[Machine transcription]
Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. I believe in the one holy Christian and apostolic church. I believe in the communion of saints. I believe in the forgiveness of sins. I believe in the resurrection of the body. And I believe in the life everlasting. Those are the words that you have heard since you were a little girl or little boy. In fact, odds are your parents never had to teach it to you. You learned it because you heard other fellow saints of Christ confess it in the church. And though you may have been scribbling and eating Cheerios, you learned it. Nevertheless, this is the faith.
This morning, the reading that we’re preaching from is not the Gospel reading, but the first reading from John’s Revelation, the heavenly scene where this great hope is fleshed out for us. And my, how comforting these words are. Whether you have lost a loved one this year or in recent years, or whether life here as of late has been a real pain, this is your hope, this is your confidence in the midst of a world that will not give you anything else but lack of hope, lack of confidence. We who are considered fools by the world.
In John’s revelation, there is a picture that we are shown. And the amazing thing about this picture is that it is not a picture that will be. It’s a picture that is. There’s a difference. It is not a picture that will be. It is a picture that is. There before you, by John’s revelation, are you and I shown, you and I ourselves, standing arm in arm with the fellow saints who have preceded us and who will follow us, if that is God’s will, before he comes again. Standing shoulder to shoulder is you and me. We’re standing there shoulder to shoulder with Adam, Abraham, and the blessed. Cheek to cheek are we with all those who have preceded us in the faith.
For the church that we just confessed, we believe in one holy Christian and apostolic church. Not two. Not as if there’s one in heaven and one on earth. They are one and the same. We are there with them in this picture. It’s for your sake and for mine, for comfort and hope. Because we’re seen there as having completed the race, having fought the good fight, having been brought into eternity. That’s the picture. The end of the story. The good news.
Now the reality in which you and I live is that we have that now, but we don’t have it yet. We’re shown that now, but we’re not yet completely free of that which clings to you and to me, this decrepit thing known as the flesh. And we’re not completely free of a world that spurns us and calls all of us fools for our belief. And we’re not free having sin foisted upon us by other sinners, doing the same to them in turn, by our own selfishness, greed, and pride. These are the saints, the complete church of saints.
And these saints of whom you and I are counted a part… We’re not proclaimed to be such by a church council, but we’re proclaimed to be such by Christ’s council, having been baptized into Christ, having been joined to Him by what He did to us, having been fed the very flesh and blood of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Here at this place, this is what God has done to you. This is why you are called a saint. Amen. That’s why you are among those counted as believers in Christ, whom we still mourn, many of us, and also whom we will be mourned in our passing as well.
The scene talks about this great multitude, the entire church, the one holy Catholic and apostolic church. Catholic not because of a denomination. Catholic because, as John describes, a great multitude from every nation, all tribes and peoples, all languages, Catholic in that sense, from all time and from all places, not two, but one church gathered around that throne, dressed in white robes, not because, again, of anything that they have done or we have done, but because of what’s been done to us by the one who has washed us white, hence the white garments that hide us. Hence the white garments that hide you.
Although Satan loves to remind you about you, doesn’t he? He can do it in living technicolor, can’t he? They’re standing around that throne with the palm branches, which have always been the symbol of victory. Behold, a host arrayed in white, holding those palm branches and waving them in victory. A little Bible quiz for you. Out of the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which one or how many of them mentioned… that Jesus entered Jerusalem with palm branches being waved? All four? One? Which one? John and John alone mentions palm branches. The same one who wrote this revelation.
God was wanting to make it very clear to us and to a very difficult church that was being persecuted voraciously that there is hope. That we are counted as one who has already received the glory, but we have not yet. We are counted as being shoulder to shoulder with Adam, Abraham, Isaac, and all the rest, and yet we have not died yet. That’s the now and not yet of this beautiful scene.
But in the meantime, we are faced with many difficulties. That’s why he said, these are they who have come out of the great tribulation. A great tribulation indeed. Many of us can say, well, I’ve gone through a great tribulation. Absolutely. We all have. Who of us hasn’t? We’re a sinner living among other sinful people in a very sinful world. Who among us hasn’t? Who among us hasn’t had sin foisted upon us by someone else unjustly? Who among us haven’t done the same to someone else unjustly? Who among us haven’t had pride put upon us and a turnabout put pride on someone else unjustly?
All of us have gone through the Great Tribulation, though not the Great Tribulation. At least not yet. That’s supposed to be the last days before Christ returns again in glory to judge the living and the dead, another great thing that we believe to be true as we’ve confessed it, as Christians before us confessed, and as, according to God’s will, Christians after us will confess. Woo!
This great tribulation about which Matthew speaks, about things being turned upside down upon themselves, so many of our brothers and sisters who are in that picture with us, who have preceded us in chronological time, experienced it. Thrown to lions and animals and beasts. Laughed upon as they were burned on the stake. Scoffed at and ridiculed. And then all of a sudden embraced by an empire. And then became… No suffering for a time. No big deal. And yet pockets of believers all around the world have always suffered at some point in time or another.
And here we sit in the 21st century of America, not suffering too much. Life’s pretty good and fat for us. It’s pretty enjoyable. And yet we’ve had great tribulation in our life too, haven’t we? In the midst of such great tribulation were John’s words written by Christ, to make sure that we could see that this was the result of Christ bringing us through Great Tribulation. This present tense scene has some future verbs in it toward the end. This present tense scene of all people, of all time, of all races and genders. Languages are gathered around that throne where there is no more.
And boy, do we need to hear that in the midst of sometimes we get tired of the things in this world. We get tired of ourselves having to sleep with ourselves and put up with ourselves and think. We get tired of putting up with other people, too. They get tired of putting up with us. But in heaven, there’ll be no mores. No more putting up with anything because it will all be rid of us. Excised out.
I believe in the resurrection of the body, we confess. We will have a temporal, corporal body in heaven. It will live forever. It will have everything that you and I have now, except on a much grander scale. And the future tense in this passage is that we’re going to be given a shepherd. Having been baptized into Him, having been fed Him and drank Him, we’ve been given a shepherd who will lead us through the many valleys of the shadow of death, through the many tribulations, either brought on by our own sin or by someone else’s, we will be led to the springs of eternal and living life. That’s the promise.
In the midst of no mores that we look forward to, in the here and now, we will be led. Now, you and I may not be led down paths we choose. Left to ourselves, the paths we choose are always the more traveled and the easier trodden, not the less traveled and the difficult trodden. They’re paths of our choosing that we have selected and amongst many paths for our sake. As we’ve been learning in Sunday morning Bible class, those apostles were led down paths they didn’t choose. God chose it for them. The prophets of old that we’ve been talking about on Wednesday nights, they were led. And so you and I, too, are led down paths we didn’t choose.
And if we chose them from our point of view or thinking, we still didn’t choose them because He laid them out before us and drove us into that path with His shepherd’s voice leading us. And we bit off sometimes thinking more than we could chew. We didn’t. He put us into something that caused us to think that because we begin to realize how lack we have, how feebly we attempt, and how feeble we are in this world. This shepherd that we’ve been given and whose blood we’ve been made white is the one who will lead us through these valleys and tribulations.
But this shepherd that will lead us is the same shepherd who bought us first and foremost by his blood. It was not a divine fiat that he said, okay, y’all who believe in me, you’re good to go. It was by a sacrifice of great expense, not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood, and with His innocent suffering and death, that I may be His own, that I may live under Him in His kingdom, that I may serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, even as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true.
Yes, indeed, this is most certainly true. And the final no more, leading us as a shepherd, guiding us as a loving and gracious Savior, He will wipe away every tear from our eyes. That’s future tense. The people that we saw in the first paragraph had already had those tears wiped away because we’re there in that group already, now. And yet, not yet. That’s His promise.
As we live out the not yet here in this world, the promise stands. He will wipe away every tear from this world from our eyes. Finally. Oh, blessed communion. Amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
