Revelation 4 (Con't)

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Andy, will you open us up with a word of prayer? Good. Let's pray.
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Our Father in God, again, we thank you for our time together, Lord, we pray that you would bless us, help us,
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Lord, to see you as you truly are, being brother Mike, guide his thoughts, guide his words, and may we all grow in the grace and the knowledge of that one who so loved us that he gave himself for us in his name.
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Amen. Amen. Revelation chapter 4, and we'll read the whole chapter.
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Last week I read on the defi, but we won't. Maybe we'll save the time and see how far we can get. After these things
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I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which
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I had heard, like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me, said, Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things.
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And immediately I was in the spirit, and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and one sitting on the throne, and he was sitting, was like the
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Jasper stone and like Sardius in appearance, and there was a rainbow around the throne like an emerald in appearance.
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Around the throne were 24 thrones, and upon those thrones I saw 24 elders sitting, clothed in white garments and golden crowns on their heads.
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And out from the throne came flashes of lightning, sounds and peals of thunder, and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God.
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And before the throne there was something like a sea of glass, like crystal. And in the center and around the throne, four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind.
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The first creature was like a lion, the second creature like a calf, and the third creature had a face like that of a man, and the fourth creature was like a flying eagle.
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And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within, and day and night they do not cease to say,
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Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come.
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And when the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, to Him who lives forever and ever, the 24 elders would fall down before Him who sits on the throne, and they would worship
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Him who lives forever and ever, and will cast their crowns before the throne saying,
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Worthy are you, our Lord, our God, to receive glory and honor and power for you.
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You created all things, and because of you they will exist and were created.
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Okay, last week, I think when we ended, we were talking about the 12 and the 12 which came to a total of 24.
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The 20, there was one, you asked a question on Wednesday night, are we going to see these 12 and 12?
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When we get there, are we going to see 24 elders standing around the throne? I say no. If you disagree with me, that's fine.
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I don't think it's a point to divide over. Or do I think, would your interpretation be wrong and mine be right?
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My conclusion is no. And the reason is, is what John is seeing is a vision.
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He was taken up in the Spirit. He is seeing what is going on into heaven. Remember, he sees this door opening, and he's seeing, he actually isn't given anything yet.
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He's just observing what's going on. And a lot like it was in Ezekiel, and if y 'all want to write this down, you can go home and read it.
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In Ezekiel chapter 8, God, Ezekiel's in Babylon. He is sitting around with the elders of Judah, and it says, immediately
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God fell upon him and he picked him up. It's funny. It says he picked him up by his hair, and he carried him away in the
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Spirit to Jerusalem, and he saw a vision. And that vision he saw was the four angels there with battle axes ready to slay everybody, and it was a vision.
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He knew that he was in the Spirit. In this case, I don't know if John would say, hey, was I in the Spirit or not? I think we talked about that last week.
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But I don't think you're going to see 24 elders. I don't think you're going to see 12 people look like Old Testament saints and 12 looking like New Testament saints.
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The question also was asked, why not 13?
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I thought that was a good question. But if you remember correctly, there actually is how many tribes?
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13. That's right. It was a double portion. So, technically speaking, there are 13 apostles.
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Technically speaking, there are 13 tribes, but because the way God has designed it, they don't count the
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Levites, at least most of the time, and they don't count Paul. So, now, if you've been reading any commentaries, and obviously
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I know many of you do, or footnotes in your Bible, some say this is the church taken up into heaven and the rapture has taken place.
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I don't even hold that position. And one, it doesn't even come close to any interpretive hermeneutical rule that you would come to that conclusion unless you start with the fact that the rapture...
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Go ahead. Question? That the rapture has to take place. Go ahead. Okay, hang on.
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Let me... Okay, let me...
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Just real quick, because I think you've got a two -part question, because once I say this... I agree. With John MacArthur, I can agree with his assessment.
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I think he's wrong, and I know I'm a nobody. I'm just Painter Mike, okay? I haven't wrote hundreds of books.
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I think he's wrong. And here's why I think he's wrong. In the first three chapters, 19 times, okay, 19 times the word church is used.
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It's not used again until you get to the end of the book. I think it's in 21 or 22. So his assessment is right.
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The church is never mentioned. The word ecclesia is never, or any derivative of it, is never mentioned again.
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Well, all you have to do is just do a plain reading of Revelation.
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Don't try to do any exegesis. Don't try to read anything into it. Just read it, and you're going to go,
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Oh, wow, well, the reason why this was used so many times is because he was addressing the seven churches.
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And how does he address the churches every time he talks to them? The church, the church of here, the church is, the church, church is, the church of.
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That's how he addresses them. Once you get to chapter 4 and 5, and everybody, everybody, any commentary will say that there is a major shift from chapter 3 to chapter 4.
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Now, what takes place, now we can say we have some differences of opinion. But the reason why he says that is because the church is never mentioned.
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But now, like I said, just take your, if you can ever sit down and just read it all the way through.
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How many times do you have saints used?
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A bunch. A bunch. How many times does Paul address the people of God as saints?
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A bunch. And who is he addressing when he writes those epistles to the church of Galatia or Ephesians?
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When he says the saints, who is he addressing? He's addressing the church. So this is synonymous of this.
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So when you move forward, after the 19 times it's used, everything after that is used in saints, redeemed ones, you have redeemed for yourself, a people, with the redeemed people.
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Is that not the church? Okay. Question? No. Oh, I saw you do that. Great man.
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Okay. All right. So, I agree with John MacArthur, but he's wrong to say that the church no longer is there.
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Because now you've made a distinction between the, once again, this is a, you're reading into it, the tribulation is now fixing to take place under his perspective, therefore the church is no longer here, and everybody that gets saved during the seven years of tribulation is not part of the church, they're part of the tribulation saints.
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He's made a distinction that the Bible does not make. He has an interpretive rule that guides the way that he is in understanding and just using, and I think he is a wonderful man.
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But, buddy, he has missed it when it comes to his eschatology. Because he is bent, he is bent towards making such a distinction between the church and Israel that these two can never touch and these two can't be the same.
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When Paul tells us that God broke down that wall and there is no more bond, nor slave, nor Greek, nor Jew, everybody is the same in Christ.
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And what was the mystery that God was going to unfold? That there would no longer be
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Jews and Gentiles, that the church would be made up of what? Both Israelites and Gentiles.
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So, the church is present from chapter, in the vision, representative by the 24 elders, when we get to chapter 6, and whatever we come to the conclusion unfolds when the seals are opened, the church is still there.
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The church is, what are those who are being beheaded?
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Remember, there are going to be some souls around the throne. Are those the church or the saints?
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It's both. Because the saints are part of the church. Okay? Now, if you've been reading too, because this came up already, it came up on Wednesday night too, there is a perspective that says that those 24 are not representative of the church.
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They're a priesthood course set up by David in 24 courses.
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And the reason why he did them in 24 courses is because the Levites, and I think it's in 1
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Chronicles 24, you got it right there? Yeah, 1 Chronicles 24.
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David sets up 24 courses, meaning sets these men up to work in such a way that they would be able to take care of their duties because they were overwhelmed with Levites.
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So that everybody could get their opportunity to serve and serve in their capacity, he set up 24 courses.
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Now, I think the connection with someone saying, Hey, well, in the
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Chronicles passage it says there's 24, you know, the 24 courses of the priest would wear white garments, they would be using incense, and we do see that coming up in the 5th chapter.
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You'll see them using incense before the throne. They're doing priestly duties, so they say, Hey, we think this is a heavenly priesthood.
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I disagree with that. Because it's not an exegetical conclusion. You're just taking a conclusion saying,
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Hey, I see 24 priests here, and I see 24 here, and they're making the connection. We're also going to see that when we come up with the white horse situation.
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When we come to that, people make just a parallel, and it's not an exegetical conclusion. So, I do agree with the fact that the 24 are priests.
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Because, but not a priest, just priesthood alone. Why? Because we are a kingdom of what?
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Kingdom of priests. That's why these 12 representatives of the old, 12 representatives of the new are wearing white garments.
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I said last week, why are they wearing white garments? They've certainly been washed in the blood.
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Why have they been washed in the blood of the Lamb? Because they have been forgiven, but they have overcome. And what was the, through the churches, if you overcome,
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I will give you what? There's two things he said he would give them. A crown, and what are these dudes wearing?
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Crowns. And what are they wearing? White garments. Okay? Okay? So, I believe that these are representative of the church in its totality.
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As a priesthood, and I put the
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Lamb there because that's what's coming. Okay? When we get to heaven,
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I don't think we're going to see 24 Presbyerov. That's the word that's actually used. And you may have another, there is another perspective that this is a heavenly, angelic council.
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I don't know if any of anybody's study Bibles say that, but does yours say that? Yeah, that's what it says.
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What does it say? So we can say how wrong it is. I'm just kidding. They could be angels who represent the entirety of God's people just as angels represent the churches in 1 .12
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-3 .14. But they're reading into an angel, and it doesn't say the word. I think me and him, the word that you use for them is not angelos or angeloi.
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It's presbyteroi, which means elder. That's the word that's used. So if we're going to be consistent with our hermeneutic and let the text stand on its own,
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I don't see it being angels. I see it as elders, meaning the ones that started the
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Old Covenant community and the New Covenant community. So not an angelic council.
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Hey, if you hold some other different opinion than that, it ain't worth dividing over. You show charity to me,
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I'll show charity to you, or just not talk about it. Any questions before we get into some of the freaky, weird stuff that we read about?
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We all agreed there's some weird stuff in that chapter, right? No? Yeah, it'll be a little weird.
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People covered in eyes. Yeah, it looks like one of those giant gumball machines. I think
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I said that when we were doing the introduction 20 weeks ago. It reads like a book that's been written by someone who's on an island in isolation.
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All right, so that gets us out of verse 4 and answers some questions that had already been asked. Now, verse 5 says,
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And out of that throne, remember, are we going to see a throne? No. God is spirit.
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Therefore, you can't see God. Therefore, God doesn't need to be sitting on anything because spirits don't sit.
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And you can't see the spirit. The spirit has to manifest itself in something if it's a spirit.
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So, out of the throne come flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder.
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When we see in the Old Testament, when we see flashes of lightning, sounds of thunder, what is that a representative of?
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What do we call that? Theophany. And at times, that theophany can turn into a
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Christophany. A Christophany. Like in Isaiah 6, we have the temple fills up.
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Isaiah's there. He said, Woe is me. It fills up. It shook. He sees the glory of the
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Lord. And from the Old Testament perspective, he was seeing
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Yahweh. Okay, just saw my thing. He's seeing Yahweh. When we get to John, John says,
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Who did he see? Christ. He saw Christ. So, we see something in the Old Testament that's representative of theophany.
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When we get to the New Testament, we have an understanding. It really wasn't a theophany. It was a
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Christophany because he saw the pre -incarnate Christ. So, there was thunder, lightning.
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Where else do we see thunder and lightning? Mount Sinai.
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Certainly, Mount Sinai. Remember what the people said when it was the thunder and lightning and it was shaking and all that?
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What did they tell Moses? He says, Check it out. You go on up there.
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You go. We're scared. They actually said, We're scared. You go up there. You figure out whatever he wants us to know and you come down here and tell us and whatever it is, we'll do it.
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Interesting that they say whatever he tells us to do, we'll do it. And they didn't even... I don't know about y 'all, but I don't make no agreement until I figure out what those conditions are.
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And they said, Whatever you want us to do, we'll do. Whatever it is. Well, here it is.
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We've got flashings of lightning, sounds and peals of... What is a peal of thunder? A thunder just does a quick little...
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Hey, I worked at... When I was doing Pet Paradise all over the nation for about 18 years, they had a company where they would drop their dogs off to this resort.
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It was called Park and Fly. Well, they saw me work and they said, Hey, would you be interested in doing our work too?
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They're right here by each other. I was like, Sure, I'm already here. So they would be at the end of the airport where you would hear the planes come in.
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You know, planes have a thunder sound. Well, these planes would take off and as it would take off, you wouldn't hear the sound as it went by.
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I mean, as the plane went by, you would hear it later and it would do this crazy...
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I'm like, Man, what is that? It's that peal of sound that were the sounds chasing down.
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It hadn't broken the speed of sound, but that sound is chasing where it's coming from.
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That's what the peal of thunder, the roaring, the reverberation of those sounds and the shaking that came along with it.
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And it says here that he was seeing this lightning, the sounds and peals of thunder, and there were seven lamps of burning before the throne, which are the seven
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Spirits of God. Now, here it is. Once again, we see the seven Spirits of God. We saw it in the beginning, which
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I understood as being the sevenfold. You remember back in Chapter 1, the sevenfold. And I said every time we see these seven
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Spirits of God, every time we see them again, it doesn't get any clearer.
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You know, in the beginning, it was a little bit easier, but this says, hey, there's seven lamps around before the throne, which are the seven
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Spirits of God. And I'll be honest with you. I don't think anybody has a satisfactory answer for how to understand that other than this is the fullness of the
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Spirit around the throne. There is a Trinitarian act going on here. Although we have not seen the
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Lamb yet, Christ has not walked onto the scene in the narrative or in the vision.
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I do believe this is the Holy Spirit that it's speaking of. And it said it was before the throne, and then there was something like a sea of glass, like crystal.
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When we think of sea, what do you think of? People. What's that?
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People. I didn't hear you. People. What did you say? People. People. Okay. People.
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What else? Vastness. Vast. Yeah. What else? He talks about it being like crystal, like a glass, so you think kind of like tranquility, like, you know, just very flat.
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Very calm. Very calm. In the Old Testament, the sea was a place of chaos.
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So when we think of, when we get to the end of the book, to me, in my opinion, the best message
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Andy ever preached was on the eternal state. And he talked about, you know, there's a sea.
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There would be no more sea. Does it mean God don't like the ocean? No. What it's talking about is the fact that there's not going to be any more chaos.
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When you look, when a person was out on the Sea of Galilee, let's just use it in a Jewish context, on the
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Sea of Galilee, do you know that tempests would rise up like that? They had the cold air would come down.
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The Sea of Galilee's down like this. It's almost kind of like in a bowl -like. You would have the cold air coming up from the high off of another mountain range.
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They would come down. What happens when you have the cold air and the hot air come together? What happens?
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You have a tempest. And there was always this chaotic, uncontrollable chaos connected to the sea.
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Always that way. We talked about this, I think, last week. How many times was they on the
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Sea of Galilee and a tempest blew up, came out of nowhere, and they were scared?
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Multiple times. Multiple times. And what did Jesus have to do? He rebuked the wind and the sea, and it became like...
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Actually, He rebuked the wind and the sea became like glass. Jesus doesn't just rebuke the sea.
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He rebukes the causation of it. What makes waves come up? Wind. That's what makes it come up, especially on a lake.
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You don't have tides controlling that. It says it's like that of crystal, meaning, one, it's clear.
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Two, it is absolutely flat. Flat and clear.
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And in the center and around the throne were four living creatures.
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All right. How many of these translations say something other than creatures?
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I prefer beings. Beasts. I don't like that.
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I'll tell you why here. Creatures, being, beast.
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We'll start with the beast. What is... In through Daniel's unfolding of his visions of the four kingdoms that would come before the kingdom of Messiah, was the beast ever representative of anything good?
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It was always something bad, right? As we go through the book of Revelation, does the beast have any good connotation?
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No. No, that's why I don't prefer this. This is good.
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I understand what it's trying to convey. How many of them say creature? Mine says creature. Who says being?
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Anybody say being? What does ESV say? Creature.
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I prefer being. I don't know which one. And reason is because they're representative of things.
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They're representative of, we're going to get to this in a minute, of all of creation.
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And we'll talk about that here in just a second. But let's look how weird they look. They're full of eyes front and behind.
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Okay. So, you have this creature, whatever it is, we'll try to figure that out here in a minute, but it has eyeballs all the way around it.
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So, is it the head? That's how I think.
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Is it the head? Or is it the whole body made of eyeballs? What does it say? It says eyes full in the front and behind it.
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I don't know. You know, is it like a, I don't know if you all, when you were kids, you'd go put the little quarter into the thing at Pick and Save, or Pantry Pride, wherever my parents were going.
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Hey, can I get a quarter? I'd go put it in that little thing, and you'd turn it, and this little plastic ball would drop out, and it'd have either the little rubber balls,
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I like to see how hard I can bounce one around and shoot them up, or it'd have a marble or something in it. It always looked like an eyeball to me.
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So, when you had it in that big old giant thing, I was like, man, that thing looked like a bunch of eyeballs.
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Is that what we're looking at? I don't know. It says that that first one was like a lion.
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So, is it a lion that looks like a bunch of eyeballs? I don't know. The second was a calf.
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All right, so here we are. Lion. Does everybody say calf or cow or ox or something?
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Ox. I'll put that here. And what's the next one? Man. And what's the last one?
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Eagle. And the fourth one, like a flying eagle.
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And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings. Okay, so now it's telling us that whatever these things look like, they've got a bunch of eyeballs, and they've got six wings.
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What do we know about six -winged things? Where do we see these elsewhere in Scripture?
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In Isaiah? Yes, we do. But specifically, if you go, why don't we turn our Bibles over to Ezekiel 1.
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The similarities with this vision John's having with Ezekiel and Daniel 7 are absolutely astounding.
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So if you want to go home and read Daniel 7 and Ezekiel, we're going to read part of Ezekiel because this is pretty cool.
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Just the similarities. It's almost like an escalated on steroids vision of what
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Daniel and Ezekiel saw. It says now, it came about in the 13th year, the fifth day of the fourth month, while I was by the river
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Kabar among the exiles. So this has taken place while Ezekiel has been taken to exile.
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He was part of the second deportation in 597 B .C. So he's down there by the river
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Kabar and among the exiles. The heavens were opened up and he saw visions of God.
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And this was on the fifth day of the month of the fifth year of King Jehoiakim's exile.
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The word of the Lord came expressly to Ezekiel, the priest, son of Buzi, in the land of the
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Chaldeans by the river Kabar. And there the hand of the Lord came upon him.
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And as I looked, behold, a storm wind was coming from the north, a great cloud with fire flashing.
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Forth continually and bright lights around it. And it was in the midst something like glowing metal in the midst of that fire.
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Within it there were figures resembling four living beings. And this was their appearance.
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They had human form. Each one of them had four faces and four wings.
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Their legs were straight and their feet were like that of a calf's hoofs. And they gleamed like burnished bronze.
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And under their wings there were four sides where human hands. As for the faces of the four of them,
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I'm sorry, as for the faces and the wings of the four of them, their wings touched one another.
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Their faces did not turn when they moved. Each went straight forward. As for the form of each face, each had a face of a man.
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All four had the face of a lion on the right and the face of a bull on the left.
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And all four had the face of an eagle. Such were their faces. Their wings were spread out above and two touching another being and two covering their bodies.
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And each went straight forward wherever the spirit was about to go. And they went to go without turning as they went.
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In the midst of the living beings, there was something that looked like burning coals of fire, like torches darting back and forth and among the living beings.
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And there was fire, bright, lightning, and flashing from the fire. And the four living beings ran to and fro like bolts of lightning.
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Okay, so we have seen some differences. The differences between what
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Ezekiel saw, he said four wings. So now, that's why
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I believe we're seeing an escalated version of what Ezekiel saw.
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This is what John is seeing. Now, the question could be, is it a seraphim or cherubim?
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Which one is it? I don't know. I don't know the difference. To be honest with you, we don't know what the difference between a cherubim and a seraphim are.
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Are they both angelic beings? Yes. Yes, no doubt, angelic beings.
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What are their purposes? Cherubim were protectors.
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Yes, let's think about that for a second. We think of cherubim. Where was the first place we see the cherubim?
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The garden. What was its purpose?
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To prevent a man from reentering the garden. Guard, right? Right. Guardian.
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Then we see it again. On the ark. And what were they doing?
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The glory. Yeah, you're right. I was going to say the glory, because what did they do? Those two came over.
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Just like he said here, their wings were almost touching one another. Even here, their wings were almost touching one another.
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Just as they were guarding anyone, not just Adam and Eve, their descendants.
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Remember, the Garden of Eden was there up until the flood. Guarding anybody to come back to the
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Garden of Eden. Don't go back there. It was to guard them, protect them from eating of the tree of life and being in a perpetual state of sin.
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Do you know how gracious that was of God to do that? That was a gift from God to say, look, you are now in a sinful condition, alienated from me.
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If they were to reach out their hand and to eat of the tree of life, they would have been unredeemable.
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But he guards them from that. In the ark, they two are like this.
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And what was in the middle? What glowed? The Shekinah glory of God.
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And those were supposed to be guarding the glory of God. Does God's glory really need to be guarded?
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No. But that little representative of what it was, was representing what these cherub do.
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Now, we do see other times in the Ezekiel passage, we see you with a cherub that guarded.
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That's actually guarding the throne. And I believe that's the guardian. He was the guardian over the throne of Tyre.
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Okay. Somebody might disagree with me, and that's fine. Oh, you got a hand up? Yeah. No, just the cherubim guarding the ark.
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The point you made about God not needing to be guarded. Think about it. God doesn't really need worship either.
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But that's what we're created for. That's what the cherubim is created for. So just them being on the ark, you know, in the middle, in the shekinah glory in the middle, it just goes to sight.
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It's kind of like with these beasts with the eyes everywhere, saying holy, holy, holy. It's like all of creation was made to worship.
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You jumped ahead, but you're right. Yeah, no, no. You've made connections.
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You're right. Hey, God doesn't need to be protected. God doesn't need to be worshiped.
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God doesn't need anything. But why did he create angelic beings?
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For the purpose of worshiping him. Okay? We're seeing the 20... Oh, you erased it.
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But what we're seeing is collectively, we've seen the 24 elders. What were they representative of?
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The church. The church. Church as a whole. Old Testament saints, New Testament saints, collectively all of them.
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Then these are representative of all of his creation. And why are they representative of all of his creation?
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Well, one, the lion is considered the king of the beast of the field. Right? What's the...
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I don't prefer calf. I think ox is better. Yes, and it is the strongest.
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That's why I prefer ox. A calf is strong for something small, but when you think about an ox, man, what did they use oxes for?
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That was like the tractor of the ancient days. Man, they'd drag anything. They'd put a couple of them together, put a goat where they were both tied at the same height and the same distance, and they could drag whatever.
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Man, what was he? He was God's crown jewel, per se, of creation.
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Therefore, he is the most intelligent. Beast of the field. The king of the beast of all the field.
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The beast of burden strongest. The most intelligent image bearer. Well, actually, the only image bearer.
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That's the only thing that God made and said what? This making our own image.
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Making our own image. And it's interesting that God gives this dominion over all of this.
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And what's the eagle represent? Does anybody else say anything other than eagle? Nothing? Okay. Make sure it didn't say vulture or something because sometimes it's translated like vulture or something.
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What's the eagle? The animal that soars into heaven. And it rules the sky.
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That's basically how we understand it. It rules the sky. Interesting because the eagle was so powerful and could move swiftly.
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As a matter of fact, it even says when Babylon was going to come and they were going to wipe out all the nations as they came through.
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Remember, Babylon rose very quick. Their empire only lasted, not just this, it fell before in the end.
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Technically, it began to fall long before the 70 years of captivity was over.
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So it rose up very quick and it came down very quick. And when
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God told through the prophets, I think it was Habakkuk and a couple of the other ones, that as the Babylonians or the
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Chaldeans would come through, they would move swiftly like an eagle. Interesting enough, what became the sign for the
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Roman Empire? Eagle. An eagle. What is ours? Eagle.
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An eagle. You know if it had been Benjamin Franklin, you know what we'd have been? Turkey. Maybe there was something special about a turkey we didn't know back then.
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So, like you were saying, does God need to be guarded? No, but he created cherubs and seraphim for that particular purpose, to do his bidding, to do the guarding, to serve his purposes.
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Why did he create? This would encompass all of creation. Why did he create them?
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For the purpose of worshipping him. And when we get to the end of chapter 4 and 5, we're going to see who's worthy to be worshipped.
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We've jumped ahead a little bit. But who's worthy to be worshipped by all of creation? Nothing but the
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Lamb. The Lamb. The Lamb. We've got about five minutes.
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I don't know if I want to go before. Yeah, does
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God need anything? Of course not. It's in him that we live and breathe and have our being.
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It's in him. Is God dependent on anything? No. How many of us think we're independent?
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We act like it, though. We act like it. We're self -made men, self -made women.
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You're totally dependent on oxygen. If somebody just sucked the oxygen out of this room right now, we'd deflate like a balloon.
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We're dependent. God is totally self -sufficient and in need of nothing.
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And it says here that those six wings, and having full of eyes around and within, and day and night, and here's where we'll wrap it up, and day and night, they do not cease to say,
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Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God the
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Almighty who was and who is and who is to come. Where have we already seen the one who was, who is, and is to come?
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We've seen it in the beginning of the book. In chapter 1 around verse 8.
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And it talks about he was the one who is. That's speaking of God the Almighty, and what is being addressed here.
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God the Almighty. Why Holy, Holy, Holy? The emphasis on it.
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Sure. And the superlative. Anytime something, hey, I agree. If you say, hey, well, I think he's speaking of the
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Trinity. Holy, Holy, Holy. I'm not going to argue with that. I say, okay, I believe that in this particular vision, the
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Trinity's present. We've already seen God sitting on his throne, right? We've already seen the seven spirits, which is representative of the
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Holy Spirit of God, and the Lamb is fixing to come into the room here or onto the scene.
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So if you say, hey, I think it's talking about the Trinity. Okay. But in the Old Testament, something was said three times.
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It was in the superlative. Meaning it exceeded. They didn't have caps.
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They didn't have highlighters to highlight something. How did they do it? They said it multiple times.
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Multiple times. To bring that to the affirmative or to make a point.
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They didn't have holy, holier, and holiest. And think about holy. I know this has to do more so with the attributes of God, but obviously the character and nature of God, all of his attributes are infinite.
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We did this on the academy last week. I've got to do a couple of them tonight, probably. You think about his holiness.
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God's holiness is forever. Although, I believe and understand the
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Scriptures as everything comes out of his holiness. His love comes out of him, a holy love.
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His wrath, infinite, without end, just like his love, without end, comes from what?
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Out of his holiness. It speaks of,
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I think it's in Thessalonians, it said that when he comes, he will lay those who did not obey the gospel and that they will be removed away from the power of his glory.
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It doesn't say this specifically, but they then do endure his holiness. Hey, do unclean people stand in the presence of a holy
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God? No, look at Nadab and Abihu. Look at, let's take a picture of the ark, where the cherub were protecting the
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Shekinah glory of God, and when they were carrying the ark, Uzzah, David bringing it back, they were carrying it in a way that God said don't.
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They would have been carrying it on the post, threw it with the Levites toting it, they wouldn't have had to worry about the ox tripping or foot slipping in the mud or whatever happened, and it falling, but what did
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Uzzah do? Him, thinking he was honoring God, decided to do it his way, in the same way
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Nadab and Abihu did, and what did he reach out to do? He reached out to stabilize the very presence of God, and what happened?
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I don't know about y 'all, man, that's a tough passage. Not only is it tough for me to read, it was tough for David too, because you know what
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David said? He was scared and he was mad at God. I think that's the only two times in Scripture we see someone actually voice anger towards God.
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One was when David saw Uzzah get zapped. Understandable.
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I'm not saying it's never right to be angry with God, but from our perspective, what he was doing was an honorable thing.
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Would we not agree? The problem with Uzzah is he thought that he was holier than the dirt.
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That dirt's not sinful. Uzzah was sinful. And the other time was when
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Jonah said he was mad at God because he saved
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Nineveh. Know what God said to him? What right do you have to be angry with me, no matter what
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God does? Yes, sir. No, just a funny thing about that story is Jonah never repented. We don't know.
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I mean, from what's written, it's not a repentance. I mean, Nineveh, yeah, sure, they repented, but we know he continued to be a prophet through the kings, and you can read it in other.
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He was a prophet. Now, in the narrative of Jonah, we don't see him.
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We see him repent of his not going to preach, but I say we don't see him repent of his racism because, remember, why did he want to go and preach to Nineveh?
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He says, man, those are enemies. They're of a wicked people.
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You should wipe all of them out. And if I go preach because of your loving kindness, you're going to save them.
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You should wipe them out because they're the wrong race. That's what he wanted. But what right do we have to be mad at God?
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None. Because God's holy. I'm not saying that's not hard, okay? I'm not saying that those aren't difficult times when
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God does things in your life, and you go, man, I don't know about this, to not be upset, angry, frustrated.
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But here it is. The holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, the all -powerful One, the
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One who is and who is and is to come. We'll pick up right there because we'll go to Isaiah 6 and look at some comparisons to that, and we'll finish up Chapter 4 next week.
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You'll close us out with prayer, brother? Yeah. Father, we come to you this morning.
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Father, we just thank you so much for this new day that you've given us and the blessings that come with it. I want to thank you for Mike and the time that he spends in your word to teach and reveal you to your people,
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Father. And as we go over to main oratorium, I just ask that you be with Pastor Keith and just use his voice, teach us the words and things that you would have us to know,