The Glory of Heaven

Introduction

You can probably guess what I’m preaching on. Of course, I already told you, the next time I preach, I want to preach on heaven. I want to talk to you this morning about the glory of heaven. Revelation 21 and 22. I can’t think of a better place to study about the glory of heaven. The Apostle John received the revelation from Jesus Christ. Things that were symbolized to him in these visions that he had. And these symbolic things represent spiritual truths and realities, which themselves are literal. But the symbols are symbolic.

And in chapter 20, we see the final defeat of Satan and his allies. And at the very end of chapter 20, we read about the judgment scene of the whole world. And that is all followed very logically by the celebration, the glory of the saints who made it. And that’s chapters 21 and 22. These two chapters are all about the glory of heaven. Now I’m not really going to be preaching from 22. I just couldn’t cram it all in in one 30-minute lesson. So I foresee at some point in the future a part two to this, but I’m not going to do it right away. So I’ll be dealing mostly with chapter 21. Verse 1. And by the way, we’re just going to look at portions of chapter 21 and make some applications as we go along to understanding heaven.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth passed away. And there is no longer any sea. Now, this new heavens and new earth that he’s talking about is talking about the eternal era. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride, adorned for her husband. So he sees this new Jerusalem. In the Old Testament, Jerusalem was the city of the people of God. And so a fitting symbol for this heavenly city of God. And he sees it coming down out of heaven, being shown to him so he can see it. I want you to just try to picture that. You know, the thing we need to do with Revelation is try to see what John saw.

If we can see what John saw with the mind’s eye, then that will help us better understand what John understood. He sees this holy city coming down out of heaven from God. Made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.

So I’m going to embarrass her since she’s not here. She won’t actually be embarrassed unless you tell her. But this time it’s okay to tell her because it’ll actually help. It’ll give me some brownie points. I say this in all honesty. My wife is a beautiful woman. She’s beautiful on the inside. She’s beautiful on the outside. You should have seen her our wedding day. She was stunning. Just stunning. In fact, one of the groomsmen, when he saw her, said, your wife looks really good. And I thought, okay, all right. A little awkward there. Thank you. There’s something about the wedding day when a woman has spent hours, perhaps, in preparation, preparing the hair and preparing the jewelry and preparing the dress and the whole thing. It’s a big deal.

It’s an elegant thing, this joining of two souls together. So the city was made ready as a bride. Now, does that mean it had a gown on? No, it’s a symbol for this beautiful thing that God has prepared in this beautiful city. And verse 3. And I heard a loud voice from the throne. Now, it says a loud voice. Have you ever read this or heard it read with a loud voice? Because I’m about to do that. And I know that I get loud. And some of you don’t like how loud I sometimes get. Because I hurt your ears. So I’m about to get loud. Fair warning. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and he will dwell among them, and they shall be his people.

1. God Will Be There

And God himself will be among them. And he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. And there will no longer be any death. There will no longer be any mourning or crying or pain. The first things have passed away. Imagine hearing that voice from the throne, that thundering voice uttering such comforting words. The tabernacle of God is among men. The tabernacle in the time of Moses represented the dwelling of God among his people. And so God will dwell among them in heaven. He will tabernacle among them. It’s the same word. It can be translated tabernacle or dwell. And of course, that was a symbol of God’s presence back there in the Old Testament. But in heaven, this is not just some symbol of his presence.

God will dwell among them. In fact, at the end of verse 3, it makes the point, God himself, in case you had any doubt what it’s talking about here. God himself will be among them. Let me ask you a question. Is God with us? If you answer yes to that, you’re wrong. Now, you’re right in the sense that he’s with us through his influence, through, you know, answering our prayers, through observing our worship. Jesus said, We’re two or three are gathered together in my name. I am there among them. Of course, he’s with us in those senses of that idea. But we’re down here on earth, and he’s up in heaven. He is not immediately in our presence in the sense that he will be when we are in heaven.

When we’re in heaven, it’s not us down here and him up there. It’s us in his immediate presence. That’s pretty amazing. In fact, that’s what makes heaven heaven. Now you might look at my outline there and say, is that a mess up there? You got the word heaven twice. No, I meant to say that. God’s presence is what will make heaven heaven. In his book and the life everlasting, John Bailey tells of the Scottish physician who was attending a close personal friend in his last hours. The friend said, Tell me, you are a believer of sorts. What will it be like when I die? There was a moment of silence. Suddenly there was a scratching at the bedroom door. The doctor turned to his friend and said, Did you hear that?

It’s my dog. He’s been waiting patiently for me downstairs and has become impatient. He has never been in this room. He has no idea what it is like. He knows only one thing about it, and that is that I am here. That’s all I know about the future. He’s there. That’s what will make heaven heaven. Paul Reese wrote, We talk about gates of pearl and streets of gold and walls of jasper, and we are thrilled. But those things would not be attractive if Jesus were not there. His presence is what will make heaven such a grand place. And it just brings to mind Colossians 3 and verse 1 to set your mind on things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. That’s the emphasis.

Christ is there. God is there. That’s the emphasis of heaven. We, you know, and we’re going to talk about the gates of pearl and the walls of Jasper and the street of gold. We’re going to talk about that today. But if God weren’t there, what good would all that be? In fact, all of that is there to represent the glory of God as we’re going to talk about. Sometimes we miss the point. We want the amenities. We want the four-star resort. And we want the hammock and the heavenly beachside property there. And we want to kick back. And we put this emphasis on me and our enjoyment. The only enjoyment will be that we will be in the presence of God in this beautiful, glorious place.

And it’s because of God that it will be glorious. We will bask in the sunlight of his eternal glory. John wrote in 1 John 3 and verse 2 Beloved, we are now children of God, and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be. But we know that when he is revealed, we will be like him.

There’s this emphasis about seeing God as he is. Moses saw God, but saw his back. He saw some manifestation of God, but he did not see his face. He did not see him fully and completely and immediately. But in heaven, that will be the full realization of God. We will see him as he is. We will be as he is. That verse also says there in 1 John 3 and verse 2. You think, what does that mean? We’re going to be spirit. Well, I think there’s more to it than that. Remember the last two verses of Philippians chapter 3? For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body, that it may be conformed to his glorious body, according to the working by which he is able to subdue all things into himself.

And so there will be a conforming of our bodies to his glorious body, and we will be glorified in his presence. We will also be pure. We will be as he is in so many ways. What a beautiful thought. Amen. In Revelation 22 and verses 3 and 4, there will no longer be any curse, and the throne of God under the Lamb will be in it, and his bondservants will serve him, and they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. Again, this emphasis of seeing the face of God, which nobody has ever seen. Too bad you are blind, someone said to Fanny Crosby, who wrote many of the songs in our songbook. With all your gifts, it’s too bad God withheld your sight.

2. Nothing Bad Will Be There

She answered, My first request at birth would have been that God would remove my sight. Why? Because when I get to heaven, the first sight I will behold will be that of my Savior’s face. God’s presence is what will make heaven heaven. Verse 4. We already read this, but I want to focus in on it. Hone in on it. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be nothing to be sad about in heaven. And what’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about the things that make us sad? Death. So that’s the very next thing it says. And there will be no death. Imagine a place where there is no death. There are no funerals. Isn’t that the most grievous thing of existing here on earth?

Is that our loved ones have to die. Our friends have to die. We have to die. It’s terrible. It brings so much pain to our lives. Imagine being in a place where there is no death. I went and heard David Tomley on Thursday night. He did a tremendous job, and one of the things he said just really stuck with me. When we die, we are not going from the land of the living to the land of the dying. We’re going from the land of the dying to the land of the living. And that just really stuck with me because that’s what heaven is. If it’s not the land of the dying, then what is it? It’s the land of the living. Eternal life. And there will no longer be any mourning or crying.

We cry and mourn about so many things. Life is hard. Life is discouraging. People disappoint us. Bad things happen. Financial situations are difficult. People are difficult. Problems. Oh, so many things that cause us to cry and mourn. Imagine being in a place where there will be no sadness. Nothing to be sad about. And if there’s no sadness, the flip side of that means only gladness. There will be no pain. You know, I’m getting old. I’m 34. I feel like I’m getting old. Some of y’all laugh because you’re older than I am. I did the math, and Mr. J.D. is almost exactly three times as old as I am. Some of y’all know really know what it’s like to have pains. Now I’ve got some pains. I’ve got some neck pains and back pains and elbow pains and knee pains.

And some of y’all have got the migraines going on and the pains here and there. You know, I think this is talking about any kind of pain. But the first century saints would have understood pain in a way that we can’t really relate to. The pain that they went through, not only physically, but also psychologically, in this the suffering that was going on at the end of the first century in Rome. No pain. Imagine being in a place where you don’t have to take any medicine for your pain. You don’t have to deal with it. You don’t have to battle with it. Just absolutely no pain. And so a point that I made when I talked about the rich man of Lazarus is that one of the best things about heaven is there will be nothing bad there.

I mean, you take away all the bad things of this earth, and you could almost just live here forever. That would be pretty tolerable. But it still wouldn’t hold a candle to heaven. One of the best things about heaven is there will be nothing bad there. Now we’re going to skip on down to verse 9. Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and spoke with me, saying, Come here and I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb. I’m going to show you the bride. Paul said in Ephesians 5, beginning in verse 25, husbands love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless.

The church is the bride of Christ. Even right now. You are married to Jesus Christ. We are his bride. But ultimately in heaven, this will be the final summation of God’s people all together, all of the saved of all the ages. This is the full and complete bride of Christ. And so he’s going to go and see the bride of Christ. Heaven is filled with the church of the Lord. Now you might expect, if the angel told him, I’m going to show you the bride, that the next thing you would see is a beautiful bride. But what do we read next? In verse 10. And he carried me. Now, now be John. Picture this. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain.

Now, as I picture that, I just, I just kind of see myself, if I were John, just sort of soaring through the skies and landing just kind of lightly upon this peak of a mountain. I don’t know exactly what it was like for John to experience that, but that’s kind of how I picture it. And I’m up on the top of a mountain. And it’s beautiful. And I look over here at the vast expanse of the sky, and I see this beautiful horizon and these beautiful clouds, and then I begin to see something lowered down. He showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. Now we already talked about this holy city. He already saw it.

This is, as it were, a close up view now. He’s getting a second look at the details of this city. And verse 11, at the beginning of that verse, that’s the key. That’s really where I got the title for this lesson. This city has the glory of God. Anything we talk about with the beautiful descriptions of heaven, the point is the glory of God. Now, why would it have the glory of God? Because it is from God. It has his name all over it. He is its architect and builder. Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 10. And in verse 16, but especially verse 10. Remember Jesus said in John 14 at the end of verse 2, I go to prepare a place for you. Or that’s in verse 2, anyway.

I go to prepare a place for you. He truly was a carpenter. So imagine this place that has been prepared by God, been prepared by Jesus, and it has his glory. Verse 11 continues, her brilliance, or her light, or her literally her face was like a very costly stone. And a stone of crystal clear jasper. Now, Jasper, if you looked it up, Wikipedia, you’re not going to see a clear stone. But here, Jasper is described as a clear stone. So the word Jasper is sort of hard to translate out of the out of the Hebrew, the Hebrew word is hard to know what to translate. So it’s translated Jasper. But it’s described as crystal clear. So I want you to imagine seeing the city and these walls, and it’s just crystal clear.

Now here’s an interesting thing. If you back up to chapter 4 and verse 3. This was preached on somewhat recently by Brother Harkrider. Verse 3 says, and he who was sitting, this is talking about God on his throne, was like a Jasper stone. There we see that again. And a Sardius in appearance. The Sardius was red. And so red is a symbol for judgment. And we certainly see judgment in Revelation chapter 4. But do you see any judgment in Revelation chapter 20? No judgment. We only read of Jasper. We don’t have the Sardius. The judgment ended in chapter 20, uh, at the end of chapter 20. So I meant to say 21 earlier. No judgment. Think about, you know, we talk about how wrong the doctrine of once saved, always saved is.

3. Heaven Is Unfathomable, Beyond Description

And it’s wrong. But in heaven, once saved, always saved. There’s no wrath. You don’t have to worry about that. All you have in heaven is glory. The glory of God. Now notice here that John doesn’t say her brilliance was a very costly stone. He said, like, as a stone of crystal clear jasper. The city’s brilliance is beyond description. Have you seen that movie Heaven is Real? Kind of came out recently. I watched it. I thought it’d be a cute thing to watch. And I liked it. But it’s based on a true story that this four-year-old had an operation. And when he woke up, he started telling his mom and daddy that he got to see Jesus and he got to go and visit heaven. And he told them all the details.

All the stuff you ever wanted to know about heaven, this four-year-old could tell you. Nobody wears glasses in heaven. Because everybody’s got perfect vision. If you’re there when you’re a child, when you die, if you’re a child, then in heaven you’re going to grow up until you get to be a young adult, and then you’ll never age again. And if you were old and you died, you get to be a young adult for the rest of eternity. Jesus rides a horse. I mean, you know, he’ll tell you everything. You know, one of the things that discredits that totally and completely is that if anybody got to go and visit heaven, especially a four-year-old, there would be no words to describe it. It is otherworldly. And you wouldn’t know how to relate to it.

You wouldn’t know what to say and tell people it’s just heaven. Even this vision that John sees, which wasn’t heaven itself, it’s not like he went right into heaven. Just a vision of heaven. John was struggling to put it into human terms. He didn’t know quite how to describe what this place looked like. It was it was like a very costly stone, as a stone of crystal clear jasper. That’s the best he could do. You know, people in certain funerals that you might go to, they’ll start talking about heaven. The preacher will start talking about heaven like he knows all about it. You know, if if this person was a hockey player that died, well, in heaven, he’s skating around right now. If he liked to ski, oh, he’s skiing in heaven.

If he was an officer in the marines, he is a he is a ranking officer in heaven with fleets of ships at his disposal. Or whatever. Why do people talk like that when we know so little about heaven? Even when we study this chapter, we still come away knowing really so little about its details. But we know that it will be beyond description. It will be unfathomable. It will be indescribable. Perhaps that’s the best description for heaven. It’s indescribable. Well, we’re going to move on down to verse 16. Now, verse 15 says the one who spoke with me had a gold measuring rod to measure the city and its gates and its wall. In chapter 11, John went and measured the temple with a reed. But here it’s not John, and it’s not a reed.

It’s a golden rod, and it’s an angel measuring the city. Verse 16 says, the city is laid out as a square, and its length is as great as the width. And he measured the city with the rod. 1,500 miles, its length and width and height are equal. Now it’s a little unfortunate that the New American Standard gives us the English measurements, what we’re used to. 1,500 miles. That is helpful. We’ll talk about, but it kind of destroys the symbolism of the 12,000 stadia, which is what is literally there. 12,000 is a symbolic number. Twelve is a number representing the people of God. A thousand is a number of completion. So you put those things together, it’s the totality of the people of God. Of course, that idea can be expressed with a different number, as it was, I believe, in chapter 7 and verse 4, and in chapter 14 with 144,000.

But here, this idea of the totality of God’s people, if I understand the symbolism correctly. But will it be big? I mean, was this big in the vision? 1,500 miles is a long way. Just to give you some perspective of that, if you were to set out walking towards Dallas, Texas from here, which I wouldn’t advise you to do. But the reason I say walking and not driving is because I can Google it walking and get a pretty straight line. But driving kind of does this. So if you were to walk toward Dallas, Texas, you once you reach Dallas, Texas, you still wouldn’t have completely reached 1,500 miles. You keep walking until you get into New Mexico, and you’ll reach 1,500 miles. That’s a long way.

It’ll get you clear through Texas. This city was, this city was 1,500 miles. Width, length, and height. That is a staggering height. One of the points that I think we can get from that is that heaven will be spacious. You remember what Jesus said in John 14 and verse 2? In my father’s house are many dwelling places. Now you say, wait a minute, preach the King James preacher. In my father’s house are many mansions. And we sing about, I want a mansion just over the hilltop. I think sometimes we’re missing the point. I want, I want. It’s about God. And mansion is not really the right translation of the word there in Greek. Dwelling places is accurate. In my father’s house are many dwelling places. I watched a documentary recently on this guy who was kind of tired of this whole idea of mortgages and wasting your life trying to make all this money just so you can pay for a house that you’re never even utilizing except to sleep in and all this stuff.

So he was going to build a tiny house on a trailer so he could take it onto his Colorado land anytime he wanted to. A completely independent home, you know, with its own plumbing and solar powered and all that kind of stuff. So he builds a house that’s 123 square feet or something like that. With everything he needs. Every square inch is perfectly utilized, and there’s an upstairs little thing where he can sleep and all that stuff. And watching that just made me come away saying, you know what? We are really spoiled in America. If we don’t have a home that’s at least 1,40 or 1,500 square feet, man, we don’t have any room to do anything. We’re spoiled. In terms of the world at large, they’re not used to having such big homes.

And certainly in the history of the world, and in the first century, do you think that the average home was 1,500 square feet? No. And so it was very important when Jesus said, In my father’s house are many dwelling places. In other words, there’s plenty of room for you. And there’s plenty of room for me. Have you ever stopped to think about how many people are going to be in heaven? You know, sometimes we just get discouraged about, well, you know, this narrow road and the narrow door, and most people are not going to make it. But over time, throughout the generations, it adds up. And think of all the children that have died. And the babies that have died. That’s the only positive thing I can get out of abortion.

4. Heaven Is Full of the Glory of God

At least those children went straight to heaven. Think of how many billions there are going to be in heaven. There’s going to have to be a lot of space for that. Heaven will be spacious. But more important than any of these things I’ve been talking about from this verse, the most important thing here is that heaven is a perfect cube described in this vision. Just like the Holy of Holies, the most holy place in the tabernacle and in the temple. It was a perfect cube. And who could enter there? Just any priest? Only the high priest. And he could only enter it once a year on the Day of Atonement. It was in the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant was.

Read Hebrews chapter 9. Jesus has entered that holy of holies for us. But there’s a very real sense, as Jesus is our high priest now, that in heaven we all enter that holy of holies, and we are all, in a sense, high priests. To enter something that nobody could ever enter and see the face of God that nobody could ever see, and be in his light and his glory, which nobody could ever be in. To offer up eternal sacrifices of praise unto God. A beautiful thought. Verse 17 says, and he measured the wall, 72 yards according to human measurements, which are also angelic measurements. Verse 18, the material of the wall was jasper, and the city was pure gold, like clear glass. This is not on your outline.

But how can gold be like clear glass? What would it have looked like? I don’t know. Something beyond what we have on this earth. And it wasn’t plated with gold, it was pure gold through and through the whole thing. Again, we’re skipping down and we’re skipping some of the description of the beautiful foundation stones. And we get in verse 21 the twelve gates were twelve pearls. Each one of the gates was a single pearl. So, like a gigantic pearl that has been carved out and made into this gate, if I understand this correctly. Priceless.

Notice it says street, not streets. You know, but sometimes we get hung up on that. I remember one time I was talking about the streets of gold, and the sweet lady said, it doesn’t say streets, it says street. Say it correctly. That’s not the point. I think street is being used here collectively. What was the street collectively made out of gold? What’s the point of that? In the first century, would you have used your most expensive material to make a road? Are you gonna plate your road with gold or build your road with marble? It’s gonna be with stones. Yet in heaven even the streets are made with pure gold. What’s the point? There is nothing that is not priceless in heaven. Nothing that is not priceless in heaven.

Every square inch is exquisite designed by God. And every moment will be absolute euphoria. Y’all don’t give me long enough to preach, so I’m gonna. We’re just going to read 22, verse 22 down through into chapter 22, and I will conclude very soon. I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it in the daytime, for there will be no night there, its gates will never be closed, and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it, and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There will no longer be any curse, and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his bondservants will serve him, and they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads, and there will no longer be any night, and they will not have need of the light or of a lamp, nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them, and they will reign forever and ever.

Conclusion

Four points that we learn from this text.

Number one, God will be there. That’s what will make heaven heaven. Number two, nothing bad will be there, and that’s one of the best things about heaven is that there will be nothing bad there. Number three, heaven is unfathomable beyond description. And number four, heaven is full of the glory of God. Would you bow your head with me in prayer? Our Father, we thank you so much for preparing a place for us and being its architect and its builder. And we can’t wait to go there. Lord, come. Come quickly. Amen. We’ll now be dismissed to Bible class.