All Things New
Isaiah 25: 6-9; Revelation 21: 1-5
I had a debate the other day. You see, I love fall. [SLIDE 7] It’s one of my favorite times of the year with pumpkin, the beautiful leaves, cool mornings, Thanksgiving…all these wonderful, comforting things. A friend of mine, though, called it horrible. She said it was the most atrocious season of any year because everything is dying. Those beautiful colors are not some inspiration for a Thomas Kincade painting. They’re the leaves losing life, falling off and dying. She added that she hates the cold. It’s painful and chilling. You can’t swim in the fall and winter. And to top it off, she prefers not to eat pumpkin if she can help it.
That is, perhaps, a common theme for folks. We tend to prefer one season over another and have personal, experience-based reasons for our choice. It is much the same with human life. We glorify and worship the abilities, beauty, and fun of youth, and we live in sheer terror of what it means to grow old and eventually die. I want you to understand something about being God’s faithful though. This process isn’t a start to finish. You do not put a period at the end of one’s life, for God has written a semicolon and a whole new paragraph to follow. God is the author and finisher of life…not just our earthly life, but our eternal life as well.
We read in Isaiah a prophecy of God’s goodness. It’s a good place to start. God will remove the cloud of gloom, the shadow of death hanging over the earth. God will swallow up death forever. Tears will be wiped away, and people will know that the God they trusted in and relied on will have saved them. The people of Israel often got a lot of prophecies of doom and punishment. They often strayed from God, and a prophet came to call them back to rights. But every single prophet also offered a word of hope for the people for their future. The punishment, the struggle, the broken relationship was never the final word for God’s people. The prophet always had words of hope to come.
In Revelation that same word of hope is echoed centuries later. God will bring a new heaven and a new earth. [SLIDE 8] God will make all things new. The writer of Revelation lived in a time of great oppression. Whereas in Jesus’s day, he was persecuted by the religious powers, by the point of Revelation Rome was ramping up its worst persecutions of the church. Revelation focuses the readers away from the world of difficulty and to the God’s realm of hope and peace…the coming kingdom, not the struggles of now.
Indeed, the words of the gospel are words of hope echoing through eternity not just today and tomorrow. Too often we look at death as the end, but Jesus taught us to consider it a beginning. And as a reminder, the beautiful fall colors, the barren trees of winter, all eventually come back around again in the spring. The dying leaves are never gone for good. Something new and amazing happens. Other reminders are all around this world we live in. [SLIDE 9] A caterpillar wraps itself up and disappears entombed in a cocoon. But in just a short time, a gorgeous butterfly emerges from what appears to be death. Our God is a God of life and hope.
I can understand that fear though. Death is an unknown. It’s something you only experience once, and you don’t really get a preview of it. An older comedian I follow said, “People tell me to act my age. I don’t know what that means. I’ve never been this age before…we’re learning together sweetheart.” When we face the unknown, it gives rise to fear within. I remember a long-time member of this church, Barbara Wright, and I were talking one day as she was getting near the end of this life. She died more than a decade ago, so many of you don’t know what a character she was. I remember she said, “I’m not afraid of death. It’s the dying part I’m not too keen on.”
That makes sense. We’re told in God’s Word there is no sting in death and no victory for the grave. Fear is pretty normal and not always controllable, but we have to take our fears and remember that God has designed a plan of hope for us. John writes those words of hope for us: “[God] will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” And the one sitting on the throne said, ‘Look, I am making everything new!’” That’s both a prophecy and a promise—God will wipe the tears from our eyes. God will end death, sorrow, crying, and pain—permanently and forever.
All of our songs talk about that promise of God making all things new for us. [SLIDE 10] “In our end is our beginning, in our time, infinity, in our doubt, there is believing; in our life, eternity. In our death, a resurrection, at the last, a victory.” We hear it again in the closing hymn, “Gather with the saints at the river that flows from the throne of God.” And we hear it in Andrae Crouch’s famous anthem, “No more crying there, we are going to see the King; no more dying there, we are going to see the king.” It’s a promise we can rely on that death is not an end, but a beginning.
And so today, we gather to light candles in memory of our beloved saints here at First Christian Church. Every year we honor their memory, their work, and we take the time to give thanks then honor them by learning from the faith they lived and experienced. Joanne Ogilvie was one of the sweetest, most loving humans you can find. And even in her late 80s, she loaded as many women from Magnolia Manor as she could fit in her Nissan Sentra and brought them to church.
Carolyn Symons was a solid friend whom you could count on to love you and help you. She always had her sweet dog Lola in tow, and a warmer, friendlier pair could not be found. And John Carroll was a man of incredible faith, who brought this church back from the brink of closure and brought me into the ministry. Each of these people have left an indelible, unforgettable mark on the people they intersected with and the lives they touched. They have earned their reward. That doesn’t make our grief any less real or any less painful that they are no longer here.
Hold fast to those promises of hope. God will soon be with God’s people. God will wipe every tear from our eyes. God will make it so there is no more death, sorry, pain, or crying. Behold, God makes all things new. It is easy to let the pain that we feel in the here and now convince us that God’s truth and promises are not real. Do not let present circumstances rob you of your hope. God, we are told, gives us strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow. And nothing, no one, and not a single painful moment, day, or season is ever, EVER, going to rob us of that promise God has made to us.
[SLIDE 11] I like the fall season. Some may say it’s hard because the leaves are dying. Some may not like it because things are getting colder, and winter can be barren and difficult. But to me, there’s a sense of beauty in the fall season. Even in their dying and falling off, the leaves burst forth with glorious colors, radiant images of a long and amazing spring and summer. And somewhere, just waiting behind the limbs of the tree is a whole new life of leaves, soon-coming. [SLIDE 12] And so it is with our lives. Death is not the final word. For even in death we hear the refrain of God’s hope: “My Lord, what a morning!”
Worship Service video https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/1292803551879958/