"from Weeping To Praise"

“From Weeping to Praise”

Revelation 5:1-14

Today I am beginning a four-week sermon series on the Book of Revelation.

Revelation is so named because that’s exactly what it is.

It’s a revelation which the Lord revealed to His apostle John.

It’s a letter of hope and encouragement for those who are being persecuted for their faith and for those who are wondering if good really will triumph over evil.

It was given to enable Christians to keep the faith in the midst of so much that was pushing back on that faith.

It introduces us to the new clarity, the new vision that Jesus’ Resurrection makes possible in our lives.

(pause)

Imagine receiving an envelope with these words written on the front: “TO BE OPENED BY THE PERSON WHO DESERVES TO DO SO.”

How would you know if you deserved to open it?

As one writer put it, “we are all overdrawn at the moral bank.”

The thought of being “deserving” at once makes us search our consciences and discover, no doubt, all kinds of things that might disqualify us, all kinds of sins we have committed, all kinds of unjust things we have done, all kinds of ways we have fallen short—missed the mark.

That is the situation at the beginning of Revelation Chapter 5 where we find ourselves looking through John’s eyes at the throne room in heaven.

God is holding a scroll sealed with seven seals.

In it is God’s plan to defeat evil and usher in the full coming of God’s reign.

“But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open” it or “even look inside it.”

And this shows us a realistic view of the deep-rooted problem that we, and it seems, all other creatures face.

No one deserves to open it.

And so, John begins to weep, realizing that there is no hope.

There is no hope for the defeat of evil.

There is no hope that things will get better.

There is no hope.

Have you ever felt as if there is no hope?

I think we have all been there.

We live in a world that is plagued with this disease of hopelessness.

You might sit in your kitchen in the morning with your cup of coffee, scrolling through the news.

You read about senseless violence and acts of terrorism and war.

You read about disturbing crimes—and perhaps it makes you wonder—is God really present and ruling this earth?

Maybe you have sat in a lecture hall with a college professor who goes out of his or her way to talk about the foolishness of Chritianity and a God who allegedly died on a cross.

He or she speaks about the foolishness of anyone who would believe in such a God and that such a God is in control of this world.

The professor makes you and others like you out to be losers.

He or she makes it clear that people who really know what’s what don’t believe like you do.

And sometimes you may be tempted to wonder if the professor is right.

Perhaps you sit down in an office filled with your co-workers.

They talk about the things they did over the weekend, and they look at you like you have a second head when you tell them that you spent two and a half hours at church on Sunday morning for worship and Sunday school.

And right now, as we sit in this sanctuary, the majority of our neighbors are either still asleep or in their pajamas watching t-v.

Sometimes we might feel like a small, seemingly insignificant little group.

We live in a world where being Christian is considered less and less as being glorious or victorious.

And perhaps it makes you wonder what’s going on.

And this is why the Lord allows us to take a seat inside His throne room today next to the Apostle John.

This is what the Lord is doing as we hear these words that John wrote in the Book of Revelation.

Today, God pulls back the curtain to give us a glimpse of reality—a reality that we don’t see on this side of heaven, except by grace through the eyes of faith.

And as John wept at the seeming hopelessness of it all “because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside” one of the elders comes to him saying “Don’t cry. Here is the One who can do it.”

And Johns sees “a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders.”

The Lamb “went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne.

And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb…