Worthy is the lamb
Day 702, Tuesday, July 14
Revelation Chapter 5
Often, especially in older Bibles, you will come across efforts artists have made to portray the visions of Revelation in drawings or paintings. No doubt someone has already tried to use AI to render these descriptions.
Ultimately these never turn out to be very satisfactory, because visions, like dreams, are fluid and often morph from one appearance to another.
One of those transformations in chapter 5 is especially revealing, but completely in line with the accounts we read in the gospels.
In verse 5, one of the elders says, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.” This is similar to what the Jews expected the messiah to be: a roaring lion in the warrior tradition of King David.
But immediately John sees something that looks very different. “Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders.” This is the messiah who Jesus was: a sacrificial lamb who conquered through submission.
This is the salvation story told in the language of visions: the expected lion came as a lamb. Victory was his, but not in the fashion that had been expected. A multitude of angels bears witness: “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”
Only the Lamb is worthy of opening the scroll of God’s revealed truth.

-Rev. Mark Fleming

Tuesday meditation

Ecclesiastes 8:11-17
When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, people’s hearts are filled with schemes to do wrong. Although a wicked person who commits a hundred crimes may live a long time, I know that it will go better with those who fear God, who are reverent before him. Yet because the wicked do not fear God, it will not go well with them, and their days will not lengthen like a shadow.
There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless. So I commend the enjoyment of life, because there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany them in their toil all the days of the life God has given them under the sun.
When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to observe the labor that is done on earth—people getting no sleep day or night—then I saw all that God has done. No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning. Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it.

Prayer focus
Grant us insight to learn the message you have for us through the words of your revelation to John.