The Apostle John describes an amazing scene in the book of Revelation in chapter 7, a great multitude from every nation praising the Lord. Today on Truth for Life weekend, Alistair Begg shows how God's plan of redemption is displayed in that scene, and we'll find out why this passage ought to motivate every one of us as believers to share the gospel. As difficult as it is for me to think of it in terms of fiction, I think I understand it better in the reading of history, and in particular, when you think about the unfolding drama, not simply of the history of our world, but the unfolding drama of redemption. And I think it is not only helpful but important for us from time to time to go, as it were, to the end of the story and to remind ourselves of how things come to a conclusion according to the instruction of Scripture.
And so I wanted to finish this morning the time that I have with you by reminding you of this great picture. It is important for us to remind ourselves, despite the views of our secular world, that history, all of world history, can only finally be understood in light of salvation history. God's acts in history are never an afterthought in response to contingency. God is acting according to the eternal counsel of his will, and the one of whom we have sung so volubly is he who is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. Now, since we can see this picture of consummation and this picture of victory, is then the message that we should then simply lighten up, that we should just wait for God to do all that he's planning to do?
No, the message is not lighten up, the message is buckle up. The message is, again, in the words of the hymn writer, we are facing a task unfinished that drives us to our knees. And that the assembled company here described for us by John is not assembled automatically, but is assembled as a result of the gospel going out into all the world.
How will they hear unless someone tells them? And it would be good for us to keep in mind as well that the book of Revelation is actually an exposition of the gospel. Every New Testament book is an exposition of the gospel. The whole Bible is about Jesus and Jesus is about the gospel. If we take our eyes off Jesus, we lose our way around the Bible. If we forget the evangel at the heart of God's purpose, then we miss the point entirely. The gospel is the announcement that God has revealed and opened up his kingdom to sinners through the birth and the teaching and the miracles and the death and the resurrection and the ascension of his Son, Jesus the Messiah, who is one day going to return and overturn evil in its entirety and consummate his kingdom for all of eternity. The lamb becomes the shepherd and looks after his sheep and wipes away all the tears from their eyes. Every time you hear the news, every time you read your newspaper, every time you're confronted by the circumstances of life, you will do well to take yourself back again to Revelation 7 and say, Wait a minute!
God is putting together this vast company. Now, we began by thinking of paintings on Tuesday, and so we're going to end by thinking of paintings. Don't misunderstand me as if I know a great deal about painting. I don't at all, but it doesn't stop me from thinking that one day I might.
And so, one must live with hope. But if you think of this as a great painting, all right? When painters paint—I've seen this from going to galleries—before they have the final picture, there are often other little mini-paintings. Or there are actually thumbnail sketches. Sometimes the work is done in pencil, and there are pencil drawings before you have the final piece. What I want to do is suggest to you a couple of the pencil drawings that precede the completion of this big picture.
I hope you can follow my line of thought. First little thumbnail sketch is God's call and covenant with Abraham. Okay, so we'd have to go back into Genesis. We're not going to go there, the call of God to Abraham, and to create a people that are his very own. And that covenant picture, both in the Old and in the New Testament, is, as you know, God's free decision to call out of all the peoples of the world a people to be his own special possession as he becomes their redeemer.
It means more than that, but it doesn't mean less than that. God has pledged himself from all of eternity what the Father has planned, the Son has procured, the Spirit applies in the great work of redemption to put together a people that are his very own, and it is the utterly undeserved privilege of all who have come to trust in Christ to find themselves included in that big company. And when you read, then, the drama of the Bible, if you read it with that thought in view, then the little individual bits and pieces suddenly take on a far greater and far more comprehensive significance.
So for example, Ruth the Moabitess, what about the way in which God chooses to use the triple bereavement in the life of Naomi to forward his purposes in these things? What is happening? The covenant promise of God that I am going to have a people that is vast in its complexity, that extends to the ends of the earth, look up in the sky, look down in the sand, he says. And as you read through, what is happening? God is keeping his purpose, he is fulfilling his promise, he is employing his servants, he is enlarging his people, and he's still doing it.
That's one little sketch. The other thumbnail sketch that I put down in my notes was the calling of the disciples, the calling of the disciples. I did this arbitrarily, but I did it purposefully because in Mark 1 and verse 15, although the NIV says that Jesus then stands on the stage after John the Baptist and he says, the time has come. In fact, he doesn't say the time has come, he says the time is fulfilled. The fulfillment of time, that is a better translation.
Why? Because Jesus is declaring that the whole process, the whole promise of redemptive revelation in the Old Testament finds his fulfillment in him. The time has come, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is near, repent and believe the gospel. And that explains why in encounters with people, everything is moved dramatically forward. Remember with the lady at the well in John chapter 4, she says, When the Messiah comes, he'll explain all of this.
He says, Excuse me, I who speak to you am he. The time is fulfilled. Or third thumbnail sketch, the beginning of Acts.
Acts chapter 1, here's the other thumbnail sketch, post-resurrection. Okay, Jesus, say the disciples, we get it now, let's go. We thought the whole thing was over, we're delighted to know that it isn't.
We're starting to figure out your death was part of the plan. Okay, well, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now, Jesus? Nationalistic flavor of their request is understandable, but it's wrong. And Jesus has to recalibrate their thinking in terms of the giving of the Spirit and the proclamation of the gospel. Fellas, this is not about a temple in Jerusalem.
This is not about the nationalistic focus that you have in relationship to the Jewish people. This is about the Spirit of God being poured out upon you and don't go till He comes. And when He sends you, then you go exactly where you're told, and you're going to discover that there are countless people who will be ushered in to the kingdom. You will be my witnesses after the power of the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth. In fact, Goldsworthy puts it like this, instead of the expected glorious reign of Christ in the New Jerusalem, we learn that the scepter of the risen Christ is the preached word that will be the focus of the worldwide missionary endeavor of the church.
And that drama then unfolds. For example, Peter then preaches in Jerusalem, and he says there is no other name under heaven by which men may be saved. He then has to go through the experience that is crystallized in the house of Cornelius, and he suddenly gets it and he says, I now realize that God does not show favoritism. In other words, there is no special nation status. Britain, in its history, suffered dramatically as a result of certain segments of the evangelical church, conceiving of something which was essentially called British Israelism. They read all of the promises in relationship to the fulfillment of the kingdom of God directly in nationalistic terms. They were so jingoistic as to think that somehow or another God was uniquely committed to Britain and to its empire. Let me ask you where the British Empire is today.
Would it be wrong for me to suggest that America tracks right behind Britain? That there are large swages of contemporary evangelicalism that are so nationalistic in their approach to the gospel that they have missed this point entirely or have chosen to ignore it? That God does not show favoritism. You see it in relationship to the Middle East, in terms of Israel, in terms of the Arab population. Most of the stuff that is said, which we entirely understand, does not give any credence at all to the existence of those who love Christ and suffer for Christ in the Arab communities of the Middle East.
Why is that? It's because of a view of the Bible. It's because of a way of reading this stuff. Ideas have implications. That's why you are sensible people. You must read your Bible and figure this out.
The gospel shatters every man-made barrier of race. Well, come back now to the picture with me. Back into the room, we did those little drawings. Let's come back and look at this great multitude that no one could count. Oh, says somebody, what do you mean no one can count? There are some numbers there in the chapter. I see that you're just trying to skip them. You started at verse 9 because you're afraid of the 144,000.
How clever of you, babe. Let me just say this. When you come to these things, it's important for us to remind ourselves that what John is doing in writing Revelation is not ministering to armchair theorists in the twenty-first century. He's writing to the battlers in the first century who are struggling to reconcile the fact of a risen Lord with the persecution and the frustration and the feebleness of their lives.
Every day they live their lives, they are harried and pressed upon from every corner. They're trying to say, well, if we serve a risen Christ, why is the world the way it is? If he is the triumphant Lord, if he is the ascended King, what in the world is this mess? Look at my children, look at my grandchildren.
What am I supposed to do? That's why he's writing Revelation. He's not writing it so that people in the twenty-first century can get PhDs by explaining some intricate and marvelous interpretation. Well, John, when he writes—and you get it in chapter 1—he's not writing from Never-Never Land.
He's writing from Ever-Ever Land. So beware these things. Beware these things. So what do you want to do with 144,000? Who is in this company?
Well, I'll just lay my colors out before you and shoot me as I leave. I think we're on the right track when we see the number of 144,000 and the multitude as one and the same. From one perspective, from God's perspective, it's the perfect number, the square of twelve by the cube of ten. That's what John heard. That's the number, a definite total known only to God. For God knows them that are his. 2 Timothy 2.
That's what John heard. What did John see? What he saw, if you like, from a human perspective was a numberless multitude. From God's perspective, this crowd is all Israel, the real Israel in Christ. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abram's seeds and heirs according to the promise.
The real Israel in Christ converted Jews and Gentiles. God sees that. From our perspective, it just looks like a vast crowd gathered together from everywhere. Again, you're sensible.
Read your Bible. But know this, that in this crowd, there will be no empty seats. In this crowd, there will be no no-shows. In this crowd, there will be no returns at the door. No one will be showing up and saying, I don't need this ticket.
You won't be able to go along with half an hour before the performance and pick up a seat that somebody has decided not to fulfill. That is not for a moment to suggest that the kingdom is going to be sparsely populated, because it is a multitude that no one could count. And they're not put together simply arbitrarily or willy-nilly. The individuals who are here in this company, according to verse 14, are those who are cleansed and clothed, those who by faith have received the gift of righteousness in Christ to clothe them before the searching gaze of a holy God, clothed in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne. That's who's there, clothed in the righteousness of Christ. Now, we're going to finish with a little exercise in imagination. I want you to imagine that the picture is up behind me here, that no one could actually imagine or count. And I want to ask you if you can see some faces. I think if you look up to your left and my right, you'll see the face of the lady who was looking for love in all the wrong places.
And as she met Jesus, she asked her for a drink of water, and her life was never going to be the same again. As a result of that, you'll see her face up there. If you look over on the far side, you'll see the funny little guy who climbed up a tree in the hope that he might have seen Jesus, just the chance to get a look at him, little realizing that Jesus would stop right underneath this tree, look up, and call him by his name, and tell him he wanted to come to his house for a cup of tea. And Zacchaeus's life would never be the same again. You'll see his face up there. You'll also see the face of the thief who got it right at just the last minute. The one who turned to his friend and said, Don't you fear God? We are up here getting what our sins deserve.
He hasn't done anything wrong. Lord, will you remember me when you come into your kingdom? Now you say, Well, what would you do with this if you were preaching to a variegated congregation such in your own church?
Well, I think this is how I would finish. I would say, Do you see your face up there? Because it's a very interesting thing. John may have seen you because he saw this. This was a vision of the completed picture. So there are actually faces. But I'd ask my congregation, Do you see your face there? And they might say, Well, how would my face ever be there? And then I'd tell them that in Scotland, when it was like Tuesday was, miserable raining all the time, I would take my pocket money sometimes, and I would actually go and buy a book that had what was extensively blank sheets of paper in it. I'm sure they must have come from America. It was an ingenious idea.
You have all the good ideas. And they were essentially blank sheets of paper. And what you did was you got a little jug of water, and you got a paintbrush, and then you put water on what was essentially a blank sheet. And it wasn't a blank sheet. Faces started to appear.
Well, look at that! How did I do that? Did I make them come there? No, apparently they were there.
Yeah, but they wouldn't have been seen if I hadn't put the water on them, would they? You also were included in Christ, says Paul to the Ephesians, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, when somebody, as it were, took the paintbrush, dipped it in the glorious news of the gospel, and painted it over what looked to be a blank canvas, and suddenly another face appeared in the multitude that no one could count. And then I would say this, and this I say to you, is that if that is the case, and if we are in Christ, and if we do understand something of this in terms of the great call of the evangel and of gospel and of mission, then I might tell them about two of my favorite people in conclusion. One would be Charles Haddon Spurgeon. And I would tell them that on Spurgeon's tombstone in Upper Norwood in suburban London, you can find the verse from the hymn, Air since my faith, I saw the stream, Thy flowing wounds supply, Redeeming love has been my theme, And shall be till I die.
And then I would tell them of Eric Liddell, who won the gold for Britain in the 1924 Olympics, memorialized in Chariots of Fire, is now only seen by grandparents and old people that get the old movie out and watch it, it's worth getting. But forget the movie, after he had finally been a hero in Scotland and left for China, when he left for China from the Waverly station in Edinburgh, a great company gathered, not simply of his Christian friends, but people in the community, because he was really the Michael Jordan of his day. He was as famous as that as an athlete. And the great assembled crowd was there watching as this fellow who had the world at his feet was about to go and lose himself in China. And he got on the train and he let down the window in the train, and he addressed the crowd and he thanked them for coming. And then he paused, and all of a sudden he shouted, Christ for the world, for the world needs Christ. And then he led them in the singing of the hymn, Jesus shall reign where'er the sun, doth his successive journeys run, and his kingdom stretch from shore to shore, till moons shall wax and wane no more.
When you're tempted to be buried under the weight of a secular world, when we are tempted to be discouraged by our apparent and sometime realistic, inarticulate ineffectiveness. Go and get this picture out, and look at it, and remind yourself that God is still on the throne, that he will remember his own. Though trials may press us, and burdens distress us, he never will leave us alone. God is still on the throne, and he will remember his own. His promise is true.
He will not forget you. God is still on the throne. You're listening to Truth for Life Weekend, that is Alistair Begg wrapping up a series called Preaching the Gospel. And if you'd like to re-listen to any of these messages, or pass this series along to a seminary student or a new pastor, you'll find the study online at truthforlife.org.
While you're on our website, check out the book we are recommending today. It's a newly published Advent devotional written by Alistair. It's titled Let Earth Receive Her King. It's a collection of 24 daily devotions taken from scripture. It traces the line of the Messiah from Genesis all the way to Revelation.
In fact, Alistair recently recorded an excerpt from this devotional. No matter how far back we consider the beginning of time to be, and no matter what model we may have in our minds of how time began, there we will find the pre-incarnate Son of God already existing. In the beginning, there was already God, and there was already God the Son, the Word. John, in his gospel, connects the dots to Genesis 1 for us. This Jesus was not created, for he is the very creator of the universe. The child in the manger was the very same person who put the stars in the sky, including the very star which led the wise men from the east to come and worship him. If you'd like to find out more about Alistair's Advent devotional, Let Earth Receive Her King, visit our website at truthforlife.org. Thanks for listening. Next weekend we will hear a reassuring message that we can keep in mind during times of doubt or despair. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
