But before we jump into that, I'd like to actually read to you the very first words that Jesus spoke to John in this book of Revelation. Hear the word of God. John says, when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me saying, fear not. I am the first and the last and the living one. I died and behold I am alive forevermore. I have the keys of death and hate ease. I was praying. Father, I pray this morning that you would simply come and open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the death. I pray that you would open the door wide to heaven that we might have a glimpse. I pray for myself that you be in my head and in my thinking, in my heart and in my understanding and in my mouth and in my speaking. In Jesus' name we pray these things, amen, amen. You know, when I was a kid, I've told you before I watched a lot of television. And one of the things, when I was a kid, I was a sort of planet of the apes nut. It's anything with planet of the apes I wanted to watch. And at some point, I don't know, I was maybe eight or nine. A planet of the apes came on television. It was a television series. And it came on after my bedtime, right? Problem. And yet I grew up in a house with five kids and it was probably, I don't know, 12 or 1300 square feet. It was very small, so the good thing was from my bedroom. If the door was wide open, I could see the TV completely at a straight shot. And so I remember plotting and thinking, you know, I'll be able to watch a planet of the apes by just leaving my door open. And I remember the night of the premiere that came on and my stepfather yelled back, Tommy, shut that door. So I was thinking fast. I acted like I shut the door and then I backed it off just a hair. So I figured out if I laid in my bed and I looked through a crack, I could sort of see the television. The problem was it was pretty frustrating because you couldn't ever see the whole picture at one time. You know, you might see an ape one minute and then a human the other minute. But you never saw the apes and the humans together which is the whole point of planet of the apes. Would that someone would just come and open that door? You see, most people that I know whether they're Christians or not Christians, when they think about Easter, when they think about the resurrection of Jesus, and when they think about church at all, most of them, it's as if they're looking through a crack in the door. They never see the whole thing. You know, I grew up in a family that almost never went to church. And I heard every now and then about Jesus, I heard about people going to church on Easter. I don't think before I was 18 years old I ever went to church on Easter. And so my whole view of Christianity, my whole view of everything was like I was trying to watch TV through a crack. I never saw the whole thing. And when you look at the book of Revelation, like we're going to do this morning, what's beautiful is you get a glimpse into the whole thing. In other words, several times this week people have said, why are you preaching Revelation at Easter? What's that got to do with Easter? And whenever someone said that, I would always say you're kidding, right? You're kidding. You see, if you ask the question, he has risen, now what? You see, most people when we come to Easter, maybe if you come to church once a year, it's Easter, maybe your wife dragged you, maybe your husband dragged you. You come, and it's an exciting time, it's a good service, it's moving, and then you leave, so what? Now what? What if I become a Christian? Okay, so I trusted Jesus, what if I just got it out until someday when I go to heaven? Is there any relevance for Easter now? And you know what, the book of Revelation, the whole book says yes. In fact, the whole book of Revelation is the answer to the question about the resurrection, now what? What do we do now? And so in order to understand that, you got to understand a little bit about the purpose of the book of Revelation. And what's the purpose if you've been here? Basically, this whole book is about Jesus, and it's about the fact that He has won, that He will win, and that He is winning right now. Jesus has won, He will win, and He is winning right now. Now the question is, what is He winning? Power ball. I remember we used to tell people when I was a kid in South Florida, people gave up green stamps, and whenever someone wrote Jesus saves, we'd write green stamps after. Made no sense to me. So He said, Jesus is winning, what do I mean by that? So basically, why say Jesus is winning? What that means is He has won complete and utter victory over sin and death. Simple as that. Now if you're here today, everyone I'm assuming here would agree that death is a problem, because everyone dies. The question is, how big a problem is sin? Well, the sin is equally as big a problem is because the reason we die is because of this thing called sin. In other words, what is sin? Sin is any breaking of God's law, any failure to live up to the standard God has set. And at the end of the day, not one of us is perfect. So why is that important with regard to this thing called the gospel and Jesus? It's just this. When we talk about his victory, what did he win? How did he win it? The first thing is that Jesus lived the life that you should have lived. In other words, I can only speak for myself, but I rarely live up to my own low standard of morality. God's perfect standard only one person came and he actually lived that way, and he lived it on my behalf. Not only did he live the life you should have died, but he died the death you should have died. He lived the life you should have lived the death you should have died. In other words, all of us deserve punishment for our sin and the sight of God. We deserve his judgment, and Jesus went to the cross as our substitute. He went there so you and I didn't have to. And then what did he do? He rose from the dead, and that's where most people get confused. Why did he rise from the dead? What's so important about his resurrection? Whether you believe it or not, at least you can understand someone saying he died for my sins as a substitute, but how important is the resurrection? It's utterly important. You can't separate it from the first two things because what does the resurrection tell us? Basically, it tells us that it's a declaration of God's satisfaction. There are a lot of other things that could be said about the resurrection, but the primary thing that the resurrection says is that when Jesus lived the life you and I should have lived and he died the death we should have died on our behalf that God heard him. Not only did the God hear him, but he found that acceptable. And he rose from the dead, and because Jesus has risen from the dead, that means you and I can be raised from the dead. Since Jesus has conquered sin, that means our sin is now conquered. The question is whether you trust him or not. And if you have trusted him, what now? You got it out for the rest of your life? Be a good person? Good luck with that. The beauty of what we see here is what Jesus does in Revelation chapter 4. Is he calls John up and he opens the door of heaven to show Jesus what's happening right now, or back then, just post-resurrection. What does it mean? What's God doing after the resurrection? What's happening in heaven? What is going on after the resurrection? We get a picture. Revelation chapter 4 is so important. Traditionally, we sing Handel's Messiah after the Easter service. We opened with it today just to change things up a little bit. Handel says that his inspiration to write the Messiah came from the chapter. We're going to look at today. Chapter 4. So it was the most glorious chapter in the Bible. I think he's wrong, by the way. I think it's the next one. You see, today we're going to see someone sitting on a throne. Next week, chapter 5, you actually get to know his name. So what are we going to look at today? Basically three things. When John's taken up into heaven in Revelation chapter 4, he basically is going to see a God who reigns. He's going to see creation that sings and he's going to see humanity that worships. You can see God who reigns, creation sings and humanity that worships. So when we think about God reigning, let's look at verses 1 and 2 first. John says after this, I looked and behold the door standing open in heaven. The first voice which I had heard came to me like a trumpet. It's like come up here and I will show you what must take place after this. At once, I was in the spirit and behold a throne stood in heaven with one seated on the throne. So imagine John, if you've been here, we've looked at the seven letters. He had the right to the churches in Revelation. And almost every one of those letters was depressing. One of the hard things about being a preacher is when you have to say hard things. And John just had to deliver seven incredibly depressing letters. And so now Jesus comes to John and says, John, let me show you something. Like you might be depressed. It might seem like a downer with all the stuff that's happening in those churches. But let me show you what's going on at the same time. And so he says, I look and behold a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, come up here. And I will show you what must take place after this. Remember the first verse that voice that he heard speaking to him like a trumpet was actually the voice of Jesus. So Jesus himself says, come up here and see. And John doesn't relocate. He says I was caught up in the spirit. There's no way to explain it other than to say he almost had to go to a different dimension to see what was going on. In other words, heaven was all around him, but he had to have eyes open to see it. And he says, so I went up there and here's what I saw. He says that one chosen the spirit and behold a throne stood in heaven with one seated on the throne. Now what would a throne meant in Asia Minor in those days? A throne only ever meant two things, especially during the days when the Rome ruled the world. A throne meant that someone was in charge, that someone was ruling, or that someone was judging. That's it. Someone in charge or someone executing judgment. And so when John goes up and the first thing he sees is a throne, what he would have thought is this is all about who's in charge here. This is all about who runs, not just earthly affairs, but all of the universe. And so when he gets caught up into heaven, the first thing he sees is a throne with someone who is both a ruler and someone who is a judge. How relevant would that have been to them? You see in the Roman Empire, it was all being the emperor was what it was all about and to sit on your throne meant you had absolute power over everybody. If you told someone to jump, they said, hi, if you told someone to be executed they would be executed, you held all power. And John says, I was caught up to a different place and there was another throne and this throne actually had more power. This throne was in charge of everything. And so what did he see after that? Then he sees all these things around the throne. Look at verse three, he says, and he who sat there had the appearance of Jasper and Carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald. And around the throne were 24 thrones and seated on the thrones were 24 elders clothed in white garments with golden crowns on their heads. So he looks up and he remembers, John is trying to describe what he sees. This may or not be exactly what it was, he's trying to put towards what he sees. And it's interesting, the first thing he sees is that the one who is there was look like Jasper or Carnelian. There's a very brilliant stones that tend to stand for majesty and glory. And so whoever is there is glorious and majestic. But what's more important I think for our purposes this morning is what was around the throne. And what was around the throne he saw was a rainbow. That seemed odd to you. Why a rainbow around God's throne? Why have it that close? If you consider and think back through the Bible, especially the Old Testament, what purpose does the rainbow serve? Right, in Genesis 6 God looked on all humanity and said every thought of their heart is only evil continually. I'm going to blot them all out. He decides he's going to judge the human race, he's going to blot everyone out. And however we see it says that but one person says but Noah found favor with God or Noah found grace with God and Noah and his family escaped God's judgment on the ark. And after they landed and the water went down, God said to Noah, I promise I'm never going to flood the earth again. I'm never going to bring judgment like this again. And then he hung his bow in the clouds, it says. And most of us, if you've been to Sunday school as a kid or something and you ask a kid, why did God hang the rainbow in the clouds? What would they say to remind us that he's never going to judge the earth again? And whenever I'm in a little kid's Sunday school class, you know what I say? Wrong. Just like that. I don't really. I'm a little less harsh than that. But that's wrong. Remember God hangs his bow in the clouds not to remind us that he's not going to judge anymore? God hangs his bow in the clouds to remind himself that he's not going to judge anymore. He says, I will hang my bow in the clouds and when I see my bow, I will remember that I promise not to judge you. And so what you see is around the God's throne, the first thing that's surrounding it is this promise that he made to himself and he made to us that he always sees. In other words, judgment is over. And if he ever thought to himself, I wonder if maybe I should go down and flood them again. Maybe I should go down and wipe them out again. He almost can't get past the rainbow that he set there for himself. So on one hand, there's a promise that he will never judge anymore. At least not by water. That's going to become important in a verse or two. But before we get to that, notice who else is around the throne. The last thing we looked at at the church in Laodicea. It was the worst harshest letter to any of the churches and he said, for those of you who overcome, if you overcome, I will make you to ring with me. So you'll be seated in thrones with me. And it says in verse 4, it says around the throne where 24 thrones and seated on the thrones were 24 elders and white garments with golden crowns on their heads. Now who are these 24 elders? What's probably not a coincidence that in the Roman Empire, if you were like a lesser person, a pro consul or someone you always travel with 12 bodyguards, guess how many bodyguards the emperor traveled with? 24. You never saw the emperor without 24 people sitting all around him. And remember what John is saying, you might trust that emperor, but I've got a bigger emperor that you need to deal with and around his throne or 24 other thrones. And it says that they were 24 elders and people debate who are these guys. Most people come down to say they represent the 12 tribes of Israel and the Old Testament and the 12 apostles from the New Testament. Both of whom notice are wearing white robes and how are the robes made white? We learn in the book of Revelation that the robes are made white by being washed in the blood of the lamb. And so the elders come around him and they all have golden crowns on their heads. By the end of this passage, they will actually be tossing those golden crowns away. What do we see next? What we see coming from the throne is from the throne came flashes of lightning and rumbles and peals of thunder and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God. In order to understand this part, you almost need to read Exodus. I'm not going to do that now. But remember in the book of Exodus in chapter 19 what happens is God comes down. That's where he's going to give Israel the 10 commandments. And as he's coming down to give them the 10 commandments, what you hear is thunder and lightning and it's incredibly scary. And God says, you know, don't even tell those people, don't even come near the mountain. They couldn't handle it. And so what do you see coming from the throne? On one hand, you see this rainbow that is a promise that judgment won't happen for those whom God has delivered. On the other hand, you hear rumbles of thunder, which means judgment is going to happen for those who have not believed. So on one hand, there's constant promise. On the other hand, there's constant judgment that God will judge. And the beauty of the gospel is this. We sing in him here. It's one of my favorite. Let us love and sing and wonder. And one of the lines is about Jesus. He has hushed the laws loud thunder. He has washed us with his blood. In other words, everyone who approaches the throne of God, depending on the perspective from which you come, you either hear, you either focus on the rainbow or you focus on the thunder. You either focus on the promise or you focus on the judgment. Which are you? When you consider coming into the presence of God, is it the laws loud thunder that you are not worthy, that constantly sounds in your ears? Or is it the promise of God? It's done. I've taken care of it. Which is it? Because from God's throne, both of those things come. The laws loud thunder has been hushed by the blood of Jesus if you're willing to embrace it. We have one more thing. And this is actually great. In verse 6, he says, and before the throne, there was, as it were, a sea of glass like crystal. Now why is this so important? You see, at the end of the book of Revelation, the sea is gone. There is no sea. So this is like a present reality. So what's going on now? Around the throne of God, you have promised, you have judgment, you have elders, and then in front of the throne is the sea of glass or sea that is as smooth as glass. Now when order to make sense of that, if you look at how the word sea is used in the rest of the book of Revelation and even the rest of the Bible, it always has something to do with evil forces that are opposing God or another way to put it is chaos. The sea is always the place from where chaos comes, right? In chapter 12 of this, the beast that comes to fight the armies of God, he comes from the sea. In the Babylonian creation story, the way that the earth was created, was it was a fight between battle and Leviathan the sea monster. The sea is always a bad place. And when you look around the throne of God, you see that there is a sea there. So even now, presently, post-resurrection, there is chaos in the world, but from God's perspective, what is it like? It's as smooth as glass. In other words, from our perspective, our lives might seem chaotic. From our perspective, we say nothing's easy, at least I say that all the time. And we say, why is this happening? Why is that happening? The economy is bad. My marriage is struggling. My kids are screwed up. What am I supposed to do? From our perspective, things seem chaotic. From God's perspective, he's got things under control. He rules. He reigns over the universe. And from his perspective, the chaos doesn't go away. The question is, is he in it? Well, my favorite two questions in the Heidelberg Catechism have to do with God's providence or his rule of all things. I think it's number 26, one of the last lines. It says, I know that whatever adversity he, that his God sends me in this sad world, he will turn to my good. He's able to do this because he's Almighty God. He is willing to do this because he is a faithful father. When you see the sea of glass there, it should actually be an encouragement because when you get to the end of the book of Revelation, all that chaos, it's not just smoothed over anymore. It's completely gone. There is no sea at the end. So given all these things, what's happening around the throne? Creation sings. Creation sings. Let's read that quickly. Verse 6 says, in around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full 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 in the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. Okay, this is where the book of Revelation starts to get a little bit wonky, at least if you're not familiar with the Bible. Because you can almost understand God's enthroned in heaven and there's a rainbow and there's judgment, there's all these things, but what's the deal with four living creatures sort of fluttering around? They have a lot of jobs, by the way. We're not going to look at all of them. But the biggest question is, why are they there? Who do they represent? And most scholars, even rabbis, come down and say that they represent all of animate creation, all living things. And you think about it, who is the king of the beasts? It's a lion. Who's the greatest of all the domestic animals? It's the ox. Who's the king of the birds of the air? It's the eagle. Who's the king of creation? Humanity, it's man. And so what you see here is all of creation represented around the throne of God. That all of creation is there, and all of creation is there, and they join in song. What is the song verse 8? It says, in the four living creatures, each of them was six wings, or full of eyes, all around them 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. Now if you're familiar with the Bible, this almost seems like it's straight out of the book of Isaiah on one hand. On the other hand, the fact that they're covered with eyes has to do with the fact that they're all seeing and all knowing and all of this kind of stuff. What I wanted to point out to you, though, is this is how they sing. The creation sings because of the work of Jesus, but it sings only about it. It doesn't sing to it. In other words, creation sings about God, but it doesn't sing to God. That all of creation, like if you read through the Psalms, this is the heavens declare his glory. If you read Romans 1, it says that all creation bears witness to the fact that there is a God. That creation is constantly saying, look, right there, right there, right there, they're bearing witness. But they can only sing about God. They don't sing to God because creation doesn't have a relationship with God, or potential for a relationship with God. At least a mano, a mano relationship. But what is the relationship? The relationship that creation has with God is also predicated or built upon the resurrection. What do I mean by that? You see, when humanity send all of humanity actually fell into sin, but also all of creation was cursed, and then all of creation someday we hope will be redeemed. And why is that? Because the resurrection of Jesus is like the Genesis bomb. You didn't think you were going to see Ricardo Mothabond this morning, did you? The reason creation sings is because the resurrection of Jesus is like the Genesis bomb. That's from Star Trek, the Wrath of Con, the second of the Star Trek movies. You've seen Star Trek, Wrath of Con, what you know happens is basically the whole thing revolves around the fact that Con wants to kill Kirk. But also there's this thing that's been created called the Genesis bomb. And we tend to think of, in terms of nuclear bombs and things, when a nuclear bomb is dropped on a populated place, it just totally makes devastation, right. A mushroom cloud comes and devastation follows and it's wake. Well the Genesis bomb, you drop it on a planet that's desolate, and what you see is an explosion, and what you see is a mushroom cloud. But instead of a mushroom cloud of devastation, it's a mushroom cloud of life. And as you watch it from the enterprise, what you see is that all of that planet eventually is covered with life in green and vegetation and animals, that it explodes with life. And what the resurrection of Jesus does is it functions in some sense like a Genesis bomb on creation now, that when Jesus rose from the dead, remember the Bible says that he is the first born from along the dead. When he rises from the dead, it's like a Genesis bomb that life begins to just flow from him, and all of creation will be redeemed, not just humanity. But everything, everything around you is not the way it's supposed to be. And what the gospel says is that because of Jesus' death and its resurrection, things ultimately will become the way they are supposed to be, the Genesis bomb. So what comes next? Humanity worships. Creation sings of humanity worships. Look at verse nine says in 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. So when do the elders fall down to worship before this great throne? Says they fall down to worship before the great throne whenever the creatures are singing and the creatures are always singing, which means the elders are always worshiping. And this is happening right now in heaven. I know it's hard to get your head around, but when you come to church on Sunday morning, there's a sense in which you're just joining a service that's already in progress. And there will come a day when all of us, all of those of you have trusted Jesus, all of the redeemed of humanity will spend their time worshipping God. Now they worship him not just in song, but the worship in your work, worship him in everything that you do. And in this particular case, they sing a particular song. What is the song that they sing? Well, first they cast their crowns before the throne, saying, worthy are you, our Lord, our God to receive glory and honor and power for you created all things and by your will they existed and were created. So notice the first thing they do, the crowns that they were wearing at the beginning, they cast them down. And what you need to keep in mind, the language that you see here is not biblical language. In other words, most of what you see in the revelation, John has pulled from the Old Testament. He's pulled it from somewhere else and shown it to us in different light. The words you see here are actually the language of the Roman Empire. When the emperor would come through, if you were like King Herod, if you were a lesser king, you would take your crown off and put it down as an acknowledgement that he was greater. And then the emperor walked through, what would you say? Well, you would say, worthy are you, our Lord and our God. Most of the Roman emperors had sort of a god complex. And if you didn't say that, you would be killed. And they would say, worthy are you to receive honor and glory and power. You would say all these things. And what is John saying now? He's saying that someday you persecuted Christians in Rome, you struggling Christians here, you struggling here, some day you will sing that song as well. But when you say, worthy are you, our Lord and our God, it won't be to some emperor. It will be to the real God. And notice at the bottom it's by your will they existed and were created. What's he getting at here? Why do you say that you or whether you are full of power, glory and honor. At the end of the day it is God himself who upholds everything. It is God himself who rules everything. It is God himself who is the one who is in charge of your life, whether or not you trust him by the way. The question is, is will you acknowledge it? You see, it's amazing. I got sick on Thursday or Friday. So I was sitting around, you know, flipping through the channels, different news shows. My girls always ask, why do you watch those shows if you hate them so much? I don't know. Stupid, I guess. But you're watching these things and on one hand you contemplate whether you're watching conservatives or you're watching liberals. Right? One says all those other people wanted it. They just want the government to take care of them and the other group says those people just want everyone to be self-sufficient. They just want them to take care of them. And you know what this says? At the end of the day there's only one person who could take care of anybody and that is God himself, especially in the person of Jesus. And the question is, when will you trust that? When will you embrace that? You see, when you look at this text, it says, viewer created all things and by your will they existed and were created. But before that, it says he is worthy to receive glory and honor and power. Why is Jesus worthy to receive glory and honor and power? It's because Jesus gave up glory. He gave up honor and he gave up power. That Jesus who was all the way at the top went all the way to the bottom, so that you and I might have a relationship with God. And the question is, will you buy that? Will you embrace that? Think about that. Let's pray. Father, I pray this morning that you would come and you would open our eyes to see this. Some folks here, I'm guessing are Christians, some folks here are not Christians and we both have the same problem. We don't trust Jesus enough. I pray that you would make that so. In His name we pray. Amen. And our man.