A young preacher was asked by the local funeral director to hold a grave-side burial service at a small local cemetery for someone with no family or friends. The preacher started early but he made several wrong turns, and got himself lost. Eventually, a half-hour late, he saw a backhoe and its crew, but the hearse was nowhere in sight, and the workmen were eating lunch.

          The diligent young pastor went to the open grave and found the lid to the vault already in place.  He took out his notes and began to read the service. Feeling guilty because of his tardiness, he preached a long and impassioned sermon, sending the deceased to the great beyond in style.

          As he was returning to his car, he overheard one of the workmen say: "I've been putting in septic tanks for twenty years and I ain't never seen anything like that."

          Today, we get to talk about heaven!  For the most part, thinking about heaven is a happy, hopeful thought.  But of course, there are a few issues we have about the subject of heaven.

          A Sunday School teacher told this story.  She had taught the children that they needed to believe in Jesus in order to go to heaven and that their salvation was by grace, not good works.  Now, she was checking to see if they had gotten her point.  

          So she asked the class, "If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale, and gave all my money to the church, would that get me into heaven?"

          "No!" the children all answered.

          "If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the yard, and kept everything neat, would that get me into heaven?"

          Again the children's answer was, "No!"

          "Well, what if I was kind to animals and was always good, would that get me into heaven?" I asked them again.

          Once more the children all answered, "No!"

          "Well," she asked, "then just HOW can I get into heaven?"

          A five-year-old boy shouted out, "You gotta be dead!!"

          Well, that little guy was right, even though it wasn’t quite the answer his teacher was looking for.  Maybe one reason we don’t talk much about heaven is that we connect it with death, and death is not a subject most of us like to think about.

           Christians have had different responses to the concept of heaven over the ages.  When things here on earth are more difficult, we have more of a tendency to yearn for heaven.  On the other hand, when things are easy for us and life is pleasant, we aren’t quite so interested in heaven. 

          When there have been times of great persecution, Christians looked forward to heaven as a place where things would be better.  In America today, there is little persecution against Christians.  We have religious freedom.  Maybe that’s why we don’t think a great deal about heaven.

          But it’s good for us to stop and remember that there are many places in the world today where Christians do not enjoy religious freedom, and in fact many of them are persecuted because of their faith.  In countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, China, and several African countries, Christians do not have religious freedom, even today.  Some of them suffer greatly because of their faith. It would not surprise me to find that these persecuted Christians have much more of a longing for heaven than most of us do.

          For most of us, life is pretty good.  I know my life is good.  So it’s not surprising that I have a tendency to cling to this life, and hope I live a long life. 

          Lately, however, I have become increasingly aware of the pain and difficulty of old age.  I am beginning to wonder if this difficult aging process is part of God’s plan to help us long for heaven and prepare ourselves for our time of passing from this life into the next.

          There is another problem we have with the subject of heaven.  That’s the question of who’s in and who’s out.  Of course, in the end, it is God who is the judge.  We believe that the Bible is clear in saying that all who put their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are saved, not by our good works, but by God’s grace.  The Bible tells us there will be a final judgment.  But the Bible also tells us that if we confess our sins, Jesus forgives us and cleanses us from all unrighteousness.

          So in the little story I told about the Sunday School teacher who asked her young students how we get to heaven, the answer would be that we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.  We ask God to forgive our sins, realizing that it is God’s grace that saves us, not anything good we do.

          In the passage we are reading today, John speaks of a great multitude of people standing before the throne of God wearing white robes and praising God.  He asks who these people are.  The answer given is that they are the ones who have come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 

          The concept of tribulation has various interpretations among Christians.  Some people believe there will be a specific time of tribulation in the end times.  There are various theories concerning the tribulation.  You may have heard terms such as “Pretribulation” and “Posttribulation.”  Pretribulation holds that all Christians will be taken bodily up to heaven in the rapture, and this will happen before the Tribulation begins.  After the rapture, the Tribulation will be a time of great suffering on earth, and after the Tribulation, Christ will return.  Posttribulation holds that Christ will come on back to earth and gather all believers into the Kingdom of God on earth, which will happen at the end of the tribulation.

          I guess to be honest, I find myself leaning towards something some people call pantribulation, which means that everything will pan out in the end.  That might sound a little flippant, but I just am not willing to study and argue about something that no one really can possibly answer. 

          In our passage for today, it says that those who have come through the tribulation are standing in heaven before the throne of God wearing white robes.  The way I interpret this is that all Christians will be part of that great throng of people gathered before the throne of God.

          It’s true that most of us don’t experience great tribulation, but almost all people do encounter some suffering—some trials and tribulations—in this life.  The promises Jesus makes are for all of us in our sufferings, whether our sufferings are great or small.  Most of us, by the time we die, will experience some suffering.  So for each of us, there comes a time of tribulation, at least to some extent.

          I believe that all of us who are Christians will be part of this multitude.  That we put our faith in Jesus means that we have been washed in his blood.  Of course, we don’t take this literally.  It is not our bodies, but our sin that has been cleansed by Jesus’ blood which was shed on the cross.  That’s what John means by the blood of the Lamb.  Jesus is the Lamb who was slain on our behalf.

          I believe that one day, all of us will stand as a part of this great multitude in white robes before the throne of heaven, praising God for all he has done.

          Last Sunday, we read chapter five of Revelation, and this week our scripture is from chapter seven.  Revelation is the beautiful but sometimes confusing and even frightening prophetic vision that John wrote.

          When John’s first readers read this vision, they thought the world would end in their lifetimes.  That was almost two thousand years ago. 

          Since then, there have been people in every generation who thought there were signs that pointed to the likelihood that the end was near.  And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. 

          From time to time, people have been convinced that Jesus’ return to earth was coming on a certain day.  There are many people who are quite sure that Christ will return very soon.  There are a few problems with this.  First, some people have become fixated on a certain date.  They put all their energy into waiting, and when that date passes, they are disheartened.  Second, when we become fixated on Jesus’ return and the end of the world, we are not so likely to be responsible about working to make our world a better place.  Some Christians actually believe it’s not necessary, for example, to be concerned about pollution and global warming, because they think the world will end soon anyway.  I’m not sure what they do with God’s instructions to Adam to care for the earth.  And finally, in Matthew 24:36, Jesus said, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”  It seems to me that if Jesus did not know when the world would end, we would be pretty presumptuous to think we could know.

          It’s a good thing for Christians to live as if we believe that Jesus is coming back very soon.  When Jesus ascended into heaven, he told his disciples he would come again.  They were sure he meant to return during their lifetimes.  So as time went on and Jesus did not return, and people who had been with Jesus began to die, the early Christians realized that the end times might be farther off in the future than they first thought.  We still don’t know when Jesus will come, but we believe he will come some day.

          I’m reading Revelation 7:

⁹After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. ¹⁰And they cried out in a loud voice:
   "Salvation belongs to our God,
   who sits on the throne,
   and to the Lamb." ¹¹All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, ¹²saying:
   "Amen!
   Praise and glory
   and wisdom and thanks and honor
   and power and strength
   be to our God for ever and ever.
   Amen!"

 ¹³Then one of the elders asked me, "These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?"

 ¹⁴I answered, "Sir, you know."

And he said, "These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. ¹⁵Therefore,
   "they are before the throne of God
      and serve him day and night in his temple;
   and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them.
 ¹⁶Never again will they hunger;
      never again will they thirst.
   The sun will not beat upon them,
      nor any scorching heat.
 ¹⁷For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd;
      he will lead them to springs of living water.
   And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."

          There are many things about heaven that we don’t know.  But here is one thing that we can hold onto:  it will be glorious, and there will be no more sorrow in heaven.  No one will be hungry or thirsty or in pain.  No one will suffer from the heat or the cold or from back-breaking labor.  There will be no evil—only the goodness of God.  God himself will wipe away the tears of all those who suffer, those who grieve, and those who are in pain.

          John tells us that the Lamb at the center of the throne is our shepherd, and he will lead us to springs of living water.  It’s natural for us to have some fear when we think about what will happen to us in the future—either in the end times of the earth or in our own end of life.  What a comfort it is to think that Jesus is our shepherd.  He is the one who leads and guides us in this life, and he will be the one who is still our shepherd in heaven. 

            Heaven will be a place of joy.  The vision that John wrote about in Revelation served two purposes for the first readers that still speak to us today.  It reminded them that there would be a judgment.  The people who stand before the throne in white robes are there because God has cleansed them through the blood of the Lamb—Jesus Christ.  In the same way, we are forgiven of all our sins through Jesus’ blood shed for our sins.

          And second, it will be a wonderful, glorious place where we will live with God forever.  Through his death and resurrection, Jesus conquered sin and death forever.  Jesus, the Lamb at the center of the throne will be our shepherd, and we will dwell with him forever. 

Prayer:

          Jesus, gentle shepherd, we ask that you would come and still our anxious hearts and minds.  Sometimes we think of the end times—and our own end times—with fear.  Remind us that your blood, shed on the cross, cleanses us from all sins.  Remind us that it is your grace that prepares us for the judgment.  May we know that you are our shepherd, and you will lead us to springs of living water. 

          Lord, as we think about heaven, create in our hearts a longing to be with you.  We thank you for providing a place for us where we will live with you for all eternity.   Amen