Speaker: Greg Sanders

Passage: Revelation 5:1-14

OUR STUDY OF REVELATION

I want to take us back into Revelation chapter 5 today. When we first started Revelation, what we as a teaching team felt was drawing our attention were the seven churches. As we studied them, it became very clear why. It’s just such a poignant season in the life of the church at large, and those messages are pretty applicable to where we are today.

But it also became very apparent to us as we began to study that we weren’t going to be able to stop after chapter 3. Why? Because I don’t believe the Book of Revelation was ever to be piecemealed, it was always to be held as one manuscript.

We open up in chapter one, and I think we forget at times that this is the revelation of Jesus Christ. It’s not the revelation of the end times. It’s not the revelation of eschatology. It’s the revelation of Jesus. 

How many of you grew up in some type of Pentecostal denomination? If Pentecostalism has a scale, then wherever crazy is on that scale, that’s where I grew up. Things like the Book of Revelation were never taught with an academic understanding of perspective. It was taught as fact: this is what’s going to happen. 

I was super curious in my late teens, so I began studying the Book of Revelation. I would take it to my youth pastor or my friends, and they’d say, Oh no, this is what’s going to happen. They would give me a very dogmatic point of view about what all these things meant.

Here’s why I’m laying this out. For us as a family, I believe we have a responsibility to study the history of the church. To study the history of how the people of God for the last 2,000 plus years have understood these passages. Then we can start looking at the things we’ve learned in our lifetime and ask, Is this accurate to how the Scriptures were understood? 

I know for some of you, the moment I say that, you get a little agitated. You’re like, He’s not messing with my end time stuff. My answer is, I’m not. Here’s why. Your point of view on the end times is not a salvation issue. Please understand that.

We have this pivotal moment in chapter 4 where John has been given this revelation about the churches he planted and how messed up they are. Then he hears this voice say, Come up here. Let me show you what has to happen after these things. The rest of the book is what has to happen.

I want us to approach it through the lens of, What does history teach us? What can we learn? Then, we can individually make an informed decision by asking ourselves, What do I believe? I have no desire to discredit history or scholars, but I’ve tasked our team internally to unearth how this book was understood for the first thousand years and then the second thousand years.

READ THE TEXT FOR YOURSELF

I don’t think you can understand the Book of Revelation correctly unless you’re reading it all the way through. We err when we try to read a portion of Scripture and keep meditating on it without the context of everything else. 

When you read it beginning to end, Revelation gives you a narrative picture that’s different from when you just grab onto certain sections. If you grab onto chapters 7 through 11, and that’s all you fixate on, you can make them say just about anything. So, we’ve put together a reading schedule. It’ll be available through the QR codes, and it will be out by next Sunday.

My request is that we, as a family, read through the entire book of Revelation this week, Monday through Saturday. You can do it in about three and a half chapters a day. And then on Sunday we come together and study it.

You see, we have a responsibility before the Lord, as the people of God, to know the text. I’m a huge fan of all the beautiful, charismatic movements of the Holy Spirit. But one of the Holy Spirit’s chief jobs is to guide us and lead us into all truth. So we can have beautiful worship expressions, and it’s awesome, as long as we live in the balance of having a perspective on Scripture, seeking where it has authority in our lives, and studying it as it has been studied throughout the history of the church.

What I’m asking you to do is, for this season, to lay down what your leaders and your grandma taught you about Revelation. I’m doing it. Pastor Gary and I were laughing because he’s sixty-eight and I’m fifty-one, and we both feel like our entire theological point of view on Revelation has been upended lately.

It’s all for the better, too. Everything about it is causing us to fall more in love with Jesus, to be more captivated by Jesus. It’s causing me to be way less afraid about what’s going on around us.

If you’re in here saying, You know the world’s just crazy, you shouldn’t be surprised. Jesus told us it was going to be crazy. He said, “In this lifetime, you will have tribulation”. How much more could He have warned us? We ask, Well, why is it so messy? He responds with,  I told you, it’s going to get messy.

What I love is the statement in chapter 4: Come up here. Let me show you what has to happen. After this, we are instantly transitioned into a picture of the throne room, where the main focus of Heaven is the Lamb. 

REVELATION 5:1-14

We’re now going to read Revelation chapter 5, verses 1 through 14.

“Then I saw a scroll in the right hand of the one who was sitting on the throne. There was writing on the inside and the outside of the scroll, and it was sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel, who shouted with a loud voice: ‘Who is worthy to break the seals on this scroll and open it?’ But no one in Heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll and read it.

Then I began to weep bitterly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll and read it. But one of the twenty-four elders said to me, ‘Stop weeping! Look, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the heir to David’s throne, has won the victory. He is worthy to open the scroll and its seven seals.’

Then I saw a Lamb that looked as if it had been slaughtered, but it was now standing between the throne and the four living beings and among the twenty-four elders. He had seven horns and seven eyes, which represent the sevenfold Spirit of God that is sent out into every part of the earth. He stepped forward and took the scroll from the right hand of the one sitting on the throne. And when He took the scroll, the four living beings and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb.

Each one had a harp, and they held gold bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of God’s people. And they sang a new song with these words: ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and break its seals and open it. For You were slaughtered, and Your blood has ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. And You have caused them to become a Kingdom of priests for our God. And they will reign on the earth.’ 

Then I looked again, and I heard the voices of thousands and millions of angels around the throne and of the living beings and the elders. And they sang in a mighty chorus:  ‘Worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered—to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing.’

And then I heard every creature in Heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea. They sang: ‘Blessing and honor and glory and power belong to the one sitting on the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever.’ And the four living beings said, ‘Amen!’ And the twenty-four elders fell down and worshiped the Lamb.”

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SCROLL

Today, I really want to look at chapter 5 with an eye for patterns, models, and observations of how we worship, both biblically and heavenly. In this passage, there’s a focus on a scroll. I want to draw our eyes to the scroll because there’s something that jumps out instantly: the scroll seems incredibly important. The scroll seems so significant that for it to be opened, it requires someone who has earned the right to do it. It requires a specific authority. 

I think we should first discern what the scroll is. In Hebrew culture, there are two dominant ideas that come out. Number one is the scroll could have been a deed. When they made a real estate transaction, it was common to write down all the details of the transaction. Then, they would roll that scroll back up and stamp it to seal it. Why? Because it symbolized that the details of the contract couldn’t be altered.

So that’s one possible interpretation of the scroll in Revelation. We don’t know what’s on the scroll for sure, so we have to discern what might be. But I think there’s a more plausible answer.

Throughout the Old Testament, specifically in Zechari and Ezekiel, we see a scroll that’s talked about a lot. This scroll is called the Book of Life, or the Lamb’s Book of Life. The reason why I think that’s what we’re looking at is because in the song they sang to the Lamb who was slain for sin, they said, You’re worthy to open the seal. In other words, You’ve earned the right to do this. 

The Book of Life in the Old Testament is described as having a two-sided contract. One side has the names of those written on it. The other side has those who are excluded. We see writing on both sides. Why do I think that’s important? I think this entire passage of Revelation draws our eyes to see the Lamb for what He’s done.

I believe we’re dealing with the Book of Life in this passage. This could be part of why John’s crying; he recognizes this. We don’t know. But I want us to consider the imagery that the elder offers to John. First, the elder looks at him and says, Stop crying. We don’t do that here. 

Then the elder says, “‘Look, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the heir to David’s throne, has won the victory. He is worthy to open the scroll and its seven seals’”. He gives John instant imagery of the strength and power of the Lamb. What the elder is presenting to John is, Look, get your eyes on the solution to the problem.

John is human. John is in a vision. I would say the elder is drawing John’s eyes to the Lamb because he’s saying, Look, He is the solution to humanity’s issues. Has it ever dawned on you that this is probably a moment for John where he’s having to mentally process a new side of Jesus? He’s probably thinking, This is my buddy. I hung out with Him. I knew He was special. I don’t think I knew He was that special. I think John’s mind is being blown at the magnanimity of the Lamb and who He really is. 

WHY A LAMB?

I want you to consider what John saw. Jesus is presented as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and it’s all these strength pictures. But then, what John sees is a lamb that has been killed. It’s an odd shift. The elder says, Look, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and then John sees a lamb.

Why would Jesus choose this posture versus the others? All of them are accurate names for who He is. Lion of the tribe of Judah. Do we agree He’s that? Do we agree He’s the Almighty? He’s the one who’s earned the right, all that. And then He chooses to reveal as a lamb.

Why? Well, we see seven horns and seven eyes. Throughout Hebrew culture, seven is a number of perfection. It’s a number of completion. What John sees is Jesus as the perfect and complete solution for the plague of sin. John sees Jesus in His highest office as the one who has fixed the eternal problem of sin, healed humanity, and beaten death.

I think Jesus shows Himself as the lamb because that’s what He’s most proud of being. I think He’s most proud of saying, I am the one that fixed your sin issue, and I love being your savior. I love that I took away the plague. I love that you can walk free. I love that you can become a new creature because of Me, so I’m going to wear this as a badge.

WE ARE THE DWELLING PLACE OF GOD

The passage talks about the seven spirits of God that went through all the earth, and John uses new language for the new covenant. What do I mean? Have you ever considered that prior to the cross and prior to what Jesus did, the Spirit of God didn’t roam freely through the earth like it does now?

Throughout the Old Testament, we see moments where the Spirit of God would land or show up in places and do things. The Spirit would come upon someone momentarily and then leave, like a landing and a pulling off. But the main dwelling place of the Spirit of God before the cross was in the Holy of Holies, which was a special room within the temple behind a veil.

Have you ever considered that at the cross, the veil was torn? Do you understand the significance of the veil being torn? What was contained behind the veil was then released.

The issue of the veil being torn wasn’t about us now being able to go in; it was that the Spirit of God could now dwell with humanity. In fact, Paul will go on and teach in Corinthians that we now are the temple of God.

The intention of God is that His very presence would dwell in us, and we would become the Holy of Holies. What John is seeing in all of this is just the magnanimity, the bigness, of Jesus. He’s seeing who his friend really was. I think John is also seeing the reaction of Heaven to the Lamb. 

Consider this: the greater our clarity on who Jesus is, the more we will see our personal reactions become like this heavenly reaction. The more time you spend with Him, and the more space you give Him to take up your view, then the more you will natively begin to respond to Him with this kind of awe and wonder.

I don’t want to blaze past the fact that we are the dwelling place of God. I want you to consider that for a second. You are intended to house the presence of God. Not to have an academic understanding that God can dwell in you but to have a sacred reverence where the Spirit of God dwells in you and begins to alter everything about your life. You are intended to now live in this beautifully protective state where you don’t want to do anything that alters that. You don’t want to do anything that drags that temple into things that shouldn’t be connected to it.

That’s the point of holiness: not to earn the presence of God but to protect the presence of God. He is holy, connected to holiness, and can’t be connected to a lack of holiness. We are people who bear His image, and we carry His presence because, through Jesus Christ, we were filled with the Holy Spirit.

Now, we have this incredible presence of God in us. When we encounter things that aren’t like Him, we are to give away what’s in us and walk in a way that protects this presence. We have this treasure in earthen vessels. We’re carrying really expensive perfume in fragile, humble containers.

That’s the paradox, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. But sometimes, I think we forget that we carry the presence of God. If you’ve ever had a moment where you just feel average or you don’t feel like your life matters, I would challenge you to remember that your life matters enough that He chose to deposit His presence in you.

He decided to call you the Holy of Holies. He decided to let you carry what had been reserved for a very small room that no one could enter except the high priest. He decided to give you His son as your high priest so that you could carry His presence. Because of this, God can actually live in you.

A CONTINUAL FILLING

Have you considered that the moment you got saved, you received a measure of the presence of God? Jesus says to the disciples that they’ve received the Holy Spirit, and it blows on in the moment they come to salvation. But did you know you can also invite a greater expression? You’re like, Oh man, we just went charismatic. No, we just went biblical. 

Did you know that Paul will teach throughout the New Testament that we, the people of God, are to pursue a continual filling? The way he writes it in the Greek, the wording is be being filled. It is not a question. It is not a suggestion. It is actually given as a mandate. In your life, you are to be in the process of continually being filled with the presence and power of God.

You’re supposed to show up at the fountain with an empty cup and get filled back up every morning. Why is the cup empty? Because you’re supposed to pour it out every day. You are to be in a living process where you’re spending time with Him, dwelling with Him, and letting Him pour into you.

BEING IMMERSED IN GOD’S PRESENCE

When I talk about the Holy Spirit, we’re not talking about just gifts. That’s a part of the Holy Spirit. Corinthians does a great job of laying out what the gifts of the Spirit are. Here I’m talking about living with the very presence of God invading your culture. The Greek word “baptizo” means being baptized in the Holy Spirit. It also literally means to be immersed in something. It means there’s so much of Him in you that it starts to come out, and it gets all around you.

This word baptizo is the same word they would use in the Greek for pickling. That’s the principle of it: to be immersed in something until what you’re immersed in changes your character. Cucumbers become pickles because of vinegar. Hang out long enough, they change, they become a different thing, and you can never make a pickle a cucumber again. But pickles can get rotten. Do you know that if a pickle stays in its vinegar form, it stays fresh for a ridiculous amount of time and never alters? You take it out, it dries out, and it’s done.

Not to be funny, but are you in the discipline of being pickled? Are you in a place where you’re immersing yourself in Him regularly so that the essence of God stays in you? Because that’s part of what Jesus did. That’s part of why Heaven is freaking out. They understand. 

Everything changed when He came. Everything’s radically different because of the Lamb.

None of this stuff was possible before Him. Before Him, God’s presence was limited. It was held in a space that was protected so people didn’t die. Now, because of His sacrifice, because He went to the cross and was slain from the foundations, suddenly everybody gets to carry the Holy Spirit. 

The problem is we treat it like a common thing. We treat it like it doesn’t matter. We don’t treat it for what it is. It’s the most precious gift ever released to humanity. It’s the ability to carry the presence of God, and you have it. You have both the presence of God and the ability to carry more. 

Did you know that He will never limit how much you carry? Only you can do that. We should be walking in an ever-increasing expression of the Holy Spirit.

A RESPONSE TO THE MOVEMENT OF THE LAMB

So, I want to make some observations on worship because that’s really where my heart is for this passage.

“He stepped forward and took the scroll from the right hand of the one sitting on the throne. And when He took the scroll, the four living beings and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb.”

I want you to notice something. Jesus stepped forward, and all of Heaven reacted. Why does that matter? What can we learn from this? Church, there’s a heavenly pattern that when the Lamb moves, Heaven reacts and responds. Therefore, there should be a similar pattern in us.

When the Lamb moves, we react and respond. We are to be a people that live with our hearts so tender to Him that the slightest movement of His heart causes us to step into action, to react, to respond.

How does that happen? Time. One of the purposes of the secret place is to spend time with Him. By doing this, we begin to understand His heart, and when He whispers and moves, we sense it and know it. One of the dangers is if we live a life where we’re not connected to Him daily, we become numb. We become ignorant of His movements; we can’t sense them.

If you’ve ever said, I just can’t hear God, that’s actually not true. Jesus said, “My sheep hear My voice,” so either you’re telling the truth or He is. Who wants to go on record and say, Jesus is lying, and I’m telling the truth? What I would say is it’s hard to learn to hear the voice of God without disciplining yourself to spend time with Him.

We live in a microwave culture. We want to believe that we took one day out of the calendar, decided we were going to hang out with God, and didn’t hear His voice, so we’re done. That’d be like going to the gym and expecting to look like The Rock after a day. It doesn’t work. There’s a process.

Proverbs will say tune your ears to wisdom. There’s a process of tuning. I want to invite us to live with that discipline and that conviction where we are people who say, I want to be so sensitive to Him that when He moves, I know.

MUSIC, INCENSE, AND AND PRAYER AS WORSHIP

So the elders fell down before the Lamb. “Each one had a harp, and they held gold bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of God’s people.” I want you to see something that’s combined here at this moment: a harp, incense, and prayer. There are three things that I think are really important for us to capture.

I had not seen this until about four weeks ago while sitting on a United Airlines flight. All of a sudden, I just went, Whoa, time out. A harp is an instrument used to create music. Now, I believe the way Revelation reads, it’s very clear that the twenty-four elders are human beings. Each elder having a harp reveals that for humanity, music is a fundamental aspect of what we offer the Lamb.

I am never going to be the guy that’s like, If it’s not Christian music, it’s sin. That’s ridiculous. Music is a gift from Heaven to humanity. However, we are to steward it, and I think we are to aim it. The music we’ve been given is meant to glorify the Lamb. That doesn’t mean it has to have worship lyrics in it. It means it’s given for His glory. But I want us to see something. Humanity was given music as a gift for the purpose of worship. 

Next, there’s incense. In the temple, incense was always connected to worship. How many have ever lit an incense stick in your house? How many grew up so charismatic Pentecostal that your parents told you that was demonic? Yeah, president of that club.

Incense was connected to worship, and the picture is that there’s an aromatic offering that changes the environment. All the way through the Scriptures and the history of the church, the people of God have had the ability, through prayer, to bring their needs before God as a life pattern.

Prayer is actually supposed to be our native language. We’re vertical all the time. It’s not supposed to be a rare thing; it’s supposed to be an all-time thing. It’s unique to us, the people of God, that we have the ability to just come right to Him and bring our needs to Him. We can come fearlessly before the throne of grace, guaranteed a glad welcome. Hey, here’s what I’m going through. Hey, I’ve got a diagnosis. Here it is, Lord, I just lay it before You. This is just supposed to be our living, breathing pattern.

What do we learn from all this? A few things. Did you know our worship and prayer create an aromatic essence in Heaven? You can affect the smell of Heaven with your worship. When we come together, what we’re creating rises like incense into the heavens. I think that’s wildly cool. We’re not just singing songs in a room. We’re offering something that leaves the earth’s atmosphere and ends up in the spiritual realm, and it begins to color and permeate Heaven. 

The second thing I see is that we are to be a people of prayer. Did you know your prayers are captured by the heavenly realm? If we keep going to Revelation 8, we’re going to see that the angelic realm grabs onto those incense bowls and throws them back to earth where they become the activity of Heaven on earth.

CHANGING THE ATMOSPHERE OF HEAVEN AND EARTH

There’s like this rain cycle, where we worship and pray, and it rises to Heaven. The elders capture it and hold it; they collect it in bowls, and then the angelic realm takes those bowls and uses them to do stuff on the earth.

My point is we should pray and worship a lot more because our prayers and worship not only change the environment of Heaven but they change the atmosphere of earth as well. How cool is God that He’s letting our worship and prayers affect both places?

Lastly, there’s a heavenly pattern where music and worship are to be combined with intercession. I had never seen this before. The elders are holding a harp, they’re holding bowls,

and they’re worshiping. Jesus teaches a Samaritan woman this idea. He says there’s a time that’s coming when there’s going to be a supernatural authority on those who worship in spirit and in truth. What that means is motivated by the spirit and rooted in biblical truth.

I don’t think we’re extrapolating too much by saying that expressly biblical worship with a tenderness to the Spirit of God is the heavenly model. It’s also to be our model. And I’d love to share with you what that model is, but we’re out of time. I’m just going to put my notes online. You can look at them there.

I do feel like we’re in a spot where the Lord is redefining our understanding. I don’t know if you noticed during worship today, but Pastor Greg pulled a lot of songs that were just very revelation. Did you notice what happened when we began to sing worthy, holy, dominion, power? When we started to lift those things to the King, the atmosphere in the room started to change.

The Lord’s leading us into a place where we’re starting to understand, Man, we can change stuff if we get this formula right. We could change this region because we were a people that grabbed onto this truth: how we worship, how we pray, and how we study actually creates an atmosphere where the supernatural is natural.

I rarely wish I had more time. I wish I had more time. I’ll put the notes online. I’ll make sure they’re available through the app online, and you guys can study them. My dream is that we’re promoting in this house a hunger for the Scriptures that creates a hunger for the Lord.