be at rest

i'll make things right

A sermon on Revelation 6 & 7:

Today’s scripture addresses something we all have a vested interest in. Something we’ve all got. And something we all want to know what to do about. I’m talking about, of course, ordeals. Ordeals. 

Now, the first thing about ordeals is that none of them happen outside the Lamb's scroll.

And that’s a whole sermon right there. Isn’t it?!? Those ordeals that seem God forsaken are actually God blessed! They’re blessed because they’re in the scroll that Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, opens by his pierced hands!

At the moment, though, it doesn’t feel like our ordeals are blessed. Does it? At the moment, it feels like our ordeals are going to tear anything loose that isn’t bolted down. God’s favor included.

Now, John does tell us there is something, or someone actually, who isn’t affected by all those ordeals. It’s a great multitude. A crowd so large no one can count them—an assembly of individuals from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages. 

They stand before the throne and the Lamb unaffected by it all.

Ironically, though, they willingly fall down to worship God! 

As John relates this, an elder asks the question that’s got to be on all our minds. “Who are these robed in white,” the elder asks.

Yes, who are these are who can stand when everything else is coming undone?

John, however, isn’t any more in the know than the rest of us. 

He does, though, know enough to ask when he doesn’t have the answer. “Sir,” he says to the elder, “you are the one that knows.”

At that, the elder drops the act and tells John who they are that can stand whenever everything else comes apart. 

Which is good, because we’d never guess. 

“These are they,” says the elder, “who have come out of the great ordeal.”

…The ones standing resolutely around the throne are the ones who have gone through the worst of it!!

If we had to guess who were the ones who couldn’t stop praising God, we’d guess it was those who walked a cleared path all their life. But, aside from fact those people don’t exist, the elder tells John it’s actually the other way ‘round! Those who can’t stop worshipping are those who have been through it, not spared from it!

Those ordeals of life that you fear will grind you down to nothing are really the places Jesus is setting up his altar! His altar where you can find shelter and sing God’s praises! 

True spirituality is life in reality.

Those places where you are weakest are the ones Jesus, the Lamb, is strongest! Those places where you cry, “why God,” are the ones Jesus takes your cry unto his lips. And suffers their onslaught—all the way to death. 

And there, three days later, he is risen! And in so doing, brings God’s enduring upside-down blessing!

The assembly around the throne stands steadfast. But not on their own. They stand firm because Jesus met them in the thick of it, and offered himself to them amid the worst of it!

We all have ordeals in our life. When they crop up, and they do, we always think deliverance will come in the form of escape. But what we see in the heavenly throne room is salvation actually looks like the Lamb coming to us in the midst of them!

When we’re laid low, the Lamb looms nigh!

What creates genuine praise isn’t being excused from our ordeals, it’s Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God! Jesus, the Lamb, who becomes the Good Shepherd for us! The Good Shepherd who searches us out among the wildernesses of our ordeals and guides us to his springs of the water of life!

The Lamb is utterly unafraid to meet you amidst those all too real ordeals of life!

The reason the multitude around the throne can’t stop worshipping the Lamb is that the Lamb wears their wounds. The Lamb wears their wounds so they might wear his robe! 

…And you will wear the Lamb’s robe, too. Only it won’t happen through any imaginary ideal life. It’ll happen through death—the death of the Lamb.

But, by his death, the Lamb has taken your place in the slaughtering line. 

It’s in the ordeals of life that the Lamb saddles up right next to you and becomes salvation for you!

By the cross, Jesus, the Lamb of God, has made your anguish his very own! He’s put your cries upon his lips. He’s borne your bloodshed upon himself. And died from the wounds.

But, by the power of God, he’s raised to new life that turns our death into his life eternal. Our blood-spattered rags into his spotless gown! Our cries for deliverance his song of salvation!

You ARE counted among the innumerable multitude standing around the throne. But it happened in the very last way you expected. Not by avoiding your ordeals. But through them.

God’s office is at the end of your rope! 

Yes, at this moment, it can be hard to see. But once you’ve been carried through, kicking and screaming, to the waters of the springs of life, you will be unable to miss the mark of the Lamb. The Lamb who met you in the thick of it and carried you through the worst of it. All to give you the best he has to offer!