We continue in Revelation 21 to see what the new heavens and earth and New Jerusalem will be like. This devotional reading looks at the pronouncement that all things will be made new and that God’s plan was finished.
Nuggets
- Heaven will be filled with new instead of old.
- God wanted to make sure we have what we need to make the right choice.
- God’s plan of completion was done.
- The beginning and the end are important.
- God wants us to thirst after Him, and He will reward us when we do.
- We are the ones who conquer.
- God chooses to adopt those who choose Him.
We barely get over seeing New Jerusalem come down, and we’re moving on. We start talking about what it is going to be like.
Let's Put It into Context
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Devotions in the Eternity Begins series
All Things New
“And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ …” (Rev. 21: 5 ESV)
Heaven will be filled with new instead of old.
We are still going with Christ as the One sitting on the great white throne. That is the only throne that was specifically mentioned since Revelation 20.
If that is so, then Jesus is the one saying He would make all things new. We know that He is the faithful Witness (Rev. 1: 5 ESV). We can believe what He says.
We can also believe Jesus because He has done it before. “He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (Jn. 1: 2-4 ESV).
Why is Jesus making all things new? Well, that is the purpose of the Day of the Lord. Sin will be defeated and punished so that disciples can be rewarded and fixed.
Alexander described it in a beautiful way. He wrote,
“Down below the long ‘becoming’ of the evolution of history and nature is complete, the ‘one far-off divine event’ is reached; we have ‘a new earth.’ Out of the city that was in idea perfectly holy and beautiful, but which was marred by sin, and whose battlements were never steeped with the sunrise of the day for which we wait — out of it, as it were, grew ‘the holy city, new Jerusalem.’”
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We are to follow God’s plan.
In Revelation 21: 4, we got a list of what would be made new.
Write It Down
“… Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true’” (Rev. 21: 5 ESV)
God wanted to make sure we have what we need to make the right choice.
We can’t say that we don’t know what is expected of us. Alexander had a great statement about the Apostles’ teaching. He wrote,
“The apostle’s sermons were sometimes, perhaps generally, summaries of the characteristics of that life. … As we contemplate the process of religious thought, we may be sometimes tempted to fear that a period is approaching when religion will be so [spiritualized] as to dissolve away. The answer is afforded by simply considering the abiding, irreducible elements in man’s nature — his intellect, his conscience, his affections.”
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Their teachings mirrored those of Jesus’. They may have added their own experiences in or applied it to the audiences to whom they were preaching, but the topics and concepts were those of Jesus.
We may mistakenly think that all spiritual things will pass away. Instead, it is part of our nature – our mind, our soul, our thoughts, and our actions.
It Is Done
“And he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son’” (Rev. 21: 6-7 ESV)
God’s plan of completion was done.
Jesus said, “It is finished” to the Plan of Salvation, but His work isn’t done. He didn’t leave us where He found us.
“It is done” is said here because perfection is done. Perfection is the goal of sanctification.
No. Alexander had it right. He said that Christ’s work still goes on today because He is still alive today.
Jesus oversees our sanctification. “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.” (Ps. 32: 8 ESV).
It began at our regeneration. It will be complete when eternity starts.
Some of us may question, though, if it is an inward or outward renewal. Is it what we think, feel, or do?
In reality, it is all we do. We are to be holy inside and out – body, soul, and spirit.
Because of this, we sometimes have the mistaken thought that there will be a big change from our spiritual bodies to our physical bodies. We don’t think we are worthy enough.
Is that how we figure out we are goats masquerading as sheep? We question the everything about it.
Instead, we are to look at this renewal with anticipation. We are to prepare ourselves by growing closer and closer to God. We have to, because becoming more and more like Jesus is the foundation of our reform.
The Alpha and the Omega
The beginning and the end are important.
But go back to the first part of verse 6. “And he said to me …” (Rev. 21: 6 ESV). Who is the He, and Who is the Me?
We generally associate that title the Alpha and the Omega with Jesus. The rest of the verse bears that out. “And he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end …” (Rev. 21: 6 ESV).
The title bookends the chapters within Revelation. The first was in Revelation 1: 8. “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty’” (Rev. 1: 8 ESV).
Yeah, it stumbles when it says that God was talking in verse 8, not Jesus. The Complete Jewish Bible said it was Adonai speaking. So, we can’t blame it on our rewriting Scriptures to make Adonai, El Shaddai, or YHWH/Yahweh into LORD, meaning Jesus.
Unfortunately, the Person on the throne is always said to be He or the One.
But it really falls apart when we get to the end of verse 7. “… and I will be his God and he will be my son’” (Rev. 21: 6-7 ESV). That has to be God speaking.
God has talked that way before. “I will be to him [Solomon] a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men” (II Sam. 7: 14 ESV).
So, where did it switch? Probably God started talking when New Jerusalem came down. “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God’” (Rev. 21: 3 ESV).
That makes sense. I got it wrong. This throne that came down with New Jerusalem. God is sitting on it.
I just thought of something. Alpha is creation – the beginning. Omega is the recreation for eternity – the end of what we have now to begin again.
On a different note, Woodford painted a wonderful picture. Picture Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Picture the multitude looking in wonder at New Jerusalem.
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One single person to a multitude – the growth of the Church was phenomenal.
To the Thirsty
God wants us to thirst after Him, and He will reward us when we do.
Probably the most memorable verse about water is Jesus telling the Samaritan woman He had living water. “Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink,” you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water’” (Jn. 4: 10 ESV).
This verse, though, is the fulfillment of Isaiah 55: 1. “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price” (Isa. 55: 1 ESV).
Look at the promise. “… To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment” (Rev. 21: 6 ESV).
Salvation is free. We do not have to earn it.
It is a gift that God freely gives us – a gift that has cost Him plenty.
To make sure we know that promise – and the consequences for not accepting that gift – is the whole reason the Book of Revelation was written. It isn’t to show off how wonderful Heaven will be.
It is to showcase the way that we must take to be ready for eternity.
- “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’ (Jn. 14: 6 ESV).
- “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Mt. 7: 13-14 ESV).
So, put all this together. The Alpha and Omega offers salvation – the plan He put together – freely without cost to those who are seeking Him.
I know. Freely and without cost sound redundant, but I don’t think so.
God offers blessings upon blessing to those who genuinely seek Him. He asks nothing from us except we submit to His plan.
We don’t deserve salvation. But look what Spurgeon said. He wrote, “Thirst is a desire arising out of a need.”
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We found out in Revelation 20 that we do need salvation. The punishment for not doing so is horrible and eternal.
The One Who Conquers
We are the ones who conquer.
We conquer by resisting sin. The Homilist put it a wonderful way. In The Matchless Creator, it was written “Sin is cowardice, sin is faithless, sin is abhorrent, sin is murderous, sin is lascivious, sin is deceptive and idolatrous.”
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I know. Sin doesn’t seem all that cowardly. One of draws Satan uses is that it is not abhorrent. But it is deceptive, idolatrous, and murderous.
But think of the hope we who have conquered has. We endured the struggle. We kept the faith.
Eternity is ours.
Our God, His Children
God chooses to adopt those who choose Him.
Isn’t eternity what God always promised, all the way back to His covenant with Abraham? “And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you” (Gen. 17: 7 ESV).
Because we are conquerors, we are adopted into God’s family. He will be our God.
Hull said don’t stress about it being in the next to the last book of God’s Word. It isn’t an afterthought.
It is a reward of redemption. Hull wrote that, “… therefore belongs with all its greatness to every redeemed man.”
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What belongs to us is God’s heart.
Making the Connections #1
We have to watch what we think sanctification really is.
Dykes talked about what goes wrong. He wrote, “The novel pleasure of being religious faded out of your days, like evening red out of the sky; somehow the old world resumed its place about you, and you returned by degrees to the old life.”
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We must be genuine in our conversation, and we must diligently work toward sanctification.
When eternity starts, that will be the real day of salvation. That is when we will truly be sin-free.
Making the Connections #2
What is it going to be like to be standing in the presence of God when it is done? Will we think about our previous lives?
Look what the Literary Churchman said. In Life Done, it was written “We do not value what looks fair to the eye, but what is real and enduring. We do not praise a promising plan, but a successful result. Wisdom is that which gains its end.”
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What we will have is so much more than what we have had.
Our relationship with God must be the most important thing in our lives. It must run through all our life from conversion to perfection.
If it doesn’t, we may have a religion, but we don’t have a relationship.
Making the Connections #3
We may feel we are not worthy enough. They wish they had more hope in their salvation.
How Do We Apply This?
- Navigate the Sanctification Road.
- Grow our faith so that we may overcome.
- Unrelentingly and constantly watch.
- Pray unceasingly.
- Follow our mission from Luke 9: 23.
- Persevere and endure.
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Father God. We thank You that You keep Your promises. You promised to make us new, to make us like You. We can’t wait, Lord. Amen.
What do you think?
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