Story of Scripture: New Creation

Alright, if you guys will turn with me in your Bibles to Revelation, chapter 21.

Revelation 21.

We'll read from several parts of this, and we'll kind of walk through it tonight.

This semester's been a little bit of a blur for me, I'm going to be honest with you.

We had a baby this semester, among other things.

And so, I mean, I'm pretty sure that what I'm about to tell you is what we've done on Wednesday nights.

I'm about to give you a little recap of what we've done.

But I'm not totally sure, just because it's kind of a blur to me, okay?

Make sense?

But this semester, if you've been here and if you haven't, we've really been kind of taking a walk through what we've called the story of Scripture.

So how the Bible kind of moves, sort of the plot line of the Bible.

How the Bible moves is one consistent, sort of coherent story.

We began with the creation account.

And that's...

And that kind of sets up the whole thing.

A very good God creates the world, and He blesses the world.

He creates people to honor and glorify Him.

He gives them a job to do.

And that happens at creation.

We moved on and looked at the fall.

This is Genesis 3, when the people that God had made to glorify Him decide they want their own glory instead, and they disobey Him.

And we learn that sin and death and evil and brokenness enter into our world.

From there, we took a look at sort of what sin and death really sort of means.

And just a further look.

And to that, in Romans 1.

So I know that was like a jump ahead.

But then we went back, and we started talking about the story of Israel and how God created a people.

He called them Israel.

It was a particular nation, a particular family of people.

And by them, He was going to bring redemption and salvation to the whole world.

You guys remembering this?

Shake your heads at me if you are, because...

Okay, cool.

Awesome.

We looked at the way that Israel failed to be that particular people to be agents of God's redemption in the world.

How they chose to...

Again, rebel against God, disobey Him.

They wanted their own sort of king rather than letting God be their king.

And that led them into all kinds of trouble.

But we looked in spite of that how God promised that He would bring salvation and restoration to them.

And then we took a look at Jesus and how Jesus came bringing His kingdom in the cross of Christ.

How redemption kind of came to its climax.

Then we looked at the story of the resurrection and new life.

And now we're at sort of the final scene, the final chapter of the story.

And it's the creation.

Actually, maybe we could say it's new creation.

A new heavens and a new earth.

So that's kind of where we pick it up right here.

We're going to read this together.

We'll walk through it.

Revelation chapter 21, verse 1.

And then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.

For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.

And the sea was no more.

And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared.

As a bride adorned for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them, and they will be His people.

And God Himself will be with them as their God.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.

Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore.

For the former things have passed.

And He who is seated on the throne said,

Behold, I am making all things new.

Also He said,

Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.

And He said to me,

It is done.

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

To the thirsty I will give from the spring of water of life without payment.

The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God, and he will be my son.

But as for the cowardly, the fatherless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral,

sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars,

their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

We'll move to verse 22.

And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb.

And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it,

for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.

By its light will the nations walk,

and the kings of the earth will bring their glory,

and its gates will never be shut by day,

and there will be no night there.

They will bring into it the glory and the honor of nations,

but nothing unclean will ever enter it,

nor anyone who does what is attestable or false,

but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life,

bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb

through the middle of the street of the city.

Also on either side of the river,

there is the river of life, with its twelve kinds of fruit,

yielding its fruit each month.

The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

No longer will there be anything accursed,

but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it,

and His servants will worship Him.

They will see His face,

and His name will be on their foreheads,

and night will be no more.

They will need no light of lamp or sun,

for the Lord God will be their light,

and they will see His face,

and they will reign forever and ever.

Let's pray.

Lord, we do ask that now You'd teach us, Lord,

and You'd show us what this all means.

God, would You enliven our imagination.

God, would It give us great hope.

Lord, would It give us courage to endure.

God, would It make us people who live in light of new creation that's coming.

Lord, would You...

Lord, would You, just by the power of Your Spirit,

just do great things through Your Word.

Lord, I pray that it would speak to us clearly.

Lord, we pray that just in Your kindness and in Your mercy,

You'd take the words that I've prepared.

Lord, would You make this Your Word to us and for us tonight.

We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Amen.

So, you know, I grew up going to church.

And I'm just going to test a little,

float a little theory out there.

That was my experience.

And just see if you guys can connect with this.

I grew up going to church and I'd always hear about heaven.

Okay?

I'd always hear about one day we're going to go to heaven.

And the way heaven was explained to me didn't sound that great.

The way it was explained to me is that heaven would be like,

almost like a church service that would just last forever.

And when I got to thinking about a church service

that would just last forever,

that would just go on and on forever,

that didn't exactly sound like heaven to me.

Okay?

That sounded like something else.

Just the idea of kind of floating around in the sky somewhere

at some church service that goes on and on,

I don't know.

I struggled with that.

It wasn't something I really longed for.

Maybe not something I really hoped in.

But I think the picture that's given here is different than that.

And certain parts of the picture,

it's given here.

You know, I think even in my own life,

I'm only barely coming to a place where I can begin to hope in that.

I think there's something about,

okay, this is where I'm going to get old on you.

I think there's something about when you get a little old

and you start growing up and you're out of college

and you start living like as an adult,

which I'm doing right now,

you just really start to long for some things

that only God can provide and only God can really do.

And that's kind of what we have here.

That's a picture of what we have here.

That God will eventually make everything

that's wrong, right.

And there's all kinds of rich symbolism.

There's really so much in here.

I thought of different ways we could probably walk through this.

I tried to think of thematic ways we could do it, you know?

Like God's presence, God's people, the place.

Those are three Ps and I don't know if that worked.

So I thought of all these ways to go through this.

But I figured a lot of that would really do a disservice

to what's going on here.

Because it's just so beautiful and so rich.

So we're just going to walk through

just some things of this.

I hope that tonight what we say here

just wets your whistle just a little bit

to want to dive into this more.

So everything, I'm not even going to pretend

that we're going to cover all the rich,

beautiful things in here.

We're going to kind of take a stab at it

a little bit at a time.

So a couple observations from this passage

and we'll kind of figure out what that means for us.

First of all, check out verse 1.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.

For the first heaven and the first earth

had passed away and the sea was no more.

A new heaven.

A new heaven and a new earth.

You know, the destiny of human people,

the destiny of God's people

is actually eventually an earthly destiny.

You know, there's a certain degree

in which we've kind of sort of heard talk of,

you know, like I was saying earlier,

floating away somewhere.

But the picture given here is that heaven,

it's a new heaven and it's a new earth.

So in other words, heaven and earth,

like the totality of creation is going to be made new.

There's going to be new creation.

But it's going to be very physical.

It's going to be very physical and material.

There will be resurrected bodies, we learn.

We're going to have physical bodies.

There's going to be a physical place.

It's a new heaven, but it's also a new earth.

I mean, this is interesting.

It's not a disembodied sort of spiritual existence,

but there's a physical nature to it.

Now, it's different.

Scripture tells us right here that

the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.

I don't really know exactly what that means

to say that they passed away.

But somehow,

the earth that we live in now,

and the heaven and the earth,

our created order will be remade and recreated somehow.

That's kind of the picture given here.

And look at this line.

And the sea was no more.

Okay, it might seem kind of random to you.

I know personally, me, I like the sea.

I like the ocean.

I enjoy getting in ocean water

and it's wild and cool and cold

and all that sort of things.

But see, in the ancient world,

the idea of the ocean and the sea,

the sea was sort of a picture

of things being chaotic and crazy

and out of control.

In the ancient world,

the sea was the place of darkness

and chaos and fear.

There's lots of places in Scripture

in which the sea kind of roars

and God has to sort of tame the sea.

In the ancient world,

in the ancient imagination,

see creatures and monsters

and see gods and goddesses

sort of ruled in the ocean

and sort of opposed

sort of the order and stability of God.

And what we hear right here

is that that sea is no more.

In other words, God's going to put away

sort of all opposition and chaos

and fear.

This is good news.

And then look at verse 3.

I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them

and they will be his people.

The whole of Scripture,

the whole of the story of Scripture

is kind of getting us to this moment

where God can be with his people

and he can dwell with them.

This is sort of the main event of heaven.

This new heavens and a new earth,

this new creation.

This is sort of the main event,

the main objective, the main goal

is that God and his people

can dwell together in the same place.

Throughout the story of Scripture,

we learn that because of sin,

God has to be distant from his people

and his presence can only be

sort of mediated to them

through sort of a, you know,

like a layer of protection

from his holiness.

Because of the people's sin

and uncleanliness,

God can't be physically present.

So there's all kinds of ways

that God has to sort of

meet with his people.

But what we learn here is that

all those things are no more.

That God can be actually

physically present with his people.

The dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them.

They will be his people.

And God himself will be with them

as their God.

You know, there's a lot of times

we think of heaven.

We think of the idea of heaven

as being some place.

You know, and you just hear talk of this.

Like, heaven's a place where, you know,

you hear of guys who love God.

They say, in heaven,

there's going to be tons of awesome golf courses

and great food and all this stuff.

Well, the problem with thinking that way

is that we can kind of think about heaven.

But what about this question?

What if God wasn't in heaven?

Would you still want to be there?

And if your answer's like, yeah, sure.

Well, then you don't understand

what the Bible's trying to do.

The Bible's trying to bring God

and his people together,

not just give us some afterlife

with a bunch of sort of pleasures.

In the biblical imagination,

the main event of heaven

is God's presence.

God and his people

being dwelling together.

This is huge.

This is important.

This is tons of hope for us.

It's exciting.

And look at verse 4.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,

and death shall be no more.

Neither shall there be mourning

nor crying nor pain anymore,

for the former things have passed away.

Pain, mourning, crying, death, tears.

Scripture here is calling those things

those things that are so much

sort of normal in our world,

these things that cause so much hurt

and brokenness and pain.

Scripture here says that those things

are but former things.

I got on the news on CNN.com

just to read some of the hurt

and brokenness in our world

in light of preparing for this.

And just right off the top,

the front page was a story

of a mother and a son

who actually were killed in car accidents

the same day,

but in two different places.

I mean, how does that happen?

Our world is very broken.

You don't need me to tell you

our world is very broken

and bad things happen.

I mean, our church family here,

I told you guys,

I alluded to this last week,

but a drunk driver plowed right in

and nearly killed a lady in our church.

And it's just crazy how it happened

because the only reason she was even on the road

is because a storm came

and her flight was delayed

and she should have already been gone,

but her flight gets delayed

until the next morning

and all this like crazy events happen

and it ends up with her getting killed

and almost killed.

Or almost killed and hurt.

I mean, there's a lot of brokenness

and hurt in our world.

I read on CNN.com

that some guy was poisoned randomly and died.

This famous former NFL football player

killed himself just today.

There's just all kinds of things.

There's a massive healthcare fraud story right now

where to the tune of $450 million

people have been cheating in the healthcare system.

There's a civil war going on in Syria.

I mean, just all this awful, terrible stuff.

There's a nuclear,

war on the verge in Iran

that a lot of people think.

I mean, these are just things,

events that are broken

and they're hurtful and painful and mourning.

And scripture says that all those sort of things

will eventually be no more.

And think about in your own life.

Think about all the personal things

that you've experienced.

All the hurt and pain and fear

and tears that you've experienced.

I mean, I think of myself sort of personally.

Just in the journey I've been on this semester.

I mean, Mandy and I had a baby this semester.

And our baby had to be in the intensive care unit

for a couple days.

And when I'm up there,

I see all these other little babies

with all these tubes hooked up to them.

And hurt and brokenness and pain and crying

are very much a normal part of our world.

I can think of times I've been in Haiti.

And there's a place I go

that is a center for malnourished children.

And I remember just feeling

this little malnourished girl's legs.

And because she was so malnourished,

she's actually really, really swollen.

And these like sores and blisters are on her legs.

I can just feel them right now.

And just seeing this little girl,

probably two years old.

Brokenness, pain.

These things are so much a part of our world.

But scripture here tells us

that these things are but former things.

They're going to pass away.

And all those things in your life

that cause you hurt and pain and brokenness,

they're going to pass away.

Those things are but former things

because God himself will be with his people.

And he's going to wipe away tears from eyes.

It's good news.

Verse 5 says that he's making all things new.

In verse 6, he says it's done.

It's done.

He's the Alpha and Omega.

And look in verse 7.

In verse 7, or what?

Sorry, verse 6.

He says,

To the thirsty I will give from the spring of water

life without payment.

The idea of for the thirsty,

those who thirst after God

will eventually be fully and totally satisfied.

You guys, I feel so unsatisfied so often.

There's something in my heart

that always feels empty and unsatisfied.

God himself says he will satisfy.

He will satisfy freely.

And then there's the difficult verse of verse 8.

Part of God making all things right

involves judgment and punishment

of those who rebel against him

and remain unrepentant.

It's not the most popular thing,

but it's here.

Part of him making all things right

involves him bringing justice and judgment.

And then from verses 9 to verse 21,

we get this picture of jewels and beauty.

And these measurements.

And all this is just to say

that everything's whole,

everything's complete,

everything's beautiful,

everything's the way it's supposed to be.

The city comes.

The narrative of scripture begins in a garden,

but it ends in a city.

Just this idea of movement toward fullness,

toward completeness,

toward wholeness.

And then we see in verse 22,

And I saw no temple in the city,

for its temple is the Lord God,

the Almighty, and the Lamb.

The idea of the temple

is the place where God's presence,

which dwells in a special way.

But what we see is that

there's actually not a temple in the city

because the Lord God is the temple.

In other words, His presence,

His access.

Like the people of God

in this new heaven and earth

have complete access to God.

Fully, completely.

So therefore, the line

in the new heaven and new earth

between what's sacred

and what's secular

is not, there's no line anymore.

It's all together.

Full, complete.

God's presence here completely.

Verse 23,

And the city had no need of sun or moon

to shine on it,

for the glory of God gives it its light.

The glory of God on full display.

Look at verse 24,

But by its light will the nations walk.

The kings of the earth

will bring their glory into it.

Its gates will never be shut by day

and there will be no more night.

The nations will be able to be here

in this new heaven and new earth.

From the very beginning

throughout the narrative scripture

we've seen all along

that God's heart is for the whole world,

all the nations.

And what we see here

is that the nations are here.

The plane of God's global work of redemption

has been accomplished

in the here and now.

In verse 27 again,

we hear that nothing unclean can enter it.

Again, God's judgment

is a part of Him making all things right.

And if we just kind of move quickly

through the last part in chapter 22,

we hear that there's a tree

in the middle of the city.

The story of scripture began

centered around this tree

that was in a garden.

Now this tree is in the,

in the middle of the city.

Interesting that the early Christian church,

the early church fathers,

they're very interesting

in the way they interpreted scripture.

And they couldn't help but hear of a tree,

you know, which would be made of wood

and kind of see a clear illusion

to the beauty of how the cross of Christ

has made all this redemption possible.

Verse 3,

no longer will there be anything accursed.

We've started off this semester,

or at least the second,

week we talked about how

because of sin and brokenness

and disobedience,

all of the world is under a curse.

And what we hear here

is nothing's a curse.

The whole curse has been

completely reversed here.

Just a second though,

we said there was no night there.

In scripture,

especially in John's writings,

night is a picture of darkness and evil.

For example, in John's gospel,

Judas goes out to portray Jesus

and tells us a quick little line there

and says,

and it was night when he did this.

It's a picture of darkness.

But what we learn here is that there's no more night.

So sin and evil and darkness,

there's no more night.

And then just to move right back up to verse 4.

And again, this is,

I said the main event is God being with his people,

but probably the main, main, main part of that

is verse 4.

They will see his face

and his name will be on their foreheads.

In the Bible,

to see someone in the face

is to know them as they truly are.

And what scripture promises us

in verse 4 here

is that we'll actually see Jesus' face.

You know, there's a part of me

that's really, really beginning to long for that moment.

And you might not be there.

I think it's something God,

sort of, slowly kind of creates in you

just a real desire to know him

as he really, really is.

And there's a part of me

that's just barely starting to long for that.

To actually look at Jesus face to face.

This idea of name,

his name being on their foreheads.

The idea of God's ownership

over his people.

One day God will eventually own us

and he'll own us fully.

If you're like me, you struggle

because you feel to a certain degree

that God owns you.

You feel a little bit,

but you struggle to let him own you fully

and totally.

But what we learn is

in the new heavens and new earth,

we'll see his face

and his name will be on our foreheads.

He will own us completely and fully.

And this is what we learn.

This is kind of the promise

of the new heavens and new earth.

God being with his people.

Complete, total access to him.

Everything made right.

All the hurt and pain and brokenness gone.

Beauty, completeness, wholeness.

Knowing God as he truly is.

Seeing him in his face.

It's just a ridiculously,

almost hysterically beautiful,

beautiful picture.

It kind of concludes the story of scripture.

God will eventually fix it.

It's really, really, really good news.

Suzanne and I,

Suzanne and I went to seminary together at Beeson.

I don't know if all you guys know that.

Suzanne and I were in a class one time

and our professor was just telling us about how,

you know, he's just being honest

and telling us that really God guarantees us

very, very little.

I mean, God promises us a lot of,

a lot of beautiful truths and things,

but God doesn't guarantee us a lot.

I don't know if you ever thought about that.

And he was kind of talking to us about this

and he was saying, you know,

God promises slash guarantees

that you will have,

you will have a resurrected body

in a new heavens and a new earth.

And I'd add on to that

in that you will see Jesus' face.

And there's not a lot else besides that

that he guarantees you.

He doesn't guarantee you a good job one day.

He doesn't guarantee you an easy life.

He doesn't guarantee you a wife or a husband

or kids or healthy kids.

He doesn't guarantee you a life

of tons of purpose and meaning.

God promises us

sort of at the end of all of it,

he promises us

a new heavens and a new earth

where everything's made right

and his personal presence with us.

And I think there comes a point

where that begins to be sort of compelling

and almost like it could be enough for you.

And I don't know,

I think as we just journeyed through

this story of scripture,

I mean, I think maybe

that's the hope and that's the dream

that we would have gone through this

and we've seen everything that God has done.

We've seen that everything that God has done

to bring redemption to his world,

that we see the way that he's loved us

and he's poured out his grace

and his mercy upon us

and he's set the whole thing right again.

And he promises us his presence

and just as college students

and as young adults

that we'd really want to know this God.

We'd really want to cling to him.

We'd really want to put all our hope in him.

And that would really, really be enough for us.

That we'd really want to live

our lives as sort of

a little bitty part

of this grand big story of redemption

that he's kind of crafting and shaping.

And I think a text like this,

the beauty of it,

really makes that

something real desirable.

So what do we do?

What do we do with such a beautiful picture?

I want to just suggest just a few things.

In light of this, what do we do?

I think a few things.

One, just hope.

There's a lot of things.

There's a lot of things you can be hopeful about.

Our world's broken,

but based upon this text,

there's a lot of things we can have hope.

You guys are going to encounter

difficult things in your life

if you haven't already.

Things that you're not sure

that you can really bear.

But a text like this gives us a lot of hope.

And it also lets us sort of endure.

So hope, also endure.

Revelation was originally written to the church

in a really difficult situation.

They're being persecuted.

Persecuted very much does not look like

God rules and reigns in the world.

In Revelation, it was written to tell the people of God

to hope, but also to endure.

To hold on, to be faithful.

And that's the call to you and to me tonight.

To hope, but yes, but also to endure.

To be faithful.

To hold on.

Just hang in there.

Okay?

Just hang in there.

Keep pursuing Jesus.

Hang in there.

He's going to make everything right.

Hang in there.

I know it's hard.

Hang in there.

A third thing.

Just long for Him.

And that's not even something you can conjure up.

It's not like you're like,

you wake up in the morning and go,

okay, one, two, three, long for Him.

I know it doesn't work that way.

But just pray that God would give you an appetite

for this Revelation 22, four moment

that you'll see His face.

Ask God to give you an appetite.

I'm telling you, in my own life,

I feel like I'm only barely having that kind of appetite.

I wish I had it more.

So hope in Him.

Endure.

Hang in there.

Long for Him.

And then a fourth thing.

Live now in light of this.

And how do you do that?

Well, for example,

we know that a new creation is coming.

So ask yourself these kinds of questions.

In the new heavens and new earth,

what would a relationship look like?

Well, I bet in a relationship

in the new heavens and new earth,

there would be healing.

There would be reconciliation.

So seek those things now in light of what will be.

Personal example.

In a new heavens,

in a new earth,

there probably won't be malnourished children.

So let's work to bring malnourished children

to nourishment in the here and now

because we know that one day

God will eventually set that right.

Does that make sense?

See, knowing that new creation is coming

leads us to live in light of the new creation coming.

We know that the nations will eventually be here

in this new Jerusalem

because we know that's going to be the case.

So let's go to the nations now

with the word of the gospel.

Let's do that

because we know that will be.

There's lots of examples.

We know in a new heavens and new earth,

a new Jerusalem,

a new city,

a new creation with the city,

that means there's going to be things bought

and sold and traded.

So if you're going to be a businessman,

then practice business now

in light of what you will be one day

with just practices

and things that are truly helpful for people.

What I'm trying to say is

whatever your field,

whatever you're into,

whatever you're interested in,

if you're going to be a nurse,

practice nursing now

in light of what will be.

And when you do that,

you are actually participating with God

in the redemption of the world.

When you actually live in light of what will be,

when you live with this kind of hope,

when you bury and you hang in there

and you endure,

when you long for Him,

when you live as a citizen,

a citizen of this new Jerusalem

in the here and now,

this is what happens.

So those are some ideas.

I don't know what it means for you tonight

to really just cling to Jesus

and this Jesus who's presented here.

Don't know where you're feeling broken and hurting.

But I pray that you take just a lot of hope

that you really endure,

that you long for Him

and that you live now in light of this.

Let's pray.

Lord, everything in here

is just almost too much for us to bear.

Good grief, Lord.

And I pray that you'd help us know

what it means to follow you.

God, I pray that you'd help us know

what it means to long for you, God.

We pray that you'd help us know

what it means to hope in you.

Lord, we pray that you'd help us know

what it means to just bear

and hang in there

and be faithful.

Be faithful to you

even when it's so hard.

Lord, I know there's students in this room

that just struggle, Lord,

with anxiety and fear and worry

and pain and hurting.

And God, we know that those things

will one day pass away, Lord.

And more than anything, we know,

God, if we're your people,

we will see you face to face.

And we pray that you'd just

give us great energy and joy

and anticipation.

Lord, thank you for the story

of what you've done in our world.

Thank you for bringing redemption

to your world.

Thank you.

And Lord, we pray that you've written us

into this story,

that you've brought your love

and your grace to us.

And Lord, would we live in light of it.

Would it change everything about us.

Lord, we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ,

our Lord.

Amen.