The mighty angel with the open book

Sermon for Midweek of Easter 4

Revelation 10:1-11

Think back to John’s vision of the seven seals. Between the opening of the sixth and seventh seals, there was a sort of interlude where John saw the 144,000 sealed on earth and then the souls of the saints who were already safely in heaven. Then the seventh seal was opened, taking us to the end of the world and then back to the beginning again with the vision of the seven trumpets.

There’s also an interlude between the sixth and seventh trumpets, divided into two parts. We have the first part before us this evening in Revelation 10: The mighty angel with the open book.

I saw still another mighty angel coming down from heaven, clothed with a cloud. And a rainbow was on his head, his face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire. This isn’t one of the seven angels blowing the seven trumpets. It’s “another angel,” a mighty messenger of God, and like many of the details of this book of Revelation, people have written pages and pages giving their explanations for who they think this angel is. In the end, it isn’t the messenger himself who matters as much as what his message is, and clearly this is a divine messenger, not an evil one. Still, there are good reasons to see this as a picture of Christ Himself, the ultimate Angel or Messenger of the Lord. Clothed with a cloud, as Jesus once said He would come again with the clouds. A rainbow on his head, like a halo, like the one that surrounded the throne of God earlier in the book. His face shining like the sun, just as Jesus’ face shone at the transfiguration, and feet like pillars of fire, even as Jesus was pictured earlier having feet of burnished bronze. Whether this angel is meant to be the Lord Christ or to simply to represent Him, His power and glory are obvious. After seeing all the wickedness, false teaching, and destruction that came from the abyss and from the antichrists we talked about last week, seeing that power and glory of this messenger of God gives great comfort to the people of God. The devil and the powers of darkness are not out of God’s control.

He had a little book open in his hand. Now, the word for “book” in Greek is “biblion,” where we get our word “Bible” from. The same word is used for a book, that is, pages that are bound together, and for a scroll that you unroll or roll up. It’s the same word as the scroll that had the seven seals that only the Lamb was worthy to open. This one is called “little,” but it seems to be the very same scroll or book that the Lamb had unsealed, and so it lies open in the angel’s hand. We identified that book as the divine revelation of the things to come for the Christian Church. This is another reason to think that this mighty angel represents Christ.

And he set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land. This must be an angel of colossal size. While it seems like evil and the forces of evil dominate the earth, in reality, they don’t. God does. Christ does. He reigns over the land and over the sea, that is, over the whole earth. All things have been placed under His feet, as the Psalm says.

and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roars. We aren’t told what the mighty angel cried out, only that it was loud, like the roar of a lion. We are told, by the same apostle John, what Jesus cried out with a loud voice just before He died: “It is finished!” Like the roar of a mighty lion who had just conquered His foes—conquered them, not for His own benefit, but for the benefit of His Church, of those who believe and are baptized.

When he cried out, seven thunders uttered their voices. Now when the seven thunders uttered their voices, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, “Seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and do not write them.” When God the Father spoke from heaven toward the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, St. John writes that the people standing by thought that it had thundered. This may be an answer from God the Father to what God the Son cried out. But John isn’t allowed to write down what the voices said. The message here is simple. There are many things about the future that God knows but that He does not wish for us to know ahead of time. We don’t need to know those hidden things. It’s all right not to know. Trust in the God who does know, and rest in His loving care.

The angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised up his hand to heaven and swore by Him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and the things that are in it, the earth and the things that are in it, and the sea and the things that are in it, that there should be delay no longer, but in the days of the sounding of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, the mystery of God would be finished, as He declared to His servants the prophets.

Here the mighty angel takes a solemn oath that “the mystery of God will be finished, as He declared to His servants the prophets. What mystery are we talking about? What did God declare to the prophets that must still take place? Well, the prophets prophesied the first coming of the Christ to suffer, die, and rise again. That had already been fulfilled when John saw this vision. But there are several Old Testament prophecies that have yet to be fulfilled. (1) The spread of the Gospel of Christ to the ends of the earth. (2) The coming together of Jews and Gentiles into a new, spiritual Israel, a holy Christian Church. (3) The rising up of unbelievers against believers. And (4) the second coming of Christ to bring judgment against His enemies and to bring His believers into the new heavens and the new earth. All of this must go on until the end. All of this, swears the mighty angel, must soon be “finished,” the same word Jesus cried out from the cross before He died in reference to His work of redemption. Then a second and final “It is finished!” will ring out.

Then the voice which I heard from heaven spoke to me again and said, “Go, take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel who stands on the sea and on the earth.” So I went to the angel and said to him, “Give me the little book.” And he said to me, “Take and eat it; and it will make your stomach bitter, but it will be as sweet as honey in your mouth.” Then I took the little book out of the angel’s hand and ate it, and it was as sweet as honey in my mouth. But when I had eaten it, my stomach became bitter. And he said to me, “You must prophesy again against many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings.”

Some things God seals up and doesn’t reveal to us, like what the seven thunders spoke. We don’t need to know that. But other things He does reveal, everything we need to know about the future so that we can make it to the end of the finish line. He gives that to John to “eat,” a picture of John taking in the information God gives Him, and then to prophesy, to preach, to proclaim against many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings.

This all goes back to what we said on Sunday when Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would come and convict the world, but He will do it through the preaching of the preachers whom Christ sends, like the Apostle John, and all those who hold that the prophetic office. We don’t preach the things God hasn’t revealed. We preach the things He has revealed to us in His Word. It tastes good, sweet as honey, when we take in God’s Word, when we come to understand how His great plan of salvation fits together. But it’s bitter in our stomachs when we realize how much evil the devil and the world will hurl against us, how much suffering and tribulation is predicted for Christians, how hard it is to preach the truth in an age that has fallen in love with lies.

Still, this chapter is a comforting chapter for Christians. It reminds us that God still rules in the midst of all the evil, that He will soon finish all He has promised to do for His Church, and that, in the meantime, His Word will continue to be preached in the world, even as it’s being preached again right now. Amen.