NEW CREATION

INTRO

Good morning! My name is Ryan, I’m one of the pastors here at Georgianna.

It’s so good to be with you in worship today… WELCOME GUESTS?

[MENTION LIVE STREAM AT 9:45]

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And we are in the LAST week of our sermon series called “Long Story Short” where we have been taking a look at the GRAND NARRATIVE of the Bible… trying to get a grasp on the big story that God is telling.

I’ve mentioned this before… but growing up in church I had trouble figuring out how the MANY Bible stories that I was told… fit together into ONE story.

Oftentimes the Bible just felt like a collection of inspirational… or heroic… or, let’s be honest, weird stories.

But our hope for this series is that it helps to make sense of what the WHOLE story of the Bible is about… the BIG story that it is telling from cover to cover.

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So just as a quick review…

We’ve made the argument that the grand Biblical story is made up of 6 movements or chapters if you will.

They are Creation, the Fall, Israel, Jesus, the Church, and New Creation.

And the story is unfinished, but what’s interesting is exactly WHAT is unfinished.

It’s NOT the last chapter. I KNOW how the story ends! God is victorious. All things are made new. Dead people come to life... and Jesus is King.

But we find ourselves still writing the unfinished chapter of the church.

It’s that chapter that began in the book of Acts and included Peter and Paul and Tertullian and St. Augustine and Jan Hus and Martin Luther and John Wesley and Billy Graham...THAT chapter includes me and you.

That is exciting and daunting and invigorating all at the same time! But knowing the last chapter is finished and that God WINS also adds "confidence" to those emotions.

Because IT MATTERS HOW THE STORY ENDS.

OPENING PRAYER

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I pray that my words would really be Your words today as you speak to Your people… Your church today.

Amen.

ME

It matters how the story ends, doesn’t it?

It’s been interesting to watch, even in my lifetime… a new era of television come into play.

Growing up in the 80s and 90s, many of the shows we would sit down to watch would tell the beginning, middle, and ending of a story in one episode…

And so if you tuned in one week, but you had missed the week before… it wasn’t really a big deal… because everything really was going to start fresh each time.

***ALF was still going to be trying to eat the family cat… as the family was trying to think of creative ways to hide their alien.

***Law & Order could begin fresh with an all new crime… because the previous one had conveniently been wrapped up and solved with the perfect amount of justice.

***Tim the Tool Man Taylor would continue to blunder about making ape noises and super charging his lawn mower…

And nothing of substance was REALLY going to change.

BUT… you have to remember that this was back in the stone ages when you had to actually be sitting at your TV, tuned into the correct channel, at the correct time, on the correct day… to catch your favorite show.

Or you missed it.

Crazy.

Now everything streams on demand… and you have no excuse to miss ANY episode.

And TV has changed. BeCAUSE you don’t have to miss an episode… Now TV shows have multiple storylines that may run through multiple episodes… and some stories last for the whole season… and some stories last for the whole series itself!

And if you missed something… well, you can always go back and catch up!

I’ve told Allison that we are not allowed to watch the latest season of Stranger Things… UNTIL I have rewatched all of the other ones… because I will need a refresher on the storyline!

And it matters how the story ends…

Sometimes there is this long running story arc that is being told… and it matters how it ends.

Sometimes it matters SO much that you want to go back and watch the whole thing over again… because- AND THIS IS IMPORTANT!- because everything is different in the light of the ending that you are now aware of…

Let me repeat that…

***Sometimes everything is different in light of the ending.

Like who wanted to go back and watch The Sixth Sense… once you knew Bruce Willis was dead the whole time? Anyone?

Sorry, spoiler alert.

Honestly… that movie is like 25 years old… so that kind of seems like your fault.

WE

There is a LONG running story arc that is being told throughout scripture… and it matters how the story ends.

It’s this story of a Creator God whose masterpiece is us…He created us with purpose and He calls us “good.” And we were given this good, good environment, this garden for us to live in…

And then, because of our choices we Fall from Paradise to Purgatory in just a few short verses… and the story doesn’t turn out like it was meant to…

But story arc goes on as God continues to remember his promise (the Old Testament calls it His covenant) with His people. This nation of Israel… A nation who sometimes does okay… but most of the time does poorly at living in a way that honors God.

BUT they DO carry the torch of faith for generations and generations…

And then God gets involved through Jesus and establishes the beginnings of His Kingdom… a Kingdom that bears all the markings of an old familiar garden… because as the story is headed forward, it also heads backwards toward God’s original intentions.

And so here we find ourselves… as a people called the church… called to share this message of hope and good news.

That those original intentions that God had are still there and still valid.

The language changes from garden… to Promised Land… to Kingdom… to New Jerusalem… but the idea is the same.

There really is a way that all of this was supposed to work. And as the church we find ourselves with that awareness… but not yet in that full reality.

And so we WORK… and we WAIT… for the last chapter… the ***New Creation. God’s intentions… once again.

AND IT MATTERS HOW THE STORY ENDS.

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There are a few helpful books out there about this big idea… trying to understand the grand narrative of scripture...

***One of those is called The Drama of Scripture.

In this book the authors argue that there are a couple of main ideas that carry the story throughout the Bible.

You just heard them… Those ideas are **** God’s COVENANT AND God’s KINGDOM.

You’ll see these words or these ideas throughout scripture… and they’re kind of like handles that you can grab on to… ones that keep you connected to the BIG story that is being told.

And so what is the BIG story you might ask?

Here is my one sentence… does NOT do it justice… version of the big story of scripture...

***THE LONG STORY SHORT OF THE BIBLE IS ABOUT CREATION'S PROXIMITY TO GOD'S KINGDOM... AND GOD'S COVENANT TO ONE DAY BRING US HOME.

THE LONG STORY SHORT OF THE BIBLE IS ABOUT CREATION'S PROXIMITY TO GOD'S KINGDOM

[HOW CLOSE OR FAR AWAY WE ARE… HOW WELL OR HOW POORLY WE’RE DOING…]

... AND GOD'S COVENANT TO ONE DAY BRING us HOME.

[GOD’S PROMISE TO ONE DAY COVER THAT GAP… TO BRING US INTO HIS KINGDOM… OR PROMISED LAND… TO BRING US BACK TO EDEN…]

***And here’s a really simplified view of what this whole proximity idea looks like in our 6 big chapters...

And again, it is our hope that wherever you find yourself in Scripture that you begin to notice a storyline… a people on a path toward a Kingdom (sometimes they’re close… sometimes they’re really far away)…

But a people on a path toward the Kingdom… and their God… OUR God who promises, who covenants with us… that He is bringing that Kingdom to earth.

And church…AND IT MATTERS HOW THE STORY ENDS.

GOD

There are a few places in scripture that talk about what the end of the story might look like… and despite what many of us were led to believe… they’re not ALL in Revelation!

Jesus talks about it. The Apostle Paul talks about it. A few writers in the OT talk about it.

But now that it’s out there… let’s talk about the elephant in the room… let’s talk about Revelation…

In my church tradition growing up… we liked to talk about End Times… the end of the world… I still haven’t figured out why.

And Revelation came up pretty often.

And seriously… we would bring in experts that said they could decode Revelation and tell you what everything means.

SIDENOTE: if someone tells you they fully understand the book of Revelation… I don’t want to call them a liar… but I can’t think of another way to finish that sentence…

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ANYWAY...

Revelation is difficult to understand…

It’s an example of what we call “apocalyptic literature” and even that is kind of loaded term because...

*******We always think apocalypse means “the end of the world.”

But that’s not really what it means in the Bible.

****Apocalypse means to “peer behind the curtain.”

So a better way to think of the Book of Revelation is actually to take the title literally… REVELATION… it is a book that reveals what is really going on “behind the curtain.”

Let me explain… the book is really about a man named John who has this amazing vision...

He is offered a glimpse of the spiritual and cosmic story that is being told behind the curtain of the literal things going on all around us.

So if you believe God is working even though you can’t see it… and that there are powers of light and powers of darkness that are at work in this world… then John was offered a chance to take a look and write down the story… the story that we can’t see but we can only believe.

I mean can you imagine what that must have looked like?

And when you read Revelation you might get the idea that some of this was probably just hard to put into words… And John as probably doing the best he could.

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And I think that, in some ways, John WAS writing about this last chapter in the Biblical story… but John had plenty of intense things in his own time to write about as well.

To make things even more confusing… in Jewish tradition, the idea of the “end” actually meant the end of an era or the end of an age… and not so much the end of the universe as we know it.

About the time that John was writing, he may have said that his own world was ending. Jerusalem… the holy city had fallen… to the Romans… and so maybe “the end” for John was about the end of Jerusalem? Or a future end for Rome?

I say all of this to say that reading Revelation is difficult. If you have an especially hard time with this book, you are NOT alone.

Parts of Revelation might be about the New Creation… but parts may be about Jerusalem… and some parts may be about Rome as the villain in a story that happened almost 2000 years ago.

PASSAGE

But I want to turn to one beautiful piece of Revelation in particular… go to Revelation chapter 21...

This is a piece that I think we can safely say IS about the New Creation chapter of the story… because it says so.

John writes about his vision and says…

Revelation 21:1–6 (NIV)

1 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem,

[SO THE GARDEN IS GONE… THE PROMISED LAND IS LOST… JERUSALEM HAS FALLEN… BUT HERE IS A NEW JERUSALEM…]

coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

6 He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.

God IS the Beginning and the End! Truly as you read this… you get the strong impression that things are coming FULL circle.

IT MATTERS HOW THE STORY ENDS.

REFLECTIONS

John writes about a NEW Jerusalem… and so YES he is writing about the current events around him… his holy city has fallen…

but he writes about this hope… a hope that he has at that moment and a hope that we still carry today.

That God will resurrect His holy city.

And you see echoes of the Garden of Eden here… God being among His people… a people that don’t die (which is what God had in mind for Adam and Eve)... elsewhere you’ll find these beautiful garden-like descriptions of this city.

And so you get this unmistakeable idea that this NEW Jerusalem is really a NEW Eden… and our last chapter takes us right back to the beginning… it finishes with God’s original intentions all along.

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And THIS is the end of the story. God doesn’t set fire to the place. God doesn’t evacuate His holy people and walk away… God redeems it. He fixes it. He puts it back together.

IT MATTERS HOW THE STORY ENDS.

AND SOMETIMES EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT IN LIGHT OF THE ENDING.

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I mentioned before that it’s not just Revelation that talks about the last chapter.

Paul writes a couple of letters to a church in a city called Thessalonica...

In one place Paul writes about hope… but in contrast to John it’s a hope that we have in much more familiar circumstances than the end of all things.

People in this church are dying… and the church is grieving.

And this is a hope that we need TODAY. Even right now it seems that Georgianna is grieving some profound losses.

And in this letter Paul acknowledges that we will grieve… but that we must not grieve as those who have no hope.

And then he expands that picture… and we get a mini- Revelation… or a mini-Apocalypse… Paul lets us peer behind the curtain for just a couple of sentences.

We see the big picture of what is REALLY happening and going to happen.

BECAUSE IT MATTERS HOW THE STORY ENDS.

1 Thessalonians 4:16–18 (NIV)

16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

[SO THEY CAN HAVE HOPE FOR THOSE WHO ARE GONE. ]

17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.

This is their hope as they grieve those that they have lost…

but it also gives us a powerful image of what is to come.

IT MATTERS HOW THE STORY ENDS.

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I want to talk about that image for a minute… but Let me ask you this…

What does it look like to welcome an esteemed guest?

Maybe it’s into your home? Maybe it’s on behalf of your company or your school?

Maybe you do what we do… when someone pulls up to our house we may just walk out to the driveway and greet them outside… then we’ll walk with them back into our home.

Maybe your company flies in a guest speaker or a consultant… and someone greets them at the airport and accompanies them to where they are going.

We used to live about a mile away from my previous church where I worked. On nice enough days… I would sometimes walk to and from work.

One day I was walking home and getting close to turning on our neighborhood street… when from far off I see I really cute girl… with a smaller really cute girl… coming out to meet me.

Allie and Zoe knew I was on the way home and they came out to meet me and walk with me back home.

Zoe got closer and started running… and I started running and we met in the middle and I picked her up and gave her a huge hug.

I wasn’t an esteemed guest… and it was just a regular day after work… but it was one of my most touching memories.

They came out to meet me and we walked back home together.

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This is what Paul is writing about. This is the vision… if you peer behind the curtain when the story ends… it looks something like this.

There is some cultural language and context that’s kind of buried in here… it’s the kind of stuff that we dig into during Vineyard Bible study if you’re interested… but it’s there.

At that time there was a custom or a tradition for how you would greet an honored guest or a visiting dignitary.

As they arrived you went OUT… you greeted them… you accompanied them back into your city.

Sometimes they came after a decisive battle victory. Sometimes they came after a defeat or a disaster. And the town needed their presence to help them rebuild.

Here’s what Paul is saying… When all is said and done… when the story is at its close… Jesus will come again… and when He is on His way we will meet Him in the clouds… we will come out beyond our earthly city gates…

And we will walk together right back here.

And we will rebuild… He will restore… He will make all things new.

IT MATTERS HOW THE STORY ENDS.

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And so, for us today… for the church… the people living out this unfinished, second to last chapter… we find ourselves living in “the land in between.”

We are in between Jesus’ first coming and His second coming.

What do we do…?

IT MATTERS HOW THE STORY ENDS… AND IT MATTERS HOW WE GET THERE.

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Before we talk about what our job is now… let’s talk about what our job is NOT.

Because when you talk about the end… it conjures up A LOT of questions...

And A LOT of ideas...

And A LOT of opinions...

But there are a few things that are NOT our job!

You may wonder who’s in and who’s out? You may wonder about hell?

I’m not going to deny the existence of hell… or the idea of a reality apart from God…

But sometimes we can get really preoccupied in speculating about the details… and who is going where.

But our job as the church is not to be the Kingdom attendance keepers. Our job is to get ready for the King.

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Our job is not to get LOST IN THE DETAILS of what it may look like… or when it’s going to happen.

No matter how long you spend trying to decipher it… it’s not going to change what actually happens.

Our job is to get ready for the King.

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Our job is not to WORRY about it.

I had a pastor once say that if the thought of Jesus coming back fills you with concern or anxiety… then you need to read the book again.

Jesus coming back is only GOOD news! The world will get turned right side up once again!

Our job is to get ready for the King.

IT MATTERS HOW THE STORY ENDS. AND IT MATTERS HOW WE GET THERE.

APPLICATIONS

So what can do?

We know it’s good news! We know it’s not yet… we know that there’s a whole lot we don’t know, right?

But what can we do… here and now.

We could just wait… right? It’s not here yet… it’s coming… so we’ll wait.

But think about this with me....

If the story about greeting a dignitary is true and accurate… and if they’re on their way to help a devastated city… how pleased do you think they would be if they just found the people just sitting on their hands waiting until someone fixed it for them.

You better believe that when Corky walks into my office I’m going to at least try and look busy…

God is on His way to our devastated city… our broken world… how will He find His church?

IT MATTERS HOW THE STORY ENDS… AND IT MATTERS HOW WE GET THERE

Church… our job IS to wait… there’s no escaping that. We don’t know when this Story will wrap up.

But our job is to wait… AND to work.

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****Let me go back to the visual that I used from earlier.

Here is the whole story...

***But we find ourselves in this chapter here.

And in this chapter… there is NO reason why that man needs to be stationary. There is no reason why we can’t work while we wait.

There is no reason why the church can’t be a part of bringing God’s Kingdom to earth NOW.

There is no reason why this can’t be a foretaste of eternity.

If our ultimate goal is to rebuild and restore God’s good creation… then this is something we can do RIGHT NOW.

IT MATTERS HOW THE STORY ENDS… AND IT MATTERS HOW WE GET THERE

And right now we wait… but we can also get to work.

WE

So what does it look like for the church to live as though we KNOW the end of the story?

What difference does it make for us… KNOWING that God wins?

How can we operate as though eternity begins now? As though we can go ahead and be little outposts of God’s Kingdom on earth?

What does it look like to wait… and to work?

There is a relief team in TN right now… \that’s what it looks like.

Kelly had several people sign up to help teach kids about Jesus… that’s what it looks like.

Men in the church and the community are going to be getting together… with the intention of truly becoming the men… husbands, fathers, friends, business leaders… that God would have them be. That’s what it looks like to work as we wait…

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Are you worried about the end of the world?

Are you trying to figure out what comes next and what it will look like?

That’s not your job. Our job is to hope for it, wait for it, work for it… and not to forget what chapter you’re living in.

It matters how the story ends. AND WE’RE NOT THERE YET…

Are you waiting to be evacuated to a mansion in the sweet by and by?

Or are you working to see God’s Kingdom come and God’s will be done on earth… just as it is in Heaven.

You are the church. This is your chapter. Take your place in an amazing line of God’s people before you...

Go ahead and stand on the shoulders of the giants of our history…

And let’s be a preview of God’s Kingdom, God’s New Creation… right here… and bring it a little closer to earth every day.

BECAUSE IT MATTERS HOW THE STORY ENDS… AND IT MATTERS HOW WE GET THERE

CLOSING PRAYER

Who You are, who we are, who You’ve called us to be…

BENEDICTION

So I’ve been told that there’s this thing that happens every year around Labor Day. Throughout the month of August… school begins and we’re back to our routines and we’re back to church… and it’s full and exciting in here.

But then Labor Day comes around and many of us have made other plans… And I’m not judging… I’ll be out of town too!

But here’s what happens… some people will be out of town next weekend… and then they’ll notice that God didn’t strike them dead for missing a week of church.

And sometimes that’s just enough to get us out of the habit all together.

But… listen… ANYTIME that you are in town and able… I want you to be here…

It’s not just so that it can be full in here… although that’s fun...

I want you to be here because I know that you need God… and WE NEED YOU.

There is something happening in this place and I don’t want you to miss it.

Right here we are WAITING and we are WORKING for God’s Kingdom… and it’s bigger than all of us. So you should be a part of it.

I love you church… we’ll see you next week. Or the week after :)