The Book of Revelation: Revelation 7:1-17

Speaker: Dr. Ian Paul

Passage: Revelation 7:1-17

Friends, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for your welcome. Thank you, Greg, for your kind words. It’s wonderful, isn’t it, to discover fellowship with people that you’ve never met before and that you sense are brothers and sisters in Christ? He covers all divides, even the divide of our common language. So that’s terrific. And thank you for all the coffee we’ve had. You guys like drinking coffee, we’ve discovered, on tap. That’s great.

As an Englishman, thank you for teaching us that we don’t have the weirdest weather in the world. We were all with sunscreen out in the Garden of the Gods down by Manitou Springs earlier in the week at 72 degrees. And then we come up here, and you say, “Hey, welcome to the winter wonderland!” It feels like we’re walking through one of those Christmas movies. So that’s really fantastic. Thank you so much for your welcome. Let’s dive straight in.

THREE BIG QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

We’ve got some questions before us, which we’ve got to wrestle with. The first of these big questions is: What in the world is happening? And you might be asking that question because of things that have happened to you, or your family, or your friends. You might be asking it when you read a newspaper or watch TV. But we’re all confronted with this question. The only reason why you wouldn’t be asking this question is that:

1. You’re living a perfect life.
2. You never talk to anybody.
3. You never look on the internet or newspaper.

If that’s you, and you think life is fine, then great. But the rest of us are asking this question.

We’re also asking a second question: What is God doing in all this? Where is God in this? Can we see God at work? Can we make sense of it? And then that gives us a third question: How do we, as the people of God, respond to that tension between how the world is and what God is doing? One thing I’m supposed to mention is that I’ve written this book. Dustin said wave the book. I’ve written a book about the Book of Revelation, so you can get a hold of that if you want to explore some of the things I say a little bit deeper. 

It’s really interesting that these questions together are in tension for us because we see what the world is like, but we also believe that God is on the throne. That’s what creates the tension for us. And the reason why I’m just so encouraged and so excited that you’re reading the Book of Revelation together, is because it’s the book that most strikingly and most clearly engages with that question. Why? Because the Book of Revelation, more than any other book in the Bible, sees as its central figure, God enthroned. Anybody who writes on it, any commentator you ask, they’ll say that the central image in the Book of Revelation is the throne.

Then we’ve got this mystery that there’s One on the throne, but there’s also the Lamb on the throne, and then the River of Life flows from the throne. I think John’s writing this thinking, you know guys, one day some of you reading this are going to work out the God is Trinity, but I’ll just give you some clues so that you can work it out for yourself.

Okay, so the central image is God on the throne, but Revelation, more than anything else, paints a vivid picture of our big questions. It paints a kind of a picture of a swirling vortex of chaos, with these four horsemen running amok, with these angels pouring out judgment. The world is chaotic, but God is on His throne. I think the Book of Revelation more than any other book in the Bible paints those two things most vividly, and that’s why we find it a bit of a struggle.

In the video which I did with Dustin yesterday, he said, “Well, what advice would you give to someone who is reading this for the first time?” I would say just read the whole thing. Read the whole thing. Because the danger is we’re selective; we pick out either the dark bits or we pick up the light bits. We pick out the swirling chaos and go look at this, or we pick out God on the throne and we’re comforted. What we actually need to do is see the two together. We need to see the way that this book moves from one to the other.

UNDERSTANDING THE AUDIENCE AND LANGUAGE OF REVELATION

Before we dive into this particular chapter (we’re jumping ahead in the series and looking at chapter seven), I just want to mention two things which we need to bear in mind as we listen to what God is saying to us today through what John wrote to the Christians in that province of Asia, in the western part of what we call Turkey. There are two kinds of ways we relate to the time that John is living in.

So the first thing we need to remember is that he lives in a different time from us. This is a book that was given to us for our benefit. God has granted it for our edification and instruction, but it’s a letter written to someone else. It’s not a letter written to us. It’s given for us, but it’s not written to us. John is writing to particular people in a particular time and a particular place. He lives in a different world from us. It’s a different culture. It has different stories; it has different realities. They face different challenges from us.

It’s nice you’ve had two English people in the last couple of weeks, but you know that there are differences. So let me tell you, if any of you men go to England, never say you’re wearing pants with suspenders, okay? Because in England, it means something different than it means here, right? Language means different things in different places. When I drive my car and there’s something wrong with the engine, I lift the bonnet. You lift the hood, right?

So I know those are subtle differences, but we just need to remember that John is living in a very different time and place from us. When we open the Scriptures, we are going on a cross-cultural journey, and we have to listen out for how people in a different time and place both speak differently and think differently. But we’re also in the same time as these people.

For example, we English people have different customs, and we always like to drink a cup of tea in the afternoon with a scone, which is a very English thing. We trekked all around Fort Collins to find a cup of tea yesterday afternoon. We found a place, which was great, but everywhere you go in England at just four o’clock everyone’s serving tea. 

However, we share things in common with Americans as well. We live in the same time because we live in the time “in between.” We live in between Jesus’s death and resurrection, His exhortation, and the time when He will return. It’s very interesting, the Scriptures never describe this as Jesus’s second coming because they don’t pair it with His birth; they pair it with His ascension. He will return. You know the angel says to the disciples in Acts chapter one, this Jesus whom you have seen will return in the same way, because He’s gone and He is on the throne. We recognize that He is on the throne and the world doesn’t, but one day they will see it. One day, they will see that He is King when He returns, and He will reign forever.

So we’re in different times, but we’re also in the same time, and we need to wrestle with those two things together as we read this book.

The second thing to bear in mind is that John paints with really vivid colors, and he draws from a particular palette. As he paints these vivid pictures, he draws on one of his palettes from his world, from his culture, from the sort of things that people knew and the stories that they told. But the other palette, which is particularly prominent here in chapter seven, is a palette using paints from the Old Testament. So he’s constantly using what we call Old Testament language, or what he just called the Scriptures. We just need to be aware of that because we don’t know our Old Testament quite as well as he did. We need to recognize that he’s constantly drawing on that language. 

REVELATION 7: 1-8

Would you open to Revelation 7? We’re starting in verse one and we’re going to go through verse eight. 

It says, “After this, I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth so that no wind could blow on the earth or sea or against any tree. I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, but the seal of the living God, and He called with a loud voice to the four angels who He’d given power to damage earth and sea, saying, ‘Do not damage the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have marked the servants of our God with a seal on their foreheads.’ And I heard the number of those who were sealed, 144,000 sealed out of every tribe of the people of Israel: From the tribe of Judah 12,000 sealed, from the tribe of Reuben 12,000, from the tribe of Gad 12,000, from the tribe of Asher 12,000, from the tribe of Naphtali 12,000, from the tribe of Manasseh 12,000, from the tribe of Simeon 12,000, from the tribe of Levi 12,000, from the tribe of Issachar 12,000, from the tribe of Zebulun 12,000, from the tribe of Joseph 12,000, from the tribe of Benjamin 12,000 sealed.”

TWO OLD TESTAMENT SOURCES

You may not realize it, but here John is painting with vivid Old Testament colors, and he’s drawing his palette from two particular passages. One is from the prophet Ezekiel. In Ezekiel chapter nine, we have this vision of judgment. The people who sinned, they’re being led into exile. Angels come and men bearing swords come to bring judgment on God’s people, and in particular, to bring it on the city of Jerusalem. But they’re told to wait, to hold back the judgment for a moment of grace. That moment of grace is for the sealing or the marking of those who’ve been faithful, the faithful remnant.

John is painting his story with these colors, but he’s actually transforming them as well as he does this. In Ezekial chapter nine, it’s the people of Israel who are being judged and the faithful remnant within that who are being protected. In Revelation, John is opening this up. It’s not nationalistic; for him, it’s global. This is a world under judgment, and within that the faithful remnant are the followers of the Lamb who are marked with the seal of a living God to be protected from the judgment that’s to come.

So here we have language of judgment, but we also have an interval of grace. A moment, an opportunity, to respond in the face of what is coming. Someone said that judgment is when we get what we deserve, and mercy is when we get what we don’t deserve. This is the moment that John is describing; his opening up of the Good News in Jesus. 

And we can see the other color that he draws on, the other palette that he uses, is from Zechariah chapter six. This is where we get the whole idea of the four horsemen. So in chapter six of Revelation, we learn about these four horsemen of the apocalypse. You’ve heard of these different colored horses? Those are drawn right from Zechariah chapter six, and people don’t often notice that Revelation seven is talking about the same thing.

Throughout this book, John is giving us a new perspective on the same thing. Very often, people read Revelation and think it’s all one thing after another, but it’s not. It’s not a sequence of events. It’s a sequence of visions. It’s as if John is saying to us, look, let me explain it this way. Okay, if you got that note, well, let me look at it from another angle and explain it this way. Do you understand what I’m saying? No. Let me explain it this way, too. I have another vision to share with you. 

It’s in Zechariah chapter six that Zechariah is told that the four horsemen are the four winds of Heaven. So, in chapter six in Revelation and chapter seven in Revelation, they’re telling us the same thing but giving us a different perspective. You see, at the end of chapter six, the Saints under the order said, How long, oh Lord? What are You doing in this world of chaos? In chapter seven, we hear the answer: God is opening a moment of grace and of mercy, and in doing so He’s calling a people to Himself.

A GOD OF JUDGMENT AND MERCY

We need to remember what Revelation says about judgment. Some people read the book and say, it’s all about judgment. It’s all about God blasting the earth and all about God destroying people. Actually, John is much more careful than that. In every mention of judgment in Revelation, he’s cautious. Yes, God is on the throne. Yes, God is sovereign. But God is not like one of the Greek gods who sits on his throne, throws down thunderbolts, and blasts people. Every mention of judgment is hedged around with qualifications.

If you read chapter six, the four horsemen come out but they don’t come out because God has called them. They come out because one of the creatures around the throne has called them. We just hear a voice saying, “Come.” It’s as if John is saying, yes, God is sovereign. Yes, He knows what’s going on in the world. But judgment is something that God is hesitant to inflict on people. Later on in the book, we get to chapter 16 and there’s language of judgment. There’s a voice which says, God is just. God is just in His judgments. God does not delight in judgment, but He is a just God. So God opens for us this moment of grace and this moment of mercy. Do not harm until I’ve sealed those with a seal of a living God. 

This pattern, I think, is just the pattern we find in Jesus’s ministry. Jesus comes on the scene dramatically, particularly at the beginning of Mark’s gospel. John the Baptist has been proclaiming His ministry, and then Jesus comes on the scene, and in Mark 15, He says, The Kingdom of God is a hand. Repent and believe the Good News.

Now, there’s a sense in which we say the Kingdom of God is good news for us. It is, but it also means a day of reckoning. In the Old Testament, this is the great and terrible day of the Lord when His presence comes. When His people will be purified, and when the nations will be judged. Jesus says, look, it’s coming. It’s at hand. It’s close by, but there’s a moment of mercy and grace for you. You can repent; you can turn and change and believe and put your trust in God. John here is saying the same thing, but using a different set of paints, a different palette.

WHO HAS RECEIVED THE SEAL OF GOD?

So the question then is, who are those who’ve responded? Who are those who’ve received this seal? We need to look carefully at who it is that has been sealed. In the ancient world, writing was an expensive thing. You had to pay a scribe and parsing was expensive. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but all the documents in the New Testament are really short. They’re really compressed. When we read, we have to read slowly and we have to read carefully.

When we look at this list, there are several things to pay attention to. You also have to be familiar with the tribe lists in the Old Testament. Has anybody memorized the tribe lists in the Old Testament? No, not really. I think there are 14 different ways in which the tribes are listed, and this list here doesn’t match any of them. Why is that? Well, there are several things to notice.

First of all, this list has the tribe of Judah at the beginning and the tribe of Benjamin at the end. If you look carefully, you can see that he describes them differently: “From the tribe of Judah 12,000 sealed…from the tribe of Benjamin 12,000 sealed.” He is highlighting this. This is a depiction of God’s people who are in the Messiah. Judah and Benjamin, the southern tribes, were where the promised Davidic King was going to come from, so this is Israel depicted as a Messianic people.

The other interesting thing is that we have Levi mentioned. In the Old Testament, Levi is never listed in the tribes. Why? Because God’s first plan was that all His people would be a priestly people. That’s what He says in Exodus 19, “You will be for me a kingdom of priests.” But His intention was thwarted by sin, and the sin that He was thwarted by was the sin of the golden calf, where all of the men of the tribes worship a golden calf, except the tribe of Levi. The tribe of Levi, therefore, became the priestly tribe, which was God’s intention for everybody.

Now, if you know Orthodox Jews—we’ve had friends who enter this—the eldest son of an Orthodox Jew has to be redeemed with a shekel payment from being a priest, because of the sin of the golden calf. So they still carry that tradition today.

Yet what does John tell us at the beginning in Revelation? Jesus has redeemed us to be a kingdom of priests. Peter says the same in his letter, that we are a royal priesthood. God’s original intention for His people, that they should all be priests, has now been fulfilled in Jesus. That sin has been dealt with, and the vision has been restored. And Levi takes the place of Dan because Dan was the northern tribe, and Dan was the tribe that didn’t observe the discipline of worship in the temple and set up their own high places.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE 144,000

So we have a vision here of the people of God, the Israel of God, as Messianic and as a holy priestly people. And then they’re described with a number. Now this is where those of you who struggled with math in high school, I’m going to apologize here. I can say that there’s prayer ministry available if you need healing of the memories from that I know a lot of people do.

I’m afraid I’m the opposite. I actually did math in college, and I was going to do some doctoral research in math as well, so I apologize for that right away. I know that makes me sound really weird. But hey, you know, John is a bit like me—he likes his numbers. He likes doing his theology through numbers as well.

So he describes 12,000 from each tribe, and that makes the total number 144,000. Why is that important? Because 144 is a square number and 1000 is a cubic number. Anyone steeped in the Old Testament knows what that means because there is one cube that matters above all others. The people of Israel are gathered in the land, the land is centered on Jerusalem, Jerusalem is centered on the temple, and the temple is centered on the Holy of Holies, which is the very dwelling place of the Creator God. It’s a cube. And that’s why if you ever see any cube number in the book of Revelation, it signifies the temple dwelling place of God.

These people aren’t actually 144,000 in number, he tells us they’re not in a minute. But these people are the Messianic people of God. They’re priestly and they’re holy, and they are the temple dwelling place of God Himself in the world. I’m looking at a cube as I look out at a congregation. Paul says, “We are the temple of God.” Peter says, “He is building us as living stones into a spiritual house, a temple for God.” Jesus Himself, in John 2 says, “Destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days.” We are part of the body of Christ; we are the temple.

So you see, John is just saying the same things we read in other places. He’s just doing it in his own eccentric way. When I first came to faith, I was brought up on the GNB Bible. I used to call it the “Got No Brains” Bible. Sorry, that’s rude. It’s the Good News Bible, but the reason I called it that is because it had a limited vocabulary. It only had, like, a 1,000-word vocabulary so it would be really easy and accessible. And when it came to this passage, I remember really clearly it was just too fast. It said, Oh, 12,000 for every tribe. It was too difficult to list all the names of the tribes. But it misses the point. 

Now, what do we call it when you count people out? We call it a census. What do you take a census for? Well, some people take a census for tax. But in the ancient world, you take a census so you know your fighting strength. If you live in Israel today, this is pertinent, isn’t it? Everyone’s in the army. You’re all reservists, so the population tells you how strong your army is. The same is true in the ancient world.

Why is the book of Numbers in the Old Testament called the Book of Numbers? Because it’s full of numbers. The people of Israel had been set free from slavery, and they were on a journey towards the promised land. They hadn’t got there yet. They knew they faced enemies and obstacles and battles, so Moses needs to know their fighting strength. The same is true for David in 2 Samuel 24. He actually sins by counting his soldiers to know his fighting strength. God says, yeah, but you should be trusting Me for your fighting strength, not your soldiers.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES

So this number 144,000 is a picture for us. This is the first of three visions of who we are in a world of judgment and in this interval of mercy. This is a picture of God’s holy people, His temple presence in the world in ordered discipline, ready for spiritual Conflict. That’s who we are. John has a vision, but he sees us. Look at images of marching soldiers. They march disciplined, in order. Their uniforms are cleaned and pressed. Their buttons and leather shoes are polished. Friends, this is what God calls us to. But our enemies are not flesh and blood; our enemies are the spiritual forces.

God calls us to spiritual disciplines, that’s what John is saying to us. This is who we are. Why does He call us to spiritual disciplines? Why do we commit to giving? Why do we commit to meeting? Why do we commit to serving? Why do we commit to reading the scriptures? Why do we commit to a discipline of prayer? Why do we commit to learning how to share our faith?

Well, it’s not because pastor Greg Sanders tells us to do it. Okay? And it’s not because we have to do that to be a member here. It’s because this is who we are. We are God’s holy people, ready for spiritual combat. We need these disciplines to equip ourselves, to be ready for the battles that we face. We need courage to live in this chaotic world with God on the throne. We need discipline, we need understanding, we need to grow in wisdom, and these disciplines are how we do it.

You might have recognized that the word “discipline” is related to the word “disciple”. Jesus calls us to be disciples. I’m always a bit dodgy about Wikipedia, but I looked up the word “disciple” on Wikipedia, and it said, “To be a disciple of Jesus was to have an intentional apprenticeship to the person of Jesus.” Wow. We live with these disciplines because these are the disciplines Jesus lived with. Jesus was disciplined in prayer. Jesus was disciplined in reading the Scriptures. Jesus was disciplined in His meeting with people, in teaching. That’s why we take these things on, and we become better people as a result.

In the UK we have a great advert for the Navy. You have the story of a guy who is a bit of a layabout, and then he joins up, he signs, and he has all these disciplines and becomes a better person. And the caption: Born in Worksop–Made in the Royal Navy. God calls us to something better. We inhabit these disciplines, by His grace and with His encouragement, not so we can sign on the dotted line or prove something or boast to other people, but just so that we can grow into being the people that God wants us to be. In this chaotic world, we can serve Him.

VISIONS AND PARADOX

Let’s dive into verse nine. “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation and from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated upon the throne and to the Lamb!’ And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.’ Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, ‘Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?’ I said to him, ‘Sir, you are the one who knows.’ Then he said to me, ‘These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'”

So who are these people? The twelve tribes? Notice that John hears them counted, and then he turns and looks. We need to recognize this because it’s when we need to pay attention to how John uses language and what he does. Most people think the Book of Revelation is a book of visions. Do you know that 43% of what he writes is not what he sees, but what he hears? It’s not just a vision. All the way through we see John doing this: he hears something and then he turns and looks, he hears something and he turns and looks, he sees something then he hears what it is. 

In chapter one, he heard a voice like many waters and he turned to see the voice. Friends, you can’t see voices, right? You hear voices but can’t see them, and yet he does. He turns to see the voice. He sees the risen Jesus. “I looked and heard”. He sees something, and then what he hears explains what he saw. All the way through the book: chapter eight, “I looked and I heard…”; chapter six, “I heard…and I saw”; chapter 21, “I saw…I saw…and I heard”. All the way through Revelation, what he sees and what he hears interprets each other.

He’s heard the census taken of this disciplined, Jewish spiritual army, and he turns to see who they are. Lo and behold, he sees people from every tribe, language, and nation that no one could count. There’s a paradox: they had just been counted out, but you can’t count them. Well, Revelation is full of stuff like that. Like around the throne is a rainbow and it’s emerald. Hang on, rainbows aren’t emerald, they’re multicolored. So he’s telling us things through this paradox. This temple dwelling, presence-of-God people in discipline now are uncountable. Why is that? Because it’s the fulfillment of the promise of Abraham.

CREATION IS FULLY RESTORED IN JESUS

What does God say to Abraham? Your descendants will be more than the sand on the shore, more than the stars in the sky; they’ll be uncountable. The promise of Abraham is fulfilled in the person of Jesus. Here’s the fascinating thing. Whereas in the Old Testament, God’s people were saved out of every nation, now in the new covenant in Jesus, God’s people are saved from every nation. You see the difference?

In the Old Testament, God’s people were separated, called out to be a distinctive people out of every tribe, language, people or nation. But now, in Jesus, the people of God are from every tribe, language, and nation. They’re still distinctive from the people around them, but now they’re black, and they’re white and every color under the sun. They speak every language. They live in every state and every culture.

That’s why this room looks diverse. That’s why the people of God are a bit of an odd mix. And that is the purpose, because you see, the grace of God given to Israel could not be contained in ethnic boundaries, and in Jesus, it has flowed over. 

This is the big story in the Book of Acts. They’re wrestling with the fact that the Jews told other Jews about the Jewish Messiah, Jesus. And then some Jews carelessly went and told Gentiles by mistake, and the Gentiles said, hey, what’s going on? What are we doing here? However, they realized this was always God’s plan from the very beginning. Israel was always meant to be a light to other nations. Israel was always meant to be a priestly people, and if you’re a priestly people, you do things for other people, right? You represent God to them, and you represent them to God. Israel as an independent nation was never God’s intention. 

God says, out of every nation you’ll be My treasured possession, the kingdom of priests. In Genesis there’s a catalog of nations, which lists people by every family, language, land, and nation. So it’s not just a covenant with Israel that has been restored, but the whole of creation which is now being renewed. That’s why Paul says to the Christians in Corinth, 2 Corinthians 5:17, “When anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation.” Every nation on earth is going to be renewed in Jesus, which is exciting. It’s wonderful.

THE MYSTERY OF SUFFERING

But there’s another side to this vision in Revelation, because the elder says to John, Who are these people? John responds, I don’t know, you know, and the elder says, These are the ones who have come out of the Great Tribulation. They come out of a great suffering, they come out of the great ordeal. In a world facing judgment, in the interval of grace, we have here in Revelation a picture of a diverse people, drawn from every nation and culture, walking through suffering in the footsteps of their master. These are the ones wearing white.

Why are they wearing white? Because they’ve washed their robes, which symbolize their life and their habits. They’ve washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. We live with suffering because we worship a suffering Savior who suffered for us and rose again. All the way through scripture, the destiny of who we are is wrapped up in suffering. Yes, we live in victory. Yes, we know about the healing power of God. Yes, we see answers to prayer. And yet paradoxically, alongside that, we also experience suffering. We can’t escape it. We’re not immune.

There’s a mystery to suffering. I think it’s fascinating that we have lots of philosophers and theologians trying to solve the problem of suffering and the answer to questions like: what is God doing? Should we experience healing? What happens when God doesn’t answer prayer? And in the one book in the Bible, the Book of Job, where all those questions are explored, what is God’s answer in the end? We don’t know the answer. It’s a mystery. There is a mystery in suffering.

We just heard from really good friends of ours; the husband, Andy, I was in ministry with. A few years ago, his brother, who was also a pastor, and who always struggled with depression, sadly took his own life. What do we say to that? What do we say in the face of this tragedy?

And we just heard this morning that this person’s daughter, who was about to get married in May, her fiance died of a heart attack at age 26. What do we say? We’re not immune from suffering, and we suffer in the world. Jesus said, in this world, you will have tribulation. We suffer with the world as well. We’re not just taken apart from these four horsemen running wild; we do experience the suffering alongside the glory.

I will never forget a colleague of mine named Nick, who I knew back when I was teaching in a seminary for 10 years. Nick was ordained in the Church of England, and he studied in Cambridge, then got married. One day they’re about to get ordained and go and join a church. His wife was driving on the way there, and somehow she got distracted, the car went off the road, and she was killed three weeks before he was going to be ordained. The bishop said to him, “I don’t know what to do. I’ll ordain you anyway.”

Nick said that he went through his first years of ministry in a fog of bereavement. He hardly remembers it. And yet, if you meet him today, you will not meet a more loving, caring, welcoming pastor. He is someone where if you’re in his presence, you just feel that he has this huge space of compassion to welcome you into. He has a really profound ministry. We can never say that his suffering and his loss were worth it. And yet somehow, God has done something with that by His grace.

THE PROMISE OF TRIBULATION AND VICTORY

Tribulation is our lot; we cannot escape it in this world. John, in the beginning of the Book of Revelation, he introduced himself and said, What do I share with you in Jesus? I’m your brother. That’s the first he says. I’m your brother with you in tribulation and in Kingdom. In tribulation but also in Kingdom because we live between the ages, between Jesus’s ascension and His return. In this overlap of the ages, we will always experience the Kingdom of God, the wonders of healing, and the answers to prayer, but also the mystery of suffering. They live alongside one another.

That’s why as God’s people we must always be ready to pray for healing, always be ready to see God at work, but also ready to create that space of welcome to those who are in pain. In the end, our healing will finally come when Jesus returns and not before, so we’re always going to live with that. 

Paul said the same thing during his first missionary journey in Acts chapter 14. The Spirit has spoken to the Church of Antioch in chapter 13: “Set aside for me Paul and Barnabas for the ministry I have for them.” They go off on this ministry, they go and preach the gospel. Luke summarizes this message, which is, through many tribulations we must enter the Kingdom of God. Have you tried that as an evangelistic strategy? Go out into Fort Collins and say, “Come listen to our Pastor Greg Sanders and you’ll know what suffering is really like!” And yet that was the message.

In Mark chapter 10, Jesus says to the rich young ruler, “You lack one thing—Sell all you have and give it to the poor,” and the young man goes away sad. Peter says, “But Jesus, what about us? We’ve left everything.” Jesus says, “Yes, and when you’ve given up houses and brothers and sisters, you will receive them tenfold.” That’s not a prosperity gospel. What that means is in the community of faith, what’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is yours. That’s how we experience the abundance of the Kingdom, and with it, persecutions. In this world, you will have tribulation. “But,” says Jesus in John 16, “Take heart, for I have overcome the world.” One day, when He returns, we’ll see His victory on full and glorious display. 

THE POWER OF PRAISE

In Revelation verses 15-17, it says, “For this reason, they are before the throne of God and worship Him day and night within His temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat, for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and He will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

In a world facing judgment, in the interval of grace, we’re a picture of God’s priestly people praising Him in confident hope of what is to come. Every Sunday morning, you come to church and praise God with songs and worship. Isn’t it fascinating that the Book of Revelation, which has both the most vivid picture of God on the throne, but also has the most vivid picture of the swirling chaos of the world, is the book most full of praise? Every time there’s a vision, John then sees people praising. Every time something disastrous happens, there’s also praise. Every time he has a new revelation of God, there’s praise.

When we worship, we say, “Hallelujah,” right? Why? Hallelujah is a Hebrew phrase. Where did we learn that from? We learned it from the Book of Revelation. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew phrase hallelujah is translated as “praise the Lord.” You only say hallelujah because John wrote that phrase, hallelujah, in Greek in the Book of Revelation. 

Jesus is Alpha and Omega, right? How do we know that? From the Book of Revelation. It’s saturated with praise. Praise does great things for us, but praise is the right response to God regardless. “Yet I will praise Him,” says Job. 

There’s a fantastic story in apartheid South Africa where the South African army was surrounding a church—I think it was Desmond Tutu in the service—and what do they do in the face of the threat of violence? They came out of the church singing praises to God. The soldiers didn’t know what to do or how to respond. Praise literally disarmed them. How about that?

There’s a challenging story in Time Magazine this week, about a Baptist pastor in the Ukraine who was taken captive by Russian soldiers. “After they beat Azat Azatyan so bad blood came out of his ears; after they sent electric shocks up his genitals; after they wacked him with pipes and truncheons, the Russians began to interrogate him about his faith. ‘When did you become a Baptist?'” He tried to explain that there was freedom of religion in Ukraine. He was dragged back to the makeshift cell, and the other inmates wondered how he could be religious when the punishments meted out to him were so much worse than them. He answered, “God is always with me,” and he prayed for his other inmates that they would not be treated like he was. The Russians left them alone, but they beat him again. 

Praise changes the world. It creates an alternative reality. Look at the army of Israel in the face of Goliath. What do they see? They see a giant man who’s going to beat them up. What does David say? “I come to you in the name of the God of Israel.” Our praise is testimony. Our praise is our priestly offering to the world. 

There’s a man born blind in John 9, and the Pharisees come to him and say, what’s happened? Who did this? And he says, I don’t know. All I know is that I was blind, and now I see. That was enough for him to say. Praise builds us in community because we sing together the same song.

STEPPING INTO A FUTURE HOPE

This morning, we sang the song “Hungry I Come to You.” It’s an older song. When I first went to the job in a ceremony 20 years ago, it was a difficult context. I was given a difficult job. I didn’t quite know what I was doing. We had to uproot the family. It was very disruptive, but God comforted me in praise, and that was one of the songs I sang. I knew that God would sustain me and God would feed me.

There’s an amazing passage in Exodus, where Moses and 70 elders go up on Mount Sinai. They are in the presence of God and it says, “and they ate and drank.” There’s a Jewish tradition which says, that’s not food, they fed on the presence of God. When we praise Him, He feeds us and sustains us.

But notice that reply by the elder in verses 15-17. Did you notice the tense of the verbs? “For this reason, they are before the throne of God and worship Him day and night within His temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat, for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and He will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Yes, we praise God for what He’s done. The danger is that it just becomes nostalgia. Yes, we praise God for the signs we see of Him working now. The danger is that it’s triumphalism. Most of all, we praise God for what He will do. That one day, He will wipe every tear from us. One day, He will heal this world. One day, He will come, and we will be with Him in His living presence. That’s why we praise God.

Why do we meet today? What day of the week is it today? First it’s Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and then Sunday. We meet on the eighth day of the week. Why? Because this age that we live in, with its suffering and its travails, this age has seven days. We need to worship on the eighth day. We meet to worship on the first day of the new creation. It’s not so much we’re traveling up to Heaven, it’s that we’re stepping into the future. When we praise God, we’re stepping into that future hope that we know He will be with us, and everything will be made new, and every tear will be wiped away.

I’d like to finish with an experience I had earlier this week. So we stayed with some friends down in Manitou Springs. We’re obviously from a different timezone and we’d just landed. And the one thing I know is that to get into the timezone of the place you go to, you need to get up early, get some sunshine, and that sort of resets your circadian rhythm. So I got up early, and the sun hadn’t risen yet. But I could look at the mountains behind me, and I could see that the sunlight was shining just on the top of the mountain. As I stood and I looked, I knew the sun must be rising because I could see that the sunlight was coming lower and lower. I knew that if I waited long enough, the sun would shine on me.

It reminded me of a beautiful verse in Luke chapter one, in Zacharias’s lovely hymn of praise that we call the Benedictus. He says, “In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn, from on high, will break upon us to shine on those who dwell in the darkness of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Friends, this is what God has called us to be. He’s called us to be those things which the sunlight is just beginning to break on.

God calls us to be this threefold people. He calls us to be a holy army, marching and disciplined. He calls us to be a diverse people suffering in this world. He calls us to be a people of praise. Why? Because we are like that mountain where the sun is shining. We pray that others will see the light; not the light of us, but they’ll see the light of God. And when they see that, they’ll turn, and they’ll see the light for themselves. This is the hope that God has called us to. Praise Him. Amen.