Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #7 of Revelation, chapter 22.  We are going to read Revelation 22:5-6:

And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever. And he said unto me, These sayings are faithful and true: and the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly be done.

I will stop reading there.  In our last study we looked at verse 5 and covered pretty much the entire verse, except for the last statement of Revelation 22:5:

… and they shall reign for ever and ever.

This refers to the elect of God that He has saved out of this world and they “shall reign for ever and ever.” We know that when God saved one of His elect, each one God saved lives forever.  They are given eternal life and they will never die, so that is implied in this statement: “and they shall reign for ever and ever.”  In order to reign forever, you would have to live forever. 

God’s elect people were chosen by Him according to His good pleasure from the foundation of the world.  He had determined to save these people and now it has all been accomplished.  In this chapter we are reading of the new heaven and new earth and God is bringing His people into that glorious new creation. He has given His people the completion of their salvation with their new resurrected bodies and the saints begin to live with God eternally.  But more than simply eternal life, it is life for evermore as rulers.  That is what it means to “reign.”  For instance, the same word is used in Revelation 19:5-6:

And a voice came out of the throne, saying, Praise our God, all ye his servants, and ye that fear him, both small and great. And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.

The word “reigneth” in reference to the Lord God omnipotent is that same word.  The word “omnipotent” means “almighty” and “all powerful.”  Of course, God reigns because He is The King.  He is King of kings.  In 1Timothy, chapter 6, we read of the Lord Jesus Christ that He is “King of kings, and Lord of lords.”  The second word (kings) in the verse in 1Timothy is actually the word “reigneth.”  It is the only time that this word was translated as “kings” and everywhere else it is translated as “reign” or “reigneth.”  Literally, it is saying that God is King of the “reigners” and that would be the body of believers. 

By the way, the Bible tells us what happens spiritually when someone becomes saved and just because something happens spiritually does not mean it is not reality.  Right now God is judging the world spiritually and that is a spiritual reality and God judged the churches spiritually and that, too, was a spiritual reality.  Why is it that you and I would not even think of going to a church?  It is because of the spiritual reality that God’s Spirit is no longer present there and the churches came under the wrath of God.  We know that is a reality and we would not dare to enter into a corporate church.  It is a reality even though it was a spiritual judgment.  Likewise, the judgment on the world is a spiritual reality. 

When God saves His people, this is what the Bible says He did, spiritually, in Revelation 1:5:

And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

Through the salvation of His people, Christ made us “kings and priests,” spiritually.  In this life, we are nothing and we are “nobodies” to the world.  God uses the “weak and beggarly” to confound the mighty of the world, so many of us are much more like Lazarus the beggar than like a rich man.  God’s people may have money, but we are all poor in spirit and the world really has no time or interest in the children of God.  We are “nobodies” to them.  However, the spiritual reality (no matter what our occupation in this world) is that God has made us “kings and priests unto God and his father.” 

First of all, Christ made us of royal blood when He saved us by His blood and adopted us into the family of God and made us heirs of the kingdom.  We will inherit the kingdom of heaven, the Promised Land of the new heavens and new earth.  Spiritually, at the point of salvation the Bible says in Ephesians 2:5-7:

Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

According to verse 6, we are raised up together with Christ and we sit together in heavenly places with Him.  In the bible, “to sit” mean “to rule” as a king reigns from a seated position.  Remember what it said in 2Thessalonians, chapter 2 about the man of sin “taking his seat” in the temple and showing himself that he is God.  And when we are raised up to be seated together in heavenly places in Christ, it is language indicating we are reigning with Him. 

It says in Revelation 20:6:

Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection…

I just want to remind us that the “first resurrection” is the resurrection of the soul.  Then it goes on to say in Revelation 20:6:

… on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.

It is just as it said in Revelation 1:6, where it said He has made us “kings and priests,” but here it says, “They shall be priests of God and of Christ.”  It is basically saying the same thing because they, too, are said to “reign.” 

By the way, these blessed individuals have all been saved by the grace of God and none of us deserve these eternal blessings.  Not a single person God has saved at any point in time (from Abel to the present time) is one of whom we could say, “Oh, he is a good man and that is why God saved him.”  That is not true of any of us.  The Bible says, “None are righteous, no, not one.” None are good.  None of us earned salvation based on anything we did or any merit within us.  It was all by grace according to God’s good pleasure and it is a tremendous display of unmerited favor that God would turn filthy, vile sinners that have rebelled against Him and transforms them by giving them a new heart, the “first resurrection,” with the promise to come of the resurrection of their bodies.  He makes them priests and He causes them to reign with Him, “seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus.”

How long will they reign with Him?  This verse says, “And they shall reign with him a thousand years.”  And how do we understand the number “1,000” in the Bible?  It points to the completeness of whatever is in view and, in this case, it is the completeness of God’s elect reigning with Christ.  And how long will they reign with Him?  According to our verse in Revelation 22, verse, 5, it is “for ever and ever” and, therefore, the “thousand years” is pointing to eternity.  The reign will never end. 

It really is a tremendous thing that God takes the worst of sinners, as the Apostle Paul was moved to say: “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”  It is true of all of us.  Paul realized, “I am the worst.  I am the chief sinner.  I am the worst wretch that God ever saved.”  That was the understanding of Paul as he looked at himself through the Word of God.  And because God gave him eyes to see, Paul saw how he had failed to keep that Law and he saw his sin.  It is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation for all of us.  We are not anyone special, except that we are the chief of sinners and that really ought to be the perspective of every child of God as God shows us our sins through His Law, the Scriptures.

Let us also look at Revelation 11:15:

And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.

This is why we will reign “for ever and ever.”  It is because “he shall reign for ever and ever.” The Lord Jesus Christ is King of kings and He is upon the throne for evermore and He rules over His glorious kingdom of heaven.  Where are we?  According to the Bible, we are with Him, reigning with Christ a thousand years and, therefore, we reign forever.

I have mentioned this before, but God likens Himself to a king and we know that in the Bible a king, like Ahasuerus, ruled over 127 provinces.  The number “127” relates to the age of Sarah when she died and she is a picture of all the believers, so it is a picture of God ruling over all the elect.  An earthly king with a vast domain needs people He can trust, so often they would set up their own sons and give them rule over their provinces.  The king cannot give the necessary attention to each one province, so he trusts his sons and he sets them up over the provinces and, as good sons, they would report back to him.  The sons rule each province, but they are subject to the king over all the provinces and that is, in all likelihood, the idea with God and his elect.  God, who has existed for all eternity past, has many kingdoms and now He has made a people in His image and there may be as many as 200 million of these people, but they are all “sons of God” and heirs, adopted into the family of God.  They are all made kings. 

Who knows how vast the kingdom of God is and how many creations He has made from all eternity past or how many he will create in eternity future?  So for His elect that He has brought into the new heaven and new earth, He may say to one of His sons, “Thou hast been faithful over little, be thou over five cities,” and He may say to another son, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.  Thou has been faithful over a few things, be thou over 10 cities.”  He will have one son reign over this creation and another son over that creation and all the sons of God will be faithful to do His will.  They will be very faithful heirs and they will be faithful “under kings” that rule under the King of kings and they will deal always faithfully, honorably and doing what is best for the kingdom of God.  There is no sin, no pride and no desire to usurp the authority of the Almighty God, our Saviour.  It will be a beautiful kingdom and God will continue to create into this eternal future, a future without end where God’s elect live, and live, and live.  They have life for evermore and they are kings for evermore, reigning for evermore. 

This is the inheritance of the children of God and this is what God has promised to His people.  His Word has told us to wait for these things and with a good expectation and hope, we humbly wait and we recognize that we are nothing in this world, but it will only be for a short season more.  What does it matter what people think of us or how they treat us?  What does it matter if we experience a little affliction or tribulation?  What does it matter to have a physical ailment or anguish of soul and to be downcast for a few short moments?  They are only momentary afflictions and they will soon give way to “an eternal weight of glory” and eternal joy and an abundance of blessing for evermore that we truly cannot even imagine!