Day

Today’s Passage: Revelation 4

For two chapters the risen Christ has walked among seven congregations in seven working towns of the Asian province. He named their loves and compromises one at a time. The view has been close and local: a lampstand in one place, a false teacher in another, a church with a fine reputation and no life inside. Now a door opens in heaven. A voice calls John up. The view pulls back further than any human eye has ever been permitted to see. Before you are shown anything about what is to come, you are shown a throne in heaven with someone seated on it, and every crown in that room ends up on the floor in front of it. Everything that follows in this book—every seal, trumpet, and bowl, every terror and rescue—unfolds from that throne and under the eye of the One who sits there. Chapter four gives you the room before it gives you the events. John describes the One on the throne the way a man describes a fire: by color and light. He assigns Him no face. Around Him sit twenty-four elders on twenty-four thrones. Four living creatures surround the center, stating without pause that He is holy. Twice the scene breaks into song. The chapter ends with crowned beings removing their crowns and placing them on the floor before the throne, declaring God worthy because He made everything that exists. Readers in a hurry treat chapter four as a corridor on the way to the seals. It is the room the rest of the book is written from.

Revelation 4:1–4 (BSB)

¹ After this I looked and saw a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had previously heard speak to me like a trumpet was saying, “Come up here, and I will show you what must happen after these things.” ² At once I was in the Spirit, and I saw a throne standing in heaven, with someone seated on it. ³ The One seated there looked like jasper and carnelian, and a rainbow that gleamed like an emerald encircled the throne. ⁴ Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and on these thrones sat twenty-four elders dressed in white, with golden crowns on their heads.

The door is standing open already. John does not open it. Heaven is disclosed to us. A man does not storm it. He is called up and shown. He does not climb up and find out what God is doing. The voice that calls him is one he already knows. It is the voice like a trumpet he heard behind him in chapter one, belonging to the Son of Man with eyes like blazing fire and a face like the sun. The same Christ who has finished walking through those seven troubled congregations is the One who now says, Come up here. The letter to Laodicea and the door standing open in heaven sit back to back on the page. They are the exact same world.

Before John describes anything around it, he gives the sentence itself. He saw a throne (θρόνος) thronos, pronounced THRO-noss. Strong's G2362, throne, a seat of royal or judicial authority. Thronos is the Greek word for a seat of state, the chair a king or a judge occupies. It becomes a load-bearing word of this book. It occurs some four dozen times in Revelation, far more than in the rest of the New Testament put together. The count makes John’s argument for him without a word of comment. You will find other thrones here. Satan has his seat on one. The beast receives a throne. The dragon has a throne. The book acknowledges that evil holds real power in the world and sits down in real chairs. Every one of those thrones is temporary, derivative, and doomed. The throne planted in heaven on the first page is still standing on the last. By the final pages, only one remains, and it is called the throne of God and of the Lamb, standing in a city where His servants worship Him. A believer’s stability in a hostile age comes from knowing exactly who is seated. He has not stood up, and He will not be moved. standing in heaven, with someone seated on it. Three facts anchor the verse: a throne, its position in heaven, and an occupant. God chooses to show a persecuted church this reality first. These people had watched a brother die at Pergamum. They were being shut out of trade and society at Smyrna. They could see with their own eyes that the men with swords appeared to be in charge. The Lord begins by opening a door and letting them see who is actually seated. He bypasses the schedule entirely.

John speaks about the One on the throne with exact care. What he refuses to say does as much work as what he says. He gives us stone and light. He assigns no face, no features, and no form. Jasper in the ancient world meant a translucent crystal-clear gem, blazing white. Carnelian was a deep blood-red. A rainbow with the green fire of an emerald circled the throne. The apostle who leaned on Jesus’ chest at supper, who saw the risen Lord and touched Him, comes into the presence of God the Father and reaches for the language of gemstones. Human speech has run out. Ezekiel had done the same thing centuries earlier from a refugee camp in Babylon, reaching for the exact same rainbow:

"Above the expanse over their heads was the likeness of a throne with the appearance of sapphire, and on the throne high above was a figure like that of a man. From what seemed to be His waist up, I saw a gleam like amber, with what looked like fire within it all around. And from what seemed to be His waist down, I saw what looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded Him. The appearance of the brilliant light all around Him was like that of a rainbow in a cloud on a rainy day. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. And when I saw it, I fell facedown and heard a voice speaking." Ezekiel 1:26–28 (BSB)

Both men pile up the words likeness and appearance and what looked like. They are holding the reader back from the fire with an outstretched arm. A rainbow rings the throne. The last time a bow appeared in the clouds in Scripture, God had just sworn never again to destroy the earth with a flood. He hung it in the sky as a sign of a promise He made to a world that had earned nothing from Him. Now the same bow encircles the throne itself. It forms a complete ring of covenant mercy around the place where all judgment is decided. There is no approach to that throne except through the rainbow.

Around the throne are twenty-four more thrones, with twenty-four elders on them, dressed in white and wearing golden crowns. Christians have read these elders in two main ways. Many take them as the redeemed people of God in representative form, the twelve tribes and the twelve apostles together, since they wear the white robes and the victor’s crown this book promises to those who overcome. Others take them as an exalted order of heavenly beings, a council around the throne. They point out that the priests of Israel served in twenty-four courses and that these elders act as ministers rather than as the redeemed. Careful, reverent believers hold both readings. Scripture leaves the question open here. What the chapter says about them matters more than their exact identity. They have thrones and they have crowns. In seven verses you will see what they do with them.

Revelation 4:5–8 (BSB)

⁵ From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder. Before the throne burned seven torches of fire. These are the seven spirits of God. ⁶ And before the throne was something like a sea of glass, as clear as crystal. In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, covered with eyes in front and back. ⁷ The first living creature was like a lion, the second like a calf, the third had a face like a man, and the fourth was like an eagle in flight. ⁸ And each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around and within. Day and night they never stop saying: “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”

The lightning and the thunder are a quotation. Every Israelite child knew where that sound came from. It is what the nation heard on the morning God came down on the mountain to give His law:

"On the third day, when morning came, there was thunder and lightning. A thick cloud was upon the mountain, and a very loud blast of the ram’s horn went out, so that all the people in the camp trembled." Exodus 19:16 (BSB)

Whatever else John is being shown, he is being shown the same God who came down on Sinai. A man standing in that room would tremble exactly as the camp trembled. Before the throne burn seven torches of fire. The text explains these as the seven spirits of God, a phrase this book has already used twice. It is bound up with the fullness and completeness of God’s own Spirit, sevenfold as Isaiah described Him resting on the coming Branch. Spread out before the throne is something like a sea of glass, clear as crystal. In the temple in Jerusalem stood a huge basin of cast bronze called the Sea, where the priests washed before they could serve. No one came near the holy things with dirty hands. Here the sea is stillness made visible. It is not water. No storm crosses it. No wave disturbs it. Anybody who has been out in a small boat in weather knows what a flat sea says about who is in charge of it.

Then John describes the creatures, where his language strains hardest. You see four living beings, covered with eyes in front and behind and all around and within, six wings apiece. One looks like a lion, one like a calf, one has a human face, and one looks like an eagle in flight. Isaiah’s seraphim had six wings. Ezekiel’s cherubim by the river had four faces and were full of eyes. John is being shown something of the same order. Believers read them in more than one way. Some take them as the highest rank of angelic beings, the seraphim and cherubim of Isaiah and Ezekiel now seen together. Others read the four faces as covering the whole created order: the wild animals, the domestic animals, mankind, and the birds. They hear these beings as creation itself given a voice at the throne. Later Christian tradition attached them to the four Gospels, though the New Testament never does. Scripture does not settle the identification. What matters is the eyes, the wings, and the words. The eyes mean that nothing escapes the notice of this throne. The wings mean that these beings are never at rest. The words mean that the highest, oldest, most powerful creatures God ever made spend their existence saying one thing about Him.

They never stop saying that He is holy (ἅγιος) hagios, pronounced HAH-ghee-oss. Strong's G40, holy, set apart, wholly other. Hagios means set apart, other, belonging to a different order altogether. Behind it lies the Hebrew qadosh. The root idea is separation rather than mere moral goodness, though moral perfection follows from it as light follows the sun. To say that God is holy is to say first that He is unlike us and unlike anything He has made. He stands off the page of the world’s catalog rather than at the top of it. Because His character is entirely consistent with His being, it means He is utterly pure. Nothing false, cruel, or unclean can survive near Him. Hold those two together and you understand why Isaiah, a good and godly man by every human measure, saw this same throne and cried out that he was ruined. The same word is the everyday New Testament word for a Christian. Believers are called hagioi, holy ones, saints. Paul uses it of quarreling, immature, unremarkable congregations. The word that makes Isaiah fall apart at the sight of God is the word God cheerfully attaches to sinners He has bought. This choice represents the astonishing generosity of the cross, which will be sung about in the very next chapter. Give thanks that the thrice-holy God calls you by His own adjective. , holy, holy, the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. Hebrew had no italics and no underlining. When it wanted to make something absolute, it repeated the word. To say a thing three times was to lift it as high as language could reach. Scripture never says that God is love, love, love, or mercy, mercy, mercy, true as both of those are. His holiness gets the threefold cry, from the seraphim in Isaiah’s day to these creatures at the end of the age. The title they attach to it is the Lord God Almighty, the Ruler of all. This book uses that title again and again for the God whose people are being crushed by an empire that thought it ruled everything. Then you hear the great sweep of time: who was, and is, and is to come. He holds all three tenses in His hand at once. That is a larger thing than having been mighty once in the days of Moses and perhaps being mighty again some day. The third of the three is the one they leave ringing in the room. He is coming.

Revelation 4:9–11 (BSB)

⁹ And whenever the living creatures give glory, honor, and thanks to the One seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, ¹⁰ the twenty-four elders fall down before the One seated on the throne, and they worship Him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying: ¹¹ “Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things; by Your will they exist and were created.”

The creatures sing, and their song sets the elders in motion. Whenever the four give glory and honor and thanks, the twenty-four come down off their thrones and go to the floor. It is a room where worship starts a chain reaction. One company’s praise cannot be heard without another company joining it. Anybody who has been carried into worship by the person singing next to them has felt a small version of the same thing. Look at the word whenever. John watched the standing business of that room. It has been doing this for as long as it has existed, and it is doing it at this moment while you read.

They cast their crowns before the throne. These are crowns of gold, and every one of them was given to them. Nobody in heaven wears a crown he manufactured for himself. The only thing the elders can think to do with what they have been given is to take it off and throw it down at the feet of the One who gave it. A first-century reader knew exactly what that meant. A subject king did exactly that when he came to Caesar. Men who had watched such a ceremony understood in their bones that it was an act of total surrender. In heaven the same act brings total joy. It carries no humiliation. Nobody in that room wants the crown once they have seen the throne. Every last thing we have to lay down was handed to us in the first place. This is the only honest thing a creature can ever do with an honor.

Now hear the hymn. Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power. In a province full of temples where crowds shouted that title at a man in Rome, those words were an act of defiance. The churches would not have missed it. The hymn is a protest. It also provides a reason. Worthy, for You created all things; by Your will they exist and were created. There is the ground of all worship. In this first song it is creation, standing ahead of God’s power and ahead even of His work as our Savior. It is that He created (κτίζω) ktizō, pronounced KTID-zo. Strong's G2936, to create, to call into being, to found. Ktizō is the verb for founding something. In everyday Greek it was used of a man founding a city, laying it out and bringing it into being where nothing had stood before. The New Testament reserves it almost entirely for God. It is the word for calling a thing into existence. It avoids the idea of shaping material that was already lying about. That is why the elders can put two statements side by side in one line: everything exists, and everything was created. The one explains the other. Nothing is self-standing. Nothing is here on its own account. Nothing keeps itself in being for a single second. The elders also make God’s will the middle term. He deliberately willed it. He did not wind up a machine and walk away. Creation did not leak out of God by necessity. A Christian can look at a mountain or a newborn or a beetle and feel worship rise rather than mere admiration. The very first ground of praise in heaven is a doctrine some people find dry. It means the sea and the stars and your own breath this morning belong to Him. It means that the God on the throne is not a rival power fighting for control of a universe that might have been somebody else’s. It is all His, every inch. That is exactly why the book you are reading ends the way it does. all things, and that everything exists because He wanted it to. You exist on purpose. The sky exists on purpose. Every atom in this universe is here because God willed it. That gives Him a claim on all of it that no other being can have or share.

Two chapters ago the picture was a handful of pressured little congregations with mixed records. Some were faithful, some frightened, some drifting. Now you have seen the room those congregations actually live in. There is a throne. It is occupied. It is ringed with covenant mercy. It is served by beings who never tire of calling God holy. It is surrounded by crowned figures who cannot keep their crowns on. Nothing about the churches’ circumstances has changed in the time it took to read eleven verses. Everything about the perspective has.