Come Up Here

I ask you to turn with me. If you have your Bibles to Revelation, chapter five, it's the book of the Bible just before maps. One very profound theologian said that children understand the book of Revelation generally better than grown-ups do. And it's because as C.S. Lewis reminds us of the children of the Chronicles of Narnia, the two who can't go back can't go back because they grew up too much. And so we have to open our minds and let God sanctify our imaginations as we envision such as seen as this. Chapter five is the second of two chapters that are really two panels. If you can imagine a screen, a decorative screen with two panels, chapter five is the second of those. And so it's a continuation. And it's a continuation of words in chapter four, verse one, where the angel of God said to the Apostle, come up here and I will show you what must take place after this. And so let's listen and hear the word of God as it's found in Revelation chapter five. Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne, a squirrel written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals and no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it. And I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. 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. 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 seven eyes which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. And he went and took the scroll from the right hand if him be was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense which are the prayers of the saints. 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. And you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God and they shall reign on the earth. 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 sang with a loud voice, worthy as the lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing. 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. And the four living creatures said, Amen and the elders fell down and worshiped. You've heard the word of God. Let's ask God's blessing on that word will you pray with me. O Lord, by your spirit, open our eyes that we might behold wonderful things in your law. Apart from your spirit, we do not recognize the truth. By your spirit give us faith to believe these words and by your spirit make us able not simply to be hearers of this word but doers as well. And I pray that you would help me to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified and all these things we pray in his name, Amen. And my very first year of work out of college working for what was then one of the big eight accounting firms were down to four now. I pulled myself out of bed on a cold spring, St. Louis morning and if you grew up in the Midwest you know how cold it can be in the spring. And I drove myself to the private side of St. Louis Lambert International Airport and I parked and I got myself onto a corporate jet that belonged to my client. I was headed to Portland, Maine to do an audit for my client but it was not what you might think of as a corporate jet. It was filled with small seats because this was really a bus for mental management. And we would make three or four stops before he finally landed in Portland but it was cold and it was rainy and it was going to be a long trip with a lot of take-offs and landings. I wasn't particularly excited about it so I got in a very back seat the last seat left and I dropped out into the seat and I pulled my overcoat and if you live up north you have such a thing as an overcoat. I pulled it up around my head and I tried to go back to where I had been just about 45 minutes earlier which was sound asleep because those planes are not necessarily the easiest ride sometimes and it was crowded and it was going to be a long week and I just wanted to sleep to the whole ordeal. And then I heard somebody say passenger glodo come up here and I thought oh no it's happened because it had almost happened to me before. Apparently the plane was fully booked with the company personnel overloaded with mental management which was not a metaphor in this case and I was going to be put off the plane and told to take a commercial flight but instead the copilot had in his hand a piece of aluminum with thin padding on it he says this is going to be your seat and when he got into the cockpit he locked it across the cockpit door and said sit here I thought oh my goodness it's going to be worse and I imagine I'm going to have to sit on a piece of aluminum with no backrest no place to put my feet and that's how I'm going to spend this trip but then my perspective changed very quickly I learned a little bit about the pilot he actually helped design the landing systems at the airport he was an aviation expert. I learned that he was for a hobby he fenced with a saber and he was bragging about almost taking his opponents toe off the night before so he was a big guy a strong guy a physical specimen and then I began to watch as he and the copilot went through the pre flight checklist checking all the instruments and then when we taxied out on the runway and from then on I had a view out the front window of the cockpit and wherever we were in the air I could look at the radar and see all the surrounding air traffic I could hear the instructions going back and forth between him and ground control and air traffic control and it was one of the most wonderful flights I had ever had. You see I had wanted to sleep through the ordeal but instead I was invited to experience the whole thing from the cockpit and it made all the difference in the world. The people to whom the book of Revelation was first written or people probably who would have rather slept through the ordeal that they were experiencing. Back in chapters one and two we read many references to the persecution that they're feeling and there are other references to the fact that they are being marginalized and even economically deprived because they are followers of Christ. They lived in a world where God's power and his goodness were not obvious all the time and so John is invited by the angel of the Lord to see the world not from the backseat where they would be tempted to close their eyes but from the cockpit from the very center of where the universe is directed and controlled. We are often in fact for many of you even this very morning in the same situation we wonder sometimes is the world out of control it's chaotic will I have enough will there be sufficiency and for us just as much as this first century audience this view from the very center of the universe is designed to comfort us to give us confidence that even though the world is chaotic and hostile particularly to those who are followers of Jesus Christ that our sovereign God is shown to be for us through his son Jesus Christ and that we can live not just tolerably but confidently and joyfully in a world in spite of the perception of its chaos and emptiness. We can see this first of all in the fact that simply God reigns God reigns when the world seems chaotic and hostile we can find order and refuge in heaven's sovereign God. We didn't read chapter 4 but the descriptions there indicate that his throne is Jasper which is a white stone at signifying God's holiness. It is thrown with sardious adornments which is a red stone which indicates God's justice and the fact that God is at the center of everything that everything is encircled around him focused upon him and he sits on the throne tells us that a holy and just God is sovereign over all that is. It tells us what Presbyterians are famous of God's providence. Sometimes we're a little more famous for it than perhaps for other things but that God is sovereign. What John Calvin described as the doctrine of God's providence where ignorance is the greatest misery and knowledge of it is the greatest joy to be aware of God's sovereignty is the greatest joy. You see the Apostle is being shown the opposite of what we see in the Wizard of Oz where the great and terrible Oz isn't so great and terrible and there's just a weak voice a weak human voice saying pain of attention to the man behind the curtain. There is no man behind the curtain. There is a holy and just God who is truly on the throne of this world and he is present not only in the one who is seated on the throne but the lion of Judah the one who is standing next to him. God sent his son as a lion to conquer, to gain victory, to win over chaos and emptiness. In some ways you can summarize the whole story of the Bible as God overcoming chaos and emptiness. Verse 2 of Genesis 1 tells us the world was formless and void, empty and chaotic and God brought order and fullness in the original creation and even to promise to his servant Abraham that he would be his shield in his very great reward, his protector and provider and the sovereign God is the one who does that. I first became intimate with this revelation chapter 5 in the fall of 1999. Some of you will vividly remember there was a private jet that took off from Sanford Airport. On board was a golfer pain steward and with him were two great Christian men Van Arden and Robert Fraley who were his agents and his attorneys and his advisors as well as the two pilots on board and if you were alive and cognizant back then you remember that somewhere over Gainesville the jet stopped responding to air traffic control instructions and fairly soon Air Force and Air National Guard jets were scrambled to find out what was going on and when those jets caught up with that private jet they saw that the cockpit window was frosted over almost a sure sign that there had been a rapid depressurization and likely all souls on board were lost. Eventually that jet ran at a fuel over MINA not MINA but MINA South Dakota and crashed into an empty field and even while that jet flew and the pilot could be seen slumped over the yoke the world was watching because the pictures were being beamed back to the ground and they were being broadcast on CNN and alike it was only a few weeks after I had preached on this text that I attended the funeral of Robert Fraley at Orange Wood Presbyterian Church where he and Dixie had been active in generous and faithful members and a friend of Roberts spoke that day a friend named Ravi Zacharias the great apologist and advocate of the Christian faith marketplace of ideas and I'll never forget what Ravi Zacharias said with his voice that is just like a knife and his ideas that are as keen as a knife he said the greatest mistake that the whole nation made that day was thinking that no one was in control of that jet even though it was a great tragedy and even though there was great grief that came in the wake of that tragedy Ravi Zacharias unapologetically spoke the message of Revelation 5 that God is sovereign and that we are invited to be witnesses of his sovereign reign because the scriptures open for us the curtains of heaven to see the real reality the real reality that is truly controlling the affairs of the earth but if we were just to stop there it wouldn't be enough because some even some of us here today might say well God's sovereignty is no comfort for me because I can't be sure God's sovereignty is for me there are a lot of people who believe in God's sovereignty and in the form of fatalism case a ross a ross why care why try why cry out if God will just do what he'll do God's sovereignty is not a doctrine of comfort when it is by itself but that's not where the angel leaves the apostle he says the lion of Judy he has overcome there is this there's a scroll or book that is shown there it's it's most likely I think it's fairly confident that we can say it's the it's the book of life but the book of life book of life is not just a passenger list for heaven the book of life is represents the opening of all of God's power and goodness to give and bring life to his people and so the fact that it is sealed perfectly and cannot be opened by anyone actually is of great despair to John it says he began to weep greatly because no one was found worthy to open the seal it sealed with seven seals sealed perfectly and there's an elder who comes and comforts John and tells him this not only does God reign but God reigns through Jesus Christ his son and because God reigns through Jesus Christ his son he reigns for the good of those who is redeemed so the elder says weep no more behold the lion of the tribe of Judah the root of David has conquered in Genesis 49 there is a prophecy to Jacob in the Jacob prophesies over his son Judah that there will be a descendant of his who will be the lion of the tribe of Judah who would bear a royal scepter and even in the old rest of the old test we see in Joshua and Judges when it's time for Israel to inherit the promised land to take possession of it there's a cry that goes up who will go up for us Joshua Judah Judah will go up for us Judah was a tribe that was always at the forefront of faith in God's power to save his people and David David was a descendant from the tribe of Judah King David was in many respects the fulfillment of that in the Old Testament and so John is looks for a lion and frankly that's what we want when we experience the chaos and hostility of life we would like a lion we have a divine 9-1-1 in our minds that God come and do something about this situation

because we need a lion we need one who is powerful and is able to administer your sovereign reign on earth and so John turns and looks and he sees in verse 6 between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a lamb a lamb how many times have we asked God for a lion and what will we feel if we turn and we saw a lamb lambs aren't predatory they're not fearsome in fact are the exact opposite whenever you look at a picture of a lamb on Facebook you go awe which is cute unless you need a lion but look at the next phrase he said I saw a lamb standing as though it had been slain this is not just a lamb this is the crucified and risen lion of Judah

and because of this he is able he is worthy by his victory over sin and death he is able to open the book of life to break it seven seals in the lion the witch in the order of C. S. Lewis's first the chronicles of Narnia the great Christ figure Aslan is slain by the evil white witch and the two girls Susan and Lucy are grieved by what has happened as they observed it from a distance and the next morning they go to see if they can dress and maybe take care of the body of their dead friend Aslan the lion and when they get there his body is gone and they begin to cry and grieve with one another that they couldn't even have left the body of their dear friend alone but then suddenly they sense a presence behind them and they turn and there's their lion friend and he's bigger and he's more glorious and fearsome than ever and the girls without thinking in the confusion the moment say they said but aren't you dead and perhaps the two most beautiful words and all of the Narnia chronicles Aslan said not now you know in other words he's he's mirroring the words of revelation one eighteen I died and behold I am alive forever more and I have the keys of death and Hades when my daughter Rachel was quite small probably about four years old she's like everything that I remember happened when she was before she was out playing in the backyard she came in and she said daddy I have something in my eye that's it okay that's what dads are for the pluck specks I was not always good at removing vlogs but plucking specks so I hopped her up on to the bathroom counter and I looked in her eye and sure enough there was a little dark speck in there and it was very painful because she had tried for a little while to get it out and rubbed it and her eye was very irritated I'll get it out and so I took a piece of tissue and twirled it into a little point and I pulled the bottom lid of her eye dad and I just tried to pluck it out but it went in deeper and I tried a little more it went in a little deeper and she was trying to be brave and I could feel her tensing up but it got to a certain point where just the pain was too much and she just burst out crying and I didn't know what to do and within just a moment she began to laugh because the tears had done what I couldn't wish to the wash out the speck the slain and standing lamb has done for us in a world that is chaotic and hostile in a world we'll be one there where there is order and where there will be fullness the grief of the Son of God Jesus Christ has done it he has overcome and he is the guarantor as well as the guarantee that if God is for us then who shall stand against us because all the sovereignty and the power and the holiness and the justice of God has been exercised it's been exercised for our good so the Paul is able to say if he did not spare his own son how much will he not give us all things in him and so this is the assurance that we have this is a good news not only that God reigns but that God reigns through Jesus Christ which then means that because God reigns through Jesus Christ we can live at all times in an always in an every extent possible for his glory because you see what happens here a worship service breaks out the four living creatures who surround the throne and the 24 elders representing the Jews and the Gentiles of God's whole people and then the tens of thousands of thousands angels and all the saints begin to sing and they sing a new song and whenever you see new song in the Bible don't think contemporary because there are new songs in the Psalms and they're fairly old when the Psalmist says new song what he means is victory song a new song because there is a new situation a new reality and so they sing the victory song worthy are you to take this scroll and open seal they praise the lamb who was standing as if slain because he was able to open the book of life for the people of God and he has ran some not simply the tribes of Israel but people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation and he's made them a kingdom and priests to God imagine this for the first century Christian as the Roman Empire dominated the known world and as that Roman power and authority was being exercised for their detriment and for evil against them to be told that they were the worldwide kingdom those who were gathered around the throne of the lamb and of the ancient of days seated on the throne they were the true kingdom to come that had already come in the sun Jesus Christ so very good reminder that the book of Revelation is less about what to expect in the future than it is how to live in the present because those people on earth as well as those who had died and gone before them were united as one to worship God to bow before him to sing his praise and therefore to live free from the curses and the insults and the hardships and the difficulties of this world the invitation of those verses that conclude this passage is to live a life of worship because God the Father through God the Son has overcome and opened to us the book of life so when we encounter hardships and difficulties we can say with Paul they are momentary and light afflictions not because they are momentary in light except in view of the surpassing glory that is ours in Jesus Christ God in his unfathomable wisdom chose not to end suffering in this life he chose not to banish all opposition and ridicule to his cause so that he could stand above it and show his power his power over sin and death and even his power over circumstances as his people live lies for his glory even as they endure you know what it was said of those early Christians by the the doubters in the skeptics as they died so well and what that means is they also lived for Christ and so we as we bear about in our bodies the fallenness of this world we also bear about in us the hope that not just that Christ will come again but that he with the Father reigns for our good and reigns with power so God reigns and the good news is that God reigns through his son Jesus Christ for our good so that we can live lies for his glory friend of mine from Jacksonville it was in his late 30s and he knew from previous medical diagnoses that he had one kidney that was non-functioning was worthless basically not only that but his other kidney was gradually progressively degenerating and that one day he was going to need a kidney transplant well the good news was he had a biological sister and she was especially back then before the anti-rejection meds were quite so sophisticated she was a good match because a good match was very much needed at that time 20 years ago and so they knew at a certain point he would have to go on the hospital and his sister gladly and willingly because she loved him agreed she would go in the hospital the same day they would take a kidney out of her and transplant it to him well just about two months prior to when the time they felt this would happen she was killed tragically in a car wreck and not only that her kidney was not salvageable neither wine so here he was and had four young boys a wife and he was declining rapidly in his health and so his wife said well have them test me and he said I'm not going to do that because there's no way both of us are going to go in a major surgery on the ship on the same day we have our boys to think about but she was very persistent he said well okay you can get tested but that doesn't mean I would agree even if you were compatible she got tested and she was found to be compatible and then she said about persuading him it'll be okay our sons need a father as well as a mother so he finally relented they went into surgery the same hour and if you know anything about that kind of surgery the donor is usually suffers more trauma in surgery than the recipient so he recovered a little more quickly than she so he was able to get up in his hospital gown and walk down to her room and he said he walked into her room and she saw him and she burst out into years and she pulled back her gown to show him the considerable incision that went around her side and she said are you going to think I'm ugly and he and what he confessed to be a rare moment of sensitivity and wisdom he said to her no no Lee that scar gave me life I think it's beautiful in the new heavens and earth one day every tear will be dried every sorrow and sickness be cured death will be banished forever there will be one remnant of a fallen and broken world that will be the wounds of our savior the very ones into which Thomas the doubter thrust his hand and that wound will be beautiful for it's beautiful to us now because it's a sign that God reigns that God reigns through his son Jesus Christ and because of that beauty we can live for his glory will you pray with me God you know our frame that we are at dust full of doubts and despair easily discouraged and even in our greatest moments praying that you would help our unbelief Lord strengthen us strengthen our resolve not as those who would just simply steal themselves and clinch their fists and teeth and face the wind of life's difficulties but help us to be worshiping creatures who see heaven opened and your victory declared openly before us with all the saints so that we can continue to persevere and trust you for you have not held back the best till last but you gave us the very best first in your song we pray that you would therefore help us to trust you that all these things shall be added to us if we seek first your kingdom if we pray it in your son's name I'm in