God only has to speak and everything happens! Right down to the cold needed to create snow, frost and crystals of ice. And then the Lord is also the one who melts them using his wind or breath. But he is not finished there. The psalmist ends his praise in stunning fashion: He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and rules to Israel. He has not dealt thus with any other nation; they do not know his rules. Praise the LORD! Psalm 147:19,20 ESV. God spoke life into being at creation. He speaks every day in order to sustain the life that he created. But now he also chooses to declare his word to his children. Unbeknown to the psalmist God does this most gloriously in the man who was the word incarnate.

What do believers mean by the sovereignty of God? Some Christians deny it is a characteristic of God at all. Wikipedia, of all places, defines this Christian teaching this way:
… God is the supreme authority and all things are under His control. God is the “sovereign Lord of all by an incontestable right [as the] creator . . . owner and possessor of heaven and earth”. Sovereignty of God in Christianity
Many who believe in this will argue that, even though the word does not appear in Scripture, you can find evidence of it on almost every page of our Bibles. There is not enough time or space in this article to prove that. But the psalmist who wrote Psalm 147 demonstrated his settled belief in the sovereignty of God.
On display in his psalm is the Lord’s greatness, his power, his infinite understanding. Basically on display is his sovereignty. The psalmist divides his understanding of the sovereignty of God into three themed lists. And the items are overwhelmingly impressive. To do justice to his thoughts we need to look at each list in isolation.
Sovereignty of God Over His People
The psalmist starts his themed list exhibiting God’s sovereignty over his people:
The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names. Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure. The Lord lifts up the humble; he casts the wicked to the ground. Psalm 147:2-6 ESV
Regardless of where we are and what we are going through and who is oppressing us, he knows. The Lord understands. He is powerful enough to change circumstances. Our God is great enough to achieve the intentions of his will and never to be thwarted – “The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel”.
The apostles were quick to reinterpret Jerusalem, in the light of Jesus, as a new city coming down out of heaven from God:
I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. Revelation 21:2 ESV
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God, who is sovereign over history, who is self-existent and eternal, who has all power, has a message for us. God himself is pulling back the veil and revealing to us what’s really happening in the world. He wants us to see the world from his perspective. This is what God wants to do. That’s why we need Revelation. We need God himself to reveal what’s happening in the world.

We’re beginning a journey today that is going to take us all the way into next year. We’re starting one of the most interesting and challenging books of the Bible. We are embarking on our journey through the book of Revelation.
Revelation is going to seem unfamiliar. Someone’s said it’s like entering a foreign country. It’s full of symbols that are hard to understand. It’s a sensory book. Someone’s said it’s “like something Dr. Seuss might have thought up after a sleepless night reading Stephen King.”
Revelation is going to challenge us. And yet, as we’re going to see today, the payoff is huge. It’s not a book that’s meant to confuse or divide us. It’s a book that’s meant to help us. David Campbell writes, “Revelation is not a handbook to last-day events. It is a pastoral letter written to Christians of every age and generation on how to live lives faithful to God and Christ in the midst of all the challenges a hostile pagan world throws at them.” This is meant to be a very practical book.
The Canadian preacher Darrell Johnson says that the Bible ever became illegal, as it is in some parts of the world, and he was allowed to keep only one book of the Bible for personal use, he would, without hesitation, keep the book of Revelation. Why? No book of the Bible presents the gospel as powerfully as this book does, he says. In no other book of the Bible do we see Jesus as clearly and compellingly as we do in this last book. “And no other book, in all of human literature, crystallizes what it means to belong to and follow Jesus in this world.”
Today I want us to dip our toes into this book by looking at the first 8 verses. These verses answer two questions for us: what is this book, and why should we pay attention to this book?
What Is This Book? (1:1-2)
That’s the first question we need to ask: what is this book? The first two verses tell us:
The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.
Here you have two important pieces of information that we need that are going to set us up to read this book well. It tells us what this book does, and where this book came from.
What this book does.
What kind of book is it? It’s a revelation. The word could be translated apocalypse, which has come to be associated with the end of the world or catastrophic destruction. But that’s not what apocalypse means in the Bible. Apocalypse means to uncover or unveil something that was previously hidden.
And this is so important for us as we start Revelation. Right away we have a great description of what Revelation is designed to do. It’s meant to reveal something that we need to know if we’re going to understand the world.
How do we know what’s going on in the world? I open up the news app on my phone. I can go online and find out what’s going on with world events any time I want.
But sometimes I go deeper. I read long-form journalism, or if I want to go deeper, I pick up a book on current events. That’s how we normally figure out what’s going on in the world.
But Revelation does something. It tells us that if we really don’t understand what’s happening in the world because we’re missing some important information. And then it unveils what we’ve missed. It shows us some realities that we could never figure out on our own, but are absolutely necessary if we’re going to understand the world. It lifts the veil between heaven and earth, so we see a fuller picture of the way that God’s working out his plans for this world.
Revelation unveils what’s really happening. It shows us:

the resurrected and glorified Christ
hidden angelic and demonic forces behind what’s happening in the world
the ugliness of the world’s system
the hidden beauty of God’s people
God’s plan for the renewal of all things

In other words, if you just rely on news to figure out what’s going on in the world, you’re missing out. You’ll never understand what’s happening in the world. Revelation is written to tell us the true story of what’s happening in the world and what will happen in the world. It describes earthly events from heaven’s perspective.
That’s what this book does.
Where this book came from.
There’s a second question that verses 1 and 2 answers about Revelation. Where did this book come from? Verse 1 says it’s the revelation of Jesus Christ. He’s the ultimate source. It’s a revelation given by Jesus.
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Christianity is first a hearing religion. The unimpressive “foolishness” of the preaching medium is suited to the Gospel message as are the modest visual media of the sacraments. We know these media are suitable and profitable because God has ordained them. If the words of scripture prompt visual images in our mind, that is natural. If we seek to create and fixate on sentimental images (even if only mental), we go astray according to the Westminster divines. Godliness with contentment is great gain—let us strive to be content with biblical data and media. 

Nothing provides a jolt of controversy like touching the worship rails, Almost every discussion of the Second and Fourth Commandments turns into a skirmish if not a pitched battle. While some Reformed folk would slot issues connected to images, worship music, and the finer details of sacramental administration and Lord’s Day observance into second or third “tiers” of importance, the mere mention of certain ways of applying the Second and Fourth Commandments (ways that seem to comport with the plain reading of the Reformed standards) elicits howls of protest. The sharp reactions around these issues tell us that Calvin was right: worship is of primary importance. People tell you what really matters to them. Hear Machen:
In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding; the really important things are the things about which men will fight.
Now, since I have no desire to start an actual shooting war I’ll refrain (for now) from talking about instruments, praise ditties and divine boyfriend songs, intinction, “young child communion,” non-elder scripture readers, or whether Christians should watch or even attend professional sporting events on the Lord’s Day…or eat at restaurants on the way to or from. I don’t want to be unreasonable.But let’s talk about pictures of Jesus, not just in public worship or Sunday School rooms but in Christians’ heads—the mental images that the Westminster Divines had in mind (no pun intended).
109. What sins are forbidden in the second commandment?A. The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counseling, commanding, using, and any wise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever; all worshiping of it, or God in it or by it; the making of any representation of feigned deities, and all worship of them, or service belonging to them; all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretense whatsoever; simony; sacrilege; all neglect, contempt, hindering, and opposing the worship and ordinances which God hath appointed.
The plain reading of this answer to the 109th question of the Larger Catechism is itself based on the plain reading of the Second Commandment. Yet, it is controversial for some presbyters. Some aver that it is impossible to have, make, or use mental images of Jesus so the catechism must have overdone it. But the impossibility of keeping this commandment (not to mention the other nine) seems a poor argument for taking a pass on it or sanding its application down to a more pleasing smoothness.
Our friend Harrison Perkins wrote a fine paper on Westminster and images several years ago. Posting quotes from that article and the reactions to it prompted these reflections. In the article, Perkins showed that Westminster was not alone (as some have suggested) in its concern about mental images.
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