Heaven "What Does Heaven Look Like" Series

So what does heaven look like?

Revelation 21:15-27 The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long. He measured its wall and it was 144 cubits thick, by man’s measurement, which the angel was using. The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of pure gold, like transparent glass. I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”

One Stadia is equal to 600 feet. So the dimensions would be approximately 1363 miles high, 1363 miles wide and 1363 miles long. It doesn’t seems that long when you think that the length would be from approximately the East Coast to Colorado when you consider all believers from all time are to be in heaven. But then you get to the height of heaven. The Space Shuttle flies between 200 and 240 miles above the earth. Now heaven is going to extend 1363 miles about the earth. WOW now that is a big heaven.

A cubit is 18 inches so the wall of heaven will be 200 feet thick made up of awesome crystals. Now realize this. There will be no need for the sun as God’s glory will illuminate all heaven, even to 1300 miles above the earth!!!!!!! That is why God should receive our praise, glory and honor from morning till night. We serve an awesome God but we treat Him for the most part like another man. That is where we get into trouble.

I have come to realize that heaven is down on our list of priorities for a number of reasons.

1. It seems far off for us

2. We don’t know much about heaven

3. Our goals are on this earth

4. Most of us don’t even have goals

In order to do anything great in life your life you need to have goals. When I say goals we can have goals that glorify us or we can have goals that glorify God. Sometimes they can be so closely related that we can get lost in our mission. I was speaking to a friend last night that works for one of the richest people in the world. He said that this person is always miserable because he is worried about losing it all.

Ecclesiastes 5:19 “Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work--this is a gift of God.”

No matter how much or how little you have it is God who enables you to enjoy what you have. So be very careful what goals you set for yourself. When I set goals to run in High School and College it was all about me. That was mistake number one. God had given me a great talent one in which I tried to glorify myself instead of using that talent to glorify the One who gave me the talent. I had a number of goals that I met and surpassed but it became a feeling of emptiness because of my self glorification.

Most of us only do what is the hottest thing on our agenda. Most of us are not into delayed gratification. But that is what heaven is. We need discipline to have our goal in the future as far as heaven is concerned. As I was talking about vacations yesterday most of us get so excited the weeks before we go. Why is it that we are not excited about heaven? Now some of you may be saying “I am excited about heaven”. This brings me back to another problem we have as Christians. A lot of us say what people want to hear instead of what is in our heart. A lot of us don’t want to be open with our struggles and lack of discipline. So we start to build this Christian wall that takes on a life all its own. Before we know it we have put so many bricks up that no one can get in. It is also so big that if we were to take it down everyone would notice and ask us what was wrong.