Indescribable

Some Ground Rules

This morning will be the first of many that find their basis in the book of Revelation. Now, I can’t tell you for sure that every week for the foreseeable future will include a sermon on Revelation - Easter; for example, will probably look at something else. But I want to start by laying some ground rules for faithfully interpreting Revelation.

First, trying to understand any part of the Bible without keeping the rest of what Scripture says in mind is always a bad idea. For this book though, it is an especially bad idea because Revelation relies heavily on symbols and references and metaphorical language from the Old Testament. So when you look at Revelation by yourself, or when we look at it together, we have to keep in mind the rest of Scripture with it.

Second, don’t over-commit to viewing the book as either figurative or literal. Many of the different things that are talked about in the book have symbolic meaning that becomes clear when you follow rule one, but that doesn’t mean that they cannot also be literal - God can do what He wants. Similarly, some of the things described in Revelation are pretty clearly literal, but that doesn’t mean that they cannot also have figurative or symbolic meaning.

Third, remember the scale of what is being portrayed here. It isn’t just a picture of the future or something we can trace out in history between John’s visions and us today - what is described in Revelation encompasses everything form the beginning of creation to Jesus’ second coming. This also means that trying to use the book to somehow predict when the end of the world is going to happen is a fool’s errand.

Fourth, final, and most important is this - the book of Revelation is centered around Jesus, His saving work, and what that ultimately means for us. To make it about anything else is a mistake we ought not make.

Keeping these four ground rules in mind can help us to faithfully read and understand the book of Revelation, and I’m going to keep repeating them as we look at different parts of the book together - so get used to hearing them.

An Invitation and A Guide

Now we’re going to get into the actual text, and I want to direct your attention to the first few verses.

Revelation 4:1–2 (ESV)

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.”

At once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne.

John receives an invitation to go into heaven and witness what is happening around the throne of God. But if you pay close attention, God is doing all of the work to bring him there. The invitation comes from the first voice (best understood as the voice of Jesus) who promises to show John what he needs to see and John’s ability to actually take up that invitation relies entirely on the work of the Holy Spirit. Our invitation to eternal life is no different, we receive that invitation as a result of the work of Christ and we can only accept that invitation through the work of the Holy Spirit.

It’s almost like going on a trip to a big city. I had the privilege of visiting New York City with a friend of mine who had lived and done ministry there for years. He took us to all of the best places to eat, navigated us to the coolest things to see, and explained some of the ways that the city actually worked. The invitation is always open for me to visit the city, but without the friend to guide me the incredible experiences I had would have been impossible. John had an invitation to see incredible things and the Spirit enabled that and we have an invitation to eternal life and the Spirit enables us to receive it.

An Indescribable Throne

Then we move on to what John was enabled to see in Revelation 4:3-8

Revelation 4:3–8 (ESV)

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.

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.

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,

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:

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.

And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”

Before we try and understand John’s description of heaven, I would like to give some of you a picture. Don’t show it to the people next to you! Now that you have those pictures, I want to turn to the people around you and try to describe that image to them without showing them the picture.

Now, how many of you feel like you were able to describe the picture with perfect clarity and precision? For those of you hearing the description, look at the picture now, does it match what you had constructed in your head? What you are seeing is actually a picture of a motherboard. Now, if you are familiar with a motherboard you might have been able to name some of the parts of this picture - the RAM sticks and the processor and the coolant pump. But if you were to use those terms and the people you were talking to didn’t know what those were, that probably didn’t help them to create a mental image that matched. Or, maybe none of the people in your group know whose terms and you had to use terms like “gray box” or “silver wire” or “glowing fan.” Those terms aren’t the most technically accurate to what is actually there, but they might actually be more helpful for building a mental image.

I had you do this exercise to help us understand a little of what is going on here. John is seeing into heaven and getting a glimpse of the incredible place where God is enthroned. Even if he understood exactly what all he was seeing, the people who would read his account (us included) have no frame of reference for it, so he uses language that may or may not be exactly what is going on, but it helps us to get a general picture of heaven and God’s throne. The simple reality is that God’s glory for us sinners is indescribable, His majesty is uncontainable, He is the one who placed the stars in the sky and knows each of us by name. We see the description of God on His throne and the most important thing to take away is that He is beautiful and majestic and glorious, we can try and make symbolic connections with the specific stones that are used to describe His appearance, but the larger point is how awe inspiring God is. Then I want to jump to the four living creatures, these are most likely a specific rank of angels - tasked with initiating and leading worship of God almighty. But in the middle we see these 24 thrones. Twelve of these thrones represent the twelve tribes of Israel, twelve of these thrones represent the twelve apostles, and the twenty four thrones together represent all of God’s people from before and after Jesus’ earthly ministry coming together to praise and worship Him. This serves as a reminder that God graciously grants us a place at His side, that He sees the depths of our hearts and He loves us the same.

Cast Down Your Crowns

And that leaves us with the final three verses of the chapter,

Revelation 4:9–11 (ESV)

And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever,

the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying,

“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

If you have two friends and they both invite you to something at the same time on the same day, you have to pick one of them. Now different things can affect which one of these invitations you accept, but at the end of the day, you have to pick which one of them is a higher priority. Or if you have an invitation to go on a vacation with a friend but there’s an important meeting at work you’d miss, you have to decide which is more important - the vacation or that meeting, friends or work. Or even when you’re running errand, if you only have a half hour but you have to buy groceries and fill up on gas - you have to pick which need you’re going to deal with, which is more important filling the fridge or getting your car home.

We make decisions all of the time that show us where our priorities are, when there is only so much time we have to pick one thing over the other. What is more important? One friend’s invite or the other, vacation or work, food or gas, worship or camping, church or sports, Christian community or timing the smoker just right? And we’re tempted to say “well, a lot of the things I do instead of worship don’t happen every week. If I miss church, I can always just catch it next time.” And maybe sometimes that’s true, if you see one friend once a week and another only comes to town once a year, you might skip that meeting with the weekly friend. But how often does our worship slip from once a week, to once a month, to a few times a year - all starting with just one exception, one reason to miss worship?

In John’s vision, these angels and people are in heaven all the time and they still cast down their crowns to praise and worship God on His throne. They drop everything that could possibly be important to them to praise God for the incredible gifts He has given them. Those twenty four elders remind us of our place at God’s side, but they also challenge us to look critically at our reasons to do something else or go somewhere else, to not let the incredible blessing of weekly worship dilute how valuable we perceive it as, and to worship at every opportunity we get.

God has graciously promised a place at His side, let us take every chance we get to praise and thank Him for it. Amen.