Scripture Reading

Into God's word. We're in Revelation 20 and 21, and as is our custom, we're going to read this aloud together. You can find this in the bulletin and on the screen behind me. Would the people of God join your voices with me as we read the word of God.

Then I saw a great white throne and one seated on it. Earth and heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them. I also saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged according to their works by what was written in the books. Then the sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them. Each one was judged according to their works. Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. It says the second death, the lake of fire. And anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire. Then I saw a new heavens and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband. Then I heard a loud voice from the throne. Look, God's dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. Grief, crying, and pain will be no more because the previous things have passed away. Then the one seated on the throne said, look, I am making everything new. He also said, write because these words are faithful and true. Then he said, it is done. I am the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. I will freely give to the thirsty from the spring of the water of life. The one who conquers will inherit these things, and I will be his god, and he will be my son. — Revelation 20:11–21:7

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Would you join me in prayer? Father, we pray that you would now meet us as we give ear to your words. Lord, I pray that I would disappear and you would be seen—you as our great hope. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

The TikTok Story

Last winter, I read a story about a young man named Zach Kesey who is an NC State grad and now lives in Durham. He had a very unique story on TikTok. I'm not a TikTok subscriber, so I read about this in the paper.

Zach did what a lot of people do and intentionally mislabeled locations in his photos or videos on TikTok—this is sort of a TikTok thing—but Zach's story took an extra step. He went to Europe on vacation and went to the Duomo in Milan, and he labeled that on his TikTok account as Concord Mills Mall, North Carolina. Then he went to Venice and took a picture of the canals and labeled that Raleigh, North Carolina. Then he went to Switzerland and took a picture of the Alps and labeled that as Gastonia, North Carolina.

Now, this wouldn't be kind of normal if there hadn't been a woman from Jupiter, Florida who is on TikTok. She sees these places and she's driving up to go with her family and she's like, "Hey, Gastonia looks beautiful. We should stop off and take a look." And she drives to Gastonia and there are no Swiss Alps there. Surprisingly, if you've been to Gastonia before, you know what she found: rundown gas stations. That's what she found in Gastonia, North Carolina.

The Sermon Title

The reason I mentioned that story is that you may think, as I tell you the title for today's sermon, that I'm doing the Zach Kesey TikTok thing and mislabeling everything. The title of today's sermon, and you just listened to the passage, is this: The Hope of Coming Judgment.

I know, right? Who hopes for coming judgment? What kind of church do I go to? What's wrong with this guy? And why are we doing Revelation during Christmas time? The Hope of Coming Judgment.

This isn't a joke and it isn't a mistake. For two thousand years now, Christians, reading the passage we just read out loud, have responded—along with those at the very end of Revelation—by saying, "Come, Lord Jesus." They have hoped in this.

Advent

You know, this is a season of the church calendar—the weeks leading up to Christmas—that we call Advent. I think it should really be "Advents" because it's a time where the church both looks backward—like, okay, let's make the parking lot over there, that's history, right? The gas station that way, that's the future. The church has used this time to look backward in history to the first advent—the first arrival of Jesus as a baby—but also to look ahead to the next advent, the second coming of Jesus again.

As a kid, I didn't understand much about why we did this stuff at church. We'd count down the weeks to Christmas, and I always felt like we're doing this big game of pretend. We're all just sort of pretending where Israel was waiting for the Messiah to come, walking in those paces, which is kind of true, but it's so much richer and bigger than that. What we do at Advent—we look back, we look ahead.

Hope in Coming Judgment

Here's my title, and it's not mislabeled: Hope in coming judgment.

Everybody wants to know what's coming. What's coming down the pike? What's coming down the road in my life? Whether things are going well or poorly—if things are going poorly, you're like, what do I have to look forward to? What's coming down the road? What's going to be the change? What can I hope in?

I find this too, though: when things are going really well, a lot of us do this thing of waiting for the shoe to drop. We're waiting for what's to come. When's it all gonna end, right?

This book, the Book of Revelation—the title itself means "unveiled, made known." It's not made secret like people think of revelation. It's what's made known. So we know what is to come. Today, I want to talk about what is to come, particularly the final judgment.

But before I do, I want to talk about what is to come more immediately. The Bible pictures for us not a one-part future, life after death, but a two-part future. One writer calls it "life after life after death."

Let me show you this in this passage, in chapter 20, verse 14. We read here about the second death, which implies there's a first death. And earlier in Revelation chapter 20, it talks about the first resurrection, which implies there's a second resurrection. So in the Bible, we don't have a one-part future. We have a two-part future, and this passage is all about the second part of that.

But let me do a little review to make sure we're all on the same page. What happens when we die?

John 14 is a passage that's often read at funerals. Jesus's promise is:

"I'm going to go and prepare a place for you. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it weren't so, I would have told you." — John 14

We describe that as heaven. Jesus says, "I'm going to prepare a place for you." But the word in Greek, moné, is a word which implies a temporary stop—like a bus stop or a rest stop on a longer trip. Heaven is not meant to be the end. It's the first part of a journey.

This is why Paul says that his desire after death is to depart and be with Christ, which is far better than life in this life. He's talking about that. Jesus talks to the thief on the cross next to him and says:

"Today, you'll be with me in paradise." — Luke 23:43

I want to remind you of what heaven is. The early Christian church was not as focused on heaven as we are. Our tombstones say "RIP"—rest in peace—and it's sort of a miss. The early Christians had this word on their tombstones: Resurge—"I will rise." They were looking forward not to the immediate future, the afterlife, but to the life after life after death.

This is only reinforced when you read the Book of Revelation. In Revelation chapter 6, there are martyrs in heaven under the throne, and what's bizarre is they're not settling in for a long eternity with God going, "This is great." They're crying out even in heaven for the next phase to come. "How long, O Lord, until you bring phase two of our future?"

So let me remind you: heaven is a temporary place on a journey, and heaven is pictured in Scripture always as God's house, not our house. This is why when Jesus says, "I'm going to take you," where does he say? To my Father's house, not to your home. So we sing these songs like, "There's a better home awaiting in the sky, Lord, in the sky," but we're talking about God's house, not ours.

There's a larger Christian hope than heaven. At no point in the Gospels or the Book of Acts do people say anything like, "Jesus has gone into heaven. Let's be sure we follow him there." Heaven is not the point, even though you'd be mixed up with that if you've been around the church in America for a long time.

We have these evangelism explosion questions—great questions. "Hey, do you know what would happen if you die tonight? Do you know where you'd go? Or if God stood before you and he says, 'Why should I let you into my heaven?' What would you give as an answer?" Those are great questions, but it could be a little misleading because heaven is not the end.

As one writer puts it: "Heaven, it's important, but it's not the end of the world."

And the language about hell or Hades is also sketchy.

When the Bible uses the word hell, like heaven, it's a temporary destination. It's called Hades or Sheol in the Bible and it's pictured for us in First Peter as a prison house, a holding cell on the way to what is to come. So, again, first death, right? The first phase. But this passage we're going to focus on today is about the second phase—the final judgment, the hope. Like I said, a final judgment.

Look at what we see. In Revelation 20, it opens with this picture of a throne room that's really like a judgment seat, right? It's the throne room, but there's a gavel and there are books that are being opened of evidence. And then there's the other book, the book of life. And anyone's name that's found in the book of life is welcome into the next phase with God—new heavens and new earth.

I want to show you this. Remember, as we read this passage, what's defined for us is not a two-part coming but a single event. Maybe you grew up in dispensational churches where there's lots of talk around God's second coming—Jesus' second coming coming in two phases with a seven-year period in the middle—but what we see here is Jesus returns and there's the final judgment. All one event.

Second, it's a bodily resurrection. In heaven, people do not have bodies. There's a separation at death between soul and body, and that is restored in the second resurrection. This is what's restored for us on the judgment day of Christ.

The sea will give up its dead. Hell and Hades will give up its dead. — Revelation 20

We'll be restored to a body. And this is really important: we will go into the future as a whole person restored to physicality.

And the third thing I want you to see about this is the purpose of the final judgment. If there's a heaven, I want you to think about this. If there's a heaven and a hell before final judgment, then the purpose of final judgment can't be just to mete out people's future status where they're going. There's got to be something else. Why a final judgment? If after death, people go to heaven or hell and that's a temporary place, why a final judgment?

And this is what I want to show you: What is that larger purpose? What is that something else? And it's right here in this passage. God's judgment, His justice, is revealed—and it's revealed to be very different from human justice and judgment. Here's what we see in our Bibles. Every time the word judgment or justice shows up, there's another word that accompanies it in almost every circumstance: righteousness.

Now, that's a word that we don't use very much. It's not something we think about very much, but it's really important. It's really important that we understand that God's justice is connected always to His righteousness—not in the sense that He is righteous, but in the sense that He is going to make everything right. His righteousness defines His justice.

Human justice in a court of law is concerned with condemnation, with conviction, with a verdict, punishing the bad guys. God's justice, His final judgment, is so much bigger than that. See what's on display here. He doesn't just tell us; He shows us. In His day of judgment, it's His rectifying and restoring justice that's on display.

God's Justice as Restoration

So I want you to picture your favorite home renovation show—Property Brothers, or what's the fixer upper? I don't really watch these shows, but I see them in my dentist's office. In each of these houses, the redesigners go in. There's a dumpy kitchen with worn-out countertops and bad lighting. They go in and they destroy everything and gut it, and then they put in everything new, right? All new appliances, all clean lines. It looks like a showroom. It's really beautiful.

Now I want you to think about that act of destruction and demolition. Would these shows be as popular if they didn't redo the kitchen? If they just were like, "Hey, we're going to destroy everything. Wasn't that great? See you later"? Maybe three-year-olds would like that, but the rest of us, we want to see the final product. We want to see it. In fact, they kind of tease you with it the whole time, right? They're like giving you little glimpses: "Here it is."

God is not just doing demolition at final judgment. He's not just punishing the bad guys. It's not just ending all that's wrong with the world. Death and Hades thrown into the lake of fire. What do we read here?

I'm making everything new. I'm making all things new. Making all things right, righteous.

In fact, so right—I want you to hear this—so right that God will remake heaven and earth, bring them together in one glorious moment where everything comes and is made new. God comes and dwells among His people. And what does it say?

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. — Revelation 21

Death will be no more. Grief, crying, pain—no more—because the previous things have passed away. When Jesus says he's making all things new, everything new, listen carefully to that language. The Latin word for this is palin, like in Genesis, like our word "genesis." A fresh start. All things new. But it means that God is going to recycle everything. It's not that God makes all new things, like God is weary of this, wads it up, and throws it out. But God takes all of this and renews every bit of it. Remakes all of it. All things new, including you, including me.

It's not that we disappear into some like all-soul. You become—how do I say this? You are you. The you that you were always meant to be. The most completed version of yourself. This world won't become something completely other, but the best parts of all of it made new. I want you to think about that.

Preachers, storytellers—we have a hard time even putting words to all this. Some of you are familiar with the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien in his book The Lord of the Rings. He ends, toward the end of the series, with Sam Gamgee saying, "Are you going to—is everything sad that going to be made untrue?" That's just scratching the surface of what we see in Revelation 20 and 21. Not just made over new, not just shiny, alive in new ways we can scarcely imagine.

I mean, the best illustration—I've used this before—this comes from The Lion King. In the story of The Lion King, the rightful king Mufasa is killed, and Scar, who's a pretender to the throne, takes the throne. Everything begins to decay. The movie goes from vivid colors to dull colors and then black and white as the land under this destructive leader begins to decay and fall apart. And then when Simba comes to the throne, you remember what happens? It's like a wave. It's like a wave of color that overtakes the entire land. All the vegetation grows. All the flowers bloom. Suddenly, animals are appearing everywhere. All things made new.

See, the Christian version of the afterlife, of life after death, is not otherworldly—"beam me up, Scotty" Christianity, "beam me up, Jesus." It's this worldly. It's this worldly. It's Him come down. Heaven come to earth. A new physicality. A new existence in renewed bodies where everything works and is made to be what it's supposed to be.

I want to particularly say this to you Christians whose bodies are failing you right now: there's a remade version of you that is to come. In a physicality that won't fall apart. The reality is everybody's body in this room is going to decay and fall apart in some way or other. It's going to stop working. It's not meant to. We pretend we live in this dissociation of regular life. We're kind of keeping going and pretending like death is not real, and it breaks in and shocks us when it does. And you know, if your body is failing you right now, that is crushing. It is really hard to live like that. But it's not the end of your story. It's not the end of my story. Not at all.

Eternal, personal, bodily existence with God. This is what we hope for as Christians in a new heaven and new earth. That is your future. That is what's to come. Like the rest of all the restoration, He is going to make you new too.

God's Judgment and Righteousness

And this is a big "and." I want you to hear this: God's judgment is His coming in righteousness at the last day to reclaim His creation for Himself in a way that will bring—I don't even know how to say this otherwise—justification for everything else that's going on. And I don't mean justification like the theology word. I mean like a logical reason. Like, why did it have to go like this?

The second coming in His righteousness—this is what the righteousness of God is all about. This is why we really need to hold on to justice and righteousness together. In His righteousness, the second coming of Jesus will make things right. So very right that it even justifies all that was wrong and sad in this world. It makes sense of it. It provides a logical explanation.

Let me say that again: In His righteousness, the second coming of Christ will make things right. So right that it will even give justification for all that was wrong, all that was evil, all that was broken. His righting all wrongs will do so in a way that doesn't just resolve and heal and restore, but explain. Make it make sense.

Listen to how Fyodor Dostoevsky says this in The Brothers Karamazov:

I believe like a child. I believe like a child that the suffering of this earth will be healed and made up for. Then the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement for all crimes of humanity, all the blood that they've shed. And it will make it not only possible to forgive, but to justify all that's happened.

Where's that come from? Right here.

Dostoevsky was reading Revelation. His character there is hoping for and longing for the time when terrorists and school shootings and cancer and corrupt politicians and predatory preachers and all of that is no more and it will make sense. It'll make sense. This is why we talk about the hope of coming judgment. I'm not mislabeling something on purpose. Do understand why Christians have attached those two phrases together and held on to them like a life raft in the ocean in the middle of a hurricane because we know we live in the land of shadow. We know that this is not lasting and it's not right. It's filled with injustice and oppression. And to have such a hope—to have a hope like this, that there will be an end that makes right all the middle of the story. That's what we cling to.

Christians throughout the ages, our forefathers and foremothers, they've held on to this passage for dear life. The Christians in the Coliseum, the Christians who suffered on the American slave trade, Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, the Chinese government today, martyrdom in Northern India. And what I found though is that the people who are least in touch with the hardness of life, with the injustice of life, with all that's wrong, are often the people who shrink back from the hope that's found in final judgment. Those who least want Jesus return are often those who've known no real suffering, no injustice in this life.

One famous believer who I really appreciate is Miroslav Volf. He is a Croatian who watched his country be torn apart by civil war, all kinds of atrocities. In his book, Exclusion and Embrace, he writes this: "If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make an end to final violence, that would be a God not worthy of our worship." Do hear what he's saying? This hope. This is what he clings to. This is what makes sense of this life for Volf.

There's an old Christmas carol called "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." We sing it quite a bit but it carries the tension that we feel, and I love it because of how it expresses this. The words go:

I heard the bells on Christmas day, their old familiar carols play and mild and sweet. The songs repeat of peace on earth, goodwill to men. But listen to this: and in despair, I bowed my head. There is no peace on earth, I said. For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

Do feel it? Between the past, the first coming, and the second, we live in the tension. We live in this place of darkness, the land of shadow. And the carol goes on:

Then rang the bells more loud and deep. God is not dead nor doth he sleep. The wrong shall fail. The right prevail with peace on earth, goodwill to men.

I've been a pastor a long time and I've walked with a lot of people through a lot of hard things and sad things. When hardship and suffering come into their lives, everybody asks the same two questions. They're almost always the same two questions. One, why did God allow this? And two, why isn't he doing anything about it?

For the first question, why did God allow this, I have no answers. As a pastor, I can weep with those who weep. I can walk alongside, but the only answer is that we trust in the goodness of God like we sang about this morning. There's no logic that we have right now that makes sense of that.

The second question, why won't God do something about it, is really a question that goes like this: Why won't God do something about it now? Today. And of course, he can and he may, and that's why we pray. But the real answer that Christians have is he will. He will. He will put it all right.

The Terror of Final Judgment

I can't talk about the hope of coming final judgment without also talking about the terror of final judgment. Let me say a couple words about this. And let's be honest, most of us if we had to attach a descriptor, an adjective to final judgment, it would be scary, terrible, fearful. There's a real judgment to come not just for killers and terrorists, but nice people like us, like the people in this room. An eternal reckoning for everything that's wrong. And so for us to say, come Lord Jesus, bring this end is to ask God to make things right, including with us, which is frightening.

People may not feel this to be true. Doesn't it feel like life just sort of goes on year after year? The promise of Hebrews is that nothing in creation is hidden from God's sight.

Everything is uncovered and laid before him, before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.

And that seems like it's not happening. And this is not a very popular notion, is it? I mean, a final day of judgment. The American church doesn't usually put on our website, "Hey, we believe in the final judgment, come join us."

Nobody's gonna be like, "Yeah, I want to be part of that church." We hide this doctrine under our beds. We don't put it on our banners. And the reverse is true—we don't want to talk about this so much that the church might as well be saying, "To hell with hell." But the cruelest thing we can do is pretend that this isn't real. Sadly and increasingly, this is what Christians want to do. A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.

You know, it's funny. Our advent calendars are now named our advent wreaths. We name the candles peace, hope, joy, love. Do you know the old name for those candles? Heaven, hell, death and judgment. That's what they used to celebrate at Advent—remembering.

A Call to Urgency

Here's my call to you today. If you're not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, the wisest thing you can do, the most expedient thing to do, is to run to the judge. He's got the gavel in his hand, and he also has nails in his hand. Because our judge is a gracious savior. He's a gracious savior of sinners. And the wisest thing you can do is run to him.

He has been gracious over and over in this church. This church is filled with a lot of committed sinners, and God has shown his mercy over and over again. There's room for more. Come to him.

This passage also gives us a sense of urgency—an urgency to this life now. My family loves to watch the Great British Baking Show. One aspect of that show that has to be nerve-wracking is they're always calling out how much time is left before you're done. "Bakers, you have one hour left. Bakers, you have thirty minutes left. Bakers, you have five minutes left. Bakers, you're done." They build this up, and you see them as the time gets shorter—they're more and more frantic, finally throwing stuff together just to get it on the plate.

There's something about living as a people of advent expectation of a second coming that we get weary in the waiting, don't we? What's odd to me is this: there's one thing in the whole universe Jesus doesn't know. The Bible tells us. Do you know that there's one thing Jesus doesn't know? It tells us—only God the Father knows when he's returning. And it's hard to live a life where we're always feeling like there's one minute left. And yet we need to hear this over and over again.

A solid vision and hope of what's to come helps us to live with wide-eyed sobriety of what this life is—to care about the eternal destiny of your family members and your neighbors and your coworkers and your friends.

Here's the truth of Scripture: everybody lives forever somewhere. Either in the new heavens and new earth with God, or apart from him. Therefore, it's really important for us to believe that condemnation is real, and it's time to be honest with people, because that is the only way to show love. Risk your reputation. Be bold in your prayers and inviting in your words and your actions. The time is short.

The second sense of urgency that we need to reclaim is that it's time for us to stop mislabeling this life. Like the guy Zach Keesee, he mislabeled the Alps as Gastonia. We're in danger all the time of trying to put the little label "heaven" on experiences and moments in this life. Family reunion, Christmas time, time with family—this weekend that we always expect is gonna be heaven on earth. We're disappointed. The reality is we are trying so hard to make this world's hopes and joys into eternal ones, and it doesn't bear up. It's like Gastonia. We expect the Alps. You aren't home yet.

The Two Ships

Let me finish with this. When Theodore Roosevelt was president, he was famous for his hunting trips. He loved to go big game hunting, and in 1905, he took a trip to Africa. Of course, this was before airline travel, so he travels on a steamship, shoots all kinds of big animals, and brings back parts of their bodies—heads on boards—to bring back to the White House. As he returns, he comes into New York Harbor to great fanfare. There's a marching band, a ticker tape parade, reporters waiting to find out how the trip was, what he got, and all these things.

On that same ship was an older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Morrison, who'd served for forty years as missionaries in Africa. They're returning to America for retirement after forty years on the field, and no one met them at the dock. No one came and cheered them. There was no ticker tape parade or marching bands or reporters. They had an address, and they made their way down the gangplank onto the dock and made their way slowly to the apartment where they would live out the rest of their days.

And the first few days around the apartment, Henry just was agitated and frustrated and angry, and there was bitterness in him. He finally blurted out, "I'm so angry. Where were the crowds to welcome us? Where were the people to tell us welcome home? Where were the ones who were supposed to celebrate what we did for the Lord?"

And his wife says to him, "Henry, we aren't home yet. We're not home. We need to stop pretending that we are."

Have an eye for what's to come. There is a deep and incredible hope for us—that God holds out for his people. That helps us to live with a sense of open-eyed love for others, a sense of right expectation about this world, and a sense of earnest longing for what's to come. That's our hope.

Let's go to the word together in prayer. Father, we thank you for your word. There's nothing like your word. It tells us things though that are hard to hear, and Lord, this has been a heavy sermon to preach, and I'm sure even a heavier one to hear this morning. Lord, would you fix our eyes and our hearts on what is lasting and what's not, on what's temporal? Lord, teach us to hope. We've forgotten how to hope.

We pray these things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, who came and is coming again. Amen.

Let's sing these truths to one another—those things we've read about and preached about this morning. Would you stand with me?