Blessed Are Those: A Journey through Revelation – Part 7

The Day Our Tears Are Dried - Rev 6:1-17

Crosspoint – Lee Eclov – Feb. 23th, 2025

 

• We’re all familiar with apocalyptic movies, books, comics, graphic novels, etc., depicting the world after a nuclear holocaust, but around 95 AD the Apostle John had the apocalyptic experience—the Revelation. Last week in Rev. 6 Pastor Dave showed us the Lamb—Jesus Christ—opening the six seals on the scroll that contains God’s decrees of judgment. We saw the four horsemen of the Apocalypse—the four faces of human depravity stampeding through our world, and the Christian martyrs—like the 70 believers beheaded in DR Congo this week—crying out, “How long, O Lord!”

Then as the Lamb opened the sixth seal we saw the world itself in convulsions under the wrath of God. Rev 6:15-17: Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?”

• So when that happens, when the world goes from bad to worse, what will become of us in all this? Turn to 7. Christians don’t all agree on what these symbolic visions mean, but the assurances the Lord gives to those who persevere in following Christ are unmistakable.

Rev. 7:1-8

​¹ After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree. ² Then I saw another angel coming up from the east, having the seal of the living God. He called out in a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm the land and the sea: ³ “Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” ⁴ Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel.
⁵ From the tribe of Judah 12,000 were sealed, from the tribe of Reuben 12,000, from the tribe of Gad 12,000, ⁶ from the tribe of Asher 12,000, from the tribe of Naphtali 12,000, from the tribe of Manasseh 12,000, ⁷ from the tribe of Simeon 12,000, from the tribe of Levi 12,000, from the tribe of Issachar 12,000, ⁸ from the tribe of Zebulun 12,000, from the tribe of Joseph 12,000, from the tribe of Benjamin 12,000.

 Rest assured that even now God seals all his servants against harm

• Who are these 144,000 servants of God, sealed from harm?
  • By the time this was written, ____ of the Israelite tribes were lost, destroyed 700 years earlier by the Assyrians, as God’s judgment for their sins.
  • This is a symbolic 12 x 12 x 1000. 12 is a symbolic number of completion. This represents the true and reunited Israel
  • God had promised Abraham, “Through you, all the nations of the world will be blessed” (Gen 12:3). In 49, God’s promised Messiah—Jesus Christ—speaks. Is. 49:5-6:

⁵ And now the LORD says—
he who formed me [Jesus Christ] in the womb to be his servant
to bring Jacob back to him
and gather Israel to himself,
for I am honored in the eyes of the LORD
and my God has been my strength—
⁶ he says:
“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept. 
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

• So how does that help us understand the 144,000? The perfect and complete Israel will include all those whose faith are in the Messiah and are thereby grafted into the tree of Israel. This is us! We’ve been adopted by God into the people of Israel. Therefore, rest assured that all whose faith is in Christ are sealed and protected by God.

 Rev. 7:9-14

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 before 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.

 Rest assured that all God’s white-robed servants will gather joyfully before his throne

• We just heard that the symbolic census of God’s holy people is 144,000; complete times complete, times a thousand. Now we see what we were told about—“a great multitude that no one could count.” We had just heard that God’s servants were perfectly reapportioned as the twelve tribes of Israel, but now when we look at them, we don’t see ledgers and lists. We see that God’s innumerable people are drawn from “every nation, tribe, people and language.”
• “…standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” Remember what ch.6 told us about those who will try to hide from the face of God? Not us! Thanks to Jesus we stand safely in the presence of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

 “wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.”

 “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”

 11-12: “Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!” Why all those words? They’re similar but not synonyms. Those are all facets of worship, like on a diamond. Each word catches the light of God a little differently. Every nuance of worship!

• White robes: “they have come out of the great tribulation”—the great oppression, the great pressure. I don’t think this is speaking of the 7-year period we call “the tribulation.” Remember, this is a book originally written to Christians in the first century who were already under tremendous pressure. Pressure, tribulation, is a word Christians better get used to. It is used 45 times in the New Testament. It is the Christian’s way of life. These are survivors!

But only being faithful to Christ would not have gotten us to this safe place before God. We must have this: “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

Revelation 7:15–17

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 shelter them with his presence.

¹⁶ ‘Never again will they hunger;

never again will they thirst.

The sun will not beat down on 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.’”

To understand these verses, we must go back into Israel’s great story of the Exodus, when God delivered them out of slavery and death in Egypt, then guided them through the vast, withering, waterless wilderness, finally crossing the Jordan River into the land God had promised them. It was a foreshadowing of a greater story of salvation from bondage and death, a difficult, faith-testing journey through passing through “a dry and parched land where there is no water, finally crossing over to our heavenly home.

• Rest assured that God’s people will be forever safe with him
• “they are before the throne of God serve him day and night in his temple.” In heaven, we are his temple. God lives in our midst. We are his holy city.

We will serve God unhindered by the world’s weeds and worries.

• “and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. ¹⁶ ‘Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst.”

 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.”

James Weldon Johnson, God’s Trombones, an excerpt from “Go Down, Death”
And Death took her up like a baby,

And death began to ride again--

Up beyond the evening star,

Into the glittering light of glory,

On to the Great White Throne.

And there he laid Sister Caroline

On the loving breast of Jesus.

And Jesus took his own hand and wiped away her tears,

And he smoothed the furrows from her face,

And the angels sang a little song,

And Jesus rocked her in his arms,

And kept a-saying: Take your rest,

Take your rest.