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 2 of 3)

In the last post, I talked about God re-creating everything, just as we are a New Creation in Christ, so Heaven and Earth will become new a the completion of all things.  Why does God make everything new?  Let's continue reading Revelation 21:1-7:

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

I elaborated on this in my last post, but in summation, this New Jerusalem is the dwelling place of the saints, who are according to First Peter, the building blocks of the city.  And John sees Her coming down prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.

Throughout Scripture, this metaphor, of a husband and wife, is used as the relationship of God and his people. In Hosea God’s people are seen to be an adulterous wife... Paul tells the Corinthians that he is going to present them to Christ as a spotless bride. This bride is the culmination of the work of God. The virtuous wife of David’s Son spoke of in Proverbs 31. A helper suitable for God the Son. As in Genesis, when God made a companion suitable for his son Adam from Adam’s side. So the Father makes a helper suitable for the Second Adam, from Christ's side.

After Christ had died on the cross, his side was pierced, and out flowed the water to baptize and cleanse his bride and the blood by which he bought her. And it is from his side that God fashioned his Bride... the Church... You and me. Cleansed by the water, bought by the blood and confirmed by the Spirit. As John says there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood and these are in agreement. Do we accept this testimony? And this is the testimony God has given us eternal life and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life, he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. How wonderful it is to be included in God’s eternal purpose as the companion of His Son.

You see God’s eternal purpose is to bring glory to himself. His purpose is triune as He himself is triune in nature. God is a relationship between Father, Son and Spirit that has existed for all of eternity. And He seeks to share that relationship with that which he has made and purchased. That brings him ultimate glory! Here John sees this in his fullness and uses three examples to demonstrate this. We have seen the first one: Husband and Bride... A companion for His Son, one with which he will be equally yoked. We see how that relationship is “here, but not yet...” in the relationship between husband and wife. Husbands are to love their their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. Right now that relationship is damaged by sin, but here John of Patmos sees it in all it’s glory! How glorious it is.  

I heard a loud voice out of heaven saying, “Behold, God’s dwelling is with people, and he will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

As human’s isn’t there something special about where we dwell? We say that we want a liveable space, but what we really mean is something more relational than that. A place where we can live with the ones we love,

and converse, and eat meals together. A place of relationship is where we dwell. This is also what God desires as well. This dwelling is the restoration of what was lost in the Garden. The very dwelling of God with man, where Man and God could walk with one an other in the cool of the day.

The Holy Spirit, the Third person of the trinity Lived in the tabernacle in the wilderness, and lived among the people. And the Holy Spirit Tabernacles with in you and I, and with among us as the Church. For the Holy Spirit is the working of God among men.

Yet with this dwelling the Lord says by the mouth of the prophet Isaiah, “Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool, where is the house you will build for me? And where shall my resting place be?”

It is no coincident that John uses the same word here for dwell, which is literally tabernacle, as he does in his Gospel where he says that the Word dwelt among us. Yet even in flesh, the Word, very God from very God, Light from Light, could not find a place to rest. For He says, “Birds have nests and foxes have holes, but the Son of man has not a place to lay his head”.

The second person of the trinity tabernacled with us and identified with our weakness. But here the fullness of the Godhead is dwelling among men, and instead of identifying with our weakness, we are identifying with God’s glory and righteousness. In the dwelling of God, we shall rest, as we do now, but he shall also rest and commune with us. We will walk with him in the cool of the day, as Adam did with him in the Garden.

This Heavenly city... the place of God's people, of restored relationships is certainly the place the Psalmist speaks of when he says "For the Lord has chosen Zion, he has desired it for his dwelling... this is my resting place for ever and ever, here I will sit enthroned, for I have desired it"

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.