I Make All Things New
Notes
Transcript
1 Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. 2 Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. 4 And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” 5 Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.”
As always, whenever our society faces some kind of crisis, whether it be war, domestic terror, or disease, like we currently face, doomsday prophets seem to come out of the woodwork by the droves.
Some even equate America with the Babylon of Revelation seventeen.
It is for these reasons and for setting the record straight that I will speak this morning about what God says in the last verse of our text today – “I make all things new”.
As children of the Most High God, we are quite confident in the redemption that has been given to us in Christ. Our transcending from this world to Heaven is paramount to our faith. But, when God says, “I make all things new”, is this what He refers to, or is there more?
Let’s take it from the beginning. The beginning of God’s great plan that is!
God’s Great Plan:
God’s Great Plan:
After God Creates everything in Genesis chapters one and two and pronounces it all to be “very good”, we find mankind living in perfect unison with God. There are no troubles, no wants, no sickness, no sin!
But then in chapter three we the protagonist enter the scene. Satan in the form of the serpent, having already fallen from his first estate as a beautiful cherub, is now about to corrupt what God has made. And so, he tempts Eve with the forbidden fruit and she eats it and gives it to her husband Adam, and their eyes were opened! For the first time, they now knew what evil was, and they brought sin into the world through their disobedience to God. By the end of chapter three, God is having them removed from Eden, and its entrance guarded by an angel wielding a flaming sword.
Sin’s immediate effect:
Sin’s immediate effect:
Within a short time these two have children and murder is committed by Cain upon his brother Abel. How tragic and utterly sickening.
Because of the festering effects of sin, the succeeding generations are baptized with a debased mind that just gets worse, until within one thousand years at the end of the patriarchs’ lives, Noah and his family, only eight people are being closed up in an ark, with the animals, as God brings the deluge that will wipe out the earth’s population. Sin has certainly taken its full effect!
A Restart:
A Restart:
Noah and his family begin to repopulate the earth, but sin always begets sin, and so it begins again; Noah drunk, Ham looking at and exposing his father’s nakedness, a curse made upon Canaan, just the beginning of a corrupt and debased situation.
Many generations are born from Noah’s family, but still there is sin, and the ultimate rebellion to God has led men to build a tower for their idol worship. God confounds the language of the people stopping them from building in Genesis eleven. Later in the days of Peleg, God would also divide the continents of the earth (Genesis 10:25). The people are scattered into tribes unable to communicate with one another and scattered over the earth and divided by oceans and seas. But this is but a band aid on sin’s corruptive nature!
Hope:
Hope:
In Genesis chapter twelve, we see a man named Abram (later changed to Abraham by God) a descendent of Shem, taken out of Ur of Chaldeans and separated unto God. He would be the father of the Jewish people, called Israelites after the name given by God to Jacob, Abraham’s grandson.
God promises Abraham that He will have a son in his old age (not possible for he and Sarah because she was barren and passed the age of child birth), the promised one who would bring forth the Messiah many generations later. It is in Him the Messiah, that the world would be blessed. Not many seeds as the Jews would later think nationally, but in one as Paul confirms in Galatians 3:16.
Sin repeating itself:
Sin repeating itself:
But, once again, sin rouses its ugly head, Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed by God for the sin of Sodomy and Lot’s daughters afterward sire children from their own father. And a child is born to Abraham, not Isaac the promised one, but Ishmael (God hears), the father of the Arab Nations, to Sarah’s handmaid Hagar, because they would not trust God.
God affirms His covenant with Abraham, Isaac is born and Abraham’s faith is tested and typified as the faith needed for redemption, as God commands Abraham to take Isaac and sacrifice him to God. Abraham’s faith is un-wavering and God provides Himself a sacrifice rather than Isaac. The scene pointing to Calvary.
In just three generations, Joseph preserves his people from the famine and annihilation, as a type of Christ Himself. The children of Israel eventually are enslaved in Egypt and God sends Moses to free them and bring them into the promised land. God shows the Jews His power and favor, gives them the law to live by and establishes the Tabernacle sacrifices as a means of temporary atonement for their sins and the type of Christ’s sacrifice as the Lamb of God.
And yet, there is always sin in the camp. The Jews because of unbelief spend forty years wandering through the wilderness, complaining and rebelling the whole way until that generation that wouldn’t enter the promised land died off. Even Moses himself, in rebellion to God, striking the rock for the second time (the first time a picture of Christ’s crucifixion) when he should have spoken to it, was prohibited from entering the promised land. Joshua leads them in.
But even under Joshua’s command, unbelief and disobedience take hold, and we see in the taking of Jericho that Akan condemns his entire family to death because he took of the Accursed things (idol worship). His rebellion resulted in 36 men killed at Ai.
But…
God showed great favor again to Joshua and the armies of Israel, for in the battle against the five kings of the Amorites, God let the Sun stand still, extending the daylight while the Jewish army slaughtered their enemy.
Again, God proves Himself to Israel. Joshua divides the land up to the tribes of Israel and they possess it.
Over the next several generations, God brings his chosen people in and out of persecution and trials. Judges are needed to turn the people’s hearts back to God from their idolatry and disobedience. There is heartache and much sin!
Over the next centuries, the peoples of the earth become more entrenched with sin, even the chosen nation becomes jaded by sin. God gives them kings because they desired to be led by men not God. But God also gives them prophets, to warn them of the dangers of idolatry and disobedience.
The world is filled with much bloodshed and evil, but God is not finished.
It is through these prophets that God discloses His plan:
Further revelation of His plan:
Further revelation of His plan:
Isaiah foretells God’s plan:
19 Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness And rivers in the desert.
17 “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; And the former shall not be remembered or come to mind.
22 “For as the new heavens and the new earth Which I will make shall remain before Me,” says the Lord, “So shall your descendants and your name remain.
But it is through the prophet Daniel, that God provides details that cannot be ignored but certainly would be by many.
Daniel prophesied of the four world empires, (Daniel 2, 7)
The image that Nebuchadnezzar saw in a dream (Daniel 2) that Daniel interpreted for the king was composed of four parts representing the four kingdoms.
In chapter seven, Daniel is made aware of these kingdoms as they are described as beasts:
o The first a lion – Babylon
o The second a bear – Media Persian
o The third a Leopard – Grecian
o The fourth Unrecognizable – Roman
Daniel spoke in detail of the transition of the first three with details about all four. He speaks about the coming King of kings as the Son of Man in the clouds (a stone cut out) and crushing the fourth empire.
Then Daniel gives details and the timing of God’s plan for His people in chapter nine:
24 “Seventy weeks are determined For your people and for your holy city, To finish the transgression, To make an end of sins, To make reconciliation for iniquity, To bring in everlasting righteousness, To seal up vision and prophecy, And to anoint the Most Holy.
· Seventy weeks (heptads = seventy sevens) or 490 years.
· Commencing from the command to rebuild Jerusalem under Nehemiah and the Temple under Ezra. The command probably given somewhere around 446 BC.
Seven Weeks or 49 years to build the wall and the streets.
Sixty two weeks or 434 years more and Messiah is cut off
The details from this chapter are so striking that it is no wonder Simeon was waiting for the Messiah’s arrival at the temple when Jesus was taken in to be circumcised.
Out of all the 490 years spoken of by Daniel, it is quite evident that seven years are yet to be fulfilled. I do not have time here to argue the point for a future fulfillment of the seven years, which Revelation bares out. But, Jesus spoke very clearly at the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24, that the Abomination of Desolation that Daniel spoke of had not yet come, and would come at a distant future time, not fulfilled with Antiochus Epiphanes in 165 BC during the Maccabean revolt, nor at the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. as the preterist believes, therefore rendering the book of Revelation a past history rather than a future prophetic account.
It should also be noted that this view makes for a pretty meager conclusion to God’s reveled plan and according to Daniel’s prophecy of the 490 years, There is no ushering in everlasting righteousness.
Also, the evidence for john getting the vision in revelation in AD 95-96 is great. Which means Jerusalem was already destroyed when He had this vision and the book was written.
Sin is remedied:
Sin is remedied:
The New Testament provides the guidelines and details of God’s plan of redemption for the individual fitted for the Body of Christ and for the Kingdom of God.
We are in a 2000 year waiting period for the fulfillment of His cosmic plan to “Make all things new”.
The Apostles wrote of the events that would and are surely to come, like…
The Coming revived Roman empire headed by the Anti-Christ (Revelation 13).
The Taking up or the Rapture of the Church (1 Corinthians 15 & 1 Thess. 4) We can debate the timing of the rapture, but the validity of it.
The End of this physical planet and universe ( 2 Peter 3:12) and a new heavens and earth (2 Peter 3:13).
The final judgment of all evil and sin (2 Peter 2:9).
Conclusion:
I have laid out a truncated version of the great plan of God, only touching upon the highlights, and probably not very well either. However, God has revealed His plan to all people through His word. And so, by the time the reader comes to the end of God’s masterpiece of revelation (the Bible), He says to all –
“I Make all things new”.
My question to you then is this:
What kind of people ought we to be as we wait for the glorious plan of God to unfold, perhaps in our lifetime?
The words of the apostle Peter are sobering -
10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. 11 Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, 12 looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? 13 Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.