Genesis 3; Revelation 21-22
Please be seated. Turn in your
copy of the scriptures to Revelation chapter 21. Perhaps as you’ve read through
the Bible, you can look back and say that you’ve traced the
theme of God’s great and grand desire of the scripture. And
that’s simply that God desires to be with his people. Bible
simply put, God desires to be with his people. What gets in
the way of that fellowship? What gets in the way of that
friendship? What gets in the way? It’s our sin. It’s our desire
to get away from God and to rule ourselves and to be discontent
with who he is. and what he has offered. So you
fast forward from Genesis 1, 2, and 3, which we’ve considered
a bit over the last few weeks, and you get to the end of the
story. Well, what’s happened? And we find that in chapter 21
of the book of Revelation. So let’s give our attention to
Revelation 21. I’ll read that chapter in its
entirety. Then I saw a new heaven and a
new earth. For the first heaven and the
first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw
the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from
God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard
a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling
place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they
will be his people. And God himself will be with
them as their God. He will wipe away every tear
from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there
be mourning or crying or pain anymore for the former things
have passed away. And he who is seated on the throne
said, behold, I am making all things new. And he said, write
this down for these words are trustworthy and true. And he
said to me, it is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega,
the beginning and the end, to the thirsty I will give from
the spring of water of life without payment. The one who conquers
will have this heritage and I will be his God and he will be my
son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable,
As for the murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters,
and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns
with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. Then came one
of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven
last plagues. And he spoke to me saying, come,
I will show you the bride, the wife of the lamb. And he carried
me away in the spirit to a great high mountain and showed me the
holy city, Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having
the glory of God, its radiance, like a most rare jewel, like
Jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great high wall with
12 gates and at the gates, 12 angels. And on the gates, the
names of the 12 tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed. On the east, three gates. On
the north, three gates. On the south, three gates. And
on the west, three gates. And the wall of the city had
12 foundations and on them were the 12 names of the 12 apostles
of the Lamb. And the one who spoke with me
had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates
and its walls. The city lies four square, its
length the same as its width. And he measured the city with
his rod, 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height
are equal. He also measured its wall, 144
cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel’s measurement.
The wall was built of jasper while the city was pure gold
clear as glass. The foundations of the wall and
of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first
was Jasper, the second, Sapphire, the third, Agate, and the fourth,
Emerald, the fifth, Onyx, the sixth, Carnelian, the seventh,
Chrysolite, the eighth, Beryl, the ninth, Topaz, the tenth,
Chrysoprase, the eleventh, Jasonth, and the twelfth, Amethyst. And
the 12 gates were 12 pearls, each of the gates made of a single
pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, transparent
as glass. And I saw no temple in the city,
for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb. And
the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the
glory of God gives its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By
its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will
bring their glory into it. And its gates will never be shut
by day, and there will be no night there. They will bring
into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean
will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or
false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of
life. And just another verse or two in the next chapter. Then
the angel showed me the river of the water of life, brightest
crystal flowing from the throne of God and of the Lord of the
lamb through the middle of the street of the city. Also on either
side of the river, the tree of life with its 12 kinds of fruit
yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for
the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything
accursed. but the throne of God and of
the lamb will be in it and his servants will worship him. They
will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads and
night will be no more. They need no light of the lamp
or of the sun for the Lord God will be their light and they
will reign forever and ever. Let’s do pray. Lord, the scripture tells us
what no eye has seen, what no mind has fathomed, what no heart
has considered is in store for us all. Lord, we think of how
C.S. Lewis said some years ago that
we’re content playing with mud and making sandcastles and playing
pretend when you offer us everlasting things. Lord, Take our mind off
of the things of this earth, the things we want, the things
we desire, the things we pursue, and put our minds on everlasting
things, things that our eyes have not seen, our minds can’t
fathom, and our hearts can hardly perceive. We’re the blessed ones
through Christ. These things are in store for
us. So help us to have done with lesser things and to put our
eyes on the heavenly city. Help us, we pray in Christ’s
mighty name. Amen. I’m asking a question I know
the answer to, but I’m gonna ask it anyway. Do you ever think
this way? And maybe you do with the new
year coming. If I get my circumstances right,
if I just get my circumstances right, then I can do this, or
I will do that. If I get my circumstances right,
then I’ll obey God. or I’ll go on a diet or I’ll
live on a budget or I’ll be friends with this person or whatever
it is. If I get my circumstances right
then, well, what do we know to be true about this life? Well,
it’s that our circumstances are never right. But there was, for
Adam and Eve, perfect circumstances. In the garden, they were happy
and holy. In the garden, they had pure fellowship with Almighty
God in the garden. They had his revelation. There
was no need for a temple in the garden for the temple was the
presence of God himself with his, well, then two people, Adam
and Eve. They walked in the cool of the
day. They fellowshiped. They listened to his commands.
He made a beautiful place for them. He put them in it. He told
them to work. and to keep and to spread the
glory of God, the knowledge of God across the face of the earth. They had perfect circumstances,
but did they obey? Did they say to themselves, well,
you know, these are perfect circumstances, but I think I’d rather disobey.
Well, hard to know what was going through their mind and heart.
Well, actually, Not so much. We know ourselves. We know our
inclinations. We know the wickedness in us. We know the devil and what he
offers. We know the world and how it whispers in our ears. And so Adam and Eve, happy and
holy in fellowship with God and in the beauty of the garden with
their holy and righteous selves, being king and queen of the creation,
were under a probation. We thought of that last week,
Genesis 2, 17. Of all the trees of the garden,
you may freely eat, God said, but of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, you shall not eat for in the day you eat of
it, you will surely die. Something to think about when
you read the scriptures. When you read something in the scriptures
such as eat and die, you can also logically believe the opposite,
don’t eat and live. And so God made this covenant
we call the covenant of works. with Adam and Eve, they could
have obeyed God perfectly and at some point eaten of the tree
of life and lived forever in righteousness. But instead they
were seduced by Satan and tempted and they saw the fruit was a
delight to their eyes. They saw that it was good for
becoming wise. And so they took, knowing that
God had forbidden it, they took and ate. And their eyes were
open. They became naked. They became
ashamed. They hid from Almighty God. And so in the perfect circumstances
of paradise, they followed their heart. They followed the wicked
ways. The curses, the curses on Eve
childbearing, the curses on Adam working in thorns and thistles,
the curses on Satan, the dust of the earth and the slithering
on the ground. This great tragedy that fell
on Adam and Eve has also been passed down to us. We consider
the scriptures, Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15 that says, In Adam’s transgression,
all die. He is our head, represented the
whole human race. And in Adam, all men die. But
thank the Lord in Christ. We who have faith in Jesus, we
get his obedience. So Adam, our first parent, our
representative of the human race sinned against God. And what
was Satan’s point of attack? He comes to Eve and says, did
God really say? I think we mentioned last week
that point of attack on the scriptures continues to this day. Did God
really say the doctrine of the inerrancy of scripture, the doctrine
of the authority of the scriptures, the trustworthiness of the scriptures
has always been under attack from Satan in the world, but
it’s even come under attack within the church. Yes, over the centuries,
but over the last hundred or so years in the American church,
you have a popular preacher today, the son of a very famous preacher.
I won’t mention his name. Some of you will figure out who
I’m speaking of who says we don’t need the Old Testament. And how
do you square that when Paul tells Timothy in chapter three
of second Timothy, you remember what you have learned from your
mother Lois and your grandmother and how the scriptures and for
Timothy, it was the Old Testament, how you’ve been taught them from
your youth and they were able to make you wise unto salvation.
We don’t need the Old Testament. Well, I don’t think Paul agreed
with that. I don’t think Christ agreed with that for he preached
the Old Testament. And what did he say? Here I am. These things foretold about me.
And so we have these popular level teachers in the so-called
church saying, we don’t need this part of Scripture. We don’t
need that part of Scripture. Oh, marriage is so old fashioned.
You know, we need to love people because love is love. And, you
know, all the rest, these attacks on Scripture have come. and they
keep on coming. So the point of Satan’s attack
then and now is did God really say? But notice also Satan’s
point of attack. It was on God’s greatest gift
to Adam, Eve. Satan went to Eve and went around
Adam as it were and tempted both our first parents through her. God had put Adam in the garden
to work. He had put Adam in the garden
to keep the garden. His calling was to make the world
and everything in it productive. His job was to protect the garden.
And he should have been a serpent slayer, right? We asked the question,
what would have happened had he killed the snake? What would
have happened if he had protected the garden and put Satan to death?
Well, they wouldn’t have desired to go outside of God’s boundaries.
They wouldn’t have desired to become kings unto themselves,
not submitting to the great king of kings, the king of the universe.
But we know she took and ate and gave some to him who took
and ate. They became self-aware. They became naked and they became
ashamed. We come to this point in the
story and say, what’s going to happen? What next? Well, they figured they better
do something. So they hid. They better do something. So they sewed together a makeshift
covering of fig leaves. Now, can the soap we used at
our last bath wash away our sins? No. Can the clothes that we put
on our bodies today cover our shame and our nakedness and our
sin? Absolutely not. Only an exchange
of raiment can do that. And so when God came looking
in the garden for Adam and Eve, when the suspense was over and
he came looking for them and called them by name, He said to them, those fig leaves,
the works, righteousness, the works you have done to cover
your sin and shame will not do. Something has to die. And so an animal was killed.
We don’t get the details, but we’re told that an animal was,
life was taken and those skins were given to Adam and Eve to
cover as a pointer, wasn’t it? To the death of another. for
the death of the real sinners. A great exchange already on the
horizon for us. But in chapter 3, verse 15, we
get the first gospel. It’s clearly the first gospel
of Jesus. The Lord says to Eve, your offspring
And then the offspring of Satan will continually battle against
one another. They’ll continually battle against
one another. And we see skirmishes along the
way, reading through the scriptures. Maybe in the new year, you’ll
read the Bible through. And the question will come to
your mind when something comes up in the Bible story, will God’s
people have the promised offspring? For example, you get to the story
of Abraham and what does God tell Abraham to do one day? Take
your son, Isaac, the son you love, your only son, the heir,
and take him up to a mountain, I’ll show you, and there sacrifice
him on the altar. Well, you think the problem is
putting your son on the altar and putting a knife into him. That’s not the problem. That
is a problem. But what is the real problem?
He’s the heir. He’s the child of promise. If
I kill him, there will be no heir. There will be an end to
the promise. But we fast forward and we read
the book of Hebrews chapter 11. And we read that by faith, Abraham
was in the act of offering up Isaac, his only son, the child
of promise, because he believed that God was able to raise him
from the dead. And so you see very quickly in
Genesis, not just chapter two and three, But chapter 12 and
22, you see very quickly the glimpses of the gospel, what
was provided for Abraham when he was in the act, a ram and
the thicket on the mountain. Abraham said to his son, the
Lord will provide. Well, it was that same mountain,
Mount Moriah, where Jesus later would be hanged on a cross and
he would bear the wrath and the curse as the ram and the thicket
as the substitute. for sinners. And so we get these
little glimpses. And so if the covenant of works
for Adam was obey and obey perfectly and you’ll live, the opposite
was disobey, disobey God’s command and you’ll die. Well, that’s
what he chose. How does a righteous or an unrighteous person have
a life, a standing before a holy God? How do we who are born in
Adam, born with sin, then commit actual sin from that original
sin. How do we ever, ever get a right standing before Almighty
God? Well, we remember the covenant
between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We thought
of this a couple of weeks back, how the Father said to the Son,
you go, And you live and you obey perfectly. You go to the
cross and you bear the sins of the people I send you to save.
And when you die and when you rise, and when you come back
to heaven and at the end of the world, at the consummation of
all things, you will inherit these people as a prize. You
will inherit them as your reward. And so the covenant was made
between the father and between the son and between the spirit
to accomplish and to apply redemption to each of us in real space and
time in human history. And so you begin to read in the
scriptures how God permitted a fall and how he promised a
savior. He would send a son who would
live and obey and die. And this grand creation that
Adam and Eve were put in would be under the curse. Some of y’all
back in the summer, I believe it was, were in the class on
Romans. You get to chapter 8 in that strange little verse that
says, all creation groans. Why does it groan? Well, we just
read why it groans in chapter 3 of Genesis. It groans under
sin and it groans under the weight of the curse. And it groans,
yet it eagerly awaits the adoption. of the sons and daughters of
God. It eagerly awaits the consummation when, as we just read in Revelation,
God says, I make all things new. The curse is no more. And so we’ve read the bookends
of scripture today, the early chapters of Genesis and the ending
chapters of the Bible. And what is there in both places
but the tree of life and what God blocks Adam and Eve from
eating in sin, he freely gives those who have faith in Jesus
and enter into his glorious presence. I used to think it was really
mean of God to block Adam and Eve out of the garden. And maybe
I thought this because I had a brother and sister, and sometimes
they’d lock you out of the house or they’d lock you out of your
room. And so you read Genesis 3 and you say, you know, God’s
a meanie. He kicked them out of the garden.
But do you see the mercy of God in the face of sin? He had told
Adam and Eve, you eat, you die. And instead of instant death,
he delayed death. The wages of sin is death. We
all face death. It is appointed once and for
all for man to die and after that to face judgment. But he
first clothed them with the skins of an animal, and then he sent
them out in the cursed world to continue living with the hope
yet of a gospel and a promised savior. But what does he put
there at the edge of the garden? He puts the cherubim, a spinning,
turning cherubim with a spinning, turning sword. And it blocks
the way to the tree of life, lest they take hold of the tree
of life and live forever. And you can fill it in, in sin.
What if you were to live forever in sin? What a horrible thing
that would be. So creation thereafter is the
theater of God’s glory. It’s the stage on which redemption
is played out and It’s played out in real human history when
in the fullness of time, God sent forth his son, born of a
woman, made under the law, and this poor couple bear the Christ
child. And again, the seed of the serpent
continues to wreak havoc as it had done with Goliath and the
enemies of God’s people, the Assyrians and the Babylonians.
And here’s Herod. He wants to kill every child
within two years. of the guest birth of Jesus,
because there can be no other king of the Jews but Herod, but
there’s Jesus. And so wicked Herod causes the
family, the little Christ family, to flee to Egypt. And so we fast
forward and see Jesus’ humiliation, His willingness to go to the
cross and suffer for our sins. He takes on human flesh. He takes
our sins on his own soul. And the curses that are due for
the disobedience of Adam, he takes in the cross and bears
them in his body on the tree. You know, Adam is a sad story,
isn’t he? Lives in paradise, perfect circumstances,
sins against God. But what about the second Adam,
Jesus? Where is he tempted and tested? Does God come to him
in paradise? No, it’s the wilderness. Does
God come to him in paradise with abundant fruit and even fellowship
and friendship? No, he’s been out in the wilderness
40 days, 40 nights, no food. And Satan comes to him in the
wilderness and says, you’re hungry, take this stone and turn it into
bread. And then he says, look at all
the kingdoms of the earth. He takes him up and shows him
all the kingdoms of the earth. If you’ll just bow to me, I’ll
give them to you. All yours. Easy peasy. You do it this way.
They’re all yours. And then he takes him to the
pinnacle of the temple, says, throw yourself down and then call out
your angels for the scripture says the angels will come and
rescue you at the command of your voice. So Jesus responds
to Satan’s temptation the opposite way of Adam and Eve. Adam and
Eve should have said, no, our God says no. They should have
said, this is not the way. We’re happy with what he’s given
us. We’re content in his boundaries. But that wasn’t so. They saw
And they idolized and they coveted and they took and they ate and
the rest is history. But the second Adam, the Lord
Jesus in the covenant of grace, he obeys God perfectly. And he says to Satan, man shall
not live by bread alone, but from the very words that come
from the mouth of God. So there’s temptation number
one out the door. And then regarding the pinnacle
of the temple, throw yourself off, command the angels to come
rescue you while you’re on the way down. He says, the word says,
don’t put the Lord, your God to the test. But regarding the
kingdoms, when he shows them all the kingdoms of the earth
and says, Hey, if you just give me a little nod, just give me
the tip of the hat. Just say, Satan, you’re, you’re
the man, right? And I’ll give you all the kingdoms
of the earth. It had to go through Jesus’ mind. All the way into
eternity past when the father said to the son, you go and save
a people. I’ll give them to you as a reward.
The kingdoms of the earth will be yours. What is Satan offering
him? He’s offering him an easy way
out. There’s no suffering. There’s no scourging. There’s
no crown of thorns. There’s no nails. There’s no
cross. And most importantly, there’s no wrath of God. But
what would Jesus be? He’d just be Adam all over again.
He would just be disobedient and serving himself and not thinking
of others and the pain and suffering that it would cause. And so the
Lord Jesus answers Satan again with scriptures. And I love how
Luke explains Satan’s response. It’s almost like he just slithers
off. He’s tried his best. The ancient serpent, the devil,
tried his best and the temptations were ended. And so Jesus, the
second Adam, not in paradise, not in good circumstances, but
in the wilderness passes the test. But wait, there’s more
obedience to be done. The scripture tells us what of
Jesus. He became obedient even to death on the cross. It wasn’t
just Satan’s temptation that had to be fulfilled. Yes, it
did for sure. But he had to go all the way.
He had to live in our place. He had to obey in our place.
He had to suffer in our place. He had to die in our place. And
his offering had to be accepted. by God for us in our place. And so there was more obedience
than just the wilderness testing. He had to be obedient even to
death, even death on a cross. So think of the covenant of works
God made with Adam. Obey me and live. Conversely,
disobey and die. But think about the covenant
of grace. Jesus obeys and we live. It’s not our obedience
that does it. It’s not our righteousness that
does it for we cannot have it. From Adam comes to us original
sin and from that original sin proceeds actual sins. And we
think now in this Christmas season, this Advent season of the coming
of Jesus, why was it important? No, bigger word is needed. Why
was it necessary for Jesus? not to be fathered by Joseph,
but to be conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin
Mary and born of her yet without sin. Jesus could not have original
sin from Adam passed to him. Otherwise he would have been
a sinner like us. He had to be born the sinless man, the second
Adam, the true man. And it was possible for Him to
sin. He could have just said, you
know, I throw my hands up. I don’t want the wrath of God. Satan
gives me the easy way out. I think I’m going to take it.
But that’s not the way of the second Adam. He is a faithful
one. And so when we who are privileged
to know Jesus think of our justification, we think of our standing before
almighty God. God sees us just as if we’ve
never sinned. And he sees us just as if we’ve
always obeyed. We have both the pardon of God
through the blood of Jesus. Our sins are pardoned. They’re
washed in the blood of Christ. But positively, we have the obedience
of Jesus. And so when we stand before God
and he says, what you got? We say we got nothing. Well,
what do you have? You have to have something. And
we point to Christ and we say we have his obedience. We have
his righteousness, but we also have his pardon. And so think
about this very practically. In the world, there’s two kinds
of people. There are people who are in Adam and there are people
who are in Christ. If you are in Adam, you will
die because your representative sinned and that sin was passed
to you and the wages of sin is death. But if you come to Jesus,
putting your faith in him, your hope in him, you trust in him
alone for your salvation, receiving his righteousness, his obedience,
and his pardon, you are no longer in Adam, but are in Christ. And in Christ, we get life. And
in Christ, we get everlasting life. In Christ, we get to eat
of the tree of life and live forever. Now, what about between
now and then? We still suffer under those curses,
don’t we? There’s pain in our work. There’s
thorns and thistles and futility. There’s pain in childbirth, pain
in childbearing. There’s struggles in relationships. That’s a hard world to live in.
And what does God do? He gives us hope in the seed
of Eve. We have this great cosmic battle
yet to be completed. And you read the book of Revelation
and you say, it’s a little fuzzy. I don’t understand it. You want
to read Revelation and know just the bottom line is simply this,
Jesus wins. Satan loses. We read and we sang from Psalm
98 earlier this morning. We get joy to the world, Isaac
Watts, joy to the world comes from Psalm 98. But we also get
another psalm, Psalter version of that that says, sing choirs
of new Jerusalem. And it sings of the wonders of
redemption and it speaks of the crushing of the serpent’s head. and the bruising of the heel.
Jesus was bruised, but the serpent will be crushed. These are really
fundamental, basic things for us to think about as Christians.
They help us read the whole Bible, but they give us hope. You read
the headlines, you see the news and you think, oh, what a crazy,
wicked world. And our hope is not in politics. It’s in Christ.
Our hope is not in our hard work and good morals. It’s in Christ. And I think of the sneaky little
phrase Paul puts in at the end of Romans. So he’s writing to
the Roman Christians living under the crazy Roman empire and all
that messy culture. And he simply says at the end
of Romans, soon Satan will be crushed underfoot. And that’s
the great hope, isn’t it? Thanks be to God for Christ,
the second Adam, who’s done things right and well for us. Let’s do pray. Our Father, we
give you thanks that it is not up to us. It is not up to our
efforts, our works, for our best works are even filthy rags. We thank you for the change of
clothing that has been given to us through Christ. The great
exchange. He took our sin. We took his
righteousness. He took our disobedience. We
gained his obedience. Our sins have been washed away.
You can by no means clear the guilty, except through one standing
in our place. And that one is your son, the
great God-man. And we give you thanks this day
for this great truth. May our faith be strengthened
and may our hearts desire to live lives pleasing to you out
of gratitude for all that has been done for us. Help us bless
us as we pray this in Christ’s mighty name and all God’s people
said, amen. We want to respond to God’s goodness. God in the gospel of his son,
turn there and we’ll stand to sing together.