Understanding Revelation, Part 4 (Revelation 21:1-6)

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church earlier today.]

Revelation 21:1-6
Have you ever noticed how much we like new things? We buy a car and for the first few weeks after we drive it off the lot, we savor that “new car smell.” We pick the first strawberries of the season and can’t wait to clean them, layer on the sugar, and put them on top of freshly-baked shortcake. And when friends share our enthusiasms, we might invite them to drop by to see our new flat screen TV, our new computer, our new game system. 

Advertisers know all about our love for new things. TV commercials are often filled with phrases like, “new and improved.” They know that will get our attention. And politicians know how much we love new things, too: Woodrow Wilson campaigned to bring what he called the New Freedom; Franklin Roosevelt had the New Deal; John Kennedy had the New Frontier; Richard Nixon touted the New Federalism; and Bill Clinton talked about the New Covenant.

I think that one of the reasons we so love new things is that, after a time, we become aware of the flaws of the old things. New things grow old. Fuel pumps and transmissions go out on the new car or it gets dinged on the grocery store parking lot and the car isn’t new anymore. We pick the last strawberries of the season, forget all about them, and they go bad before we even think about eating them; we’ve grown tired of them. Presidents’ new programs go well until they run into things like Congress, interest groups, unforeseen circumstances, and sometimes, their own faults.

The result is that after awhile, as much as we want things to be new, we grow skeptical, even cynical about claims that anything can truly be new or improved. That’s why the Who sang, “Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss.” It’s why Paul Simon sang, “Everything put together, sooner or later, falls apart.”

Maybe the biggest reason we like new things so much is that, deep in our hearts, we know that this world is not as it was meant to be. We know that we ourselves don’t live as we were meant to live. When we’re honest, I think, we even grow frustrated with ourselves, we tire of our old resentments, our old unfairness to others, our old failure to love—maybe even to love God--as we want to. We want to be “new and improved” people.

That yearning on our part is understandable. We were made in the image of God. Death, decay, our sin, growing old: None of these things were part of God’s original plan for you and me. God made us for an everlasting fellowship with Him. God made us to stand upright in His presence, with no need to hide from God, as the first human beings tried to do, after they had disobeyed God the first time. God made us to walk in what the Bible calls “newness of life.” The Bible says that God “has put eternity in [our] hearts.” But, you and I are born into a world alienated from God, all of us born with a predisposition to go our own ways, to sin. It’s our inheritance and we start spending that inheritance the moment we’re born; no one is more self-centered than a baby and if their parents don’t “hop to” at the first cry, a lot more crying is apt to follow! Even newborns need to be made new.

As our lives go on, we become more and more aware of our desire for what the Bible calls “a new thing.” But because we, as we grow older, are as self-driven as babies—though maybe a little more polite about it—we go "lookin’ for love [newness, life, hope, a sense of wholeness, happiness] in all the wrong places.”

Marriages hit snags and instead of recommitting themselves to doing the hard work of loving one another till death parts them, husbands and wives give up or take up with someone else or a string of someone elses.

People become frustrated with their lives or become bored by lives that seem to offer them little opportunity and, anxious for something new, dive deeply into things like alcohol, food, personal pleasure, money heroin, or oxycontin.

Preachers aren’t immune from looking for newness and eternity in bogus places, either. I once heard about a respected older pastor who told a bunch of younger ones who were wrestling with discouragement, “There’s nothing wrong with you that can’t be made right with a new suit and a new book.” I like books, but there’s only one book that can make us new!

Look! There is something is wrong in our lives, something that evidences itself in the lives of every one of us. We long for the newness of life that can only come from the perfect, sinless creator of the world, from God. The holes in our souls can only be filled by God, not by the junk with which we try to fill them. We can only be made new by God!

That’s why the words in our lesson from Revelation for this morning are worth our attention. Listen to them again:

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, the 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, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away." And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Then 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 water as a gift from the spring of the water of life."

The lesson presents a vision revealed to a man called John the Evangelist, literally, John the Sharer of Good News. John, at this point, some time between 81 and 96AD, was living in an exile imposed on him by the Roman Empire. John had gotten into trouble because of his beliefs.

• He believed that God had come to the earth and that His Name was Jesus, a carpenter from Nazareth.
• John believed that because of God’s desire to give us new lives, Jesus died on a cross, willingly taking the punishment for sin that we deserve, a perfect sacrifice made for all of us. 
• John also believed Jesus, not the Roman emperor of his day, was the ultimate authority and Lord of the world. 
• John believed that all who turn away from their sin and entrust their whole lives to Jesus Christ have eternal newness of life. 
• And John believed that Jesus rose from the dead as a sign that His promises to those who believe in Him are on solid ground. 

In those days, John's beliefs were seen as unpatriotic, threatening, and seditious.

Today, I suppose, most people would see such beliefs as unexceptional. Or silly. Or meaningless. Or, because he insisted as Jesus taught, that Jesus is the only way to God, even bigoted. But for those of us who agree with all that John believed and have experienced the living love and power of Jesus Christ, the beliefs John confessed are the most important truths that any of us can ever know. God offers us, as a free gift, the newness of life for which we all yearn. But God doesn’t force it on us. God respects our capacity to say no to Him. Yet with every fiber of God’s infinite being, God wants us to say yes to Jesus, yes to newness of life.

The vision that the risen Jesus gave to John was of a new heaven and a new earth, a place inhabited for all eternity by believers in Jesus, drawn from all the peoples of the old earth.

But God even gives tastes of the newness that comes to those who turn from sin and believe in Him in this world. He comes and frees us from our sins so that we can experience newness of life here and now.

Pastor Jim Cymbala tells the true story of a couple who came up to him after worship at his New York City church. They were moved by worship and asked him to bless their relationship. Before he did that, he said, he wanted to know a bit more about them. They explained that they had been seeing each other for two years. Cymbala asked, “Are you living together?” The woman blinked hard and the man stepped back. “Yes,” she said. “You’re putting me in a bind,” Cymbala explained to them. “You’re asking me to bless what God has expressed a strong opinion about.”

Sexual intimacy, God says, is for marriage alone. Those who have sexual relations outside of marriage are stealing a gift that God intended as a sign and seal of love between husbands and wives who have committed themselves, before God and the world, to one another.

Cymbala suggested that the man move to another place in order to avoid temptation. The couple reluctantly agreed. Over the period of the next several months, they received counseling. They learned more about God and God’s will for their lives. They wanted their relationship to be blessed by God. They repented for their sins and committed themselves to living in the newness of life that comes from Jesus.

Several months later, at the end of a midweek worship, Cymbala told the large congregation that something special was coming. The organist began the opening notes of the wedding march and this couple, committed now to coming to Jesus in total submission to Him, confident that he gives new hope and fresh starts to those who seek to do things God’s way, was married. Cymbala says that their occasional sobs of joy could be heard by all in that cavernous sanctuary.

The only bumper sticker I think that I would ever put on my car says simply, “Christians aren’t perfect; just forgiven.” And as long as we live amid the old heaven and the old earth, we’ll need to come to God in the Name of Jesus to seek forgiveness. I do it every day, many times a day. I call my frequent prayers of confession, “midcourse corrections.” And I need them because the old sinful Mark is still around causing trouble, prone to throwing me off course all the time!

But, no matter how many times we fall, God is willing to pick us up again. In Jesus Christ, we are made new, forever new, forever with God, forever living more of the life for which God made us.

If that’s a gift you want, it’s a very simple thing to claim. Tell God that you want to turn from all the false trails to newness, that you want to repudiate all your sins, that you want to be made truly new, and then let the outreached arms of Jesus save you to live a better life today and a life with God for eternity.

Surrender to Jesus and He will make you forever new! Amen!

[Thanks to Pastor Brian Stoffregen for suggesting this general approach to the text, to Pastor Heath Pukallus for his inspiring sermon, and to all those who prayed for me yesterday when I felt that my first go at the text this week was inadequate.]

The New Heaven and the New Earth

[This message was shared this weekend with the people of Friendship Lutheran Church.]

Revelation 21:1-6
The morning my great-grandmother died, when I was eight years old, my mother woke me with the news.

My great-grandmother, as some of you know, was a woman of deep faith in Jesus Christ. Often, when I walked into the living room of her house across the street from the home of my early boyhood, I found her reading her well-worn Bible. She frequently took time to talk with me about God, about Christ’s death and resurrection, and about what life beyond the grave is like for those who turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ as their King. Knowing that, I could picture it all when my mother said of my great-grandmother that morning, “She’s walking the streets of gold right now, Mark.”

All who follow the risen Jesus Christ live each day with the sure promise that, as Jesus told His friend Martha just before He brought her brother Lazarus back from the dead: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

The follower of Christ isn’t exempted from the pains and difficulties of this life. But the hope of eternity with Christ does give us the power to face each day’s challenges.

This same hope also can give us the courage to do the right thing even at great risk. On Saturday, along with other members of the Clermont County OSU Alumni Association, my wife, son, and I went on a tour of local sites associated with the Underground Railroad. That was the pre-Civil War movement that helped slaves escape from bondage in the South and from the threat of being taken back into slavery while traveling in the North under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act. The "railroad" helped these escapees then get to freedom in Canada.

The Underground Railroad was founded by committed Christians who believed that slavery was wrong and that even if it meant imprisonment or death for them, the risks were worthwhile. They were undaunted by the prospect of imprisonment or death because the hope of eternity with Christ was strong within them. They no doubt would have agreed with the the first century preacher Paul, who writes in the New Testament, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.”

Baptist pastor L. Joseph Rosas says that our Bible lesson for today underscores the Christian’s hope for eternity in three different ways. I want to talk about those three glimpses into our hope for eternity. But first, a little background.

Like all of the lessons we’ve explored this Easter season, today’s comes to us from the New Testament book of Revelation. In it, the apostle John records a series of visions and experiences given to him by the resurrected Jesus.

In the section of Revelation just before our lesson, you can read about a series of stern judgments rendered against what John calls Babylon. John wrote Revelation in about 90AD. Centuries before--centuries before the birth of Jesus--the ancient Israelites were held in captivity by a terrible empire, Babylon. In John’s own time, the Roman Empire, which exiled him to the island of Patmos because of his faith in Christ and which persecuted many other followers of Christ, was seen as a kind of Babylon. But for John, Babylon represents a worldview that ignores God’s command and God’s call to love Him and to love others. It’s a world of selfishness, greed, and violence that opposes God and that God will one day bring to an end.

Now, the three ways in which our Bible lesson for today underscores the Christian’s hope for eternity.

On the heels of describing the judgment of Babylon, John tells his readers that irrespective of all the bad in our world or in our lives, God is up to something new. Using imagery reminiscent of phrasing in the Old Testament book of Isaiah, written some seven-hundred years before the birth of Jesus, God shows John that in Christ, He is doing a new thing. John writes in our lesson: “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.”

One day, life on this sin-imprisoned planet will end. But God will replace it with a new heaven and a new earth inhabited by all who have trusted in Jesus Christ.

Sin, with all its devastating effects on our relationships today and the death that it brings, will disappear. That’s represented in our lesson by the disappearance of the sea. To ancient Jews and early Christians, the sea was a frightening, foreboding place, where sea monsters dwelt and chaos prevailed.

We see this picture of the sea in the first of the two creation accounts that begin the book of Genesis. There, we're told that God's Spirit moved over deep waters, a stormy, chaotic, and forebody place. When God moves over the water though, order and peace and a new creation comes about.

Thought of God the Creator loomed in the minds of Jesus' first disciples during one of the most famous Biblical incidents. The disciples were riding on a boat on the Sea of Galilee. A storm suddenly came up and even the seasoned fishermen among them were terrified. Meanwhile, Jesus slept like a baby in a crib. The disciples shook Jesus awake. "Lord," they said, "don't you care if we all drown." Jesus stood up, looked to the sea, and said, literally, "Be muzzled!" "Who is this," the disciples wondered, "that even the wind and the sea obey Him?" It was really, a rhetorical question. Only one Person Who could do that: the One Who did the very same thing at the beginning of time.

In addition to being a place of sin and death in the minds of the ancient Israelites and first Christians, it also divided peoples, putting oceans between them.

No wonder then that in the vision of the new heaven and the new earth that John saw, the sea was no more.

But in the new creation God will give, nothing will separate us from God or each other. And we believe that God is in the process, even now, even today, as we pay heed to His Word and worship Him together, of doing this new thing. God is in the process of making all who believe in Christ part of that new creation!

Next, in our lesson, John writes, “And I saw the holy city, the 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, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”

When Jesus was crucified, you remember, He was on a cross between two thieves. One joined the crowds in mocking Jesus. The other though could see that in Jesus, a sinless Savior was giving His life for the world. “Jesus,” he asked, “remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus answered this man, who was demonstrating faith in the most unlikely of circumstances, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Heaven is a real place, the destination of all who follow Christ. That's the second way our lesson underscores the Christian's hope for eternity.

Then John writes this, at the command of God Himself: “And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Then 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 water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.’”

Pastor Bill Hybels has noted in many places that all of us are born with a longing for “it,” even though we hardly know what “it” is. It’s a void within us that some try to fill with all sorts of things--food, hobbies, money, sex, drugs, alcohol, power, popularity, prestige, fitness. In their place, each of these things can be good. But when we try to use any of them to fill the void within us, we’re still empty.

After trying to find it in a lifetime of dissipate living and partying, Saint Augustine finally found “it” in the God we meet in Jesus Christ. That’s why he once confessed to Christ, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”

Jesus Christ is “it,” the One Who fills the God-shaped hole in our lives. In Christ, God and His new creation have already invaded our world. Christians, in fact, live in an “already-not-yet” reality. We already are part of God’s new creation; that new creation isn’t yet fully realized. But we’ve seen what it looks like in Jesus: It’s a kingdom to which all people, no matter what their race, nationality, or gender, or their past sins, are welcome. Christ is a never-ending spring that refreshes us now when times are hard and will fill us with life forever.

Yet it’s sometimes hard to see that new kingdom of God’s, isn’t it? How do we see it? The late Belgian priest Henri Nouwen, who deliberately militated against his own pride and self-absorption by working in Christian communities that served the mentally retarded and toward the end of his life, AIDS victims, wrote a book in which he talked about some friends of his who were trapeze artists, the Flying Roudellas.

They told Nouwen about the special relationship between the flyer and the catcher on the trapeze. The flyer is the artist who lets go. The catcher catches. While the flyer soars above the crowd, there comes a point when he must let go. He arcs through the air, his job being to remain as still as possible and wait for the strong hands of the catcher to grab him midair. One of the Roudellas told Henri Nouwen, “The flyer must never try to catch the catcher.” The flyer has to wait in absolute trust. The catcher will catch him, but until that moment, the flyer must wait.

We see God’s Kingdom whenever we let Christ catch us:

• Catch us when we turn from sin and turn to Him.
• Catch us when we reject worshiping ourselves and instead, trust in Him.
• Catch us when life hurts us so badly that there's nothing left to do but let Him love us.

In Jesus Christ...

• God is doing a new thing;
• He prepares a place in heaven for us; and
• He makes us new.

If that’s sometimes hard for us to see as we live our lives each day, be still and let Christ catch you.

He always will.