Sermon – "Victory's Spoils" – Revelation 7:9-17
November 7th, 2005All Saints Sunday made it’s entrance onto the Church’s calendar a recently as the 4th century. On this Sunday were read the names of all those who had died in the faith over the past year. Actually, and I’m very pleased to say this, and I take no credit for this, we did not have members of this congregation die since last All Saints Sunday. It’s not a good thing when there are no baptisms or confirmations or new members joined the congregation in a year but that there have been no deaths in a year is a very good thing and we give thanks to God for that. “Lord, we’ll take another year like it please – yet thy will be done.” This morning then, we read the names of those who had been members of this congregation when they died irrespective of the year. Some of these, many of you never knew. Some we knew quite well. These are mothers and husbands and wives and sons of some among us this morning. And time has passed and the anguish of the grave has faded. Death has lost the sting that it once had. And we give thanks to God for that too.
So why do we do this? Why do we name our dead before the Lord? Why do we place flowers at the foot of altar with the names of our loved ones on our lips and in our hearts? We name our living before the Lord every Sunday in our prayers asking for the Lord’s to take care of their living body. We don’t need to do the same for the dead. Their bodies are in the grave awaiting the resurrection of all flesh. Their souls are in heaven and they have everything and need nothing. So why do we name our dead before the Lord?
Psychologists say its good therapy. As it turns out, we’re more afraid of forgetting our deceased loved ones than we are of remembering them. I know the feeling. Three and a half month old Andrew died 20 years ago and I struggle to remember what his face looked like and his birthday – that scares me. I’m not afraid of remembering him, I’m afraid of forgetting him. Yet, as therapeutic as it might be to name him before the Lord, this is not why we do what we do on All Saints Sunday.
The peace-niks say it’s good politics. They line little white flags up in neat rows in Veterans Park (of all places) in memory of those who have died in action in Iraq. Regardless of your opinion of the war, to use the lives of our sons and daughters who have died in service to our country as a political statement is shameful and a cheap shot.
So what are we doing by naming our dead before the Lord? The answer is, we are counting the spoils of victory. For Christ our Lord has done battle with the devil and has won the victory. And the spoils of His victory are the names we that we have just read aloud and spoken in our heart. “You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before you as men rejoice when dividing the plunder.” (Isaiah 9:3).
The devil held those names whom we named captive to sin and death. Jesus described the situation like this. “When a strong man fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up the spoils.” (Luke 11:21-22). The devil is a strong man. “No strength of ours can match his might. We would be lost, rejected. But now a champion comes to fight, whom God himself elected. You ask who this may be. The Lord of Hosts is He – Christ Jesus, mighty Lord, God’s only Son adored. He holds the field victorious.”
And these whom we name are His plunder. They are victory’s spoils. And this is the Feast of Victory for our God.
I. The Great Multitude And what plunder they are. “Behold, a great multitude that no one could count from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages…”
At Babel, God dispersed the nations and confused their speech so they would be forced to scatter as He had commanded them. “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth….” (Genesis 1:28). But now, He has gathered the nations together into one. And every tongue now speaks the same language and each one clearly understands the other. It is the language of thanks and praise to God for sending His only Son into the world to conquer the enemy that held them captive. It is the language of thanks and praise to the Lamb of God who was slain and by His blood has rescued them from the bondage of sin and death and brought them into the kingdom of His perfect love and wonderful life.
II. White Robes They were “Standing before the throne and before the Lamb clothed in white robes.”
In the beginning, the man and the woman stood naked before God and felt no shame. Later, they couldn’t bear to let God see them. They tried to hide from Him and they only way they could bear their shame and guilt before Him was to cover themselves with leaves. I’ve never tried it but I can’t imagine it would be very effective. Guilt and shame is not an easy thing to cover up. Leaves would certainly never do.
”So the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” (Genesis 3:22). The official record doesn’t say but I’m going to take a wild guess that those garments were made of lambskin. A lamb shed it’s blood to cover Adam’s shame and guilt.
And now these spoils of victory stand before The Lamb who was slain. Slain for Adam and his wife in the garden and for all the saints we’ve just named out loud. Slain to cover their shame and guilt. And as they do so, the lambskin that they were given to wear in their baptism are like white robes. And they are adorned as a beautiful bride, “clothed in fine linen, bright and pure.” “Having the glory of God, radiant like a most rare jewel, like a jasper clear as crystal.” (Rev.19:8; 21:11).
Let’s be frank. We are not here to honor the saints. Time may well have erased some of the painful memories and the things we would really just as soon forget – but they were human – descendants of Adam and his wife. This is no place for funeral parlor talk. “He was always such a good man.” “He was the perfect husband.” “She never did anything wrong.”
Nor do we need to engage in such false pretenses. These clothes that they wear have been given to them for the sole purpose of covering up all the filthy rags that they wore when they still walked in this valley of death’s shadow. We need not make them out to have been perfect – as if they didn’t need to be covered. These are the clothes of victory’s spoils and the spoils are thankful to wear them.
III. Palm Branches.
And with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Rev. 7:9-10).
Remember that this is St. John who reporting this revelation he has been given. John’s the detail man. He catches all the little details that others miss – like the palm branches in their hands. All four gospel writers record the episode that occurred on the day that Jesus entered into Jerusalem on a donkey. But only John notes the palm branches in their hands. “So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord…” (John 12:13).
They were like captives cheering their liberator as He advanced to do battle against their ruthless master. “Fear not, daughter of Zion: behold your king is coming to you..”
They were like their ancestors, who on this same day many years before, had prepared for their liberation from the bondage and tyranny of Pharaoh in Egypt by choosing a lamb for the sacrifice. Which lamb they would shortly kill and smear it’s blood on the thresholds of the doors in the homes where they lived so that the angel of death would Passover them. By the lamb who was slain, God gained victory over Pharaoh. And all Israel and many Egyptians, “a great multitude that no one could number,” were paraded out of Egypt as victory’s spoils.
But that was just a foreshadowing of the day we call Palm Sunday when the Lamb of God was chosen for the sacrifice and whose blood would be smeared on the threshold of the cross that death would Passover all who live under that cross.
And the Palm branches in their hands were just a foreshadowing of the palm branches that they would waive eternally before the Lamb who gained the victory plundered the enemy. “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb!”
An old custom that has sadly passed out of use, was to place a palm branch in the hand of the deceased in the coffin as a vivid reminder to the living that this one shall be one of the “great multitude that no one could number.” One of victory’s spoils.
IV. All the Company of Heaven “And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
The angels, the elders and the four living creatures before the throne of God. The prophet Isaiah found himself before the throne of God and came undone because of his unclean lips. But now every lip as been sterilized by that which comes from the altar – hot coals for Isaiah – bread and wine in these last days. And what wonderful speech comes from those lips.
The angels, the elders and the four living creatures. A multitude too great to number. Victory’s spoils every one of them. In just a few moments, we will claim our place in that multitude. We will join our lips with the ‘angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, and laud and magnify’ this God around whose throne we gather. All one, holy Christian and Apostolic Church. Separated only by the thin, fragile veil of time and space. They seeing Him face to face and we under bread and wine.
So why do we name our dead before the Lord? We do so as a reminder to ourselves that we are not dealing here in vague generalities here. We give thanks to God that Brendan, Cliff, Olive, Aarne, Bertha, Hedi, Elizabeth, Franklin, Ginny, Herman, Gerda, James, Gerald, Emma, and Ralph are members of that great multitude.
And as we name our dead before the Lord, we are also reminded that this is our destiny and that one day our name will appear on this list. We too will be called out of this great tribulation and will come before the Lamb on His throne clothed in white robes and holding palm branches in our hands. One of that vast multitude of Victory’s spoils. And already, we say, “Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
Related Entries:
» Sermon – All Saints – "The Spoils of Victory" – Revelation 7:2-17 – 11/1/09» Sermon Index – Lutheran – LCMS
» Sermon – Easter 2 – "The Patient Endurance" – Revelation 1:9-20 – 4/11/10
» Sermon – Easter 7 – "Paradise Restored" – Revelation 22:1-6, 12-20 – 5/16/10
» Sermon – Pentecost 2 – " The Power of the Gospel" – Romans 1:8-17 – 5/28/08
» To the Church at Thyatira – Revelation 2:18-29
