Revelation: Hope in Our Heavenly Home

Thank you for praying for me because it's been a month since I've preached, and it's good to be back.

And hopefully, some of the rust will go away as I get going this morning.

While I've been gone, we we hired an associate pastor before I left, but he started while I was gone, and so hopefully you've gotten to meet him.

And our goal with Matt being with us is that while our church is experiencing, at least for now, who knows if it'll last forever, some growth uh numerically in this way, we want to make sure we're growing this way in depth.

And so it's important for us as a church and for our leadership as we're praying about the future of our church is to make sure that we're growing in that way, uh, that we are growing in spiritual growth, that we're growing in new people to be able to assimilate and connect and get to know other people, uh, that groups are growing and being formed, uh, that congregational care is occurring and not falling through the cracks.

And so all of this was a catalyst for us to hire Matt and an exciting time for us as we move into this next school year.

Now, when I left for summer sabbatical for those few weeks off, we had been going through the book of Revelation and we were almost done.

And so, if you didn't pick up on it, there was one chapter left, actually two chapters, 21 and 22.

And so we're gonna finish that up this Sunday, and then we're gonna jump into Psalm 23, moving into the fall.

So, if you remember, just to recap, John wrote the book of Revelation, the last book of our Bible.

Strange book, a lot of us avoid for a lot of reasons.

It's complicated, there's crazy language, there's metaphors, there's symbols, there's all sorts of weird stuff going on.

We've been studying it for months, figuring this out.

And what we've been saying is we've been taking the covenantal amillennial view, the covenantal amillennial view.

Now, I'm not going to review all that.

That means something to some of y'all.

Uh, it means nothing to probably most of you, um, but that is the view that we take, which means to some extent that we just don't take all the language of Revelation as literal, but we take a good bit of it and some of it as symbolic.

And what we do know is John keeps recapping in this book what Steve just told us.

We're broken.

We live in a broken world.

And John keeps recapping this.

There's a broken world, yet, yet, we have full redemption in Jesus, and Jesus is enough for us, and then there's a restoration to come.

We have a heaven, we have a home.

For a lot of us, we don't think much about that in our comfortable world now.

For some of us, we think a lot about it because we're sick.

Or you have a loved one who's sick, or somebody who loves is dying.

And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, like that, you go from not thinking about it all to thinking about it a lot.

And we do have another home, a future home.

Revelation gives us the story from God that's true about us.

On my break, uh, I went fishing in Grand Teton National Park with uh a couple other pastors and then another friend.

It's basically it's three, three pastors and a construction worker, is what we got.

That's our our fishing group.

But the fourth guy, he's been an elder in churches and everything, so he mixes right in.

He likes to talk theology, and we talk church and we talk about all sorts of stuff.

And so we were out there fishing.

One night we decided to go into town to grab some dinner, and so we go into town and we park, and on our walk-in, we walk by the Episcopal Church that is there in Jackson, St.

John's Episcopal Church, a series of log cabin buildings there right off the squares, founded over a hundred years ago.

And as we're walking by, we see their chapel.

Here's a picture of their chapel.

That's their little chapel there in Jackson, Wyoming.

And the door was open just like that.

It had a sign out, said, All were welcome.

And so my other two pastor friends who are much more spiritual than me.

I was thinking about, you know, the beer and the burger.

They kind of just kind of poke their head in and they're like, hey, you know, let's let's let's go.

Let's go in.

Let's see what they're doing, you know, let's see what they're doing.

And so we walk in, and I check the time, and I'm like, all right, well, there's only 15 minutes left of whatever's going on here, so I'll go in.

And we walk in, sit on the back row, back row, right?

Back row people.

Back row.

I got to sit on the back row.

It's amazing.

And the pastor's he's leading through a reading and a meditation, some time of silence, and then a discussion.

There's about 30 people kind of scattered around this little log cabin chapel.

And I'm sitting in the back row.

I'm in charge of nothing.

Everything can go wrong in this room.

And I just walk away.

Right?

Back row people, that's why you're back there.

You're like, hey, this can all go down, and you just turn around, walk to your car, drive away, nothing.

Well, that was me, you know, last week.

Amazing feeling, right?

And so I'm sitting in the back row and I'm just, oh, it was wonderful.

When it's time for discussion, I didn't talk.

Just listen.

I was just there, I was just receiving.

And that little chapel was a lot like our sanctuary in a ways.

It had a pulpit, it had a table, it had a cross.

And for me, sitting on the back row, I was kind of half listening to the discussion, not too much.

But I was just looking at the table.

I love going into church after church.

Where there's a cross and there's a table.

Because it just tells us the story.

It reminds me of the story, and that's what I was being reminded of sitting there, that I'm not a I'm not an achiever bringing all my good stuff to God as to belong.

Like when we walk forward at the end of the service to come to the table, the body broken for us and the blood shed for us, we come empty-handed.

You don't have anything in your hands when you walk forward.

And it's given to you.

The body broken for you, the blood shed for you.

Isn't that good news?

It's a little offensive at first because you want to bring something.

But once you realize the exhaustion of that attempt, man, the cross and the table is our freedom.

It's our forgiveness.

It's that we can be empty-handed and we're receivers.

And I got to sit in the back of that little log cabin chapel and just sit there and just be in charge of nothing.

Just be in church and just receive.

Be reminded, my life's not defined by being a pastor, my life's not defined by how good this sermon is.

Thank you, right?

That's great for me.

But my life is defined by his love for me.

And I'm free because of that.

And here's my point, tying it, kind of tying it back in Revelation.

We can make sense of our hearts and lives only as we find our place in God's story.

Trying to make sense of your heart and your life outside of God's story for you.

You're always going to be lost.

And God's story is this that we see throughout the scriptures over and over again: creation, fall, redemption, restoration.

You were created.

You are fallen.

You're imperfect, sinful.

You're redeemed by God, his love for you and Jesus.

And now in that redemption, we live in the already but not yet.

Because we're waiting for the full restoration, heaven to come.

Point number one is this as we begin to dig in, and we'll hear in a second open into Revelation.

Point number one is this we begin to comprehend the goodness of heaven by remembering our beginning in Eden.

It's interesting that the end of our book takes us back to the beginning of our book.

Everything was right in the beginning in Eden.

It was flawless joy.

Here's some of the description that I love for Eden.

Beauty of the magnificent world God created and deemed good.

Simplicity of living and gardening without toil, anxiety, or stress.

Can you imagine your job?

Your parenting being like that.

Relational harmony that Adam and Eve knew without pettiness, dysfunction, or discord.

Provision that God created through the bounty of the land.

Purpose to tend the garden each day in pleasure.

Rest on the seventh day.

Rest without work and demand creeping in.

Security of knowing and being known by a relational, loving God.

Can you even imagine how good, how good that would be.

Now we're ready to jump into Revelation 21, where John sees heaven as a beautiful city.

Now the city is the symbol of God's people prepared to live with God.

And the text is loaded with images and symbolism.

But here we're going to jump in at Revelation 21, verse 22.

Revelation 21:22

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.

By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring bring their glory to it.

And its gates will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there.

There will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations, 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.

Point number two is this it's about the city.

The new heaven is an existence of eternal security with God's saturating presence.

There's a lot of religious language in that point.

Let's see if we can make sense of it.

Well, John's expanding our view of heaven from being a Bill Gates mansion to being a city with physical beauty.

And this city measures a perfect cube, which is interesting because John's taking us back to Solomon's temple in Jerusalem in the Old Testament, where there in 1 Kings 6.20, the most holy place, which was inside of the temple.

So the most intense saturated place, the presence of God, the most intense saturation of the presence of God, was known to be inside the temple, inside this most holy place room, and that room was shaped as a perfect cube.

20 cubits by 20 cubits by 20 cubits.

So John is referencing this to get us to think about this.

As if to say the new heaven, our future home, after this world, is an existence like one giant most holy place.

That you and I, like the city, that we will be like one giant most holy place.

We will exist in unfiltered, permeating, fully satisfaction in the presence of God.

Which means you will finally be at peace.

Right?

That's what we say when someone passes away, right?

We say, rest in peace.

That's why we say it.

Because we finally get to do that.

We finally get to rest in peace.

From the exhaustion, from the disappointments, from the hurt, from the pain, from shame, guilt, from all of that.

And that all of existence, and all of the real you, the real you, the core of you, underneath the shell and the hardening and the pain.

Fully satisfied in absolute presence of God.

End of chapter 22, verse 1.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, brightest 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.

Point number three, coming out of all of this imagery, is about the tree.

The new heaven is an existence of perpetual nourishment and everlasting peace for your soul.

Nourishment that never ends.

That's what we get out of this passage.

That your soul, the core of who you are, so much of our toil here is trying to be nourished to get some life out of something that gives us a little bit of life and then lets us down.

But we'll have perpetual nourishment and everlasting peace.

This tree also takes us back to the garden, doesn't it?

This imagery John's pulling for us.

Because what John is teaching us is that all that was lost will be restored.

Now, one of the most famous gardeners in the world is Monty Don in England.

Anyone else, just a nerd, gardening nerd, and you know Monty Don?

Nerd like me.

Anyone want to confess you're a nerd like me and you know Monty Don?

None of you.

I'm the only nerd in the room.

Okay, Monty Don, to fill you in, this is how nerdy I am, because I actually know this, and none of y'all do.

He's like the best gardener in the world.

He's very famous amongst a very niche group of nerds like me.

And he has TV shows and gardening shows, and this is his garden in Britain.

He has about 30 acres, and it's called Long Meadow.

He has two dogs in the show.

You get to follow him around while he gardened his yard.

Beautiful garden.

Beautiful garden.

None of y'all know about it.

Beautiful garden.

He's been gardening it for 30 years, this acreage.

He has a cottage garden and a jewel garden and a vegetable garden.

He has a riding hut and a pond and a greenhouse.

You get to follow him around this little garden, his house.

The garden's amazing.

Paradise, we would say.

That's what we would call it.

Eden.

Same word.

I love that garden.

But there's larger gardens in the world.

Here's a picture of the largest botanical garden in the world.

This is in Key, England, largest in the entire world.

Now in Pennsylvania, there is a garden called Longwood Garden, Pennsylvania.

This garden, it takes 1,400 employees to garden it.

1,400 employees.

But I would argue that the best garden is Yellowstone National Park.

Untouched.

Just God's garden for us.

I mean, can you imagine?

Can you imagine such beauty all around you?

Like rather than your messy backyard, your like your brown patch and your Zoija that you fret over.

Can you imagine such beauty?

Rather than your messy life or your weary life.

This is the picture of a heavenly home where we are finally enough because God is enough for us.

And that we exist in beauty and wholeness and in peace.

If all that heaven is, is golden streets, we're not going to be too enthusiastic about it.

But when we understand heaven to be perpetual nourishment, full peace, relief from exhaustion and weariness and guilt and shame, all of a sudden it starts to open up for us to be something to really hope in.

So what does this mean for us?

I mean, what does it mean for us in Marietta today?

Well, to tie it back to the sermon four weeks ago from Revelation 20, I think it means exactly what the three points of that sermon were.

We are all weary.

We all need hope.

And we all have hope through the joyful anticipation of our heavenly home to come.

And even that may feel abstract.

Especially if you're in pain.

But hope in heaven will anchor us and reorient us through disappointment and difficulty.

Because what it means is that disappointment and difficulty, that thing that happened yesterday, or maybe it happened in seventh grade.

I don't know when it happened.

It'd be either one, that difficulty, that pain, probably do with rejection or love, one or the other, almost always it has to do with one of those two.

It's not your full story.

And the pain of it won't be the end of the story.

That's what our hope in heaven gives us.

It can anchor us and reorient and create a new perspective as we move through the pain, as we move through weariness, as we move through life.

Did you hear it in verses 1 and 2?

We will drink of the water of life and eat from a tree that never stops yielding fruit.

Then verse 4 says, They will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads, right?

We've seen this several times throughout the book of Revelation.

Something on somebody's forehead.

It's an ancient way of saying who someone belongs to.

That's all it means.

Doesn't have to mean more than that.

Who you belong to.

And this gives us our last point in our study through Revelation.

In Christ, we have forever belonging with God.

A few years ago, a friend of mine went with a friend of his, and he went fly fishing at this private club in upper state New York.

Real bougie club.

I mean, my friend came home, he's like, you won't believe this.

And so here's the deal with this club.

And if you're a member, by the way, I'm open to going with you.

I will receive this invitation.

I can gladly walk into a free bougie setting of fly fishing where there's this lodge and you spend the night and all the members wake up and walk down to breakfast, and breakfast is prepared for you.

And there at breakfast they give out the assignments of the morning.

Private water, well-kept water.

And each fisherman gets, or fisherwoman, gets a private section of water.

Nobody else is going to be on this section.

If you're a fisherman, you know what I'm talking about because there's nothing worse than driving up and somebody's on your section of water.

This is private, only for you.

And you fish the morning and you come in for lunch, which is prepared for you, and you lie about all the fish you caught or the size of the fish, because that's what we do.

And then you get the next assignment for the afternoon.

You get a different section of water just for you, and you go out and you fish that section of water, and then you come in for dinner, which is prepared for you, and you lie about the fish you caught in the afternoon, and then you go to sleep happy, and then you do it again the next day.

I mean, I could do that forever.

That's heaven, that's my paradise, is what we just described.

There's only one problem with it.

It's private.

I don't get to go, I can't go.

And something about that, knowing that I can't belong, maybe that doesn't do something to you.

Maybe you're really spiritually mature.

But that bothers me.

Either I act like I don't care, or I daydream about it kind of secretly, about what it must be like to be able to belong there.

We tend to all have something like this that we daydream about.

Like what it might be to belong to that club or those people or to that person.

I know for me, there's still like a little sixth-grade boy inside.

I got glasses that year.

That was new to me.

I didn't know how to kick them real well.

You know what I'm saying?

Some of y'all got glasses, but you're used to it.

You know how to do it.

It was new for me.

I showed up to sixth grade, kind of a new school, glasses, wasn't sure how that was gonna work out.

And I'm wondering, am I gonna belong here?

Am I gonna meet friends?

Will they accept me?

Some of that's still in me, 43 years old.

We keep asking ourselves: where do I fit in this world?

Will someone or something validate me?

If people really know me, could I possibly belong?

Will this life ever be okay?

And then we run into the word Eden.

Pleasure.

Then we get this idea that we could have a forever home after this world, which can anchor us in this world, where all is restored.

And all that is lost in Eden comes back.

Let's read the final section of scripture that ends the book of Revelation and it ends our Bible.

Starting in verse 17.

The Spirit and the bride say, Come, and let the one who hears say, Come, and let the one who is thirsty come.

Let the one who desires to take the water of life without price.

I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book.

If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book.

And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.

He who testifies to these things says, Surely I am coming soon.

Amen.

Come, Lord Jesus.

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all.

Amen.

So throughout Revelation, the call is clear.

Come.

Come to your Father now.

Come to Jesus now.

Surrender your life now.

You are created by him and for him, and through the cross, he is calling you back to himself.

So all of your sin and my sin is forgiven.

All of it.

Full forgiveness.

And all of his righteousness is given to you.

We're fully righteous through Christ.

So we have forever belonging in Him.

Do you notice verse 20?

He who testifies to these things says, Surely I am coming soon.

And then the response is, Amen.

Come, Lord Jesus.

I've been singing that line.

I've been singing that sentence for a long time, like 20 years.

Come, Lord Jesus.

I never really connected with it.

What was I singing?

I would find myself singing it.

I thought God was omnipresent.

I thought he was everywhere.

So am I saying like God come, like if you're omnipresent, like you're already here, but I'm saying, like I'm singing, come, like come, but come here, but you weren't here, and then come.

Or maybe like you're coming more, like you're here, like like 60% of you is here, but come and like let's get you up to like 85% or like 95% of you.

Like I just didn't know, like what I'm not comfortable with any of that, actually, what I just described, uh like theologically.

Um, maybe it's more like come, Lord Jesus, like reveal yourself.

I'm open to that.

Or come, Lord Jesus, like make me aware that you're already here, like you're already here, but I'm not aware of it because of my issues.

And make me aware of it.

I'm open to that.

In the context here, when we sing it, when we're singing it like this in Revelation 22, we're singing, come, Lord Jesus, or we're saying, Come, Lord Jesus, as a proclamation.

Like, I am weary, and I am looking forward to the day when I experience full restoration.

And I'm celebrating full redemption now, but I'm still looking forward to the day where I have full restoration.

We long for our final home.

It is okay to long for our final home.

Part of our discontentment here is not our sin.

Part of our discontentment here is our longing for our final home.

Come, Lord Jesus, we have a home before us.

Where the letdowns stop, the disappointments stop, the pettiness stops, or my pettiness stops.

And the pain is no more, and the tears are no more, and all the messes are made right.

And so we sing hallelujah.

We sing it joyfully, we sing hallelujah.

And we also joyfully sing, Come, Lord Jesus.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for your grace and mercy, and that Jesus is enough for us yesterday, and He is enough for us this morning, and He'll be enough for us tomorrow morning when we wake up.

Thank you for reminding us this morning that we come empty-handed, and that you love us empty-handed.

You love us even when our hands are full of faults and messes.

And we are so grateful that we cannot cause you to love us more, and we can't cause you to love us less.

And that Jesus is sufficient.

Would you help us this morning to connect to that truth in a greater way, to experience your freedom in a greater way?

We we say hallelujah because our redemption is secure, our belonging is secure, and we cry out, come Lord Jesus, because part of our hearts is still longing for a home that we were created for in Eden, a paradise, where all the mess is over and the weariness is over.

Help us in these days to trust you in greater ways, to cast our eyes upon Jesus, author and perfecter of our faith.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.