Dallas Willard once said that if we want to live fully in the kingdom now, our future needs to make sense to us. Join us for the final installment of Fill the Earth as we seek to grasp a compelling vision of our future in the new heavens and the new earth and awaken a Maranatha cry in our hearts.
The Future Garden City
Speakers
Sarah Blount
Lead Pastor
Worship
Notes
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To live strongly and creatively in the kingdom of the heavens, we need to have firmly fixed in our minds what our future is to be like. We want to live fully in the kingdom now, and for that purpose our future must make sense to us.
Willard
The end of the Biblical story is really a new beginning.
Romans 8:18-23
Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.
The world is groaning for the kingdom to be pushed out fully into the world- groaning for the day when everything, everywhere, is exactly as God wants it to be!
Isaiah 11:6-9
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play by the cobra’s hole, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the viper’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
Revelation 21:1
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.
Heaven = Sky
New = Renewed
Laid Bare - Exposed or seen for what it really is. Discovered or found.
Revelation 21:5, 10, 22
And the One seated on the throne said: “See, I am making all things new”... And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. It has the glory of God and a radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal... I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.
Revelation 22:3
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.
Isaiah 65:21-22
They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit… for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
Colossians 3:17
And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
If our daily work, done for the glory of God and the common good of others, in some way carries over to the new heavens and new earth, then our present work itself is overflowing with immeasurable value and eternal significance.
Tom Nelson
The reward for work we do here unto Him is more work and responsibility in God’s new world.
Most of us find it very difficult to want “Heaven” at all…. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it.
C.S. Lewis
There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else.
C.S. Lewis
A compelling future vision of the whole earth covered with the knowledge and presence of God will cause you to live, work, play, and pray with urgency, fervor, and intention.
To live strongly and creatively in the kingdom of the heavens, we need to have firmly fixed in our minds what our future is to be like. We want to live fully in the kingdom now, and for that purpose our future must make sense to us.
Willard
2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God…
If you are in Christ, you are an advance sign of what’s coming for the whole world.
Your new life in Christ can be a bold witness to this decaying world.
We are the people of the future in the present.
J.M. Comer
We are a new creation, and we are becoming a new creation.