Pastor
Steve Geiger Fifth Sunday of Easter
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Revelation 21:1-8
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, 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, “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. 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. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink
without cost from the spring of the water of life. 7 He who overcomes will
inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son. 8 But the
cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those
who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the
fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
I
Am Making All Things New Revelation 21:1-8
1.
Expect life to get old
2.
Look forward to a life brand new
A
motor coughing. A little too much white
exhaust billowing out the back.
Something wasn’t quite right.
I
don’t know a lot about motors. One hint
dropped not long ago . . . you need to check the spark plugs. I had heard of spark plugs. Those little electrical parts in an engine
that make a spark which lights the fuel that makes explosions that sets your
car, your lawnmower, your boat in motion.
You
get the little tool, you twist counter-clockwise, and out pops the spark plug,
a little finger at the end that should be nice and clean. Not mine.
Black with oil, crusted, corroded.
$1.94. Isn’t that exciting? $1.94.
That’s all it costs to get a new spark plug. A brand new spark plug.
Shiny. Clean. With that little finger at the end ready to
make beautiful new sparks. Wow. And I’m sure that most of you have been
dreaming repeatedly about what new spark plugs might do for your life. Or maybe not.
But
other things brand new . . . they can take over our thoughts. What would it be like to have a new car, a
new toaster, a new dress, a new life—to be young again?
You
may imagine being Keri or Jade. Their
whole life before them. But you may
also know that their lives too will quickly fade away.
For
this reason, a message from God today offering direction to the young and
expectation for all who will grow old.
In this life spark plugs get gummed, dresses go out of style, life slips
through fingers. But the day is coming
when all things will be made new.
Everything.
But
before that day comes, so important it is to expect that all things will get
old.
Is
this what you can expect to hear—perhaps what you’ve already heard—at
graduation ceremonies across our nation?
A business leader, a government official, a celebrity speaking to the
graduates of Harvard or Standford . . . “Expect everything you do finally to
fail. Expect every joy to pass
away. Expect life to be hard, earthly
goals to be forever elusive?”
This
is the graduation, the confirmation speech God shares with Keri and Jade and
you and me. “Expect life to be horribly
hard. Expect life to get old.” Expect good health to turn bad, the
excitement of high school at times to turn to disappointment. Expect happiness to turn to grief, peace to
pain. Expect life to turn to death.
Oh. That’s life? Expect life to get old?
How
dangerous if we expect anything different.
Recently
I’ve had a sinus infection, I think. I
know that it’s a comparatively small thing.
For about five weeks now. At
first I thought I’d let my body handle it all by itself. Find out if natural defenses would make the
problem go away. Finally I surrendered,
called the doctor. Antiobiotics. Of course, one imagines that the cure will
be instantaneous. Seven pills. Seven days.
Every morning I’d wake up and breathe and hope that this was the morning
when the infection was gone. For the
first three days, I didn’t expect to be better. But by day six, there was only one pill left. But nothing was better. So I call for the refill. I’m at least halfway through that and still
I’m wondering if it’s working.
This
is such a small thing. Yet the
temptation to expect a life that will not get old is so powerful. When health doesn’t return as we would like,
frustration. One can begin to wonder
why God isn’t giving me my prayer preference, that the problem go away. One can be afraid of what might happen if it
never goes away. Perhaps you’ve
imagined living with one of your pains for the rest of your life, and why . . .
why would God allow that? How could a
loving God permit a Chistian to get cancer?
How could a loving God permit a Christian to lose his job? How could a loving God permit a young lady
to lose a boyfriend? How?
The
moment can come where we are so upset at God that we begin to seek our own
relief, in our own way, in a way God says is sinful. To forget about life’s pains, we’ll hang with friends who are
doing things they shouldn’t be doing; and they offer, “Just try it.” Suddenly a Christian is rebelling against
God’s law. To forget about loneliness,
we’ll see on the most popular TV shows couples hanging out in married ways when
they are not married. Everybody’s doing
it. It hurts to be by myself. Just one night. Just trying it out. To
deal with joys, every joy, turning temporary, we’ll buy. Use our money first for earthly things. Thinking that maybe, just maybe, we’ll
happiness. To deal with the obvious,
that our life is slipping away, our future no doubt filled with trouble, we
worry. We don’t know how we’ll handle
it. Since the God who permits such
challenge surely is not our friend, we must deal with it ourselves, by
ourselves. But we know we don’t have
control, so we worry.
Though
God says, “No. That’s wrong. That’s refusing to trust me. That’s robbing God. That’s sexual immorality. That’s abusing your body.” But when we do not expect life to get old,
we become upset that it is getting old.
Upset at God. Obey you? Maybe if you change things. But right now, I think you’re the problem.
Those
words may rarely escape our lips, but do those thoughts ever guide our trip
through life?
We
choose to face life on our own. Should
this we chose, then this we can expect.
To face also death on our own.
We will not succeed. We will not
find lasting happiness here. In fact,
while making things worse, that extra pain serves only as a hint of what life
lived in rebellion will bring. The
horror of seeing the God we despised, knowing now that he must, will punish.
But
that won’t happen . . . will it?
So
much in a small town depends on trust.
But when you’re doing something big, even you might get it in
writing. A bid for redoing your roof,
buying a furnace, purchasing a car. You
want guidelines set, the promises on paper, because that means that the seller,
the contractor must do what he says.
“Write
this down,” God tells the Apostle John.
The warnings God gives are on paper because he wants us to know that
they are real. In writing.
In
writing. “Look, I am making all things
new.”
Expect
life to get old. Yes. But expect the old to be made new.
“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. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven
from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.”
New. But not for me. So often I’ve doubted God.
Disobeyed God. Lived upset that
this life was getting old. Not for
me. For me the suffering. For me the separation.
We
understand. This is honesty. Separation and suffering are just. But then, who’s in heaven? There is no one who does right. For whom is there no more death or mourning
or crying or pain, for we all have gotten frustrated, even at God, when life
gets old? Who lives in the holy city?
The
image of the bride reminds one of the picture of the perfect husband in
Ephesians 5, who “loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make her
holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present
her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other
blemish, but holy and blameless.”
Whatever this was, coming down out of heaven, this bride . . . it was
what it was not because of what it was, but because of what it had been made.
“We
all like sheep have gone astray; each of us has turned to his own way, and the
Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
For all the times we got frustrated in sickness, got drunk in a quest
for peace, lusted after or had sex with someone not our husband or wife . . .
for all the times we longed for lasting happiness by opening our checkbooks or
worried about the future because we saw God as our enemy . . . all of that was
laid on Jesus, who gave up all he was for you.
A sacrifice. Brutalized. Fires felt, eternal justice applied. To cleanse you. Wash you. In your
baptism, his life and death and life made yours. Conscience cleaned.
Righteousness given. Believe
it. In Jesus all evil is covered, all
dirt is washed, all guilt is removed.
This
is the bride. By faith in Jesus, you
are glowing, holy, blameless. You are
the inhabitants of the bride, the Holy City, coming down from heaven
beautifully dressed by your husband, for your husband.
This
is the new. This write down. Guaranteed.
You can trust him. Something
will change in the future.
All
things new. Fact: no more death. Fact: no more mourning. Fact: no more crying. Fact: no more pain. No more sinus infections. No more back aches. No more disappointment. No more fleeting joy.
This
is what you live for. Jade and Keri,
friends every one, this is what you live for.
We live not for this life. We
expect not lasting joy from this life.
And
when you’re tempted, when your sinful flesh says otherwise, be prepared with
weapons of truth, in writing, of the other destination. When one longs for lasting joys here, this
is the trigger for doubting God, getting ahead at the expense—even the
murder—of others, finding physical pleasure in sexual immorality, seeking
assistance from the occult, making ones idol earthly things, and lying to cover
up what we know is wrong. There is
another destination. When your flesh
tempts you to look for joy in things temporary, thunder at yourself of a fiery
lake of burning sulfer. It is
real. This is no game. Confront your flesh with the fact of
fire. With truth call your flesh a
liar.
And
with truth rejoice that your friend, Jesus, offers you strength to make it, to
survive, to get through a life that gets old.
The water of life. “To him who
is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of
life.” This water, yours even now. When you drink of it, never thirsty
again. The water of the words, the
promises. The body and blood. The forgiveness. The fountain. The
faucet. God showering into your lips
the promise that all is well. That you
might overcome, for the rest of your life, the lie that in this world you can
expect things to stay new.
Expect
this life to get corroded and crusty, creaky and rusty. But $1.94?
This time the price not silver or gold, but blood which cleanses . . .
this life, getting old. In Christ, look
forward to a life brand new.
Jesus
has put it in writing: “I am making everything new.”
Amen.