SPEAKER_00: Jay and Eileen, we're not gonna let you go to wherever you go in the winter.
SPEAKER_00: You just need to stay here all winter long.
SPEAKER_00: Right.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't really think it would work, but it was worth trying.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's a heavenly thought.
SPEAKER_00: I grew up in Chicago.
SPEAKER_00: I won't talk about the Cubs, but I would love to.
SPEAKER_00: Today is a good day for us.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about heaven.
SPEAKER_00: If we would only even just begin to get a glimpse of that which awaits us, what it truly is, the reality of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: It would transform the way we live our lives now.
SPEAKER_00: The only appropriate response on the part of a believer, as we begin to understand, and as we begin to apply to our lives the reality of what God has promised us.
SPEAKER_00: The only appropriate response as we contemplate the reality of heaven is spontaneous, heartfelt, awe-inspired, joyous worship.
SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_00: Forever and ever hallelujah.
SPEAKER_00: That is the reality of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Today is Sunday, October 16th, 2016, and God is on the throne.
SPEAKER_00: We try to say that as often as I remember to work that into a message or the service somehow or another.
SPEAKER_00: And as important as that is, that is only a part of a larger reality.
SPEAKER_00: The fact of the matter is that God reigns on the throne of the universe, of the throne of all that is, he always has, he is today, and he shall in the future.
SPEAKER_00: And there are some things about his future reign over this earth that we're going to be talking about in heaven and what that means for us.
SPEAKER_00: And the only appropriate response is to say, hallelujah, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to give you a foretaste of glory divine.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are old enough to know that old hymn, foretaste of glory divine.
SPEAKER_00: John the apostle, the writer of the book of Revelation, says to us, I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.
SPEAKER_00: He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them.
SPEAKER_00: Their God, and his servants will worship him.
SPEAKER_00: They, the redeemed, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, the saints of all ages, every nation, kindred, tribe, and tongue, they will see his face and his name will be on their forehead, for the Lord God will be their light and will reign forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That is the way the Bible ends.
SPEAKER_00: Talking about heaven.
SPEAKER_00: A new heaven and a new earth, and what that will be, and what we can expect about that.
SPEAKER_00: If we're not careful, however, we, like those around us out in the world who do not know better, we who ought to know better, if we're not careful, we will find that we go through our daily lives, go to work, go to the mall, do whatever we do, and heaven is not even in our thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: Or if it's in our thoughts, it's very vague.
SPEAKER_00: What in the world is that?
SPEAKER_00: We kind of hope about it, we kind of believe in it, we're not sure what we ought to think about it.
SPEAKER_00: And so we keep it there on the periphery.
SPEAKER_00: And somehow or another, the eternal reign of God in heaven and our presence in the new heaven and the new earth where God is reigning over us.
SPEAKER_00: And we are having dominion over a new earth.
SPEAKER_00: Just as Adam and Eve were created to be earthlings, having a dominion over the original creation.
SPEAKER_00: There will be a new heaven and a new earth, and we will be there.
SPEAKER_00: God will be with us.
SPEAKER_00: It's literally, physically true.
SPEAKER_00: And somehow or another, that reality needs to break into our daily lives.
SPEAKER_00: I came across a real brief video clip of where the reality of God's reign broke into the daily lives of a number of unsuspecting people.
SPEAKER_00: It was true in the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_00: Sin brought about a dramatic change in this world.
SPEAKER_00: And Christ is coming again and will bring about another dramatic change in this world.
SPEAKER_00: And he will reign on earth.
SPEAKER_00: It's an astounding thought.
SPEAKER_00: We'll see it in Revelation forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: And that is our eternal home.
SPEAKER_00: My goal this morning is really simple.
SPEAKER_00: I just and I don't know how to do it.
SPEAKER_00: Only God can do it.
SPEAKER_00: But I'd like us to get heaven on our radar screen.
SPEAKER_00: Get heaven on our radar screen.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to have you to turn to Revelation chapter 21.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to read most, not quite all, of Revelation 21 and 22.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like you to follow along in your Bible as I read.
SPEAKER_00: This is by no means the only passage that talks about heaven, but it's probably the dominant, most controlling passage, and one which, if we're not careful, we will be inclined to have neglected.
SPEAKER_00: So let me just read what the Apostle John wrote.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 21, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: I saw a new heaven and a new earth.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever thought about that?
SPEAKER_00: What in the world does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: I hope to try to understand.
SPEAKER_00: A new heaven and a new earth.
SPEAKER_00: For the first earth heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
SPEAKER_00: And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband.
SPEAKER_00: And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.
SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
SPEAKER_00: The dwelling place of God is with man.
SPEAKER_00: He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God, and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning or crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: And he who is seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, interesting, write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.
SPEAKER_00: What we are reading is trustworthy and true, and God said that.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Pay attention.
SPEAKER_00: And he said to me, It is done.
SPEAKER_00: I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
SPEAKER_00: To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.
SPEAKER_00: The one who conquers will have this heritage.
SPEAKER_00: And I will be his God, and he will be my son.
SPEAKER_00: 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 sulphur, which is the second death.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bulls, full of the last seven plagues, and spoke to me.
SPEAKER_00: And this goes back to some of the preceding chapters of what had been revealed about the judgments during the time of tribulation and wrath.
SPEAKER_00: Come, he said, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 10.
SPEAKER_00: And he carried me away in the spirit to a great high mountain and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: He just talked about that at the very beginning of the chapter.
SPEAKER_00: Showed me the holy city of Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: Its radiance like a most rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal.
SPEAKER_00: It had a great high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the name of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed, on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, on the west three gates.
SPEAKER_00: And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: And the one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls.
SPEAKER_00: The city lies four square, its length the same as its width.
SPEAKER_00: And he measured the city with his rod, twelve thousand stadia.
SPEAKER_00: Its length and its height and width were equal.
SPEAKER_00: He also measured the wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which by the way is an angel's measurement.
SPEAKER_00: The wall was built of jasper.
SPEAKER_00: While the city was pure gold, clear as glass.
SPEAKER_00: The foundations of the wall were adorned with every kind of jewel.
SPEAKER_00: The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth, emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth uh carnillion, the seventh chrysalite, the eighth barrel, the ninth topaz, the tenth Chrysophrase, the eleventh Jasinth, and the twelfth amorist, or however you pronounce those.
SPEAKER_00: And the twelve gates were twelve pearls.
SPEAKER_00: And the gates each made of a single pearl, and the streets of the gate were pure gold, transparent as glass.
SPEAKER_00: And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty, the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: By its light the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day.
SPEAKER_00: There will be no night there.
SPEAKER_00: They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations, but nothing unclean will enter into it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's Book of Life.
SPEAKER_00: First five verses of chapter 22.
SPEAKER_00: Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and from the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: Through the middle of the street of the city, also on either side of the river, the tree of life.
SPEAKER_00: We've seen the tree of life back in Genesis, remember?
SPEAKER_00: The tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month.
SPEAKER_00: The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
SPEAKER_00: No longer will there be anything accursed but the throne of God and the Lamb will be in it.
SPEAKER_00: And his servants will worship him.
SPEAKER_00: They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads, and night will be no more.
SPEAKER_00: They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_00: Ask it of myself?
SPEAKER_00: Is heaven on our radar screen?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, really.
SPEAKER_00: Do you ever think about it?
SPEAKER_00: Does it ever impact our daily lives?
SPEAKER_00: Is it on our radar screen?
SPEAKER_00: Quite honestly.
SPEAKER_00: Most of my life, I could probably be like some of those people who were captured by surprise with a hallelujah chorus.
SPEAKER_00: I love that picture of some of those people.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them were perplexed, some of them just went on with their normal business.
SPEAKER_00: There was a picture of a young mother, and she just glowed and she held the hand of her child.
SPEAKER_00: A picture of a young father who it just his his his face and he just kind of reached over and scratched the head of his son.
SPEAKER_00: There was something going on there.
SPEAKER_00: They were being confronted with something that had been off their radar screen.
SPEAKER_00: Now my question is, is that us?
SPEAKER_00: And my fear is if we're not careful, that really is us.
SPEAKER_00: In our day and in our evangelical world, I fear we are underwhelmed by heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Underwhelmed by heaven.
SPEAKER_00: We hopefully believe in it.
SPEAKER_00: We probably believe in it.
SPEAKER_00: We're not sure what we really believe about it or what we should think about it.
SPEAKER_00: But is it really central to our experience?
SPEAKER_00: It it seems like we've lost interest or lost focus on a subject that is one of the central themes of the Bible, one of the central things that God went to great effort to reveal, and He revealed it to us, because as we get a glimpse of the reality of what heaven is and what it shall be, and what experience we will have there, what we could expect, if that begins to get off of the periphery of our lives and come into a central focus, it will change the way we live.
SPEAKER_00: The truth about heaven was given to transform the way we live our lives now.
SPEAKER_00: That in light of that truth, write these things down, they're true.
SPEAKER_00: In light of that truth, we, if we get a glimpse of it, if if it begins to move us, it will transform the way we live our lives in the here and now in light of the incredible realities of there and then.
SPEAKER_00: That's just the way it works.
SPEAKER_00: And for the child of God, as we begin to get a hold of it, it it begins to change our thinking about so many different things.
SPEAKER_00: But we seem to have lost interest, or at least emphasis uh on this theme.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I came across something that uh Randy Alcorn write, and and this describes my own experience as a minister of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I attended a fine Bible college and seminary, but learned very little about heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Went to Dallas seminary.
SPEAKER_00: In the glory days of Dallas.
SPEAKER_00: Learned very little about heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I was just sleeping.
SPEAKER_00: It's possible.
SPEAKER_00: But there's actually more to it than that.
SPEAKER_00: Randy goes on and he says, I don't recall a single classroom discussion about the new earth.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely true.
SPEAKER_00: In my Hebrews to Revelation class, we never made it to Revelation 21 and 22.
SPEAKER_00: It's exactly what happened.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible's most definitive passage on the eternal heaven.
SPEAKER_00: In my eschatology class, eschatology, doctrine and study of last things, we studied various views of the rapture and the millennium, but almost no attention was given to the new heaven and the new earth.
SPEAKER_00: Exactly my experience.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I learned more about the strengths and weaknesses of belief in a mid-tribulation rapture than about the new heaven and the new earth combined.
SPEAKER_00: And he goes on and he observes most Christians who've gone to church all their lives, especially if they're under 50, probably can't recall having heard a single sermon on heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Now that may have changed a little bit, in part because of some of the work that Randy Alcorn and others have done to bring it to our attention.
SPEAKER_00: But how many sermons have we heard on heaven?
SPEAKER_00: How many sermons have I given on heaven?
SPEAKER_00: And yet how central it is.
SPEAKER_00: Not only have we essentially neglected two chapters of the Bible, mostly because we just don't quite know what to do with it, it doesn't seem very real, and things that are very real we keep out there on the periphery.
SPEAKER_00: Not only is that true, but in the process we have neglected the central theme of heaven that is meant to transform our lives now.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think we've done this intentionally.
SPEAKER_00: We haven't done this because we're ornery people.
SPEAKER_00: Pastors haven't neglected it because they want to keep something away from you.
SPEAKER_00: We've just lost a focus on something the scriptures are actually very clear about.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if we couple this fact that most Christians know very little about heaven, most pastors, most Christian leaders, most men in the ministry know very little about heaven because it's largely been neglected in our training, and I'm just saying that is true.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder why in the churches we haven't talked much about it.
SPEAKER_00: But if you couple that reality with the fact that our American culture is permeated and dominated by a focus on the good life, on comfort, and on affluence.
SPEAKER_00: That's the world we live in.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we imbibe as creatures of this culture.
SPEAKER_00: Then you have a one-two punch.
SPEAKER_00: We never talk about it, never teach on it, and everything in our culture is talking about the good life now.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not surprising that it's on the periphery.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to what another person has said.
SPEAKER_00: In this case, this is John MacArthur, and I think in this instance he's absolutely right.
SPEAKER_00: Most North American Christians have things so good right here in this world they really don't know what it is to long for heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Do we know what it is to long for heaven?
SPEAKER_00: God has blessed us with an abundance of earthly comforts, and that's not wrong.
SPEAKER_00: That's not inherently wrong.
SPEAKER_00: He has blessed us with an abundance of earthly comforts more than any other prior generation in history, and that's true.
SPEAKER_00: There is a danger, however, that we become so comfortable in this life that we forget that we are only strangers and pilgrims in this world.
SPEAKER_00: He goes on and he says, Christians in less affluent and less comfortable cultures tend to think more about heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And I've, as a missionary for thirty years, I had the privilege of traveling a lot of places.
SPEAKER_00: And that's true.
SPEAKER_00: Where life is hard, where just daily existence is hard, Christians care deeply about heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Christians in less affluent and comfortable cultures tend to think more about heaven because it promises things so very different from what they have known in this life.
SPEAKER_00: On a recent trip to an isolated city south of Siberia on the back side of Tibet, I met with 1,500 impoverished Christians who had greatly suffered under Russian oppression for three-quarters of a century.
SPEAKER_00: They were children of exiles, economically deprived, working hard daily just to find food.
SPEAKER_00: They wanted me to teach them from the Bible, and the subject they most desired to study was their future in the glory of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: I had the privilege of doing that over several hours, and many wept with joy.
SPEAKER_00: I often meet Christians who live as if heaven would be an unwelcome intrusion to their busy schedule, an interruption of career goals and holiday plans.
SPEAKER_00: I've actually heard Christians say they don't want to go to heaven until they've enjoyed all this world can deliver.
SPEAKER_00: When all earthly pursuits are exhausted, or when age and sickness hamper their enjoyment, they believe they'll then be ready for heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Quote, please, God, don't take me to heaven yet, they pray.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't even been to Hawaii.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to try to get heaven back on our radar screen.
SPEAKER_00: The new heaven and the new earth.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at that.
SPEAKER_00: We saw in earlier messages that the word heaven is used in various ways.
SPEAKER_00: It's used about the clouds.
SPEAKER_00: The heavens opened and the rain came down.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: It's used for what we might call the firmament or the celestial heavens, where the sun, the moon, and the stars are, the Milky Way, the galaxies, the planets, celestial heavens.
SPEAKER_00: But the primary way that it is used, the word heaven is used, is for the abode of God, the dwelling place of God, the place where God is.
SPEAKER_00: God is more than in a place, but he is not less than in a place.
SPEAKER_00: Everywhere throughout the scriptures, God has seen as being somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: Now I don't get that.
SPEAKER_00: My finite mind, which only knows what I can touch, quantify, weigh, and that's all I know.
SPEAKER_00: I can't understand how God can be in a place.
SPEAKER_00: And yet that is the way it is literally described, time after time after time after time after time.
SPEAKER_00: You get the impression it's not just a figure of speech.
SPEAKER_00: The abode of God.
SPEAKER_00: He dwells in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus prayed, our Father who is in heaven, he was praying to a God who was in a place.
SPEAKER_00: God dwells somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: Now that understanding of dwelling must be somewhat different than me dwelling in the apartment house on 30th Street South or Avenue.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Jane.
SPEAKER_00: I still screwed up with North Grand Fork Streets and Avenues.
SPEAKER_00: The abode of God must in some significant ways be different, but that doesn't mean he doesn't dwell somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way it's always presented.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus spoke to the thief crucified next to him, he said, Today you will be with me somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: Today you will be with me in paradise.
SPEAKER_00: There is a place that we go to.
SPEAKER_00: Let not your heart be troubled.
SPEAKER_00: You believe in God, believe also in me.
SPEAKER_00: In my father's house, there's many dwelling places.
SPEAKER_00: I go to prepare a place for you, a place for you.
SPEAKER_00: And I will come again and take you to be with me, that where I am you may be also.
SPEAKER_00: Everywhere we look, there is a place that God dwells, and that place is called heaven.
SPEAKER_00: There is more to God than that place, but there is no less to God than that place.
SPEAKER_00: And what we find is that it is the new heaven and the new earth which is our eternal dwelling place.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation 21.
SPEAKER_00: I saw a new heaven and a new earth, the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, a change had come about.
SPEAKER_00: There's a cosmic reordering of things.
SPEAKER_00: A change has come about.
SPEAKER_00: The first earth and the first heaven has passed away, and I saw the holy city coming down from heaven, and God prepared that God prepared as a bride.
SPEAKER_00: So there was heaven, and then heaven was relocated, is the picture that is given here.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe next time I will tell you about our granddaughter Olivia, seven years old, six years old.
SPEAKER_00: And she asked her parents a question and they were stumped, and so they directed her to me.
SPEAKER_00: And she said, apparently she'd been getting some good teaching on new heaven and new earth.
SPEAKER_00: She said, Mommy, I understand why there would be a new earth because of sin.
SPEAKER_00: Why would there be a new heaven?
SPEAKER_00: Now that's a pretty good question from a six-year-old.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure I came up with a pretty good answer.
SPEAKER_00: But something changes.
SPEAKER_00: There is heaven and a city coming down out of heaven, and behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and he, God, will dwell with them man.
SPEAKER_00: And God Himself will be with them as their God, and the former things have passed away.
SPEAKER_00: And that is the new heaven and the new earth, connected in meaningful ways to the first heaven and the first earth, but significantly different.
SPEAKER_00: And what I want to say is that is our eternal dwelling place.
SPEAKER_00: God existed before creation, but a time came when God spoke, and all that is, all that is material, all that we know came into being.
SPEAKER_00: And there was Adam and Eve with him in Eden, walking and talking with God in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_00: That really happened, folks.
SPEAKER_00: That's not just a story.
SPEAKER_00: A real literal Adam in a real literal place called Eve.
SPEAKER_00: Well, there were real literal Eve as well.
SPEAKER_00: A literal tree.
SPEAKER_00: God walked and talked with man in the garden in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_00: And I've pretty well decided that the next series I'm going to do when we get rid of having done with heaven and hell, I think I'm going to take the first four chapters of Genesis and just try to walk through it.
SPEAKER_00: Because we neglect the first two chapters or we spiritualize it, figuratize it, whatever the word is, as though it's not real, and we do the same with the last two chapters.
SPEAKER_00: And in my honest opinion, I think we do God a great disservice and we harm ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: A literal Adam and Eve in a literal place, a literal new heaven, a new earth where we will literally be forever and ever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: So if you just sketch the history, creation, and then there's two major events, one being the cross, and the other the return of Christ, the first advent of Christ, the second advent of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: These are the really four macro events: creation, the first advent, second advent, and the new heaven and the new earth.
SPEAKER_00: At least as I read scripture, that's the way it's portrayed.
SPEAKER_00: And why wouldn't we assume that when it says that, it's what God means?
SPEAKER_00: Now, we know something from the scriptures, most of the Old Testament, Gospels through Revelation 19, coming to the return of Christ, Revelation 20, a thousand-year reign of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And I believe it's a literal thousand years, an actual literal time period of a thousand years in which Christ will reign.
SPEAKER_00: Many people see it otherwise.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just simple enough to assume that if I can read it that way and make sense out of it, I accept it that way.
SPEAKER_00: Why look for some other interpretation if the literal sense makes sense?
SPEAKER_00: Whole different subject.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: What I want to say is the description of the new Jerusalem, the new heaven, is where we have our eternal home.
SPEAKER_00: The new earth is our eternal home.
SPEAKER_00: Now that raises a zillion questions.
SPEAKER_00: We saw, you notice I now have these three little arrows going up.
SPEAKER_00: You may have seen this before in a previous slide.
SPEAKER_00: Those are resurrections.
SPEAKER_00: At the time of Christ, Christ rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: There were also graves in Jerusalem that opened, and there were resurrections.
SPEAKER_00: There's not one general resurrection, there's a series of resurrections.
SPEAKER_00: There are resurrections that take place for those who have died in Christ before the second coming of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I'm expecting that my body, having probably been rotting in the grave somewhere, will be physically literally resurrected at that particular resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: And then at the end of the millennium, there are more resurrections.
SPEAKER_00: There's a sequence, a series of resurrections.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about that a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: What I want to say is all of that is prior to where we will be forever.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Now that raises questions about what does it mean to have been resurrected and do we have an intermediate body?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know enough to go there.
SPEAKER_00: All I know is that the resurrection takes place that I'm expecting to be at, by God's grace, well before what we're reading about here.
SPEAKER_00: So we have an eternal, everlasting home on the new heaven and the new earth with new bodies, resurrected bodies on a resurrected earth, and God, by his amazing grace, chooses to have his dwelling place with us.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't say our dwelling place will be with him, it says he will dwell with them forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So I just I just want to try to make this clear.
SPEAKER_00: When we go to be with Christ in what we might call the present heavens, heaven is wherever God is, heaven is the abode of God.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: So when we die, the believer, when the believers die, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, and that is better by far.
SPEAKER_00: But that is not the final and ultimate state in which we will find ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: What we long for, what is promised to us, is an eternal home, that heavenly city in the new heavens and new earth, about which the believers described in Hebrews chapter 11 saw from afar and realized they were only strangers and pilgrims here and longed for that city that had foundations.
SPEAKER_00: They knew that something else was coming.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, just a couple of things about this in a general way.
SPEAKER_00: And then next time I'd like to suggest to you what we might expect our experience will be in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: But for today, let's just look at a couple of things.
SPEAKER_00: New earth is our eternal home.
SPEAKER_00: It's significant to note, and it's helpful to understand, that this is a new earth.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a non-earth, it's not something fundamentally different any more than the resurrection body is fundamentally different.
SPEAKER_00: It's a different phase, but it's still a body.
SPEAKER_00: We've seen that.
SPEAKER_00: You can touch it, you can put your hands in Jesus' resurrected wounds.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a non-body, and the new earth has many similarities as it's described here to the earth that we know about.
SPEAKER_00: When we think of heaven, we think about it as kind of this airy, fairy will-of-the-wisp kind of a thing that, and we end up with cherubs sitting and angels strumming their harp or shooting love arrows or something.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the way it's portrayed.
SPEAKER_00: But if we don't listen to what the Bible says about it, then we're going to make up vain imaginations.
SPEAKER_00: Our vain imaginations will take over, and if that's repeated often enough, that becomes what we assume.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not what the scriptures teach.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible describes the new heaven and the new earth as something very earth-like, similar and yet different, but still very, very similar.
SPEAKER_00: A real, physical, tangible place.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, more real than any place you have ever experienced up until now.
SPEAKER_00: That's a strange way of putting it.
SPEAKER_00: C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis talked about this is shadowlands.
SPEAKER_00: It's real, but it's just a shadow.
SPEAKER_00: And the shadow is but a vague representation, a vague experience of the real thing of which this is a shadow.
SPEAKER_00: This earth is not what this earth was intended to be.
SPEAKER_00: We are not what we were intended to be.
SPEAKER_00: That which this earth shall be shall be resurrected, as it were, re-redone.
SPEAKER_00: And we will be too.
SPEAKER_00: And that is God's ultimate purpose.
SPEAKER_00: So in this description, it says, talks about a city.
SPEAKER_00: We know what cities are.
SPEAKER_00: That's a familiar concept.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the city of Grand Forks is completely different from the city of Beijing.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: If you were transposed back to medieval days and you were in London, it would be a city, but it would be a totally different city than London is now.
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know exactly what that means, but when it says it's a city where we will dwell, why would we assume it's not a city in which we will dwell?
SPEAKER_00: Why would we do that?
SPEAKER_00: It goes on and it talks about there being a throne there.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we know what thrones are.
SPEAKER_00: It's not something essentially different.
SPEAKER_00: We know what thrones are.
SPEAKER_00: It talks about the waters, the waters of life.
SPEAKER_00: The waters of life that will quench and totally satiate the desires of the inhabitants there.
SPEAKER_00: Now we know something about being thirsty and a cool, refreshing water which satisfies and satiates us.
SPEAKER_00: No doubt this will be taken to a whole nother level, but there's water there, my friends, and the thirsts that we have in life.
SPEAKER_00: Physical, emotional, whatever, those thirsts will be totally satiated, and there will be water there.
SPEAKER_00: If it says there's water there, why do we just say, well, it's it's all just figurative language?
SPEAKER_00: We know what water is.
SPEAKER_00: Mountains, jewels, walls, foundations, gates, beautiful breathtaking structures, trees.
SPEAKER_00: The tree that was in Eden reappears now.
SPEAKER_00: First two chapters, a tree.
SPEAKER_00: The last two chapters, the same tree is there.
SPEAKER_00: Both presented as real, honest to goodness, trees.
SPEAKER_00: If this was real, then that was real.
SPEAKER_00: If that's not real, then this isn't real.
SPEAKER_00: If this isn't real, then that's not real.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Genesis 1 and 2, Revelation 21 and 22 book end the revelation of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so the question, do we take it literally or not, is an incredibly important question.
SPEAKER_00: Real true tree, real true garden, etc.
SPEAKER_00: All right, what we learned about the resurrection body might help us in this regard.
SPEAKER_00: We saw that we talked about a redeemed resurrected body that was freed from sin and the consequences of sin, the resurrection body.
SPEAKER_00: Well, and we talked about Walt 1.0 and 2.0 and 3.0, if you were here.
SPEAKER_00: Walt 1.0, that's the the Walt that my mother gave birth to.
SPEAKER_00: Not bad, but not very good.
SPEAKER_00: And then a day came where God made me a new creature.
SPEAKER_00: Walt 2.0.
SPEAKER_00: Better by far, but not all that I need to be.
SPEAKER_00: And I am anticipating a Walt version 3.0.
SPEAKER_00: Just in simple terms.
SPEAKER_00: What I want to suggest is that there is an Earth version 3.0, the ultimate final upgrade of planet Earth.
SPEAKER_00: Earth version 1.0 in the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_00: Sin came and decimated much of that version 2.0.
SPEAKER_00: Not all updates are really very helpful.
SPEAKER_00: And what the pictures portrayed that Earth 3.0 is coming.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where our eternal home will be.
SPEAKER_00: And I expect to find in heaven trees and streams and mountain ranges of stunning beauty.
SPEAKER_00: I literally expect that.
SPEAKER_00: There was a literal garden.
SPEAKER_00: Why would it not be true?
SPEAKER_00: I expect that we, like Adam and Eve, Adam Humanity version 1.0, in Earth 1.0, I suspect that we will have a role in that creation, to nurture and tend the creation, just as Adam and Eve had an assignment to rule over and have dominion over the created realm of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Not of God's realm, but of that which God has created us for.
SPEAKER_00: And to have unadulterated, unfettered, and ever-deepening fellowship with God.
SPEAKER_00: Walking and talking with Adam and Eve walked and talked with God in the garden in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_00: Or God walked and talked with them in the garden in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_00: We will have unfettered and ultimate interaction with the Lamb of God, our Savior.
SPEAKER_00: The best thing about heaven is that the Lamb is there.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is there.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what I'd really like to do next time is talk about what the earth, the new earth lacks, and it lacks some things, and we ought to be deeply grateful for it, and talk about some of what we will experience on the new earth.
SPEAKER_00: All I want to do today is try to, however I can, with my impoverished efforts, to try to urge you to get heaven back in the center of our radar screen.
SPEAKER_00: It is talked about that it might transform our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Would you pray with me?
SPEAKER_00: Father, I thank you for a place.
SPEAKER_00: You haven't given up on us.
SPEAKER_00: Your plan was for mankind to be in a place on earth.
SPEAKER_00: I thank you that you haven't given up on that plan.
SPEAKER_00: You haven't scrapped it.
SPEAKER_00: You've put up with us.
SPEAKER_00: And you will give us that place, regenerated, renewed, perfect, that may be our home forever.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for not giving up on us.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the incredible privilege to be able to be with you face to face, walking and talking with you in a very real sense.
SPEAKER_00: The privilege of reigning with you over this limited dominion of earth that you have entrusted to mankind.
SPEAKER_00: And you, you, Lord, you will reign.
SPEAKER_00: You will reign fore and ever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: And all we can possibly do is long with true anticipation and exalt you and allow our lives to be transformed by that fundamental biblical truth.
SPEAKER_00: Oh Lord, may we say forever and ever and ever, hallelujah.
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, give us the grace to understand what you are saying to us about heaven.
SPEAKER_00: I pray in the Lamb's name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.