“Worthy Is the Lamb!”

A Sermon Based Upon Revelation 5: 1-17

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

April 30^th, 2017, Easter Series, 3/9: ‘Jesus Christ Revealed Today

“Dad, we should have turned back there!”   We were driving toward the beach.  I had hardly begun school and could hardly read.  But I could read maps.  I was fascinated by them, as far back as I remember.   Perhaps it was because I was adopted and needed as sense of control or place.  Who knows?  All I know is that I’ve always been able to read maps well.  During my missionary journeys in Europe, German locals used to tell me that I knew their roads better than they did.  They lived there, but I had studied the maps.

Back to my story.  My Dad was on the wrong road, but he wouldn’t listen to me.  He thought I was too small to know where we were going.  I tried to make him understand.  It didn't work.  I didn’t know what else to say.   I knew we were going to be lost, so I started crying.  “Dad, you don’t believe me!” When I started crying he didn’t seem to pay much attention, but my mother did.  “Charlie,  you need to listen to him”. That was a mother’s love and Dad knew he had to listen to mom.   He turned the car around and headed in the direction I suggested.   Now, we were on the right road.  We would actually get to the beach.   As far as I remember, my Dad never admitted he was wrong.  Mama did it for him.   I laugh when I remember.

Where are we?   Of course, we are at church.  You could also call out the postal address, or you could locate us with geographical coordinates, either with a map or with GPS.  This is one way of locating ourselves, but there are others ways.  We could locate ourselves, culturally, by saying we Americans.  Or we could locate ourselves chronologically, saying this is, April, 30^th, 2017, or maybe even more historically, saying that we are living in the early years of the 21^st century.  There is almost no limit to how we can describe ourselves---by time, family, culture, or even by faith, as either Baptists or as Christians.  All these descriptions we use help us define and identify ourselves and our time and place in the world.

Our text today in the book of Revelation is a kind of spiritual road map; a kind of religious GPS.   It is, however, not a map that enables us to see everything that is specifically going to happen in our own future.  In short, John is saying that if you know who Jesus is, you don't really have to know anything else.  The  ‘revelation’ was never intended to be a revelation of all the specifics of the future, John’s or ours.  It is rather, as it defines itself,‘The Revelation of Jesus Christ’ (1:1)..  This ‘Revelation’ is intended to put us all on God’s map so we can locate ourselves in the future which belongs only to God.

HOPE SEEN THROUGH TEARS

The “Revelation of Jesus Christ” starts to unfold as a ‘vision’ in chapter 4 and 5.  It begins as John sees a ‘door standing open in heaven’ (4:1) and then hears a trumpet-like voice calling him to ‘come up here’ to be shown ‘what must soon take place after this’.   What ‘after this’ does John mean?   Here, we need to remember that John was exiled on an island and left to die. He was ‘suffering’ there ‘because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus (1:2,9).   John, like any of us in  ‘life and death’ situation, is trying to locate himself on God’s map. He wonders about what will happen next.  He hopes that the troubles he, and all the people of God are going through,  will somehow fit into the grand scheme of God’s eternal purpose.

His answer begins while he is “in the Spirit” and John sees  ‘a throne in heaven’ (4:2) with sights very similar to what the great Hebrew prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel saw.  In the powerful right hand the  one sitting on the (heavenly) throne, John sees a sealed scroll.  He hopes this very mysterious scroll might be opened.  Perhaps it will contain the answer John seeks.  But his hopes, along with ours, are immediately crushed when no one, not on earth, nor even in heaven, and not even the one on the throne, can break the seal to open the scroll.  

Having to face the unanswerable, the unknowable, and perhaps, even the unthinkable, John begins to weep.  In his book, Seeing Through Our Tears,  one of my Counseling professors, Dan Bagby wrote that “Tears are one of the most expressive ways we (humans) communicate. We cry, he's says, for many different reasons.  From the moment we are born, our limited vocabulary requires tears to express ourselves.   Did you hear what he said?  Our tears express our human limits.  Tears, Bagby concludes, often reveal what we cannot put into words…  Tears have been the language of the soul…”  Tears are often mysterious and surprising, but they are never meaningless.  Tears point to the deepest feelings and greatest longings of our inner selves.  They ‘clothe our hearts’ with (or without words).   We always need to value what tears tell us.  As an old gospel song warmly put it, “Tears are a language God understands”.

What we should stop and  ‘understand’ from John’s tears is what we all feel when we also have to face the unanswerable questions of life.   If you haven't been there, you will get there.  Life has a way of finally bringing us all to our knees.  Even the strongest, smartest, and most proud among us, will have to finally and fully bow to circumstances, to powers, and we must all ultimately give in and give up to pressures and realities beyond our control.  We will all face asking what happens ‘after this’?  At some time, tears will be our only language too.

Most specifically, John ‘wept and wept because no one in heaven or on earth was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside’ (v.3).  Again, you must remember that John means that the ‘one seated on the throne’, who is constantly praised as ‘worthy’ and ‘Lord and God’  as creator of all things (4:11) is also not found to be ‘worthy’ to open this scroll.   This is the very contradiction of life and faith that John feels and sees.   It is the same kind of contradiction we all feel when we face the unthinkable and the unanswerable in our lives.

I have been there, with many people, in the worst moments of their lives.  I was with my Sunday school teacher as his pastor when his kidneys failed and he died.  He was the one who as a child influenced me with both fun and faith.  There were no words I could say except to share his fears and tears.  I was also with a family right after their daughter most unexpectedly committed suicide.  I was also there in in spirit, and later in flesh, with a friend whose husband drowned in a freak boating accident.  I also comforted her after her daughter was murdered.  We even took her young child into our home for a few months.  

I have been there in many, too many, unthinkable situations, including my own, and I have had to face the unanswerable along with everyone else.   It's a hard place to be.  Many Christians, even some pastors have a hard time being there too. Not long ago I was in a meeting with some other pastors.  A pastor’s spouse was facing cancer treatments and the one who offered a prayer for her stumbled for words and then said he believed in a God who would heal her.  While I understood what we all wanted to happen, he couldn't dare have said that he and we also believed in a God who might not answer our prayer.  That’s the contradiction of faith, isn't it?  We are not called to trust in the one on the throne because of what he has done, but we are also called upon to trust in the one on the throne when he he doesn't do what we want in the way we want it.  This is the unanswerable, the unthinkable, that brings us to tears too.

HOPE THROUGH THE TRAGIC

Still, even as he is brought to tears, John still receives hope, even though he doesn't get the answer he wants, when he wants it.   This hope comes to him from ‘one of the elders’ who tells him not to weep but to look to ‘see’ the a “lion” who can open the scroll.  But strangely, indeed very strangely, when John looks to see this lion, he sees a lamb.  And it is not just any lamb, but it is a ‘lamb, looking as if he had been slain’ who is now ‘standing in the center of the throne’.   Only this ‘slain lamb’ proves ‘worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals.’

We all know ‘who’ John is looking at.  This is God’s lamb, the lamb ‘slain before the foundation of the world’ who is beheld as the ‘lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’  This lamb is none other than Jesus Christ, who was crucified, buried, and was also raised from the dead.  For as we also see, this lamb, though slain, is still ‘standing in the center of the throne.’  He is no ordinary lamb, but he is God’s resurrected lamb.

But lets not get ahead of ourselves.  Before we come to the triumphant truth, we need reflect upon this first, hard, and very tragic truth---the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ.  How does this very tragic and ugly cross become our hope; even when all else fails and also before that?   Paul himself said that he had nothing better to proclaim than ‘Christ and him crucified.’   How does he come to suggest that the only hope we really have in the unthinkable, unanswerable, and unknowable and very tragic nature of all our lives has broken through to us in the message of the cross and in this most tragic hero we call ‘the Christ’?

As we must be reminded, in John’s Revelation, it is only this slain lamb who opens the scroll.  It is only slain lamb who points us to the redemption from our sin and from the  sin of the whole world.  What both Paul and John see, is what the entire New Testament sees.  The  redemption we all hope for can only come through this suffering and through the most tragic, not by going around it. 

To make this plain, you nor I will ever be saved by having fun, being entertained, with sheer excitement, nor through the memories we can make in life.  We will only be saved by following this suffering Christ .  Only by our own participation in the redemptive suffering Christ will we find salvation.   “By his stripes we are healed” the great prophet Isaiah said.  This is why Paul is determined to preach nothing but ‘Christ and him crucified’.   The cross is Paul’s primary message because, as strange as it still sounds,  its God’s redemptive answer.  As Paul wrote to the Corinthians: ‘The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God…. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom…, God chose the weak,…the lowly,…the despised things---and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are.’ 

Paul’s astounding words are everything John now sees in his heavenly vision too, but they are still not easy words to understand or to appropriate into our lives.   Understanding the cross wasn’t easy for Paul, for John, and it still isn't easy for us either.   A lot of Christians come to church every Sunday all their lives, even trust Jesus as their savior, but the truth of the cross still evades them.    The rest never stop learning about or living this way of the cross. 

For it is one thing to believe in the Christ of the cross, but it is quite another thing to ‘take up your cross’ and to ‘follow’ this ‘crucified  one’ as as your own way, your own truth and your own life. But isn’t this exactly what the cross ‘at the center of the throne’ means? Only ‘the slain lamb’ can take away the ‘sin’ of he world’ which begins with the greatest ‘sin’ that must be removed from all of us.  This universal ‘sin’ is  the ‘pride’ of the most  ‘self-centered life’ we don’t want to give up.   But only by fully surrendering to God and his perfect will, will we find the most hopeful answer that only comes when we follow this Christ of the cross.

Now of course, there are many ways to try to express the meaning the cross and how it is the ‘power’ that ‘saves’.   Neither the story of the crucifixion, nor the letters of Paul, and not even these very strange images from the Revelation, could ever exhaust nor fully explain the mystery of the saving power of the cross.   We continue to find new allusions to the cross in movies, in novels, books, music, and in the events of everyday life, which can be just as powerful as Scripture.  These facts, and even some fictions informed by facts, can’t replace the biblical story, but the story of the saving cross continues to pop up in both the facts and fictions of life.  In fact, cross is the only fact that will constantly prove to be true to in this life until that coming day when ‘all things are made new’.

All of you have heard that truth is stranger than fiction, but sometimes fiction is as strange as the truth.  Today, in Denmark, there is a set of very popular, fictional novels are being written about a detective who is a very ‘tragic’ but gifted sort of fellow.  He is grumpy.  He is rude.  He is a loser.  His wife has left him.  No one at the office likes him.  In fact, his boss gave him one last chance to redeem himself by making a whole new department where he can work almost completely alone.  This department is called “Department Q” where the detective is supposed to write up all the ‘cold’ unsolved cases, and then turn them in as ‘lost causes’.  Strangely, however, it is exactly by giving himself to these ‘lost causes’ that he finally begins to find his redemption in life.   By giving himself to crimes no one else cares about, and then reaching out to people who have been almost forgotten, this detective comes to finds himself.

One of the most moving scenes comes in a novel about a man who is falsely using religion as a way to trap and to kill innocent children.  This man seeks to injure other children similar to how he was injured as a child.   On the way to solving this crime, the very agnostic detective finds himself at a funeral service in a church.  He hears the gospel of hope, perhaps for the first time, he really hears it.  His face is filled with tears.  It’s as if he comes to realize that there is no other hope than the hope the true gospel gives.  Though the detective has not yet found the way to faith---that would spoil the story---he has at least for now, discovered the real need for faith in this very tragic world.

Whatever the cross of Jesus means, it means that we only find hope and redemption by walking straight into the good, important, ‘lost causes’ of life, not by walking away from them.   You, nor I will be able to avoid the tragic, the hurts, or the pains of life, so why not walk straight into them by faith, with the sure hope that by giving ourselves to doing, being, and seeking the good for and with others, we can come to find purpose, even in the midst of pain and hurt.   In other words,  we will never find lasting hope, nor find the redemptive way by seeking our own comfort.   We don’t find the hope we need by avoiding the nursing homes, the hospitals, the prisons, the lonely, or by doing our own thing.  No, we only find redemption by working to redeem those who are among ‘the least of these’.  Just like we can’t find happiness by actually trying to find it, we only find the joy and purpose of life as a by product of doing the right, good, and necessary things of life as acts of redemptive love.

I don’t mean to sound too overly philosophical, but the cross of Jesus, if it teaches us anything about life, is that right where it looks like Jesus was involved in a lost, cause, which was trying to redeem unredeemable Israel, that Jesus proved once and for all, that he was ‘a righteous man’ and  ‘Son of God’.   When we also follow Him by giving and sacrificing, even suffering for what is right, good and loving, we also prove ourselves as God’s children.  If the slain lamb at the center of the throne means anything,  it means that redemption is found in this God who calls us to join with Jesus in this ‘lost cause’ that can’t be lost.   The ‘lost cause’ of the cross can't be lost because you are being redeemed through that cross.  As Paul says, ‘to us who are being saved, (the cross, through Christ) is the power of God.’

HOPE THAT IS TRIUMPHANT

nThis lamb of God is a lion exactly because he was slain for being ‘faithful and true.’   This slain lamb not only still stands before God’s throne, because God raised him from the dead, but this slain lamb is finally praised as worthy ‘to take the scroll’, ‘to open its seals’ because ‘with his blood’ he ‘purchased people from every tribe, language, people, and nation.”  He alone is able to ‘make’ us  ‘to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God’ (5:10) and finally rule on earth.

 Now, as John finishes this opening to his vision, he takes us to the end where everything is going.   Only the faithful, slain, lamb is worthy, who can take us, and this world to where we all want to go---toward hope for a future full of ‘power, wealth, wisdom, strength, honor, glory and praise!’   None of us are there yet, but the lamb leads the way, if we want to have hope.  As one preacher put it, this what it looks like when the lamb wins, once and for all.  Life doesn't look like that now.  Earth is not yet as it is in heaven.   But for now, as the example in heaven, the lamb is the only one who wins.

There was once a small little Quaker Church in England that was located next door to a large business firm known simply as ‘Lewis’.   When “Lewis” decided it was time to enlarge, it wrote a letter to the small little church that was in its way, setting on the land in needed to expand.  In the very nice letter written to the church, an very fair offer was made to purchase the church and the land.   The said that with the money the church could relocate and find build a very nice new place to worship, because the firm needed their land.  The signature at the bottom of the letter said it all.  It was simply signed, “Lewis”.

Not long afterward, the firm known as Lewis got a return from the little Quaker Church. The letter told Lewis that it appreciated the very fair offer, but it reminded Lewis that the little church had been on that land for generations, long before Lewis was ever established.  It told Lewis to name the price, and the little Quaker church stands ready to buy out Lewis and all its holdings.   The letter was signed with one single name, Cadbury.

If you don’t know what Cadbury means in England the name Cadbury is equivalent to the name Hershey.  All the wealth of Lewis was nothing compared the wealth uncovered in that little Quaker church, where one with an even bigger shadow was cast, where all the Cadbury’s who had buried for generations,  and where one of them who was still very much alive in his faith.  So, pointing toward the power, wealth and wisdom, of where this Revelation of Jesus  is going, and toward where you are going to, I ask you; what are you investing in? Amen.