Part of the Multitude
Revelation 7:9 – 17
As we have already seen today is All Saints Day and Christians around the world gather to celebrate the lives of those saints who have gone on before us. As we do that, we should give thanks for those saints living still today.
And we ponder how all of us, you and me, are called to live lives of holiness. Our lesson today reminds us that being a faithful witness, like Part of the Multitude is the redeemed call for us all. It also reminds us that when we live out our Christian calling, we find freedom in the Lamb of God who sustains all of us.
We all have saints in our past, we all know saints in our present. Look around this sanctuary and you can see those that you consider saints. Some of the Saints in our lives are those who have gone ahead of us. Some are those who are living and walking among us. The word saint is not limited to the “greats” of history. In fact, the Apostle Paul and other writers of the New Testament use the term synonymously with Christians and believers.
No matter how you define it, the word saint has a broad application for righteous souls that have become the example of Jesus Christ to the world around them. On All Saints Day, as we have already done, we celebrate those that have finished their Earthly labors. Each of those saints are a Part of the Multitude.
In our lesson today, the Apostle John recounts for us a vision in the Book of Revelation, and in it we see a Great Multitude that is countless, it is beyond numbers and it includes people from every tribe and people, and language. There is no limit to the scope of this multitude, they are from every nation, tribe people and language. This multitude is universally inclusive.
The multitude is clad in white, it is waving palm branches, and they are resounding with hymns of praise in a loud voice. They cry out “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” In many ways this scene reminds us of the biggest celebration that we find in the Bible outside of this one in Revelation.
That scene is the triumphant entry of Jesus on Palm Sunday to the cheering crowd that lines the streets of Jerusalem. They wave palm branches and shout loud Hosannas as Jesus passes by. However, in that story many of those people will turn their back on the Lamb before the week is over.
In our scene today this crowd has come to celebrate their Savior faithfully and ardently for an Eternity. All of the angels hover over and around the great multitude. The elders watch and listen intently as this Heavenly congregation praises the Father and the Lamb. John is rightful awestruck by the scene.
Then John is then rhetorically asked by one of those elders “who are these souls in white, where did they come from”. John pointedly replies, “you already know that answer”. The elder says to John “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation, they have come through great challenge to be here”.
They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. The dirty, grimy robes they wore, the robes made filthy by the sin, sorrow, pain, and all the despair of this world, are washed in the blood of Jesus and they are now magnificently white!
The members of this Multitude have become the example of Jesus. Paul is always telling us to put on our faith, to put on the attributes of Christ, to put on the fruit of the Spirit. These are the ones who put on Christ, put on his life, and lived it as though it were their own. The lived it for those in need. They have lived and worked for the benefit of others. Those are the characteristics of saint, both living and resting.
It is in this truth that we are reminded that while holiness is a Christian calling, it is also the work of God. Holiness does not come from us, it comes from the Lamb in whose name, person, and earthly calling we are made free like Part of the Multitude to approach the throne with boldness. It is here that Lawrence Hull Stookey’s perspective becomes helpful:
“…those we rightly revere are ‘God’s saints’ because God created them by grace. Men and women do not by sheer determination and self-discipline become saints. Holiness is a divine gift. It is indeed the power of the resurrection at work in human lives.
Thus commemorating the saints is nothing other than a way of affirming that the transformative power of Christ is at work in us, in human lives. We are saints because God’s holiness is at work in us, not because on our own we have come to great spiritual attainment.
In exploring the lives of the historic saints, it is necessary to be thoroughly honest about their limitations and faults, for only in this way do we come to believe that God can also work in the people around us and even in us, whose faults we know fully well.”
Today is the day we celebrate the Saints in our lives. It is the day we remember those faithful who have died, especially those we lost this year. And all that we heard before, all the promises made to us, have been fulfilled for them! They are with the Lord!
They’re Part of the Multitude that stands around God’s throne singing those familiar words, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
We know that we’ll see them again too! Until then, you who are saints in this life through Christ join with them every time you worship! Every time you sing, you’re singing with the invisible saints who’ve gone before!
The Lord’s Supper that we will celebrate in just a few minutes is a foretaste of the feast to come, a glimpse of what waits for you and me when we all dine at the Heavenly Banquet. Then all the sorrows of this world will fade and disappear on the day that you pick up a palm leaf and stand before the throne of God and become Part of the Multitude.
This lesson is the vision of All Saints Day, a glimpse at how it is for those who have died in the faith, how they are before the Lord, they behold His face, they are passed all trouble, finished with sin, they are in bliss and at rest as they wait for the resurrection of the dead and the new heaven and new earth, and they have all of this by the Lord’s mercy. It is His blood that washes them and makes them clean.
This is an encouraging vision for us who are not yet there. We consider those who have gone before us, who rest from their labors, who behold the face of God, whose tears have been wiped from their face. This is what is ahead for us, and it encourages us.
Hear the Good News my friends………
All this is waiting for you! It’s what you can look forward to because everything that weighs you down was crucified with Jesus. Jesus leads you by the hand through the dark and stormy nights.
He promises you in the Psalms that He’s your refuge and strength. He assures you in Isaiah that He can’t forget you. He announces in Romans that nothing can separate you from His love. He declares in I Corinthians that Death has lost its sting! These are God’s promises for you and every single one of them has been kept and will always be kept by the Lamb who sits on the throne.
All Saints Day provides an opportunity to remember the promises of eternity. It is a way of looking through all that is surrounding us now into a future that looks significantly different. All Saints is a call to action, to live into this possible future, the Kingdom of God, where—as our text reminds us—there is no hunger or thirst, and there is comfort for those who mourn and those who suffer in the hands of God.
In other words, it is our time in the laundry room. We wash our dirty robes in the blood, in the life and witness and example of the Lamb, and then we put that witness on and begin to look like him and act like him. And love like him. And comfort like him. That’s the promise; and that’s the hope:
However you envision this hope, it is a grace to cling to in uncertain times. We look toward the multitudes who have gone before as a promise and a beacon of light in our darkness. These are they who have gone before; let us celebrate them, even as we honor them by how we live. So that we too can one day be Part of the Multitude just like the Saints that wait for us, pray for us and care for us as they are among the worshipping throng above! Amen.