“Jesus: Our
Future and Our Focus” (Revelation 5:8-14)
A frog went to visit a
fortuneteller. The fortuneteller gazed
into her crystal ball and said to the frog, “You are going to meet a beautiful
young woman. From the moment she sets eyes on you she will have an insatiable
desire to know all about you. She will
be compelled to get close to you. You
will fascinate her.”
The frog asks, “Where am I? At a singles club?”
“No,” says the fortuneteller, “Biology class.”
Do you
want to know what is in store for you in the future? The writer of Ecclesiastes declared, “In the day
of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the
one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be
after him” (Ecc. 7:14). And God tells us in Leviticus 19, "Do not
turn to mediums or necromancers [i.e. people who attempt to speak with the
dead]; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them” (Lev.
19:31). Nevertheless, even Christians sometimes
depend on ungodly things like horoscopes and astrology to figure out what is
going to happen to them.
Today’s reading from the Revelation to
St. John teaches us that Jesus is our future and our focus. He has the future under control. And he is the focus of our worship.
You and I often fret and fume about the
future. We wonder and worry about our
health, about conflict in our family, about threats from foreign leaders, about
moral decay within our country. But all
this fretting and fuming is simply sinful failure on our part. We fail to completely place our trust in God
and to place our worries in his hands.
In Matthew 6, Jesus tells us “Do not be anxious.” Paul, in Philippians 4, says, “Do not be
anxious about anything.” And Peter, in 1
Peter 5, tells us to cast “all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” But we DO worry. We ARE anxious. We DO NOT cast our anxiety on God. And this shows that we really don’t believe that
God cares for us.
An interesting map is on display in the British Museum
in London
God has promised to be with you, wherever
you go, even though there “be giants” or “scorpions” or “dragons” all around you. Jesus has the future under control. In today’s text, Jesus is worthy to break the
seals on the scroll in John’s vision.
The scroll is sealed because it refers to the future. Only Jesus has the ability to break those
seals and reveal what is to come. He was
victorious over the powers of sin, death, and hell on Easter morning. He lives to keep on caring for you. He holds your future in his hands. Therefore, you can place all that your worry
about in his hands and let him take your anxieties away, because he really does
care for you.
Now, even though Jesus opens the seals on
the scroll, this doesn’t mean that we will have all the answers we want about
the future. Still, in the succeeding
chapters of Revelation, we learn about a series of visions that comfort us
regarding what is to come. Each of these
visions gives us an overarching picture of time from the cross to the end of
the world. The comfort here is that the
preaching of the Gospel will continue.
Jesus is in control in spite of war and bloodshed, famine, death,
suffering and martyrdom. Nothing will be
able to take your salvation away from you.
Heaven and your own resurrection await you. The Church will be victorious in the end for
Jesus’ sake. That was a comforting
message for those who heard John’s revelation read to them in the first
century. It is a comforting message for you
in the twenty-first century.
Jesus is in control of the future, and he
is also the central focus of our worship.
You and I often make other things the focus of our worship. Some of us make our material goods the focus
of our worship. Oh, sure, you don’t
kneel down in front of them and light candles and sing songs to them. But in our hearts, the things we see are
often more important to us than God whom we cannot see. Sometimes our emotions and our feelings
become the focus of our worship. We
evaluate our experience in worship based on how it leaves us feeling. Forget about whether what was said or sung in
the service was true or not … how did it make me feel? Did the music get my feet to tapping?
John’s vision of heaven teaches what the
proper focus of our worship should be.
Our proper focus is “the Lamb of God.”
Everything revolves around him. He
is the one who was slain for our sins so that we might be forgiven. Encircled around him are “the
four living creatures” and “the twenty-four elders” who fall down before the
Lamb. Nobody is quite sure what these
four living creatures represent. They
are probably some kind of angel. Since
they are four in number they may in some way represent God’s control over the
“four” corners of the earth, or all creation.
The twenty-four elders probably represent the Church of the Old and New
Testaments, with 12 elders from the Old Testament and 12 from the New
Testament, even as there were 12 tribes in the OT and 12 disciples in the NT. They each hold harps, instruments to offer praise
to the Lamb with music and song. In
their hands are bowls of incense, which John tells us are “the prayers of the
saints.” In the tabernacle, incense was
burned. As the aroma and smoke went up, both
the eyes and the noses of the people would be reminded that their prayers were
going up to God. Likewise, this picture
here reminds us that the prayers of God’s people in heaven and on earth
continually ascend as a pleasing aroma to the Lord. Recall Psalm 141 which we sing in Evening
Prayer: “Let my prayer rise before you as incense.”
Next, John hears the voice of a multitude
of angels around the throne, joined by every creature in all God’s creation
singing a song of praise to God and to the Lamb. We can learn about worship from their
songs. We learn that Jesus the Lamb is
the object of our worship. In fact, we DO
sing their songs in one form or another.
“Worthy is Christ the Lamb who was slain, whose blood set us free to be
people of God,” we sing in our Divine Service.
“Blessing and honor and glory and might be to God and the Lamb forever.
Amen.” Through his forgiving sacrifice
at the cross, your Lord Jesus truly has set you free from your bondage to sin
and death. He has redeemed you. He has purchased you and won you, not with
silver or gold, but with his own precious blood. And later this morning we will
join the heavenly host of the book of Revelation. We will circle ourselves around this altar,
which will become for us the throne of God where the Lamb is truly present with
his body and blood. And once again, we
will participate in God’s blessings and promises as we eat and drink with faith
in those words, “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”
May 19, 1780 was a remarkable day. An unexplained, deep darkness such as no one
had ever seen fell suddenly upon New England.
Researchers today think it was caused by a combination of forest fires,
thick fog, and cloud cover. At the time,
people were terrified. They thought that
Judgment Day had arrived. The
Connecticut House of Representatives happened to be in session at the
time. Many of the House members
approached the Speaker of the House, Abraham Davenport, and asked that the
House be adjourned so that the members might be with their families as Judgment
Day approached. Davenport called the
House to order and refused to adjourn.
His words have been recorded for us, but more poetically paraphrased in this
way by John Greenleaf Whittier:
This well may be
The Day of Judgment which the world awaits;
But be it so or not, I only know
My present duty, and my Lord's command
To occupy till He come. So at the post
Where He hath set me in His providence,
I choose, for one, to meet Him face to face, —
No faithless servant frightened from my task,
But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls;
And therefore, with all reverence, I would say,
Let God do His work, we will see to ours.
Bring in the candles. [i]
The Day of Judgment which the world awaits;
But be it so or not, I only know
My present duty, and my Lord's command
To occupy till He come. So at the post
Where He hath set me in His providence,
I choose, for one, to meet Him face to face, —
No faithless servant frightened from my task,
But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls;
And therefore, with all reverence, I would say,
Let God do His work, we will see to ours.
Bring in the candles. [i]
As we wait for our Lord’s return, we
remember not to fret and fume about the future.
Jesus has the future in his hands.
He is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll. He is the focus of our worship. We encircle ourselves around his Word and his
Sacraments, receiving strength for the days ahead. Rather than fearing what is to come, your “present
duty” is “to occupy” until he comes. “They
shall reign on the earth,” sang the heavenly host. “You are a kingdom and priests to our God.” So bring in the candles, and live as lights
in the world. Burn the incense, and let your
prayers ascend on behalf of a lost and dying world.
“To him who sits on the throne and to the
Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”
And just like the four living creatures,
the only thing left for us to do is to say, “Amen!”
So let me hear you say it.
Amen.
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