Who Shall Stand With the Lamb?
Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 6:44PM Who Shall Stand With the Lamb?
Larry Kirkpatrick, Fairplain Seventh-day Adventist Church Revelation 6:15-17; 14:1-5Somewhere right now, perhaps, someone is aiming a bowling ball down the alley. And the grand result is a big gutter ball. But do you know, that in the end, it really doesn't matter. It just doesn't. And maybe a few lanes away, anotehr ball is carefully aimed and launched, and with a glorious crash the result at the other end of the lane is a strike-every pin down. But. It just doesn't matter. Who won the NBA championship last year? To some of us somehow that's very important. But in the long term or event he short-term scheme of things-guess what? It just doesn't matter. Probably the most important question that anyone can ask, is who shall stand with the Lamb? Who are the flesh-and-blood, true-to-life people, who will successfully pass through the grand finale of the conflict between good and evil--God and Satan? Oh yes. The question is, who will do it without a stunt double? Unfortunately, Scripture tells us that in the end there will be a tragic loss of people who were too-salvation-assured. Matthew 7:21-23 records their appeal to God. "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." Please notice right off that as our Lord introduces this group He immediately pinpoints the issue. It is not saying Lord, Lord, but obeying the Lord that is at the bottom of His appeal. "Many will say to me in that day"--is this a large group or a small group? "Many"--and when? "In that day" what day is that? The day of "entry into the kingdom"--The end-time, just on the other side, just after all decisions have been made. "Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?" My, don't they sound like religious folk? Haven't we prophesied, haven't we spoken as your mouthpiece, as authoritative spokesmen of your will to humankind? (Exodus 4:15-16; Amos 3:7). But God says that is not yours or my supposed spokesman-for-God status that is a condition of entry into His kingdom, but doing His Father's will. "And in thy name have cast out devils?" Haven't we done miracles? Haven't we acted as religious specialists for you? But God says that miracles done through our ministry--true or false miracles--are not about our entry into His kingdom, but what matters is doing His Father's will. "And in thy name done many wonderful works?" Like their spokesmanship for God, and their ministry of miracles, their many religious activities, were empty. They were so caught up in serving God on their own terms that they didn't realize that they weren't serving God at all. They were serving themselves! They were caught in a loop of counterfeit Christianity. How does Jesus define this counterfeit Christianity? As our religious activities done in service of ourselves, in contrast to obedient following of God and His truth. It is the substitution of a mundane life-experience and a mundane Christianity for the real thing. It is a question of sin, for Jesus finished by saying to them "I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." What we do in God's name does not make us Christians, but what we do defines whether we are Christians. Does going to church every weekend make us Christians? Or returning tithes or offerings to God? Or being a member of a church? Does living up to all the spiritual understanding that our grandma and grandpa had make our claim to Christianity valid? Or even living up to all the light of our own spiritual understanding from five years ago or ten years ago or thirty years ago. In other words, have I learned more since then? And if so, can I stop advancing and still be a Christian? John 12:35 says "walk in the light while ye have the light." The next verse says "While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light." Here is the pattern: opportunity to know, belief in, and actively living by. How well are we presently taking advantage of our opportunity to know? How are we treating our opportunity? In Ellen White's book Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing, we read on page 146 "A belief that does not lead to obedience is presumption." In Genesis 25:29-34 we find the story of Esau selling his birthright cheaply for a bowl of red lentils. Verse 32 shows that He was caught up in the interests of the moment. Consider His point of view "I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?" And so he sells to Jacob his birthright--both its material and its spiritual endowments. Would you sell out you Christianity for a cheeseburger? If we willingly accept the out-dated Christianity of the past, aren't we--in these last days--selling our spiritual birthright short? What is our birthright? Ø to become sons and daughters of God (John 1:12) partaking of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:3,4); although born into a weakened nature grossly inclined to selfishness, we can receive from God a supernatural inward change. We can be morally re-harmonized with God and heaven. Ø to be the primary participants in the vindication of God's character in the great controversy (Romans 3:4), sharing as a group in this unique experience (Ephesians 3:10,21; Revelation 14:1-5). What does it mean to finally stand with the Lamb on Mount Zion. What does it mean? This is sometimes one of the most carefully avoided sections of Scripture, because of its implications. Consider these implications: that God can produce a people who are really "guileless" and "without fault;" a people, who--willing to be made willing through their Savior's inward work upon them--are called to stand with Him through His decisive and final demonstration in the great controversy. If God can produce such a group, then what excuse is there for sinning? All excuses are removed and every mouth is stopped. God's fairness and our responsibility for our continued sinning is clear. Our condemnation is made crystal clear. All escapes are cut-off, and man finds himself responsible to live a gospel-empowered life. Is it an option for the last generation, or a necessity to be in the 144,000? This question must be asked and answered. These are scriptural givens: Ø All men are saved the same way Ø God's kingdom is not a society of distinct upper and lower classes Ø The climax of the conflict between good and evil occurs not at the beginning, but at the end of the conflict Ø There is more "light" provided to God's people at the end than at any time previous to that, and thus more responsibility Ø God does not expect impossibilities of His people or impose arbitrary requirements Ø Through the playing-out of the conflict between good and evil, God purposes to end sin once and for all without taking away our free will Ø In the end there are only two groups, no matter how you cut it: Ø Matthew 25:31-46. Sheep and goats Ø John 5:28-29. They that have done good and they that have done evil Ø Revelation 7:1-4; 13:16. Those who are sealed with God's seal and those who are marked with the beast's mark Ø Romans 2:13. Those who do God's will and those who don't Since the 144,000 are obviously the saved group, everyone else must be in the lost group. Some have thought that the "great multitude" are a separate group (Revelation 7:9-17). But a comparison of the great multitude with the 144,000 shows them to be the same group during two different time periods: one while on earth, and one while in heaven. The great multitude are the 144,000. Again, all sin, when full-grown, leads to death (James 1:15), so no one that has sin in them will enter heaven. There is no one else on the playing field, so to speak. Only the 144,000. They will not be sinning. 1 John 3:6. We will all be saved in the same way, but from out of a situation in which all the light that God has given to the final generation is necessary for their protection. God is neither stingy nor wasteful in giving us His light. He gives what is needful. Let's turn now to Revelation 14:1-5, our main passage, and see what we can learn from its description of these people who stand finally with Jesus. "And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion." John is looking, and up there on center stage appears one altogether lovely. It is none other than Jesus Himself. In John 1:29 He was declared to be "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." In Revelation 13:8 we learn that Jesus was in effect, slain from the foundation of the world. Yes, here He stands. Our Lord, our personal Savior, Jesus. He gleams with purity and truth, unspotted, untainted, altogether holy. Before Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, Jesus and the Father had agreed that if man should disobey while still immature, He would be given a renewed opportunity to reenter His birthright. Jesus would die in our place, so that we could live and receive His power for obedience. His death would stand in the place of the death of the repentant sinner. He would die so that we could live. What a transaction heaven makes for us! And where is Jesus standing? "on the mount Sion." Mount Zion was what the city of Jerusalem was called. But Psalm 48:2 shows us that Mt. Zion has a spiritual meaning too. "Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King." Where did Satan want to ascend? "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north" Isaiah 14:13. Satan wanted to stand where the Lamb stands. He wanted to win all humanity to his side and chain us to his chariot, his lost slaves suited only for destruction. He wanted to stand victorious, having defeated God in the great controversy. But instead the Lamb stands--with the 144,000! He stands on mount Zion. Again God says of Mount Zion, "For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth" Isaiah 62:1. God bound His own fate and the fate of His universe up with the fate of His people. He refused to rest until the righteousness of His government would go forth. Here "righteousness" is paralleled with "salvation." God wants to make His government a Jerusalem, a city of peace. But until Satan's charges against God are put down and shown to be false, God works among us, to bring both us and Him to mount Zion, standing together. Can He pull it off? Obadiah 21 says so. "And Saviours shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord's." As Noah judged his world by his obedience in building the ark, we judge this world by letting God bring us to the place where we keep His commandments, we live victory over sin, and in doing so, we become like Jesus our Saviour, and in a very different sense, we too come to stand on Mount Zion, judging Satan's kingdom. God points to us and says, "Satan, you are wrong. These people loved righteousness and salvation more than the pleasures of sin for a season. They stood for something that really mattered." So God blows the trumpet in Zion today (Joel 2:1) telling the world that "the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand." Yes, Jesus is standing on Mount Zion, and He is not alone... "and with Him an hundred and forty and four thousand, having His Father's name written in their foreheads." What marks this group? Something unique in their forehead, something unique in their minds, in their actions and thoughts and habits and motives; something unique in what they are, in what they have become! The mind was made for God. Romans 12:2 commands us to cease from being conformed and molded into the shape that the world is molding us. And make no mistake, it is in the very process of molding us. It doesn't shut off the moment we walk through the doors of the church. Even as we sit here and hear the word of the Lord Satan is at work to conform us to the world's ways in the place of God's. We have already allowed him to put such a load of poison into our minds that even as we hear God's message he suggests attitudes toward it. "Oh, Larry's preached all this stuff to us before." Or "I read a book about this, and this is a bunch of balony." Or "This is boring. I already heard an evangelist talk about this and I already know the answer." But instead, God urges us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. In the devotional Sons and Daughters of God, page 370, Ellen White puts it this way: "All who enter [heaven] will have on the robe of Christ's righteousness, and the name of God will be seen in their foreheads. This name is the symbol which the apostle saw in vision, and signifies the yielding of the mind to intelligent and loyal obedience to all of God's commandments." God's name in your forehead means you have yielded your intellect, your emotions, and your will, to an settled and comprehending obedience to God. It means that your mind is no longer Satan's garbage pit, but it has become an environment where God's ways are constantly playing in the background and in the foreground and in the midrange. It means a mind literally reprogrammed by the living God. But God only reprograms the willing. And only a willing person will invest the personal energy required to allow God to work inside of us. "And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps: and they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and before the four elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth." John listens while in vision and does he hear angel songs? No! He hears the song--the unique song--of the redeemed! They are singing before God's throne. Only they can sing the song that they sing. Remember, the Bible says that when it comes to singing we are sing with the understanding (1 Corinthians 14:15). These people are singing with understanding about a unique experience that they share. They have lived through the end-times. In Great Controversy, page 649 Ellen White, speaking of these people says "These, having been translated from the earth, from among the living, are counted as 'the first fruits unto God and to the Lamb.'" "These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins." Women in Bible prophecy represent churches; a pure woman represents a pure church (Revelation 12:1; Jeremiah 6:2), an impure woman represents a fallen church (Revelation 17:3-5). These Christians who stand upon mount Zion with Jesus victorious in the end are not defiled by false religious bodies or churches. They have followed the Lamb out of religious bodies that along their track have ceased to follow Him in obedience. They have left behind misguided and unbiblical teachings and practices. They are thus identified as "virgins." They arrive at a pure faith--they have allowed God to cut-away from their thinking the doctrinal flim-flam that soft-sells God's will and promotes disobedience to Him. "These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth." They follow the Lamb anywhere that He goes. Because Jesus is not stationary. He has moved from earth into the heavenly sanctuary, and from its holy place to its most holy place. Behind the veil with the ark of God that contains His law and the presence of the Father Himself, Jesus is there. And by faith we also follow Him there. Friends, this is the ultimate identifier of God's last day people. They are perhaps best described in all the Bible, as "followers of Jesus." That is demonstrated by their obedience to His commandments. Yes, they receive the seal of God. But note that where His law is, Jesus is. God's people are there because Jesus is there. His law in stone is wonderful, but Jesus is God's law in the flesh. He is the embodiment of righteousness. He is to us the one altogether lovely. And so we follow Him. You know, it is interesting that the only one who told Jesus he would follow Him whithersoever He would go was the only one that was ultimately lost. Jesus told Judas, when he came to follow Him, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head" Matthew 8:19-20. Judas was seeking the earthly kingdom. The things that mattered to him were to serve God on his own terms, his own agenda. Jesus pointed out to him that His kingdom was not of this world. But Judas tried to make his religion that. And there will be no Judas's standing with Jesus on mount Zion. Could that be you or I? Are we seeking God's kingdom, or our own kingdom? Will we follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth? What if it means giving up our darling sins? What if it means becoming holy people? What if it means we must step out of the common tracks in which we walk to follow the Lamb? "These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb." These were redeemed, bought back, taken away from among the lost, made safe, purified, and preserved. They are the first entire offerings to God from the final harvest. They give up all for Jesus. The wave-sheaf was the first part of the grain harvest, offered to God in acknowledgment of His ownership. These followers of the Lamb are heralds of the end of sorrows and the beginning of the joy of eternity, of time when every tear will be wiped away and Zion will be a joy! "And in their mouth was found no guile." There are two words used in different manuscripts. One, dolos is the same as in John 1:47, "Behold an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile--no decoying, or no bait or fakery. But most manuscripts, including many in the Textus Receptus family, have pseudos here, meaning literally a lie. In John 8:44 Satan is identified as the father of lies (peudos). In Romans 1:25 those are condemned who changed the truth of God into a lie (psuedos). In 2 Thessalonians 2:9 we find the man of sin working with al signs and power and lying (pseudos) wonders. In Revelation 21:27 nothing unclean enters into heaven that is "a lie" (pseudos), but only those legitimately entered into the Lamb's book of life. See also 22:15. This is also part of the word used for "false prophets," pseudoprophets. In other words, among the 144,000 there are no pseudoChristians. Only true Christians. You and I must finally be there! We must! "For they are without fault before the throne of God." Ephesians 1:4 says that it was God's will even before humankind was created "that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love." Ephesians 5:27 uses the same Greek word, telling us that God wants to present His last-day people to Himself as "a glorious glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish." Colossians 1:22-23 says that if we continue in the faith, we will become "holy and unblamable and unreprovable." Jude 24 says that God is "able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy." Summary of the traits of the 144,000: Ø They are pictured as standing with Jesus Ø They have their Father's name written in their foreheads (they are loyal commandment-keeping Christians) Ø They go through a unique experience Ø They leave behind all false religious bodies and their false teachings Ø They follow the Lamb whereever He goes Ø There is nothing false in them Ø They are without fault, or faultless How can we acquire these traits? Steps that we must take to be there 1. It all starts with beholding Jesus. In fact, when we read the Bible through from front to back, and we see how God intervened and interacted with fallen humanity, we are really beholding Jesus. Without Jesus nothing was made that was made. He walked in the garden with Adam and Eve. He appeared to Moses in the burning bush. He was with the Isrealites as they traveled through the wilderness. He was the shekinah glory in the tabernacle, dwelling between the Cherubim. He became flesh and dwelt among us, lived a guileless and faultless life, never sinning, and died upon the cross in our place. He made Himself a sacrifice for us, being the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. He went back to heaven into the true tabernacle, and intercedes there for us today. He has nearly finished His ministry in heaven and is ready to return to earth. But He is still waiting for those who will stand with Him on Mount Zion, having their Father's name written in their foreheads. We must read about and think about what God--what Jesus--did and does for us. But we must do more than behold... 2. It continues by following Jesus. We mustn't just be channel-surfers. The Bible is not a remote control that we flip through its different stories and pick out our favorites and watch them over and over again but not do anything about them. Christianity is not for channel-surfers and remotes. It is up close. It means getting out there and doing Christianity. It means making personal changes in our lives as we respond to what God shows us in the Bible. It means going out and inviting people to take Bible studies. It means to live aglow with the presence of the Holy Spirit so that people come to you and say "You're a Christian, right?" WWJD is good. What would Jesus do. But Adventist Christians can add to that. We can say WDJD: What did Jesus do? "I have kept My Father's commandments" John 15:10. We follow Jesus in many ways, but particularly in obedience. We not only learn what the Bible teaches, but we keep learning, we keep growing. The 28th fundamental belief should be "Don't stop here." 3. If we persist in beholding, if we persist in following, then we will arrive at last with the Lamb on mount Zion and stand with Him. We will be among the 144,000 who were redeemed from the earth. We will have let Him finish what He has started (Philippians 1:6). If we persist, we shall stand with the Lamb. There aren't any real shortcuts. You heard me give lists of things you can do at the end of the messages that I present. There are no one minute Christians because there was never a one-minute Christianity. Heaven offers to us the highest privilege: to stand with the Lamb on Mount Zion. But it means more than opening the windows of our soul heavenward. Yes indeed, we must let the light of heaven in from the top. But we must also close the windows of our soul earthward, shutting off the inflow of the paralyzing things that distract us from standing in God's battle in the end of time. Time is wasting. Let us redeem it. In the power of Jesus, we are well able to. Even so, come Lord Jesus!
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