The Fifth Sunday After Easter
Psalm 148; Hebrews 12:22-29; Revelation 21:1-8; John 13:31-35
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I.
I want to examine with you this morning the problem of Revelation 21:4.
I will read it to you again, “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.”
We heard similar words last week when we looked at Revelation 7:17, “For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
I did not comment on this last week, but here it is again, and so I think we’ve got to deal with it.
The problem is that these are fine-sounding words for describing some future state of bliss, but how are they a comfort to us now?
I think we can all understand the idea of delayed gratification. You want to lose weight, you’ve got to put up with the discomfort of going hungry. As you step on the scale every morning, hopefully you take some comfort in observing that your former self is passing away.
But there are other trials we each have to face by ourselves: death, disease, loneliness, and unemployment, not to mention problems we have to face together: war, famine, social unrest, public corruption, and bad laws that promote moral degeneracy.
When we read this passage in context with the rest of the New Testament, and particularly with the reading from Hebrews 12, we must see that God gave us these words to comfort us—and not just with the promise of good things to come—but also to inspire us to do great things in the here and now.
In other words, the Book of Revelation offers us both a hope and a cure that we can apply to our lives right now.
II.
Revelation 21 and Hebrews 12 both speak to the same new reality.
They speak to the same new reality, but from different perspectives.
St. John says in Revelation 21:1, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.”
St. Paul says in Hebrews 12:22, “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God.”
It is almost as if Paul is explaining to John what he saw. This is, in fact, what we mean when we say that scripture interprets scripture. Since the entire Bible is the product of a single divine Mind, though written down by many human authors, we can expect this kind of internal referencing and commentary.
It is as if John had said, “I saw in my vision this new heaven and new earth,” and Paul replies, “It’s no vision. You have come to Mount Zion and the city of the living God.”
The key point here is that what John casts in the language of prophecy, of something yet to be fulfilled, Paul says is already a present reality. “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God.”
John next sees “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”
Following a pattern that should be familiar to us by now from our previous readings in Revelation, what John sees and what he hears are different, but the contrast helps to explain what’s going on.
John sees the holy city, prepared as a bride on her wedding day. He then hears a loud voice that says, “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men.”
What is a marriage other than an arrangement for dwelling together? This is a marriage proposal and Paul urges us not to turn it down. He writes in Hebrews 12:25, “See that you do not refuse him who is speaking.”
In other words, God proposes to dwell with us, and we should not refuse Him.
John’s vision of the holy city adorned as a bride is a vision of the Church as she will look when she is perfected, at the end of time, on her wedding day. But we don’t have to wait for the end of time:
“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the [general] assembly of the [church of the] first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel.”
We have all of this right now. In fact, if we don’t have it now, we won’t have it later. Specifically, we have three things.
First, we are enrolled in the church of heaven.
Second, we have Jesus and His new covenant.
Third, we are protected by the blood of the Lamb. Christ’s blood shields us from God’s vengeance, whereas Abel’s blood calls down God’s vengeance on us.
In Genesis 4:10, God said to Cain, “the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.”
We possess all of this right now, church membership, a new covenant in Christ, and divine protection. Does that begin to help us solve the problem of Revelation 21:4? Do these words comfort us in the here and now as we face life’s difficulties?
III.
I’m arguing that they should, but they won’t comfort us if we’re simply asking God to give us our old lives back instead of making all things new.
Now, it can be very tempting to ask God for our old lives back. Sometimes there are some very good things that we would like to go back to or that were taken from us too soon.
I am thinking of loved ones we have lost, especially if they were cut down in the prime of their lives or even before their lives really had a chance to get started.
All of us can remember someone we grew up with who died young.
It can be tempting for the mother or father to say, “I want my son back. I want my daughter back. I have been robbed all these decades of a life with him. I never saw him grow up. I never saw him get married. I never held my grandchild.”
Then the preacher reads a verse like this one we’ve been examining, “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more,” and you may even find yourself thinking, “Well, if that’s true, then what am I still here for? Let’s hurry things up. Let’s get things over with.”
Life issue: When a Christian finds himself thinking or even praying, “Lord, let’s get things over with,” he’s reached the depths of despair.
Such a prayer hasn’t a chance of being answered, because what you’re asking from God is the one thing He’s never going to give you. He’s not going to give you your old life back.
He didn’t even give His Son His old life back. Mary Magdalene confronts Jesus outside of the tomb and she mistakes Him for the gardener. It isn’t until He calls her by name that she recognizes Him.
The problem with Revelation 21:4 is not whether we can find comfort in the promise that “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more,” but that we’re told plainly “the former things have passed away.”
Yet these are the very things we want back, the “former things.” Here is the mighty, beating heart of the Gospel message, that death and mourning and crying and pain are no more, and yet we cling to the former things, which are the very things that brought us to tears.
Now, I’ve got to be careful here so that you don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. It’s not the spouse or the child or the parent or the vigor and health of our youth that is the problem.
The problem is that we live in a world where such things can be taken from us at a moment’s notice and without warning.
IV.
But we have already come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God.
This is the real test of our faith. Faith is not a test of endurance. Faith is not testing whether or not we can hold out long enough to make it to heaven where we tell ourselves that God will comfort us. The real test of our faith is whether we choose now to participate in God’s work of making all things new.
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” Ask yourself: why are they crying in the first place, and just who is crying?
They are the blood-washed warriors of Chapter 7:14, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” To them the promise was made in 7:17, “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
That promise is repeated in 21:4, “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.”
There is a reason for their tears, and it isn’t just the heartache of disease, separation, and death, but the moral, physical, and mental wounds of fighting the beast.
Because that is what we are doing, each and every one of us.
You’re mourning a lost child? You’re fighting against the beast of death.
You’re struggling to remain faithful in your marriage? You’re fighting against the beast of fornication.
You’re dealing with an unwanted pregnancy? Beware the beast of murder.
You’re fighting to restore integrity in government and moral decency in our civic life? You’re fighting against the lying beast.
Listen again to the words of Revelation 21:8, “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars….”
Each one of these represents some aspect of the beast the Lamb has conquered: cowardice, infidelity, perversion, murder, sexual sin, witchcraft (including dabbling in the occult, Ouija, tarot cards, astrology), idol-worship (including unbiblical forms of Christianity), and dishonesty.
“...their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death.” This is why we can never ask for our old lives back.
Once we are saved, once we are born again, God starts tossing the former things, the things we need to let go of, the things that shouldn’t be a part of our lives, into the lake that burns with fire and sulfur.
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17, in another example of the one divine Mind that inspired the many authors of the Bible: “if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.”
V.
We can solve the problem of Revelation 21:4 when we realize that it is an account of the end of human history.
Everything there ever was to cry about or that could harm us is no more. The chapter and a half that remains in the book is an exposition of the end of our history as a race. For the next two Sundays we will read excerpts from it, but as I have already covered the major themes, I will conclude our Easter study of Revelation now by touching on a few points from them.
Next Sunday, we will read about the “river of the water of life” that flows through the city John saw in today’s reading. On either side of the river grows the tree of life, and, John tells us, “the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”
This is a hopeful ending, for healing means continuity. We will recognize these nations in the world to come, just as we will recognize each other.
What we begin in this life, we continue to build on in the next. John sees “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride.”
The key to understanding the Book of Revelation is that it is a vision of things to come based on what they are already.
We are, even now, as members of the Church, being prepared for the bridegroom.
Two Sundays from now, we will read about the final separation of the elect and reprobate, the saved from the lost. Jesus says in Revelation 22:14, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.”
The heavenly Jerusalem is a sanctuary city, but one with a very strict immigration policy. If you missed last week’s sermon, I urge you to go back and listen to it or read it.
No one enters this city unless he has washed his robes in the blood of the Lamb’s vengeance on His enemies.
Revelation 22:15 repeats the warning of 21:8, “Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters, and every one who loves and practices falsehood.”
The Bible ends as it began, with the separation of the light from the darkness. The children of light, the adopted sons and daughters of God, go on to eternal life in a world made new, but everyone and everything else is destroyed.
Getting saved doesn’t stop with confessing your sins and putting your faith in Jesus. That’s just the beginning. You are saved from your sins so that your works might be good. You’ve got to get out there and fight the beast.
That is the message of Revelation: get out there and fight. The “loud voice from the throne” also has this to say: “To the thirsty I will give from the fountain of the water of life without payment.”
You will remember the words of Jesus from Matthew 5:6, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
This is their satisfaction: “To the thirsty I will give from the fountain of the water of life without payment.”
To “thirst for righteousness” is to be an active agent of the kingdom of God, to advance its cause, and to fight manfully under Christ’s banner.
Preached on May 18, 2025 at the First Congregational Church, Woodbury, Connecticut.
Reflection Questions:
What “former things” are you tempted to cling to, and how can you trust God to make all things new?
How does knowing you are already part of the heavenly Jerusalem change how you face trials?
What “beast” (sin or struggle) are you called to fight in your life or community?
How can you actively “thirst for righteousness” (Matthew 5:6) this week?
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