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Revelation 5
There is surely no other chapter in the bible where such sadness
and such elation are found together.
Here we have almighty weeping and
almighty joy in one chapter.
Cosmic depression and cosmic worship together.
And it all turns on the Lamb – Jesus Christ. Without the Lamb there is desolation
and utter despair, with the Lamb there is rejoicing and overwhelming
praise.
Revelation 5 we see the resolution to chapter 4. I said last week that Revelation 4 is
incomplete on its own. It is not by
any means the ‘happily ever after’ it is only the ‘Once upon a
time.’ It’s not the end point it
is the beginning. It sets the
scene for chapter 5. Without
chapter 5, chapter 4 is unresolved and woefully incomplete.
Because in chapter 4 we saw the throne-room of heaven. We learnt
about the Father seated on the throne.
And in verses 5 and 6 we saw thunder and lightning, brooding
forces of nature, we saw the sevenfold Spirit of God and we saw the Sea. And all these things might remind us
of the ultimate beginning. The
first few verses of the bible in fact.
Turn with me back to Genesis chapter 1.
In the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was
formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the
Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Revelation 4 is like the first 2 verses of the bible. We have God the Creator, just like
Revelation 4. We have waters, we
have the Spirit waiting – just like in Revelation 4. And there is a great feeling of
unresolved tension. See how the
earth here is formless and empty, there’s darkness, there’s the
deep. All of these, just like the
thunder and lightning of Revelation 4, are symbols of judgement. Because things are not right. Have you ever noticed that about Genesis
1? God doesn’t just click His
fingers and it’s all very good.
No, He creates but it starts off dark, formless, empty. And only then does He form and fill
His creation. Only then does He
separates light from darkness and water from dry land. Creation only begins a process
that must be continued and brought to perfection. And how does God do this? Verse 3 – He reveals His Word.
And God said: - That’s how God forms and fills His creation. The Word of God separates the light
from the darkness, the waters from the dry land. It performs this judging role if you
like. The Word of God moulds and
shapes and directs God’s creation.
And this Word of God does so over the course of 7 days. And once we’ve gone through this
seven-fold process everything is at rest, everything is very good.
Now with that pattern in mind, come back to Revelation 5. I think we’ll find there are some very
helpful similarities.
Because in chapter 4 we’ve just seen God the Creator. And now Jesus
Christ, who is the Word of God, is about to be revealed. And He is about to bring order to this
creation. But without Him, God’s
creation seems dark, directionless, formless, empty and meaningless.
Look at verse 1 and we’ll see what the problem is.
Then I saw in the right
hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and
sealed with seven seals.
What is this scroll. Well as
you read on in Revelation you see that when the scroll is unfolded,
history itself is unfolded. And
it’s unfolded in seven parts. So
just as in Genesis the Word separates things out, judges the world over
seven days to bring order out of chaos, so in Revelation Jesus the Lamb brings
about the greatest separation, the greatest judgement and the greatest
order out of chaos and all this by opening the seven seals.
The opening of the seven seals in chapters 6 and 7 brings about
Christ’s seven-fold judgement on the earth. But it’s a judgement that shakes everything right. By the end of the process, history
reaches its fulfilment – there is joy and peace and rest. So the scroll is,
if you like, God’s plans for the redemption of all creation. It is the blueprint of history. The meaning of life.
But there’s a problem. V2-3.
No-one in all creation can open the scroll or even look inside it.
Channel 4
has a programme this week on Stephen Hawking called ‘Master of the
Universe.’ Apparently Stephen
Hawking is the Master of the Universe.
They hope he’ll be able to figure out a grand unified theory of everything. Can he figure out the meaning of
life? Last night I typed the words
Barack Obama and Messiah into Google and got 148 000 hits. I typed in the exact phrase “Barack
Obama is the Messiah” and I got 6140 hits. (George Bush got 7 hits.
Bob Dylan got 5 hits. Jimi
Hendrix got 2 hits. David Ike got
1 hit). Obama says if elected he
is going to “heal America and repair the world.” One journalist commented, “I hope he
rests on the 7th day.”
Is Obama worthy to unfold God’s purposes for the world? No.
Not Plato or Newton or Einstein.
Not Mother Teresa, not Gandhi, not the Buddha. No king, no army, no ruler. No angel, no elder, not even one of
these awesome four living creatures. No-one in heaven or on earth or
under the earth can unfold God’s purposes.
And notice
the Father doesn’t say ‘Ok, fine. I’ll do it myself.’ This job is for someone else. The scroll is to be handed from the
Father to someone worthy.
But in verse
3, no-one worthy is found.
Instead we’re just left with a formless and empty creation. Directionless history. A moral free universe. A meaningless life.
Post-modernists
are not the first to feel the absurdity of life in a meaningless
universe. John contemplates
living in a formless and empty world and, v4, he weeps and weeps.
Verse 4
I wept and wept because
no-one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside.
Here are
tears in heaven. More than tears in heaven – here is loud and ongoing
weeping. John is in front of the
most powerful throne in the universe, but that is not comfort enough for
him. Still he cries
uncontrollably.
And we
should feel the awfulness of a Christless universe. Here John is in heaven itself – HEAVEN
– but without Jesus he’s distraught.
Heaven without Christ is hell.
Even heaven without Christ is hell.
Do we have
such a high view of Jesus? Do we
imagine we could enjoy heaven without Him? We couldn’t. Heaven
without Christ is hell. But, v5,
heaven with Christ – that is truly heaven
Verse 5:
Then one of the elders said to me, "Do not weep! See, the
Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able
to open the scroll and its seven seals."
Back in Genesis 49, the tribe of Judah is called
a lion’s cub. And the prophecy of
Genesis 49 was that the tribe of Judah would produce Israel’s kings until
the One comes who truly deserves to sit on the throne – and He will rule
the world. That is the Lion of
the tribe of Judah.
And this lion would be the
root of David. Interesting that
it says here the root of David rather than the shoot of David. Christ is described back in Isaiah 11
as like the shoot of David – one descended from David. But here Christ is described as the
root underlying David. And both
things are true. Jesus is both
the root of David and the shoot of David as Revelation 22 says. (Rev 22:16). He both pre-dates David as the eternal Son and comes in the
line of David as the Lion from the tribe of Judah.
There’s not
time to go into these titles – the Lion and the Root of David. But they refer back to Genesis 49 and
Isaiah 11 where the King of God’s Kingdom is described.
So the elder
is saying to John – stop weeping.
Here comes the Messiah.
God’s King, the Lion, He is worthy, He will open the scroll.
And then
here comes the great surprise, v6…
Then I saw a Lamb…
John heard
of the Lion, then when he looked, he saw a lamb.
And we’re
being told Christ is BOTH the mighty Lion and the meek Lamb. He is both these things at once.
Think of
Christ’s birth. The LORD Almighty
became a single cell in Mary’s womb.
The Lion and the Lamb.
Think of the Magi coming from the east bearing gifts and
worshipping a baby. The Lion and
the Lamb. Think of Jesus saying
to Peter ‘Get behind me Satan.’ Think of Him washing and drying his feet. The Lion and the Lamb. Or think of Him
raising Lazarus – Jesus weeps at the tomb of His friend and then raises
him by the power of His voice.
Lamb and Lion. Ultimately
on the cross Jesus is saving the world, reconciling earth to heaven,
defeating Satan, killing death, burying sin but He’s doing it all by
dying.
And that’s
how verse 6 continues – A lamb looking as if it had been slain.
It’s not just that Jesus is meek like a lamb, far more it’s
that Jesus is slaughtered like a lamb. The Lamb is, in the bible, the sacrifice.
And in Revelation
we’ve been waiting for the sacrifice for five chapters now. Because John’s heavenly vision keeps
describing pieces of furniture from the temple. Heaven according to John looks very much like the temple of
the Old Testament. This is for good reason. The temple was meant to be a copy of heaven. And Revelation shows us the real
thing, so we’re not surprised to see so many features of the temple in
this vision.
We’ve seen the throne
and the cherub-like four living creatures just like the ark of the
covenant and the cherubim guarding it.
We’ve seen the sevenfold lampstand (that was in the temple). We see in v8 the golden bowls full of
incense (that was in the temple).
In the next chapter we will see the altar, in the last chapter we
saw the Sea which was the name given to the big basin that was next to
the altar. In chapter 1 we met
Jesus dressed like the High Priest.
And so pretty much everything from the old temple is here in
Revelation. Everything except for
the sacrifices. These visions are
very like the temple, but without t sacrifices. And that’s a glaring ommision. Because whatever else the
temple was – it was the dwelling place of the LORD, a model of heaven and
earth, a teaching aid showing how to get right with God – whatever else
the temple was, it was also a slaughterhouse.
You know in the first
century, historians report that the Jews were sacrificing 250 000 lambs
on the day of Passover alone. The
temple was a slaughterhouse. How
many lambs must have been killed under the old covenant? Millions! The temple was a slaughterhouse and every drop of blood
screamed, ‘Sin is serious, death is demanded. But here – another is dying in your place.’
And then, one year at
Passover Jesus died. And the
blood that He shed that was more precious than all other blood that had
ever been spilt. One Passover,
God the Lamb died to take away the sin of the world. At the cross Jesus summed up and did
away with every other sacrifice.
And here John is at the victory party because now John sees the
Lamb standing. He has
triumphed. By His death He has
triumphed.
And this is where the
Lion and Lamb imagery is so important.
Jesus conquers by
being slaughtered.
He is exalted,
glorified, lifted up, by being crucified.
He is victorious by
being a sacrifice.
It’s so counter intuitive – it’s as counter-intuitive
as a Lion who looks like a Lamb.
But that is who He is. He
is a Lamb-like Lion and a Lion-like Lamb. And John wants us to hold this Lamb-Lion at the centre of
our thinking.
Verse 6
speaks of Christ standing at the centre of three things. He is in the centre of the throne, the
centre of the four living creatures and the centre of the elders.
Let me
explain those three things in reverse order.
The Lamb is
at the centre of the elders. Last
week I said I thought the 24 elders represent the people of God in Old
and New Testaments - the 12
tribes of Judah plus the 12 apostles of Jesus. And here we see the Lamb is at the centre of the people of
God. There is no people of God
without the Lamb. Christ and Him
crucified is central to the church.
But the Lamb
is also at the centre of the four living creatures. Four is the number of universality –
we speak of the four corners of the earth. These four living creatures are angelic beings representing
all creation. And here we see the
slain Lamb is at the centre of creation.
And in a sense, this whole chapter is modelling that point. All of history hangs in the balance
waiting for the Lamb to make sense of it. Jesus is not just central to the church – He’s central to
the whole universe.
Do you
remember Jesus picking up a seed in John chapter 12 and saying ‘This seed
is like me, it dies, goes into the ground and rises again to bring new
life.’ You see all creation is
patterned upon and held together by Jesus the Lamb. We’re going to see in v13 that the
whole of creation sings to the Lamb.
The cross is not just one man on one Friday a long time ago. The cross is the centre-piece of all
creation, the logic of its operation, the meaning of its existence. Without the slain Lamb all would be formless
and empty – He stands at the centre of creation.
But finally,
the Lamb stands also at the centre of the throne. And remember, this is the throne that
represents the presence, control and authority of God Himself. And central to that power is
the weakness of Christ the Lamb.
When you imagine the very epitome of God-ness, when you think of
the highest heights of divinity, the most heavenly vision of Almighty
Deity what do you think of? You
should think of the Lamb who was slain.
There was an
old saying from the early church: ‘Christ reigns from the tree.’ He rules the cosmos from the
cross.’ Revelation 5 says the
same truth from the other perspective, on the heavenly throne sits the
Lamb. When you push through to
the deepest truth about God you will find the bleeding Saviour. There is not a depth to God deeper
than Christ crucified.
The Lamb is
at the centre of the church, the centre of creation, the centre of the
throne.
And when we
know this, it will turn weeping into joy. Let’s read from verse 7.
7 He came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on
the throne. 8 And when he had taken it, the four living
creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one
had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are
the prayers of the saints. 9 And they sang a new song:
"You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because
you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every
tribe and language and people and nation. 10 You have made
them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on
the earth." 11 Then I looked and heard the voice of many
angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten
thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the
elders. 12 In a loud voice they sang: "Worthy is the
Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honour and glory and praise!" 13 Then I heard every
creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and
all that is in them, singing: "To him who sits on the throne and to
the Lamb be praise and honour and glory and power, for ever and
ever!" 14 The four living creatures said,
"Amen", and the elders fell down and worshipped.
So what is
being sung here? Let me pick out
a few things as we close.
V9 and v12 –
Christ is called worthy of worship.
It’s not so much that Christ makes you worship Him, He makes you want
to worship Him. He is
worthy. And in English we get the
word worship from the word worthy – worship is declaring the worthship of
Christ. It is the glad praise
which we cannot help but utter when we see Him. Because He is worthy.
Why is He
worthy? V9 “because He was
slain” Not because of some
eternal glory or His work in creation or His timeless teaching or His
miracles. He is worthy because of
His sacrificial death.
This death
will be the subject of eternal praise because, v9, this death purchased
us for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.
So what is
Christ worth? Well He is worthy
to receive, v12, “power and wealth and wisdom
and strength and honour and glory and praise!”
What are we
worth? Well in ourselves
nothing. But here’s what Christ
paid for us – His own, infinitely precious blood. That’s the price He paid for you. Look at v9 – with His blood He
purchased you. He pays everything
to purchase us. Never say you’re
not valuable or worthwhile – the ultimate price has been paid for
you. You are precious to God –
but also possessed by God. V9 we
are possessed by Him, v10 we serve Him as a kingdom and priests. And look at the promise v10 – we will
reign on a fluffy cloud forevermore.
No, ‘we will reign on the earth.’
The glorious future paid for in blood by God the Lamb is a future
on the renewed earth that has been cleansed by His judgements and made
the home of righteousness and peace.
That’s the song that is sung to Jesus. And who sings it?
Well here we
see concentric circles of praise.
Verse 8 shows us the inner ring – the elders and the four living
creatures fall down in worship!
As I said last week, if we met one of these creatures in the
street we would die of fright I’m certain of it. They are awe inspiring and
fearful. But these creatures
cannot remain on their feet when the Lamb of God stands in glory.
Moving out
from the inner ring, v11 introduces us to thousands upon thousands and
ten thousand times ten thousand angels.
In v12 they sing to the Lamb.
And then, v13, every creature in all creation gives praise to Him
who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.
This song of
all creation is not a future event.
Revelation 5 takes place between Christ’s first and second
coming. It happens in between the
time that the Lamb is slain and the time when we will reign on the
earth. So this song is being sung
today. If we had ears to hear, we
would hear all creation singing: "To
him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honour and glory
and power, for ever and ever!"
Three very brief concluding thoughts.
If this is
the song of all creation, then Jesus really is important. When we pray for our friends to know
Jesus, we’re not just praying they’ll come to know the founder of
Christianity. We’re praying that
they’d be in touch with and join the song of creation. We pray that they will tap into the
very heart-beat of reality. When
we speak of Jesus we’re not just pointing to some figure from the bible
but to the One who is the beginning, the middle and the end of God’s
creation – the centre-piece of all reality.
Second,
think of that phrase, the Lamb at the centre of the throne. When we’re caught in sin and we wonder
– Can I really come before the throne like this? Yes – come to the throne because
sitting on the throne is the Lamb – sitting on the throne IS your
forgiveness, your atonement, your cleansing and your peace. Don’t slink off in a spiritual sulk
come to the Lamb who is your Lamb, He has made it a throne of grace.
Finally, ff you’re going through suffering that you feel is a
million miles from the life of heaven, look again. The throne is occupied by history’s
greatest sufferer. The slain Lamb
can sympathise with divine empathy.
Sometimes people think that the existence of suffering disproves
God. I’m sure suffering disproves
the existence of many gods. But
not the true God. Not God the
Lamb who sits on the throne still bearing the scars of His
crucifixion. Suffering should not
drive us away from the throne but towards it because there sits a man of
sorrows and familiar with grief.
But He’s also standing, He’s also the Lion, He’s also
triumphed. He is the very One to
turn to in trouble. So sin should
only drive us closer to this throne, suffering should only drive us
closer to this throne because the Lamb is at the centre.
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