If you have a Bible with you, please take it and turn to the book of Revelation chapter 21. The book of Revelation chapter 21. If you're new with us at Covenant, it's typically our practice to preach through books of the Bible, and we have been working our way through this wonderful, albeit challenging portion of God's Word, the book of Revelation, and today we hit the home stretch, and we're actually going to start hearing some really, really good news. Who's in the mood for that? Revelation 21. I want to read for you this morning the first eight verses, and if you're able, would you please stand as I read this portion of God's holy and inspired Word. Every word of it is true, and it is for our good. This is the Word of God. 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 any more, 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 and 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. This is God's word. Let's pray. And now, O Lord, we ask that you would grant us hearing, that we would receive your word with joy and with obedience and obedient faith to receive all that you say to us today from your holy word. And we pray, Lord, that by your Spirit you would speak to us in ways that would change us, in ways that would conform us more and more to Christ. And this we pray through Christ our Lord. Amen. You may have a seat. So I'm reading right now The Count of Monte Cristo. I've been intending to do it for years, and I'm just now finally getting around to it. I mean, it's taken me a while, because it's a huge – have you seen this thing? It's a huge book. It's over a thousand pages. And I'm on about page 200 at this point, and you may be familiar with the story. A young man, Edmond Dante, is a good man. He's about 19 years old, who's on the verge of this huge career breakthrough. He's about to be named captain of this ship that he has been a first mate on. And he's about to marry his beloved, the beautiful Mercedes. And at the betrothal dinner, where his friends and their family are gathered to celebrate this, right after the dinner, he's taking her down the street to the courthouse, where they will be married. It's a time of incredible joy. And at that dinner, he's arrested on completely false charges, charges belonging to a conspiracy primarily of two men that were very jealous of him and hated him. And he's tossed into the dungeon of an ancient castle prison on a small island without so much as a trial or a hearing. And there he languishes year after year as his heart and his mind are tortured by the cruelty and the injustice of it all. Meanwhile, the corrupt prosecutor, who tossed him into that prison unjustly, goes about to greater and greater success. And it's all maddening. Well, at least as I'm laying there reading it, I'm wanting to talk out loud and say, that's wrong. And this is, oh, I hope he killed. Anyway, but here's the deal. I don't do any of that because I've seen the movie. And I know how it ends. So spoiler alert, Dante's escapes the dungeon. And I haven't even gotten there in the book yet. Dante's gets his revenge. And yes, he does. So even as I'm reading and at times just cringing over the cruelty that this good man is enduring, I stop short because I know the end. The good guy wins. And this is the peculiar place that Christians live in this world, isn't it? So much is wrong. There's so much immorality and immorality that is paraded right in front of us, immorality that is shoved onto our children every time they look around. There's violence, injustice, cruelty. And if we're not careful, it could bring us to the edge of despairing. And then we remember that we've already read to the end. We know how the story ends. We know how this will go. Some of John's original readers had already been suffering much. Some of them had been in prison. Some of them had seen some of their own church members carted off to execution. Some were getting ready to go through similar sufferings. And that's continued down through the centuries throughout the history of the church. God's people have in many places and in many ways been persecuted even to the point of being carried off to the slaughter. And it's because Satan, though leashed, still thrashes about and causes all sorts of chaos and damage in the world. And though agents of a wicked government have not yet come to our doors banging on our doors as they do and have in some countries looking for Christians, we still suffer the sorts of sorrows and calamities that are part of living in a sin-sick world, don't we? A cold and loveless marriage, a terrible diagnosis, a sick child or a wayward child, abuse at the hands of an evildoer, a catastrophic loss. Maybe you struggle against a besetting sin or an unnatural desire that dogs you every day. These final two chapters of the Book of Revelation are here, not least of all as reminders from the Lord, that every loss and every sorrow and every catastrophe in this life will be eclipsed by the glory and the joy and the goodness and the wholeness that is to come. And we can be sure of that. Well, as we look and consider the words before us this morning, we have to return to the theological biblical theme of covenant. Covenant runs like a thread throughout the whole Bible. It serves, if you like, as an interpretive grid or an interpretive lens that God gives us, whereby we can properly understand his word, the unfolding of his revelation down through human history. And all of what we will be reading in the final two chapters of Revelation swims, as it were, in the seas of God's covenant, specifically his everlasting covenant of grace. These final two chapters of the Book of Revelation bring us to that great end for which God has designed for us, his people. God's promise to bless the world through the seed of Abraham, a descendant of Abraham, who was, of course, Jesus, the one who would crush the serpent, the one who would be our great and everlasting Passover lamb, our high priest, our shepherd king. These last two chapters depict the end goal of all that was promised by God in his great covenant of grace. And we can fairly sum up the substance of this covenant, the covenant of grace, with three words. The three words are this, people, place, and presence. People, place, and presence. That's how you can sum up the substance of God's gracious covenant. God promised to make for himself a people, to put them in a perfect place, and to bless them with his everlasting presence. That's the promise going all the way back to when God ratified that covenant with Abraham. We see this pattern. We see this pattern, again, originally ratified in his covenant of grace with Abraham. We see it in ways that are further illuminated through those covenants that he made with Moses and then with David, and then of how he fulfilled those promises through Christ and will bring about the final consummation of those promises in the new creation. The Lord makes us his people. He will give us a place, and he promises to us his everlasting, blessed presence. And I want you to look for those three things, people, place, and presence, as we take one more look at this passage that's before us. Look again at verse 1. 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. Now as he looks and he sees, I saw a new heaven and a new earth. What do we think of there? But we think about that place that God has promised for his people. And you'll hear me use new creation or new heaven and new earth or heaven. I'll use heaven as shorthand for the new creation. We're all talking about the same thing there, that the future of God's people is not some sort of gauzy life among the clouds with harps in hand. Rather, the eternal and blessed home of God's people is a fully embodied physical reality in a world that in many ways will be familiar to us, this new creation. John sees that, quote, the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. And this echoes God's words through the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 65, where the Lord says, For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things will not be remembered or come to mind. Isn't that good news? The former things are all of those things that belong to sin and sorrow and calamity, the things that belong to this fallen world. They will never again come to mind. Now, this mention that the sea was no more does not mean that there will be no bodies of water in the new creation. Rather, we have to remember what the sea symbolizes. The sea symbolizes chaos, wickedness. Remember that the beast from the sea that John saw earlier, it emerges out of the sea, that beast which symbolized the corruption of human government and kingdom. All of the wickedness that governments and kingdoms and kings and politicians have done over the centuries and over the eons, all of that comes out of this sea of chaos and wickedness. And what John is seeing here, what he hears when the Lord says, And the sea was no more, he's saying even the very potentiality of evil rising again has been done away with. It says in verse two, And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. All right, what is John seeing here? Well, in the next section, next Sunday, Lord willing, we'll see that that John goes into more detail about what he's seeing in this, quote, New Jerusalem. It's a highly symbolic depiction of this massive city, almost unimaginably huge in the form of a cube made out of translucent gold. It's so pure. More on that next week. But what is this? What is this sign of a New Jerusalem pointing to? Well, I think he's giving us a very clear clue right here, because after he mentions the holy city, New Jerusalem, what does he say? Is that it's prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I think John is giving us a very clear indication there that it's not just what he is seeing there, but ultimately who he is seeing, this bride of the bridegroom. And we know that this is common language to depict the church, the people of God. That somehow I think what he is seeing is both simultaneously people and place. Next week, we'll see in verses 9 and 10 where John is told by an angel, come and I will. He says, I will show you the bride, the wife of the lamb. Now, no building is the wife of the lamb. No piece of earthly real estate is, quote, the wife of the lamb. But he says, come and I will show you the bride, the wife of the lamb. OK, I'm going to show you the church. And at that moment, John is carried away, he says, in the spirit. And what does he show? He said, and I was shown the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven. So the angel says, I'm going to show you the bride of Christ. And what does he show him? This New Jerusalem. These are the redeemed people of God in that holy place, this holy people. And then verse 3, and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and he will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. You just need to hang out on that for a second. This declaration serves as a sort of organizing principle for everything the Scriptures promise, right there. From Genesis chapter 3 onward, what we read there in verse 3 is the whole goal. That statement is the covenant of grace fully realized. 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. From Genesis chapter 3 onward, the Bible seeks to address fallen humanity's most essential dilemma and the most central, essential dilemma that mankind faces in this world is this. How can sinners dwell in the presence of God? That's a real dilemma. We cannot on our own just sort of greasily sidle up alongside of God and say, Well, you've got to love me because you made me. No, it's a real dilemma. There's a real barrier between God and sinful humanity that had to be addressed, and it was a dilemma that we could do absolutely nothing about. The Bible tells us the answer to this dilemma. How can sinners dwell in the presence of a holy God? The Bible tells us what the answer to that dilemma is. The answer is a pure and holy sacrifice. A divine substitute for sinners. But being forgiven are our sins is not the ultimate goal. Being forgiven is not the end prize. It's a means toward the prize. The goal is exactly what's promised here in verse 3. Behold, the dwelling place of God is with you, church. God's promise to Abraham and to his descendants was, I will be your God and you will be my people. It's a promise that's made repeatedly in the Bible. And for God to be our God and for us to be his people, that's biblical shorthand for everything the Scriptures teach us about what it means to be saved. For all of the innumerable blessings there, the greatest blessing of heaven, the greatest blessing of the new creation will be the presence of God. And this blessed state that we will enjoy is going to change everything. Look there in verse 4 again. What a tender scene is captured in those words. We're used to wiping away our own tears. The image here is of an intimacy with the Lord, a closeness to him such that he will wipe away all of our tears. He will remove all of our weeping. This world that we live in is a veil of tears, isn't it? We don't have to pretend that it's better than it really is. It's like reading The Count of Monte Cristo. There's a mountain of injustice. There's loads of sorrow. There are innumerable instances of cruelty. But when our Redeemer comes, he will remove all of that. He will remove everything that in this life has caused us mourning and sorrow and pain. Why is it that every person around the world, no matter how sophisticated or primitive, dreams of a future like that? Why is that? I think it's because it's written on the souls of all humanity, believer and unbeliever alike, as a longing to be in a place that's not like this, to be in a place where there is no mourning, where there is no weeping, where there is no dying. All humanity always longs for it. Apart from Christ, people strive for it in whatever way they think they can achieve it, but every heart longs for a home that they haven't reached yet. And why? Because ultimately, we were not made for a fallen creation. Because in the end, there really is a home where there's no weeping and no pain and no death. How is it that after all of the many ages that humanity has been walking the face of the earth, how is it that evolution, as it were, hasn't knocked out of our system this longing for a place that we have not been? I mean, if the evolutionists are right, you'd think that by now, evolution would have selected that false conception out of us, you know, as we have continued to improve. And yet, modern man still hungers and thirsts for what fallen mankind has always hungered and thirsted for. Because it really is there, that home, that home really is there, where there's no death, where there are no hospitals, where there's no weeping. We long for the home that we have not yet seen, because that home is really there. Look at verse 5. And he who is seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. We inhabit a world that's been ruined by sin. Don't misunderstand. God has been truly merciful to us, and so there are lots of good things still in this sin-sick world. Lots of good things, lots of very good things. It's still God's creation. But it is a world in which the creature, that is us, have imagined ourselves as kings and as lords. And we get this notion from Satan, who presumed, for instance, that he could offer the kingdoms of the world to Jesus. He was offering the Lord stolen goods. Sinful humanity, therefore, mimics this in being glory thieves ourselves. This may seem like a trivial thing, but when I watch nature programs, I like nature programs because the photography is really good and there's always this great narrator, you know. And you get to see birds flying in slow motion. It's beautiful. It's great. We see all these amazing creatures and landscapes. But when we watch one of those in which there is no reference at all to the Creator, we ought to be reminded of what is wrong with the world, and that is stolen glory, a stubborn denial of God and of the truth, such that we can wonder at his creation and reject the Creator. And so we live in a world where sin runs deep, is the point I'm making here. It goes into the root. It's a world that doesn't need a few adjustments here and there. We live in a world that needs to be remade. Now notice in verse 5 that God does not promise to make all new things. Rather, he is making all things new. So think of this not as a total annihilation of the old creation, but as a sovereign act of divine purification. We are not God's co-renewers. That's not a work that we partner with him. We're not partners with God in the renewal of all things. This is a sovereign, divine act to take place at the end of the age, a complete renewal from top to bottom to the extent that the entire cosmos, including its inhabitants, will be made new. The systematic theologian Douglas Kelly writes this, quote, God does not negate what he has made. Even though Satan pockmarked it by sin, God is not going to destroy what he made. He loves his creation and he loves the bodies and souls of his people. So God's going to purify his first creation. He won't obliterate it. He's going to purify it. Now there is a reference in 2 Peter chapter 3 where the Apostle Peter draws a parallel between the destruction of the world by water in the days of Noah with the destruction of the world by fire at the end of the age. And so I think it seems best to understand that the fire referred to by Peter is not a means of the total obliteration of the first creation, but one of divine purification, just as was the case with the water in the days of the flood. And again, we're not talking about minor tweaks or even a remodel here. We're talking about rebuilding from the ground up. Think of someone who's really good at restoring old rusted out ruined cars. And that's just their thing. And they're really good at it. After all that work, hours and hours, months and perhaps years of restoration, what results is something that resembles the old car. It holds roughly the same shape, but it's gleaming new. Everything that was ruined has been remade to the extent that he can say it's basically a new car. He's not blown the old car to bits, but he's brought it back to a glorious new life. Is this not what God has promised concerning our bodies? In whatever state our old bodies will be, he will reassemble, remake, glorify, resurrect, make new these once sin-sick, decaying bodies into something new and wonderful and incorruptible. Verse 6, 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. Now in chapter 1 of Revelation, chapter 1 verse 8, the Lord identifies himself as, quote, the Alpha and the Omega. And now here, as we get to very near the end of the book of Revelation, he speaks again and names himself again the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. And so you have at the very beginning and right now, right near the very end, the Lord saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. These statements, I'm going to give you a technical term here. These are technical terms with Todd. Are you ready? These statements, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, right there at the beginning and right near the end, those statements form what scholars refer to as an inclusio, an inclusio. And as that word sort of suggests, those two statements include something in between. They act sort of like bookends. They sort of give shape to and hold in place the material in between. And in this case, the Lord's self-identification as the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end, points to his power to rule over and govern all things. He's the beginning and the end, meaning also that he exists over and above time. He does not experience the passage of moments the way we do. He is eternal, the beginning and the end. And so he sees it all and governs over it all. Now, why is that a comfort to us here? Because God is not waiting for these events to unfold, as though it might be a possibility that it won't work out, because God isn't even there yet. No. God does not exist within time. He enters time, but God is eternal above and beyond time. He sees it all. He sees all of human history as one completed whole, and he's already there at the end. And so what he is saying in this inclusio of I am the beginning and the end, I am the beginning and the end, remember, there's not a chance that this is not going to go the way I've declared it to go. There's comfort in that for us. And he goes on, look at that final clause there in verse 6, to the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. A beautiful depiction of the way that God saves sinners. We come to him having nothing to offer except our thirst. All we have to give him to help out, if you like, in our salvation, is our need, our sin, our corruption, our helplessness. We are those whom Jesus describes in Matthew chapter 5 as the poor in spirit. And it is to the impoverished and the thirsty sinner that God promises to give from the spring of the water of life without payment. That is without payment to us. He paid. He paid with the life of his son. And that means it comes to us without payment. And these same individuals, these thirsty, who all that they can do is receive the water from the spring of life, these same individuals are then referred to in the very next breath in verse 7 as the one who conquers will have this heritage. And I will be his God and he will be my son. There we get back to that covenant language. You will be with me and I will be with you. And he gives it the language of familial intimacy. I'm going to be your father. You're going to be my child. To the one who conquers, this is their heritage. Which takes us right back to chapters 2 and 3. The Lord promises life to those believers who persevere through trials and persecution, to each one of the seven messages, to the seven churches in Asia Minor. He says the same thing to the one who overcomes, to the one who perseveres, to the one who endures. They are the thirsty. They are the thirsty who turn to Jesus for the water of life. And they are the redeemed, who having once drunk from that spring, persevere through trials because they have set their sights on the glory that is to be revealed. In verse 8, the Lord gives one final warning. It's the last one really we'll see in the book of Revelation. One final warning to those who persist in their sin, those who suppress the truth and unrighteousness, those who would be rid of God entirely. And it comes to us in the form of what we call a vice list. And it's a list of sins that encompass the range of human iniquity. No one's exempt from this entirely. You read that list and you should be able to recognize something of yourself there. It's a reminder that no one who suffers the judgment of God will be able to plead their innocence on that day. But the second death belongs to those who preferred sin to salvation. They didn't want saving because they did not believe they needed it. These are those who had a real taste for the poison of pride over the water of life. Are you able to hear those words this morning? Because this is yet another opportunity given to you. One more warning to flee from sin, to flee from judgment, to flee to Christ for shelter and salvation. And here in these 8 verses, the contrast of destinies could not be more graphic. One is the everlasting new creation where God will be and we will be in his presence and he will be our God and he will be a father to us everlastingly. The other destiny is described here as a lake of fire. And when couched in this question, which do you prefer when put forward like that, it seems ludicrous, doesn't it? Will it be the new creation or the lake of fire? Which will it be? Beloved, there is a God, your creator, who made an eternally binding promise, a covenant, a gracious covenant, that he will save every sinner who believes in him, every sinner who will trust in him, every sinner who humbly lays down his pride and says, have mercy on me. Have you said that to the Lord? Have you cried out for mercy to the Lord? Or is your back still straight with the pride of your own self-sufficiency? Which will it be? The joys of the new creation, that home, that every human being in one way or another knows that there must be, will it be that for you or will it be the fire of God's judgment? Which will it be? Have mercy on me. Call out for the Lord. Have mercy on me, God. The Bible, the record of human history from creation to new creation, tells us how God made and kept his covenant promise of grace. And the book also tells us that the forgiveness of your sin is not the end of the story. The end of the story is the first day of eternity in that home where there will be no more tears. I'm not into, I'm not a fan of romantic comedies. But I'm going to be very vulnerable to you right now and admit something that is going to cause me some measure of shame. I admit to a level of weakness when it comes to the movie You've Got Mail. See, you laugh at me. I'm never opening up to you again. I've got a weak spot for that movie, You've Got Mail, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. I'm not going to retell the story except to mention that the scene at the end when Tom Hanks' character shows up in the park and Meg Ryan realizes that he's the one that she has fallen in love with through months of correspondence. She sees him, she'd known him, she thought he was somebody else. She, the owner of a little bookshop, he the head of a big consortium of massive bookstores. And she sees him and she says, I was hoping it was you. And she begins to cry and he embraces her and he wipes away her tears. And he says, don't cry shop girl, don't cry. I mean, that's good. That's good. You do realize, don't you, that a day like that is coming for us when the one that we've known through his correspondence with us will appear and will say, I knew it was you. And he'll take us in his arms and he'll wipe away the tears and he'll say, don't cry. In James chapter 5 we read these words, quote, Be patient then brothers until the Lord's coming. Be patient and stand firm because the Lord's coming is near. The judge is standing at the door. So hold on. Hold on brothers and sisters, don't lose heart. We wait but we do not wait alone. We wait in eager anticipation along with the rest of the bride of Christ. We wait together in anticipation of the new creation. We wait together to see the final triumph of Christ. The powerful worldwide triumph of the gospel. We wait to see all human pride once and forever leveled to the ground. We wait for the dragon to be cast away for eternity. And we wait to be welcomed home by the God who calls us child. His temple, his body, his building, his bride. We wait together to see death and the grave swallowed up in victory. Hallelujah. Let's pray. And now oh Lord we ask that these truths would be at home in our hearts. That these would be things we think of when we feel encouraged and especially when we feel despair knocking at the door. Remind us Lord of the home that you made us for. The home that we are sick to be in. A home sickness that will be satisfied when we see you. We thank you for your promises in Jesus name. Amen. Well this morning we are receiving the Lord's Supper together. The Lord has given to his church two sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper. A sacrament is a holy mystery. Something that points beyond itself to a deeper, eternal, spiritual reality.