Is he Worthy?

1 Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. 2 And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” 3 And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, 4 and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. 5 And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.” 6 And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. 7 And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. 8 And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. 9 And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, 10 and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.” 11 Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, 12 saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” 13 And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” 14 And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” and the elders fell down and worshiped.

Jesus is WORTHY!

This Easter Sunday as we worship a resurrected savior…

Every day….

Every moment…

Every nanosecond…

In any and every moment….

That we worship…

UNDERSTAND THIS TRUTH….

Outline

Big Idea: Jesus is worthy…because of WHO He is and WHAT He has accomplished.

Who is worthy? – Vs. 1-2

None are worthy – Vs. 3-4

There is one – Vs. 5

The Lamb Who was Slain – Vs. 6-7

Response of Worship – Vs. 8-14

Sermon Body

Big Idea: Jesus is worthy…because of WHO He is and WHAT He has accomplished.

IT IS A STUNNING display of worship that is centered on what we celebrate today!

It all begins with a question…

Who is worthy? – Vs. 1-2

5 Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. 2 And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?”

Scroll

MacArthur

The scroll John saw in God’s hand is the title deed to the earth, which He will give to Christ. Unlike other such deeds, however, it does not record the descriptive detail of what Christ will inherit, but rather how He will regain His rightful inheritance. He will do so by means of the divine judgments about to be poured out on the earth (6:1ff.). While the scroll is a scroll of doom and judgment, it is also a scroll of redemption. It tells how Christ will redeem the world from the usurper, Satan, and those men and demons who have collaborated with him. Ezekiel describes this same scroll in his vision of heaven: “Then I looked, and behold, a hand was extended to me; and lo, a scroll was in it. When He spread it out before me, it was written on the front and back, and written on it were lamentations, mourning and woe” (Ezek. 2:9–10).

Scroll depicts God’s plan to redeem and restore His creation.

It is the future of all things

Thus it is of profound importance.

This is expounded and enhanced by the seven seals…

Seven Seals

In Roman law, according to some evidence, a testament was sealed with seven seals by seven witnesses before its legality could be established.

Each seal represented a witness to the contents.

Seven represents perfection

This is the documents of highest import, verified by seven seals to validate its authenticity and importance.

This is no letter from your grandma. (Though, those are important to)

This scroll will reveal God’s plan to redeem creation and opening the scroll will set that plan into motion.

This is letter cannot be touched, let alone opened, by just anybody.

You must be worthy….

Worthy

Classical Greek – Tipping or balancing the scales

Worthy or deserving

Indicates a character and an achievement that causes you to stand out from ALL others.

Who is deserving to open the scrolls? Whose character and conduct qualifies them to touch the scroll, to break the seal, and to real/reveal the contents of it?

How is this worth decided/valued/measured? What would make one worthy of it?

Someone with integrity, righteousness, holiness, trustworthiness, strength, courage, power…

Someone who has proven time and time again that they are just and right

Someone whose actions reveal their strength and conviction, who reveals a flawless and upright character.

Someone whose actions and achievements merit such an honor.

A Search begins…

None are worthy – Vs. 3-4

3 And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, 4 and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it.

None Able, capable.

Why not?

Romans 3

No One Is Righteous

9 What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, 10 as it is written:

“None is righteous, no, not one;

11 no one understands;

no one seeks for God.

12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;

no one does good,

not even one.”

13 “Their throat is an open grave;

they use their tongues to deceive.”

“The venom of asps is under their lips.”

14 “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”

15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;

16 in their paths are ruin and misery,

17 and the way of peace they have not known.”

18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

None are righteous among men (of ourselves).

We are not basically good (world’s view)

Romans 3 explains us

What about the angels in heaven who never sinned and left the heavenly abode?

Not even they were worthy of such an honor. None possess the might, power, and requirements to touch or open the scroll.

None met the standards

None among men.

Not even among the angels

Not even among the fallen saints of old, as godly as they are.

John began to WEEP LOUDLY

Weep – Vehement, bitter crying, bewail

Loudly – Large quantity, extensive, in large measure.

W. A. Criswell explains why John wept:

[John’s tears] represent the tears of all God’s people through all the centuries. Those tears of the Apostle John are the tears of Adam and Eve, driven out of the Garden of Eden, as they bowed over the first grave, as they watered the dust of the ground with their tears over the silent, still form of their son, Abel. Those are the tears of the children of Israel in bondage as they cried unto God in their affliction and slavery. They are the tears of God’s elect through the centuries as they cried unto heaven. They are the sobs and tears that have been wrung from the heart and soul of God’s people as they looked on their silent dead, as they stand beside their open graves, as they experience in the trials and sufferings of life, heartaches and disappointments indescribable. Such is the curse that sin has laid upon God’s beautiful creation; and this is the damnation of the hand of him who holds it, that usurper, that interloper, that intruder, that alien, that stranger, that dragon, that serpent, that Satan-devil. “And I wept audibly,” for the failure to find a Redeemer meant that this earth in its curse is consigned forever to death. It meant that death, sin, damnation and hell should reign forever and ever and the sovereignty of God’s earth should remain forever in the hands of Satan. (Expository Sermons on Revelation [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1969], 3:69–70)

Caird is to the point when he remarks as follows:

These are not the tears of the prophet, thwarted in his expectation of seeing into the future. His frustration goes deeper than that. Until the scroll is opened, God’s purposes remain not merely unknown but unaccomplished. John has been brought up on the messianic hope of the Old Testament, which promised that one day God would assume his kingly power and reign openly on earth, punishing the wicked and redressing the wrongs of the oppressed. Especially in persecution God’s people had longed for that day to bring an end to their sufferings, but also to vindicate their faith. For there is a limit to the capacity of faith to survive in the face of hostile fact; unless in the end right obviously triumphs over wrong, faith in a just God is utter illusion. God must “vindicate his chosen who cry out to him day and night” (Luke 18:7). John weeps with disappointment because the hope of God’s action appears to be indefinitely postponed for lack of an agent through whom God may act.

John wept because the final vindication, the final act of redemption, the promise of everything being set straight, appeared a hopeless and lost cause.

Would you not weep as well if you saw no hope of redemption or deliverance from our present situation?

What does your heart long for?

Do you weep for the suffering of man and of God’s creation?

Do you ache and long for the renewal of all things?

Do you yearn and crave for the coming of our God?

I am convinced that the suffering of this world is designed to make us long for the coming of the next…for our true home. (At least this is one purpose for it)

Have you gotten too content here in this life?

Movie – the Matrix (set in future time, AI computers have taken over the world…mankind scorged the skies to cut off their power supply (sun)…they began to grow human to use them as live batteries…a few select humans live outside of the computer program designed to keep them in check…sometimes, people get unplugged. Those who do, sometimes have a hard time adjusted. One in particular betrayed them all so that he could go back in. Once he discovered the truth, he didn’t want to live the hard life of reality and truth and chose instead to bury his head in the sand and live for temporary comforts instead of fighting the long hard war for a more lasting and permanent freedom. --- so many times this is like us as Christians. We settle for the temporary pleasures of now instead of fighting the long hard war for the greater pleasures to come.

We don’t long for it like we ought to. We don’t yearn for God because we are too comfortable here.

What is our response to the fact that none are worthy for such an honor but God Himself?

There is one – Vs. 5

5 And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”

His weeping was premature. There is ONE.

This is about hope

Weeping went on for a bit – Tense of verb shows continual action.

You have to wonder how long the sorrow and suffering went on for and why God allowed it – reminds you that sorrow has a purpose in our lives. If we try to avoid it entirely, we will fail to grow in Christ likeness.

Lion of Tribe of Judah

Big Idea: Jesus is worthy…because of WHO He is and WHAT He has accomplished.

Title

Components of “Lion of the Tribe of Judah”

The “Lion of the tribe of Judah” occurs only once in the Bible in Rev 5:5. The phrase draws from Israel’s history and from the Old Testament.

1.The lion is a prominent animal in the ancient Near East, used in the artwork of many nations to signify royalty and power. In Egypt, there were lioness cults in the Nile Delta and gods such as Horus were depicted with lion features. Ancient Mesopotamians associated the lion with the goddess Ishtar and both Egypt and Mesopotamia described their rulers as “lions” to portray them as mighty warriors.

2.“Tribe” is an organizational term used here to assert one’s identity as a member of the people of God.

3.“Judah” forms an allusion to Genesis 49:9 where Jacob blesses Judah and calls him “a lion’s cub.”

History – Genesis 49:9

Context of Jacob blessing his children

8 “Judah, your brothers shall praise you;

your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies;

your father’s sons shall bow down before you.

9 Judah is a lion’s cub;

from the prey, my son, you have gone up.

He stooped down; he crouched as a lion

and as a lioness; who dares rouse him?

10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah,

nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,

until tribute comes to him;

and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.

11 Binding his foal to the vine

and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine,

he has washed his garments in wine

and his vesture in the blood of grapes.

12 His eyes are darker than wine,

and his teeth whiter than milk.

It is prophesied that….

The tribe of Judah should be victorious and successful in war: Thy hand shall be in the neck of thy enemies.

It should be superior to the rest of the tribes; not only in itself more numerous and illustrious, but having a dominion over them: Thy father’s children shall bow down before thee.

It should be a strong and courageous tribe, and so qualified for command and conquest: Judah is a lion’s whelp, v. 9. The lion is the king (ROYALTY) of beasts, the terror of the forest when he roars; when he seizes his prey, none can resist him; when he goes up from the prey, none dare pursue him to revenge it. By this it is foretold that the tribe of Judah should become very formidable, and should not only obtain great victories, but should peaceably and quietly enjoy what was obtained by those victories—that they should make war, not for the sake of war, but for the sake of peace. Judah is compared, not to a lion rampant, always tearing, always raging, always ranging; but to a lion couchant, enjoying the satisfaction of his power and success, without creating vexation to others: this is to be truly great.

It should be the royal tribe, and the tribe from which Messiah the Prince should come: The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, till Shiloh come, v. 10.

It should be a very fruitful tribe, especially that it should abound with milk for babes, and wine to make glad the heart of strong men (v. 11, 12

Matthew Henry

Much of what is here said concerning Judah is to be applied to our Lord Jesus. (1.) He is the ruler of all his father’s children, and the conqueror of all his father’s enemies; and he it is that is the praise of all the saints. (2.) He is the lion of the tribe of Judah, as he is called with reference to this prophecy (Rev. 5:5), who, having spoiled principalities and powers, went up a conqueror, and couched so as none can stir him up, when he sat down on the right hand of the Father. (3.) To him belongs the sceptre; he is the lawgiver, and to him shall the gathering of the people be, as the desire of all nations (Hag. 2:7), who, being lifted up from the earth, should draw all men unto him (Jn. 12:32), and in whom the children of God that are scattered abroad should meet as the centre of their unity, Jn. 11:52. (4.) In him there is plenty of all that which is nourishing and refreshing to the soul, and which maintains and cheers the divine life in it; in him we may have wine and milk, the riches of Judah’s tribe, without money and without price, Isa. 55:1.

This title depicts the ROYALTY, the MIGHT, the POWER of The Lion of the Tribe of Judah.

Who is this?

Root of David

Root of David A phrase used in the New Testament to refer to Jesus Christ (Rev 5:5; 22:16). In Rev 22:16, the pairing of “descendant of David” with “root of David” indicates that “root” refers not to the ancestor of David, but to his offspring. Because David was Yahweh’s anointed king, this phrase associates Jesus with the promised Davidic king of the Old Testament. This connection also is evident in Jesus’ genealogies in the Gospels.

This root of David makes clear, this is Jesus…descended from David…of the right tribe and bloodline to be King…He had every earthly and human right to be king.

The Lion of the Tribe of Judah, is Jesus…who comes from the root of David.

We see this in his genealogies, that he is descended from David.

Conquered

To overcome in the face of opposition or obstacles. Overcome. Prevail

He can open scroll and seven seals

These things qualify Him and Him ALONE to open the scrolls.

Because He is the lamb who was slain…

The Lamb Who was Slain – Vs. 6-7

6 And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. 7 And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne.

Big Idea: Jesus is worthy…because of WHO He is and WHAT He has accomplished.

Refer back to Revelation 4 reading for throne and four living creatures and elders…

Paradox – THE LION is actually a slain lamb.

The Lamb – capital P

Lamb – Slain. Pet lamb, child lamb. Images back to the Passover and the lamb the Israelites had to bring into their home in preparation for Passover.

OT sacrifices

Standing, ALIVE, on his feet, though looking to have been slain – Defeat over death

Seven Horns

Ford says that the horn is proverbially a symbol of courage, strength, and might.

Number seven – perfection/completion

Seven eyes which represent the seven spirits of god.

Beckwith says, “This trait is taken from Zec. 410, and denotes, as there explained, omniscience—the eyes of Christ behold and scrutinize all things.”

He took the scroll

What makes him worthy to open the scroll?

Because he was slain and because of what that death accomplished.

John Stott – Incomparable Christ

Victory - The reason why the Lamb was able to open the scroll is because he has triumphed (5:5).

Redemption - The repeated use of the title ‘the Lamb’ will immediately have reminded Jewish readers of the Passover. For just as the Passover lamb was sacrificed, its blood sprinkled and the people spared, so Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us, so that we might be redeemed and might celebrate the festival of redemption.

Suffering - For the sufferings of the Christ, although unique in their redemptive significance, were nevertheless the prototype of the sufferings of the people of God. Because he suffered, his people are called to suffer. Because he went to the cross, he calls us to take up our cross and follow him. So John moves on from the Lamb slain (in ch. 5) to the souls of the martyrs, slain because of their faithful testimony (in ch. 6). Thus those who are called to suffer for Christ, whose sufferings are so hard to understand and to bear, learn to see them in the light of the sufferings of Christ.

Weakness - specifically of power through weakness. This paradox is seen in its most dramatic form in Christ and the cross, and in John’s vision in Revelation 4 and 5. For at the centre of God’s throne (symbol of power) stands a slain Lamb (symbol of weakness). In other words, power through weakness, dramatized in God on the cross and the Lamb on the throne, lies at the heart of ultimate reality, even of the mystery of almighty God himself.

The Lamb who was slain…he is worthy…because he alone did what none other could.

Big Idea: Jesus is worthy…because of WHO He is and WHAT He has accomplished.

When you are confronted with the glorious nature of this Lamb, this Lion of the Tribe of Judah, of the root of David….

When you have the glorious nature of His person and work thrust upon you like this….what response can you possible give?

When you are first confronted with the hopelessness of NO ONE being found worthy to fulfill God’s promise and plan to redeem mankind…to redeem creation…How glorious is this truth that there is one who is Worthy?

In order to fully appreciate the good news, we have to be struck terribly with the bad news…

But when that happens, we fully appreciate the good news and the response is worship.

Response of Worship – Vs. 8-14

8 And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. 9 And they sang a new song, saying,

“Worthy are you to take the scroll

and to open its seals,

for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God

from every tribe and language and people and nation,

10 and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,

and they shall reign on the earth.”

11 Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, 12 saying with a loud voice,

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,

to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might

and honor and glory and blessing!”

13 And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying,

“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb

be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”

14 And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” and the elders fell down and worshiped.

Macarthur

The spontaneous outburst of worship results from the realization that the long-anticipated defeat of sin, death, and Satan is about to be accomplished and the Lord Jesus Christ will return to earth in triumph and establish His glorious millennial kingdom. The curse will be reversed, the believing remnant of Israel will be saved, and the church will be honored, exalted, and granted the privilege of reigning with Christ. All of the pent-up anticipation of millennia finally bursts out at the prospect of what is about to take place.

Worship and song was elders, believers, those of the redeemed (Not the angels)

The Angels SPOKE their praise…they did not sing it.

Look throughout scripture, you will not see anywhere where angels sing. They only ever speak. The redeemed sing.

The focus of the song – redemption.

Center piece of our worship, FOREVER, is the lamb that was slain.

IT IS THE REASON HE IS WORTHY TO OPEN THE SCROLL AND TO UNFOLD THE REDEMPTION OF ALL HIS CREATION.

It is reason why HE ALONE is worthy to do this.

Does this truth move your heart to praise, to worship? Does it move you to humble yourself, to submit to Him? Does this truth bring you to brokenness?

Conclusion

Play Video – Is he Worthy (Shane and Shane)

Application Questions

In what way(s) does your heart ache and yearn for the renewal of all things? How are the suffering and trials of this life propelling your towards Christ likeness?

In what way(s) does the reality of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah bring hope to your heart? In what way(s) does it inspire worship?

In what way(s) might this truth challenge your life to be a living act of worship this week? Be specific.

Related Media

Related Sermons

Earn an accredited degree from Redemption Seminary with Logos.