The Book of Revelation begins with an angel telling John: “Do not be afraid.” But then the angel goes on to pummel John with one terrifying vision after another.

How do you explain this? Is John a fraud? He says not to be afraid, but then he paints, in great detail, many scary threats.

That’s the first question I tried to answer in my sermon “Crowns, Not Crutches.”

Ultimately, John does want us to be afraid, but he wants us to fear the right things. We tend to fear the wrong things. We run up the mountain to avoid the tsunami only to be buried by avalanche.

So, what does John want us to fear? That’s the second question that fueled my sermon prep.

What was John’s Point?

John’s point is that we should not fear what this world can do to us, or even what the Beast might do to us. Instead, we should fear God. That is, we should fear our own unfaithfulness to God. We should fear our own betrayal to Christ Jesus, and we should fear our own neglect of his teachings.

That’s a legitimate fear because faithfulness to Jesus isn’t easy, especially here and now in our modern polarized era, in this arena of angry influencers, of manipulative talking heads, of professional conflict-entrepreneurs with their mic-drop political takes, their belittling internet memes, their mastery of mockery, their gourmet skill at ridicule. The journey Jesus calls us to is a richer, slower, deeper journey.

Everything Jesus offers looks like a wet sock compared to the dancing shoes of rhetoric and propaganda we see all around us. I understand the temptation to discard the slow growing fruit of Jesus’s teachings and dive into the fructose of our current culture-war ethos.

Paul tells us to “be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave us” (Ephesians 4:32), but now we see Christians demonstrating little compassion for people who merely vote differently, even though the true impact of each vote is the statistical equivalent of a gnat pissing on a forest fire.

We see Christians using whatever rhetorical tactic they can find to tear others down, all while Paul instructs us to build one another up (1 Thessalonians. 5:11).

We see Christians saying vile things about others even while Paul instructs us to “avoid godless chatter” (1 Thessalonians 5:22).

We seem stuck in current events and consider everyone from a worldly point of view, even though that’s exactly what we’re told not to do (2 Corinthians 5:6).

We’re great at “exposing fruitless deeds of darkness” (Ephesians 5:11), but then we cannot seem to keep ourselves from engaging in unwholesome talk about the perpetrators of those deeds (Ephesians 4:29).

Perhaps we’re patient with some, but certainly not “patient with all” (1 Thessalonians 5:14).

We let the anxiety of politics rob us of the “peace of Christ” that should “rule in our heart” (Colossians 3:15).

Instead of filling our conversations with grace and salt (Colossians 4:6), we fill it with labels, judgment, and amateur diagnoses.

We’re great in the easy unity of agreement, but not good at “making every effort to maintain unity” (Ephesians 4:3) in the face of disagreement.

We’re good at “reject every evil” that we see in people (1 Thessalonians 5:22), but terrible at “holding on to what is good” in people we disagree with (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

We’re great at calling out wrongs, but absolute failures at discussing them as brothers and sisters with wrongdoers who commit those wrongs.

So those are some of the themes that went into this sermon. I hope you get a chance to hear it.

Writing this sermon was a fight, but it somehow came together better than I thought it would. You can listen to it HERE: “Crowns, Not Crutches.”