The End of Even Stephen
(Masterpiece of Hope Series)
Revelation 21:1-5
God is not just trying to break even with heaven;
He is going to bless us beyond what Eden was like for Adam and Eve.
Chapel Service of Plainfield Christian Church
Rob Hoos
Introduction
My grandfather was a very interesting person, and one of his greatest interests was his lawn. He would spend hours upon hours, and great amounts of money on maintaining and growing a pristine and perfect lawn. Though he had emphysema really bad from years of smoking, every week he would get on the mower multiple times to keep his yard looking like a golf course. Even in the few months before he passed away, when he was too sick to be out on the mower or the fertilize spreader, he had my brother and I out there putting down coat after coat of fertilizer and weed killer. We joke about how those layers of fertilizer he had us put down are still causing the grass to grow too quickly a year and a half after he passed away. One of his mortal enemies, however, was the dandelion. He would spray and pull and dig and do whatever he needed to do to try and get rid of those things. He had a severe vendetta against this flowering weed, as if it had personally offended him, or insulted his mother. He understood what was said in Genesis 3:18 when God cursed the land because of man saying: “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you.” My grandpa spent a good deal of time trying to fight the curse on the small piece of land that God gave him.
The curse has really affected all of us though, hasn’t it? We find ourselves having to deal with the consequences of sin on a regular basis. Sickness, hard unproductive labor, relational problems, death, these are all consequences of what happened when we choose to follow our own wills instead of the will of God. We [humanity] really used to have it good though didn’t we? Before sin entered the world, we had it really good. Look at this description in Genesis:
I Come to the Garden
8 The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed.
9 Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
10 Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers.
11 The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.
12 The gold of that land is good; the bdellium and the onyx stone are there.
13 The name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole land of Cush.
14 The name of the third river is Tigris; it flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
15 Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.
This was a pretty good place. God had created a special garden for Adam and Eve to live in, and given them rule and reign over the whole earth to multiply, subdue, and cultivate the earth. We can also reason that God used to walk with Adam and Eve in the garden on a regular basis. So, not only did they have an amazing, breathtaking creation that they were given charge over, but God himself would often walk with them in the cool of the day. They had walked with God so often that they recognized his sound. That to me is an amazing and phenomenal thing. They had it all. But then they lost it all.
Fallen for a Fruit
Because of Adam and Eve’s sin, they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Not only that, but death, disease, hardship, and a whole slew of other things entered into this perfect world that God had created.
The comedian Jim Gaffigan says: “An apple, who’s ever been tempted by an apple? I’d have been like, “Yeah, cover it in caramel and get back to me. Hey! You got any cake back there? ‘Cause I love cake.”
They weren’t tempted because they were hungry, they were tempted because they bought the lie that God is holding out on them. Because of their mistrust of God, their lack of faith in God, their sin toward God, they were exiled from Paradise.
A deep longing
That is why we can never truly be satisfied by the things of this world. We were made for a perfect world. The longings of our heart are not for the best that this world can offer, but the best that God can offer us. We miss the Garden of Eden, deep down we miss it. You know what though; it is not the immortality that we miss, even though it is a good thing. We don’t miss the trees, or the flowers, we don’t even miss the fact that we didn’t have to work as hard. If we were to look deep into the longings of our hearts, we would find that the thing we miss the most about the Garden is the walks with our creator. That’s the reason that this world doesn’t feel right, because our sin has always kept us from the close intimate walk with God that we desire.
It’s no surprise to us then what the writer of Hebrews pens in the section that we refer to as the “Hall of Faith” in chapter 11.
13 All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
14 For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own.
15 And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return.
16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.
• They were not seeking an earthly country, but they had realized the same thing that you and I have come to realize, that we are neither made, nor meant for this world. We are made for a different world, a heavenly one. Because they realize this fact, because they realize that they were meant for a heavenly country with the ability to walk with the Lord, He is not ashamed to be called their God.
• In Peter’s first letter, he urges Christians to abstain from worldly lusts since we are aliens and strangers. It is a common thought amongst God’s children that we are aliens and strangers on earth. This is not the home that we were made for.
• It’s high time that we allow ourselves to respond to the longings that we all have inside that we were made for so much more than what we are doing right now. We were made to have fellowship with God and enjoy his presence forever.
• Well, Guess what, God has made that possible.
Eden Again (Revelation 21:1-5)
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.
2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them,
4 and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”
5 And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He *said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.”
• John begins in verse 1 by saying that he saw a new heaven and a new earth. This is most likely referring to the visible universe. See, heaven isn’t going to be this odd fuzzy place where we all exist without physical bodies in the clouds with harps. We are going to have real bodies, and live on the real new earth. It is different though, because the word that is used here for new represents a new kind, something entirely different from what we have ever experienced. The new earth is here, because the old earth, the old order of things has been remade. And now there is no sea. To a person in that time, the sea represented danger, death, and separation. God is saying that those things will no longer exist upon the earth. There will no longer be fear, death, nor separation.
• Verse 2, not only that, but God is sending down a city for us to dwell in. The description of the city is magnificent in the rest of chapter 21, but for the sake of brevity, it is beautiful, safe, and beyond our wildest dreams.
Then, in verse 3, the Lord speaks, and as you know, it is always important to listen to God when he speaks.
• God now makes his house with man. He begins to live with us. The new heaven and earth (heaven as we typically call it) is going to be the most wonderful existence because God will be there. He will once again be with man, and our longing will be fulfilled.
• Almost as a direct result of his presence there with us he will wipe every tear from our eyes. Do you catch that!? There will be no more reason to be sad in heaven. There is no longer death, mourning, crying, or pain. All of those things are gone. There is nothing bad that can touch us, or hurt us, there is nothing but the pure bliss of living with the Almighty.
• I love the next thing he says, because it is the understatement of the universe: “Behold, I am making all things new.”
• During the movie “The passion of the Christ” I typically do alright, sure it is tough to watch, but I always lose it when Mary walks over to Jesus whose bloodied, bruised, and beaten body is struggling under the weight of the cross, and he looks up at her and smiles a little (almost like an “are you proud of me” kind of smile) and he says “Behold, I am making all things new.”
• New bodies, new standing with God, new lease on life, new earth and heaven, new city, new existence, new…. It is just way to amazing for us to even contemplate.
• Write, for these things are faithful and true…
The end of Even Stephen
This sermon is titled “the end of even Stephen.” I don’t know if you all have ever heard that expression before, but it has to do with getting even, or making things come out exactly evenly. It is all about being even.
Sometimes, I think we (whether consciously or unconsciously) believe that it is in heaven that God breaks even. It is there that he restores Eden for us to live in, and it is like this whole story of history never happened.
We think it is kind of like that season of Dallas when one of the main characters was killed off, and then they decided that they wanted him back in the show, so they made it look like the whole season had just been one woman’s dream.
Contrary to belief, God is not just breaking even. The eternity that we have waiting before us is far beyond anything that Adam and Eve had in the garden. They had bodies, we’ll have heavenly bodies; they had a garden, we get a golden city; they walked with God, we’ll get to live with Him forever.
God has shown us the riches of his mercy by not just restoring us to where we would have been had we not sinned, but by blessing us all the more.
That’s the kind of God we serve. That’s what grace is all about. It is that reckless, unmerited favor that God gives to us on a regular basis. As we live through life, we need to keep this promised eternal destination in our minds. We need to remember that we are destined to live with God for all eternity. Because of what God has done for us, that is what we get to receive.
Eternity with God in a way that no one has ever experienced, in a way that makes the garden walks that Adam and Eve originally enjoyed pale in comparison.
