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Who Are the 7 Spirits of God in Revelation_ (No Ads)

Evangelical Bible Church

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  1. Welcome back to the Bible Stories. You may notice there

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  8. keep these Bible Stories going. The seven Spirits of God

  9. are not seven different spirits. They are not seven angels

  10. standing in a row. They are one Spirit, the Holy

  11. Spirit himself, shown to us in the fullness of everything

  12. he is. In the language of the Bible, seven is

  13. the number of what is complete and whole. And so

  14. when John sees the seven Spirits of God before the

  15. throne of Heaven, he is seeing the one Spirit of

  16. God in his perfect fullness. Nothing is missing in him,

  17. nothing is partial. And this matters more than it may

  18. first seem, because if you have ever felt that God

  19. gave you only a small piece of himself, that other

  20. people got the strong, whole presence of God while you

  21. were handed something thin and far away, then this vision

  22. was written for you. What John saw was the spirit

  23. of God, lacking nothing, standing at the very center of heaven,

  24. and then moving out toward the whole earth to find

  25. people exactly like you. Before we can understand the seven spirits,

  26. we have to understand the man who first wrote those words,

  27. and where he was when he wrote them. His name

  28. was John. He was old by this point, one of

  29. the last still living, who had walked beside Jesus, who

  30. had leaned close to him at the table, who had

  31. watched him die and then watched him alive again, And

  32. now near the end of his long life. John was

  33. not in a comfortable house, surrounded by friends. He was

  34. a prisoner. He had been sent to a small rocky

  35. island in the sea called Patmoss, cut off from the

  36. churches he loved, cut off from the people he had

  37. spent his life teaching. Imagine the loneliness of that, an

  38. old man far from home, separated from everyone, with the

  39. sea on every side. If anyone had reason to feel

  40. that God had grown distant, that Heaven had gone quiet,

  41. it was John on that island. We do not always

  42. picture the men who wrote the Bible this way. We

  43. imagine them full of confidence, close to God, sure of

  44. every word. But John was a real person who had

  45. lost nearly everything. By the end, the friends of his

  46. youth were gone. The churches he had planted were far

  47. across the water, facing troubles he could not reach out

  48. and fix. His own freedom had been taken. And that

  49. is exactly the person to whom Heaven chose to show

  50. its deepest secret. John began to write down what he saw,

  51. and he addressed his words to seven churches that were

  52. struggling in their own ways. Some were tired, some were afraid,

  53. some had drifted and lost their first love. And write

  54. at the beginning of the letter, before the Visions, before

  55. the trumpets and the Throne, John gave them a greeting.

  56. He wrote, grace and peace to you from Him who

  57. is and who was, and who is to come, and

  58. from the seven spirits before his throne. Revelation, Chapter one,

  59. verse four read who is standing in that greeting the

  60. one who is and was and is to come, which

  61. is God the Father, And later in the same passage,

  62. Jesus Christ, the faithful Witness. And here right alongside them

  63. the seven spirits before the throne. This is placed shoulder

  64. to shoulder with the Father and the Son. From the

  65. very first page John is telling us that the seven

  66. spirits belong to God himself. This is wholly ground. So

  67. the question is no longer only what the seven spirits are.

  68. The question becomes who they are. And to answer that,

  69. John takes us up past the walls of his prison

  70. into the throne room of heaven. John says a door

  71. stood open in heaven, and a voice called him up.

  72. What he saw next is almost too bright to describe.

  73. He saw a throne and someone seated on it, shining

  74. like precious stone. He saw a rainbow around the throne.

  75. He saw elders in white and living creatures full of eyes.

  76. And he heard worship that never stops. And then in

  77. the middle of all that glory, John noticed something burning.

  78. He wrote, from the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings,

  79. and peals of thunder. In front of the throne, seven

  80. lamps were blazing. These are the seven Spirits of God. Revelation,

  81. chapter four, verse five. Seven lamps blazing right in front

  82. of the throne of God. Now John's first readers would

  83. have felt something stir when they heard about seven lamps.

  84. They knew that back in the Temple in Jerusalem, in

  85. the Holy Place, there stood a golden lampstand with seven branches,

  86. and it was never supposed to go dark day and night.

  87. Its seven lights burned, keeping the presence of God visible

  88. in that room. For hundreds of years, that lampstand had

  89. quietly said one thing to God's people. God is here.

  90. God has not gone out. God is still shining. So

  91. when John sees not a lamp stand made of gold,

  92. but seven living lamps of fire blazing before the very

  93. throne of Heaven, he is seeing the true thing that

  94. the old lamp stand only pointed to the Spirit of God,

  95. complete and full burning at the center of everything, not

  96. a symbol carved by human hands, the living presence of

  97. God on fire in the highest place there is. Consider

  98. what fire meant to the people of the Bible. Fire

  99. gave light in the dark and warmth in the cold.

  100. Fire was also how God had shown himself again and

  101. again in the bush that burned without being consumed, in

  102. the pillar that led his people through the wilderness at night,

  103. in the flame that rested on the mountain. Fire was

  104. the sign that God was present and alive and near

  105. enough to be fed. Helt And now John sees the

  106. spirit of God as seven lamps of fire, never dimming,

  107. never dying down, burning steadily before the throne. This is

  108. a picture of a presence that does not flicker with

  109. our moods, and does not go out when we fail.

  110. The fire of God's spirit is constant on the days

  111. you feel close to Him and the days you feel

  112. nothing at all. Those lamps are still blazing exactly the

  113. same because they're burning never depended on you in the

  114. first place. And notice where those lamps are. They are

  115. in front of the throne. They are not off in

  116. some far corner of heaven, waiting to be needed. They

  117. are at the center, closest to the seat of God,

  118. part of the glory itself. If you have ever wondered

  119. whether the Spirit of God is near to the Father

  120. or somehow separate from him, this vision answers you The

  121. spirit blazes at the heart of heaven, inseparable from the

  122. one who sits on the throne. But this raises a

  123. fair question, one that troubles many people who read the

  124. Book of Revelation. Why seven, if this is the one

  125. holy spirit, why does John keep saying seven spirits? Does

  126. that mean there are actually seven of them? To answer that,

  127. we have to understand something. The Bible does again and

  128. again with that number. From the very beginning, the number

  129. seven carries a meaning in scripture. It is the number

  130. of things that are finished and whole. Think back to

  131. the first page of the Bible. God made the world

  132. in six days, and on the seventh he rested, not

  133. because he was tired, but because the work was complete.

  134. The seventh day was the sign that everything was finished

  135. and good. From that moment on, seven became the number

  136. of completeness woven all through the Bible. Seven days in

  137. the week, a sacrifice sprinkled seven times to show it

  138. was fully clean. Walls circled seven times before they fell

  139. again and again. When God wanted to show that something

  140. was whole, full, and lacking nothing, the number seven appeared.

  141. So when John wrights seven spirits of God, he is

  142. not counting heads. He is not telling us there are

  143. seven separate spirits any more than there were seven separate

  144. Gods resting on the seventh day. He is telling us

  145. that the one spirit of God is complete, full, whole,

  146. perfect in every part. The seven is a way of

  147. saying that in this spirit, nothing is missing. This matters

  148. because of how we are tempted to think about God's

  149. Spirit in our own lives. We imagine that we received

  150. a week version. We look at some point one whose

  151. faith seems strong and steady, and we think they must

  152. have gotten more of God, while we were given a

  153. smaller share, a flickering candle instead of a fire. But

  154. the vision John saw does not allow that thought to stand.

  155. The Spirit before the Throne is sevenfold, which is to say,

  156. he is total. There is no incomplete version of the

  157. Holy Spirit. When God gives his spirit, he does not

  158. ration him out in fragments. And where did John learn

  159. to see the Spirit of God in these full sevenfold terms.

  160. He did not invent it. He was reading it, as

  161. every faithful Jew did, from a promise made hundreds of

  162. years before he was born, in the words of the

  163. prophet Isaiah, long before John was born, long before the

  164. churches he wrote to existed. The prophet Isaiah looked ahead

  165. to a coming king. Israel was a nation in trouble,

  166. its future uncertain, its royal family looking like a tree

  167. that had been cut down to a stump. And Isaiah

  168. promised that from that dead looking stump from the family

  169. of Jesse, a fresh green shoot would grow a king

  170. would come. Then Isaiah described what would rest upon this king.

  171. He wrote, the spirit of the Lord will rest on him,

  172. the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of

  173. counsel and of might, the spirit of the knowledge and

  174. fear of the Lord. Isiah chapter eleven, verse two. Listen

  175. to how full that description is. It begins with the

  176. spirit of the Lord himself, and then unfolds outward like

  177. light through a prism wisdom and understanding, counsel and might,

  178. knowledge and the fear of the Lord. This is one

  179. spirit described in the richness of everything. He brings wisdom

  180. to see what is true, understanding to know what it means,

  181. counsel to know the right path, and might to actually

  182. walk it, Knowledge of God, and a deep reverence that

  183. keeps the heart soft before him. This was the promise

  184. of the spirit resting in fullness on the coming King.

  185. And this is the well that John was drinking from

  186. when he wrote of the seven spirits of God. The

  187. same complete sevenfold spirit that Isiah promised would rest on

  188. the Messiah is the spirit John now sees blazing before

  189. the throne. Here is the quiet beauty of it. The

  190. Spirit of God is not only power, He is wisdom

  191. for the confused. He is understanding for those who feel

  192. that life makes no sense. He is counsel for the

  193. person standing at a crossroads with no idea which way

  194. to turn. He is might for the one who knows

  195. the right thing but feels far too weak to do it.

  196. He is knowledge of God for the soul that is

  197. starving to actually know Him and not just know about him.

  198. Everything the human heart lacks, this spirit carries in fullness.

  199. Nothing about God's Spirit is thin. It is worth slowing

  200. down here because Isiah did not describe the spirit in

  201. vague words. He named real things, and those things speak

  202. directly to the places where we hurt if you look closely.

  203. The description comes in pairs, and each pair meets a

  204. different kind of need. The first pair is wisdom and understanding.

  205. Wisdom is the ability to see what is truly good

  206. and true, and understanding is the ability to grasp what

  207. it means for your life. Think of how often we

  208. lack both. We stand in the middle of a decision

  209. and cannot tell what is right, and even when we

  210. know what is right, we cannot see why it matters

  211. or where it leads. Into that fog. The spirit brings light.

  212. He does not simply hand us rules. He gives the

  213. kind of seeing that lets a tired soul finally make

  214. sense of things. Many people believe they need more information,

  215. when what they really need is the spirit of understanding

  216. to make plain what has been confusing them for years.

  217. The second pair is counsel and might. Counsel is knowing

  218. the right path, and might is the strength to actually

  219. walk it. This pair speaks to a very common kind

  220. of pain, the gap between knowing and doing. You know

  221. you should forgive, and you cannot find the strength. You

  222. know you should let go of the fear, and it

  223. clings to you anyway. You know the direction you should take,

  224. but your legs feel too weak to move. The spirit

  225. of God is counsel and might together, which means he

  226. does not only point at the path and leave you

  227. standing there. He gives the strength to take the first step,

  228. and the next one and the one after that. He

  229. is the guide who also carries you when the road climbs.

  230. The third pair is knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

  231. Knowledge here is knowing God himself, not merely knowing facts

  232. about him, and the fear of the Lord is the

  233. deep reverence that keeps the heart soft and humble before him.

  234. This is the pair that so many hungry believers ache for,

  235. without being able to name it. They have read the verses,

  236. they have sat through the studies, and still they feel

  237. they do not really know God, that he is a

  238. subject they have learned, rather than a person they have met.

  239. The Spirit of God is the very one who brings

  240. us into that knowing. He warms the cold heart, He

  241. turns doctrine into nearness. He takes a God who felt

  242. like a distant idea and makes him a present father.

  243. Put those three pairs together and you begin to see

  244. why the fullness matters so much. The Spirit is light

  245. for the confused, strength for the weak, and nearness for

  246. the lonely, all at once, all complete. This is not

  247. a spirit who helps a little. This is the whole

  248. help of God offered to the whole need of a

  249. human life. But John's vision does not stop at the throne.

  250. If it did, we might imagine the Spirit as glorious

  251. but distant, a fire burning far above us in a

  252. heaven we cannot reach. The next thing John saw takes

  253. this full and complete spirit and sends him somewhere. It

  254. sends him toward us. After John saw the throne and

  255. the burning lamps, a new figure entered the vision. All

  256. of heaven was waiting for someone worthy to open a

  257. sealed scroll, and no one could be found, and John

  258. began to weep. Then one of the elders told him

  259. to stop weeping, because the lion of the tribe of

  260. Judah had triumph. John turned to look for a lion,

  261. but that is not what he saw, he wrote. Then

  262. I saw a lamb, looking as if it had been slain,

  263. standing at the center of the throne. The lamb had

  264. seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits

  265. of God sent out into all the earth. Revelation, chapter five,

  266. verse six. A lamb standing yet, looking as though it

  267. had been killed. This is Jesus, the one who was

  268. slain and is alive. And on this lamb are seven eyes.

  269. And John tells us plainly what those eyes are. They

  270. are the seven spirits of God, the same spirit we

  271. have been following. And now something new is said about him.

  272. He is sent out into all the earth. Think about

  273. what eyes do eyes see? And these are not ordinary eyes,

  274. but seven, the number of fullness. The lamb sees everything everywhere,

  275. completely there is no dark corner of the earth. His

  276. sight does not reach, no forgotten room, no hidden life,

  277. no person too small or too far away to be seen.

  278. And these seeing eyes are the Spirit of God sent

  279. out over the whole world. This carries an echo from

  280. another prophet, zek Yah, who long before had seen a

  281. vision of God's eyes ranging back and forth across the

  282. whole earth, watching over his people. John is telling us

  283. the same truth in fuller light. The complete spirit of

  284. God is not locked inside the throne room. He goes out,

  285. He covers the ground. He is present in all the

  286. earth at once, seeing, knowing, and reaching. So put the

  287. whole picture together. Now, the seven lamps before the throne

  288. showed us the Spirit in his fullness, blazing at the

  289. center of heaven. The seven eyes of the Lamb show

  290. us that same full spirit sent out to the ends

  291. of the earth. The Spirit of God is both perfectly

  292. complete and perfectly present. He is not so high that

  293. he cannot reach you, and he is not so scattered

  294. that he arrives to you weakened wherever you are. The

  295. whole spirit of God can be for an old man

  296. alone on a prison island. This was everything John was

  297. cut off from every church, every friend, every familiar face,

  298. and Heaven showed him that the Spirit of God ranges

  299. through all the earth, which means Patmos was not outside

  300. his sight. There is no island and far enough to

  301. be beyond him. There is a reason the Spirit is

  302. shown to us as eyes, and it is worth sitting

  303. with because it changes how being seen by God feels.

  304. Long before John, the prophet Zechariah lived among a discouraged

  305. people who had come back from exile to a broken

  306. city and a half built temple. They felt small and forgotten,

  307. sure that God had moved on to bigger things than

  308. their little work, and Zechariah was given a vision of

  309. a golden lamp stand, much like the seven eyes and

  310. lamps John would later see, and he was told that

  311. these were the eyes of the Lord that ranged throughout

  312. the whole earth. The message to that tired people was clear.

  313. God had not looked away. His eyes were still on them,

  314. on their small city, on their unfinished work, watching not

  315. to condemn but to strengthen. That is the same truth

  316. John saw made complete. The seven eyes of the Lamb

  317. are the spirit of God sent into all the earth,

  318. which means the seeing of God is total, and here

  319. we must be careful, because the idea of being watched

  320. can frighten us. We imagine eyes that catch us, failing,

  321. eyes that keep a record of everything we would rather hide.

  322. But that is not the kind of seeing this is.

  323. These are the eyes of the lamb who was slain

  324. for us. They are the eyes of the one who

  325. gave his life to save the very people he sees.

  326. When his gaze finds you, it is not the cold

  327. stare of a judge counting your faults. It is the searching,

  328. tender attention of a shepherd looking for the sheep that

  329. wandered off. Think of what that means for the parts

  330. of your life. No one else knows the private fear

  331. you have never spoken, the quiet grief you carry to

  332. bed at night, the corner of your heart you are

  333. ashamed of. You may have convinced yourself that no one

  334. truly sees those places, that you are carrying them entirely alone.

  335. But the spirit of God ranges through all the earth,

  336. and there is no hidden room He does not enter.

  337. You are not unseen, You are not a person God

  338. overlooked while tending to more important matters. The full attention

  339. of Heaven can rest on one forgotten life because his

  340. eyes are everywhere at once, missing nothing and caring about

  341. everything they find. This is what lifts the whole vision

  342. out of the sky and sets it down in the

  343. middle of an ordinary life. A God who is only

  344. fullness might be glorious and still far away. A God

  345. who is only everywhere might be near and still cold.

  346. But the spirit John saw is both full and near,

  347. both complete and searching, blazing at the center of heaven

  348. and moving across the whole earth to find people who

  349. thought they had been left behind. Now we come to

  350. the truth that ties all of this together, and it

  351. is the most tender part of the whole vision. Remember

  352. Isiah's promise. The sevenfold Spirit, full of wisdom and understanding

  353. and counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord,

  354. was promised to rest on the coming King, on the Messiah.

  355. And when Jesus stepped into the Jordan River and came

  356. up out of the water, the spirit of God came

  357. down and rested on him, just as Isiah had said,

  358. the whole fullness of the Spirit rested on the Sun.

  359. Then look at what John saw in heaven. The seven

  360. spirits of God are the seven eyes of the lamb.

  361. The spirit belongs to Jesus. The risen lamb holds the

  362. full spirit of God and sends him out into all

  363. the earth. And why does he send him out not

  364. to inspect the world coldly, but to give This is

  365. the heart of the gospel hidden inside the vision. The

  366. lamb looks as though he were slain, because he was.

  367. Jesus gave his life, and through that death and his

  368. rising again, the very spirit that rested in fullness on

  369. the sinless sun is now poured out on ordinary, failing,

  370. tired people who could never earn him. The same spirit,

  371. not a lesser copy handed down to the second class,

  372. the full spirit of God given to those who belong

  373. to Christ. Jesus said it plainly on the last night

  374. before he died. He told his frightened disciples that he

  375. would not leave them as orphans, that he would ask

  376. the Father, and the Father would send them the helper,

  377. the spirit of Truth, to be with them forever. He

  378. was not promising them of fraction. He was promising them

  379. the presence of God himself to live inside them and

  380. never leave. So when we read of the seven spirits

  381. of God, we are not reading about a strange, heavenly

  382. mystery that has nothing to do with us. We are

  383. reading about the very spirit that God has given to

  384. his people through Jesus, the fire before the throne, the

  385. eyes that search all the earth, the fullness Isaiah promised.

  386. All of it is the spirit that comes to make

  387. a home in the heart of anyone who belongs to

  388. the Lamb. Before we come to the end. It helps

  389. to clear away a few misunderstandings that keep people from

  390. resting in this truth. Some people read seven spirits and

  391. conclude there must be seven separate beings, perhaps seven high

  392. angels serving God. But John never calls them angels, and

  393. he places them alongside the Father and the Son in

  394. his greeting, where no angel belongs. The seven is the

  395. number of fullness, not a head count. This is the

  396. one Holy Spirit, whole and complete. Others have quietly come

  397. to believe that the Holy Spirit is only a force,

  398. a kind of divine energy, with no heart like electricity

  399. flowing from God. But the spirit John saw is no

  400. cold power. He is the spirit of wisdom, of counsel,

  401. of the knowledge of God. Jesus called him the Helper

  402. and the comforter. Names you would only give to someone

  403. who can actually care. The Spirit is not an it.

  404. He is God present and personal, able to grieve, able

  405. to comfort, able to lead. And some fear that talking

  406. about the seven Spirits somehow crowds Heaven or breaks apart

  407. the oneness of God. It does not. The Father on

  408. the throne, the Lamb who was slain, and the Spirit

  409. blazing before the throne are one God shown to us

  410. in the richness of who he is. Revelation does not

  411. divide God. It lets us see more of Him. When

  412. these misunderstandings fall away, what is left is simple and steadying.

  413. The seven Spirits of God are the Holy Spirit, complete

  414. in every way, sent out to the whole earth, given

  415. freely to God's people through Jesus. That is who he is.

  416. So let this settle on your own life now, because

  417. it was always meant to. Maybe you feel the way

  418. John must have felt on that island, cut off, forgotten,

  419. too far from the life you once had. You wonder

  420. if the presence of God has quietly passed you by

  421. while you were left behind. Hear what the vision says.

  422. The Spirit of God is sent out into all the earth.

  423. There is no place that is too remote for him,

  424. there is no life so hidden that his eyes do

  425. not find it. The same spirit who blazes at the

  426. center of heaven reaches the smallest and loneliest corner of

  427. the world, and he can reach you where you are

  428. right now. Maybe you are not lonely so much as empty.

  429. You feel you have run out, out of strength, out

  430. of wisdom, out of the ability to keep going. You

  431. look at the fullness of God and it only reminds

  432. you of how little you have left. But this is

  433. exactly the spirit you have been reading about. He is

  434. the spirit of might for the weak, of counsel, for

  435. the lost, of wisdom, for the one who has none.

  436. God does not wait for you to fill up before

  437. he comes. He is the fullness that comes to the empty.

  438. He does not give himself in pieces, keeping the best

  439. part back what he gives. He gives whole. And maybe

  440. you are simply tired, tired of trying, tired of failing,

  441. tired of a faith that feels like performance. You are

  442. worn out from doing religion like a task you can

  443. never finish. Then listen again to how the vision began.

  444. It was a greeting of grace and peace offered before

  445. John saw a single frightening thing. Grace comes first. The

  446. Spirit of God was never a reward for the strong.

  447. He is the gift of a lamb who was slain

  448. for people who could not save themselves, poured out on

  449. the ones who come to him with empty hands. You

  450. do not have to climb up to the throne room

  451. to find him. Through Jesus, the whole spirit of God

  452. has already been sent out to find you. The fire

  453. that Isiah promised, the fullness John saw, the presence that

  454. never leaves. All of it is offered to the one

  455. who turns to crime and simply says yes, And once

  456. he comes, he stays, This is perhaps the greatest comfort

  457. of all. The lamps before the throne do not go dark,

  458. and the eyes that range through the earth do not close.

  459. The spirit given to God's people is not a visitor

  460. who drops in on our better days and disappears when

  461. we stumble. Jesus promised that the helper would be with

  462. us forever. So the wisdom is there for the next

  463. confusing season. The strength is there for the next uphill road.

  464. The nearness is there on the nights when God feels

  465. a thousand miles away, because his presence was never measured

  466. by how strongly we felt it. Long after the emotion fades,

  467. the fire is still burning. That is the kind of God.

  468. The Seven Spirits reveal a God who comes in fullness

  469. and then refuses to leave. So the next time you

  470. come across those strange words the Seven Spirits of God,

  471. do not let them feel distant or cold. Behind the

  472. vision is a promise as warm as any in Scripture.

  473. The complete, unbroken, wise, strong, all seeing Spirit of God

  474. is not far above you and not against you. He

  475. is the presence God gives to his children, so that

  476. no matter how alone or empty or tired you are,

  477. you can rise again knowing you were never left to

  478. walk this road by yourself. The Spirit before the Throne

  479. is the spirit sent into all the earth, and all

  480. the earth includes the very ground beneath your feet. If

  481. this video helped you grow deeper in God's Word, I

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