Sermon

 

Introduction

Recently, on holiday, I read Ian McEwan’s latest novel Solar, which had received rave reviews which included the Daily Telepgraph’s prediction that ‘it will come to be regarded as a classic’.

 

A huge McEwan fan, I have now read 11/14 of his novels, and I was excited about Solar, which tells the story of a Nobel prize winning physicist Micheal Beard. Darkly satirical, like much of McEwan’s work, it is a splendid novel which I enjoyed very well until I go to the end.

 

It appeared that MacEwan was building up to a great climax, but at the last the story seemed just to stop abruptly with all sorts of issues and matters unresolved, and with no sense of closure or end.

 

This afternoon, we have read together from the final chapters of God’s Word found in the bible, which is itself a library of 66 books that tell the story of God and our world.

 

The story begins, as we well know, in Genesis 1 with an account of the creation of the universe,

and it ends finally, 1189 chapters and 807,361 words later with Revelation, written by apostle John.

 

John was a late C1 pastor who served a number of churches around Greece, and was a prisoner of the Roman Empire, kept on penal colony on island of Patmos when he received a vision from God, a message for the churches at that time when Christians were beginning to be persecuted.

 

Revelation is not easy read. John was a poet as well as a pastor, and he uses metaphor and symbols, images and allusions that are not always easy to understand. However, the demands he makes of our minds and imaginations are well rewarded when we come to appreciate vision he received.

 

This afternoon, we shall study together the climax of John’s vision, the climax of the entire bible, a story that began in the Garden of Eden that ends with a glorious vision of a new Jerusalem, and shall discover that unlike McEwan’s novel Solar, God’s story has a magnificent ending .

 

Development

1. Exegesis [What the passage meant there and then]  turn with me, please, in your bibles to p 1249.

a. v1: ‘I saw a new haven and a new earth’.

Previous, Isaiah’s vision, wh Harry read to us earlier, was of a changed or transformed Jerusalem. Here, John receives a vision of a completely new world, where there is no distinction between heaven and earth, and where ‘there was no longer any sea’. 

 

Understand, as a prisoner on an island, the sea symbolised the separation John suffered from family.

Therefore, the disappearance of the sea represented a new freedom which John would enjoy.

 

Also, accord to Near Eastern mythologies of the ancient World, the sea represented power of evil.

Hence the removal of the sea, in John’s vision, also represented hope that sin and evil would end.

 

b. v2: ‘I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven, prepared as a bride’.

This new city of God’s is His creation, and is not the result of any human effort.

Meanwhile the image of the city as a ‘bride’ creates the sense of wedding joy that is to come.

 

c. v3: ‘I heard a loud voice… saying, ‘Now the dwell of God is with men’. 

Alluding to the promise God gave his people during their wilderness wanderings, John hears God repeat this promise again, that He will be with and live among His people in this new city.

 

d. v4: [Voice continues] ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes.. no more death, mourn, cry, pain’.

Again, and in another clear reference to the prophecy of Isaiah, John, in his vision, sees that in this new world suffer and death, the effects of sin and evil will be no more. They have been removed.

 

e. v5: Finally, ‘He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’

With the removal of death, mourning, crying and pain, God promises that He will make everything new. The previous references to a ‘new heaven and new earth’ and a ‘new Jerusalem’ emphasise that in the new city which God has made everything will be radically new.

 

2. Application [What the passage means here and now]

Today, this passage, that was written 2000 years ago to bring encouragement to Christians who were suffering persecution, continues to speak and gives us a sense of sure and certain hope.

 

Admittedly heaven remains beyond our present experience and therefore also our understanding.

We cannot properly conceive of this new world that exists beyond time and space.

 

Nevertheless, by this vision given to John, we can affirm several important truths about this new holy city to which God has promised to take us when our lives here on earth come to their end.

 

a. Heaven will be vastly better than this life on earth.

Everything that is good about human life, found in this world, such as love we share, will continue.

Everything that is bad, including sin and evil, suffering, pain and death will simply be no more.

 

There are no ward 32s in heaven, no Hospices, no illnesses, nothing that will ever harm us again.

There will be a radical improvement, in heaven, on everything we have ever known or experienced.

 

b. We shall enjoy an experience of true community.

Although cities might not be our thing, and we may prefer country or seaside, John’s vision of this ‘new city’ is one of a community, bursting with life and vitality, of an inclusive, multi cultural community where peoples from all the nations of the world would live together.

 

Everyone will live together in peace and in harmony.

Because there is no sin or evil in heaven, there will be no more wars, murders, attacks or assaults.

 

c. Heaven is of God’s making.

John saw that the new Jerusalem came down out of heaven from God, and thus it is of his creation.

Despite optimism created by the Enlightenment, heaven is not something that we shall ever create.

 

We know, despite our efforts, neither we nor others can truly hope to make the world better place.

Rather, our hope of heaven lies in God, the maker of heaven and earth, who will create the new city.

 

Upon what do we base our hope? Our hope rests not only in God, but in His son Jesus Christ, by whose death sin and evil were defeated, and by whose resurrection death has been conquered.

 

Accordingly, our hope for the future is sure and certain because of what God has already achieved through the death and resurrection of His Son. ‘In Christ alone our hope is found’.

 

Conclusion

We have come here together today because someone who we loved has died and is no longer here with us, and I thank you for coming.

 

In a moment we shall take a moment of silence to remember our loved ones again.

 

I do not want to assume that you are a Christian or that you believe in God or trust in Jesus, but today I want to share with you the hope that Christians enjoy through our faith, and I want to invite you to believe, put your trust in God so that you know might know this sure and certain hope, that...

 

Soon and very soon, we are going to see the King!

No more crying there, we are going to see the King!

No more dying there, we are going to see the King!

 

And with King, we shall also see our parents and children, husbands and wives, family and friends.

In words of King David, after death of his son, ‘I shall go to him, but he will not return to me’.

 

We shall go to them, whom we have loved and lost awhile.

This is how God’s story will continue when our days are done.