Revelation 7:1
Our reading from scripture is
Revelation chapter 7 verse 1 all the way through chapter 8 verse
5. And you’ll remember that a few
weeks ago when we looked at chapter 6, it was the opening of the
first six seals. Chapter 7 is kind of an interlude,
and then the seventh seal is opened. And so we’re carrying
on a little bit of what we looked at several weeks ago when we
were in chapter six. Let’s hear God’s word together.
This is Revelation chapter seven, beginning at verse one. This
is John speaking. 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 the 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 on 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 they 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. Then one of the elders
addressed me saying, who are these clothed in white robes
and from where have they come? I said to him, sir, 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. They 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
shall they thirst. The sun shall not strike them
nor any scorching heat. For the lamb is in the midst
of the throne. He will be their shepherd and he will guide them
to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every
tear from their eyes. When the lamb opened the seventh
seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then
I saw the seven angels who stand before God and seven trumpets
were given to them. And another angel came and stood
at the altar with a golden censer. And he was given much incense
to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden
altar before the throne. And the smoke of the incense
with the prayers of the saints rose before God from the hand
of the angel. Then the angel took the censer
and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the
earth. And there were peals of thunder,
rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake. Amen. This is God’s holy word for us. Today at the Wimbledon tennis
tournament in the men’s finals, the two men who played for the
championship played a five hour match. Compare that to yesterday
in the women’s finals when the gal who won the women’s final
dispatched her opponent in under an hour. These two men fought
it out in great agony and perseverance for just three minutes short
of five hours. Both when asked after the match
was over. what it took to fight it out. Both said they gave it their
all. Both could have won and both
could have lost, but neither quit. And that’s the sort of
grit, that’s the sort of gumption that God asks of us as his children
living in this world. We live in a world that hates
God. We live in a world that hates
the church. We live in a world that hates
marriage, it hates family, it hates Christian children, and
it hates all that we stand for. And as we saw in chapter six
in our study of the first six seals, this world is full of
tumult. It is full of wars and rumors
of wars. It is full of hatred toward the
saints, hatred toward the church, hatred toward all things godly
and Christian. And so tonight, as we look at
chapter seven and the beginning of verse, beginning verses of
chapter eight, I want us to see that we’re in a continuation
of the war on the saints on the earth, but tonight we’re given
a glimpse of the saints and glory. And so in a sense, it might be
like a split screen on your television. We see in one of the split screens
the reality of heaven, the saints in glory, and the peace and the
worship and the joy that they experience because they are living
eternal life in the presence of the lamb. And as our passage
said to us, they serve him night and day. that he has sheltered
them with his presence. They hunger and thirst no more. The sun does not strike them,
nor does any scorching heat, for the lamb is in the midst
of the throne. He is their shepherd and he guides
them forever. So in one split screen, you have
a picture of the saints in heaven, experiencing bliss and peace.
But in the other split screen, you see what we looked at several
weeks ago in our study of chapter six. there is tumult and mayhem
unleashed on this earth. And so while one is a picture
of tranquility, the other is a picture of just the opposite,
a place of chaos and tumult. And so the question we might
ask is those left behind on earth, can we saints on earth make it? Will we get out of here alive?
It brings to mind the question of eternal security. Can the wars and rumors of wars
and the tumult of this earth steal us away from Almighty God? And the passage that we consider
tonight speaks directly to those questions. It speaks of the people
of God being sealed, the people of God being marked, the people
of God being named and claimed as it were
by God Almighty, a perfect number, 12,000 from all 12 tribes, 144,000,
a perfect number of God’s people. The servants are sealed and it
puts a great multitude of God’s people safe and in the arms of
Almighty God. What about this seal? In the ancient Near Eastern world,
these first readers of Revelation, the first hearers of Revelation,
they would have understood that when a king, a ruler, put his
seal on a letter, it was a puddle of wax, his signet ring stamped
into it to show that this was an authentic letter. This was
his word, his mark, that it was trustworthy. And God in Christ
has sealed us with his ownership. He’s, in a sense, put a ring
on our finger. He’s pledged to be ours. These seals come in visible signs,
like baptism. These seals come in other visible
signs, like the Lord’s Supper, where God says to us, I am your
God, and you are my people. And nothing can take away you
from my love. It is an everlasting love. It’s
a love as we sing from time to time, a love that will not let
us go. And so we are sealed, we are
claimed, we are pledged to be gods. And there’s a complete
number of the saints. If we know God and love Christ,
we have no fear that Satan can snatch us from the Father’s hands
that no matter what goes on in this world, tribulation and everything,
God made a covenant promise to Abraham that he would be our
God, we would be his people, and that one day our dwelling
place would be with him. And this passage shows us wonderfully
the covenant of grace to Abraham It is fulfilled and we can bank
on it. It’s a sure thing. Now, sometimes
we here in the church on earth We think of ourselves as small
and insignificant. We think of ourselves sometimes
in worldly standards and we say, we’d love a little diversity.
We’d love some masses. We’d love to see every kind,
every bit of what we see on the face of the earth in our church.
And sometimes we lament what we are not. And it’s good for
a church, our church, other churches to have goals for growth, goals
for reaching communities, those sorts of things. But sometimes
we forget that our little church is not all there is. that we’re
part of the big church, the capital C church, or as our creed puts
it, the Catholic church, the universal church. And so we worship
together, not only with the saints who around the world bow their
knee to Christ, but we worship with the heavenly throng that
is pictured. We worship with those we just
sang about, who are these stars appearing, we worship every Lord’s
Day with those who gather here on Saddle Club Road, but also
with those on earth who call on the name of Christ and with
those whose spirits have been made perfect and they worship
around the throne in heaven. But it makes us think sometimes
we’re insignificant, we’re small, we’re unimportant. But when you
connect us to that grander vision of the church, we think, boy,
we’re really something because God has done a mighty work. There
was a time when Israel had returned from Babylon and as they were
rebuilding the temple, the temple was not what it was. when Solomon
built it and with its subsequent remodelings. The towers and the
walls that went around the city of Jerusalem, they were not what
they were when David took the city of Jabuz and built it into
the city of David. And so there was a smaller temple
being built. There was a smaller city with
its walls being raised. And some of the old men who remembered
the old city, the old temple, before Babylon came and destroyed
it, they wept. And while others had great joy
that God was building his church, rebuilding his church, these
old men wept. And the prophet came to the people
and said, why do you despise the day of small things? And
then this great prophecy came. there will be a temple built
someday. And in that temple will be God
himself and his son. And this is a picture of that
promise. This is a picture of what God
will do. And so sometimes we think, oh, the Sunday school
rooms aren’t filled or, you know, we don’t have the most attended
service on Sunday. We don’t have a policeman directing
traffic out of our parking lot or on and on we may go. And we
need to remember that the reality of the church is pictured here. and it’s being worked out in
the sovereignty of almighty God and God is using us to fulfill
the great commission to preach the gospel to every tribe and
nation and tongue and people and he is building his church
here around the world but he is gathering them in heaven. And so we will one day experience
what we might desire on earth, but it’s only meant for heaven. Now, what of the tribulation?
What of the troubles of the church in the world? One of the classes
we were required to take in our course of study for seminary
was a class called exactly this, the church in the world. And
I think what the class was designed to do was to take all of us young
guys who were bright-eyed and starry-eyed and ready to go out
and conquer the world and serve the church and be the best pastors
the church ever saw until we got kicked in the head by reality. We were taken through this class
on the church and the world and given a overview of how hard
it is to take the truths of the Bible into the harsh realities
of the church context where you have fallen people, broken people
in church, in leadership, and it’s utterly difficult to be
the church that’s in the midst of this world. And not only those
difficulties, but the pressures of the world. And I was thinking
just this week, what are the issues facing the modern American
church? And not just the modern American
church, but our brothers and sisters in the Reformed faith.
Just a few weeks ago, our sister denomination, the Presbyterian
Church in America, They debated something that we thought would
probably never come up for debate in a conservative church. And
that is whether or not human beings are to be identified by
their sexuality. We have always believed in the
Christian church because the Bible teaches that God made man
and woman. He made male and female. And
that our identity is that we’re made in the image of God and
our sexual preferences do not identify us. But more than one
of our reformed sister-brother denominations fought the battle
and one that passed such a resolution to identify with the statements
of Christianity or the scriptures only passed it by a 60% margin.
And so the church is in the world, it’s suffering tribulation. That
tribulation is, yes, outside, but it’s within the church as
we are fighting battles that we never thought would face us. Then you think about the global
church. The church in China is not fussing over whether a man
is a man or a woman is a woman. They’re facing battles like,
is it safe to leave my doors and go to the house of God on
a Sunday for fear of religious persecution? And on and on we
might go. Now some of you, if you were
to join the military, probably one of the first questions you
would ask, it’s the first question as I would ask, is when do we
get to use the guns? That’s what you would ask. And
one of the things we need to take encouragement in is that
God has given us weapons for this spiritual battle. He’s given
us weapons for this tribulation. And so you say, when do we get
to use the shield? When do we get to use the sword?
When do we get to use the breastplate? When do we get to put on the
shoes for battle? And the answer is your whole
Christian life, you get to use the guns. God has given us these
weapons to fight through. tribulation and so we get to
worship and serve God and fight the battles. Now when you come
to this last little section of our study tonight in chapter
8 verses 1 through 5, you see the seventh seal opened. There’s silence in heaven as
if everyone is in awe awaiting the final judgment. And God gives
us a glimpse into how he uses the prayers of the saints to
not only work out his sovereign will, but to bring about judgment
on the earth. The prayers of the people of
God are at work, it says in verse 3 of chapter 8. Another angel
came and stood at the altar with the golden censer. He was given
much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on
the golden altar before the throne. And the smoke of the incense
with the prayers of the saints rose before God from the hand
of the angel. And the angel took the censer,
filled it with fire from the altar, and threw it on the earth
where there were peals of thunder and rumblings and flashes of
lightning and an earthquake. One encouragement we ought to
take in addition to seeing this split screen of peace in heaven
and tumult on earth We have to take great comfort in the fact
that our prayers are effectual. Our prayers do something. Our
prayers don’t just hit the ceiling here and stop. Our prayers don’t
just fall on the ears of our fellow prayer meeting attenders. They rise right up to heaven
and with the incense from the altar, from the angel, they rise
right into the nostrils of Almighty God. And when God gets his people
praying, he gets to work, working out the judgment, working out
all his holy ends. And it ought to encourage us
in a couple ways. The first way is simply this,
we need to be praying. If we’re not praying, there’s
no incense rising. And if there’s no incense rising,
things do not take place. And so we need to pray. The second
thing we ought to think from this is it is a privilege that
our prayers are heard by Almighty God and that He uses our prayers
to accomplish His holy ends. It’s sobering. exciting, I think,
to think that God uses our prayers to accomplish his sovereign will. So what can we do? What can we
do as Christians while the world seems to be falling apart, while
it seems to us that God just needs to come and make all things
new? What can we do? We can pray. We can think about
heavenly things and what a wonderful thing it will be to be in the
shelter of the wings of the Almighty someday. But until that reality
comes, in addition to praying, We can keep fighting. We can
keep battling. We can keep standing firm on
the truth of Almighty God. We can keep worshiping and we
can keep being a witness for Almighty God. This is not a day
of small things. God is at work and he uses us
and so we ought to take courage. Those men today who fought it
out for four hours and 57 minutes. They fought it out to the end.
They didn’t quit. They didn’t give in. They didn’t
rest on their laurels. They didn’t take their water
breaks. They didn’t take it easy. It was a constant fight. Can
you imagine fighting in the hot sun, center court, thousands
of people watching for five hours? And there’s something like that
in the book of Hebrews, where it says, we run with endurance
the race that is set before us with the great cloud of witnesses
watching us and cheering us on. They’ve already finished the
race. They’ve already run the race and the course set before
them, but they are looking in on us and cheering us on as we
make it to the finish line ourselves. And so we ought to take courage.
Let’s pray together. Lord, we pray that you give us
endurance because of the strength of Christ and the pictures that
we get of heaven, the power we get through praying and the encouragement
we get as we see the saints who have gone before us resting in
the arms of Jesus. Help us to see and think on these
things and to take courage in Christ’s name.