Every sermon leaves something behind. Time runs out, but insight remains. The Pastor’s Cut is where those hidden pieces come to light. Each week, I revisit a passage I preached and share a truth, angle, or application that didn’t make it into Sunday’s message. Sometimes it is a deeper theological thread. Sometimes it is a pastoral word that presses closer to the heart. Always, it is something worth seeing. If you have ever wondered what was left unsaid, this is your invitation to lean in, look again, and discover more of what God’s Word is doing beneath the surface.
On Sunday we entered into Revelation 5, where the Apostle John witnesses Jesus Christ through the symbolic imagery of a “lamb standing as though it had been slain.”
One of challenges of Revelation is 5 discerning the relationship of the one who is “seated on the throne” (Rev 4:2-3, Rev 5:1) at the center of heaven, and the lamb who is described as standing “between the throne and the four living creatures” (Rev 5:6). On the one hand, it seems that there is a difference between the two persons. After all, we are told that the lamb “took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne” (Rev 5:7). The one “seated on the throne” is clearly God. But what is the identity of the lamb? Clearly this text informs us that the lamb is uniquely “worthy to take the scroll” (Rev 5:9). But what is his relationship to the one who sits on the throne, God?
To answer this, it is helpful to see a detail that is often missed in our English translations but is more apparent in the original Greek. In our ESV translation, we read that the lamb was “between the throne and the four living creatures.” That is a fine translation, but it does miss a bit of the clarity that the KJV offers. The KJV reads that the lamb was “in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts”. Indeed, when you read the original Greek, “in the midst of” is a more formal and literal translation of the Greek “ἐν μέσῳ.”
If we assume “in the midst of” is the best translation, then we begin to see a different picture emerge. The lamb is not standing next to the throne, as if he is of a lesser authority than the one on the throne. He is right “in the midst of” the centrality of heaven, where the throne is, where God is.
Further, in order to feel the weight of why it is so significant that the lamb is standing “in the midst of the throne and the four beasts, we must go back to the Old Testament. Moses was instructed to build an ark of the covenant. This was a golden box that housed the Ten Commandments. But the ark of the covenant was much more than just a container for an important relic. The lid to the ark of the covenant, was made of gold, and had two massive cherubim on either end with their wings outstretched. In the center of the lid, in the midst of the angels, was the Mercy Seat. The Mercy Seat was the place where atonement and divine presence met. Quite literally, it was considered the place where God’s presence would meet with Moses when he entered the tabernacle. Further, annually the Day of Atonement, a lamb’s blood would be poured on the Mercy Seat, showing that atonement came through the blood of the lamb. This physical ark, which was housed in the temple in Jerusalem, was a physical image of a heavenly reality.
In Revelation 4, when we see a throne in heaven surrounded by massive angels with many wings, our minds immediately recall the design of the Ark of the Covenant, where the Mercy Seat was “in the midst” of the angels. In Revelation 5, when we see a lamb, standing “as though it had been slain… in the midst of the throne” we realize where that lamb is standing. He’s standing on the Mercy Seat, where the lamb’s blood would be poured. He’s standing on the throne.
Therefore, Revelation 5 offers wonderful support of the classic doctrine of the Trinity, which is strengthened throughout Revelation. God the Son and God the Father are one God and yet two persons. The lamb is able simultaneously to stand in the place where only God belongs, and to take the scroll from God’s the father’s hand. We note here that God the Father does not actually have hands, as he is a perfect spirit. Rather this kind of language is what we call an anthropomorphism, where human traits described as belonging to God in order to make a point. The Apostle John is masterfully and visually teaching us about the Trinity. As the commentator Leon Morris summarizes it, “The Lamb is in the centre of all John has named.”
Worthy is the lamb!
