Dr. Manny Arango (0:00)

Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey. To all my fellow pastors, I've got a question for you. Does your city know that your church exists? Listen, I get it. You're preaching, you're leading, you're discipling, you're doing ministry. We are in the same boat. And let's be honest, social media and marketing, not your strong suit. Not mine either. And that's probably the last thing on your mind. And that's why we chose to partner with Church Candy marketing for our church plant the garden. We out here, y'all. They help churches get more actual guests walking through the doors on Sunday without your eye having to stress over ads or algorithms or trying to crack the social media code. Right now, Church Candy is helping nearly 400 churches reach their communities with simple invite ads. And it works. It's super effective. I can tell you from firsthand experience. So if you're tired of being your city's best kept secret, how about you do this? Go to churchcandy.com Manny and book a free consultation book a discovery call. Their team will break it all down and show you how to start seeing new faces at your church this Sunday. I'm in the trenches with you trying to grow the church. And how about we just start a whole campaign? No more empty churches. So let's partner with Church Candy and get our churches full. The glory of Jesus. Let's go. If you've done the reading for Today, that means 77 days down, 288 days to go. Yo, you got this. I got this. We got this and we're doing it together. Hey, if you haven't done the reading yet, pause. Don't watch this, don't listen to this. Go read Revelation chapter four and five literarily. Like, like this is a unit. Like Revelation chapter 4 and 5 is a literary unit. Tomorrow we got a lot more reading. So there's less reading today than we got tomorrow, but we just didn't wanna put weird breaks in places. So we got Revelation chapter four and five today. And honestly, I would say that Revelation chapter four and five create like a theological center of the book. This is a really, really, really important two chapters of the book. Remember I said that the entire theme of the book of Revelation is that persecuted Christians would get an unveiling, that the curtain would get pulled back and they would begin to see backstage. Like, all they can see is what's on the front of the stage, and it looks like the emperor. Whether it's Nero or Domitian, I would tend to argue that it's Domitian. Some people intelligently and sophisticatedly argue that it is Nero. Okay, so whoever they are, it looks like that that emperor and the persecution is taking center stage. But what happens in an apocalypse is there's a pulling back of the curtain, and you get to see that center stage isn't the only thing on stage. There's a whole backstage. I remember one time I'm a part of an awesome church called Social Dallas, and we've had service at the Winspear Opera House a couple of times. And I remember just being shocked as to how big backstage was. Actually, like, at the Winsper Opera House, there's more backstage than there is the stage you can actually see. And they've got these, like, I don't know, like, 50ft tall, like, thick velvet curtains, and there's a curtain. And what happens is if you stay a little longer, like, if service is over and you stick around for, like, 30 minutes, you'll see our team tearing down and getting all the instruments back into the truck and getting all of our stuff, like, you know, back. We're a portable church, so we're moving from place to place. And you can just see like, oh, my gosh, backstage is huge. That's the exact same thing that's happening with the book of Revelation. There's a curtain, and as long as the curtain is drawn, all you can see is what's on center stage. My pain has taken center stage. You know, I've lost loved ones, and that's taken center stage. My grief is on center stage. But what John is doing is he's pulling back the curtain and he's saying, hey, behind all of this is a God who is in control, and he's king. So here's our context clue for the day. I actually, really, really excited about this. I'm actually going to read something from page 103 of this awesome book called Reading Revelation Responsibly. If there was just, like, a book on Revelation that has helped me a ton, I would say it's probably this book. Reading Revelation Responsibly. If you grew up with kind of like a dispensational view of Revelation and you got swept away by the whole left behind garbage, then. Then this is a great book. I tried really hard not to say garbage, guys. I tried, but I did. Okay, so I'm going to read page 103 of Reading Revelation responsibly with which is gonna help us to kind of understand what's going on in Revelation, chapter four and five. Here we go. It says this. The images of throne and lamb run through the entire book of Revelation. Many interpreters claim that one or both of these images provide the theological key to the entire book. One normally symbolizing sovereignty and power, the other sacrifice and vulnerability. It is we will see the conjunction of these two images that is the key to Revelation. And that symbiosis begins in chapter four and five. Printed here in boldface. Text shows parallels between chapter four and five. Underlined text shows parallels within one chapter. For Old Testament Predecedent, see Exodus 3 and 19, Ezekiel 1 and 10, Daniel 7, and Isaiah chapter 6. So the images of throne and lamb are going to take center stage here. I'm going to read one more little bit. The word throne appears 43 times from chapter four until the end of the book, 19 times here in chapters four and five alone. And the word lamb referring to Christ, appear 28 times. Together, these images constitute the hermeneutical or interpretive key to the entire book. They reveal in pictures the essential theology of the Book of Revelation. God, the Creator, reigns and is worthy of our complete devotion. And Jesus, the faithful slaughtered lamb of God, reigns with God, equally worthy of our complete devotion. So I just read two excerpts from reading Revelation responsibly. Okay, so what are we seeing in chapters four and five? We are seeing an unveiling. And what happens when John gives us an unveiling? We see the throne and the lamb, these two images. You could just think about these images as the logo, like the mascot, okay? The symbol, the dominant symbol for the book of Revelation. Now. Okay, now let's move into some nerdy nuggets. Okay. In the ancient world, emperors, each emperor would have chosen, like an animal that would have kind of depicted their power. Okay? So emperor would have said something like, you know, I'm strong like an ox, or like, I rule like a lion. Okay? And I need you to have that in your head, because we're going to see this in Revelation chapter 4 and 5, because Jesus's symbol is not going to be any of those. It's going to be the lamb. Ephesus had the largest gymnasium in the ancient world. And it was actually being constructed during the time period when Domitian was the emperor in the ancient World. The reason that there's so much persecution towards Christians is because they don't worship the emperor. Literally, they refuse to worship the emperor. There was this imperial song. Remember yesterday we kind of talked about this imperial song that would have been sang to the emperor at the beginning of the Olympic Games. Well, we actually know the lyrics to the imperial song. And here's the lyrics to the imperial song. It would have gone a little like this. Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. That is what Roman citizens would have been singing to the emperor, whether it's Nero or Domitian. And you can begin to see these themes, okay, in the book of Revelation, that it is not the emperor who is the one who was and is and is to come. It is the Lord Jesus. The entire, this entire chapter of Revelation is a subversive pronouncement that Caesar is not on the throne. We're going to get an image of 24 here in Revelation chapter four and five, going to see 24 elders. Why? There's two reasons. Number one, there were 24 official religions in the Roman Empire. And so the image or the number 24 would have immediately told all the Christians, ah, like the citizens of Rome, they symbolize or they make up empire. And we as the citizens of heaven, we symbolize or we comprise the the kingdom of God. And that these two realities live side by side, that the kingdom lives side by side by the empire, and that the kingdom is not an empire. The kingdom is more powerful than the empire. However, the way that we are powerful is actually by sacrifice and by service and by allowing the empire to kill us in the Coliseum. The same way that the empire put our God on a Roman cross. That we don't win by brute force or power, but we win by laying our lives down following the example of our slain lamb. We're going to see a scroll, we're going to see a couple of scrolls, actually. Also, the way that Christians would have interpreted the number 24 in Revelation chapter 4 and 5 would have also been a new Israel. So we would have gotten 12 tribes of Israel in the Old Testament and 12 apostles in the New Testament. And 12 plus 12 is 24. That Israel and the church represent the totality of God's kingdom in the earth. There would have been an immediate Greco Roman application to the number 24. But there's also, just like a Jewish or Old Testament application to the number 24. Next, the size. This is another nerdy nugget. The size of a scroll completely correlated to the Accolades of the ruler. A scroll was going to have all of the pronouncements that a herald was going to make about the Caesar. So the longer the scroll, the more things that ruler has done. And what we're going to see in Revelation is that there's words written on the front and back of the scroll. Who's worthy to open the scroll? This doesn't just have Greco Roman implications. This has Jewish implications. If you were to go to a synagogue in the first century, okay, the only person who's worthy to actually go to the. There's like a closet that actually has scrolls in it. Each synagogue kind of shared scrolls with other synagogues. This is before books. Remember when Jesus goes into the synagogue and somebody hands him the scroll of Isaiah, your average synagogue, probably they all would have had the five scrolls of Moses or the five books of Moses, but then they would have had maybe 10, 15, 20 other scrolls. But then they had to like share scrolls with other synagogues. So let's say the synagogue down the street has the scroll of Jeremiah and you've got the scroll of Isaiah. Then you're sharing with with them. And so who's worthy to open the scroll? Well, it's respected leaders in the church, people with pure, clean hands and a pure heart. Okay, everyone didn't just go into the synagogue and open the scrolls and like read out loud. And so who's worthy to open the scrolls? This would have been when the original audience would have read these words in Revelation chapter 4 and 5. This is not like a foreign concept for them. And the fact that the scrolls had have the accomplishments of God written on the front and the back again just shows the preeminence, the supremacy of God. Although it looks like Domitian is in charge, Although it looks like the Roman Empire is the most powerful thing on the planet, although it looks like persecution is defining our life, John is giving them an apocalypse. Hey, you need to see the throne room of heaven. I've gone to the throne room of heaven and the Lamb was on the throne. And we do not overcome by fighting back with the Romans. We don't overcome persecution by fighting for our rights. We don't fight persecution by demanding that we retain our privileged place in society. Nope. We fight persecution by being faithful witnesses within the empire. And the way that we are faithful witnesses is we hold our secondary citizenship in heaven as if it's really our primary citizenship. Bible nerds, I have an announcement. My brand new book Crushing Chaos releases May of 2025 in pre orders are officially open when I began to learn Genesis in its proper context. I learned that the creation account is not primarily about God creating something out of nothing. It's about but rather God bringing divine order to the chaos of the cosmos. That one nugget was a game changer for me because I've been preaching to all the kids in my youth group that peace was a solution for their anxiety. But really, God's solution to chaos is never peace, but rather order. Peace isn't something that you stumble into. It's something that you intentionally step into and that starts with aligning your life with God's order. I think that this book is a game changer. It's nerdy, it's practical, it provides a very contextual understanding of the book of Genesis. And if you grab a copy, you'll learn why there's a huge dragon on the COVID Head to the link in the show notes to pre order or head to crushingchaos.com to see the really dope trailer that we made for this book. I think it's time for you to crush the chaos in your life. And that starts with grabbing a copy of this book. Now back to the podcast. Last thing. Let's move into our timeless truth. We're going to go to Revelation, chapter 5, verse 6. It says this. Then I saw a lamb looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne. So we get lamb and throne right there in that verse, encircled by the four living creatures and the altars. Sorry. In the elders, the lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. One of the things that Michael Gorman says in reading Revelation responsibly is the image of a slaughtered self. Sacrificial lamb does not, however, mean that this lamb is powerless. I need you to get this. Slaughtered doesn't mean powerless. In fact, the contrary is the case. The lamb is indeed the messianic lion who has seven eyes of perfect perception or perfect wisdom and seven horns of perfect power. That being sacrificial doesn't equal powerlessness. And that is something that needs to be redefined in our world. This is our timeless truth for the day. That sometimes when I tell people, hey, you need to operate in forgiveness, hey, you need to serve. Hey, be willing to sacrifice. People see that as a sign of weakness. And really what they don't realize is that stubbornness is actually weakness. That that what looks powerful based on the way the empire defines things is not powerful based on the way that the kingdom defines things. And so, yes, the lamb of God has been slain and slaughtered in a self sacrificial way. But the lamb is not powerless. Quite contrary to the lamb is full of perfect power. So you get this juxtaposition of images, you get a lamb, but that lamb has seven horns and horns represent power. And he has seven, which means total power, complete power, perfect power. All right, so I've got my little dragon here from Game of Thrones because I think one of the big questions that the book of Revelation is asking us and forcing us to ask ourself is am I going to follow the beast, which is a symbol of power, is a symbol of violence, is a symbol of wealth. Am I going to follow the beast, which is represented by the dragon, which represents Rome in the Roman Empire? Am I going to follow the beast or am I going to follow the lamb? Because to follow the lamb is going to feel like I'm losing. To follow the lamb means I have to pick up a cross and I have to die to myself. And it means that I don't want to be a lamb in a world of lions. That is particularly what John is saying. He's saying, I know that we're living in a world that wants to devour you and take advantage of you. And I'm saying that I followed a Jewish rabbi by the name of Jesus who said, if a Roman soldier demands that you walk with him, who with him an extra mile, if, if he slaps you on one cheek, turn the other, that it's better to be persecuted. So I didn't have plans on giving you this quote, but we obviously know from, from church history. And I'm actually going to type this in because I want to make sure that I'm quoting this correctly. I know the quote, the quote says that the blood of the martyrs is the seeds of the Church. I just want to make sure that I give you. Who said that? Tertullian. That's who I thought said it. So here's what we find out from church history, that these Christians, they listened to the Apostle John and they allowed the Rome, the Romans, to conquer them and kill them and feed them to lions in the Coliseum. But here's what happened. After a couple hundred years, when people realize that you're willing to die for something you believe in, they start becoming convinced that maybe, just maybe, you are dying for something that is actually true, that persecution never ends. A religious idea. Persecution actually makes that religious idea way more famous. And so what the Roman Empire ends up doing starts to backfire because people begin to be Impressed with these Christians, and people throughout the Roman Empire begin to realize there may be something to this crazy narrative that all these Christians believe in. And so Tertullian says this, that the blood of the martyrs is actually the seeds of the church. Go ahead, let them kill us. Let them kill us. Because the more they feed us to lions in the coliseum, the more people who don't believe in God will see that this group of radical Christians is willing to die for what they believe in. And it's going to make them curious. And if they get curious, then, now, my death was a form of evangelism. I think it's hard for American readers to resonate with this because we've never been persecuted. But imagine being persecuted. Imagine living as a persecuted Christian. And John begins to write the book of Revelation. And you read it, you would not see it as a guide to the end times. You would 100% see it as a way to be faithful to King Jesus in the here and now so that you can ultimately allow your martyrdom, the blood that you shed as a martyr, to become the seeds of God's church. All right, it's Revelation chapter four and five tomorrow. We got a big chunk. We got revelation chapter six to 11 tomorrow. Okay, so we got a big chunk. But again, it's like one saw literary unit. And so buckle up for day 78. If you're on a streak, don't break it. I'll see you right here tomorrow for day 78 as you continue our trek through the book of Revelation. I'm so proud of you. You're doing an amazing job. I believe that if you read the Bible this year, you dedicate this year to reading the Bible. It'll forever, forever change your life and everybody connected to you. I'll see you right here tomorrow. I love you guys. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebibledepartment. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.