What's New: Sermon on Revelation 21:1-5

Does it all ever just seem... old? Worn out, overplayed, exhausting? All the poverty. All the lack. All the sorrow. All the sickness. All the violence. All the confusion. All the woe and the chaos and the pain and the grief. All of the loss. Doesn't even the world seem run down sometimes? For we know that it's written: “Of old you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish..., they will all wear out like a garment; you'll change them like a robe, and they will pass away” (Psalm 102:25-26). “Heaven and earth will pass away” (Mark 13:31). “The heavens vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will die in like manner” (Isaiah 51:6). Paul was right – your “outer self is wasting away,” and so is mine (2 Corinthians 4:16). Nothing holds up over time. Things wear out. Even the skies above and the earth below. Things crumble and fade. They slip from our grip. What have we lost?

The realities of loss and impermanence were no less a problem for John and the first readers of this Revelation, this book of unveiling. We've been journeying through it together since the close of April, and I'd like to take a few minutes to look back and see where the trip's taken us. After a richly theological introduction, we promptly were awestruck with a vision of the risen Jesus Christ as the Living One, the Everlasting Man, in the splendor of his glory. It reminds us that this isn't meant to be a book of fear, or a book of perplexity, or a book of history written in advance. It's a book of Jesus. It's about Jesus from beginning to end. It's meant to redirect the seven churches, and every church since, to a vision of Jesus.

Within this book of Jesus, we explored the chief cast of characters. We found two opposing 'teams,' if you will – the reality and the parody. And each team comes with a trinity, a crowd, and a city-lady. Revelation reveals God, the 'Enthroned One,' and shows his greatness over against his parody, the devilish Dragon. We meet Jesus as the Lamb, who expresses power through self-sacrifice, over against the Beast, brutal earthly power. With God and the Lamb is a sevenfold Spirit, the Holy Spirit, who inspires witnesses to the truth, unlike his parody, the False Prophet, a beast which deceives with propaganda. God, the Lamb, and the sevenfold Spirit receive worship from a crowd of holy Lamb-followers, who bear a divine seal, whereas the earth-dwellers, those who serve earthly powers, are branded with a beastly mark as a sign of who and what they ultimately worship. And the Lamb-followers are waiting for the revelation of the Bride-City, the New Jerusalem, a purified civilization and culture; whereas the earth-dwellers and their rulers are living it up with her parody, the Harlot-City of Babylon, a corrupted civilization and culture that's doomed to destruction. The latter realities are only parodies from below. Through these visions, John encourages us to pick a side. He wants us to see that everybody worships, and Revelation is a call to choose and then live accordingly. But to do that is to recognize the worship basis of everyday life, beneath which John sees a Babylonian beastliness lurk.

To gain clarity, John invites us to pivot our gaze for a while from this world to heaven, because in no other way can we see things rightly than from above. In heaven, we glimpse the beauties of heavenly worship, which unmasks all the drama of earthly empire as a cheap farce. We meet the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders and the myriads of angels, and we behold the ascension of the Lamb, slain but somehow standing again – crucified yet risen. And Jesus the Lamb is the only one found worthy to open the scroll and fulfill God's secret plans for the universe. Through Jesus, we found ourselves drawn into the drama of heavenly worship, seeing our prayers offered up as incense and cast down to earth as flame, hearing the new songs that Jesus' glory inspires, watching the dream of worship sweep up all things in the universe into a single unified praise. And we remembered that, outnumbered through we may feel, we stand in the cosmic majority.

We were reassured that, though our gravest fears may gallop like armed horsemen through the world, yet their havoc is only moving the Lamb's plan forward in ways we can't yet fathom. Then we glimpsed the martyrs under God's altar, their lives and deaths as a holy sacrifice; we heard their plaintive cries for justice and watched them receive rest, and we learned that our lives, offered up to God in witness, are his measure of earthly time, the way he counts down to the end. Then we caught visions of the church – on the one hand, looking like an elite Israelite army, and on the other hand, unveiled as a countless multi-ethnic crowd. We heard the story of salvation told and retold as our exodus through the troubled waters of the worldly seas, and we witnessed scenes of immense glory as we edged closer and closer to the final unfolding, as God's presence began to be displayed to our view, and then heard the sounding of the seventh trumpet, the last trumpet.

From that, we jerked ourselves back, taking a pause, holding off from last things so that we could now go and retread the seven letters Jesus dictated to the seven Asian churches – churches with their strengths and flaws, churches full of people not so different from you and me. We walked their streets, breathed their air, got to know them, understand them, searched for our own strengths and weaknesses in the mirrors of their faces, as Jesus encouraged them, challenged them. We met the church at Ephesus, theologically pure but lacking in love. We met the church at Smyrna, virtuous but beaten down by persecution. We met the church at Pergamum, compromised by false teachers who corrupt the gospel with unhealthy beliefs. We met the church at Thyatira, undergoing revival except that they're tolerant of a false teacher who seduces some to immoral excess. We met the church at Sardis, alive in name only, on the brink of extinction unless they catch revival. We met the church at Philadelphia, pressing on faithfully but discouraged by opposition and exclusion. And then we met the church of Laodicea, assimilated to the culture, neutered by self-sufficiency and luxury – but Jesus will bless the people even there, if only they'll let him in where he belongs. And amidst these seven churches, we can find all that's right and all that's wrong with ourselves – our lives, our church, we hear the voice of Jesus over.

Having taken stock of ourselves in the present, we took a deep breath and went back to the sound of that last trumpet. We knew it would change everything. After all, Paul had written that “the last trumpet... will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:52) – “the Lord himself will descend... with the sound of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first..., and so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). And so, leaping forward to the sounding of the seventh and final trumpet, we then heard the call telling us that the “marriage supper of the Lamb” was ready – the union of Bridegroom and Bride, Christ and his Church, for an eternal feast. We then caught sight of the Second Coming, as Jesus rides in as our Warrior, taking up our fight and overcoming evil. And we stood still, sobered, at the Great White Throne, watching the skies roll up and the earth crumble before God's presence to judge.

And that's where we left off last week, as we delve into what lies ahead. But now our journey has taken us past the Final Judgment, and today we enter upon the grand finale, the elevation, the consummation, the glory! It's all up, up, up from here! And when the Last Judgment is done, John can't help but remind us of what God said through the prophet Isaiah once: “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old – look, I'm doing a new thing! Now it springs forth – don't you perceive it? I'll make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert!” (Isaiah 43:18-19). And John himself hears the same voice that spoke to Isaiah. And the voice of God the Father cries out where John can hear it: “Behold, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5)!

All things new! Can you believe it? Not a thing will stay as it was. Not a thing as it now is will go unchanged, unrefreshed. Everything may be wearing down now, but it will be renewed and restored – not just restored, but transformed, brought to what it was always meant to be. Everything will take on a sacred unfamiliarity. And it will begin with us. Because the first thing that needs to be done is our resurrection. We touched on it somewhat last week. What will it be like to be raised from the dead? To come alive again, and be entirely new? It's worth thinking about, because that will literally happen to each one of us. We're all liable to die, but not a one of us is going to stay buried, not one of us will be abandoned to dust and ashes for good. What will our bodies be like? John doesn't get into it, but Paul tells us that they'll be “raised imperishable” (1 Corinthians 15:42), “raised in glory,” “raised in power” (1 Corinthians 15:43). They won't be able to fall apart, they'll be glorious and strong and profound. Paul tells us that they'll be “Spirit-driven bodies” (1 Corinthians 15:44). Right now, what moves you, what fuels you, what powers your body is just your own soul, your natural self. But when your body gets made new, it will have a new power source: the infinite Spirit of God! Out with the AAA batteries, in with the nuclear reactor! You cannot begin to imagine the energy that will fuel you and govern and direct your living. And as we see how that plays out in the only example of a resurrected body, we find it can integrate the matter we know – after all, Jesus eats ordinary fish that the disciples cook, though we suspect he doesn't need to eat, yet he can (Luke 24:42-43). Jesus' risen body doesn't play by our familiar rules, as he proves when he just appears inside locked rooms (John 20:26). Power and glory indeed! And that's what our bodies are going to be.

But our bodies aren't the only thing that will be resurrected. Paul tells us that the entire creation is groaning and hoping to be “set free” by sharing “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). The whole universe wants to ride our coattails into liberation, into resurrection. And so it will. Because didn't Isaiah hear: “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind – but be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create” (Isaiah 65:17-18)? And just so, that's what John sees: “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” (Revelation 21:1).

The skies above, as they now are, are chained down in corruption. We read rightly in the book of Job that “the heavens are not pure in [God's] sight” (Job 15:15). But that won't always be the case. When we get our liberty, so do the skies above. Having passed away, slain by God's presence, they'll be resurrected as new skies, fresh and vivid, marvelous in their beauty. What might it look like for Mars to become a new Mars, perhaps a more flourishing and more hospitable Mars? What will it be like for Pluto to be raised to new life? What could it mean for the Andromeda Galaxy to be newly transfigured with the glory of the Lord God Almighty? We can scarcely dream it. Not only that, but the soil under our feet will be new soil. The earth, too, will be resurrected, set free of all the pollution and the sin and the damage. It won't be the familiar earth of affliction. It will be a risen world of risen forests and risen fields, risen hills and risen valleys, risen atmosphere and risen oceans. John describes it as being without a 'sea' simply as a symbol, because the turbulent sea was the thing God had to clear aside for the exodus, and the sea is the thing separating him from his beloved churches. But in this risen earth, we'll find again a hundred times all we now lay aside for Jesus' sake (Matthew 19:29). What will this new earth be like? What transfigured laws of physics will it operate under? What smell will a risen rose release, what texture will resurrected blades of grass present to the soles of our feet as we run? What awaits us is surely mysterious, perhaps, but not vague and certainly not dull.

Still, “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Our wildest dreams are incapable of guessing positively most of what will be true about the new heavens and the new earth. That's why John describes it chiefly in negative terms – by what won't be there, by what will be missing. And one of the most important things to go missing will be death. The prophet Isaiah had already heard that God “will swallow up death forever” (Isaiah 25:8). And now John learns it for himself: “Death shall be no more” (Revelation 21:4). Imagine it – not only will we be raised to new life, but it will be a life that can't be lost, that can't be taken away! No more separation, no more worrying, no more needing to dwell on our mortality – because we'll have put on immortality! Maybe you remember the opening and closing lines of the sonnet written in 1609 by John Donne:

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so....

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Death shall die! And what will life look like for us once it does? What will life be, without death haunting it, without death looming over everything? Without fear of an ending, without the bittersweet injection of parting, without the suspicion that anything will be our last this or our last that – how much more able will we be to live in the moment and savor each second to the fullest? Having been through a mortal life now, we'll appreciate each moment as a gift, and yet never more have to worry about being deprived of that gift. Our zest for life will only grow. The perfection of life will be new life.

So, too, the perfection of joy will be new joy. The prophet Isaiah called out to God to “awake as in days of old … Wasn't it you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over? And the ransomed of the LORD shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Isaiah 51:9-11). Sorrow and sighing must flee away if gladness and joy are to be everlasting. And that is what John hears will happen. “Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And how will those things be made to disappear? Because God himself, personally, “will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 21:4).

Think of everything that vexes you inwardly now. All your inner struggles. Your fear. Your doubt. Your times of confusion. Your vices and temptations. All your griefs. All your sense of loss. All your frustrations. They will be made to go away. Right now, each of us carries some kind of brokenness inside. We've been hurt. We wear the scars. We bear the burdens. We may not even be able to recognize that heaviness, because it settles so into the background of our every moment that we forget the weight is even there. We just accept it as baseline normal. And yet each of us, right now, carries that brokenness. We always have, since our first breath. And it builds as we go through life, as we sustain our emotional and psychological and spiritual bumps and bruises. We lose things – and people. We hurt. Sometimes it's sharp and cutting, sometimes it's dull and aching. But we carry it with us always. And yet John hears promise of a time when that really will no longer be the case. All sorrow and sighing will flee away. There will be no more mourning over loss. There will be no more crying over fear. There will be no more grief of any kind. Nothing will be allowed to cast the slightest shadow over your gladness and joy ever again. We may know now that some of the songs we've sung are untrue – we are not, here in this age, “happy all the day.” But in a new earth, under a new sky? You bet!

Yes, the perfection of joy will be new joy, unending joy, ever-increasing joy. Each new day that comes, you'll be gladder. You have no thought to the joy and bliss you were made for, the contentment that was custom-built for your soul, the peace that was tailor-made just for you. But you will. You will! You will wear “a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit” (Isaiah 61:3). You will become all gladness (Isaiah 65:18). Your desires will be deeper and richer and more daring, and each and every one of them will find its truest satisfaction. Along with that will come total peace and safety, inside and outside. The perfection of health will be new health.

We've said how a resurrected body will be imperishable, how you will be raised incorruptible. And that, with the promise of pain being a thing of the past, means that every disease and adverse condition you now know will be a thing of the past. There will be no such thing as arthritis. There will be no such thing as dementia. No such thing as cancer. No such thing as cataracts. No such thing as anxiety or depression. No such thing as Parkinson's or Lou Gehrig's disease. There will be no such thing as fibromyalgia or scoliosis, no such thing as hearing loss or carpal tunnel. All disabilities and diseases will be consigned to the history books. They'll be among those former things that won't even come to mind any more.

Can you daydream of life without those? With no disability, no disease, no aches and pains at all? Not so much as a common cold or an earache or a headache? Every thought coming through clearly, every joint moving comfortably and smoothly? Every day, you will feel young and vibrant and glorious and satisfied. Every day, you will know that whatever the day holds – whether it be planting a tree or rearranging the stars – will be a wild adventure, and that your body and mind and heart and soul will all be 10,000% up to every challenge that comes your way. Can you imagine hang-gliding off the peak of Mount Everest, with the perfect knowledge that you're immortal, invulnerable, untouchable, fearless? I think that one's on my post-resurrection to-do list. And yet I know that all my dreams and all my plans will pale next to the real possibilities I'm not yet creative enough to think up. I guarantee that what we'll be and what we'll do is wilder than your greatest dreams. Paul spoke of “an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). And that's what we were made for!

But best of all – we will be sinless! Oh, all these great joys are wild and thrilling and exhilarating, but if we had still to carry the burden of sin, how could we ever enjoy them? If we still had to fear making a mistake, if we still had to wrestle with guilt, if we still had reason to be ashamed, it would be the worst of curses. If sin were to keep even a toehold in our hearts, the freshest world would be the stalest hell. But sin will have no toehold in you. You will be wholly purified and entirely sanctified and robustly glorified! Sin will be a thing of the past. You will have no guilt. You will bear no shame. With your body being powered by God's own Spirit, the prospect of sinning, of missing the mark, will no longer be a possibility. Your love will be so complete, and your wisdom so deep, as to preclude sinning as an option. You will indeed be holy as the Lord your God is holy – and God's love will be so infused into you that sin will have nowhere to grasp. Marvelous joy – a sinless life! Nothing ever to apologize over. Nothing further to repent from. No resolutions of amendment to make. No more stumbles, no more sidetracks. No more wrongs. You will walk with your head held high.

And with not only yourself but each neighbor sinless, the perfection of community as we know it will be a new community, a new civilization. For John sees “the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:2). We'll explore the significance of this New Jerusalem, the Bride-City, more next Sunday. But for the moment, suffice it to say that it means perfect community. Goodbye loneliness. All the ransomed of the Lord will come to that Zion with singing. All the resurrected will dwell together in blessed unity and a degree of friendship that does not yet exist on the whole face of the earth. If you've been married, you do not yet even grasp what sort of closeness with your spouse is a possibility when sin and sorrow exit the picture. When you've been entirely sanctified together and when your resurrected bodies fully reveal your souls to each other – the depths are unthinkable. And yet each of us is destined to have a deeper friendship with each other than the closest relationship we could ever have now.

But the greatest thing in the new creation will be this: the perfect presence of God. Long, long ago, the highest hope Israel received, as a blessing offered on the condition of obedience, was this: “If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them..., I will give you peace in the land, and you shall lie down..., I will turn to you and make you fruitful and multiply, and will confirm my covenant with you. You shall eat old store long kept, and you shall clear out the old to make way for the new. I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you, and I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be my people” (Leviticus 26:3-12). And now, that is exactly what John hears announced as a reality: “Behold, the dwelling of God is with humans! He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Revelation 21:3). God with us. Us with God. What will it be like to walk next to him, his glory unveiled, and see him face-to-face? Remember last week: the skies and earth all fled from before God's face. They could not bear to look at his glory which blinded the sun and stars. And yet, in the new creation, we “will see his face” (Revelation 22:4). What no old-creation mountain or galaxy could endure, your new-creation self will. As one medieval poet put it, your resurrected self will be “stronger than the universe..., strong enough, even without effort, to overturn the world!” And because of that, and because you will be sinless, God will walk with you, unveiled. No separation. No mask. No buffer. Unshielded intimacy with God. Dwelling in his immediate presence. Being beautifully identified as his. Living openly with him as his son or as his daughter. The heights of spiritual ecstasy now are shadow and smoke next to the glory of God's dwelling being with us.

Yes, he is right to say he is “making all things new.” Right now, things are old. Human inventiveness is worn out – every trend we devise is old-hat before it even gets out of our minds. But they will be new. New because they'll be brought into conformity with the infinite richness that is Jesus Christ, the beginning of a new creation. The skies above will somehow be more like Jesus. The rocks and trees will be more like Jesus. You and your relationships will be just like Jesus – “we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2). Everything will be like Jesus, because Jesus will be “all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11). And so, patterned after Jesus as its template, the heavens and the earth will all be restored and transformed – completely new! Rejoice forever in what God will create!

Knowing the joys in store is what comforts us now. Amidst every present difficulty, “according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13). And these things “are trustworthy and true” – so take note (Revelation 21:5)! Hallelujah! This is what we're living for – this shows why the gospel is such good news for our future, and for the entire universe's future. Accept no substitutes, but live by a faith that will lead you into the new creation. And already it begins, for those who have faith: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation: the old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). But this is the beginning of what will someday be brought to a fullness beyond our wildest hopes. How should we live in light of what's ahead? How can we give thanks enough for what's new? So go dream a dream, be joyful, and celebrate the goodness of the God who makes all things new!