Preaching the Gospel from Revelation

“After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’ All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: ‘Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!’

“Then one of the elders asked me, ‘These in [the] white robes—who are they, and where [do] they come from?’

“I answered, ‘Sir, you know.’

“And he said, ‘These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore, ‘they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them. Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’”

Thanks be to God for his Word.

And now, Father, as we have our Bibles open before us, we pray that the Spirit of God will conduct that divine dialogue, which is a mystery to us, whereby the very Spirit of God takes the word of the Scriptures and brings them to bear upon our lives, far beyond the voice of a mere man. We do believe that when your Word is opened up and taught, that your voice is heard, and it is for your voice we listen now. We’re all very busy, with lots of things to do and places to go, and we have gathered now that we might not listen to the rambling thoughts of a preacher but that we might hear from you. This is our solemn expectation. This is our humble cry. In Christ’s name. Amen.

There are some people, I’m told, who, upon the purchase of a novel, go immediately to the closing pages to discover how it ends. I just don’t get that. As a Scotsman, if I’ve spent that much money, I’m not going to deprive myself of the great journey that finally reaches the denouement. But I realize that I am only one among many.

As difficult as it is for me to think of it in terms of fiction, I think I understand it better in the reading of history, and in particular when you think about the unfolding drama not simply of the history of our world but the unfolding drama of redemption. And I think it is not only helpful but important for us from time to time to go, as it were, to the end of the story and to remind ourselves of how things come to a conclusion according to the instruction of Scripture—not least of all when our interest is in and our concern is about the evangel, about the gospel, about the issue of mission.

I have been rereading lately some of John Stott’s books as he moves in the direction of meeting Christ and as his writing ministry has come to an end, as his preaching ministry. And in rereading Christian Mission in the Modern World, which is still, I think, a classic, Stott says in there, “The whole church is commissioned to take the whole gospel to the whole world.”[1] And then he says, “World mission is not an impertinent interference in other people’s lives, nor is it a dispensable option which we can ignore if we don’t happen to like the idea, nor is it the hobby of a few eccentrics or fanatics. No,” he says, “mission is a logical deduction from the universal lordship of Jesus Christ.” It is an obvious, logical deduction from who Jesus is.

And so, I wanted to finish, this morning, the time that I have with you by reminding you of this great picture. Particularly if any of us feel that our endeavors are feeble, that our years are passing us by, that somehow or another we’re missing things, it’s good to go to this particular chapter in Revelation and get this picture clearly in our minds—a picture of “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.” In other words, this is the big person’s reminder of what the little people sing at Sunday school: that Jesus loves the children of the world. And those little children grow up to be adolescents and teenagers and young couples and men and women. And the focus of the church is upon those who as yet have never heard or have never believed in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is important for us to remind ourselves, despite the views of our secular world, that history, all of world history, can only finally be understood in light of salvation history. In fact, as dramatic a statement as this may appear to be, I think you would concur that history itself cannot be understood without the Bible to interpret it. That’s why every history faculty of every good university in the world still, if it neglects this story, fails to have the hermeneutical key necessary to understand not only the great sweeps and advances of humanity but also the great nadir of humanity and its descent into the depths.

And so we remind ourselves, in the hymn writer’s words,

God is working his purpose out
As year succeeds to year;
[And] God is working his purpose out,
And the time is drawing near;
[And] nearer and nearer draws the time,
The time that shall surely be,
When the earth shall be filled
With the glory of God
As the waters cover the sea.[2]

God’s acts in history are never an afterthought in response to contingency. God is acting according to the eternal counsel of his will. And the one of whom we have sung so volubly is he who is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

History cannot be understood without the Bible to interpret it.

Now, since we can see this picture of consummation and this picture of victory, is, then, the message that we should then simply lighten up? That we should just wait for God to do all that he’s planning to do? No! The message is not “Lighten up.” The message is “Buckle up!” The message is, again in the words of the hymn writer: we are “facing a task unfinished that drives us to our knees.”[3] And that the assembled company here, described for us by John, is not assembled automatically but is assembled as a result of the gospel going out into all the world. How will they hear unless someone tells them?[4]

And it would be good for us to keep in mind as well that the book of Revelation is actually an exposition of the gospel. Every New Testament book is an exposition of the gospel. The whole Bible is about Jesus, and Jesus is about the gospel. If we take our eyes off Jesus, we lose our way around the Bible. If we forget the evangel at the heart of God’s purpose, then we miss the point entirely. I don’t mean by that the kind of little coda that some of us have been trained to stick onto the end of a sermon that has got nothing at all to do with hardly anything at all from some obscure passage in the Bible, and then somebody says, “Now, before y’all go, I just wanna tell you the gospel.” That’s not what I’m talking about. And you’re probably not telling them the gospel.

The gospel is the announcement that God has revealed and opened up his kingdom to sinners through the birth and the teaching and the miracles and the death and the resurrection and the ascension of his Son, Jesus, the Messiah, who is one day going to return and overturn evil in its entirety and consummate his kingdom for all of eternity. The Lamb becomes the shepherd and looks after his sheep and wipes away all the tears from their eyes. Every time you hear the news, every time you read your newspaper, every time you’re confronted by the circumstances of life, you will do well to take yourself back again to Revelation 7 and say, “But wait a minute! God is putting together this vast company.”

Now, we began by thinking of paintings on Tuesday, and so we’re going to end by thinking of paintings. Don’t misunderstand me, as if I know a great deal about painting. I don’t at all. But it doesn’t stop me from thinking that one day I might. And so, one must live with hope. But if you think of this as a great painting… All right? When painters paint—I’ve seen this from going to galleries—before they have the final picture, they are often other little mini paintings, or there are actually thumbnail sketches. Sometimes the work is done in pencil, and there are pencil drawings before you have the final piece.

Three Thumbnail Sketches

What I want to do is suggest to you a couple of the pencil drawings that precede the completion of this big picture. I hope you can follow my line of thought. Yes, I do.

First little thumbnail sketch—and I’m not going to go to all these passages of Scripture, because it would be tedious; and secondly, because you’re such an august body that you’re able to just follow right with me. It’s wonderful to preach to such a good group. Everybody’s sitting up slightly higher in their chair now: “Thank you. He obviously understands where he is.”

The first little thumbnail sketch is God’s call and covenant with Abraham. Okay? So we have to go back into Genesis. We’re not going to go there. The call of God to Abraham and to create a people that are his very own. And that covenant picture, both in the Old and in the New Testament, is, as you know, God’s free decision to call out of all the peoples of the world a people to be his own special possession as he becomes their Redeemer. It means more than that, but it doesn’t mean less than that—that God has pledged himself from all of eternity. What the Father has planned the Son has procured, the Spirit applies, in the great work of redemption: to put together a people that are his very own. And it is the utterly undeserved privilege of all who have come to trust in Christ to find themself included in that big company.

And when you read, then, the drama of the Bible, if you read it with that thought in view, then the little individual bits and pieces suddenly take on a far greater and far more comprehensive significance. So, for example, there’s a servant girl, and she’s working in a large house. She works, really, for the wife. She knows the master of the house. The master of the house is sick. The master of the house can’t seem to get any benefit at all, any cure at all. The servant girl says to her boss, “If my master would go and see the prophet who is in Samaria, the prophet who’s in Samaria would be able to help him.”[5] Fast-forward to the great entourage showing up with Naaman and all his hosts.

You remember the rest of the story. You remember how he leaves in a great harrumph and a pumph, and “I’m not going in the filthy river. I don’t care who the fellow is.”[6] And who is it, again, then that speaks? Who’s used, in the economy of God, in the intervention in the life of Naaman, to paint Naaman into the great canvas that is here in Revelation 7? Who’s used initially? A servant girl. What’s her name? Don’t know. Who’s then used? Servants. What are their names? Don’t know. Because they’re the ones who intervene: “My father,” they said, “if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you [to] ‘Wash and be cleansed’!”[7] A young girl from Israel, servants in the entourage, and the covenant intervention of God in the life of a statesman.

Or what about Ruth the Moabitess? What about the way in which God chooses to use the triple bereavement in the life of Naomi to forward his purposes in these things? Probably the best short story ever written, the story of Ruth. What is happening? The covenant promise of God: that “I am going to have a people that is vast in its complexity, that extends to the ends of the earth. Look up in the sky. Look down in the sand,” he says.[8] And as you read through what is happening, God is keeping his purpose. He is fulfilling his promise. He is employing his servants. He is enlarging his people. And he’s still doing it.

That’s one little sketch.

The other thumbnail sketch that I put down in my notes was the calling of the disciples. The calling of the disciples. I did this arbitrarily, but I did it purposefully. Because in Mark 1:15, although the NIV says that Jesus then stands on the stage after John the Baptist and he says, “The time has come,” in fact, he doesn’t say, “The time has come.” He says, “The time is fulfilled.” Peplerotai ho kairos, the fulfillment of time. That is a better translation. Why? Because Jesus is declaring that the whole process, the whole promise of redemptive revelation in the Old Testament, finds its fulfillment in him. “The time has come.” “The time is fulfilled.” “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the [gospel]!”[9]

And that explains why in encounters with people, everything is moved dramatically forward.

Remember with the lady at the well, in John chapter 4, she says, “When the Messiah comes, he’ll explain all of this.”[10]

He says, “Excuse me?” “I who speak to you am he.”[11]

“The time is fulfilled.”

Or, in the synagogue in Nazareth, when they were used to having the various speakers at the equivalent of the Mullins Lectures, and they were all coming in and going out, the same old stuff all the time. And eventually they realize that it’s the boy from the carpenter shop, he’s giving the talk. Now he’s doing the reading, and he’s gonna give the talk. And he read from the passage of Scripture, and then he sat down. And it’s recorded for us that all “the eyes … in the synagogue … fastened on him.”[12] They could never have imagined what he was going to say. His opening sentence was a killer: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”[13]

Or, third thumbnail sketch; the beginning of Acts. You say, “We like this. You’ve moved the whole way from Genesis to Act in probably six minutes. That was praiseworthy!” Yes, make note of it, those of you who are planning a seventeen-week series to get where I’ve got in seven minutes. Don’t do that to your people. You’re not that good. And they’re not that gracious.

Acts chapter 1. Here’s the other thumbnail sketch, post-resurrection. “Okay, Jesus,” say the disciples. “We get it now. Let’s go! We thought the whole thing was over. We’re delighted to know that it isn’t. We’re starting to figure out your death was part of the plan. Okay. Well, are you gonna restore the kingdom to Israel now, Jesus?”[14] Nationalistic flavor of their request is understandable, but it’s wrong. And Jesus has to recalibrate their thinking in terms of the giving of the Spirit and the proclamation of the gospel: “Fellas, this is not about a temple in Jerusalem. This is not about the nationalistic focus that you have in relationship to the Jewish people. This is about the Spirit of God being poured out upon you. And don’t go till he comes. And when he sends you, then you go exactly where you’re told. And you’re gonna discover that there are countless people who will be ushered into the kingdom. You will be my witnesses, after the power of the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, to the ends of the earth.”[15]

Goldsworthy puts it like this: “Instead of the expected glorious reign of … Christ in [the new] Jerusalem, we learn that the sceptre of the risen Christ is the preached word that will be the focus of the worldwide missionary endeavour of the church.”[16] And that drama then unfolds. For example, Peter then preaches in Jerusalem, and he says there is no other name under heaven by which men may be saved.[17] He then has to go through the experience that is crystallized in the house of Cornelius, and he suddenly gets it, and he says, “I now realize … that God does not show favoritism.”[18] In other words, there is no special nation status.

The gospel shatters every man-made barrier of race.

Britain, in its history, suffered dramatically as a result of certain segments of the evangelical church conceiving of something which was essentially called British Israelism. They read all of the promises in relationship to the fulfillment of the kingdom of God directly in nationalistic terms. They were so jingoistic as to think that somehow or another God was uniquely committed to Britain and to its empire. Let me ask you where the British Empire is today. Would it be wrong for me to suggest that America tracks right behind Britain? That there are large swaths of contemporary evangelicalism that are so nationalistic in their approach to the gospel that they have missed this point entirely or have chosen to ignore it: that God does not show favoritism?

You see it in relationship to the Middle East, in terms of Israel, in terms of the Arab population. Most of the stuff that is said, which we entirely understand, does not give any credence at all to the existence of those who love Christ and suffer for Christ in the Arab communities of the Middle East. Why is that? It’s because of a view of the Bible. It’s because of a way of reading this stuff. Ideas have implications. That’s why you are sensible people. You must read your Bible and figure this out.

The gospel shatters every man-made barrier of race. Every man-made barrier of race.

[We have] a story to tell to the nations
That [will] turn their hearts to the right,
A story of truth and [gladness],
A story of [love] and light.

For the darkness will turn to dawning,
And the dawning to noonday bright,
And [God]’s great kingdom shall come on earth,
The kingdom of love and light.[19]

The Big Picture

Well, come back now to the picture with me, back into the room. We did those little drawings. Let’s come back and look at this “great multitude that no one could count.”

“Oh,” says somebody, “what do you mean, ‘no one can count’? There are some numbers there in the chapter. I see that you’re just trying to skip them. You started at verse 9 because you’re afraid of the 144,000. How clever of you, Begg!” So now we’ve got Mrs. Jenkins in the Bible study, who wants to tell us what the 144,000 is. It’s a good time to send her out to make coffee.

Let me just say this: when you come to these things, it’s important for us to remind ourselves that what John is doing in writing Revelation is not ministering to armchair theorists in the twenty-first century. He’s writing to the battlers in the first century, who are struggling to reconcile the fact of a risen Lord with the persecution and the frustration and the feebleness of their lives. Every day they live their lives, they are harried and pressed upon from every corner. They’re trying to say, “Well, if we serve a risen Christ, why is the world the way it is? If he is the triumphant Lord, if he is the ascended King, what in the world is this mess? Look at my children. Look at my grandchildren. What am I supposed to do?” That’s why he’s writing Revelation. He’s not writing it so that people in the twenty-first century can get PhDs by explaining some intricate and marvelous interpretation. And some of the interpretations are… Their ingenuity is only matched by their improbability! And the more ingenious you are, the more improbable you probably are as well. What John, when he writes—and you get it in chapter 1—he’s not writing from never-never land. He is writing from ever-ever land. So beware these things. Beware these things.

So, what do you want to do with the 144,000? Who is in this company? Well, I’ll lay my colors out before you, and shoot me as I leave.

I think we’re on the right track when we see the number of 144,000 and the multitude as one and the same. As one and the same. From one perspective, from God’s perspective, it’s the perfect number: the square of twelve by the cube of ten. That’s what John heard. That’s the number: a definite total known only to God. For God “know[s] them that are his”—2 Timothy 2.[20]

That’s what John heard. What did John see? What he saw, if you like, from a human perspective was a numberless multitude. From God’s perspective, this crowd is all Israel—the real Israel in Christ. “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed[s], and heirs according to the promise”[21]—the real Israel, in Christ, converted Jews and gentiles. God sees that. From our perspective, it just looks like a vast crowd gathered together from everywhere. Again, you’re sensible. Read your Bible.

But know this: that in this crowd, there will be no empty seats. In this crowd, there will be no no-shows. In this crowd, there will be no returns at the door. No one will be showing up and saying, “I don’t need this ticket.” You won’t be able to go along a half an hour before the performance and pick up a seat that somebody has decided not to fulfill. That is not for a moment to suggest that the kingdom is going to be sparsely populated, because it is a “multitude that no one could count.”

And they’re not put together simply arbitrarily or willy-nilly. The individuals who are here in this company, according to verse 14, are those who are cleansed and clothed. Cleansed and clothed.

“Oh, but wait a minute,” said Mrs. Jenkins. “What about the great tribulation?”

“Mrs. Jenkins, I said make the coffee.”

These are the individuals who are cleansed and clothed—those who by faith have received the gift of righteousness in Christ to clothe them before the searching gaze of a holy God. “[Clothed] in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne.”[22] That’s who’s there, clothed in the righteousness of Christ. You get that in Zinzendorf’s hymns. You get that in Watts. You get that in Newton. You get it in Townend and Getty.

As a boy in Scotland, I grew up with lots of hymns. Many of them are just buried now in my consciousness. I never get to sing them. I sing them in the car by myself. One came to mind this morning. It begins like this:

With harps and with viols,
There stand[s] a great throng
In the presence of Jesus,
[To] sing this new song:

Unto him who hath loved us
And washed us from sin,
Unto him be the glory forever. Amen.

And the second verse I always loved. Goes like this:

All these once were sinners,
Defiled in his sight,
Now arrayed in pure garments
In praise they unite:

Unto him who hath loved us
And washed us from sin,
Unto him be the glory forever. Amen.[23]

Are You in the Picture?

Now, we’re gonna finish with a little exercise in imagination. I won’t have them bring the screen down, although that would be quite good. (Don’t!) I want you to imagine that the picture is up behind me here, that no one could actually imagine or count. And I want to ask you if you can see some faces.

I think if you look up to your left and my right, you’ll see the face of the lady who was “lookin[g] for love in all the wrong places.”[24] She met Jesus, he asked her for a drink of water, and her life was never going to be the same again.[25] As a result of that, you’ll see her face up there.

If you look over on the far side, you’ll see the funny little guy who climbed up a tree in the hope that he might have seen Jesus, just a chance to get a look at him, little realizing that Jesus would stop right underneath this tree, look up, and call him by his name, and tell him he wanted to come to his house for a cup of tea.[26] And Zacchaeus’s life would never be the same again. You’ll see his face up there.

If you look carefully, right in the middle you’ll see a big Black man who was reading his Bible on the way home from a conference in Jerusalem and hadn’t a clue what he was reading about until a little Jewish guy came up and ran along beside him and said, “Do you understand what you[’re] reading [about]?”[27] And he said, “How could I ever understand what I’m reading about unless somebody explains it to me?”[28] And Philip says, “Well, I guess that’s why this Spirit of God told me to run along here beside the chariot. Seemed like a crazy idea to start with, but now it’s beginning to make sense.” And he hops into the chariot with him, and he leads him to faith in Jesus Christ.[29] You’ll see his face up there.

You’ll also see the face of the thief who got it right at just the last minute—the one who turned to his friend and said, “Don’t you fear God? We’re up here getting what our sins deserve. He hasn’t done anything wrong. Lord, will you remember me when you come into your kingdom?”[30]

Now, you say, “Well, what would you do with this if you were preaching to a variegated congregation such in your own church?” Well, I think this is how I would finish. I would say, “Do you see your face up there? Because it’s a very interesting thing: John may have seen you. ’Cause he saw this. This was a vision of the completed picture. So there’re actually faces. You may meet John in eternity, and he goes, ‘You know what? You that guy? Were you doing an MDiv at… Because I’m sure I saw you. When I had that vision of the huge big picture, I… You look familiar to me.’”

But I’d ask my congregation, “Do you see your face there?”

And they might say, “Well, how would my face ever be there?”

And then I’d tell them that in Scotland, when it was like Tuesday was—miserable, raining all the time—I would take my pocket money sometimes, and I would actually go and buy a book that had what was ostensibly blank sheets of paper in it. I’m sure they must have come from America. It was an ingenious idea. You have all the good ideas. And they were essentially blank sheets of paper. And what you did was you got a little jug of water, and you got a paintbrush, and then you put water on what was essentially a blank sheet—and it wasn’t a blank sheet! Faces started to appear! “Wow, look at that! How did I do that? Did I make them come there?” No! Apparently, they were there. “Yeah, but they wouldn’t have been seen if I hadn’t put the water on them, would they?”

“And you also were included in Christ,” says Paul to the Ephesians, “when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation”[31]—when somebody, as it were, took the paintbrush, dipped it in the glorious news of the gospel, and painted it over what looked to be a blank canvas, and suddenly another face appeared in the multitude that no one could count.

And then I would say this, and this I say to you: is that if that is the case, and if we are in Christ, and if we do understand something of this in terms of the great call of the evangel and of gospel and of mission, then I might tell them about two of my favorite people in conclusion.

One would be Charles Haddon Spurgeon. And I would tell them that on Spurgeon’s tombstone in Upper Norwood in suburban London, you can find the verse from the hymn,

E’er since, by faith, I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.[32]

And then I would tell them of Eric Liddell, who won the gold for Britain in the 1924 Olympics, memorialized in Chariots of Fire, as now only seen by grandparents and old people that get their old movie out and watch it. It’s worth getting. But forget the movie. After he had finally been a hero in Scotland and left for China, when he left for China from the Waverley Station in Edinburgh, a great company gathered, not simply of his Christian friends but people in the community, because he was really the Michael Jordan of his day. He was as famous as that, as an athlete. And the great assembled crowd was there watching as this fellow who had the world at his feet was about to go and lose himself in China. And he got on the train, and he let down the window in the train, and he addressed the crowd, and he thanked them for coming. And then he paused, and all of a sudden he shouted, “Christ for the world, for the world needs Christ!” And then he led them in the singing of the hymn,

Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
Doth his successive journeys run,
[And] his kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.[33]

When you’re tempted to be buried under the weight of a secular world, when we are tempted to be discouraged by our apparent and sometime realistic, inarticulate ineffectiveness, go and get this picture out, and look at it, and remind yourself that

God is still on the throne,
[That] he will remember his own;
Though trials may press us and burdens distress us,
He never will leave us alone;
God is still on the throne,
[And] he [will remember] his own;
His promise is true, he will not forget you,
God is still on the throne.[34]

Father, thank you that this is true. Thank you that your word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.[35] Shine out on the pathway of our lives, we pray, that we might live to the praise of your glory. For we ask it in your Son’s name. Amen.

[1] John R. W. Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1975), 29. Paraphrased.

[2] Arthur C. Ainger, “God Is Working His Purpose Out” (1894).

[3] Frank Houghton, “Facing a Task Unfinished.”

[4] See Romans 10:14.

[5] 2 Kings 5:3 (paraphrased).

[6] 2 Kings 5:11–12 (paraphrased).

[7] 2 Kings 5:13 (NIV 1984).

[8] Genesis 22:17; 26:4 (paraphrased).

[9] Mark 1:15 (NIV 1984).

[10] John 4:25 (paraphrased).

[11] John 4:26 (NIV 1984).

[12] Luke 4:20 (NIV 1984).

[13] Luke 4:21 (NIV 1984).

[14] Acts 1:6 (paraphrased).

[15] Acts 1:4–5, 8 (paraphrased).

[16] Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006), 224.

[17] See Acts 4:12.

[18] Acts 10:34 (NIV 1984).

[19] H. Ernest Nichol, “We’ve a Story to Tell the Nations” (1896).

[20] 2 Timothy 2:19 (KJV).

[21] Galatians 3:29 (NIV 1984).

[22] Edward Mote, “My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less (The Solid Rock)” (c. 1834).

[23] Arthur T. Pierson, “With Harps and With Viols.”

[24] Bob Morrison, Patti Ryan, Wanda Mallette, “Lookin’ for Love” (1980).

[25] See John 4:7–26.

[26] See Luke 19:1–10.

[27] Acts 8:30 (NIV 1984).

[28] Acts 8:31 (paraphrased).

[29] See Acts 8:35.

[30] Luke 23:40–42 (paraphrased).

[31] Ephesians 1:13 (NIV 1984).

[32] William Cowper, “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood” (1772).

[33] Isaac Watts, “Jesus Shall Reign Where’er the Sun” (1719).

[34] Kittie L. Suffield, “God Is Still on the Throne” (1929).

[35] See Psalm 119:105.