All during this month, as we have thought together about the work of the Holy Spirit, we have been in familiar territory. It wasn't hard to think about the Holy Spirit in the heart, speaking to me, leading you, dealing with each one of us as individuals. That we know about, that's familiar territory.
And when we looked at the way the Spirit takes His place in our homes, in our marriages, and in our families, that too must have sounded familiar. Every one of us can identify with the idea that the Spirit of the Living God crosses the threshold of our homes, that he crowns our marriages with his presence, that he empowers us to love and to care for one another in families. This too is familiar territory.
And then last week we considered together what the Spirit does for the church, we spoke of the gifts the spirit provides for the people of God, and again we were comfortable with that idea. Again we were on familiar territory, because, I would guess, each one of us hopes, each one of us wants to believe that the Holy Spirit is active in the life of this church and, indeed, in the life of the whole Christian church. Familiar territory.
But today, unless I miss my guess, we are getting into some uncharted lands for many of us. Terra incognita, as the old maps used to say, unfamiliar territory, because today I want us to expand our concentric circles to their farthest extent. I want us to stretch our thinking and to imagine what the Holy Spirit is doing in the world. In the whole created order. In the whole web of institutions and systems, of organizations and governments, of movements and trends and activities that make up our world. The Holy Spirit in the world – ever thought of that? Is the Holy Spirit somehow active on the grand scale? Is He involved in the affairs of men and nations?
I can imagine the Holy Spirit speaking to me in my heart, yes. But does He speak to the very soul of a nation?
I have heard the Holy Spirit addressing my home, my family, yes. But does he address all humanity in some way?
I know the Holy Spirit is working toward some overarching purposes in the church, I can even measure what the Spirit is doing in the household of faith. But does the world, the world of evil as well as of good, the world of military might and economic power and social change, does that world yield at all to the leadership of the Holy Spirit?
Well, I guess it should be evident by now that I believe that, yes, the Holy Spirit is active in the world at large, the world outside the church, the world of systems and structures. If I didn't believe that, more importantly, if I didn't find that in the Bible, there would hardly be any sermon to preach, would there? And you know full well you have not sat there for the customary 18 to 20 minutes yet, have you? Why, some of you are still awake – sermon cannot be over yet.
The Bible does teach that God is lord of history; the Scriptures do focus on a God who not only sees the inner side of the human heart, but who also sees what we are when we begin to live out our lives as nations and as part of the stream of human history. The Bible teaches, in fact, that God is working out his purposes not only in persons, and not only in the church, but that God is working out his purposes all across the globe and in all sorts of ways. There is the Lord of the Exodus, for example, who reaches down and deals with the Pharaoh of Egypt and who creates for himself a people called Israel.
Or there is the Lord of Israel's armies, seeming to struggle alongside his people against the enemies that stood in their way. Or again the Lord of the Exile, who permitted his people to be stricken down and carried away to Babylon, but then reached out and touched one Cyrus, a Persian king who was by no means a faithful follower of God, an infidel, an outlander, a nonbeliever. But the prophet Isaiah insists that God reached out and tapped Cyrus of Persia and anointed him, chose him, so that the purposes of Almighty God among men and nations might go forth.
Do you see what I am saying? Our God is a mighty God. Our God is one who is the creator of all things, all things and all humanity, whether they recognize him or not. And he is involved, involved in the world, in order to achieve his purposes.
Now there is no more lofty and majestic language in all of the Bible to get this point over than the language of the Book of Revelation. This book has always been mysterious; the Book of Revelation has always challenged the best minds of the church, and at the same time seems to have drawn all those who were really more superstitious than Christian. John's magnificent vision is written in such a way that the mind can scarcely take it in, but I’ve always found that it communicates anyway. Even though I may not always understand completely all that it says, not precisely anyway, still that mood of praise, that language of exaltation, that shout of alleluias, that communicates. That’s real, that I can hear. I may not always be able to explain this mysterious book, but I can experience it, I can resonate to its sense of victory. And so may I read the 7th chapter of Revelation to you, well aware that I may today end up like the Scottish preacher who was described y one of his parishioners as invisible during the week and inscrutable on Sunday!
Revelation 7:1-17
For me, this text says that the Spirit of the Living God is at work in the world, that in fact our' God is winning the victory in the battle that is raging all around us, and most of all, that you and I have a place in that battle. Let's look at this more closely.
I
First, this Scripture says that God is restraining evil, God is holding back the forces of destruction, lest they do their worst and destroy us. The grace of God, the providence of God is operating all the time to restrain the powers of evil.
"I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree. Then I saw another angel ascend from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, saying, ‘Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God upon their foreheads.’"
The angels, the messengers with power to harm: do not harm. God is restraining evil, no matter how dismal our history, no matter how much we may despair and feel that we have gone about as low as we can go, be assured that our God is a God of justice and He is a God of mercy, and he will not forever let evil reign unchecked.
Human history has known some very, very dismal periods, hasn't it? Even when we think we are making so much progress, even when we imagine that we are really learning something, that seems to be the very time that monstrous evil takes over, and we are horribly surprised about the depth of the sin of the human heart. "A Tale of Two Cities" says it in the memorable opening line, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
And so in this twentieth century, this century of knowledge and of communication, this era of education for everyone and of wonders that would have dazzled people who lived only a century ago, in this best of times we have known the worst of times. We have known world wars and countless smaller battles. We have felt the heat of the thermonuclear explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we have felt the sting of long and costly military struggles in Korea and in Vietnam. And we began only a few years ago to worry that somehow we had just about done ourselves in, that someone might push the button and trigger off the last war, the war in which the happiest people would be those who had not survived. The worst of times in what we had hoped would be the best of times.
But it has not happened. It has not yet come to that. And even with terrorism and with Libya and with Chernobyl and all the gazetteer of places we've suddenly become familiar with, the massive destruction we fear has not happened. Why not? Bad as it is, why is the international situation not worse? Why has the Cold War remained cold?
I believe it is because God is restraining the forces of evil. He who planted the rainbow sign in the heavens after the flood in order to say, "Never again" – he in the Holy Spirit is still in charge, he is still intervening, I dare say he is still suffering. Did you hear the Book of Revelation speak of the Lamb, the lamb slain from the foundations of the earth? God is still suffering because of our propensity for evil, and in ways I can never fully interpret or understand, the God who created us, who sustains us in His Spirit, that is the same God who in Christ Jesus suffers evil, takes evil into Himself, and keeps the full fury of evil from being unleashed on the world.
I know you are having a hard time following me on this. In fact, I am having a hard time following me! But I tell you, say alleluia anyway and hear it again: how powerful and how furious, how destructive is the evil one; but how much our God restrains him, holds him back, how much our God gives us room and space to be. Praise God for the love which holds off harm; He said to the angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, "Do not harm." Do not harm.
II
But now I want you to see that God is doing more than hold back the rising tides of destruction. He is doing something else; he is working for the well-being of all the earth. Our God is at work, His Spirit is everywhere at work, not leaving Himself without a witness, to bring redemption and fullness of life all over the earth.
You think with me about a few of the ways in which human sinfulness drags us down; you just think with me about how wherever men and women gather some things happen that are destructive. And then read with me in this Scripture to see what God is doing about it.
Well, for one thing, we humans get jealous of one another, we get suspicious of one another, we begin to think that I'm right, and you're right if you look like me and think like me, but nobody else is right. We get a corner on the truth, we get a corner on virtue, and we begin to think nobody else is quite as good as we are. One novelist entitled one of his books, "God is an Englishman." One nation thinks it owns God. Now my wife doesn't see anything particularly wrong with that title, which I find it hard to understand because I grew up thinking that the only reason West Virginia could claim to be almost heaven was that it was next to Kentucky, which is heaven!
But do you see what I'm saying? We have been for a long time in the position of suspecting people who are not like we are, we have supposed we had a corner on the truth. And that's destructive. That's what pits Catholic against Protestant in northern Ireland. That's what causes Afrikaners to put blacks and coloreds into apartheid, into Bantustans and Sowetos and all the rest. That's what creates Moslem fanaticism and a Qaddafi. That' s what suspicion does.
But now hear what the Spirit is doing: "Behold, a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the lamb.’" What is the Spirit doing? He is bringing together all kinds of people, people who would have no reason to be together, people who might not have even liked each other, but together they are, because the Lamb has sacrificed for them.
Or again, what else destroys, what else tears down life as God intended it? In our time we've been made aware of poverty and especially of hunger. Today especially we are regaled with the harsh statistics of hunger. The face of hunger and of disease looks out at us from our TV screens; the voices of the poor and the homeless are made to cry at us from our newspapers. Wherever there are men and women who do not have enough, and wherever in fact there are men and women who will take from the poor even what little they have by selling drugs or marketing sex or peddling intoxicants – wherever that happens life as God intended it is being torn down.
But again, hear what the Spirit of the God of life is doing, hear what this Holy Spirit promises is yet to come: "They shall hunger any 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 springs of living water; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."
What is the Spirit doing? He is working toward that day when every hungry mouth shall find food, every thirsty throat shall be refreshed, every homeless person shall find a home; and he is laboring toward that day when every wanderer will know the shepherd. I tell you, our God is at work in the world, His purposes are magnificent, and there is room for us, plenty of room for us to work with him.
On occasion, when I was feeling really confident, I have teased my minister-professor father-in-law about his preaching. I’ve said, You know, you really only have one sermon. No matter what the occasion is, no matter what text you take, it all comes out the same. And what you always say is, ‘In the midst of the terror, God is winning, God is the victor.’" Well, he finally got fed up with my jabs and jibes, and he told me why that is his message, his central message. He told me what it was like to be a pastor in an English city during World War II, when the bombs were dropping. He told me stories about taking his helmet and his flashlight and looking for bodies in the rubble and then having to bury them, one after another. He spoke with no little emotion about taking his little girl, now my wife, into the bomb shelter and then huddling over in the corner trying to write a book. And the book was called, The Christian Understanding of History; its thesis, evoked by faith during those dark days: that God in Christ Jesus, God in the presence of the Spirit, still works out his purposes. His Kingdom cannot and will not fail.
And so on this Memorial Day, see with John’s victory vision. See a God who restrains evil and gives you room in which to grow, room in which you might become a part of his work. And see too a God who so cares about us, all that we are and all we might become, and works to bring us salvation complete. See that, and you will, with Revelation, see victory’s vision.
