AUSTRALIAN BIBLE CHURCH - October 10, 2010       

A Presbyterian Church, Following the Bible without Qualification,
the Lord Jesus Christ without Compromise by Faith  

THE SCROLL, THE SAVIOUR AND THE SAINTS

REVELATION 5

What do we see here ? God is on the throne. Yet there is a pause. In the divine hand is a scroll, written inside and on the back, double-edged like a sword. There lies the beauty and wonder of our situation. We are not atoms amidst stars without number; rather are we persons amidst words without number, assigning law to life and understanding to man. Words there are, of judgment for vileness,  amid salvation from  virtue, divine in origin and in gift; and  to ignore these words is like forgetting to breathe:  only confusion or death results.

Thus the scroll written on both sides  appears in heaven, amidst a vast congregation.  A question comes into the holy presences. WHO is WORTHY to open the scroll ? An angel delivers the charge. Before the throne there is a sea of crystalline clarity, and crowns are cast at the feet of God, in voluntary delight at His all supervening glory, and they cry,

"YOU are worthy O Lord to receive glory and honour and power,
for You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created."

God both created and maintains His worlds! Seen simply,  consider the case when awkwardly you cut your hand or arm, mouth: then observe the sheer wonder of its reconstruction,  multi-stage, intriguingly contrived healing, even when there were considerable wounds! Millions of cells are involved with vast quantities of information; organisation in ingenious complexity abounds, commands thrust, and this works: you are inaudibly mended.  Why then is there now this question, WHO is worthy to open the scroll ?

Is it not  obvious ? Clearly, God has seen fit to place the grand opening in the hands of another, already written as it is. There is to be a CEO, an executive who will translate or ensure the translation of the words into actions. Who can this be ? Whom did He send, to die for sin ? whom, to show the way, the life and the truth ? Yet how very many have attacked this same Saviour, denying His majesty, roused at His power, gritting their teeth at His grace! What is the outcome ?

THE PAUSE

For some time, strangely, awesomely, pregnantly in depth, no one is found in heaven or earth, however to open the scroll, and thus release the last phases of human history on this globe, to the light of common day.  John tells us that he therefore is engaged in deep weeping, because of the lack, as well he might;  for if this world had no worthy person to release the finalities of history what that is unworthy might try! what travesty result. Yet who more worthy than the One, beautiful in holiness, endowered with responsibility, who had entered history as a man, exhibited the power, pity and purity of God in that human form and experienced atrocities in return, such as we now find often with malignant might from Islamic sources, just as such horrors had long been so in Communist hands, and before that in Inquisitorial ones ? Thus He redeemed.

Imagine if this earth were like a deserted island in terms of utter loveliness such as is God's, so that the entire race simply went its way in its follies, sold but not redeemed, divested but not re-invested, encouraged but not enabled, and all went out like a mob surging into battle to die!

It was not to be so. DO NOT WEEP! said the angel to John just as it is said to us; for

 "Behold , the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed
to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals."

Having become man, He could manage; having paid the price to  evacuate from the simple onset of hell,  He could take the scroll revealing what is to come; and taking it, He could open it. No more was there any opening for the sneers of the weary: Does God care! He cared enough to come in person and DO IT,  all required. Glorious in power and wisdom, He was shown also wonderful in compassion and fatherly pity,  splendid in meekness, and this not in word only, but in deed, and not in deed only, but in performance of  all that truth required and mercy desired.

Thus we read in Revelation 5:6: "And I looked, and behold in the midst of the throne and of the four elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain..." It is not the conquering hero but the crucified Christ who is now displayed. It is HE who died, and is alive for evermore He comes to terminate history, the cross always in view, so that no one can ever get to hell without in some way, rejecting it (John 15:22-25)!

That being so, history before the God of all love and grace and comfort, may now proceed. The words are exposed like a program: the truth follows. Who is ready for it! Adequate provision has been made, and famous is the Faithful and the True witness Jesus Christ, who has paid not least to make history possible, through His blood. How can any then escape who does not come to Him, as Hebrews 2:1-3 points out; but there He is, and now can history  proceed to the various phases of judgment, with mercy always at hand, for the asking, for the taking in the hand of truth! (Micah 7:19ff., Revelation 22:17).

THE PRINCE

Now comes this Prince of glory. Recognition is immediate and His praiseworthy actions make of Him an incomparable choice. Why is He worthy ? Revelation 5:9 tells us, it is because "You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by Your blood, out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation."

Instead of immoral lords and presidents, morally empty Prime Ministers, self-indulging princes, charming despots turning drunken louts, crowd manipulators, mafia-presences penetrating like a mustard gas into many societies, lovers of power deploying themselves for their own profit or imagined good, we now have One whose solution of the sin problem, and resolution of every other problem is so glorious (though in a spiritual parallel, as with antibiotics in the early days, when there was little resistance - so here, in many faith is distorted before they even react, because many onsets have left the heart weary and the mind stalled), that true indeed is the voice of the angels What do they cry ? It is as in Revelation 5:12, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and riches and wisdom, and strength and honour and glory and blessing."

Yes, it is to "Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, forever and ever!´

Look at your spiritual paramours, partisans, self-pronouncing leaders and weep at the folly of even considering some other person, or his way or thoughts or ideals or ideas, in the very presence of those of the Lamb. A Lamb who is also Lord of glory, a Shepherd who knows His sheep who follow Him and know His voice! A Lord who directs as if deranged, whose vassals learn to know his rank purposes or starry confusions: what have these in common!

THE PEOPLE

Nor is this all. He has paid out this triumph, for He has "made them kings and priests to our God; and we shall reign on the earth." Then they fell down and worshipped Him (Rev. 5:14)

Man is now busy worshipping at the throne of science, where tentative knowledge constantly changes and varies according to the philosophic and religious contaminants which pre-set the mind of the scientists, so that they imagine now this, now that, in the realm of truth, and lay down the law, before changing it once more, with great authority. By many in the field, he is led no less surely than by many in the other dictatorships among men, such as the political and the social, and often the academic, when these fields are entered, to worship. The point ? It is that worship involves an entire surrender to some force, power, person, resource, recourse, without qualification, so that what it has either to say or do, is accepted as if from God.

That is worship. If it is not some creed, or simple application of it (thus some try to manipulate scientific method so that you do not even have to find verification wherever it lies, and failure to verify is no more to exclude a theory), it is some exemplification of heroic power, as some imagine in some of the sports. Self-deprived of God, many fall like Autumn leaves off the tree of life in order to cling to the ground, impure and littered, of some merely created object or idea.

Most are now worshipping, many who pretend  to be Christian, this or that, and not the Christ, the God who made them, the word of God their rocky foundation, Christ the living foundation of their lives. Instead, they do NOT say with loud voice, WORTHY IS THE LAMB, but worthwhile is the network, the body politic, academic, scientific, social or whatever else may take their fancies. Let it receive honour and glory for ever and ever! they show by their actions, to be in their hearts. But WHAT makes such merely created and often straying, indeed sometimes strangling bodies so worthy ? It is nothing so much as the fact that God being removed from their thoughts, the true and living, the sovereign and glorious God, whom to worship is merely right and natural, there is a READINESS to worship something else.

It is like having good eyes, and refusing to use them right, finding you get all kinds of weird results when your use is amiss!

But what is the true result of the One who has proven Himself worthy ? It is as the text declares, that  He has "made them kings and priests to our God: and we shall reign on the earth." From Revelation 22:4-5, we find further:

 "They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads,"

and this:

 "They shall reign for ever and ever."

Some imagine themselves as gods in the making. Ludicrous: gods at the least have to have certain autonomous powers of dynamic thrust; and those who belong to God have, in their final and perfected lives, nothing of this. Initiative and imagination ? of course, for that is part of being in the image of God. But self-imposed, self-serving, self-important thrust, of this nothing! Let God be God and keep your place; it is only then that the realities of grace make of that place a thing of wonder. It is then that man may indeed with his fellows, be kings and priests to God.

But how a priest ? In this, that there is no need of HAVING the work of some priest, to set you straight. You ARE one. As Christ cut short the entire sacrificial system, by BEING the victim and offeror and temple, collapsing into one, all those former mediations and intermediaries, so now being IN CHRIST (John 15), with Christ IN YOU (Colossians 1:27), there is a directness of action, and in the end, the Lamb and His Father ARE the temple, as in Revelation 21:22.

But how kings ? When you love God, you can do as you please, Augustine is famed for saying, or words to this effect. Now it is imperfect, but true in principle; then it is true in direct action. There is no more cleavage between what you want and what you get, for what you want is precisely in such accord with your Father's will and His Son's provision for you, that the gap no more exists. But let us take care!

This is not to say that your every whim, caprice and desire is gloriously fulfilled, as if you were some indulged potentate. Rather is it that desires are in the light, and the light is in the desires, so that sin being excluded (Revelation 21:8), there is room for that blessed sonship, that blessed daughterly position (in fact the genders no more apply - but this in present-day terms), where growth and increase consorts with wisdom and diligence, joy and wonder, and the ashes of wrong enterprise are never to sully the air.

Fatherly counsel and power, removal of evil, shepherding love and concern, these move through the  presence of His people like perfumes in  Spring (Isaiah 9:6-7, Hosea 13:6, Galatians 3:28, Revelation 7:14-17, Malachi 3:17, Isaiah 28:5, 33:17).

As in Revelation 21:4:

"God will wipe away every tear from their eyes: there shall be no more death,
nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain,
for the former things have passed away."

You don't have to pay because not only has the Saviour covered all your costs of litigation, no more necessary, since Christ died for you and you have received His gift as a Christian, but
"I will give of the water of life freely to him who thirsts," and again,

"And the Spirit and the bride say, "Come!".  And let him who hears say, "Come!"
And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely."