Revelation 21:1-8
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen, today is Reformation Day, but we're not talking about the readings we would normally do or doing a sermon on that theme, because we are in the middle of a series based on the windows that you see up in our sanctuary. We've worked through a number of them, and I have the photos of some right up there that we're talking about today. Two of them are over there. One is the lily, and then next to it is the New Jerusalem descending from heaven. And then the last window is the one that you see all the way in the back on the other side, it's the one with the really tall kind of tree Bush thing. So that one back there represents heaven. That is the scene that is heaven. The scene over on this side is New Jerusalem, descending down to earth. And the lily represents the resurrection. And we have all seen the symbolism of the lily representing the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I think every church I have ever been to on Easter gets a whole bunch of lilies and puts them up front and and we get to see their beauty, and the people who are allergic to them get their noses filled, and they're glad that they don't they only last a couple of weeks. The lily represents the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a reminder of the joy that we have that after Christ died on the cross as a triumph over sin, he rose to new life to bring light and life to light for all of us that it leads us to the resurrection, our own resurrection. Today, I want to focus in on the window that is the scene, however, the New Jerusalem descending from heaven because it is the resurrection of Christ and His ascension to Heaven, which means that he is coming back. And John gives us this vision of the city of Jerusalem descending from heaven onto a new earth and from the new heavens as the final resting place for us all eternal life and the joy that we have to look forward to. He writes, then, I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven, and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. This is the promise that we look forward to as Christians, the new heavens, the new earth, and the city, Jerusalem descending to create eternal life for us in this majestic thing that we have a promise of in the resurrection. I'm going to take a look at a couple of those promises and a couple of those things and highlight some of what John says. The first one I want to see is this phrase, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. This is the goal of the entire plot of the Bible. If you go all the way back to the very beginning with Adam and Eve, the goal is, God will be with his people. He will live with them, and they will be his, and he will be theirs. And Adam and Eve had that. When they were walking in the garden, until they ate from that forbidden fruit. And the rest of the story is about God trying to be with his people. You can see it in the story of Moses. When God brought them out of slavery in Egypt, he brought them out into the desert. He gave them the 10 Commandments, and he said, I will be your God, and you will be my people. And he tried to dwell with them. He had them build a tabernacle for his presence, with the Ark of the Covenant in the center. And when He wanted them to move. He would lead them by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, and he gave them a very complicated set of rituals that needed to be done to make sure that his holiness would not destroy them because of their sin, he wanted to be with his people and live and dwell with them. But it just didn't work out, because a holy God and an unholy people don't mix. So we tried it. We see it failed over and over again. Solomon tried it too. He took the tabernacle and turned it into a temple this big and beautiful and impressive building. Not even that would work. God's people continued to sin. They treated him like the pagan gods around them, and so God sent prophets. He sent prophets to go into the land of Israel to tell them, return to the Lord your God. He is faithful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. They repeated the promises of the law. They called the people to faithfulness. God wanted to be their people, and they refused. And so the place where God dwelled was destroyed and the people ejected from the land, which is why God sent a new temple His Son, Jesus Christ, who entered into Herod's temple and said, Destroy this temple, and I will rebuild it in three days. Meaning his body. He lived among them. He died for them. He rose for them, just as he does for us. And yet, that beautiful vision that John has, that God will actually come down and dwell among us, has not been fully realized has we cannot shake Jesus's hand or give him a hug. We have something though that calls us to mind of his presence among us. God still wants to dwell amongst his people, which he does through Holy Communion, as we eat his body and drink his blood, we become temples of him where his presence is, but even that is just a shadow of The amazing beauty of Christ dwelling with his people on the last day. Later on, in Revelation 21 John writes, And I saw no temple in the city for its temple. Temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. When the New Jerusalem descends from heaven, we won't have to look for these small earthly signs of God's presence. We won't have to take his body and his blood to be reminded that he is among us with power and grace and mercy. We will actually see him in all his glory and dwell with Him in perfection, all our hoping, our yearning, our believing and trusting that he is coming will finally be realized.
What a glorious day. Can't wait God among us. Forever.
There's another thing that I think it reminds us we have to take a look, and especially as we are heading towards November of 2024 is that it is a city descending from heaven, right? I saw the whole holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. How many of you have been receiving texts 50 times a day telling us who to vote for. Initially, I started with the rule, if you text me, I won't vote for you. But that rule, pretty much means I don't vote. Now it's stressful and annoying. What's going on with our election, especially as much as the people keep playing it up and telling that everything depends on this moment. If you're like me, you wish there was a registry that could say already mailed in my ballot. Stop bothering me, but this passage helps us to remind us that our true citizenship is not in the United States or California or El Cajon lakeside, la mesa, wherever it is that you call home, our true citizenship is the New Jerusalem as Paul says, but our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Whatever your opinions on the politics of today, whoever happens to get elected, my vote is that they all lose. Whatever happens. Just remember, the end is the New Jerusalem. What we have now is temporary. The final thing I want to take a look at is this phrase, He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. I love the image of God wiping away every tear from every eye. We just think about that. What is it? What does it depict? You see the hand like coming up to a face right. And to do that, you have to put your your thumb or your finger right up intimately with every single individual person. That's a closeness that you don't get very often. How many times does someone actually have your trust to put their hand on your face and wipe away the tear from there, much of the time we in the Lutheran church, emphasize the communal relationship of God, that we all gather together and we receive the same body and blood of Christ. We hear the same word proclaimed, and hear the joy and promise is God will wipe away every tear from every eye. It's this intimacy, this individuality of God coming down and soothing every person, and each one of us has something that makes each of us cry individually. As I get older, I find that I tear up more at the weirdest things, you know, that's kind of a thing guys do. As we get older, we start to tear up at certain things, but it's always the weirdest things, not the things that are supposed to be, the tear jerkers, they make me roll my eyes. I remember watching this movie. It's called Brittany runs a marathon. I'm sitting there in the movie theater with my wife. We're in the final scene. It's the marathon scene. They've gone through all the training and the difficulty, and Kristen sitting there, and she's like, Yeah, isn't it great? And I am bawling like a baby. It was so bad, I didn't even try to hide it, just like
and we all have things that are. Are putting tears in our the pains and the hurts that each of us face. It's individual to you. And John chooses this image to show that individuality of God's care in the community of the saints. He says, I will wipe away every tear from every eye, whatever it is that you're facing that makes your heart swell with pain and sadness brings that tear to your eyes. When the New Jerusalem descends from heaven, God himself will wipe away every tear from your eyes, every tear from every eye. And that's the promise of the resurrection, when our Savior returns, all things will be made new in Jesus. Name Amen. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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