So Revelation 21 verse one. Then I saw a new heaven and a
new earth, for the 1st heaven and the first earth had passed
away, and there was no longer any sea.
I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of
heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for
her husband. And I heard a loud voice from
the throne saying, Look, God's dwelling place is now among the
people, and He will dwell with them.
They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be
their God. He will wipe away every tear
from their eyes. There will be no more death or
mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has
passed away. He who was seated on the throne
said, I am making everything new.
Then he said, write this down, for these words are trustworthy
and true. 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 without cost
from the spring of the water of life.
Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be
their God and they will be my children.
But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the
murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts,
the idolaters and all idols, all liars, they will be consigned to
the fiery lake of burning sulphur.
This is the second death we go to verse 22.
I did not see a temple in the city because the Lord God
Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.
The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for
the glory of God gives its light, and the Lamb is its lamp.
The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the
earth will bring their splendour into it.
On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night
there. The glory and honour of the
nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter
it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful,
but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of
Life. Then the Angel showed me the
river of Water of Life as clear as crystal, flowing down from
the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the
great St. of the city. On each side of the river stood
the Tree of Life, bearing 12 crops of fruit, yielding its
fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are
for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any
curse. The throne of God and of the
Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will serve Him.
They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads.
There will be no more night. They will not need the light of
a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them
light, and they will reign forever and ever.
I'm going to tell you a little story.
I like stories. It's just turned midnight on the
15th of April 1912. If you're really good at
history, you might know what's going on.
There's just over 2200 men, women and children on board an
ocean liner heading across the Atlantic and it's just hit an
iceberg. Not good news.
Water is on board, the boat is going down.
Women and children get on the boats, the lifeboats, but
there's not enough lifeboats even for the women and children,
let alone the men and let alone the people who are on the lower
classes down below deck. There's not really much hope.
As the boat is going down, it's turned on its end and it's going
to sink and people will be in the middle of the ocean,
freezing ocean. Now there's a famous movie from
1997. It won Oscars, made lots of
money, and it has a particular scene in there which may or may
not have happened, I don't know. But there is a moment when
there's a priest and he's hanging onto the boat and he's
going down here and all his kind of the parishioners and the
others who are listening are also hanging on and they're
thinking, what is he going to say?
What, how is he going to come for us?
And he says, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.
The 1st heaven and the first earth have passed away.
Then he goes and there was no longer any sea.
It's kind of funny, maybe ironic, but it is in the Bible.
We did read it, didn't we? Just now this scene kind of
shows the truth that these words are a comfort and a hope for
people who are facing death. They say, do you know what?
It's not good now, but there's a new heaven and there's a new
earth. That's from the first one of
chapter 21, where we're living now.
We'll pass away along with all the difficulties and the hurt
and the suffering that it contains.
But this glimpse of the future shouldn't just be a hope for
people who are facing death and difficulty.
Should be a hope for all of us. Anyone who is following the
resurrected Jesus in good times and bad times.
There was this offer of hope for those people.
It's going to look at Revelation 21 and 22.
Please have those Bible, your Bibles open in that final book.
You have to hold the final pages.
So it's going to try and close. It's so far at the back.
It's it's big. There's so much that you can
say. You read these chapters over and
over again. You'll find so many different
things in there. Can't talk about everything, but
we are going to look at some parts of it to help us think
about what hope we have for tomorrow.
But we're going to start with a little bit of context because
Revelation is a weird book. I remember when I was a kid and
I was at church, maybe a bit bored, I'd flick to the back and
look at the stories about Dragons because that was cool.
That would keep me going. There's a weird stuff, There's
weird stuff in Revelation. So a bit of context.
It is apocalyptic. That doesn't necessarily mean
it's about the end of the world. An apocalypse, which is what
Revelation is, means it's revealing something that was
hidden. Read this in verse 1 of chapter
1 of Revelation starts with the revelation from Jesus Christ,
which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take
place, so something hidden. Revelation is about showing
God's people what will take place.
Jesus shows these things to the apostle John so that he can then
share it with other Christians. Christians who are facing
persecution in that 1st century. They feel like they're on the
losing side. Everyone is against them.
They're not going to make it. According to church tradition,
John was the only of the disciples who was left.
All the other disciples had died.
They were executed for their faith.
John was the last one and he even he was exiled kind of in
house arrest, which is when he had the vision and wrote this
book. So this whole book is filled
with poetic picture imagery to encourage believers in the 1st
century who are suffering, who are facing opposition, that even
though they feel like they're losing, if they're on Jesus
side, then they will win because Jesus wins.
That's what Revelation is about. You can summarize it.
Jesus wins. It's not a historic account of
what's going to happen on this day.
This will happen, then this will happen, then this will happen.
But it shows us images throughout the whole book to
help us understand something of what God's salvation plan is and
how it's going to end up. So as I said, I used to read
about the Dragons. There's heaven with the glassy
sea and rainbow and golden gates and things.
There's plagues and flying horsemen.
There are Dragons and all sorts of other monsters.
There's a lion who is also a lamb who has been slain, but
he's also standing and winning. There's there's lots of imagery
in here. Maybe one day we'll preach
through Revelation Avenue. I think that might be a good
thing. Maybe we'll think about that
next year. But this context that I just
shared now is to help us this morning to understand some of
the pictures that Revelation is using to tell Christians about
their future. Hope, bright hope for tomorrow.
So we're going to see some images that tell us that wrong
things will be made right, that healing and life will come and
that will satisfy and that the presence of God will be with his
people forever. So as you think about these this
morning, let's allow ourselves to make there'll be all sorts of
things going on. You might come from different
places. Let's try and allow ourselves
for this time as we look at these book chapters to be
excited and to be hopeful of what God has in store for his
people. So we'll start with wrong things
made right. As we heard last week, Jesus
resurrection is the firstfruits of what is to come.
Jesus suffering in death and his payment for sin was turned into
a glorious resurrection body as he rose from the dead and
ascended to the right hand of the Father.
His resurrection is a sign that one day everything wrong will be
made right. So chapters 21 and 22, the kind
of climax of Revelation, start with those verses that are
quoted by the priest on the Titanic we read earlier on.
I saw a new heaven and a new earth.
The 1st heaven and the first earth had passed away.
The sin and the suffering of this world, this fallen world
will pass away. There'll be something new in its
place. First one calls it a new heaven
and a new earth. We can call it a new creation.
I'll also talk about a new creation.
That's what I kind of mean this morning.
There'll be something new in place of what there is now.
Jesus gives 3 images. Well, there's three images I'm
picking out to explain what this new creation is.
So first chapter 21, verse one, there will no be no longer any
sea. Now I love the sea.
I don't want the sea to go away. Maybe you think the same thing.
I was swimming in the sea in Torquay a couple of weeks ago.
It was freezing, but I was in the sea.
I quite enjoyed it, even as cold as it was.
It's beautiful. It's home to wonderful animals
and plants and we can give God glory for those things.
He made the sea and it's a good thing.
So why would there no longer be any sea?
Well, we need to know that in biblical terms, the sea is a
picture of chaos and uncertainty.
So those people, especially in the 1st century, the people who
this was written to, the sea was uncertain.
It was dangerous, it could kill them.
They didn't know what was going to happen and it would just, it
could just take over at any moment.
So you see these in the stories of this of the disciples when
they're sailing on stormy seas. There's at least 2 cases of
that. Both times they thought they
were going to die. This is it.
The sea has taken us until Jesus stepped in and rescued them.
Throughout the Bible we might see sea, and it's often a
picture of uncertainty and chaos.
So when we read that in the new creation there'll no longer be
any sea, we can hear that Jesus is saying in the new creation,
there'll no longer be chaos, There'll no longer be
uncertainty. Uncertainty will be gone.
The danger of death and the threat of danger is going to be
finished. That's not just for when you go
sailing on the sea. That's for all things.
Things when you're on the land, things in our physical life,
things in our mental life, things in our relationships.
When there's uncertainty and there's chaos, when there's
threats and danger, it'll be restored to order just as things
were meant to be fully. And finally, I happen to believe
that in the new creation, there will be sea and we'll go sailing
and kayaking and it'll be amazing.
I will never drown, just like the whole of creation will be.
It'll be a restored, amazing, joyful place to be next.
So I'm going to be flicking around, which is why I need to
have your Bibles open. Now, Verse 23 of chapter 21, the
city, it's another way of looking at the new creation.
The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for
the glory of God gives it light and the lamp is its lamp.
Also in chapter 22 and verse 5, it talks about this.
There'll no longer be any night. They'll not leave the light of a
lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them
light. So we've already lost the sea
and now we've lost night time as well.
You might think again. I loved we were in talking at
night time. They had all these lights around
the harbour, they reflected on the water.
It was really good. Maybe you enjoy fireworks or
maybe sometimes there's a blood moon.
When it's low down it all goes colourful.
It's really amazing. There's nocturnal animals that
come out at night that are awesome to have a look at, to
see what they see, how they live.
There's good things about night time.
But again, let's think about those original heroes, 1st
century heroes, when they think about night, when they think
about darkness, to them it's danger, it's the unknown, it's
threat at any moment. There's no St. lights or
electric lamps in the houses. There's no car lights.
Darkness was even one of the plagues that gods sent in Egypt
during the Exodus. Darkness is a bad thing.
It's dangerous threat for day-to-day life.
Night time in darkness was the time when people would hide and
attack then God's new creation. There's no need for lights to
shine into the darkness to remove that danger.
There's no need to even for the sun in the daytime or the moon
or anything like that. Because God Himself is the
light. His Holiness and His goodness
and His truth is all the light we could ever need.
He will be our everlasting light like that never runs out.
He'll be our guide to help us know the way that we should go.
Light will be clear and bright it'll be.
We'll be able to see exactly where it's going, where to go,
where to go next, where there's danger, an unknown hiding around
the corner. They'll be gone.
We'll be led by the light of God.
He'll shine into the darkness that we might have in our lives
now forevermore. And third picture, go back to
chapter 21, verse four. He will wipe away every tear
from their eyes. There'll be no more death or
mourning or crying or pain. For the old order of things has
passed away. The current order of things is
hard, right, and can be hard. Physical illness, both chronic
and short term illness and injury.
Mental illness that plagues us and steals our joy.
Breakdown of relationships. There's broken families and
marriages and friendships. There's the loss of life we
hoped we might have that is taken away.
There's the loss of people, our friends and our family, our
loved ones. But this is not how things were
meant to be. This is not what we were made
for. That's part of why Jesus came
and was born and lived a human life, because he knew what it's
like to live a life like this. He knew that when he lived.
We read that Jesus wept. He cried.
We see that Jesus was angry at the fallen world.
That was not how it was meant to be.
But in God's new creation, all these wrong things will be made
right. There's a wonderful verse in
Psalm 56. It says that God collects our
tears in His bottle. God sees every one of our tears,
every difficult situation that we have, and they matter to Him.
That's now in the new creation. There will be no tears to
collect. He's going to wipe away every
tear. There will be no more death, no
more mourning, no crying, no more pain.
There'll be no more illness, physical or mental, will be a
thing of the past. Relationships will be restored
and they'll be renewed. We will love one another just as
God has loved us. Death, as we heard last week,
will be defeated. It has been defeated.
It will be destroyed forever. Wrong things will be made right.
For those who trust in Jesus, this world, with its hard and
painful experiences, is as bad as it will get.
Jesus knows what it is to suffer.
We see that. We see in the Bible that he's
suffered. And now he promises to walk
through life with us as we suffer.
But in the new creation, when he finally returns and makes all
things new, He will remove it forever, completely.
It'll be gone. Hallelujah.
So there'll be bad things that are removed in the new creation,
but there'll be wonderful things that will be given to us too,
healing and life. So verse 6 of chapter 21, to the
thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of
the water of life. Water is life for a lot of
people today, especially those in the 1st century.
Water is life when it's in the sea.
Yeah, it's chaotic and uncertain.
But the well, the place where people got water to drink and to
do the things they needed to do, was the place in the village or
the city that brought it life. Without water, you don't, you
don't survive. That would be it.
So in the new creation there's water for everyone whenever they
need it, for free and forever. There'll be no thirst, there'll
be no striving against adversity.
There'll be abundant life on tap for anyone whenever they need
it. Maybe you remember the woman at
the well in John chapter 4. The well is the centre of plain
of the village and there's a whole thing that goes on with
Jesus and the woman at the well. Jesus said to her, Whoever
drinks the water I give them will never thirst.
Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of
water welling up to eternal life.
This living water we now receive today.
We can receive that today by faith.
We can receive the abundance and living and flourishing now by
faith, but in the new creation they'll be freely available.
Yes, there is faith, but it'll be a whole different thing
because we will see Jesus. We'll never doubt we'll have
that eternal life, living water whenever we need it.
We'll be fully satisfied, fully refreshed, fully alive forever,
all thanks to the grace of God. That's living water.
And then chapter 22, verses one and two talks about the Tree of
life. On each side of the river of
living water stood the tree of life bearing 12 crops of fruit,
yielding its fruits every month. And the leaves of the tree are
for the healing of the nations. Aren't trees amazing?
I was driving down Wellford Rd. the other day.
I'm so used to them being completely bare for the last few
months and suddenly they're full.
Little green leaves. The sun shines through it.
That's amazing. Or the blossom that's coming out
on some of the apple trees, the fruit trees around.
This happens every year. Green leaves in the flowers and
the fruits in the spring, they almost overflow.
In the summer, they fall off. In the winter, they're empty.
They fall off in autumn. Sorry, they're empty in the
winter, and then they come back in spring.
Even more amazing are the trees that have fruits, apple trees,
damson trees, where the fruit comes back year after year.
Well, here's an image of the provision of God that we already
get now, but forever for the people, for His people in the
new creation. This tree of life on both sides
of the river has twelve kinds of fruits in this image.
It would like it's full and abundance #12 in Revelation.
There's lots of numbers in Revelation.
That's another thing we won't particularly talk about, but #12
in Revelation is a is a number of fullness of completeness,
especially relating to people. So twelve kinds of fruits means
there's enough for everyone. There's more than enough for
everyone. It's at the 12 baskets when
Jesus was feeding the 4005 thousand.
More than enough for everyone. And not only each year do we get
fruits like we do now, but each month we'll get fruits.
It's just say, look, it's going up.
It's it's exponentially increased undeserved goodness
from our gracious God, from the tree of life.
I'll be reminded of the garden in Genesis where we first hear
about the Tree of Life. It stood by the river that
watered the garden. Well.
Then Adam and Eve had everlasting, everlasting food,
and they enjoyed it until sin came and Adam and Eve were
parted from the garden, parted from the fruits that they would
have had. Well, that parting, that
separation will be restored. We'll have access to the tree of
Life again, but even better because it's not just a tree
next to a river, but it's this weird tree that stands on both
sides of the river. I've seen some people trying to
figure out as the roots and the roots go above doesn't really
make sense, but it's a picture, isn't it?
I think it means that there's trees everywhere.
There's the river and there's trees everywhere.
The tree of life is all over the place.
The river is has water clear as crystal, living water, the tree
of life with living fruits for us to enjoy, and the leaves on
the the leaves of the trees by the river heal the nations.
There's a lot again in Revelation about who's going to
be in this new creation. There'll be a great multitude of
people from every tribe, every nation, every tongue, and
they'll all know the healing life of the new creation.
All the hurt and harm and suffering that came before in
this world will be healed by our healing and restoring God.
He'll bring healing and life in the new creation.
So we've got the removal of these wrong things to be made
right. We have the arrival of these
good things to restore us and to help us to flourish and to live.
That all sounds good, right? Yeah, it does.
It is good. But these things are just an end
in a way. They don't mean anything without
the presence of the God who provides it for us.
Without God's presence with us, the removal of wrong things and
the giving of good things is just stuff.
It's just stuff for us. They may be unending, but they
won't truly satisfy. There'd always be something
missing. We weren't made just to enjoy
lots of stuff. We were made for a close
relationship with the God who can satisfy, and that's what we
get. We see that in Revelation 2122
as well. So here's where the images get a
bit more abstract. Chapter 21, verse 22.
I did not see a temple in the city because the Lord God
Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.
So again, the city is another picture of the new creation.
In the garden of Genesis 1, the Lord walked with Adam and Eve.
They saw him, they spoke with him, they knew him, but from the
moment that they were banished from the garden, the presence of
God was just out of reach and they knew it.
No presence of God means there's none of His blessings.
None of His blessings will come without His presence.
Bible talks about that as a curse.
A curse took place. The curse was put on the people,
the curse was put on the creation.
Because without God's presence, there's no blessing, there's
only curse. All the right things became
wrong. So throughout the Bible, in the
Old Testament, we see God's people are seeking to get back
into God's presence. That's why we have the tent of
meeting that Moses set up. We had the Tabernacle then,
which was kind of the bigger tent that moved around to have
God's presence inside. Finally, this is a picture of
what some people think the temple in Jerusalem looked like,
which is the temple where God's presence was found.
But it was never fully there. It was never fully accessible.
It was always still out of reach.
The sin of the people and God's holiness meant that there
couldn't be a connection. There was rituals for people to
go through to be able to access God's presence.
Even for the priests, I think the priest could only go into
God's presence once a year and they had to tie a rope around
him just in case he was struck down.
He had to pull him out so he didn't have to go in after him.
God's presence was always there, but he was just out of reach.
And then in Jesus, the New Testament, we see God's presence
come down and arrive in human form, but not forever, because
Jesus ascended to heaven, to the right hand of the Father, but he
sent the Spirit. The Spirit again, is God's
presence come to live in us, to come and live in his people.
But we still sin in this fallen world.
We're still tempted away from the Lord.
We still quench the Spirit, but in the new creation, there's no
need of a temple say that to say that there's no barriers between
US and God's presence anymore. It's not about literal temple,
it's about God's presence. It'll be freely available.
There'll be no nothing in our way from getting to know God, to
know His blessings. There'll be no rituals.
There'll be no place we need to go to be in the presence of
Almighty God. There'll be no sin that gets in
the way that clashes with His Holiness or be in God's presence
forever. We will see His face.
We'll know His warm embrace every day.
Psalm 16 puts it this way. You will fill me with joy in
Your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
It's what we look forward to in the new creation.
And chapter 22, verses 3 to 4, the throne of God and the Lamb
will be in the city, and His servants will serve him.
They will see His face and His name will be on their foreheads.
You remember the jubilee celebrations of Queen Elizabeth
the second, or maybe the coronation of King Charles the
Third? Get these big moments in British
history. The British people lie in the
streets in London. They're looking to see the
golden carriage come by and there's the wave.
Something like that, isn't it? The royal wave?
They wave their flags. Maybe they wear union union
flags on their clothes. They see the King and the Queen
go past and some of them get to meet them.
You might not be a royalist. Whether you are or not, I don't
know. But this is this idea is
something of what we will experience in the new creation
when we see our King, our true King, the King of kings,
Almighty God, we'll see him on his throne every day.
We'll have that exciting privilege again.
Don't forget, this is an image. I'm not sure there'll be a big
throne that we look at, and I don't know what that will look
like, but we'll see. God, our king, and don't forget
this God is the King of kings. He is the best king.
He's a servant king, King who's never high and mighty, looking
out for himself, always doing what is best for his people.
And then we will serve him as his servants.
And straight away, that's a bit jarring, servant.
That's not very free, is it? That's not a good place to be.
But I think that's to say, as we all know what we were made for
because we are God's people, his creations, which who he loves.
We all know that we are made to serve him and that's the best
thing for us. And we all serve him gladly and
joyfully. We'll see his face at the
moment, maybe picture what what do I think of when I when I
think about God? It's difficult to try and
understand, but we'll see God's face.
We'll have that deeper understanding that we can only
imagine that we can't even imagine of now.
He'll not be unknown. Sometimes it's hard to have that
faith, to know that God is there, to know that God is real.
That'll be gone. He'll be tangible, He'll be
visible. There'll be no doubts.
We'll see him face to face all the time, and we will be marked
as His again. It's a picture.
I'm not sure we'll have God written on our foreheads, but
it's the idea that we'll be marked as His.
We will know that we belong to God, that we are His forever,
His precious possession, His loved children who will never
forget that. The best part about the new
creation is that God is there. God is there with His people.
We will see Him for ourselves. Wrong things will be made right.
Hallelujah, there'll be healing and life.
Hallelujah for the presence of our glorious and loving Creator
and Father will make it all worthwhile.
Jesus presence with us is what will satisfy us and fill us with
joy forever. More than wrong things being
made right, more than the good things that we get before the
infinite Almighty God, there'll be glory upon glory, joy upon
joy, love upon love. The best of what we know now.
There are really good things that we have in our lives now,
aren't there? In our relationships.
The greatest moments we can think of, they'll be multiplied
exponentially as we enjoy God's presence and his blessings to
us. What I hope to look forward to.
If you watched Titanic, maybe you remember the movie Titanic.
The boat goes down, 1500 passengers and crew die along
with it. And the movie follows this.
One of the passengers Rose, she grows old, she throws a jewel
into the sea. It's a bit of a weird moment,
but she does that. And then she has this kind of
vision, this afterlife vision where she meets all the people
she remembers from Titanic on the boat.
And then her love interest comes down the down the stairs and
they meet and everyone applauds and it's very happy and all
lovely. A wonderful reunion.
I do believe that there will be a wonderful reunion in the new
creation with our loved ones. Those who are there, who who
trust in Jesus, we'll all be there.
Maybe people we never knew, maybe the person who shared the
gospel with once and then they left.
Maybe down the line they become a believer and they see you
there. Wouldn't that be amazing?
Maybe those who just know through stories, biographies,
even in the Bible will meet those people there.
But this hope from Revelation is more than just a reunion like in
Titanic, as wonderful as that reunion may be.
New creation is a removal of the curse of all wrong things in
this world. It's healing and life.
Everyone who is there, it's eternal life in the presence of
the God who made us, who loves us, and who saved us.
That's the good news of Jesus. That's the gospel, right?
All of these things are waiting for those people who trust in
him and in his resurrection, For those who go to Jesus for
forgiveness and eternal life. This is what I want.
Sin is paid for. They are invited in to this new
creation to be of God forever. They will live as they are
always meant to live. But there is a warning in these
chapters. We had those two chapters.
We think, oh, which parts of it should we read?
Is tempting to avoid those bits we don't really like.
Because this hope is only a hope for those who put their trust in
Jesus, who'd been forgiven by His grace.
The Bible says that those who are unbelieving and who live for
themselves will be cast out into a horrible image.
We've had lovely images, this horrible image of the fiery lake
of burning sulfur in Revelation 21/8.
Their sin means they cannot come in.
Their sin must be dealt with and that is how God is dealing with
their sin. They reject Jesus, so they are
rejected by Jesus. Revelation 21 and 22 offers a
wonderful hope for those who have washed their robes.
That's in 2214. Think that washing of robes is
to believe in Jesus death and His resurrection for their sins.
Their names are written in the Lamb's book of Life.
They are welcome to come in, but anyone who has not been washed
and forgiven by Jesus will be outside of this hope,
tantalizingly out of their reach.
Hear the words of verse 17, chapter 22 on the screen here.
The Spirit and the Bride say come.
Let the one who hears say come. Let the one who is thirsty come.
Let the one who wishes. Take the free gift of the water
of life. Have you come to Jesus yet?
Do you have this hope? As we finish, I've got three
things I think I hope you'll be able to take away for what this
makes to a difference to our lives today.
Because these are good things. I hope that you have been
encouraged and excited about what God has in store.
Here's some more practical things that I hope will help.
Number one, let it guide your actions now as you work to bring
glimpses of this new creation into this old current creation.
What are the wrong things in this life that you're able to
put right? What wrong things can we help
people to endure through comforting them and loving them
and praying for them? One thing.
One day all tears will be wiped away, but until then we still
cry. So whose tears can you help wipe
away as we wait together for that hope to come?
How can we bring life and healing and flourishing to those
who are in need? How can we .1 another to the
presence of God? You know God will bring this one
day, but we still pray in the Lord's Prayer your Kingdom come.
That's for now. How can we bring God's Kingdom
now? Second, let it encourage you to
share the good news, thoughts about this is good news.
This is the gospel that we share.
Doesn't this news answer our longing for an end to suffering,
an end to conflict, for healing and flourishing in life, for
purpose and meaning and belonging?
All of those things, all of those longings answered in the
Christian hope. That's what's in store for God's
people. Let's tell the amazing story
that one day Jesus will return and all the wrong things will be
made right. God will break in and finally
restore creation to how it was always meant to be.
That is a great story that we have to share.
It's a theologian called Blaise Pascal, and he said make good
men or women wish Christianity were true and then show that it
is. I think this hope is something
that people would want to be true.
Don't you want one day for everything to be restored, for
wrong things to be made right, to have healing and life and
flourishing and meaning and purpose?
Let's share that with people so they wish it were true.
And then let's show them the evidence of the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus that proves that it is true.
Finally, let this news be help you to be sustained in good
times and in bad times. When things are good, remember
this hope that we have that encourage you to share the
gospel that excites you about what things lie ahead that cause
you to praise and glorify God for His salvation plan.
When things are hard, remember this hope that we have.
The bad things in this life are as bad as they get.
There's a wonderful new world in life to come.
Maybe you've prayed for healing for years, maybe all your life,
or one day that healing will come.
Maybe you're seeking God desperately, you never seem to
fully find Him. Or one day you'll see His face
and you'll be marked as His. Maybe you live day-to-day with
uncertainty and dread of what might be coming next.
Well, one day there'll be no more sea.
There'll be no more uncertainty. There'll be certain order.
That'll be the warm embrace of your perfect Father every day.
So remember, Revelation is a book to remind us that Jesus
wins. Anyone who is with Jesus, they
will win with Him. One day he will return to make
all things new. And a big question is, will you
be with him? Let me finish with the verses.
Right at the end of Revelation, right at the end of the entire
Bible. He who testifies to these things
says, yes, I am coming soon, Amen.
Come Lord Jesus, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's
people. Amen.
Let's pray. Our Father God, we praise you
for your salvation plan. One that we could never come up
with, one that often we don't fully understand.
But it's amazing that you would send your Son to die for
undeserving sinners like us, to bring us into your presence with
fullness and joy forevermore. We praise you now for this
creation, for the things that we enjoy in this life.
And we praise you for the promised new creation to come.
Help us to live out the new creation today.
As your Kingdom breaks in, we pray that you would use us to
wipe away tears, to bring life and healing to those who are
struggling to point people towards you.
Help us to be excited about this new creation by this hope of the
future, the hope that Jesus offers us.
And please sustain us and encourage us through good times
and in bad times, as we hope and trust in the promises of
revelation, come, Lord Jesus, we pray.
Amen.