HoHum:
This is from Daniel Overdorf but I am have been in many of these kinds of conversations and situations: One Friday afternoon I struggled to prepare for the weekend. The week’s hectic pace, filled with activities, left me scrambling on Friday to finish my sermon. While I hunched over my desk, unable to develop anything that resembled a sermon, the office phone rang. From the phone’s earpiece came the shaky voice of an elderly lady who lived in the nursing home, Mrs. Robinson. She wanted me to visit. I looked at my unfinished sermon, then at the clock, then back at the computer screen. I grimaced. “I’l be right over.” Mrs. Robinson served in the church for years. She had endured a difficult life. She had outlived all of her family. Though she resided in a nursing home full of people, she lived alone. “I’ll just make it a short visit, then I can get back to more important things.” I entered her room, sat in the recliner next to her bed, and asked Mrs. Robinson about her week. She raised her head briefly from her pillow and smiled. “Awful kind of you to visit an old lady.” My shoulders and eyes dropped, “My week has been fine, thanks for asking,” she continued. “The beautician came by and gave me a new hair style. Do you like it?” “Very pretty,” I responded, though I could tell no difference from before. I glanced at my watch. We chatted briefly about the happenings at the nursing home, then Mrs. Robinson grew quiet. Her eyes focused somewhere beyond the room. “I’m tired, and I want to go home,” she said. Her head turned toward me,”Is it okay to want to go home?” To Mrs. Robinson, heaven meant home- a home for which her tired body and spirit ached. Is it okay to yearn for our heavenly home?
WBTU:
Discussing the community of the church the past several months, focusing on community.
Started in the past, in the OT and discussed the background of the community of the church
Working our way into the present and discussing struggles, trials and persecution. How can we persevere in the midst of these things?
Now we are moving into the future, offering a glimpse of the church’s destiny.
3 things before we start over the next several Sundays:
1. End times theories of pre, post, dispensational, or a millennialism are absent. See my views bleed through but more practical in nature
2. Must understand that the Bible provides signs of the end times but no precise, indisputable, clear roadmap of the times that lie ahead. Panmillenialist.
3. We are going backwards. Tonight discussing our ultimate eternal existence, then Christ’s return, then Christians who die before Christ’s return, then the present “heaven,” and finally how all of this should affect the church in the present, particularly regarding our worship
Thesis: Proclaim our ultimate eternal existence; new heaven and earth
For instances:
God’s ultimate restoration project
Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind- Isaiah 65:17. He (Jesus) must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets- Acts 3:21 The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare…That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness- 2 Peter 3:10, 12-13. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away- Revelation 21:1
Sometimes we picture heaven as a place where we will be free floating spirits among the clouds, drifting about in an eternal state of enchanted bliss. Such images grow from fairy tales and cartoons more so than from the Bible. Scripture pictures the church ultimately existing- following Christ’s return- in a physical heaven and a physical earth.
John the Revelator pictures the new heaven and the new earth as “the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” - Revelation 21:2. This New Jerusalem will include a throne, from which the Lord will proclaim, “Now the dwelling of God is with men”- Revelation 21:3, and "I am making everything new!”- Revelation 21:5. To summarize Stanley Grenz the biblical picture of this cosmos differs from the vision of which many Christians dream. They conceive of our eternal home as an entirely spiritual, non material place. They picture eternity as a realm inhabited by purely spiritual beings. The picture present in the NT is different. Instead of resurrected believers being snatched away to live forever with God in some heavenly world beyond the cosmos, the seer of Revelation envisioned something different. John uses physical terms to describe a physical place. Yes, beyond our present physical knowledge but to ignore this is to go against the description.
II. The Nature of the New Creation
Some aspects of our present life will remain in the new creation. While “nothing impure will ever enter” the new creation (Revelation 21:27), “The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it” (Revelation 21:26). Much of the physical aspects of the current creation will continue to exist in the new creation.
Now much from the present creation will have no place in the New Jerusalem. The chapters leading into Revelation 21 display the fate of all that opposes God and His people- Babylon the harlot (Revelation 17-18); the beast, the false prophet, and their armies (Revelation 19); Satan (Revelation 20:1-10); and even death itself (Revelation 20:11-15). “The new creation is marked, in part, by an absence of powers that oppose God and diminish life” (Koester). As a result, in the new creation, “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
Revelation emphasizes the presence of God Himself with His people in the New Jerusalem. “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "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.”” (Revelation 21:3). God’s mission to dwell with His people as their God- reaches its climax in the new creation. God will live with His community. All of Scripture’s other promises about heaven fade into nothingness when compared to the promise of God’s presence with us.
When we think of heaven what do we most look forward to? Asked this question to a man dying and he said clearly, “To see the face of Jesus.” Could we be satisfied with heaven without Christ?
In the future heaven, the community of God’s people will reach its own full, communal potential in the new creation. The nowhere to be found of all that opposes God and His people will include the absence of pride, greed, envy, lust, and other such sins that drive wedges between Christians. Stanley Grenz, “Peace, harmony, love and righteousness will reign everywhere. Fellowship will characterize our lives as humans Above all, we will enjoy eternal community with the God who makes his abode among us. Because we are reconciled with God, we will enjoy complete fellowship with each other as well, for the eternal community is a social reality.”
III. A Reflection of Eden
The new creation will reflect the Garden of Eden. Now it will surpass the Garden of Eden but we find that it will reflect it in many ways.
In Eden, before the Fall of mankind into sin, God enjoyed fellowship and communion with His people. The new creation brings restoration of this fellowship and communion. As such, the description of the New Jerusalem includes parallels with the Garden of Eden. Read Revelation 22:1-5.
Notice the river of life (Genesis 2:10; Revelation 22:1), the tree of life (Genesis 2:9; Revelation 22:2), the curse present then absent (Genesis 3:14f; Revelation 22:3); and the visibility of God (Genesis 3:8; Revelation 22:4). These parallels indicate that the New Jerusalem will reflect the Garden of Eden. The Creation of God will find restoration.
We find in Eden, God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Genesis 1:28). In the new creation, God’s people “will reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 22:5 also in 2 Timothy 2:12).
Said in a recent prayer bulletin: “This is one of the things we will be doing in heaven is reigning with God. I am clueless what that means but it means that we will be doing something of importance. We will not be floating along on clouds and playing harps all of the time, we will be doing something significant.” Here is part of the answer: We find that our status in the new creation will involve an active, tangible cultivation and stewardship of the new creation, similar to how Adam and Eve functioned in the Garden of Eden.
In heaven, pure love and relationship shared between God, His people, and His creation.
So what?
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young recorded a song named Woodstock:
Chorus: We are stardust, we are golden, We are billion year old carbon, And we got to get ourselves back to the garden. Last chorus: We are stardust, we are golden, We are caught in the devils bargain, And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
