“WHO ARE THEY?”
All Saints’ Day
November 1, 2015
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
“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 lead
guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every
tear from their eyes.”
Revelation 7:14-17 (ESV)
As a teenager in high school I remember a Roman Catholic friend of
mine trying to tell me that the major difference between his church
and mine was that the Roman Catholic Church has saints and the
Lutheran Church does not. I thought that was a strange thing for him
to say, especially since he often accompanied me and some other kids
from my church’s youth group to ”Teen Supper Club” meetings in
Annapolis, Maryland at a place called Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church. I
tried to explain to my friend what our real differences are in this
matter: We do commemorate saints in the Lutheran Church; it’s just
that we don’t pray to them or trust in their merits. And we define a
saint as being anyone who is made holy in the sight of God through
faith in the sacrificial life and death of Jesus Christ; not
necessarily somebody who has been canonized as a saint by the Church.
In other words, the Lutheran Church has no official “list” of saints.
Of course there are certain well-known heroes of the faith that we
hold up as examples to be followed, but they aren’t really any better
than the rest of us. As far as we are concerned (and more
importantly, as far as the Word of God is concerned), a saint is a
sinner who, trusting in Christ for forgiveness and acceptance,
confidently hopes to go to heaven. Such a person certainly gets there
because of what Jesus has done for sinners.
The Scripture text that serves as the basis for our meditation on
this All Saints’ Day gives us a perhaps more picturesque description
of the saints. They are described here as people who have endured
“the . . . great tribulation”--people who are cleansed by the blood of
Christ--people who receive all of the blessings of God as a free gift
in the Gospel of Christ. It is my hope that this morning this passage
from Revelation will help us to see ourselves as saints of God in
Jesus Christ and to appreciate both the challenges and the blessings
that sainthood bestows upon us and upon all who rely on Christ alone
for forgiveness and salvation.
The first challenge of sainthood mentioned in the verses before us is
surviving “the great tribulation.” This has been greatly
misunderstood by many well-meaning but misguided Christians, who
mistakenly think of this “tribulation” as being some specific time
period in history. According to their interpretation, “the
tribulation” fits into an elaborate scheme that supposedly gives us a
timeline for the end times. But in reality, “the . . . tribulation”
(or “period of trial,” as some Biblical translations render it) is for
every saint the period of time between that person’s conversion and
his or her death. What this means is that, for you and me, “the
tribulation” is right now. This is the time when we are actively
engaged in spiritual warfare against the devil, the world, and our
[own] sinful nature (Small Catechism, explanation of the sixth
petition of the Lord’s Prayer), the enemies who use every good and bad
circumstance in our lives to try to drive a wedge between us and our
Savior. Their attacks on our faith go on for as long as we live on
this earth. Not until we die trusting in Christ can we say that we
have survived “the great tribulation.”
The saints are further described in our text as those who “have
washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, was offered up on the altar of the
cross as the atoning Sacrifice for the sin of the whole world.
Because His blood was shed for sinners like us, that shed blood of
Christ has a cleansing effect on those who through faith belong to
Him. Our sins are, to use Biblical language, “washed away” by the
blood of Jesus. Our “robe” (or our appearance in the sight of God) is
no longer soiled by sin; it is the purest white because it has been
made that way by the Lamb who lived and died for us.
This text from Revelation also speaks of the blessings that await
those who are saints of God through Jesus Christ: “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 lead guide them to springs of living water.”
Here we read about the Lamb on the throne being the Guardian and
Protector of His saints, meeting a host of material needs for them.
This assures us, as God’s saints, that our faith in Christ is not
misplaced. He cares about us enough to recognize our need and He is
able to do something about it. He is always there for us when we need
Him. All we need to do is ask. He may not always give us
specifically what we ask for, but we can be confident that in His
wisdom He will always give us what is ultimately best for us.
Finally we are told that the saints find in their Savior comfort and
consolation for all their sorrows: “God will wipe away every tear
from their eyes,” we are told. I don’t really think that it’s
necessary to convince you that in this life we have tears that need to
be wiped away. Our sorrows in life are too numerous to list and too
obvious to try to prove. From the cradle to the grave, life as we
know it is one sorrow after another. Granted, most of our sorrows are
of our own making, through our sin. But not every sadness has a
direct cause-and-effect relationship with a person’s life and conduct.
Because we are sinners living in a sinful world, we are bound to have
sorrow, whether we are directly responsible for that particular sorrow
or not. But no matter what our sorrows are or what specifically may
have caused them, the comfort that God offers us in the Gospel of His
Son is far greater.
Most of us probably feel a little awkward or uncomfortable thinking
of ourselves as being saints. But that is precisely what the Word of
God says that we are. We have been cleansed from our sin with the
innocent blood of Jesus Christ, shed on the cross for us. Because of
that sacrifice that He made for us, we are holy--righteous in the
sight of God on the day of judgment. Today we rejoice in our
sainthood and consider it a precious gift. And we look forward with
confidence to a joyful reunion in heaven with all who have gone before
us trusting in Christ for forgiveness and salvation. We also consider
it a sacred privilege to share with the others the Good News of God’s
redeeming grace in Christ, so that even more saints may be created by
the power of His Spirit, who works in and through the Word that we
proclaim.
Amen.
May the Lord bless your hearing of His Word, using it to accomplish in
you those things for which He gave it. May you be enriched and
strengthened in faith that you may leave here today to go out into our
world armed with the whole armor of God, prepared to be able
ambassadors of your Savior Jesus Christ. He who calls you is
faithful, and He will do it. Amen.