Sermon Tone Analysis

*What Happens After We Die*

 

Today’s scripture is found in Revelation chapter 21 and we will be reading through chapter 22 verse five.

While you are finding that in your Bible, I want to encourage you to continue blessing others and relate your stories to us on the forms that were in your bulletins last week.

If you need a form, you can get one at the welcome center.

If you would like to share a story digitally, you can E-mail your story to any staff member.

Also, if you have any questions from any of the messages during the Taking Jesus to the Streets series you can write them on the back of your communication card, or any bit of paper you have, and we’ll do our best to address them for you.

Okay, let’s stand and honor God as we read his word, starting in Revelation chapter 21 and verse 1 follow along as I read:

 

*Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.

  2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.

They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.

4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes.

There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

*

*5 **He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”  Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” *

*6 **He said to me: “It is done.

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.

To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.

7 He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son.

8 But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur.

This is the second death.”

*

*9 **One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.”

10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. 11 It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.

12 It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates.

On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel.

13 There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west.

14 The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

*

*15 **The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls.

16 The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide.

He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long.

17 He measured its wall and it was 144 cubits thick,  by man’s measurement, which the angel was using.

18 The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass.

19 The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone.

The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, 20 the fifth sardonyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst.

21 The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl.

The great street of the city was of pure gold, like transparent glass.

*

*22 **I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.

24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it.

25 On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there.

26 The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it.

27 Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.*

*22** Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city.

On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.

And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

3 No longer will there be any curse.

The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.

4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.

5 There will be no more night.

They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light.

And they will reign for ever and ever.*

Thank you for standing.

You may be seated.

This passage of scripture gives us a glimpse of the eternal destination for mankind, after the second coming of Jesus, the new heaven, and the New Jerusalem.

This description of heaven gives us just a peek at what our final destination will look like.

But what happens between now and then when someone dies?

At some point in each of our lives, we become aware of our mortality.

I remember when I was about nine or ten years old, on a bright sunny summer day in Illinois.

I was out in the yard playing with the 1960’s version of a gameboy; sticks and mud.

For some reason my mind wandered to thoughts of my life on earth coming to an end someday.

I realized at that point that there was an end and I didn’t know what was beyond that end.

My chest tightened, I felt emptiness in my stomach.

I’m sure I had a “deer in the headlights look.”

I responded by standing up, and running towards the house in a panic.

By the time I reached the front porch, the panic had subsided and I was able to change my attention to a different activity and abandon those scary thoughts.

I’ll bet that some of you can tell a similar story.

We all become aware of our mortality at some point.

How we reconcile those fears in a large measure depends upon the worldview we hold.

Christians, from all generations, have a view of heaven and hell after this life on earth, and the life-long struggle with the devil while we are living this pre-heaven life.

The mindset from my generation can be summed in the slogan: “If you prove it to me by objective reason, I will believe it and live it.”

Since the devil, heaven, and hell cannot be proved scientifically, this mindset finds it difficult to believe in the devil, heaven, or hell.

Non-Christians from my generation struggle with the reality of the devil, heaven, and hell because they can’t prove their existence scientifically.

Throughout our life on earth, we are tempted from three sources: the world, the flesh, and the devil.

It is relatively easy for us to identify temptations from the world; things like advertising, money, and possessions, and temptations from the flesh; things like overeating, sexual desires, and excess physical comforts.

But there are temptations that we know come from neither the world nor the flesh, like temptations that come to us in our moments of deepest devotion and quiet.

You know when your thoughts wander to thinking about what other people are, or are not doing, and those thoughts that have jealousy or pride at their root.

Reason tells us that those temptations can only be attributed to the devil.

That ability to reason through temptations gives the modern thinker a way to grab a hold of the notion of the devil.

The next generation’s mindset views truth as that which best fits the facts as I know them here and now.

Those truths are realized through relationships and experiences.

If through relating to others, or personal experience they encounter the devil, and then it can become a truth.

In the early 2000’s, George Barna noted that an “overwhelming majority of Americans believe that there is life after death and that heaven and hell exist.

And that their views of heaven and hell are cut and pasted from a variety of sources such as television, movies, and conversations with friends.

Do you believe in the devil, heaven, and hell?

Does our society believe in the devil heaven and hell?

Watch this clip and see what people on the street are saying.

Now I’m sure that those interviews were not conducted in a manner to infer any statistical certainty, but if they are at least somewhat representative of our society, the beliefs of Americans have changed drastically in the last few years.

Is there a devil?

If there is, who is he?

What does he do?

Clearly if you hold the Bible as the word of God, you must believe in the devil.

The New Testament records Jesus’ encounters with the devil and his temptations.

Scripture calls the devil the adversary, the devil, the slanderer, the false accuser, Satan, the opposer, the prince of the fallen angels, the evil one, the malevolent one, the dragon, the old serpent, the prince of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the god of this world, and Beelzebub, among other names

 

The late theologian Stanley Grenz provides this description of the devil:

“In the Old Testament, Satan appears as a member of the heavenly court with the task of the accuser.

He acts much like a prosecuting attorney does in our court system, acting in the interest of justice.

In Job, the Satan assumed his classical pose of charging a good man with evil.

Somewhere in the story, the accuser in the court of God develops a hostile intent.

Satan the accuser falls from the heavenly court and becomes Satan the accuser of the saints, the one who is hostile toward humans.

It is a small step from accuser of the saints to Satan’s final position as God’s archenemy.

As God’s archenemy banned from heaven, Satan carries out a two-pronged attack on earth.