Moving Day!

Darin Wilt

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Revelation 21

Moving Day!

Intro: Moving. How much moving has everyone done in their lives? How many of you love it? And how many of you dread it? How many of you avoid it?

Moving can be exciting, tiring because of all the work in cleaning the old house, packing all your stuff and then putting it away. It’s stressful because everything has to go right. And you are usually waiting on approvals and loans and offers, if you are selling your house. Moving because you want to, whether its just to get a bigger house in the same area or city, or because of a job opportunity is usually a good thing overall.

But sometimes you move because you have to. You are leaving family and friends, sometimes it’s not under good or ideal situations. You move to get away from something or someone because it is necessary and so you may leave everything behind. And this makes moving dreadful. It makes it hard because you may only have enough to barely live month to month and you wonder if the struggles are worth it.

This chapter is what the New Testament is leads us up to. Jesus has come to earth , died and was resurrected and he ascended back to the Throne. The Holy Spirit has come as churches celebrate the day of Pentecost. But then we wait. We bring as much of the Kingdom as we can to Earth, but We know, from Chapter 21, that will change one day.

Read Verses: 1-8

Main Idea: A wonderful new home awaits those who conquer.

And with it they will have:

I. The Best Neighbor (1-8)

God tells John in verse 5, Behold I am making things new. But in order to make thins new, there has to be an old.

Old house, new house. Old body, new body. Old Life, new life. And not just a new house with new problems to discover and fix. Your new body will be perfect. And eternal. Your. New eternal life will be wonderfully perfect in every way.

God will live with us, or tabernacle, just like he did with Adam and Eve, just like he did with Moses and the Israelites, just like he did when God the Son came to earth. Each time he came to guide us to live with him, and to follow him.

Verses 3 and 4 give us hope. There will be no more tears, no more pain, no more death or sorrow.

Application: God will dwell with us in the new City and we are made perfect.

The doctrines of the omnipresence of God and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit throughout the history of the church have been doctrines of great comfort and an assurance of the providences of God. But the heart longs for the opportunity to walk visibly with Christ as was the privilege of the first-century apostles.

Verse 3-4

God Gives us Peace

God takes away our Troubles

But the good news is that you don’t have to wait until the event to be realize you are, on the spiritual level made new already.

Paul says You are a new creation in Christ. 2 Cor 5:17

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. ESV. This is what Paul stresses to almost every congregation he writes to or visits.

ISAIAH 43:18-19

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

Truth: God calls us to let go of “former things,” so we can cling to our new identity in Christ.

2 CORINTHIANS 4:16-17

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

Even though we have sorrows, we can give them to God. We can share the burden with others in our church family. We can pray for one another.

Jesus already bore our sins to the father. So stop carrying them around with you. Leave them at the cross. Drop your heavy backpack and free yourself

II. The Best Building Materials (9-21)

The design of the city is crucial. The gates represent the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 apostles.

On each of the gates are inscribed the names of the 12 tribes of Israel. In v. 14 this capital city of the cosmos for all the people of God has foundations that will be described as containing the names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb. Whether the subject is Israel or the church, the rigidity of some premillennialists in arguing that Israel is forever separate from the church might at first blush seem to get some support here but on more careful consideration must be jettisoned just on the basis of this description. It is one city stamped both with the 12 tribes of Israel and with the apostles of the Lamb.

Since the apostles of the Lamb are not specifically named in the text, one cannot be sure what those names included. Almost certainly Judas is not there, but whether the Twelve should include Matthias or Paul is a matter of conjecture.

Jesus himself says in Revelation 3:12, ESV: "The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name."

When you read this entire chapter, you see that for God in his new city, the things we value are now just building materials. Jasper, sapphires, emeralds agates re just foundation adornments.the alls are built with what looks like jasper and gold.

We see this throughout history as a way to show off how rich you are. If you have gold and jewels just hanging on your walls, then you have money to put n the walls. Or on your silverware.

The Incas had so much gold in their possession that they used it for religious items and decoration, but they did not use it as currency or wealth like Europeans did. The way the Inca used gold was what led to the legends of El Dorado and the cites of Gold. But the Land was more valuable to them than Gold. You cant eat gold. You cant wear gold clothing. To keep you warm.

Have you heard of the Amber Room?

Designed in the early 18th century, the Amber Room was an ornate set of floor-to-ceiling wall panels decorated with fossilized amber, semi-precious stones and backed with gold leaf. In 1716, Prussian King Frederick William I gifted the panels, designed to cover 180 square feet, to Russian Emperor Peter the Great as a symbol of Prussia and Russia’s alliance against Sweden.

Modern estimates of the room's value range from $142 million (2007) to over $500 million (2016). Because of its worth, the Nazi’s ransacked it and dismantled it. It was either stored away somewhere or melted down and sold to finance their ultimately failed takeover.

But what may be hard to fathom in seeing this massive city, made out of or adorned with jewels stones and metals seems odd to us, it is well within in God’s design for his world.

Application:

God designs everything perfectly with His ends in mind.

When God created the world in genesis, he said it was Good. When he created mankind, he said it was very good. And then the fall happened. God elects his people and he deals with them graciously

The fall is rectified and this brings Glory to God, because God defeats his enemy at the appointed time.

Jesus coming out of heaven and living on earth and dying on the cross in order to pay for our sins and be resurrected is and was always the plan.

And now God puts the final pieces into place and brings his perfectly constructed city To completely reset and redo Paradise the way that not even Eden could be.

It is like our bodies, our lives and our planet are all us a starter home until you Can move into your forever home, because who likes to move? Not too many people. and this new home has all the stuff you like.

And the best part of it is you are led by God Himself, .

III. The Best Light (22-27)

The majority of the Israelite History has always had a temple. Whether it was the tabernacle made to the exacting specifications just like in the last few verses. Or it was the actual temples that were built by Solomon or rebuilt after the return from the exile.

But instead of setting up another temple, there is no need for a temple. God is the temple. He is the one to worship and he is the one we come to to worship. We don’t need to go to a building. And as come out of COVID or many people even before the lockdowns try to say, well I don’t need to go to a building to worship and so the pastor just confirmed that.

But hear me know folks. Corporate worship is important to God. All of God’s people are worshipping him. What you don’t need to do is come to the building to be seen by others. To come and just socialize and judge others. To get your check Mark for the week like it will help you on the day of judgment. No church, we need to come together to be the church. The writer of Hebrews says let us not forsake the gathering of believers so we can encourage one another.

Hebrews 10:24-26 24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

26 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left,

What we can do is worship god wherever we are because our praise and worship do not stop when we leave these walls. You can read the Bible anytime. You can pray any time, you can love one another anytime. Those things are not just for church.

It sounds like common sense, but as people at work tell me, common sense is not very common and people don’t use it.

The temple is no longer necessary because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb constitute the temple. To be in their presence is to be at the center of the worship of the universe.

All the redeemed can bring into the new creation is their righteous acts (14:13; 19:8), which they continue to perform by praising God. It is these very righteous acts which reflect the divine glory, as a comparison of 19:7–8 with 21:2–8 and 21:9–27 reveals; only that which is clean and holy and thus reflects the glory of God will be admitted to the new Jerusalem.

If this letter is written after 70 AD, this stands as a reminder that the temple is not important because Christ is the final sacrifice and there is no need to conduct those rites or those sacrifices to tone for sins. Jesus has already fulfilled that.

Application:

God is the light you can live your life by, He guides you, helps you see things and removes the darkness

1 John 1:5. This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.

Habakkuk 3:4

His radiance is like the sunlight;

He has rays flashing from His hand,

And there is the hiding of His power

Just Iike the nations the most important thing you can bring to God is your worship, yourself. Your entire self.

Conclusion

So are our earthly struggles worth it? Is it worth hanging on for this idea of heaven and then the new Jerusalem.

Yes. We can have peace with God now. We can worship him now. We can worship Him together as a body of believers.

We can have hope that each day we live is a day closer to seeing God.

We can look forward to the day we get to move into our new home.

So are you joyful and hopeful about each day r are you full of dread and fear?

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