So we are about halfway through our study of the book of Revelation.
So let me catch you guys up to speed of where we're at and what we've been saying.
What we've been saying is that this is John's letter at the end of the book, end of the Bible.
It's a letter to seven churches.
It is poetic, it is beautiful, the imagery is large and majestic.
Revelation 4, John begins to have a vision that he is writing down.
Now, like so many things in the Christian faith, there are a lot of opinions on the book of Revelation.
There are different views on this.
So if you remember, we had a couple really big terms that we can impress our friends with.
And the first term is this dispensational premillennial view, of which, just use that this week.
Your status intellectually with your friends will go up a little bit and make you feel better than them, which is always good.
This is what I would say is the kind of left-behind book series view, right?
Like this is a very common view.
Maybe you hold this view.
We welcome you.
Hey, we we're glad you're here if this is your view.
This is uh that view where it says, hey, there's gonna be a rapture, Christians are taken up to heaven, then there's gonna be some tribulation, and then Christ will reign for a thousand years, and then there's an eternal heaven.
Like I said, maybe your view, maybe you've heard that, maybe you don't care, right?
Maybe.
Probably you probably don't care.
Now, there's another view, and this is the view that we will be teaching and looking at.
And this is called the covenantal, amillennial view.
And this means that we see a lot of the book of Revelation as figurative.
We see the book of Revelation in terms of end times being these times that we are in the end times right now, that the book of Revelation is a symbolic writing about the time between Christ's first coming and second coming, and so we are in the tribulation right now.
We are in end times of suffering and illness and war and difficulty and relational divisions and heartache and sadness.
Maybe one of those connects with you.
Now, before you try to leave, because some of you want to, why, why, why?
Like, why?
Why even go into this book, right?
Like the strange book at the end of the Bible.
Why even go into it?
Why does revelation matter?
And we said this.
Two weeks ago, we said this.
We said three things.
Number one, the crazy book at the end of our Bible is not as crazy as people think.
That's just reassuring.
Just to know, like that crazy book, we're not crazy.
You're not crazy to believe in the Bible, I'm not crazy, we're not crazy, and it's not as crazy as we think.
Number two, revelation actually draws our hearts toward the astonishing greatness and the lavish redeeming love of God.
That's what we see in the book.
Number three, revelation helps us see God will restore.
He is on a mission.
In this mission of creation, fall, redemption, restoration, God will restore the hurt and sadness of the world and of your heart.
So let's read some of the passages.
I'm gonna reread what was read, and then we're gonna go into Revelation 7.
We're gonna be looking at the sixth seal we covered two weeks ago, seal 1 through 5.
If you remember, a seal is like a way to say, John is using this as imagery to say a description of what life is like.
So, 6 12 through 17.
When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale.
The sky vanished like a scroll that's being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.
Then the kings of the earth and the great ones, and the generals, and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb.
For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?
And nobody wants to say amen, right?
Like none of you are like, Amen, you know, praise God, you know, bless you.
That's so great.
No, we're all going like, uh, what?
Like wrath of the Lamb?
Like I like more like Matthew, like Jesus saying, I'm gentle and lowly.
Like, that's my Jesus, this is not my Jesus, this whole wrath thing.
Well, what's this about?
So the sixth seal is this it's symbolizing the unveiling of God and the terror of judgment.
All judgment's a terror, especially judgment before God.
Even judgment before your mom or dad is terror, or you're like your best friend.
I mean, judgment is terror, and then judgment before God is terror.
So we're gonna have to have a rescue.
And John's using vision and poetic language here in this passage to say, hey, we have natural disasters.
We have political divisions, we have conflict between nations.
And then that bothersome passage phrase, the wrath of the Lamb.
I mean, that rubs me wrong.
I'll just be honest.
I mean, I think it's good to be able to kind of rub up against something in the Bible and be able to, it rubs you a little bit.
I'm gonna have to deal with this.
But see, I know Christ, and hopefully you know Christ is gentle and near because you're in God's grace.
Now, that doesn't mean that God's justice will not one day deal with the evil of abuses and genocides and starvations and wars and enslavements.
So here's the point.
Point number one.
In light of God's wrath toward injustice, we find safety in Christ's love.
We find safety in God's grace to us.
That's the good news.
In Christ's work for us, not our work for him.
We never have any fear of judgment.
That's why we just sang in Christ alone.
We want to make sure to tee this up for you, like ground us before we read this, because it's in Christ alone.
We need to go back to Narnia.
Look at Aslan.
It helps us, right?
That imagery that C.S.
Lewis built out for us in Aslan helps us because Aslan was so fierce in the book and in the movie.
Love this image.
The little girl in front of a fierce line.
He was fierce to his enemies, right?
To any injustice, to enemies that would harm peace and joy.
He was fierce.
And yet you had these children that were always so comfortable around him.
Well, why?
Because they came before him in need.
They knew him as caring and fiercely for them.
I love this well-known quote by Frederick Bruner.
The wrath of God is not the irritability of God.
It is the love of God in friction with injustice.
It is the warm, steady, patient, but absolutely fair grace of God in collision with manifest selfishness.
God's wrath does not contradict God's love, it proves it.
A love that pampers injustice is not lovable.
Now, Revelation 7.
John sees four angels standing at the four corners of the earth.
He's holding back the winds.
Verse 4, and I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000 sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel.
So this 144,000 is made up of 12,000 from every tribe of Israel.
These numbers, plus verse 9, verse 9, after this I looked and behold, a great multitude that no one could number from every tribe, every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne, before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands.
So this number symbolizes the totality of the redeemed.
And then some scholars break these numbers into two ways to think about this.
They say, verses four through eight, we can think about it as the church mobilized in the world.
What does that mean?
Which means we are receivers of God's love as to be givers of God's love, mobilized in the world.
And then verse 9, the church triumphant before God, which means, good news, the church will never shut down or shut up or fail.
It doesn't matter who the political leader is, what political system you're in, it just won't.
It can't.
The church will never fail.
Now let's jump to the end of the chapter, verse 17, and then we're going to circle back to the middle of the chapter.
So Revelation 7, 17, this is where we're headed.
I want to ground this first because this is your story.
Your story of restoration.
It's where God is taking you and all of your herd.
For the lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd.
There's our rescue from that terror of judgment.
And he will guide them to springs of living water.
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
So this imagery of wholeness and restoration.
Remember that word restore?
To be set right.
For three days this week, I and four other dads from our church, we went and we bravely chaperoned the fifth grade Westside Elementary retreat.
Here's a picture.
That's my group.
I'm in the back just waiting for one of those boys to do something.
Kid in the white hat's about to do it.
Sorry if that's your son.
He was in my group.
You already know that story.
I'm just waiting.
That's all I'm doing.
That's all I did the whole time.
Just waited.
Put down that stick.
Don't push her.
Don't do that.
Stop spitting.
Just constant.
Constant.
That's all we did.
And here's what I can report back on fifth graders.
Fart jokes?
Still awesome.
And your social status in fifth grade, 98% of it, is tied to your performance on the four-square court.
You win and lose in life on the four-square court.
And Jenny may like Johnny.
We're not sure.
But we saw her talking to him over at the four-square court.
We're not sure.
I mean, maybe.
But we're not sure if Johnny's even aware of it because he also doesn't know where his underwear is.
So we don't know.
We don't know.
But it's a big deal.
It's a big deal.
So after Reed Wagall and I sternly welcomed our boys into our cabin because we decided to go in with a fear-based approach.
It's kind of like basically we took our entire philosophy of our church and just reversed it into our cabin governance.
Fear-based.
Walked in, just really, you know, put the law on them.
It worked.
A lot of, you know, they wanted to perform up to us.
17 minutes after being there.
This is one boy's bag.
17 minutes.
That's 17 minutes.
That's not a day.
We're there three days.
Okay, so just take 17 and multiply that out over three days, and that's what the kind of war zone that was developing.
The last morning.
The last morning, we're gonna wake up, we're gonna wake them up 20.
Our whole goal is just not to have them in the cabin.
Like wake them up 20 minutes before kick them out, take them back to the cabin 20 minutes before bedtime.
So 20 minutes before we're like, hey, wake up, you got 20 minutes, let's go, let's go, let's go, get the four-square court, you know, you know, keep your social status.
You know, and they throw all their stuff in their bag, so the war zone's getting kind of cleaned up, and then just in 20 minutes, like everything is out the door, and Reed and I start to sweep up a little bit, and we sweep up, and and you know, I've been the whole time because Reed and Meyer is, you know, it's nice and manicured, you know, like tight, and then it's war all around, you know, and then finally, you know, look back and it was oh, right?
It was neat, and it was orderly, and it was clean, the war was over.
Right?
It was, it was it was restoration.
The cabin had been restored, the cabin had been set right.
And you want restoration for your own war zone, for your own tribulation, your own end times.
Because your life or heart feels like a mess because there's that part of you that's still plagued by that one kind of line of thinking, that tape that plays over and over again, that one issue, or maybe you feel like you're never enough, or you never have enough, or that person cheated you or took from you or hurt you or abused you or lied to you, or the doors keep closing over and over and over again.
Finances are hard, relationships are messy.
It can feel like a war.
And you just want it right.
You just want it whole.
We all long for restoration because we live in the already but not yet.
We're in redemption, but we're not in restoration.
We all want Revelation 7, 17.
We can't wait for it.
Our hearts have been hoping for it our entire lives.
We just don't realize it all the time.
Now let's pick back up in verse 10.
There's a great multitude before the throne and the lamb.
We are clothed in white because we are fully righteous in Christ.
Waving palm branches because that symbolizes victory.
Verse 10, so 7, verse 10, 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.
Remember, we reviewed all that earlier.
And they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, Amen.
Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever.
Amen.
Maybe for you, this vision of heaven, you are in it because you can't get enough passion music and Maverick City music and Sandra McCracken music.
Like you are all in.
Others of your like, hey, like when Redeemer goes from 59 minutes to 63 minutes, I get antsy.
Like four-minute overage of worship is too much for me to handle.
And I just say, I understand.
Like, I need some Dave Matthews mixed in, right?
Neil Kenny Chesney mixed in.
That's what we some of us need that.
But we are forgetting.
We are forgetting this, that we don't know everything about heaven or how we'll feel when we get there.
Like what that might feel like to be riddled of all sin and selfishness and shame and guilt.
What kind of freedom we might have there.
That everything would change.
Let's read the rest of chapter 7.
It's a bit of reading, but as I read it, imagine this for your own heart.
Your own exhaustion.
Your own guilt or shame or whatever you're carrying around.
Verse 13.
Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, Who are these?
Clothed in white robes.
And from where have they come?
Right?
So who are you?
Who are you?
Who are these?
I said to him, Sir, you know them.
You know.
And he said to me, 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 anymore.
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.
Point number two, just two points.
Our thirst for more and our hurt will be restored by God's endless care and love.
I know he's not working on your timeline.
He's not on my timeline.
But this is our story.
We are waiting.
We are in hope, which means we are weary and waiting.
We are in hope of heaven.
And I don't know what sort of church you've been in or faith background you've been in, fear-based or shame-motivating.
But I know you and I, what we need to hear, is that he has endless care and endless love for us.
That we are clothed in white.
We are waving victory because of his work for us on the cross, not our work for him.
I mean, just listen to your story.
This is your story.
Listen to this.
Finish your great tribulation.
Will that day be so good?
Deemed pure in Christ, joyfully served without hesitancy, sheltered in presence, hunger no more, thirst no more, stricken no more, weary no more.
For Christ will guide you to wholeness and contentment.
And God will restore your sadness.
Two weeks ago at the Mockingbird Conference in New York, a priest showed this music video by Florence Welch.
So she's in the band Florence in the Machine.
The song is entitled Free.
It's four minutes long.
We're gonna watch the whole thing so you can kind of settle in.
You don't have to wait for me to cut it off.
If you're at home watching, I don't know what you're about to get during these four minutes.
Maybe you see the video, maybe you have audio, maybe you go grab a snack.
I really don't know, so just hang with us.
It'll be about four minutes.
Hang with us as we watch this.
So let's just ponder for a moment.
Here's what she's saying.
Maybe you couldn't pick up all the words.
I'm always running from something.
I push it back, but it keeps on coming.
And being clever never got me very far.
As it picks me up, puts me down, it picks me up, puts me down.
Then she sings the bridge.
Is this how it is?
Is this how it's always been to exist in the face of suffering and death and somehow still keep seeing?
Oh, like Christ up on a cross who died for us, who died for what?
Oh, don't you want to call it off?
But there is nothing else that I know how to do but to open up my arms and give it all to you.
And then at the end she stands, right?
She's standing there, covered in red, and she holds her body shaped like a cross.
And then she's finally at peace with her suffering.
It's a story of restoration.
There at the conference.
It was dead quiet right after her show of the video, just like it is right now.
And the priest asked the crowd.
He said, How does that video make you feel?
No, I said it.
And finally, one man very faintly, he said, undone.
I feel undone.
My brothers and sisters, over and over again, God is calling us in the sufficiency of Christ, covered in the blood, and the hope of heaven.
We are being called to surrender our hearts and to surrender our cares into his care, into his sufficiency, and into his love.
Florence Sangat, there is nothing else that I know how to do but to open my arms and give it all to you.
Let's pray together.
God, thank you for your grace and mercy to us that we can fully acknowledge the already that we live in right now, that we are yours and we are loved and we are redeemed and we are righteous, and yet we have anxiety and fear and loss and sin and shame and guilt.
Our hearts hope for so much more.
We want to know you in a deeper way, have our identity grounded in you, have a greater wealth of identity in you to know victory for the spirit to be at work in us.
We want all of that.
And at the same time, our hearts are constantly longing for the hope of heaven, Revelation 7:17, that there will be a day when you wipe away all the sadness, that we are redeemed and we are on a journey to be restored.
May us rest, help us to rest more in this story of redemption and restoration that is true and right, good and steady and stable in Christ alone.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.