Okay, so tonight the question is, what will the new Earth be like? What? No, I don't, I don't. I did, I did not, I resisted the temptation to use that picture I always use. All fresh pictures tonight. It is a good picture, yes it is. In fact, we might just, no, I'm just kidding. All right, so. Now, you might have noticed that it is springtime now. Everybody enjoying the spring? Yeah, it is sort of, it sort of dips into summer and then back into winter sometimes a little bit. But springtime, I remember last year, last year at springtime we were in lockdown and our family took a walk every day and so we were like every day you go and walk by the same trees and you can kind of see every day those little buds getting a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger and it was kind of neat to like actually watch spring happen in in almost real time as not the most exciting thing but it was it was interesting to experience So anyway, the spring is really good because it's a really good picture, I think, that God gives us of dead things coming back to life. Now those trees really aren't dead, but they look kind of dead, don't they? And then they sort of spring into life again. Shh, Randy, you're gonna have to sit somewhere else if you can't be quiet. So, oh, go to the first picture. This is my spring picture. Yeah, so this spring, didn't that look like just the epitome of spring right there? No comments, please. No comments. So this also reminds me of one of my favorite books slash movies. Go to the next one. So this is like the Chronicles of Narnia where it's always winter, but never Christmas. But then when Aslan comes, the winter starts melting away and the witch's power starts to decrease. And so, Yeah, I can't really, don't spoil it. I can't really speak to the quality of the other movies, but the first one is really good. So these are some of the things that I think about when I think about the new earth, the new heavens and the new earth that we read about in the Bible coming at the end of the earth. This is not gonna be the end of the earth, it's gonna be the beginning of something new. All right, so first of all, I'm going to read a little bit here. I'm going to read some verses. This is from the last book in the Bible, Revelation, all the way to the last part of the book in chapter 21. And I know that you've heard these verses before because I read them quite a bit. But then I'm going to read some extra verses too. So now listen along because we're going to kind of refer back to this as we go through. So this is John having a vision of these end times things. 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. That's like the A and the Z. the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. To the one who conquers I will have this heritage and I will be his God and he shall 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. Then moving on to, now he talks about the city coming down and this will be important in a minute. He talks about it like it's a big cube almost. Put your hand down, hold your question. And maybe it's not exactly a cube but this is sort of like the description of it and it's to remind us of some other things which we'll talk about in a minute. but it's also made out of certain precious stones and different things like that. Just John trying to take whatever language he can to describe this thing that is just about indescribable, and just writing it down that way. All right, so then we skip down to a few verses more, and he says this, and I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the lamb. You don't know who the lamb is? Jesus, right, okay. So make sure you're following along. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there. there they will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations but nothing unclean will ever enter it nor anyone who does what is detestable or false but only those who are written in the lamb's book of life all right and then the last little part here Then the angel showed me the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, through the middle of the street of the city. Also on either side of the river, the tree of life, with its 12 kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His servants will worship Him. They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They'll have no need of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever." Alright, so that's a lot of description of what things will be like after Jesus comes back at the end of God's plan. But really, it's kind of the beginning of a new sort of plan. So, why did God create us? Alright, go to the next picture here. Here we go. Why did God create us? Remember the answer? Might be, I don't know. For his own glory. That's right. God made us for his own glory. So there's at least two really important reasons why God made us. The first one is so that he could have fellowship with us. Because God wants to have a relationship with us. He wants to have fellowship with us. He wants to be our friend. and actually our Father, and because He wants us to be His image bearers, the bearers of His image. We're made in the image of God. That's kind of unusual. We're not entirely sure what all that means, but part of it means that we're supposed to be standing in for God. We're like God's representatives here on earth. So really now God created. He spoke things into existence, but really God wants a lot of things to be done by people. That's the reason there's so many people is because that's the way that God does things in this world a lot of times, most of the times, is through people. And He wants these people to bear His image and to represent Him. and to extend His rule to this world. That's what God wants. So when God created Adam and Eve, that was part of His purpose. And we can actually see this purpose running all the way through all of history as God interacts with His people. So first we have the Garden of Eden. That's what this is, the Garden of Eden. Somebody painted it anyway. I don't know. Nobody was there to see it except for Adam and Eve. They didn't paint any pictures of it probably. Or if they did, we don't have them anymore. But anyway. But the Garden of Eden, we know some things about it from the Bible. What do we know about the Garden of Eden? What was there? Anything? It was a garden. Very beautiful. A lot of animals. A lot of fruit. might be some vegetables, maybe. There was a tree there, at least there's several trees, but then there was a tree of life, and then there was a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There's also a river around in that area that talks about, and God would come and walk with Adam and Eve. So his presence would be there. Now go to the next picture. Now later on, after Adam sinned and they left the Garden of Eden and after the flood and all of that, then once Israel was a nation, God told Moses to build a tabernacle and then later they built a temple, which is sort of the permanent version of that. And this is a picture of what the temple sort of looked like. So God is still using Israel now to fulfill his purpose of fellowship and being his image bearers. And so that's what some of this is about. So this is where they would worship God. So the high priest would actually go into this part right here and God would actually meet with him. And so the presence of God would be there, but they had a lot of rules they had to keep to kind of get in there and they had to do it a certain way. But it's kind of interesting because when they made the tabernacle in the temple, they had a lot of the decorations. There was instructions for the decorations for it. You know what kind of decorations they had? Well, it was a lot of gold, but also they were supposed to make like little flowers and like pomegranates and other kinds of fruit and They also had a candlestick in there that looked a lot like a tree. It had lots of different branches on it. You've probably seen a menorah before. Jewish people still use those in their ceremonies sometimes. And so there's some echoes there of some things that were even in the Garden of Eden, some things that God really cares about. In the book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel has a vision about this temple that has a big river flowing out of it. the throne of God, which is another kind of interesting thing. All right, so go to the next one. So now that gets us all the way to the New Jerusalem. This is the one we read about. This is a different picture. Again, just somebody's idea of what it might kind of maybe look like, or be really hard to describe what it would look like. But anyway, We read some verses. There's a river. There's a street of gold. There's also the tree of life, which it says on both sides of the river, which means it's maybe like a whole big grove of trees or something, or maybe it's like grown that big or something. I don't know how that all works, but hopefully we'll find out one day. So there's fruit again. There's the presence of God. God is there. And there's a river. And the fact that it's kind of cube-shaped, you can go back one slide. It's pretty interesting because this part is called the Holy of Holies, and guess what shape it is? But what's a three-dimensional square? A cube. so it's sort of like god saying all right this is the most holy part this is the part that i'm going to meet you in and then go to the next one iliana and then he's saying uh in in the new world the whole city is going to be uh my holiest place like the whole city and really Maybe the whole world will be His holy place. In other words, there will be no more division. There will be no more curtains or anything like that. Just you will be directly with God. And so then you'll have direct fellowship and you will certainly continue to, you'll bear the image of God perfectly. Now what about now? Is there a way that God has these things, a way that he has fellowship in a way that he wants people to be image bearers and a place that there's the presence of God? Where do we find the presence of God now? I mean, the temple is destroyed. That's right, Miranda, that's right. We come to church and we are church together. Those of us who are believers and who've been baptized together, we have the presence of God residing in us. All right, go to the next slide, Ileana. We are the presence of God. Now, what do you think this is a symbol of? That's one thing that they can symbolize. You remember when Jesus was baptized? What did the dove symbolize? The Holy Spirit, that's right. A lot of people have art that represents, they use a dove to represent the Holy Spirit. And that's what we have. That's how we have the presence of God now. So the New Testament writers, they talk about you being like the temple of God, or our church together being like the temple of God, and you being like living stones put together into a building. That's pretty weird to think about, isn't it? Do you feel like a living stone? Sometimes, maybe. But it's just an illustration to talk about this reality that God's made for us. And so we have actually a very special kind of place in history that they didn't have in Eden, they didn't have in the tabernacle or the temple. We have even a closer relationship to God, because if you're saved, you have the Holy Spirit. We'll talk a little bit more about that next week. But anyway, so this is what God's trying to do. All right, so now to the question, what will it be like? Now, there's a lot of things that the Bible doesn't tell us about the new Jerusalem and the new heavens and earth. And guess what? There's probably just a lot of it that we don't need to know about yet. Have your parents ever told you that before? And say, well, tell me what's going to happen. Well, you don't need to know. You don't need to know where we're going. You don't need to know what we're going to do tomorrow. I'm not going to tell you. Did they tell you that? Yeah, well some people get mad about God about that too because sometimes God says, you don't need to know. There's actually a couple of parts in the revelation where they say, now John don't write that part. Don't write that down. So he did, so this is like he saw some stuff he wasn't even allowed to write down in the book. man those parts are like wow but what was it maybe one day we'll find out but there's a lot of mystery about you know exactly what it would be like or what it would be like to to be there but we have a few maybe clues about sort of what it might be a little bit like all right go to the next slide so one of the ways that we find some of these clues is in the the resurrection of Jesus I don't know if that's the best picture of the resurrection of Jesus, but we just had Easter. That's where we celebrate the resurrection specifically. But when Jesus died, but then he rose again, when he rose again, he had a whole new kind of body. and we don't exactly know what kind of body it was. We have some record in the New Testament of you know some description. I was listening to somebody today talking about it a little bit and he said you know basically we know that he could walk through walls and he could eat fish and that's about like all right you know that's about all we know of what this new body was like because It was so hard to even describe. We know that the disciples could see the nail prints in his hand from when he was crucified. So it's like not everything was just completely healed up, but it didn't hurt him anymore. So it's like maybe some of the things that are a part of your body will continue on in eternity. That's interesting to think about. So don't get too many piercings because you might have them for the rest of eternity. I don't know how that works. But anyway, one thing we know is that they could touch him. It was a physical body, but it didn't exactly obey all of the rules that normal bodies obey. But it's a good body and a physical thing. Go to the next one. We also know that because Jesus was resurrected, we will be resurrected if we're... That's a tombstone, I think. Yeah. It might just be the top of it. If we're followers of Christ, then one day we will be part of the resurrection. And so when that happens, we will receive are new bodies just like Jesus had. Bodies just like that. Physical bodies, real bodies, but different somehow and maybe better. A lot of people like sit around thinking, well, how old will I be? Or will I look like this? Or will my eyes still be crooked? And I don't know, you know, it doesn't really tell us all that stuff. I know that you're not gonna be disappointed. You know, it'll be good. So you don't have to be too worried about all that. I think God's figured that out for us. All right, all right, the next slide, Ileana. Not only will we be resurrected, but really all creation will experience kind of something like this. again there's a lot of mystery about this exactly how it will happen you know there might be some other kind of things that sort of happen or whatever but but ultimately creation itself will be will be remade So all the bad things about this world will be fixed and wiped away and made again, resurrected. Kind of like, so it'll be like the same world but different somehow and maybe better, probably a lot better. So all of creation will have that. All right, and then one more slide. And in all of this, God's purpose, God's original purpose will continue on. Remember His purpose that He would have fellowship with us? That will continue on in the new heavens and the new earth. We will continue to have fellowship with God. but it will be much better because we won't be breaking God's laws and rebelling against God. All of that will be done and we will actually want to have fellowship with Him and fellowship with each other. And also, we will continue to be image-bearing. We will continue to be ruling. That's one of the things that we read tonight, that we will reign with Him forever. That means He is, Jesus is the King, but if you're a follower of Jesus, you will also be in that part. In some way, you will be having something that you have to have dominion over and some, you know, have charge of. Like it's not just going to be sitting around and not doing anything. There's going to be actual stuff to do and responsibilities and things that need to happen and for the glory of God to increase and to go even farther. And he also says that, I don't know if you've picked up on it, but he says that the nations will come into the city and go out of the city. Like there's going to be this whole big bunches of people and again i don't know exactly who all those people are but they there will be the individual cultures will continue so like maybe there'll still be you know some tacos up there or something or maybe there'll still be some you know uh chicken lo mein or something? I don't know, you know, but there'll be some kind of sense of some differences. God loves diversity. He loves differences, and that's why we're all different kinds of people, and we have all different kinds of things that we like to do. We all have all different kinds of talents. We all have all different kinds of interests, and God loves all of those things, and so in the new heavens and the new earth, all of those things will be there, but just more, more of it. So that is, that's sort of a little bit of maybe what it's going to be like. So now the question is, will you be a part of that new creation? Well, if you're a follower of Jesus, you will be. You have to be a follower of Jesus because we read some verses about people who were rebelling against God and decided to go their own way and did not care about following Jesus. All right, let's bow our heads and we'll pray. Father, we thank you for the lesson we've had tonight. I know there's many things here we don't understand and we are not going to understand until we're there to see it with our own eyes. But Lord, help us to see it by faith and to know that you love us and that you have prepared good things for those who follow you. And help us to be faithful to you. In Jesus' name, amen.