✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever
Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum
Revelation 21,1-7 5716
Lezter Sonntag des Kirchenjahres 073
27. Trinitatis; Ewigkeitssonntag
Pontianus, Bishop of Rome, Martyr 235
20. November 2016
1. О Merciful and Everlasting God, Heavenly Father: We thank You that You have revealed unto us the glory of Your Son, and let the light of Your gospel shine upon us: We pray, guide us by this light so that we may walk diligently as Christians in all good works, ever be strengthened by Your grace and conduct our lives in all godliness. Amen. (Veit Dietrich for 27. Sn. n. Trinitatis).
2. 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, new Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 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. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.“ And He who was seated on the throne said: „Behold, I am making all things new.“ He also said: „Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.“ And He said to me: „It is finished! 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.“
3. In the classic 1976 sci-fi movie Logan’s Run is this dialogue at the end:
P.A. System: Lastday, Capricorn 29’s. Year of the City: 2274. Carousel begins.
Logan 5: No! Don’t go in there! You don’t have to die! No one has to die at 30! You could live! Live! Live, and grow old! I’ve seen it!
4. The citizens of the Domed City were promised the chance for renewal and rebirth when their time for Carousel arrived. It was a lie; there was no rebirth and no resurrection. Some realized this and sought to escape the city and find Sanctuary outside where they could live out their days.
5. The Holy Scriptures teach that there really is a last day but one much different to the one in Logan’s Run. The Earth, as we currently experience it, is a planet of chaos and corruption. Natural disasters threaten us, famines and warfare pursue us, and we have only ourselves to blame for this vile course of events. Our sinfulness, our sins, bring man’s inhumanity to man into our experience. Until Christ returns, our world will be a history of violence, genocide and other atrocities as we lurch from one calamity to another; such horrifying events will become more and more intense as we draw closer to the last day when Christ will bring this horrible wreck of human misery to an end when He returns.
6. In John’s Apocalypse, chapter after chapter describes the pain and sorrow as the world falls sway to evil and destruction, but at the very end John’s vision becomes one of great comfort to Christians. John writes: »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, new Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her Husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: „Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man!“«
7. Jesus declares that He will make a new heaven and a new earth. This present heaven and earth will be destroyed with fire, but the destruction of heaven and earth is not an event to be feared, for Jesus will do this to remove the curse He had imposed upon fallen mankind and creation. Jesus will create a new heaven and earth in the image and likeness of the present, but all vestiges of sin, corruption and evil will be removed. This future, new earth will be a new Garden of Eden where men and women dwell in purity and in the eternal presence of the Triune God. The original Eden was such a place where Adam and Eve lived in harmony with creation, acted as faithful stewards of the same and spent the cool of the evenings resting in the refreshing presence of the Lord.
8. Almost every creation myth in the cultures that span this earth contain a story how God and man dwelt together in harmony, but then man did something to sever that idyllic existence. Genesis tells us that the devil possessed a snake and convinced Adam that it was his right to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and in doing so he would take his rightful and created place as god over the Earth. Curses and condemnations followed and mankind was kicked out of Eden.
9. The tree of life was now out of Adam’s reach; and how we long to eat from that tree still today so that we may live forever! J.R.R. Tolkien mythic The Lord of the Rings has a great White Tree in the city of Gondor, the last great city of men. It was described as a tall tree with white bark; its leaves were dark green on top and bright silver underneath. Unfortunately, by the time of the events in Tolkien’s book, the White Tree had died but no one had the heart to cut it down, so it stood in the courtyard of the king as a dead husk of its once former glory. As Tolkien brings his story to a close, the new king, Aragorn, is told that a sapling of the White Tree exists. He climbs the mountain behind the city and retrieves it, cuts down the old tree and plants the sapling in its place. The following year the tree blossoms and blooms, signifying that the race of man will also flourish and bloom anew. The Apostle John tells us that the Lord will dwell in our midst, and from His throne will flow a river. On each side of this river will grow the tree of life, with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. When the Lord placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, He intended for them to eat from the tree of life. In the new heaven and new earth, the tree of life that was lost to us will now again be before us, and we will be encouraged by the Lord to eat its invigorating, rejuvenating fruit.
10. Jesus proclaims: „I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.“ In the beginning, Adam and Eve rebelled against Him, sought to become their own gods, and ate from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Sin entered the world, and death through sin. Our fellowship with God had been rent asunder. Mankind had been been overcome by a tree. In the middle, Jesus came to His created Earth. He submitted Himself to be sacrificed upon a tree, yes, a cross made from two planks of wood. Upon this cruciform tree Jesus died, and in His dying He overcame sin, death and the devil. By His death, Christ purchased our forgiveness. In the end, we will stand in God’s presence with the tree of life before us. The cruciform tree leads to the path where the heavenly tree of life grows. Jesus is Life Eternal, and through Him we will have access to the tree of everlasting life.
11. Such are the joys revealed by the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures. Many more glorious days and activities await us in the new heaven and on the new earth. The gospel bespeaks us righteous; bright with Christ’s own holiness (LSB 578,3). It is as Phillip Nicolai writes in his hymn:
To You Gloria is sung
With human and angelic tongues,
With harps and with cymbals beautifully.
Of twelve pearls are the gates
We stand in the choir at Your city-state,
The angels around Your throne eternally.
No eye had ever beheld
No ear had heard
Such joy.
We gloriously
Sing to Thee
The Hallelujah to all generations (Nicolai, v. 3). Amen and Amen.
12. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, make known to us the path of life, for in Your presence there is fullness of joy and at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore, so that we look forward to the last day as a time of renewal and rebirth in the resurrection that is promised to us along with the new heavens and new earth[1]. Amen.
To God alone be the Glory
Soli Deo Gloria
✠
All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4th Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27th Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
All quotations from the Book of Concord are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, 12. Edition © 1998 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Nicolai, Philipp. ,,Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme“. (Awake, the Voice is Calling to us). Evangelisch-Lutherisches Kirchengesangbuch. Copyright 2005 Lutherischen Buchhandlung. The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind, Tr. © 2016.
[1] Gloria sei dir gesungen Mit Menschen- und mit Engelzungen, Mit Harfen und mit Zimbeln schön. Von zwölf Perlen sind die Tore An deiner Stadt, wir stehn im Chore Der Engel hoch um deinen Thron. Kein Aug hat je gespürt, Kein Ohr hat mehr gehört Solche Freude. Des jauchzen wir und singen dir Das Halleluja für und für (ELKG 121,3).
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