Text: Revelation 14:6-7
Date: October 31, 2021
Event: Reformation Sunday, Year B
Revelation 14:6–7 (EHV)
6Then I saw another angel flying in the middle of the sky. He had the everlasting gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth, to every nation, tribe, language, and people. 7He said with a loud voice:
Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the sky, the earth, the sea, and the springs of water.
We Have a Global Gospel
I learned a new term a couple of weeks ago, a term that perhaps many of you are already well aquatinted with, depending on your work or your hobbies. That term is “TAM,” an acronym for “Total Addressable Market.” This is a metric that companies will use to make decisions on production or whether a project is worth investigating further. We even use it here. I use a “TAM” of sorts when printing the bulletin by asking the question, “How many people would I guess will be here this weekend?” If I know a lot of people will be out of town on a given Sunday, maybe we don’t print as many as we would when I know few families have guests in town. And certainly the pandemic has manipulated that in a lot of ways over the last 19 months.
For certain products or markets the TAM is large, for others it is small. I imagine Honda’s TAM for its compact Civic sedan is much larger than Ferrari’s for its high end “hypercars.” More Civics will be sold in a year than Ferraris.
So before you get into something, you look at the total possible market and ask, “Is this worth it?” Maybe the questions revolve around cost and profit, maybe they revolve around benefit to others vs. work involved. We were talking on Wednesday night on our Bible Information Class about how we do not maintain a food pantry for the needy on campus because we just don’t have the volume of traffic needed to make such a project worthwhile, but we do support other groups with more traffic to help them in that work.
On this Reformation Sunday, we are partially remembering God’s work through Martin Luther. Our focus is broader than that, but it’s in-part a celebration of what God did through Luther and the other reformers to preserve the truth of the gospel. When Luther lived, the Roman Catholic Church had an iron-clad monopoly on Christianity in western Europe. If you were Christian in that area of the world, you were Roman Catholic, with only very rare exceptions.
And that was a real problem because the teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church did not sync up with what the Bible said. There was a heavy emphasis on guilt and demanding good works to pay for sin. Often, that good to get rid of sins involved money. You could donate money to church, or pay for a worship service, or buy an indulgence all to get rid of the sin and, ideally, the guilty feelings you had.
You can see the issue right on the surface. Any teaching the puts a burden on people, that indicates that Jesus didn’t do enough to save us, is a problem. Jesus is the sole solution to sin. You and I cannot add anything additional to what Jesus did, and thanks be to God we do not need to.
But Luther did not know this; most people did not know this. In an era where Bibles were not available because of few translations in the language the people spoke and read as well as expensive and slow duplicating processes, the general populace was not able to interact directly with God’s Word and had to trust what their leaders told them. When Luther joined the monastery as a priest and monk, he suddenly had access to the Bible. His sensitive conscience led him back to the Word over and over again. But he did not go simply to study and learn; he went to try to find a way to make sure God was happy with him. What he discovered there in the clear writing the of prophets and apostles was what you and I are already so privileged to know: that Jesus lived, died, and rose to rescue us from sin. He paid for every sin when he took our place and suffered hell on the cross. Luther, you, and I will be in heaven not because we are or were so great, but because of God’s mercy to us in Jesus. It is God’s undeserved love for people, his grace, that means we will be in heaven. This is a gift we receive solely through the faith, the trust, that God gives.
When Luther made this discovery, how his heart soared! The burden was lifted! He had the freedom in full that God wanted him to have! Now he could have just taken this as personal comfort and left it at that. But he knew that was not in keeping with the point of this message. This was not just for him, this was not even just for those living at the same time he was, or even just for those who had a sensitive conscience like he had. The audience of this message was essentially limitless, because this applied to every human being who was living or ever would live. In our lesson from Revelation, this eternal gospel is described as being proclaimed to those who live on the earth, to every nation, tribe, language, and people. This message was for everyone! A TAM with no end!
What is the result of sharing of this good news of sins forgiven in Jesus? Well, the angel flying with that gospel made that clear: Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the sky, the earth, the sea, and the springs of water. God is the ruler of all, he is worthy of all praise. “Fear” in this case is not to be afraid of, but to respect. Thus, the direction to worship is not one servitude or humiliation, but one of thanksgiving. The “hour of his judgment” is not meant to be a scary thing, but an exciting, because that will be the beginning of our time with God in heaven! The Lord has freed us from our sins and given us the free gift of eternal life! How could we not serve our God, praising him and thanking him?
And so we do. We are here today for that very thing. And while this eternal gospel is a great comfort for us eternally, temporally it can have some negative consequences. You heard the warning that Jesus gave to his disciples in our Gospel for this morning: Be on your guard! People will hand you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues. You will stand in the presence of rulers and kings for my sake as a witness to them. And the gospel must first be preached to all the nations (Mark 13:9-10). Things weren’t always going to be great for the messengers of the gospel. Being a Bible-believing and Bible-living Christian comes with consequences when we live in this sinful world.
We can see that play out, in part, during Luther’s life. Rather than rejoicing that Luther had made these fresh discoveries that could make the church’s teaching more comforting and more biblical, both church and state rejected what Luther taught. Last June was the 500th anniversary of the Pope Leo X’s proclamation that Luther was a heretic, condemned by the church (“People will hand you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues”). This past April was the 500th anniversary of Luther’s trial at the Diet of Worms, where he stood not before church leaders, but state leaders. In fact, he stood before Charles V, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and was forced to answer whether he would recant, or take back, the things that he had written about salvation in Jesus alone (“You will stand in the presence of rulers and kings for my sake as a witness to them”). In that moment, if Luther didn’t recant, he would not only continue to be a condemned as a heretic by the church but he would be declared an outlaw by the state. With that “outlaw” designation came the consequence that he could be killed by anyone, on sight, with no questions asked and no consequences for the killer.
Luther, through much turmoil and sleepless nights, eventually declared that he could not recant what he had written unless he could be shown from the Scriptures that he was wrong. Only God’s Word could force him to change his mind. Of course, Luther’s biblical teaching was accurate so there was no scriptural rebuke coming. But, that was of no concern to the pope or the emperor. Luther’s adherence to the truth meant danger for him physically, but this was too important for Luther and the world for him to compromise.
This is sounding a little bit like what Jesus said would happen, isn’t it? It’s also sounding a little bit like what Shadrak, Meshak, and Abednego went through with King Nebuchadnezzar in our First Lesson, isn’t it? I don’t know about you, but for me that’s a little bit scary and disconcerting. We could sacrifice a lot, even our lives, just for living and proclaiming our faith! How do you handle that?
Well, Jesus didn’t give that warning as an out to not do anything. He was honest with his disciples (and you and me along with them), but he also had a directive. Yes, you’ll suffer for this message. Yes, you’ll be asked to testify before people, perhaps even rulers and authorities, but that will be an opportunity to witness to the truth! And, like it or not, there’s a task placed into your lap: The gospel must first be preached to all the nations. And our lesson from Revelation shows a picture of that happening, that an angel who serves as a picture of the many and varied messengers of the gospel, declares that good news to those who live on the earth, to every nation, tribe, language, and people.
Shadrak, Meshak, and Abednego bravely confessed their faith before Nebuchadnezzar, even though they did not know if they would lose their life for doing do. Luther bravely confessed the truth in front of the emperor even though, he, too, did not know what the outcome of that would be. The apostles bravely taught the truth Jesus had given them to share. All of the twelve suffered, and most died directly as a result of what they taught and lived.
You and I walk the same path. We may not face death a possibility for our faith, but will clinging to Jesus ruin friendships and family bonds? Will our commitment to live a life of thanksgiving to God for what we have been given in Jesus result in problems? Yes. But we can’t hide this gospel. We can’t just keep it to ourselves. It is an eternal gospel for the people on earth. So let’s embrace our Lutheran heritage, our Christian heritage, here today and recommit ourselves to living and sharing this truth. It’s what literally everyone needs and we can give it without losing it ourselves. Even if we were to lose our very lives, no one can take our Savior and his work from us.
This is our gospel; this is the global gospel. God bless the efforts to share it with all! Amen.
