What Is Heaven? (Revelation 21:1-8)

VIDEO

 What Is Heaven? (Revelation 21:1-8)

GIST: Heaven is God’s transformative grace fully realized: His people in His presence experiencing His love forever.

Welcome back to our study in Revelation. After taking December off to focus our hearts on Jesus’ incarnation, we’re picking up with, well, the end of our study… of the end ☺️. Throughout this journey together (and it has been a journey), we’ve seen that Revelation was never meant to be a mystery to solve but rather a revealing of Jesus to us. It gives us a picture of who He is and how He will work in a broken world until He returns to judge sin, destroy death, and redeem His people. We’ve watched this unfold in a series of images circling back through the same “kinds” of events over and over…until chapter 20 where Jesus’ return was depicted for the final time showing Him victorious over everything. Now, we’re in the last two chapters and what do we see? Heaven. 

So much of these final chapters flows around a driving message: Jesus is coming back, and it will be wonderful for those who have accepted His rescue and Hell for those who have chosen to run from Him. Nonetheless, I just want to walk through what we see specifically in the first eight verses of chapter 21 this morning. Before I say anything else, let’s just look at that→

“1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." 5 And He who was seated on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new." Also He said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true." 6 And He said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. 7 The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be His God and He will be My son. 8 But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death."”

A lot of this imagery is probably very familiar to many of us. However, let’s not forget we’re still in the same book we’ve been studying for over a year together. These images are John putting what he saw into the words he knew. We have to be careful not to lose the message by trying to make the pictures work with our understanding of how things should be. I know we all want to know what Heaven is going to look like, and what our bodies will look like, and what we’ll spend our time doing. However, that’s not the kind of picture we get. Instead, we’re told more impactful truths like this (and here’s our gist☺️)→ Heaven is God’s transformative grace fully realized: His people in His presence experiencing His love forever. Let’s break that down.

I. Heaven

New? Ok, before we get into the message portion, I do want to at least address the elephant in the room. Maybe you’re asking this question. Maybe you’ve never thought about it. However, since I imagine someone is, we need to talk about it for a second. This passage, which we’re reading on New Years Day by the way ☺️, starts by saying John saw a new heaven and a new earth.  “1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”

So, what does that mean? Full disclosure: I don’t completely know, and I don’t think anyone with integrity will say they do. There’s been lots of speculation. The prevailing thoughts are that either the world will be completely destroyed and then remade, or the world will just be cleaned up, or (something between the two—and this is where I fall right now) something inbetween—the world will be completely transformed or redeemed. This seems consistent with the message of Scripture and other passages like 2 Peter 3:6-7 where Peter compares Jesus’ return and final judgment to the flood. “6 Through these the world of that time perished when it was flooded. 7 By the same word, the present heavens and earth are stored up for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.” (CSB). What happened then? Was the world completely destroyed and then remade? Not really, but it was completely changed. For that reason, I would say it seems like the same kind of thing is going to happen. Heaven will be earth completely transformed: made new, made perfect. Later, we’re going to see Garden of Eden imagery—which is helpful. I’ve said this as often as I can in this study, but we have to fight the sterile white room image of Heaven. Heaven will be vibrant and alive in a way the best parts of this fallen-creation only hint at! 

It will be the world with no sea. Not necessarily because there won’t be vast bodies of water in Heaven, or Jesus had enough of it the first time ☺️, but because the sea symbolized chaos and destruction in the ancient world. Heaven will be a clear absence of that! The old way of sin has passed away. Life is new. 

Ok, so that’s the elephant. Here’s the meat. Heaven, whatever it will “look like”, will be→ 

II. Grace Fully Realized

 “2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”

Here we’re coming back to two pictures used throughout this letter to describe God’s people: His Bride and His City. Both of these are used to represent→

His People in His Presence. The Church is depicted as the Bride of Christ. Why? Because He loves us. Because He took Hell in our place to present us blameless before Himself that we might be with Him forever. Because only the intensity of a strong marriage relationship even comes close to the level of love Jesus has for us (and it’s just a shadow of His love!). What about the city? Specifically, we’re called Jerusalem, the Holy City, the place where God met with His people. If we had any question about what this means, God’s voices thunders it home for us→ “3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God.”” Heaven is being with Jesus. It is the ultimate place of safety and belonging…because we’re with Him! If that doesn’t excite us, then we’re probably not really looking forward to the reality of Heaven, and we probably need to look at the state of our relationship with Him now.

Heaven is His people in His presence→

Experiecing His Love. I don’t think we need much commentary on these verses: “4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Being in the presence of Jesus is the end of all suffering! Why? Because the God of the universe will personally wipe away every tear! We’ve seen this before in Revelation (Chapter 7), and it gets me every time. I have been around a lot of hurting over the past few weeks. In fact, I tend to be around heart ache most of the time. The thought of Jesus taking away pain and death, the thought of no reason for morning and final tears being wiped away… This is love! 

All the hurting will be taken away because, as Brett Davis put it, Jesus came burning away all that isn’t love! Look at where these verses go next. In fact, we’ll look at this as our→ 

TAKEAWAYS

(But don’t get too excited…because these are kind of like points this morning ☺️.)

“5 And He who was seated on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new." Also He said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true." 6 And He said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. 7 The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be His God and He will be My son. 8 But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death."”

1. This is true. The God of the universe, the one reigning on His sovereign throne, says: “Trust Me! I’m the Alpha and Omega.” Life is from Him and for Him, and He’s offering life withoutpayment for all who conquer. That conquering, as we’ve seen throughout this letter, is all about clinging to the conqueror. Those whohave been rescued receive etneral life without payment…because Jesus has already paid!

2. We can look forward to a day when His love is all we see. Again, I love how Brett Davis defines the wrath of God: His righteousness burning away all that isn’t love. Life will be defined by Jesus alone. There will be no brokenness here.

3. So…how does this impact your prayers? I know that might seem like an out of place question, but this really struck me, actually while thinking about these verses in the shower… ☺️. When Jesus taught us to pray, He said to ask: “Your kingdom come Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” Think about what this means in light of all we’ve seen about Heaven so far. How is His will done in Heaven? 

This would be praying that God be seen and known as sovereign. When we pray, we should ask for His control to be known and trusted. 

This would also be praying that souls would be saved. Heaven is full of those rescued by His grace because “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9). He isn’t back yet because He’s still saving people! 

This would be praying that God burn away all that isn’t love. Is it ok to pray for pain to go away? That’s what it will be like in Heaven. This should give us strength to ask Him to be who we know He is. It should also give us confidence that He only ever acts according to His nature, so even the things we don’t understand can’t be outside of His loving sovereignty.

4. So…how does this impact your life? “7 The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be His God and He will be My son. 8 But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” What defines you? If you’re defined by sin, you’re running headlong away from grace and toward the Hell you’re choosing. If you’re defined by His rescue and His conquering of sin in your life, you’re heading toward Heaven. No, you won’t be perfect. But where is you heart? Are you striving to live for Him because you know you’re loved and love Him?