Beware of Practicing Your Righteousness Before Twitter (Matt 6) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

Do Not Love the World (1 John 2:15–17) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

Everything that Lasts and Christ’s Resurrection (1 Cor 15:20–28) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

Bombings, nuclear threats, and saber rattling have pushed many people toward their source for every answer to life—Google. By mid-week, the topic of World War III hit the search engine’s top spot. Fear of the unknown pushes multitudes to grab for shreds of hope that something will last beyond the madness of humanity.

Others hardly notice. Oblivious to news out of North Korea, Syria, or Russia, they live for the moment without thought to what might last beyond their next pursuit.

Not everything that we see will last. However, our reason for gathering today focuses on the certainty that some things do last. Despite the bravado of dictators and tyrants, everything that God intends to last will last. Jesus Christ’s resurrection makes it so.

We’re somewhat numbed to eternal things. Admittedly, when just a young fellow, aim in life was to get my driver’s license. I couldn’t see far beyond that goal that appeared almost an eternity away. Once achieved, the future took on broader stretches, looking toward a college degree, marriage, family, and a career. Now that I’m far enough down the road that the majority of my years have passed, I tend to take much longer looks at eternal things. The stuff that I’ve accumulated, the diplomas on the wall, and any accomplishments, seem far less important than earlier years. My grip on those things has loosened to hold tightly to the things that last.

Here’s where this matter squares with life. If we can think only about today or the satisfaction of holding a few things in our hands, we probably won’t think much about eternity. And if we don’t give thought to eternity, then all of the talk about the resurrection of Jesus this Easter Sunday may seem much ado about very little. Aside from traditional festivities, the message of Easter comes and goes on the calendar. Then it’s on to the next big event with Easter in the rearview mirror. Then what? Do you treasure what lasts? Some things we see do not last. But those who are in Christ do. And all that God intends us to enjoy forever will last, too.

Jesus rose from the dead so that everything that should last will last. That first includes those redeemed by Jesus from sin and death. It follows that the lasting things in creation will continue because Jesus rose from the dead. How does this happen?

1. Hear the decisive proclamation in the resurrection

No chapter in the Bible states more clearly the necessity of Christ’s resurrection than this one. Paul argues in verses 12–19 that if Christ was not bodily raised from the dead, then no one will live on in eternity. The exercise of faith is worthless without His resurrection. Yet Jesus’ resurrection makes certain the bodily resurrection of all whose faith is in Him (vv. 35–41). The mortal will put on immortality because Jesus conquered mortality.

But some in Corinth sneered at the idea of Christ’s bodily resurrection. Like the Athenians at Mars Hill, they denied that death could be conquered or that the body made in God’s image could last. They rejected the transformation by the power of Christ’s resurrection to so affect the body that we live on in eternity. Yet this truth remains central to the Bible’s message. What sin, Satan, and death robbed and marred in the fall, God restores forever through the death and resurrection of His Son.

(1) He is risen indeed!

“But now” makes sharp contrast from the argument against the bodily resurrection of Christ. “But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.” The original language is more descriptive: ‘But now Christ has been raised from the dead first of those who have died.’ He presses two important truths that cannot be separated. Jesus has been raised from the dead. And His resurrection is the first of many. Death cannot hold those united to Christ. Those that should last because of what Christ has done on t[...]

Maturing Saints (1 John 2:12–14) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

Maturing in Christ doesn’t always follow maturity in age. It should. At least as Christians age so should their spiritual maturity, not due to age itself but due to faithful attentiveness to growth. Yet lack of attention to growth in grace leave some hanging in spiritual childhood far longer than we might expect.

Every church should be a mixture of those new in the faith learning the practices of growth; those firmly in the spiritual conflict learning how to apply the gospel; and those who haven’t arrived (who has!) but find immeasurable joy in the journey. Each helps the other, as our corporate life proves critical to sharpening one another along the way.

But when this balance of maturity gets out of sync, when those who should be at the point of immeasurable joy in the journey show regular signs of whining, complaining, and inconsistency, then the equilibrium of growth gets shaken. What should be examples of steadiness and joy for those younger in the faith and those struggling for consistency are missing, unsettling them in the process.

When those who should be firmly in the trenches of spiritual warfare toward living in the triumph of Christ can’t get past matters of biblical authority, assurance of salvation, loving one another, and basic obedience, then the church’s unity, worship, and ministry falter. Spiritual maturity—and lack of spiritual maturity—doesn’t just affect the individual. It involves all of us. That’s why John uses the images of little children, fathers, and young men in the plural. Christianity is not an individualistic sport!

We grow together. We struggle together. We experience joy together. We mature together. John shows us the process. You belong to Christ so keep growing and maturing in Him. What does maturing in Christ look like? Let’s think about it together.

1. A starting point

Let’s clear the air. There are no magic formulas for spiritual growth. Despite book titles referring to the secrets, keys that unlock the door, and hidden truths, John makes spiritual maturity quite clear. He does so at this point in his letter for a couple of reasons.

First, he has laid out two critical evidences of those who know the Lord, with more to come: obedience to God’s commands (2:3–6) and loving one another (2:7–11). Any sensitive spirit will feel a twinge of struggle at both evidences. None of us fully obeys or completely loves others. That will happen one day but not on this side. Meanwhile, we evaluate our practice and find it lacking. So we need the encouragement and assurance found in the promises of the gospel.

Second, John hasn’t finished laying out hard-to-handle declarations. The next paragraph discusses that one loving the world does not have the love of the Father in him (2:15–17). That tests everything that we see, hear, touch, and feel. So, again, we need to understand that we’re still works in progress through spiritual maturity. We’ve not arrived regarding the world. John knows that we need the foundation of our Christian lives steadied by remembering that our forgiveness and standing with God rests in Christ alone.

That’s why the identification of “little children” (teknia) in verse 12 and “children” (paidia) in verse 13 has more to do with all of us instead of just a few of us. In that sense, we all start as little children that must never forget the basic foundation of the Christian life: we’re forgiven and accepted through Christ.

(1) We are forgiven.

“I am writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for His name’s sake.” Some truths we forget lead us down dangerous paths. Chief among them remains the forgiveness of our sins. If we think that we’re not forgiven, then we take one of three postures: [a] we fret, worry, and get spiritually paralyzed; [b] we ignore it, hoping that it will go away, while we slip and slide spiritually; or [c] even worse, we attempt to achieve or merit forgiv[...]

An Old Commandment That’s New (1 John 2:7–11) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

I should have known that I was in for a rough ride. I was young, inexperienced, and yet eager to serve a congregation just twenty minutes from my hometown. I found the search committee, for the most part, to be warm-hearted and interested in my emphasis on expositional preaching and a discipling ministry, that is, until they later discovered what that meant. But the tip that should have clued me in was the chairman’s repeated emphasis, “We just looovvve each other!” (Yes, he stretched it out!) I heard it from a few others too. It sounded convincing. No doubt, some among them did love one another. It’s just that after I began my ministry, they were hard to find. Their idea of love just didn’t square with that of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet and laying down His life at the cross.

You’ve probably heard the same kind of talk that didn’t filter down into true deeds of love. Maybe it has even be descriptive of you at some stage before the gospel of Christ grabbed you and by a supernatural act of regeneration, transformed you so that you started seeing people differently and finding your heart inclined to love even some who appeared hard to love.

That kind of love has the unmistakable imprint of Jesus Christ upon a life. So important is this evidence of love in true believers, so characteristic of one in union with Jesus Christ, that John keeps repeating it throughout his epistle as a mark of assurance that you belong to Christ (3:10–20; 4:7–12; 4:15–21; 5:1–2). Without this mark of loving one another in the body, we have no ground of assurance that we’re in Christ.

As Pastor Matt noted in last week’s text (1 John 2:3–6), we can have assurance that we’re in Christ—not some vague, mystical experience as some thought, but the reality of the saving life of Christ evidencing Himself in our deeds. John presses that truth throughout his letter. So, we know that we’ve come to know Christ “if we keep His commandments” (2:3).

Yet by keeping His commandments, John doesn’t imply a kind of rigid legalism by which one follows his perception of the letter of the law while divorced from the spirit of it. Remember when Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment? His reply hung all of the commandments of God on two prongs: love God and love your neighbor. So the connection to verses 3–6 in our text proves to be explanatory by amplifying what it means to follow Christ’s commands. The focus on the commands of God centers life on loving God and loving others even as Jesus Christ did.

Here is the certainty that we’re in Christ: believing the gospel is evidenced by Christ-like love. Believing the gospel comes first. In no way does John suggest that if you can work up a good measure of love toward others that God will save you. Rather, love for others flows quite naturally out of the new birth. How is that worked out in our text? Let’s consider it under three questions:

What is this old but new commandment?

How do we have the motivation and the power to keep this old/new commandment?

How does keeping this commandment mark genuine Christianity?

1. What is this old but new commandment?

With great tenderness and certainty of his care for them, John writes, “Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you.” By that he meant that he was not switching things in mid-stream by creating new practices for people to do if they would be Christians. He was not like those who lured people from the fellowship of the church to follow after the strange teaching that denied the humanity of Christ and excused sin by emphasis on spirit while ignoring the physical. No, this is no new commandment “but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning.” The beginning of what? He probably means either the beginning of the gospel proclamation by Jesus Christ or the start of their Christian lives—more likely the latter (1 John 3:11). In either case, he’s reitera[...]

The Walk of Assurance (1 John 2:3–6) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

A few months ago, I attended a breakfast for a group of local business owners at the Racquet Club. My mom came into town for this meeting, so I was really just there having breakfast with her. However, over coffee and eggs, a fairly well–known politician was scheduled to speak on various economic realities facing small business owners.

And for the most part, he convinced me he knew what he was talking about. However, toward the beginning of his talk, he lamented the fact that as a resident of Knoxville he only came to Memphis for business. He told us he never had any time on his visits to see the sights so many Memphians boast about. So, in an attempt to build rapport, he says something like, “I’m hopeful to come back soon for pleasure, to visit places like the Zoo, Graceland, and Orange Mound.” Then he kept talking, but he’d lost me.

And I imagine a few others. At that point, I was merely one of a couple hundred who probably thought, “That’s an interesting list; this guy doesn’t appear to know Memphis.” It’s not that I think he shouldn’t go visit Orange Mound; as a politician, he should. But, if he’s coming as a tourist, that’s not generally in the highlights. He’d walked and talked in Memphis; but he didn’t know it.

You’ve experienced instances like this before. Someone claims a certain degree of knowledge, but as more words tumble from their mouths, they contradict their claim. For example: there are a ton of folks from out of town here this weekend for the NCAA tournament. I’ve heard some of them talk on the radio about the best places to eat in town. Dyed–in–the wool Memphians laugh at their tourist sensibilities.

Sometimes we claim to know that which we actually don’t know. And, because that’s true, sometimes we can do the exact opposite.

Our text today is about knowledge, in particular our knowledge of God in Christ. In more contemporary language, it’s largely a text about assurance. We’re going to study it by asking three questions.

1. Can we have assurance?

2. Can we be wrong about assurance?

3. How can we have assurance?

First, Can we have assurance?

Is this even possible? During my recent trip overseas, one afternoon we participated for a few hours in a class on sharing the gospel with Muslims. And one of the crucial distinctions, one of many of course, is the issue of assurance. Because Islam teaches a works–based salvation, if you ask the faithful Muslim whether or not the judgment will be favorable to him or her, he or she most likely will answer along the lines of, “I can’t know.”

Other world religions cast the same aspersions, asserting that this as a question of hubris, beyond the scope of humanity’s knowledge. One can’t possibly know with any degree of certainty whether or not he or she will ultimately be saved from the ravages of this world.

Yet, note 1 John 2:3: And by this we know that we have come to know him. John appears to be more certain. The first verb he employs here (we know) is in the present tense. He’s not left wondering until the future judgment. This knowledge John writes of is assumed to be a present knowledge. Then he uses the perfect tense, (we have come to know). It seems that this present knowledge John speaks of doesn’t exist in a present vacuum, isolated from the past. But rather––as one scholar notes––this bears the marks of something that happened in the past with continuing results.

1 John asserts that we can know, in the present, that we’ve come to know God in the past, recent or otherwise.

However, reading that verse doesn’t immediately cure all the ills plaguing those who doubt. Unfortunately, because evangelicals have adopted practices that confuse gospel issues, it’s not just Muslims that question assurance. The trouble for us often comes because we assume this knowledge of God must come to us on the heels of a Damascus Road experience. As adolescents, we heard a testimony or two, or a few doz[...]

The Sinner’s Advocate (1 John 2:1–2 from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

Think about this logically. People stand in line in the hot sun in order to be strapped into a metal seat with someone else to slowly move toward a precipice, and then suddenly tip over the edge, falling at incredible speed, rising, dropping, twisting, and jerking from side to side until the final rush to the end. That’s a roller coaster ride. It makes you wonder why we pay to lose our stomachs and kick in our adrenalin. But we do it, smiling all the way.

A roller coaster in a theme park is one thing. But a roller coaster spiritual life is quite another. Up and down, twisting and turning, falling and rising, anguishing and struggling seems to be the mainstay of many Christians. If it were only in the first days of faith in Christ then it would be somewhat understandable. Yet it seems that some who have known Christ for many years still regularly ride the roller coaster.

Then First John is the right book. It helps us learn how to move from the roller coaster drop and twist of doubts, fears, and spiritual anxiety to walk in steadiness with the Lord. That doesn’t mean that seasoned believers never face dips or twists but it does mean that they’ve learned more about themselves and far more on how to depend upon Christ day-by-day so that they develop consistent walks with Christ.

How do we walk in fellowship with the Lord? That’s John’s theme in these opening verses. He proclaimed Jesus as the Life so that through union with Him, believers might join in fellowship with one another and with our Triune God. This fellowship is with the God that John calls “Light.” Fellowship with Him means walking in the Light. But that’s just where we may struggle. How do we keep walking in the Light? We have an Advocate with the Father so that we might walk in the Light and in fellowship with our God. What’s so critical about having an Advocate? Let’s consider that question with five questions regarding our text.

1. Why do we need an Advocate?

There’s not the least hint of scolding in John’s teaching. He addresses his audience as “My little children,” a term of affection and an indication of the way that the old apostle felt about this church at Ephesus. As a fatherly figure in the faith, he sets before them truths necessary to walk with God.

In the previous passage (1:5–10), John assures Christians that the blood of Jesus goes on cleansing us from all sin, and that the Father is faithful and righteous to forgive our sins when we confess them. But some could misconstrue what he meant. In all likelihood, the opponents that John hints at throughout the letter had the idea that sin was no big deal. With that kind of atmosphere, hearing of this teaching on confession of sin might lead some to think that evidently, sin was no big deal since God forgives it so readily.

But that’s not the case. “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.” Rather than sin at will and just offer a little confession, then go about your merry way, John stops us in our tracks. Since “God is Light” we are to learn to live in view of Him as Light, with no darkness in Him at all. All pure and holy and righteous, God doesn’t tolerate sin. It runs totally contrary to His nature and ways. He hates sin. His wrath, “a burning zeal for the right coupled with a perfect hatred for everything that is evil,” is bent against sin [Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, 209]. So John reminds us that he writes so that we might recognize sin’s danger and darkness, that we might see every act of sin—however small in our eyes—as treason against God, defiance against His holiness, an act of rebellion, and the object of His wrath.

The problem is that we’re so familiar with our sin and the sin of those around us that we often don’t even notice sin. We have a natural bent toward sin. We find ourselves comfortable with it. But Light exposes the darkness. When we’re un[...]

The Way to Fellowship (1 John 1:5–10) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

Fellowship with God and with His people is not an option for the more serious minded Christians. It is sometimes thought that those less inclined may still call themselves Christians while pursuing lives that have little to do with Jesus Christ. The intentional fellowship with God through Christ, for them, just doesn’t hold much importance. Is that an exaggeration?

Just take a look at the high percentage of people in our country that call themselves Christians. Three-fourths of the population makes that claim. Yet if that is biblical Christianity, then we must question whether God is holy and the cross of Jesus necessary.

And it’s not just in the United States. We can take a look at countries that once had strong gospel work, like Germany, Britain, and the Netherlands, but over the years, drifted into merely professing Christianity while gutting it of any substance.

The Apostle John saw the early traces of that same kind of thinking. At one point, some that associated with the Ephesian church now followed a different teaching and different way of life. They thought themselves superior to those remaining in the church. Their view of God had changed. Their consideration of the necessity of the Incarnate God dying on the cross as a Substitute for them before God’s wrath, had been laid aside for a more therapeutic, softer kind of religion that gave little to no thought about sin. Oh, they still claimed fellowship with God but not fellowship rooted in the redemptive work of Christ. Was that Christian? John said “no.”

We denigrate Jesus dying on the cross when we give credence to that kind of Christianity. We can’t change the way that the world has redefined Christianity to avoid calling God holy, sin-sin, and Jesus on the cross necessary. But we can affect the way that the church views biblical Christianity. That happens when we let the Bible alone shape our understanding and practice of the Christian faith as relationship to God through Jesus Christ. John calls this relationship fellowship and he centers it in Christ alone.

Fellowship with God through Christ leads to actively pursuing Him. Saving grace does not leave us passive in our faith. It engages us in fellowship with God and His people. What does the way to fellowship look like?

I. Premise for life

John starts his letter by reinforcing that Jesus, God’s Son, has come in the flesh so that we might have fellowship with Him and with His people (1:1–4). Yet that central message to all of Scripture hinges on one thing, that “God is Light.” He doesn’t start with God is love or God is generous but God is Light. What does he mean?

1. God is Light

“This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” Everything else in his letter is a commentary on the implications of that statement. Light is used to explain the nature and character and practice of God throughout Scripture. David declared, “The Lord is my light and my salvation” (Ps 27:1). “For You light my lamp, the Lord God illumines my darkness” (Ps 18:28). “Though I dwell in darkness, the Lord is a light for me” (Mic 7:8). And prophesying about Christ, “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them” (Isa 9:2).

The New Testament writers do the same. Christians are called “the light of the world” because Jesus is their light (Matt 5:14). Jesus said, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life” (John 8:12). John the Baptist “came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light” (John 1:7–8). Paul told the Ephesian church, “For you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light” (Eph 5:8).

God as Light conveys two [...]

The Fellowship (1 John 1:1–5) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

Imagine with me a church in a large city, filled with godless images and practices where no gospel work had ever taken place. The church, although fairly small, has had some influence in the community, even creating quite a stir about their message of salvation in Christ alone. Opposition arose toward the church but the congregation joyfully trusted in Christ and banded together for encouragement and support.

Members of the congregation came from all walks of life and from every social strand. For many years they lived with much unity as a visible demonstration to the power of the gospel. But with the next generation, some began to listen to competing voices alluring them toward teaching contrary to the gospel. Others grew slack in their study of the Scriptures and discussion of foundational teaching, so that they questioned what they had been taught concerning Christ and the gospel. As that happened, a few enthusiastic teachers with a different message captured their attention and lured them away. Emphasizing special experiences and secret knowledge, some found it more interesting than the gospel. Consequently, they split away from the church that had nurtured them and where they had confessed faith in Christ in order to embrace a teaching contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Those remaining struggled. What was the truth? What experience was legitimate? Their friends who left still remained in the community. The teachers that influenced them still spoke out against what those in the church confessed believing concerning Christ. The former members even derided those who remained in the church as outdated and archaic. Some doubted, while others wrestled with assurance in Christ. How would they recover the joy, fellowship, and unity that they had known in earlier years?

That imaginary story is not imaginary. That’s what happened a generation or more after Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus. Now, in the later years of his life, the Apostle John ministered to the Ephesian congregation. False teachers had arisen that drew people away. John declared of them, “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us” (2:19). So a group split from the church that John, without hesitation, explained that they did not belong to Christ or to the true body of Christ. How could he make that kind of statement? What were the criteria for being genuine believers in Christ?

That split had shaken the church. It made many question their relationship to the Lord. Some wrestled with the essentials of the gospel. So John wrote his epistle to bring them back to certainty in the gospel, assurance of relationship to Christ, and joyful fellowship with one another. But assurance is needed now as then. First John addresses it.

The gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed and believed brings us into joyful fellowship with the church and with the Father and Son. How does that happen? Let’s think about the message proclaimed and the fellowship explained.

I. The message proclaimed

John’s approach in this letter or what some call a treatise on assurance differs from Paul. We’re accustomed to Paul’s more linearly organized letters. John, on the other hand, has organization but it’s more spiral than linear. In other words, he doesn’t pull the lever and drop everything on you at once. He layers his message of assurance by considering the Person of Christ, issues of sin and obedience, relationships in the body, evidences of false teaching, and characteristics of true knowledge of Christ. That’s why he starts addressing assurance in the first chapter and then in the last writes, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life” (5:13). That wasn’t a new subject. That was the subject [...]

The God of Hope, Part 2 (Rev 21:1–5) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

In order to get a “person on the street” perspective on hope as I studied it in Edinburgh, I did a little informal interviewing on the Royal Mile where you can always find people from all over the world. I asked what people thought of when they heard the word “hope.” A Scottish lady said, “Wishful,” while another in his twenties from the Ukraine, “what I have when looking for a job,” and yet another Scot, “something will go right.” Then I asked if hope played a part in their lives. One Canadian said that it didn’t, that she was lucky and made things happen. Another, a sixty-ish Scottish lady, replied, “Not too much, just get on with it.” What seemed quite apparent to me in the ten people that I quizzed was the failure to express a solid hope grounded in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, their misplaced hope is quite normal although not healthy and Christ-centered. Since those moments when temptation led to the fall, humanity has hoped for something better. Those collaborating at Babel hoped that through human effort in building a tower to heaven, they would bring about unity, satisfaction, and happiness for all. But their attempts toward that end excluded the Lord God, ending only in confusion, alienation, and division.

Solomon had every resource at his disposal and the power and freedom to do anything that he set his mind on. So he sought what he thought would be the perfect life. He experimented with food, wine, women, gardens, building projects, and even knowledge, but could only cry “Vanity! Vanity! Everything is vanity and chasing after the wind.”

Just a year before Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenburg, Sir Thomas More wrote his famous novel Utopia, where he told of an island with perfectly organized cities, where everyone got along, where they swapped homes every few years and wore the same kind of clothing and had work equality. Ironically, More’s title in Greek literally meant, “no place” (eu-not; topos-place). Utopia didn’t exist. When communism attempted a similar model it only brought disaster and bondage.

But there is a place and eternal existence with life far beyond the imaginations of those at Babel, Solomon, or Thomas More. Yet for it to become reality the Lamb of God had to bear away at the cross the sin, corruption, and effects of the fall. When the Father raised Him from the dead, Jesus’ resurrection body became the first fruits of what He accomplished through His redemptive work. His resurrection assures His people’s hope for a new life unlike anything imaginable. That hope warms the hearts of believers in trials, illness, affliction, persecution, temptation, and in the face of death. Such hope, a partner with faith, “has more of a futuristic emphasis” to it than faith by itself. It is “faith directed toward the future fulfillment of the promises of God” [John Frame, Systematic Theology, 956].

When John wrote Revelation, he sought to encourage a people living under the experience and threat of persecution. They felt the heavy hand of Roman oppression, with more to come. But they were to live as overcomers despite the pressure, and they could as they learned to live in the hope bound up in the gospel’s promises. What does hope in Christ promise? We discover just a glimpse of it in this passage.

A contrast is set by John declaring, “the first heaven and the first earth passed away . . . the first things have passed away” and “Behold, I am making all things new.” He alerts us to a distinctive transition. What we have been seeing and experiencing around us will be changed. There’s still a heaven and earth but the “first things,” marred and corrupted by the fall, have given way to “all things new.” So John attempts to describe what has gone and what has come. He uses highly figurative, metaphorical, and symbolical apocalyptic language rather than literal language, as we shall see.[...]