It's so great to be with you guys for Christmas Eve.
A lot of people are traveling in our church
because we have a very young church.
I think maybe 10 years or so,
more people will be traveling back here
because you guys will have maybe families and roots here.
But for now, a lot of people travel for Christmas.
Today is the last day of Advent,
and tomorrow is Christmas, as you know.
And Advent means arrival or coming.
It's a season in the church's calendar
where we remember the first coming of Jesus
to redeem his people
and also anticipate the second coming of Jesus
to consummate the kingdom of God
and bring his final judgment.
So it's appropriate that we're in Revelation 7 this morning.
We've been in the book of Revelation for the last couple months,
and this passage looks back at the redemption of Christ
that accomplishes the first coming,
but also looks ahead to the final judgment
and the vindication of God's people.
So if you have your Bibles,
please turn with me to Revelation 7.
If you don't have a Bible, please raise your hand.
We'd love to give you a copy that you could have
and you could use while you're here.
We pray for the reading and preaching of God's word.
Father, it's a privilege once again to stand in your presence,
to be able to worship you
as members of a local church together,
but also as members of the numberless strong
throughout the ages and all over the world
who belong to you and worship you.
Impress upon us this morning that great privilege
and remind us again of the great love that you showed us
in sending Jesus to die as the sacrificial lamb
so that we might be washed clean by his blood.
build us up as your people,
as your body, as your church,
we ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.
If you are able, please stand for the reading of God's word
from Revelation 7.
After this, I saw four angels
standing at the four corners of the earth,
holding back the four winds of the earth
that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree.
Then I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun
with the seal of the living God.
And he called with a loud voice to the four angels
who had been given power to harm earth and sea,
saying,
Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees
until we have sealed the servants of our God
on their foreheads.
And I heard the number of the sealed,
144,000 sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel.
12,000 from the tribe of Judah were sealed.
12,000 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 were sealed.
After this I looked and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.
Clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice,
Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.
And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures,
and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, saying, 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?
These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation.
They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
Therefore they are before the throne of God and serve Him day and night in His temple,
and He who sits on the throne will shelter them with His presence.
They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more.
The sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat,
for the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd.
And He will guide them to springs of living water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
This is God's holy and authoritative word.
You may be seated.
Last week, Revelation 6 ended with John's prophetic vision of God's end time judgment,
and that which began,
inhabitants of the earth, both the great and the small, the kings and the rulers,
all of them hiding from the Lord and His judgment,
because the great day of the wrath has come, of His wrath has come.
And they asked this haunting question at the end of that chapter.
Who can stand?
In the face of the wrath of God, who can stand?
When the holy, holy, holy God brings His judgment to bear upon a sinful world,
who can stand?
And that's a question that reverberates throughout the Old Testament.
Psalm 130, verse 3 asks,
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities.
O Lord, who could stand?
Nahum chapter 1, verse 6 says,
Who can stand before His indignation?
Who can endure the heat of His anger?
Sometimes people think that the second coming of Jesus will be similar to the Santa Claus coming to town.
He's making a list and checking it twice.
Gotta find out who's naughty and nice.
The nice ones will get prizes, and the naughty ones will get none.
The difference is that while it's possible to be nice enough to meet Santa's fictional standards,
it is not possible to meet God's real, perfect standards.
No creature, it says in Hebrews 4.13, is hidden from God's sight.
But all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.
How would you like being utterly naked and exposed before the all-seeing eyes of God?
It's a terrifying prospect.
The things that you browse on the internet with the incognito window.
The things that you mutter under your breath when no one is listening.
The things that you do in secret when no one else is watching.
Even the hidden thoughts of your mind.
They're all out in the open to the all-seeing eyes of God.
That's why the psalmist despairs in Psalm 130, verse 3.
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who can stand?
No one can stand.
But thankfully, it's followed by verse 4, which says,
But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared.
If God should mark our iniquities, none of us could stand in the presence of God.
But it's because there is forgiveness in God through Jesus Christ that we can have hope.
That's the main point of this chapter in Revelation 7.
It answers that question posed at the end of Revelation 6.
Who can stand?
And it answers that by saying that we can stand before the throne of God and before the Lamb
because we have been sealed by God and because we have washed our robes in the blood of the Lamb.
This passage describes the people of God in glorious terms.
First, it tells us that we are sealed in verses 1 to 8
and that we are standing before God's presence in verses 9 to 14.
And finally, that we are sheltered and shepherded by God himself in verses 15 to 17.
We'll look at those things in turn.
First, the people of God are those who are sealed.
John begins in verse 1.
After this, I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth,
holding back the four winds of the earth,
that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree.
So when you see words like after this in Revelation,
you shouldn't think time and like chronological sequence.
Rather, you should just think of it as different scenes and different visions
like you would see in a movie or in a book that you're reading,
which can jump from different time and place to give you different angles or perspectives on what's happening.
And so this is not chronologically after what happened in chapter 6.
There's a repetition of the number 4,
and the numbers are very significant in this book because they have symbolic import.
And the number 4 consistently represents universality.
And so four corners then are referenced to the entire earth.
It encompasses the north, the south, and the east, and the west.
All four directions of the compass.
And then the four angels then standing at the four corners of the earth
are those who have rule and superintendence over the earth.
And they are holding back the four winds of the earth so that they don't blow against and harm the earth
or the sea or the trees until the servants of God are sealed on their foreheads.
Later in Revelation chapter 8, we'll see the first two trumpets blown of judgments,
God's judgments, and they will affect precisely those things,
the earth, the trees, and the seas.
And so this angel is saying you need to hold back until the people of God have been sealed.
And that means the sealing here takes place before the judgments of God.
And that means this sealing also takes place before the judgments we read about in chapter 6
because these judgments are cyclical and not sequential.
The four angels who have control over the four winds of the earth
likely parallel the four horsemen of divine judgment we saw in chapter 6.
The four horsemen in Revelation 6 represent conquest, war, famine, and death.
And they're patterned after the four horsemen of the apocalypse we see in Zechariah 6, 1 to 8.
And interestingly enough, in that original context in Zechariah 6,
the four horsemen are described as going out to the four winds of heaven.
So four horsemen and four winds mentioned here in this chapter,
so they're parallel.
So likely the four angels here are parallel to the four horsemen we saw in chapter 6.
But before that, those judgments are unleashed.
The servants of God are sealed on their foreheads with the seal of the living God.
What is this seal?
A seal serves two primary purposes.
One is identity, and two is security.
It serves to identify something as one's own, to indicate possession and ownership.
When a king takes a document and then impresses his seal upon it,
it becomes a royal decree that carries his authority wherever it goes.
It belongs to him.
When we put our own signatures on a check or a contract,
we're taking ownership of that and saying,
that belongs to me.
I stand by this.
A seal also serves to secure something, to close it off,
like when we seal an envelope so that its contents do not fall out,
or when the bank seals off a vault to keep it safe from robbers.
So the seal of the living God in this passage serves both of these functions.
The idea of the seal on the forehead comes from Ezekiel 9,
where God commands an angel to put a mark on the foreheads of people
who have not participated in the idolatry of the Israelites.
And so they are sealed as God's own,
and they are protected when the angel of judgment passes through
and strikes down the idolatrous people.
This is in Ezekiel 9.
And Ezekiel 9 passage, in turn, is alluding back to Exodus 12,
during the Passover, when God's people are marked or sealed on their doorposts
with the blood of the lamb,
and the angel of death, again, passes over them,
and instead goes and strikes down the idolatrous Egyptians.
We're given more details about this seal later on in chapter 14, verse 1,
and chapter 22, verse 4,
where we're told that the 144,000 had the lamb's name
and his father's name written on their foreheads.
So God is putting his name upon his people,
indicating ownership and possession,
as it was a common practice back in the day in the ancient world
for slaves to be marked on their foreheads
to indicate to whom they belong.
And so this is confirmed by the fact that these people,
the 144,000 are called the servants of God in verse 3.
So there's, as God's servants,
they're being marked out on their foreheads as belonging to him
with the name of God and the name of the lamb.
They're the ones who have been purchased or redeemed by God.
This is later imitated by Satan and his beast.
In Revelation 13, 17,
the beast also puts his own mark on his followers,
the idolaters.
And that mark is called the name of the beast
or the number of its name.
And so it's a counterfeit seal that the devil uses.
So everyone who belongs to Jesus,
the lamb of God,
has his name on his forehead,
and everyone else has the name of the beast on their forehead.
There is no middle ground.
There's no one in Revelation
that has no seal of any kind on their foreheads.
As Jesus said in Matthew 12, 30,
whoever is not with me is against me,
and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
If you abstain from making a decision,
if you withhold judgment,
that means you are not following Jesus Christ
as your Lord and Savior.
And that is a decision you have made
and a choice that you have made.
And there is no neutral ground in this cosmic battle
between the lamb and the dragon.
Whose side are you on?
If you have repented of your sins
and trust in Jesus for salvation,
if you have pledged your allegiance to Jesus,
then you have been sealed
with the name of God on your forehead.
It's not a literal mark.
As you can see,
I don't have a mark on my forehead.
Neither do you.
And Christians don't have physical marks.
Rather, this is a spiritual seal.
And other parts of scripture confirm that.
Ephesians 1, 13 to 14 says this,
when we heard the word of truth,
the gospel of our salvation,
and believed in Jesus,
we were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,
who is the guarantee of our inheritance
until God redeems his possession.
The Holy Spirit is the seal of God upon our souls
that bears witness to our spirit
that we are children of God,
that we belong to him.
I like to tell the story when I speak of this.
In Toy Story 3,
when 17-year-old Andy is about to leave for college,
he puts his toys in a trash bag
in hopes that he will,
he's planning to bring it up to the attic
so that he can keep it in storage
and get back to it until it finds a better home
or whatnot.
But because it's in a trash bag,
his mom thinks that it's trash
that he forgot to take out,
and so she grabs it
and then throws it out
and puts it in a garbage pickup truck.
And the toys are dejected
because they think that Andy threw them out.
They're like,
Andy doesn't want us anymore.
He's too old.
And so they escape,
seeking,
trying to find a new home
where they can be loved by other children.
And they don't know
that they weren't meant to be thrown out,
and only toy that knows this is Woody,
who was left out of the trash bag,
and Woody saw everything that happened.
And so Woody tracks these toys down,
and these toys are despondent.
They don't want to go back to Andy.
They're like,
Andy doesn't want us.
And at that point,
Woody tells them,
hey, look under your bus.
Look, Jesse, you too.
Whose name is written there?
He's trying to remind the other toys.
You're not a castaway toy.
You're not a piece of trash.
You have an owner
who cherishes you and loves you
and owns you and wants you.
We have to go back to him.
That's what the Holy Spirit does for us.
When we believe in the goodness of Jesus Christ,
God seals us with his spirit,
and his spirit declares to our spirit,
mine, my child, my son, and my daughter.
Fear not, for I have redeemed you.
I have called you by name,
and you are mine.
Fear not, for I am with you,
everyone who is called by my name.
And that seal of God is unbreakable.
It's unerasable.
It's uncancellable.
That's why the Holy Spirit is called our guarantee.
That's in the passage I cited earlier,
Ephesians 1.
That word guarantee literally means down payment.
It refers to a deposit that you make,
a down payment that you pay
to get legal claim over something,
and to guarantee that the rest of the payment is coming.
So the fact that we have the Holy Spirit now
guarantees that the rest of our heavenly inheritance
is surely coming.
Amen.
In this way, the Holy Spirit not only identifies us
as God's own,
he also secures us with himself as a divine seal.
But in the same way that the seal is not a physical seal,
but a spiritual seal,
the protection, the security that the seal brings
is not a physical one, but a spiritual one.
We know this because in Revelation 6,
we saw that many Christians are ordained to be killed
on earth by the enemies of God to die as martyrs.
We know this because later in Revelation 13, 7,
Satan's beast is allowed to make war on the saints
and to conquer them.
That means Christians die while we bear witness to Jesus.
That means Christians get killed because we say,
no, I will not take on the mark of the beast
because I am sealed with the mark of the living God.
So we are not given physical protection,
but he does promise here invincible spiritual protection.
That God will, by his power, protect and preserve us
in saving faith until the end.
This is a very important doctrine
that I think many of us need to be reminded of.
The scripture does teach, on the one hand,
the perseverance of the saints,
which is an important and biblical doctrine
that emphasizes the need for God's people
to persevere and endure in faith and obedience
till the end.
All those of us who truly belong to God
will persevere till the end,
but it requires hard work and requires effort.
And we're reminded over and over again
throughout Revelation 2 and 3
that we have to conquer by faithfully following Jesus
and living in patient endurance
and through suffering and tribulations,
and then we must hold fast to Christ's name
and not deny him his faith.
And we have to be faithful even unto death.
Yes, we have to persevere on the one hand.
But on the other hand,
scripture also teaches us of the preservation of the saints,
which emphasizes that God will preserve his own people
with his power until the end.
In Romans 8, 29 to 30,
we see a glorious chain of salvation.
Those whom God foreknew,
he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.
You know that he might be the firstborn,
he might be firstborn among the many brothers.
And those whom he predestined,
he also called,
and those whom he called,
he also justified,
and those whom he justified,
he also glorified.
From electing for knowledge to predestination,
from predestination to effectual calling,
from calling to justification,
and justification to glorification,
there is no broken link
in that glorious chain of God's salvation.
Salvation belongs to the Lord
from the beginning to the end.
Jesus says of all those whom he saves
in John 6, 37 to 39,
all that the Father gives me
will come to me,
and whoever comes to me
I will never cast out.
For I have come down from heaven
not to do my own will,
but the will of him who sent me,
and this is the will of him who sent me,
that I should lose nothing,
no one of all that he has given me,
but raise them up on the last day.
Note the unbroken sequence of events once again.
God the Father gives to the Son,
and all that God the Father gives to the Son
come to the Son without fail,
and all those who come to the Son without fail
will be preserved without fail
till the resurrection,
because Jesus loses none,
nothing of those who have been given to him.
That's why he says in John 10, 28,
I give them eternal life,
and they will never perish,
and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
Who dares,
who dares to try to pry open
the mighty hand
of the conquering line of Judah,
in which the saints of God securely rest?
The New Testament epistles
are filled with assurances like this,
that God will sustain us till the end.
He will keep us till the end.
He will guard us through faith until the end.
He will keep us from the tribulation
that we face in this world.
I'm going to have to digress for a little bit,
and this part might be a little bit
harder to follow,
so I ask you to focus with me,
because it's just in the text,
I have to explain it,
because I've been taking for granted
up to this point
that the 144,000 represent all of God's people,
but that's a debated point,
so I'm going to prove that to you
over the next few minutes.
So for example,
Jehovah's Witnesses say
that there's a literal 144,000
of special anointed class of believers
who will reign with Christ
in his heavenly kingdom,
while the rest of the believers
will just get to be a part
of the restored paradise on earth.
Mormons contend
that the 144,000 sealed believers
refer only to the Mormon high priests,
and not to all believers,
but all of these misrepresent the truth,
and these are one of the many reasons
why they're not considered
to be in the mainstream of Christianity,
that are considered cults or outliers.
It's because all of these misrepresent the truth.
The 144,000 are not some special class
of elite Christians.
How do we know this?
They're called servants of God,
in verse three.
That expression occurs many times
throughout the book of Revelation,
and it never exclusively refers
to an elite group of Christians.
Rather, it says in Revelation 11, 18,
and 19, 5,
it defines the servants of God
as all those who fear God's name,
both small and great.
So it's not an elite group of people.
It includes the small and great.
And some Christians also argue
that 144,000 represent either a literal
or figurative number of ethnic Jews
who are a physical descendants of Jacob.
They think this because it says in verse four
that the 144,000 are sealed
from every tribe of the sons of Israel,
which is a reasonable inference.
But I still don't think it's a reference
to ethnic Jews or to the nation of Israel
for several reasons.
Reason number one is that already twice
in this book,
in chapter two, verse nine,
in chapter three, verse seven,
Jesus has denounced those
who say that they are Jews,
but are not,
but are a synagogue of Satan.
So we have been told in Revelation
that it's not Jews
who are ethnically Jews
who are true Jews,
but those who have faith in Jesus
who are the true Jews.
As Paul says in Romans 2, 27, 28,
no one is a Jew
who is merely one outwardly,
nor is circumcision outward and physical,
but a Jew is one inwardly,
and circumcision is a matter of the heart
by the spirit and not by the letter.
That's why throughout the New Testament,
James 1, 1, Galatians 6, 16,
the Christians, all Christians,
Jews and Gentiles,
are called the new Israel of God.
Reason number two
is that the tribal list here
in verses five to eight
is not a typical list
that you expect
of the 12 tribes of Israel.
One odd thing is that
the tribe of Judah is listed first,
and usually if you look
at the genealogical lists
of the sons of Israel,
Judah is not listed first
for the simple reason
that Judah was not the firstborn.
But here, Judah is placed at the head
because from Judah came,
the tribe of Judah came,
the lion of Judah,
lion from the tribe of Judah,
the conquering lion,
Jesus Christ,
who is the messianic king.
And moreover,
if it's meant to represent
ethnic Israel,
it's curious that it omits
tribes of Dan and Ephraim,
which is usually not the case
in these lists.
Usually in the lists
of the tribes,
12 tribes,
Levi and Joseph
are the two tribes
that are omitted.
Levi is omitted
because that's the priestly tribe,
and they don't get an inheritance
along with the other tribes
of Israel
because their inheritance
is God himself.
And Joseph is omitted
because at the end of his life,
Jacob adopted Joseph's two sons,
Manasseh and Ephraim,
as his own sons
in Genesis 48, verse five.
And so Joseph gets taken out
and those Joseph's two sons
get added is usually
how the list is comprised.
But this list instead
includes Manasseh
and includes Joseph
and includes Levi,
but it omits Dan and Ephraim.
And that's once again
for spiritual reasons.
In Judges 18 and 1 Kings 12,
we see that the tribe of Dan
becomes the center of idol worship
among the Israelites.
And then in Hosea 4.17
and Hosea 5.9,
God says that Ephraim
is joined to idols
and that for that reason,
Ephraim shall become
a desolation in the day
of punishment.
And so in light
of the recurring polemic
against idolatry
throughout Revelation,
this list is not making
a physical point,
a genealogical point.
It's making a spiritual
and theological point
that this is the purified group
of all of God's people,
the new Israel,
the true worshipers of God.
And the final reason
why I think this is referring
to all of God's people
is that we see
a surprising juxtaposition
between the depiction
of Jesus as a lion
of the tribe of Judah
and the slain lamb of God
we saw in chapter 5,
5 to 6, right?
It said,
John heard that there's a lion
of the tribe of Judah
who has conquered,
but then when he turned
to look and behold
this lion that he has heard about,
he saw the slain lamb of God.
So John uses this pattern
where what John hears
is then interpreted
and its understanding
of what he heard
is deepened by the vision
that he sees subsequently.
And so that surprising
juxtaposition is here
replicated almost exactly
because John heard
in verse 4 to 5
the number of the seal,
144,000 seal from every tribe
of the sons of Israel
starting with the 12,000
from the tribe of Judah
like the lion of Judah
that he heard.
But then he looks
and beholds in a vision
that the 144,000,
this is actually a great multitude
that no one could number
from every nation
and from all tribes
and peoples and languages
standing before the throne
and before the lamb.
So what he hears
is the 12 tribes of Israel.
What he sees
is the innumerable throng
from all nations
and tribes
and peoples and tongues.
And so again,
it's what he hears
is interpreted
by what he sees.
So then the 144,000
sealed from every tribe
of the sons of Israel
is a symbolic representation
of all of God's people
from all nations,
Jews and Gentiles
throughout all human history.
The number itself
is symbolic.
The number 12
often represents in the Bible
the people of God
because of the 12 tribes
of Israel
and the 12 apostles
of Christ
who are the foundation
of the church.
Number 1,000
is a figurative number
that represents a multitude.
So when you multiply 12
by 1,000
you get 12,000
and that's the number
of each of the sealed people
from each tribe.
And when you add that up
you get 144,000.
Likewise,
in Revelation 21
we see the New Jerusalem
which is a reference
to the church,
the bride of the Lamb.
and that New Jerusalem
has 12 gates
which have the names
of the 12 tribes of Israel
inscribed on them
and then its foundation
has the names
of the 12 apostles
of Jesus Christ
inscribed on them.
And so then
you multiply 12 times 12
and get 144.
You guys all know this.
And you get 1,000.
Multiply it by 1,000
you get this number.
So while the number
is symbolic,
the specific number
still shows us
that all of God's
sealed people
are numbered.
As we saw
in Revelation 6,
God has a specific
number of people
who will bear witness
to the name of Jesus
and will be martyred.
And until that number
is completed
and filled,
the full final judgment
and vindication
of God's people
will not come.
And so God has a number
and this should encourage us
not only that we are
numbered among them
but also to go and find
the rest of the number
among all the nations
because there's some people
from every tribe
and every nation
that will come
to know Jesus Christ
as their Lord and Savior.
It's kind of like,
I know it's Christmas,
not Easter,
but imagine an Easter egg hunt
and I usually hide the eggs,
let's say for my kids
and the kids come back,
hey, are there any eggs left?
And if I know exactly
how many eggs I hid,
then I can tell them,
yeah, keep looking
because there's still eggs left.
If they don't know,
then they'll stop,
they'll get discouraged,
oh, maybe there's nothing left, right?
In the same way,
when God tells us
that there's a number,
144,000,
a numberless multitude
among all tribes
and peoples and nations
and tongues
who are to come to know Jesus
and be saved,
that should propel us to go,
say, because we have faith
and confidence
that by God's will,
they will come to know Jesus.
So the saints of God
are sealed,
but we also see
in verses 9 to 14
that they are standing
and that's significant
because of what I mentioned
at the beginning
of the message,
the chapter 6
ended with that despairing question,
who can stand?
And here's the answer,
verse 9,
After this I looked
and behold,
a great multitude
that no one could number
from every nation,
from all tribes
and peoples
and languages,
standing before the throne
and before the Lamb,
clothed in white robes
with palm branches
in their hands.
Once the last of those
who have been sealed
come through
the great tribulation,
they will be
this innumerable multitude,
which is a fulfillment
of the promise
that God had given
to Abraham
to multiply his offspring
and through his offspring
all nations
will be blessed
and that's happened
through Jesus,
the promised messianic
offspring from Abraham.
This great multitude
from every nation
is standing before the throne
and before the Lamb
and that parallels
the description
of the slain Lamb of God
who was described
as standing
in chapter 5,
verse 6.
So in the same way
that Jesus,
the Lamb of God,
conquers sin
by being slain
for our sins
on the cross
and then being raised
from the dead.
His people follow
in His footsteps
and they bear
suffering witness
to Jesus
and are faithful
even unto death
and it's through that
they conquer
and come out
through the great tribulation
and can stand
before the presence
of God.
All of Christian life
is full of tribulation
and affliction
and we see that
all throughout the Bible.
However,
the expression
great tribulation
occurs only
here in Revelation
in the New Testament
and in Matthew 24, 21
which also speaks
of the end times,
the final end.
And so we are,
while we are all
in the midst
of tribulation
as Christians,
there will be
an intensified,
severe tribulation
that the Bible calls
the great tribulation
near the end
of human history
and that's an allusion
to Daniel 12,
verse 1.
There shall be
a time of trouble
such as never has been
since there was a nation
till that time.
But at that time
your people
shall be delivered.
Everyone whose name
shall be found
written in the book.
Even through
that great tribulation,
those who have
the seal of the living God
upon their foreheads
will be delivered.
Those are the ones
who conquer
by the blood of the Lamb
and the word
of their testimony.
So this is the answer
to that question.
Who can stand?
They can stand.
And that's why
they're clothed
in white robes
with palm branches
in their hands.
Palm branches
are a symbol of victory.
But even more significantly
for this context,
in Leviticus 23, 40,
God commanded Israelites
to celebrate
the Feast of Tabernacles
or the Feast of Boots
or Feast of Tents
known by many names
with palm branches.
They were to collect
palm branches
and use it to build
these makeshift tents
and dwell in them
for like six,
seven days
to commemorate
this time
that they were
in the wilderness
where they dwelled
in tents
as they were journeying
to the promised land
and they dwelled
in tents
and God himself
dwelled in a tent
called the Tabernacle
and dwelled among them,
among his people.
So it's celebrating that
and palm branches
are reminiscent
of that.
And this multitude
now gets not merely
a temporary dwelling
with God,
they get a permanent
and eternal dwelling
with God.
And how did that
come about?
Where did this multitude
get their white robes
of purity
and righteousness?
How were they
made worthy
to stand before
the throne of God?
God,
verse 14,
tells us,
they have washed
their robes
and made them white
in the blood
of the Lamb.
This is the only way
to get our robes
clean,
made white.
Isaiah 64, 6
accurately describes
the condition
of all sinners
apart from Christ.
It says that
we have all become
like one who is unclean
and all our righteous deeds
are like a polluted
garment.
This is not talking
about the righteous deeds
of the saints,
righteous deeds
of those who have
given their lives
to Christ.
It's talking about
the so-called
righteous deeds
or the grandstanding
and the virtue signaling
of people who have
rejected Christ
as their Savior.
Isaiah says
even their righteous deeds
are like a polluted garment.
This is why sinners
cannot save themselves.
They can never hope
to make their robes
white
by their own
good deeds.
I once saw
a moving photograph
of women
in India
washing clothes
manually
in the polluted water
of the Yamuna River.
That water is brown
in the picture.
It's brown
and it's murky
because it's
wastewater.
Urine
and feces
invested water
from the city
of Delhi.
The wastewater
from the city
of Delhi
gets directly
deposited
into the Yamuna.
And not only that,
in the picture
you see
the water
is covered
with floating
trash
all over.
This whole surface
is covered.
And yet,
there are these women
who have
their washing boards
and they're
washing their clothes
in that filthy river
because they don't
have any place
else to wash them.
Can you imagine
the stench,
the stains
on those clothes
as you're trying
to wash it clean?
That is the sad
spiritual reality
of all sinners
who seek
to justify themselves
before God.
trying to
cleanse
ourselves,
wash ourselves
but our robes
are filthy,
polluted garments.
You can't ever
get that thing
clean.
That's why
God had to
send his only son.
And that's
what Christmas
is all about.
John 1.14
says that
Jesus,
the word of God
became flesh
and dwelt
among us.
Translated more
literally,
that word dwelt
means he pitched
a tent
among us.
He pitched
a tabernacle.
He tabernacled
among us.
Remember I mentioned
the palm branches
are connected to
the feast
of tabernacles
because God
knew that
sinners like us
could never
on our own
make our way
to God
and stand
with our heads
held high
before the throne
of God
because he knew
we could never
do that.
God sent
his only son
down to us
to pitch
his tent
among us.
The infinite
son of God
confined
in space-time.
The one
by whom
the whole world
was created
becoming one
of the creatures.
The author
of history
enters the book
of history.
The king
and ruler
takes the form
of a servant
and he comes
not to be
served
but to serve
and to give
his life
as a ransom
for many.
Jesus died
on the cross
where we should
have died
in our place
as a substitutionary
lamb.
As we are told
in Revelation 1-5
Jesus loves us
and has freed us
from our sins
by his blood.
We can never
make our robes
white
by doing our best
to do good deeds
and be good people.
It's never enough
but the blood
of Jesus
God's son
cleanses us
from all sin.
This is why
the multitude
cry out
with a loud voice
in verse 10
salvation belongs
to our God
who sits on the throne
and to the lamb
and then in verses
11-12
the angels
who are standing
around the throne
join in their chorus
they fall on their faces
before the throne
and worship God
and then they say
amen
blessing
and glory
and wisdom
and thanksgiving
and honor
and power
and might
be to our God
forever and ever
amen
that's an expression
of affirmation
and acclamation
indeed it is so
yes
it is true
salvation belongs
to our God
amen
blessing
and glory
and wisdom
and thanksgiving
and honor
and power
and might belong
to our God
amen
all of heaven
sings worship
our God
is so unlike
the so called gods
of paganism
who quarantined
the rabble
far away
from their lofty dwelling
up in the mountain
Jesus has been among us
as one of us
so that he sympathizes
with us
with our weaknesses
with our failures
with our frailties
with our tribulations
because Jesus
pitched his tent
among us
and died
for us
and that's why
he's the only one
who can bring us
to God's heavenly temple
and so we see
in verses 15
to 17
our ultimate reward
we're being sheltered
and shepherded
by God
it says in verse 15
therefore they are
before the throne
of God
and serve him
day and night
in his temple
and he who sits
on the throne
will shelter them
with his presence
it's because our robes
have been washed white
in the blood of the lamb
that we can now stand
before the throne of God
and serve him
in his temple
but this is no literal temple
because we are told
later in Revelation 21-22
that the temple
is the Lord God
the Almighty
and the lamb
so this image
of us serving God
as priests
in his temple
is actually a picture
of our ultimate dwelling
with God
and our intimate
union
with God
so it says
that he who sits
on the throne
will shelter them
with his presence
and that word shelter
is just a different
translation
of the same Greek word
that was used
in John 1-14
to say that Jesus
pitched his tent
among us
he tabernacled
among us
Jesus pitched his tent
among us
and died for us
and was raised
from the dead
so that God
will ultimately
forevermore
pitch his tent
over us
with his
very presence
I look forward
to that
we're not going
to be aliens
forever
living in this world
whose values
and priorities
we don't recognize
having to tolerate
a world
where Christ
is not honored
not worshipped
we will not always
live as aliens
one day we'll be
in our father's country
and we'll be citizens
we're not always
going to be
pilgrims
we're pilgrims
now
we're journeying
through the wilderness
in temporary
dwelling places
longing
for our home
but one day
we will be home
God
is our home
his shelter
over us
his presence
our temple
and we'll also
be shepherded
by our Lord
Jesus Christ
the slain Lamb
of God
who is also
the good shepherd
it says in
verse 16 to 17
they shall hunger
no more
neither thirst
anymore
the sun shall not
strike them
nor any scorching
heat
for the Lamb
in the midst
of the throne
will be
their shepherd
he will guide them
to springs
of living water
and God
will wipe away
every tear
from their eyes
it's a fulfillment
of Isaiah 49
9 to 10
Isaiah 25
8
have you known
hunger in this life
have you known
thirst
in this life
have you been
beat down
by the scorching
heat
of life
have you known
tears
have you known
loss
have you known
suffering
have you known
persecution
all of these things
will be no more
Jesus our shepherd
will take us
to green pastures
make us lie down
beside still waters
he will wipe away
our tears
with his own hands
and death
shall be no more
neither shall
that be mourning
nor crying
nor pain
anymore
for the former
things
have passed away
Lord
Heavenly Father
we long
for that day
help us
not to lose sight
of our home
your shelter
Father
our good shepherd
who awaits us
in our eternal
dwellings
help us not
to lose sight
of that Father
so that
every day
we live here
and every day
we have tribulation
in this sinful world
that we
that we would
always have hope
thank you for that
hope Lord
in Jesus name
we pray
Amen