Monday, October
15, 2018
After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes and held palm branches in their hands. And they were shouting with a great roar, “Salvation comes from our God who sits on the throne and from the Lamb!” And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living beings. And they fell before the throne with their faces to the ground and worshiped God. They sang, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and strength belong to our God forever and ever! Amen.” Then one of the twenty-four elders asked me, “Who are these who are clothed in white? Where did they come from?” And I said to him, “Sir, you are the one who knows.” Then he said to me, “These are the ones who died in the great tribulation. They have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb and made them white. “That is why they stand in front of God’s throne and serve him day and night in his Temple. And he who sits on the throne will give them shelter. They will never again be hungry or thirsty; they will never be scorched by the heat of the sun. For the Lamb on the throne will be their Shepherd. He will lead them to springs of life-giving water. And God will wipe every tear from their eyes.” Revelation 7:9-17(NLT)
There is a longing for justice inside
every human who has ever drawn breath. We
are hard-wired by our Creator to see and crave order, particularly setting
right that which has been wrong. The
injustice of human madness (murder, sex-trafficking, dictators, and even down
to playground bullying) cries out from the dust of the earth like Abel’s blood.
If my bride and I are watching a TV
drama where the bad guy seems to be getting away with his heinous crime, sooner
or later, when that villain gets what’s coming to him,
Elizabeth will just about jump out of her seat with a YES!
This passage from John’s
Revelation of Jesus Christ is one of those YES times in Scripture. Pulling back the future’s veil John shows us
the oppressed, martyred saints of the great tribulation as they’re welcomed in
Heaven, healed and whole, and in full fellowship in the presence of their
Redeemer; what was wrong is now changed to glorious, as He wipes away every
tear on that day!
Whenever I reflect on one of these
“yes” passages there is a little reminder floating around in my brain of the criticism
I have heard throughout the years of those who seem to dwell on the “yes” passages:
He’s so heavenly-minded he’s no earthly-good!
The point here is that we can get
a little lop-sided in our thinking. We
do that because it is easier to live an uncomplicated, non-messy life in a cocoon
of Christian fellowship; so, we use these “yes” passages to insulate us from
the Great Commission call of going into all the world with the gospel in
one hand and a loaf of bread in the other.
On the other side of that lopsided
coin, for the more stoic and heroic among us, these “yes” moments are simply an
inspiration to bolster a life’s career-choice to keep one’s hands dirty in the
toil of the fight; we seize the pain of the martyrs as a rallying cry to press
the battle, demonstrate, resist, and call everything dark.
A “yes” passage isn’t there to do
away with the hard work of meeting sin and darkness head-on, facing the ravages
of Satan’s onslaught, just to give us a hide-out in the heavenlies, where all
is sweetness and light. Rather, those
passages are there to remind us WHY we do what we do in
spiritual warfare, and in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and giving a
cup of cool water in Jesus’ name.
Those passages are also there to
remind us that doing all that good stuff isn’t the point of our existence. Our citizenship is truly in heaven, and earth
is a training ground for how we will spend eternity. Resistance movements may be necessary at
times, but when your whole life is a resistance existence, your
whole life is spent pushing people into opposing camps. And that is not cooperating with the one who extended
an invitation to whosoever will to come to Him and live together
in healthy fellowship.
That’s what real justice is all
about.
For You Today
YES moments are
important to help us along the way, and keeping balanced means we don’t just
live there; but it sure helps to visit often!
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