Revelation 5.1-14

This coming Sunday we will be focusing on Revelation 5.1-14.  In this passage we begin by seeing a scroll that is in the hand of him who sits on the throne.  This scroll has seven seals and an angel begins proclaiming that there is no one who is worthy to unseal the scroll.  John begins weeping at this terrible news ----- but then one of the elders comforts him by telling him of the conqueror who is worthy to unseal the scroll.  That conqueror then appears on the scene.  This conqueror is "a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth" (Revelation 5.6).  The lamb takes the scroll ------ and at the sight of this all of creation begins singing!

What a awesome glimpse that we are given the pleasure to behold ------- a glimpse into the very throne room of God.  Christopher C. Rowland comments on this passage by saying: "The identification of Christ with the lamb, made throughout the book, suggests that an act of witness, at great cost, has turned the world upside down.  The victim is shown to be in the right, and the demonstration of that witness shakes the fabric of the cosmos and its institutions to the core."  In the slaughtered lamb we see Jesus ----- the one who is the conqueror of death and the grave!

Jesus is the one who is worthy to unseal the scroll ------ but with this unsealing there is a shaking of the entire universe.  Everything that can be shaken will be shaken.  True authority and power is found in the one who conquered by giving of his own life.  This shakes our systems and institutions to the core ------ for we see the slaughtered lamb ------ who overcame the world through love.  Now, we can do nothing else then sing of this great love that is found in Jesus Christ!