The story of human history is the story of the abuse of power. Raw power is a dangerous thing, especially when it is unrestrained by righteousness or by mercy. Raw power exercised, whether it’s by a government on its subjects or people, whether it’s by a man over a woman, parents over children, or within a dynamic relationship of somebody in some kind of authority over somebody who’s weak, raw power exercised unrestrained by righteousness or by mercy can create coercion, violence, bullying, cancelling, extermination, persecution. All to get its own way. Raw power must win at whatever cost. And one of the lessons that the Book of Revelation teaches us that ultimate power, power in its absolute sense, belongs entirely and solely to God.

But if we were to look at the power of God through the prism of the abuse of power at a human level, we would be terrified of the power of God. And this passage before us this morning teaches us not to be afraid of God’s absolute power because of who God is absolutely. In Revelation chapter 4 and 5, the significance of the throne and the horns in John’s vision accentuates the idea of the power of God present in the world.

John is in the Spirit, that is, he’s been caught up in the Spirit as a prophet is in the Bible’s witness. He has been transported into another dimension — a dimension that is inaccessible naturally to us who live in the world of reality – the created reality that we live and move and have our existence in. This other dimension into which he’s lifted, we call it the heavenly dimension, it’s the presence of God, the God who is not part of this reality, at least not bound to this reality, not trapped by time, not measured by space, always close at hand. In fact, we live in it, and it lives in us, though we cannot see it. Though it is inaccessible to us, it is this other reality that actually sustains our reality in its existence. Every molecule in our reality is sustained by the intentional will of this other reality that we’re speaking about today. By God himself. This other reality can’t be described; it can only be grasped through the kind of Biblical signs and images that we find used and utilized by the Apostle John here, and by the prophets of the Old Testament.

In chapter 4, what we’re being told is that the center of all reality as we understand it, that is, created reality and reality outside of creation, the center of it all is the throne of the Triune God. John offers no description of this God because you cannot describe what is invisible. You cannot describe something that is infinite and has no boundaries to it. You cannot describe something that is pure spirit. It isn’t an entity. You can’t get a machine and point it at it so that you kind of show it up in its form up because it has no form or composition. It’s not made up of various parts. God just is. The Triune God just is.

And it’s the Holy Trinity that’s being described as we saw in chapter 4, as the creatures, the creaturely representatives before the throne sing,

“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.”

Revelation 4:8

Because that language is used of Jesus, it’s used of the Father, it’s used of the Holy Spirit. It’s used of God as God is in himself. It is the Triune God of Israel. And when we come to chapter 5, we discover something about this great Creator God. We discover that he has in his right hand a scroll written within and on the back.

Now the context, and we need to remind ourselves, is the heavenly worship of God. It’s a worship service. Chapter 4 and 5 is a heavenly worship service, that is a counterpart to the earthly worship that is going on in the seven churches in chapters 2 and 3 – the seven churches that represent all of the churches. If you’re watching from your home, at a great distance, the church that you went to this morning or the church of which you’re a part. All of the churches of Christ everywhere in the world throughout time are represented by the seven that we read about in Revelation 2 and 3. And the earthly worship of the church is joined to the heavenly worship of the angels and the archangels, of the spirits of just men and women made perfect. We belong to that that heavenly worship, and our earthly worship should as much as possible reflect what we see in the divine liturgy of the worship of heaven.

Well, in that heavenly worship and in our earthly worship, we’re confronted with the reality that the difference worship makes is this: worship, as we gather Sunday morning by Sunday morning, worship draws a line between the Creator and the creature. Worship is that that occupation of ours by which we intentionally remind ourselves of who God is, and of who we are. That God is not simply on a higher level of existence, in a kind of spectrum of existence. He’s not only just bigger and better than we are. No, he in, he belongs to an entirely different category from what we are. There is God, and there is all things in relation to God. And the “all things” encompasses the angels, the archangels, the demons, people, animals, rocks, mountains, planets, stars, everything all things in relation to God. And one of the purposes of worship, as we come Lord’s Day by Lord’s Day, is to be reminded of who God is and of all things as they relate to who God is. Because if we get that distinction wrong, then we end up breaking the commandments and coming under the curse of God. So we come to worship God, and worship is, it draws a line between God the Creator and us the creatures.

Secondly, worship is intended to help us to contemplate and consider something that is beyond all our categories of thought, as we think about who God is. And here this morning we’re to think about this fact that God, the God who is there, has a scroll, sealed. Now the language comes from Daniel, the book of Daniel, chapter 12, when the prophet is told this: he’s told to shut up the words that God has given to him, shut them up in a book, seal the book until the time of the end, that is, until the latter days, the end of the ages.

Now that book described in Daniel chapter 12 contains the decrees of God, that is God’s purpose, God’s will and his decrees of what is going to take place in the world relative to our salvation, our redemption, and the world’s judgment. The world’s judgment – these events are going to unfold from this chapter on in the book of Revelation. What is sealed in this book that is in God’s hand in Revelation chapter 5 are the events that transpire from Jesus’ resurrection until Jesus’ return. They include your life and mine. They include your salvation and mine. Your name is either written in this book, or it isn’t written in this book. Your story, the story of your life, the story of America, the story of the world, the story of the unfolding plot line of human history is all captured in that book. We’re going to see that God is active in the world. He is active in the world, sounding out a trumpet as he calls men and women to repentance, allowing men and women the leeway to do what is in their heart to do. And it’s, of course, God giving people what they want.

And as God gives them what they want, what do we find happening in the world? We find the world increasingly going to hell, as it were, as the world chooses the direction of absolute power, total power, and the implications of that. You come to the New Testament, and in the New Testament we are told that the death and resurrection of Jesus brought about the last days.

“God, who spoke to our fathers by the prophets at various times and in various ways,
has in these last days spoken to us by a Son.”

Hebrews 1:1

We are living in the time that Daniel describes. “Shut up the words until the time of the end.” And we’re going to read this morning about the One who is going to unseal the book. The One in whose hands is the execution of everything that is written in this book. We need to understand that it is this, that the unfolding of this book, that the church, the readers understand, purpose and history, that Christ rules it. How history serves his purposes, how God’s people suffer, how the world is judged now with interim judgments on its way towards its final judgment, and how God’s elect are preserved and disciplined on their way to resurrection and everlasting joy.

Well, the mighty angel asks the really big question: “Who is worthy to open the scroll and to break its seal?” And the silence and the tears of the Apostle John are compelling, because there is no one among God’s creatures that can open the book. Notice that it’s a creature that’s required to open the book. God is inviting a creature to take the book and open the seals. But if nobody can be found, then the decrees cannot be executed, and there is no purpose to life, no meaning to history, no sense to human existence; there is only despair. And you can think of it today, you think of the world we’re living in today, this pandemic has accentuated the despair that lies latent in the hearts of men and women. It has exposed the sheer – the one thing that that seems to be common to all human beings. It exposes the terror that lies in our hearts at the prospect of death. And God is at work in this pandemic, exposing that fault line that runs through every human heart. And the tragedy is that it even runs through the hearts of those who say they believe in the resurrection of the dead.

The world’s default setting is to despair, and fear and the loneliness that comes along with those things. No wonder John wept. He wept because of the human condition; he wept because of human impotence; he wept at the thought that unless that book is open there will be no protection for God’s people, no judgment for the world, no triumph for the overcomer, no new heavens and new earth. But there is a champion.

“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.”

Revelation 5:5

This one that he’s talking about, this one is the key to unlocking the unfolding story of humanity and executing the actions of God in history. That’s why we have the throne here, where God reigns and God wills his decrees. That’s why this book is sealed by the Spirit until the conquering hero comes to unseal the book. And all along in the Bible’s unfolding narration of God’s purpose, this One who comes is going to be the Messiah.

The Messiah will be a Jew, that is, he will come from the tribe of Judah, just as, just as it is explained to John here. It is this One from Judah, this Jew who will gather all the nations of the world to himself. And this One who is to come is also a descendant of David. And this language “the Root of David” comes from the book of Isaiah. Let me read to you Isaiah chapter 11:

“There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit with the Lord, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, and of counsel and might, and of the knowledge and fear of the Lord.”

Isaiah 11:1-2

The seven-fold Spirit. You notice a connection with our text. And the Holy Spirit being present with the Lamb in his fullness comes straight out of Isaiah 11. The Root of David and the Lion of Judah is the One who has the Holy Spirit in all of his fullness and perfection. A little later down in Isaiah 11 it says this:

“In that day the root of Jesse shall stand as an ensign to the people,
and to him shall the nations come and his dwellings shall be glorious.”

Isaiah 11:10

In other words, all of these Old Testament prophecies converge on the Messiah Jesus. That’s what we read in Luke chapter 1.

“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and he has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke from the mouth of his holy prophets.”

Luke 1:68-70

So the Messiah is who’s in view — the Messiah Jesus. And the Messiah Jesus has conquered, that is, he has won the battle. The battle with his enemies is over. He can open the book because he has the authority and the power and the credentials to open the book.

And so John turns to see the Lion, and he sees the Lamb. He sees the Lamb in proximity to the throne. The Lamb has just appeared in proximity to the throne. He sees him standing among the elders that represent the church of the Old Testament and the New Testament. He is standing adjacent to them in proximity to the throne. He is immediately before the throne of God. Here is the Lamb of God. John identifies him as the “Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world.”

Here is the Lamb who has just been slain. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. As our Passover lamb he was sacrificed for us. But here he is now, alive, standing before the throne of God above. It’s as if the death, and the rising, and the ascension have occurred in one nanosecond of time, because in eternity there is no passage of time as there is on earth. He has come straight from Calvary, as it were, and here he is standing in the very presence of God. There’s an immediacy to it. And standing before the throne he now takes that in charge the future of the world. His mortal sacrifice has accomplished redemption. His death in weakness has achieved final victory.

In all of the new heavens in the new earth, when we with resurrected bodies rise on that last day, not one of us will have any of the defects or any of the scars that we have gotten over time here. We will be perfect in resurrected bodies. There will be only one resurrected body in the new heaven and new earth that will carry the scars of his experience here, and that is the Lamb. The Lamb of God. The Messiah.

This is where, by the way, all Biblical understanding begins. It begins with our grasp of the crucified and resurrected Savior. This is where all theological thinking begins, as we reflect on the fact that in the mystery, the mystery of our dying with him and rising with him into newness of life.

Why is he worthy? Because he is perfectly sinless. Isaiah says he’s led like a lamb to the slaughter “although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.” The Apostle Peter says of Christ he is “a lamb without blemish or spot”, utterly sinless. Not only is he worthy because he’s perfectly sinless, he’s worthy because he is completely victorious. You think of some of the language the Apostle Paul uses. Colossians, for example:

“having forgiven all our trespasses, having cancelled the bond that stood against us with its legal demands, by setting it aside, by nailing it to his cross. He disarmed the principalities and powers, he made a public example of them, he triumphed over them in it.”

Colossians 2:13-15

In what? In his death. And as we look at the Lamb, the Lion of Judah who is the Lamb of God, we see in Christ the perfect harmony of infinite majesty on the one hand, and transcendent meekness on the other. Raw power terrifies us in the wrong hands, but the power of God that is active in guiding the world to its final consummation is in the hands of the Lamb. The meek Lamb, the One who took on creaturely existence. You see, the picture of the Lamb that points us back to the sacrificial system of the Old Testament, also makes us think of a little lamb bouncing in the field. Some of you are city people, you never seen a lamb in your life except on television, and you can be forgiven for that. But they are very pretty, and they smell a bit, and smell a lot actually, but they’re pretty to look at from a distance. Little creature.

Because the God who love you – loves you – took on creaturely status. Here’s the amazing thing as the Lamb stands before the throne, the Son of God, is on the throne. In other words, he’s never left the throne. As God he doesn’t give up being God, put it on pause for a while for the 30 years he’s here and then go back to heaven and press the “on” button again. He’s not ceased to be on the throne. He assumed human nature and lived a human life in the man Christ Jesus, that is, his human nature to which he is joined for all eternity for our sakes. So that we know God and see God in Christ Jesus in eternity.

And in that human flesh – let me, let me put it like this. Cyprian of Carthage put it like this: “He puts on human nature that he may lead humanity to the Father. What humanity is, Christ was willing to be, that humanity may become what Christ is.” Here he is in his creatureliness.

And he possesses the Holy Spirit without measure; he has the seven Spirits of God. The seven horns that designate perfection of power of the omnipotent Spirit, echoing Zechariah:

“Not by might, not by power, by my Spirit, says the Lord.”

Zechariah 4:6

And then the seven eyes denoting the perfect sovereignty of the omniscient Spirit. The Spirit who sees:

“For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth,
and show his might on behalf of those whose heart is completely his.”

2 Chronicles 16:9

The Lamb has divine attributes. And the Lamb, this Lamb, bears the marks of the slaughter. But here he comes, and he takes the scroll in his right hand. Through the Lamb the will of God shall prosper, Isaiah said. He is the agent through whom God’s purposes will be carried out. Why can he do that? Because he is both God and he is creature. He is the God-man.

“There is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.”

1 Timothy 2:5

So when we see the picture of the Lamb here, we are led to think about him in his incarnation. This, as the Son of God, as he appears to us, as he is present on our side of that Creator/creature distinction. Remember I said in worship what we do is we draw a line in our minds between who God is and what we are as creatures. But when we encounter Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, we find him on our side of that line in his human nature. He is like us. He is in the condition of createdness. In his human nature considered in itself creaturely.

Now this means that God appears to us in Christ on the opposite side of the divide as a creature. Instead of strength we see weakness. Instead of eternity we see someone living his life in time. Instead of immortality he has made himself mortal – he is liable to death. But even as a creature, that eternal relation with his Father, that eternal relation of his Father, the love of the Father for the Son from all eternity plays itself out in his human life in terms of his obedience to the Father, in terms of his love for the Father, in terms of his laying down his life for his people. As a man he learned obedience. As a man he accepted suffering. As a man he resisted temptation. As a man he surrendered to death.

In other words, these things are the stuff of our human existence. And they were the very stuff that Christ worked with as he worked out what it meant to live a human, to live life at a human and earthly level. If you ask the question “How would God act if God was a creature?” The answer is he would act like Jesus.

You know, there’s a similarity here with an event that takes place in the Old Testament. You remember when Abraham is called by God to take his son, his only son Isaac whom he loves, and take him into the desert to a place that God would show him, and to build an altar there, and then to bind up Isaac and to slay him and place him on the altar. You remember that most terrifying, terrifying story. Abraham goes out in faith. The New Testament tells us that he was able to do it because his faith was such that he believed that God could raise him from the dead. So he goes. Isaac is as good as dead to Abram. He’s going to go through with this. You remember he binds him; he puts him on. There’s a crisis. He lifts up the knife – there’s a crisis. All the promises of God that were to come through Isaac to the world – including the coming of Jesus – are up for grabs here. And then God interrupts, and there is a lamb caught in a thicket.

Here we have a crisis in heaven. Here’s the book of God that unfolds the history of your life and mine, and the history of the times in which we live, and the times of that are still to come. And there is nobody worthy to open the scroll, until the Lamb appears straight from the cross. He’s come straight from the battle. He appears in heaven. He appears by the throne of God. He’s able to go and take the scroll straight from God’s hand. He’s standing in the vicinity of the throne.

Paul understood this in his great hymn in Philippians chapter 2:

“He who was by nature God, he who already enjoyed equality with God, made himself nothing, he took on the form of a servant, he was found in fashion as a man and he humbled himself to obedience to death, even the death of the cross.”

Philippians 2:6-8

But as we read Revelation chapter 5, we are now listening to the latter part of what Paul writes there. Therefore, because he’s submitted himself to the death of the cross on your behalf and mine,

“God has highly exalted him, given him the name that is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that he is Lord, to the glory of his name.”

Philippians 2:9-11

The Son of God has come, in order he may take history in his hands, and he does so as the Lamb of God. History is in safe hands; your life is in safe hands. And if you’re going through a particular trial in your life at this moment, maybe you’re doubting that, maybe you’re questioning why should you be going through this, your story is not ended. And your story doesn’t end when you die. It only begins when you die. The new chapter, that is better than the one that came before, when you’re with Christ, which is by far the best.