Signed, Sealed, and Delivered
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| "The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb" by Jan Van Eyck |
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, 10and 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, 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.”
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,
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” (Revelation 7:9-17).
Grace to you and peace
from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!
“May
you live in interesting times” is an English expression that is dubiously
claimed to be an ancient Chinese curse. While phrased as a blessing,
the expression ironically puts forth the idea that life is better in “uninteresting
times” of peace and tranquility than in “interesting” ones,
which are usually times of trouble and upheaval.
Given that understanding, I think most of us would agree that we
certainly live in “interesting times.” Since the pandemic came to our country
over seven months ago, we’ve found ourselves constantly navigating new territory.
We watched the gas prices go down to their lowest level in decades, but there
was no place for us to go. We experienced shortages of toilet paper, hand
sanitizer, Plexiglass, and bread flour. Farmers were forced to euthanize thousands
of hogs and cattle because local packers were closed, eggs and milk were dumped
even as supermarkets limited meat, milk, and egg purchases for each customer.
We stayed home and shut down our businesses for the longest two weeks in
history. Those who have long felt undervalued and unappreciated suddenly found themselves
designated as “essential workers.” Local family-owned businesses struggle under
shut-down and executive orders, while giant corporations experience unprecedented
sales and profits. Unemployment rates hit depression era levels. Lots of us
learned more about communication technology than we ever thought we could or wanted
to. Teachers and students met in virtual classrooms. Pastors preached to a
camera and microphone, while pajamaed parishioners curled up on the couch and
watched from home. DCEs and volunteers figured out creative ways to continue
Sunday School, VBS, and youth programs.
We’ve come to know (and perhaps detest) a lot of new terms and phrases: flatten
the curve, herd immunity, social distancing, Zoom, new normal, out of an
abundance of caution, follow the science, unprecedented, slow the spread, when
things get back to normal again, we’re all in this together apart, stay home, stay
safe, and turning down the dial, just to name a few.
The pandemic and attempts to deal with it have led to suffering, death,
inconvenience, and encroachment on privileges and freedoms we may have taken
for granted. Families have not been able to see their loved one in person for months.
Patients die in hospitals and nursing homes without the comfort of family and
pastoral care. Families and communities have been unable to gather to mourn their
loved one’s death and to comfort one another.
Then, there’s COVID’s collateral damage: Suicides have surged, drug and
alcohol abuse has risen, domestic and child abuse have risen dramatically. As
we seek to protect the most susceptible to sickness and death, our residents of
nursing homes and assisted living centers are becoming more fearful, lonely,
and depressed. Important healthcare appointments, even surgeries and
procedures, have been postponed. Health care professionals, caregivers, daycare
personnel, and teachers have had to work harder and in more difficult, perhaps
dangerous, circumstances to provide even basic care.
There’s compassion fatigue and fear. Congregations are divided over
approaches to opening or keeping churches closed. Folks are scared to come back
to church or gather with family for holidays. Those not as concerned are
accused of being unloving or uncaring. Pastors are war-weary and worn down,
trying to figure out to care for God’s flock who are scattered or scared or scarred.
And perhaps the worst part is that no one has any realistic idea when, if ever,
it will all go back to our previous idea of normal.
In the midst of the
doom and gloom that seems to hang over everything, one might look longingly to
the future in hopes of better things to come. That, too, will likely leave us
with fear, dread, and disappointment. Living in a world broken by sin, we
should never be so foolish to expect utopian dreams to materialize. In this
age, there will never be a heaven on earth. But our text for this festival
celebrating God’s work in all the saints does assure us that ultimately all God’s
saints are signed, sealed, and will be delivered by Christ Jesus into the new
heaven and earth for eternity.
So where do we children
of God turn to faith in Christ Jesus, our only Savior from sin? Where do we turn
for hope, encouragement, and strength to remain faithful to the faith put in us
by the Holy Spirit in Baptism? How can we imitate and follow the example of the
saints in heaven described in today’s First Reading from God’s Word, who come “out
of the great tribulation” and who “have washed their robes and made them white
in the blood of the Lamb” (v 14)? How do we get where they’ve gotten?
The answer is quite
simple and clear in today’s text. But it’s not easy. It’s one that can make us weary
just hearing it. It’s one that we often would prefer not to know, because it’s
not easy to abide by. That’s because it foretells terrible tribulation until the
time God delivers us safely home to eternal life in the glory of His heaven.
Yet at the same time, it gives us once again God’s faithful promise that He has
done, and is doing, absolutely everything necessary to save us from the damning
power and guilt of our sin and to take us safely, in faith, all the way home
for eternity in the perfect glory of heaven.
That’s what God is
doing in today’s text when He tells us through St. John’s revelation that
Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit “have sealed the servants of our God on their
foreheads.” The Greek word for sealed means “to set a mark or seal on us
in faith to serve as protection and also identification.” All those God has
made His children in faith in the sin-purifying waters of Baptism, God is
protecting. That—in our Baptism—is when the Holy Spirit signed us into saving
faith in Christ crucified, when the sign of His cross as made over our
foreheads and our hearts. He is thus identifying His believers as His dearly
loved possessions, whom Christ Jesus bought with His sin-free lifeblood on Calvary’s
center cross.
This saving act not
only destroyed all the power of all our sin, death, and hell, but it also
strikes dreadful fear in Satan. The truth be told, it also marks us as an enemy
of the evil one. Satan, therefore, relentlessly and futilely seeks to prevent
the Holy Spirit from delivering us safely, in faith, into the “multitude that
no one could number” in heaven, those Christ Jesus Himself has robed in white.
And this ongoing action
of the Holy Spirit in us, which He works through the Gospel power of God’s Word
and Sacraments, is the sealing action of God in us, in faith, just as it was
for all the saints who from their labors rest in the loving arms of the Lamb of
God in heaven. In those arms they do not hunger, thirst, or cry from the
war-weariness of the great tribulation they endured in this sinful world that we
endure for the sake of Christ Jesus and His Gospel. That’s because this world still
considers the sealing Gospel so offensive and terrifying, since it implies that
they have sin from which they need saving.
That’s why God
continues to protect and identify us as His redeemed children in faith. That’s
why He continues to seal us with the assurance of His forgiving love in the
Gospel promise—Christ Jesus born as one of us in Bethlehem to die in our place
on Calvary’s cross. That is the ongoing and even more relentless sealing and
delivering the Holy Spirit does in fulfilling His guarantee work, in which He specializes.
Because the Holy Spirit lives in our hearts signed by our Savior’s cross, we
have God’s guarantee in this, His presence, that we will inherit heaven. This
is God’s guaranteed delivery into the glory of His heaven, when the white-robed,
palm-waving saints sing our enthroned Savior’s praises. They sing well-rested
and triumphant through God’s faithful delivery out of the great tribulation,
where we still have tears.
In this high-definition
picture revealed in today’s text, God’s Word gives us His faithful promise: “He
who sits on the throne will shelter them with His presence.” Even as we still cry
our way through the great tribulation that we all must endure in this life, He
will shelter us until He takes us home to the glory of heaven.
God lives with us
through faith—in a very real way in His Word and Sacraments—right here and now.
This includes living with the sorrow, pain, and tears this sinful world causes
God’s believers until God turns them to joy. This is His sealing and delivering
of us home to heaven, as surely as He did the very same for every single saint
in that “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.”
To sustain us and inspire
us to soldier on, John gives us a glimpse of the glory that is Christ’s. How
incredible to be part of that blessedness! How wonderful to be numbered with
all God’s saints. By Calvary’s cross, delivered to us at the baptismal font and
the Lord’s altar, God has signed and sealed us in His grace. In that grace we already
now stand in faithful assurance alongside the saints triumphant, and one day we
will be delivered to join them in praising God, from whom all blessings flow!
Go in the peace of the
Lord, all you His saints, and serve your neighbor with joy! You are forgiven
for all your sins.
In the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Unless otherwise
indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard
Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good
News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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