Josh Broward
August 13, 2006
Last week we read John’s vision of God sitting on the throne.1 He is like a diamond radiating in His own Light. This week John’s vision continues. John looks at the throne again, and he sees a scroll in God’s right hand.
But this scroll is sealed with 7 seals. 7 is the number of perfect fullness, so this scroll is perfectly and fully closed. A powerful angel calls out in a powerful voice: “Can anyone open this scroll?” This is no ordinary scroll. This scroll is the scroll that opens God’s plans for the future. This scroll is the scroll that finally brings out God’s plans for our world. “Can anyone open this scroll?”
No one answered. No one in heaven. No one on earth. No one under the earth. No one answered. No one could open God’s future.
And John cries. John doesn’t just get a little “manly” water in his eyes that he can wipe away with the old “scratchy eyes” trick. The word used for “I cried” here is the word for “the most dramatic form of mourning” possible.2 John is doing the funeral-my-mother-died-the-world-is-coming-to-an-end-cry. Tears are pouring out. His body is shaking.
But then one of the 24 elders says to John: “Stop crying! Look over there. The Lion of Judah has conquered. The long awaited King has won the final battle. He can open the scroll! He can bring in God’s future.”
I am thinking of the classic Superman movies. Just at the moment when it seems like all hope is lost, someone shouts out: “Look! It’s Superman! Here he comes to save the day!”
So John looks, and we look. We look for the strong Lion – the King of the Beasts. We look for the Superman who can stop speeding trains and catch bullets in his teeth. We look for the powerful King, and what do we see?
A Lamb.
A Lamb? We wipe our eyes and look again. Maybe we’re seeing at least a strong ram, something that can crush its enemies with its horns. No, John uses the word for a little, bitty, baby Lamb – a small, defenseless little Lamb.3 Baaaaa.
We expected a Lion, and we got a Lamb.
We expected Superman, and we got Erkle (a classic nerd from an American TV show).
One Bible scholar says, “This is perhaps the most mind-wrenching ‘rebirth of images’ in [all of] literature. The slot in the system reserved for the Lion has been filled by the Lamb of God.”4 This is possibly the single greatest surprise scene in the Bible or in the whole world.
This is The Great Surprise – the great scandal of the gospel. If we are honest, we all really want a Lion. When the elder said a Lion was coming, we wish a Lion had really shown up. Dan Boone says, “We want our God to come in the form of earthly powers. We want heads to roll and thrones to be overturned.” We want God to play this world’s games of force and domination and win.5
Why? Why do we want a Lion? Because we don’t want to be losers. We want to be winners. We want to win this world’s games. We want a Lion to lead us into victory. We are like Jesus’ disciples. (See Mark 8.) They were always asking Jesus, “Lord, when are you going to establish your kingdom? Why are you always talking about this dying stuff? When are you going to take over?” We don’t want a Lamb. We want a Lion. We want to follow a Lion. We want to be people of the Lion. We want to reign in power. We want to be the victors of the world.
But Jesus - the Lion of Judah, the King of the world, the one who brings in God’s future - is a Lamb. Let’s talk about this Lamb.6
This is “a Lamb that had been killed.” The Lamb was slain or slaughtered. Great – it just gets worse. Not only is this a little, baby Lamb, but it is also a Lamb that has been to the butcher’s house. The imagery here is that Jesus is the ultimate Passover Lamb. Jesus’ death on the cross is parallel to the sacrifice of a Passover lamb to free God’s people from God’s judgment in Egypt (Exodus 11-12). Heaven sings a new song to this Lamb: “You are worthy to take the scroll and break its seals and open it. For you were killed, and your blood has ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (v. 9). This Lamb gave His own life as the ransom price to buy back God’s people, to buy back people from every nation and every place. Like we read in Colossians, “For he has rescued us from the one who rules in the kingdom of darkness, and he has brought us into the Kingdom of his dear Son. God has purchased our freedom with his blood and has forgiven all our sins” (Colossians 1:13-14).
But this Lamb is not a dead Lamb. The Lamb is alive. The Lamb “is now standing between the throne and the four living beings and among the 24 elders” (v. 6). Jesus died, but He lives again. Jesus is the Crucified-Risen One. Jesus is the One who died and lives forevermore.
One of my friends pastors a church called The Risen Lamb Church. That is a good name. This Lamb is Risen, and now He has 7 horns. Horns symbolize power, and 7 means fullness or completeness. So this defenseless little Lamb that was killed is now the Risen Lamb who has complete power.
This Lamb has “7 eyes, which are the seven spirits of God that are sent out into all the earth” (v. 6). Here we see the Trinity in action. The Lamb is filled with the fullness of the Spirit of God, and God sends this Spirit-filled Lamb out into every part of the earth.
The Lamb takes the scroll, and as He takes the scroll, all of heaven falls down to worship Him. 7 The 4 living beings worship him. The 24 elders worship him. All of God’s people worship him. Thousands and millions of angels worship him. Finally, everything everywhere sings out: “Blessing and honor and glory and power belong to the one sitting on the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever” (v. 13). The Lamb and God receive worship together. The Lamb is filled with the Spirit of God. The Lamb and God are One.
Remember that up to this point, we have not actually seen God. We have seen an indescribable One sitting on the throne. We have seen a diamond shining in light. We have seen a hand holding a scroll. But we have not seen God, at least not a God we can define or describe. Now with the Lamb, we see what Paul describes: Jesus “is the visible image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). God is so amazing and spectacular that we cannot even fit Him into our eyes. We cannot manage to put a picture of God in our brains. He is beyond us. But God has a solution: Jesus. Jesus is the visible picture of the invisible God. We cannot see God, but we can see the Lamb. We cannot see God, but we can see Jesus.
Sometimes in school, I had to draw a picture to describe myself. I had to draw something that would show my interests, my character, my passions, my heroes. I had to define myself so that others could see who I am. Jesus is God’s picture of Himself. Jesus is God’s self-definition. God says, “If you want to know what I am like, here – look at Jesus. Look at the Lamb!”
What do we see when we look at the Lamb? What do we see when we look at God’s Self-Portrait?
We see a picture that changes everything.
We all want a Lion. We want a Superman type God. But we get a Lamb, a Lamb that was killed. And this Crucified Lamb – this ultimate Loser - is the ultimate Victor, the ultimate Winner, the ultimate Conqueror of all time.
Death was his path to Life. Failure was his path to Success. Defeat was his path to Victory. Being Crushed was his path to Healing.
Jesus changes everything. The crucifixion-resurrection-enthronement of Jesus is an explosion that changes all thought on all things. We can’t think of anything in the same way after this event. Jesus – who is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6) – has rocked the world. Losing is Winning. Dying is Living. Giving up power is the path to true power.
That is the real crux of the issue, the central point. God is a God who gives up power. True power is not taking power for oneself. True power is giving power to others. Christ conquered because He gave up power. Because Jesus gave up power, He showed the false power of this world. Because Jesus gave up power, He now gives true power to all who follow Him. The Christian life is following the way of the Lamb who was slain. The Christian life is a life of giving up power, laying down our own power, and giving power to others so that they can become strong. This is the Christian life – giving up power for the sake of others. God is a God who gives up power. In God’s Kingdom we also give up power. We willingly give our power so that others can be strong.
We don’t know how to deal with this. I don’t know how to deal with this. I spend far too much of my time and energy trying to get and keep power. This Risen Lamb is an explosion of thought that blows up our mental boxes like dynamite in a cracker box. We don’t know what to do with this kind of God. We don’t know how to live this kind of life.
What would it look like for us to live lives of giving up power to others? What would it look like to live our lives giving away our power?
If we are really honest, this vision of God and God’s Kingdom calls us to rethink everything. Laying down our power means we need to rethink everything! Rethink everything! Pastor Brian McLaren explains: “It means that you begin looking at every facet [every part] of your life again in this new light – from the way you think about God to the way you treat your spouse, from your political affiliations to your spending habits, from what makes you angry to what makes you happy. It doesn’t mean everything changes all at once, but it means you open up the possibility that everything may change over time. It involves a deep sense that you may be wrong, wrong about so much, along with the sincere desire to realign around what is good and true.”8
What does it mean for us to lay down our power?
How can we give power to others through the clothes we buy or give away?
How can our leisure time be a way to give power to others?
How can we give power to others through the way we give or spend our money?
How can we give up power as we seek God’s guidance on our futures? (God is
challenging me on this.)
How can we lay down power in a constructive way when we have disagreements,
when we have been wronged, when we have contract disputes?
How can we give power away through what we say or don’t say? (Maybe by
refusing to gossip?)
How can we lay down power at work or at home? Maybe by working harder or
by working less.
How can we give power to others at church? How can we lay down our own power and live the life of the Lamb here at church?
In our small group this week, Jason Gitt shared with us one of his grandfather’s favorite sayings. “When you boil the Bible and Christianity down to its core, we only have to do two things: 1) Make sure we are right with God. 2) Invest our lives in others.” One way we can give away power is to spend our lives investing in others. How can you invest your life in other people this week?
How can we as a church, how can we as individuals, how can I as a pastor – follow the Lamb and lay down our power so that God can give others power through us? This is our calling. This is our God. This is our life.
1 See Pat Marvenko Smith’s idea of what this looks like at:
2 Craig Keener, Revelation, NIV Application Commentary, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000), 186.
3 Eugene Boring, Revelation, Interpretation (Louisville, KY: Knox, 1989), 109
4 Ibid, 108.
5 Dan Boone, Answers for Chicken Little, (Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill, 2005), 50.
6 See Ted Larson’s image of the Lamb at:
7 See Smith’s picture of the Lamb at:
8 Brian McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus, (Nashville, TN: W Publishing, 2006), 105.
No comments:
Post a Comment