Sermon Transcript
Remember in 1999 how worried some people were about Y2K? People talked as if satellites might fall out of the sky, all of our bank records would just disappear, nuclear warheads would explode. There was, in 1999, there was a movie about the end of the world. It wasn’t related to Y2K, It was called End of Days, and it starred Arnold Schwarzenegger. It made $212 million.
But January 1st, 2000 came and went, and we were all fine, right? Then, remember in 2012, the end of the Mayan calendar was approaching. People predicted it was going to be the end of the world. There was another movie entitled 2012. This one starred John Cusack, but the Mayan calendar ended.
That movie grossed $769 million worldwide, but nothing else really happened in 2012. You know what I find so weird about all those end-of-the-world predictions? With as often as they come around, you would think someone just by random chance would have said, watch out for 2020. But nobody warned us about 2020, did they? They said, 2000, oh, you got to watch out, it’s going to end.
It didn’t end. 2012, it’s definitely going to end now. Didn’t end. Then we get to 2020 and they’re like, oh, you’ll be fine, nothing to worry about with 2020. Well, so far 2020 has some people looking up wondering what is going on.
We’re sheltering in place during a pandemic, tensions in our country feel like they might boil over at any minute. And on top of that, in case you forgot, it’s an election year. I doubt that’s really going to help bring the temperature down in our environment. Then there’s stuff like I saw on CNN back in April. An asteroid came close to the Earth.
Now, close only means in astronomical terms. It’s not like the asteroid was between us and the moon or something, but it was close enough that it made an article on CNN. Oh, hey, I’ll just— I’ll tell you where I am with all this stuff. None of those events really made me wonder if this might be the end, but I’ll tell you what did make me pause. First, Ravi Zacharias died this year.
And if you aren’t familiar with Ravi Zacharias, he has had an incredible ministry all over the world as a Christian apologist. He is very intellectual in his approach to Christianity. He has helped countless thousands develop their faith in our kind of modern, scientific, rational world. And he died this year. Then, Tim Keller announced that he has pancreatic cancer.
Tim Keller, similar to Ravi Zacharias in his approach to Christianity, Tim Keller planted a church, started a new church in the center of Manhattan that has drawn thousands of people each week for the last 20-plus years. His books have sold millions of copies because of how he is able to articulate complex concepts in ways that really anybody can understand. And I’m wondering how many people have come to faith in Christ because of Ravi Zacharias and Tim Keller. And now one has passed away and the other is seriously ill. I am like, what is going on, God?
Why would You take these titans out of the world? Is their work finished?
Maybe the full number of the Gentiles has come in, Romans 11:25. I don’t know what is happening in 2020, but like others in recent days, I have paused and wondered, Is it possible God could be wrapping all this up? Might we be in some kind of final countdown? Now, Jesus didn’t say when He was going to come back. He just said that He was going to come back soon.
And the passage that we are reading today repeats 5 times in 21 verses what must soon take place. Now, if God says something once, that is enough, of course, but He says it 5 times, He’s trying to get your attention, just like a good parent making sure that you know this is really going to happen. Jesus really is coming back soon. And the skeptics among us will say, okay, well, that’s, that’s obviously wrong, Christians, because it’s been, what, 2,000 years since any of this was written? So if he’s coming back— doubtful of that— but if he’s coming back, then it’s certainly not soon.
Well, here is the deal with that word soon. The Greek word that is translated from does not have to mean in a short amount of time. It can also mean suddenly, without notice. Like, when it happens, it will happen very rapidly, like without warning. In fact, the Bible describes Jesus will come like a thief in the night.
Unexpectedly, quickly. He will come upon you out of nowhere. Jesus’ return is actually not unlike the current situation that we’re in. Remember, remember back in December, January, we started to hear about this virus on the other side of the world. In February, we heard it was spreading a little.
Some countries were shutting down, and then Just like that, right? We had to shelter in place and change the way that we do just about everything. There wasn’t a lot of time to stock up on toilet paper, for instance, because, or before we had to shelter in place, we couldn’t prepare. It just happened. Jesus says He will come back like that.
It will just happen. Now, if you are paying attention, so far we have said Jesus comes like a thief and Jesus comes like COVID came upon the world, and you are thinking, you know what? Neither of those are super great. I mean, should we compare Jesus to thieves and to COVID? I mean, when Jesus comes, does He come with destruction and doom?
Should we be excited about him coming back? I thought this series that we were in is called Future Hope. Isn’t Jesus all about grace and salvation and liberation and joy?
Well, as it turns out, Jesus’ return brings both salvation and doom. So, let’s read our text for today. It is fairly lengthy. And we will find out how the 2 of these play together, salvation and doom. This is the very last chapter of the Bible.
It is written by John, who was one of Jesus’ disciples, and John was actually, seems to be Jesus’ closest friend. John had a vision of the future, and this is how John’s vision concludes, Revelation chapter 22, starting in verse 1. Then the angel showed me— that showed John— the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life bearing 12 crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
No longer will there be any curse, the The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign forever and ever.
The angel said to me, these words are trustworthy and true. The Lord, the God who inspires the prophets, sent his angel to show his servants the things that must soon take place. Look, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy written in this scroll. I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things.
And when I had heard and seen them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who was showing them to me. But he said to me, Don’t do that. I am a fellow servant with you and with your fellow prophets and with all who keep the words of this scroll. Worship God. Then he told me, do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this scroll because the time is near.
Let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong. Let the vile person continue to be vile. Let the one who does right continue to do right. And let the holy person continue to be holy. Look, I am coming soon.
My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches.
I am the root and the offspring of David and the bright morning star. The Spirit and the bride say, come. Let the one who hears say, come. Let the one who is thirsty come. And let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.
I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: if anyone adds to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll. And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this scroll. He who testifies to these things says, yes, I am coming soon. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.
There is no way we could pack everything in that text in one day, but, but we will look at Jesus coming soon from 3 different angles. It’s a promise, it’s a warning, and it’s an invitation. So, first, Jesus coming soon is a promise. In verses 1 through 5, John sees a vision of the future that closely resembles the opening pages of the Bible. In the opening pages of the Bible, humans live in the literal Garden of Eden, right?
It’s paradise. There is no war, there is no conflict, there is no illness, There’s plenty of food. The tree of life is there sustaining our bodies with everything that we need. But best of all, God is in the garden. We have unrestricted access to Him who is the most marvelous light.
He’s our Creator, our Maker. We can actually be with Him. He is, in fact, so glorious that the more that you are with Him, it is the more that you want to be with Him. He never gets old or boring. We never get to the bottom of God.
He is always new. He is always fresh. And that is what we had in the garden. But then we lost Him because of our sin. Because of our disobedience.
We can’t see God like our ancestors did in Eden. But John gives us a picture of the future where we will be with God like that again. John shows us Jesus coming soon is a promise that there is a city where every need is met, every wound healed, and every moment is with God. In the city, there is a river and a tree that will provide for our every need, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Can you imagine this, a place where there is no conflict, no racial tensions, God will heal all of that.
Right now, there are so many open wounds, aren’t there? This is so raw. It’s like we have a nerve exposed in our teeth. How could this ever be healed? Is it too deep?
Can we mend what’s broken?
God can. God says He will heal the nations.
But best of all, in this city, we will be back together with God. We will see His face. Our limited access to Him will be full access, and we will enjoy His presence in increasing measure forever and ever and ever. That is the promise. That is the future.
That’s the hope for which this series is named. That’s why Christians are so excited for Jesus to come back and for him to come back soon.
But what about the warning? What about the doom? If this is the future, how could there be any doom? So, let me just ask you, we’ll talk about me first, and then if you want to implicate yourself, go for it. But seriously, I want you to answer this honestly, okay?
I can’t hear you, so you can’t hurt my feelings right now. If there were such a place with zero conflict, no one was ever going to wound anyone else in any way, it’s a place of perfect harmony, do you think that I would be there.
If it was perfectly harmonious and they let me in, what do you think would happen?
I would mess it up. That is what would happen. I mean, I hope I would keep it together for a while, but eventually I am going to wound someone. I know I would. I’ve wounded people in our church.
I’ve wounded my wife, my kids, and that breaks my heart. Of course, I go back and I ask for forgiveness, but the fact is, if this city is a place of perfect harmony, they shouldn’t let me in.
Here is another way to ask that question. If you had to spend eternity with someone, would you want it to be me? Don’t feel bad, okay? Answer honestly. If I were you, I wouldn’t want to spend eternity with me.
That doesn’t sound so terrific.
How about you? You think anyone would want to live with you for forever where they can’t get away from you? I mean, I know we kind of put up with everyone here, even our loved ones, right? I mean, we don’t want them to like disappear entirely, but there is a lot of work that has to go into even the best relationships. It isn’t paradise here because we are here messing it up.
And this is what our text says, right? If we are going to have a perfectly harmonious city, there are some people we can’t let in. Verse 15, outside the city, so not everybody is inside the city, outside the city are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, everyone who loves and practices is falsehood. How guilty am I of those? I mean, we could just take idolatry.
It’s not a term that some of us might be familiar with, but idolatry is putting something other than God in the place of God, looking to something within this world to meet a need only God can meet. That’s idolatry. So, for instance, have you ever needed someone to affirm you? To notice you, to praise you, to approve you or thank you, and they didn’t? Instead, they rejected you or ignored you, and it just drove you crazy, right?
Because they wouldn’t give you that approval, that recognition, that praise that you needed. If it drove you crazy, that is idolatry. It is looking to someone else to meet a need that really only God can meet All the time. Only God can meet fully. Now, if you’re curious how God fully meets our need for praise and approval, that is another sermon.
But we should all know just from our experience in the world that we cannot count on people to provide for that need, can we? Yet we do it all the time. And that is idolatry, one of the ways in which we are idolatrous, putting something in the place of God. Then, when people fail to meet our needs, like all idols will always fail, what happens to us? We don’t get the approval or the recognition we need.
What do we do? We start to unravel. We might lash out at others. We are irritable, which creates tension and conflict, and that affects others. All because— why did this happen?
Because we looked to another person to meet a need really only God could meet. Whenever we pull God off the throne and put something else up there, it is always going to have ramifications like that. And if we are going to have a true paradise, there can’t be any ramifications. We can’t have people like us in there.
Did you notice who is on the throne in this perfect city, verse 1 and verse 3? God and Him alone. If we are the type of people, and we are, who tend to place someone or something else on the throne to meet our needs, then we will wreck the whole thing if they let us in there.
Jesus’ imminent return is a warning.
Not everyone will be in the city.
In fact, we deserve to be outside the city.
I do and you do.
Thankfully, that’s not the end of this message, because Jesus offers all of us a way into the city. It is so fascinating in this passage. There are people inside the city and there are people outside the city, and we have already talked about the people outside the city, the dogs, the immoral, the liars, those who deal in falsehood. So, we might think when John described the people inside the city, he would say, The good people are inside. Outside are the bad people.
Inside are the good people. Inside are the people who tell the truth and love their neighbor. That is what you might expect, but that is not what it says.
Listen to who goes inside the city. Verse 14, Blessed are those who wash their robes. That they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. It’s not the good people who are inside. It’s the washed people who are inside, not the good people, the washed people.
Washed in what? Now, John has told us earlier in his vision, they’re washed through the death of Jesus, Revelation 7:14. They washed their robes in the blood of Jesus to be clean. This is what Jesus told His disciples on the night that He was crucified. He takes the cup and says, this cup is my blood of the new covenant poured out for the forgiveness of sins.
Jesus’ death and resurrection takes bad people, washes them, and and makes them new people, makes them fit to enter into this perfect city. If we are going to be in the city and not mess it up, we are going to need to be radically different from how we are now.
If you are going to want to spend eternity with me, I am going to need to be radically different. I mean, still me, right? But without my mess, without my propensity to sin. Jesus’ death and resurrection accomplishes that. Jesus takes our sin, takes our mess with him onto the cross, and puts it to death.
Then, with His resurrection, we are made new, not all at once usually, but incrementally. We become more like Him. Our mess and our sinfulness gets purged away from us. Here is the best part. Anyone can be washed and made new through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
The invitation is available to everyone. Whoever wishes may come. The Spirit and the bride say, come. Verse 17, let the one who hears say, come. Let the one who is thirsty come.
Let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. The invitation to come into the city is extended to all of us. Anyone can come in, but you do have to be washed before you enter.
You have to admit you have a problem that has to be fixed before you go in. You have to acknowledge something like, if you let me in there, I am going to mess it all up. You have to come to terms with your own brokenness, with your insufficiency to fix yourself, your sin. You have to own it, not make excuses for it, not blame someone else, not say it’s not that big a deal. We have to say, it’s my fault I am the way that I am.
And you have to trust Jesus to solve it for you. Trust that His death paid the debt that you owe for your sin, and trust that His resurrection will make you new so that when God’s city gets here, you will be able to enter, not enter on your own merits. You can’t enter on your own merits. Our actions have earned us a place outside the city. Right?
We enter only because Jesus earned the right to enter through His perfect life, and then He gave us the credit for His perfect life while He took the blame that we deserve. That was His crucifixion. Christ was crucified outside of the city, remember, as symbolizing His rejection so that you could be brought into the city. His rejection means your acceptance. His exile means your return.
You have to trust Him for that. And by trusting Him for that, He will make you new.
Okay, here is the really bad news.
Not everyone will take this free gift.
Jesus says, I volunteer to be exiled so you can go in. And there are people who will look at Him and say, no thanks.
One of the reasons why I think this passage repeats 5 times that Jesus is coming soon is because we have a limited window to receive this gift.
There’s an urgency, okay?
You need to decide soon. You might not always be able to turn to Christ. So, if right now today you have a sense of your sin, your inability to fix yourself, and you want Jesus to take away your sin and make you new, Please do that today. Your heart may not always be aligned as it is right now. One of the peculiar verses in this passage is verse 11, but the passage says, let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong.
Let the vile person continue to be vile.
Let the one who does right continue to do right, and let the holy person continue to be holy.
And you’re like, what? Is Jesus saying he wants people to do wrong?
No, that’s not it. It’s that people can get themselves pointed in a direction they can’t turn around from.
That there comes a point where God will say to people, Okay, have your own way. God says, if that’s the way you want to go, I’m not going to stop you. Let the vile person continue to be vile. So, if you previously have been running away from God and the forgiveness He offers, but today your sin is grieving you and you want to turn around and be washed from it, do not delay. That decision.
Jesus is coming soon. I don’t, I don’t know how long that window is going to be open for you, okay? Later today, God’s forgiveness may seem silly to you. You have an opportunity to change your course right now.
We are all on a trajectory somewhere, and that trajectory extends out into eternity. Those of us who have started with Jesus are on a path, no matter how slow, to conform to His perfect image. Those of us who have not been washed and made new are on a path to have our own way.
And those 2 paths may not look very different over the time period of 5, 10, even 40 years, but if you extend those 2 paths all the way out into eternity, The difference cannot be overstated.
C.S. Lewis, who was a professor at Oxford, wrote, Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live forever, and this must be either true or false. Now, there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about, C.S. Lewis says, if I were only going to live 70 years. But which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live forever.
Perhaps, he says, my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse, so gradually that the increase in 70 years will not be very noticeable, but it might be absolute hell in a million years. In fact, if Christianity is true, C.S. Lewis says, hell is the precisely correct technical term for what it would be.
Listen, there will come a day when you won’t be able to turn from who you are.
God will say, have your own way. Let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong.
So if you can turn to him today, if you can say, I want to be on a different trajectory, I want Jesus to wash me so that my debt is paid, sin is out of my life, I’m on a path toward holiness— if you can say that today, don’t miss that opportunity. Change your course today. Jesus is coming soon. You’re like, I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to ask him to take away my sin.
Listen, this is just a simple conversation between you and Jesus. You tell Jesus something like, and when I say you tell him, you can tell him in your head, you can tell him out loud, wherever you are, he will hear you, but you tell him something like, I’ve gone my own way and I’m sorry. I’ve hurt people. I’ve taken advantage of people. I have enriched myself at the detriment of others.
I have practiced falsehood, deceit, maybe just half-truths. I realize, Lord, that if You don’t intervene, my own way will become a deep, dark hell from which I cannot escape. Save me from myself.
Wash me with Jesus’ death. Thank You that He was rejected so I could be accepted. Thank You that He was exiled from the city so I could go into the city. Thank You that He was raised to life again so that my life could be raised from the pit which I have put it in. Lord, redeem me, please.
Listen, if that is the cry of your heart, God will have mercy on you and say, dear child, I have made you new. I have washed you and you are clean. May you continue to do right and enter into the city.
Let’s pray together.
Father, thank You that You have promised a future hope, a future glory to be with You in a perfect city forever and ever where there is no conflict or tension, and best of all, that we will have You.
Father, convict us Show us our sin so that we know that we need to be redeemed in order to go into that city. Help us admit that, Lord. Help us not make excuses for that. Help us to own it.
Lord, help us receive the washing and the cleansing and the renewal that You have provided through Jesus’ death and resurrection. Help us all cry out to You to be made new, that our sin would be taken away, that it would be put to death with Jesus on the cross, and that we would be resurrected new and clean to enter into Your forever city. We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
