The Seven Churches of Revelation: Introduction, Rev 1:4-20

Last week, we finished a series through Paul’s Letter to Titus. It was all about building a healthy church. We looked at the importance of qualified leaders, Christians’ relationships with false teachers, each other, the lost, and even the government and society at large.
Today, we are going to begin an examination of the seven churches in Revelation. These studies are related, because as we will see, five of the seven churches were not healthy. As we look at them closely over the next few weeks, we will see what their illnesses were and what needed to be done to cure them.
These were very real churches with very real problems, but they are also case studies for churches and for individual believers today. We will all deal with the same underlying issues as these churches.
Chapters 2 and 3 get into the details of each church, while chapter 1 sets the stage.
Revelation was written by the Apostle John around 96AD. John was the last of the Apostles alive and he was exiled to the Island of Patmos. He was probably in his 80s or 90s at this time. The first generation of Christian leaders were gone, and the church as a whole was struggling.
Christians were facing false teaching and spiritual drift from within and increasing hostility from without.
It was at this moment that God gave this vision and message to John. The message was directed specifically to the churches in the seven major cities of the Roman province of Asia (Modern day Turkey). The location of these cities formed a circuit, and they were addressed in circuit order.
For these struggling churches, the message sent was simple—it’s about Christ. It’s who Christ is, what Christ is doing, and what Christ will do. Don’t mistakenly think that Revelation is about the end times or about judgment. Those things have their place, but the book is about Jesus—it reveals Jesus.
Here in Chapter 1, to prepare the churches for the message to come, John teaches four important lessons about Jesus.