A picture of heaven. That’s what St. John gives us in this reading from the Revelation to St John on this day. It is certainly appropriate enough for All Saints’ Day that we should see our future as the saints of God, our great eternal hope and delight. Because that is really what All Saints Day is about for us now. It’s not about venerating the saints of old so much as it is pointing to the great and awesome promise that is ours for the sake of Christ Jesus.
What a glorious picture it is, too! A great multitude, John tells us, beyond numbering, from every nation, tribe, people, and language. It’s a universal heaven, a heaven belonging to everyone who believes in Jesus Christ. And there you can see yourself in the throng, standing before the throne of God the Father Almighty and of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. You too are there, dressed in the white robe of your baptism, carrying a palm branch to proclaim your king, just as the throngs did on Palm Sunday. And together we all cry out the song of our salvation—“Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” A beautiful picture of our eternal rest.
There’s no other salvation, no other way. Here our salvation is, here alone. In Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. In the Father, who made a plan for our salvation even before the worlds came to be, who in His eternal foreknowledge called us to be His own from eternity and who keeps us as His own through His Word and sacraments, by the power of His Holy Spirit working through these means of grace.
Here is our salvation. Here is our basis for joining together as the family of God in this place, the family of saints.
But how do we know that this is us, in this glorious heavenly picture? How can we be sure that we are in that great and heavenly chorus, singing praise to God alone?
Hear as the elder and John converse:
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."
These saints are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. Like it or not, we are in the great tribulation right now. Oh, sure, it doesn’t look like it, most of the time, but that’s just because it’s so well masked. Think about the panic and fear which hit our culture in the last few weeks, not because of some great spiritual crisis but because some banks were collapsing and with them, some of the monetary value in our financial system. We are in a culture built upon the rock of the financial market, which worships the almighty dollar and looks to banks and associated credit agencies as our great hope in times of trouble. A false saviour, a false hope, a false god. That’s all it is. True, the way our world is set up, we need to use the money we have to make a go of it. You simply can’t operate in this world without money. But the degree to which even we, as Christians, end up making money our priority over and above our Lord is our current tribulation we endure in our North American culture. It is a very subtle, and effective, deception of Satan. This even befalls us, the people for whom our Lord and His Church are important enough that we give up our Sunday mornings to hear His Word.
There are other tribulations; there are those who would make it illegal to speak the name of our Lord Jesus in the public square or in our schools, while ensuring that all other religious groups and identities get full airtime. There are those parts of our world today where brothers and sisters in Christ, part of our extended family of saints, are yet bleeding and dying for the name of Christ which they bear on their foreheads and on their hearts. Every now and again we hear of a persecution in Africa or Asia where a Christian church has been attacked and the worshippers killed or injured for the crime of going to the Lord’s house to join in public worship, as we do this day. Thankfully, this is not our situation at this time, but it could well be one day.
And the greatest of all tribulations, the one which all Christians must face up to and strike out against, is the tribulation of sin itself. From the time when Adam and Eve doubted God’s Word and tried to become like God, knowing good and evil, evil has dominated the hearts and lives of all on this earth. We hear in Genesis 6, before the Flood, how “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5 ESV) Noah found favour, and the rest of the world was destroyed. In the same way as that flood was sent to wipe out evil, so the great flood of Baptism is given to us to wipe out the sin in our hearts. But just as Noah and his family still sinned, so we also, despite this cleansing gift, still also struggle and lose the battle against sin so very often in our lives. Perhaps it is unresolved anger or lust or jealousy or gossip or laziness or pride or whatever. Sin likes to package itself in attractive forms; and remember that one of the names for our old evil foe, the devil, is Lucifer, the light-bearer. There’s just not the same commitment to Christ and His church as there used to be; even many of us hear today can and do often find other things to do than spend time in God’s Word, whether on Sundays or at other times. It’s easy to make church just one of the palette of Sunday options rather than the key to the entire week. Sin and death and the devil are constantly working against the gift of Baptism which God has given us, working against us in order to bring us down, to keep us from the great heavenly feast, the eternal choir.
This is why we dare not treat our Baptism as a once-and-long-ago experience in our lives but need to return to it and treasure it daily. “The Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”
In other words, the great tribulation we face as the saints of God is that we are also still sinners. Utter, depraved, sinners. And that sin needs to be drowned daily. Every day we need to return to the water in the font, to the foot of the cross, and there receive that new hope again and again, that reminder and promise that this sinful world is not all there is, but that we are now, and already, also the full and complete saints of God. We cannot yet see it, but by faith we know that this is our reality, our great hope. For we have been washed and made clean in the blood of the Lamb. Where such a cleaning has happened, we dare not take it for granted, but instead, by the Holy Spirit, live in our new clean clothing, taking special care to follow the One who has made us clean. As the Apostle Paul says in Romans 6,
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:1-11 ESV)
That’s what it means to be wearing the new baptismal clothes, to live with Christ, knowing that, as Romans 7 says, it will be a daily struggle, but also knowing that the ultimate battle against sin has already been won for you and for me, so we need not be ashamed but instead can boldly live as His people, here and now. At the end of this life’s day, all that matters is if your robes have been washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb. All of those things which so concern us now— our families, our jobs, our finances, our friends, whatever—will fade in the light of the One whose glory so fills His eternity that there is no need for the sun or any other light, for in the glory of God to be revealed, we will need nothing else. In Jesus, we find our eternal rest. We find in Him “our refuge and strength”, as we recited earlier in the 46th Psalm. That’s what it means to be a saint.
“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.”
God grant this eternal blessing to all of us, as we continue in His ways, under the grace of Baptism which He has given to us and to all the saints, past, present, and future. In Jesus, the Lamb who was slain in order that we might live and reign with Him for all eternity. Amen.
Last updated November 2008 by the webmaster.