Our future

Introduction - context

I don’t want to start with the Bible passage today. Instead I want to lead you into it, to prepare you to, hopefully, experience it.

This is the last in our sermon series, “The Journey,” in which we have traced the amazing work of God in bringing humanity back to him.

Remember that God created the whole world, including human beings, as a good, harmonious place, full of live and love and productivity.

But humanity wanted to be their own rulers, their own boss, and so they rebelled against God and dragged the whole world into chaos and conflict with them.

God wasn’t just going to sit back and let that be the end of the story, though. So he embarked on a long plan that involved choosing the people of Israel for himself, establishing their nation and king, until at last the Son of God, God himself, entered the world as a member of the human race, a Jew. He lived a sinless life, but was hung on a cross. He died in our place. But because he was the sinless Son of God, death could not hold him, and he defeated death that we, too, might live again with him.

But history continues after Christ’s death and resurrection. That’s where we find ourselves now, “groaning inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies,” as Paul says in Romans. And we, God’s people, are still in this world of death and sin. Why? Because we continue Jesus’s ministry of bringing the world back to God:

2 Corinthians 5:17–21 ESV

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

We are Christ’s ambassadors, sharing the good news of salvation throughout the world, and doing that by being his “new creations.” You see, this new heaven and new earth is already partly here. We are the “firstfruits of the Spirit.” We are the first fruits of the new creation: we have been made new spiritually: our bodies are still creatures of this world, but our minds and souls are creatures of the next! That’s why we “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.”

But God has given us a promise. He will not leave us in this state, in a world that is shot through with sin. He will not leave us in this constant struggle with our own worst selves. He has promised to once and for all defeat sin and death, and bring about a new world where we can live at peace.

The Bible finishes with the future history of God’s ultimate conquest of sin and death, which includes the redemption of our bodies. All wickedness and evil, which has so corrupted the entire cosmos, is destroyed, and the world is made new.

Before we think about that, I wanted to reflect for a moment on the state we’re in. I’ve prepared a poll on the issues that we’re struggling with at the moment. You can choose more than one item, and then we’ll see which are the most common concerns. This poll is anonymous.

What are you finding most frustrating at the moment?

Isolation

Financial issues

Home maintenance

Work/study difficulties

Family relationships

Work relationships

Other relationships

Time management

Distant from God

General anxiety

Now, obviously my question is a leading question: I’m asking what you’re finding frustrating, and so you’ll answer with a frustration. But I think that’s the nature of our life in this world, it is full of more than frustrations: it is full of pain and suffering. The entire religion of Buddhism is based on that observation!

But, as we said, God has a better future for us. Let’s turn to that now.

The New Heavens and Earth

Let’s meditate on Revelations 21:1-8 for a short while. Let’s set ourselves free from the concerns and worries of this world, and think about what God has in store for us, and soon.

To prepare your mind for this passage, think about all the burdens you are struggling with. The pressures of work, of finance, of family, of society. Perhaps you’re feeling the pains of age and are frustrated that you can’t do as much as you used to. Perhaps you’re hurting from the betrayal of a friend or family member. Perhaps you’re angry with your own mistakes. Perhaps you’re mourning the loss of a friend or family member, even if they’ve only moved away to another city. Perhaps you’re just missing having family close by? You may even be distressed by the suffering of others in this fallen world. These and many more are pains that this passage addresses.

Now, to free us from the distractions around us, I’d like everyone to close their eyes and listen to this Scripture. Don’t look out at the beauty of God’s creation, don’t look around at your brothers and sisters online, just focus for a moment on God’s word. Picture the images in your head. Imagine all your pain and worry falling away. Imagine this amazing scene as if you were John, seeing it before you. Ready?

Revelation 21:1–8 ESV

1 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. 2 And I 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 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. 4 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.” 5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” 6 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. 7 The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. 8 But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

The sting

Isn’t this a wonderful passage? Doesn’t it make you yearn for the end, when Jesus comes again? If we kept reading in chapter 21, we’d find that the New Jerusalem matches and exceeds the original paradise in every way. God’s fullness is come to earth, permanently. In Eden he walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening, but in the New Earth he dwells with us permanently. In Eden God provided a single tree of life that Adam & Eve could eat from, in the New Earth there are multiple trees of life, and a river of life! In Eden God created the sun to be the source of light, but in the New Earth, God himself is the light to see by.

And there’s plenty of room for everyone, this is how big John says the city is, and it’s a cube, because that is the shape of the Holy of Holies, where God resides on earth.

But there is a sting in the tail of this passage, isn’t there? It seems that residence in the New Jerusalem is conditional. “The victorious will inherit all this,” it says, but the rest, “they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulphur.”

Why, you might ask, is there a division here at all? Why can’t everyone come into this wonderful, new paradise? Well, the answer is distressingly simple. Because there are many who don’t want to be there, and if they were there, they would make sure that it was no longer a paradise. Just as people today wilfully go their own way, prioritising themselves and their own concerns, and mess things up for themselves and everyone else, so they will continue to do. And so God gives them what they want: an existence without him. Unsurprisingly, an existence without the source of all that is good, is a bad existence, and Revelation represents this as the fiery lake of burning sulphur, or the second death.

I don’t know about you, but I would rather choose life than death, obedience to the one who understands my deepest longings, who offers me sonship, rather than an insistence that I must be in charge, no matter the cost to me or others.

That list of sins that God gives, “the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars,” that’s a list of people who have rejected God’s rightful place in their lives.

Most of those sins are obviously wicked to us, but the first two might surprise us: the cowardly and the unbelieving. I think the unbelieving is fairly straightforward: if we cannot accept and believe in God’s purposes, we are not going to be happy in his presence. Our character is defined in this life, and it is expressed in our future life as well. So those who refuse to accept God’s truth here, will continue to do so in the new earth.

But what about the cowardly? What is so bad about being a coward? Well, the context is important here. The cowardly are not merely people who are scared of things in general, but rather those that have given up, who have denied God. They are cowardly because they don’t have the strength to live out their convictions. They know that God is real, that he is perfect, that he is all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful. And yet they succumb to the worries of this world, or the temptations of this world.

Conclusion

So the very last chapter of the Bible gives us both something to look forward to, and something to motivate us in our present work as ambassadors of Christ.

If we have repented from our sins and accepted Jesus death in payment for those sins, then we know that we will rise again to be with Jesus in the New Heavens and the New Earth. We have hope, even in the midst of the frustrations and struggles of this life. We don’t lead our best life now, but we are victorious because we are hidden in Christ, and our best life is yet to come.

At the same time, we recognise that those who reject God won’t be able to join us, and so we are motivated to reach out to them, to persuade them, through our love, our example, our reason, to abandon their love-affair with selfishness and to allow Christ’s sacrifice to save them too.

Let that hope and that burden always guide us. Let them always be on our minds and our lips.

Let’s pray.