 Throughout my life I've increasingly found that reading Scripture in public isn't just about feeding our own spirits and minds. It's about rehearsing the mighty acts of God for God's glory. So let's think together about Revelation chapter 5 verses 9 and 10. And first we'll need some tea. This wonderful song, which comes in Revelation chapter 5, is an advanced statement of the promise which Revelation holds out for the new heavens and new earth with renewed humans taking their place within it. So often we in the church have imagined that if we are praising God for what he's done in Jesus, if we are praising Jesus himself for his death on the cross, this is because he's done what he's done so that we can go to heaven. And there as some hymns say, we will just rest forever. Well, in a sense, yes, it is a time of rest because it will be rest from the struggle which we still have with sin and suffering in this world. But it's much more interesting than that, much more human than that. What we are promised is that those who are rescued from sin and death will then become a kingdom and priests to God and will reign on the earth. Not reign in heaven, but reign on the earth. When the new heavens and new earth come together, then though it's hard for us to imagine this, partly because our Christian traditions haven't reflected very much on this, then there will be tasks to perform in God's new world. That notion of being a kingdom and priests goes all the way back to Exodus 19, where it is the call of Israel. Israel, having been brought out of Egypt, knowing themselves to be the people who are rescued under the shed blood of the Lamb, are then told that through the gift of the Torah in Exodus 20, through the gift of God's own presence in the tabernacle at the end of the book of Exodus, they are to be constituted as the people through whom God's will is to be done in the world. They are to be a royal priesthood. The royal bit has to do with the purposes of God working out through them in the world. The priestly bit has to do with the praises of creation returning through Israel to God. A lot of the Psalms are doing precisely that latter task. And this is then picked up in the New Testament, which sees Jesus himself as the royal priest. He is the true king. He is the true high priest. He is the one who sums up God's purposes for humankind. That is to say, to be under God and over the world, to be the one through whom the world is rescued, and the one who sums up the praises, the worship of the whole of creation before God his Father. And so now this is a song in praise to Jesus, the lamb who is also the lamb. If you read back in chapter five, you'll see that these two animals extraordinarily are held together. He's the lamb of Judah, who is also the sacrificial lamb, the Passover lamb. And those who know themselves to be rescued through the shed blood of the lamb are then going to sing in his praise. You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals. What's that all about? It seems to be about the ongoing purposes of God, that there is a scroll containing God's purposes in the heavenly vision, which John the seer is glimpsing in Revelation four and five. And on that scroll are the purposes written, which no other human being can take forward. There is nobody else who is worthy to do so, but Jesus has done what is necessary. He was slaughtered and with his own blood, he purchased a people for God. This is Exodus language. This is God going down to the slave market and purchasing the slaves and giving them their freedom. And so the picture then of the people of God is a picture of freed slaves suddenly looking around themselves with delight and joy to be able to be the people that they are really called to be, a kingdom and priests who will reign on the earth. Are we ready for that? Have we even reflected on what that might mean? And we notice that here, as elsewhere in Revelation, as elsewhere in the New Testament, this is a people who are defined simply in terms of their allegiance to Jesus because it is a people from every tribe and tongue, from every people and nation. Again and again the church, not least in the last few centuries, has tended to fragment into different groups, maybe all worshiping Jesus, but groups defined by their own nationality, their own language, their own national history, whatever it may be. And sadly, tragically, that has often resulted in them hating or even fighting each other, not just being separate but actually being hostile. What Revelation holds out to us is that the vision of Jesus as the slaughtered lamb must result if it is to have its proper effect in a community of every nation and language and tribe and tongue, every people worshiping together. This is the vision which we see in Paul's letters. It's clearly the vision of Revelation. It's a vision we would do well to ponder in our day and age as we look with gratitude back to Jesus and on to the vocation of his rescued people. So may God give you grace to celebrate the victory of Jesus and to understand the way in which your redemption is to make you part of the people of God through whom his will will be done on earth as in heaven. Amen.