All Saints (Observed)
The Church – On Earth and In Heaven
Rev. 7:2-17
6 November 2016 – Redeemer
Everyone wants a glimpse inside heaven. Isn’t that why movies and book about someone who supposedly died and returned to life become best sellers? We’re curious. We want an insider’s view. It’s like driving by a multimillion dollar mansion every day and then one day getting invited to see the inside, to walk through the grandeur yourself. Who wouldn’t want to see it? Who doesn’t want to know? How many times at funerals do we hear people imagining what heaven will be like?
The good news for you today is that Saint John takes us into heaven. He gives us an insiders’ view. We know John’s view is right and true because the Holy Spirit is the One who gave John this heavenly tour. Perhaps as important as John’s glimpse of heaven is what he heard of earth – of the Church here and now as seen from God’s perspective. Before us today in the text of Revelation we have two beautiful pictures – one is the Church on earth winning over sin and death and the other is the Church at rest in Christ and around Christ in heaven.
So what does the Church on earth look like to you? I’ll tell you what it looks like to me. I recently watched a 10 hour miniseries on the Pacific battles of World War 2, from the view point of the 1st Marines. The marines battled in places we know from history – Guadalcanal, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima. The church to me looks like those Marines after a battle – tattered, torn, and tired. Those who lived through the battles probably wondered if they were winning or losing as they saw brother after brother fall in combat.
Seasoned Christians know the battles. You know the battles – the temptation to sin, the daily war against troubles, the church itself splintered by false teaching, our families broken because of our own sin, the death of devout and faithful brothers and sisters. It appears with each passing day that the battles are longer and harder and a horde of new enemies is appearing on the horizon every day.
But just as our veiled view of heaven is usually wrong, so is our picture of the church on earth. St. John hears about the church on earth from God’s perspective in Revelation. And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel: Then we get that listing of 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes. It is interesting that John does not see the 144,000, but hears of them. He hears how God sees them – and to understand the picture here we need to go back to the Old Testament. When the tribes of Israel moved away from Sinai and to the promised land God organized them in military formation – three tribes on each side of the tabernacle. When Israel went into battle, a representative number of each tribe was taken. Israel may not have looked like much to Israel – a rag tag band of sinners who struggled to believe the promises of God, but God by His Word gave them the victory, gave them the promised land, settled them in that land flowing with milk and honey. This 144,000, these 12 tribes of 12,000, is the Church militant, the Church in rank and file in battle.
So hear now, how God sees His church on earth. He sees it in perfect order, in military might, accomplishing the purpose for which He sends it. The church on earth is at work and at war accomplishing the Mission of Christ – wherever God’s Word is preached in truth and wherever the Sacraments are given according to Christ’s Words, the Church is winning. This is what God sees – one sinner coming to repentance, one lost and broken lamb being carried home by the Good Shepherd, a husband turning to his wife and saying, “I’m sorry” and the Devil losing when his wife says, “I forgive you.” The Devil sees a congregation confessing their sins and saying “Amen” to God’s forgiveness in Christ and he loses. The Devil hears a pastor preaching that Christ Jesus died for sinners and when you believe that, the Church militant wins another victory over the evil one.
This mighty Church militant is not something we can see – like John in Revelation, it is only something we hear. The Church gathered around Christ wins – it wins over sinners from sin and death’s hold. Satan is in retreat until that day when Christ bars the gate of hell locking away Satan and his losing host of demons. Hear it and believe it – as long as Christ the Son of the Living God is at the center our formation – then not even the gates of hell shall prevail against us.
John hears about the church on earth, but he sees the Church at rest. 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!”
Those Palm Branches in the crowd bring us back to the time before Christ when the Israelites welcomed conquering heroes with Palm Branches. They bring us back to Palm Sunday when the crowds thought they were installing a new King. That’s exactly what heaven centers around – the victory that belongs to all who believe that Jesus’ coronation was on a cross outside Jerusalem and that this King dies in our place to win the victory for us over our sins.
One thing that is the same on earth for the Church as it is for the Church at Rest in heaven is that Christ is in the center. They survived the battles on earth because of Christ. They stand holy and pure in heaven because of Christ. Those standing in heaven – are the ones who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
Besides Jesus at the center – John does not see much. He doesn’t describe heaven’s beauty. He doesn’t appeal at all to our selfish desires – will I see a monster buck every morning from my heavenly deer stand. Will I get my own mansion? Heaven is Jesus, where Jesus is there is forgiveness, life, and salvation. What Saint John tells us – outside of Jesus – is what he does not see. No more tribulation. No more hunger. No more thirst. No more tears. You see, where sin is at an end – then everything broken by my sin and your sin is at an end. Earth will be at peace in the Resurrection – no more earthquakes, floods, hurricanes. Where sin is gone all anger and hatred and selfishness are gone. No one will hunger or thirst anymore. You won’t be grabbing everything for yourself, because you will fully have Jesus and you will be free of sin, once again restored to the image of God. No tears in heaven because there will be no death in heaven – no hospitals, no phone calls in the middle of the night, no sirens, no funeral homes, no gravesides. Doctors and Nurses and Pastors and Funeral directors will have time on their hands, as will you, an eternity of time without death, without tears.
I’ve read a good number of those books by people who supposedly died and came back to give us a glimpse of heaven. Every book I’ve read got it wrong – because not one of them saw Jesus at the center of heaven, not one saw Jesus with pierced side and nail scarred hands and feet, not one saw the Lamb who was slain alive and reigning at God’s right hand. Not one saw the Church on earth waging war against sin and Satan with Christ’s forgiveness. Not one saw that crowd of sinners made holy by the blood of the Lamb. That is why we do well to hear God’s Word from God’s book, for it gives us a true picture of the Church, here on earth and there in heaven. Here the Church wins with Jesus, there the Church rests in Jesus. None of this should surprise us, although we always need to hear it. – that the Church here and there lives in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Pr. Bruce Timm
5 November 2016 anno Domini