All things new: Part 2 - Revelation 21:4
Notes
Transcript
English Standard Version Chapter 21
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes
These lovely words are found in Revelation 21:4.
The chapters that lead up to this are heavy. We read of the plagues, the bowls of God’s wrath, the terrible end of the Great Prostitute and the Beast, and the fall of Babylon. We have struggled to work out what they all mean.
And then, all of a sudden, we move to a picture of a loving mother dabbing the eyes of her infant, tenderly wiping away one tear, then another, and another, until they are all gone and the child is settled and contented.
The Bible is full of tears. It is therefore realistic, because tears mark our present age.
The first tears in the Bible were those of Abraham for his wife Sarah. ‘Sarah lived 127 years; these were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died at Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.’ (Gen 23:1-2)
Abraham, called by God out of the epicentre of rebellion against him in Ur of the Chaldees (Babylon), is not spared from tears. He loved his wife, but she died, and so he wept.
And the tears keep on coming.
The reigns of David and Solomon were the high point of the Kingdom of Israel, but in the middle of all that David suffers the death of his son Absalom in tragic circumstances.
And the king was deeply moved and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept. And as he went, he said, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”
John, whose visions from God give us the book of Revelation, had wept - was there no answer to the earth’s evil?
and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it.
Jesus knew what tears were, so this is not divorced from his own experience
In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.
And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it,
Jesus wept.
He wept in response to his knowledge of the path he had to take.
He wept over Jerusalem when he foresaw its destruction at the hands of the Romans in AD70
He wept over the reality of death, even though he knew he was going to conquer it.
Mary knew tears, even when, unbeknown to her, Jesus had risen and there was no longer any reason to weep:
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb.
Peter shed tears at his own frailty:
And Peter remembered the saying of Jesus, “Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.
Our tears are the entail of human rebellion and failure, and are the result of:
grief
bereavement
pain
sorrow for sin
regrets
disappointments
frustrations
missed opportunities
But: God wipes them away himself - he does not delegate the task to angels or anyone else. He takes responsibility for every tear.
He does it completely - there is no residue - every tear is wiped away. All of those tears will be wiped away - David’s for his son, Peter’s for his failure, Mary’s for her Lord, John’s for the pain of humanity, Abraham’s for the loss of the love of his life. The tears fall, but they are not the end of the story.
The end of the story is the final, ultimate, total reversal of the curse of Gen 3.
No more tears.