Revelation 5

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks from Revelation 5 in his series called Missions as the Triumph of the Lamb.

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Please turn in your Bible this morning to Revelation 5. I said last night that chapters 4 and 5 need to be read together. Chapter 4 is to chapter 5 what a setting is to a drama. Now we come to chapter 5. Chapter 4 set the scene picturing God in transcendent glory, so utterly magnificent, so utterly spectacular that even the highest order of angels cover their faces before him and exalt him, not only for his sovereignty but for his creative power. They exist simply because he has decreed that it be so. Now we read:

“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. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?’ But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it.

I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. 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.’ Then 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. He came 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. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. 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. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.’ 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. In 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!’ 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 honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!’ The four living creatures said, ‘Amen,’ and the elders fell down and worshiped.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

I said that at the beginning of some of these sessions I would add one more piece toward principles for interpreting a book like the book of Revelation. Yesterday I mentioned the value of metaphor when you start talking about transcendental things. How do you talk about the throne room of God when it lies completely outside your experience?

There’s another element to bear in mind. That’s the nature of literary genre, the form of writing. Stop and think what kind of literature God has put into the Bible. There is lament. Not only a book like Lamentations but some of the Psalms and elsewhere. People bemoaning the fall of their city, for example.

There is history, genealogies, law, and wisdom. Different kinds of Wisdom Literature. Proverbs, but also a book like Ecclesiastes, circling around and around on the same themes, getting in closer, exposing worldviews, blowing them up. Gospels, made up of things like the Sermon on the Mount, but also parables, which don’t tell true stories and yet they are true in another way. A fable, like Jotham’s fable in Judges 9.

Forms like poetry of various sorts. How many oracles in the Old Testament are poetry? There are different kinds of poetry. In English, there are many different kinds of poetry, from structured sonnets to free verse and everything in between. In English, of course, we have limericks. There may be another language in the world somewhere that has limericks, but if so I don’t know it. Limericks are peculiar to the English language, as far as I know.

There was a professor called Dodd,

Whose name was exceedingly odd;

He spelt, if you please,

His name with three “D’s,”

While one is sufficient for God.

How do you translate that, for goodness’ sakes?

Then you suddenly realize that there are forms of literature that only exist in certain languages, too. One of the most peculiar forms of literature is what is often now called simply apocalyptic. It was written in Jewish and Christian circles. It started about sixth century BC. There are parts of Ezekiel, parts of Daniel that have these elements in, but big time from about 200 BC to about AD 200, and then it dropped out.

Nobody writes apocalyptic today. Oh, Hal Lindsey tries, but he can’t quite do it. The fact of the matter is that nobody writes apocalyptic nowadays. As a result, the thing seems alien to us. It seems strange. If I were teaching an ideal course on the book of Revelation, I would begin by requiring about 500 pages of reading of Second Temple Judaism apocalyptic. Books like 3 Baruch, parts of Jubilees, 4 Ezra, which is sometimes called 2 Esdras, and so on.

I know you haven’t read them, but they’re out there. You can get them in English translation. You read those for a while and the book of Revelation doesn’t seem so strange anymore. They’re sort of all of a piece. It’s a literary genre. And why not? It was part of the literature of the day, and it’s peculiarly useful in certain respects.

Amongst the characteristics of apocalyptic (there are a lot of characteristics of apocalyptic) let me mention one or two. I’ll mention more in sessions to come. One is there are certain elements in apocalyptic that are part of standard symbolism. The horn, for example, is always a way of referring to a king or a kingdom, always, without exception. It’s always a way of referring to a king or a kingdom.

Likewise, because numbers are symbol-laden in apocalyptic, seven horns almost always refers to a perfection of kingly rule. That sort of thing. If you come across some beast with seven horns on its head, you’ve either got some symbolism for seven kings or seven kingdoms or a perfection of kingly rule. You can’t argue that just because numbers are symbol-laden in apocalyptic; therefore, they’re symbol-laden everywhere. They’re not! It depends on the genre of literature.

People who make the transfer without thinking sometimes say some very silly things. You remember in John 21, they catch 153 fish? I have files at home on odd interpretations of the Bible. I have one just on 153 fish. The interpretations of 153 fish you wouldn’t believe. Did you know that 153 is the triangular number of 17?

For the mathematically challenged, a triangular number is one where you have, for example, in this case 1 plus 2 plus 3 plus 4 plus 5 … all the way to 17, and it totals 153. Seventeen is 10 plus 7. Ten is the number of the Ten Commandments. Seven is 3 plus 4. Three is the number of the Trinity. Four is the number of the city built foursquare.

Thus, the 153 fish represent (well, transparently, on the very face of it, since Christ sent us out to be fishers of men) people going out as fishers bringing in men and women to Christ Jesus and teaching them the Ten Commandments in the name of the Holy Trinity to build up the city built foursquare. Yes, I bet you I could preach that in a lot of our churches and get away with it.

The fact is it isn’t apocalyptic, and I could tell you 20 or 30 other interpretations of 153. In fact, there were 153 because it was one more than 152 and one less than 154. Somebody said, “Boy, that’s a lot of fish. Let’s count them. That’s why there were 153!” To try to make more of it than that is pushing it. In apocalyptic, the numbers are symbol-laden. It’s one of the rules of interpretation of apocalyptic.

Another thing that becomes very important in apocalyptic (it’s very important in this passage; that’s why I’m mentioning it) is mix your metaphors. Now normally, if you start mixing metaphors in English, you just look slightly stupid. Or you grin, a sort of silly way of saying something. But in apocalyptic, you’re doing it all the time.

We saw it last night already where you have six wings. Good, six wings. The imagery is drawn from Isaiah if you recall, but on the other hand, these six wings have eyes everywhere: on top of them, underneath them. Eyes everywhere. I thought wings had feathers, but no these wings have eyeballs. If you try to draw a mental image of it, it looks so silly.

You’re not supposed to draw a mental image of it. Each little bit of the metaphor combines, not to make one unified picture but to stagger the mind with conceptions that are beyond imagining and yet each has its contribution to make. All the eyeballs have to do with the fact that God sees everything. The wings had other values that we saw last night.

After a while, you get to see how these things work in apocalyptic. There are two or three really magnificent mixed metaphors in chapter 5 which are absolutely critical for understanding what this chapter is about. Let’s begin. There’s a kind of story that runs through chapter five. You can follow it in steps, as it were.

“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.” The right hand was traditionally simply the hand of power, or the hand of authority. This is a scroll, not a book. With a book like this one, to say that you have writing on the inside or the outside isn’t saying very much. Most of the writing’s on the inside.

On the outside what normally goes is simply the title, maybe the author. If it’s a paperback, blurbs on the back. That’s about it. With a scroll, at least in theory, there is as much space for writing on the outside as on the inside. In fact, in the ancient world, that wasn’t normally done. You only wrote on the inside, usually, for a very simple reason.

Most scrolls were made out of papyrus. Some were made out of animal skin, but most scrolls were made of papyrus. Papyrus is a plant a bit like celery or rhubarb except that in cross-section it’s like a triangle. You could take a sharp knife and nick it at the top and pull off a whole strip, then nick it again and pull off another whole strip just like rhubarb or celery.

Then you lay these strips down beside each other and then lay some more strips across them until you’ve got a papyrus sheet. You glued it together with some sort of organic glue and a lot of water, mashed it together, and let it dry. Then you had a papyrus sheet. Then you put on another sheet to it and either sewed it or glued it and then another sheet and then another sheet. A whole papyrus scroll went to 32 or 34 feet long.

You stuck a stick on either end and twiddled it together and then you had a scroll. In fact, one of the reasons I’m sure why Luke/Acts is two books instead of one is because each book, Luke and Acts, takes between 32 and 34 feet. That’s about as long as scrolls were ever made. You had volume one and volume two.

In theory, you could write on both sides, but Greek (written, as English, from left to right) and Hebrew (written from right to left) were at least written horizontally (unlike Japanese), so you were writing with the strips. If you wrote on the backside, then you were writing against the strips that were vertical. So your quill pen was bumping over all of these joints. As a result, people preferred to write only on the inside.

There were two reasons for writing on both sides. One was, you were so dirt poor you couldn’t afford another papyrus scroll. Then you’d sometimes write on both sides. I assume the Almighty here is not dirt poor. That cannot be the reason. The other reason is because there was a fullness of something you wanted to say and you didn’t want it separated into two volume; you wanted it held all together. Then you would put it all in one scroll.

As it turns out, as the book proceeds, that what this scroll contains is all of God’s purposes for judgment and blessing. That’s what this scroll contains. Thus, the fact that it was written on both sides is a way of saying, “This is all of God’s purposes for judgment and blessing. This is the plentitude of God’s disclosure of what’s coming in blessing and judgment for his people.” That’s what this scroll contains.

In certain kinds of important documents then, once the whole scroll was written, you twiddle sticks together and put one more piece of papyrus sheet around it then tie it with a string or seal it with a wax blob and imprint it with some sort of cylindrical mark, a ring, or something, to indicate that it was sealed with some sort of official stamp.

If you were very important, then you put on lots of wax blobs and lots of seals. Seven seals, in this case. This was a perfection of being sealed up, if you like. In fact, when some of the Roman emperors, for example, the Roman emperor Vespasian, left his will he sealed it with seven seals. In the legal practice of the day, it was not uncommon then to have other copies of such a will made by scribes before it was sealed and put on record somewhere so officials knew what was in the will, but it was actually taking the original copy and slitting the seals.

That brought the will to probate, in our terms. That effected the will, that put the will into practice. Once Vespasian died, the will still was not probated until the right authorities came along and slit the seven seals. You’ve got to understand, that’s the symbolism of the day here. Here’s a scroll with all of God’s purposes for judgment and blessing, and it’s sealed with seven seals. It’s all been decreed by God.

What will bring God’s purposes to pass? In the drama of the vision, what has got to happen is for these seals to be cut. Then the contents will be disclosed. That’s the way the scene unfolds. You’re now introduced to a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?” He’s got to be a mighty angel with big lungs and a terrific larynx because he’s challenging the entire universe.

Today we don’t worry about such things because we have microphones and we just get a little closer and suddenly you hear a little more loudly. In those days, a public orator who was challenging a lot of people had to have quite a set of lungs. They say that George Whitefield, eighteenth-century evangelist.… He crossed the Atlantic 13 times and died on the other side. Each time he crossed by sail, taking somewhere between six weeks and three months.

He could speak to as many as 50,000 people in the open air. That’s just unbelievable. He had some help. He would do it in a valley, downwind. He’d have a sounding box behind him. He’d speak under a sounding box that would then vibrate a little bit downwind, but he must’ve had a voice that was spectacular. But even he only managed 50,000 people.

This mighty angel has got to challenge the entire universe, and his challenge is, “Who is worthy to open this seal? Who is worthy to bring to pass God’s purposes?” What you find next as the drama unfolds are tears, John’s tears. Because no one is found who is worthy. Verse 3: “No one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could be found to open the scroll or even look inside it. I wept and wept.”

This only makes sense because of chapter 4. This is where chapter 4, the setting, is critical for understanding chapter 5. If you have a vision of God in which God says, “Okay, that’s fine. I’ll choose you,” you don’t have a drama here. If you have the picture of God in chapter 4, then you can understand.

In chapter 4, the seer John is so far removed from God by spectacular and fearful thunderstorms, by all of chaos, the surging sea, by even the mediation of God’s blessings by the Spirit, by serried ranks of angels who themselves don’t even dare look at this God but take off their crowns before him and bow before him, acknowledging that all they have comes from him. This God is a terrifying God.

There’s no one who is found who is going to wander up to him and say, “I can do it. Just give me the job. I’ll handle it.” It’s not going to happen. So when the challenge goes out, “Who will bring God’s purposes to pass?” and the way you do it is by daring to approach this God and taking the scroll from the right hand of the majesty on high and slitting the seals, then who is worthy to approach this sort of God and bring his purposes to pass? That’s the way the drama is set up.

No one is found … not in heaven (that is, no angelic being) nor on the earth (that is, no human being) nor under the earth (that is, no dead being) … could open the scroll or even look inside it. Even supposing someone could somehow have glimpsed something within it or perhaps looked at a copy or anything to find out what was happening, you can’t get close enough to this God even to fathom what he’s going to do. So John weeps.

He does not weep in verse 4 because he’s a nosey parker and his curiosity is being stifled. It’s not that he wanted to be able to give some sort of exposition that would explain the mysteries of the universe and now he can’t do it, so he’s frustrated. In the drama of the vision, not to have someone who opens the scrolls means that God’s purposes for judgment and blessing will not come to pass.

That means all that the church is going through is in vain. Persecution is in vain, its witnesses in vain, its proclamation of the gospel … all in vain. It means that the universe suddenly doesn’t make any sense again. If God brings about his purposes finally for justice and blessing but now they’re not going to be brought to pass, then who’s to say that justice will ultimately prevail?

In this world there are many, many, many injustices. It is the commonest part of Christian faith that says, “At the end, not only will justice be done but it will be seen to be done. There is a heaven to be gained and a hell to be feared, and justice will be done. Every knee will bow and every tongue confess, ‘Christ is Lord.’ ” So part of walking now in a world that has many injustices is walking in faith until God brings it all about at the end.

But supposing it doesn’t come about. Where is the justice? John weeps not because he’s a stifled nosey parker, but because now nothing makes sense. The universe becomes incoherent. Now there’s a reason to commit suicide, or else to become a hedonist, “Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.” There is a fair bit in twentieth- and early twenty-first century philosophy and worldview and intellectual history that really does think the world makes very little sense.

Rudolf Bultmann, for example, probably the most influential single New Testament scholar of the twentieth century wrote, “The question of meaning in history has become meaningless.” He says that because he holds to a certain form of existentialism. History itself has no meaning. It’s rather that you make your choices, you exercise your own faith to define yourself.

We live in a more postmodern world today. It’s not quite exactly the same. It’s not exactly existentialism, but now there’s no universal meaning. You find what is helpful to you, what is true to you, what shapes you, and that becomes your meaning. But there is no meaning in the universe in that kind of way of looking at things; it’s just what you think happens.

We’re suspicious of the metanarrative, the big story, today, but that means we’ve given up on hoping for meaning except what is meaningful to us. One of the ugliest things about postmodernism, it seems to me, is that it’s got such a truncated vision, even at its best. It is so small. “It is what is meaningful to me.” It’s about time to weep.

Postmodernism doesn’t even have enough sense for that. It’s so busy finding out what is meaningful to me that at the end of the day it does not look for what is meaningful, what makes sense, what brings about justice at the end. Others of us, instead, we look for a kind of utopian vision. That’s what our politicians are building on all the time. “Switch to my party. We’ll do the following things and this will bring about the Promised Land.

We have the following problems in our society. There’s the healthcare problem and the challenges of education and the inner cities. These are the policies we’ll put in place. If you vote for me, then utopia is around the corner.” We build on it in every election. There are better and worse policies demonstrated empirically with time, but according to the Bible, there is no utopia until Jesus comes back.

We would be far more realistic in this broken world. Remember that Jesus says, “There will be wars and rumors of wars, but the end is not yet. Be not dismayed.” This is a broken world. We’ve got to the place where again and again and again we’ve built ourselves up where somehow if we just put the right policies into place we’ll be here.

In 1993 I read the book by Fukuyama, The End of History. Some of you may have read it. Remarkable book. In 1993 it was four years after the wall came down. What did he mean by the end of history? He meant that all the large-scale conflicts were now over. Communism was defeated in principle, although there’s still China and a few little places like Cuba, but basically communism as an economic system has been disqualified from any serious consideration in history.

Thus, the great struggles are over. There will be a few hundred years of regional disparities and regional struggles, but basically history, as a history of conflict, is over. Liberal democracy has won. I remember reading Fukuyama’s book, which received wide circulation in the Western press and thinking, “Either Fukuyama is right or Jesus is right. They can’t both be right. I’m putting my money on Jesus.”

Then other things start happening in the world and there is more tension of different sorts, with different analyses that have come along since then. There will be more tensions yet. I’m neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I guarantee that the twenty-first century will see its share of wars and bloodshed and sacrifice and injustice and poverty.

It’s not that we shouldn’t fight them. It’s not that there are not policies that we shouldn’t put in place. It’s not that there is not a need for peacemakers. That’s not the issue at all. The issue is none of these things will be final. None of these things will bring about the Promised Land. None of these things will bring about utopia.

John weeps, because what brings about utopia is God himself at the end of the age. Now there is no end of the age. There is no final display of God’s mercy and God’s judgment. “Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep!” Stop your crying, John. Here is the answer. “Look, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.’ ”

Very often in apocalyptic literature, it is an angel who interprets things to the seer. That’s another reason for thinking this elder here is an angel. We looked at that question last night for those of you who have just arrived. He is interpreting what is going on to John as he experiences all of this. He says, “Stop your crying! Look, someone has prevailed!”

The word is a strong one. It suggests there’s been a struggle and he’s won. “The one who has prevailed is the Lion of the tribe of Judah.” That is the King from the tribe of Judah, the messianic King. That’s all it can mean from Old Testament background. The promised Messiah from the tribe of Judah is called the Lion as early as Genesis 49.

Otherwise put, “He’s the Root of David. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.” This Root of David language comes from Isaiah 11. There Christ is called the root and the shoot of David. It’s a very interesting expression. How can he be both? To be the Root of David means that somehow he supports him.

You have the Davidic dynasty somehow growing out of him. To be the shoot of David suggests that the dynasty is in place and he’s come out of him. But that is the whole point. There is a sense in which this Christ, though he is the shoot of David and has come out of him, born of David’s line, nevertheless, because he is also the preincarnate Lord, goes back into eternity and thus undergirds all the Davidic dynasty in the first place.

A long time ago, two and a half decades ago, I lived in Vancouver, served a church there. In Vancouver right downtown, center town, there is a wonderful area called Stanley Park. It sticks out into the sound and you can take a bike path around it. It’s a long trail, and there are joggers and bikers on it constantly. It is a wonderful piece of bliss.

As you go around there then come back to the other side you see all the high-rises of the city. The water is on three sides of this peninsula. To the north is the North Shore with all the mountains of Vancouver. It’s a wonderful area. As you first come in from downtown, you’re forced right (it’s a one-way system) and immediately off on the left, there used to be a small zoo.

Now there’s just an aquarium. As you go into the parking lot there, there is an old BC Douglas fir. These BC Douglas firs never grew quite as big as the California Redlands that you sometimes see in pictures, so big that occasionally they’ll carve out a hunk of the tree and put a road right through it. They are just huge trees, if you’ve ever seen them.

The BC Douglas firs aren’t quite that big, but they’re not bad. A good BC Douglas fir can be 10 or 14 feet in diameter. It’s a big tree. The Indians, long before the white men ever got there, used to cut these things down with stone axes and roll them into the sound and carve them out with stone axes to make ocean-going canoes. The work involved is just past belief.

Here in the edge of this car park, there is the stump of a BC Douglas fir that’s probably 12 feet in diameter (it was a pretty big tree) that the Indians had cut down perhaps a century and a half or two centuries earlier. The stump is still there. The tree was obviously rolled down to the sound and became some sort of ocean-going canoe.

Out of the middle of this BC Douglas fir, a BC Douglas fir has grown. I don’t know enough about botany to know if this is because a seed has got inside and it started all over again, but every time I see that, I’m reminded of this picture. There is the tree that’s been cut down. It looks as if the dynasty has ended. Then out of this stump has nevertheless emerged new life and the tree has shot up.

So it was with the line of David. The line of David grew and flourished and then became corrupt and was cut down in the time of the exile, 587 BC. There hasn’t been a king of David’s line on the throne in Jerusalem since that time. Then in due course, the Davidic line sprang up again. Because this messianic King, this Lion from the tribe of Judah, is the shoot of David.

He has emerged from David’s stump. At the same time, he’s also David’s foundation. He’s David’s origin. He’s David’s root. In fact, that’s how Christ describes himself in the very last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22. “I am the Root and the Shoot of David,” he says, “and he has prevailed.”

The really intriguing part of this chapter is the next verse. In the NIV, which I’m reading, you begin a new paragraph. That’s a mistake. The original writings had no paragraph breaks. We read in verse 6, “Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain.” So if you’re following this vision you think, “Okay, there’s a lion and then parked right next to it is a lamb.” But that’s a huge mistake.

Here is the mixed metaphor. You’ve got to picture the scene dramatically. There is giant John blubbering his eyes out, crying, crying because there is no hope for the universe. And the interpreting elder touches him on the shoulder as it were and says, “Stop your crying, John. Look, look! The Lion of the tribe of Judah. He has prevailed!” “So I looked,” he says, “and I saw a Lamb.”

The point is the lion is the lamb. Someone has written, “None but an inspired composer of heavenly visions would ever have thought of it. When earthbound men want symbols of power, they conjure up mighty beasts and birds of prey. Russia elevates the bear. Britain the lion. France the tiger. The United States, the spread eagle.” (Nobody mentions Canada, the beaver, but we’ll let that pass.)

“All of them ravenous. It is only the kingdom of heaven that would dare to use as its symbol of might, not the Lion for which John was looking, but the helpless Lamb, and at that, a slain Lamb.” He’s almost got it right, but he’s built in an antithesis. “Not the Lion, for which John was looking, but the Lamb.” No, no, that’s not right. The lion is the lamb. That is the point.

Here is the king of the beasts, the messianic figure, the rightful king, but he’s also the slaughtered lamb. That’s the whole point. You’ve brought the kingly lion and the priestly lion together. You have all the royalty and authority, and you have the sacrifice, brought together. Indeed, this lamb is quite a lamb, too.

“Looking as if it had been slaughtered.… That’s a very strong word. “… standing in the center of the throne.” This is a way of affirming his deity. He didn’t have to come in from the outside. He was not some figure that came in through the storm and across the sea, by means of the seven spirits, through all the serried ranks of angels and finally got there and took the scroll. He was already in the center of the throne. It’s a way of affirming his deity.

“… encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. He had seven horns …” That is, a perfection of kingly authority. “… and seven eyes …” Omniscience, to see everything. “… which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.” That is, even these spirits are his spirits. They do anything he wants. They do his bidding.

Now you start saying, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. What kind of a lamb is this? ‘Looking as if it has been slain’? That’s a slaughtered lamb. But with seven horns?” Again, you can’t draw a picture of that. A picture of some beast with seven horns. In a symbol-laden language it’s saying in a perfection of kingly authority. How can you get a slaughtered lamb being a perfection of kingly authority?

In fact, that had already begun to happen in ancient Israel. Israel sometimes pictured itself as God’s lamb. In literature written about the same time, it pictured itself as God’s powerful lamb, with a kind of irony built into it. Yes, Israel is small and weak. It’s a lamb, but it’s an apocalyptic lamb, with horns on its head, and Israel will rise again.

Thus, the Old Testament prophecies that seem to suggest that Israel would rise drove ancient Israelites about the time of Jesus to imagine that this lamb had lots of horns on its head. It was a way of saying, “Yes, it was small and weak, but it was also going to be strong and rule.” Now inspired by the Spirit of God, that’s the language that is picked up and applied to Jesus.

This lamb is so weak; it’s been slaughtered. It’s a sacrificial lamb, but it’s also a lamb with seven horns on its head. To change the metaphor again, it’s also the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Only such a one as this from the throne, David’s root and descendent, the kingly authority long-promised, and God’s own sacrifice is sufficient for bringing about all of God’s purposes for judgment and blessing. Only he could do it.

So we read, “He came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne.” We might put it this way. It’s almost barbaric to think of it. If Christ had not come and died, there would not have been a single redeemed person. There would not have been a church. There would have been no descent of the Spirit, no promise of the resurrection life, no promise of sins forgiven, merely assurance of a world gone wrong that was finally simply was consigned to hell.

No new heaven and new earth where the redeemed and resurrection body confront their Maker and Redeemer and recognize Jesus as their elder brother, the firstfruits from the dead. None of that. Who brought to pass God’s purposes for judgment and blessing? So we read, “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. And they sang a new song.”

Now we need to think about some of these symbols as well. You’ve seen these endless cartoons of what heaven is like where people sit around in nightshirts and strum harps. Does this really turn you on? There have been times in my cynical youth when I thought, “If that’s what heaven is like, I’m not sure I want to go there. It’s probably better than the other place, but that’s about the most you can say for it. I’m not into nightshirts. The odd harp I can listen to in an orchestra now and then, but quite frankly, eternity strumming a harp is a bit much.”

It derives from passages like this that have been taken out of hand. You’ve got to understand however that a harp in the ancient world was not what we mean by harp, where you sit down and pluck it and press the little pedals and so forth. No, no, no, that’s not what they mean, a rather subdued and elegant instrument.

No, no. A harp in the ancient world was understood to be an instrument of joy. I know that’s culture-laden, because people have different instruments of joy. If you’re not too put off by Country-Western music, think banjo. It’s really hard to imagine a banjo at a funeral. Banjo is not really gifted when it comes to lament.

A banjo is an instrument of joy. Unless you really hate this kind of music absolutely, once a banjo really played well starts going, it’s really hard to feel sorry for yourself. There’s a kind of vibrant joy to it. You find yourself grinning. You’re tapping your foot on beats two and four. There’s a syncopated folk realism. It’s a happy instrument, isn’t it?

When the Jews went into exile, they say in the Psalms, for example, “By the rivers of Babylon, there we hung up our harps. Our enemy said, ‘Sing us a song of Jerusalem.’ ” It’s all sneering condescension. “How can I sing a song of Jerusalem in a strange land?” Now the harps come down. Now there’s joy.

Instead of John weeping, now there’s reason for joy. Because the Lion of the tribe of Judah has prevailed. The sacrifice has been offered. All of God’s purposes are brought to pass and so there is reason for joy. In other words, heaven, whatever else it is, is a joyous place, full of God-centeredness.

Then these bowls, or these vials, which are the prayers of the saints. The imagery is drawn again from the Old Testament. Thus, for example, Psalm 141, “Let my prayer be set before you as incense.” It’s partly because there was an incense altar in the tabernacle and in the temple. This was also the day before Right Guard and other deodorants.

Many houses had some sort of little incense system going. It was considered pleasant. It got rid of other odors that were less pleasant in days before nice showers and frequent bathing and so on. So houses had little incense burners of one sort or another. As a result, the symbolism grew up in the Old Testament. It’s understandable. A prayer is a bit like incense. It’s sort of wafted before the presence of God. It’s pleasant to God.

That’s part of the symbolism from the Psalms. So also now here. “Each of these creature had a harp. They were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.” There is a sense in which, if God’s purposes for righteousness and justice and blessing and forgiveness are all frustrated and will not be brought to pass, what’s the point of praying anymore?

What’s the point of praying for your unconverted friends? What’s the point of praying that God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven? What’s the point in praying, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus?” What’s the point of praying, “Pour out your Spirit upon me that I might have a heart to seek your face and grow in holiness?” What’s the point of praying for holiness? If none of God’s purposes for righteousness and blessing are ours, what’s the point of praying?

Now you see because God’s purposes will be brought to pass because the Lion of the tribe of Judah has prevailed, now there’s a point in praying. You are praying in line with the will of God because all of God’s purposes for justice and blessing will come to pass. Secured by Christ. Now the prayers of God’s saints are wafted into his presence. That’s the whole point.

Now there’s a point to prayer. And they sing a new song. New, as opposed to the old song of the end of chapter 4. In chapter 4, it is really a song of praise to God because he’s the Creator. “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things.” Now it’s a new song. It’s addressed to the Lamb. It’s addressed to Christ.

“You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals because you were slain.” “You are worthy” was technical language in the Roman Empire, and everybody knew it. There are all kinds of layers of hints in this book that show something of the conflict between Christ and Caesar. We’ll see more of them in the next two or three meetings.

When a Roman emperor came to the throne, there were vast acclimations in the streets. In Greek, axios, axios. You are worthy. In Latin, vere dignus, vere dignus. You are worthy. But now the Christians are taught to address Christ and say, “You are worthy.” Claudius was worthy, but he died after a few years. Caligula, they said he was worthy. He was mad. He insisted on being deified by the Senate before he died. Then he proclaimed that his horse was a god as well. He was just mad. Nero, “You are worthy, Nero. You are worthy.” Give me a break!

You come before this one, Christ, “You are worthy. You didn’t proclaim your horse a god. You yourself came from the throne of God and you were slain.” What brings about all of God’s purposes, ensures that they will unfold is the sacrifice of the Lamb. “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. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.”

Note first, it’s a bloody atonement. We’re not to think of the blood of Christ in sort of mystical terms. No, no. The blood regularly symbolizes in the New Testament not only life but life violently and sacrificially ended. In the writings of Paul, anything that is said to have been secured by Christ’s blood is somewhere else said to be secured by Christ’s death or by his cross.

If we’ve been saved by the blood, we’ve been saved by the cross. If our sins are forgiven on the basis of the blood, then our sins are forgiven on the basis of Christ’s death. The blood of Christ symbolizes his life violently and sacrificially poured out. He died so that I might live. I have life because he died. That is the point here.

“You were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” Not a hint of racism here, but men and women from every tongue and tribe and people and nation. It’s a bloody atonement. Perhaps one of the most moving hymns in this regard to understand what is meant is an old one by Wesley.

Arise, my soul arise; shake off thy guilty fears;

The bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears:

Before the throne my surety stands,

My name is written on His hands.

Five bleeding wounds He bears; received on Calvary;

They pour effectual prayers; they strongly plead for me:

“Forgive him, O forgive,” they cry,

“Nor let that ransomed sinner die.”

The Father hears Him pray, His dear anointed One.

He cannot turn away, the presence of His Son.

His Spirit answers to the blood,

And tells me I am born of God.

It’s a broad atonement, broad in a sense that it draws in men and women from every tongue and tribe and people and nation. It’s bloody. It’s broad. It’s directed. We are not only saved from sin, but for God. We have been purchased for God. We have been made out to be his. We were rebels but now reconciled to him.

Hence Paul, likewise, can say in 1 Corinthians 6, “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, which you have of God, for you are not your own; you have been bought with a price. That is the price of Christ’s blood. Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your Spirit, which are God’s.”

It is a triumphant atonement. Verse 10: “You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God.” That is, you constitute this subset of God’s sovereignty under which there is life. We constitute the kingdom of God. This kingdom goes on to consummation and glory in the new heaven and the new earth.

There will no longer be any contentions anymore about whether or not God is God. We’re priests. That is, we’re mediators. We receive God’s word, God’s forgiveness, God’s spirit, and we proclaim it, we teach it, we demonstrate it, we show it out to the world around us. In that sense we’re mediators.

We take the sins and the concerns of the people of whom we are a part and we bear them before God, and we say with Isaiah, “I am a person of unclean lips and I dwell amongst a people of unclean lips. My eyes have seen the King.” We’re mediators. That’s part of what Christian witness is all about. We mediate the truth and blessing of God to others.

We’re a kingdom and priests to serve our God. That’s the new song. “Then I looked and I 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. In a loud voice they sang: ‘Worthy is the Lamb.’ ”

This has got to be one of the strongest passages affirming the deity of Christ in the New Testament, precisely because it follows chapter 4. In chapter 4, only God is worthy of that kind of praise. Now all the hosts of heaven are similarly singing to the Lamb. He’s come from the throne, thus is indifferentiable from God. He’s brought about all of God’s saving purposes.

“You are worthy! Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive …” Then a sevenfold string of epithets. “… power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!’ ” That is, the very perfection of praise and adoration. You are worthy to receive it all. From here on throughout the rest of the book, all the way to chapter 22, almost always when God is mentioned, the Lamb is mentioned as well.

“I saw him who sat on the throne and the Lamb …” “I heard the praises of him who sat on the throne and the Lamb …” That’s what you hear, again and again and again. “I saw no temple in that city for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” So completely unified. “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain.”

It’s not even enough for the redeemed of the Lord, men and women, to confess this greatness, or all the angelic hosts to confess the greatness of the Lamb. Now it’s as if the entire created order recognizes its Creator. “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 …” There’s the first pairing. It’s like that for the rest of the book. “ ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!’ Amen.”

There are some psalms that are nature psalms, where nature is pictured as somehow praising God. Psalm 148 is like that. “Praise the Lord from the earth. Fire and hail, snow and vapor, stormy wind fulfilling his word. Mountains, all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, animals, all cattle, creeping things, flying fowl, kings of the earth, all people. Let them all praise the name of the Lord.”

Here that is presupposed, and yet there is a hint of something more, the sort of thing that Paul mentions in Colossians 1. A renovated universe, no longer under the sentence of death because the Lamb has died instead, a whole recreated order, and everything recognizing its creatureliness before God and the Lamb.

We have a selection of birdfeeders at the back of our house. We watch them coming through at the different seasons of the year. We have hummingbirds that come to a hummingbird feeder. Spectacular little creatures. Four different kinds of woodpeckers. Then there are robins, which are not like British robins, United Kingdom robins. They’re really thrushes.

Various kinds of blackbird. Different songs. The spectacular color and raucous sound of a jay. Or a warbling vireo. A tiny little bird, and it has three different parts to its call. At the last little bit, that tail goes back and forth so fast. To watch a warbling vireo feed its young from the feeders.… In a renovated universe, there is a sense in which no longer does the law of the jungle rule. You remember Kipling’s Law of the Jungle?

This is the Law of the Jungle—

as old and as true as the sky;

And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper,

but the wolf that shall break it must die.

A law of the jungle is kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. We used to have neighbors that had a cat. It was constantly coming after our birds. I wanted to kill the cat. More law of the jungle. But now you see in this renovated universe everything finding its place in God’s ordering of things, from a little mote dancing in a sunbeam to the beasts of the field, songsters in a grove of trees, insects playing in a sunbeam, mighty winds, all praising the Lord. The whole universe cries, “Amen and amen.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, there are so many siren voices in our culture that want us to shortchange this vision, want us simply to pursue our own private idolatries, want us to pursue some political vision as if it’s the be-all and the end-all, whereas it can’t ever be more than a prophylactic.

There is only one ultimate vision of justice, only one ultimate vision of mercy, only one way, only one person to bring about all of God’s purposes for transformation, for justice, for forgiveness, for blessing. He’s the Lion of the tribe of Judah. He’s the Lamb of God. Both the suffering lamb and the apocalyptic lamb.

In this rebel world where we fear the light,

All our gods must be domesticated, tame.

But the sovereign Lord who sees through the night

Is not threatened by pretensions built on shame.

In majestic splendor, God rules throughout our days.

He is holy in his deeds and wise in all his ways.

Mighty Babylon and the third Reich too

Join the dust of empires that have passed away.

Full of strutting pride, mouthing boasts untrue.

They lie crushed before the God whose Word holds sway.

Surely all the nations are dust upon the scales.

So with whom will you compare this God whose will prevails?

Not the patriarchs, not the priestly class,

Not the wise in all their learning glimpsed the cross.

Not the royal court, not the zealot bands thought

That God would buy back rebels at such cost.

Who has comprehended the wisdom of the Lord?

For the grandeur of his plans our God must be adored.

Who will take the scroll in the sovereign’s hand,

Break the seals and bring God’s purposes to pass?

While we wait in fear at what God has planned from the throne

The Lion roars and death is passed.

Sing to Christ the conqueror a new song full of praise,

For the triumph of the Lamb means God will have his way.