On the inside of every person there is a desire to see things in this world change. Whether it's injustice, inequity, bringing people into the fullness of the knowledge of Christ, or any number of things, there's something in nearly every person that says not only can the world be better, but hopefully my actions can help to make it better.
Did you know that that is a Divine desire, given to all of humanity by God Himself? Revelation 21:3-5a tells us, "And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.”
In other words, what John is seeing here in a vision is God telling Him that the presence of God is now with people. He is dwelling with them. That was a significant conceptual shift to a Jewish man in the late first century. You see, the Tabernacle is the place in the Old Testament where we see God's presence dwelling physically here on the earth. It was the place where He resided, and what God is showing to John is that now, through Jesus, there's no need of a tabernacle made by human hands (a concept reinforced in Acts 7:48 and 17:24) but He has now come to live with, dwell with, and abide with humanity, desiring for them to be His people.
“The God who has done and is doing all those things we’ve read about is making all things new.”
In the next verses, He begins to tell us of this life we qualify to live because of what Jesus has done, telling us that pain, sorrow, death, and everything under the curse will be in the past because the God who has done and is doing all those things we've read about is making all things new.
This is the cry of humanity, it's the cry of the Church, it's the cry of people through the ages: We need things to be made new. Our systems are broken, fundamentally flawed from the ground up. No matter what we've tried to do in building things and how we've tried to improve them, we continually fall short. Look at the spate of scandals in Christian ministry even over the last few years: a number of people who built large churches, large organizations, and impacted millions at their core for Christ and spread the Gospel across the world were found out to be people with moral failings, and those failings were cast into a public light...
Maybe this is why Jesus taught us to pray the way that He did.
"Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven: Give us this day our daily bread; And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us; And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil; For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, For ever and ever. Amen."
“Salvation has been accomplished but it is still being accomplished on the inside of us, [and] God’s Kingdom has been brought to us and He has made things new but He is still in the process of making all things new.”
The very first thing that Jesus says after giving glory to God is praying that His Kingdom come or praying that everything be made new in light of His Kingdom.
This brings us to the tension that we've spoken about before - this idea that the Kingdom both is now and is not yet. That salvation has been accomplished but it is still being accomplished on the inside of us, that God's Kingdom has been brought to us and He has made things new but He is still in the process of making all things new.
John touches on this thought in 1 John 3:2, "Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." We are children of God and Paul tells us repeatedly that we have been made like Jesus, in His image and likeness, but John tells us that this is still not yet fully accomplished in us.
God has made us new. God is in the process of making us new. Like John Mark McMillan said, "You are making all things new, you are making everything new."
This is the desire that should be burning on the inside of every single one of us. We're caught in His love. We have been made new. We are being made new. And our desire is for everything to be made new.
In the book, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, this desire for things to be made new and set right was something that lived strong on the inside of the Narnians, even under the reign of the White Witch. They held strong to their belief over the years, even when it seemed like nothing would change, passing down through the ages the saying, "Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight." The Narnians were waiting for His return to set things right and make all things new again. We should be anticipating the same in our world.
By Grace,
Dave