Title: Shining Dawn Star/Revelation 22:16
Contents
Revelation 22:16 is the testimony of Jesus. In other words, “I, Jesus… … It begins with ” and explains who Jesus Himself is.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus Himself said, “I… … He explained his existence in various ways.
① I am the light of the world (John 8:12)
② I am the gate of the sheep (John 10:7)
③ I am the good shepherd (John 10:11)
④ I am the resurrection and the life (John 11:25)
⑤ I am the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6)
⑥ I am the vine (John 15:5)
⑦ I am the bread of life (John 6:48)
⑧ I am a king (John 18:37)
And the text says, “I am the root and offspring of David, the bright morning star.”
Let us examine the text in detail.
1. He said it is the root of David.
In Isaiah 11:1, Isaiah refers to the coming Messiah, saying, “A shoot will come out of the trunk of Jesse, and a branch will come out of his roots and bear fruit.
Jesus was a sprout that came in fulfillment of this very prophecy, and a branch that rose from the root.
Root of David has two meanings.
The first is that he was ahead of David. It is common knowledge that the root precedes the stem or branch.
David referred to the coming Messiah in every verse of the Psalm he wrote and called “Lord”. In other words, he called the Messiah who would come as a descendant of David “Lord”. Because he is the son of God who borrowed the lineage of God.
Second, according to the prophecy of Isaiah, he is the Messiah who was born from the root of David.
In other words, although Jesus is God, he is a descendant of David and was born through that lineage.
Revelation 5:5 says, “The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome.”
Roots have the property of hiding themselves and extending deep into the ground.
Jesus, the root of David, also silently stretched out and took over the whole world. Its root is now breaking through the iron curtain and the bamboo curtain.
As the Apostle John said, the root is the root of victory.
The roots seem to be trampled on and pressed into the soil, but the very roots have the power to make a giant tree rise.
The Roots of Jesus have taken over the world, have taken over mankind, and have made a new history.
2. He said he was the son of David.
In Matthew 1, the genealogy of Abraham and his descendants is recorded.
1:1 begins with this: “The world of Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham and David.”
The fact that Jesus is the son of David is evidence that He came as a human in human history.
Among those who deny the humanity of Jesus, there are those who say that Jesus was God with man, but did not come as a man.
However, the Bible clearly states that they are “the Son of David.”
The public confession of the church is that Jesus Christ is “the true God and the true man.”
Denying divinity or denying humanity is heresy.
1 John 4:2-3 says, “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God, and this is the spirit of the antichrist.”
There were two heresies that threatened the early church.
One was Ebionism, which denied the divinity of Jesus. They claimed that Jesus was only the son of a carpenter of Nazareth.
The other was Gnosticism, which denies the humanity of Jesus. They argued that Jesus' body was like a temporary dwelling place, but he did not come as a human being.
It was the Gnostics who denied the humanity of Jesus that the Apostle John warned against as the antichrist.
At that time, the leader of the Gnostic cult was a man named Carinthus.
There is an anecdote that one day the Apostle John was in the public bath, and saw Caerintus coming in and went out.
Jesus was the son of David and the descendant of women. Jesus came as the descendant of David, suffered, died on the cross, and rose again.
3. He said it was the bright morning star.
If the word ‘root of David’ means the divinity of Jesus, the word ‘son of David’ means the humanity of Jesus.
In Numbers 24:17, it says, “A star comes out of Jacob.” It means to come from among the descendants of Jacob.
Malachi 4:2 refers to Jesus as “the year of righteousness.”
Also, in John 8:12, the Lord called Himself “the light of the world,” and in 2 Peter 1:19 He expressed Himself as “the morning star of the dawning of the day.”
And in the text, the Lord refers to Himself as the “bright morning star.”
Lord Barclay said, "Just as the morning star is the brightest of all the stars and is the harbinger of darkness, so Jesus is the best and brightest of all the stars, from whom the night of sin and death will flee."
The morning star, the shining star, and the bright star have the following meanings.
1) It means hope.
It is hopeful that the dark and gloomy night will pass and the dawn will come.
The dawn is the starting point for the passing of night and the beginning of a new day.
Likewise, Jesus Christ gives us a new day and a new life.
Of course, there is hope for those who are outside of Christ. But that hope is not eternal hope.
But the hope the Lord gives is eternal hope.
2) It means victory.
No matter how great the darkness is, it cannot overcome the light. Even if you light one candle, the darkness in the room disappears. The thick darkness that covers the earth disappears when the sun rises. This is because the power of light is strong.
Jesus, the bright morning star, is the victor over the darkness of the world.
In John 9, we find the story of a man who had been blind from birth.
One day, the Lord met him on the road and said, “Go to Siloam and wash.” He made mud with saliva and put it on his eyes. Then his eyes were healed.
In this event, we discover the power of the Lord to cast out and heal darkness.
That day, the blind man opened his eyes twice.
Once, you opened your physical eyes to see the world, things, and people, and once again, you opened your spiritual eyes to see the spiritual world and thank the Lord for His power and grace.
Currently, the number of blind people in our country is said to be about 150,000. Among them, it is said that about 20,000 people can open their eyes through open eye surgery.
In the meantime, it is said that 893 people underwent open-eye surgery through Siloam Hospital.
In our society, there are an unexpectedly large number of blind people.
But even more important are the eyes of the spirit.
Because the eyes of conscience, the eyes of truth, and the eyes of faith are darkened, they cannot see a step ahead, and each of them is sinning and inclining to luxury.
It's like a car driving through a pitch-black night without lights.
One time, I was on a Korean Air flight to visit Sweden.
After boarding the flight leaving at 9pm, the plane was moving and entering the runway on time.
The reason was to fix it because the plane's lights didn't come on. So I left about an hour after that.
Airplanes, automobiles, people, and history must not be extinguished.
Jesus is the shining morning star.
3) It speaks of grace.
The longer the electric light is turned on, the higher the electricity bill.
Oil boilers also cost more fuel the longer they burn.
One of the methods for treating cancer is radiation therapy.
The treatment method is not only a problem in the cost of treatment, but there are also many difficulties in the method.
In other words, it is said that the physical pain experienced by the person receiving the treatment is great, and the mental pain suffered from abnormal phenomena in each part of the body cannot be ignored.
From this point of view, for example, how much would it cost to light up the world with electricity 24 hours a day, 365 days a year? will it cost you money? No, would that be possible? Impossible.
However, God gave the sunlight by day and the moonlight by night, and he is illuminating the universe with those lights.
And he gives light, oxygen, rain and dew for living things to grow.
Is that all? He is healing our dying souls and illuminating and guiding our path as a lamp of hope.
In a word, it is “grace”.
In Isaiah 61:2, this event is referred to as “the year of grace” and “the day of salvation,” and in Luke 4:19, “that the year of the Lord’s favor may be proclaimed.”
The world we live in these days is becoming ferocious and desolate enough to be afraid to open the newspaper page.
Of course, it's not the news or the news or the picture of our time as a whole. But it must be a very bloody and terrifying world.
In a word, it's so dark and bleak.
But for that very world, the Lord came to this world as the morning star and is still with us.
In a world without light, there would be no need for the Lord to come as the light.
Close your eyes now. The whole world will be dark.
Open your eyes now. The whole world will look bright.
When the lamp of my heart and the lamp of my soul go out, the whole world and the way I go will be dark.
How can I light the lamp of my soul?
It is to receive Jesus, the morning star, as my Lord.
All you have to do is receive Jesus, the eternally shining morning star, into your soul.
Don't blame the world for being dark, let's light up my soul. Let's open our eyes.
And let's look to Jesus, the morning star. Let's illuminate my soul with the shining starlight of Jesus.