Wednesday, April 20, 2016
THE LAMB ON THE THRONE WILL SHEPHERD THEM (3)
Revelation 7:11-14 And all the angels stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: "Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom, thanksgiving and honor and power and might, Be to our God forever and ever. Amen." Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, "Who are these arrayed in white robes, and where did they come from?" And I said to him, "Sir, you know." So he said to me, "These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb...."
WASHED WHITE IN THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB
What encouragement this is for Christian mission work! The white-robed heavenly multitude, a crowd too big to number, raises heaven's rafters with a paean of praise to their Savior-God. All of a sudden the praise-numbers double as angels join the elders and four living creatures (symbolizing believers to the four corners of planet Earth) in worshiping God with a triumphant sevenfold doxology:
"Amen!
Blessing and glory and wisdom,
Thanksgiving and honor and power and might,
Be to our God forever and ever.
Amen."
The white robes symbolize purity, holiness, divine glory. Those so gloriously robed do not claim self-purity or self-righteousness. Hardly. They know they were sinners, but through the preaching of God's law (to show their sin) and God's gospel (to show their Savior), they were moved to Spirit-wrought sorrow for sin and faith in the Savior (repentance). By the same Spirit, they "washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb"!
The hymn-writer nicely captures the thought:
Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness, My beauty are, my glorious dress!
Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed, With joy shall I lift up my head.
The holy, meek, unspotted Lamb Who from the Father’s bosom came,
Who died for me, e’en me t'atone, Now for my Lord and God I own.
When from the dust of death I rise To claim my mansion in the skies,
E'en then this shall be all my plea: Jesus hath lived and died for me.
(The Lutheran Hymnal, 371:1, 3, 6)
