Come, Lord Jesus - May 8, 2016 - Seventh Sunday of Easter - Text: Revelation 22:1-6[7-11]12-20

How does the old saying go, “Time flies when you’re having fun.” It seems like just day before yesterday we celebrated Christmas and yesterday we celebrated Easter. This past Thursday we celebrated an important holiday in the church and I can image that no one even knew it passed. Thursday was exactly forty days after Easter and on that day we celebrated Jesus’ Ascension back into heaven. Yes, Thursday was the ever popular Christian Celebration of Ascension.
 

Today is a day of celebration as well, not a Biblical holiday so to speak, rather a social holiday, yet one that is Christian in its moorings, at least the concept is or once was in our culture. Today is the day we honor our mother’s as we celebrate Mother’s Day and God’s gift of the highest vocation of a woman and that of being a Godly mother. Popular culture might cringe at that statement today, yet as Christians we know that motherhood is a gift and calling from God. So we say, happy Mother’s Day to all our moms here this morning. Thank you for bringing your children to church with you today.
 

During this Easter Season we have been looking at heaven and even today we get one more look into heaven. This is our last glimpse into heaven, at least for a while and at least as far as our texts go, because this is the last Sunday that we will have a reading from the book of Revelation for a while. Today is the last Sunday in the Easter season. Next week we celebrate Pentecost and the sending of the Holy Spirit. The next week we will celebrate Holy Trinity Sunday, that our God is a triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then we will be in the season of Pentecost for twenty some odd weeks.
 

Our text begins with John continuing to give us a picture of heaven (v. 1-11). John’s words take us back to the Garden of Eden in Genesis. In the Garden of Eden we were introduced to two trees in particular, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. The difference here in John’s revelation is that there is not one tree of life, but there are trees of life which line the river of life. John’s vision and his words remind us of how wonderful heaven is and how our Lord provides for all our needs. The trees of life bear twelve kinds of fruit and they bear fruit twelve months out of the year. The leaves bring healing. So, this is spiritual food and spiritual healing.
 

John sees Jesus who is the light of the city, thus we are reminded as we were last week, that heaven has no need for any artificial light nor any temple or church, because Jesus is there with us. Jesus is God in flesh, He is the one we worship and because we are in heaven which is a place of complete perfection we will only need Jesus. And did you notice, that when John heard these things and fell down before the angels, he was reminded by the angels that we do not worship angels, but that we worship only our Lord.
 

Our text continues with Jesus testifying of Himself and His return (v. 12-13). Jesus says, “I am coming soon!” He is coming soon, sooner than we know, sooner than we expect. I say sooner than we expect because we tend to think of things from a human perspective. We know that God waited some three to four thousand years to fulfill His first promise to send a Savior. After Jesus came, suffered, and died and before He ascended into heaven He promised to come soon to take us to heaven. We have already waited about two thousand years. Will we have to wait another thousand or two thousand years? No one knows, only God the Father in heaven knows. Certainly there are many who do not believe Jesus will return during their lifetime, nor for another one or two thousand years. And we know this, not necessarily because they say so, but by the way they act, living life on earth giving no thought for Jesus’ return, today or tomorrow. What we are forgetting is that even if Jesus does not return during our lifetime, we will return to Him when we die and that could come at anytime, from the time of conception to the age of over a hundred. It will happen. We will see Jesus, sooner than we know and sooner than we might expect.
 

Along with His promise to return, Jesus also says that He will give us our reward. Our reward will be meted out as follows. Those who die in unbelief will earn hell. Those who die in faith will be given heaven earned for us by Jesus. And those are the only two options, heaven or hell.
 

And we can count on this happening, because Jesus says it will happen, remember, God said it and that settles it. Jesus can do what He says because He is God. He is the Alpha and Omega, that is, He is the first and the last. He is God with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He was with the Father and the Spirit at the creation of the world. He was one with the Father and the Holy Spirit as He lived on this earth. And He continues to be one with the Father and the Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit continues to give, strengthen and keep us in faith. He is always one God with the Father and the Spirit, undivided.
 

This morning we get a glimpse of those who are inside and those who are outside the kingdom of heaven (v.14-15) as well. Those who are inside the kingdom are those who have entered in because they have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. In other words, entrance into heaven is for believers, those who have been given faith by the Holy Spirit through the means of grace. These are the ones who wear Jesus’ robes of righteousness.
 

Those who are outside, those who have no entrance are those who have rejected and continue to reject Jesus. Those who refuse to acknowledge Him as Lord and God. John’s list begins by saying that those outside the city are the dogs, that is, those who are sorcerers, that is those who do such despicable things as “practice magic arts,” read their horoscopes, visit fortune tellers and psychic friends hotline, and so on; also, those who practice deviant acts of sexual immorality, giving up natural relations for unnatural as Paul calls it, or homosexual sins, and so on; those who murder, not only those that commit the actual sin of killing, but those who murder by hurting, harming, or defaming another; those who are idolaters, and in our world today idolatry includes: people chasing after images and statues that change and move, people busying themselves with the things of this world today, so much so that we do not have time for God and the things of God; and finally, those who love and practice falsehoods. We are living in a post-modern, a post-Christian world which is exemplified by the fact that truth has become relative, or so it is thought. Truth is whatever you want it to be at the present time, thus we have become ever changing people depending on the facts that we want to present at that time, not that we would call them falsehoods, just different forms of the truth. Our text tells us that these are those who are outside the kingdom of heaven and instead inhabit the kingdom of hell.
 

Continuing on in our text, we get the testimony of the second witness, the angel (v. 16). What is interesting about this is that from Deuteronomy forward and even in the New Testament, something legal had to have two or three witnesses. Now we have Jesus’ second witness. God’s angel speaks to John. His testimony is in complete agreement with Jesus’ words. Jesus is the Son of David. Jesus is the promised Messiah. Jesus is royalty, truly King. Jesus is the Light of the World.
 

Finally we have the invitation (v. 17, 20). The invitation is from the Spirit and the Bride. We have the invitation to the marriage feast from God and His Holy Bride, the Church, all believers in Jesus. The invitation is to come and thirst no more. Heaven is a place where we will eat eternal manna and drink of the river of pleasure forever. Heaven is a place of perfection where there will be no physical, bodily, or spiritual needs. Everything will be supplied.
 

Our invitation is to come and have perfect fellowship with Jesus. We will have no more worries or cares. We will not need to worry about our relationship with Jesus, because we will be in perfect communion and fellowship with Him.
 

Our RSVP, our response is to say, “Come, Lord Jesus!” In the Lord’s prayer we pray “Thy kingdom come,” this is another way of saying, “Come, Lord Jesus!” We want God’s kingdom to come. And in the Lord’s prayer we are praying for God’s Kingdom to come. We are praying for His Kingdom of grace, the church on earth, the church militant as we call it, that is that God would continue to work through us as individuals and as His local congregation to reach out into our community and the world to bring people to the means of grace so they too might be given faith, forgiveness, life and salvation. We are also praying for His Kingdom of glory, heaven. We want God to take us from this vale of tears to be with Himself forever in eternity. We want to be in heaven. We know that heaven is a much better place and so we desire God to come quickly and so we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus!” even, “come, quickly!”
 

Six weeks ago we celebrated Easter. We celebrated Jesus rising from the dead. Three days before Easter we celebrated Good Friday. We celebrated Jesus’ death on the cross. Maybe celebrate is not the best word, but we did celebrate. We celebrated that because Jesus died we are no longer sentenced to death. I would suggest that we do not celebrate the fact that Jesus died, but we do celebrate that He gave His life for ours. We are born in sin, spiritually blind, spiritually dead, enemies of God. When we are conceived we are conceived deserving death and hell. Yet, that is not what we will get, because Jesus gave His life for ours.
 

As we have been looking into heaven following the readings in the book of Revelation, we are reminded once again that we are not getting what we deserve, rather we are getting what Jesus deserves, what He earned for us by His giving His life for ours. We are reminded that heaven is a free gift.
 

We have been looking into heaven. We have seen Jesus seated at the right hand of the Father in all His glory. We have seen what a wonderful and joy filled place of perfection heaven is and now we eagerly await Jesus return. We eagerly await Jesus coming to take us to be with Himself forever in heaven.
 

You might say there are two ways of “encouraging” people to believe. One way is to show people what hell is like and scare them enough so that they do not want to go to hell. The other way is the approach that we have in the book of Revelation, that is, to show people what heaven is like and to encourage them to understand that this is where they want to go. So how do we get there? By God’s grace through faith. Heaven is a free gift. Heaven is not earned or deserved. To try to earn or deserve heaven takes it away as a gift and then it is lost. Heaven is a free gift, given to us by God’s grace through faith in Jesus. Faith is also a gift, given to us by the Holy Spirit through the means of grace. Faith is also an instrument. Faith is the instrument which reaches out and takes hold of all the gifts God has to give, the gifts earned for us by Jesus death and resurrection. What part do we play? We are the one’s who are given to. God gives and we are given to. Now, as we see the wonders of heaven, we know that this is the place where we want to go and we want to go soon, so we pray, “come Lord Jesus, come quickly.” To God be the glory for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

The Glory of the Lord - May 1, 2016 - Sixth Sunday of Easter - Text: Revelation 21:9-14, 21-27

Last week we were reminded, once again, that we get it right when we point to Jesus. We heard that the best way to teach is to teach and reteach, that is to say that we need to hear the same thing over and over and over again until we master it. Indeed, the desire of the one’s who have been given faith is to be in Divine Service and Bible Class as often as they are offered, yes, every Sunday because we need to hear and rehear God’s Word so that we might take it to heart and we may even say, master it, at least as best we can this side of heaven. And last week we were reminded that if God says it, that settles it.
 

As God has called me here to be the Pastor of this congregation, so one thing I attempt to do, even if it is imperfectly, that is that I attempt to model what I preach. One way I do this is in my own prayer and worship life. Many of you know my usual routine. We are, after all, creatures of habit and my wife will attest that I am as well. My usual routine is to come to church early, have time in prayer, and during that time in prayer I remember each of you as I lift your name up in prayer and for any particular cares or concerns that you have. Following my prayer time I spend about a half hour reading God’s Word. I spend about fifteen minutes in the Old Testament and about fifteen minutes in the New Testament. And then I am ready to begin my day.
 

The reason I spend so much time encouraging you as brothers and sisters in Christ in your faith life, that is in teaching and reteaching about our need to be in Divine Service and Bible Class, about our need to read God’s Word, to have personal and family devotions is because these are the means we have of being in a relationship with Jesus. Relationships are the things we cherish. We like and even need to spend time with our spouse, our family and our friends. It is the time we spend with others, both quality and quantity time, that help our relationships to deepen and grow. The same is true with our best friend. If you have ever felt like your relationship with Jesus has become strained perhaps it is because you are not spending enough time with our best friend, our Lord and our Savior, Jesus Christ. Just as relationships can begin to fade when we do not keep in contact, so our faith and our relationship with Jesus will fade as we keep away from Him.
 

My faith in Jesus is a relationship even a friendship. I speak to Him in prayer. He speaks to me through His Word. If I do not pray to Him, He does not hear from me. If I do not read His Word, I do not hear from Him, thus our conversation is broken and our relationship can become strained. And just as our earthly relationships and friendships are so important, how much more so is our relationship and friendship with Jesus.
 

During this season of Easter we have been looking into heaven as we have been following John’s words in his vision in the book of Revelation. And so, this morning we come and we get another view of heaven. In his vision John sees (v. 10-14) God’s glory and he describes it as a “most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.” John describes God’s glory as the finest, shiniest thing that he knows, a “most rare jewel.” He describes heaven’s fortress saying, it has “a great, high wall.” We may not understand what that means, completely, but a great high wall was great protection from the enemy, so John is describing heaven as being a place where a person could feel very secure. John goes on to remind us that heaven’s gates are entered through by faith in the teachings of the prophets of the twelve tribes of Israel; that heaven’s foundation is the word of the Apostles given to them by the Lamb, Jesus; and those included in heaven are those included by God’s grace through faith. In other words, heaven is ours, given as a free gift, earned by Jesus’ death on the cross, made ours by faith worked in our hearts by the Holy Spirit working through the Word. Heaven is our real home. Heaven is where we will live forever with our best friend, Jesus.
 

In the last verses of our text John describes Jesus as the temple (v. 22-23). John tells us that there is no temple in heaven, because Jesus is the temple. And he says there is no sun in heaven, because Jesus is the Light. We would say He is the Son, S-O-N. Here we see Jesus in all His glory, the glory that He gave up to take on flesh and blood, the glory that He gave up to give His life on the cross for us. Jesus is in all His glory and we will see Him and live with Him in all His glory forever in heaven.
 

Over the past few weeks we have been getting various views of heaven. Perhaps as we are seeing heaven we might ask the question, “Are we ready for heaven?” I have suggested that we are ready and we know we are ready when we take our focus off this world and the things of this world and instead focus our attention on things heavenward. I have suggested that we know we are ready when we understand that our purpose for being here, as Christians and as a Christian congregation is to encourage and build each other up as the body of Christ, to extend God’s Kingdom here in this place by inviting our unchurched family and friends and the community to come and hear the Word and be given faith as well, and to give praise and glory to the name of the Lord, which we do as we do one and two.
 

This morning I want to ask a different question. The question I want to ask this morning is, “what is important in life?” We live on this earth, in this world for one, sixty, eighty, maybe one hundred years. Heaven is forever. So, what is important, our lives in this world, or our lives in the world to come? We would probably all agree that our lives in the world to come are most important, yet we live our lives as if this world is most important. We put more emphasis in our work, in accumulating the things of this world, in making friendships for the purpose of building our network than we do in building our relationship and preparing ourselves and others for heaven. We are more concerned about what people think about us in this world than we are about spending time with our best friend, Jesus. And we feel helpless in changing our lives because of these things and because our lives in this world are so important to us.
 

This morning we are privileged to get another glimpse of heaven. Heaven really is undescribable, yet, that is what John is trying to do. Heaven is beyond imagination, a place of complete joy. It is a place of complete happiness. It is a place of eternal life. And again, this is what John is attempting to describe for us. Certainly we would say that John is using a Gospel approach to encourage us to be about the business of having our eternal well being our priority, in other words, we want to make sure we go to heaven, not because we do not want the alternative, but because heaven is such a wonderful place.
 

When we talk about heaven in earthly terms we often hear people say that heaven is different for everyone. For you, this is heaven, for me something else is heaven. John’s words remind us that heaven is not something different for everyone, rather, heaven is our eternal home where we will eat eternal manna and drink of the river of pleasure forever. Heaven is where we will be in complete union and relationship with Jesus Christ, the Lord. Heaven is a place of complete and perfect fellowship with the Jesus.
 

Most importantly, heaven is ours. It is ours right now. We may have to wait to move in, at least until after we have passed on from this world, but it is ours now. It is ours and it is ours as a free gift. No amount of money can buy heaven. No amount of doing good or being good can earn heaven. Heaven is not for sale. No amount of head knowledge, that is no amount of knowing the Bible will get us to heaven. Instead, maybe we could say, “we do not get to heaven by what we know, but by who we know,” or even better, “by who knows us.” Heaven is ours, it is a free gift, “not by works so that no one can boast.” Heaven is ours, purely by God’s “goodness and mercy without any merit or worthiness within us.” Heaven is ours because Jesus gives it to us. Heaven is ours because Jesus paid the price for our sins so that we might have forgiveness of sins and with forgiveness we know is life and salvation. Yes, heaven is ours because Jesus gave His life for ours.
 

As we just said, unfortunately, our priorities tend to get messed up. We tend to focus on this world and the things of this world. We tend to focus on our lives in this world as if this is all we have and all we might have to hope for. And so we spend our time fretting, struggling, even fighting to get what we can in this world, failing to realize that this is all temporary. Remember, what we are born with and what we take with us when we die, is what is really ours. Nothing is really ours. Yes, we focus on this world and yet, Jesus focuses on us. His whole life was lived for us. He gave up all the glory that was rightfully His in heaven, for us. He was born for us. He lived for us, perfectly. He obeyed all God’s laws and fulfilled all God’s promises, all His prophecies for us, completely and perfectly. He took our sins upon Himself, even our sins of our mixed up priorities and He suffered and paid the price for our sins. He died, for us, in our place. But, of course, we know the rest of the story. He did not stay dead, but rose from the dead, victorious over sin, death and the power of the devil. And after ascending into heaven, rightfully sitting at the right hand of the Father, where He watches over us, rules over us and intercedes for us, He sent the Holy Spirit to give, strengthen and keep us in faith. And now we see Him in all His glory as John relates His vision to us. What an awesome God we have. How can we not want to live our lives to His glory?
 

This morning I say thank you, for being here. Thank you for coming to spend time building your relationship with our best friend, Jesus. I want to encourage you to keep working on your relationship with the Lord, making regular and diligent use of His means of grace, the means He uses to come to us and to give us the gifts He has to give. As we well know, we live in a world where too often it happens that friendships break and dissolve, because of misunderstandings, because of mis-communication, because of lack of putting time into the friendship. Likewise with our relationship with our best and greatest friend, Jesus. Jesus wants to hear from us. His desire is for us to pray to Him. Jesus wants to speak to us. His desire is for us to read His Word. He wants to be a part of our lives and to be close to us. I think there was a phrase a while back that went something like this, “if you feel like you are not close to God it is because someone moved, and it wasn’t God.” I want to encourage you to pray and to read God’s Word. As you do, the Lord will draw you closer to Himself and you will have a friendship and a relationship that will last forever. You will have a relationship and a friendship that will look like John’s vision. And that is a great thing. To God be the glory, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Personal Observation

Just a bit of personal observation: I have noticed what I believe to be an interesting bit of irony about the desire of young people to reach intellectual independence, that is their attempt to be intellectually independent, especially of their parents and that is that what they seem to fail to realize that in their attempt to be independent, usually practiced by going against everything they have been raised to know, they have simply adopted an intelligence usually espoused by the liberal “free” thinking professor whose last desire would be that they would actually be “free” thinking (like them) unless it is to espouse their own values or lack thereof. My thought continues to go back to the Apostle Paul who reminds us, we are either slaves to sin or slaves to God. In our search for intellectual independence we eventually realize that we have to agree with someone. Thus we hold to the hope of God’s promise, “raise up a child in the way that they should go and when they are old they will not depart from it.”

Worthy Is the Lamb - April 10, 2016 - Third Sun. of Easter - Text: Revelation 5:(1-7) 8-14

Have you ever wondered what heaven would be like? If you have, listen up, today’s text, and as we continue in the book of Revelation, we will see a glimpse of heaven in John’s vision. This morning we continue with “The Distant Triumph Song” of Revelation. We continue to see the resurrected Jesus alive in all His glory, the glory that He had given up to be born as one of us in order to give His life for ours on the cross.
 

I should also preface our text with a reminder of what was happening at the time of John’s vision and the writing of his vision. While John was in exile on the Island of Patmos, having this vision, the Holy Christian Church was being persecuted for their faith. John is writing to many people who saw no hope for their lives. The people were being beaten down for their faith and the only place they could turn was to the Lord, or deny their faith. John’s words in this vision are words of comfort and hope for these people, for these Christians and even for us today. As the persecution of Christians continues around the world and even seems to be on the increase and as that persecution may in fact one day soon reach our shores so that we are persecuted, perhaps we would do well to take heed of John’s Words for us when our day of persecution comes. John encourages us by reminding us that yes, Jesus did rise from the dead. Yes, Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father. Yes, Jesus does care. Yes, Jesus will come again with great power and glory to judge the living and the dead and to take the faithful to heaven to be with Himself forever in eternity. John’s vision gives the people of his day and even us today the strength they need to hold up until the end. John’s vision brings to mind Paul’s words in his letter to the Romans when he said, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18).
 

The first few verses of our text show that John understood the struggle of the people to whom he is writing. To John the question is asked, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seal?” And John was rather discouraged because he believed no one was able and John believed this might mean the end of God’s revelation and counsel to humanity. But he too is comforted to know that there is one who is able to open the scroll and of course that one is Jesus Christ Himself.
 

The setting of our text is that we are enjoying a glimpse of heaven. We see and we hear the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders sing a new song to Jesus, the Lamb of God. Their song is: “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, 10and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth” (v. 9-10). And then we hear what we might call the first chorus of their song, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (v.12). John begins by trying to describe something that is undescribable, which is most of what he has been seeing. He is trying to describe the number of angels he sees. What he is seeing is all the angels in heaven which is truly an uncountable number. So, John says, “Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousand” (v.11). Again, what John is seeing is an enumerable number of angels, all the company of the heavenly host.
 

These angels were in a circle around the elders and the living creatures, who are all creation. So, we see a picture of heaven that looks something like this: Jesus is at the center. He is seated on the throne. He is the Lamb of God. He is the light of the world. There are four living creatures surrounding Him. Next is a circle of the twenty-four elders and the last circle around the throne is the circle of the countless angels.
 

The angels sing a sevenfold song. Remember that the number seven is a number of completion, thus their song is a song of complete blessing. Also, the number seven is made up of two numbers, the number three which is the number of the trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and the number four which is the earth number, thus this song of sevenfold blessings reminds us that it is Jesus who came to give His life in order to restore our relationship with the Father in heaven and to restore the fellowship between God and the world which was destroyed at the fall into sin.
 

Just briefly let us look at the words in this sevenfold blessings. The hymn begins with the word “power.” Power does belong to Jesus, it is His as can be seen in the creation of the world, as well as in His defeat of Satan on the cross. Jesus is all powerful. Next is “wealth.” All the wealth of the world is His. He created all things and all things are in His hands. As we say in stewardship terms, “God owns, man owes.” What we have when we are born in this world and what we take with us when we die is what is truly ours, thus nothing is truly ours. Everything we use in this world, no matter how much we want to possess it (and we have to admit, we do get pretty possessive at times), is only ours on loan until we pass on into heaven. Next is the word “wisdom.” Divine wisdom is evident in all the works of God: His creation, preservation, and justification, all things dealing with sin and its result, redemption, sanctification, justification, and glorification of the saints and the eternal condemnation of the lost. And, as we were reminded not too many Sunday’s ago that, the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom. Next in this sevenfold blessing is the word “strength.” We see strength in the all creating and in the all preserving hand of His creation. And we were reminded, along with wisdom, that the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength. The next word is “honor.” Jesus is due honor, even all honor. We say in the explanations of the commandments, “we should fear and love God.” Honor is fear, reverence, awe and respect. The next word is “glory.” All glory belongs to Jesus. He is the one who gets the credit, the glory for all things. And the last word in the sevenfold blessing is “praise.” Christ is worthy of all praise because He has done all things and He has done all things perfectly. Yes, these words of sevenfold blessing are indeed both appropriate and descriptive of Jesus.
 

Following this first chorus comes the second chorus, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” (v. 13b). This chorus is sung by “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea” (v. 13a). Notice that there are four “places” mentioned. The number four is the earth number, thus we see that every created thing, in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, now raises its voice to sing. When we first hear these words they might remind us of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, when the Pharisees asked Jesus to tell everyone to be quite. Jesus’ response was to tell them that even if the people were quiet, the very stones would sing. Here we have all creation, animate and inanimate objects, praising the Lamb, Jesus.
 

And their song is a fourfold, earthly song. Their fourfold chorus echos four of the seven words that the angels sang in their chorus, “praise,” “honor,” “glory,” and “power.”
 

Finally, “The four living creatures said, ‘Amen.’” The imperfect tense is used here which indicates that they said “Amen” not once, but a number of times. Amen, the word we use to conclude our prayers. The word which literally means “God is faithful.” God is faithful. Because of His faithfulness Jesus came to give His life. Because of His faithfulness Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to bring us to faith. Because He is faithful Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to work to strengthen and keep us in faith until He comes again. Because of His faithfulness Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father, in all His glory. Because He is faithful Jesus continues to watch over us, rule over us and intercede for us.
 

This morning we are given another glimpse of heaven. We are allowed to see Jesus, the Lamb of God in all His glory. We hear the first chorus, the angels, the heavenly creatures, sing a sevenfold praise to Jesus. We hear the second chorus, all the earthly creatures sing a fourfold praise to Jesus.
 

We are reminded that every Sunday and every day that we sing praises to the Lord, we join in this unending hymn as we sing with all the saints above. We may think we are singing alone, but we are not singing alone. We are indeed singing with all the saints. And we echo the loud “Amen,” confident that God is faithful.
 

Certainly, we do not face the trials and tribulations that many of the early Christians faced, although there are many in our world who are facing just such trials and tribulations, yet we do daily face the struggles of this world. John’s vision reminds us that Jesus is with us, that He is watching over us, that He cares for us and that sometime soon He will come to take us from this vale of tears to be with Himself in heaven for eternity. The question we might ask ourselves is, are we ready? Now, more than ever, is the time to set our hearts and minds on the things above. We have seen Jesus die on the cross, for us, for our sins. We have seen Him, risen from the dead. As we continue in our trek through the book of Revelation we see Him ascended into heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father in all His glory. We see Him being given all the glory that is His by all creatures in heaven and earth. But, again, are we ready for His return?
 

As I reminded you last week, we ready ourselves by making regular and diligent use the means that He has given to us to get us ready, His Word and His sacraments. As we make use of these means that He has of coming to us, He gets us ready. How do we know if we are ready? Might I suggest that if we have a strong sense of urgency about our own spiritual well being as well as a strong sense of urgency about the spiritual well being of others, we might be getting ready. If we have a strong sense of urgency to remember our baptism, to confess our sins and even more to hear those most beautiful words of absolution, that our sins are forgiven, that we have a strong sense of urgency not only to read our Bibles, but to be in divine service and Bible class where we might also hear the Word of God, and that we have a strong sense of urgency to partake of the Lord’s body and blood through His Holy Supper. This sense of urgency is how we know we are ready. My prayer for you, continually, is that the Lord will work in you through the means of grace so that you will be ready for when He comes again. So that you will be ready to stand at His throne and sing with all the saints. To Him be the glory for Jesus’ sake. Amen.