SPEAKER_00 0:00

Grace and peace, family. My name is Angela, and you'll see me later on the lawn representing Multiplication Network in today's mission fair. First, I would like to introduce you to a friend of ours, a man named Shuan Gastro from Valencia in Spain. When Shuan was about 20 years old, he did something that he had never done before and has told us he has never done since. And as he walked past an open table, he saw in an ashtray on the table a crumpled-up piece of paper. He stuck his hand in the ashtray, pulled out the piece of paper, uncrumpled it and read it, and saw that it was an offer for a correspondence class for learning more about the Bible. Showan didn't know a ton about the Bible, didn't call himself a Jesus follower, but there was something very compelling on that piece of paper, and it was the word free, gratis in Spanish. So he signed up, signed on for this course. Over time, the church that was sponsoring and giving this course sent people to visit him in his apartment. He visited their church. And about five years later, he married the daughter of the pastor of that church, and he became the director of that correspondence course. About 20 years ago, Shoan and my husband John were together at a church planting conference in Mérida, Venezuela. They didn't know each other, but they were standing in line together to take this cable car up the mountain. It's one of the longest cable car rides in the world. They had plenty of time to realize that they were in Venezuela for the same reason, to converse as they went up and came back down. And later at the conference, John was able to write a little note for him on the inside cover of a book that Showan kept, and they went their separate ways. About 10 years ago, another friend of ours, Alfredo, said to John, I'm looking for a director for Multiplication Networks Hub in Europe, in Spain. I have a fantastic candidate, and his name is Joan Castro. And John thought the name was familiar and realized that this was the same gentleman that he had met in this cable car years earlier. And when they were able to meet up again, uh Showan still had the book with the note that John had written in the front cover. This month of May, Showan is celebrating 10 years of being Multiplication Networks Director for our Europe hub in Valencia, Spain. And in the year 2025, just last year, wholly through the work of the Holy Spirit, entirely through God's grace and only for his glory, Multiplication Network was able to see planted 17,237 churches across over 75 countries in the world. Multiplication network partners with many different denominations, many different organizations and churches, including Pillar Church. So though we know that there are over six billion people in the world who do not walk with Jesus, we believe fervently that one of the best ways to allow people to come under the sound of the gospel and to hear the name of Jesus and to meet him is to plant new communities of faith where none had existed before. And we partner together in that. So, friends, one neighborhood, one village at a time, we are pushing back that darkness through the work of the Holy Spirit. Thank you, thank you for partnering with us, and to God be the glory.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

The Lord be with you. Thank you very much. I am a happy camper this week because on Wednesday Angela and I celebrated 35 years of marriage. And when I asked her, honey, are you ready for the next 35? There might have been just a brief hesitation. And then she said yes. So I'm very thankful. Love you, honey. Thank you. The ministry is not to be done alone, ministry is to be done together. We're celebrating Trinity Sunday today, the Sunday after Pentecost. And if there's a reason to do it together, is because the Godhead is community, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which we celebrate today, the first Sunday after Pentecost. So happy Trinity Sunday, and may the Lord continue as a triune God pouring out his spirit on his people so that together we can do the mission that none of us can do alone. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne that said, Look, God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and he himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. Then he said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. This is out of Revelation twenty-one, verses one through five. Let's pray. Father, Son, and Spirit, may your scriptures be our teacher, may your spirit be our guide, and your glory our only concern. And all God's people say. Amen. I grew up in one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Half the time we were in the Patagonia, and the other half of the time of these 13 years, we were in the capital city of Buenos Aires. Of course, I'm talking about the country of Argentina. Argentina is beautiful. And if you ever have on your list places that you want to visit, I urge you put Argentina on the list. I've been in about 160 plus countries, and I still think, although I am a little biased, that Argentina is one of the most beautiful places on earth. You could go to the south and you're in the Patagonia and you see the beautiful Andes mountains, which are a continuation of the Rocky here in the Americas between Argentina and Chile, and they are absolutely beautiful. People go from all over the world to climb these mountains. And the lakes, pristine lakes, where people travel from Europe to go do fly fishing around San Carlos de Bariloche. They go there because they call it the little Switzerland of South America. If you go just a little bit north, you end up in the province of Mendoza, where they have the famous Malbec grape and the Malbec wineries. It's just incredible to accompany the amazing beef that comes from the Pampas in Argentina. Have you ever been to an Argentine steakhouse? It's incredible. And this is the land of tangos and of gerva mate. Did I mention World Cup champions three times of the real football? Then if you go further north, you get in right on the border of Argentina and Brazil, you've got what is cataloged as one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful, waterfall in the world. A series of 275 individual cataracts or falls in a jungle setting, just incredible beautiful. I still think, at least on my list, it is the most beautiful spot on the planet in terms of nature. And then Buenos Aires, the capital, called by many the Paris of Latin America. Wide boulevards and statues with beautiful fountains. If you go in the springtime, the smell and the beauty of the flowers. Argentina is just incredible. Did I say it was beautiful? And then there's another side. I grew up under a military dictatorship. Late 70s, early 80s. The junta took over with violence, took a grip of the society, and anybody who had some thinking that looked different than their own to talk about political polarization, snatch them away in the middle of the night, cut them up, and do all kinds of things that are not good to mention here today, torture them and kill them. My brother and I remembered going on our bikes to go check out that we had heard our friend's house had been bombed. And sure enough, when we got there, we saw all the debris of the crumpled-down house. And then there are the death flights of the 20 to 30,000 people called Los Desaparecidos, the disappeared ones, in this Guerra Sucia, which in Spanish means the dirty war. Two to three thousand of them were pushed to their death out of airplanes into the Rio de la Plata Delta and into the Atlantic Ocean. And you can read about this if you want to study it and document it's documented. Violence, fear, a professor, a journalist, a political opponent, someone who thought different. Half the people didn't even know why they were being tortured. The reason I share this with you is that I think that Argentina is a microcosm of the world, but also a microcosm of the tension that every human being experiences in some measure. That the world is a beautiful place created by God for human flourishing, for healthy relationships, for a good marriage, for wonderful children, maybe blessed with grandchildren. What a beautiful world on a day like today, and to go by the lake, maybe some of you are lucky enough to go out on a boat ride later this summer. Wow, what a beautiful world. And then at the same time, the ugliness, the polarization, the broken relationships, the divorces, the tensions, the misunderstandings, the pains within, the secrets we don't even dare to talk about, the violence, the words, the oppression. And somehow, in the book that we're looking at today, these tension comes together. So let's turn now to Revelation 21, 1 through 5. And I urge you, if you will, open up your Bible near you or look on your phone, Revelation 21, and we will look in expository fashion at verses 1 through 5. Revelation, the last book in the Bible, the canon is about to close. The last two chapters, 21 and 22, the closing of the canon, give us a vision that remind us of the first two chapters of creation, Genesis 1 and 2. So we have creation, we have the fall, we have the redemption, and then we have the good news of new creation. Today we celebrate new creation, a new heaven and a new earth. And it for those of you who like to take notes or who are the kind that like an outline, we're simply going to look at the natural outline that comes from the scripture itself, which is we're gonna look first, what did John see? Secondly, what did John hear? And third, what does Jesus say about it? So let's look first at what John sees in this revelation in what is often called apocalyptic literature, where there's all kinds of symbolisms, right? In the book of Revelation, a book often very misunderstood and hard to study, but a book that we know is intended to bring comfort to a suffering and persecuted church. But a book that also speaks to us today. Verse 1. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. Wow! Here we have a cosmic vision of a new heaven and a new earth that is in the making. God is bringing about, ushering in a new heaven and a new earth. And right away you see that you have a fork in the road theologically and messiologically, that you have to deal with. Because you have to make a choice. What does this first uh this new heaven and this new earth represent, and what happens to the old heaven and the old earth? And one of the interpretations that has been offered up in the last couple centuries, especially since one Bible that people know as the Schofield Bible, when that came out, a fairly uh uh prominent uh part of the North American and Western Evangelical Church took the route of saying that this verse means that the earth will be completely annihilated and replaced with something new. Thankfully, there is another alternative which says this is not about annihilation and replacement, but rather about radical renewal and restoration. That's a whole different uh approach. Now, how can we come to that conclusion? Well, we call our friends the Greek scholars, and they tell us that the Greek word here for new, a new heaven and a new earth, is not the word neos, which means new in time, where out of philosophically they say ex nihilo, a new heaven and a new earth, boom, just appear out of nothing, like poof, and there it is. No. The word that is used here in Greek is the word kainos, which is not new in time, but new in quality, inviting us to think of something that is totally renewed, totally remade, but keeping the good and taking off and sloughing out all the results of sin and death. So there is this new heaven and new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. So the world as we know it will not continue. It'll be this world as we know it, but improved, renewed, and totally restored. The second thing I think can be said about this is that there's a clue there, what it says, and there was no longer any sea. The fact that it specifies that there's no longer any sea means that okay, there might be other things that continue. And of course, even for the best scholars in the world and the theologians, it is still a mystery to answer the question: what are the levels of continuity or discontinuity between the old heaven and the old earth as we see it now, and that new heaven and that new earth that someday will totally be. But we know that there has to be some level of continuity from other passages in Scripture. Now, some people point out to the passage that says, Well, it's all going to be destroyed by fire, and that seems to support that annihilation perspective that is going to be totally destroyed. But then the theologians ask, is it an annihilating fire or is it a refining fire that seeks to purify the gold of what God has made? One final argument before we go to verse 2 is that just think about it. God declared the creation good. In fact, when men and women were created, he said it was very good. He affirmed his creation and he sustains his creation. If this world is going to be destroyed and annihilated, the devil gets to take some glory. And you know what, brothers and sisters and friends who are listening, God does not share his glory with anyone. He is a jealous God, the maker of heaven and earth. Yes, your friend, but also holy other, holy sovereign over all that he makes and loves and treasures. And he will not share his glory, not one inch of it, with the enemy of our souls. So I think this is a strong case that this new heaven and this new earth will have a significant amount of continuity with the world as we know it, but without the death and the sin and the suffering. When it says there was no longer any sea, some of you are already worried. You like boating on the big bodies of water. We're blessed to live here in West Michigan, especially in the summer. In January, we'll think about it. But people like fishing, people like going to the beach, people like the ocean, they like the sea. What does it mean here in the Bible? In the new heaven and the new earth, there's no longer any sea. I've got good news for you. The scholars tell us that in the Hebrew thinking, Hebraic thinking, and in the Old Testament, the sea is the place of chaos. The marine monster lives there, the Leviathan lives there. Everything that is tempestuous and tumultuous lives in the sea. The sea is a symbol of chaos. When John is telling us there is no longer any sea, what it's trying to tell us even today is that creation wins over chaos. Hope wins over despair. I was gonna say hope wins over Calvin. That didn't sound right. Don't pursue rabbit trails. There was no longer any see. Love will win over hate.

unknown 21:11

Amen.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

Verse two, still talking about what John sees. Not only does he have this cosmic vision, that cosmic theological framework all of a sudden becomes very personal and intimate. Verse 2, I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. Here we have an incredible thing that I think if you forgot everything else about this message, that you would remember this. A lot of American evangelicalism teaches that the whole Christian movement is about going up. Let's save some people and send them to heaven. Let's populate heaven. You'll hear phrases like that. Like if it's about snatching people, taking them to some other place far away, and we'll name it. Heaven and everything is good there, but this earth is no good. It's about going up. This text says so clearly that at the end of time, the movement is not a movement up, but a movement down. The new heaven and the new earth is a movement of the new creation where the holy city, the new Jerusalem, is coming down here, and God's dwelling place will be among us. This is incredible. And then it has this incredible, tender, intimate, naked, celebratory line where it says, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. This is not just a theological construct, this becomes personal, intimate, and celebratory. The movement is the king is coming back. Then we switch from what he saw to what he heard. In verse 3, he says, I heard a loud voice. Now there's two things that make me think we need to pay attention to this. One, the voice is loud. If the voice is loud, we need to be listening. We need to pay attention. The second thing is it comes from a place of authority, it comes from the throne. The loud voice comes from the throne. And what does that loud voice say? It says, look, pay attention, behold, God's dwelling place is now among the people. Last year I went through a year-long certification in cultural intelligence. And I chose to do a project of how does the cultural intelligence and cross-cultural communication intersect with an understanding of biblical of the gospel in the scriptures. And if you study cultural anthropology and even from the corporate perspective, how cultures interact, you soon learn that every culture in the world has the question of trying to answer where does the divine live? Where does God reside? What is God's zip code? We have in the Bible, you know, the first place of God's dwelling is with people in the garden when everything is right. But then sin and human rebellion and wickedness and brokenness come into the world and all the minions of death that are making chaos out of our relationships with creation, with each other, with self, with with all of nature. God comes and in Jesus Christ, he not only lived there, but then he lives in the tabernacle, then he lives in the temple, and then finally in the New Testament, in the person of Jesus Christ. And Jesus has the audacity to say, after his work on the cross and his resurrection, that he is going to send the Holy Spirit. And we just celebrated that last Sunday, Pentecost Sunday, where the Spirit is poured out on all flesh. And the triune God through the Spirit and says, Jesus says this, now I am going to live wherever two or three of you are gathered in my name, that's where I'm going to be. I am going to live in the worship of my people. And when you agree on something, I will bless that and I will go with you. Wow. God in Jesus becomes incarnate and then gives us the same power of the Spirit with which He walked on the earth, is available to His church to be and make us a new identity and a new community. Amazing. God's dwelling place will be among the people. And then verse 4 part of that message that he hears from the throne says, This God is going to wipe every tear from their eyes. American society, if you allow me this constructive critique, wants a macho God. And sometimes we associate him with a military or with a machine gun, and you'll see pictures of even of that, or somebody that's going to come with the weapons of the world. And some evangelical traditions find it even offensive that he didn't come on a stallion, he came in a little donkey. He didn't even have a place to lay his head. We're talking about a Jesus that incarnates with the poor, with the marginalized, that doesn't come in the halls of power, of huge economies and huge uh military might. We're talking about a Jesus that identifies with those who others despise, who teaches us to love the widow and the orphan and the stranger in our midst and the poor. This is the Jesus that the New Testament shows us. But Americans want somebody who will strut and come with strength and muscle. And we find it sometimes hard to do the Jesus work, the Jesus way in incarnational ministry. This God is also not only the most powerful, but he's also a tender God. An image here, a metaphor that you would usually ascribe to a mother washing the tears of a baby or a child. And it says, God Himself will wipe away the tears from their eyes. One thing I like about the scripture is that it doesn't hide our suffering and our pain. No more. And then there's a list of things that will be no more. In Argentina, which I told you about, there was a report when democracy finally came after the military lost the Falkland War, we call it La Islas Malvinas. After they lost that and economic collapse, democracy finally came and a commission for justice was created and for peace and reconciliation. And the report is a long report with the documentation of all the rapes and the tortures and the things that happened during those flights of death where they would throw people from the planes. Twenty to thirty thousand people lost their lives and disappeared. Two to three thousand found their death by the death flights where they were thrown out of airplanes into the Atlantic and the Rio de la Plata. That report is called Nunca más, which in Spanish means never again. Even a population like Argentina, in its official report, can recognize there are some things that have to go. And on this list we see no more death, no more mourning or crying or pain, for this old order of things has passed away. And now we saw what John saw, what John heard, and let's just finish with one last verse. He who was seated on the throne said, and now Jesus speaks. So let's look at that sentence for just a moment. The text does not say, hold on, someday in the future, I will make it all new. For now, just tolerate this reality. It doesn't say that for a future tense. It also does not say, hey, past tense, it's all finished. Can't you see? What's wrong with you? It's all done. It's all been made new. We would look through the window and we'd look at the news and we'd say, This doesn't look like it's right to me. It doesn't look new to me, it doesn't look restored to me. If nothing else, we'd look in the mirror and say, it doesn't look like it's totally renewed yet. I don't know, am I the only one? The Greek scholars tell us that this is in the present continuous. And the present continuous means that the project has already begun, but it's still happening. You see, in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, when he forgave our sins and through death conquered death in this incredible mystery of the Christian faith that Christians have believed for 2,000 years, and then proclaimed that on the third day death was conquered even more by Jesus resurrecting from the dead, then sending that spirit of life, of hope, of service and sacrifice into the people that he calls the church for the good of the world. Jesus manifests his power and his glory, and that project from the resurrection on has already begun. And there are little signs here and there that should give us hope, little moments of joy, little moments of hope, little things, glimmers of things that we see God is amongst us, and He is going to make all things new. He is the resurrected Christ, and He will restore this world to its original intent. And I have to just finish by saying that this is not something that we just wait for, although waiting is a big part of the Christian life, but it is also something that we get to participate. God's presence, which is the theme for this summer at Pillar, invites participation. Let me say that again. God's presence invites participation. God, this Father, the Son, and the Spirit, today's Trinity Sunday. Did I mention that already? Trinity Sunday, we're celebrating. The Father sends the Son. The Father and the Son send the Spirit. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit empower the church, and the church then has one more step to go into the community, into the hurting world, into the pain of the world to bring the joy and the resurrection power of the gospel into that hurting world. We can choose to stay here happy as just a community of faith of sorts, a club or something else. But if it is the church, it's our mission with God into the world. I want to finish with one of uh NT Wright's uh quotes, where he says, Jesus' resurrection is the beginning of God's new project, not to snatch people from earth to heaven, but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. Isn't that beautiful? And one more quote: people who believe in the resurrection, do we have two or three here who believe in the resurrection yet? Can somebody say amen? Is God, people who believe in the resurrection, in God making a whole new world in which everything will be set right at last, are unstoppably motivated to work for that new world in the present. Brothers and sisters, the third time a preacher says they're finishing is the true one. And this is the third one. You and I get to participate. We have been blessed with the presence of God. But there are still six billion people, as Angela mentioned, who do not know anything about Jesus. What are we doing to change that? A new king is in charge. The bad king has been vanquished at the cross. Still kicking, but already on the outs. A new king is in charge. We call it the kingdom of God. It doesn't come with heavy weaponry or with big uh attitudes or with Facebooking someone to tell them where to go quickly. No, it comes in the ways of faith, of hope, and of love, of service and sacrifice, of loving and forgiving one another and participating with whatever gifts God has given you, those are the ones that are in are meant to be used by the Spirit in the making this world new. For that, thank you, brother. For that, we need a special food, a special food of grace. The bread and the cup. And that's why now we're going to come to the table. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.