I Saw a New Heaven
Sermon
Renewal of the New
Sermons For Sundays After Pentecost
Two ninety-five-year-old sisters died at the same time and went to Heaven. There they were overwhelmed by the magnificence and glory of heaven. They ooh-ed and ah-ed at the wonders they saw. They couldn't get over what a matchless place it was. Then one said to the other, "You know, we could have been here five years earlier if you hadn't insisted on our eating oat bran." If you're going to Heaven, the earlier the better, but let God appoint the time. There's a barbershop quartet song that has these words, "Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die." The aged apostle John, in lonely exile on the little Mediterranean island of Patmos, was given a vision of Heaven, as reported to us toward the very end of the Bible. Each year its glories come to us in the First Lesson for All Saints' Sunday.
Wonders Beyond Description
Four times the word, "new," is used in this lesson to describe Heaven: "a new heaven," "a new earth," "new Jerusalem," "Behold, I make all things new." This is heavily emphasized because life in Heaven will be entirely different from life on earth. The Bible says, "The former things have passed away." This was foretold in the sixty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, where God says, "For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind." Jesus spoke of the new world, saying, "In the new world, when the Son of man shall sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones." We shall be thrilled with endless surprises at all the new things in Heaven.
One thing Heaven will never be: it will not be a let-down. When the state of Georgia bought the spacious residence of the late millionaire William Rockefeller on Jekyll Island, it was curious to open the walk-in safe. What treasures would that safe be holding? When the safe was finally opened, it contained half a bottle of wine and a set of false teeth. Heaven will never be a let-down like that. Instead, it will be a soaring upwards into discoveries, raptures, surprises and joys such as earth could never offer. The Good News proclaimed on earth will become the Fantastic News displayed in Heaven.
The rare beauty of Heaven is compared in Revelation to "a bride adorned for her husband." What a beautiful sight that is to see a bride coming down the church aisle for the wedding ceremony, dressed in her absolute finest, looking prettier than at any other time in her life! Some words of Paul in First Corinthians can apply to Heaven, for he writes, "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him." When Thomas Edison lay dying, he could hardly speak, according to his widow. His doctor, who was also a friend of the family, observed that Edison was trying to say something. He bent down very close and heard the inventor whisper, "It's very beautiful over there." Those were his last words. Those could be a person's first words in Heaven: "It's very beautiful here."
The Heart of Heaven
Central among all the glories of Heaven will be the majesty of God who is seated on the throne. He is the heart of Heaven. It was not just a voice, but a loud voice that came from Heaven's throne, saying this very thing: "Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them." There is much repetition in these words, because the concept is so overwhelming that it requires repetition to help make it believable. It boggles our minds to think that the eternal, almighty God would want to spend eternity in closest association with these creatures he created. We shall be astounded that he wants to be everlastingly in our midst. This will be the final proof of his infinite love for us. When Jesus was born, he was called Emmanuel, meaning "God with us." When we reach Heaven by God's mercy in Christ, we shall see Emmanuel face to face and spend eternity with his selfless love in our midst. The voice that promised this was a loud voice, and it came from the authority of Heaven's throne, and it repeated the assurance over and over again. Who dares to doubt it?
Actually, Heaven will bring us a reunion with our rescuer. Little Lisa Greene was three years old when she was rescued from the smoke and flames that engulfed her family's home in Brooklyn, New York, in 1975. A city firefighter named Marvin Bunch arrived at the scene to find three women on the porch of the flaming house screaming that children were trapped upstairs. Bunch crawled upstairs at the risk of his life and brought Lisa Greene out in his arms, unconscious. Two other children were also rescued. Fourteen years later, Lisa phoned the New York City Fire Department and learned that the person who had saved her life was a retired fire captain living in Las Vegas. Her family brought the Bunch family to New York as guests of honor for Lisa's high school graduation and for a luncheon afterward. Bunch said of his taking her to the hospital, unconscious, fourteen years before, "I was up all night until I got the report" that she was alive. Lisa was ecstatic to be in the presence of the one who had saved her life and to thank him profusely and honor him gratefully. In Heaven, by God's grace, we shall have the privilege of living forever in the presence of our divine rescuer, as we thank him profusely and honor him gratefully.
It is interesting that the word, "people," used by the loud voice from the throne, which said, "They shall be his people," is in the plural in some ancient Greek manuscripts. Then it reads of those in Heaven, "They shall be his peoples." This suggests that many different peoples of the earth are gathered around Heaven's throne. It represents the truth that Christianity is a universal religion for all the peoples of earth. It is also a challenge to the church of Jesus Christ to reach out with the Gospel to all the peoples of the world, that they may be in that great throng in Heaven, with God at its center, their faith accepting the rescue that Christ won for them by his atoning death on the Cross and his victorious Resurrection on Easter.
Earth's Burdens Lifted
The vision of Heaven in today's lesson from the book of Revelation now mentions specifically some of the aspects of life in God's glory. It begins, "He [God] will wipe away every tear from their eyes ... neither shall there be mourning nor crying ... any more." The sadness and sorrows of earth are all gone and forgotten. This is beautifully described in that hymn of Magnus Landstad which says in part:
All trials shall be like a dream that is past;
Forgotten all trouble and mourning.
All questions and doubts have been answered at last,
When rises the light of that morning.
Another hymn writer, Hans Brorson, who wrote seventy hymns the year before he died, wrote this one among them, "Who is This Host Arrayed in White." Part of that hymn, written in the year 1764 reads:
On earth they wept through bitter years;
Now God has wiped away their tears,
Transformed their strife to heav'nly life,
And freed them from their fears.
No so-called "crying towel" is needed in Heaven. God personally dries those tears of earth.
The vision goes on to say, "And death shall be no more." This was foretold back in the prophecy of Isaiah, where we read of God, "He will swallow up death for ever." Paul echoes that prophecy in his words, "Death is swallowed up in victory," with which he quotes Isaiah in describing Jesus' Easter victory over death. On earth, many people, even Christians, live under the fear of death all their lives. In Heaven, that fear will be absolutely unknown because there is no more death. Death is eternally extinct. God is life, and he is in the midst of his people forever. What steel this thought must have put into the hearts of Christians who were being cruelly persecuted when this vision was written! "The valley of the shadow of death," as the twenty-third psalm expresses it, has no place in the topography of Heaven. That life above is one unending Easter day, throbbing with the celebration of Resurrection.
Another aspect of life in heaven as the vision describes it is that there is no more pain. No more suffering, no more sickness, no more heartache, no more pain! St. Paul claimed that this future prospect even alleviated suffering on earth, for he wrote, "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us." In other words, today's sufferings hurt less because of the promise of an after-life without suffering. A big part of earth's pain is separation from loved ones when death takes them from us. In Heaven there will be no more separations of those gathered around God's majestic presence. Heaven's dictionary will not contain the word, "goodbye," for it will never need to be used. The apostle John, whose thoughts are contained in the Book of Revelation, was separated from all the friends he loved by being exiled on that lonely island of Patmos. How he must have longed for the life to come, in which there will be no more separations! Every time a loved one in Christ is taken away from us by death, we can hunger even more in our heart for Heaven's eternal togetherness in Christ.
One more aspect of life in Heaven is promised in today's lesson from Revelation. "And the sea was no more," we read. Although this might appear to refer to the sea as separating us from one another, it actually means that there is no sin or evil in Heaven. It was the sea, according to ancient thought, from which the great dragon came forth and stirred up all the evil on earth. From the dark depths came the fomenter of all sin, namely Satan, the great tempter. When we reach Heaven by the merits of Christ our Lord, all that will be in the past, never to be experienced again. We cannot imagine what living together without sin will be like. We will all be Christlike persons, seeking only to bless and serve and support one another to the glory of God. No one will ever need to seek forgiveness from another for having wronged the other, because no such sins will be committed. Nor will sins of omission be possible. All will be peace and joy and love and celebration, the like of which we cannot now even imagine in our wildest dreams. What a different and blessed life it will be in God's new order! Recently published is a five-volume, ten-million-word Encyclopedia of World Crime. This set of books will not be in Heaven's library. The word, ''crime" is not even known there.
Heaven Is Our Destination
Heaven is the destination of God's people. This is declared in the words of him who sat on the throne, saying, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end." Alpha and Omega were, of course, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, the A and the Z. God is saying here that he is the source of our life on earth and the destination of our life in Heaven. He is all in all for us. Every day almost 6,000 Americans die. Where do they go? God has a place for those who trust in Christ alone for their future. The destination is far better than any experience along the journey. The longing for it keeps us strong to finish the journey in faith. The words from the throne, "It is done," signify that everything necessary to enable a believer to attain Heaven in the end had been done through Christ's life, death and Resurrection for our sake. Nothing more can be added by us or by anybody.
Take note that the one on the throne said in the vision in Revelation, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true." We sometimes say when we are uncertain about someone's promise, "Put it in writing." God did just that for us. He put it in writing in the Scriptures for all people for all time to come. Nobody can ever erase it or blot it out or take it away from us. Nobody can add to it or take from it. It is in writing in indelible ink. This writing comes from the authority of the throne. Nothing will ever overthrow that throne.
If God is our destination in Heaven, then this earthly life is a pilgrimage toward that destination, in which we are all engaged if we follow Christ. There are only two qualifications for such pilgrims to enter Heaven. They are the biblical mandates; repent and believe in Christ as Savior. It takes 392 different forms to comply with all the provisions of the U.S. income tax code. It only takes two things to qualify for Heaven. We must be ready at any time for God's final call. A survivor of the 1989 airplane crash near Sioux City, Iowa, said, surprised that she was still alive, "Here I was, sitting on the edge of eternity." But aren't we all sitting on the edge of eternity every day of our lives? Many people die altogether unexpectedly. A man in one city was shot dead by a stray bullet while he was mowing his lawn. A woman in another city was killed by a bullet coming through her window while she was watching television. A youth in still another city was killed in an auto accident on a lonely road at night when an oncoming driver under the influence of alcohol crossed the yellow line, resulting in a head-on collision. In this world no one is guaranteed safety. We must be ready to die at any time. The journey of this earthly pilgrimage may be very long or very short, but its destination for those in Christ is the same. We meet at the throne of God in glory, there to rejoice in his presence forever.
There is one more thing that must be noted in the vision in Revelation. John saw "the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God." This suggests that we can have Heaven on earth to a certain degree when Christ lives and rules in our hearts. It will not be perfect, for there is always sin on earth, but the joys of Heaven can continue to increase on earth among those who hold Christ in their hearts. He keeps changing their lives into more and more of his likeness. This is what the Lord's Prayer means when we pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." When we mean what we pray, something of God's heaven is let down on earth in our hearts. The Holy Spirit brings this to pass. Paul put it this way in the Bible, "If any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come."
As you remember today, on All Saints' Sunday, any of your loved ones who have died in Christ and gone to Heaven, take heart, for they are experiencing a life in the beauty of love, before the majesty of God, in the company of Christ beyond anything that this earth could possibly offer. If you yourself are struggling with mountainous problems, or groaning under crushing burdens, or crying rivers of tears, or being persecuted by merciless adversaries, hold onto the vision of God's great reward in Heaven for those who keep the faith. The destination is a thousand times better than the journey, and its experience will wipe away all the sorrows and pain and discouragements of the pilgrimage on earth. We are traveling toward a new Heaven, where God is at the heart of his people forever, and Christ is the pattern for every life, and joy will not be shadowed by sorrow, and all things will be new by the majesty of God.
Wonders Beyond Description
Four times the word, "new," is used in this lesson to describe Heaven: "a new heaven," "a new earth," "new Jerusalem," "Behold, I make all things new." This is heavily emphasized because life in Heaven will be entirely different from life on earth. The Bible says, "The former things have passed away." This was foretold in the sixty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, where God says, "For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind." Jesus spoke of the new world, saying, "In the new world, when the Son of man shall sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones." We shall be thrilled with endless surprises at all the new things in Heaven.
One thing Heaven will never be: it will not be a let-down. When the state of Georgia bought the spacious residence of the late millionaire William Rockefeller on Jekyll Island, it was curious to open the walk-in safe. What treasures would that safe be holding? When the safe was finally opened, it contained half a bottle of wine and a set of false teeth. Heaven will never be a let-down like that. Instead, it will be a soaring upwards into discoveries, raptures, surprises and joys such as earth could never offer. The Good News proclaimed on earth will become the Fantastic News displayed in Heaven.
The rare beauty of Heaven is compared in Revelation to "a bride adorned for her husband." What a beautiful sight that is to see a bride coming down the church aisle for the wedding ceremony, dressed in her absolute finest, looking prettier than at any other time in her life! Some words of Paul in First Corinthians can apply to Heaven, for he writes, "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him." When Thomas Edison lay dying, he could hardly speak, according to his widow. His doctor, who was also a friend of the family, observed that Edison was trying to say something. He bent down very close and heard the inventor whisper, "It's very beautiful over there." Those were his last words. Those could be a person's first words in Heaven: "It's very beautiful here."
The Heart of Heaven
Central among all the glories of Heaven will be the majesty of God who is seated on the throne. He is the heart of Heaven. It was not just a voice, but a loud voice that came from Heaven's throne, saying this very thing: "Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them." There is much repetition in these words, because the concept is so overwhelming that it requires repetition to help make it believable. It boggles our minds to think that the eternal, almighty God would want to spend eternity in closest association with these creatures he created. We shall be astounded that he wants to be everlastingly in our midst. This will be the final proof of his infinite love for us. When Jesus was born, he was called Emmanuel, meaning "God with us." When we reach Heaven by God's mercy in Christ, we shall see Emmanuel face to face and spend eternity with his selfless love in our midst. The voice that promised this was a loud voice, and it came from the authority of Heaven's throne, and it repeated the assurance over and over again. Who dares to doubt it?
Actually, Heaven will bring us a reunion with our rescuer. Little Lisa Greene was three years old when she was rescued from the smoke and flames that engulfed her family's home in Brooklyn, New York, in 1975. A city firefighter named Marvin Bunch arrived at the scene to find three women on the porch of the flaming house screaming that children were trapped upstairs. Bunch crawled upstairs at the risk of his life and brought Lisa Greene out in his arms, unconscious. Two other children were also rescued. Fourteen years later, Lisa phoned the New York City Fire Department and learned that the person who had saved her life was a retired fire captain living in Las Vegas. Her family brought the Bunch family to New York as guests of honor for Lisa's high school graduation and for a luncheon afterward. Bunch said of his taking her to the hospital, unconscious, fourteen years before, "I was up all night until I got the report" that she was alive. Lisa was ecstatic to be in the presence of the one who had saved her life and to thank him profusely and honor him gratefully. In Heaven, by God's grace, we shall have the privilege of living forever in the presence of our divine rescuer, as we thank him profusely and honor him gratefully.
It is interesting that the word, "people," used by the loud voice from the throne, which said, "They shall be his people," is in the plural in some ancient Greek manuscripts. Then it reads of those in Heaven, "They shall be his peoples." This suggests that many different peoples of the earth are gathered around Heaven's throne. It represents the truth that Christianity is a universal religion for all the peoples of earth. It is also a challenge to the church of Jesus Christ to reach out with the Gospel to all the peoples of the world, that they may be in that great throng in Heaven, with God at its center, their faith accepting the rescue that Christ won for them by his atoning death on the Cross and his victorious Resurrection on Easter.
Earth's Burdens Lifted
The vision of Heaven in today's lesson from the book of Revelation now mentions specifically some of the aspects of life in God's glory. It begins, "He [God] will wipe away every tear from their eyes ... neither shall there be mourning nor crying ... any more." The sadness and sorrows of earth are all gone and forgotten. This is beautifully described in that hymn of Magnus Landstad which says in part:
All trials shall be like a dream that is past;
Forgotten all trouble and mourning.
All questions and doubts have been answered at last,
When rises the light of that morning.
Another hymn writer, Hans Brorson, who wrote seventy hymns the year before he died, wrote this one among them, "Who is This Host Arrayed in White." Part of that hymn, written in the year 1764 reads:
On earth they wept through bitter years;
Now God has wiped away their tears,
Transformed their strife to heav'nly life,
And freed them from their fears.
No so-called "crying towel" is needed in Heaven. God personally dries those tears of earth.
The vision goes on to say, "And death shall be no more." This was foretold back in the prophecy of Isaiah, where we read of God, "He will swallow up death for ever." Paul echoes that prophecy in his words, "Death is swallowed up in victory," with which he quotes Isaiah in describing Jesus' Easter victory over death. On earth, many people, even Christians, live under the fear of death all their lives. In Heaven, that fear will be absolutely unknown because there is no more death. Death is eternally extinct. God is life, and he is in the midst of his people forever. What steel this thought must have put into the hearts of Christians who were being cruelly persecuted when this vision was written! "The valley of the shadow of death," as the twenty-third psalm expresses it, has no place in the topography of Heaven. That life above is one unending Easter day, throbbing with the celebration of Resurrection.
Another aspect of life in heaven as the vision describes it is that there is no more pain. No more suffering, no more sickness, no more heartache, no more pain! St. Paul claimed that this future prospect even alleviated suffering on earth, for he wrote, "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us." In other words, today's sufferings hurt less because of the promise of an after-life without suffering. A big part of earth's pain is separation from loved ones when death takes them from us. In Heaven there will be no more separations of those gathered around God's majestic presence. Heaven's dictionary will not contain the word, "goodbye," for it will never need to be used. The apostle John, whose thoughts are contained in the Book of Revelation, was separated from all the friends he loved by being exiled on that lonely island of Patmos. How he must have longed for the life to come, in which there will be no more separations! Every time a loved one in Christ is taken away from us by death, we can hunger even more in our heart for Heaven's eternal togetherness in Christ.
One more aspect of life in Heaven is promised in today's lesson from Revelation. "And the sea was no more," we read. Although this might appear to refer to the sea as separating us from one another, it actually means that there is no sin or evil in Heaven. It was the sea, according to ancient thought, from which the great dragon came forth and stirred up all the evil on earth. From the dark depths came the fomenter of all sin, namely Satan, the great tempter. When we reach Heaven by the merits of Christ our Lord, all that will be in the past, never to be experienced again. We cannot imagine what living together without sin will be like. We will all be Christlike persons, seeking only to bless and serve and support one another to the glory of God. No one will ever need to seek forgiveness from another for having wronged the other, because no such sins will be committed. Nor will sins of omission be possible. All will be peace and joy and love and celebration, the like of which we cannot now even imagine in our wildest dreams. What a different and blessed life it will be in God's new order! Recently published is a five-volume, ten-million-word Encyclopedia of World Crime. This set of books will not be in Heaven's library. The word, ''crime" is not even known there.
Heaven Is Our Destination
Heaven is the destination of God's people. This is declared in the words of him who sat on the throne, saying, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end." Alpha and Omega were, of course, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, the A and the Z. God is saying here that he is the source of our life on earth and the destination of our life in Heaven. He is all in all for us. Every day almost 6,000 Americans die. Where do they go? God has a place for those who trust in Christ alone for their future. The destination is far better than any experience along the journey. The longing for it keeps us strong to finish the journey in faith. The words from the throne, "It is done," signify that everything necessary to enable a believer to attain Heaven in the end had been done through Christ's life, death and Resurrection for our sake. Nothing more can be added by us or by anybody.
Take note that the one on the throne said in the vision in Revelation, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true." We sometimes say when we are uncertain about someone's promise, "Put it in writing." God did just that for us. He put it in writing in the Scriptures for all people for all time to come. Nobody can ever erase it or blot it out or take it away from us. Nobody can add to it or take from it. It is in writing in indelible ink. This writing comes from the authority of the throne. Nothing will ever overthrow that throne.
If God is our destination in Heaven, then this earthly life is a pilgrimage toward that destination, in which we are all engaged if we follow Christ. There are only two qualifications for such pilgrims to enter Heaven. They are the biblical mandates; repent and believe in Christ as Savior. It takes 392 different forms to comply with all the provisions of the U.S. income tax code. It only takes two things to qualify for Heaven. We must be ready at any time for God's final call. A survivor of the 1989 airplane crash near Sioux City, Iowa, said, surprised that she was still alive, "Here I was, sitting on the edge of eternity." But aren't we all sitting on the edge of eternity every day of our lives? Many people die altogether unexpectedly. A man in one city was shot dead by a stray bullet while he was mowing his lawn. A woman in another city was killed by a bullet coming through her window while she was watching television. A youth in still another city was killed in an auto accident on a lonely road at night when an oncoming driver under the influence of alcohol crossed the yellow line, resulting in a head-on collision. In this world no one is guaranteed safety. We must be ready to die at any time. The journey of this earthly pilgrimage may be very long or very short, but its destination for those in Christ is the same. We meet at the throne of God in glory, there to rejoice in his presence forever.
There is one more thing that must be noted in the vision in Revelation. John saw "the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God." This suggests that we can have Heaven on earth to a certain degree when Christ lives and rules in our hearts. It will not be perfect, for there is always sin on earth, but the joys of Heaven can continue to increase on earth among those who hold Christ in their hearts. He keeps changing their lives into more and more of his likeness. This is what the Lord's Prayer means when we pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." When we mean what we pray, something of God's heaven is let down on earth in our hearts. The Holy Spirit brings this to pass. Paul put it this way in the Bible, "If any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come."
As you remember today, on All Saints' Sunday, any of your loved ones who have died in Christ and gone to Heaven, take heart, for they are experiencing a life in the beauty of love, before the majesty of God, in the company of Christ beyond anything that this earth could possibly offer. If you yourself are struggling with mountainous problems, or groaning under crushing burdens, or crying rivers of tears, or being persecuted by merciless adversaries, hold onto the vision of God's great reward in Heaven for those who keep the faith. The destination is a thousand times better than the journey, and its experience will wipe away all the sorrows and pain and discouragements of the pilgrimage on earth. We are traveling toward a new Heaven, where God is at the heart of his people forever, and Christ is the pattern for every life, and joy will not be shadowed by sorrow, and all things will be new by the majesty of God.
