Revelation 4:1-7

The Sight of the Glory of God

A sermon by Pastor Joe Haynes

Preached on May 13, 2018 at Beacon Church

Bruised and battered believers at the end of the first century, living under the iron fist of the mighty Roman Empire, needed a reason to hope. Christians today also need hope in the face of popular opinions that criticize and mock faith in Jesus, or in many countries kill His followers. Without hope, the Church of Christ would probably be intimidated into silence. This book began with a statement that it was given to show God’s people “what must soon take place” (1:1) and to give a blessing for all who hear and keep what is written in this book (Rev 1:3). Vague hopes aren’t strong enough to sustain our joy; optimism alone can’t make us strong or happy. We need a confident hope that’s based on something reliable. We need to know that throughout the years that lie ahead for us, God will be God, and that at the end of our lives, God will love us still, and not refuse us, not condemn us, though the Lord knows we have earned His judgement. We need God.

Jesus gives us a future and a hope

“After this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, ‘Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this,’“ (Rev. 4:1 ESV). "After this I looked…” - In the first verse of Revelation, we read that God “made known” this whole book to John, and the Greek word for “made known” is “signified”—communicated by signs (c.f. the KJV). This will be something we talk about again and again in Revelation: that in order to understand this book, a book of signs (c.f. 1:1, God "made it known / signified it"), we have to keep in mind the distinction between the signs and the things they signify--the difference between the symbols and the realities they stand for. When you buy a product that has a shape on it resembling an apple with a bite out of it, what are you buying? An electronic device or a piece of fruit? The apple is the symbol; the reality is a phone, tablet, or computer. It's easy to get confused about that with Revelation. People ask, "is it symbolic or literal?" And the answer is, according to how it was communicated or signified in the very first verse, it is a book of symbols, describing literal reality. So "heaven" in chapter 4 is not the real Heaven, but the Holy Spirit uses the real place called Heaven as a symbol to communicate something Christians need to know, as 1:1 also says, regarding "the things that must soon take place". That’s why the classic commentary by Lange says, "It is almost universally admitted, that he did not look upon the real Heaven and real angels. The scene he beheld was symbolic."[i]  That’s why John keeps telling us about the signs he saw when in this vision he looked at one thing after another. After the opening vision of the Son of Man, of Christ, and the seven letters He told John to send to the churches, John tells us what he saw next.

It might not surprise you that John saw a "door standing open in heaven", but it did surprise John! He says, "behold!"--a word that means "look at that!", sort of like "wow!" John saw that this door in heaven was open. And the angel takes him and shows him what looks like a heavenly copy of the Tabernacle or Temple where God met with Israel’s priests, where sacrifices were made, and where God was worshipped by His people in the Old Testament era.  The symbols John sees are all drawn from the Old Testament Scriptures, and most of them follow the Temple/Tabernacle theme. Jesus already appeared in chapter 1 as the divine High Priest ministering to His churches, symbolized by seven lampstands. Now he sees a sea of glass, resembling the Temple’s basin of water for washing (v6); there is no altar or sacrificing, but in 5:6 he sees the Lamb, the final once-and-for all sacrifice; there are peals of thunder and flashes of lightning, like when God met Moses on Mt. Sinai and made a covenant with Israel and gave Moses His Law. That Law taught Israel about the problem of sin (Rom 3:20), to hold Israel accountable for sin. The priests could not even enter the Tabernacle or Temple to offer sacrifices until they first followed God’s instructions because they had their own sin. Exodus 29 detailed the things the priests had to do to wash themselves in that basin; the sin offerings and daily offerings needed before they could even go inside the House of the LORD and serve as priests for others. The whole sacrificial system taught Israel that there is no such thing as a righteous person, much less a holy priest. The way to God was shut; so how could the door to Heaven be open? By what miracle was John allowed to go up and enter through that door? No wonder he said, “behold!” (4:1).

The book of Revelation is about the future, and the biggest human fear is fear of death: will God accept us? But the future is hopeless unless we can know that God has forgiven our sin. What John sees in heaven is breathtaking, but the silence is deafening at first: how can a sinner come into God’s presence? The explanation, of course, has already been given in chapter 1: Jesus is the one "who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood" (1:5). The whole future John is about to be shown hinges upon, and is caused by that history-changing event when the Son of God died to save sinners.

“And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, ‘Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this,’" (Rev. 4:1 ESV). The angel who God sent to John to show him this Revelation of Jesus now speaks again to John, for the second time, to invite him to come up and see part 2 of this Revelation, beginning with the open door to the symbolic presence of God. And the invitation is to see "what must take place after this". You might remember that this is the second part of the whole book of Revelation, according to 1:19. The book of Revelation, everything John sees, was divided into two parts: the things that were present realities in the lifetime of John (those that are), and the things that were future (to take place after this). This means that 4:1 is the beginning of the rest of Revelation, and from John's place in history, is all about the future. And this means that the future is not random or uncertain. It is anchored in the fact we've already seen, that by His death for sin, Jesus has opened the door to Heaven.

God has ordained the future for glory through Jesus

“2 At once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne.  3 And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald,” (Rev. 4:2-3 ESV). In every generation, believers have cried out and prayed to God, needing hope especially when their futures looked grim. The past is hard enough to understand. When bad things happen, we wonder why, and when tragedy strikes, we struggle to understand how such things can be part of God's plan. It’s that much harder, then, to understand the future when it looks like things will get worse. So before the angel showed John what will happen in the future, he showed John why it will happen: he showed John God. Like John, we need to orient our compasses to True North, to learn to look at the future in light of a) the fact that the way is now open to God, b) because of the glory of God. In other words, as the future unfolds, when we struggle to make sense of what is happening, Revelation 4 helps us by reminding us that in some way, all things happen so that God will be glorified through the salvation Jesus made possible by dying for sinners.

First, God is on the throne. To understand anything about the past or the future, we have to begin with this: that God is sovereign over all things (I said "all thing" just to be clear, but to say He is "sovereign" literally means His rule is over all things. There is no such thing as part-way sovereignty.) Second, God the Father is not described as human in appearance. Only the Son of God is described in the Bible as "like a son of man", or with "human appearance"--like in Ezekiel 1-2, when Ezekiel saw Christ; or in Daniel when it is the Son of God who appeared "like a son of man" in Dan 7 and 10. But here, the Spirit is careful to show God not with any shape, but only with colours and lights.[ii] In John 1:18, the Spirit revealed through John that "no one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known." Third, the symbol representing God to John includes "the appearance" of two colours: the colour of what John calls "jasper", and the colour of "carnelian”. This stone that used to be known as “jaspter” (not the modern kind) was clear and translucent (as in Rev 21:11).[iii] The colour then is bright translucence, the same visible glory of God like in so many visions of God in the Bible, reminding sinners of God’s unapproachable purity of holiness. The “carnelian” was a stone from Sardis known for its red colour.[iv] It’s an obvious reminder of blood. These two colours then, the clear brilliance and the bright red, shine the glory of God through the blood of Jesus. God’s true glory is ultimately revealed through His holiness that required satisfaction for sin, and through Christ’s death that made satisfaction for sin. Law and Love. Justice and Mercy. Glory be to God through Jesus Christ our Saviour! The way is open because Jesus is the Way.[v]

The last thing about the throne of God is that it's surrounded by a "rainbow" of emerald green. The Old Testament significance of the rainbow goes back to the covenant God announced to Noah: "that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth" (Gen 9:12)--the rainbow was the sign God gave by which to remember His covenant.  The emerald green colour reminds us, not of the death the flood brought to the whole world because of sin, but of the life God has brought to all who believe in the new covenant sealed by the blood of Jesus Christ. This life in Christ was promised to the priesthood of Israel in the Old Covenant, as God says in Malachi 2:5, "My covenant with [Levi] was one of life and peace, and I gave them to him. It was a covenant of fear, and he feared me. He stood in awe of my name." The Old Covenant was a promise of life; the New Covenant is the provision of Life through faith in Jesus. And so Christians in every century, in all suffering, in persecution and famine and war, in poverty and pain, in temptation and in trial, when we cry out to God, "Why are you letting this happen?", must train ourselves to look at the picture of God we have through Jesus Christ, and learn this lesson as of first importance: God our Redeemer is on His throne to save and redeem. That’s the end-game the future will reveal.

God’s Word will accomplish the best possible future

4 Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clothed in white garments, with golden crowns on their heads.  5 From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God,  6 and before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal. And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind:  7 the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. (Rev. 4:4-7 ESV)

The 24 elders on thrones is a symbol, but of what? People float lots of ideas about where this symbol comes from, but the theme of the Temple and Priesthood means that we should see this as a picture taken from the 24 divisions by which God arranged the priests of the tribe of Levi. As 1 Chr 24:19 explains, these 24 divisions “had as their appointed duty in their service to come into the house of the LORD…”, following the instructions for cleansing and making themselves holy before offering sacrifices for the people. That's the main thing here: the priests of God are now seen sitting in God's presence! Not waiting outside to be made clean, and not standing to do their work. The Way to God has already been opened by Jesus, the work of the whole Levitical priesthood has already been finished by Jesus. They sit because Jesus is now standing, and “always lives to make intercession for us” (Heb 7:25). They are dressed in white garments to show that Jesus has covered them in His righteousness. They are crowned because Jesus has made them rulers in His Kingdom. The 24 elders then are a symbol saying in picture form what the Spirit already revealed through John in Rev 1:6 about the finished work of Jesus: He has "made us a kingdom of priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever"![vi]

When God met Israel at Mt. Sinai, the lightning and thunder announced God's decrees for Israel through Moses. Here, the thunders and lightning go out “from God’s throne” as decrees to His Church through the Holy Spirit, symbolized by the 7 torches God gives to light the seven lampstands of His Churches (i.e., lampstands from chapter 1:4b, 12, 20). God’s Word will succeed: “…So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it,” (Isa. 55:11 ESV). Here God's divine decrees are mediated by God's Spirit, by the ministry of the Word, through His Church, to the world.[vii] That’s why this order: “from the throne”, through the Spirit,[viii] and then through “the sea of glass”.

5 From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God,  6 and before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal. And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind:  (Rev. 4:5-6 ESV)

The symbolic "sea of glass" was, in the Tabernacle, a bronze washing basin, and in the Temple, the "bronze sea". Not only does it communicate the way God washes and makes His people clean, but it is "of glass", suggesting it also clearly reflects the glory of God like a mirror. This is the Gospel--the essential message preached and proclaimed by the Church, inspired by the Holy Spirit, thundered by the One who sits on the throne. It is the Gospel that washes: In Titus 3:5, Paul speaks like this of the Gospel saying, "he saved us… according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit", and in Ephesians 5:26, that Christ makes His Church holy, "having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word"; Peter also speaks of our souls being purified by our obedience to the truth, having been born again "through the living and abiding word of God…and this word is the good news that was preached to [us]" (1 Pe 1:22-25); as Jesus told his disciples in John 15:3, "Already you are clean because of the word I have spoken to you".

The last symbol for today, the four living creatures--like a lion, an ox, a human, and an eagle, are symbols based on descriptions of spirit-angels in Ezekiel's and Isaiah's prophecies. But as symbols, we can discern what these mean by remembering what those angels do: In the Old Testament prophecies, those beings “go out from the midst” of God’s presence (Eze 1:5-15), “wherever the Spirit wants to go” (Eze 1:20), are used by God for various purposes to do His bidding (c.f. Isa 6:6), usher the movement of God’s glory (Eze 11:22-23), and guard access to His “mercy seat” (Heb 9:5; Ex 25:18; Psa 80:1; 99:1). Here, it seems best to understand them as symbolizing God’s servants whom God sends in His Spirit to do His bidding, spreading His glory, bringing people to “the mercy seat” by the preaching of the Gospel: the prophets and apostles upon whose ministry Christ established His Church, and after them, evangelists, and then pastors and teachers--the four kinds of ministers of the Word Paul lists in Ephesians 4:11. God has used these four offices to cover the Earth with the Word of the Lord and of His glorious Gospel of grace in Jesus Christ, "for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea" (Isa 11:9). They go into all Creation, full of "eyes", giving witness to what God has shown them of Christ--the Revelation of God's glory. Into all Creation, because God does not intend to merely save souls and abandon ship, leaving the Earth to perish while believers are whisked away to Heaven. The Gospel is hope for the Redemption and Restoration of all Creation in the New Heavens and the New Earth, as Peter prophesied, "according to His promise we are waiting for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells" (2 Pe 3:13).[ix]

What a comfort when everything else is frightening or confusing: to know that God is directing His sovereign will in ruling over the future to bring about the salvation of lost souls and the redemption of all Creation! Heaven and Earth will pass away, but the Word of Christ will never fail (Mat 24:35).