×

Revelation (Part 9)

Revelation 5

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the End Times from Revelation 5


“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.”

So chapter 4 is the setting. Chapter 5 is the drama. Perhaps the easiest way to unpack it is to take it step by step.

1. The scroll.

Chapter 5, verse 1. What is going on here? The fact that it is a scroll is important. In the ancient world, a book that is sewn or glued on one edge like our books we nowadays call a codex. Codices were invented in the first century, but they were not that common, and they were not usually used for the best books. What you had was a scroll.

The reason it’s important here is because of the symbolism that’s involved. We are told that there was writing on the inside and the outside. Well, if you take a codex and have writing on the inside and the outside, you’re not saying much, because on the outside you don’t have a lot of room. Title, author, a few blurbs, but that’s about it. If you’re a Puritan, your title is so long you don’t have room for anything else anyway.

But a scroll written on the inside and the outside.… The outside had as much space as the inside, but normally you didn’t use it. Why not? Well, paper in the ancient world was made up of two kinds. I mentioned last week in connection with Pergamum that the library in Pergamum used skins of animals, vellum, which came to be associated with Pergamum, and hence we get our English word parchment, but it was far more common in the ancient world to use papyrus.

Papyrus was grown largely in the swamps of the delta of the Nile River, and its consistency is very much like rhubarb or celery, except that in cross section it is triangular. You cut it across, and it’s sort of shaped like a triangle, but consistency-wise it’s very much like rhubarb or celery. If you put in a sharp knife at the top, you can peel off a whole strip all the way down.

So what you do is peel off a strip of this stuff, then another strip, then another strip, then another strip, then another strip, and another strip, until you have roughly a square. Then you take some more strips and lay it out over the top. Then you use some kind of organic glue you make up from animal muck or sap or something like that, and you glue these two layers together, the backing and the front pieces.

What that means is that on one side, the back side, all of the strips are going up and down. They’re all vertical. On the inside, where you want to write, all of the strips are going horizontally. Since both Greek and Hebrew are written horizontally, unlike Japanese (Greek from left to right like English, Hebrew from right to left), you’d want to write on one side. You’d want to write in line with the strips.

You didn’t really want to write on the back side where your quill pen was going over all of the bumps. So you would write on the inside, maybe in two or three columns, and then you would connect this with another sheet, then another sheet, then another sheet, sewn or glued on, until you had a whole scroll. A full-length scroll was usually a maximum of 32 to 34 feet.

That would be filled up, for example, by the gospel of Luke. I suspect one of the reasons Luke/Acts is a two-volume work is because you filled up one scroll with Luke. Then you move to volume two, and now you have Acts. This scroll, we’re told, is written on the inside and on the outside. That’s significant because it’s abnormal. What would it signify? When would you write on the inside and on the outside in the ancient world?

Well, there would be two reasons for doing so. You might do so if you were dirt poor and couldn’t afford another empty notebook. These things were jolly expensive. But you can’t imagine the symbolism suggesting God as dirt poor. The other reason you would do so on occasion is because you had, for example, some legal document or the like, where you wanted all of the material in one document. You didn’t want it to be separated.

The problem with a scroll was you could separate them. In certain kinds of complicated state acts, for example, legislative acts, you wouldn’t want part A and part B, where you could lose one, so you’d put it all in one document, even if it meant writing some of it on the back. So this book written on the inside and the outside is a way of saying that whatever it represents, it’s the fullness of that disclosure. It’s the fullness of that material. It’s not just written on the inside, but there’s so much to say here it’s written on both sides.

What this book turns out to contain is God’s purposes in redemption and judgment. All of God’s purposes. We’ll see that as it’s unpacked next week and beyond, but that’s what the scroll represents. This is not the scroll of the book of the elect; that is, the book with the names of God’s people written in them. It’s not that at all. This is the book of God’s purposes in redemption and judgment. That it is written on the inside and the outside is a way of saying it’s the fullness of those purposes or the completeness of those purposes.

This scroll is in the right hand (that is, in the hand of God’s power), and it is sealed with seven seals. What does that mean? Well, once you had a book together and it was on its two spindles and you tightened up the spindles so you had the two halves coming together, what held it together? They didn’t have rubber bands in those days.

You could, I suppose, if you were cheap, just tie it with a piece of string or hemp or something, but if it was an official document or the like, you took one more papyrus sheet and wrapped it around it, and then, if it was an official document, you dropped on a blob of wax at the joint and sealed it with a signet ring or a personal signet seal.

If you were really important, you might drop on a lot of blobs of wax and seal them all. In fact, history tells us that the last will and testament of the emperor Vespasian was, in fact, sealed with seven seals. What you have here, therefore, is a document that is very official, very full in all of God’s purposes, and sealed with seven seals. It’s very official. This is God’s doing. It’s in God’s right hand, the hand of his power, and it’s sealed with seven seals.

In the next chapter we’ll see the seals being split, being cut open. What does that signify? What kind of world is this coming out of? In legal documents at least, the slitting of the seals signified the enactment of the material, not least in wills and documents. In any important document in the ancient world, they made duplicates. At least the posh people did. The wealthy people did. That’s what they hired scribes for.

Nowadays we have photocopiers. We have everything on backups and disks. Press a button, and it spits out another copy. In the ancient world, where they had neither disks nor photocopiers, they had scribes, and anything that was important they had backups, but there would be an official copy, the original.

For a last will and testament, that original would be very important. I mean, the scribe might have dropped out a line by mistake because he was tired, or he might have been perverse and actually put in something for himself. He might have done all kinds of things. The original that had been checked was the official copy, and once backup copies were made, it might be sealed.

Then dear old Vespasian pops off, and it might be that the executors and others.… They know what’s in the will because they can examine the backup copies, but that doesn’t mean they can dispense any of the goodies. Probate occurs precisely by the slitting of the seals of the official document. Thus, the slitting of the seals signifies the enactment of what that document contains. Thus, the slitting of the seals in what comes about signals the bringing to pass of what God has in mind in his purposes of judgment and blessing.

The point here is that this book is sealed and cannot be opened until the seals are broken. God’s purposes in salvation and judgment cannot be fulfilled until this takes place. Thus, the opening of the seals does not mean you can take a sneaky peek into the future (that’s not the point) but that God’s future will not be brought to pass.

2. The challenge.

Verse 2: “And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?’ ” Now he’s a mighty angel because he’s challenging the whole universe, as is clear by the responses in what follows. There’s nothing in the whole universe that is able to respond to his challenge.

In those days, without PA systems, if you’re going to challenge the whole universe, you have to be a mighty angel. If I want to speak to a little more people, I just get a little closer to the microphone or I get this brother over here to turn up the wattage, but in the ancient universe it wasn’t like that.

They say George Whitefield could actually preach to 50,000 people in the open air. Of course, he had some help. He had a sounding board. He had a wonderful booming voice. He always preached downwind, and he liked little gullies so it would sort of trap the sound a little bit, but 50,000 people in the open air is not bad. Nor is that a ministerial estimate. That estimate came from none less than Ben Franklin, who was no friend of Christians, but Ben Franklin happened to be a personal friend of George Whitefield.

In one of these great meetings Whitefield spoke at, Ben Franklin wandered through the crowd and estimated the density of the crowd, how many people per square yard. Then he walked around the outside of the crowd and paced it out later to find out how many square yards in the whole thing. He estimated out to the outskirts of the crowd, where you could still hear dear old George, it was 50,000 people.

Well, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t have been George Whitefield just from the point of view of my lungs and my voice box, but nowadays I don’t have to. I can speak to large numbers of people by simply having a decent PA system. This angel must address the whole universe, so he’s a mighty angel.

The challenge he gives, then, makes sense only if you have digested chapter 4 first. “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?” Remember, this is not so you can look into the future and have a sneaky peek. This is, rather, “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll to bring about God’s purposes for judgment and blessing? Who is capable of bringing to pass God’s purposes?”

This is the God described in chapter 4. To get to this God and break the seals of the scroll that lies in the right hand of his power, you have to cross the sea of glass. You have to get through these serried ranges of angels, who are already terrifying in themselves, get through the thunderstorm, approach this God, whom even the angels are hiding their faces from, and take something from his hand, and then split the seals open.

That’s why the setting is so important. It’s why the whole point of chapter 4, in terms of the drama that unpacks in chapter 5, is that you can’t approach this God like that. He’s not a toy. He’s not a souped-up human being. He is a terrifying, awesome God. So the challenge is, “Who has rank so exalted, attributes so full and marvelous, life so perfect and holy as to be able to approach the throne of God, take the book, break the seals, open it, and bring to pass God’s purposes for redemption and blessing?”

3. The silence.

Verse 3: “No one in heaven or on earth …” Now you know how far the challenge went out. Everywhere. “No one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it.” That is, even find out what it had to say. No one in heaven (that is, no angelic being), no one on earth (no human being, no earthbound creature), no one under the earth (that’s a way of referring to the abode of the dead), no necromancer, no spirit, good or evil. No one was found worthy to approach the kind of God described in chapter 4.

4. The tears.

“I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside.” Why is John weeping? He’s not weeping because he’s a nosey parker who’s frustrated because he can’t see what the future is. That misunderstands the symbolism. He’s weeping because under the terms of the vision, unless someone opens the seals of the scroll in the right hand of the Almighty, God’s purposes for redemption and judgment will not be brought to pass.

John represents a persecuted church. He’s an apostle. Is the whole thing a joke? None of it’s going to work out? Will evil win after all? Is the whole point of the exercise lost? Does God just withdraw his hand and not care after all? Of course, we don’t think in such apocalyptic terms, but I want to suggest to you that our generation understands something of these tears anyway.

Rudolf Bultmann, famous German theologian who died a few years ago, insisted out of his existentialist theology that the question of the meaning of history has become itself meaningless. Bertrand Russell, famous British atheist who died two and a half decades ago, give or take, was asked what he had to hang on to in life. He was asked on British radio toward the end of his life. He repeated his answer in his famous book Why I Am Not a Christian.

He said all he had to hang on to was “grim unyielding despair.” At least he was honest. Tell that to the mother who has just lost her baby, to the husband who has just lost his wife of 50 years. “Hang on to grim unyielding despair, brother.” The death of God may sanction our independence. It also ensures our meaninglessness. Or we establish meanings for ourselves that are so petty they’re not worth anything. They have no transcendent value. We make our own meanings in existentialism.

There’s a famous graffito in a Paris subway in the dirty 60s when it was the custom to write all of this super-wise graffiti. “To do is to be—Sartre.” Jean-Paul Sartre, the father of existentialism. “To be is to do—Camus.” Albert Camus. “Do be do be do—Sinatra.” In a sense, that said it all. The whole thing has lost its meaning after a while. Even the philosophies die, and you’re left with, “Do be do be do.”

So today, we have not only lost a notion of meaning; we have lost the notion of truth, at least of transcendent truth, of cross-cultural truth. That’s the very nature of postmodernity. In intellectual circles, in university circles and the like, we no longer live in the modern age; we live in the postmodern age. The categories have all shifted.

It is a desperately sad situation, and we face it today by not thinking much about it, by buying a lot of toys, by keeping very busy, by being very stimulated. From the time we wake up in the morning and snap on the radio or put in a cassette tape or turn on the television, we’re stimulated for every hour of the day so we don’t have to think. We just buy another electronic doodad and keep busy. At least John thought, and he wept.

5. The lion.

Verse 5: “Then one of the elders said to me …” Notice it’s an elder. In apocalyptic literature, it’s regularly an angel who interprets what’s going on. I said there would be a number of places where an elder comes and explains things to John. This is one of them. “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.’ ”

The lion of the tribe of Judah. The symbolism is profoundly biblical. Line after line after line in the Apocalypse is steeped with Old Testament imagery. The lion of the tribe of Judah. As early as Genesis 49:9–10, the tribe of Judah is designated lion. Judah is a lion’s whelp. That is, the king for the Israelites comes from the tribe of Judah.

Even in the intertestamental literature of this period.… In 2 Esdras, sometimes known as 4 Ezra, the Messiah is called a lion. It’s part of the whole heritage of Judaism. He is the monarch. That is, he’s the ruler. He’s in the Davidic line. So the lion of the tribe of Judah is another way of saying the Messiah, great David’s greater son, the one who is in the royal line.

Not only so, but he’s called here the root of David. The language is drawn from Isaiah, chapter 11, verse 1. Again, one of these great messianic passages. Isaiah, chapter 11, verse 1, begins, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.” Or again, verse 10: “In that day the Root of Jesse …” There’s the language exactly. “… will stand as an ensign, a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him.”

He’s the root of Jesse and the shoot that comes out of Jesse, we’re told. What does that mean? Every time I read this passage, I can’t help remembering two things. First, this designation not only recurs in the Old Testament but crops up again in the book of Revelation. In the very last chapter, Jesus is described as both the root and the shoot of David. In other words, here you just have the root. In the last chapter he’s the root and the shoot of David. Why? What does that have to do with anything?

The second thing I remember is a certain tree in Vancouver. I used to pastor a church in metro Vancouver. If you go to downtown Vancouver and cross onto the peninsula that is Stanley Park.… It’s a one-way system around the park to accommodate bicyclers, joggers, and other people. You come in, turn to the right, and then within the first half mile, off on the left, is a small zoo and a really good aquarium.

If you pull into the parking lot there.… There are several little areas of parking. If you pull into one of them, right in the corner is an old BC Douglas fir stump. This BC Douglas fir is probably 14 or 15 feet in diameter. It’s a real wingding. It’s not quite like the massive trees you get down, for example, in Northern California by the coast, but it’s still a big tree.

The Indians in the Pacific Northwest used to cut them down with stone axes, all 14 or 15 feet of diameter, and roll them into the Sound, where they would hollow them out to make oceangoing canoes. Can you imagine the hours of labor in that kind of thing? This one had obviously been cut down maybe a century and a half before and rolled down into the Sound. Somebody turned it into an oceangoing canoe.

Out of the middle of this stump, a BC Douglas fir has grown. Whether it has grown because another seed got into the rot in there.… Maybe that’s what has happened there. I don’t think it’s the same tree, but it looks for all the world like this BC Douglas fir has been cut down and out of the middle of it is a BC Douglas fir, maybe a foot and a half or two feet in diameter, already 50 feet high.

Every time I see it, I think, “Jesus is the shoot of Jesse.” He’s the root underlying the whole thing, and he’s the shoot. Well, how could he be anything else? From the perspective of the New Testament, the Son of God is God’s agent in creation. The Son of God is before David. Doesn’t Jesus himself insist in Matthew, chapter 22, verses 41–46, in the intercourse with the Pharisees and Sadducees of his own day …?

“The Messiah, whose son is he?” “The son of David.” “Then why does David call him ‘Lord’?” he asks, citing Psalm 110. In that sense, the Messiah is antecedent to David. He’s one with God. He’s his root. He underlies him. David wouldn’t be there without the Messiah. But there’s another sense in which, as a human being invading human history, he comes as, in fact, the seed of David.

It looks as if the whole royal line of David is going to be cut off. From the time of the exile, there is no king in David’s line who reigns from the throne in Jerusalem. The tree has been hacked down. All you have left is the stump. You still have the records of the Davidic line, kept first in Babylon and then in the tabernacle, all the way to the destruction of the temple in AD 70.

Do you realize that if any Jew tried to prove today that he was from the tribe of Judah he couldn’t do so? The links are severed. They’re forever gone. They can’t be restored. You can guess what tribe some Jews belong to. Cohen, for example, is a name that means priest. Cohen in Hebrew means priest. It could be that that’s a Levitical name. It’s probably so intermarried over the years in any case.

In the Middle Ages, many Jews started keeping all of their records again, so many Jews can track themselves all the way back to the Middle Ages and even earlier, but at the end of the day, there is not a Jew alive in the world anywhere who can prove he’s from the tribe of Judah or the tribe of Levi, much less track himself back to David.

But in the first century, the records were still good. Not every Jew could. Even in the Old Testament, when the Jews returned from Babylon, some had lost their records and, therefore, they were not allowed to serve. They thought they were Levites, but they weren’t allowed to serve. Unless they could prove they were genuinely Levitical, they weren’t allowed to serve. Read Ezra and Nehemiah.

After the fall of the temple in AD 70 and then the re-destruction of Jerusalem at the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt in AD 132 and 135, the records were gone forever, never to be restored. Nor is it a question of God by sovereign review coming in and telling us how people are lined up. The point is there has been so much intermarriage it’s all mixed up now, but that’s not the way it was in the first century.

Jesus comes along, and as none less than the eternal Son, he’s the root of David, but he’s also the shoot of David. The Davidic dynasty is cut down, but the records are preserved, and in due course, he rises again as great David’s greater son, the fulfillment of the ancient Davidic dynasty, the King par excellence. Thus, we are set up for the utterance in 22:16, where Jesus himself says, “I am the Root and the Offspring of David.”

Then we are told, “He has triumphed.” The verb is a strong one. That is, there has been a struggle, and he has prevailed. He hasn’t simply sauntered in. In order to take this scroll, there has been a terrible battle, and he has prevailed in it. We don’t see quite yet what the battle is. We will shortly. He has already conquered. “He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”

6. The lamb.

Verse 6. Now the NIV here has a new paragraph. That’s a mistake. You have to picture what’s going on. There’s John, weeping and weeping and weeping (verse 4), weeping his eyes out because nobody can take that scroll and bring about God’s purposes. He’s crying and crying, and an angel, the elder, touches him and says, “Stop your crying, John. Look, the lion of the tribe of Judah. He has struggled, and he has prevailed. He can open the scroll and its seven seals.” John says, “So I looked and I saw a lamb.”

It’s not, in other words, that there are two creatures there, the lion and the lamb. The point is the lion is the lamb. One of the things apocalyptic does so well (we’ve already seen hints of it) is mingle the metaphors. It means you can never draw them, but they’re powerful, evocative ways, so long as you don’t try to make the metaphors walk on all fours, of saying several things at once.

The lion is announced. John stops his weeping enough to see the lamb. And what a lamb. He’s a slaughtered lamb. The word is a strong one, a brutal word, but he’s alive. Hasn’t Jesus already announced in the first chapter, “I am the one who was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore”? This lamb has been slaughtered. That is, he has been a sacrificial lamb. Now we understand the nature of the struggle that has enabled the lion to prevail. The lion has died like a lamb, a slaughtered lamb, a sacrifice, but is now alive.

One commentator writes, “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—all of them ravenous.” Nobody mentions Canada, the beaver, but we’ll let that pass. “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.”

That’s almost right. It’s right in what it affirms; it’s wrong in what it denies. Yes, he’s a lamb. Yes, he’s a slaughtered lamb, but he’s also the lion. There’s not antithesis. It’s not he’s not the lion; in fact, he’s the lamb. He is the lion and he is the lamb, and if he’s slaughtered, it turns out that he is also a powerful lamb.

Listen. The text says, “He had seven horns and seven eyes.” Most literature that uses numbers in the Bible does not use numbers symbolically, but apocalyptic, we’ve seen, does. Seven horns and seven eyes. Horn is regularly a symbol in apocalyptic literature for kingly power or kingly rule. Seven horns means he has perfect kingly right. He rules.

What did Jesus say? “All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth,” or in Pauline terms in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul insists that God mediates all of his sovereignty through Jesus. “He must reign until he has put all of his enemies under his feet.” He has perfect right to rule. He rules. His rule may be contested now, but he’s the King. Perfect kingship.

Seven eyes. He sees everything. Perfect omniscience. Perfect power, perfect kingly rule, and perfect omniscience. He knows it all. So although he is a lamb, a slaughtered lamb, he’s also what is sometimes called the triumphant apocalyptic lamb. This was also a symbol used in Judaism at the time, where you sometimes got a picture of a lamb, but it wouldn’t be a suffering lamb at all; it would be a triumphant lamb. John has them both. He’s a slaughtered lamb and is now triumphant.

Thus, on the one hand, if we’re to remember words like Isaiah 53, “He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth,” we are also to remember that this lamb rules. This lamb knows everything. This lamb is King. Here you have, then, the most amazing combination of a being of utmost power and utmost self-giving. Could there be any more powerful imagery of Christ than that?

“He came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne.” Notice what it says. Where does he appear? He appears, in verse 6, standing in the center of the throne. That’s another way of saying he’s God. Who else is going to stand there? The cherubim and the seraphim don’t. They’re around the throne. They’re worshiping him who sits on the throne. They hide their faces with their wings from him who is on the throne.

But the lion who is the lamb emerges from the throne to take the scroll from the right hand of him who sits on the throne. Do you see what the symbolism is saying? Yes, he may be slaughtered. Yes, he might come from the tribe of Judah, but at the end of the day, he is none less than God himself. It’s another way of getting at what later is termed the doctrine of the Trinity. It’s another way of getting at the kind of thing you get in John 1, in very different sorts of terms. He was with God, differentiable from God, but he was God.

Thus, the two chapters now come together. The only one who could bring about God’s purposes for redemption and blessing is one who comes from the very throne of God himself, identified with God. Those purposes of redemption and blessing could only be brought about by one who suffered and died as a sacrifice, who is nevertheless God and reigning King. Otherwise, God’s purposes of judgment and blessing would never have been brought about.

7. The new song.

The worship and praise of heaven. Verse 8: “When he had taken it …” That is, when he had taken the scroll. Then in chapter 6, you see the seals are beginning to be slit, and as the seals are slit, various things take place. The slitting of the seals then leads on eventually to the bowls and the trumpets. So unless the seals are slit, you don’t get anything of the drama of the rest of the book. It is in that sense that chapters 4–5 control everything.

When he takes the scroll, and then the seals begin to be slit in the next chapter, “… the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb.” Before, they had worshiped only God. Now they still worship only God, for this Lamb comes from the very center of the throne. He’s one with God.

Now almost as a formula you get repeated, scores of times from here to the end of the book, “Him who sits on the throne and the Lamb,” or “Praise to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.” “There was no light in heaven but him who sits on the throne and the Lamb.” Again and again and again. So now they fall 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.” What does that mean? You know all of these cartoons of what heaven is like, where people wear white bed sheets and play harps? It comes from these passages in some literalistic imagination. “Wearing white raiment,” so you have white bed sheets. “Playing harps,” so you have all of these funny looking harps.

If I have to do that for all eternity, I’m not even sure I want to go, to be quite frank. What it does is misunderstand the nature of the symbolism. In the first place, a harp in the first century is not like our harp at all, one of these sort of funny-looking things that you sit at and pluck. It was not like that at all. It was an instrument of joy. Do you remember the Psalms? “By the rivers of Babylon, there we hung up our harps,” in the older versions. It’s the same word here. On the Hebrew side there, the Greek side here.

In other words, it’s an instrument of joy. “By the rivers of Babylon.” That is, the people are being transported. They’re being taken away from their homeland, and finally, when they get to the river that marks the demarcation into the land of their exile.… “There we hung up our harps. How can you sing a happy song to the Lord in a strange land? Our captors said, ‘Sing us a song of Zion!’ How can you sing a song of Zion in a strange land?”

I don’t know what a happy instrument is to you. People have different tastes. For some of you it might be a banjo. Can you really sit around and cry and feel sorry for yourself when a banjo is going? It gets you going whether you like it or not. “Oh, that country western. I don’t like that stuff.” Pretty soon your little foot is tapping. It’s an instrument of joy.

So if you want to render this right, these are not people in nightshirts; these are people playing banjos. That’s what’s going on. The text says, “Each one had a banjo.” The idea is this is a time for enormous joy. Or maybe you’re pipe-organ-ish. Fine. Then they all had pipe organs. The point is that what’s going on here is a festivity of spectacular joyous music, precisely because God’s purposes for the universe are going to come to pass.

The bowls of the saints.… Again, people have made this so ridiculously literalistic. They think if they have incense candles and they pay so much to burn an incense candle, they’re really offering prayers to God. The language, again, comes out of the Old Testament. For example, Psalm 141, verse 2. “Let my prayer be set before you as incense.” You have to understand the culture of the ancient world.

In the ancient world, people didn’t bathe quite as much as they do today. They certainly didn’t have spray bombs of Right Guard or Mennen Speed Stick. They didn’t even have talc. What they had was incense. If you didn’t want a place to stink, you burned incense. We still do that. It’s sort of considered yuppie and posh. You go and get a little incense wick in a posh yuppie store. Then you light it, and it burns, and it smells around. It’s so posh and yuppyish.

In the ancient world, this wasn’t posh and yuppyish. It was a matter of self-defense. It was a way of making a pleasing atmosphere. The psalmist is using that kind of analogy. “Let my prayers come before you as incense.” In other words, a sweet-smelling savor. Remember that repeated phrase from the sacrifices? “A sweet-smelling savor before the Lord.” Perfumed oil burned in the tabernacle and in the temple. Why perfume? So it would smell nice.

That’s the kind of symbolism. “Let my prayers come before you as a sweet-smelling savor.” You get something of the same sort of thought, although it’s cast in very different terms, in one of the modern songs. “Let it be a sweet, sweet sound in your ear.” Let my praise be sweet-sounding, not sweet-smelling. You can’t say, “Let it be a sweet, sweet smell in your nose.” It doesn’t go very well, does it? But that’s the category that’s being used in the ancient world.

Now that kind of category is being picked up in the apocalyptic. It’s already there in the Psalms, and now it’s being picked up. Because the Lamb is bringing about God’s purposes for redemption and judgment, we read, “Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.”

The idea is that if Christ had not thus triumphed, our prayers could not possibly have been answered. If Christ had not died for his people, on what conceivable ground would Christ answer our prayers? He would owe us judgment. He would owe us nothing but condemnation. How could God’s purposes of redemption and blessing be fulfilled? How could his purposes for judgment, distinguished between the redeemed and those who were not redeemed, be brought to pass?

[Audio cuts off] by this lion who is a lamb. Well, the elders are busy bringing the prayers of God’s saints to God. “Here, Lord. Waft some more.” The prayers are being brought into the presence of God so that God will enjoy them and answer them, respond to them. That’s what’s going on here.

“And they sang a new song.” It’s new here as compared with the one in chapter 4, verse 11. There God is praised as the God of creation. Here it’s new in that it’s directed, in the first instance, to the Lamb and then to God and to the Lamb, and he’s praised because of redemption. That’s what makes it new. So we read, “They sang a new song: ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals.’ ” We used to sing an old hymn. It’s not sung very much anymore.

There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin

He only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in.

That’s what this chapter is about. May I say this reverently? It could be taken wrongly. If Christ had not died, which is unthinkable.… It’s unimaginable granted who God is. It’s unimaginable granted his power and his providence and his saving plan. It’s unthinkable, but let us think it anyway. If Christ had not died, there would not have been a single redeemed person.

Heaven would be empty of people, and hell would be full. There would be no church, which is the only human organization that goes into eternity. There would be no one with sins forgiven. There would be no gift of the Spirit poured out on men and women. That’s what this chapter is telling us. This chapter (this book, as we’ll see) is a gospel chapter. It’s a gospel book.

“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 tongue 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.” We could easily take a couple of hours just on those two verses. We don’t have time. Let me outline four points from this new song.

A. It is a bloody atonement.

“You have redeemed them to God by your blood.” There’s nothing mystical about blood in Scripture. Regularly in the New Testament when blood is introduced, it signifies not simply life but life violently and sacrificially ended. Thus, in Paul, for example, if we’re told that we’re justified by Christ’s death, we’re told elsewhere we’re justified by his blood. If we’re told in some places that we’re sanctified by his death or by his cross, we’re sanctified by his blood.

If Hebrews tells us, for example, that we have a clear conscience by the death of Christ, it tells us we have a clear conscience by the blood of Christ. In other words, the blood is a way of representing by metonymy the whole atoning, self-sacrificial death of Christ. It is his life violently and sacrificially ended on our behalf. It is a bloody atonement. “With your blood you purchased men for God.”

Somebody has said that the best commentary on this passage is a hymn of Wesley’s. You may know it. Again, it’s not sung as often as it used to be. It should be sung some more.

Arise, my soul, arise

Shake off thy guilty fears

The bleeding sacrifice

In thy 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.

 

My God is reconciled

His pardoning voice I hear

He owns me for his child

I can no longer fear

With confidence I now draw nigh

And “Father, Abba, Father” cry.

 

It is a bloody atonement.

Redeemed, how I love to proclaim it

Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.

Even some of the Kentucky-ish folk songs of a century ago have some of the same emphasis.

Would you be free from your burden of sin?

There’s power in the blood of the Lamb.

B. It is a broad atonement.

Have you noticed this? “By his blood he purchased people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” A great theme in the book of Revelation. Not a trace of racism here. None. From every tongue and tribe and people and nation, a point that recurs and recurs and recurs and recurs throughout the whole book.

So in the last chapters, likewise, you have men and women from every tongue and tribe and people and nation, purchased by the blood of the Lamb. How dare anyone despise someone whom the blood of the Lamb has bought? It is revolting past words.

C. It is a directed atonement.

That is, these people are redeemed to God. Have you seen that? “… because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God.” They’re not just redeemed from sin. They’re redeemed from sin for God. There is never a redemption from sin so you can go and do something else or so you can do it your way, because if you’re still doing it your way, you’re still in sin. The very nature of being redeemed from sin is that you’re redeemed for God. You cannot have one without the other. It cannot be.

D. It is a triumphant atonement.

“You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.” This atonement works. Thus, the church is a priesthood. It doesn’t have a priesthood. The whole church is a priesthood. They are priests. That’s the language also drawn from 1 Peter. That is to say, priests by definition are mediators, but under the terms of the new covenant, we don’t have priests who are mediators between God and us.

The New Testament says there’s one mediator between God and man. On the other hand, we’re all priests in the sense that we all take the message and truth and presence of God and mediate that to the world. Then we take the burdens, sins, concerns, passions, guilts, and fears of the world, and we bring them back in intercession to God. We function as priests, as mediators. God makes us a kingdom, his fiefdom, his domain, which ultimately embraces the whole universe, we discover by the end.

That’s the new song, but it’s not enough just to have it once, as it were. “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 …’ ” Now you have a sevenfold list of attributes. In other words, it’s a way of saying he is given a perfection of praise. All praise is here. “… to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” Seven.

All of heaven is now joining in, not just the elders or the beasts around the throne. All of heaven is joining in, but it’s not enough just for heaven to join in. Now the whole universe joins in. “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!’ ”

There is a sense in which this partakes of what is sometimes called Hebrew nature poetry in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, nature is always joining in in Hebrew poetry, and you have to make allowances for it. The trees clap their hands, the hills dance for joy, and the stars fall from the heavens. That’s picked up later in the Apocalypse. Two stars falling from the heavens. Do you ever sit there and think, “The stars I know have billions of mass more than the earth. How does a star fall from heaven? Maybe it’s just a little chunk of star. Maybe it’s a generic word for meteorite.”

It’s missing the point of the language. The point of the language is that it has the same significance as the hills dancing for joy or the trees clapping their hands. It’s a way of saying, “This event is so significant that all of nature is joining in.” Either it’s all collapsing, the stars falling from the heavens, or they’re all rejoicing.

So you get hymns of praise like this in the Old Testament. Psalm 148: “Praise the Lord from the earth, fire and hail, snow and vapor, stormy wind fulfilling his word, mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, beasts and all cattle, creeping things, all flying fowl, kings of the earth, all the people. Let them all praise the name of the Lord.” A nature psalm.

But this one is going one better. This is not simply a nature psalm. It is a recognition that the whole universe, as presently constructed, is out of joint because of sin. Isn’t that what Paul says elsewhere in Romans, chapter 8? “The whole universe groans in travail, waiting for the adoption of sons.” The universe is winding down. Even on a petty scale, it’s marked, however much beauty there is, by terror and death. “Eat or be eaten.” Isn’t Kipling right?

Now 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.

What is the law of the jungle? Eat or be eaten. Kill or be killed. We erect our civilized behavior, but in a fallen, broken world, at the end of the day, we all die. People die, moths die, elephants die, stars die. All dies. The whole universe groans, waiting for the adoption of sons, but now the whole universe joins in, because all of God’s purposes for redemption and judgment are going to be brought to pass. There will be a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.

So every creature joins in. “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb …” There’s that formula. “ ‘… 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.” That’s why we sing:

Crown him with many crowns

The Lamb upon his throne

Hark! How the glorious anthem drowns

All music but its own

Awake, my soul, and sing

Of him who died for thee.

We make too little of the cross. We understand too little of the central place in God’s redemptive purposes, in God’s purposes from now until eternity, of a little hillock outside Jerusalem, where the eternal Son of God was crucified 2,000 years ago. Let us pray.

Grant, we beseech you, most holy God, that in our studying of these things we shall be consumed by them afresh and grow not only in understanding but in worship and obedience, as we join the chorus around the throne in everlasting worship to him who sits on it and to the Lamb. For Christ’s sake, amen.