Our Heavenly Home Series

Revelation 21:1– 8 Our Heavenly Home

Thesis: Our eternal home.

Introduction: Good evening. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you tonight. We have had good music and it has blessed our hearts,

And I hope your heart is now prepared for the message. Our message tonight is ‘our heavenly home.’

I want to encourage you tonight by reminding you that heaven is a real place, that heaven is going to be a regenerated place and finally we will see that heaven will be filled with the redeemed.

I. Heaven Is A Real Place

A. Is heaven a real place? Is there a land that is fairer than day waiting for us, the redeemed, one day? The Bible speaks of heaven as a real place. In John 14: ‘In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.’ Jesus speaks of heaven as a place. It is going to be a prepared place for a prepared people. In the books of Mark and Luke it is recorded that Jesus sent two of his disciples into Jerusalem in order to find a room and prepare it for the Passover meal. It is the same word found here in John 14. Jesus sent them with a specific purpose to prepare a place for them together. Jesus has done that for us. Have you ever went ahead of your party to a restaurant so you could get a table. You get to the restaurant and you tell the waitress I have a party of 10 or 12 coming. She pulls tables together and gets the silverware and napkins laid out on the table. She is preparing a place for your fellow guest. Jesus ascended into heaven to prepare us a place there in the Fathers house. It is a real place prepared for our home coming.

Let me add a word of caution for those that are who are not yet prepared for heaven. Just as real as heaven is, so is hell. As sweet and wonderful and beyond description as heaven is so hell will be in all its horrors and sufferings. Just as there is nothing imaginary about heavens glory there is nothing imaginary about the gory hell you will be in forever if you do not repent and place your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Hell is a prepared place, but it is prepared for the devil and his angels, not for you, but if you die without being saved you will be with the evil one and the smoke of your torment will rise up forever and ever so the Bible says.

B. If heaven is a real place, where is it located? When the Bible speaks of heaven, it can mean one of three locations. It can mean the atmosphere around us in which the birds fly above our heads. It can mean the starry heaven we see at night where the sun and the moon is or it can mean the abode of God. Our message tonight concerns heaven where the throne of God is located. Where is that place where Gods throne is found?

When the Bible speaks of heaven, it is no accident that it speaks of it as being up. We must look up to see the birds in the air. We must look up to the stars in the sky and we must look up to God. Why is that? Why is heaven spoken of as being above us and beyond us. I think there a couple of reasons.

1. It is because we are fallen. When man sinned in the garden of Eden he fell morally and spiritually. For man to go down to is go farther away from God, but when a man looks up he looks to God for help. Whence cometh my help the psalmist said? He said, ‘I will lift my eyes unto the hills’ We are to look up to God because we are fallen. But the Bible also says God looks down to us. In his great agony Job said, ‘Is not God in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the stars, how high they are!’ Job knew where God was. The Psalmist said, ‘For he hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary; from heaven did the LORD behold the earth;’. 2. It is because God is greater than we are. Isaiah 55:9 says, ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.’

The Bible speaks of hell as down. If you are not saved you are going to go down, down, down away from God and heaven into hell. I’ve had enough of down! I’m ready for up! As somebody once said, ’I’m not looking for the undertaker, I’m looking for the upper-taker.’ The Bible says in 1 Thessalonians 4:16, ‘For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.’