Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #7 of Revelation chapter 21 and we are going to read Revelation 21:4-5:

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

We had been looking at verse 3 in the last couple of studies where God speaks of dwelling with His people.  We saw that this was a fulfillment of Biblical promises that God (Emmanuel or “God with us”) would dwell with His people for evermore.

Then in verse 4 we see one of the most comforting verses in the Bible, as it says, “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” 

When we think of the sorrows of this world and the daily grief and despair that people experience, we can see how much of a blessing this Scripture is.  Just in the last few weeks I have personally heard of three individuals that I or others have known that have died and a couple of them were true believers.  When true believers die, we look at it differently than when an unbeliever dies.  It is a much more positive thing.  Actually, in the last few weeks there have also been murders, bombing deaths, train derailments, flood deaths and deaths at home and abroad, not to mention acts of terrorism.  These things happen every day in every nation of the world.  People are dying and many tears are shed by family and friends.  There is much grief in this world and every one of us knows it will be the same tomorrow and the next day.  As long as this world continues, there will be death.  There will be crying, sorrow and pain.  It is an integral part of life in this world. 

Why is that so?  Why is there such deep sorrow everywhere in this world?  Of course, the modern natural man does not want to hear the Bible’s answer, but this is the fact of the matter: all of the terrible things that happen and bring such awful grief to mankind are a result of man’s sin.  This has been the case from the very beginning, since Adam and Eve sinned and God cursed the world.  Remember what the Lord said after Adam and Eve sinned, in Genesis 3:16-19:

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

God is saying that man was formed from the dust of the ground and man shall return to the dust of the ground upon death.  In these few verses, God says they will experience sorrow and death and, oftentimes, it is death that brings such awful sorrow into a family or into a household.  We go along in life and, for a time, we are happy.  We may have a new wife or a new husband and children begin to be born and we are building our family and things look good.  There are all kinds of good expectations for our lives and our children.  But, eventually, it comes and for some, it will happen a little later than with others.  Eventually, death will come to the home.  Perhaps, it will not be in the immediate family at first, but there are grandparents and the day may come when there are whispers and tears and crying: “Grandma is dead,” or “Grandpa is dead.”  Or, it may be that the father has died or the mother has died or, worse yet, one of the children died.  Death has come to their house and now there is weeping and deep sorrow and pain of heart.  Now the family and household have changed, but after a while, we go on, but what are we going on to?  We are going to the “next occasion” when death will come to that family.  I do not have to know anything about you to know that this will happen to you.   And it will happen to me.  This is mankind’s lot.  We can expect tears and crying and sorrow and pain because of death.  Death will come to each one of us.

We know that Adam and Eve were created “good” and they would have lived forever, but they sinned.  God had warned them that in the day they ate of that tree they would die.  Adam was our figurehead and he stood as our representative.  All of us were in him, so we cannot blame him.  All of us would have done the same thing and, in fact, we have all disobeyed God.  Adam died spiritually in that day and physical death eventually came to him 930 years later.  This has happened to all mankind.  We read in James 1:14-15:

But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

Here, God explains the process.  Man looked upon the tree, as we read of Eve.  She saw that it was a fruit to make one wise and it was beholding to the eye, so she lusted.  Then follows sin and what comes after sin?  “When it is finished,” it “bringeth forth death.”  This is the pattern we have all followed in our lives. 

Is there much death in this world?  Yes, there is death everywhere, is there not?  There are thousands of people all across this earth that are dying from one cause or another, whether it is man’s inhumanity to man, like war, terrorism and murder or from natural disease.  We say it is natural disease, but it is a result of the curse upon creation.  There are tumors, cancer and heart attacks that happen and people die as a result.  Death is everywhere, which means that sin is everywhere, because death does not come by itself.  It starts with lust and it leads to sin, “and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death,” so death is actually a result of sin. 

We can look around the world and we see a tremendous multiplication of sin all over the earth.  Iniquity is abounding and men’s hearts are waxing cold, which means more death.  More death will come.  Man is always so excited and eager to run after his sin.  It is the lust of the eye and the pride of life that excites him.  An example is this gay marriage thing.  There are a million sins that people do, but this is one that people are excited about: “This is a good thing,” they say.  Yet, what will be the result of it?  It will only be death, just as it is with all other sin.  The Bible says, “And sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”  People lust after money and they compile wealth in this world, without any thought of God.  It is all sin.  At the end, are they going to enjoy their money?  No, they are just going to die and their wealth will be given to others.  No one will be able to enjoy a particular sin beyond the boundaries of this world and they will die and cease to exist. 

In Romans, chapter 6, God speaks of the wages of sin, and He says, in Romans 6:23:

For the wages of sin is death…

Again, sin leads to death.  In Isaiah, chapter 25 God gives a wonderful and inspiring verse to mankind.  It is just a beautiful statement in the midst of an account of the results of sins, such as death and sorrow and tears and the misery mankind has brought upon himself as he thinks himself to be wise.  But in a miserable world that has resulted because of his rebellion against God, God gives His people hope in Isaiah 25:6-8:

And in this mountain shall JEHOVAH of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord JEHOVAH will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for JEHOVAH hath spoken it.

Here, we see that in order for God to wipe away tears, He must deal with death.  You cannot have a world where people die and expect that there would be no tears and sorrow and pain.  The two go hand in hand.  Where there is death, there are tears.  In the new heaven and new earth, the former things are passed away and this world is gone and God tells us here in Isaiah and in our verse in Revelation 21:4: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death.”  Do you see how He joins the two ideas together?  There is eternal life in the new heaven and new earth, so there is no more death and, therefore, there are no more tears or pain of heart.  That is going to be an incredibly wonderful thing.  The people of God will be brought into a new creation and in this new creation there will be God and the entire company of the elect whose names were recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life and they will dwell together as brethren and sons of God and there will be love of God and love for the brethren. 

It will really be a family of God, an enormous family that may number as many as 200 million and they all have their new resurrected bodies and they all have eternal life in the new heaven and new earth.  They will live eternally forever and there will not be a single instance in which they will wake up one day (to use the familiar language of “time”) and someone will say, “Brother so-and-so is no longer with us and Sister so-and-so is no longer with us.”  Of course, there will be no male and female in heaven.  As we try to explain this eternal glorious future, it is not easy to do without using some of the language of this world and that is what God does in the Bible.  But, it will never happen that someone has died. 

What would happen if we were told that someone had died?  It would mean we would be sad and cry.  Remember how they wept for Dorcas in the Book of Acts?  They lamented because she had done many good works.  True believers do weep for other believers when they pass away, but in the new heaven and new earth there are no more tears because there is no more death.  Therefore, there is no more crying, sorrow or pain.  There will be no more instances of getting to know someone and loving them deeply, only to have your heart broken because that person has died and you cannot see or talk to them any more.  God is saying there will be no more death.  It (death) was a result of the curse upon this world and because of the penalty and punishment of sin.  Sin is so evil and has brought death into the world, but God has settled things concerning sin and the wages of sin have been satisfied through the atoning work of Jesus Christ from the point of the world’s foundation.  He died for His people so that they will not die and they are set free to live for evermore.  And they will live and live eternally and there will be no more death.

People wonder, “Why do you look with good expectation to the coming day of God and to the end of the world?”  What is really going to end?  They have not thought what that means for the child of God because they are so wrapped up in this world and they love this world.  I am sure many of us wonder why they love this world so much.  This world is so full of tears and sorrow and crying and pain and death and injustice.  Day by day it brings some kind of sorrow or calamity some place and it is just a matter of time before it comes around to my house or your house.  We live our lives dreading that day.  Remember what Job said in the Book of Job?  He said, “For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.”  It came to his house and all his children died and he lost everything.  It was only a matter of time, was it not?  It was only a matter of time when those 10 children would have died anyway, but the terrible thing that was “out of the norm” was that it happened to all 10 of them at the same time, but the reality is that it will happen in each family sooner or later. 

This is why the child of God looks for a better world and for a new earth where there is the wonderful hope and expectation of life for evermore.