Revelation, Sermon Ten - Rev 4-5, Part One
Revelation 4 (Reading 4&5)
Come Up Here!
Introduction: “Come Up Here!”
Open Door in Heaven
All that precedes is carried forward
In the Spirit: a new vision section
Voice like a trumpet: same voice
We are given a great gift - a heaven-level view of the world, the Church, together with the flow and outcome of history and its end. Most importantly, we are given a vision of God’s sovereign majesty, beauty, mercy, power, and justice.
The Earth-rise image from Apollo 8: December 24, 1968: the astronauts gave us an image of our world for the first time from the elevation of space. What a gift! To see our home from the angle of heaven’s throne is a grace that brings perspective to our faulty sight, so tethered to ourselves and our age.
"Heavenly tourism genre," - Jan 2015. Tell the story of Alex (Malarkey… don’t reveal name until the end).
The best-selling book that documents a 6-year-old's journey to heaven and back during the two months he spent in a coma is being pulled from shelves after the boy, who is now 17, recanted his story.
Alex Malarkey, the co-author of The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven with his father, Kevin Malarkey, was in a car crash in 2004 that left him paralyzed. The memoir, published in 2010 as part of the popular "heavenly tourism genre," detailed his accounts of talking to Jesus Christ and meeting with the devil. Since its publication, the book has sold more than one million copies, according to the Washington Post.
But on Tuesday, Pulpit and Pen published a letter from Alex Malarkey, entitled "An Open Letter to Lifeway and Other Sellers, Buyers, and Marketers of Heaven Tourism, by the Boy Who Did Not Come Back From Heaven." Lifeway is a chain of religious book retailers.
"Please forgive the brevity, but because of my limitations I have to keep this short. I did not die. I did not go to Heaven," Malarkey writes, calling, well, malarkey on himself. "I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. When I made the claims that I did, I had never read the Bible. People have profited from lies, and continue to. They should read the Bible, which is enough. The Bible is the only source of truth. Anything written by man cannot be infallible."
Today, the Christian publisher Tyndale House released a statement confirming it will stop selling the book. "We are saddened to learn that Alex Malarkey, co-author of 'The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven,' is now saying that he made up the story of dying and going to heaven. Given this information, we are taking the book out of print." Lifeway has announced that it will no longer sell the book in its stores.
One Million Copies. People are hungry to know about heaven. So hungry, in fact, that they’ll swallow lies. In a world that so often feels like hell on earth, we have the opportunity to offer the heavenly kingdom. Incredibly, his last name is… wait for it, Malarkey
But we think of it so lightly and so little.
It's great to have books written about heaven rooted in the Bible. Dane Ortlund quote here.
As Christians, we know the NT doesn’t tell us a story about a little boy who went to heaven, but about a Man who came from heaven and became as we are to live the life we were called to live and didn’t, suffered the penalty we should’ve paid as a result but couldn’t, and - wait for it - went to hell. He toured hell. He rose again. He ascended. He will come again to judge the living and the dead. And until that day, he calls people through the Church’s witness into the kingdom of heaven.
Over and over again, the Bible tells us to become people with a central focus that is radically different from this world. In preparation for heaven, we are to ponder heaven, set our minds on things above where Christ is. That is part of the purpose of Revelation - to show us Jesus and his eternal kingdom that outlasts all other realms and rulers, and the joy of his presence that transcends all trials and tribulations and temptations here.
Colossians 3:1-4
“So heavenly-minded, they’re no earthly good.” Quite the opposite today
We have Rev 4-5 as the portal to introduce us to the heavenly realm. And we need this elevated view of reality: the view of earth from heaven.
“I got in this little room, and the upstairs came down.”
I. Come Up Here to the Sovereignty of God - 4:1-2
Throne - 17x in 4-5, 44 x in the rest of the book
Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel - visions of the King and his Kingdom
Rev 3:21: the kingdom, the reign of Jesus, is a current reality, not just a future hope
Ephesians 2:1-6
II. Come Up Here to the Glory of God - 4:3-11 (Earthrise Picture)
“Earthrise” photo captured on Christmas Eve 1968: Evocatively in 2009, journalist Steve Connor in the Independent recalled: “They went to the Moon, but ended up discovering the Earth. The crew of Apollo 8 were the first people to leave Earth's orbit and pass behind the far side of the Moon. They had been drilled and trained for just about every eventuality, save one―the awe-inspiring sight of seeing our own planet hanging over an empty lunar horizon. It later became known as ‘Earthrise’...”
In 2011 Robert Jacobs, an associate professor at the Hiroshima Peace Institute in Japan, noted in The Asia-Pacific Journal that the poet Archibald MacLeish wrote in The New York Times on Christmas Day 1968: “To see the earth as it truly is: small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together”.
We don’t see ourselves truly until we see ourselves in Christ before the throne of God.
Calvin on knowledge of ourselves and the knowledge of God:
“It is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he has previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself…Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other. For, in the first place, no man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves…” - Institutes
The Living Creatures
The Elder-Angels
ALL of Creation is thunderstruck by the holiness and beauty of God
III. Come Up Here to the Centrality of God
Worship: In Old English, “Worthship”
Everything happens in heaven before we see it here, and in worship we participate in how that unfolds.
Everything flows from the throne, and only One is worthy of the worship of all creation. Only One is at the center of the throne that is at the center of it all.
What in our lives cries, “Worthy! Thou art Worthy!” This is our center.
What is the center - our chief concern, greatest joy, delight, pleasure, and what we count worthy of our treasure, of our very lives? Is it Christ?
“Thou art worthy of my affections, my time, my money, my waking hours, my study, my dreams, my hope…” - Who - or rather, “what” is our “Thou”?
Here is the true center! Christ the Lamb is worthy!