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When Triumph Comes, Christ Will Deserve Our Alleluias

            So what did those five foolish virgins miss out on and what did the five wise virgins gain?  What will the wedding banquet in heaven be like?  Just in case you were thinking about something else while Pastor Huebner was reading the Gospel, I’ll ask the question a different way: What do Christians actually do when do up there in heaven?  That’s a good question.  The Bible gives us a lot of information about what we won’t do in heaven: We won’t sin, we won’t feel pain, we won’t cry, we won’t sleep, we won’t die.  OK, but what will we do? 

            St. John gives us the most information.  Most of you know that Jesus gave John an opportunity to see a little of what heaven would be like.  John wrote down what Jesus revealed to him in the Bible book we call The Revelation.  John’s picture is a little hazy; Jesus didn’t show John everything.  But we certainly come away with one impression: When we get to heaven, we’re going to spend a lot of our time singing.      

            Everybody comes away from The Revelation with exactly that impression: there’s going to be great music in heaven.  If the music is especially uplifting in worship, somebody will always say, “I don’t expect to hear music like that again until I’m in heaven.”  You go to the funeral of a Christian who liked to sing and somebody will say, “Well he’s singing with the angels now.”  Everyone expects that heaven will be filled with alleluias and praise the Lords.  Singing is what triumphant saints do.

            And everybody’s happy about this except the people who don’t like to sing or who can’t sing or who consider music to be low on their priority list.  If music isn’t a big deal for you, what are you going to do up there?  And even if you do like to sing, you might say, “Isn’t there something more to do than sing?”

            In the Second Lesson for today, John wrote down a vision he had of heaven.  There’s singing all around him.  There are songs coming from everywhere and songs coming from everyone.   What John saw and heard is what you and I are going to participate in when we get to heaven.  I can’t tell you what the music is going to sound like, but I can tell you that we’re going to have a reason to sing.  In heaven we won’t be singing just to pass the time or put the kids to sleep.  Whether we like to sing now or don’t like to sing now, whether we enjoy music or don’t enjoy music, when we get to heaven we’re going let fly with a full-throated Hallelujah Chorus.  And here’s why: 

He will have destroyed the Church’s greatest enemy

Let the songs begin: After this I heard what sounded like the roar of a great multitude in heaven shouting: Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God.  You know, this is the only chapter in the entire New Testament where we find this word Hallelujah.  Hallelujah is a Hebrew word, and we find it all over the place in the Old Testament, especially in the psalms.  When they translated the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek a long time ago, Hallelujah turned into Alleluia, but both words mean exactly the same thing: Praise the Lord.  Hallelujah is a shout we shout and a song we sing over the greatest things God has for us.  When we get to heaven we’re going to join forces with all the believers in heaven and praise the Lord because his greatest glory was to use his awesome power to save us. 

            I said that when we get to heaven Christ will deserve our alleluias.  So here’s the rest of the song we’ll be singing: True and just are his judgments.  He has condemned the great prostitute who corrupted the earth by her adulteries.  He has avenged on her the blood of his servants.  I know what you’re thinking: We’re going to sing that?

            What I’m about to say isn’t going to be real comfortable for everybody here today, but I’m not going to pull any punches because God doesn’t pull punches.  Already in the Old Testament God led the Bible writers to see that evil forces would arise after Jesus finished his work on earth, and the writers saw that those evil forces would oppose everything Jesus taught and everything he did.  The Bible writers in both testaments could look ahead and see kings and governments opposing Jesus.  But they saw something more.  They saw forces inside the Church attacking Jesus and his people with greater strength and more success than any king or government.  These forces would call themselves the Church, they would look like they belonged in the Church, they would preside at altars and preach from pulpits.  But the words they spoke would be false words, not true words.  They would sound like God’s words, but they would be the opposite of God’s words.  These insider forces would turn what Jesus said and did into a lie; they would use enormous power to destroy everyone who wanted to be faithful to Jesus.  The Holy Spirit led the writers of the Bible to identify these forces with this title: anti-Christ.

            In our politically correct society, people don’t like pastors to talk about the anti-Christ.  Your neighbors and classmates and colleagues insist that you accept every religion, especially every Christian religion, and they don’t like preachers who make distinctions between false words and true words.  Sometimes their thinking influences us.  We don’t always stop to think what false teaching actually does to people.  We need to understand that we could never count how many Christians have become martyrs over the centuries because some Christian church branded them a heretic.  You say, “But that’s long, long ago and far, far away, professor.”  OK, I’ll bring this closer to home.  Just ask yourself: How many children die without baptism because some Christian churches teach that babies aren’t born with sin and don’t need baptism?  How many of your friends have trouble falling asleep at night because a Christian church taught them that Jesus didn’t die for all their sins and need to make up for what Jesus didn’t cover?  How many Christians have stopped believing in miracles, even the miracle of the resurrection, because some Christian teachers have told them that miracles are fables and fairy tales?  How many Christian churches use promises of sure-fire wealth and feel-good music to seduce Christians and trap them in false teaching that can destroy their faith?  

            When we get to heaven, all the fuzzy thinking and all the political correctness will be gone.  When we get to heaven we’ll be able to look back from our heavenly perch and see that great day at the end of time when Christ finally destroyed the forces of the anti-Christ.  If we don’t realize it now, we’ll understand then the horror these forces brought to Christian people.  And we’ll rejoice and we’ll sing: Hallelujah! The smoke of [her destruction] goes up for ever and ever.  And if we feel a little guilty for singing about destruction, we’ll hear the voices of the great leaders of Old and New Testament and the voices of God’s own special angels, and they’ll be singing, too.  John heard their song: The twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God, who was seated on the throne. And they cried: “Amen, Hallelujah!”  And if there is still doubt about such rejoicing, listen to this: Then a voice came from the throne, saying: “Praise our God, all you his servants, you who fear him, both small and great!” Who do you think sits on the throne?  God himself will sing the song that praises Christ for destroying the anti-Christ!  And if God will sing that song, and the leaders of heaven will sing it, and all the believers will sing it, then, whether we sang on earth or not, we will sing that song and we will sing from the bottom of our hearts.  When we are triumphant, we will know that Christ deserves our alleluias.  We’ll know because we will see that he brought down his vengeance on the Church’s greatest enemy and destroyed it forever.

He will have prepared the Church for its grandest feast

            Why do we care so much about what is true and what is false?  This entire conversation about Christ and anti-Christ seems just plain weird in a world that has no interest in right and wrong.  You know people who would say, “What’s the point of this?”

            The point is getting right with God.  There’s a voice inside me that tells me there are more years behind me than ahead of me.  At age 58 I get the distinct impression that I’m going to die.  You’re getting the same sense, right?  I can feel the arthritis setting in and I know my hearing isn’t what it used to be, so the signs are obvious.  But I don’t have a clue about how I can get right with God before I die.  The only one who can tell me that is God.  And this is what God says.  God says that you and I inherited from our parents a disease called sin.  I can’t find evidence of that in any DNA sample, but I believe it because I know I sin every day and I’ve been sinning for as long as I can remember.  God says that people who sin can’t get right with God.  That makes sense to me, too; why should a perfect God want to spend time with someone like me?  God says that he’s going to punish every person who sins and he’s going to punish them in a way they’re not going to like and he’s going to punish them forever.  I really don’t like hearing that.  In fact, I’m scared to death of it, and the more I think about, the more I hate God for doing that to me, and I then don’t want anything to do with God if that’s the way he’s going to be--and that anger separates me from God even farther.  And I’m caught in a trap, and you’re caught in the same trap, and it’s a trap we can’t get out.  And we’re doomed and damned because of it.

            But God says more.  God says he doesn’t want to punish us or doom us or damn us.  God says he wants us to be right with him.  And so God sent his Son.  And Jesus came and he obeyed the laws we couldn’t and he carried the sins we deserved to carry.  And God said, “Let’s call it even.  Jesus for you.”  Guess what happened then?  Jesus took these ugly old sinners, all these damned and doomed sinners who were covered with the warts and wounds of sin and were beggars dressed in rags and he said got down on one knee and he said to each of us, “Will you marry me?”  And we said, “How could you want someone like me?”  And Christ loved us and gave himself up for us to make us holy, and he cleansed us by the washing with water through the Word and he presented us to himself as a radiant bride without any stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.  We are this now, brothers and sisters.  Right this minute we are the Savior’s beautiful bride.  Right now he forgets the things we do wrong and forgives every sin we commit.  Right now he protects us from trouble and does everything for our good.  Right now holds us close to himself, and even death can’t part us from him.  The marriage isn’t perfect.  Right now we still sin, we still face problems, we still have fears and aches and pains, but the day is coming when all this will be gone and Jesus will take his bribes to an eternal banquet where we will be in triumph forever.

            And then we’ll sing.  John could hear it, the song we’ll sing.  “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns.  Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory!  For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.”  And whether we sang on earth or not, whether our voices here were weak or strong or bad or good, it won’t make any difference.  Then we will want to sing, we’ll have to sing, we won’t be able to stop singing.  Then we will know that Christ deserves our alleluias because he has dressed us up for the Church’s grandest feast.  And we’ll know more.  We’ll agree with what John heard the angel say: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!

            With joy we depart for our fatherland.

            Where God our Father is dwelling,

            Where ready for us his mansions stand,

            Where heaven with praise is swelling,

            And there we shall walk in endless light

            Forever his praises telling!

Amen.

Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (www.gracedowntown.org) on November 16, 2008

Services

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Mondays 6:30 pm

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1209 North Broadway Milwaukee, WI 53202 | (414) 271-3006

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