Act IV: Restoration

Hey everyone! My name is Garrett and for those that don’t know me, I’m our high school guys pastor here. And I say it every time I get up here, but I am genuinely thrilled to get to open God’s Word tonight and study it with y’all. You see, if you’re new here or it’s been a while, every single week, we come in on a Wednesday night and sing songs to God because we believe Jesus is worthy of our singing and worship. Then we devote a major portion of our time together to study God’s Word—that’s what we really believe the Bible is: God’s Word to us. We believe at FSM that the Bible is still relevant to our lives and speaks today and that the goal of the Christian life is to get better at conforming our lives to what the Bible says. We want this story to shape our story.

In order to become better students of the Bible, we make bulletins for you guys which you can grab back by the garage doors. We provide those as a distraction-free way to take notes. taking notes isn’t inherently more “spiritual” or anything, but it can be a really helpful tool for you to retain the information we study each week and refer to it later! We do this because we want to take what God says seriously.

Another way that we want to take God’s Word seriously is a really exciting project we’re putting together for this upcoming summer. It’s the 2nd annual FSM Summer Devotional Book. this year, we’re spending 60 Days in the Psalms—and here’s the catch, we want YOU to be a part of writing this. If you’re interested in contributing to the Summer Devo, just scan the QR code on the screen and fill out the form to let us know you’re interested. Submissions are due back next week, so if you want to help out, make sure you fill that out tonight!

Crisis

We all experience brokenness to one degree or another; we know the world isn’t as it should be.

Illustration: I just briefly scanned the latest Global News Headlines today during work and here’s what we’re looking at:

Severe storms threatening the American south

“Goon Squad” sentenced to several consecutive decades-long sentences in connection to their crimes

Don’t know what this is about? It’s a group of former law enforcement officers who were fired and have just recently been convicted for actual, real-life torture of two black men in Mississippi

Financial angst among Gen Z

“we can’t afford to live”

Israel-Palestine War

Mass shooting in Philadelphia

Canada may face a “catastrophic” wild fire season again

And let’s not forget we are just a year removed from the tornado that wrecked Little Rock.

It doesn’t take much to realize that this world is not as it should be.

Complication

We try to self-medicate, we try to establish utopia, escapism, social reform, political allegiance, you name it.

Personally, I feel this, when I get stressed and I feel like my world is getting too chaotic, I retreat to a lot of time spent playing video games. Video games are a fake world that I can control and I feel like I can exercise power when life is too crazy.

Right before my daughter was born, I started no lifing some video games. Mostly career mode in Madden or FIFA, but I played a little bit of Shadow of Mordor in there, too. Anything to get my mind off of the craziness that was about to be bringing a newborn infant into the world and trying to raise a kid.

When life gets complicated and we recognize the challenges that we face in the world, a lot of us can choose retreat or escapism or we can try to live in blissful ignorance. Others might be prone to fight the injustice and become really wrapped up in the culture wars or place their hope in key political figures.

But even well-intended, man-made efforts to affect change in the world around us can leave us feeling empty and filled with angst.

Transition: We need something more than a temporary fix…

Clue

Just like we each find redemption in Christ; the whole world needs to be restored in Christ.

Climax

Remember what we’ve been saying this whole series: The Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus.

Just like every good story, the Bible’s story has a great ending.

So far, we’ve looked at Acts I-III of the story: Creation, Fall, & Redemption. Tonight, we’re looking at a really unique part of the story because it hasn’t come to fulfillment yet.

We’re living in the middle of the story right now!

My hope is that tonight, we will see…

The end of the story is meant to motivate & inspire us to live in the middle of it.

The hope of the whole biblical story is this: Jesus promises to return one day and make all things new. It’s the hope of this future restoration that gives Christians the motivation to live out his kingdom on earth now!

- Tonight, we are going to read some passages from Revelation and see a picture of just what this future restoration is going to look like.

“Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years…And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth…and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” (Revelation 20:1-2, 7, 10).

- Here, in chapter 20 of Revelation, the story is coming to its dramatic conclusion and the first thing you need to know tonight is that…

King Jesus defeats evil.

o In the closing verses of the Scriptures, we see the final, decisive victory that the reigning King Jesus wins over the powers of darkness. This is the day that we’re longing for!

o While this day has not yet come, the outcome is already determined! With his death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead, Jesus has proven that the battle belongs to him. We are only awaiting the day when the fighting will be over.

o Now, let’s turn to chapter 21 to see what happens to us after the battle ends.

“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. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away,” (Revelation 21:1-4).

- God will live with humanity again.

o Just like the story started in the beginning with a garden, a paradise of untapped potential, so at its conclusion, God brings humanity and his creation to this beautiful end: he will recreate all things new and we will dwell again with him!

Conclusion

So, as we wrap up this series and look to the week ahead, we can ask ourselves, how is the conclusion of this story supposed to affect my life right here and right now?

- You see, one Christian writer puts it this way, “We live in a theological tension. By faith in Christ, all of these spiritual blessings are ours already, but the full enjoyment of these blessings is not yet ours.”[1]

- This “already and not yet” tension is difficult for some of us and makes the study of the end times seem abstract and unhelpful. You might think, ok sure that’s how the story ends, but what does that matter? How does that affect me? And the New Testament authors have several important answers to those questions:

- We can have confidence in our future life with Jesus.

o Jesus told his disciples that everyone who believes in him will have life forever, that just like he was resurrected, we would be resurrected with him (John 11:25-26).

- We are the living proof that new creation is coming.

o When Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5 that anyone who is in Christ is a new creation (2 Cor 5:17), he was referring to the resurrected body of Christ as the first evidence that a new creation is really coming! Notice what happens in Revelation 21? All of creation becomes new. When you are in Christ, living now on this old earth, YOU are the evidence that a new creation is coming!

- We can be confident of our eternal destination.

o The fact that we have confidence that we have been saved now also means that we can have confidence on the final day of Judgment. In Revelation 20, Jesus judges the living and the dead and he even judges the devil and his workers of evil. If it wasn’t for Christ’s resurrection securing our justification, we would have to wait around anxiously hoping that we did enough good deeds to come out on top in the end, but that’s not how it works!

o We know we will receive life in the end because we have already been justified in Christ (Romans 5:9; 8:1).

- We can prepare the way by living like new creation here on earth.

o This means obeying the biblical commandments to live and love like Jesus!

o Remember back to the Sermon on the Mount that we studied earlier this year. Remember how Jesus taught his disciples to live? This is what the new creation will look like perfectly. The best way we can live in this “already and not yet” tension is by doing our best to live like new creations in this old creation.

Live your life as though Jesus has really won the victory, because I promise you: He has.

[1] David Briones, “Already, Not Yet,” Desiring God, August 4, 2020.