The "Why" of Revelation

Man, it has been an amazing year, and today we get to wrap up something really special that we've been doing all year long.

I wanna show you guys a real quick video.

Our video team does a great job uh when we need video stuff, and they they made what I think is a pretty amazing recap of the year that we've had as far as teaching goes, because we've been doing something really special this year.

And maybe you're coming in and this is your first Sunday or you haven't been here in a while or you've forgotten what we've been doing all year long.

Since this is the last Sunday that we're wrapping everything up, I think this will help you sort of be reminded of where we've been and where we are.

Okay?

So take a look at this and we'll come back together.

Today we get to officially kick off something that we we did a brief overview of last week called the whole story.

We started something that we've never done before called the whole story.

But we're calling the whole story.

The whole story.

The whole story, the whole story, the whole story.

We have uh been doing something all year long.

I'm gonna keep saying this at the beginning of every message this year.

We're doing something called the whole story.

The whole story, the whole story, the whole story, the whole story, the whole story.

Sunday, we started a brand new series that may have my favorite title in the history of the titles that we've ever had for series.

It's just called So Much Blood.

That's the name of the series that we're in.

So if you're a first timer, welcome, welcome.

I'm so glad you're here.

We're talking about the whole story, the whole story, the whole story, the whole story.

The whole story.

We are obviously in the midst of an amazing study this year.

And so we're calling this the the the the whole whole whole story with story, story, story, story, story, story.

The whole story, the whole story, the whole story.

All right, let's just start here.

Uh if if you're here for the very first time, my name's Justin.

It's nice to meet you.

We have spent this entire year doing something really interesting.

Uh we've called it the whole story, the whole story.

The whole story.

The whole story.

The whole story.

The entire story, story of story, the whole story.

The whole story.

The whole story.

We've been doing something all year long.

You guys have heard me do this little disclaimer at the front of the message all year long, and we've only got a few more left.

We've done something called the whole story.

So uh full disclosure.

Joshua on our staff made that video, and he and I didn't know they were doing that, and he showed it to me, and I could tell he couldn't tell, like, either I was gonna love it or he was gonna get fired.

Um, I love that.

I love that.

And so we've been doing something all year long called the whole story.

We've taken the whole story of the Bible and we've broken it into 14 different series, and we've been making our way through those all year long.

And today we are wrapping up the very last series.

This is something we started about a month ago, and this series is called How It Ends.

How It Ends.

And we've been going through the book of Revelation, and it's been an interesting experience for me.

It's funny when I watched that video, it's really cool because um that video that we just watched uh was like it was like beginning of the year, I started losing weight because I was working out real hard, and then it started coming back on because I gave up.

And so I got to watch like progress and then regression in that video.

But the one constant, all right, not my weight, but the one constant throughout the year was the dread that I had about teaching revelation.

Because I've avoided it my, I mean, I've literally avoided it my entire 20 or so years in full-time ministry.

Like I've I've I've used Revelation, I've mentioned Revelation, but I've I've never gone through it.

And in part, I was intimidated.

There's a million, I mean, come on, like revelation is challenging.

It is difficult.

And what's funny is that this has ended up being my absolute favorite study, at least in my own personal time.

Um I'm so grateful that that this year made me do this because it's opened my eyes to some aspects of revelation that I've just never really, I've never noticed before.

I grew up at a time when everyone was kind of obsessed with revelation, and in the church culture I was part of, it was like, it's happening, like it's probably happening, guys.

It's happening, it's happening.

But it was very fear-based.

It was almost like the idea was like, man, I hope I'm not alive when this happens.

And as I've got to study this, I've realized, my goodness, that is, that was never, ever the takeaway for Revelation.

That is not what the Lord desired for us to feel.

It's not about fear, it's about hope, it's about encouragement.

It's something we actually should look forward to.

That's why pretty much every previous generation of Jesus followers has prayed what we see at the end of Revelation, Lord, come quickly.

Like, bring this on soon, because this world needs it.

And today we get to sort of wrap all this up.

Now, we've called this series How It Ends, and we've decided to try to answer that question of how with three other questions.

And so we started with the question of who, not when, but but who.

When is the question that we always want to ask?

When is the question that we think about the most?

It's just that's our nature as people, like when is this going to happen?

When?

And that's something we actually see in scripture.

Jesus in Matthew chapter 24 uh teaches about a lot of end times, at least end times sounding things.

Matthew 24 · chapter mention

And it says that in verse 3 that his disciples came to him on the Mount of Olives privately and said, Tell us when.

When will all this happen?

What sign will signal your return and the end of the world?

And Jesus goes on to describe a lot of different things, and he describes wars and earthquakes and natural disasters and all kinds of craziness and turmoil, basically just the news.

And uh and in verse 36, he says something interesting.

He says, However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself, talking about himself.

Only the Father knows.

And then Jesus dies and he raises again and he comes back and he's with his disciples after he's resurrected.

And it says in Acts 1, verse 6, when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?

Acts 1:6

There they are again with the when question.

Like, is it now?

Is it is it now?

It's gotta be now, right?

And Jesus again says, the Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know.

So it's just so interesting that we typically, we typically obsess over the when.

That's our nature.

We're like the disciples.

I mean, they they ask Jesus clearly, when is all this gonna happen?

And he's like, that's not for you to know.

And then not very long after that, they're like, hey, like, come on, when?

Now?

Is it now?

Is it about to happen?

And he goes, What did I tell you?

It is not for you to know.

There's nothing wrong with us wondering, there's nothing wrong with us asking that question, but it's so clear that the question of when is not a question we're supposed to obsess over.

And when we get obsessed about the when, when we read Revelation as if it's sort of like this guidebook, this sort of decoder book about figuring out all the timing of everything, that that is, it doesn't lead us to a good place most of the time.

And that's not that's not the way it was intended to be read, because if that was the way that it was intended to be read, then you could go back in time and tell every generation of Christians living before, don't even read it.

It's not, it has nothing to do with you because you're clearly not living in the last times.

So there's other questions that we have to ask.

If we're gonna figure out how it ends and what it's all about, we've got to ask other questions, not just when.

And so we looked at the question of who.

Like who is revelation about?

And revelation is about Jesus.

And I'm not just saying that as like the cliche church answer, like Jesus, it's about Jesus.

No, no.

Revelation gives us the most complete picture of Jesus we have in the entirety of Scripture.

All through Scripture, we see images of Jesus, even in the Old Testament.

We see hints, we see aspects.

Jesus comes as a person.

Right?

He is not a person, he became a person.

He was a person for a time, but he is more than a person.

He is God.

And in Revelation, we see Jesus in his fullness in a way that we don't see in any other part of Scripture.

Jesus, uh Revelation gives us this complete version of Jesus, and our options are either worship him or reject him.

Like that's that's the options that Revelation gives.

There's no way to take the Jesus of Revelation, revealed in all of his glory and all of his magnificence and all of his authority.

You look at that Jesus and you can't be like neutral on him.

You either you either bow before him and worship him in recognition of who he is, or you just say, I don't believe that and I reject that, but it's it's powerful, it's it's amazing.

So who?

It's about Jesus, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, as Revelation says, the Alpha and the Omega, like He's everything.

And our second question, we looked at this last week, is the question of where.

Where?

As you read Revelation, it's it's hard to keep track of, but it's it's going back and forth between heaven and earth, heaven and earth.

Something happens in heaven, and there's so much symbolism, right?

A scroll is unsealed, or a bowl is poured out, or a trumpet is blown, and it's highly symbolic language.

And every time something happens in heaven, something happens correspondingly on the earth, and a lot of it's very intense.

And so sometimes we read it and we're like, ooh, this is hard to read, this is hard to wrap my head around.

This sounds really, really intense, but it's it's so powerful and encouraging because we we remember in Revelation that heaven and earth are deeply connected.

Sometimes we can wonder when we see crazy things happening on the earth, when we see really horrible things happening, we can wonder, God, are you paying attention?

Why are you letting this happen?

That's a question that we ask as people very often.

God, why are you letting this happen?

And Revelation shows us that God is not just letting things happen that very often some of the craziest things that we see in the world are actually, they're actually part of God bringing this world to its conclusion.

Heaven and earth are connected, and that should give us hope.

Nothing is happening here that is random, nothing is happening that is out of God's purview or out of God's control.

And even the hardest things that we see are part of something bigger and something greater.

And that where question sort of comes to a head as we get to the very end of Revelation in chapter 21, John says, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.

The old heaven and the old earth had disappeared, and the sea was also gone, and I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband.

The end of Revelation gives us this image of heaven and earth coming together.

We don't leave earth to go to heaven, that's the language we typically use, that's how we think, but the way that this is all wrapping up, the way that history is moving, the point that it's moving to is an absolute reunion of heaven and earth, where the two are one.

And that's a really that's a really beautiful thing.

Today we're gonna try to wrap this up the best that we can by answering, I think, the most important question that we can ask.

And it's the question, why?

Why?

Like, why do these things need to take place?

What is the overall purpose that God is trying to accomplish?

If we can understand why, if we understand the purpose, it helps us put everything else into the proper context.

So today we're gonna explore why.

As I've been reading all this and reading books about it and commentaries about it, it's amazing to me how much just how much trouble God goes through to rescue and redeem this world.

Like it's a lot of trouble.

He's very involved.

And if you read this, the whole story of the Bible, I don't know if you guys knew this, but this whole year we've done something called the whole story, and we've gone through the entire story of the Bible, right?

Like, I mean, at every single turn, we've given God a lot of really good reasons to just say, I'm out.

I mean, it's human history.

And this applies on like a macro level.

You look at history, you look at nations, you look at cultures.

There's just so many things that that happen, and you would totally understand if God would look at the earth and be like, I've done all I can do, I'm done.

It's also true on a micro level, with all of us individually.

I mean, this is something that I think about often, I talk about it from time to time.

Love is a funny thing, and that usually we love out of ignorance.

Like we love people that we don't know very well.

The more you get to know someone, the harder it is to love them.

This happens a lot in life if we're really honest about it.

We love the idea of things, and then you actually have an experience, and you're like, ah, this is not as good as I thought it would be.

And let's be honest, some of us have had that happen in really hard situations in life.

Maybe it's been a relationship, maybe it's been a church.

It's like, I love it, I just don't know very much about it.

And then you learn more, you're like, I don't love it anymore.

To love something when you see its absolute worst is a whole other thing.

God never loves us out of ignorance, he knows everything about us.

And knowing all of our worst aspects, knowing all of our darkness and all of our selfishness and all that we're capable of, the thoughts that we're capable of alone, he loves us.

He goes through so much trouble.

And that's what I want to start with.

Why, why?

Why does God do all that he does?

Why is he so committed to finishing what he started when he created this world?

Why does he stay so committed to us even though we struggle and we fall short so much?

And the first the first answer is love.

It's love.

God and he loves us.

And he demonstrates that love by just how much trouble he's willing to go through to make this right.

I got a really interesting picture of that uh in the last the last week or so.

Um for years, my my wife and I have you know, we've kind of divided and conquered when it comes to Christmas.

And so uh I actually am the one that gets the most excited about the gifts.

Like I start in October, I'm like, hey, let's start talking through like what we're gonna get the kids this year.

We we let our kids, some of you guys might let your kids make a list.

We don't.

Um that's fine to do that.

I get that.

We just, I don't know, we like to be in control.

We're more dictators uh at home.

No, I'm teasing.

No, no, we we just get really excited.

They they do have things that they ask for, and we always make sure that there's some of that on there, but we also like to go, man, what would really bless them?

What would they like?

And so we start doing this.

I get into it in like October.

Now, when it comes time like to purchase the gifts, I'm super involved in that.

You know, I'm on Amazon, I'm like, let's get that, let's get that.

But then when they arrive and it's time to prepare them and you know, wrap them and all of that, I'm like, I'm out.

This is uh I I helped her a little bit the last few years with wrapping, I'm not nearly as good at it, but this year I got I got to see a whole different perspective on it because I went with Megan to get all the stuff necessary for wrapping the gifts.

You know when when you have like a birthday for someone that you don't really love, but you have to go.

Um just being honest, like you like them, you need to be there, but it's just not a level of love.

There's what you do, right?

You get the gift on the way to the party, and then at the place you get the gift, you grab a little bag and some tissue paper, and you just go, stuff it in there, and you're like, hey, I got this for you.

I thought of you when I saw it, right?

But you you put as little time as possible into that process, right?

You're like, okay, that is as polar opposite of what I have watched my wife do for our children in this last week or so.

So, number one, I got to watch her pick out the wrapping paper for our kids.

I thought this would be like a five-second process.

You walk up, you're like, we got four kids.

There's a red one, a white one, a blue one, a green one, boom, boom, boom.

But she's like, no, which paper speaks about our child?

Like, it was the involvement, the thinking.

She sat there and looked at all these options and was like, which one feels like Judah?

And, you know, I thought we'd be there for five minutes.

Oh, no.

I won't even tell you how long it took us to pick out to pick out paper.

And then it then, and I thought we were done, we got the paper.

Sweet, that's all you need, paper tape.

She's like, no, ribbon.

Like, what?

Ribbon?

You know, and and I've never even thought about ribbon in my entire life.

It's never even been a thing that I've, I mean, I guess it's a thing that exists.

I don't spend much time with ribbon, but we went and I was like, what about this ribbon?

And she's like, No, it's too thin.

Okay.

Found another ribbon.

She really liked this one ribbon, but they only had one, and she needed three.

And I'm like, well, you're just gonna have to pick something else.

She's like, no, there has to be more in this store.

And so we literally went up and down aisles, and finally we did find randomly in different places we got the ribbon.

And then last night, last night, as I was actually kind of doing the final touches on the message and just praying through some things and thinking through some things, the whole time I'm doing that, she's she's wrapping their gifts.

And I mean, there is like a level of perfection, each gift wrapped, ribbon tied around it, gifts put together and ribbon tied around those to the point where she's like, now put this in like the closet where we hide the stuff.

And uh, and I'm like, it it like it won't even stack on top of itself anymore because the ribbons will get smushed, and so we had to do some really interesting.

I say we, she had to do some really interesting things to get it all to fit.

It was amazing, like watching the amount of involvement and care.

She went through so much trouble for something that our kids aren't even gonna notice.

Like they're not gonna, they're gonna see, they're gonna rip through it, throw it away, but for her, the level of love that she has for our children, she is excited to go through what, from my perspective, is like an unnecessary amount of trouble to bless them.

That's love.

That's love.

God is so invested in us and in this world.

And I fully believe that if any of us were God, we would have tapped out a long time ago.

Like we the whole story would have been much shorter.

We'd have gotten about Genesis chapter 12, and it was like, and then God left, and that would be it.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

And everyone would be like, that makes a lot of sense.

That makes a lot of sense, honestly.

But he stays with us, and in Revelation, you see all this trouble, all the detail, all the events in history, all the working out of everything, all the patience, all the patience for all the wickedness in this world and all the intensity, and you realize this is love.

This is a God who loves the world.

This is a God who loves people, and he will not stop doing whatever is necessary for this world and for each of us.

It's love, it's powerful, and it's amazing, and that's gonna bring us to number two and salvation.

Salvation.

If you read Revelation chapter seven, it's a really interesting chapter, it's a lot of numbers.

In Revelation, almost everything is symbolic, and that doesn't mean that it can't be literal and symbolic at the same time.

There's many arguments about that.

A few weeks ago we did kind of a Revelation primer and we talked about some of those dynamics, but the language of Revelation is highly symbolic.

Even, and you might even say, especially when it comes to numbers.

And there's this one number that we see in Revelation, and it's the number in Revelation 7, the number 144,000.

And it describes 144,000 people coming to the Lord.

In other words, being saved, repenting and committing their lives to the Lord and coming into relationship with God.

144,000.

And that's a big number, but it's a symbolic number.

Many people have talked about what that number could be.

There's been a lot written about it.

Typically, the number a thousand used in scripture is like a hyperbolic number.

It doesn't mean a thousand specifically, it means like a vast, vast multitude.

Let me give you an example.

Um, Psalm chapter 50.

Psalms 50 · chapter mention

God is talking and he's talking about the sacrifices that his people make.

Back in their day, it was animal sacrifices, and he said, I do not need the bulls from your barns or the goats from your pens.

For all the animals of the forest are mine, and I own the cattle on a thousand hills.

Now, when he says that, he's not saying it's just a thousand hills.

Like, there's a thousand hills and I own those, but then the rest of the hills and the cattle and all that stuff, that's not mine.

That's not what he's saying.

Like it's just a number that's meant to be like, hey, picture a number bigger than you can even like think of.

A thousand in Scripture very often is just a massive, massive number.

It's used in hyperbolic ways.

So we're told that to the Lord to the Lord, a day is like a thousand years.

Like for us as human beings, a thousand years is crazy.

Like we have a lifespan maybe of a hundred years, and a thousand years, it's it's nuts.

And so that number thousand, it means vast multitude.

And then 144 is a really interesting number because many scholars have looked at this and the way that Revelation is written, this isn't just me talking crazy.

This is not like I have things on a on like a board.

A bulletin board, and I've got like yarn going to it, and then number 12, and number 12, and what it's not that.

No, this is this is scholarly stuff because these numbers were very meaningful and rich in the culture in which they were written.

Number 12 is a really important number in scripture.

It's the number of disciples that Jesus chose, it's the number of tribes that there were in Israel as well.

And so you take 12, multiply it by 12, you get 144, right?

So you have the Old Testament, 12 tribes of Israel, the New Testament, the 12 apostles, the 12 disciples, and then a thousand that gets to 144,000.

I know this is crazy, stay with me.

What it's trying to say is that there is this unimaginable number of people who come to the Lord.

And we see even more of that as we keep reading in Revelation chapter 7.

Revelation 7 · chapter mention

He says, After this, I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language standing in front of the throne before the Lamb.

They were clothed in white robes and they held palm branches in their hands, and they were shouting with a great roar salvation comes from our God, who sits on the throne and from the Lamb.

Salvation.

It's a powerful word.

And I think it's a word if you've grown up in church that you've heard a lot, and it's a word that we can very easily underestimate.

I know I have.

That word, by the way, salvation, it helps us understand why there's so much intensity in the book of Revelation, why there's so much war metaphor and war language.

Revelation jumps back and forth between like wedding language, like the church is a bride and the bride is prepared for the groom, Jesus.

But then there's a lot of war language.

And sometimes we have a hard time with that.

We have a hard time with the intensity.

But guys, the war language totally makes sense if you understand the true meaning of salvation.

There's a big difference between needing salvation and needing assistance.

Right?

Like, think about the cry that would come out of you if you needed saved, if you were in absolute mortal danger.

The way you would scream help if you truly needed saved.

Versus the way you would cry for help if you needed some assistance.

Right?

That's one of the hard things about being a parent, is sometimes two-year-olds who need assistance will scream at you as if they need saved.

And as a parent, you're just like, what, what's going on?

And they're like, they tell you, and you're like, what?

No, wow, okay.

Um but no, honestly, as like as an adult, if you truly needed saved, you didn't just need some help.

Like, how intense would your your cry be?

Salvation is it is a battle.

Because the the story that Scripture paints for us, and this has been a story that's been painted the entire time, and we see it come to its culmination in revelation, is this world needs saved.

This world is not in need of God's assistance.

And I'm not saying this to be cynical, I'm not saying this to have a negative view of the world.

But if you read Revelation, it just makes it so clear that there is an enemy.

And we talked about this last week.

A lot of the symbolism, the enemy is the dragon in Revelation.

We have an enemy.

Satan is our enemy, and he's evil.

He's evil, and he's cunning.

And then last week we talked about this idea of these beasts.

We see a dragon, we see beasts, and then you're like, oh, this is crazy.

I'm talking about 144,000, dragons and beasts, whatever.

Well, the beasts are their symbols of, typically in the Bible, this happens in Daniel and other places, of world powers, governments.

And here's the language that Revelation gives us the the world powers, the powers that be, they're in league with the dragon.

They get their power from the dragon.

So if we can look at the world and say, okay, do can I look at the world and can I see entire nations in history, entire governments, empires committed to evil, how many could we even name?

Oh my goodness.

Oh my goodness, you look back and you see the atrocities and the evil and the oppression done by the greatest nations in terms of power and money, it's it's unimaginable.

This world does not need assistance.

This world needs rescue.

This world needs salvation.

And so, yeah.

And so we see this intense language and all this war metaphor.

We see it in Revelation because it's trying to remind us to not allow ourselves to believe that we're just in need of a little bit of help from God, that things are going great.

We just need God to give us that little extra.

But no, in reality, there is so much brokenness, there is so much pain, there is so much evil, there is so much oppression in this world.

This world needs saving.

And if we could see it like it actually is, if we could see it with our right mind, we would cry out to God, come now, save us.

You've got to save this world.

Revelation is about salvation.

Peter, in 2 Peter chapter 3, wrote, Do not forget this one thing, dear friends.

2 Peter 3 · chapter mention

With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, a thousand years are like a day.

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.

Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

Excuse me.

God wants everyone to come to repentance.

And so Revelation shows us that God is waiting.

And he's being patient, and he's working things out, and he's calling out to the world, he's saying, Hey, come to me.

Jesus in Revelation chapter 3 says, Here I am, I stand at the door and knock, and if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and I will eat with that person and they with me.

Revelation 3 · chapter mention

This world needs saving, and I need saving.

We all do.

And if we could look at ourselves with sober eyes, with a right mind, we would say, Lord, I don't just need some help.

Rescue me from myself, from my sin, from this world.

And for us as Jesus followers, there's a moment of salvation.

Salvation is both a moment and a process.

There's a moment where you give your life to Jesus, and we call that salvation.

And when you repent and you come to Jesus, you're forgiven of every sin.

You're covered by his sacrifice on the cross.

He paid the price for you because that is what sin deserves is death.

And he took that for us.

But then we we're told in Scripture to work out our salvation.

It's a process.

In Revelation, God is not just saving people, He's saving this entire world.

That's why.

That's why He does all that He does.

Even the judgment, the judgment isn't, it's not just to punish, it's it beckons you to change.

Those of us who have children, or those of us who maybe have positions of authority in a company, we know what that's like.

You've had someone that you've disciplined, but it's not just to make them feel bad, it's not just to make them go, here, you did something wrong, now take this.

Maybe you are like that, and you know, you need saved if that's the case, but so do we all.

But but no, like we've all had those moments where what we've done, the consequence that we've given, the discipline that we've given, it's corrective, it's designed to get your attention and say, please change.

Please, like, turn things around because I want so much more for you.

And that's what we see in Revelation, the judgment.

It's like God is telling the world, hey, I'm not gonna let you get comfortable.

I'm not gonna allow you to believe that everything is great and you don't need saved, you need rescued, you need saved.

And even the earth cries out for that.

Earthquakes, volcanoes, you name it, Jesus said that all those natural disasters are like, they're like birth pains.

It's like the entire earth is saying, Come, come.

And they get more intense and they start happening quicker, but then the moment is at hand.

So in Revelation, the why is love and it is salvation.

And I just want to say this.

Usually you do this at the end of a message, but look, if you don't know Jesus, if you haven't given your life to Jesus, He He loves you.

You are loved.

He knows you, He sees you.

But you need saved.

Because we all do.

It's not me judging you.

I need saved.

We all need saved because we all have the same stuff, and we can't fix it.

We can hide it, we can mask it, we can compensate for it in some ways, but we can't fix it.

Only, only Jesus can.

We need saved.

One last, one last why.

It's a word that I have to put a hyphen in.

I don't even know if this is an actual word.

Uh it's recreation.

If you don't put a hyphen, it's recreation.

And that's a very different thing, right?

Like every city has a recreation department.

I don't know if they have recreation departments.

So this is where it all comes together.

Like the beauty of revelation, the ultimate why.

It's it's a story of recreation.

In many ways, the ironic thing about the ending of Scripture is that it's not really an ending, it's a second beginning.

Technically, the story of the Bible never ends.

It's it's a restart, it's a new beginning.

And I just want to read this in its entirety and obviously recognize that we have so much symbolism in this language.

There's so many things that are meant to, and by the way, the symbolism, it's meant to make us feel something, right?

Poetry is meant to make you feel things.

Don't just read this logically, going, like, I wonder what that is, I wonder what that is.

No, no, let it elicit emotions in you.

Let it make you think about beauty, let it make you think about power, let it make you think about glory.

Revelation 21.

I saw a new heaven and a new earth.

For the first heaven and earth had passed away.

There was no longer any sea.

I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband, 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.

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.

He who is seated on the throne said, I am making everything new.

And then he said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.

We go on a few verses later.

One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.

This is the church.

And he carried me away in the spirit to a mountain great and high, and he showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.

And it shone with the glory of God.

And its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.

It had a great high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates, and on the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel.

There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south, and three on the west.

And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and its walls.

The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide.

He measured the city with the rod and found it to be twelve thousand stadia in length, and as wide and as high as it is long.

The angel measured the wall using human measurement, and it was a hundred and forty-four cubits thick.

The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold as pure as glass.

The foundations of the city's walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone.

The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth ruby, the seventh chrysalite, the eighth barrel, the ninth topaz, the tenth turquoise, the eleventh Jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst.

The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl.

It's a big pearl.

And the great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass.

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp, the nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it.

On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there.

The glory and honor of nations will be brought into it, nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does not, or who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb, and down the middle of the great street of the city, and on each side of the river stood the tree of life, just like we saw in the beginning, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.

And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

No longer will there be any curse.

The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.

They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.

There will be no more night.

They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of a sun, for the Lord God will give them light, and they will reign forever and ever.

Now, again, all kinds of symbolic language, and there's precious jewels, and you know, the precious jewels, what they do is they they highlight certain colors in the color spectrum, right?

They basically allow us to separate all the different colors that we really can't see.

And they're just they're bright and they're beautiful, and there's light and it's shining, and there's no sadness, and there's no death, and there's no deceit, and there's no evil.

And the gates of the city never shut.

They're always open.

And we have God Himself there.

We have Jesus Himself.

There's no temple, there's no church, there's no building that we've got to go to to think about God, to talk about God, because we have God with us in our midst.

And that is heaven.

This is heaven come to earth.

And I have to say, it's a very different view of heaven than we often have, or that the world often has, right?

This is not something that's out there floating in the sky and we go float up to it.

No, heaven comes to earth.

Heaven is a recreation.

It's a recreation of this earth as God intended it to be.

That's why we see so much language from the Old Testament.

If you know the Old Testament well, you see it, right?

The tree of life.

The very first story of the garden, we have the tree of life, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we eat from the wrong tree, but but in heaven there's only two trees of life.

You can't make the wrong choice.

There's not a tree that's good and a tree that's not.

There's one tree that's good, there's another tree that's the same, and no matter what you go to, you get life.

And there's healing and there's blessing, and there's beauty, and there's glory, and there's power, and there's God.

Everything is made again, all over again.

He's making all things new.

He recreates everything and makes it as it ought to be.

We don't even have that in this world.

We we can't recreate anything.

We we have words like restoration, and when we restore something, we make it like new.

You know, if you have an old car and it gets restored, it looks like new, but it isn't new.

Only God can create, and only God can recreate.

And he does that with every single one of us.

It's this beautiful picture.

It's heaven, and again, it's so different.

It's especially different than the way that the world likes to think of heaven.

Most of the world's views of heaven are just uh like all your desires are satisfied.

Like everything you want, there's just a lot of it.

You know, like, oh man, I hope in heaven.

You know, man, I hope I hope the Georgia Bulldogs play in heaven and this game's just always on and they always win, right?

It's like that, you know.

But no, honestly, like if we want to be real honest, there's versions of heaven and other faiths and other religions that uh that are pretty pretty debased.

It's the only word I can think of.

You know, it's like, oh, you you you get you get virgins and you have all this stuff in the world.

I'm not trying to be offensive, it's just this is what people believe heaven is about.

For all of human history, heaven has been a very selfish idea where you just get more of all the stuff you want.

I mentioned this guy last week, an author named Eugene Peterson, passed away not that long ago, a few years ago, wrote some really powerful things.

He wrote this about heaven to the person who simply wants more, who is impatient of limits, who is bored with what he or she has and wants diversion from it, St.

John's vision of heaven will not serve well.

This is not a paradise for consumers.

St.

John's heaven is not an extension of human greed upwards, but an invasion of God's rule and presence downwards.

Heaven and the vision, remember, descends.

The consequence is that the dwelling of God is with men.

If we don't want God, or don't want him very near, we can hardly be expected to be very interested in heaven.

That's why if anyone ever asks the question, well, can't you can't you avoid Jesus but still have heaven?

No.

Because he is heaven.

Like he is, it's him.

And so if we think of heaven as this place where we get all the stuff that we want, it's not heaven.

But if we understand through what it's telling us that in heaven, even we get created and we don't want the stuff that we want.

Like, have you ever desired to be free of your desires?

Have you ever had this, like, what it would be like if I didn't ever want things that aren't of God?

Like, we all have desires that aren't good or aren't healthy.

Sometimes they're obviously unhealthy, sometimes they're they're actually celebrated in the world.

But maybe they're rooted in insecurity, like you want recognition because it fills you.

And maybe at some point in life you you weren't noticed, you weren't appreciated, and so now you live your life trying to please other people and you're trying to strive for something because man, you you want people to be like you're doing great, you're awesome.

That fills some part of you that's that's empty.

You know, or maybe, let's just say hypothetically, you have a kid who plays basketball, and you know, they do really well, and so you post a video on Facebook to celebrate them, but really it's about you using their success to fill insecurities that you have from your younger years, hypothetically, like maybe it's that.

Okay.

Or it's it's money, sex, it's whatever.

We're live life so often.

We are just searching for something to fill us, but but here's the picture of heaven.

You are full.

You are full.

You are filled by the very presence of God, and you need nothing.

And it's a heaven where you don't desire things that don't matter.

So much of what we have in this world doesn't matter.

It will burn away, it will waste away, it doesn't matter at all.

And in heaven, you don't even care about it because you have God.

Like, if that if that gets you excited, the idea of I have God, I have him, and I am with him, and he is with me.

This this promise, by the way, all the way back to Jeremiah in the Old Testament, God said to Jeremiah that there will be a day when I will have a new relationship with people.

He said, I will be their God and they will be my people.

And it's equal.

Like he doesn't just say, they'll be mine.

He says, No, he begins by saying, I will be theirs, I will belong to them.

Can you imagine what it would be like to have a relationship with God where you can say he belongs to me and I belong to him?

It is we are together.

We are completely united.

I am not confused by him, I am not struggling to understand him, I'm not struggling to see him, I'm not struggling to feel his presence.

He's there, I'm here, we're together, I have all of eternity to spend with Jesus Christ in worship of him, in his service, doing whatever like that, that is heaven.

That's that's heaven.

Look, if heaven is just a bigger house with more shoes in the closet and a nicer car in the driveway, I'm telling you, that's that's a disappointment.

Like, if you can watch HGTV and you can see your version of heaven, you got you got the wrong view of heaven.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, if it's just a better thing or a nicer this or more of that.

It's like I've always joked that in heaven I'm gonna have a six pack.

I've never had one.

Some of you had them.

And so you can laugh at me, but you don't, I you don't know what it's like.

Maybe you do, to never have seen your abs.

I've never seen them.

No idea.

I think they're there.

Just don't know.

No visual confirmation in my entire life.

What would it be like to not care what you look like?

You know, in Genesis, you talk about recreation.

Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed.

You ever have a nightmare that you're naked in a public place?

That's like a recurring nightmare that people have.

That's the worst nightmare you can possibly have, right?

You just you're so ashamed.

But I'm serious, like the idea in the idea in Genesis is that they didn't care.

The first thing that happened when they ate from the wrong tree was they became self-aware, but it was shame.

They looked at themselves and said, we're not right, we're not good.

And they covered themselves.

Can you imagine what it would feel like to literally not care?

To not even be like aware of how you measure up or how you're this or what you look like or what you feel.

It's just, it doesn't even matter because you have God and He's with you and you're with Him, and there's an intimacy.

Oh man, like it says in Genesis that Adam and Eve heard God walking in the garden.

That's when they hid from God.

That means that they were so familiar with God that they could identify him by his steps.

They could identify him by his steps.

Can you imagine being that intimate with God?

What it would be like to hear footsteps and know it's Jesus.

That's how close you are with him.

That's heaven.

And that's going to be your reality.

Because that's what everything is moving toward.

You know, I like most people will wrap this up.

Worship can come out before this never stops.

Um this message can't be like heaven, okay?

The series is called How It Ends and It Has to End.

Just like anybody, there's moments where I read things in the Bible and it's intense and it's hard, and I'm like, ooh, I don't know how to deal with that, and that's tough.

Right.

There's parts of Revelation where like, ooh, okay.

But I was gonna say this.

I trust the Lord.

He's so good.

You know, Matt, I made a joke as Matt comes out.

Hey Matt, sorry, I didn't mean to do this.

Matt Matt hates attention, but he's gonna get some.

Um Matt, don't be mad at me, but when you came up to do the transition in between a couple songs, I was in the sound booth and I told Joshua I was like, he's gonna say, God is so good.

Because that's what you say?

You know what's cool about Matt is I know Matt very well.

Very well.

I know the things Matt goes through, and Matt, like all of us, goes through ups and downs.

And yet he consistently says every Sunday, God is so good.

And he's not saying that because he's just had an amazing week.

He's saying that because it's true.

That God is good no matter what happens.

So when I read this stuff in Revelation and I'm like, oh man, uh, you know, at the end of the day, look, I don't care about all the I just I don't care about all that other junk in comparison with God.

Like I can look at God, I can look at Jesus and say, you are so good, you are so right.

I can look, this world's a mess.

This world's an absolute mess.

This world needs saving because it's a mess.

And and I don't know how to solve it.

Do you?

Does anyone know how to solve the mess?

It's not technology, it's not like a slightly different form of government, it's not a candidate, right?

Does anyone in this world know how to solve it?

No.

Then who are we to judge God for solving it?

He's gonna deal with everything that needs dealt with, and what is gonna be left is the most beautiful, pure recreation of how this world was supposed to be.

We get to go back to Genesis.

We get to go back to when the earth was just good.

And it doesn't need to be improved, it doesn't need to be made better, it's just good.

And we're good, and God is good, he is so good, and we're good with God, and he is good with us, and everything is good, and that is where things are heading.

The why of revelation is love, it is salvation, it is recreation, and it is beautiful.

And if you want to be part of that, you just gotta put your trust in Jesus.

Because he's the only one who can get us there.

He's the only one.

And if you've already done that, then rest in it.

Rest in it.

Just know that no matter what's happening in your life today, what you're going through, the difficulties, the struggles, this is your destiny.

This is where it's moving.

You're part of this.

Be encouraged by that.

When you look at the world and it's nuts, it's nuts.

It's always been nuts.

It's always gonna be nuts.

That's what Jesus said.

Like basically, hey, there's gonna be wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's the way it's always been, but it's moving to a point where love and salvation and recreation comes together, and that's where revelation takes us.

That's where it leaves us, where we get to be the worshipers of God in perfect relationship with Him.

Are you excited about that?

Because I can't wait for that.

I just can't wait for that.

And if you don't know Jesus, if you don't know Jesus, it's super easy.

Because he already knows you, like half the work's been done.

He loves you, and that same verse I read earlier, Revelation chapter 3, verse 19, I stand at the door and knock.

Revelation 3:19

Or is it 320?

I want to get this one right because you know it's Jesus.

Let's see here.

I can't even find it.

Ah, 20.

There you go.

I knew it.

I knew I was wrong.

All right.

Here I am.

If you don't know Jesus, process this.

Here I am.

I stand at the door and knock.

He is knocking.

And if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in.

I will eat with that person, and they with me.

You can know him.

All you gotta do is say yes.

And I think it's so amazing that what we get to end with today as we take Lord's Supper and wrap up, are multiple people who've said yes to Jesus getting baptized.

It's the perfect way to finish.

And so, with everything that we've just thought of and read, we're gonna take this little meal together.

We do this every Sunday, usually right here at the end.

And if you miss the bread and the juice, go grab some.

It's the last time we're gonna do this together this year.

So don't, I mean, don't skip this one.

Oh my goodness.

You know, I probably could have spent months talking about Revelation and not even gotten half the way there.

I know there's a lot of questions that are unanswered.

Same is true for me.

Every week we take this meal.

It gets our eyes on Jesus.

We need that.

Like, have your eyes gotten off of Jesus in the last week?

A little bit?

Anybody?

Anybody say, hey, my eyes drifted just a little bit in the last week?

Oh, just only wow.

Doing good.

Mine did.

Just busy, life gets crazy, and your eyes get, they drift.

This this gets us back to Jesus.

But we need this.

Like Jesus told us to do this all the time because he knew that all the time we need to be reminded of him, get our eyes back on him.

What's it gonna be like when we don't need this?

We don't need this meal.

Because we don't need reminders.

Because he's there.

In the meantime, this is wonderful and beautiful, but this is just a piece.

There's so much more.

And we're one day we're gonna get to experience it together.

And in the meantime, we just keep looking at him, we keep thanking him for what he's done, and we live with eager anticipation for when he brings it all home.

And so, Jesus, we thank you for this piece of bread and what it represents.

You said, This is my body.

You gave us your life, you gave us yourself, you gave us a taste of what is waiting for us in fullness one day when you bring all of history to a conclusion, when you recreate this entire world as it's meant to be, and we get to live there and be there.

So, in the meantime, Lord, help us get our eyes on you.

Help us remember who you are and how desperately we need you every day.

And with that in mind, Lord, we take this bread.

Let's thank him for the juice.

Lord, we thank you for this juice, what it represents.

Your blood spilled for us on the cross.

Lord, help us to remember all you've done.

And thank you, Lord, that there's a day coming when there will be no more spilling of blood ever.

No more shedding of blood, no more sacrifice, no more death, only life.

We love you, Jesus.

Let's take the juice.