Sermon for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity - Mt 22:15-22

 

                                                                                                Trinity 23

                                                                                                Mt 22:15-22

                                                                                                11/15/20

 

            At the beginning of the sermon this morning, let me ask you to engage in a little thought experiment with me.  What would happen if next week, President Donald Trump announced that by executive order he had directed the U.S. Mint and the U.S Bureau of Engraving and Printing to put his image on every single coin and currency produced by the United States?

            Well, it’s really not much of an experiment. I think we all know what would happen. Based on four years of evidence, we can be pretty sure that the media would go completely crazy in condemning the action.  Certainly the people who voted for Joe Biden would be outraged.  And then, a very large portion of the people who voted for President Trump would be shocked and ask: “What in the world is he thinking?”

            The fact of the matter is that we just don’t do this in the United States.  American Presidents don’t produce coins and currency with their own picture on it.  Instead, we have pictures of past respected and influential presidents who have died. So on our most used coins there is Abraham Lincoln on the penny; Thomas Jefferson on the nickel; Dwight Eisenhower on the dime; and George Washington on the quarter.

            Beyond that these coins all have statements that are meant to express beliefs and values of our country.  Each of these coins has “Liberty” and “In God we trust” on the face side of the coin.  They have the Latin phrase “e pluribus unum” – “one from many” on the reverse side.  Our coins and currency are not used to promote the living President.

            Things were completely different in the first century Roman world.  Even though emperors during the first century did travel, most people in the massive Roman empire would never see the emperor in person.  However, that did not mean they wouldn’t see the emperor.  Instead, the emperor’s presence was made to be felt everywhere by putting his image – his likeness -in every conceivable location and form where people lived.

            And of course, what better way to do this than to put the image of the emperor on something that people had to use on a regular basis – by putting it on the money in their hand.  And so the denarius at the time of Jesus had the image of Emperor Tiberius on it.  It also had the inscription: “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus and High Priest.”  At his death, Augustus had been acknowledge as being a god.  According to this inscription, Tiberius was the son of a god. And of course, especially in the eastern part of the empire, Tiberius received worship as a god in the cult of the emperor.

            This denarius with the image of Emperor Tiberius and the inscription, “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus and High Priest,” stands at the center our text this morning.  We hear about events that took place during Holy Week.   Matthew tells us, “Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words.”  More literally, the Greek says that they sought “to trap him in a word.” The Pharisees were out to get Jesus.  He had been a thorn in their side for some three years, and they were desperate to catch him saying something that they could use against him.

            Now you have to give the Pharisees credit. They had devised a really brilliant plan. They sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians – people who supported the rule of Herod Antipas in Galilee and Perea - saying, “Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone's opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances.”

            Of course their description of Jesus was completely fake and disingenuous.  It was meant to set Jesus up so that he would inclined to say something that opposed the emperor. The irony was that while they didn’t mean a word of what they said, every word they said about Jesus was true.

            And then they laid the trap for Jesus by asking: “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”  In this question they had Jesus perfectly set up.  If he said that the Jews should play taxes, it would discredit Jesus in the eyes of the people who hated Roman rule. 

            The tax on individual subjects of a Roman province was the most direct way that people experienced the impact of Roman rule.  When the Romans took over a province, the first thing they did was to take a census and implement a tax.  In 6 A.D. Rome had made Judea a province, and the census and tax caused an uprising that was serious enough that a senior Roman official had to bring legionary troops down from Syria in order to suppress it.

            On the other hand, if Jesus said that Jews shouldn’t pay taxes to the emperor, they would immediately have evidence against Jesus that they could take to the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate.  You did not mess with the Romans when it came to taxes and revenue, and they could be sure that Pilate would take care of their “Jesus problem.”

            But the Pharisees had no idea with whom they were dealing.  Jesus knew their intent and said, “Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin for the tax.” They brought him the denarius I described earlier in the sermon.  Then Jesus asked: “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” The Pharisees gave the obvious answer: “Caesar’s.”  Jesus replied, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” When they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and went away.

            The Lord had escaped their trap.  The coin had the emperor’s image and inscription on it, so Jesus said, give it to him. But Jesus also said, give to God the things that are God’s.  Of course, everything belongs to God, the Creator of all things. And that included as well that little piece of silver which bore the image and inscription of a mere human being.

            There are two sides to Jesus’ statement, and it is the second one that runs everything.  Render to God that things’ that are God’s.  You belong to God. He created you.  Everything you have belongs to God. He gave it to you.  Our Lord Jesus would have us live all of our life directed towards God.

            The problem is that is not how sinful people work.  As I have mentioned before, Martin Luther described sinful man as being “curved in on himself.”  At our core, as fallen people we are focused inward.  We are focused on ourselves.  We are interested in serving a trinity – the trinity of me, myself and I.

            This is a basic issue of the First Commandment: “You shall have no other Gods.”  As the Small Catechism says, this means that we are to fear, love and trust in God above all things. And of course, we can’t overlook the fact that our text deals with money. As we live life, two things that hold the greatest value for us are our money and our time.  Look at how you apportion those – consider how much God gets in relation to all the other things we like and want, and you will soon find false gods all over the place.

            Yet remember where and when Jesus has this interaction with the Pharisees.  It is in Jerusalem and it is during Holy Week.  Just before our Lord entered into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Jesus told the disciples: “See, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.”

            Jesus was in Jerusalem because we don’t render to God the things that are God’s.  Just after predicting his passion he went on to say, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”  Jesus was nailed to the cross in order to receive the wrath of God against our sin.  He cried out, “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?” as he experienced the judgment of God that should be ours.

            But this was the will of the Father because of his incredible love for us. It was his will to give us the forgiveness of sins through the suffering and death of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.  But for sin and death to be defeated, there must be life. And so on the third day, just as Jesus had said, God raised Christ from the dead.  God vindicated him as the One who had passed through judgment and death for us in order to give us forgiveness and resurrection life.

            Through baptism you have received this forgiveness.  Your sins have been washed away.  But your baptism is about more than the absence of something.  Through the work of the Spirit you have also received regeneration – you have been born again of water and the Spirit.  The Spirit of the risen Lord now leads and enables you to live in the ways that please God – to do the things God has given us to do.

            Things God has given you to do are your vocations – your callings in life where he has placed you. And this particular text in this particular month when we have had an election leads us to think about our vocation as citizens.   The verse from our text, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's,” is the first verse in the Small Catechism’s Table of Duties for the topic “Of Citizens.”          

            Everything does belong to God, and the government itself is part of his ordering.  Paul told the Romans, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”

            God has provided the government to restrain evil.  He has given you resources to support the operation of the government, and he tells us to pay taxes.  Jesus says it. The apostle Paul says it.  He has told us to pray for our government – to pray for our leaders.  He has told us to obey the government, up unto the point it tells us to do things that are against God’s will.

            The government may be God’s ordinance, but the people who run the government are sinners. Some will do a better job than others.  Some will have better plans and policies than others. Some will do things are that immoral – things that are sinful. And let us be clear that any politician who promotes the murder of unborn children through abortion is doing something that is sinful and evil. 

            Things have not changed in this regard during the last five hundred years, because people have not changed.  Martin Luther was not blind to the reality of bad and even evil leaders. When he preached on this text, he said: “We, however, should retain this passage as a teaching for ourselves about how we are to act toward both kingdoms – God’s and Caesar’s – so that we give each its honor and due, since both of them are God’s ordinance and work.  We are not to look at the fact that, in both, the people to whom it has been entrusted are not righteous but abuse their office, especially against Christians, and blame and persecute us as disobedient and rebellious.  We should and must tolerate this, but only so far that we retain the right to rebuke them with our mouths and tell them the truth, and not let the blame imposed on us remain on us.  When we do this, we have done and accomplished what was ours to do. We commit the other part to God: how he will punish them and avenge us.”

            God has made us his people through faith and baptism.  He has given us forgiveness, and he has given us his Spirit who helps us live in ways that are true to his will.  We are true to God’s will when we live in our vocation as citizen: when we obey the government; when we pay taxes; and when we pray for the leaders of our government.  If the government tells us to do things that are against God’s will, then we are true to God when we disobey the government and tell it that we must obey God and not man.  When the government does things that are wrong, we use the opportunities we have to speak the truth and rebuke it.

            This may not change the outcome of what the government does.  It may even bring suffering and hardship to us.  We are able to live with both of these because as those who are in Christ we seek to render to God the things that are God’s.  We can trust God when either occurs because we know that Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose from the dead.  And in the resurrection of our Lord we find the assurance that the justice of God will prevail and that eternal victory with Christ will be ours.

 

             

             

 

 

Commemoration of Martin of Tours, Pastor

 

Today we remember and give thanks to God for Martin of Tours, Pastor.  Born into a pagan family in what is now Hungary around the year A. D. 316, Martin grew up in Lombardy (Italy). Coming to the Christian faith as a young person, he began a career in the Roman army. But sensing a call to a church vocation, Martin left the military and became a monk, affirming that he was “Christ’s soldier.” Eventually, Martin was named bishop of Tours in western Gaul (France). He is remembered for his simple lifestyle and his determination to share the Gospel throughout rural Gaul. Incidentally, on St. Martin’s Day in 1483, the one-day-old son of Hans and Margarette Luther was baptized and given the name “Martin” Luther.

Collect of the Day:

Lord God of hosts, Your servant Martin the soldier embodied the spirit of sacrifice.  He became a bishop in Your Church to defend the catholic faith.  Give us grace to follow in his steps so that when our Lord returns we may be clothed with the baptismal garment of righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

 

 

Sermon for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity - Phil 1:3-11

                                                                                                       Trinity 22

                                                                                                Phil 1:3-11

                                                                                                1/8/20

 

            When I go to meetings with other pastors and hear about what they are experiencing, there are many times when I come home and tell Amy about how thankful I am to be pastor at Good Shepherd.  Now don’t get me wrong, Good Shepherd is certainly not the only good congregation around. There are indeed many other pastors who feel the same way I do.

            But there are also congregations - more than you would like to think - that make life difficult for their pastor.  I have talked with a number of pastors recently who are in that situation.  Doing the biblical and faithful thing is not always accepted.  Doing what we as Lutherans confess to be our belief and practice is not always accepted because sometimes it doesn’t match “what we have always done here.”

            This is nothing new. In fact, we can find examples of it in Paul’s letters to the congregations he founded.  So, the church at Corinth made Paul want to pull his hair out.  They wanted to accept the culture of the world around them, and didn’t see how faith in Christ set them apart and caused them to live differently.  They challenged Paul on what should be believed, and were very willing to accept other teachers who came in, contradicting and undermining Paul.

            And then, on the other hand, there were congregations who loved and supported Paul – congregations who were very dear to the apostle for this reason. That describes the church at Philippi.  Paul had preached the Gospel there during his second missionary journey. And from the moment the congregation was founded, they had been supportive of his work.

            Paul begins our text by writing, “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.” This wasn’t empty rhetoric. Paul really meant it, because the support of the Philippians was more than talk.  They put their love into action.  The Philippians had once again sent money to help support Paul in his mission work.  In the last chapter of the letter Paul gives thanks for this and recalls: “And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only. Even in Thessalonica you sent me help for my needs once and again.” 

            At the time that Paul wrote to the Philippians, he was imprisoned, probably in Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast. Paul makes no excuses for the strong expression of his love and appreciation of the church at Philippi.  He says in our text, “It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.”

            The portion of our text that I really want to focus upon this morning is found in the last verses where Paul writes: “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

            Paul says that his prayer is that the Philippians’ love will abound more and more.  We hear a lot about “love” these days.  Love is the great force that is supposed to bring everyone together, not matter what differences may exist.  We are told that love is the great equalizer in which no differences exist – “love is love” we are told, even if it is between two people of the same sex involved in a sexual relationship.  Love is a warm fuzzy feeling that justifies whatever I want to do.

            But the apostle Paul has no use for such definitions of love.  Yes, Paul wants the Philippians’ love to abound more and more. But what he writes is, “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment.” This is not love defined by what sinful man decides.  First this is love that is defined by knowledge. Paul means the knowledge of God and of his will. This is both his saving will that he has revealed in his Son Jesus Christ, and his will for how he has ordered life. And Paul also says that this increasing love is to be defined by “discernment.”  It is love that perceives matters on the basis of God’s word and will.  It discerns between truth and error.

            This is Paul’s prayer because he says that only in this manner it is possible “that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”  The Greek word translated as “approve” here describes the outcome of testing and examining.  And the phrase “what is excellent” can be translated more literally as “the things that really matter.”  Love that abounds in knowledge and discernment is able to evaluate and recognize the things that really matter  - the things that really matter because they are about the salvation God gives, and life that please him.

            Paul says that when this happens the Philippians – and all Christians – will “be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”  Now notice that the goal that dominates Paul’s thought is the “day of Christ” – the return of the Lord Jesus on the Last Day. This is the same thing that we heard earlier in our text when Paul expressed the confidence, “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

            Paul says in our text that Christians are to be “filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.” Paul is describing the fruit that righteousness produces, the righteousness that comes through Christ. In chapter three of this letter, Paul rejects the idea of a righteousness before God that is based in any way in us.

            Left on our own, a righteous standing before the holy God is simply not possible for any of us.  Look at your life and you will find that you are not going to be pure and blameless on the day of Christ.  Instead, you will be guilty of putting God second in relation to your time, attention and money when he should be first. You will be guilty of not honoring, obeying and loving your parents.  You will be guilty of not loving your spouse by putting his or her needs ahead of your own.  You will be guilty of harming the reputation of others by sharing gossip.

            But Paul says in this letter that our standing before God is not based on anything we do.  Instead, Paul now considers everything about himself in which he once placed his trust as garbage, “in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith-- that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

            Jesus Christ died on the cross so that we could be justified – counted as righteous before God.  He received God’s judgment against our sin. Our sin has been judged and condemned in Jesus Christ the sinless One.  And now through faith in Christ, God considers us to be righteous.  Faith receives this righteous standing before God as a gift. It is a gift guaranteed by Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.  Righteous in God’s eyes because of Christ, we know that God will raise us on on the day of Christ, just as he raised Jesus from the dead on the Easter.

            God’s righteousness is his saving action in Jesus Christ to put all things right.  He has given us this righteousness – this innocent standing before him now and on the Last Day - through faith in our crucified and risen Lord.  Through the work of the Spirit – through baptism and faith – he has made us a new creation in Christ.

            And so Paul tell us that this saving action by God directed towards us produces fruit. This fruit takes many forms.  But Paul mentions two of them in this letter and I want to emphasize these. In this first chapter Paul goes on to write: “Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. 

For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, 

engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.”

            One fruit produced by God’s righteousness is our willingness to suffer for the sake of Christ.  Make no mistake, if you are you going to let your manner of life be worthy of the Gospel of Christ; if you are going to strive for the faith of the Gospel, then you will suffer for the sake of Christ.  You will be derided for saying that there is a holy God who judges sin, and that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation. You will mocked and pressured when you say that sexual intercourse is God’s gift for marriage and is to be used only in that setting. You will be condemned and labeled as a bigot for saying that homosexuality is a sin, and that marriage can only exist between a man and a woman. But remember, we are suffering for the sake of the One who has risen from the dead, and so we know that final victory and vindication will be ours.

            Another fruit produced produced by God’s righteousness is described by Paul in the next chapter.  He writes, “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Paul then presents the Son of God’s incarnation and willingness to humble himself “by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  Jesus Christ humbled himself in this way in order to make us righteous, and now through his Spirit he leads us to humble ourselves in serving and putting others before ourselves – an action that begins in your own home as you live with your family members.

            In our text today Paul tells the Philippians: “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 

filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”  May the Spirit of Christ lead us to abound more and more with love as God defines it – a loves that is shaped by knowledge of God and discernment as we recognize the things that that really matter.

            What really matters is that God has made you righteous in his eyes because of Christ.  Through faith in the crucified and risen Lord your sins have been taken away, and God regards you as holy. The righteousness of God – this saving action by God to put all things right - has given you salvation, and through the work of the Spirit it produces the fruit of a life that is willing to suffer for the sake of Christ and to serve others.

 

 

 

                                                                                                                       

 

Sermon for the Feast of All Saints - Rev. 7:9-17

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      All Saints

                                                                                                Rev 7:9-17

                                                                                                11/1/20

 

            During the last ten years, fourteen people who were members of Good Shepherd have died.  That is a remarkably small number – not even 1.5 members per year.  To put that in perspective, I just talked with a pastor this week who has buried twelve members in the last eight months.

            Now this pastor is at a larger congregation, so that does help to explain why he has had more deaths.  He also has a congregation in which a much larger portion of the congregation is older.  It is a congregation in an area where people are born, marry, have children, stay there, and then die there. 

            Our situation is quite different. Very few of our members are originally from Marion and the surrounding area.  Because that is the case, members often move to be closer to family when they get older and are approaching the years when they probably won’t be able to live on their own anymore. And beyond that I can only say that the Lord has blessed us in the last few years as members have survived serious threats to their health, and as treatment for cancer has kept it at bay.

            But while the number of deaths may not be large, each one has still been a great loss. They are people that we knew and loved, people like Myrtle Pickens, Vivian Valley, Shelby Tippy, Ted McNeil, Roy Elting, Pat Crow, Patrick Campbell, Stan Valley, Ellen Patterson, Will Genz, Herb Rowold, and most recently, Janet Myott.

            On the Feast of All Saints we remember these and all the other brothers and sisters in Christ who have departed to be with the Lord.  Now they are not saints because they have died. You are all saints – holy ones – because of Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul often begins his letters by addressing the believers in that location as saints. For example, he writes in the first chapter of 1 Corinthians: “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.”

            You are saints – you are holy ones – because you have the forgiveness won by Jesus’ death and resurrection.  You are saints because you have received Holy Baptism which has washed away your sins.  Paul told the Corinthians that they used to be sinners, yet then he adds:  “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

            But while we are certainly saints, on the Feast of All Saints we remember the saints who are in a very different category than we are. We remember the saints who have died. They have died, and in our text today we learn that they are with the Lord in a setting that is far better than anything we know now.

            Today in the Sunday morning Bible class we are beginning a study of the Book of Revelation.  We will see that Revelation actually tells the same basic story – with varying details and emphases – three times.  It has three cycles, each of which describe the tribulation of the end times, and the ultimate victory that is guaranteed for God’s people.

            Our text is part of the first cycle.  In chapter four, John had seen God seated on his glorious throne, surrounded by the cherubim and the twenty four elders.  Then at the beginning of chapter five he tells us: “Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals.” The problem is that there is no one who I able to open the seals so that the scroll can be read and its contents revealed.

            However, it is then learned that Jesus Christ, risen, ascended and exalted can open the seals. The company of heaven sing a new song saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”

            As Christ opens the seals, they reveal the terrible events of the final end times. For example, the first four seals are opened and reveal the infamous four horsemen of the Apocalypse. It’s terrible stuff in general.  But we learn that it is also a time of great suffering for the Church. 

            After the fifth seal, John tells us, “I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne.” We learn that they cried out, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” 

John tells us that they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, “until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.”  In other words, there are more who will suffer and be martyrs before the end, but God is still in charge and the final victory will be theirs.

            Chapter six and its six seals have been the revelation of terrible and frightening stuff. And then in chapter seven there is an interlude before the seventh seal is opened. It is a pause that serves to comfort and encourage.  John says in our text, “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, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’”

            The white robes indicate the righteousness and holiness of Christ, and the palm branches are a symbol of victory.  We learn that these individuals wete not alone, but instead all the angels, the elders and the cherubim who were all standing around the throne fell on their faces and worshipped God.

            John tells us, “Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, ‘Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?’”  John responded in the only way he could, as he said to him, “Sir, you know.” The heavenly elder said to him, “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.”

            John is seeing the Christians who have died in the great tribulation of the end times that has been described by the previous six seals.  Many are probably the martyrs who were yet to die mentioned after the fifth seal. They had died.  But what really mattered was they had washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

            Now when you really stop and think about it, this is strange imagery.  We know that blood doesn’t make clothes white or clean them.  Instead, it makes a stain that can be hard to get out if you don’t treat it first.  But of course this symbolic language is used in the Scriptures to describe what Jesus Christ has done for us.

            I have a pair of jeans that I wear when we are painting. And let me tell you, when the pandemic hit and schools were closed and Amy couldn’t work, Amy and Abigail had us doing a lot of painting in the house.  Poor Timothy can barely even recognize the place that he now refers to as house 2.0.

            Those jeans are ruined with different colors of paint. I could never get them clean to wear in public again if I wanted to, no matter what I might do.  That is a description of our lives. They are filthy with sin – marked in a way that our efforts can never remove it. There is no end of the things we put before God.  We speak angry and hurtful words. We hate, and lust, and covet.

            But Jesus Christ was the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. The shedding of his blood on the cross was the atoning sacrifice that takes away our every sin.  Through faith and baptism we have washed our robes in the blood of the Lamb, and so now in God’s eyes they are white and pure.  Our sins are forgiven. We are holy before God. We are saints.

            When John first sees Christ, the Lamb of God, in chapter four he describes him “as a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain.”  Jesus Christ died on the cross. But he defeated death by passing through it as God raised him up on the third day.  John begins Revelation by saying that Jesus is “the firstborn of the dead.” 

            And in that chapter John encounters the risen Lord who is described in frightening might and power.  John tells us, “The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.” But when John falls at his feet as if dead, our Lord says, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.”

            Because of what Jesus Christ has done, John sees the saints coming out of the great tribulation in white robes with palm branches in their hands.  What John see is specifically a description of the very final end times. But it is not true only of those who die then.  It is true for every Christian who has died in the faith.

            He says, “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.”

            Because Jesus Christ is the crucified and risen Lord, we have the peace of knowing that this is true for all who have died in Christ. They are with the Lord, and they have been freed from the struggles and hardship of this fallen world. There are no more tears for them because sin and death are no more.  Instead they know the peace of being sheltered by God’s presence. They know the joy of dwelling with the Lamb – the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

            God gives us this glimpse in Revelation in order to encourage us.  We are encouraged to know that our friends and family who have died in Christ now enjoy this peace and joy in God’s presence.  We are encouraged to know death that cannot separate us from God.  Instead, it means the end of our struggle and a place with the saints who dwell in God’s presence.

            Yet we also must remember that while what our text describes is good – far better than what we now know – it is also not yet the very good that God intends for us.  John ends Revelation by saying, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”

            Revelation ends with the resurrection of the dead and the renewal of creation itself, freed from sin. John sees the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, because this world – this earth – is the place God made for us to live. And then we hear words that echo those of our text this morning because what the saints in heaven already enjoy will continue to be our existence as we live with resurrected bodies in the new creation.

            John says, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’”  This is the joy the saints who have died already know. This is the joy we will know if we die. This is the joy that all will know when Jesus Christ returns on the Last Day.  And so we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus!”