Revelation 7:9-17 Matthew 5:1-12 1 John 3:1-3
As a species, humans are obsessively competitive. We will compete, or bet, on almost anything. We will race each other to the car; we even made speed walking a competitive sport. We give awards to the highest-ranking graduates, we have sports for anything that a human can do on land, in the water, or on the snow, and if we could fly, we would compete in that too. And I suppose if we were to count airplanes, we do that too. When we’re too old to compete physically, we watch other people do it, and we like doing that so much that we pay insane amounts of money to those people who are exceptionally good at something, just so that we can pay to cram ourselves into a crowded stadium and watch them do it. At work we compete to see who can bring in the most customers, to see who can produce goods the fastest, we often feel as if we are competing to see who makes the most money, wears the nicest clothes, or who lives in the nicest neighborhood. As a species, there are also an abundance of historical examples, not including warfare (which is its own sort of competition), of where we have even made death a part of the competition, up to, and including, human death.
But because we are so competitive, the one thing that we rarely do is to confuse winners and losers. No one accuses the Super Bowl champions of being losers, and no one would mistakenly give a gold medal to the person in last place. But scripture does exactly that… and it is not confused at all. In his Revelation, the Apostle John saw a great multitude of martyred believers, people who the world would think of as those who had lost to those more powerful, but the people in that multitude are not, in any way, described as losers, but instead can only be described as victorious. We find this as we read Revelation 7:9-17.
9 After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10 And they cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.”
11 All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying:
“Amen!
Praise and glory
and wisdom and thanks and honor
and power and strength
be to our God for ever and ever.
Amen!”
13 Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?”
14 I answered, “Sir, you know.”
And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 15 Therefore,
“they are before the throne of God
and serve him day and night in his temple;
and he who sits on the throne
will shelter them with his presence.
16 ‘Never again will they hunger;
never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat down on them,’
nor any scorching heat.
17 For the Lamb at the center of the throne
will be their shepherd;
‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’
‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’”
The angel tells John that those who make up the great multitude are the people who had been killed and martyred during the great tribulation. And, because they had suffered and died for the name of Jesus, they had been purified and stood before the throne. These blessed saints, though they had lost in the fight against evil in the world, now served as victors before God and would never again feel hunger, thirst, discomfort, or sadness as they now followed the great shepherd.
Jesus preaches this same message of finding victory in what earthly culture calls loss as he preaches the sermon of the beatitudes in Matthew 5:1-12 where we hear this:
5:1 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them.
He said:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
The people who have been poor will become a part of the kingdom of God. The mournful will be comforted, the humble will be greatly rewarded, those who tried to do what was right will be filled with righteousness, the merciful will be shown mercy, and those who are pure in heart and who are often criticized for being too nice, too kind, to decent, too moral, too ethical, or too sexually repressed will see God face to face. Having left a world that has almost never seen the absence of warfare, the peacemakers will be called the children of God. Jesus said that we are not blessed for selfishness, but for selflessness. And, we are blessed for the price that we pay on earth for remaining faithful to Jesus. Those things for which people of faith are often mocked, scorned, persecuted, or otherwise labeled as losers, are the very things for which God will reward them in his kingdom.
John further adds to our understanding of our life in the next world in the kingdom of God in his letter to the church in Asia found in 1 John 3:1-3 as he says:
3:1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
John says that God loves his people so much that he adopts us as his own children and that after the appearing of Jesus Christ in the last days, we will see him in all his glory with nothing hidden, and we will be transformed and become like him. It is because that we have this hope: in a life in eternity, in the kingdom of God, that we strive to follow Jesus, follow his commands, and do his will.
Jesus, and his disciples, knew that there was an earthly cost to following God. They knew that being his followers often makes us swim against the current of our culture and compels the world to see people of faith as losers or worse. But despite being countercultural, and despite being unpopular, or even the cause of persecution suffering, and death, Jesus tells us to do good anyway. To love anyway. And to pursue faithfulness, purity, and righteousness anyway.
Because in the end, many of those who the world sees as losers, are really winning the only victory that matters.
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*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.com . All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.comThe “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
