Sermon from November 2, 2024 (All Saints Day)

A Sermon on Revelation 7:9-17

“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 1:7).

The text for our meditation this evening is the First Lesson from Revelation 7:9-17 - the vision given to John of the saints in heaven. Notice especially some of the later verses. “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their Shepherd, and He will guide them to spring of Living Water” (Revelation 7:16-17).

The emphasis on thirst and water and springs caught my attention because, for a few months now, it’s been warmer than usual and very dry - unusual for us. We had planned a family outing with the grandkids, including cooking hotdogs over a fire and making s'mores, etc. - and then came a burn ban in our own county and most all counties around us. And then came a red flag warning on Tuesday, with high winds and warm temperatures and low humidity, where any fires or even sparks from equipment could be dangerous, as it was so dry.

And added to all that, in the last year or so, we began to hear of the “Stop the Water Steal,” when there were plans that few knew about to build pipelines to ship large amounts of our water off to Lebanon for businesses and development there. Many people here were not happy. It made me think of a time we visited family in California and saw areas where there had been large lakes, which were now bone dry because so much water had been shipped off to other areas, especially Los Angeles.

We are richly blessed with water and can bounce back from the shorter periods of drought we have. It is not so true for many areas, including the land of Israel, where freshwater sources are limited and have been for a long, long time. I looked it up and found that in 2022, 85% of the drinkable water for the city of Jerusalem came from the desalinization of saltwater from the Mediterranean Sea, more than 30 miles away.

There was, of course, no such methodology in Bible times. Water sources in Bible times were very important and valuable but very scarce. It is no surprise that water became one of the images of God and His blessings, and even of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, and lack of water was pictured as a judgment for sins. You can trace these images through the Old Testament and into the New.

In the perfect Garden of Eden, there was a river flowing to water it, according to Genesis 2. After the fall into sin, everything changed, and the Great Flood changed things even more, as sin and evil spread everywhere, with judgment for sin. Noah and his family “were saved through water” in the ark, and this corresponds, Peter tells us in the New Testament, to “baptism, which now saves us,” through connecting us to Christ and His resurrection. Christ has now gone into heaven at His ascension and is now at the right hand of God, with angels all around him, just as seen by John in Revelation 7 (1 Peter 3:20-22).

When the children of Israel were later slaves in Egypt, the water of the Nile River was turned to blood, as the first of the plagues on them (Exodus 7:14-25), and later, many Egyptians died in the Red Sea, while God’s people went safely through that same water on dry land (Exodus 14).

Unfortunately, God’s people quickly became rebellious about the lack of water, even though God always provided water in miraculous ways - whatever they needed (Exodus 15:22-25, 17:1-7; Numbers 21:4-5, etc.). Because of their continued rebellion, almost all of them died in the wilderness before ever reaching the Promised Land. Even Moses rebelled against God and produced water from a rock in an angry way, different from what God had told Him to do. He, too, failed to enter the Promised Land, though He was forgiven and reconciled with God (Numbers 20:2-13, Deuteronomy 34:1-6). Joshua was then chosen to lead the next generation of Israelites into the Promised Land, crossing the Jordan River - on dry land, as Moses had crossed the Red Sea, many years before.

Note how many Old Testament passages use water as an image of God’s blessings for His people and His promises for the future, with the promise of the coming Savior. In Psalm 1, we hear of a man of God, being like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither (Psalm 1:3).

In the familiar Psalm 23, we hear of the Lord as our Shepherd, “who makes us lie down in green pastures” (where there has to be plenty of water for the pastures to be green), and He “leads us beside still waters” (where it is easy for us to drink and no danger of being swept up and drowning) (Psalm 23:2).

In Psalm 36, we read, “How precious is Your steadfast love, O Lord” for Your children. “You give them to drink from the river of Your delights. For with You is the Fountain of Life” - the best drinking fountain from the Lord (Psalm 36:7-9).

In Luther’s psalm, Psalm 46, we heard last week that “God is our Refuge and Strength, our Fortress, a very present Help in trouble” (Psalm 46:2,7). But we also heard, “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God” - speaking of God’s blessings for them, though there is no literal river in Jerusalem.

Isaiah, in His prophecy, spoke of the coming time of the Messiah, the Savior, and said, “The Lord will come to save you… the waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool and the thirsty ground springs of water” (Isaiah 35:4,6,7).

And again Isaiah prophesied, “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the Lord will answer them… I will open up rivers on the bare heights and fountains in the midst of the valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water” (Isaiah 41:17-18).

And again, Isaiah predicted, ”The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desires in scorched places… and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose water does not fail” (Isaiah 58:11).

There were warnings, too, if God’s people rejected Him as the one true God and His ways. The prophet Jeremiah wrote, not long before Jerusalem was destroyed, and many Jews were carried away into captivity in Babylon: “Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods?… Be appalled, O heavens, at this”… “declares the Lord, for My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken Me, the Fountain of Living Waters, and have hewn out cisterns (for storage of water) for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:11-13).

And when the fullness of time did come, God sent His own Son, Jesus, into this troubled world, a world thirsty for help, to be the Savior. And Jesus talked with a Samaritan woman at a well and said, “Everyone who drinks of this water (of this well) will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13-14).

And later on, at a festival in Jerusalem that Jesus attended, “He stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” “Now this He said about the Spirit, Whom those who believed in Him were to receive” (John 7:37-39).

As Paul wrote, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (the children of God) (Galatians 4:4-5). Christ Jesus did all the redeeming, saving work for us through His perfect life, His death on the cross, and His mighty resurrection.

Now, we have been born again, of water and the Spirit, in our Baptism (John 3:5), and we are strengthened in that new Life through the living and abiding Word of God. As Peter wrote, “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory is like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower fades” - that’s us, on our own in this world - "but the Word of the Lord endures forever, and that Word is the Good News of Christ" and the Water of Life that He brings to us, that wells up to eternal life, as well, for us (1 Peter 1:23-25).

John put it so simply: “This is the testimony (the Word) that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has Life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the Name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:11-13).

The last chapter of Revelation, the Scripture from which our text comes, has these words taken from an Old Testament prophecy from Ezekiel. John says, “The angel showed me the river of the water of life, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb" (Revelation 20:1, Ezekiel 47:1,16). And some of the last words of Revelation say: “Come! And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires, drink from the water of Life, without price” (Revelation 20:17) It is the free gift of God, without price, already earned for us, in Christ. And it is already ours in Christ, as believers, through His Word and Sacraments. We can be sure that we will be part of that great multitude seen by John in heaven one day as we stay in Christ, along with our loved ones and friends who have lived and died in faith in Christ.

We, too, are forgiven sinners, saints of God by God’s grace, whose robes are washed in the blood of the Lamb. And all the picture images and promises will be ours, too, though we still struggle now in this life.

No more hunger or thirst or tears. No more stifling heat or freezing cold. Jesus, our Good Shepherd, will provide us His living water, every blessing that we need, and the Heavenly Father will shelter us with His presence, and we will serve Him with joy. Amen (Revelation 7:15-17)