Sermon Tone Analysis

A Glimpse of Majesty

A Reminder of God’s Promises

When God gave instructions for the making of the high priest’s breastplate, it was to have twelve stones on it.

Two of those twelve stones were jasper and carnelian (Exodus 28:17, 18, LXX).

Evidently God commanded these stones to be on the high priest’s breastplate because they reflect his own glory, as John sees in 4:3.

John probably uses these terms to describe what he saw because his mind was saturated with Biblical terms and images.

When Isaiah prophesied that the Lord would rebuild Jerusalem, he said he would build its buttresses with jasper (Isaiah 54:12, LXX).

The city will show forth the glory of God.

And there seems to be a connection between carnelian and jasper and the Garden of Eden in Ezekiel 28:13; so we can see that the Garden also reflected the glory of God.

Revelation 21:11 describes the bride, the wife of the Lamb, the new Jerusalem, as “having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal,” and carnelian is one of the twelve stones, with jasper, on its foundations (cf.

21:18–20).

The new Jerusalem will reflect God’s glory.

What becomes clear from this survey of p 144 other places where we see these stones in the Bible, jasper and carnelian, is that they are characteristic of the glory of God.

James M. Hamilton Jr., Preaching the Word: Revelation—The Spirit Speaks to the Churches, ed.

R. Kent Hughes (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 143–144.

A Declaration of Worship