What Did John Want? PDF Print E-mail
I.    How important is the Future?
Let me begin with a simple question.  Well, maybe it’s not that simple.  But it is important.
Here’s the Question:  How important is the future to you?  Let’s say you could predict the future.
You could know, with a high degree of certainty, what will happen within the next 10, 20, even 30 years.  How would that affect your life right now?  That would mean, for example, that you could identify the next Wal-Mart or Apple and you could do it while it was still an idea in the mind of the next Sam Walton or Steve Jobs.  Or let’s say you knew with certainty that the world economy was headed for a major collapse, not like the tremor we just lived through, with its 10% unemployment and 25% drop in house values.  No.  This one, you knew, would be a veritable economic earthquake, like the Great Depression, with unemployment reaching 33% and soup kitchens in every city.  More like the Fall of Rome, more like the end of the world as we know it.

Now, if you knew with certainty that this economic earthquake were coming soon, how would that effect your life in the present?  How would you feel?  What would you do?   How would you take care of your family?

Let’s change the focus of attention just a little bit.  I still want to think about the future, but not the economic future.  Let’s say it is not the economic world as we know it that is coming to an end, but your world, your personal world.  Because of your insight into the future, let’s say you know with certainty that your child will soon pass away, or that grandchild you adore.  Or maybe it’s your days that are numbered, and you know the number.  The number is 1270.  Three and a half years.  How might that knowledge affect your life today?

The future is rather important, isn’t it, to all of us?  What we expect to happen, what we hope or believe will happen, maybe even know will happen “out there,” decisively impacts what’s going on “in here,” in our minds, our hearts, our everyday lives.  At least it should, if we’re wise.

II.    What Did John Want?
For months now I have been asking one question, over and over again.  What do you want?  What do you really want?  What desires drive you?  What hungers shape your life?  You’ll be glad to know:  this is the last week I will be asking that question.  At least the last week in which that question will be the focus of my sermon.  This sermon series, what do you really want? ends today and it ends with the Apostle John.

There’s a reason why it ends with John, a reason why I give him the last word, because God gave John the last word.  Revelation chapter 22, verse 20. He who testifies to these things, the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ says, “Yes, I am coming soon.”  Then John writes, just before the postscript. Amen.  Which means, so be it.  Come, Lord Jesus.  This is John’s final word, in response to the final word of Jesus Christ to him and it is the final word of sacred Scripture.  It just so happens that this two-fold final word from Jesus, and from John, is the repeated refrain throughout the last half of the entire last chapter of this last book of the Bible.  Without a doubt, God Himself wants to leave this word ringing in our ears. 

Verse 7.  Behold, I am coming soon!  Jesus declares.
        Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy in this book.
    Then, again in verse 12:  Behold, I am coming soon!   My reward is with me
and I will give to everyone according to what he has done.
    This twice repeated promise is followed by a twin chorus of response.  Verse 17.
        The Spirit and the Bride, that is, the Church, say “Come!”
        And let him, let anyone, who hears these words say “Come!”
    Finally, in keeping with the triune number three, for the third and final time in
verse 20, Jesus say, “Yes, I am coming!”
    And John echoes for all God’s people, the third time,
 “So be it.  Come, Lord Jesus.”
    Behold I am coming!  Behold I am Coming!  Yes, I am coming soon.
        The Spirit and the Bride, in response, say “Come!”
            And let everyone who hears say, “Come!”
                Amen.  Come, Lord Jesus!

So what did John want?  What did John invite all God’s people to want?  He wanted for Jesus Christ to come again and bring history to its appointed end.  John wanted the words and visions that he had just heard and seen and written in this prophetic book to finally and fully come true.  Words and visions like these.  Listen to them, from Revelation chapter 21.  Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.  They will be his people, and God 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. 

Then John describes this New Jerusalem, this eternal dwelling place of God and man in this new earth He has created. It is a city 1400 miles wide, 1400 miles deep, and 1400 miles high with dwelling places for all of God’s people from every tongue and tribe and nation throughout the history of the world.  Its streets are paved with gold; its walls embedded with precious stones;  And its 12 gates are each carved from a single pearl whose size is beyond our wildest imagination. 

Then John says, chapter 22, verse 22:  I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.  The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light and the Lamb is its lamp.  The nations will walk by its light and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it.  On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there…Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.  Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city.  On each side of the river stood the tree of life…and the leaves of the trees are for healing of the nations.  No longer will there be any curse.  The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city and his servants will serve.  They will see his face…and they will reign forever and ever and ever.  Then Jesus says, Behold I am coming soon!  John wanted Jesus to come and bring all these glories to pass.  He wanted Jesus to come and wipe away every tear from our eyes.  He wanted Jesus to come and banish sin and death from every corner of this globe.  He wanted Jesus to come and bring the light and life of God to the nations.  He wanted Jesus to come and remove the curse that sin has brought on human history and to restore the tree of life and the river of life and the dwelling place of God among men.  John wanted God’s Kingdom to come and God’s good will to be done everywhere by everyone on earth as it is in heaven.  He didn’t just want it.  He expected it.  He prophesied it.  He promised it on the authority of the resurrected Jesus Christ whose words he heard with his own ears and whose revelations he recorded with his own hand.

III.    What Do You Want?
So, one more time let me ask:  What do you want?  What do you deeply, passionately, primarily want?  Do you want what John wanted?  And even more to the point:  Do you expect it?  Are you waiting and watching for the coming of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords as if it were a sure and certain hope, as if it could happen soon, perhaps in your lifetime?  What difference would it make if you were?  If I were?  What difference would it make if you and I wanted what John wanted as much as he wanted it, and expected it as much as he expected it?  What difference would that picture of the future make in our everyday lives if we carried it in our hearts and minds every day of our lives?

I am told, in the commentaries I read, that the early believers used the word, “Maranatha,” “Come Lord” as a liturgy.  They would say it when they gathered in their services.  Maranatha.  They would say it when they celebrated the communion meal.  Maranatha.  Come, Lord Jesus.  Some people have even imagined that this liturgy spilled over into their everyday language, and became a kind of greeting.  I don’t know if that is true, or just a bit of historical imagination.  But imagine, the early believers seeing each other as they pass on the street, Maranatha, come, Lord Jesus.  Or imagine them knocking on a door, and when the door is opened, greeting each other with Maranatha, come, Lord Jesus.  Or imagine them watching one of their friends being taken away by the powers that be, to be burned at the stake or thrown to the lions, and then hear them say, Maranatha!  Maranatha!  Come quickly, Lord Jesus.  We can imagine that can’t we, for them, back then?  We can imagine them in the midst of their persecutions crying maranatha.
We can imagine them, listening to the words of someone they knew, someone who actually saw the resurrected Jesus disappear into the clouds, and saying, Maranatha.

But it’s harder to imagine us saying it now.  There is a difference, isn’t there?  A difference between then and now, between them and us and it’s not just a difference in verbal expression.  It’s also a difference in the mental picture we carry in our minds.  It’s a difference in the way we think, and maybe, in what we most deeply desire.  In the beginning of this message I asked us to imagine an economic boom or bust and then a physical tragedy that could shatter our world as we know it.  Most of us can do that.  We can picture the loss of that which is dear to us in this life. When we imagine it we can feel the feelings.  But to imagine the future that John puts before us at the end of the book of Revelation, well, that’s just more difficult.  It’s harder to see in our mind’s eye, it’s harder to feel in our heart of hearts especially since the vision of John is just that, a vision that John saw and we didn’t.

But John’s vision is the truth.  There is no truth more fundamental, more life transforming than this truth.  As the angel said to John in verse 6 of Revelation chapter 22:  These words are trustworthy and true.      As Jesus said, three times, I am coming.  I am coming. .I am coming soon.  It may not be soon as a child reckons soon.  It may not even be soon as a grown man or woman reckons soon.  But compared to the length of eternity, God’s time, Jesus is coming soon.  Even if it doesn’t happen in your lifetime or mine, it will be soon.  Because at the end of our earthly lives, and that is coming soon, we will meet our maker, the maker of heaven and earth.  This life will give way to the next.

So, here is the question:  What difference would it make if you and I really believed the words of this book?  What difference would it make to us as we walk out these doors today if we really expected what John expected and really wanted what he wanted?  By the way, what’s not to want? No more tears, no more death, no more sin and sorrow, just life and light, love and joy in the presence of God and his new creation forever and ever and ever.  Amen.  Just life the way it was always meant to be.

IV.    A Maranatha List
Well, let me take a shot at an answer to that question:  What difference should it make?  Let me do it by offering you a Maranatha list, a list of things that would be different for me if I could carry the hope and desire, “Come, Lord Jesus” in my heart.  My list is far from complete.  It’s just a beginning, some first thoughts.  I offer it to you as an invitation, to make up your own list, maybe this week.

1.  As I age and approach my death I will not feel hopeless.  In fact, I will be filled with hope.  Last week I had the pleasure of hearing a man by the name of Dallas Willard speak at Willow Creek Community Church.  Now, Dallas Willard is a personal favorite of mine.  He is a philosophy professor at USC who has become a thought leader in evangelical Christianity.  He has written extensively on spiritual disciplines as the means of becoming like Jesus.  So it was a real treat to listen to this 75 year old hero.  In the course of his lecture he made this statement, I am an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God’s good universe.  I am an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God’s good universe.  See this?
   
This is your life, the span between the tip of my finger and the end of my thumb. Your life on earth, I mean.      Now think about the distance between here and the sun, 93,000 million miles away, or better yet, think about the distance between here and the next galaxy so far away that it must be measured in the years that it takes something traveling at the speed of light to get there.  This is your life on earth; that is the 1st year of your life on the new earth.  Because of Jesus Christ you and I are unceasing spiritual beings with an endless, an endless future in God’s good universe.  We have only just begun.

Yes, there is pain and frustration in this life.  Yes, there are tears and sorrow.  As we age we can do less and less that this world considers important.  But Jesus is coming soon!   To live is Christ and to die is gain.  To age is to grow, day by day, closer to that glorious day when God makes all things new and we live forever and ever in God’s good universe.  Here is item two on my maranatha list:  2.  Because Jesus is coming soon, I will not be deceived into believing that the passing pleasures of this world are all there is, or the best that will ever be or to put it in the words of CS Lewis, which I have quoted so many times, I don’t need to be like a child playing with mud pies in the slums, refusing to leave them behind, because I can’t imagine what is meant by a holiday at the sea.  No.  I can imagine.  Jesus Christ, raised from dead, has revealed his holy holiday plans for me.  The best is yet to come.  The best is yet to be.      So I can run with endurance the race that is set before me, fixing my eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of my faith.

Knowing that I am surrounded, as Hebrews says, by a cloud of witnesses, men like John the Apostle.  Women like my Grandmother, Wilma Young.  People who have gone on before and have now entered into the presence of Jesus, awaiting the day when he will make all things new.  I imagine this cloud of witnesses cheering me on.  You can do it!  You can do it! They say.  Don’t be deceived by the passing pleasures of this world!

As I age and suffer the slings of outrageous fortune I will not feel hopeless;  When I am young I will not be deceived into believing that the passing pleasures of this world are all there is or the best that will ever be.
       
3.  Whether young or old, I will remember that the pains and problems of this life pale in comparison to the glory that is to come.  That should be self-explanatory, even if it is hard to grasp in the midst of the trials and tribulations of this life.  Because it is the clear and repeated testimony of the entirety of the New Testament revelation of God.

Here is a fourth item on my Maranatha list.

4.  Because Jesus is coming again my life right now has real purpose and meaning and it can be enjoyed to the fullest.  The Apostle Paul perhaps said it best in I Corinthians 15.  If Christ has not been raised from the dead, then let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die.  If there is no day of reckoning, if there is no day of great reward, if there is no day when the resurrected Jesus Christ makes all things new and brings this great universe to a good and glorious end, then what is the point of it all?  Purpose is determined by how things end.  If it ends in death, eternal death, then this life has little, if any, real purpose.

But if it ends with God’s King ruling on the throne of God’s new heaven and earth, and if we have the eternal privilege of living in that great universe, then everything I do now can be purposeful and important.  Everything can be a participation in God’s good will now.  Because every good gift, as James reminds us, comes down from above, from the Father of all light, in whom there is no darkness at all, not even the slightest shifting shadow.  Whether today or tomorrow or some day in the eternal future to enjoy God’s goodness and to share God’s goodness with others is good and it will always be good.  It will always be very good.

With that I will stop.      This list could go on forever.  Please, take some time to write your own list, in your own words.  Take some time to allow the truth of your eternal destiny in God’s great universe to dawn in your heart and mind—so you can learn to want what is really worth wanting—and what will really last—forever and ever and ever.  Amen.