In east-central Minnesota, the county seat of Kanabec County is Mora, a small town of about 3,000 that’s named after a city in Sweden. Several miles to its south lies the unincorporated hamlet of Day. The only surviving business there is the Day Fish Market, one of the few remaining distributors of the Scandinavian delicacy lutefisk (dried cod fish cured in lye). A generations-old quip among farmers in the area has been:

"I’ve got to go into town to do some shopping."

"Yah, but are you going to go to Day or to Mora?"

A similar situation exists in southwest Ohio, with its village called Morrow. It was named for Jeremiah Morrow, one of Ohio’s early governors. But some village residents probably wish his name had been Jeremiah Smith. The Morrow moniker has provided grounds for confusion, especially when someone wanted to get to Morrow tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the stuff of prophecy. "The days are coming when ..." proclaimed the prophets. Such prophecies were often uttered during dark and dismal days in Israel’s history when not only the present but also the future looked bleak. But "tomorrow" was one way the prophets kept Israel’s faith alive.

Tomorrow is one of the keys for understanding Christianity, too. We explain it something like this: When you embrace the way of Christ, you enter the kingdom of God, which is already here in some ways. But you also inherit the hope of the kingdom to come, where God’s love and power will have full sway, where all wrongs will be righted and where there will be neither sorrow nor suffering anymore.

In October of 2001, the president of the United States told us that the war our country is now fighting is different from previous wars we’ve fought. If for no other reason, this war is different because it is a war that will never end. We are told that there will always be terrorists trying to attack us, to damage or destroy us. We have been told that we must remain vigilant, and try to eliminate terrorists before they can attack us.

Within months of the infamous attacks of September 11th, 2001 in New York City, and Washington DC, we were already battle weary and longing for some sense of normalcy in our lives. Instead, we’ve come to accept a new definition of normalcy.

Passports are required for visits to counties that didn’t used to require them. Air travel is a headache. Fear over the continued supply of oil drove gasoline prices up drastically – and with them the prices of just about all other goods and services. We’ve already become tired of complaining about those things.

Profiling our fellow citizens and visitors to our country was a source of anger for a while. But that too is something to which we’ve resigned ourselves. And how about the angry issue of immigration and the need to control our borders? It seems the flood has not even been slowed down, and Washington has kept us distracted with other issues until it has almost become a non-issue.

In the midst of these problems of the past and the gloom that seems to be everywhere now, one might look to the future and hope for better things to come. And the indications that things aren’t going to get better might paralyze us with fear, dread, and disappointment. But in the verses just before our text this morning, we see the multitude of believers signed and sealed by the blood of Christ. Today we celebrate God’s work in all the saints and our text assures us that the saints are signed, sealed, and will be delivered by Christ Jesus.

So where do we children of God turn for hope, encouragement, and strength to remain faithful to the faith that was begun in us by the Holy Spirit when we were baptized? How can we imitate and follow the example of the saints in heaven described as those who have come out of "the great tribulation" and who have "washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb? How do we get where they already are?

The answer is quite simple and clear in today’s text. But it’s not easy. It’s one that can make us weary just hearing it. It’s one that we might often prefer not to know because it’s not easy to abide by. You see, it looks like our text promises terrible tribulation until God declares us safely home to eternal life in the glory of his heaven.

Yet at the same time it gives us once again God’s faithful promise that he has done and is doing absolutely everything necessary to save us from the damning power and guilt of our sin and to take us safely, in faith, all the way home for eternity into the perfect glory of heaven.

In verse three of Revelation chapter seven, God tells us through St. John’s revelation, that Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit "have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads." The Greek word for "sealed" means to "set a mark or seal on us in faith to serve as protection and also identification."

God is protecting all those he has made his children through the sin-purifying waters of Baptism. It was at our Baptism that the Holy Spirit signed us into saving faith in Christ crucified, when the sign of the cross was made on our foreheads and our hearts. It is that sign of the cross that identifies believers as his dearly loved possessions, whom Christ Jesus bought with his sin-free lifeblood on Calvary’s cross.

This saving act not only destroyed all the power of our sin, the power of death, and the power of hell, it also stuck unquenchable fear into Satan. Satan relentlessly, but futilely tries to prevent the Holy Spirit from delivering us safely, in faith, into the multitude that no one could number in heaven, those that Jesus Christ himself has robed in white.

And this ongoing action of the Holy Spirit in us, working faith in us through the Gospel power of God’s Word and Sacraments, is the sealing action of God in us, just as it was for all the saints who rest from their labors in the loving arms of the Lamb of God in heaven. In those arms they don’t hunger or thirst or cry from the war-weariness of the great tribulation they endured in the sinful world.

But we still do. We’re still war-weary of the great tribulation of this world. We’re weary of a world that finds the Gospel so offensive and terrifying.

Even

though the Gospel is Good News, it implies that people have sin from which they need saving.

That’s why God continues to protect and identify us as his redeemed children in faith. That’s why he continues to seal us with the assurance of his forgiving love in the Gospel promise – the promise that Jesus has come to die in our place on Calvary’s cross.

That’s the ongoing, and even relentless sealing and delivering the Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit lives in our hearts, hearts signed by the Savior’s cross. And through that sign of the cross we have God’s guarantee that we will inherit heaven. This is God’s guaranteed delivery into the glory of his heaven, where white-robed, palm-waving saints sing our enthroned Savior’s praises. They sing well-rested and triumphant through God’s faithful delivery out of the great, tear-filled tribulation.

In the high-definition picture of the future revealed in today’s text, God’s Word gives us a faithful promise; "He who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence." Even as we cry our way through the great tribulation that we must endure in this life, he will shelter us until he takes us home to the glory of heaven.

God lives with us through faith, right here and right now. We don’t have to wonder about today or tomorrow. It’s already here, right now. Even through the sorrow, pain and tears of this sinful world, this promised sealing of us and our delivery to our home in heaven, gives us hope of the kingdom to come, the very same hope that every saint in that "great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands."

By Calvary’s cross, delivered to us at the baptismal
and at the altar of the Lord, God has signed and sealed us in his grace. In that grace we already stand in faithful assurance alongside the saints triumphant, and one day, not necessarily today or tomorrow, but one day we will join them in praising God.

In the early, dark days of World War II, England was ill prepared to defend itself. Night after night, German warplanes repeatedly bombed London. Many of the city’s children were sent to live with relatives out in the countryside, and the people who remained lived under daily threat. British flyers, seriously outgunned and piloting rickety, outdated planes, took to the air to defend the country, but many didn’t return alive. One of the most popular songs in England during that time was "The White Cliffs of Dover," which proclaimed, "There’ll be joy and laughter / And peace ever after, / Tomorrow / when the world is free ... Tomorrow / Just you wait and see."

The kingdom of God is the ultimate tomorrow. It’s the goal of history and the reward of the faithful. Its coming is up to God. But between today and that tomorrow are the nearer tomorrows. We who follow Jesus are empowered by the Holy Spirit to proclaim the Gospel promises of a signed, sealed, and delivered tomorrow to world that desperately needs to hear something that will keep their faith alive. And we shouldn’t wait for tomorrow to get started. We can go there today. Amen.