Sermon ideas: A new place

The final chapters of Revelation provide a magnificent climax to the last book of the Bible and make a beautiful connection between the first book of the Bible and the last.

• Genesis tells us that God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1.1). Revelation 21 describes the new heaven and the new earth and God coming to his people, a tremendous promise of hope and reassurance to Christians living in the midst of fear and adversity, both at the time Revelation was written and subsequently.

• Chapter 21 opens with a description of the eternal blessedness bestowed by the God who makes his home among mortals. Here the author elaborates on the promise that God had long before given to Isaiah that he would ‘create a new heavens and a new earth’ (Isaiah 65.17) that would abide for ever (Isaiah 66.22). John uses the word ‘new’ to mean a new kind of heaven and earth. The new creation will have some kind of continuity with creation as we know it but it will be different. There will be a new order of life, a reversal of the ‘curse’ of Genesis 3. In this new place sorrow and pain will cease and death has no final triumph.

• Behind the strange announcement that there will be no more sea lies the fact that the Jews were fearful of the sea, regarding it as a symbol of separation and restlessness: Job 38.8-11; Psalm 89.9; Isaiah 57.20. In Revelation 13.1 the system that embodies hostility against God’s people is cast up out of the sea. By contrast, in the dry Mediterranean lands, where water must be saved and carefully stewarded, salvation is represented here as a spring and river. To all who are thirsty, God promises to give water, a gift from the spring of life (21.6). The balance between being saved and being overwhelmed may be quite fine. What could we learn from this?

• Many Christians support charities and NGOs who work in the name of the Churches to provide education, healthcare, sanitation, fair trade and a fairer distribution of wealth; changes which offer life ‘in all its fullness’ (John 10.10, Good News Bible). We would never question the urgency of this work, yet Revelation’s new earth is of a different order. Does this eschatological vision inspire our contemporary action? What part must we play in being ready to promote ‘all things new’?

• Although God is ever-present in Revelation, he doesn’t often speak. Seated on the throne, God declares, ‘See I am making all things new’ (21.5). The present tense is significant. God is continually at work: ‘It is done!’ (v. 6). At every stage of the struggle a believer can count on the final victory. The divine name is mentioned to underscore the completion of everything that God has begun: ‘I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.’ God is the originator and completer of all things.

Another angle

• Do verses 3 and 4 help in our struggle to understand the concept of heaven? Far from being ‘pie in the sky by and by’, John’s vision of God ‘dwelling with his people’ is the consummation of faith. Creation is renewed. The face of God is seen. How does the picture of John help us in our sadness when people die?