The Final Thanksgiving | Revelation 11:15-19
Brian Hedges | November 26, 2017
Well, I’m sure that all of us have heard many times the story of the first Thanksgiving. We think back to those Pilgrims when they first landed and the harsh winter they went through and how God provided for them and then they gave thanks after that great ordeal with a wonderful feast.
But this morning I want to talk to you not about the first Thanksgiving; I want to talk to you about the final thanksgiving. There is going to be a final thanksgiving, and I wonder if you’ve ever considered it. I want us to look at a passage that’s found in the book of Revelation, and it’s a passage in Scripture where we have the last occurrence in the Scriptures of the phrase “give thanks.” It’s found in Revelation chapter 11, verses 15 through 19.
Now, Revelation is kind of a confusing book for lots of Christians. It is a kind of literature that we’re not particularly used to; it’s called apocalyptic literature, and it has all kinds of strange imagery, and most of the time when we think about Revelation we’re thinking about those images and what do they mean, we’re maybe trying to figure out what do these images represent in the current calendar or the current headlines, and so on.
I want to suggest a completely different approach to that, that these images are actually rooted in the Old Testament Scriptures, and they have a very important but pretty basic truth to teach us about the triumph of God’s kingdom and what we can expect at the end of time, when Jesus returns. That’s really what this passage is about, and it’s all framed in the context of giving thanks.
This is a passage I’ve never preached on before that actually arose out of my devotional reading this week. I’m reading through the book of Revelation right now, and when I read this passage I of course thought about thanksgiving, because this was the week of Thanksgiving. I thought, “Oh, well that might be a good way and kind of a fresh way to talk about giving thanks in a message,” so that’s where I landed this morning. So we’re going to dig into this text together, Revelation chapter 11, verses 15 through 19.
I want to read the text, give you a little bit of context for how to understand this passage, and then really zoom in on three specific things to give thanks for that we see here in this passage. Okay? Let’s read the passage together, Revelation chapter 11, verses 15 through 19.
“Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.’ And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying,
‘We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,
who is and who was,
for you have taken your great power
and begun to reign.
The nations raged,
but your wrath came,
and the time for the dead to be judged,
and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints,
and those who fear your name,
both small and great,
and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.’
Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail.”
This is God’s word.
So, we’re reading here the account of the seventh trumpet, and if you know anything about Revelation you know that there are lots of sevens. This book opens with letters to seven churches, and then there are seven seals, and then following the seven seals are seven trumpets, and then following the seven trumpets there are seven bowls (three woes, and seven bowls), and then you have kind of the final four or five chapters of the book of Revelation. That’s kind of the flow of thought in this book.
Of course, when you read these you’re always wondering, “Okay, what does this trumpet mean and what does this bowl mean and what does this seal mean,” and so on, and we can sometimes get the mistaken idea that each one of these things represents a distinct event that will happen in the last times, so that when you add up the seven seals and the seven trumpets and the seven bowls you have something like 21 events that are going to happen before the end comes.
I don’t think that’s a correct reading of the book of Revelation at all. Rather, the book of Revelation gives us cyclical descriptions of the same basic events, and those events are the conflict between the church and the world, the church being persecuted by the world and by all the evil powers that are behind the world. Those are things that happening right now, today, all the time, and have been happening since the beginning of time, really, and especially in the age of the church, as persecution began early in the life of the church and was going on when this book was written.
So you have this conflict between the church and the world, and then you have God bringing his kingdom and with it judgment for the wicked and salvation for his people. Those are basically the events that the book of Revelation is describing, but describing over and over again in all different kinds of ways, giving us different vantage points. I think that’s what you have right here; you have a description of the last judgment, this final event, that is yet to take place, but John is seeing it as it occurs, and so that’s what seems to be happening here with the seventh trumpet.
So this is the occasion of the final thanksgiving. It is the final judgment, it is the seventh trumpet, and here’s something to keep in mind when you think about trumpets. Can you think of another occasion in Scripture where you have seven trumpets followed by some kind of victory?
If you scratch your head for just a minute you will remember Jericho, right? Remember the story of Jericho in Joshua chapter 6. There you have Joshua and the children of Israel and the priests, and they march around Jericho for seven days; you remember that? For seven days, and then on the seventh day they march around Jericho seven times and they blow a trumpet, and then the walls of the city fall down flat and they march into this city carrying the Ark of the Covenant. You have the mention of the Ark right here.
That’s part of the background to this text, and then along with that are the plagues of Egypt with the seven trumpets. So if you study that closely you’ll see that the seven trumpets correspond, in many ways, to some of the plagues of Egypt.
All of that Old Testament background is showing us that these trumpets are God’s judgment on the world and God’s victory for his people as he brings his kingdom. Just as the story of Jericho is a story of the defeat of a wicked people, a godless people, people who are characterized by offering their children as burnt sacrifices - I mean, that’s what was going on among the Canaanites, and God is defeating these people and he’s bringing in his own people and establishing his kingdom in the promised land. That’s a picture of what will happen at the end of time, when the wicked will be defeated once and for all and when God will establish his kingdom on earth. That’s what’s going on here. That’s the imagery and that’s the background to this thanksgiving.
Now, notice here just a cast of characters, okay? You have a group of people who are praising God, and God described in a particular kind of way. The group that’s praising God, seen in verse 16, are the twenty-four elders. “The twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshipped God, saying, ‘We give thanks.’” So they’re the ones who are offering this thanks.
Now who are the twenty-four elders? There are different opinions on this, of course, but the best one, that I think makes the most sense, is that the twenty-four elders represent the entire church of both Old and New Testaments. You remember that the Old Testament people of God were fathered by the twelve sons of Jacob, the twelve sons of Israel. So you have the twelve tribes of Israel. And then in the New Testament Jesus reconstitutes his people around himself, naming twelve disciples as apostles. So when you get the twelve tribes of Israel with the twelve apostles you have the number twenty-four, so the twenty-four elders, I think, represent here the church of the Old and the New Testaments. So it’s the church that seems to be worshipping God, the church that worships God, falls on their faces before him, and gives him thanks.
And then notice how they thank him, or how they describe him. “We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was.” Now, both of these ways of describing God are crucial and important in the book of Revelation. The Lord God Almighty; it’s a title for God in Revelation used about nine times in this book. It is a title that ascribes to God all power. He is the omnipotent God, he is the Lord God Almighty. He has all might, he has all power, he is omnipotent. That’s the idea. This is a description to God of his sovereignty, of his lordship, of his absolute power over all things.
And then he is described as the one who is and who was. Of course, this harks back to the very beginning of the book. In Revelation chapter 1, verse 4, we read these words: “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come.” So you have this three-fold description of God. He is the one who is, he’s self-existent, always existed from all time, he is; he was, so he is the God who is from everlasting to everlasting, he’s the God of history, he’s the God who has worked in history; and he is the God who is to come, who has yet to work out his purposes in the future.
Now, what’s interesting here in Revelation 11 is that the phrase “is to come” is dropped off, and he’s only described here as the one “who is and who was.” The reason for that is because now he’s come. Alright? So this is the last time. This is the last day, this is the final judgment, he has come, and so he is described simply as the one who is and who was.
I think right here we have an initial way of applying this text to us, noticing that God is the object of the thanksgiving, he’s the object of worship, and it’s just a reminder to us that we owe everything to God, and that when we give thanks to God we are to give thanks to God as he is characterized here. He is this omnipotent God, this eternal God, this sovereign God.
And then follows the reasons for this thanksgiving, or the content of the thanksgiving, and I want to give you three. There are three things here that the church of the Old and New Testaments thank the Lord God Almighty, the one who is and who was, three things that they thank him for. They thank him for his kingdom and his reign, that’s first; they thank him for his wrath and his judgment, that’s second; and then they thank him for his reward and his salvation, that’s third. So, thanking God for:
I. His Kingdom
II. His Judgment
III. His Salvation
That’s what we’re going to notice here. Let’s look at each one of these three things.
I. His Kingdom
First of all, the church gives thanks to God for his reign or his kingdom. You see this in verse 17, “We give thanks to the Lord God Almighty, the one who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign.” That’s kingdom language. He has begun to reign.
Then in verse 15 there has already been a reference to the kingdom and to a reign. Verse 15 really connects to verse 17, “Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.’”
So here’s the first thing to thank God for: we thank God for his kingdom, and in the last day the church will thank God that he has brought about the consummation of his people. In some ways, what you see here is the church thanking God for what we pray for almost every Sunday. We just did it, didn’t we? Did you think about the words? When we pray them, we pray the Lord’s Prayer, and what is one of the requests? “Thy kingdom come.” Well, here it’s come! His kingdom has come and he has begun to reign. He’s exercised his power and he has begun to reign.
Now what we have to understand is that in Scripture there’s a sense in which God always reigns, and there’s a sense in which is reign is yet to come. It is true that God is sovereign and that God is on his throne and that God reigns even now. He is reigning even now, but he’s not reigning as visibly as he will in the last day and in the eternal state. There is coming a time when the kingdom of God will be established on earth, where the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. There is coming a day when God’s will will be done in earth as it is done in heaven, and that’s what the saints are thanking God for.
Let me just show you several characteristics of this kingdom. First of all, this kingdom is supreme and sovereign over all. You see that in verse 15, where the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.
It’s interesting that that verse is inscribed in Westminster Abbey, where for several hundred years now the kings and the queens of England have been crowned. There they are crowned in regal ceremony, and above them there is this verse inscribed, “The kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of the Lord and of his Christ.”
It should be a reminder to every earthly power that every earthly power is, ultimately, subject to the power, the power of Christ, and that there’s only one kingdom which will actually never fail. There is one kingdom that will be supreme over all other kings and kingdoms, and that is the kingdom of Christ. Here we have a text describing for us what will happen in the last day, when Jesus comes back. All the kings of the earth, all the kingdoms of the earth, will bow the knee to the supreme Lord of heaven and earth; they will bow the knee to Jesus Christ. His kingdom his supreme, and it’s sovereign over all.
Notice also this is an eternal kingdom. It says, “He shall reign forever and ever.” He shall reign forever and ever! It’s not a temporary thing. This is an eternal kingdom.
And then, when we look elsewhere in Revelation, we see two other things about this kingdom: we see that it’s shared with his people. You remember how this book, both in chapter one and again in chapter five, describes how Christ has come and he has made us to be a kingdom and priests to his God, and we shall reign with him. And in fact, you even see it here, because the twenty-four elders (that is, the church of the Old and New Testaments) are seated on their thrones, and then they are praising and giving thanks and worshipping the supreme Lord of heaven and earth. So this is a reign where God’s people reign with him.
And then finally, this reign is won through the suffering and death of the Messiah. It is the kingdom of the Lord and of his Christ, the Messiah, and the whole mystery behind the book of Revelation is really this: here is the church being persecuted, they’re being persecuted by the Roman Empire, the Roman Empire demanding their allegiance, the Caesars were claiming themselves as god; there’s a whole imperial cult. They are persecuting the church, and here’s the church, suffering, and who are they worshipping? They’re worshipping a crucified Messiah, a crucified king.
The book of Revelation is written to these suffering saints to remind them that just as the suffering Messiah was raised from the dead, so vindication is coming, and though you’re being persecuted now, though you’re suffering now, there is coming a day when the wrongs will be made right, where you will be recognized, where you will be vindicated by your God; there is coming a day when you will reign with Christ, but it’s reign that comes through suffering.
Revelation chapter 1, verses 5 and 6, “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come and from the seven spirits who are before his throne and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead,” there’s the resurrection, “and the ruler of kings on earth,” there’s his kingdom, “to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood,” there’s his suffering, “and has made us a kingdom of priests to his God and Father; to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.”
The kingdom of God! We give thanks for the kingdom of God. It’s a kingdom supreme over all kingdoms, a kingdom shared with God’s people, a kingdom that will last forever, and a kingdom that has come through the blood shedding of the Lord Jesus Christ in his death and then in his triumphant resurrection. That’s the first thing to give thanks for; here’s the second.
II. His Judgment
We give thanks to God for his wrath and his judgment. Not just his kingdom and his reign, but also his wrath and his judgment. Do you see that? Look at verse 18; actually, look at verses 17 and 18: “We give thanks to you, the Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but your wrath came and the time for the dead to be judged and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.”
They’re still giving thanks, but they’re giving thanks to God that his wrath has come and that he’s judging the dead and that the destroyers of the earth are being destroyed. Now this is a little bit counterintuitive to us, because we don’t think of final judgment as something to thank God for. We don’t think of the wrath of God as something to thank God for.
When we think about the final judgment we may feel maybe something like fear, okay, “Am I going to stand before God in this final judgment?” We may have that emotion. We might feel like, “That’s a part of Christianity that I’m not particularly fond of and I would rather just not talk about that so much,” or we may find ways to explain it away, but we certainly don’t have this response: “We thank you that your wrath has come and that judgment has come, that you’re judging the dead!” We just don’t think that way.
I think there are reasons why we don’t think that way, and one reason is because we don’t understand the context in which this is first uttered and because we live in a very comfortable, peaceful, free society, where we don’t suffer in the ways most of the people in the world have suffered throughout history.
Here you have a description of the nations raging and God’s wrath coming (this, by the way, is an echo, quotation of Psalm 2); you have a description here of God’s wrath and of God’s judgment in a context of thanksgiving, and here, I think, is the reason for it. You have people are being persecuted, you have people who are being oppressed. You have men and women who are being crucified.
We don’t know exactly when the book of Revelation was written. If it was written during or after the reign of Nero then you have this insane emperor who is lighting the streets of Rome by drenching Christians in pitch or in tar, putting them on a stake, and then lighting them alive, letting them burn alive to light the streets of Rome. Now this isn’t actually so far-fetched. I mean, did you know that there have been more Christians persecuted in the 20th and early part of the 21st century than the previous 19 centuries put together? So most of the Christians in the world feel this differently than we do. They feel their suffering, they feel the oppression, they see the injustice. I mean, here are people who murder men, women, and children because they worship God. Injustice.
And it calls for a certain kind of response, and in fact the response of the saints in the book of Revelation who have been martyred is one of crying out for justice. You see that in Revelation chapter 6, verses 9 through 11, and in some ways this passage, the one we’re studying this morning, is the answered prayer to Revelation six. Here’s chapter 6 verses 9 through 11. “When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness that they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, ‘O sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’ Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.”
Here are the martyrs under the throne, and they’re praying; they’re asking, “How long, O Lord, before you bring judgment?” They’re longing for judgment! You know why? Because they’re longing for justice; they’re longing for justice. The reason why we don’t think of doctrine of the wrath of God and of judgment as good news is because we haven’t, for the most part, experienced the kind of oppression and injustice that many other Christians have.
Another reason is because we don’t have the same view of God that the Bible does. The God of the Bible is the God who has ultimate rights, and when his supreme rights as the Creator - I mean, he could just utter a word and the whole universe ceases to exist. We owe everything to him. We owe everything to him, and to live in rebellion against that kind of being is great evil. We don’t feel that evil the way the Bible feels that evil, so that’s another reason why we don’t value, we don’t respond to final judgment in the same way.
Let me just give you one illustration of someone who came to appreciate the doctrine of judgment in a new way when he experienced suffering. This is a theologian named Miroslav Volf, from Yale University. He’s from Croatia originally. He says in one of his books that he used to hold to this fashionable view that dismissed the wrath of God, the idea that an angry God was somehow incompatible with the love of God. And then something happened: war came to his country, and he saw terrible atrocities committed in his country. He saw the people who were killed, he saw the violence, the terror, the rape, the pillaging; I mean, he saw what happened when war came to his country, and he then began to think, “If God is not angry about this then he wouldn’t be a good God.”
So, a similar kind of perspective, I think, pervades the book of Revelation and Scripture itself, and when we understand that it’s the oppressed, suffering people of God crying out for God’s justice, when that’s the situation then a doctrine of final judgment is good news.
III. His Salvation
Now here’s the third thing to give thanks for. We give thanks to God for his reign and for his kingdom, we give thanks to God for his wrath and for his judgment, and then thirdly, we give thanks to God for his reward and his salvation; his reward and his salvation.
I’m drawing this from the middle of verse 18, and then from verse 19, alright? Look at the middle of verse 18, “And for rewarding your servants.” “we give thanks to you for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great.”
Now, a reward in Scripture carries the idea of a recompense, okay, or a payment. You might think of a reward given at the end of a race. Here’s a runner who completes his race, he wins the victory, and he’s given a reward, he’s given a crown, a wreath. You might think of that. The same word can be used in a more negative sense, and it carries the idea of a negative recompense, so a payback. It can carry both of those ideas. It’s a repayment, okay?
In fact, this particular word is only used one other time in the book of Revelation, and in that context it actually carries both connotations. This is Revelation 22, verse 12, the words of Jesus: “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense,” or reward; it’s the same Greek word, “bringing my reward with me, to repay each one for what he has done.”
And then what follows are two categories of people. This is Revelation 22. “...to repay each one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gate. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.”
So he’s bringing his reward, he’s bringing his recompense with him, he’s repaying each according to their deeds; two categories of people, those who have washed their robes and have a right to the tree of life and to enter the city of God and the sinful, who are cast out, that are outside of the city. But they’re both getting a reward; they’re both getting a payback, they’re getting a recompense.
Here in Revelation 11 those who are being rewarded, somewhat set in contrast with the dead who are being judged, those who are being rewarded are described as his “servants, the prophets and saints, those who fear your name, both small and great.” Probably not four different groups of people, but four different ways of describing the same group of people. God’s people are his servants; God’s people are the prophets, and by prophets here he probably means those who bear witness to Christ. That would be the church, Revelation 19, verse 10, “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” The idea here is not so much prophecy as in foretelling events; it’s prophets who bear witness to the Christ. I think that’s the idea here.
So they are his servants, they are prophets, they are the saints. Who are saints? The saints are those who are consecrated to God, they are holy to God, they live for God, they have been set apart for God, sanctified in Christ, and they are those who fear God’s name, both small and great. So I don’t think this is different groups of people, I think it’s different ways of describing the same group of people, the church. They are the ones who are rewarded, and the reward here is a positive thing.
Now, here’s the trouble that we have with this: how do we think about this language of reward? This is all over the place in Scripture, okay, so we have to reckon with this somehow or another. Over and over and again the Bible says that God judges according to works and that he rewards the righteous. This is all over the place; Paul’s letter’s, Jesus’ teaching, it’s just there. But how do we think about this?
I think there are two things to avoid. On the one hand, I think we make a mistake if we think that the reward is something given for merit, as if somehow we earn something from God. It’s not that we earn something from God so that God owes it to us to then reward us with something good. I don’t think that’s the idea. There is some correspondence between the reward given and the life lived; there is. That’s why it says, “Judged according to our works.”
But I don’t think the idea is that if you live a good enough life so that your good works outweigh your bad works, then God will save you. I mean, that would be a salvation by works, or justification by works. I don’t think that’s the idea, and there are lots of reasons for saying that that’s a wrong-headed approach. One is just how the Bible over and again emphasizes that we are saved by grace through faith, that we are saved through the decisive work of Christ, that God takes the initiative in our salvation, that he chose us and then he sent Jesus to die for us and he sent the Spirit to regenerate us, even when we were dead in sins. I mean, over and again salvation is seen as this monergistic, unilateral, God is the one acting. Okay? That’s seen over and over again.
Another reason why I think it’s wrong to think that the rewards are recompense for some kind of merit is if we put God in our debt, so he has to pay us back for the good we’ve done, is because so often what we receive from God at the end is described in other terms. It’s described in terms of an inheritance. An inheritance is given to sons; it’s given to children.
You even have this in Matthew chapter 25, where you have a parable of this final judgment, the sheep and the goats divided, and you remember how the sheep are addressed by Christ, “You’ve fed the hungry and you’ve clothed the naked and you visited those who were in prison,” and they say, “When did we do this, Lord?” You know, “When did we do this?” He says, “You’ve done this to me,” and they say, “When have we done this, Lord?” And he says, “As much as you’ve done this to my people, my servants, you’ve done it to me.”
And then he says, “Come, you blessed of my Father, and inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” I’m not getting the quotation exactly right, but he uses that language of inheritance. So, they’re being judged according to their works, but they’re receiving an inheritance. An inheritance is not something that is earned, it’s something that is given.
So, lots of other reasons, and I would just commend to you John Calvin, Institutes, Book 3, chapter 18. Calvin gives a full argument for why we should not read judgment according to works as somehow being a merit-based salvation like the medieval Roman Catholic system was, or at least a part of it was.
There’s another way that we can go wrong on this, though, and this is what I think most evangelicals probably do; instead of seeing these rewards as being somehow intricately and deeply connected to salvation itself, the rewards are just extras. They’re just extras, so that all Christians get saved, but only the good Christians, who really worked hard and were faithful, only they get the rewards, and some Christians get more rewards than others, and so on. So, you still end up having kind of a tier system and still a merit-based approach, it just doesn’t have to do with salvation.
Again, I think that’s a mistake. I think it just doesn’t work with the reward language when you look at it closely. Let me just give you one example from the book of Revelation. While the word “reward” is not used, in the letters to the seven churches there are promises, and the promises are to “those who overcome.” Right? The promises are to those who overcome, or to those who conquer. Every one of the letters has these promises. Now, some of these are a little hard to unpack; it’s not clear exactly what the author means, but in a couple of them it’s pretty clear what is meant.
One of them says, “To him who overcomes I will let him eat from the tree of life.” Well, in Revelation 22, we’ve already seen, those who have a right to the tree of life, those are the righteous, at the very end, right? There are only two categories. There are only those who have a right to the tree of life and to enter the city of God and those who are outside. Everyone who’s saved has a right to the tree of life.
Here’s one that’s even more clear: “To those who overcome he will not be hurt by the second death.” In Revelation chapter 20 the second death is basically equivalent with hell and being cast into the lake of fire, with final banishment from God’s presence and final damnation. The promise is, “If you overcome, you will not be hurt by the second death.” You can’t read tree of life, second death in any other way but an eternal way in a salvific way. I think, when you look closely at the rewards language as it is used in Scripture, that becomes true across the board.
So then, what does it mean here that he rewards his “servants, the prophets and the saints, and all those who fear God, both small and great”? What does it mean that he rewards? What’s the idea here?
Well, I think it’s simply this: the rewards are promises of salvation that are given by God in grace, but they are promised as rewards to spur us on in faithfulness and in obedience to God. So that just as runners who are persevering in the race to the finish line, they’re looking for the finish line, they’re looking for the crown, in the same way believers are encouraged; these are incentives, they are motivations to keep on running, to stay faithful, to persevere, to conquer, to overcome.
But it’s not that when we finish the race we’ve somehow merited anything. We’re still saved by the blood of Christ. We’re still ransomed by the blood of Christ. Every good that we’ve done has been empowered by the Spirit of Christ. There’s no merit there; it’s all of grace! Even the good you do is of grace. And yet we must persevere, and yet we must be faithful, and promises are some of the means that God uses to help us be faithful.
Okay, one more thing to note. There is not only here a promise of reward, but there’s also, in verse 19, a description that’s kind of strange to read about the temple being opened and the ark of the covenant. Let me read that again and explain what I think he means here.
It says, “Then God’s temple in heaven was opened and the ark of his covenant was seen,” or “the ark of the covenant appeared within his temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail.”
Now, the end of that verse is pretty clearly the language of theophany, divine theophany, where God appears in his majesty and his glory, as on Mount Sinai; same kind of language. But what’s the significance here of the temple and of the ark? Well, remember that the temple in the Old Testament was God’s dwelling place on earth. This was the place the children of Israel built, first the tabernacle then the temple, they built it according to the specifications given by God, and this was the place where God would dwell.
You remember how God’s glory fills the tabernacle in Exodus 40, and then God’s glory fills the temple after Solomon builds and consecrates this temple to the Lord in First Kings. The glory of God fills it, and the judgment on God’s people is when the glory leaves the temple in the book of Ezekiel. So the temple is this place of God’s glory, it’s the dwelling place of God; this is where God was present with his people.
And not only that, the temple was the place that housed the holy place and the most holy place, the Holy of Holies. The Holy of Holies was that little room which could only be entered into once a year by one man, the high priest. You remember he would do this only the Day of Atonement; he would come into this room and he would offer a sacrifice on the day of atonement and he would sprinkle the blood of his sacrifice on what? The ark of the covenant.
The ark of the covenant was this little box, and the box held the Ten Commandments and some other items that were symbolic of God’s covenant. It was covered by a lid. You remember the lid is called the mercy seat, and on the mercy seat there are these two cherubim that face one another. Seven times the Old Testament tells us that God is the one who is enthroned on or over the cherubim. This was where God’s glory dwelt. This was the presence of God, and only the high priest could come, and only with an atoning sacrifice, and only by offering that atonement once a year would God continue to dwell with his people. That’s the temple, that’s the ark; huge covenantal significance here.
And here in Revelation 11 we read that the temple is opened and the ark appears. Why does it say that the temple is opened and the ark appears? I think, essentially, it is showing us that God, in the final day, when Jesus comes at the last judgment, when God sets up his kingdom once and for all, when he judges the wicked, when he receives and rewards the righteous into his eternal kingdom that God will once and for all make his presence dwell with men and that the way will be opened. I mean, the way is opened by Christ already, but there will be a kind of mutual fellowship and communion with God in that day that we have not fully enjoyed yet.
I think it’s essentially the same thing described in Revelation 21, verse three, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.’” The temple’s open! God’s dwelling-place with man, he’s made his dwelling-place with us once and for all.
And what’s the significance of the ark? It reminds us that the only way this happens is through an atoning sacrifice, and that sacrifice, of course, is the sacrifice of Christ, to which the ark of the covenant pointed.
So, three things we’ve seen here that the church on the last day, the final thanksgiving, the church will thank God for. The church will thank God for his reign and his kingdom, the church will thank God for his wrath and his judgment; God will make right all wrongs. And the church will thank God for his reward, his salvation, for making his dwelling-place among us once and for all.
Let me conclude in this way: I just want to suggest to you three applications of a text like this, three things that I think will help us to be a more thankful people as we anticipate this final thanksgiving.
(1) Number one, let me encourage you to cultivate a biblical imagination. One reason I think we have so much trouble with texts likes this is because we don’t have a biblical imagination. We have imaginations, but they’re not mainly framed by Scripture.
You remember how C.S. Lewis one time said that in reading the writings of George MacDonald his imagination was baptized? “[They] baptized my imagination.” That’s what he said. Well, that’s all great, and I’ve felt the same way reading Lewis, but I’ll tell you the main place to get your imagination baptized is reading the Bible. Read the Bible and let it baptize your imagination.
The Bible is an exciting book! I mean, studying this this week, and I’ll tell you this is one of the things I’m feeling. I’m like, “God, keep me alive long enough to preach through this entire book,” because this is an awesome book! I mean, it is so full of rich symbolism and vivid imagery that just stirs the heart and the imagination. You’re missing out if you neglect the book of Revelation. Don’t neglect it. Read it, get some helps; if you want a commentary I have great ones to recommend to you. Get some helps and read this book and don’t read like The Late, Great Planet Earth, where you’re trying to figure out what in the headlines corresponds with what’s going on in the book of Revelation; it’s the wrong approach. Read it, instead, saturated in the Old Testament. Almost every verse in this book is an allusion to the Old Testament, and when you know your Old Testament and you read the book of Revelation it will start making sense. Cultivate a biblical imagination. As you move into the new year, get a plan, read your Bible.
(2) Number two, cultivate an eternal perspective. Keep the end in mind! Cultivate an eternal perspective. This is one of the keys to Christian living, is to keep our minds set on eternity. It’s another reason why we have so much trouble with books like this: we are so earthly minded that, as the old saying goes, we’re so earthly minded we’re not of much heavenly good, kind of reversing the saying. We need to have an eternal perspective.
You know, Calvin in his Institutes has a section on the sum of the Christian life, and he says there are three things necessary to it, and one of them is meditation on the life to come. That’s one of Calvin’s three keys to living a successful Christian life, meditation on the life to come. We need an eternal perspective, and again, you can get it from Scripture.
(3) And then number three, cultivate grateful hope, and I’m intentionally putting those two words together, grateful hope: gratitude that is infused with hope. We really need both of those graces, both of those emotional responses in our hearts and lives. We need gratitude, and there are lots of things to be thankful for. You can’t actually sit down and think for very long about everything you have that you don’t deserve without beginning to feel grateful, okay? So we need gratitude, and hopefully you’ve cultivated that somewhat this week.
But here’s the reality: in this world, the longer you live the more troubles you accumulate, the more you suffer, the more disappointments you experience, the more aware you become of all the bad things in the world, and it can dampen a superficial approach to gratitude. You start thinking about all the bad things in the world and you’re like, “Well, it’s hard to be grateful when I read the headlines,” or, “It’s hard to be grateful when I just found out that my dad was diagnosed with cancer last week,” or, “It’s hard to be grateful when I just can’t make the ends meet.” You know?
Here’s what you need in moments like that: you need gratitude that is infused with hope. You need a realistic kind of gratitude. It’s gratitude still, because you still recognize, if you’re really taking your stance in Scripture you recognize that what you deserve in this moment is to be in hell, and you’re not, and you should be grateful. There’s always something to be grateful for. But, the world is not yet what it should be. The world is not yet what it shall be. You are not yet what you shall be. There’s more to come! Your best life is not now! It’s coming, and what you need is hope, and that hope comes as we meditate on the future life.
So, cultivate biblical imagination, cultivate an eternal perspective, cultivate grateful hope, gratitude infused with hope. Let’s pray.
Our God, we thank you for this wonderful book of Scripture, this wonderful passage of Scripture. We thank you for the promise of your kingdom, for the promise of your future justice, for the promise of future reward, inheritance, your presence among your people, the things we’ve considered this morning. They really are too great and too deep for words, so our language fails when we try to give an account of these things.
My prayer this morning is that you would baptize our imaginations with your word, that you would infuse our hearts with new gratitude and new hope, and that you would do all of that as we consider the glorious story of your triumph over the powers of evil in this world and how you have triumphed through the death of your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thank you for the cross, we thank you for the resurrection, we thank you for the promise of Christ’s coming, and it’s in that gratitude and in that hope that we come to the table this morning. We come to look back, we remember his death for us, and we come to look forward as we proclaim his death until he comes. So with a backward look and a forward look we right now, in the present, look to you, our God, and we give thanks, and we do that with this meal. This meal is a eucharist; it is a thanksgiving meal. So as we come, may we come with grateful hearts. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Brian G. Hedges
