God's Last Words

“Trouble”

Revelation 7: 9-17 (NRSV)

There is no doubt that God created our world in perfection. Disease, Death, and pain was unknown in the Garden of Eden. Until Adam and Eve’s fall into sin, humanity walked side-by-side with God in Paradise. What a blessing to humanity that must have been, and what a tremendous blow losing God’s companionship and presence has been. Since that time our world has been sliding into corruption. 

The sin of humanity began a process of eroding the perfection of God’s creation and today we are only bad copies of copies of multiple copies of the original humans. It is no wonder we suffer increasing illnesses, resistance to medical treatments, and continue to develop mysterious diseases at alarming rates. 

Our lives are measured in misery indexes and each of us has played the “I can top your sad story.” Remember the jokes about older folks telling younger folks about how times are “getting so much better than...” that ends with … “you had feet?” 

One of humanity’s recurring questions since being kicked out of the Garden of Eden is how much blame we should place on God for our troubles. Are they punishments or nudges toward character development? We often ask “does God manipulate our condition in order to satisfy His will?” 

There’s a lot of money, scholarly esteem, and political hay to be had in the answers to that question. The answer depends on your beliefs and faith (or lack of it), and whether you think God still has a claim and right to you as His creation. 

Oswald Chambers wrote, “If you are going to be used by God, he will take you through a multitude of experiences that are not meant for you at all: they are meant to make you useful in his hands. And being useful to God is not a bad thing. 

I don’t have to tell you that life is full of events, experiences, and situations most of us don’t want.  

How we handle them is more important than most of the actual scenarios themselves. God is sharpening and molding us into people who are useful in his kingdom.

No one should ever think God causes troubles or conducts “tests” for His followers just because he can, or that He delights in doing such things. God has a purpose. 

The old Murphy Brown TV show once had Candice Bergan make a passing reference to the Rocky and Bulwinkle Show, by suggesting that a character was “making trouble for Moose and Squirrel” while mimicking the Natasha Nogoodnik voice (BTW Natasha hung out with Boris Baddanoff). 

Friends God doesn’t make trouble for Moose and Squirrel just for fun. If we are tempered by fire, are tired and hungry, and scorched by the burning sun, Jesus, the Lamb of God will come to shield us. Hear our lesson from the Book of Revelation: 

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation. From all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 

They cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” 

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.”

Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal: they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. 

They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to the springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”  

The word that sticks out from this passage is the curious use of the word “ordeal”

(“thlipsis,” (th-lip-sis) in Greek) which actually should be translated “tribulation.” Tribulation means distress, troubles, sufferings, hardship, persecutions, trials, afflictions, anguish, and being hard pressed.

The people around God’s throne are said to have come out of a great period of tribulation in which they found protection and solace from the Lamb of God. These people have survived great trouble and are now sheltered before the Throne of God.  

Isn’t it wonderful to know that God recognizes the difficulties and troubles humanity will endure and rewards those suffering in it? But (notice how God does have “buts” in the covenant language he has made with humanity?) there is something in this scripture passage we must not overlook. 

Let me read again the verses we must see: “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal: they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.”  

Each of these persons has figuratively “washed” their robes in the blood of the Lamb. Each has received salvation and eternal life through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It was not their deeds but instead their willingness to trust Jesus. 

While it doesn’t directly say it I take this to mean that they took their “thlipsis”

(th-lip-sis), their tribulations, their troubles, and gave them to Jesus. Jesus received them and they now are restored to walking, talking, worshipping, and being in the presence of God.

See how God solved the problem of Adam and Eve’s sin and slide into corruption? 

Now let me tell you something even more amazing. 

These are the people who are saved and restored to God’s kingdom after what is called the rapture, They have suffered and have been persecuted and killed for Jesus’ sake prior to what we call the “Great Tribulation” prior to the End Times. 

These are the people who got a second chance after witnessing millions, if not billions, of living believers called to heaven by Jesus in that event called the rapture. These are the Doubting Thomas’s of Eternity.  

I ask you this: If Jesus treats these “losers” so wonderfully, how much more so will he treat those who believe, haven’t seen, and are called up to be in Heaven?

Having faith and trust in God during times of difficulty are major themes in both testaments: 

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” (Jeremiah 17: 7-8) 

Should we blame God? Who are you, who am I, a human, to talk back to God?  

Romans 9: 21: “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?”Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?” 

Friends there are times when I get discouraged from all my ailments and wish life and winning the lottery was simpler. I remind myself of what is awaiting me and you, by what John wrote that Jesus said in John 14:1-3:  

“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”

There is no trouble, no thlipsis, no tribulation bigger than God or the grace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. 

Amen.