The End of History (Revelation 5; Matthew 24:14)
(Given @ Campus Outreach Samford- May 2, 2012)
(indebted greatly to David Platt, John Piper (1) (2) & (3), & Sinclair Ferguson)
Revelation 5: “Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. [2] And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” [3] And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, [4] and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. [5] And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”
[6] And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. [7] And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. [8] And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. [9] And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, [10] and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.” [11] Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, [12] saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” [13] And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”[14] And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” and the elders fell down and worshiped.
“And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” -Matthew 24:14
If I had to guess, not many of you have probably spent much time contemplating “the end of history,” when Christ will return. I want to challenge you tonight fix a great deal of hope & confidence in Christ’s return, when He will make all things new. It’s true that we do not know precisely when He will return & when the events we just read about in Revelation 5 will take place but we do know a few things that must happen first. In the meantime, we labor and we hope.
We will try to answer three questions tonight as we investigate these two passages about the end of history: (1) What cause do we have to hope? (2) What are we hoping for? (3) What must we do to make our hope a reality?
What Cause Do We Have to Hope?
1. God Is Uncompromisingly Committed to His Fame & His Family
God is the happiest being there is, because God fully & whole-heartedly delights in himself. God would not be holy if He valued anything more than what is supremely valuable, and He Himself is supremely valuable. He is the most valuable thing that there is; therefore, He acts justly when He acts to ultimately delight in Himself. The Bible again and again attests to how God unwaveringly acts on behalf of His glory: “For my own sake I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another” (Isaiah 48:11).
Psalm 115:3 says, “Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases.” God is the Creator & ruler of all, and therefore has the right to do whatever makes him happy. He is over all things and subject to no one. He is infinitely happy because he has every right and power as Creator to overcome every obstacle to his joy.
Whenever God acts, He acts in a way that is pleasing to Him, and what does it please Him to do? To bring Himself glory & to do good to His children. Jeremiah 32 says, “I will make them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them; and I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good… with all my heart and soul.” God is good to his children, because He is a good father & enjoys it so very much! These are the primary drives of His heart, and thank the Lord that this is the case!
2. God Can Never, Has Never, and Will Never Fail
Not only does God, as Creator, have the right to do as He pleases- to pursue His commitment to His fame & His family- He cannot be stopped. Isaiah 43:13 says, “I am God… there is none who can deliver from my hand; I work and who can hinder it?”
How many times have you, just in this last week, been frustrated- by a classmate, by traffic, by a friend, by your computer, by a teacher, etc.? God has never, in the ultimate sense, been frustrated, because nothing can hinder him or slow him down and He never changes His mind.
Think about this: This is a God who has not only no need of food or clothing or water, but is perfectly emotionally content in love, perfectly consistent in all his character, never needs help, never wonders what the best course of action might be or how things might turn out-because there’s nothing he doesn’t know, never wonders what’s happening somewhere else- for there’s no place he isn’t, never forgets a thing- for he cannot change, never learns a thing- for there’s nothing he didn’t ultimately invent. He alone is perfectly free from constraints-free in his power, free in his will, and free from counsel, free from all growth or decay, perfectly seeing the past, present, and future because He determined them all. This means that even when it looks like the world is out of control & outside of God’s will- as it surely did on Good Friday when the Messiah was harassed, scorned, beaten, mocked, cursed, and killed- God is perfectly acting according to His sovereign pleasure & His perfect, finished plan.
Isaiah 55:11 says, “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”
With that in mind, let’s look again at Matthew 24:14, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Notice again what it says: not that this gospel should be preached throughout the world, not that we hope this gospel will be preached, but this gospel will be preached. John Piper said, “This is not a great commission, nor a great commandment. It is a great certainty, a great confidence.” Our hope in sending people to the nations is that the cause of world missions is absolutely assured of success. It cannot fail, because Christ has spoken, He cannot be thwarted, and He never changes His mind. What a great hope!
3. The Ransom Has Been Paid in Full
When Jesus declared, “It is finished” from the cross, he meant it. There was nothing more to do, no more work to be carried out to secure our places in his coming kingdom, no more debt that had to be paid- it was truly & forever finished.
When the four living creatures & 24 elders shout, “by your blood you purchased people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation,” they are saying that the delivery of Psalm 22:27 “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you” – will be coming soon; the check has been received. People from every tribe, tongue, and nation have already been paid for & God will not go back on His Son’s payment of His life for our lives.
John Stott wrote, “The redeemed people of God…drawn from every nation and language… say… their righteous standing before God is totally owed to the cross of Christ, through which their sins have been forgiven and their defilement cleansed. Their salvation through Christ is also secure, for not only are their names written in the Lamb’s book of life, but the Lamb’s name is written on their foreheads” (The Cross of Christ, 43).
Why such diversity? “The beauty and power of praise that will come to the Lord from the diversity of the nations are greater than the beauty and power that would come to him if the chorus of the redeemed were culturally uniform… more depth of beauty is felt froma choir that sings in parts… unity in diversity is more beautiful and more powerful than the unity of uniformity… there is something about God that is so universally praiseworthy and so profoundly beautiful and so comprehensively worthy and so deeply satisfying that God will find passionate admirers in every diverse people group in the world” –John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad, p. 199
4. Jesus Is Indescribably Worthy
Let’s take a look back at that whole drama about the scroll in Revelation 5. There’s this important scroll, and someone must be found who is worthy to take it and open it. The point of verses 2-3 is that there is no creature worthy enough. This is why John weeps: no man or angel could touch this scroll and do what needs to be done.
The scroll represents all of God’s sovereign decrees concerning the future redemption of all things. All heaven awaits this restoration, but, alas, there is no one worthy to set this renewal into motion. You can see why this is a cause for great mourning.
Then, in a sudden burst of acclamation, all of heaven roars together as the Lion of the tribe of Judah appears. You imagine the cry of Psalm 24 going forth in wonder, “Who is this King of glory?” Christ rides through on his horse, and they shout, “This is the Lord, strong and mighty in battle! Weep no more!”
John looks at this worthy, victorious, conquering Lion, and what does He see? John sees a slaughtered Lamb- the true & better Passover lamb that has borne the punishment for our sins once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous. The Lamb did it: cancelling sin by becoming it, defeating death by dying, conquering by being crushed.
As Paul says in Philippians 2:8-9, Jesus was “obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has exalted Him to the highest place and given Him the name that is above every name.” David Platt commented, “Apparent defeat gives way to astonishing victory: salvation through sacrifice. The consummation of the kingdom comes through the crucifixion of God’s son.”
Part of the reason we declare that Jesus is indescribably worthy is because He was fully obedient, as both Lion & Lamb, perfectly both. He is powerful & glorious, but perfectly humble. He is infinitely beyond us & yet, infinitely near. He is just and merciful. He is unshakably good and patient with sinners. He held all the particles in the universe in their place and gave life & breath to all- even those who cursed Him- even as he refused to step down off the cross. We have great hope because Christ is indescribably worthy.
What Are We Hoping For?
1. To See the Place Jesus Has Prepared for His Bride
Stephen Colbert said, “To me heaven is getting a harp, drinking a mint julep & asking Ronald Reagan questions,” and, while funny, it probably isn’t too far off your thoughts. Is heaven really a place of endless boredom? Is it an unending church service where we sing the same, miserable song? Are we going think, “Man, I sure wish I had brought a magazine”?
Nothing could be further from the truth. In John 14, Jesus says, “In my Father’s house are many rooms… I go and prepare a place for you… I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” This is so tender! When He tells us that He is going to prepare a place for us, he speaks as a groom to his bride-to-be. These are words of love and romance. How would any bride who loves her fiancé respond to these words? She’d be thrilled. Not a single day would go by, not a single hour, in which the bride wouldn’t anticipate joining her beloved in that place he prepared for her to live with him forever.
If you’ve ever been in love, you know this. You want nothing more than to be with that person; your thoughts are preoccupied with dreams of the next time you’ll be together. Isn’t that right?
Jonathan Edwards described heaven as, “perfectly fair, without any spot; perfectly clear, without any cloud… [All Christians there] are all united, with one mind, to breathe forth their whole souls in love to God their eternal Father, and to Jesus Christ their common Redeemer, and head, and friend…There is not a single secret or open enemy among them all. Not a heart is there that is not full of love, not a single inhabitant that is not loved by all the others. Love is mutual, full, and eternal… There is no pride or selfishness in heaven to hinder this love. There is no more enmity, coldness, or deadness of heart towards Christ or towards each other. No, such feelings will be as far as sin is from holiness & heaven is from hell. Neither shall the saints of heaven have any doubt as to the greatness & certainty that God loves them, and they shall have no doubt of the love of all their fellow inhabitants…And God shall forever be theirs as their portion, and the saints shall be Christ’s, having been purchased by his blood” (“Heaven: A World of Love”).
C. S. Lewis, in The Last Battle, says of his characters, “All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia have only been the cover and the title page. Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the great Story which no one on earth has read; which goes on for ever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
Did you hear that? “Every chapter is better than the one before.” It’s like we’re water balloons hooked up to a faucet that is pouring out joy & love. We are so full that we feel like we’re going to burst with that joy & love, and yet, we keep getting more & more filled with delight. But what is it that we’re delighting in?
2. To See Jesus Face to Face
For those who have trusted and followed him, the final day will be like a wedding day, as the Lamb comes to marry His bride. We will no longer “see through a glass darkly” but behold him & celebrate. You see, all love, all weddings, and all marriages are just dim shadows pointing to this magnificent day: when this blessed Redeemer who set his love on us in eternity past will be ours & we will be his. God created these things in order that we might understand in part what his love is like, but in heaven, dwells the God from whom every stream of love proceeds. It’s like we’ve been living in a light drizzle of love and suddenly we’re submerged in the ocean. Don’t you desperately want this?
What Must We Do to Make our Hope a Reality?
1. Take This News to Every “Ethne” for the Glory of God and the Joy of the World
Now what does this mean? Remember the Great Commission? “Jesus came & said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age’” (Matthew 28:18-20). The words “of all nations” here are the Greek words are panta ta ethne, from which we get our word “ethnicity.” So then, we are not simply talking here about “nations” in terms of geopolitical boundaries, but distinctive ethnolinguistic families of peoples around the world. The gospel must reach all the various peoples of the world, or “people groups,” not simply as many people as possible.
If we believe that Christ died to purchase people from every tribe, then we will go to every tribe to bring people to Christ. Why? Out of guilt? No. First, we go for the love & glory of our King & Husband. We believe that He deserves the praise of every tribe, tongue, and nation that they would join with the angels, singing, “To Him who sits on the throne be glory and honor and power forever and ever. Amen.”
Secondly, we remember that the people to whom we’re taking this message are our true brothers & sisters, trapped in deadly peril. To what ends would you go if your earthly brother or sister were captured and forced into slavery? When would you stop giving money or going to search for them? How much more should we give ourselves for our heavenly family, who, at this very moment, are living in a much more twisted, devastating slavery!
Now, let’s look back at Matthew 24:14- Jesus will return and heaven will be our home when the gospel is first preached to the ends of the earth. Presently, there are about 7 billion people in the world within approximately 24,000 identified “people groups.” Let us be encouraged that there are about 16,700 of these people groups that have embraced the gospel all over the globe, that what began as primarily a Middle-Eastern religion moved to Europe then North America and now is predominately South American & African, while Jesus’ name is quickly sweeping through Asia.
On the other hand, there are still an estimated 8,000 peoples considered “unreached,” that is, that have less than 2% evangelical Christians among them and, therefore, no direct access to the gospel. There are approximately 2.5 billion people who live among these people groups, including 86% of the world’s Buddhists, Muslims, and Hindus. These people don’t personally know a Christian. Unless something drastically changes, almost all of these people will be born, live, and die without having ever heard the joyful news of Jesus, having only enough knowledge of God, as Romans 1 tells us, to damn them.
These peoples desperately need the gospel & we must make sure that they hear it- for their sake, for our sake (so that blessed day of His return would come quickly), and for Jesus’ sake. The task seems immense, but unbelievable progress has been made! By the year AD 100, there was only 1 church for every 12 unreached people groups. By the year 1500, the ratio was about 1 to 1, with about 85 non-Christians for every Christian. By 2010, there were nearly 1000 churches for every unreached people group and just over 7 non-Christians for every believer. The end is coming! We, by God’s grace, empowered by His Spirit, can do this!
How is this going to happen? We need people to go bring the news (highlight Logan)! We need people to stay here and send (highlight Leah. There is no hierarchy in the Kingdom of God stemming from vocation. You can be a banker, a fashion designer, a pastor, a mom, a CPA, a nurse, a teacher, an athlete, a professional blogger or a missionary and give Him glory- but we all must be about His business)! We all need to pray, because God has ordained the prayers of his people to bring the consummation of his kingdom! We must all mobilize people towards these nations! People, this could happen within our lifetimes if we take seriously the charge to take the gospel to the nations.
We, as God’s children, as His bride, are part of a glorious, unstoppable cause that carries a glorious, joyous message. Who would not want to share this message: “The Lord reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad!” (Ps 97:1)? Our message to the world is that people everywhere should seek their own best interest, and their ultimate good is found in God. We are summoning people to God, in whose presence there is fullness of joy (Psalm 16:11). We take this message to every ethne for the glory of God and for their joy.
One question: How do we know that our understanding about people groups is correct? Ultimately, we don’t. This is the best guess. What we do know is that Christ has not yet returned, so the task is not yet done. Let us get busy to complete our mission. How?
2. We Live as Though Dying Were Gain
John Gray, an atheist philosopher, wrote in Straw Dogs that morality is merely a convenience we have contrived to survive as a species and get along as a society. When you look at the church, he says, you see a group of comfortable people who lead convenient lives.
Well, on October 8, 1732, John Leonard Dober, a potter, and David Nitschman, a carpenter, set sail from Denmark as the first Moravian missionaries- the first large-scale Protestant missionary movement. They were headed to St. Thomas & St. Croix in the Dutch West Indies, where plantation owners had forbidden them from coming to minister to the African slaves there. Dober & Nitschman heard this news & then declared that they would sell themselves into slavery if need be to reach these people. They boarded a ship and as it pulled away, they called back to their loved ones, “May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of His suffering!” Within 50 years, with the help of others that followed, there were churches planted in St. Thomas, St. Croix, St. John’s, Jamaica, Antigua, Barbados, and St. Kitts.
How could they do that? You see, they believed, like the Apostle Paul did, that to live is Christ & to die is gain (I heard David Sitton say that this verse means that if a tribal leader cut off his head that he’d be doing him a favor), that all things are loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, and that, as Psalm 63:3 says, “The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life.” They were truly in love with Jesus & being in love makes you do some crazy things- not what is convenient or comfortable.
Men can take everything that you have, kill the ones you love, torture your family…but these are not defeats! Romans 8:36-39 teaches us that, even if we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us! If you are a Christian, nothing can ultimately hurt you. Everything, absolutely everything works for your good and even death is a gain.
And so we say with John, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus. We’ve seen your heart for the nations through Genesis 3 & 12, through Jonah, through Jesus in the temple, in Acts 1- through all the Word, now let us speed your coming by taking your gospel to the world.”
This God who calls the very stars out by name, made the universe with a word, throws mountains into the seas, who holds the wills of kings (Proverbs 21:1), to whom the nations are a drop in the bucket, who needs absolutely nothing… This God invites us to join him in His unstoppable mission. This Great Commission is truly the grandest of invitations & this God truly warrants absolute abandonment for His glory’s sake. So then, let us pray with great faith, invest in His work with great confidence, and send out laborers into the harvest with a sense of assured triumph so that one day soon, we will join the myriads of angels, martyrs, and saints enjoying Christ together forever! Amen.
Last year, she released In Feast or Fallow ($8 on Amazon!), my second favorite Christian album ever (right behind Derek’s She Must and Shall Go Free, in case anyone is keeping score), which included a song based on Psalm 22:9-10, which says, “Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.”
