Revelation: God Dwells With Us Forever (21:1-5, 22-22:5)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

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And they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.

Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.

And he who is seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new.

Also he said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and truth.

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 lamp.

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

They 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.

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.

The word of the Lord.

Maybe hold off on the poison, hold off on the knife for at least a minute or two before they figure things out.

It could have been a much happier ending.

But then it would have been a very different story, wouldn't it?

It wouldn't have been the tragedy that talks about, or that speaks about the uh cost of blood feuds and prejudices and bitter rivalries.

Or think of Star Wars.

Imagine if Luke didn't blow up the Death Star at the end, it would be a story about the absolute dominance of power, evil triumphing over good.

It wouldn't be the cherished classic that it is in my heart, at least.

The end of the story says a lot about what the story itself is all about, where things have been heading, and what it is we're meant to hold on to.

I think that's true when we come to the end of this great story of salvation that we read in Scripture.

We've come to Revelation chapters 20 and 21 this morning.

Revelation 20 · chapter mention

And this is for us the end of the great story of our salvation, but we discover that the end of this story is really the beginning of a greater story yet to come, the end of one age and the beginning of a greater age to come.

And it's this ending, it's this place where we land that tells us something about what this whole story in Scripture, this whole story of salvation, has been about this whole time.

You'll notice that at the end of Scripture, the voice from the throne doesn't say, it's the end.

You've made it.

Well done.

Human beings, you've earned it.

You've done enough good works to make it into the kingdom.

Why don't you pat yourself on the back?

It doesn't say anything like that, does it?

Yet I wonder if sometimes if we think the Bible is a story where, you know, we're the heroes or we cast ourselves as the law keepers, we end up thinking that that's the best outcome we could hope for.

The best outcome we could hope for is that we've done enough to earn it and to earn God's approval.

But that's not what the voice says from the throne at the end of history as we know it in the beginning of the age to come.

Instead, the voice says this 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.

See, I think the story of salvation, the story of all of Scripture, is the story of a God who endeavors to dwell with us.

A God who does everything he can out of his great love for us to rescue us and restore us and redeem us and to make his home with us.

I think that that's been the case since the very beginning of Scripture.

God has been working unending unhindered friendship and fellowship with himself.

That's true of creation.

That's why God created in the first place and created us in his image that we could in a real way correspond to him and have relationship with him.

That's why God tabernacled with Israel in the wilderness.

When they wandered, God wandered with them.

He led them in cloud and in fire and manifested his glory in the Holy of Holies.

And he did so as well in the temple in Jerusalem.

God endeavors to dwell with us, and chiefly so in the character of Emmanuel, God with us.

The word who became flesh, John tells us, and dwelt among us.

And the word who became flesh ascends back to his Father.

That's what Jesus is talking about in John 14.

But nevertheless, he promises not to leave us alone as orphans, but to send his Holy Spirit to dwell with us, to indwell us as Christians.

So that even as Jesus is at the Father's right hand, we are not left orphaned and alone.

God endeavors to dwell with his people.

So I think Revelation 21 and 22 are not, it's not a twist ending.

Oh, I didn't see that coming.

I think it's the culmination of something that God's been doing this whole time.

Making his home with us.

Don't you want to make your home with God?

You want to live with him and enjoy him and delight in him and glorify him forever.

See, God endeavors to make his home with us.

God endeavors to dwell with his people to cause for unending and unhindered communion and friendship and fellowship with himself.

And he's going to bring that about in a powerful and transforming way.

God will make his dwelling with us, and with that brings, I think, three things, Revelation tells us.

What's really God's revelation to us, isn't it?

God wants to see three things about this renewed and transformed reality in which we will dwell with him.

We see that God's dwelling with us brings a new creation.

It brings a new city and it brings a new way of life.

A new creation, a new city, and a new way of life.

Friends, this is where, this is where the story of our salvation, we could say it ends, it culminates, but then it invites us into an eternity to come.

An eternity of further up and further in.

Let's discover where God is going to dwell with us this morning.

If you have your order of service, if you have your Bible, please open it with me to Revelation 21.

And we'll skip around a little bit here, but we'll stick primarily in these first four verses.

God dwells with us in a new creation.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, John writes.

So John sees a new heaven, a new earth, because the first heaven and the first earth, this first earth being the one that we experience right now, has passed away.

Now, what is it that John means by that?

Does he mean that it's been burned away, it's been done away with, it's been thrown in the celestial bin, so to speak?

I mean, some Christian theologians have said something like that.

There was a book that came out a while ago now called The Late Great Planet Earth.

Have you heard of that one?

That one kind of says it all in the title, doesn't it?

This earth that we live on right now, one day it's going to be past tense.

It's going to be gone.

But I don't think that that's what John sees here.

It's true that there is a sense of discontinuity of former things passing away and new things coming to be.

But rather than thinking of this as, you know, Earth 2.0 built up from scratch, I think John sees a renewed heaven and earth.

John sees a rescued and restored and redeemed creation, heaven and earth together.

And the key word here is this word for new, which in Greek is kairos.

And this word kairos communicates a sense of transformation.

Taking something that is and transforming it in such a profound way that it comes into a new way of being.

Maybe a simple illustration of that would be like restoring a classic car.

Maybe you inherit, you know, a beautiful car that, you know, I don't know, I can't think of anything other than Batmobile.

But 1966 Adam West Batmobile, but it's all rusted and the paint is chipped and the leather is gone.

And bit by bit you work at it such that what was a disaster once again comes into pristine condition.

There's a sense of continuity there, but you're bringing up more of what this was always meant to be.

This is the renewing work that God has conclusively done.

He's not thrown the car in the trash, he's restored it.

He's restored all of creation to what it was always purposed to be.

Our present creation, Paul writes, it groans in anticipation of what God will be doing.

It groans to be raised up to the state of glory and renewal.

This is something like our experience, what our experience of the resurrection will be.

Our resurrection body will be a glorious body and it will be an imperishable body, but it will have a sense of continuity with the body that we occupy right now.

But without the consequences of sin and decay and deterioration.

This is creation as it's always meant to be.

And I wonder if that suggests that how we regard creation is important to God.

Because if God is just going to throw the world we live in into the bin, it really doesn't matter how we treat the world around us, does it?

It's just going to get burned away.

But if God intends to raise this creation to what he's always purposed it to be, to share in a resplendent glory of renewed creation, well then how we treat the world around us, I think, matters in the present.

I think it also suggests that heaven, our eternal home, is not just a spiritual realm divorced from any kind of materiality or physicalness.

Heaven is not just the shedding of this flesh suit that corrects us and troubles us so much.

It's actually the renewing and restoring of all these good things that God's created.

God created this physical matter.

He says it's good.

And he intends to make it so eternally.

I mean, even the sacraments speak to the fact that God takes physical things and communicates his grace and goodness to us in them.

God intends to do that eternally so in this new creation.

So matter matters to God.

I think the new creation suggests that.

This is not just a creation as we experience it, though.

This is a rightly ordered creation.

Where do I get that?

I get it from the final half of verse 1 here.

It says this interesting line.

Did you notice that?

It says, the sea was no more.

Now maybe you're a real swimmer or you really like fishing, and that gets you a little worried because heaven doesn't seem to live up to the hype if that's the case.

Is there still bodies of water in heaven?

Well, yes, I think there are.

We see that from chapter 22, verse 1, and we see that in Ezekiel's vision of heaven in chapter 47.

But we need to bear in mind that Revelation is a densely symbolic book.

So what John is talking about here with regards to the sea is a symbol.

What does it symbolize?

For John and for his audience, it was understood that water is this primeval symbol of chaos.

It always threatened to swallow us up at any given moment.

Think about the Genesis 6 flood for a moment.

When God withdraws his hand of providence and sovereignty, it's the water for the deeps that come and swallow up creation.

See, it's God's work in creation that holds chaos at bay.

And what John is saying here is chaos will no longer threaten this new creation.

It doesn't have to be flood waters that represent that chaos.

We are without electricity right now, aren't we?

We had a storm blow through.

We saw its devastating effects all around us.

We see images of famine, of mudslides, of all kinds of ecological disasters.

It reminds us that our present creation groans under this condition of sin and decay and chaos.

But one day, one day creation will be rightly ordered.

One day creation will be put right, conclusively, completely.

And so it matters how we live in this world today, how we cultivate this world and work to uh partner with God and participating in this renewing work that He's doing.

That we're thoughtful and considerate in our conversations around how we care for this creation, because God called it good and he intends to raise it up.

We will live in a new and rightly ordered creation with God.

We will also live in a new city where God will make his glorious presence known.

Let's look at verse 2.

John says, I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride for her husbands.

So this is a new and heavenly city.

A new Jerusalem descending from heaven to earth.

Notice it's descending, by the way, not ascending.

This is not a Jerusalem that humankind has endeavored to build.

This is a gift from God to humanity.

This is God's work, not ours.

See, it was the Tower of Babel, wasn't it?

That was that first attempt to build something upwards towards God.

This is not Babel 2.0.

This is the reverse.

This is God's city descending to earth, in which we will dwell with him.

And it's God's gift to us.

This city is very distinctive.

It's called New Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was the city of God's covenant people Israel, because it was the place where God established his throne through the lineage of David.

And it was the place where he established his temple, where his presence was manifest and made to be known.

But while God rules in this city, it said that there's no temple in this city, which I have to think for John and for his readers, that's pretty inconceivable.

How can you have Jerusalem without the temple?

That's like having Toronto without the maple leafs.

It just doesn't compute.

How is that possible?

John tells us in, pardon me, this is verse 22.

He tells us that there's no temple.

Verse 22, he gives us an answer.

I saw that there was no temple in this city.

Why?

For its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.

God himself is the temple in this city.

In Hebrews chapter 10, the author of Hebrews is talking about the Old Testament law and the practices surrounding the temple.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

And the author says that the temple and all of its activities were a shadow of heavenly realities instead of the true form of these realities.

Well, now John is saying we're going to see the true form in this heavenly city.

We're not going to go to the temple to meet God.

God is making himself known right here in our midst.

He is drawing us completely into his presence without anything held back.

And this is where his resplendent glory is going to be made known.

Did you catch that about God's glory in verses 23 and 24?

It says, the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it its light, and the lamp is the Lamb.

And by its light will all the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.

See, God is making Himself known in all of His resplendents and illumination.

His glory, which we got a taste of in the Old Testament temple, is being made fully known.

You'll notice that it doesn't say that there is no sun and moon, but that there's no need of sun and moon.

God's glory is going to make them look, oh, like past tense.

God's glory is going to outshine them all.

And I have to think, because I was that kid who totally looked up at the sun from time to time, just to see how long I can look at it, which is probably why I need glasses now.

I have to think that the sheer power and brilliance of the sun, I mean, it's amazing to think.

Just imagine what that'll be to be outshone by the very glory of God Himself in this heavenly city.

See, most of all, this is the place where God, by his own gift, is going to dwell with his people.

It's where he's going to make his presence known forever and ever.

And we are going to live there with him.

We will live with him in a new creation, a new city.

And let's land here.

We're going to live with him in a new way of life.

Let's look at verse 4 together.

It says that God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, that is his servants.

And death shall be no more.

Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore.

For the former things have passed away.

Notice there's that phrase, the former things again.

That was the phrase used of, well, the first heaven, the first earth.

And now we talk about the former things.

Death and mourning and grieving.

These are the things that belong to our experience of life on earth, isn't it?

We know what it is to grieve the loss of someone we love.

We know what it is to experience pain and suffering, experience the decay of our own bodies.

Here we have a promise.

God will wipe every tear from our eyes.

We'll have no reason to be sad.

Why?

Because the chief enemy, death, will be defeated.

It will be no more.

So there'll be no more reason for mourning or crying or pain.

All of these former things have been put away.

See, I think what's being described here is a sort of renewed Eden, a sort of renewed creation as it's always meant to be.

In Genesis 1 and 2, of course, God creates us in his image to occupy and to cultivate this wonderful piece of creation that God has entrusted to us.

But in Genesis chapter 3, our first parents rebel against God.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

They want to determine what's right and wrong for themselves.

And we get these interesting verses.

Genesis chapter 3, verses, let's see, 22 to 24 here.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

God pronounces curses, recognizing the devastating, alienating consequences of sin that have been unleashed on creation.

And then God has this interesting kind of inner dialogue.

The Lord God says, Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.

Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat it and live forevermore.

It's almost like a pause.

Therefore the Lord God sent him out from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.

And he drove out the man, and at the east of the Garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

See, God sends our first parents out of the garden, and then he says, I'm going to make sure that they never eat of this tree again, so that they would live forever.

Which you could read that and go, gosh, that sounds really petty.

Sounds like God's like, you really screwed up, and I'm going to make sure you don't enjoy this.

Oh, we've got our emergency lights on.

That's promising.

I don't think God's being petty.

I think God is being abundantly merciful.

Because for a fallen, our fallen first parents, to eat of this tree and to live forever means living forever in a state of alienation from God.

And God will not allow for that.

Instead, God has a plan already in this moment to rescue them and redeem them, to bring them from their alienation back to dwell with him.

And his plan is going to lead through the cross.

So until the cross takes place, the way of Eden is barred off.

But now, because of the lamb who was slain, the door to Eden is opened wide again.

And now there's a tree in the middle of all this new creation.

There was a tree in the garden, but now there's a tree in the midst of this heavenly city, and this tree brings healing to all the nations.

And just as our first parents were created to reign with God forever, now we can fulfill God's purpose as his royal priests and reign with him in this new creation.

And then this is the wild part.

Let's land here.

In chapter 2022, there's this almost throwaway line that if we're not careful, we'll miss it.

This is what I think makes all the difference.

What makes this not just a place we'll spend eternity, but a dwelling place, a heavenly home.

Verse 22, verse 4.

It says the servants will see God's face.

Imagine that.

Seeing the face of God in a place that he intends for you to live with him forever.

See, when Adam and Eve sinned, they hid, they hid themselves from God, and he went looking for them.

Later on in the story of Scripture, Moses asked to see God's glory, and God says, You cannot see my face and live.

For such a creature in a state of sin and decay and alienation, we can't behold his face.

Nevertheless, that's the petition of God's people.

That's the petition of Psalm 67.

Let your countenance shine upon us.

Here we're promised we will see God smile.

We will see his delight over each and every one of us.

As a father welcoming his children to their eternal home.

This is what makes us a whole new way of life.

Not that God doesn't smile over us now.

We know that he does in Christ.

But we will see his face.

And surely that will change us.

That will make things on earth as they are in heaven.

So, friends, God endeavors to dwell with us in a new creation, a rightly ordered creation.

And he will make his glorious presence known in this new city with a new way of life, where death is no more, and where we will know above all things is his smile over us.

Behold, the dwelling place of God is with me.

What an assurance in the world that.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

Thank you for listening today.

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