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Alright, if you're ready to study
together with me, why don't you join me in the book of Revelation
this morning. We're nearing the end, as I said last week, of
our long study together, many weeks. This is actually week
47 out of a total of 48. I hope to do one more week next
week on this theme of the last things. God's plan for all of
history, how it's all going to end and then begin again. And
appropriately enough, since we're coming to the end, we're going
to be looking at the end of God's book. And Revelation chapter
21 this morning is where we will spend most of our time. I'll
probably peek over into chapter 22 and may refer to a couple
other passages elsewhere in the scriptures, but we'll be camping
for the most part in chapter 21. Well, where we left off last
week and where we're at in our study is that the Lord is coming
again. That's really how God is going
to culminate all things. That's the end of the story.
God is returning His Son, bringing His Son back to planet Earth.
When He comes, He's going to do three main things. All kinds
of details that we spent weeks and weeks studying that are attached
to each one of these three things. But the three main things that
the Lord Jesus is going to do when He returns And they're all
one flowing right into the other. He is going to raise all people
from the dead who have ever lived, and they are all going to be
brought to judgment. Every single human being is going
to give an account for all of their life. Every thought, word,
and deed. And following that judgment,
the Lord is going to make all things new. He's going to recreate
His entire creation. And He is making all things new
for a very important and specific purpose. And that's really what
we're going to be looking at this morning. Just before we
read from chapter 21, what I want you to keep in the back of your
mind as we go through this material today is that the Bible can be
understood, it can be interpreted from a lot of different perspectives,
but in the simplest form. The entire Bible is like one
big, beautiful, awesome storybook. The Bible is one big story. And it has, like all good stories,
a beginning, it has a middle, and it has an end. And it's,
of course, God's story. It's not a story like people
in the world love to comfort themselves with this thought
because it allows them to live any way that they want to live.
It's not a story that's made up by men. This isn't Moses'
story. This isn't Paul the Apostle's
story. This isn't John who wrote the book of Revelation's story.
This isn't just some wonderful imagination of men. And you know
what? Human beings, we do have an awesome, wonderful imagination. I'm not using the term loosely
when I say we have an awesome capacity for imagination. It's
because we are created to bear the image of God. And our minds
and the way that our minds function is intended to image God. I don't
know about you, but I love a well told or well written story. I'm
really looking forward to next month in the month of December.
There's a story that's being told in film right now that I
can't wait for the third and final chapter of this film, which
is the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's a great story. I know how
the story goes because I've read the books. In fact, I love the
book so much I read the books three times. And I'll probably
read them three more times before my days are over. Why? Because
it's an awesome story. Maybe, apart from God's word,
one of the best stories ever told. But what are we dealing
with in the Lord of the Rings? We're dealing with the imagination
of J.R.R. Tolkien. And he had an awesome
imagination and he put together some incredibly imaginative elements. Now, there are some biblical
principles that are actually portrayed in the story. And that's,
for me, what makes the story particularly appealing, because
he was a Christian. He wrote from a Christian perspective.
He admitted that he wove biblical concepts in and throughout all
of the elements of this story. But it's still an imaginative
story. You know, whether you've come to this realization or not,
there really was no place called Middle Earth. And hobbits are
just imaginary. They don't actually exist. But
nevertheless, I'm really looking forward to the story. And I'm
going to go see the movie, even though I know how the story turns
out, just to see how they tell the story in images. And I'm
going to enjoy it thoroughly, I'm sure, just like I enjoyed
the first two. The Bible is a storybook also.
What's the main difference, though, between the Bible as a storybook
and The Lord of the Rings or any other well-told story? This
one's true. In all the details, in all of
the elements, in all of the story, there is not a single shred of
untruth. It's not the imagination of men.
This is God's story. And from beginning to end, the
story is just told perfectly. But what we've come to now is
we've come to the end of the story. And how is God going to
end His story? And then, as we've seen already,
it's not really only an end. The end and yet it's the beginning
of a whole new story. And he just hints in the last
couple of chapters and in a few other places throughout his work.
He just hints at what the new story is going to be like. We
don't have all the details of the new story. Our lives for
all of eternity is going to be playing out the new story that
God is telling. But we do know somewhat about
what it's like. Let's read together in Revelation
chapter 21. We'll read verses, we'll probably
eventually read the whole chapter today, but we'll just read verses
1 through 7 to start. And in context, and this is an
important perspective, this section immediately follows the end of
chapter 20, of course, and in the end of chapter 20, just glance
We won't read them, but verses 11 through 15 are telling the
story of what is commonly called the Great White Throne Judgment.
This is the final judgment that we've already studied together.
When the Lord returns, He raises people from the dead, brings
them before His throne for judgment, and then following that judgment,
verse 1 of chapter 21, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth,
and the first heaven and the first earth passed away. And
there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, New
Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as
a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from
the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men
and he will dwell among them and they shall be his people
and God himself will be among them. And he will wipe away every
tear from their eyes. And there will no longer be any
death. There will no longer be any mourning,
or crying, or pain. The first things have passed
away. And he who sits on the throne said, Behold, I am making
all things new. And he said, Write, for these
words are faithful and true. Then he said to me, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega. The beginning and the end, I
will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water
of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit
these things, and I will be his God, and he will be my son."
Now, there's one element that every good story shares, a really
well-written story. And that is, like I said, there
is a beginning, a middle, and an end. But the really, really
good stories all share one thing in the qualities of the end of
the story, and that is what? A happy ending. And we have these
famous words from literature that are used in children's stories,
and they lived happily ever after. Now, we hear those words, and
What we tend to think about them is, you know, wouldn't it be
great if that was what life was really like? But we know in this
world, in our present life circumstances, things don't always end up this
way, do they? And the way our lives are lived
out, we have to deal with things that are described here in verses,
looking again for just a second in verse four, we have to deal
with things like death. Michael Foxson recently passed
away, Creighton not so long ago himself. We have to deal with
the mourning that's left for those who remain. Crying, pain,
you know, the suffering of just living in a fallen world, living
with situations and circumstances that are outside of our ability
and our power to control and all of the suffering and the
difficulty that goes along with that. And that's part of our
life. It's part of our life experience.
And it's meant to be, because we're right now in the middle
of the story. These things are meant to be
part of our life experience. Why? Why hasn't God removed these
things yet? Because we're still, even though
the Lord Jesus has already come and brought the salvation that
God always planned and intended for Him to bring, we're still
learning the lesson of how the story started. And how did the
story start? It started beautifully without
death, without mourning, without crying, without pain or any of
those things. But something, of course, terrible
happened. And like in any good story, you
know, you have conflict that enters in and creates difficulties
and barriers and trials and tribulations. that the heroes, the protagonists
of the story have to endure and have to deal with. And that's
where we're at. We're living out the consequences of what
we saw at the beginning of the story is the fall of man. The
sin that created all of these things. Death didn't just mysteriously
show up in the story. Mourning, crying, pain didn't
just out of nowhere show up in the story of this life, in this
world. They all came in to the story because of sin. Because
of the failure of a single human being to obey God and to submit
to His will and follow Him and what He had commanded. And so
we're learning that lesson. But the good thing, and this
is, I mean, good is just such an inadequate word to describe
this, is that the story doesn't end in the middle. God's story
doesn't end in the middle. It has an end point. And what
God is showing us in these last couple of chapters of his book
is that In spite of all that's happened, in spite of the horrendous
destruction and warping of his original purpose through sin,
God is going to somehow, someway bring about a gloriously great
and happy ending for all of those who belong to him. It's going
to be so great at the end of the story that when we're there,
All we'll have in our hearts is praise and worship and adoration
for how God brought us through the entire story and how the
entire story ended up. Now there's some particular features
of the story, there's some characteristics of the story that I think God
wants us to specifically focus on. The first thing is looking
in verse, we've already described in verse 1 the fact that it's
going to be a new creation, a new heavens and a new earth. somewhat
similar to the old heavens and the old earth, because they're
both identified by the same basic terms, but yet it's going to
be completely different in another way, and that this first one
is tainted by sin, as we saw last week. The influence of sin
has colored everything in this present creation. Whether we
see it, whether we get it or understand it or not, that's
spiritually what has taken place. But in the new creation, only
righteousness dwells. The very fabric of the new creation
is infused with God's righteousness. So we've seen that, but in verse
2, there's a new element introduced to the story at the very end
of the story, and that is, something that's going on with this city.
And it's a particular kind of city, of course. This is the
city that's identified by name as the New Jerusalem, the Holy
City, and it's identified as coming down out of heaven from
God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. Now, we've already seen that
the Lord Jesus has before this passage unfolds, the Lord Jesus
himself has already returned. He's come back to raise people
from the dead, to judge them, and to make all things new, to
make this new heavens and new earth. But now, after he's made
all things new, we see the city of God coming down from God,
from heaven. Now this detail isn't mentioned
specifically, but it's clearly implied, and I don't think anybody's
failed to pick this up. If this is a city that's coming
down from heaven, where is it coming to? Coming to planet Earth. So the city of God, the New Jerusalem,
I'm going to just initialize this as NJ on the board here,
the New Jerusalem, this is not New Jersey, the new Jerusalem
is going to be at this point on earth. Presently, whenever
we read about heaven in other places, and we've talked about
this before when we did our several week study on heaven together,
we saw that heaven, let me get this on the board too, heaven
itself has a story attached to it. And this is part of the bigger
story, of course. But heaven has, as I said, a past A present and a future. And we've identified that heaven
itself has undergone changes in the past. Heaven itself is
not like it was when God first created heaven, and it's not
now like it will be in the future. And what is the big change? We've
studied together the past and the present of heaven, but I've
held until now the future of heaven. Heaven itself has a future
in God's story. And what is the biggest change
coming for heaven itself? The biggest change is the change
of location. Heaven prior to this moment in God's story is
where? It's in heaven. Where is that? It's not here. It's not on earth.
Where exactly is it? We don't know. We haven't been
there. We only believe by faith, because God declares it to be
so, that it's a real place and it's somewhere other than here,
and you can't get there from here on your own. You can only
be taken there by God's means, by God's conveyance. based on,
of course, the salvation that only is accomplished through
Christ and His death on the cross. But at this moment, at this point
in God's story, heaven is not going to be there any longer.
Heaven is going to be here. Heaven is coming to earth. And
when it comes to earth, it's not coming. And when I say heaven,
I'm talking about heaven as the heavenly city. Because other
than the heavenly city, the Bible doesn't really talk in these
details. I mean, it leaves this much undescribed. But imagine
for a moment, if you will with me, let's, in our imagination,
travel to heaven for a second. What's in heaven right now? I
mean, physically, what is in heaven? The city of God. And everything that's in the
city, including the throne, the angels, the saints that are with
the Lord right now, the Lord himself, of course, you know,
all of the heavenly things. But it's all contained within
the city of God, the New Jerusalem, which is in heaven. Now, what's
outside the city in heaven? In heaven, what's outside the
city? Are you tracking with me here? No, nothing is outside
the city. Everything in heaven is inside
the heavenly city. In other words, the heavenly
city is heaven. It's not like heaven is just this arbitrary
place, and the city happens to be in heaven. The city is heaven,
and heaven is the city. Does that make sense? So when
the city comes down from God from heaven, where is it coming
to earth? Therefore, where is heaven from
that point forward? It's on earth. Now, is this just
a visit? In other words, it's the city
coming just to kind of check things out in the new earth.
And then later it will go back to heaven where it came from.
The whole implication, as you read from this passage forward
through the end of the book and the next two chapters, is this
is a permanent and final change of the location and the reality
of heaven. Heaven on earth is God's plan
for all of eternity. The two combine. We've lived
in a world here on this earth, and not just we, but everybody
that's ever been born, everyone that's ever lived. We've lived
in a world separated from heaven. Heaven is real. Heaven is the
ultimate reality. Ultimate in the sense of, not
that this isn't real here, but ultimate in the sense that this
isn't real in the way that God intended it to be. It's a changed
reality here, a worse reality. a warped reality that we live
in. Our best day here is not nearly
as good as what it can be and what it will on that future day
be forever and ever and ever. It's kind of like, you ever see
these bumper stickers, the worst day fishing is better than the
best day at work? What are they trying to communicate
there? Which is, they're trying to say, you know, I live a humdrum,
mundane life, and of course I go to work, but my work is nothing
more than a means for me to buy my fishing equipment. And what
I really live for is my weekends when I'm out on the water fishing.
And you know, fishing is just whatever brings pleasure to the
individual. But the idea is, the worst day,
in heaven on earth is going to be so far greater than your very
best day has ever been here. And that's going to be the nature
of things for all of eternity. Every single day will be the
best ever. And here, your best ever is just
not good enough. And I'm talking about even the
best ever when you're really close to the Lord, things are
really right between you and the Lord. Have you ever had a
day where things were just clicking? with you and the Lord, and things
were just falling in place, you knew you were following in the
footsteps that the Lord had marked out for your path that day. And
that's a beautiful thing, because not every day for me is like
that. But when you have that experience, that's a beautiful
day. But it's nothing like every day is going to be here. So the
city of God, the heavenly city, is going to come down from God,
from heaven, and it's going to come down to earth, and once
it gets here, setting down roots. It's here forever and ever and
ever. Now, what's the beauty of this? Well, let me just remind you
that you don't have to turn here. Let me just turn back and read
a passage that's very familiar to all of us from the Sermon on the Mount, where the disciples needed some
instruction. in one of the basic aspects of
our relationship with the Lord, and that is with prayer. And
this is what the Lord taught them at that time. Pray then
in this way, Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in
heaven. This is the fundamental perspective
that a disciple is called by the Lord and instructed by the
Lord, even commanded by the Lord, to pray every day for the rest
of your life. Now, we've studied this before.
This is not so much a formula prayer, but it's an outline of
fundamental concerns that should be in every believer's heart
every day. And that is, you should be seeking the Lord daily for
this final reality to come. What we're looking for, as Peter
said, as we saw last week in 2 Peter 3, is we're looking for
the end of the story. We are called to live for the
end of the story. We're not meant to be satisfied
with life as we're experiencing it right now. God wants us to
have an unfulfilled life. a holy dissatisfaction with the
way things are in this world right now, and to seek Him for
the fulfillment, the fullness, the answer, the end, the conclusion
of the story. Well, let's look a little bit
together at what this is going to be like, because there are
some details given to us in these last two chapters. I'm talking
about the last two chapters of the book of Revelation. There's
just so much detail. Again, I easily could spend weeks,
if not months, looking through these details with you, but I
just want to do a quick overview of a little bit of what this
life is going to be like. These are features of heaven
on earth. Once the heavenly city has come
down, what will life be like then? And as I said, the Lord is just giving us hints. He doesn't give us Exhaustive
details. He just wants to, I think, wet
our appetites so that we have a perspective of these things
and we have a hunger and a desire for the fulfillment of these
things. What's the very first thing? Looking in verse... We'll read from verse... Hold on one second. Verse 10. Actually, I'll go ahead and read
verse 9. Then one of the seven angels
who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came
and spoke with me, saying, Come here, I will show you the bride,
the wife of the Lamb." Now what he's about to show John is he's
about to show John the city itself. And both here in this verse and
back in the passage that we read in verse 2, it clearly implies
that the city equals the bride. Okay? The city equals the bride. Now, that creates somewhat of
a problem for us in our thinking. Why? Because in every good story,
there is a hero who has a love interest. But it's not a very
good story if the hero has more than one love interest. And there's
a confusion between the two. Unless that's just creating some
dramatic tension in order to lead up to the fulfillment of
the love interest with the one. And those are in human stories.
God only has one love interest. His Son is the hero of the story.
And He has one love interest. He has one appointed Bride. Who do we normally think in terms
of the Bride's identity being? The Church is the Bride. Right? But here, the city is
called the Bride. So which is it? Is the Church
the Bride or is the city the Bride? You guys are good students. Yes,
both. The bride is an image that describes
the church in its relationship to the Lord. And all the Lord
has done in this last two passages is He's added a second image
for us to understand that He's trying to describe to us the
relationship between Christ and the Church. And this relationship
is far deeper and wider and greater than we can easily comprehend
and understand. And so He gives us more than
one image in order to catch the fullness of what the relationship
is between Christ and the church, and how that relationship is
going to shape our lives for eternity to come. So when you
read the Lord saying, the city is the bride, understand this,
the city is just an image to describe the people in the city.
The city has no meaning apart from the people that live in
the city. Have you ever been to, in Northern California they
have a famous one, have you ever been to a ghost town, what they
call a ghost town? And what's significant about
a ghost town is that it used to mean something. It used to
be a place where people lived. It used to have some significance.
It used to have some influence and impact on the area that that
city was established in. But when you go there now, how
many people live in a ghost town? Nobody, unless they happen to
be the tourist people that are running the ghost town. And they
don't want people living in the ghost town, because that's how
they're making their money, to get you to go to or there. But the
whole idea of the ghost town concept is that the city is only
significant because of the people that are alive in that city.
And so the city of God is just pointing to the people of God
that inhabit the city, that the city was built for, that as the
Lord Jesus says, I go to prepare a place for you. The place is
significant because of his relationship with us. It's the home that the
bridegroom has prepared for his bride. But the city is described
for us and it gives us indications of how our lives are going to
be for all of eternity. And the first thing that I want
to identify is, and I'm going to just list five things here,
and let me just get some room on the board. These are features,
as I said, of our future life. And the first feature is, and
these are just terms that I came up with, there's probably better
terms to describe this. Intensity. And let's look at
chapter 21, 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. Now, this little
pronoun in verse 11, her, is just another detail that confirms
the point I was just trying to make, which is that the city
is a representation of the church, the bride, because the city is
described using a feminine pronoun. So, the city equals us, as the
people of God, our dwelling place for all of eternity, And the
first and most significant feature of the city, as you're just with
John, looking through John's observing eyes, first time he's
ever seen this heavenly city as it's coming down out of heaven,
he sees it having the glory of God. Now, we talked a little
bit about this way back when we were studying the day of the
great resurrection and what our resurrection bodies are going
to be like. And words are definitely going
to fail me here in trying to describe what I believe God wants
us to catch. And that is, our lives for all
of eternity are marked by us as the people of God, us as the
city of God, having the glory of God. What does that mean? That our lives are going to be
marked by having the glory of God. What are our lives marked
by now? What do we have now? Well, yeah,
praise God, we have some things that are identified like the
presence of the Spirit of God is identified as God's down payment,
His guarantee of future promise of what He will accomplish. But
we have other things too. We have trouble, we have pain,
we have difficulty, we have heartache, we have suffering, we have all
kinds of things that are part of the fabric of our lives now,
then all we will have, and only all that we will have, is the
glory of God. Now what is, if we were to try
to identify this as a substance, and you can't really because
it's not actually a substance, but what is the glory of God?
What is that? What is the glory? And I've heard
a lot of good thoughts here, but it's hard to identify exactly
what the glory is. Can you take God's glory and
put it under a microscope and identify it? I don't think so,
because God is Spirit. It is radiance, yes. It's light. It's light beyond any human light. You know, when the Lord appeared
to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus and appeared to him
with a light, an out-rain, an out-shining of His glory that
was brighter than the light of the noonday sun, so bright that,
you know, of course, it blinded Saul for three days and had the
Lord, in some sense, not toned down the revelation, it would
have done more than just blinded him for three days. What would
it have done to him? It would have absolutely, it
would have just disintegrated him. Because the full expression
of the glory of God cannot be apprehended or even observed
by physical human eyes. So God is going to need to recreate
our bodies with the capacity to be able to behold His glory.
But it's not just, and what I want us to catch here, it's not just
that we're going to be in the city of God, and God's going
to be there, and because God is there, there's glory over
there. The entire city itself is infused with the glory of
God. It has the glory of God. We are
going to be filled with the glory of God. Everything is going to
be really bright. Everything. I'll look at you,
and all I'm going to see is, you know, have you ever seen
those movies where there's this shining person? It's going to be like
that, except it's you are going to be like that, I'm going to
be like that, The walls are going to be like that, the floors are
going to be like that, the ceilings are going to be like that. Everything
is going to be infused with the glory of God, but it won't be
like it is now. If you walk out from a dark place
into a bright noonday sun, it's kind of discomforting. Our entire
makeup is going to be designed to bear that glory, and to appreciate
that glory, and to enjoy that glory in its fullness. That's
intense. is the way I'm conceiving of
this. Second thing, there's great security
in this heavenly city. Why? Because, looking in verse
12, it, meaning the heavenly city, It had a great and high wall
with 12 gates. And reading down in verse 14, the wall of the city had 12 foundation
stones. And then reading down a little
further in verse 17, and he measured its wall, 72 yards according
to human measurement, which are also angelic measurements. You
might have a little notation in your, if you have a study
Bible, This was not originally written in yards, of course.
It's literally 144 cubits. And what's being described here
is either the height or the wall or the width, the breadth, the
depth of the wall, the thickness of the wall. I personally think
this is describing the thickness of the wall for reasons being
that what this approximately works out to in human terminology
is about 220 feet high if it was height. The problem is the
city itself is nearly 1,500 miles high. All right? So this wall wouldn't be much
of a wall. It'd be like, you know, it'd be like barely shoe
level to the entire city. So I think it's actually describing
the thickness of the wall. And there's room for interpreting
that one way or the other. Why is there a wall around the
heavenly city at all? Because in ancient times, walls
served a very important, critically important function in every city.
A city without walls was what? It was dead meat. That's what
a city without walls was in the ancient world. Because anyone
could just come in and take it over. But a city with walls was
a secure city. Why does the heavenly city have
such incredibly thick walls? 144 cubits thick. It's just to convey to us the
level of security. Not that there are any enemies
because we're going to see it also has gates in a moment and
those gates are left open all the time. The idea though of
God including walls is to just be a visible conscious reminder
to us of how secure his city is. The city equals the people,
how secure his people are. This is the ultimate expression
of what is commonly called in Christian circles, eternal security. You're going to be safe. For
the first time in your life, you're going to be totally, completely
safe. And you'll be safe forever. Now,
all of you believe in the Lord, but how many of you ever in this
present life feel just a little bit unsafe? You get on the freeway, do you
ever feel just a little bit unsafe? You know, the earthquakes like
in 1994, do you feel just a little bit unsafe? The fires on the
hills raging out of control, just a little bit unsafe? You
know, back in the Rodney King trial, you know, and the people
are rioting throughout the city, just a little bit unsafe? Absolutely. Absolutely. And we're intended
to feel, in this present life, while sin is still part of the
equation, part of the story, we're intended to feel a little
bit unsafe. But here, finally and fully safe and secure forever
and ever and ever. What else about this city? The
city is immense, as I've already alluded to. So, immensity. It's huge. The dimensions of the city are
literally 12,000 stadia, which is a Greek form of measurement
that John uses. It's translated in our Bibles
as 1,500 miles. That's a poor translation because it doesn't
work out exactly 1,500 miles. It's a little bit under 1,500,
but it was never meant to be conveyed in miles to begin with.
And the number is critical because all of these numbers, we won't
have time to develop all of the symbolic details here, but the
numbers themselves bear symbolism, just like there's 144 cubits
in the thickness of the wall, which is a biblical number of
12 times 12. Here it's, you know, 12. 12,000
stadia has its own significance. You can imagine with the number
12 being the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 apostles, on and on and
on, that there's some significance there. But how big is this? It's
the equivalent of nearly 1,500 miles. Nearly 1,500 miles. Well,
that's the thing. Let's read real quick. It's a
good question. 1,500 in what dimension? Now,
if we had a city that was just 1,500 miles wide today, starting
in Los Angeles and stretching east, where would the city end?
About Dallas. From Los Angeles to Dallas, that's
the size of the city. But, if we were to also extend
it to the north, where would it end? It'd move on up into
Canada. Alright? Be a big city. But,
if we also went up, how big would it be? from Los Angeles to Dallas
to Canada and then up, how big, how immense would this city be?
He says in verse 15, the one who spoke with me had a gold
measuring rod to measure the city and its gates and its wall.
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.
Its length and width and height are equal. And he measured its
walls 72 yards, which is 144 cubits, according to human measurements,
which are also angelic measurements. So what you have here, how many
of you have ever seen Star Trek? Are you familiar with the Borg?
What's their vessel? A big cube. Okay, that's a really
ugly picture, you know, if you've ever been on a Borg vessel, okay,
in your Star Trek imaginations. You know, it's not a pretty picture.
This is, instead of this dark, ugly, you know, mechanical device,
this is something that in its walls and very substance has
the glory of God. But it's one huge, gigantic cube. I'm terrible at drawing stuff. A 1500 mile long, wide, and high
cube. Now, the question that's often
asked at this point is, is this literal? I don't know. I don't
know. I mean, literally? Will the city
of God literally be this large in one location on the Earth?
I don't know. Does it matter? Probably. If
I knew, I'd just tell you, yes, it's absolutely literal, or no,
if it's not literal, what else could it be? It could be imagery,
like God uses imagery throughout the book of Revelation to describe
spiritual realities that are greater than the images. So if
it's not literal, I'll say this, it's greater than the image,
not lesser than the image, because the images never portray the
fullness of the reality. They just get our minds heading
in the right direction. and inform our hearts about things
that God wants to communicate to us. So the city of God is
going to be immense, just like all of God's purposes, of course,
are huge. But when you talk about something
huge, this is the biggest ever. And this is, of course, big enough
to encompass everybody that is meant to be with God for all
of eternity. There are going to be millions of souls that
are going to share eternity with God, and there's not going to
be any population overcrowding problem in God's city. There's
going to be room for everyone. Next feature of the city is accessibility. I mentioned this earlier. It's huge, it has walls, And
you could never climb over these walls naturally or physically,
but it's identified as having gates. Verse 12. It had a great
high wall with 12 gates. And at the gates, 12 angels.
Now normally this would be a problem in human history. Whenever God
establishes gates and He places an angel there, is that for human
beings usually a good thing or a bad thing? Depends on which
side of the wall you're on. Remember the story of the Garden
of Eden? This is where this imagery starts, and this is at the end
of the story on purpose. When God drove Adam and Eve out
of the garden, He placed a cherubim, which is an angel, a guardian
angel, not there to guard Adam and Eve, there to guard the way
back into the garden. He placed him there with a flaming
sword which turned in every direction. Whatever exactly that means,
I don't fully understand it. But, the idea was, Adam couldn't
just up and decide, you know what, life outside the garden
is not that pleasant, I think I'm going back into the garden,
where life is better. The angel was there to stop him,
and had he tried to force his entrance, he would have lost
the battle between himself and the angel. That's the whole concept.
So the gates of this city have angels there, at each gate. But
are they there to bar entrance? No. Something's changed. And
also what has changed is that there are how many gates now? There are 12 gates, which of
course dovetails back to our perfect number, 12 tribes, 12
apostles, the fullness of God's government, the fullness of God's
purpose. But why is this a change? Remember in the teaching recently
on heaven, I referred to heaven right now as a gated community,
that it is barred. There's only one entrance into
God's community right now, God's city. and that that entryway
is guarded. You can't just enter into heaven
today because you want to. You can only come through a single
entry point today. Just like in the Old Testament,
throughout all of God's images, there was one entry into the
garden, there was one entry into the Ark of Noah, there was one
entry into the tabernacle, there was one entry into the temple.
Now, there are twelve. Why? Because the only people
that are in there are God's people. And now the gates are, as it
describes, they're thrown open, in a sense, in verse 12 again. And at the gates twelve angels
and the 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, three on the north, three on the south, three on
the west. The wall of the city had twelve foundation stones.
Let me move on here to the rest of the gate material. There is a place, and I think
I might have already skipped over it, where it just, it mentions
specifically, is it 21? The place I'm looking for, I
read it a minute ago, but I'll just refer to it. It says the
gates are always open. And here, and we will now look
at verse 21, and the 12 gates were 12 pearls. Each one of the
gates was a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure
gold, like transparent glass. So what we have is 12 gates,
they're always open. And they're made of pearl. Now
all of these things deserve, each one of these three points
deserves their own teaching. But the main point about there
being twelve rather than one entry into the city is that God
has now thrown open His purposes in the new creation, in the new
heaven and the new earth. Now everything is open and accessible. The access is to get to Him.
Meaning because we're all His people, we all have ready and
open access into God's presence in this new creation. The fact
that they're open day and night, and it's actually identified
elsewhere that there's really only day and there's no night
in this new creation, is simply the fact that there is no longer
a need to bar access to God's presence. And then one last detail
that's worth mentioning is that God, even though He makes the
walls with precious stones which signify glory and beauty and
value, He makes the gates specifically out of a completely different
kind of precious stone, a unique kind of precious stone that's
not like any of the others. All of the others are minerals
that are made in the earth. These gates are all made, each
gate equals, not made out of pearl, like we refer to these
in popular terminology as the pearly gates, as if there's like
thousands of pearls somehow or millions of pearls to make these
fairly relatively small gates. What we're talking about is a
city that's 12,000 stadia high and a wall that's huge Either
in height or thickness, either way, that is a pretty big pearl. Now, how are pearls normally
made? Oysters, right? Where is the oyster big enough
to make this pearl? Yeah. Okay, there's not some
giant oyster in heaven, okay? The idea here is God chose pearl
to signify an important remembrance point, even in the new creation. Pearls, you all know the story
of how pearls are formed. They're formed by an irritating
bit of material in the oyster, something that oyster hates,
something the oyster can't stand. And what does the oyster do with
that irritating bit of material? It surrounds it with pearl substance. It just secretes it, which then
encircles this bit of grit, this irritating material, and it forms
this perfect little ball and it grows larger and larger over
time as the oyster continues to cover this irritation, continues
to cover it with something precious and which makes that now comfortable
to the oyster itself. What is this a remembrance of?
Why would God choose that image for the gates into a city? This
is a, on a very symbolic level, this is a reminder of the cross.
The entryway into the city is, of course, through Christ, through
the cross. The cross is all about God covering the irritation of
the inhabitants of the city. What we did in our lives, each
and every one of us without exception, God hates and irritates Him. And yet, how can He then have
fellowship with us for all of eternity? There's only one way,
for Him to cover over. our sin with the substance of
his salvation, what is secreted in the blood of Christ on the
cross. All right, one last thing and we'll end here real quickly. The last feature that I wanted
to focus on is that the new creation, the heavenly city that's coming
to earth is marked by originality. It's a brand new thing, of course,
that God is doing. It's never been seen. None of
us have seen its like before. But it's not just that the city
is going to be different, everything is going to be different. Turn
to chapter 21 again, verses 22 and 23, where this is describing
life in the city. What's going to be different
about this from life today? I saw no temple in it, for the
Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb are its temple. And the
city has 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."
Now, my question is, when the passage says the city has no
need of the sun, does that mean that the sun is shining, but
it just doesn't really need it? You know how it is, like if you're
indoors, the sun can be shining, but since you've got lights on
inside your house, you don't really need the light of the
sun at that particular moment. Is that what's being described
here? Or is it something even bigger and greater? And that's
what I tend to think, which is that this is describing that
this new creation is is somewhat unlike the first creation, in
that there is a replacement for the physical and natural focal
point of this creation right here, that we're living in, is
the physical sun of our solar system. Our world is, apart from
the physical sun, a dead world. You take the sun away, and what
happens to this planet? everything ceases to exist. I
mean, we might, through mechanical means, sustain life for a very
short period of time, but we would die without the sun. And
in that sense, what God has done in this new creation is He's
replaced the natural dependence that we have with the ultimate
dependence on who? He is the Son of the new creation. He's the light source, the life
source. Everything derives from Him. In not an indirect way,
like we know God put the Son there to give light to this world.
But in the new creation, God is going to be very directly
the light and life source of our entire daily life experience
for all of eternity. All right, well, we'll stop our
study here. And like I said, we have one more week together
on this theme of how God is ending all things. Next week, what I'm
going to do, rather than focus on details like we did today
of the actual circumstances, I just want to do a review of
everything we've studied. I'm going to teach you 47 weeks
of material in one week next week. And then we'll talk about
why it is that we spent so much time studying these things together. Let's pray. Father God, the things
that we've just briefly stopped and thought about today and looked
at, considered, I know that you've included those descriptions in
your Word because you intend those things to change us. You
intend those things to affect and influence the way we think,
the way we act, the way we live out our lives. And I do ask,
Father, that you would cause the seeds of your word this morning,
Lord, to produce that kind of good fruit in each one of us.
I pray that we would be changed by our perspective of the future,
where you're taking each and every one of us, the beauty and
the glory and the awesomeness of what you plan. And I thank
you for that grace in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen. The
copyrighted product of Tree of Life Christian Church of Canoga
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Heaven on Earth
Series Eschatology series
At the end of history, Heaven is in for a location change. The New Jerusalem, our future dwelling place, will come down to Earth. What will life in "Heaven on Earth" be like? The New Jerusalem will have intensity, security, immensity, accessibility, and originality.
Copyright 2003, Tree of Life Christian Church. All rights reserved.
| Sermon ID | 11903164249 |
| Duration | 51:59 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Revelation 21:1-7 |
| Language | English |
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