Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?” But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”
Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. He went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people. And they sang a new song, saying:
“You are worthy to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
and with your blood you purchased for God
persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.
You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth.”
Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they were saying:
“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!”
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying:
“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be praise and honor and glory and power,
for ever and ever!”
The four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped. (Revelation 5)
The Scroll
There are points at which it is hard to decide whether John is relating an actual vision as he saw it on the island of Patmos, or whether he is presenting us with a literary construction. The reason I say this is because the whole of Revelation is so deeply informed by the Hebrew Scriptures. And not only is it informed by them, but at many points it seems as though John has lifted the exact words of his Revelation from various parts of the Hebrew Scriptures.
We see that here at the beginning of chapter 5. The words echo, almost exactly, Ezekiel 2:9-10, “Then I looked, and I saw a hand stretched out to me. In it was a scroll, which he unrolled before me. On both sides of it were written words of lament and mourning and woe.”
The idea of a scroll revealing what will happen in the end times is a common one in Judaism. We see this same idea in the Book of Enoch.
So, let’s talk about this physical scroll itself… It has writing on both sides. On one side of a sheet of papyrus the grain would run horizontally. This is called the recto and would be the normal side for writing because it was easier to write in line with the fibers. The other side is called the verso and this side was not normally written on because the grain of the papyrus would run vertically. But papyrus was expensive. So, if someone had a lot to write, they might write on both sides of a sheet of papyrus.
It is important to note that this is a scroll and not a book. Until the second century after Christ, literary works were contained in scrolls, not books. The hinged book, or codex, that was invented long after the writing of Revelation, was one of the greatest inventions of humankind up to that time, enabling readers to better find their way through longer works without having to unroll a cumbersome scroll.
William Barclay explains what these physical scrolls were like, especially when they contained parts of what we now know as the New Testament…
The roll was made of papyrus, manufactured in single sheets about ten inches by eight. The sheets were joined together horizontally when a great deal of writing had to be done. The writing was in narrow columns about three inches long, with margins of about two and a half inches at the top and at the bottom, and with about three-quarters of an inch between the columns. The roll commonly had a wooden roller at each end. It was held in the left hand, unrolled with the right, and, as the reading went on, the part in the left hand was rolled up again. We may get some idea of the dimensions of a roll from the following statistics. Second and Third John, Jude and Philemon would occupy one sheet of papyrus; Romanswould require a roll 11 ½ feet long; Mark, 19 feet; John, 23 ½ feet; Matthew, 30 feet; Luke and Acts, 32 feet. The Revelation itself would occupy a roll 15 feet long. It was such a roll that was in the hand of God.
The scroll that John talks about has seven seals. When a person was finished writing, say, a letter in the first century, they would roll up the scroll, tie it with threads and put a seal on the knot. The one ordinary document from this time that would have had seven seals was a will. Under Roman law the seven witnesses to a will sealed it with their own personal seals and it could only be opened when all seven, or their representatives, were present. This suggests that this scroll in Revelation might be God’s will, so to speak, his final settlement of the affairs of the universe, or put more positively, his plan of redemption for the universe, that was only foreshadowed in the Old Testament. But it may be that the seven seals simply signify profound secrecy.
A mighty angel asks, “Who is worthy to open the scroll?” And, at first, no one is found who is worthy. John weeps over this until one of the elders tells him that there is one who is worthy; the one who is worthy is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.
The Lamb
This title, “The Lion of the Tribe of Judah”, comes from Genesis 49:9. Judah, one of the twelve sons of Jacob, and leader of the Israelite tribe that bears his name, was described as being like a lion’s cub. The Messiah was later pictured as a lion attacking the eagle of the Roman Empire in 2 Esdras 11 and 12. No first century Jew would miss the fact that the “Lion of the Tribe of Judah” is the Messiah.
This same person is also called the Root of David, a reference to Isaiah 11:1-10. This title reminds us of the ideal king who was to arise from the line of David. We are told, not only that this person is worthy to open the scroll, but he has also won the victory. The word translated as “triumphed” in verse 5 is ἐνίκησεν. The noun is a familiar word to all of us: “Nike”. Jesus is the one who has won the victory, the Nike.
Next, we are introduced to one of the great paradoxes of Scripture, that this Lion of the Tribe of Judah is also a lamb. He is strong like a lion, but at the same time, he has the vulnerability of the lamb of sacrifice. Notice that the lamb has a strength about him; he has seven horns symbolizing that strength. And he has seven eyes, for he is all seeing, and he is blessed with the seven-fold spirit of God.
The eyes are also symbolic of wisdom. So, the eyes and the horns together symbolize wisdom and power. As Paul says, “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:24) The power of Christ “is not to be understood as the power of unlimited coercion, but as the power of infinite persuasion, the invincible power of self-negating, self-sacrificing love.” (Caird)
Notice, the lamb looks as if it had been slain. The hymn puts it so well, “Those wounds yet visible above, in beauty glorified.” The victory of the lion is won through the sacrifice of the lamb. It is this sacrifice that is going to not merely set a few people right here and there, but it will put the whole creation right again. “Instead of a ferocious lion that hurts others, the Messiah is a sacrificial lamb that takes into himself the hurts of others.” (Metzger)
We need to make sure that we lose neither side of this vision, this dream. Jesus, our Messiah, is both a lion and a lamb. This is one reason why I love C. S. Lewis’s Narnia stories. In the great lion Aslan, the Christ figure of the stories, Lewis has almost perfectly pictured this balance, this tension, this gentle strength. Aslan is not safe, but he is good.
This Lion, who is also a Lamb, is the one who is worthy to open the scroll. Michael Wilcock says that this suggests, “Only in Christ crucified is to be found the answer to the riddle of life; no angel ‘in heaven’, no man ‘on earth’, no teacher from the past, now ‘under the earth’, can explain it—only Judah’s Lion, David’s Root, the Jew from Nazareth who is also the Lamb of God.”
The Living Creatures & The Elders
Once the lamb takes the scroll, we are reminded that we are still in God’s throne room in heaven, where the living creatures and the elders worship God continually. We are told that they each have a harp.
Harps are mentioned 49 times in the Bible with four of those mentions being in the book of Revelation. The harp mentioned here was probably a hand-held harp, as depicted on ancient Israelite coins.
Revelation is where the idea of our playing harps in heaven comes from. If we don’t find the idea of eternal harp-playing appealing, then we must remember what the harps represent.
In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis says that all the scriptural images of heaven (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) are symbolic attempts to express the inexpressible. Musical instruments are mentioned because music suggests ecstasy and infinity. Crowns are mentioned to suggest splendor and power and joy. Gold is mentioned to suggest the timelessness of heaven and the preciousness of it. Lewis contends that those who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Jesus told his disciples to act like doves, he meant for them to lay eggs.
Most people, when told that they will spend eternity in worship, ask one very obvious question: won’t it be boring? Now, just because we will spend eternity praising God, that does not mean that heaven is going to be like some of our most dismal church experiences. The problem is that our worship services here on earth are merely attempts at worship, attempts that are never fully successful, and sometimes 99.9% failures. We must remember that in earthly worship we are merely tuning our instruments. We must ask ourselves, if even one experience of tuning our instruments can be glorious, what might the symphony of heaven be like?
In addition to the harps, the living creatures and the elders also are holding bowls full of incense, representing the prayers of God’s people. Thus, we see that there is a connection between worship on earth and worship in heaven.
It can be encouraging to remember that when we sing God’s praises here on earth, or when we pray, we are joining our little twitter with the voices and the music of a mighty throng of believers, past and present, living and dead. This is what we confess when we say with the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in the communion of saints.”
The Words of the Songs
We are not told what the worship in heaven sounds like, beyond the suggestion that harps are involved, and we all have some idea of what harp music, or at least music on a stringed instrument, sounds like. But how could one describe the sound of a song anyway? Music itself is a completely different medium from that of lyrics and touches a chord in our souls that nothing else does. The sound of music is, in some way, indescribable, isn’t it? Perhaps, we will only know the sound of heavenly music when we get there and hear it ourselves.
But we are told the lyrics that go along with the heavenly music. The words of the song sung by the living creatures and the elders tell us why the lamb is worthy to open the scroll. He is worthy because he was slain, and by his blood he purchased for God people from every tribe and language and people and nation. He has made that diverse group to be a kingdom and priests to serve God and to reign on earth. Jesus changes us from rubbish into royalty.
The second song in this chapter, where thousands upon thousands of angels join in, turns from singing about what the lamb has achieved to what he deserves; as we might expect, seven things are mentioned: power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise.
Finally, in the third song “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them” joins in to give praise, honor, glory, and power, forever and ever, to God and to the Lamb. Then the four living creatures say, “Amen” and the elders fall down and worship. The elders must be especially talented to hold a harp in one hand, a bowl in the other, and still be able to fall down and worship without dropping their harps or spilling their incense!
What an amazing picture this is, revealing all of creation, without exception, worshiping the one on the throne in heaven and the lamb! Every creature in heaven worships God and the lamb. Perhaps John means to include here the birds of the air, and even the sun, moon and stars.
Every creature on earth and in the sea worships God and the lamb. This includes not only human beings, but also the animal kingdom, and all the sea creatures.
Then, finally, even those under the earth, are worshiping God and the lamb. This is a reference to the dead. In the ancient Jewish conception, the dead do not praise God. They are, simply, dead, and nothing more. But here, the reign of the lamb and the worship of the lamb extends even to the dead.
John perfectly pictures the fact that God is in the business of redeeming all of creation, not simply human beings. Paul tells us the same thing in Romans 8.
To appreciate and try to imagine the glory of this universal worship, I think it is helpful to have experienced different styles of human worship within the Christian Church around the world.
May I take a moment to be a bit self-critical? I hope you will forgive me, but the style of worship in which I was raised, Presbyterian, like our worship in the Congregational Church, is frankly so tame by comparison to some worship services I have been in around the world. I have been in services in the Caribbean where people worship with real gusto.
At another time, Becky and I worshiped in a Foursquare Church in Southern California for a year or so. They did only three things in their services. They sang songs, led by a praise band, they prayed, and they preached. But I remember it would always take me about twenty minutes to warm up to their level of worshiping and singing. Fortunately, the singing went on for forty-five minutes straight, so it gave you time to warm up. And there were two older ladies who showed up with their tambourines every Sunday to get us stirred up, if we needed help. There was nothing showy, or ostentatious about any of it. It was contemporary music performed with excellence, but it was God-directed.
Yet another time, I remember preaching in a black and Hispanic church in Southern California. I had barely started into the introduction of my sermon when the pastor began Amening. Soon, the whole congregation was joining in. I found myself preaching with a different cadence. I had to leave room for the Amens. And those Amens gave me a whole new energy in preaching that I had never experienced before.
All that to say, we Presbyterians and Congregationalists may have some surprises in store when we get to heaven. Perhaps we better start preparing, start tuning our instruments, now.
But even more important than the character of worship depicted in this chapter is the content and focus of that worship. Notice that the Lamb shares worship and adoration with the One on the throne. John is clear throughout his writings that Jesus shares the worship that belongs to the one true creator God. But, as Tom Wright says, “We discover, and celebrate, the divinity of the lion-lamb Messiah only when we find ourselves caught up to share his work as the royal priesthood, summing up creation’s praises before him but also bringing his rescuing rule to bear on the world.”
It seems to me that the most important thing about worship is not how we worship (whether with an organ or a synthesizer, a guitar or a harp, with praise songs or with hymns). The most important thing is who we worship—the Father still on his throne, the Son who is at once the Lion and the Lamb, and the sevenfold Spirit who can alone empower us to worship our Triune God. Worship is all about giving our Triune God what he is worth; it’s about giving as much as we know of ourselves to as much as we know of him. Again, as C. S. Lewis puts it, God doesn’t want something from us, he simply wants us…
Comments