Christ s Return: A New Heaven and a New Earth! Revelation 21:1-5 March 25, 2018 Rev. Dave Benedict Not everyone is looking forward to heaven. Why not? Because, frankly, for more people than you would guess, it just seems too boring for something that lasts, you know, forever. In my second favorite book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Huck describes a conversation about heaven with old Miss Watson, his dreary Sunday School teacher. She said she was going to live so as to go to the Good Place, and she said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn t think much of it. And it s not just Huck. There was a television advertising jingle a few years back that described, for our world, this disinterest in heaven; In heaven there is no beer... that's why we drink it here. In other words, better have all the fun you can while you're still here on earth, because the afterlife will no fun at all. But it s not just no fun that seems boring. It s the prospect of nothing to do that s hard to take, as well. As my retirement draws nearer, I m getting some good advice from retired people who ve been through it all. Get some rest, they say, but you ve got a lot of life left, and you can t just rest the whole time. You have to find something meaningful to do, too. I m sure they re right. What s this got to do with heaven? Listen to this quote from Randy Alcorn s book about heaven... A pastor once confessed to me, Whenever I think about Heaven, it makes me depressed. I d rather just cease to exist when I die. Why? I asked. I can t stand the thought of that endless tedium. To float around in the clouds with nothing to do but strum a harp... it s all so terribly boring. Heaven doesn t sound much better than Hell. I d rather be nowhere than spend eternity in a place like that. Wow. To him, heaven, as he s come to understand it, sounds not only boring, but meaningless. He d rather be gone than be in a place like that, forever. If a pastor thinks about heaven that way, what must be going on in the heads of people in the pews, not to mention people on the street?
Maybe that s why Christians just don t think much about heaven. It s hard to imagine it as all that appealing. What about you? When you think about what heaven will be like, do you find yourself disinterested in it, or even put off by it? At long last in this series, we re going to talk about heaven. And it might seem like we should finally talk about what heaven is going to be like. Do people imagine heaven as boring and unappealing because they just don t understand what it will be like? If we could just get a better idea of what heaven will be like, then we would look forward to it more? Well, yes and no. It s true that our imagination of heaven is terribly inadequate, most of us, even if we look to the Bible to guide us. But this is because most of us are asking the wrong question of our Bibles, and so the answer we find seems, indeed, inadequate. We ask our Bibles, What is heaven going to be like? when we should be asking What is heaven about?. We ll get a better sense of what heaven is going be like if we start by asking what heaven is about. So, what is heaven about? Here is the simple, profound answer. Heaven is about restoration. Heaven is the result of God's long and costly efforts to restore His perfect creation from the damage caused by our sin. Genesis 3. Humanity s fall into sin wasn t just about humanity. God s immediate and utterly holy response to Adam and Eve s sin was to place His curse upon the land so that mankind would always be reminded of their rebellion. And Romans 8 reminds us of the extent of that curse...the entire creation groans under the curse of sin. The universe, our planet, all of nature the environment, animals, plant life and everything mankind touches cultures, institutions, art, music, politics, everything. Every aspect of life on earth has been under the curse of the Fall, groaning to be set free. But Revelation 22:3 describes heaven this way; no longer will there be any curse. When Jesus returns, the curse will be reversed and God s intention for His Creation will be restored. Heaven is about restoration. And heaven is only about us because you and I are part of what is being restored. This is a hugely important concept to get right. Otherwise, in our sin, we'll imagine heaven as an extension of our personal self-interest. And we'll pervert it in the process. Heaven is about restoration. OK. The next step in coming to imagine heaven, then, is to ask, what will be restored? As we answer that question, we can begin to fill in the picture of what heaven will be like.
The first thing that will be restored from the brokenness of sin will be heaven and earth itself. Did you notice, from our text this morning, the emphasis on a new heaven and a new earth? When Jesus returns, He will usher in a new heaven and a new earth. The heaven and the earth we've known will be no more; 2 Peter 3:10 tells us that they will disappear in a roar and a flash of fire, and a new heaven and a new earth will take their place for eternity. Have you ever taken on a major restoration project...maybe you've had water damage in your family room, or something? You know, then, don't you, that you can't just cover over the damage with a coat of fresh paint or a new piece of carpet. You have to rip out the damaged places and put in all new materials. That's what will happen to the current heaven and the earth when Jesus comes. The damage caused by sin won't be painted over. It will be ripped out and replaced. All new. Both heaven and earth. Yes, heaven, too, needs to be restored. After all, heaven is where the rebellion against God began; Lucifer and one third of God s angels rebelled, tainting heaven itself with sin. God will create a new heaven and then He will bring it to a new earth, where God will dwell with all His creatures That s a subject for another series, which I ll leave for another pastor. But the implications for us are obvious. God will create a new earth upon which we will dwell forever. We won't spend our eternity rolling around in the clouds with harps. That idea comes from the ancient Greeks, like Plato, not from the Bible. According to the Bible, our eternity will be spent on an all new, physical earth, although it will be an earth quite unlike the damaged and cursed one we've known. The new earth will be completely restored from the damage of the curse. It will be what God intended earth to be in Creation when He pronounced it good. That's about all we know from the Bible. But from there, it's not hard to set our Biblical imaginations to work. What will the new earth be like? Who knows! But my favorite way to imagine it comes from C. S. Lewis' little book, The Last Battle, from the Chronicles of Narnia. He suggests that what we experience on earth now is only the shadow of what the new earth will be like. The best and most beautiful of our experiences of this planet are but mere shadows of what they will be on the new earth.
Take mountains, for instance. As you know, I love mountains; the snowcapped peaks, the alpine meadows, the crystal-blue lakes and rushing streams, the wild flowers, and the trees. But when I see the mountains on the new earth compared to the ones I love so much now, I'll know what mountains were supposed to be like, before the curse. And they will take my breath away. Listen to this passage from the book, when all the characters find themselves in heaven, at last. It was the unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed, and then cried, "I have come home at last! This is my real country. I belong here. This is the land I've been looking for all my life, though I never knew it until now. The reason we loved our old country is that it sometimes looked a little like this." Maybe that's what we'll all say, too. After Jesus comes. The reason we loved our old earth was because, every now and then, it gave us a glimpse of what the new, restored earth our real home will be like. What else will be restored? We will. Our souls and our bodies. First, our souls will be restored. Glorification, theologians call it. And it simply means this; we will be transformed into creatures who never sin. Never have the impulse to sin, never experience the temptation of sin, never experience the consequences of sin. We will be like Jesus in this way. All love, all the time. And it will never be a selfish love, like now, but a love focused on God and experienced by others. Our souls will be restored from the disfigurement of sin; our emotions no heartache, no brokenness, no despair. And think about this; a sinless soul will have a capacity for joy we can barely imagine, a capacity that increases forever. I love how Dave Modal imagines it; Each moment in heaven will always be fuller, deeper, and richer. You will never look upon the same reality twice without some new way in which to enjoy it. You will look at each day through some new lens, where you see more clearly, understand more fully, and feel more deeply the truest joy ever-increasing, ever-full joy for all eternity. And our bodies. Following Christ's return and the Great Judgment, the Bible tells us that we will receive resurrection bodies to replace the ones that died while we were on earth. But not just a new body, a restored body. The body we were intended to have, in the beginning, before sin. A body that will never know disease, or aging, or frailty, or cancer. A body that can run and never tire. A body that will never die.
Our bodies, too, are under the curse of sin. We began feeling the effects of sin we began dying from sin the moment we were born. But in heaven, our restored bodies will match our restored souls. Perfectly. What will these new bodies look like? There's no Biblical reason to believe they will look any different that they do now, that is to say, human. Will we be young or old? Will children remain children? Will we look like ourselves? We don't know. Maybe I'll look a bit more like George Clooney. Jesus appeared in a resurrection body. He ate food and breathed air. And people recognized Him. So, I imagine that our restored bodies will be like that. We ll be very physical, and we ll enjoy it. We ll eat, walk, run. With our perfected bodies, we ll work, and play, and create. Our intellect, our emotions, our personalities will all be restored, as well, so our souls and our bodies will work together as God created them to do. What else will be restored? Relationships will be restored. We were created for relationships, first with God and then with one another. So, we can imagine that heaven will be completely saturated with pure and enriching relationships, with our God and with our fellow humans. The Bible tells us that, in the Garden, Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the evening. They were absolutely unafraid of God, fully comfortable in His presence, their love for Him was constant and abiding. So, think of the best moments you've ever had with God, however brief or fleeting. Those will be normal between you and Him in heaven, only better and better, forever. Just as God intended. But, more than that, the Bible tells us that, before they fell into sin, Adam and Eve s relationship was utterly transparent. A bond of love unhindered by jealousy, self-interest, power, deception, unfaithfulness, or greed. Remember, Jesus told us, in Mark 12:25, that marriage, as we know it, won t be part of life in heaven, so maybe the relational intimacy we find now only in marriage will be the norm for all relationships. Maybe. In any case, in heaven, our relationships will be restored, all of them. So, rather than thinking of heaven as just me, my harp, and Jesus think of heaven as a never-ending web of the best moments you ve ever had with those you love most. Those moments will be normal, only better. And in heaven, it will be with anyone and everyone. There will be no such thing as a bad relationship. God will restore the centrality of relationships in heaven because we were made for relationships.
What else will be restored in heaven? I m going to suggest that the purpose and meaning of work will be restored. Work and rest (including play), each in their turn. After all, we were created in the image of a God who both works and rests. God didn t place Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to do nothing all day. He gave them meaningful work to do, together. We call this work the Stewardship Mandate. We were place in charge of God s Creation to care for it and cultivate the possibilities He placed within it, together. The new earth, in all likelihood, will be a wild and wonderful place that will take eternity to explore and develop. We ll need all our wits and our skill sets and the synergy of collaborating with each other s gifts to care for and cultivate its possibilities. So, don t imagine heaven like this...a boring eternity floating in the clouds. Imagine it as frontier after frontier, discovery after discovery, possibilities galore, marvelous creatures to discover, to name, to care for, to enjoy (remember, exploitation is part of a greedy, sinful world, so there ll be none of that in heaven...). At heart, are you a scientist, or an explorer, or an inventor? An artist, or a musician, or a writer? A builder, a gardener, a caregiver, a teacher, a thinker, a doer, an organizer? We re all hard-wired by God for something, aren t we? It s just there within us; some enterprise fills us with a sense purpose and a feeling that we are being our true selves when we re doing it, that it means something when we ve done it. In this life, we don t all get to be and to do what we were wired to be and do, but in heaven, I believe, we will. God will restore the connection between working and being that He intended. So, don t plan of being bored in heaven; plan on being fulfilled by work in a way we only glimpse occasionally in this life. And we ll play in heaven, because play is part of rest, and we need to rest. We bear the image of a God who rests. Me? I m looking forward to hiking without getting tired, and skiing without getting hurt, and playing golf without...well, without swearing. What kind of play refreshes and gives you life? You can imagine it will be part of your eternity in heaven, because heaven is about restoring all things, even play. I started by stating that heaven isn't about us; it is about restoration. But I hope you can see now, that heaven is for us. When mankind entered our
rebellion against God, He could have simply chosen to forget the whole thing. He could have dealt with the problem by wiping out the Creation as a bad idea. But He chose, instead, to restore His Creation. And He went through hell, literally, to do it. To our eternal benefit. Heaven may not be about us, but it is for us. Everything about God's restoration benefits us. If you have placed your faith in Jesus, the Christ, as your Lord and Savior, then you can look forward to an eternity of restored life and relationship with Him. Let s finish by returning to part of the text Janel/Linda read for us earlier. Revelation 21:3-5. Whatever marvels we imagine heaven to include, and I hope we are imagining a lot, we must remember that heaven will be heaven because it will be the restored place where God lives with His people just, as He intended. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Look! God s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. 5 He who was seated on the throne said, I am making everything new! Then he said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. And all God s people said, Amen.