Revelation 4:6b-11

December 29, 2019

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts at 16:15 in the audio file.

Or, Worship of Him Who Holds the Scroll

This really is an amazing scene. The vision of Jesus that John had in Revelation 1 was amazing, and the messages from Jesus to the seven churches in Revelation 2-3 were somehow both local and cosmic, immediate and eternal, startling but unsurprising, confronting and also comforting. But our imaginative capacities are pushed to new heights as John relates his vision of the heavenly throne room.

We started our look at Revelation 4 two Sundays ago, skipping last Lord’s Day for sake of focusing on Christ’s first coming. I also plan to preach a short series on our worship and liturgy at the start of the new calendar year, as usual, starting next Lord’s Day. Revelation 5 will be a part of that series, for reasons I’ll give later. So while it could seem untimely to finish our look at Revelation 4 today, I think it will be a word that lifts our heads as we finish this year and decade.

Remember that John was “in the Spirit” and given revelation through an open door in heaven, whether in his body or not. In the center of his vision, and in the center of this chapter and the next, was the throne. There were twenty-four additional thrones around the central throne, with twenty-four elders on those thrones. There were flashes of lightening and peals of thunder coming from the throne. The one sitting on the throne had the appearance of light, brilliant and bright. There has hardly been any action so far, the chapter is almost entirely description, which continues in the second part of verse 6 through 7. In Greek most of the verbs are assumed, but not written, giving the grammatical impression of little time to breathe.

I believe that the twenty-four elders are twenty-four angelic beings of a certain class, the “thrones” level as Paul referred to them in Colossians 1:16. They are part of the divine council (see Psalm 89:5–7 and Isaiah 24:21–23), those who do God’s will as we’ll see when the seals on the scroll are broken in chapter 6. There is another group of angelic creatures introduced in verses 6 and 7, and together with the elders, we finally see some action in verses 8-11 as they worship.

Living Creatures in the Midst of the Throne (verses 6b-7)

While the throne was at the center of the room and the first object of focus, John described the twenty-four elders second because they were closer to him. Now he describes an inner ring of beings, those who were between the elders and the throne.

And there were four living creatures in the middle of the throne and around the throne. It’s a double description of their spatial location that appears to get them as close to the throne as possible without being on it, and a description that locates them on each side of the throne.

The first thing John noticed about their appearance is that they were full of eyes in front and behind. There are some who think this doesn’t make sense, or that it appears grotesque, and so they take it as symbolic language. But John is describing what he saw, and each of them have a “likeness” in verse 7, so there is no good reason to think that the eyes are merely metaphorical. These creatures are covered with eyes. What that suggests is that they are able to see a lot, from a lot of angles. They also have wings, which we’ll se in verse 9, but having eyes all around means that they don’t miss much.

Verse 7 works around the throne to give at list one distinct feature about each creature. The first living creature was in the likeness of a lion. The second living creature was in the likeness of an ox. The third living creature was having the face as a man. The fourth living creatures was in the likeness of an eagle flying. And each one was having six wings.

Three of the four follow the same patter[...]