Revelation Part 3 Chapter 4 & 5

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Sunday Night Bible Study - Revelation Part 4

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Good evening, I am Pastor Jeff Sion of Wynton Baptist Church, and tonight I want to go over part three on our series of the

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Book of Revelation. Part one we did on the different views of Revelation, how to read it, progress, historicists, futurists, etc.

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We went over a little bit of the Millennial Kingdom, post -millennialism, pre -millennialism, all -millennialism.

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Part two we did on what is the Rapture, and then now we're at part three, we're on chapters four and five of the

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Book of Revelation. Say that again, we're on chapters four and five of the Book of Revelation. That's what we're going to cover tonight.

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Remember, a large portion of the Book of Revelation, chapters six through eighteen, is talking about a seven -year period.

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So once we get to those chapters, we're going to fly right through. So anyway, we're in chapters four and five tonight of the

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Book of Revelation. Get your Bibles ready, pen and paper, and without further ado, let's read Revelation four and five, starting in chapter four, verse one.

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Let's stop there, that was verses one through five. A lot already, right? First off,

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I'd like to point out, just in passing, and this has to do with last week, the word church is used in the

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Book of Revelation nineteen times. It is used eighteen times in chapters one to three.

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And then it is never used again until the end of the book. So the question is, why is the word church used so much at the beginning of the

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Book of Revelation, and then it's not used at all during the Tribulation? It's not used again until the end.

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Well, because I've already told you guys that I tend to lean towards a pre -trib rapture, I believe the church is not on earth anymore, the church is now in heaven.

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In other words, believers get raptured up. Keep in mind, people can still and will get saved after that happens.

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All right, that's just a side note. Notice that on the throne is

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God, but around his throne are twenty -four smaller thrones for the twenty -four elders.

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Notice there's a rainbow under the throne. Remember, the rainbow is a symbol of a covenant of God.

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Remember that he would never flood the earth with water again? That's a symbol of his covenant. One of his covenants.

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He doesn't break his promises. On those twenty -four smaller thrones, so the big thrones in the middle and around those are twenty -four smaller thrones, or twenty -four elders.

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Now, a lot of talk about who these are. That is a good thing. Some say they are Old Testament saints.

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Some say this is the church. Yada, yada, yada.

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Once you look at Chapter 5, I believe that we could look at this as symbolically.

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A lot of people point this out. Twelve tribes of Israel, twelve apostles symbolizing the church.

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Put them together, that's twenty -four, right? Look at our math. Twelve tribes of Israel, twelve apostles, put them together.

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So we have the church and Israel symbolically together. I believe this represents God's people ransomed from every century, every millennium.

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Whether Israel or Gentile, Jew or Greek, circumcised, uncircumcised, all the people of God has been ransomed.

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I think that makes the most sense contextually. Okay, so the twenty -four elders are people

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God has ransomed. In the New Testament, Paul and others often speak of crowns

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God will give you. Crown of righteousness, crown of life, so on and so forth.

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Notice these guys have crowns. In verse 4, notice they're cloaked in white garments, symbol of purity.

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God will have his bride pure. And they have crowns on their heads. Now, the word is

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Stephanos, not the word for diadem, not the word for a sovereign, okay?

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That's what God has on. This isn't the word for sovereign, this is Stephanos. Okay, that's the wreath you got when you won.

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That's the victor's crown. That's a symbol of victory, not a symbol of power and authority, symbol of victory.

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These are those who have won. Notice what they do with their crowns. Um, if you look at verse 10, they cast their crowns before the

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Lord. It says every time they go down to worship and bow down before him, they cast their crowns. It happens like three times in these chapters.

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They're constantly, all the crowns that they get, they cast before the feet of Jesus, showing that he's the only reason they have them in the first place.

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Every success you have is through the grace of God. Every good and perfect gift is from above.

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Do not forget that. You are not your own. You were bought at a price. And they realize that every victory they have is because of Jesus.

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I don't mean to be mean. If you've ever been told, yeah, you get a crown of righteousness or a crown of life every time you lead somebody to Jesus, the crown of righteousness and the crown of life are always given to those who endure until the end.

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That's what Paul teaches us. When you realize that these guys, when they have their crown of endurance, even give

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Jesus the credit for helping them endure. It's an amazing thing. All right.

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Now, verse six.

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And before the throne, there's a sea of glass like crystal. And around the throne on each side of the throne are four living creatures.

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Full of eyes, front and behind. These are some interesting characters. Get ready. The first living creature is like a lion.

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The second, like an ox. The third, like the face of a man. The fourth, like an eagle. And the living creatures, each of them have six wings, full of eyes around and within them, day and night.

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They never cease to say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.

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And whatever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who has sat on the throne, who lives forever and ever. Twenty -four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever.

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They cast their crowns before the throne and say, worthy are you and Lord our

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God to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all things and by your will they exist and were created.

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These living creatures appear a few other times in scriptures. So if we look at this description, it's almost like these living creatures are kind of like a mesh of the living creatures in Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1.

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In Ezekiel 1, we have these living creatures. They only have four wings in that one, but they're actually identified as cherubim in Ezekiel 10 -15, whereas in Isaiah 6, they're identified as seraphim.

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And I was going to read those, but I'll just quickly put them down for later. Isaiah 6, Ezekiel 1.

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Isaiah 6, they're called seraphim. They have six wings like this and they sing a song, a little different though.

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Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, the whole earth is full of his glory. And at the sound of their praising him, the temples of a threshold,

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I mean the thresholds of a temple shake. At the sound of the creatures created to praise God, it shakes the temple.

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In Ezekiel 1, even though in Ezekiel they have four wings, here they have six.

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These cherubim have the appearance of these same four creatures, lion, ox, man, and eagle.

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Kind of cool to think about. Ox is the king of the domesticated animals.

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Lion is the king of the wild animals. Eagles are the kings of the birds.

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Man is the king of all created things, if you want to think of it that way. They're all worshiping

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God. So four living creatures are like the seraphim and the cherubim of the

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Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1. The 24 elders are a symbol of the

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Jew and Greek, 12 tribes of Israel, 12 apostles representing the church.

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Coming together, these are the people God has chosen. And they're all worshiping God. That's chapter four.

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Chapter five, we have a scroll with seven seals on it. Picture a scroll, rolling up a piece of paper.

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Your Bible may say book, that's fine. It's got seven seals on it. So think of hot wax, and then they would take their signet ring around the back or on their hand and imprint it into the hot wax so their symbol would be on it.

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And that seal, that wax would have to be broken in order to open up the paper. This has seven seals on it.

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You'll read where maybe for someone's will, there has to be three, in Hebrew culture, there'd be three seals on it, in three witnesses, or in Roman times, maybe four.

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Last time it was just one seal. The fact that this has seven shows how important it is. Now we're about to get into, next week, the seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls of judgment.

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But look at the scroll with seven seals on it. John's in heaven, and he sees the scroll with seven seals on it.

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In verse two, a mighty angel proclaimed with a loud voice, who's worthy to open up the scroll and break its seals?

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In verse three, no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth is worthy to do it. And verse four,

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John says, I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll. One of the elders said to me, weep no more for the lion of the tribe of Judah.

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Genesis 49, the root of David has conquered so that he can open up the scroll and its seven seals.

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In between the throne and poor living creatures, and among the elders, I saw a lamb standing as though it had been slain, with seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out throughout the earth.

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Oh, I forgot to mention this last chapter, seven spirits of God. It's just representative of the

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Holy Spirit. Go read Isaiah 11 .1. It's got like a sevenfold ministry of the

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Holy Spirit. But when it says the seven spirits of God, seven is the number of perfection. We're just referring to the

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Holy Spirit, not seven individual spirits with different personalities and functions. It's just the

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Holy Spirit. Seven is the number of perfection all throughout the Bible, especially in Revelation.

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Okay, so we have the lion of the tribe of Judah, who is actually the lamb who was slain.

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In verse seven, that lamb went and took the scroll from him who was seated on the throne.

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Jesus walks up to father and takes that scroll. Everyone else is bowing down before him.

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Jesus walks up to the throne and takes it. I want you to imagine anyone else walking up to a father like that, because Jesus is

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God, part of the triune God. They are in perfect union. Jesus approaches the throne, not cowers before, approaches the throne.

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Even the angels at the end of Revelation. John mistakenly worships the angel.

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The angel says, uh -uh, don't worship me. Worship God. They are worshiping the one seated on the throne and the lamb, because Jesus is

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God. Verse eight, when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty four elders fell down before the lamb.

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Just like they did before the father. Each holding a heart and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.

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Remember, saint just means Christian. It doesn't mean special super Christian. It's just Christian. Read Philippians 1 verse 1.

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Saints are any Christian. And just like there were incense offerings in the

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Old Testament that were pleasing to God's aroma, our prayers are pleasing to him, even though we don't know how to pray as we should.

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So all of these sing a new song. Saying worthy you to take the scroll and open it for you were slain in your blood as ransom people from God, from every tribe, language, people, nation.

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You've made them a kingdom and priesthood of God. They will reign on earth. And I looked and I heard around the throne and living creatures and elders, the voice of many angels, numbering myriads and myriads and thousands of thousands.

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Saying with a loud voice, worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power, wealth, wisdom, might, honor, glory, and blessing.

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And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in all the sea and all them saying to him, a sense of my throne to the lamb, may blessing, honor, glory, and might forever.

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The four living creatures said, amen. And the elders fell down again and worshiped. Worshipping the father, worshipping the lamb, worshipping by the father, the worshipping

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God, the son, and worshipping them in the same way. Recap, 24 elders, representative of God's ransom people from Jew and Greek, four living creatures is a reference to Isaiah 6 with the seraphim,

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Ezekiel 1, the cherubim. And they're still in heaven after all these thousands of years praising God.

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That's their job. There's a scroll with seven seals on it that has to be opened.

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It's God's scroll. We have to open it to read it. And there's a judgment in there. No one's even worthy to break the seals to read it except for Jesus Christ, the lamb.

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He is about to start breaking these seals, which releases God's judgment one part at a time.

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Okay, that's Revelation 4 and 5. Next week, we start the tribulation, chapter 6 through 18.

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We'll see how far we get. All right, that was fun. That's part three. I love you guys very much.

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I hope this is beneficial to you. And look, by the time we're done, we'll have a whole little series on the book of Revelation we can reference for later.

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I know we're not going to catch every little nuance and every little thing in it, but I hope this is somewhat helpful to you guys.

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All right. Love you guys very much. Don't forget to tune in to all of our videos.

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I certainly had fun at WOW Moment this last Thursday. Question and answers are on Saturdays.

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Remember, this week, well, actually, yesterday, there was no question and answer because I was driving on vacation.

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But I'll make sure to do it on the way back this time. Blair Andrews music stuff.

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We got all the fun stuff on social media. Please subscribe to Witten Media Ministry on YouTube.

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Even if you don't use YouTube, it helps us. Okay, please. Love you guys very much.

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Continue to pray for our sick, those who are hurting, anyone affected by disease, virus, whatever.