Revelation 21:9-21

May 30, 2021

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 16:55 in the audio file.

Or, The City of the Lamb

Series: Just Conquer #60

Introduction

When God decided to create something other, when He made the world and all that is in it, His purpose was to show His glory. The end for which God created the world is to show off His greatness, which, considered from our angle would be difficult, because there is no greatness like His greatness. He is infinite, and so every one of His attributes is connected to that infinitude. Even His communicable attributes are unique to Him because they are perfect. No one communicates like Him. No one is as righteous as Him. No one is as joyful as Him. No one loves like Him.

He has done, is doing, and will do whatever shows His glory. It is revealing itself, and connects with His nature, that He is glorified by our understanding of God’s glory and, as Jonathan Edwards points out, by our delight in God’s glory, and also by sharing His glory with His people. God doesn’t preserve His glory in a gallery behind glass over which we “oooh” and “aahh,” God portions out His glory in us. The OT concept of glory (kavod) was weightiness, and God is refining His people to be gold. The NT concept of glory (doxa) was brightness, and God is polishing His people to be radiant like diamonds.

Beautiful brides are often said to be radiant, and we see in Revelation 21 the Bride of the Lamb. Cities are sometimes said to be radiant, and we see in Revelation 21 the City of the Lamb. The City-Bride is adorned for her Husband (21:2), the City-Bride is made glorious by her Husband (see also Ephesians 5:25-27). The City-Bride, and this is John’s eye-witness testimony, comes down from heaven “having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel” (21:11). The City-Bride is a place and the people, and she is glorious with and for God’s glory.

God allocates radiance all over and among His people. The descriptions and dimensions on display all work toward the glory of the Lamb, who is repeatedly referred to in this section (seven times from 21:9–22:5) as He dwells with a radiant people.

For whatever is challenging about this part of John’s vision, and there are a lot of pieces to the vision, the coming of the City is not gradual through millennia. This is not church history, it is not a vision of the spread of the gospel to the world. In its context, judgment is finished, all the unrepentant are in the lake of fire, and even Death is dead. The radiance shines in the new heaven and new earth, a new dispensation. In a broader context, the Bible refers to the final parts of our salvation, our resurrected bodies and our perfect blamelessness, and here we are. This glorified state is not the process of our sanctification, it is the end of it.

One beseeching before we look with John at the angel’s tour of the city. There are some exalted, not-of-this-world sort of descriptions to be heard. What you must not do is punt your belief over the symbolism side because someone might laugh at you for believing what the sentences say. This also means that you must not be one who laughs at those who don’t think everything is merely a symbol because it seems silly to you. If you want to make a case for maximum symbolism as the proper interpretation, do so, but for better reasons than what you think “can’t” be.

That is a dangerous standard, especially in light of passages such as Isaiah 55:9. It’s like saying God couldn’t have created the entire universe in six 24-hour days. God can’t be three Persons yet one God. There couldn’t have been a global flood. Jesus can’t be fully God and fully man. God wouldn’t have taken on flesh and then died; that’s foolish, it’s a scandal. Brothers, there is no gospel and there is no glory apart from truths that don’t “fit” [...]