All Saints: First Lesson: Revelation 7:9-17                           

Revelation 7:9-17

It’s important to read the Bible as you would any book. Now, we must pay attention to genre differences within the Bible in order to do good interpretation work. What’s a poem? What is history? You get the idea. Chapter divisions and verses are mostly a blessing. And even a publisher’s heading within a chapter can give some aid. But remember, none of those “helps” are part of the original text. Our first lesson for the week, in the versions I read, have a somewhat unhelpful heading in the middle of the reading. At the beginning of chapter 7 my Bible has, “The Sealed of Israel” and then to head into verse 9 it reads, “A Multitude from the Great Tribulation,” making them different groups. What’s the beef?

Granted there are vastly different “reads” on Revelation, the Lutheran tradition of which I am a part sees the church, not as a replacement of Israel, but rather its continuation. I would point you to Romans 9-11 and perhaps Ephesians 3-4 for clarity where Paul teaches the old enmity has been destroyed and two have become one. Remember the church is a bride. I realize that counters much of what American Christianity sees here. But I believe that those sealed of the 144,000 from Israel’s tribes are the multitude standing before the throne in verses 9-17. And they are from “all nations.” God’s plan was never to isolate the preaching of his Kingdom to one ethnic group. But to initially use that group to spread the message for the world to the world. And Revelation 7 gives us the result. And grand it is.

It is the song they sing that particularly thrills my heart:

 

“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom,

Thanksgiving and honor and

power and might,

Be to our God forever and ever. Amen”

 

That is a song rising from all God’s people. Jew and Gentile, from all the nations of the world. That same world marked out for the reception of all God’s good promises. A multitude which no one could number. I can’t wait.