Revelation 21:1-5, 22-22:5

What is Heaven Like and How Do I Get There

Opening
View video How Do You Get to Heaven at https://vimeo.com/99583613
Popular and religious conceptions of heaven
Its an almost universal human impulse to dream and wonder about the world to
come. Newsweek magazine ran an article a while back about heaven, and
according to the story 77% of Americans believe in an existence after death. On
the basis of interviews and polling, the writers concluded that most people imagine
the world to come to be a place of beauty, peace, rest and solitude.
Other religions have done their own imagining. Hinduism pictures it as sort of a
garden party, with flowers, choice foods and beautiful women. And Islam - weve
all heard about what suicide bombers are promised - the 72 virgins - but
mainstream Islam pictures it as a restored Garden of Eden, with abundant fruits,
and to quote the Newsweek article, sweet potions and compliant maidens.
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Now thats got some appeal, doesnt it, especially for the men - its not only a
mans world, its a mans heaven, too.
A place of peace and rest where you can smell the lovely fragrances of
blooming flowers, hear the bluebirds sing, sip a sweet potion and enjoy the
company of the models from the Victorias Secret catalog.
Nice ideas, I reckon. But the reality of heaven is far more interesting and exciting.
Passage context
The most info we have in the Bible about the world to come, is in the Book of
Revelation
Genre - Apocalypse - means unveiling - and apocalyptic is a unique genre,
image-rich, full of metaphors, imaginatively rich - vs 2 - city wearing a dress, vs.
21, streets like transparent gold; vs. 22 lamb on a throne - wild and weird - Bosch
painting - vision bursting the bounds of conventional categories and human
language and imagination.
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But all of the NT is task theology - written to a particular group of people who
needed to hear a word from God - and same is true of Revelation -
It was written to group of people suffering under persecution of Roman
empire in order to give them hope - Domitian about to begin really
systematic intense widescale persecution of Xns - people about to
experience what John has in vs. 4 promised will come to an end - more
death and mourning and crying and pain
The Lord gave them this to give them hope to get them thru - how you handle the
present a function of what you believe your future to be - enables endurance and
sacrifice
And it worked - Roman Empire did not eradicate xnity - because they had the hope
found in this letter - and they even sang and prayed for those who were killing
them - when plagues came a few centuries later to the cities in the empire, they
stayed and cared for the sick and dying and lot of them died trying to save others,
and it had an enormous impact
Im going to talk about the way our hope for the future sustains us and shapes our
lives in the present...but going to start with the content of our hope
Eternal life a two-stage journey
heaven we know very little of
A promise - John Edward Carnell - We are alone when we enter the world,
but when we leave it we shall feel the abiding presence of the Lord. As
death draws near and we dreaded the dark journey ahead, the Lord will
assure us that our lives are precious in the sight of God. He will gently say,
Child, come home. Jesus gives us his word that he will never leave us or
forsake us, and his word is as firm as his character. (CT, 10.23.2000, 93)
Heaven a spiritual existence where our souls are kept safe in presence of
God - and thats where the passage begins - in heaven - and the saints who
have died are there, spiritually - but the story doesnt end there.
Because theres more to eternal life than heaven. There is another stage - what NT
Wright calls life after life after death. There is, we are told in Revelation, a new
creation coming, a new heavens a a new earth. A physical reality, where we are
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resurrected into new, physical bodies. And theres a lot more detail about that new
world, than about heaven.
God saving the whole creation
Heres the first thing we learn from Revelation. God saves and transforms the
whole creation. The whole creation is healed and made new.
And what this means is that the whole creation, needs saving. Not just human
beings. Because in our world:
Animals suffer and die
Hurricanes come roaring ashore and wipe out cities, tornadoes and floods
sweep away homes and lives, droughts leave humans and animals dying of
thirst
Its a world where 10% or more of the species are parasites; a world where
viruses hijack cellular machinery and cause illness and death
And the universe itself is finite - one day our sun will expand into a red
giant and swallow up the earth and all life here will die, and one day the last
star will run out of nuclear fuel the universe will be cold and dark and dead.
Its a beautiful world, but ours is a world filled with suffering and death. This is
why Paul says in Romans 8, like saw last week, that the whole creation groans,
awaiting liberation.
And because our world is fallen and broken, God intends to save and heal the
whole creation.
You ever see a car with the bumper sticker, Warning - in case of rapture
this car will be unoccupied? You can get the idea from popular theology
that Gods salvation is about rapturing a select few out of the world while
the rest of the world goes to hell in a handbasket.
What we see here instead in Gods word is that God is saving and healing
the whole creation.
Its like NT Wright wrote, instead of thinking as gospel saving
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people apart from the world, "I was challenged to see the gospel as
something which was basically God saving the world. The gospel
declared something that was publicly true about the whole world
rather than simply opening up an option into which I as an individual
could step."
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Its worth noting that Revelation was written by St. John to seven small
congregations in Asia Minor who all together numbered maybe a thousand. Thats
a small minority group if there ever was one. But Revelation does not give a
picture of a small minority raptured out of a corrupt world - it gives the vision of
the whole world being judged and saved and made whole again.
Salvation is bigger than just you and me - in that it includes the whole world - but
it also includes you and me - and brings us into a new creation. And lets consider
what the Bible says the new creation will be like.
What this new world looks like
At the center of it, what I call The Beautiful City.
In our reading, John says that he saw a city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out
of heaven to earth. And becoming the center of the new world.
Now, that is kind of surprising. When you imagine heaven, a city doesnt pop into
our minds.
Cities are noisy, dirty, dangerous
Cities seem to concentrate the best, but also the worst, of human culture, in
a small, crowded place.
This is especially true in the cities of the third world, which are growing
explosively - places like Rio de Janiero, which is filled with abandoned
street children who survive by petty thieving and picking through garbage,
like Nairobi where hundreds of thousands live in shanty towns made of tiny
dwellings constructed of scraps of wood and metal, no running water, no
sewers, nothing.
But this symbol of the new Jerusalem is Gods way of trying to tell us about the
world to come.
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First, eternal life means existence with other people.
Jean-Paul Sartre once said, Hell is other people. Well, the Bible says the new
world, is other people. Thats why its depicted as a city. And one of the problems
of popular conceptions of heaven is that they are solitary, they seem lonely. Like
the movie What Dreams May Come - Robin Williams character dies and goes to
heaven - and its like his very own Grand Teton National Park - beautiful, but
solitary.
And the appeal of a solitary heaven is that people - some people - are tough to get
along with
At Totem Pole Playhouse with Susan on Wednesday, seeing the Johnny
Cash play, was wonderful, except that in the middle of the first act, a
couple, I guess around 30, sit down right in front of us - and start making
out! Shes nibbling his earlobe and giving him hickies, hes playing with
her hair, theyre hugging and snuggling - I wanted to give the guy, a jab in
the back of the head, not to hurt him mind you, just to get them to stop. But
then I figured it might not be a good idea to get arrested for starting a brawl
at the Totem Pole!
And to push this farther - which city does God pick as the centerpiece of the
new creation? Jerusalem! You go there, you can feel the white-hot hatred
between Israelis and Arabs. Its a city divided, a city claimed by three great
religions, a city of tension and hatred - and this makes you wonder -
Jerusalem - what kind of image is that for the center of the new world?
Well, what the Lord is trying to tell us, is that he is taking the most divided place
on earth, and through his great salvation, making it a place of peace where all
kinds of people come together through the healing mercy of Jesus Christ. Because
he is saving us, healing us, and making us fit to live with each other forever, and
well actually enjoy it.
Saw a glimpse of this on vacation in Antigua...
Antiguan people - beautiful and friendly...election - their own lives, so
different yet common humanity
Brits...two people divided by a common language...yet we had a great time
of conversation and made new friends
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Second, the new creation is beautiful. Heart-stoppingly beautiful
Remember, the language of Revelation is imagery designed to spark our
imaginaations -and John describes the new Jerusalem saying the city is made of
pure gold, with the foundations of the walls inlaid with dazzling jewels. The new
creation, then is, going to be heart-stoppingly, jaw-droppingly beautiful.
Ive seen three incredibly beautiful cities - Ive seen Paris in the Spring-
time, walking hand-in-hand with my lovely wife down the boulevards; Ive
seen New York from the Palisades, across the Hudson River, with the
setting sun making the city glow orange; and Ive seen Seattle when the sun
is shining, reflecting off the Puget Sound with Mt. Rainier on one side and
the Olympic Mountains on the other.
And maybe youve seen sights like that too. Reach down now and try to
remember how that beauty made you feel - how you wanted to just keep
looking, take it into yourself - how it make you thankful, awe-struck,
producing a deep pleasure and joy that wells up and sometimes makes you
tear up - those feelings of joy and pleasure are a bare hint of the beauty of
the world to come - the beauty that God is bringing for us to enjoy. We are
destined for beauty unimaginable. There is a great verse in the Bible that
goes, In Gods hands are pleasures forevermore. And one of those
eternal pleasures, is beauty.
And its forever
Forevermore. That leads me to another piece of information about the world to
come. In chap. 22, vs. 2, John tells us that in the middle of the city is the Tree of
Life. Remember that from the Garden of Eden? To eat of that tree means you live
forever, and after Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil, God drove them out of the garden before they ate from the Tree of Life
and lived forever in their state of sin and alienation from God. Well, the reason
that tree is there in the new creation is so everyone can eat it, and live forever.
I read a story about a woman who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She
was straightening up the kitchen one day, trying to get the house in order for
when she was no longer around. She pulled down some stuff out of the
kitchen cabinets, and saw a box of baking soda with an expiration date on it
- and she said,
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I just stood there crying angry tears. This stupid box of baking soda was
going to outlive me. I wanted a later expiration date than it had on the
box.
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In the new world there is no expiration date. We live forever. And not as wispy
spirits floating from cloud to cloud, but in resurrected bodies that are a big upgrade
from our bodies now - no arthritis in our knees, no cancer cells taking over our
bodies, no teeth rotting and falling out of our gums - like Ive told you before, if
you saw yourself now as you will be then, you would be so dazzled that you would
be tempted to fall down and worship the creature before you.
How do you get there?
Promised Id tell you what heaven is like and how to get there. And in the passage, were
told that the gates of the New Jerusalem are always open - but there are some - entrance
requirements.
In my first church I did childrens sermons most every week and one time I asked
the youngsters, How do you get to heaven? And little Brian Reisch shot up his
hand and shouted out, Die!
Thats definitely a requirement. But theres something else.
Heres the problem. The new world is free of violence and hatred and racism and
selfishness and greed and all the other mess of human life. But if we are violent or
hateful or racist or selfish or greedy people, wed ruin the party if we just barged in
there. We need some cleaning up, we need to made fit for this new world. And
you cant do it yourself.
Thats why Jesus came. Through his death on the cross and resurrection to new
life, he provides a way for us to be healed of our messes - and live forever in
Gods new world.
When you and I say to Christ, Save me, heal me, make me whole, God sends the
Holy Spirit who lives in us and goes to work, and in this life we make progress, we
take steps towards becoming the person we will be - because what God is up to in
your life is making you fit for his new world. And when we do die, God finishes
that work - we are made perfect - and we live forever in Gods perfect world.
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And what do we do now to get ready?
Once you give your life to Christ -
Get with the program of what God is already doing - God is at work in this world
now, and we join him
Why Mercy Ships? Why hospital ships that go around port cities in Africa, doing
surgeries to repair birth defects and remove tumors and save lives? Because in
Gods new world, no one suffers from cleft palets or dies of cancer
Why Habitat for Humanity? Because in Gods new world, no one is homeless!
Why Navajo ministries? Because in Gods new world, no one gets left behind like
so many Native Americans have in our country.
Why teach Sunday School? Why share faith? To bring as many people into Gods
new world as possible.
All to make this world a little bit more like the world to come; and to make
ourselves fit to live in it.
Closing
Eugene Peterson, the Presbyterian pastor who did the bible translation The
Message, writes about visiting a monastery, and when he was on the way to the
dining hall with some monks where they were going to have lunch, they walked
past the graveyard, and he noticed an open grave.
So he asked which member of the community had died recently, and he was told,
"No one. That grave is for the next one."
Every day, three times a day, as they walk to eat, the members of that community
are reminded of what we spend our waking hours trying to forget. One of them
will be the next to occupy that open grave.
We are all going to die. But if we trust in Christ, we live forever in Gods new
world. Lets be people of hope and faith and courage - and get ready for the great
celebration. Amen.
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1. Newsweek, March 27, 1989, pp. 52-55.
2. Christianity Today, February 08, 1999, p. 44.
3. From a sermon by Frank Harrington, David at His Best In the Wilderness, preache march
29, 1998.
Endnotes
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