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TTHEHE GGENEVAENEVA SSCHOOLCHOOL TTHEHE COURIERCOURIER NNEWSLETTEREWSLETTER JJUNEUNE 110,0, 22009009 The Geneva School Class of 2009 Back Row Middle Row Front Row Joel Baumgarten Elizabeth Schaffer McKenzie Fletcher Jonathan Seneff Ryan Delk Taylor Fletcher Raymon Garcia Luis Perez Caroline Mitchell Zachary Schutz Christopher Bonarrigo Samantha Cowan James Calhoun Neely Patton Rebecca Lopdrup Kyle Barker Damian Campbell Katherine O’Driscoll Ryan Killoran Josiah Nethery Lauren Padgett Stephen Wilkes Veronika Nyberg Lindsey Warner Jonathan Spilman Ashley Yates Abigail Pugh Return of the Kings Revelation 4:8–5:10 Baccalaureate Address delivered by Rev. Michael Francis on Th ursday, May 21 It’s a great privilege for me to be with you this evening, and I thank Reverend Ingram and the Board for entrusting me with the responsibility of issuing the charge to you, Geneva’s largest graduating class (thus far). It boils down to this, my friends: the world won’t lift a fi nger to help you learn the things you most need to know. Th e sooner you realize this, the safer and wiser you will be. But take heart: God is not like the world; He is eager for you to know these things, which is why He throws open the doors to His heavenly throne room for us in Revelation 4 and 5, to show us three Kings who are central to the Christian world- view. God willing, I will charge you tonight to build a vision for your life on the true identities of these three kings: (1) God (the Father); (2) Jesus Christ; and (3) Man. I. Th e First King: God on His Th rone (5:1-4) Make no mistake about it: the world is perfectly willing to let you get away with murder when it comes to God, particularly when it comes to speaking about Him. You’ll fi nd that not only will God be a frequent topic of the world’s conversation, but also that the world will be very generous in granting you permission to speak about God, provided, of course, that you restrict yourself to counterfeits and impostors that demean His glory, His majesty, His power, His goodness, and His beauty. Th ey will also be generous to you provided that you’re willing to reduce Him to the punchline of a joke, to use Him as pious fi ller for conversation, or to invoke Him as the target of self-righteous indignation when things in life don’t go according to your plan. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are cause no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never it. And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the cease to say, Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so “Holy, holy, holy, that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.” is the Lord God Almighty, And between the throne and the four living creatures and among who was and is and is to come!” the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and of God sent out into all the earth. And he went and took the ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. Th ey And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and by your will they existed and were created.” and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people Th en I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the for God throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with from every tribe and language and people and nation, seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” and they shall reign on the earth.” And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to Rev. 4:8–5:10 (English Standard Version) open the scroll or to look into it, and I began to weep loudly be- Page 2 Yes, the world will be perfectly happy for you to speak about man ever could be! What breaks John is the vision of God he God in such terms, and it will very likely applaud, promote, has just been shown in Chapter 4. Th e angel’s question and and reward you for doing so. But what the world will not the search it triggers (5:2–3) underscore the incomparable tolerate from you, and what it will never be willing to lift a worth of God: no one, nothing, in all Creation approaches fi nger to do for you, is to speak of Him with reverence as His worth, His value, His glory! the King, to show you God on His throne: eternal, holy, almighty, worthy—as Creator and therefore Owner of all that Th e relevance of John’s experience here to our lives becomes is, including you. But this is the very thing that God is most plain when we remember who John was. By this point, he willing to make known to us. had already been an apostle for 60 years. He was the author of the fourth Gospel. He had been one of Jesus’ inner circle of Th e world will never do what God has three disciples who done for us in Revelation 4–5, which is had been with the to usher us into the very heart of ultimate Lord on the Mount reality itself, something no tool or theory of Transfi guration devised by men could ever do, no mat- and who saw Jesus’ ter how skillfully designed or sublimely unveiled glory. He conceived. What we’re shown in these had spent 40 days chapters is that the root and ground of with the resur- all reality is a Th rone: eternally, securely, rected Lord prior and happily occupied by God. Th e world to His Ascension will never show this Th rone to us, which (Acts 1), and he is why I am so grateful for John’s weep- had been present ing in this passage. John’s weeping (v.4) at Pentecost (Acts is a gift that brings 2). He had even the worth of God been given a vision into focus for us. If of the exalted Lord we accept his tears Jesus Himself in Revelation 1. And yet as genuine and not none of these experiences adequately pre- merely symbolic, pared him for the vision of the Father in then we have to His glory sitting on His throne. It was an probe further to encounter he could not manage, or take ask why the great in stride. In the perfect clarity of heaven, Apostle is weep- John sees the Father in His full authority, ing? Is he weeping glory, and majesty, and the sight of God’s because, even for reality breaks him. the slightest mo- ment, he fears that John by this time would have been an old the risen, reigning man who had walked for decades in faith- Jesus Christ is un- fulness with the Lord. Yet here is a man worthy to take the who is not done being grown by God’s Book from the Father’s hand and to break its seals to look grace, who discovers that 60 years of faithful apostleship is not inside? No! John isn’t weeping over the unworthiness of Je- enough to exhaust the glories of God’s reality. Th e same King sus Christ, but over the shocking reality of the worth of God John saw is still King. Th e same throne John saw still exists, a Himself. throne still happily and securely occupied by an eternal King. We must interpret John’s weeping in its context. And in I charge you to build your life by gazing as John did upon that the immediately preceding context of Chapter 4, what have same Th rone. I charge you to remember that this King— John’s eyes and ears been fi lled with? Th e holiness of God, alone—is worthy of your crowns, your fascination, your pas- the authority of God, the power of God, the transcendence sion, your devotion, your delight, your joy, your loyalty, your of God—all of which has triggered the explosion of the el- energies, your best thinking and deepest feeling, your most ders’ praises in 4:11: “Worthy are You…!” John tells us that costly sacrifi ces. I charge you to remember that there is no he weeps “because no one was found worthy” in all creation.