Rev 21:4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
As we live in this world, we live based on assumptions about the very world in which we live. We assume that if we drop something that it will fall to the ground. It won’t fall up! These assumptions help us navigate, but can also lead to our missing the obvious.
Let me give you an example. One assumption we often have in life is that life should be fair. But as anyone who has lived past adolescence has learned, life isn’t fair. There are not equal outcomes. There aren’t even equal opportunities. Some people are born with advantages.
But our assumption when things don’t go the way expect is that they should have gone the way we expected. And our usual reaction is to see the unfairness of it all. We see others who get the results they expect and we compare our results to theirs, and it isn’t fair.
So what are the defining principles by which our time here on earth operates? Well, our text calls them an “order” of things. And this current “order” compared to the future “order” operates in a very peculiar manner, very much not the way we expect it to.
Death, mourning, crying, pain. These are the things that define our current “order.”
Now wait a minute. Those don’t seem like the rules that run this world. It seems as though power, wealth, fame, self-fulfillment, control…. These sure seem like the things that run this “order” in which we must exist. But all these things are not sustainable.
When the end comes for each of us, power, wealth, fame, self-fulfillment and control all slip though our fingers like oil. The harder we try to hold onto them, the more they slip away. They are not made to be grasped.
And there are forces that have arrived as a result of humanity’s rebellion that overpower these fleeting status symbols. The old saying about death and taxes held some truth. The results of sin, (death, mourning, crying and pain), will overtake us all. They are the defining elements of this “order.”
By contrast, the new “order” is characterized with the summarizing words of “no more tears.” Like the baby shampoo, the new order will have a distinct absence of death, mourning, crying and pain. Can you imagine a world without these things?
As we read this section of the Revelation of Jesus Messiah, there is an abundance of joy and rejoicing, praise and worship, thanksgiving and honoring. All the upbeat emotions seem to show up in the text. There is peace and safety, abundance and provision, meaning and purpose.
Get ready for this new order. We can do that by pausing in this “order” and shifting our focus to those things that will transcend this life. These things will pass through the temporary barrier between now and then, here and there. We experience then and there here and now when we worship, give thanks, and live in the reality of His abundance.
The Arnold Journey 