Hope Springs Eternal. As we enter into 2023 our minds can be filled with thoughts about the future. But the best way to keep everything in perspective is to focus on the ultimate future Christ holds out for us. Revelation Chapter 21 shows us what heaven is like which empowers our lives today with hope.
Contact Pastor Smart from our Church website or send an email.
hope4tampa.com/smartalk
smartalk@hope4tampa.com
Music: Achaidh Cheide - Celtic by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100340
Artist: http://incompetech.com/
Hope Springs Eternal. As we enter into 2023 our minds can be filled with thoughts about the future. But the best way to keep everything in perspective is to focus on the ultimate future Christ holds out for us. Revelation Chapter 21 shows us what heaven is like which empowers our lives today with hope.
Contact Pastor Smart from our Church website or send an email.
hope4tampa.com/smartalk
smartalk@hope4tampa.com
Music: Achaidh Cheide - Celtic by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100340
Artist: http://incompetech.com/
Rev 21 Heaven New Year’s Day 2023 Hope Springs Eternal
Introduction: New Year’s day service- looking forward. It’s a way of preparing for the New Year. Like the survival shows- get ten pieces of equipment- what would you take? One thing you don’t want to go into the New Year without? One key to survival is hope which prepares us for the terrain ahead. If it’s artic - warm clothes. If it’s desert- water. Here we are encouraged to know how to get out of the hostile terrain by aiming clearly for our final destination. We already do this when we prepare ourselves for job interviews, exams, or weddings. But as you’d be foolish to get married and only think about the wedding day, so we should think of preparing for the hope of Heaven. This picture book has been written for just hostile terrain: it worked for the first Century Christians under Nero and for the last 2000 years. So don’t knock it or ignore it.
1. Dare to Hope
Proverbs.13:12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick…too afraid to hope? Plus there are the Doom-mongers for 2023. There is an absence of Hope in society- because there is no basis. Camus “there is no superhuman happiness, no eternity outside of the curve of the days…. he rejects Christianity as based on a hope for a life beyond this life. Hope is the error Camus wishes to avoid. Rejecting “the delusions of hope”. Many leading thinkers over the last hundred years have thought like this…their beliefs had no basis for hope because death was viewed as the end.
Yet as C.S.Lewis - If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. i.e. Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’; aim at earth and you will get neither._ CS Lewis
The reason is that to survive and thrive in this life you need to have the equipment- including hope, which is knowing the way out of the hostile terrain. And that in turn gives you unprecedented resources for suffering well and surviving anything life that throws at you. And to make this world a better place it will involve suffering- took 40 years and the breakdown of W Wilberforce’s health before he finally got the British Parliament to ban slavery. How could he make such a difference on earth? Because his heart was full of heaven and his own death as we see here was now only a doorway to his real home in Heaven. Do you have a basis for hope? Are you afraid to hope? Will you dare to hope for 2023 and right to the end of all you will know?
2. The Destination of Hope
Lasting Change: v.1 the old is going - not going to last forever…all that is broken and wrong with life on this earth is not going to last forever or until it burns out with the sun. One of the differences between old and new: there will be no sea- upset lots of old fishermen in Scotland! Ch.20:13 gave up its dead- seen as a place of death and for John as an old man trapped on an island, it caused separation. Tired of all the separation- long for real togetherness? All that separates us will one day be gone.
The New is coming v.2 - What happens when you die? Two stages: Reign with Christ in Heaven- ch.20 calls this the first resurrection – spiritual life. But when Christ returns- body and soul are united permanently in the second resurrection which is physical. New Jer: Coming DOWN- New Heavens and a New Earth - a new sky (heaven- same word) and new earth- whole new bio-sphere 20:11. For our bodies are designed for the earth and on earth they will dwell.
What will it look like? The best model of what that will be like- wedding day. V.2.
- The bride- beautiful – prepared- all the redeeming work of Christ. And one day it will be complete- perfect. She will be beautiful, complete. All that makes you feel ugly and incomplete will not last. Follow Christ, and it will be gone in a moment and the beauty will last eternally.
- The bridge groom- God himself. V.2 so she will be dressed for her husband: Old clothes washed- all marks from our character removed. Perfect. Now cf. v.8 many will still be in their old clothes, old habits, old vices, and old ways, and heaven will only be a hell to them. There has to be a clothing change- coming to Christ- exchange your rags, and receiving his white robe of Righteousness is the simplest picture of what God’s redemption applied to us looks like. That’s the Cross.
- The marriage Home: v.3 God’s dwelling place- heaven is heaven because of God. It’s his dwelling with us- love that provides, cares, inspires, and commissions us to cultivate the earth, to be vice-regents of the creation. Looking for love? If you don’t love him now heaven will only be hell to you.
3. Death or Hope
The consummation: v.4 all tears of the old life will be wiped away. Will remove all their sorrows: it’s future. No one is ever going to bring utopia to this earth. Instead- Rev acts as a lighthouse in the darkness of this world- constant repetition of this hope between the 1st to 2nd coming of Christ. The consolation you will receive then will more than compensate all your hardships here. 2 Cor.4 our light affliction…works for us…actually prepares us to receive more blessing on that day.
The heart of the consolation- and death shall be no more… Physical death and pain and suffering are all removed. Imagine a world with no undertakers! Fear of death? No graveyards, coffins or funerals where the whole industry of death has gone. The resurrected body you will receive won’t be susceptible to these things. Compare that to Christ’s body after his resurrection- physical but not as confined perhaps as our physical bodies are right now.
The Confirmation: The basis for our certainty: v.5 I am making everything new….who could say that? Only the one seated on the throne. And who was that? Jesus Christ, the one who had drunk death down to its bitterest dregs and yet lived! Who experienced the second death of v.8 hell- spiritual death- cut off from God, yet was restored to life because of his innocence. And now his empty tomb is the gateway to that new world, the birthday of the New Creation.
Conclusion: Communion so as we come to the table- taste the cup- remember Christ’s was bitter so yours can be sweet. Remember this is your survival rations on the journey home. Remember it’s a foretaste of the banquet when Home returns to this world made home and we will feast forever in the company of the King. Taste all x10 points above in Him now.