Hi, this is Dave Olson. I'm the senior leader of
Heartland Church located in Ankeny, IA.
I hope the following message challenges, encourages and
ultimately changes you. Thanks for joining us.
OK, let's get into the word this morning.
My computer is not wanting to cooperate.
We are in a short, at least it, it, it may be short, a short
series on what we'll see how long this goes, but a short
series on Revelation, the Revelation, the Book of
Revelation. Really what I want to get to is
just chapters 4:00 and 5:00. But I've been just marinating in
this. I, I got, got a bug this week.
I got sick. We launched the school on
Thursday and it Yeah. And I, I manned Wednesday
morning or Wednesday afternoon. All of a sudden I realized, you
know what? I'm sick and I called Bill
Buyer. I said Bill, because Bill had
called me. He said he's going to be in
Nebraska. I said you still over there?
And he said yeah, so you're doing anything tonight?
No, I said do you want to come over and preach for me tonight
and tomorrow morning? So Bill got on his horse and
rode and he and it had to be like an 8 hour round trip, I
think and came over and taught Wednesday night and Thursday
morning. And I believe that that that was
orchestrated, not my sickness, but Bill's visit was
orchestrated by God for him to be here the first day of the
school. So, so I got time to make up,
but so I had, I had time to just lay around and read because I
wasn't feeling well. You know, there's an old saying
it says in on earth, Tis said laid aside by illness in heaven.
Tis said called aside for stillness.
Now I don't know if that's, I feel like that's been true of me
at times where the Lord just gets me to slow down.
And, and so I've been just reading the Book of Revelation
over and over again. And I'm not really taught on
this book a lot over the years, but I've been captured by it and
especially chapter 4 and 5. And so we want to get there.
But before we can get there, I want to look at a couple of
things. We talked about this a couple of
weeks ago. The the meaning the the word
revelation, it is the revelation of Jesus Christ.
John had a prophetic revelation. He had he was caught up into an
encounter and God had him recorded.
In fact, let's look at verse one one listen to what it says.
The revelation of Jesus Christ. That word, the Greek word is a
compound word and it means it comes from 2 words to cover and
to, you know, to cover or conceal and then the other one
to remove. So a revelation is God removing
that which hides something or conceals or it's it's something
that keeps us from understanding.
So God gives a revelation. So John writes the revelation of
Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the
things that must soon take place.
He made it by sending. He made it known by sending his
Angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God
into the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.
Now we could spend a month in chapter 1 or verse one, because
it really is a biblical cosmology.
It's the way that God operates. It's the way that God
administrates his Kingdom and there's a complexity to what God
reveals here that is very important for you and on to
understand. We have a tendency to think
that, well, God wants to do something.
He just wishes it done. He decides it done and it's
done. But here it's very clear God had
something that he longed to show his people.
So what did he do? He sent an Angel and then the
Angel went to a guy and they and named John and he, this Angel
ushered John into a couple of revelations or encounters.
And that there's a, a biblical history, a tradition of Jewish
prophets who would go into these encounters.
Ezekiel was one, Jeremiah was one.
They would have these encounters where they would experience
things, see things, but they were seeing and experiencing
them for others. So they would, they would record
those, they would write those down so that God could get it to
the people. So God wants something to get to
the churches. God wants something to get to
you and I. So what did he do?
He sent an Angel and the Angel found a guy and ushered that guy
into an encounter, and then that guy went into an encounter and
then he recorded everything that he experienced, wrote it down,
did the hard work of writing it. They had to keep copying these
manuscripts and disseminate them to these seven churches that are
in chapters 3 and or two and three, and then multiply that
across the world so that you and I could get what God wanted us
to get. Now, I don't know about you.
That's a little more complex than I think of.
When God operates, I tend to think, well, God just wants
something to happen. He wills it so.
But what God does, he shows us in this verse.
There is always a partnership between heaven and earth,
between the angelic and the human, to accomplish God's will.
God has a family. They're sons of God in the
heavenly realms. They're angelic creatures, and
he has a family on earth, and he operates through both of them.
And there's this partnership between heaven and earth for
God's Kingdom to show up on the earth.
And so John has this encounter and he records this revelation.
Now, one of the things I was reading this week, laying in
bed, I was reading a, a summation of a book by Doctor
Craig Keener. Anybody ever heard of Craig
Keener? He, he's a theologian, past or
not, Pastors. He's a professor at Asbury
Seminary. Matter of fact, Rick Erewood, I
believe went to school with Craig.
He was already parsing Greek when he arrived at Bible
college. He's a brilliant guy, but he's
also spirit filled, believes in the gifts of the Spirit.
He just came out with a huge, I've got a, I've got a set of
commentaries by him just on the book of Acts is almost 5000
pages. He's got a big old book on
miracles that he wrote. And then he's got a little thin
one for the layman and it records, it's documenting
miracles today. And it's one of the
groundbreaking work that has just come out.
But I, I appreciate him because he's so brilliant.
He's, he's just puts out all kinds of material, but he also
believes in the life and the spirit.
And what I really appreciate about him is what I'm about to
read to you. And I read this and I thought
this guy is brilliant because he's saying just what I said,
just better. When I said two weeks ago, I
knew he was brilliant because he agrees with me.
And so listen to what he said. This is the introduction or a
summation of his book. This book is called, I love the
title, A spirit hermeneutic or spirit hermeneutics is what it's
called. Reading Scripture in light of
Pentecost. Spirit hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics is the science of literary interpretation and
especially Bible. So there are rules to interpret
writing. You can't just make things up
and just decide while this is what it means, there are strict
rules to interpret literature, especially the Bible, and that's
called hermeneutics. And it's a very boring class if
you take it. But he talks about a spirit
hermeneutic, and this is what he means by this.
The experience of the Spirit that empowered the church on the
day of Pentecost can and should dynamically shape our reading of
Scripture. All Christians should read
Scripture as people who are living in the biblical
experience, not in terms of ancient culture, but as people
living by the same Spirit who guided God's people in
Scripture. This means that we are
interested in biblical texts, not simply for what they teach
us about ancient history ideas, intriguing as that is.
He was one of the contributors to the Cultural Background Study
Bible. So he says, yeah, that that's
intriguing ancient history and ideas, but we should be
interested in it because we expect to share the kind of
spiritual experience and relationship with God that we
discover in those Scriptures. Jesus resurrection is not a mere
historical datum. Datum.
It declares, I believe that's how you say it.
I looked it up. It declares that the Jesus we
learn about in the Gospels is now the exalted Lord who has
sent his Spirit so that we may continue to experience his
presence. Throughout Scripture, we read
about people hearing from God, prophesying, experiencing
miracles. Though we may not all experience
all of these activities and of the Spirit daily biblical
pattern leads us to expect that the God who empowered these
activities throughout Scripture is the God who still empowers
them today and that'll preach this morning.
Matter of fact, it's So what we need to understand is when John
is receiving this revelation. It's very clear from verse one
that the reason John had these encounters was not for him
solely. It was so that he could get him
to the people of God. And here's the idea that this is
not just a revelation or an encounter, because when we talk
about revelation, especially when we read this book, we think
of, oh, a revelation of end time events.
That's not what John's saying. He said it's a revelation of
Jesus Christ that God wanted to get to the people so that they
would know what soon must take place.
Now, what is soon? That's for another time.
OK. But the point is, is that it's
not just so that we can read about this encounter.
John hadn't think, Oh, that's cool.
John had this encounter, but it's to record his his encounter
and to leave the breadcrumb trail for you and I to enter
into the same that there are secrets and Nuggets and Kingdom
protocol principles that we can cooperate with in order that we
can experience the same things. And that is what Keener is
talking about, that we're not just to read the Bible and say,
oh, those are great, the things that God did in the past, that
these things are for us today and we should expect
revelations. We shouldn't.
And that revelations is not just having insight of an idea, but
revelation in the biblical sense of the word often included
dreams and visions where people would have encounters with God.
You know the old phrase, a picture is worth 1000 words.
Well, a vision is worth a million because there are layers
to that. We've talked about this before.
There was a brilliant lady. She's with the Lord now, Leanne
Payne, she said that God, she had this phrase.
She said reality is so vast, it's too great to be summed up
in mere words. That's why God gave us symbols
and the prophetic is full of symbols and full of pictures
and, and moving pictures and all of that so that we can learn
about God. And we lean in and we ask for a
spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we can interpret the
revelations that God gives us. And God wants all of us to
experience him. It's not just something we read
and think, oh, that's neat. Wish I could have been back that
time. Jesus himself said, it's better
that I leave because I'm giving you a spirit like unto myself.
He'll lead you into all truth and that's for you and I too.
So let's look at chapter turn with me to chapter 4.
While we're going there, chapter one kind of gives the backdrop
of what's going on with John before he launches into this
vision. Chapters 2 and three, he
addresses these seven churches that God gives him an encounter
for revelation for seven churches, and he begins to
unpack them. And let me caution you, a lot of
people read that as 7 church ages.
And if that's what you believe, that's fine.
Just don't. Here's the problem.
Don't overlook the fact that these were 7 literal churches,
many of whom John knew, with people with very real problems
that John is addressing. And this book was written
initially to them and secondarily to us.
And we can't know what it says to us until we know what it said
to them. And there's a tendency for us to
kind of skip the hard work of Scripture and just look at it
and try to figure out what he's saying to us by looking at the
newspaper. And we need to do the hard work
of Scripture. There's some principles that
that the Lord is giving to these churches, and they were little
churches. And they are those principles
apply to us. But we first have to understand
what those principles worth in an ancient culture and then
apply them to our modern world. And there's some work that needs
to take place for that to happen.
And God rewards us when we do that hard work of study.
So he has these seven churches and the last church he speaks to
is the Church of Laodicea. And you know, many look at that
as the Laodicean age. I personally don't adhere to
that. I'm not going to arm wrestle
you. You know, if you believe that,
that's fine. Just understand, there was
really a place called Laodicea that had a Laodicean church that
was in a backslidden state. It was they were apathetic.
Their passion was gone. The Lord rebukes them and says
you are neither hot nor cold. I knew a preacher down in
Missouri many, many years ago. He could quote much of the Bible
and he had this message he used to preach all over about God
wants you to be a fireball, but if you're not a fireball, he'd
rather have you be a snowball. But if you're neither, he'll
make you a spitball. And it was a good preach.
It was a good sermon. I'm telling you.
The guy could preach. Yeah, So.
And with that as the backdrop, look at verse 19.
Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline so as to be zealous
and so be zealous and repent. And so we know from Hebrews 12
that the Lord, one of the marks of sonship, is the correction of
the Lord in our life. If God never corrects you, you
really do need to question whether you're saved, because
the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he corrects everyone
he treats as a son. And if you're never disciplined,
then you are an illegitimate son, the writer of Hebrews says.
And so one of the marks, you know, we talk about the father
heart of God and, and there is this whole intimacy element to
the father heart of God and God's affections.
But the flip side is it's the discipline of God that is a
manifestation of the father heart of God.
And it's coming to us as it's, he says, don't, don't lose heart
and don't treat it lightly, but understand the weight of what's
going on and take it as the loving correction of the Father.
We can go to 2 ends of the pendulum.
We take it lightly. Ah, it's not a big deal.
Yes, it is the Lord's dealing with us.
But don't lose heart. When God corrects you, it is
actually an expression of his love and affection for you.
So he says, those who whom I love, I reprove and discipline.
So be zealous and repent. And then he says this, This is
fascinating. Behold, I stand at the door and
knock. If anyone hears my voice and
opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him, and he
with me, the one who conquers, I will grant to him to sit with me
in my throne, as I will also as I also conquered and sat down
with my Father on his throne. He was ears.
Let him hear what the Spirit would say to the churches.
And then the next verse after this, I looked and behold the
door standing open in heaven. And so John goes from one
encounter to another, and we see this word showing up.
Behold, behold, behold. And it has this abruptness to it
that all of a sudden John is thrust into another encounter.
And it's kind of the connecting word to transition from one
encounter to another. Now we read this in chapters and
verses, and I'm grateful for that.
It's hard enough to keep track of this massive book called the
Bible without chapter and verse or with chapter and verse, but
so I'm grateful. But the the danger is, is that
we just kind of stop and we separate.
We turn our mind off and then we turn it back on and we go into
the next passage and miss the fact that John talks about two
doors. And that's what I want to talk
about this morning. When I was raising our babies,
my wife and I, we had a lot of kids and so when we were on the
road, sometimes we'd have to get 2H rooms.
You ever rented or, you know, paid for two adjoining hotel
rooms? Some of you people with large
families, I can see you been out in your head and what's
interesting is that you have two hotel rooms.
You got family staying in both of them and it's always divided
by two doors because what they don't want to do if they don't
have one family renting 2 rooms, they don't want to have some
weirdo in one room thinking, hey, I think I'll visit our
neighbors and open the door and look at, hey, how you doing
tonight? That would be disconcerting.
So there's 2 doors. It has to be opened from both
sides in order for the occupants of both rooms to have
fellowship. There's 2 doors and both doors
have to be open in order for them to have fellowship, in
order for them to access each other's environments.
And I would propose to you that John is Speaking of a similar
thing. There's two different doors John
mentions here, and there's two different dynamics to these
doors. A number of years ago, I ended
up stumbling into this principle and started looking up about the
windows of heaven. You know, there's three times in
scripture it talks about the windows of heaven, and it talks
about the abundance of heaven breaking into our realm of
things. The windows of heaven.
Twice it's a blessing and one it was judgment, but it's heaven's
environment, atmosphere breaking into ours.
So we have this idea of the windows of heaven, then we have
this idea of doors we have here, and then we have gates, and all
of those speak of access points between dimensions.
And again, we need to be very, very careful that we don't just
kind of water this down, oh, that's nice poetry and move on.
There's a reason that the biblical writers used this type
of type of terminology. They're trying to communicate
something to us and we can just blow past it and think, oh,
that's nice imagery and fail to ask ourselves why.
What's going on with that? Windows are not something you
climb through. You're not supposed to at least
teenagers. You're you know, windows are not
something you, you don't act, but what you do, is it like in
this weather, I'm enjoying this weather.
You open the window, you turn off the air.
Hallelujah. I'm a cheapskate.
I love this man. I have to run my air and the
environment, the, the climate, the, the, the atmospheric
conditions outside come into my, where I'm where I'm living and
I, I, it cools it down. I'm experiencing the atmosphere
outside of me and the windows of heaven are very similar.
There's there are dynamics where windows open up.
I had John Kilpatrick tell me one time.
He said I believe that every service in, every time the
people of God get together, a window opens.
And if you'll give way to that, that thing will become a door
and God will enter in. But we've got to give way to it.
We've got to be discerning what is God doing.
So there's windows and then there's doors, and there's
gates. What's the difference between a
gate and a door? They're both something you gain
access to from one environment to another.
Doors are for individual access and gates are for corporate
access. We read things like Psalm 24,
Swing wide, ye heavenly gates be lifted up you ancient doors.
So these gates are for corporate access and they're that's a
sermon for another time, but that's talking about regional
access. So there are gates and regions,
there are doors of access in the Spirit.
And in this passage, John has a very real experience by the
Spirit of God. An Angel actually ushers him
into this encounter and he gets this word for the the Church of
Laodicea. He said, listen, you guys have
been apathetic. You've lost your first love.
Behold, he stands at the door and knocks.
If any man hears his voice and opens the door, he will come in
and you will. The King James Version said Sup
with you. You ever saw someone say Sup?
He's going to Sup with you. He's going to, you're going to
have fellowship with the Lord that that's a powerful thing, He
said. If any man hears my voice, I
would propose to you that anytime God speaks to you,
there's more than just what he's speaking in the moment.
It's actually an invitation. It's a knock on your heart's
door. And if you'll open yourself up,
there's more that he wants to give you.
There's actually a feast waiting for you.
And the danger is is that we we get so you know God spoke to me.
I remember when when we hosted one time, Kara's father, Randy
Bixby was was running a House of prayer in Des Moines, Cahop and
they had John and Carol Arnot in and John and Carol were the the
leaders of the Toronto outpouring up there.
And he was going to have him. And he said we need a place to
meet. Can we meet at your place?
I said, let me pray about it. I meant.
And so we met here and I remember Carol Arnot praying for
a young evangelist. This guy had a touch of God on
his life and she laid hands on him.
He got blasted and she gave him a word.
And I thought you're exactly right.
I never recognized that about him until she said it.
But what she said is she said you are so zealous for a touch
from God that as soon as he touches you, rather than, rather
than soak in it and get everything you can, you're off
running with that little that little touch.
And you you don't get everything out of it that you could.
That thing kind of bounced off of him and got on me.
If any man hears my voice and opens the door, when God speaks
to you, anytime he speaks to you, it's an invitation for
more. There's an entire feast waiting
if you'll just pause and open the door.
There's always so much more than what we initially understand
when God speaks to us. When you're reading the Word and
you have a flash of insight and our tendency is to rush on and
go on to something else, when if we'll stop and we'll begin to
just dig into that. There's 3060 and a hundredfold
harvest that we can get. And too often we get excited.
We get the thirtyfold and we run off, not realizing we've left so
much on the table. And so he says, if any man
would, I stand at the door and knock.
If any man would hear my voice and open the door, I would come
in to him. I can't read this passage
without thinking of Song of Solomon chapter 5.
Turn there with me real quick. Song of Solomon, chapter 5, and
some of you know where I'm going with this.
It's verse 2. Verse 2.
I slept, but my heart was awake. This is the bride, and she's,
she's already gotten ready for bed.
She's in bed. I slept, but my heart was awake.
A sound. My beloved is knocking open to
me. He's speaking to open to me, my
sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one.
For my head is wet with dew, my locks with the drops of the
night. So what it is is the bridegroom
has made him, made his way through the night.
He's now drenched. He's he's gotten himself all wet
in the dew of the night because he wants to see his bride.
He's knocking on the door. He's wanting to he was wanting
to hold her. He's wanting that encounter with
her. He's hungry for her affection,
that intimacy with her. And verse 3, I had put, this is
what she says. I had put off my garment.
How could I put it on? I had bathed my feet.
How could I soil them? She said, man, I'm already ready
for bed. This is inconvenient.
I mean, I love them, but man, I, I, I'm already in bed and, you
know, in that culture, you know, Dyson's hadn't been invented
yet. You know, her feet she had, she
would get her feet dirty and her feet were clean.
Verse 4 My beloved put his hand on the latch.
The bridegroom begins to shake the latch, and my heart was
thrilled within me, so I rose to open to my beloved.
My hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid murrh on the
handles of the bolt. I opened to my beloved, but my
beloved had turned and gone. My soul failed me when he spoke.
It's an interesting phrase. My soul failed me when he spoke.
What does she mean by that? What she's saying is that her
affections she didn't arouse her to the point where she could
overcome her own apathy. She wanted comfort and slumber
more than she wanted another encounter with the bridegroom.
Jesus himself talked over Jerusalem, he said Jerusalem,
Jerusalem. I long to bring you to myself as
a mother hen with her chicks. But you would not.
You have missed the hour of your visitation, he says.
There was an hour of visitation. There was a beginning and there
was an end and they missed it. And when the Lord's dealing with
us, when the Lord comes to us, and I have found the Lord will
often come at inconvenient times because he wants to give us
something of great value. And if we'll respond, there's
there's those intimate moments we have with the Lord.
But if our soul fails us, if our our desire is for slumber more
than that encounter, we can miss those opportunities.
And she went out in the streets and she's looking for her love.
And I don't know about you, but there have been times where the
Lord has woken me up in the middle of the night.
There's times I've responded and there's times I haven't
responded quick enough. And there's times I've turned
over and went to sleep. My soul failed me, my affections
for Him were not strong enough, and we forfeit these encounters.
I was thinking this morning as I was reading over that I remember
it would have been 1980, would have been 1986.
I remember I was hanging out with a bunch of guys.
We were heading to this camp and we were just hanging out and all
of a sudden I felt the Lord calling me.
I just knew I got to go over to the church.
So I kind of snuck out of there and went into the church and all
of heaven opened up in this church sanctuary across the
street. I will never forget that
encounter with God, but it came at a really inconvenient time.
And because I responded, there was this encounter.
And I guarantee you there's other times that I've missed it.
And what I'm saying is, if any man hears my voice and opens the
door, listen, the Lord comes to us.
And this particular door that he's talking to the Laodicean
church about was a door of intimacy that the Lord wants to
build that with us. And we need to learn to respond
to him and go away with him. Now, I don't know what you think
about Benny Hinn, but I know a guy that was having dinner with
Benny Hinn and a bunch of important people.
And all of a sudden Benny stood up and he said, I've got to go.
They had just ordered the food. The food was still there.
And he, he said, I got to go. The Lord's telling me he he went
and just disappeared. And that's the way he's lived
his life for many years. And I've known people.
Hey, he's got a lot of flamboyant ways and you know,
the, the, the outfits and all that.
Hey, that's his style. That's that's between him and
Jesus. But I would be careful listening
to others reports about him. I knew a pastor, my mother in
He went down there and he was standing in the in the in the
group and Benny was preaching and Benny whipped his hand like
this and the whole section fell out, including him.
He got back up, drove home, got in the pulp.
He said, I don't understand it, but it was God and I'm never
talking about him again. There's a reason he carries what
he carries. Listen, man, the Lord and during
worship, Rebecca came up to me. Rebecca, where you at?
Wave at me. There she is.
And Rebecca came up to me and she was just crying, she said.
I just feel the Lord. He's longing for people and
people are having a hard time surrendering themselves.
And I'm telling you, man, God longs for you.
He's knocking at the door of your heart.
This first door is a door of intimacy.
It's the door that you and I control, and we have to open it.
He won't break the door down. He jiggled the lock and it
awakened the heart of his bride, but she waited too long.
And I'm just telling you that there are times where the Lord
comes to you and you need to respond.
Learn to respond. And if you will find, if you
will begin to steal away. There's this old phrase that
says secrets bind hearts together.
Something about husbands and wives.
There's little things they know about each other and little
words they say and they know what they mean and no one else
does. Those looks that they have at
each other and they know what that means.
And those secrets actually bind their hearts together.
And the Lord wants to have that with you.
Those little trysts where you steal away with him and, and I
remember back in Bible school, I'd be studying in the Lord
would just, I'd feel the stirring and I'd go off into an
empty room and God's glory would just come down.
I just, I long for that again. I long for those times where the
Lord would just visit me in that way.
If any man hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in.
That's the door on your side of the hotel room.
You want to get into his room and him into your room.
Then you've got to unlock your side.
And then we see. Look at, look at here at what
John says in chapter 4. After this, I looked and behold,
a door standing open in heaven. There's another door.
This door is already open. It's what Jace was saying here
during transition, that there's God.
God's heart is already open. The door is already open, but it
required something of John. He says, Behold a door standing
open in heaven. Of the first voice which I had
heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, Come up here and I
will show you what must take place after this.
At once I was in the spirit. And behold, a throne stood in
heaven. Once seated on the throne, and
he came and and he who sat there had the appearance of Jasper and
carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the
appearance of emerald. And around the throne were 24
Thrones. And seated on the Thrones were
24 elders clothed in white garments and golden crowns in
their heads of this extravagant throne room scene that John is
ushered into as he comes through this open door that he was
ushered up into. And all of a sudden, he's seeing
things that there would, he would have had no understanding
of had he not been thrust into this revelation.
And he left it for you and I. And some of what he saw was
Kingdom protocol principles that you and I can learn.
If we'll, we'll, we'll begin to look at what happened here so
that we can have these types of encounters.
Listen, these this isn't off limits to us.
This isn't for the special people, OK?
This is for the believer. John was ushered into this so
that he could bring it back for the entire church.
But it wasn't just to tease us and say, don't you wish you were
like John? God will often baptize someone
in something so that he can then use that that person to release
it on the rest of the body of Christ.
And it's accessible to all of us.
But you got to have your faith. Your faith has to rise.
And John heard the voice come up here.
He saw and he heard. And immediately he was there
because his heart responded. This is Speaking of ascension,
Psalm 15 or Psalm 24. Who can ascend the hill of the
Lord? Who can stand in His holy place?
Again, that's not mere poetry. David was asking this question
because he longed to get into God's presence.
Who? Who can ascend?
Who can stand? How does this thing work?
And David didn't side with consensus theology and say you
had to be a Levite. David understood.
He discovered something. He discovered a way in that he
left for you and I, that we're a Kingdom of priests, that we can
all go up. But there was a criteria who can
ascend? He has clean hands, a pure
heart, doesn't lift his soul to an idol or swear by what is
false. There's a heart posture that it
requires of us, and God longs to release those things to us.
And so we have this second door, the first door we have to open.
The second door already is. It's like we have these two
adjoining rooms, heaven and earth, and we long to get in
there. And he longs to get in here.
There's a longing for that, that fellowship that needs to happen.
His door is already open. Ours has to be open from our
side. And there's an intimacy to the
first door that will lead to an ascension in the second door.
And then what we see, look at with me here.
Oh my goodness, look at Chapter 5.
This is where we need to go. So he's talking about all that
he saw in this encounter, and it's amazing.
And you need to read it. You need to soak in it and ask
God for insight because there's so much going on.
It's an amazing thing. And then in chapter 5, then I
saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne, a
scroll written within and on the back.
So there's this scroll sealed with 7 seals.
So they were, they were a scroll that were written on both sides.
And then they would wrap these twins run and they would put a
wax seal over that tightly round wound string so that it, it
would hold it together and it would be, it would make sure
that it wasn't tampered with. And this particular one had
seven. That's the way wills were
transferred. They were, they were, they
couldn't be broken until the death of the benefactor.
And then the executor of the will would break it.
And then they would enact the, the legalities of that will.
So it's probably not a coincidence that the one that
opens it was also the one that died to enact it.
He was both the executor and the benefactor.
He's the one that left us our inheritance.
But John says he sees this. And I saw a mighty Angel
proclaiming with a loud voice, who is worthy to open the scroll
and break its seals and listen to verse 3.
This is so intriguing. And no one in heaven or on earth
or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into
it. It's like this evaluation was
made of all, of all the beings in heaven and earth and even
hell and heaven and on earth. And he went through all of it
and looked into hell and nobody was worthy.
And then what happens is this? And I began to weep loudly
because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or look into
it. John, this grief erupts in him
because John intuitively knows this is a significant scroll.
Something is written in this scroll that needs to be released
upon the earth for God's purposes to be manifest.
And John is so grieved. There's nobody there.
And I always get a kick out of this verse five.
And one of the elders said to me, it's like even in heaven,
the elders are up there working. One of the elders comes and
says, weep no more. Behold the lion of the tribe of
Judah, the root of David has conquered so that he can open
the scroll and it's 7 seals. Man.
When I when I was gripped with this was about 3 weeks ago.
And then the next week we sing it again, that song that comes
out of here. And I looked around the room and
people are just going after it, screaming open the scroll, open
the scroll. There's only one worthy and
we're all crying outbreak the seal and open the scroll.
And I them to my hair was standing up.
This is awesome. And then I realized, Oh my
goodness, I know where that comes from.
Do we know what we're praying? Do we realize what we're really
saying here? Because these 7 seals released
the judgments of God on the earth.
They what? Regardless of what your
interpretation of the Book of Revelation is, virtually
everybody agrees with this, that the breaking of those seals were
the release of the judgments of God to everything that opposed
His purposes in human history. And so God was releasing some
whoop em into the earth and he was judging principalities and
powers, wiping out opposition. And there was some pretty
drastic things that were happening with the opening of
these seals. And we're down here.
Open the scrolls, open the scrolls.
And I'm like, whoo. So I thought I got a circle back
around and read this. And the more I read it, the more
I want to sing it. This is powerful and I would
propose to you that God has purposes, scrolls, things
written from the foundation of the earth that will not be
released without the weeping of his Saints.
That there are things that God, just like in the 1st chapter
here, the verse one, God longed to get some revelation to the
people. What did he do?
He he said to this Angel. You go and usher that guy into
an encounter. And then that guy is going to
write it down. He's going to do some hard
physical work. He's going to stay up late
writing scrolls. And then he's going to wrap and
he's going to go and we're going to deliver him to the churches.
And if I was John, I'd have been thinking, isn't there an easier
way? Couldn't you just do one of
these? Lord, we all have our own.
But no, that's not how God operates.
And just like chapter 1 shows us to get revelation to us, chapter
5 shows us the purposes of God are not released on the earth
without the weeping of the Saints.
We've got to enter into this thing.
God is looking for a people that realize God.
Your purposes are so valuable that there's a grief in us that
it's not being manifest, Lord, that what you want to do in this
hour of human history is so important and we feel grief.
There's a weeping and a wailing and an intercession that breaks
forth. And it was then that the elder
came up and said, hey, weep no more.
He didn't say you shouldn't have wept before.
He just says, you can stop now because there's one worthy.
And it was then that the lamb stepped forward, the lion of the
tribe of Judah. And he steps forward as a lamb,
and everybody freaks out and bows.
And the rest of the book is God releasing his purposes into
human history. And I'm telling you, we've been
talking about Psalm chapter 2 and Psalm 149.
Psalm chapter 2 says, why did the kings rage?
And the rulers of this age imagine a vain thing in vain.
The Lord sits in heavens and laughs at them.
And he he, he mentions these four people, rulers, kings,
nations and peoples. And he says they're trying to
conspire against the Lord in his anointed 1 And they're saying
we're going to throw off his yoke.
We're not going to, we're not going to listen to what God is
saying. Then that's the second Psalm of
the book. The second to the last Psalm
mentions those four same groups of people.
But now it says you and I as the Saints gather together in the
assembly. The the Greek version of the Old
Testament, the Septuagint, translates that word assembly as
eklesia. When we worship him in the
eklesia and with the high praise of God in our mouths and a AA
double edged sword in our hand. One translation Espi said, I
think it says the praise of God in our throats just sounds more
manly. And he says, and it's, it's the
glory of all the Saints to bind their kings with fetters and
their rulers with shackles of iron.
Yes, yes, Hallelujah. And then he says to carry out
the sentence written against them.
I would propose to you that this scroll was one of the things
written against the kings of the earth that oppose God.
I'm not talking about having some some anger against human
beings. I'm talking about binding rulers
and principalities in heavenly realms through high praise, high
worship. When we do that, when we begin
to release the high praise, there comes a point, there's an
ascension that happens where we reach a platform of authority
and there are times where we release things and we make
declarations that will change and shape history and that is
the glory of all the Saints. Psalm 149 says go ahead and
stand. So you know, I'm going to quit.
Many of you remember Bob, Bob, Bob Phillips, many of you don't
know Bob. Bob was with us for one year on
staff. Wonderful man of God, a general
in the faith, a long history in the things of God.
The first time we ever had Bob come and visit to preach, we had
this amazing weekend. We got done Sunday morning and I
felt like we're standing here. I felt like a tornado had just
gone through. And I'm standing, my hair
whipped out, my half my shirt ripped off and looking around
the aftermath and people just, you know, all touched and and
I'm standing there looking at Bob and Bob said, Dave, I'm
telling you, he said, there's going to be declarations that
are going to be released from this house in worship, that
you'll declare them on Sunday and read about them in the
papers on Monday and the week to come.
It's that's this dynamic. It's this thing.
When Dean Briggs, the first time he came, he's he he looked at me
during worship. He said, Oh, my goodness, what
did this? And he said it the last time he
said, Oh my goodness, it's here again.
He said, this is high praise. And if some of you remember,
because Ben would share that recording at the front end of
worship. And what Dean said, he said it
so eloquently. I wish I could say it just like
he said it, but he was talking about high praise is the war
College in the spirit. It's where the children of God
learned to make war, where we impose the will of our God into
human history. It's it's it's not this angry
thing against people. People are the trophy we're
fighting for. They are they are the they're
the Pearl of great price. They're the thing that we're
going after. But we're binding kings with
fetters, with our praise. There's a place where worship
becomes intercession, where that weeping breaks forth into joy
and that authority to release things.
And this is a thoroughly biblical thing.
And that's what John was breaking into in Revelation four
and five. Thanks for listening to our
podcast. If you'd like to help more
people hear this message, you can get the word out by
subscribing and sharing it on social media.
If you'd like to support the ministries of Heartland Church,
you can do so at Heartland Church online.com/give.