The Return of the King

Good morning, Gateway!

Scripture: Psalm 31.

Prayer

Intro

Good morning, again!

August 5, 2001 was a beautiful night in Cleveland, Ohio at Jacobs Field, especially if you were a Seattle Mariners fan. The Mariners coming into the game were 80-30, they had won the first two games of the series, and seemed virtually unstoppable with guys like Ichiro, Edgar Martinez, Bret Boone, Mike Cameron many of whom were probably on steroids but that’s besides the point. Seattle jumped out to a 14-2 lead by the 5th inning, and if you were an Indians fan watching at home, surely you turned off your television. All hope is lost! I know how this will end. But that’s when the improbable, the unthinkable happened, the Indians put up 13 unanswered runs and won in extra innings 15-14.

You’re probably wondering, is Chris that upset about the MLB lockout and missing opening day that he’s telling us baseball stories? Partly.

Think about how two Cleveland Indians fans might watch that game.

One watches without knowing the ending. When it’s 14-2, unless you’re a crazy fan with nothing better to do, you turn that game off. It’s OVER.

The other is the cool kid and has one of those fancy DVR’s and they’ve recorded the game and KNOW the ending. When the Mariners go crazy and lead 14-2, that fan with the DVR can sit back, relax, and enjoy the final 5 innings because they know who WINS.

Life gives us moments when we’re like the fan without DVR, we’re down 14-2 and we ask, “Am I going to make it through this?”

What gets us through is hope. Humans need hope as much as if not more than water, food, shelter, oxygen. We need it to survive.

So as Christians, what is our hope? How does the story end? Is the end of the story just that we float off into heaven and sing Spirit 105.3 songs for all eternity? That actually doesn’t sound very compelling to me.

Christian or not, how you think your life ends matters for how you live it now. There’s the famous Tim McGraw song, live like you were dying. But if he still just dies then why does it matter what you do? Is that how the story ends? We just…die and in the meantime try to be nice to each other?

Is there a story that actually matters and can give us hope to not merely hang on and survive but truly live?

I’m so glad you asked.

We’re wrapping up our sermon series, “The Story of God” where we’re walking through the overarching story of the Bible as if it were a 6-act play. Fletcher put it well last week in his sermon, saying the Bible is like a Mosaic with many smaller stories, but is there an over arching story which allows us to find our place in it and thereby find out what we’re supposed to do now?

This morning is Act 6, The Return of the King.

Well to find out, we are going to do a brief touch down at the end of your Bible in Revelation 21:1-5. Revelation 21:1-5 is this vision of the life to come. The purpose of reading this is not to predict the future, but to know how to live today. What does the Bible say about the end of the story? And how does that move us to live today?

Pray

Before we dive in, let’s briefly recap where we’ve been.

Act 1 - The King and His Kingdom

Act 1 is The King and His Kingdom. Genesis 1 and 2. Creation! This is a story about the King...God, the one who spoke and brought light from darkness, beauty from chaos. He made all realities, including time, what’s up there, and what’s down here. And he filled those realities with inhabitants. Bald eagles, sea creatures, lady bugs...and humans. His crowning achievement. And humans are to rule on God’s behalf to take his beautiful kingdom onward. It’s an amazing start. What could possibly go wrong?

Act 2 - Rebellion in the Kingdom

Act 2- It all goes wrong. Rebellion in the Kingdom. We read in Genesis 3 how humans listen to the voice of the serpent rather than to the voice of God. The serpent deceives them and the humans redefine good and evil for themselves, taking what wasn’t there’s rather than receiving life as a gift from God. Genesis 3-11 showed us the horrible downward spiral caused by the consequences of sin, Cain & Abel, The Flood, The Tower of Babel. And yet even still, we see God’s remarkable patience to not give up on his creation. And in Genesis 3, right after the fall of Adam and Eve, God promises to one day send someone who will crush the serpent and defeat evil...even while being wounded in the process. Who would this person be?

Act 3 - A People for the King

Act 3 - A People for the King. Genesis 12 - Revelation 22 is essentially asking the question, “What is God going to do about the cosmic chaos of sin?” God responds by choosing a family. God chooses Israel to restore blessing to the whole universe. Not just restoring human hearts, but the whole creation which has been tarnished because of sin. What are they supposed to do? They’re supposed to be a kingdom of priests, representing God in love to the world. How does that go? Not well. Why doesn’t God give up on this toxic sinful people? And how does this connect with the cross? We read in Genesis 15 the amazing story of God promising Abram that he, God, alone would bear the consequences of Abram and his family’s inability to keep the covenant. And he would one day DIE on his behalf to keep his promise to restore blessing to the world. This in just the early stages of the Biblical story. I don’t know a better story.

Act 4 - The Coming King

Jesus comes on the scene as the King to bring the Kingdom. And we read in Mark 1:14-15 that Jesus’ came preaching the gospel. His central message was three parts: proclaiming who he was, the Messiah. The promised king from the line of David. The kingdom is at hand and the renewal of all things back to how it was in the garden has begun. And so…repent and believe in the gospel. Turn from your way of thinking about the world, and believe that God is doing a new thing in me. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection prove he was who he said he was, and his ascension to heaven then leads to his sending of the Holy Spirit which leads to Act 5.

Act 5 - Spreading the News of the King

Fletcher preached from Acts 2 last Sunday and showed how the church is not a new thing on the scene, but actually a continuation of the story. Now that the king has come, the good news of his reign must be preached to all nations. I love how Fletcher reminded us that the church has Holy Spirit power to do normal things (share meals, be hospitable, give money) but with tremendous power.

That leads us to Act 6 - the Return of the King.

Revelation 21:1–5 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.”

We’re jumping headfirst into one of the most misunderstood books in the entire Bible.

Before prepping this sermon, it’d been a long time since I’d read this book. Which is a bummer! It’s awesome and given the events of the last two weeks, we as the church need the encouragement and hope found in this book. It is a beautiful work of literature and this sermon might be like me trying to draw Mt. Rainier on a sunny day with sidewalk chalk.

But obviously there are issues reading this book.

What popular Christian fiction book pops into your mind (not the Bible) when we talk about the book of Revelation?

Left Behind sold close to 80 million copies, filling our minds with images of one take on interpreting Revelation.

Another one for you...I remember visiting a friend’s youth group in middle school, and the images in my mind are still fuzzy, but all I remember was they had like an “End Times” themed night when I visited, and all I remember is we watched some movie with demons and dragons eating people, and at the end they were like, “Don’t you want to be a Christian now??” And I have this fuzzy memory of either praying on my knees or hiding under my chair I was so terrified.

Are you like me? When we bring up Revelation, as Americans we have these images and others in our minds. So in order to get a better idea of Act 6 in the story, let’s talk about this book.

Revelation

Most misnamed book of the Bible, if you’re like me, you call it Revelations quite often, but this is singular because as the first verse suggests this is the revelation of Jesus Christ.

The Bible is a library of texts with different genres. The Psalms are poetry, Isaiah is prophetic, Samuel is narrative, and Revelation, like another book in the Bible Daniel is

Apocalyptic

When we see that word what images come to mind? Zombies. Nuclear bombs. Death, destruction, and chaos.

It just means to reveal. Instead of Ty Pennington yelling, “Move that bus!” on extreme home makeover he could’ve yelled, “Apocalypse!” Revealing something we couldn’t see without God’s help.

The purpose of Apocalyptic writing was to remind people that God was at work in history. The world sees Russia invading Ukraine and the might and power of empires, but God sees something else, and one day no evil empire will be left standing before King Jesus and his self-giving love.

But as I was reading Revelation this week, what strikes you is the confusing imagery. Dragons. Several headed beasts. Women riding dragons. Bottomless pits. Lakes of fire. The litany of numbers. 7’s and 10’s, the 666 of the mark of the beast. These are images from a culture that we’re no longer a part of.

It is heavily symbolic. A close modern comparison would be political cartoons.

When you see this cartoon, you get it? The donkey says, “It’s upsetting that our culture is so divided.” And the elephant says, “No it isn’t.” Would this make any sense to a first century Jew? No. And vis versa for us reading their imagery. We have to read cautiously with heavy symbolism.

Who was it written to?

John is writing to churches going through persecution under the Roman empire. Emperor Domitian, who followed Nero, had a favorite title for himself: “Our Lord and God.” Christians gave their allegiance to the real Lord, Jesus, and thereby faced oppression.

Revelation is meant to give hope to people who might be saying, “Am I going to make it?” And to challenge nominal Christians who might be saying, “Maybe that whole Jesus thing wasn’t what I thought…I should just go to the temple and worship Zeus, that seems to be what everyone else is doing...” And through the intense imagery of this text you are confronted with a choice: which Christ will I trust? The one who died on a cross or the one who uses power, might, and violence to win?

How do we interpret Revelation?

There are at least four different camps on how to read Revelation. It’s hard to find agreement and some people fight over stuff. And frankly, while interesting to listen to the arguments, I don’t think it much of it matters as it pertains to predicting the future.

I certainly have wondered in the last two years, “Jesus…when are you coming back? Sure seems like soon.” And I’m sure after Putin invaded Ukraine last week there were a lot of Google searches about the end times. What is the mark of the beast? What is it with the number 666? Who is the antichrist? These are all questions we have as modern Americans reading this fascinating text.

But what did Jesus himself say

Matthew 24:36 ESV

36 “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.

Jesus says the signs of the end are like birth pains. And fixing our attention on, “Is this the end? Who is the anti christ? Mark of the beast?” is like being fixated on the contractions of labor and forgetting that there is a baby on the way! LIFE!

And so wherever you land on reading Revelation, I think the point is to give hope to Christians that new life is coming. It’s what others have called, “A trumpet call to faith.” Hang in there. And to challenge others, “Where does your hope lie? Because things don’t turn out well for people who trust the wrong Christ.”

So let’s focus on the new life, and read Revelation 21:1-5.

Revelation 21:1 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.

The first word is then. So what just happened?

Revelation 17-20 is all about the triumph of God.

In chapters 17 and 18, the mighty city of Babylon falls. Ever since Genesis 11 and the tower of Babel or Babylon, Babylon has been an image of evil. It’s an anti-Eden. It looks so appealing, but really it is evil. In chapter 19 Jesus shows up as a rider on a white horse, and he’s covered in blood before the battle even starts signifying his death on the cross and Jesus defeats his enemies. And then in chapter 20, Satan and Death are defeated, which is what we’ve been waiting for since the beginning of the story when the serpent deceived Adam and Eve in the Garden. And then every human who has every lived stands before the throne of God and gives an account for their life. Those who do not trust Jesus, including Death itself, are thrown into a lake of fire. Again, heavy symbolism, but whatever that lake of fire is, it is somehow a consummation of God defeating evil, including those who refuse to give their allegiance to him.

So that’s a way to brief explanation of those chapters.

John says in Revelation 21:1, after the king returns and then…the kingdom is finally restored.

Revelation 21:1–5 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.”

In Revelation 21, the kingdom is restored. It’s new creation language, just like Genesis 1 said God made the heavens and the earth, so we see that same language here.

Look at the differences between the first heaven and earth and the new heaven and earth.

First Heavens and Earth

Passes away (21:1)

Sea (21:1)

Separation of God’s space and ours (21:3)

Separation of God and his people (21:3)

People worship other gods (21:3)

Tears, mourning, crying (21:4)

Death (21:4)

Pain (21:4)

Lies (21:5)

New Heavens and Earth

No more sea (21:1)

The Holy City, New Jerusalem (21:2)

The city is on earth (21:2)

More beautiful than this earth (21:2)

God is with humans (21:3)

God’s family is united (21:3)

No more idolatry (21:3)

Comfort from tears, no more mourning or crying (21:4)

Eternal life without death (21:4)

No pain (21:4)

No humans who don’t trust Jesus (21:8)

Radiant like a most rare jewel (21:11)

No temple (21:22)

No sun or moon (21:23)

No night (21:25, 22:5)

Represent all nations (21:26)

Nothing unclean, detestable, or false (21:27)

A new garden with a river and tree of life (22:1-2)

God will be served/worshipped by his servants (22:3)

People will see God’s face (22:4)

People will reign with God forever (22:5)

It is a reunion of heaven and earth. God’s space and our space are restored. God and humans are restored.

The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story A New Creation: The Restoration of All Things

“Very often people have come to the New Testament with the presumption that ‘going to heaven when you die’ is the implicit point of it all.… They acquire that viewpoint from somewhere, but not from the New Testament.”

Maybe you’ve heard the verse where Jesus says, “Then you will have treasured stored up in heaven.” We think, great! When we die, I will go there and be in the place where my treasures are. But I don’t think that’s the imagery, it’s more like if I tell you I have a drink for you in the fridge, you don’t say, “Great! I want to go be in the fridge!” You say, “I can’t wait til Chris goes and brings the drink to me.” I think so it is with God and heaven. One day, all those treasures stored up through honoring Jesus with our lives will be brought here to a renewed earth.

It is a reunion on the grandest scale. Those we’ve lost who are now with Jesus in some way, will be with us again. But that pales in comparison of what it will be like to see him. The King.

Because we can’t really know what this part of the story will really be like. Try telling a story without using time. If you say, “Spencer went to the store” you’re using past tense, Eternity doesn’t work in our brains.

What is this? It’s a sign pointing you to a hospital. Does this H represent an actual Hospital very well? An emergency department, the parking garage, the thousands of employees, the medicine, doctors, beeping, babies, all that. No. It’s just a sign.

In a similar way, all of this is just a broken signpost for the life to come. For those who trust him and give their allegiance to him, Jesus’ Return will be so much better.

So I hope you’re not disappointed but I don’t know when Jesus is coming back.

But the real question is in light of that, how are we to live now?

Just like the H sign pointing to the Hospital, we live our lives today pointing to the life to come. That’s why Jesus said to pray, “Your Kingdom Come, Your Will be done.” We’re like actors given a script that’s intentionally vague and we get to live out the drama in ways that are consistent with the story so far, but also are new and unique.

I just want to focus on 3 spheres of life that are basic for many of us here today: home, work, and church.

We live out the story at home.

Christian homes are meant to be signposts pointing forward to the new creation.

And because I know the end of the story, that Jesus wins, that means I don’t have to win every argument. I can enjoy the mundane acts of diaper changes, breakfast, and taking out the trash without having to be on my phone for entertainment because I know I’m a part of a grand narrative and God is intimately involved in my small life and loves me.

As Christians, we long for our kids to follow Jesus. But because of the story, we know that God was the perfect parent, he had a perfect home, and both his kids betrayed him. I will hurt my family and mess things up but I can never disrupt God’s plan to make all things right in the end. I can relax.

We live out the story at work.

The world needs to see Christians in the workplace who say Jesus is king and not my paycheck or retirement. I think about Jake Loden as a real estate agent, when you think real estate agent you think of a certain person, but Jake is the most trustworthy down to earth guy…and he’s working in a commissioned sales position. He’s representing Jesus well and making a good living, the world needs to see that.

The world also needs to see Jesus in how Christians represent retirement. Our culture puts retirement on the plane of Revelation 21. But I so appreciate guys like Brian Doherty who is retired but is picking up trash and making our city better, Doug Eash who recently retired and is going to be serving as Gateway’s first ever Missions Coordinator, connecting our church family more with the ministries we support.

We are all in full time ministry at our jobs in our retirement, pointing to Jesus wherever we are.

We live out the story with our church family.

Another Acts29 church in Idaho has a Ukrainian and Russian church that gathers in their building. And the Acts29 pastor, Vinnie, asked that we pray for pastor Slavic, a Ukrainian man, to care for his church as they navigate worshipping together when their countries are at war.

They are the H pointing to the Hospital. Every tribe, nation, language, worshipping together one day. Right now, it’s messy. But we commit to love each other because we are pointing forward to the day when God finally unites his family.

We have the DVR and even though it may seem like the team is down 14-2, we know the end of the story. You like how I compared Death and Satan to the Mariners? Nice.

But we do know the end. The King Returns. And he also shows up to battle bloodied because he already won the won when he died for us on the cross. So we can have hope now because of what Jesus did then, and because Jesus won then, we can endure knowing and trusting what he will do one day, even if we don’t know when that will be or what it will look like.

So we the actors read the drama and from it learn how to finish out the story in our homes, our work, our church. And we trust Jesus as the author and perfecter of our faith.

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