Revelation Chapter 7

Pentecost 6 year C  Sermon

‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’”

Have you ever laughed till you cried?

You know nothing brings on the jokes among ministers
like the book of Revelation.

A friend of mine who’s just been appointed head of the school of theology at Laidlaw College…it used to be call the Bible College of New Zealand…

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sent me this graph about preaching on Revelation
when I told him we were doing a series on it.
I laughed out loud when I saw it.

[Speak to the graph]

Remember it took me eleven years in ministry to have the courage to tackle the book of Revelation…

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Because this is what it looked like to me! The book is misunderstood… and abused… and used by non-believers
as an instrument of ridicule of the Christian faith…

Worse it’s been used to deceive the world…

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instead of the truth about our God of love and grace revealed in Jesus Christ…Irresponsible teachers have used Revelation to promote a theology of fear…telling people they must live their lives to avoid God’s punishment…in that fiery rubbish dump outside Jerusalem… they called hell.

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But we now know John is given his vision…
as a message of hope for suffering humanity…particularly those who continue to suffer…the lies and violence and greed and injustice present in our world…

We’ve heard how… toward the end of the first century
things were worse than ever for those who continued
to insist on the cosmic authority of God…
over the divine claims of Caesar…

Those who didn’t flee… were cut down in the
fall of Jerusalem, later persecuted for sport… in the arenas of Rome…taxed into starvation for the upkeep Caesar’s armies

The result was famine and financial hardship for ordinary people, leading to disease, further suffering and death. 

And if you were into signs and portents…
of the end of the world… you’d be utterly convinced by the great cloud of ash… sweeping across the sea
turning the sun red…after the eruption of Mt Vesuvius.

Hope was desperately needed to keep the new covenant movement… of Jesus followers… from giving up…

Heavenly throne room slide

And so we find John on Patmos…transported a vision
into God’s dimension… outside time and space as we know it…and given a message for all creation…

Do not despair…the purposes of God have been accomplished and are being accomplished…
by the Lamb of God…
who alone is worthy…to open the scroll of God’s purposes
to reveal God’s perfect design for all creation,
including you and me.

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But first as we heard last week in Barbara’s
excellent sermon on Chapter 6…the seals that prevent God’s purposes being accomplished… must be broken
and what they conceal …exposed to the light.

And only the Lamb of God can break them…only the lamb can break the power of evil that prevents God’s purposes from being realised. 

And we learned … far from ‘unleashing’ evil into the world Jesus cosmic role… is to name it for what it is…
expose it to the light…and consume its power through love. 

A divine work…that transcends time and space …
accomplished in a dimension we can not see…
except by its fruit …a divine… on-going and eternal dimension …that intersects our reality in every age…in the life and death and victory of Jesus…as evil is brought into the light…

And whether cosmic or personal …this salvation …
this restoration to wholeness… is accomplished
when we let Jesus open our eyes to it.

We’ve learned this message of hope is for everyone…and as Barbara reminded us last week…we have a choice…we can work with Jesus to expose the powers and principalities at work against God’s purposes in the world… and in our own self-deceiving lives…or we can remain part of the problem…

And when we allow Jesus to shine his light on the darkness…on the scroll of God’s purposes for our lives …our humanity is unfurled…into a beautiful reality…
knowing the evils of this world may hurt our bodies,
but can never ever touch that part of us which is In Christ…

Revelation Chapter 7 slide
Ok drum roll into Chapter seven…

We now have a clear view of the evil hidden by the seals
that keep God’s purposes from being fully accomplished …

The lies, the violence the greed and death…persecution and catastrophic cosmic events…

So far the Lamb of God has opened six of the seven seals …you can just imagine the little clusters of fearful Christians huddled in the dark… listening by firelight…
as John’s vision is read out to them…waiting for a seventh possibly more terrifying… obstacle to God’s purposes…
to be revealed. [pause]

But before the seventh seal is opened by the Lamb …

listen to this…

Angels slide

After this…John says… I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds…
and another angel coming from the east holding… [pause]
the seal of the living God.

This angel called out to the other four that had power to harm the earth:

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Don’t harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.

Perhaps a violent wind will scorch the earth, stir up the sea and uproot the trees…
but more likely a great shaking will pass through the world of human affairs… as powers and principalities are exposed for what they are… by the Lamb of God.

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And God’s people need to be reassured …
they’ll come through this time of tribulation safely…

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And after the Angels and the four winds and the fifth Angel with the seal of the living God which has yet to be opened
by the Lamb………John sees before him…

a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and holding palm branches and they cried out in a loud voice:

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Salvation belongs to our God… who sits on the throne,

and to the Lamb. [pause]

Now John uses the rich symbolism of Israel’s identity
to mark out those who through the Messiah…
belong to God’s renewed and rescued people…
no matter what their ancestry…Twelve thousand times twelve

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yes…a multitude of God’s people may not escape suffering …neither did the lamb of God. But they will come through
to safety on the other side…

just as Jesus… passed though death
to the immortal physical life of the resurrection.

One small thing here… remains a mystery to me…
and to most biblical scholars…why does John list twelve tribes adding Manasseh and dropping the tribe of Dan.
Let me know when you figure it out.

before the seventh seal is opened… God’s good creation is being protected…by a fierce and purifying wind… God won’t allow the rising tide of evil… to jeopardise the ultimate rescue of his children…

The message in the vision is clear…the events that surround them may be terrifying… but they may rest assured…
God has them in his care.

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And all the angels and elders and four living creatures around the throne fell down and worshiped God.

And John heard them saying:

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Amen!

Praise and glory

and wisdom and thanks and honour

and power and strength

be to our God for ever and ever.

Amen!”

And then John and the Elder play that little game again where the Elder asks John to interpret who the multitude are

and John says back to him ‘You know’…and the elder replies

These are the ones who survived the great tribulation; they washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. That’s why they serve God day and night for the one who sits on the throne shelters them with his presence…

The communities to whom John will relate his vision
are about to face a nightmare… and they must be ready for it. What John is given… is a vision of the utter truth…
against which their suffering must be measured…

the ultimate reality that they must cling to with dear life…
the reality that the creator God and the lamb
have already won the victory…

This means those who follow the lamb are ultimately rescued from harm and free to worship and praise in the presence of the living God. And in John’s vision…they can’t contain their enthusiasm and their delight and their gratitude to God.

Salvation belongs to our God.

Here the word salvation literally means…rescue.
the realisation that everything good and noble and powerful and wise… comes from God…the one God from whom all blessings flow.

Who is this multitude…the Elder answers…they’re the ones who’ve come through the great suffering.

Their clothes are white… not because they’re perfect, or lived lives of holiness and purity…but because the lamb…

the sacrificial Passover-like death… of Jesus himself…

has rescued them from slavery… to sin…
enabling them to stand… in the presence of the living God.

No need to wait…no need for a lengthy post-mortem clean up period …all that is required has been done.

Not only are they welcome in God’s presence…but God’s presence will shelter them…literally…
this word means God will pitch his tent over them…
as God did the Israelites in the wilderness.

And right here in his glorious vision… John glimpses the future of the new Jerusalem itself. Time collapses… present and future overlap and interlock …and already the blessings of the final community of God… are being experienced by those about to suffer…

And in a wonderful role reversal…
the lamb becomes a shepherd…assuming the royal role
of John ten…the good shepherd…the divine shepherd of the 23^rd psalm…who leads his people to springs of living water.

And the Elder reveals…
‘Never again will they hunger

    never again will they thirst.

The sun will not beat down on them,

    nor any scorching heat.

For the Lamb at the centre of the throne

    will be their shepherd

he will lead them to springs of living water.

    And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

There is an intimacy to this promise that rules out every crazy fearful prediction of the end of the world. A tender compassion that banishes all attempts to create God in our own image…

Yes God is angry with all those who deface and defile the beauty and goodness of creation…yes God is angry with those who make the lives of their fellow creatures miserable and wretched…

but God’s judgment on this… is to overcome evil with love. And again we have a choice…

Will we put our faith in the God of salvation and hope

or will we follow the gods of destruction.

For our God… revealed ultimately by Jesus on the cross…
is no faceless heavenly bureaucrat with a big book
nor a violent celestial bully…

our God is the one whose heart full of the goodness and mercy…that follows us all the days of our lives…whose most characteristic gesture… is to come down in person…
and wipe away every tear… from every eye.