SPEAKER_00: Thanks for teaching us a new song, too.
SPEAKER_00: Appreciate that.
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: Today is the uh the second of two Sundays in which we are looking at the biblical topic of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Heaven.
SPEAKER_00: That's where we will spend eternity with God in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Two weeks ago, I wasn't here last week.
SPEAKER_00: Jane and I were back home again in Indiana, and some of you are old enough to remember that once popular song with that reframe, Back Home Again in Indiana.
SPEAKER_00: We have a home there.
SPEAKER_00: We were back there, and uh, but the Sunday before I began this topic on heaven with asking a question.
SPEAKER_00: Pretty simple one.
SPEAKER_00: Uh is heaven on our radar screens?
SPEAKER_00: Do we really ever think about it?
SPEAKER_00: Do we ever really focus on it, or is it just peripheral to our thinking?
SPEAKER_00: You may remember I showed that clip of uh Christ in the food court, where uh there was a flash mob in a food court in a mall, in which uh the people there going about their everyday business were actually surprised by the hallelujah chorus that people stood up in the middle of the food court and sang, and it was glorious.
SPEAKER_00: But it was as though this foreign concept of forever and ever and ever and ever, hallelujah, amen, was so peripheral to people's thinking that it burst upon them unexpectedly.
SPEAKER_00: The question is, does the reality of heaven, when we talk about it or when you hear about it, is this something unexpected?
SPEAKER_00: Is this something we know about?
SPEAKER_00: Is this something we think about?
SPEAKER_00: Is it central to our thinking?
SPEAKER_00: Does it have any meaningful impact in our daily lives?
SPEAKER_00: And what I want to suggest is that it ought to absolutely be at the core of our understanding.
SPEAKER_00: We will not know how to life, live life now in the here and now, without an understanding of the there and then and what awaits us and what that is all about.
SPEAKER_00: For that is eternal, this is temporary, that is our home, this is not our home, that's where we belong, this is not where we belong, at least not this earth in its present form, and not us in our present form.
SPEAKER_00: But there's something else coming that is more real and more central than all of the things that we focus on.
SPEAKER_00: There was a time when, this was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, uh, there was a time when Bible-believing Christians were mocked by the following thought.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, they're just so so heavenly minded they're no earthly good.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think anybody would say that about us.
SPEAKER_00: American evangelicalism in the 21st century.
SPEAKER_00: We've got it too good.
SPEAKER_00: We're so focused on the here and now.
SPEAKER_00: If we run any risk, it is not being so heavenly minded that we're no earthly good.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe just the contrary would be a danger.
SPEAKER_00: That we become so earthly minded we're really no heavenly good.
SPEAKER_00: Uh one Christian leader, I think it was John Piper, said, Well, it is possible to be so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly use.
SPEAKER_00: My problem is I've just never met anyone like that.
SPEAKER_00: So we've been, what I've tried to do in that message and this message is confront us, help us understand the centrality and the breadth of what the Bible teaches about heaven, because we've lost touch with that, I'm afraid.
SPEAKER_00: Um so, heaven.
SPEAKER_00: The question today is what should we expect?
SPEAKER_00: What can we know about heaven?
SPEAKER_00: It's not as though we don't know anything about heaven.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we know a whole lot more about heaven than we pay any attention to.
SPEAKER_00: Um let me just speak personally here.
SPEAKER_00: I spent most of my life and most of my ministry not thinking at all about heaven.
SPEAKER_00: In the last 10 or 15 years, this reality has begun to transform my life in ways that are incredibly profound.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not just because I now have white hair.
SPEAKER_00: Although, um, I had a real good friend who was a missionary uh that I supervised and happened to be in Ireland, Jim and Jan Harness.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh Jan was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
SPEAKER_00: And so I got an airplane from Brussels to Dublin and sat in the kitchen of this missionary couple, and my responsibility was to encourage them to go home so that she could die at home with her family and her children around her.
SPEAKER_00: They appreciated that.
SPEAKER_00: But in the process, Jen looked at me and she said, Well, I'm gonna die.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I got thinking the other day, well, I'm gonna be in heaven before I thought I was.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I should spend some time studying and reading and understanding what God says to us about heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Duh! She's absolutely right.
SPEAKER_00: But it hadn't dawned on her.
SPEAKER_00: Let's not wait until we're facing death to begin to get in touch with this central theme of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And my experience, maybe it's just mine, but I've seen it uh repeated much more frequently than that, is that as heaven becomes more of a reality, as we begin to set our mind on things above, including our eternal place, and it won't be a place of rest in the sense of floating on clouds and strumming harps, but our final existence is in the new heavens and the new earth, as revealed in Revelation 21 and 22.
SPEAKER_00: And the more we begin to focus on what is to come, the more it begins to grip our soul, it changes us.
SPEAKER_00: It brings forth longings within us that have always been there, they just hadn't been properly nurtured and fed.
SPEAKER_00: It makes our hearts warm towards God in sometimes new and different ways.
SPEAKER_00: It makes us desire godliness, not just as God talk, but as a reality that I don't want to be like I am.
SPEAKER_00: I want to be like I one day will be, truly and fully.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I long for.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't just long for this house, the house we bought in Indianapolis, that's not what I long for.
SPEAKER_00: That's not my home.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just a temporary resident of planet dirt, and I'm on my way home.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I wonder why you've even bought that silly pile of bricks and plaster and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_00: Um we live our lives as though this stuff around us is home and this is normal.
SPEAKER_00: No, this is not a normal phase of life.
SPEAKER_00: This is permeated by sin, this is broken, you're broken, I'm broken, the world is broken, and yet we long for so much more, and God has provided so much more for us.
SPEAKER_00: And that longing for more is because we are destined for more.
SPEAKER_00: And as we begin to focus on heaven, those longings and desires get stronger and richer and fuller.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm uh woefully aware of my uh impoverished efforts to do this, would be that we might be helped to get heaven back in the center of the radar screen, and that we would know what we can expect in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says a great deal about it.
SPEAKER_00: So I want us to turn to Revelation 21 and 22 again.
SPEAKER_00: We looked at it uh two weeks ago, and here's the central thought.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the only thought in those two chapters, but for what I'm understanding and for us today, the central thought is that God's eternal place of dwelling, the abode of God, wherever God is, is heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: The heaven is, by definition, the abode of God.
SPEAKER_00: God's eternal dwelling place, heaven, will be centered on earth.
SPEAKER_00: And if you've not thought or heard about that concept, that will seem bizarre.
SPEAKER_00: But that's what Revelation 21 and 22 is about.
SPEAKER_00: God's eternal dwelling place, heaven, will be centered on earth.
SPEAKER_00: But a new earth, a different earth, renewed, resurrected, earth version 3.0.
SPEAKER_00: Version 1 of Earth was paradise, Adam and Eve, that place for which mankind was designed and created.
SPEAKER_00: And then a change came, and that change is the result of sin.
SPEAKER_00: And version 2.0 of Earth, planet Earth, um, was not an improvement.
SPEAKER_00: Not every upgrade of our software really helps us very much, does it?
SPEAKER_00: But there is coming another earth, another version, another phase of earth, earth 3.0.
SPEAKER_00: And that is where we are meant for, what we are meant for, where we will be, God will dwell with us there in the new heavens and the new earth.
SPEAKER_00: That is what Revelation 21 and 22 says.
SPEAKER_00: And quite frankly, I simply take that as fact.
SPEAKER_00: Just as I take the first two chapters of the Bible as fact, true, historical realities, a real garden, a real tree, real streams, real apples, real literal Adam and Eve who lived and breathed.
SPEAKER_00: Those aren't just fairy tales and stories.
SPEAKER_00: That was God's original design for man.
SPEAKER_00: Sin has messed things up, and we live now in the shadow lands, the mere shadow of what it was, but not yet what it will fully be.
SPEAKER_00: Where we are destined is yet to come.
SPEAKER_00: And if we don't understand that, then we live life now, in the here and now, in an impoverished way.
SPEAKER_00: And God wants so much more for us.
SPEAKER_00: So uh let me read and please follow along in your Bible if you have it with you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna read Revelation 21 and part of 22.
SPEAKER_00: And just if this is new and this sounds like uh science fiction or Looney Tunes or something like that, then just over the next few days or the next few weeks, just read it, focus, and say, could this be literally true?
SPEAKER_00: And just as Genesis 1 and 2 are literally true, first two chapters, I believe, the last two chapters of the Bible are literally true.
SPEAKER_00: So, John, the apostle, was given a vision by God.
SPEAKER_00: He was told to write this down, for these things are true.
SPEAKER_00: And he says in chapter 21, verse 1, then I saw, and listen, a new heaven and a new earth.
SPEAKER_00: Heaven is the abode of God.
SPEAKER_00: There's a new place where God dwells, and a new earth.
SPEAKER_00: The first heaven and the first earth is passed away.
SPEAKER_00: A change has come.
SPEAKER_00: The sea was no more, and I saw a 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, Listen up.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.
SPEAKER_00: He, God, will dwell with them, mankind, and they, mankind, will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God, he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning or crying or pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.
SPEAKER_00: This is a whole new world.
SPEAKER_00: This is a whole new phase of existence that we wouldn't know about if it hadn't been revealed to us.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: He who was on the throne said, Behold, I'm making all things new.
SPEAKER_00: Also he said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.
SPEAKER_00: This revelation was given to John, and by the command of God was to be put in writing, and by the sovereign working of God has been preserved down to us today, and it is intended to help us understand the there and then that we might live in the here and now in a different way.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 6, and he said to me, It's done, I'm the elf 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: I will be his God, and he will be my son.
SPEAKER_00: 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: He's not talking about that.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about the portion of his people, the inheritance of his people, that place that he has designed for us and destined us for.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9, then came one of the seven angels who had held, who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues, and that's referring back to previous chapters.
SPEAKER_00: We're jumping into a long narrative here.
SPEAKER_00: And he spoke to me and said, Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: That's talking about us, the church, the redeemed.
SPEAKER_00: And he carried me away in the spirit to a great high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.
SPEAKER_00: Coming down where?
SPEAKER_00: To the new earth.
SPEAKER_00: Coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God and its radiance like a rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal.
SPEAKER_00: And now he gives descriptions.
SPEAKER_00: Descriptions of things that are that we can relate to, tangible, real things.
SPEAKER_00: No doubt the heavenly reality is somewhat different, far more glorious, taken to another level, but it's tied to things that we know something about.
SPEAKER_00: A heavenly city.
SPEAKER_00: It had a great high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed.
SPEAKER_00: On the east three, 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 twelve 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 is the same as its width.
SPEAKER_00: And he measured the city with his rod.
SPEAKER_00: Twelve thousand stadia in length and width and height are equal.
SPEAKER_00: He measured also the wall, 144 cubits by human measurements, which, parenthetically, are also angelic measurements.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 18 The wall was built of jasper, the city was pure gold, clear as glass.
SPEAKER_00: Foundations of the walls of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel.
SPEAKER_00: Jasper, sapphire, agate, emerald, onyx, carnilian, chrysalite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, jasinth, amarist.
SPEAKER_00: And the twelve gates were twelve pearls.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I've never seen a pearl that could function as a gate or would be big enough for that.
SPEAKER_00: But he says these gates were pearls.
SPEAKER_00: The pearls were gates.
SPEAKER_00: Made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass.
SPEAKER_00: Is all of this just purely figurative?
SPEAKER_00: I don't believe it is.
SPEAKER_00: Any more than the tree of life in the garden in the book of Genesis was purely figurative.
SPEAKER_00: Or the streams, or the serpent, or the trees, or the garden, which he was, Adam and Eve were given to tend and take care of.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 22, I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: The city had no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives us its light.
SPEAKER_00: Its lamp, lamp is the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: By its light the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.
SPEAKER_00: And its gates will never be shut by day, there will be no night there.
SPEAKER_00: They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor any one who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's Book of the Life.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 22, verse 1, just a few verses there.
SPEAKER_00: The angel showed me then the river of the water of life.
SPEAKER_00: A river, a real river.
SPEAKER_00: River of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, the throne of God is now on earth and of the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: Through the middle of the street of the city, also on either sides of the river the tree of life.
SPEAKER_00: We saw the tree of life in Genesis 1 and 2.
SPEAKER_00: We see it now in Revelation 22.
SPEAKER_00: First two chapters, second two chapters, bookending the revelation of God.
SPEAKER_00: And we find at the end many of the same elements of paradise that were revealed at the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Now, how the tree is on both sides of the river at the same time, I don't understand.
SPEAKER_00: But I've all I know about heaven pretty much is what I read here.
SPEAKER_00: But I read it here, and I take it as it is written.
SPEAKER_00: The leaves of the tree were for the healing of nations.
SPEAKER_00: No longer will there be anything accursed.
SPEAKER_00: The throne of God and the Lamb of God will be in it, and its servants, that's us, we will worship him.
SPEAKER_00: And they will see his face, we will see his face, and his name will be written on their foreheads, and night will be no more.
SPEAKER_00: They will need no more lamp of light or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: God's eternal dwelling place, heaven, will be centered in the future.
SPEAKER_00: There will be a change, a cosmic reorganizing, restructuring of earth and heaven, just as after the fall there was dramatic implications and changes on earth.
SPEAKER_00: A renewed and resurrected earth, we will have renewed and resurrected bodies, and our eternal dwelling place, heaven, will be on that renewed and resurrected earth.
SPEAKER_00: So what are we to expect?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we should expect, if I can put it this way, heaven on earth.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that in a sense what we've always wanted?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we try to make this just exactly right.
SPEAKER_00: We try to decorate our home just right.
SPEAKER_00: And I there's nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER_00: We try to, we, we, we want things, and yet it's the stupid house gets dusty.
SPEAKER_00: The yard, uh, unless we use round out or roundabout or roundup or whatever it is, I don't have a yard right now, except in Indiana, and it needs some of that.
SPEAKER_00: Um but the weeds, the thistles, the thorns, it's and yet there is planted, and here's the key there is planted deep within us a place, the right place.
SPEAKER_00: The place for which we have always been designed.
SPEAKER_00: But that was given to Adam and Eve, a real place.
SPEAKER_00: They belonged there.
SPEAKER_00: That was for them.
SPEAKER_00: They had things to do there.
SPEAKER_00: And then sin entered in.
SPEAKER_00: We now live in the shadowlands.
SPEAKER_00: This is not normal.
SPEAKER_00: The world around us, my friends, is not normal.
SPEAKER_00: This is not the way it was, it's not the way it was intended to be, and it's not the way it shall be.
SPEAKER_00: And so we write books of utopia.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we we try to create, even if it's only in our imaginations, utopia.
SPEAKER_00: Because that is deeply ingrained in our spiritual and emotional DNA.
SPEAKER_00: We are meant for something much better than this.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what we were meant for.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what shall be ours.
SPEAKER_00: Heaven on earth.
SPEAKER_00: The new earth is our forever home.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you think it would be maybe wise to explore a little bit in your mind of what that will be like?
SPEAKER_00: I think that's why God has revealed this to us.
SPEAKER_00: We saw last time the new earth is our eternal home.
SPEAKER_00: We touched on the fact that it's a new earth, but it's not a non-earth.
SPEAKER_00: What's described here is not fundamentally different.
SPEAKER_00: It is different, but there's continuity.
SPEAKER_00: Just as there was continuity between the earth as we read about it in the few things that are revealed in the Garden of Eden and this phase of Earth, there's a continuity, there's differences, so also the future new earth will have parallels, and we can understand something about the future by understanding something.
SPEAKER_00: We can build and develop our understanding because we know what cities are, we know what thrones are, we know what streams are, we know what trees are.
SPEAKER_00: And what is coming has a parallel to that.
SPEAKER_00: It won't be exactly like the streams and the walls and the cities that we know.
SPEAKER_00: But we're not just going to live in some kind of shady reclining as cherubs on clouds.
SPEAKER_00: No, this is a real place.
SPEAKER_00: We were made for earth.
SPEAKER_00: We are earthlings.
SPEAKER_00: We were designed for the earth, and we are destined for the earth.
SPEAKER_00: This earth is not what we are destined for.
SPEAKER_00: It's this earth that is being revealed to us here.
SPEAKER_00: Redeemed, renewed, resurrected, freed from sin, free from sin's consequences.
SPEAKER_00: Just think about the best things in this world.
SPEAKER_00: And not a one of them, not a one of them is perfectly best.
SPEAKER_00: It's all falls short.
SPEAKER_00: We're limited.
SPEAKER_00: The most beautiful sunset you have ever seen, if you're into sunsets.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not, I feel sorry for you.
SPEAKER_00: The most beautiful sunset, when we drove this morning, church was gathering as dawn was uh was breaking, and we drove uh here before the first service, and there was this beautiful light pink in the sunrise.
SPEAKER_00: Just breathtaking.
SPEAKER_00: I've seen better, but wow, that was pretty much something.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the most beautiful thing you've ever seen or experienced in this life is but a shadow of the reality.
SPEAKER_00: The reality is here.
SPEAKER_00: There's a shadow being cast now for us.
SPEAKER_00: We live in shadow land.
SPEAKER_00: The best things of this life are a foretaste and a hint of the realities to come.
SPEAKER_00: And what I believe God wants us to do is to become hungry for that which awaits us.
SPEAKER_00: This is not something fundamentally different.
SPEAKER_00: It's change.
SPEAKER_00: This is Earth version 3.0.
SPEAKER_00: You may remember I talked about you and our bodies and your existence.
SPEAKER_00: Version 1.
SPEAKER_00: I was born from my mother's womb.
SPEAKER_00: She was the only one on earth that thought that was attractive, me.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Version 1 of Walt 1.0 was really nothing special.
SPEAKER_00: And then one day, Christ came into my life and transformed me, made me a new creature.
SPEAKER_00: And version 2.0 was far better than the best of version 1.0.
SPEAKER_00: But it's still broken.
SPEAKER_00: And it's still not what God wants, and it's certainly not what I want.
SPEAKER_00: But a new day is coming.
SPEAKER_00: Walt version 3.0 is about to burst forth.
SPEAKER_00: And Earth 1.0, Earth 2.0, Earth 3.0, Walt 3.0, and Earth 3.0 are realities.
SPEAKER_00: They will be here.
SPEAKER_00: They're revealed to us.
SPEAKER_00: A real physical tangible place.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Let me suggest some things that we can expect to find or maybe to miss in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: That might be a strange thought.
SPEAKER_00: That there would be some things lacking in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the reality is there's a lot of things on earth now that we will be happy that we miss in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Because this is broken.
SPEAKER_00: So take all of the broken, ugly, twisted, limited, wearisome realities, and they will be gone.
SPEAKER_00: These two chapters help us get in touch with some of the differences that there will be.
SPEAKER_00: Now these are only I'm going to give a list of things that we will be missing in heaven, but believe me, we will not miss them.
SPEAKER_00: They will be missing, but we won't miss them.
SPEAKER_00: And I think for each of these I have a pretty strong biblical basis.
SPEAKER_00: And then we'll look at a number of things that we will experience, and I think it's quite clear from scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: But there's limited data, but building on that, we can begin to imagine, I think, with sanctified imagination, what it might be like.
SPEAKER_00: And I think we have to be careful.
SPEAKER_00: There's some things that are clearly revealed, but if those things are true, huh?
SPEAKER_00: I wonder, I just wonder.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not going to deal with those things.
SPEAKER_00: Will we really have coffee in heaven?
SPEAKER_00: Boy, I hope so.
SPEAKER_00: I really hope so.
SPEAKER_00: Um will we all be 30 years old, handsome, beautiful, strong?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: That's not really revealed.
SPEAKER_00: Will a child who dies as an infant still be an infant in heaven?
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's some clues about that, but we can't say a whole lot for sure about that.
SPEAKER_00: But there are some things we can say for sure, and I want to talk about those sure things as far as I can read it in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: But I also want to encourage you to let yourself be led by some people who have a wise, biblically founded, sanctified imagination.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll explain what I mean at the end.
SPEAKER_00: 200 pages in Randy Alcorn's book Heaven deals with such things.
SPEAKER_00: We can't prove it for sure, but Randy Alcorn has understood a whole lot more about heaven than I ever have.
SPEAKER_00: So the first part of his book he talks about the things that we know for sure, and then there's 200 pages to satisfy our curiosity about what might be.
SPEAKER_00: And he makes a good distinction between what we know and what we might assume based upon that.
SPEAKER_00: So, some things that I believe we can say very clearly are missing, and when we get there, we will be profoundly thankful that they are missing.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just list them here.
SPEAKER_00: There will be no temple.
SPEAKER_00: Now, a temple is a place that one goes to to encounter God.
SPEAKER_00: A temple is where we go to worship.
SPEAKER_00: But it's very clear from Revelation 21, verse 22, that there will be no temple in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: There will be no need of a goat, a place to go to to worship, an artificial construct that is a help, but it's not the real thing.
SPEAKER_00: There will be no temple, for God will be our temple, our Lamb will be our temple, we will worship him directly.
SPEAKER_00: God's very presence.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what happens when you come into church.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I don't want to know.
SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes I come in and, you know, I oh, I don't like those flowers.
SPEAKER_00: Or I don't like that organ or I don't like those drums or whatever, and I get distracted.
SPEAKER_00: You know, this this is a help for us to worship, but but this is not this is not where we meet God.
SPEAKER_00: The local church is not the temple of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's not God's dwelling place.
SPEAKER_00: If anything, we are the temple, the temple of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit dwells in us, but a meeting place with God, we have things that come between us and God that are meant to help us, but all the distractions and all the imperfections will be taken away.
SPEAKER_00: No temple, God's very and immediate presence in a new heaven and a new earth.
SPEAKER_00: No source of light.
SPEAKER_00: That's very interesting.
SPEAKER_00: We are creatures who fear darkness and are drawn to light, with good reason, because God is light and in him is no darkness at all.
SPEAKER_00: And evil is often associated with darkness.
SPEAKER_00: But there's more to it than that.
SPEAKER_00: We have never experienced fully the light and the radiance of God.
SPEAKER_00: He is the light.
SPEAKER_00: And whenever God appeared to man throughout the Old Testament or the New Testament, it almost always was with a brilliant, almost fearsome brightness that people would cover their eyes or they would put their heads down on the ground because we're not yet ready to experience the brilliance, the shining glory of God in its fullness.
SPEAKER_00: All we ever see of God is incomplete at this point, but we will see him, and it will be.
SPEAKER_00: The sun is the brightest thing in our physical experience.
SPEAKER_00: If you look into the sun, you will burn your eyes.
SPEAKER_00: At the next solar eclipse, please be wise and don't look directly at the sun.
SPEAKER_00: We can't even handle the physical sun, the brightness of that.
SPEAKER_00: And the brightness of our physical sun is but an infinitesimal minute comparison to the absolute shining brilliance of God that we could not tolerate now.
SPEAKER_00: And yet that will be that in which we exist, that brilliance and the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so there won't be any other light source because we'll have Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The best thing about heaven, the best thing about heaven is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are there, the Lamb and our God is our light.
SPEAKER_00: Very interesting.
SPEAKER_00: No protection system.
SPEAKER_00: There's no gates, is the way it's described here.
SPEAKER_00: No gates.
SPEAKER_00: The city has gates.
SPEAKER_00: Why do cities have gates?
SPEAKER_00: Well, in the ancient world, the gates were to keep the enemies out.
SPEAKER_00: The gates were protection.
SPEAKER_00: When somebody was coming against you, the villagers would go and draw within the city and then close the gates and be protected.
SPEAKER_00: There are gates in heaven, but it's so interesting.
SPEAKER_00: They're open.
SPEAKER_00: They never close.
SPEAKER_00: Why would they never close?
SPEAKER_00: Because they're never needed.
SPEAKER_00: There is no danger.
SPEAKER_00: There is no one that we have to be protected from in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: There is no harm that comes upon us.
SPEAKER_00: We have perfect security and peace in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: That's the picture of these open gates.
SPEAKER_00: No enemies, no threats, nothing to harm.
SPEAKER_00: You've never had one instant in your experience in life in this earth that there hasn't been danger and threats and things to be afraid of.
SPEAKER_00: Now we don't dwell on those.
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, we don't dwell on those, especially as believers.
SPEAKER_00: But there's threats all around us.
SPEAKER_00: I could get run over on my way home today.
SPEAKER_00: I could plug in the toaster and stick my finger in instead of the prongs in the toaster and fry.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's dangers all around.
SPEAKER_00: That's just part of the broken existence.
SPEAKER_00: But there will be no threats, no dangers, no harm.
SPEAKER_00: Complete and eternal and perfect security and peace.
SPEAKER_00: There will be no wants or needs.
SPEAKER_00: There will be nothing lacking.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 22, verses 1 and 2.
SPEAKER_00: The angel showed me the river, verses 1 and 2, bright as a crystal in the middle of the streets, on either side of the river, the tree of life, yielding its fruits each season.
SPEAKER_00: The leaves of the trees were for the healing of nations.
SPEAKER_00: That's just one of the pictures woven into these two chapters of there will be no unmet needs in your life.
SPEAKER_00: There will be no need to eat for the sake of sustenance.
SPEAKER_00: And when we eat in heaven, and I think there's indication the risen Christ ate, there's fruits, there's trees, so forth.
SPEAKER_00: But there will be, you will be able to eat to your heart's content and feel no guilt, gain no extra unwanted weight, and not fear any bad cholesterol.
SPEAKER_00: Those are all consequences of the fall.
SPEAKER_00: We will be able to eat for the pure human enjoyment and satisfaction, and God will provide everything we need.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's true with food, but that's true in other areas as well.
SPEAKER_00: You have never known a moment where your needs were met.
SPEAKER_00: We go around and we try to get our needs met in all of the wrong places, and we will have no unmet needs.
SPEAKER_00: We'll be totally satiated, totally satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: And we can enjoy the good things of the new heavens and the new earth without any guilt, without abusing it, and without it harming us.
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't you love to be able to eat to your heart's content?
SPEAKER_00: Now, if we overdo it on Thanksgiving, then we fall asleep in the middle of the football games, and then we groan for the next couple of days because we've overdone it.
SPEAKER_00: We will not overdo it.
SPEAKER_00: We will be able to have our needs met, physical, emotional, spiritual, complete satiation, complete satisfaction.
SPEAKER_00: You've never known an instant of complete satisfaction in this life.
SPEAKER_00: You just haven't.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it's about.
SPEAKER_00: We're not made for this life.
SPEAKER_00: This is not what it's all about.
SPEAKER_00: If Adam and Eve hadn't sinned, we would not be in the mess we're in.
SPEAKER_00: They would not have had the consequences of their sin.
SPEAKER_00: Um and complete dissatisfaction at every area.
SPEAKER_00: Um curse.
SPEAKER_00: Everything will be as it should be.
SPEAKER_00: You've never known life as it should be.
SPEAKER_00: Um a number of things we'll just touch on these.
SPEAKER_00: Things that we can expect to experience, awesome experiences.
SPEAKER_00: We overuse the word awesome.
SPEAKER_00: Those are awesome jeans.
SPEAKER_00: That's an awesome car.
SPEAKER_00: That's an awesome hairstyle.
SPEAKER_00: Baloney, that isn't awesome.
SPEAKER_00: Let's save the word awesome for that which is truly God-honoring and inspiring us to be amazed at who God is.
SPEAKER_00: We have some awesome experiences waiting for us.
SPEAKER_00: We've touched on worship without distraction.
SPEAKER_00: Um, all pretense in worship will be gone.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I appreciated so much what uh what Webb had to say.
SPEAKER_00: He'd been singing this song all week long, and he realized he was just singing the song.
SPEAKER_00: He could sing it pretty well.
SPEAKER_00: He could give the impression that he was there with it.
SPEAKER_00: Can you identify with that?
SPEAKER_00: I sure can.
SPEAKER_00: And there will be none of that.
SPEAKER_00: There'll be no pretense, no artificiality of worship.
SPEAKER_00: Um, worship will be the most satisfying and fulfilling and probably the main activity of the redeemed of all ages in heaven, and it won't be one long, interminable worship service.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if we spent the next ten hours worshiping, we'd all get tired of it.
SPEAKER_00: And for some of us, a half hour is too long.
SPEAKER_00: Especially if you sing like I did.
SPEAKER_00: It will be without distraction, without imperfection, it will be spontaneous, it will be it will be genuine, it will encompass all creation.
SPEAKER_00: The heavens will clap their hands, I'm not sure that's to be taken literally.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but all creation is longing to be set free, according to Romans 8, and to be involved in the redemption and the fulfillment and the revelation of the sons of God.
SPEAKER_00: I heard a great uh message a year or so ago from Louis Giglio, in which he was talking about the songs of the planets, taking the uh the celestial bodies and analyzing them and the noise they make.
SPEAKER_00: And the all creation, that if that's true, that's mere shadow of what is to come, all creation will be part of worship.
SPEAKER_00: The hallelujahs and the praise of the Lord's and the amends will be the sounds of heaven, and we will lose ourselves in the joy of reveling in the goodness and the grace of God, and telling God how good he is, and telling one another how good he is.
SPEAKER_00: And we were made to glorify God.
SPEAKER_00: There will be service or work without burden.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the sweat of the brow, the thorns and the thistles that are involved in our work, that's a result of the fall.
SPEAKER_00: We will have work to do, I believe.
SPEAKER_00: Adam and Eve had work to do before sin came, to tend the garden, to investigate the animals and give them names, the beginnings of science and learning and all of that.
SPEAKER_00: But the work that we do, we will be once and for all freed from being exhausted at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_00: We will be freed from work that is not satisfying.
SPEAKER_00: Um we will be uh without a shortage of time, there will be no schedule conflicts, and oh Lord, please have there be no emails.
SPEAKER_00: Um pure delight.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you delight in your work?
SPEAKER_00: Some of you enjoy your work, some of you don't.
SPEAKER_00: I mean pure delight in your work.
SPEAKER_00: I love what I do, but there are days.
SPEAKER_00: There will be pure delight and fulfillment because we were designed as creatures to do things in a place called paradise.
SPEAKER_00: And paradise will be restored.
SPEAKER_00: Learning without limitation, rest without boredom or exhaustion.
SPEAKER_00: We won't rest because we are so beat and tired that we can't move another muscle.
SPEAKER_00: That's the result of the fall.
SPEAKER_00: Um God rested on the seventh day.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't rest because he was tired.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, what are we thinking?
SPEAKER_00: Um I've may have mentioned I've decided that when I'm done with this, we're going to look at the first few chapters of Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: We've been looking at the last chapters, we're going to look at the first couple of chapters.
SPEAKER_00: God rested, but not because he was exhausted, but because he was totally fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: He had accomplished precisely what he wanted.
SPEAKER_00: I never get done what I want to get done.
SPEAKER_00: And it will be pure delight in fulfilling.
SPEAKER_00: All right, let me close with uh a couple of thoughts here.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like you to begin to imagine, to use your sanctified imagination.
SPEAKER_00: You see, just the propositional truth, just the logical, rational putting together of truths about heaven is valuable, but but there's something that is beyond us and yet is within us as well.
SPEAKER_00: There is something, there's a not only a God-shaped vacuum within us that is meant to be fulfilled, there are longings and realities, yearnings that we have that are meant to be fulfilled and they will be one day.
SPEAKER_00: Uh two of the writers that help me the most are uh C.
SPEAKER_00: S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis and Randy Alcorn, but I've quoted this before.
SPEAKER_00: Uh C.
SPEAKER_00: S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis said in Mere Christianity, if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most plausible explanation is that I was made for another world.
SPEAKER_00: There are desires that we have that we never get satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: Why do we have those desires?
SPEAKER_00: Those desires aren't part of the curse.
SPEAKER_00: The dissatisfaction of being able to fulfill them is the part of the curse.
SPEAKER_00: But we were made for another world.
SPEAKER_00: Where all of the desires that we have.
SPEAKER_00: There are no desires that are essentially and fundamentally evil.
SPEAKER_00: They become twisted because of our sin.
SPEAKER_00: But our desires will be right and they will be fully fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: Randy Alcorn said, This world is not my home, but part of me wishes it were.
SPEAKER_00: I can relate to that.
SPEAKER_00: There's some pretty good things about this life.
SPEAKER_00: What we really want is to live forever in a world with all of the beauty and none of the ugliness of this world.
SPEAKER_00: A world without sin, death, the curse, and all personal and relational problems and disappointments they create.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we were made for.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we long for those things.
SPEAKER_00: The moment we step foot on the new earth, we'll know it's exactly where we belong.
SPEAKER_00: That's an interesting thought.
SPEAKER_00: There will be an aha, this is what is right.
SPEAKER_00: For every joy in shadow lands was but a stab, a pang, an inconsolable longing for this place, heaven.
SPEAKER_00: C.
SPEAKER_00: S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis in the Narnia Tales writes fiction.
SPEAKER_00: It's just fiction.
SPEAKER_00: But he captures something that is deep within us.
SPEAKER_00: And C.
SPEAKER_00: S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis, as a Christian scholar and intellectual, realized that just propositional truth doesn't get to all the truth that there is.
SPEAKER_00: And so he intentionally used fiction, allegory, and mythology, not because those things are true, but that they get at certain things that are true.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the Chronicle of Narnia is all about.
SPEAKER_00: And in one of them, The Last Battle, we find Lucy and Edmund and Peter and Lord Diggory and some of the other characters that we have come to know in the Narnia tales.
SPEAKER_00: And they stand and they're entering into Aslan's land.
SPEAKER_00: In Aslon's, or in C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis Chronicle of Narnia, that's certainly a metaphor for heaven.
SPEAKER_00: They're just on the verge of entering in.
SPEAKER_00: Although Lucy and her family and friends are on the threshold, Lucy looks back to the Narnia that she knew and has a sense of loss.
SPEAKER_00: But as they get deeper into Aslan's country, she notices something totally unexpected.
SPEAKER_00: What happens next has to do with the picture of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Those hills, said Lucy, the nice wooded ones and the blue ones behind, aren't they kind of like the southern border of Narnia?
SPEAKER_00: Edmund, after a moment's silence, says, Like?
SPEAKER_00: Why they're exactly like.
SPEAKER_00: Look, there's Mount Pier and the forked head and the pass into Archonland and everything.
SPEAKER_00: And Lucy says, and yet they're not like.
SPEAKER_00: They have more colours.
SPEAKER_00: More colours.
SPEAKER_00: They look farther away than I remember, and they're more they're more oh I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Diggory said softly, more like the real thing.
SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, Farsight the Eagle spread his wings, soared thirty or forty feet in the air, circled around, and then alighted on the ground.
SPEAKER_00: Kings and queens, he cried, we've been blind.
SPEAKER_00: We are only beginning to see where we are.
SPEAKER_00: From up here, I could see it all.
SPEAKER_00: Beaver's Dam, the great river, Ker Parvel still shining in the edge of the eastern sea.
SPEAKER_00: Narnia is not dead, that's Narnia ahead of us.
SPEAKER_00: But how can that be?
SPEAKER_00: said Peter.
SPEAKER_00: Aslan told us that we should could never return to Narnia, and yet here we are.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, and we saw that it was all destroyed and the sun put out.
SPEAKER_00: And it's all so different what we're seeing.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Diggory says, listen, Peter, when Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of, but that was not the real Narnia.
SPEAKER_00: It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia, which had always been there, and had always been that had just been our old world, England, and only a shadow or a comp copy of something in Aslan's world.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to mourn over the loss of Narnia, Lucy.
SPEAKER_00: All the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures have been drawn into Narnia.
SPEAKER_00: And of course it's different, as different as the real thing is from a shadow, as different as the reality is from a shadow.
SPEAKER_00: Or waking is different from dreaming.
SPEAKER_00: The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that.
SPEAKER_00: The new Narnia was a deeper country.
SPEAKER_00: Every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as it meant, as if it meant more.
SPEAKER_00: I have come here home at last.
SPEAKER_00: This is my real country.
SPEAKER_00: I belong here.
SPEAKER_00: This is the land I have been looking for all of my life, though I never knew it till now.
SPEAKER_00: The reason we love the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little bit like this.
SPEAKER_00: The reason we love things on earth is because they remind us of something we've never yet seen.
SPEAKER_00: That's the shadow.
SPEAKER_00: The reality is yet ahead.
SPEAKER_00: And I would urge you to read and understand the truths that are revealed in Scripture, and then I would encourage you to read some of C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis and some of Randy Alcorn and begin to say, huh, I wonder if this could be that, that we might long and hunger for heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And my friends, as we do, it will change your life.
SPEAKER_00: I really mean that.
SPEAKER_00: But the more we could get focused and anticipate and long for and experience whatever we can now with eager anticipation of that which is to come, it will change us.
SPEAKER_00: And that is why it's revealed.
SPEAKER_00: So my friends.
SPEAKER_00: My friends, go into the world in peace.
SPEAKER_00: Have courage.
SPEAKER_00: Hold on to that which is good.
SPEAKER_00: Honor all men.
SPEAKER_00: Strengthen the faint-hearted, support the weak, help the suffering, comfort the grieving, restore the wandering, and share the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Love and serve the Lord in the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And may the grace and the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us.
SPEAKER_00: God bless everyone and amen.