The Coming of the Perfect, and the Departure of the Imperfect

Bible > Sermons > Revelation 21:4

Revelation 21:4
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying…

I. THE FORMER THINGS CONNECTED WITH THE BODY HAVE PASSED AWAY. Our bodies shared the ruin into which sin brought our race. Mortality and corruption took possession of them. They became subject to pain, and weariness, and disease, in every organ and limb. All this shall yet be reversed. Former things shall pass away. This head shall ache no more; these hands and feet shall be weary no more; this flesh shall throb with anguish no more.

II. THE FORMER THINGS CONNECTED WITH THE SOUL HAVE PASSED AWAY. The beginning of this renovation was our "being begotten again unto a lively hope." This re-begetting displaced the old things and introduced the new. The sin, and the darkness, and the misery, and the unbelief, and the distance from God — all these shall come to a perpetual end. In their place shall come holiness, and love, and light, and joy, and everlasting nearness — unchanging and unending fellowship with that Jehovah in whom is life eternal.

III. THE FORMER THINGS CONNECTED WITH THE EARTH HAVE PASSED AWAY. This earth is the seat of evil since man fell. The curse came down on it; creation was subjected to the bondage of corruption; Satan took possession of it. The devouring lion shall be in chains, and "no lion shall be there." The curse shall vanish from creation; the blight disappear. Beauty shall clothe all things. Paradise shall return. Holiness shall revisit earth. God shall once more delight in it and set His throne in it. Righteousness shall flourish, and holiness to the Lord be inscribed everywhere. And all this irreversible! No second fall. Messiah — even He who died for us and who rose again — is on the throne, and no usurper can assail it. He ever lives and ever reigns.

(H. Bonar, D. D.)

Parallel Verses

KJV: 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.

WEB: He will wipe away from them every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more. The first things have passed away."