God's Eternal Purpose and Our Eternal Hope (Part 3 of 3)

In the past two blogs, I have spoken about how God's eternal purpose of bring glory to himself, gives us eternal hope.  We looked at this eternal hope by looking at Revelation 21:1-7.  So far, going through this

passage, we have seen two parts of God's three-fold purpose:

1) to create a companion for His Son (We are that companion that God is making suitable for His Son)

2) to create a place for Him to dwell and rest (That place is our eternal abode with Him)

Now we we see his third purpose, to share His trinitarian life with you and I.  You could call this purpose, God's desire to have a people (or family).

He will wipe away from them every tear from their eyes.

God, is comforting his people in this passage. We have many tears because of the effects of sin and how our sins have damaged our relationships: with one another and with God. God will make these relationships right, but in doing so, there will be many tears shed... They must be shed. So here God comforts us, as a mother comforts her weeping child.

Death will be no more; neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more. The first things have passed away.”

A complete restoration and reversal of the curse from Gen 3. No more will our relationships with one another be cut off due to death, no more pain in our hearts from the loss of a relationship, either through death or through our own stubbornness. This old order of things has passed away. Our relationships with one another will grow for all eternity as we share the in the relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

This is a work he has already started in you and me. Paul writes, “if anyone be in Christ he is a new creation, the old things have passed away and behold all things are becoming new”. This is the concept that theologians call “here, but not yet”. "He who has begun a good work in you, will take it to completion." Here is the completeness of the work of God. We are new, our relationships are new, and one day this whole universe will be made new.

He said, “Write, for these words of God are faithful and true.”

God’s words are faithful and true, stay near them, listen to them, heed them, wrap them around your heart and mind, encourage one another with these words.

He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give freely to him who is thirsty from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes, I will give him these things. I will be his God, and he will be my son. He who overcomes is the one who believes in Jesus Christ. For How can we enter this everlasting life given to us by the trinity, if we don’t even believe that such a life exists? It is only in Christ that we see such a life. 

The Scriptures tell us that a Father’s crown of glory is his children. Our heavenly Father’s glory is you and me. This relationship, which we get a preview of when we see the relationship between a parent and a child, will come to it’s fullness when God expels sin, presents us as a companion for His son, dwells with us, and we inherit what he has promised for his children. That is it... Forever we will live with God, sharing in his divine love, drinking from the water of life. The symbolic metaphor for the trinitarian life. That everlasting life available through Christ. The catch is... you must be thirsty. Are you thirsty for life as it should be, relationships as they should be? Come and drink. It starts now... “here, but not in it’s fullness”... Eternity begins today, relationships are restored today, marriages become fulfilling today... but they will be brought to their fullness on that day... when the dead are raised and heaven and earth merge.

God's Eternal Purpose and Our Eternal Hope (Part 1 of 3)

As Christians we have an eternal hope, the hope of heaven and being with our Lord forever. But, what does this look like? What is summation of all things? Is it like being in a giant choir forever and ever? Do we become angels and sit on clouds and strum harps all day long?  That sounds less like heaven and more like...

well, anyway.

Is it relative? That is to say, does each person get their own personal heaven? this is an extremely popular view. Many religions of the world have this type of theory... Heaven or the afterlife becomes very personnel, just like a personal blissful, peaceful experience... something that is almost achievable if you got your hands on the right kinds of plants, if you know what I mean.

This "own personal afterlife" is so popular that even some humanists/atheists have theorized this type of after-life. The humanist and philosopher David Staume says that the odds of an afterlife are fairly reasonable, the odds of meeting God there is nil. His idea of a secular after life has been furthered by Bryon Ehlmann, a computer scientist and philosopher who calls the theory the "Neverending Dream".

To put it simply, both these men argue that when religions of the world speak of heaven, what they are referring to is a dream from which we do not wake up. Their argument is that if you never wake up, you will never know that you are dreaming.

Is this the hope we have as Christians? To peacefully and blissfully dream for eternity? Could this be the purpose for which we were made? God's grand finale?

Hardly.

Christians believe in resurrection and re-creation. We believe that God's purpose is bigger than just making things blissful for us. We believe heaven is here, but not yet... it is awaiting it completeness, when the kingdom of the world becomes the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. When our relationship with him and with one another becomes healed, by the only one who can possibly heal, the one who is both God and man, Jesus Christ.

You see, heaven is not personal, it’s relational. We will be in the presence of God and one another, absent from the corruption of sin, forever. We won't be stagnet, because our relationship with God and one another will continue to grow and deepen over time.

This is when God's eternal purpose comes to fruition within our reality!

Revelation 21-22 is the final restoration of what was lost in Gen 3, when man fell into sin. It speaks to God's eternal purpose, to share the trinitarian life with those who are created in His image, bringing ultimate glory to himself. John describes his vision of the culmination of everything. His description is heavily rooted in the words of the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Let's look at the first seven verses of Revelation 21, as a starting place to begin to see God's eternal purpose and what our hope for eternity looks like.

First he says I saw a new heaven and a new earth:

John sees a complete fulfillment of the promises made in Isaiah 65:17-25; 66:22. This was the hope of Israel

and of the apostles: The New Creation. But, this New Creation is not only future. Sure will into it's fullness and be completed at the end of time, but Paul says in 2 Cor 5:17 “If any man be in Christ, he is a New Creation,” and just like John who says for the first heaven and the first earth have passed away, so Paul continues “the old is gone and the new has come”. We begin to experience the new creation here, in this life, here in our relationship with our family, our relationship with God. Remember the old has passed away, you are not enslaved as you once were, anxiety and anger, insecurity of what the future holds does not have to keep you up at night. He who has begun a good work in you will bring it to completion. In this vision John sees the work of God in us, be brought to completion. It is Gen 1 all over again.

and the sea is no more.

As a surfer this part has always kind of grieved me. But, John is saying so much more then “put away your surfer boards”. The sea in scriptures is often spoken of as a place of confusion and judgment. The promise here is that “God is not a God of confusion”, he is making things right. I’ll have to stick to surfing on the sea of glass.

I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,

Remember when Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3, “You must be born again”, in Greek “born again” is gennao anothen which means “born from above”. This New Jerusalem is from where one must be born (or be a citizen). And in Hebrews when the writer says that the OT saints were looking for a heavenly country, one built by God... This is that heavenly land. the Psalmist tells us in Psalm 87, “The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are said of you, O city of God:” Selah. Isn’t Jerusalem a dwelling of Jacob? Then why does God love the Gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. The Zion the Lord is speaking of is one that He himself builds, where He Himself dwells with His people. It truly is the city of God. “I will record Rahab and Babylon among those who acknowledge me- Philistia too, and Tyre, along with Cush _ and will say “This one was born in Zion”... The Lord will write in the register of the peoples: “This one was born in Zion”

All these places mentioned are enemies of the city of Jerusalem according to the flesh, but the Lord will record those who are born of the Heavenly Zion in His register... the Book of Life. Is your name written in the book of Life?

The next part, we will see what is God's purpose in making everything new.  

Hebrews 10:26

One passage in Scripture I have been asked about a lot is Hebrews 10:26; which says, "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more a sacrifice for sins,". This verse has weighed down many people's consciences and played mind games. So, I would like to step through Hebrews 10:26-39 and see what this passage is saying in it's proper context. The actual text from scripture (WEB version) will be in bold. I do not use verse numbers at times because they can sometimes complicate things that are simple and straight forward.

After going to great lengths to explain the priesthood of Christ and how much better His sacrifice for sins was, being once for all, than the sacrifices for sin that had to be offered continually; the writer of Hebrews (starting in verse 19 of chapter 10), exhorts his readers to have confidence to go directly into the presence of God through the blood of Jesus Christ. He tells them that we can approach God with a clear conscience, because we have been cleansed by the blood of Christ. He further exhorts them, as in other parts of the book, to cling to this hope and encourage one another in this hope. Then comes the warning in verse 26:

For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which will devour the adversaries.

What sin is being spoken of here? It is the sin that changes our hope into a fearful expectation. It's the sin that insults grace and turns Christ's blood into an unholy thing. The sin that the Israelites (and all of us) struggle with the most, the sin that Calvin calls the "very fountain of all sin", the author of Hebrews rails against in chapter 3 and equates it with disobedience: it is the sin of unbelief (Hebrews 3:19).

The writer now explains why your hope is turned to fear through unbelief:

A man who disregards Moses’ law dies without compassion on the word of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think he will be judged worthy of who has trodden under foot the Son of God, and has counted the blood of the covenant with which he was sanctified an unholy thing, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?

Here the writer calls unbelief an insult to the grace of God.

This is a perfect example of the difference between a believer who has hope and an unbeliever who has an expectation of fear:

For we know him who said, “Vengeance belongs to me,” says the Lord, “I will repay.” Again, “The Lord will judge his people.”

The writer quotes from Deuteronomy 32:35-36. This further strengths the writers argument against unbelief. In the Deuteronomy passage, vengeance is promised against those who hate him and rely on themselves, where vindication (judgment) and compassion are promised to his people, those who have no strength in themselves (Deu 32:35-36).

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

For those who don't know about his tender mercy.

But remember the former days, in which, after you were enlightened, you endured a great struggle with sufferings; partly, being exposed to both reproaches and oppressions; and partly, becoming partakers with those who were treated so. For you both had compassion on me in my chains, and joyfully accepted the plundering of your possessions, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and an enduring one in the heavens.

The writer reminds the reader of times in which the struggled, but God was faithful and their faith was strengthened by the experience.

Since the people had seen the faithfulness of God, the writer urges them:

Therefore don’t throw away your boldness, which has a great reward. For you need endurance so that, having done the will of God, you may receive the promise.

“In a very little while,

he who comes will come, and will not wait.

But the righteous will live by faith.

If he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.”

But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the saving of the soul.

We can have full confidence before God because of Christ.  Our sin, even the ones we do on purpose, has been covered by the blood of Christ.  No other sacrifice can give you such eternal confidence.

Why are you eating garbage?

Whenever the pure message of God's love and acceptance is taught, enviably someone objects saying, "You are giving people a license to sin". I always laugh, because people sin just fine without a license. But, anyway this objection to the message of God's grace is not new. Actually, Paul asked and answered this objection in Romans. "What shall we say then? Shall we continue is sin that grace may abound?... Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?" (Romans 6:1, 15). Paul's answer to both was "Of course not!".

It's a ridiculous question when you understand the love and grace of God and the fact that Jesus Christ lives in you. Let me give an example:

There was an owner of a buffet who was going out back to throw away some trash, when he saw a homeless man digging through the dumpster eating the scraps that had been thrown in there. The owner tells the bum, "Hey, why are you eating garbage? Come in to the restaurant and eat the buffet."
"I ain't got no money" says the bum and continues rifling through the trash.
The owner replies, "Don't worry about it, you can eat at my restaurant everyday for free, come on lets go."

They go inside and there are mountains of fruits, veggies, fish, steak, rice, and cakes. The owner turns to the homeless man and says, "Eat all you want"

the homeless man says, "I can really have anything"

"Anything and everything free of charge"

"Can I go back and eat more garbage?"

Can you believe that? Faced with a beautiful spread of food, the homeless man asked if he could go and eat garbage. How ridiculous!

Jesus laid down His life to take away our sins and make us free from the bondage of sin and death. He was also raised from the dead and gave us His life so that we could live life with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness and self control.

We have missed the whole thing. Jesus offers us the smörgåsbord and we are asking about eating crap. Jesus says that He came "so that we may have life and have it abundantly" , and all we can do is ask, "Does that mean I can sin more". How ridiculous!

We are obsessed with sin. Most preaching is telling people to stop sinning, instead of directing them toward Jesus. It's like yelling at the homeless guy to stay out of the trash instead of telling him to "Come and eat". 1 Corinthians says "The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law". Just like the rotting food in the garbage can, sin looks pretty good when all you hear people say is "Don't sin... Quit sinning... It may look good, sooooo goood, but take it from me it's horrible... blah... blah".

Luckily Jesus did not come so that we would quit sinning. He came that we could "have life, and have it more abundantly". Garbage loses it's appeal to a hungry person once he starts experiencing the food from the restaurant. Just like sin loses it appeal once a person begins to experience the reality of knowing Christ and walking with Him in a vibrant relationship.

The grace of God should never be thought of as a license to sin, but as an emancipation proclamation from the bondage of sin and death. This freedom allows us to experience the abundant life in Christ.

Daddy Beyond Doctrine

Jesus' heart broke.  His little child was crying.  He certainly knew the facts, He was God, of course He knew the facts.  And Martha had come out to make ABSOLUTELY sure Jesus knew that her brother, Lazarus, had died.  She was always ready to serve and always ready to "tell it like it is".  Oh and she told Jesus alright!   

We all know at least one Martha.  The faithful servant, always ready to tell you her list of good deeds.  Her faith really works, and you always feel as if maybe she might ask why yours doesn't.  You seem led into a fake show piety when in Martha's presence.

    

Jesus gave Martha what she needed, a reminder:  "Your brother will rise again".   She thinks she has Jesus all figured out.  She knew this doctrine, maybe a little to well.  Christ knew what she was hinting at, but decided to remind her of a greater hope.  Before letting the words of Jesus sink into her soul, Martha stuffed the infinite God in to a box of her own making.  "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.", she says, almost rolling her eyes.  We can almost hear her think, there Jesus goes again, being all spiritual, he had the power to save my brother and didn't, know he's hiding behind eternal hope again.  Why can't Jesus be more practical!  Jesus could feel her frustration and gives her what she needs (but doesn't want): a theology lesson.  

"I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who

lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?".  This is one of the most profound theological statements in the Bible.  Jesus is telling Martha that He is the embodiment of the doctrine of the resurrection that she knows so well.  And what does she come back with?  The "right" answer: "Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world."   Now that Martha has said her peace, she tells Mary that "The Teacher is here and is calling for you."  Isn't that something that is just like a Martha to do... She couldn't talk any sense into Jesus, maybe her sister could.

Mary comes out to Jesus, falls before him and weeps. The Bible tells us that Jesus "groaned in the Spirit", which means, Jesus felt empathy.  The Almighty God feels our pain.  Remembering that when I am going through a hurtful time in my life, always seems to help.  

Mary didn't need doctrine, she needed Daddy (Abba).  Mary comes out and repeats exactly what her sister said, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." And bursts into tears.  All the the slogans we say to try to take away the pain meant nothing, all the doctrine in the world didn't matter, she was hurting and she needed her Daddy.  His child was broken, that broke His heart.  "Where have you laid him?"

Too many times we come to Jesus with a Martha attitude.  We come, in almost an accusatory fashion, looking for answers.  Nine times out of ten, proper doctrine will answer those questions, but bring no relief.  Proper doctrine is needed, but when we are hurting, we need to cry out to our Daddy who transcends doctrine. 

Living Free

"I strive to live my life with so much freedom and joy, that uptight religious people will doubt my salvation, and the world will see Christ".

This quote from one of my favorite authors, Dr. Steve Brown, has become a motto for my life.  The Bible teaches us that we are in bondage to sin and to this worldly system.  That is why Christ came, "to preach good news to the poor... to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to deliver those who are crushed" (Luke 4:18).  He came to proclaim the acceptance of the Father! (Luke 4:19).  If that doesn't make you want to get up and dance, I don't know what will!

The Scriptures continually tells believers that we are free (Gal 5:1, John 8:32, Heb 9:15, 2 Cor 3:17, Psalm 119:45, etc) and implores us to live as free people (1 Peter 2:16).  So lets live as free people!

Doing Life Together in the Light - Sermon (audio)

Here is a sermon on "Doing Life Together in the Light"

Click here to download or press play to stream