Life Of The World To Come

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. So we're in our last Sunday on this Credo, We Believed. Why do we even do this? Because I know we weren't just trying to deal with contemporary issues all the time. This is what the church has confessed and taught and believed for 1,700 years. That's even older than me. 1,700 years ago in 325 A.D. in Nicaea, they established a church. The whole Christian church came together and established this creed, which is basically a story. It's basically trying to condense what the New Testament had already been speaking and saying. We're now covering today the last two phrases in the creed, where it says, We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen. What does that mean? What does that imply? Where are we going with this? So we're in Revelation 21, 1-7, and then we're going to go to 22, verses 1-5 that we're going to read today and get into this text a little more. So, Revelation puts it this way, 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, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was 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 the 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. Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and 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 twelve 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, for 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 will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. That's how the New Testament ends. Isn't it amazing? I know, a lot of people look at the book of Revelation and go like, you know, scary! It isn't really that scary. It's very symbolic, it's got a lot of stuff in it, but that's how it ends. That's where we're ending up. So we're going to look from this passage and a few others in the New Testament, just two points today. Well, but there's some points, so don't get your hopes up too far. But first of all, A, what Christians believe about the end of history. Where is it all headed? End not as, oh, it's over, as much as end goal. And then B, how this gives us hope in a hopeless world. Because I think this world's kind of hopeless. Not saying it should be hopeless, but a lot of people are. Right? So first, what Christians believe about the end of history. Now, the Bible says that the world had a definite beginning. A planned by God out of love. A difficult middle that we're in right now. It is kind of tough. But then, a glorious end. That's what the Nicene Creed points out. We've kind of seen it from the beginning. It starts out with, we believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth. That's the beginning. And then the middle is, we believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only son of God. Who for us, and for our salvation, came down from heaven. That's the middle. And now the end. We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. What's amazing is how different that is. From almost every other religion and philosophy in this world. Many people believe, and many philosophies will say this, whatever this is, is a cosmic fluke. It just happened. Oops. Who knows? Just random. And then the middle, that we're in the middle, is an enigma. We're not quite sure what this means or where it's going. And that the end is unknown. And possibly, all of this is just one more cycle among a million other cycles going forward. Really, in a sense, a lot of world religions and philosophies say that the world is kind of purposeless. Because it's just going to be again, and again, and again, going nowhere. And I dare say most people today in our culture want to believe in a positive future. But they'r...