Three hundred years before Christ, in the days of Alexander the Great, the Greeks made a list of what they called the “Seven Wonders of the World.”
This group is composed of monuments remarkable for their splendor and/or size:
· Pyramids of Egypt
· Hanging Gardens of Babylon
· Temple of Diana at Ephesus
· Statue of Jupiter in Athens
· The Great Mausoleum of Persia
· Colossus of Rhodes
· Lighthouse of Alexandria
· Today we have a similar list called the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. They are:
· The Grand Canyon
· The Rio de Janeiro Harbour
· Iguaçu Falls of Argentina
· Redwood Trees of California
· Mt. Everest
· Amazon River
· Northern Lights
This morning I want us to stand in awe of the Wonders of Heaven. Our text is Revelation 21. We are past the horror, past the evil, past the violence that surrounded us so much in the earlier chapters of the Revelation. We have arrived.
• At the place of new beginnings.
• At the place where dreams are born.
• At the place our distance ancestors lived and lost awhile.
This is not the end of the world. This is the renewal of the world. The restoration of all things. The book of Revelation does not have an ending. It has a new beginning. We call it heaven. It is filled with many wonders. I was going to preach on the seven wonders of heaven but then decided that really there is only one Wonder of Heaven.
God is the wonder of heaven. Everything else is a footnote. 60 years ago I was a young man from Prince Edward Island. For some reason I took great interest in a little Prairie town on the other side of the country - Innisfail, Alberta. In those days Innisfail had several large grain elevators, there was Fred’s Grocery Mart, and of course, the Club Café where you could have a veal cutlet dinner for next to nothing. I loved the historic village. They even had a small Railroad station where the rail liner between Calgary and Edmonton stopped each day.
And so I started going to Innisfail, a lot, several times a year. But it wasn’t the grain elevators that I was focused on, it wasn’t the Fred’s Grocery store that I looked forward to seeing, it wasn’t even the Club Café with its great cutlets. I went to Innisfail to see a beautiful teen age girl. She had captured my heart. I wanted to get to know her better and spend the rest of my life with her.
Why do you want to go to heaven? Is it the place or the person? Many people want to go heaven for the same reason they want to go to Arizona – they think the weather will be better and the people will be decent.
Do you see how the book of Revelation describes heaven? God will live with humans, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. God with them. How can anything go wrong with God at your side. All the wonders of heaven flow out of the fact that God is with us – joy, peace, love. God almighty living with humans is the greatest wonder of heaven.
As far as the eye can see the hills are peppered with laughter. Creation playing with creation. Toddlers ride atop lions, children pile onto the back of big brothers, Mothers smile as they wipe gold dust from their youngster’s face. Teenagers jump off a cliff into a deep pool of water that doesn’t understand the word drown. God is at our side – forever!
God has been dreaming of this moment from the dawn of time. He has forever wanted a close, intimate relationship with us. That was His original intent. We are his pride and joy. God loves us with an everlasting love.
And just to make sure no one in this meeting thinks it’s the other guy that God loves. Have you checked out the names engraved on the twelve gates of heaven. Can you see the names carved onto the twelve foundations of the Holy City.
The 12 gates of the New Jerusalem are named after the twelve sons of Israel. How much do you know about those rascals? Ten of them were prepared to murder their brother Joseph. Reuben the eldest went to bed with his father’s concubine. Judah got his daughter in law pregnant. Shall I tell you about Gad or Dan or Issachar? Do you really want to be depressed this morning with the stories of jealousy, incest, brutality, fraud, kidnapping, and slaughter, from these 12 men.
My point here is that God’s grace is greater than all our sins. The New Jerusalem is populated with people who have done all these terrible things and worse, and yet God’s grace, God’s love, God’s power reached them and redeemed them.
And if you still question if you belong in heaven, check out the names on the 12 foundation stones. Peter, James and John, Andrew, Philip, Thomas and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Bartholomew, Thaddeaus, Simon the Canaanite, and Matthias. What we have here ladies and gentlemen, is a random gathering of ordinary people. Hopeful and fearful, sacrificing and grasping, courageous and inconstant human beings. The 12 Apostles! Some well-known to history. Most unknown. In other words, what we have here are the people who attend Resurrection Anglican Church.
And God wants to live with us forever. This has been God’s idea from the very beginning. Here is the God who throughout all generations and through all 66 books of the canon has stopped at nothing to set the wrongs right, to undo sin’s curse, to draw near his beloved.
• What kind of God is this? A God who lets me place my fingers in the holes of his hands as we walk side by side in the cool of the day.
• What kind of God is this? A God who spots me cowering in Church on a Sunday morning, feeling unworthy, yet calls to me Come! Come!
• What kind of God is this? A God who probes my wandering heart, knows me more intimately than anyone else and yet loves me still.
God is the wonder of heaven. Everything else is a footnote. No more sea, no more tears, no more pain, no more death. All footnotes.
However, in closing I would like to read an alphabetical list of the no mores of heaven as a footnote. I do this for fun because heaven is going to be filled with joyfully fun and because I want us to leave this meeting with awe and wonder.
After you bask in the unbelievable wonder of living with God Almighty forever here are the footnotes in Alphabetical order:
· No more adversary, arthritis, aggravation, annoyance, adultery, abortion, or Aides
· No more, baldness, backache, bitterness, broken bones, broken homes, and bad business meetings.
· No more cancer, cemeteries, crime, cussing, complaining, car wrecks, or crutches.
· No more divorce, drugs, deceit, disappointments, denominations, death, and definably no more devil.
· No more evil, no more enemies, and no more eyeglasses,
· No more funerals, false teeth, fads, fears, failings, fighting, fussing, feuding, and no more faultfinding.
· No more garbage, guns, gout, goodbyes, no more guilt and no GST.
· No more heart attacks, hearing aids, hospitals, and high blood pressure.
· No more Insurance, incest, and insects no more loneliness.
· No more jails, jealousy, kidney stones, no more kings, killings, no more liars, or lice.
· No more misunderstandings, or mosquitoes,
· No more newspapers, nastiness, nudity, no more needs.
· No more obituaries, obesity, no more policemen, pain, pornography, pills, problems, no more politicians
· No more quarrels, no more questions, no more quitting.
· No more rebellion, no more racism, and no Rolls Royce.
· No more sickness, sorrows, sinus, snakes, sweat, selfishness, shacking up, stealing, stupidity and no more sin.
· No more toothaches, tobacco, television, tears, tariffs, trials or toupees, no more wayward children, no more wheelchairs, no more x rated movies, no more yielding to sin, youthful lust, no more zigzagging.
Small wonder there will be joy unspeakable and full of glory in heaven.
One more check. Who is the greatest Wonder of heaven? God!
Why do you want to go to heaven? The place or the person?
