I have some questions for us to ask ourselves personally, and that is this, where is your hope found? What have you set your hopes upon in this life? What are you aiming for in life? What are you seeking to achieve in order to satisfy your soul and your deepest longings, to give you meaning in life? For some, their hopes or their longings only extend to the things of this life. You know, they hope to own a house one day, maybe some forever home just perfect for them and their family. Maybe the longing for a certain job or a promotion to achieve some sort of status in this world. Or maybe for some it's in finding that perfect someone, that perfect spouse that will fulfill them, having that family, going on those vacations, just living that dream life. But as Christians, we are given a hope that is independent of the things of this world, of those things that happens in this world. As Christians, our hope is in fact our strength. Our hope is that which becomes the steel in our spines, to live in this world in a way that is different, to live in this world in a way that pleases our God. Our hope gives us strength to do things that are actually extraordinary, to live sacrificially now. Our hope lets us sacrifice now, sometimes to look like the losers, sometimes to look like those who aren't achieving, the underachievers we might be called by the world, But you see, if your hope is set on this world, if your hope's set in a house and in achieving that, so you'll work so hard, you'll finally get that house. Yes, you've made it, but what happens when that house burns down? If your deepest longing is for a marriage, what happens when it breaks apart? If your confidence is maybe in your physique or your ability to feel young because of what you eat and how you work out, then what happens when you age? You see, it's all temporary and it's all so elusive, but the Christian does not need to put their confidence in these things. The Christian does not need to give everything they have to seek these things out. Our strength comes not from the things of this world, but from the things in the world to come. Those things which God has promised to do for us. Those things in which he has promised to be for us and to give to us in the age to come and what we might commonly know as heaven or in the world to come. And it would do us some well this morning to dwell on these things, to think even with some regularity, not just this morning, but even day by day, to think about that new home that God is preparing for us. And it might just be that we find a new strength, a new vigor to live in the way that God would have us live. And so this morning, we're gonna break down a passage into a few portions. We're gonna see firstly, God provide for us a perfect or a perfected home. Secondly, we're going to see the promise of a perfected relationship between God and His people. And then thirdly, we're going to see that of perfected persons, our body, our soul, our mind, our individual selves. And then finally, we will have some thoughts on who will inherit this perfection. So firstly, a perfected home, in verse one, we read, a new heavens and a new earth have come, for the first heaven and the first earth passed away and were no more. What do we think of when we think of new? Sometimes we think of totally new, something that's totally different. So someone says, you know, I've got a new car. You go, oh, what did you do with the old one? Oh, I scrapped it and I've got a new one. Okay, I've got a Toyota now, you know, whatever it might be, you think of your dream car. Completely new, nothing to do with the old. I'm glad I got rid of that old thing. But then there's another idea of a new, and it can mean that which is renovated or renewed. That of making something new that was once broken, old, run down. That of restoring something and uplifting it and bringing it back to its former glory, but maybe even beyond its initial glory. And the Bible, I think, has a lot to say about that concept. Now on Marketplace, Facebook Marketplace, sometimes you see this beautiful set of drawers and then you come to see that it was refurbished. Someone took an old beaten up thing that's got strong bones and they gave it a new coat of paint and put new handles on it and it looks as good as new. You might look at it and say I'd rather that than the new thing that's made nowadays, you know, with maybe some weak pine instead of some old Rimu. It's been fixed up, it's been restored, maybe it's even been improved beyond what it was to begin with. And that's what I think we see here in Revelation 21, is something that has been so restored and renewed, it is God's new world, a new heavens and a new earth. What I don't think occurs here, And it's been a long time since I looked at the different views on the new heavens and the new earth. But what I don't think is happening here is God scrapping everything that exists. Just saying, look, I'm done with this. I'm sick of it. Scrunch it up like a bit of paper. Throw it in the fire. Get rid of the old canvas. Too many mistakes were made and I'm going to start entirely anew. No, nor do I think God simply fixes what's broken and makes it like it was before. I think what we see here in the new heavens and the new earth is something like that of an extreme makeover. I don't know if you ever saw that program where they'll get a house, you know, someone's in need and they would do an extreme makeover and suddenly you think, I'm sure that looked 20 times better than it looked to begin with. but every corner of the property is fully utilized, fully beautified. It looks like a resort at the end of this thing. I think God does that, it seems, with creation. He comes in and makes it all totally new. And we see that sort of theme in Romans chapter eight as we just read. Paul says that creation has a hope and a longing. He says, for the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. So the idea that we saw through those scripture readings is that when mankind fell into sin and broke relationship with the God of creation, creation then also was cursed and fell into chaos. Everything that was in good order became disordered. But now when God makes believers new and glorious and restores them, so too will creation be set free from its bondage to decay. and will come into newness and glory that has not been seen before, with no fear of being ruined again. That's the wonder of it. Creation, it seems, in Romans 8, is not looking forward to its funeral, looking forward to being discarded, but it's looking forward to being renewed. And there's this interesting little passage in Matthew 19 28 where Christ speaks of the future and he says this in my ESV translation Truly I say to you in the new world And so we read that I read that in the ESV and I went and looked in the New King James and and you read this I'm not sure what translation everyone has here, but it says a surely I say to you that in the regeneration And this new world is, again, not just completely new, like now I've got a Toyota instead of a Mazda, but just like humans are regenerated and we're still ourselves, but we are made perfectly new, pristine, holy, we're purged of all the old corrupt nature, so too creation will come into a regenerated state of perfection. Now I think this is important because creation is our home. Creation is, we're intimately tied to creation as human beings. This is the place in which we live, in which we dwell, in which we explore and enjoy and create. We're intimately tied to this world and this universe. Now I'm sure I don't know, and I'm sure none of us know what this is going to look like in its entirety. Everything is not revealed to us about the future, but What we can rejoice in is that everything will be new, perfect, delightful, pristine, pure, holy, from one end of the universe to the other. Every square inch will be perfected. You will not be able to turn over one rock in any forest anywhere and find something imperfect. You will not be able to travel to any part of the galaxy and find anything imperfect, anything sinful, anything unpure. God will make for us, his family, a perfect home, a place of permanence, a place of peace, a place where we can thrive and call home forever without fear of change and corruption again. Now, I don't know if you've noticed, but our world is actually pretty messed up in its current state. You know, sometimes it feels like we live in a bit of a bubble. Things, you know, the sun is shining. New Zealand's a wonderfully, you know, overall a wonderfully safe place. But this world is maybe more messed up than we realize. Tornadoes rip people's houses apart. Floods destroy cities. Earthquakes wreak havoc. It happens all the time. Winds destroy. Ice destroys. I was in the Philippines 10 years ago. when a typhoon named Yolanda struck the region that we were in, like we were literally right there, and it killed around 6,300 people in a night and wrecked towns and islands. And we were there helping a church, and so we drove along the coast to meet the other churches and Christians there and to ask, is there anything we could give you to either help you or for you to give assistance to others? And as we drove along this island, right on the coast, on the front of the storm, miles of coconut trees were just snapped in half like matchsticks, you know, just miles. Forests, just, the heads were cut off them, you know, and they're just stuck all over the landscape. As we drove along, power lines were wrapped up in piles like spaghetti along the road. All these disasters will be no more in our new home. disease will be eradicated in the new world. There will be no more cancer, no more diabetes, no more broken bones, heart failure, impaired vision. For everything in this place, in God's place, will be renewed and made perfect. Just to give you a few stats, just to blow your mind, because again, we forget how bad things have been through history. The Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 killed 50 to 100 million people all over the globe, they say. It is thought that it killed more people than World War I and infected about a third of the world's population. It's believed that the plague has killed around 240 million people. Smallpox, three to 500 million people. I hardly even know what that is. And then according to the World Health Organization, every two minutes a child dies of malaria. It's just disaster everywhere in this world, and it is the consequence of sin, and it is heartbreaking. And some of us, particularly in the West, often forget how bad it really is. Then there are famines, droughts, forest fires, volcanic eruptions, the danger of wild animals. On and on it goes. Bites from insects that turn into turn into death, but we're told it will all be no more. It'll all be gone. Chaos will be no more. There will only be tranquility in God's home. There will be rest, security, peace, for everything that is wrong will be made right. Everything will be permanent. And the fight of nature against humanity and humanity against nature will be finished. Oh, what a glorious day we have ahead of us. The universe will not go back to its original beauty either, as we've mentioned. That would seem good enough. Would you like to go back to Eden? I'd rather be there than here, in a sense, apart from the changeableness of us being able to sin. The creation will not go back to its original beauty, but will reach ultimate new heights of perfection. And you simply have to read the rest of the next two chapters to see just the perfection of this new land. It even uses language that that is just beyond our comprehension, metaphors and pictures and symbols that try to speak of the beauty of this new place. It will far surpass our wildest expectations. That's what we can know for sure. And our joy in that world will only ever increase. You will think, today I have had more joy than I had yesterday. And you'll think, this is enough. But tomorrow, if there are morrows, you'll find yourself with increased joy. in the presence of God, and the next day, increased joy, and the next day, increased joy, and you'll wonder, does this never end? And it will never end, because we will be with the God of all joy. Now, here's a question. Do you enjoy the world as it is now? That's an interesting thought. Mountain biking, swimming, sunbathing, fishing, gardening, eating, drinking, listening to music. These things are wonderful, wonderfully delightful. Even in this broken world, they are wonderful, but oh, you wait for the glories to come and how good the singing will be and the eating and the drinking, the listening to music, the sunbathing, I don't know what that will be like in the glistening sun of our God. The new heavens and earth that God has planned for us will make what we know now seem like the faded moon in the full sun's rays. Believer, why would you live for this life? Why would you give everything that you have and all your energies, all your efforts to the things of this world, to holding on to them, to growing them, to storing up? Now, I'm not saying, nor do I think the Bible's saying, don't enjoy these sins, you know, only that matters. No, but just don't live for the things of this world. Don't give yourself for them when that life awaits us. Why would we store up treasures? And unbeliever, if there are any unbelievers in this room this morning, do you know what you're missing out on? Do you know what you are giving up as you seek the things of this world? The pleasures that you are running after are tiny, they're minuscule compared to the joys of this life to come. Don't let one lifetime of pleasure-seeking steal from you an eternity of never-ending, ever-increasing, enduring pleasure. Secondly, God will perfect his relationship with his people, we see in verse two and three. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And then 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 see, in the beginning, when God created the world, he made a garden for us to exist in, and he made one man and one woman, and he told them as a couple to multiply and to fill this earth. Their task was to expand this garden, to expand God's kingdom and his people on earth. They were meant to be a children and fill the world with a united chorus of worshipers of God, praising him, thanking him, delighting in him, subduing, walking in close communion with him. But instead, they sinned. We sinned and broke relationship with God. We were cast out of the loving presence of God. And ever since that day when we were sent out, we as humans have suffered the consequences of separation from God. We have become enemies, fugitives, aliens in this world, wanderers with no place of permanence. And all mankind has not fared well since that time, have we? We not only turned on God, but we have turned now on each other. Both the vertical and the horizontal relationships have broken down. They always go together. History is filled with violence and division, bloodshed, brutality, betrayal and bullying, slander and suspicion, grievance and gossip, friction and factions, wickedness and war. This world and the relationships therein are messy, but one day all of that turmoil will be no more. There will be a new city, unlike the cities of this world filled with corruption and violence and crime, here there will be a united people who live together and dwell together in harmony, a celestial city of love and generosity, and not only between man and his neighbor, but wonderfully between God and his people. Did you see that little phrase there, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband? Aren't weddings wonderful? Weddings are a wonderful part of life, and for me, one of the most beautiful moments in a wedding is I'm not sure what it is for you, but for me it's those first moments, there's that awkward hush when you think the bride's arriving but she actually is still five minutes away and it was just an announcement and you wonder if you can resume talking or if you have to remain silent. But then the music comes on and the bridesmaids start to walk down the aisle and it's just, it brings a smile to everyone's faces, doesn't it? As they smile, sometimes their husbands are at the front or sometimes they're in the crowd and you just see glances flickering around the room as these beautiful women come in, dazzling in all their glory. But you're waiting for the bride. You're waiting for her to come in to see what she looks like, what her dress looks like. You're waiting to see the look on her face and then the look on the husband's face. And she comes in, and there's always a tear-jerking moment for me. I'm a bit of a crybaby, but, you know, they come in, and you see the man, and he's, you know, tears come down his eyes, and tears come down mine. On this day, that will be the moment that we have with God Himself, as He has prepared us as a bride for Himself. You see that it is He who has prepared us. We don't prepare ourselves. So yes, we sanctify ourselves and we fight sin and all these things, but God prepares us. He spends the time and the effort to make us beautiful and radiant, adorned with grace for Himself. Decked with beauty, decked in splendor. Brothers and sisters, do you feel ordinary? Do you feel unwanted, unloved, or potentially, particularly with God, too messy to be accepted by Him, too messy to be welcomed by Him? This is here for us to just wonder in, that God prepares us for himself and makes us beautiful, that he takes our filthy garments, our filthiness that we can't rid ourselves of in this life, and he clothes us with the beautiful garments of righteousness for himself. Here we have a God who has chosen us. He's chosen us. He said, I desire you, and I will have you for myself. He, as it were, weds us to Himself in a pledge of eternal love. I mean, what a vow He will make to us, right? He will vow to us. I mean, this, in one sense, is all one-sided. It's like, God, we have nothing to give. And He says, well, I'm gonna give you my love. I'm gonna give you my kingdom. I'm gonna share with you my joy. I'm gonna share with you my new creation here. Come, I've prepared it all for you. I have already given you my Son, Jesus Christ. There is nothing now that I wouldn't hold from you. I'm gonna give it all. Come, come, have my joy. As believers, we have this great hope of the Creator, the invincible, eternal, all-powerful Creator of the universe becoming our husband, our God, our Savior, and He will give us everything. It is just wonderful to consider these things. He will now dwell with us, and we will dwell with Him. No more disconnect. no more distance from God, no more crying out to God in the night for help and for salvation, for he will be with us, he will be our final salvation. And then thirdly, God will perfect each and every believer, as you can see in verse four. He's gonna wipe away every tear from our eyes, death will be no more, there'll be no more mourning, crying, or pain, for the former things have passed away. Now, I don't know what, grabs your attention in this passage, but this is probably, they all kind of grab my attention, but this one always does. No more mourning, no more crying, no more pain anymore. I am eager and ready for that day. From the big to the small, from the knots in my back that cause me irritation to the death of loved ones, no more. From tummy bugs to the breakdown of close relationships and friendships, no more. From sleeplessness to fights in the church, it will all be over. From hurtful words spoken against you to actions perpetrated against you. This verse again speaks in a new way of that final heavenly land and the perfection thereof. Not only will the macro, that the heavens and the earth be perfected, not only will God's people as a whole be perfected, but you as a person, as an individual, and all that you experience will be perfected. Consider what this means. What brings tears to your eyes? I'm sure there will be as many things as our persons in this room. One thing, I've got quite a few, but one thing, I was working a year or two back painting, and I was listening to someone speak of the sex slave trade in America, and some of those issues, and I just wept. I think it was for two hours on a work site. I took the time off. But when you thought of the pain that people go through, and we don't need to discuss that, right? It is shocking and it brings tears to our eyes. What else brings tears to our eyes? It is all going to be done. No more sick inhumanity and pain and suffering and abuse. Sickness will be no more. Fevers, headaches, no more. Disease, weakness, bodily restrictions, bad vision, arthritis, stomach ulcers, tumors, cancer, you name it. I don't know what it is for you that has brought pain, but it will be done away with. Mockery, slander, abuse, manipulation, loneliness, finished. It's done in this new world. In verse five, God speaks with and gives us certainty. It says, and he who was seated on the throne said, behold, I am making all things new. And he said, write this down for these words are trustworthy and they're true. They can be relied upon. You can jot this down and know that it's gonna happen. It's dependable because the almighty God will ensure it. He said to me, look, it is so certain that it is indeed done. He speaks with this sort of, it's already done. It's finished. I've made it. I've prepared it for you. It's just a matter of time now. It's set in granite stone. He says, I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. And it is he that dwells outside of time and eternity, both past, present, and future, that can tell us what the future actually holds. He's like, look, I'm going to give you the inside scoop. It's done. It's done. You can rest on your pilgrimage now. Where there was rejection and abandonment and loneliness, they will be finished in this world. There will only be acceptance, loving kindness, inclusion, embracing, and fellowship. This will be God's land, perfected by the power of God, filled with the perfected people of God. I mean just, there is a list of thousands of things we could list. Tiredness, weariness, exhaustion will be no more. Frailty will be replaced by strength and zeal and vigor. Won't it be wonderful? Loss of family members through death and loss of friends, no more. No more separation, no more goodbyes. No more moving to Auckland. No more moving companies. We will be with one another forever. And then significantly, and this should be the overwhelming desire of the Christian, is that there will be no more sin. What has brought the most tears to my eyes, the most heartache and grief is sin. Both done toward me, but that's the smaller amount, that which dwells in my own heart and which comes out of me toward others and toward God. It will all be done away with. Brothers and sisters, in this home that God is preparing for us, there will be no more greed in our hearts. And this isn't because we're powerful, because we can clean ourselves up, but God will perfect us. There'll be no more coveting in this place, no more lustful thoughts, that the war will be over. The war in our hearts, the war in our minds, the fight will be over. No more bitterness, no more gluttony, no more laziness and slothfulness, no more faithlessness, distrusting what God has said, no more lying, pride, jealousy. You add your sins to that list this morning. I mean, I don't even know, often we do not even know of all our sins, but they will all be purged and plucked out and thrown away. Let us, it's hard to, there's so many ways to apply this, but let us, at bare minimum, share our longing for this with God and pray, Lord Jesus, come. Come and save us soon, as soon as possible. What a wonderful place that this will be. And lastly, we have this question of who inherits this perfected home. This home, we read, is for the one who conquers. the one who conquers will have this heritage and I will be his God and he will be my son. The theme of conquering is a primary theme throughout the book of Revelation. And believers, it's kind of a synonym. If you're a believer, you're a, if you're a true believer, you're a conqueror, you're a conqueror. But we need to have this word straight. As we read through the book of Revelation, do we come away with this idea that, okay, so to make it to the end, I need to be strong enough. I need to beat all my adversaries, and then he will let me in at the end. No. We do have victories. We do see that. We have victories over sin, Satan over this world and its temptations, but we have it through the power of God. We read things like, I forget where it is in Revelation six, maybe, where it's the lamb has conquered. He has conquered and he is able to open the seals. And then in Revelation chapter 12, 11, it says, we conquer by the blood of the lamb and by the word of his testimony. And so it is through the Lamb, it is by being cleansed by His death, it is by being forgiven by Him and set free from our sins, it is by being made new and regenerated by the power of the Spirit that we then go on to conquer and to see victory in this life. We are not those who win on our own, we are those who have been won by God. We are those who have been redeemed and rescued But then, after having been redeemed and by the power of the Spirit, we are then to go about the work of putting to death the deeds of the flesh. We are to say no to sin and yes to God. We are out of love for God and gratitude to Him to seek Him and to seek to put to death those things that displease Him. And we are then to follow Him in humble dependence. So we are not those who are to give in to faithlessness, hatred. As for the murderers, the sexually immoral, the sorcerers, we're to say no to the lusts of our flesh and to fight the good fight of faith. But we know that this victory is ours through Christ. And so at the end here, we see that there's only two realities. There are either those who overcome sin by the blood of the lamb, the word of his testimony, or those who are overcome by sin, who give in and walk in a way that displeases God. It's quite interesting here at the end that prior to Revelation chapter 21, we've already seen the lake that burns with fire. We've seen that the dead have been judged. And so this almost seems to be somewhat of a warning to the church to say, examine yourselves, test yourselves. You know, just because someone calls themselves a Christian or names the name of Christ does not mean they're truly His people. We are to see, are our hearts aligned with God? Are our hearts directed toward God? Have we pledged allegiance to Him? Are we seeking to follow Him? or are we doing as we like? Is our hope in this world or is it in the world to come? Brothers and sisters, in light of eternity, in light of this never-ending glory to come, follow Christ. Follow Him. Pledge your allegiance to Him. Stick with Him. Cast your lot in. He will see you safely home. If you are feeling weak and burdened by sin, if you are struggling in the fight of sin, which really we should all put our hands up to, lean on Him. Trust in the Lamb who gave His life for you and pray that God would help you in this fight and give you the strength to persevere. Go all the way with Him. We have a wonderful assurance ahead of us. And let's pray now that God strengthens us this morning. Father, we thank You for Your Word. Father, we thank you that your Word, the Scriptures, are not just a set of rules, they're not just a set of laws, but that your Word is filled with promises. Father, of what you have done for us, what you have done in us, and what you will do for us, we thank you, God, that you have given us such hope in the gospel. And we pray, Lord, that you would help us to set our minds, set our eyes on this hope. Help us to set our eyes on Christ and on the lamb who died for us. Help us to set our eyes on his blood, his sacrifice, and his strength to see us through to this heavenly home. And Father, we pray that if any of us this morning have wandered Maybe we've allowed our hope, that target, to shift away from this new world and away from fellowship with you to the things of this world, to money, to power, to position. Father, please realign us this morning. Grab our hearts, Lord, grab the attention of our hearts and our eyes and draw them heavenward, we pray, that we might be heavenly minded this morning. God, help us to be faithful in our lives, to follow you, to follow you wherever you would lead, and to follow you with faith. And Father, we lastly thank you. We thank you that you are the one that we depend upon, that we have you as a rock to stand upon, that you are trustworthy and true. We thank you that your promises always come true, and we pray, help us, Lord, to trust in them. Thank you for your son who died for us and purchased for us this eternity of joy and bliss in your presence. In his name and for his glory we pray. Amen.