Easter 5 Revelation 21:1-6

April 28, 2013

There are a lot of TV shows about restoring old things and making them like new again, and in many cases, even better than new. It is truly amazing how a rusty old car can roll into a shop and a week later is transformed into a glistening showroom masterpiece. Or how a team of designers can enter a cramped, dilapidated, run-down shack and within weeks turn it into a beautiful, jaw-dropping, spacious home with every modern convenience.

There are at least two reasons why those shows are so popular. First, their projects look so impossible. We wouldn’t even know where to start, but as the experts go to work we are stunned as their plans unfold before our eyes. A second reason these shows are so popular is because we all have something we’d love to have restored, too, and wouldn’t it be nice if someone could do that for us?

Every one of us longs to have this world restored to its former flawless beauty. Every one of us yearns for our lives to be restored to the perfection and joy Godcreated us to have before sin entered the world. But for us it’s just an impossible dream. We wouldn’t even know where to start, and if we did, we still couldn’t do anything to change it. But we aren’t the ones in charge of the restoration project. In this chapter of Revelation the apostle John received a breathtaking vision of the greatest overhauling project ever: the future transformation of this decaying and dying, sin-infested world and universe into a grand and glorious, perfect home without any sin or its effects forever. The one in charge is God, and with God, nothing is impossible. “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new’.

JESUS MAKES EVERYTHING NEW

  1. A new home

John had just seen a white-knuckled vision of the end of the world on judgment day. He saw Satan and everyone who followed him in unbelief thrown into hell, which God describesas a “lake of fire”. Anyone who thinks they can bargain with God on the last day will find out how horribly mistaken they were.God means what he says when he warns, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Without Jesus, hell is all there is. And there are no exceptions.

But what about those who believe in Jesus? Where do they go? “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.”He promised the same thing to his people in the Old Testament in Isaiah 66 and in Peter’s second epistle in the New Testament. So God is describing something that sounds familiar to us.Our future home is not a place where people sit on clouds strumming harpsbut a place similar to where we’re living now. The big difference is that “the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.” (The word “heaven” here means “sky” and reminds us of Genesis 1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”.) Peter tells us that God will do this by destroying everything with fire and melting it down to the bare elements. Thenhe will make everything new again, even better than it was in the beginning.

The world we live in today is a far cry from what God made it to be. The ground is cursed because of sin. It has been through a worldwide Flood. The climate is unpredictable. We’ve come to accept as “normal” all the distortions and hardships that sin has made a part of our lives and every other living thing shares the pain and groaning with us. We can only imagine a different world and a different way of life, and what we are hearing seems so impossible. But the Savior who did the impossible by dying on a cross to free us from our sins will do the impossible once more. He has promised, “I am going to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you I will come back and take you to be with me.”(John 14:2,3)

  1. A new condition

John wrote, “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband”. Once again, the word “heaven” here means “sky”. But what or who is the “new Jerusalem”? Going way back into the Old Testament God often used the physical city of Jerusalem, where he had placed his Temple, as a way to describe all true believers in the coming Savior. God declared them holy in his sight through the coming Messiah, the Lamb of God, who would wash away their sins with his own blood.

Jesus calls his Church,everyone who believe in him, his “bride”. He loves her so much that he laid down his life “to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word.” He “dresses her up” in a beautiful wedding gown of his righteousness “to present her to himself as a radiant church, without any stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” John sees her “coming down out of heaven from God” because God has taken every believer off the earth during the fiery destruction and rebuilding process. Then he walks her down the aisle to take her to her new home.

  1. A new relationship

Then John heard God shout with joy, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”How long he had waited to say those words!

Since the Fall into sin the personal, face-to-face presence man enjoyed with God was broken. Man is born in the darkness of unbelief and has no clue who God is. He attempts to make God visible with idols and tries to find him in creation. He makes up religions to explain who God is and how to get close to him again.

But God made a personal visit to man right after he fell into sin. It was to give them the personal message of a Savior. A seed of the woman would come to make all things new again, just as it was in the beginning. He wouldbe a Mediator who would remove the sin that separates us from God. As long as that promise of the Savior was in the hearts of his people, God was with them. He showed this by coming to dwell in their Tabernacle, or Tent of Meeting. But then he came to earth in person and lived among us. Through his suffering and death Jesus removed the sin that separates us from God. No more Tent or Temple to visit. No more priests to go to God on our behalf. As his Word remains in us, he is “with us always, to the end of the age.”

Yet something is still missing. Here we live by faith and not by sight. We long to see our Savior “face to face”. On that Day our faith will turn to sight and our hope will be fulfilled. God will again live among us as he did in the beginning. Jesus makes everything new.

  1. A new life tomorrow

And in that new earth and new existence, “[God will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes…for the old order of things has passed away.” No more death. No more mourning. No more pain. No more tears. Everything that we’ve become so accustomed to: Kleenix, medicines, life insurance policies, doctor’s offices and waiting rooms, furnaces and air conditioners, nursing homes and cemeteries – gone forever, never to come to mind again.

  1. A new confidence today

It all sounds so impossible, so much like a dream. And it would be if it were not coming from the mouth of God. “Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Jesus did not say, “I am going to try to prepare a place for you.” He said he was going to do it.