All Things New / Revelation 21:1–7 / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday May 18th 2025 / Season of Easter / Mount Olive Lutheran Church

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday May 18th 2025: Season of Easter / Revelation 21:1–7 “All Things New”

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.” Also 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.

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends we like new things. We like that new car smell, we like to see new leaves bud out on the trees after a long winter, we like to see new flowers spring up, we like the feel of newly washed fresh sheets on the bed at night, and as much as we might enjoy good leftovers often it’s the new dish on the table made with love that we appreciate most. But we also live in a disposable culture and often having new things comes at the expense of something old being thrown out and disposed of. We are tempted to look for novelty, to remove the ‘old fashioned’ for the ‘cutting edge.’ Some people have even camped out in front of stores to be first to get a new cell phone, and when a new thing has become popular and is in short supply fist fights can even break out among normally mild mannered people like happened in the infamous Cabbage Patch Doll Riots of 1983. We don’t always have a good relationship with what is considered old and what is deemed new. The new music of your youth quickly becomes the music of the oldies radio station and even radio stations become old fashioned. How quickly the things you once loved — and maybe still do love — end up in the waste bin of history.

There’s a point as we grow older when the world seems to shrink around us, and the phone stops ringing as often as it once did and family and friends and good neighbours exit our lives for one reason or another and before we know it everything has changed and in our opinion not always for the better. When the World is obsessed with replacing the old with the new we ourselves can end up feeling swept away with the old as we become old. Of course some people fight against this: 60 is the new 30 and 80 is the new 60, but truth be told 60 is still 60 and 80 is still 80 and no amount make-up or hair dye or young styled clothing can really turn back the hands of the clock. Besides many young people even have a hard time reading clocks with hands on them ... maybe it’s because such clocks are so ‘old fashioned;’ see how easy it is to slip into despair and curmudgeonly discontent. If you’re young now trust me you’ll have your own example soon enough.             

How often do you take the time to repair something old that has need of repair? If you dropped a plate or a bowel on cement or on a tiled floor and it busts do you seek out ways to repair it or do you seek out ways to replace it? Maybe if it had sentimental value or was an heirloom ... but will the next generation want your grandmother’s china set even if it’s in 100% prefect condition? In Japan they have a traditional way of repairing broken pottery and porcelain using pins and lacquer, highlighting the broken yet repaired seams with gold or silver.[1] You can still see the scars of the damage but it’s repaired.

In The End, on The Last Day, in the Resurrection of the body on That Day does the LORD replace the old with the new? Do you get the newest style body off the rack? Or does He take you and just repair you leaving seams of gold and silver over all your wrinkles and broken bits of body, mind and soul?

Saint John writes in the Revelation: And He who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Let’s unpack that a little bit. We believe teach and confess that God, the Father Almighty, is the Maker of heaven and earth: that God has made each of us and all creatures; that He has given us our body and soul, eyes, ears, and all our members, our reason and all our senses, and still takes care of them.[2] We also trust what Scripture teaches, when the same Saint John who recorded the Revelation from our Epistle Reading today writes in the Gospel that bears his name, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”[3] This Word of God that Saint John speaks of is Jesus the Christ who is seated at the Right Hand of the throne of God. We likewise confess in the Nicene Creed that the Holy Spirit is “the Lord and giver of life,” and we know from Scripture that He was there “in the beginning” with the Father and the Son when we read in the Book of Genesis how it was, “[that when] God created the heavens and the earth [and] the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep [how] the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters,”[4] and how when They decided to make man They said together, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.”[5] So when the LORD says “Behold, I am making all things new,” this “making all things new” is the work of the Holy Trinity just as it was in the beginning, just as it is the work of the Holy Trinity that providentially sustains the fallen world such as this world is. We are unable to do this but dear ones remember what Jesus said when giving the example of the camel thread through the eye of a needle regarding entering into eternal life, Jesus said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible,”[6] so while it is impossible for man to ‘make all things new’ it is most certainly possible for the LORD to do this.

We are promised that “[the LORD] will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” On the one hand all those things like death and pain and sorrow will pass away while on the other hand we in and of ourselves do not pass away, we are transformed as Saint Paul says “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.”[7] Death which seems so permanent is the thing that is perishable; sorrow and sadness which seems never-ending are the things that are perishable and will pass away; the grinding sharp edge of pain that is only dulled in this life has no life past The Last Day, on that day it washes away with all tears like water down a river into a sea which is doomed to be no more.[8] The things that will remain, which will be made new will be “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable,” and as Saint Paul says of these things “if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”[9] Think on them because they are the kinds of things that will remain the kinds of things that will remain in you as you are made new.

Regarding the former things while speaking about the things that were to change in His Good Friday Crucifixion, His death and His Easter Resurrection,[10] Jesus says “new wine is not put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”[11] Jesus’ death and resurrection that we celebrate at Easter, and all through the year, is the promise that all things are made new in Him, that your old wineskin will be a fresh wineskin in Jesus, that the LORD who created heaven and earth our heavenly Father, that the Word of God Christ Jesus His Son, that the Lord and giver of life the Holy Spirit makes your old wineskin new. New and prepared to receive everything Jesus pours into it today and perfectly pours into it on The Last Day.    

So while it is true that new wine cannot be poured into old wine skins today we are called to ask ‘but what if the old wine skins are made new?’ You’ve heard the saying, ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,’ today we are called to ask ‘but what if the old dog was made new: what then, then what?’ The old dog in you with all its bite, and misbehaviour, will be made new. Your emotions, your thoughts, your words, your deeds, your memory and your attitudes towards everything made new. Your relationships with each other and your relationship with the LORD all made new. Even your relationship with what you think is old-fashioned and what you think is new will be made new. As they say ‘everything old is new again.’

I leave this with you today: Ultimately the Christians life until That Last Day is a life of the ‘now and not yet,’ so your life as a Christian already is being made new day by day in Christ Jesus, not by your hard work but by the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in you. So Saint Paul says in 2 Corinthians, “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, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.”[12] Paul caps this off by saying, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”[13]

The LORD provides all of this for you both today and in The End out of love because, in Christ Jesus, you are not disposable, and you are not just going to be repaired with pins and glue and lacquer and gold leaf, no He promises to make you new, you therefore are now free to start living that new life now, at least when it comes to love and forgiveness. In Christ you are neither replaced nor simply repaired but are rather made new.  

Therefore don’t treat each other as disposable; don’t look away from what is broken when it can be made new today in Christ Jesus. Dear ones in this regard take to heart what Saint Paul encourages us as Christians to embrace in this new life as we watch for the great and glorious return of Christ Jesus on The Last Day, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.”[14] Thankful that the LORD makes us new in His Son Christ Jesus and promises to make all things new on The Last Day in the new heavens and new earth where everything is no longer shrinking but perfectly expanded: where as children of God we will truly live together with Him in a word without end. Amen.    

Let us pray: Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] Kintsugi: (golden joinery) is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.
[2] The Creed, Article One, Luther’s Small Catechism, Concordia Publishing House 2017, Page 16.
[3] John 1:1–4
[4] Genesis 1:1–2
[5] Genesis 1:26a
[6] Matthew 19:26
[7] 1 Corinthians 15:52–53
[8] Revelation 21:1
[9] Philippians 4:8
[10] Matthew 1:1-11:1 Concordia Commentary, Jeffrey A. Gibbs, Concordia Publishing House 2006, Page 480.
[11] Matthew 9:17
[12] 2 Corinthians 5:17–19
[13] 2 Corinthians 5:20–21
[14] Colossians 3:12–15

Photo: Main photo of various saws listed in Googel search as 'Creative Commons licenses' from 7framesolutions.