Revelation 21:1-6
Heaven on Earth
The famous Christian author, C.S. Lewis, once wrote, “The Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.” Today and next week we’re going to think a little of the next world. We’re in week two of a four-week series on some key passages in Revelation. Today we get a little taste of heaven on earth, as the heavenly city of Jerusalem descends into a new heaven and a new earth.
You should thank me. We’re picking up near the end of the book after all the bad stuff has ended: sinners have been judged and condemned; Satan and his evil demons have been thrown into the lake of fire. It’s time now for God to begin the rest of eternity with a redeemed people who have had their sin forgiven and stripped away. That’s us!
The commentator Erik Heen summarizes our passage well. He writes, “As the vision of the new creation continues to unfold in Revelation, the distinction between heaven and earth simply falls away. Heaven quite literally descends to earth, radically renewing it. In the process, all life on earth is restored to God's intent for it.”
Our writer of Revelation, the Apostle John, gives us a couple of images to relate what this new heaven and earth will be like. First, John describes a “city,” but not just any city. This is the holy city of Jerusalem, the capitol city of heaven. God has prepared it in the heavenly realms and God now lowers it down to a waiting new earth. Here is a perfect place for all its kingdom citizens to reside.
John also talks of a “wedding.” Ancient Hebrew weddings included three phases: First, there was the “betrothal” period, what we might call an engagement, except back then breaking a betrothal required a divorce; that’s how serious it was. Next there was the “presentation,” a series of festivities that might last several days, all leading up to the last phase: the “ceremony,” which included an exchange of vows.
Currently we are engaged to Jesus, so to speak. Someday we will be presented to him at what the Bible calls the wedding feast in heaven. And then comes the ceremony itself, which John describes here: the church of all true believers is adorned as a beautiful bride walking down the aisle toward Jesus, the groom. I’ll never forget seeing my bride enter the back of the sanctuary, on the arm of her father, and how radiant she looked as she came down the aisle to meet us. God says his church of believers will be radiant—with all sin stripped away—as we meet our groom, Jesus Christ, at the altar.
Now, according to Jewish custom, the bridegroom would take his bride to live in an extension he built onto his father’s house. (This is still done in certain cultures today.) That’s why Jesus promised, “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:2)
Jesus is there now, the master carpenter, preparing a place for you and for me.
JOKE: Did you hear about the pastor and the taxi cab driver who arrived at the Pearly Gates at the same time? St. Peter came out to greet them and turned to the cab driver and said, “Sir, if you’ll follow me, we have quite the place for you. In fact, you can see it from here, that mansion up there on the hilltop.” As they walked away, the pastor beamed with excitement, awaiting his just reward. St. Peter returned and said, “Pastor, we have this quaint little shack down here off the alley for you.” The pastor was irate! He said, “I’ve been preaching the word of God for 40 years and all I get is a shack, while that taxi driver gets a mansion???” Sadly, Peter shook his head and said, “When you preached, people slept. When he drove, people prayed.”
I’m sure whatever Jesus is preparing for us will be just fine!
Verse 3 carries a third image from John, that of the “tabernacle,” that tent-like house of God that pre-dated the Temple. Remember the tabernacle in the wilderness? Anywhere the nation of Israel went, the Tabernacle went with them. The tabernacle was a sign to everyone that God was with this people.
Here at the end of the Bible God promises to come down with the city. He promises to tabernacle with us. The word as a noun means a dwelling or abode. As a verb, it means to hang out with, to be with. God will live with us.
That makes me think about Jesus’ title, “Immanuel,” which means “God with us.” John talked about Jesus’ incarnation at that first Christmas when he wrote in John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” That word “dwelling” is the same word “tabernacle.” Jesus came to tent/dwell/tabernacle among us, but then he had to return to heaven so he could send his Holy Spirit to be in believers worldwide. Someday, though, God in his Trinitarian fullness will dwell among us for good. We will belong to him and he to us. To borrow from Song of Solomon 2:16: “My beloved is mine and I am his.”
So what will this be like, with God living among us? John describes it by telling us what won’t be in heaven. He says in verse 4 there will be no more death, no more mourning, no more crying, no more pain! At the end of time as we know it, what will pass away is death itself! Eternity fully begins. Heaven has no regrets, no doubts, no pain, no sadness. Think about it: heaven has no hospitals, no funeral homes, no cemeteries, no ambulances, no Kleenex. We won’t have any need for those things. For God is making all things new!
So what will heaven have in it? We’ll talk more about that next week, as we look at the last chapter of the Bible. But today, let me give you one word suggested from verse 6: heaven will have “fulfillment.”
Where do I see that? Look at how God identifies himself in verse 6: He says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” These are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. Alphabets are used for storing and conveying knowledge. So this is another way of God saying, “I am everything you ever need to know.”
God also says, “I am the Beginning and the End.” God is over time. The Bible begins with the phrase, “In the beginning God...” God was there before the beginning and God will be there after the end, when he initiates the new phase of eternity with a new heaven and a new earth. People say time is the most precious commodity. If you lose money, you can always earn more. But you can never earn more time. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. And yet God reigns over it completely, the Beginning and the End.
Lastly God says he will quench our thirst. He will give us water “without cost” from the spring of the water of life. Salvation is a free gift; it can never be earned. This is grace, getting what we don’t deserve. Someone once said that GRACE stands for “God’s riches at Christ’s expense.” Someone has to pay for that living water. Jesus paid, through his death on a cross. He paid the debt we could not pay. Jesus had told the crowds, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink” (John 7:37). He offered a drink of everlasting water to the woman at the well. God alone satisfies our deepest needs. God alone gives eternal life. Heaven is all about ultimate fulfillment.
Do you remember the C.S. Lewis books, “The Chronicles of Narnia?” In book seven, the characters who have lived in Narnia complete their mission there. In a closing chapter entitled, “Further Up and Further in,” Aslan, the lion who represents Jesus, has come for them to take them home. They are leaving Narnia for good and entering Aslan’s land, but there they encounter familiar scenes. One of the characters cries out, “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.”
I believe that when we enter the real heaven, we will say, “This is the land I’ve been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason we loved the old earth so much is that it sometimes looked a little like this.” It will be a new heaven and a new earth, restored and redeemed. It will be the place we were meant to live! Heaven on earth! Let us pray...
Thank you, Father, for this beautiful image of heaven. We don’t deserve it, but you are good to give it to us, based on your grace and forgiveness alone. We look forward to the day when our faith will be sight, when you will live among us, when you will remove every pain and sorrow and bring fulfillment everlasting. You are an awesome God, standing above all knowledge and even time itself. Yet we know your timetable is ever advancing, to that point in eternity when you create a new heaven and a new earth and draw us to yourself through the blood of Jesus our Lord, amen.
