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. Then He came and took the scroll out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne.
Now when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. Revelation 5:5-8
John, the beloved apostle of Jesus, who had been with Jesus since he was a lad, was there at Calvary’s tree, had been given charge of Mary Jesus mother to watch over her in her old age; who was now an old man, and evangelist who preached Christ and Him crucified, was exiled by Romans to the isle of Patmos and now having been with the Rapture of the Church in Chapter four, has been crying, because no one was found to be worthy to break the seals of the deed in Gods right hand.
Now John realized that we all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God, haven’t we? One of the problems of our day and age is dismissing God and His Word, and not believing that we are sinners. We seem to think that if God would just get out of our way, we could make it just fine. Not realizing what a predicament that we are in without someone who is worthy before God who can provide salvation for us.
It may be that one person is a little better than another. We may look around and say, I am a better than him, or that fellow is a little better than me, but this kind of thinking is like a contest to jump across the Atlantic Ocean, if you can just jump across it you will be safe. And as we line up at the pier and make our jumps we find that maybe I can jump a couple of feet further than others, and some can out distance me, still none of us can even make it more than a fraction of 1% of the distance across that vast ocean to safety.
So … all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God. (Romans 3:23) And so without help from the proper person, there is no way we can make it ourselves. I don’t think the world realizes the dilemma that they would be in without a Saviour redeemer, because many would say, “If I were in heaven, I would take that book and peel the seals off” because we have no concept of the Holiness of God, and what His reaction would be for sinners, as we are, to try and approach a Holy God. How can we come before Him and live in His presence without some help and without the forgiveness of our sins?
There are people out there today who are saying we should replace religion with science, just do away with God and religion and replace it with science, because now we see in science all of the answers to our questions. As if we could actually approach a Holy God in that way. I don’t care if you are Richard Dawkins or Adolph Schickelgruber Hitler, Barack Hussein Obama or George Soros, or the pope, or mother Teresa; you can believe and say there is no god, but you are lost without a redeemer in order to come before a Holy God.
Two things that we have a problem with in our mind are God’s Holiness and God’s Love, isn’t that right, His justice on one hand and His mercy on another. You and I try to bring those things together in our lives constantly. On the one hand, we try to feel righteous indignation toward things that deserve punishment, the type of behavior and thinking that deserves correction and punishment, and on the other hand, trying to be gracious, loving and forgiving, we cannot put those things together, and yet God is both of those. God is absolutely holy; no sin can come into His presence without a covering.
And yet He was merciful and set His son for us, He loved us first even though we hated Him; He showed us mercy even though we were yet sinners. He reaches His hand down but mankind has kept slapping away His hand even unto this day. How we can put together the Justice and Mercy of God, we cannot find, and yet God has found a way.
I don’t know if you noticed in the scripture, which is our subject, that first we see Gods Justice in the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and we see Gods Mercy in the Lamb, which was slain before the foundation of the world. How can these two things come together? We cannot do it but one day God will make the Lion and Lamb lie down together in the Kingdom of God when it comes, but God has made the Justice of God and the Mercy of God lie down together in one person of the Lord Jesus Christ. In that one person who is both the Lion of God and the Lamb of God, where the Justice and Mercy has come together, and what a great thing that is.
That is why He will reign on this earth as the God-man, the Lion-Lamb, the prophet- priest, one day He will be King over all of this earth. That justice and mercy came together at the Cross-on Calvary, because there the sins of the world had to be punished. God had to answer through His holiness for the sins of all mankind, and yet there on the cross the love of God, and the mercy and forgiveness of God perfectly displayed at the Cross-on Calvary.
And so we are brought into the Throne Room of God in these verses. Consider verse 5, this lion. 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 book and to loose its seven seals. It is interesting trivia that this is the only time lion appears in the book of Revelation, and yet the word Lamb will be presented 28 times. And yet the book of Revelation is a book of judgments, a book of the time of God’s vengeance upon the sin in the earth. The lion is mentioned here once, and the seals will be opened and the judgments of God will be poured out.
This Lion of the tribe of Judah, this Root of David; the angel takes John back in his memory, remember the writings in the old testament, remember that in the 1800’s BC, when Moses wrote these words, about Jacob speaking to Joseph. When Jacob said “Judah is a lion's whelp; From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He bows down, he lies down as a lion; And as a lion, who shall rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor a lawgiver from between his feet, Until Shiloh comes; And to Him shall be the obedience of the people. (Genesis 49:9-10) Remember John that 1800 years ago, Jacob said that one would come to rein from the tribe of Judah, and he will be like a lion, and He will rule and rein on this earth and no one will be able to until He comes.
Remember John, Isaiah wrote in 700 BC “There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots. (Jesse being the father of David, and it will be of the son of David and from his household) The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him,(notice the various spirit expressions here) The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD. His delight is in the fear of the LORD, And He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, Nor decide by the hearing of His ears; But with righteousness He shall judge the poor, And decide with equity for the meek of the earth; He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked. Isaiah 11:1-4
So … when we read the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, we should see the fulfillment of all of these prophecies coming in the person of Jesus Christ.
But then this elder who is speaking to John takes him back into that present, and says this lion that you know so well, notice these words in verse 5, has prevailed, He has prevailed. This is called an aris tense in the Greek language. In the English language we have past tense, present tense, and future tense, but the Greek language contains a tense, which means, “it happened, never to be repeated again”. This lion, who is of the seed of Jacob, who is of the seed David he did prevail, and it will never have to be repeated again.
Let’s skip over to chapter 6 and look at verse 16. here is this lamb, 28 times He is mentioned in the book of Revelation, but now we see him in verse 16 when the people of the earth coming under the judgment of God say to the mountains and to the rocks “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne (God the Father) and from the wrath of the (not the lion but the) Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?" Isn’t it interesting that we would have the word lamb here and not lion? Don’t we always make the mistake of thinking? “Well God loves us, and God is a forgiving love, and so no matter who I am and what I do in this life, or what mistakes I make, I think that God is such a loving God that when I die, I’ll be ok before Him … everything will work out just fine”.
It is no wonder that when we see someone who has passed from this life to the next, and they may have been a very sinful person before God, and yet we say at their funeral we make them out as if they were a saint before God. Thinking that is kind of how God is, thinking God will forgive and God will forget, and He is kind of like a big old grandpa in the sky, who will wink at our wickedness.
It is the Lamb of God, who loves this world and gave Himself for this world and who’s wrath will pour out because God’s love will not trump His holiness. His holiness will not be whittled away because there is also the love of God. It is the Lamb also who will judge this world. And so here He is and He has done something for us, He has prevailed. Do you know what that was? He came to this world and qualified Himself to be the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.
Consider Hebrews 5:8-9 “though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. Kind of an interesting expression about Jesus, that he learned obedience, but we have to understand since we know that He did not sin, since we know that He was perfect, that His whole live from is conception to His ascension back to the Father, He never did anything that did not please God. And so he learned obedience in the sense that he experienced it. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him,
Do you know what would have happened if He had sinned even once? Do you know what would have happened if He had even one evil thought and sin had entered into Him? He would have died on that cross not for our sins but for His own sins and His body would still be in the grave. Someone dieing with sin cannot be resurrected as the sinless Lamb of God. And because God brought Him back out of the Grave, that is our victory. When Jesus came out of that grave, He was pronounced ‘sinless’ and that He is the acceptable sacrifice for our sin, He did prevail. And thank God that He did!
What a terrible thing that it is in our lifetime that men study about Jesus Christ, that men write books and make movies where they try to make him to be just human like the rest of us, you know he had sins, he had a wife, he was just kind of like the rest of us, maybe he was a little better that most of us. What do they do to the Salvation that has been supplied? They take it away totally. John would have had to say, “No one prevailed including the lion and the lamb who did not prevail to take away our sins.” And yet He did prevail for our sakes. There was no sin, no disobedience, not even an evil thought in Him.
Listen to Isaiah describe this lamb. “All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. (Isaiah 53:6-7) When He had to come to this earth to live a sinless life, to die for our sins, He did it perfectly, obediently before the Father in a way that you and I could never do, or ever have done, so that He could be our Saviour on the Cross-at Calvary.
Don’t weep John, the angel said. This lion has prevailed. When was that? 2000 years ago outside of Jerusalem’s walls on an outcropping called Golgotha, on Calvary He prevailed to take away our sins. Not only that, He has prevailed to open the book and loosen the seals, before the Throne of God, the seven Spirits of God, the 24 elders, the multitude of his church, the legions of angels, and John the beloved, once and for always. This lamb of God has prevailed and is slain.
Isn’t it interesting that He died for our sins in a way that is still open and fresh to us? I want you to notice something, that He opened to us a living way, he is ever slain and that comes to us from Hebrews chapter 10 verse 20 it is interesting that as Paul is describing a new and living way, “Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, (then he says this), by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh”, Jesus Christ before the throne of God right now, has provided by His blood a new and living way. Meaning a sacrifice that has just been slain. A new and freshly slain way, a new way with the flesh still open and the blood still flowing. And with that Blood He pleads for our sins before the throne of God. He has been slain perfect tense here, and it still goes on through today. Meaning that before the throne when Jesus Christ forgives us our sins, God looks at Him as if He had just been sacrificed. Through out eternity the wounds of Christ will plead before the Father just as if it were the very day that He had died for us.
I can imagine that, you and I have to think in terms of time and space, we have to think that He was slain back some two thousand years ago. But the Father see it through all of eternity. It is all an eternal present with God so for out eternity Jesus Christ is freshly slain before the Father, so if you now come before Him for Salvation, it is just as if you came before Him on the very day He was slain on the cross. And So I thought to myself, how profane it is, the Mass and the Sacraments, those things that pretend that Jesus Christ has to be killed again, and again, and again. His Blood has to be slain over and over day-by-day and week-by-week when the bible tell us that He prevailed once, His blood was shed once, and he sat down forever the atonement completed. What a great thing that is!
In verse 6 notice again it says, “and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders” This Lamb comes out of the midst of the throne, because He belongs to those closest to the throne, He belongs on the throne, and he is one of our brethren. A Lamb that has been slain and notice He has seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth throughout all of the earth. Kind of an odd picture to us, but we have seen many things in the book of Revelation that seem odd to us, and yet they tell us the truths about what God is telling us here. And that is this that the seven Spirits of God is the Holy Spirit from the first chapter through this. The seven Spirits of God are manifest as seven eyes within the Lamb of God. That is because the Holy Spirit is doing His work right now in the earth for the Son’s sake.
It is Jesus Christ who has sent Him into the world. It is Jesus Christ who has commissioned Him, God the Father and God the Son. When Jesus ascended to heaven, the Holy Spirit came to this earth, and what He is doing is convicting this world of sin, and unrighteousness, and judgment to come and their need of a Saviour. If He is speaking to your heart He is speaking of accepting Christ as your Saviour. He is revealing the Son to you. And so he comes as the eyes of this Lamb slain and going forth into all of the earth.
Think of the Holy Spirits manifestations folks, He is described in the scripture as a dove, as wind, as breath, as fire, as oil, as a seal, and as water. Many different manifestations does the Holy Spirit have in scripture. And He has many ministries to you and to me. He inspires, He illumines, He comforts us, He convict us, He draws us, He even convicts us, and then He teaches us. And many influences in this world that this world knows nothing about, He withholds the sin in this world from becoming even worse than it is. He restrains the evil in this world and one day soon when He is removed from this world evil will engulf this world. He preserves it and He blesses it, He reveals it, He causes righteousness to rise up in a nation even among people who don’t know Christ, He exalts morality and puts down immorality. The Holy Spirit does all of that, and He does it because He is the Spirit from the Lamb of God. And thereby reveals Christ the Son to this world.
Someone said, “well, He doesn’t seem to be doing a very good job in my life”, or “I have been praying for those people and He doesn’t seem to be able to reach those people”. You know we forget something, on a cloudy day like we have today, we say the sun is not shining today, but you know that is not right is it? It is just a matter of perspective. The sun is always shining of course, the suns rays are always coming to this earth, it’s the earths problem that you don’t feel the suns rays today, it’s the earths problem that it is covered with clouds, or that it is turned to a different pitch and no warmth is felt or that it has turned about and now it is night.
Let me tell you the Holy Spirit is always convicting, He has never stopped. He is always drawing; He always is sending out the truth of the Gospel, we are the ones with the problem. We are the ones who turn away from Him, we are the ones who cloud our vision to God, and we are the ones who will not hear His voice. He always is working.
It is a great thing to go up in an airplane isn’t it? On a rainy day you board and take off, rising up you can see nothing, but very soon you popup out of the clouds, and you see that it is not raining up here, the sun is shining and it is just down there where it is dark, wet and cold. We need to live as believers; in the light of the Spirit, as His light shines on us every day.
Then there is one other thing, and that is the book, there is the Lion and the Lamb, and the book. It says in verse 7, “Then He came and took the scroll out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne”. This is the most sublime individual act in the book of Revelation. This, is “The” act, this is the apex. Here comes the Lamb who is described as a Lion, and there is a hush in heaven. Heads are bowed, no one else is found worthy, and not even an angel can approach the throne.
If you read my last massage, the Seven Sealed Book, then you know that this seven-sealed book is the covenant God made and Jesus Christ is the kinsman redeemer the only one who can qualify to peel the seals away from the covenant book and redeem back that which was lost. All of heaven is quiet, no one can redeem the book, and out of the midst of the throne walks this lion-lamb and he walks to the throne of God.
No one walks to the throne of God. No angel approaches the throne this way. No human being approaches the throne of God this way. There must have been a hush, as this Lion-Lamb boldly walks up to the throne of God.
Think of the Book of Ester, when she needed to go in before the king, she decided to go in herself instead of waiting to be called, remember? And she said, “If I die, I die”. Because she knew what it was to walk into the presence of a king unannounced.
Or Nehemiah, when his countenance was fallen before the king, because he was the cupbearer, and the king said, what’s the matter Nehemiah, and he feared for his life. Because he knows you don’t come before a king that way.
The same thing can be said of Daniel when Belshazzar calls him in to read the handwriting on the wall, if he did not behave properly he could have died in that room before he ever left.
And here is the God of the universe, the Holy God, no sin can approach, no created being can approach Him. Who can open this book and provide Salvation, and this Lion-Lamb walks before the throne and reaches out and takes the book out of the hand of the Father.
When the Father God releases the book and He takes it into His hand, then the moment has passed. The sacrifice has been accepted; the lion and the lamb have prevailed to take away our sin and now He becomes the one to be worshiped. And at that moment folks there we are, with the 24 elders as the church, we will be there in heaven when this happens, you understand this has not happened yet. This will happen after the Rapture takes place and we are before the throne. And all of the Old Testament spirits are there, the just men made perfect waiting for this moment to happen, and when it does what happens in verse 8, the recognition when He had taken the book, of the four beast and the 24 elders who fell down not before the Father but before the Lamb. Having every one of them harps and vials full of odors, tools to worship God with which are the prayers of the saints, and I will read on a little, in verses 9-10 “And they sang a new song, saying:
"You are worthy to take the scroll,
And to open its seals;
For You were slain,
And have redeemed us to God by Your blood
Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation,
And have made us kings and priests to our God;
And we shall reign on the earth."
It would be blasphemy, it would be sacrilege in heaven if the angels of God and the Redeemed of all ages were to fall down and worship anything or anyone other than God Himself. There is no greater expression or testament of the deity of Christ than this event in heaven.
Who can fall down and worship anyone other than God, and here is the Son of God, who left His throne, came down from heaven and lived a sinless life as the God-man, qualified to die for our sins, qualified to be resurrected from the grave, ascended back to the Father and now coming back to the Fathers right hand, deserves the worship, adoration and praise of all of heaven and earth. He is God, folks, He is the God-man; He is the only one who could prevail to take away our sins. And so we fall down before Him too.
We have harps here, interesting; the only other instrument even mentioned in the book of Revelation is the trumpet, in heaven that is, so I guess you will have a chance to learn to play one or the other. We have vials, containing our prayers brought before the Father, finally answered, and the prayers of those saved after the Rapture, being brought before the Fathers throne to be answered. We will praise God for answers to prayers. We will sing our praises to God, and I can promise you it will be nothing of ourselves. It will be nothing in the first person I and me, it will be thou and thee. He is worthy, and that is how we will sing before Him.
The Lamb of God is slain, Redemption has been accepted, and Jesus Christ has prevailed.
Are you ready?
Do you know if you are in the bride, and Salvation is yours already?
It is so easy…
Just Believe that you are a sinner, we all are and will be until the day of redemption. Repent (repent means turn away from your sin, and toward God) and Confess your sin to God, ask Him to forgive you.
Believe that He has raised Jesus from the dead, and ask Jesus into your heart to be your Saviour, your King, to sit in the throne of your life….
Paul said, "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, "Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame." Romans 10:8-12
Please do it Now, tomorrow may be too late.
