Worthy Is The Lamb Part 1: Revelation 5 - Revelation: The Apocalypse

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

You sign up for hard when you get saved.

You just declared war on the devil and your flesh when you let the Lamb of God come into your heart.

If you don't have the prevailing light, you won't last long.

And most American Christians don't last long.

Because we've been we've been sold the bale of goods that it's all gonna be just abundant life.

And guess what it is?

It is the abundant life.

But what we forget to say is the abundant life is a war.

Today, Pastor Steve continues his series on the Book of Revelation.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on the road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We are in Revelation chapter 5.

Revelation 5 · chapter mention

Man, I started getting into Revelation 5 and went, man, I am I am so butchering this passage.

This is just not, there's so much more here.

So I'm just gonna go as far as we can, and then we're gonna get into worship.

Let's pick up where we were a couple weeks ago, and then we'll get as far as we can.

And I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back sealed with seven seals.

Then I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the scroll and to loose its seals?

And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look at it.

Verse 4.

So I wept much because no one was found worthy to open and read the scroll or look at it.

But one of the elders said to me, Do not weep.

Behold, the lion, you ought to underline that or highlight, the lion of the tribe of Judah.

The root of David has prevailed, underline prevailed, to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals.

That's really important.

Lion of the tribe of Judah has prevailed.

Verse 6.

And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders stood a lamb, underlined lamb, as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.

Then he came and took the scroll out of the right hand of him who sat on the throne.

Father, in the name of Jesus, with the time we have, thank you for the word of God.

Thank you that it's living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword.

Thank you that it pierces bone and marrow, it pierces soul and spirit, and it is able to lift up our hearts with a faith that we do not naturally have.

That it is a supernatural work, and thus we echo your words.

Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

And so, Lord, give us faith in the time we have this morning, that Lord, we might be prepared as a people for the surprising work of the Holy Spirit in these last days.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

So we looked at this a couple weeks ago, this idea that John, who is in the Spirit, remember that in John chapter 1, he was in the Spirit.

John 1 · chapter mention

So he's filled with the Holy Spirit, he's baptized by the Holy Spirit, he is focused.

It's on the Lord's Day, so it was a Sunday, probably Sunday morning.

We've talked about there on that volcanic island of Patmos, which is a beautiful place now with where people go and have vacations.

It was not beautiful then.

It was a prison camp.

It was where the Romans sent their most notorious political prisoners.

It's probably in a cave, at least that's what tradition says.

In his cave, he sees his vision.

So he has his vision.

He's ushered into heaven.

You know, Revelation 4 and 5 is what heaven is like.

I've told you that before.

That, you know, if any of your kids ever, hey, what's heaven like?

Dad's, well, let's go to Revelation 4 and 5.

It's a massive worship service.

And so every time we go into worship, and I looked out, you know, when Troy was leading worship, and almost all the hands of you guys in the church were raised.

You were focused.

Guess what?

You were lining yourselves up with what's already happening in heaven 24-7.

24-7 in heaven, there's seraphim, there's cherubim, there's saints that have gone before us.

There are there are the elders.

We don't know exactly who the elders are.

There's elders, probably the apostles, you know, or the elders.

I don't know.

There's a lot of opinion about that.

They're worshiping the Lord.

And so when you lined yourself up with worshiping the Lord this morning, you were lining yourselves up with heaven.

And so the question becomes how is it that Jesus in this passage is both this lamb that was slain, but is also the prevailing lion of Judah.

We can't miss the fact.

Remember, chapters two and three of Revelation are all about what?

They're all about overcoming.

And if you miss that, you can go online, you can hear all the messages.

You can either watch them on video or you can listen to them.

But the whole point of the seven churches is prevailing.

That you are called, men and women, to be overcomers.

The slain lamb has become the prevailing lion.

Don't miss that.

The slain lamb has become the prevailing lion.

And now from chapter 6 onward, as we look at the last days, as we look at the seals that are open in the last days, as we see stuff happening in our world that are all pronouncements and prophetically given to us from the book of Revelation of the last days of the coming of the Lord, we're not going to see as much of a slain lamb anymore as a prevailing lion.

But don't miss this.

So it's in redeeming us at Calvary that he became the lion of Judah that's going to come the second time with power.

He will not come on a donkey with little palm branches.

We love that.

I mean, every church has a little palm Sunday.

I grew up Lutheran.

And you got a little palm, you know, and you came in and everything.

I mean, that's great.

Praise God.

I mean, that's that's really neat.

We had palm branches and everything.

But it's gonna be more like a scepter.

It's gonna be a sword coming forth from his mouth, and he's gonna have a tattoo on his thigh that says King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

That's where we're going in the book of Revelation.

Don't miss that.

Don't miss the fact that the prevailing Lamb, which by the way, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, as John pronounced it when he saw Jesus, is still the most popular way of looking at Jesus in the church today.

And it's the title that's used more often in the book of Revelation than any other titles.

That's really key.

That's really important.

But don't miss what I'm gonna say next.

The church, in my opinion, is more enamored with the lamb than the lion.

And I want to challenge us that the lamb gets you in, but the lion gets you on.

What I mean is that we can talk to the cows come home about how we got saved.

And some of you here aren't even saved yet.

So you need to come to know Christ here this morning, the Lamb of God.

The Lamb that was slain was slain for you.

But when we come to know the Lord, when we open the door and enter into salvation, it doesn't all end there.

It's only the beginning.

It only got you into the, I always say the gink con because that's what you call the entrance way in a Japanese home.

Gets you into the gink con, but God's call us to discipleship, which involves the whole house, and guess what?

That is hard.

You sign up for hard when you get saved.

You just declared war on the devil and your flesh when you let the Lamb of God come into your heart.

And if you don't have the prevailing line, you won't last long.

And most American Christians don't last long.

Because we've been sold a bale of goods that it's all gonna be just the abundant life.

And guess what it is?

It is the abundant life.

But what we forget to say is the abundant life is a war.

You gotta fight for joy.

You have to fight for peace.

You know, I Jay Inman says this often.

I think he's got a point.

Jay, who loves to study Bible prophecy, and and um he, we're actually gonna I'm gonna actually gonna interview him at my fireside sometime.

We'll show it about the armies of the north, what's happening with Syria and Iran and Russia right now, which I we haven't gotten to that part yet in Revelation, but we're gonna get there.

He said something very interesting.

He said, if you look historically at different generations, that usually a generation doesn't understand their freedom until they have to pay with their life.

Most generations don't understand their freedom until they have to pay with their life.

And then he said this, and he wasn't saying it in an acaustic way, he was saying it in a sad way, and that is there is not an understanding of our democracy and what God got us to in this republic until shed blood happens with millennials.

Well, the Christian life is not unlike that in that the process of salvation simply introduces us into the school of discipleship.

In other words, you just got your name signed in the book of life.

I mean, you just got signed up for your classes.

The road is not a salvation center.

The road is a training center.

We're training you for hard.

And if you're hearing this and going, I don't want that, then you're at the wrong church because there's plenty of other churches where it's not hard.

But I'll just say this.

The reality is, in building wholehearted disciples of Jesus, is that I found over the years, having walked with God for 32 years, that if you look at life as hard and you view life as hard, it's a lot easier than you think through the power of the Holy Spirit.

But if you think of it as easy, everything that comes your way seems to derail you.

Does that make sense?

Now I was an athlete.

Some of you were athletes.

I was an athlete in high school and college.

And I just, man, I went to college, and how many of you were college athletes?

Anybody here college athlete?

Okay, a little number of you.

You know, you thought it was gonna be like, I knew it wasn't gonna be like high school.

That was a piece of cake compared to University of Georgia gymnastics, SEC gymnastics.

So I went in there, I was like, and everybody was so muscular, and everybody was so like everything they did was perfect.

And I remember thinking, what am I doing here?

This is crazy.

But what it did is it gave me a focus and a mindset.

You hear what I'm saying?

To prevail.

And so I got there early.

I came early, I stayed late.

And so something here is important that we can't miss.

That's to me, this is an introduction to the rest of chapter five and really to the rest of Revelation.

Go back to verse five, and this is why we're not gonna get very far today.

Um, but it's important, it's gonna be key for next week.

Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals.

That's what the rest of the book's about.

This prevailing lion.

Chapters two and three was about overcoming.

Men and women, you cannot prevail without knowing the Lion of Judah.

And we're gonna look in a few verses.

I don't know if we'll get there this morning, that you are called a kingdom.

You are called kings and priests.

You are an overcomer.

You have everything that you need to overcome any situation, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, in your life if you learn how to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so this is the prevailing lion, the Redeemer, the Arnion, the Lamb of God has become the Laon, the Lion of Judah.

It is as Redeemer that he also becomes judge.

Listen, it is as Redeemer that he also becomes judge.

Folks, you can judge the earth right now in preparation for judging the earth with the coming of Christ.

You will judge the nations.

And according to the works of our life, here will determine how much territory we get there.

And I'm already claiming the Rockies because there's great elk hunting lands up there.

Every elk will be an eight by eight in the second coming of Christ.

I just know that.

And you'll always, every fly will always work in every trout stream up there.

I'm preparing.

Verse 8.

Now when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp.

What do you do with the harp?

You play it, you worship.

It represents worship.

And golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.

We've called it classically harp and bowl.

When we do 24-hour war rooms here, when we've come in to do 24-hour war rooms, we worship, we pray, we worship, we pray.

Over at Every Home for Christ, with Marcus and Troy and the guys over there, every morning, every evening, they're worshiping and praying.

We're talking about a relationship with the road.

Well, we're going to invite you guys to take time each week to go and be a part of this kind of worship and prayer.

But do you see where it came from?

It's already happening.

All we're doing is lining ourselves up with what's already happening in heaven 24-7.

Day and night.

So when you pray, it's like incense to the Lord.

That's what it means to the Lord when we pray.

It's a beautiful aroma to the Lord when we pray.

Now, this this is gonna sound a little sick for all of you that haven't been missionaries.

But when I was in Japan for all those years, I used to love to go to Buddhist temples because I liked incense.

And I know it's like, what, man, like that's syncretistic or something.

But no, I really did.

I really liked it.

And I found the Buddhist temples, everybody said they're demonic and everything, and they are.

I mean, there's demon demons there, I'm sure, but there's demons in churches, so whatever.

But I would go there and it was just, I would, I would just pray for a great revival in Buddhism.

And I would smell those incense.

I remember thinking, this is like, this is what Jesus smells.

I mean, he smells incense.

I'm not saying, listen, I'm not saying that Buddhist prayers are the same as Christian prayer, not at all.

Of course, Jesus is the only way, truth, and life.

I'm just saying I like the smell of incense.

That's all I'm saying.

So when I read this, it reminds me that in the heavenly realm, when you pray, it's incense to the Lord.

Do some of you like incense?

Anybody like incense around here?

Okay.

You know, we've got a lot of you that are that are into fragrances and stuff like that, and you've practically saved my life with some of my injuries, and we put that stuff on, and I can smell it when it's on me, and it actually is healing.

It's actually healing.

And so there's something, listen, there's something in the last days about this.

This is about the last days.

We're moving in the next few verses, and we'll probably cover more next week.

But as we as we look at those verses, what we're gonna see is this move of God, the Lamb, the Lion of Judah, opening up the seals, and there's gonna be an unleashing of incredible tribulation upon the earth.

And I'll talk about the rapture, and I'll talk about the coming of Christ next week.

But don't miss this.

There is also a demonic form of this on the earth today, because we know in Revelation that those whose names are not written in the book of life will worship the beast.

And they will have the number 666 stamped upon them, but there is a there is a worship, there is, listen it, a beastly worship that is very similar to kingly, godly, spirit-filled worship.

Be careful.

Be careful.

There is a rise of demonic activity, of darkness in worship and in song, even as there is a great move of the Spirit of God in churchly worship right now.

I mean, this is the greatest time in the history of the church.

Do you realize that?

Do you realize whether you go into some hut in Papua New Guinea or Eringia or Malaysia or China, or you go into some great cathedral in London, there's a new sound.

There's a new sound of worship.

It's coming out of Anglican churches, it's coming out of Catholic churches, it's coming out of evangelical churches, it's coming out of Presbyterian churches, it's coming out of Baptist churches.

God's moving.

He's bringing the body of Christ, those that are spirit-filled, together in this move of musicality and worship that's rising up, and the enemy is also on the move, and there is a work of demonic activity also in the worship that comes from the flesh, the worship that comes from that part of us that's very sexual and very lustful, and you have to be careful.

Young people, you have to be careful with the music that you listen to.

Now, the Doobie brothers are okay.

I'm just talking about some of the other music you guys listening.

My point, though, is as we come into the latter days, the light is going to become brighter, and the darkness is going to be darker, but there's going to be a mixture in between.

There will be a mixture in between, and there'll be a temptation in our lives to keep one foot.

Listen, to keep one foot in the church, one foot in the world, and in the process of doing that, that ambivalence, that divided heart, can ruin you.

Our vision at the road is to build whole-hearted disciples of Jesus.

Whole-hearted disciples of Jesus.

Remember what that means?

That doesn't just mean all in, though it does mean that, it also means this, church, and don't miss this.

It means that we love him with our shame.

We love him with our brokenness.

We love him with our divorce.

We love him with sexual abuse.

We love him with drug addiction.

We love him with porn.

What I mean is, I'm going to just keep doing both.

No, that's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying, though, that as we're getting healed, instead of hiding it, we learn to be vulnerable with the Lord and trusted brothers and sisters with it, because that's how we get set free.

Does that make sense?

So the church is notorious for everybody looking perfect.

We all have our coats and ties and whatever, and we all look perfect, and we're all screwed up.

And why not just say, I'm a screw up?

Paul did.

Paul did.

He said, I'm the chief of sinners.

And so when we come and we say I'm a chief of sinners, I am unworthy to open the seals.

I mean, John is in the spirit here, men and women.

And he's he's unworthy to open the seals.

And there's these uh elders that are worshiping before the Lord, they're unable.

They're unworthy to open the seals.

And the seraphim and the cherubim, they're unworthy to open the seals.

Only one is foundworthy.

Only one is foundworthy.

And that's the Redeemer, the Lamb of God, who became the prevailing Lion of Judah.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

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Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.