1 John 3:1-3 3 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
Revelation 7:2-17 2 Then I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, 3 saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.” 4 And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel:
5 12,000 from the tribe of Judah were sealed, 12,000 from the tribe of Reuben, 12,000 from the tribe of Gad, 6 12,000 from the tribe of Asher, 12,000 from the tribe of Naphtali,node 12,000 from the tribe of Manasseh, 7 12,000 from the tribe of Simeon, 12,000 from the tribe of Levi, 12,000 from the tribe of Issachar, 8 12,000 from the tribe of Zebulun, 12,000 from the tribe of Joseph, 12,000 from the tribe of Benjamin were sealed.
9 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, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” 11 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, 12 saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
13 Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” 14 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.
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 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. 17 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.” Story of first learning how to read felt hopeless like I would be never able to do it
Reading revelation can feel like that sometimes.
Revelation sometimes misused and turns us off from it We hear crazy stories of people “following the bible” based off of what they read in Revelation People start doing things like holding snakes or trying to decipher exactly who the AnitChrist is or any other number of characters we read about in Revelation. Or we hear of people Saying that only 144,000 is the total amount of people making it into heaven and that’s it. As well as taking a lot of the other numbers in Revelation literally.
Hearing all these and other stories or ideas of what people have “gotten out” of Revelation can make us wary of reading Revelation lest we come away with similarly off base ideas.
But Revelation is a beautiful book of the bible that offers us a lot of hope and a realistic picture of where we live now and what we have to look forward to. We can learn some beautiful truths from Revelation if we take the time to learn how to read it. But learning how to read Revelation is often more like when I first learned how to read than picking up a book and instantly being hit with tons of insights.
So to get us started looking at Revelation in the way it was intended to be read let’s take a little time to get to know the person who wrote it.
Written by John when he was in exile on the Island of Patmos This was John the beloved disciple. Only disciple to live to old age Writing was something someone did when they were about to die He wrote four other books besides Revelation, the gospel of John, 1 ,2, and 3rd John. Revelation was most likely the first book he wrote and served as the motivator and jumping off point for his other four books. For example in the letters of John. John writes to the elect lady which is an image used in revelation to describe the church. John reuses the imagery in Revelation to help describe the important realities he talks about in his other books
But before we can see how he uses the imagery from revelation in other books we need to understand. What he is up to in Revelation
Specific kind of literature Apocalyptic writing Takes the design patterns and images from throughout the bible and use them to give us a new perspective on what is really happening in the world and what will happen in the future
It breaks us out of literal descriptions into very poetic and vivid images. Many of these images can be disturbing as they describe the state of our fallen world and the powers of darkness at work around us. But everything always points us back to Jesus and his ultimate victory over the powers of death, disease and darkness to bring salvation and renewal to humanity and the rest of the world as well.
Let’s take a particular image from revelation and see how this plays out.
I’m sure most of you have heard of the notorious number 666 and how it is the mark of the beast. This mark is something people have been looking for for centuries and have tried to pin it on everything from technology, to particular governments and even now vaccines.
But in order to understand what this image is trying to teach us we need to first understand what it would have meant for the first people who would have read Revelation. These people lived long before the governments of recent history under the rule of Rome.
And the number 666 is actually what is called a cryptograph. So if you think of the letter A equalling one and the letter be equalling two and so on. If you take the letters from a particular name in Greek and add them up you get the number 666. And that name is Emperor Nero. The infamous emperor who used Christians as torches for his dinner parties.
So packed inside the number 666 would have been the very real and terrifying memories of what Nero did to Christians. His leadership becomes a description of not just one time period in history but of all the corrupt and wicked rulers of the World. The image that describes this global reality of the rule of darkness is the beast. And as we read through revelation we see the actions of the beast as the pattern of power hungry and evil rulers that has played out over and over throughout the course of history.
So when we read about the beast and the mark of the beast 666 we should not be trying to pin it on one particular thing but allow that imagery to open our eyes to the forces at work around us. The devil is the power fueling the kingdoms of the world. And as nations and kingdoms rise and fall this dark reality is something we grapple with as God’s people. We do not turn to governments or nations for our security because these dark powers will always find their way into the human systems we create.
But we read about a different mark in our reading from revelation today. This is not the mark of the beast but the mark of the living God. This mark is so permanent it is described as a seal.
We read about Seals throughout scripture as the tool used by Kings to make their proclamation official. In the story of Esther the seal is so binding that even the king cannot undo a proclamation that has the royal seal upon it. And now this mark of God upon his people is described as a seal. Something permanent and powerful, so powerful that even the coming destruction of this broken world cannot erase it.
Turn to your neighbor and look at their forehead. Can you see the seal of God there?
Even though we can’t see it. We are really marked through baptism when we receive this seal.
This mark makes us part of the Communion of saints.
Nyg story of seeing so many other Christians. The awesomeness of seeing just how vast the kingdom of God is.
We participate in this vast communion of Saints whenever we gather for communion. Describe Image of communion with family members and ancestors. All of us with the strong Seal of Jesus upon our foreheads.
We will do this soon and this moment is a holy moment where we get a little taste of heaven. As we receive the body and blood of Jesus we enter into the promise of God wiping away every tear. For a moment we are mysteriously right alongside everyone described in Revelation. From every language and people and time.
We have this hope even when things around us are crumbling Songs sometimes help us express this hope in ways that is hard to get across with normal speech and one of my favorite hymns that describes this hope goes like this:
“Built on the Rock the Church shall stand Even when steeples are falling. Crumbled have spires in every land; Bells still are chiming and calling, Calling the young and old to rest, But above all the souls distressed, Longing for rest everlasting.” We see this same hope described in revelation. Even when it looks like everything is falling apart and even the world itself is uncreating itself. Jesus emerges as the victor. He recreates this broken world into something beautiful and renewed.
We live here in the in-between time. Where Jesus has started this restoration within us and called us to lives that bring this restoration to those around us. But we still wait and fight against and through the darkness of this world.
Describe 100 years from now Like in the song, church buildings have crumbled. Scary church is gone everything fallen apart But we have hope that Jesus’ church is not a building, but is each and every one of us. People who have been sealed with a permanent mark. Something no one and nothing can take away from us.