Advent 02: Promise

Isaiah 65.

For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.

But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create.

For behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness.

I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people.

No more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping, the cry of distress.

No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, an old man who does not fill out his days.

For the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.

They shall build houses and inhabit them.

They shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

They shall not build and another inhabit.

They shall not plant and another eat.

For like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be.

And my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity.

For they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord, and their descendants with them.

Before they call, I will answer.

While they are yet speaking, I will hear.

The wolf and the lamb shall graze together.

The lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent's food.

They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

The word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks, Plain.

Good morning.

Welcome to church this morning.

Thanks for joining us.

This is our second week in our Advent series.

Last week we had a guest speaker, Dave Runyon, joined us.

Who was here for that?

Nice, great.

How was it?

By a show of hands.

Actually, that's a weird way to do that.

By applause.

Okay, good.

Some people like it.

Did any of you introduce yourselves to your neighbors?

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Why not?

Okay, cool.

Well, it looks like it really took.

Yeah, I was super grateful for him to come speak.

I I my wife and I, we slept in and went to snooze and waited like until 20 minutes ago to eat.

Um and it was like, oh, I guess this is what people do when they're not at church on Sunday mornings.

They just wait for brunch.

Uh this is better.

You made the right choice this morning.

Um so I've got a couple of announcements to make that I'm really excited about.

And it's pretty thrilling to get to make them uh before the end of the year, uh, because these were sort of goal times for us.

So the first is uh something that we're going to be asking you, uh particularly the men in the room, to be praying about for yourselves personally.

To use this as an opportunity for some self-examination.

While our church has been in transition, we've uh had it, we've been led by uh a sort of uh we're we're sort of like stewards of the eldership.

Uh so we've referred to ourselves as the founding board.

There's been four of us who have act as uh acted as uh elders over the church, uh sort of filled in that capacity.

What we're moving into now is the season where we're going to be selecting what will be the first official elder board for Redemption Church Denver.

And so that's going that process is going to take place and unfold um over the first couple of months in 2019.

So we'll begin accepting applications in uh the first week of January.

So what I want you to consider is do you think that you are in a position, and I said this is particularly for the men because we uh hold to the the description of biblical eldership, which is for men.

I I anticipate the emails.

Um, but that's something that we we can discuss and hash out further.

But there is uh what I want you to consider is do you think that you're in a position to where you feel a call towards church leadership?

Now it the eldership role is a difficult one to sum up in terms of tasks because it really runs the gamut.

There's a lot of weight on those positions.

There's a lot of biblical weight on those positions.

And so I want you to prayerfully be considering whether you think this may be something that God is calling you to.

Or if someone has been laid on your heart who you think would be qualified for this position, maybe it's a good time, well, I'm telling you, this is a good time to give that person a nudge and perhaps act as a confirmation of their prayers.

And say, look, this is something that you I think demonstrate the qualities of and the biblical qualifications necessary to be a church elder.

So I want you to begin that process as we move into the end of the year and you're considering what your next year will look like.

Begin the process of praying through those things.

And likewise, as a church, be praying for our future leadership.

This is uh a pivotal moment for us.

The establishment of this first elder board means the establishment of a culture that we'll be standing on for a long time.

And so we're going to take this decision very, very seriously.

So, one of the ways that Paul describes an elder, he says that if you desire to be an overseer, you desire a good thing.

Meaning this is a good desire to have if you feel this desire in yourself.

So, one of the things that we want to use as a litmus test is yes, I actually think I would like to lead the church.

Oftentimes we shy away from leadership that's that explicit, and we think, no, I shouldn't be the one to nominate myself, I should only be nominated.

But we have real biblical precedent to say that if this is something you desire, you're desiring a good thing.

And so follow that up with lots of prayer and pray along with us while we're making this decision.

So that's just a call to prayer, really, for the uh establishment of our first elder board.

Okay.

Uh my next announcement uh is also very exciting.

Um, so one thing that we've been discussing quite a bit, and I've been discussing particularly with Zach, uh who plays the music.

Um he's the guy who has the kick drum.

Uh the only way I'll describe him.

Um the uh one thing that we've been discussing a lot is how can we uh remove church from a theater into a gymnasium?

This idea of how can we help to remove this idea of church attendance.

Church attendance is like the worst.

Let me clarify.

There's if we're just attending and this is just something that's passively happening to us, uh go wait in line at snooze.

Because that's just that's not what we're here to do.

We're we're not here to create a a theater, we're not here to create an event, we're here to be a church together.

That is our call as a body to be a church in the city.

And so we're trying to make moves to, as I'm describing it because it's fun to say, we want to eliminate church attendance.

And we only want to have church participation.

This needs to be something that you necessarily participate in.

So that you are participating with your faith, with each other, growing together.

And uh one of the means that we've decided on that we've actually created in order to assist in this process, um, is we've create we created an app like for your phone, which is cool.

Apps are cool.

My plan was to wear uh black turtleneck and white sneakers and jeans to announce this, but I didn't.

Um so uh if you go to your app store of choice, uh Redemption Church uh to or the iTunes Store, Amazon store, because they own everything, and they actually recently acquired this church, and um uh Google Play store, then it just search Redemption Church Denver, and you'll be able to you can do it right now.

You can pull out your phone right now.

Go to your store.

You also it you can check your email and you have an email with links to it right in the uh right in the email.

Um and what this will do for us is it hosts basically all of our content.

So anything that we produce as a church is hosted on this app.

So you can tap on the media, you can check out all of the last sermons, and you're able to see those in there.

Uh also containing that is sermon notes, so like these things that I'm preaching on.

Like if you want to go to Advent02 Promise and tap sermon notes, then you'll get a real look at these, um, which is kind of like cheating.

Um uh you can also take notes in the app, and those notes will be saved with the sermon so you're able to track along with them.

Uh and also one of my personal favorites, you can give right in the app, and it is dead simple.

I mean, it is so easy to give.

You could do it right now, and uh you'd be able to give and tithe right through the app.

Um okay, so back to this idea of church being a gymnasium.

Here's the thing that I'm most excited about rolling out in this right now.

Is uh in something that likewise I want you to be considering as we move towards this next year, this next year of participation.

Uh the middle tab on the bottom of the screen of the app just says Bible.

And what's built into it is a Bible reading plan that takes you through the whole of scripture over the course of a year.

And so what uh we're going to be doing as a church is reading the Bible together.

So I've talked with so many Christians who have been Christians for years and even decades and have never read the whole Bible.

Like, look, we're basically a book club.

If you haven't read the book, then I don't know, this like the why there's just other clubs to join.

Remember the whole snooze discussion?

There's other things to do.

So what we're really aiming in on is developing a culture of participation with our faith.

So this is an opportunity, it's given to you in your hand.

Every day it will populate with that day's reading, and it's just four chapters a day.

Look, this will take 15 minutes to just read through and participate with the scripture.

What we're gonna be rolling out through this app over the course of the next year are these sorts of practices, we're calling them.

And the intention of this is to create a faith that we aren't just attending, but that is actually happening in us.

So that we are connecting together, really connecting with our faith.

And so the intention of this is to make that as simple and as easy as possible.

So uh that's our that's our rollout.

Uh, it's really exciting.

The uh I hope you'll grasp our intention behind this.

That look, what we really want to do, the I'll put it like this.

Do I want to see those stanchions in the back removed and this whole place, you know, standing room only?

Yes, I do.

But here's how I think that will happen.

It's by us really becoming a church together.

So that we are going to be making these intentional investments in our faith personally.

Over this next year, our hope is that things get really messy.

That we start having parts of our lives exposed by the scripture that really get healed.

Let me put it to you this way.

When I had there's one professor that I had that really got me to read.

And it was in a class on Nietzsche.

Um, and he would put it like this: before every reading assignment, at the end of every class, he would say, Oh man, I shouldn't be assigning this to you guys.

You're just too young.

And you're at too impressionable of a stage of your life, and this this writing is really intense.

And it's really dangerous stuff to be living with and engaging with.

And you know what?

Here's the assignment, but honestly, I shouldn't be doing this.

You shouldn't be reading this.

You're too young and too impressionable.

Um and so I went, I read everything that that guy said, because I was like, yeah, yeah, give it to me.

I think I can handle it.

Um yeah.

Uh uh.

So look, that's that's Nietzsche, right?

That's like i you know, big big mustache.

It doesn't have to do with anything.

Like, you know, if if if you're like a high school atheist on Reddit, you like are going through a Nietzsche phase.

You know, uh like it sure, is it powerful?

Yes, it's powerful.

Is it diagnostic?

Yes, it's diagnostic of our culture.

But look, it's nothing like the Bible.

It's nothing like scripture.

If you like your life as it is now, even a little bit, don't do this reading plan with us.

Don't participate.

Because if you get into the Bible, if you start reading this for yourself, if you're reading this especially in the context of a community where you have people to be working out these questions with and really deeply exploring with, it's gonna screw everything up.

Your whole life will be it'll be it'll be completely turned upside down.

So that's my pitch.

Don't do it.

You're too impressionable, you're too young.

And this book is too powerful.

It changes lives too deeply.

We're talking about the living God.

So that's our call.

And that's the main thing that we're focusing in and zeroing in on with this app that we're gonna we're gonna use to facilitate this.

No more church attendance.

We're getting rid of it.

This is all church participation.

Uh so yeah, download it and have a blast.

Okay.

Now it's time to preach a sermon.

So let's pray.

Holy Father, I pray that you would guide us.

And that you would, by your spirit, make your words to land on us in truth.

Lord, like the rain that falls or the snow that falls, it never falls to the earth without watering it.

And Lord, in the same way, your word always accomplishes exactly what you sent it out for.

Father, I pray that your word would operate in that way this morning.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Okay, so this is our second uh real installment of the Advent series since we took a break last week.

And what we're doing is we're taking our first two sort of movements in Advent, and we're looking at uh sort of the double meaning of this word.

Advent means an arrival, it means a coming onto the scene.

And what we're seeing is not just the initial coming of Christ, which we have looked forward to, the world has looked forward to, but also the second coming of Christ, which we are looking forward to now.

At the place we are at the story of redemptive history.

We're looking forward to the second coming of Christ now.

And so that's what we're getting clear on.

Last week we looked in 2 Peter and we looked at what is this reality of the second coming.

And we saw the judgment that will take place on the earth and this promise of the creation of the new heavens and the new earth.

And we saw that the second coming for us is really, it can only be hopeful.

It can only be this real anchor of hope for us when we are deeply committed to an understanding of the first coming.

That in the first coming, we're able to be cleansed from our sins so that when we look at this day of judgment approaching, we look at it fearlessly.

We look at it with hope of the creation of the new heavens and the new earth.

And so, as we saw the reality of the second coming, this week, we are going to get clear on what it what is it that we're hoping for now?

How is it that that hope of the second coming informs us in this present state?

How does that hope change us and influence us, and how is that connected?

There's this phrase in theology that helps bridge that gap.

And it was developed to kind of do it.

And and uh what the term is is it's already, but not yet.

And it's this idea of describing the way that we approach our Christian hope, which is that there is this sense in which the new creation has already started.

In Christ, we see the new creation has come.

The kingdom of heaven is in your midst.

And yet there's this other sense in which we know that it is not yet here.

It's not yet fully consummated, it's it's incomplete.

Our lives are plagued by sin and despair and discouragement.

So, how is it that we are able to hold this tension and how do these relate to each other in Scripture?

We're going to be really doing some theology today.

So put on your helmet, as the old Puritan expression goes.

So here's what I want us to see.

I'm gonna go ahead and give you the thesis right up front.

I want us to see that when we hope for the glorious future in the second coming of Christ, what that means is we are also simultaneously hoping for the kingdom of heaven to come to earth now.

When we're hoping for this glorious second coming, it doesn't mean that we have abandoned what this life is like now.

It's not as though we you convert to Christianity and you see, my hope is located in the second coming.

And so now we're all a part of this group that say, it doesn't matter what's happening in the world.

The world's all going to this eternal judgment anyway.

We know that our hope is just in this second coming event, so we can check out of the events of this life now and just focus ourselves on the things that really matter, which are just the spiritual.

That is not the position that we are in.

Because of this way that God has orchestrated events to where our hope isn't something that just exists off in the future, but it's actually something that reaches back from the future towards our present moment.

It means that our hope is real.

Now.

So that when we hope for the glorious second coming, we're also hoping for the kingdom to show itself in the world now.

So let's start with that scripture that we are likely most familiar with when we've heard this phrase, the new heavens and the new earth.

This is Revelation 21, verses 1 to 4.

Revelation 21:1–4

It says, 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.

And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband.

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.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

Death shall be no more.

Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore.

For the former things have passed away.

So last week we encountered this phrase, New Heavens and New Earth in Peter.

And this week we see it in the book of Revelation, where we are probably most familiar with it, Revelation 21.

When you're reading Revelation, it's the reason you keep reading to get to Revelation 21, so it's no longer a confusing book about dragons.

And you get there and you see this beautiful, indescribably beautiful hope of Revelation 21, which is there's no more death.

God makes his dwelling place with us.

The church descends like this bride.

The kingdom of heaven forms the earth into this new glorious place.

And we see that, you know what it's almost just exactly like?

It's the end of the Bible is almost exactly like the beginning of the Bible.

It's about a creation.

It's about a new creation that we see, except it's way better than the first creation.

In the new creation, sin has been completely dealt with.

There's not even an opportunity for it.

It's perfectly incorruptible, and we live with God in this incredible glory that we see our hope in this new heavens and the new earth.

Whole new order of things.

Oftentimes when our minds settle on what our future hope is as Christians, they settle on this passage, on Revelation 21.

If they settle, which they should, they should consider and mole over these things and work them into our hearts that we might consider what is it that, what is this glory that we are heading towards?

This incredible news that God will make his dwelling place with us.

That's how the story ends.

The story doesn't end with us going up away to heaven.

That's not the picture.

The story is God makes his dwelling place with man.

It's an incredible image.

And yet, when our minds are settling here, I think we often miss what the shape of this hope really is.

Kenneth Gentry is a premier scholar on the book of Revelation.

And he offers this really helpful sort of guardrail in our interpretation.

He says this.

He says, Most of what we know from God's word about the eternal order is by extension from the present order.

So that's something that may make your sort of like uh, I don't know, helmet pop off to borrow the old Puritan expression.

There's a uh most of what we know about heaven isn't the Bible's description of heaven.

Most of what we know about the new creation that we're moving towards is not this description of the new creation explicitly.

It's a movement from, it's an extension of the present order that's described to us as our hope in Christ.

That hope which we can experience now because Christ has come.

And by extension of that, we look forward to that hope being completed for us at the new heavens and the new earth.

Because heaven is not the type of thing that you can describe explicitly.

I don't think our words can flex that far.

Heaven isn't the type of thing where you say, this is it, here it is.

Even when Jesus describes the kingdom of heaven that would be in our midst, he's always describing it parabolically.

Where it's like, I can get you close, but to say the thing itself, you're gonna have to be a whole new type of being.

You know, he's drawing our imaginations towards something completely transcendent that our hope is in.

And so that's the way that we understand heaven and what we're heading towards.

See, this is really important to realize that our hope for heaven is mostly grounded in an extension of our hope in the present order.

Because if we don't get that, if heaven to us is just this disconnected reality that breaks into creation in some distant moment that is, that is completely unlike, completely separate from the actions that take place in this world, then we will live with a completely disconnected hope.

We won't be hoping to see the expansion of the gospel now, because those are disconnected things.

We won't be hoping for our sanctification that we might experience victory over sin now, that there might be a peace that Jesus offers us that we could actually have brought into our world now.

Why would we counsel each other?

Why would we comfort each other?

Why would we seek to get to the depths of what the idols that are commanding our hearts really are?

If we know that that heaven up there is just disconnected, and I'll go there one day, and so long as I'm saved, I know that I'll go there, but it doesn't have any influence over where I am now and where I'm living now.

That's the danger of heaven being this disconnected hope when we don't realize that it's actually from the future stretching back into our present moment, that what we know about it is actually by extension from what God is working in the world now.

So it's helpful to have these categories so that we can understand how is redemptive history taking place?

How can this already but not yet really be happening?

I know we're doing a lot of theology today.

Hang in there.

I believe in you.

Says, these are some helpful categories that Kenneth Gentry puts forward.

He says, though Christ legally secured the defeat of sin, death, and the devil in the first century, all three evils remain with us.

Is anyone here untainted by sin?

Would you please introduce yourself to me?

All three evils remain with us.

They have been vanquished legally before the judicial bar of God.

That happened in Christ.

That's why Paul can say, of Christians now, of you now, if you're a Christian, therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

That is absolutely true of Christians now.

Because the sin in you has been utterly punished in Christ.

It is legally true.

The word that we use is it is a forensic reality.

You are legally free before God.

Complete access to his throne room.

And yet, right now, in this present moment, the world, the flesh, and the devil, sin, death, and the devil, they are being vanquished historically through the continuing progress of the gospel.

This means that this thing that is legally true is somehow still progressing in the world.

It's legally true that you are perfectly freed.

And yet we see that sin reigns in our hearts.

And the hope of the Christian is that historically, that is, throughout the story of our lives, the gospel continues to work on us.

And not just us personally, but us as a church.

And not just our church, but the global movement of Christianity.

And not just the global movement of Christianity, but all of creation, as the influence of Christianity moves throughout cultures, so that we establish global things like human rights, and these incredible things that so many people benefit from that are grounded in these explicitly Christian principles.

So historically, the gospel moves forward, the gospel progresses, progresses.

And finally, our hope that we're looking forward to is that they will be vanquished eternally at the second advent of Christ.

The moment we are in is that moment of the historical progress.

Here's a good picture to help us kind of grasp this more.

At the Exodus, when they cross when the uh Hebrew slaves cross the Red Sea, and the Egyptian soldiers are washed away behind them once the sea closes in again.

We remember the pic the picture from the Prince of Egypt, the cartoon.

And when those Jewish people stood on the other side, legally, they had complete freedom.

They were utterly free.

It was done.

Their oppressor had been washed away.

They were legally completely free.

And yet, as we see them continuing wandering around in this wilderness stage before they get to the promised land, we see that their hearts are still so corrupted by that slavery.

To where they're actually saying things like, can we go back?

Can we go back to that way of living, to that slavery that we had experienced?

Because they had meat there that we'd like to have now.

Can we go back to that?

See, that's the picture of our Christian life and a lot of what it's like.

Legally made completely free in Christ.

And yet, your heart has not been changed yet.

It's happening progressively in this experience of our sanctification.

We're being transformed by the renewing of our minds.

And we're looking forward to the day when this transformation that is happening in us progressively will finally be made complete.

To where it is not only that I will uh it is not only that I could now possibly not sin, but there will be a day where I will not even possibly desire to sin.

What a joy that will be.

There will be, not only are there days now where I can experience the peace of Christ, but I will be living perpetually in his joyful presence.

You see, these are connected things that happen legally, historically, and finally eternally.

We are in this time of the historical conquest of peace.

But then in order to understand what Revelation 21 is talking about, how this connection works, and why Kenneth Gentry would make the claim that most of what we know about the second coming is from, by extension, from this present church age that we're in.

We have to go back to the source text that John was using when he was writing Revelation.

What is he referencing when he references this creation of the new heavens and the new earth?

And that language is taken right from Isaiah 65, this passage that we're looking at today.

Says this, for behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.

But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create.

For behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness.

I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people.

No more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress.

It sounds familiar, right?

It's almost exactly what we see, almost word for word, in Revelation 21.

We see this promise that we will be God's people, that He will be personally attending to us.

There won't be these cries of pain and distress.

We see the new heavens and the new earth created.

We see this whole new order that's breaking into existence, which they can only describe in terms of just, it's just like a new creation.

It's like creation is just this new thing.

There's a new creation in it.

And that's the description that we see.

And then what's incredible about this passage is that this is not a passage about the second coming.

This promise is not a passage that is about what happens when Jesus comes back the second time.

This is not a passage about that final eternal state.

This is not about these things becoming eternal.

This is about Christ's first coming.

This is about the advent we're talking about in this season.

This is the promise of the church age.

And we see this language littered throughout the New Testament.

There should be a positive word for littered, by the way.

Scattered throughout the New Testament.

It's neutral.

Seasoned throughout the New Testament.

Where we see Paul writing in 2 Corinthians, where he can say, of you now, of the Christian now, therefore, if anyone is in new, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away.

Behold, the new has come.

Describing us now, the church age, as a new creation.

You see, this language is all throughout the scripture.

We see this connection to the promise of the church age now.

Isaiah continues.

He says, in uh verse 20, he says, No longer will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his days.

For the youth will die at the age of 100, and the one who does not reach the age of 100 will be thought accursed.

So we see this can't be about the eternal, consummate new heavens and the new earth, because look at the description, there's death in it.

And we know as John is describing the new heavens and the new earth, that death will be no more.

But in this passage, what he's describing is the way that as the gospel moves forward in the world, it's pushing back the curse.

It's pushing back those things that have plagued us because of sin, death, and Satan's rule in the world.

But as the gospel moves forward now, historically, those things are getting pushed back.

So even death in this instance, saying, look, there's this inevitability of death that seems to be encroaching on your life.

And it, you know, it's gonna get pushed back.

So you'll look at someone who dies at a hundred years old and we'll be saying, oh, what a shame.

A hundred years old is so young.

That's so young to lose your life.

And we'll be saying that because the way that the church order has worked in the world, these are incredible things.

But it's actually influencing it.

The way that the curse is taking place in the world.

We have this hope that those will be pushed back.

So what does this mean?

This means that when you're how do how do these connections happen?

This means that, you know, how many of you work in healthcare?

I know a lot of you do, nurses, and a lot of you are nurses.

Yeah, there's one of you here.

So we'll talk.

Just us.

You know, it can seem, it can seem to be, I've heard this actually said before.

I've talked to a Christian who was a doctor, and he was like, you know, my job doesn't really do anything, because everybody's gonna die eventually.

So like this doesn't really matter.

Like, I'm not really handling this, I'm too fidgety with that.

And what this means is that look, those movements, when when we see somebody really pursuing that, like an excellence in that, and in saying, like, no, I'm gonna fight to get this person, you know, two more months, three more years, ten more years to be living on the earth.

What is our reason for doing that?

It's because look, we're gonna fight against the curse.

This death shouldn't be working in the world as it is now.

And in Christ, we have this promise that a new order is coming, and we have this commission to be witnessing to that new order now.

So this health of this present moment is not some irrelevant thing.

This has a real value here.

And so there is no just disconnect, but this future hope reaches into this present moment.

And all of a sudden, these little acts that we do to push back against the curse, we see they're connected to this hope of where we're headed.

They aren't two different hopes.

One is an extension of the other.

The kingdom of heaven is already here.

Because, look, we've seen forgiveness take place between people that that would have been impossible to happen before.

And yet it's not yet here.

Because we see that not happening all over the place.

So that's why we need to understand how these hopes are connected to our present moment that we're in.

John, excuse excuse me, uh, Isaiah continues.

He says in Isaiah 65, 23, he says, they shall not labor in vain.

This this remember, this is a marker of the age that we're in.

This is true of us now.

They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity.

They shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord and their descendants with them.

It says, they shall not labor in vain.

These passages are are have had a deep personal effect on me.

And when the the story is not a cool story.

It's kind of like, why was that such a thing when you when I say it?

But here we go.

Uh The first job that I got out of school, I was selling software for this company called Service Source.

Here's how bizarre it is.

HP makes this software, but it's just a contract renewal process.

And I worked for a company that contracted, that HP contracted to handle their software renewals.

And I worked in a portion of the business called the channel, which meant that I wasn't a salesperson.

I literally just called the salespeople and said, Hey, are you gonna make that sale?

And they said, Yep.

And I said, Alright, I'm gonna forecast it.

And then I would forecast it.

And if they didn't make the sale and I forecasted it, nothing really happened.

And if I did make the sale and they and I forecasted it, then it was like, oh cool.

So it was a very weird job.

It was like it it felt to me so utterly meaningless.

And so I had this like crisis, my poor wife, because I would come home from work every day and I was just like, I feel completely useless.

I feel like I am completely disconnected from anything that could possibly have meaning in the world.

And I'm just moving these things around, and I remember actually actually thinking this: like, uh I need to walk downstairs out of my office to be able to pray, because I know God isn't in this cubicle.

It is funny.

Thanks for laughing at me, Michelle.

Um but I I remember I remember literally thinking that like this is this is not a place God is.

And then as we started attending here, and these this picture started coming together and realizing it how my hope is not so disconnected.

You know, this may feel meaningless to me.

This time may feel just useless, and I may not be able to reason out what exactly this connection is to the meaning, but this is where God has me now.

And I know that his hope of the future stretches back to this moment so that my labor is not in vain.

My life is not wasted.

I may not be able to see the connection now, but I can faithfully serve in this.

In this moment that by the constraints of my life God brought me to.

I can faithfully serve in this because I know that my hope is not just something for this the next order of the world, but it's breaking in now.

And it will color all of our labor that we have done in faithfulness to Christ.

It will cover it in an incredible meaning.

To where we'll look at those that are that are accomplishing these amazing things and we'll say, you know, that was actually nothing.

And then the simplest labor of the Christian done in faith will look back from that eternal perspective then and we'll say, wow, praise God.

Praise God that He was accomplishing such a meaning and a depth here.

Do you see why this is so important to see?

That our hopes are connected, that the our hope in the eternal order is by extension from this present order.

That means we don't give up on the hard things that we're moving through now.

Because we're able to see, you know, there's hope and there's meaning here.

It's already here.

And I know it's not yet here, but it's already here.

That's the shape of our hope.

C.S.

Lewis has this excellent quote.

I'm just gonna go ahead and skip over to the C.S.

Lewis quote, um, which says uh, and it's about this idea of how our hope of heaven informs our efforts now.

He says this.

He says, a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not, as some modern people think, a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do.

It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is.

If you read history, you'll find that the Christians who did most of the present, excuse me, the that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.

The apostles themselves who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English evangelicals who abolished the slave trade, all left their mark on earth precisely because their minds were occupied with heaven.

It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in.

Aim at earth and you will get neither.

When we read these hopes of the new heavens and the new earth, oh how we look forward to the day where it will be consummated, where Jesus will come, our sin will be abolished, where we'll dwell in his presence, we won't even need the sun, because it will be so bright.

There will be no more suffering, no more crying, no more pain.

Consider that that future hope, by God's design in the church, is stretching back to our present moment, so that we can participate in its development.

So that when we see mourning and suffering and crying and pain, we don't think, well, that's just the way this order is.

And we move on to a hope for an eternal future.

But we think an eternal order is coming.

And our goal as the church is to be a witness to that now.

So how can I comfort you?

How can the Spirit empower me to wipe your tears?

You see, our hope pushes us into the present.

If we can see that connection, we can have this baseline in our faith that I think can inject a meaning into areas that we otherwise would have considered meaningless and a perseverance of love where we would have given up before.

So with that, let's take one question.

One question concerning the end times.

Are there concrete examples of the renewal of the earth in the already but not yet?

Oftentimes things still seem horrible in the world and sin seems to be winning.

Yeah.

That's why this is so look, this is one of those things that I think is uh it has to be held by faith.

Because if you were to take a just like a snapshot of the impressions that you get every day, uh I I think you would be wildly discouraged.

Now, is there evidence of things getting better?

Yeah, loads of it.

I mean, you know, the the headline of the New York Times every day for the past eight years could have been 20,000 more people lifted out of poverty.

The quality of life, the life expectancy, you know, things that we actually see promised to us are getting pushed back in ways that are incredible.

The development of the world, the increase of those things which we would consider lead to happy and fulfilling lives, we can't deny that that is really happening.

It's absolutely really happening.

It's it's just like a statistical reality.

Yet that's exactly right.

Oftentimes things still seem horrible in the world, and the world the and sin still seems to be winning.

Two pitfalls.

One is a denial of scripture and an expectation that things will constantly be getting worse and worse, and the progress of the gospel will somehow be halted.

And God's view of sin uh was so unconquerable that he says, just scrap it and throw the whole thing away.

And he doesn't have a project of redemption, but of just destruction.

But that's not what we see.

In Scripture, we see God promise a new heavens and a new earth, a redemption of the created order.

Other flaw is what people call an over-realized eschatology, an over-realized expectation of the kingdom of heaven being here now.

The way that that may work out personally is you'll think I was promised this success over sin.

I'm warring against the sin, and I'm not feeling as though I'm able to make any progress against it.

And you'll consider I must not be a Christian then.

See, you have an over-realized end times.

You aren't in that perfect state now.

We are in this moment of war.

So we have to hold this balance.

One that moves in faith that things are getting better and moving towards a place of ultimate perfection.

And yet expects that there will be incredible suffering in this life because it's not yet here.

That's why we use that phrase, which is just like paradoxical, right?

It's already, but not yet.

So as we move into communion, take some time before this and consider.

What are those areas in your life or in the world where you've given up hoping?

You've given up hoping that Christ's Spirit could move here in those things.

Check yourself on either side.

And what are those areas of your life that perhaps you'd say, you know, I've actually given up suffering in those things.

Because if God makes me suffer here, then he couldn't possibly be God.

Consider those places.

How can you bring them back in line with the balance that Scripture offers?

That's where our hope is.

All right, so let's pray and then we'll take communion together.

Holy Father, I pray that you would make us a church that is so heavenly minded that we are incredibly earthly useful.

Lord, would you make us a church that is patient like you are?

Would you make us a church that seeks to embody these characteristics that you have promised us for this new covenant?

Would you give us the strength to trust you in these things?

That we would engage in the process of transformation, drawn forward by this hope that it absolutely will happen.

Father, teach us to hold these things in a wise balance.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.