Sermon Transcript

0:00:14.0

I get to talk about heaven today.  I’m so excited.  Especially after a very long series through the book of Revelation where we’ve had to deal with some pretty hard subjects likes the Tribulation and calamity and distress that will happen on this earth during a seven-year period of time in future Bible prophecy known as the Tribulation period.  But we finished our study of the Tribulation.  We talked about the second coming of Jesus, the one thousand-year millennial reign of Christ on this earth.  Now we transition into what theologians call the eternal state.  And that’s Revelation 21 and 22.  What a fabulous climax, not only to the book of Revelation but to the Bible itself.  And John begins in Revelation 21:1 by saying, “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.”  Revelation 21 and even into chapter 22 contain the largest and most detailed description of heaven we find anywhere in the Bible.  It’s a fabulous and fascinating and even mysterious read.  But even as we go through this and we learn a little bit about heaven and the future eternal state, I want us to keep in mind 1 Corinthians 2:9, which says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for those who love him.”  God is gracious in giving us a glimpse, and that’s all it is.  A glimpse into heaven and eternity through the pages of scripture.  You ever go into a movie theater and you have previews of coming attractions and all of that?  Well, that’s what Revelation 21…it’s just a preview, just a little glimpse of what heaven is.  But no eye as seen, no ear has heard.  It hasn’t even entered into the imagination of the human heart and mind what God has prepared and is preparing for those who love Him.

0:02:31.1

But John says he saw a vision of a new heaven and a new earth, a little bit later a new holy city of Jerusalem.  And it begs the question, why a new heaven?  Why a new earth?  Why a new holy city Jerusalem?  What’s wrong with the old heaven and the old earth and the old city of Jerusalem?  Well, I guess the best way to answer that question is to say God loves to do new things.  I mean, I kind of get the new earth.  This is a tired, rundown, sin-stained, fallen world in which we live.  And I’d look forward to a new earth.  But why a new heaven?  Why a new holy city Jerusalem that John sees coming down, landing upon the new earth?  Well, God loves to do new things, doesn’t He?  And it’s not just about building projects, about building a new heaven, a new earth, and new holy city Jerusalem.  He also loves to do a new thing in your life and in my life.  2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ…”  Are you in Christ today?  “If anyone in is in Christ he is a new creation; old things are passed away and all things are increasingly becoming new.”  God wants to do a new thing in your life today.  Maybe you’re stuck in a rut.  Maybe you’re stuck in an old sin habit you can’t break. Maybe you’re just stuck.  And God wants to do a new thing in your life today, and you’ve come to the right place where He can start something new.

0:04:02.6

But John tells there’s a new heaven, a new earth, a new holy city Jerusalem.  You say, “Pastor, what’s that all about?”  Well, it does kind of introduce the idea that we have a lot of misconceptions about heaven, do we not?  What John describes here is the merging of heaven and earth into a new heaven and a new earth and this picture of the holy city Jerusalem prepared as a bride for her groom, landing like a holy city upon this newly created and merged heaven and earth.  We have misconceptions about heaven, do we not?  Not the least of which is, oh, heaven is just…we’re gonna be floating around on clouds and strumming harps.  Listen, friend, if that’s your understanding of heaven, you’ve never read the Bible and you’ve never read the most detailed description of the future heaven and earth found in Revelation 21.  John pictures this merging of the two.  And it’s a fascinating, fascinating picture.  In fact, Robert Jeffress, the pastor of the famous First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, in one of his books he writes this.  “One of the greatest misconceptions about heaven is that it is located in some distant galaxy far, far away or in some invisible fourth dimension that will be inhabited by the disembodies spirits of Christians.  Nothing could be further from the truth,” he says.  “The Bible teaches that the ultimate dwelling place for Christians will be a recreated earth, not an ethereal, undefined location in outer space.”  And this is what John pictures for us, this merging between heaven and earth.  Look at verses 9 and 10, where he says, “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.”  And he goes on to describe its glory and its radiance.’

0:06:19.3

So with that in mind and before we get into some specific descriptions about heaven, let me tell you about some things that you won’t find in heaven.  Revelation 21 mentions about five or six things that are missing in heaven.  You won’t find these things in heaven.  And I don’t have a long time to touch on them, but I just want to briefly describe them.  At the top of the list is death.  Verse 4 says, “Death will be no more.”  Can somebody shout hallelujah and amen?  I mean, come on.  That is the best news you could hear today, that the last enemy called death will be found nowhere in heaven.  In fact, at the end of chapter 20 at the Great White Throne Judgment we learn that God takes both death and Hades, that temporary dwelling place of unbelievers, and casts them into the lake of fire.  He defeats death.  Jesus defeated death at the cross, but death is defeated ultimately, never to show its appearance in heaven again.  J. Oswald Sanders writes, “The king of terrors, the last enemy, will never be able to breach the pearly gates and disturb the bliss of heaven.  No more deathbed vigils or funerals.  The hearse will have made its last journey.”  That’s great news, isn’t it?  No death in heaven.

0:07:37.6

Secondly, no tears in heaven.  You see that in verse 4?  “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”  There will be no mourning, no crying, no tears in heaven.  Thirdly, no sea in heaven.  Now, I’ve got to be honest with you.  This disappointed me a little bit.  All right?  “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.  The first heaven and the first earth had passed away,” verse 1, “and the sea was no more.”  Really, Lord?  No beach in heaven?  Come on.  I’m just joking.  We’re gonna learn later heaven is such a massive place.  Right now 75% of the earth is covered in water.  Because of the massive inhabitants of heaven, we’re gonna need more place.  Now, there’s a river that runs from the throne of God, and there’s a sea that’s clear as crystal.  But for some reason, and I don’t know why, there will be no sea in heaven.  Fourthly, there’s no pain in heaven.  Yeah, there you go.  Verse 4, “Nor  pain.”  No pain in heaven verse 4 tells us.  No crying, no mourning, no reason to go to CVS and get, you know, extra-strength Advil or Tylenol.  Yeah, no reason to visit the oncologist and have your cancer treatment.  No more pain in heaven.  No sin in heaven.  Verse 8, “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.”  Verse 27, “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.”  You won’t have to worry about locking your doors at night because of some evil that might come upon you.  And then lastly I’ll just lump these together.  No temple, no sun or moon.  Verse 22, “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 or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.”  How interesting.  I mean, God created the heavens and the earth and the stars and the sun and the moon and all the luminaries of the sky.  But there will be no need for that in heaven because the glory of God will radiate the place.  There will be no night in heaven.  There will be no need to sleep because we’ll have eternal energy and resurrected body kind of energy.  But there will be no night and there will be no light other than the light that shines from the glory of God.  Just a list of a few of the things you won’t find in heaven.  I don’t think anybody’s gonna be disappointed by any of them.  Maybe the beach, maybe the ocean, sea, I don’t know.

0:10:30.4

But what kind of place is heaven?  What sort of revelation does God give us through the pages of scripture that we can say, hey, this is kind of what heaven is like?  First of all, heaven is a massive, massive place.  In other words you might be familiar with, it’s the Father’s big, big house.  Our children in children’s ministry remember that.  It’s the Father’s big, big house with lots and lots of rooms where we can play football, you know, and all of that kind of stuff.  It’s a big, big house.  Jesus said to His disciples on the night before He was crucified in the upper room, “In my father’s house are many rooms.”  The old translation says “many mansions”.  It’s a big, big place.  Cathryn and I have some friends in Dallas that have a big house.  It’s over 6,000 square feet.  And we used to spend some of our staff Christmas dinners and things like that there.  There’s a dance floor on like the second or third floor because the Mrs. is a Texas line dance instructor.  I won’t even begin to show you what she taught me, but watch out.  So we’d have our dinner.  We’d go upstairs.  We’d do some Texas line dancing.  They have a slide in this house, like from the third floor down to the first.  I mean, who builds a slide in their house?  But it’s a big house.  But it’s not bigger than my Father’s house.  It’s not bigger than our heavenly home where Jesus is building lots and lots of rooms.  Listen to the description in Revelation 21:15.  “And the one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls.  The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width.  And he measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia.  Its length and width and height are equal.  He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel’s measurement.”  Now, we’re not familiar with the measurements of a stadia and a cubit.  But what’s described there is a big, big house.  Actually a big city.  If you think heaven is sort of this cloud-floating, ethereal experience, no.  The description of the new heaven and the new earth and the New Jerusalem is of a dynamic city with streets and building and people and lots and lots of things happening there.  And many scholars believe that this description pictures maybe a cube, a three-dimensional cube.

0:13:10.4

One author named Ron Rhodes in his book The Wonder of Heaven says, “The heavenly city measures approximately 1500 miles by 1500 miles by 1500 miles.  The eternal city is so huge that it would measure approximately the distance from Canada to Mexico and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rockies.  That is a surface area of 2.25 million square miles.  By comparison, the city of London is only 621 square miles.  The city is tall enough that from the earth’s surface it would reach about 1/20^th of the way to the moon.  If the city has stories, each being 12 feet high, then the city would have 600,000 stories.”  He’s trying to wrap his mind around the description in Revelation here and kind of get a sense of how massive it is.  He goes on to say, “Someone calculated that if this structure is cube-shaped it would allow for 20 billion residents, each having his or her own private 75-acre cube.”  I like that part.  If each residence were smaller then there is room to accommodate 100,000 billion people.  Even then plenty of room is left over for parks, streets, and other things you would see in any normal city.”  Heaven, friends, is a massive, massive place.  And here is the good news.  There’s room for you.  There’s room for you and for anybody who places his or her faith in Jesus Christ and who wants to go to heaven.

0:14:47.0

Secondly, heaven is a welcoming place.  It’s a welcoming place.  Read with me in verses 12 and 13.  “It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the 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, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates.  And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.”  It’s a welcoming place.  Again, if it’s a cube, a three-dimensional kind of thing, it has 12 gates, 12 foundations.  And why do I say it’s a welcoming place?  Because on every side of the cube there are three gates in which you can enter the city.  And a little bit later in this chapter, verses 25 and 26 and 27 tell us that the gates are open perpetually because it’s a welcoming place.  And you get the sense that there is activity and flow inside and outside of this massive holy city called Jerusalem and called heaven and this merging of heaven and earth.  It’s a welcoming place because the gates are always open.  It’s a welcoming place because you know who the welcoming committee is at the gate?  You know who’s on the hospitality team?  Angels.  John tells us that there is an angel at each of the gates.  There are 12 angels positioned at all 12 of the gates.  Now, we have some wonderful, friendly people on our hospitality team here at Atlantic Shores.  You can come into this building from all kinds of entry points, and we always have a wonderful, smiling face there.  But we don’t have angels.  Can you imagine being greeted by a heavenly angel and you come in and out of the holy city?  Heaven is a welcoming, welcoming place.

0:16:43.8

It’s welcoming also because of the reminder of these 12 gates and the 12 foundations.  Above the 12 gates are the names of the 12 tribes of Israel.  A perpetual and eternal reminder that salvation is of the Jews.  That God chose the nation of Israel not because they were big, not because they were great, not because they were better than everybody else, but because He wanted to pour Himself into them and that they would be a blessing to the nations.  And then the 12 foundations.  Above those foundations there are the names of the 12 apostles, a reminder of the Church.  And the Church gave way not only to Jews, but also Gentiles.  And so it’s a perpetual and eternal reminder—these 12 gates and 12 foundations and the tribes and the apostles—it’s a perpetual reminder that salvation is to the Jews and to the Gentiles. Everybody is welcome by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  Heaven is a welcoming place.

0:17:45.9

Thirdly, heaven is a beautiful, beautiful place.  Look again in verse 2.  “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,” John says.  Now, listen to this, “Prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”  It is not by accident that the wedding imagery appears here again.  Remember, the Church is the bride of Christ.  And often in the Old Testament God described His relationship with Israel using marriage terms.  And so this holy city Jerusalem is the saints of God in the Old Testament and the Church like a bride prepared for her heavenly groom, the beauty and the majesty of it.  There’s nothing more beautiful than a bride on her wedding day.  And on this wedding day, the wedding supper of the Lamb and all that we talked about a couple of weeks ago, the beauty will be stunning.  Let’s pick it up in verse 10 where John says, “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 (0:19:00.1) God.”  Now, listen to this, “Its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.”  Scroll down to verse 18.  “The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, like clear glass.  The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel.  The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst.”  I had to work on that this week.  How’d I do?  Not too bad, right?  “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.”  John is doing the best he can understand inspiration of the Holy Spirit to grab human language and describe the dazzling, (0:20:00.1) stunning, radiant beauty of heaven.  But just remember this.  “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for those who love him.”

0:20:13.3

This is like a New York City trip to Tiffany’s, isn’t it?  You ever wanted to go to a beautiful jewelry store, ladies, guys?  And all the jewels that are mentioned there, most of them recognize.  Some of them we’re not sure what they are.  I think that’s an indication that God will reveal to us aspects of true beauty the human eye has never seen.  Aspects of true beauty the human mind has never imagined.  We have cheap substitutes for beauty in our culture, don’t we?  But heaven will be a truly beautiful place.  And do you notice the description here?  What we consider rare and precious jewels are common building materials in heaven.  I find that fascinating.  Down to the streets of gold.  There’s no steel.  There’s no concrete.  There’s no asphalt.  There are no potholes in heaven.  Did you know that?  I mean, with streets of gold you never have to, you know, fill in a little pothole and fix this or fix that.  What a beautiful, stunning, stunning place.  And again, all described using the wedding imagery.  “Like a bride adorned for her groom.”  Nothing more beautiful than that.  The fiery Baptist preacher W.A. Criswell says “the entire city of splendor proclaims God’s covenant relationship with the bride of the Lamb, His people Israel, and His redeemed Church.”  Don’t miss the wedding imagery there, again, John’s way of trying to describe the absolute stunning beauty of heaven.

0:22:04.7

Number four, heaven is a healing place.  It’s a healing place.  Let’s pick it up in 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 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve 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 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.”  It’s a healing place.  We see the tree of life reappearing at the end of the Bible, the last chapter of the Bible.  We’ve come full circle, haven’t we?  We’ve gone from paradise—that’s Genesis 1 and 2—to paradise lost—that’s chapter 3 of Genesis—all the way to Revelation 21 and now paradise regained.  What was lost in the Garden of Eden is regained at the end here in the tree of life.

0:23:31.7

First church that Cathryn and I served was in Texas in a west Houston suburb called Katy.   And it was in one of those master plan communities where the developers go in and they manicure every part of it.  I remember that just part of the beauty was the boulevards.  You know, they planted crape myrtle trees.  You know what a crape myrtle tree is?  You know, we used to chop them down to the sticks, you know, during the dormant winter months because in the springtime they would blossom up again in these beautiful radiant flowers.  And it would line the boulevards of Cinco Ranch.  As stunningly beautiful as that is, it’s nothing compared to the beauty of the tree of life.  And Charles Haddon Spurgeon describes it this way.  “That paradise, which the first Adam lost for us, the second Adam will regain for us with added bliss and superior joy.  We shall dwell where a river rolls with placid streams and surrounds a land where there is gold.”  What a beautiful description of heaven.  And John says that the leaves of the tree of life…well, two things about them.  Number one, they produce a fruit, a different fruit every month.  Now, how creative of our God is that?  You might have a tree in your background.  If it’s a maple tree or an orange tree or a lemon tree or whatever kind of tree it is…a key lime tree.  Well, it produces key limes or oranges or lemons.  It doesn’t produce a different fruit each month.  But in heaven the tree of life will produce a different fruit…it’s like the fruit of the month club, only better.  It’s heavenly.  And John says the leaves of the tree of life—listen to this—are “for the healing of the nations”.  That word “healing” in the Greek is where we get our word “therapeutic”.  Heaven is a therapeutic place.  There’s no stress.  There’s just perpetual bliss and therapy and healing.  Why healing for the nations?  I don’t know.  Maybe because there’s no war or conflict or rumors of war or turning on the 24-hour news channels at night and going, “Oh, that again.”  No, it’s a healing place.  And all the struggles you’re having in this life, all that part of you emotionally or physically or whatever it is that needs healing will be made perfect, perfect in heaven.

0:26:04.9

Finally, it’s a worshipping place.  And I don’t have time to go to all the ways we’ve learned or glimpses we’ve gotten or pictures of worship in heaven.  But there are three places in the book of Revelation where, while great tribulation and trial and calamity is happening on planet earth, we’re given a glimpse of heavenly worship.  One is found in chapter 4, chapter 5, also chapter 7.  We hear words like this.  “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,” where those worshippers in heaven are just enthralled and enraptured in what they were created to do.  You know that, don’t you?  You were created to worship.  You were created to worship God.  And if worship for you is kind of a boring thing, then you’ve got some distance to travel in your relationship with the Lord to get ready for heaven.  Because what we do on this earth is a dress rehearsal for heaven because it’s a worshipping place.  But as we worship God in heaven we will never feel so fulfilled and so complete in who we are and who God created us to be.  And as I read the scripture—and I don’t have time to go there—but it seems as though our work and our worship are comingled.  We’ll have work to do in heaven.  Some of you are saying, “Oh darn, Pastor.  I was into that therapeutic experience.”  Well, work will be therapeutic as well, because God has always been a worker.  He worked for six days creating the heavens and the earth, and then He rested on the seventh, right? When He put Adam in the Garden of Eden one of the things He said to Adam is, “Take care of this place.”  He gave him work to do.  Sin frustrated that.  God never cursed work.  He cursed the ground.  And the thistles and the thorns came up, and it made it harder in paradise lost to work.  So we have something we call the daily grind here.  In heaven there will be no daily grind.  You’ll never wake up on Monday morning and say, “Oh, I’ve got to go to work today.”  Not in heaven.  And our worship and our work will be so comingled that we’ll never feel more fulfilled, more who we were created to be than when we’re worshipping God and working.  We won’t worship our work, but we’ll work as we worship.  And one in the same will be happening there as we serve the Lord for all of eternity.

0:28:29.0

How many of you want to go to heaven?  I certainly do.  It’ll be a whole lot better than this place.  I mean, the best experience you might have or I might have on this earth, the most beautiful place on earth that you might experience on this…that little slice of heaven that you call your beach home or your home in the mountain or that vacation to some remote island on the planet…all of that is a ghetto compared to heaven.  Because “no eye has seen, no ear has heard, neither has it entered into the heart and the imagination of man what God has prepared for those,”—here’s the tricky part—“for those who love him.”  Do you love Him today?  Do you love Him enough to call Him your savior?  Have you placed your faith and your trust in Him, this Jesus who came to die on a cross for you sins and then was buried?  Who rose from the dead three day later, 40 days later ascended to the Father, and for the last 2000 years has been using His carpentry hands to add onto His Father’s house.  Can you imagine what He’s been building?  And that same Jesus who is awaiting a word from His Father that says, “Go.”  And we His Church, like a bride waiting for her groom, we are the Church waiting for Him.  Are you loving His appearing?  Are you leaning into it every day, doing what God has called you to do every day, trying to be as faithful as you can?  But in the back of your mind you’re listening for that trumpet sound for when Christ returns.  Do you really love Him?  Are you truly one of His followers?  Because the scripture is clear here.  It’s those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life that will be welcomed into this heavenly place.

0:30:36.6

And my prayer is that every one of us in this room would come to that personal decision where you come as a sinner in need of a savior, kneeling at the cross—that’s where it all begins-and inviting Jesus Christ into your life.  And if you’ve done that, that’s a matter of fact in your life, then here’s what the Bible says.  “Set your affections on things above, and not on things on this earth.”  I’m not saying become so heavenly-minded you’re no earthly good.  But let’s not become so earthly-minded that we never give a thought about heaven.  “No eye has seen, no hear has heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man what God,” the God who created us, “is preparing for us,” because He loves us.  And He wants to dwell with us for all eternity.  That’s what drove Him to create us in the first place.  “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.”  That ought to blow your categories.  You mean God wants to dwell, wants to hang out with me?  “What is man that you are mindful of him?” the psalmist said.  But God is preparing a place where He can hang with us for all of eternity.  Let’s pray together.

0:32:09.2

Father, thank You for Your Word.  But, Father, we have some business to do this morning, and You’re already ahead of the game.  You can see into the hearts and lives of people right here in this place.  And there may be some, maybe one, maybe two, maybe many that need to come to the cross of Christ today.  Oh, they want to go to heaven.  Sure, who doesn’t given the alternative?  But, Jesus, You said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father but by Me.”  Thank You for giving us specific instructions about how to get to heaven and to make it our eternal home.  And we pray this in Jesus’s name, amen.

0:33:11.9