Revelation 21:1-8 Conquerors and Cowards

You're listening to the podcast of the Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches through his series, Thy Kingdom Come, taking us through the book of Revelation. Let's listen in.

Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, and I wanna start off just by saying I'm glad that you're here and a big welcome to you, especially if this is your first time here with us. We're grateful that you've taken the time out of your busy week to join together as God's people.

The Church Gathers to Hear God's Word and Trust His Truth

I'm very glad that we're here and have gathered together as God's people to worship him and grow in our faith by taking in his word this morning. I believe that that's fundamental to what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ, is to take in his word and believe it and trust it.

And the T in Recast, our name is an acronym for our core values, the R and the E is for replicating, the C is for community, the A is for authenticity, the S is for simplicity, and the T is for truth.

And our conviction here at Recast is that we turn to God's word for the truth. How can we know? There are so many voices out there in the world that will tell us what God is like. And everybody would love to fashion a God that meets their expectations, that matches their love for whatever.

And really, it would be really convenient to have a God who always agrees with us, right? And kind of just endorses the things that we endorse and hates the things that we hate. But we have to turn to God's word to know what he really is like.

And that's where we have a standard. We have an anchor for our lives, an anchor for our weak to turn to and say, hmm, who is God and what does he want from us? And that's why the word is so vital. And by truth, when we think about God's word as truth, capital T, we don't just mean that it's a set of facts that conforms to reality.

But we ought to think more of God's word as truth like the source of hope, truth like the source of purpose. We turn to God's word to know the reality of God's relationship to humanity and how we ought to relate to him and then how we ought to relate to the world around us in light of the truth of who he is.

And faith is the word that we use to describe the way we take God's word and apply it to our real lives. That we gather together on Sunday morning, we hear a message that we let it kind of marinate, let our minds marinate in the word and in the truth, and then we trust it, we believe it, and we believe it enough to then go out throughout our week and live it, to actually do something about it.

You see, I believe all of scripture is meant to transform us on the inside. It's meant to convert us, if you will, to change us from one mind to another, from one way of thinking to another, so that we live differently on the outside throughout the week because of a transformation that's happening on the inside of us.

And I hope that the book of Revelation has been doing that for you. We're getting really close to the end of this book, and I hope that over the course of this series, the end of the story has been impacting your everyday story.

That the way that this is all going, the direction that history is flowing, the things that God's word tells us is true of the trajectory of history is changing the way that you live day in and day out.

This morning, we're gonna turn a corner in the text of Revelation. We're gonna see one final mention of judgment here at the end of our text, but the bulk of our text is taken up this morning by setting before us a vision of the new heaven.

And the new earth.

And that is where the rest of the text is gonna take us. And equally, it's gonna talk to us about a new city that will come down to heaven from earth,.

The new Jerusalem.

And even in this, we find the practical hope that can sustain us in rough times. When this text is combined with our trust and belief that it is true, that this is indeed the destiny of those who belong to Christ, it can have a radical impact.

On the way that we live our lives.

Everything in our life from losing a job to facing down cancer will be tempered by this eternal hope. And the way we interact with the world around us will equally be impacted by our belief and trust in this text.

Because in the end, this highlights that there are really two types of people, and you're gonna see it in the text as I read it. There are the conquerors and there are the cowards. And we are either, we are one of those two.

We're either the conquerors or the cowardly. So let's open our Bibles to Revelation chapter 21. We're gonna be looking at verses one through eight and check out this text and see what God has for us this morning, Recast Church.

So if you don't have a copy of God's word, if you could just raise your hand and we want everybody to have a Bible on their lap so that they can check that out. Raise your hand and we'll get one to you.

Otherwise, follow along, Revelation chapter 21, verses one to eight. Recast, this is God's word to us. I would love it if you were just kind of following along, seeing it, feeling it, experiencing it as I read it, and realizing that God wants to speak to you through these words on this page this morning.

Revelation 21. 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, the 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 springs of 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.

Let's pray as the band comes to lead us.

In worship this morning.

Father, I pray that as we have an opportunity to look into your word this morning, and as we've had a chance to even just read it together and contemplate it and consider it, that we end on a really tough verse.

That last verse that just talks about a multitude of people that are going to experience the second death, and after a painting of this beautiful picture of this eternal and glorious kingdom that you're bringing to this new earth, that will be renovated in a place without sin and without pain and without suffering, and the contrast couldn't be stronger for us this morning, and now we have a call to worship, and we're gonna praise you by singing some songs, and Father, it's a pretty heavy thing to think about judgment, and it's a pretty glorious thing to think about the eternity that you have for your people, and it can sometimes get mixed up in our minds, so Father, I pray that you would help us to worship you as the only hope, as the one who has given purpose, the one who has given salvation, and has offered that to the world, Father, and I pray that we would not take this as a big downer when we hear about the destruction that is coming for those who are under judgment, but rather a motivation to be out and sharing the glorious truth that they too can have eternity with you if they would humble themselves before you and accept the salvation that you provided through your son, so Father, I pray that this be a rejoicing time, a celebrating time, a time of lifting our voices before you and recognizing how glorious and awesome you are as the divine judge, but also as our Savior and Lord and the one who has provided a way for us to come out from underneath the crud and the mess that we've made of ourselves and of this world.

We look forward to a renovation and a time when this will be fixed and taken care of forever, and so from that place, I pray that we would lift up our voices before you as your church here in Madawan,.

In Jesus' name, amen.

A Review of Revelation and the Reward for the Conquerors

Would like to, and I would encourage you to keep your Bibles open to Revelation 21, one through eight. I don't really put them in an outline in the bulletin or in the worship folder or anything like that.

What I do is I walk right through the text, so if you've got it open, you're gonna see the outline right there because it is these verses that we're gonna be talking about as we dig in and work through, but I think it'd be helpful for us at the start here to do a quick review of the book of Revelation.

Obviously, I was out last week, and not everybody has been able to catch everything in the entire series, and so I think there's some benefit here for us to just dig in and think this through, and so the first three chapters, remember, and I did that as a completely separate series, and then people encouraged me to go on with Revelation, and so we're nearing the end of that book, but those first three chapters began with letters to specific churches, identifying that the book of Revelation is actually, in its entirety, a letter to these churches in ancient Rome that were in the area of modern-day Turkey, and in each of those letters, various challenges were posed to those churches.

There were commendations, you're doing this well, and then there were some things that they weren't doing so well, and they were rebuked for certain things, and there were challenges for them, and it was declared at the end of each one of those letters to those seven churches that he who overcomes will receive some kind of a reward.

The word overcome there is also equally, could be translated conquer, to he who conquers, and we're gonna see that that matters in our text because we're gonna see the ultimate reward for the conquerors here in our text this morning, but it ultimately all falls down to God telling his church here at the beginning of Revelation, at the very beginning, saying, follow Christ, and there's gonna be a reward for you.

Then from chapter four on, John recorded for the church numerous visions that he was granted by the power of the Holy Spirit, not necessarily in chronological order, some of them cyclical in nature, but he received these visions of things yet to come.

In most of the cases, we saw the church in heaven observing the events of the judgment going on down here, an indication of rapture, an indication of the church being present in heaven during a lot of the book.

We saw the cycles of physical judgment on the earth during the time of a great tribulation. We saw clear evidence that God will never leave the earth without a faithful remnant of witnesses who will endure great persecution, but will remain faithful and true to Christ, and more recently in the book, we saw Satan's final scheme to raise up an antichrist, one who would be like a world ruler who would oppose God and a false prophet to bring the nations together against Christ, but then we saw the return of Christ with his saints in victory over the antichrist and the false prophet, and John recorded for us a vision of a thousand year reign of Jesus Christ on the earth with peace, with Satan removed to the degree that he was not allowed to influence people or nations for a thousand years, but after Satan's release, he's released for one final moment and there's gonna be a final battle where he will gather the nations to come up against Jerusalem and come up against Jesus one final time, and at their defeat comes the final great white throne judgment that we saw a couple of weeks ago, the antichrist, the false prophet, Satan, and all were cast into the lake of fire whose name were not written in the lambs, that's Jesus's book of life.

So that's where we're at, that catches you up to date in where we're at in the book of Revelation, so we come into this final movement of the book that describes now for us the eternal state of those whose names are written in the book of life.

We were given a cursory glance at that horrible judgment and devastating reality for those whose name was not written, are not written in the book of life, but now we come to where we will see what happens for those who are, and it's a bit different.

John records another vision and he sees this, imagine with his spiritual eyes, he's given a vision of these things, his eyes are open to things that maybe many of us would long to actually look into. How many of you would like to know what the new earth and the new heavens will be like?

You'd like a glimpse of that, well John was given that, and he sees the new heaven and the new earth. There are two Greek words for the word new that are common in the New Testament, and so we kind of have to figure out which word are we looking at, and it matters.

One word would be like the sense of making something like new, like renovating something, like how many of you know Chip and Jojo? Any of you ever watch Chip and Jojo on HGTV? You get a chance to see the show Fixer Upper, it's really common to see those kinds of shows where they're trying to flip houses, or they're renovating old or repurposing old furniture, or that's a pretty common, is that a pretty common thing in our culture right now?

It's a big thing in America is kind of repurposing, recycling, and that's the kind of word, the nuance of the word that we see here in our text. There's another word that means completely novel, brand new, like you've taken raw material and you've created something new out of it, and this is a renovation, a fixing up of things.

That's the word that's employed for the word new earth, new heaven, a renovated heaven, a renovated earth. Now my theology professor up at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, I just saw him this past week at the pastor's retreat, that's why I was out, I was up at Mackinac Island, tough, tough gig, but I was up there with a bunch of pastors, very encouraging time for Linda and I, we really enjoyed it and really appreciated Bill Smith filling in for me so that I was able to go to that, so very grateful for that.

But I actually, one of the main speakers at the retreat was my theology professor, and he's a big proponent of restoration theology, the idea that this current earth is going to be remade without sin, it's not, that redemption ultimately comes down to the concept that it's the thing being bought back, and if God takes this whole thing and crushes it up and crumples it up and throws it in the wastebasket and then creates a new one, he hasn't redeemed the old one, that's kind of the notion behind that, and that's where we kind of have to, words matter, right, and I think some of us are like, well why does it matter whether he recreates it or whether it all is destroyed or whether it's just a fixed up earth or something like that, but those kinds of things matter and the word redeemed has the implication that it's gonna be you and I in heaven, it's not gonna be a completely alternate, like he's gonna create a robotic you, who's not really you that's in heaven, but you will be redeemed, the earth will be redeemed, all of those kinds of things, and so this kind of thing does matter and theologians like to talk about it, I lean in the direction that it is indeed restored and every text that speaks of, you can probably think already, you've got a couple texts in your mind, maybe some of you have some texts in your mind that you're like, man, that's gonna be a tough theology, you're gonna go into first Peter where it says the elements are gonna be destroyed or melted with a fervent heat or different texts like that, and I would love to sit down, this isn't the time for us to have that discussion, but if you have those texts in your mind, you're like, Don, how do you get past this, how do you get over this, well we can talk about that, I believe every text that speaks of the destruction of this earth can equally be interpreted and understood just like later in verse one, it's gonna say the old heaven and the old earth have passed away, but it can be explained in terms of a complete overhaul, it doesn't necessarily mean that everything ceases to exist and then is rebuilt, but whether this, if I could be completely wrong on that and if I am indeed wrong on that, I apologize and I'll apologize to you on the new earth about it, but whether this earth is completely recreated and starts over from scratch or it's restored as I believe it will be, we are gonna be happy with the results, amen?

The text is abundantly clear that we're gonna be glad for this transformation that happens, where we're gonna live in an amazing place and the text is gonna go on to explain it this week and then next week we're gonna even dig in more in it,.

The New Heaven, the New Earth, and the Sea No More

But one of the things that I think of.

That kind of makes me less happy is the end of verse one, right? Let's see, 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. Anybody ever been hung up on that verse?

No one? Just me?

Maybe a couple of us?

How many of you like the ocean just in general? Do you like marine life? How many of you like to watch the documentaries about stuff going on under the sea and you got that guy with that British accent that you could just listen to all day long?

Do you know what I'm talking about? I love those kind of shows. Maybe I just geek out on that kind of stuff. I'm a little bit sciency in my mind, but I like that stuff and I'm like,.

Man, no more dolphins? Are you serious?

Like blue whales, no more? No more coral reefs? No more of that kind of stuff?

And it's a little bit,.

Like I was raised thinking that. I was raised in a church where I remember that being preached. I remember there's just not gonna be an ocean there because there's not gonna be because the text says there's not gonna be an ocean and it always bummed me out because I like the idea of beaches without sin.

I like the idea of petting the sharks while checking out the coral reefs. Just kind of pet the great white as it swims by and maybe grab on and go for a ride. I don't know. But the word sea has occurred a lot of times already and so it's beneficial for us to look at how did John use the word sea?

What was his understanding of that word? Half of the time it's used so far in the book of Revelation, it's been used as a metaphor, an image for something. Not the actual water itself, but something else.

And then the other half, it's been used for the literal sea.

So not a whole lot of help there.

In the sense of what is he talking about? Is he talking about literal water or is he talking about these figures of speeches that he's been using metaphorically? But to really understand the sentence, the sea was no more, I think it's beneficial for us to get in the mind or work and that's part of my job each week is to try to get in the mind of the ancient Greek speaker, the ancient Roman during this time in the first century and how would they have read this?

How would they have heard this? What would the phrase the sea was no more? Why would that make them elated? Why would that make them rejoice? Because this is a text of rejoicing. Do you see that? I hope you can see that this was meant to encourage.

So where I'm kind of bummed and I'm going,.

Well, would they have been bummed when they read this?

And I want to point out that to the ancient Greek, to the ancient Roman, there was not a love for the sea. There was an intense fear of the sea. Now, certainly they utilized the sea to travel. There were trade routes and all that kind of stuff.

So they recognized some commercial benefit from the ocean and the Romans gained from it. But by and large, they didn't even go across. They would stay very close to the shore. They didn't like to go out into where you couldn't see land from any direction.

And often they would skip from island to island to island and that kind of thing, just try to stay as close to shore as they could. They had an intense fear of the chaos of the sea. The sea was a fierce and terrifying symbol of chaos.

The Romans sought to tame everything that they touched. They wanted to control things. I don't know if anybody in the room can relate to that. Some of us in the room kind of like to tame everything that we touch.

We like to have it controlled and easy and figure it out and all of that kind of stuff. And the sea was fierce. It was a territory of terrible creatures with sharp teeth that would drag sailors down to their doom if they went overboard.

And I mean, can you imagine the depth of knowledge? Yeah, whoa, there he is. Can you imagine if you were in ancient times and you saw that, okay? You don't know what's under there. There isn't that British guy who's giving you the documentary of the stuff that lives under there.

And so you see these things come up from once in a while and they take a guy, they take a lady. And it's like, what is going on under there, right? Like, can you imagine in the ancient mind how terrifying the ocean would be?

Vast stretches of water, huge amounts, and you don't know how deep it goes. No method to know actually how far down this Mediterranean Sea is. That's just the Mediterranean Sea, right? So, and they would see all kinds of things in there.

So, a terrifying thing. And I firmly agree with the majority of the scholars that I read this week who believe that this use of sea here, the sea will be no more as likely a figure for the chaos that they would have thought in their minds that the sea represented.

Maybe even more accurately and more to the point of the book of Revelation, it's quite likely that the sea represents the mass of humanity in opposition to God. It's already been used that way twice in the book of Revelation.

That the sea, that the beast rises up from the sea, that is the mass of humanity. Or that the harlot, the prostitute, who is Babylon the Great, actually sits on many waters, and then it's actually declared that the many waters are the nations, the peoples in opposition to the creator.

Where does the, what does the prostitute hold sway over? The many nations earlier in the book. From where does the false prophet rise? From where does the beast rise? From the mass of humanity. And so it's likely that that is what is no more, and that's an indication that would have brought joy and rejoicing to the heart of the ancient Greek to just kind of say, okay, there's no more opposition to God, there's no more of this chaos that is there.

But John's sight is turned away from the generalized view, new heaven, new earth, no sea, and he sees something very specific that grabs his attention, and ought to ours as well. He sees a city coming down from heaven, a city moving in the atmosphere down to bring itself down onto the new earth.

And one thing we know for certain from the text regarding the relationship of heaven and earth is that the kingdom of God will be an eventual blending of both. God's kingdom is coming down here to a new refurbished earth.

The trajectory of this direction, coming down to earth, is so opposite to what many of us have been taught regarding heaven and our eternal destiny. So many of us have been taught that we're going up there.

He's bringing us down here. We've been led to believe that God is gonna take us to heaven, and we will forever be there, floating on clouds, playing harps, and kind of this ooh, ghost-type thing,.

Or ethereal, or just spirit, and that is,.

It couldn't be further from the image and the picture that we have of this new earth and the city that's coming. Jesus said he was going to prepare a place for us, so we're like, okay, he's there, he's preparing a place for us.

What's he preparing?

He's preparing the new Jerusalem to bring it here. He's preparing a place for us, and then he's gonna bring it to us. Now, certainly in the rapture, and we understand that from different texts of scripture, from Thessalonians, from just parts and portions of Revelation, that he is indeed going to take the church to heaven, so it's not wrong to have that trajectory in your mind, but remember, just a few chapters ago, he brought us back with him in victory to reign with him for 1 ,000 years.

The saints were with him. The trajectory is indeed to be in heaven, and I believe protected for a period of time from the great tribulation and the great judgments that are gonna come on the earth, but in the end, we come back with him, and he brings the city to us.

He brings this glorious reality of heaven come to earth with him to us. Fundamentally, we need to shift our thinking to match the testimony of scripture. We are earthlings. We were specifically designed to worship God on earth, and our destiny, our future, is to worship God on earth.

We are made physical beings with flesh and bone, and the whole point of the resurrection thing isn't just merely victory over death, but it even identifies that there's going to be a physical resurrection for those who belong to Christ, living in these bodies for eternity.

Now, we're gonna see it's pretty cool because they're without pain. They're kinda like super bodies.

They're enhanced.

There's some really cool features to them that are gonna be a lot better than this experience that you experience now, but nonetheless, flesh and blood and real, real physical beings. God designed us to worship him as physical beings.

We will forever worship him.

With all the cultural activities that come with being physical. He's given us so many ways to worship him, and I've often pointed out that the way that humans worship him is unique to everything else that's created because he's given us creativity ourselves.

He, the creator, has instilled within us creativity that is a means and a method to continue to worship him. We will not worship him in rote, abject bowing for eternity or anything like that. It's gonna be with creativity and with relationship.

He's created us relationally. We see a group of angels, by the way, earlier in the book of Revelation who are just constantly repeating the same phrase, are constantly bowing, and that sounds to me like angels.

That sounds to me like the kind of things that he has angels doing, but that doesn't sound like the kind of things that he's created us for. Look at all the diversity of relationships and behaviors and actions that he's created us capable of.

I think that's gonna continue on with culture, with art, with all kinds of cool things, even with sports. I think we'll play sports. I don't know how our competition fits into all of that. I think we're just really glad when we lose, and we're really glad when we win, and we keep working at it.

I don't know. But are there some of those conundrums in your mind, too? Are there some of those things where you kind of go,.

I don't know how that's gonna work out.

I believe that God's gonna be in charge of all of it, and it's gonna be all to his glory. Maybe there will be competition, and we'll dog each other to the praise of God. I don't know if we'll trash talk for the glory of God.

I don't know if you can do that.

That's not in my notes,.

So you can strike that from the podcast. You're not recording anyways?

Okay.

Thank you.

But the cool thing is, the city is glorious. The city is glorious. We're gonna see a more detailed description of it next week, and it's an amazing, beautiful, lavish gift that God is bringing down to earth, where heaven touches earth.

And the beauty, this city is meticulously adorned. The text tells us directly, like a bride on her wedding day. Doesn't mean that it's a woman that he sees coming down out of the sky. It's just, he's giving us an analogy, an illustration, and tell me, how much attention does a woman give to her appearance on her wedding day?

Is there a little bit of attention?

Is this one hair in the right place? Is this one blemish covered up carefully? Is there, in every attention to detail, and she's got women who are around her just making sure that everything is just so, and somebody is literally there to move the train.

Of her, of her, I almost said cape, her gown. Maybe she wears a cape, I don't know.

I mean, I don't know these words.

But I mean, there's so much attention to every detail brought into that, and I think that's the indication of what Christ has gone to prepare for you and I. Every detail, just spotless, every detail, carefully and meticulously taken care of for the delight and joy of his children.

Oh, church, you are loved.

He is there preparing a place for you right now. I don't know about you, I'd be satisfied with a shack on that new earth, right? Maybe that's what I got waiting for me, I don't know. I mean, you kind of look at some of the comments.

On this sermon earlier, I don't know, we'll see.

But I mean, just anything there would be glorious, but he's not fixing you a shack. You might think, oh, he's fixing you what you need and what he wants to give you out of his love.

That's a beautiful thing.

It's a glorious, amazing thing to put that kind of detail.

Into preparing a city for his people.

And then in verse three, we see a shout from heaven. Begins with this phrase, check this out. Behold is kind of the Greek way of saying check this out. I want you to pay special attention to this. We see it twice here in our text.

Behold, check it out. And the next words give me chills because this is what he wants you to check out. This is what he wants to just rivet your attention on this for just a moment, church. He says, pay attention to this.

The dwelling place of God will be with us. He will come down and he will live with us.

What?

Okay, I think sometimes we get this idea in our mind, like maybe we miss that point. We miss the understanding because we, some of us skip over the whole Old Testament. Like we just kind of like, that's old stories.

Or you just only know the stories that you know.

And you don't see the flow of it.

You don't really read it for the flow or understanding. That there's this trajectory of God coming closer, drawing nearer, drawing nearer until the revelation, the beautiful revelation of his son in the New Testament.

But even then we killed him. Even then we pushed him out. And I think we have this idea, we would love for him to live here with us, but throughout the Old Testament, remember, with Adam and Eve, it's even declared that he would come down and visit once in a while.

He would come and walk with them in the cool of the day.

But he'd return. He'd go back to heaven.

He didn't set up shop down here with them. Even in that perfect paradise, he didn't live here.

His throne was in heaven.

You've got to understand the starting point and then the flow of the history to the point where you understand it, and your jaw just drops at the thought.

That he would live here with us.

And he's going to.

The text is abundantly clear with that. Well, remember that throughout the Old Testament, in that flow, he would temporarily dwell in the tabernacle or the temple with his people throughout the Old Testament.

And then it said of Jesus in John 1, 14, that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. The word dwelt there is the same word that we see in our text. It's tabernacled among us, set up his shop there.

But remember, we turned on him. We have a way of rejecting him. Down through the ages, humanity has thought it was a good idea to invite God over to stay. But then we realized that he doesn't dance to our tune.

He wants to call the shots and have ownership. And he has a way of demanding righteousness and holiness.

That ruffles our rebellious hearts.