Thursday: A Devotional Response

A Milwaukee Bucks playoff game is one of the most electrifying events I have ever been to. The roar of the crowd is truly something special to behold, but I rarely look around and study the individuals within the crowd. Instead, my focus on the court increases as the volume increases. But what would happen if the fans at the game spent the whole game trying to draw attention to themselves?

In Revelation 7:9-10, the relationship between multitude and individual is similar. The multitude is one group. It is made up of every difference you could possibly imagine in all of humanity, but the action of the multitude is unified away from itself and toward the Throne. Each person is wearing white, meaning they all have been through literal hell and were washed in the blood of the Lamb. This multitude is the most diverse representation of humanity ever seen, and the significance of that diversity should not be lost! It is easy, however, to stay there and miss the point. Just like with basketball fans, the multitude is there to focus on the main event, not focus on itself.

I long to see such a representation here on earth. In the present time, we value individualism and exalt ourselves in the multitude. Inequality seems to reign on every corner, and sometimes even the ones who stand against inequality use their “Holiness” as podium to glorify themselves. Sometimes self-hatred drives us to compare with others and damage ourselves. We are not in the same multitude as in Revelation 7. Our robes are still in the process of being washed by the blood of the Lamb. But there is a day when that multitude will come forth from every corner of the earth. In that multitude, there will be no place for pride, no place for self-loathing, no place for inequality, and no place for self-righteousness. There will be only a single, unified multitude that cannot contain itself when it gets a look at the Throne.

by Zack Johnson