The Revelation 4:7 | Episode # 1033

September 24. 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

The Revelation 4:7

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

If you would like to revisit today’s Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. 

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years.

I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life.

I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up.

His word to you and allow you.

To see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today,

in Jesus name.

All right, so these angels have a purpose and a meaning to exist.

Okay?

Now,

they're not the pagan demigods.

Or are they?

If you begin to look back and think through the Odyssey and the Iliad and all these beings and all these gods and the different gods and the different gods that do different things,

you begin to realize that,

well,

are. Are these gods like Zeus and Artemis and Jupiter, and you just start naming them.

Are they figments of somebody's imagination? Or are they beings that were wanting to be worshiped like their leader wants to be worshiped?

If you think about it long enough, you realize there's a strong possibility that they're fallen angels.

In fact, we know that the Earth is controlled by Satan.

Scripture tells us that Adam, in his sin, handed over control of creation to Lucifer.

We know that he's the prince of the power of the air. We know that he has control over the universe. And we know that we've been given sovereign authority and power and control over what?

The things that God has made us over, the things that God has given us power over.

We also know that you can't just go to an angel and tell them to do something and. And you don't have the authority to do that. Am I right? Seven sons of Siva tried that, and they got whooped by a demon.

He drove them out. Now, a demon and a fallen angel are two totally different things. And I don't have time for. For that Bible study tonight.

Okay? All right?

But we understand that these fallen angels are powerful. We also understand that God's angels are powerful,

okay? And that they have authority and control.

We understand that Gabriel is the messenger archangel. We understand that Michael is the warrior archangel. We understand that from our understanding, reading scriptures, that these angels in importantly represent something about God, and so do these.

And the way we know it is we can just begin to look at it, number one, There are four of them,

okay? And four in Scripture. As you go through Scripture and you begin to study the number four, and it's a real easy number to study, you begin to realize that 4 tends to represent how God made things,

how he made his universe. You begin to see that, you know his. He establishes himself on.

Establishes the universe in its existence. On day four, you begin. You begin to.

Oh, by the way, I need to go back and explain something to you. When it became woe, who. When it became formless and void,

God began to do something which we call the second creation account,

okay? And this is the creation account y' all think about,

okay? In fact, there's an A and B to it. Did y' all know that?

As you read in chapter one, two and three of creation, you remember, you begin to see that Adonai says, let there be this.

Adonai says, let there be that.

Okay?

Adonai is the most common word in the Hebrew for who?

God the Father, okay?

Adonai says, let there be these things, his will.

Then you have another creation account.

Creation to be. You have Jehovah,

or the Lord God forms. The Lord God makes. The Lord God does.

Adonai says,

the Lord God does. And you go, well, where's the Holy Spirit? Well, he's in chapter two. After everything became formless and void, it says that the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.

The spreading out of the voidness.

The Holy Spirit was there,

brooding. The Word actually has the significance of like a mother brooding over the world,

okay? And so God fixed it by his will and by His Son. But he didn't make more matter.

He fixed the matter that was made. And how do we know that? Because he was forming it.

He was bringing order back to it. He was making it the way it ought to be. Now, a lot of y' all are getting all kinds of. Y'.

All.

Y' all will be dragged into situations where people will argue with you about days and how we do days. I'm going to tell you that one of the smartest men that I know that I've ever listened to talk about this.

He will tell you that there are.

It's either six or seven ways the word day is used in chapters one, two, and three of the Book of Genesis.

So when you start getting into arguments and fights over how that all worked out,

first of all, I want you to know you weren't there.

And second of all, I want you to know that don't limit yourself by one singular understanding. Allow God to reveal that to you. Over time and show you things that might cause you to ponder God a whole lot more.

Does that make sense?

All right.

And so. So when God formed and fixed these things,

they still had his.

Well, his.

His character, nature is a part of it.

Four represents the way he made them.

You've got the four winds.

The four corners are four directions of the universe.

You got the four seasons. Before you know it, as you start looking through. In fact, there's four times a day, and I never get these.

There's morning,

day,

evening, and night. In scripture, you can start going through it and you can find fours over and over and over again. And as you begin to find these fours, you realize they kind of represent how God made the universe.

They all kind of point to it.

And you'll start really realizing, you know, four is an important number here.

All right,

so what he's saying is, is if I got four angels that are around the throne room of God with these 24 elders sitting around that throne,

what he's saying is what's about to happen or about to take place is.

Yeah, it's in heaven.

Yeah, it involves God. Yeah, it involves the Holy Spirit. Yeah. The church is there. But it has to do with his creation.

Okay?

What we're about to see take place has to do with his creation.

It has to do with these angels that are standing there. They're there for a reason,

because God's creation was made to glorify him. You were made to glorify him. God's creation was made to glorify him so that you might see the eternal God in that which he made.

Okay?

If you got questions about that, read Romans, chapter one. Very important chapter in the Bible. I've almost got it all memorized, but maybe I'll get it figured out by the time I.

I can remember anything anymore.

Okay? All right.

Romans, chapter one is a powerful book and is a powerful chapter in scripture because it explains how God made all things and his purpose behind them and how all things have become,

well, chaotic and messed up,

okay?

Because man has turned and broken it.

All right? And then how God plans to fix that problem.

All right?

These angels are. Well, they're need angels. They see everything around them. Now, that's the important part of about angels. And it's important part about Satan too.

Okay?

You have power over Satan.

You have the power of the Holy Spirit in you. But I want you to hear me, because the minute you start getting all prideful about how powerful you are when you're dealing with Satan, he knows a lot of stuff.

Okay, how many of y' all ever been somebody really, really, really smart and it kind of intimidated you? Well,

why don't you think of Satan as somebody who pretty much knows everything that's ever happened?

Now, his understanding of it is limited,

his way of seeing it's limited,

but he pretty much knows that everything that's ever been.

And he's watching very closely. He's watching God's plan at work. He's trying to figure out how he can destroy that plan.

God, on the other hand, he not only knows everything he made, he knows Satan. And so I want you to hear me. God uses Satan to glorify himself. Did y' all know that?

Absolutely. He knows how Satan's gonna do things.

He knows Satan's gonna reject him. And so when he.

When God begins to do something, he adds the variable of Satan, but it's not a variable for God. He adds him to the equation.

You need to understand that you have authority over the angels, you have authority over creation, but you also need to be humble enough to realize you probably don't know very well how to do anything with it.

Okay?

Just because you got the power don't mean that you've got the ability to wield that power, okay? If you want a superhero that you're like, it's Fletch.

Okay?

Have y' all ever see that movie Will Smith?

He couldn't do anything, right?

He was super powerful, but he just messed everything up, tore everything up.

Really shouldn't watch it anyway. All right, he says, before the throne, there was a sea of glass. It says the first living creature was like, a lion.

Okay?

Now you go, pastor, why? I don't understand what all these creatures are. Well, remember, there's the universe and there's how he's made things.

Okay?

Now, lions are spiritual powers.

Okay.

All right, you go. Well, what do you mean, lions are spiritual powers? Well, they're spiritual powers. They can be good or evil. Right?

Who's described as a lion in scripture?

Well, Satan's described as a lion. He's described as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Who else is described as a lion?

Jesus is. He's the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David. Who else are described as lions in scripture?

God's people are described as lions. Sometimes in scripture, different persons are described as lines. By the way, when Daniel was thrown in the lion's den, he wasn't just thrown into a physical pit where he was to be devoured by these lines.

He was thrown into a Spiritual trap.

Isn't that what happened?

They made a law to catch him doing what God had told him to do spiritually. And when he did not do it,

he was thrown in with the lions.

Lions are a picture of spiritual authority. Now, when we look at this throne room, remember this has to do with God's creation. But you need to understand that you can't separate the two, by the way, that is one of the original heresies,

okay?

One of the original heresies is the idea that the spiritual and the physical can be separated and they really don't have anything to do with each other.

And if you said, pastor, what is that heresy called? I can't remember.

Gnosticism. It's called Gnosticism. Who said that? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Terror. It was Gnosticism,

all right? The idea that the spiritual and physical are separate. They're not.

They're tied together. They're intricate. God, who is Spirit, made the universe to glorify himself. They can't be taken apart from each other, okay?

And by the world, we. By the way we live in a nation, in a world today which rejects the spiritual and places all the emphasis on the physical,

okay?

Now you can go the other way and reject all the physical and place all the emphasis on the spiritual.

What? Huh?

Asceticism. That's exactly right.

All right?

Or you can. You can do exactly the way the universe was made and understand that they work together,

they operate together.

Says that the first. The first one had the head and it was like a lion.

The second one was like a calf.

All right, Now I want you to hear me.

Some translations will translate this ox,

okay? It's a.

It's a cow. And we want.

What?

Y' all ain't even listening. Sunday, I said we wanted the whole cow. Sunday, y' all remember that. Y' all remember that? We don't want part of the cow. We want the whole cow.

Now you go, well, do we re the whole ranch? That's exactly right. We want the whole ranch, alright? But you do need to understand that when you're dealing with cattle and when you're dealing with oxen, that always is a picture of flesh,

okay?

Good flesh, bad flesh, flesh, period.

Okay?

There really isn't a whole lot of good flesh right now, but there was some good flesh.

That was Jesus, right? And so there's a possibility for there to be good flesh. And there is in heaven, okay? But cows, oxen, calf, however you want to describe them, they're always a picture of the flesh by the Way.

When. When David went to go get the Ark of the Covenant.

Because when the Philistines had it,

they.

Well, God,

you really need to read the story of when the Philistines had the Ark of the Covenant. He really made it rough on them. And finally they decided, we're just gonna put this ox on a cart.

I mean, this ark on a cot.

We're gonna put the ark on a cart with oxen carrying it.

Okay?

That's what he said he's gonna do. And he took the. And they just let those oxen head off. And when they found out that the Ark of the Covenant was coming back into Jerusalem,

his men to go get it.

And when they got there, they just started guiding those oxen right on back.

And it hit a bad spot in the road, and.

And the ark began to tip over. And one of the men, God, that David had sent to go get the ark,

steadied it with his hand and it killed him.

And you go, well, why did that happen?

Well, because the presence of God, which is what the ark represents,

was not meant to be carried by flesh.

It was meant to be carried by men.

In fact, does anybody know how many men were supposed to carry it?

Four.

There were two poles that were to go into the two rings on the rings on each of the legs, and they were to be carried on the shoulders of men.

Why? Because God created the universe in such a way that his presence was to be carried by human beings.

So he is a holy God.

And so David left the ox in the cart and the ark where he was and went back home and.

And,

you know, had a pity party.

Well, the old boy left the ark with.

Things went really good for him.

I mean, he had more sheep and donkeys and goats and everything else than you could ever imagine. He did different types of them. He was having them come out all kinds of ways.

And then he, David, heard that the man he'd left the ark with was prospering, and he realized, you know what? I'd rather have the presence of God than not have the presence of God.

And so when he went to go get the ark and bring it back,

he took with him a train of oxen.

The Bible says he danced with his loincloth on all the way to Jerusalem. And every six steps he took, he killed an ox.

Every six step,

six being the number of man.

Every time he took six steps in his flesh, he killed an ox.

So you've got lions, which are spiritual forces. You've got oxen, which is the flesh. You've Got eagles, which in many, many ways represent God himself,

but it represents the spirit of God himself,

okay?

And so in God's creation you've got at work right there around his throne,

you've got spiritual powers,

you've got the flesh and then you've got God's presence by his spirit,

okay?

And then the last one has a head like what a man.

So all the other three also involve humanity. Humanity's a part of God's plan. Humanity. We are,

we are important,

okay? There's a real movement in the world we live in to diminish the value of humanity in,

in the creation, in, in that which we live.

In fact,

there are those who believe that man is a parasite on God's creation,

okay? And let me tell you something, Their ideas are ancient and old and, and as far as their leader is concerned, they're correct.

Because there was somebody in scripture who always saw man as parasitic because he took his position and that's Lucifer himself. And so those who follow that idea or understanding usually are Marxist,

okay? And when I say that, I want you to understand what that means. Marxism is the idea that man can be God and make things right because we don't need God.

God is worthless and does not exist.

Now you got to get that. You need to understand that. Marxism's authority.

Well, many of you say, well, that's Karl Marx. No, it's Satan himself from the very beginning,

okay? So when I say godless Marxist,

I mean godless Marxist. There are no God filled Marxists,

okay? Because Marxism believes that man can be God.

In fact, that's what 666 means, by the way. And we'll get to that later on.

I switched eagle and man,

didn't I?

That's all right. We got it.

As you go today, I pray that.

The Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.