Our communion meditation is from Revelation chapter 21, and then I'll read the first four verses. Revelation 21 verses one through four. Now, I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also, there was no more sea. Then I, John, 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 heaven saying, behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people. God himself will be with them and be their God, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word and for this promise that there is a new heaven and a new earth to which we look forward. We pray, Father, open our eyes to where we could see this glorious future that awaits us and that we can put all of what we now face into the proper perspective. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Yesterday was December 7th. And it was, of course, a commemoration of that day that will live in infamy in this country forever. It was the 78th anniversary of the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor. Many ships were destroyed, many planes were destroyed, 2,400 people died. And yet, what the Japanese most wanted to take out did not happen because the three aircraft carriers they wanted to destroy were not in port. They were out at sea. The Japanese attacked us because four months earlier we had cut off oil to them for all that they had done to China and were continuing to do in Southeast Asia. Admiral Yamamoto, who had spent time two different times in this country, was the man that was given the direction to perform this surprise attack. And he did not want to do it. He did not feel that it would be successful. He counseled against it, but powers that be wanted to go to war with America. And yet, when the attack failed to sink the carriers, as exciting as it was, as excited as the pilots were when they returned to have lost so few of their planes and to have fully surprised America, he was distraught. He wrote in his journal, I fear all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant. And so he did not feel good about what had happened. And so he immediately began to devise another plan to take out those carriers that he needed to take out. So he devised a second strike against Midway Island. Midway is an island that's pretty much midway between Hawaii and Japan. And he sent four carriers there. This was in June that the battle was fought. America learned of this and they were like two or three days ahead of what his plan called for. So they already had these carriers up there ready to attack him. Now the first wave of torpedo bombers failed miserably. did not take out any of those carriers. And yet, these dive bombers that were way up high, that were looking for these things, and the ocean is big, and even aircraft carriers are tiny in comparison to the vastness of the ocean. Yet, one of those dive bomber pilots spotted a wake, and then all of these waves of planes came in and destroyed all of those carriers. And that was probably one of the greatest naval battles in all of history. So, This has absolutely nothing to do with the commune of meditation. It's just really, really exciting. And I love talking about World War II. I'll make a point about it. Verse one of what we read said, also there was no more sea. And when Pastor Kaiser preached on that a year ago, some of us were very sad. to hear that there was going to be no more sea. Now, sea doesn't mean like Mediterranean sea, the salt in the sea, it means ocean. If you look in the New King James Bible, the word ocean does not appear. And so what you see instead are the words, the phrase great deep and the phrase sea. And often that's referring to our oceans. Even in Omaha, even in Omaha, We love our oceans, even though we're as far from them in the United States as we can be. How many here, married only, this is a straw poll, how many of you married people have ever stood on the shore and looked out at the ocean, any ocean? Raise your hands. Okay, lower your hands. How many have not? How many married adults have not, never stood on, raise your hands high. Got one, got two. Is that all? Going once, going twice? Okay, two people out of all this. Now if I had asked you that question a hundred years ago, how many would have raised their hands? None of you. None of you would have existed a hundred years ago, right? So that was a trick question. But so anyway, if we'd all lived a hundred years ago and I'd asked that question, very few of you would have raised your hands. And yet all but two have seen the ocean. And so we live at an interesting time in history where we're very mobile. We get around like this. And so the ocean has been romanticized to a great degree. People that really sail the ocean probably think it's silly how romanticized it's become. Let me share a few songs with you, most of you probably recognize these. Sailing by Christopher Cross, big hit in 1979. Sailing takes me away, you've probably heard it. Now, three years earlier, Gordon Lightfoot wrote the song, The Wreck of the Edmonds Fitzgerald. Now, many of you have probably heard the Tim Hawkins shortcut of that. But I liked this song of The Wreck of the Edmonds Fitzgerald. It was about a ship that had sunk in the Lake Superior just a few weeks earlier. And when he read about it, he was very emotional about it. He wrote this song and it became a famous hit. Four years before that, there was a song, and I think this is probably the most popular song for romanticizing the ocean, at least that I'm aware of, Mandy. This was a group called Looking Glass in 1972. There's a port. ♪ On a western bay and they sail ♪ So you've heard that tune. I don't know, maybe you young people haven't. But it's a beautiful song. It talks about this woman who loves a sailor who loves the sea more. And so he seldom returns to port because he's a sailor and he loves the sea. But I've saved the best one for last. 1968, The Dock, Sitting on the Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding. And so anybody who whistles loves this song. Sitting on the dock of a bay, watching the tide roll away. You've heard this. Now what you don't know is this. I'll bet most of you don't know this. He recorded that song on December 8th, 1967. Today is December 8th. He recorded that song today, what is it, 52 years ago. When he recorded it, they wrapped up the recording, and he whistled the tune at the end, but it was not meant to be in the song. It was just a placeholder for what they would later do before they finalized it and stamped it out and put it out as a record. And so he whistled it, but then two days later, he died in a plane crash. And so his song was later released, and it became famous, with the whistling included. So, now you know. Now you know. Now, why do I bring all these stories up? Because they all romanticize the water, the ocean, being at sea. I really doubt that any American sailor was feeling very romantic in the Pacific Ocean in 1942. They were at war. It was serious, serious business. The reason I bring all this up is that water, we have romanticized this. Fishermen are romanticized. Port cities are romanticized. Farming even! Because farmers now account for 2% of the population, we've romanticized farming. Farmers are cool now. Whereas 100 years ago, I doubt that was the case. When you though, except for the two that raised their hands saying they've never been at the ocean, but you know, all of the rest of you who have been at the ocean know that the ocean stinks. It smells bad. You often have dead animals along the ocean that have washed up and they then perpetuate that smell. Now I doubt that the little fancy villages, the tourist traps now allow that to happen. Daily they probably go out and scour the beach hauling dead carcasses away if they're there. But so what I'm pointing out is that we kind of have this different view of water than the Bible has. When we read about the sea being no more, we don't really want to come away from this disappointed that we're not going to have a sea and the moon. We need to be energized by what God is really saying. Because see, the moon and the ocean and the tides, they all exist to cleanse the earth. Dead carcasses, frankly, that are washing up. There will be no more need of that because there will be no more death. There will be no more sadness, no more tears. God will be with us. We don't need to romanticize the moon or the ocean in heaven. But our imaginations can prevent us from embracing this and experiencing this and loving the reality of it. And so we have to train our imaginations. We have to overcome this earthly romanticization that really, I think, in some ways, steals from us, steals from us a better understanding as to what God wants us to understand. So let's not romanticize this because it is that sin that God is removing that apparently may require Him to remove the ocean. But he is taking its place. He himself will be with us. We don't need to romanticize that. He will be our God. He will be with us. He'll remove the moon, the oceans, the tides. We won't need them. And let's remember that the promises that he's giving us will be so much sweeter, so much more beautiful than what we now experience with this romantic view that we have of the ocean. So as we come to the table, We need to reflect on the truth of what God's word tells us, and not feel sad about it, but embrace it. Correct our thinking, correct our thoughts, to come into line with God's own, to understand what it is that he's written in the Bible about this sea, and why it can be so dangerous, and that he's gonna remove that danger and that sin and that darkness from us, and he'll be with us. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for this promise. We can't fully understand it, and yet we ask you, Lord, to teach us, have your Holy Spirit conform us to think rightly about your word and about our world. We thank you, Lord, for your many blessings in our lives, and we thank you especially that your word guides us and leads us into greater and greater truth. If only we will choose to live by it and to shut down anything that interferes or opposes it. We give you thanks, Father, and ask your blessing. In Christ's name, amen.