“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. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 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. 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.’ 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.’ 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. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. 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.’ 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.’”

The Bible is, in no way, shape, or form, a book of small things. While the stories told and subjects addressed may range from large to small, mountain to mustard seed in their scope, each word is living and breathing, every sentence of every verse is another piece of the foundation that is built upon the rock. But even though there are no small things, there are certainly more understandable things, things that we as humans, as image bearers existing in flesh and blood can more easily wrap our minds around – it is simpler for example to comprehend Daniel’s trial in the lion’s den than it is to understand his vision of the four beasts. There are things communicated in Scripture – grand visions, miraculous prophecies, and descriptions of the spiritual realm that we simply don’t have a comparative touchstone for. I’ve never stood face to face with a live bear (which I’m grateful for), but I’ve seen pictures and videos, I’ve seen bears in captivity – when, in 1 Samuel 17 David speaks of pursuing lions and bears when they take sheep from his father’s flock, and striking them down to rescue the sheep, I can envision what that might look like, I can understand the impossibility of this for a single, mortal man, and acknowledge the hand of God at work. I’ve never seen angels descend from heaven, I’ve never seen into the throne room of God, I don’t have a personal perspective to aid in my understanding. While these elements that are too grand to understand pop up throughout Scripture, Revelation is particularly heavy with them. It’s after John is taken up in the spirit to the throne room, and especially the beginnings of the openings of the seals that get the most attention as the points where things really transition to ethereal and difficult to understand, but the truth is, Revelation is too grand for mortal comprehension from the very beginning, when John witnesses the glorified Christ before him and falls at His feet as though dead. This is not something that we can rationalize by human understanding, and it’s not something we can simply explain away in metaphor, because even metaphorically, it’s too grand. Proverbs 3:5–8 tells us,

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.”

For some people, “trusting in the Lord” gets defined as blind faith – they don’t understand, they believe they can’t understand, and so they throw up their hands, say that it’s simply too complicated, and they’ll just believe blindly. But that’s not really belief, and nowhere in Scripture are we called to “blind” faith. Psalm 105:4 says,

“Seek the LORD and his strength; seek his presence continually!”

God is worthy of our attention, of our praise, He is worthy of our attempted understanding so that through His blessings and revelations we may hold onto glorious pieces of the unknowable whole of His majesty – we are to seek Him. But again, we’re not to seek Him on our terms, we’re not to lean on our own understanding and rationalization, to reduce the Almighty to a human level and degrade His holiness to something we find more palatable. Jesus is our Cornerstone, He is our Rock, our sure Foundation, He is the lens by which everything else may be understood. Revelation without Christ is not Revelation, it’s a horror story and a fever dream. It’s the Revelation of Jesus Christ, He is most obviously the central figure through which everything else might be reasoned and understood. What we’ve seen described throughout the tribulation are many good things – this may sound like a strange thing to say, but we’ve witnessed the response of true Good to great evil. It is good that the wicked world be turned over to itself, good that it be massacred by the evil it coveted, good that it be deceived by the lies that it begged for, good that it’s idol be burned to ashes before its eyes, and good that the judgment of God be leveled against unrighteousness, and that His holy name be glorified. From the four horsemen, to the fall of Babylon, to the great white throne, we’ve read of good thing after good thing. This does not mean that they’re not heavy, it doesn’t mean that it’s not tragic that these things had to happen. The fact that a world that God made out of the abundance of His love chose to hate rather than love their creator and so heaped condemnation upon themselves is not something we should handle with harsh words or calloused hearts, but the ultimate justice of God that we have watched unfold is unquestionably good. But at the start of chapter 19 we witnessed a shift, something began that has continued to grow through chapter 20, and blossoms as we begin chapter 21 today. We’re no longer just witnessing Good in response to evil, but Good in response to righteousness. As the saints begin to cry out in joyous celebration, as judgment is delivered, the world ended, and the promise that comes to fruition at the opening of the book of life, we see deliverance from the trial, and the goodness of God poured out on those He has called His own. If Christ was the lens, our only means of understanding what we’ve read so far, then He is still just as crucial, just as pivotal in what we read now. These are not matters for the human mind to rationalize, or to wrap up in a tidy and easily explained package – this is the beginning of eternity, the culmination of the promise to which we cling, the entrance into the kingdom that we could have never entered on our own, the open door to the home we’ve been made worthy of through the precious blood of Christ.

The Beginning of Eternity

1. The Eternal Place Prepared

“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.”

I touched on this last week, but as we begin chapter 21 we’re given some news that may come as a surprise if we weren’t paying close attention before. I distinctly remember reading through Revelation, reading, “for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away,” and I literally stopped and said, “wait, when did that happen?” We just passed through the final judgment, but how on earth did I overlook the grand ending of our entire universe? Well, I’d missed it because it wasn’t exactly grand – or rather, what was grand about it wasn’t the universe ending, it was God’s overwhelming Glory. Revelation 20:11,

“Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them.”

That was it. God steps forward, and all creation stained by sin dissolves into nothing. But this end was not our end, but rather our beginning. Jesus says to the disciples in John 14:2–4,

“In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.”

This was not some temporary thing, we now witness as this new creation, this place is revealed before us, an eternal home in our Father’s presence. We read last week that death and hades gave up the dead that were in them, and the sea gave up the dead that were in it, all to stand in the final judgment, and that when all was said and done, death and hades themselves were thrown into the lake of fire, that place of eternal destruction. This week though, we contend with the sea, and this is something of great significance that it would be easy to pass right by. We’ve talked about this before, but it merits returning to and giving special attention, because the relationship between humanity and the vast bodies of water that cover the earth is something that can be diminished in the technological arrogance of modern times. While we can so often look at the oceans as simply being a feature of the earth, a novelty to be swam in or sailed upon, a resource to be exploited for profit, the sea is ultimately a place of chaos and death. This isn’t something we’re blind to – despite the recreational and commercial use the sea is put to, it claims its share of lives every year, and while it’s tragic, it’s never exactly a surprise that the unfathomable depths of the ocean can swallow someone without a trace. This is something that is clearly illustrated Biblically – if we look at Matthew 8:23–25, just before Jesus calms the storm, we read,

“And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him, saying, ‘Save us, Lord; we are perishing.’”

Bear in mind that a significant number of the disciples were once professional fishermen – in a boat, on the Sea of Galilee is about as in their element as they can possibly be. And yet, at the mercy of the wind and the waves, sailing on this body of water that once produced their livelihoods, they’re frantic, aware that death is closing in upon them, that the chaos of the waters is about to swallow them up. But the theme of watery chaos goes back much farther than this, to the very, very beginning. Genesis 1:1–2 says,

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”

The original form of the earth, or rather what would be the earth, was an image of dark and undefined waters. It was from this chaos, this environment that was empty and void of life that God spoke creation into being, that He brought forth light and land and life. This is described symbolically in Psalm 74:12–17 which says,

“Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness. You split open springs and brooks; you dried up ever-flowing streams. Yours is the day, yours also the night; you have established the heavenly lights and the sun. You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth; you have made summer and winter.”

It’s a common theme among the pagans to teach that the earth is a byproduct of their gods, that through their conflicts our world came into being. The Mesopotamians were no exception, teaching that the king of their gods, Marduk made the world from the corpse of the sea dragon (or leviathan) Tiamat. Psalm 74 is directly spitting in the face of this, declaring the truth, that there was no war at the dawn of time, that the mighty leviathan imagined by the pagans was nothing, an idea crushed beneath the feet of the One True God, a chaos that in no way contended against Him but was fully brought to submission as He made the universe and all reality out of nothing. We didn’t have a chaotic relationship with water when we were first made – the four rivers that are described as flowing out of Eden were ones of nourishment and riches – but our relationship with this source of potential chaos didn’t remain the same after the fall. This is a shift that is shown most vividly in the flood. In Genesis 6:17 God says,

“For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die.”

In this, God promises to bring the waters to bear against humanity, and to reveal the chaos that it represents as it is poured out on the earth. In describing the flood Genesis 7:17–22 tells us,

“The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind. Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died.”

This is a literal description, but we’ve also talked about the symbolism of mountains – they show the authority, the structure – it is from the top of the mountain that God gives the Law to Moses, where the transfigured Christ is witnessed, and it is from the high tower that one man my attempt to lord over another. What we see is that all sense of order is washed away during the flood, the mountains themselves are submerged, and a covering of chaos and death blanket the earth. This if nothing else cements the relationship between humanity and the sea as one of death and deadly mystery. Jesus affirms this quite simply when He says in, Matthew 16:4,

“‘An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah…”

Speaking of His own three days in the grave, He draws comparison to the three days that Jonah spent in the deep of the sea inside the belly of the great fish, because the sea is a symbol of death and Jonah’s trial is likened to a burial beneath the waves. But the passage that is arguably most telling here, both to the overwhelming and deadly nature of the sea, as well as God’s complete dominance and control over the waters is Matthew 14:23–33,

“And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat by this time was a long way from the land, beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them. And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, ‘It is a ghost!’ and they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.’ And Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ He said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, ‘Lord, save me.’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, ‘O you of little faith, why did you doubt?’ And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’”

Jesus walking on water is recorded in all three synoptic gospels, but almost every time I cite this passage I pull from Matthew, but it is his account that includes Peter’s time on the water with Christ. It’s not that I just really like Peter (I do, but that’s not my motive), nor do I seek to use this passage to put him down (his faith cracking under stress is all too relatable). It’s because of the contrast we’re shown between Peter, who is called into a miraculous position, supported on the water by the power of God and the blessing of his faith, only to be left sinking and terrified moments later as his flesh comprehends the swirling sea that surrounds him – and Jesus, who is entirely unaffected by the wind and waves, who treads without fear or hesitation upon the heaving waters, who calls Peter out to Him, extending the deliverance of His power, and who without delay rescues his servant when his faith is overwhelmed and the chaos threatens to pull him below. This moment on the stormy sea of Galilee is a glimpse into eternity, it is a foreshadowing of the place that God has prepared for us where His love, might, and authority reign in completion, where the sea that once held such danger and mystery for humanity is not just restrained or diminished – it’s gone. The sea is no more, we are delivered into a world that is unstained by sin, that is unmarked by the fear and uncertainty, a land in which no darkness is found. What we know in part in this life, through deliverance of the Spirit while still bound in mortal flesh is revealed in completion, as God fulfils His promises, and establishes us in His presence for eternity. God promises in Isaiah 11:9,

“They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.”

The new heaven and earth mark the fruition of this promise, that instead of uncertainty and darkness the new place prepared is one filled with the glorious Light of the knowledge of the Lord.

“And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”

We’ve talked before about how our world today regards the nation of Israel and the Jewish people, how there are those exist across the spectrum ranging from extreme Zionism, insisting that Israel has divine claim on the land from Egypt to the Euphrates, while others insist that Israel is an oppressive abomination and should be wiped from the earth. Neither view is Biblical – the extreme Zionists overlook the fact that the covenant that God first entered into with Abram in Genesis 15 was broken many, many times by the people of Israel, and the genocide called for by the “river to the sea” crowd is in no way supported by any Christian teaching or doctrine. The two sides either take what Scripture says, or take the evil that is in their hearts, and inflame what is there with geopolitics. The new Jerusalem however, this shining city is freed from all the noise of our sinful world, it appears glorious and radiant, like pure and golden wheat without an ounce of chaff. We will look more at new Jerusalem next week, at the details of this beautiful composition wrought by the hands of God, but for now we can gain a great amount of insight for the description that the city descends “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” In the Song of Solomon, two of the many ways that the groom describes his bride are, in 2:2,

“As a lily among brambles, so is my love among the young women.”

And in 6:10,

“Who is this who looks down like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun, awesome as an army with banners?”

As we continue reading in the coming weeks there can seem to be some distinction between Jerusalem, heaven, and the rest of the world, but it’s a mistake to draw these lines too harshly. The dwelling place of God is with man, His glory fills the world, He is not only the spiritual, but the literal Light of the world, as the sun and moon are no longer needed, we stand in the presence of eternal Light. The new Jerusalem is the figurehead of this, the manifest image of the glorious new world – a beautiful flower given to us after we have been delivered from a fallen world of thorny vines. The idea of Israel as the bride of God, or the church as the bride of Christ (both ultimately describing the same thing), can throw some people off – in a marriage between a man and wife there is a distinctly sexual element, the command to “be fruitful and multiply” is a core principle of the marital covenant. But some will fixate on that so much that they forget that this isn’t the only feature of a marital union, and they either fail to grasp what it means to be seen by God as a bride, or, far worse, they force very strange and blasphemous teachings on to Scripture to attempt to add this element between God and His people. God says in Isaiah 54:4–8,

“‘Fear not, for you will not be ashamed; be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced; for you will forget the shame of your youth, and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more. For your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called. For the LORD has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off, says your God. For a brief moment I deserted you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,’ says the LORD, your Redeemer.”

People can forget in the often petty squabbles of modern feminism that throughout vast portions of history (and persisting in some parts of the world today), women were treated as little more than property. Scripture provides us with glowing examples of men who refused to demean their fellow image bearers this way, seen in accounts like Boaz’s redemption of Ruth, or David’s marriage to the widow Abigail (the second one it a bit marred, as David took Abigail as his third wife, but regardless, the compassion can still be seen in the act). God’s marriage to His people is not a physical union as exists within the covenant of human marriage, it’s a spiritual one. The fact that we, God’s people, the ones for whom the shining city of new Jerusalem has been prepared are called and seen as prepared pure and radiant as a bride, tells us the depth of the work that God has done in us, the purification He has wrought to reconcile us to Himself. Paul writes in Ephesians 5:25–32,

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”

God has called us to Himself – forever. The union that exists between the Lord and His people, the imperishable place that is prepared for us to exist in the glorious presence of our Father is not a passing or transient thing. Our place with God is eternal, our membership in His family is everlasting, and the place that He has prepared in which we will be forever reconciled in both flesh and spirit to Him is seen captured in the image of the descending glory of the new Jerusalem.

2. The Eternal End of Evil

“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.”

What we’re seeing here is the fruition of God’s promise in Ezekiel 34:22–24,

“I will rescue my flock; they shall no longer be a prey. And I will judge between sheep and sheep. And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the LORD; I have spoken.”

As well as what Jesus said to the church at Philadelphia in Revelation 3:12,

“The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.”

Throughout so much of Scripture we’re pointed again and again to the insurmountable gap that exists between us a holy God. But it has to be considered that God made us to be with Him, and this was His desire from the beginning. It was we who transgressed, we who severed that bond, and we who were helpless to repair what we had broken. But just as God made us in the beginning when we could never have created ourselves, He came and did the work that we could not, dying sacrificially, overcoming death, and restoring us to Himself. We are blessed to know this now in spirit, to be transformed in Him, to be restored, made new, indwelled and sanctified by His hand. But what we know now by faith, what we see reflected dimly in a mirror, we know by sight, in flesh, face to face in eternity. What we see gloriously declared from the throne is the deliverance of our current hope, that the barrier of evil we set up in our transgression will be completely removed, that all separation from our Father will be gone, that we will know a perfect closeness to our heavenly Father that moral minds can scarcely begin to comprehend.

“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.’ 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.’”

I’ve heard people take this passage and explain heaven like it’s some kind of mass amnesia, like we as individuals are wiped clean like slates as we enter eternity. They really fixate on “the former things have passed away,” and they’ll supplement this with passages like, Isaiah 43:16–21,

“Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings forth chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick: ‘Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild beasts will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise.”

Really homing in on “remember not the former things,” as well as Isaiah 65:17–19,

“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress.”

Where there’s heavy focus placed on “the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.” I think that in most situations people are taking the text at face value, not necessarily trying to twist it, but also not giving it the thought or consideration that it’s due – it may be an honest interpretation, but it’s a shallow one. Because God is not the God of nameless, faceless people, but calls Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is the God of our fathers, and in saying this it gives credence to the lives our spiritual fathers led, the work God did through them, and the ways He brought this to fruition in our lives. When Jesus speaks of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16, we see as Abraham remembers and acknowledges the life that Lazarus led – and while one could argue that this wasn’t in the new heaven and earth, it was still in an afterlife of spiritual peace, and yet Lazarus’ past was recalled. I’ve also heard people insist that in the new heaven and earth, we will have no knowledge of the existence of hell. I believe the exact thing I was told was, “how could it be heaven if you know that grandma didn’t make it in and she’s in hell?” But these takes don’t look at Scripture in its fullness, they zoom in, they seem to emphasize certain passages while keeping others at a very surface level. The problem with acting as though we’ll forget everything (or at least the largest problem), is that this assumes we’ll forget the sacrifice of Christ, and we know without a doubt that the One who appeared to the disciples with nail holes in His hands and feet and a spear wound in His side, the One who was seen as a Lamb who was slain in Revelation 5, who arrives to the battle of Armageddon in a robe that is already stained with His own blood – the One who by His awesome might and power paid the admission for everyone who stands in the presence of God in the new heaven and earth is not going to have His ultimate sacrifice erased in eternity. To forget that would lead us to reason that we had somehow entered heaven by our own merit, and if we remember His sacrifice, then we must remember why His sacrifice was necessary. To imagine that we will have no knowledge of the existence of hell, pretends that hell is the scary boogeymen place, and if we know about it then heaven won’t be perfect. Please, please understand me on this – I don’t want anyone’s grandma to go to hell, I don’t want anyone to go to hell. It is my deepest and most earnest desire that everyone would die to their flesh, be made new in Christ, glorify Him as He is due, and spend eternity in His kingdom, joyously singing His praises. But that’s not what happens, the world hates God and a tragic number of people follow the creation instead of their creator. There is no one who goes into the outer darkness, the lake of fire, the eternal separation that is hell by accident. There is no one who goes into the outer darkness, the lake of fire, the eternal separation that is hell by accident. There are no “good” people eternally cast from the presence of God, only those who have committed themselves to a morality founded in flesh and rejected their desperate need for Christ as their Lord and Savior. There’s nothing to support that there will be some hyper fixation on hell in eternity – our focus is on God above all else. But to teach that we have no awareness of hell, no memory of the justice that God served from the great white throne? It just doesn’t fit with what the Word tells us. Heaven is not fairyland, and glorious eternity is not a mindwipe where we lose everything that the Lord has made us, so that we become faceless drones. So then, what does it mean to be in a place where we stand in the presence of God? Where He Himself has wiped away our tears, where death has been abolished, where mourning, weeping and pain have all been erased, and the former things have passed away? First I want to give you a question to consider – can you remember what your favorite thing was when you were three years old? Was there a toy, a stuffed animal, a book, a song, a TV show, anything that you can recall that was the center of your little toddler world? If you can’t remember such a thing, know almost absolute certainty that there was something. If you were to see a picture from childhood of you holding or interacting with whatever it was there’s even the distinct possibility that it would jog your memory. “Oh yeah,” you’d say in realization, “I used to play with that thing all the time!” And then you’d smile nostalgically, and go about your day. I personally had a stuffed Barney, and me and that purple dinosaur were ride or die. When I was three and had to get my tonsils removed, Barney got to go back into surgery with me – they even gave him a little surgical mask. Now, for three year old me, Barney being there was really important, but today at almost thirty-five years old, I barely remember the procedure. I only know about Barney’s cute little surgical mask from being told the story – I have no clue when I stopped carrying that stuffed dinosaur around, and if my life depended on it I couldn’t even hazard a guess as to where it ended up. It was once one of the most important things in my life, and now it’s simply not. If you can’t tell where I’m going with this, the vast majority of your current life is probably going to be about as relevant to you in heaven as whatever your three year old obsession was is to you now. Your job that you obsess over, your new truck you meticulously wash each weekend, the massive sixteen point buck you shot two seasons ago that’s mounted on your wall, the football team that you might literally kill someone over, the new set of golf clubs you just got that are going to revolutionize your game – it’s all just a long forgotten stuffed Barney when you’re standing in the throne room of God, it just doesn’t matter enough to remember. What’s more, while sanctification draws us closer to God and farther from sin, this isn’t complete until we enter His presence forever. Even when we feel disgust for our sin, we often harbor a lingering fondness, we never hate it as much as we should. Any sweetness you may currently still find in the poison of sin will have no place in heaven – all things are new, the stain of sin is forever gone, and we are fully and completely, both in flesh and spirit, set free. Something else to consider is the function of pain in our lives on this side of eternity. There’s a sermon by Adrian Rogers (which I heard referenced before and have been looking for for years and finally just found it), called “The Purposes of Pain.” In it he makes the points that pain protects, preventing us from doing things that lead to greater harm, pain unifies, here citing 1 Corinthians 12:26,

“If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.”

And finally that pain corrects, pointing to the fact that pain is not there for no reason but serves as an indicator that something is wrong. These are all vital functions of pain in a world that is stained by sin – and all of them are absent in the new heaven and earth. When we live in the presence of God, when the old separation, the veil of sinful flesh has passed away and our Father has embraced us and welcomed us into His kingdom forever, there is no longer any pain because its purposes are gone. There is no longer any sin, no longer any wickedness or evil – reality itself has been remade without the warp of our transgression, creation is smoothly and perfectly in line with His holiness – and so of course it looks different, of course the former things fade in the glorious Light of His presence. But we are sorely mistaken if we think that to be full of His righteousness is to be some erasure of who He has made us, or destruction of our minds. Eternity is not a state of blindness, but one of enlightened revelation – our knowledge is complete, our family is complete, we stand immersed in His holiness, and nowhere in all the new world can a trace of the old darkness be found.

3. The Eternal Union with God

“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. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.”

We’ve looked at the image of new Jerusalem, the eternal place that God has prepared for us in His presence, and we’ve looked at the complete destruction of, and our deliverance from evil – and these two things feed directly into the cemented understanding of our eternal place with God, our union with our Father. God declares that He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. God Himself is eternal, He has no beginning or end, but He is both the beginning and end of all creation, and it is by His hand that a new beginning is wrought. In John 4:13–14 Jesus says to the Samaritan woman at the well,

“… Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

And later during the Feast of Booths John 7:37–39 says,

“On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”’ Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”

What Jesus offered through the Spirit, something that on this side of eternity is delivered through faith, will, in the presence of God be delivered by sight, when we stand and worship in the presence of the wellspring of true life forever. This place is the glorious deliverance of the one who conquers. John 1:12–13 tells us,

“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

Paul writes in Romans 8:14–17,

“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”

Shortly thereafter he continues in Romans 8:37–39,

“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The position of the conqueror in the eternal kingdom of God is not something that we gain for ourselves – we are not conquerors in the name of self, but in the name of Christ. This is not something that we’ve obtained, something that we’ve fought for by the merit of our own good works, but through the guiding deliverance and incomprehensible power of His Spirit. We are more than conquerors in Christ, and in this victory we are eternally bound, eternally accepted, eternally loved by our Father who made us and brought us to life.

“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.’ 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.’”

Underpinning what I said previously, about how heaven is not a place of blissful unawareness, we see immediately after the promised place of those who have conquered sin in the name of Christ, what the position of those who failed, who were conquered by their own wickedness is. After Cain’s offering is rejected by God Genesis 4:6–7 tells us,

“The LORD said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, and you must rule over it.’”

There is an option offered to every man, a path presented that we may be victorious, denying and crucifying self, and submitting to the true freedom found in Christ – or we may indulge in self, we can shape our minds and lives and the world around us in the pursuit of the passions of our sins, and we can suffer eternally for it. Note the spectrum that is given in today’s passage – the outer darkness is not just a place that is reserved for serial killers and child molesters. The first group listed are the cowards – those who were more afraid of the world than they were of the might of the Lord – followed by the faithless and detestable. Then we see murderers, those who have indulged in their sexual immorality (which is a broader category than many may want to think), sorcerers, and idolaters, all of which makes sense, and then the final group given – all liars. Everyone lies – everyone. We lie to one another, we lie to ourselves – we try to pretty them up, to remove a little of the filth that they’re steeped in. We call them “white lies” or “half-truths,” as though any truth could exist except the whole Truth, and that anything short of this was not simply a lie that we’ve tried to put a different label on. Jesus says in John 8:44,

“You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

Lying, despite the ways in which we try to frame it as acceptable, is inherently satanic. When we lie we reject the reality that God has made in favor of something we have devised in our sin, we attempt to recolor the world to something we desire more than the truth, just as Satan did. In Matthew 13:24–30 we read,

“He put another parable before them, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?” He said to them, “An enemy has done this.” So the servants said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” But he said, “No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”

Later, when explaining this parable to the disciples Jesus says in Matthew 13:37–42,

“… The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.  Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

However in closing this he states in verse 43,

“Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.”

At the end of this age, at the beginning of eternity, there is no middle ground. There is wheat, and there are weeds – none of the wheat is destroyed, none of the weeds are kept, both are put in their proper place. There is nothing that the weeds can do to bargain their way out of the fire, no version of events that they can spin to change the reality that they are not wheat – the harvest has ended and the time of their destruction has come. This is not a bad thing, it’s a right thing. This is not something that the eyes of the children of God are blinded to, but rather we know the reality of what we were delivered from, what we conquered by the blood of Christ alone. And it is here in our victory, in full awareness of the righteousness of God’s judgment that we see an angel approach John – not just any angel, but one of the seven who poured out the wrath of God upon the world, and what he offers to John, and through John to all who read these words, is a great gift.

“Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.”

Here we are offered details of the immeasurable, incomprehensible glory of the eternal kingdom that God has prepared for us, the place where we are joined with our Father forever and ever.

Pastor Jake’s sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsVTBAfk2Vg