After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, ‘Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.’ At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it. And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow resembling an emerald encircled the throne.

Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads. From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder.

Before the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God. Also before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal.

In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back. The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle.

Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night they never stop saying: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.’

Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say: ‘You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.’ ”

Revelation 4 and 5 constitute one vision, and it is programmatic for the rest of the book, as we’ll see. If you understand this vision, some of the rest of the book begins to unpack.

Chapter 4 sets the scene for what takes place in chapter 5
We have in chapter 4, what heaven is like, a vision of the transcendent God.

What you have in chapter 5 is a vision of the redeeming God.

We haven’t been there. Even the few who have … in vision, transport, some sense, some sort in Ezekiel or Isaiah or whatever … how do they put it? As in Ezekiel 1, a passage I briefly referred to the first day. “This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.” You can’t draw that.

In verses 1 and 2a, John writes: “After this, I looked …” After what? Obviously, after the visions and instructions of the first three chapters, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet.”

That has to be Jesus. There is no one else that could refer to, because the voice speaking to him like a trumpet in chapter 1 is identified as that of the resurrected Christ.

The writer pictures himself as a seer who’s caught up to see things that other people don’t see. That’s the way that apocalyptic literature works.

You recall 2 Corinthians, chapter 12? He said he was called into paradise. He was called into the third heaven. Then he says, “Whether in the flesh or not in the flesh, I don’t know. God knows.” Then he says that he was called again. Then he says (repeating himself), “Whether in the body or out of the body, I don’t know. God knows.”

John sees Five things:

1. The indescribable majesty of the Almighty.

A throne, with someone sitting on it. John does not let his persecuted readers or those who are about to be persecuted forget that there are thrones above thrones above thrones until there is only one throne. God is sovereign. You remember Isaiah 6:1 and his vision? “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and lifted up and his train filled the temple.” He’s sitting on a throne too.

One of the problems is that the ancients did not employ our contemporary terminology in their classification of precious stones, but most likely jasper is either an opal or a diamond.

That is almost certainly a white stone and in the ancient world, diamonds were not clear, because they had not yet learned how to cut them with perfect symmetry.. So opals or diamonds, they would glitter and shine, reflect light. They could be beautiful, and refract light, but they weren’t clear.

What the King James Version calls a sardius is not a fish. It’s a scarlet red gem the emerald, like ours, was almost certainly green. So the overall impression then is of fiery, spectacular, entrancing beauty.

How do you describe a God who is whiter and purer, morally speaking, than the driven snow?

How do you describe a God who is more magnificent than the most stunning sunset?

How do you describe a God who is more entrancing than a million twinkling stars?

First Timothy 6 says, “The Lord dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or ever can see.” How do you describe a God like that?

Indeed, the most important thing about this description is that God is not described. There’s no possibility here of image-making

2. The divine throne is enhanced by spectacular heavenly beings.

Verse 4: “Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads.”

In the history of the church it has been argued that these 24 elders represent the church or represent the people of God.

Paul refers to certain ranks of angelic beings as thrones, principalities, and rulers. These people are all sitting on thrones. They don’t have to be, therefore, triumphant Christians or the like.

More important, the view these elders represent a high order of angels is strongly supported by the vision of chapter 7, verses 9–11, where you have around the throne concentric circles: first a great body of the redeemed, then concentric ranks of heavenly beings (angels), then elders, and then the four living beasts.

In other words, the elders are placed between angels generically and the four living beasts, the highest order of angelic beings that are picking up from the Old Testament, cherubim and seraphim, Isaiah 24.

An elder often comes to John and explains what’s going on. Sometimes it’s an angel, sometimes it’s the exalted Christ, and sometimes it’s an elder, but in apocalyptic literature it is very common for an angel to explain what’s going on.

An elder has that function from time to time in the book of Revelation, as we’ll see, which also suggests that it’s an angel.

It seems that these elders represent a high order of angels around the throne. If there are 24 of them, it might have very much to do with exactly the same sort of symbolism bound up with the angel of each church.

The letter is addressed to the angel of the church, so there’s a kind of angel corresponding to the church, an angel in heaven corresponding to what’s going on down here. So there are angels for the people of God, and the 24 of them represent, the angels for the people of God.
What is more important from the point of view of what is going on in this chapter is their function. What is it that they do?

How do they operate?

We’ll see by the end of the chapter that their function, along with that of the four living creatures, is to praise God constantly, they enhance the throne.

It’s because he’s way up there. He is surrounded by functionaries. It has always been that way. The higher up you are in the pecking order, the more functionaries surround you.

So then how will you approach God?

That turns out to be one of the major themes of this chapter. Before you get the good news of chapter 5, there is a tremendous amount of emphasis on God’s transcendence, his otherness.

Before you get to the throne, this God is surrounded by those who serve, spectacular beings who sit on thrones themselves and who never stop singing the praises of heaven.

They’re emblematic of more and more angels who are surrounding the throne, which is unpacked further.

 

The 24 elders do all of this. They lay their crowns before him.

By the end of chapter 5, there are thousands upon thousands of angels and ten thousand times ten thousand. You don’t drag leisurely into the presence of this God.

2. God is Holy and Separate.

The lightning and thunder; the seven lamps; and the sea of glass.

The lightning and thunder.
When God comes down on Mount Sinai, the whole mountain is shaking from the thunder and lightning, and the people cry out, “We don’t want to get any closer to this God. Moses, you stand in for us. You talk to him for us. We can’t get closer to this God. He’s too terrifying.”

Why? Because they saw God and they were scared? No, they just saw some of his milder manifestations, what we think of as terrible thunderstorms, and they were scared. At least they had the sense to be scared.

“And it came to pass on the third day in the morning that there were thunders and lightnings and thick cloud upon the mount, so that all the people in the camp trembled.” So Exodus 19.

The seven lamps.

In Isaiah, chapter 11, verse 2, one of those lovely messianic passages that picture what it will be finally, we read, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest upon him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.” That sevenfold list is sometimes taken to be a way of referring to the one Spirit.

It maybe that we are dealing with seven spirits. Not the Holy Spirit; seven angelic beings who are peculiarly commissioned in a variety of important ways, who are quick to do God’s command, and who are bound up with the churches, and so forth. In any case, what it means is there are more intermediaries between John and the throne.

The sea of glass.

Our English versions here often have “clear as glass,” but the word rendered clear in Greek equally means sparkly or shiny, not clear.

A violent thunderstorm, and now you have a sea as clear and smooth as glass. Glass wasn’t clear in the ancient world. In Old Testament literature, the sea becomes a symbol for chaos, for confusion.

It’s a symbol of chaos, Revelation 21–22, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and there was no more sea.”

3. The four living creatures.

They are clearly the highest angelic beings, orchestrating the praise of the Almighty and reflecting the transcendent administration of the Almighty.

The reason they are the highest angelic beings is because in their description, they take on some of the elements of the cherubim of Ezekiel, who are the highest angelic beings there, and of the seraphim in Isaiah, chapter 6.

The language chosen to describe them is made up of language drawn from Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel in several passages, they’re designed to make us think of ancient imperial thrones.

They were covered with eyes in front and back. The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, and the fourth was like a flying eagle.

Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings.”

There’s no way you can draw this. The symbolism is what you have to unpack.

What is meant by it? Well, the lion, then as now, is the king of the beasts.

God’s throne is a royal throne. God is King. The whole notion of the kingdom of God is bound up with the assumption that

God is King. At the end of the day, God is King.

The bullock, the ox, was a common symbol for strength, endurance, stability.

The man here, the human being, in the physical world, this head is the closest thing we have to a symbol for intelligence.

God’s throne rests on intelligence.

The flying eagle symbolizes either speed to execute God’s command, which is possible, or God’s protecting care. Exodus 19:4? Remember, some of the symbolism is already drawn from the giving of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 19, the thunder and the lightning and so on. There God says (Exodus 19:4), “You have seen how I bore you up on eagle’s wings.”
These are beings that John would have to navigate through to get to the throne. The importance for all of this is a way of saying that God’s throne is characterized by certain very important things.

5. The worship and praise of heaven.

“Day and night they never stop saying: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.’

What does that mean?

What is holiness? That is a difficult question to answer. Holy is almost an adjective for God. Whatever else God is, God is holy.

It’s almost a way of referring to the Godness of God. Because he’s different from everything else, that is, he’s separate from everything else, so He alone is Holy.

God is separate from everything else, and we are to be separate from everything that is contaminating our being as God’s image bearers. It gets tied very quickly to morality, to ethics, to act it out, holiness.

We have to come to grips with the fact that God is God. God is transcenden, He is not like us. He doesn’t need us, He’s distant from us. He’s not easily approachable. He is, in fact, awesome and, frankly, terrifying.

Even the highest order of angelic beings never stop, day and night, from ascribing these things to God.

There are several things we need to try to understand about this ascription of praise.

There is only one who is worthy of that kind of honor.”

“You are worthy, for you created all things.” In other words, all things owe him allegiance, and worship because he is their Maker.

The doctrine of creation is precisely what establishes our responsibility to God.