FBC Morning Light – December 3, 2022

Good Saturday morning, people of faith. This morning, we hope to have a little insight into what heaven is like, some encouragement about heaven, and perhaps a challenge to you as well. We're in Revelation chapter 7, and I'm going to read in verse 9.

The Great Multitude Before the Throne

This is John speaking. He says, "'After these things, I looked, and behold, a great multitude, which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands.'".

So first of all, notice here that it is a great multitude, which no one could number. There are different sects of people, I don't necessarily want to call them Christian, who claim that the entrance into heaven has been closed and has been filled, and sorry, but you and I don't get to enter anymore.

Well, this verse tells me that those people are wrong. It is a number too big for you or I to number, and I'll tell you what, as a math teacher, I can count pretty high, okay? And so this is going to be a very large number.

Of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, the word for nations there is ethnos. Now, ethnos, you may sound familiar to you, it's where we get the word ethnicity. This is not restricted to just people from a white European background.

It is not. Christianity is not the white man's religion.

It is not.

It never has been, all right? People who say that they are, are only looking back the last couple hundred years in history. They're not looking back to the beginning. There's not likely a white European Christian who wrote any of the New or Old Testament,.

Okay?

And so that being said, this good news of being able to enter heaven is not restricted by a number you can think of. It is not restricted by your ethnicity whatsoever. So let those things be an encouragement to you, all right?

Washed in the Blood of the Lamb

And now let me read to you in verse 14. One of the elders has approached John and after a bit of an interchange, he says to John, these, referring to that great multitude, which no one could number, are the ones who come out of the great tribulation and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

And here's the challenge. The clothes which we wear before God, it's a recurring theme throughout Scripture to put off the old man, to put on the new. Revelation chapter 3 in the message to the church at Laodicea in verse 18, it says, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich, and white garments that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed.

This is part of that recurring theme of being clothed with God's righteousness. If you think back to the gospel of Matthew in chapter 22, we have the parable of the wedding feast, and this king has given a wedding for his son, and he's gone out and invited all these different people and they've come.

And the king in verse 11 of Matthew chapter 22 says, but when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. So he said to him, friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?

And he was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, bind him hand and foot, take him away and cast him into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.

I ask you this day, as today, like every day is a good day to make certain that your calling and election is sure. Have your robes been washed in the blood of the lamb? Do you know that Jesus died for you and you have placed your trust in the risen Savior, that you have repented of believing the wrong things, that you could enter the gates on your own, not clothed in the righteousness of Christ?

I ask you to ponder those things on this Saturday. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you, hopefully clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ and not in our own righteousness. For we know there is no good work that we could do on our own, but that you paid our penalty on the cross in our place, that we might be with you in heaven, clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

May these things be true of us today. It's in your Son's name, Jesus, we pray, amen. Have an excellent day, people of faith.