-I got forwarded an email this week from one of my uncles of my grandpa’s farm being featured in the local newspaper, and grandpa winning a fairly prestigious award! 

-It’s funny what they emphasize in the article. “electrically heated watering devices” and “The Strands have an ‘all electric’ farmstead”

 -Then grandma called me this week and told me about another article that came out about the same time and described her as a “progressive” woman because of all her electric appliances! 

-It got me thinking though, how would you describe electricity to someone living 200 years ago? Vines connected to large skinny trees that connect all houses together. If your house is connected to these vines you can get a mini sun in your house to be able to see at night! What a gift! That means you can work longer hours, sleep less hours, and get all sorts of mental health issues due to working too much. Do you think they’d have any framework for how to understand what we’re saying? 

-Or imagine trying to describe facetiming or skype to someone just 30 years ago. You get to SEE them and talk to them! My kids get frustrated and confused when my parents call me without facetime because they can’t see them.

-Take it a step further and try to explain Wi-Fi to someone who hasn’t seen a computer, or an iPhone (yes, not an android) to someone who doesn’t know what a computer is (so easy a caveman could do it)

-Now take that and multiply it by infinity and you’ll start to see the tall task in front of John today: trying to explain the infinite using finite words to finite people.

READ/PRAY

1. The Throne (1-3)

-“After this”

-Not referring to time, just saying the next sequence of visions was moving from the letters to the churches to the next thing God wants to reveal to John.

-This also serves to set the stage for the rest of the book. Think of the first 3 chapters as the introduction, then this begins a new section where God is giving all the spoiler alerts as to how we should view the events of human history.

-“Open door”

-Can you imagine getting a glimpse of heaven like this? What do you think this looked like? Do you ever contemplate heaven? The words in here were written to the 7 churches, yes, but they’re also for us today to be reminded what heaven is like, to understand what God wants from us, and to have our hearts stirred by the reality that God is in control and worthy of our full allegiance and worship, not anything on this earth that tries to distract us. Focus on heaven!

-“The first voice” “In the Spirit”

-1:10 – same voice we read about in here

-“In the spirit” isn’t the first time this happened:

–2 Cor. 12:2-4 “² I know a man in Christ who was caught up to the third heaven fourteen years ago. Whether he was in the body or out of the body, I don’t know; God knows. ³ I know that this man—whether in the body or out of the body I don’t know; God knows— ⁴ was caught up into paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a human being is not allowed to speak.” 

-The big difference is Paul wasn’t allowed to talk about it, but John is commanded to! Similar to Jesus’ ministry where He regularly told His disciples to not tell anyone until after He was ascending to heaven, then they were supposed to tell everyone!

-“Throne in heaven”

–Isa. 6:1-4: God’s presence connected to the temple, Seraphim (6 wings), continually call the Lord “holy, holy, holy” The noise literally shook the foundations of the building! 

–Ezek. 1:26-28: brilliant light, rainbow 

-“Jasper and carnelian stone”

–Ex. 28:17-20: the priestly garments. A way of signifying the set apart nature of priests, which turns out was a reflection of God Himself! One of the things we see throughout this book is that God has designed earthly ideas to reflect heavenly realities. That will keep coming up in today’s text and the rest of the book!

-“rainbow”

-Can you see how John’s fumbling with words here? Rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald. Ezek. 1:4 “there was a whirlwind coming from the north, a huge cloud with fire flashing back and forth and brilliant light all around it. In the center of the fire, there was a gleam like amber.”

-Once again, we need to keep in mind the whole biblical storyline here. Does anyone remember when rainbows were first mentioned in the Bible? Gen. 9, right after the flood! What does God promise to do? Never again flood the whole earth. That is another way of saying God’s preservation of His people despite His right judgment coming.

• Around the Throne (4)

-24 thrones, 24 elders (subservient to the main throne)

-Numbers are almost always symbolic in Rev. so some people try to argue they’re humans who have earned their crowns and white clothes by being faithful unto death like God promised to the churches.

-Others argue that they’re angels, and the number refers to standing in for the 2 12s God used in His renewal plan of the world: 12 sons of Israel and the 12 disciples chosen by Jesus.

-Another argument is like the 24 orders of the priests (1 Chron. 24:4-5)

-I think this is meant to be similar to the letters to the churches, a heavenly representation of an earthly reality. (We should probably flip that around: a heavenly reality of an earthly representation) Just as the 7 churches had corresponding angels, here the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 disciples have corresponding angels. 

• The Throne (5-6a)

-Zoom back to the throne. What comes from the throne?

-Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody “Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening”

-Very few things more frightening than a huge thunderstorm. I remember driving with a friend in WY (the part of WY I lived in was flat, literally opposite corner of the pretty Jackson Hole side, more like Nebraska) we saw a big storm coming in from MILES away and he commented “can you imagine people coming here in covered wagons and not being able to pull out your phone and see where the end of the storm is?” These pictures start to show what the part of Wyoming I lived in look like. Close to mountains, but you can’t see them! 

-This ditch was almost dry before this storm came through, this was the aftermath of a pretty good-sized storm. But aren’t storms terrifying? Even today when we can easily see the trail of the storm when it’s passing through the power is incredible! 

-Similar to Isa. 6 noisy, loud, smoke filled the temple, Ezek. 1:4 “there was a whirlwind coming from the north, a huge cloud with fire flashing back and forth and brilliant light all around it. In the center of the fire, there was a gleam like amber.”

-God’s people saw similar things when He met with Moses in Ex. 20

-“Seven fiery torches”

–Rev. 1:4 where the 7 spirits showed up before. Not saying there are 7 literal spirits, referring to the complete perfection of the one true God

-“like a seas of glass” not a sea of glass, closest John can get to trying to describe it

-Separation between the throne and everything else. Often the sea in early times (and probably should today too) is viewed as terrifying, full of chaos

-An impossible barrier for us to cross. But there’s also a significant theme of water throughout the Bible that I think needs to shape the way we think about a sea here. 

–Gen 1:2 Creation, spirit of God was hovering over the water

-Gen. 7 (flood) 

-1 Kings 7:23-26 Bronze sea in the temple 

-Finally seeing the waters of baptism as another picture of the way we approach God (Rom. 6, 1 Peter 3)

-This separation between the throne is only accessible through the waters of baptism, which is the first act of obedience to demonstrate your new faith in Jesus Christ, which means we now have access to this throne! 

• Around the Throne (6b-11)

-“Four living creatures”

-All sorts of proposals: 4 Gospels, astrological signs, divine attributes. Representative of the created world (again, just as the churches have divine representation, this represents all of creation serving the one true God)

-Midrash (Jewish commentary on the OT) comment on the book of Exodus: “Man is exalted among creatures, the eagle among birds, the ox among domestic animals, the lion among wild beasts.” Taking the “cream of the crop” as a stand in for all creation.

-Similar to what we see in Ezek. 1, 10, specifically we learn that these are Cherubim, angels (Ezek. 10:15). They guard God’s presence, are found in the most holy place where God is enthroned as king, were sewn into the curtains of the tabernacle, carved into the walls, doors, and frames of the temple – so where God’s presence is you find Cherubim. 

-Covered with eyes, 4 directions, signifying that they are vigilant in protecting God and carrying out His commands

-“Day and night they never stop” more lit. never rest.

-This is what they do 24/7. There’s no down time, no breaks. And think of the repetition of this. They never stop saying:

-Why do we think repetition is such a bad thing? My first role in ministry was music, thankfully people don’t have any strong opinions about music! GK Chesterton Orthodoxy

-Did you know that God loves repetition? Do you know that He doesn’t get tired of hearing people worship Him? I think this is hard for us to admit sometimes because we’re the ones that get tired of it. I have a friend who grew up in the Caribbean who told me the reason they repeat words and phrases for so long is because it takes that long for those realities to start to reach into their hearts. If we can’t regularly reflect and be moved by the realities of the gospel and who God is something’s wrong with us, not the repetitive words.

-“Whenever”

-glory, honor, and thanks – acknowledge that God alone has and contains all these divine truths. 

-Elders join in 24/7. It’s not just the 4 creatures, it’s also the elders who are worshiping God all the time, without any breaks. 

-Fall down – prostrate themselves. Just as we need to realize that there are spiritual realities and implications to our lives, we also need to realize that we are complex creatures who are called to love the Lord with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strengths. Or as we see in Deut. 6 to love God with all our “muchness” That means there are certain physical responses that are appropriate to use in our response to God. There’s a reason we stand when we sing, there’s a reason we bow our heads when we pray. These physical responses help our bodies match the reality of what we’re doing, and God intended it that way. There are all sorts of physical descriptions of faithful ways to worship God in the Bible: sitting, kneeling, standing, shouting, crying, silence, raising your hands, raising your head, staring at heaven. All of those don’t always have to be present in worship of God, but if they’re never used I wonder if we’re being faithful to worship God with everything we have and are?

-This gets us to what the elders are doing: Cast their crowns – who gave them the crowns? Rev. 2:8 “Be faithful to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.” 

-This is important: when we worship God, we’re not worshipping Him with anything we earned by ourselves. From the very breath in your lungs, to your skeletal structure, to the muscle and skin tissue covering your body, all of that is a gift given by God. 

-The only appropriate response to understanding who God is, Him revealing Himself is to worship Him. Think of what Paul reminds us of in 1 Cor. 4:7 It’s a rhetorical question because the answer is NOTHING! 2 chapters later he says: how do we glorify God with our bodies? We use them to worship God!

-Look at what they say:

“You are worthy to receive” Roman phrasing used to welcome the emperor or government officials. By referring to God this way, it undercuts the whole imperial cult! Caesar isn’t Lord, Joe Biden isn’t Lord, Putin, Kim Jong Un, Netanyahu, none of them are worthy to receive this glory and honor and power. Why not?

-They don’t reign cosmically. In the scheme of things where there are millions of galaxies, more planets than we can ever know about, none of these countries make a dent in all of the created order. They didn’t bring anything into existence and they will someday die! But not God.

-Weird word order: created and exist logically makes sense, but this is making a theological point that everything only exists by Him, and they only come into being by Him

-Someday, anyone who is in Christ will join with the 4 creatures and the 24 elders in worshipping God 24/7, using everything they have and are to honor, praise, and glorify God.

-Some really bad ideas about what that means. What if I don’t like singing? Are we just going to be playing harps on clouds all the time? 

-There is going to be continuity and discontinuity between heaven and earth, and I think there’s going to be a lot more continuity than we often think about. We have a picture in the Bible of what our resurrected bodies will look like and how they’ll operate in Jesus’ resurrected body. He was able to eat, walk, talk, be touched. His disciples recognized Him! But there were also some unique things, like walking through walls, disappearing. 

-When we get to heaven, we’re all going to have jobs to do! We’ll be able to continue learning new things, practicing new skills, and all of them will be tools that will be used to worship and glorify God. And here’s the best part: we have eternity to explore these things! So if it takes you 100,000 years to learn something, don’t worry, you’ve got eternity to keep learning and worshipping the Sovereign Creator