No More Night: Life in the New Jerusalem

We're back in the book of Revelation tonight. We're nearing the end, y'all.

We're in Revelation chapter 22, and we're going to pick up tonight in verses

Revelation 22 · chapter mention

three through five in that area.

And remember, we're talking about the New Jerusalem, which is the capital city of heaven, right?

And so tonight we pick up with the privileges of its inhabitants.

In other words, those who are going to live there. Do you know Jesus tonight?

That's going to be you if you hadn't figured that part out, all right?

You're going to be living there.

So here's where we pick up. It says, there will no longer be any curse and the

throne of God and of the lamb will be in it and his bond servants will serve him.

They will see his face and his name

will be on their foreheads and there will no longer be any night and they will

not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun Because the Lord

God will illumine them and they will reign forever and ever.

Does that blow your mind? I mean, this is amazing right here.

As John toured the new Jerusalem, he just couldn't help but notice,

y'all, that life was very different for its inhabitants, right?

The most dramatic change here from the present earth is there will no longer be any curse.

Can somebody say amen? No longer any curse, y'all.

We've talked about this in the past weeks, but the removal of the curse is going

to mean, y'all, the end forever. Get this.

Of sorrow, pain, and especially death. Can somebody say amen?

How many of you would like today? No more sorrow, no more pain, and no more death.

The most terrible aspect of the curse. That's the last enemy to be destroyed, right?

And though we've talked about this already, but there will be no temple in the New Jerusalem.

And it says it right here, the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it.

There'll be no temple. And God the Father and the Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ,

they're going to reign throughout eternity.

And since God will continue forever as heaven's sovereign ruler, what does it say here?

It says His bondservants, that's us y'all, will serve Him, how long? Forever.

They will spend, in other words, all eternity, we'll spend all eternity carrying

out the infinite variety of tasks that the limitless mind of God can conceive.

Now, this is not like those pictures sometimes we see. We think of heaven floating

in the clouds, playing the harp.

You know, like, boy, I'm going to be bored in heaven. All I'm going to do is float in a cloud.

No, we're going to be involved in this new Jerusalem. We're going to have tasks

to do. We're going to be serving the king.

In fact, we don't even know the full aspect of it, but no, we're going to have

a life here that's beyond our comprehension, and we're going to be serving God.

We're going to be ruling.

We're going to be reigning all of it with him, and incredibly,

as the parable also in Luke 12.

Somebody read this for me real quick, because I think it's important.

Luke chapter 12, verses 35 through 40 it's only about five verses luke 12 verses

Luke 12:35–40 Luke 12:35–40

35 through 40 if somebody can get that one if y'all whoever gets it first if

you'll raise your hand just read

it nice and loud for us all okay luke chapter 12 verses 35 through 40.

Luke 12:35–40

All right stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning and be like men

who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast so that

they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks.

Blessed are those servants whom their master finds awake when he comes.

Truly I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline

at table, and he will come and serve them.

If he comes in the second watch or in the third and finds them awake,

blessed are those servants.

But know this, that if the master of the house had known at what hour the thief

was coming, he would not have left his house to be broken into.

You also must be ready for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you.

Amen. Thank you for that. Y'all, I said earlier in the passage says that we

as bond servants are going to be serving him forever.

This passage that was just read in Luke 12 is so incredible,

we can hardly conceive it, but it indicates here that the Lord will also serve them.

You remember it? Did you hear it? They'll recline at his table and he will serve them.

Man, doesn't that blow your mind? We serve him and he said, hey,

we're going to sit at his table and he's going to serve us.

And the saints, by the way, in the new Jerusalem will also see something else

that they haven't seen. God's face.

Matthew 5, 8 talks about it. Being perfectly holy, think about it,

and righteous. We're in our eternal state now, right?

We'll be able to endure the heavenly level that we've talked about here in this

new Jerusalem of the blazing, glorious light of God's presence.

Remember, we've talked about in previous weeks, there's no need for the sun,

as it says here, no light.

God himself, the glory shines through all this. It's reflecting his glory. There's no more night.

And we can look at God's face, be in his presence.

We can look into his face, the glorious brightness of his presence without being consumed.

Something that's impossible, by the way, for mortal men because we can't look

at God right now in our current state and live.

And so the redeemed, which is us, will also be God's personal possession.

Look at what it says there. His name will be on their what?

Foreheads. That identification, y'all, is going to leave no doubt as to who

they belong to, who you and I belong to forever.

John actually repeats the earlier description of heaven's magnificence here. Look at what he says.

He says, and there will no longer be any night, and they will not have need

of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them.

And then he adds, y'all, like a final crescendo, just describing the saints'

heavenly experience up there.

He says, it'll never end because...

They will reign forever and ever.

This is eternal bliss, if you will. I mean, we are serving, we are reigning with Christ.

And that'll be the fulfillment, by the way, of Christ's promise in chapter 3, verse 21.

He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with me on my throne,

as I also overcame and sat down with my father on his throne.

Does that not blow your mind? Does that not blow your mind? What's going to happen?

I mean, if we endure, Paul actually wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2.12,

he said, we will also reign with him if we endure.

So the eternal capital city of heaven, the new Jerusalem, will be a place,

y'all, of indescribable, unimaginable beauty.

From the center of it, the brilliant glory of God is going to shine forth through

the gold and precious stones that we've talked about in weeks past to illuminate

the new heaven and the new earth.

But y'all, the most glorious reality of all that will be that sinful rebels will be made righteous.

We're going to have whose righteousness?

Jesus. We'll enjoy y'all intimate fellowship with God and the Lamb,

serve them and reign with them forever in sheer joy and just unending praise.

And I tell you this, it's not going to be boring.

I mean, who knows what God has in store for us, Brother James?

Who knows what task he has that we haven't even dreamed up.

Part of his kingdom. And y'all, death is going to be no more, no more.

Well, we're going to pick up in verse six here of chapter 22,

talking about our immediate response, the believer's immediate response to Christ's imminent return.

And so what I thought I would do is I'm just going to just kind of break open,

just crack this a little bit tonight, and then I'll stop so we can have time for prayer and all that,

but I want to kind of pick up here and just peer into our next section.

Listen to this. It says, and he said to me, these words are faithful and true.

And the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets sent his angels to show

his bond servants, the things which must soon take place.

And behold, I am coming quickly.

Blessed is he who heeds the words of the prophecy of this book.

I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw,

I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed me these things.

But he said to me, do not do that.

I am a fellow servant of yours and of your brethren, the prophets and of those

who heed the words of this book.

Worship God. And he said to me, Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of

this book, for the time is near.

Let the one who does wrong still do wrong, and the one who is filthy still be

filthy, and let the one who is righteous still practice righteousness,

and the one who is holy still keep himself holy.

Behold, I am coming quickly, and my reward is with me to render to every man

according to what he has done. That's verses 6 through 12.

So verses 6 through 21 of this chapter, they actually form the epilogue,

if you will, to the book of Revelations.

And so having taken us through this amazing sweep of future history all the

way into the eternal state,

all that's left for John to record is this divine post script, if you will.

All right. And by this point in the apocalypse, all the glorious and gracious

purposes that God ordained before the foundation of the world will have been attained.

The devastating judgments, think about it real quick, the devastating judgments

of the tribulation will have been carried out and their memory will remain only

in the torment of the damned.

The Lord Jesus Christ will have returned in blazing glory, executed his enemies,

as we saw, and reigned on earth for a thousand years, a thousand literal years.

All rebels, both angels and humans, by the way, will have been sentenced to

their final eternal punishment in the lake of fire.

And it is eternal, by the way. We saw that.

That's one reason why I said the literal thousand years, there's nowhere in

Revelations where numbers are ever not literal.

Okay? There's a literal thousand years. And all that time, the beast and the

false prophet are in the lake of fire too, by the way. So it's eternal punishment.

The present universe will have been uncreated and the eternal new heaven and

new earth created in which the king of kings is going to be reigning with his father,

the holy angels and the redeemed of all the ages, that's us plus everyone from

all time, that's believers, right?

We'll be reigning from all the ages. We'll be dwelling in eternal bliss with

him in this new creation, particularly in heaven's capital city, the new Jerusalem.

And from his throne, by the way, in the center of that majestic city,

we've been studying, the brilliant, blazing glory of God will radiate through

the recreated universe.

Absolute, y'all, unchanging holiness is going to characterize all of us who dwell in,

in the universal and eternal kingdom of God. There will be constantly praise,

worship, serve him throughout eternity in the environment, y'all,

of perfect peace, joy, and fulfillment, all of it.

And I tell you, if you think about this, bracketing the book of Revelation along

with the epilogue, as I said, there is the prologue.

And that epilogue is recorded in chapter 1, verses 1 through 3.

I want to rewind just a minute, okay?

Listen to this, the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to

his bondservants, that's us, the things which must soon take place.

And he sent and communicated it by his angel to his bondservant, John.

John was on the Isle of Patmos, right?

Who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus,

to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.

Blessed is he who reads and

those who hear the words of this prophecy

and heed the things which are written in it for the time is near remember we

talked about in the beginning as we started revelation that this is the book

that has the promised blessing to those who read it and hear it y'all if you've

been a part of this and you've been looking and studying the book of revelation,

God has promised you will be blessed just by reading it, just by hearing it.

That prologue introduces the theme of the whole book, which is,

and y'all know, the second coming of Jesus Christ.

The epilogue provides this fitting conclusion that we're looking at tonight to the apocalypse.

It's just simply by pointing out what is to be the believer's response to the

second coming. Verses 6 through 12 here.

This also, this postscript here, it also, one final time in scripture, what does it do?

It invites non-believers to come to saving faith in Christ before it is forever too late.

In verses 13 through 21 there.

Had y'all seen this theme all throughout Revelation? God's

always been pleading with people to come to

come and as we see there's going to come that

time y'all when it's it's it's over judgment comes it's done but he's saying

here at the end of the book look you get a blessing for reading and for hearing

but here's one final call another call to those who don't know Jesus to come before it's too late.

God, Jesus is coming again. He's coming again. And it's going to be too late one day.

Y'all probably remember that old song, some of you, One Day Too Late.

Y'all remember that one?

I don't know how many heard it, but One Day Too Late, it was called.

You probably heard the one from Larry Norman years ago. You know,

I wish we'd all been ready.

Those things are going to happen, right? It's coming.

And so in a series of rapid fire, it's almost like, you know,

staccato statements, if you're musician, right?

That move from theme to theme, verse 6 through 12 here, they actually delineate

the responses that every believer, y'all, all of us should have to this coming,

this imminent coming of Jesus Christ.

So I just simply say tonight, these verses here, they convey this majestic rush, if you will, of energy.

It's kind of like that wild, you've seen wild horses before, right?

That wild flurry of excited effort to call forth an immediate reaction to the

vital truth, y'all, that it communicates.

The text here is just overflowing with urgency in us reaching out,

letting people know, right, of calling for repentance.

Take action, in other words. Don't just sit there. Take action based on the

truth that it presents to us.

So this sense of urgency that the repetition of the phrase, you remember in

verse 7, 12, verse 20, behold, I am coming when? How?

Quickly. And that declaration, y'all, is the refrain of this passage because

that phrase appears three other places in Revelation.

If you remember, it's all the way back in chapter 3, verse 11,

and it's a promise of blessing as it is here, the three uses in chapter 22.

In chapter 2, in chapter verse 5, verse 16 of chapter 2.

They warned that that particular phrase warns of Jesus coming in judgment, right?

And Jesus likens his coming again to the unexpected coming of a thief, of a thief.

But unlike a thief, I want y'all to know tonight as we wind up,

unlike a thief, of course, Jesus will not come back to steal, will he?

He won't. A lot of people have those security systems. You may have one in your home. I don't know.

You know, you're always trying to keep the robbers out, right?

Jesus is not going to come back to steal like a thief. But what is he going

to do? He's coming to take back what's rightfully his.

And since Jesus, y'all, could rapture his church, that's us,

y'all. He could rapture us at any moment.

Triggering all the end-time events that we've been studying here in the book

of Revelation, going all the way to his second coming to the earth.

Believers and unbelievers, by the way, need to be ready, right?

So I just simply, that's our challenge tonight, because a natural reading of

the New Testament yields the truth that to the early church,

Jesus' coming was imminent.

That is, that it could happen any time. And I wonder today how our lives would

be different if we really believe Jesus could come back today.

What would you be doing today? What would you be doing tomorrow if you believe Jesus was coming back?

How would you live your life if you believe he's coming back?

It could literally be. It could happen at any time.

They believe that he could come back for them in their lifetime.

Do you believe God could come back, Jesus could come back for you in your lifetime?

Yeah. For the early church, eminence

just contains the elements of both of certainty and uncertainty. Okay?

I mean, they were certain that Jesus would return one day. It could be today.

But they were not sure exactly when. They just were ready. They wanted to be ready.

Y'all know things remind me of songs. I apologize. It reminds me of the good

old DeGarmo and Key song, Ready or Not, right? They got to be ready.

And not knowing when he might return, they wisely just lived prepared, y'all.

They lived prepared for and hoping for Jesus to come back at any moment.