Revelation 5:11-12

And I saw, and I heard the voice of many angels, who were in a circle round the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and their number was ten thousands of ten thousands and thousands of thousands; and they were saying with a great voice:

The Lamb, which has been slain, is worthy to receive the power and the riches and the wisdom and the strength and the honour and the glory and the blessing.

The chorus of praise is taken up by the unnumbered hosts of the angels of heaven. They stand in a great outer circle round the throne and the living creatures and the elders and they begin their song. We have repeatedly seen how John takes his language from the Old Testament; and here there is in his memory David's great thanksgiving to God:

Blessed art thou, O Lord, the God of Israel, our Father, for

ever and ever. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and the power

and the glory and the victory and the majesty; for all that is

in the heavens and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom

O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all. Both riches

and honour come from thee, and thou rulest over all. In thy

hand are power and might; and in thy hand it is to make great,

and to give strength to all (1 Chronicles 29:10-12).

The song of the living creatures and of the elders told of the work of Christ in his death; now the angels sing of the possessions of Christ in his glory. Seven great possessions belong to the Risen Lord.

(i) To him belongs the power. Paul called Jesus, "Christ the power of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24). He is not one who can plan but never achieve; to him belongs the power. We can say triumphantly of him: "He is able."

(ii) To him belongs the riches. "Though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor" (2 Corinthians 8:9). Paul speaks of "the unsearchable riches of Christ" (Ephesians 3:8). There is no promise that Jesus Christ has made that he does not possess the resources to carry out. There is no claim on him which he cannot satisfy.

(iii) To him belongs the wisdom. Paul calls Jesus Christ "the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24). He has the wisdom to know the secrets of God and the solution of the problems of life.

(iv) To him belongs the strength. Christ is the strong one who can disarm the powers of evil and overthrow Satan (Luke 11:22). There is no situation with which he cannot cope.

(v) To him belongs the honour. The day comes when to him every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that he is Lord (Php_2:11). A strange thing is that even those who are not Christian often honour Christ by admitting that in his teaching alone lies the hope of this distracted world.

(vi) To him belongs the glory. As John has it: "We beheld his glory, from glory as of the only Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). Glory is that which by right belongs to God alone. To say that Jesus Christ possesses the glory is to say that he is divine.

(vii) To him belongs the blessing. Here is the inevitable climax of it all. All these things Jesus Christ possesses, and every one of them he uses in the service of the men for whom he lived and died; he does not clutch them to himself.

Therefore, there rises to him from all the redeemed thanksgiving for all that he has done. And that thanksgiving is the one gift that we who have nothing can give to him who possesses all.

The Song Of All Creation (Revelation 5:13-14)