Good morning. I just want to start off by asking a few, two questions today. So if everybody's on their toes. First question is, and I need some volunteers to answer these questions. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word heaven? The first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word heaven. Joel? Joy. The throne of God. Pastor? Jesus Christ. Anybody else? With the Lord. Freedom. Freedom. Great. So the first thing we think of when we think of heaven is being with the Lord. What will it be like when we're with the Lord? Joy and freedom. What does it mean to be with the Lord? To be with the throne of God. Well, this morning I want to look briefly at an overview of the subject of heaven. And why don't we go ahead and turn to Revelation. Revelation, we'll be looking at Chapter 21 and a little bit of Chapter 22 this morning. And I'd like three volunteers, if I could, to read this passage. So, who would like to read Revelations 21, verses 1 through 6 for us? 21, 1 through 6. Mark. And Revelation 21, verses 9 through 22, or 9 through the rest of that chapter. Anybody else want to read that passage? Thanks, Bob. And then a short one. After that, who'd like to read chapter 22, verses 1 through 4? Thanks. Okay. So let's go ahead and look at Revelation 21. As I find my way there. 21, 1-6, and let's start with verse 1. Mark. Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw a 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 Heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, There shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away." Then he who sat on the throne said, "'Behold, I make all things new.' And he said to me, "'Great, for these words are true and faithful.' And he said to me, "'It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, and I will give up the top of the water of life freely to hence the thirst.'" And verses 9-22, Then one of the seven angels, who had the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues, came to me and talked with me, saying, Come, I will show you the drive, the land's water, and to carry you away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and show you the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descended out of heaven from God. And when Gloria died, her life was like a precious stone, like a jasper stone, clear as crystal. Also, she had a great and high wall, and 12 gates, and 12 angels at the gates, and names written on them, which were the names of the 12 tribes of the children of Israel. Three gates on the east, three gates on the north, three gates on the south, and three gates on the west. On the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the land. And he who talked with me had a gold reed to measure the city, its gates, and its wall. The city is laid out as a square. Its length is as great as its breadth. And he measured the city with the reed 12,000 furlongs. Its length, breadth, and height are unlimited. Then he measured its wall, 140 floor-feet. according to the medical tradition that is in the region. The construction of this wall was of jasper, and the city was pure gold, like clear glass. The foundations of the wall in the city were adorned with all kinds of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth Sardonyx, the 6th, Sardius, the 7th, Chrysalite, the 8th, Beryl, the 9th, Topaz, the 10th, Chrysantherous, the 11th, Jasper, and the 12th, Amethyst. The 12 gates were 12 pearls. Each individual gate was of one pearl. And the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and Lamb are His temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for it is the glory of God in the unity, and the Lamb gives its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. This gate shall not be shut at all by day, for there shall be no night there. And there shall be the glory and honor of the nations, but there shall be no means In the first four verses of chapter 22. 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 to the middle of the street of the city. Also, on either side of the river, the tree of life gives its twelve kinds of fruit, giving its fruit each month. The leaves of the trees were for the human dimensions. No longer will there be anything accursed The throne of God and 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. Thank you. Thank you for reading those passages. My intention this morning isn't to reveal any dark truths from from the 144 cubits or from the gates made out of solid pearl, but just to have an overview and help us to have a sight and a vision of heaven while we wait that eternal rest. And I can't think of a better day to get into that than Resurrection Sunday with the sun brightly shining outside. And I use some books, we have some great books in the library as resources for heaven. Joni Eareckson Tata's book, Heaven Your Real Home. John MacArthur, The Glory of Heaven. Randy Alcorn has a book just entitled Heaven. Richard Baxter, The Saints' Eternal Rest. And those will all be back in the library when I'm done. But I would encourage you to grab these books. And one thing they highlighted to me as I was trying to read on the commentary and exposition of the theme of Heaven Throughout Scripture is that there's not a lot of clarity in the revelation of heaven as far as a physical description. There is a lot of description. There's a lot of symbolism. There's a lot of revelation. But some things God has left obscure to us. And he's done that not by accident. So no dark truths this morning. But I do want to look at how we can live in light of heaven today. So let me just get started. And I'll read this passage since everyone has already done the heavy lifting of reading through revelation. 2 Corinthians 4.16-18 says, Therefore, we do not lose heart even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us as a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. While we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. We want to talk about the things that are not seen this morning. And to me, this is a great description of being heavenly-minded, feeling the weight of the trials of this world and viewing them as light. Why does Paul say to the Corinthians, why are they light? Because we look on the things that are not seen, not on the things that are temporal or the things that are seen. One thing that struck me as I was reading through the resolutions of Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards, in his early years, he wrote about 70 resolutions over the course of a few years. And he resolved to review those resolutions every day of his life to keep his mind focused on God and his spiritual disciplines. And it struck me that of those 70 resolutions, 11 of them that I counted all had to do with this with having his eyes set on the things which couldn't be seen But the things that were eternal not being having his eyes set on the The things that were temporal the things that were around him in this world So 11 of his resolutions that he meant to keep every day were putting his eyes on on heaven putting his eyes on the day of his death and his transfer into glory and I picked one out, Resolution 55, which was from Jonathan Edwards, written in the late 1700s. Resolved, he says, to endeavor to my utmost, to act as I can think I should do if I had already seen the happiness of heaven. So to act in this world as if he had already seen the happiness of heaven. So how do we do that? How do we know? None of us have been there and come back to tell the story, I don't think, or written a book yet. But how do we act as we've seen the glories of heaven, the happiness of heaven. So I just want to talk briefly today about what is heaven. It's a broad question. What is heaven? And the first point I'd like to make is heaven is a real place. And heaven is a current place. Heaven is happening now. And it's a source of joy and solace for many of us who've lost loved ones. But sometimes we think of heaven as this This thing that's going to happen later, especially Revelation 21. There's going to be a new heaven and a new earth. And we think of heaven in that mindset. But I'd submit that heaven is a real place. It's a place that's happening now. And even though Solomon says that the heavens cannot contain God, much less this temple that I build, when he built the temple in Jerusalem, because God is omnipresent, scripture is clear that it reveals God as having a dwelling place. It reveals God as having a command center, as having a home of operations, and this is in heaven. Certainly too many scriptures to look up, but we think of the Gospels of Jesus and Jesus' teaching. He continually refers to his Father who are in heaven, his Father which is in heaven. In fact, Matthew 5, verse 16, verse 23, verse 45, so the entire chapter of Matthew 5 is full of him referring back to his Father who is in heaven. All the way through chapter 6 and 7, chapter 10 and chapter 12, 16 and 18, all the way through his teachings to his disciples, his teaching to the Jewish people, he's referring them back to his own deity and that his Father is in heaven. When he was baptized, we hear a voice come out of heaven, and the Holy Spirit descending from heaven, cluing us into, directing our eyes to the fact that God has a dwelling place that's a real place. It's not a state of being or a state of consciousness, but it's a physical place. And we call that, and the scripture calls that, heaven. It's also a real place. that the scripture continually says, we will be translated to. So not only does God reside there, but we'll be translated to in the epistles, Paul in 2nd Timothy, referring to his own Death says, the time of my departure is at hand. There seem to be three different ways throughout the epistles that the New Testament church is directed to think of death. In fact, four. One would be sleep. And we think of even Jesus referring to Lazarus being asleep. departure. So that's Paul saying the time of his departure is here and departure comes from that concept of to set sail or to weigh anchor. So here's Paul who set sail and weighed anchor a lot using this terminology saying I'm about to set sail to go to another port and my departure is at hand. In 2nd Peter he says after my decease And that word there, decease, is an exodus, or a going out, like the book of Exodus. It's a journey. It's a removal from the land of Egypt to the promised land. This decease, or his exodus. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul says, For we know that if the tent, that is our earthly home, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. in verse 2, for in this tent we groan, longing to be put in our heavenly dwelling. What Paul is saying here is death is an exchange. We're exchanging something for something else. We're exchanging a temporal tent with sagging tent poles and maybe torn canvas for an eternal home in heaven, not made by hand. So, heaven is a real place, it's a current place, The Bible continually directs us to think of it as God's command center. This is his home, his throne room, as Bill said. We think of his revelation to Isaiah, right? Prophet Isaiah. How did God reveal himself when Isaiah needed to have that come-to meeting for the people of Israel? God revealed himself as sitting on a throne, high and lifted up. God's throne room. And heaven is a real and a current place because we are promised throughout scripture. We are going there. We are being translated there. It's our exodus, it's our departure to that place, it's an exchange for our temporal bodies. And of course we think of Christ on the cross to the thief and he says, today you will be with me in glory. Heaven is a real place because that is where our destination as believers lie. Heaven is described as a place in Scripture. It's described as not just a throne room. As Bill says, it's described as a temple. It's described as a city. It's described as a home. In my father's home, there are many rooms, dwelling places, mansions. And we are citizens of that home. So here the Bible uses this language, our human language, to try and give us a picture of what heaven is like. And it's a picture that it's where God is, it's where believers are translated to, it's a physical place, and it's where we find our citizenship. Ephesians 2.19 says, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. And then in Philippians, but our citizenship, he says, is in heaven. It's a place where we have citizenship, ownership. No longer are we those weary pilgrims scattered throughout the land. And finally, what is heaven? It's a real place. holding our rewards. We think of even pastors' messages through the Sermon on the Mount some time ago, and when Christ is speaking to those who are reviled and impugned for the name of Christ, what is His response to them? What is their hope they cling to? He says to them, rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great, not here on earth, but in heaven. Your reward is in heaven. Heaven is holding something for us. In Matthew 6, Christ says, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, where thieves don't break into steel. And why is that? Because we see that in the city of New Jerusalem, the gates are always open. There's no threat to God's kingdom. So heaven is a place where our treasures are laid up, where our rewards are stored for us. And heaven is a home. Heaven is our home. So not only is heaven a real place, but heaven is our home. Psalm 137.1 gives the account of the Jews in their time in Babylon, their exile in Babylon. And it says, by the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres, for there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors mirth saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's songs in a foreign land. I think I'm touching that verse is, can we commiserate with these Jews who are in a foreign land? And when we see the commandments in scripture to think of heaven, or we're convicted to do so, or challenged to do so, how can we sing the Lord's songs in a foreign land? I think of heaven as a home. Several years ago, Don Maurice and I went camping. It was a few kids ago. and when it was doable. But we were in northern Illinois. We met my sister and her family in northern Illinois and took the opportunity to go camping for a long weekend. And I grew up just a few hours south of there in a little town on the Illinois River called Chillicothe. And so I said, honey, why don't we just on the spur of the moment take a jaunt down to Chillicothe and drive through my old haunting lands as a junior hire. And so we drove a couple hours south and it was like flipping a switch in my mind. I didn't get lost. I never drove while I was there. I wasn't past bicycle age. But I Navigated right to my street, pulled up outside the house, probably scared the people living inside as we stared at the house. Of course, the kids are excited, asking me to retell all the stories of my adventures in hometown Illinois. Drove through the town and I said, this is where I get ice cream, this is where I got in trouble, and then Don Murray didn't let me tell that story. And then this is the park, and this is the swimming pool, this is the trail we would ride our bikes on. Over and over again, it all came back. Why was that? What is it? That makes something a home to us. What do you think? Anybody have any input into that? For me it was memories that made it a home. Anybody else? Security. The feeling of safety. Relationships. I was in that home with my family, right? And we were all together, right? Relationships. Remembering the church family in that city, right? And the relationships that were there. And we actually stopped in and saw an elderly lady who was in the church when I was a child. And our kid sat on her knee. It was a wonderful opportunity. So those relationships in our home. Anybody else? Scott? Impressions. Good kids. Yeah, sure. If your home was a good environment, you have these lasting impressions of good feelings that will last for your home. Sensitive belonging. Citizenship and heaven, right? This is where I belong. I don't feel like a fish out of water. Certainly, of course, when you go back to your hometown, it doesn't look like anything you remember in some aspects. You say, what happened? This is supposed to look different. But citizenship of a home. So heaven is our home. This speaks to our earthly mindedness. This speaks to our heavenly mindedness. This speaks to Jonathan Edwards saying, I must resolve every day to think of, to walk my life as if I'd been home and came back and I know the joys, the impressions, the good memories. I've had them already and I'm back here living on earth. That's how he resolved to live. We think of those Israelites who were in Babylon, who were saying, how can we sing the songs of home when we're here in this foreign land? Hopefully, as you study the scripture through its revelation of heaven and read good books, it'll foster that ability to be heaven-minded. Well, the first point is, heaven is our home, we need to understand the original intention of heaven. And hopefully I can make this clear. I think I still struggle in my own head with this, but as we think of original intent, it's something that we talk about a lot with authorship. So what's the intention of the author? When we try to understand a passage, even a scripture, we have to understand what's the intention here of this passage, of this epistle? And oftentimes with the Constitution, there's always debate about what was the original intent of the founding fathers, the framers of the Constitution. There's healthy debate about that. Why? To understand how we apply it to ourselves today. So understanding the original intent, if you turn with me to the book of Ephesians, we'll look at a familiar passage, Ephesians chapter 1. And we're going to look at verse 4 through 10, and I'll read it, and I'm reading out of ESV. Ephesians 1, 4 through 10, the original intention of heaven. Ephesians 1, 4, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love, He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will. To the praise of His glorious grace with which He has blessed us in the Beloved, in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven, and things on earth. I want to highlight verse 4, before the foundations of the world, how many times do we see the implication of God's planning, His wisdom, His design, and His purpose in these five verses. One thing I talk about a lot in junior high, because we go through the catechisms, is God is an architect. So as we try to talk about his decrees and in the course of redemption and redemptive history, God is an architect in his command room in heaven. And nothing caught him by chance. I don't want to give anything away here. But I do want to say, what is the intention of heaven? And it's a designed intention. This might be hard to read, but it's not important. I'll read through it. But as a resource from my study Bible, they have a great diagram in it, which is actually the redemptive history. And it starts, interestingly, over here, which says, God in eternal glory. So here we have God in eternal glory. And this week, we started reading through with the kids Genesis, Genesis 1. We made it through day 4. So God in eternal. prior to creation. The earth is without form and void. The spirit hovers over the water and God begins to create the earth. What's his motive? What is the original intention? So, we have creation. God created the heavens and the earth. He created day and night and then put lights to rule them. On the seventh day, He rested. And we actually sing about that, right? The Sabbath. So, He creates the Sabbath for us. And as Richard Baxter says in the Saints' Eternal Rest, that is, the Sabbath is a picture, in a way, of our eternal Sabbath we'll have in heaven. But he then highlights the Sabbath for us, gives it to us as a gift, as the seventh day. What does he create in heaven? The tree of life and the river of life created in heaven. And then what happened? Well, we know the fall happened. We know that because of the fall, God institutes the law. We know that he chooses a nation called Israel, and then he brings Christ into the picture. Although, when we read in Ephesians, we understand that way before creation, Christ was already chosen to come and provide redemption for a fallen man. After Christ comes, he ushers in, through his grace, the church, now the chosen people, and a final judgment. And then we read in Revelation 22 all about a new creation, that the heaven and earth will pass away. There will be a new heaven and a new earth. There will be no dark, like the day and night here. All will be holy, not just the Sabbath day. And interestingly, we read about the city of Jerusalem, the new Jerusalem. There will be a tree of life and rivers of life. And it ends with God and his people in eternal glory. So why, in talking about heaven, do we go all the way back to creation, and before creation, to God eternal in time? And that's to understand His intention, and to understand that the bookends of redemptive history is creation, this perfect creation where no sin was present, And at the end of redemption history, what do we have? We have creation, our heaven, our final resting place, the new heaven and the new earth. And so to understand God's intention, we understand that almost as a performance in three acts, God is playing out his purpose for man and his purpose for redemption history. Act one could be called creation. The intention was for God's glory. The design was Adam and Eve in this garden. There's no sin, there's innocence. It's perfect, right, in its form, in its beauty, in its orderliness. We have fellowship with God as created beings. We are ordained to work in this Garden of Eden, as Adam is ordained and given work to do before the fall. The family is instituted before the fall. And then in Act 2, all of a sudden we have the antagonist appear, and we have the fall of man. And Act 2 ushers in the redemption plan of God. Romans 8.20 says, was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who is subjected to it. It was subjected to futility because of God. And hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now, and not only the creation, but we ourselves. we have the firstfruits, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. So heaven, the intention of heaven, since its creation is revealed to us in scripture, is in some ways a mirror of God's original creation. So to understand what heaven will be like, to understand what joys we may have in heaven, what things we may do in heaven, we need to go back and understand what was God's intention in creation, what was his design in creation. He created a new earth. He's not going to throw the earth away. He redeems the earth. He doesn't throw a man away. He redeems man and He takes it back to what He said is His original intention. We're going to have a fellowship with God. There'll be beauty and orderliness and perfection. We'll be working in heaven because it comes back through after His redemption. He redeems it back to perfection. The Act 3 would be this resurrection to infinity, this resurrection to the new heaven and new earth. Job says, and if this is Act 3, then there's an intermission, and an intermission would be maybe our death, where Job says in Chapter 14, if a man dies, shall he live again? And he answers himself, for I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin, my flesh has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, who I shall see for myself. My eyes shall behold and not another. My heart faints within me. So I just wanted to highlight the intention of heaven. Actually, I should have told this story earlier, but I used to drive great little sporty Dodge Avenger, first car I ever owned. And we just had Alexander, I was coming home from work, I was in a rush, it was raining outside, perfect set of events. I pulled into the turn lane to go to our house over on Davis Street, and there was another car in the turn lane, and we hit head on and it sheared off the whole driver's side of the car. And thankfully I wasn't hurt, I had it car towed home, and so I did what anybody would do. I found some pieces in my garage. I had a flue vent cover for my roof that looked about the diameter of a headlight. And I went to the auto store and I got a round headlight and some black gunky silicon sealant. And I put it in there and stuck the headlight in and wired it up. And I got a couple rolls, I think three rolls of black Gorilla Tape, which is sort of like duct tape on steroids. And I wrapped it around the headlight and the front end. I got some wire and I poked holes through the trim of the car and wired it all up. together so it wouldn't drag on the ground, and I drove it that way for like a year until it finally died. That is not redemptive history. That is not God's approach to the destruction of this creation. God doesn't use Gorilla Tape and black sticky goo to put it all together again. God wasn't taken by surprise, is the point. at the fall of man. God wasn't taken by surprise, at the curse, at the thorns, at the pain, at the suffering. God submitted creation, Romans 8 says, to futility, and God redeems it on purpose, and He will redeem it back to the glory that it originally was. And that is our source for hope in heaven. As we walk this earth, we can find hope and joy in the fact that God isn't patching it back together. that God is sovereign in His decrees, He's sovereign in what He allows, and He's sovereign in bringing glory to Himself through redeeming a fallen creation, and giving it to us again as a new heaven and a new earth. Well, we will break here, and our next points will be, this is just a picture of the Garden of Eden, but our next points will be that heaven is our home because of its original intent, right? So, we were intended to be there all along in creation, and heaven is our home because it's natural. And that naturalness is attributed to by Solomon in Ecclesiastes who says, God put eternity in the hearts of man. So when we are welcomed home in eternity, it's because God put it in our hearts and draws us there. And it's that God's intention was that we would be in a heaven-like place in his creation. And he will return us there, because heaven is our home. I think I will just end with a passage out of Randy Alcorn's book on heaven. He actually, Randy Alcorn, wrote a fiction book called Edge of Eternity. And in this book, the protagonist is a man named Nick Seagrave. And he beholds the woodsman, who is symbolic of Jesus Christ, this woodsman at the end of the world, which he realizes is really sort of the beginning. So at the new heaven and the new earth, he realizes is sort of the beginning. And Nick Seagrave says, I saw a dying cosmos hold out its weak right arm. So heaven and earth shall pass away, Christ says. longing for a transfusion, a cure for its cancerous chasm. I saw the woodsman holding what appeared to be a tiny lump of coal, the same size as the blue-green marble he had held before. The woodsman squeezed his hand, and the world around me darkened. Just as I felt I would scream from unbearable pressure, the crushed world emerged from his grip a diamond. I gasped air in relief. I saw a new world. Once more, a life-filled blue-green. The old black coal, delivered from its curse and pain and shame, wondrously remade. It looked so easy for the woodsman to shape all this with his hands. But then I saw his scars and remembered it was not. Let's pray. Lord, we come to you on this day where we take joy in remembering your resurrection, and we look forward to our resurrection. Lord, we thank you for the home you have prepared for us, not as a place where we will just be in eternal bliss and listlessness, but as a place where we will enjoy all pleasures of your glory and your presence, and we will enjoy Worshipping you and praising you and father. We will enjoy a rest in our home away from this alien land Lord we pray that you would help us to walk with footsteps that remember this heaven even here on earth that we would be Challenged to share the joy of this heaven with others around us That we wouldn't keep it to ourselves that we would walk with a certainty of its realness in Jesus name we pray amen Thank you.