The Beginning and the End
Revelation 21:1 – 6
Last week we started a short run of Message lessons in Revelation. We know that in Revelation, John has been brought to Heaven, not only to see what was going on in the present but also to see what living in the presence of God will look like after the defeat of the Evil One. Essentially John pulls open the curtain of heaven to give us a vision of what is happening in the heavenly realm, in a cosmic battle between God and Satan, between good and evil and between dark and light. The prize that they are seeking is my soul and your soul, my allegiance as well as yours, and our Eternal afterlife, nothing less.
Fortunately, as Christians, we know that it is a battle that God will win. Good will overcome evil. God will overcome Satan. As we learned last week because of His victory our evil, John saw a Great Multitude that have come through the great tribulation, the ones that have come through great challenges to be there is the midst of God’s presence.” These are the ones that have faithfully faced to great challenges of the world below and yet have remained true to God who has sustained them.
But despite the warnings of pain, suffering and persecution of Christians that John lays out in this book, the reality is the Revelation is a book of hope for Christians in the present as well as in the future. In Revelation, death itself passes away. Death will be no more. Mourning and pain and sorrow will be no more. The old order of things will pass away to make room for something new, something promised to us through the prophets.
As we go to our message lesson today, we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of the final scene of the entire Bible. The evil city of Babylon has fallen, the heavenly warrior has defeated the beast, Satan has been judged and thrown into the burning lake of fire along with the beast and the false prophet.
Evil in the world has been defeated by God. The war for the collective soul of mankind has been won. But what is to happen to man and woman, the individuals, me and you and all of our forefathers and foremothers? So, John tells us all we need to know about what is beyond the life and world we know; beyond God’s final victory; beyond God’s final judgment and it is this:
I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth was being recreated and transformed, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. 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.
John’s vision of the End of the battle for man souls, leads us unmistakably to the Beginning of the Bible. Before anything else: God created the Heavens and Earth, all you see, all you don’t see. When Genesis 1 speaks of the creation of the heavens and the earth, it is preceded by the existence of God who is the creator. In the Beginning! Consequently, and rightfully then, it is fitting that any concept of the recreation of the original Creation, the promise of a new heaven and new earth in Revelation 21, must also point us to that same God. John tells us today that it is the One that created the old world, does away that old Creation, in favor of a perfected new world for the people of God.
But God isn’t simply the God who will create a new universe, He is the God who does create and is recreating a people for himself. The new Jerusalem is not just a picture of our future home. It is also a picture of our future selves, individually and collectively. It is an image of the church and the Lord that dwells alongside. Our God who did create, is now the God that comes to mankind, a reflection, a recollection of when He first came to mankind when He sent his Son to us. Again, He comes to dwell with His people in the fullest way possible. Mankind’s communing with God in a new world is the very thing that Jerusalem has always stood for: the city of the righteous, in whose midst God himself dwells. Jerusalem represents the Beginning and the End of God’s purification and perfecting the human soul!
It may surprise you to learn that there is nothing in the Book of Revelation about us going up to heaven. Brian Peterson writes, “Rather, The New Jerusalem descends to us from God. In John’s vision, the final hope is not that we go to heaven when we die. Salvation is not us going to God, but God coming to us. Creation and Recreation are found only in God.” The Beginning and the End!
Our salvation is the opportunity for us to live with God through eternity. It was never God’s idea for death, pain and separation to be part of human lives. As I have mentioned many times, God’s plan for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, was always to be with mankind, to love us and live with us in close relationship.” John’s vision of eternity shows us a God that comes to us to abide closely with his created and loved people.
The plan that He started with, creation of the Garden, is the same plan that he ends with, living with a sanctified and purified mankind in a perfect environment, a perfect garden. He reaffirms for us in our lesson today that what he started, after defeating the evil one, He will finish. He is the Alpha and Omega, and He designs and assures the Beginning and the End.
What a comfort in the present it is to know that God is with us in the here and now through the Holy Spirit, but we should also find great future comfort in knowing that He and plans to be with us throughout all eternity when brings the New Heaven to the New Earth. You see friends, that despite the struggles that we have faced, are facing and will face, that our whole existence is framed, if book ended by the care and presence of God. We have a God that did create, The Beginning, a God that cares and loves us in the present and is also the God that will come to be with us once again in the new perfect garden in The End.
To assure us of that comfort, John repeats the same language and inference that we heard in the message last week, He will wipe 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. Friends God will blot out every tear, not only the tears we will shed, but every tear ever shed, He will wipe away every pain ever felt, throughout the entire history of humankind. Not only the tears we weep, but the tears we cause to others will be gone. There will be no more death to grieve us or cause us to mourn us.
Every burden that you’ve ever carried, every tear you ever shed, every fear that’s ever gripped you, every worry about the future you’ve suffered under will be erased and forgotten. The old order of things in the Beginning, the way things used to work is now gone. God’s new thing, the Ending of man’s separation from the love and presence of will arrive. The Ending of what we have known will cease, All Things will be Made New Again.
That promise is something that God seems to want to make sure that John is clear on, God wants to make sure that John is paying attention to what He is saying, He wants to be sure John emphasizes this point. It is almost as if God stops the vision John is having in midstream and says to him, “are you listening carefully to what I am saying, write his down, listen to me because this is important for my children to know, these words and true and trustworthy “I am making everything new”!
What was in the previous life for man will now be different. The old ways of living for man are now new, that is renewed. What was created but corrupted in the Garden is made new and reestablished. The Beginning and the are similar yet different.
Just as God finished the work of creation and Jesus finished the work of redemption so too the Trinity will finish off the entire plan of salvation by inviting the righteous and redeemed to become part of a new creation as the battle is won. “It is done” He says. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. What God started; the Alpha, He will finish; the Omega. All Things Will Be Made New!
To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. The water of life is God’s symbol of eternal life, eternal refreshment and eternal renewal. As we recall it is the same promise that Jesus gave to the Samaritan woman at the well. It symbolizes the renewal of life found in God’s purpose for our salvation, the fullness of life in God and eternal blessings that come when we believe in him and allow him to quench our spiritual thirst.
Hear the Good News my friends………..
In this season of Easter, it is proper and fitting that we came forward to Revelation and John’s telling of the renewal, hope and recreation that is found for all Christians, those living and those asleep, that awaits us after evil has been eliminated in the world.
On this Fifth Sunday of Easter, we continue to celebrate the mystery of Jesus’ resurrection. A resurrection that promises that we will be the same, but totally different, transformed like our Savior in the resurrection from tomb. Everything including us will be made like new, renewed in spirit and in purpose. We will be new people living in a renewed Jerusalem, living in eternity with God in our midst
Just as our mortal bodies will be transformed to be like the resurrected and glorified body of Jesus, this heaven and this earth will not simply be replaced, but also transformed into something new, into what the initial home for mankind could have been, into the Garden of Eden before man ruined it by believing the words of the Great Deceiver. Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory over the forces of evil through our Lord Jesus Christ!
O Lord, who makes all things new, we are weary of doing things the old way, our own way, the way that leads to suffering and pain and death. Change us, God. Transform us. Make us new, so that we can claim your promise of eternal life that starts now. Forgive us for all the tears we have caused and wipe away all the tears we have shed. Fill us, revive us, with the living water for which you have paid the price. Help us to gratefully anticipate your Kingdom as it comes in its fullness, when everything, including us, becomes new. For us as the children of God, he is the Alpha and Omega, He is the Beginning and the End. Amen.