The Plan Actually Works

Transcript

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[0:00] The book of Revelation is fitting. We started in Genesis. We're ending in Revelation. And our reading is Revelation 7, 9 through 17. Before I just wait for everybody to... Actually, I'm going to do the reading now.

[0:18] And then we'll get to the handout. Well, no, I just changed my mind. I'm going to wait. Because we'll start with the handout. That's okay. Okay, I need to kind of help my voice here a little bit. Well, I know what we'll do, I know what we'll do.

[0:42] So we've had a thing where we're trying to identify famous books by their opening line. Now we're gonna identify famous books by their ending line because this is how it ends. So I need help. you guys have to guess it's a little bit like trivia here's the ending line of a famous book the scar had not pained Harry for 19 years all was well that's the very last Harry Potter book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows okay now this one but I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest the the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally, she's going to adopt me and civilize me, and I can't stand it. I've been there before.

[1:35] Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And finally, last one. We're doing three today just for fun. Last one. But for them, it was only the beginning of the real story. the last battle the final book of the Narnia Septuagint I don't know how you say seven books in a row very good okay so let's take a look at our handout because I had said at the very end we were gonna have one massive long sentence and I you're not gonna fill in the blanks on this one because I want you to be able to take it home and this is essentially the Bible and the gospel in one very long run-on sentence English teachers don't get mad at me because it's, there should be a semicolon in here, but it's just a bunch of commas. So the Bible is a book about God rescuing us from sin by the covenant, promising a new king to sacrifice himself for us, bringing us home from captivity and fulfilling all in Jesus Christ. That's where the semicolon should go. Empowering the church with his Holy Spirit in sure and certain hope that we will be with him again. That's our sermon series right there. Isn't that great? It's just, it's a long sentence, but it's all there. And so hang on to this because we're not actually gonna get to the fill in the blanks until about three quarters of the way through the

[3:02] sermon. So put that aside for now, but you will need to fill that in a little bit later. Okay. So let's go to our reading. It's from Revelation 7, 9 through 17. And we'll begin at verse 9. After this, I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes and held palm branches in their hands, and they were shouting with a great roar, Salvation comes from our God who sits on the throne and from the Lamb. And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living beings and they fell before the throne with their faces to the ground and worshiped god they sang amen blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and strength belong to our god forever and ever amen then one of the 24 elders asked me who are these who are clothed in white where did they they come from. And I said to him, Sir, you are the one who knows.

[4:17] Then he said to me, these are the ones who died in the great tribulation. They have washed their robes in the blood of the lamb and made them white. That is why they stand in front of God's throne and serve him day and night in his temple. And he who sits on the throne will give them shelter. They will never again be hungry or thirsty. They will never be scorched by the heat of the sun. for the lamb on the throne will be their shepherd he will lead them to springs of life-giving water and god will wipe every tear from their eyes let's pray heavenly father thank you for this word we ask that you would add your blessing to it in jesus name amen all right well i'm going to give the background so far and this is just to get us up to where we are today. And I'm just going to go right in. And I think you've heard all this before, but this is just good repetition. So here's how this whole thing starts. That God created the world because he wanted to, right? And humanity fell from grace and from God. And God right away began devising a plan to rescue them from sin and death. God went into action right away. And humanity's overwhelming and intensifying sin led God to make covenant with Abraham and his descendants so that they could work with God to rescue all

[5:45] the other nations. In the covenant God made there is also a foreshadowing of the new covenant that brings salvation by grace through faith, Genesis 15. There were further covenants that were needed, the covenant of the law and the sending of the prophets to help God's people stay true to him they requested a king to be like the other nations and God grudgingly granted that but with disastrous effects God didn't want them to be like other nations he wanted them distinct from other nations so that they could be a light to the other nations but again there was a foreshadowing of the true king to come who would be the opposite of the kings of Israel and Judah in every way now over time the the people's wickedness and idolatry became too intolerable for God to bear, and he removed his presence and protection from his people. Ten of the twelve tribes of Israel have disappeared forever. They're gone. The remaining two were taken into captivity for 70 years in Babylon, and even there, God continued to send his prophets and his word, and he promised to rescue them from captivity, and that they would return to the land and be with him again. end. Then we get to Jesus. The birth, life, and death of Jesus is God's best and final effort to

[7:02] rescue humanity and it works this time in Jesus because it does not depend on human ability but on the obedience of Jesus to keep the covenant where we cannot. His death on the cross fulfills the requirements of all the covenants, the covenant to Abraham and the covenant of the law. So in a way, Jesus becomes the new Israel, and in that way, he's also the new light to the nations. And so true to the hint about Abraham's faith, we receive righteousness through faith in Jesus and his work for us, and very important, his resurrection is the guarantee of our own resurrection at the end of this life and a restoration of humanity into the physical presence of God. That's super important. We're going to be restored to the physical presence of God as we saw in this reading from Revelation that we just had. As Jesus left the world to sit at the Father's right hand, he inaugurated the church and sent the Holy Spirit to inspire and guide, accompany, and give valuable vocational gifts to the church. So the church had and has what it needed to keep at the plan for rescue. And this looks like a consistent sharing of the the word about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus to people who haven't heard it yet. That's

[8:21] what the whole book of Acts looks like and that's what the church has been commissioned to do. And now we come to today. So the idea that there's a fair amount of scripture that points to a future that hasn't happened yet but it will someday and for which we're both happy to celebrate but we also have to be prepared for and we have to use our gifts accordingly. So I want to look at real Real quick, I want to look at our readings from Matthew. Those were difficult readings, no doubt. Each one ended with sort of a stern word. And we can't just sanitize the Bible and take all the difficult parts out and just have sort of these fun, nice parts. So the difficult part in all those things was the people who weren't prepared or the people who weren't faithful or the people who weren't living the way God had told them to live found themselves on the outside of this great feast and banquet and sort of all these metaphors for what heaven is like. And that's difficult, right? We can wrestle with that a lot, but at least we, you know, this comes directly from Jesus himself, so we kind of have to wrestle with it in strong terms. But I want to talk about these three parables because they're all about the future,

[9:32] they're all about the end, they're all from the gospel of Matthew. And so the first one, again, is about preparation. But underneath it is this idea that the bridegroom will arrive at an hour that is completely unknown. They are prepared. Some of them are prepared for him, but they don't know when he is going to come. And he takes longer than they think. And so some of them who are prepared are ready, and the ones who were not prepared were not ready. And so people will need to be prepared for the coming of the bridegroom. That's sort of the parable that kind of has this sort of application for us today, is that there's preparation, there's work to be done. You don't just sort of sleepwalk through life and at the last day go, oh, I, you know, there's our layers to this. There's discipleship, there's learning more about Jesus. And so, not that that's what saves you, but in the end, there's, you have to be prepared, you have to be ready for what's coming the other thing is that this this imagery and that happened several times in the scripture is that heaven is compared to a wedding feast which back then that was that was the biggest moment on the basically on the social calendar is when a cousin or a relative got married that was

[10:47] days long feast and festival people spent a lot of time and energy on it and so that's really fitting god's saying being in heaven is like you know the best party ever as victoria says right um and so there's this tension in all these parables there's a wonderful event coming up but only the prepared will actually be able to enter that feast the second parable is about a master who goes away he entrusts his servants with his assets and when he returns to have taken what was entrusted to them and made a return on it that's great and for that they're commended but one was timid and faithless and he had nothing to show for it and um he was singled out for exclusion then you know he He was sent out. And that's the stark reading. And the final parable is even the most stark one, isn't it? Right? The final parable about the future where the world is divided into two groups and only two groups. There's no, like, third group that we can't figure out.

[11:42] Those who lived in such a way that they showed they were living by the Spirit's guidance and those who didn't. Those are the two groups. And the most striking thing about this parable is that neither the sheep nor the goats knew they were doing something good or not, or at least knew they were they were helping jesus or not the explanation is when you're helping somebody you're actually helping jesus and i think that's beautiful but this is a good call back to how the spirit works when the spirit works through you you give up some control of your life and you also give up the ability to pat yourself on the back because you go well that clearly wasn't me that was doing that and so there there is very plausibly this sense where god will say say, you know, right before you get to heaven, he'll say, you did all these great things. And if you were truly spirit-led, you'll say, well, it sure wasn't me, but thank you. You know, I guess so. Thank you. But, you know, it was your spirit. It was your spirit and me doing it, Lord. It can't have been me, myself, right? And so that's this, how the spirit works. It changes us. It helps us keep the law, including the law to take care of the poor and the sick and the naked and those in

[12:48] imprisoned but that it's in control and uh that's that's what it looks like okay so there's again finally there's this promise and warning in the same sentence the righteous will go on to eternal life the unrighteous will go to eternal punishment we'll take some time in some other future sermon to talk about how difficult that is but i think we'll just sit with that for now is that yes Yes, there's a great thing waiting, but as far as Scripture is concerned, it's not everybody is going to get it. And a lot of that has to do with the choices that they've made in life. And if we're going to get it, it has to do with us coming to faith in Jesus Christ and living by the power of the Holy Spirit.

[13:32] So, now let's look at the future. And I want to talk about this reading from the book of Revelation. And two things I want to say about Revelation. It's a challenging book, and one is that it's a vision. So if you read the first chapter of Revelation, you realize that this is a dream, a vision that somebody is having.

[13:52] It's not like something that actually happened and somebody recorded it. So that's really important to take. So don't take everything literally in it. And people taking it too literally has led many Christians to waste a lot of time looking for events and trying to put a date on this will happen and when this will happen. and they've developed these complex charts of when to be you know and even Jesus warns this is a very interesting thing in the scripture Jesus tells his disciple not even the Sun knows when this will happen so if Jesus doesn't know when it will happen why do you think you can figure it out by lining up all these events in the world don't waste your time on it so that's one thing I'd say about the second thing about about Revelation is related to of that in that it's possible to spend too much time thinking about this future and to say, okay, I made it in. Now I can forget about the challenges of this life. I can forget about the people who are in need. I can forget about what God told me to do, which is to be a light to the nations and tell other people about God. I've got what I needed. And so sometimes we say this is being so heavenly minded that you're not any earthly good, if you've heard that phrase

[15:04] before. And that's a problem that some Christians have. And so at the same time, and this is important, thinking about the future shouldn't be all of our time, but it also shouldn't be none of our time. It's in the Bible. It's important. There should be some of our time should be spent thinking about the future, because this is this great hope that we have, And it's actually the culmination of God's great plan to rescue the world. So there needs to be balance. And the best way to think of it is the future with God is going to be so great that it's not enough for me to know that I will have it. I need to help as many other people find it as I can. Because if it's that good of a news, then it needs to be shared, right? I mean, if you won the lottery, well, that's a very bad example. Because if you were smart, you wouldn't tell anybody. Because they would come after you. you. Say your kid won the spelling bee, you know, which one of my children definitely could have, but then you would tell people, good news, my kid won the spelling bee. Without, you know, unless you're from a modest culture like the Norwegians or you, you would say something like, you know, my kid's, my kid's okay, you know. You'd have to read into it

[16:26] a little bit. Then if somebody said that, they'd be like, wait a second, something really big happen. Was your kid in the spelling bee? Yeah, well, you know. Did they win it? I don't want to say. All right. So when there's good news, you want to share all that to say. So we do care about the future, but we don't obsess over it. We are not so heavenly minded that we're no earthly good, but it's important. So that's sort of a good balance to hold on to things. So for our sermon text we see this vision of all these people before the throne of god there's a host of heaven and the rescued humanity before god they're singing it's a great sight and the first thing we hear is that the the people there are from every nation this is how it says every nation and tribe and people and language which is really cool and one thing we've talked about when we went through a lot of of our racial justice work is we think this means that God is delighted by ethnic differences because he created them. You know, to him, that difference is between all the languages, even though, you know, all the languages, all the cultures, all the ethnic groups, God looks at that and he sees this bouquet. He sees something beautiful. The distinctness of it all makes it

[17:50] wonderful to him right and do you notice in heaven there is no attempt to erase any language or people group and present them as this sort of single undifferentiated mass of people there's no attempt to do that so heaven the future I guess I'm still gonna be Norwegian as for all the faults that that will entail except they'll all be taken away so I don't know what I'll say about the spelling bee in heaven but it'll be the right balance of sort of of pride, but also humility. It'll be perfect, but until then, I'm going to be Norwegian. But I'll be Norwegian in heaven, and you'll be whatever you are in heaven. It's all good.

[18:28] Not as good as Norwegian. No, it will be, of course, because that's the point. It's all good up there. I was kidding about the Norwegian thing. Please don't. OK. So but, and here, get your paper out. I'm going to need to get this out, the paper out now. No, it means actually something more important than that, than that God loves all the different nations and peoples.

[18:55] What else does it mean that every nation is present? I'm going to take it from the audience here. What else does it mean? What else could it possibly mean that all the nations are there? Yes? That someone was successful. yes so if you want to put it down in two words is it worked in the future all nations are there and God sent Abraham and his descendants to be a light to all the nations and God sent the disciples out after Pentecost to be a light to all the nations and in the book of revelations all the nations are there so we're talking about the future that hasn't quite happened yet but evidently it works. Do you believe that? So there's good news ahead. There's a little bit of room for optimism and it's actually the best reason for optimism because it doesn't depend on us. God says it's already gonna happen. So somehow or other all the nations, and honestly a lot of the nations have been reached, maybe not every last single one of them, but that's gonna happen before too long but all the nations so God's we're talking about God's plan the final plan that he said about with Jesus and the Holy Spirit do we honestly think it's going to fail I hope not I honestly think it's going to work and Revelation

[20:23] is telling us that it's going to work every nation is there in front of the throne so the plan works it works okay but it works down on there okay I think that's what i put oh god plans this is what it should say god's plan to rescue the world works but i put works in all uppercase letter and i put an exclamation point at the end okay because i thought i was excited about it god's plan to rescue the world works you can write that on your paper okay where was i now yep yep so that's a good takeaway from that and then the I'm not sure I'm here. Yeah, that's right. Okay, so that's a good takeaway from this story about this vision in Revelations. And the parables have some people being left out. That's really sobering, and there's a warning, but we're dealing with God. And he can bring about success in ways that we can't see. And I want to just sort of leave one idea open here for us. is there's various times, and I've said this before, when Jesus makes a call to a discipleship, to somebody in particular, and every now and then they walk away without taking him up. So one example would be somebody in the scriptures, he doesn't have a name, but he's just called the rich young ruler. And Jesus says, you know, leave your wealth behind and follow me.

[21:46] And it says, the man went away sad because he had great wealth. and if you stop reading there you go okay he didn't make it well why would we think that does it say that he didn't make it no he just says he walked away that day did he someday come back we don't know scripture leaves this possibility open for us it doesn't say because it had every sort of narrative uh narrator type authority to say he went away and never never came around it just says he went away sad but he could have come back the next day he could have come back the next year he could have come back on his deathbed and said I had this true treasure and I was exchanging it for this false treasure I'm going to set the false treasure aside I'm going to embrace the true treasure and that's you know that's like the parable of the man who finds the pearl of great price in the field and he sells everything he has so he can go by that field so scripture keeps leaving open many places that that god isn't done with people yet and this is the part where we're involved if god isn't done with those people yet you may have a spot in their life for god yet to be persuasive for them and so maybe one of jesus's disciples disciples followed that young man and said, hey, we grew up together. We went to the same high

[23:17] school. We were on the varsity football team together, whatever you want to say. Let's keep talking about this, you know? And so there's this sort of this agency of God's people who are sent out into the world to work with God in the kingdom to bring about God's plan. So, and I think the other side of it, so we're dealing with God. God can do things that we can't imagine.

[23:41] another part of the good news is that wickedness and evil which I dare say is rampant in this world and is depressing is so depressing I'm not gonna say what I was gonna say this I was about to say it's as depressing as you know what but it's so depressing and there's so much evil and wickedness in the world and of course a lot of us in my own heart I own that but there's just so much murder and mayhem and war and awful things happening in this world that somewhere in this world at the end of this world at least there will be true judgment and a true listing of all the accounts and a true exposure and transparency of every heart and every motive and everybody will have to give an account for their actions and so you know Vladimir Putin he will have to give an account and I I have a hard time thinking that it's going to go his way, but God is gracious and I will be in such a state of mind in heaven that if he is himself redeemed because he came to faith at the last minute, I will praise God for it. You know, I will really praise God for it. I'm skeptical, but I just told you how to be optimistic because all nations will be there. So if God has a plan, let's let God work it out. It's not my place to say who, and I've actually already transgressed by naming a person that

[25:00] that I don't think is going to make it into heaven. I don't know. But I do know that there's one aspect of the good news is that there will finally be justice for those people who are vulnerable and who have been victimized. And that's a reminder of the holiness of God and the power of God. And that is a form of his love for us, that he will bring justice. And it will be perfect justice. And he will know all the facts. and he will be a righteous and an impartial judge and he's going to judge everybody on the facts and when he comes to judge me he'll say Hans-Erik you've done everything just as bad as anyone else in this world but my son Jesus Christ has paid for your sins and so you are redeemed my rescue plan in your case has worked and the same will be true of you okay so the people who are suffering And some of them have been through the tribulation, as it's said here in the reading from Revelation.

[26:05] It says, the lamb on the throne will be their shepherd. He will lead them to springs of life-giving water, and God will wipe every tear from their eyes. So heaven is not just a place of celebration in front of God's presence, but it's a place of the binding up of these deep wounds and this restoration to God's presence and the restoration to the wholeness of what it means to be human. And I don't think we'll forget all the pain that we've had in our lives, but the incomparable joy of being in God's presence will make all of that kind of look different to us. So here's where we want to end. We have this future for ourselves. If you're in the church right now, if you believe in Jesus Christ, you're saved. I want you to know that but the scriptures are telling us that this will also be a future for the many nations it's gonna work the plans gonna work okay as Ellen said thank you Ellen and so what I want us to do is to be a little heavenly minded so that we can be a lot of earthly good and what I mean by that is God's original plan for humanity was to work with him in the garden and to keep order and beauty in the world but now he wants us to work with him in the kingdom as we're led by the spirit sort

[27:29] of like to work in the garden of the world and that means we need to pull up weeds in our own patch and we need to plant seeds far and wide and that means we need to do what the spirit shows us in acts chapter 2. use our gifts to preach the gospel of the life death and resurrection of jesus so other people could find the new life that has changed us so profoundly so even though this is going to happen god is still saying i'm not going to do it all you lazy bums you got to get in you got to get in this fight with me right now you got to get in this this rescue campaign with me so you have work to do especially if you've been redeemed and the spirit is living in you and you have this one one or more of the spiritual gifts god is saying time to use them time to use them to spread the gospel about the life death and resurrection of jesus and the good good news that we have. The future where every tear is going to be wiped from every eye and the shepherd will lead the sheep to life-giving water, right? That's our future. But other people need to have that future too. So we have to tell the story. And so the story of scripture is ultimately that we have to tell the story of scripture. It's kind of a sort of a circle. Don't go crazy thinking

[28:40] about it. But we're going to tell the story of God's rescue, of his great love for us, of the reality of the brokenness of the world and the hope of the future to come you need to be ready to tell this story and that's why we did this sermon series and that's why i want and i think this is that at this the spirit's prompting to go get training for myself as i mentioned in the announcements and several other people in the church whoever will go will take you along on how to grow my evangelism skills there are practical things we can do to spread the word to the rest of the world and so the main focus of the training is on the local church developing a culture of evangelism. I think that's on your paper. Empowered by the Spirit and using our gift, the church needs to develop a culture of evangelism. Isn't that an interesting phrase? But I think it's good. We all have cultures, but every church has a culture, and not all of them are great cultures. Some of them are cultures of gossip or cultures of clubbiness or whatever you want to call it. We need a culture of evangelism. We need it so that this is just our normal. This is just our normal default mode is to be evangelistic and to tell. Because if this is such good news, why would we not tell other people about it, right?

[29:53] So the focus of the training is on the local church developing a culture of evangelism. Clearly it's time. And I get a chill. Like when I read that phrase, cultural evangelism, I actually get a little bit of a chill. Because I'm like, that sounds good. I want that.

[30:13] and it also sounds a bit scary but you know one of the things I've learned about life and I hope you're here too I'm not gonna go through life avoiding opportunities that are gonna stretch me and grow me life's too short I don't want to be comfortable all my life I want to be challenged okay so I want to be challenged in August I want you to come along I want you to think about it and pray about it if you want to go to the boardwalk in New Jersey at the end of August for a week I mean that alone is pretty good but or if when we come back from it you want to be involved in building that culture of evangelism here in the church and get involved in the training that we're going to bring to our church pray about that think about that this is not just my work it's not just victoria's work in fact victoria and i kind of said that if it's just her and i going maybe we won't go because in a way it wouldn't make sense it would make sense to almost it wouldn't make sense to because we need to do this together other. So I need to spend more time talking about it, okay? And we will. We'll keep casting vision about this, but we want you to go. It's important. If just the two of us go, but everybody else commits to this other training thing, I think we'll still go, okay? So I'm not trying to be,

[31:20] like, make anyone feel bad or anything. I know it's hard to take a week off. Okay, so that's, I think, where this is all leading us. We have this plan, this scripture, And I read it again, this one sentence, the Bible is a book about God rescuing us from sin by the covenant, promising a new King to sacrifice Himself for us, bringing us home from captivity and fulfilling all in Jesus Christ while He empowers the church with His Holy Spirit in the sure and certain hope that we will be with Him again. And I'm going to end with kind of how we started. How does the story begin? Genesis 1.1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And now we're going to end the whole Bible. This is where the story ends. Revelations 22 verses 20a and 21 goes like this.

[32:16] Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. Isn't that great? A way to end a book. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's people. Amen. That's what it says. Let's pray.