(no audio or video of tonight’s service)
Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 9
Revelation 14:14-20
As you listened to the verses read this evening from Revelation 14, I’m guessing you may have breathed a little sigh of relief, because these words are relatively easy to understand. We may still struggle with this or that detail of John’s sixth vision in the set of seven visions, but there is no question at all that the harvesting of the earth that we heard about in these verses is the final judgment of the earth.
There are two parts to this vision. First, the harvesting of the believers, and then the harvesting of the unbelievers.
Jesus is pictured for us as a Son of Man, sitting on a cloud, wearing a golden victor’s crown on His head. That’s like what He told His disciples, that they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. In the vision before us, that gathering together of the elect from the four winds is pictured with a sickle that the Son of Man swings over the earth. He’s informed by an angel (not that He needs to be informed, but it’s part of the story) that the harvest of the earth is ripe, so it’s time to reap. Finally! Throughout Scripture, God refers to the judgment of the earth as a harvest. In fact, this imagery in Revelation is drawn almost directly from a prophecy in Joel 3: I will gather all nations, and bring them down to the Valley of Judgment; And I will enter into judgment with them there on account of My people, My heritage Israel, Whom they have scattered among the nations. Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, go down; For the winepress is full, the vats overflow— For their wickedness is great.
For now, the wheat grows together with the weeds, as Jesus paints the picture in one of His parables. For now, believers and unbelievers grow together in the world, and even in the outward, visible Christian Church. But it won’t be that way forever. When the harvest is ripe, when all the elect have been called by the Gospel and brought into the kingdom of God through Baptism and faith, when the wickedness of man has reached the highest point God has determined it may reach, then the day of harvest, the day of judgment will come.
Here’s how Jesus described what Judgment Day holds for believers in the parable of the sheep and the goats: the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. John the Baptist foretold the same thing early in his ministry, the Christ has His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn. St. Paul put it this way in his epistle to the Thessalonians: The Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.
That’s the part of the harvest you and I want to be in, isn’t it? The wheat harvest. It’s the future God has promised to the baptized, as long as we remain in the faith until the end. So take God’s Word seriously and use the tools God has provided—prayer and the ministry of His Word—to hold on until the end!
Because you don’t want to end up among the weeds, or among the bad fish that are tossed out, as Jesus put it in one of His parables, or among the chaff that’s blown away, as Psalm 1 puts it, or among the chaff that’s burned up, as John the Baptist put it, or in the grape harvest, as John describes it here in Revelation, all describing the final judgment of the wicked.
You heard John describe another angel with a sickle coming out of the heavenly temple of God who was charged with performing the grape harvest. He went out and swung his sickle and gathered up all the grapes from the earth and threw them into the winepress of God’s wrath—His wrath against sin, and wickedness of all kinds, but especially the wicked treatment of His beloved Christians—wickedness of which the nations will never repent, even though God has sent prophet after prophet and preacher after preacher to call them to repentance before it’s too late.
Now, you know, if you ever watched that old episode of “I Love Lucy” what happens to grapes in the winepress. They’re “pressed.” They’re trampled (or at least, they used to be trampled) under people’s feet and crushed until all the juice comes out. Except that, in John’s vision, it isn’t grape juice that comes out. It’s blood that’s squeezed out and fills an area of about 200 square miles, several feet deep. 1600 stadia, which is 4x4x10x10, representing the final harvest of the whole earth. What a horrific picture! And yet, God wants people to understand that this is part of His revelation, too. He wants all men to be saved through faith in Christ Jesus. But because He knows that most will remain in their wickedness, He has prepared this end for them and warned them about it ahead of time. As Jesus put it in the parable of the sheep and the goats, the wicked will hear the dreadful sentence, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
It’s either one harvest or the other. Both are executed by God. And every time we pray, Come, Lord Jesus!, this is what we’re praying for, for Jesus to come and carry out these two harvests, one that will rescue the saints from all the troubles and turmoil we face here, and the other one that will send the unbelievers to everlasting punishment. But even though we pray, Come quickly!, we know He won’t come before the time is right and the harvest is ripe, nor will He delay any longer than He needs to. At just the right time, the harvest will come, and we raise the great and glorious song of Harvest-home. Amen.
