Jesus Christ Makes History (Revelation 5:1-10)
Though I have read through Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings at least four times, I still don’t think that Frodo and Sam are going to make it. How will they get from the Shire to Mount Doom, in the midst of Mordor, to cast the ring into the Crack of Doom, and then home again?
Consider the vast distances to be crossed, the murky forests, icy mountain passes, and abysmal caverns. Consider the hordes of orcs and wargs and giant spiders, and the black Nazgûl on their winged-steeds. Consider the Eye of Sauron, which sees all. Consider that within the fellowship of the Ring itself there are traitorous weaknesses. Consider the vile Gollum with his razor teeth and wiry strength, ever on Frodo’s trail, determined to retrieve his Precious.
If I was to start reading the trilogy again tonight I would be absolutely convinced, “They won’t make it!”
As the church looks to the future, the obstacles faced by Frodo and his friends pale in comparison. A cunning and powerful devil, legions of demons, and a world that hates Christ and his people (John 15:18). More worrisome, the hideous weaknesses within us all: the habits of sin, a heart that is “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” (Jer 17:9), and a dreadful tendency to forsake Christ.
“We won’t make it!” And we couldn’t, if it wasn’t for the one that John now shows to us in his heavenly vision.
Revelation 5:1 Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals.
The ruling Sovereign holds a scroll at his right hand. It is covered in writing front and back, detailed and complete. Chapter 6 will show us that this is the LORD’s decreed plan for history. It is perfectly and completely sealed with seven seals. These seals must be broken for his decree to be unfurled, to be put into effect.
Revelation 5:2-4 And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?” 3 But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. 4 I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside.
The mighty angel blasts a challenge: “Who is worthy to break the seals?!” axios (ἀξιος) can refer to what has a high degree of worth and value, or to what is fitting or appropriate. An architect designs a magnificent house, but someone has to build it, someone qualified, equipped, skilled, and able. The angel’s challenge is: “Who is qualified, equipped, skilled, and able to put the Sovereign’s written plans into action?”
What is the answer? Uncomfortable silence, the lonely bark of a distant dog. No one! No one in heaven. No one on earth. No one even under the earth. No human being nor angelic being, evil or good. No one is worthy and able for the task. No one can even look at the words.
John weeps aloud. Why? “Because no one worthy was found to open the scroll and look into it.” No one could carry out the Lord’s decrees.
Let’s think very carefully about this. Why can’t God, the Almighty, for whom “nothing is impossible,” just do what he wants to do? What’s the holdup? Why must there be a person distinctly worthy and qualified to do this?
If God’s plan was simply to bring judgment upon a sinful and rebellious earth, then yes, that would require no “special person.” God is perfectly holy, just, and omnipotent. His sentence of final and catastrophic judgment could be executed in a moment and with ease. He could send an angel to do this, as he sent the Destroyer upon Egypt. He could send Satan to do this. He could even use human agents, as he used Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian war machine to destroy Jerusalem.
But if the Lord’s plan was different, if he wanted to show judgment and mercy, if he wanted to redeem a people from out of sinful humanity and adopt them to be his sons and daughters, and give them a glorious future, then yes! No creature in heaven or on earth could do this.
That is why John wailed. Without this person, judgment and only judgment would fall. Judgment without mercy. No redemption.
If we see what John sees, then at this point we should weep too. If there is no worthy Redeemer, how will we escape God’s judgment? How will we be adopted? Saved from our sin and given a glorious future?
Revelation 5:5 Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”
"Don’t weep!" There’s a ray of light and hope!
There is a person worthy to execute God’s decree of justice and mercy. A person who will destroy Satan and his works, and redeem a people for salvation. Who is this person?
First we see a lion, the king of the beasts, a being powerful enough to destroy Satan and evil. Remember what God promised through dying Jacob about his fourth son:
Judah, your brothers will praise you; your hand will be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons will bow down to you. You are a lion’s cub, O Judah; you return from the prey, my son. Like a lion he crouches and lies down, like a lioness—who dares to rouse him? The sceptre will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his (Genesis 49:8-10).
Judah would be in every sense leonine—majestic and powerful and terrifying, dominating his enemies. The tribe of Judah would rule over the nation of Israel, and would hold and pass down the royal sceptre and staff until it devolved upon the One to whom it ultimately belonged, the One who would rule forever, and over all.
King David was of Judah. He unified Israel and pacified her enemies. But David sinned and was “a man of blood” and could not be the One Jacob prophesied. So God promised David that from his rootstock would come the Eternal and Universal King, “I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son” (2Sa 7:13-14).
John ceases wailing because he sees the Fulfilment of these prophecies, the Lion of Judah, the Root of David (Isa 11:1). “Behold! He has triumphed.” The verb is in what Daniel Wallace calls the “consummative aorist” tense, “to stress the cessation of an act.” The battle has been won. The victory is complete.
If God’s decree is to bring final judgment and mercy, then we can see how the Lion of the Tribe of Judah is worthy to open the seals in the sense of executing God’s defeat of evil. He is worthy because he has already triumphed over evil.
Thus King Jesus, Judah’s Lion, exorcised demons with a word, and “saw Satan fall like lightning” (Luke 10:18). That is why King Jesus gave his life upon the cross, “that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). He is Christus Victor, he has conquered evil at its source. All that remains is the mopping up.
But if God’s decree, written on the scroll, is a decree of justice and a decree of mercy and redemption—and Revelation 7 shows exactly that—then the vision could not end with Judah’s Lion. There would have to be more to this person.
And there is.
Revelation 5:6 Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.
John sees a Lamb, obverse of the redoubtable lion. Worse, its throat is slashed. It is slaughtered, a sacrificial lamb. Yet it is not dead, but stands. Where is it? In the very centre of the elders and living creatures. It stands in the midst of the throne, heaven’s focal point.
Look closer. The lamb has seven horns. The horn symbolises strength and might. Seven horns symbolise perfect and complete strength and might. The slaughtered lamb is in fact infinitely mighty. It has seven eyes. It sees and knows all. Yet these seven eyes “are the Seven Spirits of God, sent out into all the earth.”
Given that the lamb is simultaneously mighty, slaughtered, and blood-soaked, and given that the one “seated on the throne” is jasper and ruby, precious, jewel-like, and red (4:3), then the Lamb is in every way, as we will see, like the one seated on the throne, yet is not him. Similarly, the lion/slaughtered-lamb, with its seven eyes, somehow incorporates the “Seven Spirits of God” (4:4), yet is not the Holy Spirit.
So there is both identity and distinction between these three figures: the ruby-red Father, the bloody Lion/Lamb, and the Lamb’s seven eyes/Holy Spirit. One in Three, and Three in One. The Athanasian Creed gives us the just the careful and precise language that we need to express this:
We worship one God in trinity and the trinity in unity, neither blending their persons nor dividing their essence.
For the person of the Father is a distinct person,
the person of the Son is another,
and that of the Holy Spirit still another.
But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one,
their glory equal, their majesty coeternal.
Yet, our attention is riveted, for the moment, upon the Slaughtered Lamb:
Revelation 5:7-10 He went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. 8 And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people. 9 And they sang a new song, saying:
“You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals,
because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God
persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.
10 You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth.”
John wept because no one was worthy to execute God’s decree of judgment and mercy. And although Judah’s Lion had conquered Satan and would easily mop up sin and evil, how would God’s mercy plan be accomplished?
The Lamb takes the scroll. The four living creatures fall down. The elders fall down. They sing and pray, worshipping the Lamb’s worthiness to carry out God’s merciful decree. He can do it because he was slaughtered, and so purchased a people by his blood.
This is the great doctrine of redemption, so central and precious to every Christian. I was a slave to sin. I owed a crushing debt of punishment to the Thrice-Holy God for doing what he had forbidden, and not doing what he had commanded. I could not purchase myself out of this slavery by my law-keeping. But Christ has borne my punishment upon the cross. His blood has been shed instead of mine, and has purchased my freedom.
You know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect (1Pe 1:18-19).
Whom has the Lamb purchased? Four overlapping terms—tribe, tongue, people, nation—emphasise one great fact: the redeemed are from everywhere. God promised Abram that “all peoples on earth will be blessed.” Here is the fulfilment.
The redeemed are kings and priests. Like priests—think of the boy Samuel—they dwell in the LORD’s very presence. Like kings—think of David—they share in the Lord’s rule. Hence the thronelets and crowns of the twenty-four representative elders of God’s people.
But if we are to share in the Redeemer’s rule, then we must also “share in his sufferings” (Rom 8:17). “No servant is greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also” (John 15:20). We take up our cross. We “follow the Lamb wherever he goes” (Rev 14:4) and so face slaughter, in one way or another, just as he did.
Yet we will make it. As Dr Chapple emphasises, “The decisive moment in all of history lies behind us, not ahead of us.” The Lion has conquered for us. The Lamb has died for us. The Lord’s glorious future for us is assured.
Join the heavenly praise, for in Jesus Christ you are “more than conquerors” (Rom 8:37). Judah’s Lion has crowned you with a victory crown. The Lamb who was slain has clothed you with his robe of righteousness, washed white in his blood (Rev 7:14).