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Jesus says, “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me to repay everyone for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life.”
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Dear saints, remember how things started. Six days the Lord creates everything, the entirety of the cosmos, sun and moon and stars and everything else all shining down on a garden where the man and the woman were given life and dominion. It was an orchard with plenty of food, abundance. It was surrounded by rivers and riches. And there was a tree in the midst of the garden, not the forbidden tree; there was another one. There was the tree there of life whose fruit would cause you to live forever. Can you imagine it? That was good. In fact, it was very good; that’s what the Lord said about it, but not for long.
There was also a dragon in the garden filled with pride and rage and lies. We remember how it went, the temptation and the fall and how the man and his wife cover themselves with fig leaves and how they hide in the trees and how the Lord then covers them with skins and expels them from the garden. In fact, the Lord appoints angels, cherubim, with fiery swords to stand guard so that Adam and Eve can’t get back into the garden. I don’t know if you’ve seen this; there are incredible, really terrible depictions of this moment of history in a lot of old and ancient art. I was looking at it yesterday.
There’s the angels standing with their flaming swords, guarding the way back into Eden. Or there is the Lord pointing Adam and Eve away from the garden, and Adam and Eve there with their heads hanging in shame and tears rolling from their faces, hunched over, walking out into the wilderness to scrape the ground and to make a little bit of bread until they themselves would join the dust and death. The garden was lost. The garden is lost.
We also are wandering in exile east of Eden, and there is no way to return. Now there are, to be sure, good things in life. Joys and triumphs and little moments of peace, and there’s graduation parties, and there’s watermelon, every now and again a glimpse of something beautiful. But there is also and always blood and sweat and tears, pain and sorrow and tribulation, temptation and sin and wrath and suffering. There’s bad news, sometimes evil and incomprehensible news. There are test results, and there are sirens, and there are caskets made for children.
This is indeed a strange garden, where the moments of light remind us of all that we’ve lost, where they remind us that we are lost. They remind us that the grave is catching up to all of us, and one day soon we, like Adam and Eve, will be dead and buried. Death doth pursue us all the way. We were made for the garden. We are surrounded by graveyards. God made us in His image, but we now bear the image of Adam, the man of dust. God made us for life, but we are dying sinners; we’re expelled, expelled from the garden.
That’s how the book began; that’s how history began, and that is what we deserve. But today we’ve just heard how the book ends, how history ends, and you wouldn’t believe it if the Lord hadn’t written it down. There in the last chapter of the Bible, Revelation chapter 22, we hear that the garden is back. The rivers are back. The orchard is back. This time it’s a garden city with streets and walls and gates always open and homes and places to live and the tree of life, remember that? That also is back.
Listen, then the angel showed me—this is Revelation 22, one and following—the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. And 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 trees were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him.”
The garden is back. The living forever. The not dying. It’s back. The image and the glory of God. It’s back. It’s restored and reflected in the Lord’s resurrected saints. The walking with God in the cool of the day is back. All the graves are emptied. All the tears are wiped away. All the sins are forgotten. All the shame is covered. All the sorrow is exchanged for joy. All the darkness is consumed by the light, and the gates of this garden city are open, always open. It turns out that the entire Bible, it turns out that the entire history of the world is one long trip back to the garden of Eden, the new Eden, that new Jerusalem, the new heaven and the new earth, the Lord bringing us back to the garden where the dwelling place of God is with man.
Remember the angels with the flaming swords to guard the way into the Garden of Eden? It turns out that they weren’t to keep you out forever, only to stall you for a little bit. And why? Because the Lord did not want Adam and Eve and you and I to eat of the tree of life while we were still in our sins and still in our corruption. To live forever in that way, no, apart from forgiveness and apart from restoration. The tree of life was dangerous for sinners.
You and I could never be noble or good enough to deserve it, wise enough to find it, powerful enough to force our way to it, but Jesus has conquered, triumphed, died, risen. He then restores goodness and life. He restores to us goodness and life. So by His suffering and death and blood, He forgives our sins and makes us worthy to eat from the tree. With His gospel, He makes us wise unto salvation to find the fruit. With His resurrection, He has destroyed the dominion of death and made a way out of the grave, and on the last day, He will call you to walk that way, the way of eternal life, the way that leads back to the garden, and you will on that day see Him face to face.
There’s a lot of, I think I’ve told you all this before, there are a lot of beautiful names that the Bible gives to death. The old theologians called them the mortis dulcia nomine, the death’s beautiful, death’s sweet names: to be gathered to one’s people, to depart in peace, to depart and be with Christ, to be taken from evil, to sleep, to rest, to pass from death to life, to be delivered from evil or gain. Remember Paul says to live is Christ, to die is gain, but this I think is the sweetest of them all from our text, Revelation 22 verse 4: they, the they there is you, you will see His face.
Can you imagine that? That’s what the devil wants you to be afraid of—dying? You will see Jesus face-to-face one day soon, and dear saints, on that face is not a scowl, not a furrowed brow, not a look of scorn or disappointment or derision or disdain; no. On that sacred face, for you, is a smile. Jesus loves you. Jesus is your Savior, and you are his joy. And all of it—all of the plagues and wanderings and establishing of kings and kingdoms and being born in a stable and living and dying and rising again, and the rise and fall of empires—all of it was so that He could come back to restore you to Himself in the garden.
This one is coming soon. God be praised. May this promise be your hope. May this vision be your confidence. And may this Jesus keep you, guard you, and protect you until you see Him face to face. May God grant it for Christ’s sake. Amen. The peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
