It's all about the Lamb

Revelation 7:9 After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. ¹⁰ And they cried out in a loud voice: "Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb." ¹¹ All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, ¹² saying: "Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!" ¹³ Then one of the elders asked me, "These in white robes-- who are they, and where did they come from?" ¹⁴ I answered, "Sir, you know." And he said, "These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 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 spread his tent over them. ¹⁶ Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. ¹⁷ For the Lamb at the center 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." 

 

In the revelation the apostle John received from Jesus Christ, while John was in exile on the tiny island of Patmos, John saw some amazing things.

He saw the four living creatures, angelic creatures with both human and animal features. They are a picture of all of creation praising God. The four living creatures are there. But this vision isn’t about them.

John saw the twenty-four elders, which are the representatives of the twelve tribes of Israel plus the twelve apostles. They are a picture of all believers of all times praising God. The twenty-four elders are there. But it isn’t about them.

John saw a great multitude that no one could count. He heard the mystical number of this countless amount of the redeemed as 144,000. He heard the roll call: 12,000 from every tribe of Israel. 12 times 12 times a perfected cube of 10. An Israel like there has never been and never will be on earth. God’s Israel, His chosen people, a holy nation, a people belonging to God (1 Peter 2:9). They bear the mark of God on their foreheads for they have received the water and Word poured over their heads and received the sign of the cross on their head and heart to mark them as redeemed children of God.

They are a great multitude that no one could count in all their diversity – from every nation, tribe, people and language. Their Babel divisions are finally ended (Genesis 11:9). They are finally one people under God. They sing with one voice. They wear white robes, the baptismal sign of their priestly purity. “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Galatians 3:27). They are covered with the white seamless robe of Jesus’ blood-stained righteousness. Behold a host arrayed in white! (CW: 550)

They are waving palm branches, the way the Israelites did every year at their high feast of Tabernacles when they marched around the temple grounds waving palm branches to signify God’s victory and their homecoming. A perpetual Palm Sunday.

Perhaps in that mass of perfected humanity, John was able to make out individual faces. There was his brother James, and Peter, and Paul, and the rest of the apostles – all martyred for their faith. There was the beheaded John the Baptist. There were some folks he had taught and buried, in their martyrdom. There was our sister in faith, Marilyn Acklam, who was recently called home. There was our brother in the faith, Glen Sherwood, who has received his transfer notice from Epiphany Lutheran Church to the Church Triumphant. The angels, the archangels, the white-robed saints, the company of heaven are all there. But it isn’t about them.

It is all about the Lamb at the center of the throne. The Lamb who is both the perfect sacrifice and the leading Shepherd. We are imperfect saints who have stained our white robes with the filth and blackness of sin. We are wayward lambs and straying sheep who have killed our Good Shepherd. Still, Jesus is the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep. He holds His lambs in His nail-pierced hands. He has His sheep around His nail-pierced feet. He gives the Gospel promise, “Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” He washes our robes in His baptismal waters and places His name on us. Then He promises, “I know my sheep and my sheep know me.”

It is all about the Lamb – who He is, what He has done for us and what He deserves from us. Maybe you have heard people ask, “What is heaven going to be like? What will we be doing for all eternity?” The answer from Revelation 7 is this: worship. What else is there to do when your labors are ended? We rejoice in an eternal Sabbath rest. So, you might say that our Sunday morning worship is a kind of preview, a foretaste of the feast to come, when our work is over and all there will be is worship. We are giving the Lamb the worship He deserves – now and throughout eternity.

But for those who do not have any time or interest in bowing before the Lamb to worship Him, we must ask, “What then are you preparing for?” If we do not make the time to rest from our work now in order to worship our Good Shepherd, then sadly, we will have an eternity of time absent of worshiping the Shepherd who laid down His life for us. There is nothing more important in this life or the next than the worship of the Lamb. It’s all about Him! It has always been about Him! And it will always be about Him!

John heard the liturgy of the saints and the angels. Not coincidentally, it sounds a bit like ours, at least the words do … because our liturgy borrows from theirs. They praise Christ and His Father for saving them: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” We praise the Lamb in our communion liturgy as they praised the Lamb sitting before them with a seven-fold doxology, “Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!”

In times of tragedy our American culture wants to pull all the heathen religions and Christian denominations together for interdenominational services and prayer vigils. These vigils and services are giving equal status to every fictitious god and every false doctrine. The Lamb wants no part of those services for His Father has commanded, “You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God, am a jealous God” (Deuteronomy 5:9). He will not share His praise and salvation with any false deity. And why? Because there is salvation in no other than this Jesus whom the Father sent to die and rise. His is the only Name by which we are saved (Acts 4:12). He alone is the Shepherd who laid down His life for uninterested sheep. He alone is the Lamb who died for those who slaughtered Him. He alone rescues and saves. He alone has slammed shut the gates of hell and He alone has opened wide the gates of heaven so His saints may stream in.

As John the Baptist pointed out and we sing in our communion liturgy, “Look the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” And how desperately we need this Lamb and His forgiveness! Look around you. It appears as if we are trying to tear our world apart at the seams. The killing of newborns in the Gosnell trial. The terrorism at the Boston Marathon. Ricin being sent in letters to President Obama and other officials. Three children dead in a fire after being locked in their house by their mom. A grandmother fatally shooting her teenage grandson. The holocaust of aborted babies for decades in America. Sadly, the stories continue in an endless news cycle. Every day we are shocked and surprised by the depravity and inhumanity of humans.

But we shouldn’t be.

Such cruel and defenseless actions are reprehensible. But no one can say that they are inhuman. Such senselessly vicious and evil acts are decidedly human. I heard someone recently say, “Imagine the worst thing you can. Make that ten times worse and you can be sure there are people doing that thing; a lot of folks will be doing that thing.”

Doesn’t that well describe what we see and feel all around us? People doing their own evil thing?! Now, you and I may not ever think of using ricin to hurt someone, but we tear people down all the time with our caustic words and acidic tongue. We may consider committing an act of terrorism, but our daily lives are often  lived following the great terrorist of the devil who destroys lives, instead of following the great hero, Jesus, who only wishes to rescue. We may not wish harm on our children, but we do harm them with our lack of discipline or our failure to teach the Christian faith or the poor example we set at home.

Think of that sin of which you are most ashamed of, the one you want to remain hidden and secret, buried deep in the closet with your other skeletons. Now I don't know what sin comes to you most easily. I don't know the sin, but I know you do have one or more sins that are effortless and wonderfully appealing. We aren’t as perfect – or even as good – as we like to believe. Sin comes all too naturally to natural-born sinners like us.

This is why all of us need a Shepherd who would lay down His life for His sheep. This is why all of us need a Lamb who would spill His blood for His precious lambs. In the person of the Redeemer, we have been given a Savior who – in spite of the intensity of our transgressions, in spite of the ease with which we embrace our wrongdoing – loves us and sacrificed Himself to rescue us.

To those who have fallen away, Jesus extends a sincere and blood-bought invitation to return. To those who have hearts and lives that have been corrupted by sin, Jesus offers the forgiveness He alone can extend. Indeed, there is no person whose sins are so large, so heinous that they cannot be forgiven by the Redeemer.

That is what is so important about the saints John’s sees. There is a secret to their purity. It is all about the Lamb. Their robes are washed in the Lamb’s blood. Only His blood will do. We, too, are counted among the saints around the Lamb’s throne. But it isn’t by our blood that we are there. It is not by our actions. Not the sweat of our labors or the tears of our contrition. There is no such thing as sinless saints … only forgiven ones. Like the multitude already gathered around the throne, we are not saints because of what we have done, but because of what Christ has done for us. We are baptized, clothed with Christ, covered with His holiness, redeemed by His blood. Jesus has reversed what happened in Eden when Adam and Eve feasted on the forbidden fruit. Now we can enjoy the marriage feast of the Lamb.

This vision applies to us. We are saints, almost like they are. They are those who have already been gathered to the other side of the veil. They have already received their Sabbath rest. We are still gathered on this side of the veil of death. We are still laboring under the cross of Christ. Our saintliness remains hidden under the sin and struggles and persecutions of this world. It isn’t a new reality, it will just be a new place for us.

Those saints gathered around the throne tabernacle under the tent of God’s presence forever, as Israel once did in the wilderness. He is their God, they are His people. Sun and scorching heat no longer beat down upon them. No worries of rain or flooding assail them. Their wilderness days are over. God is their shelter, for they are at home. You get a little taste of that each Sunday in the bread of Jesus’ body and the wine of His blood. No more hunger, no more thirst. They are filled and satisfied. It is finished.

This vision applies to us. The vision of the white-robed crowd worshiping Christ the Lamb is a picture of you gathered with all of Jesus’ baptized believers. That’s your future in Jesus, and it’s already your present through faith in Jesus. Already you are gathered in worship with the angels, the archangels, and all the company of heaven. They are worshiping with you. You are worshiping with them.

The great Gospel comfort is that no matter how bad things may get, no matter how many tears and how much blood is shed, no matter how much we may hunger and thirst, it all comes out good and right in Jesus. There will be tears now … and plenty of them. Tears of pain, tears of sorrow, tears of suffering. But in the end, those tears will be vindicated by the Lamb who died but lives. God will wipe away every tear from your eye.

For now, you must trust the Lamb. Take Him at His Word. Follow Him through suffering and death. Worship Him now, so you may worship Him for eternity. For it really is all about the Lamb. Amen.

To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and thanks and honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.