A New Heaven And A New Earth

In this sense, the book of Revelation in general and these passages we’re looking at today in particular, meet the criterion of poetry.

John writes about the dwelling place of God, the Holy City of Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, and coming to and connecting with the earth…the new earth.

That which is the stuff of dreams and hymns and lofty imagination and passionate faith, becomes less abstract…actually comes in a recognizable form to earth.

And then John writes something that’s really pretty disarming if you think about it. This place of God’s dwelling, this holy and beautiful and perfect living space of the most high God enters the atmosphere “as a bride beautifully adorned for her husband”. What?!?

The presence of God, the relationship of God with humanity is like…a wedding? A uniting of hearts, a combining of lives? Do you find that surprising at all, that the Holy Scriptures should compare our eternal relationship with God as a kind of marriage?

We know that marriage ends up defining you us a person and describing our soul. Marriage is a promise to be there, one for the other, no matter what happens. Is that something of the picture that John is painting?

3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

OK. So we’re talking about a profound relationship…and John is describing our eternity with God in a way that reflects the most profound relationship that humans can know…that of marriage. “Now the dwelling of God is with men”: Something new is happening.

There is distance now between God and humanity. Of course that distance is mainly in the distinctive character of God compared to humanity…that character or characteristic is holiness…utter, uncomplex and uncompromised holiness. And here, on our globe, there is a lot of utterly complex unholiness and selfishness.

Simple stats like how in North America we, with 20% of the world population, consume 80% of the world’s resources…simple, stark facts like that make it pretty clear that there’s a serious problem here on earth.

Add to that our own struggles to be decent and live decently, our own tendency to behaviours that addict us and entrap us…it’s clear there’s an alarmingly great gulf between God as He is now and humanity as it is now. We’ll come back to that in a moment.

So…”Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God”. When we understand that God is love, when we understand that God enthusiastically wants this marriage with humankind…that God is a person in Whom all the best we’ve ever imagined dwells…when we understand that, I think this is really a very encouraging and challenging passage.

We continue with a very tender description of how God cares for humanity in this setting.