Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How The Bible Ends | New Testament | Revelation 22

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

You've reached the end of Revelation. The end of the Bible. So what is so important about the way the Bible ends? In today's episode, Tanya looks to Revelation 22 to share 3 important lessons. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Prepare your heart to celebrate Jesus. Sign up to have the 'I Am Your God' Advent Devotional delivered directly to your inbox starting Sunday, Dec. 3, 2023. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Revelation 22

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmuth. Mark Brown said it's his fault because he didn't know the end of the story when he wrote it. See, Mark is a journalist for the Chicago Sun Times who wrote a story about Sister House, a recovery home for women with addictions. They were doing good things Sister House was, and he wanted the public to know about it. And then maybe some people would even be motivated to financially support Sister House's efforts after reading his story. Now, when Mark wrote this story, he was drawn to an 18-year-old woman who lived there named Cornicia Fowler, and he included her picture and he wrote about her addiction that landed her in recovery. What Mark didn't know when he wrote that story was that Cornicia was going to become completely clean and go to college,

with the hope to become a child protective specialist for the Department of Children and Family Services in Chicago. But there would be an obstacle in her path. And Mark said, it's his fault. See, when potential employers Googled Karnisha Fowler's name a few years later to learn about her background, find her web profiles, etc. The first thing to pop up on Google search engines was Mark's story that featured her as an addict in the sister house recovery program. Now Mark, well, he wasn't satisfied with this as a journalist. He felt like it was his responsibility to change the way Google wasn't telling the true end of the story. So he wrote a new column for the Chicago Sun Times titled Google this. Kronisha Fowler is an exemplar employee. You can try it right now. Google her name and it's the first story that pops up.

Mark says there's just one thing that might hold her back in the beginning line of his new story. And it's kind of my fault. Now, we've been talking about this in our series on Revelation, so it's no surprise to you at this point. But when John wrote Revelation, the original audience was in the middle of a story between Rome and Jerusalem, and they couldn't see how things were going to get better. They needed encouragement to live for something more than the empty idol worship that seemed to be working so well, quite honestly, for the Romans at the time. And they needed resilience to not assimilate into a culture that was encouraging, lying,

and cheating, and dehumanizing people to get ahead. We don't live in the same time and place, but we face a lot of the same struggles and temptations in our lives today. And we also live in a time where it would be easier. to compromise than stand out. Now, if you have or haven't read Revelation 22, and the end of the big story, the Bible, we're going to talk about three things

about the way the Bible ends that we really need to know. First of all, the new heaven that comes to Earth is described as a city. Now, the Bible begins in the Garden of Eden, and it ends with a garden in the middle of a city. Listen to this from Revelation, the end of the Bible, chapter 22, verses one and two.

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. Now this is kind of unexpected, because cities in the Bible, well, they were associated with human violence and opposition to God. Like think about Babylon and Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Testament. And then the New Testament movement begins in Jerusalem and then goes to Antioch and to Rome. Cities were notorious for breeding idolatry and personal agendas that went against God's people and God's kingdom. Now that God chose to place his renewed garden in the middle of a renewed city shows a lot of things. And one of those is that people are intended to live in.

community for spiritual growth and worship. Tim Keller has a talk, and you can listen to it, and in fact, I'd highly encourage it. It's online about the value of raising kids in the city. And he brings up a study that was done in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, among several thousand college students at a ministry event, where the students were surveyed about the most important factors that led them toward keeping their faith in college. Now, you might think they would say things like parents who took them to church, or attending a Christian school or having a strong youth group. But the most important factor,

according to these students, was believing their parents understood what it was like to live in the real world and live out their faith in it. Now, we're inclined to enter into the middle of the story where evil is all around and we want to build up walls around our families and our small groups and our churches to protect us from outside influences. But when we see the city at the end of the story, the walls look different. They're still there surrounding the city, but instead of bricks and stone, they're made of jewels, and the gates are wide open. Instead of putting our kids in a bubble, the end of the story suggests we kind of pop the bubble and welcome people who are not exactly like us into our conversations and our routines. We talk to our kids sooner and more openly about

the real world instead of hiding from it, and we let them see us living in it, messing up, asking forgiveness, not doing it perfectly, but depending on God and needing forgiveness and help. Now, this takes us into the next point, which is that the city, at the end of the story, is renewed to be God's dwelling place with us. See, instead of wiping out the earth and starting over or whisking us away to heaven, Revelation says heaven comes down. God works with this earth and all that humans have done to us to renew. it and make it a place where he can dwell with his people.

Remember the story of Jesus, coming back to be with his disciples for a short time after his death and resurrection? He still had nail scars in his hands. His body was resurrected, but the scars remained. And remember, he allowed Thomas to touch them. What humans mean for harm, God can use for good. This is incredibly encouraging to us when we feel cast aside by the culture for living differently for Jesus. God does see and he does know, even though we don't feel like it sometimes.

But we can be sure he will make everything good and wipe away every tear shed by his children. Finally, in the renewed city, God is the only light we need. Verse 5 says, 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 rain forever and ever. See, there's no need for light or sun because God shines on the city. In Paris, the city of light, the Eiffel Tower, cast its light over the sun river, and even twinkles on the hour every night beginning at 11 p.m. The city of lights is a beautiful place after dark because of modern electricity. But imagine what the Eiffel Tower would look like at night

if there was no power. There is no darkness. in God's eternal city because God is there. There's no distance between him and his people. And because of the blood of the Lamb, the people have nothing to hide from God. Do you grasp this kind of relationship with Jesus today, where he's always with you and fully accepts you? Nothing to hide. As we wait for this heavenly city, we have to share the knowledge God has given us about

the end of the story. Like Mark Brown, the journalist said, if I know something as a journalist, it's my job to make sure other people know it also. Metaphorically speaking, instead of putting up your walls or building walls around your family, how can you emulate your future life in the city? Can you meet someone for coffee that you've disagreed with in the past and ask them to move forward? Can you get out from behind your phone at the game and meet the other parents around you? Can you find out what people in your small group are good at and ask them to teach you,

or at least encourage them in it? Can you show your kids what acceptance looks like by finding your approval in God instead of other people's opinions of you or them? Our story has a beautiful, renewed, corporate, worshipful ending. And this encourages us to live renewed, corporate, worshipful lives as we follow Jesus today.