KNU International English ChurchJosh Broward
August 27, 2006
This week I looked for pictures of different kinds of bookends. I found everything from A to Z. There are the horse bookends, without which no posh English study is complete. There are the classic “thinking man” bookends. There are many varieties of little people struggling to hold the books together. There are countless children’s bookends, like this engine and caboose. Here is Emma’s favorite: Pooh and Tigger. My favorite was probably this set from the Chronicles of Narnia: the White Witch and Aslan.
Why are we talking about bookends? Well, let me show you one more set of bookends. In Revelation chapter 7, John gives us two visions. They stand like bookends on time. The first vision, verses 1-8, happens before time. The second vision, verses 9-17 stands at the end of time as a picture of the beautiful conclusion of the world.
Let’s read Revelation 7 now.
OK, now let’s look at the 1st Bookend (v. 1-8). In chapter 6, John has watched the Lamb open 6 seals. At the end of chapter 6, with the earth collapsing, we expect Judgment Day, but instead, God’s video screen flashes back to before the chaos, before the martyrs, before the Four Horsemen. God shows John (and us) a picture of the time before time.
At the beginning of time, as God is creating the world, He pushes chaos to the edge of the picture. Before He sets the earth in motion and allows freewill to run its course, God calls for a time of perfect calm so that He can do something very important. God shuts all the windows and the doors, turns of the fans and the air conditioners, so that His angel can work without any interference. God’s people need to be marked. God wants His people to be sealed with His personal seal. Before any of the Trouble starts, God wants to make sure that the full number of His people are marked and claimed as His.
John tells us that 144,000 people “were marked with the seal of God” (7:4).1 Why 144,000? If you go to the KORAIL website, you can reserve a seat on a train, and it will tell you how many seats are left. Some people think there is a train leaving for heaven with 144,000 seats.2 Better get your ticket fast!
But that is a misunderstanding. “The number 144,000 is intended as symbolic theology, not literal math.”3 In the Bible the number 12 consistently represents God’s people (the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 apostles, the 24 elders), so here John hears that a full group of God’s people will be marked with the seal from every part of the family of Israel. The point is that God’s family will be very big, very full, and very safe – even when the Trouble starts.
So that’s the 1st Bookend. In Paul’s words, “Long ago, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes” (Eph. 1:4). Before any of the Trouble started, God chose us as his own people.
Now let’s talk about the 2nd Bookend: verses 9-17. In verse 9 God’s movie screen fast-forwards to the end of time, or to the time outside of time, after the Big Trouble.
Here John sees “a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb” (7:9). “Too great to count” must be a really big number because in another place John gives the number 200 million (9:16). This crowd must have been huge!!
The 1st Bookend had a very large number: 144,000, representing a very full family of God from every part of Israel. When John views the second bookend vision, two amazing things happen.
First, the number explodes. The nice, neat numeric symbolism of the first vision explodes into a swarming mass of people too big to count, too big even to organize into some kind of namable groups. John looks out at the vast crowd and says, “Uhh, there’s … um … a lot … a whole lot!”
Second, the group diversifies. There aren’t just Israelites anymore. There are people from every nation and tribe and people and language. There are Canadians, Koreans, Taiwanese, New Zealanders, Massai, Americans, Cherokee, Iroquois, English, Philippinos, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Kenyans, French, Hutu, Tutsi … people from every possible place or group in the world.
Like we prayed today from Psalm 67, all the nations are finally praising God. God’s plan was never just for Israel. God’s plan was that Israel would become a God-like, hospitable people who would slowly but surely incorporate all people everywhere into God’s loving family. Revelation 7 gives us a picture of when this finally happens.
These are still the 144,000. John will use this number to refer to all of God’s people again. The international, multicultural church of Jesus Christ is the continuation of Israel as the people of God. But the 2nd Bookend has radically reinterpreted the 144,000. God’s elite, special people now include all kinds of people from all kinds of places.
This scene in heaven is like the World Cup victory party. They have conquered. They have survived the Big Trouble. They are victorious (see chapters 2-3). What are they doing? They aren’t giving each other high-fives and congratulating each other for making it through. They aren’t kissing the trophy. They aren’t holding up their white robes and crowns for the camera.
They are worshipping. They are giving God all the credit: “Salvation comes from our God on the throne and from the Lamb! You are the rightful Owner of all blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and strength. We never could have made it without you. It’s all about you, God!”
One of the elders turns to John and gives John a little commentary on heaven. First, he explains that John is now seeing the 2nd Bookend, the time after our time, the time after the Big Trouble.
Then, he explains who these people are. They are the people who have made it through the Big Trouble because “they washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb and made them white” (7:14). Now, I have a lot of shirts, and I can tell you that blood does not make them whiter. I have had to throw away some shirts because I stained them with blood after I shaved. But this is a different kind of clothes and a different kind of blood. These are the clothes that represent our lives, what we have done in this world, our track-record so to speak. And this is the blood of Jesus from when he died on the cross. He was completely innocent. He had a perfectly clean record, the only person who ever lived who never got grass stains on his spiritual knees. When we put our trust in Jesus and his death on the cross, God transforms our dirty, stained clothes into Jesus’ clean, white clothes.
Up to this point, we have already seen that the Community of Heaven is radically inclusive and radically worshipful. Now the elder explains one more about the Community of Heaven. It is mutual, and it is healing.
The Community of Heaven is mutual. The people worship God and serve God day and night. God lives among them and shelters the people (7:15). The people give; God gives. The people serve; God serves. Heaven is a mutual exchange of love and caring.
The Community of Heaven is healing. These people are coming out of the Big Trouble. Many of them have had very difficult lives, but here, in the Community of Heaven, God heals all their wounds. God satisfies their hunger. God quenches their thirst. God protects them from the summer heat. God guides their lives. God wipes away their tears. Because they have trusted the Lamb, God takes away their dirty clothes and gives them fresh clean clothes and fresh clean lives.
The 2nd Bookend, this picture of the time after our time, is radical. The people of God are radically large – too many to count (and for a pastor like John, you know it takes a big crowd before it’s too many to count). They are radically multicultural; in fact, they are every-cultural. Their worship is radical – day and night. They are radically mutual – serving and being served. They are radically healing – no more hunger or thirst or shame or tears. This picture is radical and beautiful!
But we – we don’t live in this time. We don’t live in the Bookends yet. We are still in the books. We are in the in-between time. The 1st Bookend was before the Big Trouble. The 2nd Bookend is after the Big Trouble. That means we are living in the time of the Big Trouble. If you remember from last week, the Horsemen still ride in our world. The winds still blow in our world, and the waves of chaos still crash against us.
How do we live between the Bookends? How do we live in the midst of Trouble? We have been chosen by God to make it through the Trouble, but we are not through it yet. How do we live as we journey through?
Our answer is found in the Lord’s Prayer. “May Your Kingdom come soon. May Your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” Jesus taught His disciples to pray that God’s Kingdom would become a reality on earth. He taught them to pray that things will be done God’s way on earth, just like they are in Heaven. Jesus taught His disciples to pray for Heaven to come to earth. In the meantime, in the middle time between the Bookends, Jesus taught them to pray for Heaven and to live like Heaven. Live out the Community of Heaven even as we live on earth. Live like the end while we’re still in the middle.
While we are still in the middle time, live like God and work with God to make the Community of Heaven a reality on earth. In this middle time, God is calling us to live toward the second picture.
Be radically growing. God exploded the picture of his community from a one-nation family oriented community in the 1st Bookend, to an every-cultural, uncountably huge community in the 2nd Bookend. Maybe God wants to expand our expectations, too. Maybe he wants to explode our expectations.
Be radically inclusive. Relentlessly pursue those who are lost and left out. Look for people on the outside on the edges of our church or on the edges of our larger community of Cheonan. Notice the ones on the outside, and join God to bring them inside.
Be radical worshipers. Worship God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your body, day and night.
Be radically mutual. Give, and receive. Serve, and be served. Encourage, and be encouraged. Strengthen others, and let them strengthen you.
Be radically healing. We are all wounded. But here’s the beauty of the gospel. As we become a community, we become God’s doctors and nurses. We become God’s medicine and bandages to heal each other with his grace. We see the pain in each other and the pain in our world, and we join with God to satisfy hunger and to wipe away tears. God is using us to bring heavenly healing to each other and to our world. Let God use you more.
Let me show you a picture of what living like Heaven might look like even as we live in the Middle Time. It is a picture of one fellowship living in a place called Middle Earth.
(Show trailer of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring to 1:20.)
God has chosen us. We are called and chosen to live like Heaven on earth. In this place, in our community, in our Middle Earth, if we don’t do it, no one will. We cannot do it alone. We need each other. We have formed a fellowship, a Fellowship of the King. Let us say to each other, “You have my voice. You have my hands. You have my heart.”
Church, we are in the Middle Time, but by God’s grace we can live like Heaven. This is our calling. This is our privilege. Let’s do it together.
1 See Pat Marvenko Smith’s picture of this at:
2 This image is from Dan Boone, Answers for Chicken Little, (Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill, 2005), 67, though Boone is simply describing a faulty opinion.
3 Eugene Boring, Revelation, Interpretation, (Louisville, KY: John Knox, 1989), 130.
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