A New Heaven & a New Earth – Revelation 21

A NEW HEAVEN & A NEW EARTH

The Consummation of All Things

Revelation

Revelation 21

THE TEXT:

The text for the sermon today is Revelation 21. Our text can be found on page 1041. These are the words of God:

21 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. ² And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. ⁴ He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

⁵ And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” ⁶ And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. ⁷ The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. 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.”

 

⁹ 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.” ¹⁰ 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, ¹¹ having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. ¹² 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— ¹³ on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. ¹⁴ And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

¹⁵ And the one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls. ¹⁶ 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. ¹⁷ He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel’s measurement. ¹⁸ The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, like clear glass. ¹⁹ 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, ²⁰ the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. ²¹ And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.

²² And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. ²³ 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. ²⁴ By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, ²⁵ and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. ²⁶ They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. 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.

GRAB THEIR ATTENTION

We finally made it to heaven. I thought we’d never get here. I felt like the man whose wife died and when she got to the Pearly Gates St. Peter greeted her and said, “In order to get into heaven you have to spell a word.” She asked what the word was and St. Peter replied, “Love.” So, she spelled L, O, V, E; the gates opened and she went in. She got to see all her old friends and family who had went on before her, and after several years had passed, St. Peter approached her and asked if she would man the front gate while he ran a few errands.

And would you believe it, but while she was at the gate up walked her husband. She was so glad to see him and said, “Oh! Oh, it’s you! How have you been?” The husband said, “Well, I’ve been fantastic.” A little surprised, she said, “Tell me what all has happened.” The husband said, “Well, a lot actually. You remember when you were sick, and that cute little nurse was taking care of you? Well, I married her. Not long after that we won the lottery and hit it rich. We sold that little dump you and I lived in and we’ve been travelling the world ever since. In fact, last thing I remember, we were just on a jet ski in the Caribbean and I fell and hit my head and I woke up here. How do I get in?”

She said, “You have to spell a word.” He asked, “What is it?” She said, “Czechoslovakia.”

RAISE THE NEED, SIGNPOSTS, STATE THE DESTINATION

Church, we could spend weeks in this chapter. There is so much to be said about the New Heavens and Earth. And most of the time that people talk about what it will be like those conversations focus on what will be there: friends and family, streets of gold and so on.

But if we read this chapter carefully, we find the Apostle John draws equal, if not more focus to what is absent from the New Heavens and Earth. Yes, he tells us what is there, but he also tells us what’s missing. So, today we’re going to think about the glorious “No’s” of the New Creation, and we’ll simply walk through the passage verse by verse.

1. NO MORE SEA (21:1)

21 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.

One of the big questions in this passage is whether the New Heavens and New Earth are a renovation of the present earth or will it be an entirely new creation. I think Romans 8 is clear that creation today is longing for the day when God removes all sinfulness and brokenness and renews the cosmos in glory.

And the first feature that John notices is that there is no more sea. Now, before those of you who love the beach get heartbroken, remember, this is still a symbolic book. All throughout Revelation the sea has been the place of turmoil and persecution. The beast rises out of the sea in Revelation 13. The evil city of Babylon is seated upon the sea, representing humanity in revolt against the creator.

John is telling us that in the New Creation, there’s no more revolt. There are no more Satan-empowered persecuting beasts coming for the church. Praise God. Friends, in the coming years the churches of our nation will be put more and more to the test by overweening rebellious government officials. What we believe about human life, marriage, the rights of parents, and a thousand other issues will set us at odds with the culture which surrounds us. But a day is coming when there will be no more sea—no more cultures who oppose and rebel against God. Praise God.

2. NO MORE TEARS (21:2-4)

² And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. ⁴ He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,

Throughout the Bible the imagery of the bride God has several meanings:

• Physical Jerusalem or Mount Zion (Isa. 54:6; 62:5)
• Israel (Jer. 2:32; Hos. 1:2)
• The Church (Rev. 19:7)

I think Revelation 21 is referring to all three: the dwelling place of God is with his people—all of them—every believer under the Old and New Covenants.

Notice that in the end, we don’t go up to God—God comes to dwell with us. Heaven isn’t a misty, ephemeral shadowy realm—this is a remade earth which is filled with the glory of the Lord.

And when God comes dwell with us, there are no more tears. God wipes them away. There’s a closeness and tenderness pictured here. You have to be very close to someone to wipe a tear from their eye.

3. NO MORE SUFFERING (21:4)

Verse 4 continues:

and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

In the new creation, there will be no death. Finally, the great enemy of God’s creation will be undone. If you go back to the beginning of the Bible you see that when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, the consequence was the entrance of death into creation.

So, one of the things I typically say at funerals is that death is not natural. So many have this idea that death is natural. You hear people say things like, “Death is just part of life.” We’re so accustomed to death’s presence.

William Shakespeare wrote in his Macbeth:

Each new morn

New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows

Strike heaven on the face.

But, Death isn’t a part of life, death is a perversion, a corruption of life. It’s an enemy.

This is why Dylan Thomas wrote the famous poem:

Do not go gentle into that dark night.

Old age should burn and rave at the closing of the day.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

This is why Isaiah 25:6 says:

      6       On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples

      a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,

      of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.

            7       And he will swallow up on this mountain

      the covering that is cast over all peoples,

      the veil that is spread over all nations.

            8       He will swallow up death forever;

                  and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces,

      and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,

      for the LORD has spoken.

            9       It will be said on that day,

      “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.

      This is the LORD; we have waited for him;

      let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

Thankfully, because of Christ, for the Christian, death is only the interruption of life. It is a shadow we pass under only to be raised victorious above it. And on the last death, the death itself will be swallowed up in victory.

4. NO MORE SANCTIFICATION (21:9-21)

In verse 9-21 there is an extended description of what John calls the New Jerusalem. It’s a picture of the people of God, described as a beautiful city.

⁹ 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.” ¹⁰ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem.

What is this city? It’s a picture of the bride, the wife of the Lamb. She is the church triumphant, perfected, no longer working out her sanctification—but finally and fully glorified.

Ok, some big words there. If you are new to church, the word sanctified simply means that Christians are to set themselves apart for God’s exclusive use. By God’s grace, we are changed over time to become more and more like Jesus, to imitate him. And that process, sanctification, lasts our entire life, and it’s never easy. You never graduate, you only move on to the next grade.

So, Christians are people who spend the rest of their life learning how to surrender to God’s will. They make a lifelong practice of learning forgiveness, patience, humility, generosity, courage, and wisdom. And we never master it.

Until Christ returns. This is why John wrote this in his first letter:

² Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. ³ And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

You see what he is saying, in this life, as we hope in Christ we purify ourselves—we are progressively changed. But when Christ appears, we will be like him. The sight of the returning Christ will transform us instantly. Christ will complete in a moment what we were unable to complete in a lifetime.

And this picture of the New Jerusalem is a picture of the perfected and completed church. She has the glory of God, radiating like a diamond. She, unlike Babylon hasn’t worked for her own glory. She has received the glory of the one who laid her foundation.

What makes up the gates and foundations of this city? The 12 tribes of Israel are written on the gates. The 12 apostles are the foundation stones. This is the entire people of God in the Old and New Covenants.

We’re told each of the gates are made of a single giant pearl. This isn’t telling us that the new creation has giant oysters. Think about this. All the other precious items in this passage are either metals or gems which occur naturally. But a pearl is made of living flesh. An oyster is wounded and around the offending wound, the oyster builds a pearl. The pearl is pain resulting in beauty.

It’s a reminder that the greatest wound in history, received by Jesus Christ at the cross becomes the very gate which welcomes us into the city of God. These gates are the eternal reminder that Christ’s suffering has opened heaven to us.

Friend, how do you see the church today? I can tell you that I have no delusions about the church’s faults—both the church as a whole and even our church. It’s so easy to fault-find in the church. In fact, the church may be the easiest target for fault finding specifically because we’re always talking about what we ought to be doing—and we’re constantly struggling to do it.

So, I get it. If you have been hurt by a church, I have too. I know what that’s like. If a church you know hasn’t lived up to its ideals and promises, I understand. I’ve experienced that as well. If a church has failed you in the past, it’s failed me as well.

Friend, Christians can disappoint you, and they will disappoint you. But Jesus Christ won’t and he can’t disappoint you. And—don’t lose sight of this: on the last day—the church will be so utterly perfected by the presence of Christ that she will be more beautiful than we could have every dreamed.

When you are tempted to give up on the church, friend, go to Revelation 21 and consider the fact that her future glory is as certain as her current struggles.

5. NO TEMPLE (21:22)

²² And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.

Technically, there is a temple in the New Jerusalem, but it’s not a brick and mortar temple. It’s a presence—the presence of God.

You see, “temple” is a theme that runs throughout the Bible. And the temple simply means: here is the location where God and man can come together. The temple is where God’s presence is.

• Eden – the garden was the temple. Immediate access to the presence of God.
• Tabernacle – this is where the presence of God was in the middle of the camp. But!!! There was a veil. Only the high priest could go in once a yar.
• Solomon’s Temple – a permanent building in Jerusalem.
• Jesus Christ – tabernacled among us.
• The church is the temple of the living God.

John is telling us that in the new creation there will be perfect and immediate access to God.

6. NO NIGHT (21:23-25)

²³ 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. ²⁴ By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, ²⁵ and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there.

Again, John isn’t telling us whether there is a Sun or Moon or stars. He’s telling us that you can’t possibly compare even the brightness of the Sun, which we cannot look at, with the radiant glory of God, which floods and permeates and illuminates the new creation.

There won’t be any night doesn’t meant that the New Jerusalem will be like living in Alaska from May to June. No night means no darkness, no evil. Night is when creeping sinister things come out. In John’s gospel, night and darkness symbolically refer to the power of darkness and sin.

If you’ve ever struggled with chronic illness or anxiety, you know how terrifying night can be. Here lately our own church has had many members who are battling sickness, and almost every single one of them will tell you that the nights are the hardest. The darkness brings a spiritual challenge that they don’t face as much during the day.

John is showing us, that in the New Jerusalem, darkness has no power. Evil, which feels so heavy and oppressive to us, is a mist that gets vaporized in the eternal Sun of God’s glory.

There is no more weeping in the night. There is only joy in the morning.

7. NO CLOSED DOORS (21:24)

²⁴ By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, ²⁵ and its gates will never be shut by day

The gates will never be shut. That may not mean much to you, but it would have meant the world to John’s original audience. In the ancient world, the city was a place of refuge from thieves and bandits. The city had walls and fortifications. And the city had gates. And if you were running for your life and you got to the city and the cates were closed, there was no hope.

1. S. Lewis, when his wife was dying kept a journal of his thoughts. It’s not published under the title A Grief Observed. In it he wrestles with personal suffering and his own faith in God. He writes:

Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symp- toms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels — welcomed with open arms.

But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?

Do you see what he’s saying? So often, in this life, we go to God and we feel as though the gate is shut. We pray but the heavens are brass.

Thankfully, Lewis goes on to remind himself that God never forsakes us, even when we feel he has. Why? Because at the cross Jesus Christ was truly forsaken.

But at the return of Christ—the doors are never closed. There is perfect and immediate intimacy with our Creator God.

8. NO MORE CURSE (21:27)

If we jump down to Revelation 22:3 we read:

³ 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.

It’s a continuation of what John writes in v. 27 of chapter 21:

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.

Here, at the end of the Bible, we return to Eden in a sense… but it is a greater Eden for Eden was only a garden, but this is a garden city.

And it’s a greater Eden for Satan could enter Eden, but he cannot enter here. You know what this means? It means eternal security. In the garden Adam could choose to sin or not sin. But in the new Jerusalem sin won’t even be a possibility.

You know what this means? We won’t be able to mess it up. All of this life, we are stumbling and tripping, falling down, and getting up again by God’s grace.

But this life is just the cover and the title page. When Christ returns, we’ll begin chapter one of the great story, which no one on earth has truly read, which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.