So we’ve reached the last Sunday of our study of Revelation.Perhaps you are glad about that! I said at the beginning of the month that the reformer Martin Luther said it either finds you mad or drives you mad. Well, we are still in one piece. Four sermons on it and leading two training sessions on it and three Bible studies on it I’m still in one piece – just!
We have arrived at chapter 21 today. John sees a vision of a new heaven and new earth and he gives us the greatest promise of Scripture: See the home of God is with mortals and he will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them and he will be their God… and it’s a fabulous place — you think about all the things that drag us down, well.there’s none of those.
No more tears, no more death, no more sorrow, no more crying, no more pain. Why? The former things have passed away. Throughout our journey grappling Revelation we’ve been reminded over and over that Jesus is on the throne. And today he says “behold” (that’s a word he uses a lot) “behold, I make all things new.”
There are two powerful things I see in these verses.
One, that they come while there is still threat and trouble and real hardship. Remember John receives God’s long term vision while in exile for being a Christian. But the message here is one of hope and life and celebration one day. The message here is that today is not how it will always be. There’s a lot for us to cry about, the state of the world, so much so we don’t want to open a newspaper anymore. There are so many people we know in pain. But God is telling John today might be rubbish, but tomorrow won’t be. We sing it don’t we in Great is thy faithfulness: “Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.” Over and over again we are told in these verses “do not fear” and “behold” so you can stand firm because God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year. We are singing that in my afternoon and evening services this Sunday.
Some of us have been meeting to do some more in depth Bible study on some of the chapters in Revelation we might not ever read in church. Thursday’s was a real explosion of the delights of theology about judgment. Before chapter 21, we’ve been told Babylon, the name for everything evil will be destroyed. Of course as Revelation is a survival guide to get through the horror of the Roman Empire, Babylon is Rome. Read chapter 18 sometime, everything is obliterated in an hour.
An angel casts a mighty millstone into the sea – thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down and shall be found no more at all evil, is never to be seen again, and we are to sing praises because of that. Alleluia for the Lord our God omnipotent reigns! So I guess here’s a call to be strong in our faith, to remember the mighty power of God, to remember Jesus is king and to remember nothing will separate us from his love.
There are times when we think the world or our dire situation we find ourselves in is it forever. I wrote this in a silence on a quiet day I was leading up at Dallowgill. Dallowgill had its roof lift off in a storm a year last May.
It took Methodist Insurance ages to send sometime to put it right so in the meantime lots of damage was done to the inside walls of the chapel leaving us through a wet winter. We took Methodist Insurance on and we’ve now had the chapel painted for nothing and it looks bright and lovely. Sometimes you’ve got to keep believing! So I guess Revelation 21 calls for optimism in our preaching and our prayers and our programme. God doesn’t give us here the possibility of a new heaven and a new earth, it is a certainty.
It’s like in Psalm 42 where the psalmist says, “As the deer pants after the water brook, so pants my soul after Thee, O God.” The psalmist in the same in Psalm 73, he says, “Nearness to God is my good.God is my portion forever.” Being preoccupied with the person of God, longing to be in the presence of God is the heart of Christianity.. In fact, the pure in heart, according to the words of Jesus in the Beatitudes, are promised that they will some day see God. Through the centuries, that desire to see God, to be in God’s presence, to enjoy God forever, that desire, that there is nothing in the world that can satisfy has been on the hearts of believers. That’s why we come to church! You know it took another 300 or so years for the Roman Empire to be defeated. But in that time the Christian community wasn’t completely destroyed. We might not know how to be church today in a confusing and largely agnostic world but we I think are called to keep going —- why?
Well, here’s the second thing I see in these verses of Revelation 21. There’s a new way God works. God comes down to us. The Holy City, the new Jerusalem comes down from God out of heaven like a bride adorned for her husband. God comes down. We think about that at Christmas when we remember Jesus coming long ago as Immanuel on earth, but actually God promises to be alongside us always and one day Christ will return. There will be a second Advent.
We say it in our creed but have we lost any excitement or anticipation about it? We believe that he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and that his Kingdom will have no end. Don’t we? The corruption, injustices, greed, and dodgy leadership in the earthly city will be replacedby a holy city, with no chaos, with peace and Christ triumphant returning in glory. Come to Bible study on Thursday this week where we will do chapter 22 and debate the second coming! We need a new heaven and a new earth. I don’t like cities. When I go hospital visiting in Leeds, I have the aggressive driver behind me who can’t cope with my hesitating over which lane to be in.
We were in Newcastle on a Saturday night. I was only going to pick up a take away pizza. Swarms of people were on the street so I couldn’t go very fast. Newcastle FC had just won. They thumped my bonnet did some shouting “TOON!” rather the worse for drink. Then’s there’s London, a mass of people all looking at their phones as they walk along or on the underground pushing and shoving because they’ve a divine right for a seat. Give me getting stuck behind the slurry lorry in Kirkby anytime! But note the city is transformed. There is a new Jerusalem. Jerusalem a hotbed of political and religious unrest for centuries will one day be the arena where God is closer to us than we can ever know now. “See the home of God is with mortals and he will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them and he will be their God…”
Remember, as this chapter opens all the sinners of all the ages, demons and men, including Satan, the false prophet, the Antichrist, and everybody else, are now in the eternal lake of fire. They are out of the presence of God and the saints and the holy angels forever. They have been dismissed into their own disconnected, isolated place of eternal punishment. They are gone from the presence of God, the saints and angels forever. God comes and makes His home with us. Now this is the Father’s house, and we’re all in it together. That is the amazing reality of heaven. “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”
That means, according to verse 22 of Revelation 21, “There’s no temple.” John sees a new Jerusalem and there’s no temple. Why? “Because the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb are the temple.” In other words, a temple would indicate that you have to go somewhere to see God; or go somewhere, as in the Old Testament, to behold the shekinah. You don’t need a temple, because you’re in God’s house. This is so staggering that John’s listening to this voice, and the voice repeats this thing several times: “The tabernacle of God is among men.” And the voice says it another way: “And He shall dwell among them.” God’s going to dwell with His own. And what the psalmist, I’ve quoted him a lot, here’s Psalm 16 - he anticipated when he said, “In Thy presence is fullness of joy, at Thy right hand are pleasures forever,” is going to become reality.
Isn’t that amazing?
But here’s where I end this sermon. Sarah and I put this service together on Thursday afternoon and we had a think about whether to end the Revelation 21 reading at verse 7 all nice and hopeful and positive or at verse 8:
“But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” Um! Would you like me to climb the pulpit steps and thunder to you like a Victorian preacher might well have about hell? Well if hell is separation from God then life like this cannot be enjoyed. Remember Jesus said in Mark 8 where some fear they might lose their possessions or their jobs or their friends or their comfortable life if they trust him it is worthless to gain the whole world but lose one's soul.
We still have work to do. The new heaven and the new earth haven’t come yet. They will — but we are called to expect and anticipate and help people see a foretaste of it. Do we expect it ourselves? That’s the issue. Tom Wright when he was Bishop of Durham did some Easter services in the very deprived former pit village of Easington Colliery. He said in one “If we believe God’s new creation has begun, we are called to make little bits of new creation happen in our world as it is.” There is no temple in Revelation 21 as we don’t need help finding God. What will we do with our time? What will we talk about when we don’t have to worry about paying the assessment or where we find more stewards? But for now we have a Gospel to proclaim until Jesus comes again.
Is that okay? Don’t give up. God is ahead of us. All shall be well.
A lady at the coffee morning at Allhallowgate on one of the coaches that arrived told me her problems. She said “maybe I shouldn’t have read Revelation!” She’d read the hard bits and she’d not read the promises and the reminders. The notes for preachers suggest you read it with a highlighter pen in your hand and mark all the promises, worship and certainties and then remember them when we have it tough or we think there’s little future. That’s not a bad idea.
Luther found Revelation found him mad or drove him mad! Whilst I am glad next Sunday there will be no reading from Revelation in my services it’s been good to do a book all about how to be when it’s so so hard. There is a new heaven and a new earth coming and God will dwell amongst us for ever. We hold on to the foretaste of that through our stories, our fellowship, our service, our sharing of bread and wine, our waiting on God, our remembering his mercies and we look forward in hope and expectation.
“Everyone who wins the victory will inherit these things. I will be their God, and they will be my children.”
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