There are seven things that the book of Revelation tells us heaven is not. The picture it gives is a new heaven and earth, with God's city shining brightly from His holy mountain.

SERIES: Make it to the Mountains

TITLE: What Heaven is Not

PROMO:
There are seven things that the book of Revelation tells us heaven is not. The picture it gives is a new heaven and earth, with God's city shining brightly from His holy mountain. Join Charles Morris for the next HAVEN Today and a program called "What Heaven is Not".




Friday, September 23, 2011

It wasn’t just the headline maker, Drudge in red second coming type saying “Global Meltdown – Investors Dumping Everything. Even the more stayed Wall Street Journal and New York Times were using the headline “Meltdown”.

Swell

Welcome to HT, I’m CM sharing the GS that’s all about Jesus in the final day of a series called “Make It to the Mountains”. Yesterday, the billionaire investor George Sorros said we are already in the second leg of a deep recession. U.S. 30-year Treasury bonds tumbled the most in two days since 2008. The giant investment bank, Goldman Sachs, is facing a markdown in investments, which would bring a third consequtive quarter of losses.

This is a program called “What Heaven Is Not” and in the next few minutes we will be looking to God’s Word and the final mountaintop picture in Revelation.





It was a famous New Testament scholar, George Eldon Ladd who wrote that the Bible “always places men and women on a redeemed earth, not in a heavenly realm removed from earthly existence.” When someone dies we speak of them going to heaven. And the scriptures teach when you are abscent from the body, you are present with the Lord. That’s our future. That’s what we have to look forward to. But the Christian vision of the future, based on scripture, is the new heavens and the new earth, where Christ-followers will live. God originally made us for earth and in Jesus, God will fulfill that original intent in a new earth. Our destinity is laid out before us if we are in Christ. Contrary to popular opinion, the Christian vision of the future is not “other worldly” it is “new worldly”. We won’t have to worry about what we worry about today. No worries about the stock market plummeting. When will this recession finally be over and being able to get a job again. No worry about losing our house. No worry about our deteroriating bodies, groaning for sickness and age to go away. We will be resurrected with new bodies, given to us a resurrected Lamb. We will be free of a sin-filled world that is subject to decay. The new city – the new Jerusalem – is God’s original dream for a new heaven and a new earth where we will live.

This is the final day of a series called “Make it to the Mountains”. In Revelation we find a mountain experience that comes at the end of the Bible. It’s found in Revelation 21:7



9 One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” 10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. 11 It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. 12 It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. 13 There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. 14 The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.



Revelation 21:9-14. God’s Word describing the new heavens and the new earth. But before this in Revelation 21, there is the description of what will not be in the new heavens and the new earth. Verse 1, Revelation 21:



1 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”[a] for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’[b] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
6 He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. 7 Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. 8 But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”


In chapter 21 of Revelation there are seven tangibles that are not present in this new city on the new earth where we get to live.

First, there is the sea. “I saw a new heaven and a new earth … and there was no longer any sea.” Is John the Apostle saying there is no longer a body of water in the new creation? No. In the Bible, “the sea” represents the forces of chaos, which seek to suck the world back into a void of nothingness. For first-century people, these forces of chaos meant winds and waves of lakes and oceans. Psalm 93:3 … “The floods have lifted up, O Lord, The floods have lifted up their voice; The floods life up their pounding waves.” The sea represented the powers at work in the universe that threaten to undo us. For us today, we see chaos in the world financial markets, in the speech yesterday at the United Nations by the president of Iran, the typhoon that hit Japan this week and the earthquake tsunami that struck with such force earlier this year. But it’s still great chaos. “and there was no longer any sea.” In the new city, the forces of chaos are gone!

Second, there are no tears, death, mourning, crying or pain. “And God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there shall no longer be any death; there shall no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” No matter how far we advance technologically, our lives are still marked by tears, death, mourning, crying and pain. Who has not been touched by them? Whose family escapes pain and death in this creation? In the new city, these things are not there – they are no more. All of the life robbers are gone. It’s almost too good to be true. Right? It is almost too hard to get our minds around. It is certainly too hard to get our emotions around. Life without death is inconceivable to us. Two days ago I was part of a funeral for a long-time Haven supporter. Thankfull, this person knew Jesus and is safely with him. But not everyone at the memorial service had this assurance. I was so proud of one of our team members, Jim Grams, who led the service and burial, leaning over that mortuary pulpit and looking deeply into the eyes of all present and offering the hope that can only be found today and after this life in Christ alone. The prophet Isaiah, hundreds of years before John, saw the city, he expressed the wonder of life there to the greatest degree he could imagine:

No longer will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, Or an old man who does not live out his days; For the yhouth will die at the age of one hundred.” Isaiah 65:20. One hundred years – what a city! But John sees even more clearly so much more: not one hundrears, not two hundred years, not three hundred years. John sees that “there shall no longer be any death.

Third, character traits and behaviors that are inconsisten with the kindom of God. “But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars” – all not there. Othere New Testament writers authors warned us that such character traits and behaviors would not inherit the kindom of God. And now we see they meant business. Christians in John’s time were under the pressure of persecution. All they had to do was confess Caesar as Lord. Just go to the local temple, take a piece of incense, and say the words “Kaiser Kurios – Caesar is Lord. If they did not do it, they were hauled into court, as John was, and pressured to change their minds. Pressured to be unfaithful to the truth. For the truth is that there is only one Lord, only one Kurios – Jesus Christ. If early Christians bowed to the pressure and said Caesar is Lord, they would be lying; they would not only be denying the truth, they would be lying. The cowardly and the liars are not there in the future because they had turned their backs on the One who holds the future. Even today where I live, a friend of mine is being challenged by a city government for holding a Bible study in his home. He’s being told it’s against the law not to have a permit. He’s being asked to get a permit costing 15-thousand dollars after the environmental impact study and a traffic flow study, even though he lives in a remote area of the city and no neighbors would be affected by the cars parked outside his home. John is not referring to persons who, one one particular day, fell to the pressure. John, and more importantly Jesus, is much more merciful to people under pressure of persecution. John is freferring to those who continued over time to prove to be wowardly and liars. Such character traits and behaviors have no place in One who is called “faithful and true, earlier in Revelation. God says from the throne that the one who overcomes shall inherit the things of the new city. Overcomers are those who do keep faith under pressure.

Fourth, the temple. “and I saw no temple” in the city. That is unheard of! That is undreamed of! Put yourself in the shoes of a faithful Jew then and now. It would be unheard of to think of no temple in the new Jerusalem. And yet this is the vision that John is given in the final words of Revelation. Why is this? Because we are told the city itself is the temple. The new heaven and the new earth are the temple. All the features of Ezekiel’s temple are transferred to the city of God. What Jesus shows John is that God’s dwelling place is no longer an identifiable separate space within the city. God’s dwelling place is the city itself – everywhere. It is all the temple. The entire city becomes the Holy of Holies because the Lamb is there.

The fifth “not there” is found in Revelation 21:23: “And the city has no neeed for the usn or of the moon to shine upon it.” Now I need to be clear abou this. John does not say that the city has no sun or moon. Rather, the city has no need for the light of the sun or moon. Given that the city is the temple and that God dwells everywhere in the city, there is no need for the light of the stellar bodies. The whole place is filled with light. Just thinking about this, I feel like breaking out into the song “Shine, Jesus Shine” by Graham Kendrick.

Six. There are no closed gates. The city is not a jail. “its gates shall not be closed”.john says the gates are the twelve tribes of Israel. No closed borders like are present in Israel today or in the dividing lines in some countries hoping to keep out terrorists intent on death and destruction. What’s happened when there will be no foreigners. Israel has fully fulfilled her reason for being. That is what has happened. God called Abraham and Sarah, the father and mother Israel, to be a blessing to all the nations, a blessing to all the ethnic groupings of the world. God called Israel into existence for the sake of the nations. Israel was to exist for the sake of Gentiles. By the time Jesus entered the gates of the old Jerusalem, on Palm Sunday, Israel’s only concern was Israel. Therefore, Israel was no longer being Israel. Being Israel means giving one’s life away for the Gentiles. Tru Israel exists to bless the people of the Muslim world, Africa, North America, Asia, all the peoples on earth. No closed gates. The new city, the new Jerusalem has no closed gates.

Seventh. “And there shall no longer be any curse.” After Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s one command, not to try to aspire to the knowledge that makes one independent from God, Eden came under a curse. The third chapter of Genesis says even the ground was cursed. It no longer yielded its fruit without toil and sweat. Relationships were cursed. Women suffered through childbirth. In the new city “there shall no longer be any curse.” In the new city, the blessings have so overrun reality that there is no trace of the curse. Creation has been set free from slavery to futility and frustration. In the end it is all about mercy. And where is the only way you and I can find mercy today, living in chaos. It’s by meeting the Lamb, whose blood was shed on a Roman cross to free us from the impact of the curse. It’s meeting Jesus and having him shine on us and through our lives to a very dark and needy chaotic world.

SONG – Shine Jesus Shine