The second Sunday of Bible Month: Heaven’s door opened

In his important book Knowing God, Jim Packer says, "The study of God, who He is, what He's like, is the most practical project anyone can engage in." The most practical project anyone can engage in. "Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives," he says, "as it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesman to fly him to London, to put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square, and leave him as one who knew nothing of England or English to fend for himself, so," Packer says, "we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing the God whose world it is and who runs it. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life, blindfold as it were, with no sense of direction and no understand of what's around you. This way," Packer says, "you can waste your life and lose your soul." 

 

So today we continue our journey through the minefield of the Revelation of Christ revealed to John. We are encouraged to look up. We see heaven in our readings this morning and we see Jesus as king enthroned in glory. 

 

Let’s think about kings first. There’s been a lot of discussion since 8.17 on Friday night about the nature of honest and respected and trusted leadership. I had to look up the meaning of the word egregious used by Boris in his venomous and angry resignation statement! He’s not a happy bunny is he but nor are a lot of people about him. It was really something the audience live at Any Questions on Radio 4 on Friday night cheered loudly when the presenter announced his going. Then there’s what’s going on in the United States and your man Trump. How many counts of felony? And they’ll still elect him unless he’s in jail because some of them think he’s Jesus come back to save them and Jesus was wrongly accused. Thank God I say — and you might disagree with me —- that we have a monarchy in this country. We watched King Charles III crowned and seated on an ancient throne in a ceremony going back centuries. He’s not immune from scrutiny in a social media age but largely we think him a good man, and best of all a man of faith and Christian conviction trying to make the world better.

Revelation chapter 4 is a lovely chapter. John is there struggling in exile and he’s written to the seven churches about the persecution coming and to hold on to their faith. 

But surely those churches needed proof they weren’t being fobbed off with just words. Was God really going to show them his glory and power? In an amazing scene we can only really start to imagine God says to John, “come up here and I’ll show you.” And John is lifted up to heaven. Wow!  Revelation chapters 4 and 5 were written at a time when the church was suffering terribly for its faith in Jesus and more suffering was on the way. 

And it is designed to help hurting Christians look beyond the strange, mad, painful place, the realities of this world, to see God's greatness and glory and majesty and grace, and seeing that, be enabled to press on. Notice how John begins with his vision in the first verse of chapter 4. "After this I looked and behold, a door standing open in heaven." That word, "behold," by the way, is the most frequent command in the book of Revelation. "Behold." I wonder if you know what the second most common command is. "Fear not." Behold! Fear not! How will we obey the command to "fear not" in this strange, mad, painful place that we live in? How will we face our present sufferings, future trials? How shall we "fear not," John? We'll do it by obeying the command to "behold," to look. 

You silence fear by looking where John points us. God opens the door of heaven and tells John and tells us to look, to behold. And what is it that John sees? Verse 2 - "and behold a throne and one seated on it." That is, if you'd like, the message of the book of Revelation in a nutshell - "Fear not! Behold a throne and one seated on it!" The Lord has not abdicated His rule. He has not defected from His sovereignty. Though we may not always be able to grasp how it is so, John is inviting us to lift our eyes from our circumstances and to see again the throne and the one seated upon it. The message is, as Jeremiah put it long before, that "a glorious throne, set on high from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary." The glorious throne is our sanctuary. Let us run to it, rest in and cling to the vision of the greatness of God that John sets before our eyes - God in His sovereignty and in His mercy. And that vision is given to John and to us to say “hold on, there is a bigger picture. Today is not tomorrow.” So the first thing we need to remind ourselves of today is this – the church is here to seek and share the glory of God in Christ — so together in everything we do – we worship the king all glorious above. 

I’m overwhelmed with funerals at the moment. I had one on Wednesday, one on Thursday, one on Friday and I’ve another on Tuesday. I try and offer the promise of heaven to those I’m sharing with. People want to know there’s something beyond trouble and tribulation and death. 

I like what Gareth Baron has written in the worship from home for this week: “Being a Minister I have heard many people express their thoughts of what heaven will be like. “I believe heaven is..., I think heaven will be like…, I want heaven to be this…” various prefaces to their beliefs, wants and likes projecting what heaven would be for them. Oppositely are those who have asked me what heaven is like, almost expecting me to produce my phone with photos as if I have been.” We don’t know. But it’s got to be better than here. No more death or roadworks or Donald Trump. In the conclusion to the Narnia Chronicles, C.S. Lewis attempts to express the absolute joy that will come as our earthly lives come to an end and we are reunited with our God for all of eternity:

 

The things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

I like that. 

And see this: Around the throne in heaven were twenty-four thrones and seated on the thrones were elders clothed in white garments with golden crowns on their heads." These are the representatives of the people of God across the ages - the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve apostles of the new covenant era - here are the representatives of the church from across history. And what are they doing? They are participating in the reign of God. 

What a thing heaven will be - the church participating in the reign of God, there, seated on the throne. They have crowns on their heads. And with the elders are these four strange living creatures who almost defy imagination. John piles up symbol upon symbol to teach us about them. They are positioned, one on each side of the throne, facing every direction, poised to do the will of the one who sits there. They're covered inside and out with eyes. That is, they're full of wisdom. One is like a lion, another an ox, the third a man, the fourth an eagle. What are they? What are they for? Hard to say. Are they perhaps here to represent all the creatures that God has made and over whom He continues to rule. 

More important than their description is their activity, these servants of God. Look at what the elders and the living creatures are about. Like the seraphim in Isaiah chapter 6, day and night the living creatures never cease to say, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!" They adore God for His holiness. They adore God for His holiness; they adore God for His power. "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty" - infinite in His power. And they adore Him for His immutability, His unchangability - "He was and is and is to come." "As thou hast been, thou forever wilt be. Great is thy faithfulness!" That is their song.

And as they sing praise, they cast their crowns before the throne. Even their rule is but an aspect of the reign and rule of the sovereign God. And they sing, "Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things and by your will they existed and were created." And so must sing that too to make a difference in our world, giving a glimpse of heaven, as Charles Wesley puts it so well we anticipate that heaven below and own that love is heaven.