Revelation
New Creation

Everybody has a deep internal longing to know where we came from and where we’re going. The Christian faith should answer these questions, but our answer often falls short. Instead, Revelation offers us a better conclusion to the human story. Rather than being raptured up to a spiritual heaven, Revelation 21-22 tells us that the world ends in renewal, not destruction. If God’s redemptive plan includes the redeeming of the created world, then we can take part in renewing creation today. We live in the new reality of renewed bodies, we work to renew relationships with each other, and we partner with God to bring about the Kingdom in the world today. 

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 Uh, hey, if you have a Bible, go ahead and open to that passage, Revelation 21. Uh, if you’re new with us, if this is your first time, we’re Uh, journeying through the book of Revelation. And so, uh, the idea is that we’re, we’re tackling kind of one of the hardest books of the Bible to read after we just talked about the importance of reading Scripture.

And, and the hope is that as we journey through Revelation together, uh, you see how we approach it. Uh, and, and by looking at this book, you can kind of pick up practices and, uh, ways and see how Scripture invites us to read it. And Revelation is one of the most challenging books because a lot of us bring with us…

Uh, predispositions. We have ideas about what revelation means and the end times and all of that. Uh, our, our sort of tagline for the series has been that we believe Revelation is really about disciple discipleship and less about decipherment. And so the idea is that we, we hope and we pray that through this series you see, uh, what it really means to be a disciple of Jesus.

That’s what Revelation is written for. It’s less about charts and graphs and trying to figure out who is who and what happens when and more about encouraging you as a follower of Jesus. Uh, to actually implement the way of Jesus when times are good and when times are not so good. So, with that, uh, Revelation 21, we’re gonna look at the last couple chapters of the book, uh, and the last couple chapters of the whole Bible.

So, let me pray, uh, and then we’ll get started.

Father God, we, um, we welcome you into this space,

and we thank you for, um, the gift of your word. You’ve given us a way for us to know you, uh, like Alexa said, for us to, to hear your voice, to discern, um, your voice from all the other noise in our lives. And, and God, we ask that as we look at a really tough passage in a really tough book, that you would help us to discern your voice.

That we would see, uh, your word and the truth of your word clearly. Uh, that you would give us hope for our lives today. And that you would help us see what it looks like to, to live out this story that you’ve, that you’ve given us. Um, God, I pray that you would, uh, for the next few moments, just, uh, open our eyes that we might see what you have for us, open our ears, uh, that we might hear your word truthfully and then help us to actually live this out as we leave this place.

Uh, later this morning that we would carry with us these truths and that they wouldn’t just stay with us, but that we would share these with each other, uh, with those in our lives that need to hear the hope of your word. Uh, we pray all this in your name. Amen. Well, just before I graduated college, uh, I got a job working at Albertsons, uh, the grocery store.

Uh, I was part of the overnight freight crew and my job was to clock in at 11 o’clock at night. Uh, we would go, there were about four of us on the freight crew, we would unload all the pallets from the warehouse and we would stock the whole store and then we would clock out by seven in the morning. And that was, that was, that was the job.

So five to sometimes seven days a week, that’s what I was doing. Now the worst nights was when it was just me. So every now and then they would only schedule one person because there wasn’t that much stuff to stock. And so I would go in, I would be in the store all by myself, and then I’d have to stock the store and then run up and down the aisles and make sure everything looked good.

And that was really boring by yourself. Uh, it was really scary to be in like a half lit grocery store at like 3 in the morning. It’s not a good place to be. The second worst night was when it was all of us. So if there were four of us scheduled, that was our entire freight crew, and that meant that there was a ton of stuff to stock.

That meant that we likely weren’t going to get done, management was going to come in at seven, they were going to be angry at us, they were going to keep part of us to work overtime, send the rest of us home, and that was awful. We weren’t going to take our break, we weren’t going to take our lunch, that was the worst.

But the best nights was when it was me and Munson. Who’s Munson? That’s what I asked the entire time I worked with Munson. Munson was the frozen manager. So Munson’s job was to do what we did for the whole store, but just for the frozen aisles. There were two frozen aisles. And every now and then they would schedule just me and Munson together.

So I would do the rest of the store and Munson would do his aisle and usually there wasn’t wasn’t much work for me to do on my end. And there wasn’t much work for Munson to do on his end. And so me and Munson would have the best conversations. We would waste time together. We’d take up our full shift.

We would take a long lunch. We had all these conversations about really dumb things, like movies and sports and TV shows that we were watching, and like, like who would win in a fight between our manager and like a 12 year old black belt. Like what would, anything to pass the time, right? After about a year, uh, I graduated college, but I was still working at Albertsons, and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.

I didn’t know. What my next step was going to be, and so these conversations that I had with Munson were becoming draining and not as interesting to me. I wanted to talk about other things. I wanted to know, Munson was like a 40 year old man. I wanted to know about his life and how he ended up here and how I could not do that so that I didn’t end up still at Albertsons at 40.

And so I would ask questions like, Munson, do you ever think about, like, what happens after we die? Or do you, do you, what, if you didn’t have to work in the grocery store, what, what would you be doing? What, what do you want out of life? Do you ever think there’s more to life than this? And every question that I asked, he would just say, Nope.

And I don’t think he was being like, deceptive. I, I genuinely just think that he didn’t ask these questions. He didn’t think about life after death, and he didn’t think about his life and anything transcendent. He just, he clocked in, he did his job, and then he went home. Until Munson had a daughter. Which blew my mind.

I didn’t, part of me didn’t even think Munson was real. After a year of working with him, he did not seem like a real person. And then he had a daughter, and he didn’t tell me until two months after he had this daughter. And I was like, why didn’t you tell me this? And he’s like, it never came up. And I was like, alright, Munson.

We were sitting in the break room one night, uh, towards the end of our shift. And, and we were quiet, we were about to, to clock back in and go finish our shift and then go home. And then Munson, uh, looks at me and he says, Do you, do you ever think there’s more to life than this? And I said, yes, Munson, I do, I do think there’s more to life than this.

And for the next 20 minutes, we had the best conversation that we’ve ever had. He told me about fatherhood. He told me about, um, what it was like raising his little girl. He told me about his fears, his doubts, why he didn’t believe in an afterlife. And I told him about what I believed about the end times and about the future and the doubts that I was having in my wrestle with what to do next in life.

It was the best conversation we’ve ever had. After that night, I never saw Munson again. No, I’m just kidding. I, he was there. And then everything went back to normal. The next day, it was like that conversation never happened. Uh, now I, I know that some of you know a Munson. Uh, or some of you are a Munson.

Not in like a weird way, but like you never ask these questions. These questions about like where, what’s, what’s life about, what’s… What’s going on behind the scenes? Where am I going? What’s transcendent? What is meaning? What is purpose? What’s my role in the story? Is there even a story? Is there meaning behind any of this?

And then others of you are like me. You’ve been asking these questions since you were like six years old. Like what happens when we die? Where is this going? What’s the meaning behind my work? What, what role am I supposed to play in life? Is there anything that happens after death? But regardless of who you are, whether you relate to me or you relate to Munson, the bottom line is that we as humans Cannot live without knowing where we’re going.

And so at some point in our lives, we will ask that question. The birth of a child will make you ask that question. Tragedy, suffering, confusion, loss, pain. You get fired from a job, you’re asking what’s next. At some point, we want to know where we’re going. And for a lot of people, the answer is nowhere.

That’s a really common answer. Maybe that’s your answer here today. I don’t know all of you. Um, but maybe that’s, that you, there’s nothing after death. This is all that there is. And for you, anything about religion or about politics or about community or meaning, that’s all just a construct to help you make sense of, of just meaninglessness in life.

That all that there is is just this physical world and, and after that we just turn back into dust. There’s nothing like a spirit. Your soul doesn’t exist. And if that’s you, that’s, that’s okay. I, I know that’s a really. Common answer to that question. Where are we going? Well, nowhere. We didn’t come from anywhere.

We’re not going anywhere. It’s just, this is what, this life is all that there is, so make the most of it while you can. Now, as Christians… Our job is to offer a better answer, right? We want to have an alternative. We want to tell a beautiful story about how God created us, how God has redeemed us, and how life after death is actually going somewhere.

But, I think for a lot of us, at least this is true of myself, as of maybe a year or two ago, the best that I had to offer was something like this. Well, when you die, uh, if you believed in Jesus, uh, then you go to heaven. And if you don’t believe in Jesus, then you go to hell. And that’s the essence of Christianity.

That’s what being a follower of Jesus is all about. Now, I’m not saying that’s not true, but I am saying that that story alone falls short. In fact, both stories fall short, right? The idea that we’re not going anywhere. That, no one can live like that. So we create meaning for ourselves. We seek pleasure at any expense.

But if the best that Christianity has to offer is that we go to heaven when we die, That also falls short. At best, we just create meaning for ourselves. We seek pleasure. At worst, we give in to paranoia. We become fearful, and then Christianity is just really about a waiting game until we get to heaven.

There’s nothing that Jesus cares about in this life. All he cares about is your soul. The reality is that you and I want a better story than that. Like, you and I need, we need a better story than that, and it can’t be up to us to make up that story. And so we get the book of Revelation. Revelation gives us that better story.

And so we’ve spent the past few weeks looking at the story, answering the question, what should I believe then? Right? What should I believe about the end of the world? John has been giving us a peek behind the curtain saying, this is really what’s happening, right? We’ve talked about beasts. We’ve talked about dragons and women and lambs today.

Today, we’re going to look at the end of the story. The end of the entire Bible. And the question that we want to ask isn’t so much, What should I believe? But the question is rather, Is what I’m believing right now worth it? Because that’s the question that the readers of John’s letter are asking. We’ve talked about how they’ve been persecuted, uh, for giving their lives to Jesus.

The emperor has, uh, taken Christians because their allegiance is to Jesus, not to the emperor. And he’s, he’s been killing them. And so, as they’re huddled together in their house churches, fearing for their lives, that’s the question they’re asking. Is this going somewhere? Right? Is my pain and my suffering actually going to be worth it?

Is it going to pay off in the end? And for you and I today, I know many of us are asking that same question. Is this worth it? Maybe your life isn’t in danger, at least I hope not. Uh. But is it worth the opportunities that I’ve given up, right? Is it worth the friends that I’ve lost, right? Is it worth showing up when I don’t feel like it, worshiping God, singing these songs together with each other when I don’t know that I can actually trust God?

Is this going to pay off in the end? And John’s answer that he gives us in the book of Revelation is a clear and resounding yes, it’s worth it. And the end of the story is better than anything that you can come up with, anything that you’ve heard. And so… That’s what we’re going to do this morning. We’re going to look at the story.

So Revelation 21 should be on the screen. We’re going to read everything that Alexa just read. 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. I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.

Then I heard a loud voice from the throne, Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his people’s, and God himself will be with them, and will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. Grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away.

Alright, that’s the end of the story. That’s where all of us are headed. Now it’s likely, you may have heard this passage before, uh, or it’s likely this is nothing like what you’ve read about in these talks and these conversations about heaven and the new earth and reality and all of that. What happens after you die the afterlife?

And so, uh, I wanna look more closely at this. I just wanna point out three things that we see John telling us. This is what happens at the end of the world. This is how the story ends, right? First, we see a new heavens and a new earth. Now if you’re an astute reader of the Bible, you know that this is not the first time you’ve seen this phrase, heavens and earth.

Uh, this is how the entire Bible begins. In Genesis 1, the very first words are, John is seeing that

The Bible is literally bookended with creation. So heavens and earth, what does that mean? That’s, that’s really a phrase, uh, sort of a, a catch all phrase that means everything. All of the created world, right? So when they, they talk about heavens, there’s really two definitions, uh, in both the Greek and the Hebrew, right?

So when they say heavens, in one sense, they just mean the sky, right? Like the birds of the heavens. It’s the things that live up there in the blue, the clouds, that space that takes up the space above our heads, above the earth. That’s the heavens. But heavens also means… It’s the dimension, the reality, the spiritual world that God lives in.

Earth is the physical world. It’s the space that you and I occupy today. It’s everything that we can touch and see. And when you put those two things together, it just means everything. So in the beginning, God creates everything. And in the end, God recreates everything. Revelation 21 isn’t just giving us an end of the story, it’s, it’s showing us that God is taking what was meant to be in the Garden of Eden and restoring everything back to that state.

And if you know the story, you know that, uh, God dwells with his people in Genesis 1, right? God creates Adam and Eve, they represent humanity, God is with them, he walks with them, he communes with them. And their job was to spread God’s goodness and God’s presence to the rest of the world. That was what they were supposed to do.

But instead… We know the story in Genesis 3, they give in to the temptation from the serpent and sin, death, chaos, disorder, wickedness, evil, all enter the world, and that’s what gets spread out instead. So Revelation 21, at its core, John is saying everything at the end of the world is going to be like how it was in the beginning, but even better.

Second thing we see is the new city. And we read that line about the new Jerusalem. There’s also going to be a new Jerusalem. What does that mean? Um, some people take this really literally and they think, okay, well at some level in, in, you know, after we live in heaven or after Jesus comes back and judges the world, something is going to happen in Jerusalem.

Um, That could be it. It could be that something really special is happening in the city of Jerusalem. I don’t know, maybe, but I think John is actually making a better point here. Um, in the Bible, cities, especially in the Old Testament, cities represent humanity’s wickedness, arrogance, violence, and aggression.

So God intends for humanity to spread a garden and instead they spread evil, violence, wickedness, everything else, and they do that by forming cities. So think about how cities are talked about in the Old Testament. You know, like we’ve talked about Babylon, right? Babylon was a wicked city. Egypt was a wicked and oppressive city that built its empire on the backs of the Israelite slaves.

Think about the Tower of Babel. Think about all these different cities that you read about in the Old Testament. These are not good cities, and so what God intends is for his people to create a new city called Jerusalem. And in the Old Testament, Jerusalem was supposed to be the center of God’s presence.

Right, it was supposed to reflect what the garden was supposed to reflect, that the Israelites were going to establish a nation, and they were going to show the rest of the nations around them, the rest of the world, what God looked like. But instead, they worship other gods. And it’s that cycle over and over again.

They keep spreading wickedness, violence, and idolatry. And so God allows them to be overtaken by a wicked city in Babylon. Now in the new creation, at the end of the world, there is a new city. God builds it. God redeems city. It’s Jerusalem. It is the center of his presence. And it’s described as a perfect cube, which is really weird.

In verse 16, it says the city is laid out in a square. Its length and width are the same. He measured the city with a rod at 12, 000 stadia, which I read is about 1, 400 miles. Its length, width, and height are equal. In other words, this city is huge. This is a large, this is a massive city. It’s almost as big as the entire U.

S. The height would actually reach into, like, the upper levels of the Earth’s atmosphere into space. Um, again, it’s possible that John means this literally. That there is actually going to be a cubed city. That’s possible. But I think the point that he’s trying to make is that John sees a city that envelops the whole world.

In other words, in the end of the story, after death and resurrection and all of those things, what actually happens isn’t just the world being restored to the way God intended, but it’s actually the world functioning the way God intended it. And so we talk about the kingdom of heaven a lot, right? We talk about the kingdom of heaven is where God’s will is done.

And there are parts of the kingdom that can break through into the world today. Jesus prays for God’s kingdom to be done and God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. This is the kingdom happening on earth as it is in heaven. This space of heaven and the space of earth overlap entirely. God’s space becomes our space.

This is the kingdom. This is where what God’s will to be done is done. And it’s huge, not because of its militaristic might or to rival the empires of Babylon, America, or Egypt, but because so many people are packed in this city. That’s a huge feature of this. It’s not one people group. It is people groups of all nations that are all invited into this new Jerusalem, this new city, this new presence where everything that God intended happens.

This is the answer to the longing that a lot of us have. This is the answer. You have a longing. C. S. Lewis says, We find in ourselves a longing that this world cannot satisfy. And if this world can’t satisfy it, that means that we were probably meant for another world. You want belonging. You want an identity.

You want community with each other. You want acceptance. You want love. And all of that can only be found in God’s will. This is what’s happening here. This is the fulfillment of the longing that we all have. This is the center of God’s presence. Now, third thing. Revelation 22, this is really important. I want to point this out.

This is the third thing. So we have the new creation, new heavens and new earth. We have the new city, and now in Revelation 22, look at the next chapter if you want. It’s going to be up on the screens. These are the first five verses. Then he showed me the river. of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the city’s main street.

The tree of life was on each side of the river, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations, and there will no longer be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will worship Him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.

Night will be no more. People will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, because the Lord God will give them light, and they will reign forever and ever. This is God undoing the curse. Notice a couple things. Notice the tree of life, right? So in the garden, God creates the Garden of Eden, and at the center he puts two trees.

It’s the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And Adam and Eve partake of… Both trees, um, but God tells them not to take part of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And they do that, and so God says now they can’t have the fruit of the tree of life. So he cuts them off from that tree, banishes them from the garden, and that’s why humans die, is what Genesis tells us.

In Revelation 22, at the end of the story, this is what’s being restored. That people are freely taking from the tree of life. You also see the restoration of everything that humanity has unleashed in the world, right? It says their curse will be no more. There’s no more curse. Everything that we’ve, we’ve struggled and we fought against, sin, Satan, death, wickedness, all of those things, those things do not exist.

Nations are healed. That means war and genocide and… Famine, natural disasters, all of these things are gone. There’s peace. Nations, meaning people groups. There’s not one monolithic people group. There’s people of all nations are now a part of this new city, this new creation. And they’re all living at peace with one another.

So at the end of Revelation, this is what we see. John says, this is how the story ends. This is where you and I are headed. There’s the new heavens and the new earth. There’s the new city. And there’s the new garden with the tree of life. Now notice what we don’t see first. We don’t see the, the, the sea ocean, right?

21, uh, verse one says that, The first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. Now, what does that mean? Well, in the Old Testament, the sea represented chaos, right? The sea, think about it. They didn’t have technology to explore the sea, so the sea was just this untamed wilderness.

It was part of God’s creation that had gone wrong, that was just marred by wickedness. It was chaotic. It was disorder. It represented everything evil. If there is no sea, then that means that there is no disorder in creation, right? There’s no more natural disasters. Uh, wreaking havoc on God’s created world.

The second thing we don’t see, there’s no death, grief, crying, or pain. At the source of all of our struggles are gone. Everything that you struggle with in this life is gone. Everything keeping you up at night is gone. Um, the fears that you have, the things that you’re anxious about, the trauma that your body can’t forget, the tragedy that is at the core of your being, that’s become a part of your identity, all of that is gone.

Everything that humans have unleashed into the world is gone. There is an answer for the pain that you have. That’s the bottom line. The tragedy that you feel, um, the trauma, the suffering, everything, that is gone. The third thing we don’t see. It’s individual souls raptured to a spiritual heaven. So let’s talk about the rapture for a moment.

Chances are, if you grew up like me, um, here’s what you believed. You, you heard this story that, um, that Jesus was going to come back to judge the world, right? Before that, he was going to come back to take his people away. And so the idea was that Jesus is going to come back. Nobody knows the time or the hour, right?

Bible says that. Uh, and when he does, what’s going to happen is, um, those of us who are alive and who have chosen to follow Jesus in that moment are going to see Jesus descend from the clouds, that our bodies are going to be lifted, physically lifted into the air, that we’re going to meet Jesus in the air, and then Jesus is going to take us to heaven where we’re going to escape the earth and live in heaven with God forever.

I don’t want to, how many of you are familiar with that? Have you heard that story? Okay. I’m not saying that that’s not true. What we’re doing, what we’ve done this whole, I’m so nervous to talk about this, if you can tell. Uh, we’ve avoided this, I’ve avoided this, but you have to talk about this when it comes to Revelation.

I, I’m willing to be wrong on this. Okay, let me say that too. What I want to do is offer an alternative. Um, because for the, that, that idea of that happening to us did not exist until about 200 years ago. There’s a lot of convoluted history about why that is. You can talk to me about it later. I can send you some resources so you know I’m not just making this stuff up.

But today when people talk about the rapture, at least when I learned about the rapture, uh, I was typically told one verse in particular. There’s a couple places in the Gospels that Jesus could be referring to that, but that’s a different story. I want us to look at 1 Thessalonians 4. Because this is what a lot of people say, it’s just a plain reading of the text.

This is what describes what’s actually going to happen. So this is Paul writing to the church in Thessalonica, and he says, for the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout with the archangel’s voice and with the trumpet of God and the dead in Christ will rise first. So they would say, okay, if you’re dead and you believe in Jesus, you don’t go to heaven right away until Jesus comes back.

Then when he comes back, then your soul goes to heaven. Then we who are still alive, so those of us who follow Jesus at that moment, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. Now that seems pretty clear, right? Plain reading of the text says that’s exactly what happens.

God comes. There’s a loud trumpet sound. Doesn’t matter if you’re in Beijing in the middle of the night or in Arizona, Queen Creek in the middle of the day, you’re going to see Jesus in that moment. And if you’re a follower of Jesus, then you are going to join Jesus in the clouds. And again, you’re going to be with the Lord forever while God judges and does away with the earth.

Except I don’t think that’s what this passage means. I think what’s happening is, this is a weird event, right? None of us, we don’t have any framework for this. This doesn’t make any sense, and so we read into it, and that makes sense how we would take that away. But if, if you’re reading this for the first time in the first century, if you’re an original reader of this letter that Paul is writing, you know exactly what he’s talking about, because this event happens all the time.

In a city, when a king goes out to battle, he takes an army with him. If he’s victorious in that battle, then he comes back to his city and in the city you have watchmen and when they see the king coming back, they send out emissaries. And the word that Paul uses means caught up, like they go out, they are caught up with the king.

They meet the king, they blast their trumpets, the king comes in with a trumpet and then they welcome the king back into the city. The king doesn’t take them to another place and then destroy the city. They welcome the king back into the city. And that is precisely the point of revelation. The end of the world is not its destruction, its renewal.

It’s us welcoming our king, right? Who’s defeated the enemies that have plagued us, right? Sin, Satan, and death, the dragon, the beast, all of these characters that we’ve talked about in the past. Everything orchestrating this evil behind the scenes. God defeats those. We go out to meet our king and then we welcome him back to creation, which is his kingdom to begin with.

Salvation is not then about us being saved from this earth to go to a spiritual heaven while this earth is destroyed. That is not the idea in Revelation 21. It is a renewed creation. There’s no mention in this passage of anybody going up, but there is a mention of God coming down. That’s how the story ends.

In other words, where we are headed is not just heaven, it’s also earth. Because there is going to be no difference between the two. God’s space, where everything that God wants to happen happens, and our space, where human wickedness, evil, arrogance, violence have all spread, are now going to overlap like a Venn diagram until they become one thing.

We are with God and God is with us. That’s what’s happening in the physical created earth. The first major heresy to plague the early church was called Gnosticism. Gnosticism was this idea that the spiritual world is good. And the physical world is bad, so everything matter, your body, you’re just, you’re a soul with a body, you’re like, your body is just a, like a, the word meat keeps coming to mind, like a meat mechanism, right, like it’s just a meat suit, and it’s nasty.

But that was the idea, right, the goal is to escape this physical world, to get out of your meat suit, and go exist, it’s like the movie Soul, have you guys seen this Disney movie? Great. Okay. It’s a good movie. I love this movie. It’s such a good movie. That’s how I think a lot of people envision what’s actually going to happen.

That, uh, if you, the story, it happens in the first 10 minutes, so I’m not spoiling it. But a jazz musician in New York falls down a pothole and dies. Uh, and the whole movie is about his soul just existing in this like spiritual space. And it’s, I love the movie. It’s a great movie. But that’s, that’s not how the Bible describes reality.

Our souls do exist with God. We believe that when you die, you are in the presence of God, but that is a temporary space where we are all headed. Is the, the, the, the merging of the spiritual and the material. This is the new creation and the new earth. And I think that a lot of us still believe this, right?

We still tend to dichotomize the spiritual and the physical. We’re still, we’re still tempted by the same heresy today too. So we separate our spiritual lives from our real lives, right? Um, for some of us, this looks like. Like you designate like your spiritual life on Sundays, and then the rest of your life is like your time, or what you do with your body is your choice.

Because God really just cares about your soul. Or one of my favorite things, just preach the gospel, right? God doesn’t care about what happens in this world. All he cares about is saving souls that he can take to heaven. I would say this is the gospel. The gospel is about renewal. At the core of the gospel is the idea that you and I were put at odds with God, but by believing in Jesus, he makes us new, but it doesn’t end with that.

It ends with the entire world being renewed. All of creation belongs to God, not just our souls, not just our worship, not just our thoughts, not just our emotions, but our bodies as well. The world around us belongs to God. Everything is being made right. Everything is being made better, not just our individual souls.

That’s the end goal. That’s how the story ends. That’s the message of the gospel. And it might sound like a victory to just scrap the broken, evil, corrupt, wicked place that we live in. But it’s so much more powerful to take what’s broken and to actually redeem it. Because redemption is always more powerful than destruction.

And that’s the message of Revelation. God isn’t powerful because he destroys what’s wicked. He’s powerful because he redeems it. There is still the destruction of the wicked, right? Verse 8 says that the cowards, the faithless, the detestable, the murderers, the sexually immoral, the sorcerers, the idolaters, all liars, their share will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

The wicked will still be judged and destroyed. And that’s a good thing. A couple weeks ago, Trey talked about that. You want justice, right? You want people who propagate evil, oppress others, take advantage of children to get what they have coming at the hands of a just God. But God’s power comes from his ability to redeem what’s wicked, not just destroy it.

What’s wicked is you and I, right? We were once in this category, but God renews us. Just like he renews us, he’s renewing all of creation. Everything in the world belongs to God. It’s his ability and his willingness. To take what’s broken, wicked, corrupted by sin, Satan, and death, and make it new. Everything is going to be made better.

That’s the message of Revelation. Because it takes more strength to redeem what’s unredeemable. to renew what’s already been decayed and to restore everything that’s been lost than to simply scrap the whole project of creation altogether and concede this sort of contested space of creation to the enemy.

No, God will not give up his creation. That includes you and me and the entire world. And if God cares about the renewal of the world, then he cares about how we live in that world today. Christianity then is not just about what happens after we die, it’s about what happens while we live. It’s about how we can take part in bringing the new heavens and the new earth in part.

We don’t do it all, Jesus does it all, but we reflect that renewal to the world around us. Uh, philosophers talk about three dimensions that we live in. There are three things that we relate to. We relate to ourselves, we relate to others, and we relate to our environments. And that’s what God redeems. So first we experience what I’m calling the renewal of our bodies.

This is the renewal of ourselves. What does this mean? This means that renewal starts with us. That we were wicked, we were sinful, we were corrupted by evil, we were put at odds against God, but by following Jesus, that we are made new. We’re made whole, we’re put right with God, we are fully redeemed, right?

Jesus offers us the chance to be redeemed, and if we accept it, we experience renewal. That means that what you do with your body has spiritual consequences. We don’t have time to read this but in 1 Corinthians 15, go and read it on your own, Paul talks about the resurrection of the bodies. He says, no, there is going to be a resurrection of your body.

You will not just exist in a disembodied spiritual heaven with harps and halos. You are going to have a new, better version of the body that you have now, but it’s made whole. It’s made complete. A few examples of what this means, just at a base, obvious level, um, sexuality, right? If there is nothing transcendent, if, if, if what we do with this life doesn’t matter and it’s just about our souls, then, then we can have sex with whoever we want and whenever we want.

But, if the physical reality reflects a spiritual reality, if this world is going somewhere, and if all of creation belongs to God, then what we do with our body matters, including the intimacy that we share with other people. That’s why there are parameters in the Bible about sexuality. It’s not to be oppressive, it’s to be protective.

Right, to protect what God created. There’s a whole, that’s a whole other story, but I don’t want to get into that. Um, the other thing this means is just at another base level, your habits. What you actually do with your physical body, right? The lifestyle that you live. The routines that actually shape who you are, not just what you do.

Or consumption. The things that you watch. The things that you listen to, the things that you talk about, those things shape who you are at the deepest level. It’s not just your soul, it is your body. The next practice series we’re going to do in a couple weeks is on simplicity. We’re going to expand on this idea a lot more.

How do we simplify our speech? How do we simplify our materialism and all of those things? So renewal starts with us, with our bodies. The second thing, the renewal of the world. Because renewal starts with us, but it doesn’t just stay with us. If our end goal was heaven, then we wouldn’t have any responsibility to the world around us.

And that’s what a lot of Christians think, right? This is, uh, the world is evil, heaven is good, right? The world, um, is irredeemable. It’s wicked, it’s marred by sin. God is gonna take us, that’s the whole point of the rapture, right? God’s gonna take us from this world, and he’s gonna destroy it. And we’re gonna live in the good stuff.

That’s Gnosticism, right? The spiritual is good, the physical is bad. But God deeply cares about the world. Right? To destroy the world is to concede that, to give that over to the enemy and God will not concede what He created to be good to the enemy. And that means that this world is good. Marred by human wickedness?

Yes. Corrupted by Satan, the dragon, evil and sin? Yes. Unredeemable? No. Which means that we have an obligation to the world around us. Now we partner with God. That’s the whole point of being a Christian. It doesn’t end when you accept Jesus. It ends in the new creation. Our job until we get there is to help do what Jesus prayed for, that we would bring God’s will down here onto earth where God’s will is not currently happening.

That means that we work to make the world a better place. That is a mandate for Christians. We see that in the end of Revelation 22, right? How does this end? With God, where we don’t need light, but we are reigning forever and ever. That was what we were meant to do in the garden. That’s what we’re meant to do now.

And that’s what we will do in the new creation. We’re going to make it better. We’re going to rule over the world. And I don’t mean this in like a weird political way. Here’s what I mean. There are three simple areas. First, culture, right? The culture that we live in today. We want to reflect the best values of humanity, of creativity.

We want to celebrate those things. We want to celebrate God and bring him into the culture. The workplace. When you go to work, we believe work should be a better place where you work should be better because you as a follower of Jesus are there, right? You are bringing kingdom values to a place where empire values rule, right?

You sacrifice for the sake of others. You don’t put others down for the sake of your own promotion. You elevate others even at your own expense. Those are kingdom values. That’s making your workplace a better place. And then areas of justice, right? We lament injustices and we fight for equality. This is an integral part of the Christian mandate.

Now we’ve done some sermons on the past, um, about this specifically. I did a workshop, uh, I don’t want to plug anything, whatever. I did a workshop last summer about outreach and how one of the best ways to actually share the good news is to live out the good news where we live in our workplaces, to practice hospitality and do those things.

We’ve done sermons on racial reconciliation and how Christians are, are meant to fight for justice, um, and I can send those to you if you’re interested. But at the end of the day, this is what being a Christian is about in this world is making the world a better place. Third thing. So we have renewal of our bodies, renewal of creation.

Then we have renewal with each other. It’s not just you and Jesus. It’s not just about you. In this passage, there is no individual soul. It is a collective group of people. The Greek actually says peoples. That’s not a grammar mistake. That means peoples. Of all different ethnic diversities and backgrounds, you are not just saved to God individually, but you are adopted into a family.

That means that you don’t just have reconciliation with God when you become a Christian. You also have reconciliation with each other. So the kingdom of heaven, right? This new creation can break into our world today when we practice good relationships in community with each other, when enemies are loved and forgiven instead of fought against.

When generosity is practiced over the way of consumption, when unity is achieved and when diversity is celebrated, that’s the new creation breaking into our world today. As we close, here’s the most helpful thing about our passage, is that if God Is in the business of making things new. If that’s what God does, God doesn’t just destroy what’s evil, but he offers the chance of renewal.

If God can take the most evil parts of the world, the brokenness, the natural disasters, the systemic injustices, the exploitation, all of that, and make it something new, then God can do the same thing with you. And that’s the message of the gospel. We don’t, we don’t follow Jesus because of our fear of hell or destruction.

We follow Jesus because of the beauty of renewal. We follow Jesus because Jesus offers us the thing that we long for, the answer to those deep questions that we ask. What comes after this life? It is better than what you can imagine. Can God take my brokenness, my, my trauma, my sinfulness, my arrogance against him and actually be at, not only not at odds with me, but can he make me something new entirely?

Yes. God is doing it today. It starts today. This isn’t something that happens in the future. This is something God says, I am making all things new. This happens today. And the end of the story is the perfection of God’s creation. It’s the restoration of everything that we brought into the world. And it’s you being made whole.