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in a world of conflicting values,
when questions are more common than answers. God's Word provides
everything we need to live a God-centered, truth-driven life. Now, here's
the Word for Life broadcast, brought to you by Brookside Baptist
Church. Good morning. Thank you for joining
us on this Wednesday morning on the Word for Life. My name
is Mark Widmer and I'm joining Pastor Ken Keltner as we are
continuing our verse-by-verse walk through the book of Revelation
and today is quite the day because we enter the Final chapter. Chapter 22. Unbelievable. Amazing. And in this portion of Scripture,
we are seeing the amazing description of what God tells us and shows
us is going to be in the New Jerusalem, all the splendors
of it, any hint of wickedness or waywardness or whatever is
totally done away with, not only on our part, but collectively. There's no more sin. Satan's
been cast into the lake of fire by this point. This is a chapter
of just glory and celebration. Pastor Kent, Well, in chapter
21, remember, we started looking at the perfect city, that's going
to be the New Jerusalem. Then we looked at the perfect
temple, there's not a temple building in the New Jerusalem. Jesus is the Lamb, the temple
himself. And now we're into what we would
call the perfect garden, starting in chapter 22. And again, as
Pastor Mark, anytime I look at what I know is to come, it really
gives me a burden for people. There's people that don't have
the confidence of what's going to happen to them after they
leave this earth. It's sad because as one person mentioned it to
me, 10 out of 10 people die. Death is undefeated. The death
rate, my friends, is 100%. In fact, I looked up some facts
on this. We're told that three people
die every second. a hundred every minute, and nearly
11,000 every hour. You know, I believe what the
Bible says about eternity, and so that means more than 250,000
people die every day, and they either go to heaven or they go
to hell. And yet the apostle Peter tells
us the Lord's not slack concerning his promise, but his long suffering
toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should
come to repentance. My friends, God so desires that
people will come to repent of their sin and trust Christ for
eternal life, that they can live with him forever. He desires
that so much that he sent his only begotten son to take on
all of our sin and pay for our sin, past, present, and future
on the cross. I mean, Jesus wanted to put his
followers at ease about life after death. It's a very familiar
passage in John chapter 14, and I'll have Pastor Mark, if you'd
read that for us. Yeah, this is verses 1, 2, and 3. Let not
your heart be troubled, You believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many
mansions. If it were not so, I would have
told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare
a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself,
that where I am, there you may be also. I mean, what a comforting,
reassuring passage of Scripture. You know, God wants mankind to
know, hey, we're going to live somewhere forever. And that has
shaped every civilization in human history. In Australia,
the folks that inhabited Australia there in the beginning pictured
heaven as a distant island beyond the western horizon. the early
Finns thought it was an island in the faraway east. Mexicans,
Peruvians, Polynesians believed that they went to the sun or
moon after death, you know, and so, mankind has been thinking
something is after this life. And it's evidence because God,
we're told, has put eternity in the hearts of men. So, Revelation
22, we're going to see just these final snapshots here inside the
eternal city and this new perfect garden, paradise. You know, we
all think, man, I'm going on a vacation, I'm going to paradise.
That paradise has nothing of the paradise we're going to experience
in this perfect garden. It's better than the Garden of
Eden. It will be reminiscent of the Garden of Eden. But there
is no break in the picture for us between the end of chapter
21 and what we see in chapter 2. So, Pastor Mark, I'm going
to ask you to read the first five verses for us here in chapter
22. And he showed me a pure river
of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of
God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street and
on either side of the river was the Tree of Life, which bore
twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves
of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall
be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall
be in it, and His servants shall serve Him. They shall see His
face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. There should
be no night there, they need no lamp nor light of the sun,
for the Lord God gives them light, and they shall reign forever
and ever. You read that and you think,
wow. I mean, we're really focusing right now on heaven. This final
description that we see here are phrases of heaven, what it's
going to be like. So, heaven, as we've learned
already, is a word for the eternal state. It includes the new heaven,
it includes the new earth, the eternal city of God, that would
be the new Jerusalem. and the Father's throne, that's
where God, we're going to be in the presence of God Almighty.
And my friends, all of this for the believer is going to be there
for us to enjoy as it shines with the glory of God forever.
It seems low, Pastor Mark, the more that we study about heaven,
the more questions come to our mind. I mean, what's it, I mean,
can we do this? I mean, I've had people say,
do you think we can swim in heaven? Someone said, you know, if they're
golf courses, it might be frustrating because you're getting a hole
in one every time, you know. Recreation, every shot I take
in basketball is just going in the hoop, you know. I hate when
that happens. Yeah, exactly. But God evidently wants us to
be thinking about what heaven's like. In fact, that word heaven
appears 582 times in the Bible and the plural form heavens is
found another 133 times for a total of 715 times. And Revelation 21 too tells us
that the holy city, the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from
God. It sure seems that God wants
us to get excited concerning our imaginations of what heaven's
going to be like. I mean, chapter 21 we encountered
a city that makes Mount Everest look like a small hillside. 1500
miles square. I mean, we've been given colors
of gemstones, the size of freight trains and pearls, the size of
massive arenas. We've seen the magnificent ceremony
of the parade of nations, which takes place there in the beginning
of heaven's glory. I mean, I think it's even hard
to imagine this capital city of heaven sparkling like a flawless
diamond, reflecting the brilliant light coming from God himself.
I mean, look, gold is so commonplace that in heaven, it'll be used
for nothing more than just pavement. Asphalt, but much prettier than
asphalt. Okay, so Pastor Mark, as you
were reading, there's one thing that stood out to me here right
off the bat was this river of life. I mean, we're told it's
a pure. I mean, I don't think we really
get to see pure rivers as often as we think we see them. I mean,
I tell you, I've been over to Israel and I mean, the Jordan
River is just one filthy river. I mean, and the Jesus went down
and got back, I mean, wow. I mean, if you remember, you've
been with us, John said in verse one of chapter one, there's no
more sea, there's no more ocean in this new earth. So this is
not a river necessarily like we know it today. First of all,
as we mentioned, it's going to be pollution free. Today we have
a hydrological cycle that includes the rivers and the oceans. One
Revelation scholar that I've enjoyed reading, Robert Thomas,
he writes this, and I quote, these are literal waters that
are of nature and quality that we've never seen before, just
as we've never seen a literal city like this before. I believe
this is the same river that David had earlier predicted in Psalm
46, 4, when he says, there is a river whose stream shall make
glad the city of God. The prophet Joel, he wrote that
a fountain would flow out of the house of God there in Joel
chapter 3. It's interesting. Is it not how
many passages in Revelation originate in the Old Testament? What strikes
John is the river's color and its source. The color is clear
as crystal. Crystallis is that word is transliterated
to give us our word crystal. It's detailing for us this shimmering
brightness. I mean, just as we were down
in Florida and you're sitting there on the balcony and you're
looking over What's it called now, the Gulf of America? Yeah,
that's the new name, Gulf of America. And as the sun is shining
on the water, it just looks like sparkling diamonds out there. I mean, I was kind of thinking,
I thought, wow, I don't know if it's going to look necessarily
like that, but that's kind of what it would remind us of. The
source is its proceeding from the throne of God and of the
Lamb. So, it's a symbol of just pure, holy, eternal life flowing
down through the city from the throne of God and of the Lamb.
That's one throne. So as rivers today have headwaters,
the fountainhead, or the source of this river, is flowing down,
and it's flowing down from the throne of God. You remember,
in the Garden of Eden, there were four rivers that flowed
through. In the Millennial Kingdom, a river flows from Temple Mount. Ezekiel talks about it being
a wonderful river to swim in. But in this eternal city, the
river is literally flowing from the throne of God, which means
its source is going to be endless. You know, scripture often describes
the glories of heaven symbolically because, I mean, in our human
minds, it's just like we can't comprehend it. We do know, without
a shadow of a doubt, that heaven is not symbolic. It's a literal,
real place, as real as the places we were born and where we live
now. And so this river symbolizes
that our deepest needs are going to be met. Every thirst we have
that is God-given is going to be satisfied in heaven. And John
really understood the whole meaning of water in terms of its reference
to salvation. For he recorded Jesus' words
in John chapter 1 when he said to the woman, and we'll close
with this today, you're familiar with that, in Matthew chapter
4. Whoever drinks of the water will thirst again, but whoever
drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But
the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain
of water, springing up into everlasting life. We want to leave you with
that passage of scripture today, that that water is still Jesus
Christ. He is the living water that will
give us life, that we'll never be looking for anything in religion
again because Jesus is the only one who satisfies that need,
that thirst to know the truth. So friends, thank you for joining
us today. Join us again on our next broadcast as we're getting
close to finishing the book of Revelation. We hope you enjoyed
today's program. If you have a question we can
answer, or would like information on the Word for Life, would like
to donate to continue to produce this broadcast, or need resources
for your Christian walk, Contact us at Brookside Baptist Church,
4470 North Pilgrim Road, Brookfield, Wisconsin, 53005. You can also
visit us at brooksidebc.org. That's brooksidebc.org. Or call
us at 262-783-6180. That's 262-783-6180. Thanks for
listening today, and please tune in again as we bring the Word
of God to your life. you
The Book Of Revelation (A Continual Study) The Beginning Of The End
Series The Book of Revelation
Join Brookside's Lead Pastor Ken Keltner and Pastor Mark Widmer study of the Book of Revelation chapter by chapter and verse by verse.
| Sermon ID | 312252128531111 |
| Duration | 14:15 |
| Date | |
| Category | Radio Broadcast |
| Bible Text | Revelation 22 |
| Language | English |
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