The Bible is quite clear—there is an end to the Story. It’s an end to evil. An end to suffering. An end to tears. An end to feeling far from God.
And yet, at the same time, that end is also a beginning. It’s a beginning of life so clear and pure and beautiful that we can scarcely imagine it from where we live in the midst of a broken world.
But imagine it we must, for the Scripture calls us to orient everything in our lives around the reality of eternity. So with the help of God’s Spirit and guided by the words of one of the Bible’s most spectacular passages, we will try to imagine the life of the New Creation. And perhaps, along the way, God will even be so gracious as to let each of us taste or touch or glimpse a bit of that glory right now.
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Notes Transcript Video Audio iTunesGrace Fellowship Church
Jon Stallsmith
Series: One Story: Digging Deeper
May 26, 2013
New Creation: God’s View of Eternity
Revelation 21-22
If you need a Bible (and you do, this morning…you will), slip up your hand and we’ll get you one. If you need a blue sheet for taking some notes, we can get you one of those also.
As Scott mentioned, we are wrapping up the One Story today. It has been nine months journeying through that great narrative of the Scripture. This is a vision, this is a thing that has been on Buddy’s heart for a couple of years actually, because as he was engaging with the congregation, engaging with us, he was realizing a lot of times we open up the Bible, we start reading a passage, maybe out of the Psalms, or maybe one of the epistles like Romans, or maybe Jeremiah or Isaiah, and we’re going, “Where does this fit into the big picture of what God is doing?”
So Buddy sat down and started to divide up that Scripture into big chapters. If you have been with us these last nine months, you know we’ve been going through that story, those chapters, the entire narrative, the entire story, the start-to-finish story the Bible tells.
Last week, I wasn’t with you guys in the morning. Randy was here and preached a great word out of Revelation. We were at Camp KidzLife. How many of you guys were at Camp KidzLife? All right. How many of you recovered from the sleep loss incurred at Camp KidzLife? No hands, okay. Yeah, it takes me at least a week to make up for several missed nights of sleep.
At Camp KidzLife, we were looking at Daniel 1:8, where Daniel purposed in his heart to align his life with the purpose of God for him, how we all have a purpose and we all have the choice the line up with that purpose. We were also really blessed. It’s amazing. At Camp KidzLife, we had two world-renowned European animal trainers, Jacques and Cousteau. They were with us also and helped us to recognize we all have a porpoise. They had their porpoise with them. If you see any of the kids in their teal “I have a porpoise” shirts, that’s what that’s all about.
But the point remains, and it’s a good one, that God has been working through this whole story with purpose. He has a real intentional plan. That’s part of what highlights and lies right at the center of that story in the book of Revelation, that God has this great plan, signified by the scroll in Revelation 5 being opened up and the seals being broken. God has a plan. He has a purpose.
What we’ve seen from the beginning all the way through to the end is that his purpose is to call forth, to call out a people from among every nation of the earth who will bear his name and extend his reign, who will worship him, and who will reign with him, who will walk with him, be his unique, beautiful people. Just to remember those 12 chapters we’ve been going through, that right, I got the cards out again. We’re going to do this real fast.
We saw that first chapter, Kingdom Foundations, Genesis 1-11. God creates. It’s a good creation. He creates the man and the woman in his own image, this echo of this great relationship. They are to bear God’s good name. They’re to be like God, connected to God in that covenant relationship, but they’re also to go forth and rule and reign, extend the goodness of creation, what they saw in Eden, over the entire face of the earth.
That’s what we’re called to, but then sin entered the equation. Rotten, broken, dark kingdom of darkness, nastiness, created this huge crisis right at the beginning, the foundation of the story, God’s great creation, God’s good plans for his people alongside just the anti-creation forces of sin.
Now as part of that, in the next chapter, God calls on a family. Through this family he’s going to deal with this sin issue with the brokenness of the kingdom of darkness. He comes to a guy named Abram. He says, “Hey, I’m going to make a covenant with you. I want you to be my unique, special guy. You and your family, we’re going to be so closely connected in relationship. And I’m going to bless you. I’m going to bless you so you can be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. There is direction and purpose. You’re going to go forth, and through you, all the nations are going to be blessed.”
There’s a picture of a star here as the symbol of this chapter, because God makes this promise as part of the covenant with Abram, “Hey, your descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the night sky.” From there, that family multiplies. They end up enslaved after the life of Joseph. The Pharaohs in Egypt forget about Joseph. They go into slavery.
God calls on a man after 400 years named Moses. “Moses, go down and lead my people out of slavery.” God makes these amazing works of deliverance. The plagues with the Pharaoh and that whole showdown. Leads them across the Red Sea, parting the waters, and the waters crash back together, sweeping away the Pharaoh’s armies.
Then God gives them the Law, and he gives them the way they are to live. He makes a covenant with them, that relationship and that responsibility again making its way through God’s people, the story of God’s people at the exodus section of the account. Then it says God gave them instructions to build a tabernacle so he could come and be among them, to live with his very people. This would set them apart from all the nations of the earth, the ones with whom God, very God, is living.
Of course, there’s a whole generation who has problems with idolatry. The golden calf. They wander in the wilderness 40 years and die off. But the new generation God leads into the Promised Land. That’s the chapter of Kingdom Fighting, the book of Joshua and the book of Judges, as they’re carving out territory in which they are to display the life of the kingdom and in which they are to enjoy the life of the covenant with God. That’s what’s going on here.
After that, they realize as they’re forming a nation that they really want a king, and so God gives them a series of very Famous Kings. Who was the first famous king? Saul! Excellent. Who was the second one? David. And after David? Solomon. Exactly. Three very famous kings at the apex of the nation of Israel’s history. David and Solomon especially become precursors. They foreshadow, they give a picture of what it will be like when Jesus comes to reign.
These famous kings are leading the people, but then after their time, the people are still beset by idolatry, by sin, by evil, the kingdom of darkness. There’s a fracture that occurs in that kingdom. God sends prophets in to say, “Hey, come back. Come back to me. Stop worshiping false gods. Stop defiling the Sabbath. Come back.” But of course, the people don’t listen. Apart from a few good kings, they go their own way.
Because of that, the judgment of God comes and they’re exiled. God sends them off. The Assyrians come and they conquer the northern kingdom. The southern kingdom of Judah is carried off into exile for 70 years before they return. It’s challenging living in Babylon in exile. Jeremiah says, “Hey, go, put down roots. Seek the shalom of that place.” But it’s sort of a total world rocker for the Israelites. “Wait, I thought we were God’s people, and now we’re being sent out of the very land he gave us?”
But then by the grace of God, he allowed them to return. In the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, they come back. They rebuild the temple. They rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. There’s this idea that maybe now God is going to fulfill his promises. Maybe now he’s going to come back and really step into that deep relationship he promised us. Maybe now he’s going to come back and let us participate in the reigning, the ruling of his kingdom he has promised to his people.
But there’s just one problem. For most of this period of time, they’re still under foreign government. It’s not like God is ruling them. There are these corrupt empires…the Greeks and the Egyptians, eventually the Romans. So throughout this time, it awakens this deep expectation, a hunger even for the coming of God’s kingdom. “God, we want your kingdom to come. We want you to come and renew the covenant with us.”
So they’re waiting, they’re waiting, they’re waiting. It’s a period of darkness and challenge during that expecting time. You read 1 and 2 Maccabees if you want a portrait of that. Then finally into that period of time Jesus comes, the true King. He says, “Hey, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Change the way you think. Repent. Believe this good news.”
Jesus walked around and he displayed the kingdom. He died on a cross, taking evil onto himself to make a way we might escape the wrath of God and be justified, drawn into that new covenant with God. Then he arose again on the third day and called us all to live a life of the new creation, a life of resurrection power, filled with his Holy Spirit.
That’s the story of the church. That’s what we’ve been looking at. Now this is the section of the One Story we’ve sort of been in here for the last several weeks, looking at how does God’s Spirit fill his special people so they can bear his name and be in that covenant relationship? How does God’s Spirit fill his people and empower his people to extend that kingdom, to share in the reign of God so the works of God’s good kingdom are springing up all over the place? That’s the question we’ve been asking these last few weeks.
Then, of course, at the very end, we get to New Creation, the final chapter, the end of a part of the story, but also the beginning of the next part of the story. That’s where we’re going to finish up this morning. I have a question. How many of you guys want to go to Wisconsin Dells? A handful. Just a handful.
How many of you guys have never heard of Wisconsin Dells? “Wisconsin Dells? What is he saying? Wisconsin Dells? What is that place?” I’ll describe it to you as well as I can. It is essentially Wisconsin’s version of Gatlinburg. I don’t know if that’s enticing or not enticing to you.
But growing up in Milwaukee, the Dells… That’s what everybody calls it. “Hey, let’s go out to the Dells.” They have water parks and go-karts and putt-putt. If you’re a kid growing up, it’s like, “This place sounds awesome!” Actually, if you knew you were going to take a trip to the Dells (it was about an hour and a half from where we lived growing up), it was like your whole week was dominated by this.
If you’re going on Friday, Monday and Tuesday you’re thinking, “I’m going to go to the Dells.” Wednesday, you’re thinking about, “Man, I can’t wait to get on that waterslide at Noah’s Ark. It’s going to be so great.” Thursday is like, “Maybe I’ll get to ride some go-karts.” Friday: “It’s here! We’re going! We’re going! We’re going! It’s awesome!”
Because I had that picture of the Dells in my mind, it was great. But if you’ve never been to the Dells, and I say, “Hey, by the way, let’s go to Wisconsin Dells,” you’re kind of like, “What? I don’t even know what words you’re saying.”
Sometimes, I think, this happens with us and eternity. We think about heaven. We think about new creation. We think about the future God has for his people, and it’s kind of like Wisconsin Dells. It’s a little bit hazy. “What are you talking about? I don’t know exactly.” Sometimes we don’t let the Bible define that portrait for us. Instead, we just sort of pick up whatever we get, the bits and pieces of cultural ideas about heaven and eternity, and that’s fills our mind.
I think I have a few slides here. Maybe some of you guys have seen paintings like this. This is The Annunciation. You have some clouds there. You have some babies. I always thought it was so interesting. In the Bible, when angels show up, people are terrified, but I don’t know who’s going to fall down as though dead if that baby shows up.
Or maybe the next one. This is an illustration from the middle of the nineteenth century from the print edition of Dante’s Inferno. Dante was a guy who lived in the Middle Ages and he wrote all about the levels of hell and purgatory and then levels of heaven. They printed it, and a guy did a bunch of illustrations. You look at that and you say, “Whoa! That’s interesting. What do I do with that big swirl of things, kind of scary, kind of cool?” Some of this stuff drifts in as we think about heaven.
Then we go to an illustration of another kind. Maybe this is sort of what shapes your thinking. I love The Far Side. No offense if you love the accordion. A lot of our pictures of heaven, believe it or not I think, actually come back to little pen-and-ink drawings of cartoons we’ve seen, because they love to depict. Once again, you have the clouds. You have halos. You have wings.
Here’s another one. “What are we going to do in heaven?” “Well, I don’t know.” Nobody really knows what you do in heaven, so we have to invent some cloudballs, make snowballs or something like that. Some people think of heaven like this. But here’s the challenge. If our minds are kind of vague about heaven, it’s very hard to connect where we’re living to the reality of what heaven will be.
Paul says in Colossians 3, if you’ve been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above. Set your mind on the things that are above. Orient your whole life about what is above. Orient your world, navigate, let your mind, your thinking, be calibrated to the way of heaven. Now if I was to ask most of us, and we were really going to be honest, the truth is we set our minds on the things around here for the most part.
Most of us are probably thinking, “Well, I have to go over and pick up some ribs. Then I have to cook them out. I have to mow the lawn before everybody comes over tomorrow. Then we have work on Tuesday. I don’t want to go. I mean, I love long weekends, but then Tuesday is like such a drag because I have to catch up for the day that I missed and everything else.”
The kids have to go here, and the sports are happening there, and then school just finished up and everything else. Before you know it, our minds are not really set on things above; our minds are set on everything around us. We get overwhelmed by it actually. The call in Scripture is, “No, set your mind on the things that are above.”
But if this is your picture of heaven, some staircase leading up into the clouds, it’s very hard to make the connection between eternity and where I’m living right now. How do you connect what your day-to-day living is with a picture like this? Do you just need to get a Stairmaster? Is that a way to prepare for eternity? Do you need to listen to more Led Zeppelin? What do you do?
How about this last one, just because I like baseball? The famous Field of Dreams. A great question: “Is this heaven?” “No, it’s Iowa.” It’s actually not my favorite movie or anything, but ironically that last snapshot might be closer to the biblical truth than any of the previous ones, and we’ll see that in just a minute.
But here’s the thing. We really need to understand eternity. We need to understand the future. We need to know where this One Story is going, what God’s doing. He has a purpose from the beginning all the way through to the end, and if we are to set our minds on that, if we are to link in with that, if we’re going to live well right where we are, we really need to know where we’re headed.
In the book of Revelation…it’s in a number of places in the Bible, but maybe one of the clearest places we find it is in the book of Revelation…we find out what God wants us to know about eternity. If I was going to try to talk you into coming to Wisconsin Dells with me, I would tell you about some of the things that really matter to me because I feel like they would be important things for you. You’d want to enjoy the go-karts. You’d want to play some putt-putt with me…and I will win.
What we have in the Bible is God telling us what we need to know about eternity. It doesn’t answer every question. It doesn’t give us every single detail we probably would like to know, but he’s saying, “Here are the things that really matter to me.” You can open your Bibles to Revelation 21. What struck me this week as I was reading and working through Revelation and everything else, oftentimes I approach the questions about heaven and eternity from sort of a me-centered perspective.
What’s heaven going to be like for me? Am I going to play the harp? Will there be accordions? What will it be like for me? Maybe even for a loved one we’ve lost. We think, “Oh, what’s heaven like for this person?” We think about it from that human perspective, but as I was reading, I really felt like the Lord was asking me, “Hey, actually when you read this passage, why don’t you pay attention to what matters to me about eternity?”
The Lord was saying, “Here’s this stuff.” This is the big question we want to talk about. What things about eternity matter most to God? When he’s telling us, “This is where you’re headed. This is the future. This is what’s going to happen,” what things matter most to God?
So I’m going to read Revelation 21 and a little bit of Revelation 22. It’s actually a pretty big chunk of Scripture. We’re just going to take a little time and then we’ll unpack a little bit a few specific things that really matter to God. As we’re reading here, I just want you to pay attention to that question. As we’re seeing a portrait of eternity, what are the things that matter to God? What’s really important to God here?
So John, who has been sharing the various aspects of the vision he has had through the book of Revelation, picks up in 21. This is after the cataclysms of Revelation 4-20. We’ve seen the scroll. We’ve seen the seals, the trumpets. We’ve seen the bowls of wrath and their plagues poured out. We’ve seen the great judgment. We’ve seen everything dealt with, and now 21:1. Again, I’m going to read the full chapter and a little bit of the next chapter.
John says, “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 away.’
And he who was 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 the 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 faithless, 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.'” (Revelation 21:1-8)
Now the vision sort of zooms in from that grand picture to a closer-up look at the New Jerusalem. Verse 9: “Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, ‘Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.
It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed—on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
And the one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls. The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width. And he measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel’s measurement.” I guess they have the same tape measure…the 15-foot Stanley version from Home Depot.
Verse 18: “The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, like clear glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.
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 into it, 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 the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”
Then just a couple of more verses. “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, the tree 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 reign forever and ever.” (Revelation 21:9-22:5)
Wow. It’s better than a The Far Side cartoon. Powerful vision of what is to come. Let’s come back to that question. What things, what about eternity matters most to God? As we were reading this and we see vision and maybe there are some symbols and some literal things mixed together, it’s hard to get our minds around every topographical detail of this picture, but we’re getting a glimpse into what is to come, that new creation.
As we’re looking, saying, “What matters to God?” Not so much what it’s going to be like for me, but what really matters to God? Four things. The first thing that really matters to God, you see throughout the book of Revelation, actually through the whole Scripture, but so clearly here, is…
1. Ending evil. Ending evil really matters to God. What we’ve seen is as God is accomplishing his purposes through the book of Revelation, and we have the seals and the trumpets and the bowls, and certain villains appear. You have the Beast who comes up out of the sea. You have the Beast who comes up out of the land. You have the portrait of Babylon, the great and wicked city as a harlot who looks great on the outside, but is offering a cup filled with poison.
What we see over and over is as God is ending evil, there is a necessary drawing out of evil. God, as he’s working through and he’s judging it, and he’s dealing with evil, he has to draw it out so everyone can see just how evil evil is. This is important because several times in Revelation the saints cry out, “All of your judgments are just.”
Throughout the Scripture, this is an echo, a resounding cry about God, that he is very just, totally fair when he makes his decisions. As part of this, he needs to first draw evil out. That’s part of why Revelation is so terrifying. It’s because evil in all of its nastiness is being unmasked and in even some ways unleashed across the face of the earth so people can recognize, “Oh my goodness, that is so evil.”
Part of the reason it says several times…three places in that passage…as God is dealing with the evil, it talks about how the purpose of it is that we would repent, that people who are caught up in evil would finally come to recognize , “Whoa! That’s awful. This is terrible. I have to turn to God. There has to be another way.”
So God has been ending this evil. He’s drawing it out and then he’s dealing with it. He’s judging it. He’s paying back everything. Every broken family, every abused child, every story of slavery and violence and injustice and cruelty and abuse, all of that God is setting right. The Scripture says that God says, “Vengeance is mine. I will repay.” Here he is bringing justice to the earth, ending evil.
In the passage we just read, we saw how the old order of things has passed away, how the tears are being wiped away. This matters so much to God. Maybe to help understand what’s going on in Revelation here, we all kind of know what it’s like to have that house in the neighborhood, that house down the street, or maybe on the next block. It’s kind of a shady house. Things seem not quite right there. People come and go a lot, and it seems like what’s coming out of that house is just kind of evil.
It has a reputation in the neighborhood. Maybe there’s crime going on. Nobody is really sure exactly what is going to happen over there or what’s going on, but you just have this sense like, “There’s something not quite right about that.” What has to happen in order for that house to be restored if indeed it is full of evil?
Well, first, that evil has to be drawn out into the open. As long as that evil remains behind the four walls, you can just have a nasty sense about it, or maybe like in To Kill a Mockingbird, you walk past it and you walk faster and avoid it, but it can’t really be dealt with until it’s drawn out. Well, once that evil comes to light, arrests can be made. Sentences can be administered. The house can be cleansed. That’s what’s happening.
It’s interesting this week with Buddy. One of the big things… He’s recovering from this aortic aneurysm surgery, miraculous and everything else. There’s this fever afflicting him, and a fever is a nasty thing. It’s a part of the kingdom of darkness. It’s a sign of illness. The great challenge has been…What’s causing this fever? We can’t really deal with it until we determine, until we draw out the cause. We need the doctors to say, “Hey, here’s what it is,” and then it can be dealt with.
The same sort of thing is happening in Revelation. Again and again, God is drawing evil out and then he’s dealing with it. American culture: It’s interesting. We’re all living in America. There are a lot of challenges in our culture around us. Consumerism and worshiping celebrity and sex and success and all these other things. Sometimes we don’t even realize that we’re caught up in that. So part of what’s happening in Revelation is God is drawing to the surface the evil that lies submerged.
Some of us perhaps, just like the merchants when Babylon goes up in a big plume of smoke, will come to that realization, “My goodness, I was buying into something that looked so good on the outside but inside was full of death.” That’s what’s God is doing. He’s just drawing it out.
Now there’s one last piece of this that’s really important as we understand what matters to God about eternity and ending evil. Yeah, he’s going to draw it out and he’s going to deal with it. He judges it. He pours out his wrath on it, repays everything. But often, we, his people, are part of that solution.
We’re part of that process. We’re drawn into the drawing out of evil. We’re drawn into the dealing with evil. But not so much in the triumphant sort of, “We’re fighting the evil,” and we’re swinging the sword and everything else, but it’s through suffering of the saints that evil is drawn out. As God’s people are going around announcing his kingdom, one of the places where evil rears its ugliest head the clearest is in rejection of that, in the spilling of the blood of the martyrs.
As we’re reading through Revelation, what we see are quite a few people who’ve died even for their faith. This is part of how God is drawing out so the world can look and say, “Whoa! That is really evil. That guy was just a peaceful, kind, loving man who loved Jesus, and they slaughtered him. They fed him to lions. They covered him in oil and lit him up. My goodness, that is so evil.”
One of the ways God unmasks or draws out the evil in the world in which we live is through the suffering of his people. I know a lot of us would like to read Revelation and just say, “Well, actually, God is going to pluck us out from all that. We’re not really going to have a role in the end of evil. He’s going to take us out.”
The truth is there are several places in Revelation where he certainly does seal his servants. He does keep them away from some of the judgment that’s occurring. But at the same time, it is very much a reality that we, God’s people, will suffer as we go forth into the world as evil is drawn out and dealt with and people are coming to faith. It’s just a reality of the Scripture. It happens all the way throughout the book of Acts, through the epistles. We just see it over and over and over again.
Maybe you don’t like it, but we have to remember this is what happened to Jesus. When he died on the cross, evil was drawn out. People could see evil for what it really was, and it was awful. It was grotesque. It was cruel. It was wanton. Jesus took that in himself and he rose again the third day. Then Paul later would say, “Hey, we, as God’s people, actually complete or fulfill the sufferings of Jesus, the same sort of stuff as Jesus himself was a display not just of the love of God but of the evilness of the world and the wrath of God. In the same way, we display that.”
But there’s good news, because even if we die, we live forever. Even if we lose, we reign forever. Even if we’re put into a tomb, we’re resurrected. That’s part of the reason Revelation is written, to encourage the church to be a part of the end of evil with God as he’s doing his work. Now the second big thing that really matters to God, and we see this through this passage we’ve read is…
2. Renewing creation. There’s a new heaven. There’s a new earth. There’s a New Jerusalem. The terms that are used to describe this new creation are very physical. It’s a real place. It’s interesting, because sometimes in our minds, when we think about eternity and where we’re going to go and everything else, it’s kind of the goal is like, “Man, just get me off this rock and get me out of this broken body. I just want to get up into heaven. I want to take the staircase up, get my harp, sit around and have some snowball cloud fights, or something.”
But that’s not the biblical direction. God doesn’t abandon the creation; he renews it. God’s goal is not to snatch us out of this physical reality; it is actually to bring us back into it as it was meant to be, and then even more so. What happens is God cares about the creation. You have a garden. You have a city. You have a river. These are real tangible things that will be with us in eternity.
If it’s going to be a full planet, a real creation, a new heaven and a new earth, we’re going to need real bodies. We’re not just going to be floating around in sort of disembodied spirits, but we’re going to have real tangible resurrection bodies in the new heaven and the new earth. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 15.
He says we’re going to receive, all of us who are in Christ, whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, all of us at this day of the new creation, all of us receive these new bodies that are no longer physical, like man-powered, bodies that break down and get sore and get fat and get lazy… I mean, all of us have trouble with our bodies because they’re rebelling against us and everything else. But he says no longer will you have that. It’ll be exchanged. You get a new body that will be powered by God’s own Spirit.
This is the powerful thing Paul says. He says in 1 Thessalonians 4. He talks about it in 1 Corinthians 15 and Philippians 3 also. He talks about how this new body will be just like the body Jesus had at the resurrection. So just think about that for a minute. Our eternal destiny is to be on a real planet in real bodies of the same kind that Jesus had at the resurrection.
What do we know about Jesus’ resurrection body? Well, we know when he came out of the tomb Mary saw him and hugged him. So he has some substance to him. It’s not like she just was just like, “Ah, Rabboni!” and ran up and was like, “You’re a ghost! Creepy.” Then put her hand like in and out. “Colder. Hotter. Colder. Hotter.” That’s not what happened. She hugs him, because he has real physicality to this resurrection body.
Then what happens next is Jesus sits down, eats meals with the guys. Cooks fish with them. He’s eating. Then what happens? Well, Thomas says, “I don’t believe you really saw the Lord. Until I touch his scars, put my hand in his side, I’m not going to believe it was Jesus.” Jesus shows up and says, “Hey, check it out.” Thomas can touch and can feel. Jesus has a real solid body.
And yet it’s different in some ways. He walks through a wall apparently into the midst of the disciples. They’re like, “What are you doing here?” Then he ascends into heaven. Maybe these resurrection bodies can fly. That would be awesome. The point is that Jesus’ resurrection body is the prototype of the body we will all receive for life in the new heaven and the new earth.
Now maybe the most interesting detail about Jesus’ body to me is that his resurrection body has scars. There’s continuity between his body before the cross and his resurrection body after the cross. There’s connection. What he did as a work of profound love and the wounds he incurred, those scars are in his resurrection body, badges of honor that exist for all eternity.
God didn’t just like scrap Jesus’ old body and start all over. The tomb was actually empty. That lifeless corpse, somehow God breathed new life into it so Jesus would have a full resurrection new body with scars. In Revelation, we have several portraits of the saints who have been persecuted, those who’ve been beheaded. How does John know they’ve been beheaded? Perhaps he can see in eternity that they still bear the wounds as badges of honor in their martyrdom.
See, it makes you ask the question…What connection here does my life have to what it will be? What continuity? What sort of things, what works, what parts of my life will follow with me on into eternity? What will really last forever? How do we set our minds, how do we fix our thoughts on the things that are above, the things that are future? How do we do that and not on the stuff that’s all around us?
Well, if our picture of eternity is just floating on a cloud, playing a harp, then it’s really hard. Maybe we just all quit our jobs and get some harps and get the Grace fog machine in our houses and so we can just practice what it’s like to be on a cloud. But that’s not the reality. The eternal reality is that we will, our final destination, be in real bodies on a real planet doing real stuff with each other and with God. It’s going to be awesome.
If that’s the case, then everything that happens here parallels stuff that can happen there. There’s a continuity between our lives in a body on the earth here and our lives on a new creation without any evil in a real body there with God. Everything is connected. Suddenly, setting our minds on things above has everything to do with the way we live our lives right now and engage with what God is doing, and announce his kingdom, and serve the Lord, and worship and reign and everything else.
So it raises one question…What does happen when we die? Important. We’ll just take a second as an aside to talk about that. It’s very clear in the Scripture that when we die now, before the creation of the new heaven and the new earth, in some way our soul separates from our body, which remains in the tomb, and the soul goes to be with God.
Paul talks about this tension in Philippians 1. He says, “Sometimes I think it’d be better for me to die so that I could be with Jesus, while at other times I feel like I should remain in the body to be with you,” like that. So he feels that, but he’s very clear. When he dies, he’ll just go to be with Jesus.
Furthermore, as you’re walking through the Scripture, you can see, like in Hebrews 12, where it says we’re surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. There are these disembodied saints who when they’ve died, their spirit, their soul is someway with God, and they’re conscious. They’re awake. They’re aware. Elijah and Moses visit with Jesus at the Mount of Transfiguration, and it’s clear. They’re having a real conversation. They’re alive, but they don’t yet have their bodies.
So there’s what scholars call an intermediate state described in the Bible. When we die now in Christ, our spirit goes to be with God, but we still await the great resurrection of the dead that will occur at Jesus’ second coming and the creation of the new heaven and the new earth when we all receive these new bodies.
In fact, some people who are still alive when Jesus returns and who are in Christ, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, “I’ll tell you a mystery. They’re actually just going to be transformed. Their bodies will just be in the twinkling of an eye transformed.” Metamorphosed. Just brand new. They get the new resurrection bodies. That’s awesome.
But it has another big implication. Heaven is not our final destination. What we see in Revelation, these glimpses of the saints gathered around the throne of God and worshiping and singing and crying out for justice and asking God to do his works of bringing the world to rights, all of that, is an intermediate state awaiting this great day of the new heaven and the new earth when we’ll receive our new bodies and be on a new planet with God.
It’s going to be amazing and beautiful. That’s what we’re looking forward to. That’s the concrete hope of the believer. That’s where the One Story draws down to a close, but then there’s a whole new story of a new life and a new creation and a new body with God, and that’s going to be amazing.
So what matters to God? Well, ending evil. Renewing creation. Not escaping creation, but renewing creation matters to God. Now the next thing, and this really struck me. This is so tender actually. Do you know what else matters to God about eternity?
3. Being with his people. Listen to Revelation 21:3. “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…'” (Revelation 21:3) What matters to God? What is he really looking forward to? He’s really looking forward to just being with us, being near to us.
I don’t know if that’s your picture of eternity or that’s your picture of God. A lot of us, I think sometimes we think about the judgment day or when I stand before God, “Why would I allow you into my heaven?” and so many questions like this, it’s a scary sort of thing. It’s like, “Oh man, we’re going to be with God. I hope it works out. I believe in Jesus. I went forward several times just to be sure. I even raised my hand. I was pretty sure I was already saved, but I still raised my hand that one time in that service just to double check.”
God’s heart is to be with us. It’s not something to be scared of. Because we are in Christ, we who have accepted his sacrifice and free gift of grace are totally justified, seen as righteous. We can just be in his presence so freely. There’s nothing to be afraid of. There’s no condemnation. There’s no, “Hey, you just barely made it in, buddy.”
Listen to the intimacy of the details. God can’t wait to be with us. It says here he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. That’s a very intimate detail, isn’t it? It does not say he will hand you a Kleenex box. That’s what we do if we’re not really comfortable. That happens to me sometimes. You’re a pastor and somebody just starts crying in front of you, and you’re not really sure what to do, so you go, “Here’s a Kleenex box. Wipe yourself off.”
No, it says God comes and he wipes away the tears. He has his hand up close next to your face. “Let me wipe that away. I know it was hard. I know you suffered. I know people treated you poorly. I know you were sick. I know everything about you. I know everything that caused you to cry through your entire life. I know everything about it, and I’m wiping it away, because I just can’t wait to be with you.” God wants to comfort us.
He doesn’t just want to comfort us though; he wants to father us. Look at verse 7. It says, “The one who conquers…” In Revelation, it refers to the people who make it through the challenges of life, who remain faithful. He says, “The one who conquers will have this heritage [this inheritance], and I will be his God and he will be my son [she will be my daughter].” (Revelation 21:7)
God wants to parent us. I remember, like that video we just saw at the beginning of the service. I love that, going around Washington DC, a son with his dad, having adventures, learning stuff. I remember my dad and I, when I was growing up, we took a few trips like that. We went to New York City one time. We walked everywhere in New York City. We went to the Statue of Liberty. It was like the most awesome experience.
This is what God wants to do with us in eternity. He wants to father us like that. He wants to say, “Hey, come on. Let’s go play catch. Hey, we’re together. Come on, let’s go do this. Come on, let’s go.” Like that. Just to have infinite adventures with us. This matters to God. This is what he’s looking forward to about eternity.
Finally, he wants to dazzle us. He wants to wow us. The word in the Bible for this is glory. He wants us to see his full glory. I think that’s part of the point of the description of the New Jerusalem and all these gemstones…onyx and chrysoprase, jacinth, amethyst. It’s easy to get distracted by the layers of description and go, “I don’t even know what a chrysoprase is. What anniversary is that…27…39? I’ve never even heard of it. If my wife finds out about chrysoprase, we’re going to have to get one of those.”
We can let it numb us to the beauty of what’s happening. What John is trying to communicate is just how amazing this place is. It has been crafted. God has prepared it, and it dazzles us. God can’t wait to be with us just so we can be wowed by how amazing he is.
Last night, we went up to Stone Mountain. We wanted to see the sunset and the rising of the supermoon. I don’t know if you guys saw it. It literally is called a supermoon. Astronomers decided that would be the appropriate astronomical term. “That sure is bright. Yeah, let’s call it a supermoon.” “That’s a good idea. Yeah, that communicates.”
We climbed up Stone Mountain and just watched this sunset over Atlanta. Every single night, there are just amazing sunsets, and here it was. We were looking at it, and the sky is just blood red, and it’s absolutely beautiful. I’m standing up there going, “Wow! This is amazing.” I’m thinking, “And yet, in the New Jerusalem, the new heaven and the new earth will be like this, but infinitely more beautiful, infinitely more awesome.”
Then Amy and I got in a big fight on the way down the mountain. It’s okay. Everything is fine now. We worked it out. Our marriage is good. God wants to wow us and dazzle us, and we don’t have fights anymore. Heaven is going to be awesome. Eternity is going to be amazing. But this is part of God’s heart. He just wants us to be wowed by his goodness in the new heaven and the new earth. This is something we have to look forward to. The last thing that really matters to God is there in chapter 22.
4. We worship and reign with God and one another. Remember we’ve been talking about from the beginning to the end of the story, God has been after this people who will bear his name, who will worship him, who will know that covenant, who will experience that relationship. He has been after this people who will carry his image into the earth, who will announce his kingdom, who will display his goodness, who will handle the responsibility of being God’s representatives on the earth.
Here are the two words we see: God’s people are worshiping. “…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 reign forever and ever.” (Revelation 22:3-5). Worshiping and reigning together, all nations.
It’s amazing that the river of life flowing through the center of the city… You have the garden within the city, and then there’s more nature around it. It’s just an amazing picture. Then there’s the Tree of Life straddling that river. Out of it come these fruits. Then it says the leaves are for the healing of the nations.
The people who are gathered here worshiping and reigning are representative of every tribe and nation and tongue from every area and every epic of history, all together, worshiping and reigning with God. The Lord is with us. He’s loving us. We’re just saying, “Thank you, God. It’s amazing. Thank you for redeeming us. Thank you for this life you’ve given us. This is amazing.” We’re just worshiping him in everything we are.
Then reigning with him. There’s stuff to do. There are adventures to be had. There are places to travel. There’s stuff to explore. Stuff probably to build. We’re going to have real bodies. We’re going to have a real planet. It’s going to be great. Let’s reign with God. Let’s extend the goodness of that kingdom as we were originally intended to do all the way through the planet and into eternity. That’s the call.
So here’s the thing: If we are called to set our minds on things above, to let our lives be oriented around eternity, as Paul says in Colossians 3, if this is what we’re called to do, then the things that matter about eternity to God should be the things that matter to us here. Let us be the kind of people who seek the end of evil, even if it means we have to step into the middle of a situation and we suffer. Let us be the kind of people who value the creation, who don’t just despise it, who don’t want to bundle it up or throw it out. No, no, no.
Let’s engage in God’s good world and with the people around us. Let us be the kind of people who value being with God. He wants to be with us. Let us be the kind of people who value being with God. And let us be the kind of people who worship. Let us be the kind of people who reign because of what Jesus, our King, did to make it possible. So the book of Revelation, in fact, the entire Bible, ends with an invitation. I’m just going to read that and we’ll close.
Revelation 22:17 says, “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.” (Revelation 22:17) It’s an invitation. Come, find your place in the story. Come, link your life to eternity. Come.
Come, find that place of covenant and kingdom. Come into this. Value the things that are valuable to God. Come. Come. Invitation. In. Then verse 20. “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20) The coming of the King, the arrival of Jesus is not something to be feared; it’s something to be so looked forward to, to yearn for.
“We cannot wait, Lord, until you come, because in that day, evil will end. And in that day, all creation, including this broken down body, will be renewed. And in that day, you will be with us, fathering us, comforting us, dazzling us. And in that day, we will worship and we will reign without any hindrance.” Let’s pray.
Lord, thank you for this Word. I pray you would just light up our minds and our hearts, our imaginations with this vision of the eternity you have for us. Lord, let us hear your invitation. For those of us who are on the fence figuring out whether or not Jesus is worth following, Lord, convict us. Invite us into that place where we have eternal destiny with you.
Not just avoiding hell, but embracing the fullness of the new heaven and the new earth in your presence forever. Lord, for those of us who’ve just settled for a little bit of a watered-down version in certain areas of our lives, for some of us who are more distracted about the stuff that’s going on around us than focused on the things that are happening in heaven,
Lord, let us hear your invitation. Say, “Come. Come. Come. Come, think differently. Come, live differently. Come. Come into your purpose. Come into your identity. Come into your destiny. Come.” Lord, I pray your Spirit would issue that call and that we would respond obediently wherever you lead us in this great small piece of your One Story for us. In Jesus’ name, amen.