Understanding Revelation, Part 2 (Revelation 5:11-14)

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

Revelation 5:11-14
Before one song was played by U2 during their famous Rattle and Hum concert tour of 1987, the band’s lead singer, Bono, was fond of saying, “This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We're stealing it back!" The song he referred to is a Paul McCartney tune recorded by McCartney and the rest of the Beatles nineteen years earlier, in 1968. It’s called Helter Skelter, a frenetic, screeching, relentless, driving, but altogether harmless rock song, which the demented Charles Manson claimed contained orders to him and his crazed followers to kill people, especially black people. After Manson and his group went on a murderous rampage and were taken to trial, the song Helter Skelter fell into disrepute. For years, no one played it. But in ’87, Bono and the rest of U2 were intent on rescuing Helter Skelter from its undeserved bad reputation. It worked. The song became a showstopper. For a number of years now, McCartney himself has felt it safe to play a song he once had been forced to put in mothballs.

I told the adult Sunday School class last week, as we prepared to begin this sermon series on Revelation, that I felt a bit like Bono and U2. Like Helter Skelter, the New Testament book of Revelation has an undeserved bad reputation pinned on it by kooks and financial opportunists. I hope that we, as Lutheran Christians, can help rescue Revelation from its disrepute. I hope that we can take Revelation back for the glory of God! 

The stakes are much higher when we talk about Revelation, of course. It’s not a four-and-one-half-minute rock song; Revelation is one of the books that make up the inspired, perfect, inerrant Word of God. It’s important that we ignore those who misuse Revelation and overcome our own wariness of it, to hear and see what God wants to tell us on its pages.

Last week, I laid a general foundation for Revelation, talking about its main messages written, originally, to Christians in western Turkey who were facing persecution for their faith. In order to understand today’s lesson from Revelation, it’s important that we discuss a few other key background issues.

Most importantly, it's critical to remember that Revelation can be broken, broadly, into two big sections. Section one is made up of the first three chapters. There, John the Evangelist, the writer of Revelation, presents messages from the risen ascended Jesus, to seven churches in western Turkey.
When you come to chapter four of Revelation, you enter the second big section of the book, one that runs all the way to its end in chapter 22.

At the start of chapter 4, John says that while he was imprisoned, still exiled on the island of Patmos, he was simultaneously placed in the heavenly throne room, where he saw and witnessed extraordinary things.

This automatically sounds weird to you and me. But to the people living sometime between 81 and 96 AD, when Revelation was written, it wouldn’t have seemed weird at all. There was a well-established form of writing common among Jews, Christians, and even people of other Middle East religions, known as apocalyptic. You may remember from last Sunday that the book of Revelation takes its name from the very first word in the original Greek text, apocalupsis, meaning a revelation, or a lifting of the veil. The moment the first hearers or readers heard or saw that word, they no doubt would have known that they were about to hear an apocalyptic letter.

You can find examples of other apocalyptic literature in the book of Daniel and in sections from the book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament and in chapter 12 of Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth, found in the New Testament. Apocalyptic literature always presents vivid first person accounts of believers who find themselves swept into heaven's throne room. The second section of Revelation is another example of this literary genre.

The two big sections of Revelation need to be seen as two sides of a single mysterious coin. Scholars might have other names for them, but I'm just a shirtsleeve preacher. So, I describe the two sides of Revelation as down and up, respectively. In chapters 1 through 3, Jesus comes down to John with a message for His earthly Church. Jesus cares about what happens in our everyday lives. He's a Lord unafraid to get His uniform dirty. Just as in His original incarnation, when the Word became flesh and lived among us, Jesus still comes to us in Word, in the Sacraments, and in the fellowship of Christian believers. In chapters 4 through 22, the risen Jesus pulls John up to the holiest of holies, allowing John to get a glimpse of what all who are faithful in following Him have to look forward to.

As chapter 4 begins, John says he walked through an open door to heaven. There, he sees an imposing throne. Around it are 24 smaller thrones for those John calls "the elders." Scholars tell us that these are probably composed of 12 for the 12 tribes of Israel and 12 more for the 12 apostles, representing the fullness of God’s reign over all the world.

John also sees four living creatures, each with four eyes, representing God’s capacity to watch over the entire universe at all times. (I always thought that my mom had eyes in the back of her head. John is saying that God really does see everything that happens to us!)

Just before our lesson in chapter 5, John writes that he saw a scroll sealed by seven seals. You know that in the ancient world, before kings and important people sent documents, they would use wax to seal them and imprint them with their rings or signets. No one but the recipient was authorized to break those seals.

The scroll sealed with seven seals, the number of them representing the perfect, complete sovereignty of God, detailed the future of our fallen world, what is to become of a world imprisoned by sin and death and afflicted with problems. In John's presence, it's determined that there is no one there worthy of opening up the seals, nobody with the power or perfection to move the future of humanity beyond the grave.

On hearing this, John says that he wept bitterly. An elder tells John to stop his weeping, that the Lion of Judah, the descendant of David, can open the scroll and the seven seals. Suddenly, on the throne of God, John saw a Lion Who was at the same time “a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered.”

John’s apocalyptic scene is different from others you might read in the Bible or elsewhere. As one scholar points out, it’s almost a parody of the standard apocalyptic throne room scenes. Here's why: When we think of a conquering deity, we think almost exclusively as first century people did: of powerful beings which, in human form, have straight white teeth, are always in perfect health, bestride the world unencumbered by opposition or challenge, and whose every hair is always in place. This is how Jesus is often portrayed in popular imagination. But when God told Isaiah how the Messiah would look some six centuries before Jesus’ birth, that’s not how God said the One we know as the Lion and the Lamb would appear at all. In Isaiah, we learn that Jesus will have

no form or majesty that we should look at Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him…despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;…one from whom others hide their faces…held…of no account.

In heaven, the clear object of worship, on the throne with the Father (actually sharing the throne with the Father) is One Who is described both as a Lion and as “a slaughtered Lamb,” sacrificed for your sins and mine!

Then we come to the verses of our lesson in Revelation, chapter 5. John sees myriads of myriads (a myriad is 10,000) and thousands of thousands of living creatures singing the praises of the Lamb. Some of the words they sing are undoubtedly familiar to you:

Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!... To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” 

For us this morning, the take-away message is simple, important, and relevant.

This past week, one of our young members, considering all of the earthquakes and disasters being reported in the news these days, wondered if the end of this world might be coming upon us soon.

I understood why she might ask that. It’s easy to get caught up in the panic and fears on which the world, the devil, and even we ourselves like to feed.

But we need not fear! The One Who was and is and is to come, has already conquered sin and death. His kingdom has already begun. We are already safe in His hands even if, like John the Evangelist and the early Christians to whom he first wrote Revelation, we face persecution, difficulties, or death. The Lamb of God Who was slaughtered for our sin and Who alone is worthy to break the seals on our destinies, has control of the future.

Instead of spending time or energy on fear, we should use our lives to do something else. We get an important insight into what that something else is by looking at one single word used by the myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands as they sing to Jesus, the Lion and the Lamb. Do you know which word it is?

It's worthy. They sang that Jesus was worthy to break the seals on eternity, worthy of their praise and glory. Our word worship is a contraction of the Old English word, worthship. When we worship the God we know in Jesus Christ, we join the myriads of myriads and the thousands of thousands in declaring Jesus’ “worth-ship,” the unmatched, superior, eternal worthiness of Jesus. By His suffering, death, and resurrection, Jesus has made Himself,  worthy of our utter and complete devotion!

We’re called to worship Jesus not just when we gather here on Sundays, but also in our everyday lives. We worship Jesus in...

• how we respond to His Word and will, 
• how we love our neighbor, 
• how we fight injustice against the weak and despised of the world, 
• how we strive to do our very best as parents, students, citizens, employees, employers, and neighbors, and 
• how we share the Good News of Jesus with others. 

The One Who reached down to John the Evangelist on Patmos, the One Who pulled up that suffering evangelist to give a glimpse of all the wonders that will belong to followers of Jesus, does these same things for us today in many ways.

The Lamb of God is worthy of all our worship, honor, devotion, and love. The God Who comes down and lifts us up is worthy of all our praise!

This world is a fragile, fleeting thing. It has come into being and it will one day pass out of being. But the kingdom of Jesus Christ is eternal. This is the word of God we find in today's lesson in Revelation: Christ has given all for us; in lives spent in worship of Christ, we give our all back; then, come what may, we leave the future to Him, certain of His love and His good will for our eternal destinies.  Amen

How to See Jesus

[This is the second part of a series of messages on Revelation that I'm presenting during this Easter season. It was presented during Saturday and Sunday worship celebration with the people of Friendship Lutheran Church, Amelia, Ohio, on April 21 and 22, 2007. If you live close by and have no church home or if you're visiting the area, we invite you to worship with us soon.]

Revelation 5:11-14
“Eighty percent of success is showing up.” So says comedian and director Woody Allen. Of course, some would say that Allen has shown up in places he shouldn’t have. I wouldn’t disagree with that. But there’s something to what he says. So many of the good things we experience in our lives--success, enjoyment--are the result of showing up.

And by showing up, I mean more than simply occupying space. Two people can go to the same restaurant, be served by the same waiter, order the same items from the menu, the items prepared well and served piping hot. And yet one of those customers can come away grousing about having had a bad experience, while the other goes on about how he’d love to go back to the same restaurant again and again. The difference? One of the diners was there in body only; the other was completely engaged with the experience. The second fellow soaked up the restaurant’s atmosphere, enjoyed the descriptions of the menu items, had fun interacting with his server, savored the taste of every bite of food, enjoyed the company of his wife and friends as they ate together. The first guy was there because it was time to eat.

We see this same thing happen in people who participate in public worship. For many people, worship is something they may do once a week for an hour. They sing a few songs, say a few prayers, and listen to a message. The entire experience is entirely unexceptional.

For others of us, at least some of the time, in spite of the humanness of the worship experience, worship is a lot more than that. As we saw when we read from Article 7 of The Augsburg Confession this morning, the founders of our Lutheran movement knew that worship doesn’t have to look the same all the time. The pastor may wear a robe, or chant, or not. The congregation may sing the same song week after week or not. The form of our worship isn’t as important as the degree to which we are engaged in worship. Do we show up? Real worship happens when we surrender ourselves--mind, body, spirit, soul, and will--to the God we meet in Jesus Christ.

I bring all of this up because in this second week of looking at the New Testament book of Revelation during the Easter season, our focus is worship. The early chapters of John’s book, written in about 90-AD while he was in exile on the island of Patmos, contained a series of messages to seven churches in a region known as Asia Minor, now largely encompassing Turkey.

But beginning in chapter 4 and running through the verses that make up today’s Bible lesson, John presents a vision of heaven. It’s very clear that John gained access to this vision during worship. Somehow, while singing praises to God and attending to God’s Word, even though shackled and exiled on rocky Patmos, he was in some way transported to heaven.

There, He saw the Lamb of God Who sacrificed Himself to give all who believe in Him life forever--Jesus, God in the flesh--on the throne, being worshiped by thousands upon thousands of angels and saints and creatures. All who worshiped Jesus declared Him to be worthy of sevenfold praises: power, wealth, wisdom, might, honor, glory, and blessing!

If John, in his painful imprisonment, could have a transporting experience of Jesus’ love and power while he worshiped, something that comforted and inspired him in his tough times, I believe that we can, too. We have our own tough times, after all. So how can we learn to truly show up for God and experience His presence and power in our lives?

First: We remember that worship is a twenty-four hour a day proposition. The Old Testament, of course, was mostly written in Hebrew. The Hebrew word for worship is aboda, which means service. True worship begins with a commitment to serving God and that includes serving our neighbor. God calls us to love and serve others as He has loved and served us in Jesus Christ. Serving God and loving our neighbor is something we do with more than just words.

This is a lesson I learned early in my marriage. My wife would come home from work and I, still a student with one year of college left, would sit there amid dishes I hadn't cleaned and messes I hadn't cleared. "Why is this place such a mess?" she'd ask. And I'd reply, "I don't know. But I love you." Those words didn’t wipe the look of frustration from her face. If you love me, my wife was saying, then clear away this squalor!

Once we understand that worship is offering our lives to the God Who offered Himself to us on the cross, we come to our corporate worship on Saturdays or Sundays with different attitudes. We’re ready to experience the presence of the real, loving Christ in our lives!

Second: We understand that corporate worship, worship with others on Saturdays and Sundays, is most meaningful when we take time to worship with our families and by ourselves. John was ready for the consoling experience of his heavenly vision because he took time to worship God even as he laid alone, cold and worn from his slavery, on the rocky ground of the island of Patmos.

One of the things that excites me about this summer’s mission trip with our youth is that every night, after a day of serving, we’ll worship together with hundreds of other youth and their adult advisors. Having worshiped God all day long through our service, we’ll then enter into God’s presence together, energized, inspired, and encouraged as John was long ago on Patmos!

Third: We know that true worship is a matter of spirit, of lives dialed into Christ. Jesus said as much once when he told a Samaritan woman that God didn’t care where people worshiped. What matters is that we worship in way that's truly connected to Christ. And God doesn’t care if we wear a three-piece suit or a T-shirt. He doesn’t care if we sport wing tips or flip-flops or are barefooted. God cares whether we give ourselves completely to Him or not. Like the elders John saw in his heavenly image, we worship when fall down--literally or figuratively--before God and let Him be the most important thing in our lives. One day, I hope to learn how to worship like this!

You and I are called to be living sacrifices to Christ. Living sacrifices don’t hold anything back from God. I once heard a man named Robert Coleman, a professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, tell the story of a little boy whose twin brother was very sick. I’ve shared it with you before. Without a transfusion, the brother would die. The situation was explained to the little guy and he readily volunteered to have his blood drawn. Laying on a hospital bed some moments after the IV had been put in his arm, the boy turned to the doctor and asked softly, “Doctor, how much longer before I die?” It was then that the doctor realized that the boy thought that giving life to his twin brother would cause his own death. The doctor asked him, “If you thought that you were going to die, why did you say it was okay for us to draw your blood?” The boy said, “Because he’s my brother and I love him.”

It shouldn’t be hard for us to remember how much Christ has done for us. It shouldn’t hard be when we consider all that Christ endured for us. How He was arrested, scourged, rejected, mocked, beaten, and crucified all to take the punishment we deserved for our sin! Gratitude alone should lead us to fall down before Christ. It shouldn't be hard to remember to be thankful. But it is. I’m ashamed to admit how often I fail to worship Him. God though, will take even our weakest desire to worship Him and turn it into something when we dare to submit to Him!

Worship is our twenty-four-hour-a-day call from God. Worship is service to the One Who has served us in Christ. Worship is something that happens when we make God our highest priority. Worship is a matter of surrender to Christ.

You and I can experience the presence and power of Jesus Christ in our every day lives. It begins with truly showing up to worship God, not just on Saturdays and Sundays, but every day we live.

Third Pass at This Weekend's Bible Lesson: Revelation 5:11-14

[You can find the first two passes at the lesson here and here. The first link will explain what these posts are about.]

Verse-by-Verse Comments
11Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands,
(1) It's typical of apocalyptic literature to speak of looking, then hearing.

(2) The throne of God is surrounded by the praises of thousands. The thousands mentioned here have already been mentioned in Revelation 4:10. There, they cast down their crowns before God. No matter what respect or honor others may accord angels or us, we all must bow to God!

(3) Daniel 7:10 also portrays thousands serving and bowing before God.

(4) In Greek, a myriad is ten-thousand. Clearly, John sees thousands joining in with praises of God.

12singing with full voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”
(1) Here, the myriads offer a sevenfold hymn of praise to the Lamb, Who gave up His life so that all who repent and believe in Christ may live. (See here.)

(2) From corporate worship on earth, John sees a vision of worship in heaven. There is a connection between the worship we offer here and the worship offered in heaven.

(3) Our term worship comes from a compound of old English words. In worth-ship, we declare the worthiness of God to be given all honor and praise.

(4) Seven was the Hebrew word symbolizing completeness. Creation, according to Genesis 1, was completed in one week and on the seventh day, God declared His work "very good" (in the Hebrew: tov tov). Total praise in response to God's completeness and perfection is being offered here.

(5) Ironically, in a Roman culture that valued violence, power, and wealth, glory was being ascribed to one whose road to eternity was marked by self-sacrifice, service, and poverty.

13Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, “To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”
(1) The Lamb is accorded the same honor as the Father, indicating His oneness with Him.

14And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” And the elders fell down and worshiped.
(1) Amen means Yes! or Let it be! It's a word of affirmation for whatever confession, conviction, or prayer has preceded it.

(2) The four living creatures are mentioned in Revelation 4:6-9.

Finally: Richard L. Jeske says, plausibly I think, that the hymn of redemption found in Revelation 5:9-10, capped by a doxology--a word of glory to God--in Revelation 5:12-14, should be seen as a companion to the hymn of creation in Revelation 4:11. Writes Jeske:

The Lamb who was slain is the only one worthy to open the scroll that is held in God's right hand (5:1). In other words, the cross of Christ is the means for interpreting our past, present, and future. Through Christ crucified we are able to understand the fallen, hostil world, and in him we see it redeemed (5:9-10).

Second Pass at This Weekend's Bible Lesson: Revelation 5:11-14

[For an explanation of what these "passes" are about, go here.]

General Comments (Focused on This Passage)
1. Most commentators identify Revelation 5:1-14 as a single unit and as a pivotal part of the book. John has completed the messages to the seven Asia Minor churches, really a selection of messages for all the churches. Now will come his apocalyptic vision.

2. During worship (see yesterday's pass), John is transported to heaven. There, The New Interpreter's Bible commentary tells us:

...he hears about the one who will open the seal, the lion from the tribe of Judah. But he sees something different. In the midst of the worship and movement in heaven, John sees a Lamb "bearing the marks of slaughter," who comes to God and takes the scroll, the opening of which heralds the manifestation of the crisis described in subsequent chapters.

3. The Lamb is also the Lion of Judah, Jesus, Who conquers through submission to the will of the Father and through His death on a cross. Writes Richard L. Jeske in Revelation for Today: Images of Hope:

The symbol of "the Lamb who was slain" has various antecedents in Old Testament tradition, all of which figure in John's use of it. It recalls the slaughtering of the Passover lamb and Israel's exodus from Egypt...Isa[iah] 53:7, "like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth," is applied to Jesus in Acts 8:32. The imagery of the conquering lamb is also found in the apocalyptic [literature predating John, such as 1 Enoch, which appears in the Apocrypha]...

4. As Jeske tells us:

The symbol of the scroll is that all of world history is subject to the will and power of God. But the scroll is sealed and "no one in heaven or on earth was able to open the scroll or look into it" (5:3). No one is worthy to unravel the mystery of time and existence, of a hostile and fallen world and its future. No one, except "the Lion of the tribe of Judah," "the Root of David," "the Lamb who was slain" (5:5-6, 12)

It's tempting to believe that this Biblical image of the suffering servant destined to reign over heaven and earth being the only one worthy to break the seal of the scroll must have informed one part of the Arthurian legend in England. In a dark age of lawlessness, the legend says, there was no one worthy to be king. That's because no one was able to pull a sword from a stone on which were inscribed the words, "Whoso pulleth out this sword is by right of birth King of England." As whimsically portrayed, first by author T.H. White and then Walt Disney in, respectively, a novel and a movie, each called The Sword in the Stone, a small, underestimated orphan boy called The Wart by his guardian, was the only one able to remove the sword from the stone. The Wart became King Arthur.

5. But if some find the notion of Lamb slain or a suffering servant winning victory over death through submission to a cross consoling, others spurn it. This Savior calls us to take up our crosses--to confess our sin, to own our mortality, to face up to our need of God. For the Christian, the cross is a symbol of liberation and new life. For those without hope in Christ, the cross is a symbol of folly, self-denigration, and defeat. They forget that Easter follows Good Friday! They also underestimate the power to work death that comes from our sin, the sin for which the sinless Christ went to the cross on our behalf and the sin which must, as Revelation tells us, must be bleached from our lives in the blood of the Lamb!

[Verse-by-verse comments tomorrow, I hope.]

First Pass at This Weekend's Bible Lesson: Revelation 5:11-14

[Most weeks, I present as many updates on my reflections and study of the Biblical texts on which our weekend worship celebrations will be built as I can. The purpose is to help the people of the congregation I serve as pastor, Friendship Lutheran Church of Amelia, Ohio, get ready for worship. Hopefully, it's helpful to others as well, since our Bible lesson is usually one from the weekly lectionary, variations of which are used in most of the churches of the world.]

Revelation 5:11-14
11Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, 12singing with full voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” 13Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, “To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” 14And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” And the elders fell down and worshiped.

General Comments:
1. This marks the resumption of these "passes" at the weekly Bible lesson. Because last weekend marked my first of six messages based on passages from the book of Revelation and I didn't present any introductory comments on that book, I'm going to do that here.

2. As I explained in my message last weekend:

It was written by John, traditionally thought to be the beloved disciple and the author of the Gospel of John and of the three letters to churches also found near the back of your Bible, First, Second, and Third John. By the time John wrote Revelation, he was an old man exiled by the Roman Empire to Patmos, a small Greek island in the Aegean Sea. Even today, the place is so tiny that it has only about 3000 residents. It’s a rocky place that has been likened to Alcatraz.

The map above shows the position of Patmos off the coast of what was Asia Minor and is modern-day Turkey.

3. Revelation, like the letters of Paul such as Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, and so on, was written as a "circular letter," correspondence to be carried to gatherings of Christians in various communities as they worshiped.

4. Revelation 1:4 addresses the recipients of the letter: "John to the seven churches that are in Asia." This can't be read to mean that there were only seven churches in Asia Minor. From Acts and the letters Peter and Paul, we know that there were gatherings of Christian communities in many more locales than these. But there are two explanations scholars often advance for the reference to "seven churches":

• John's letter was meant specifically for the seven faith communities mentioned.
• Or, far more likely, seven, the number of completeness in Jewish numerology, would have caused the original hearers and readers of the letter to see the words John writes here as being a message for the whole church.
  

5. Revelation is the result of John's encounter with the risen and ascended Jesus. The opening verses indicate that the context within which this encounter and Christ's revelation to John happens is community worship. John's call isn't to a spiritual lone rangerism. His call is from the Creator and the Lord of the Church and he's being called into service to the Church.

6. The literary genre of Revelation is apocalypse. In fact, as I said this past weekend:

Our English title for this book exactly translates the Greek term, apocalypsis. That’s the noun form of the verb, apocalypto, which means, I reveal or I uncover. Here, John presents a series of messages and images revealed to him by the risen and ascended Jesus.

An Old Testament example of apocalyptic literature is Daniel.

The irony of Revelation is that while it purports to clarify, reveal, and uncover, it is in many ways, the most mysterious book of the Bible.

I hope to share general comments on the lesson itself tomorrow.