The Way Forward

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Let's begin, Revelation 7, 9 through 17. After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and people and languages, 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 on the throne, and to the Lamb. And all the angels were standing around the throne, and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne, and worshiped God, saying, Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever, Amen. Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, Who are these clothed in white robes, and from where have they come? I said to him, Sir, you know. And he said to me, These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple. And he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. 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 springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. So here's the deal. When we read passages like this, and we see things that, I don't know, it just doesn't seem very normal to be able to read some of these things in the Bible. I think there's some fear and insecurity that sits in, like, what does this mean, okay? And even for myself, I really have to wrestle through some of these scriptures, and it's like, God, what do you mean? Like, what do you mean by white robes? What do you mean by four creatures? Like, what the heck is going on, all right? And so it's easy to really be caught up with the metaphoric imagery that's going on in this particular book right here, all right? Revelations is a hard book. In fact, the Bible is a very hard book to understand. If it was so easy, I don't think we would have so much confusion going on, or even so many different denominations that are formed with different beliefs and thoughts about scripture. Like, it's a hard book to really unravel and uncover, okay? So disclaimer, I want you to know that. I mean, today we're not necessarily going to sit here and talk about Revelations and what everything means, but we're going to be able to address this particular dream that was given to John, and what this means, and how we are able to move forward, all right? So the best way of putting this, and it was a really good imagery that I was taught, and I wanted to be able to share this with you, but if you are familiar with the painter from 1890, Vincent van Gogh, he is a famous painter, and at one point, before he was passing away in 1890, he was writing his sister, and he said this, I want to create paintings that are Revelations, okay? Here's the interesting thing about Gogh, all right? At the time, no one really liked his paintings whatsoever. It is actually recorded that he was able to sell only one painting, and here, this is probably one of the main painters that we observe, and you know, we, like, you see him all over. His paintings are now sold for millions of dollars, because he was doing something that was so revolutionary, that was so different, and you know, I was actually looking at more stuff about him, and you know, where do I go for great reference? YouTube, right? And I even saw that there's a movie that was just created about Gogh, and they got like 400 artists together, and they painted the movie of all the different sequences of what's happening in the movie. There's a lot of people that revere and really appreciate his artwork. Now, however, when he first was releasing these particular paintings, the people were appalled, and they were repulsed, and say, this is, we don't like this. This is really hard to understand, like, look at the strokes that he's doing, it just doesn't necessarily make sense, and it's just not normal, it's not what we were used to, and why would I even buy something like this when, you know, there's so much better artwork out there? But as we go on, and as we go throughout history, we see something special about his paintings and about his portraits. Now, it's safe to say, even the early Christians, when they were opening this book of revelations, they were kind of troubled, and they were kind of repulsed, and they're kind of like, hey, we don't necessarily understand what's going on. I mean, cut us a break, Jesus just rose from the dead, like, that's already miraculous enough to be able to believe, and then all of a sudden, you're giving us these visions of what is t...