When The Saints Go Marching In Series

Apple founder, Steve Jobs was asked to address the graduations of Stanford University just shortly before his death. He said these memorable words: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve encountered to help me make the big choices in life.” Yes, remembering I will be dead soon is an important tool in helping me make the big choices in life. In fact, if we consider our deaths, we can know what can make us happy both in this life but also in the life to come.

For the last time in our series, I want to speak about Heaven. Locate Isaiah 60 with me. The people of God have long been fascinated with the topic of Heaven. And scattered through your Bible is all kinds of imagery to bring hope to God’s people about the kind of life they’ll spend in Heaven. Heaven is pictured from a garden to a city to the Father’s House to a place where life and joy itself resides, the Bible is replete with beautiful imagery that paints for us hopeful, bright scenes of our future days. Central to the Bible’s vision of the future Heaven is a pristine Jerusalem, a place of political harmony.

Now, utopian dreams and visions of utopia have a long history. As far back as the Genesis, we see humans seeking to build a utopia city when they constructed the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9). Many of you are familiar Plato’s The Republic, written nearly four centuries before the time of Christ. Plato lays out how the society of the future should be arranged: with definitions of the ideal system of parenting, education, as well as law and government. A little closer to the present as well as near my personal history, is New Harmony, Indiana. Just a short drive from where my wife, Traci, grew up. The community was built up around 800 devoted built the town in hopes of delivering Heaven on earth. No one was husband and wife but all were brothers and sisters. It was built in the hopes that everyone would live simple lives where everyone would cooperate with one another. After the founder died, his children sold the city to someone else where the dream died. There was still another attempt at utopian city in Oneida, New York in the middle part of the 1800s. A man named John Humphrey Noyes led the group and he instituted something called complex marriage where people could have sexual relations with anyone who consented. The thought was they would be one big, happy family. But Oneida did produce something of value even to us: Oneida flatware. Their flatware is used in nearly every restaurant, hotels and inside every kitchen drawers around. Since it’s founding in the 19th century, Oneida Limited flatware has become something of an American tradition.

There have been many failed attempts at a perfect city, but I believe in one to come that will not fail. All of us long for a place of perfect harmony and community. For the next few moments, I want to speak to you about the refreshing picture of political world of Heaven. I am thinking of a favorite jazz song that originated from a black spiritual from the 1800s is still familiar to all of us:

Oh, when the saints go marching in

Oh, when the saints go marching in

Oh Lord I want to be in that number

When the saints go marching in

This song is filled with imagery from the book of Revelation such as when “the moon turns red to blood” and “when the stars fall from the sky.” After spending two seconds thinking about Heaven, much less two months, I can say, “I want to be in that number.”

The prophet, Isaiah, gives us a glimpse of the future and a utopia founded in Zion, or Jerusalem. In a world were we all expect the worst, let’s see how government is to be run.

Sermon Preview

1. The Nations Go Marching On

2. The Nations Come Marching In

1. The Nations Go Marching On

1.1 This is Heaven

Look at Isaiah 60 for what you’re seeing is a poem but it’s also a vision of a magnificent city – a transformed city. The city that Isaiah envisions is a magnetic place. It has drawing power. People and things are flocking to this urban center: they are being “turned” into this city, “gathered” from many places, and you’ll notice people are coming “from afar.” Isaiah 60 is a surprising picture of the future New Heavens and New Earth – a picture of the future Heaven.

“Violence shall no more be heard in your land, devastation or destruction within your borders; you shall call your walls Salvation, and your gates Praise. 19 The sun shall be no more your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give you light; but the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. 20 Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended. 21 Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified. 22 The least one shall become a clan, and the smallest one a mighty nation; I am the Lord; in its time I will hasten it.” (Isaiah 60:18–22) Revelation borrows language from Isaiah 60 to picture Heaven in Revelation 21–22. In Revelation 22 we’re told at the end of all time the city of God will come out of Heaven and descend to the New Earth itself. The city of God is a radiant place where the glory of God makes the sun obsolete (verse 18). The sun in the sky would be as if holding a candle in the middle of sunny day – it’s not noticed because of the very glory of God and the light of God. God’s light and glory will replace the sun. Next, we can tell this is Heaven because both John and Isaiah agree about the gates and the protection of this city: “Your gates shall be open continually; day and night they shall not be shut, that people may bring to you the wealth of the nations, with their kings led in procession.” (Isaiah 60:11) John says this of the Celestial City: “…and its gates will never be shut by day…” (Revelation 22:25a) Even when the city’s gates are wide-open 24 hours a day … even then … nothing evil, nothing wicked, nothing nefarious will wander through the Eternal City’s gates.