The Book of Revelation - Chapters 4-5 - The Lamb & The Heavenly Scene

Shalom, friends. My name is Chadwick Harvey, and you have reached Faithful Performance. Thank you for joining us tonight as we continue our series on the Book of Revelation, specifically chapters 4 and 5 — the heavenly scene — which we also find echoed in many other places in Scripture that we will bring out as we go. Thank you for joining us on this Memorial Day evening. We want to thank all the men and women who have served our country in the United States military — past, present, and future — for your service. We truly appreciate it from the bottom of our hearts, and we wish you Godspeed wherever you may be.

Tonight we are covering some very important material in the Book of Revelation. This is episode three in our series. In the first two episodes we covered chapter one — the introduction — and then chapters two and three, which are the seven churches in Revelation. Those first two chapters set everything up for chapters four and five, which we are going into tonight. After that, we will move into the seals, the trumpets, the bowls, and the subchapters in between. Tonight's study on chapters four and five is extremely important because it marks the beginning point for everything that follows. From chapters four and five forward, that is the starting point for the rest of what John writes about.

For those who have not been with us for the first two episodes, we will briefly summarize so we can see the trajectory the Lord is on in the Book of Revelation. Then we will jump into chapters four and five, which will give us a clear understanding of how the first five chapters set up the rest of the book.

In Revelation chapter one, the introduction, we have the Revelation of Yeshua the Messiah — that is truly what the book is: the Revelation of Yeshua the Messiah, Jesus the Messiah. He wants us to obey the Word of God and to understand what he is conveying. All that he is doing in chapter one is disclosing who he is — revealing himself to all of us and to the Jewish people. He moves through chapter one in essentially a Torah, Prophets, and Psalms discourse.

Isaiah 11:1–3 speaks of the sevenfold spirit of Yah, sometimes called the seven spirits. Throughout the first four or five chapters of Revelation, he references Isaiah 11 and the seven spirits four or five times. Then in verse five he introduces the Feast of First Fruits and the Feast of Passover, revealing himself as the Passover Lamb and also as the resurrection — the Feast of First Fruits — for the Jewish people and for all of us. Right in the first chapter he is disclosing the seven spirits of Yahweh and confirming the testimony of Yeshua the Messiah through the Feast of Passover, the crucifixion, and the Feast of First Fruits, the resurrection.

Continuing in chapter one, he affirms the kingdom of priests and a holy nation, first declared in Exodus 19 when the Torah was given at Mount Sinai. There is a direct connection between the Torah and that designation because it was spoken at Mount Sinai in Exodus 19:6. We also find it in Deuteronomy 14:2, Isaiah 6:16, 1 Peter 2:9, and Revelation 5:5.

After disclosing who he is in the first six verses, in verse seven he shifts to the second coming events: "Look, he is coming with the clouds." This should immediately remind us of Daniel 7 and other chapters that speak of his return. He is doing two things simultaneously — revealing his identity through the Torah, Prophets, and Psalms, and pointing forward to the second coming. In verse eight he confirms that he is the first and the last, the Aleph and the Tav, the Alpha and the Omega, which the prophets also wrote about him. He is also the commander of the Lord's armies — Adonai Tzavaot — as verse eight calls him the God of heaven's armies, connecting directly to Joshua 5, where he told Joshua he is the commander of the Lord's armies. And as we know from Revelation 19, he returns in that same role.

Verse ten ties in the Day of the Lord with the Feast of Trumpets — something we will confirm again tonight through chapters four and five. The verse reads: "I came to be in the Spirit on the Day of the Lord, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet." The trumpet initiates the Day of the Lord. This connects to 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4:16–18. The chapter then describes Yeshua just as Daniel 10 does — the gold band around his chest, eyes like a fiery flame, feet like polished brass, a voice like the sound of rushing waters (Daniel 10:4–6). Isaiah 49:1–3 is present as well, along with the sevenfold spirit of Isaiah 11, 2 Thessalonians 2, and Malachi 4, which ties in the Day of the Lord, the coming of Elijah, and the Torah all together.

So in summary, Revelation chapter one is the introduction, but it is really a comprehensive disclosure of who Yeshua truly is — at his first coming and at his second coming. He is identifying himself to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles through the Torah, the Prophets, and the Psalms. He is the Jewish Messiah: crucified on Passover, raised on First Fruits. Then he pivots to the second coming — the clouds, the Feast of Trumpets. This is precisely why we must understand the feast days. John is writing what Yeshua's angel is telling him, and he wants all of us to recognize that Yeshua is the Jewish Messiah. When he says in verse seven, "Look, he is coming in the clouds," he is directing us to go back and read Daniel 7, Matthew 24, and Acts 1, where he ascends in a cloud and will return in the same way. He wants us to connect the cloud back to the Torah — the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night from Exodus — so we grasp the depth and continuity of what John is writing.

He said in the Gospel accounts that Moses wrote about him, the prophets wrote about him, and the psalmist wrote about him. The Book of Revelation is ultimately the disclosure — given through John — of who he truly is, according to everything the Torah, the Prophets, and the Psalms declared about him.