Good morning. Please open your Bibles to Revelation 21.
I read an interesting stat this week. According to the American Automobile Association, 119 million Americans will travel at least 50 miles between Christmas and New Year’s. Nearly a third of our entire population will be on the move — packing suitcases, buying plane tickets, sitting in traffic, going through airport security.
And then I started trying to do the math. Which is usually a bad idea for me. But check my work.
There are only about 132 million households in the United States.
So if there’s 119 million Americans and 132 million families, that means every single person in America is either going home, or waiting for someone to come home.
That hits home. No pun intended.
Because “home” is never just an address. Home is where the people are who make us feel safe. Home is where the traditions live that remind us we belong somewhere. Home is the place where the recipes, the stories, the laughter, the grief, and the memories connect us to the people who came before us and the ones who will come after.
Which is why this time of year can both warm the heart and break the heart. Because for many, home isn’t what it used to be. Maybe someone who made it home isn’t at the table anymore. Or something happened this year that shattered the sense of family you always counted on. For many people, Christmas doesn’t just stir nostalgia — it stirs the ache of displacement.
But here’s the truth behind that ache:
our longing for home isn’t merely emotional.
It’s theological.
Longing for home is the longing for Eden in the human soul.
It’s the reminder that we were created to be at home with God.
And in God’s perfect timing, just days before we celebrate the incarnation — the moment God came to dwell with us — we arrive at Revelation 21, where God declares from the throne:
“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.”
Revelation 21:3
The Bible begins with God walking with Adam in a garden,
and it ends with God making His home with the children of Adam in a holy city.
Christmas celebrates the day God came to dwell with us.
Revelation celebrates the day His dwelling place is with man for good.
And that is the hope of this passage:
the God who came near in Bethlehem will bring us home forever in the New Jerusalem.
So with that in mind, I want us to read together Revelation 21:1-7
[READ, PRAY]
Point 1 — Home Coming (Revelation 21:1–8)
John opens this section with a breathtaking reversal of how we tend to imagine heaven. He writes, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth… and I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.” The final movement of the Bible is not human beings escaping the world to get to God. The final movement is God bringing home down to us.
And don’t miss the fact that this is Earth 2.0. Verse 1 makes it clear that the earth as we know it has passed away. We have never seen the world as God intended it. All we have ever known is an earth marred and broken by sin—and even so, we still find corners of it that take our breath away. So imagine for a moment what it will mean to spend eternity in a renewed creation, not a discarded one. This is not evacuation—this is restoration.
From the very beginning, God’s intention has always been to dwell with His people. Sin disrupted that fellowship, but it never canceled the promise. In Revelation 21, what was lost in Eden is restored on a cosmic scale. John then tells us what makes this world “new.” God does not scrape the universe and start over. Instead, everything that broke your heart here will be healed there. A loud voice from the throne announces: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore…”
You want to know what Homecoming looks like?
It looks like a world where every form of loss is reversed.
• No more death—because the last enemy has finally been defeated.
• No more mourning or crying—because sorrow has no soil to grow in.
• No more pain—because everything that wounds has been undone.
In verse 1, there’s a detail that puzzles modern readers: “The sea was no more.” For many of us, the sea is where we go to relax—my wife is a beach girl; she has a Life Is Good shirt that says, “The ocean is my medicine.” So why “no more sea”? Because in Hebrew thought, the sea represented chaos, evil, danger, and separation. John is saying something far better than “no beaches”—he is saying the possibility of chaos is gone forever.
Then, in verse 5, “He who sits on the throne”—God Himself—says, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Notice the wording: not all new things, but all things new. What makes home feel like home is familiarity, and we are not going to lose that in the new creation. Heaven will feel familiar because God is not replacing everything; He is restoring everything.
The same is true of your story. Will you remember your life on earth? Yes—even the painful parts. But by God’s grace, when you look back, it will be without tears or mourning or regret. Not because those moments are erased, but because they will finally be redeemed. God is not discarding your story. He is reclaiming it.
And before the section even ends, God extends an invitation:
“To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.”
Every ache you carry—every longing for a world without violence or grief or regret—is your soul’s homesickness for the world God is making new.
So hear the promise from the throne: these words are trustworthy and true. Come home.
Christmas proclaims that God came once to dwell with us. Revelation declares that He is coming again—and this time, He’s home for good.
Now let’s see how Revelation describes that home.
Point 2 — Home Described (Revelation 21:9–27)
When the angel says to John, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb,” you expect John to see a people. But then the angel carries him away and shows him the holy city Jerusalem.
Did the angel get distracted?
Is the bride somewhere in Jerusalem?
No—the Bride is Jerusalem.
The people are the place.
Heaven is not primarily about buildings and walls and gates.
It is about belonging.
It is a family home.
Let’s drill down and look at the language.
The Gates — The Twelve Tribes
Verse 12 says there are twelve gates, and written on them are the names of the twelve tribes of Israel.
Think about your childhood home. Maybe your name is still written on a doorframe, with hash marks and dates showing how tall you were each year. Maybe the scribbles are still there—crooked, uneven, messy—but nobody ever painted over them.
Why?
Because they weren’t flaws.
They were family.
And that’s what God is showing us in the New Jerusalem:
the names of His covenant people—our spiritual ancestors—are literally written into the architecture of God’s house. Reuben and Simeon and Levi… Gad and Asher and Issachar… Naphtali and Judah… Zebulun and Joseph and Benjamin. Their stories aren’t forgotten. They’re embedded into the entranceways of eternity.
The Foundations — The Gospel Beneath Your Feet
Then in verse 14, John notices that the city also has twelve foundations, and on them are written the names of the twelve apostles.
Think of the beauty of that:
• The Old Testament saints are the gates—the entry points into God’s story.
• The apostles are the foundations—the teaching on which our faith is built.
You walk into this city through the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…
and you stand on the gospel preached by Peter, John, and Paul.
Everything about this city says: You are not checking into a hotel. You are coming home to a family.
The Size — The Holy of Holies Expanded for Everyone
Verses 15–17 describe the dimensions of the city. It is a perfect cube—exactly like the Holy of Holies in the Old Testament temple. But instead of being a tiny room where only one man entered once a year, this cube is enormous—roughly two-thirds the width of the earth’s moon.
In other words:
The Holy of Holies has now become the whole city.
Everyone who lives there dwells in the presence of God.
No more waiting outside.
No more separation.
No veil.
No “keep out” sign.
No velvet rope. No bouncers.
Every child of God gets what humanity has longed for since Eden:
to live face-to-face with the Father.
The Materials — Glory Beyond Vocabulary (v. 18-21)
Then John tries to describe the materials. The walls shine like jasper. The street is pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations shimmer with gemstones so beautiful that half of them can’t even be confidently identified today. God is preparing a home so glorious that it simply doesn’t fit into our earthly vocabulary.
What Isn’t There — The Negatives That Take Your Breath Away
Ironically, some of the most beautiful descriptions in this chapter come from what isn’t there:
• Verse 22: No temple — because God Himself is the temple.
• Verse 23: No sun or moon — because the Father is the light and the Lamb is the lamp.
• Verse 25: No shut gates — because nothing unclean or threatening ever approaches.
• Verse 25 again: No night — because the light never goes out.
And think about it: If there is no sun or moon, nothing to mark seasons, no night to divide the day… then there is no time there.
People sometimes ask, “Won’t I get bored in heaven? What will I do for billions of years?” But heaven isn’t endless time. It’s the absence of time. It’s being in the presence of God in a perfect, unbroken “now.”
Have you ever had a moment with people you love where time disappeared? Where you didn’t check your watch, you didn’t think about tomorrow, you didn’t feel rushed—you were simply there, fully present, fully alive?
Take the best of those moments and remove the shadows.
Remove the tears.
Remove the misunderstandings.
Remove the sin.
Remove the end.
That’s heaven.
That’s home.
This is Home Described—
a home with family names on the walls,
with the gospel in the foundations,
with the Father’s glory in the atmosphere,
and with the Son Himself lighting every corner.
Point 3 — Home Restored (Revelation 22:1–5)
In Revelation 22, we move from the streets of gold in the New Jerusalem to the green spaces. The angel now shows John “the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.” That imagery should sound familiar. It’s Eden language. It’s Genesis language. In the very beginning, a river flowed from the garden to water the whole earth. The first home humanity ever knew was a place of life, beauty, provision, and fellowship with God.
Now, in the final chapter of Scripture, we go back to the garden. But this time, it’s not limited to a corner of creation—it flows from the throne at the center of God’s new world. The river of life is not just a feature of the landscape; it is the very flow of God’s presence, God’s grace, God’s sustaining life for His people.
And then John sees the tree of life, growing on both sides of the river. Again, the echoes of Eden are unmistakable. The tree of life was the one tree humanity lost access to after the fall. Cherubim guarded it with flaming swords so that sinners could not eat and live forever in a broken world. But now, in the world made new, the tree of life stands open and available. No gates. No guards. No flaming swords. No prohibition. The life we were created for is finally the life we will receive.
And John says the tree bears twelve kinds of fruit—one for each month—and that “the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” That line is stunning. The healing of the nations means the healing of every wound that has torn humanity apart. Every division we’ve created—racial, political, cultural, economic—will be healed. Every injustice that has scarred the world will be undone. Every conflict that has defined history will be mended. The curse that fractured Eden will be reversed, not just personally, but globally.
And then John says, “No longer will there be anything accursed.”
If you know your Bible, you can’t think of the Garden of Eden without thinking about the fall. Those awful words from the righteous God when He cursed the serpent, the woman, the man, the ground. And we have been living under that curse ever since.
Which makes Revelation 21:3-4 one of the greatest promises in all of Scripture.
No curse. No brokenness. No sin. No shame. No decay.
The world that began in blessing ends in blessing restored.
But then we reach the line that is the highest promise of Scripture, the dream of every prophet, patriarch, apostle, and pilgrim:
“They will see His face.”
When Moses asked to see God’s glory, God told him, “You cannot see my face and live.” When Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, he cried, “Woe is me, for I am undone.” When the disciples glimpsed Christ’s glory on the Mount of Transfiguration, they fell to the ground in fear.
But in the new creation, the redeemed will see God’s face—not in terror, but in joy. The distance between humanity and holiness is gone forever. The fellowship Adam and Eve had for a moment in Eden will be ours for eternity in the New Jerusalem. And John says God’s name will be on our foreheads—not as a mark of ownership, but as a mark of belonging. You will finally know Him, and you will finally know yourself.
And then the final reversal: “They will reign forever and ever.”
The vocation humanity lost in the fall—our calling to steward creation, to rule under God, to flourish and cause creation to flourish—that calling returns. Not as drudgery. Not as labor. But as joy.
Your story does not end in decay or decline.
Your story ends in glory, healing, and calling.
This is Home Restored—
Eden regained, curse reversed, vocation renewed, fellowship perfected, and the face of God unveiled.
Now Revelation turns from what we will experience…
to how we prepare for it.
Point 4 — Home Soon (Revelation 22:6–15)
In verse 6-7, the tone shifts. Suddenly the language becomes urgent, emphatic, insistent. In many Bibles, there’s a visual cue. You see red letters again, which means Jesus is speaking directly.
And three times— verse 7, verse 12, and verse 20, Jesus himself says:
“Behold, I am coming soon.”
Not “eventually.”
Not “someday.”
Soon.
And the angel says these visions are “trustworthy and true.” In other words: This isn’t symbolic fiction. This isn’t religious poetry. This is your future, as certain as the One who speaks it.
But this section also carries a warning. Verse 11 says, “Let the evildoer still do evil… and the righteous still do right.” That sounds strange until you realize what it means:
when Jesus returns, your character will be fixed.
There will be no more time to change direction.
And that’s why verse 14 says, “Blessed are those who wash their robes.”
You don’t enter this home because you were good enough.
You enter because Jesus washed you clean.
This entire vision — this entire home — is a gift for the redeemed.
And then Jesus speaks again:
“Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me.”
The Greek word here is misthos, which literally means:
• wages
• reward
• repayment
• what is owed or due
It doesn’t automatically mean punishment — it means appropriate return.
So Jesus is saying:
“When I come, I bring the rightful outcome of every life.”
For the redeemed, that’s unimaginable reward.
For the unrepentant, it’s judgment.
We who are in Christ do not wait for this with dread.
We wait with eagerness. We wait like a child at the window watching for headlights in the driveway.
Home is coming.
And Jesus says He will not delay.
The Invitation — Come Home (Revelation 22:16–21)
Revelation ends not with charts or speculation, but with an invitation. One of the most tender altar calls in the Bible:
“The Spirit says come.” That’s God Himself.
The Bride says “Come”— that’s the church.
The one who hears says ‘Come’— that’s everyone here this morning.
If you are thirsty, come. Take the water of life without price.”
This is not an invitation to religion.
This is an invitation to home.
If you are homesick…come.
If you’re tired… come.
If you’re longing for something this world cannot deliver… come.
If you’ve carried regret or shame or grief… come.
If you know in your heart you are far from the God who made you… come.
Because the God who came once to dwell with us
is coming again to bring us home —
and this time, He’s home for good.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
