The Great Multitude: Hope for a Wounded World

 A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

17 August 2025

Series: Revelation: An Unveiling for Our Times

Revelation 7.9-17
John 14:1-4

Grace and peace to you
            from the One who is and who was and who is to come.

Today, in our ongoing journey through the Book of Revelation,
            we stand before a vision of astonishing beauty and hope.

Revelation 7:9–17 has been called
            one of the most beloved and comforting passages in the entire book.

It is read at funerals.
            It is stitched into tapestries and stained glass.
It is quoted when people need assurance
            that God is with them in suffering.

But it is also a deeply political, radically challenging text
            —one that pushes us to see beyond the narrow boundaries
            of empire, nation, race, class, and fear.

It invites us to see the world as God sees it.
            And to live as if that vision is true.

We’ve been seeing through this series that apocalypse doesn’t mean catastrophe.
            It means unveiling.

Revelation isn’t written to frighten us about the future.
            It is meant to help us see the present more clearly
            to see our here-and-now from heaven’s perspective.

John seeks to purify the imaginations of his hearers
            to construct alternative images that resist empire’s power.

And that’s exactly what we have before us today.

John writes:

“After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” (7.9)

Can you imagine it?

An uncountable crowd.
            From every nation.
            Every tribe.
            Every language.

A vision of humanity gathered, reconciled, united
            —not by coercion, but by worship.

Not by Rome’s military conquest.
            Not by any empire’s forced assimilation.
But by shared allegiance to the Lamb.

This is Revelation’s counter-vision to the empire.

Because let’s remember the context:
            John’s churches lived under Rome’s shadow.
Rome boasted of its “Pax Romana”—its peace.

But that peace was built on conquest,
            on slaughter, slavery, taxation, and humiliation.
It was a peace that erased difference,
            enforced loyalty, and extracted wealth.

Rome’s vision of unity was uniformity at the point of the sword.

And against this John offers a different picture.

He sees difference not erased but embraced.
            Every language is there.
            Every culture.
            Every people.

All united—not under Caesar’s banner, but in worship of the Lamb.

This is deeply political.
            And it is also profoundly pastoral.

Because it says to John’s small, struggling congregations:
            Your witness is not in vain.
            Your suffering is not forgotten.
            You belong to something far bigger than you can see.

You are part of a multitude that no empire can number or silence.

But let’s be honest:
            This vision can feel impossibly distant.

Our world is still divided by race, nation, language, class.
            We see borders hardened, refugees demonised,
            racism woven into systems.
We see fear of the “other” exploited for power.

Even within the church, we have often failed this vision.
            We have divided along doctrinal, cultural, political, and ethnic lines.
            We have sometimes baptised empire’s values instead of resisting them.

And so John’s vision is both comfort and critique.

It says: This is what God desires.
            This is the shape of God’s redeemed people.
            This is what true worship looks like.

It calls us to examine ourselves:

• Who is missing from our communities?
• Whose voices are silenced?
• Whose needs are ignored?
• What walls have we built—visible or invisible?

Notice what the multitude cries:

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (7.9)

Salvation doesn’t belong to Rome.
            It doesn’t belong to any nation-state or ideology.
            It doesn’t belong to the market or the military.
            It doesn’t belong to us.

It belongs to God.
            It is a gift.
It is universal in scope but particular in cost
            —because it is the Lamb who was slain who saves.

And this is crucial.

Because John’s vision centres not on the throne alone but on the Lamb.

Remember what we saw last week in Revelation 5:
            The Lion of Judah is revealed as the Lamb who was slain.
            Power is redefined through sacrifice.
            Victory comes through vulnerability.

This is the heart of Revelation’s theology.

Empire says: Power is domination.
            Revelation says: Power is self-giving love.

Revelation’s imagery purifies the imagination
            offering an alternative to Rome’s visions of absolute control.”

Here, that alternative is the Lamb.

The Lamb who suffers with the suffering.
            The Lamb who redeems through blood, not swords.
            The Lamb who gathers all peoples not by conquest, but by love.

John’s vision continues:

“These are they who have come out of the great ordeal.”

This isn’t cheap hope.
            It’s forged in suffering.

John’s churches knew persecution.
            Christians were marginalised, slandered, sometimes killed.
They faced pressure to conform, to worship the emperor, to compromise.

John doesn’t deny their pain.
            He honours it.

And this “Great ordeal” is not just theirs.
            It is ours also.

We live in a world that is hard to love.
            We see violence, greed, indifference.
We face personal losses, grief, fear, anxiety.
            We wonder if anything can really change.

John’s vision doesn’t promise escape from ordeal.
            It promises God’s presence in it.

“They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” (7.14)

Strange imagery.
            Laundry advice, it is not.

It’s paradoxical.
            Blood stains—but here it purifies.

Because it is Christ’s blood.
            His sacrificial love.
His refusal to return violence for violence.

They are cleansed not by their own virtue, but by God’s grace.

This is grace we can’t manufacture.
            We can only receive it.
            We can only live into it.

John then hears the promise:

“They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd.” (7.16)

Here the Lamb is also the shepherd.

A tender image.
            Pastoral in the truest sense.
Here we see God incarnated not as a tyrant but a guide.
            Not as a destroyer but a protector.

Revelation continues: “He will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (7.17)

Every tear.

Think about that.

Not ignored.
            Not dismissed.
            Not minimised.

Wiped away.
            By God’s own hand.

This is not sentimental escapism.
            It is defiant hope.
It is a promise that the pain of empire, the grief of injustice,
            the wounds of violence, will not have the last word.

It is a promise of healing that is both personal and cosmic.

And so our companion text from John’s Gospel speaks here too:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places… I go to prepare a place for you.” (14.1-2)

Jesus promises not an exclusive mansion for the privileged few,
            but a spacious welcome for all who will come.

He is the way—not of conquest, but of sacrificial love.
            Not of fear, but of trust.
Not of exclusion, but of radical hospitality.

Friends, Revelation 7 is not a map of the future.
            It is a manifesto for the present.

It is a vision meant to shape us now.
            To draw us into God’s dream for the world.

So what might it mean for us at Bloomsbury?

It might mean asking whose languages and cultures we celebrate.
            Whose struggles we stand alongside.
            Whose suffering we refuse to ignore.
            Whose voices we amplify.

It might mean choosing welcome over suspicion.
            Generosity over fear.
            Solidarity over apathy.

It might mean refusing to baptise empire’s false peace,
            and instead working for God’s true shalom.

Because empire always offers us a counterfeit peace.

Rome called it the Pax Romana
            —peace through conquest, through fear, through enforced silence.
It was the peace of the cross used as an instrument of terror.
            It was peace for the powerful and subjugation for everyone else.

Today, empire’s peace might look different,
            but its logic remains the same.

It tells us to value stability over justice.
            To keep quiet about racism, poverty, and violence
            so as not to make things “political.”

To protect our comfort rather than confront injustice.
            To accept growing inequality as the price of prosperity.
To treat refugees and migrants as threats instead of neighbours.
            To believe that security requires surveillance, walls, weapons.

Empire’s peace is always conditional.
            It always depends on someone else’s suffering being ignored.

But Revelation’s vision refuses that lie.
            It unveils it.
            It calls it what it is.

John’s great multitude is not gathered by force but by grace.
            It is not uniform but diverse.
            It is not a conquered people but a redeemed people.

And at its centre is the Lamb who was slain.
            The one who suffered empire’s violence rather than inflict it.
The one who reveals that true peace comes only through justice,
            only through truth,
            only through love that is willing to bear wounds.

So to work for God’s true shalom
            means refusing to stay silent in the face of empire’s injustices.
It means being willing to name the systems
            that benefit some at the expense of others.
It means choosing solidarity with the marginalised
            even when it is costly.
It means letting our tears move us to action.

Because God’s promise is not a peace that ignores pain
            but one that wipes away every tear.
Not a kingdom that crushes difference
            but one that gathers every nation, tribe, people, and language.
Not a victory won by the sword
            but by the Lamb’s self-giving love.

This is the vision that must shape our worship,
            our mission, our politics, our lives.
This is the alternative to empire’s false peace
            that we are called to proclaim and embody.

But let’s be honest: this vision can feel so far away it’s hard to grasp.

We might nod along on Sunday,
            but by Monday we’re back in a world
            that runs on fear and competition.

We’re surrounded by messages that tell us
            that security means shutting others out,
that success means outdoing others,
            that belonging means sameness.

We hear that real power is force,
            that real victory is domination,
            that real worth is wealth.

Revelation knows this.
            It knows the pull of empire’s imagination is strong.
It knows how easy it is
            to lose hope that anything can change.

That’s why John doesn’t just argue. He shows.

He paints this vast, cosmic, beautiful picture
            of a multitude no one can count
            —gathered, praising, healed, reconciled.

He wants us to see it.
            To let that vision soak into us.
To let it shape our longings, our decisions, our loyalties.

Because change begins in the imagination.

If we can’t imagine a reconciled world,
            we’ll never work for one.
If we can’t see a community of every nation and tongue praising God together,
            we’ll settle for churches that all look and think the same.
If we can’t picture God wiping away every tear,
            we’ll start believing that suffering is just how things are.

So Revelation says: Look again.
            Don’t let empire be your teacher.
Don’t let cynicism have the last word.
            Don’t accept the world as it is
            as the world as it must be.

We need this vision precisely because the world is broken.
            Because the work of justice is hard.
            Because solidarity is costly.
            Because hope is fragile.

John offers us not an escape from the world’s pain,
            but a promise that God is at work redeeming it.

He gives us a glimpse of where God is leading all creation.
            He invites us to live now
            as if that future is already breaking in.

So, friends, can we dare to let this vision shape us?
            Can we commit to seeing as John sees?
Can we help one another imagine—and practice—
            a community where every tribe and people
            and language are truly welcome?
Where worship isn’t just words
            but a witness to God’s coming kingdom?

This is the gift—and the challenge—of Revelation’s unveiling.

And yes, it might mean reimagining our worship.
            But I’m not talking here about musical style or preferred choice of instrument.

Because worship in the Book of Revelation isn’t about the music,
            it’s about the politics.

To sing “Salvation belongs to our God”
            is to say it does not belong to any government or system.
To gather across difference is to reject empire’s divisions.
            To follow the Lamb is to renounce the logic of violence.

This is hard.
            It will cost us.

But Revelation dares to say: It is worth it.

Because there is a multitude waiting.
            Longing.
            Hoping.

And God is still gathering them in.

“They will hunger no more.”
“God will wipe away every tear.”

This is the promise.
            This is the hope.
            This is the call.

So let us join the song of the multitude:

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

Let us follow the Lamb wherever he goes.
            Let us bear witness to a love that conquers by giving itself away.
Let us live even now as citizens of that redeemed, reconciling multitude.

For worthy is the Lamb.
Worthy to receive our worship, our loyalty, our lives.

To him be blessing and honour and glory and might forever and ever.

Amen.