Where Our Prayers Go: Sermon on Revelation 5:8

It had to be an emergency, for them to come disturb the holy man during his night-time prayers. But, panting with urgency, that's just what someone did. And so this holy man got up and went with the man. For his part, Caesarius, the thirty-something-year-old bishop, wished he were home in the town he loved to serve. But he wasn't. He'd become bishop of Arles (in what's today southeastern France) in the last month of the year of our Lord 502. Then, a few years into his energetic work, his zeal for rescuing captives – regardless of their politics or ethnicity – had gotten him into trouble, and after a false accusation was charged against Caesarius' reputation, the Visigothic king Alaric II had banished him westward, exiling him to the city of Bordeaux. Which is where he'd been praying his usual nightly prayers for the peace of all nations and tranquility of every city – when that night word reached him. A fire had broken out, and had been spreading, and now threatened with its bestial maw to gobble up the city whole. And who could do a thing?

Caesarius got up at once – there was no time to waste – and he ran. He ran, and he ran, until he found the fire, and to the surprise of everyone, he got in front of its path, the very thing every right-thinking man, woman, and child was running away from. Standing, staring down the advancing rush of flame and heat, Caesarius hurled himself to the ground in worship of his great God, crying out as he hit the dust in prostration, pleading with the Lord Jesus Christ to quell this hellish monster flame and rescue Bordeaux. He poured out his soul in prayer in the dirt as the fire raged. He didn't even look up at the gasps the denizens of Bordeaux let loose as they watched the fire unwind, retreat, die away, smothered beneath the mighty hand of God. “An apostle for our day!” they hailed.

Alaric later let Caesarius return to Arles, but during another king's reign, Caesarius was accused again and taken to Ravenna (in Italy) to be judged by the Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great, who saw in Caesarius' face “the face of an angel.” While there, the bishop heard that a local widow, mother of a terminally ill and comatose son who was their sole wage-earner, was desperate for the bishop to pray for the young man. So Caesarius went, fell to the ground in prayer, and left when the Holy Spirit assured him of an answer. He left behind his disciple Messianus to witness the miracle and report back – within the hour, the man revived in good health with thanksgiving for Caesarius' prayers. And Theodoric sent Caesarius back home – back home at last to Arles, the city of his bishopric.

His first day back, the church was packed. Caesarius was one of the most popular preachers in the world in his day. But that evening of his first day back, a woman burst into the church, foaming at the mouth, interrupting worship. Her need was obvious. Bystanders brought her forward to the altar, where Caesarius was. He took her gently and anointed her with oil and prayed over her. And whether afflicted by rabies or another ailment, it was promptly purged out of her system, and the prayers of Caesarius restored her to health. Another day later on, he met a woman with trembling hands, perhaps from Parkinson's or palsy – Caesarius took them, blessed them, prayed over them, and watched her hands grow still and steady. And still another day, he once again hurled himself down as fire burned in a local home, and the flames were beaten down by the force of his prayers. It tended to become known: things happened when Bishop Caesarius of Arles prayed.

It's been 1500 years since Caesarius lived, and I suspect many of us can only hear those stories, written down by an eyewitness to his life, from an experiential distance. Because for most of us, it takes a lot of praying to see things happen. And there may well be times in our lives when it feels as if our prayers must be getting lost in the mail – they seem to smack into some obstacle and fall feebly away, or get re-routed to the wrong address, or otherwise are abandoned. And we might wonder what's the point of praying when our prayers seem like they're going nowhere at all. Because if Caesarius sent his by express priority mail, ours may seem handled by the sloppiest interns the post office ever saw. And we wonder, where in heaven or earth do our prayers go?

Over the past several Sundays, we've begun entering into the beauty of the Book of Revelation. These chapters reveal the heart of worship in the command center of all things, the throne-room of God. We've met the four living creatures covered in eyes, who survey all things and constantly are awestruck by the ever-fresh holiness of God, just by who God is. We've met the twenty-four elders, heavenly priest-kings who praise God for his works in creation, who submit their authority to him again and again by hurling their crowns to the base of his throne. We've basked in the emerald radiance emanating from the throne, wrapping God in light. We've seen the seven torches, signifying the Holy Spirit, there where the crowns land across the glassy sea. And lately, we've welcomed a great surprise in heaven: When it seemed as if there was no way for God's plan to unfold, we heard report of a warrior-messiah, the Lion of Judah, who had conquered his way to victory – and behold, we saw that the conqueror was in fact a sacrificial Lamb, whose victory was redeeming others by his shed blood and laying the foundation for a whole new universe. And now, everything about worship has changed.

See, the Lamb of God – Jesus Christ – is worthy to take the scroll and open its seals. The Lamb is worthy to shepherd history to its goal. The Lamb is worthy to receive worship – worship meant for God alone – and to get it right there in God's presence. If any false worship were offered there, it would be the greatest blasphemy of all time. But the Lamb is rightly worshipped, worthily worshipped, as one with God the Father. From here on out, it's obvious: there's no such thing as right worship that doesn't include the Lamb. The Lamb can't be gotten around, can't be bypassed, can't be overlooked. There's no other name, not even in heaven. There's no other way or truth or life, not even in heaven. The Lamb shares the throne of God, belongs there, is worshipped there forever – worthy is the Lamb (Revelation 5:1-7)!

And now, for the first time, worship becomes a song. As soon as the Lamb takes the scroll, that's when we read that the worship leaders of heaven – the four and twenty-four – all begin singing (Revelation 5:9). That's the first time we've heard that. All their worship in the last chapter – they said those things, but they didn't sing yet. They start singing now. And now they have instruments, too: “The four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp” (Revelation 5:8). Instruments in heaven! (And Kenny, you'll be glad to know that the word for 'harp' here is kithara, from which we get the word 'guitar,' so you'll fit right in, won't ya?) The presence of the Lamb really changes everything about worship, elevating it to a new key, bringing a new and resplendent joy that we'd never have without the deep saga of redemption.

But there's something else that changes in heaven's worship when the Lamb steps in, something we haven't yet heard about. See, the twenty-four elders are holding something in the other hand. They don't just have their harps. They also carry “golden bowls full of incense” (Revelation 5:8). And that takes us back to another saga of redemption: the exodus. When the Israelites came out of Egypt, when they journeyed deep into the desert, when they camped in the frightful light of Sinai's blazing summit, Moses went up into the dark cloud, and we know he got the commandments of the law. But he got more than ten things. Actually, equally importantly, he got instructions for building a tabernacle for God's worship, along with all the furnishings necessary for it. And this is the big centerpiece of Exodus: the book doesn't end until that tabernacle is built.

Part of the instructions Moses got were to “make its plates and dishes for incense,” and to “make them of pure gold” (Exodus 25:29). These are the golden bowls that the priests of Israel would have to use, and it's their heavenly counterparts that John's seeing in heaven. Moses was also told to “make an altar on which to offer incense” (Exodus 30:1). God instructed that “Aaron shall offer fragrant incense on it – every morning when he dresses the lamps, he shall offer it, and when Aaron sets up the lamps in the evening, he shall offer it – a regular incense-offering before Yahweh throughout your generations. But you shall not offer unholy incense on it” (Exodus 30:7-9). God even laid out a recipe for the special blend of incense he wanted, and banned the Israelites from ever using that combination for perfume or anything else – it was to be his and only his (Exodus 30:34-38). Later evidence lists the ingredients in more detail: mastic resin, operculum, galbanum, frankincense, myrrh, cassia, spikenard, agarwood, saffron, costus, cinnamon bark, and Jordan amber – but only one priestly family, the House of Avtinas, knew how to add a secret ingredient that made the smoke go straight up in a pillar.

Exodus ends with the offering of some of this fragrant incense (Exodus 40:26-27), but Moses still can't enter the tabernacle until the priesthood is set up, which is what Leviticus covers. And there we learn that this incense would be an absolutely necessary part of the Day of Atonement ritual, whereby Aaron the high priest would address the sins of the whole nation – for his own safety, he'd have to cover God's throne with a cloud of this incense, layering it on like a safety buffer in the air, in order to step into God's presence (Leviticus 16:12-13).

We find in the next book, Numbers, that the incense dishes were dedicated by each tribe of Israel, each of whom provided some of the initial stock of incense (Numbers 7:86). But the actual offering of incense is reserved to the priests descended from Aaron, who had to make incense-offerings to atone for the people in emergencies (Numbers 16:40-46). This, it turns out, was one of the basic functions of priests in Israel: “to offer incense” (1 Samuel 2:28). It's one of the things they do: they “offer to Yahweh every morning and every evening burnt-offerings and fragrant incense” (2 Chronicles 13:13). As the Bible goes on, we meet kings who are good because they support the priests in doing just that (1 Kings 9:25); we meet kings who are judged because they try to do it themselves, as King Uzziah did and became a leper (2 Chronicles 26); and we sadly meet kings who endorse the burning of incense on other altars and to other gods (1 Kings 3:3; 12:33; 13:1-2; 22:43). But the prophet Malachi looks forward to a day where God's name will be “great among the nations; and in every place, incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering” (Malachi 1:4).

Incense was a big part of Old Testament worship, and so John won't be surprised to see it in heavenly worship. Neither would he be too surprised that the incense is offered by heavenly beings – he knows traditions where archangels gather and collect things to present them to God (Tobit 12:15; 3 Baruch 11:8-9, esp. 14:2 Slavonic). And the Old Testament had also long linked incense with prayer. That's why, when the Baptist's father Zechariah went to make the incense-offering in the temple – which is where the Archangel Gabriel appeared to him – it was as the people outside prayed, so that the rising fragrance of incense could symbolize their prayers going up, up to heaven (Luke 1:10). And the psalmist had already prayed, “I call upon you, O Yahweh; come quickly to me! Give ear to my voice when I call to you! Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice” (Psalm 141:1-2). And now John sees the fulfillment of that psalm. For he sees these elders holding “golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints” (Revelation 5:8).

And what that means is this: Even if you aren't Caesarius of Arles, even if you're somebody like me or someone like you, your prayers are not getting lost in the mail! If you've ever wondered what happens to your prayers once they leave your heart and your lips, John sees the answer staring him in the face: the prayers of the saints go into the bowls of incense that these elders present to worship the Lamb.

And that changes everything. These 'golden bowls' hold the prayers of the saints, the holy ones, God's own people who belong to him through Jesus the Lamb, whose lives have begun to be purified and sanctified by the sevenfold Spirit. Every prayer you pray to God will find its way into those bowls. They will be purified and prepared and presented in the presence of Father, Son, Holy Spirit. 

 

And that is the foundational act of heaven's worship. Heaven worships God by using your prayers. That's what John is seeing. Your prayers are significant enough, your prayers are important enough, your prayers are valued so highly, that they are included in the grandest ceremony of the universe and beyond. Heaven worships God by using your prayers. So if your prayers seem to be floating off, if your prayers seem to be bouncing back, if your prayers seem to you as though they're doing nothing, know this: That isn't true. That isn't true at all, not if you're bought by the blood of the Lamb. Your prayers will never be overlooked, they will never be set aside, they will never be ignored. What's happening is that your prayers are being stored up for the right time. The incense must be collected first.

We know that the incense for worshipping God has to be made from a whole list of ingredients. And each one of those ingredients has its own unique properties, its own smell, its own texture. Some of them, on their own, may not be the most pleasant substances. But they combine into an aromatic whole, and those who smelled the incense used in Israel's worship said it was a fragrance unlike any other. And if our prayers are the incense for heavenly worship, then heaven's incense – being equally derived from varied ingredients – needs all the rich diversity our prayer lives have to offer. These golden bowls need to hold our happy praises. They need to hold our weary petitions. They need to hold our heartfelt thanksgivings. They need to hold our bitter laments. And they need the passion that makes the smoke rise straight. They need all of it, without any being left out. So we can't afford to hold back or limit ourselves to only the bright notes. We are the tribes presenting the ingredients for heaven's incense, and the fullness of a life is what's required, in all its sweet and all its bitter.

The Old Testament also already taught us that this special blend of incense was forbidden for private use – that it was a great offense to offer it on any other altar, and especially to any other god. The righteous king Josiah had to “depose the priests … who burned incense to Baal and to the sun and the moon and the constellations and all the host of the heavens” (2 Kings 23:5). Offering incense to any of those things – good created things or demonic powers, any of them – was a major crime. And if our prayers are meant for heavenly incense, then they are meant for God and the Lamb. They must not be aimed elsewhere. We must not go around praying to the trendy idols of our age. We must not pray our lives out to money, asking it to fulfill all our needs and give us security. We must not pray our lives out to sexual gratification, asking it to give us an identity and to soothe our wounded souls. We must not pray 'patriotic' prayers to America – (but I have seen some so-called 'churches' do exactly that, displacing the worship of God with vows, pledges, and prayers to the stars and stripes). God states openly in the Bible that he's offended when we do any of that. He is offended when we pray to any of these things. He says that one who uses his incense in such ways should be cut off from God's people (Exodus 30:38). Our prayers, our petitions, our thanksgivings, our laments – these don't belong to money or sex or family or country, they belong to God and the Lamb, and that's the only address they should have. We do not pray as money-earners or money-yearners, we pray as the saints of God. We do not pray as sex-seekers, we pray as the saints of God. We do not pray as patriots, we pray as the saints of God. We do not pray as devotees defined by anything else, we pray as the saints of God. And as the saints of God, our prayer lives are too holy to God to be shared with any other use.

But just the same, we must pray. We read in the Bible that another righteous king, Hezekiah, led people in great prayers of repentance, and the great sin he named was that their ancestors “have not burned incense or offered burnt-offerings in the Holy Place to the God of Israel; therefore, the wrath of Yahweh came on Judah and Jerusalem” (2 Chronicles 29:7-8). The sin that put Judah and Jerusalem on the wrong side of things was, in part, that they had stopped offering incense at all. And John now sees that we commit the same sin as they did, whenever we give up praying. If we let our prayer lives fizzle out, if we set prayer aside, if we become a non-praying people, then we are no different than the faithless generation Hezekiah was talking about, are we? We, too, if we give up prayer, are withholding incense for the heavenly worship – by not praying, we cripple the purpose of the universe's existence.

So when you're happy and you know it, don't clap your hands – pray! When you're thrilled and thankful, pray! When you're sad and forlorn and alone, pray! When you're exhausted and drained and spent, pray! It doesn't matter if your prayers are happy ones or sad ones, fast ones or slow ones, eloquent ones or inchoate ones, smooth ones or gritty ones, sweet ones or bitter ones. The incense blend requires some of all of them, and we'll balance one another out in the bowl. So don't let that hinder you. Just pray – provide incense for heaven's worship.

Because, in the end, it really does matter. In a few chapters, once the Lamb has opened all seven seals, we read that “there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them” – instruments for more worship. “And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer,” an incense-burner. “And he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel” (Revelation 8:1-4). There we finally see the offering of what the twenty-four elders were holding. Israel had twelve bowls of incense, heaven has twice that; it comes from us; and now we see the great incense-offering. What does it do?

The next verse will tell us: “Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth – and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake” (Revelation 8:5). The signs of the invasion of the presence of God Almighty, coming in judgment to set all wrongs right, to vindicate the oppressed and overturn injustice, to cut through all the red tape and burn down the dividing walls and make holiness known in the world. Not only do our prayers equip heaven's worship, but that worship – our prayers in heaven's hands, our worship plus heaven's music – is the very tool that God will use to fix what's wrong in the world. Whatever it is you've been praying about – God will fix what's wrong in the world, and the very prayers you're offering, the prayers you maybe fear aren't being heard, the prayers you suspected were lost in the mail – no, God is holding them in reserve as his instrument of breaking down everything wrong so that something better and truer and more beauteous can be born. And that, in the end, is where our prayers go – Caesarius' and mine and yours.

If our worship here does anything, if our lives do anything, they have to take seriously the privilege of prayer. Did you ever imagine your prayers did all that? Did you know that's where your prayers go? Your prayers, my prayers, our prayers here, have a role to play in heaven's worship, in Jesus' own presence, at the Father's throne. They are what heaven offers to God. They are how God judges and purifies the world. Without them, heavenly worship would be impeded, and the world's redemption would be further off.

So what would happen if you and me and us all together started really believing this about prayer? What if we thought about our prayers like this – as holy incense for heavenly worship? What if, when you prayed happy or sad or thankful or weary or sweet or bitter prayers, you envisioned the incense being mixed and pounded down, the powder being poured into the gleaming bowl in heavenly hands, the solemn dignity of its presentation to God and to the Lamb with shouts of “Worthy!”, the sense of anticipation for the offering and the burning and the falling of fire to fix all that's wrong? What if we prayed as people who see in our prayers what John saw about our prayers? How much more seriously would we take prayer? How much more careful would we be to reserve it to God and to the Lamb? How much more insistent would we be about praying in all circumstances (cf. Ephesians 6:18; 1 Thessalonians 5:18)? How much more awe would we have of the privilege of praying, the privilege we have, not just of releasing a mishmash of words into the atmosphere, but of preparing incense for heavenly worship to cleanse and heal the world? How eager would we be to pray?

So pray, don't delay! Pray, don't let those incense-bowls linger half-full! Pray to God, pray in the worthiness of the Lamb, pray in the Spirit who radiates sevenfold from them both. Pray as one bought by blood, redeemed out from your nation and heritage and allegiance and identity, and given a new calling in Christ. Pray with the heavens open to the throne of God and Lamb, in the name of Jesus, in the Spirit's power, for whatever rests on your heart, whether light or heavy, sweet or bitter. Pray with faith like Caesarius, even when the fires still burn and the mouths still foam and the hands still tremble. Pray with the blessed assurance that, in Jesus, no prayer of his holy people will ever go to waste, even if the impact can't be seen 'til the very end. Pray, because your prayers have important places to go and important things to do, in bowls more radiant and hands more steady than ours. So pray. May our prayers be counted as incense before the Lord God Almighty, and may all heaven's worship resound with sweeter and louder songs through our worship here, in Jesus' name. Amen.

A Scroll for Sheep: Sermon on Revelation 5:1-7

Can there be such a thing as an awkward moment in heaven? You wouldn't think so. Heaven is perfection and bliss, heaven is purity and harmony. And yet... And yet, while John expected no awkward moments when he passed through that doorway in the sky, he had to admit: Things were now feeling mighty awkward. They had been fine, at first – more than fine – as he'd watched these majestic living creatures and this ring of enthroned elders all worshipping the Enthroned One who radiated the emerald rainbow and shone like gemstones. All the air of heaven was suffused with light and flame. It was beautiful beyond compare. And what John had been watching was synchronized flawlessly, an elaborate dance. He could have watched it for an eternity. Maybe he had, he thought to himself. He'd lost track of how many cycles of holy-holy-holys and crown-hurlings he'd seen thus far – could be three, could be three billion. He was simply and surely entranced.

And that's when he noticed it. Had it been there all along? Or was it newly introduced? But there, at the right side of the radiant throne, was a large scroll, resting at the Enthroned One's right side, on something like an open palm. The scroll... The scroll was massive, thick, wound tight. And it was shut, sealed with seven seals, each burning with the impression of a fiery signet-ring, one after the other. But John could see some writing on the outside – the thing was so overflowing with text that it seemed the letters could just run off, dance away, fly through the stars. John was mystified, but he felt a deep intuition about that scroll. He felt that, whatever else was in it, it was where his utmost hopes and dreams were written down. He felt that it was the path history was supposed to take. In his very bones, he sensed that the scroll was the plan – the plan, the plan to solve the world, the plan to advance to a beautiful conclusion. There it all sat – the plan, locked away behind those seals, waiting to be implemented as the words were loosed. And suddenly John was consumed with desire. Like the deepest hunger he'd ever felt, he wanted that scroll, the scroll prophets before him had left unshared. He wanted it free. He wanted to live it out to the end. He wanted to watch the pause-button of cosmic time thrown into fast-forward. He wanted to reach the ending, and the scroll was the only way (Revelation 5:1).

John stood, staring at the scroll. Did anyone else see it? Could the holy ones hustling and bustling in heaven's court notice it? The question demanded an answer. Was there a plan after all? John wondered and mused. But John stopped wondering when a large angel, tall and strong, possessed of gravitas, strode through the distant crowds and took flight. Hovering over John's head, he looked up in time to hear the thunder crack. And the angel, like a preacher breathing fire from a pulpit, like a general shouting for his troops to charge, announced the question: “Who is worthy to open the scroll and loose its seals?” (Revelation 5:2).

Now isn't that the question! The scroll, John realized, is there – that's not the matter at issue. The question is, can it be opened? If God holds it forth, is there anyone equal to the task of unrolling it and letting it loose? Can someone carry God's plan to completion? Is there anyone who can conduct the orchestra of creation so well? Who is going to be the one to take the scroll from the depths of emerald brilliance and bring about a new world? John watched as all heaven reacted to the question. And that's when things got... awkward.

All eyes turned to the ones with all the eyes – the four living creatures, who lived closest to God, who shouted the holy-holy-holys and flew on six wings. Surely they would be worthy! I mean, basking in the divine glory for endless eons, living lives of constant praise – how could that not be worthiness? How could that not meet the qualifications? But, confesses an ox-like face, it doesn't. Neither he nor his associates can go take that scroll. They may support the throne-chariot of the Lord, they may dwell in his presence, but action is not for them. A test confirms it: the scroll is not theirs to open. And disappointment settles over every eye.

Well, focus then turns to this broader ring, the twenty-four ancient priest-kings robed in white, seated on thrones and crowned with golden splendor. The question is asked: “Are you worthy?” Surely they should be worthy! They've received authority from God himself, they minister to him as priests, they rule as kings in administering the whole of creation, they live the lives that the gods of the nations could only dream of! But in unison, in horror they rip the crowns from their heads, slide them across crystalline pavement, and collapse off their seats. “No!” goes up the impassioned cry from one of them. No, they are not worthy. Look elsewhere.

The awkward silence thickens. The twenty-eight lead contenders are out of the running. A summons is issued. Archangels begin marching into the thick of the action. Michael at the head of the band, Gabriel close behind, then Raphael and Uriel, and so forth. Living in God's presence since the dawn of dawns, commanding angels and carrying out missions, surely an archangel can open the scroll! But their efforts fall flat. No archangel can get it. They aren't worthy to open the scroll, break loose the seals, and see what's inside.

Now things are getting really awkward, as each angel, thousands upon thousands, is put to the question. But the results are no different. Each is measured against the enormity of the task. Each falls short. None can open the scroll. And as for John, he starts to worry. Pangs of fear creep into his heart, even here in heaven's command center. Having a plan is good, but if it can't be put into motion, what good is it, really? And all the spirits who inhabit the heavens have been tested. The solution just... doesn't seem to be here. So, what if there's no one to do it, John wonders? What if the scroll can't be opened? Will it just be filed away? Will the world continue on as it has been – suffering and pining for a fresh breath that'll never come? Will all creation meander lost in the labyrinth of impossibility for a trillion eternities? Or will it simply fizzle out in a pathetic whimper, fading to black in an unsatisfying anticlimax? What happens if God's plan can't be unrolled?

The question seems like a live one. John's heart beats faster with anxiety. He thinks of everything he's been through, everything he's going through on Patmos. If the scroll can't be opened, it's all pointless, all in vain. If the scroll can't be opened, there's no telling what might happen next. It's one thing to suffer for purpose. It's a far grimmer thing to see all hope lost, to surrender to mere absurdity. That sort of nihilistic fantasy is not for John. Can anyone open this scroll? Is there anybody worthy?

Angels in desperation form search parties. They fly through space and time, on a hunt. They visit John's seven churches – is anyone there worthy, up to this challenge? But no. Perhaps, though, that's the wrong place to start – perhaps they should stretch to the beginning. An angel flies to the tomb of Adam, known only to heaven's secret-keepers, and calls out to the bones long lost. “Adam, Adam! Oh how we need you now, Adam! There at the start you were, made in the image and likeness of the One seated on the throne. It's written that you could even be called a son of God. You breathed the fresh air of a garden, you walked with your Maker, you embodied innocence once, before centuries of toil and sweat wore you down and reduced you to bone and dust. Oh Adam, if is the end in the beginning? Could you be called back from dust, would you be worthy, Adam?”

And the sad voice murmurs back from the grave, faint and distant. “Unworthy, unworthy. What have I done? Brought sin and death to all my kind. Cloaked my shame in fig leaves and folly. I failed what I was made to do, though I named all things. But I can't name what's in that scroll. Nor can the bride whose bone is of my bone, whose flesh was of my flesh, whose dust is forever by my side. You'll have to look elsewhere.”

Frustrated, the angel calls out to the dirt. “Earth, you hide the blood of Adam's son, the one who made a good sacrifice but perished at a mad brother's hand! It's Abel I want, Abel I need! Abel, you pleased God then, in the days of your pilgrimage. Your faith was so strong, so pure! Can you open the scroll?” The angel waits to hear. The blood cries out from the ground in reply. “I cannot. My blood doesn't speak a good enough word. I only wait for justice – justice I hope will be in that scroll somewhere. But I'm powerless to unroll it myself. I can only entrust myself to the one who will.”

As John watches and listens by staring down through the sea of glass, he begins to worry all the more. If not Adam, if not Eve, if not Abel, then who? The angel moves on to Hebron, to Machpelah, to the cave-tombs of the patriarchs. “Abraham, Isaac, Jacob – bearers of the promise! You struggled and fought your way toward faith; you overcame great odds. And matriarchs, matriarchs – Sarah and Rebekah! You, too, did the same! Are any of you, all of you together, up for this? Are you worthy to open the scroll?” But, one by one, each said no.

Michael was fed up. He went to the secret place where he'd concealed Moses' body. If anyone could, shouldn't God's great prophet, the one who stood on Sinai's mount and received the law, be worthy? And so Michael himself went to ask. But his angelic heart of lightning fell flat at what he heard. Moses was unworthy – he'd sinned, he'd raged, he hadn't even been worthy to set foot in the promised land, much less unroll God's scroll. The whole thing was sealed to Moses. The lawgiver could do nothing to help.

The angel search team continued on. At Jerusalem, they checked in with David and Solomon, the great kings who'd built God's people into an empire, who'd overseen a slice of God's kingdom on earth. But David cried out about Bathsheba and a baby, about a census taken, about a family falling into chaos and a life plunging into bitterness. Solomon lamented how his wisdom had been blinded by the wiles of a thousand women (and, first, his own yearning heart), how he'd fallen prey to lust and seduction, how everything ended up as vapor and smoke. They alike protested their unworthiness.

To the prophets, then. Angels called forth to Isaiah, to Jeremiah, to Ezekiel, to Daniel. Those who'd written some of the scroll in the first place – couldn't they open it? One by one, they and the others answered back. No – they had some familiarity with what was in the scroll, they whispered a few foggy secrets, but the seals were too great for them. They, too, were desperate to get in, eager to look into the great mysteries to come. But they could catch only glimpses. And they certainly couldn't put the plan into action. Angels asked Ezra and Nehemiah next. Having led their people back to the promised land, restored God's law to them, built up the defenses of the holy city – couldn't they open the scroll? But they couldn't, either. It was sealed to them, too, like an impenetrable wall built long before them.

Looking down, John started to wail. Angels took pity, redoubled their search. If not among these worthies of biblical renown, they'd have to go far and wide. Fly forth, angels, fly forth! One flew to India, to a burial mound in Kushinagar, where lay the ashes of the sheltered prince who'd walked away and sat under a tree and found his balanced path. “Siddhartha Gautama,” the angel yelled, “the one some call an 'enlightened one'! O 'Buddha,' you claimed you grasped the real nature of things, and you taught your dharma to your sangha, your community of disciples. With all the insight you gained, can you open the scroll?” The mound was all but silent at first – stilled. But the angel strained to hear the whisper. And it disappointed. The Buddha had no desire for the scroll. The Buddha was ignorant of the scroll. And this prince-turned-monk, Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha, was unworthy to break those seals, even if he wanted to. Whatever Buddha could teach, it wouldn't help the matter at hand. And so the cycles of suffering would continue.

Another angel touched down in the Arabian Peninsula beneath the soft moonlight. He went to Medina, and his voice shattered the night. “Son of Abdullah! You defied your tribe's scattered loves and called them to one God and one cause. You spoke your words, and some listened. And with them, you fought for supremacy, and you retook your city, and you shattered idols in the shrine. You united your people under the confession of your lips and unleashed a wave that, long after you, took the world by storm. You called all to submit, and millions upon millions have listened to you. They love you, they revere you, they say you're the seal who finalizes the work of all prophets. O Muhammad, if you're the Seal of the Prophets as you claimed, can you unseal these seals? Are you worthy to open the scroll, to bring this sealed book to light?” The answer would surprise many. For when all was said and done, Muhammad ibn Abdullah was not worthy to open the scroll. He could not unseal the seals. He could not see into and recite from the heavenly book.  Muhammad, his bones resting in an Arabian tomb, was unworthy to open the scroll. And when he saw that, John beat his breast and wept a little louder. Can no one?

The angels moved on. They went to Greece, called forth the philosophers. Up stood Socrates, his lips tinged with hemlock. Up stood Plato, ready to wrestle. Up stood Aristotle, tutor of generations. “You wise men taught the world reason. You revealed form and matter, justice and truth; you set a million minds to work. But here's the puzzle for you. Greater wisdom is sealed away, locked behind seven seals, in a scroll. Can you approach? Can you reveal? Can you interrogate it open? Are you limited to groping in the darkness of the cave, or can you see in the light?” But faced with the question, Socrates only asked more questions about what a scroll really is, and what it means for something to be open or sealed. Plato and Aristotle fell to bickering, for Plato felt that any scroll was merely a reflection of the abstract idea of a scroll, but Aristotle thought the form resided in the matter of the scroll and gave it shape. And as they feuded, the scroll remained sealed, and it was soon plain that none of these, nor their disciples and heirs, would be of any use in actually getting the scroll open.

So if not the philosophers, well – the angels searched throughout Europe for the tombs of great writers. One went to Stratford-upon-Avon to summon the bard. Others landed in London, in Ravenna, in the hearts of human culture, to find the rest of the poets and story-tellers. “You've all written so much,” the angel effused, “but can your artistry recapture what's in that scroll?” And they had to confess they couldn't. Milton told of angels and devils, of paradise lost and regained – but while he could dream of paradise, he couldn't bring it to earth. Dante confessed his words too little for such a heavenly flight, said that he could not gather the scattered leaves of the book of love. Shakespeare replied in a sonnet, but his sound and fury signified too little – all were unworthy. 

 

Perhaps charm, then? The angels found Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Vivaldi; they sought further in Graceland for 'the King,' they tracked down the Beatles, they gathered the rappers and the crooners and the masters of reggae and jazz. “Play a fresh song for us, men! Your compositions have lasted through the ages. Your melodies are unmistakable. Can you not go and get into the scroll, treat it as a musical score, and play, play, play?” But the musicians couldn't charm the seals off the scroll, no matter what instrument they used, no matter what sonata they played. The seals wouldn't budge; the scroll wouldn't unfurl.  Every encore lapsed back into uncomfortable silence.

Another tactic is required! Watch as the angels keep moving, keep looking. They called forth that Renaissance man, painter and inventor and thinker, Leonardo da Vinci. But others came up too – Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Richard Feynman, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, the Wright brothers. They'd thought so far and so hard, they'd come up with insights, they had more brainpower combined than most rooms ever hold. “O scientists and inventors,” the angel begged, “can't you reverse-engineer the seals? Can't you figure out the mechanics by which they work, and devise a way to pry them loose?” But Orville and Wilbur couldn't fly high enough. The lights of Edison and Tesla were no match for the emerald rainbow. Feynman and Bohr and Einstein were baffled, their theories incomplete and broken by the unbroken seals. Even the “Universal Genius” left stumped in the end. They were unequal to the task, their intellects depleted.

Well, if not to clever engineering, perhaps to brute force! A surly angel swept the world, calling forth kings and warlords and tacticians. There stood Alexander the Great. Next to him, Julius Caesar. Then Attila, Sun Tzu, Charlemagne, Richard the Lionheart, and Genghis Khan; even William Wallace and Robert the Bruce and General Patton stepped up. “Attention!” shouted the angel. “You have your strategies. You have your armies. Your objective: Shatter the seven seals. Charge!” But no lance or blade ever got close. One by one, the conquerors fell, conquered by the scroll. Alexander wept, for he could not conquer. John wept, too, for it seemed like no one could.

Can angels panic? If they can, this is when they would have. Some came closer to here – one at Mount Vernon, another to Monticello, a third to Quincy, a fourth to Montpelier. “Arise, George Washington! Get up, Thomas Jefferson! John Adams and James Madison, you too! We need you all! You great men, fathers of a country, could our hope be in you? Are any of you honest forefathers the ones we need – worthy to open the scroll?” They took a vote. The result was unanimous: Unworthy. The seals were as inalienable from the scroll as their natural rights from their souls. So the angel strode to the White House, to its current occupant. Others went back to earlier Oval Office sitters; others went forward to who'll be there next. And it may surprise you or not, but once again, all are unworthy to open the scroll. No Trump or Obama or Bush or Clinton or Biden, no Reagan or Carter or Roosevelt or Lincoln, can open the scroll. The angels even summoned forth the symbols – why not? – of Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty. Embodiments of America itself, everything we salute, standing tall in civic freedom. Hear the angel: “Surely you can open the scroll?” But they can't. No American right extends so far. No court can order the seals unsealed. No soldierly death in battle – not all who fell from Gettysburg to Normandy, from Iwo Jima to Fallujah – has shed the blood that dissolves these bonds. The star-spangled banner will sooner unravel to threads than outlast those seals. America is unworthy.

What about the corporate world? As a last-ditch effort, the angel calls out for Amazon and Apple and Google and Facebook. With all their databases, with all their algorithms, with all their economic dominance and savvy, can they search the scroll? But it isn't in their databases. They, too, fall as unworthy. Defeated, the angels keep looking, interviewing everyone, one by one. Your grandparents. Your grandkids. Your mom. Your dad. Your son. Your daughter. Your sister. Your brother. Your boss. Your neighbor. Some think they're worthy. But the test proves they aren't. Others have the sense to admit it up front. 

 

And then the angel gets to you. Are you the one who's worthy? Can you do what no cherub or seraph, no man or woman, no country or corporation can do? And whatever you answer, in time you know the truth. You aren't worthy to open the scroll and see what's in it. If it's up to you, the endeavor is a loss – the same as it has been for all others.

And John breaks down. “No one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or look into it” (Revelation 5:3). Which means that God's plan can never unfold. It can never be implemented. It has to be stored away in the archives – not just in the archives, but locked down, sealed, unlisted from inventory. Forever unconsulted, unread, unopened. No wonder John's hot tears ripple the glassy sea! Because with no one to open the scroll, hope is dead! All dreams are dead! Heaven and earth are dead, dead, dead (Revelation 5:4)....

And just then, one of the twenty-four elders turns around to John and gently urges him to dry his tears. “Look!” he says. “Just look!” And the elder begins telling him that a new contender has shown up, one who in the midst of human history has done something no one else ever has or ever will. He's the one Israel long expected – the Root of David's line, the Great King, the icon of Judah's whole tribe, the mighty lion-warrior out for conquest and victory and triumph! “Do not weep: See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered – so he can open the scroll and its seven seals!” (Revelation 5:5).

At this point, doesn't that just sound too good to be true? The entire creation, from top to bottom, has just been scoured by search parties, looking for just such a person. And every human and animal and angel, every living and deceased figure, even symbols and conglomerates, have all fallen flat. Isn't a tedious string of billions of disqualified candidates a reason enough to cease the hunt, close the contest, throw hope in with the rest of the garbage? What's the point of believing this speculation about a Jewish lion who can do the impossible?

Then John actually looked – and he saw no lion. No, he saw... a sheep. A lamb. Fresh from the slaughterhouse. Killed, bloody, but on its feet and looking strong and healthy. Radiating paradoxical power. Beaming the Spirit of God in all completeness into the whole creation. “I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as having been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth” (Revelation 5:6). How could this be a winner? A meek and mild lamb? A tiny ball of fluff and wool, stained with blood, carted here and there by butchers making mutton chops? This is the conquering lion – a vulnerable victim, a sacrifice doomed? One last contender. One last hope. But when all else has failed, doesn't that pattern mean the last piece will fit the same dismal puzzle?

So imagine John's surprise when this Lamb “went and took the scroll from the right hand of the One who was seated on the throne” (Revelation 5:7). The Lamb really did take the scroll! And how does all heaven respond? The creatures and elders call out to this Lamb, “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals!” How can that be? How did this one, this... this Lion-Lamb, conquering through vulnerability, become equal to such a task as no cherub or seraph, no president or potentate, no inventor or artist, no priest or prophet or king could do – how? “For you were slaughtered” – that's a qualification? You have to fall into violent hands? You have to be victimized, brutalized, beaten down? “For you were slaughtered, and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). There it is! The Lamb's blood is the blood that speaks a better word than Abel's (Hebrews 12:24). The Lamb's blood creates a new world, sets the tone for a whole new universe, drawn out from all the rich diversity of the old one: a world where sacrifice is conquest, and redemption is triumph, and an ounce of love outweighs a trillion tons of strength. From Adam to Armageddon, from cherubic circle to infernal pit, no one else has done this. And that's what shows that the Lamb is worthy. It's true, what the elder said: “He can open the scroll and its seven seals!” (Revelation 5:5)!

And with that, John's tears are dried. The frozen course of destiny surges suddenly into motion; all color flushes back into the world, all heaven breathes a sigh of excited relief. He is worthy! He is worthy! Only one is able, only one is worthy, but when that One is Jesus, that One is enough! The scroll of God's plan is not a scroll for patriarchs and prophets, not for philosophers and ponderers, not for wordsmiths and warriors, not even for Mary and all the saints. It isn't available to Hollywood or Silicon Valley, not to Washington or Wall Street. The scroll from God is a scroll for sheep – the Sheep, the Lamb of God, is alone worthy. God's plan cannot unfold without the scroll in his hand. You need fear John's fear no longer. God's plan can move forward. History is arrested and frozen no more. There will be justice, there will be mercy, there will be hope, there will be redemption and healing and new creation. The Lamb is worthy to save, worthy to rule, worthy to unseal the scroll of all secrets and to open every destiny wide! He is worthy! Jesus Christ is worthy! Hallelujah! Ascribe all to him! Amen!

Casting Crowns: Sermon on Revelation 4

It felt strange to look the enemy in the eye. Especially here at Rhandeia, and on an occasion like this, with all their troops gathered on every side. But Tiridates, king of Armenia, was ending the war. His opponent, the Roman general Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, was an honorable one, at least. To think things all started eleven years earlier. Tiridates' big brother Vologaesus had become king of the Parthian Empire in AD 51/52. Needing a territory for his little brother Tiridates, Vologaesus had taken advantage of chaos in Armenia, invaded it, and made Tiridates the king there. Fortunately, the locals decided they liked Tiridates better than his rivals. But the Roman Empire hadn't been happy – they were accustomed to crowning the kings of Armenia. And so when Nero came to power in 54, he sent Corbulo east, and four years later, it came to war between the empires. For several years, Rome and Parthia duked it out, and Tiridates had been one of Rome's great devils, humiliating a Roman army at Rhandeia. But then came time for war to stop. In 63, Tiridates met Corbulo – at Rhandeia.

And this was the day. The Parthian cavalry was there in squadrons, each displaying the emblem of their people. The Roman legions stood there, golden eagles shining in the sun, idols of their gods crowding around, making them look almost like a temple. And there in the heart of it, Tiridates approached a platform the Romans had assembled. On it sat a throne. And on the throne, not a man but a statue. A statue of the Roman emperor. But this was what they'd agreed. Tiridates came closer, had the animals summoned. And he made a sacrifice there. Approaching Nero's statue, he took the Armenian crown off of his head, felt its heft in his hands – and then he gently placed it at the foot of the throne, vowing to be crowned as king only by Nero himself. And he left the crown at the base of the throne where the statue was.

A couple years passed, as Tiridates returned to Parthia, visited his mom and brothers, gathered personnel for the big trip. As a devout Zoroastrian, he wouldn't sail more than a day over water, so it would be a long trek by land – a nine-month journey, nice and slow, with his three thousand horsemen, with his nephews and wife and sons, with a band of magi like himself – the ones whose grandfathers had once journeyed to a little Judaean town called Bethlehem. So Tiridates set out, with a Roman escort, too. And in October of 65, he met Nero in Naples. Fascinating to meet Rome's emperor in person – Nero was just twenty-seven at the time; Tiridates, likely in his thirties. After the entertainment of gladiatorial games in nearly Puteoli, they marched to Rome in early 66. And there, in the forum of a city recovering from the Great Fire, early one morning Tiridates, his dagger nailed to its sheath at his hip, marched between columns of Roman soldiers toward a platform with a throne – this time, with a living Nero seated on it. All around, the very roofs of Rome were crowded with spectators. Banners filled the city, and the forum was thronged with citizens in white robes, carrying laurel branches.

Swallowing his pride, Tiridates approached the base of the platform atop which sat Nero's imperial throne – and Tiridates did what he never expected: he bowed in worship. Tiridates' voice rang out: “Master, I am the descendant of Arsaces, brother of the kings Vologaesus and Pacorus, and your slave. And I have come to you, my god, to worship you as I do Mithras. The destiny you spin for me shall be mine, for you are my Fortune and my Fate.” Nero, deeply flattered, invited him to walk up the ramp to come closer. He declared Tiridates the rightful king of Armenia. And as Tiridates knelt below Nero's feet, the emperor took him by the hand, raised him, kissed him, and then presented the crown once cast before his throne and placed it back on Tiridates' head – and the crowds went wild on that 'Golden Day.'

News traveled far and wide. Nero proclaimed it as the dawn of world peace: he had the doors of the Temple of Janus closed, minted coins to commemorate the occasion. 'World peace' didn't last – in just a few months, a revolt in Judaea would lead to the war that would see Jerusalem's temple burnt to the ground. But the story of Nero and Tiridates would spread. It was likely just three decades later when, on Patmos, John – living in the era of the Emperor Domitian, the late Corbulo's son-in-law – was invited to come see a brighter 'golden day' in a far more glorious imperial court than Rome ever boasted.

Sometime after John's vision of the risen Christ, whether minutes or months later, he had yet another vision – “After this, I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven! And the first voice, which I'd heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, 'Come up here...'” (Revelation 4:1). A gateway in the sky. An invitation. But how would John get through? He's down on earth, on the land, at a level with me and you. And the place he's asked to see is way up there, beyond all that we know. No nine-month journey around the coasts of the Adriatic Sea could get him through that resplendent portal overhead.

But we keep reading. “At once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with One seated on the throne” (Revelation 4:2). There's the bridge! There's what gets John through that heavenly door – he's once again “in the Spirit,” experiencing reality not merely through his natural senses but through the Spirit of God. What a nine-month march couldn't ever do, the Spirit of God does immediately, shifting John far beyond all he's ever seen or heard or touched or known.

The scene he sees there is absolutely mind-blowing. He dares not dwell too much on what it was like to see a vision of the One seated on the throne: “The One who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald” (Revelation 4:3). This colossal throne outshone Nero's in every way, outstripped all Rome's pageantry, all Parthia's exoticism, dwarfed any and all earthly kings. The only way John can get even part of an image across is by comparing the vision to jewelry – to precious gemstones and crystals, refracting light into an emerald rainbow, a vivid halo around the throne. John's seeing what Isaiah saw, what Ezekiel saw. He's seeing “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD” (Ezekiel 1:28), a vision in which his eyes have to take in, and his brain has to interpret, the perplexing vista of the God “who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see” (1 Timothy 6:16). And yet in the Spirit, John sees the Unseeable, beholds the Unbeholden, seated on heaven's royal throne, “enthroned in the heavens” (Psalm 123:1).

And that's not all. “From the throne came flashes of lightning, and sounds and peals of thunder” (Revelation 4:5a). It has to remind John of the story of when Moses and the Israelites waited at the base of Mount Sinai for God to appear, and then “Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the LORD had descended on it in fire,” and “there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled..., and the whole mountain trembled greatly, and as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder” (Exodus 19:16-19). And so in heaven, John meets the Storm of the Almighty; he stands in Moses' shoes, but the smoke is gone, John sees only the brightness and the dazzling figure, far outshining all Rome's glittering gold, which now looked cheap.

And as if that weren't enough, “before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God; and before the throne, there was – as it were – a sea of glass like crystal” (Revelation 4:5b-6). Blazing in front of the crystal sea, smooth and tranquil, which rests above the world, John sees the same Spirit that fills him and surrounds him, the Spirit through whom he can see any of this blessed vision. The same Holy Spirit is forever in God's presence, multiply ablaze at the base of his throne, connected integrally with heaven's authority and never dying out. We'll find in the same chapter that the exact same Spirit also radiates like seven horns from the head of the Lamb who is Jesus Christ – one Spirit radiating from the Father and the Son, a perfect picture of the Holy Trinity. But the Spirit can't show John the Father until the Spirit has come from the Son.

It's much the same for us now. We could not have a personal encounter with God apart from the Spirit. And the Spirit would not be indwelling us if Jesus had not first died and lived again and ascended into heaven so that he could pour out the Spirit from God's throne. If not for Good Friday, if not for Easter, if not for Ascension Thursday, there could be no Pentecost Sunday; and no Pentecost means no vision, no Pentecost means no power, no Pentecost means no encounter, no Pentecost means no revelation – and heaven's open door would remain forever beyond reach. So praise God, it's Pentecost! Praise God, Jesus lives and sends down his Spirit – the same Spirit through whom John viewed a vision – and that Spirit lets us encounter the Enthroned Glory!

As he stands in heaven, John sees some strange things around the throne – but then again, maybe those things would think John the strange one, dull and quiet and made of mud, when life's for splendor and song and flame. He sees, for one, four “Living Creatures” around the throne, maybe supporting the throne – “four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes around and within” (Revelation 4:6-8). If you can't picture it, you aren't alone – nobody really can. The psalmists said their God was “enthroned upon the cherubim” (Psalm 99:1), and when Ezekiel saw God's throne, he saw it suspended over “four living creatures” with humanoid bodies but four faces and four wings (Ezekiel 1:5-6) – and the prophet later added: “the living creatures that I saw underneath the God of Israel … were cherubim” (Ezekiel 10:20). But John sees creatures with six wings, like the seraphim that Isaiah saw around God's throne; and they're saying what the seraphim say (Isaiah 6:2-3). Neither prophet caught the full view of what John's looking at. These creatures – hybrids of Ezekiel's cherubim and Isaiah's seraphim – sum up in themselves all that's best in the whole animate creation (lion, ox, eagle, human) as they shine and burn. They see things from every angle – nothing on them is sightless. They have no blind spots, no rose-colored glasses – they see everything as it is, nothing escapes their view.

And no matter where they look, they see just one thing. They see the glory of God. And so “day and night they never cease to say: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!'” (Revelation 4:8). Wherever they look, they see the holiness of God. They see everything as it is, and so – to the capacity of any created being – they see God for who God is. And to the extent they see God for who God is, they're in the throes of worship. They don't praise God for anything in particular he's done. He doesn't have to do anything to win their allegiance. He just has to be himself. God is God, he is who he is – that's enough for them. That right there suffices to elicit their galaxy-shaking shouts of praise. No matter what happens, so long as God is God, they proclaim him as triply holy, the eternal God who can do all things, the Almighty Lord who never fades and never fails. And if we want to learn the heart of worship, John writes so that they can teach us. Revelation is a book on worship, and here's Lesson #1: God gets worship just because he's his holy self.

We have a tendency sometimes to functionalize or instrumentalize God. We praise God because of some cause, some act that we approve of. That in itself isn't bad – the psalmists frequently praised God in reference to some specific deed or deeds – but, if disconnected from God's intrinsic worthiness, it can make worship mercenary. What these living creatures see is that, even if God did nothing, even if God created nothing, even if God were God alone and there were no heavens and no earth and no angels and no creatures – even then, God would be holy, eternal, almighty, glorious. God alone would rightly see that God alone is worth praising, even in the depths of timeless eternity where the Father, Son, and Spirit praise each other without end and without beginning. And if God is worthy of worship even if God is all that exists, that truth still holds true when creatures live to give voice to that truth. That's what these heavenly worship-animals exist to announce, what they live to say.

And they never stop saying it! “Day and night, they never cease to say, 'Holy, holy, holy'” (Revelation 4:8). It's a perpetual chorus, each calling to the other. It's the concert that's lasted since the dawn of Eden. It was going on when Nero and Tiridates had their little 'Golden Day.' It was going on when John languished on Patmos. It's going on this very instant. Right now, as I preach to this sermon, these four living creatures covered in eyes can see me behind the pulpit and see you in the pews, and they're saying “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.” They've seen all the joys and sorrows of history. Their eyes have, from afar, watched cruelty and kindness, abuse and healing, outrage and jubilation, genocide and reconciliation, abortion and new birth, enslavement and liberation, destruction and redemption. And still, with one foot immersed in the rivers of tears and sweat and blood and another foot atop the dazzling mountain of beauteous exhilaration, having a far better sight than we of what the world's really like, beholding every pain from every angle, still they talk of the glory of God! Still they think God worthy of honor! Still they thank God for being the God he is! For John tells us: “the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to the One seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever” (Revelation 4:9). 

 

Having seen all they've seen, and seeing everything that's affecting you right now, and viewing and understanding it better than you ever will in this world with the two eyes you can aim one direction at a time – they keep glorifying and honoring and thanking God. And that's how we know that heaven's throne is no seat of mismanagement! Those who've seen the most – and perhaps have eyes enough to spare that some of their eyes see the world through our eyes – are yet the most thankful that God's on the throne. And if they see so much and find such abundant cause to thank God, you can thank God, too, no matter what's within the limited horizons of all your eyes can see.  Nothing your eyes have seen is justification to detract God's glory or subtract from God's honor or withhold thanksgiving in life – not if you only saw still more.

What's more, these heavenly living creatures keep saying their praises “day and night,” without ceasing. No lunch breaks. No time-outs. Their life is fueled by worship. This message, this gospel of God being God, is the sum total of their existence. There's a beloved hymn – and you know this one – where we sing, “When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun.” And I'll be honest, there was a time in my life when I thought, “How frightening! A never-ending task of one thing, stretching out beyond all I can imagine, with no end in sight? It's like a prison sentence that keeps multiplying for eternity!” But then I started thinking about these four living creatures. Since the start, they've been saying the same thing, over and over again. Why don't they get bored? Why don't they need to shake things up, branch out? And then it hit me: Every time they see God, they see something they've never seen before. He's like a gem with countless facets that, every way the light shines through it, brings out something new. These living creatures are on an endless voyage of discovery of the infinite God, who contains more limitless variety in himself than the universe will ever attain at any definite point in its past, present, or future. The life of these living creatures is the very opposite of boring. For them, each minute is gripping, is captivating, is on-the-edge-of-their-seats enthralling. They never have a dull moment! They're learning every second of every day! And what they learn is life-changing, transformative, astounding, amazing! Their whole existence is a thrilling adventure into God's infinite riches of character and quality and being – new and fresh at all times, always and forever! And if that's true, then if our worship really does bring us into contact with this God, it should never be stale (however dry and dusty our dull and debilitated hearts may misperceive it). Our worship grows deeper and deeper every time we connect with God, because there is literally no end of fresh brilliance in him.

Honestly, if these living creatures were all John saw around the throne, that'd be enough to teach a lifetime of lessons. But they aren't all he sees. Before he even mentioned them, he already told us that “around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clothed in white garments, with golden crowns on their heads” (Revelation 4:4). And there's a lot that's mysterious about that. But these are, in all likelihood, the ones whom biblical scholars call 'the divine council.' As one psalm says, “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment” (Psalm 82:1). We glimpse it in other verses, like when the prophet Micaiah says, “I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left” (1 Kings 22:19). It's the court staff of heaven, the council of God's administration. And here they correspond to the twenty-four divisions David made in Israel's priesthood and the twenty-four divisions David made among the Levite singers, the worship leaders of Israel (1 Chronicles 24-25). These elders are heavenly priest-kings whose thrones ring the greater throne of God, whose authority is part of his administration, who are set apart to minister in his presence (cf. Revelation 5:8).

And when the living creatures shout out and give them their cue, these ancient heavenly priest-kings – who themselves outshine the gods worshipped by Rome and all nations – they themselves “worship the One who lives forever and ever,” and they say, “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created” (Revelation 4:11). The living creatures praised God just for who God is. And that inspires these elders to praise God – specifically, for who God is to them. They praise God for what God has done: created all things. He is the Creator; all else is created and contingent, dependent on God's will. Everything else receives its very existence as a gift from God. They themselves, like the living creatures, would not even exist unless God had decided they should. Every beauty in creation – it's God's artistry. Every marvel in creation – it's God's engineering. Every novelty in creation – it's God's inventiveness. God is the Creator of all things. No exceptions. There's nothing for which anything else can take credit. In every way, we are creatures, created things, but God is Creator. No one invented God, no one dreamt God up. He is not the fancy of our wish-fulfillment or the projection of our ego or the artifice of our sophistry or the misfire of our cognition. He does not depend on us at all. But we depend entirely on him. And, these elders say, that makes God worthy! It means that, when we worship God, we can appeal to an endless variety of reasons. We can worship God by citing his greatness in stretching out vast galaxies. We can worship God by citing his craftsmanship in designing the inner workings of the humblest bacterium and its genetic code. We can worship God by celebrating the colors of the sunset and the songs of the birds at the dawn. We can point to any plant, to any animal, to any rock, to any star, and understand that it's a reason to proclaim God as worthy to receive glory and honor and power! Our worship has an endless string of rightful justifications, because God created all things. The universe was not designed by committee, and it developed under his careful and loving hand, by his sovereign will and choice. Not a thing has ever existed apart from God's will. He is Creator and Sustainer.

And in the face of this, how do these ancient priest-kings in heaven worship? How do they express their vivid conviction of God's worthiness? How do they respond to the gospel of the living creatures? “The twenty-four elders fall down before the One who is seated on the throne and worship the One who lives forever and ever: they cast their crowns before the throne” (Revelation 4:10). Just like Tiridates in front of Nero's throne, they bow down to the ground and worship and give up their crowns. It's a surrender of authority. That's what their worship is all about. They know that their crowns, their authority to rule in God's administration, any power they have or influence they exert – it's all a gift. They possess their authority by grace. And they perpetually submit that past and present grace to God, leaving it up to him whether to graciously continue to crown them anew and keep them in office.

As I said, it's a lot like Tiridates. He proclaimed Nero as his master and his god. He announced that he would worship Nero. He accepted Nero as the fate deciding the future course of his life and the fortune holding all his hopes and dreams. He bowed to Nero, submitted to Nero. He took the crown off his head and surrendered it to Nero, conceding that Nero had the right to authorize royal authority over Armenia (even if Parthia would be the nominator of the man to be coronated). He vowed – be it sincerely or insincerely – that he didn't want the crown unless it came from Nero's hand, unless his rule received Nero's permission and blessing. He relinquished that power and prestige, trusting Nero to return it more splendidly than ever.

And what Tiridates ascribed to a young Roman tyrant, these elders ascribe to God on heaven's throne, their Emperor of Emperors. They proclaim God as their master and their God, they worship him, they accept him as the fate and fortune holding their hopes and deciding their future. They bow to him and surrender their authority, knowing that only God can re-authorize it, over and over and over again, each and every moment. And they sincerely do not want to have any power or prestige or privilege that's overstayed its welcome. Every time God gives them a gift, they thank God for it and submit it to God's continued approval. They live by grace, and grace alone!

And that's how our worship should look. No matter how high and mighty we think we are, worship is defined, at a fundamental level, by what we refer back to God. Every talent, every trait, every blessing, every breath – he has given us so many gifts we can't even name them, so many crowns we can hardly believe them. But if he does, our proper worship is to continually take them and place them at the foot of his throne – surrender our every right and our every dignity back to God, returning it to him as glory, letting him be the Heavenly Emperor who chooses, in every moment, whether to re-authorize us to continue in our privileges or not. Our proper worship defers to God in everything. Our proper worship doesn't get bogged down in our personal preferences – our best-beloved styles, our best-beloved tunes, our best-beloved postures. When we cast our crowns before the throne, we're saying it doesn't matter what we might prefer: our greater preference, we're saying, our greater choice, is to erase our preferences and put God's in their place. We acknowledge our rights as continually subject to God's choice. And we trust that, if he chooses, he'll keep on restoring us, keep on creating us anew as kings and priests to him in Christ by the Spirit (cf. Revelation 1:6).

You see, Revelation is a book of worship. It's not a confusing book of endless puzzles. It's not a scary book of fear and doom and dread. It's a book of worship – of basking in God's light and learning how to react to him and to what he's done, and then live in a way that announces how worthwhile this God – and only this God – is. That's what John's visions are for. That's why John has led us away from the cheap pageantry of Rome or of Parthia or of any earthly country, and led us to the throne room of the heavenly empire, where God holds court and his glorious servants worship him in truth. And when we read it, we learn what our worship should be like, what we should be doing here on Sunday morning and what we should be doing the rest of the week – “day and night.” And when our worship says what theirs says, and when our worship is truly focused on God, and when our worship has us hitting the dirt and casting our crowns before God's throne, and when that worship fills up our lives – then we can say that heavenly worship is happening here. Then we can say that we have heaven on earth. And that is what the church is for – possible only as we encounter God in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Spirit that radiates from the Lamb and burns before the Father's throne. May we be a church that sees! May we be a church that falls in love! May we be a church where seven torches of Spirit-fire burn forever, to the glory of the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come, amen!

Our World Exposed: Sermon on Revelation 17-18

It was dark outside on the night of Sunday, June 27, 1954, and a similar gloom had settled over the president's heart. It was, unexpectedly, his last day in office. As he sat in his office in the National Palace, President Juan Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán fiddled with the equipment that would let him broadcast one final message, if anyone would tune in and listen. Árbenz reflected as he readied his address. He'd been one of the first democratically elected leaders in the history of Guatemala. Before that, he'd served in the armed forces during World War II, when the dictator Jorge Ubico used them to violently crack down on... not criminals, but simply poor farm laborers. Árbenz had been disgusted, and vowed to help the oppressed if ever he came to power. Once Ubico was overthrown in '44, Arévalo had his six years, and then Árbenz had his turn.

In June 1952, he'd given his Decree on Agrarian Reform, ordering that land sitting uncultivated should be seized by eminent domain and distributed to the starving workers who'd actually make something useful out of it. But one of the biggest holders of unused land, whose value they'd lied about on their taxes, was the United Fruit Company. An American corporation whose ex-CEO worked in the State Department and whose past lawyers included the Dulles brothers – one now Secretary of State, the other now Director of the CIA. It was plain to Árbenz what had happened: United Fruit Company supporters like the Dulles brothers had lobbied President Eisenhower to approve an operation to meddle in Guatemalan affairs; the United States government had thus hired mercenaries to invade Guatemala and stage a coup d'etat. And it had worked. The CIA's propaganda had so demoralized his people and army alike that Árbenz stood no chance, and was now being forced to resign and flee to the Mexican embassy. So, though few were listening, Árbenz gave a final message for his people:

For fifteen days, a cruel war against Guatemala has been underway. The United Fruit Company, in collaboration with the governing circles of the United States, is responsible for what is happening to us. … The truth is to be found in the financial interests of the fruit company and the other US monopolies which have invested great amounts of money in Latin America … One day, the obscured forces which today oppress the backward and colonial world will be defeated. I will continue to be, despite everything, a fighter for the liberty and progress of my country. I say goodbye to you, my friends, with bitterness and pain, but remaining firm in my convictions. … Long live Guatemala!

And with that, Árbenz walked into the night, an emotional wreck, to live out his remaining 16.5 years in exile. But if any man in history who'd never run a country knew how Árbenz felt that night, it may have been John the Revelator. John would have understood.

Last Sunday, if you were with us, you might recall we started exploring the main cast of characters, ten in all, that we find in the Book of Revelation. And there, we encountered two trinities – one of God, Lamb, and the sevenfold Spirit; the other of Dragon, Beast, and False Prophet. God and the Dragon each have their throne of authority, but could scarcely be more different. God calls for truth, goodness, and beauty; the Dragon, or Satan, utters lies, authors corruption, and is grotesque. And just as the Lamb reflects his peace-loving Father, so the Beast – political and military power that turns violent, blasphemous, inhumane – the Beast reflects its spiteful father, the Dragon. And just as the sevenfold Spirit inspires witnesses to point truthfully to God and the Lamb, the False Prophet – a propaganda machine – points to the Beast and enforces its worship.

There we have six key characters, and the seventh and eighth are the crowds that worship and follow them, dividing all humanity into Lamb-followers and Beast-followers in the end. John could describe these things so well because he recognized them in his own time and place, when the Roman Empire's politics had become a beast oppressing nations from across the sea, and where the provincial council of John's own home in Asia Minor, having become enthusiastic for emperor-worship, was a false prophet leading the masses astray.

But then John has a vision of the ninth main cast member of Revelation's drama, and it's a doozy. Riding on the same Beast as before, John is shown “the great prostitute who is seated on many waters” (Revelation 17:1) that signify “peoples and multitudes and nations and languages” (Revelation 17:15). John sees her sitting on the Beast's seven heads, which are seven hills, and hears the name that tells who she is: “Babylon the Great, mother of prostitutes and of earth's abominations” (Revelation 17:5). Dressed in fine clothes and jewelry (Revelation 17:4), she's gotten herself drunk on innocent blood (Revelation 17:6), and not just that, but “the wine of her prostitution” has gotten the entirety of earth's society drunk as they prostitute the whole world to her (Revelation 17:2). But this same woman is revealed as “the great city that has dominion over the kings of the earth” (Revelation 17:8), “for all nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her prostitution, and the kings of the earth have committed prostitution with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxurious living” (Revelation 18:3).

John and the seven churches would've known what he was talking about. When John says 'Babylon,' what they heard him saying was 'Rome.' Other Jewish writings from those days use the code-name 'Babylon' for Rome, even calling this 'Babylon' a “hateful harlot” that's doomed to fall (4 Ezra 3.2; 15.46-48; cf. Sibylline Oracles 5.158-159). The same churches John oversees had earlier gotten a letter from Peter and Mark, living in Rome, who sent greetings from the church in 'Babylon' (1 Peter 5:13). John and others saw Rome as a violent culture, a corrupt civilization, that was extending its influence around the world, seducing all subject nations into its evil ideals. Roman coins and statues portrayed Rome itself as a goddess, Dea Roma, seated on Rome's seven hills. John sees the same figure, but instead of a dazzling goddess, he sees a less savory figure, a drunken harlot.

John sees Babylon riding the Beast because the influence of Rome's culture and economy piggybacked on the movements of Rome's military power – Roman force secured the supremacy of Rome's privileged status as “a prime exporter of immorality,” as one scholar calls it. Rome's thirst for luxury goods was a problem that even Roman moralists complained about, but John's vision attacks it mercilessly. He rattles off a list of imports like “gold, silver, jewels, pearls, fine linen, purple cloth, silk, scarlet cloth, all kinds of scented wood, all kinds of articles of ivory, all kinds of articles of costly wood, bronze, iron and marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and slaves – that is, human lives” (Revelation 18:11-13). Rome really did import those luxuries and give special tax breaks to ships taking them to Rome. But John sees exploitation, especially as he caps off the list with human lives being reduced to a mere commodity for Babylon's (i.e., Rome's) enjoyment. The Roman economy, oriented on luxury consumption in the city at the expense of the basic dignity of the common man or woman in the provinces, is entirely corrupt, built on violence and deception; but Rome's culture and supposed benefits are seductive, and John says Rome has all the leaders of the world out of their wits.

He finally hears an angel celebrate Babylon's fall and the end of its culture, “for your merchants were the great ones of the earth, and all nations were deceived by your sorcery, and in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints and of all who have been slain in the earth” (Revelation 18:21-24). Rome's violence, Rome's glorification of depravity, Rome's luxury when others were needy, Rome's arrogance in dominating other tribes and their cultures, Rome's alliances with self-serving leaders who betray their own people to it – John hates it all and wants his churches to see it as it really is. Plenty of Christians in the seven churches were working in the shipping industry and the business world, which were increasingly impacted by the imperial cult. And so John forces them to face a very uncomfortable question: Given how corrupt the whole system is, if God judged it and made it come crashing down, would you be relieved or distressed? And if you'd be distressed by the collapse of such a culture and such an economy, then whose side are you really on, after all?

All well and good for the seven churches in first-century Asia Minor. But what's it got to do with us? 'Babylon' goes beyond just the city of Rome. It extends to any culture and economy that bear similar traits. What John's done isn't just unmask Rome; he's unmasked the way the world will always work, left to its own devices. The world, bereft of God, will always turn to worshipping beastly power. The world, bereft of God, will always get drunk on violent entertainment, sexual depravity, economic exploitation, and the luxuries of consumerism. We have to admit – John tells us we have to admit – that the society we've crafted, the civilization we've built, can be a dark place – that the very things we accept as normal all around us may well be deceptive masks for less savory things. 

 

'Babylon' is ever with us. In our own time, there are cultural and economic powers that export toxic culture around the world and use the force of their economic advantage, backed by military dominance, to enjoy luxury at the expense of the poor of the earth, all while remaking the world into their own image. And if you'd asked former Guatemalan president Juan Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, he'd have told you all about one such power. He might well have held this picture of Babylon next to ours, and asked us if we can't see a resemblance. For while we are not alone there (many cultures, past and present, must stand in the same line-up), neither can we claim absence.

You see, we may have to grapple with more of an 'American Babylon' than we ever thought. That's a hard thing to think! It was hard for John's first hearers to see his ugly portrait of their beloved Dea Roma; and we similarly find it hard to swallow if John were to paint a similarly ghoulish picture of a depraved Statue of Liberty – (which is, after all, a monument featuring a Roman goddess as well).  Can we bear to think of that casting choice?

 

But we sadly must.  We live in a nation that, in addition to maintaining about 800 military bases outside its borders, also exports its consumer culture around the world – just about anywhere on earth you go, you'll find Coca-Cola and Starbucks and McDonald's and our movies and our music. We live in a nation that imports goods from all the earth, striking deals with political and commercial leaders, with reckless disregard to those who work like slaves to provide what we use. We live in a nation that at times meddles in the affairs of other countries for its own advantage, but screams outrage when the tables are turned. We live in a nation that has indeed done its large share of global good, but often oversteps to congratulate itself as the sum of all virtue.

We live in a nation where sex and violence are the cornerstones of entertainment and whose appetite for illicit drugs fuels the crisis of neighbor nations.  We live in the nation where the decided majority of the world's pornography is produced and hosted; the nation that's used its foreign policy reach to force same-sex 'marriage' and other radical social and anthropological experiments onto other cultures; the nation that uses food aid and tariffs to reshape the global economy to its own benefit; the nation that talks democracy but routinely props up dictators if they say they like us or if we think we'd get less praise from whatever arose in their absence. 

 

All the while, we're a relentlessly unhappy nation of materialists, leading lives of luxury relative to the rest of the earth. Our hearts and habits are reshaped by individualism, libertinism, anti-authoritarianism, and consumerism. And so John's portrait of Babylon, of her relationship with kings and merchants – well, it holds up a mirror that we don't want to look into. I know I dread the hard truth I see there. But in reading Revelation honestly, I have to say: If John were the here this morning, I have my doubts whether any star-spangled banner would still be in sight by noon today. And if that thought seems too horrible to fathom, then we've found our idol. We've learned that we love our Babylon.

This is a painful and bitter pill to swallow. We are not used to taking an outside look at ourselves from the view of people like John, looking up at us and seeing right through us. We can choose to ignore John, if we want to. We can choose to embrace the Babylonian elements within American culture and commerce. We can choose to cling to our consumerism and self-congratulation; we can turn a blind eye to what John sees in us, in our world order. We can choose that road. Probably some of us will. But then John warns us that, when cultures and economies get Babylonian, they always fall – and woe to those whom Babylon drags down with her!

Or we can let John shock us back to our senses, away from our RVs and vacation homes, away from our TVs and heaped-up plates, away from our dollar-sign golden calves and our ruts of stale thought-forms and our art gallery of advertisements. We could ask John what we should actually do. And then we hear the voice from heaven: “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues” (Revelation 18:4)!   What can we do?  Leave Babylon. 

 

What does that mean here, here in our farm-rich county, to leave Babylon? What's John calling us to do, practically speaking? He calls us to be wary of the sins on which our whole cultural system is founded – sins like greed and pride and lust and gluttony and covetousness. He cautions us that, if we're immersed in Babylonian culture and its commerce, forms of these may seem so normal that we won't recognize them unless we catch his vision. He asks us if we can see ourselves through the eyes of the poor and downtrodden. He implores us to let God bless us with critical distance from Babylonian systems so that we can at last see straight.

John would call us to carefully judge all propaganda in light of the gospel – and that includes the patriotic slogans and party platforms we swallow so easily, with their cheap talking-points and their vain boasts and biases. John would call us to question the purchases and sales we've made. Who gets hurt, who gets left worse off when I do this? How does it affect the world for me to buy or sell like this? John would call us not to open our mouths and ears and eyes wide to take in American culture, not without a lot of straining and sifting – our movies, our music, our news, our television programming, all inevitably the packaged products of corporations serving the base things they worship (and that goes as much for 'classics' as for what's shiniest and newest). John would question whether we've kept enough distance to remain more Christian than American. John would ask if we've kept our sobriety and purity when tempted with Babylon's wine of passion. And I do not know what we can say. I don't know what I can say! How much has Babylon's wine already twisted our vision? How much do we love what's Babylonian around and within us?

A convicting thought. John has seen not just one nation, not just one empire, but the entire world unmasked and exposed. He's shown us the harsh truth behind things we've loved. But at the same time, before he showed us Babylon, John showed us something else: the Everlasting Man, the Living One who holds the keys of death and underworld, the slaughtered Lamb whom God's servants follow wherever he goes, the Lion of Judah. And John showed us a glory that puts all Babylon's finery and jewels to shame. As John's prophetic visions unfold, this Everlasting Man – (we know his name: Jesus) – offers, in the end, an alternative to Babylon.

The book will close with a last set of visions, showing another city from heaven – not Babylon which must fall, but a New Jerusalem which must descend; not a drunken prostitute, but the pure bride of the Lamb. This is the ideal civilization into which the church is called – through worship and witness and work – to help humanity and society grow up. Where Babylon glorifies violence, New Jerusalem glorifies peace. Where Babylon talks the arrogant talk, New Jerusalem simply shines. Where Babylon exploits and ruins, New Jerusalem extends equal generosity and builds up. Where Babylon is faithless and depraved, New Jerusalem is faithful and pure. Instead of Babylonian inebriation, New Jerusalem is full of clear-headed joy in the Lord; and God himself will be at the center of a beautiful civilization.

We'll learn more about this New Jerusalem later in the year, at the end of October. But John shows us this New Jerusalem to say, “This is what you must come out of Babylon for. This is the template for how human society should look. When you do business, do it like a New Jerusalem economy, not a Babylon economy. When you choose entertainment, watch and hear what looks like New Jerusalem, not Babylon. Live for the splendor of a New Jerusalem that lasts, not the luxury of a Babylon that awaits her doom.” The New Jerusalem John sees at the end is the template, the heavenly model, that Jesus ascended into heaven to plan. And just as John gives us a promise that every expression of Babylon will fall, so we know that Jesus' word will call New Jerusalem to the earth – a new way to be society, a new civilization. New Jerusalem is what the church has always dreamt of being, even as we lament that Babylon has colonized us and stupefied us.

So what can we do? We can keep careful distance from the foundational sins of Babylon, but we can also begin to shape our neighborhood in a better way, beginning in our own hearts and homes. We can build better things, keeping our eyes on New Jerusalem for inspiration. And it starts here, as we learn to worship God and not a Dragon, follow the Lamb and not the Beast, take guidance from the Spirit and not the False Prophet, love New Jerusalem and not Babylon. It is a hard word, stacked up against what we've bought as normal. But no one said following the Lamb was easy or comfortable. No one said our idols would be safe. No one said we could keep drinking Babylon's cup and still reserve a seat at marriage supper of the Lamb and his New-Jerusalem Bride. So follow the Lamb, break free from Babylon, and live to open glimpses of New Jerusalem in this church and in the neighborhood around us – to the glory of God, in Jesus' name. Amen.