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Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
[00:00:10] We're going to focus mainly on the reading from Revelation this morning.
[00:00:21] But the Gospel reading, as we talked about in the children's message, has this. Well, it kind of sets the pattern, right, this vision in Revelation. It's a vision of the end, the fulfillment of all of God's promises.
[00:00:39] Jerusalem comes out of heaven, Death is no more.
[00:00:43] He wipes away every tear from their eyes.
[00:00:46] That's the end.
[00:00:48] This is now. And the picture of the end gives us hope and joy in the present, even in the midst of suffering.
[00:00:56] It can get as bad as well as it did for the apostles, where they were beaten and treated like Jesus going to the cross, essentially. And then they bore their own cross.
[00:01:09] They died for the faith.
[00:01:11] Things got pretty bad, earthly speaking. But they had the joy and the hope of God's promises, the fulfillment of his promises, inheritance kept in heaven for them, eternal life and joy.
[00:01:25] God wiping away every tear from their eyes.
[00:01:29] And that was. Well, that sustained them.
[00:01:33] We have the same promises and the same race ahead of us.
[00:01:38] We, as God's people, are in the midst of the tribulation, the trials, the difficulties.
[00:01:45] There is difficulty now, there's difficulty to come, but we can weather the storm through Jesus Christ, in Jesus Christ, because of his promises of eternal life. So that's the.
[00:02:00] There's the pattern. But I want to talk about another pattern going on in Revelation. This is just one of the ways that the reading strikes me. Okay, so we've got a new heaven and a new earth.
[00:02:17] The first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more.
[00:02:24] And then I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
[00:02:32] So I want to picture it this way.
[00:02:36] It's like the.
[00:02:38] The present earth is passing away and the sea is going away and the new is coming down. It's kind of like if you've ever played a video game or watched somebody else play a video game where the screen is rolling and your character is just kind of keeping up. You're going up and so the screen's rolling down behind and it just keeps.
[00:03:03] It's like that. It's like the old is going down and out of view and the new is coming down.
[00:03:10] That's the movement of it all. The sea is gone, the earth has passed away, and the new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven. The new heavens and the new earth.
[00:03:21] The direction of the movement is really Important, because here we are in.
[00:03:27] Well, here we are on earth, where things are changing constantly, where we ourselves are unstable, liable to fall into temptation or to.
[00:03:43] Well, to have division amongst ourselves, to fight about silly things, to get all stirred up about things we shouldn't. Here we are in the midst of temptation and change and struggle, and it can feel like what we need is just to build up the things around us to kind of, you know, make this movement happen, right? It's like we just gotta. Just gotta move things up.
[00:04:08] And so it's really helpful to have this picture. Speaking of moving things up, Daniel and Eli, please calm yourselves.
[00:04:18] So it's important to have this. This image of it all coming down, because that's the direction that help comes from. That's the direction from which we're built up.
[00:04:31] The growth that lasts comes from God. The good gifts that last come from God. Everything good that we have is a gift from God, including our being built up together and strengthened. It happens through Jesus Christ who came down to us.
[00:04:54] This is important because in the life of our church together, where does the building up come from?
[00:05:02] We're installing Pastor Woodward as an interim pastor for us as we look for an associate pastor. And thank God. I'm so excited for his wisdom and experience to come to bear, to bear fruit among us.
[00:05:19] But it's not his wisdom or experience, let's say, that's going to build it up.
[00:05:26] It's God working through him.
[00:05:28] The good gifts that Pastor Woodward has to share with us, they're gifts from God that he worked in Pastor Woodward. And as he works among us and as our church is built up together in Christ, it's going to be through God's word and sacraments, God's ministry coming to bear through the words and actions of Pastor Woodward.
[00:05:52] You see, it's this downward movement. God bringing his work down to us and through simple means as well.
[00:06:02] Pastor Woodward and me and every one of us as we live together, sharing God's word with one another, being built up together.
[00:06:12] Notice that the new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven.
[00:06:19] What is the new Jerusalem?
[00:06:21] As I said at the beginning of the service, it's not buildings or, you know, it's not like finally we're going to have a city where all the traffic is regulated perfectly by, you know, whatever, by our stop lights or, you know, there's going to be no construction.
[00:06:39] It's not about the surroundings.
[00:06:41] It's not like, finally we'll have the right carpet color or the, you know, whatever. We might want to be better.
[00:06:50] It's the people of God coming down out of heaven.
[00:06:54] In fact, remember a few weeks ago we talked about the triangular shape of the people of God? That was.
[00:07:01] Yeah.
[00:07:03] Today we get the square shape of the people of God.
[00:07:08] How many is it in Revelation that the people of God make up?
[00:07:13] 144,000. Why 144,000?
[00:07:17] Well, because 12 times 12 is 144. 12,000 times 12,000, I suppose, is. Is 144,000. That's a square.
[00:07:27] So you could make that shape by making a row with 12,000 dots and then making 12,000 more or 11,999 more of those rows. And now you've got a square of dots. But just picture it that way. That's Jerusalem. That's the shape of Jerusalem. Four walls, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven. And think of yourself as one of those dots, as one of those people shoulder to shoulder, as God's people.
[00:08:01] That's what a city is. It's people close together. That's why some people want to get out of the city. Right. Which is fine, too. But the city is where people come together for mutual benefit. They come together because they can serve each other and provide each other work. They can work together and together be better than just the sum of all the parts a city is. People coming together to live together, closer together and working in harmony. Ideally, C.S. lewis makes an illustration of hell.
[00:08:39] It makes it out to be about separation. If you've read the Great Divorce, if not, like this is something that we should read together sometime, whoever's interested. But the great divorce by C.S. lewis. You hear it in the title, the Great Divorce Separation.
[00:08:57] But hell is pictured as this place where the further you go into hell, the further apart people live.
[00:09:05] So that if you get far enough into hell, the houses are millions of miles apart.
[00:09:11] And then the irony of it all is that when the main character leaves hell to visit the entrance to heaven, okay, he's flying on a bus, this flying bus, and it flies out of a canyon. And then looking back, it turns out it was just a crack in the ground.
[00:09:32] So it's like hell is this place where people are so far apart, but really it's an illusion.
[00:09:43] We drive ourselves apart by such silly, meaningless things.
[00:09:51] That's the way it happens, isn't it, in your relationships, when you have a difficulty in the moment, it seems like a big deal.
[00:09:59] And then you realize, what were we even arguing about?
[00:10:05] The things that separate us, well, don't need to separate us. Usually.
[00:10:15] We're liable to drive each other Apart to be consumed with silly things. These external things, like the.
[00:10:23] Well, external things, outward things about our life together.
[00:10:28] Do we hold grudges against each other?
[00:10:31] And for what? Is it something that we can't resolve?
[00:10:36] By confessing to one another and saying I'm sorry and forgiving one another, can we not be reconciled?
[00:10:46] Jesus Christ, our head, our King, our shepherd, he came and he just laid down his life for us. And he asked God to forgive those who were killing him, those who were crucifying him, forgiveness, and everything else about our life together.
[00:11:14] It's not something that we just work harder to do. Okay, so work harder then.
[00:11:21] You just go fix your relationships because it's a shame that they're in shambles.
[00:11:25] Fix our life together because it's not right. See, that doesn't give the power to actually fix it. The power to fix our life together, to bring us together, to wipe away our tears, to reconcile us with one another. It comes from God.
[00:11:41] It comes down from God through Jesus Christ.
[00:11:46] It's not our power, it's not something that we generate that allows us to humble ourselves and say to that person, I'm sorry, will you please forgive me?
[00:11:57] Or gives us the humility and faith to forgive one another.
[00:12:03] That power comes from God, through Jesus Christ, who came down to us, became one of us, offered it all up, gave Himself up for us, made Himself nothing, became obedient to death, even death on a cross for our sake, and was highly exalted, given the name above every name, exalted for you and me, so that in him, having repented of our sins and looked to him for forgiveness in life, we were brought up into his life, raised to heaven.
[00:12:36] We're not to Ascension Day yet, but Jesus ascended into heaven so that we might ascend with Him. He lifts us up out of our sin and death.
[00:12:46] He takes away death and sin, the sea and earth passing away, and then the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven. That new Jerusalem, brothers and sisters in Christ, members of God's family, that's you and me together coming down out of heaven.
[00:13:05] The people of God living together in harmony for mutual benefit, bound together by Christ's love, built up together as his body with him, our head.
[00:13:17] It's like he's the city manager or the mayor or the king. However you want to picture that.
[00:13:25] It's the same image as the shepherd and the sheep living together in harmony under his guidance, leadership, protection.
[00:13:36] We're a fortress together. And as we, by the power of the Holy Spirit, mend the things that pull us apart as we confess to one another and to God and receive forgiveness and forgive one another we are being bound together like that square, like Jerusalem, like a fortress bound together and strengthened in Jesus Christ.
[00:14:04] Think of our life together as something otherworldly, something that comes down from heaven.
[00:14:11] And then when you find yourself thinking earthly thoughts then by the power of the Holy Spirit put to death what is earthly in you and set your mind on things above.
[00:14:24] Remember Jesus Christ who came down from heaven and makes our life heavenly by his grace through word and sacraments. He will continue to show us our sin so that we repent and look to him. And it's not just the church that works this way where we're repenting and receiving forgiveness. We're bound together in Christ.
[00:14:48] It's your family or other community, friendships.
[00:14:55] This is the way it works for God's people and the power it comes down from above through Jesus Christ.
[00:15:04] Thanks be to God in Jesus name amen.