All Things New

If you have your Bible with you this morning, and I hope you do, turn to
Revelation chapter 21.
I was in the Dallas airport a week ago, trying to get home while the rains were
happening here, and I looked up and I saw these two people. Do you know who these
two people are? That's right, that's Chip and Joanna. Okay,
they were on the TV screen, they weren't actually in the airport. I mean, do you
think anybody here think Chip and Joanna fly commercial, right, through the Dallas
airport? They couldn't get from TSA to anywhere without being mobbed. So anyway, they
were on the TV. For those of you who don't know who I'm talking about, Chip and
JoJo, you're all, who are these people? These are the hosts of a reality TV show
called Fixer Upper, Welcome Home. And for years, they've been showing us how to
remodel homes in Waco, as they go in and take an old beat -up house and turn it
into something nice. They take something that looks like this and they turn it into
something that looks like this, okay? So that's what they do. And if you've ever
watched the show, you know there's a point in the show where they get the couple
who is buying the house and they put them out in the street and they got a big
thing up in front of them where they can't see the house and they say, "Are you
ready for the reveal?" And then they take a commercial break and then you come back
and they do it all again, and then they tear it down, and everybody goes, ooh, ah,
ah, and the gasp, and they are all so excited about their new house. And that's
been a theme for all of it, whether it's Fixer Upper or Extreme Makeover, or I
guess there's one called Fixer to Fabulous, or Love it and List it, or if you've
seen these shows, you know that big moment is in each of these shows, where they
show you the before, and then they show you the after, and you see the makeover.
And I thought about that this week as I was reading Revelation 21. We are at a
major turning point, a transition point, not just in the book of Revelation, but a
turning point in the story, the big story of the Bible. Maybe you've heard the big
story of the Bible described this way in four acts. So it begins with creation.
That's the opening part of the Bible. And then quickly there is the fall of mankind
as Adam and Eve sin in the garden. And then there is God's plan of redemption
being unfolded. And it culminates in restoration in what's sometimes called
consummation or the new creation. And the interesting thing about these four acts,
if you will, in the story of the Bible, is that three of the acts are really
short and one of them is really long. So creation is told to us in Genesis 1 and
2. That's where we see the storyline of creation. The fall is in Genesis 3.
The story of God's plan of redemption begins in the middle of Genesis 3 and takes
you to Revelation 20. And then the restoration happens in chapters 21 and 22,
which tells us that the big story of the Bible is redemption. That's where the
focus is. That's where God's attention is drawn, starting with the promise of
redemption in the middle of Genesis 3, taking us all the way up to the defeat of
Satan at the end of Revelation chapter 20. The big theme of the Bible,
revelation or excuse me, redemption, we're getting to the point in the last two
chapters of Revelation where we get a chance to see the Restoration. We get a
chance to see how what God created is being redeemed and restored.
Not just human beings, although that's the central focus of the Bible, But it is
everything that God created that was impacted by the rebellion of Adam and Eve that
is going to be restored by God. In Revelation 21 and 22 are that point where we
have the big reveal. We've been waiting and everything's been blocked and now the
curtain is pulled back and we get to see what the restoration looks like. We get
to see what the extreme makeover looks like. And this is our first peek at the
restoration of all creation. And the thing I want us to notice as we work through
these two chapters over the next four or five weeks is that the most glorious part
of the restoration project that God is unveiling here is not the physical description
of where we're going. The most This part of the restoration project is something
that's even greater than streets of gold or pearly gates or the water of life
flowing out from a river. What captivates John as he gets his first look into the
restored creation, the highlight of the new heavens and the new earth is in verse
three of chapter 21, it is the dwelling place of God is with man.
That's the highlight. It's not the streets of gold and the pearly gates, it is that
God has come to dwell with man. The first glimpse we see of the new heavens and
the new earth is a picture of restored relationships because that's the heart of it
all, the restored relationship. What was corrupted in the garden When the man and
the woman rebelled against God, turned away from him, chose to go their own way,
was a fourfold corruption. When Adam and Eve fell, they were alienated from God.
They were alienated from one another. They were alienated from the ground,
from the creation. Thorns and thistles started to appear and fought back. And they
were alienated from their own soul. They didn't have peace in their soul anymore.
It's a four -fold alienation. And what happens when we get to the new heavens and
the new earth is that all of that is reconciled. Our relationship with God, our
relationships with one another, that the creation is recreated so there's no more
fighting the thorns and the thistles and the new heavens and the new earth, and our
restoration for our own souls being at peace and at rest. So as I said,
it's gonna take four or five weeks for us to go through these two chapters and see
everything, but we're gonna dig in this morning and look at the first eight verses
of Revelation chapter 21. And this has been, after you've gone through chapters six
through 20 and you've seen one bad thing after another bad thing after another bad
thing, this is what we've been waiting for, is this picture of what God is gonna
do. So let me read these verses to you this morning. Again, let me pray, Father,
we need your spirit to be our teacher this morning. Holy Spirit speak to us through
the word of God. We pray in your name, amen. Revelation 21,
beginning at verse one, you follow along as I read. This is the word of God for
the people of God. John says, "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, 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. Amen.
May God bless this reading of his word. The grass withers and the flower fades. The
word of our God will last forever. So this morning, we're gonna look at these
verses and we're gonna see what John saw. We're gonna see what John heard and then
we're gonna see what God said when he spoke. So that's how we'll divide this text
up. So what John saw first in verse one he saw two things.
First he saw the new heavens and the new earth and then he saw a new city coming
down. I mentioned last week that there's a debate among scholars about whether this
new heaven and this new earth are a total recreation or whether it's a remodel of
what exists. And one reason that people think It's a ground -up total restoration of
things is because of what we read in 2 Peter 3. So in 2 Peter 3,
Peter says, "The day of the Lord will come like a thief, "and the heavens will
pass away with a roar, "and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved,
"and the earth and the works that are done on it "will be exposed." Now that
sounds like dissolved, done away with, completely destroyed. And if God is able to
speak the universe into existence from nothing in Genesis chapter one, he's able to
speak the new heavens and the new earth into creation from nothing. It's not like
God needs some raw clay to be able to bake the new heavens and the new earth.
With that said, I'm inclined to agree with those who see not a total recreation,
but who see a remodel or a redoing of the heavens and the earth. They see a major
overhaul to what already exists. There are two reasons why I think that's right. The
first reason is found in 1 Corinthians 517. Excuse me,
2 Corinthians 517. That's a verse you should know. If you don't know 2 Corinthians
517, it's a verse you ought to underline. You ought to memorize. It's a good verse.
So we're going to say it together, "Therefore if," is in, "he is a," the,
has, "behold the," has, okay, say it again,
"therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,
the old has passed away, behold the new has come." Okay,
one more time. We'll just keep going through. "Behold, therefore, if any was in
Christ, he is a..." Go ahead and fill it in. New creation. Go ahead and there we
go. Put it up there, Rachel. Is it not there? There we go. "The old has passed
away, behold the new has come." Okay, so there we go.
I guess we didn't fill in some of the blanks. You got it in your head, right?
When someone is new in Christ, what that means to be in Christ, you are a new
creation in the same way that there's a makeover of the heavens and the earth. So
when you came to faith, you didn't become a totally new person. You didn't get a
new nose, you didn't get a new jawline. Some of you wish you had gotten some
plastic surgery when this happened, but that's not how it works. You're still the
same person, you still have the same personality. But the makeover that happens to
be new in Christ is that you have new priorities, new affections, new desires.
You have a new center of your life that you didn't have before. You used to be
the center of your life. Now God is at the center of your life. That's what makes
all things new. When God is at the center, everything else becomes new. So when we
go back to Revelation 21, and John sees a new heaven and a new earth, I think God
is gonna do to the universe what he does in our hearts when he makes us new. He's
going to remodel everything and put himself at the center of the universe, and that
changes everything.
For a Christian, the old man is dead, and we are made new for the universe.
The old Earth is gonna be dead and the new universe is gonna be recreated. That's
the first reason I think it's a remodel. The second reason is because of the flood.
When you read about the flood in Genesis 6 through 9 in Noah's day, the Bible says
God destroyed the earth and what he did on the flood on that day was a cleansing
of the flood cleansed away the sin and what grew back was a new world.
I think the purging, the fire that Peter is talking about, is a purging fire that
is gonna cleanse the universe. What John sees here is I think what the people on
Fixer Upper see. They saw the old, now they see the reveal, they see the new
heavens and the new earth, but it's more spectacular than anything that Chip and
Joanna can create. It's a universe as it was meant to be unmarred by any sin.
And the key part of what John sees in the new heavens and the new earth, in fact,
it says here that he sees that the, not only has the first earth passed away,
but it says the sea is no more. Now some of you got really sad 'cause you like
going to the sea, you like going to the beach, you're thinking, wait, in heaven,
the new heavens, new earth, there's no beachfront, there's no lakeside I can go to,
is that what you're saying? No, I think what the Bible is telling us is that the
sea in the ancient world was often a picture of a place of dread,
a place where there was fear and danger associated with the sea.
The sea was dangerous. People who died at sea were swallowed up. You saw them no
more. Their bodies were overboard and they were gone forever. Storms would rage up
on the sea and put you at risk. There was no place to go for refuge. When you
were in a storm on the sea, there's no place to hang on anymore. So the sea is
that picture of chaos, that picture of danger and toil. And so what John is seeing
when he says the sea is gone is not that there's no waterfront in heaven, it's
that the danger is gone. It's that the dread is removed. The fear that sea
represents is taken away. And all of us know moments when we've had dread and fear,
when we've been consumed by that, when you get separated from a child in the store,
right? and you don't know where your child is and you panic and you think what's,
and your heart starts to race and everything stops and you're in that dread.
When you're walking late at night to your car and it's in some part of town that
you're unfamiliar with and it's dark and you're hearing noises and you pick up the
pace 'cause there's a little dread, that'll never happen in heaven. You'll never of
a moment of panic in the new heavens and the new earth. You'll never worry that
something is gonna go wrong because it won't. The sea is gone.
That's what John is seeing here. That's what this passage is telling us. And then
in verse two, he not only sees the new heavens and the new earth and the sea
gone, but he sees the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven. Now, in the same
way that I don't think the sea being gone means there's no water in heaven, I also
don't think that John is seeing a vision of a floating city coming down and landing
on the earth. If you were a Jew in John's day, you went to Jerusalem three times
a year to celebrate the feasts and the festivals. Why did you go to Jerusalem? Why
couldn't you just celebrate? We celebrate Christmas in our living room. Why did Jews
go to Jerusalem to celebrate the feasts and the festivals? What's in Jerusalem? The
temple. Whose house is the temple? It's the house of God. You go to Jerusalem
because in your mind, we're going to God's house for the festival.
We're going to where God is. That's the dwelling place of God on earth. It's
Jerusalem, it's the temple, that's why we go there. When John sees the new Jerusalem
coming down, what he's seeing is the dwelling place of God. He says it in verse
three, "The dwelling place of God has come to be with man." The significance of
this new Jerusalem, the most important element of this holy city coming down,
is that the dwelling place of God has come with man. That's what John hears in
verse three, the significance of the New Jerusalem. God has come to be with man.
Now, before we get to verse three, I wanna point out when John sees the city
coming down, interestingly, he said, it looked to me like a bride adorned for her
husband. Again, to see a city that looks like a bride tells me we're talking about
a lot of symbolism here, a lot of metaphor here. So he sees the city and he said
it looks like a bride. Well, what's that all about?
It means that the most important, most significant thing that John is seeing, God
coming down to dwell with man in the same way that God dwelled with Adam and Eve
in the garden. He walked with them in the cool of the day. He communed with them.
They had fellowship with God. He wasn't distant. He wasn't detached. he lived with
them, John says it's like a bride coming to be with her husband. He's saying that
when God comes to dwell with us, he comes to dwell with us in a personal intimate
relationship. Think of the closest, most intimate relationship we know on earth.
It's a husband and a wife together in a covenant of marriage. He said when God
comes to dwell with you, it's like he's coming to be joined to you in marriage.
Later on in verse 7, he says it's like a father with a child. He takes the two
most intimate relationships we have, parent, child, and husband, wife, and says that's
what our relationship with God and the new heavens and the new earth is going to
be. When he comes to dwell with man, he doesn't live in the palace and you never
see him. He lives with you and you're always with him.
It's an intimate relationship. These metaphors of looking like a bride coming to be
with a husband or a father and a child being united is taking family relationships
and saying this is what it will be like. You'll be a part of God's family and you
will dwell with him forever. As believers we actually have that kind of a
relationship with God right now. We are the bride of Christ today, we are adopted
children of God. He is always with us. He's always near us. We have the Holy
Spirit who is with us and in us. So what changes in the new heavens and the new
earth? Well, when sin is gone, everything gets closer. Everything draws near.
The relationship is deeper. When sin is removed from the picture, then there are no
barriers anymore. We have a taste today in our relationship of God, what we will
experience in depth in eternity. Those sweet times that you've had of drawing near
to God, that will be your hourly experience for eternity.
Right?
There'll never be a time in eternity when you will say, "I feel distant from God
today." There will never be a time when you feel like he is far away from you.
There'll never be a time when you will look up and say, God, where are you?
Your relationship with him in eternity, John says, will be like the relationship a
husband enjoys with a wife, like the relationship a father has with a child, warm,
intimate, close, personal, connected, near.
That's what John sees. The new heaven the new earth the dwelling place of God
coming to be with man and then in verse 3 He goes from what he sees to what he
hears an announcement is made about Reconciliation so this is where a voice a loud
voice from the throne We assume that's the voice of God coming from the throne Says
behold the dwelling place of God is with man. He will well with them, they will be
his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.
That verse is the most important description of the new heavens and the new earth
in all of chapters 21 and 22.
In fact, you go back to that big storyline of the Bible that I talked about, when
God created the heavens and the earth in Genesis one and two, he created us to
live with him, to walk with him, to fellowship with him. And then when Adam and
Eve fell in Genesis 3, they said to God, "We want to be independent of you. We
don't want you anymore. We don't need you anymore. We want to live on our own."
And immediately after they did that, they saw the consequences of their choice. They
saw that they were removed from the fellowship they had enjoyed with God. They were
kicked out of the garden. There was no way back in. They were on their own. They
were apart from God. And then from Genesis 4 to Revelation 20, we have the story
of God doing all he needs to do to bring us back to him,
which ultimately requires that he sends his son to be Emmanuel, God with us.
Jesus comes from heaven, reveals what life with God is meant to be. He offers
himself in our place on the cross, dies for our sins, so that fallen humanity can
have a new and living way.
Woodstock is the OG of music festivals, right? It's the original.
August 15th through 18th, 1969 at Max Yasker's farm in White Plains, New York.
Actually, interestingly, White Plains is a little hamlet in the community of Bethel,
New York. What does Bethel mean? House of God, I'm just saying, okay?
Three days of peace and music in the house of God. The joke is, if you can
remember going to Woodstock, you weren't really there. That's the old joke people
used to say. And singer -songwriter Joni Mitchell was not there. At the time,
her boyfriend, Graham Nash, was there with his band, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
But Joni could not be there. So the only thing she knew about Woodstock was what
she was seeing on TV and what she was hearing from her boyfriend about what the
experience was. And it prompted her to write a song called Woodstock. And the big
line in her song is, "We've got to get ourselves back to the garden." Now,
what she was expressing, and what she was thinking, she was thinking Woodstock is
like going to heaven. You go to heaven, it's peace, and it's music, and Man,
it's love and what else could you want? It's just free, right? And we've got to
get ourselves back to the garden. But it's the longing of every human heart to
wanna get back there, where there is love and peace and music and joy.
It's where we belong. It's what we were made for. And we think we've got to get
ourselves back to the garden. People went to Woodstock thinking that would satisfy
the longing in their soul, and maybe it did for a day or two till the rains came,
but you can't get yourself back to the garden, not to the real garden, not to the
garden where you belong. We've been locked out of the garden by our own choice.
When we rejected God, we were put out of the garden. Today, we've got people who
wanna get back to the garden, they just don't want God to be there. They want the
garden, they don't want God. They want peace and joy and love and all of that but
not if it means having to bow to the God of the universe who created them So
they're gonna look for it some other way some other place They want what God
promises apart from God, and they'll do anything to try to find it But there's only
one way to get back to the garden Because it's the way that God made he made a
new and living way in the death of his son so that we could get back there. There
is no other way to find that for which your soul longs. In this life we have a
taste of what happens when you walk with Jesus in eternity. When we get to the
last part of the story, Revelation 21 and 22, then we're back to the garden when
the Restoration happens. We're back where we were meant to be. And Again, it's not
fundamentally about the garden. It's not about what we see there. It's about who is
there.
Unhindered, unmediated fellowship with God. We walk with Him, we dwell with Him in a
perfect relationship, free from sin, dwelling every moment with Him. And it's not
just free from sin, although that's great. Look at What else you're free from in
verse four? He will, God will, personally,
wipe away every tear from their eyes. People have wondered, well, if he's wiping
away tears, does that mean we cry in heaven? We bring our tears with us into
heaven, and God wipes them away, and they are no more.
Death is no more, no more mourning, no more crying, no more pain, the former things
have passed away.
Pastor Kevin DeYoung reflects on this verse and says this, "It'd be hard to find a
sweeter, more precious verse "in all of the Bible than verse four of Revelation 21.
"Little more than 30 words in English, "but it is here to heal 10 ,000 wounds "and
to provide hope for millions and billions of hearts." He says, "Imagine what this
will be like. Just allow your head and your heart to hope and dream of such a
place. The inconveniences of life will be gone.
He says, I can tell you some of the things I'm looking forward to. He says, no
more cankersores, no more allergies, no more celiac, there will be fountains of
gluten, he says,
No bad ankles, no bad knees, no bad back, no flu, no cold.
He says, "But think about even more serious things. The nose, no more stillbirths,
no miscarriages, no traffic fatalities, no suicides, no loneliness,
no anxiety, no panic attacks, no depression, no dementia, no unexplained darkness that
doesn't seem to lift, no more tumors, no more cells that attack your body,
no more head injuries, no more phone calls to frighten you in the middle of the
night, no more war, no more shootings, no more bomb shelters or air raids,
no paralysis, no autoimmune disorders, no more arthritis, no freak accidents,
no leukemia, no tears or over wayward children, no betrayal,
no death. He says, "You will never again think to yourself "or cry out, my God, my
God, why have you forsaken me?" You'll never ask that again. You'll never cry out,
my, scarcely imagine the splendor, the joy, and the wonder that we will have in
this place. What do you think about when you think about a place where there are
no tears, no death, no sorrow, no crying, no pain? And Don't you think I'm longing
for that? Of course you do. But the bigger question is,
are you longing for that more than you're longing to dwell with God?
The two go together, right? The reason there's no more sorrow is because you dwell
with God, but is it possible that we're longing more for the absence of sorrow and
pain than we are for the presence of God.
In those times when you say, like I do sometimes, "Lord Jesus, come quickly," are
you saying, "Lord, I can't wait to be with you or get me out of this mess?" I'm
going to show you a 30 -second video clip. I've shown the longer version of this
clip before, but it impacted me powerfully. Almost 20 years ago,
when I was sitting at the very first together for the gospel conference in
Louisville, Kentucky. John Piper was speaking. He was describing the gospel,
talking about the gospel and the power of the gospel. And he ended the clip with a
question that kind of was a gut check for me. So watch this 30 seconds from John
Piper.
I mean, ask your people. This is a very frightening question.
If you can have heaven, perfect health, all the friends you've ever wanted,
all the physical pleasures purified that you've ever wanted,
and God's not there, would that be okay? So
many evangelicals would say yes.
What do we want?
What do we want?
The great hope of the Bible is the great hope that we will one day be with Jesus.
That should be the longing of our heart. To want what Jesus promises more than to
want to be with Jesus, It's a problem and we need him to turn our hearts in the
right direction so that what we're longing for, what we're fixing our heart on is
being with him, not on the benefits that come from knowing him and being redeemed.
How can we even dare to imagine that this kind of eternal blessedness is possible,
that we can well with God that we can experience the joy that comes from that. How
can we believe that this might be true, that it might be real, that it might be
possible? Well, we can believe it because of what God says in verses five through
eight in our text. And that's where John turns his attention here. And he who was
seated on the throne said, behold, I am making all things new. We've already talked
about that. And he said write this down for these words are trustworthy and true.
Now, why does God need to tell us that what he's telling us is trustworthy and
true? Why is he reinforcing the trustworthiness of this? He's doing it because the
first readers of this book and because people in our day face enough opposition,
they face persecution. The first readers were facing persecution and martyrdom. It's
still true in our world today because there are pastors in South Africa being taken
by gunpoint in the middle of a sermon and being kidnapped. And any of us in the
midst of hardship or pain or challenges in life, it's easy to think as we think
about heaven. Are we just, is this just wish fulfillment? Are we just pretending
that that's gonna be, do we just long for it so much that we pretend it's gonna
happen, and God says no, write this down. This is true.
This isn't something you just dreamed up on your own. This isn't just your
imagination, imagining a glorious eternity. This is my promise to you.
This is what I'm revealing to you. You can trust it because it's coming from me.
How can you know it's true? Look at who's speaking, it is done, he says. I am the
alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. I'm the creator of it all. I'm in
charge of it all. Colossians 1 says he is before all things. He is the one who
holds all things together. Romans 11 says from him and through him and to him are
all things. When the one who created everything and sustains everything says, I've
got a promise for you, you can take that to the bank. When the one who has proven
himself to be faithful and true for all of human history says, "Here's what's
coming." Maybe you can allow yourself to believe that this is really true.
So God says, "Count on this. I'm revealing it to you. This is trustworthy and
true." And then he says, "And there are three promises you need to keep in mind."
And he ends that in verses six through eight. He says, first, a promise to anyone
who's thirsty. To the thirsty, I will give from the spring of the water of life
without payment. Now, who are the thirsty? They're those who recognize that they hear
this and they go, this is what I want. I want to be with God. I want to dwell
with God. I want this to be my future. He says, if that's what you're thirsty for?
I'll give you the living water. God is saying the same thing Jesus said in John 7
on the final day of the Feast of Tabernacles when he stood up and he said, "If
anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the
scriptures say, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water." He's saying the
same thing that he said to the woman at the well in Samaria when he said to her,
everyone who drinks the water from this well will be thirsty again, but whoever
drinks the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water I
give him will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life. When he says to
the one who is thirsty, I'll give you living water to drink. He's saying, if you're
hearing this and reading this and you're saying this is what I'm thirsting for, I'll
give it to you, free. No question, all you have to do is come and ask and
surrender.
And then he makes a second promise to the one who conquers in verse seven. He
says, "The one who conquers will have this heritage. I will be his God and he will
be my Son." Back when we started our study of Revelation, we looked at what is a
central word in this book, the word "nikeo" in the Greek, which is a word, we give
our word "nike" from it, it means "conqueror, overcomer." And it's central to this.
So when he says to the one who "nikeos," the one who "nikes," the one who
"conquers," he's telling both his original readers and us today, "Do not shrink back
in the face of hardship, persecution, opposition. No matter how hard life gets,
no matter how hard following Jesus gets, don't waver, don't wobble, don't walk away,
stand firm, conquer, overcome. Jesus Christ calls all his followers to be overcomers.
Not to, he's not just calling you to this, he's promising that he will empower you
to overcome as well. He says, "I call you to overcome and I'll be the power for
you to overcome.
You come wanting to overcome, turning to me and I will empower you to overcome.
In him you can conquer, you can stand firm, you can overcome.
And his promise for all who will overcome is he will be their God and they will
be his child. He will love his children as a parent loves a child forever.
He will care for you, he will provide for you, he will never leave you, he will
never forsake you. You will be his child. So there's a promise to anyone who's
thirsty, I'll give you living water. There's the promise to anyone who overcomes, you
will be with me forever. And then there's a sobering promise in verse 8,
"As for the cowardly, with the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable. Okay,
stop there for just a second. God is contrasting those who overcome with the
cowardly, the faithless, and the detestable. Those who don't overcome. Why don't they
overcome?
These are people who have aligned them. They've said, I'm gonna follow Jesus, but
they don't follow through,
they shrink back. Why do they shrink back? Because of cowardice, because of
faithlessness, or because of a detestable spirit?
Let me explain these things to you. What causes someone to walk with Jesus to
ultimately walk away at some point? Cowardice is one reason. They become fearful.
They become timid. They don't mind standing for Jesus, if it doesn't cost much,
but as soon as it gets hard, they shrink back. They bail.
Jesus used the same word with his disciples, this cowardice, when they were in the
boat and the storm was raging around them and they were in fear. They were
cowardly. They were shrinking back. They weren't believing in God in that moment as
the storm was raging.
Jesus is warning all of us here that we ought to fear falling away more than we
fear whatever it is that comes from following Jesus. You ought to fear falling away
from God more than you fear whatever the consequences of walking with Jesus will
require. So one reason people fall away is because of cowardice.
Another reason is because of faithlessness. The word is a pistis. Pistis is the word
for faith. You put an A on the front, no faith. These are people without faith, no
confidence. They fall away because ultimately they don't have confidence in the
promises of God. They hear them, they'd like to believe them, but they don't really
believe them. And the warning for us is that in order to believe the promises of
God, we must strengthen our faith muscle. When we studied the book of Jude,
in the face of false teachers, Jude says, here's what you need to do. You need to
build yourself up in your most holy faith. You need to work out your faith muscles.
You need to strengthen your faith. How do you do that? God's regularly going to put
your faith to the test, and what you do when He puts you to the test is you lean
in rather than pulling back. You lean in recognizing that God is strengthening you.
You know you go to the gym and they say okay get on this machine and you go
that's hard I don't want to do that. Either lean in and your muscles get stronger
or you pull back and nothing happens. He's saying the faithless pull back.
Those who are the faithful lean in in the middle of the hardship.
So, there are the cowardly, there are the faithless, and then there are the
detestable. This is a word in the Greek it means distinct, to have an aroma.
It's a word that's most often associated with idolatry, the detestability.
So he's really talking about what will happen if you give your attention and your
affection and your devotion to someone or something other than God. You put something
else at the center of your life and it will give off an unpleasant aroma.
And you will become detestable before God. You will be a stench in his nostrils.
Remember how John ends his first letter? First John, the last verse in First John,
I think it's 513, "Little children,
keep yourselves free from idols."
That's a mic drop moment for him So here God is making this promise to all who
give into cowardice who give into faithlessness who give into idolatry he's saying
and And by the way, he says that will start to manifest itself in things like
murder sexual immorality sorcery outright idolatry lying. That's not a complete list,
but that's a pretty comprehensive list of those who are not overcomers. This is what
you will see in their lives. And the promise is their portion, he says, that's
inheritance language. What they will inherit is the lake of fire that burns with
sulfur, which is the second death. They're going to spend their eternity not in the
presence of God, but with the beast and with the false prophet, and with Satan
himself, and with all who have rejected God. They'll be separated from the goodness
of God.
So you hear all of that, and here's the question that comes up. Can someone who is
a child of God fall away?
I mean, when he's saying, I got this one. If you're thirsty, come to me. If you
are my child, if you're,
what was it, the thirsty, what's the second one? I don't know.
into idolatry or faithlessness or cowardice? How can I know that I'm not headed for
the lake of fire? How can I know that I'm not detestable or cowardly or faithless
that I will dwell forever with God and not be in the lake of fire? How can you
know that? Because you look at what you keep pursuing even in the midst of what
you're facing. Do you fall and slip? Yes, what happens when you get up?
Do you stay down, or do you get up and keep pursuing Christ? Do you keep growing
in grace? When things get hard, and when you've been waylaid, do you get back up
and run to Him, or do you go somewhere else? Do you run away from Him?
We need to remember this, we will be weak and when we're weak, He is strong. We
will wander, and when we wander, the good shepherd will come look for his sheep. We
will feel like we're losing our grip on him, he never loses his grip on us. You
keep coming back to him, you keep growing, you keep getting spiritually stronger, you
keep pursuing holiness and godliness, but it's ultimately not your grip on God that
holds you, it's his grip on you as a child of God. How do you know if you're a
child of God? You keep pursuing him, and as you do, you will continue to conquer
and endure. But if you find yourself no longer interested in pursuing him,
that's evidence that you were never a conqueror in the first place. You were never
a child of God in the first place.
You hold fast knowing that he will hold fast to you, and that you will then spend
eternity with him rather than eternity in the lake of fire.
Let's pray.
Father, this passage is both glorious and sobering.
This passage points us to the glorious reality of presence, being present with you
for eternity.
And it points us to the terrifying reality
that comes from those who are not yours. Lord, I pray that every person here would
be sobered by what we've read here this morning and that we would be able to
evaluate our own hearts and minds and that your spirit would bear witness with our
spirit that we are indeed sons and daughters of God. Lord,
I pray for any who are anxious about that, that for those who are your children
you would calm their anxiety, for those who are not your children, that that anxiety
would continue to stir in them, and that they would settle the matter, that they
would put you at the center of their lives,
that they would recognize that it's possible to walk near but not walk following
after Jesus.
Lord, I pray that as we look forward to this day, we can look forward to a
confidence that comes from you.
I ask all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.