Please turn with me in your scriptures to Revelation 21. We're gonna look at verses one through five. If you're looking at a Pew Bible, this will be on page 1041. And as we are turning there together, let us hear the words of Jesus when he says, he who has ears, let him hear. And let us ask together that God would grant us ears to hear his holy word now. Revelation 21. starting in verse 1. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. Also he said, Write these down, for these words are trustworthy and true." Thus ends the reading of God's Holy Word. Let's go to Him in prayer now. The book of Revelation opens with a benediction and a promise saying, blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it for the time is near. God, You promise blessing upon Your people as we read and listen to these words, and we ask, Lord, only that You would fulfill what You have promised. Lord, please come and teach us what awaits those who have been cleansed and washed by Your Son Christ. Show us, Lord, what the Gospel has accomplished, finally and fully, in the new heavens and the new earth. We ask these things for your sake that we might see you and rejoice in the kind of God that you are. In Christ's name we ask these things. Amen. Alright, please be seated. If you are new with us this morning, This is part four in our Gospel Changes Everything series. And if you've missed any of the messages, I would just encourage you to go to our website, thewellboise.com. We've been following this grid, creation, fall, redemption, glory. That's the components that all of us need for a complete Christian worldview. And whether you're a Christian or not, all of us have answers to those four basic categories. The question is, does it line up with reality? Now this morning, we are looking at our last component, glory. Where is all of this going? How does this story end? And the last two chapters of the Bible give us a picture that is radically different than many of our contemporary misimaginations of it. See, oftentimes we are stuck between two radical extremes of what glory is going to look like. On the one hand, we have books in popular culture, like the five people you meet in heaven. which tells the story of a man who was marginalized and lonely and overlooked in this life. And when he dies, he goes to heaven, and what he discovers is that instead of being marginalized, he was more like George Bailey from It's a Wonderful Life when he meets these five people who tell him how much he changed their lives. That his life really mattered. And so he gets to heaven and he realizes that finally he's accepted, finally he has meaning, Only in this heaven, there's no Jesus Christ, no salvation by cross, no holy God, just a God that's marginalized and put in the background. Heaven is totally man-centered. On the other hand, we have the extreme where we're presented with a heaven where Jesus Christ does reign, but heaven is non-physical. All the pleasures of this world are gone, work is gone, we are forever destined to an unending church service, singing glorious hymns in a disembodied state, floating in a non-physical universe. Whatever that means. Gary Larson, if you guys ever followed the Farside comic strip, he captured this picture of heaven with this guy sitting on this cloud with nobody around. And the caption underneath read, wish I brought a magazine. Those are the two extremes of heaven that are often, we're plagued with. And so, we're content with not thinking about it. And both of these extremes couldn't be further from reality. The new heavens and the new earth will be the absolute climax of human history. Amen! It will be! And if we actually saw that, all of us would be screaming, Amen! After all mankind stands before the judgment seat of God and all accounts are finally settled, God will create a new heavens and a new earth, both completely physical. Revelation 22.1. He will bring a physical city to the physical earth, the new Jerusalem. Revelation 22.2. And the dwelling place of God will finally and forever be with man, where we will behold the resurrected and glorified Christ, and all sorrow and sin will be finally put away. Forever. Forever. And then, the great adventure will begin. Then, the great adventure. You haven't even lived yet! You haven't even lived yet. When Bilbo Baggins is about to get onto that ship to sail away into that elven country, what does he say? I think I'm quite ready for a new adventure. That's when life really begins. We will be Christ-worshipping, culture-building, universe-exploring, beauty-creating, redeemed people. Forever. Forever. Here's the big idea. If you get lost in the sermon at any point, come back to this. It's a bit wordy, but every word is important. In glory. We will have sinless, resurrected bodies, fulfilling the cultural mandate, all while enjoying the presence of God forever. One more time, in glory. We will have sinless, resurrected bodies, fulfilling the cultural mandate, all while enjoying the presence of God forever. Every word is important there. I wanted to put physicality and sinlessness together so that you could see that physicality is not wrong. That's what we've been arguing this whole series. Physicality is what God created and He said it was very good. And that's what the new earth and the new heaven will be and will forever be fulfilling the roles that God had commanded to us in the beginning, all in the presence of Christ forever. Two parts to this sermon. First, we're going to look at how we have misimagined heaven. That's important. In order to get to what heaven actually looks like, we need to deconstruct those wrong ideas that we have adopted. So that's the first part, misimagining heaven. And in the second part, we're going to look at the heaven that Christ purchased. The heaven that Christ purchased. So first of all, misimagining heaven. I would argue that evangelical culture at large, including probably most of us in this room, have a wrong premise when it comes to imagining heaven. Many of us have bought into that notion that we are destined to a non-physical place in some sort of disembodied state. And perhaps we've done that subconsciously. So perhaps when we just think about heaven, we just think about whiteness or clouds or all of those things. That's a wrong view. That's not what the scripture says. Now, I think this is a very interesting thing because as Orthodox evangelicals, all of us would affirm the physical resurrection of our bodies. John chapter 5, 28 and 29, Jesus said, an hour is coming. when all who are in the tombs will hear His voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to a resurrection of judgment." And so we can affirm that, yes, we're going to have glorified bodies. And where will we land? That's where the disconnect is. Glorified bodies into what? Randy Alcorn in his book, Heaven, says this, quote, our doctrine of the resurrection dresses up men and women in bodies and then gives them no place to go. Instead of the new earth as our eternal home, we offer an intangible and utterly unfamiliar heaven that's the opposite of home. No wonder there is such an ambivalence and uneasiness about heaven in our churches. No wonder. So where do we get this notion that heaven, our final destination, would be non-physical? Where do we get that notion? Well, Alcorn has adopted this worldview that he coined Christoplatonism. It's a combination of Christianity and Platonic thought. You know, many of Plato's thoughts are gifts from God of common grace that have been given to us from his kind hand. Yet, since Plato wasn't grounded in the scripture, his views led to a dualism between the material and the spiritual. He had this phrase in Latin, soma sima. which means a body, a tomb. And this asserted that humanity's highest destiny was to be forever set free from the body. That was his view of heaven. and that has seeped into the church, and all you need to do is open up the Scriptures to see. Paul combated that view in his letter to the Corinthians. John combated that view in his letter to 1 John, and we still fight that influence today. And the reason why it seems so appealing to modern Christians is because it looks like it takes the high ground. Well, that's spiritual. That's physical. And so we think, oh yeah, well of course, I want to be high-minded, I want to be spiritually minded. So Christoplatonism is the unbiblical belief that the spirit realm is good and the material realm is bad. That's what Christoplatonism is. The belief that the spirit realm is good and the material realm is bad. And just as this view has showed itself in our creation and fall components, So it shows itself in this component of glory, by making heaven a completely spiritual place devoid of physicality. And this view is so pervasive that it has even infected Orthodox Reformed teachers in the circles that we would say hallelujah to. One such teacher writes in his commentary on Revelation, he says this, quote, Hear the Christoplatonism here. When John speaks of streets paved with gold, a city whose gates are made of single pearls and the like, we must not understand that the heavenly city will be as material as present earthly cities. Why not? Why should we not think of the heavenly city as material? Where do you get that presupposition? Are we to spiritualize our resurrected bodies as well? What does it mean to be human? You know that we weren't called human beings until the spirit and the body was combined together. And this influence has gone so deep as to even condemn physical pleasures. Many evangelicals, and perhaps many of us in this room, would identify physical pleasures with evil, pitting pleasure-seeking against seeking God. Remember that email that I quoted here three weeks ago with that young believer who sent me an email? And she confessed Christ, and she asked, is it OK As a Christian, if I can draw, or run, or sing, where does she get those ideas? Where do we get them? Who invented physical pleasure? Where did good food come from? And sex, and friendship, and laughter, and celebration, and work? Did those things come after the fall? No. God made all of those things before sin ever entered the world. But what does Christoplatonism do? It tells us that physical pleasures are bad. And it creates a picture of the afterlife that is more akin to Eastern mysticism than Biblical Christianity. You know, we as Christians can look at the Old Testament and see how Israel synthesize their religion with the pagan nations around them and we can think, man, how foolish they are. And then we turn around and do the same thing. To be disembodied spirits floating in some ethereal, non-physical place is more a product of Buddhism than it is of the Bible. And this view of heaven for any thinking human being is very unattractive, if we are honest. We have created a picture of heaven that is Only a place that is attractive to those people who are most suffering in society, the elderly, the handicapped, the persecuted, only those type of people would find that type of heaven attractive because at least they would be delivered from their present ailment. But to those of us who are strong and robust, why would we ever want to go to such a place? No wonder why so many evangelicals are not excited about glory. But Christoplatonism is not merely the product of human beings. It is a product of Satan. One of Satan's attacks against the Church is to attack our view of heaven. In Revelation 13, 6, the NIV reads this, that Satan opened his mouth to blaspheme God to slander His name, and His dwelling place, and those who live in heaven. Satan slanders three things. God, the people of God, and heaven. Why is heaven unattractive? Because Satan is constantly slandering it to our ears. And we suck it in. And Mark Twain, certainly drank deeply of this false view of heaven. In his story, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck reports his conversation with this Christian spinster, Mrs. Watson, about her view of heaven. And this is what he says, quote, she went on and told me all about the good place. She said that all a body would have to do there was to go around all day with a harp and sing forever and ever. So I didn't think much of it. I asked her if she reckoned that Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said, not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together." Who would want to go to that type of heaven? If that is heaven, then Joel Osteen is right. This is our best life now. This is our best life now if that is what heaven is. But what does the scripture say? Let's go to our second part. Let's look at the heaven that Christ purchased. Please turn with me again to Revelation 21 and 22. We're going to read an extended section. It's on page 1041. of the Pew Bible. And as we read this, please read it with brand new ears. Pay close attention to how many times the Apostle gives us physical descriptions of the new earth. And then reimagine it, perhaps for the first time, not as some spiritualized analogy, but as literal descriptions of what the new earth will be like. Revelation 21, starting in verse 1. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away. 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. And He said to me, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, to the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God, and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues, and spoke to me saying, Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb. And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great high mountain. and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. And it had a great high wall with twelve gates. and at the twelve gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed. On the east three gates, and on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates, and on the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb." And the one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls." And skip to verse 21. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl. And the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun nor moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. but nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb through the middle of the street of the city. Also on either side of the river, the tree of life with its 12 kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and then of the Lamb will be in it and his servants will worship him. They will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads and night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun for the Lord God will be their light and they will reign forever and ever. I want to make three observations from this text. The first observation is this. Consider the repeated physicality of the new earth. the repeated physicality of the new earth. This text makes mention of numerous physical realities. Cities, gates, streets, rivers, foundations, walls, water, mountains, precious stones, nations, kings, trees, fruit. And the most repeated reality in this passage being the word city, mentioned 12 times. What do we find in cities? Buildings, bridges, parks, streets, businesses, fountains, restaurants, art museums, zoos, skyscrapers, athletic arenas, and concert halls. If those realities aren't in the New Jerusalem, then in what sense could John possibly call the New Jerusalem a city? Furthermore, where would we be with our resurrected bodies if it wasn't in a physical place? That's so absurd, that God would make a fish with scales and fins, and make him breathe carbon dioxide, and then He would throw him in the city, or a park, or in a living room. God made human beings to be physical combinations of spirit and soul, to live in physical places. But let us not restrict the new earth to one city. There's more than one city in the new earth? Yes, and Jesus speaks about it. To be sure, the New Jerusalem is the capital city, but notice in chapter 21, verses 24 and 25, there are kings coming from other parts of the earth through the open gates. Kings are coming into the New Jerusalem. Where are they coming from? Jesus tells us. in the parable of the minas in Luke 19, 17. Parable. Jesus tells the faithful servant, after he was faithful with the portion that God gave him, that he would receive authority. Authority over what? Ten cities. Jesus said, because you have been faithful in very little, you shall have authority over ten cities. Jerusalem is one city in the new earth. And the gates are open, and through those gates come kings bringing gifts. to Christ. The new earth will be populated with cities. Did you ever read that parable like that before? Or were you just focused on the idea of faithfulness? Jesus said cities. Second observation. In this passage, John the Apostle tells us that old things have passed away. Old things have passed away. Look at the end of verse 4 in chapter 21. The former things have passed away. What former things is John speaking of? Verse 1 says that the new heaven and the new earth is coming into existence. It can't be those things. Verse 2 speaks of a new city. It can't be those things. Look at the context in verse 4. God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away. Now what are those former things? Sin and the effects of sin, those are the things, thank God, that will be finally gone. Those things will be gone, not physicality. This is what Jesus purchased for us on the cross, eternal freedom from sin and its devastating effects. In verse 1, when John says that the first heaven and the first earth passed away, he means that those things will pass away just like our old bodies will pass away to give way to our glorious resurrected bodies. You see, between this life and the next, there's a continuity and a discontinuity. There's a continuity in the sense that our new bodies will really be us. And there's a discontinuity in that they will be glorified. God is not going to totally annihilate this universe and start over. He's going to glorify it. That's what Paul meant in Romans 8.22. He said, for we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. Creation is groaning in the pains of childbirth. Listen, when a mama is groaning in the pains of labor, what are we expecting will happen? A baby. A human being. The earth is in labor pains right now. Every time you see an earthquake, or a tsunami, or a hurricane, those things are labor pains. It's getting ready. It's going to give birth to what? To what? A new earth. A new heavens. Those are signs that God is giving us that this is not all there is. The earth is going to give birth to newness. There's the continuity. But there's discontinuity, because that new earth and that new heavens is no longer going to be subjected to the futility of sin brought on by the human race. But we must understand that God is not scrapping His original creation. What did He call it in Genesis 1? Good, good, good, very good! As Albert Wolters says in his book Creation Regained, he says this, quote, God hangs on to His fallen original creation and salvages it. He refuses to abandon the work of His hands. In fact, He sacrifices His own Son to save His original project. God is so interested in the universe that He slayed His own Son to redeem it back to Himself. Third observation. The cultural mandate will continue on the new earth. The cultural mandate will continue on the new earth. Recall from Genesis 1, from our first sermon in this series, that the cultural mandate was found in verse 28. God commanded all mankind be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion. Meaning, mankind was commissioned by God to develop the natural order, plant crops, build bridges, design computers, compose music, and mankind was to develop the social order, build families, churches, schools, cities, governments, laws. These tasks that God gave us in the beginning constitute our God-ordained vocation, which means that God created every one of us to be creators and rulers. Do you think of yourself like, what does it mean at the end of the passage we just read, that we will reign with God forever? Is that some, are those empty vein words? No, that's fulfilling what God commanded in the beginning. We are creators and rulers. And the part that many of us miss is that this work was part of paradise. Work was part of paradise. Work was ordained before the fall. It was part of God's very good plan that we would be working. Not working exclusively. God also ordained rest. But part of our problem is that we've never worked this side of heaven apart from the curse, and so we often associate work with unnecessary evil. Don't we? But haven't you ever had one of those days where almost everything went right? You met all your deadlines, your co-workers and you were working in harmony, If you're a cop, you caught all the bad guys, or you had like the greatest adventure you ever had. If you're a fireman, you put out all the fires and nobody got hurt, or all the strokes of your hammer were perfectly placed. Or if you're a stay-at-home mom, all your children were mostly cooperating with you, and you cleaned your house, and you had your supper on the table at just the right time. What do we feel at the end of those days? Do you feel fulfillment? That's imaging God. That's fulfilling what God has for us to do on the earth. That's what God designed us for. And those are four tastes of what heaven will be like, minus all the sin. To work is what it means to be an image-bearer of God. Jesus said in John 5.17, a verse that we can overlook so easy, My Father is working until now, and I am working. Are we to suppose that once we get to heaven we're going to be lazy sloths? sitting on a cloud saying, man, I wish I brought a magazine. That's totally not imaging forth God. And that's why it's so unappealing, right? Tim Keller says this in his book, Work is as much a basic human need as food and beauty and rest and friendship and prayer. It is not simply medicine, but it's food for our soul. Without meaningful work, we will sense significant inner loss and emptiness. Part of the problem of unemployment in this country is not merely an economic problem, but we are robbing those people of bearing the image of God. Not all of them. I realize that there are circumstances in which are beyond their control. But to work is to be alive. Now, with all of that in mind, Look again at the activity that is happening on the new earth in chapter 21, verses 24 through 26. Let's look at the activity that's happening there. By its light, that's the light of the Lamb, will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there. they will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations." What does John mean here? Now certainly it includes songs and shouts and proclamations to Jesus' great glory, but is that all it means? Verse 26, "...they will bring into it the glory and honor of the nations." They're coming from other cities into the gates, and we know that God made men to be creators and rulers, so what are they bringing? Is it not possible that they are bringing their art, and their inventions of their engineering, and the stories of their adventures, and their stories of their exploring, and their businesses, and their gifts, and they're bringing into the King as tribute? Romans 11.29 says, the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable. Is it not possible that those things that they subdued and had dominion over, they're bringing into the King as part of their worship? To show Jesus how they have stewarded His new earth so that they can hear once again, well done, good and faithful servant. How do you hear Ephesians 2.10? For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Does that verse count for this life only? We're going to do good works until we get to heaven, and then after that we sit on a cloud. Those good works are for all eternity. building culture, making new inventions, exploring the furthest reaches of the universe, going on adventures we never dreamed of. Imagine the creativity that awaits us. Do you realize that civilization has barely been born? The human race is in its infancy. What will you do? Will you compose music? How long would it take you to produce music better than what Beethoven did here? What about athletics? Will you run with Eric Liddell and feel God's pleasure as you feel the wind hit your face? Will you invent new technology? Will you study the physics of the new universe? What books will you read? Or will you write books? Will you be one of the ones in Luke 19 that Jesus appoints to be ruler over cities? How many cities do you think there will be hunting in heaven? Jesus ate fish in his glorified body. Will you paint, or sculpt, or learn a musical instrument? Or will you learn all of them? Or will you invent new ones? Will you climb mountains? Will you open a business? Oh, we can't do that because business is what? A product of the fall? Actually, it happened before the fall. The busyness of heaven will be so intoxicating with creativity, such that anyone outside of Christ would be completely crushed by it. Far from being bored in heaven, we'll be so exhilarated that if the Spirit of God didn't hold us together, we would blow apart. Is that how you view heaven? If not, reimagine it. Now, at this point, I can imagine someone saying, because my own heart is saying this as I was writing these words, where is room for worship of Christ in all of these activities? Josh, it sounds like you're painting a very man-centered picture of heaven. I thought heaven was about worshiping Jesus. Back to Christoplatonism, right? Gotta take the spiritual high road. Beloved, everything that we do in heaven is worship. There will be no material object, no physical activity, no intellectual pursuit in heaven that will ever be a competitor of God. All will serve as instruments that manifest His character to the watching universe. Every single object will be like a river that flows to the ocean of Christ's great glory. The problem is, is that we're blind to it down here. Finally, in the new heaven, we'll see things that we were blind to in the new earth. Alcorn says it like this, we'll finally fully see that flowers are beautiful for one reason, Christ is beautiful. Rainbows are stunning for one reason, because Christ is stunning. Puppies are delightful. I have a little Chihuahua, and I know that it hates everybody else, but we like it, because it likes us. And God made his little tail to wag. And when I see that tail wagging, I know that God is smiling. God made puppies delightful because Christ is delightful. God made sports to be fun because Christ is fun. Study is rewarding because Christ is rewarding. Work is fulfilling because Christ is fulfilling. And so in all of these activities, we will not be pursuing our own agenda, we'll be pursuing Christ's agenda. All of these activities and wonders will be opportunities for perfect worship. And this does not exclude directly gazing at the King. At times, we're going to be among those kings where we're rushing through the gates of the great city, the New Jerusalem, and perhaps we're falling on our faces before Christ in adoration and tears of joy, losing ourselves for days, perhaps, doing nothing but singing and praising Him. At other times, as one author says, we'll worship Him when we build a cabinet, paint a picture, cook a meal, talk with an old friend, take a walk, throw a ball. Whenever man's creativity is displayed in heaven, Christ is pleased because Christ is on display. So you can compose music and love it and not feel guilty. You can climb a mountain and love it and not feel guilty. That activity is fun because Jesus is fun. Oh, to be freed from that type of demonic dualism. So how do we apply this to our lives? First of all, our doctrine. today is that heaven is the death of boredom. Heaven is the death of boredom. There are so many errors that people have arrived at when thinking about heaven, and it's impossible to address in one sermon. Many of them deal with scriptural misunderstandings, specific verses that you might recall to your mind and say, oh, I have an objection. And to those, I would just say Randy Alcorn does a phenomenal job in his book Heaven. If you haven't read it, I would recommend it highly to you. But I want to deal with just one grave error, the error that says heaven is boring. That error kills evangelism. It kills evangelism, it inflames discouragement, and it encourages you to sin. And if you believe that heaven is boring, we need to deal with that right now. That is a heresy. Because it necessarily implies that God is boring. Anyone who thinks that God is boring has never read the Bible. God is the God who commands us, be hospitable to one another. Welcome one another. Celebrate with one another. Are we to suppose that when we show up in the new heavens and the new earth, that when we're welcomed into His house, that God will be an unhospitable God? That we'll show up disappointed? That's ludicrous. Who invented taste buds? Who invented adrenaline? Who invented sex? Who invented those nerve endings that run to our brain to tell us when something feels good? Now imagine every pleasure that you ever had on planet Earth stripped of their corruption and emptiness, if you can, and that'll be a small taste of what heaven will be like. Heaven is the death of boredom. It's the death of it. One verse for this is in Jesus' Beatitudes in Luke chapter 6 verse 21. They're so easy to look over. Jesus said, blessed are you who weep now. Does anybody know how it ends? For you shall laugh." Laugh? Is there going to be laughter in heaven? Well, when is He talking? What is He saying? When are we going to laugh? This world gives us so many reasons to weep. And Jesus promises for His people, His sheep, that your weeping will one day bear the fruit of laughter. You know the sound we're going to hear in the New Jerusalem? Laughter. Does that sound boring? See, it's not enough that God would promise us that He would remove all of our tears. He promises that we would laugh. C.S. Lewis said, joy is the serious business of heaven. Our duty. Because our doctrine is heaven is the death of boredom, our duty is that we are to long for heaven. We are to long for heaven. God wants us to long for him. to long for the time when our hearts will be joined with His. And Hebrews 11 speaks of the saints of old who were seeking their true homeland. Near the middle of Hebrews 11, it says that they acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. And then verse 16 says of these saints, but as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. Do you see the connection? They longed, therefore God was not ashamed to be called their God. God loves it when we long to be with him in heaven. Beloved, do you have this longing? I think some of us, if we're honest with ourselves, don't. We hesitate at that question because there's a sense in which we haven't accomplished those things that we want to accomplish down here, either because of a lack of resources or time. We haven't met our goals. What do we do with that? J.R.R. Tolkien faced a similar problem. He was the author of that famous trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. When England was forced into World War II, Tolkien was nearing the age of 50, and Germany was hammering at the door of England, and Tolkien started to despair that he wouldn't be able to complete the project of his life. He dreamt one evening of a tree being cut down And he realized that this tree could very well be him, this tree being cut down in his prime, never being able to bear the fruit that it wanted to bear. And he woke up and he came upon a story that he wrote and turned into the publishers called Leaf by Niggle. Leaf by Niggle, interesting story. Niggle was a painter. And that word niggle means to fiddle in an ineffective way, to spend time unnecessarily on details. And anybody who knows about Tolkien and the way he wrote Lord of the Rings will know that he had already spent decades on languages and histories and subplots behind the Lord of the Rings. But his book wasn't done yet. Well, as the story goes on, Niggle the painter was captivated in his mind's eye with this picture of a tree. And it was set in this wide open country with mountains in the background tipped with white snow. And so he set himself to painting. But he hardly ever made headway in this painting. For two reasons. One, because he was a perfectionist. And he was better at painting leaves than trees. And he would spend all this time getting the shading and the sheen and the dew drops just right on each leaf. But secondly, He never made any headway because he was a kind-hearted man who was always helping his needy neighbor. And because of these two things, he never finished his painting. And before he died, he wept that his work was not finished. The only thing that was completed on his canvas was a single leaf. But Tolkien doesn't end the story there. When Nigl entered his new and permanent country, he found the tree. It was complete just as he imagined it in every detail. He realized that his dream had not died at his death, but his work continued into his real home. Beloved, this life is not all that there is. Our work has not even yet been truly begun. Don't let unmet expectations stop you from longing for heaven now. God is infinitely concerned with our work, both here and in the new earth. When Paul says the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable, he does not just mean this side of heaven, he means forever. Far from being disappointed in heaven, you'll be able to get to your real life's work. It hasn't even begun yet. Our delight. Christ purchased this heaven for us. There would be no new earth if Christ did not lift the curse. In chapter 22, verse 3, it says, No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His servants will worship Him. Jesus reversed everything through His Word. God told Adam after the fall, curse it is the ground because of you that happened in Genesis 3. And now in the last chapter of Scripture we read, no longer will anything be called accursed. That's what the Gospel has done. The Gospel has changed everything. But the Gospel must be believed. Nobody has the benefits of Christ until they cling to Him by faith. The Scripture promises, whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. And whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. Look to what Christ has done. He was made poor so that you could be made rich. He was humiliated so that you could be honored. Christ was treated like an enemy so that you could be treated as a son or a daughter. He obeyed in the place of your disobedience. He was forsaken so that you could be accepted. He was damned so that you could be blessed. He took on hell so that you could go to heaven. Oh, how Christ loves His people. One day very soon we will see His face, and His name will be on our foreheads, and night will be no more. Let's pray. Father, You tell us at the end of the closing verses of this book, surely I am coming soon. And so we say, Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. Come and save us to sin no more. Come and finish the work that You started on the cross. Lord, help us to reimagine heaven the way that You have actually made it, Lord, that we would no longer think of physicality and identify it with sin, but we would see it as You see it and call it good and use it to worship You and bring all things under Your feet. Bring us into worship now, God, we ask. In Christ's name, amen.