No More Tears

The Sunday morning message in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish.  November 5, 2023.  The Bible verses used are Revelation 7:1-4, 7-19.

            When you read the book of Revelation, you read about some really terrible things.  A third or the earth being burned.  Seas turning to blood.  Stars going dark.  Locusts stinging like scorpions.  People being in such pain and misery that they want to die, but they cannot die.  People refusing to repent of their sins.  People worshiping demons.  People being under attack by Satan, and following Satan.  These, frankly, are some depressing sections to read and to study.  There’s a lot of bad stuff happening.

            Some people read the book of Revelation, and see parallels to our current situation.  And there’s no denying that there are some.  Now, does that mean we are in the end times?  I don’t know.  I mean, in one sense, we’ve been in the end times ever since Jesus left the earth.  Every day brings us one day closer to the day Jesus comes back.  But whether that day will be soon or in the far distant future, I don’t know.

            But when you think about all the terrible things the book of Revelation talks about, remember this:  there is good news, too.  The good news is that there are people who will triumph over that.  There are people who will stay faithful until the end.  Today, as we look at Chapter Seven of Revelation, we hear about some of the people who are saved.

            We start with the one hundred forty-four thousand.  We get that number, one hundred forty-four thousand, because there are twelve thousand from each of the twelve tribes of Israel.  

            Why these twelves?  Well, it’s thought to be symbolic.  As we’ve talked before, three is considered a divine number--God is a trinity, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, the three in one.  Four, is considered an earth number.  We talk about the “four corners of the earth”.  Four directions--north, east, west, and south.  And so, if you multiply three by four, you get twelve, representing God ruling over the earth.

            These are considered to be the martyrs, the people who were killed because they had stayed faithful to God.  They are referenced at the opening of the fifth of the seven seals, they’re the people who ask, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?”  Each of them is then given a white robe and told to wait.

            But we learn about others who are saved, too.  In verse nine of chapter seven, we’re told that there 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.”  John is told who they are.  They 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.”

            They have come out of the great tribulation.  Not that they did not have to go through it.  But they went through it and did not turn away from God.  They kept God’s commands and held fast their testimony about Jesus.  In other words, they triumphed over the tribulation.  Their faith resulted in the forgiveness of their sins--that’s what it means that they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.  

Now, these are not the only people who are saved.  There are more, described in Revelation Chapter Twenty.  But for now let’s look at what we’re told happens to those who triumph over the tribulation.  They “are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple”.  What do they do?  How do they serve God?  We don’t know that.  The worship of God is almost certainly involved in that service, because we read earlier in Revelation about how even the highest elders and kings worship God in heaven.  But exactly what they do, we don’t know.

But then we’re given a description of what life will be like in heaven.  And I don’t think this just applies to the people who are part of that multitude, everyone who comes out of the great tribulation.  I think it applies to everyone who goes to heaven.  Here’s what we’re told:

Never again will they hunger, never again will they thirst.  The sun will not beat down on them, nor any scorching heat.  For the Lamb at the center before 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.

            Think about how awesome that is.  In heaven, if people have physical needs, they will all be met.  No one in heaven will ever lack for anything.  Jesus Christ will lead us to living water.  There will be no more sadness.  God will wipe every tear from every eye in heaven.

We’ve talked before about how one of the things that makes death hard for us is that we don’t really understand much about heaven.  It’s one of the things that can make us fear death--the fact that there’s so much we don’t understand about what happens.  We cannot picture heaven.  We cannot visualize it.  We don’t know what heaven looks like or what we’ll look like.  We don’t know what we’ll do or how we’ll do it.  We have all these questions that we simply cannot answer while we’re alive and on earth.  

Now, it’s understandable why we wonder about all those things.  But there have to be reasons why God chooses not to give us the answers to our questions, and I think one of those reasons is that God is trying to tell us that those things we wonder about are not important.  They may seem important to us right now, but ultimately they’re not.  

But let’s break down what God does tell us.  First, we will never hunger and we will never thirst.  All of our physical needs will be met.

Now, the Bible does not say this, but I think one of the things that will become clear to us in heaven is the difference between our needs and our wants.  Think about it.  How many things do you have in your life that you don’t really need?  Almost all of us have some.  In fact, if we’re really strict about making that distinction, most of us have a lot of them.  There are a lot of things that each of us have that, if we came right down to it, we don’t really need.  We could survive without them.

Now, don’t misunderstand.  I’m not saying that having those things is sinful.  These are things that make our lives easier.  They’re things that make our lives more enjoyable.  Sometimes, they’re things that make our future more secure.  There’s nothing wrong with that, at least as long as we don’t go overboard with these things and make them more important than they should be.

But the thing is, in heaven, we won’t need all those extra things.  We won’t be looking for something to make our lives easier, because life in heaven won’t be hard.  That’s what it means when it says, “The sun will not beat down on them, nor any scorching heat.”  We won’t need things to make our future more secure, because our future will already be secure.  Jesus Christ, the Lamb, is going to lead us to springs of living water.  All these extra things, all these things that we think we need while we’re here on earth, we won’t need any more.  We’ll have all the things we truly need, and we won’t care about having anything else.

But the biggest one for me is this:  “God will wipe every tear from their eyes.”

Look at all the sadness there is in the world.  There’s an awful lot of it, when you think about it.  And in fact, we don’t have to look around the world to see sadness, although we can certainly see it there.  But we see it all around us, right where we are.  In my time here, I’ve averaged twenty funerals a year.   Every week in the local paper we see three or four obituaries.  That’s a lot of people who are grieving, right here in our own community.

And of course, death is only one of many, many things that causes sadness.  It can come from all sorts of things.  There are lots of people in our congregation who are dealing with serious illnesses, and of course that affects an entire family.  And there are other things.  The ending of a relationship, for whatever reason.  A job that does not bring satisfaction.  Loneliness--that can be a huge cause of sadness.  The list could go on and on and on.  It’s more sometimes and less sometimes, but I suspect that each and every one of us has some sadness in our lives.

But that won’t be the case in heaven.  There will be no sadness in heaven.  God will wipe away all our tears.  Think of a life with no sadness in it.  Can you?  Can you even imagine that?  It’s about the most awesome thing I can think of.  And that’s how it’s going to be in heaven.  That alone is going to make heaven incredible.

God, through the apostle John, tells us the things we need to know about heaven.  We’ll have everything we need.  We’ll serve God and worship God, but our lives won’t be hard.  We won’t need to worry about our future.  And all of our sadness will be gone.

We probably still have questions.  Human beings are naturally curious.  God made us that way.  No matter how much we know, we always want to know more.  That’s one of the things that makes faith hard, you know--we always want to know more, but sometimes we just cannot know more.  But when it comes to heaven, there’s no way we can no more.  We just have to accept what we do know and take the rest on faith.

But while we’d like to know more, I hope that what we do know, the things God has told us, will help us not fear death.  I hope those things will help us accept death as a part of life.  I hope they’ll make us realize that death, when it comes, is simply the next step along our path.  And for Christians, that path leads us to eternal life.  A life where we have everything we need, and we having nothing but peace and joy and love in the presence of the all-loving God.