SPEAKER_00: The phrase the beautific vision is a term that's used to describe the experience of seeing the Lord face to face, of seeing his glory.
SPEAKER_00: It's what Moses would have experienced on the top of the mountain.
SPEAKER_00: It's what three of the disciples would have experienced in Jesus and his transfiguration.
SPEAKER_00: It's looking upon the resurrected Savior, not merely in his bodily resurrection, as countless did, but in his glorified state.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible says, when you see the Lord in his glorified state, you will be made like him.
SPEAKER_00: That's 1 John 3, verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: We know that when he appears, we'll be like him.
SPEAKER_00: John goes on to say, perfect love drives out fear, and we'll see him as he is.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus himself said, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
SPEAKER_00: He says that to the Pharisees, of course, so he's talking about more than the Pharisees' mere seeing of him incarnate there as he's preaching the Sermon on the Mount, where he said that, but he's speaking of a time beyond that.
SPEAKER_00: The pure in heart, those who've been declared righteous by God, purified, sanctified, will set their eyes upon Jesus in his resurrected state.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 12, verse 14, Paul says it this way strive for peace with all men, without which you will not see God.
SPEAKER_00: Or he says it this way in 1 Corinthians 13, verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face.
SPEAKER_00: And what a perfect picture that is.
SPEAKER_00: You look at the Word of God, and the Word of God is a mirror to you.
SPEAKER_00: It exposes your own sin.
SPEAKER_00: It's a window to God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: But as you look at it, it's just so dim.
SPEAKER_00: But the day is coming when the imperfect will fade away, maturity will arrive, and you'll see the Lord face to face.
SPEAKER_00: But often, even the phrase beatific vision, it can be more ethereal.
SPEAKER_00: It can be, it gives a sense of, I don't know, this spiritual, uh instantaneous transfusion of God's glory that you experience once and then it's over.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not the way the Bible describes heaven.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible doesn't describe heaven in that sense as something you enter in and at full blast you are now made perfect with no more growth or no more progress or no more varied ages to come.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible describes the beatific vision as something that happens to you at a moment, but then has progress or then has uh growth or changes or ages or even the word the Puritans often use was dispensations, which has a different connotation now, but that's the way heaven was often viewed.
SPEAKER_00: Or Edwards himself would describe uh heaven as a series of ages or dispensations, one giving way to another forever and ever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: A flood that keeps rising and rising and rising with new crestings of God's grace at every turn of the corner.
SPEAKER_00: For us, we experience these in I think the following order.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we're here alive on earth, and if the Lord returns first, we'll be raptured.
SPEAKER_00: We will go into the air to meet the Lord in the sky.
SPEAKER_00: Those who have died in Christ already, their bodies will be raised from the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Their Lord will bring back their soul with them, their body will be raised, the soul and the body will meet in the air.
SPEAKER_00: Those who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, they will be caught up into the air to meet with them as well.
SPEAKER_00: We looked at that last week, and they'll forever be with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: The sound of the trumpet of God, the dead will rise first, we'll meet the Lord in the air, and we will always be with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you die first, your soul is immediately in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: You experience the vision of his glory there, you see him face to face, you stand before him at the Bemisy judgment, you're rewarded, and the Lord will return, bringing your soul with him.
SPEAKER_00: Those who are alive will be raptured, you will be meet your body in the air, and then together the saints of the Lord will dwell with him forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: But even after that, after you meet with the Lord and you receive your rewards at the Bemis Seat judgment, Jesus himself returns.
SPEAKER_00: And he returns to establish his kingdom on earth.
SPEAKER_00: This is described in Zechariah chapter 14.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, the day is coming, verse 1, for Yahweh, when the spoil taken from you will be divided in your midst.
SPEAKER_00: I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: So this is describing it not from the perspective of those in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: That's where Paul was going in 1 Thessalonians 4.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna see that the heaven perspective again later on tonight when we get to Revelation 20.
SPEAKER_00: Here Paul's describ uh uh Zechariah is describing it from the earthly perspective.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna see the same scene from the heaven's perspective in Revelation 20.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go there later.
SPEAKER_00: So here is the same scene as Revelation 20, but from earth's perspective in Zechariah 14.
SPEAKER_00: The nations will be gathered together against Jerusalem in verse 2 to battle, the city will be taken, the house is plundered, the women raped, half of the city will go into exile, the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city.
SPEAKER_00: Then Yahweh will go out and fight against those nations.
SPEAKER_00: So God Himself comes, shows up to battle.
SPEAKER_00: On that day, verse 4, his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem to the east, and the Mount of Olives shall split in two from east to west by a very wide valley.
SPEAKER_00: So one half of the mountain will move north and the other half south.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is a very specific kind of prophecy here.
SPEAKER_00: It's not Yahweh's gonna come fight for his people like he rides along the clouds with Isaiah's vision that he's gonna send the Egyptians to rescue them like uh he has before.
SPEAKER_00: When it says he's gonna fight with his people, he's not talking about sending the angel of the Lord as has happened before, also.
SPEAKER_00: He it could be that if you just stopped in verse 3, but no, it gets specific.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh himself, his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives.
SPEAKER_00: And you could think, well, that's even kind of a metaphor for he's gonna show his might, particularly on that mountain.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about that, because then it starts describing the mountain splitting and shifting.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, but it's gonna the world will be divided over the return of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, to the north and to the south.
SPEAKER_00: And then you get to Ezekiel, and the water flows through that opening, is where the water's taken off.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, the mountains divide.
SPEAKER_00: The people will flee in this battle, verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: The valley of the mountains will reach to Azal, and you will flee from the earthquake, as in the days of Uzziah the king of Judah, and Yahweh, my God, will come and all the holy ones with him.
SPEAKER_00: On that day there will be no light, no cold, no frost.
SPEAKER_00: There will be a unique day, which is known only to Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: Neither day nor night.
SPEAKER_00: In evening, there will be light.
SPEAKER_00: And on that day, living waters will flow out of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And we read Ezekiel earlier because I wanted you to understand this is not like a random verse in Zechariah.
SPEAKER_00: This is repeated in other parts of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Half of them to the eastern sea, half of them to the western sea.
SPEAKER_00: It will continue in summer as in winter.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh will be king over the earth.
SPEAKER_00: On that day, Yahweh will be one and his name one.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the person of the Lord and his name and the people that are named by him will all dwell together.
SPEAKER_00: He'll be the king over the earth.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 10, the whole land will be turned into a plain from Giba to Ramon, south of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: But Jerusalem shall remain aloft on its site, from the gate of Benjamin to the palace of the former gate, to the corner gate, from the tower of Henael to the king's wine press.
SPEAKER_00: Again, this is all described in Ezekiel as well.
SPEAKER_00: It shall be inhabited.
SPEAKER_00: There will never again be a decree of utter destruction.
SPEAKER_00: Jerusalem will dwell in security.
SPEAKER_00: You can read the rest on your own sometime, and it continues to describe some of the battle of Armageddon.
SPEAKER_00: You can flip in your Bible to Revelation chapter 20.
SPEAKER_00: As you're making your way, you don't need the page number for this one.
SPEAKER_00: It's at the end of your Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation chapter 20.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to think of all that's going to happen at that time period.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 62 says that the day of the Lord, the coming of the Lord Israel, will begin, be married to God.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 19, verse 23 says the Assyrians, which I take to be modern-day Iraq, and the Egyptians will worship together with a common road that takes them through Israel.
SPEAKER_00: So imagine that.
SPEAKER_00: Uniting Iraq and Egypt and worshipers that are directed towards Israel, where the Lord himself reigns from Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Daniel 2 has a dream where the Messiah crushes the kingdoms of the earth and he reigns on the earth, the dream that has not been fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: Micah 4 describes a time where Zion becomes the center of the world and the nation stream to Zion.
SPEAKER_00: Wars stop, not just in Zion, but globally wars stop, Micah 4 says, because the king is reigning from Zion.
SPEAKER_00: The nation streamed to Zion.
SPEAKER_00: As the water flows out from Zion, the nation streamed to Zion.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 11, verse 10 says, the nations will rally around the Savior who is reigning in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah 23, verse 3 says, God will raise up a shepherd who will shepherd his global flock.
SPEAKER_00: Then during that time Israel will dwell securely in the land.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah 33, verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: Scribes during the new covenant says, Judah, the specific tribe of Israel, will dwell secure and safely.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh's chosen Zion.
SPEAKER_00: Of course he will establish his throne there for all generations.
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel 40, we read that for a scripture reading, describes a temple there, bigger than any temple that has ever been there before, so big that rivers flow out of it.
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel 36.
SPEAKER_00: We looked at that last Sunday night, or two Sunday nights ago, actually.
SPEAKER_00: There's a prophecy to the mountains to let them know that the time is coming when their enemies will no longer trample them.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah chapter 9, verse 7 says, When the Savior reigns on the throne, the increase of his government will have no end.
SPEAKER_00: Haggai chapter 2, repeated in Hebrews chapter 12, describes this as a future event.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus will shake the nations.
SPEAKER_00: The gold and the silver will come to Jerusalem where their king reigns.
SPEAKER_00: So that's Haggai chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, some say, well, that's spiritually a reference to the kingdom of Christ, the Savior comes, and now the treasure, Jesus is the jewel of the nations, and now the nations put their allegiance towards him.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I understand that, but Hebrews chapter 12 puts this as a future event where the nations are shaken at the coming of the Lord, and their gold and their silver flow towards Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 8 says at this time all of creation will be renewed.
SPEAKER_00: Creation drones longing for this day.
SPEAKER_00: It will be renewed then.
SPEAKER_00: And we saw a little bit of that in Ezekiel.
SPEAKER_00: The water is transformed.
SPEAKER_00: The Dead Sea comes to life.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews chapter 2 says the Savior will return, bringing his city with him to earth to reign over.
SPEAKER_00: That's incredible.
SPEAKER_00: Zechariah 14, the Messiah will come with an army of angels to establish his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: We just read that earlier.
SPEAKER_00: So that's prophecy about the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: What does this look like from heaven's perspective?
SPEAKER_00: John, in the telling the vision of Revelation, is not merely regurgitating what had already been given through the Zechariah and many of the other so-called minor prophets.
SPEAKER_00: John is giving the same events that they described, of course, but he's giving them from an entirely different perspective.
SPEAKER_00: John doesn't know what's happened to him.
SPEAKER_00: He's caught up in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: He learned this back in Revelation chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: He's getting a vision of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: It begins with the letters to the churches.
SPEAKER_00: So the communicator here is Jesus speaking to John.
SPEAKER_00: John writes them down.
SPEAKER_00: He gives those seven letters to the seven churches.
SPEAKER_00: We look at one of them last Lord's day.
SPEAKER_00: And now at the end of the book, well, after that, Revelation 4, he finds himself in the throne room.
SPEAKER_00: He sees the animals walking around the throne room, the angels described in terms like descriptive of an animal, the strength and the wisdom and the power of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He sees that.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 5, looking for someone to open the scroll.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 6, the horsemen go out and the apocalypse begins, the tribulation, the great tribulation, such as has never before shook the earth, comes onto the earth, described in chapter 6, all the way down through chapter 17.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 18 is when that ends and Babylon falls in the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: And John is still in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: You see this in chapter 19.
SPEAKER_00: He's describing what he sees there in chapter 19, a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven crying out.
SPEAKER_00: So now John's recording the singing in heaven as the tribulation ends.
SPEAKER_00: The tribulation ends in verse 6 of Revelation 19 with the marriage supper of the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: And now the kingdom begins in chapter 20.
SPEAKER_00: I saw an angel coming down from heaven now.
SPEAKER_00: So this is how you know John is viewing this from the opposite perspective of Zechariah, who saw this from Jerusalem up.
SPEAKER_00: John is viewing this from heaven down, holding in his hand the keys to the bottomless pit in a great chain.
SPEAKER_00: He sees the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil in Satan and bound him for a thousand years.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to give you a bit of an outline tonight.
SPEAKER_00: It has like 15 points, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to put them all on the screen at the end.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to make 15 different slides.
SPEAKER_00: So you have one slide with all 15 points at the end.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's 15.
SPEAKER_00: But if you want to try to keep up as we go, you're welcome.
SPEAKER_00: And the first is that in heaven, there's no Satan.
SPEAKER_00: There's no Satan.
SPEAKER_00: And so the whole outline is going to be a list of no's.
SPEAKER_00: The first one is no Satan, no devil.
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting that this stage, this next dispensation, begins with the devil in the clink.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus binds him through the angel.
SPEAKER_00: He seizes that dragon, the ancient serpent, who's the devil, and he binds him for a thousand years.
SPEAKER_00: He throws him, verse three, into the pit, shuts it, seals it.
SPEAKER_00: So that he might not deceive the nations any longer until a thousand years were ended.
SPEAKER_00: After that, he might be released.
SPEAKER_00: But he'll be released only for a little while.
SPEAKER_00: In this thousand-year period, it's a time of tranquility on earth without the devil.
SPEAKER_00: Right now the devil's roaming about, Jesus says, looking for people to devour.
SPEAKER_00: But in heaven, he'll be bound, taken out of the game, no more roaming about.
SPEAKER_00: The implication is that his minions are with him in custody.
SPEAKER_00: What is the earth like then?
SPEAKER_00: Creation is no longer groaning.
SPEAKER_00: Creation won't be groaning through the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Sin won't be destroying the world through the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 11, verse 6, the leopard will lie with the lamb.
SPEAKER_00: The wolf will lie down with the goat.
SPEAKER_00: You'll be looking around for your pet goat out your window.
SPEAKER_00: Which is Americans don't have pet goats, but most of the world does, okay?
SPEAKER_00: You'll be looking around for your pet goat out the window, and there's your pet goat, and you're like, oh, he's with the wolves.
SPEAKER_00: Phew.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we have, if you have a cat and your cat's out outside and the cat sees the fox, it's like showdown time.
SPEAKER_00: You get nervous.
SPEAKER_00: We had a coyote in our yard recently, and we're like, check the neighbor's dogs.
SPEAKER_00: The coyote was huge, looked like a wolf.
SPEAKER_00: In the kingdom, you look out the window and you'll see the coyote, and you'll be like, huh.
SPEAKER_00: I hope you can watch my kid.
SPEAKER_00: My toddler wandered outside earlier.
SPEAKER_00: Coyotes, watch my watch, Junior, please.
SPEAKER_00: It'll be a time of a transformation in the animal world.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 35 describes what we saw in Isaiah in Zechariah 14.
SPEAKER_00: Climate change.
SPEAKER_00: The desert yielding fruit.
SPEAKER_00: The Dead Sea becoming fresh.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation 5, verse 10 says that when Jesus comes, he's going to bring the martyrs with him, those who overcame, and he will reign with them on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: So people who are put to death by nations that were hostile to Christianity, hostile to the gospel, like those that received the seven letters, for example, those people who endured, who overcame, they're going to return to earth.
SPEAKER_00: So their souls are in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: We see that in Revelation 5.
SPEAKER_00: Those who are martyred, their souls are in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to return to earth and reign with Jesus over the nations.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation 2, verse 11 says, the one who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation 2.26, the one who overcomes will have authority over the nations.
SPEAKER_00: And so even in the kingdom, there are nations.
SPEAKER_00: We mentioned that earlier.
SPEAKER_00: Haggai says they're streaming towards Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 12 says their riches and treasures going towards Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Revelation 2.26 says those who overcome this life will reign over them.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation 3, verse 5, the one who overcomes will be clothed in white garments.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation 3 verse 21, the one who overcomes will reign with Jesus on his throne.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the thousand years are like.
SPEAKER_00: People reigning with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's what happens when the devil is bound.
SPEAKER_00: That shows you the reality of hell.
SPEAKER_00: 2 Peter 3, verse 7, by his word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
SPEAKER_00: And you see in the book of Revelation, the earth is going to be rolled up like a scroll.
SPEAKER_00: Those who died apart from the Lord will be sentenced to judgment.
SPEAKER_00: We'll see that in a second.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 3, the devil and his demons are thrown into the pit, so he won't deceive the nations any longer.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4, I saw thrones.
SPEAKER_00: Seated on those were those to whom the authority to judge was committed.
SPEAKER_00: Paul references this in 2 Corinthians.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to judge angels.
SPEAKER_00: Believers have been given the authority to sit in judgment for angels.
SPEAKER_00: Angels are supposed to minister to us, so we are the ones that will be giving angels rewards.
SPEAKER_00: Also, I saw the souls of those who'd been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image.
SPEAKER_00: So this is speaking of the tribulation, who had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands, they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years because they're the missing category right now.
SPEAKER_00: Those who died before the rapture, there were Jesus, of course.
SPEAKER_00: Those who were alive at the rapture, there were Jesus, of course, they're raptured.
SPEAKER_00: But those who died during the tribulation, what of them?
SPEAKER_00: They had their heads cut off for the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: You see them praying earlier in Revelation, crying out for vengeance from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Well, now you see that their bodies are raised also.
SPEAKER_00: They're reunited in the millennium.
SPEAKER_00: They came to life, it says.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, their souls were obviously alive earlier.
SPEAKER_00: Their souls never died.
SPEAKER_00: Their souls were alive, their souls were praying to the Lord back earlier in Revelation, speaking to him.
SPEAKER_00: But now they're reunited with their bodies.
SPEAKER_00: And they'll reign with Jesus also.
SPEAKER_00: The rest of the dead didn't come to life until the thousand years were over.
SPEAKER_00: Who's the rest of the dead?
SPEAKER_00: The whole world died.
SPEAKER_00: You just read that in Zechariah.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, everybody goes down.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord comes back and goes, He lures all the nations.
SPEAKER_00: When I preached the Revelation a few years ago, that's what really struck me.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's a great, it's almost a trap.
SPEAKER_00: All the nations are lured together.
SPEAKER_00: The armies of the nations come, they've all turned.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you can trace the battle through the different minor prophets in the book of Revelation, how it goes north into Asia and then back down into Africa, and then eventually everybody turns on Israel and goes there.
SPEAKER_00: And they're all wiped out, and they will be dead for the rest of the thousand years.
SPEAKER_00: They're not going to come to life, verse 5 says, until the end of the thousand years were over.
SPEAKER_00: But those who died in faith, they are resurrected.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 6 blessed and holy is the one who shares in this first resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Over such the second death has no power.
SPEAKER_00: They will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.
SPEAKER_00: Those who are martyred in the tribulation will be physically resurrected and reign with Jesus for a thousand years.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever the thousand years is, say it's 900 years, say it's uh four thousand years, I mean, I don't care, set that aside.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever the promise is, people die for Jesus in his testimony.
SPEAKER_00: And they're gonna be reunited with their body, and they're gonna reign over the nations in some period of time.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever that period of time is, that's it.
SPEAKER_00: That's a future stage.
SPEAKER_00: But when the thousand years are ended, you get one more final rebellion.
SPEAKER_00: Satan will be released for seven cents from his prison, he'll come out to deceive the nations that are the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog.
SPEAKER_00: Gather them for battle.
SPEAKER_00: This is the second battle of Gog and Magog.
SPEAKER_00: Um when I preached this at the big church a few years ago.
SPEAKER_00: I titled it, Thou Shalt Have No Other Gogs Before Me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm still pretty proud of that title.
SPEAKER_00: This is the second battle of Gog and Magog.
SPEAKER_00: Their numbers like the sand on the sea.
SPEAKER_00: They marched up over the broad plain of the earth, surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city.
SPEAKER_00: Fire came down from heaven and consumed them.
SPEAKER_00: The devil who deceived them was now thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: So the next phase we go through reigning with the Lord in the kingdom, there's no devil there.
SPEAKER_00: But then he's released for a brief period of time.
SPEAKER_00: There's a final battle.
SPEAKER_00: We don't even get any insight into that battle.
SPEAKER_00: It's so insignificant from our perspective.
SPEAKER_00: It happens.
SPEAKER_00: It's important for those who have who are not resurrected that are dwelling in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: But then it's over.
SPEAKER_00: Over and done.
SPEAKER_00: No more devil for ever and ever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 2, verse 5 says, Because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you store up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God.
SPEAKER_00: The end of the devil is the end of those who store up wrath for themselves on the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
SPEAKER_00: The earth is going to be rolled up like a scroll.
SPEAKER_00: Those who die apart from Christ will be undone, and the people who hold this earth dear will be brought to an end.
SPEAKER_00: So there's no devil.
SPEAKER_00: Second, there's no division.
SPEAKER_00: There's no division.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: Earth and sky fled away from it.
SPEAKER_00: No place was found for them.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to be here.
SPEAKER_00: If you're here, you're lost.
SPEAKER_00: The dead, the great, the small were standing before the throne.
SPEAKER_00: The books were opened.
SPEAKER_00: Another book was open, the book of life.
SPEAKER_00: The dead were judged according to what they had done.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to be judged according to what you were done.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care who you are.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to be judged according to what you've done.
SPEAKER_00: The sea gave up the dead who were in it.
SPEAKER_00: Death and Hades gave up the dead who are in them.
SPEAKER_00: So you know when Jesus led the souls captive from Sheol, as Ephesians 4 describes, he didn't leave all of them to freedom.
SPEAKER_00: Only those who died in faith.
SPEAKER_00: The rest were obviously still in Hades.
SPEAKER_00: They're not going to be given up until this instant.
SPEAKER_00: They'll be judged according to what they have done.
SPEAKER_00: Then death and Hades are thrown in the lake of fire.
SPEAKER_00: Hades is no more.
SPEAKER_00: Sheol ends at that point.
SPEAKER_00: So even those who die apart from the Lord, they receive a resurrection body, but they only receive the resurrection body so that they can be thrown into hell.
SPEAKER_00: This is the second death, verse 14, the lake of fire.
SPEAKER_00: And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's everybody at this judgment.
SPEAKER_00: That gives away, though, to glorious news in chapter 21: a new heaven and a new earth.
SPEAKER_00: The first heaven and the first earth.
SPEAKER_00: So now we're looking beyond the dispensation of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: We're looking past the thousand-year reign of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: There's something new even then.
SPEAKER_00: The first earth passed away, the sea was no more.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I mean by no division.
SPEAKER_00: There's no sea.
SPEAKER_00: The sea gives way.
SPEAKER_00: See marks separation.
SPEAKER_00: Sea marks the distance between the nations.
SPEAKER_00: Sea marks division, nation in nation, continent to continent.
SPEAKER_00: You know, and initially before the flood, there was only one continent.
SPEAKER_00: So the animals could move freely about the planet.
SPEAKER_00: That's how they would get to the ark, of course.
SPEAKER_00: There was the division of the continents, didn't come until after the flood.
SPEAKER_00: The days of Peleg, even around the time of the Tower of Babel.
SPEAKER_00: That's how the people separated.
SPEAKER_00: It was after the Tower of Babel, the nations begin to divide.
SPEAKER_00: That's all going to be undone.
SPEAKER_00: This is what I mean by the Bible's going back to the garden.
SPEAKER_00: You get garden-like conditions in the kingdom, but then you get a garden-like topography in eternity.
SPEAKER_00: You have your resurrected bodies, remember.
SPEAKER_00: You're physically there.
SPEAKER_00: You're walking on a planet.
SPEAKER_00: There's food.
SPEAKER_00: Like you're you're delighting in eternity.
SPEAKER_00: You're delighting in the joys of this world.
SPEAKER_00: In that sense, that we're made by God for his beauty.
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna be forever.
SPEAKER_00: Forever and ever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: The only thing missing, it's not the good thing that people say, is there coffee in heaven?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it'll be better than you think it is, too.
SPEAKER_00: Everything in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Better than you think it is.
SPEAKER_00: The thing that won't be there, you think of good things, you're like, will those good things be there?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're asking the wrong questions.
SPEAKER_00: What not what's not gonna be there?
SPEAKER_00: Division, separation, continence.
SPEAKER_00: That division will go away.
SPEAKER_00: C is no more.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: I saw a holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Coming down.
SPEAKER_00: And God had prepared it as a bride adorned for her husband.
SPEAKER_00: I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.
SPEAKER_00: He will dwell with them, they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a unity now as God Himself descends to the earth.
SPEAKER_00: This is the third Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we have the old city Jerusalem that's in Israel today.
SPEAKER_00: We have the Jerusalem and the millennial city, which we read about in Ezekiel, the river's flowing out of it, and now you've got this city.
SPEAKER_00: This is not the millennial Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: This is not the Jerusalem that's there today.
SPEAKER_00: This is a brand new city.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, I'm gonna go work on a city for you, mansions for you, houses for you, however you want to translate that.
SPEAKER_00: He's coming back with a city that descends from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: He will dwell in it.
SPEAKER_00: And he'll comfort us, and we will be with him forever.
SPEAKER_00: So that's what I mean by no division.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, there's no separation, there's no distance from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You know, now there's such a great separation.
SPEAKER_00: Sin separates us, of course, from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We sin and you know we're ashamed, and it's hard to call upon the Lord, but in heaven, there's no, that separation is erased.
SPEAKER_00: In heaven, there's a unity where there's the Lord is on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: You know, where where's Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: You go to Jerusalem and see him.
SPEAKER_00: That distance is erased.
SPEAKER_00: And he dwells with his people forever and ever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Fourthly, no separate I said there's no separation, no, no tears.
SPEAKER_00: No tears in verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: He'll wipe away every tear from their eyes.
SPEAKER_00: He's the great comforter.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is the spirit of comfort, Jesus comforts us, the Father comforts us, God comforts us in our affliction.
SPEAKER_00: This is 2 Corinthians 1.
SPEAKER_00: When we are distressed, God comforts us.
SPEAKER_00: In heaven, he remains the comforter, but he remains the comforter in an eternal sense.
SPEAKER_00: That he removed, he doesn't just comfort us through our afflictions like he does here in this life.
SPEAKER_00: In the next life, he comforts us by removing the afflictions.
SPEAKER_00: Now he dries our tears.
SPEAKER_00: In heaven, he will wipe away every tear.
SPEAKER_00: There's a sense of finality to it.
SPEAKER_00: No more affliction in that sense.
SPEAKER_00: You know, as I go through this list, you'll notice that they're all no.
SPEAKER_00: They're all not this, not this, not this, not this, not this.
SPEAKER_00: That's because how could you do it the opposite way?
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna, there's gonna be a list coming up that's an attempt to do it the opposite way, an attempt to describe what's actually there, but it of course defies our vocabulary.
SPEAKER_00: You know, words are themselves are a form of condescension.
SPEAKER_00: Words themselves are trying to give meaning to something that is, you know, spiritual and amorphous, and it's very difficult to ascribe words to anything.
SPEAKER_00: You know, every philosophy 101 student understands that, you know, you have a dog and you ascribe the word dog to dog, but what what what really makes a dog, you know?
SPEAKER_00: And that's what every philosophy 101 student goes through.
SPEAKER_00: That you remember that from your undergrad days.
SPEAKER_00: It's all fun and games and you're talking about God, but what about when you talk about important things?
SPEAKER_00: Um what about when you talk about the holiness and the righteousness and the glory of the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Words fail.
SPEAKER_00: They absolutely fail.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what's happening here.
SPEAKER_00: So that's why it's all described in the negative.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's no devil, there's no division, there's no separation, there's no tears, no unmet expectations, only joy.
SPEAKER_00: God will in fact expand our ability to experience joy.
SPEAKER_00: In his incarnation, he bore our sins and he bears our sorrows.
SPEAKER_00: In heaven, he has taken them away.
SPEAKER_00: There's no death.
SPEAKER_00: And we said that one earlier, but it's just it's repeated here.
SPEAKER_00: Every tear from their eye is gone, no death.
SPEAKER_00: Death will be no more.
SPEAKER_00: The great separator.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, you're gonna see when we get to chapter 22, which Lord willing we'll get there tonight, there's a tree.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the tree of life.
SPEAKER_00: It's back.
SPEAKER_00: No death.
SPEAKER_00: No grief is the next on your list.
SPEAKER_00: No grief.
SPEAKER_00: It says that in the middle of verse 4, there will be no more mourning, no crying.
SPEAKER_00: God removes the source of suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Right now, the source of grief and suffering, it's a thorn in the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's the the you get the splinter under the fingernail and you can't get it out.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's no tweezers that can get in there and get it out, and it just afflicts you and afflicts you and afflicts you until finally your body rejects it.
SPEAKER_00: Well, in heaven, this world is like that.
SPEAKER_00: The suffering and the affliction of this world, it's just been festering in this world for so long.
SPEAKER_00: And we try to lead our lives as best we can here, but there's so much sin and suffering in this world that it's difficult to have.
SPEAKER_00: This is why you can't have the beatific vision here.
SPEAKER_00: You can't see the Lord and his glory here because there's so much sin in the way.
SPEAKER_00: But in heaven, all of that is removed.
SPEAKER_00: So grief is removed, and you can just see the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Pain is removed, no pain in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Towards the end of verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: No pain anymore, because the former things have passed away.
SPEAKER_00: Notice the way John structures this.
SPEAKER_00: There's no pain because the earlier things passed away.
SPEAKER_00: So because the earlier things are gone, all that's left is heavenly things.
SPEAKER_00: And so in John's mind, if you follow his logic here, it's so obvious that because the earlier things are gone, there can't be any pain anymore, because nothing that is present in heaven could afflict pain.
SPEAKER_00: Do you follow that logic?
SPEAKER_00: The earlier things are gone, so obviously there's no pain.
SPEAKER_00: And he says that the opposite way, there's no pain because the earlier things are gone, meaning that everything that remains in heaven is impotent to cause pain.
SPEAKER_00: It can't do it.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: He who is seated on the throne said, Behold, I'm making all things new.
SPEAKER_00: Write this down.
SPEAKER_00: This is trustworthy and true.
SPEAKER_00: It is done.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the Alpha, the Omega, the beginning and the end.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the A to the Z.
SPEAKER_00: So this is why it's not a stretch to say we're going garden to garden here.
SPEAKER_00: We're going Genesis to Revelation as the Bible began in Genesis chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: It is ending here in Revelation 21 and 22, because Jesus describes himself as the Alpha and the Omega.
SPEAKER_00: He is the word that created the universe, and now he's the word that rules over the glorified and perfect eternal state of the universe.
SPEAKER_00: It's more than a rhetorical flourish to say A to Z.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, no, actually A to Z.
SPEAKER_00: From the beginning of concept to the fulfillment of concept.
SPEAKER_00: Something's origin to its teleological end.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, everything in the middle belongs to him.
SPEAKER_00: He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
SPEAKER_00: Now to the thirsty, I'll give water from the spring of the water of life without payment.
SPEAKER_00: Another allusion to the garden where the rivers flow in the garden, the rivers were what they needed to live.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Himself will be the river.
SPEAKER_00: This is why it's not the Ezekiel anymore.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the Ezekiel temple we read about earlier.
SPEAKER_00: This is the Lord Himself is watering.
SPEAKER_00: The one who conquers, verse 7, will have this heritage.
SPEAKER_00: I will be his God, and he will be my son.
SPEAKER_00: When you overcome this world, this is what you inherit.
SPEAKER_00: It's not for those that are cowardly or the faithless, the detestable, or for murderers, the sexually immoral, the sorcerers, the idolaters, the liars.
SPEAKER_00: Their portion is in the lake of fire, the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, back with the devil.
SPEAKER_00: That's the second death.
SPEAKER_00: They die once, they're going to be bodily resurrected at the end of the thousand years, their body and their soul will meet again, they'll die again for eternity.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the last seven plagues.
SPEAKER_00: So this is the bad news, angel.
SPEAKER_00: But now he comes with good news.
SPEAKER_00: Saying, Hey, I brought the bulls earlier.
SPEAKER_00: Forget about that for a second.
SPEAKER_00: I want to show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great high mountain, showed me the holy city of Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel.
SPEAKER_00: And so here is where John's trying to describe what heaven will be like, using words.
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I mean you can judge how effective it is.
SPEAKER_00: It's like a jewel, he says.
SPEAKER_00: A rare jewel, a most rare jewel.
SPEAKER_00: Jasper, clear as crystal.
SPEAKER_00: Its radiance is pure.
SPEAKER_00: It had a great, verse 12, high wall with 12 gates, the gates of the 12 angels on the gates where the names of the twelve tribes of the Son of Israel were inscribed.
SPEAKER_00: On the east three gates, the north three gates, the south three gates, the west three gates, so all their gates, they have the twelve tribes of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Also, the city had the twelve foundations.
SPEAKER_00: And on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: So you can decide if Paul gets his name here, or Matthias, and I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: My money's in with Paul.
SPEAKER_00: But whatever.
SPEAKER_00: The bigger point is that the Israel church distinction in some sense remains.
SPEAKER_00: The names of the twelve tribes are on the doors, but the foundations of the preaching of the apostles, Peter, of course, it's he's the rock because he identified Jesus as the Savior, preaches the first sermon in Acts chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: In that sense, he's he's the rock, the foundation.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, we know the cornerstone is Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But in another sense, there's unity here.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus doesn't have two brides.
SPEAKER_00: People say, like, oh, if you're premillennial, you think Jesus has two brides.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't have two brides.
SPEAKER_00: The temple comes, there's one temple, there's one Lord, there's one Savior, there's one city.
SPEAKER_00: There's not two cities of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: It's not, you know, like Arlington needs to have the wall for African Americans on one side and white people on the other side.
SPEAKER_00: That, you know, the wall is built in Arlington.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't that kind of city where there's a wall down the middle.
SPEAKER_00: Israel over here, Israel saints over here, Christian saints over here, Paul gets to operate on both sides.
SPEAKER_00: No, there's one city, one dwelling place.
SPEAKER_00: And yet the names of the apostles are there.
SPEAKER_00: The church and Israel distinction is commemorated at the very least.
SPEAKER_00: Forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: A great unity in the faith, one Savior, one Lord, one God, one faith.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: The one who spoke with me had a measuring rod.
SPEAKER_00: You remember him from Ezekiel.
SPEAKER_00: Only this measuring rod's of gold.
SPEAKER_00: And he's not measuring the water that flows out of the temple like in the thousand years.
SPEAKER_00: He's measuring something greater than that.
SPEAKER_00: He's measuring the city and the gates and the walls.
SPEAKER_00: City lies four square.
SPEAKER_00: Its length is the same as its width.
SPEAKER_00: He measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia.
SPEAKER_00: Its length and width and height are equal.
SPEAKER_00: 144 cubits by human measurements.
SPEAKER_00: That's helpful, ESV.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Which is also an angel's measurement.
SPEAKER_00: The wall was built of jasper.
SPEAKER_00: Jasper, of course, is clear.
SPEAKER_00: We saw that earlier.
SPEAKER_00: The city was pure gold, clear as glass.
SPEAKER_00: So you've got some kind of gold that's translucent.
SPEAKER_00: You can see through it.
SPEAKER_00: The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel.
SPEAKER_00: The first was Jasper, which is clear, remember.
SPEAKER_00: The second was sapphire.
SPEAKER_00: The third Agites, the fourth, emeralds, the fifth, onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh, chrysalith, the eighth, beryl, the ninth, Topaz, the tenth, Christophars, and the eleventh, Jacanth, I think is how you say that.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: And the twelfth amethyst, and the twelve gates of the twelve pearls.
SPEAKER_00: Each of the gates were made of a single pearl.
SPEAKER_00: The street of the city was gold, transparent as glass.
SPEAKER_00: You know, when you look through those colors, they really do go through the rainbow there.
SPEAKER_00: Sardis being orange, crystallite the yellow, barrel green, topaz yellow, amethyst purple, sardonyx red, which is the New American Standard word there.
SPEAKER_00: You get all the colors there, but the gold is clear.
SPEAKER_00: I mean that John's just struggling for words here to describe the manifold beauty of the Lord on full display, the entire color spectrum on display, but you can see through it all in the terms of gold and jasper and rare jewels.
SPEAKER_00: An incredible sight to behold.
SPEAKER_00: The gates, I made fun of them being called stadia earlier, but I did do the work for you.
SPEAKER_00: It's 1,400 miles.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what you're dealing with here.
SPEAKER_00: 1,400 miles.
SPEAKER_00: Up into the sky.
SPEAKER_00: That's Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And it descends, and the nations will be on the earth still, but everybody resurrected in faith, and it's impossible to comprehend.
SPEAKER_00: But you do get some more things that aren't going to be there.
SPEAKER_00: We covered no death earlier, but no death is repeated again.
SPEAKER_00: You get no unbelievers there.
SPEAKER_00: You'll see that.
SPEAKER_00: You get no murderers there.
SPEAKER_00: That was up in verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: No unbelievers, no murderers.
SPEAKER_00: But now down in verse 22, you get no temple.
SPEAKER_00: Look at Revelation 21, verse 22.
SPEAKER_00: I saw no temple in the city.
SPEAKER_00: For its temple is the Lord God and the Almighty Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: So the temple we write about in Ezekiel, that's gone away.
SPEAKER_00: Now a new city of Jerusalem comes down.
SPEAKER_00: And what's noticeably missing, this would be a huge deal for the Israelites, because the Davidic covenant comes in with the request to build a temple.
SPEAKER_00: You remember back in 2 Samuel 7 where David is asking Nathan, his question wasn't, can I build a house for me?
SPEAKER_00: David's question was, Can I build a house for God?
SPEAKER_00: Can I build a temple for God?
SPEAKER_00: And Nathan at first says, Yeah, totally build a temple for God.
SPEAKER_00: That's a great idea.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't even get too far away, and the Lord speaks to his prophet and be like, hey, you should have at least prayed before he answered that one, big guy.
SPEAKER_00: Circle back around and tell him, No temple for you, but I will build you a house.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's the Davidic covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's the fact that Jesus comes from in his human form, comes from the line of David.
SPEAKER_00: Uh obviously, we know this is the plan before the foundation of time.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus predates David, he's the Son of God eternally.
SPEAKER_00: However, it enters time with the Davidic covenant, which comes paired with the request to build a temple.
SPEAKER_00: But David doesn't get to build the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Solomon builds the temple after him.
SPEAKER_00: The temple is rebuilt, of course, by Herod.
SPEAKER_00: It's destroyed by the Babylonians, rebuilt by Herod.
SPEAKER_00: Herod rebuilds it.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus purifies it.
SPEAKER_00: The Romans destroy it.
SPEAKER_00: There's a new temple that is built in the millennial kingdom, of course, that has the rivers running out of it.
SPEAKER_00: We read that earlier.
SPEAKER_00: Now that temple is gone.
SPEAKER_00: So what's David asked for?
SPEAKER_00: No more.
SPEAKER_00: That shows the limited nature of David's request.
SPEAKER_00: He thought he was doing something really cool, build a big house for God.
SPEAKER_00: God said no, something better.
SPEAKER_00: The Savior still reigns.
SPEAKER_00: The Savior is the temple.
SPEAKER_00: So David had no way of knowing that.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of cool when you think about 2 Samuel 7, why God told David no.
SPEAKER_00: He says, because you're a man of bloodshed.
SPEAKER_00: But there is another reason why David could not build the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Because the Son is the true temple, the Son who comes from David.
SPEAKER_00: The Savior is David's son and David's Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So David building a house is not appropriate for him.
SPEAKER_00: David worships the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord doesn't dwell in a temple made by human hands anyway, of course.
SPEAKER_00: We know that.
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord, the Savior, and his humanity will come from David.
SPEAKER_00: So now that whole mystery is gone away.
SPEAKER_00: The God man Jesus Christ will reign over heaven forever and ever and ever, and there is no temple.
SPEAKER_00: There is no temple.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing is necessary for worship in heaven at all.
SPEAKER_00: There's no sun.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 23.
SPEAKER_00: There's no sun.
SPEAKER_00: The city is no need for the sun or the moon or any other kind of light to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it its light.
SPEAKER_00: And this takes you back to the first day of creation.
SPEAKER_00: But when God created, there was only the Lord and his perfect Trinitarian beauty, and God is pure light, pure action, pure love, all of that overflowing from him to the persons of the Trinity.
SPEAKER_00: When he creates, the first thing he creates, of course, is light.
SPEAKER_00: Because he is light.
SPEAKER_00: At the very beginning, he's separating light from darkness.
SPEAKER_00: That lets you know at the very foundation of human existence is the distinction between light and darkness.
SPEAKER_00: You can't confuse those two.
SPEAKER_00: Light is not darkness.
SPEAKER_00: People get sidetracked with, you know, how what's the deal with the, you know, where can there be how can you have days without a sun?
SPEAKER_00: Where's the sun?
SPEAKER_00: And is the light, you know, coagulated into different kinds of you know, celestial beings?
SPEAKER_00: That's not the point of the first day.
SPEAKER_00: The point of the first day is that God is light and he ain't darkness.
SPEAKER_00: And so at the end of Revelation, you get the same principle made.
SPEAKER_00: There's no sun in the last period of time here that you don't need the sun, you don't need a moon, you don't need the greater light.
SPEAKER_00: To rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night.
SPEAKER_00: All the language of Genesis 1 is pushed aside.
SPEAKER_00: It's replaced with the Lord is the light.
SPEAKER_00: And by him the nations, verse 24, will walk.
SPEAKER_00: The kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 25, its gates will never be shut by day.
SPEAKER_00: So I have it in my outline no crime.
SPEAKER_00: No crime.
SPEAKER_00: And again, Americans might not understand that, but if you live anywhere else in the world, you know that gates have essentially one function to keep the thieves out of your house.
SPEAKER_00: Or lived in South Africa, we would drive by our house one time before opening the gate to make sure nobody was hanging out outside the gate and you go around the block and then you have a time.
SPEAKER_00: You know exactly how far away from your driveway have to be to click the clicker to open the gate.
SPEAKER_00: So it's just at the right car width right as you get inside of it, you hit it again to close, and people in South Africa always have dents in the back of their car because they don't get the timing right and the gate hits the back of their.
SPEAKER_00: Bad things happen at night, thieves come out at night, no nighttime.
SPEAKER_00: Day one of creation.
SPEAKER_00: The earth on its rotation with light, darkness, not here.
SPEAKER_00: Not here.
SPEAKER_00: There's no night.
SPEAKER_00: There's no rotating away from the light.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
SPEAKER_00: It's a pure light forever and ever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: No sin, verse 27.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing unclean will ever enter into it, nor anyone who does what's detestable or false.
SPEAKER_00: Only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.
SPEAKER_00: So the only people there have been declared righteous by God.
SPEAKER_00: They have their breastplate of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: They have an imputed righteousness from Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: God has declared them to be righteous.
SPEAKER_00: Their sin has been substituted into Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus died bearing the penalty for their sin.
SPEAKER_00: Now in heaven you're freed from the not just the power and the penalty of sin, but the very presence of sin is removed.
SPEAKER_00: Only the people who have been purified are there.
SPEAKER_00: And it keeps going in chapter 22.
SPEAKER_00: No curse in chapter 22.
SPEAKER_00: The angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: Different than Ezekiel's river, which is flowing within the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Here it's flowing from the lamb to the middle of the street of the city, on either side of the river of the tree of life, with his twelve kinds of fruit, yielding as fruit in each month.
SPEAKER_00: The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
SPEAKER_00: No longer is there any curse, verse three says.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: His name will be on their foreheads.
SPEAKER_00: And verse 5, night will be no more.
SPEAKER_00: That's the final thing in our outline.
SPEAKER_00: No night.
SPEAKER_00: Night will be no more.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need a flashlight in case the power fails.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need a sun.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord God will be their light.
SPEAKER_00: Everything you do will be illuminated by Him.
SPEAKER_00: To tie this all back up, I want you to see how, in this sense, what real heaven is, how physical it is.
SPEAKER_00: There's a river, there's beauty, there's trees.
SPEAKER_00: Trees have fruit on it.
SPEAKER_00: There's joy and delight.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we think of heaven perhaps as almost like a TV show.
SPEAKER_00: You watch it.
SPEAKER_00: And you think eternity's a long time.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how many times can you watch reruns of Blue Bloods, you know?
SPEAKER_00: And it's just like watching, eh, it's a good show, but I've seen this one before.
SPEAKER_00: Heaven's not like that.
SPEAKER_00: It's not watching reruns.
SPEAKER_00: It's a new show every day.
SPEAKER_00: And they keep getting better and better and better.
SPEAKER_00: There's new experiences in heaven every day.
SPEAKER_00: New connections in your mind between this thought and that thought.
SPEAKER_00: Between this facet of God's glory and that facet of God's glory.
SPEAKER_00: New deductions, new applications, new ways to think about the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Every moment in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: A constant growing, a constant appreciation, a constant maturity, a constant growth.
SPEAKER_00: You've never arrived.
SPEAKER_00: You have the beatific vision, but that's not over at that point.
SPEAKER_00: It's one phase after another.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why I think to understand the millennium is so critical to this.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's how it starts.
SPEAKER_00: Your introduction into heaven is through those phases where you'll see the Lord in glory.
SPEAKER_00: And if you die before the rapture, you'll be there spiritually, and your soul, in that sense, will be with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: But then you get another phase when you get your body.
SPEAKER_00: You get another phase when you reign over the nations.
SPEAKER_00: And then you get another phase when the eternal state arrives.
SPEAKER_00: And who knows what the eternal state will be like.
SPEAKER_00: This is all that John gives us here.
SPEAKER_00: That's a pretty far out vision.
SPEAKER_00: I love the way The Last Battle Ends by C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis, the Chronicles of Narnia series.
SPEAKER_00: I just, it's one of my favorite scenes.
SPEAKER_00: It almost brings me to tears, even thinking about it.
SPEAKER_00: How they journey in through the door, and there's another door, and another door, and they they run as far as they can through Narnia, and there's another Narnia after that, and another one after that.
SPEAKER_00: And just when you think it's fully explored, there's another place to go exploring.
SPEAKER_00: There's a whole nother universe, it seems like, of God's glory to be revealed continually and perpetually without boredom.
SPEAKER_00: How can a finite being, even in a glorified state, max out on an understanding of the infinite God?
SPEAKER_00: It's impossible.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's why I think it's best to think of heaven as all the things that aren't there.
SPEAKER_00: Because you're gonna have a really long time to discover all the things that are there, and you will not do it.
SPEAKER_00: You will never fully arrive.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're thankful for the vision of heaven that your word provides us.
SPEAKER_00: Our hearts are drawn forward to our, in that sense, our final resting place.
SPEAKER_00: But we know even then, as floods give way to floods, as glory gives way to glory.
SPEAKER_00: Stages of glory give way to other stages of glory, give way to maturity and new understanding of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We we long for that day.
SPEAKER_00: We long for that day.
SPEAKER_00: We think of the beauty of heaven, we think of the reunion with loved ones, which Paul, of course, motivates us with and to comfort one another to know that even those who we haven't met, those who went before us, and he as he lists in Hebrews 11, we'll meet them in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says that we'll meet friends in heaven that we don't even know in this world, that are there through our our money and our missionaries, and we'll get to meet them in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: It'll be an eternity of joy, of knowledge, of fellowship, of communion, of sheer delight.
SPEAKER_00: We think that you know there's something pleasurable here.
SPEAKER_00: We need to grab it now while we have the chance.
SPEAKER_00: What insane thinking.
SPEAKER_00: Knowing that true joy that is unspeakable and undescribable awaits us in the next life forever and ever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Joy in heaven that this earth can't even compare to.
SPEAKER_00: So we look forward to that joy.
SPEAKER_00: We long for that day in the name of Christ we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to tms.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.