The appearance of an emerald, round the throne, were 24 thrones, and seated on the thrones were 24 elders clothed in white garments, with golden crowns on their heads. From the throne came flashes of lightning and rumblings and peels of thunder, and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which were the seventh 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, all 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. 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 24 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. May the Lord bless the reading of his word for the grass withers and the flower it fades, but the word of the Lord remains forever. Well, it's certainly good to be out of the seven letters, the revelation, and on to something a little easier. Revelation chapter four gives us a perspective. And as I was looking over it again this morning, I was reminded, as Dennis Johnson and the commentator has said, it reminds him of the Wizard of Oz of it because here you have this mythical land that's so different from everything that Dorothy, you remember, was swept up with the tornado and carried away. It's so different from everything that she knows and understands, nothing behaves right. And then they go to see the Wizard and the Wizard is all inspiring and they shake and they coward before him. And of course that turns out in the post and in that spirit of modernity, it turns out to be just nothing but electronics and wizardry and artificialness. And so there's a real cynicism there about anything that is above what we can do ourselves. You remember the end of the message. He said, Oh, you already have had that with you all along in your bag. He had the heart and he had the brains that she had the ability to get home. They didn't need a wizard after all. And so the illustration falls somewhat short because it presents a very humanistic. We don't need a God approach the things. And so then I began to think, well, is there nothing in literature that I can use for an illustration? And I began to think of Alice in Wonderland. And there in that particular story, you have Alice who falls down a rabbit hole and she's transported to a place where she has to describe what she sees, the author is describing what they see, but it's in terms that if it wasn't illustrated, we would really struggle to picture in our own minds. And I find that to be sort of a way that revelation is presented in a sense. Here we have things that ought to be common to us, seas and drones. And we have images of elders sitting there and crowns and all these things ordinary to us to a degree. But then there's something so foreign about them that we struggle to grasp and comprehend what it is that they mean. Well, it's hard not to notice that there's a major change in the perspective as we're reading through chapters two and chapters three and then going to chapter four. And that perspective becomes one where we had been seeing the perspective on the church and its worship from the human level. That is addressing the issues that were common to man in the churches, issues that we were being called upon to address. And now we are transported as it were to view the same scene but from a heavenly perspective. We're now looking at the saints from a heavenly perspective. We know that Paul was there on the island of Patmos and it was on the Lord's day. On the Lord's day we learned in the beginning and so it was the day of worship and so there's this theme of worship throughout. It was worship that was being addressed in the letters to the churches, what was happening in their ministries and in their worship in particular. And now we have here a scene of heavenly worship as they are gathered around the throne of God to engage in that worship. So in chapters two and chapters three we have this idea of imminence if you will that is that God is near to us. He walks with us, remember Christ was walking in the midst of the churches, walking among the candlestands and so we were comforted by the fact that Christ remains with us and is near to us. And now we have a perspective of God's transcendence and when I say transcendence I don't mean that God is far off but that God is being presented to us in his enthronement and as exalted. That is that he has a moral transcendence and a transcendence concerning his power that is something so far above so far far into us as to be unattainable and unreachable by us. And so we have a view of him as the Jews did when they gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai and the clouds will settle at the top and thunder and lightning and earthquakes were shaking and they were shaken themselves and in awe at the power of God. And that is what I mean when I am talking of transcendence because God is in all places so we can't say that God is far removed from us because he is also imminent in Christ and by the spirit that dwells within us. Yet there still remains something other for God that remains something that is transcendent with God, something that is uncomfortable for us, something that is so far into us that the language used in Revelation chapter 4 seems strange to our ears and we have to read carefully and slowly try to capture what it is that is being communicated. Now imagine that you are John and you are there on this island of Patmos and you have been alone because you are in exile on this rocky small island. It is the Lord's day and you know that the churches across the channel are engaged in worship on this Lord's day. So you walk to the shoreline standing there on the rocks now an older man and you have been already considering the things of God as these letters have been shown to you and you look across the water and you can just barely make out the shoreline where the people that you so love are in their worship and in their churches. And your heart begins to break when you think about them, when you think about the letters that have been given to you and relates to you and you think about their spiritual drift, you think about the infighting that is happening within the church. You think about the bleeding of the martyrs whose blood is just beginning to drip onto the streets and persecution and you can't reach them, you can't get to them. You are the last remaining apostle and you can't get to your churches, you can only look and know that they are in trouble. The persecutors' heel is beginning to grind them down. Their blood is already, as I said in the street, Satan has already established his throne and rule very dear to one of the very churches that you write to. But all of this is expected because Jesus warned that it would come. Know the church will survive external pressures. If you're John and you're sitting there, you know that as the pressures begin to come that the church will survive, it's the seeds of internal corruption that pull the tears from your eyes. It's the seeds of internal corruption that create the rifts and the schisms and the infighting. The letters that you have had detail to you the dangers and you wonder if if in fact in your humanity you begin to wonder if there's really any hope because for the church to withstand the pressures from without, she must be strong within, strong and true. So he stares out and he asks himself, will the church survive? Will the church make it through these times? Chapter two and three were warning to men that they must tighten up and straighten up that they needed to get the churches internal operations correct. Beginning in chapter four, the Lord shows John that whether that happens perfectly or not, that he will not allow his church to be destroyed or lost even to the corruptions of man. The heavens open up before John says that he looks in the heavens open and there's a door that is there before him. A door that opens meaning a transition from one place to another he has to cross that threshold he's in the spirit on the Lord's day. He goes to the gathered church in heaven on the Lord's day because that's what we have here, pictured as a service of worship as they are gathered around the throne as they sing a song as we sang this morning. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty and so he goes up and he hears them singing and giving God praise and glory. But he sees as well as he hears. Chapter four and chapter five, we introduce that next section of Revelation that's going to be where we see the seven seals that are open, the seven trumpets that are sounded and the seven goals that are poured out and all of this occurs in a trinitarian scene of worship. We have the throne, we have the lamps that we read of this morning which represent to us the spirit of God with the light of illumination that shines forth that we may understand what we see. And then in chapter five we're presented with the lamb and all of these persons of the Trinity are present in the worship. Question, worship is trinitarian. Too often today it is fractured out much to our own loss and the loss of orthodoxy. We have those churches that major only own the power and the person of Father God and they tend to be the highest forms of high church expression where there seems to be nothing spoken of concerning redemption in the blood and the spiritual indwelling and the priesthood of believers. There's much reverence and there's much all but there's nothing else and then there are those churches that are Christ the centric so much so that all they have is the appeal of evangelism. They speak of evangelism but they never speak of the Father and they have not much to understanding and they're incomparable with things of the spirit but they preach the cross which is vital but that's all. And then there are those that are focused almost exclusively on the Holy Spirit, more the charismatic churches. And so you have these three divisions that have broken out which essentially are together trinitarian worship but separate there is always one that is exalted above the other and it ought not be. But worship must be trinitarian because the persons of the Trinity are themselves equal, non-stealing glory from the other but all equally glorified and equally important in our worship as we consider God in His wholeness. So as he arrives there there are things that are happening in heaven, pictures of things that have happened that are happening and will continue to happen since the time of the resurrection. We read that John was in the spirit and his vision was not one that took him physically deporting him or transporting him from one place to another. Now he was in the spirit, he remained on earth but he had a vision, he had a comprehension to see what the Lord was teaching to him. Much as we gathered on the Lord's day and dwelled by the spirit, worship in spirit and truth. So the illumination work of the Spirit, the work of revealing the scriptures to Christians today is very much akin to what we read here in what was a much more compact and dense vision given to John but nevertheless we also are in the spirit on the Lord's day. Now this apocalyptic scene that follows, all of the ones that follow chapter four and five have to be read with four and five in mind. We can't take the seven letters and then chapter four and five is being a picture of worship and then move on to exciting into the world drama. All of these are connected together, one informs the other as we march along through revelation. Chapter four focuses on God and his sovereignty, it focuses on his majesty, it focuses on his holiness. Chapter five will focus on Christ, his redeeming love and his glory. Both together give us a vivid example to follow for worship as it will be in its spiritual maturity in heaven. We observe the worship of heaven and our worship should not be foreign to that. Our worship is an echo as the sounds of heaven reach the earth and bounce off the crust of the earth, our own worship should be an echo of that worship which is in heaven. We shouldn't arrive in heaven and say I've never actually seen it done like this before. Our worship should reflect that worship which is in heaven. It should be God-centered, spirit-dependent and Christ-enabled. We see worship in dialogue here as well in verse eight, there's a proclamation that talks about God's holiness, his name and his eternal nature. And then in verse 11 we see the response of the people as they declare to God his worth and his worthiness. They say, worthy are you, our Lord, our God to receive glory, honor and power and own it goes to his nature as our creator. And so what we have is a proclamation and a response by the people, a proclamation that God is holy and the people's responses and worthy is our God. And so we see that dialogue and worship established here as we do in the rest of scriptures as well. But what did John see as he arrived? What was some of the first things that dawned upon his eyes? Well drawing imagery from Daniel 7 and Zeke 1, John sees God on his throne. The first thing he mentions, God is on his throne. He sees a throne seated there permanently in heaven, permanently. What's the permanence of the throne mean? It means that God has always been on his throne. He's on his throne now, he will always be on his throne. We are waiting for God to take his throne, he is on his throne. It means that God has ruled, he is ruling and he will rule forever, some 93, two teachers. Your throne is established from a bold, you are from everlasting. So Christian speech and song should only reflect that God has been. He is and he will always be on his throne. We are not a people waiting for our Lord to become King, our Lord is King always. The implications of Lordship are obvious. If we're waiting on him to be King, then he doesn't rule. But if he is King, then he does rule. We often ask people, have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and your Savior? When we observe the state of the Christian church today, we would have to say that most together would say they've accepted him as Savior, but there's just a few who actually have accepted him as Lord. John looks and he sees the throne, symbol of power, symbol of authority and a symbol of judgment. These days of sovereign individuals and of people who clamor for power and influence themselves, these are unsettling images and though they are acknowledged, they are not grasped and focused on and comprehended because they are uncomfortable, because they infringe upon our rights as man. Then John speaks of him who sits on the throne. Either can't or he doesn't describe his form. I believe that he can't describe his form. Perhaps he couldn't even see the actual form. Instead he gives substance to his conviction as these are coming to him by his vision. Because holiness is righteousness, his glory and his majesty. Revelation, in fact in the year 2000, Sikler Ferguson was preaching at Park City's Presbyterian on chapters 4 and 5. That's in Dallas. And as he was preaching on that, he compared this and the illustration I believe is very good too. The same strategies that are used in making movies. He said that movie makers will very often because they can't produce an 8-hour movie so they have to condense things and they use tricks of the camera in order to speak without words. They use motion, slow motion. They use memory where all of a sudden you have a flashback and it helps you fill in the blank to understand the action this before you. And they also use pause and focus. Here the scriptures are using something like that pause and focus. The camera as it were is moving across this scene of heaven and it's focusing in on something. And it presents to us a picture and the picture produces in us not only awareness and knowledge but conviction. Conviction. Based upon what is spoken through the picture that is presented and as that pauses and focuses on the throne, we get the idea of God's holiness, His righteousness, His glory and His majesty. How was this communicated? Well there are some colors that are used. Jasper for example which is a transparent stone probably like our diamonds today yet the Jasper is full of color. It's a testimony of the purity and the holiness of God. When you have a transparent stone it symbolizes purity, it symbolizes holiness. The carnalian also called a sardine stone is blood red. It's a blood red stone and that color red which is pictured here on the throne testifies of God's inflexibility is uncompromising character and it reminds us of His justice and His wrath. So we have holiness and we have justice and wrath. And then we have this rainbow all around the throne that looks like immoral. For Genesis 9 we know that about the rainbow and of it being a sign of God's covenant is mercy, His grace and His love and the colored green is used to signify the idea of peace and rest like we read in Psalm 23. He makes me to lie down and green pastures a state of peacefulness and restfulness. So here we have a picture of God's holiness and righteousness, a picture of His justice and His wrath and then a picture of His covenant faithfulness and mercy all around the throne. Add to that the thunder and the peels of thunder and the lightning and we're also reminded of the covenant made with Moses on Mount Sinai perhaps more indirectly but it does come to mind. The Jasper colored rainbow or the immoral colored rainbow reminds us of the truth in Romans 5, 1 and 2. Therefore since we have been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into the grace in which we stand and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. These stones together with thunder and the lightning give us a picture of the gospel, don't they? God is holy, He hates sin, He hates disobedience, God is just, the sinner is destined to be crushed under the gavel of the holy judge under the holy justice of God like grass we wither, like flowers we fade. But God is merciful, God is merciful so by grace we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ. The Passover Lamb of God presented to us more fully and completely in chapter 5 is the covenant promise of God. He is the promised one that would come to relieve and assuage God's justice to propitiate for our sin. When we worship, we remember the great covenantal mercy scene right there round God's throne. John didn't just see the throne, he felt it too because from around the throne came lightning and thunder and voices. If you've ever been caught in a very serious thunderstorm, a lightning storm, it hushes you and you wonder how safe you are. And so you might clamor into your car but even there, if it's thundering such that it shakes the car, if you're inside you can hear the dishes begin to rattle, it frightens you a bit. Even though you know that you're safe inside of your own home or inside of your car, you still feel the power of that thunder and it hushes you. We wonder what it means to come before the Lord with reverence and all, isn't this it? How can we not be hushed when we come to the throne and we see what John has seen and we hear what he has heard and we might not hear it with our physical ears, see it with our physical eyes but be in the spirit with the word before us, illumined by the spirit. We see that which was captured by John and described and we know our God's throne. God, on that throne is exalted and again transcendent of all creation. The sounds that come out from His throne as the word goes out through the world showing His power but there's more. Before the throne or seven lampstand representing, we're told the seven spirits. We already looked at those in depth in chapter one verse four. We know that that is a way of describing the Holy Spirit. These lamps shine forth to represent the wisdom and the truth of an all-seeing God, the illumination of the spirit. And then he sees something that is like a sea as it were, he says, a sea of glass that looks like crystal. When the people of God come before God and the tabernacle and then later in the temple there was before the throne what was described as a sea. In 1st Kings 739, after describing the water base and the lava, it is referred to as a sea. And he set the sea at the southeast corner of the house, that is the Lord's house or temple. The use of the lava and the worship of the Lord was really only one. It was to be used in the daily purifications of the priests so they were made clean to approach God. The altar, as you approach the Lord, you pass through the altar, that was where we see picture of the justification. And then there came the lava, that's where we see pictured purification. The lava symbolizes the continual work of sanctification or let's put it this way, the perfecting of the saints. In the tabernacle and the temple, it required the daily washing away of the pollutants and the filaments and the flesh. Instead of being a bowl of brass, however, in heaven, it is contained in a clear glass-like container showing the transparent purity of the divine graces now seen in the kingdom. The water that is described as a sea represents the cleansing power of the word as Jesus testified in John 15. He said there already you are clean because of the word I have spoken to you. So we were in Christ, having been called a priesthood of believers and a royal priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices. And what are those spiritual sacrifices according to Paul, our own selves, our own bodies, made acceptable to God? We have been washed clean from our sins in the blood of Jesus and have been made a kingdom of priests. Do you see in this picture of heavenly worship the culmination of all the strands of teaching throughout the scripture? If all we had was the book of Revelation, we probably couldn't figure anything out but because we have from Genesis all the way to Jude. We have pictured the people of God gathering on the Lord's day in the Spirit all the way through and we take all of those to inform our understanding of Revelation. All that was so dimly revealed in the first testinus, now made clear in this holy court of God in this service of worship in eternity. See, stretching out from the throne presents a visible form of the scriptures teaching on holiness and divine cleansing that is required. We are taught that without holiness no man can see God and that he has saved us by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. Then we see twenty-four elders and four living creatures around the throne, wearing white robes and crowns of gold. They sit around the throne between these twenty-four elders and the throne of God are something like four beasts or four living creatures. Now who are these people and who are these creatures? Well the twenty-four elders represent the entire church across the span of the ages, the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve apostles, twenty-four symbolically gathering to show that it spreads the whole span of God's redemptive history with all of His people. They are clothed in righteousness, clothed in white and crowned in the victory of Christ Jesus. Their crowns mean that they reign over sin and Satan and the world. The four creatures are those men that are preaching the gospel to the church across every age. In Revelation 5, 8-11 we learn that these four are also redeemed by the blood of the Lamb so we know they are men and they are not angels. And John tells us ten things about them that helps identify them. The number four, the four creatures are the four beasts there. Represent for us the four corners of the earth, gathering men from every tribe and tongue and nation. Then they are also described as being four living creatures meaning they are made alive by the spirit of God. They are between number three, they are between God and His people. Remember there is the ring of the elders and then there is an inner ring of these creatures and then the throne. So they are ambassadors, they are not there as priests, they are there as ambassadors. They represent God to the people and the people to God. Their full of eyes were told before and behind, meaning that their gift is spiritual insight into the mysteries of the gospel and the needs of immortal souls. They look to the Word to discern God's will and speak it to men who have ears to hear. One appeared as a lion, lion represents boldness and strength. One appeared as an ox, meaning tireless labor. The third appears with the face of a man showing that these sermons, these creatures, are like those to whom they themselves are preaching. The fourth was like a flying eagle showing those swiftness and wisdom. They had six wings, just like the angels that we read of in Isaiah six, two covering their face out of reverence for God, two covering their feet because of their humility. And then because they are not self-righteous themselves and then with two they will go wherever the Lord requires them to be. And then the 10th characteristic in verse 8 says, they are full of eyes within. These eyes within keep them constantly engaged in God's work, knowing their own sin, knowing their own corruption and having within them the testimony of God. They rest not day or night, they are consumed with doing the work of the gospel ministry and their song is consistent with the theme of Isaiah six. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And what's our takeaway? Revelation 4. The dialogue of worship, Saint John, verse 11, worthy, argue, worthy, or you of God. We would have to be blind or almost stubborn, stubborn believers to not see this scene of worship being played out and know that this is an eternal service of worship. The first message in our evangelism, patterned after this is seen in the Jasper and the Cornelian or the second stone and the emerald. Firstly, behold your God. Secondly, all flesh is like grass. You see, man is nothing and Christ is everything. We owe everything to our covenant keeping God. And then thirdly, God is faithful and merciful to those in his covenant care. The creatures proclaim the truth. The redeemed fall down before the throne as that truth is proclaimed, casting their crowns, casting all of their pride. Everything that they would possibly claim as their own measure and stature down before Him, that's what faith looks like in worship. That casting of our crowns, it's submitting to Him as Lord. We cannot have Him as Savior, if we will not have Him as Lord. God is holy, God is everlasting, God is the Creator. This book is for the eyes of believers, isn't it? It'll be an offense to the pride of man. But both believer and unbeliever will appear before His throne one day, worship one for judgment the other. So I would exhort you to choose carefully our heavenly Father, our gracious God. We ask your Lord that you would bless us that we might see the truth of your revelation and that seeing true Father we would wonder what it is in our life that we are growing too. I pray that you might bless us Father as we continue our day of study, bless those who teach, bless those who have come to be taught. Pray your blessing, Father, on the balance of this Lord's day in Jesus' name. There is a redeemer. It is a chorus. It's in your bulletin. If you need, let's stand together and sing. Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of Holy Spirit be with you now and always in Jesus' name.