All right, good morning. Hope everyone got a good night's sleep. My family certainly did. We are enjoying things. It's very beautiful here. Just have one complaint. Breakfast was good, but where are the grits? Okay, okay. All right, well, let's pray. Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for your blessings to us. We thank you for the beauty of your creation. Father, we especially thank you for the beauty of your new creation, your church, your people. And we pray that as we dive back into these mysteries, these things that you've spoken about in your word, that we would be strengthened, that we would be equipped to serve you more effectively, that our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ would be strengthened, that our repentance would be deepened. Father, we pray that in all things you would be rounding us out more and more into the image of the Savior. Father, that we might share in the fellowship of his sufferings, that we might also know him in his resurrection glory. Father, we pray that you would be with us now, that you would speak and teach us through your Word. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. Let's turn back to Revelation chapter 21. I'm going to read the first eight verses, and I'll read the first five verses out of chapter 22. 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. Then he who sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said to me, Write, for these words are true and faithful. And he said to me, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. He who overcomes shall inherit all things. And I will be his God, and he shall be my son. But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. And it's in chapter 22. And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street and on either side of the river was the tree of life. which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations, and there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall serve him. They shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads. There shall be no night there. They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light, and they shall reign forever and ever. This is the word of the Lord. I would say that learning to be a Christian is something like learning a new language. The Bible's language is not necessarily our native language, or at least not as much as it should be. Now, when I say that the Bible comes to us in a foreign language, I don't just mean that the Bible itself was written to us in Greek and Hebrew. Obviously, that's true, but we have the Bible translated for us into good, solid English translations. What I really mean is that the Bible simply describes the world. It describes history in ways, in categories and in thought forms that we are not accustomed to. And even if we spent our whole lives growing up in the church, of course, there are all kinds of other influences on us that keep us from learning God's language as deeply and fully as we should. I guess one way to look at this would be to think about words that are used in the culture around us and compare that with the way those same words are used in the scriptures. Take the word hope, for example. If you hear the word hope used out in the world, it usually means something like wishful thinking. Like, even though I didn't study for the test, I hope I pass. You know, that kind of thing. Even though I know my favorite team is not very good, I hope that they can somehow make the playoffs this year. You know, that kind of thing. In the Bible, of course, hope is something totally different. Hope is this rock-solid conviction about what is to come. It is this rock-solid expectation of what God will do in the future. It is this expectation, this sure expectation about what God has in store for us. It's not mere wishful thinking. It's not a mere dream. But it's based on what God has already accomplished. So it is secure, and that's why Peter can say, his first epistle, be able to give a reason for the hope that you have. See, it is a grounded hope. It is a hope that can be defended, that can be proved, that can be verified. We know that these things will happen in the future because of what God has already done in the past. The past guarantees our future. So hope means something different, and part of learning to be a Christian, to be a faithful Christian, is learning how to use the word hope in this biblical way, to talk about hope as the sure expectation that we have based on what God has already done. When Christians use the word hope in their theological discourse, they mean something quite different than what the world means when it talks about hope. Then we do the same with other terms, words like sin. and salvation and justification and fellowship, and maybe even especially the word God, all have very different content in a Christian context, in a biblical context, than they do in the world at large. If you take that word sin, you know, if somebody says, I was really, really sinful the other night, they probably mean that they had a second helping of dessert out in the world. But of course, we as Christians would mean something quite different by that. We think of sin as a violation of God's law. violating God's word, God's command. When we talk about God, we obviously are talking about someone very, very different. You know, you do surveys, I don't know how it is in California, it's probably not quite the same, but in Alabama, I mean, everybody believes in God. Everybody. I mean, you do the surveys and it's like 99% of the people out there that they ask on the street believe in God. But what God do they believe in? It's usually not the triune God who has revealed Himself in Scripture who has done these things for us and requires these other things of us. That's not what they mean by God. They've got to be kind of the Santa Claus in the sky who grants wishes, and that kind of thing. So it's quite different. So we use the same letters and the same sounds as the world does, but we mean something quite different by these things. We fill those same terms with very different content. And part of our growth in discipleship as Christians is learning this new vocabulary, this new way of looking at and describing the world. It's learning these new categories that God's Word gives us for understanding the world around us, for understanding history. William Willimon refers to this as our peculiar speech. It says Christians talk funny. We have just a different way of describing the world. And that's not just because he's from the South either. So you could say, in a way, growing a discipleship is like learning a foreign language. It's foreign at least as far as the world is concerned, because it's a quite different way of describing and defining things. Now, I think this is really important for us to keep in view when we come to a passage like Revelation chapter 21 and 22, because there are a lot of words, a lot of categories used here that, if you really start to unpack what they mean, It can be counterintuitive. It seems like words and categories are being used in ways that are very different than what we might be accustomed to. What I want to do this morning is look at verse 1. There, and let me just read this for you again. John says, 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. I want to really focus on what John means here by this new heaven and this new earth. What does that language mean? What comes to mind when you hear that language of a new heaven and a new earth? Again, this is one of those places where we've got to be very careful to rely on the Scriptures to shape what this language means rather than just assuming that we already know. I know that for a lot of Christians, and I think for a lot of Christians out there, when they hear that kind of language, they assume that that's got to be something totally and exclusively off in the future, that it cannot refer to a present reality. And they would say, you know, look at the world around us. It doesn't look new at all. You know, the same old things are happening today that have always happened. The same old darkness seems to prevail over the earth that has always prevailed. Now, I would say, yes, this does have a future dimension. This whole passage, Revelation 21 and 22, has got to be read in terms of an already and a not yet frame of reference. So there is that not yet. There is more still to come. There is a future physical renewal of the cosmos that is promised to us just as we will have resurrection bodies, we will live as a renewed and perfected physical humanity. in that after Jesus has returned in glory. So we can say the whole cosmos, the whole creation will be resurrected, will be remade at the last. But there's also a sense in which this is already presence, in which the reality described here has already begun to take shape in the world. And that's what I want to talk about to you this morning. New heavens and new earth, what might that mean? Well, the first thing to keep in view is that a new heaven and a new earth is something that God had already promised in the Old Testament. So this is talking about the fulfillment of a promise that God made to his people long before. So if we want to know what this is, a pretty good place to start, obviously, would be to go back to the Old Testament and start to ask, what does it mean? What exactly did God promise to his people when he talked about a new heaven and a new earth? Again, we've got to let the Bible train us. in what these categories mean, what these labels mean. And when you go back to the Old Testament, and obviously this is, I can't go into all the evidence here this morning, but what you find if you go back to the Old Testament is that the new heaven and earth that God promised refers to a new covenantal order that God promised to set up. You could say a new social, political, and spiritual order of things that God promised to bring in when He sent Messiah. Now, obviously, if you think about this, we've got some, as strange as that may sound, we've got some dim reflections of this, I think, in our own everyday vocabulary. For example, if I say that that the fall of the Berlin Wall was an earth-shattering event. What do I mean? Do I mean that when that wall came down that there was actually an earthquake that followed? No, that's not what I mean. I just mean that after that wall came down, the world was very different than it had been before. Things got shaken up socially, politically, and so forth. The world changed. It meant the end of the old Cold War and the start of something new. So to talk about an earth-shattering event means that That's metaphorical language to describe something that really, really changes the shape of life in the world. I think what's going on here in Revelation is much more powerful than that. That kind of language in our everyday discourses is a dim shadow of the kind of change that the Bible's talking about. But that gives you a feel for the way that we could use language in a similar kind of way. Now, one other note here before I get into some of the details of this. This way of reading the Bible's heaven and earth language in these prophetic passages to suggest it's the coming of the New Covenant, this is not something that obviously is new with me, not something even that's new in our own day with Bible interpreters, Bible commentators. It's something that you can find down through the history of the church, Since we locate ourselves in a foreign tradition, that's what we're most interested in. And you can find a lot of the Puritans, a lot of the great Puritans like John Owen and John Bunyan and John Lightfoot who read these New Heaven and New Earth passages in this way to refer to the coming of the new covenant. John Calvin read these passages in that way. Matthew Henry, the great Bible commentator. If those names aren't familiar to you, don't worry. I'm just saying this is a a historically credible way of reading these passages in terms of the way the church has read the Bible historically. Now, I will also admit to you up front that it takes some poetic imagination to get this. A more scientific approach to interpretation makes this very, very difficult. And I think one of the great problems in the modern church has been trying to interpret the Bible, I would say, with more of a scientific mindset than a poetic mindset, or to approach biblical interpretation as though it were a matter of applying a set of rules, rather than something that's really more poetic. And a lot of times it's going to be a lot fuzzier maybe than we would like, and maybe not as clear-cut, but that is the way God has chosen to reveal himself. He uses these images, these symbols, these metaphors. It's very poetic, it's very literary. I think here in the Chronicles of Narnia, the character that C.S. Lewis named Eustace Scrub, and Lewis says he almost deserved that name. But he says the problem with Eustace is that he had never read the right books growing up, you know, books with dragons and damsels in distress and knights in shining armor. Instead he had read textbooks, basically. And so he had this scientific mindset. And so if that's the way you approach this kind of thing, you're going to struggle with it. You're going to have a hard time understanding these archetypes, these symbols, these metaphors, these images. I would say that Christian eschatology, and that is to say a Christian view of the future, really you could say history as it is made new with the coming of Christ and also what God has in store in the future for us, Christian eschatology is really all about having a sanctified imagination, an imagination that has been trained and shaped and molded by the Scriptures. In order to have a Christian eschatology, a Christian view of the future, you've got to be able to imagine a world very different than the one that we live in. You know, if you lived 2,000 years ago, it would have taken a sanctified imagination to think, okay, what's the church going to be like 2,000 years from now? And if we want to take another 2,000 years into the future, it takes a very deep and I would say very sanctified imagination to even begin to be able to think about that. So we need to have an imagination that's been trained by Scripture, an imagination that has been awakened by Scripture, an imagination that is attuned to biblical symbols, biblical images, biblical archetypes, biblical metaphors, and it's also in tune with what God says He's done and what God says He will do. See, these things have got to shape the way we think about all of this. I would say that science, of course, is great for learning about certain aspects of God's world, but it doesn't do you a whole lot of good when it comes to reading the Bible. If you want to read the Bible better, you need to read great literature. You need to read George Herbert and John Milton, and you need to listen to great music like Bach and Handel and so forth, music that has patterns in it, that are in some ways analogous to the kinds of patterns that we find in God's Word. Now, I said if we're going to understand what New Heavens and Earth language means, we've got to go back to the Old Testament. When we go back to the Hebrew Scriptures, what do we find? Take Isaiah chapter 51 for starters. Isaiah 51 verses 15 and 16. Here's a paraphrase. God says, I am the Lord your God who divided the sea. I put my words in your mouth. I covered you with the shadow of my hand. I planted the heavens and laid the foundation of the earth. And I said, you are my people. And that's Isaiah 51. What event is God referring to? When did God do these things? Well, God says, I divided the sea. When did this parting of the sea happen? The Exodus. It's the Red Sea crossing. He says, I put my words in your mouth. Obviously, this is a reference to the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, where God gave his law and then the people said, we will obey. God's word was put in their mouths. He says, I covered you with the shadow of my hand. That's probably a reference to the pillar of cloud that covered them, that shaded them, that gave them shadow during the day as they made their way through the wilderness. And then God says in that same context, I planted the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. So the way of saying, I've made a new heaven and a new earth. This is God's way of saying that the Exodus puts Israel in a new creation situation. They've come out of Egypt, they've begun to head for the promised land, they've built the tabernacle, God moves in and dwells in their midst. This is a new world order, you could say, a new situation that God has brought them into, and God calls it a new creation, a new heavens and a new earth. In fact, when it describes in the book of Deuteronomy God carrying his people out as on an eagle's wings, it talks about God fluttering above the people. It's the same word that's used back in Genesis chapter 1 for the hovering of God's Spirit over the watery mass of earth at the very beginning. So even in Exodus and in Deuteronomy, you've got new creation language being used to describe the Exodus event. Isaiah then, as a prophet, takes all of that and God is speaking through Isaiah and says that's a new creation, the Exodus is a new creation event. It's the establishment of a new heaven and a new earth, a new world order began when God called his people out of Egypt and began to dwell in their midst in the tabernacle. Now what's interesting is in Isaiah's prophecy he says there's going to be another Exodus If the first exodus was a new creation, and Isaiah says there's going to be a new exodus that's actually going to be so great you're going to forget all about the previous exodus, certainly that new exodus is going to be a new creation, you could say, a new heaven and a new earth. And that's exactly what we find later on in the book of Isaiah. And this is very relevant to what goes on in Revelation chapter 21. Isaiah 65 and 66. See, that new heaven and earth that God established through Moses, that heaven and earth was going to grow old. and was going to be replaced by yet another new heaven and new earth. And that's what God speaks to the prophet, through the prophet, in chapters 65 and 66. 65-17, God says He is making a new heavens and a new earth. The old things will be forgotten. And then the rest of that passage, it's really all going to be read as one big literary unit. The rest of that passage unfolds what this new heaven and new earth are all about. Isaiah 65, verses 1 and 2. tell us that God will be found by the Gentiles while the Jews will rebel against Him and be cut off. Now what's interesting is Paul takes those verses and quotes them in Romans chapter 10 to explain why his mission to the Gentiles is successful and why the Jews in Mass are rejecting Jesus as their Messiah. So Paul saw those verses at the beginning of Isaiah 65 coming to fulfillment in his own ministry. That is to say, the transition that the prophet Isaiah foresaw, Paul says, it's now happening. See, this new heaven and new earth is not going to be just for the Jews, it's going to be for Gentiles as well. as those Jews who received Jesus as Messiah. And Paul cites that passage from Isaiah in Romans chapter 10. Of course, he goes on to explain what it all means then in Romans chapter 11 with the olive tree metaphor and all of that, with the branches being broken out, the natural branches of the Jews being broken out, and Gentile branches being grafted in. Isaiah 66 verses 18 and 24, part of that same section. It also talks about the Gentile nations coming into this new creation, actually described there as a new Jerusalem. And this is what's interesting. Right after Isaiah says that God will form a new heavens and a new earth, He shows what that means. He says, there will be no more weeping or crying, but instead rejoicing. Now, of course, that is something picked up on in Revelation chapter 21, verse 4. Basically, what the prophet Isaiah meant is that there will be no more weeping, no more mourning over Israel's exile, Israel's curse. The exile will come to Then he says, while there's still going to be death, he goes on to describe how people will have long life, how they will have prosperity. He says they will build houses, they will plant vineyards, they will have children. He says their descendants will be blessed by the Lord. So, when Isaiah talks about this new heavens and new earth, he's clearly not talking about the eternal state. There's still going to be death, though people will live longer lives. There's still going to be marrying and giving in marriage, and there's still going to be children being raised up, things that we know from other parts of Scripture don't apply to the eternal state. Or when I ask, when does all this begin? We've seen what Paul says, Romans chapter 10, he quotes that, but even Isaiah himself gives us a hint. Isaiah chapter 66 verse 3, he says, The time will come when he who kills a bull will be like slaying a man. And he who sacrifices a lamb will be like breaking a dog's neck. And he who offers a grain offering will be offering a swine's blood. Now you read that in Isaiah and you think, now wait a second. You know, bulls, lambs, grain offerings, these are all things that God commanded. And all these other things, slaying a man, breaking a dog's neck, swine's blood, those are all things that would be associated with uncleanness, things that God has forbidden. Dogs and pigs are unclean animals and obviously it's wrong to slay a man. Doing an animal sacrifice that God required become like an act of murder. Or offering those things that God required under the Levitical law, how can they become just the same as offering unclean sacrifices before God? Well, of course, we get the answer to that. Whatever mystery there was for those living in the days of Isaiah, we have the answer to that. The book of Hebrews, as well as all other kinds of passages you could point to in the New Testament, show us that when Christ came, he came to put an end to sacrifice. The sacrifices are now obsolete. After the cross, and really you could say, well, after the death and resurrection of Christ, to go on offering animal sacrifices in the same way, that is an abomination before God. Because the blood sacrifice, the once and for all blood sacrifice that all those old covenant sacrifices pointed to, that sacrifice has now been made. And so the sacrificial system has served its purpose, its time is up. To go on doing that would be to offer God something unclean, something that He no longer accepts, something He's no longer pleased with. So you've got all this going on in Isaiah 65 and 66. What is this new heavens and earth that the prophet promises? What is he talking about? When you take it all together, he's talking about a new world order in which full membership in the covenant is offered to Gentiles. Animal sacrifices have come to an end. The curse is removed. God's people are no longer in exile. They've been restored. And God's people live under His favor. As they raise their children, as they build their cultures, they live under God's blessing. Well, I would say you take all that together, it sounds a whole lot like what the New Testament describes as the New Covenant. This is how we live in the present age, the age that Jesus inaugurated through His death resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The covenant has been opened up to Gentiles. He commissioned his disciples to go and to disciple the nations, to convert the nations and disciple the nations so those nations would be built up and live under the favor of God as they begin to do all the things that God commanded. This new heavens and earth that the prophet Isaiah talks about is the Christian It is the Christian era. It is the new covenant age of history. The old heavens and earth of the Jewish age have passed away. The new heavens and earth of the Christian age have arrived. See, we live in a new situation. The world is now a different place, a radically different place, now that Jesus has come. Heaven and earth are new. We have shifted out of the old covenant and into this new creation, this new heaven and earth. that God promised. But we still have this question. You can see how Isaiah's prophecy comes to fulfillment in the New Covenant. So when Isaiah speaks of a new heavens and earth, he's talking about the New Covenant that we live in. But we still have this lingering question. Why does God call the New Covenant a new heaven and a new earth? See, we might be tempted to think of the New Covenant as this private spiritual thing. There's this new spiritual relationship that you can have with God. There's this new relationship that's offered to Gentiles, yes, maybe that's part of it too, but can you really say that the whole world has been changed? That the whole structure of history has been changed? That things are that radically different that it would warrant calling this a new heaven and a new earth? I mean, that is radical language to talk about a new heaven and a new earth. So here's the question, do the changes that Jesus brought about in the first century really justify that kind of language? Can we really say that Jesus inaugurated a new heaven and a new earth? Or really, we can ask the question this way, how are heaven and earth different now that Jesus has come? Okay, you see what I'm asking. We see the prophet uses this kind of language for the new covenant. Why? And I think it's a matter we need to search out. Let's talk about heaven first. How is heaven different now that Jesus has come? Well, think back, there's a lot of different ways we could approach this, and obviously all I can really do is scratch the surface of even that, but think back to the book of Job. What do you see going on at the beginning of the book of Job? You see, Satan, with access to the heavenly sanctuary, to God's throne room, he can go before the Lord and he can make accusations against the brethren night and day. And that's what he does with Job. He goes before the throne room of God and he accuses Job. That's what Satan means, accuser. And so he goes before God's throne and makes accusations against Job. Now, think about a passage in the Gospels. Luke chapter 10. His ministry is building momentum. He sent out the 12, and now he sends out the 70, and they do the things Jesus has been doing. They do exorcisms, they do healings, and when they come back, they rejoice. They say, even the demons are subject to us in your name. And Jesus says, yes, I know, because I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. See, what is Jesus He's saying that now the heavenly battle is underway. In fact, if you want another description of this heavenly battle, you can look at Revelation chapter 12, which shows us what happens at the ascension of Jesus, that when Jesus goes up to heaven, Satan is cast down. That begins to happen during the earthly ministry of Jesus. It happens in some greater, fuller way at his ascension. When Jesus ascends into heaven, he kicks Satan out of heaven. Satan is cast down. upon the earth. He throws Satan out of heavenly places. So what's different about heaven now? What's different about the situation in the heavens? Well, Satan is barred from heaven. Satan has been kicked out of heaven. We no longer have an accuser in heaven. Now what do we have? We have an advocate in heaven. The very dust of the earth in the man Jesus. Remember, he took on our flesh. The man Jesus has entered into heaven and taken his seat at the Father's right hand and now reigns there and intercedes there on our behalf. Heaven is new. Heaven is different. Satan no longer has access to heaven. Jesus is seated there on our behalf. And it's not just that. The New Testament also shows us that we are in union with Christ. So in Ephesians 2, Paul says that we are seated with Christ in the heavenly. Christ is in heaven in our humanity, but we are seated there with Him in the heavenlies because we are united to Him by the Holy Spirit. And so that heavenly war that you see break out when the 70 are sent forth to do their ministry, that heavenly war that you see break out in Revelation chapter 12 when Jesus ascends into heaven, Ephesians chapter 6 goes on to say, we are soldiers in that heavenly battle as well. We wage war, as Paul says, there with principalities and powers. In the old covenant, God's people fought with flesh and blood. Think of Joshua's conquest of the land. They couldn't fight in the heavens as we do now, now that we are seated in the heavenlies in union with Christ. That's an oversimplification, especially the old covenant holy war situation. But there's something radically new that's happened. We are seated with Christ in the heavenlies. We now do battle with the principalities and powers in union with Christ. Another way of getting at what's new about heaven. We have access to the heavenly sanctuary. Again, think about the book of Job. In Job, Satan comes before the heavenly throne. But now you know what Hebrews 4 says? Paul says in Hebrews 4, we come before the heavenly throne, the throne of grace, to get the help that we need. See, we now have access to the heavenly sanctuary that in worship, in prayer, we enter into the most holy place of heaven. Hebrews chapter 10 says that in our corporate worship gatherings that we pass through the veil that was when the flesh of Christ was torn on the cross, we pass through that veil into the heavenly, most holy place. In the liturgy, when we lift our hearts up to the Lord, we ascend into the heavenly places, as John Calvin said. We have access to the heavenly sanctuary, access that the old covenant saints didn't have. Because if you think about the tabernacle, if you think about the temple, there are all these veils that kept the people of God, you could say, at an arm's distance, at an arm's length from the presence of God. So that's what's new about heaven. There's more that could be said there, but let's talk about earth. How is earth arranged differently? How is earth reorganized and reconfigured with the coming of Christ and the outpouring of His Spirit? Well, I just said that in the old covenant, in the old heavens and earth, the people of God did not have access to heaven. What they had was a centralized sanctuary on earth. Now, I realize that for a lot of portions of Old Testament history, they didn't even have that. They didn't even have the centralized sanctuary. But for a lot of that period of time, they did. But again, if you look at those centralized sanctuaries, the tabernacle that they had in the wilderness, the temple then that Solomon built, the temple that was rebuilt after the return from exile, while those temples were places where God really did dwell, on earth with his people. At the same time, when the people went to the tabernacle, when they went to the temple, they really couldn't get all that close to God. Those veils kept them out of God's presence. Now, what happened when Jesus died on the cross? We're told in Mark's gospel that that veil was torn from top to bottom. It's like God just reached down and ripped that thing right in two. to show this temple is obsolete. Now my people will have access to the heavenly temple. The veil has been torn in the death of Christ. Now my people have access to me. But if you ask the question, how do we get this access? Where do we go to get this access? If you think about it in terms of the old covenant, there was always a geographic kind of movement that had to take place. For example, you go all the way back to the beginning of Genesis when Adam and Eve were going to meet with God. the center of the Garden of Eden, where those sacramental trees were located. That's where God came to meet with them, walking in the cool of the day. That's where God came to meet with them. Later on in history, if you wanted to draw near to God, if you wanted to meet with God, you would make this journey, this pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where the temple was. And that's how you would get near to God. That's where God's presence was most manifest on earth. You would go to the temple. But after the death of Christ on the cross, the temple in Jerusalem became obsolete. No longer would there be one central place on earth where God dwelt. Indeed, in 70 AD, God had that temple destroyed, just as Jesus had prophesied. Not one stone was left upon another. That temple was destroyed. What is the temple now? Where do you go to get close to God? How do you draw near to God? Well, most centrally, most fundamentally, you go to church. You gather with the people of God. Now, I'm not saying we don't have access to prayer on our own or with our families. We certainly do. And I think the book of Hebrews indicates that. But it is especially as we gather together as the covenant people of God for covenant renewal that we have access to the heavenly sanctuary, that we enter into God's heavenly presence. See, the church community has become the dwelling place of God. And that's really what Revelation 21 is all about. But of course, there are churches scattered all over the face of the earth, which means now sanctuary access, you could say, has been decentralized. It's not just one central sanctuary on earth. But as Jesus said, wherever two or three gather together in my name, there I am. There you have sanctuary access. See, we pass through Jesus. He's the torn veil. We pass through Jesus into the heavenly sanctuary, into that heavenly most holy place. Now, in Matthew 18, where Jesus makes that promise, wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, he's talking there about a gathering for official church business, you could say. It comes in the context of church discipline. It's just as applicable to prayer, to worship gatherings. where two or three come together in His name, an official gathering of the church, there Jesus is among them. There you have sanctuary access. Indeed, I would say wherever God's people gather for word and for sacrament, there is the most holy place. There is the heavenly sanctuary. There is the heavenly Jerusalem descending down to the earth. There are God's people being lifted up into the heavenly places to worship God inside the veil in the most holy place. See, that's the point. That's what the church is. That's what gathered worship is all about in the New Covenant. Or we can come at this another way. In John's Gospel, John chapter 4, Jesus talks about a coming time when His people will worship Him in spirit and in truth. Now, this comes in the context in John chapter 4 of a discussion with a Samaritan woman. And Jesus has sort of pinned her to the wall with her sin and so she wants to have a theology conversation. You know, how often does that happen? She's trying to squirm out of this discussion about her living arrangements, you might say. So she wants to have this conversation about the proper location of worship. Who's right? We Samaritans or those Jews? Where is the true temple is the question she's asking and that's when Jesus says, The time is coming, and now is, when those who worship the Father worship Him in spirit and in truth. We need to keep in mind, see sometimes we think, oh it's spirit and in truth, that means new covenant worship is spiritual. So we do away with all these physical accoutrements of worship and so things like posture and musical instruments and all that kind of stuff, that all falls to the wayside. No, that's not what Jesus meant. Jesus brings up this whole notion of worshipping in spirit and in truth in response to a question about the location of worship. We worship in spirit and in truth. What does it mean to worship in spirit? It means that the spirit's presence with the people of God creates a temple environment, you could say, a sanctuary environment, that when the spirit comes among the people of God as they gather together for worship, The Spirit lifts us up into heaven. The Spirit, after all, is the agent of our union with Christ. It's through the Spirit that we are united with Christ and seated with Him in the heavenlies. It's the Spirit that makes heaven present to us, that makes heavenly realities present to us as we gather in Christ's name. And Jesus speaks there of worshipping in truth. So, the Spirit is a matter of location. It's in the Spirit where the Spirit is present. The Spirit creates this heavenly environment. in which we worship, but it's also in truth. And in John's gospel, truth is not so much something that's true as opposed to that which is false, but it's the reality as opposed to the shadow, the new covenant reality that fulfills the old covenant shadow. To worship in truth is to no longer worship in the temple that is a shadow, of that which is to come, rather it's to worship in the true temple of Jesus and His church. See, the people of God become the temple, the true house of God, the dwelling place of God. So heaven is different. We have access to heaven. Satan's been kicked out of heaven. Earth is different. There's no longer one central sanctuary located at a particular spot on the face of the earth that you must go to to get nearest to God. Earth has been reorganized, reconfigured. So now wherever two or three gather in the name of Christ, there he is present with his people. There is worship in spirit and in truth. So heaven and earth are different. Now, that brings me to one other aspect of this that I want to deal with. In saying all of that, we've talked about what it means to live in God's new creation. We live in this new world order that God set up through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, through the outpouring the Holy Spirit. But one thing we learn from this Revelation passage and again from other places in the New Testament, it's not only that we live in God's new creation, but we are God's new creation. And we need to understand both aspects of this. History is objectively different. The world is objectively different. We live in this new world order that God established through the death and resurrection of Christ. There's a new creation, a new heavens and earth, and we're in it. But you can say more than that. Not only do we live in God's new creation, we are God's new creation. And we need to learn to live as that new creation, that new world, that new humanity. What John is referring to here as the new heavens and new earth in Revelation chapter 21 verse 1, Paul calls a new creation. Paul uses New Creation language, whereas John here is using New Heavens and New Earth language, but they mean the same thing. But think about what Paul says about New Creation. One passage, 2 Corinthians chapter 5, Paul says, If any man is in Christ, there is. a new creation. The old things are gone, the new have come. He doesn't just say there that if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature. There are some translations that read that way and make it sound like it's just focused on the individual. But actually what Paul says is, there is a new creation. There's a new creation that has begun. He says, old things have passed away, new things have come. The old heaven and earth have passed away, the new heaven and earth the new creation has arrived. So the church in Christ is God's new creation. Now again, as soon as you say that, There are all kinds of questions that come to mind. You know, how can we say that? The church has got so many problems, so many messes today. She's so fragmented. We look at the church and we say, this is it? This is the new creation? How can it be? Surely there's more to it than this. You know, it's like you drive a new car home. You got this new car and then you find out it's a lemon and all these things start going wrong with it. And it almost seems that's what happens with the church. You know, Jesus founded this church and then Right off the bat, even while his apostles are still alive, all these things are going wrong with the church. And so you've got all these letters written in the New Testament to address all this stuff that's going wrong, that's malfunctioning in the church. Well, there's probably no church more messed up than the Corinthian church, if you look at the New Testament. I think the Galatians could give them a run for their money, but things were pretty bad in Corinth if you look at the kind of things that Paul had to deal with. That's the church that Paul writes to and says, you are a new creation. If any man is in Christ, behold, the old things are gone, the new have come. So a church, even with all these problems, all these defects, all these shortcomings, is regarded as, viewed as, declared to be God's new creation. Now, there are a couple of things going on here that we need to consider. We sometimes fail to look at the church through the lens of Scripture. And so we fail to see everything that's going on there. See, even in the midst of a church community where, yeah, you can point to all kinds of things that are maybe not all that they should be, you know, maybe we're not doing everything, you know, we're not fulfilling every aspect of this vision that God gives to us for the church. Even so, still, even the most feeble church is a place where sins are being forgiven. It's a place where lives are being transformed by the gospel. It's a place where people are finding friendship and community. It's a place where those who are in need are being helped in Christ's name. I mean, you know, if you think that the world is a dark place now, Imagine a world without the church at all. I mean, we take for granted all the ways in which the world has been radically transformed by the church. We take for granted all these fruits in our culture, in our civilization, that are really fruits that only grow on the tree of the gospel. that are really bequeathed by the church to the world. And we take those things for granted. We lose sight of the connection between those fruits in our culture and the root of those things, which is the gospel, which is this new humanity, this new creation that God has established. I could give you dozens of examples, but just one. Hospitals. Who do you think came up with the idea of a hospital? Who invented the hospital? It was Christians. Nobody had ever thought to create a hospital, a place to care for the sick. It was Christians who came. And then you can talk specifically about advances in medicine, in nursing. These are fruits that grew on the tree of the gospel. that were given to the culture as the gift of the church. And of course, all you have to do to really see that is to look at those places in the world that don't have the gospel. Now, they've still been influenced by the gospel to some degree. And in today's world, that's almost unavoidable. Pretty much every culture now has had contact with a culture that's been influenced by the gospel. So those fruits are now found in other places. But if we think the world is a dark place right now, we don't realize how utterly pitch black it was 2,000 years ago, before the gospel began to spread and to move out, before the church began to expand. But it's not just things out there in the world that we take for granted. There are things in the church, in the life of the church that we take for granted. Things that 2,000 years ago were spectacular in their newness, now we just take them for granted. We hardly pay any attention to them at all. For example, think about the Lord's Supper. In Old Covenant worship, all the drink offerings, all the wine and beer offerings, were poured out before God. Only God got to drink those wine and beer offerings in the Levitical system. Only God got to drink alcohol, you could say, in the Old Covenant system. Only God got to celebrate and rejoice in that way in the Old Covenant ceremonial system. They were poured out before God's throne. God alone imbibed the drink offerings. In the New Covenant, what's changed? When Jesus took that bread and gave it to His disciples, that was one thing. But when He took that cup and He said, this is the cup of the New Covenant, and He gave it to His disciples and He said, drink this, all of you. This is my blood shed for the remission of your sins. Do this as my memorial. That was radical. that they would get to drink the sacrificial blood, that they would get to drink wine in the presence of God. That was radical. In fact, one scholar points out, you know, the Corinthians must have been so excited about this, they got a little carried away and some were getting drunk. Okay? Yeah, maybe that's what's going on there. They were so excited about it. We just take it for granted. Oh, it's just another cup of wine, another week, another sacrament. No, it's amazing. It is a sign of the new creation. That we are included in the drink offering. That we drink the blood of the Savior. That we celebrate and rejoice around His throne in this way. Or take another example. How often in the Old Covenant, think about the Hebrew Scriptures here, how often does someone in prayer call God Father? It's not that God wasn't Father. God called Israel His Son. But that name for God is never used in prayer because of the sense of distance between God and His people. You can't approach God as Father because there are all these veils which shear them with swords, keeping you out of the presence of God. You can't draw near to God in that way. Heaven has not yet been opened. The veils have not yet been torn. But now, how do we pray every single week our Father who art in heaven? How do we pray in our families every single day we cry out to God as Father? We don't really think about that. We just take it for granted that we have this nearness to God, this access to God, that God is Father. We don't recognize how radical that is, how new that is. This intimacy that we have with God, this nearness to God, that's a new creation benefit. That's something radical, something new that comes in with the death and resurrection of Christ, with the outpouring of the Spirit. Paul talks about crying out, Abba, Father, in Galatians and in Romans. Because that's an amazing thing. Don't just take it for granted. Understand, the church is God's new creation. The church is not just a container where salvation is available to individuals who are determined to get it. No, the church is God's new humanity. The church is the shape that God's salvation takes in the present. Yes, it's imperfect. Yes, it's incomplete. No, it's not fulfilled or completed as of yet. The final consummation of these things, the final physical consummation of these things, the final glorified form of these things is yet to come. But they are already realities, spiritually, socially, Politically, the church is the new creation, God's new creation, already at work in the world, already existing in the world. See, the first fruits of the world to come have already been planted. And so what does it mean to be God's new creation? How should we then live as God's new creation, as His new heaven and earth? Well, as I said last night, it means we should seek to do God's will on earth as it's done in heaven. We should be agents and representatives of God's heavenly kingdom living on the earth. It's interesting, if you're familiar with Jonathan Edwards, he gave a description of heaven in one of his books. He described heaven as a world of love. If that's what heaven is, and the church is God's New Heaven, His heavenly people, that's what the church should be. The church should be a world of love, a culture of love, a culture of service, a community that exists in the world for the sake of the world, a fellowship of holiness and righteousness and humility and repentance. But you know, in a lot of modern versions of Christianity, I should really say a lot of American versions of Christianity, The church is not the agent of all those things, the church just kind of gets in the way of all those things. We're more embarrassed by the church, we feel more hindered by the church than anything else. I remember when I was a kid growing up, I went to a youth Bible study and the youth pastor who was speaking asked us all if we wanted to be cutting-edge Christians. And I remember thinking, yeah, that sounds good. Who wouldn't want to be on the cutting edge? Well, he basically told us that if we wanted to be on the cutting edge, we had to sort of leave the church behind because the church would hinder us. The church would get in the way. The church was old-fashioned and stodgy and not really with it, and you had to be willing to sort of sit out on your own and do your own thing as a Christian if you really wanted to be on the cutting edge. Follow God's Spirit wherever it leads, and we know God's Spirit's not really doing much in the church these days. No, Scripture shows us it's just the opposite of that. See, the church is God's cutting edge. The Church is the future, even in the present. The Church is the world to come, breaking into this present world. Now, there are all kinds of things about that that are really interesting to consider. In Scripture, you find that the Church is both a The church is a spirit-indwelt community, but the church is also an institution. The church has institutional structures. You know, I was told back then in that same talk from that youth pastor, Christianity is not a religion, it's a relationship, and so you don't need institutions. You just need to follow God's Spirit. You can never say you don't need the church, just follow Jesus, because the church is where Jesus has promised to dwell, where He makes Himself available to His people, where He communes with His people. See, God's cutting edge is the church. If you want to ride the wave of God's future, you need to dive into the life of the church. See, Jesus didn't come just to make a bunch of individual new creatures. He came to bring in a new creation. Again, that's the right way to read the 2 Corinthians 5 passage. We're not merely a bunch of renewed but unrelated individuals. Rather, we are God's new humanity, His new community, His new heavens and earth. And if you think about it, that's just what God promised to Abraham. What did God promise to Abraham? That his descendants would be as the sand of the shore, and the stars in the heavens above. Now that obviously has to do with quantity, that's a big part of it, that his family will be so big, so innumerable, it will be like the host of the heavens or the grains of sand. But it also has to do with quality. When God promises to him A people who will be like the sand and like the stars. He's promising him a new heaven and a new earth. That his family, his descendants will be a new creation. That's what we are. We are God's cutting edge. We are his eschatological edge. And that's true in every respect. All that stuff about how it's a relationship, not a religion, that's really garbage. The word religion actually means to bind. or to bind together. Christianity is the true religion because it's the true binding. It binds us to Christ. It binds us. to one another. See, it binds us in covenant to God. It binds us to one another with bonds of love, with bonds of the Spirit. This idea that you can have a relationship with God apart from religious structures, apart from the church, apart from public preaching where God speaks His Word to us, apart from the sacraments which are overseen by elders, by a session, that's all nonsense. So if you want to do business with God, if you want to draw near to God, if you want to know God, You must do so, you must be connected through a church. That idea has been abused in all kinds of ways in church history, so we have to guard ourselves against that, against those kinds of abuses. But those abuses don't make it any less true. God gives himself, he offers himself, he makes himself present in his church, among his people, as the word is proclaimed, as the sacraments are offered. We may not have time to get into all of it this week, but if you really study this out carefully, you see here that this new heaven and new earth, which is also called a New Jerusalem, it has all kinds of institutional features. It's described as a city, so in the nature of the case, it has a government. It has gates, but all throughout the Scriptures, Wherever you have gates, you have elders. That's where rule takes place. The elders of the gate meet and they rule. If the city has gates, it has elders, it has rule, it has government, it has authority, it has a structure to it. So yes, there is a relationship with Christ to be had, but it's to be had in the context of the church, in the context of God's people, where God dwells. See, God makes the church His home. He dwells in us as His home. See, the people of God are not just this amorphous blob. The new creation has a structure to it. The new creation condenses into enduring structures that God has set up, including governmental structures. So things like having real church membership, having real officers, doing liturgical forms in worship. prayer forms and responsive forms for the people and these sorts of things, taking part in the sacraments. All these things can be made to seem routine. We need to remember they are vehicles through which the Spirit is at work. We don't want to just play church. We want to do the real thing. We want to be God's new humanity, God's new creation, God's new city. This is the way to do it. So we've got to learn what it means to live in God's new heaven and earth. that history has changed. History will never be the same. There's no going back. History has radically changed. When Jesus came, he set the history of the world off in a different direction than where it had been headed. He saved the world and that salvation is working itself out. Heaven and earth are different. His church is growing and expanding to fill the earth, discipling the nations. But we've also got to learn to live as God's new creation, as his new heaven and earth. showing the world a glimpse of God's promised future by how we live together as a spirit-filled and orderly and righteous and loving community. Let's pray and give God thanks for these things.