Download Audio

Context is important. Whenever you’re given information about something, sometimes if you take that information as it stands, as it’s communicated to you, without knowing the context you might get the wrong impression. Chapters one to three of Revelation have a context. John tells us in the first chapter that he was in exile on the island of Patmos in the Mediterranean. Then we were introduced to seven representative churches. All of those churches existed in cities and towns in Asia Minor, now modern-day Turkey. 

And then we saw the risen and exalted Lord Jesus, superintending and speaking to the separate liturgical assemblies of those churches, that is, those churches as they were gathered – the gathered ecclesia – the church at worship. We saw in each of those seven letters Jesus following the liturgy of the church, and in the liturgy of the church revealing himself, and speaking to the church and calling for its repentance and inviting individuals within the church to hear what the Spirit says to the churches.  

All of those things happen on earth, where we human beings live out our earthly lives. Because we can all imagine, can’t we, a Mediterranean island. You may have never been to the Mediterranean, but you can imagine an island. And you certainly can imagine cities, you’re sitting in one. And you can imagine a worshiping assembly, because today you if you’re here in person are part of one. All those things are familiar to us because they happen on earth.  

But with Revelation chapter 4, there is a dramatic change of context. A change of scene altogether, a shift, we might say, into an alternative reality from the world we know and from the churches that we’re familiar with, with all their strengths and their weaknesses, with all their blemishes and ideals, for all their faithfulness and frequent disloyalties. We are transported with the Apostle John, by a vision of a better place, a higher power, and a greater peace than this world of time and sense can ever know. 

We’re introduced first of all to the open door. John writes:  

“After this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven!”  

Revelation 4:1

Jesus had said earlier to the church in Philadelphia, he had said,  

“Behold, I have set before you an open door which no one is able to shut.”  

Revelation 3:8

There in that letter he was referring to the fact that this church, in its worshiping assembly, in its gatheredness, as it comes together through the liturgy of the church to worship and focus its mind upon God, has in that context access into the heavenly realm. That’s what Jesus said to the church in Philadelphia.  

John, as he writes his opening words after this, signals a change of subject from the vision of Christ glorified walking among the churches on earth; we are lifted up beyond that to have a vision of the glory of God in heaven. Now this idea of the heavens opening is found throughout the Scripture. In Ezekiel, for example, the prophet tells us  

“the heavens were open, and I saw visions of God.” 

Ezekiel 1:1

We see it happening in Mark chapter 1. Jesus is there, he is about to be baptized and 

“immediately the heavens opened, and the Spirit descended on him.”  

Mark 1:10

In John chapter 1, Jesus is talking again. He says:  

“Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” 

John 1:51

This vision that John had specifically was John receiving a vision from God, and the voice he heard, he tells us, from the first voice that he had heard speaking to him in chapter 1, 

“Like a trumpet, said, come up here.” 

Revelation 4:1

John is being transported by an act of revelation as a prophet. He is being escorted, as it were, into the heavenly council chamber, into the Holy of Holies, in order that he might hear from God that which he is going to reveal to you and me and to us. Now there’s precedent for this. In First Kings chapter 22, we read of a prophet, Micaiah. The prophet says  

“Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, all the hosts of heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left.” 

1 Kings 22:19

Isaiah similarly writes,  

“I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.”  

Isaiah 6:1

Amos the prophet reports:  

“For the Lord God does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophet.” 

Amos 3:7

So what’s happening in the book of Revelation is that Amos’s words are now being fulfilled. John is the prophet, and God has caught up John into this heavenly vision, in order that he might reveal through John to us what is going to unfold in the history of the church until Jesus returns. Jeremiah gives us the criteria upon which to judge whether a prophet is true or false. He says this, referring to a group false prophets, 

“For who among them has stood in the council of the Lord to see and to hear his word?” 

Jeremiah 23:18

John is being caught up into the council of the Lord that he might see and hear the Word of God for us. Like Moses, John is summoned up by the trumpet voice to come into the heavenly dwelling. Like Moses, he receives a spirit – the spirit of revelation, the spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit who knows the deep things of God. The Holy Spirit fills him, the Holy Spirit opens his minds to realities that transcend all that is familiar to us as creatures bound in time and space.  

Up to now, John has talked to us about Christ and his exalted glory, as he relates to the churches here on earth. And from that first vision that John gives us, as he describes God, but describes God in the form of the Lord Jesus, in the form of the Son of Man. We learn from that first vision that the invisible God is only visible in Christ, and that the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit’s voice is only audible as Jesus speaks to the churches. The Holy Trinity in other words is indivisibly present to the churches and in the churches. 

But as John comes before us here, these things all belong to what is now. The Holy Spirit says to John, “Come up here to the supreme height, that you may be shown things which shall be hereafter.” And the lesson we learn here is this: that when you get into the throne room, the glories that are, and the glories that will be, are already present there, instantly and immediately in the eternity of God, in God’s eternal now, his eternal today. The open door takes John into that heavenly realm.  

Second thing we see is the divine throne. Here’s how John puts it: “At once I find myself in the Spirit.” That is, in a state of exaltation, in a posture whereby he can receive divine revelation. But this time he’s seized by the Spirit with greater force, and he’s given the eyes to see and the ears to hear in a visionary way something of the immediate presence of God. And the very first thing he sees is emblematic of the immediate presence of God – it’s the throne. It’s the throne on which God sits. It is the central symbol of the entire book of Revelation. It immediately confronts us with the majesty and the glory and the sovereignty of God.  

This heavenly throne room is the template for the earthly temple. This heavenly throne room is the Holy of Holies that is represented in the earthly tabernacle and the temple. In the earthly tabernacle and temple, the Holy of Holies was where the ark of the covenant stood. A box, and on the top of the box two golden cherubim with their wings pointing towards each other, and in between the cherubim an empty space. That was the throne of the invisible God. How disappointing for the Babylonians and the Romans to go looking for it! For the Babylonians to find there was no idol, no image, no representation of Israel’s God in that empty space between the cherubim where God sits, because Israel’s God is the invisible God.  

“Behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne.”  

Revelation 4:2

The God of the Bible, the God of Israel, the essence of God is that he is seated in eternal repose. What that means, to translate into language that we can understand, is that there is nothing that perturbs him, nothing that disturbs him, nothing that moves him or alters his state in any way for good or ill. God is sitting on the throne. He remains in charge. While everything else is going on in our little world, in our little universe, God remains the same in absolute majesty. This is the unified testimony of Scripture. The psalmists say,  

“The Lord reigns; he is robed in majesty. His throne is established from of old; and he is from everlasting. The Lord reigns; let the people tremble! He sits enthroned above the cherubim; let the earth quake!” 

Psalm 93:1-2; 99:1

So in the whole universe, which is God’s temple, here we come to the “sanctum sanctorum,” the innermost zone, the Holy of Holies, the place where God says he can be met, and where God is pleased to reveal himself. We know that this is the God of Israel, he’s identified in verse 8 as the Lord God Almighty. This is the One who says in Isaiah,  

“Thus says the Lord, ‘Heaven is my throne, the earth is my footstool.'”  

Isaiah 66:1

This is the One of whom Jesus says: 

“Heaven is the throne of God; he who swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.”  

Matthew 23:21-22

This is the one of whom David spoke,  

“The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven.”  

Psalm 11:4

Now what arrests our attention here is this: the prophet describes nothing. He does not describe any form or shape in chapter 1 when he’s describing the revelation of God. There you’ll remember that he describes the form of God; “The Son of Man,” he says, “a human form.” It’s the resurrected Jesus. that’s the only form in which God ever reveals himself. John in chapter 4, however, is given a vision of God as he is in himself, and he is in his essence, primarily the Father in his essence, as the fount of the Godhead. He sees him in all the invisibility that he that he is – God is the invisible God.  

So what does he see? What arrests his attention is the flashing brilliance, he says, of what has – and this language is important – the appearance of precious gem-like colors. Now that language of appearance is language you find all over the prophets. They don’t want you to think for one moment that you can describe God as being like this or that or the other thing. They have the “appearance of the likeness” of something. They have to use human language to talk, to communicate with you and me, but you cannot communicate what it is they are actually seeing. What John saw is something that you cannot see with a physical eye or comprehend with the human mind. This enthroned one was like in appearance to a brilliant blaze of light and color refracted through these precious stones. The Psalmist spoke  

“the one who covers himself with light as with a garment.” 

Psalm 104:2

The Apostle Paul said that the Lord  

“dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see.” 

1 Timothy 6:16

The three stones that are named, these three stones are mentioned used by Plato. He may very well have got them from the Hebrew scriptures. He knew them in their Greek translation. These three stones have a significant place in the Biblical lists of gems, and later you find them in the book of Revelation in the foundations of new Jerusalem.  

Now what is John describing here? John is describing here the shekinah; he’s describing here the glory of God in all its splendor. John is observing a theophany, that is, a visionary appearing or appearance of God. As Ezekiel did, when he spoke of the shekinah of the God of Israel, 

“I saw the likeness of a throne with the appearance of the brightness all around it the glory, over the heads of the cherubim.”  

Ezekiel 1:26

This is the shekinah – you need to know this word – the glory that appeared to Israel. The glory that led Israel through the Red Sea, that led Israel through the desert, that descended upon the tabernacle, that hovered over the Holy of Holies, that filled the Holy of Holies. The shekinah. The glory of God. The splendor of his presence – it’s a created means by which he communicates his splendor, and his power, and his dignity, and his majesty to creatures. It was the shekinah that God, kind of, Moses, you remember, when Moses was on the mountain, and he saw, he saw the glory of the Lord as it came upon the people. 

Now what immediately distinguishes God from all created reality, and what causes us to pause at this point and to worship and wonder this luminous presence, this omnipotent majesty, this unfathomable mystery, the glory and the beauty that belong to the very essence of God himself, and at the center of the universe is this throne.  

In not mentioning any human appearance, John is pointing us towards that which is beyond all description to ordinary mortals. The presence of God, the eternal light that God is, is the highest point when we think of God in heaven. It is inconceivable to us. It cannot be compared to any other real or imaginary place. Heaven is inaccessible. It cannot be explored or described or even indicated. We can call it a place, as some theologians have; we can call it God’s place. Yet no place we can think of can contain God.  

At Christmas time we sing a carol that has these words for Christ: “Heaven, it cannot hold him, nor the earth contain.” We would want to say the universe could not contain him, just as the temple could not contain God, yet it was the place where God could be reliably encountered. When we gather together for worship on the Lord’s day, why is gathering so important? It’s because God has said, “I’m everywhere, but here’s where I can be found. Here’s where I deign to be found by you. When you come together with my people, when you together call upon my name, there I will be found by you.” God says. It’s the very heart of our worship. But heaven – there is no spatial or earthly coordinates by which we can locate it.  

“A throne stood.” 

Revelation 4:2

It speaks of the utter otherness, the transcendence, the distance of God. Remarkably, it also speaks of his presence within creation, and his presence towards creation. Now this chapter then teaches us both what it is possible to say about God, as well as the limits of our speech and our understanding. The language provided in Scripture, though mysterious, gives us something truthful to say about God, but we must be careful of the limits of our own creatureliness. Somebody has said this, “To do theology is to be careful about one’s words in the fear of God.” 

Now what does this throne represent? It represents ultimate sovereignty, jurisdiction, government. God is both a King and a Lawgiver. He’s written his laws on the consciences of every man, woman, child who’s born into the world. He’s written his laws on the tablets of stone he gave to Moses. The Holy Spirit is working out those laws on the hearts and minds of every believer, as we are taught day by day to conform ourselves more and more into the likeness of our Savior. The jurisdiction of God. God sets up his throne in your heart. He sets up his throne in the church, in order that we might get to know him better. The brightness, the glory, the majesty. 

The light that God is, the light that God dwells in, that demonstrates something of the perfections of his being, all that is in God is God. Whether it’s eternity, or infinity, or immutability, or omniscience, or omnipotence, or omnipresence, or wisdom, or power, or goodness, or truth, or love, or grace, or mercy, all that is in God is God. So you find this brightness refracted through these gems, these the multi-faceted gems that John describes in this vision. 

What does John see? He has been caught up, he has gone behind the veil, he has left behind the physical world. What does he see? He doesn’t see the uncreated space of God, not the highest nature, so pure and so simple, known only to God’s self. He doesn’t see that. That which is known only to the Trinity, he does not see that. He does not see what is still lies hidden, and which by definition is immaterial, and invisible, and incomprehensible, and ineffable. But he does see the outskirts of the divine nature, like Moses who saw the back parts of God. There’s God, then there’s the glory of God, and then there’s the afterburner of the glory of God; and Moses is now unable to see the afterburner of the glory of God. Which he utilizes, utilizes created things. Do you know that the heavens declare the glory of God, and the earth declares the glory of God, and people declare the glory of God? He leaves traces of himself everywhere, all through creation. Those traces of God are to be found in the works of creation, and providence, and redemption, where we see the back parts of God. This is the revelation then that’s being given to the church through John as he sees the throne. 

And then the last thing is that he sees a covenant sign around the throne.  

“There was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald.” 

Revelation 4:3

This throne will be a throne of judgment at the end of the story. There will be a great white throne of judgment, but this rainbow reminds us that in the present judgment is tempered by mercy. You remember after the flood, God pointed Noah to the rainbow as a sign of the covenant of nature. God said,  

“Never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth. I’ve set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh.” 

Genesis 9:11-15

God says covenant of nature, but that rainbow in Isaiah is also a sign of God’s covenant of grace in Isaiah 54.  

“This is to me, as the days of Noah: as I swore that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so I have sworn that my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the Lord who has compassion on you.” 

Isaiah 54:9-10

There is around the throne a reminder that God has come in peace. That right now, at this moment, God intends peace for his creatures. And that we are reconciled to God by the blood of Christ, and that he’s “broken down the walls of hostility” between us and each other, and between us and him, so that we might know that unity that comes, and that peace that comes through Christ. 

“I saw a throne.” 

Revelation 4:2

Do you know the ultimate reality which will still be standing after this universe has disappeared is the throne? The throne. To those who must live under the shadow of Caesar’s throne, and find out that that shadow is made colder and darker by the shadow of Satan’s throne, the one truth that matters above all others is that there is a higher throne. When we hear of that throne, we hear of a sovereignty, and a kingdom, and a secret plan that God has to make this heavenly fact an earthly reality one day. It leaves us on tiptoes waiting for that great announcement that will come later in this book, that  

“The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ, and that he shall reign forever and ever.” 

Revelation 11:15

The fact that this throne exists, and that you and I may go in prayer together as we gather as a worshipping community through the open door, into the sanctum sanctorum, into the very Holy of Holies, and then do so boldly because of Christ is a great encouragement to our hearts. It gives us great security to know that that our security eternally is guaranteed by the Holy Trinity. But for now, if you and I are to know God at all, we must know him as the unfathomable mystery that he is. A mystery to be explored only in this time only by means of the humility of worship. It is through the worshipping of God’s people that we begin to comprehend what it means for us to say: 

“The Lord God omnipotent reigns.” 

Revelation 19:6

© 2024 Tenth Presbyterian Church.

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in its entirety or in unaltered excerpts, as long as you do not charge a fee. For Internet posting, please use only unaltered excerpts (not the content in its entirety) and provide a hyperlink to this page, or embed the entire material hosted on Tenth channels. You may not re-upload the material in its entirety. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Tenth Presbyterian Church.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: By Liam Goligher. © 2024 Tenth Presbyterian Church. Website: tenth.org