Revelation 21:1– 8 Our Heavenly Home
Thesis: Our eternal home.
Introduction: Good evening. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you tonight. We have had good music and it has blessed our hearts,
And I hope your heart is now prepared for the message. Our message tonight is ‘our heavenly home.’
I want to encourage you tonight by reminding you that heaven is a real place, that heaven is going to be a regenerated place and finally we will see that heaven will be filled with the redeemed.
I. Heaven Is A Real Place
A. Is heaven a real place? Is there a land that is fairer than day waiting for us, the redeemed, one day? The Bible speaks of heaven as a real place. In John 14: ‘In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.’ Jesus speaks of heaven as a place. It is going to be a prepared place for a prepared people. In the books of Mark and Luke it is recorded that Jesus sent two of his disciples into Jerusalem in order to find a room and prepare it for the Passover meal. It is the same word found here in John 14. Jesus sent them with a specific purpose to prepare a place for them together. Jesus has done that for us. Have you ever went ahead of your party to a restaurant so you could get a table. You get to the restaurant and you tell the waitress I have a party of 10 or 12 coming. She pulls tables together and gets the silverware and napkins laid out on the table. She is preparing a place for your fellow guest. Jesus ascended into heaven to prepare us a place there in the Fathers house. It is a real place prepared for our home coming.
Let me add a word of caution for those that are who are not yet prepared for heaven. Just as real as heaven is, so is hell. As sweet and wonderful and beyond description as heaven is so hell will be in all its horrors and sufferings. Just as there is nothing imaginary about heavens glory there is nothing imaginary about the gory hell you will be in forever if you do not repent and place your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Hell is a prepared place, but it is prepared for the devil and his angels, not for you, but if you die without being saved you will be with the evil one and the smoke of your torment will rise up forever and ever so the Bible says.
B. If heaven is a real place, where is it located? When the Bible speaks of heaven, it can mean one of three locations. It can mean the atmosphere around us in which the birds fly above our heads. It can mean the starry heaven we see at night where the sun and the moon is or it can mean the abode of God. Our message tonight concerns heaven where the throne of God is located. Where is that place where Gods throne is found?
When the Bible speaks of heaven, it is no accident that it speaks of it as being up. We must look up to see the birds in the air. We must look up to the stars in the sky and we must look up to God. Why is that? Why is heaven spoken of as being above us and beyond us. I think there a couple of reasons.
1. It is because we are fallen. When man sinned in the garden of Eden he fell morally and spiritually. For man to go down to is go farther away from God, but when a man looks up he looks to God for help. Whence cometh my help the psalmist said? He said, ‘I will lift my eyes unto the hills’ We are to look up to God because we are fallen. But the Bible also says God looks down to us. In his great agony Job said, ‘Is not God in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the stars, how high they are!’ Job knew where God was. The Psalmist said, ‘For he hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary; from heaven did the LORD behold the earth;’. 2. It is because God is greater than we are. Isaiah 55:9 says, ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.’
The Bible speaks of hell as down. If you are not saved you are going to go down, down, down away from God and heaven into hell. I’ve had enough of down! I’m ready for up! As somebody once said, ’I’m not looking for the undertaker, I’m looking for the upper-taker.’ The Bible says in 1 Thessalonians 4:16, ‘For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.’
II. Heaven Is A Regenerated Place
Not only does the Bible teach us that heaven is a real place but it also teaches us something else. There is going to be a new heaven and a new earth. It is going to be a regenerated place.
To be regenerated means to be made new again. The Bible speaks of our being saved as regeneration. Titus 3 says of our salvation, ‘not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit’. The Bible tells us this sin infested, sin infected, sin corrupted world will be purged by fire. 2 Peter 3:10 says, ‘But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up.’ The Scriptures teach us in Romans 8:21, ‘the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.’ God will purge this world by fire. Psalm 102:25 says the heavens and the earth ‘will all grow old like a garment; and like a cloak you will change them, and they will be changed.’
In the new heaven and new earth John says three things will be absent.
1. Sorrow will be absent. Look at verse 4. God will wipe every tear from our eyes. Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. All of the sorrows we encounter here will be melted into a price treasure when we stand in the presence of the Lord Jesus.
2. Sin will be absent. Sorrow will be absent because sin will be absent in heaven. Sin is the birth mother of the sorrows of this world. (James 1:14-16) Look at verse 27. It says ‘But there shall no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lambs Book of Life.’ There will no one in heaven to entice us to disobedience nor will there be anyone in heaven being disobedient to the Lord. Someone said, ‘Think of it– in heaven the saints never think a sinful thought.’
3. Separation will be absent in heaven. Here on earth we experience the pain of separation. The one experience of separation that is common to all men is the separation brought about by death. The Bible says in James 1:15 sin brings forth dead. Romans 6:23 says the wages of sin is death. Death and separation is all that sin brings but sin will be absent in heaven so there will be no more separation.
a. There will be no separation from the saints in heaven. Look at verse 1. Notice that odd little statement at the end where it says there will be no more sea. Why will the sea disappear? I believe the Bible tells us there will be no more separation among the peoples of God. We will all be together in heaven. There will be no more restless days, but tranquility in heaven for us.
I want you to think about something with me. Tonight three churches have gathered in this room for singing and celebration. Do you realize what this is in reality? This is a foreshadow of heaven. In this world the saints of God are separated by geography and death and other things but all that will be gone in glory. There will be no separation of the saints in heaven. 1 Thessalonians 4:17 says ‘Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them (those that have died and went to be with the Lord) in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.’ Someday we will be all together with the saints.b. Best of all, there will be no separation from the Savior in heaven. We shall be in the Saviors presence. Like a beautiful bride on her wedding day we will meet our Savior in heaven before the throne of God. Heaven simply would not be heaven without Jesus.
The Light of Heaven is the face of Jesus
The Joy of heaven is the presence of Jesus
The melody of heaven is the name of Jesus
The harmony of heaven is the praise of Jesus
The theme of heaven is the work of Jesus
The employment of heaven is the service of Jesus
The fullness of heaven is Jesus
In the regeneration heaven and earth will kiss. Over and over in this chapter it is emphasized that we will be in the very presence of God forever.
III. Heaven Is Filled With The Redeemed
I once had a college professor who professed he believed that if there was a Supreme Being, he would be great enough to let everyone into heaven. It is obvious that professor did not know what the Scriptures say. The Bible is clear on the matter that only those people redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ will enter into those glorious streets and stand before the throne of our Lord and Savior. Verse 24 says ‘And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light.’ Are you saved? In Revelation 5:9 we find this song sang by the living creatures and the 24 elders who worship before the throne. They sang to the Lamb saying, ‘You are worthy to take scroll, And to open its seal; For you were slain. And have redeemed by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation.’ These redeemed by the blood are you and I who and we will one day walk with the rest of the redeemed in the light of the Lamb of God in His eternal heaven. What will that day be like? I can only imagine.
