Food
for Thought:
A New Heaven and
a New Earth
A Summer
Sermon Series: The Jesus I Want to Know
July 8 , 2007
Dr. Mark Ruppert
John 20:11-16; Revelation 5:4-6; Revelation 21:1-5
The hall was filled to overflowing to hear the lecturer as he
spewed out his communist rhetoric. He came to a pause and then went
into his summation as the audience listened fearfully. “Therefore,”
he said, “there is no God; Jesus Christ never existed; there is no
such thing as a Holy Spirit. The Church is an oppressive
institution, and anyway it’s out of date. The future belongs to the
State, and the State is in the hands of the Party.”
As the communist lecturer was just about to sit down there was an
old priest near the front who slowly rose to his feet. “May I say
two words?” he asked. (It’s really three in English but he was
speaking in Russian. And anyway, whose counting.) The lecturer,
with a look of disdain, reluctantly agreed. The old priest, turning
and looking out over the crowd shouted, “Christ is risen!”
And back came the roar of people, “He is risen indeed!” You see,
in Russia, people had been saying that phrase every Easter for a
thousand years; why should they stop now?
Well, this morning we continue in our summer series entitled: “The
Jesus I Want to Know.” As I said at the outset, when we began
in June, the more we look at Jesus, the more we will want to serve
Him. But the trouble is many of us have made up our own Jesus for
ourselves, and our reinvented Jesus makes few demands on us; this
reinvented Jesus makes us feel happy from time to time but doesn’t
challenge us. The real Jesus did this with the people back in His
day, so why should it be any different today? So what we need to do
is get back to the basics and understand that following Jesus
involves heart, mind, soul and strength.
Let me ask you- other than Christmas and the celebration of the
birth of the Christ Child what is the most mind-boggling,
out-of-this-world event that is celebrated in the Christian Church?
Easter, of course. But let’s just take a few moments and talk about
what Easter has become- it is a time for families and friends to get
together and have a full-blown ham dinner. It is a time for adults
to hide Easter Baskets filled with chocolate candies, and marsh
mellow chicks, and dyed Easter Eggs. It is about churchgoers
getting a new outfit or part of a new outfit and strutting off to
church. So Easter is about celebrations but more than that. Easter
is about the opportunity to have a personal relationship with the
risen Christ; Easter is about the Resurrection of Christ who shows
us that there is hope beyond the grave; Easter is about a new day.
Easter is about the beginning of God’s New World. When Jesus Christ
burst forth from the gave that first Easter Sunday everything
changed, the history of the world was set on a new course. The New
Age began, not the New Age movement with all the crystals and hocus
pocus stuff but the God of Creation’s New Age. Easter is about
God’s victory over evil and the reality that His Kingdom shall come
and His will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. Easter
shouts out of a world that is reborn.
This morning I want to focus on Easter and the impact it makes on
the believer now and for time in eternity. The trouble for us is we
live between the times- between the time when Jesus first was here
and returned to be with the Heavenly Father and when He will return
in all of His glory. So we live between the times….
Our first scripture passage follows the story where Mary
Magdalene comes to the tomb of Christ early in the morning and finds
the stone has been rolled away and there is no Jesus to be found
within it. So she runs and tells two of Jesus’ disciples, Peter and
John what has happened. They go to the tomb and find it just as
Mary has described. They return to their homes and we pick up our
passage with Mary standing outside the tomb weeping. Now remember
the scene-Mary is weeping, because she stands for weeping for all of
us. “She is weeping bitterly; weeping for herself, yes; weeping for
her Lord, yes; but also in her tears weeping for the hope of Israel,
cruelly crushed by tyranny; and in that, for the hope of the world,
snuffed out by the power of the world. And Mary weeps on today…” (Following
Jesus, N. T. Wright, p. 57) Weeping over the death of Jessie
Davis and her unborn child; weeping over the bloodshed in the Middle
East that is so maddening; weeping of Darfur, Sudan; weeping for
those who have not a roof over their heads or food on the table;
weeping for those who suffer because they claim the name of Jesus
and are persecuted. Mary weeps for us when we are in pain; when we
loose a loved one; when we stumble and fall and given in to
temptation.
On the resurrection day, Jesus meets up with Mary and calls her
by name and asks, “Why are you weeping?” And Jesus calls out to us
and asks us why we are weeping and then with assurance and hope says
as He did in Revelation 1:17-18, Mark, Larry, Bill, Heather, Cindy,
whoever can hear, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last,
and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and
ever; and I have the keys of Death and Hades.”
Now jump over to Revelation 5:4-6 for, again, we find there is
weeping. The writer of Revelation, John, beginning in verse 4 is
found weeping for it says, “And I began to weep bitterly because no
one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it, then one
of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe
of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the
scroll and its seven seals.”
And so the scroll is opened and the Book of Revelation continues
and what is revealed is the victory of the Lamb, Jesus Christ, over
all evil and injustice and tyranny and death.
Friends, Easter is all about making all things new.
Easter is all about the wiping away of tears, and new life, and
victory over sin; Easter is all about eternal life and being with
Jesus forever.
Someone once put Good Friday and Easter into this context by
making these observations. “… if Good Friday and Easter don’t stir
our emotions, then the tyrant has indeed enslaved us. We have
become like a garden paved over with stone slabs. Many people live
like that; God help us, many of us even choose it, rather than face
the terror and the joy of our own hearts, let alone of Calvary and
Easter. But Easter is all about the garden in which stone slabs are
made to look silly. Jesus weeps before Lazarus’ tomb; and then he
calls him out to life. Jesus weeps again in Gathsemane; then he
goes off to confront the tyrant and defeat him. Peter weeps
bitterly after he has denied Jesus; and the risen Jesus meets him
and loves him and commissions him. Mary weeps because the plan of
salvation is sealed up, and the world cannot be rescued from
tyranny; and her tears turn to worship because of the Lamb, who was
slain. We can try paving the garden with stone if we like; but come
springtime, come Easter, there will be grass pushing its way
through. It wasn’t, after all, such a silly mistake for Mary to
think that Jesus, the true Adam, was the gardener.” (N. T. Wright,
p. 57)
Which brings us to our third and final scripture passage where
John shares the vision of the new city that replaces the wicked
city. It is the Easter vision of a world reborn. We
read about this in Revelation 21:1-5 where John says, “Then I saw a
new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth
had passed away, and the sea was no more.
And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of
heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I
heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See. The home of God is
among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be
his peoples, and God himself with be with them; he will wipe every
tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying
and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”
The heavenly city comes down to earth and the world is reborn.
Friends, without Easter there is
no hope for anyone, there is no hope for the world.
“Without Easter, Calvary was just another political execution of
a failed Messiah. Without Easter, the world is trapped between the
shoulder shrug of the cynic, the fantasy of the escapist, and the
tanks of the tyrant. Without Easter, there is no reason to suppose
that good will triumph over evil, that love will win over hatred,
that life will win over death. But with Easter we have hope;
because hope depends on love; and love has become human and has
died, and is now alive evermore, and holds the keys of Death and
Hades. It is because of him that we know- we don’t just hope, we
know- that God will wipe away all tears from all eyes. And in that
knowledge we find ourselves to be Sunday people, called to live in a
world of Fridays. In that knowledge we know ourselves to be Easter
people, called to minister to a world full of Calvarys. In that
knowledge we find that the hand that dries our tears passes the
cloth on to us, and [asks] us to follow him, to go to dry one
another’s tears. The Lamb calls us to follow him wherever he goes;
into the dark places of the world, the dark places of our own
hearts, the places where tears blot out the sunlight, the places
where [evil people try to defeat that which is good];…” (N. T.
Wright, p. 61-62) Jesus wants us to be His light in this dark
world. Jesus wants us to join Him in His ministry of wiping the
tears of those who hurt. One day there will be no more tears and
one day there will a world reborn. Until then, may we make every
morning Easter morning from now on. Amen.
Key Points
Introduction:
The hall was filled to overflowing to hear the lecturer as he spewed
out his communistic rhetoric
Other than
Christmas what is the most mind-boggling event celebrated by the
Christian Church?
What
has it become?
What
it is about…
We live
between the times…
John 20:11-16
Mary
is weeping
Assurance and hope- Revelation 1:17-18
Revelation
5:4-6
Verse
4- there is weeping
Easter is
about making all things ______, Easter is about…
It is
the Easter vision of a world ________
Without
Easter there is no hope for anyone, there is no hope for the world
Conclusion:
Jesus wants us to be His light in this dark world. Jesus wants us
to join Him in His ministry of wiping the tears of those who hurt.
One day there will be no more tears and one day there will be a
world reborn.
Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A.)
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