Scripture Introduction:
Worship Happens. It’s a fact of life.
How do you know if you are worshipping?
Louie Giglio says:
[It's easy.
You simply follow the trail of your time, your affection, your energy, your money, and your allegiance. At the end of that trail you'll find a throne; and whatever,
or whomever, is on that throne is what's of highest value to you.
On that throne is what you worship. Sure, not too many of us walk around
saying, 'I worship my stuff. I worship my job. I worship this pleasure. I
worship her. I worship my body. I worship me.'
But the trail never lies. We may say we value this thing or that thing more than any other, but the volume of our actions speaks louder than our words. In the end, worship is
more about what we do than what we say.” ]
Revelation is a stirring reminder of why we worship our Lord even in the midst of hardships. It was written to remind Christians who were persecuted and struggling with all the temptations of this world that God is still on his throne, still working all things to our good and His glory.
Today, we’ll read chapters 4-5, a scene of all heaven worshipping the Lord on his throne that will show us why we too want to worship God and none other.
Read: Revelation 4
1After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this." 2At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it. 3And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian.
A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne. 4Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads. 5From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder. Before the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God. 6Also before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal.
In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back. 7The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle. 8Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings.
Day and night they never stop saying: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come." 9Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, 10the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say:
11"You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things, and by your will they were created
and have their being."
Revelation 5 - 1Then 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. 2And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, "Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?" 3But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. 4I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. 5Then 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."
6Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. He had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. 7He came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. 8And 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.
9And 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.
10You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth."
11Then 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. 12In a loud voice they sang:
"Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!"
13Then 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 honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!" 14The four living creatures said, "Amen," and the elders fell down and worshiped.
All men like the Grass wither and the flowers fade but the word of God will last forever…
Please pray with me briefly now:
Heavenly Father, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing to you through our Lord, our rock, and our redeemer, Jesus Christ, Amen.
This text gives us many reasons why we want to worship God.
We’ll look at three:
We worship God because fulfills our deepest desires for Justice, Justice and Hope
1st Our God’s glory fulfills our desire for Joy
I. The Glory of God- Desire for Joy
Let’s jump right in and explore this Vision
A window to heaven opens and John sees the throne room of heaven,
The 1st thing John sees is the Lord high and exalted on his throne.
The Throne is the dominant, central image of this passage, mentioned 13x’s in these 2 chapters
John’s not able to express what the Lord looks like other than describing him as a rainbow of dazzling gemstones.
Like Psalm 104 says: “The Lord is very great; clothed with splendor and majesty. He wraps himself in light as with a garment” (vv. 1-2), and in 1 Timothy 6: “God lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. (vv. 15-16).
It’s as if the Lord himself is too bright for John to behold, like the noon day sun, but there is a crystal prism around the Lord that refracts his brightness into a rainbow of colors.
The rainbow symbolizes that God will mercifully sustain his people just as He did with Noah and those on the ark.
But the rainbow of God’s mercy is balanced by the flashes of Lightning and thunder rumbling from the throne, which remind us that this is the law giver of Mt. Sinai- God is the righteous judge of all the earth, who will by no means acquit the guilty.
Knowing God was enthroned and in command of the world would be a great hope to John’s listeners, pushed around by the world as they were: 1st century Christians were Cast out of cities, had their possessions stolen, were victims of mob violence, thrown to wild animals…. To know that the Lord was on His throne, still in control of history, still in control of their destinies, would still call to account those persecuting them was a very comforting image indeed!
Around God’s throne are four living creatures, angelic beings which both represent all of creation and rule over it (4:6). The number 4 corresponds to the entirety of creation- like the four directions of the compass.
In the same way, the "living creatures" have different faces which represent the full range of all creatures: a lion (the noblest), an ox (the strongest), a human (the wisest)… though that’s debatable ☺) and an eagle (the swiftest). The eyes all over their bodies symbolize their great awareness of all that transpires in the universe.
What are the Living Creatures most aware of? In chapter 4 v.8 we see they never stop praising God. Day and night they declare his holiness- his otherness from all creation as its creator. They function as worship leaders for all of creation to sing praise to God.
We also see 24 Elders. These elders may be angels or men, but whatever they are, they are, they represent the church throughout the ages.
24 corresponds with the 12 tribes of Israel in the OT and the Church built on the 12 apostles in the NT.
And 24 was the number of priestly divisions for God’s earthly temple. So that each division could lead the people of God in worship and sacrifice.
We can see that these Elders are dressed in white as priest and function as priests leading the people of God in worship along with the 4 Living Creatures. And they do so in a Kingly role as well. Getting off their thrones to kneel down and cast their crowns before the lord.
They reflect God’s glory as they give God glory. They rule over creation even as they submit to God.
** Here is an interesting tangent that we don’t have enough time to pursue in detail: These Elders become like the one they worship: As God is pure and reigns on the throne, they are dressed in white and worship from small thrones. In the same way, as we worship Christ we become more and more like him!**
But the Main point of chapter 4 is that All of Heaven, all of creation is worshipping & enjoying the Lord. It’s as if this were a giant cosmic stadium and everyone is cheering wildly for the winning team. But instead of shouting “Touchdown!” when the Red Skins score, they’re shouting holy holy holy is the Lord God Almighty, the creator and sustainer of the universe.
God gave John this picture of heaven to wake us up to reality.
For us on earth to realize that God is the center of the universe and Not us.
God gives this vision to us so that we would worship him.
Why does God want our worship?
[C.S. Lewis asked this questions as he was becoming a Christian. Over and over in the Bible God demands praise from his people… He considered: Was God like a vain woman craving compliments? Lewis immediately rejected this: He said “Even if such an absurd Deity could be conceived, He would hardly come to us, the lowest of rational creatures, to gratify His appetite. I don't want my dog to bark approval of my books.”
Lewis realized it was quite the opposite - in the act of worship that God actually gives himself to us. He gives, we receive. In this way….
He goes on to say: the most obvious fact about praise (or worship)– whether of God or anything – strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless . . . shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise – lovers praising their mistresses [Romeo praising Juliet and vice versa], readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game – praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. . . . Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible. . . . I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: 'Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent?' The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can't help doing, about everything else we value.”
If you Got lost in that quotation. The bottomline is that we praise, we worship what we enjoy. Lewis goes on to say:
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . .
The greatest Gift God can give us is himself.
The Lord is the creator –anything that you enjoy here is a reflection of him.
Everything Lewis just mentioned is a something God made and emanates from his being.
This scene wakes us up to God’ greatness. Wakes us up to the fact he is worthy of our worship. Nothing in the universe is as beautiful and captivating and satisfying as God!
By calling for, even demanding our worship it as if God is saying: “Here I am in all my glory: incomparable, infinite, immeasurable, unsurpassed. See me! Be satisfied with me! Enjoy me! Celebrate who I am! Experience the height and depth and width and breadth of savoring and relishing me!”] – Section modified from http://www.enjoyinggodministries.com/article/27-c-s-lewiss-most-important-discovery/
The Lord is praised as creator, but when we worship his creation.
We get it wrong and cheat ourselves of the joy that could be ours.
Enjoy the things of creation but realize that what you must like about them is what God has bestowed on them, and worship him for it.
Because He alone fills our desire for Joy.
We also worship the Lord because he fulfills
II. All believers Desire for Justice
The heavenly worship scene pauses as a scroll appears in God’s hand.
What is this scroll? Scholars call this the Scroll of Destiny- it’s God’s will for the world. It’s written on front and back because it is detailed, the full will of God to bring about the culmination of time. It symbolizes the Lord bringing Heaven to Earth, Judgment on evil, Restoration & Redemption to what’s good.
The scroll of destiny is the answer to our prayer: Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Put the beauty, peace, and justice of heaven into our hearts and lives and world that have been so ravaged by sin.
Please Lord, Make everything that is crooked straight, make the wrong right, make the false true, make the wicked pay, give the righteous relief.
Yet (at 1st) no one can open the scroll and John weeps and weeps- he is inconsolable.
Why is John so devastated that no one can open the scroll?
John has just seen the perfection of Heaven. Where everything is as it should be. The Lord is beautiful and enthroned. Peace and rest. Everything we desire and more. Paradise with God. Visions indescribable.
Yet day after day, John and the church he loves see the Earth, with its ugly headlines and suffering… Just as we do. John longs for God’s kingdom to come to earth. He hungers and thirsts for God’s righteousness to come down and make things right.
Yet no one is worthy to open the scroll. No one can bring God’s will forth to the earth. And without the scroll opened everything still remains the same.
Nothing can break the endless cycle of violence, brokenness, and heartache…
Ever been inflamed with rage at some injustice?
Or wept for those devastated in a war on tv, or heartbroken for some one wounded by a battle in your own home?
This is your heart joining with John and with the Holy Spirit inside of it groaning in words you can’t express, helping you to pray for the Lord’s return.
How bad do you want it? You should! You should!
Hear the longing and hope which Russian novelist Dostoevsky had for this scroll to be opened:
"I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened." — Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
God’s judgment fulfills our desire for Justice
III. The Worthiness of Christ – The Desire for Hope
Why can’t anyone open the scroll?
No one is worthy! No one is powerful enough or pure enough to handle God’s will. No one is holy as God is holy. Even the 4 Cherubim- the living creatures hovering around the Lord have six wings so that they can hide their creatureliness from God. With 2 they fly, with two they cover their bodies, and with two they cover their faces because even these perfect angels blush before a Holy God.
How much more any of us? We are all sinful and therefore under the judgment of the scroll. Even if we could open the scroll, we would be opening judgment on ourselves. Yet there is Hope!
The Lion from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David has conquered.
Both of these are titles from messianic prophecies made hundreds of years before Christ.
The 1st was made by the patriarch Jacob 1500 yrs before as he blessed his 12 sons, saying that from his son Judah would come a king as strong as a lion who would rule over all the 12 tribes of Israel forever. This was partially fulfilled 500 yrs later with King David, a real life King Arthur type, who brought peace, prosperity and Godliness to Israel. But many of his descendents walked away from the Lord and the prophet Isaiah prophesied that one day a true spiritual as well as physical descendant of David, the man after God’s own heart, would bring God’s kingdom to earth. Jesus more than fit the bill.
Jesus is the conquering Lion of Judah, the King David, King Arthur type and yet quixotically, in verse ? he appears as a lamb that was slain. A sacrificial offering before God.
The lamb imagery recalls 2 OT images. One is the Passover Lamb which was slain and whose blood was dipped on the doorways during the Exodus. The Angel of Death would see the blood and Passover the house of believers in it.
The 2nd image is that of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 who frees all of God’s people by his suffering. We read:
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. (Isaiah 53:3-7)
With NT eyes we see these seemingly contradictory pictures of Lion and Lamb coming together in Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross. In Jesus’ seemingly most vulnerable moment, suffering execution and even death, he achieved the greatest victory. Rising from the grave and conquering sin and death and Satan.
John certainly sees this. In his Gospel he says of Jesus “Behold, the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world!”
There are so many who would claim to be worthy to open the scroll of destiny and make this world right again. Some say education and technology will do it. Others have worked hard or even fought for a new form of government, new leaders in gov’t. But these are all pretenders. The change is only skin deep, only so long. Problems, injustices still rage rampant.
Every new generation is touted as the one who can really change things for good, because they are so bright and full of potential. But all of this is prideful and naïve. Humanity will never fix humanity.
I’m always grimace at graduation speeches that say this latest class can do anything, achieve anything. I’m not denying significant inventions and some progress. I’m not saying people can’t do good. But there are some things we as humans just can’t fix.
We as Christians realize that to face the evils of the world we need A hope not from ourselves. We need a hope beyond ourselves.
Chuck Swindoll says…
If our greatest need had been information,
God would have sent us an educator.
If our greatest need had been technology,
God would have sent us a scientist.
If our greatest need had been money,
God would have sent us an economist.
If our greatest need had been pleasure,
God would have sent us an entertainer.
But our greatest need was forgiveness,
So God sent us a Savior!
And this savior can save! Only God can sit on his heavenly throne. Yet we see Jesus standing on God’s throne. He is God and has all of God’s power. In verse 6 we see the Jesus the Lamb having seven horns, eyes and spirits. The number 7 in Revelation symbolizes fullness- completeness. Horns = power. Eyes awareness or knowledge, and spirits = presence. Jesus has 7 horns- meaning he has the complete power of God, 7 eyes, the complete knowledge of God, and 7 spirits – complete omnipresence of God.
The Lamb (Jesus) sees and knows what is taking place on earth (eyes) and is able to do something about it (horns).
Jesus is Lord. Jesus is God. That’s the unified message of the NT. He has the power to take on all the bad guys and free the good guys (who aren’t any better than the bad guys but are forgiven by JC).
And this savior is worthy. He CAN redeem the world. He rescues men from every tribe, nation, and tongue. They’re all worshipping united before his throne. I often can’t get my own family to be united about anything. Yet all these people couldn’t come together. This is deep, lasting change that only Christ can achieve.
If in chapter 4 all of Creation was singing praise to God for his mighty works of creation and sustaining his creation, then chapter 5 is about all of creation singing praise to God the son for redeeming it. Redeeming us.
Mid way through v. 9 we read:
and with your blood you purchased men for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation.
10You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth."
The 4 Creatures and the twenty four elders are joined with a heavenly host of untold millions of angels, and every living creature - trillions upon trillions of creatures singing praise to the lamb who has redeemed the church and therefore the world.
The songs, the cheering is non-stop
Creation needs groan any longer. Jesus will transform it into perfection.
[ Just after the climax of the trilogy The Lord of the Rings, Sam Gamgee discovers that his friend Gandalf was not dead (as he thought) but alive. He cries, “I though you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself! Is everything sad going to come untrue?
The answer in Christianity to that question is – yes. Everything sad is going to come untrue! ]– Tim Keller Reason for God
This is our Hope
4 Quick Applications in 1 minute as we consider why we worship God, who fulfills our desire for joy, justice and hope.
1) Worship God and enjoy him. If you enjoy something here on earth, praise God for it.
2) Persevere when suffering as Christ did as a lamb as he will give you power to get through it. And expect suffering- if God’s own son had to go through suffering don’t think you won’t. We are to follow in his footsteps.
3) Pray and Plead for Christ to come back as a Lion and make all things right. Make this earth new, especially in your own heart.
4) Dream about heaven and how great it will be.
Please Pray with me now the simple, urgent prayer of the Apostle John:
Come Lord Jesus, Come!!... For your glory… Amen.
Acknowledgments:
Much of the exegesis was from G.K. Beale’s Commentary on the book of Revelation in the NIGTC series. Other works looked at were Mounce in the NICNT and Poythress’ book on Revelation.
All of these commentaries help ground Revelation in OT prophecies, which help the readers interpret scripture (specifically, the visions of Rev) with scripture, rather than with speculative imaginations. Speculations end up placing the focus on the person rather than on Christ.
