[Originally preached 14 March, 2004]
Revelation 21.3, 22-27
We’ve come to the end of Revelation. This is where John describes the bliss of eternity for the saints of God. Last week I mentioned that this last part is divided into seven pairs of sections. Last time we looked at Revelation 21.2, the summary statement, and 21.9-21, the more detailed explanation. This first section dealt with what kind of place eternity will be. I told you that eternity will be filled with beauty, the beauty of holiness. All of the ugliness of sin that is associated with this world will be removed. All will be beautiful. The section that we will look at this morning deals with a different aspect. Here, John tells us about who will be there. In this section John teaches us about the inhabitants of this beautiful place and what they will be doing there.
First, I want you to see yourself in this picture. You will be there. But please notice how John describes you. He doesn’t refer to ‘the saints’ or ‘the brethren’ or some other way of referring to Christians. No, instead he talks about ‘the nations’. Now, this is significant for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it points us back to what he wrote earlier in the book.
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands … Revelation 7:9
The Church that arrives in that place will not be limited to a few select groups. The Church triumphant will include people from all over this globe and from every different era. It will be the nations who will be there. Now, we often tie the idea of a nation to some political identification. But that isn’t what John is pointing to. A better way of understanding a nation is to think in terms of cultural and historical ties. These are the more profound things that people have in common. And so, when we get there we’ll see Hispanics and Hebrews, Karamajong and Scandinavians, Slavs and Arabs. Eternity will be a true melting pot with this difference. When we get there the distinctive qualities of each of these cultures will still be seen. Let me try to explain this. Angels, as far as I know, are all the same. There are no cultural differences. But people are not like angels. We are different from each other. Our cultural and ethnic groups are different. And it is this background that, to a large extent, makes us who we are. Culture is not something out there. It is something that is within the people of that culture, something that they all express which makes them a group. These cultural differences will still exist, though they will be beautified.
Now, I went through all of that so that you could understand what comes next. Listen again to John.
By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it … They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. Revelation 21:24, 26
What is this ‘glory and honor of the nations’ that will be brought into the city? And how could this benefit a city that John has described as already glorious? The glory of a nation is something good that was produced by that group. It is the good fruit of a culture. Last week some of my kids went to see the movie, ‘The Last Samurai’. It is a movie about a portion of ancient Japanese culture. When I asked Gabrielle about it she waxed eloquent about it and about the culture that it reflected. One thing that she mentioned is the sense of honor that this culture produced. In contrast with modern pragmatism – do what works – this culture believed that you do what is right. It may cost you dearly, may be incredibly difficult and may not ‘work’, but that didn’t matter. The glory of this culture was its understanding of honor. A couple of years ago we had a missionary to a group of South American Indians. He mentioned that our style of evangelism, which emphasizes the salvation of individuals, made no impression on the people of this culture. They think in terms of the whole, the community. Hearing that when Jesus returns everyone meets Him together in the sky – well that impressed them. The glory of this culture is its sense of community. What they do, they do together or not at all. Consider Europe during the Renaissance. The areas of art and science and literature were all exploding with new developments and discoveries. That was the glory of that culture.
When the nations enter the New Jerusalem they will bring with them the glory of their cultures. ‘This is what we accomplished. Here is the good that we were able to produce.’ That’s true of the group and it’s true of the individuals who make up the group. You have a glory about you. There are things that you have achieved that are good. There are things about the kind of person you are, the kind of character that you have developed, the skills that you have learned, that are good. These are the things that go into making you the person who you are. These things are an aspect of your culture, your contribution to your culture. And all of them will be beautified. The ugliness of sin will be removed. And that’s important. The honor of the samurai was used to kill and destroy. The sense of community can lead someone to compromise the truth by conforming. The science discovered in the Renaissance has been used to fight the Gospel. Even the good things of a culture can be twisted by sin. But not then. In the age to come the purified glory of the nations will be brought into the city. The cultivated fruit of centuries will be there. It will be a most fascinating place.
Now, it’s not just the nations who will be there. John tells us that God will be there. The New Jerusalem will be His dwelling place. He will dwell with His people. Here, again, we need to trace this idea from its Old Testament roots. Go back to the Garden of Eden. What is that? It’s the dwelling place of God with man. We’re told that God took walks in the Garden in the cool of the day. Imagine taking a walk with God. But, as you know, sin intruded. Instead of taking that walk, Adam and Eve ran from God. Here, man is removing himself from the God who dwelt with him. He chose not to dwell with God because of his sin. But it wasn’t only man’s decision. There’s also God’s curse. Man is excluded from the Garden, from the dwelling place of God. The relationship is broken. There is a deep chasm between God and man. Access to God’s dwelling is denied. Remember the cherubim and the flaming sword. No more walks in the cool of the day. But God, being rich in mercy and grace, didn’t leave it this way. First, there were the altars of sacrifice. Not a dwelling of God, but at least a point of contact between God and man. This led to the tabernacle that Moses built. This was better than just an altar. But the tabernacle was a mixed message. It was a sign of God dwelling among His people, but at the same time there was a fence around it. It was God saying, ‘I’m here, but be careful how you approach.’ God commissioned the tribe of Levi as His guards to kill any who approached without proper warrant. We still have the equivalent of cherubim with flaming swords. The tabernacle gave way to the temple. Here was a sense of real permanence instead of a collapsible tent. God was dwelling with His people and would remain with them. But even temples aren’t so permanent. Even temples could be destroyed. This led up to the coming of Jesus, the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. Here we have Jesus, the presence of God walking among men again. But even this was only partial. And that was felt when Jesus ascended to heaven. Jesus still dwells with His people by the Spirit, but that isn’t the fullness. What we have now, the indwelling Spirit, will give way to the full reality of God dwelling with His people. That’s what John is writing about in our text. It’s back to God walking with man in the cool of the day. The New Jerusalem is God dwelling among men just as He did back in the Garden – except better.
We see who will be there in the New Jerusalem. The redeemed nations will be there and God will be there. Now, let’s take that and ask a question. What’s going to happen when the nations arrive, bringing their glory and laying it at Jesus’ feet? The details of what I am going to say will be my educated guesses. But I think that the basic outline is correct. In this I am making a few assumptions. If you want to pursue what those assumptions are, ask me later. So, don’t press the details too much. Consider that general point. But I present the details to keep what I am going to say from being too abstract. This is how I picture eternity – except I know that it will be much better than this.
I see Jesus leading us all so that we learn from each other. Each saint from his respective culture will have something to give. The Japanese Christians will explain honor. The Christians from that Indian culture I mentioned will teach us about community, about how to feel a part of the group. The Renaissance Christians will help us to develop a sense of beauty from the arts and wonder from the sciences. I see us enjoying good times together, enjoying different kinds of foods from different groups, many of which we will never have heard of until we get there. I see the saints laughing together, learning together, working together. I see me finally learning how to garden and actually remembering all the names of the plants that we will grow. I see Jesus strolling from one cluster of busy Christians to another, chatting with the people and hearing them say, ‘Lord, You won’t believe this!’ And then He listens as someone tells Him about some new discovery he’s just learned from another of the saints. I see some of the saints approaching Jesus, one of them saying, ‘Lord, I don’t understand. I always thought … but now I’m hearing something very different.’ And then Jesus unties the knot and makes it clear. I see multitudes of cultures, each different and yet all in the process of making one new culture together. And the thrill and the wonder of it all will never end as we learn about our God and His remarkable ways by learning about and from one another. I think that eternity will be a fascinating place. The glory of the nations in the presence of God.
Now, what do we do with this? What do I want you to see? Well, for one thing, I’m still battling the popular myth that says that heaven is going to be boring. And who wants to spend eternity being bored? I hope that you see that it will be anything but boring. I hope that you are getting a little taste of the wonder of being there. And I hope that that wonder will translate into a yearning to be there.
Secondly, I’m hoping that looking at eternity in this way will give you a better perspective on the relationship between the ‘here and now’, and the ‘then and there’. On the one hand, you need to see that you are exiles here. This isn’t home. Think of all the different times that the Scriptures picture us as pilgrims and strangers here. This isn’t home. That is home, the New Jerusalem. If you can see that it will go a long way to helping you have biblical attitudes and expectations of life here. This isn’t home and we don’t put our hopes here as if it were home.
Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1:13
Home starts when Jesus comes back. We are other-worldly pilgrims here, on our way from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, our true home.
However, while we are here we don’t just sit around waiting for the Second Coming. Rather, we are to work hard to do good. Jeremiah proclaimed a message to another group of exiles that fits here.
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. Jeremiah 29:4-7
We are exiles, but we are to do some good while we are here. We are to seek the welfare of the city – this world – where we have been sent into exile. We do this knowing that it’s good for this world and that it will also bear fruit in the world to come. The good that we do here – the strengths, positive character traits, the skills and biblical ways of looking at life – these aspects of our culture come with us. This is the glory that we bring to the New Jerusalem to share with the rest of the saints, even as they bring qualities to share with us.
I hope that you see the balance in all of this. We are to be truly heavenly minded so that we can do some earthly good.
Revelation 21.3, 22-27
We’ve come to the end of Revelation. This is where John describes the bliss of eternity for the saints of God. Last week I mentioned that this last part is divided into seven pairs of sections. Last time we looked at Revelation 21.2, the summary statement, and 21.9-21, the more detailed explanation. This first section dealt with what kind of place eternity will be. I told you that eternity will be filled with beauty, the beauty of holiness. All of the ugliness of sin that is associated with this world will be removed. All will be beautiful. The section that we will look at this morning deals with a different aspect. Here, John tells us about who will be there. In this section John teaches us about the inhabitants of this beautiful place and what they will be doing there.
First, I want you to see yourself in this picture. You will be there. But please notice how John describes you. He doesn’t refer to ‘the saints’ or ‘the brethren’ or some other way of referring to Christians. No, instead he talks about ‘the nations’. Now, this is significant for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it points us back to what he wrote earlier in the book.
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands … Revelation 7:9
The Church that arrives in that place will not be limited to a few select groups. The Church triumphant will include people from all over this globe and from every different era. It will be the nations who will be there. Now, we often tie the idea of a nation to some political identification. But that isn’t what John is pointing to. A better way of understanding a nation is to think in terms of cultural and historical ties. These are the more profound things that people have in common. And so, when we get there we’ll see Hispanics and Hebrews, Karamajong and Scandinavians, Slavs and Arabs. Eternity will be a true melting pot with this difference. When we get there the distinctive qualities of each of these cultures will still be seen. Let me try to explain this. Angels, as far as I know, are all the same. There are no cultural differences. But people are not like angels. We are different from each other. Our cultural and ethnic groups are different. And it is this background that, to a large extent, makes us who we are. Culture is not something out there. It is something that is within the people of that culture, something that they all express which makes them a group. These cultural differences will still exist, though they will be beautified.
Now, I went through all of that so that you could understand what comes next. Listen again to John.
By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it … They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. Revelation 21:24, 26
What is this ‘glory and honor of the nations’ that will be brought into the city? And how could this benefit a city that John has described as already glorious? The glory of a nation is something good that was produced by that group. It is the good fruit of a culture. Last week some of my kids went to see the movie, ‘The Last Samurai’. It is a movie about a portion of ancient Japanese culture. When I asked Gabrielle about it she waxed eloquent about it and about the culture that it reflected. One thing that she mentioned is the sense of honor that this culture produced. In contrast with modern pragmatism – do what works – this culture believed that you do what is right. It may cost you dearly, may be incredibly difficult and may not ‘work’, but that didn’t matter. The glory of this culture was its understanding of honor. A couple of years ago we had a missionary to a group of South American Indians. He mentioned that our style of evangelism, which emphasizes the salvation of individuals, made no impression on the people of this culture. They think in terms of the whole, the community. Hearing that when Jesus returns everyone meets Him together in the sky – well that impressed them. The glory of this culture is its sense of community. What they do, they do together or not at all. Consider Europe during the Renaissance. The areas of art and science and literature were all exploding with new developments and discoveries. That was the glory of that culture.
When the nations enter the New Jerusalem they will bring with them the glory of their cultures. ‘This is what we accomplished. Here is the good that we were able to produce.’ That’s true of the group and it’s true of the individuals who make up the group. You have a glory about you. There are things that you have achieved that are good. There are things about the kind of person you are, the kind of character that you have developed, the skills that you have learned, that are good. These are the things that go into making you the person who you are. These things are an aspect of your culture, your contribution to your culture. And all of them will be beautified. The ugliness of sin will be removed. And that’s important. The honor of the samurai was used to kill and destroy. The sense of community can lead someone to compromise the truth by conforming. The science discovered in the Renaissance has been used to fight the Gospel. Even the good things of a culture can be twisted by sin. But not then. In the age to come the purified glory of the nations will be brought into the city. The cultivated fruit of centuries will be there. It will be a most fascinating place.
Now, it’s not just the nations who will be there. John tells us that God will be there. The New Jerusalem will be His dwelling place. He will dwell with His people. Here, again, we need to trace this idea from its Old Testament roots. Go back to the Garden of Eden. What is that? It’s the dwelling place of God with man. We’re told that God took walks in the Garden in the cool of the day. Imagine taking a walk with God. But, as you know, sin intruded. Instead of taking that walk, Adam and Eve ran from God. Here, man is removing himself from the God who dwelt with him. He chose not to dwell with God because of his sin. But it wasn’t only man’s decision. There’s also God’s curse. Man is excluded from the Garden, from the dwelling place of God. The relationship is broken. There is a deep chasm between God and man. Access to God’s dwelling is denied. Remember the cherubim and the flaming sword. No more walks in the cool of the day. But God, being rich in mercy and grace, didn’t leave it this way. First, there were the altars of sacrifice. Not a dwelling of God, but at least a point of contact between God and man. This led to the tabernacle that Moses built. This was better than just an altar. But the tabernacle was a mixed message. It was a sign of God dwelling among His people, but at the same time there was a fence around it. It was God saying, ‘I’m here, but be careful how you approach.’ God commissioned the tribe of Levi as His guards to kill any who approached without proper warrant. We still have the equivalent of cherubim with flaming swords. The tabernacle gave way to the temple. Here was a sense of real permanence instead of a collapsible tent. God was dwelling with His people and would remain with them. But even temples aren’t so permanent. Even temples could be destroyed. This led up to the coming of Jesus, the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. Here we have Jesus, the presence of God walking among men again. But even this was only partial. And that was felt when Jesus ascended to heaven. Jesus still dwells with His people by the Spirit, but that isn’t the fullness. What we have now, the indwelling Spirit, will give way to the full reality of God dwelling with His people. That’s what John is writing about in our text. It’s back to God walking with man in the cool of the day. The New Jerusalem is God dwelling among men just as He did back in the Garden – except better.
We see who will be there in the New Jerusalem. The redeemed nations will be there and God will be there. Now, let’s take that and ask a question. What’s going to happen when the nations arrive, bringing their glory and laying it at Jesus’ feet? The details of what I am going to say will be my educated guesses. But I think that the basic outline is correct. In this I am making a few assumptions. If you want to pursue what those assumptions are, ask me later. So, don’t press the details too much. Consider that general point. But I present the details to keep what I am going to say from being too abstract. This is how I picture eternity – except I know that it will be much better than this.
I see Jesus leading us all so that we learn from each other. Each saint from his respective culture will have something to give. The Japanese Christians will explain honor. The Christians from that Indian culture I mentioned will teach us about community, about how to feel a part of the group. The Renaissance Christians will help us to develop a sense of beauty from the arts and wonder from the sciences. I see us enjoying good times together, enjoying different kinds of foods from different groups, many of which we will never have heard of until we get there. I see the saints laughing together, learning together, working together. I see me finally learning how to garden and actually remembering all the names of the plants that we will grow. I see Jesus strolling from one cluster of busy Christians to another, chatting with the people and hearing them say, ‘Lord, You won’t believe this!’ And then He listens as someone tells Him about some new discovery he’s just learned from another of the saints. I see some of the saints approaching Jesus, one of them saying, ‘Lord, I don’t understand. I always thought … but now I’m hearing something very different.’ And then Jesus unties the knot and makes it clear. I see multitudes of cultures, each different and yet all in the process of making one new culture together. And the thrill and the wonder of it all will never end as we learn about our God and His remarkable ways by learning about and from one another. I think that eternity will be a fascinating place. The glory of the nations in the presence of God.
Now, what do we do with this? What do I want you to see? Well, for one thing, I’m still battling the popular myth that says that heaven is going to be boring. And who wants to spend eternity being bored? I hope that you see that it will be anything but boring. I hope that you are getting a little taste of the wonder of being there. And I hope that that wonder will translate into a yearning to be there.
Secondly, I’m hoping that looking at eternity in this way will give you a better perspective on the relationship between the ‘here and now’, and the ‘then and there’. On the one hand, you need to see that you are exiles here. This isn’t home. Think of all the different times that the Scriptures picture us as pilgrims and strangers here. This isn’t home. That is home, the New Jerusalem. If you can see that it will go a long way to helping you have biblical attitudes and expectations of life here. This isn’t home and we don’t put our hopes here as if it were home.
Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1:13
Home starts when Jesus comes back. We are other-worldly pilgrims here, on our way from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, our true home.
However, while we are here we don’t just sit around waiting for the Second Coming. Rather, we are to work hard to do good. Jeremiah proclaimed a message to another group of exiles that fits here.
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. Jeremiah 29:4-7
We are exiles, but we are to do some good while we are here. We are to seek the welfare of the city – this world – where we have been sent into exile. We do this knowing that it’s good for this world and that it will also bear fruit in the world to come. The good that we do here – the strengths, positive character traits, the skills and biblical ways of looking at life – these aspects of our culture come with us. This is the glory that we bring to the New Jerusalem to share with the rest of the saints, even as they bring qualities to share with us.
I hope that you see the balance in all of this. We are to be truly heavenly minded so that we can do some earthly good.
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