Revelation 4:2

THE TRIUNE GOD IN HEAVEN

‘Immediately I was in the Spirit, and, behold, a throne was set in heaven.’

Revelation 4:2

Other Feasts of the Christian year show our Lord God in the works and wonders which He has done; the Feast of Trinity declares to us what God is in Himself, in His divine Being. Here we see the Triune God in heaven. The whole chapter is appointed as the Epistle for Trinity Sunday. Let us consider its teachings:

I. The enthroned Jehovah.—St. John was permitted ‘in the Spirit’ to pass the bounds of mortals, and as Moses (Exodus 24), as Isaiah (6), as Daniel (8), to behold the eternal Father—

(a) In His ineffable majesty; ‘like a jasper and a sardine stone’ (Revelation 21:11). These describe His majesty, and are taken to represent symbolically that God is holy and just.

(b) In His glory as a covenant God. He is surrounded (like the vision of Ezekiel, chap. 1) with the rainbow of promise (cf. Genesis 9:12). The emerald is of a lovely green colour.

(c) In His glory as a lawgiver to man. The lightnings and thunders call to mind God on Mount Sinai whom Moses saw.

(d) In unruffled and eternal calm. A tempestuous sea best represents the life of troubled mortals. A sea of glass, like the molten sea in the Temple, like the sapphire pavement seen by Moses in the Mount, is a true emblem of the immovable calm of the Judge of all the earth.

(e) As the dispenser of spiritual light and life to man by His Spirit. The seven lamps of fire were the seven Spirits of God.

II. The adoring Church surrounding the enthroned Jehovah.—These were ‘four and twenty seated elders’ and ‘four living creatures.’ The latter have been taken to symbolise (a) the four evangelists, (b) the ministers of God (it is observed that they lead the devotions), (c) cherubim (cf. Isaiah 6), (d) representatives of animated nature. Adopting the latter suggestion, we have here—

(a) The Old and New Testament Church—twelve tribes and twelve apostles. The Church is one.

(b) The adoration of the universal Church and the creation of God. ‘O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord’; the song is one of redeemed spirits from a redeemed earth. (i) Creation praises the Triune God, ‘Holy, holy, holy.’ (ii) The redeemed praise the Triune God.

III. The Bestower of the vision of the enthroned Jehovah.

(a) It is He that opens the kingdom of heaven to all believers.

(b) It is He alone that can say, ‘Come up hither.’

(c) It is He alone that fills us with the Spirit.