Who
Are They – Whose Are They?
John 10:22-30
Revelation 7:9-17
Robert J. Elder, Pastor
Fourth Sunday of Easter: April 21,
2013
Suppose
you are a great sports buff, one who follows every Mariner and Blazer game with
the fierce intensity of a true and loyal fan. But imagine that you were to be
called out of the country for the week of a final game, tending to business in,
say, Thailand, where you couldn’t expect much coverage of American sports in
the local newspapers even if you could read
the local newspapers. But you are a real fan, so you had set your home TV
system to record the upcoming game before you left.
And suppose, on your return, before you had a
chance to watch the recorded game, one of your friends saw you in town and said
to you, “Welcome home! Say, how about those Blazers!” in such a way that you
thought maybe they had won the critical game. Now, as you watched the recorded
game unfold, you would have a different level of anxiety after a bad call from
a referee or when one of the front line players fouled out of the game, wouldn’t
you? You could still get excited about the action, but in the end, you would
think you knew who the final winner would be. It would be something like
reading a detective novel backwards. Come tribulation and hardship, you would
be secure in your knowledge. As they struggled to prevail on the screen, you
would know that in reality, your team was already victorious.
That’s something like the purpose for reading
Revelation in the church. If we take Revelation 7 seriously, we will know that
come this or come that ordeal or setback, victory has already been declared in
heaven, God’s salvation is already a fact, and the woes through which we go are
the mopping-up operation of a battle that has already been won. So no matter
what, from the testimony of John in Revelation we know that the salvation of
God is victorious. Set in the middle of the strife that believers knew then,
reminding us of the strife we may know today, John’s witness never lets up on
the ultimate victory of God, the final security in which believers may rest.
And, like a pre-recorded Blazer game, John records
a victory of God which is already accomplished, not just some reality that
awaits us in the future. While many television preachers may be preoccupied
with some calendar for God’s future intervention in the world, John gives us a
vision of God’s triumph that has already broken in upon the human scene. In
Revelation, the future is determining and creating the present.
But who are these saved ones in John’s vision? Who
are those folks he saw gathered around the throne of God in heaven?
WHO ARE THEY?
One thing is certain. John looked into heaven, and
the people he saw surrounding the throne of God outnumbered his personal circle
of acquaintance. Who are the people that Jesus – the Lamb – has in mind for his
church, as members of his flock, his sheep who will know his voice and follow
him? Our friends and neighbors, certainly. But more than that, just as
certainly.
In Genesis 15, God promised Abraham that his
descendents would be as countless as the stars in the heavens. In the new
Israel, the Church, John’s vision in Revelation demonstrates that God’s promise
to Abraham is fulfilled. The multitude in the chorus in heaven — from every
nation and language – is so large that no one could count them all!
So often, we are preoccupied with questions about
who may and who may not be numbered among the elect, who may and who may not be
the apple of Jesus’ eye just as much as we are. One of the worst tendencies of
many church fellowships is this inclination to presume to know who belongs to
the host of heaven. This scene from Revelation should startle us any time we
are inclined toward that presumption. Apparently, the way to be numbered among
the elect has little to do with knowing who else
is saved, and everything to do with knowing the one doing the saving. The main
thing is to know the Shepherd; we may never know the name and number of all his
other sheep, all his other flocks.
This is hard news for those of us who can only find
pleasure in having when others have not, in knowing when others are ignorant,
in receiving love when we are certain others are loveless, in triumphing when
others are defeated.
John’s admitted ignorance about the “ins and outs”
of heaven ought to be a lesson for the community of faith. John, in looking
upon the multitudes in heaven, when asked who they were, was struck not by
their familiarity but their diversity. The fellowship of the saved is destined
to be greater than we expect. Remember the final scene in John’s gospel, when
Jesus told Peter that he would be imprisoned for his faith, and Peter saw John
walking along behind and asked, “What about him?” Jesus said, “What is that to
you? Follow me!”
This reminds me of a wonderful little poem I read
once and which has stayed with me through the years:
I
dreamt death came the other night,
And
heaven’s gate swung wide.
An
angel with a halo bright ushered me inside.
And
there! to my astonishment
stood
folks I’d judged and labeled:
As quite unfit, of little worth, and
spiritually disabled.
Indignant
words rose to my lips
but
never were set free
Who will we find in heaven? The only way we will
know is by following Jesus. The task of the disciple is not to sort the sheep
from the goats but to obey and follow the Shepherd...
WHOSE ARE
THEY?
...which helps us know that the main issue in
determining the population of heaven is not in finding out who they are, but whose
they are. To whom do these folks belong?
When the day of the festival of Hanukkah came
around and Jesus was in the temple, those who remembered the last big victory
they had known – the victory still celebrated at Hanukkah, commemorating the
time the Maccabee family drove the Syrians out of their homeland — they looked
to Jesus and demanded a final answer from him. “Are you the Messiah?” Are you
the one to whom we need to belong for a new victory?
If we’re honest about it, we all struggle with this
“Who is Jesus?” question from time to time. Should I throw my lot in with him,
or should I wait and get more information? Jesus seldom responds to his
questioners just the way we wish, because he may not be just the Messiah for
whom we wish. If we want to know who Jesus is, our best opportunity to know is
in asking the ones who are following him. They are part of that uncountable
multitude who have come out of great ordeals. To follow Jesus is to know him. “Those
who stand back, arms folded, waiting to be convinced” will never receive the
final proof concerning Jesus’ lordship. “Those who enter the flock are the ones
who hear the Shepherd’s voice.”[2] They are the ones over whom the Shepherd will
watch eternally.
When we were very little, if we were blessed with a
good home, one of our parents — very likely it was our mothers — spent a good
deal of time watching over us, literally.
As we lay sleeping in our cribs, we were observed 0and cherished. As we
took our first steps, said our first words, celebrated our first birthdays, we
were watched and treasured. I seldom hold an infant at the time of baptism when
I don’t think of the eyes of the congregation as well as the eyes of God
watching over, guiding that child. Young children don’t mind it when we watch
over them. In fact, they often feel an immediate sense of panic and uncertainty
if a familiar face is nowhere to be found in a crowded room.
But that comfort under the watchful gaze of others
begins to give way, ultimately, to an adolescent desire for freedom from
observation, for privacy. Children make a game of it initially, closing their
eyes in an effort to make others disappear. As we mature, we want to control
when we will be seen, and who will see us. And we want to hide many things from
anyone’s observation. We may have come to believe that no one, not even God,
watches over us any more. But it is not true. At the center of the very throne
of heaven, the center of life itself is the Lamb, watching over us like a
Shepherd, because we are his.
“Salvation belongs to our God and to the Lamb!”
Some of these saints pictured in John’s vision have sacrificed everything, even
their lives, for the sake of the gospel. Now, even acknowledging their
sacrifice, they continue to recognize that salvation is a gift of God in every
way. No amount of self-sacrificing will bring them their salvation, nor will
any failure to measure up take it away. That is because of who we are and whose
we are: We are the followers of the Shepherd and our lives mirror the salvation
we have found in him. And we are his.
We are they
who have come out of great ordeals;
we have washed our robes
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
For this
reason we are before the throne of God
and worship him day and night within his
temple,
and the one who is seated on the throne
shelters us.
We will
hunger no more, and thirst no more;
the sun will not strike us,
nor any
scorching heat;
for the Lamb
at the center of the throne will be our shepherd,
and he will guide us to springs of the water of
life,
and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.
