5 And I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals. 2 Then I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and to loose its seals?” 3 And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll, or to look at it. 4 So I wept much, because no one was found worthy to open and read the scroll, or to look at it.
I've been told quite often that I have an overabundance of confidence. People ask me regularly why I am so cocky. So let me start right off by telling you that I can't open this scroll, can't explain the Revelation for myself or for you, this scroll, I am relatively confident is what chapter 1 verse 1 calls "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants", and what I hope to do is to tell you the story of God giving Christ that revelation, a revelation not of the End of the World, not of the Antichrist, not of Judgment and Condemnation, but a revelation of the one who was dead and lives forever more and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father and holds the keys to death and hell.
"We are wrong about everything else but we are right about the Gospel." It's a pretty good one liner and I have kind of been using it as the unofficial motto of our church. "We are wrong about everything else but we are right about the Gospel." What I mean to imply by that is that the Gospel is the only thing that matters. The Gospel, quite literally, justifies all of our other mistakes, errors, and failures. So, I don't know how far our little look into Revelation will get but the key that I intend to use is something like this. "I am wrong about eschatology. I am wrong about numerology. I am wrong about symbolism. But I intend to be right about what the Revelation says about Christ." Where it is necessary to try and interpret John's visions to tell my story, I don't intend to seek a coherent system of symbolism, I don't intend to offer any opinion on the chronology of the "End Times", not even in the most general of ways. Instead, I will shamelessly use all of the imagery and mysticism to try and illustrate the Christ of Revelation. If that is how John intended it to be used then it might work out pretty well. If it isn't, "Oh well."
So, John-whoever he was-got this story "in the Spirit on the Lord's Day", and he wrote it all down and sent it out with a letter to the people he was sending it to. We are not looking at those letters today, I am not trying to interpret a bunch of weird symbolism for you, I am gonna try to tell you a relatively straight forward story, the part of Jesus Christ's story that I want to focus on today I am titling "Irresistible Grace-The Conqueror".
So, our story starts in the throne room of Heaven, and like all good stories we run into a problem fairly quickly. God has a scroll, with stuff wrote all over it, jam packed with goodness, full of grace and truth, this scroll is as I suggested earlier the Revelation itself, not just the weird book at the end of our Bible, but the Express Image of God, this is everything you need to know about who God is, which in the long run is everything you need to know about everything. Our Lord said, "This is eternal life, to know God and Jesus Christ whom He sent.", that is what is on this scroll, not some crap about the end of the world. But, like we already knew, that knowledge isn't easy to come by.
Backing up a little to chapter 4 to set the scene,
2 Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne set in heaven, and One sat on the throne. 3 And He who sat there was like a jasper and a sardius stone in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, in appearance like an emerald. 4 Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and on the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white robes; and they had crowns of gold on their heads. 5 And from the throne proceeded lightnings, thunderings, and voices. Seven lamps of fire were burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.
6 Before the throne there was a sea of glass, like crystal. And in the midst of the throne, and around the throne, were four living creatures full of eyes in front and in back. 7 The first living creature was like a lion, the second living creature like a calf, the third living creature had a face like a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle. 8 The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within. And they do not rest day or night, saying:
“Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God Almighty,
Who was and is and is to come!”
9 Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever, 10 the twenty-four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying:
11 “You are worthy, O Lord,
To receive glory and honor and power;
For You created all things,
And by Your will they exist and were created.”
So this is a pretty neat crew. In our story they will be playing the part of People who can't Help Us Read the Scroll. We have got twenty four of the sharpest cats around, they can stand for the sum total of human knowledge if we want to get symbolic. They have their shit together. But they are no help at all to poor old John, they can't read him no scroll. We have four weirdo angel things. They got bunches of wings and bunches of eyes, and they kind of represent all of the living things in Creation. You have got the "King of the Jungle" the lion, the King of domesticated type animals in the cow, the king of birds, and man himself. When the scroll finally gets open they each have some kind of connection to what is written under one particular seal, so they are some sort of messengers of the Gospel. But the bottom line is that they are no help. Nobody IN HEAVEN, or Earth or under the Earth" could give us the only News that is unconditionally Good. There is one last character that we need to look at in this light before we move on, and that is the Guy on the Throne.
God created the worlds by His Word, the ultimate purpose of Creation is so that there can be people who are not Him, that's us, who are Like Him, sons and daughters to Him, kings and priests to Him, and it is the knowledge of Him, the scroll, that makes us Like Him. But even omnipotence has to have a Way. And the Way to Him is not to approach God enthroned in Heaven. The old myths all say that to see God in His glory is to be undone, that for us to see Him He has to take human form. Well they aren't wrong, but where they are no help is that they don't recognize that our thoughts and feelings about the Guy on the Throne are futile and self-destructive too. The Way to God is, to give away the punchline, which I assume most of you have seen coming, through the man Jesus Christ, Our Immanuel.
5 But one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals.”
6 And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth. 7 Then He came and took the scroll out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne.
Now, I emphatically think that it is to the man Himself, the walking, talking, weeping, partying Christ of the Gospels that we have to go to to learn who God is. The Essence of God, that which makes Him who He is, is not found in what the theologians term the "Attributes of God", omnipotence, omniscience, eternity, immutability that whole raft of overeducated nonsense, but the Essence of God is found in the divinehuman compassion when He sees us as sheep without a shepherd, it is found in the weeping for the death of his friend, it is found in the rage at the corruption of His Father's house. But the big theme of the book of Revelation, which even the worst commentators have picked up on, the big theme of the Bible, and the big theme of the Scroll which is the true and everlasting Gospel, is Death. When John tells us this story, very tellingly it is not the loving Christ, or the bereaved Christ, or the angry Christ who reveals God to us. It is the dead Christ, he presents us with a lamb slain. It is the dead Christ who draws all men unto Himself, it is the slain Christ that sends the Spirits of God into all the earth with the Good News. It is the Slain Christ who tore the veil of the Temple, uniting God and man, which is exactly what the scroll we are finally gonna get a look at is about.
I don't mean to gloss over the rest of chapter 5, but for our story it can be summed up as "And all the autobots said, "Yay Optimus"" So let's get to what the scroll actually says:
6 Now I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals; and I heard one of the four living creatures saying with a voice like thunder, “Come and see.” 2 And I looked, and behold, a white horse. He who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.
If, as I have posited, this is about revealing Christ to us, what exactly are we supposed to see here? First point is that all the imagery here lines up pretty well. Our translation says "one of the four living creatures", it should probably be read more like "the first of the living creatures", living creature number one, the Lion, the One on the horse has a bow, an aggressive first strike weapon, a crown signifying victory and He is presented as winning whatever fight it is He is in. But conquest is about more than victory, He doesn't just beat His opponent, He takes what was the opponent's and makes it His.
Human history is the story of putting God in a box. In Eden, Adam and Eve knew that the vast majority of their good came from God, but they thought that there was something good that came from another source, their own choice, their own knowledge, their own will, a fruit, a snake, something. We have progressively looked for more of our good from other sources and less from God and made the box that we put God in smaller and smaller. Most of the things in our life that we hope for, that we think will be good we are looking for not from God at all. Of course eventually we got God literally in a little golden box, a box that is really good at a few things, in a few places, on very select occasions, the God in the Box is the greatest picture of the Law ever made. And any type of religion that puts God in a box, any box is legalism. Contrast the God in the Box with Satan roaming the Earth as a lion, hunting, stalking his prey. And so the first thing we need to know about Christ, and His Gospel, is that He isn't staying in the box anymore, and when He came riding out He tore the veil that separates God and man. Is the lion a symbol of kingly royalty, sure I guess so. But here I think what we especially need to see, is God out of the box, going out "conquering and to conquer", roaming the earth, going to and fro, hunting as we are told Satan does. Evil, in our minds, has a few advantages. Christ has humbled Himself to take those advantages as His own. I don't want to pretend to have any great keys to John's Apocalypse but this theme of Christ doing things that we usually associate with Satan, that Christ has gone not merely into the lowest class of society but into the criminal class, literally hanging with thieves, may be one reason we have found this book of the first who are last and the last who are first so confusing. Anyway, onward.
He carries a bow. Of course the most famous bow that God carried is the one that He hung in the clouds. And I think that maybe it is with good reason that the book of Revelation is literally drenched in rainbows. He hung up the bow of judgment, because He swore never again to flood the Earth with condemnation. That is the bow that we should see in His hand, taken up to flood the Earth with grace and mercy. In the Gospel death and condemnation itself has become the waters of baptism, has become life and justification.
Before I ever read any theology, or was a serious student of the Scripture at all, when I was just a boy sitting in an English Lit class I read a poem. And years later, when I found all of the things I had put my trust in, mainly myself, to be empty hopes, the poem came back to me and gave me a different hope. So, John Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV
Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
No one can take what belongs to the strong man unless they bind him first. I don't feel like looking up the text, we all know Christ said that. Well the Strong Man, is Satan, and as Donne puts it so eloquently we are "betrothed" to him the enemy of Christ that is we are bound to sin and death by the Law which is Holy and Just and Good. All of my hope had left me to ever be a Christian. So many preachers have stood up and told us how easy it is to become a Christian but I never found it that way. If Christ was knocking on the door of my heart, part of me would run to open the door, but another part always slammed it in His face. It happened over and over again, and I finally realised that the real me, the truest strongest part of me was the part that rejected Christ.
And in that hopelessness, I thought a new thought. I had never heard of Irresistible Grace, I thought Calvin and Calvinism was some nutjob, one-trick predestination pony. I never imagined that the Rider of the White Horse, the Prince who saves the day for me, the Truly Good News was there.
What if Christ knocks on the door of your heart, and you don't open it? What then? Is that the end of the story, or is my hope, and Dr. Donne's hope, that Christ might batter down the door of the heart that is not opened to Him true? All that is in me, sides with Satan to my own destruction, but Christ stoops, humiliates Himself to conquer me. Those who criticize Irresistible Grace say that Christ is a Gentleman and will never force His affection on us. All I can say is that if He doesn't we will never have it or Him. To be a Savior He has to be a Conqueror, a Heel, quite literally the Bad Guy.
The Law has bound us to Darkness. We chose the Serpent in the Garden, we choose him all the time, and the Law holds us to our choice, we are the property, the promised bride of the Strong Man, destined to be his, but the weakness of God is a Gracious Conqueror riding forth to our salvation, and neither Law, nor Satan, nor our own foolish will, can prevent the Prince on the White Horse from carrying off His princess.
And I think that that is the ultimate picture that I would like to close with. Where is the rider of the White Horse riding His horse? I have talked a lot about Saul lately and his story, his descent into madness, darkness, and death is emblematic of the God in the Box and the Law. What has Christ really changed? Simply that in the New Testament there is another Saul who's story doesn't end in pointless war and madness, God got out of His box and went charging down the Damascus Road. The vision that I want to close with is the vision that changed another Saul into Paul. That is the true conquest of the One who has gone out Conquering and to Conquer, the greatest of the Legalists, the Pharisee of Pharisees become Grace's most uncompromising champion. Be ye converted.
