Commentary on Revelation 1:4-8

• 7/27/2025: Revelation 1:4-8; accompanying text: John 8:13-20
• 8/3/2025: Revelation 4:1-11; accompanying text: John 17:1-5
• 8/10/2025: Revelation 5:1-13; accompanying text: John 1:29-31
• 8/17/2025: Revelation 7:9-17; accompanying text: John 14:1-4
• 8/24/2025: Revelation 13:1-18; accompanying text John 12:30-32
• 8/31/2025: Revelation 21:1-6; 22:1–5; accompanying texts: John 4:1-14; 16:20-22

Series Overview 

This sequence of late summer readings gives preachers an opportunity to explore the most troublemaking book of the New Testament. Left uninterpreted, Revelation (no –s, please!) will be exploited and distorted, again and again. But read aright, as a supremely beautiful confession of faith in Christ and a visionary experience of hope for the persecuted, it will inspire courage, fidelity, and divine patience.

An overview of the whole book will help preachers and readers track the spiraling narrative. It is, first of all, an apocalypse (as “Revelation” directly translates from the Greek): a disclosure of Jesus Christ, presented in deliberately startling images and time-bending episodes, to shake off the narrow vision of ordinary life and time.

Revelation advances in distinct stages. It begins with letters to “the seven churches that are in Asia,” some faithful, some apostate, and some so inert that they’re even worse than apostate (chapters 1–3). Then we behold Jesus revealed as true priest, who leads and receives worship in heaven (chapters 4–11); true king, who does battle against the enemies of God (chapters 12–20); and true bridegroom, who gathers his beloved into the New Jerusalem for an everlasting honeymoon (chapters 21–22).

Week 1 (7/27/2025): Greetings and First Vision

Revelation 1:4–8

Accompanying text: John 8:13-20

John’s vision begins with a trinitarian blessing, though if you’re accustomed only to the Matthew 28 version, you might not notice at first.

Grace and peace come “from him who is and who was and who is to come,” or, as you could paraphrase, from “I am who I am.” This captures the everlastingness of God the Father as well as his presence to all of history.

Next, the blessing comes “from the seven spirits who are before his throne.” Not only is this out of the usual trinitarian order; the number has jumped from one Holy Spirit to seven!

Time to start tackling the numbers of Revelation. They are neither math nor a secret code. As church father Irenaeus figured out 1800+ years ago, you can manipulate numbers to mean anything you want, so they prove nothing.

But in the symbolic usage of Revelation, seven is the number of completion and perfection, as in the days of creation according to Genesis. The “seven spirits” signify the perfection of God’s (one) Spirit. This accounts for the recurring sevens in the opening chapter of Revelation: seven churches, golden lampstands, stars, and angels.

Last in our trinitarian blessing, we hear “from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.” Revelation promptly adds further that Jesus loves us, freed us from our sins by his blood, made us a kingdom of priests to his God and Father, and will come again, a threat to those who despise him but the chief hope of those who are persecuted for his sake.

The reading ends with the Lord God—that is, God the Father—announcing, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” The Father won’t speak again until the very end of the book (22:12–13). He is, indeed, the Alpha and Omega of Revelation itself! Jesus and the Spirit get all the letters of the alphabet in between.

Week 2 (8/3/2025): The Elders and the Four Living Creatures

Revelation 4:1–11

Accompanying text: John 17:1-5

A door stands open in heaven, and the Spirit invites John to see what’s inside.

On the throne, God sits in glory. Note how Revelation observes the stricture against depicting God as any living creature or heavenly body (Deuteronomy 4:16–19) and so uses mineralogical images instead: “And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald” (4:3). Note also how the sevenfold Spirit is linked to God enthroned, their identity merged and distinguished at the same time.

The 24 elders signify the 12 tribes of Israel plus the 12 apostles; in essence, the whole people of God. Revelation, like Romans 9–11, consistently chooses against supersessionism.

The four living creatures hearken back to Ezekiel’s vision, and both sources give us our symbols of the four Evangelists: Matthew the man, Mark the lion, Luke the ox, and John the eagle. If your church is graced with such imagery, now’s a good time to explain it!

Then Ezekiel blends into Isaiah, and the four living creatures sing as if they’re cherubim, “Holy, holy, holy.” Now you know what to choose for the hymn after the sermon! You could even walk the congregation through each line of that hymn; or if “This Is the Feast” appears regularly in your liturgy, do the same, in either case, drawing connections to the hymns of praise found here in Revelation.

Week 3 (8/10/2025): The Seven Seals

Revelation 5:1–13

Accompanying text: John 1:29-31

Last Sunday’s reading from Revelation focused attention on God enthroned with his sevenfold Spirit, and the myriad residents of heaven offering their worship. Now we turn our attention to Jesus and his many names and visionary appearances.

It begins with John weeping that no one is worthy to open the scroll. An elder comforts him that “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” will be able to open it because he has conquered, as a son born to the royal line of David should.

But when the “Lion” appears, he is in fact a Lamb! More than that, “a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain.” The conquering Lion and the conquered Lamb are one and the same. By his blood, the Lion-Lamb has ransomed people “from every tribe and language and people and nation,” not for servitude, but to become priests of God.

The as-though slain Lamb has “seven horns and … seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.” Although this sounds like a science experiment gone wrong, it is another symbolic rendering of the Trinity in the unique pictorial language of Revelation. The worship addressed to Jesus removes any doubt about his divine identity.

Who worships is also significant here. That worship comes from “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea” calls to mind both the triumphant conclusion of the hymn in Philippians 2:10–11 and the Deuteronomistic warning against graven images (Deuteronomy 5:8). What Revelation portrays here is all of God’s many different creatures united in worship of their Creator, with no more idolatry or misplaced deference, only exulting joy in the one source of life and redemption.

Week 4 (8/17/2025): The Multitude from Every Nation

Revelation 7:9–17

Accompanying text: John 14:1-4

Readers of Revelation tend to get preoccupied with the number and identity of the saved. This is a good week to tackle that quandary.

Directly preceding this reading in chapter 7, we get the notorious number 144,000. This is not a statistic but a symbol: 12 (tribes of Israel) x 12 (apostles) x 10 (everything) x 10 (everything) x 10 (everything). Far from limiting, this is symbolically as big a number as you could get.

Then, right at the outset of today’s reading, John beholds “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.” Here God’s election is not stingy but sweeping, already anticipating the successful outcome of the gospel mission.

Yet this is no carte blanche to assert universal salvation, either. The vision equally anticipates the hostility and hatred that the gospel mission will elicit. Revelation stridently refuses to give pat answers about the number and identity of the saved or the damned. It’s not our business or competence.

What the vision cares about is strengthening our fidelity to the Lamb, which is costly, because it makes us the target of the hostile powers that despise God. Comfort and hope are offered to the persecuted. But revenge fantasies, which can fester in the persecuted, are blocked.

Revelation continually returns its focus to the worship of the victorious Lamb. This book won’t—and so you shouldn’t—provide answers about any given person’s eternal destiny. Proclaim instead the trustworthiness of the merciful, righteous, and victorious Lamb who was slain.

Week 5 (8/24/2025): The Beast and the Dragon

Revelation 13:1–18

Accompanying text John 12:30-32

Revelation earns its happy ending by dwelling at length on the evil that is inflicted upon the earth. It doesn’t duck or deny evil, though it also isn’t interested in giving evil more attention than it already claims. This book is more sophisticated than people assume; it knows that you end up worshipping what you stare at, so to stare at too much evil lures you into evil’s way of thinking and acting.

Yet pretending like it’s not there makes you easy prey. So you at least have to be able to identify the true enemies of God.

Today’s reading gives us the other most troublemaking number in Revelation (besides 144,000), namely 666. Six is one short of seven, the number of perfection, thereby making six signify imperfection. Repeat that imperfection three times in a row, in a kind of perverse trinitarianism, and you get 666.

But the more vivid image of the anti-trinity in Revelation 13 is the beast-dragon-false prophet triad. What’s so striking about it, other than the gruesome imagery, is that while it is certainly capable of horrific violence, its chief tool is deception. Its blasphemous words snare people; its great signs persuade them. The beast has 10 horns (the everything number) and seven heads (the perfection number), making it look supreme—but as we know, its supremacy is in evil. The horrible sight is so compelling that people give up and render it worship: “Who can fight against it?”

Revelation has no illusions that this enemy can be defeated by human means. Jesus alone can ultimately vanquish, silence, and lock up this enemy forever. The saints in the meanwhile are to endure and keep the faith, at great cost to themselves. Returning again and again to the worship of the Lamb is the best protection against losing your soul to the unholy trinity.

Week 6 (8/31/2025): The New Heaven and the New Jerusalem

Revelation 21:1–6; 22:1–5

Accompanying texts: John 4:1-14; 16:20–22

What happens now is what all of creation has been waiting for (see also Romans 8:21): to become the fit and blessed dwelling place of God. The new heaven and new earth come to be, and the new Jerusalem descends from heaven as the setting for the wedding celebration. 

While the city has boundaries, they are life-giving, not death-dealing boundaries. The foursquare city has its walls, but each wall is perforated by three gates. These gates “will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there”—which is to say, the gates of heaven are never locked once and for all. Quite unlike the lake of fire, which happily, will be shut and locked eternally!

In the new Jerusalem, the name Immanuel, God-with-us (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23), becomes a living reality: “He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”

Hope that is seen is not hope (Romans 8:24). Revelation knows this hasn’t happened yet. But this hope is “trustworthy and true” (Revelation 21:5). In a sense, “it is done!” (21:6). Revelation offers spectacles for stereoscopic vision—one lens perceiving and resisting the evil that continues, the other lens perceiving the victory that is already Christ’s.