Turn in your Bibles to Revelation 4, Revelation 4, we're in the middle of a series called Priest, and we've been talking about our identity as followers of Jesus to be priests, and that that's part of our calling, and it's not the call of just the pastors, it's not the call of the clergy, but we actually believe that you're called to be clergy. You're not called to just be a layperson that isn't qualified for ministry, it's the definition of a layperson, someone not qualified for the work of ministry. You know, you are actually qualified when Jesus died on the cross, rose from the dead, and when you said, I'm counting the cost, I'm going to follow him. That's right when that happened, and Holy Spirit made a home in your life, and you became a temple of God.
That's when you became qualified to minister. And so a lot of times we think we have to go to school, we have to go to Bible school, we got to go to seminary in order to fulfill our destiny in God, and God is actually breaking that, and he's snapping that in half in our generation. And he's going all of the people that aren't in full-time ministry, not getting a paycheck, all of you, you are the ones that are qualified to do the work of ministry. And so we've been just going after this identity of priest as a community, and we started by talking about the history of worship, and Adam and Eve, and they were stewards of the overlap of heaven and earth.
And then Anna, and Joshua, and King David, and we were talking about all of these Bible characters, but they're not characters, these real people that lived in history that sought after him. And then we talked about how you are a temple, once you get the Holy Spirit inside of you, and then we build a corporate temple when we gather together. And what a temple is, is a place where God is worship and housed, and he comes down in meets, and there's an overlap of heaven and earth that happens when we gather. And then the next week we talked about the chirping of shame and guilt.
You remember that? And how the enemy is always accusing us and trying to get in between our ears, trying to distract us with shame, trying to distract us from guilt. And those are the things that hinder us from being comfortable in our own skin in the throne room of heaven. And so we talked about that, then, oh my goodness, behold, the lamb was last week with John the Baptist, not beloved.
On the Baptist, he's meditating on Jesus. Jesus goes into the wilderness, and he's meditating on the Son of Man, and he just has this combustion of behold, the lamb of God. And then his disciples leave him, follow Jesus, and this chain reaction happens, right? And then a couple years later, Peter, he's leading 3,000 people to the Lord in a day in his first sermon, and it all started with John, saying behold.
And I believe that there's those of us, like last week, so many of us got marked when we responded to the Lord as worshipers. And I believe that God is putting a behold on our community. God is putting a behold on our city. What John the Baptist had, that forerunner prepared the way of the Lord thing is on us as a people.
And so we're continuing to look at that tonight. The message is called burning ones. Burning ones, Revelation 4, you guys ready to jump in to the book of Revelation? Oh my goodness.
We're not going to get an eschatology tonight, but we are going to get into studying him and what was happening around him. So we're going to start in verse 6, halfway through verse 6. Say amen if you're there. All right, says this.
And around the throne, well, context here, John the beloved, one of Jesus' disciples, he gets taken up into heaven. He's the last living disciple, gets taken up into heaven, and God starts showing him all the things that are going to happen in the future. But also, he gets brought into this dimension of heaven, and he starts seeing what's been happening all along. He starts peering in.
This is mind-blowing. He starts getting, he like peeks into what Jesus was talking about in John 17. And John said, I had the glory, like the glory that we had before the foundations of the earth, I remember it. That's what Jesus says.
He says to the Father, I remember the glory that we had with each other before creation happened. And John the beloved gets brought in to just peek into what Jesus was talking about forever, the glory that Jesus and the Father and he turned he passed out. And then John also starts seeing into the future. But tonight we're talking about what he was seeing in the throne room, okay?
And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind. The first living creature is like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within. They don't want us to miss that.
Full of eyes all around and within. And day and night, they never cease to say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. There's a passage in Ezekiel where Ezekiel has a similar vision to what John saw. And Ezekiel has a different description of these creatures that are around the throne.
And he says, he sees these creatures, what he calls cherubim, and what they're doing is they're moving back and forth around the throne. And as they move, it's like lightning. So they're moving so quickly, it's like flashes of lightning. And it says that their voices are like the thundering voice of the Lord.
So they're moving back and forth like lightning. Their voices are thundering around the throne. And then it says that they all had, each one of them had four faces. John is seen, each of these living creatures from one angle, but Ezekiel has seen them from all different types of angles.
And he says all of them have four faces. And so each, they have each of the four faces that John just saw. Every single one of them has a face of an ox, the face of an eagle, the face of a man, and the face of a lion. That's wild.
That is wild. But each one of those creatures represents a different part of creation. And they're the strongest animal over that part of creation, or strongest creature over that part of creation. So the ox, it's the strongest of the beast of burden, the eagle, strongest of those that are in the air, that man is given dominion in the lion.
The lion. We all love lions, right? Where my main men at? Okay.
And so John is seeing this. And I think it's so fun to just think and meditate on all of these visions that some of the prophets have had. And you look at these visions and you know what they do. They never really describe God.
They never get around to describing Him. They just start trying to describe the things around the throne. And the things that they're describing around the throne, they're like it was the appearance of the image of emeralds, right? Like there is a sea of glass.
It kind of looked like that. They're just trying to describe something that's in a completely different otherworldly area, right? They're like, okay, it's kind of like a flying eagle, but it's the face of it. It's like, what?
Totally know what you mean by that, John, right? And so they try to describe all of the things around Him, but that's because they can't describe the uncreated. They can try to describe the created things around Him, but when they start trying to get language for one that is not a creature that was created but was uncreated and never had a beginning and will never have an end. They somehow can't find the words.
And they don't even go there. Any description just feels a little bit less than. Any description seems like such an insult to the everlasting one. And so John starts describing these cherubim and he talks about their eyes, covered in eyes.
What do eyes represent? Eyes represent knowledge. Knowledge. So when you, how do you learn?
A lot of times we learn by looking at things. We read things. How much of communication is nonverbal, right? Like 90% of communication is nonverbal.
And so these cherubim are actually the most, listen, the most knowledgeable creatures in all of creation. The most knowledgeable, they know the most information in all of creation. And what they're doing is they're going back and forth and they're getting different angles looking at Him. They're just getting different perspectives.
They're moving like lightning, a different angle to look at Him and all of their eyes, the dozens or the hundreds of eyes are locked. I just picture. What, what type of pupils and retinas did God give them to take in on approachable light? It's appearance stronger and more powerful than the sun.
And yet God gives them eyes to actually peer in to unapproachable light that shines brighter than the sun. Have you ever looked at the sun when you were six years old and you look at it and you're like, man, it hurts. Right? Your parents are like, stop that.
Right? These cherubim literally looking with hundreds of eyes at the unapproachable light of God. His greatness is unsearchable. And they look at Him.
And as they look at Him, I just, I just wonder what type of brains they have. How can you, we sometimes we look at the sun. And our brains start like, oh, it hurts. And they have hundreds of eyes taking all of the information of the infinite through their eyes.
And they have some type of brain and I don't know what the receptors or the neural path, whatever it is, but what kind of brain did God give them? I'm telling you this. You know, the data centers of our day, like Google and all the other Amazon, they have all these data centers, just acres and acres and acres stacks after stacks of servers, holding the information of the internet. All of the information you search on Google and it's like 80 million results.
And these cherubim are literally scanning God, looking at Him. And as they're scanning Him, it's like their brains become full of Him. And I'm telling you this, all of the data centers of the entire globe can hold but one little fraction of God's patience. One little fraction of the infinite, the eternal patience of God can only be captured in all of the data centers of the whole earth.
And we think we're so smart. We think we know so much. We think we've arrived. Look at what we can do.
Look at what we can do. Look at what we've done. Look at what we've built. Look at all the knowledge that's increasing every single four months across the earth.
And the cherubim are looking into that which has no end. And their brains are short circuiting. Their brains don't know what to do with Him. And they start meditating just one little facet, one little part of who He is.
And all of a sudden their brains start filling up with what everything that took in with their eyes. And all of a sudden there's this spontaneous combustion of praise and they start going, holy, it's not holy, holy, holy. It's just one. Holy.
Because in Greek, whenever you see the repeat of words, they don't have an exclamation point, so they just say it multiple times. And it's there's resounding. What holy means is this resounding, there's no one like you. You're completely other than.
And it's the only thing that you can say to a God that's uncreated. It's the only thing you say when you can't find the words to say anything about Him, to describe Him. There's just no one like Him. The only thing I can come up with is you're totally other than anything I've ever known.
When I look at you, you're not like the created things that you've created. Now, we just, I think God is putting a humility on us. I think God is putting this humility on us to go, do you know Him? You think you know Him, but do you know Him?
In the passage we see, look at verse 8 here. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. Totally other than is this God. He's Almighty.
And then we see in the sentence that's following that what they were meditating on. That was the content of what they were taking in when they looked at Him. The one who was an eternity past. The one who is an eternity in infinity now.
And the one who is in eternity in the future. The one that has no end in the present. And you start, they're filling their minds with his patience that runs so endlessly right now. Can you think about the patience of God right now as he sustains every single moment?
All of the injustice he was sustaining at the patience of God in that moment. And they're going, no one like you. There's only one, there's no one like you that you'd be so patient to allow me to have breath in my lungs and sustain the breath. Every single breath that you'd be sustaining by the word of your power.
Who are you? And so they're meditating on the eternal spirit, the eternal son, the eternal Father. He's the only one that understands everlasting life. Listen, it's like everlasting life.
John 3 16. That's great. Everlasting life. There's only one that knows the extent of everlasting.
Everlasting love. He's the only one that gets what that means as the everlasting one. Who is like this one? But what happens is we get bored.
We get bored. And the reason why we get bored in our relationship with God is because we've put Him in boxes. We've put Him in little compartments. We've filed things about Him in our minds.
How many of you guys ever met someone? And they because of your, because you and them have mutual friends. Or you have a certain last name or you have a certain skin color. Or you have a, you're from a certain area and they assume things about you and relate and interact with you based on their assumptions.
Have you ever experienced that? And they start interacting with you just because of how they perceive you. And they do, it's the most safe thing and it's the most lazy, prideful thing that we can do. Is I'm just going to take this person and I'm going to put them in the box so I get them.
And so I understand them. I'm going to file this away and I can put them in the box so then I can feel like I'm in control because I figured them out. And now I can be lazy and I don't actually have to peer in to have a curious heart. And I believe God is raising up those that would have curiosity sparked again.
And I believe Holy Spirit is breaking our boxes and our compartments and our filing structures and our systems of theology and He's snapping them in half. And He's going, I'm tired of being put in little tiny boxes in little tiny brains that are specks on the earth which is a speck in the speck of the Milky Galaxy Milky Way galaxy. And we think we figured them out. Well, I know, I know the gospel.
I don't know the gospel cloud, I know the gospel. No, I'm good. Yeah, like I grew up in church. I know.
And the Lord, the infinite one, sits in throne above the circle of the earth. Eternity past, infinity in the moment. Can you imagine infinite emotion that's healthy emotion in the now? Infinite joy now.
He's the inventor of it all. He's the originator of all of it. And we're just a little bored. I just read some of the Bible and I didn't even get anything out of it.
The Holy, totally different than us. Totally other than. Oh, there's a Holy getting restored on us. There's a behold that's different.
I want to encourage you. You haven't touched it yet. Man, we just think, oh, I'm like in a good spot. I want to encourage you.
You're in a good spot and we're just going to break off shame. We're going to break off guilt. If you're feeling like, even as I'm talking and feeling like, man, I'm not even close to what you're talking about in terms of learning about God. And it's like, we all just start at somewhere and we're all on the shores of him.
It's like, wow, that 60 year old theologian, he really knows a lot about God. And he's like a baby inch ahead of you in the shores of who God is. There's an endless, endless ocean of pleasures forever more at his right hand. What that means is that Jesus is at his right hand and in Jesus is infinite pleasure.
And we start meditating on him, keep our minds stayed on him, filling our brains with him. And there's thousands and millions of lesser things that always consume our minds that get taken care of when we start meditating on him. All of these things that are upsetting us, all these things that are frustrating us and then we just start connecting with him and start looking at him. And it's not even about information.
The cherubim are taking in him. But you have something special about you. You have emotions to connect with him. I don't know the emotions that cherubim have, but you have the privilege of looking at him and locking eyes with him, having never seen him in faith.
Angels are jealous that you get to have a season where you haven't seen him and you still meditate on the uncreated God, the invisible one. I remember the story of the road to Emmaus. And what happens is that Jesus rises from the dead and he just shows up on this walk. It's a seven mile walk.
So it's about two and a half hours of his disciples. They're taking a two and a half hour walk to this town called Emmaus. And as they're walking, Jesus comes alongside of them. And what does he do?
He starts unlocking all of the scriptures. He starts showing himself through everything that Moses wrote, everything that the prophets wrote. He starts unraveling it to these disciples as they're walking. And our daughter, she's ten years old, her name is Emmaus.
And we named her after the Emmaus wrote to Emmaus. And Emmaus has a mill name and her mill name is Song that she would exemplify this story. Because what happens is Jesus is he's eating with them and he breaks bread with these friends, these disciples. And as he breaks bread, they have the aha moment.
It's him. And they didn't recognize him because he has a resurrected body, this brand spanking new body. And his body is awesome. And we get to have resurrected bodies just like Jesus in the new heavens and the new earth.
It's going to be amazing. But they have this aha moment. Oh my goodness, it's you. And right away he disappears.
Can you imagine? That's going to be so fun. It's like, hey, John. Oh, hey, you know, right?
And they say this one thing after Jesus left in that moment, they said, did not our hearts as he talked. Did not our hearts burn. Cherubham's there from there called the burning ones. Taking him in, meditating on him.
Jesus is unlocking the scriptures. And the response is taking me not burned. I believe God is raising you up as a burning one. I don't care how old you are, how young you are, what your social class is, what your ethnicity is.
God is raising up. He's raising the water level in the body of Christ. And he's saying they're all meant to burn. They're all meant to have this longing.
They're all meant to have this hunger. They're all meant to have this insatiable desire to know me. It's just like going into a mine. You know, you're digging for treasure.
And I believe that there's a treasure that's getting restored on the body of Christ, treasuring him. And we're willing to go into the secret place, into the dark place, and start digging and mining, even as a community, as communities of people, digging and mining to treasure him. And all of a sudden, how many of you know that moment when somebody hits something in the mind? Ding.
And it's like, Eureka, we found something. And what happens? Hey, come and look, everybody starts gathering. And you dig it out and you start holding up that jewel.
And you start looking at it from different angles. And you start polishing that thing. I believe the treasure of him is going to start arresting us. I want to peer in.
I want to look at something that I haven't even looked at before. I want to see him from a different angle. I want to polish this and look at this facet of who he is. I want to know the details.
I want to know all of the intricacies of him. What does he feel? What does he think? What does he like?
And it's not just this information thing. It's not a transaction of information. It's not about information. Do you have a fascinated heart?
Do you have a heart that's hungry, a heart that's humble? I believe that there's humility on us again. That God is saying, it's time to land on one thing, and that is, I don't know. But some of us feel like we do know, and because we think that we do know, then we're so bold as to correct people online.
As if we know. And God is breaking our boxes. And he's saying, now's the time to get really humble. Now's the day to start looking at the mutable God, the infinite God, and say, oh, I am just at the beginning of him.
I know some things about him. I know what he's done for me. Oh, but there's so much more. He's breaking my boxes.
And there's nothing that is more exhilarating than just tasting a little bit of a revelation from me is. I'm telling you from experience, there's nothing like tasting a little bit of a revelation of him. You're destined for it. Eternity is longing within you for him.
Revelations in him. It's like a drug that is better than all the other drugs because it just feels so right. It feels so good when you get a glimpse. And some of us have never gotten a glimpse.
And that's not a thing to have guilt or shame about. But that's a thing to go, oh, I want. I want that. Whatever that is, I want to taste it.
I want to see it. And I believe that hunger, we're leveling up wherever you are. We're leveling up. We're not content with just status quo.
We're not content with just where we're at. There's so much more. There's a teacher getting an internship a couple years ago. It's a lot more than a couple years ago.
But we did this internship and there's this guy that talked about a way to meditate on the scriptures. And he talked about how this is a strategy. This is how we're going to meditate on the word. And this is actually on our website.
It's a resource called recipe for revelation. And he taught the class, this is how you study. This is how you can meditate. And so he said, we're going to meditate on John 3 16 for three weeks, for three hours.
Every single day. And so they're like, okay, really? He's like, yeah, we're going to do it. And he says, just pick a phrase and do what I told you to do in terms of how to meditate on this passage.
And we're going to see what happens for three weeks. And he got to the end of the three weeks and his class was begging him to not move on to another verse. And there's people that were saying to him, they're saying, Kirk, Kirk, I didn't get passed for God. I didn't get passed for God because listen, we think that the Bible is a really long book, right?
Man, it's really thick. I'm telling you this. It's so much deeper than it is wide. Oh my goodness.
It's so much more thick than you could have ever imagined. He's so much bigger than we can ever conceive with our little specks of brains that we've got. But he wants to be known and he's not trying to hide himself. He's given you just enough neuro pathways to have you get him a little bit and have your mind blown.
This is the Holy Grail, the knowledge of him, the Holy Curiosity that's being restored on the body. And I just think that we get to lay our pride down and we get to surrender it. I want to raise the white flag on our systems of theology. I'm saying this for myself.
You know when you're reading the Bible and you're going, well, that doesn't make sense within what I think. Have you ever had that before? You're reading the word and you're like, well, that doesn't work. God, you must be wrong, right?
This must be wrong. And sometimes it's like a mistranslation and that's great. And you can look at it and you're like, okay, yeah. Wow, see, my system held up.
And then there's other times where you as your finite brain tries to understand, it just breaks. And I want us to actually lay on the altar all of the systems of what we think about him and start humbling ourselves. I don't care what your experience is. I don't care how many doctrines you have.
We are just at the beginning of the one that shines brighter than the sun. What do they see when they look at him? I want us to get fascinated again and curious again. What do they see that would make them sing the same song over and over and over again and never take a nap?
It says day and night, night and day, they never stop. They never have a snack. They never go in, go to sleep and then wake up and eat breakfast and go back to work. They just do it all the time.
It's constantly holy. It's constantly look at him. There is no greater call than to actually lay down your life for your friends because you've looked at him and seen him rightly. And in your beholding, you become like him.
But it starts with the behold. It starts with the look at him. God is calling us as a people. I want to commission us out, send us out.
But as I do, I just want whatever helps you, whatever helps you receive what I'm praying over you, just whatever, if you want to put out your hands, if you want to just close your eyes or even keep your eyes up, whatever helps you concentrate, just want to pray over us as a community tonight. Lord, we don't take it lightly that you said that we can be seated with you in heavenly places. I declare that you're calling us to be burning ones. You're calling me to be a burning one, like a Maya song that as our prayers parents for her that she would burn with revelation for Jesus and then have songs that would rise to you.
Lord, I just declare that over this house, over this community, that we would be those that are singing theologians, studiers of God, that respond like a bride to a groom, that we would be singing theologians. That aren't just content with knowing a little bit, knowing just enough. Lord, take us into the excellencies of who you are. Holy Spirit, magnify him again.
We don't want to just have a little bit. We don't want to just have a seasoning of the knowledge of you, Lord. We want experiential knowledge of Jesus, experiential knowing of him. Lord, you're raising up the burning ones of our city.
Lord, you're raising up those that see an open door in heaven and the torn veil and start saying, oh, I have to know him more. I have to just just the longing for more. And the more is you. I just declare that the more is him.
The more is him. Lord, we want to get caught up in the details, the facets, the intricacies, getting lost in your word, business women, businessmen, getting caught up in the knowledge of Jesus. Fascinated on their way to work as they meditate on you. Oh Father, we just thank you.
It's the everyday believer, the minister. Lord, you're calling us. Closer. You're inviting us to see more facets of you.
We just declare more eureka's of you. You're the greatest treasure. You are greatest reward. In the end, it's you.
In the beginning, it was always you. Lord, make it our everyday now that it would be you. You're putting up a hold on us. Burning it, brand us with behold.
In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen.