Hebrews 11:8-16, Revelation 21

When we think of a person coming in faith to God for salvation in His Son, Jesus, we can’t help but connect that to the Holy Spirit’s regeneration. The Spirit’s work is not to come tidy up and patch up a tired old Adamic life, but a complete renewal and impartation of a new divine life in the heart where death and corruption had crept in. Titus 3:5 speaks of this as the “washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit”. 2 Cor 5:17 “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature (creation); the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” Jesus applies this same “old things gone, all things new” principle of “regeneration” to the earth and heavens in Matt 19:28. And this is just where we land in our text this morning in Revelation 21. See v1 to start.

Revelation 21 begins with an ending! V1 and v4 make the startling foundational design claim for the New Heavens and the New Earth… that this present earth and its systems and the heavens must be and will be, finished, kaput, wiped clean, “passed away” like a mist in the wind! What follows is, like a born again person, the regeneration of a whole New Earth and Heavens, a New Creation!