The New Heaven and the New Earth, Pt. 1
Revelation 21:1-3
I think throughout the history of the church, heaven has been a preoccupation of God's people. Many songs have focused on heaven. Because people through the years in the life of the church have been loosely tied to earth and so they have longed for heaven. I suppose even this time in the history of the world around the globe where Christians don't have it as comfortably as we do, there is still a great anticipation for heaven.
Most Christians, I suppose, through the centuries could say with the psalmist in Psalm 73, "Whom have I in heaven but Thee and besides Thee I desire nothing on earth." That is the expression of the heart that longs for God. Much like Psalm 42 where the psalmist says, "As the deer pants after the water brook, so pants my soul after Thee, O God." The psalmist in the same Psalm 73 said, "Nearness to God is my good." He said, "God is my portion forever." Being preoccupied with the person of God, longing to be in the presence of God was on the heart of Christians.
In fact, the pure in heart, according to the words of Jesus in the Beatitudes, are promised that they will some day see God. Through the centuries that desire to see God, to be in God's presence, to enjoy God forever, that desire that there is nothing in the world that can satisfy has been on the hearts of believers. But it's not so in this culture.
Not in this society in which we live in the western world. We are living in a society of instant gratification, material comfort and endless indulgences. And the church has become worldly. Nothing demonstrates that, I don't think, anymore graphically than the lack of interest in heaven. Most Christians are, to some degree or another, more interested in laying up treasure on earth than in heaven. They're more concerned with their investments and their retirement package and their own future on earth than they are with heaven. I suppose most Christians sacrifice the eternal blessing of glory on the altar of temporal gratification. We don't talk about heaven much. We don't sing about heaven much because we're really not that interested.
The old song said "heaven on my mind," but that's not really true anymore. Because believers do not have heaven on their minds, they waste their lives, they hinder the power of the church and they are consumed with fading things.
We could address this issue of having lost the heavenly perspective from a number of passages. We could talk about Paul's words to the Philippians in which he reminds them and us that our citizenship is in heaven, chapter 3 verse 20 and that we are waiting for the One who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, or we might even look at Colossians 3 where it says, "Set your affections on things above and not on things on the earth." Or we might even study 1 John 2:15 to 17 where it says, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world, for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of God but is of the world and the world passes away." We could even study the passage in James where James says, "Friendship with the world is enmity with God."
You see, everything connected to our spiritual life and destiny is in heaven. Our Father is there. Our Savior is there. Our Comforter is there. Our fellow believers are there. Our name is there, our life is there, our inheritance is there, our home is there, our citizenship is there, our reward is there, our treasure is there. Everything that belongs to us is there.
Consequently, Paul told the Romans that they should be rejoicing in hope. That they closer they are to heaven the more joy they should experience. I don't know that we see that. I see even Christians close to heaven trying desperately to hold on to this life. But the preacher in Ecclesiastes chapter 7 and verse 1 was right. He didn't intend it this way but he was right when he said, "The day of one's death is better than the day of one's birth," and that is true for a Christian. And though he may have approached it cynically, what he said was indeed truth. It is better to die than to be born because to die for a believer is to enter into a better place than birth ushers us into. The Apostle Paul understood that when he said, "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain." Therein he voiced his perspective.
The reason we should have a longing for heaven is because God is there. And whom have we in heaven but Him? And whom do we desire on earth but Him? He should be our supreme affection, our supreme love, our supreme desire. And if He's in heaven then heaven should be the place we long to be.
In 1 Kings chapter 8, eight times it says that God is in heaven. And if indeed He is the supreme object of our affection, if He is our great love, if we love the Lord our God in any proximity to loving Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, then we would long to be in heaven with Him. And we would say with the psalmist, "I desire nothing on earth but You and whom have I in heaven but You." I want to be there because You're there, not because my friends are there, not because my family is there, not because my relatives are there but because You're there.
This has a powerful effect on our lives, to desire heaven. And frankly, we could wish that we lived in a less comfortable culture, we could even wish that we lived in a poor culture, we could wish that we lived in a persecuted culture so the world would not seem so good to us and heaven would seem so much better.
In 1 John chapter 3 the first two verses, John says, "See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called children of God and such we are. For this reason the world doesn't know us because it didn't know Him. Beloved, now are we the children of God and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that when He appears we shall be like Him because we shall see Him just as He is." That's the attraction of heaven, we'll see Him just as He is...no more veil, no more distance, no more mystery, the complete revelation of God. And then John says in verse 3, "He that has this hope in Him purifies himself." It purges your life to hope for heaven.
John Bunyan writing in that marvelous Pilgrim's Progress which demonstrates such genius in making the Christian life into a graphic illustration or allegory has a conversation between two pilgrims who are on their way to the celestial city, which, of course, is heaven. One of the two pilgrims says to the other, "When do you find yourself in the most wholesome and most vigorous spiritual state?" To which the other pilgrim says, "When I think of the place to which I am going." Bunyan understood that. When he wrote that he understood that heaven on your mind changes your life. The living in a joyous anticipation of the presence of God changes everything.
Sadly, I suppose most Christians are more like the cynical Mark Twain who when told about heaven remarked flippantly, "You take heaven, I'd rather go to Bermuda."
A true and vivid longing for heaven has many marvelous implications and many marvelous benefits. A true and vivid longing for heaven, for example, is an evidence of genuine salvation because when a person longs for heaven, you know they're longing for God. They're demonstrating love for the Lord. They're showing you where their heart is.
And not only that, where you see a strong longing for heaven there is incentive to the highest excellence of Christian character. Why? Because anyone who loves heaven and anyone who longs for heaven and anyone who seeks that which is above and anyone whose heart is in heaven is one who loves to commune with the living God, one who travels there in meditation, who travels there in devotion, who travels there in prayer, who travels there in study, and that's a purging fellowship.
Furthermore, a true and vivid longing for heaven is the truest path to a life of joy because if you're really living in heaven and if all your anticipation is there and you recognize that that is the great desire of your heart, then you can endure absolutely anything in this life and never have your joy affected. What does it matter what happens here in view of heaven's glories?
Furthermore, a true and vivid anticipation of heaven is the best preservative against sin because the more heavenly minded you are the less likely you are to stoop to the degrading level of the world. The more you set your affections on things above, the less likely you are to follow fleshly impulses.
Furthermore, a true and vivid longing for heaven will maintain the vigor of your spiritual service. Those Christians who run slow, those Christians who work little, those Christians who make a minimal effort at serving God demonstrate little regard for eternal things. Many of them work very hard at earthly things and very little at eternal things. Why? Because they in their minds have designed that the prize to be gained here is more worthy of their effort than the prize to be gained there. What a deception. You see, fervency in service, diligence in service, faithfulness in service is related to anticipation of heavenly benefit. I ask myself that constantly...what is the heavenly benefit of my life? What will be the heavenly benefit of that endeavor? What does it matter for eternity?
Furthermore, a true and vivid longing for heaven honors God above everything else because when your heart is in heaven it is because He is there and He is the supreme One. And a true devotion and longing for heaven also repays God's goodness. You say, "In what sense?" Well, when we set our affections on things above, in a sense we have given back to God what He has given us because His heart is always set on us, and certainly ours should be set on Him.
So when you want to find an evidence of genuine salvation in someone's life and when you want to find a motive or incentive to the highest excellence of Christian virtue, and when you're looking for someone who has true joy, someone who can stand against temptation, someone who maintains the vigor and diligence of spiritual service, someone who honors God above everything else and someone who wants to repay God for His goodness, you're going to find somebody whose heart is in heaven. The noblest of all Christians, the godliest of all saints, the most virtuest of all believers are going to be heavenly minded and they're going to life in the life of eternity.
So when we talk about heaven in our study of the book of Revelation, having come to chapters 21 and 22, we're not just talking about pie in the sky, we're talking about something that has immense implications for how we live our lives. And, frankly, we're talking about something that should bring great conviction. It does disturb me, I confess, that every single seat in this church isn't filled and people pressing against the doors on the outside. It should be enough to announce we're going to talk about heaven that every believer would be here, if he had to paddle his own boat. In some places in our world even today that would be the case where people have suffered much and where they love God much.
And so, as we come to the closing two chapters of the book of Revelation after all these months and even several years of study, we come now to the subject of heaven. And my prayer is it will rekindle the fires in every heart, the fires of preoccupation with the land of glory which awaits us.
Let's get some foundational data first, okay? Heaven is referred to 550 times or so in Scripture. Heaven is referred to 54 times in the book of Revelation. The Old Testament Hebrew word is shamayim, it means the heights. The New Testament word is ouranos from which we get the planet Uranus. It means that which is elevated, that which is lifted up, that which is raised up. Heaven is the raised up place, the heights.
Scripture simply delineates three heavens. In 2 Corinthians 12:2 it says Paul was taken up into the third heaven, that's the heaven where God dwells, that's the third heaven. The first heaven is the atmospheric heaven, that's the atmosphere around the earth, that's the air we breathe. The second heaven is the stratospheric heaven, that's the heaven of the heavenly bodies, the planets, the stars, the moons and everything else. And when you've gone through the atmospheric heavens and you've gone through the stratospheric heavens and come to the last heaven, it's the heaven of God, it's the divine heaven, the abode of God and angels and saints.
And people have asked throughout the centuries: where is it? Where is it? We believe it's a place because there are some people there who actually have bodies. Is that not true? Like Enoch who talk a walk one day and walked right up to heaven. And the prophet Elijah who went to heaven in a chariot. And the Lord Jesus Christ who is there in a glorified body. And there's going to be a lot more people there in their glorified bodies because Jesus said in John 14 He went to prepare a place for us and some day He'll come and bring us there. And when He does bring us, according to 1 Thessalonians, our body is going to be transformed, we're going to get a new body to go into that heavenly place. It's a place.
You say, "Isn't it just sort of a spiritual consciousness?" No, it's a place. It's a place where the spiritual and the transcendent glorified bodies of the saints will dwell with the glorified Christ and the holy angels.
Now exactly where it is is not given, we just know one...one detail, it's up, that's all we know. You say, "How do you know it's up?" Because that's what the Bible says. In Revelation, for example, chapter 4 verse 1, "After these things," John writes, "and behold standing open in heaven, I looked and saw the door and the first voice I heard like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me said, Come up here." So, from where John was standing, heaven was up. In 2 Corinthians chapter 12 verses 1 to 4 Paul says he was caught up into the third heaven. It's up.
Now I know the next question: how far up? Well, we've got to get through the atmospheric heaven and we've got to get through the stratospheric heaven, although we could conclude that heaven is in a completely different dimension, and thus is very near. I'll say more about that. But let's just assume that we go through the atmospheric heaven and the stratospheric heaven to get to the up where the true heaven is. The moon is 211,463 miles, you could walk to it in 27 years if you could walk 24 miles a day, it's not that far. Now if we could just crank up your speed a little bit to like 186,000 miles per second, you could get to the moon in a second and a half, which is really the better way to go if you're going to take the trip. At that speed you could reach Jupiter in 35 minutes and 11 seconds cause it's only 367 million miles away. And if you could go 186,000 miles per second you could get to Saturn in 7...in one hour and 11 seconds cause it's only 790 million miles away. Now remember, you've got to go 186,000 miles a second to get there in a hour and 11 seconds.
But you see, when you've gotten to Saturn and you've gone beyond, and you've even gotten to Pluto which is in to the billions of miles away, when you've arrived at the very extremity of what we know is our solar system, you haven't even gotten out of the front yard. You're still at the very, very beginning of the stratospheric heaven because Alpha Centauri which is a star is 20 billion light years away, the North Star...420 billion miles away, I should say...the North Star, 400 billion. And then a star Betelgeuse, 880 quad drillion miles away. And by the way, it's big. They have discovered it has a 200 million mile diameter. And you want to know something? When you get there, you're still in our galaxy and there are billions of galaxies.
And they say that our galaxy probably has a diameter of 100,000 light years, that's going at the rate of 186,000 miles a second for a year. And when you've gotten through our galaxy there are billions more. So when we say "up," it is up.
You say, "Well, it must take a long time to get there." Luke 23:43 Jesus said to the thief on the cross, "In 100,000 light years you'll be with Me in Paradise." Is that what He said? He said what? .... Isn't that amazing? And the Apostle Paul said, "Absent from the body, (snap), present with the Lord." Second Corinthians 5:8, "Far better to depart and be with Christ." Oh in a sense it's outside the created order as we know it, it's in a different dimension than time and space and so it's a little facetious to assume that it's miles away, but you understand that the great heaven of God is way beyond the created world and yet we can be there in a split second. In fact, when the Rapture comes it's going to happen in a twinkling of an eye, that doesn't mean a blink, that's different. Twinkling means the light...the time it takes for light to refract off your pupil.
And what do we know about heaven? Well only what the Bible says. Ezekiel tried, we give him credit, tried to explain it in chapter 1. I'm not going to read it to you because it's...you can read it yourself. He talked about storms and he talked about fire flashing and jewels and metal and glowing metal and living creatures and bronze and spinning wheels inside of wheels. From verse 4 down through 28 he gave his best effort at describing the indescribable.
And Paul went there and came back in 2 Corinthians 12. And sad to say, the Lord didn't let him tell about it because he says he was not allowed to describe it.
So Ezekiel is giving us a description that's very hard to comprehend...shining, brilliant, blazing, glorious light and jewels. Paul doesn't even get to tell us what he saw. So the best look at it is here in John's revelation. We're going to get the best glimpse of heaven anywhere in Scripture here in chapter 21 verse 1 down through chapter 22 verse 5. This is a monumental text of Scripture then because it describes for us our future home.
Now remember, Jesus said in John 14 that He was going to go away and prepare a place for us, and this is the place He prepared for us. And we'll see how that fits together in a moment. Let's turn to chapter 21 and at least for tonight we'll take a shot at the first three verses.
"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, `Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He shall dwell among them and they shall be His people and God Himself shall be among them.'"
Now, friends, that is enough for me to preach on for months. It is so glorious. But let me just give you three features that come out of these verses.
First of all, the appearance, or the vision of the new heaven and the new earth. Let's call it the appearance of the new heaven and the new earth. Verse 1, "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth passed away and there is no longer any sea."
Now remember, as this chapter opens, let me just give you a fast review, as this chapter opens in the chronology of end times, all the sinners of all the ages, demons and men, including Satan, the false prophet, the Antichrist and everybody else are now in the eternal Lake of Fire. They are out of the presence of God and the saints and the holy angels forever. They have been dismissed into their own disconnected isolated place of eternal punishment. They are gone from the presence of God, the saints and angels forever.
Additionally, the whole universe as we know it, the entire universe, all the way out to endless space through all the billions and billions of light years that make up the stratospheric heavens, all of it has been destroyed. All of it has been reduced to energy. All the matter that makes up the entire universe has been reduced to energy.
So the universe as we know it is gone. And all the ungodly are gone. And God then takes the holy angels and the godly of all the ages and creates for them a new universe which is to be the eternal dwelling place of the redeemed and of the angels who worship God.
This is what Ephesians 1:10 has in mind when it says, "The fullness of times has come." That is the summing up of all things, things in the heavens and things upon the earth, Ephesians 1:10. This is it. This is the eternal state. This will exist forever and forever.
Let's look at the verse, "And I saw," I have to stop at that phrase. That little phrase is a technical phrase, this is the seventh time it's been used since chapter 19 verse 11. Chapter 19 verse 11, "I saw heaven opened and then Christ comes," this is the seventh time that same little phrase is used. It's a very important phrase because I think it is used to take us step by step through the chronology of the coming of Christ. It is used when the Lord returns. It is then used at the defeat of Antichrist. It is then used to introduce the banishment of Satan at the outset of the Kingdom. It is then used at the introduction of the Kingdom, the millennial Kingdom. It is used at the opening of the release and the destruction of Satan. It is used to introduce the scene at the Great White Throne. And here for the seventh time it is used to introduce the new heaven and the new earth. It's a technical phrase that introduces each of the sequential events from the return of Christ to the establishment of the eternal state. And here is its seventh use. We'll see the eighth use in the next verse. As you can see verse 2 begins with the same phrase, "And I saw."
But here in the seventh use, "I saw a new heaven and a new earth." Following the Lord's return, following the defeat of Antichrist, following the banishment of Satan at the beginning of the Kingdom, following the Kingdom, following the release of Satan and his destruction, following the Great White Throne comes the new heaven and the new earth. And there you have the sequence, the eschatological sequence leading up to the eternal state, signaled by the little phrase "and I saw."
And what did he see? A new heaven and a new earth. Now this terminology is drawn from the Old Testament. And I just remind you of two scriptures, Isaiah 65:17, "For behold, God said through the prophet Isaiah, I create new heavens and a new earth and so new that the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind." People ask, "When you get to heaven, will you remember what went on down here?" What's the answer? No. Because if you could remember, you would remember things that are tainted with...what?...sin. "Be glad and rejoice forever in what I create."
Then in Isaiah 66:22, "Just as the new heavens and the new earth which I make will endure before Me, declares the Lord, so your offspring and your name will endure." And again there twice Isaiah refers to the new heaven and the new earth. And so John is taking that phrase right...right from, as it were, the pen of the prophet. What Isaiah had predicted is now a reality in the vision that John is having.
So there's coming a new heaven and a new earth. And I say to you what I've said all the way along, the earth we live on is temporary, disposable. We're not to preserve it, that's pointless. I'm not saying that you are indiscriminate in how you care for the resources around you. I'm not saying that you should wantonly pollute the world and make life difficult and things like that. But I am saying the idea of preserving this world runs contrary to the plan of God. It is disposable, it is unraveling, it is declining, it is winding down. The law of entropy which says that matter is always breaking down and tending toward disorder is indeed occurring. And consequently we are living on a disposable planet. God does not intend for it to remain. The goals of all those who want to save the earth, to save-the-planet people are really wasting their time because this one will be replaced by an eternal new heaven and new earth. In fact, the earth is not headed for an ecological crisis. I want to take that burden off your back, the earth is not headed for an ecological crisis, it is not headed for an ecological holocaust, it is headed for an eschatological holocaust.
Now the word "new" is important. It's not the word neos which means new as opposed to old, it's the word kainos which means new in quality, it measures not the timeliness of something being new or the fact that it is new on the calendar, it is new to this period of time, but simply that it is new in quality. It is fresh. It is different. There's coming a different heaven and earth. Yes it is new in terms of chronology, but it is...the point that the writer is making here is that it is new in terms of kind, it's different, the quality of it is completely different from the one we now know. And we won't even have any remembrance of the one that now exists. God originally made the universe and the earth, I believe, to be the permanent home for mankind. And Eden would have been his permanent home and he would have lived forever, except that men and women sinned in the Garden. Sin and death entered in, corrupted the world and the universe. The fall of angels, of course, added to the corruption. The earth became a place that had to be destroyed. Decay entered it. It started unraveling and decaying and ultimately God has to wipe it out.
There will come a new heaven, think about it. A heaven with no more tempests, a heaven with no more storms, no more fierce winds, no more thunder, no more rain and no more demons and devils roaming. And there will be a new earth with no miseries of godlessness, no longer smarting under the curse. And earth whose forever hills will flow with holiness and the river of salvation and whose eternal valleys know only the peace of the paradise of God. This has to happen. There has to be a new heaven and a new earth. Why? Back to verse 1, "For the first heaven and the first earth passed away." That was described back in chapter 20 verse 11. "I saw a Great White Throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away and no place was found for them." At that point we discussed the fact that the universe goes out of existence when God gathers the ungodly at the Great White Throne and then sends them in to the Lake of Fire.
And because the universe is gone, He has to create a new one. The heavens and earth that we now know must be destroyed. You remember how the Old Testament prophets said the heavens are not pure in His sight, Job 15:15. That was true. Leviticus 18:25, "The land has become defiled." Isaiah 24:5, "The earth is polluted." And consequently the psalmist writing in Psalm 102 wrote, "Of old Thou didst found the earth and the heavens are the work of Thy hands, even they will perish but Thou doest endure and all of them will wear out like a garment, like clothing Thou wilt change them and they will be changed." The old clothing a new garment will come. And by the way, that identical passage is quoted in Hebrews chapter 1 verses 10 to 12, "Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth, the heavens are the work of Thy hands, they will perish but Thou remainest." Jesus said in Luke 21, "Heaven and earth will pass away."
So because heaven and earth, as we know it, this whole massive universe will be uncreated. And when you think about the creation of it, I mean, think about the creation of a universe where you can go 880 quad-drillion miles, reach a star 200 million miles in diameter and still be in your galaxy and there are billions more galaxies beyond it. Imagine that massive universe being uncreated. And then in its place a new heaven and a new earth.
You say, "What's it going to be like?" He only gives us one clue, end of verse 1, just...this is the only clue, "There's no longer any sea." Humph, you say, "Is that a clue?" Yeah, there's no longer any sea, that's all he says.
Now that means it's going to be different because three quarters of the earth's surface is covered with what? Water. And you know something, I want to announce to you that you're mostly water. Did you know that? Your blood is 90 percent water and your flesh is 65 percent water.
This then, this world in which we live is basically a watery world. There's not only water in the oceans, there's water in the land. And we're water and plants are mostly water and animals are mostly water, and the earth...did you know?...is the only place in the known universe where there's water enough to sustain man, plants and animals. Tell me that's evolution. It can't be.
The sea is emblematic of a water-based environment. Man's existence is water based. You'd die if you get dehydrated. So what is he saying here? Well, what he's saying is the new heaven and the new earth don't operate on water anymore. Now that's enough to tell you it's going to be different. No more evaporation, distillation and condensation. New climatic conditions. And whatever we are in our glorified form is not going to depend on a process that demands consumption of water. The new heaven and the whole new universe isn't going to have to have a whole lot of oceans, it won't have to have any, it won't have any. So in our glorified form, no water is needed.
You say, "Well, is there going to be any water at all there? I might get thirsty even there in heaven." Well you probably won't but in Revelation 22 it says, "He showed me a river of the water of life," that's the only water, it's not the H2O kind, it's the water of...what? Life.
So whatever...whatever the water of life is is what gives us life but it's not the kind of water we know, it's not a chemical called H2O. You say, "Well why does he say that?" Just to point out that it's different. And that's about as profound a way to express its difference from the physical standpoint as any way he could say it because if there's no water there and there's no sea there, then life is going to be so completely different than anything we could even understand in its glorified form. The eternal state is totally different.
So, verse 1, the appearance of the new heaven and the new earth and I can't tell you anymore than that, folks, because that's all there is there. First Corinthians chapter 15, Paul says there's a body terrestrial, that is an earthly one, and there's a body celestial, a body in the glory, and they're different. We will be literally raised, we will be literally given resurrection bodies, we will dwell in an eternally new heaven and earth that will be based on a completely different life principle than what we know now in this created universe.
Now let's move to the second point. He starts out with the appearance of the new heaven and the new earth, and then secondly, the capital of the new heaven and new earth, the capital. Verse 2, and here is the eighth use of this little phrase, taking us to the next in the sequence of visions, "And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband."
Unleashing God's Truth One Verse at a Time