Two Journeys

My kids know that I cannot stand computer upgrades. I just checked — attached to my App Store, there is this little number 52, meaning there are 52 upgrades for apps that are on my phone, to enable my phone to do clever, interesting, beneficial things. But those software people think I need them continually — so generous of them to provide these upgrades. Microsoft also thinks about me continually, and they have coming up with new ways that my operating system can improve. They hijack my computer for a while to make the computer better, but it has been my experience that not all of the upgrades are an improvement. Perhaps you agree.

In contrast, as we study the new world that is coming, described in Revelation 21 and 22, we find an upgrade, if we can use that low word, that will be infinitely perfectly satisfying to us. We will in no way be disappointed. Romans Chapter 8 says, “Hope does not disappoint.” We will find that what we have hoped for is vastly small compared to the reality we will inherit; we will be overwhelmed by the beauty and majesty of the place. The more we have a sense of that now, the more energetically and courageously and fruitfully we will live. The more heavenly-minded we are now, the more we will put sin to death by the power of the Spirit, the bolder we will be in evangelism and missions. In every way, it will be better.

We have a sense of this in Philippians 1. The Apostle Paul was incarcerated for the Gospel, facing the possibility of his own execution for Christ. He weighed his preferences to the two options of, on one hand continuing to live and serve Christ and his people on earth; or on the other hand, to die, to be executed, to depart and be with Christ. As he evaluated, he was torn between the two. It is remarkable that he wanted to wait to go to heaven so that he could benefit his brothers and sisters in Christ and benefit lost people by preaching the Gospel. Paul was imitating Christ’s attitude, how Jesus left Heaven to come to earth to save us. Paul imbued that attitude, wanting to stay on earth as long as he could, “…but to depart and be with Christ is better by far.” We will not be disappointed in that upgrade. It will be better by far.

That is a heavenly world that is in some mysterious sense incomplete. The world we read about here in Revelation 21 and 22 is better by far than what we would go to today if we were to depart from the body. The New Heaven, the New Earth, the New Jerusalem, are better by far than the present reality of where the saints dwell now. Absent from the body means present with the Lord. That is better by far than this. But we will be so deeply, richly, fully satisfied with Heaven.

The first half of Revelation 21 describes, first, the New Heaven and New Earth generally in broad terms. There will be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain in that new universe. Then it zeroes in on the New Jerusalem, the capital city of that new empire of God. The city is described in architectural terms, telling of the heavenly architecture and layout of the city. We learn about its gates and foundations and dimensions and building materials. The remainder of Revelation 21 describes the New Jerusalem in mostly negative terms, what will not be there — no temple in the city, no sun, no moon, no lamp, no exclusions from the kings of the earth, no shutting of the gates at night for indeed there will be no night, no wicked persons, nothing impure at all — all that will be filtered out or changed in the world.

We begin with the observation in Revelation 21:22: “I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” The earthly temple will be fulfilled in heavenly worship. Here, the history of the tabernacle and the temple, and of what God intended for those structures, reaches its final destination and fulfillment. 

The tabernacle, then the temple, represented the idea of an earthly place where God would dwell in the midst of His people, where He would put His name. That would be the place where people would go to meet with God. The mystery is that because God is omnipresent, in some sense no more in one place than He is in another. But amazingly, He has chosen in this present age to reveal Himself more in some places than He has in others.

When Jacob fled for his life from Esau, he came to a certain place, Bethel, where he lay down and had a dream in which he saw a vision of a stairway to Heaven with angels ascending and descending. Genesis 28:16-19: “When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, ‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.’ He was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.’ Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. He called that place Bethel (which means house of God).” He looked on that as a holy place. When God called Moses from the burning bush, God said, “Do not come any closer” but told him to take off his shoes, for the ground on which he was standing was holy ground. The place where Jacob met with God was an awesome place, the gateway to heaven. And the place where Moses met with God, at the burning bush, was holy ground. So in the Old Covenant, God chose to reveal himself more in certain places than in others.

Jonathan Edwards, in his marvelous sermon “Heaven is a World of Love”, said, “Heaven is the palace or presence-chamber of the high and holy One... Of course, God ...is everywhere — he fills both heaven and earth. But yet he is said, in some respects, to be more especially in some places than in others. He was said of old to dwell in the land of Israel, above all other lands; and in Jerusalem, above all other cities of that land; and in the temple, above all other buildings in the city; and in the holy of holies, above all other apartments of the temple; and on the mercy seat, over the ark of the covenant, above all other places in the holy of holies. But heaven is his dwelling-place above all other places in the universe; and all those places in which he was said to dwell of old, were but types of this. Heaven is a part of creation that God has built for this end, to be the place of his glorious presence, and it is his abode forever.”

Exodus 25-40 lays out how God ordained a tabernacle, or tent, where He would meet with the people. It was movable because the nation was out in the desert at that time, moving around. God gave Moses the details of the tabernacle — its building materials, how it was to be built, its dimensions — in a heavenly vision when He met with him on the mountain. The tabernacle was a representation of that heavenly vision. When it was built, God descended in a cloud of glory cloud and filled the tabernacle. This was symbolic of God’s desire to dwell together with His people. He wanted to be with His people so that they would be where He was and see His glory. The tabernacle was only a type, or a shadow, as the author to Hebrews makes it plain in Hebrews 8:5: “The [Levitical priests] serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven.”

In the tabernacle, the Levitical priests poured out the blood of animal sacrifices, showing that it was only by the atoning blood of sacrifice that God would meet with sinful people like us. While the tabernacle was still standing, the way into the true most holy place was not yet disclosed because it was impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. It was a type and a shadow of what was to come.

Later, after David was settled as king over Israel, he lived in a beautiful aromatic palace of cedar. He began to be jealous for the glory of God and said, “Here I am in a palace, in a building, a structure, but God is in a tent.” Nathan the prophet told him, “Do whatever is on your heart.” But then God, a few moments later, had a different message for Nathan to give to David: “Are you the one to build a house for me? No, I will build a house for you.” 2 Samuel 7:5, 12-13 says, “Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in? … When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.”

David’s own son, his biological son Solomon did build the physical structure of the temple. He dedicated it in 1 Kings 8:10-13: “When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the LORD. And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled his temple. Then Solomon said, ‘The LORD has said that he would dwell in a dark cloud; I have indeed built a magnificent temple for you, a place for you to dwell forever.’” But Solomon did not really understand the future, that the real temple would be built by David’s greater Son, the Son of David. Jesus would build the eternal tabernacle, or temple. Solomon did realize the insufficiency of that wood and gold box that he had made called the temple, saying in 1 Kings 8:27, “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!”

In the course of time, the Jews desecrated the temple by their wickedness and sins, their perversions and idolatries. God took the prophet Ezekiel on a secret journey in the Spirit through the guts and the basement of the temple where the elders of Israel were worshipping crawling things and defiled things and bowing down to idols. Because of the wickedness of the Jewish people led by their leaders, the cloud of the glory of God departed from the temple. Soon after, the Babylonians destroyed the place because of the wickedness and the sin. After 70 years, the Jews returned from exile in Babylon. Under the prophets Ezra and Haggai, they rebuilt a smaller, less glorious temple. The animal sacrificial system was re-established and ran until the time of Jesus.

As Jesus began His public ministry, he cleansed the temple, and did so again as he ended his public ministry. The first time, he made a whip and drove out all who were buying and selling, as well as the money changers, who were all trying to make money wickedly in the temple. His enemies approached and tried to stop him, saying, “‘What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?’ “Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.’ They replied, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?’ But the temple he had spoken of was his body.” [John 2:18-21] He decisively redefined the temple.

In his spiritual discussion with the woman at the well in Samaria, he brought up her sin concerning her husband, so she changed the subject. In witnessing situations, people will often deflect like that —  “Since you’re talking about my sin, let's talk about the proper place of worship.” That is a smokescreen. Amazingly, though, she took the conversation in the direction Jesus wanted it to go. The Samaritans believed that the proper place of worship was Mount Gerazim in Samaria. The Jews argued that it was Mount Zion, in Jerusalem. Jesus soared far above both of them, telling the Samaritan woman in John 4:21-24, “Jesus declared, ‘Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.’” He was saying that the time was coming when there would not even be a specific place to worship God, but that believers would worship anywhere and everywhere by the Spirit.

Furthermore, Jesus predicted the destruction of the last temple of the Jews. Matthew 24:2 says, “I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” On the cross, he shed his atoning blood, forever ending and making obsolete the animal sacrificial system, as well as the need for a Levitical priesthood, a tabernacle or a temple. Jesus fulfilled all. Matthew 27:50-51 says, “And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom…” Now a way was opened for us. We are no longer excluded, but invited to come into the very presence of God by the atoning blood of Jesus. Hebrews 10:19-22 says, “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith.” 

The Romans confirmed this in AD 70 by destroying the building in direct fulfillment of Jesus’ prediction. The Jews have not had a physical temple since. Paul, in his ministry among the Gentiles, saw very clearly that not only was Jesus’ own body the temple, but the church had become the body of Christ. He used an architectural image of the church in Ephesians 2, as the Gospel was spreading not only to Jews, but now to Gentiles too, every tribe, language, people and nation. People were coming to Christ, and he saw this vision of a holy temple, Ephesians 2:19-22: “…God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”

Peter adds to that image in 1 Peter 2:5: “…you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

For 20 centuries, this spiritual temple has been rising. Living stones have been rescued out of Satan’s dark kingdom and put in the walls, so to speak, as this temple rises and becomes more beautiful and diverse and glorious and magnificent as people from every tribe and language, people and nation are being saved. Elect from every nation are being brought into this marvelous structure. It is a glorious building project. It is not finished yet but it is getting close.

Why is there no temple in heaven? Revelation 21:22 says, “I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” The reason is clear: God’s atoning work through Jesus is fulfilled and we are perfectly cleansed of all of our sins, so there is no need for sacrifices any longer. Furthermore, God will be so present everywhere that we will not need a special place. Every place will be special, an encounter with the radiant glory of God. It will be impossible to look any direction north, south, east or west and not see the glory of God. We will have an immediate experience with the glory of God. There is no need for a special place to assemble. It is the fulfillment of the vision Jesus gave to the Samaritan woman — not a place, but together, intimately connected with God by the Spirit.

John speaks of the Lord God Almighty, God the Father, who rules over everything, God is the temple, and so is Jesus the Lamb. Again, this is clear indication of the deity of Christ. The city will be the Holy of Holies, a perfect cube. Solomon’s Holy of Holies, also a perfect cube was 20 cubits by 20 cubits by 20 cubits, 1 Kings 6:20. The new Jerusalem is 12,000 stadia by 12,000 stadia by 12,000 stadia, massive. Every place in the city is perfectly holy, because we will encounter the living God.

Second, we see earthly light fulfilled in heavenly glory. Revelation 21:23 says, “The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.” When God created the heavens and the earth, the first thing he said after that statement was Genesis 1:3: “And God said, 'Let there be light,’ and there was light.” The sun and moon and stars were not required on the first and the second and the third day of creation — they did not exist. God does light very well. He did not need the sun or the moon or the stars. He delegated the job of light to them on the fourth day, and now He will take the job back.

The awesome sun will be obsolete. It will be fulfilled. This incredible burning ball of nuclear reaction is 93 million miles from us, 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface, 27 million degrees Fahrenheit at the center. No probe has gone to the center of the sun to tell us, but it is hot, and its light has given us the light of day throughout creation, but now God will reclaim the task.

The moon will also disappear — the softer gleam of pale reflected light. There are aspects of the description in Revelation 21 that some people regret, like no sea and no moon. One night, I rented motor scooters with a friend of mine from college. We rode out to see the full moon on Nantucket Island. The moon and the sea, two things that we will not have in Heaven, were spectacularly beautiful, the shimmering light of the moon on the pretty quiet sea that night.

Another time, the night was not so peaceful to me. Every year I ride up to Lake Gaston on my bicycle, 72 miles. On this ride a year and a half ago, I got a late start. I could have done simple mathematics: it was in October, and I started around 3:00 for about a four-and-a-half-hour bike ride. The sun was going set during that time, but I had no lights on my bike and no reflection on me. I was riding up there in northern North Carolina or southern Virginia. The shadows were getting longer and the light began to fade. I was momentarily struck by the realization, as though I had never seen a sunset before. Then suddenly it was dark — there was no moon that night, and no stars. It was one of the scariest nights of my life. I had to dismount my bike and walk it for long distances. There were barking dogs and probably some Remingtons to protect the property from people like me out walking at night when they should not be doing that. I wondered if I would survive the night. I could not see the left side of the road or the right side in the pure, scary, inky-black darkness. Light at night is beautiful, but there is nothing beautiful about night itself without light.

In the Bible, frequently, we have the images of the light, but it seems like God is going to fulfill that. There will be no more night, no more darkness.

Isaiah 24:23 says, “The moon will be abashed, the sun ashamed; for the LORD Almighty will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and before its elders, gloriously.” Why would the sun and moon be ashamed? Because they cannot do anything compared to God’s glory. It is like bringing a little flashlight to a spotlight party, and you want to hide the little thing you brought. The sun and the moon will be like that; they will be ashamed compared to the glory of God. Again, as it says in Isaiah 60:19, “The sun will no more be your light by day, nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you, for the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory.”

Third, earthly exclusions will be fulfilled in heavenly openness. Revelation 21:25 says, “On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there.” This is speaking about the exclusion of people kept outside the city. Look ahead in Revelation 22:15: “Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.” These are all the wicked, the sinners. God will weed all of them out, as well as all the dangers of the night which now prowl around.

God called the day good, He did not say anything about the night. Though there is a beauty to a star-spangled night sky and a softer gleam of the moon, there is no beauty in pure darkness, so darkness is frequently used as a metaphor for evil. 1 John 1:5 says, “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” Or John 3:19: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” In John 8:12, “Jesus said, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’”

This happened the night that Jesus was arrested. He predicted that one of his disciples would betray him. It was the one who took the bread that Jesus dipped, took it out of his hand. In John’s Gospel, Jesus dipped the bread and handed it to Judas, and Judas took it. When he took it, Satan entered into him. John 13:30 says, “As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.” That is not an accident. Jesus said to his arresters and his persecutors in Luke 22:53, “…this is your hour — when darkness reigns.” So darkness is an image of rebellion against God.

In the new universe, there will be no darkness at all. There will be a universal light of the glory of God. There will be no shadows in the New Jerusalem, like a stage lit by brilliant spotlights in every direction — no shadows anywhere. 

Furthermore, it says the gates will never be shut. In the ancient world, gates were shut to keep the dangers on the outside — wild beasts, marauding invading armies. All of the wicked, rebellious people and all the demons and Satan will be in the Lake of Fire, so the gates will stand open all the time.

Earthly sacrifices will be fulfilled in heavenly diversity. Revelation 21:24-26 says, “The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it.”

This is the light of the new world — the new Jerusalem, the New Heaven, the New Earth — a pervasive brilliant beautiful light of the glory of God. The nations and the kings of the earth will walk by that light. The light by which we will operate and do our things will be the light of the glory of God, not the sun, the moon, the stars, or the lamp. More than that, it means that we will walk by the principles that flow from the character of God. The moral law of God will be perfectly fulfilled in us. We will walk by God’s character, by his nature — that will be our rule, the way by which we will live our lives.

Isaiah 2:2-5 says, “In the last days the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.’ The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. Come, O house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the LORD.” Many commentators say that passage refers to the millennium. I can say only that all of that will be perfectly fulfilled in Heaven. The law will flow from the heart of God and we will resonate and glow with it and walk by that light.

Who are these nations and kings of the earth? There are many speculations, some connected with the millennial reign. Keeping it simple, let us say they are, together with the Jews, all of the redeemed from the earth, from every tribe, language, people, and nation (Revelation 7). They are recognized by their expressions of amoral ethnic cultural diversity. They will be identified as trophies of God’s grace from every tribe and language and people and nation.

I have worshipped with African brothers and sisters in Nairobi, primarily from the Kikuyu tribe. They love rhythmic worship, lots of drums, they love to clap and sway and sing. That worship is beautiful. They are mostly modernized in their dress and attire, but their culture is very clear. On that same mission trip, I also worshiped with Maasai tribespeople in the Rift Valley. They are herdsmen, tall and graceful. They put red ochre in their hair and on their face and wear a lot of beads and jewelry. The Maasai were some of the most violently opposed to British rule and among the last to be pacified when the British ruled that colony. The Maasai tribespeople we worshiped with were Christians and had been kicked out of their tribe, ostracized by their other Maasai, but they maintained their culture. What an unforgettable time of worship that was, under a tree, sitting on rudimentary wooden benches.

I have worshipped in a Lutheran Cathedral in Dresden with Calvin a couple of summers ago, listening to baroque music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. The German people worship in a different style than the Kikuyu people do. Though they are different displays, those who are born again and love the Lord, worshiping the same triune God, celebrate in the same redemption.

I worshiped in a cell church in Shanghai in China, in a high rise. They used a boombox with a CD to play Western praise and worship songs. They spent a lot of time in prayer. I have worshiped with Indian believers in Pune near Mumbai. I was there during the Hindu festival, the Diwali, the Festival of Lights, These believers had broken off from their false religion of Hinduism and come to faith in Christ. There were thousands of them there listening to me unfold the book of Philippians. Many thronged to me afterwards to say they had been hungry and thirsty for the Word of God. These Indian believers maintain their amoral cultural distinctions. I have attended an Easter sunrise service, overlooking the Pacific Ocean with Japanese Christians. We were convinced that we were the first Christians on earth that year to celebrate Easter in the Land of the Rising Sun. It would have been about 1:00 a.m. here. It was sweet to be with those Christians in Tokushima.

In the New Heaven and New Earth, we will see all of that cultural diversity in some marvelous way. They will bring their riches and treasures into the New Jerusalem, so we can at least simply say that they themselves are converted and they bring their uniqueness into worship Jesus.

To take it a step further, we will be in resurrected bodies with resurrected minds, hands and feet, and we will have limitless strength and energy in an entirely new earth. We will surely have work to do — things to work on, projects to make, there will be no more curse on our work. Work was not the punishment, but work was cursed. Our efforts crumble, and thorns and thistles come after plowing and watering and planning and waiting. In Heaven, we will work and it will come to full fruition. We will have limitless time to work on projects. As things are finished, the kings of the earth will bring their glory into the New Jerusalem to show Jesus what they made by their creativity and strength.

Why will they be kings of the earth? There will be different, smaller kingdoms in the Nw Heaven and New Earth. Jesus will be the King of kings and Lord of Lords. This is clearly taught in Scripture in Daniel 7:27: “Then the sovereignty, power and greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be handed over to the saints, the people of the Most High. His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all rulers will worship and obey him.” Luke 19 tells a parable of a man who gains 10 minas, an amount of money like a talent, through his stewardship of resources given by his master. He is therefore given ten cities to manage. There will be kings of the earth. They will stream into the capital city of New Jerusalem to honor and worship Jesus, the true King of kings.

Earthly impurity will be removed and replaced with heavenly purity. Revelation 21:27 says, “Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life” The New Jerusalem will be perfectly pure. Modern cities are patterned after wicked Babylon. Revelation 17 depicts the great horror of Babylon drunk on a cup of immorality, drunk on the blood of the saints, rich and prosperous through sin and idolatry, but she will fall, as predicted in Revelation 18:2: “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!”

Imagine landing by plane at night at JFK. You can see the beautiful, spectacular side of New York City in all the lights — the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, other landmarks; the headlights and tail lights of the traffic like diamonds and rubies and jewels. But once on foot in the city, you need to be careful all the time and especially at night, when wicked forces are prowling and at work. They will not hesitate to trade your life for their next fix.

In the New Jerusalem, all of that is gone. There will be no impurity. Best of all, our impurity will be gone. Our hearts will be purified, we will be glorified, we will perfectly love righteousness and perfectly hate wickedness forever. We will have our robes washed in the blood of the Lamb, and we will have the right to enter the city and eat from the Tree of Life. 

Only those whose names were written in the Lamb’s Book of Life from before the foundation of the world will be allowed to enter. That is election, or predestination. Every single one of those named by name before the foundation of the world will most certainly be in there. Each one of those elect has ratified it, confirmed in space and time when they heard the Gospel of their salvation. Having believed, they were marked in Him with a seal and crossed over from death to life. But their names were known before they responded; before the foundation of the world, they were called and summoned to follow Christ, and they will enter.

First and foremost, hear and believe the Gospel now. If you are on the outside of all this looking in, I ask you to let the fear of the Lord be the beginning of wisdom for you. Realize that you do not know how much longer you have in this body, how much longer you will be alive. The Bible says that today is the day of salvation. I am begging you, as though God Himself were making His appeal through me, be reconciled to God, acknowledge that you have sinned, that you have violated God’s laws. Acknowledge it. Be honest about it. Ask Him for the forgiveness that Jesus provided by shedding his blood on the cross, one atoning sacrifice for all time. All you have to do is trust in Him, not by works, but by faith. Trust in Him and you will be welcomed into the New Jerusalem when the time comes.

For the rest of us who have done that some time ago, recognize your responsibility to speak a version of what I just said to a lost person this week. We have a responsibility to reap now into the New Jerusalem, a responsibility to share the Gospel. We are surrounded by people who are without hope and without God in the world. We have an evangelistic responsibility.

Let us be faithful to it this week. Do something bold for Jesus, invite someone to church. We will be celebrating the resurrection and salvation every week.

Understand the future of worship in Jerusalem. We will all be bowing down and worshiping. The more you can do that now, the better. I urge you to spend more time personally in worship this week. Find a sweet Psalm or a hymn you like, and sing it to God, sing it to Jesus because you love him.

Finally, look forward to heavenly work and do your work as to the Lord this week. Yes, the work is cursed now, but it is a foretaste of the work we will do in Heaven. Work with all your heart as working for the Lord. Do the projects God gives you so that people sit up and take notice and wonder why you have such an energy and a zeal for your work. Work as unto the Lord, because some day you will be in the new world and your works will not be cursed then. Do them as much as possible now for the glory of God. Share why you work that way, that you are looking forward to that future day. 

Father, thank you for the time we have had to study today. Thank you for the good things that we have learned. Thank you for the joy and the delight that is waiting for us at the upgrade, a word that does not capture what will be infinitely satisfying to us. Oh God, fill us with hope, and help that hope to energize us to do the good works. I pray for any who are lost that are here, that they would hear Jesus calling to them, crying to them, saying, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Trust in me and I'll forgive you of all your sins.” In Jesus’ name. Amen.

We come to the description of the New Jerusalem, with words that boggle the mind and stretch the imagination. How do you describe indescribable, inexpressible wonders? The Apostle Paul was caught up to the third heaven, to paradise, where he heard inexpressible things that man is not permitted to talk about. He was forbidden to write anything about what he saw there. The Apostle John, on the other hand, had a vision through the Spirit which he was told to write down and make known. John’s vision was of the New Jerusalem, the coming city, with buildings — giving us a spiritual architectural image.

All of my adult life, I have enjoyed excellent architecture. I am an architect wanna-be. I was a mechanical engineer — boring, though needed and can get a job. Architecture, on the other hand, is an amazing combination of science and art, function and form — crafting buildings with a combination of engineering skill, for safety, and artistic beauty, to be aesthetically pleasing, designed to draw and transport in an artistic way.

The science of architecture includes the materials and the strength of structural members, like the I-beam. It may be boring to most of us, but very essential, something for which we are all thankful even if we know little about them. The science ensures that the building will stand firm through all weather and conditions. In Japan and other locations, architecture must take into account seismic shifts and other environmental factors.

The artistry of architecture has undergone many shifts over the centuries with different schools of architecture, different artistic approaches to building design — classical, baroque, colonial, Victorian, gothic, renaissance, Romanesque, oriental. Our church building is in the style called Greek Revival — it looks like a Greek temple with the pillars out front.

I have seen some amazing buildings around the world. Prague is a beautiful city with many awe-inspiring buildings. I love the St. Louis Arch. It was built in the 1960s to commemorate St. Louis as the Gateway to the West. It is truly a magnificent piece of architecture, soaring hundreds of feet above the ground, made with steel and a glistening aspect. It is quite elegant and beautiful. The Capitol building in Washington DC was finished during the American Civil War. The Eiffel Tower, which I saw last summer for the first time, was considered a monstrosity when it first went up, but now it is a landmark and an icon of the Paris skyline. In London, I have seen Big Ben, the Parliament, and many other iconic buildings. I have been to the spectacular Osaka Castle in Japan, and the Forbidden City in Beijing.

I have never visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, which integrated the mountain stream and the woods and the rocks with the house in an amazing and new way. Many of you have toured the Biltmore mansion in Asheville. It seems odd to have a beautiful French château in the Black Mountains of North Carolina — an example of elegance, ostentation, expanse.

On the other hand, on various mission trips in countries that had been behind the Iron Curtain — Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic — I have seen buildings that were built during the Cold War era that seemed to be ugly by design. They have no special form, just structures built of cinder block. I felt that they could suck one’s life out through the eyes to behold them, and much more so for one who had to reside or work in such ugliness.

In Revelation 21, God gives John the task of describing what it will be like for all of us from every tribe and language and people and nation to live together. The image here is architectural, a spiritual structure that stretches human language and imagination. In the end, we merely say we can hardly imagine what that radiant city will be like, perfect in form, perfect in function. This is a city whose architect and builder is God, as we are told in the book of Hebrews.

Revelation 21:9-11 tells of the radiant glory of the city: “One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.” 

The account begins with an angelic guide, as often happens in the book of Revelation. This angel is identified as one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues. The backdrop of this radiant, spectacularly beautiful account is human wickedness and rebellion and sin that has been judged by the overwhelming wrath of God. We have seen His wrath throughout Revelation, like the seven bowls of the seven last plagues, and in the verse immediately before this one, Revelation 21:8: “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars, their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur, this is the second death.”God’s wrath is kindled because of the wickedness of the human race.

There is a strong parallel between this and the earlier description of the great whore of Babylon. As we looked ahead when we studied Revelation 17, now we will look backward for the comparison, at the nearly identical phrasing. Revelation 17:1 says, “One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters.’” The prostitute is described in Revelation 17 and 18. Contrast that with Revelation 21:9: “One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ The angel will show us the bride’s glory. The parallel is clearly intentional, with identical language — the bride of Christ is the direct opposite of the great whore of Babylon, dressed in spectacular, shimmering, gaudy jewelry, and luxurious clothing, with an outward seductive allure. She is drunk with the wine of immorality and with the blood of the saints. She is a creature of pleasure and a vicious violence against the people of God. The bride of Christ, in contrast, is depicted as radiant with a different kind of sparkle and glory. The light of the glory of God is shining in her. It is the difference between perhaps a rhinestone and a perfect diamond.

Yet every member of the body of Christ has been rescued out of the great whore of Babylon. Every one of us was being sucked into the whirlpool of the world system of wickedness and sin. We were drawn down by it, until the sovereign grace of God reached down and rescued us out of it. We have been delivered from the kingdom of darkness and brought over into the kingdom of the beloved Son. That is how we became part of the bride of Christ. There, but for the grace of God, go I, as we look at the great whore of Babylon. We were part of that system.

The symbolic bride language, the city that is a bride, generates an amazing combination of images. The bride language flows from the Old Testament image of Israel as the bride of Yahweh, depicted in many places. Sometimes the people of God were depicted as God’s Son, whom he carries, and in other place, as his bride, whom he marries, especially in the Book of Hosea. In the New Testament, this image is perfected in Ephesians 5:25, 31-32, where Paul commands Christian husbands to “love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. … ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery — but I am talking about Christ and the church.” We have the fulfillment of that image in Revelation, the new Jerusalem descending from God, out of heaven, like a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband, prepared for the wedding celebration and the eternal marriage. The Triune God — Father, Son and Spirit — has been preparing her in the heavenly realms for this final display of her glory. 

John is carried away by the Spirit to a mountain, great and high. Whereas the angel carries John away in Revelation 17 to a low-lying plain, where he can see the great whore of Babylon, here he is carried to an elevated lofty perch where he can look at her. It is not implied that the New Jerusalem is built on a mountain, but rather, that John is observing from this visionary mountain. 

Jerusalem is called the holy city. What an incredible expression. The word holy means separate unto God, as His special possession, free from all darkness. God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. So she has been perfectly separated from all wickedness and all darkness, and she is radiant with God’s glory. She is holy, separated unto God as His special possession.

The beauty of this image is that throughout history, cities have been the seat of great wickedness. The Tower of Babel shows the beginning of that link between human rebellion and sin and urban wickedness, crime and ugliness. The people of Babel said, “Come, let us build a tower that will reach up to heaven, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the earth.” It is a direct affront to the lofty glory of God, like Satan who says in Isaiah 14, “I will ascend, I will make myself like the most high. I will sit on the throne and I will rule over all things.” The people of Babel were trying to do the same thing with this tower made of brick, thoroughly baked and covered with pitch. They started to build this lofty tower in direct defiance of the God of the universe.

Human cities have continued, from that spirit of Babylon, to be cesspools of human wickedness and rebellion and pride, technology, achievement, wealth, arrogance. Think about “the city that never sleeps”, and how “nothing good happens after midnight”. Think about the red light district or back alley drug deals, a lurking stalking sleepless malice, the smell of human filth, the danger of human violence. It is reasonable to associate these things with cities. In certain places, in certain cities, you will be warned to not go out at night unaccompanied. Augustine called this the City of Man, in all of its rebellion and ugliness and wickedness.

However, there is nothing intrinsic to cities to make them wicked. Human sinfulness is responsible for that. But we will be forever in a radiant, spectacularly beautiful city. How marvelous is the holy city Jerusalem. In Isaiah 1, she was called a harlot, and defiled. She who was once a faithful city has become a harlot. Now, she is radiant and holy and beautiful. That is the power of the cleansing and atoning work of Jesus Christ. He gave himself for his bride to make her the holy city, and she is shining with the glory.

Revelation 21:11 says, “It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.” This city is shining, radiantly bright. There is a spiritual glow to it. That is the essence of the holiness of God and the beauty of God.

When God created the heavens and the earth, he said in Genesis 1:3, “‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day’…,” Light is a complex physical phenomenon that scientists have been studying throughout the history of human science. Isaac Newton set up a prism and discovered the spectrum and white light, and the science of optics was born. Isaac Newton was the father of three Sciences. Albert Einstein studied what light is made of. Is it a particle? Is it a wave? The quantum theory of physics came about at the beginning of last century. People have been studying light for a long time, but we will see light forever and ever. This city will be radiantly glowing with the light of the glory of God.

It is marvelous that God created light before He created light-bearers, creatures that give off light. I once had a discussion with an atheist, a visiting scholar at Duke. We were having Bible studies, and he informed me that there was a flaw in the book of Genesis. He pointed out that there was light, but no sun, moon and stars until the fourth day. He looked at me as though it were a mic drop, a gotcha moment. I asked if there were laboratories at Duke, which he confirmed. He admitted, when I asked, that some were in the basement, and that the basement had no windows, but the labs were not in total darkness because there were lights in the room. I asked, “How is it that humans can do light without the sun, the moon and the stars, but God, in your opinion, cannot?”

God does light very well. He will do light beautifully forever. He does not need the sun, the moon and the stars. He says, “Let there be light!” and there is light. This New Jerusalem shines, it glows with the light of the glory of God. Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, is the radiance of God’s glory. All of the light that we see, that is God, it comes to us through Christ. Christ shines the glory of God to us, so this New Jerusalem will shine with the glory of God administered to us through Jesus Christ.

We should not imagine that the brilliance of this light will be blinding. It will display the perfection of sight and the perfection of light. Seeing Christ as he really is will be the clearest we have ever seen anything, and it will be the most pleasing seeing we can possibly imagine. It will bring us a perfect pleasure to see that light. In this world, brilliant light can be painful, actually destructive, but in that world, there will be no more pain. Rather, the radiant beauty of the new universe and the New Jerusalem will be perfect pleasure, the most pleasing sight, the most beautiful sight we can ever imagine. 

This radiant glory illuminates everything in the New Jerusalem. The materials of the city are all translucent or transparent to shine the light through, so everything shimmers and glows and radiates with the light of God. All the precious stones in the foundation of the wall would be totally dark, were it not for the glory of God. They would have no light to show themselves. The streets of gold, which are mysteriously called transparent as glass, would be black and dead, were it not for the glory of God. Though these things are not mentioned in Revelation 21 or 22, except the Tree of Life, any growing thing that will flourish in the new earth — flowers, plants water, rivers, lakes, ponds — will shimmer with the light of the glory of God, where the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. The lights of that place all around us will flow into our perfected eyesight. We will be in resurrection bodies and have resurrection eyes, and we will see eternal glory.

Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be filled with light.” There is no “if” here — our eyes will be good, and therefore our whole body will be filled with the light of the glory of God. It says in Matthew 13:43, “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”

This New Jerusalem will be like a clear jasper stone. The glory of the New Jerusalem is said to be precious, valuable, like a precious gem, so it is likened to a jasper, clear as crystal. Jasper is a form of quartz, usually appearing in a reddish color, often with streaks or spots that make it interesting, appealing, fascinating. It is formed by mineral-rich volcanic sediments coagulating in unpredictable patterns.

Like many physical aspects of John’s description, this is a different kind of jasper, since it is perfectly clear as crystal. We could liken it more to a diamond with no inclusions, a perfectly radiant diamond, with no flaws. Despite the fact that the new Jerusalem is made up of redeemed sinners, the purification of the bride by the blood of Christ is so complete, the radiance of the glory of God will be undimmed by any spot or blemish in us but will shine with the glory of God.

Revelation 21:12-14 details the wall and the gates of the city: “It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.”

Ancient cities had walls for protection. At night, the gates would be shut to keep wild animals and wicked people out, brigands, marauders, bandits, and especially invading armies. If there were an invading army, the safest place for the populace would be inside the walled fortress. It is a picture of absolute safety, before gun powder and artillery made such fortresses obsolete in the 15th century. Behind the mighty high wall of stone was the safest place to be to face an enemy or any threat. This wall is a surprising feature of the New Jerusalem, because it seems unnecessary. All the enemies of the city will have been thrown into the Lake of Fire, from which there can be no escape.

We are told later that the gates of this city will never close. Revelation 21:25 says, “On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there.” The gates are always open, just as Isaiah 60:11 predicted about the future glory of Zion: “Your gates will always stand open, they will never be shut, day or night, so that men may bring you the wealth of the nations — their kings led in triumphal procession.” This wall is said to be great and high, a massive barrier, impenetrable. Many commentators believe that the entire layout is symbolic and spiritual, not literal. They struggle with the interpretation, wanting it to be one or the other, literal or symbolic. Why could it not be both? They point out that the wall is impossibly short compared to the height of the city, which is impressive, 12,000 stadia or 1400 miles up. The wall is measured at 144 cubits — whether that is the thickness or the height, I do not know. I drew it proportionally — the wall is practically invisible compared to the city.

The wall is symbolic in that it depicts being outside and entering; and ultimately, Jesus is the doorway for the sheep. We must enter the Kingdom of God — no one is born into it — and only by Christ can we enter this city, being born again by repentance and faith in Christ.

Revelation 21:12-13 says, “It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west.” The gate of the city is the way by which one enters and leaves. It is the place where official business was transacted in that ancient near eastern setting. People went to the city gates to be honored to do business.

Adam sinned on behalf of all of us in the Garden of Eden when he ate from the forbidden tree. He and Eve were evicted from the garden. So that he would not reach out his hand and take from the Tree of Life and live forever, God put an angel, a cherubim, with a flaming sword flashing back and forth, to guard the way to the Tree of Life. But now, Christians have been given the right to enter and to eat from the tree. Revelation 22:14-15 says, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.” Outside are the wicked; inside are the redeemed who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb.

I want to appeal to those of you who know you are on the outside, not a Christian, you have never come to faith in Christ: the doorway is open for you. All you need to do is repent and believe, trust in Christ, and you will enter now by faith spiritually and later physically. Trust in Jesus; repent of your wickedness, of the ways you have violated God’s laws. When you trust in Christ, His blood will cleanse you from wickedness, and you will have the right to eat from the tree and live forever. Jesus is the gate for his sheep. He said in Matthew 7:13-14, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

In John’s vision, there is not only one gate, but twelve — three in the east, three in the north, three in the south, and three in the west. Each gate is labeled with one of the sons of Jacob, one of the twelve tribes of Israel. This shows a continuity of God’s covenant work. God made a promise to Abraham that through his offspring, all peoples on earth would be blessed. Abraham is called therefore the father of many nations. We who have repented and believed in Jesus, though we are from many different ethnic backgrounds, are counted sons and daughters of Abraham through faith in Christ. Galatians 3:7 says, “Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham.” These names honor the grace shown to Israel and through them, grace shown to us — sinners saved by grace.

At MIT, where I was an engineering student, there is a courtyard called Killian Court, a series of buildings built in 1915, dedicated and inscribed with the names of some of the great figures of science up to that point. They polled the faculty and came up with the key names that would be in really big font, and then many other names in smaller font. MIT students walk under those names day after day to get to their classes. The big font names include Aristotle, Newton, Lavoisier, Franklin, Pasteur, Faraday, Archimedes, Darwin, Copernicus, and da Vinci. That what passed for scientific greatness in 1915. Their names are there as an honor for their accomplishments; by contrast, the names of the patriarchs, the sons of Jacob, are on the gates because they were sinners saved by grace.

Why the points of the compass? East, north, south, west — three on each side times four is twelve. Until very recently, I had no thought that it was anything but random. We are not looking for any kind of symbolic configuration. But the book of Revelation is continually working in my brain. I wake up in the morning thinking about it. Jesus said in Matthew 8:11, “I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.”  The four points of the compass indicate that this gospel has spread to the ends of the earth, and people have come from all over the world to enter this new Jerusalem.

Verse 14 says, “The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.” This gives a feeling of massive stability. It is not moving; there is no concern for earthquakes or plate tectonics; it is eternal and permanent. Ephesians 2:20 tells us that the household of God is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.” The Old Testament is represented by the twelve descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the New Testament believers are represented by the twelve Apostles. That shows continuity of the people of God, all together. It also shows that the Apostles’ witness to the life, teachings, miracles, death and resurrection of Jesus is the basis on which the rest of us are saved. They were eyewitnesses of his glory. They wrote Matthew and Mark and Luke and John. They wrote down what they saw with their eyes and handled with their hands and heard with their ears. Because they wrote it down, our faith is based on something that is not moving but rather on historical truths that can never be shaken.

The dimensions of the holy city are described in Revelation 21:15-17: “The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long. He measured its wall and it was 144 cubits thick, by man's measurement, which the angel was using.” The angel measures, similar to the elaborate measurements that the angel conducts in Ezekiel 40 and 41, in which the angel takes a rod and measures the walls, the gates, the porticos, the alcoves, and the courtyards, everything to do with the visionary temple in Ezekiel 40-4

This angel has a rod of gold to take these measurements. He measures the entire city, especially its gates and its walls. This act of measurement is scientific and mathematic, but it gives a sense of the reality, the physicality, of this place. It also gives a sense of its limitations, its boundaries. We will be radiantly glorious in our resurrection bodies, but we will not be gods and goddesses. There is a limit to us. We are creatures, and even in our perfected states, we will have limits surrounding our eternal lives, living within boundaries that we are assigned by God. The boundary lines have fallen for us in pleasant places, Psalm 16 says. There is a limit, a finiteness, and a reality, fixed by the purpose of God.

We see a little bit of the layout of the city here. Urban planning is a major science. When leaders change or extend a city, they turn to civil engineers and urban planners who know how to lay out a city. My hometown of Boston was very poorly laid out. Some say that the roads are paved cow paths or deer paths. I do not think there is a single perpendicular intersection in the Back Bay section, at least where I lived. There is somewhat of a grid for a while and then it becomes jumbled. Washington DC, in contrast, was laid out scientifically and mathematically according to President Washington’s instructions for a capital city. He contracted a Frenchman named Pierre Charles L'Enfant in 1791, who made the Mall the center of its egalitarian vision of human government.

This eternal city, the new Jerusalem, the capital city, has been very well planned by the ultimate urban planner, the ultimate architect, God. We do not know much about the streets, but there is one wide main street, going right down the center of the city.

The dimensions are mind-boggling. The city is laid out as a perfect square in its footprint, but it is also massive in scope. No city in human history comes close. It is 12,000 stadia on a side. A stadion, singular, is about 607 feet, or two football fields. 12,000 stadia is just shy of 1400 miles on a side for a city. I superimposed this over the United States. If I placed a corner here in the Triangle, it would extend to Northern Canada, so to keep it all in the United States, I put one terminus at Orlando, Florida. 1400 miles west ends around El Paso, Texas. 1400 miles straight up from El Paso is the Canadian border around Montana or North Dakota. 1400 miles east to finish the square lands in a small place in Canada north of Ottawa, called Val-d’Or, Quebec.

The footprint would take up effectively half of the Eastern Continental United States — one city. That is massive. Even more amazing, John tells us, is that it is a perfect cube. Length, width, and height are 1400 miles. Some people think that it is patterned after the Holy of Holies. 1 King 6:20 details the construction of the Holy of Holies, the place where the Ark of the Covenant was, where the blood of the sacrifice was placed: “The inner sanctuary was twenty cubits long, twenty wide and twenty high. He overlaid the inside with pure gold, and he also overlaid the altar of cedar.”

The height is incomprehensible. The International Space Station orbits the Earth 150 miles above the surface of the earth. This city rises about ten times higher than that, way out into outer space. At ten feet per floor, a skyscraper would be 700,000 stories. An elevator taking you to the top floor would take a long time. Imagine the buttons. The fastest elevator in the world is in Shanghai, traveling at 40 miles an hour, borderline uncomfortable. Imagine traveling 1400 miles at 40 miles an hour. Driving at that speed from Orlando to El Paso would take 35-hours. My son Calvin commented, “They’d better have some good in elevator entertainment!

Henry Morris, in his book Revelation Record, presented a different possibility: the new bodies of the resurrected saints will be like those of angels, no longer limited by gravitational or electromagnetic forces. It will be as easy for the inhabitants to travel vertically as horizontally in the New Jerusalem. Consequently, the streets of the city may well include vertical passageways as well as horizontal avenues, and the city blocks might actually be more like city cubes.

How do you take this both literally and figuratively, or spiritually? John McArthur said, “Human language is inadequate to fully describe the unimaginable magnificence of the believers’ indescribable eternal home. Unwilling to take the language of Scripture at face value, many seek for some hidden meaning behind John’s descriptions. But if the words do not mean what they say, who has the authority to say what they do mean? Abandoning the literal meaning of the text only leads to groundless, futile speculation. The truth about the heavenly city is more than is described, but it is not less and not different from what is described.” [Commentary on Revelation 12-22, p. 280] Just because the numbers are symbolic does not mean that they are not also literal. 12,000 is a symbolic number, twelve times ten cubed. The wall, 144 cubits, is twelve squared. God can do both literal and symbolic together.

The building materials of the city depict the radiant glory of the people of God. Revelation 21:18-21 says, “The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of pure gold, like transparent glass.”

Everything here, all this precious valuable material, has as its essence translucence or transparency. It is all about the glory of God in us. With transparency everywhere, there will be no privacy in the city, but we will not need it, not having the same bodily needs we have now. Marriage will have been fulfilled by then and we will be like the angels, neither marrying nor giving in marriage. We will have no dark secrets to hide from anybody, so we will live transparent lives, shining with the glory of God.

The preciousness and variety of these building materials speak to the amoral cultural diversity of the people of God. We come from every tribe, language, people and nation. We look different from each other and we have different creative answers to problems like architecture, food and clothing. This beautiful amoral diversity — rescuing the word diversity back from the way the pagans have grabbed it — will shine in the Kingdom of Heaven. 

The visible spectrum is beautiful — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Each of these colors is represented in these precious stones with each of those colors. Some time ago, I preached a sermon entitled, The Cross: A Prism for God’s Glory, Like Isaac Newton’s experiments with white light. In the same way, all of the glory of God is visible in the cross. Every individual attribute of God is represented: justice, wrath, patience, love, power. We see the same thing in the Church of Jesus Christ. We will shine radiantly, but differently from one another, together making up the beauty of the New Jerusalem.

Finally, we consider the astonishing pearly gates. Pearl is made of one of the most precious substances in the ancient world. It results from some particulate, like a grain of sand, getting inside an oyster. The oyster protects itself by covering it, layer by layer, with a shimmering hard substance called conchiolin, like the rings of a tree. It testifies to the suffering that has gone into building the Kingdom of God.

First and foremost, Jesus suffered, but Paul said in Colossians 1:24, “Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions…” The blood of martyrs is seed for the church. There have been all kinds of labor and suffering that have gone into building the place. Every time we walk by those massive pearly gates, we will be reminded of the beauty that came from suffering. 

First, meditate on Heaven in your own way. Friday morning, I went with my daughter, Daphne to Hillsborough to get some coffee and hot chocolate. Then we went for a walk in this reserve called Ayr Mount, a beautiful place with a pond and a river and some woods. It was a shining shimmering morning. We walked down a path called the Poets’ Walk. I was thinking about the book of Revelation, which I do all the time, and we came to a clearing, a field. The sunlight was shining, so I stood by Daphne’s side, held her hand to pray. We closed our eyes and could see the sunlight through our eyelids. I prayed about the New Jerusalem, when Daphne tapped me. There was a woman standing there with a dog watching us. I do not know how long she was there because we had been praying for a while. It was an awkward moment. But she said, “You looked so prayerful. I didn't want to disturb you.”

Could we have our hearts and our souls filled with joy and hope at where we are going? Could that drive out sin? Could it drive out depression? Could it drive out worldly sadness and discouragement? Could it be a light that attracts people who are right now on the outside, who do not have hope, who do not have forgiveness? Could that attract people to Christ, if we would be more filled with a joy and inner light of this beautiful place to which we are going?

Be active as witnesses. Share the gospel. The workplace may be one of the best places to do evangelism in America. People get to know you and see the way you live. It is a good place to do some gradual witnessing.

Lord, thank you for the time we have had to walk through these verses, to look line by line at each of the aspects of this New Jerusalem. We may never have this opportunity again. Father, I pray that you would please strengthen our imagination, strengthen our sense and our faith, so that we may shine with the glory of hope, so that people who are without hope and without God in the world may see something different in us and ask us to give a reason for the hope that we have. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on John 11:25-26. The main subject of the sermon is that Christ is the resurrection and the life. Our hope is to be found in Him alone.

Well, I love to preach every time, but I especially love preaching on Resurrection Sunday. Such a gift and a joy for us to gather and celebrate in a special way the resurrection victory of Christ from the grave. And I like to think about missions all the time, I like to think about this resurrection victory, this message, where it was prophesied in Isaiah, that the distant islands and coastlands that have not heard of God's fame or seen his glory, will hear of his fame and see his glory. And to know that that's been going on now for 20 centuries. And so that all over the world, our brothers and sisters are assembling today to celebrate Christ's resurrection victory. That just brings me so much joy.

In 1839 two courageous missionaries from London made a bold attempt to evangelize the natives of the New Hebrides Islands in the South Pacific. Shockingly these two missionaries, these men, were attacked, murdered, and cannibalized, immediately, in full view of the ship that had brought them there — immediately.  Nineteen years later, a Scottish minister of the Gospel named John Paton decided to go to those same islands with his wife to seek to bring those same inhabitants, those violent and terrifying cannibals, to bring them to salvation through faith in Christ.

Now, this man, John Paton, had a very flourishing urban ministry there in Scotland, and God was using him greatly, but he felt a strong and overpowering call to missions. But there was an elder in his church, a man named Mr. Dixon, who was very upset when he heard what John Paton was planning to do with his wife. And he went to him and rebuked him vigorously saying, "You will be eaten by cannibals." And to this, John Paton replied — this is one of the great replies in church history, listen to this — "Mr. Dixon, you are advanced in years now, and I believe your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave and there to be eaten by worms. And I confess to you that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether my mortal body is consumed by cannibals or by worms. And in the great day, my resurrection body will rise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer." Now, that's a great answer. I'm sure all of you are wondering “Who writes his stuff? That's really good!” What an answer, what faith, what courage and what clear perspective based on the good news that assembled us here today, Jesus’ triumph over the grave, his resurrection victory.

And I wanna begin this Easter sermon by asking you two questions or sets of questions. First, do you realize, personally, that it is appointed to you to die once, and after that, to face judgment? Are you aware that you are going to die? Secondly, do you believe that through faith in Christ, your body will rise glorious from the grave on the final day? Those are two questions I wanna pose to you. What I mean is this, if the Lord doesn't choose to return in our lifetime, if we're not the final generation, every single one of us will die. Our hearts will stop beating, our lungs will stop filling with air, our brain waves will cease. I don't know how. I don't know when. But it will happen to each one of us. It could be suddenly like a car accident or drowning. It could be expected after a long illness. It could come when we are relatively young, or it could come when we are very old, but it will come if the Lord doesn't return first. And then your body will decompose and most likely be eaten by worms. Do you ever think about this? Does it cross your mind, or do you try to remove the thought of death as far from you as possible?

I have performed many funerals, and I've done many graveside services, and I've noticed the habit of the funeral homes is to cover the dirt with AstroTurf, and the hole in the ground also is covered, and you can't see it. And there are nice cloths and drapes, and there's all kinds of coverings. But the Book of Ecclesiastes said, “I would rather go to the house of mourning than the house of feasting.” It is good for us to realize where we're going. It's good for us to look at the dirt and the hole in the ground. I'm not advocating that funeral directors change their patterns, not at all. I'm just saying you need to know, you need to be mindful of where you're going. And as you face the inevitability of your own death, have you found comfort in the unshakable truth that Christ came to give you a resurrection body as glorious as his? 

Easter Sunday is a time for a joyful celebration for us and for Christians all around the world, celebrating Christ's triumph over the grave. We Christians believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave. We believe that the tomb was empty on the third day; that the grave clothes were still there — Jesus had mysteriously risen up out of the grave clothes and left them there as a physical evidence of his resurrection power; that he was already out of the tomb by the time the stone was moved by the angel. He was already gone, passed right through the walls. And then he gave to many eyewitnesses many convincing proofs that he was alive. We believe in that.

And as a matter of fact, we believe if that hasn't happened, as the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, our faith is futile, and we're still in our sins. We absolutely are banking on the fact that that's true, that it's historically accurate. And we're gonna feel the marvelous weight this morning, I trust through the Spirit, of Jesus' statement in verses 25 and 26, Look at it again, if you would. “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.’” So I wanna walk through this account today. I just wanna go through the narrative, and I wanna draw from it spiritual principles that will help us. More than anything, I want to get you to see Christ, his nature, his character, his power, and so I'm just gonna focus on what he was doing as we walk through this narrative. 

I wanna begin in verses 1-16 with the surprising purpose of Jesus. The basic framework of this story is Jesus' friendship with a specific family, with Lazarus and his two sisters, Martha and Mary. He already knew them. This is the context of the matrix of this marvelous miracle, and it's clear that he raised Lazarus from the dead because he loved them. It was an extension of his love relationship with them, but the account begins with a very surprising purpose of Jesus. It says that he actually lingered where he was extra days. And he did that, lingering, the adding of the two extra days, because he loved them. He did this on purpose because he loved Lazarus and Martha and Mary. Look at verses 1-4. “Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, ‘Lord, the one you love is sick.’ When he heard this, Jesus said, ‘This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.’” So now, by this time in John's Gospel, by this time in Jesus' public ministry, he's done a river of miraculous signs in Palestine. His reputation as a healer of every disease and sickness conceivable to man was well established. There was no sickness he could not heal. There was no case that was too difficult for him.

Also, by this time, Jesus had met this family that lived in Bethany just two miles from Jerusalem. He knew them personally. The sisters, Martha and Mary, were obviously very familiar with Jesus, and you see it right in the account, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” You have a strong connection with Lazarus. Jesus proclaims that Lazarus’ sickness will not end in death. That's not the final end of this sickness. Now, obviously, such a statement could be easily misunderstood, but it really is the key to everything. It's the key to our gaining hope from this text today — the understanding of what the word “end” means. Though we will go through death, we will not end in death. Isn't that incredible? Our sickness as Christians will not end in death, none of our sicknesses, even if they're terminal, but rather, Lazarus’ sickness, like all the sufferings of God's children are for God's glory, that God's Son may be glorified through them.

Now, look at verses 5 and 6, “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So [Verse 6] when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.” There was a strong link between verses 5 and 6. Jesus stayed the extra days because of his love for them and for us, because at the end of this whole encounter, their faith in Jesus' power will be vastly greater than it was before, and so will ours as we read this account.

So we need to just take an application. Just stop right now and do some application of this for ourselves. God will orchestrate trials and afflictions for us, and they will be incredibly painful, and he does it to strengthen our faith and put his own glory on display, and they will go on longer than we want them to go on. And we will begin to question and wonder about his timing. And you'll be tempted to question his love as I think Martha and Mary do in this account. But you need to understand that God only means good for you in Christ.

Well, Jesus has to draw his disciples into his plan. He wants them to understand ahead of time what he's going to do. Jesus' ways are often difficult to follow, and so he has to explain his plan to his disciples. Look at Verse 7-10, “Then he said to his disciples, ‘Let us go back to Judea.’ ‘But Rabbi,’ they said, ‘a short while ago the Jews tried to stone you, and yet you are going back there?’ Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? A man who walks by day will not stumble, for he sees by this world’s light. It is when he walks by night that he stumbles, for he has no light.’” So we need to establish clearly the boldness, the courage of Jesus. It's not like he didn't know that he had mortal enemies in Jerusalem, very powerful enemies that were conspiring to kill him, and that it reached really a critical level the last time he was there. He knew that. But he also understood that his father had measured everything carefully out in his life. All of the days ordained for Jesus were written in God's book before one of them came to be. And so he knew that there was a certain allotted amount of time, 12 hours of daylight, and he says the one who “walks by day will not stumble, for he sees by this world’s light. It is when he walks by night that he stumbles, for he has no light.”

What that means is you need to see your life... I just wanna stop again and just apply this. You need to think about your life span, the way Christ thought about his. Your days are measured out. They're not limitless. Your time here on earth is measured out. There's a certain finite number of days, and if you have your eyes open spiritually, if you can see by faith the span of your life, you will walk as Jesus did, seeking to glorify God by doing the works he has prepared for you to do. But if you don't, you're in darkness. You don't understand the purpose of life. You don't understand the meaning of life.

Now, in verses 11-16, we have Jesus' remarkable attitude toward death. “After he had said this, he went on to tell them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.’ His disciples replied, 'Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.’ Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep. So then he told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’ Then Thomas (called Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’”  Now, Jesus' way of speaking of death here is stunning. He just calls it sleep. He did this also with Jairus' daughter: "The girl is not dead, only sleeping." To Jesus, given his irresistible power over death, raising a dead person is no more difficult for him than rousing a sleeping person.

But his disciples did not understand this figure of speech, so Jesus must tell them plainly, Lazarus is dead. Now, just if we could stop and say, where did he get his information? There was no other messenger coming from Martha and Mary at this point. Jesus knows everything, and so he knew exactly when Lazarus had died. But he wants them to understand what exactly is going on because he knows that for us, there's a vast difference between sleep and death. When we come up upon a loved one who's lying in bed, and his eyes are closed, we feel confident that all we need to do is shake him a little, shake him on the shoulder, touch his forehead or his hand, speak gently to him, and he'll open his eyes.

But what if when we enter the room, we just have a different feeling. Something comes over us, and then we look down, and we touch him, and he feels cold to the touch, very cold, and our hand jerks back, almost like we've touched something hot, but it's not, it's cold. And we notice that his chest isn't rising and falling. And then, all of a sudden, some things start happening in our bodies, where our breathing starts getting short, and the adrenalin starts moving, and we wonder — right away we know what we're dealing with — this person might be dead. We don't say that. But then you shake the person, and there's no response. And I don't know at what point you realize, maybe you try to open their eyes, but you know this person is not only sleeping, this person is dead. Maybe you scream, cry out in agony, 'cause you know there's a vast difference between sleep and death. This loved one, this one that you love, will never rise out of that bed again. You'll never see him again in the land of the living. You're not going to be able to have a conversation. All of the sweet fellowship that you've enjoyed with this person in this world is over. You know the difference. And so Jesus has to tell them plainly, Lazarus is dead. 

And then he says something very shocking, "And for your sake I am glad." Glad? Glad. How can you understand the emotional life of our Lord? Later in this account, he's gonna show very different emotions than gladness, very different. But here, he says, "For your sake, I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.” It's not like they didn't believe before, but their faith needed to grow, it needed to develop. So does mine. So does yours. And so, for your sake, I'm glad I can do this with Lazarus. I want to expand your sense of my greatness, and for that, for the joy that's set before all of us, I'm glad to go through this misery and pain. That's the nature of his gladness — to put himself on display. He wants to put himself on display. That's the nature of his gladness. But the gladness also is a foretaste of the days when death will be no more. In the New Jerusalem, in the new heaven and the new earth, where he will wipe every tear from our eyes, and there'll be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things will have passed away. And so it was a gladness in foretaste. Now, however, for Jesus, it's time to work. There's some work to be done. The 12 hours of daylight haven't ended yet. And so he says in Verse 15, “Let us go to him.”

Now, in Verses 17-27, we see the stunning promise of Jesus. And when he arrives at Bethany, he walks into a cold sea of sorrow, 17-19: “On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother.” So Lazarus has been dead four days. Now, I think if you do the calculation, it might have taken one day for the messenger from Martha and Mary to get to Jesus, then there is that fateful two-day delay, and then there's one day for Jesus to get back to Bethany. So when did Lazarus die? Figure it out. Probably a few hours after the messenger left. Jesus didn't wait two days for Lazarus to die. He was already dead. So why the two-day delay? Because the Jews back then had a sense that the soul hovered around the grave for three days, but on the fourth day it's done, he's dead. Now, that's not in the Bible, but many contemporary accounts give us that sense. And we know that as soon as someone seems to be dead, you don't give up on them. You might do CPR. Maybe you've dragged somebody out of the swimming pool, and there's a chance to revive them. Mouth-to-mouth, something like that. But four days? There's no emergency team on earth that would make any efforts that somebody that's been apparently dead for four days, no breathing, no brain activity, four days, they are no doubt about it, dead. And Martha says in Verse 39, "By this time decay will have set in." But the key we need to understand, it's no more difficult for Jesus to raise someone who's been dead for four minutes or four hours, or four days, four weeks, four months, four years, four centuries. It’s all the same to him. Lazarus is asleep. Jesus' power is limitless.

Nothing's impossible for him, but like he says about his own prayer, "I'm saying this for your benefit, I'm doing the four days for you, because you know he's dead, it's been settled in your mind." Furthermore, the four days allow for a vast audience coming from Jerusalem. A vast assembly of mourners have come. And this is going to be Jesus' second greatest miracle, second only to his own resurrection that we celebrate today. And so there's gonna be a huge audience. This miracle is not done in a corner. And so Jesus steps into this sea of mourners and all of this grief and sadness. And they did mourning far more than we do. We really shrink it; they would expand it. They would be there for a long time grieving with the family. And so he just walks into that ocean of grief, but the coldest waters came from Martha and Mary. 

Martha hears that Jesus has come and she gets up immediately. Look at verses 20-22: “When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. ‘Lord,’ Martha said to Jesus, ‘if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.’”  So Martha is a woman of action, she's very practical. Mary, more the contemplative, she stays inside. I think it's significant. It seems that she's too wrapped up in her grief to deal with Jesus at this point, to face him.

I think they're both wrestling with the same question deep inside, with the same wound. Not only have they lost their brother, but they don't understand Jesus. They don't understand why he didn't come. “Lord… if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” It is a statement of faith, a confession of faith. But also I think we could see another question in there, another question. A sense of disappointment. Why didn't you come? Don't you love us? Don't you love me? Don't you care that we're swimming in sorrow right now? This is the mystery of providence that we all have to deal with. Providence is going to hurt you at some point. It’s going to hurt and you're gonna look vertically and you're gonna wonder why God is doing this to you, and you need to realize God is perfectly good, and he only means good for his children.

Everything he does for us is good. Remember Jeremiah 29:11, “‘I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” Both Martha and Mary still believe that Jesus is Lord. They still believe he could have healed Lazarus. Verse 22, “I know that even now, God will give you whatever you ask.” Don’t think she means, “Even now, you'll be able to raise Lazarus from the grave.” I don't think that was in her mind. “Even now, God will let you continue to do your healing ministry,” perhaps. However, they are both, I can assure you, vastly underestimating Jesus. They're underestimating his power, they're underestimating his wisdom, they're underestimating his love for them.

And only by seeing what he only can do, well, they more fully understand who he is and how great is his power over sin, suffering and death. So he makes to Martha his first promise in this account. Verse 23, “Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’” Jesus is promising that she is going to see Lazarus alive again. Now, just stop and let me apply that. In Christ, all of your loved ones who are in Christ and you're in Christ, if they die, you will see them again. And that's why we Christians grieve, not as those who have no hope. We're gonna see him again. "Your brother will rise again.” But he's gonna teach her far more than that, far more than that the sickness will not end in death and all that. He has something more to teach us.

Now, Martha makes a remarkable faith-filled confession. This really, I think, in some degree — well, 24 and 27 — is Martha's shining moment in the Bible, and she's really quite remarkable. “Martha answered, ‘I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.’” Now, she's learned her Bible lessons well. The resurrection is taught in the Jewish scriptures, many. Isaiah 26:19, for example, “But your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead.” Couldn't be plainer. That's in Isaiah 26, verse 19, but even better, Jesus taught it openly.

John Chapter 6:38-40, “For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” So Martha is saying that back: "I know that he will rise in the resurrection at the last day." But do you get a sense that that doctrinal knowledge is distant from her at that moment? It's like something rolled up in the attic of her doctrinal mind. It’s not doing her much good. Or like some slogan or some Bible verse that's cross-stitched and hanging on the wall, but it's really not bringing her much comfort at all. And we do that with Christian theology, we do that with doctrine. It’s like not bringing us any sense of healing or joy right now.

"I know he'll rise in the resurrection at the last day." Stop! That is glorious good news. But it's not meaning anything. And worse, I think she has that seed of doubt about Jesus, about his wisdom, about his power and his love, so the two are like separate topics in her mind. There is the resurrection of all the dead at the last day, and then there's you Jesus. No, no, no, we're gonna put them absolutely together. They're going to be harmonized. They're gonna be perfectly united. Verse 25, Jesus makes this incredible assertion: “I am the resurrection and the life.” What an incredible assertion. This kind of assertion can only be made by Almighty God. It's just like the other "I am" statements.

Jesus makes seven "I am" statements in John's Gospel, like saying, "I am the bread from Heaven, come down from heaven to give life to the world." I mean, who could say that but God? "I am the light of the world. I am the door for the sheep. I am the Good Shepherd." And later, "I am the way to heaven, and I am the truth, and I am the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me." So Jesus does not merely teach the resurrection of the dead in an orthodox fashion. He does not actually even merely bring about the resurrection of the dead. He is the resurrection. And not only is he the resurrection, he is the life that will follow that resurrection. He's everything.

So there's total identity of Jesus with the resurrection. That’s essential, though we will never fully understand it in this world, or even in the next. I think it's a beginning, when he says, "I am the resurrection," to say this: "Apart from me, there is no resurrection." That's a start. There is no resurrection from the dead apart from Jesus. There’s no other options to death. But that's only the beginning of, "I am the resurrection." Think of it this way, "I am the essence, the distilled perfection of resurrection. I am what resurrection is. And keep going... I am the opposite of death, death is the opposite of everything that I am as darkness is the opposite of light. Life flows through me. Every living thing on earth has its existence through me." 

It says in the prologue in this Gospel, [John 1:3-4] “Through him [Jesus] all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life…” So all of the leaves with their photosynthesis, they're doing that mysteriously in Jesus. And all of the beasts that have the breath of life in their nostrils, they breathe through Jesus. He is life. But even more than that, he is human life, and he is eternal life. He is life. And what that means, conversely, is he hates death. Death is his mortal enemy. It’s the opposite of everything he is. And so that's the assertion, "I am the resurrection and the life,"

Then he makes her a precious promise and he makes it to us too. Look at it: “I am the resurrection and the life. [Verses 25-26] He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” So what that means is if you can make Martha's confession in verse 27, “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God…” If you believe that he is the Christ, the Son of God, if you believe that he died on the cross for your sins by simple faith, trusting that Jesus died in your place under the wrath of God — if you believe that, and if you believe that God raised him from the dead on the third day, you will live forever in resurrection glory even if you die physically. That's the celebration of Easter.

It's not merely that this great hero 2,000 years ago did some great thing, and we're here today to honor him and to remember him. No, you get a portion of the plunder from his victory. He’s bringing it to you. Just like the feeding the 5,000, you get to eat and chew and swallow; you get to draw this life into yourself and the benefit comes to you. Jesus said in John 14:19, “Because I live, you also will live.” And that eternally, in a resurrection body. 

Beyond that, Jesus says if you believe in him, you'll never die. Now, what does that mean? Because Lazarus died and he believed in Jesus, and we know many that fall asleep in Christ — they die. So what does he mean, “Whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” Well, the only way really to understand this is to understand death doesn't end at physical death, there's another death beyond it. It's called in the Bible the second death.

It says in Revelation 20:14, “The lake of fire is the second death.” There is a death beyond physical death. And Jesus is saying that, "If you live and believe in me, you will never experience the real death.” And that real death is not mere sleeping, but that's an eternity where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched, where the damned will hear before they're thrown in the lake of fire, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” [Matthew 25:41] That is the death I think Jesus is referring to. If you live and believe in him, you will not experience that death.

So Jesus has made an assertion: “I am the resurrection and the life.” He has made a cluster of two beautiful promises: “He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” Now, he asked this probing question: “Do you believe this?” He says this to Martha, "Do you believe in me?" Now, I'm going to ask this question at the end of the sermon in a few moments, again, but Martha without hesitation — look at Verse 27 — answers and declares her faith: “‘Yes, Lord,’ she told him, ‘I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”

Friends, this is the center piece of the Easter celebration, the Easter hope — facing the historical reality of Jesus' death on the cross in our place for our sins and his bodily resurrection from the grave on the third day and finding your salvation in that. But now we need to drive away any lingering doubts we may have about Jesus Christ with the rest of the account. We need to learn to embrace his love and compassion for us, who still have to walk through the land of the valley of the shadow of death.

So look at the secret passion of Jesus, verses 28-38. Death is the final enemy, and Jesus knows this. He knows that that day will not end death. He knows that his loved ones, his beloved people, are going to have to suffer in almost incalculable ways for 20 plus centuries because of death. He knows that better than we do. And this fact draws from the infinitely deep recesses of Jesus' soul, from his heart, a river of feeling of compassion, of emotion that's hard to even understand or calculate. And I think the best comfort that God can give us who have to walk through the valley of the shadow of death is the fact that he will walk with us and cares how we feel as we're going through it — his compassion. 

He says in Isaiah 43, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” “I'm gonna walk through it with you.” And we have it on display right here in John 11. No better chapter, actually, in the whole Bible, to see the compassion of God through the misery and the sorrow of death. We are all gonna die if we're not that final generation. And before we do, most likely, we're gonna lose loved ones in death, and we're gonna have to attend some very painful funerals, some vastly more painful than others.

I can hardly imagine a more heart-rending funeral to attend then the funeral of your own child, especially a young child. I mean, if I kept talking, I would easily start crying here, it'd be easy to do. Because honestly, death is merciless, the merciless enemy, and it stalks by day and by night, and we have no answer, not within ourselves. And it's not gonna spare anyone. Young or old, not safe. Rich or poor is not safe. Healthy or sickly is not safe. Powerful or weak, not safe. Famous or obscure, doesn't matter, not safe.

And death will rip apart so many of the best laid plans of those individuals and families, rip them right apart, leave them dead on the ground. And mourners are gonna stand over that freshly dug grave and they're gonna feel an anguish in their hearts that they can't put into words. The best ministry I can give as a friend in that situation is to point them to John 11, Jesus' compassion, the fact that he cares what you're thinking, and the fact that some day he's gonna kill death forever. And so we see the emotional life of our Lord. And up to this point, all we've seen is Jesus' kingly side, his regal side, his powerful side. He's absolutely in charge. He’s in control. He knows what's happened with Lazarus. He’s a king.

But it's the tender Mary who just causes the rivers to flow from within. Mary, the one who sat at his feet, drank in his wisdom, the one who chose the better portion — remember, it wouldn't be taken from her — that Mary, the one who anointed him. But this time I think she's so devastated by Lazarus' death and Jesus' inexplicable delay that when Martha went out to see Jesus, she couldn't come yet. Wasn't ready. So Jesus has to specifically call her by name. He knows his sheep, and he calls them by name. “The teacher is asking for you,” and she gets up and comes. And when she gets there, verse 32, “she fell at his feet and said, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’” Same thing Martha said. “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.” Mary's anguished statement just opened up the Lord's heart and his emotions begin to flow — I wanna say freely, but also deeply. Some of it's absolutely hidden, and we wouldn't know about it except that John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, told us what he was really feeling. 

Look what it says, Jesus, in verse 33 “was deeply moved in spirit.” The Greek phrase used there is one of rage. Rage! But it's got a prefix that implies it's totally inward, like an inward-focused rage. So there's this absolute rage within him, like a subterranean river that's not visible, and John puts also the words after that, "He's raging within himself in his spirit." So we get it, it's not clearly displayed. If you've been standing there, you wouldn't see it fully. You'd see something. And then he adds another verb, “and troubled.” And so that's like a stormy sea, it’s like the churning tossing sea. That’s Jesus at that moment, rage and billowing, foaming, churning sea. But it's within himself.

What is he so angry about? If you've been there standing near him, you would have seen some emotions, maybe some twitches on his face or something in his body, but you would have seen less than the tip of the iceberg. This rage of Jesus is not directed at any person, not at all. He’s not angry at Mary, he's not angry at Martha, he's not angry at all the Jews that have assembled to mourn with them.

What then? Well, go back to what Jesus said a moment ago, "I am the resurrection and I am life." So how is he toward death? He hates it with a hatred we can't even measure. Death is really, to some degree, his personal enemy. But God in his wisdom has ordained that after Christ's resurrection from the dead, and after his ascension to heaven, and after he passes through the heavenly realms, he would sit at God's right hand until all of his enemies would be made a foot stool for his feet. And the last enemy to be conquered will be death.

In the meantime, we have 20 centuries of funerals. It's like he would like to rip death apart right there and then, but he can't do it. He’s held back by the father's wise and sovereign plan. And he knows he's not gonna show up at each one of those funerals and raise the individual up. And by the way, if you got your wish and that happened, would the individual be happy to come back? Would they wanna leave heaven and come back and be with you and alleviate your earthly misery? They won't come to us, we're gonna go to them. Amen, hallelujah. God is wise, but he also cares about our feelings. 

And God the Father has willed that the wages of sin is death. He willed that back from the beginning, in the garden of Eden, that if you eat from that tree, you will die. And through the sin of one man, Adam, death entered the world. This is the just penalty of God for our sins, but how deeply Jesus yearns to end death's vicious reign right then. But what you do see is you see tears. Look at Verse 34, ‘“Where have you laid him?’ he asked. ‘Come and see, Lord,’ they replied. Jesus wept.” Shortest Verse in the Bible, the most stunning. There he is, and these tears are coming down.

And yet there's more questions about Jesus. Verse 36, “…the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’” So weeping showed that he loved them, but why didn't he come? Why didn't he heal? He did that blind man, that was incredible. He could have done this, just probably has a fever or something. Why couldn't he heal him? And so there's still questions. 

And honestly, the promise that he made in Verse 25-26 don't mean anything if he doesn't have the power to do it. And so he wants to put that power on display. So we see the supernatural power of Jesus, verse 38-44. Jesus is again deeply moved in spirit, same word, that rage is inside, he comes to the tomb. It’s like, "Here I am, and I'm facing my enemy.” And it's a cave with a stone laid across the entrance, the very same setup that he will display his own resurrection victory over in a very short time.

And he gives the command, ‘“Take away the stone,’ he said. ‘But Lord,’ said Martha, the sister of the dead man, ‘by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.’ Now, this is Martha, this is us. You're up, you're down. Great moment in verse 27, not so great here. But isn't that real? You go through wrenching sorrow and you'll have your high times and your low times, just like you're a little rowboat on a stormy sea. And so she's at a low point here, worried about the odor. But she doesn't really realize who Jesus is and what he's about to do and no bad odor is gonna stop what he's about to do. And so he prays, at that point, a simple, powerful prayer. They move the stone, and then Jesus looks up to the father and says, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” Jesus said earlier in John 5:19, "I can do nothing apart from the father.” Apart from the Father, the Son does nothing. He only does what he sees the Father doing. He wants them to know that it's the Father who's gonna be raising Lazarus, and he does it by this simple prayer.

And do you see the child like confidence of Jesus in his prayer? It’s not an ornate or elaborate prayer, just "Father, I thank you that you heard me. I know that you always hear me. But I'm praying it for all these people standing around listening to me.” And I feel like I'm part of them. I’m just standing there and I'm listening to Jesus pray and just a simple confidence as he looks up to the Father. And then he cries out, “Lazarus, come forth!” with a loud voice. The power of Jesus. And with the words comes a corresponding supernatural power that only Christ possesses. With the words comes the power to obey, and he rises up in the tomb and comes alive. 

Now, we have standing in front of us, as I told you a few minutes ago, the searching question of Jesus. “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.’” An assertion, “I am the resurrection and the life,” a double promise, and then a searching question. So I'm asking you now, on behalf of God, on behalf of Christ, do you believe this? Do you believe this? I believe there are probably many guests here that don't usually go to church. I just wanna stand and ask, do you believe that Jesus died for your sins? 

All you have to do, it says in Romans 10: “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and if you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” That's all you have to do. You don't have to do any good works, you don't have to walk forward or backward or sideways in the sanctuary, you don't have to sign a card. All you have to do is quiet your mind, your heart, look upward in your mind and say to God you have violated his laws, you deserve to die. But because Jesus died in your place, you're not going to die. You trust in Jesus as your Savior. That’s all you have to do, and if you believe that, you will be saved.

If you're already a Christian, you did that years ago. Are you deriving benefit from that promise right now? Tomorrow we're going to go to Lorraine Geer's funeral, and I'm praying, and I know that Tom — what a strong faith this brother has and his whole family, just a beautiful display of faith — and they are not gonna be grieving like those who have no hope. They are going to believe — they do believe — in the resurrection from the dead, including Lorraine and including themselves. And so we have to derive hope from the fact that some day death will be no more, and he's gonna wipe every tear from our eyes and there'll be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain.

Thirdly, we need to be co-laborers with Jesus. Alright? Jesus gives us jobs to do. Alright? Like in the account, “Roll away the stone.” Could Jesus have rolled away the stone? “Oh, stone be rolled away.” Sure, he could do that. But he wanted them to do it. And so before Lazarus is even resurrected from the dead, there's work to be done. There is a spiritual resurrection that needs to happen in lost people. They are dead in their transgressions and sins. We have, as witnesses, a job to do before they're resurrected. Our job is to share the Gospel with them. Our job is to speak the words of the Gospel. They have no power whatsoever apart from the Holy Spirit, but we have a role to play to speak the words of the Gospel. And Jesus then will speak through the Holy Spirit and raise the dead as they hear the Gospel. Our job is to roll away the stone. Our job is to work leading people to Christ, but it's only God that can do it. 

And then after they come to life, we have a job to do, remember? Take off the grave clothes and let him go. And to me, that's just the ministry of teaching them to obey everything they have commanded, leave aside the old dead way of life, and get rid of all those wicked garments and filthy patterns and walk in newness of life. We have a job to do to unwrap the recently alive through discipleship. Let's do our job.

Close with me, if you would, in prayer. Father, thank you for the celebration that we've had today of Christ's resurrection from the dead. I thank you so much for the testimony we have of your power to bring joy even in the face of death, and we've seen so many godly men and women that have grieved, filled with hope, knowing that the resurrection is real and powerful. Father, I do pray that You'd help us to do the works you've given us to do, we can't raise the dead spiritually, we can't raise the dead physically, but we can do the task you've assigned to us. Help us to be faithful to share the gospel. And then faithful ones, those have responded and they're walking now in newness of life, to disciple and train them. Thank you for this day of celebration. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on Revelation 21:9-21. The main subject of the sermon is how believers will remember the great stories of God's work in the Church throughout history.

Why did God make the universe? Scripture reveals the answer: for the display of his glory. And why did God create man in his own image, in his own likeness, male and female? Again, for the display of His glory. And why did God permit man to fall into sin? Ultimately, for the display of his glory. Why did God then work an unfolding story of redemption through the Jewish nation in the Old Covenant, and then through the church for the last 20 centuries? For the display of his glory. Why did God send His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, into the world to live a sinless life and to die an atoning death on the cross? And why did God raise him from the dead on the third day and have him ascend to Heaven and seat him at the right hand in the heavenly realms? And why did he pour out his Holy Spirit on the church? For the ultimate display of his glory.

It is not easy to understand what the glory of God means, but it includes an aspect of light, of display, and of attributes. God’s glory is the radiant display of His attributes or perfections. His glory reveals what kind of God He is. It is put on radiant display so we might see how great and magnificent He is. In Revelation 21, we come to the final eternal display of the glory of God in the perfection of the church, the people of God.

A number of years ago, when my son Calvin and I were in Prague, we visited St. Vitus’ Cathedral. Construction began in the year 1344 and took over six centuries to finish. One of the most captivating things in medieval cathedrals such as St. Vitus are the stained glass windows, these radiant multi-colored displays. They were designed by the architects of the Middle Ages to be situated to take the morning sunlight in through one set of windows and the late evening sunlight through another set of windows. The vignettes depict individuals throughout history, intended to teach a lesson.

The little colored bits of glasswork together in an amazing artistic display. The cooperation between the sunlight and the colored pieces of glass yields an incredible picture. The stone structure would be a cold mausoleum if not for the light streaming in through these windows. The artistry of it gives a picture of the glory of God in the people of God throughout various eras of church history. I learned in my research on the history of cathedrals, and of stained glass windows in particular, about a monk in France who was meditating on the very text of Scripture that is in front of us now, Revelation 21. He thought that colored pieces of glass and windows and natural light would be a way to depict this marvelous passage. The whole thing started as a display, a foretaste of the new Jerusalem and the multi-colored glory that we will see when we get there.

This morning’s sermon is part two of last week’s sermon based on the concept of heavenly memories. Last week, we paid the price for the positivity of this morning’s concept. The idea that there will be perfect memory in Heaven might be a bit off-putting for some of us who do not want to think about our sufferings and our sins. But I do believe that our memory of our earthly life will be perfect in Heaven.

My thesis is that God will be in Heaven displaying, in amazing detail, his glory in putting the bride of Christ, the Church, together. This is the most glorious thing that God has ever done in history. It is far greater than the natural glory of creation. I believe that a great part of our heavenly celebration will be going back over history, but with the full understanding of the heavenly perspective of what God did by his sovereign power and in his sovereign grace, in his wisdom to put together the bride of Jesus Christ.

We will speculate together what that will be like, based on rock solid Scripture and exegesis, but with the sanctified use of imagination, staying as close to the text as possible. Being there in person will be better than holding giant history books on our laps to read starting with chapter one, page one. But I cannot say one way or another exactly how it will unfold. It is possible that we may be able to travel in visions of the Spirit backward and forward in time, as John did in this text. Or as the prophet Ezekiel did when he was in exile in Babylon. Ezekiel 40:1-2 says, “In the twenty-fifth year of our exile, at the beginning of the year, on the tenth of the month, in the fourteenth year after the fall of the city — on that very day the hand of the LORD was upon me and he took me there. In visions of God he took me to the land of Israel and set me on a very high mountain, on whose south side were some buildings that looked like a city.”

We see the same thing in our text in Revelation. The Apostle John was in exile on the island of Patmos, a small rocky island off the coast of modern-day Turkey. He did not leave the island, but his mind was filled with light and vision through the power of the Holy Spirit. Revelation 21:9-11 says, “One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, [thus my basic concept — the New Jerusalem, the bride of the Lamb, will be radiating with the glory of God in Christ] and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.” God is eternal. Past, present, and future are equally vividly before Him. He is not locked in to any moment in time. He is present to events that happened, from our perspective, a thousand years ago. In the same way, he is present to events that will happen, from our perspective, a thousand years from now, because he is an eternal God. He will be able to fill the inhabitants of the New Jerusalem with a visionary spirit, to take us back in time and see what God did to put the church of Jesus Christ together.

I have never used virtual reality goggles; it is likely that I never will. Whoever has them on may be having a great time with the things he is seeing, but people who are looking at the person do not see the same things. This is not that. Instead, we will partake of visions, which will fill our minds and hearts through the Spirit, of what God did to save each of us. We will study the vast, complex, intricate plans of God in leading all the elect to Christ. We will see and fully understand the price that was paid in Christ's blood, and also the blood of martyrs, and will be able to apply that message perfectly.

One subject that many of us do not enjoy that we will all thoroughly enjoy in the New Heaven, New Earth is science. We will explore what God has made in the New Heaven and New Earth. “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” [Habakkuk 2:14] We will be immersed in the study of natural science. We will see what God has done in making the new world.

Another subject that many do not enjoy now is history, but we will enjoy it and be immersed in it. Today, we will be focusing on our knowledge of history in the New Heaven and New Earth. A large part of God’s glory in Heaven will be going back over what he did throughout redemptive history to assemble the Church of Christ. I will root this idea in twelve passages of Scripture. 

According to Revelation 21:9-21, the New Jerusalem will be a radiantly glorious city, made up of the people of God redeemed from every tribe and language and people and nation on earth, and spread out over every era of church history. The gates of the new Jerusalem are listed by the names of the actual tribes of Israel. There is a history surrounding those names. The foundation stones of the new Jerusalem are the names of actual people as well, the twelve Apostles of the Lamb. Their histories are woven into the very structure and the gates of the place. Without the history, it will mean nothing.

Jesus, in Matthew 8:11, said, “…many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” Imagine if we had total amnesia, no history trails in our minds, all simply radiantly glorious beings with no memory. We would meet Abraham and he would just be another radiantly glorious being that we will share a meal with. Names do not matter if there is no history behind the name. It makes no sense. Abraham is Abraham because of his story. Isaac is Isaac because of his story. Jacob had his own story. And so on. These are real people who lived real lives. Real things happened, and God showed them real grace for their sins. He used their gifts in a real way to build His kingdom.

Think, for example, about the massive pearls that are the gates. Pearls come from the suffering of the oyster, from an irritation, like a grain of sand in the shell. The pearl builds layer upon layer of protection, and then it is radiant and glorious. There is a mingling of suffering and glory in those gates of pearl. Their stories contain layer upon layer, like the rings of a tree. They represent stories of brothers and sisters in Christ, not only Jesus, who suffered. Paul says in Colossians 1:24, “Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.” To apply the blood of Christ to each person, we need their stories of suffering. Each gate represents a massive amount of suffering, not only by Jesus, but by the people of God.

The architecture of the place is so often in Scripture woven together with the people. 1 Peter 2:5 calls us “living stones” that were quarried to some degree out of every tribe, language, people, and nation. We make up the place. Isaiah speaks of other structural members of the place. Isaiah 56:4-5 says, “For this is what the LORD says: "To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant — to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off.” The eunuchs who worship Jesus will be part of the walls of the place — a memorial, a name, a history that will never end.

Isaiah 60:7 says, “All Kedar's flocks will be gathered to you, the rams of Nebaioth will serve you; they will be accepted as offerings on my altar, and I will adorn my glorious temple.” Those are descendants of Ishmael, modern day Arabs, almost certainly all of them Muslims. Isaiah 60:13 says, “The glory of Lebanon will come to you, the pine, the fir and the cypress together, to adorn the place of my sanctuary; and I will glorify the place of my feet.” Again, the people adorn the structure; it is what makes it beautiful. Revelation 3:12 says, “To him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will he leave it. I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on him my new name.” The people are the pillars, the gates, the foundations, the walls — all translucent to shine, radiant glorious, with the glory of God. Every color of the spectrum is represented. And the gold, silver, and costly stones of 1 Corinthians 3, our rewards which survive the fire of judgment, will adorn the place and shine with the glory of God. To understand all this, there must be a history, a combination of all stories.

Revelation 7:9-10 says, “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: "Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” There is the redeemed from every tribe, language, people, and nation.

A few verses later, Revelation 7:13-17 says, “Then one of the elders asked me, ‘These in white robes — who are they, and where did they come from?’ [This important question supports my purpose — we want to know people’s history, their stories. How did they get here?] I answered, ‘Sir, you know.’ And he said, ‘These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore, “they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them. Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”’”

Woven into the answer of who this great multitude is (What are their names? What are their stories? Where did they come from?) is a sense of the suffering of this present world, the kinds of things that people endured, heat and thirst and hunger, and various forms of misery and deprivation. They will never experience those again. But they are remembered and they are part of the story of assembling this great multitude from every tribe, language, people, and nation.

The bride has made herself beautiful for the wedding. Revelation 19:6-8 says, “Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting: ‘Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.’ (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.)”

In other words, she got herself ready by doing righteous acts on earth, the good works that God prepared in advance for her to walk in. As she walked in those good works by the power of the Spirit, not for justification, not for the forgiveness of sins, but in service to God, in service to the Savior, she got herself ready for the wedding day. Much of her beauty and radiance comes from her own actions while she was serving Christ on earth. 

The Apostle John organized his Gospel around seven miraculous signs and seven extended teachings. At the end, in John 21:25, he says, “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” There is not enough space — the memory stick is too small. We would overwhelm the system, have too much data if everything were written down. It is a powerful and provocative statement. This present world is not big enough for all the books that would be written.

I do not think books are the best way anyway. I have been reading books my entire Christian life, and I still read them. But it is better to see it with our own eyes than read about it on the text. 1 Corinthians 13:12 confirms this, saying, “Now we see through a glass darkly; then, we shall see face-to-face.” Someday faith, which is based on the Word, will become sight, and that is better. That is why I advocate for a visionary history, not just a book history. John was saying that even if we wrote all the books, the whole world could not contain them.

Matthew 4:23-25 says, “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.” He must have done tens of thousands of healings during his ministry.

John devotes a whole chapter to just one healing, the man born blind. Next week on Easter Sunday we will focus on the resurrection of Lazarus, which also takes a whole chapter in the book of John. If we slowed down and told everyone’s miracle story, every single thing Jesus did, the whole world could not tell all the stories. I am interested in those stories, aren’t you? Radio host Paul Harvey called this “the rest of the story.” He would unfold interesting stories from current events or history. You did not know what direction he was taking the story, until at the end, there would be a mic-drop moment and he would say, “And now you know… the rest of the story.”

Tell me the rest of the story of the Syrophoenician woman in Matthew 15:26-28 with the demon-possessed daughter in the region of Tyre and Sidon. At first, Jesus did not answer her at all. She begged, “Lord, son of David, have mercy.” He did not answer, nothing. Finally, I picture her throwing herself in front of Jesus. He could not take another step until he dealt with her. He said to her, “‘It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs.’ 'Yes, Lord,’ she said, ‘but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ Then Jesus answered, ‘Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.’ And her daughter was healed from that very hour.” End of story? No. What happened then? Did they hug? Were there tears coming down their faces? Were they eventually part of the church there in Tyre that Paul visited in the book of Acts? I want to know the rest of her story. I think you do too.

What about the demoniac of the Gadarenes? This guy was tearing off his clothes, breaking chains, howling at the moon. He had 5000 demons inside of him, a legion of demons. Jesus healed him with a word. Luke 8:38-39 says, “The man from whom the demons had gone out begged to go with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, ‘Return home and tell how much God has done for you.’ So the man went away and told all over town how much Jesus had done for him.” I want to know the story of that man’s life, how effective he was as an evangelist.

Acts 1:1-2 says, “In my former book [the Gospel of Luke], Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen.” I love that word, began. We call it the Book of Acts, or the Acts of the Apostles, but it is the acts of Jesus through the Holy Spirit, through the Apostles and through the church. Jesus has more actions to do, more works done by the Spirit through his people.

We were dead in our transgressions and sins. We were in Satan’s dark kingdom. We could not break through, but God showed us mercy in sending Christ. He made us alive with Christ, and he raised us up with Christ. He seated us with Christ in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus “in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” Is that for just some of the saved? No, it is for everybody. He wants to show the greatness of his grace in our lives. In the coming ages, he will show it. We will not only read about it, we will see it, how gracious God was to save sinners like you and me.

Matthew 26 tells of a woman who anointed Jesus with very costly perfume. The aroma of the perfume filled the house. All the disciples, especially Judas, were offended by how much money was poured out on the ground — a year’s wages. They were indignant with her, and with Jesus for allowing it. Jesus said she was doing a beautiful thing, preparing him for his burial. Then he said something about her. Matthew 26:13 says, “I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” That is incredibly powerful. So we are done talking about her once we get to Heaven or can we keep talking about her? I want to meet her.

How about the widow who put in the two copper coins? Mark 12:43-44: “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything — all she had to live on.” You know what that tells you? Much of history is made up of obscure people whose actions are noted by nobody. Nobody knew what the coins did, nobody ever saw them, they will never make the pages of history. But Jesus sees and he says, “That person that day served me better than anybody else.” We would have no way of knowing if Jesus had not highlighted the poor widow and talked about it.

In the Psalms, there are many exhortations or promises that the righteous make to declare in the great assembly what God has done for them. This is a very common feature in the Psalms. For example, Psalm 22 begins with the words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and ends with a testimony of people from all over the world in the great assembly.

Psalm 22:25-29 says, “From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly; before those who fear you will I fulfill my vows. The poor will eat and be satisfied; they who seek the LORD will praise him — may your hearts live forever! All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him, for dominion belongs to the LORD and he rules over the nations. All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him — those who cannot keep themselves alive.” All of those who were resurrected up out of the dust will be assembled, and in the great assembly, we will give our theme of praise to God for saving us.

Psalm 22:16 says, “They pierce my hands and feet.” The psalm is all about the crucifixion of Jesus, but from his crucifixion comes a multitude from all over the world who will assemble to tell how great was God’s mercy to save them.

We get the same thing in Psalm 40:9-10: “I proclaim righteousness in the great assembly; I do not seal my lips, as you know, O LORD. I do not hide your righteousness in my heart; I speak of your faithfulness and salvation. I do not conceal your love and your truth from the great assembly.” In other words, I will stand in front of this multitude to tell my story of how good God is to me. You may think, “I do not like public speaking.” We will be so free of prideful self-concern that all we will care about is to tell our stories about what God did in our lives.

Psalm 107 tells of vignettes of four different sets of people in dire need: a group lost in the desert who cannot find their way out; a sick person drawing near to the gates of death because of a fatal illness; a group arrested, in chains in dungeons; and a group on the heaving deck of a ship in the midst of a terrible storm. In all four cases, it says, “Let them cry out to the Lord and he will deliver them and let them give thanks and praise to God in the great assembly.” Psalm 107:31-32 ends, “Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men. Let them exalt him in the assembly of the people and praise him in the council of the elders.” Amen. We will each get to get up and say, “God has been good to me. He has saved me, and relieved me, and healed me.”

1 Peter 2:9 says, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” When do we get to do that? It starts now and we can do it every day. But it will be even better when we get to Heaven as a royal priesthood, to declare the praises of the one who rescued us. That will be heavenly worship and heavenly praise.

Hebrews 11 presents a great Hall of Faith. Many great stories of church history are told, great men and women of faith and all the things that they did. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the patriarchs, Sarah. At a certain point the author says, “I have much more to tell."

Hebrews 11:32-38 summarizes, “And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets —  who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated —  of whom the world was not worthy — wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.”

The author is saying, “I have a lot more to say about these people, but time will fail me.” We do not have enough time to go through the details. But in Heaven, time will not fail us. We will be able to tell these stories, and they will be radiant and glorious.

What about the genealogies? How many of you would say 1 Chronicles is your favorite book in the Bible? I will never preach an expository sermon series through 1 Chronicles verse by verse. What would I say about the sons of Dan or the sons of Naphtali that has not been said already? I know nothing about them. In my study Bible cross-references, there is nothing there, because we do not know anything about these people. They are obscure, but they are in the Bible, and God is provocatively saying that even if we are obscure, like 99.99% of His people have been, He knows us, our names and our stories, and there will come a time when we will be able to tell our stories.

What about David’s mighty men, famous in their era? We get a little snapshot of how mighty they were. 1 Chronicles 11:22-24 says, “Benaiah son of Jehoiada was a valiant fighter from Kabzeel, who performed great exploits. He struck down two of Moab's best men. He also went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion. [I want a replay of that; I want to watch that battle.] And he struck down an Egyptian who was seven and a half feet tall. Although the Egyptian had a spear like a weaver’s rod in his hand, Benaiah went against him with a club. He snatched the spear from the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with his own spear. Such were the exploits of Benaiah son of Jehoiada; he too was as famous as the three mighty men.” That list in the Bible is provocative, saying there are many valiant acts, some of them not so famous, some of them humble cups of cold water given by a woman or a man to some servant to keep them going. They will never lose their reward and their stories will be told. 

Proverbs 31 says, “A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth is far more than rubies.” Then it unfolds all of the valor and honor in being a godly wife and a godly mother.

I have conducted many funerals of women whose families said she was a Proverbs 31 woman, and wanted that to be part of the funeral to honor their loved one. The last word on the godly wife, Proverbs 31:31, says, “Give her the reward she has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gates.” The gates were the gates of Jerusalem where official business was transacted. Earlier in Proverbs 31, it says her husband takes the seat of honor at the gates. Because of her work in his life, he has become prominent in the community. But now it is her turn to be recognized at the gates. By far the most important rewards will be vertical rewards from God, infinitely more important than anything horizontal, but there will be a horizontal component to the rewards for this godly wife and mother, through all that she did to keep her family clothed and well-fed and prayed for, that nobody ever saw. She will get her chance to be rewarded and honored in Heaven.

Finally, the new Jerusalem will be translucent. The light will go right through her. The glory of God will shine through her, and all of these righteous acts that we have done that we will go back over, we will show them because they display the glory of God in our lives. John 3:20-21 says, “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” We come into the spotlight, the time of focus, and we are able to take our works and put them on display so that God may be glorified through what we did. As Jesus said, “…let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” All of these good deeds, these works, this history, is for the glory of God. Those are twelve indications from the Bible that we will review history in Heaven.

We will meet some incredible heroes and heroines in Heaven, and we will find some hidden moments in history that will be thrilling. We will get to know the great names, Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, John Bunyan, Adoniram and Nancy Judson, Jim and Elisabeth Elliot. They are our brothers and sisters. We are part of an incredible family, a royal lineage of men and women of God.

There will also be many obscure people as well. It will be great to meet all of the martyrs involved in spreading the Gospel throughout the Roman Empire before Constantine, to get to know these men and women who laid down their lives. Of them it was said, “The blood of martyrs is seed for the church.” We will find out how they were willing to lay down their lives. Imagine meeting a Roman procurator who condemned many of our brothers and sisters, but who little by little was worked on by their testimony and who himself crossed over and became a Christian, and was himself condemned to death. We could meet a person like that.

Or imagine a humble monk copying Scripture in an Irish monastery when the Vikings invaded. He was butchered, but one of the Vikings, part of that marauding band, himself later came to Christ through testimony and witness. Imagine the monk and the Viking sitting down at table in the kingdom of Heaven and feasting. Or imagine an unknown woman who cared for victims of the Black Death while they were dying in the 14th century in a city in Germany, when everybody else who was able had run for their lives, but she did not. She stayed, taking care of their loathsome clothing, caring for them and giving them broth until she finally caught the disease and died.

Or a prayer warrior, a woman in the 19th century, not known by anybody except that she went in and closed the door and prayed to her Father unseen, prayed for Hudson Taylor’s mission in China, that it would be successful, and God answered her prayers, but we know nothing about her. And then getting to know Hudson Taylor to find out how he spread the gospel to the inland regions of China. No one is too great or too small to get to know in Heaven.

One of the best World War II movies I have seen is Tora! Tora! Tora! about the Pearl Harbor attack. It is very well done, accurately researched, not sensational, told from both sides of the story, but mostly from the Japanese side. The words “Tora! Tora! Tora!” were the code words spoken by the first wave of attack at Pearl Harbor. The word “tora” means tiger in Japanese. It meant the way was open to attack; there were no American planes over the harbor. Recently, I read an account that blew me away of the pilot who gave that command, Mitsuo Fuchida, who later came to Christ. It is incredible that he survived the war. Japanese pilots did not survive that war. They were kamikazes by the end, flying bomb-laden planes into American ships and troops and dying, because they were not well-trained pilots at the end, but this man was a national hero to the Japanese.

After the war, Fuchida met his former flight engineer whom he thought had died at the Battle of Midway, Kazuo Kanegasaki. He was overjoyed to see him alive. It turned out that Kanegasaki had been a prisoner in an American POW camp. Fuchida asked him if he was tortured and abused. Kanegasaki answered no, that an American woman named Peggy Covell had cared for their needs and nursed them when they were sick. She was incredibly kind. Her parents, who were missionaries in the Philippines, were killed by the Imperial Japanese army when they invaded the Philippines. Fuchida was amazed, could scarcely believe it. In Japanese culture, the murderers of your parents were your sworn enemies for life. You were to seek vengeance, not love them. Kanegasaki replied that as part of her Christian religion, Jesus told her to love her enemies. Fuchida had never heard anything like that. He was intrigued.

A few weeks later, he was entering the train station in downtown Tokyo in the Shibuya district. Someone was passing out Gospel tracts written by an American pilot named Jacob DeShazer who had flown in the Doolittle raid, the first bombing raid by American planes over Japan after Pearl Harbor in early 1942. These raid missions required them to launch stripped-down long-range land-based bombers off of an aircraft carrier. The distance was so far that they did not have enough fuel to make it back, so they hoped to crash land in China. Some did. Some crashed in the ocean. Jacob crashed on mainland Japan and survived the crash but was captured, imprisoned, and tortured for the rest of the war. While in prison, Jacob came to faith in Christ. His imprisonment was essential to his salvation, and the tract was his story. Fuchida read this and desired to find out more about Christianity. He tracked down one of the missionaries, got a Bible, read it and came to faith in Christ. He eventually became a traveling evangelist in Japan and in America and wrote a book called From Pearl Harbor to Calvary, available on Amazon.

How many stories like that are there? With a multitude greater than anyone could count, we will get to go over those stories. We will be free from the constraints that we are under now. The biggest constraint is within ourselves. We could not take a fraction of it all in now. We need breaks and endpoints. We have a vintage Webster dictionary from the 1840s. The word “boredom” is not in that edition. At that time, “bore” meant putting a hole in a board. People in 1830s America did not know the concept of boredom. They were fighting to survive. Boredom is a 20th century post-Industrial Revolution idea. Boredom is a weakness of body and mind and heart. Jesus said, “Consider the lilies of the field.” They are as beautiful now as they will be three years from now. Their beauty does not diminish, but we get weak as we consider it. We will be transformed from that. Also boredom is tied to selfishness and self-focus, self-love. If an area university had decided to honor you with its highest academic award, even though you do not go to that university, you would be interested in that story. I would be intrigued. I would think they had the wrong person, or perhaps “It’s about time they recognized me for my brilliance.” We are interested in our own stories. But if I tell you somebody you have never heard of will be honored, you would barely even raise an eyebrow because it is not you. In Heaven will be completely free from that. We will be God-focused and other-focused, and we will want to hear each other’s stories. 

Jonathan Edwards, in his classic sermon, Heaven is a World of Love, said, “There is undoubtedly an inconceivably pure, sweet, and fervent love between the saints in glory; and that love is in proportion to the perfection and amiableness of the objects beloved, and therefore it must necessarily cause delight in them when they see that the happiness and glory of others…” You will be free from yourself, over yourself by then and you will want to hear other people’s stories. 1 Corinthians 12:26 says, “…if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”  We will share each other’s honor.

The Lord will show not only what happened in the physical realm, but also what he did in the spiritual realm to make it all happen. Elisha and his servant were surrounded by the army of Arameans that came to capture him. When they went out to see the vast army, the servant was terrified, but Elisha was not alarmed. He said there were more on their own side than their enemies’. The servant was skeptical. Then Elisha prayed, “Lord, open his eyes” and the servant saw fiery chariots and an angelic army surrounding Elisha. Is it possible that there are moments like that throughout all of history in which Christ by his sovereign power pushed back the powers of darkness, like with the prince of the Persian kingdom, or to create an opening so that missionaries could go to a closed country? I want the whole story, to find out what God did in the spiritual realm as well as what we did in the physical realm.

Yearn for Heaven. Look forward to this heavenly world of light and joy that we are going to. The journey along the way has been orchestrated and ordained. It is a journey of suffering; therefore, rejoice in hope in the midst of your suffering. Realize it is part of the tapestry of grace that God is weaving. Do not complain or murmur against Him, or think He is being hard on you, but bear patiently the cross of grief and pain as you add your story to the glorious story of Heaven.

Hate the very concept of wasting your life. Do not waste time. Let’s add to the glorious story that we will see in Heaven. Church history, especially good biographies, that tell the stories of what godly men and women have done, are incredibly encouraging to your faith, so read them. Share your faith. This is Easter week, a week that opens the door to talk about the resurrection. Invite people to church. Give the card inside your bulletin to a non-Christian and invite them to come with you to church next week to hear about the resurrection of Christ. If you are not a Christian, the most important thing you can do is not so much meditate on this incredible heavenly glory to which we are going, but have inside yourself a yearning to be there. If you want to be in Heaven, first understand that you are a sinner. The law stands against you. We all have violated our conscience and have no hope of surviving Judgment Day, except that God sent His son Jesus Christ as a Savior for sinners like you and me. All you need to do to know that you will go to Heaven is trust in Jesus as your Lord and Savior right now. Repent of your sins, turn away from wickedness, turn to Christ and say, “Lord, please save me from my sins!” He will save you, and then your story as a redeemed Christian will start to unfold at that point. And what incredible works God has for you to do only He knows.

Close with me in prayer. Lord, we thank you for the things we have been able to cover today. We thank you for the glory that there is in the word of God. We thank you, oh Lord, for the indications we have in these various texts that Heaven is going to be spent going back over glorious actions that you have done in redeeming such a vast multitude from everywhere in the world. Lord, help us to be courageous in the meantime, to put sin to death by the Spirit and to advance the Gospel. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.

For a year or two, I have arisen early in the morning with Calvin and Daphne to read Courtney Anderson’s biography of Adoniram Judson, a missionary to Burma. The biography is called To the Golden Shore. The golden shore refers to Burma, which had a golden king. Everything there seemed to be made of gold, including the emperor’s palace. Those who went to the emperor to ask him for something fell at his golden feet. Imagery of gold permeated everything. So To the Golden Shore was an image that Courtney Anderson chose for the entire mission to Burma, but at the end of this biography, it had a different, higher meaning.

At the end, Anderson writes, “At 15 minutes after 4:00, on Friday afternoon, April 12th, 1850, Adoniram Judson reached his golden shore through more suffering than I can put into words. Very few people died as hard as he did, suffered physically as long as he did.” The golden shore was a symbol of how difficult it was for Judson to live his life to bring people to Christ. In a spiritual sense, he died at sea and finally reached his golden shore in his death.

Randy Alcorn, in his book, Heaven, opens with a powerful story, an illustration from 1952, of a long distance swimmer named Florence Chadwick, who did stunning things, including swimming the English Channel four times, twice each direction, setting the record for that long distance swim. She had a goal to swim from the Catalina Island off of the coast of California to the mainland. On the day of the swim, the weather was foggy and chilly, and she could hardly see the boats accompanying her. She swam and swam and swam for 15 hours. She begged, finally, to be taken out of the water along the way. Her mother, in one of the boats alongside, told her she was very close and not to give up. Finally, physically and emotionally exhausted, she stopped swimming and was pulled out. When she got onto the boat, she discovered that the shore was less than half a mile away, covered with fog. At a news conference the next day, she said, “All I could see was the fog. I think if I could have seen the shore, I would have made it.” Two months later, she succeeded. It was just as foggy, but she said, “I kept the mental image of the shoreline in my mind as I swam, and it enabled me to finish.”

Randy Alcorn, picking up on this, says, “Perhaps you’ve come to this book burdened, discouraged, depressed, or even traumatized. Perhaps your dreams—your marriage, career, or ambitions—have crumbled. Perhaps you’ve become cynical or have lost hope. A biblical understanding of the truth about Heaven can change all that. I pray this book will help you see the shore.” I am praying that the sermon series will help you see the shore. I yearn to give you a fuller scriptural view of the eternally glorious world that awaits all of us in Christ.

In contrast to Adoniram Judson, Stephen Hawking died this week at the age of 76. He was a brilliant physicist, cosmologist, atheist. He suffered all his adult life with Lou Gehrig’s disease, or ALS, confined to a wheelchair, and became a picture of a secular hope, of what the human spirit can overcome. He was a thoroughly secular man. His work was seeking a unified theory that would explain everything: Origins, destinations, and everything in between. That is what he sought with physics and with mathematics. His most famous statement about religion was: “I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers. That is a fairy tale for people afraid of the dark.” In that spirit, he died. It is an amazing insight in the way he looked at human life, that we are nothing more than biochemical machines with certain biochemical reactions in our brains, and when all that stops, then life ends. As brilliant as Stephen Hawking was, I have the joy and privilege this morning to contradict him based on Scripture — the word of God; based on faith in what the Lord has told us of the shore to which we are sailing.

For two weeks, we have been unfolding Revelation 21 and 22, the best, most careful description in the Bible of the world to which we are going. Revelation 21:1-3 says, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.’” What a magnificent vision of our future blessedness, of our future happiness; not a fairy tale for those afraid of the dark, but a reality to which we are moving.

It is beneficial to take the Scriptures as they are given, and extensively meditate on them. The Westminster theologians said, “The Word of God is not only what is printed on the page, but what can be logically deduced from the scripture.” In this way, we build a theology. I want us to have a theology of Heaven, but I do not want to go too far afield from the text. Amen. I do not want to be like the astronaut hundreds and hundreds of feet away from the Space Shuttle with a jet pack but no tether. I want to tether to the text, but I will do everything the text allows me to do.

Heaven will be far greater than anything we can imagine. Ephesians 3 says, concerning God, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or think.” The NIV, says “More than we can ask or imagine.” That works there, because Paul is talking about things that push the limits of what we can think; that is what imagination is about. We are thinking about what can be scarcely imagined. Ephesians 3:20-21: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

This morning, we will focus on Revelation 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.” We are commanded to meditate on heaven. Colossians 3 makes that plain. Revelation 1:3, regarding the whole book of Revelation, says, “Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.” Read these words and take them to heart. Ponder them. Cherish them.

The great Puritan preacher and theologian, Jonathan Edwards, focused on Heaven every day of his life. He said, “It becomes [or benefits] us to spend this life only as a journey toward heaven... to which we should subordinate all other concerns of life. Why should we labor for or set our hearts on anything else, but that which is our proper end and true happiness.” Every moment of your life should be seen as a journey toward Heaven, and everything should be subordinated to that.

After an extended detailed theological teaching and meditation on the resurrection body, Paul applies that to our practical Christian lives of service to God and to Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:58 says, “Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” That includes everything that God has equipped us to do in the body of Christ: specific spiritual gift ministry and all of the general duties that are part of the Christian life —intercessory prayer, evangelism and missions, holiness and all of those things. Stand firm, do not be moved by anything that happens to you, and give yourself fully to your labor in the Lord. Meditation on Heaven will do that.

False aberrant views of Heaven are rampant. Every false religion has a view of Heaven. Roman mythology has Elysium, a lush shaded meadow, like an outdoor park, with luscious fruits growing and athletic contests occurring. In Norse mythology, it is Valhalla, a feasting, banqueting hall, a place to drink and eat meat and celebrate valiant military victories with their god Odin. Radical Islam teaches a heavenly paradise for warriors who die in jihad, including 70 to 100 beautiful virgins with wide dark eyes. The blessed will recline on couches in a beautiful garden, like Eden, and enjoy sensual pleasures forever, including rivers of pure water, fresh milk and rivers of wine. Buddhism speaks of seven circles of heaven that are part of this present physical world, which are themselves temporary. The ultimate goal is Nirvana, which is nothingness, a drop in an endless sea — one loses his identity and ceases to exist. Native American tribes like the Lakota in North and South Dakota conceived of happy hunting grounds where one would continue life as a hunter and do very well.

All these conceptions of Heaven illustrate the truth of Ecclesiastes 3:11: “He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” All people have eternity in their hearts. We have a conception of the afterlife, the world that is coming. But Scripture reveals that we cannot rightly think about Heaven on our own. If left to our own unaided imaginations, we will think wrong thoughts. 1 Corinthians 2:9-10, a well-known verse, says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him…  [people stop there and miss context] but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.” Those who stop at verse 9 assume we cannot know what Heaven will be like, because we do not know what God has prepared for those who love Him. But God has revealed some of it to us by the Spirit. Yes, we see through a glass darkly, but we ought to take what the Spirit reveals in Scripture, and by the Spirit’s leading, through exegesis and good interpretation, try to understand.

This magnificent verse, Revelation 21:4, says, “‘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.” We are in the first world, the “old order of things”, now, but there is a second world coming. That is a more literal translation. The first things will have passed away. This old order of things, this present world, is filled with incalculable suffering and pain and misery — a river of sin and death. Adam sinned in the garden, and as Romans 5 says, in Adam we all sinned. Through Adam, we received the death penalty and a corrupt sin nature. But the text says that He will wipe every tear from our eyes. That is a powerful image to me of God’s intimate, relational comforting. With His own hand, He will wipe away our tears.

Think of all the tragic funerals throughout history. Think of infant mortality. Almost a million infants die every year. How do we measure the grief and tears that has brought to mothers and fathers for centuries? How much more the death of toddlers, when the child has wrapped his parents around his little finger and then they have to bury him? Few things would be more difficult and tragic in this life than burying a child.

There are also countless tears connected with suffering —tears cried by people in intense pain, like burn victims, or cancer victims, people in their final stages, with nothing to relieve their agony. Or tears connected with material loss, like when a house burns down. In Lexington, Massachusetts, at my first church after I came to Christ, there was a fire caused by electric lights on a tree. It was very tragic — a grandmother died of smoke inhalation, and they lost everything. We were there to try to help, but it was heartbreaking. Think about farmers who lose all their earthly wealth when hail or an early freeze comes and destroys their harvest, and they have to start over again, if it is even possible.

Think about tears cried by lonely people, such as single people who desire a spouse, tempted to think that no one will ever love them, feeling so lonely in this world. Even what we might consider trivial tears are noted by God. My tears as a 6-year-old learning to ride a bike were significant to me. I started the process by riding down a hill. It was great until I crashed into a teenager’s car. He was waxing it and buffing it; that was his baby, and he chased me through the woods. I cried tears of fear that day. 

There are also tears of bitter remorse over sin. Think about people who have ruined their marriages through sin, men or women, and they want to but cannot save it. They lament and weep, and there is nothing that can be done for it. There are tears cried by old people in nursing homes as they look at a photo album or something that brings back memories — the people in it are gone; that time is gone. They grieve the loss of an era.

Perhaps the most poignant in the sequence of redemptive history are tears that we will all likely cry on Judgment Day. This is hard for us to imagine, but when we give Christ an account of everything done in the body, good or bad, we who believe will not be condemned. We will not hear the words, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Though not condemned, we are not free from accountability. We will look Christ in the face and explain our lives, as it says that we will do in 2 Corinthians 5:10: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” When we see the portion of our lives that produced wood, hay and straw go up in flames, we will suffer loss and will feel emotions of regret and will weep. How sweet then will it be for Christ’s own hand to wipe away our tears and say, “No more. We are done. You will never weep over those things again.”

Closely connected with that is this next idea that there will be no more death. John Owen, the Puritan theologian, wrote a great work on the atoning work of Christ called The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. What a great title that is. When Jesus died and rose again, those two actions together destroyed death. But the victory that God the Father willed that Jesus would win over death was to be a long unfolding victory, not an instantaneous destruction of death. The Father said to the Son, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” [Psalm 110:1; Luke 20:42-43] And He says in 1 Corinthians 15:25-26 “Christ must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

He will destroy death. He will win. Death will be swallowed up in victory! For you basketball people, that is a 50-point win in the championship game. Christ will win a resounding victory over death, but not yet. That is why he wept at Lazarus’ tomb, out of compassion, because of the sorrow that death has caused over centuries of redemptive history,

Revelation 20:14 talks about the final end of death: “Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.” That is the death of death — no more death. The key to this is the resurrection body, as we have previously discussed. 1 Corinthians 15:50-52 says, “I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. [We cannot go to Heaven just as we are. We must leave behind this body of death and sin, praise be to God for that. Romans 7 says we will be delivered from this body of death.] Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed — in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”

Earlier in that chapter, in four couplets, Paul compared the body of death and the resurrection body — sown in weakness, raised in power; sown a perishable body, raised imperishable; sown in dishonor, raised in glory; sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body. Cling to those four adjectives. It will be an imperishable body. It will be a glorious body. We will shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father, radiating with the glory of God. It will be a powerful body. Isaiah 40 says, “You will run and not grow weary; you will walk and not be faint.” Amen. Limitless power coursing through our resurrection bodies.

And It will be a spiritual body. We do not fully know what that means, but we have some indication with the resurrection body of Jesus, which was doing different things than natural bodies — escaping wrapped grave clothes covered with sticky resinous substance; coming through the walls of the cave, or the heavy stone door, long before the women arrived when the angel moved the stone for them. Later, the disciples were in the upper room with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, and Jesus came and stood among them. Isn't that great? He told them, as he needed to, “Peace be with you.” They were overwhelmed with feelings of joy when they saw their Lord. He took food and ate it and said to Thomas, “Touch my hands and see”  because Thomas had said, “Unless I put my fingers in the nail marks, I will not believe.” Jesus is physical and yet somehow spiritual, and our bodies will be the same. 

All of us understand pain. Some of the worst pain in this life is mental and emotional, such as the anguish of depression and sorrow and grief and regret. Parents who have endured the pain of teenage suicide would choose physical pain rather than the emotional anguish they feel every time they remember their son or daughter, every time they see a photo, every time they walk into their room or see a stuffed animal that was in his or her crib. There is a kind of a therapeutic forgetfulness in this life so that we can move on. But what will we remember in Heaven about our lives here on earth? That is a question that has occupied me for over a decade — no pain, no grief, no mourning, no regret in Heaven. No psychological trauma, no anguish, no guilt. All those things are painful.

Whether or not we will have memory of the painful events in our lives, though, is a question on which some men that I respect are divided. John McArthur says to some degree, provisionally, there will not be memory of these things. He cites Isaiah 65:17-18: “Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy.” That is the New Jerusalem, New Heaven, New Earth. I understand Isaiah is saying the former things will not come to mind or be remembered. But it does not mean we forget. Many verses use that kind of language. We still remember the Red Sea crossing even though something greater has come. We treasure both the Red Sea crossing and the greater exodus that Jesus won. If we do not remember, we will not get to do that. This seems to be saying instead that the New Heaven, New Earth will be so great that any memories of the past life will be as nothing compared to it. McArthur is saying that he cannot imagine how we could remember the grief and misery and suffering of this life and not feel pain. His provision is partial amnesia or some kind of cleansing of the memory.

On the other end of the spectrum is John Piper. He says there will be both memories and sweet heavenly regrets. He wrote, “I want to live my short life on earth with as few regrets as possible. … When I think on these things, it makes me tremble at the prospect of living a trivial, self-serving, comfortable, middle-class, ordinary, untroubled American life. I can’t keep eternity out of my mind. Life is short and eternity is long. Very long. It is a long time to regret a wasted life. … Which raises the question: Is there regret in heaven? Can regret be part of the ever-increasing, unspeakable joy of the age to come, purchased by Jesus Christ? My answer is yes. I am aware of promises like Revelation 21:4, ‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’ But I don't think this rules out ‘tears of joy,’ and it may not rule out ‘regretful joy’.”

I respect both John Piper and John McArthur, but I disagree with both of them. Instead, I suggest that there will be perfect memory in heaven with no associated pain, mourning, or crying. Mourning is the inner psychological mental state, and crying is the action that comes out of that. Both are gone.

How is that even possible? I would answer, how could it be any other way? How could we celebrate the grace of God in Christ to a multitude greater than anyone could count if we do not remember anything about their lives, if we are not able to celebrate in detail God’s grace to specific sinners, how he worked to bring that person through many troubled waters to repentance and conversion, and then through sanctification to Heaven? I want that story in Heaven so that we can celebrate the beautiful diversity of the redeemed.

The thing we all likely worry about most on this topic is whether we will I remember our sins in Heaven. On a gut level, we all would hope the answer is “Of course not! Heaven is a happy place!” My response is, how will we celebrate the amazing grace of God without it? Think of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the day he woke up breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. Before that, he carried out those murderous threats by dragging off men and women to prison. When the Sanhedrin met, he cast his lot against those Christians, condemning them to death, consenting and delighting in their executions, including Stephen. On that particular day, he was traveling on the road to Damascus when Christ appeared to him and said, “‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ ‘I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting. Now, get up and go into the city and you'll be told what you must do.’” On the road to Damascus, he saw a part of the glory of the resurrected Christ and was transformed.

Did he forget what man he had been before that? Not at all. He writes in 1 Timothy 1:13-17: “Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners — of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.” [Will that display, which works to convert people like us, not also do very well in heaven? He ends with this beautiful doxology:] “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.” I do not see heavenly amnesia being a part of that. I think it is heavenly celebration of God’s grace to Saul of Tarsus.

Will David remember what happened with Uriah the Hittite? Yes. In Daniel 4, we can argue that Nebuchadnezzar was transformed and saved eternally. Will he remember that he was a megalomaniac pagan tyrant who used his authority to oppress the people he had conquered, even to the point of condemning all of his counselors to death if they could not tell him what his dream was? Will he remember throwing Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego into a fiery furnace, because they would not bow down to his golden idol? Will he remember in Heaven, when Daniel told him to renounce his wickedness, what that wickedness was? Yes. And all, in those memories, will give God the glory for their salvation.

Mary Magdalene will remember that she was inhabited with seven demons. The woman whom the Pharisees thought of as “sinful” wept over Jesus’ feet and washed his feet in her tears and dried them with her hair. Because Jesus forgave her abundantly, she poured out her love for him abundantly. There is a link between the two. That will work so beautifully in Heaven. The Samaritan woman whom Jesus met and saved at the well said, “I have no husband.” He responded, “You are right in saying you have no husband. In fact, you have had five husbands, and the man you are living with now is not your husband. What you said is quite true.” Do you think she will remember that whole story? I think she will.

I think the centurion who oversaw the crucifixion of Jesus is in Heaven. The centurions seem to do well in the New Testament — they are typically good guys. This centurion testified after Jesus died, when the earthquake and eerie darkness occurred, “Truly, this man was the Son of God.” That is the fruit of Jesus’ prayer before he died, “Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.” That was not a universalistic prayer of a high priest praying and hoping that some people would be forgiven. That was a specific high priestly prayer for one of his sheep who was about to cross over from death to life. “Father, forgive him. He does not know what he is doing.” Do you think in Heaven that centurion will know that he was the one who killed Jesus? I think so. And he will celebrate God’s grace to him for bringing him, a pagan Roman, to salvation.

Tertullian said, “The blood of martyrs is seed for the church.” Will the martyrs remember their suffering, their blood that was shed, and those who persecuted them? If some of the persecutors became brothers and sisters in Christ, then the blood of martyrs was a seed. Out of their bloody seed came new Christians who had persecuted them perhaps a day or a month or a year prior. Will those remember that they were persecutors? In Heaven, will John Newton remember his former profligate life, his wicked life, and all the people he enslaved as a slave trader?

Corrie ten Boom tells a story about an SS guard in one of the death camps she was in, where some of her family died. She met him later, and he was so filled with joy because he had come to faith in Christ. He wanted to shake her hand, but she could not reach out her hand because of the difficulty of memory. Is it possible that they will have full memory in Heaven, along with full, rich deep fellowship in Heaven?

Will Jim Elliot be able to spend eternity worshiping side by side with the Huaorani who killed him and his friends, and who were later led to Christ by his courageous wife, Elizabeth Elliot? I think they are already doing so, but it will be even better in the New Heaven, New Earth.

The tapestry of grace that God has ordained through His providence is woven through with various colors of thread, some dark, some light. The pattern does not make much sense to us now, as though we are looking at the backside with the jumble of knots when we consider the painful trials of life. But when we see the front side of the tapestry when we are in Heaven, in the presence of the beauty and the radiance of that place, we will rejoice.

Ephesians Chapter 2:6-7 is the best verse to prove and illustrate what I am saying. “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus in order that in the coming ages, he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” In the coming ages, He will show us how gracious He has been. Heavenly amnesia does not allow for that to happen. Forever, we will put on display just how gracious God was to us, and we will celebrate that with no mourning, no crying, no pain, but absolute joy and delight. While we live in this world, we need to feel all kinds of pain, physical and emotional and spiritual. We need to feel pain physically so that we will stop doing whatever we are doing. If you are burning your hand, you do not want to wait until you smell smoke. It is a grace and a gift from God to feel instantaneous pain to get you to move your hand away from that to avoid significant damage to your hand. In Heaven, we will not need any of that. If injury is even possible, we will experience instantaneous healing. The speculations are limitless.

But in this world, we need spiritual, emotional, psychological pain connected with our own sin. Pain enables us to “Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.” [James 4:9] We need to feel pain for your sin, because we are not finished being led astray by the world, the flesh and the devil. We are still in danger, and the pain keeps us from future sin. It enables us to genuinely repent and turn away from damaging patterns of life, so we will stop doing them. In Heaven, we will not need it. There will not be any world or flesh or devil, not the way we define the world as an alluring, enticing whore of Babylon. That is gone. The devil will be in the Lake of Fire. Our current flesh will be gone. We will have a resurrected nature, so we do not need grief or mourning or pain over our sin in Heaven. But if you do not feel it now, you are in great danger. It may be that you are not a Christian. There is a place for grief and sorrow over our sin now, but not in Heaven.

How can there be memory of our sins without any mourning? Think of it as having the stinger removed. 1 Corinthians 15:55 says, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” Death has been defanged by Jesus. The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. The law gets defanged for us. In Heaven, there will not be any law for us, only the moral beauty behind the law. We will not need to be commanded to love God with all of our hearts, because we will do so easily. We will not need to be commanded to love our neighbors as ourself. We will do so. We will not need the law, and there will not be any stinger embedded in the memories.

Psalm 30:5, 11-12 says, “Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning. … You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent.” We remember so we can celebrate what He has done to comfort us. We will remember all of our sorrow and sadness and the circumstances of how we came to Christ. I read recently about how John Wesley, before his conversion, was on a ship in a terrible hurricane. The sea was heaving, the waves were crashing over the deck, and the sails were being shredded. He was certain it was his last day on earth. A group of German Moravian Christians on the ship were singing and praising God. He knew, watching them, that he was not converted. Later, at a Moravian prayer meeting at Aldersgate, he found Christ. He pursued the Moravians because they had something he did not have. In later years, when he looked back at that storm, did he look on it as horrible and awful or as the instrument of God to bring him to salvation?

Do you think in Heaven Joni Eareckson Tada will remember that fateful day in 1967 when she dove off the bridge into the shallow Chesapeake Bay and snapped her spinal column? She will be in her resurrection body, and she will celebrate God’s grace. How could we understand her life apart from her circumstances, from which her ministry flowed in large part. It would not make any sense.

As a trustee of the International Mission Board, I get to interview missionaries. When we meet these folks, we find out how they came to Christ. With married couples, we get to find out how they met. About two months ago, we met a couple who met in college at a Christian ministry party. She said, “I met him, I didn't like him at all. Then I left the party and backed into his car, crushed it, so we met again and we got to know each other.” They were both laughing at that story. I can tell you it was not funny the night it happened, but they can laugh about it now. Take that and multiply it by infinity. That is what heavenly memories will be like — no sorrow at all, just joy of what God did, how He used our weakness and our sorrow and our sin and our smallness and our pettiness and overwhelmed it with grace and built this incredible church. We will celebrate all of it.

First and foremost, I yearn for everyone listening to my voice today to be there in that world where there is no more death or mourning or crying or pain. Hell is the exact opposite. The inhabitants of Hell swim in death forever — an eternal death. “The worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.” We cannot put into words what the pain and the mourning and the regret will be like; it will be far worse than we can imagine. I sometimes get a foretaste as I am sharing the gospel with people. I wish they could understand how much they will re-live that moment, if they do end up in Hell. They will go back to the moments they heard the gospel turned their back on it.

Adoniram Judson went to ask the emperor of Burma for religious tolerance in his nation. He somehow gained an audience with the golden ear, and he fell at the golden feet. He and his co-workers made their pitch, including sharing the Gospel. The emperor listened for a while and then stopped, dropped the tract on the ground, stepped on it and walked out of the room. Judson never saw the emperor again. I asked my kids, as I was reading that to my them, “Do you understand how that moment was exactly the opposite of what it appeared?” It appeared that this American missionary was groveling on the ground begging for a favor from the mighty emperor, but what was actually happening was that an emissary of the true Emperor of the universe was there offering this sinner a chance at amnesty from all of his sins so that he would spend eternity on the true golden shore.

Satan is so deceptive to obscure what is really happening. I am begging all of you who know that you are on the outside looking in. Now, today is the day of forgiveness, the day of salvation. I, an emissary of the King, am begging you, be reconciled to God.

If you are already reconciled and you are a Christian, how shall you now live? Pursue the two journeys. Internally, grow in holiness. Put sin to death, because some day you will be pure and holy. Externally, spread the Gospel. Talk to people this week, invite them to church, invite them to faith in Christ, invite them into a conversation about this eternal world to which we are going. How many people surround us every day with Stephen Hawking’s atheistic mentality? Tell them the truth while there is still time.

Close with me in prayer.

Father, thank you for the time that we have had today to celebrate your grace and your goodness, thank you for my friend Rob Hatcher, for the way I have been able to watch his family love on him and care for him, and for the grace you have shown him, and for the privilege of being part of that in a small way. He represents a multitude greater than anyone could count, and we will be celebrating your incredible working, so diverse, so detailed in bringing people to Christ. I cannot wait. Lord, give us joy, give us energy, give us the ability to stand firm and let nothing move us and be abounding in the work and the labor of the Lord. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

In 2010, Tyndale House published a book that took our nation by storm, called The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven: A True Story. It related the story of Alex Malarkey’s experience when he was six years old, after a terrible traffic accident in 2004. According to his own account, Alex and his father Kevin were involved in a terrible car crash on a rural highway in Pennsylvania. Alex said he saw his father fly out of the window of the car only to be caught by an angel and carried to safety. He then related his own experience after he had been life-flighted by a helicopter to a hospital. He states he was carried by an angel through the gates of Heaven, which he described as tall, to be met by Jesus, who appeared out of a hole in Heaven. After he regained consciousness, he told his family this account and his father helped him write down his near death experience. Tyndale House published it, promoting it as “a supernatural encounter that will give you new insights into heaven, angels and hearing the voice of God.”

The book sold over a million copies, which shows the intense interest that people have about Heaven. Unfortunately, despite the title, A True Story, it was not true at all. In the year 2012, Alex described his own book as one of the most deceptive books ever published. Alex wrote in a confession of sorts, “I did not die. I did not go to heaven. I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. When I made the claims that I did, I had never read the Bible. People have profited from lies and they continue to profit from lies. They should read the Bible, which is enough. The Bible is the only source of truth. Anything written by man cannot be infallible.” The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven is one of many books in what has become known as the heavenly tourism genre — books by people who claim to have had visions of heaven and can give us information about what we will experience after we die.

The 2004 book, 90 Minutes In Heaven by Don Piper spent over five years on the New York Times Best Seller List and sold over 6 million copies. Even more impressive is Todd Burpo’s account of his three-year-old son Colton’s experience. That book, called Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back, sold over 10 million copies and was made into a movie that grossed over $101 million at the box office. That story is particularly engrossing because Colton somehow acquired information about an unborn sister that was miscarried by his mother in 1998 and a great-grandfather who had died 30 years before Colton was born. This seemingly supernatural information gave Colton’s account spiritual authority to many people, which explains the runaway sales of the book and the interest in the movie.

Pastor John MacArthur in California is deeply concerned about all of these kinds of stories. He said, “It may be quite fascinating to read these intricately detailed accounts of people who claim to have come back from heaven, but that hobby is as dangerous as it is seductive. Readers not only get a twisted, unbiblical picture of heaven from these tall tales, they also imbibe a subjective, superstitious, shallow brand of spirituality. There is no reason to believe anyone who claims to have gone to heaven and returned. Studying mystical accounts of supposed journeys into the afterlife yields nothing but confusion, contradiction, false hope, bad doctrine, and a host of similar evils.” I take it John MacArthur like any book of that genre.

The amazing popularity of these books shows the intense interest we all have in knowing more about Heaven. The controversy that has followed them, however, shows the danger inherent in these accounts and, as Alex said, seeking information about Heaven from any place other than the Bible. That is why the last two chapters of the Bible that we are studying are so powerful. In the book of Revelation, the Apostle John records spiritual visions that God gave him through the power of the Holy Spirit, in which he ascended in the Spirit into the heavenly realms and saw visions of heaven and predictions of the future. Revelation 1:1-2 says, “The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testifies to everything he saw — that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.”

A few chapters later in Revelation 4:1-2, John writes, “After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice that I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, ‘Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.’ At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it.”

Both of these passages say that John was given a revelation from God of the future and of the heavenly realms. Revelation 21 and 22 contain the final visions that God gave to John on the island of Patmos (and the final visions of the Bible), visions of the heavenly world to which Christians are going. God commanded John to write down those visions for us to read. Verse 5 says, “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’” The words committed to the apostle John are trustworthy; they are words on which we can build our lives, the hopes of our souls. They are trustworthy and true — not lies, not deceptions. John was commanded through the Holy Spirit to write them down for the generations, twenty centuries of Christians who would read these accounts.

In giving him this responsibility, God dealt differently with John than he did with the Apostle Paul. In 2 Corinthians 12:2-4, Paul said, “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know — God knows. And I know that this man — whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows — was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.” Paul says that the things he saw when he was caught up to the third heaven were inexpressible — no words could express them accurately; and were not permitted to be revealed — he was not even allowed to try to put them into words. God had planned to entrust that responsibility to John decades later.

Whatever you may think about the heavenly tourism books, whether you agree or disagree with John McArthur, you may enjoy reading them. But this book of Revelation, and specifically the last two chapters, are the only God-approved Spirit-inspired description of the magnificent future world to which we Christians are going, and they are worthy of our careful study because they are trustworthy and true.

Verse 4, which I will focus on in depth next week, is magnificent, giving us a look into the world to which we are going, where there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. We will swim in that concept next week to try to understand what that will mean for us.

God has commanded us to meditate on heaven, to fill our minds and our hearts with things above, things to come. “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you [Christians] died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” [Colossians 3:1-4]

The greater our suffering, the sweeter will be our meditations about heaven. Jesus said in Matthew 5:11-12, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Our brothers and sisters in restricted countries are suffering for the gospel, incarcerated for their faith. We are to remember them, according to Hebrews, as if we were in prison with them. We should especially pray for the persecuted church that God would give them robust meditations on their heavenly life, their heavenly rewards, that they would rejoice and be glad to suffer for his name.

We noted that our present affluent comfortable life may make our meditations on heaven less sweet and not as urgent.

We noted the many benefits of meditating on and yearning strongly for Heaven. It proves that where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also. It develops Christian character — perseverance, boldness, courage, an otherworldly aspect to our lives. It glorifies God — Psalm 73:25 says, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire beside you.” It makes all of life God-centered because heaven is God-centered; the more we meditate on that place, the more God-centered we will become, and God will be our treasure and our pleasure.

Meditating on and yearning strongly for Heaven helps us to realize how insignificant our life circumstances really are, whether good or bad. Accolades and rewards and treasures of this life or suffering that we endure shrink into insignificance, enabling us to conclude that our suffering is, as Paul said [Romans 8:18, 2 Corinthians 4:17], “not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” and “light and momentary” compared to eternity.

Meditating on Heaven results in holiness. Both Paul and John link meditating on Heaven to putting sin to death and purifying ourselves just as He is pure, resulting in yearning for holiness.

Meditating on Heaven drives missions and evangelism, helping us to live otherworldly lives, not caring what we have in this life. It enables some to leave behind the comforts of a particular lifestyle to go to places where they will be less comfortable or even actively persecuted because they are living for Heaven. Our hope in heaven is very attractive to people who are without hope and without God in the world. It drives the external journey and enables us to vigorously serve God right to the end because we know that our labour in the Lord is not in vain, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:58.

Then we started with Revelation 21:1: “Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth’, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…” Here, the Bible comes full circle from Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” It ends with this incredibly hopeful statement that completes God’s intention in making a physical universe as a manifestation of his love and glory. He did not need a physical universe, he wanted it. So He created the first heaven and the first earth, which he will remove in the end. The first heaven and the first earth will pass away, and He will bring in a new heaven and a new earth. The use of the same words shows that there will be continuity in the form of a resurrected earth — there will be a link to this present world, but it will be far greater and more glorious.

In that physical spiritual world, we will have the delight of exploring, like Lewis and Clark or the explorers who sailed to the new world. At that point, Habakkuk 2:14 says, “…the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” We will study, like scientists and explorers, what God has made in the new heaven and the new earth, to celebrate and delight in it. The first heaven and the first earth will have passed away — we will remember this present world and our personal and collective history, but without any accompanying mourning or pain or sorrow.

The first heaven and earth will pass away to be replaced by a resurrected world, similar in concept to our resurrection bodies. In 1 Corinthians 15:42-44, Paul affirms the resurrection body which will require a physical resurrected world in which to live. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. We must have resurrection bodies to live in that perfect world. He described it in this way: “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” Imperishable, glorious, powerful, spiritual. That describes the resurrection body and the resurrected world. We will enjoy walking in our resurrection bodies on this resurrected earth, feeling the resurrected soil with our resurrected feet.

Randy Alcorn, in his book Heaven, speculates, using his imagination based in Scripture, on what that new world will be like. It will be familiar, like home, like what we have known in this world, only different, better. He cites Revelation 21:10: “… he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.” John is taken to a lofty, glorious mountain and later is shown a river flowing through the center of the city, clear as crystal.

Then, Alcorn’s imagination takes flight. It is amazing to imagine what God will do with mountains and rivers in the new earth. He uses the logic of progression — our resurrection bodies will be like our physical bodies, only better, with expanded capabilities: “Everything God tells us suggests we will look back at the present earth and conclude, creatively speaking, God was just warming up and getting started with this present earth.” 

Consider the natural wonders God has created in this universe. On Mars, the volcano Olympus Mons rises 79,000 feet from the surface of Mars, almost three times taller than Mount Everest, which is 29,000 feet. The base of Olympus Mons is 370 miles across and would cover the entire state of Nebraska. That is a big mountain. The Valles Marineris is a vast canyon on the surface of Mars, stretching one-sixth of the way around the planet, 2800 miles long — about the distance from the Atlantic to the Pacific across the United States — 370 miles wide, 4 1/2 miles deep. Hundreds of our Grand Canyons would fit inside that canyon.

Alcorn is pointing to what God has done in this present universe and speculating that the new earth may have far more spectacular features than that. The new waterfalls may dwarf Niagara Falls. We may find rock formations more spectacular than those in Yosemite or the Alps or the Karakoram Mountains or the Himalayas; and forests deeper and richer than the Pacific Northwest or the Amazonian rainforest. There will be no bondage, suffering, or decay that the present nature has, so there will be no natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, mudslides, floods, droughts, or anything that would torment the earth and destroy the beauty, harmony, and peacefulness of the future world. Verse 1 concludes, “No longer will there be any sea.” Whether you are fine with that or not, what will be will be. But whatever God makes will be spectacular, majestic, beautiful and breathtaking.

In Verse 2, the new Jerusalem descends from God. “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” This is the capital city of God’s eternal empire. There will be both glorious heavenly countryside and a radiant glorious city — rural and urban — in the new heaven and new earth. The city, the new Jerusalem, is the very thing that is promised to Old Testament believers. Hebrews 11:13, 16 says, “All these people were still living by faith when they died… …they were longing for a better country — a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

The country implies a vast, spacious world to explore, teeming with life, spectacular scenic vistas, lakes, rivers, hills, forests, fields, mountains, vast open spaces. The city, on the other hand, implies a concentration of population, shared experiences, relationship, society and culture, fellowship, creativity, the arts, architecture and music. All these are displays of being created in the image of God. The new Jerusalem will descend from heaven already constructed by God’s hand. He has prepared the bride but she has also prepared herself, so we can imagine that our labors in this world help to make the new Jerusalem glorious and beautiful. In the same way, in the next world our labors will be welcome; we will be working in the new heaven and the new earth. 

The name of the city, Jerusalem, implies continuity but difference. The word “Jerusalem” was evocative and powerful for the Jews. The old Jerusalem was the city of David, the center of Jewish life, culture, religion and hopes. But it was also corrupted by idolatry and wickedness, so it had to be redeemed by the blood of Christ. This new Jerusalem is perfectly pure, the fulfillment of the Old Testament purpose for God to dwell in glory in the midst of His people. The new Jerusalem is therefore both a city — a place — and the Church, the bride of Christ — a people. We, having resurrection bodies, will have to dwell somewhere. “In My Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, I would I have told you I'm going there to prepare a place for you.” Christ is preparing a physical location for his physical people.

The city is “a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” She is made radiantly beautiful for her wedding day, coming down out of Heaven, gloriously adorned and dressed and ready for her bridegroom. Christ has labored to make her ready for centuries of redemptive history through evangelism, discipleship, pastoral ministry, the ministry of spiritual gifts of teaching the Word of God, administration, prayer and faith. All of those spiritual gifts together make her radiant and beautiful and ready for her wedding day.

Paul says to husbands in Ephesians 5:25-27, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word, in order that He might present her to Himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish.” Holy and blameless, without blemish, stain or wrinkle. In every respect, her adornment — kosmeo in the Greek, from which we get  “cosmetic” — is magnificent, glorious and complete.

The image of marriage is a powerful Old Testament image. God considered Israel his wife. Jeremiah 2:2-3 says, “I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the wilderness, through a land not sown. Israel was holy to the Lord.” Many of the prophetic images in the Old Testament are negative, as God speaks like a husband to His unfaithful wife. The prophet Hosea was commanded to marry an adulterous wife and have children of unfaithfulness as a picture to Israel, guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the Lord. We all are, like the hymn Come Thou Fount says, “prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.” Our idolatrous, wandering, defective hearts will be cured and healed from that at last and purified from our wandering ways. That marriage image is perfected between Christ and his Church.

Revelation 21:3 says, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.’” This is the central joy of Heaven. The heavenly tourism books tend to miss this fact, which is one of their big problems. The central joy of Heaven is being present with the Triune God. God has been yearning for this throughout all the years of redemptive history. At last, the dwelling of God is with people. He has been waiting and yearning and working for this moment for thousands and thousands of years. All of His patience and compassion and suffering and labor comes to sweet consummation.

It is difficult to number the times God says this in Israel directly or through the prophets: “I will be your God and you will be my people.” Leviticus 26:11-12 says, “I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.”

At last we have the fulfillment of the dwelling glory of God. The Greek, skene, is derived from the Hebrew for the word “tabernacle,” Mishkan, so the Hebrew comes over to English in the expression “Shekinah glory,” literally meaning “dwelling glory.” This is the glory that God shows when He is settling in to dwell in the midst of His people. He would use a glory cloud to show that He was with the Israelites in the desert. When the tabernacle was set up, the glory cloud appeared and filled the tabernacle. God’s dwelling glory is the centerpiece of Heaven.

Jonathan Edwards, in his sermon on 1 Corinthians 13, Heaven is a World of Love, detailed the future world. Despite the fact that God is omnipresent, He is revealed in Scripture, especially in certain places, relationally. He was more in Israel than in any other nation on Earth. He was more in Jerusalem than any other city in Israel. He was more in the temple than any other building in Jerusalem. He was more in the Holy of Holies than any other part of the temple. He was more in the mercy seat above the Ark of the Covenant than anywhere else in the Holy of Holies. There was a concentration of the revelation of God.

That is what we will get in Heaven, where we will be swimming in a sea of God, and so deeply, richly satisfied with that. We will be filled with God — this is the reward of Heaven.

He said to Abraham, in Genesis 15:1, “After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: ‘Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.’” Abraham would not take the loot, the gold and silver, from the battle with the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, so God appeared to him in this vision, saying in effect, “Well done. Fear not. I am your very great reward.”

The more I learn about God, the more I see how glorious it will be to fully understand why we want to be with God. But why does He want to be with us? We are sinful, weak, insignificant, corrupted. But God does not see it that way. He yearns to have fellowship with us. Jesus, on the night before he was crucified, said to His squabbling apostles who were arguing about which of them was the greatest, said to them in Luke 22:15, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” It is incomprehensible, but that is the way he is. He wants to be with us; we are his heritage and he is ours.

Other joys of heaven are lesser, but worth discussing. Revelation 21:4 says, “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.” This is the intimacy and tenderness of Christ’s own hand wiping our final tears away. All of the grief and suffering and pain that we have gone through will be finished.

There are various reasons for tears. Personally, what I most regret is my own sin. It often causes me tears of sorrow. To have Jesus wipe those tears away and say we will not weep or mourn over that anymore will be unimaginably sweet. It is helpful to link it together with an appropriate understanding of Judgment Day. Verse 4 and its beautiful promises do not seem to cover Judgment Day like a canopy. That day will be hard. It will be a day of darkness and sorrow. It will be difficult to give Christ an account for everything done in the body, whether good or bad, and for every careless word ever spoken.

Some believe we will not need to face Judgment Day in this way, citing Romans 8:1: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” But giving Jesus an account is not the same as condemnation. Condemnation is the Lake of Fire. He will not command us who are Christians on the basis of any of our sins “Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” We will not be condemned, but we will give him an account. 2 Corinthians 5:10 says plainly, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.”

God will test the body of our works to see if they are worthy of reward. 1 Corinthians 3:12-15 says, “If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.” We will suffer loss from whatever of our works are burned up; that will be difficult. We will have an emotional reaction to giving account on Judgment Day, but not beyond. All of our faithless works and sins of omission and commission — the wood, hay and straw — will be tested and burned, and then the gold, silver, and costly stones — actions done for the glory of God, from a heart of love, by faith, though imperfect — will be purified by fire and we will be rewarded for those. 

We will cry tears of regret on that day: I did not live like I should have. I wasted opportunities to tell people about Jesus. There were poor people around me, and I lived selfishly. I did not do for them like I should have. I did some things, but not enough. What is so amazing is that Jesus, with his holy and nail-scarred hand, will wipe those tears away and comfort us, and then will bring us into a world where those tears will be shed no more. That is incredible; that is his grace.

Death is the final enemy. 1 Corinthians 15:26 says, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” All the destruction and sorrow and fear and anxiety and intense loss and pain caused by death will end, and we will live forever. We will not die. Our relationships will be eternal. We will never say goodbye again. We will not age. We will not reach our prime after 10,000 years, followed by a long, slow, eternal decline. The body will be raised in power and in glory — no decline, no death, no funerals. No more mourning — psychological, emotional, mental anguish — or crying, the physical action that flows from pain.

Revelation 21:5 says, “And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, 'Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’” God speaks from His throne with the voice of kingly, powerful authority.

He says, “Behold [Look at this!] I am making all things new.” This gives a sense of God’s energetic activity, not a deistic world which God sets it up and then removes Himself from it. He is actively, energetically involved in making all things new. 

There will be a comprehensive new creation. In this present world, there is no new creation thing except our redeemed souls. The moment we come to Christ, we are made new creations in Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” Everything else continues in the old order. But then, He will make everything new.

John is commanded to write down what he hears. Our Christian faith is a literary, written faith. We have a book, and this book sets Christianity apart from every other religion in the world. Other religions have holy books — the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, and other writings. But this book is unique. God originally wrote the Ten Commandments with His finger, but then commanded Moses in the wilderness to write down all of His commands that God gave to him. After that, all of the prophets were commanded in a similar way to write down the Word of God. In this final testimony, these words have been written down, and they are trustworthy and true. They are a part of that poor reflection. We see indistinctly, dimly. How do you put Heaven into words? How can you possibly describe in nouns and verbs and adjectives and paragraphs a vision like this? But he said, “Write down what I tell you. The words will be exactly what I want you to say to correspond to this vision.”

The words are enough to get us to Heaven, but not as good as being in Heaven. Amen. We will see him face-to-face, and that will be so much better, but in the mean time, we have these words. Psalm 12:6 says, “And the words of the LORD are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay, purified seven times.”

Verse 6 is God’s powerful invitation to this eternal home based on all His words. Revelation 21:6 says, “He said to me: ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.’”

It is done, or literally, has become. God has brought this magnificent new world into reality; He has made it become real. He points again to that linear history that spread out over a redemptive history. Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. The first world, this present world that will pass away was brought in through Christ. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” [John 1:1-3] And “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” [John 1:14] The Word is Jesus Christ, and through him, the first world came into being. So also through Christ, the eternal world will come into being through the work of the Father.

Isaiah 9:7, speaking of Jesus, says, “Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.” His kingdom will continue increasing, and we will see it. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Christ’s kingdom, as the waters cover the sea. It will be eternally becoming more radiant and glorious and majestic and beautiful. God wants us there; He is inviting us to enter the Kingdom of God now by faith, and then later, when the time comes, we will enter it with our brothers and sisters.

Verse 6 concludes, “To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life.” Think about the thirstiest you have ever been in your life — a hazy, hot, humid day, working outside, you have not had enough to drink and you are parched; or someone crawling through a desert, desperate to find an oasis. Water is life in those cases. Are you thirsty to be in a perfect world like that? I am so thirsty to never sin again and to be around others who never sin again. I hunger and thirst for righteousness. I want to see God — as the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul thirsts for you. 

Jesus said in John 6, “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” You will come to a place of perfect satisfaction and be so refreshed in Jesus in Heaven. Are you thirsty for the forgiveness of your sins? Do you yearn to have God say to you, “All of your sins are forgiven through faith in Christ”? Are you thirsty to be reconciled to God and be in a right relationship with Him? Are you thirsty to be in the new heaven and new earth, where there will be no more death, mourning, crying or pain? Then come and drink. It is offered freely without cost, as it says in Isaiah 55:1: “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.”

This gift is given to those who overcome. Revelation 21:7 says, “He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son.” We must conquer to get there. We must overcome something. First and foremost, 1 John 5:4 says, “…everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.” Faith in Jesus is the victory that overcomes the world. We must overcome all that the world, the flesh and the devil want to do to our souls just for believing in Jesus, to have a saving faith in him. Then, having come to saving faith in Christ, we then must fight the good fight of faith. We must fight indwelling sin by the power of the Holy Spirit. Heaven is given to those who fight that fight. Those who do not are not children of God.

Romans 8:13-14 says, “…if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” You are led by the Spirit into a battle against sin, against the world, the flesh and the devil. That is the road that leads to Heaven. He who overcomes will inherit all this. We are more than conquerors, and those who are born again will overcome. Someday we will see Satan dead at our feet. We will put a foot on his neck. We will see the world system destroyed, and our own lust and sin nature will be purified out of us, and we will be heirs to the Kingdom of God.

He gives a terrifying warning of those who will be excluded in Revelation 21:8: “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars-- their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

The cowardly are those who care more what people think than what God thinks, who know what to do, but do not do it. The cost is too high. The unbelieving are those who will not believe in Jesus. Whether they have heard the Gospel or not, they will not combine what they know with faith, as the author to Hebrews says. The vile are morally repugnant, morally ugly, excluded because in that world, there will be no blemish, no stain, nothing but purity and holiness. In Christ, we are transformed from being vile to being radiantly beautiful, but those who have not received that transformation are vile.

Murderers. The sexually immoral — we are in a sexually free, permissive age but God has never changed His standard. The magic arts, the sorcerers — pharmakos — those who use drugs in witchcraft. Idolaters — anyone who places ultimate value on created things rather than the Creator. Liars — Psalm 116:11 says, “Everyone is a liar.” Seeing that on the list, we should realize that we are redeemed by grace, though we deserve to be condemned too. We are all the same, but we are redeemed from lying and all these other sins by the blood of Christ. The end of it for those people is the fiery lake of burning sulfur, the second death; a place of active conscious torment and sorrow, not merely the absence of God.

The top priority for any who are outside of Christ is that you come to faith in Christ. That is what this invitation is all about. Believe in Jesus, trust in him. God sent Jesus his only begotten Son into the world to be a human. He is fully God and fully man. He died on the cross in our place as an atoning sacrifice. Put your trust in Him, not in your own works. Trust in Jesus and you will be forgiven of all your sins. 

If you are already a Christian, meditate on heaven more than you do; fill your soul with meditations of the world to come. Read Revelation 21 and 22, and feed on it. Let it flow out into good works that God has prepared in advance for you to walk in. Ask the Lord how He wants you to serve Him each day. Find someone who is lost and share the Gospel. Find someone in a place of sorrow or misery, and talk about sadness and sorrow in light of what we have learned today, that we are coming to a place where there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. Ask if they would like to hear more about that.

Close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank you for the beauty of the world to which we are going, We know we do not deserve it, and can scarcely imagine it. But I pray, O Lord, that You would fill our minds and our hearts with the truth. Help us to understand that beautiful world. Help us to yearn for it and to be hungry and thirsty for it, and to desire it with all of our hearts. Fill us with your Holy Spirit. Enable us, O Lord, to glorify you by putting sin to death and by witnessing by sharing the gospel. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hope is merely faith in the future; the two terms, hope and faith, seem almost synonymous when it comes to future good things that God has promised us. Therefore, I preach for your hope and for your faith, based on the Word of God. Revelation 21:5-6 contains wonderful words: “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, [I can imagine he spoke it in an urgent and excited tone of voice; but even better:] for these words are trustworthy and they are true.’”

We can have a hope based on scriptural truth; anything other accounts about Heaven that add to Scripture are fantasy. I would dissuade you from paying attention to those accounts — people who die and go to Heaven temporarily then come back and tell us what it was like. Be afraid. Do not listen to that; listen to the Word of God, to Scripture. That is enough. It is complicated, not easy to put into words, but it will be wonderful walking through it.

In 2004, Randy Alcorn published a book about Heaven called Heaven. It is 494 pages of some scriptural exegesis and some speculations. Alcorn argues for the sanctified use of imagination. These words of Scripture beg to be explained and unfolded and meditated upon. Alcorn wrote the book in part because he was shocked to find that many Christians that he talked to dreaded Heaven. I can understand being afraid to go to Hell, but they were afraid of their faulty view of Heaven. Many see it as an ethereal, non-physical, wispy-clouded place, with much playing of golden harps. One of my kids asked me if we will need harp lessons to be let into Heaven, like being in language school as a missionary. When one graduates into golden harp skill, he will be admitted into Heaven to begin his eternal harp strumming while sitting on a cloud.

Some imagine that we will be singing Amazing Grace forever, given the line in the hymn, “When we’ve been there 10,000 years, bright, shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing his praise [i.e., Amazing Grace] than when we’ve first begun.” Thinking about it that way, it can be depressing. Many people like the song, but most will say honestly that there is nothing they like doing on earth that they would want to do forever and ever and ever and ever. People have a hard time with the concept of eternity.

Alcorn cites a passage from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain, no believer at all, must have been gleeful in writing this section. Miss Watson, the Christian spinster who took in Huck, was continually warning him that he would not go to Heaven with his loose lifestyle. Huck said about her, “She went on and told me all about the good place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing forever and ever. So I didn't think much of it. I asked her if she thought Tom Sawyer would go there and she said not by a considerable sight. And I was glad about that because I wanted him and me to be together.”

Clearly, such a view of Heaven was utterly unappealing to Huck Finn, and if we are honest, it is unappealing to us as well. Thank God, that view is not biblically accurate. Alcorn wrote his book Heaven to drive away such depressing views of Heaven.

So what is the truth? What can we really believe about the future to which we are going? There is no better way to answer that question than to study Scripture, and there is no better place in the Bible to study about Heaven than in the final two chapters of the Bible, Revelation 21 and 22. We will take our time going through these chapters to try to squeeze all the heavenly nectar that we can out of the admittedly incomplete view that words cannot afford.

At the end of 1 Corinthians 13, Paul wrote about spiritual gifts, including preaching and teaching, saying all gifts culminate with what is eternal, what will remain — namely, faith, hope, and love. Before that verse, he said, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face-to-face. Now I know in part [thus a partial view] then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” Now, we see through a mirror, indistinctly, dimly, like the man whom Jesus healed in stages. At first he saw people like trees walking around; later, he was able to see everything clearly. Our view of Heaven might be somewhat like that.

From apocalyptic, visionary language, we are seeking to extract details of what our heavenly life will be like, and the process is well worth it. We should all meditate on Heaven based on Scripture more than we do. We should read Revelation 21 and 22 more frequently than we do. Commit it to memory and recite it to yourself on repeat. 

Colossians 3:1-4 talks about being heavenly-minded: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” We are commanded to set our minds on things above and things to come, future things. We are to be thinking about them all the time, not primarily earthly and dark and temporal things. Our heavenly meditation is commanded.

For our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world, it is definitely true that the greater we suffer in this world as Christians, the sweeter our heavenly meditations will be. Brothers and sisters who are being persecuted for their faith in many places in the world feed their souls continually with meditations on Heaven. Such thoughts keep them going, keep them hopeful. These meditations enable them to lead guards who have tortured them to Christ, so obviously filled with a hope and fearlessness when it comes to death that the guards lack. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5:11-12, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.” In the midst of persecution, we can meditate on how great our reward will be in the heavenly world. Jesus says it is a time to rejoice. He is commanding heavenly joy based on heavenly reward, even in earthly suffering. When we get to Heaven, we will look back a great deal on church history.

We will be able to see what God did to strengthen our brothers and sisters who were in prison cells, in places of torture, with streaming heavenly light, a supernatural foretaste of heavenly joy and enabled them to endure great suffering. I read a book called The Heavenly Man about a man named Brother Yun, who was involved in the house church movement in China. He was arrested for the first time as a Christian when he was only 17 years old. At that time, he was ministering at a meeting far away from home. When caught, he was thrown into a freezing, unheated prison cell. His winter coat had been thrown away into the snow as he was being dragged to prison by the security police who had caught him. In that cold prison cell, he began to sing Psalm 150 out loud. The more he sang, the more he was filled with supernatural joy. Gradually, his frozen hands and feet regained feeling and he no longer felt cold. This would be the regular pattern of his many incarcerations for Christ. He was called the Heavenly Man because his hope in Heaven was so clearly on display in those many imprisonments.

The more suffering that we go through on earth, the sweeter our heavenly meditations will be. This was true of Christian slaves on the plantations in the South before the Civil War. Working in the cotton fields, they would sing constantly of Heaven, their only hope and solace in a life of unremitting sorrow and pain and injustice. “Swing low sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home. I looked over Jordan and what did I see, a band of angels coming after me. I’m sometimes up, sometimes down, but still, my soul feels heavenly bound. Swing low sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home.” Wikipedia writers prefer to say it was a secret language for the Underground Railroad, and it may have been, but very likely they were thinking about and yearning for Heaven even more.

Most of us do not endure suffering like that. There are sufferings that are common to people all over the world — sufferings of a medical nature, financial pain, chronic pain. But in general, our present level of affluence and our level of comfort renders heavenly meditation less sweet and less frequent. I do not think we do it as much as others do.

Proverbs 27:7 says, “One who is full loathes honey from the comb, but to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet.” The Bible says that we are aliens and strangers in this world, but the more affluent and the more comfortable our lives are, the harder that is to believe. Those who lived by faith in the past, like those listed in the Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11, admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. They went through extreme suffering, people of whom the world was not worthy, but they fed themselves on heavenly hope. They saw from a distance their heavenly home where they were going. When all our needs are met physically — stomachs full of good food, beds warm, no real danger on the horizon — it is easy to forget about God and easy to not think much about Heaven.

There are multiple benefits of a strong yearning for Heaven. First and foremost, it proves what your treasure really is. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” [Matthew 6:19-21] Heavenly-minded people know where their treasure really is. They live securely in this world because they are not afraid of losing earthly things.

Second, a strong yearning for Heaven develops Christian character. People who are drinking continually from thoughts of Heaven display fearlessness and boldness and perseverance. It shapes their character.

Third, a strong yearning for Heaven greatly glorifies God. The Psalmist says in Psalm 73, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.” Sincerely meant, that glorifies God. The Psalmist is saying, “There is nothing I desire on earth compared to God. If I could have God, I do not need anything else in this world.”

Fourth, a strong yearning for Heaven makes all life God-centered because Heaven is a God-centered place. The more you meditate on Heaven, the more God-centered you will be in this world, thinking about God more, who He is, what He does and has done.

Fifth, a strong yearning for Heaven helps us to realize how insignificant our present earthly condition is, whether good or bad. Life is a mist, a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Whether things are going well or poorly as we would define it, either way it is as nothing compared to the heavenly reality. Earthly accolades and honors and prosperity are as nothing compared to Heaven. Heavenly accolades and heavenly life and heavenly prosperity are infinitely better. Our present sufferings are very small compared to the future glory, which puts everything in perspective, enabling us to persevere through suffering. Paul says in Romans 8:18, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

Sixth, a strong yearning for Heaven results in holiness. It is a very powerful force for putting sin to death. Being heavenly-minded, we will yearn for holiness and purity. Again, Colossians 3:4-5 says, “When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry.” John makes the same connection in 1 John 3:2-3: “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.” Meditating on Heaven gives us power for holiness.

Seventh, a strong yearning for Heaven drives missions and evangelism. The more heavenly-minded we are, the more it is evident that we have a hope in us that non-Christians do not have, and the more they will ask us to give a reason for it. That is especially true when we endure suffering. It creates missionary encounters. Tertullian said, “The blood of martyrs is seed for the church.” It is seed if they die well, filled with evident hope in Heaven. The pagans will notice that these Christians have something they do not have, that they could not respond that way in the face of death. Hope in Heaven also frees missionaries up from earthly entanglements. Missionaries typically leave their homes to serve in worse conditions than they have ever known because they are yearning for a heavenly glory, both for the people they share the Gospel with and for themselves. They want rewards, as should we. We should want God to be pleased with us. A heavenly mindset frees people up to go serve in some remarkably difficult settings.

Eighth, a strong yearning for Heaven keeps us vigorously serving God for the rest of our lives. It gives us perseverance in service. At the end of that marvelous chapter on the resurrection body, Paul applies in 1 Corinthians 15:58: “Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” Because there will be a resurrection of the body, your service to the church is not in vain. Your gift of administration is not in vain. Your financial giving is not in vain. Your teaching of toddlers in a BFL class is not in vain. Your secret closet prayer ministry is not in vain. Your evangelism in Durham is not in vain, even if none of the last 25 people you witness to have been interested. None of it is in vain. The more confident we are in our hope of Heaven, the more energetic and persevering in service to Christ we will be. Therefore it is well worth it for us to meditate often on Heaven.

Revelation 21 begins with this marvelous statement: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.” We have now come full circle now in the Bible. Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Revelation ends with a New Heaven and a New Earth. There are innumerable vibrant, vigorous themes in the Bible that come to fruition and completion in Revelation 21 and 22. It is a challenge to trace them all — consummation of the tabernacle and the temple, service to Christ, worship, and many more.

It begins with this issue of creation. The terms heavens and earth provide familiar, recognizable concepts, not some alien universe. We have experience with the starry heavens — the sky and the stars — though we have not seen Heaven itself, the spiritual realm. We have experience with the earth; we understand the concept. In Revelation, though, the heavens and the earth will be new physical and spiritual realities which we will be able to explore, like Lewis and Clark, paddling up the Mississippi out of St. Louis and then going up the various rivers, but without the accompanying danger, disease, hostile enemies attacking, starvation, extreme temperatures, and other hardships.

We will finally see the consummation of Habakkuk 2:1 — the verse which I requested to be put over our missions map in the hall: “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.” We will explore and see how God has woven his glory into everything in creation, and we will know it well. We will not be idolaters, worshiping and serving the creature and creation; we will give the Creator full credit for creation and will serve Him.

Genesis 2 gives a picture of the first world to be explored, the Garden of Eden. God made this beautiful garden with a river running through, which“…separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.)” [Genesis 2:11-12] If they had not fallen into sin, Adam and Eve at some point would have left Eden, perhaps by boat, to explore the whole world. It would it have been beautiful. Sadly, they did fall into sin and the world was cursed. Eden is long gone, but we will inhabit a new perfect world with a river flowing out from God’s throne.

Revelation 22:1-2 says, “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit yielding its fruit every month.” One tree stands on both sides of a great river. There is a sense of a real physical world to be explored.

This heavenly world must be predicted or unveiled or revealed by the Holy Spirit through writings, as it is in Revelation. Without this revelation, idle speculations would be damaging, but there is enough to go on. The phrase “new heavens and new earth” first appears in Isaiah 65:17-18: “Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy.” In addition to the New Heaven, New Earth, this also speaks of a delightful Jerusalem.

Revelation 21:1 says, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…” John, transported, saw the new world in his vision of the future, given to him as an apostle while exiled on the island of Patmos. The first heaven and earth had passed away. Revelation 20:11 says, “Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them.” Take these two verses in conjunction with one another — Revelation 20:11 and 21:1; it is clear that the present physical universe that we know and call home will go away. In one sense, it will be transformed, made new; in another, it will be radically destroyed.

Hebrews 1:10-12, quoting Psalm 102, says, “In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will roll them up like a robe; like a garment they will be changed. But you remain the same, and your years will never end.” Peter makes it plain that the present physical universe — earth and sky and outer space — will disappear. 2 Peter 3:10 says, “…the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.”

Two verses later, 2 Peter 3:12 says, “That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat.” It is not hard to imagine that this verse describes a thermonuclear conflagration in which the atoms themselves release energy in a kind of massive explosive fireball.

But there must also be continuity with this present world. While the word “new” implies a difference, the terms “heaven and earth” imply continuity. Just as our bodies will be resurrected, so will the world be resurrected, made new.

1 Corinthians 15:42-44 describes the resurrection body in the language of a seed that is sown and raised, another picture of both continuity and disconnect: “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” We will have a spiritual body. Our resurrection bodies will be different than we can imagine, but still physical. Jesus said, “Touch me and see; A [spirit] does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.” [Luke 24:39] “Go ahead, Thomas, put your finger in the nail marks.” It is physical. He asked for broiled fish and ate it to prove that his body was physical. The spiritual aspect to Jesus’ resurrection body enabled him to go through cave walls, grave clothes covered with sticky, resinous, aromatic spices, locked doors — there were no obstacles for his resurrected body, and people did not recognize him unless he revealed himself, so there was some difference.

Our resurrection bodies will be like that. Paul calls it imperishable — cannot perish or fade or get old; glorious — radiant and shining; powerful — not growing weary but energetic and strong. In addition to being imperishable, glorious and powerful, it is a spiritual body. It is hard to fathom, along the lines of transparent gold or a single pearl as a gate (if you can picture the pearl, imagine the oyster that made it). It stretches the mind. We cannot yet imagine what a spiritual body, transparent gold, and a single massive pearl will be like.

Resurrected bodies with resurrected feet need resurrected ground to walk on. Anthony Hokum said, “Resurrected bodies are not intended just to float in space or to flit from cloud to cloud. They call for a new earth on which to live and work and glorify God.” The doctrine of the resurrection of the body makes no sense without the doctrine of the new, or resurrected, earth. 

Revelation 21:1 ends saying, “…and there was no longer any sea.” Randy Alcorn disagrees with this. (One of his basic rules is that if he likes it, it will be in Heaven.) We have to take the Bible’s statement as it is given, but I understand the sentiment. The coast is a beloved vacation destination. Observing the sea, one sees a display of beauty and power, such as when the sun rises on the east coast and sets on the west coast. Some of the most beautiful scenery I have seen has involved the sea, like the rocky Maine coastline in Acadia National Park with sailboats all over the harbor. It sparkles beautifully in the sunlight.

We visited my mother’s house in Orleans on Cape Cod during Christmas 1996 when Carolyn was six months old. Since she was born in land-locked Kentucky, the only massive body of water she had ever seen was the Ohio River. I wanted her to see the ocean, so I put her in the car and the two of us went to Nauset Beach. From the parking lot, we walked up the stairs, cresting the sand dune which hides the ocean from view. There had been a serious winter storm the day before so the waves were in fine form. We heard the crashing waves and wind, felt the foam and mist on our faces, and smelled the salt air.

I did not want to miss the moment Carolyn first saw the ocean. I had seen it plenty of times myself, of course, but I had never seen my daughter see it for the first time. God gave me the foresight to watch her face. Since she was a wordless little baby, all she did was just point, as if to say, “Don't look at me, look at that spectacular, powerful thing.” 

I would love to go on a whale-watching cruise in the New Heaven and New Earth. The last time I participated in whale watching, the sea was rough and choppy and had a less than desirable effect on my stomach. That will not be a problem in the resurrected world.

There are darker implications of no sea. It could be argued that there were no seas before the flood of Noah. God separated the water from the dry land, but the seas are vastly larger now than they were before the flood of Noah, which was a display of God’s wrath and judgment. The sea harbors, in the Hebraic mind, sea monsters that need to be killed; without the sea monsters being killed, there can be no salvation, no rescue. Psalm 89:9-10 says, “You rule over the surging sea; when its waves mount up, you still them. You crushed Rahab like one of the slain…”

This churning sea was the source of Daniel’s four great wicked empires that came up, one beast after another. John has the same image of the Antichrist that comes up out of the churning sea. The sea represents the nations and all their tumults and their churning. “But the wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud. ‘There is no peace,’ says my God, ‘for the wicked.’” [Isaiah 57:20-21]

If we literally take what it says, there will be no longer any sea, our future lives and the new earth will be radically different than the one we know in terms of ecology and biology. 70% of our oxygen comes from marine plants and 83% of our rainwater from the sea. 71.1% of the surface of the present earth is covered by water, and if all of that surface area became land and a new earth, with all of the creativity of God, there will be much exploring to do and plenty of room for us to do it in.

We do not have any idea how many people will be redeemed but most will not be. Jesus said in Matthew 7:13-14, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” We cannot guess the percentage of unredeemed, but Jesus put it in more general terms: many will be condemned and only a few saved. But we also know from Revelation 7 that the redeemed are comprised of  “…a multitude, greater than anyone could count, from every tribe, language, people, and nation.” A smaller group of people than presently live on earth will be exploring much more land than we can possibly imagine.

So a new universe is coming, radiant with the glory of God. It will be our home for all eternity, and we would know nothing about the New Heaven and the New Earth, except that Scripture reveals it to us. 

Verse 2 reveals that a beautiful city is coming as well — not just countryside with beautiful land — called the New Jerusalem. Revelation 21:2 says, “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.”  This is the capital city of God’s eternal empire, where his throne will be. There will be a radiantly beautiful land to explore and a radiantly beautiful city to live in.

I have seen some amazing sights all over the world. I tend to gravitate more toward and get refreshed by nature rather than city. Other people find cities exciting — I do too but I love nature to my core. I love visiting National Parks like Acadia; the Redwoods along the Pacific Coast in Northern California with massive trees and rocky coastline; Half Dome in Yosemite; Old Faithful in Yellowstone. I saw Mount St. Helens’ eruptions of steam following the main eruption as I was traveling down the Oregon coastline. All interesting and spectacular natural beauty.

I have seen some amazing cities as well, with their sights and sounds. It is impressive. I spoke at a conference on outreach to Muslims in New York City, staying on the 30th floor in a decent hotel on the Avenue of the Americas. It was like a man-made canyon of steel and glass and light. When the sun went down, I could see a man working at his desk right across the road, and as far as I could see to the left and right were man-made buildings. It had its own kind of beauty.

This past summer, I was on my way to Cameroon and missed my flight, so I had an extra day in Paris. I decided to make the most of it and took the train from the hotel they put me up in Paris. I walked as much as you possibly can in one day and was thoroughly exhausted by the end. As the sun was going down, I climbed the Eiffel Tower, overlooking the City of Lights. It was beautiful and amazing. London was the same way with Big Ben and all the monuments and other sights.

I have seen some amazing European cities as well, like Prague for example, one of my favorite cities, with cobblestone courtyards of old buildings, the Charles Bridge across the Vltava River, and the ancient castle on the hill.

A city implies a society with many people together — working, eating, experiencing life, having a common culture together. There is a man-made beauty because we are created in the image of God. Babel had this man-made beauty of construction even as the people were building the Tower of Babel as a display of human arrogance and pride. Perhaps there will be other cities in the New Earth, as Jesus implies in his parable about the ten minas: one who managed his affairs well would be in charge of ten cities and another in charge of five cities. The New Jerusalem is the capital city, and we will all be together to see its glory and its beauty.

Jerusalem links back to a history and heritage. Jerusalem was the place in Israel where God chose for His name and His glory to dwell. He told the Israelites, before they entered the Promised Land, that He would choose a place. It was called the City of David, because David conquered it militarily from the Jebusites. The Tabernacle had been moving around from place to place, but at last, the Ark of the Covenant came to Jerusalem. Three times a year, the Jews would take pilgrimages up to Mount Zion, to Jerusalem, to offer their sacrifices there. That was the heritage of Jerusalem.

But Jerusalem also had a history of great wickedness — evil and sin and idolatry. It was a dirty, filthy, nasty, sinful, wicked city, and the prophets railed against the wickedness of Jerusalem. Isaiah 1:21 says, “See how the faithful city has become a prostitute! She once was full of justice; righteousness used to dwell in her — but now murderers!” Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem, saying, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’” [Luke 13:34-35]. After saying this, he left Jerusalem. 

The new Jerusalem will be perfectly pure, radiantly glorious, purified of all of her uncleanness and idolatry and wickedness. It will be a radiant, beautiful place, the perfection of the Old Testament purpose, fulfilling God’s intention to put his name in a place, a location where His glory will dwell. The New Jerusalem the physical city, is this location. In our resurrection bodies, it is where we will congregate. 

But the New Jerusalem is, more significantly, the church of Jesus Christ, the bride of Christ. The language in Revelation is of a radiant bride beautifully dressed for her husband. She is ready for her wedding day, descending from God, beautifully adorned. She is made ready in Heaven by God himself, prepared and made glorious by thousands of years of redemptive history, evangelism and missions, the ministry of spiritual gifts, and sanctification.

Christ makes her ready, and she is also making herself ready. Revelation 19:7-8 says, “‘Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.’ (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.)” By her righteous good deeds she is preparing herself for her wedding day while being made ready by God and by Christ as well. She will descend ready, glorious. Revelation 21:9-11 says, “One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.”  Radiant with the glory of God, He got her ready, made her glorious and beautiful.

Revelation 21:2 says, “beautifully dressed for her husband,” or adorned, kosmeo, from which we get the word “cosmetics.” She has adorned herself as every bride does. I have had the privilege of officiating many weddings — all brides are beautiful. My daughter was the flower girl in one. When she came down the aisle in her miniature bride dress, it was hard not to become emotional. (Fathers of brides look back; fathers of flower girls look ahead.) A bride’s dress is the most costly she will ever wear, perhaps made of silk, with sparkling sequins or beads woven into it. She puts a great deal of time into choosing it or making it. Her hair is perfectly styled, every hair in place. She has just the right amount of jewelry, tastefully chosen, and her face is shining with joy. She is beautiful.

In American weddings, the bride gets ready with help from her mother and bridesmaids, not typically from the bridegroom. In fact, it is a tradition that he does not see her on that day until the moment she walks down the aisle. But in this case, this radiant bride has been prepared by her bridegroom, Christ, for centuries. This is a word to every husband in Ephesians 5:25-27 “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”

Her beauty is his work. He did not find her beautiful but, as Ezekiel saw, kicking around in her blood and her defilement, ugly, rebellious, sinful. Romans 3:11 says, “There is no one righteous, not even one, there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God.” That is all of us who are part of the bride of Christ. He will is making us radiantly holy and glorious and beautiful — it is his work. The bride is the consummation of the wedding image of Israel and God — God married Israel, but she was unfaithful until He restored her in a new form. 

First and foremost, I yearn, if you are listening to me with your ears, listen to me with your heart. Jesus said, “He who has ears, let him hear.” Please do not miss it; do not be excluded, on the outside trying to get in when it is too late — you will not be admitted then. Hear me now. This is the day of salvation. Hear the Gospel. God sent his son Jesus into the world to die on the cross for sinners like you and me. If you believe in him, your sins will be forgiven, and you will be there in Heaven. That is all. You do not have to — you must not — do any good works to pay for your sins. You must only trust in Christ. Do not miss this doorway of opportunity open for you — walk through it. Two years ago, I shared the Gospel with somebody on a plane. The Holy Spirit was so completely filling me that I had a deep yearning to spend eternity in Heaven with a guy I had never met. In my heart, I wanted to plead with him “Don’t miss it!” He would not have understood that, so I toned it down. But I do not want you to miss it either. Be there.

Second, for all who are Christians, I urge you, be heavenly-minded. Think about this more than you do. This week, take opportunities to talk to co-workers, to non-Christians about these things. Talk about the sermon. Ask the person if he ever thinks about Heaven. Let the Lord open the door to share the Gospel.

Let’s close in prayer.

Father, thank you for the things that we have covered today, for the opportunity we have to walk through this incredible truth and the things you are showing us. Please strengthen each one of us, and make us, O Lord, radiant and strong and energetic in serving you. Help us to be so filled with joy and hope that we would give you the glory that you deserve by the way we live. In Jesus name. Amen.

In June 2007, I was in Greece with my daughter, Jenny. I was there to preach at a missionary conference. We visited Athens and went to see the Acropolis, one of the most famous ancient sites in Greece, with its famous ruins standing hundreds of feet above the bustling modern city of Athens. As we were climbing up the winding road up to the top of that famous mountain, off to the side, we encountered a small rocky outcropping, a little knob, with a road leading to it. We decided to follow that road and soon found a plaque written in Greek and in English next to some stairs going up. I suddenly realized we had found Mars Hill — the Areopagus where Paul, as recorded in Acts 17, had discussed and preached the Gospel to the Epicurean and stoic philosophers that gathered daily to talk about and listen to the latest ideas.

On that plaque, we read Paul’s defense of the Christian Gospel, culminating with this statement in Acts 17:31 to the Athenian philosophers, “For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.” That is how the message at Mars Hill ended. When these brilliant Greek philosophers heard of the resurrection of the dead, most scoffed and mocked. In their anti-physical philosophy, it was utterly ridiculous that the spirit would want to take the body again. But some listened with interest and said they would like to hear more.

God has set a day when he will judge the world with righteousness by the man he has appointed, and He has given proof of this by raising Him from the dead. That man is Jesus Christ, and that day is Judgment Day. As Jenny and I stood and looked at that plaque, most of the tourists going up to the Acropolis walked right by the side path. Generally, only the Christians take that detour. It is not all that impressive; the rock where the plaque is mounted is covered with graffiti. Far down below in the streets of that modern city, bustling businessmen and shoppers and tourists and all kinds of people go about their business, paying barely any attention to the concept of Judgment Day. The people who sprayed the graffiti certainly were not thinking about the reality of the terror of Judgment Day.

Another time that I was in Greece, I visited a hotel in Corinth, which is not far from Athens. I asked the proprietor, “Do you realize that your city, Corinth, is famous all over the world?” He had no idea what I was talking about; he did not know that it is in the Bible. He was a Greek Orthodox, as most Greeks are, but he had never read the Bible and was not aware of 1 and 2 Corinthians. We had the chance to go up to Acrocorinth, the old Corinth, where the Bema seat is located that Paul writes about in 2 Corinthians 5. In Scripture, we will all stand before the Bema judgment seat of Christ to give an account for our lives, but this man, this citizen of Corinth, had no idea about any of it.

I think this is true of the natural man. The natural human does not think much about Judgment Day. It is true here in Durham, North Carolina, just like in Athens — people are bustling. Tomorrow, people will get up and begin their week, going about their business here in the Triangle, most not giving any thought to Judgment Day. It will happen all over America. Stockbrokers in New York, riding the subway to Wall Street to try to earn and not lose money for their clients — they will not be thinking about Judgment Day. Legislative assistants in Washington DC will go to their offices or out and about to do their job, giving no thought to Judgment Day. Professors of religion at UNC-Chapel Hill will find new ways to destroy the faith of those who listen to their lectures, and many of the students who attend them at UNC or Duke or NC State will not be thinking about Judgment Day at all.

We Christians should be different. We will see this morning with eyes of faith this Great White Throne that is coming. We should be able to see the reality of Judgment Day and absorb its lessons and its responsibilities, both for ourselves and for those to whom we speak as messengers of the Gospel. The next action in this marvelous book of Revelation is the appearance of the New Heaven and New Earth. I cannot wait to physically be in the New Heaven and New Earth, but if the Lord should tarry, it will be a joy to preach about it next week. This is the final act of this present evil age in which we live, in which there is death and mourning and crying and pain, this Great White Throne of Judgement.

Revelation 20:11 gives us the description of this Great White Throne and the final day of human history in this present evil age. Human history is linear. It had a beginning, it has progressed now through its stages, it had a middle, and it will come to an end. That's the biblical view of history. We know this from the very beginning in Genesis 1. There is a first day, then evening, then morning, and the second day and the third and fourth. The days are counted there in Genesis 1, which began the unfolding of history. Psalm 90 asks of God to “Teach us to number our days.” There is a sequence to them. They have a beginning, they will unfold through a middle, and then they will come to an end. Our personal history is linear, as is the history of the world.

Many verses teach this. Jesus said in Revelation 22:12-13, “Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” That is sequential. Alpha, beta, gamma… to omega — A to Z — to the final day. Eastern religions posit an endless cycle of birth and life and death, and then rebirth, or reincarnation — it continues on until one finally escapes karma to become nothing, a drop in an endless sea. The Bible teaches otherwise — that history had a beginning, it is making progress, and will have an end. For us, if we are not among the final generation, Hebrews 9:27 says, “…man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment…” Paul calls this our present evil age. He says in Galatians 1:3-4 “…the Lord Jesus Christ, ... gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age.”

This “present evil age” is defined by the defiant rebellion of the human race against God the King, against the throne established in Revelation 4. This rebellion is led in secret by Satan and his demons. It seems like the death, mourning, crying, and pain that characterizes it will go on forever, but it will not! It will come to an end, and that end is Judgment Day. That will be the final day of this present evil age.

This is the consistent teaching of Scripture. There are many verses in Scripture that teach this theme of Judgment Day. Psalm 96:13 says, “…the LORD... comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his truth.” Jude talks about Enoch, the seventh from Adam, Who saw Judgment Day coming prophetically and he said, [Jude 1:14-15], “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” Enoch saw it a long time ago by faith, and that is the only way we can see it now.

Satan has tried to deceive us about this from the very beginning when he was tempting Eve, when he said to her, “You will not surely die.” [Genesis 3:4] He convinced her that there would be no accountability, no bad consequence in reference to eating the fruit. From the very beginning, he has tried to get us to not believe in Judgment Day, to deny that it is coming. 

Unbelievers deny Judgment Day, or they minimize it. Psalm 94:3-7 says, “How long will the wicked, O LORD, how long will the wicked be jubilant? They pour out arrogant words; all the evildoers are full of boasting. They crush your people, O LORD; they oppress your inheritance. They slay the widow and the alien; they murder the fatherless. They say, ‘The LORD does not see; God ... pays no heed.’” In other words, they say there is no Judgment Day, no accountability for their wickedness. Psalm 10 says, “In his pride, the wicked does not seek him. In all his thoughts, there is no room for God. His ways are always prosperous, he is haughty and your laws are far from him. He sneers at all his enemies. He says to himself, ‘Nothing will shake me. I’ll always be happy and never have any trouble.’”

In this text, the center of Judgement Day is a Great White Throne with someone seated on it. We can see that throne now only by faith. Some day we will not need faith to see it; it will be there, and we will all be there. This throne is paired with the earlier vision in Revelation 4 — the doorway to Heaven was standing open and a voice came from Heaven saying, “Come up here and I will show you what must take place after this.” At once, he was in the Spirit, who took him up through the doorway, where he saw a throne with someone seated on it. This is the same throne — the throne of Almighty God. The more we, by faith, saturate our minds in Scripture and keep Judgment Day in front of us, the better it will be for us on that day, and the fewer regrets we will have.

Paul said in Acts 24:15-16, “…there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. So I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man.” He put forth practical ethical implications of believing in Judgment Day. Because death does not end everything, and both the righteous and the wicked will be resurrected to face a Judgment Day, he strove always to keep his conscience clear vertically before God and horizontally before other people.

The throne is the place where a king sits. The basis of Judgment Day is the kingship of God; we, His created beings, are His subjects. God is the Creator of the universe and of the ends of the earth. Because He made everything, He has the right to rule over everything. Every king rules by law. God made laws that He wants us to obey. He gave us the Ten Commandments, which we are to obey: You shall have no other gods; You shall not make or worship any idols; You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy; Honor your father and mother; You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor; You shall not covet (deeply desire in your heart anything that belongs to your neighbor).

In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, Jesus took the coveting aspect of heart inquiry and applied it to the earlier two commandments of murder and adultery, saying God looks at the heart. You may not have murdered your brother, but if you are angry with him, you are in danger of the fire of Hell. You may not have literally committed adultery, but if you even look at a woman lustfully, you are in danger of the fire of Hell. He was not going beyond the spirit of the law; the Tenth Commandment is about what you do with your mind and your heart and your intentions. Jesus was saying, “I will judge you based on your heart response to the entire law of God.” The law was presented mostly in the negative: “You shall not, not, not, not, not.” But Jesus turned it around, summarizing the law with the Two Great Commandments:“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” [Matthew 22:37-40]

That law exposes all of us as sinners. Every one of us has violated the Ten and the Two Commandments. The essence of sin is lawlessness, or breaking of the law of God. If you do not understand the law or you do not think it applies to you, you will think that you are sinless, that you do not have anything to fear from judgment. The law alone convicts the guilty. The Word of God does that. The Puritans called it law work. Evangelism must apply the Ten Commandments and the Two Commandments to the one receiving the Gospel. This is the King’s standard, and we have all violated it.

If He is the Creator, He is also the King and Ruler. Therefore, he will also be the judge who will assess or evaluate us. Salvation corresponds to His kingship because we, by faith through the grace of God, will be allowed to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. By faith in Jesus, we are offered amnesty through his blood from all the transgressions and sins we have ever committed, all the ways we have violated the Ten and the Two. We are offered free and full forgiveness through the blood of Jesus. If we believe this, we will, the New Testament teaches, enter the Kingdom of Heaven, God’s Kingdom. When we get there, we will find a King ruling on a throne forever. As believers, we do not have a problem with that. We are delighted in the kingship of God. We see that Jesus’ yoke of kingly authority is easy and his burden is light, so we are delighted to take that yoke and that burden on us. It is a beautiful thing to submit to King Jesus. That is what salvation is all about.

Why is it called the Great White Throne? We have a sense of the throne’s great, massive magnitude. It is an imposing, majestic, large throne. It makes us feel small — Psalm 2 says we are like grasshoppers before Him. We are small compared to him, and we are meant to feel that way. It is white because it is pure and holy, free from any blame. His judgment is perfectly righteous. God’s justice is His essence: “…all his ways are just…” [Deuteronomy 32:4]. Psalm 36:6 says, “Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains; your justice like the great deep.” God possesses limitless commitment to justice.

The Scripture in the New Testament reveals that God has entrusted the judgment of the human race to Jesus Christ. Paul said in the Areopagus on Mars Hill, “…he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” [Acts 17:31] That man is Jesus, who also taught this openly in John 5. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, is seated on the Great White Throne.

He says in John 5:22-23 “…the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father.” We are to honor, meaning worship, Jesus like we worship the Creator God. We will see that on Judgment Day when he is the One judging the entire world. John 5:27 “And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.”

When my sister Julie was married, she wanted me to read Matthew 25 at her wedding in Vermont, my only duty that day. She wanted this passage because she has a heart for the poor and needy. I do not think she had reviewed text and all that it said, but it regards Judgment Day. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He'll put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.” I had memorized it long before then, and I read it very clearly, slowly and powerfully. I have never been to a wedding rehearsal like that. It was quite a moment. You could have heard a pin drop. Everyone looked at me with eyes like saucers, wondering if I would actually read that at the wedding the next day.  Julie, to her credit, did not waver.

The judgment of Christ is perfect because he judges in perfect harmony with the will and the nature and the commandments and laws of his Father. He is a perfect embodiment of the righteous character of his Heavenly Father, and thus, he is a perfect judge. He says in John 5:30, “By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.”

Speaking of Jesus, the Messiah, Isaiah 11:2-4 says, “The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him — the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD — and he will delight in the fear of the LORD. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.” He will judge with perfect, just judgment.

Some evangelicals believe we will not be at the Great White Throne judgment at all, especially those who believe in a literal millennium. They say it has already happened, that Christians will not need to be there because we were already judged at the cross. We will skip Judgment Day because we are already perfectly righteous in Christ. They quote Romans 8:1: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” This shows a misunderstanding of what condemnation means.

Though there is no condemnation, there will be evaluation, reckoning, giving account even for those who are in Christ Jesus, for everything we have done in the body, good or bad. Scripture confirms this. 2 Corinthians 5:10 says, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” We will all be there. The separation of sheep and the goats will not happen without all being present. He will separate the sheep from the goats. It is not a parable or a metaphor but a prophetic prediction. It will be like the separation that a shepherd does with sheep and goats. Jesus is telling us that when the Son of Man comes, he will sit on the throne with everyone gathered in front of him, and he will separate them, putting the sheep on his right and the goats on his left, and then he will judge them.

We will all be there. Romans 14:10-12 says, “…we will all stand before God's judgment seat. It is written: ‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.’ So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.” We will give an account to God for how we have lived. There is an infinite difference between giving an account to your Savior for what you did with the gifts you received — the time and energy and money that you were stewards of — and being condemned to the lake of fire.

Either way, this Great White Throne is the last judgment. There is no more judgment after this. Sin will be destroyed forever, death will be defeated forever, and we will have no need of this kind of judgment in the New Heaven and New Earth.

Revelation 20:11 shows the end of the present universe: “Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them.” This is an awesome reality. Revelation 21:1 reiterates it plainly. This present physical universe will depart; in some sense it will be no more. Everything will be destroyed. In this text, earth and sky are somewhat personified, running in terror from the presence of the One on the Great White Throne. Earth and sky flee from His presence, but there will be no place for them.

A simple way to understand these words is that this is the end of the physical order as we know it. The very next verse, Revelation 21:1 says, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.” This means that Christ, the judge of all the earth, is more permanent than the present heavens and earth. He will outlast them forever. In Hebrews 1:10-12, God the Father speaks to God the Son: “In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will roll them up like a robe; like a garment, they will be changed. But you remain the same, and your years will never end.” 

What will happen to the present heavens and earth? Will the next universe be made in some sense out of existing materials, or will those be entirely destroyed and removed to make way for an entirely new creation made out of new materials?

There are two different evangelical views on this. Will this present, groaning, decaying earth be purified, rehabilitated or renewed in some marvelous way, or will God speak it out of existence and speak a whole new universe into existence? Donald Grey Barnhouse says, in support of the second view, “There is to be an end of the material heavens and earth which we know. It is not that they are to be purified and rehabilitated, but the REVERSE OF CREATION is to take place. They are to be UNCREATED (spoken out of existence). As they came from nothingness at the word of God, they are to be sucked back into nothingness by this same word of God.”

That evangelical view seems to line up with Peter’s strong assertion in 2 Peter 3:10: “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.” The word elements, stoicheia, relates to the actual atoms. The atomic structure will come apart, like Einstein’s E=MC2 turns matter into energy. All matter will become a massive thermonuclear blast of heat, and it will be gone with a roar.

However, I do not think 2 Peter 3:10 deters us from saying that the New Heavens and the New Earth are in some powerful significant way linked to this present universe. I speak of a resurrected earth and heavens rather than entirely newly, made out of nothing, ex nihilo. Similar to our resurrection bodies, there must be a connection between the two or else we do not use the word “resurrection”, just as there was a connection between Jesus’ first body that was wrapped with linen cloths and buried and that body which came to life. He invited his disciples to look at and touch his wounds. Thomas said unless he could put his hands in the wounds, he could not believe. He required continuity.

The earth will be, in some sense, raised. Matthew 19:28 speaks of “the renewal of all things.” Acts 3:21 says that God will restore all things. Consider the promise made to Abram. Abram’s and Lot’s shepherds were bickering about the lack of pasture for all of their animals, and finally Abram told Lot to choose whichever land he wanted. Lot chose Sodom and Gomorrah. 

Genesis 13:14-15 says, “The LORD said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, ‘Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever.’” He says it again in Genesis 17:8 after He changed Abram’s name to Abraham: “The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.” We find out from Hebrews 11:13,16: “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. …they were longing for a better country — a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

Bait and switch, to be offered one thing but receive something else, is not okay, even if the thing that you receive is even better. In the end, will God say it did not work out like He promised Abraham, but He will give something even better instead? I do not see that. Abraham will receive the land he walked on, but it will be resurrected because the feet he will be walking in will be even better than the feet he was in then. There is a similarity between the resurrection body and the resurrected earth.

Paul links this earth and our resurrection bodies in Romans 8:20-23: “…the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” Creation is waiting for us to receive our resurrection bodies, because creation will then receive its resurrection self as well. Verse 11 tells us that the earth and sky then fled from the presence of the Great White Throne, “because there was no place for them.” 

Revelation 20:12 “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne.” After the earth and sky flee, every single human being stands before God’s judgment throne. They were dead, but now they are alive in resurrection bodies fit for eternity. Jesus said this would happen in John 5:28-29: “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out — those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned.” There will be no exceptions — nobody will be left out; everybody will be there.

John Phillips said, “There is a terrible fellowship there... the dead, small and great, stand before God. Dead souls are united to dead bodies in a fellowship of horror and despair. Little men and paltry women whose lives were filled with pettiness, selfishness, and nasty little sins will be there. Those whose lives amounted to nothing will be there, whose very sins were drab and dowdy, mean, spiteful, peevish, groveling, vulgar, common, and cheap. The great will also be there, men who sinned with a high hand, with dash, and courage and flair. Men like Alexander and Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin will be present, men who went in for wickedness on a grand scale with the world for their stage and who died unrepentant at last. Now one and all are arraigned and on their way to be damned: a horrible fellowship congregated together for the first and last time.”

That is a powerful picture. When Hitler committed suicide in that reinforced concrete bunker, he thought he was escaping the Red Army and its rage. He did not realize a far greater enemy was waiting for him on the other side. Jesus said we should not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more to us. He admonished us instead to fear the one who has the power to destroy both soul and body in Hell. Jesus said it is appropriate to fear the God who can condemn to Hell.

The quote from John Phillips made me think also about all the small, insignificant, not-famous sinners of which human history has largely been comprised. These have not been recorded because their actions are not noteworthy. They will be there too, unrepentant for their small sins, not realizing they were sinning against an infinitely glorious God. There will be an infinite penalty for those so-called small sins as well.

I think about elderly unbelievers in a rural setting, on a porch in rocking chairs, drinking sweet tea, talking — older men, telling off-color jokes and gossiping, perhaps bitter. They cannot do much more sin because they are old and weak and sick, but they are coming to the sordid end of a life of sin, unrepentant without any concern for Judgment Day. There will be no escape, so there will be no need to send heavenly federal marshals to hunt down fugitives from justice — there will be nowhere to escape to.

Amos 9:1-3 says, “Not one will get away, none will escape. Though they dig down to the depths of the grave, from there my hand will take them. Though they climb up to the heavens, from there I will bring them down. Though they hide themselves on the top of Carmel, there I will hunt them down and seize them. Though they hide from me at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent to bite them.”

Revelation 20:13 says, “The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them.” In Revelation 21:1, the sea will soon be destroyed. But before that happens, the sea will give up all sailors and merchants and commercial fishermen and wealthy yacht owners out on a cruise, anyone who died and was buried at sea or sank into the sea. The victims of the Titanic or the Lusitania down at the bottom with several miles of cold North Atlantic water above them will come up out of that to stand before the Great White Throne. Anyone eaten by a great white shark, anyone who died of dysentery on a British man-of-war in the 19th century and was buried with honors with the cannonball wrapped around their sheeted body will arise. Everyone will be there.

Death and Hades — the grave, the holding place of the bodies and souls of sinners who died before the end of the world — will give up the dead that are in them. Most people die on land and are buried on land or cremated. Their bodies will come together in order to be judged and condemned. Death and the corruption of the grave will no longer be needed; their job will be finished. The new home of the damned will be the Lake of Fire.

The Books of Deeds and the Book of Life will be opened. Revelation 20:12 says, “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.”

The books represent God’s accurate, meticulous record-keeping. Much of both the Old New Testaments is history of things that were said and done. The Bible says that even the very hairs of our head are all numbered, and that all the days ordained for us were written in God’s book before one of them came to be. Those were forward-looking books of predestination. These in Revelation give a different perspective, telling what we did, what happened. The two are the same in the end. But now it has happened; it is finished, not predestined at that point. It will be utterly meticulous. Jesus said in Matthew 12:36, “I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.”

In a search, I found that on average, according to a team of linguists, people speak approximately 20,000 words a day. That means that over the course of 80 years of speaking, we will give account for half a billion words. I once shared the Gospel with someone who said that he did not remember what he had said before we started talking. But God will remember every careless word we have spoken, and we will give an account for it all based on God’s perfect record. 2 Peter 3:8 also gives a sense of God’s meticulous nature: “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years…” God can see one 24-hour period in super slow- motion, as if it lasted a millennium. He misses nothing, whether a slight glance of the eye, a slight inclination of the heart, a little action, a little snide comment. It is all there; there is no escape.

His judgment is perfectly just and righteous. Job said we will not be able to answer him one in a thousand times. He will have no need of witnesses or cross examination or DNA evidence for this court trial. When God revealed to Abraham and Sarah that a year from then they would have a baby, Sarah laughed. She thought it was funny. I think she was thinking about her husband at that particular moment. Genesis 18:13-15 says, “Then the LORD said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh? Is anything too hard for the Lord? A year from now, I'll return and Sarah will have child.’ Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, ‘I did not laugh.’ But he said, ‘Yes, you did laugh.’” That is a little moment of what the court trial will be like. Christ will be the prosecutor, and on the basis of what is written in the perfect record of the Book of Deeds — everything we have done — we will be judged.

People have a hard time with this, confusing it with being justified by faith, not by works. This is not about justification but evaluation and identification. Sheep or goat? We are not saved by our works, but we will most certainly be evaluated or assessed or judged by our works. We cannot use good deeds to pay for our sins, but we will most certainly be evaluated. Jesus said in Matthew 7:16, “By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?” Jesus is the perfect fruit inspector. He will look at the fruit of our lives. The words alone are enough — if he has our words, he knows who we are, because out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks; but he will have everything.

Revelation 20:13 says, “…each person was judged according to what he had done.” Romans 2:5-11 makes this plain: “But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. [Great White Throne judgment] God ‘will give to each person according to what he has done.’ To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self- seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. [Then he inverts it.] There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For God does not show favoritism.” Clearly, we will be evaluated, assessed, and judged by our works.

Our works will identify us perfectly, but Christ also is able to probe the heart. He warned that though we have heard it said, “You shall not murder,” if we are angry in our heart, we are in danger of the fire of Hell. Revelation 2:23 says of Jesus, “I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.” He look at minds, hearts, intentions. 1 Corinthians 4:5 says, “He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts.” He will look at the motives behind everything. There will be no secrets on that day. Romans 2:16 says, “…on the day when God will judge men’s secrets through Jesus Christ…” Luke 12:2-5 says, “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs. ‘I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.’” Nothing that will be secret on Judgment Day.

Thank God there is a Book of Life. Thank God there is a Savior and salvation for sinners like us. We cannot survive this kind of scrutiny, not one of us. But Revelation 20:12 says, “Another book was opened, which is the book of life.” The Lamb’s Book of Life is the record of all of those who are born again through faith in Christ, chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. They also were sinners. They violated the Ten Commandments and the Two Commandments, but there is an infinite difference. By the working of the Holy Spirit of God on them, they came to see their sins while they lived here on earth. They turned away from those sins in repentance and turned toward Jesus Christ, the crucified Savior, for forgiveness and atonement for their sins. At that moment, their sins were all wiped away, and they received the gift of forgiveness.

John 5:24 says, “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.” It comes down to what you believe about Jesus. When Lazarus died, Martha went out weeping in distress to meet Jesus. John 11:25-27 says, “Jesus said to [Martha], ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. [Then he asked her the most important question:] Do you believe this?’ [She gave this beautiful testimony in response:] ‘Yes, Lord,’ she told him, ‘I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.’”

If you can make Martha’s confession, you will not be condemned to the Lake of Fire but will be rescued. Romans 8:1 says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 5:9-10 says, “Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! [That is a future salvation; on that day, you will be saved from the Lake of Fire by the living Savior on the Great White Throne.] For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” If a dead Jesus on the cross atones for your sins, how much more will a living advocate, who sitting on the throne of judgment advocating for you, save you finally!

1 Thessalonians 1:10 says that we are waiting for “…his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead — Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.” Praise God. Christians will be evaluated on the quality of our works. That is the gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay and straw which Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 3. I believe that will happen at this judgment.

But non-Christians’ deeds — their actions, their sins in violation of the Ten Commandments — will be the basis of their condemnation. Romans 1:29-31 says, “They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” Galatians 5:19-21 says, “The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Do not imagine it is on the basis of whether they heard of Jesus or not. They will be condemned because of actual sins they have committed, violating their conscience and the moral laws of God written in their souls. The Lake of Fire is God’s eternal judgment for his enemies.

Revelation 20:14-15 says, “Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” There, Jesus said, quoting Isaiah 66, “…their worm will not die, nor will their fire be quenched…” The damned will come out of their graves in some version of a resurrection body to be condemned, and their experience in that body in Hell will be infinitely worse than those who are apart from their bodies suffering now in torment. That is the future for the damned. 

The atonement of Christ is our only hope, and it is sure and certain. Paul says, “…I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man.” [Acts 24:16] We are motivated to live a holy life.

Jesus came as the Son of God and died on the cross in our place so that we might have forgiveness of sins. Do you know if your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life? Revelation 20:15 says, “If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” Judgment Day, the Great White Throne, is coming. Every day brings us closer. You do not know when you will die, and from that point on, there is no possibility of repentance and forgiveness. For you that might be today. You are hearing the Gospel and being warned of the coming judgment. Have you fled the wrath to come by trusting in Christ?

If you are a Christian, foremost, be sober about this; it is a serious topic. You will stand before God and give Him an account for your life. It is also a motivation for evangelism. We are surrounded by people who do not think this will happen. Our job is to share the Gospel: First, God is Creator and is therefore King and is therefore law-giver and is therefore judge. Second, man was created by God and should have been submissive to God the King and law-giver, but violated His laws; all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Third, Christ is our Savior, God’s Son, whom He sent into the world to save us. Fourth, a response of repentance and trust in Christ is necessary to gain eternal life. Preach that gospel.

Close with me in prayer. Father, we have been sobered by the word of God. We are mindful of the seriousness of this topic of Judgment Day, and I pray, Lord, that you would help each of us who are believers in Christ to see it by faith, to know that it is coming, and to live our lives in holy and reverent fear of sin and Satan, but with the knowledge that we have been delivered from the fear of Hell. Thank you, Lord, thank you. Help us, O Lord, knowing the fear of the Lord and knowing the love of Christ, to persuade others to flee the wrath to come and find in Jesus a warm and welcome Savior. We pray in his name and for his glory. Amen.

Revelation 20:1-10 covers the topic of the Millennium, the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth, which we started looking at last week. Today we will gain more clarity about the Millennium, and though we will move forward next week I will continue studying it. In John Calvin’s introduction to his commentary on Romans, he used a phrase that stuck with me. He was seeking, he said, to achieve “lucid brevity” — clarity and briefness — that I seek to emulate this morning. I want to briefly and clearly explain what I think is happening in these incredible words.

As we study the Bible week after week, I am more and more in awe of this book. By any definition, it is a miracle. It is an encounter with the living God. There is no human explanation for this book. It contains predictions about the future that were made centuries before which have now been fulfilled. It is a supernatural book because it goes outside of nature. James reminds us that we do not know what will happen even tomorrow, so how much more do we not know what will happen centuries in the future. But this book predicted the first coming of Christ in great detail — aspects of his genealogy, where he would be born, what his life would consist of. Every one of those has been fulfilled in every detail.

Revelation is a book unlike any other in this library of books, which the Bible really is — 66 books, written from the mind of God through various authors at different times. It borrows heavily on Old Testament prophecies and language, but it has a new word to say, and it teaches us details about the Second Coming of Christ and about the events that precede the Second Coming.

We believe that this world is poisoned and dying with sin, and it will take a series of cataclysms such as we can scarcely imagine to draw out the elect, the chosen, from this horrible sin-wracked world and get us into a New Heaven and New Earth in our resurrection bodies. This is a very painful perilous journey. Many of the things we have been studying have not yet happened, perhaps have not even begun. Some general signs have happened, but they have been happening for 20 centuries now: wars, rumors of wars, famines, and earthquakes in various places.

But there are cataclysmic events recorded in Revelation that we have never yet seen on earth. Revelation 8 and 9 bring the seven trumpet judgments in which the ecology of the earth is ripped apart — a third of the sea turns to blood, a third of the sea creatures die, a third of the green plants and all of the grass are burned up, and a third of the fresh water is poisoned. That is only the first round. In the second round in Revelation 16, the seven bowl judgments are poured out — the entire sea turns to blood and every living thing in the sea dies. We have not seen anything like that ecological disaster. These things are yet to come.

In Revelation 13, we see the reign of Antichrist, this terrible one-world ruler that by deception takes over the military levers of power of human government all over the world. He wields his authority in an overpowering way. Soon after, the false prophet comes along to shift the whole thing to a religious focus, setting the Antichrist up as a god whom people worship.

People all over the world are compelled by the force of military might and the police state to receive a mark, the mark of the beast, without which they cannot buy or sell. Most people accept it willingly and worship the beast. God, through all of this, protects a remnant of His own, Jews who at last, in the final act of redemptive history, will see in Christ their Savior, their Messiah, their Son of David. At last, they embrace him. Zechariah tells us that they will weep for him as for an only son, and Paul says in Romans 11 that they come to him in faith and “…all Israel will be saved.” The Antichrist mobilizes his forces militarily from across the surface of the earth to come wipe out the followers of Christ — not just the Jews, but specifically those in Palestine. The great battle of Armageddon ensues, predicted in Revelation 16 and again in Revelation 17. This is the context of the Second Coming of Christ in Revelation 19. Jesus returns with the armies of Heaven and slaughters this vast army that comes to wipe out his people.

As we come to Revelation 20, we need to review some theology and church history. There are three basic views on the Millennium. One, I believe, has been so vigorously discredited by the unfolding of history that I do not mention it much, namely Post-millennialism. This is the idea that the Gospel will so saturate the world that everything will get better and better, and people will come more and more to faith in Christ, and then Jesus will return. I do not see that happening. The last century has been rough on the planet. It is right for us to marry together current events and Scripture. Jesus told us to do that with the abomination of desolation — when that happens, then the prophecy of Daniel has come true, and those alive at that time should run for their lives. Thus, I have set that aside. I respect those that view Post-millennialism as a reasonable view, but that leaves me, as an evangelical, two views on the Millennium.

The Millennium refers to Revelation 20:1-10, which talks about the thousand-year reign of Christ physically on earth. There are two views on this time period that square with being evangelical. The Amillennial view teaches that Revelation 20:1-10 is a recapitulation of what we have already covered in church history and the spread of the Gospel, that Satan has been bound in some way, restricted to keep him from deceiving the nation so that the Gospel can spread. In Matthew 12, in his analogy about the strong man, Jesus says that no one can plunder his house unless he first bind the strong man; then he can plunder his house.

The Amillennial view says this refers to the spread of the gospel for a thousand years, that 1000 is just a symbolic number, like when God claims in Psalm 50 that He owns “the cattle on a thousand hills.” Clearly that verse is not literal but poetic. The question we have to ask though is, is the number, 1000, spiritual or poetic? And here in this text, that's the question you have to ask.

I have been exhorted to read the text and preach accordingly. The alternate view treats the text as innocent until proven guilty, to take it that it will happen unless some compelling reason proves otherwise. That is the Premillennial view, that the Second Coming happens before the Millennium. Jesus returns with the armies of heaven, destroys Satan’s army led by the Antichrist, and slaughters all of them in vast carnage. After that he sets up his thousand-year reign on earth.

Just as I have studied these two different views, I commend them to you to continue to study them as well. In a broad general way, the Amillennial view does well in the entire New Testament but not so well in Revelation 20:1-10. Premillennialism does not fare well in all of Paul’s epistles, but it does a good job of explaining these 10 verses. I am a verse-by-verse expositor, so I have to adopt the Premillennial view today, because as I go through these verses, it is hard to explain it from the Amillennial view.

It starts: “I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil or Satan and bound him for a thousand years. He threw him into the abyss and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. And after that, he must be set free for a short time.”

The Amillennial view does not have a good explanation for the details of those verses, specifically the word “Abyss”. This word refers to a specific place mentioned in various passages in the New Testament, especially with the demoniac of the Gadarenes in whom there was Legion, 6000 demons inside him. A simple reading of Revelation 20:1-10, as you compare Satan and Jesus, shows the infinite gap of power between the two — Satan is nothing compared to Jesus. Inside the man in Luke 8, the demons are terrified of Jesus; they plead with him not to throw them into the Abyss before their time.

The Amillennial view of the chaining of Satan is that it has to do with evangelism and missions. Those who ascribe to this view acknowledge that Satan is out and about, prowling around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. They agree that we need to be strong in the Lord and His mighty power and to put on the full armor of God, because our struggle is against the devil and his demons. But they say the binding is really focused on keeping the devil from deceiving people about Jesus. When you share the Gospel with a co-worker, if that co-worker is elect and God is using you to bring that person to faith in Christ, Satan will be blocked or bound to some degree from that interaction. Your witness will be effective to rescue them from the dominion of darkness and bring them over into the kingdom of light by the power of the Holy Spirit. I say “Amen”, but I do not think that is what the Abyss is about here.

We would not imagine that Satan is bound with a great chain and thrown in the Abyss as believers are sharing the Gospel, leading others to Christ in the break room or East Asia or Africa. No, he is still prowling around like a roaring lion at that moment. Looking at these verses, I have a hard time accepting that exegetically. Premillennialism does well here in verse-by-verse exposition. If I were preaching 1 Corinthians 15, I would have a hard time with Premillennialism, because I do not see the Millennium in anything Paul writes about the resurrection. In sharing the Gospel in this current age, I do not see how Satan is bound with a great chain and thrown into the Abyss, which is locked and sealed over so he cannot deceive the nations. A more natural reading is that this capture of Satan is yet to come.

If you accept that, then you will have many logistical and practical questions. Is it a kingdom? Yes, it is. Revelation 20:4-6 “I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years.”

Those who resist during the Great Tribulation will come to life and reign with Christ physically on earth. This would be the Millennial kingdom. Picture what it would be like when Christ returns. The earth will be a smoldering pile of wreckage — the sea is blood, everything in it is dead, there is no fresh water, there has been a massive worldwide earthquake from which the cities of the earth are destroyed — piles of rubble. It will be a massive rebuilding project; it is unimaginable what Jesus will have to do to rebuild planet earth. He can do it. His Heavenly Father created everything through him. John 1:1-3 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made…” Colossians 1:16 says, “…things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.” He has all resources at his disposal.

I am reminded of Nehemiah when he heard from his brother that Jerusalem was filled with rubble. He asked for and was granted permission from the king to go back to rebuild the wall, which he and his cohorts did in a short amount of time while the enemies of the Jews looked on. This was done by God. How could we give Nehemiah greater place than Jesus? Jesus can do it.

The next practical question is, who is he reigning over? I do not know, but we can imagine some possibilities. It is possible that all of Jesus’ enemies, those who did not believe in him at the Second Coming, died in the final battle. Revelation 19:17-18 says, “And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, ‘Come, gather together for the great supper of God, so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and the mighty, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, great and small.’” This could mean that everybody who has not believed in Jesus up to the moment when they see the sign of the Son of Man in the clouds will mourn because they know they will die. Every single unbeliever will die, and the birds will eat their flesh.

Or it is possible that those who are part of the army assembled to fight against the people of God, the battlefield participants, are the ones who will die. That would leave a population of unbelievers whom then Jesus will rule over with a rod of iron. If that is the case, they had better behave themselves.

Thus, the two possibilities for the human starter set for the Millennial population are either all genuine believers in Christ, not yet resurrected, still in their physical bodies, who have been through a horrific time, along with those beheaded during the Tribulation that are going to be raised to reign with them; or a mixed group of believers and unbelievers. Jesus will rule the unbelievers with a rod of iron, settling disputes between the nations. They will come to Zion, to Jerusalem, to have those disputes settled, and if they do not obey, they will suffer consequences such as no rain in their land, according to Zechariah. There are many images from the Old Testament which could possibly apply to this mixed population during this Millennial time.

I prefer at this point to interpret that all the unbelievers die, leaving only genuinely regenerate, born again but not yet glorified believers. Many of those will be Jews, but I do not think that it will be only Jews,  because it says that Satan can no longer deceive the nations. I think there will be Gentile believers there too. These are generally called tribulation saints, who are converted during the final era of history.

It is interesting that they will need to be ruled over. Verse 4-6, “I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years.”

There is an Amillennial interpretation of this, that these are the martyrs who reign in Heaven — absent from the body, present with the Lord. Let’s set that aside for now and zero in on the Pre-millennial approach. There are two options for who these people are. One, they are all who have ever believed in Christ, including the martyrs, but who had died before that point. The ones who are still alive are the starter set of that population. Everybody else is up in Heaven, not only those who died in the tribulation. Everybody is raised physically — we get our resurrection bodies at that point. We sit on thrones and we judge.

Who will we judge? We will judge the not-yet-glorified, not-yet-resurrected believers. We may wonder why thrones and judgments are needed. If you believe in the Millennium — the literal thousand years — those in the starter set are not yet glorified. They are believers like you and me with an internal sin nature. They will have children, and they will get old and die. Their children will have an advantage as to believing the Gospel. There will be no Satan to tempt them; he is locked up in the Abyss. There will be no evil world system set up by Satan, as 1 John 5 says, that the whole world lies under the power of the evil one. When he is gone along with the world system he set up, all children will have godly parents. In addition, they will have Jesus reining physically on earth in a glorified state, and they will have the resurrected people sitting on thrones to help them come to faith in Christ. But amazingly, not all of the subsequent generations will be believers in Jesus.

Isaiah 65 says, describing Millennial life, that one who dies at 100 will be seen to have died early. Most, then, will live to 125 or 150. That will be from seven to ten generations during the thousand years. Not all the descendants will be believers in Christ. The resurrected glorified saints will sit on thrones and judge the population and settle disputes under Jesus.

Those who judge must be a narrow set of people. The Gospel has done very well over the last 20 centuries — Revelation 7 emphasizes “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language.” Imagine being part of the remnant that survived the Second Coming, being judged at a 10:1 ratio of resurrected glorified not resurrected or glorified people. In terms of sanctification and holiness, I cannot resolve that dynamic. The glorified, resurrected believers who are perfect and never sin will judge those who are struggling and muddling through. If that will literally happen, it must be a narrow set; hundreds of millions are not needed.

The text says specifically that those who are raised are the ones who have been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and the Word of God. They will not have worshiped the beast or his image, nor received his mark or their foreheads or hands, meaning they will have lived during the time of the beast. They will have had the possibility of receiving or refusing the mark of the beast — they will choose to refuse, and will have paid for it by being beheaded. This is a very small group, and they receive the honor, the privilege, of this early resurrection to reign with Christ physically on earth. Most Millennialists agree that is what is happening here. They will sit on thrones and reign with Christ.

Verse 5 says, “The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.” In the Amillennial view, that would be all of the reprobates who are given resurrection bodies and sent to Hell. It may also include the rest of us who are absent from the body, present with the Lord during the whole thousand years, in Heaven doing whatever we will do — likely celebrating and worshiping God — while the Millenial kingdom is happening. The rest of the believers will be on earth during the Millennium. Logistically, it is a difficult issue to resolve. Those in Heaven will come to life and receive our resurrection bodies in a second phase. The first resurrection will include the special ones who are chosen. “Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them…” The second death is Hell, which we learn in the rest of Revelation 20. Those in the first resurrection will not be subject to Hell. The second death will not have power over the rest of the saints either, but the reprobate will certainly be subject to it.

This smaller set of believers will come to life to reign with Christ for a thousand years, and they will be priests of God and of Christ. There will be a Millennial religion, which will be focused on worshiping Jesus, the Savior and the King. Animal sacrifice will have no part in it. I would urge you to read the book of Hebrews and come to the conclusion that God will never again accept blood sacrifice of animals. Fundamentally, the religion will be a spiritual one of following Jesus. He is at that place now in redemptive history, reigning bodily in glory; and in the. Millennium, these resurrected glorified saints will be priests of God and reign with Christ on earth.

That is not the end of the story. This is remarkable. Some of you want to understand and have your questions about this time answered, and some of you are ready to skip the Millennium and go straight to Heaven, where there will be no more death, mourning, crying or pain. Either way, the next logical question is, Why would God do this, if this what will happen?

Revelation 20:7-10: “When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth — Gog and Magog — to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God's people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

To some degree, if you believe in the Millennium, it seems almost unbelievable that this would happen. After the thousand years, the binding is done, and the devil comes up out of the Abyss where he was thrown. Parenthetically, I think it is a very hard verse for Amillennials to explain — What does he come up out of at the end of the thousand years? There is no explanation in a metaphorical framework.

Satan is unbound, on the loose at the end of the thousand years. What does he do? It is like Napoleon on an incomparably larger scale. Napoleon was exiled to Elba after losing a series of battles. When he was later released and returned to France, instead of the French immediately arresting him and throwing him back in prison, they followed him into one more battle — Waterloo — where more of them were slaughtered for Napoleon’s tyrannical ambitions. Satan has been exiled for a thousand years, locked in the Abyss. When released, he rallies a large number of followers to fight Jesus. The insanity of it is staggering. The Millennial kingdom has been beautiful — well ordered, well governed, fruitful, magnificent. Jesus has reigned with a rod of iron, which results in peace and beauty, with no disputes, no wars. Satan, the instant he is released, is able to gather together from Gog and Magog (language from Ezekiel 38 and 39, meaning rough, distant Gentile nations) for one more battle. 

Those who follow Satan are like the sand on the sea shore. It is tragic. They come across the breadth of the earth to the camp of the people that God loves, perhaps Jerusalem, to attack the people of God one more time. There is very little description about this, but it is obvious who wins. Fire comes from heaven to burn them up, and that is that.

In 2 Kings, a wicked king sends 50 men to arrest Elijah, the prophet, who is sitting on a hill. The captain orders, “Oh, man of God, come down.” Elijah replies, “If I am a man of God, may fire come from heaven and burn up you and your 50 men.” Immediately the men were burned up. They're dead. A second captain with 50 men tries again, with the same results. My favorite is the third captain, who humbles himself to say, “Oh, man of God, please, if it is not too much trouble, I would like to ask that you have mercy on my life.” The Lord tells Elijah to go with him, and Elijah gives the king a prophetic message that he will die, which is fulfilled soon thereafter.

That was Elijah. This is Jesus. You do not come after Jesus, lay hold of him and topple him from his throne. Psalm 2:6 says, “I have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain.” He will not be conquered. When they come this last time, fire comes from Heaven, and rebellion on earth is ended.

In the Garden, at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we desired an education — we wanted to know. In February 1970, undergraduates at Harvard University were told that their tuition would increase the next year by $200, from $2400 a year to $2600 a year. Two years ago, it costs $45,270 for one year, all costs. Since 1970, if it had kept pace with inflation, it would cost $15,700. Education comes at a high cost. The students at Harvard that year did not realize how much the cost would continue increasing for that education. That is a picture of redemptive history. We wanted an education in good and evil, and we have had six millennia of such an education. During all those millennia, sin has proven to be exceptionally stubborn to eradicate; our education has been very costly.

Romans 5 helps answer the question of why God would set up a physical Millennium in this way. (Of course, whether we hold the Pre-millennial or Amillennium view, we will not be excluded if we have subscribed to the wrong view on this point. God will decide, and we will all be there.) Romans 5:12 says, “…just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men because all sinned.” Through Adam, we sinned; through Adam, death entered the world.

But then Paul says in Romans 5:19-20, “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase.” [You may read right over that and not give it any thought. Why would God add the law of Moses so that the trespass would increase? That would be like firefighters spraying kerosene on a house fire.] But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life [not thousand-year life; eternal life] through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

What has been going on for six millennia has been a clear display that the only force in the universe that can conquer sin is the sovereign grace of God in Christ. It must go to the nth degree; He must get inside my soul, mind, and heart, take out the heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh, and more than that. He must glorify me or I will sin. Oh, unglorified but sanctified and justified, saved people. You know exactly what I am talking about. Paul talks about it in Romans 7:15, 17, 24: “…what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate, I do…  [Why?] … it is sin living in me… What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

When we at last are delivered from death, we will have been delivered from sin. Those happen at the same time. Death is the final enemy. When death is finally gone, then sin will be finally gone and vice versa. If there will be a starter set of unglorified but truly justified saved people whom he rescues, when they die, they will be absent from the body, present with the Lord just like us. They will go to Heaven. Their children, if they believe in Jesus, if they trust in him as their personal Savior, will have their sins forgiven, and then they will also go to Heaven after much better lives than we are living. They will die at age 137 after having been abundantly blessed in their labors. But if their children do not believe in Jesus, despite all of the evidence, they will die and go to Hell. If they should be living at the end of the thousand-year reign, Satan will call and they will listen and hear, and they will come together under Satan to fight Jesus. That will be the final display of the wickedness of sin.

Romans 5 also tells us that step by step, from Adam until Moses, sin reigned, which means death reigned. Death reigned from Moses to Jesus’ first coming, and sin and death has continued and will continue to reign in some way on until the Second Coming. After the Great Tribulation, there will be one more thousand-year reign for sin and death, and then Jesus will finally bring us into Revelation 21, where there'll be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain. We will be glorified. We will be able to look back and remember how we got what we asked for — a costly education in evil — but we will love righteousness and hate wickedness, just like Christ.

That is all I can say about the millennium. If in the end, the Amillennial view is true, then praise God for the limited binding of Satan. Go out and evangelize. Be involved in missions. Share the Gospel with your boss or your neighbor or classmate or suitemate or total stranger, or an unreached people group on an overseas mission trip. Watch God bind Satan right in front of you. Watch Christ rescue souls.

In the meantime, know that someday we will get to a world, the New Heaven and New Earth, which will last not a thousand years but forever — not long life but eternal life. Disease and sickness and death and sorrow will all be gone, and we will go there someday.

If you are here today because someone invited you, or you walked in off the street, you may be confused, wondering what all this is about. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, the resurrection chapter, “…what I received I passed on to you as of first importance [top priority for you] that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” And John 1:12: “…to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God…” You do not need to do any works, you only need to trust in Jesus who was crucified for sinners like you and me, then buried and raised from the dead on the third day. Trust in Him and you will be forgiven of all your sins.

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the two weeks we have had to look at this difficult topic. It is not easy to understand the Millennium and all of the ramifications. We look forward to the time when Satan will be not merely bound but thrown into the lake of fire, not to trouble us ever again. Lord, in the meantime, help us to be bold with the Gospel. Help us to be courageous, to take risks for the gospel, to be willing to go overseas as missionaries, to walk across the office to a cubicle to talk to somebody, maybe a new employee at the company. O Lord, help us to be bold in witnessing on college campuses, at Duke and UNC and NC State and Central. Help us to be involved in seeing people cross over from death to life. Help us to be bold. We thank you for the things we have learned. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Ever since Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden and a Cherubim was put at the entrance with a flaming sword flashing back and forth to prevent access to the Tree of Life, the human race has yearned to get back to that place. We have in our hearts a sense of a perfect society in a perfect world, including a perfect government with a perfect economy with perfect human relationships, no war, perfect prosperity and peace, harmony with nature, perfect beauty. Philosophers, artists, political dreamers, and theorists, religious cult leaders and many others have concocted their own views of what this perfect world would look like.

People have been dreaming and writing about this for a long time. In 380 B.C., Plato wrote a book entitled The Republic in which just city states were ruled by philosopher kings bringing in a perfect society. Within a few decades after Christopher Columbus discovered the new world, Sir Thomas More wrote a book called Utopia — meaning literally “no place,” or sometimes “good place” in the Greek — in which he posited an island in the new world in which there was a perfect ideal society. In the 19th century, as America expanded westward, more and more attempts toward creating idealized societies popped up all over the landscape, especially after the Second Great Awakening. These groups were communistic in nature, seeking to create a perfect society in their own space. In 1905, H.G Wells wrote a book called A Modern Utopia. He created the ideal setting on another planet, but with a portal, a doorway in a valley in the Swiss Alps through which one could enter the perfect world.

The Bible has its own ending of the story of mankind after the fall and eviction from the garden in Revelation 20-22. After the Second Coming of Christ, one of two things will happen. Either there will be a thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ physically on the earth, leading ultimately to an eternal state called the New Heaven and the New Earth, or immediately after the Second Coming of Christ on Judgment Day, the New Heaven and the New Earth will be set up.

The thousand-year reign is known as the millennial kingdom, during which Christ reigns physically on earth, a concept which many Christians say is taught in these verses. Satan will be bound for a thousand years and righteousness and blessings will flourish. People will experience lavishly blessed, healthy, long, successful lives. There will still be birth, aging, death, and sin, but those will be reduced and reined in. At the end of the thousand years, Satan will be released for one final battle. These verses speak to this but say nothing beyond naming it as the final battle, Gog and Magog. Immediately following the battle, Judgment Day and the New Heaven and the New Earth will follow.

Either this Millennial kingdom will occur, OR Christ will return, win the battle of Armageddon, and we will go immediately to what is known as the Great White Throne Judgment in which all nations gather and Christ separates the sheep from the goats. Satan and his demons and all the reprobate — the unbelievers — will be judged and cast into the Lake of Fire at once. The righteous will receive their glorified resurrection bodies at once with no possibility of a future fall and sin, and the New Heaven and the New Earth will appear. The first Heaven and the first earth will pass away in a conflagration of fire, Peter tells us, and we will come into the eternal state.

Of the two scenarios, I am not sure which I subscribe to. I always seek to settle every text in the overall corpus of Biblical teaching. I believe in the law of non-contradiction. There is harmony with all of the things God said to us in His Word, and theology is a task of harmonizing everything we read into a growing body of truth and non-contradiction. This is where things get challenging.

The word “millennium” comes from the Latin, meaning “thousand years.” It comes right from this text. Christ’s eternal physical reign on earth in a wonderfully blessed world surrounded by the redeemed from every nation on earth will happen with either scenario. Bible-believing Christians agree that Revelation 21 and 22 describe that. The question is, what is happening in these verses in Revelation 20.

The physical world that we will enjoy in the New Heaven and New Earth, in which we will be in physical bodies, or a “spiritual body” as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, is not depicted here in Revelation 20. If anywhere, it is described in Old Testament visionary passages in books such as Isaiah or Ezekiel. Perhaps those passages describe the Millennial kingdom, or perhaps the eternal kingdom, or even the spiritual blessings of the Gospel. Physicality is not what differentiates the Millennium from eternity.

If there is to be a physical Millennium, there is a vast difference between now and that time. The Millennium will be a greatly enhanced blessed world that still includes birth, sin and death, none of which will be included in the eternal state. Now, Christ is reigning physically in Heaven, where he ascended. He is now sitting at the right hand of God, and “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy…” (1 Peter 1:8). Now, Christ rules his invisible spiritual kingdom by the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of converted people. In the Millennial kingdom, Christ will be reigning physically on earth, settling disputes among the nations — necessary because sin nature will still be present. He will cause people to live at peace with one another.

Now, Satan is roaming the earth with his demons continually tempting us to sin. In the Millennium, he will be locked up in a prison, unable to deceive the world. Now, the world system that Satan has set up is continually alluring and enticing us to sin. In a physical Millennium, with Christ reigning on earth, there will be no alluring world system pulling us toward evil and sin.

Now, the world is groaning in bondage to decay and corruption and a cycle of death. In the Millennium, the effects of sin, Adam’s sin will be greatly reduced, but not totally removed. Now, the work that we do is under the curse of Adam. We wrestle with the ground, and it produces thorns and thistles. In the Millennium, labor will be lavishly blessed and fruitful, providing deep satisfaction though not yet perfection. Now, our bodies are racked with pain and sickness, and all of us will die, probably on average around age 80 or so. In the Millennium pain and sickness are reduced though not removed; people are more robustly healthy. Death is deferred, though not entirely removed. People will still die, but on average, they will die much at a much later age.

Revelation 20 does not provide this information about rich blessing and lavish agricultural and long life. In Revelation 19, Christ returns, then in Revelation 20 he binds Satan for a thousand years. During those thousand years, Christ is reigning over the nations; those alive at the time will be occupied in some way. To understand the lavish blessing of having Christ on earth as king, we must look mostly to Old Testament visionary passages like Isaiah 65:17-25.

Interpreting the book of Revelation as a whole, and this particular passage in detail, is challenging. There are not many passages that clearly depict Millennial life that cannot be referring to the New Heaven and the New Earth, or the spiritual blessings of the Gospel, but that refer exclusively to the Millennium. A passage in the Old Testament which describes lavish agricultural blessings on a previously barren land in Isaiah may be referring to the blessings of salvation by faith in Christ, like the outpouring of the Spirit. Jesus frequently used agricultural analogies: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.” [John 15:5]  Descriptions of lavish agricultural blessing may be spiritual rather than literal. We know that Jesus is not literally a vine. He is using agricultural images to teach us the blessings of the Gospel. That passage might be referring to spiritual blessings, or to the blessings of the restoration of Israel from exile to Babylon, or to the blessings of Millennial life, or to the blessings of the New Heaven and the New Earth. The answer to the question “What will millennial life be like?” requires Scripture that cannot refer to the other categories of blessings.

Isaiah does the same thing. For example, Isaiah 44:3-4 says, “For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants. They will spring up like grass in a meadow, like poplar trees by flowing streams.” Which of the four categories of blessings does that passage cover? It could be any of the four or all of them. Is Isaiah talking about God literally turning the desert into a paradise, or is he speaking of the effects of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on people? Whole books, 450-500 pages long, have been written about the Millennium. The topic has been debated throughout history. Augustine debated in his day with Chiliasts, or Millennial thinkers; Calvin and Luther did as well. Jonathan Edwards, following the Calvinist/Augustinian pattern, spiritualized the Millennium, seeing it as the advance of the Gospel throughout church history and the overthrowing of the false Roman Catholic system.

The two views have been in opposition of each other for a long time. I have gone back and forth on the topic, sometimes on Monday one thing and on Tuesday the other. Unlike any other theological topic, the more I study it, the more difficult it gets for me to resolve.

In 2002, I was with a friend of mine at the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis, Tom Schreiner, who wrote a very long commentary on the Book of Romans and is a professor of New Testament at Southern Seminary in Louisville. He is, in my opinion, one of the leading New Testament scholars in the world.

At this convention, when we were talking about the Millennium, I was in the process of working out my views at the time, leaning toward Amillennialism. This is the view that the thousand years is symbolic language for the spread of the Gospel throughout the church age, which is recapitulated in the battle of Armageddon ending, or Gog and Magog. In this view, Satan is bound by the spread of the Gospel.

The other option I was considering was Pre-millennialism. Most evangelicals are pre-millennial, they believe in the thousand year reign. Just going back over it, and he said he was a pre-millennialist This view has to do with the timing of the Second Coming relative to the Millennium, meaning Jesus comes back prior to the Millennium, the thousand-year reign of Christ on Earth.

In that conversation, Tom said he was pre-millennial because of the apparently chronological order of the chapters in Revelation, which seem to be unfolding the story of God’s judgment on earth, with Revelation 17 and 18 as an aside describing Babylon. Jesus’ Second Coming is described next, followed by the Millennium, followed by the eternal state. Given his input, I decided that I most agreed with the Pre-millennial view. 

Years later, as I was writing my commentary on the book of Isaiah, I came to Isaiah 65:17-25. “‘Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more. [This sounds like the eternal state in Revelation 21, the New Heaven, New Earth, no more weeping. But listen to verse 20:] Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; he who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere youth; he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed. [In the New Heaven and New Earth, there is no more death, mourning, crying or pain, but here in verse 20 we see birth (implying marriage) aging, death. Jesus told us in that in the Kingdom, there will be neither marrying nor giving in marriage.] They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands. They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the LORD, they and their descendants with them. Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent's food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,’ says the LORD.”

This passage is key for descriptions of Millennial life and is a doorway to look to other similar passages in Isaiah with other aspects of the Millennial kingdom. It is hard enough to preach or have a conversation about it, but when publishing a commentary, there must be some resolution. So I called Tom Schreiner, described my dilemma with this passage in Isaiah, and asked for his input since he was Pre-millennial.

In the middle of my synopsis, he stopped me and said, “Actually, Andy, I’m Amillennial now.” I could have dropped the phone. I am not the only one who is unresolved on this issue. I am not seeking to confuse you, and I know that some of you are resolved on it. In the history of evangelicalism, some have thought that holding an Amillennial view implies that one is a theological liberal. However, that is ignorant of church history: John Calvin, who was Amillennnial, had a high view of Scripture. 

Currently, for the most part, either of these views is acceptable among evangelicals, less fundamental than inerrancy of Scripture regarding bodily resurrection in a resurrected world. If you are active in putting sin to death, growing in holiness, and sharing the gospel, then what you believe about the millennium will not affect your spiritual walk.

We ought to work at it because it is in the Scripture, but with the understanding that the answer will not be finally resolved until it happens. If you are Amillennial and there is a literal Millennium, you will not be left out. You will be where you are supposed to be. If you are Pre-millennial and we go straight to the eternal state, you will not be sad or disappointed.

Sometimes a Pre-millennial view may cause one to focus more on the Millennium the eternal state. Certainly we will be in the Millennium for a while, if there is one, but the eternal state will be for eternity, so we must spend more time on that. Revelation 21-22 clearly describes aspects of the eternal state.

The best I can do to help us figure this out is to read the Scripture and preach it. Romans 4:3 admonishes, “What does the Scripture say?” We will walk through this together through two sermons to do our best to understand it. To any here who are unbelievers, it really does not make a difference what you believe about the Millennium. What matters is that your sins are forgiven through faith in Christ.

First we need to review for context. Revelation 20 will not make much sense if we do not look at where we have been. Revelation is an unveiling of the invisible spiritual world, but also of the future. Revelation 1:1 tells us that Jesus Christ is revealed, given to show his servants what must “soon” take place. The word “soon” means soon in His economy — the next thing that will happen. So this book is given to unfold the future.

In Revelation 4, John goes up through a doorway by the power of the Spirit into Heaven, where he sees God on His throne. The central reality of the universe is God enthroned. We see through John’s eyes a heavenly vision of concentric circles of thrones and worship for God, the Creator. In Revelation 5, we see a scroll in the right hand of the one seated on the throne; the scroll is sealed with seven seals. Jesus the Lion and Lamb, takes that scroll. He has the authority, the right to open it. In Revelation 6, Christ breaks open the seven seals. Each seal contains a judgment sent from Heaven to earth.

In Revelation 7, we see a multitude greater than anyone could count from every tribe, language, people, and nation that are redeemed by the blood of Christ. The redemption of lost people from all over the world is the point of the entire story. Revelation 8-9 bring seven trumpets judgments which devastate a third of the ecology and economy of the earth. They are so grand and vast and devastating that it is not possible to spiritualize them or say they have already happened. Nothing like these judgments has ever been seen. Since he is telling us what must soon take place, they have not yet happened. Revelation 12 shows us, behind the scenes, the serpent — the dragon —mentioned in our text in Revelation 20, who is Satan. We see clearly his hatred for the people of God and for Israel. He desires to pursue and kill the children of the woman who is Israel, as well as believers who follow who follow Christ and obey His commandments. This satanic attack on the people of God on Earth is happening now in the invisible spiritual realm.

In Revelation 13, Satan’s final phase is a devastating attack on the church: he brings forth the Antichrist, or the Beast from the Sea, the one-world ruler who is coming. After that, the Beast from the Earth, who is the false prophet, arises, enabled to do miraculous signs and wonders to deceive the nations. He causes all people to bow down to an idol, a statue of the Antichrist, establishing a wicked one-world religion. As a sign of loyalty to the Antichrist, he causes people to receive a mark on the forehead or on the hand. Those who do not receive it cannot buy or sell, resulting in economic strictures and persecution of people who will not worship the beast. Revelation 14 says that those who do receive the Mark of the Beast will spend eternity in Hell. There is a clear demarcation of believers and unbelievers. The elect, the true followers of Christ, will not bow down, and therefore must run for their lives. It will be a very difficult time.

Revelation 16 depicts the final bowl judgments poured out on the ecology of the world. This time it is not a third but the entire sea turns to blood and every living thing in the sea dies. At the end of Revelation 16 is the battle of Armageddon. Lying, deceiving spirits go around the world and gather everyone together for a climactic battle. Amillennials see this as the same battle as the one in Revelation 20, Gog and Magog. Pre-millennials see it as an additional battle.

Revelation 17 shows the kings of the earth under the Antichrist gathering for this battle with one purpose to give their power to the Antichrist. They gather to fight for him to slaughter the Jews who now believe in Christ, so all Israel will be saved, as Romans 11 says. The kings are coming to Palestine, to Armageddon, ultimately to try to get to Jerusalem to slaughter all of the Jews that are now believing in Christ as their Messiah. They think it will be an easy battle, but they do not understand with whom they are dealing.

In Revelation 19, the Bridegroom returns — the Second Coming of Christ — to rescue his Bride. He wreaks carnage on his enemies — dead bodies everywhere, a river of blood. This climactic battle brings us to Revelation 20, beginning with the binding of Satan.

Revelation 20:1-3 says, “And I saw an angel coming down out of Heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be set free for a short time.” The chapter opens with a powerful decisive action, the binding of Satan. A single angel, who has the key to the Abyss, comes down from Heaven to bind him. The word “abyss” in the Greek literally means bottomless, so he is thrown into a bottomless pit. Other texts also mention the Abyss as a pit of punishment for demons.

Revelation 9:1-3: “The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. And out of the smoke locusts came down upon the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth.” Satan is identified as the king of the Abyss. Revelation 9:11: “They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, Apollyon.” Both those words mean “destroyer”. Revelation 9 provides an image of billowing smoke as out of a smoke stack, bringing locusts which plague the earth.

2 Peter 2:4 says that “God did not spare the angels who sinned, but threw them down into Tartarus [in Greek mythology, a deep pit] and delivered them to be kept in chains of darkness until judgment.” This is the same idea, a pit with chains, but those demons were locked up in an earlier time. Some scholars think it was demons that fell right before Noah’s flood, but we do not know. Jude 6 says, “…the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home — these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day.” This covers the same thing — demons that fell in some previous time, locked in a pit with a chain.

During Jesus’ ministry on earth, his miraculous signs and wonders included healing people who were possessed and controlled by demons. One was the demoniac of the Gadarenes — naked, howling at the moon, breaking chains — a terror to the entire population of the surrounding countryside.

Luke 8:30-31: “Jesus asked him, “‘What is your name?’ ‘Legion,’ he replied, because many demons had gone into him. And they begged him repeatedly not to order them to go into the Abyss.” They plead with Jesus not to send them prematurely to their prison; they want to retain their freedom to roam about causing trouble. After he drives them out, they inhabit a herd of pigs, which go mad and rush into the sea and die. We can imagine that as they are begging not to be sent to the Abyss, they have in mind the other demons who were sent there. Here, Satan is seized by this angel with a commission from God, bound with a great chain and thrown into the Abyss.

Key to the Amillennial position is the idea that when Jesus came to earth the first time and began preaching the Kingdom of God, to some degree he bound Satan. Jesus’ enemies — Scribes, Pharisees, and other unbelieving Jewish leaders — claimed that he was a deceiver and was driving out demons by Beelzebub, the king of demons. In reply, Jesus described what he was truly doing. Matthew 12:29 says, “…how can anyone enter a strong man's house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can rob his house.” The strong man is Satan; Satan’s possessions are people. The one stronger than the strong man is Jesus, who overpowers this strong man and ties him up, enabling him to steal people from Satan’s dark kingdom. The Amillennial view says that is what the thousand years is all about. The binding of Satan is a provisional binding to keep him from deceiving people in reference to the Gospel, so that the Kingdom of God can advance. Another passage like this, Luke 11:21-23, says, “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up the spoils. He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters.”

In other words, gathering and assembling the Kingdom of God is an act of spiritual violence. He is conquering a wicked king, plundering his kingdom, building the kingdom out of plundered living stones that have been quarried from a dark kingdom, sending his church over the walls of Hades — the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. We undertake a rescue mission into dark territory to rescue living stones; we plunder and Satan cannot stop us. This has been going on for 2000 years. Colossians 1:13 says, “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.” We have been rescued from that dark kingdom, and Jesus bound the strong man to make that happen.

The purpose and result of the binding is clear. Revelation 20:3 says, “He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended.” The essence of Satan’s power and reign is lies. This is how he deceives the nations and rules his kingdom. When God said to Eve in the Garden, “What have you done?” she replied, “The serpent deceived me and I ate.” Jesus said of His enemies, who hated the Gospel, in John 8:44: “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” Satan’s deception of the nations has been essential to his kingdom. It is what he does.

He deceives every generation through the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life. “Sin won’t damage you. It’s fine.” He deceives people into false religions — Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam are all constructs of the Devil. He is lying to their adherents and to atheists and other philosophical systems. All are included in the system of lies and deceptions. The greatest deception ever will come from the reign of Antichrist. 2nd Thessalonians 2 says, “He will send them a powerful delusion.” This will come through the whole story of the Antichrist, by the fact that he and the false prophet are able to do miraculous signs and wonders to deceive even the elect, Jesus said, if that were possible. It is not possible, but that is a powerful delusion.

If there is a literal Millennium, the people who live on the earth at that time will come to faith in Christ, like all of us did. Likely, there will not be a different system of justification then, meaning those in that generation must also believe in Jesus, but it will be very different than it was for us. They will have the tremendous advantage of not having to overcome Satan with his system of lies in the world, having to overcome false religions. I imagine there will not be any. They will believe in a literal, physical Jesus right in front of them, just as people — like the thief on the cross, Peter, and others — in Jesus’ age did. That does not mean that every single solitary person in the Millennium will be a believer in Christ. There will be some unbelievers, and they will be the ones gathered at the end to fight that final battle.

All we can say about the number 1000 is that it is ten times ten times ten — ten cubed, a perfect number. Just because it is a perfect number does not mean it is not a literal number. Symbolic and literal are not mutually exclusive. Frequently in the Bible, the word thousand years can mean a long time, as in 2 Peter 3:8: “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” Psalm 90 says, “A thousand years in your sight are like an evening watch that goes by.” This could refer to a long time or a literal thousand years.

The question in front of us that Amillennials must struggle with is whether Satan is bound now. In Revelation 20, Satan is locked up, wrapped up with a great chain and thrown and sealed into the Abyss. He is not limited or blocked in that verse; he cannot be more bound than that.

But we do not see that either scripturally or experientially. Right now, Satan is fighting everything we are trying to do. Many verses in the New Testament say that. For instance, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed seed — some seed fell on the path and the birds came and ate it up. When one hears the word and does not receive it, Satan comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. That is happening all the time. Satan follows behind preachers like me, and if people do not have a soft heart, he plucks away immediately any impact of what they have heard. Satan is active. Ephesians 6 admonishes us to put on the full armor of God, not because Satan is locked up, chained in the bottom of a pit, but because “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” James 4:7 says, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” We are told in 1 Peter 5:8-9, “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” That is not restrained, chained and thrown in a pit. No, he is out and about.

We need to be aware of what he is doing. 1 Corinthians 5:5 says, “…hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.” Satan is not bound and thrown in a pit. He was active in Corinth in this man’s life; Paul said to hand him over to the unbelievers, the wicked surrounding satanic world. When he repented, Paul said to welcome him back (2 Corinthians 2:11) “…in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.” Paul recognized that he is always fighting Satan. “For we wanted to come to you—certainly I, Paul, did, again and again—but Satan blocked our way.” [1 Thessalonians 2:18] This is a strong argument then for the Pre-millennial interpretation of Revelation 20:1.

I cannot leave it like that. Next week we will go to the other side to balance our understanding. I will make the quick point that I do not accept a literal Millennium outright without question because  The biggest problem I have is that it does not seem to be taught clearly anywhere else in the New Testament. For example, the Apostle Paul does not seem to acknowledge it. In 1 Corinthians 15, when Paul talks about the bodily resurrection, you would think he would mention a thousand years in which there is a partial resurrection. 1 Corinthians 15 makes us long for our full resurrection body. Christ is the first fruit of resurrection, then when he comes, believers will be resurrected, but will it be only partial?

I think these questions are worth asking, but they are not ultimate or fundamental questions. We all have eternal souls, and as I said, the next thing that will happen after the Second Coming is either this or that. No matter what happens with the Millennium, it is appointed for each one of us to die unless we are in the final generation. After death, we face judgment. If you have not come to faith in Christ, you will be lost. If you came here today as an unbeliever, perhaps you are confused about what you have heard. Perhaps you want to know how your sins can be forgiven. Maybe you are feeling guilty for the ways that you violated your conscience or feeling lost with no purpose or feeling desperate.

It is my joy, my duty and my responsibility to tell you that there is good news in Christ. The Millennium is not the most important thing I have to say to you. No, the most important thing is that Christ died for your sins according to the Scriptures; He was buried and He was raised from the dead on the third day. If you repent — turn away from your sins and trust in Him — you will have eternal life.

Lord, thank you for the time we have had to consider the difficult, challenging topic of the Millennium. We thank you, Lord, for the provision that you have made for sinners like us at the cross, for the empty tomb, and for Christians to commemorate that through the Lord’s Supper. We ask now that You would bless us with your presence, and that you would strengthen our faith and help us to partake in a manner worthy of the Lord. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.