Advent Apocalypse Pt. 4 // Born with the End in Mind

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, welcome to the The Vine Life Church podcast. We're in the Balder Colorado and following Jesus Christ and living in his presence, following his family and living on his mission so that hearts are awakened with his awe inspiring. And if we can help you in any way, reach out to usovinelife.com. For now, here's a short sermon from last week in my life. Again, thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Or watch over and over again. Overboard. Is that Jaws? The notebook. Lord of the Rings, okay. Braveheart, Star Wars. Sense insensibility. Alright, some Jane Austen. I like it. Anything else? Any other editions? What was that? Hindsfeet in High Places? Woo! What about Christmas movies? What about Christmas? Elf the holiday. It's kind of hard to go from like revelation to elf in literally 45 seconds. It's a wonderful life? The chosen, okay. The Grinch. Okay, so stories that we latch on to, that we we attach ourselves to, um, that we return to over and over again. Oh no, let me ask you this question. What do you think are the highest grossing movies of all time? If I were to ask you, the highest grossing movies, it's not elf. No, it's not elf. Highest grossing worldwide, gross ticket sales, which I know this doesn't make it necessarily the best movies, but they're the movies that people were willing to pay a lot of money for over and over and over again. Okay, you can stop talking now. I'm gonna tell you. But yes, Star Wars is on the list. So number one, number one of all time is a movie called Avatar. Coming clocking in at $2.8 billion worldwide. Brought in Avatar. Also on the top five lists, we have Avengers Endgame and Infinity War, if that means anything to you. We have uh Star Wars, The Force Awakens. Jurassic World is somewhere on the list. And somehow in the middle of this list is a movie called Titanic. So you can see it's mostly these stories of intergalactic cosmic battles of good and evil, and then a love story of a ship that's sinking. Right in the middle of like, take my money now, I want to see this. Honorable mentions, we got Lion King, Frozen 2, Lord of the Rings, and so I'm sure you could add a lot more to the list. But yes, the these stories, it's amazing when we look at these stories that affect us, they shape generations, they they capture something in the essence of the storytelling that we return to over and over again. I think the reason why many of these movies did so well, um, yes, because of graphics and production. You know, a lot of these are like these massive budgets that we want to see visually, they're just visually stunning movies. But also, it's not just that. A lot of the movies that we just referenced, um, they all capture something from the human story. And many of them end with what screenwriters call a climactic scene. So the climactic scene is the point in the movie where all the story threads, all the story loops, and story questions all get summed up in one decisive scene. And they really it answers all of the questions together. Will love win the day? Will good triumph over evil? Will there be an end to oppression? And, you know, it's that moment in Avatar where the natives of the beautiful garden planet Pandora fight back and triumph over the greedy human colonists of the future. It's the moment in Avengers Endgame when all the superheroes return from the dead to bring a final defeat to Thanos and all his minions. Please, somebody be with me. I loved that scene. Loved it.

unknown 4:58

Spoilers!

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Spoilers, spoilers. It's the Star Wars, it's the it's the explosion of the Death Star. The Jedi will will fight another day, they will live another day, right? It's the the moment in Titanic where the ship sinks and the sacrificial love and Jack and Kate will endure even unto death. Right? We stick around, we pay a lot of money, we watch the movie over and over and over to see the same thing happen. Will is it gonna happen again? Yes, it's gonna happen again. The movie ends the same way every time, but I want to see it. Love wins. It's that moment where Ralphie, carrying the weight of disappointment, looks under the tree to discover one more gift, the long-awaited Red Rider BB gun. And then proceeds to shoot his eye out. I'll just watch it. Oh, just keep just keep it on loop all Christmas. So screenwriters and novelists, they all have this secret. Any kind of writer, creative writer, they have this secret. This and they it's it's a it's a storytelling device called the climactic scene. So they start most a lot of times, they start their story with the end in mind. They don't even write the rest of the story until they know how they want the, they pulled all the story threads into that one last scene. They know what that they want that final scene to look like and to feel like, how they want it to move you. And then they reverse engineer the whole story from there. And uh the reason I bring that up because as we're finalizing the book of Revelation, we can't help but have some of the same feeling. We're reading the climactic scene of the story of God and his people. It's an ending that for us has already been written and we are working towards right now. And everything is resolved in this kind of final the scene, this final movement that answers these story questions. Will the saints endure? Will the enemy be defeated? Will evil be reversed? Will God's love overcome? Will new creation at once be restored once and for all, for all of eternity? And we see these threads of yes, these things are happening as we've talked the last few weeks. That the dragon and his and his beasts are defeated, the saints and all the angels join around the throne and they lift up this beautiful song: holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, that every knee will bow on all the nations of the earth, and that once again God will make his dwelling with man, that the lion will lay down with the lamb, that weapons will be beat into gardening tools. War will be no more. Screenwriters start with the end in mind. Architects build homes with the end in mind. Every try building a home without having a plan. Maybe it's not a good idea. It's not good. You don't build you you have there's a home that you build with a plan with blueprints. Trips. Have you ever planned a trip without a final destination in mind? Arguably this can happen. You know, you can do a road trip, but some of the best trips are when you have an idea of what we want it to be like. In the same way, Jesus was born with the end in mind. Jesus was not born into a story void. He wasn't born wondering what was going to happen. The Prince of Peace, the King of the universe came. He was born, he entered into the frame of an infant, of a fertilized egg that grew into a fetus, that was born into a fragile invent, the word of God that was born without being able to speak a word. And he was born, though, with the end in mind, with entering into the Father's purpose for all of eternity, that God would complete what he started. Amen. And the reason why that brings us hope when we look towards revelation, when we look towards the future that God is writing for us. And it's important that we understand this, and some of you need to hear this now. Because we've heard it before. Spanish philosopher George Santana Santinana, he's credited with the aphorism those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. So we do remember, we turn our eyes to the past so we don't repeat it, but we also turn our eyes to the future. Those who ignore the past are condemned, but those who ignore the future are condemned too. And one of the callings of followers of Jesus is to live from the future and to not forget our future. And it's hopeful because God doesn't promise us a good life, he promises us a good ending. And while the kingdom of God enters into our life now, we cannot judge our past or our present by what's to come. If you were to ask Paul, did you live a good life? Well, he would probably, the Apostle Paul, he probably would chuckle. He probably would say, Yeah, but it depends what you call a good life. He was beaten, he was stoned, he was left for dead, he was flogged, he was shipwrecked. And if that wasn't enough, he was bit by snakes. It's like, come on, could you leave the snake part out? Like the rest was enough, not snakes, right? But he's bit by snakes, and ultimately his life would be taken. He'd be murdered in Rome. But was it worth it? Yes, because he wasn't living for a good life, he was living for a good ending. And let's take a look even at the life of Jesus. Did Jesus live a good life? That's an interesting question. It just depends, again, how we interpret a good life. See, we're looking at a Savior who was born in a barn. He was literally born in a barn. He was misunderstood, he was rejected. He didn't have a huge following until he died. Not huge. And a lot of them just left him midway because they couldn't understand him. He didn't live great according to earthly standards, standard of living. Never got married, never had kids or grandkids. He didn't live long enough to see his 401k cashed in. Never played golf in the Bahamas. Never went to Disney World. And he died young. He lived 95% of his life in obscurity. And his last three just accelerated him into death. So what is the hope as we look at eternity, when we look through the lens of eternity and through this great cosmic scene that God is writing for all the time, we live with the end in mind. And it was even Jesus that knew that he was not living for a temporal moment, but he was living for what God was doing, which is why he endured the cross for the joy that was set before him. He knew that going to the cross would not be the end of it, it might not be the best particular moment, but it was going to lead for the joy of the world. It was going to lead to the reconciliation of all things. And some of us need to hear that today as you are aware today of things that feel incomplete, the things that feel unresolved, the things in your life that feel like they're not where they're supposed to be. Take hope, my friends, my brothers and sisters, that if it's not good, it's not the end. If it's not good, it's not the end. That God has written a great future for you. He knows the plans he has for you to prosper in him. And yes, temporally in the present moment, it means that we we wait, we groan with creation, and our life has to walk through these things, and we see glimpses and signposts of the kingdom of God, of these flashes and explosions of resurrection, and we rejoice in those things. But friends, we are not living for this moment. We are living for that day where we'll be before the throne of God at the wedding feast of the Lamb, celebrating his final victory forever and ever. The end of the story is really good. And so what we believe about the future, it matters a lot. Now, in theological terms, we call this eschatology: the study of the end, the study of the end of things, right? And there's a lot of places you can go with this. And I'm not going to tell you exactly what you need to believe about every particular point of the story and how it's all going to happen, and the rapture and the antichrist and all the all the beasts and all the things, you know. I'm not that's not as much of a point, but I will tell you your eschatology matters for the life that you live today. What you believe about the end affects the way that you live right now. For instance, if if if you're living with the impression that God implants to abandon the world and throw it all away and vacuum us up to a place in the sky and dismiss this entirely, then we are more prone to start that process right now. If our end involves the doing away with or or the burning up of God's earth or it all just collapsing under the weight of warfare, then that means that we start to care a little bit less right now. If our picture of what God is doing is detached from heaven coming to earth, then we won't have much of a reason to pray the prayer, let you let heaven come, let it be on earth as it is in heaven. Some people over time, knowing that the scriptures talk about wars and rumors of wars, actually have gotten excited when new wars would break out on the earth, thinking that this is just one step closer to the return of Jesus. But I'm just telling you, friends, if we're getting if we get excited about warfare happening or increasing on the earth, then we're missing the point of what God is doing for all of time. That is not a reason to rejoice. Not to say that heaven is another place, you know, as our as our spirits are given up. I do believe that heaven as a dimension, a place where God dwells, it's a real thing. But when we read through the scriptures that God's ultimate plan is not to abandon the good earth, but for a new heavenly Jerusalem to come back and restore everything he intended in the first place. That should give us meaning here and now for our work today. Even this passage in 1 Thessalonians 4, 16, as Paul is writing, he says, For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of the archangel, with the sound of a trumpet of God, and the dead will in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive who are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. And it gets this it sometimes it presents this picture of the saints rising from the dead and going, going to another place, and we're finally leaving this hellhole, or whatever we would call it. But the word, the Greek word here is actually parousia, it's a Caesar word. And what happened as the Caesar would come into a city, it was no small thing. There would be a procession, and he'd come into a city, and miles before he actually got to the city, the people would rush out of the city gates and go meet him outside of the city and greet him and then usher him back into the city for him to reign over the city. Guys, when we meet Jesus again, his ultimate plan is for us to greet him, but then to him to come and rush back in and to restore the whole world like he originally intended. That is what God wants to do, and we get to participate here and now. We're not just waiting for another day to happen, we're not just waiting for the future to happen. The reason why the book of Revelation and our eschatology matters because it gives meaning to the decisions and the life that we live today, that we can start the future right now. As we walk with Jesus, as we abide in Jesus, as we cooperate with him in the creative participation with the Father and the Son and the Spirit to take all his plans and all everything that heaven is supposed to be, and to begin to cooperate with him, to offer glimpses of that here on earth right now. This is what Jesus wants for us. To help to even now begin to make the earth the kind of place where God will dwell again, to work until earth looks just like heaven. Now, what does this mean? It means a lot of things. It means that we make peace. We don't just wait for war. We are peacemakers. We go into the world because there's coming a day where God will restore shalom to all the world. So we get to start now as peacemakers. We heal the sick, we dignify the poor, we bless our enemies, we host dinners, we throw parties. For God's sake, we plant trees. I love one of my favorite theologians, N. T. Wright. He has this beautiful essay. He says, Jesus is coming back, quick, plant a tree. And so we do things now as prophetic. We don't just have prophetic words, we live prophetic lives. Do you see that? When you're living from the future, it makes not just your words prophetic, it makes your life prophetic. Because we begin to appropriate the reality of what God is doing for all of time, and we begin to usher it in, and we say, Come, Lord Jesus, not just with our words, but with our very lives. But then over the last couple months, some weird stuff started happening in the house. So she sent Megan uh this little video and she had a Marco Polo. That means nothing, probably a lot of you, but it's a little video text message basically. And and she said, Hey, quick question. I know this sounds weird, but does Luke talk to spirits? She's like, Weird things have been happening in our house. Like we'll hear like footsteps going across the floor, or or we'll hear like Lego bins tipping over and go out there, and nothing was, you know, nothing was there, or just just weird stuff. She's like, this wasn't happening in our last house, it's happening in this house, light bulbs shattering, and weird stuff. She's you know, so she's like, you know, I don't we don't really know what to do. It's kind of freaking us out. There's a lot of fear and anxiety in our house right now. So I sent her a message back and I said, Hey, um in short, yes, I I believe I believe in spirits. I really only talk to one of them. His name is the Holy Spirit. Um and we believe that God's spirit, the spirit of Jesus, is the one given to us that means well for us, that that brings peace and love and well-being. And I'd be we'd be happy to come over to your home and pray for you. And and and any other spirit that's there, that's in your home, that doesn't belong, we'll pray for it to leave, and we'll pray that the Holy Spirit comes. So if that's something you want, let us know. So she responded very quickly. She said, Yes, that's what we want. We need this right now. When can you come over? So it was really fun. So Megan and I and and and uh our brother and sister in law uh went went over to the house and we just the funny thing is. It's to a lot of people in our culture that stuff just sounds weird. It sounds like Hocus Pocus. Or like if some stuff like that started happening, they would be, they would just be dismissive, they would ignore it. They would, you know, they just think it's child's play. It's just fairy tale stuff. Um and uh but but not them, because they had felt the presence of real darkness in their home. And so nothing was weird. So we get out there and they're like, hey, listen, here's what we're gonna do. Uh we're gonna go through your home, and with your permission, we want to pray in the name of Jesus. And uh we're just gonna go through your rooms. You're gonna go through the rooms in your house, we're gonna anoint the doors with oil because we believe oil is this symbolic, it's not superstitious, it's just symbolic of a setting apart of the anointing of God, a setting apart for his purposes. It's a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Um, welcome into the home. And uh and we're gonna pray in the name of Jesus, circling your home. You're gonna hear us whisper, you're gonna hear us pray. Uh, is that okay with you? And they were like, uh-huh. And so we're like, all right, let's do it. So we started going through their home and just praying. We just said we just started rebuking the evil one and and any effects that he had in the home and and um and inviting the Holy Spirit, you know, and coming into the house, we just knew right away there's just already a lot of fear and anxiety in the house because of stuff that had been happening. But and we prayed over them, physical things that had been happening in their bodies, things that were happening in their home. We just prayed it out. And you know, by the end of the time, it was uh, you know, everybody we checked in with them, everybody could feel like a lifting that was happening. Now, we're gonna go back over there probably this week and continue these prayers, but one of the things that Megan told her friend was, hey, listen, you can do this, all right? There's spirits in your home. If you if you if you get connected with any spirits that are in your home that are making you uncomfortable, they're destructive, they're they're causing fear. What I want you to do is tell it to leave in the name of Jesus. I want you to speak the name of Jesus and have it leave. And so that's how we left it with them. And so they're like, okay. And so the next day Megan checked in and she was like, our friend was, she said, Yeah, it's it's wild. There's still weird things happening. But she said, I've been doing what you said. I I've just been going through my house and I feel something. I'll say, I'll say, get the hell out of my house in the name of Jesus. My kids will live in peace here. And we're like, perfect. You got it. Keep running that play over and over again. You're gonna be stolid. I love it though, because this is what it looks like. This is it's just one little small picture of what it looks like to take our neighborhoods, take the homes, take authority, take the usher in the reality of heaven. Listen, in your home, your home should be a place where only the Holy Spirit is welcome and invited to bring peace and shalom and joy and hope and well-being and physical health and mental and emotional health. You should go through your homes and pick up anything that does not belong, because that's what Jesus will do once and for all at the end of time. He will defeat, he will offer judgment over every dark and vile and unclean thing that does not exist to serve us and to usher us into the presence of God. But there are spirits that exist to just cause fear and control and manipulation. And for us as the people of God, we get to live now in the authority of those who have been baptized in the Holy Spirit to come into places and declare the reality of the kingdom of God and the present manifestation of the kingdom of God, the Lordship of Jesus will reign in the places where our feet tread. And that's just one example of many. This is the life we get to live, and it's kind of fun and it's kind of wild and it's kind of scary. But this is where the story is headed, so we get to start living there even right now. So this morning, I want to just invite you. If if that's not something that you've connected with, maybe you're very familiar with the past. And you rehearse your past quite a bit. The mistakes of your past, the things that you regret. And you're very familiar with the present, what's happening right now. You know what's working and what's not working in your life. But maybe you haven't been as connected with your future. We're believing it and actually entering into the hope of what has been made possible through the cross and through the resurrection. I want to invite you today to see today is a day to have a renewal in your heart towards the Lord. Maybe that's just initially putting your faith in Jesus if you've never done that before. But some of you here maybe have been believers and you've followed Jesus to the present, but you haven't quite followed him into the future. And I just want to believe this is one of the best gifts we can bring Jesus on his birthday is to become people who participate in everything he was born for. And if that's you, just say in your seat today, Jesus, I receive you. I receive your story. I take up my part in your story. We thank you, Jesus, for the story that you're writing. And I just speak hope and renewal over every heart here today. I'm gonna invite the worship team up and parents, if you have kids down in um down in class, I just want to invite you right now to go get them and to bring them back up. And what we're gonna do here collectively is we're gonna receive communion, and we're gonna end in a really fun way today. But one of the beautiful parts as we kind of wait for the parents to come back and we receive communion together. One of the beautiful summaries as we end this journey this year-long journey through the New Testament, as we end the book of Revelation, as we end our Sunday gatherings for this year, to be reminded of Revelation 22, 16 through 17. The words of Jesus. Let the spirit and the bride say come. And let those who hear, and let the one who hears say come. And let the one who is thirsty come. Let the one who desires take the water of life without Christ. So friends, I just want to invite you, wherever you're at, to come to the tables and bring the elements, to grab the elements. There's a table in the back, and there's tables on the sides here. And as your family comes in, um to to sit together, bring the elements back to your seat. We're just gonna take a moment of reflection as we as we as we come back to our seats. But wherever you're at, just let's stand up together and and come to the tables and bring them back to your seat. Yes, so Jesus, as we hold the bread and the cup in our hands, we're obedient to what you've asked us to do, to remember you, to remember what you've done. Your covenant to us, the promise that you made that will never be broken, the promise that we rest in, God, the promise that we give our lives to. We thank you, Jesus, that you were born with the end in mind, and you were born knowing that you were going to die. And as we receive the body and the blood, your body broken for us and your blood poured out for us, Lord Jesus. Let us be overwhelmed by the gift of mercy, the gift of grace. Let us be overwhelmed by being caught up in a story we would have never imagined. That our lives could mean something not just in the future, but even now we get to participate in the in-breaking of the kingdom of God for now and forevermore. Nourish us with your body and your blood, Lord Jesus. The spirit and the bride say come. The spirit and the bride say come. Let's do it together. The spirit and the bride say come. Amen. Let's receive these elements.