A Reflection on Revelation 15
Revelation 15 is only eight verses long, yet this morning I found myself lingering there.
The chapter stands on the edge of something frightening. The seven last plagues are about to be poured out. Human history is moving towards its final crisis. The heavenly sanctuary will be filled with the glory of God, and the work of intercession for sin will have reached its conclusion.
And yet, before God allows John to look at any of that, He turns his eyes somewhere else.
He shows him the redeemed.
They are standing beside a sea of glass, and they are singing.
“Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are Thy ways…”
Revelation 15:3
That touched something very personal in me.
These people have just come through the greatest crisis this world will ever know. They have faced the beast, his image, his mark and everything that accompanied that final conflict.
Yet when it is over, they are not sitting there licking their wounds.
They are worshipping.
They are not singing about how strong they were.
They are singing about how faithful God was.
And I recognise something of that song.
I Have Met Him in Dark Places Before
When I look back over my own life, there are chapters I would never willingly choose to live again.
There have been places of grief, fear, uncertainty and pain where I could not see how the story could possibly end well.
But when I look back now, something else stands out more clearly than the darkness.
He was there.
There were times when I felt His presence most clearly precisely because everything else had been stripped away.
That doesn’t make suffering good.
It means God is faithful in suffering.
Job sat among the ashes with wounds he could not understand. He did not have an explanation for what was happening to him.
Yet from that place he could declare:
“For I know that my redeemer liveth.”
Job 19:25
Not, I know why this is happening.
I know my Redeemer.
Perhaps that is one of the most important distinctions faith ever learns.
Kept, Not Abandoned
Revelation 15 also brought me back to the prayer Jesus prayed in John 17.
Jesus knew His followers would experience suffering. Yet He did not pray that the Father would remove them from every difficult place.
He prayed:
“I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them…”
John 17:15
Keep them.
There is such tenderness in those words.
Revelation tells us that a time will come when Christ’s intercessory ministry concerning sin reaches its completion. Human decisions will have been made. The sanctuary ministry will close.
But that must never be confused with Jesus abandoning His children.
He promised:
“Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”
Matthew 28:20
There may come a day when Christ’s work of intercession for sin is finished.
There will never come a day when His children must face anything without Him.
The final generation will not survive because they have finally become strong enough to stand without Jesus.
They will stand because they have learned to remain completely dependent upon Him.
The Seal Says, “These Are Mine”
The Exodus story helped me understand this differently too.
Before Israel finally left Egypt, God made a distinction between His people and the Egyptians during the latter plagues.
Israel was still in Egypt.
God did not immediately remove them from the place of trouble.
He kept them in it.
And suddenly the seal of God in Revelation became more beautiful to me.
I had often thought about the seal primarily in terms of the conflict surrounding the mark of the beast.
But the seal also speaks of belonging.
It says:
These are Mine.
God knows His children.
And when the final crisis comes, they will not be anonymous people desperately trying to survive an angry world.
They will belong to the Lamb.
Practising the Muscles of Faith
That changed my prayer this morning.
I don’t merely want enough faith for some future crisis.
I want Jesus to become the natural orientation of my heart now.
I want looking towards Him to become as instinctive as breathing.
I want to wake in the morning and have my first thought turn towards the goodness of God.
I want gratitude to become more natural than complaining.
Worship more natural than worry.
Trust more natural than fear.
And perhaps the ordinary difficulties of today are places where those spiritual muscles are exercised.
Every experience in which I discover God’s faithfulness becomes something my heart can remember tomorrow.
When another dark road comes, perhaps faith can whisper:
I recognise this Presence.
I have met Him in dark places before.
He did not leave me then.
He will not leave me now.
Not because this trial resembles the last one.
Not because I know what happens next.
But because He is still the same God.
My Prayer
Father,
Keep my eyes on Jesus.
Teach me to seek You so naturally that it becomes like breathing.
Exercise the muscles of my faith now, in ordinary life, so that when I cannot understand what You are doing, my heart remembers what it already knows:
My Redeemer lives.
You have been faithful before.
You are faithful today.
You will still be faithful tomorrow.
When fear comes, turn my eyes back towards Jesus.
When I cannot see the road ahead, remind me that I do not need to see the whole road. I only need to know the One walking it with me.
And Lord, when my faith feels weak, hold me fast.
If I ever have to walk through circumstances darker than anything I have known before, let something deep inside me recognise You and say:
I know this God.
I have met Him in dark places before.
He stayed.
And He will stay again.
Make my life now a rehearsal for the song beside the sea of glass.
Until gratitude becomes more natural than fear.
Until worship becomes more natural than worry.
Until knowing You becomes more precious than knowing what happens next.
And when the journey is finally over, may my testimony never be about how strong I was.
Let it be about how faithful You were.
“Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are Thy ways.”
Keep my eyes on Jesus until faith becomes sight.
Amen.
Perhaps that is what Revelation 15 has left with me most strongly:
I do not need to know that I will be strong enough for everything the future may bring.
I need to know Jesus.
Because the One who has carried me before will still be there.
And when my strength fails, He will hold me fast
