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Feb 14, 2021

Start with the Ending

Start with the Ending

Passage: Revelation 21:1-8

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: All Things New

Keywords: endure, new earth, dwelling place, new heaven

Order of Worship

CALL TO WORSHIP: Romans 8:10-11 & 2 Corinthians 5:17
OT READING: Isaiah 55:1,3,6,10-11
MESSAGE TITLE: Start with the Ending
CENTRAL TEXT: Revelation 21:1-8
RESPONSE: Prayer - Augustine, 354 - 430
BENEDICTION: Revelation 21:1,3,5

Readings & Scripture

CALL TO WORSHIP: Romans 8:10-11 & 2 Corinthians 5:17
LEADER: 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
ALL: 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.[a] The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

OT READING: Isaiah 55:1,3,6,10-11
1“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

3 Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.
6 “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near;

10 “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress, instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;
and it shall make a name for the Lord, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”

CENTRAL TEXT: Revelation 21:1-8
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” 5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” 6 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. 7 The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. 8 But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

RESPONSE: Prayer - Augustine, 354 - 430
ALL: Look upon us, O Lord, and let all the darkness of our souls vanish before the beams of thy brightness. Fill us with holy love, and open to us the treasures of thy wisdom. All our desire is known unto thee, therefore perfect what thou hast begun, and what thy Spirit has awakened us to ask in prayer. We seek thy face, turn thy face unto us and show us thy glory.
Then shall our longing be satisfied, and our peace shall be perfect.

BENEDICTION: Revelation 21:1,3,5
LEADER: 1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

ALL: 5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES:

  • Leviticus 26:12
  • Isaiah 25:8
  • Isaiah 43:19
  • Isaiah 55:1-13
  • Isaiah 65:17-18
  • Ezekiel 37:276
  • Matthew 6:10
  • John 19:30
  • Romans 8:21-23
  • 1 Corinthians 3:16-17
  • 1 Corinthians 13:12
  • 2 Corinthians 5:17, 6:16, 12:22
  • Galatians 4:26
  • Hebrews 11:16
  • 1 John 2:28-3:3

ILLUSTRATIONS:

2.14.21 InView Media Album

Discussion Questions:

  1. Pick a season of your childhood: what would’ve been one of your greatest goods--something you desired both deeply and for a long time? Why that? What measure did you take to acquire it? What would’ve been one of your greatest fears? Why? What steps did you take to avoid it?
  2. What are the several promises involved in this vision of a final future? Why would they be desirable if those promises are true?
  3. What did the sermon argue this passage puts forth as our greatest good? Why would that be our greatest good? How do the warnings in the last verse serve to heighten our sense of that being our greatest good?
  4. We all fear death. We’re told we are enslaved to that fear by no less than the Enemy himself (Hebrews 2:15). What are the reasons you fear it? What reasons does God give us to at least confront that fear?
  5. What tends to motivate people today? Name several possibilities. What does this passage suggest is meant to motivate us?
  6. On what basis could anyone rest in this fantastical vision of the future? What’s to be “done” on the days or seasons when that vision seems either too remote or too impossible to believe?
  7. The sermon ended with a summary thought from C.S. Lewis through his imaginary arch-demon, Wormwood: “[God] would therefore have them continually concerned either with Eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present — either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.” If these are the priorities of a believer, in order to both live out and rest in this final version of the future, what would it look like for you to begin (or continue) practicing these rhythms?

QUOTES:

  • Modern man fulfills his urge to self expansion in the love object just as it was once fulfilled in God. - Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
  • No human relationship can bear the burden of godhood… However much we idolize him [the love partner], he inevitably reflects earthly decay and imperfection. And as he is our ideal measure of value, this imperfection falls back upon us. If your partner is you “All’ then any shortcoming in him becomes a major threat to you. Ernest- Becker, The Denial of Death
  • The things I loved were very frail, very fragile. I didn’t know that. I thought they were indestructible. They weren’t. - The professor in The Sunset Limited
  • It's an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death. Even corporations with their reward systems don't try to make it posthumous. -Gloria Steinem
  • What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’—could set up on their own as if they had created themselves—be their own masters—invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy. Lewis, C. S.. Mere Christianity
  • It seemed to Peter Lake that the city, or as much as he had seen of it, was similar to the cloud wall. Its motion, the sounds erupting from all directions, the great vitality, struck him as a cloud wall laid flat, like a boiling carpet. But, whereas the wall was white, the city was a palette of upwelling colors. Its forms and geometry entranced him… He was overcome by feeling. The city was a box of fire, and he was inside, burning and shaking, pierced continually by sights too sharp to catalog. - Mark Helprin, Winter’s Tale
  • For what can be imagined more beautiful than a perfectly just city rejoicing in justice alone?  - Mark Helprin, Winter’s Tale
  • . . .there were two ways through life - the way of nature and the way of grace.  Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. . . .Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things. - From Terence Malick’s Tree of Life
  • The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would ordinarily be called unsuccessful marriages, or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in reality. I think everyone knows what I mean. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may be a very interesting job: but something has evaded us. - C.S. Lewis
  • The Christian should see two realities at once, one world (as it were) within another: one the world as we all know, in all its beauty and terror, grandeur and dreariness, delight and anguish; and the other the world in its first and ultimate truth, not simply “nature” but “creation,” an endless sea of glory, radiant with the beauty of God in every part, innocent of all violence. To see in this way is to rejoice and mourn at once, to regard the world as a mirror of infinite beauty, but as glimpsed through the veil of death; it is to see creation in chains, but beautiful as in the beginning of days. - David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea
  • through the ages of the world we have fought the long defeat. - Galadriel
  • All the animal life in us, all schemes of happiness that centred in this world, were always doomed to a final frustration. In ordinary times only a wise man can realise it. Now the stupidest of us know. We see unmistakably the sort of universe in which we have all along been living, and must come to terms with it. If we had foolish un-Christian hopes about human culture, they are now shattered. If we thought we were building up a heaven on earth, if we looked for something that would turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city satisfying the soul of man, we are disillusioned, and not a moment too soon. - C.S. Lewis, “Learning in a time of war”
  • Hamlet was someone whose doubts made him incapable of acting right. Hamlet was frozen:to be or not to be. That's the question. But. . .Hamlet had it backwards. . . your doubts should free you, because once you've accepted that you don't know what happens next, that you can't predict or plan everything in your life, then you're free to act. Because what's holding you back? . . .I think my father thought that Hamlet was wrong. He believed in God. Even though no mathematical proof exists of God's existence, doubt did not compromise his faith. It was what gave him freedom to believe. - Malcolm Gladwell in the eulogy for his father.
  • I don't know what to say except that the worst misfortune isn't only misfortune. - Rev. Ames in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead
  • The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. He would therefore have them continually concerned either with Eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present — either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure. - Wormwood in The Screwtape Letters

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