00:00:00 Was to create a group of people, a community of people, whom he can love forever. And you and I and people from every nation, tribe, tongue, and language are included in that covenant. And his desire was always that, that he will be our God and we will be his people. His desire was to create a covenantal community of people, not a loose relationship. 00:00:30 Especially as you\'re exploring to get married, and you\'re starting to get involved with someone, it\'s possible to take an incredibly long time before you have your DTR talk because you really don\'t know when is it time to commit. And even then, it kind of is not a covenant. It\'s sort of like a contractual agreement, isn\'t it? But with God, that\'s not how he deals with us. When he covenants, he accomplishes. And it\'s not an ordinary feat. 00:01:02 And because he\'s a covenantal God, we can trust him at all times. Even the best of us cannot consistently demonstrate this covenantal love at all times. As husbands, fathers, and friends, we let people down many times, isn\'t it? And many times, people let us down, too. And no one in history has demonstrated this unwavering love for you and me. But a big question remains. How could God accomplish this? 00:01:40 How could God promise something to someone thousands of years ago and end up actually accomplishing it? Especially if you know who Abraham was, if you know who his descendants were, if you know who you and I are. The descendants of Abraham included his grandson, who was a deceiver. It included an entire rebellious nation that at the drop of a hat would go after other gods. Even their best king would commit adultery in the most wild manner. 00:02:17 And when God sends his own son, Jesus Christ, into the Earth, they would crucify him and kill almost all of his 12 disciples, and they would persecute and go after those who are spreading the good news to the nations around them, starting with the Apostle Paul, till our own missionaries today, some of whom are serving in those very countries that are going after them, facing tremendous hardship and hate in the world around. 00:02:54 With all of this brokenness in the world and human history, how did God pull this out? What made this possible? We get a clue for that in verse nine. It says, \"Standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, 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.\'\" 00:03:24 Here is people who are from all nations, tribes, tongues, and languages, gathered together wearing white robes, and they\'re now able to get it. They are saying, \"You know how we got here? How our salvation was accomplished? It was accomplished because of who it is that we are standing before.\" And who are we standing before? We are standing before the throne, our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. There are two things about God. It\'s about the bigness of who our God is. 00:04:02 Our God is so big that he alone can accomplish this. He is king, he is mighty, he\'s powerful in order to have the ability to accomplish his covenant. It\'s not just the mightiness and the sovereignty and the greatness of God. It\'s also because of who is there. It is the Lamb. It is the Lamb of God. 00:04:32 It is Jesus Christ, his Son, who accepted and covenanted to come into this world to be a sacrifice on your behalf and my behalf, who took upon our sins and our brokenness and our fallenness and established a new covenant, which we celebrate every week. The angels also add this through their doxology. It says in verse 11, \"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.\" 00:05:14 It\'s not just the people, which is going to be you and me one day. Says even the angels. And it talks about the four living creatures and the elders, which commentators have different interpretations. Dr. Polythrus thinks these are angelic beings. Some commentators talk of them as representing the 12 disciples and the leaders of the 12 tribes of Israel. But whoever they are, they are in this glorified state. What are they saying? They\'re saying, \"Amen. Yes, we agree with these people.\" 00:05:50 And they are also worshiping God for the same reasons. They say, \"Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen.\" When they see this having been pulled off It\'s just incredible. It\'s so worshipful. What made this possible was the sovereign will, plan, and power of God, and the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ. Now, what can bring nations and people together who do not look like us, who do not think like us? 00:06:33 It\'s not any human ideology or effort. In fact, the world can never actually accomplish this. It is God\'s desire, God\'s plan, purpose according to His will, and He supplies the way to do it through His Son, Jesus Christ. Only through that is this even a possibility. And when you see that happen, you cannot but give God glory in worship, and which is what they did. It says they cried out with a loud voice, \"Salvation belongs to our God.\" 00:07:10 But what we see in the world around us all the time, as I spoke about, is we see is nations against nations, people against people, tribes against tribes, people divided among one another on the basis of languages or ethnicity or the color of our skin, racial discrimination, ethnic discrimination, social discrimination. Left to ourselves, we only know to divide ourselves. Our sin tends to find unique ways to hate on one another. 00:07:50 And our mind tells us only if someone is like me and likes what I like, I can be friends with that person. Or you can call it in Gen Z lingo, we don\'t have the same vibe. But if we see people like God sees, that they are part of the same covenant family. God loves them like He loves me, not because of anything in us or our cultures or our ethnicities or our languages, but because of His Son who gave His life for you and me. 00:08:27 We are all equally messed up, and we all equally desire and deserve the same grace of God, and we are all equally saved by the same blood of Jesus Christ. We can love one another. And it\'s interesting, they\'re all wearing white robes. We\'ll talk more about that later, but just a brief observation. In God\'s presence, though we come from different nations and tribes and languages and we\'ll have our idiosyncrasies, in a way, externally, we are all wearing the same white robe. 00:09:04 Why talk about nations or society at large? Even among people who look like us, it\'s so hard to love one another, isn\'t it? That\'s why there are divisions even within churches or why that even in marriages, ask any married couple, they will tell you how easy or hard it is to love each other, especially once you\'re married. But here in this vision that John gets, it\'s a vision that God is redeeming us, and when we are in His presence, all our other differences will not matter. 00:09:47 In fact, they\'ll be more beautiful. They will be overpowered by the presence of God\'s majesty and His love that is displayed by the Lamb. God\'s motive was to bless His covenant people from all nations that brings Him glory. And it\'s worth marveling, isn\'t it? It takes immense otherworldly wisdom to accomplish this. This is something that makes everyone give thanks to God and brings God honor. But in order for this to be happen, the Lamb had to be slain. 00:10:31 People from all nations had to be united into his death. People from all nations, tribes, tongue, and languages had to be united to the resurrected Christ. And it is through that union with the dead and the resurrected Christ and the Spirit that sheds abroad the love of Christ in our hearts, can we even genuinely love someone a little bit. When we see a mission like this that seems almost impossible getting realized, it really touches your emotions, isn\'t it? 00:11:13 As I used to do triathlon and half Ironmans, I love the logo of Ironman, which says, \"Anything is possible.\" And you get to see people with incredible challenges take on this enduring race that takes hours to finish, when every cell in your body will call you to quit, and you\'re fighting it till you cross the finish line. But when they do, you will see several of them bursting out in joyful tears because they thought what was impossible is now possible. But in Christ, we have something bigger. 00:11:53 With God, all things are possible. You know what is possible that is impossible by anyone who does not have Christ? A best illustration of that can be found in the story that we all know of Jim Elliot and his friends Jim Elliot and his friends, they trained. They were athletically built. Jim Elliot used to do wrestling to have a body that is trained that can traverse the terrains of Amazon jungles because he wanted to reach the Waodani people who lived there. 00:12:28 But the day when he and his friends landed, they were all speared to death in 1956. And his wife, Elisabeth Elliot, subsequently lived among the Waodani. And there was a man, Minkaye. He was one of the men involved in the killings. He ended up becoming a Christian and developed a remarkable relationship with Steve Saint, the son of the missionary Nate Saint, whom he had speared to death. How is that possible? 00:13:08 How can a man who killed someone now start loving, and how can a person and a family who was killed show love to someone who killed their beloved one? That is only possible because of the love of Christ. That\'s the power of the gospel, my dear friends, made possible by our covenantal God. You may not need to cross the ocean for us to practice this. We live in Silicon Valley, Bay Area, which has people from 90 different countries. 00:13:43 You may just have to cross your street or go across your cube in your workstation to meet someone from another nation who\'s living or working right beside you, who you never saw so far. You perhaps have seen them as a competing colleague or a noisy neighbor or an annoying peer who was getting better grades than you in school or was doing better in sports than you. 00:14:12 But how about you see them through God\'s eyes, and invite them home for a meal or a cup of coffee, and that can be your first small missionary baby step. Missions is not just about us giving our money to someone who is out there. It starts with you and me in our hearts, with loving people. Secondly, in this passage, what we get to see is it just keeps getting more and more beautiful. 00:14:43 First was covenant accomplished, covenant fulfilled, creation of this heavenly community, and secondly, we are going to talk about redemption accomplished. It\'s the creation of a holy community in Christ. Verse 13, it says, \"Then one of the elders addressed me saying, \'Who are these clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?\' I said to him, \'Sir, you know.\' And he said to me, \'These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. 00:15:16 They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.\'\" It begins with a question that the elder asks the apostle John, and he tells the elder, \"You know it,\" in humble response, and he gets this explanation. It talks about those, if you just read the verse before that, the previous chapter, it talks about John getting a vision of seeing Christ victorious. 00:15:50 He\'s opening the seven seals, and it talks about the 144,000, referring to 12,000 people from every 12 of the 12 tribes of the nation of Israel. He hears that as a representative of the elect, that these are the people who survived and persevered till the end, and now he gets to see those who have persevered and come out of the period of tribulation. The people who he is writing to are right now experiencing intense persecution and tribulation. 00:16:28 And we are living in that age, even as we spoke right now, there are people who are living in countries where it is illegal to preach the gospel, especially in our mission fields. And we therefore have an abundant responsibility to pray for these people. We\'re going to have our missions carnival, and I hear we\'ll have tables where we can get to see what\'s happening in each of those countries where our missionaries are serving, so we can get to pray for them and raise some support to them. 00:17:13 But it is not just our missionaries. It\'s talking about Christians, ordinary Christians, who are living in some of these places even right now who are experiencing this. We know what\'s happening in some of these communist countries, the underground Christians in China. There are almost 200 million underground Christians in China. 00:17:41 Or those in the Middle East or North Korea or Central Asia or even India, where every week there are churches that are torched, missionaries and pastors who are hunted and killed. And when you are in that ministry context, John\'s vision is going to encourage them to see, \"Hey, God is going to see you come through this But it\'s just not that. You know what he says? He says, \"They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.\" What made their robes white? 00:18:30 Says they have been washed by the blood of the Lamb. This is talking about what is the identity you and I are going to have when we are going to be in heaven. Our identity in heaven is not going to be defined by what you and I accomplish here on earth. Not our positions, not our job titles, not how much money we have, but it says that we will be made holy and blameless by the precious blood of the Lamb. Then why do we keep going after all these worldly things as though that is it? 00:19:14 We know we commonly say we cannot even carry this with us to our grave, isn\'t it? We can\'t literally do that, let alone to heaven. And we will also not need any of them in heaven. Why? Because we will have God, our Father, who is now the King of the universe, and Christ, our Lamb, who has made us a holy people. Which means you and I will also not be defined by our failures and our sins and our shortcomings. Our robes have been washed white in the blood of the Lamb. What beautiful that is. 00:19:55 God is not going to look at each one of you and say, \"Hey, you. You did that sin.\" \"Hey, you. You messed up there, remember?\" Many times. And when my wife and I get into a conflict, I have a very strong memory, and I can recall things she has done 10, 15, 20 years ago. And I have some very good persuasive skills because I\'m a preacher. And in my fallenness, I can sometimes deploy them, and she will have no chance of even getting back. 00:20:30 And then I\'ll feel terrible after that, and I can get reminded of my humanity, of my weakness. This is what you and I will do. We like to put people down. We like to define people by their failures. We wait for people to fall so we can feel better about ourselves than them. And that\'s what breeds jealousy. That\'s what destroys friendships. That\'s what eventually disrupts even God\'s work in the world. It even creeps into the church and the mission fields. 00:21:05 Because most of the world around us have people who always want to see us fall or fail or celebrate our shortcomings and define us through our fallenness. But in God\'s presence, he says we receive the robes of Christ\'s perfect righteousness as redeemed, set apart, and as a holy community. No matter your past, when you come to Jesus and you repent and believe in his finished work on the cross and embrace him, he is ready to clothe you, too, with white robes that have been washed in his blood. 00:21:47 Do you want this, my dear friends? If you are someone who has never had this relationship and you have seen the depths of your sin and you want to be washed by the blood of Jesus, you can still go to him. If you are authentic in your faith and you practice genuine repentance, and the scripture says, \"Bring forth fruit bearing unto repentance,\" and he will clothe you with his white robes, too. He may not remove the consequences of your sin or your sinful life, but you will be with him in heaven. 00:22:22 So come to Jesus is my plea. And lastly, we are going to move to see glory awaited. A glorious community in God\'s presence forever. What will we be doing and what will God do? Says we will be worshiping him and God is going to be caring for us. How? It says in verse 15, \"Therefore they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore. 00:22:58 The sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb, in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.\" Wow. The first thing it says is when we are before the throne of God, we will be serving him. And you know what God does? He says he will shelter them with his presence. It\'ll be a joy to serve him. 00:23:34 Work now sometimes or many times is laborious and burdensome and three out of four people believe they are in the wrong jobs and hate their work in America. But when we serve God, it\'s going to make us joyful. But even more than that, it says we will be sheltered by his presence. What is the most joyful place that you can be? In God\'s presence. The most joyful place to be is in the presence of God. 00:24:10 This is actually a fulfillment, once again, of what Isaiah prophesied 500 years before Jesus came. If you read with me in Isaiah 49:10, it\'s verbatim here. It says, \"They shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them, for he who has pity on them will lead them and by springs of water Will guide them. Like I said earlier, even now, the early Christians and many Christians are living in places where they are facing intense hunger, thirst. 00:24:50 Especially our refugees who are fleeing war-torn regions. That is their reality. That is their life. I was talking to Pastor Clement, who we all know. He\'s from the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo. When I asked him about what\'s happening, and he was saying people are fleeing the DRC because he said there is nothing to do. You cannot even work to get bread and butter. Food and water is a scarcity, yet there are Christians who are living there. 00:25:32 His own parents are faithful Christians who raised him up in a godly home that he was able to give his life to serve Jesus. His own father was abducted by the rebels, and they didn\'t know where he was for a year. He came back after one year, and that\'s when they realized he was alive. They couldn\'t leave the country to be here for his wedding. He can\'t go back to see them. He says, \"I have to go to another country because if I go there, I will be abducted.\" 00:26:01 But there are faithful brothers and sisters who are serving God. We are living in Silicon Valley in beautiful sunny California, literally a land flowing with milk and honey, and we sometimes don\'t realize there are brothers and sisters in other parts of the world who do not have that. But this is what would encourage them. This vision should encourage the persecuted and suffering Christians then, and it does now. You know why? The beautiful reason? It\'s not just a pep talk. 00:26:39 It says we will have Christ as our shepherd. Psalm 23 will become real. \"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures\" will become a reality. There will be no more pain. It says and no more tears. We live in a broken world, and we all experience the effects of sin, either ours or someone else\'s. We all experience suffering, pain. We experience death. Our loved ones die and leave us, which produces griefs and tears. 00:27:20 But here, when Christ, our shepherd, shepherds us, eventually we will be in a place where he says there will be no more pain, no more tears when we enter this Christ\'s presence. And this week, perhaps we can pray for our brothers and sisters living in persecuted nations around the world and our missionaries serving them as well. That would also be a way for us to be thankful and anticipate when we go through such things. 00:27:57 Perhaps not as big as what they are, but in our own world, when we face trials, when we face sickness, when we face death, when we face the effects of sin, either of ourselves or others, this can give us an encouragement because all of this was taken by Jesus Christ on the cross. The same Isaiah says, \"He was stricken for our iniquities.\" All our brokenness, He took upon himself on the cross, and we can begin to experience his healing grace, his healing touch, even here, even now. 00:28:36 And this is such a wonderful passage. I hope we\'ll restore our love and our trust in our God, because he\'s a God who accomplishes his covenant. He\'s an unchanging God. He\'s the same yesterday, today, and forever. And you know what\'s happening here is the reverse of what happened in Babel, in Genesis 11, where all the nations came together and they were trying to build a tower to reach heaven so they can make a name for themselves. 00:29:12 But here, God is gathering all the nations together, not to make a name for themselves, but to glorify himself. That\'s why Piper wrote his book of how the motive for missions is worship. Our desire, why we want to go and love on others who are around us, our brothers and sisters from other parts of the world, is because we want to draw them into this very same family of going into God\'s presence and being God\'s covenant people and give him the worship that is due to his name. 00:29:50 And we can experience that heaven right here, right now. When we do that, we don\'t have to wait till we get to heaven. Not in its fully perfected form. That\'s going to happen when we get there, but God has given us the grace that we can begin to experience that in this world. And that\'s why we have an urgency to participate in the mission God has called us. So beloved, trust in God\'s unchanging covenantal love and believe in his might and power to redeem people from all nations. 00:30:25 We are not going to draw people by having smoke screens and laser lights and flashy music. That\'s just only an inch deep and a mile wide, and it will disappear like that. We want to draw people by proclaiming the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ and how he clothes you and me with his white robes and makes us beautiful in God\'s presence forever and ever. We will not stand before him with our failures or accomplishments. 00:30:59 We will stand before him wearing white robes, being fully accepted, washed by his blood. And we can share that experience with our brothers and sisters so we can experience heaven on earth. 00:31:13 Whenever we gather together like this and worship together, it becomes a visible proclamation and a challenge to the world around us that is constantly fighting and struggling to experience racial reconciliation and unity and fighting wars to show that, hey, the gospel of Jesus Christ has the power to redeem and bind people from every tribe, tongue, and nation for his glory.