A 296 The Blood of the Lamb

Some words found at the end of the sixth chapter, and then we got the thought of the judgment of God falling on the world, and then we've got a picture of men and women, Israelites and Gentiles, who have been saved. So from the twelfth verse, with that in mind, listen to the sixth chapter. And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and lo there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood, and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand? And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.

And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God. And he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads. And I heard the number of them which were sealed, and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel.

The tribe of Judah were sealed twelve thousand, of the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand, of the tribe of Gad were sealed twelve thousand, the tribe of Asher were sealed twelve thousand, of the tribe of Nathalim were sealed twelve thousand, of the tribe of Manasseh were sealed twelve thousand, the tribe of Simeon were sealed twelve thousand, of the tribe of Levi were sealed twelve thousand, of the tribe of Issachar were sealed twelve thousand, of the tribe of Zebulun were sealed twelve thousand, of the tribe of Joseph were sealed twelve thousand, of the tribe of Benjamin were sealed twelve thousand. Well, you shouldn't forget the number. After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands, and cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation belongs to our God, who sits upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.

And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders, and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God, saying, Amen, blessing, and honor, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen. And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes, and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest.

And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple. And he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them.

They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.

Well, we bless God for all that reading, but particularly for those last four verses. Galatians 7, verses 13 and onwards once more, and then we have a very brief prayer. And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes, and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, you know.

And he said to me, These are they which came, which are coming out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple. And he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them.

They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.

Father, you know there are some passages of Scripture which it's almost impudent to preach on. There are depths to them. There's a delicacy about them which no human mind can really contribute to or fully explore.

And we're on the sea of your word this night, and the depths are fathomless. We pray for some appreciation, and we ask that the Spirit of God may cancel out, and make up for human inadequacies in the proclamation of this word, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

I wonder, my friend, what will happen to you when you die? You say, well, that's a very blunt question. Well, in some words, in some ways, I'm not apologetic for putting blunt questions to people from this pulpit, for this is not a place to patronize or to spell out something that is sweet and healing if the occasion does not arise for the balm of the word to be proclaimed. There are many occasions in Scripture when you find that men of God and the God-man himself were extremely blunt, and the book of Revelation makes us ask this question, what will happen to us when we die? In the sixth chapter of this remarkable final epistle in the New Testament, there is a tremendous description of the last day on this earth.

Admittedly, there is metaphor, but within those verses there is the obvious presentation of a picture of tragedy, of unmitigated sorrow, of concentrated fear. Fear. Men and women described as the kings of the earth, the great men, the politicians, the rulers, the mighty men, hide themselves.

They're part of those who are unredeemed, and the day of the advent of the Christ has come. The moment of the judgment has been signaled, and in absolute terror, like frightened rabbits, they scurry away, and attributing personality to the hills and the mountain ranges, they say, fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of God's anger has come, and who shall be able to stand? There's thunder in that chapter. No one but a fool reads it and refuses to hear the somber tone of the message, and by sharp contrast, as you go into the next chapter, there's a different picture of the whole, first of all, of the Israelite community who have been brought to a knowledge of Jesus Christ.

The repetition of the number 12,000 symbolizes completion, and the epistle of Paul to the Romans, and many scriptures in the Old Testament indicate the ultimate turning of the Hebrews to the Lord God and the acknowledgement of Jesus as Savior. The elect of the Jews are there, praising the Lord for the one who sits upon the throne, the Lamb of God who has been slain for their redemption, for the scales have fallen from the eyes of the Jewish community, and John, as he has this vision, as he looks into the future, as he's transported to the heavenly dimension, he sees these people, and he blesses God for this multitude, but this is no nationalistic vision that John the Jew has, for the ninth verse brings us into something that is exceedingly interesting for the non-Jew, for the Gentile, for there John goes on to say, after this I beheld and lo, a great multitude which no man could number, of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, the word there used to signify the Lord Jesus, as I shall show you, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands, and these people are caught up in a cacophony of praise, and they're saying that salvation belonged to our God, and through the Lamb he has directed that redemption blessing to us, and so they link up their voices with the angels and the archangels, and they say blessing and honor and wisdom and thanksgiving and glory and power and might be unto our God forever and ever, and as John hears this, one of the people who is taking him a conducted tour of the heavenly dimension says, John, who are those? Identify this company that cannot be numbered, and John wisely says, me answer, you know who they are and where they came from, and he said unto me, verse 14, these are they which came who are coming out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Who are these people? They're the countless thousands of men and women who have lived for the honor and the glory of God down the centuries.

They are people who at times have gone through horrific experiences. Some have been persecuted for their faith. Many have undergone great pressure.

They have found and acted in their own experience something of what the Lord Jesus went through, for Jesus said that if they call your Lord and Master Beelzebub, if they hate him, then they'll hate you also, and Paul, the first missionary evangelist, said that people would enter into the kingdom of God through much tribulation and suffering. Now, I am aware that the Scripture leads us to understand that before the great and terrible day of God comes, there will be an intensification of struggle for the redeemed community, but the church of Jesus Christ down the centuries, my friend, has always known tribulation. It goes beyond the advent of Jesus, right to the first righteous man, Cain, or rather Abel, who suffered at the hands of his brother.

The conflict between the redeemed community and the unredeemed community, the forces of righteousness and unrighteousness, that conflict is seen throughout the whole scope of human history, and says the one who's showing John around the heavenly dimension, these people here, this innumerable company, these who make up the church of the firstborn which is in heaven, have come through great tribulation. I am glad to say that there are loved ones that I know who are already there. Charles Spurgeon says that no one is ever born into that church too soon, or goes through to the heavenly dimension and arrives unexpectedly.

These are the people who have remained true to Jesus Christ, and who have lived out their lives for him on this earth. But what has happened to these? What is it that identifies them, that makes them distinct over against the rest of humanity? Well again, stay with the 14th verse as I expound it. These are they which came out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the lamb.

Now, those who are aware of the Old Testament teaching will remember that there were a group of people in the old dispensation called priests, called Levites, and they would minister before the Lord. And before they could go into the temple, or stand in front of the altar, or before the high priest could go into the holiest place of all, he and his colleagues would have to ensure that they had upon them the ceremonial robes. You couldn't go into the church of God in those days, and I use that word advisedly, the church of God, in a careless fashion.

God was concerned about the department, about the dress of the people who stood before him. And the idea is this, that carried through into the heavenlies is the same picture. These are the redeemed men and women of every generation, who have passed through death and into eternal life, and they're ministering before God.

But before you can minister in front of the presence of the great high God, there must be a change of dress. There must be a righteousness, the quality of which is completely beyond your grasp. But that righteousness you are to attain.

You say, how can I get a righteousness which you define as being beyond my reach? The Bible says this, speaking of our own endeavors to be just and good and honorable, all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. I cannot stand before God as Tony Sargent, and suggest to God that I've tried to do this, and I've tried to do the other, because he is aware when he looks at my personality, that there are many great blemishes. That I represent an absolute bundle of contradictions.

And if I were to be brought into the presence of God, standing in my own righteousness, I would find myself in the same condition as these men, whose predicament is recorded in the last verses of the previous chapter. I would want the mountains to fall upon me. I would want the ocean to swallow me up, for I could not abide the presence of a holy God in the sinful condition in which I would find myself.

But these people, this innumerable company, are those who have had their garments, their personality, attended to. Look at the verb. These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes.

The idea of washing, and the hinging that to the concept of salvation, is so obnoxious to the sophisticated mind and ear of the 20th century man. We talk about, and I'll be alluding to this in a moment or so, being washed in the blood of the Lamb, and there are those who look upon us as though we're obscurantists, as though we're like dwarfs in our mental comprehension of the teaching of Scripture. And they say, you don't really believe this, do you? That these hymns that you've been singing, you don't really believe that you've got to go through some sort of washing process, some dry cleaning process in your personality, before you can stand before Almighty God? Indeed, my friend, that's precisely what we do believe.

That innumerable company of people are constituted of those who have come out of many tribulations, and they have washed their robes. I spelt out to the young folks last Sunday, in the magnetic board illustrations that I was using, that when the New Testament and Old Testament in particular speak about sin, they don't refer to the blackness of sin. That's more of a modern color to describe sin.

In the Bible, sin is referred to in terms of scarlet and crimson. And the prophet Isaiah, speaking for God, says that though your sins be as a scarlet, they shall be white as wool. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as snow.

But how does this come about? What antidote is there to the blemishes that I confess are within my personality? And if you're honest people, I think you will confess are present in yours, at least to some degree. The antidote of my attempts to please God, they may be honorable in themselves, but they in no way can be a rubber, an eraser which cancels out the wrong that I have done. If a person is going to have their personality washed, their hearts washed, then understand me spiritually, they have to have the right detergent.

I said again to the young people last week, if you have paint on your hands, it's no use putting your hands under the tap and putting water on the stains of your fingers, it won't wash it off. You must have something that is designed to remove the stain that's upon your hand. And the Bible goes on to speak of these people who have come out of great trouble and are distinctive over against the rest of humanity, because they've had their robes washed.

They stand before a holy God. And he, and none of his servants, none of the angelic hosts suggest that they're improperly dressed, that it's presumption for them to be present. These men, these women are accepted before God in the heavenly dimension.

They've washed their robes, but what was the ingredient, if that word is not too inelegant to select, which has moved them from crimson, from the scarlet of sin and made them white. Well, my text says, these people have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. And again, the word falls hard on the ears of many of our contemporaries.

Washed in the blood of the Lamb. Do you really believe this? This old fashioned Victorian historic approach to Christianity, that the blood of the Lamb has something to do with your eternal salvation? What childish prattle is this? And we reply, you can have your own hang-ups, my friend. You can pour out your scorn and your cynicism.

But according to our reading of the Bible, washing a robe in blood is absolutely necessary for salvation. Why does not the man answering his own question on the encouragement of John say, okay, these are people who have been saved by Jesus Christ. These are people who have been redeemed by the activity of the Lord Jesus on the earth.

He could have used those terms. But you see, he has a concern to show the very way in which salvation came to those who are amongst that innumerable company. And heaven itself will never comprehend this.

How God could send his own dearly beloved son into this world and allow him to live 32 or 33 years and to hang on a Roman gibbet and to shed his blood for those who will trust him as Lord and Savior. It's the blood, you see, the blood of the Son of God, which was spilt, it amazes heaven. We draw nice as the apostle Paul unto God through the blood of the Lamb.

Speaking to the Ephesian elders, ere he takes his leave of them on the seashore of the Mediterranean, he says, speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ, he has purchased his church through the shedding of his blood. There was no more barbaric way invented for man to rob his fellow of death, of life than crucifixion. It was the most hideous way.

The Romans reserved it for the barbarians on the frontiers of the empire. The very word cross was an obscenity in their ears, and they were directed never even to repeat the word. And as far as the Jews were concerned, the concept of a man hanging upon a tree was obnoxious to them.

And here, describing that innumerable company of people who are in the presence of Almighty God, we are told these are they which have come out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunge beneath the as the moderns in understanding the significance of the shed blood of Calvary. They have washed their robes, aye, they have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

But why use the word Lamb? Why not the blood of the Savior, the blood of Jesus, the blood of the Christ? Why the blood of the Lamb? Well, to understand that, my friend, you again would have to have knowledge of the Old Testament and that gray day when God historically and literally released His chosen people from the tyranny of slavery in Egypt. So many things had happened for Pharaoh to have changed his mind and to have acquiesced to the request of Moses, let my people go. There had been nine dreadful plagues that had befallen that unhappy land.

And almost after each one, Pharaoh changed his mind or seemed to have done, and yet he went back upon his word until the Lord one day drew Moses aside and he said, the tenth plague, Moses, that will achieve my purposes. There will be deliverance from Egypt on the particular night of the Passover. And Moses got all the Hebrew community together in the county of Goshen in the land of Egypt, and he instructed them, as I told the younger folks last week, get yourself a Lamb, a perfect Lamb from your flocks and slay the Lamb.

Cook its meat, but don't lose the blood. Make yourself a brush from the hyssop weed. And take the blood in some container to the lintel in the doorposts of your house, and apply the blood on the lintels and on the doorposts.

And when my ambassador, who has the power of life and death, passes over Egypt and he sees the blood on the doorpost of the Hebrews, death will not befall your firstborn. There has been a sacrifice. Life has been offered.

Blood has been spilt. The Passover Lamb has been employed for saving purposes for the benefit of the Hebrews. And that awful night came, and the angel of death passed over the whole of Egypt.

And from the hearts of the Egyptian men and women folk was heard a great wail and cry, as their beloved eldest children were found dead. But as for the Hebrews, there was no similar calamity. And in the years that were to come, the centuries that were to follow, the Passover meal would always be remembered, and the Lamb would be slain, and they would realize that God had spared them through the offering of the Lamb.

And those with sensitivity came to realize that somewhere in the far-flung future, there was going to be a fulfillment of this, not only historically, but spiritually. A Lamb will come into the world, and through the offering of His body, salvation will be made possible. And the centuries would absorb into history.

And the day came when Jesus the carpenter left off his work as an artisan in Nazareth, and commenced his public ministry. And his ordination, so to speak, took place on a strange spot by the banks of the Jordan. And it was none other than the one who immersed him in water, the Baptist, who identified the presence of his own cousin.

And he said, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the Lamb that three years later was to be offered on the cross, the Lamb that was slain for your sin and my sin. And the efficacy, the effect of the death of the Lamb of God on the cross was perceived by one of the criminals who died alongside the Savior. And again, to quote Cowper, the dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his bay.

And there may I though file as he wash all my sins away. The Lamb was slain. And the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, says the New Testament.

And there's no embarrassment on the part of John as he pens the word cleanses, keeps on cleansing me, us from all sin. Who are these people in the heavenly dimension? These are those who have come out of great tribulation. These are those who are coming out of great tribulation.

Those who died in the first century and the years before the public ministry of Christ, in the second century, in the third, in the dark ages, at the reformation, at times of great persecution in England, on into the 18th century, the 19th century, the 20th century. These are they which came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Where is this nonsense talked, that on death one goes into a sort of limbo, a type of twilight world, at worst, a purgatory? The Bible says of this company of the redeemed of the firstborn which is in heaven, they are, verse 15, before the throne of God and serve Him day and night in His temple and He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them.

Here is food for you who have been bereaved to take away. What about the condition of your loved ones, those who knew pain perhaps whilst they were here on this earth, those who risked so much for the cause of Jesus Christ? We're told in the 16th and 17th verses that they are consciously in the presence of God and there's no harm that can befall them. Neither shall the sun light on them nor any heat.

That's metaphorical, it's referring to conditions we don't understand, but in the Middle East they knew the heart-burning sun which dried the body, that no longer shall cause any difficulty or discomfiture. The problems of decay in the physical realm, that no longer is a problem of theirs. They who love to sing the praises of God here on this earth are now in the glory with the angelic hosts, mingling their cry and their song and their worship, singing praise and honour and glory be unto the Lamb that sits upon the throne.

For, verse 17, the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. What's going to happen to you when you die? We say of some people when we hear that they've unfortunately contracted some malignant condition. How sad, how terrible.

And in one sense it is, but what fools we are. We've all got a malignant condition. The scythe of death is no respect of persons and it'll cut us down by a malignancy or a heart attack or what we fondly call death by natural causes, but sooner or later, one day or another, one week or the next, this year or next decade, it will happen to us.

But what then will your condition be, my friend? What will my condition be? Ushered into the presence of God, for make no mistake about it, when physical decay takes over, your spirit still lives on. It goes back to the Lord, its maker. Embarrassment, a futile cry to some imaginary mountains to fall upon you.

The desire for some unseen ocean to open up and swallow you and take you down into the depths. The terror of being before the Lamb and knowing not his love but his wrath because the sin question which he resolved on this earth, you tossed aside as being unnecessary, too simple, too naive for your sophisticated way of thinking and living. Or rather, and God be gracious, may this occur this evening, when you stand before him on that great day, will you stand with your garments having been washed, washed in the blood of the Lamb who gave his life, so that when death takes over, you should be transported into the heavenly dimension and set up in God's eternal program which has yet to be.

Who are they? These are they which came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Let us pray. Dear dying Lamb, thy precious blood can never lose its power till all the ransomed saints of God are saved to sin no more.

We bless you, Father, for the Lamb that was slain and who lives again and who offers not condemnation but everlasting life to those who trust him. Help us to do just that right now, for Jesus' sake. Amen.