The Revelation 5:1 | Episode # 1036

September 29, 2025

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

The Revelation 5:1

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.

They had this picture of this lion,

and it was the face of a lion.

And then right in the middle of its face, and it looked like a normal lion, but right in the middle of its face, if you looked. If your eyes kind of focused in on that, you could see the lamb.

Okay, so you had the lion and the lamb. And the caption of that picture was the main verse in this chapter, which is about the lion of tribe of Judah, the root of David, and Jesus being the lamb in the middle of it.

So you've got,

in this passage the dichotomy of Jesus being both a lion and a lamb.

And I love that picture. And I loved it so much,

but we were so poor and I couldn't have it. And then finally one day, I think we found it somewhere.

Somebody had had it,

like, for sale at a thrift shop. And I bought it.

And Kathleen, she didn't love it. And so I don't know where it's at now,

but it was on the wall for a while, and then now it's not. Anyway,

so.

And I don't even really know where it's at. It's kind of like clothes that I.

That I. That I wear, that she don't like, sometimes they just turn up missing.

I don't know what causes that,

but I'm just thankful that I'm just thankful that somebody's taking care of those issues for me. You know what I'm talking about?

I think the washing machine or the dryer eats them. Don't y' all think that's gotta be what it is? But if it keeps eating those clothes, I'm telling you, we're gonna have to get a new washing machine or dryer anyway.

He said,

by the way, man, if you ever have that going on, it must be real bad. Just letting you know, ok,

if you're losing something and you thought that's one of my favorite so and so's. It must be really, really bad. Alright. He said it says in verse 5,

and John is talking about, we've already had, now, I want you to notice we're going to have really a kind of repeat. And it's important to see the repeat that happens and to kind of make a look at and go, okay, what is going on?

And why is, why is there a repeat in the sense of the flow of the passage, meaning Revelation chapter four has a flow to it, and then Revelation chapter five has kind of the same flow to it.

There's some differences and it's good to. Whenever that happens in scripture,

especially when you're in the prophecies or you're in some of the poetry in scripture, a lot of times you'll see, you'll see the writer go through something and then he'll kind of go through, when I say the same process, the general outline of what he says.

He'll go through it again and say something kind of different. And then he'll go through it again and say something kind of different. He's trying to let you see a progression in there.

And you need to, whenever that happens, you need to kind of take note of that. You need to look at it and say, okay, this is a progression.

And so I need to note that the differences, okay? And I need to note what God's trying to tell me.

All right,

in chapter five, it says,

and I saw at the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll. So we've gone back and we've got the throne again.

He went through the throne,

then he went through the actors around the throne. Then he went through the singing or the praising of God.

Then he goes back to the throne and he goes, and I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside, on the back,

written inside and on the back sealed with seven seals.

Okay? Now there's a couple things you need to get from this, and it's real important. Some of y', all, and especially some of y' all who are a little older than I can remember when you used to get a deed and the deed was in legal,

it was the length of legal, which is 11 by 17.

And the deed was written on both sides,

okay?

It had writing on one side,

which was generally the front said it was a deed. The second part of it kind of said,

you know, who was involved in the deed. And then on the other side you would have the actual legal description. And then you would have the signing of the deed or how the deed was going to be passed from one person to the other.

And it was written on both sides, by the way.

That is the only.

And when I say it's the only,

it is the only legal document that you will find in the law profession that that is written on both sides.

We don't write on both sides of a piece of paper.

Now, in the Old Testament days and in the Roman days and after that, during the Christian era in Europe,

deeds were written on both sides, but nothing else was written on both sides. And there was a reason for it. The reason you wouldn't write, like, Scripture on both sides is because one side would face out,

okay? And that side would be the side you'd pick up.

And over the years, because they didn't have the Baptist bookstore or Lifeway or online way, they didn't have that to get you another Bible or to get your Bible rebound.

They didn't have that. If they had a actual Bible or they had scrolls which had Scripture on it,

those were of great, great value.

And they didn't wanna write on both sides because in the process of picking it up,

carrying it, and that's what they would do, they'd take it from a special place in a synagogue and they'd pick it up and they'd carry it and they'd unroll it and they would read from it, and then they would discuss it there in the group.

And then they would take it and go through a process of rolling it back up and putting it up. And you would never actually touch the writing. And those scrolls would last for hundreds of years.

And in fact, they've lasted for thousands of years because we have them now.

Now you go, well,

why did they have deeds, which are deeds for land? Why did they have those written on both sides? Well, the reason they had them written on both sides is because they didn't want you touching.

You didn't want to actually touch the scrolls and the paper too much.

And because the documents that they would have of great importance would be scripture or one of the books of antiquity, which there are not a lot of books of antiquity, if you actually think about it.

And then they would have deeds.

And deeds were of great importance because deeds determine who owned what land. And you could,

over time, you could see, especially on a scroll, you could see the land pass from one person to another person to another person.

And you actually,

in those days,

could do what we call now a title search and see who had title to the property and see how far Back the title to the property went. And so when I was going into maybe a library or maybe I was going into a religious.

A church or a synagogue,

if I had those writings there,

I would see, okay, these are the deeds.

So I'm not going to touch them because we don't want to handle them too much.

These are the writings. Then I would look, and you could tell probably by the size what it was. Then you'd pick that up and you'd carry it and you'd open it up and read it, all right?

And those things cost a lot of money because it would cost a scribe maybe a year of two of their lives to actually write out books of the Bible,

because they had to write them. Exactly. And they couldn't make a mistake. They couldn't. There was no, if you think about being so intricate painting that you can't make a single mistake.

Because if I make a mistake after a year's worth of work and I write something that's not right, what I have to do with it, if it's scripture,

I gotta burn it,

okay? So I lost the value of the.

Of the paper. I lost the value of the ink, which is very, very valuable. Then I lost the value of my time and my efforts. And so those writings were of great, great value.

And so when you read from scripture,

they were of importance. Now, we know that the whole world changed with the invention of the printing press,

okay? But those traditions were passed down.

And so it's not really even a question,

but when you read this and you read that it's a scroll with writing on both sides,

you realize if you're an attorney or you're a historian, we all know if it's a written document on both sides, that's a deed,

okay? That's a deed to land.

Now,

that's very important too,

because back then there were really three things of value,

okay,

that weren't human,

all right? You had the value of property,

and each piece of property being very, very unique.

Okay?

What I mean by that, well, if you have 120 acres and you want to divide your 120 acres between your three children,

if you don't in your will state the exact 40 acres by legal description that you want each child to have,

then they have an undivided one third interest in the whole property. And because no piece of land is exactly like another piece of land,

then in order for it to be split,

if you're going to split it,

you have to sell it,

okay? You have to either sell it to the others or you have to sell it and then divide the money. Because money has standardized denominations to it. Well, so does.

So back then, you had land,

you had what we call currency,

which would be silver or gold or some other metal like copper or tin with the stamped face of the ruler of your area on it, which means that that was a real piece of silver, a real piece of gold.

If you go on up Media, if you want more detail about that, go back to the financial Bible study I did a few weeks ago, and I explained that in detail,

all right?

And those would be standardized,

okay?

And so they would be very important. And then the third thing,

which the Bible talks about a whole lot, too,

would be commodities.

There'd be spices,

salt,

wood,

grain.

What I mean by commodities, I mean something that you get from the earth that has a measurable amount. And I can say, okay, this is how much I'm buying from you, and I can come up with a deal for that.

Now, some of y' all are going, this is boring as I'll get out, okay, I know, all right?

But, you know, I was an economics major, so I'm. I'm. I have to. I have to deal with it. Commodities are very important. So we got commodities, we got currency, and we got land.

By the way,

Bible talks about unrighteous scales,

meaning having scales that were not true.

And what was it talking about? Well, it's talking about stealing from somebody. That's what it's talking about. All right? So we've got on this throne who we know from last chapter is God,

God Almighty himself.

And in his right hand there is a scroll that's written on both sides.

Well, what scroll would.

Yeah, what scroll would God Almighty have in his right hand?

What scroll would he have in his right hand that would be written on both sides and would be so important that he would have it? Now, I'm going to tell you, if it's actually just a small piece of land, we need to figure out what land that is and buy it because it's real valuable,

okay?

In eternity, it's going to be real valuable. But the truth is that's not what it is. It's obviously, as you're reading it, it's the title deed to the Earth,

okay? Or to his creation.

It's the deed to his creation. It's the deed to what he made.

Now you go, well, why is that important? Well, it's important because he made the Earth.

He placed the angelic host on it. The angelic host fell.

He had to go back and reform the Earth.

And when he reformed the earth, he created a creature. And that creature he gave dominion over the earth, which means he gave him the deed to it.

That creature did what?

Sinned and gave his authority away,

relinquished his authority for that property.

And then when he relinquished his authority, that property,

nobody had authority over it. The enemy was battling God's people, God's plan.

And that's why land is very important. I don't know if y' all noticed it or not,

but in the headlines of the day, land's very important still over there.

Really, really, really, really important.

Even the sorry land, even the bad land, even the wilderness that they wandered in, they fight over all the time. Am I right?

It says on the throne, a scroll was written inside and on back, and it was sealed with seven seals. Now, those seals would represent some spiritual authority,

okay?

And if a scroll was closed with a seal, it usually was closed with a seal by somebody who was royal, somebody who had noble birth.

And the only person that could open the seal would be a person that had that same, equal to or greater than authority.

Does that make sense?

So if I had a message,

as the prince of a kingdom,

I was on a battlefield and I wanted to send a message that only my father, the king,

would read. I would take that message, I'd write it, I'd roll it up, I'd seal it with my seal. And if anybody opened that seal other than the king, it would be off with the head,

be death, be death penalty, okay? And so these seals represent authority that have closed it off.

And when humanity fell,

if you'll notice, God, what closed him off from the garden,

he closed him off from having the original authority that he had prior to the fall.

And so this scroll has seven seals, which seven is the number of completion.

So it's completely sealed, and only someone of equal or greater authority can open the seal.

Does that make sense?

These seven seals, by the way, are going to be opened one by one.

This is beginning our outline of the book of the Revelation,

because you have in the first chapter a presentation of what's going on. You have the second, third chapter, what is known as the Church age. You have in the fourth chapter, the scene of Heaven.

Now you have the fifth chapter, the plan of God that he is revealing in the book of the Revelation.

And the book of the Revelation is going to now go through the opening of each seal which is going to bring about God's judgment on that sin so that he can refix the earth in this process,

so that the wrath of God against sin might be satiated and that God can now have full control back over the earth. He's going to set things right.

And these seals, as they're open, are going to bring about judgments on the earth. Okay? Judgments on all of creation.

Does that make sense?

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.