Revelation 21:1-4: The New Creation

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Outline

  • God’s new creation
  • God’s tabernacling
  • God’s presence

Introduction

In our naturalistic worldview, the future ends in a big bang, crunch or freeze. Much more of the same will come and the end of human existence is inevitable in one way or another. This is very different to the view of the future that the Bible gives. We have a supernatural view of the future not a uniformitarian view. God will break in and interrupt time as we know, life as we know it, death as we know it, pain as we know it, sin as we know it. He is coming to make all things new 21:5. The future that we look forward to, the one for which all of creation is groaning is a creation free from Satan, sin and death. This new creation was what was pictured in the Garden of Eden, but we get better than Adam lost; it is what was badly pictured in the new world Noah stepped into after coming out of the Ark; it was the real substance of the promise to Abraham when God promised him land; Israel was a sinful portrait of what it would look like to be in God’s presence; David’s imperfect reign was a glimpse of living under God’s Lordship freed from all enemies; the prophets spoke of this coming creation in terms of the OT covenental context; Christ showed us in His earthly ministry what a creation without demons, sin, death and Satan looks like; New Creation power was inaugurated with the resurrection of Christ; the church at Pentecost experienced a partial inbreaking of this creation in God taking up residence in our hearts, but we are all still looking and longing for the full and final fulfilment that all of these things anticipate, the New Heaven and the New Earth.

Satan, sin and death have been destroyed and now God wants to tell His hurting people what will be coming next. He puts the light at the end of the tunnel in focus and fixes our hopes on the wonderful things that are to come. What we are about to see are the deepest longings and needs of our hearts fulfilled, the very purpose of our creation satisfied. We will see that the pot at the end of the rainbow is God Himself as our God and all that entails.

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