Revelation Class #17

       As we covered last week, Revelation is written in the form of a Suzerain Treaty. Remember that the first part of a Suzerain Treaty is the Preamble, which is the declaration of the Suzerain or Sovereign King, saying: 'this is who I am.' A clear example is in Exodus, in the preface to the Ten Commandments: "I am the Lord your God." The second part of the treaty is the Historical Prologue, which states what the great king has done (Exodus 20: I am the Lord your God … who brought you out of Israel). Then we get into the Ethical Stipulations, which states ‘this is what you need to do.’ That, of course, is the main body of the Ten Commandments that we are all familiar with. The Lord in effect is saying 'you will obey these commandments.' In the book of Revelation, the Ethical Stipulations section begins in chapter 4. Each of the Seven Seals are the stipulations that God requires. The 4th part of the treaty follows in chapter 8 with the Sanctions: 'this is how I'll punish you if you don't obey me, and how I'll bless you if you do.' Then the 5th and final section is the Succession Arrangements.

       John writes: Revelation 4:1 After these things I looked, and behold, a door open in heaven, and the first voice which I had heard, like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me, said, "come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things." (2) Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne. (3) And he who was sitting like a jasper stone and a sardius in appearance; and a rainbow around the throne, like an emerald in appearance. (4) And around the throne were twenty-four thrones; and upon the thrones twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white garments, and golden crowns on their heads. (5) And from the throne proceed flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder. and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God; (6) and before the throne, as it were, a sea of glass like crystal; and in the center and around the throne, four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind. (7) And the first creature like a lion, and the second creature like a calf, and the third creature had a face like that of a man, and the fourth creature like a flying eagle. (8) and the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the almighty, who was and who is and who is to come." (9) And when the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, to Him who lives forever and ever, (10) the twenty-four elders will fall down before Him who sits on the throne, and will worship Him who lives forever and ever, and will cast their crowns before the throne, saying (11) "worthy art Thou, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for Thou didst create all things, and because of Thy will they existed, and were created."

       John here sees a vision and he is 'in the Spirit.' He says (2) Immediately I was in the Spirit;  We're not sure when we read this if this is a continuation of his original vision or whether it's a more intense vision, or whether it's some period of time between the two. Remember in Chapter 1 verse 10 he says "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day." Throughout the Old Testament you see this prophetic calling. We are all prophets in a sense. To prophesy means to explain Scripture. So what I'm doing here is prophesying. But there's a difference between what I'm doing and what you're doing when you are talking to your friends about the Bible, and what John, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Micah and all the other Old Testament prophets did. With virtually no exception, what you find in the Old Testament is that the prophet was caught up either bodily or in a vision of some sort into the very heavenly counsel of God. Isaiah 6 is one of the best examples of that in the Old Testament.

       Isaiah 6 (1) In the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. (2) Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings;… (3) And one called out to another and said "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory." (4) And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. (5) Then I said, "Woe is me, for I am uncreated  – “uncreated” is the actual word he uses because he recognizes that he is so UNrighteous and God is so righteous. He is brought into the very counsel chamber of God. Over and over in the Old Testament you can see the prophets being brought into the very presence of God, where they're given a very specific mission and very specific message from God. They were called to the office of Prophet. But today there are no longer Prophets in that official sense of the word. Why? Because Scripture is complete. In chapter one of the book of Hebrews, it tells us long ago, God spoke in many different ways, through the prophets and other means, but in these last days he has spoken to us in His son. So Jesus Christ was the prophet par excellence. He was the final Prophet. He came and he gave us the final word. So when we see churches today who say that they have official prophets, we should be considering that they are not biblical. Like the prophet in the Mormon church is said to be called of God. But clearly Scripture says that's not true. Yes, we are prophets in the sense we proclaim and explain Scripture, but not like John here in Revelation. John is called into the very heavenly counsel of God.

       You may not think of it in these terms when you read these words. I mentioned it briefly last week, but what is John's vision of, when he is called up into the heavenly counsel of God? What's going on? Worship! Have you ever thought about the fact that you go to heaven every week? No, most of us don't. But earthly worship is a little sample or “vision” of heaven. It's our practice to celebrate communion the first Sunday of every month. What is communion? It's a little “vision” of what it's going to be like in heaven when we join together at the Table of the Lord with all the saints in history and we finish that Last Supper that Jesus Christ arrested when he said “this cup is the New Covenant in my blood which is shed for many and I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until I drink it new with you in heaven.” So you see what we need to get a grip on is that God has given us these little samples of what heaven is like. When we come to worship God every week, we are joining in heavenly worship. We're coming into the very presence of God and joining together with all of the saints throughout all of history and lifting our voices in praise to God. That is what John sees here.

       Now if that's true, if what he's seeing is a worship ceremony, and if our worship ceremony is a little bit of that, we should be concerned that we are actually worshiping God in our services, not only from the heart, but according to the pattern which God has given us. That's what is important. That's what the Reformed tradition believes (Grace is a Reformed church with roots tracing back to the Protestant Reformation and Calvin and Luther), that what Scripture teaches us is that we should not worship God in any way other than what he has commanded us. You see the Reformers understood this idea in Scripture.

       When you look at the Old Testament Tabernacle out in the wilderness, yes, they had been terribly rebellious and sinful, and were condemned to wander in the wilderness for forty years, but when they were at Mt. Sinai and God gave them the Ten Commandments, Moses also got something else from God. He was given the plans for the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle was where God dwelled and they worshiped. The Tabernacle was built according to the design God showed Moses. There was the huge exterior tent, and in the inside, near the back was another “tent” – the Holy of Holies, which was a square compartment – the same distance around as it was high, a cube. And in this cubicle was the Ark of the Covenant, with cherubim wings outstretched over it. And there in between the wings of the cherubim dwelt the very Presence of God himself.

       Then in the outer compartment, the Holy Place, there was a Table of the Presence, with bread and wine. We don't often think of the wine because the Bible focuses primarily on the bread, with twelve loaves representing each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Each week the priests would enter and eat the bread. Then they would put out new bread on the Sabbath, on the day of worship. What we see in other parts of the Scripture is there were also wine vessels on that table. This would make the Table of the Presence a communion table. That's where the priests ate and drank and communed during the worship service in the presence of the Lord. On the other side of the Holy Place was the seven-branched lampstand which gave light. It symbolized the “light of the world.” Then right in front of the curtain that separated the outer Holy Place from the inner Holy of Holies was the golden Altar of Incense with smoke continually going up. This symbolized the prayers of God's people. Finally, around the inner temple itself was a white curtain, symbolizing purity, righteousness.

Q: If this is how we're supposed to be worshiping, is our worship service the right way or should we be more like Catholics with the incense and liturgy, formality and all that?

A: You could argue that there is a certain validity to that. In David Chilton's book Days of Vengenance says that in the Reformed tradition, we've lost something because we've moved away from the robes for the pastor, for instance, because the Reformed tradition was concerned about the excesses of the Catholic church. Clearly, the Mass is an abomination, because it is a re-sacrificing of Jesus Christ in which the people assist. To me, that's an abomination and that's why I won't go to a Catholic Mass because the priests are reenacting the sacrifice of Christ and the congregation is helping sacrifice him. Now you may not understand that, your Catholic friends may not understand that, but I have studied the Vatican II documents in depth and that is clearly what the Roman church teaches and understands. The average Catholic on the street doesn't understand that, but I can show you in Vatican II if you're interested. They believe the bread and wine are transubstantiated and actually turn into Jesus’ literal body and blood. Then they take the host (the wafers) and they put it in a little tabernacle and worship it because it is Christ. So clearly, there are some excesses.

       When you read Revelation, it seems quite a little bit different than what the Roman Catholics do, and it is. What we really need to study and understand is not the Roman tradition, but what God directed and was actually involved in the Old Testament worship. Even the way Israel was encamped was important. You had the Tabernacle in the center, and then around the Tabernacle you had a particular tribe, the tribe of Levi, and the priests which camped around the Tabernacle. Then you had the other tribes laid out around the Tabernacle. There were twelve tribes. Levi was one of the tribes, but they were also part of the priests. There was also a tribe of Levis who were not priests. The Levites who were not priests were part of the twelve-tribe structure. There were some who were called as priests, as singers, they camped around the Tabernacle.

       That is the same structure we see in Revelation. You see God in the center, on the throne, and we see the twenty-four elders (those who are called to serve him) camped around the throne, and then we see God's people, (the Church) around that. That's the picture we are seeing here in Revelation Chapter 4. We're seeing God's plan for worship, just as he told Moses how to build a tabernacle on Mt. Sinai and how to worship. He's showing us the same thing in the New Testament.

       In the Old Testament, the high priest officiated in the worship service. He was a picture of Jesus. He was dressed in robes and had on jewels. Remember he had a breastplate, a folded pouch on the front of him, with twelve jewels on the breastplate representing the tribes of Israel. Actually inscribed on each one of the jewels was the name of one of the tribes of Israel. He had a jewel on each shoulder and a golden chain down to the breastplate with six names on one jewel and six names on the other. He had a crown, probably very much like the miter that the Pope wears. That's why the Pope wears the tall crown. On the front of the crown there was a plate that said “Holy to the Lord.” He was set apart, not only from the elders and the other priests, but from the people as well. Now in himself he wasn't any better than the other people, but he was called and set apart by God. He was given a particular function, just as pastors today are called out of God's people. They are not better than God's people. As a matter of fact, when I was a pastor in Bakersfield, I used to sit with the congregation. I wanted the people to understand that I was one of them. Then I would simply get up and preach or lead the service. That's also what you see with the Old Testament high priest.

       David Chilton argues in his book and Calvin agreed, that the priest should wear a robe. Why? To remind himself that he is acting for God, and to remind the people he is acting for God. Because he's preaching and teaching God's word: “Thus saith the Lord.” I think we forget that. The focus is on the office, not the person. But the reformers were so concerned about the excesses of the Roman Catholic church, that they got away from that. In Calvin's day they wore black robes, which were academic robes because the priests were also judges. Where do we see that today? In a courtroom. The fact that judges wear black robes originally came from the church. It's an ecclesiastical tradition. If you ask a judge about it today, they probably wouldn't know that, but it originated in the church. The priests, who were also judges, wore robes.

       So what we're seeing here then is a worship service in heaven patterned after what God showed Moses at Mt. Sinai, and the way Israel lived their life in the desert. They were gathered around the throne of God, and around the throne of God were the elders who led the worship service and taught the people. That's what we see here.

(1) …a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne. A throne standing in heaven, one sitting on the throne. (3) And he who was sitting like a jasper stone and a sardius in appearance;  Chilton goes into the fact that a jasper that we might see today is different than the jasper stone mentioned in the bible. It's probably more like a diamond, a crystalline, clear kind of stone. A sardius was a red stone much like a ruby. It was named for the town of Sardius, and is also called a carnelian. An emerald in appearance. Interestingly enough, if you go back to the Old Testament and you read about the high priest's breastplate with the stones on it, the very first one that's mentioned is jasper. The last stone mentioned is sardius.

       You may not know this but the emerald represented a particular tribe. Remember, each of them was engraved with the name of a particular tribe. An emerald represented the tribe of Judah. Why is that important to our understanding of Revelation? Jesus came from the tribe of Judah, the lion of Judah. You'll see when we get into chapter 5, he was not only the lion of Judah, but also the lamb of Judah, the lamb of God. All of these things were understood by the people John was writing to. They understood the Old Testament symbolism that is so foreign to us. We have to dig for it and search for it. Guys like me and Chilton and Mounts had to go back and do all this reading and put this out for you, although once you start reading this, you'll find it incredibly fascinating. But, it was common knowledge to them.

COMMENT: We need the Old Testament on audio tapes next!

       I read a chapter in the Old Testament and a chapter in the New Testament every day, almost without fail. I lost count long ago of how many times I've gone through the Bible, it must be 50 or 60 times now in the 17 years I've been a pastor. But, what's amazing to me is that I'll be going through the Bible and I'll come across something and BOOM! WOW! I don't remember ever seeing that before! That's incredible! That's the way God works, and that's why it's so important to continue to hear and to read devotionally. Don't read the Bible once and then say, “Well, I've done that, now what?” Now you don't have to formally study the Bible, although we encourage you to do that, too. Simply read it every day and God will give you what you need out of it.

       We see God then sitting on a throne with a rainbow around the throne, like an emerald in appearance. We also see this in Ezekiel 1:28. Ezekiel 1:1 Now it came about in the thirtieth year, on the fifth day of the fourth month, while I was by the river Chebar among the exiles, (he was in exile in Babylon) the heaven were opened (sounds like John – “a door opened”) and I saw visions of God. (4) And as I looked, behold, a storm wind was coming from the north, a great cloud with fire flashing forth, continually and a bright light around it, and in its midst something like glowing metal in the midst of the fire. (That sounds like Revelation 4. It's the same vision.  Remember I said the prophet was called into the very presence of God. It's the same thing that Isaiah saw.) (5) And within it there were figures resembling four living beings. And this was their appearance: (Now there are some differences between what Ezekiel describes and what John describes. When we report something, everybody describes it a little bit differently. There are different perspectives; they are not contradictory, but complimentary. Each perspective in the Bible is inspired by God, and together they form a whole. Each prophet is telling us what God wants us to hear through that prophet. There's a reason for the differences and we need to study to find out what God is really saying here. He goes on after he describes the four living beings and talks about the throne and the wheels under it.) (22) Now over the heads of the living beings there was something like an expanse, like the awesome gleam of crystal, extended over their heads. (23) And under the expanse their wings were stretched out… (26) Now above the expanse that was over their heads there was something resembling a throne, like lapis lazuli in appearance; and on that which resembled a throne, high up, was a figure with the appearance of a man.

       Ezekiel describes this “expanse” like a sea. John also talks about this same expanse, this “sea of crystal.” He says (6) and before the throne, as it were, a sea of glass like crystal;  From the east was the only way into the tabernacle, through the tribe of Judah. As you came through the entrance through the tribe of Judah, the first thing you came to was the Altar of Sacrifice. As soon as you got into this temple complex, you had to sacrifice. There had to be bloodshed before you could go any further toward God. Next to the Altar was “a sea,” a huge basin of water there in the desert. In Solomon's Temple it was a enormous, bronze laver sitting on the backs of twelve bronze bulls. The volume of water was incredible, which was used to wash and sprinkle, or baptize. There had to be sacrifice, and there had to be baptism, and only then could the priests enter further in and worship God as representatives of the people. And only once a year, on the Day of Atonement, could the high priest go into the Holy of Holies, into the actual Presence of God.

       This is also what we're seeing here in Revelation. This same Temple complex that God showed Moses in heaven. This is what Moses built in the desert. This is what God showed David, who passed it on to his son Solomon, who built the Temple that was laid out exactly like this. And this is what we see, or should see, in the worship of the Church today. We don't have to slavishly follow some manmade ritual. And we don't have to sacrifice anymore because Jesus is the final, once-and-for-all sacrifice. Our Great High Priest sacrificed himself, which is the only sacrifice worth anything. All the other sacrifices were pointing to God's own promise “One day I will sacrifice the Lamb of God, the Messiah.” This is why they sacrificed a lamb daily, pointing forward in time to its fulfillment in the sacrifice of God's Son. We'll get into that more in the next chapter. There we see the lamb standing in the throne. The word “standing” is a Hebrew word “Tamid.” The lamb that was sacrificed everyday was called the “Tamid,” the standing sacrifice. Do you see how it all connects?

       When we hold a worship service today, that worship is for God. Because we are sinful, in order to worship God properly, we must have a sacrifice. You have to understand that Jesus Christ sacrificed himself for you and your sins, and personally appropriate that by faith. Then there must be baptism – symbolizing cleansing by the blood of the Lamb, the One who washes away the sins of the world. Then and only then, can you come into the very presence of God in worship. Yes, you can walk in the door and sit in a seat and sing the songs and you can listen to the Word, but that's not biblical worship.

       There were people who didn't understand that in Moses day, too. The children of Israel were in the very visible presence of God. This boggles my mind. For forty years in the desert… God himself dwelt between the wings of the cherubim above the Tabernacle in the Holy of Holies. And above the camp there was a pillar of fire and a pillar of cloud. You couldn't miss them! The cloud gave them shadow by day from the heat of the sun and made it nice and cool in the Judean desert. At night, the pillar of fire gave them light, the light of the world, and warmth. God was “in their face” every day. Yet what were they doing for 40 years in the desert? Complaining! Not only that, God says they brought along their star gods and their planet gods. And they were worshiping these false gods right in the very visible presence of the the one and only true God. What did God do about that? They died in the desert. Sadly, the same thing is happening in our worship services. People come and worship other gods in the very presence of God himself. They worship gods of their own making, fashioned in their own minds like they want or hope or think God is, instead of submitting themselves to God and learning what he is truly like from the Bible and worshiping the him as he tells us to in the Bible.

       (5) And from the throne proceed flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder, Where have we heard that before? How about Mt. Sinai! When all of Israel were gathered at the foot of the mountain and God himself came down in a pillar of cloud and pillar of fire upon the mountain and the very mountain itself shook, and God spoke and gave them the Ten Commandments, and they thought they were going to die! They told Moses to go talk to him. “We don't want to hear his voice anymore.” They understood this is God in vengeance. Remember in Revelation 1 John says he heard this voice like of a trumpet, (10) I was in the spirit on the Lord's day and I heard behind me a loud voice like of a trumpet. This incredible, shrieking, wind-like trumpet sound was what they were hearing: the voice of God. I said the first place we see that in the Bible is in Genesis 3, where it says “the wind of the day.” After Adam and Eve's sin, they heard God coming (in Hebrew) in “the wind of the day.” Most translations unfortunately say “the cool of the day.” Adam and Eve were afraid because they heard God coming with this incredible trumpet, shrill sound and they knew they were in BIG trouble. That's what you see everywhere in Scripture, God coming in judgment with this shrill-like trumpet, wind sound. Remember what brought down the walls of Jericho? A trumpet sound. This wind sound of God coming in judgment and flattened the walls. That's what you see in Scripture when you see this judgment throne of God situation.

       Were God's people quaking in fear? What did the elders do in Revelation Chapter 4? They fell down. Moses said “I tremble with fear.” What did Abraham do when he saw the angel of the Lord and his two companions coming across the desert? He fell face down in the dirt. What would you do if Jesus Christ were to walk in the door in his full glory as John saw him? The same thing: BOOM! Face down in the dirt, which is exactly what John did. We tend to have this idea of God as a little ol' Santa Claus in the sky. Or Jesus as “I love you, come to me no matter what.” And that's true in a sense, but we must remember “the rest of the story.” What we continually fail to understand or remember is the awesome majesty of God, the absolute holiness of God. Remember the four living creatures do not cease to say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the almighty,”  And furthermore, we're not able to get up until God reaches out and picks us up. That's what you see with Abraham. What does the angel of the Lord do to Abraham? He touches him and empowers him to get up. What does Jesus do to John in Chapter 1 after John falls on his face “as if dead”? He touches him and “brings him back to life” so he can get up. And we see this over and over in Scripture. It's the same thing in Isaiah 6, too. We should never go waltzing into the presence of God and say “Hiya, Abba Father! What's hap’nin’, Daddy-o?” Sadly, that's what you get in a lot of sermons. But “Abba” does not simply mean “Daddy” as most sermons proclaim. “Abba” is a word of respect and honor and reverence, although it also conveys a deep level of mutual love. This is why the King James translates it as fear. Not fear in the sense that I'm afraid God is going to smack me with a stick, or zap me with a lightning bolt. It's fear in the sense of awe, because I recognize the majesty and transcendence of Almighty God. If you're invited to the White House and you come into the President's presence, there would be respect. And a certain amount of fear. Reverence, if you will. We need to have that same kind of reverent attitude toward God, except to a vastly greater degree. Especially when we gather together for worship. We should come recognizing, as the elders do here, that every crown (every honor) belongs to him, and throw our crowns at his feet. The song we sang this morning, “All I have I give to you,” needs to be our attitude.

COMMENT: This reminds me of Uzzah (in 2 Samuel 6), who put out his hand to steady the ark.

       Yes, and God struck him dead. God doesn't need us to hold him up. Can God get dirty? No! His presence makes the dirt righteous. That's what we need to understand. God had said “let no man touch the ark.” And when God says it, he means it. Besides, they shouldn't have been using an ox cart to transport it. God had provided rings along the edge of the ark and the ark was to be carried using long poles, so that no one would be tempted to touch it. Perhaps if it had been allowed to fall off the cart, they would have remembered how it was supposed to be carried.

Q: Did Uzzah go to heaven?

A: I don't know. If he was a believer and had faith in the Messiah to provide for his salvation, then he went to heaven. Only God knows the state of his heart.