Worthy is the Lamb

We're gonna be looking in Revelation chapter five, but in preface to reading that chapter, I wanna read a couple of other passages of scripture that I believe are, serve as a commentary, if you want to say that, or a glimpse, a way of bringing us to an understanding of who it is that's spoken of here in chapter five of Revelation.

I think it's necessary, or it's good, at least, that we come to to look at this one through the eyes of those who have been given to print, to record the word of God to us. Of course, we believe that this first passage I'm going to read is by the same one who wrote this book of the Revelation, but I believe he wrote this before He was given that vision, but it's the same thing. I mean, he sees the same thing, but not perhaps with the measure of the glory that's revealed to him, but yet the glory that overwhelmed him nonetheless. And should overwhelm us. I mean, as we read this and contemplate it, what a glorious is found here. And this first passage I'm gonna read is found in John, the book of John, the gospel of John, in chapter one. It says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him. And without him was not anything made that was made.

In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light. that all men through him might believe. He was not that light, but he was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. and we beheld his glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, he that cometh after me is preferred before me. And of his fullness have we all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time.

The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. And then in Hebrews chapter one, Verse one says, God, who at sunry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds, who being the brightness of his glory, the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.

Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. For unto which of the angels said he at any time, thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. And again, I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. And again, when he bringeth in the first begotten into the world, he saith, and let the angels of God worship him. And of the angels, he saith, who maketh his angel spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire. But unto the son, he saith, thy throne, O God, is forever and ever.

A scepter of righteousness is a scepter of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity. Therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. And thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thine hands.

They shall perish, but thou remainest, and they shall wax old as doth a garment. And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed, but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. And which of the angels said he at any time, sit on my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool? Are they not all ministering spirits who sent forth to minister for them who shall be the heirs of salvation?

And then we come to behold this same one. Hopefully, maybe that might add some clarity of thought here as we begin to read in chapter five, verse one. as to who this is speaking about. And it says, I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne, a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals.

And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, who is worthy to open the book and to loose the seals thereof. And no man, in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon. And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon. And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not, Behold, the line of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.

And I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne, and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a lamb, as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne. And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and the four and 20 elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full of odors, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sung a new song, saying, thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof for thou was slain and has redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation. And has made us unto our God, kings and priests and we shall reign on the earth.

And I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders and the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000. and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, blessing, and honor, and glory, and power be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the lamb, forever and ever. And the four beasts said, amen. And the four and 20 elders fell down and worshiped him that liveth forever and ever.

Now, if you don't get anything else out of this book and our study of it, and I certainly don't know much about all of the things that unfold in this book, but I know what this book's about. Just like I started off when we started talking about it, what is this book? It's the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him. Now, that's a glorious, every time I read that, I'm just, I don't know what can you say about that. The revelation of Jesus Christ, the unfolding of Jesus Christ, the setting forth of Jesus Christ, that's what this book is. And we see right here in John's vision, showing of who Christ is.

Now, you know, you can get all hung up in theological terms and people call other people heretics and this, that, and the other when they get to talking about these things and somebody doesn't say something just like somebody else thinks they ought to say it. God is God. You can't see God. You can't know God. You can't enter into the presence of God, except in, through, and by Jesus Christ, whom he has revealed.

And this one sitting on the throne is not different from the one in whose hand this book is placed, who come to take that book and open that book and reveal. Because you see, this is what the book's about. It's about God showing himself to us. Now, he could have done that any way he wanted to do it. And he has, he will. Whether you ever understand it, or I do, or anybody else, God is not under any sort of obligation, need, nor is He any way hampered or is He surrounded by time in any way. He's eternal. And His purpose is eternal.

Now, we can't quite grasp eternity. You can't. I can't. I mean, you can sit around and think about it all. You can read all the explanations about what people tell you what eternity is, and you'll ultimately sit down and start trying to figure it out in terms of time. Because you can't comprehend it. Because you're not meant to. You are a creature of time.

God is not. And all these people you know that say we're gonna be as God, well, you'll never be as God in that sense because He's holy. He's set apart. And what sets Him apart is He is eternal. He's the great I Am. And you would have had no way under the sun of ever knowing anything about God or having his purpose set forth before you except that he revealed it in Jesus Christ.

And that's what he's saying here. And he says, I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne. Well, who's sitting on the throne? God's sitting on the throne. Scripture says that Jesus Christ is sitting on the right hand of God. Now, does that mean that there's two thrones in heaven? No, it simply means he is the right hand of God. He is the power of God. He is the authority of God. He's the one who manifests who God is.

Otherwise, you're totally... The scripture says, no man hath seen God at any time. Now, can you wrap your head around that? Now some people say, oh, well, there's God up there and you can't see him, but you can see Jesus Christ. Well, God cannot be seen except that he's pleased to show himself to you.

You have no power to see him. You have no right to see him. You hear these people say, oh buddy, when I get where I can sit down and talk with the Lord, I'm gonna ask him some questions. You're not gonna ask him anything. You don't have the power or right to ask him anything.

He does according to his will, the army of heaven. See, that's all a matter of time. See, when we're brought to the place where John was, John wasn't asking any questions about things. He was just sitting there wondering what on earth, you know, to himself. I'm sure he was just overwhelmed. He said he fell on his face as a dead man when the Lord showed himself to him. And yet he'd walk with him. And he knew it was the same one. Same one.

It says, I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne. Who is that? That's God. And in the right hand, he had a book. The right hand. Jesus Christ is seated on the right hand of God. He is the revelation of the purpose of God. Of course, see, that's what this book is. It's a book written within and on the backside, and it's sealed with seven seals. It's the purpose of God that's in the hands, as we will see, of God. Surely He holds it, and He gives it to the only one that was found worthy to open it. Now we're talking about a creature. He's the creator. That's what we read.

There was not anything made that was not made by Him, who is the Word of God. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and what the Word was God. Now again, You know, all of our heads are filled with things we've heard all our life about God as what's called a triune God. And I'm not denying that scripture speaks of God as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Most certainly does. But we're not talking about three gods. We're not talking about three persons. We're not talking about three individuals. We're talking about one God. Now how you want to say how all that fits, you can't. And I don't care who defines that. You cannot. It is impossible for a man to define how that is and fits together.

All we can do is fall on our faces before him and worship him. Who is? the incomprehensible God. But yet he has shown us himself. How could we have ever known anything about the spirit of God if Jesus Christ had not come and given us his spirit? Couldn't have done it. You wouldn't have known it. But he did. And he has. And we worship him. And so we see this book.

What is this book? I believe it's the purpose of God. The book is written on the front and the back. In other words, it's a full book. It's everything. There's not anything that's been left out of it because it's the purpose of God. It's written on the front side, within, and on the back side. There's no room for anybody to put anything else in there. It's complete. And it's a sealed book. Nobody know me. You can't have any comprehension whatsoever about the purpose of God in the earth, in his creation, except that book's open.

Sealed with seven seals. and we're gonna see those seals open. Now, you know, people get all, they're gonna define the seal and this, that, and the other, and you know, this is like some dark mystery. The Lord tells us right here what these things are. It's mysterious because we're ignorant creatures, but it's not mysterious because if we understand who it is that wrote the book, number one, and whose book it is. So he saw the book, it's the purpose of God, sealed with seven seals.

And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, who is worthy to open the book and to loose the seals thereof? Who is the strong angel? See, here again, people get all worried about these different things. I believe, this is my personal view of this, that the strong angel is Christ himself.

He's the messenger of God. Didn't we just read, God who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in times past by the prophets to our fathers hath in these last days spoken unto us by his son. Every truth that we can ever know is gonna have to be given to us by Christ. Because he's the spokesman of God.

There's not anybody else. You know, you got people that run around saying, oh, you know, I got the inside track, I got the inside Word. Nobody has the inside Word. Christ is the inside Word. He's the outside Word. He's the Word. He's all in all. And I saw a strong angel proclaim with a loud voice, who's worthy to open the book. Now understand that all of this is in the vision of John. This is not a chronological vision. I keep saying that and I don't know if I'm saying that in the right way or not. This is not something that's happening and unfolding like we understand it in time. This is an eternal truth here.

And so, you see, the Lord, is the one who determines the things, and he's the one who declares the things. And John, this strong angel, I believe, is the Lord speaking and declaring himself. Isn't that what no man has seen God at any time? Jesus Christ, who's in the bosom of the Father, what does it say? He hath declared him. He declared him. He came. and he declared himself as the one who's the savior of the world. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No man comes to the father but by me. He's the prophet of God. Don't fall for these guys running around out here saying they're prophets. They can tell you something that Jesus Christ has not already said, that he's not already taught, that he's not already set forth. And so he says, a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice. And he asked this question, who is worthy to open the book and to loose the seals thereof? This is a question that leaves men and angels in their understanding of saying, who can do that?

Do you know anybody? Is there anybody in your sphere, is the smartest man on earth that you've ever met or that you ever heard about? Or maybe you haven't heard about him yet. Do you expect that some man or some alien from outer space, you know, you're hearing a lot of talk about that, about these people that supposedly, you know, coming down and we supposedly found parts of them and talked to some of them and all this kind of crazy stuff. And I don't know. I know this. If there's anybody that's rode in here on a spaceship, it's because God sent him according to the good pleasure of his will. And there's nothing out there that's outside of God's creation. I do know that. And no man in heaven or earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book. Nobody can grasp the purpose of God. Nobody can explain it. Nobody can unfold it to men.

How can we know the purpose of God? I mean, we don't even know our own purpose, let alone, you know, people go to school and stuff, and of course some people kinda pretty much, you know, get their track going, but most of us, you know, we wander around through life and we wonder what in the world are we doing?

I mean, you know, we figure we're gonna do one thing and we wind up doing something else. We used to, every now and then, when I was first in the construction business, we'd be putting on a roof or something, out in the hot sun, nailing on shingles, and I'd be asking myself, what in the world are you doing? What are you doing?

I didn't even know. But you see, God had a purpose in all these things. He brought us in a way which we knew not. I think that has to do with our natural life as well as our spiritual life. I mean, we don't know what we're doing. You think you do, but you don't really. I mean, how many times have I been working on a car and I think I know what I'm doing? And I realize I don't know what the heck I'm doing. And somehow or other, you know, sometimes the stuff even works out. And I'm able to fix it. And I say, wow, but I don't know how I did that. Do you know how you do the things you do? No, you didn't know it. I mean, if God hadn't shown it to you, you couldn't have done it. The mysteries of this world. but there's no mystery with God. There's no mystery in the purpose of God. He's not waiting to see what's gonna happen. He's the one that makes things happen. What a glorious one he is. So who is worthy?

And no man. was able to open the book. Not just to open the book, but to just get up there and look. They couldn't even read the cover of the book. Couldn't even approach to the book. And John said, and I wept much. Oh dear brethren, you know, when we come to the place where we understand who God is, It causes us to weep.

Oh, woe is me. Woe is me. Now, what Isaiah said when he saw the Lord, I lifted up, he said, oh, woe is me. For I'm a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips. What am I doing in the presence of this woman? And I wept much because, John said, because I realized there was nobody that could give us what we needed.

See, the Lord teaches you what you are and what you need long before he shows you the one who can solve the problem. That's what's called the conviction of sin. It's called that which God is pleased to awaken a man to see. See, a man can't even know that he's a sinner unless the Lord shows him.

Oh, you can teach him that he is. There used to be, when I was coming along, a guy wrote a little tract called The Four Spiritual Laws. And one of them was, you're a sinner. Well, you can learn that. Most everybody, I would venture to say, that you could probably go out here in this community and ask, knock on the door and ask, well, do you believe that you have sinned? They'd say, well, sure I have. But you could probably ask the same, pray people, are you a sinner? They'd say, well, I'm not.

I'm not really, you know, that bad. I mean, you know, I've done some things wrong, but I mean, you know, after all, hasn't everybody? But see, when the Lord is pleased to bring a man to a place of understanding that he's a sinner, he's not worried about all the other people in the world. He's not thinking about, well, my sin ain't as bad as so-and-so's.

He's thinking, oh, what am I gonna do? Lord, we're here in a mass. And that's what John said. He's seeing this one, that there's this book, the purpose of God has got to be opened. Otherwise we're going to perish. If the Lord doesn't help us, we're not going to be helped. And he said, and John wept, oh, here's the book, and nobody is able to open it. There's nobody that's worthy to open the book. Nobody was found worthy to open the book, to read the book, not even to look there on. And one of the elders saith unto me, weep not. I think it's interesting that he says one of the elders.

Isn't it a glorious thing that the Lord has sent the gospel into the world through the hands of men, to be preached by men. That doesn't make any sense to us, does it? I mean, really, wouldn't you think that such a glorious message as this ought to be sent down from heaven by the angels? I mean, shouldn't the angels be the ones that's going out here telling men about the glory of God? but he chose to send sinful men to declare this message. Ignorant men. scripture called, the Pharisees, they realized these men, Peter and John, they said, well, these guys are just ignorant fishermen. They're ignorant and unlearned men.

What are they doing? But they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus. See, they said something about these people's kind of crazy. I mean, they're dumb. They don't know anything about all the different theories and whatnot about the Trinity and about the, you know, different doctrines and stuff that they can just lay out to you in such a way that everybody knows exactly what you's talking about. But one thing's for sure, somehow or other, The Spirit of God is upon them.

And one of the elders, he says. Now, that doesn't mean that somebody calls themselves an elder can say, oh, well, I'm one of those. No, that's not what I'm getting at. I mean, the Lord can raise up stones out of the ground to praise his name. He doesn't need men. that call themselves preachers or whatever they want to call themselves, he doesn't need men, but he's pleased to use men according to his good pleasure. And that doesn't confer upon them any special privilege or status.

They're like mules. You know, like an old mule out in a coal mine, how they used to just load him up on the back and send the old mule out. The old mule, he's just going along. He doesn't even know what coal he's carrying. He doesn't know what coal is. But you see, the coal miner has put the coal on there, and it doesn't matter if the mule knows what the coal's for.

See, when we preach the gospel, we don't know what we're preaching it for. I don't know if it's a word of help, if it's a word of condemnation. I don't know if it's a word of, just goes out in the air and nobody even pays any attention to it. I don't even know.

You see, those that are sent with the word of God, they're just like that old mule out of the coal mine. They're just carrying the coal. because they know that the one who mined the coal and loaded the coal and those that's gone unloaded on the other end, they know. See, the Lord knows. He knows the end. He knows when the coal's mined and He knows when the coal's burned. He knows the end from the beginning because it belongs to Him. And he just sent them out.

And this elder said, weep not. Oh, what a glorious message. What a glorious message. This is the message of the gospel. Weep not. Don't be frightened. Don't be afraid. You know yourself to be a sinner, worthy of death. You know that you have nothing to claim.

But the line of the tribe of Judah has prevailed to open this book. And open this book he has. Because you see, he opened this book with his own blood. And he wrote every word upon the page with his own blood. And his sufferings are there. His love is there. His power is there in that book. Oh, what a glorious Savior He is. No one worthy. But the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, He has prevailed to open the book and to loose the seals thereof.

Would you know the purpose of God? It's in Christ. What is God's purpose to do? His purpose is to save His people through the blood of Christ. No other way. That's His purpose. And He revealed it, and He alone has been able to open that book and to loose the seven seals thereof. You know, the scripture says when God has opened something, No man can shut it. When it's closed, no man can open it. But the lion of the tribe of Judah, he's opened the book.

And he said to sinners, come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart. Oh, what a glorious Savior He is. And He sent the gospel to us. He's declared it through Christ. See, the gospel is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. It's not Jesus Christ and Him crucified plus what you're gonna do. It's Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He is the Savior of sinners. A glorious Savior indeed. the one who is the revelation.

Worthy is the Lamb

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Worthy is the Lamb

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