The Whole Story #11 :: Renovation, Not Evacuation // Chris Holm

We closed out this series by asking what we actually believe happens at the end of the story. Most of us grew up with a picture of heaven that never really came from the Bible. Souls floating up to clouds, harps, pearly gates. That picture owes more to Greek philosophy than it does to Scripture. Plato taught that the body is a prison and the goal of life is escaping it. The real hope in the Bible runs the other direction.We walked through Revelation 21 and 22, where John sees a new heaven and a new earth, and the Holy City coming down out of heaven to earth. Not us leaving for somewhere else. God moving in with us, for good. We looked at Isaiah 65, where the picture of eternity is houses being built and lived in, vineyards planted and eaten from, real work that never gets stolen from us again. We looked at 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul describes our future bodies as a seed becomes a plant, the same thing, fully grown and fully realized. And we looked at Romans 8, where all of creation is described not as dying but as groaning like a woman in labor, on its way toward being born into something new.We traced the whole arc of the Bible from a garden in Genesis to a garden city in Revelation. A tent built like a garden, a temple carved like a garden, a man buried and raised in a garden, and finally a whole renewed world grown up into what Eden was always meant to become.The application this week is simple. Gratitude. Thank God for your body, the one you have and the one that is coming. Thank him for the parts of this earth you love. Thank him for the people you have lost, and for the reunion that is coming. Thank him that he is not done with this planet, and he is not done with us.URF WEBSITE: ➤ http://www.urfellowship.comSOCIALS: ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urfellowship/➤ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urfellowship