Vision of a Transcendent God (Part 2)

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the glory of God in this address from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library.

Please turn in Holy Scripture to Revelation 5. For those of you who were not here in the first session, let me just say this to set the scene. Revelation 4 and 5 belong together. Chapter 4 is to chapter 5 what a setting is to a drama. Revelation 4 gives us in the highly emotive and colorful imagery of apocalyptic literature a vision of the throne room of God.

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What stands out in Revelation 4 is how God is transcendent. He is spectacular. He is to be worshiped because he is God, and he is Creator. One does not saunter into his presence. The very highest orders of angels cover their faces with their wings. Between the throne and us is an array of barriers, spectacular thunderstorm, the entire created order in fallen disarray symbolized by this sea and so forth.

Yet the angels around the throne, the elders around the throne, all gather in great worship before God because, at the end of the day, he is God. We are, at most, his grateful creatures. “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.” That’s the setting. Now the drama in chapter 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.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

The chapter unfolds in seven panels, as it were. They’re not quite seven scenes. There’s only one scene, but one panel follows another. If you follow it right through, then you see what it’s about. First, a scroll. “… in the right hand of him who sat on the throne …” That is in the right hand of God, the hand of power (that’s what is meant by the right hand), there is a scroll. Not a book, a scroll.

Already in the first century, there were the beginnings of books as we know them. We call them now codices (a codex), sewn or glued on one edge. The advantage of a codex, of course, is that you can get to any part of the text very quickly. That’s why eventually codices eventually displaced scrolls.

But this is a scroll, and there is reason for it. There is symbolism in this. To understand the symbolism, you have to know how those scrolls were made. Some of them were made out of sheepskin. It came to be called vellum. But the vast majority was made out of papyrus. Papyrus is a plant grown in the Delta of Egypt, and it’s a bit like rhubarb or celery, except it’s sort of triangular on the profile. You cut it off, and you look down on a triangle.

What they would do is they’d use a sharp knife and knick it at the top and pull off a whole strip. They’d knick it again and pull off another whole strip and then another whole strip. Then you laid out your strips like this, you see, vertically until you had roughly a square. Then you’d knick a whole lot more, and you’d lay them out horizontally so you would have all of these vertical strips and horizontal strips of papyrus.

Then you would mash them together with water in a kind of organic glue they made up, let it dry, and that gave them one sheet of papyrus paper. Then they added another paper and sewed it or glued it to the previous one. Then another one, and then another one, and then another one, and then another one. Then they put a stick at either end and rolled them up. That was your scroll. A good scroll would be 32 to 34 feet long. That was about it. That was long enough to give you the book of Luke, for example. You needed two scrolls for Luke and Acts.

That meant, you see, on the inside of this scroll where all the strips were going left to right, when you write in Greek (which is left to right) or when you’re writing Hebrew (which is going right to left), then you’re writing on these strips. No problem! But you normally didn’t want to write on the backside of the scroll because then your quill pen was going over all the bumps since all the strips were going the other way.

Normally people only wrote on the inside of a scroll, but this text says this scroll is written on the inside and on the outside. If you have a book like this and you write on the inside and then you write on the outside, you don’t get much on the outside. A few blurbs maybe, a title or two, but that’s it. In a scroll in theory, you can have just as much on the outside as on the inside, except you just didn’t do it normally because of all those bumpy bits for your quill pen.

There were two conditions under which you would write on the outside. One was if you were so dirt poor, you couldn’t afford another scroll. Now whatever else this symbolism means here, God is not dirt poor. It’s not as if he can’t afford another scroll. That’s not what’s going on. The other circumstance was when you had a lot to say and wanted it all in one document. You didn’t want it separated on the chance it could go in two different directions. Then you’d write on both sides of the scroll.

That’s what’s going on here. The idea then is that whatever is in this scroll, it’s the fullness of what God wants to say. It’s in the right hand of his power, and it’s the fullness of what he wants to say in this scroll, written on the inside and on the outside. As the book progresses, you quickly discover what’s in this scroll.

What’s in this scroll is all of God’s purposes for both redemption and judgment cast in highly apocalyptic terms. All of God’s purposes for both redemption and judgment for the entire universe cast in highly apocalyptic terms. Because it’s written on the inside and the outside, it’s the fullness of all of that vision. The whole shebang! It’s right here in God’s right hand, the hand of power.

Then we’re told the two scrolls are rolled together, and it’s sealed with seven seals. What they did with that was simply to take one extra piece of papyrus, wrap it around the outside, and then drop a blob of wax on it, except that if you were very poor (and this was an extremely important document), you put a lot of blobs of wax. Then as the wax began to harden, you would use a seal (sometimes a seal on a ring or it was held around your neck).

It was instead of a signature. It was the kind of thing you would sign in a checkbook today or on a credit card receipt. They used their own personal seal. Then they would seal it. Do you see? If it was sealed with seven seals, you were way up there! For example, the last will and testament of the emperor Vespasian was sealed with seven seals. We know that. I mean, he was the emperor for goodness sake!

Now you have this document, which is sealed with seven seals. In certain kinds of legal enactments in the Roman world, including wills, for example, even if people knew what was in them (because there was another copy somewhere), they were legally enacted by the slitting of the seals. It was the equivalent of what we would mean by going to probate court. Even if people knew what was there, it wasn’t enacted until the seals were slit. Then they’d go into legal effect.

In the symbolism of the day, what this vision is saying in this first panel is in the right hand of God (the hand of God’s power, of this transcendent, powerful, majestic God seated on the throne) is the book, the scroll of all of his purposes, all of his purposes for redemption and judgment for the entire universe. They’re sealed up, and the only way they are going to be brought to pass is if the seals are slit. That’s what constitutes the drama of this chapter. Somebody must come and slit the seals by God’s own sovereign permission and decree. That’s the first step.

Then the second step: 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?’ ” He has to be a mighty angel, because in those days, he didn’t have a PA system. I mean, I can get louder by speaking a little more closely into the microphone. Do you see? I probably scared them witless up there in the control box. Nevertheless, it can be done. You just get a little closer. Do you see?

But this was before those days. You had to have town criers who were powerful people. They say George Whitefield in the eighteenth century could preach, believe it or not, to 50,000 people at once and be heard. You’d almost think that was a ministerial estimate, but it wasn’t. That estimate was from Benjamin Franklin, who was no Christian but was a friend of dear old George.

What George would do is make sure he was in a small valley, preach downwind, stand on a sounding box with a big hood behind it. He had God-given lungs and a voice box you wouldn’t believe. He’d preach, and 50,000 people.… What Ben Franklin did was walk the outside of the crowd as far out as he could hear him, then calculate the number of square yards approximately, wander through the crowd estimating how many people per square yard, and came up with 50,000 people who heard dear old George.

But this angel has to be heard throughout the entire universe. His challenge is, “Who is worthy to take the scroll and slit the seals?” Now you see why the setting of chapter 4 is so important. The God who is presented in chapter 4 is so awesome, so terrifying, so powerful that no one saunters into his presence. Nobody is saying, “Oh, I’ll go! Send me! I’m fine!” The highest orders of angels covered their faces with their wings.

There is utter awe and dependence and respect. So who then has rank so exalted? Who has attributes so full? Who has such an irreproachable life? Who has such perfection, such holiness as to be able to approach the throne of the God just described in chapter 4, and say, “I will bring your purposes to pass”? That’s a challenge. You see, unless the seals are slit, God’s purposes for redemption and judgment will not be brought to pass. That’s the way the drama is set up.

Then there’s a pause and silence in heaven. That’s the third panel. “No one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it.” No one in heaven. That is no angelic being. No one on the earth. That is no human being. No one under the earth, a biblical euphemism for the abodes of the dead. No necromancer. No one! No angel. No created being. No human being. No earthbound creature. No dead. No spirit. Neither good nor evil had the requisite ability to approach this God to take the scroll and slit the seals or even to look into it.

Suppose then that someone could somehow have managed to pick up a flap or something. Or maybe there was an extra copy somewhere. They couldn’t even find out what was going on! The astrologers couldn’t do it. The fortunetellers couldn’t do it. Nobody could even find out what God definitively was going to do, let alone bring it to pass.

In the fourth panel, what you find are the tears. “I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside.” It’s pretty common in this kind of literature (apocalyptic literature we’ve seen in the first hour, Jewish apocalyptic literature) for the seer to weep when he couldn’t see more. Here it’s deeply symbol-laden. Why does John weep? This is what you must understand. Why is John crying?

It’s not because he is a nosey parker, and he is frustrated. It’s not because he wants his eschatology all sorted out, and unfortunately, he can’t get the key that brings it all together. So he is mad as all get-out and really quite a frustrated hombre. That’s not what’s going on here. He understands the symbolism in the vision.

According to the symbolism of the vision, unless someone is found who can approach this God and take the scroll and open the seals, then God’s purposes for judgment and blessing will not come to pass, in which case, the whole church is a sham. Persecuted Christians? Not much point really. Justice will neither be done nor be seen to be done.

People saved? Can’t say anything about that. Maybe God is just going to be distant. Maybe history is meaningless. Maybe you live and you marry and you die and that’s it! The most thoughtful people of the twentieth century have understood this, even if they haven’t understood this vision.

The renowned British atheist Bertrand Russell was asked on British radio (BBC) when he was 90 and not far from death himself if he had any hope for when he died. He said, “I have nothing to hang onto but grim, unyielding despair.” At least he was an honest man. The famous German theologian Rudolf Bultmann, who was completely married to Heideggerian existentialism, speaking about the meaning of history, said questions about the meaning of history have become meaningless.

That’s why John wept. John understood. Oh, you can surround yourself with toys and playthings for a while, but sooner or later, you too get arthritis. Sooner or later, you too come down with cancer. Sooner or later, you lose your job. Sooner or later, one of your kids goes off the rails. Sooner or later, you lose your parents. Sooner or later, you’re at death’s door yourself.

Then tell me what it’s all about. If you’ve ever lived in parts of the world where people cook their food on cow dung and human excrement, poverty of that order, perhaps a billion people living like that, tell me what that’s about.

John weeps. Then the Lion. Verse 5. “… one of the elders …” We saw in the first hour this is almost certainly an interpreting angel. “… 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.’ ” This language, of course, is drawn right from the Old Testament. The Lion of the tribe of Judah means the King of Judah, the Davidic King from the tribe of Judah.

He has come, and he has prevailed. The idea suggests a struggle, an enormous struggle through which he has passed and from which he has emerged victorious. He is the Root of David. That language comes right out of Isaiah 11 where the Messiah is presented as the Root and the Shoot of David.

Then this glorious vision in chapter 11 of the time when the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, the transformation of all things in resurrection splendor, such that the wolf will lie down with the lamb, and a little child will play over the asp’s hole. This all comes about when the Lion of the tribe of Judah prevails, who is known as the Root and the Shoot of David. Why? Why that?

For quite a number of years, I lived in Vancouver, British Columbia. I was there just two or three weeks ago to go and visit the church I served 30 years ago there as pastor. It was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. All five of its pastors from the last 50 years were there. Now I didn’t found that church in case you were wondering, but the pastor who did found it was there. He was 88 or whatever he was.

All of us were there, and we’d had a glorious history. There hasn’t been one pastoral scandal or anything like that. It had been a really good, happy church for all of us. When I lived in Vancouver, I used to go down every once in a while to Stanley Park. You go through the downtown area, and Stanley Park is a peninsula that juts out into the Sound. You can take your bike or walk around there. It’s about 9 miles all the way around.

When you first go in, off to the left there was a zoo. It’s gone now, but when I was there, there was a zoo. Now there are simply whales and sharks. There’s a water display now, but when I was there, there was a zoo as well. In the parking lot for that zoo, there was this stump of a giant BC Douglas fir.

Now we’re far enough north there that we don’t get the giant California redwoods, but we get BC Douglas firs. It’s our poor substitute. Canada always has to be a little smaller, because it’s so far north … frozen and things. These BC Douglas firs could nevertheless grow to pretty substantial diameters. You know, 12–15 feet. Pretty big trees just the same.

Two hundred years ago, the Indians would chop them down with axes. Axes! Sometimes just stone axes. They’d chop them down and roll them into the Sound, then hull them out with stone axes to make oceangoing canoes. Would you believe? Huge trees! This tree obviously had been chopped down about chest high by some Indian tribe a couple of centuries earlier. The thing still had been carefully preserved, and out of the middle of it had grown a revitalized BC Douglas fir about two or three feet in diameter.

Now I don’t know enough about these things to know if this was the life of the original tree coming back up through it (some trees do that) or this is rather some seed that’s got down into the rotting core and put down its roots. I don’t know. But every time I saw that when I lived in Vancouver, I remembered this passage.

You see, the tree was cut down. The Davidic line seemed to have come to an end. There was no longer a David on David’s throne. For all intents and purposes, it was game over. The tree was chopped down, but the promise was there would be a shoot out of the stump of Jesse. This shoot out of the stump of Jesse would come and provide the final flowering of the Davidic line. Do you see?

But this shoot out of the stump of Jesse was not only the result at the end, the final culmination. He was also David’s root. In one sense, he is antecedent to David. He is David’s maker. He is one with the eternal God, and thus he is David’s root as much as he is the shoot in human guise now from the line of David coming out of David’s loins. He is the Root and the Shoot of David. The very last chapter of this book (chapter 22 of the Apocalypse) has the resurrected Jesus saying, “Behold, I am the root and the shoot of David.”

What you have here then is the promise from this interpreting angel. “John, stop your crying. Stop your crying! Don’t you see? There is one who is qualified to take the scroll from the right hand of him who sits on the throne and to break the seals and bring to pass all of God’s purposes for judgment and blessing. He is the Davidic king. He is the promised Lion of the tribe of Judah. He is the Root and Shoot of David.”

Don’t you see in fulfillment of these promises? Now you have to picture the scene. John is crying away. Tears are streaming down his face. He is crying, and he is weeping. The interpreting angel 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.”

That’s what the text says. “Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain …” Someone has written, “None but an inspired composer of heavenly visions would ever have thought of it. When earth-bound 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 …” Oh, nobody mentions Canada, the beaver, but we’ll let that one pass!

“… France the tiger, the United States the spread eagle—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.” The writer almost has it right, but not quite.

You see, the writer has cast it as not the Lion but only the Lamb. Yet one of the things we saw in the first session this morning is that apocalyptic literature mingles its metaphors. It delights in mingled metaphors … mangled metaphors from a kind of linear way of looking at things. The point is this one who is able to take the scroll from the right hand of him who sits on the throne is both the Lion and the Lamb.

That’s the point! He is the conquering king, and he is the bleeding sacrifice. There is no way you can go away and draw a picture of this. How do you get a lion to look like a lamb? In the person of Christ, all the paradoxes are resolved, for we serve one who is the messianic King fulfilling all the promises, one with God from before the ancient days of yore, and yet who, nevertheless, is the slaughtered sin-bearing Lamb.

Yet even when the Lamb is mentioned, it’s not enough. Look at what is said about him. “… looking as if it had been slaughtered …” It is a brutal word. “… standing in the center of the throne …” That is he doesn’t have to come from outside through all of these serried ranks of barriers. He is already there. It’s a way of affirming his deity. He comes from the throne toward the outside rather than coming from the outside toward the inside. He is not a human being who has to be exalted enough to finally reach up and touch that scroll.

He is one with God in the throne itself, then comes out and becomes the human being who constitutes the Lion of David and suffers then as the Lamb who redeems a fallen race. Not only so, but we are told of him he stands in the center of the throne. He is “… encircled by the four living creatures and elders.” They’re offering their homage to him. From now on in the book, again and again and again, there is scarcely mention of God without mentioning the Lamb.

It’s a reference to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb again and again and again right through the rest of the book. Yet we’re also told he had seven horns. An apocalyptic horn is always a symbol for kingdom authority or kingdom or king dominion. Seven horns mean he has perfect kingly power. Seven eyes. That is, he sees everything. He has all the attributes of divine omniscience.

So even though he is a slaughtered Lamb, he is truly God with all of God’s prerogatives, kingly authority, and omniscience. He sends out the seven spirits of God sent into all the earth. That is to say he mediates all of his reign and rule at this juncture by the Spirit of God. “He came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne.” The rest of the book unfolds then by the slitting of the seals (chapter 6). The seals give way to other images. The whole book unfolds based on the fundamental controlling vision of chapters 4 and 5.

“Was ever a heart so hardened, and can such ingratitude be that one for whom Jesus suffered should say, ‘It is nothing to me’?” Once the book has been taken and it is clear this slaughtered Lamb/Lion, this conquering King, this sacrificial conqueror is going to slit the seals and bring about all of God’s purposes for redemption and judgment, then we’re told the four living creatures, the highest ranks of angels around the throne …

“… and the four living creatures with the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb.” Granted, the authority ascribed to God in the fourth chapter, because they fell before him.… To ascribe similar authority and worship then to the Lamb is a way of saying he is one with God as he appears then throughout the rest of the book. “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 …”

What’s this symbolism got to do with things? Now when I say the word harp in English, I know what’s going through your head. You’re thinking of one of those great big instruments that’s shaped a bit like that with foot pedals down below, and you pluck it with strings. Isn’t that what you’re thinking of?

It’s a great big, ugly thing. It sounds nice, but you don’t want it too often, do you? I mean, it’s the sort of thing that fleshes out a nice orchestra, but you’re not going to listen to it 24 hours a day, are you? But harp in the ancient world was an instrument of joy. It wasn’t a solemn instrument or a whimsical instrument. It wasn’t a kind of Indian sitar or anything like that. It was an instrument of joy. What should you think of? A banjo, perhaps.

Now of course what you conceive of as an instrument of joy depends a bit on a particular culture and background and so on. I understand that, but it’s pretty hard to imagine a banjo at a funeral, isn’t it? I mean, it’s just hard. You get a really good finger-strumming banjo player who can pick out those notes, and despite your best intentions, you start beating with it. I mean, it’s just a happy instrument, isn’t it? Even if you prefer pipe organs, you can’t really be sad with a banjo, can you?

That’s what’s going on here. It’s why you see when the people of the Israelites go into captivity, we read in the Psalms, “By the rivers of Babylon, there we hung up our harps. Our captors said, ‘Sing us a song of Zion! Go on, you guys. Pull down those harps, and sing us a tune.’ How can I sing a song of Zion in a strange land?” But now the harps come down. That’s the point.

This is a cause for great rejoicing, for enormous delight, because all of God’s purposes for judgment and blessing are going to be brought to pass. This wipes away all the tears. Get out those banjoes. This is a time for rejoicing. Do you see? The same with the bowls, which are for the prayers of the saints. “Each of these had a harp and they were also holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.”

The imagery again is drawn from the Old Testament. Psalm 141, for example. “Let my prayer be set before you as incense.” We may not see the power of that today because we’re more familiar with Right Guard. But in the ancient world, which was not so well known for hygiene and soap and daily showers, homes could be pretty smelly places.

You wanted incense around to sort of dispel some of that. Out of this then came the symbolism that was also found as part of the tabernacle and temple rites. Our prayers before God are wafted before him like incense. To think that then you can sort of light an incense candle and that’s the same as a prayer is to confuse the symbolism with the reality. That’s not the point. You go to some temples of strict Catholics or just some Eastern Orthodox, and they’ll swear you can pay your money and light a candle, and then that’s somehow offering something up to God.

Give me a break! It’s confusing the symbol and the reality. Do you see? But just as the incense made the whole thing so pleasant in the home (the whole atmosphere), so the people of God, when they’re offering prayers to God that are accepted before him and waft into his presence, it makes the entire relationship pleasant. That’s where the symbolism came from in the ancient world.

You see, if all of God’s purposes for judgment and blessing are all tied up, now they’re not going to happen. What’s the point of praying? How can you pray for the salvation of people? How can you pray justice will be done? How can you pray the church will be built? How can you claim Jesus’ promise, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”? How can you pray, “Even so, yes, come, Lord Jesus”? How can you pray any of that? None of God’s purposes for judgment and blessing will come.

But now the Lion and the Lamb is going to slit the seals, and all of the prayers of God’s people are wafted before him once again with perfect assurance of their efficacy. Why? Why? Because we’ve suddenly become great prayer warriors? No! Because of the certainty we have that God’s purposes for judgment and blessing will be fulfilled. The harps come down. We start to sing, and the prayers of God’s saints are wafted before him, and God is in the business of answering prayers according to the promises and dictates of the gospel itself. Do you see?

Out of this then, these beings around the throne sing a new song. Let me say this reverently. If Christ had not died as the Davidic King and the atoning Lamb, then God’s purposes would have failed. It’s unthinkable, but it’s also the truth. Not a single person would have been redeemed. Not a single human being would have escaped hell. There would be no church, no gift of the Holy Spirit, no communion of the saints. There would be none to believe.

There would be no confidence of a new heaven and a new earth, a home of righteousness. No delight in the prospect of a resurrection body. We would still face death as the last enemy, but today death (or the last enemy) does not have the last word. If Christ had not died, it would also have the last word. All of this because the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Lamb who was slain, prevailed. He alone opens the scroll.

That’s what precipitates this new song. “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals …” Why? What makes him worthy to bring about God’s purposes? “… 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.”

Notice well it is a bloody atonement. “You were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God.” It’s a bloody atonement. The symbolism of blood in the Scripture is bound up with life violently and sacrificially ended. In Paul, all the things that are ascribed to the blood of Christ are elsewhere ascribed to the death of Christ or the cross of Christ. It’s a different way of saying the same thing. Someone has commented that one of the best commentaries on this simple truth is a hymn of 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.

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, “Abba, Father, Abba” cry.

Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. It’s a bloody atonement. It’s a broad atonement. Have you noticed? “You have purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” There is not a hint of racism there. Men and women from every tongue and tribe and people and nation. In that respect, LA is more like heaven than Lincoln, Nebraska. Oh, there may be other respects in which Lincoln is a little closer, but in that respect, LA wins hands down.

We ought to rejoice in this and make sure our mission commitment is not only for China but for at home as well. It’s a bloody atonement, and it’s a broad atonement. It’s a directed atonement. We’re not only rescued from our guilt on our past and our sin, but we are rescued so we are free to serve God. We are told, “You have purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.”

It’s a directed atonement, and it is also 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 is the new song, but it’s not enough for the inner crowd of angels to sing it. Now the entire angelic choir comes in. Millions of them. Ten thousand times ten thousand, we’re told. Thousands upon thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand.

It did my heart good to hear this choir. It’s a very good choir, and it’s a good orchestra. But let me tell you, it’s small potatoes compared to what we’re going to hear on the last day. Can you imagine singing, encircling the throne and the living creatures and the elders and in a loud voice singing maybe a cappella so we can hear all the words with perfect clarity, even if there are millions and millions of them singing? “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain …”

The great song you see at the end of chapter 4 is directed to God because he is the Creator. “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things …” Now it’s especially directed to the Lamb because he has redeemed us. “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive …” then a seven-fold list of attributes, which is a way of saying, “This is the perfection of praise.” “… receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”

But it’s not enough for all of the angelic hosts of heaven to join in. Oh no! There must be a response from everything in the entire universe because, you see, it is all God’s universe. He is the God of creation. An appropriate response from a mote of dust dancing in a sunbeam and from a frog galumphing in a bog, from constellations that are sending forth their glory everywhere, from the entire universe which, up until now, has been groaning under the travail of living under the curse …

We still live in a fallen world that lives by the law of the jungle. Do you remember Kipling’s description of it? “This is the law of the jungle, as old and as true as the skies, and the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.” The law of the jungle is kill or be killed, eat or be eaten.

You will die. Sons will die. Everything will die, die, die! But in the new heaven and the new earth, death will be wound backwards. It will be reversed. There will be life, resurrection life, akin to Christ’s own resurrection life. Everything in the entire new heaven and new earth, the entire new created order will spring with praise to the God who has redeemed us from the curse of sin and all of its maleffects.

The whole universe joins out in singing. “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 …’ ” That’s the regular refrain throughout 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!’ The four living creatures said, ‘Amen,’ and the elders bowed down and worshiped.”

Great God of wonders!

All thy ways are matchless, godlike, and divine.

But the fair glories of thy grace,

More godlike and unrivaled shine.

Who is a pardoning God like thee?

And who has grace so rich and free?

Here is the impetus for living with eternity’s values in view. Here is the impetus for holiness. Here is the impetus for repentance and faith, for we will all stand before this God on the last day. Here is the impetus for missionary call, for doing something useful with your life. Here is the impetus to do something with your retirement. Here is the impetus for thinking big thoughts, giving up small ambitions, and thinking about eternity.

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 clans,

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 has passed.

Sing to Christ the Conqueror a new song full of praise.

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

Let us pray.

My words are so weak and anemic in comparison with the grandeur of this vision. Oh Lord God, we beg of you, open our blind eyes that we may see eternal things and glimpse something not only of your majesty along with the angel hosts who are not redeemed while we, though blood-bought people of God, are redeemed.

But grant that we may also see the triumph of the Lamb and what it cost him who became sin for us that we might be forgiven our sin, to redeem us and free us and purchase us and undo all of the curse that came on the entire created order such that we too by faith have come to see eternal things and cry with the church in every generation, “Even so, yes, come, Lord Jesus.” We pray in his name, amen.