Revelation: A View from the Throne Room

Revelation: A View from the Throne Room
Sycamore Creek Church
October 9, 2011
Tom Arthur
Revelation 4:1-8

Peace, Friends!

I want to begin today with a reading from Revelation.

Revelation 4:1-8 NLT

Then as I looked, I saw a door standing open in heaven, and the same voice I had heard before spoke to me with the sound of a mighty trumpet blast. The voice said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must happen after these things.”  And instantly I was in the Spirit, and I saw a throne in heaven and someone sitting on it!  The one sitting on the throne was as brilliant as gemstones — jasper and carnelian. And the glow of an emerald circled his throne like a rainbow. Twenty-four thrones surrounded him, and twenty-four elders sat on them. They were all clothed in white and had gold crowns on their heads. And from the throne came flashes of lightning and the rumble of thunder. And in front of the throne were seven lampstands with burning flames. They are the seven spirits of God. In front of the throne was a shiny sea of glass, sparkling like crystal.

In the center and around the throne were four living beings, each covered with eyes, front and back. The first of these living beings had the form of a lion; the second looked like an ox; the third had a human face; and the fourth had the form of an eagle with wings spread out as though in flight. Each of these living beings had six wings, and their wings were covered with eyes, inside and out. Day after day and night after night they keep on saying,

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty —
the one who always was, who is, and who is still to come.”

Revelation is an invitation to see the world the way God sees it, from the perspective of the throne room of heaven.  We see that invitation in verse one.

Then as I looked, I saw a door standing open in heaven, and the same voice I had heard before spoke to me with the sound of a mighty trumpet blast. The voice said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must happen after these things.”

Have you ever seen things from up above?  Way up above?  When you’re way up high, the pattern of things looks different.  Sarah and I were celebrating our anniversary one year and staying at the Grand Traverse Resort in Traverse City.  Our room was on the 16^th floor.  When we got back to our room that night after dinner, a lightening storm was brewing over the Grand Traverse Bay.  Wow!  Have you ever seen a lightening storm over a huge body of water from sixteen stories up?  It is an amazing sight.  Very different than being on the ground.

The book of Revelation is like that.  It’s a view from the perspective of the throne room of heaven.  When you’re that high up you see things in a very different light.  You see them the way God sees them.  You see them through God’s imagination.  And the big question that arises from that high up is this: who or what do you worship?

The question of worship is really a very simple question, but the book of Revelation usually seems pretty hard to wrap our own imaginations around.  It is a crazy book full of crazy stuff preached by crazy people.  It can be a very polarizing book.  We either hate the book of Revelation and stay as far away from it as we possibly can or we are obsessed with it trying to turn it into some kind of treasure map for seeing into the future.

Of course, the series of Left Behind novels have popularized a certain way of thinking about Revelation including a lot of discussion on things like the rapture, the moment when God instantly takes away all the Christians from the world.  I grew up in this kind of a setting where the rapture was discussed regularly.  As teenagers we turned this discussion into something of a joke.  We tried to imagine the worst possible situations to be left behind:

On an airplane when the pilot is raptured…
On the back of a tandem bike when your partner is raptured…
Getting a root canal when your dentist is raptured…
Preaching at church when your congregation is raptured!

Funny thing about Revelation is that the rapture is never mentioned!  The idea of the rapture comes from other books of the Bible, so in this series on Revelation, we really won’t spend much time talking about the rapture.  But the book of Revelation does talk about the end of God’s story so we will discuss that in the last sermon in this series.

And now we’ve hit on a very touchy subject.  The end times.  I get asked questions fairly regularly about the end times.  Are we in the end times?  We’ve got earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, wars, droughts, and chaos after chaos.  Recently Harold Camping, a very right-wing Christian, has become somewhat infamous for his end times prophecies.  May 21^st came and went.  Yikes!  Well, he said he had made some mistakes.  The new date is October 21^st.  Right in the middle of this series!  Don’t worry.  He was wrong the first time.  He will be wrong again.

But are we in the end times?  I’ll give you the answer to that question right now.   Yes.  We are each in the end times.  Ask Steve Jobs whether he is in the end times.  No matter how awesome he was and how much money he made, Steve Jobs was still mortal.  Any of us could die on the ride home today.  So yes, we are each living in the end times.  Guaranteed!

OK.  Enough of that.  Let’s look more closely at the book of Revelation.  I’d like to introduce you to a book that you may not be very familiar with, and if you are familiar with it, then I’d like to introduce you to it in a new way.

It’s important to understand the genre or style of a book that you’re reading.  While you may not know what I mean when I say “genre” you know what a genre is.  When you go to a movie you have certain expectations you bring with you based on what genre it fits into.  I watched Thor last night.  Expectations?  Fantasy.  Supernatural.  Super Hero. Suspend my sense of disbelief.  But I could have watched, say, The King’s Speech.  Expectations?  Realistic.  Historical in nature.  Natural.  Retain my sense of disbelief.  If I watched Thor with the same expectations that I watched The King’s Speech then I’d be seriously confused.  That’s why most of us get really confused in the book of Revelation.  We bring the wrong set of expectations to reading it.  It’s like we’re watching Thor but expecting The King’s Speech.

The book of Revelation is technically an “apocalypse.”  That word doesn’t mean a big huge destructive battle like it means today.  It literally means “revelation.”  Thus the title of the book.  Revelation is one long revelation or image that God gives to John.  It is not a series of “revelations” as we sometimes make the mistake of calling the book.  There are other similar types of literature in the Bible.  Ezekiel and Daniel are two from the Old Testament, and Revelation alludes to them heavily.

John is a literary artist and the revelation he receives creates a symbolic universe that you can get lost in, in a very similar way to that of a modern day fantasy movie.  Take Harry Potter for example.  The books and movies create a universe that you can live into.  There is even a theme park now that helps your imagination get into the symbolic universe of Harry Potter.  If you live in the world of Harry Potter long enough, pretty soon you’re seeing magical things happening all around you in the real world.  Revelation is the Harry Potter of 2000 years ago.

So why is Revelation so hard to understand?  Because it is a symbolic universe made of symbols that meant something to everyone 2000 years ago, but mean very little to us today.  It is kind of like a political cartoon (in fact, Revelation has many political overtones woven throughout it).  When you and I look at a political cartoon today we immediately understand the symbols.  A donkey = the democratic party and an elephant = the republican party.

If you see a light in the sky in the shape of a bat, you know exactly what that symbol is referencing: batman.

But take a look at political cartoons from even just a hundred or two-hundred years ago, and you’re lost.

So let’s look at some of the symbols of Revelation and give you a cheat sheet for making sense of this symbolic universe.  There are all kinds of beasts in Revelation.  Beasts = empires.  These beasts often have multiple horns.  Horns = leaders.  So if you read about a beast with two horns, then you know that you’re talking about an empire that has or had two key leaders.

Then there are numbers.  Numbers were much more important to ancient people than they tend to be today.  Numbers were full of all kinds of meaning.  Here’s a brief list of what numbers in Revelation mean:

3 = realm of the spirit
4 = created order
7 = completeness (maturity)
10 = completeness and inclusiveness
12 = God’s people
3.5 = Evil’s time to run its course.

Lastly there are colors.

White = victory
Red = war/conflict
Black = lack of something
Greenish-Gray/Pale = death.

Understanding these symbols will help you have a basic idea of what’s going on as you read the book of Revelation.  Don’t forget as you’re reading, that some things are just window dressing and don’t intend to carry deep significance.

As I said before, the big question of Revelation is who or what do you worship? The right answer to this question according to John, the author of Revelation, is that we are to worship God alone and Jesus Christ who too is God, the King of kings, and Lord of lords!  Worship is at the heart of Revelation.  There are seven (Remember what seven stands for?  Perfection!) scenes of worship in Revelation.  We are actually very familiar with these scenes of worship thanks to Handle’s Messiah.  The words in Handle’s Messiah are taken directly from the book of Revelation.

Worshiping God alone is usually pretty hard.  Even John has a hard time doing it.  At the end of Revelation we read:

I, John, am the one who saw and heard all these things. And when I saw and heard these things, I fell down to worship the angel who showed them to me. But again he said, “No, don’t worship me. I am a servant of God, just like you and your brothers the prophets, as well as all who obey what is written in this scroll. Worship God!”
Revelation 22:8-9 NLT

Oops.  John was ready to worship the angel, but the angel would have none of it.  Worship God and God alone!  Throughout this series we’re going to explore this question of who or what do you worship.  Today is basically an introduction to Revelation.  Notice the image of the king for today.  That king is Austin Blackmer.  Austin, the King, reminds us to worship God and God alone.

Next week we’ll look at one of the primary competitors for our worship: empire.  What better image of empire is there than Darth Vader?  Darth Vader is being played by Ethan Bird.

The third week we’ll look at the worship of the church according to Revelation.  It turns out that our worship is sometimes a mixed date, beautiful on the outside but deadly on the inside, like a princess with fangs.  That fanged princess is played by Samantha Bird.

Then on the last week we’ll take a look at worship and the future.  The primary image of the future for the book of Revelation is a wedding.  The bride and groom are played by Maggie Hoerner and Conner Blackmer.

So here’s what I want you to do throughout this series.  I want you to be open to asking the question, who or what do I worship, and are there things that I worship besides God?  I’d like you to explore that question by reading the book of Revelation over the next four weeks.  I’d suggest reading it at least once in one sitting.  What fun would it be to watch Harry Potter one scene each day?  No!  Sit down and watch the whole movie to get the full effect.  Same thing with Revelation. Read it in one sitting.  And then join a small group to read it with other people.  Our small groups are going to be reading through the book of Revelation together over the next month or two.  Contact Mark Aupperlee  (m_aupperlee@hotmail.com) to find a small group.

When we accept the invitation to view the world from the throne room of heaven, through the eyes of God’s imagination, we will begin to see the world very differently.  It will pop out in our imagination.  We’ll start to notice all the things around us that pull us away from worshiping God: our busyness, our kids, our kids’ sports, our spouse/lover/boy/girlfriend, the need to be liked, the car you drive, the money you try to make, the success you strive for, comfort, security, and even happiness.  All of these things and more can compete with our worship of God.

But when we see the world the way God sees the world in the book of Revelation, busyness will look like a blazing red dragon full of fire and fury.  Our kids will appear as blue and pink fairies darting this way and that.  Our kids’ sports will be brown and yellow four legged creatures with rounded horns.  Our spouse, lover, girl/boyfriend will seem like a siren mermaid scaled but smooth and fleshy.   The need to be liked will be an ever color-shifting gecko.  The car you drive will appear as a silver and gray Decepticon.  Money will look like a long-haired dreadlocked pirate with razor sharp teeth of gold.  Success takes on the image of a blazing yellow and orange eye scanning forever this way and that.  Comfort, security, and happiness will look like a tall man dressed in black with a cape, helmet and raspy voice.  But wait, that’s next week.