We'll start in verse 10. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. Having the glory of God, her brilliance was like a very costly stone, as a stone of crystal clear jasper. It had a high wall, had a great and high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names were written on them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel. There were three gates on the east, and three gates on the north, and three gates on the south, and three gates on the west. And the wall of the city had 12 foundation stones, and on them were the 12 names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb. The one who spoke with me had a gold measuring rod to measure the city and its gates and its walls. The city is laid out as a square, and its length is as great as the width. And he measured the city with the rod 1,500 miles, and its length and width and height are equal. And he measured its wall, 72 yards according to human measurements, which are also angelic measurements. The material of the wall was jasper, and the city was like pure gold. like clear glass. The foundation stones of the city wall were adorned with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation stone was jasper. The second, sapphire. The third, chalcedony. The fourth, emerald. The fifth, sardunx. The sixth, sardius. The seventh, chrysolite. The eighth, beryl. The ninth, topaz. The tenth, chrysoprase. the eleventh, jacenth, the twelfth, amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each one of the gates was a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb are its temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. In the daytime, for there will be no night there, its gates will never be closed, and they will bring the glory and honor of the nations into it. and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life." Amen. Let's pray before we begin our talk. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for such a splendid and magnificent text of hope, of promise, of beauty like we've never seen before. And we pray that this passage would be an encouragement to all of us. And we ask this in Jesus's name. Amen. So when we peer into this passage, we notice that the first thing that comes to our minds is that John sees someone who is genuine. He sees the bride who is genuine. Now we've talked about this before with Revelation, where he will provide contrast. So here we have the bride and all her brilliance, contrasted with the one who was kind of the disgusting or the bad counterfeit, who was the harlot of Babylon, who was described back in chapter 17 and 18. It's interesting how Satan always has a counterfeit to what God has produced. And he counterfeits it in such a way that it's going to be beautiful, it's going to be powerful, it's going to be big, many people will see it. And we could make speculative comparisons to the things that we see in our world, the power of man, the wisdom of man, and we can see for sure what we would say is a counterfeit. So, the vision of the harlot and the vision of the bride really makes her stand out as one who is glorious. You might be a little wondering, well, where are you coming up with bride here? Well, you gotta look into the passage just before it, and we read it last time. And we also need to remember that John here, again, he's reinforcing this idea that he's seeing things with his eyes, right? He's seeing things with his eyes. And that which John is seeing with his eyes is symbolic. not to be understood so much as literal as being a one-for-one comparison. So in verse 2 of the same chapter, 21, he sees a holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. This holy city is a people. This New Jerusalem is a people. This is the Bride of Christ. And he uses some very interesting and powerful images here to describe his covenant people. So you may be wondering, well, I've heard other pastors take different interpretations. Oh, I'm sure you have heard other pastors take different interpretations of this. But we need to be mindful that the whole book of Revelation is moving us toward the idea that I'm going to touch on in the message, that the one who overcomes will be victorious. Revelation 3.21, the one who overcomes will be victorious, and will be made to sit on a throne with Him. So the idea is beauty, the idea is oneness with Christ, the idea is we are victorious because Christ is victorious. So this isn't something that we make ourselves to be. This is the beauty of God's bride, and He is the one who has made her this way. So, he carries him away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain that says, and shows him the holy city, Jerusalem. Now notice, where is it coming from? It's not there already. Which tells us that it really is nothing on the earth that's going to be redone or fixed up by God. But it's coming down out of heaven. And all these words, holy city, Jerusalem, all referring to the bride of Christ. We would say the children of God. We would say every saved person from Adam to the end. Have we seen other glimpses, let me ask you this, have we seen other glimpses in Revelation of people in heaven? Yes we have. In heaven. With the Lord. So let's think through this just a minute. We have those who have experienced the first resurrection, the spiritual resurrection. Those like we just prayed for Pastor Mbewe's 31-year-old son, he's gone to glory, and he is there with all of our friends and loved ones who preceded him in heaven with God. I see them really connected with those saints who are under the throne in chapter 6, crying out, how long until you avenge our blood? So they're there. Well, what about those who 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 says who are alive and remain? So we're there at judgment. Let's say we're the ones who are alive and remain. We're there at judgment. The books are opened. He found each of our names in the book of life. Again, this is symbolic, but it helps us, doesn't it? He knows who are his. And what then? Do we just sort of stick around? No, we're taken where? To heaven. To heaven. Everybody's in heaven at this point in Revelation. All of God's people are in heaven. All those who have been washed in the blood of the Lamb, you might say, are in heaven. We'll go from that very terrifying moment of judgment where we are vindicated because we are in Jesus, to the marriage supper of the Lamb. That's the rapture of God's people. And so there we are with Him in heaven, and we know at the resurrection what else happens. Every body comes up out of the grave, or out of the ocean, or wherever it is, in whatever condition it is, and it's given a new, spiritual, glorified body. And I mean, we could go through the membership role of Prineville Community Church and have two, three hundred people that have passed away, that they will come forth out of the grave. and they'll be given their new bodies and their new souls and be taken to heaven, united with Christ in the ultimate way. So that's us. That's them. Again, we are the holy city. This idea of city is people. That's a similar concept with Zion. coming down out of heaven from God. I noticed something else here, too, that I think it's good for us to think about. This group of people, which is us included, is referred to here as Jerusalem and the New Jerusalem. But we don't really see ourselves that way, do we? But when we read Romans 9-11, Paul there tells us that we have been what? We have been grafted in to the olive branch, as it were. We have become part of the tree. He has reached out and said, hey, you non-Jewish people, you're coming in by faith, too. You're coming into my family. And so we, too, enjoy the promises of God, just like Israel of old, those who were of real faith. And we are grafted in, we are brought in. And so, praise God. He didn't have to include us in His plan, but He chose to. What else about her? Verse 11, I refer to her as her. We could say this is us. Having the glory of God, her brilliance was like a very costly stone. A stone of crystal clear jasper. One of the pastors says this, this is Dr. Johnson, dazzling light is the first impression that imprints itself on John's consciousness. because the city has the glory of God and shines with the brilliance of costly, crystal clear jasper. We've all been in a jewelry store before, and we've all looked at the diamonds there in the case, or maybe they have them sitting on top of the case under the lighting that's just right with the black velvet underneath. I think one of the reasons why they say diamonds are a girl's best friend is they really sparkle. They're very brilliant. They are something that just captivate the eye. So that is what God here is saying of us. Now you might be thinking like I was thinking, well, I've picked Jasper. I've gotten jasper along in places in the Crooked River drainage as we've gone out and gone rock hounding, and it wasn't that clear. A lot of the jasper around here, at least what we've found, it might be sort of green or reddish in color, it's different. And so this is just a different type of stone, something perhaps that we don't have right around Prineville. Again, I think what John is doing here, I mean, consider the brilliance of the apostle John. His capacity of explaining things, is only so much. We have the same problems too, right? Can you explain to me exactly how you saw this event go down when this car hit the other car, perhaps an officer said to you in the past. And you're thinking, we're trying to come up with words and we can't quite come up with what we want to say. So what John is trying to describe here, it breaks the backs of words. We might say words are not doing full justice to what John is seeing here. But it's what we have. It is God-inspired scripture, absolutely. But with words come limitations. You know that. We have a little phrase, right? Well, you had to be there. You can read about the Crooked River Roundup in the paper or talk to a friend about it, but you really have to go down there and sit and watch the bull riders to really get the experience to know what it's like. So the radiance that John sees I suggest to you, this is like a blinding radiance. Perhaps as bright as the sun. You're having to shield your eyes. Now John's already seen something that's been pretty bright and radiant when we look to Revelation chapter 4 verse 3. He who is sitting was like a jasper stone and sardis in appearance and there was a rainbow around the throne like an emerald in appearance. Now who is he speaking about here? That's Revelation 4 3. This is important. Who's he speaking of? He's speaking of God. He's seated on the throne. This is the Father. He's sitting. And we see the word again, jasper, jasper stone. So here it is describing Father God, whom we can't even look upon. And later in our text, Revelation 21, it's describing the bride of Christ, the believers. Wow. God shares His glory in that way with us in eternity. We shine as bright as the stars in the sky because He shines as bright as the stars in the sky. Now today, you can meet somebody on the street and talk to them, and you'll walk away, you'll say, you know, I really think that woman is a believer. And you say, well, why would you say that? Because everything about her was different. She looked at me with love in her eyes, acceptance. Her speech was pure. Her speech was just. She wasn't filled with complaining and grumbling like everybody is today, it seems like. And she was very kind. It's almost like you could just see the light of Christ through her. And doesn't Jesus tell us to do the same thing? To let your light so shine that the men of this world will see them and see me and glorify your Father in heaven. I love how Jesus never says, now I want you to go out there and I want you to take the gospel to every person, and you keep hammering them. He doesn't say that. Oh yes, he says, make disciples. He says, preach. He says, be witnesses of me. And so as we go into the world, and we're gonna see, sorry, I keep referring to my sermon, but I'm so touched by Revelation 3, 14 through 22 and the Savior there. How the Savior, he never gives up even on his children who are being very naughty, but he never really demands anything of them in that text, other than, that they would simply open the door, that they would, if they hear his voice, if they hear his voice, you gotta have ears to hear, open the door. Seems rather simple, doesn't it? Well, these are just the ways that I think when I'm working through this. So here we have the radiance that John sees emanating from the throne of God that we saw in chapter four just now, that same radiance now permeates the city. It's not just confined to the space around the throne of God in heaven. It's everywhere. The Lord of glory indwells his people. The Lord of Glory floods His new community with the beauty of His holiness. And we see a little bit of that today, don't we? We're the people of God. We are His people. And so His holiness emanates in us and through us. We're united by faith and by virtue of the Holy Spirit who's indwelling us. And we are encouraging each other to walk with the Lord together. And you see this, sometimes it takes a while to begin to see this in people. And you've heard me say this a thousand times, but I think it bears repeating. How do we see it, how do we see it? Again, it's rather simple, it's the fruits of the Spirit. You see the patience of someone when they're dealing with somebody who isn't that patient, isn't that kind. There's patience of moms with their kids, dads with their kids. You see the joy in people's lives when you know they're dealing with really difficult and hard things. We have one person who's part of our fellowship here who deals with difficulty every day, unlike the rest of us do. And when I see joy in her, real happiness from the Lord, I know it's from the Lord. He's the one that's given her, because she doesn't really have a lot to be happy about in her present circumstances. It's difficult. Here we have this brilliance of a very costly stone. So the next thing that John describes with his words for us, we see beginning in verse 13, moving from this brilliant glory of God to things that are great and high. We'll read it again, verse 13. I'm sorry, verse 12. It had a great and high wall with 12 gates. and at the gates, twelve angels. And names were written on them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel." Here again, we need to remind ourselves, this is symbolic. This is a vision that John has seen about this glorious city and place, which is the people of God. Now, why do you suppose that it has a great and high Wall. What purposes did the walls around the cities in the ancient times serve? Protection. To keep out the enemy. So, he's reinforcing this idea and this concept of what God has already done. So, what has God already done to protect us from our enemies? Not now, but at this future point in Revelation. What did he do in chapter 20? Got rid of Satan. Very good. When we read further, we noticed in chapter 21 that verse 27, nothing unclean, no one who practices abomination and lying shall ever come into it. You think, well, why does he have to say that? Well, why not? Why not? They are with Satan in the lake which burns with fire for eternity. And remember, we are children. We are God's children. And what does a good father do to his children? He wants their hearts to be secure. He reminds them often that as long as they're under His roof and in His house, they're safe and secure. You don't just say it once. Okay, you're born to me, little one. I will protect you. You will be safe and secure all of your life. I mean, You have little children and they can get very fearful and very emotional. They need to be reminded all the time and they need the arms of their father protecting them and showing them. And so that's what I see the Lord doing here. Because I don't think we could read into verse 27 that there's a bunch of bad people that are those who dwell upon the earth that are sort of walking around and they're gonna try to scale the walls of the city and get in and somehow corrupt our heavenly experience with God. No, that's not even a risk. But he puts it here to comfort us, right? That's my best understanding of it. So the high walls and the gates would keep out the enemies. We notice here too that there's 12 gates. and the gates twelve angels, and the names written on them are the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel." And in verse 14 we see that the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb are there too. I think that This is the 24 elders that are mentioned back in Revelation 4, verse 8. The 24 elders who are falling down before the Lamb, each one holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense. And there's a little more to it than that, at least in my understanding and interpretation. And we say, well, why do you go there? Well, those 24 elders would be the 12 from the Old Testament and the 12 from the New Testament. Again, this is my opinion and what I think. You're free to have a different idea, but I have to teach what I'm convicted about. And so what does that do for us? We see represented here all of the Old Testament saints. right, from Adam forward to, maybe we would say the Apostle Paul, forward to the time that Jesus ascended into heaven. All these Old Testament saints who are saved by faith in Jesus. Hebrews 11 is a beautiful catalog of their history and their life. And then the 12 New Testament, the 12 apostles, they represent what? All of the people who come to faith in Jesus, i.e. the saints, during this present age, of the New Testament time, since Jesus' ascension. Again, and I love this, because this is the biblical language. There's no biblical language of separation here, between the Old Testament and the New, but the language is what? A unity. A coming together. One of my best friends is a man by the name of Rich Robinson. And Rich Robinson is 100% Jewish in his blood and DNA. He's been here a couple of times. He's preached, he's played music for us. He grew up in Brooklyn. I mean, he has about, he's about as opposite as Chris Cookston as you could be because I grew up in Eastern Oregon on a ranch and, Not in Brooklyn, not Jewish. I'm English slash Irish. But in Jesus, I am closer to Rich Robinson, and so are you, than I am my next door neighbor on Mahogany Street. We just have everything in common. And so I think this is helpful, and we see these images and these things in Revelation. We have lots of gates. So in the ancient time, lots of gates in this text, in the ancient times, the gates would be included on the wall. In fact, the wall of Jerusalem is kind of interesting. If you want to do a little study, you could go and read Nehemiah and Ezra and see how they rebuilt, and that would have been the second building of Jerusalem. And there were people, there was the sheep gate and other gates. And at those gates, is often where the elders would sit. The elders would be like, I mean in Prineville we would say that the city administration, we might say Judge Crawford and the commissioners and whoever the mayor, the man serving as mayor, etc. would be there in the gates. And at the gates business is conducted as well. And so, we see things here in this wonderful image that would be very common and very familiar to a first century believer reading this. And so, that's the picture that they would have. So, the 12 gates, and at the 12 gates, 12 angels. Hmm. Let me ask you this, and we might have to think hard. Where else in the Old Testament, very early in the Old Testament, do we see an angel stationed at such a place almost like a garden? Where do we see that? The Garden of Eden. Oh, so hint, hint, hint. Does this passage, and we'll read it further in the weeks to come, does this passage remind you at all of the Garden of Eden? Chapter 22, verse 1, he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb. Verse 3, there will no longer be any curse, et cetera. But what we're going to see is this is a return to Eden. I get so excited because the Bible really is bookended with these glorious heavenly settings that you and I are gonna be there for eternity worshiping our God. I hope you're thinking and wondering, well, what are we gonna be doing there for eternity? We'll come back and talk about that later, because you're gonna be doing something. We're gonna be doing something there. We all have jobs. We'll be working. Of course, we're created to work. We're not gonna get bored. But I really hope that there is no goat head thistle. There. I don't think there will be. That's gotta be part of the curse. Me and another brother who... I pray there's no go-heads there. So friends, we've got the gates, verse 13, three gates on the east, three gates on the north, three gates on the south, and three gates on the west. And the wall of the city had 12 foundation stones. On them were written on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. So, there's something else here, too, that we missed, and we'll end on this, that we didn't miss, I just wanted to come back to it at the end. There's other place in the book of Revelation where it refers to the 12 tribes. And it's Revelation chapter 6 verse 4, and I heard the number of those who were sealed, 144,000 sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel. And they're not all listed here. From the tribe of Judah, we see also from the tribe of Reuben, from the tribe of Gad, and it's 12,000 each, that's verse 5. And then we see Asher, Manasseh, Simeon, Levi, Issachar, Zebulun, If you make a close comparison to the 12 tribes from Genesis, you'll notice that those don't match up perfectly. Again, this is a book of imagery, isn't it? Why do you think that? I'll tell you why I think that. I think because in God's amazing and perfect plan, He's going to include a lot of people who don't have Jewish DNA and blood. My friend Rich might be able to trace his lineage back to one of these tribes, I'm not sure. I definitely can't. I mean, go back to somebody over there in the old country in England somewhere, I'm sure, but not to Israel. And so the Lord leaves little gaps and little things like that because His plan from before the foundation of the world has been to include Gentiles into His plan and to make Gentiles and Jews one new man, according to Ephesians chapter 3. in Jesus Christ. 144,000, we know, you know, people get worried, well, has there been 144,000 people saved? Who is this a reference to? Boy, lots of folks have gotten themselves really worked up over that. A symbolic number referring to a whole lot of people. This is the great multitude of people, and that includes everyone who has accepted Jesus by faith. Everyone, even the thief on the cross, who had just accepted Jesus by faith, had no time to do anything else, had no time to become a member of a church or do anything, but then go directly to paradise at his death. So, well, friends, these are very much my thoughts from Revelation 21. I think our time is almost over. Does anyone have anything you'd like to share or a question or anything? 12 foundations of the apostles, the 12 apostles. Would that be Matthias or would that be Paul? Just a curiosity question, more than anything else. The reason I ask, because When they appointed Matthias, they said, it seems good to us, but the only confirmation they got was they cast the stone and threw it. Yeah. And then along comes Paul. And he refers to He refers to other men as apostles as well, that could be more than 12. So two thoughts here. First thought, I can't really answer that question, because I don't know. Yes. Because I kind of went through there really fast. We'll come back to this next week. But what this is ultimately pointing to is the testimony of these men, of these apostles, which is the testimony of the Word of God. And we see that in chapter 1, verse 2, verse 9, we see it in chapter 20, verse 4, and others. And I think it's answered by this, is what is the role of an apostle? It's to be a witness for Jesus. The eyewitness is already there in heaven. And the office of apostle, we know, has ceased. But it's to proclaim the excellencies of Christ and the gospel. So I'm seeing, and I didn't quite get there today yet, I'm seeing a reference here to the word of God, because that's what the 12 apostles left us, isn't it? And the 12 and the 12, and you could say, well, Jeremiah wasn't, yeah. Okay, so again, thinking with broad brush strokes, this Word of God we have is the testimony of the elders of the Old Testament, the saints of the Old Testament, and the saints of the New Testament, whether we view them as apostles, patriarchs, prophets, et cetera, yeah. And Matthias is included in that, absolutely. I believe so. And notice, too, these are foundation stones. It's almost like these are memorial stones, we would say. It isn't that just the twelve and the twelve are going to be the only ones that are going to make it. No, no, no, no. We'll all be there. But we're all resting on the foundation of the apostles. and the prophets, and the testimony of Abraham and Moses, the writing of the first five. We'll talk about that a little more next week. Well, everyone, thank you. Father, thank you for this time. Please encourage and bless your family in the worship service today. We love you, amen.