“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. And he said to me, ‘These words are trustworthy and true. And the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place. And behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps 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 them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed them to me, but he said to me, ‘You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God.’”

A couple weeks ago I started off by asking the question, “what is heaven?” Chapter 21 gave us some extraordinary detail, much of it too great for us to fully wrap our minds around, and yet what we can know of it is glorious beyond compare. Moving into chapter 22, the final chapter of Revelation, we’re offered still more detail of the holy city, the shining beacon of our eternal home. But as much as we may elaborate on the idea of “what is heaven” beyond the caricature our minds can so often gravitate toward, there is another question to ask – one that we’ve addressed but haven’t asked outright. What makes heaven, heaven? The place we read of is a paradise, a glorious, perfect world, shining with grandeur – but it’s not the foundations of precious gems, the walls of jasper, the streets of gold, it’s not the river of life or the tree of life that makes eternity into what it is. God is what makes our eternal home into a perfect place of rest. I know that this may seem painfully obvious, but there’s a very real trap here where we risk thinking of heaven the way we all too often think of the earth now – marveling at the creation instead of the Creator. The pitfall is that we praise God with our mouths while harboring hearts like the Pharisees. Jesus rebukes them in Matthew 23:16–22 saying,

“Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? And you say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.”

It can be all too tempting to point at the Pharisees and shake our heads at their blindness, to mock their audacity that they would prize the material gain of their station above the blessing they were called to in serving God. But there are far too many people who ridicule the Pharisees without realizing that they themselves are living and acting in the same spirit. There are so many who look forward to the glorious features of the things we’ve read of, there are those who wonder and fantasize about heavenly hobbies and pastimes, things that we might do over the course of eternity – guys, I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but the central theme of heaven is that God is there. There are many, many people who so look forward to seeing friends and loved ones who have passed away – and please understand me, I’m not at all saying that the idea of seeing someone you love again, of spending eternity in righteous paradise with those that you’ve cherished here on earth shouldn’t bring you joy. But you also have to grasp that your mother, father, husband, wife, son, daughter, brother, sister – there is no one, no beloved friend, no faithful mentor, no one who can deliver and sustain you in righteousness eternally. That power lies in God and God alone, and to shift Him one millimeter from the center of our praise and devotion is to devalue the work He has done and the holiness that He holds that is so worthy of eternal praise. So as we continue on, and as we get so very near the close of this beautiful and eye-opening book, I hope you feel a sense of excitement around heaven, I hope that peace and joy are stirred up within you at the prospect of what is promised – but I hope that all these feelings are fixed around the central point, the cornerstone, that anchor that is Christ. I hope that in every good and perfect thing we read of you see and revere the hand that made them, the Light that sustains them, and that in all the promise that heaven offers, you worship God.

Our Eternal Necessity for God

1. The Eternal Necessity for His Peace

“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 very first feature that John is pointed to is the river of life. In John 4:13–14 Jesus tells 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 in John 7:37–39, at the end of the Feast of Booths we read,

“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.”

This living water, this water of life flows in abundance in the eternal kingdom, it pours like a river from the throne of God and the Lamb – another statement that solidifies the unity of the Father and the Son. This river and the life it represents that flows out from God and through the center of the city – the central focal point in the shining city of new Jerusalem. We next see that on either side of the river grows the tree of life – this again points to the completeness of the provision of heaven. You could think of a river as a geographic barrier – God stopped the flow of the Jordan to allow the Israelites to cross into the promised land, the sixth bowl of wrath dried up the Euphrates so that the armies of the earth could gather together and receive the condemnation that they had brought upon themselves. Rivers are so often obstacles, and yet here there is no sense of created separation. The tree of life – this thing that once grew in the heart of Eden, that we were once protected from eating and thereby living forever in our sin, now grows on both riverbanks of the river of life. It is an open and plentiful blessing in heaven – and there’s something very interesting about this tree, because it suggests something that is often either overlooked or taught against when we read or hear of heaven. I’ve addressed this before, but for much of my life I had a very fearful relationship with the book of Revelation. As a child, the rapture, the fear of somehow being left behind in a very Kirk Cameron type fashion, and the fear of heaven itself, the incomprehensibility of eternity, robbed me of all sense of peace with this beautiful book. In my teens and as a young man these things still terrified me – trying to wrap my mind around eternity, existing without the grounding principle of time would make my head spin, and still only knowing the idea of a pre-tribulation rapture, believing that this could be thrust on me at any moment without warning would legitimately leave me in a state of terrified paralysis. If I had actually known what my Bible said, if I had held any proper understanding of what the Word communicates about these things, then I wouldn’t have endured such fears. Because as we’ve discussed, while we can be absolutely sure that Jesus is coming back, the exact timing of when is its own debate, which is why we’ve ended up with the pre-trib, mid-trib, pre-wrath, post-trib crowds. And concerning the lack of time, this thing that I couldn’t possibly wrap my mind around, the idea of existence without end that so inflamed my thoughts with panic – if I had understood the implications of what is written, I would have seen the baselessness of the fear that gripped me. There is no doubt that heaven is an eternal place – David wrote of this hope long before Jesus came into the world to offer redemption when he said in Psalm 23:6,

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”

And Jesus speaks of the promise of eternal life repeatedly in the gospel accounts, most famously in John 3:16,

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Eternal life is absolutely what Scripture promises and what Revelation describes. But what I’ve heard said many, many times is that in eternity with God there will be no time, and this, when thought about the right way, is absolutely terrifying. If you’ve ever had a panic attack (which I hope you haven’t) or if you’ve ever been through a crisis of some kind, you can probably appreciate how from the perspective of someone who only knows the conditions within a fallen world, a sense of timelessness – the minutes dragging, the state you’re stuck in seeming to stretch endlessly – sounds like a bad thing. Time is such a central concept for all of humanity that we can’t separate our understanding of it from existence itself, which is why time and space are described as a continuum – two things so seamless that you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. I can grasp I don’t understand that God, who is outside of time, who created time, is unaffected by all this, but I in my flesh am ultimately incapable of comprehending a state of being where there is no time. But the description of these trees, the tree of life that lines both sides of the river of life, offers us a touchstone. From them grows twelve kinds of fruit – the number itself points us to the city’s establishment, and its eternal stability – but there’s the specification that the tree yields its fruit each month. There can’t be months if there’s literally no time, and if there is time in any capacity, then suddenly the fears of some unimaginable state of being are stilled. To be fair, we can’t properly imagine existing in heaven – not because of the barrier of trying to imagine existence without time, but because we can’t truly wrap our minds around the amazing deliverance of existing in a world without sin. Time, however it exists, whatever it looks like, will no longer be a part of our curse, no more will it countdown to our mortal end, but rather the days and millennia count upward, chronicling every second of the love and righteousness that God has poured out on us, and our praise and worship back to Him.  

“The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”

Along with timelessness, another feature of heaven that will come up in discussions and descriptions is that there will be no sin in heaven. Unlike the teaching of there being literally no sense of time, the text absolutely, 100% supports the absence of sin from the eternal kingdom – however, there’s another question layered within this one that I’ve seen come up before. There’s no sin in heaven, but could we sin, could we transgress and be cast out? And again, based on what the text is telling us in clear language, no, I don’t think that’s a possibility – but I don’t think that’s out of an absence of free will, I think it’s entirely because of the power and provision of God. Prophesying of the Messiah, Isaiah 11:1–9 says,

“There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. 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 interesting thing is that, in the description of the peace that will exist upon the holy mountain of God, nothing has changed from what it is – the cow is still a cow and the bear is still a bear. The cobra hasn’t been turned into something benign and harmless, it’s still a cobra – what has caused the entire situation to change is the power and influence of God. It’s specified in today’s passage that the leaves of the tree of life were for the healing of the nations. This made me wonder, if we’re seeing a new heaven and earth where everything is perfect – and how could it not be with no sin and no death, as we stand resurrected in eternal praise of God? – then what is there to be healed? What this points us to is that our need for God in eternity is no less than our need for God now. While we may not think of needing an active redeemer in heaven, our sins and transgressions having been washed away, and the sting of death forever cast out, we still very much require an active sustainer. Colossians 1:17–18 tells us of Christ,

“And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.”

And Hebrews 1:3 says of Him,

“He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high…”

Our entire existence, all of reality is held and sustained by the mighty hand of God – and just because earth is new and heaven is new doesn’t mean that changes. It’s relevant that the river flows continually, it’s relevant that the trees produce their fruit and their healing leaves without fail – because we don’t stop needing the life, provision, and peace that is found in God and God alone. The blessing of eternity is not that we receive once and are filled, but that we are provided for and sustained forever as we worship our Lord and Father.

“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.”

John’s gospel begins by saying in verses 1-4,

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

This is a beautiful beginning that immediately unifies Christ irrevocably with God through the parallel with Genesis. It also explains that found in Jesus is life – true life. Not simple existence, not blind consciousness, but the Light of Life, living alongside us, living within us, and as we see clearly emphasized in today’s passage, living with us and us with Him for eternity. But I want to also draw your attention to verse five of John’s opening to his gospel account,

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

There is an inverse to the Light, and opposite force – not opposite in scope, power, or permanence, but opposite in spirit. The Light and dark don’t exist as the Daoist yin-yang symbol suggests, in equal measure to one another, each containing a piece of the other. The dark despises the Light, and the Light casts out the darkness, ultimately to the point of its destruction. The darkness that is the enemy, that is the fallen world, that is death, cannot endure, while the Light, that is the Redeemer, that is Life endures forever. Heaven is perfect, it’s a place of righteousness, where we exist fully in the Light, filled and made holy that we might stand in the presence of God. Creator of the universe, Author of reality, thrice holy God, and we can stand before Him and worship Him face to face. But our holiness is not self-sustained, we don’t become our own lights, we’re partakers of the eternal peace of heaven, but we’re not the source – God is. There is nothing unrighteous, nothing accursed in the eternal kingdom of God, because He’s there. We enter heaven entirely because of the merciful redemption offered by Christ, but it’s not as though He’s paid our entry and then we remain by our own merit. He is the reason we’re allowed to pass through the gates of pearl to begin with, and He’s the reason we can remain there, fully freed from the curse of sin, truly belonging in His holy kingdom.

2. The Eternal Necessity for His Light

“They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.”

The two things conveyed in this one sentence say more than we can fully understand about our condition in eternity, and how entirely dependent that condition is upon the continual provision of God. In Exodus 33:18–23 we see an exchange between God and Moses before the people of Israel depart from Sinai,

“Moses said, ‘Please show me your glory.’ And he said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name “The LORD.” And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,’ he said, ‘you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.’ And the LORD said, ‘Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.’”

We read this almost immediately after Exodus 33:9–11 tells us,

“When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the LORD would speak with Moses. And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship, each at his tent door. Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend…”

God would speak to Moses “face to face,” and yet the Lord tells Moses that a man shall not see His face and live. And just to dispel any questions about the nuance of the language, the same word is used in both sections here for “face.” Bearing all this in mind, how can we understand the two passages together? Note that Moses didn’t ask God to see His face, he asked to see His glory. Also bear in mind that when the Lord would speak to Moses face to face it was within the context of the tent of meeting, this specific place set aside where man may, to varying degrees, approach God, and God approach man within a set of guidelines and boundaries to the protection of the one who comes before God. In Leviticus 10 two of Aaron’s sons violate the protective framework that was established by the tabernacle and are consumed and killed for offering strange fire before the Lord – the system that God has given, the fact that He may be approached in any capacity for that matter is no small thing. It also stands to reason that speaking face to face, and looking on someone’s face carry two different implications. The fact that God spoke to Moses face to face, which we’re even given the context for, in a similar way to how a friend might speak to a friend, tells us something about the intimacy of God’s relationship with Moses. There are many elements that play into a conversation, many cues and insights that register between facial expressions and body language – but the primary component of speaking face to face is the speech. But if without words I stare you in the face, there’s something else happening, I’m looking for and trying to discern an understanding beyond words. And so when Moses asks God to see His glory, God doesn’t say “no.” He responds,

“I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’”

But even in this Moses can’t gaze upon the face of God, he can’t stare into the shining righteousness of the Ancient of Days, having his eyes filled with the unbridled holiness of the Lord and live. But Jesus tells us that this will not always be the case, saying in the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:8,

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Mankind thinks ourselves pure when we’re not, and so this can go over our heads, but this is an unthinkably miraculous declaration. God said in Jeremiah 17:9,

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

But the Lord explains how He will do this wondrous thing in Ezekiel 36:26–27 when He promises,

“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”

What we see described in today’s passage is the culmination of these things, the fruition of the promise that Jesus made that the pure of heart would be blessed in that they would see God. We are delivered to a place where we can see our Lord – not veiled through the wonder of creation, or obscured behind the sin and weakness of our flesh – we can look upon His face, we can see and wonder and glorify our God because we are in the eternal presence of His Light. We can see Him and not die, not be destroyed before His holiness, but can stand before Him and see Him and belong – belong because we are marked as His, because His name is written on our foreheads, written on our very minds that every thought may be captive to Him and Him alone. In Deuteronomy 6:4–9, as Moses relays what God has commanded he tells the people of Israel,

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

The fact that in eternity we can see God and that His name rests as a frontlet between our eyes forever shows us perfectly who we are in heaven, and how this is entirely anchored around the Lord and His holiness, because of the everlasting, unquenchable glory of His Light.

“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.”

In John 9:4–5 Jesus said to His disciples,

“We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

While Jesus is present in the heart of every believer through the Helper of the Holy Spirit, His bodily presence and earthly ministry had an appointed season and time. But where Christ is, the Light is, because He is the Light. We see a picture in the new heaven and earth of Father, Son and Spirit ruling in perfect unity, visible and present across the world. The time to do the work of Christ – no longer the work of offered redemption, but now the work of eternally glorifying the Father – is unending. We stand in the blessing and wisdom of His Light continually. David writes in Psalm 23:3,

“He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”

The hope we have in these four words, “for his name’s sake,” is unfathomable. The Light that shines in eternity – that shines even now in the hearts of His children – is not dependent on us. It is His glory, His holiness and mighty power that is our Light. Before venturing back into Judea where the religious leaders were seeking His life, Jesus says to His disciples as they question His decision to go in John 11:9–10, saying,

“… Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.”

There is no night in the eternal kingdom, no darkness for the followers of the Lamb to stumble or fall in. Our path is always clear, our sight always bright, as we worship our Father and King. In Revelation 3:21 Jesus said to the church at Laodicea,

“The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.”

This is the eternal promise of the Light of the kingdom of God – that in the Light of our Lord we will conquer, we will rule forever in Him, and darkness will never again prevail, for the world is filled with the Light of His glory.

“And he said to me, ‘These words are trustworthy and true. And the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.”

James 1:5 tells us,

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.”

The simple truth is that God owes us nothing. He didn’t owe us our creation in the first place, He didn’t owe us the freedom of will to betray His love and provision, He certainly didn’t owe us a path of redemption back to Him, and through all this, He owes us no explanation. But rather than being a far-off God of mystery, God who is ultimately unknowable to mortal minds has given us ways to understand Him in part and to draw comfort in this understanding. We’re given the Word, the miracle of Scripture, and we’re invited to seek Him, to ask of Him that we might understand, and in our understanding, glorify Him. Jesus teaches in Matthew 7:7–11,

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

We serve a loving God, a merciful Father who, for all His holiness and all our iniquity has finished the work to reconcile us to Himself, and rather than leave us in the dark, has given us the Light of His Word, trustworthy and true, that we might not disbelieve, but believe and glorify His name.

3. The Eternal Necessity of Our Worship

“And behold, I am coming soon.”

I doubt there has ever been a single Christian, perhaps never a single person period who hasn’t read this and thought, “I wonder what was meant by ‘soon’?” Maybe the question was asked cynically or mockingly, but maybe it was asked in genuine sincerity. In all fairness, it’s been roughly two thousand years since Christ’s ascension, we can honestly acknowledge that that’s a timeline that exceeds the human boundaries of “soon.” This “soon” has been used as a foothold for everyone from blasphemous false teachers to desperately confused believers to reinforce the warped teachings that Jesus has somehow already returned. The simplest and most reassuring passage we can pull from regarding the timeline of things and what may feel like a delayed return in the minds of humanity is 2 Peter 3:8–10,

“But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.”

We’ve already talked a fair amount about time, but this passage emphasizes God’s complete control over and removal from time as we have any perception of it. The timing of everything is well within His control, and none of it is by accident. His delays aren’t arbitrary or negligent, His purpose is one of mercy and compassion. While I can understand and sympathize with those who cry out, longing desperately for Christ to return and put an end to this mortal strife, and I certainly understand the curiosity of wondering when our Lord will come and claim His Bride, who would dream to be so foolhardy, to be so wildly blind and prideful as to tell God that His “soon” was not soon enough? We are right to wonder, and we are right to pray, however it doesn’t matter if our Lord’s return is tomorrow or ten thousand years from now, He is still entirely worthy of our praise and devotion – because if nothing else, we can rest in knowing with absolute certainty that His timing is always perfect and He has never failed.

“Blessed is the one who keeps 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 them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed them to me, but he said to me, ‘You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God.’”

The Bible is a vast, living, breathing text – in it are answers and explanations to literally all of life’s questions (just because we don’t like the answer doesn’t mean we weren’t given one), and beyond. But if every lesson, every passage, were to have a single core theme, one central aim, it would be the words that the angel says to John – “worship God.” This is what both angels have told him, as twice now, caught up in the joy of the message he’s receiving, he has impulsively and sinfully bowed down to worship them for the wonder of the message they share. I don’t say this to belittle John – I think this is a situation much like Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden where it’s easy to point and judge, but in truth, none of us would fare any better. Regardless, the kind but firm correction that both angels give is the same, and it is a directive that echoes through every page of Scripture, and one that should be found in every facet of our lives – “worship God.” This isn’t something we just do during our time on earth, separated by sin, longing for the union that we’re offered through the Spirit to be fully realized and known face to face. Worshiping God, celebrating His glory and holiness and reveling in the joy that we’re actually with Him isn’t just what day one of eternity looks like. It’s an eternal act, an ongoing devotion, a core element of our eternity in paradise. The worship of God is an absolute necessity – not for God, He doesn’t need our worship, He needs nothing because for Him to need would suggest that somehow He is incomplete. However, it’s a complete and absolute necessity for us that we honor and worship God. This isn’t exactly new, we’re called to do it here on earth, but we’ve also seen it illustrated in John’s first view into the heavenly realm as he saw the throne room of God in Revelation 4:6–11,

“… And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, ‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!’ And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying, ‘Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.’”

The living creatures, these four heavenly beings who have been filled with sight, who in their appearance cover a broad spectrum of creation are continually declaring the holiness of God – why? Because He’s right there, they’re standing in His presence, the only right thing to do is to praise the might and majesty of the One they’re blessed to behold on the throne. The twenty-four elders, this picture of the saints, placed on thrones and given crowns of glory by God are constantly leaving their places of exultation to bow before the Lord, they’re continually surrendering their crowns, these symbols of authority, to God. The worship doesn’t end, because God’s glory doesn’t end, He is constantly and continually worthy to be praised. Heaven isn’t heaven without God, and if God is there and we’re there, then that means that heaven isn’t heaven without God being praised. Because to fail to honor and praise the One who has prepared this place for us, who has made this eternal home and reconciled us to Himself, not out of our merit or good works, but our surrender to Him and His work through us, would be wrong. And so as we put the pieces we’ve been given together, as we, with imperfect, mortal minds seek to reconcile all the wonder we’re told of, and struggle against the fantasies spun up by unbiblical teaching and our own desires, let us see, understand, and look forward with great joy to this key and central necessity of our heavenly home. We will not worship the place, the shining kingdom prepared by our Father. We will not worship the angels, our fellow servants and allies in honoring and praising God. We won’t worship our family members, or the friends and loved ones who are with us in eternity. None of these things – all of which are wonderful eternal blessings – are what will be the focal point of our worship, none will be the primary source of our joy. That position belongs to God and God alone, the only One who is worthy of our worship. So as we look to heaven, as we read of the place prepared, work to understand what we’re told of, and possibly infer or imagine the things that we’re not, remember and cling to the fact that what should be the greatest point of excitement and joy for every Christian is the presence, glory, and provision of God, and the opportunity to worship Him for all eternity.

Pastor Chris’ sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLu2atSrUeU