Resisting Trump with Revelation (34)
New Creation (21:1-22:5)
Gen.1-2 and Rev.21-22
This
last scene of the vision of Revelation, the conclusion to Jesus’ sermon, takes
us beyond the realm of sin and struggle to the fulfilment of God’s eternal
purpose. Here we find the counterpart to Gen.1-2 as bookends of the entire
biblical story which reveal the “point” of purpose of the whole story.
The
creation stories reveal the Creator’s work in constructing a temple for he and
his creatures to live together in intimacy and harmony.[1]
That is his purpose and that for which God works throughout the biblical story.
When this purpose is derailed by our sin, resolving that becomes the major
focus of the story from Gen.3 – Rev.20. But that story serves to demonstrate not
only the reclamation of God’s wayward creatures but most importantly their
restoration to God’s original design. That’s what we find in Gen.1-2 and
Rev.21-22, the only four chapters in the Bible in which sin plays no role. Here
we find God’s purpose in embryo (Gen.1-2) and fulfilled (Rev.21-22).
And
the temple God built in Eden at the beginning we find in Rev.21-22 at the end.
-The
New Jerusalem, the holy city, is cubic-shaped. The only other structure so
shaped in the Bible is the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s temple (1 Ki.6:20),
where God dwelled. God’s fulfilled plan, his bride, his people, his new
creation, is the site where God lives and shares fellowship with his creatures.
-This
city becomes co-extensive with the new creation, matching the rivers flowing out
of Eden to irrigate the then uninhabited lands outside, indicating they were to
be settled, thus extending the boundaries of the nascent temple in Eden to
include these outer lands as well. The embryonic Holy of Holies has become the
worldwide Holy of Holies God intended.
-This
new creation to be God’s “home” where he will “dwell” (21:3) which is temple
language.
-we
also find the river and tree of life of the garden, indeed the garden itself,
enclosed within the new city (22:1ff.).
-Humanity
will “reign” forever in the new creation fulfilling the mandate given our first
parents to have “dominion” over the creation.
Numerous
other lines of evidence confirm this identification (see Walton and Beale noted
earlier). In Rev.21-22 we see what God had intended for his creatures and
creation in full bloom!
We could say much more about this
last scene of the vision but I think it is sufficient to note that ends Jesus’
sermon following the model of reading Revelation as a worship service I
proposed in the beginning of this series. He closes it off, appropriately, with
a Beatitude: “See, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who
keeps the words of the prophecy of this book” (22:7).
Summarizing the Sermon
Chs.12-13 are Jesus’ sermon in a nutshell:
1.
Everything
centers on Jesus himself, birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension
(12:1-6).
2.
The decisive
battle between God and the anti-god powers has been fought and the powers have been
defeated by Jesus and cast out of heaven (12:7-12).
3.
The defeated
enemies of God (Dragon and two Beasts) nevertheless continue their futile
resistance as they await their destruction, especially by persecuting God’s
people (ch.13).
This is, as you can see, the basic
gospel of the early church. Everything in Revelation emerges out of this center
and flows back into it.
As an “apocalypse” (1:1)
Revelation unveils or reveals the truth of this state of affairs for the
church. First, and directly, the churches of Asia Minor to whom it was directed
(chs.2-3) and by analogy to the church throughout the ages (chs.7,14).
As a letter (greeting and
conclusion), Revelation intends to be a pastoral resource for the faithful
living of this gospel by the church living under the “death throes” of the
powers.
As a “prophecy” (1:3; 22:7) it
declares God’s word into the immediate situation of the seven churches and
echoes through the journey of the church as an ever-pertinent reminder of our
situation and God’s action and provision.
Revelation, according to Jesus’
sermon, is finally about “living as of the first commandment matters.” Or if
Jesus is Lord, the Emperor/King/President/Queen, Prince(ss)/ Prime Minister,
etc. is NOT, though they fancy they are. What does it mean to be faithful to
the true Lord, Jesus Christ, while living in “the belly of the beast” of false
lords pressing them claims on us at every turn? Whether in the 1st or
21st century this is always what is at stake in being the church.
Revelation’s imperious and sometimes strident vision of the gospel is necessary
for the church to:
1.
re-present
Jesus Christ to us in his full stature as Lord of Lords and King of Kings
2.
remember who
we are and what we are here for
3.
realize
that every day and every action are fraught with “apocalyptic” significance in
the ongoing struggle of the church to endure the death throes of the powers and
bear witness to the gospel.
Jesus baptizes our imaginations
in this sermon to more truly “see” or world and our lives in it faithfully.
Similar to John’s hearing about the Lion of the tribe of Judah but on turning
to see a slaughtered lamb, we need a similar jolt to our imagination that
redefines reality for us. To wit, we really do live in a world where a dragon
plots our downfall and recruits beasts to do its dirty work and attack us to
hinder and derail our following the lamb. Our world is, as Luther put in his
great hymn, filled with devils, this host of evil powers has been beaten by a
man hanging on a cross and raised from the dead in 33 a.d. The unfathomably counter-intutitiveness of
this to our “normal” way of thinking requires the strong jolt of the bizarre
and the fantastic this sermon offers for us to begin to get a grip on what follow
Jesus in our world is all about. Quite a sermon, huh?
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