really, I feel like that applies to me. But I would never go to his personal correspondence pile and pull out a personal letter for someone and read it a few pages and say, wow, you know, I think that I could apply that to me. One of the reasons that churches go through the seven letters in this book and do not benefit is that so many in churches are not on the envelope. Who's on the envelope?

Look at chapter 1 verse 1. The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show to his bond servants. Now that is a wonderful opening phrase for this book. It is the phrase that kept me from avoiding Revelation and personal study as afraid as I was of it. This whole book is an unveiling of Jesus Christ but that is a gift from the Father to the Son, so that the Son could freely give it to His church.

But look how He writes the name on the envelope. Not church, not kings and priests, bond slaves. If you are not a slave of Jesus Christ These letters may be curious and interesting You may like what your pastor says about them, but you will not find room for them in your heart Now let's look at another thing. Who is the letter from? Who a letter is from means so much more than who a book might be from.

Now I don't mean spiritual books because we do read spiritual books and when we read you know a devotional book it's pretty important to you who the author is, but let's think of some other books. Cookbooks. You might buy a cookbook because of the author of the cookbook. So it's this cook, and I really like her cooking show, but you might buy a cookbook and you never look at the author's name so a cookbook might be kind of thematic so holiday desserts or you know 100 easy recipes that a mom with kids climbing all over can do in five minutes for nothing. What about math textbooks?

I've been through a lot of mathematical textbooks in my life, but do you know that I don't remember one author? What about owner's manuals? You get a car, you have an owner's manual? You know the name of the guy that wrote your owners manual? Now look there are so many books that really the author just isn't the most important thing but when it comes to a letter, how different.

If you pick up a letter right now and it has IRS, so you look for the name first, okay this one's for me, IRS is on the top left corner, you read it in a very particular way. If you pick up a letter and in the top left corner it says, you know, capital city chase Credit card services and you know that it's just another company trying to sell you another credit card You approach it in a very different way if You pick up a letter and your grandmother's name is in the corner, or a son or a daughter who lives far from you, a son in the army, and you read it in a very different way. Who it is that wrote the letters makes a difference. Now When we come to the Lord Jesus Christ, one of the most significant things that you could do for yourself individually, and if all you hear is this and then you check out, that's okay. What you could do for yourself is this.

Go back to the descriptions that John gives of Christ, the ones I read this morning, the ones you recited this morning, and take them one at a time. Read a description and then read the seven letters. Read a description another day, read the seven letters again. Read a description. Who it is that's talking in these letters makes all the difference in the world Now so you could for instance take the description of Jesus in verse 5 He is the faithful witness doesn't that change the way you read the letters here is the one man that you can trust everything he says to you about life.

I want to know what he says about church. I can trust him. Here is the one man that has laid death itself at his feet and has exited the grave not as an individual only but as the beginning of a greater resurrection Don't you want to know what the man that that destroyed death has to say to you? Here is the one who is the ruler of the kings of the earth Here is the one who has made you a kingdom and priest and has and has broken the chain between you and your sin So you could take any of those descriptions, but we're going to take just one We're going to take the description there in verse 5 the ruler of the kings of the earth We're going to look at what kind of letters a king writes to us today. Now when we say that Jesus Christ is sovereign, we're saying more than he has the power to rule over everything in the universe.

We're saying that he has the right to rule. That is, he has all the rights. He has indisputable, unconditional, and absolute right to dictate the behavior of a molecule and a solar system of a husband and wife a child a government a church when we talk about the sovereignty of Christ it's so easy especially if you're a church that kind of finds itself in the camp of the Reformation, and I believe you are, one that would say we need to go back to truths that were discovered in the Reformation and we don't need to shy away from the sovereignty of God. Well, wonderful. But don't treat sovereignty as kind of a cold, sterile category of facts that you have to defend against people that disagree.

The sovereignty of Jesus Christ is one of the sweetest and most comforting of facts for the believer. Think of how Paul ends his first chapter in Ephesus to the Ephesians. He writes all these wonderful doctrines about the triune work of God in saving you. Father, Son and Spirit all involved. And then he prays that the Ephesians would really have an experiential grasp of that, to live on it.

And then he talks about Christ, and he says this. He says that the Father raised him from the dead, and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named. Not only in this age, but also in the one to come and he put all things in subjection under his feet that's a wonderful statement But it's not finished listen to this and he the father gave him as head over all things to the church One of God's sweetest gifts to Hope Church is that he is provide provided a supreme king Now when you consider a local church, that is a local expression of God's body God's kingdom It is an organized and governed entity But it is not a democracy. It is not rule by majority. It is not oligarchy, rule by the few.

It is not chaos, rule by committees. That's my joke right there. So if you have a lot of committees, forgive me. I'm so anti-program. One time I was doing a wedding.

I mean I grew up in a church where everything was programmed, you know, and everything was committee run. And I was doing a wedding and I get so nervous during weddings because it is important you say nice things at the right time. You know, in a sermon you can forget where you were and you can come back to it, but in a wedding, you know, grandmas are expecting it to, they're filming you, they want it to be nice and so what I'm always, I just freeze and think what was I supposed to say next and there's my notes and So I told the people to pick up their wedding, it was supposed to be a wedding program and stand and let's sing this hymn. And so I couldn't say program, I said pick up your brochure. And everybody's like, oh John, you're terrible at this.

Well, we're not really committee run either. John Brown, 18th century Scottish pastor said this, a Christian church is a very free society, but they mistake the matter who consider it a democracy. It is a monarchy administered by inferior magistrates. That's your pastors. Chosen by their fellow subjects, that's you, who are to execute the king's laws guided solely by his word.

So your king, your church has a king. Now let's stop this morning and think about the king because although we understand some things when we talk about God's attributes like God's love and mercy, God's peace, God's patience, God's faithfulness, We as humans have some experience of these on a much lower plane a very imperfect experience But there are some of God's attributes We call them the incommunicable attributes the attributes of greatness that we really just don't have categories for If he hadn't explained it to us, we'd have no idea what it is. God's infinity, God's eternity, God's infinite power and knowledge. When we talk about sovereignty, we say, well, we understand what sovereignty is. It's authority, and God gives authority on earth, but the authority that the Father has rewarded His eternal Son, the God-man with, when He finished His work, is a unique, it's an authority that's in a category all to itself.

Every passage that you read in the Bible that describes the sovereignty of God must be applied equally to the sovereignty of God the Son. So when the psalmist writes this, our God is in the heavens and he does whatever he pleases, that psalmist is talking about your church's king. And when he says in Psalm 103, the Lord has established his throne in the heavens and his sovereignty rules over all, that's talking about your king. And in Daniel chapter 4, when Nebuchadnezzar is humbled before the living God and then when his mind returns to him and he says this His dominion is an everlasting dominion and his kingdom endures from generation to generation And all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing He's talking about your king Think about the right of Jesus Christ to rule. I know since we're in a church building, none of us would say I don't think Christ has a right to rule me.

I think I could find a better king. But in practice, that's the constant whisper we hear. We say, well, Jesus rules these categories, okay? Jesus definitely rules church, and Jesus rules family. But then I have these little rooms in the back of my heart, and I hear a constant lie from the enemy that says Jesus doesn't rule here.

So I want to give you just a description of the right of Christ to rule us because as good Americans we're just not very good with monarchs we're not even good with governors and presidents oftentimes and the last year has really put a strain on believers. How far do I obey? What's respectful? What's honoring to God? Genuine questions.

But when it comes to the rule of Christ, we're freed from those questions. Think about it. The rule of Jesus Christ is unlike every other rule because your king is a ruler who rules independent and solitary it is what we would call self-existing rule he is essentially sovereign he was sovereign before he created anything to rule over. He rules through all the worlds alone we say. No one helped him to establish his throne and he owes no one here a political favor.

Your King is the one who also created everything from nothing and rules over what he created. Other men rule over things that once belonged to other people. So a man comes on the scene in earth's history, he rises to power, and he takes other nations lands to become his lands. He accomplishes it by the strength of other men's arms in his army. He rules over other people's lives.

But when we speak of Jesus Christ, all things Paul says are by him and through him and for him. So he rules over things that he made. Christ is the only king who sustains every life in his kingdom. You might argue and say, well, since Jesus created me, I admit that he has a right to rule me unless I can be self-supporting and the moment I become self-supporting I don't really need them we see this all the time a Christian college grows to the point that they're very popular they start becoming worldly They're self-sufficient financially and they break away from their denomination Religious individuals can do that as well We get our lives how we feel. Well, it's things are going pretty well.

I feel like I'm sustaining myself I feel like that I can kind of go on what I think is right. But the Lord Jesus Christ is the pillar of every life. Every part of creation, the psalmist says, God stretches out His hand toward it and it's sustained and if God for a moment withdraws His hand or turns His face, we wither. All creation is sustained by the Lord Jesus even his enemies think of the vastness of his realm you might say this okay well I was born in his realm so he has a right to be my king But if I could ever leave his realm, I would no longer be under his rule. I mean, we did that as a nation.

Can you leave his realm? You remember the psalmist? If you go down into the depths of hell, he's there. If you were to rise to the heights of heaven, he's there. Darkness doesn't hide you from him.

Think of the endurance of his rule you could say this he was my king as long as he was alive but if a king dies nobody thinks that that dead king still rules a nation Will your king ever have a successor? The king of Hope Church is eternal. That means he is not only really long-lasting, that's everlasting or immortal, He's more than that. He is above the effects of time. He is in the past and the present and the future at once.

Every moment we enter into this moment, this moment, he's already there. That's the King of Hope Church. So when we bring all these together and we look at the qualifications, it's a wonderful thing. I mean, fitness to rule doesn't equal the right to rule, does it? I mean, if you're in a country that has a monarchy, you might look at a peasant and say that man has the qualities of a ruler but our present king is a buffoon and has no qualities to rule but he still has the right to rule.

Fitness doesn't equal right but it's a wonderful thing when a people can look at their king and say the one that has the right to rule me is the one who is infinitely perfectly suited to rule me. Have you found a better king? Have you ever tried to find a better king? Would you like to find a better king for your church? And that would sound like a shocking question.

If you did not already realize, every Christian realizes that you spent years looking for a better king. You thought you were a better king. I thought I was a better king. Were you a better king? If I look back over the years, the 20 years that I lived for myself under a religious flag, I would have to say that I would summarize that as a complete failure.

The misery and the darkness and the bitter memories. If it weren't for a king that freely forgave, What hope would any of us have? So that's a picture of our King. Now that brings us to the next point. Your church has a King.

He really is the rightful ruler of everything about our lives and he's written you letters. Scott has covered these seven letters with you. So really what I just want to say is this. If a king writes seven letters to you, to your church, Then you would read those letters and respond to those letters differently than any if any other person wrote you those letters So let me just give you four things that would be different and we take these just from passages in the scripture So kind of an overview Let me give you the first one If you really want to benefit from these letters, if you want to respond appropriately to these letters, you will need to make sure that you bring the right measuring cup. I know that is not what you thought the first point would be.

When Christ talks to the disciples in the Bible, he often uses the parables, and they are a little confused about why he would use parables. After all, there are these oceans of people, there are the crowds, and you use these parables and they can be a little confusing to some of these people. And Christ explains the reason that He delights to reveal these truths to people who have humbled themselves and who want to know the truth. And He also delights to hide these truths from people who in their pride want nothing to do with them. So the curious onlooker that kind of crosses his arm and says well let's see what this guy says, gets nothing and the desperate hungry person gets everything.

Now at the end of giving a little explanation of that we find in the book of Mark chapter 4 verse 24 and 25 Christ gives another pictorial lesson. Let me read that to you. Mark 4 24. And he was saying to them, take care what you listen to. By your standard of measure it will be measured to you and more will be given to you besides.

For whoever has to him more shall be given and whoever does not have even what he has shall be taken away from him. Now if you take what Christ says there, and then you go to his letters, you have kind of this picture. Imagine two people sitting beside each other in this church. And one person is sitting there with a five gallon empty bucket. Do you have those around your house?

When I was a little kid, anytime we had to carry anything like water or anything, you know, I remember going camping and I, you know, I've always been a little guy. I was really little then. I don't think I weighed as much as a five gallon bucket. My uncles and my dad, when we would camp together, they'd say, John, you go to the stream and get the water for the camp. I couldn't carry a five gallon bucket full of water, so I would spill it all the way up.

By the time I got back, it'd be about a gallon left in it. A five gallon bucket's pretty big. Have you brought a five gallon bucket to church today? Now the person next to the five gallon bucket person is the person who brought the smallest measure in the kitchen drawer, teaspoon. What's the difference?

Christ clearly explains that what you get right now from the Lord when you come to His word is largely based on what you did with the last time you came to His word. Did you bring a large measure? Did you come hungry? Have you made room? We're gonna have lunch together, so imagine lunch.

One person comes to the table with a giant platter. I mean not a normal plate, but one of those big serving platters and everybody looks at him and thinks that's a bit piggy you know and another person who's on a diet comes with a little tiny dessert plate how have you come this morning platter dessert plate thirsty you come with one of those enormous only in America 64 ounce cups that you can sit in your truck holder or a little Dixie cup. Do you see the point? Those who have come to the word of God, earnest, caring what he says, taking everything that your pastor said on Sunday and cramming it, taking more than you could hold, and making room, and room, and I can get a little more. Next time you came, God gave you more.

And the next time you came, God gave you more. Because you widened the container to say, God, I need everything you're saying. But if you came and you said, you know, our pastor is such a good pastor. I mean, he's a really great preacher. And I really feel like I've benefited from that.

But you made no room in your life for it. You come with a little dixie cup. You say that was really all I wanted. I mean I just wanted Sunday morning. And you come next week and God gives you less than He gave you last week.

And you come the next week and He gives you less because you don't care. Be careful how you hear Christ says and then strangely the measure that you use that will be the measure that God will give you by. Now that's a wonderful truth you don't have to be clever You don't have to know Greek and Hebrew. You don't have to have a great library. You don't even have to have a lot of leisure time to just quietly sit and soak.

But you do have to have a container that's big. The opposite is true. You can have a lot of leisure time and read your Bible and you can have a great library and you can know Hebrew and Greek. This has happened countless of thousands of times and you can come to God and get nothing because your container is small. So when the king writes a letter and he brings you so much kindness, be careful what measure, what container you bring.

Let me give you a second thing. If you want to benefit from these letters and respond to them appropriately, then you're going to have to make sure that you have removed all idols from the heart which are hiding there. You know what I mean? A Christian can, when we're careless, we can give sanctuary in our soul, in the temple of our soul, to an idol. You know?

What people think of me. What I think I need to be happy. What I really wake up for. It's not Christ, it's Jesus plus. You can make an idol of your church, of your pastor, you can make an idol of your family, anything that promises to make you happy can serve as a great idol.

And be careful, the best things that God gives us the best gifts make the best idols we have to keep them in the right spot so we come to God and if we're not careful he looks at our heart and we sit down in the service and say oh I just can't wait to hear what our pastor's going to say from these letters. And God says nothing at all to you. And maybe you blame your pastor and say, he used to preach better. But the problem is That you have heart idols and you haven't removed them and God won't talk to you It's a pretty easy picture, but we find it in Ezekiel chapter 14 in verse 1 We read some of the elders of Israel came to me came to Ezekiel the prophet and sat down before me and the word of the Lord came to me and said son of man these men have set up their idols in their hearts and have put right before their faces the stumbling block of their iniquity here's God's question for the preacher Should I be consulted by them at all? Should I pay them any attention?

And the answer is no. Are you surprised to hear that people who hide idols in their heart might be the first people to show up at church on a Sunday morning? I mean it was that way in Ezekiel's day. If you want to be impacted by Jesus' seven letters, remove the distractions and the fillers and the dreams that have nothing to do with him. Remove every competitor in your heart to Christ and plead with Christ to drive them out.

Sometimes I find that old, old heart idols are like old lovers and you say to them, look it's time for you to leave you've got no right to be here again and they're stubborn you know and it's almost as if they say to you I'm not going anywhere I have a perfect cure for that throw the front door open and say to Christ come come through every room I'm sorry they're still here and and run to Christ in the scripture and lock yourself in your bedroom on your knees with the Bible and open it up and meet with him and if he comes in the front door they will run out the back. Let me give you a third thing if you want to benefit from the letters of a king you must determine not to treat his word as if it were a stirring song. How do you treat stirring songs? Your emotions get stirred. You think, man, I really enjoyed that.

And that's it, right? You go home and it just fades. Ezekiel chapter 33, God says this in verse 30, but as for you, son of man, your fellow citizens who talk about you by the walls and in the doorways of the houses and they speak to one another each to his brother and say Come now and hear the message which is coming from the Lord now that sounds great Then he says this but they come to you as a people come and sit before you as my people and hear your words, but they do not do them for they do the lustful desires expressed by their mouth. Their heart goes after gain. Why are they at church then?

Behold, you are to them like a sensual song sung by one who has a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument for they hear your words and do not practice them the difference between getting God to give you something from these letters and getting God to ignore you, could be the simple difference between treating your pastors' sermons as exciting, emotionally moving things that you don't do anything with, and doing something with them. When the king comes to us and we listen to his word as if it were a stirring song to be appreciated for a moment but we don't do anything, then we forfeit the right to hear from him. Let me give you the last one. To benefit from the King's letters, you have to be willing to give his words full access to your life. Colossians 3, 16, very simple verse.

Let the word of Christ, do you remember it? Richly dwell within you, abundantly dwell within you. That's a very simple picture. Do you have people that come to your house and you only let them on the porch? I mean, I do, especially during political seasons, in which we're in the middle of one.

Everybody that's running for sheriff comes and knocks on the door. I mean, normally I dive down under the window and pretend like I'm not home, but when they catch me, I open the door and I don't say to them, hey, come in, you hungry? I just stand within the door and I let them stay on the porch and they give me their spill and I say well thank you thank you for explaining that and they give me their card and I said thank you I'll think about this then there are some people that come and knock on the door and you say hey come in you know friends neighbors come in how have you been But you don't expect them to run through every closet and then you're back in your bedroom. If they did, if your neighbor came over and was sitting and right in the middle of the conversation, they said, excuse me, Scott, and went and said, which one's your bedroom? And then, pure, they go off to your bedroom.

But now grandkids, they go everywhere. They get into every nook and cranny You know they climb into your your tools and the garage they get into grandma's clothes her shoes They go into your library. They do everything and you're not offended, they're family. When the Word of God comes to you, these weeks that Scott has taught on the seven letters, let me ask you, front porch only? Living room only?

Or did you say to God, even though it's difficult, every door is open. I've unlocked it all. Every cupboard, every closet, it's yours. Let the seven letters roam. Dwell richly, he says, dwell.

Not a short visit. Move in. Stay as long as you want. Down south, of course, in Mississippi, when people get ready, when you get ready to go and you say well I guess I better go your host is supposed to say what oh no don't go listen I grew up in Columbus Ohio and I got married to a Mississippian and we in our first year of marriage we used to visit her friends you know So we stayed we visited an older couple and they were a blast and when it was when we had overstayed our welcome You know, my wife is kicking me and I said well, I guess we better go they said oh don't go I set back down And my wife looked at me like what is your problem? And I said so later in the when you're free to explain to each other I said they said don't go she said they say that to everybody they don't mean it I'm like well in Ohio we never say that you know we like open the door and it's about time you know when people come to our house I just say well before you go Let me pray and they look at each other and they're used to it now, but that's how I say it's time to go alright Do you do that do you do that with the Word of God?

Do you say oh no don't go, but you open the door or do you say to God? I don't think these seven letters have finished with me Well, let me give you just a couple of closing thoughts Since He is a unique king and since he is Hope Church's king and every believer in here, he is your king of grace. Let me ask you, have you finished with the letters? A preacher named Edward Payson, one of my favorite, from the early 1900s, sorry, early 1800s, late 1700s, so early 18th century. He preached in a place called Portland, Maine, And he was known for being a great prayer, so they called him praying pason.

This is what he wrote about people who neglect the scripture but say that God is their king. So this is what he writes. All right, it's kind of a long quote, but we'll be ending with this. He says, no man will ever voluntarily neglect to make himself acquainted with the contents of a letter sent to him by one that he acknowledges to be his superior, one that he feels himself dependent upon. Let a citizen receive a letter from his king and It will receive immediate attention Nor will that citizen especially if it contains important instructions think that a quick glance is sufficient No, he will Study it till he feels confident that he is acquainted with all of its contents and understands their importance.

It is equally certain and equally evident that every man whose heart acknowledges God to be his rightful sovereign, who believes that the Scriptures contain a revelation from him, that man will study them attentively, study them till he feels confident that he really understands their contents. The man who does not thus study Scripture, who negligently suffers the Bible to lie for weeks and days on open says more plainly than any words could say I am my king God is not my sovereign I am not his subject nor do I consider it important to know what he requires of me Take his messages to those who are his subjects and perhaps they will pay some attention Now what if that's you I mean, let's be honest it doesn't do any honor to the Lord to pretend that we love Him just because we're in a church building. In the last weeks of your pastor carefully walking through these letters, have you demonstrated by your indifference That you're not his bond slave So it's like someone reading a letter that wasn't written to you. It's interesting, but it's just not that important If you have to say That's me It is not too late to seek the king.

He rules on the throne of unexpected friendship. And by a terrible cost, he has carried out the eternal plans of God to provide a way for you to walk right up to Him and to throw down all the weapons you've used against Him and all your empty arguments and to lay before Him your most embarrassing sins and to say to Him, if you want me, you can have me, But God, I lay all that I know of myself before you, and I take all that I know of Christ for me. And He will treat you so kindly that every day that follows there is a cheerful self-abandon to Him. Not perfect, but real. Let's pray.

Father, we ask that you would open our eyes like John, just to turn and see a faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth So that when we read his letters we read him like we've never read any letter before for his glory God do it We ask it In His name, Amen.