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᛭ INI ᛭
(5. Oops!: “What are you looking for?” is a tough question on All Saints’.)
Revelation tells us: “John looked.” He saw the great company; He looked and saw on the Lord’s Day. (Rev 1) Exiled on Patmos, may not of been what he was expected or was even looking for. On this Lord’s Day, what are you looking for?
Now, on the day we’re observing All Saints’ it’s a tough question to ask. “What are you looking for” doesn’t quite capture it. “Who are you looking for?” That’s a better fit. For the great company might be innumerable, it might be countless, but it’s not nameless or faceless. You know the names. Remember the faces. But you do not see them.
Thanks be to God that the Nicene Creed gives us a good confession for our tough question today. “What are you looking for?” “I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” (Nicene Creed)
(4. Ugh!: We look for all sorts of fleshly things.)
The Nicene Creed is the gift of a good confession, but it must give us this good confession because our “our flesh has not those pure desires the spirit of the Law requires.” (LSB 555:2) As John says today, “What we will be has not yet appeared.” (1 Jn 3) So, we look for all sorts of fleshly things, the desires of our sinful flesh.
What are you looking for? Why are you here? All sorts of reasons, are they good reasons? With pure and holy intentions? Are you pure and holy in your daily living? What are you looking for in your daily life? If you’re baptized, “[being] raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” (Col 3)
But it’s not just seeking or looking for the wrongs things in this life. Our flesh causes us to look for all sorts of things in eternal life, too. Looking for comfort and hope and faith in all the wrong places and ideas…
We’re affected by our worldly culture that causes us to look forward to an eternal life God never promises. (A false faith operation perpetrated by the devil and his demons…) Eternal life gets turned into something like the ancient Elysian Fields. You get a glimpse of this idea at the end of the movie The Gladiator. The main character has been looking to go to those fields to spend eternity with his family. (He does get there in the movie.) For us, though, eternal life is just whatever past time the departed enjoyed in this life.
Many Christians may not like that our relationships will enter a completely different phase in eternal life. You’ll be you after the resurrection, and it seems, as far as Scripture hints to us, that we recognize other people in eternal life. The relationship we had with them ended at death, and yet we’ll enjoy enteral life with them forever as brothers and sister in Christ. So, Jesus says in Matthew 22: “In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage.” (30) That might frustrate us, which shows how much our flesh sets its mind not on things above but on earthly things. (Col 3)
Besides that, do we really like or agree with what we sang last week? “And take they our life, Goods, fame, child, and wife, Though these all be gone, Our vict’ry has been won; The Kingdom ours remaineth.” (LSB 656:4) Another hymn puts it this way, when singing to Jesus, “Earth has no pleasure I would share, Yea, heav’n itself were void and bare If Thou, Lord, wert not near me.” (LSB 708:1) These hymns, like the Nicene Creed, draw a good confession out of us, because how often heaven is bare if someone we love isn’t there!
(3. Aha!: Yet saints are saints not because of what they look for but διὰ τὸν αἵμα τοῦ ἀρνίου.)
Our sinful flesh affects what we’re looking for and who we’re looking for. Such fleshly realities often dominate our lives. They get stuck, a playlist on loop, in our heart, soul, mind, and strength. So turned away from the Lord, we set up these desires and those things we long for, look for, look forward to, as our idols. Yet, “you shall have no other gods before Me,” (1st Commandment) the Son speaks at Sinai. In other words: “100% of time look for and to Me alone.”
Nevertheless, the Lamb sanctifies you anew by bringing you to repentance and strengthening your faith in Him. Only He can do this. Saints aren’t holy because they did holy things or more holy things than others. No, saints are saints because of Jesus alone. Their robes are washed and white “in the blood of the Lamb.” (Rev 7) “Everyone who hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” (1 Jn 3)
Today, He’s repenting and strengthening you again by showing you something from Revelation 7…
(2. Whee!: GOD’S SAINTS—ALL OF THEM—ARE ALWAYS TOGETHER κύκλῳ HIS AND THE LAMB’S THRONE.)
He shows it to you to strengthen your hope in Him. For “everyone who hopes in Him is pure like Him!” (1 Jn 3) A saint! And Jesus promises His saints: “They shall see God.” (Mt 5) You will see it. It’s just “not yet,” as John says, and yet he also says, “we’re God’s children now.” So, there is something we can “see” now by faith. The very thing Jesus wants to show you today, dear saints of God.
Jesus wants you to see this:
GOD’S SAINTS—ALL OF THEM—ARE ALWAYS TOGETHER κύκλῳ HIS AND THE LAMB’S THRONE.
I can say this because the Lord promises to be present in certain places. He dwelt between the cherubim of the Old Testament tabernacle and temple (Ps 99). He promises to be present wherever His name is spoken and placed—like Baptism. He promises to be present wherever His Word is. He promises to be where His forgiveness is spoken, His body and blood are given out. “Where two are three are gathered in My name, there I am.” (Mt 18)
And whenever the Lord comes to a place, He’s never alone. Jesus comes with His Father and the Spirit, of course, but even Father, Son, and Spirit is never alone. He brings His angels with Him! He brings all His saints with Him, “the whole company of heaven,” too!
Now, God reveals this to us from time to time in the Bible. It’s clear in Hebrew 12 or Isaiah 6, but another clear example is Psalm 116. That was our Psalm for the week two weeks ago, and I only picked up on it after praying it throughout the week as a family at home and also at Good Shepherd. (Only getting the abbreviated version in DS 1, you’ll miss it.)
In Psalm 116 we pray, “I will pay my vows to the LORD now in the presence of all his people. Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of His saints.” (14–15) A bit later we pray again, “I will pay my vows to the LORD now in the presence of all His people, in the courts of the LORD’s house, in the midst of you, O Jerusalem.” (18–19) When the Psalmist says, “in the presence of all the LORD’s people,” He means all His people, even the departed saints! Isaiah witnesses this gathering at the temple in Isaiah 6. Yes,
GOD’S SAINTS—ALL OF THEM—ARE ALWAYS TOGETHER κύκλῳ HIS AND THE LAMB’S THRONE.
(1. Yeah!: That’s exactly what we’re not looking for or hoping for today because it’s actually happening!)
It’s exactly what’s happening today! It’s not something you need to hope for or even look for. Look no further than here and now! Today we drink “the cup of salvation,” full of Jesus’ blood. We eat His body, too. He gathers us together to do this as the Lamb of God who’s taken all your sins away. (It’s why we sing John 1:29 as our first communion hymn every time we have it!) We are gathered around His and His Father’s throne as His saints, washed in the blood of the Lamb, for His “blood set us free to be people of God.” (Rev 4)
The throne of God the Father and the Lamb His Son dominates the heavenly dwelling. It dominates the space, even as it dominates Revelation 7. (“Throne” is used 7 times.) It’s why our forefathers wanted an altar that would dominate this space. Not only as symbol of God’s throne, but as the focal point and gathering point, so that even your church building would confess that
GOD’S SAINTS—ALL OF THEM—ARE ALWAYS TOGETHER κύκλῳ HIS AND THE LAMB’S THRONE.
And we really are “around”—in a circle. So the area where the altar resides is rounded. (“Apse” is the architectural term.) But, more than that, when we gather for communion, our table/circle is completed on the eastern side of the altar. Christ in the center giving out His body and blood, us receiving it here in faith to our great joy for the forgiveness, and beyond us the saints gathered, rejoicing in the same blood, for it cleansed their robes and made them white. [BLC: It’s why these two windows are designed with stained glass to echo the light and beauty of eternal life.]
As we gather to receive Jesus’ body and blood for the forgiveness of sins and strengthening of our faith, we’re not alone. It’s not just us here. Not just Jesus with His Father and the Holy Spirit. Not just “with angels and archangels.” We do sing the great Sanctus of Isaiah 6 with them, maybe even bowing with them since they are… But we’re also here with and singing “with all the company of heaven.”
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