Bible Talks - Traditional Church (Sunday 8am)
Series: Letters from Heaven · Talk No. 10
New Heaven and New Earth
Sunday, 24 September 2006
This morning we come to the final two chapters of John’s vision recorded for us in the book of Revelation. Revelation Ch 21 begins with the statement,” Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.”
We shouldn’t be too surprised at the disappearance of the existing framework of the universe because it has been anticipated on a number of occasions in Revelation for instancein Ch’s 6, 8 & 16. Since the dragon, the beast and the false prophet are no more as Tim told us last week, then it is inappropriate that their habitat — heaven, earth and sea — should remain. Not only evil, but also the environment of evil, that is this earth, will be no more.
This teaching is in sharp contrast to the world-views of Marxists and secular humanists who both envisage a new age arising out of, and in continuity with, the existing order. John’s vision presents a new order not in continuity with, but in discontinuity with, the present creation. His prophecy is entirely in line with the prophet Isaiah who wrote in Isaiah 65: “I will create new heavens and a new earth The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind” followed by “But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy.”
What John then saw coming down out of heaven from God, in fulfilment of Isaiah's promise, was the Holy City, the New Jerusalem. It has come, not by peaceful evolution nor by violent revolution, but by God's gift from heaven.
This city is further described as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. The woman desperately menaced and pursued on earth by the dragon back in chapters 12 and 13 is now the pristine bride of the Lamb, coming in serene beauty from heaven. She is the community of those faithful and enduring ones who, in their deaths, have been raised with Christ in the first resurrection and who have been reigning with him throughout the symbolic thousand years. That is the bride is the church, the fellowship of faithful believers from the period between Christ’s fist and second comings.
Here is an astonishing teaching. The New Heaven, the New Earth, the New Jerusalem, are the Bride of Christ, the gathered community of the redeemed. That is the new creation is the church, the church gathered together with God at the end-time. So the culmination of everything, what it’s all leading too is the church, the gathered people of God.
Notice again the parallelism used by John. On one hand there is the community of the beast, the people of the Roman Empire, who worship Caesar and his image, and who are referred to as a city, "Babylon the Great"and as a woman, "the great prostitute". This community has brought great misery to its opposite number, the community of Christian believers, who are also depicted as a city "the new Jerusalem" and as a woman, "the bride of the Lamb". The community of the beast is now overtaken and replaced by the community of the Lamb; New Jerusalem replaces Babylon, the Bride of the Lamb replaces the great prostitute.
At this point John hears God speaking from the throne, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” These words aqre quotes from two Old Testament passages: Leviticus 26:12-13 and Ezekiel 37:27-28. In the former, God promises to make his dwelling with the people when he rescues them from slavery in Egypt. In the latter, God identifies his dwelling among them in terms of his sanctuary or temple, which will be a sign to the nations that he is his people's God. Together they make up the covenant slogan that runs right through the Bible, “I will be their God and they will be my people.” The time has now come when God has finally rescued his people, when he is himself present with them. This is also implied in Jesus’ other name “Immanuel” meaning God with us. God, now present with his people, “will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” There will be a cessation of the suffering which has been endured through persecution in loyalty to Christ.
God speaking from the throne now utters three further statements to John:
First, he declares the divine plan to the prophet: I am making everything new: there will be a new creation comprising God's people with whom he will dwell.
Second, God assures John that these words are trustworthy and true. Back in Chapter 3 and again in Chapter 19 these two words are a title of Jesus. And God commands John to write it down; the promise of the new creation comes from God and is reliable.
Third, God announces the fulfilment of his plan, it is done. The plan will certainly be fulfilled because of the identity of the speaker, who declares / am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. The divine I AM overarches history, knowing its beginning from its end. He who speaks the promise brings it to fulfilment. Therefore he speaks with authority and truth and his words are to be believed.
God continues to speak, first to those who will belong to the Holy City and then to those who will not. To the thirsty, that is to those exhausted from the struggle to remain Christian against the great pressure of the beast and the false prophet, God offers the water of life which will flow freely in the City, “/ will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.” These words resemble two promises of Jesus as found in the Gospel of John ("If a man is thirsty ..." in 7:37; "The water I will give him will become ... a spring of water welling up to eternal life" in 4:13), and strengthen the belief that the author of the Revelation also wrote the fourth Gospel.
Those who overcome, that is, who conquer the evil forces pitted against them which would make them abandon their faith, will inherit the New Jerusalem. Moreover, God will be their God and they will be God's children.
By contrast, however, and in parallel with the redeemed community who are the new Jerusalem, the Bride of the Lamb, there will be those destined for the fiery lake, what John calls the second death. These may be subdivided into two groups:
Firstly lapsed Christians the cowardly, the unbelieving or faithless, the vile or polluted
and secondly those who have only ever belonged to the community of the beast and the false prophet; the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practise magic arts, the idolators and all liars. Clearly John is exhorting and encouraging his readers to continue as Christians and not to give up the struggle. The alternative community of the faithless face a truly grim future.
John is addressed once more by an angel with a bowl full of the seven last plagues. Possibly it is the same angel who had summoned John back in Chapter 17 where the angel said. "Come I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute" Now, however, to balance the symmetry in the contrastive parallelism, the angel says: "Come I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb". As we have noted already, this woman is the church on earth who had been persecuted and tear-stained but who is now secure, protected and restored by God, ready for her marriage with her husband, the redeemer-Lamb.
Again note that what the angel showed was not a woman, but the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. Those who read need to keep alert to John's rapidly changing imagery. At the beginning of the chapter the Holy City is mentioned before the beautifully dressed bride. Here the order is reversed. Both images represent the gathered and redeemed people of God and John uses them almost interchangeably and keeps switching backwards and forwards from one to the other.
Three characteristics of the city are now established in pictorial terms. It is, first, a city which shines with the glory of God. In contrast to the haunted, doomed, smouldering Babylon of Chapter 18:9, the angel showed John a city brilliant in light and colour like that of a very precious jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal. The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone and the walls as well as the foundations were made of jasper and the twelve gates were each a dirty big pearl. The city and its streets were made of gold, as transparent as glass.
If the first creation of God is beautiful, as it truly is, then these images of the City of God teach us that the new creation is to be infinitely more glorious. As with the first creation the source of the beauty is not mankind but God. Ugliness and destruction in the world are due almost entirely to humanity; goodness and beauty in the old and the new creations are due to God. Men and women are indeed able to create beauty but when they do so it is in imitation of the beauty of God's creation. When people attempt to be creative apart from God, their efforts are frequently debased and corrupt. Our hope for a future which is bright with glory does not lie with Caesar or his modern political counterparts, or with architects, town-planners or the artistically creative, but with God.
The second characteristic of the city is its size. The angel who showed John the city also measured its length, width and height. It was, in fact, a perfect cube, but of enormous proportions. What John saw descending from God was vast, 12,000 stadia long, wide and high —12,000 stadia is about 2,250km or from Adelaide to Brisbane or London to Athens! In John's time that distance in every direction was probably as big as the known world, located as it was around the shores of the Mediterranean. John is saying that the city, the new creation, was huge, co-extensive with the present creation.
The repetition of the number twelve is important. The dimensions of 12,000 stadia, twelve gates, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve foundations, the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. Only those obedient to God as members of Israel in the old covenant, on one hand, and to the message of the apostles of the Lamb under the new covenant on the other, will be part of the city of God.
The city of God is now present. The created world and history have finally been overtaken by God's purposes. The end of the Bible's story is at hand. Babel/Babylon, the city of mankind in rebellion against God, the civilization which had always been harsh to the people of God domiciled within her, the community which despite its best efforts to achieve unity and solidarity was always one of internal hostility and alienation, is no more. The dwelling of God is with men and women, he will live with them.
In 22:3 we read “And his servants will serve him.” A better translation is “And his servants will worship him”. The book of Revelation began with John worshipping God “in the Spirit ... on the Lord's Day" and so it concludes with worship. Right through the book John's readers are confronted with the challenge of whom they shall worship: the Beast and its blasphemous image or the Enthroned One and the Lamb? Caesar or Christ?
At the time John wrote, the Emperor Domitian sought to be called "Lord and God" and had a large statue of himself erected in a specially constructed temple in Ephesus, the leading city of the province. Recent times had seen a remarkable proliferation of the imperial cult in Roman Asia. John says repeatedly 'do not worship the beast' It is for this reason John so frequently portrays the redeemed and the angelic hosts proclaiming and acclaiming worthiness of the Lord God almighty and the Lamb that was slain. Worship, however, must not be thought of only in terms of singing the praises of God, important as that might be. Rather, worship is the settled attitude of heart and mind towards the true source of power, truth and reality in life. John says, repeatedly, worship God.
At that time Satan deceived the hearts of people to believe that Caesar and the Roman State were worthy to receive reverence and honour. These days political leaders in both in the East and West tend to portray themselves as "saviours" of the people and that a "new age" will begin when they are elected or appointed. The electronic media beckon us to use consumer durables and other goods so as to fulfil our deepest needs, in what is almost a religious sense. God's people need to identify the pseudo-salvations and pseudo-saviours in every generation and to determine to give their worship only to God and the Lamb. This worship is for the whole of life in every situation. Certainly the verbal worship of God when we meet together in church is a vital focal point of that greater worship, but it is not by any means the totality of worship. Worship of God is a whole of life thing.
There are two notable absences from this city. John states that he did not see a temple in the city of God. Here Revelation is curiously bewildering for its readers. Earlier in the book there are many references to the temple. Christ promised the Philadelphians who overcame the opposing forces: "I will make a pillar in the temple of my God" (3:12). Those who came out of the great tribulation "serve God day and night in his temple". When God finally takes his great power and begins to reign, "God's temple in heaven is opened"
But when the Holy city, the new Jerusalem comes there is no temple becausethe Lord God almighty and the Lamb are the city's temple. Under the new covenant the people approach God directly, without human priestly mediation and without a sacred shrine. There doesn’t need to be a symbolic dwelling place for God on earth because God himself now lives with his people.
In the city, God and the Lamb will be worshipped directly and immediately, without a temple. The worship there of God and the Lamb are to be vital activities.
Also absent from the city are the celestial lights of sun and moon. The city has no need of the illumination given by these; the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp (21:23). Light was God's gift to the old creation to enable people to see, springing into being as the first command of the Lord, and being pronounced "good" by God (Genesis 1:3-4). The people needed spiritual and moral light, as well as physical light. The psalmist wrote: "In your light we see light" (Psalm 36:9). In the new creation, the City of God, the people will still be dependent on light which will be provided by God and the Lamb.
The city is, of course, people. It is a human environment. But which people? John saw the nations brought into the city, a reminder of the ancient promise by God to Abraham baqck in Genesis that "through his offspring all nations on earth will be blessed". The small and struggling churches of Roman Asia are not to limit their view of the composition of the city by their own circumstances. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendour into it. Because of the glory of God permanently irradiating the city, night will never fall; there will be no darkness. On no day will the gates of the city ever be shut as they customarily were at nightfall in ancient cities.
The light of God and of the Lamb will perfectly shine, as gates of the city remain open and the peoples of the world and their rulers stream in.
But not all may enter. Those destined for the "fiery lake", as referred to earlier (21:8), will not be permitted access. The impure and those who do what is shameful or deceitful are denied admission. These derive their impurity and shame by their participation in the sins of the alternative, evil community which is destined for the "fiery lake": murder, sexual immorality, magic, idolatry and lies (21:8). The members of that other "city" will not enter the City of God but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life. The contrastive parallelism underlying the Revelation surfaces once again. The "fiery lake" is the destination of the Beast, the false prophet and their loyal community whereas people loyal to the Lamb will be present with the Lord God almighty and the Lamb in the City of God. One community worships the Beast and its image whereas the other community worships the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb.
Again there is that reminder of the two sides of the gospel – heaven for those who turn to Christ, Dammnation for those who don’t, with no middle ground.
The river of life reminds us of the paradise of God in the garden of Eden, as found in Genesis 2, which has in turn provided inspiration for the prophets' vision of the future. The tree of life, also found in Genesis 2, is seen growing either side of the river which flows through the middle of the great, main street of the city.
The interesting thing is that here the word for tree is not the usual word for a living tree but a word normally used for a piece of dried wood. Commentators see this as a reference to the cross of Jesus.
The leaves from that tree are for the healing of the nations. The pain and suffering of humanity throughout history will be no more. No longer will there be any curse refers to the removal of the dire consequences of the disobedience of God in Genesis 3.
A brief description of life in the city now follows. Three statements are made about the blessings to be enjoyed by the people of the City.
First, his servants will serve or worship him. It is not clear whether the "his . . . him" refers to God or the Lamb. or both.
Second, these servants will see his face. Nothing will stand between him and them; they are his and he is theirs. Again it in not stated whose face is seen, God's or the Lamb's; possibly it is the face of both. His name (God's, the Lamb's, or both names?) will be on the forehead of the people, a mark of God's ownership of them. They belong to God and the Lamb; they shall see the face of God and the Lamb, something which, in the case of God, had not previously occurred
Third, these servants will reign for ever and ever. Here is a paradox: servants reigning! Their reign, previously referred to as those raised to life after suffering the "first death", was for "a thousand years" a long but limited time, but in the new Jerusalem that reign will continue without end in the City of God.
As we look at these descriptions we see mankind in Eden restored. Everything man needs for life is there. God himself is with them as he was in the garden and again man has dominion or reigns. All is as it was back in the garden before man sinned.
John then gives an epilogue about the words of prophecy in the book of Revelation. 5 times in Ch 22 he calls his wordsprophecy. That is words spoken by God.and he empasizes that “These words are trustworthy and true”, and the book is not to be sealed because the time for their fulfillment is near.
Clearly John sees his book of prophecy as being of absolute importance, to be read and observed in the churches.
and he adds his own personal assurance that he heard and saw these things.
The final statements that “ I am coming soon” (22:6-21) are Jesus’ words to John. In some overarching way, Jesus who spoke to John at the very beginning at Patmos, is speaking to him once more, bringing the whole Revelation to its appointed end. What is his final word? Three times he states that he is coming soon.
Behold, / am corning soon. Blessed is he who keeps the prophecy of this book.
Do not seal this book. The time is near. Behold / am coming soon, bringing my reward. I am Alpha and Omega, first and last, beginning and end. I am the root and offspring of David, the bright and morning star.
Surely / am coming soon.
How will John's readers respond to this? Will they choose to remain in the community of the Lamb or will they slip over into that other community, the people who worship the beast and who bear his mark on their forehead? Will they be inside the city, blessed and with washed robes and with access to the tree of life, the cross of the Lord Jesus? Or will they be on the outside, with evil men , sorcerers, fornicators, murderers, idolators and those who love and practise falsehood (22:15), destined for the "fiery lake" with their god, the beast and with his false prophet.
The reader must choose between two possible objects of worship: God/the Lamb or the beast;
between two communities: the New Jerusalem or Babylon;
between two destinations: the new heavens and the new earth or the fiery lake.
An open invitation is offered to the thirsty to come and receive the free gift of the water of life. It is not too late to be received by the Lamb.
The Revelation concludes powerfully, with a series of invocations, "come". The Spirit (speaking through John the prophet) and the bride (the people of Jesus) address their Lord. "Come", they plead. They ask that those who hear this message likewise plead with the Lord, "come". Jesus, the witness of these things says to John, in response to the invocations of prophets and people, "/ am coming soon". They say, finally, Amen, come Lord Jesus.
Revelation leaves us in no doubt: the great end-time battle of God does not lie in the future but in the past. Christ has conquered the twin evils of guilt and death by his own death and resurrection. As a consequence God's kingdom is now a present reality. This is perhaps the most important keys to understanding the mysteries of this book.
John urgently challenged his readers to worship God and the redeemer Lamb, not the pretentious counterpart, the Roman Emperor. Worship was a test of true conviction and loyalty. To worship Caesar as god was to deny Christ as Lord. To worship God Almighty and the Lamb was to deny Caesar. The many expressions of worship in the Revelation affirm that God and the Lamb were the only ones to whom one could trust one's all.
As we live in the world, and as we meet together with fellow believers, our lives are to be characterised by worship. This means that we say 'yes' to God and the Lamb, but 'no' to every false alternative.
It is to Jesus Christ, however, that most attention is directed. God has bestowed the honour of directly ruling history on Jesus, the Son of God. He is "Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David". As God's messiah he shares with God the kingdom of the world, and over the nations he is the "ruler of the kings of the earth"
Yet this dominion does not depend on his deity (which is undoubted) but on his victory in the end-time battle of God. It is precisely at this point that the Revelation takes us completely by surprise, as we have seen. The victory of God lies in the past. That victory occurred not in a military campaign but in the death of Jesus on the cross. The crowning paradox of the gospel is that Jesus is the Lion of Judah, the Christ authorised to exercise his Father's dominion over history, precisely because he is the Lamb who was slain. "The Lion of the tribe of Judah . . . has conquered" (5:5). In this way the Revelation focuses our attention on Jesus' death, resurrection, ascension, rule and return.
The book repeatedly portrays God as mercifully restraining the destructive powers of the evil king. God is not the source of evil. In his mercy he limits the extent of satanic destruction to provide rebellious humanity with the opportunity to repent from the worship of demons and idols, and from their breaking of his commandments. In the face of this evil, Christians are continually called on to display patience and faithfulness to Jesus. And it is by endurance and faith that believers share in the completed conquest of the Lamb who was slain.
Through Jesus' redemptive death and their fidelity to him, believers exercise his rule over the devil and all his evil forces. These faithful ones rule on earth during their lifetimes, and they rule from Heaven after their death. They share Jesus’ messianic rule as Lion of the tribe of Judah. This then is the conquest, the triumph of Christian believers as set out in the Book of Revelation. It is the humble triumph of patient faith in the face of deadly opposition, a triumph which will be realised in physical terms only at the end, in the new Jerusalem.
To his people Jesus says, "I am coming soon".
And we say :Amen. Come Lord Jesus”