Revelation 4

Today’s Passage: Revelation 4

Something changes here, and you ought to feel it change. For two chapters the risen Christ has been walking among seven small congregations in seven ordinary towns, naming their loves and their compromises one at a time, and the view has been very close and very local: a lampstand in one place, a false teacher in another, a church with a fine reputation and no life in it. Now a door opens in heaven, a voice calls John up through it, and the view pulls back farther than any human eye has ever been permitted to see. Notice what he is shown first. Not a timetable. Not a war. Not a beast. A throne, and someone seated on it. Everything that follows in this book, every seal and trumpet and bowl, every terror and every 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, and that order is itself a kindness. John describes the One on the throne the way a man describes a fire, by colour and light, and quietly refuses to give Him a face. Around Him are twenty-four thrones with elders seated on them. In the middle and around Him are four living creatures who never stop saying that He is holy. Twice the scene breaks into song. And the chapter ends with a company of crowned beings taking off their crowns and laying them on the floor before the throne, telling God that He is worthy because He made everything that is. Do not hurry through this. This chapter is not a corridor to somewhere more exciting. It is the room the whole rest of the book is written from.

As you read, hold this: 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.

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.

Notice that John does not open the door. It is standing open already, and that is how everything in this book works. Heaven is never stormed; it is disclosed. A man does not climb up and find out what God is doing, he is called up and shown, and even then he is shown in pictures. The voice that calls him is one he already knows, the voice like a trumpet he heard behind him in chapter one, which belonged to the Son of Man with eyes like blazing fire and a face like the sun. So the same Christ who has just finished walking through those seven troubled congregations is the One who now says, Come up here. Hold those two scenes together, because the letter to Laodicea and the door standing open in heaven are back to back on the page, and they are not two different worlds.

Then, before John describes anything else, comes the sentence the whole book is built on. He saw a throne (θρόνος) thronos, pronounced THRO-noss. Strong's G2362, throne, a seat of royal or judicial authority. Thronos is a plain Greek word for a seat of state, the chair a king or a judge occupies, and it becomes one of the load-bearing words of this book. It occurs some four dozen times in Revelation, far more than in the rest of the New Testament put together, and once you start counting them you begin to see the argument John is making without a word of comment. There are other thrones in this book. There is a throne where Satan has his seat, there is a throne given to the beast, there is a throne of the dragon. The book is perfectly honest that evil holds real power in the world and sits down in real chairs. But every one of those thrones is temporary, derivative and doomed, and the book opens by planting one throne in heaven and never letting you forget it is there. By the final pages there is only one left, 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 does not come from knowing what happens next. It comes from knowing who is seated, and that He has not stood up, and He will not be moved. standing in heaven, with someone seated on it. Read it again slowly, and count what is in it. There is a throne. It is in heaven. And it is not empty. That is the first thing God chooses to show a persecuted church, and it is worth asking why. These were people who had watched a brother die at Pergamum, who were being shut out of trade and society at Smyrna, who could see with their own eyes that the men with the swords appeared to be in charge. To such people the Lord does not begin by explaining the schedule. He begins by opening a door and letting them see who is actually seated. Whatever else you take from this chapter, take that.

Now watch how carefully John speaks about the One on the throne, because what he refuses to say is as instructive as what he says. He gives no face, no features, no form. He gives us stone and light. Jasper, which in the ancient world could mean a translucent crystal-clear gem, blazing white. Carnelian, a deep blood-red. And around the throne a rainbow with the green fire of an emerald in it. That is all. 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 because human speech has run out. Ezekiel had done the same thing centuries earlier from a refugee camp in Babylon, and he reached for the 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)

Notice how both men pile up the words likeness and appearance and what looked like, as though they are holding the reader back from the fire with an outstretched arm. And do not miss what the rainbow is doing there. The last time a bow appeared in the clouds in Scripture, God had just sworn never again to destroy the earth with a flood, and He hung it in the sky as a sign of a promise He made to a world that had earned nothing from Him. Now it encircles the throne itself, a complete ring of covenant mercy around the place where all judgment is decided. A reader who has come to this book afraid ought to sit with that for a good while. 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 that this book promises to those who overcome. Others take them as an exalted order of heavenly beings, a council around the throne, and point out that the priests of Israel served in twenty-four courses and that these elders act as ministers rather than as the redeemed. Both readings are held by careful and reverent believers. Scripture does not settle it here, and this study will not settle it either. What the chapter clearly does say about them is far more important than their identity: they have thrones and they have crowns, and 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 not decoration. They are a quotation. Every Israelite child knew where that sound came from, because 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)

So this is not a comfortable room. Whatever else John is being shown, he is being shown the same God who came down on Sinai, and the trembling is appropriate. Before the throne burn seven torches of fire, which the text itself explains as the seven spirits of God, a phrase this book has already used twice and which is bound up with the fullness and completeness of God’s own Spirit, sevenfold as Isaiah described Him resting on the coming Branch. And spread out before the throne is something like a sea of glass, clear as crystal. In the temple in Jerusalem there stood a huge basin of cast bronze called the Sea, where the priests washed before they could serve, and no one came near the holy things with dirty hands. Here the sea is not water at all; it is stillness made visible. No storm crosses it, no wave disturbs it. If you have ever been out in a small boat in weather, you know what a flat sea means. Everything is under control.

And then the creatures, and here John’s language strains hardest. Four living beings, covered with eyes in front and behind and all around and within, six wings apiece, one like a lion, one like a calf, one with a human face, one 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, and again believers read them in more than one way. Some take them simply as the highest rank of angelic beings, the seraphim and cherubim of Isaiah and Ezekiel now seen together. Others notice that the four faces cover the whole created order, the wild animals and the domestic animals, mankind and the birds, and hear them as creation itself given a voice at the throne. Later Christian tradition attached them to the four Gospels, though the New Testament never does. Once more, Scripture does not tell us, and it does not matter nearly as much as we would like it to. What matters is the eyes and the wings and the words. The eyes mean that nothing whatever escapes the notice of this throne. The wings mean that these beings are never at rest. And 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, and 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 not like us and not like anything He has made. He is not the best item in the world’s catalogue, He is off the page. And then, because His character is entirely consistent with His being, it means He is utterly pure, so that 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. Now notice something that ought to make you sit up. The very same word is the ordinary New Testament word for a Christian. Believers are called hagioi, holy ones, saints, and it is used of quarrelling, immature, ordinary congregations. The word that makes Isaiah fall apart at the sight of God is the word God cheerfully attaches to sinners He has bought. That is not a lowering of the standard. It is 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, and 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. It is His holiness that gets the threefold cry, from the seraphim in Isaiah’s day to these creatures at the end of the age. And look at the title they attach to it. The Lord God Almighty, the Ruler of all, a title this book uses again and again for the God whose people are being crushed by an empire that thought it ruled everything. Then the great sweep of time: who was, and is, and is to come. Not a God who was mighty once in the days of Moses and may be again someday, but the One who holds all three tenses in His hand at once, and 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.”

Watch the choreography, because it is beautiful. The creatures sing, and their song sets the elders in motion. Whenever the four give glory and honour 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, where one company’s praise cannot be heard without another company joining it, and there is a lesson in that for anybody who has ever been carried into worship by the person singing next to them. Notice also the little word whenever. This is not an event that happened once while John watched. It is what that room is always doing, and has been doing for as long as it has existed, and is doing at this moment while you read.

Then comes the gesture that ought to be printed on the inside of every believer’s eyelids. 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. And 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, because that is what a subject king did when he came to Caesar, and men who had watched such a ceremony understood in their bones that it was an act of total surrender. In heaven it is not humiliation, it is joy. Nobody in that room wants the crown once they have seen the throne. And it turns out that this is the only honest thing a creature can ever do with an honour, since every last thing we have to lay down was handed to us in the first place.

And now the hymn, and this is where the chapter lands. 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, these words are quiet dynamite, and the churches would not have missed it. But do not read the hymn only as protest, because it is far more than that. It is a reason given. Worthy, for You created all things; by Your will they exist and were created. There is the ground of all worship, and it is not that God is powerful, and it is not even, in this first song, that He is our Saviour. 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, and in ordinary 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 not a word for shaping material that was already lying about; it is the word for calling a thing into existence, which 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. Notice too that the elders make God’s will the middle term. Creation is not something that leaked out of God by necessity, nor a machine He wound up and walked away from. It is deliberate. He wanted it. That is why a Christian can look at a mountain or a newborn or a beetle and feel worship rise rather than merely admiration, and it is why the very first ground of praise in heaven is a doctrine some people find dry. It is not dry at all. It means the sea and the stars and your own breath this morning belong to Him, and 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, and 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 are not an accident and neither is the sky. Every atom in this universe is here because God willed it, and that gives Him a claim on all of it that no other being can have or share.

Sit with that ending for a moment before you go on. Two chapters ago the picture was a handful of pressured little congregations with mixed records, some 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, and 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.