Revelation 7:1-8

May 17, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 16:50 in the audio file.

Or, The Number and Nature of the Sealed

It has been 70 days since our last time together in the Apocalypse. Of course, the last 70 days have been their own sort of revelation, and while it shouldn’t be identified as the Great Tribulation, it has included some here-to-fore unseen power-grabbing devastation. Plagues of locusts have nothing on partisan legislators when it comes to devouring the land.

We had just considered the breaking of the sixth seal which caused such turmoil on earth that kings self-quarantined into caves. The rich and the powerful hid themselves, the slaves and the free were panicked.

Usually these sorts of prophetic pictures take some imaginative effort on our part if we want to envision the destruction across earth. But at least for me, the last ten weeks have been stranger, and stronger, than fiction. We have seen a tribulation trailer, and, of course, the trailer isn’t finished playing yet. Between the novel virus and the traditional political manipulation, we have more reasons in real life to wake up from our comfy readings of Left Behind.

At the same time, there is nothing new under the plandemic. Shouldn’t we sympathize a little better with the church in Ephesus with their patient endurance and hatred of evildoers while also remembering not to forget our first love? Can’t we relate a little better to the Smyrnaeans whose neighbors kept slandering them and caused them economic loss, and long to be faithful unto death? How about the faithful in Pergramum where Satan’s throne was, or in Thyratira where they needed to hold fast? Can’t you picture, at least a little more clearly, some of the Christians in the first century saying to each other, “How has the world gotten so crazy?” And doesn’t it challenge us a little more, like a trumpet blast inside our noise-cancelling headphones, to hear Jesus keep saying things like, “To the one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations” (Revelation 2:26)?

We’d gotten past the letters from Jesus to the churches in chapters 2-3, through the worship of Jesus as Lion and Lamb in chapters 4-5, into Jesus opening the seals on the scroll of judgment. Chapter 6 reveals the first six seals. The first four seals are the four horsemen, bringing false peace then taking peace then bringing famine and pestilence and more of the sword to death. The fifth seal showed the martyred souls crying for justice. The sixth seal brought a great earthquake and stars falling and the sky vanishing.

I found a note after that Sunday which questioned my interpretation of those events as actual events. I still think these are not mere representations of bad things, but realities of bad things as retribution on those who will not submit to God. The final question of chapter six is the one all men must deal with, “the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”

There is an answer to that. Those who can stand are those who are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. In chapter seven, we are introduced to two visions that emphasize God’s effective care for His own.

I am no stranger to the disagreements over the number and nature of those discussed in the first vision, verses 1-8. The second half of the chapter is a little easier to deal with, though some see both visions as talking about the same group in different ways. What seems to be the case is that judgments have paused between the sixth seal at end of chapter 6, and the seventh seal which is opened at beginning of chapter 8. Chapter 7 describes a pause in the action.

Whatever else, these two visions leave no doubt about who will stand. God will preserve His own from judgment and bring them to salvation where there will be no hunger, no thirst, and tears will be wiped away.

The first vision has a lot of numbers and requires some visionary math. It s[...]