MEDICINE FOR AN ACHING SOUL

Revelation 4:1-3
November 13, 2005
Bob Bonner

For the past two weeks, France has experienced mayhem, the likes of which I have never read about in that country’s history. The riots brought on by frustration, deeply felt injustices, religious prejudices and lack of jobs or hope is truly disturbing. I imagine that there are many people there who are asking, “Does anyone care? Does God care? If He does, what’s He doing about it?”

In Iraq, the wife and mother, and the children of an Iraq lawyer are now without a husband and father. This week, this lawyer assigned to defend Saddam Hussein was murdered, the second of two murdered attorneys. She, too, must be asking, “What’s the sense of all of this?”

Even more close to home is a question that hangs over me as a new grandfather. Several months ago, Patty and John Beeler’s daughter gave birth to Judah, born with severe birth defects. On November 3, Judah moved into the everlasting arms of Jesus. Yet, two days before his passing, the Bonners are gifted with a relatively healthy baby granddaughter. Why us and not them? We are all Christians and love the Lord. Why, God? When life doesn’t make sense, our souls ache.

This morning we are going to look at a passage of Scripture, that I believe one of its purposes was to bring some spiritual medicine for an aching soul. The events that we are going to read about this morning were an encouragement to one in particular and eventually to many, who were living through difficult soul-searching and soul-aching times. Those times, when one wonders or questions God, “Do you really know what you’re doing? This makes no moral sense to me. I can see no good outcome or specific righteous purpose to the present events that are surrounding my life.”

If you have your Bibles with you, please open them to Revelation 4. Allow me to remind you of the personal setting of this scene; and by “personal setting,” I mean what was happening in the apostle John’s life and heart when Jesus showed up to reveal what we are going to look at this morning. Because what we are reading didn’t take place in a vacuum; it involved an individual whose remaining years of life were marked by what he saw that day. 

I remind you that the apostle John was one of 12 handpicked disciples and apostles of Jesus Christ. By this time in Church history, John had seen or heard that all of the other 12 disciples of Jesus Christ had been martyred for their faith. Besides them, he had come to know many other Christians who had lost their families, lost their jobs, lost their possessions and had been ostracized from their communities simply because they chose to follow Jesus Christ. In addition, John had seen other Christians arrested and tortured for their faith. Yet he was still alive. Why? What kind of God would allow such a thing? Why should he, of all of Christ’s handpicked apostles, still be allowed to live?

Then, one day John, himself, is arrested for his worship of Jesus Christ and for his refusal to bow a knee in worship to the emperor of Rome. He is tried, found guilty and exiled to the Island of Patmos, a forsaken island, destroyed by war, with little or no vegetation. At the time of Christ’s visit to John on the island, he had come to accept that this is where he would die, in total obscurity. He was forced to live out the end of his life without his closest friends or family around him. No longer free to sleep on a bed, he slept in a prison cell, most likely on the hard ground. That might not seem like a hardship to a young person who loves to go camping, but for someone pushing 80 years of age, that is very hard on the old body.

Being an apostle does not remove one from being human. Being called of God, like John the Baptist was, did not keep him, from within the darkness of his own cell, from questioning if he had really done right following and believing in this Jesus. Those same honest human feelings must have been felt by this apostle as well.

Then, without notice, Jesus shows up and transports John into the spiritual realm of heaven. According to chapter one, when John recognizes the voice of Jesus, he falls to the ground in fear and worship. Jesus reaches down, touches him and tells him, “Don’t be afraid. I have a project for you to fulfill. I want you to write down all that I tell you and am about to show you, so that all the Christians that come after you, will be encouraged by what I have to say.”

So, right there, John starts taking mental notes. But then, without warning, Jesus grants John a special invitation to experience something no other human being has yet to experience. And that’s what we are going to begin looking at this morning. Follow along as I read just the first three verses of this event.

“After these things, I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I had heard, like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me, said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things.” ²Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne. ³And He who was sitting was like a jasper stone and a sardius in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, like an emerald in appearance.” Revelation 4:1-3

If you recall from our previous studies, we have a divine outline for the book of Revelation given to us in 1:19. Here, Jesus instructs the apostle John to record Christ’s revelation for others to read in the three major divisions. John’s record of Christ’s revelation chronologically deals with those things that concerned John’s past “what you have seen,” John’s present life, “what is now” and what is going to take place long after John is dead, or “what will take place later.” 

This last section, which we are entering into this morning, presents a more graphic picture of the future, given in more detail, than any other part of the Bible. Such a revelation is a fitting climax to all the biblical prophecies relating to human history, especially considering that they are properly centered around the person and work of Jesus Christ. These next two chapters, Revelation 4 and 5, set the stage for the tremendous sweep of prophetic events predicted in the rest of the book of Revelation. These two chapters, 4 and 5, are what I call transition chapters.

In 4:1, John clearly signals that we are now transitioning from the second section of this book into the third section, with a phrase that bookends this verse. In that phrase are the words “After these things.” This phrase signals to us that there is a major shift in subject matter as well as in the scene. It shifts abruptly from speaking to the Church about the Church to future events that do not involve the Church. In addition, John moves from the physical realm of earth, to that invisible, spiritual realm in which God dwells and from which God rules. Hence, from this point on, the events we read about take place chronologically sometime after Christ’s letters to the seven Churches in chapters 2 and 3 were received. 

Since Jesus has said seven different times in chapters 2 and 3, that His words to these seven Churches did not just apply to those seven first century Churches but to all of the Churches, I take the “after these things” to refer to that period of time that follows the Church age.

The Church age refers to that period of time when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost and bound all Christians into one universal group called “the Church.” This period ends with what is called “the Rapture,” that period in time when God removes all the Christians from the earth suddenly and without warning, so that those Christians who are alive on earth will not have to endure the final seven horrible years of this earth’s history, known as the Tribulation.  

For those who may be new to Bible prophecy, allow me a moment to further explain this concept of “the Rapture.” It means a catching, or snatching away. Even though the word “rapture” is not found in the Bible, the event that we call the Rapture can be supported as real and is signaled to take place in several passages in Scripture. Probably the two most significant passages are 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and Revelation 3:10.

I believe that this event, the Rapture is signaled in the original Greek language of 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. In this passage, the apostle Paul is writing to the Christians at Thessalonica in answer to one of their questions. They had heard a teaching that Jesus was going to come again to the earth and rescue His followers from the travails of this life. However, by this time in the first century, many Christians had died. Those Christians who were still alive were left confused and wondered if what they had been told about Jesus coming again was really going to happen, and if so, what would happen to their loved ones who had already died? In response to their concerns, Paul writes, ^13”But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. ¹⁴For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. ¹⁵For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁶For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. ¹⁸Therefore comfort one another with these words.”

The expression “will be caught up” is the translation of the word from which we get the idea of “rapture.” It speaks of a sudden catching away. I believe this “being caught up” or this sudden catching away referred to as “the Rapture” is clearly spoken of by Jesus in His promise found in Revelation 3:10, in which He comforts the believers with this guarantee. He says, “Because you have kept the word of My perseverance, I also will keep you from the hour of testing, that hour which is about to come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth.”  Literally, the words “keep you from” mean “keep you out of.” In other words, Jesus is not saying here, like God did to Noah that He would be with Noah in the ark and deliver him through the flood.  Jesus is telling the Christians that He will literally take them out of or remove them from the scene so that they will not experience the “hour of testing” that he will be speaking to in Revelation 6-19.

Part of this “hour of testing” is a clear reference to what Jesus refers to in Matthew 24 as “the great distress.” In Matthew 24, Jesus is not addressing His comments to the Church, or to Christians, but to the Jews of His day. Furthermore, He is telling these Jews that His comments will not affect them, but future Jews and gentiles, some of whom will be saved after the Rapture and some who will not be saved.

What is really interesting for the student of the Bible is, you can almost put down as a perfect overlay, the chronological order of Christ’s prophecies to the Jews in Matthew 24, with Christ’s prophecies in Revelation 6-19. The time spoken of by Christ in Matthew 24 and in Revelation 6-19 is a time of worldwide upheaval, the magnitude of which has yet to be experienced in history. 

But different than His explanation in Matthew 24, of these times given to those who would reject Him, and as a result would live through these horrible days, Jesus promises the Christians in Revelation 3:10 to “keep you [the Church] from the hour of testing.” Note, this is not, as some have taken it, a blanket promise to Christians that they will be kept from all trials or persecution. This is only Christ’s promise that we would be removed from that seven-year period of time known as “the Tribulation.”

Additional evidence from Revelation that leads me to believe that the Rapture already will have taken place by the time we come to Revelation 4, is the obvious absence of the mentioning of “the Church” or any terms that might be associated with the Church until chapter 22:16, or a less obvious reference to the Church as “the wife of the Lamb” until chapter 19:7. Keep in mind that in the first three chapters of Revelation there has been an intensive focus on the Church. Now, suddenly, beginning with chapter 4 and for the next 16 chapters there is not one mention of the Church, or the “body of Christ.”       

The only explanation for the obvious absence of the mention of the Church in these 16 chapters is twofold: First, is that the primary focus of the prophesied events in these upcoming chapters does not concern the Church, but the judgment of an unbelieving world. And second, that Jesus will make good on His promise to keep His bride (the Church) having to participate in the events of those days. 

The third important factor to notice about this scene is who is speaking to John. In 4:1, John mentions that he hears a voice call to Him, but he doesn’t identify for us whose voice it is. However, because John tells us that this voice sounded like a trumpet when He spoke, I believe that John hears the same voice he heard back in 1:10 which also sounded like a trumpet. It is the voice of our personal and caring Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ, inviting him to come up to heaven from whence John will see the future events that will play out the end of our world. 

When John writes of “heaven” and Jesus speaks “Come up here,” the heaven to which John refers is not the starry heavens or the atmospheric or cloudy heavens immediately above the earth, but that invisible spiritual realm in which our Lord Jesus presently lives. Whereas previous to this point, John was in this spiritual realm called heaven, now Jesus is taking John to a special place in this spiritual realm, the throne room of God, the command center from which He rules over all creation. In human terms, what John is telling us is that for the duration of this book, he has left this physical earth as we know it and has entered this heavenly realm to be given a front-row seat in this heavenly command center from which to view the future events that will take place on earth. 

Just as John gets a temporary ride into heaven to view the future events spoken about in the rest of this book, something that no other human being has yet to see, I believe that one day in the future, all Christians, after they have been Raptured will, from this very same heavenly vantage point, watch the closing events of this earthly world.

In the next two verses, we see John responding to Christ’s invitation, and entering into this heavenly command center. Immediately upon his arrival, John is hit with many sights and sounds as he enters with Jesus into this heavenly command center. In the rest of verses 2 and 3, John writes of his three first impressions. The first thing that impressed John was the “throne.” This word “throne” is the key word in this chapter. It is used 14 times in this chapter alone. More important, this word “throne” is a key word throughout the book of Revelation, appearing 46 times. In contrast, this same word for throne is used only 15 other times in the rest of the New Testament. 

The significance of this use of the word “throne” is that its use is a declaration that no matter what may happen on earth in the future, you can be sure that God is on His throne and He is in complete control. The sovereign rule of God is above all earthly governments. Therefore, no matter how awesome, saddening, tragic or triumphant these events in Revelation or in your life appear, all of them take place in the shadow of the sovereign, omnipotent, righteous, holy, good and loving God’s throne. 

Considering the persecution that John and his fellow believers were experiencing at that time, John’s view of what was going on in the command center of heaven was not only encouraging to him, but it would also be encouraging to those on earth who would later read about what Jesus had shown John. Although many will suffer for many reasons on earth and be forced to live through times that make no sense, God wants us to understand that He really does have things under control, and that all of history is on a planned course.

The next and the greatest impression left on John was the sight of the One sitting on the throne, described as a visual radiance or glory that was brilliant with color. I believe this is John’s best attempt to describe in words the visual glory or radiance that accompanies God. However, there is a debatable question at this point: Is it God the Father or God the Son who is sitting on this throne? In Revelation 4, it appears that the one on the throne is to be identified as God the Father, since the Lamb or Jesus Christ is mentioned in 5:6-7 as the One coming to the One on the throne, to take from His hand the book.

More on that later. In 5:9-12, Jesus, the Lamb is not just mentioned, but those around the throne are worshiping Him in the same way that they worship God the Father in chapter 4. In 5:13, all of creation then begins to worship both the Lamb and the one sitting on the throne equally. If nothing else, John is confirming for us the very deity of Jesus Christ.

One last observation to help answer the question, “Who is sitting on this throne?” comes from Revelation 3:21. In Revelation 3:21, we are told that both Jesus and God the Father are sitting upon the throne. With all of this data, I sense that the best answer as to who it is that is sitting on the throne is God the Father and God the Son, since they are one in essence and equally God, and are reported as both carrying out the role of ruling and judging the world. Remember Jesus’ words in John 14:9: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.”

Here’s another tidbit to consider. You will see as we go through Revelation 4 and 5, that all three of the Trinity are mentioned: God the Father, God the Holy Spirit and God the Son. But when you count the number of verses devoted to each of the Trinity in the two chapters, the majority of the verses are spent highlighting God the Son. In fact, from this point on in Revelation, Jesus is the predominant one mentioned throughout as speaking to John, not God the Father. Hence, to further clarify my answer to “Who is sitting on the throne?” I would say that it is “God the Father and God the Son,”with particular emphasis or focus upon the third person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. Again, this seems only fitting since from the beginning of this book and throughout this book, the central character has been and will be Jesus 

Finally, John tells us that the throne and the one sitting on the throne are encircled by a “rainbow.” The significance of the “rainbow” surrounding the throne should not be missed. In Genesis, God used the rainbow as a two-fold reminder. First, it was a reminder of God’s righteous nature, and because He is righteous, God must judge sin. However He also used the rainbow to be a reminder to Noah, a believer, that He is also a God of mercy. Although the world deserved to be judged, God’s mercy will always save some and He promised out of His mercy that He would never again destroy the earth by flood.

Through this rainbow, we are being reminded, that God is not a heartless God, but one who is full of mercy and compassion, just as He is and always will be righteous and holy. One other interesting thought is that usually, a rainbow appears after the storm, but here we see it before the storm begins. Here, it becomes an awesome warning about the future to come.

Now, let’s go back to the apostle John’s personal life and reflect on how these first impressions must have affected his life from that point forward to his death. Why did Jesus feel it was so important for John to experience and record his impressions of his trip into the throne room of God.

But then Jesus shows up, tells him to write seven letters to seven churches and then, invites Him to enter the throne room of God, to see what the future holds for the human race and why. What did this do for John at that moment and for years after, before he died? Why did Jesus feel it would be so important for John to experience this?

Between the ascension of Jesus Christ and the moment of this Revelation, we have no biblical evidence that Jesus Christ ever appeared to or revealed Himself to John. That means from 33 A.D., when John was probably in his mid-twenties, to around 90 A.D., almost sixty years later, making John in his 80's, John had no more visible or visionary contact with Jesus than the average Christian today. For sixty years, living through tremendous loss and sacrifice of people and the things of this world that meant a lot to him, he had continued to live by faith, not by sight. But now, he is alone as a prisoner on an island, and I can only imagine that this normal human being probably had his days of doubt, fueled by the injustices and atrocities he had seen again and again through the years since he began following Christ. This probably led to his wondering about God’s plans for him and for this world. Suddenly, without warning, Jesus shows up, again! What does John learn about Jesus through His showing up, taking him into God’s heavenly throne room and seeing what the future holds? How did this touch John’s heart?

First, through it all, this revelation of Jesus Christ screamed loud and clear that Jesus still cared about him the individual. He had always cared and had never stopped caring about John, even though he and many others had suffered hardship for the faith. I believe that God wants us to see, as well, that no matter how confusing life becomes, no matter how difficult life becomes, Jesus always cares about the individual.

Closely related to this, but a little different, was John’s remembrance of how personal Jesus is. Jesus personally sought John out. Jesus speaks to him. Jesus even physically touched John, according to 1:17. He reached down and tenderly put His hand upon John to encourage him to rise up from his prostrate position on the ground. Then, Jesus personally invited John to walk with Him through a door into a very special place that only the privileged, those who are saved, will ever be able to enter, the throne room of God. He gets to go see the place where all of his prayers were received by God. 

So far, Jesus is declaring to John and to us, that he is not distant, or stand-offish but personally interested in us. By His actions, Jesus is reinforcing in John’s mind that, “I still am your personal God, who loves you. Nothing has changed that. No matter how bad it looks, it will get worse, but then, My Kingdom will come and all will be perfect!”

In the end, amidst all of his own personal suffering, John comes away with a refreshed view, a reminder of the greatness, the sovereignty of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the sovereign king who rules over the earth. He’s got control of the universe. He is good and His plans are good. There will be hardship and a battle with evil, but Jesus wins. No emperor, president, dictator or Shah will be able to over-ride Jesus. 

 As the rainbow depicted, Jesus as King, will judge but He will also be merciful.

As I walk away from these first impressions of the very throne room of God, I am struck with the fact that what we have read is reality, not someone’s dream. This is real hardcore life, lived in a world mixed with joy and misery that will get worse before it gets better. Yet, in the midst of all the various hardships and heartbreaks of life, Jesus is still there, working, loving, protecting and promising to bring each of us home, when we are finished with His work here on earth.

In the meantime, Isaiah leaves us with this reminder. It is the medicine for healing the aching soul: “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” —Isaiah 40:28-31

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