Stubborn rebels

It is surely thegreat longing and heart's desire of every true Christian that everyone would repent and believe the good news of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. When you compare the blessings of being with Christ with the consequences of persisting in rebellion, it's hard to comprehend why anyone would reject him. And yet most do.
For nearly two decades, I've preached to non-Christians in church, at weddings, funerals and school services and I've told them as clearly and winsomely as I can about the great offer of life in Jesus and the consequences of rejecting him. Once or twice I've been criticised for saying that God punishes evil people, but by and large it seems as if I've just been ignored - or rather, that Jesus and his message of eternal life and eternal death is ignored.
Reading through Revelation is a reminder that God is full of patient compassion as well as fiersome, righteous judgement. There's no reason why he should delay final judgement, but he does, so that everyone has ample opportunity to repent and recevie life. And he sends many warnings of the final judgement as partial judgement begins now (Rev 8 & 9 cf Romans 1:18-32), and yet despite the terrible warnings, we read,    

The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.   (Revelation 9:20-21 ESV)

For those of us who enjoy the mercy, grace and blessings of Jesus, it's hard to comprehend why anyone would not give up their worship of empty idols. Their stubbornness is infuriating, their idiocy makes me angry! How can they refuse such a gracious God? And yet they do.

In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Corinthians 4:4 ESV).

But we don't give up on evangelism. We persist. We're patient as God is patient. And until the day of final judgement, we will hold out the offer of life which is the gospel. 

Renewal

For Christians who take the Bible seriously, there is always the danger that we become entirely cerebral and neglect the heart.
Of course you can never be too cerebral - we're to love God with 'all our mind' - but we can neglect to 'love God with all our heart'. (Of course people of other traditions tend to neglect the mind which is equally sinful, but that's another story).
This morning, I was struck by something written about the book of Revelation by Vern Sheridan Poythress  (no, I'm not making the name up, he's a serious Bible commentator and scholar!):

Renewal to our lives comes through worship, through adoring this God who created us and saw fit to redeem us through the blood of the Lamb. Revelation renews us, not so much from particular instructions about particular future events, but from showing us God, who will bring to pass all events in his own time and his own way.

We must allow serious study of God's word (which is essential if we love God with our minds) to flow into adoration and worship from the heart because that's God's plan for his creation, and especially for man.
But the reason so many don't make this final step into worship and adoration when they read their Bible is because we think the Bible is about us not about God. So, in the case of Revelation, we spend too much time trying to decipher what the book might (but probably doesn't) say about today's geopolitics instead of seeing that it shows us the character and attributes of God - it is a revelation of God's majesty and sovereign authority, it's about the God who saves and judges, and so it must be read intelligently with the OT as the pirmary point of reference, not geopolitics of today or yesterday.
Similar principles could, of course, be applied to any book of the Bible, and if we allow God's word about himself to lead us to adoration, praise and worship from the heart, it will give God the glory he deserves, put our lives into proper perspective and transform our living.

Reading Revelation

I don't know how many times I've read Revelation - it even formed a large proportion of a module in my Masters Degree - and yet I've never really got to grips with it.
But reading it over the last few days in my quiet times, I've found the NIV commentary on the biblegateway website tremendously helpful. It's full of sound and sensible interpretative help. The only problem is, it's not that easy to find. So, if you want help from these generally excellent commentaries go to the relevant passage on biblegateway.com and you'll see a page like this:

 If you look at the right hand end of the yellow line, you'll see 'show resources' in red. Click here and the text of the NIV Commentary will open in a side pane:



Select the relevant section of the commentary and it will be there for you. Unfortunately, as you read on, you have to go back to the menu to select the next section.

If you just want the commentary without the Bible text next to it, go to the Additional Resources section on the left hand side pane and scroll down until you find the link.