Revelation 21-22:5- ‘Heaven- the New Jerusalem’
Intro
Notions of Jerusalem
• Archaeology & the Bible. “In Jerusalem in 1880 some school boys were wading in the Pool of Siloam when one…discovered some peculiar…marks that looked like writing. When they informed their teacher, Professor Conrad Schick, he…visited the spot and copied the inscription… All authorities agree[d] that it was written about 702BC when Hezekiah was king of Judah” (Thomson Chain Reference).
• At that time Jerusalem was in a terrible state. The prophet Isaiah had been warning Hezekiah and others that “the faithful city [had] become a harlot! …Their land is full of silver and gold and there is no end to their treasures…no end to their chariots…their land is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands... People bow down, and each man humbles himself; therefore do not forgive them” (Isaiah 1:21;2:7,8). Sounds a bit like Britain, 2004AD.
Eventually, Jerusalem was crushed in 586BC by the Babylonians, sacked again in the 2nd Century by the Syrians; then burnt down in AD70 by the Romans. Ever since, Jerusalem has been the bloody battle site for Crusaders and Arabs, Jews and Muslims. We hear weekly reports of suicide bombers in the holy city. It’s not without some poignancy and irony, therefore, that ‘Jerusalem’ means ‘city of peace’, and it is never without relevance that the Psalmist calls us all to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (122:6).
• Where can we find a better Jerusalem, one quite unlike this uniformly unholy city?
The apostle John saw a New Jerusalem in his revelation around 1900 years ago, and the prophet Isaiah another 800 years before that. And this wonderful place is not just for Jews- no, our passage clearly states in verses 24 and 26 that “the nations will walk by its light”- that’s you and me.
This New Jerusalem no earthly place. It is heaven itself.
So what do we think about heaven?
Notions of Heaven
• Where true love is found?
‘Heaven’ by DJ Sammy-
“And love is all that I need
And I found it there in your heart
It isn’t too hard to see
We’re in heaven.”
• Pleasant but boring? “I don’t believe in an afterlife, so I don’t have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse” (Asimov); “Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company… The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humour in heaven” (Twain).
No heaven?
• Just the here and now: ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon
“Imagine there’s no heaven,
It’s easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people
Living for today.”
Why should we consider heaven and hell?
• If they doesn’t exist, rejection of the LORD soon follows: “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We [the Beatles] are more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first- rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity” (Lennon, 1966 interview for Evening Standard).
• But if they do exist, rejection of the LORD is extremely serious indeed. Jesus says in Mark 8:38, “Whoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
What should we think about heaven?
1) What won’t be in heaven
a) Tears, sorrow, pain, death (21:4)
• Tears- impotent despair after getting a yellow card (Gazza- show pic!); wild desperation (toddler lost its mother in the supermarket); inconsolable grief of David- “The king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept. And as he went, he said thus: ‘Oh my son Absalom- my son, my son Absalom- if only I had died in your place! O Absalom my son, my son!’” (2 Samuel 18:33). Not because his son was a rebel, but because his son was dead
• Death. The root of our sorrow. There’s a kind of death in all our tears- the fear of separation and loss by Gazza from his dream; the fear of separation and loss for the mother and toddler; the reality of separation and loss as it sinks it for the bereaved king David.
• The writer of Ecclesiastes points out one of the most ghastly facts about death: it renders everything, even wisdom, utterly pointless. “For there is no more remembrance of the wise than of the fool forever, since all that now is will be forgotten in the days to come. And how does a wise man die? As the fool!” (Eccl 2:16).
• Some might say, isn’t it just a natural thing? NO!! No it’s not! As Dylan Thomas watching his robust and militant father turn into a weak and dying old man cried out, “Do not go gentle into that good night./ Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” We were never designed to be annihilated.
• If we weren’t designed that way, where does this death come from? From the curse of Adam…
b) Curse (22:3)
• Adam. Right at the start of it, our most ancient forefather made a fatal act of defiance against his creator. And God promised that death would be the result of this disobedience- the whole earth and all succeeding generation under a curse. Romans 5 says, “through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned” (12).
• Us. Some people say, well hold on that’s not fair, we didn’t get a say in our human nature. But actually, which one of us can say we have been forced to sin, that our consciences have given us no option? We are all conspirators with the Adam within, and we all enjoy sin and striking out against the God who made us. Mark Twain said: “Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world” (Pudd’nhead Wilson). Why did he say this? Because perhaps for him death was preferable to an accursed existence, and Job of old very much experienced that temptation when he said, “Why did I not die at birth?” (3:11). There have been numerous cases of late of people like Diane Pretty who have been trying to get assisted suicide legalised. Some have actually managed to get over to Switzerland where they can be legally put down. When Diane Pretty finally died of her illness, her husband said, “And then for Diane it was over, free at last.” But when we die, are we really set free? Does the curse that had brought us death get lifted?
c) Us- sin and sinners (21:8,27; 22:15)
• Sinners face another death. The problem with the curse is that we take it with us. Our sin is the cause of our death, and so we ourselves simply cannot be the solution. We see in verse 8 that “the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practise magic arts, the idolaters and all liars- their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death.” Notice the oddness of the two sins to head the list- cowardice and unbelief. Could it be that so many of us know the truth about God and yet through fear or indifference are never prepared to act on it and put our faith in Him? Tragically, the Bible speaks of a second death even more horrific than the first, and to this death there is no end. “There is no peace,” says the LORD, “for the wicked” (Isaiah 48:22).
• Nothing impure. Verse 27 is very dogmatic: “nothing impure will ever enter [heaven].” We are all impure. None of us will ever enter, unless we find a solution outside of ourselves, some way the curse can be lifted.
So we see that there will be no tears or death or curse in heaven, and we rejoice about that, and the thought of God personally wiping away every tear from our eyes is just immensely beautiful. But since we are all sinners, and we are the problem, there will no us in heaven either, and so we despair, unless a solution can be found.
2) What will be in heaven- great things!
a) Great joy (Isaiah 65:18,19)
We aren’t told in great detail about the delights of being in heaven, but if we’re honest, we can hardly complain since we’d rather turn to the speculations of our own imagination than what God has actually said in His Word. God says that “The former things will not be remembered nor will they come to mind” and that those who enter the New Jerusalem will “be glad and rejoice for ever in what I create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more” (65:18,19). How wonderful!
b) Great healing (22:2,19)
The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil brought death, but the leaves and fruit of this tree of life, once prohibited to Adam and Eve, bring healing to the nations (Rev 22:2). Many people have considered this tree of life in heaven to be a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who is described in a different pair of metaphors as “the Sun of righteousness” who “brings healing in His wings” (Malachi 4:2), as we sing in the carol ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’. This healing comes freely to whoever will receive it, as “to him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life” (Rev 21:6).
c) Great cost (13:8)
But the healing was not without gigantic cost for Jesus, who was “made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). Revelation 13:8. “We considered Him stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted…the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4,6).
d) Great saints (21:2,3,24,27; 22:3-5,12,14)
It appears that you must be a saint to enter to heaven, you must be like a “bride beautifully dressed for her husband” (v2), or “one who overcomes” (v7) or “a king of the earth” bringing your splendour in with you. And chapter 22 v 12 says that Jesus “will give to everyone according to what he has done.” But actually the crucial qualification for being a saint is not some great miracle or even a life of piety and devotion to the poor; no, the crucial qualification is to have your name written in the Lamb’s book of life (20:15; 22:27) and to have your robes washed (22:14) and to “take the free gift of the water of life” (22:17). This is the same thing put in three different ways: Jesus, who loves us, has washed us from our sins in His blood (Revelation 1:5). Jesus does the work- He makes us saints, He saves us, He makes us clean, something we could never do for ourselves. Our attempts to clean ourselves are like children with dirty fingers trying to wipe away dirt from their faces- it can’t be done. Praise God for the wonderful gift of forgiveness through the blood of His Son! God Himself provides the one solution that we need.
e) Great worship of a great God (22:3-5)
‘Saint’ means one set apart for service. This is something that is almost completely neglected in the non-Christian perception of heaven- the worship of God. This is, after all the whole point of heaven. It’s not about our personal happiness- it’s about the glory and praise of our Creator and Redeemer. He made us for His pleasure and we are most satisfied when we, “His servants…serve Him” (22:3). As well as being reunited with those who loved Jesus and went before us into heaven, we will be reunited with the God whom we have known and loved, but never so much as glimpsed. We shall “see his face, and His name will be on [our] foreheads” (4). That face, so wonderful and new, and yet a face we will recognise as belonging to the one who has loved us before we were even born, and has carried us all through our lives, safe into our eternal home.
3) What this means for us now
a) Sinners
Do you see yourself as a sinner?
“How you behave toward cats here below determines your status in Heaven” (Robert Heinlein). This man was absolutely spot on apart from one detail: he was wrong about the cats. You see, it is how we behave towards the Son of God that determines whether we will enter heaven at all. God’s Word says, “If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed” (1 Corinthians 16:22). If God did not spare His only Son, but gave Him up for your sake, do you really think He will spare your soul on the Day of Judgement if you have spurned His gift so freely offered to you at such great cost for so long?
The Bible says that “now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). We should “seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near” (Isaiah 55:6), so that we will never hear Him say the words, “Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).
b) Saints
Do you see yourself as a saint, washed by the blood of Jesus and made clean from all your sins? Good! Do you trust the Lamb that your name has been written in His Book of Life? Good! But are you living in the light of His coming and being even more diligent to make your call and election sure (2 Peter 1:10)? Or are you like one who “has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins” (9), one who has wandered from the road? Even those who love the Lord most faithfully have moments, hours, days and even weeks when they are far from the Lord who purchased them with His blood. Let’s just take some time this coming week to reflect on the heavenly hope that awaits us, how unworthy we are of it, and how amazing is our Alpha and Omega, that He should grant us such a precious gift- that we will one day, without a doubt, walk with Him in the streets of that perfect city, the New Jerusalem, lost in wonder, love and praise.
