RUF @ KSU Large Group 4/30/26

Revelation 22

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You're listening to RUF at KSU Podcast. Well, good evening, everyone. My name is Chris. Once again, I'm the RUF Famous Minister. If we haven't met, I'd love to get to know you, meet with you, grab a cup of coffee, uh, and hear about what's going on in your life and how we can serve you and bless you here in your time at KSU through RUF. We've come to the part in large group where we open the Bible and read. So if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and open up to Revelation chapter 22. It should also be on the screen here in a second. We've been doing a series through the book of Revelation, and we've come now to the final chapter of the final book of the Bible. There's a lot of crazy things at times in the book of Revelation, but most of all, it is God speaking to his people when they're going through a hard time and asking the question, how do I keep going? And maybe you've asked that same question too. How do I keep going? Like, how do I keep going when final projects are gonna take way more time and energy than I think I have? Or maybe you've asked the question, how do I keep going when my summer plans seem to be falling apart? Or how do I keep going when the roommates I thought I had on lock for next year just bailed on me? If you've ever asked those questions, hey, you're in good company because we have to. And so we're gonna open up God's word now and see how it speaks to this reality and what it can teach us. So let's turn now and read Revelation chapter 22, starting in verse 1. Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, through the middle of the street of the city. Also on either side of the river the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads, and night will be no more. They will need no lamp, no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. And he said to me, These words are trustworthy and true, and the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place. And behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book. I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things, and when I heard and saw them I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed them to me. But he said to me, You must not do that. I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers, the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God. And he said to me, Do not seal up the words of this prophecy of this book, for the time is near. Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy. Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life, and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star, the spirit and the bride say come. And let the one who hears say come, and let the one who is thirsty come, and let the one who desires take the water of life without price. I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if any one takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book. He who testifies to these things says, Surely I am coming soon. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all. Amen. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Alright, I'm going to keep it short tonight because we have testimonies, but I have two things I want us to see here from this passage. And the first one, first point is going to sound a little confusing, but I think it'll make sense once we get into it, which is why is RUF here? Like, why are we here? Why do we do this? Why do we gather? Why do we have this organization? What's the goal here? Well, in short, like the goal of RUF is to tell students about the hope of the good news of Jesus. To reach students for Christ, equip them to serve while they're here and long after. Alright, how do we see this in this passage? Well, look, revelation is giving us a glimpse of the future that God has planned so that our present, our now, can be shaped and empowered by what is to come. That we all live with a sense of our future and that impacts and motivates our decisions in the current time, right? Like, why are you in college now? Just for giggles? No, like you're here investing in your future. You know, I want to get a degree so I can get a job, or at least I want to come here and meet people so I have friends, or whatever it may be. There is some future goal in mind that is impacting your now. And in the same way, God is saying, look, if you're a Christian, if you've confessed faith in Jesus, uh then I want to give you a glimpse of your future, where you're going, so that that will impact your now as well. That God's plan is not just to let it all burn, as a lot of people think. No, God's plan is to redeem and restore all of creation, to gather all his people into the new city, the new Jerusalem, where we will experience the joy of God's presence for eternity. And there's so many little details here that give us this beautiful picture. But like, just real quick, I mean, isn't it amazing in verse 4? It says, They will see his face. That in the new heavens of the north we will see the very face of God. You know, if you're familiar with your Bible in the book of Exodus, Moses, he's on top of Mount Sinai, he's getting the Ten Commandments. He's like, Hey God, can I see you? And God says, No one can see my face and live. The reason is because of sin, because sin separates us from God. That's a see the face of a holy God, we would be undone, we would be wiped out completely. But in the new heavens and new earth, sin has been dealt with completely, and now we get to be in the very presence of God. We get to see him with eyes and not just by faith. I mean, that's an amazing thing to think about. And I think we read this and I think it begs the question, like, so why can't we have that now? Like, even John at the end's like, so Jesus, come back quickly, huh? Like, I'm ready. And here we are, 2,000 years later, and we're like, Jesus, come back quickly. We're ready. Can we have it now? I'm tired of the brokenness, I'm tired of the sin. I want to see the face of God. That's a good and healthy desire. So, why doesn't Jesus come back today? Well, I think the thing we see throughout Scripture is God has great compassion on this broken world. The most famous Bible verse, John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he sent his son, that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have eternal life. That God delays so that more people can hear the good news, and then be brought into the kingdom and be there in the new heavens and the new earth. And so, getting back to the point here, why is RUF here? So that we can go out and tell people this good news and invite them into the kingdom, and that someday we have the hope and the joy of standing with them in the new heavens and the new earth, seeing the face of God together. Let me just think about that for a second. There's someone that you sit next to in world lit 101 that, like, you know, I don't know, you just kind of joke about how bad the teacher is and how terrible they are with technology or something. But like, potentially, your friendship with them and the opportunity to share the gospel with them could have this kind of eternal impact. That's why we are here. Like, there is no church here on campus at KSU other than God's people. There's no first Presbyterian of Kennesaw State University or first Baptist of Kennesaw State University. It's just God's people here. Sent from local churches, yes, to call people into a relationship with God and into his body, his family, the church. That it's our job to represent him and share the hope that we have in Christ. And when we share that hope, we can see kind of two things here in this passage that we share. First is the river of the water of life and the tree of life. So let's kind of zoom in on those real quick. The river of the water of life. If you know your Bible well in the book of Genesis, the Garden of Eden at the very beginning, it talks about there's like rivers coming out of it. And then later on, we see this kind of water language in the book of Exodus. They're in the desert, they have no water. And God brings water out of a rock. He brings water where there is no water. And then in Ezekiel, the prophet has this vision of he's in the temple in Jerusalem, and like water starts slowly rising out of the temple and floods out of the temple, and it goes so far that it says it goes into the deserts outside of Jerusalem, and like plants start to grow. And it goes so far, it goes to the Dead Sea. If you know, you know, maps, like Dead Sea is the lowest elevation on earth, I think. The water is so salty, like nothing can live there. And it said, so much fresh water will one day flow that the Dead Sea will have fish in it. And so the whole Bible's been speaking of like there's this like river of water of life coming out of what God is doing. It's part of his plan. And here we see it coming to fruition at the end of all things in Revelation. But we also see that God's people have struggled to accept it for what it really is. In Jeremiah chapter 2, God says, My people have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that hold no water. You know, this is like a desert culture where they got to dig wells, so a cistern is like places you store water. And he says, My people keep trying to look for water in all the wrong places, you know, and they keep digging wells that are broken so they leak. This is the reality of a life apart from God. It's constantly trying to seek life, trying to find the source of the water of life, but looking in all the wrong places and finding that your heart just can't contain it. It keeps leaking. We're leaky people. And look, there's a lot of college that looks fun and looks exciting and it looks life-giving. And you can spend all your time on it, but in the end it can leave you dry and empty and broken, and apart from the word of God being shared by the people of God, then most of us end up walking around not knowing any better. That's why we're here, and that's why we're doing this all, to tell people that there is a better source. There is a water of life that you can drink from, and it is real, true life. To nerd out just for a moment here, like the Greek word here for life is Zoe. So if you have a family over named Zoe, you're like, wow, that's from the Bible. Uh, but there's two words for life: there's Zoe, and then there's BIOS, where we get the word biology. BIOS is just like any kind of life, like biological life. But Zoe is only used for like the life that God can give. So here it's saying the water of life here is not just like so regular plants can grow, not that kind of water. No, this is water that only comes from God. And look, no one can say it better than C. S. Lewis when it comes to this. He says this in mere Christianity. The spiritual life, which is in God from all eternity and which made the whole natural universe, is Zoe. BIOS has, to be sure, a certain shadow or symbolic resemblance to it, but only the sort of resemblance there is between a photo and a place, or a statue and a man. A man who changed from having BIOS to having Zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue, which changed from being carved stone to being a real person. And this is what Christianity promises. That is precisely what Christianity is all about. This world is a great sculptor's shop, and we are the statues, and there is a rumor going around that the sh uh going around the shop that some of us are one day going to come to life. That if you've drunk deeply of the water of life, if you put your faith in Christ, then you will no longer be a statue. You have real life in you. That that is the hope of Revelation 22, and it's hope for now as well as eternity. Alright, but it's not just the individual impact of things like the river of life, but it's also the world impact here. Right? So it also talks about the tree of life. It's bearing its fruit. We saw that back in the Garden of Eden as well. But it says, look, the leaves of the tree of life, they're for the healing of the nations. That God's plan is not just to bring life in you where there was dry death, leaky emptiness. No, but also to bring life to this world and to the nations and to bring people together in harmony and true unity. And man, like, I don't know, just scroll the news app for two seconds. Um, our world needs that badly. We live in a time of war. I mean, the Ukraine and uh, you know, like Iran and so many other places around the world, we get like, why can we not figure this out? Why can we not bring peace? You know, what do nations tend to do to each other? They tend to seek power over one another, take advantage of each other, get something out of each other, and yet God's desire for the nation is to bring healing to them, to bring them together in the new city, the new Jerusalem, in the new kingdom of God. That God's plan is not just to change our individual lives, but to change the world. And this should be reflected here in our community and our UF as well. That we are not just about I come here for me and get a good message for me, God's gonna change me. It is that, but also God's gonna change me and us together, and together we're gonna go out and proclaim this gospel to the world that God wants us together to live this out. That we should be reflective of the nations that are present here at KSU. That we want all types of people. We want people in Greek organizations and you know, engineers, God save them, uh, and you know, like art students and communications majors, you know, we want uh blue-collar workers in the area who are young adults. Like, we want all people from all backgrounds to hear the good news and be brought in and reflected here. That we are not just for one type of person. That's why we have an open door policy and a humble attitude and welcoming all who come our way. Alright, so that's my first point. All right, the second one, real quick, though, is how do we keep going? So you're like, all right, that's that's the picture of the new heavens and the new earth. There's the river, the water of life, and the the tree of life, and it's for healing, and I like all that, but how does that affect my right now? Well, we see here as they wrap up, Jesus gives us three quick things that can encourage us to keep going. First up, he says, look, you need to be in the word. I mean, he's giving them part of the word right here in Revelation. He said, This word, this prophecy, this book is to be a blessing to you. And it can't bless you if you don't read it. Like, it can't be at work in your life if you're not familiar, if you're not hearing it preached or taught or reading it yourself or discussing it with people. If you are ignorant of the word, then you can't experience the blessing of the word. But also he says, look, don't change it, don't add anything to it, and don't take away anything from it. That any you know, person claiming to speak in the name of Jesus who is saying, like, oh, the Bible didn't really say that, or well, it's really meaning this, or well, you can just ignore that part. Uh-uh. Run away from those people. And look, if you feel like I'm even saying that, like, run away from me, like stick to the word overall, right? Like, we come back to the word before any man's teaching. That's what Jesus wants for his people. The word is meant to be a blessing. Savor it, read it, marinate in it, let it soak into your life. It's part of how you keep going. But look, he also says you need to be in worship. Worship is such a key theme here in the book of Revelation. And part of that is being involved in the local church. There's this weird language here of like the spirit and the bride say, Come. But the bride is Jesus' people, his church. So they're saying, like, go seek them out. You're not meant to do the Christian life alone. Jesus church is his plan for working this out now. So be involved in the church, find a good church, find Christian community that feeds your spiritual life so you can keep going. Worship is meant to be life-giving. It's God's means for you to drink deeply of the water of life on a regular basis. Do not neglect your own soul. Find a good church, get involved. Alright, and finally, remember that Jesus will return. It's the truth. Like, I know sometimes we can talk about Jesus' coming back, and you know, it can almost seem like, I don't know, uh like a silly thing you see in a movie, you know, like a crazy guy with a sandwich board saying, like, God's coming back. You're like, all right, crazy grandpa. Uh but look, the whole point of revelation is that Jesus is saying, I am coming back soon. It's like, okay, well, when? And all he says is soon. It's like, the point is that the kingdom of God is not eventually going to happen. That God is bringing his kingdom into this world even now. That it is breaking in, it's rubbing up against like the rest of life, it's in conflict with the kingdoms of this world. That Jesus is on his way, he is currently coming, he's already at work breaking into this world. He's not eventually going to be a king who conquers. He's a king who's already conquered, and he's just seeing his kingdom fully played out on the map. That Jesus is coming back and it's true. And that's something you can bank your life on because Jesus himself guaranteed it with his life. When we say it's true, it's not just because I'm saying it, but because God himself said, I want you to know how serious I am about saving my people. That I will send my son to die on the cross for your sins and to give you the hope of resurrection life. It reminds me of a story my mom told me recently. We had a good family friend who passed away uh, I don't know, a year or two ago, and we were just telling stories of this person, and she was like, you know, I trusted that person so much that one time your father and I, we were having money problems, we owed some money, and uh, we were gonna ask this friend to borrow some money to pay off this debt. And she's like, I trusted them so much that I actually wrote the check to the company that we owed money for and put it in the mail before I even made the phone call to them because I knew that they would help us out. That's how much I trusted that friend. And you can trust in Jesus Christ and his word and his return, even more than that. That you can write checks on that, that it is guaranteed and trustworthy. The money is in the bank. You're playing with house money, as they say in Vegas. It's not a risk to trust in Jesus. Actually, it's the most certain thing in the world. Why would you trust anything else? So, look, to wrap up here as we close, so many things we could say about this passage. But Jesus is describing himself here, and he says, Look, I am the bright morning star. That's a little detail. You're like, that sounds like pretty Bible language, but I have no idea what that means. I had to look it up too, y'all. And then this is apparently what it means. The morning star tends to appear between 2 and 3 a.m. when darkness is complete and when the faintest sign of morning is not yet visible. So small the morning star is that it threatens to vanish. The star seems unable to vanquish the overpowering darkness. Yet, when you see the morning star, you know that the night has been defeated. For the morning star pulls the morning in behind it just as certainly as Jesus pulls the kingdom in behind him. Now, look, if you and I can just see Jesus in our circumstances, as dark as they may be, we can keep going now and in the present. That it may still be difficult, but when we see him in those circumstances, we know that the night has been defeated. We know that the darkness will not win. That the time is near because the star is near. That dark though it still may be, it will never again be totally dark. Because Jesus is the morning star in the light of the world. And that's the hope of the gospel, and that's the hope for you. And I pray that you take that in to your summer wherever the Lord leads. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for the good news of Jesus. We thank you that you're the morning star. We pray that you would shine brightly in our darkest moments and remind us of the hope that we have in you. Help these students to keep going in whatever circumstances they are in, wherever they are struggling, meet them in that, but don't leave them in that, Lord. Deliver them, redeem them, and remind them that you are making all things new. We pray this in your name. Amen. Let's stay in and sing.