Residents and Their Dwellings on the New Earth

Transcript

GR 2059
11/25/2018
Residents and their Dwelling on the New Earth
Revelation 21:18-27
Gil Rugh

We're going to Revelation 21. Everybody has their favorite portions of Scripture, but this has to be a favorite portion of us as believers, because here God gives us a description of what our dwelling place is going to be, forever and ever and ever. It is a place of awesome beauty that we can study and just get a little glimpse of because it is hard for us, with our finite minds, limited as they are, to be able to appreciate and grasp the wonder of the beauty of what God has created for us.

We have noted a number of times, but the contrast is important. At the end of chapter 20 verses 11-15 we have a terrible portion of the Word of God. It is not terrible in one sense because it is true, and it is the way things should be, it's the way God said it must be. But it describes the destiny, for eternity, of those who have not entered into the salvation God provided in Christ, the salvation that you can avail yourselves of only by faith, by believing what God has said, what God has done, what Christ has accomplished.

Then Revelation 21 opens up with the contrast, a new heavens and a new earth. Remember Christ returned to earth in Revelation 19, He began His reign and rule for a thousand years. Then we had a sequence of events, a rebellion against Him at the end of that thousand years. Then the final judgment at the Great White Throne. And then John saw a new heaven and a new earth, and this is significant because this moves us into the New Jerusalem. So, we will have a new heaven, a new earth and a New Jerusalem. And we have noted, these are things that are totally new and yet they are connected to things that precede. It's an earth that is totally transformed, perhaps totally made new, but it is the earth, something we can connect to. We talk about the New Jerusalem in verse 2, it is so awesomely greater and more beautiful than the Jerusalem we can know. But it is connected, it is called Jerusalem. It is a city, it is tangible, it is described in ways we can relate to. It will have gates, the construction materials, if you will, are things we relate to—precious stones, precious metal, gold. But it is on a scale that brings a glory that we will only appreciate when we behold it.

This city is called the bride's city, verse 2, “It was adorned as a bride for the husband.” And the statement in Revelation 21:3, “I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold the tabernacle of God is among men. He will dwell among them, they will be His people, God Himself will be among them.” And we've talked about the importance of the connection of what has happened preceding this. And, again, it shows there is a connection. The tabernacle of God. Where do we go when we think of the tabernacle? We go back to the Old Testament Scriptures, the tabernacle that was constructed in the Old Testament.

Come back to Exodus 25. I don't want to belabor this, but I don't want us to forget the connection or fail to appreciate it. In Exodus 25, Moses is called up to Mt. Sinai after the exodus from Egypt, and he is given instructions regarding the building of a tabernacle. And I want you to note verse 9, “according to all that I am going to show you,” this is the instruction to Moses, “as the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of the furniture, so you shall construct it.” And so, He is going to give detailed instructions on the construction of the tabernacle. Now, at this point in time the tabernacle, as you are aware, was a portable tent structure, an enclosure. And within that enclosure, with curtains around it, there was the inner tabernacle consisting of the Holy of Holies and the Holy Place, the Holy Place preceding the Holy of Holies. There was a curtain separating the Holy of Holies and the Holy Place. The ark of the covenant, with the cherubim with their wings spread over it, is the place where God met with His people. He would come down; His glory would fill that tabernacle. The tabernacle was a cube, 15x15x15. You'll note, it is constructed according to the pattern given to Moses. So, there is a set of plans, if you will, that he is to follow, given him from heaven. And that will include all the items in it as well. Very specific, detailed instructions.

Come down to Exodus 25:40, “See that you make them after the pattern for them, which was shown to you on the mountain.” Come over to Exodus 26:30, “Then you shall erect the tabernacle according to its plan which you have been shown in the mountain.” Very important that they follow carefully all the instructions. They have been given the plan and they have to follow concisely, because what is taking place is, this is patterned after what is true in heaven, where God manifests His presence most fully. So, this is a miniature, a model, if you will. We know you can get miniatures, and some miniature models are very detailed, but they are only a model of something that is much bigger. Some of you, when you were younger, maybe built models, you can do a model of a building, sometimes you put together an airplane model or car models. They are miniatures, you build them according to the instructions. They are patterned after the reality.

That is what is happening with this Old Testament tabernacle, it is patterned after the reality in heaven. Later, we looked at, but you can turn over to 1 Kings 6, these are passages we looked at, but I want you to have them fixed in your minds. 1 Kings 6, now Solomon is going to build a more permanent temple. The tabernacle, remember Israel is going to wander for 40 years in the wilderness and then they get into the land. They have to take this down, there are instructions on it, how it is to be taken down, how it is to be assembled, how it is to be carried. All of that. The priestly family had instructions on that.

Now Solomon, David's son, is ready to construct a permanent place for God to be worshiped, but it will follow the pattern given from heaven to Moses, but it will be larger. So, in 1 Kings 6:1 we are told “he began to build the house of the Lord,” the place where God would manifest His presence among the people. And 1 Kings 6:19, “Then he prepared an inner sanctuary within the house in order to place there the ark of the covenant of the Lord.” So, in what we would know as the Holy of Holies in the Old Testament tabernacle given to Moses, in there was the ark of the covenant where God's covenant and the Ten Commandments were placed. And on that cover, there was where God manifested His presence in the Holy of Holies. You'll note this inner sanctuary, this Holy of Holies, behind the curtain that was there, for example, in the tabernacle, was 20 cubits in length, 20 cubits in width, 20 cubits in height. You see again, it is a cube. Under Moses it was, to put it in our dimensions, 15 feet x 15 feet x 15 feet. Here it is 20 cubits or 30 feet. So, it is twice as large. A cubit is about 18 inches, so it is 30 feet each side and 30 feet high. So, the same basic dimensions, scale, expanded. No problem with that because these are just models. You can have smaller models, you can have bigger models, but they have to be to scale, so to speak.

Now that is important in the background of where we are in the rest of Scripture. We'll have the millennial temple in Ezekiel 40-48 and it will be constructed, again, on a larger scale, but great detail. As you read through the end of Exodus, you get some of the details required for the tabernacle. When you read through Ezekiel 40-48, you see something of the clarity of instructions for the millennial temple where God's presence will be manifested during that first phase, 1000 years of the kingdom.

Now come back to Revelation 21. What we have here in Revelation 21 is the reality. All things preceding have been miniature models but now we are going to see the reality. Sometimes you watch a program where a large building has been built in a city, the architects will have constructed a scale model and they will show that on a large table, and this is a model. But, it is nothing compared to the scale of what they are going to build. And that's the way it is with the tabernacle and the temple, because we are told down in verse 16, as they measure this city, and it is a splendid city, an angel measures it with a gold measuring rod, and we see at the end of verse 16, “it is 1500 miles, its length, its width and its height are equal.” So, we have another cube, just like we saw with Solomon's temple, it was the same, it was a cube. Much smaller, it was 30 feet x 30 feet x 30 feet. This is 1500 miles, 1500 miles high. Remember though, in our previous study, we looked and we are told in Scripture that the builder of this city is God, He is the architect and builder. So, it wasn't built with human hands, it was built in heaven.

Come back to Hebrews 8:1, background and now the point. What we are contrasting is Christ's ministry as High Priest with the Old Testament system and it's high priest, and where his ministry is focused. The main point in what has been said is this, “we have such a High Priest who has taken His seat at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens.” He is seated in the very presence of God in heaven. “A minister in the sanctuary and in the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, not man.” This is built not with human hands, this is heaven itself. God built it, God created it. Human hands didn't have a role in it. Now the earthly models were constructed according to God's instructions. It's like a person who took the model of that large airplane and then gave you the plans and the materials, and here you can build a miniature, if I can call it that, patterned after the reality. The point here is, Christ does His work and now functions as our representative in the reality, in heaven itself. That's the sanctuary, the true tabernacle. You see the connection in terminology. Which the Lord pitched, not man.

Verse 4 says, “If He were on earth He would not be a priest at all.” Why? They operate according to the Mosaic Law, but Christ wasn't of the line of Levi, so He wasn't qualified to be a priest under the Mosaic Law. He couldn't offer those gifts and sacrifices. He is of a new order of priest, after the order of Melchizedek, who is a person you meet briefly in Genesis. And “these priests,” under the Law, verse 5, “they serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things.” This is a reminder again, the earthly tabernacle, temple are just copies, a shadow of the heavenly things. And that's why Moses was warned by God, verse 5, when he was about to erect the tabernacle, “see that you make it according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain.” Why is that important? Because this is to reflect the reality in heaven. And we have seen as we have gone through the book of Revelation references that are connected to the Old Testament tabernacle. For example, the ark of the covenant, the altar of incense before you come to the throne of God. Christ now has a more excellent ministry by as much as He is the mediator of a better covenant. And he goes on to quote the New Covenant.

Come back to Revelation 21. What we find is with the descending of the New Jerusalem from heaven, the New Jerusalem itself is the reality, the heavenly tabernacle, the heavenly temple. And so you see the scale. Solomon's temple with all its glory and splendor was in the Holy of Holies, 30 feet x 30 feet x 30 feet, twice as big as the Old Testament tabernacle, Holy of Holies. This is 1500 miles, a cube. Its length, its width, its height are equal.

Then we noted in verse 17 the wall. And if you go to Ezekiel 48 you will see that there they tell you the width of the wall that will be around the millennial city, how wide it was. That's what we are told about in verse 17, “Its wall was 72 yards.” And even though an angel is measuring, he is doing it with human measurements, so we shouldn't be confused. That's how wide the wall is. Some of you have been to Jerusalem, you walk around the wall. And you can see some of the comparison in that millennial temple that we have here.

Then you have the material of the city and the foundation stones. If God is build it, it is going to be on a scale and a beauty. The city is pure gold, like it is transparent, there are no imperfections in it. And the foundation stones, every kind of precious stone. Not stones put on the foundation, they are the foundation. So, as you look at it, you will have the different stones, the jasper, then the sapphire, then the chalcedony, the emerald, and all these, twelve stones. And then in verse 21, “The twelve gates were twelve pearls.” I read one commentator who said, this tells us this can't be a literal city because you couldn't have a pearl big enough to be a gate, one pearl. Well you understand, we are talking about what God built without human hands in heaven. Now you tell God He can't make a pearl big enough for a gate. That's like saying human beings couldn't have been created from dust because you can't make a human being from dust. That is right, you can't, I can't, man can't. Do you know who can? God. What is the problem? You can't make a beautiful woman out of the rib of a man, but the Bible says literally that God took the side part of a man and built it into a woman. I didn't even know you could do that. No, you can't, but God can. So, what is the problem? Do you think He has to wait for the oyster to go through the process and then create a big oyster? God makes a pearl. Where do you get stones big enough to be a foundation for a city that is a 1500-mile cube? I shared with you, some have done some of the analysis and said you could fit 100 thousand billion people into that city and everybody would have plenty of room to live. I don't even know how you make foundations of any kind for a city like that, but this city has foundations made by God. So, there is not really a problem.

“The twelve gates were twelve pearls,” verse 21, “each one of the gates was a single pearl.” What don't you understand about that? I just don't see how it could happen. It's like Job who had some questions about what God did and God challenges Job and says, you think you know so much, I have some questions for you. When did you ever call the dawn? When did you ever create the morning? What have we done? It amounts to nothing in comparison with what God does. Look at the buildings man makes, and then go look at the mountains God creates. Put that mighty building that man is so proud of next to the mountain that God made and you say man is not that great.

Back up to Revelation 21:12, “These twelve gates have the names of the twelve sons of Israel on them.” That means Israel will have its identity and not just as one nation undivided, it will be divided into twelve tribes. We are into eternity in the sense there are not time markers like there were for the first thousand years. And then you come down to verse 14, the foundation stones we were just talking about, there are twelve of them and they have the names of the twelve apostles. And we looked at Ephesians 2 or referenced it where the foundation of the church is the apostles and prophets, New Testament prophets and apostles. So, you have the distinction between Israel and the church in this city. We saw that in Hebrews 12 when we were told the distinguishing groups that would be dwelling in this city, the New Jerusalem.

Come further down in Revelation 21, verse 22. “I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty.” That's a good reminder, we've seen that title for God, that name of the Almighty. That ought to tell us something about trying to figure out how He could create such a city. He is the Almighty. He could have made it three times as big if He wanted to, He is the architect and the builder of the city—He designed it, He constructed it. It now exists in heaven. So there is no temple in it. “The Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” In other words, the whole city is a temple. There is not an inner temple here, this city is the Holy of Holies, it is the place where God manifests His glory and His presence. I would expect it to be large because, remember, it descended out of heaven. And when we saw heaven described, it was described consistent with the way the tabernacle and temple are in the Old Testament. But we have seen that heavenly scene with myriads and myriads of angels, tens of thousands of ten thousands of angels. I take it heaven has to be a big place. If you are going to have tens and tens of thousands of angels and myriads and myriads of angels and then all the spirits of the redeemed and everybody, no surprise when this moved from heaven down to earth. It's a big place, it is marvelous.

And you have a clear declaration here that Jesus Christ is also God. There is one God eternally existing in three persons. How would you say this? “I saw no temple in it for the Lord God the Almighty” and the archangel Michael are its temple. You say you can't do that, the archangel Michael is the chief angel but he is just an angel. You say “the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” That tells you something of the deity of Christ, not any way diminished by his becoming a man. Remember “all the fullness of deity dwells in Him in bodily form.”

Now we come to another group, “the nations will walk by its light.” When we saw Israel back in Revelation 21:12, the twelve tribes are the sons of Israel, then at the end of verse 14, the twelve names of the apostles for the church, now what about other? “The nations will walk by its light and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.” Now wait a minute, you see the connection with what we understand and know something of in this day. We know about Israel, we know about the church, we know about nations, plural. And that distinguishes them from Israel; Israel is the nation, singular. The rest of the nations are the nations, and they have kings, rulers. And they walk by its light because remember this city doesn't need the sun, we'll see that coming up in a moment, because the presence of God illumines it. Its lamp is the Lamb, the nations walk by its light, they bring their glory into it. So I take it there are going to be people living outside the New Jerusalem.

The New Jerusalem is not the residence of all people, all believers. It is the residence we saw in Hebrews 12:22, “but you have come to Mt. Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.” So you see the connection to the Old Testament. And those were just patterns, those were just copies, those were just, if I can use the word, miniatures, the plan was to construct something which was a miniature model. “You have come to the heavenly Jerusalem to myriads of angels.” Angels are spirit beings created by God, fallen angels were sentenced to hell in Revelation 20. So these are the unfallen angels, they will dwell in the New Jerusalem. “To the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven,” that's the church, the church will reside in the New Jerusalem. We will have been resurrected and glorified and we will have our glorified bodies. “To God the judge of all.”

This will be where God's presence is manifested. God is omnipresent, He exists everywhere. No matter where you go, God is there. But He chooses to manifest His presence among His people, and it is in the New Jerusalem. He will be in the New Jerusalem, manifesting His presence. “And to the spirits of righteous made perfect,” so other saints—Old Testament saints, Israel, tribulation saints—when they get their glorified bodies, so only in the glorified body, “made perfect” with their glorified bodies. They will reside in the New Jerusalem. “And to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant, and sprinkled blood,” the applied blood which makes possible our redemption. So these are the people, the persons who are in the New Jerusalem. God the Father, God the Son, angels, the church, glorified Old Testament saints.

Now we find out, that is who is residing in the New Jerusalem, but the New Jerusalem is not all there is to the new earth. Remember, “I saw a new heavens and a new earth,” and the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven onto the new earth. So the New Jerusalem is not all there is, there is a new earth upon which the New Jerusalem now descends and resides. It is its permanent resting place. So Revelation 21:24 tells us “the nations will walk by its light.” Outside the New Jerusalem there are nations, there are kings who will come in to bring their glory to it. My understanding is the ultimate purpose of God in all He does is His own glory. It's not even the kingdom, it's not our salvation. All these are subsets to the glory of God, so the ultimate goal of God is not the kingdom, the ultimate goal of God is His own glory. So they will bring their glory into it.

Now who are these nations? Who are these kings? I take it they are people, human beings, some of them went into the millennium, the first phase of the kingdom, in their physical bodies. They were saved during the tribulation, they went in in physical bodies. Remember all unbelievers were killed, but these believers went in in physical bodies. They had children, those children are born in the millennium, great numbers because there is not sickness and death and pain and all that.

We saw at the end of that thousand-year period “a number like the sand of the sea” rebelled against Christ. Who were they? They were the children who were born in the millennium in a perfect environment with a perfect king without the issues that cause so many problems for people today. No hunger, no . . . But they never trusted the King as their Savior. So they reserved their rebellion because there was immediate judgment on those who sinned. But when the thousand years are over, Satan is loosed, and given a choice they would choose for their king, the devil, and there is a rebellion. Now I take it there were people saved during the millennium, those who went into the millennium in their physical bodies, those who trusted Christ during the millennium. I take it they, along with the believing Jews, believing Gentiles, will go into the eternal phase of the kingdom in their physical bodies.

Remember we are bringing to completion what God started in His creation in the opening chapters of Genesis. Come back to Genesis 1, important to see the connection and thread that runs through all the Bible. We are back to the beginning. Genesis 1, God creates, determines to create man as male and female. So verse 26, “God said, let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, and let them rule over the rest of creation.” So in that sense we are something of a manifestation of the person of God, the character of God. We are in His image, His personal beings. He didn't create the animals in His image, but He created us in His image. Verse 27, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. God blessed them, God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it,” or rule over it. Now what we have at the end of Revelation is the final realization of what God planned for man as male and female when He created them, before sin came into the picture. You'll note what He tells them to do, “be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, rule over it.”

So I take it that for these human beings that come through all of this and are still in their physical bodies, as we leave the thousand-year phase and move into the eternal phase of the kingdom, they will go in, in their physical bodies, they will have children. That is no problem. God created man and woman to have children. Now when sin came into the picture, every child born is born with the sin nature, “in sin did my mother conceive me,” from birth. But that is not part of God's original plan. When He told Adam and Eve to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, that didn't mean they would create sinful beings with conception. Sin is not part of man's essential being, in our present state it is, but the death of Christ takes care of it. If not, the devil has won. If his injection into the human race by luring Adam and Eve into sin has brought a corruption that cannot be annihilated, he succeeded.

God will not be able to do what He intentionally planned—for Adam and Eve as sinless beings, to have children, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. So it's important to see that sin is not an essential part of our humanity; that doesn't happen until Genesis 3. But God's instruction is to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. So no problem, the death of Christ is powerful enough to deal with the sin nature. God in His plan chooses that that will not be removed, even when we become believers. The old man is overcome, his power is broken, but he is not removed. We are made a new man. There will come a time when the old man is removed, when we are glorified.

But for these saints, you get to this point, the old man is gone. They just go in now as perfected human beings, as Adam and Eve, with one added thing—they are confirmed in their holiness. We talk about Adam and Eve as unconfirmed in righteousness, but now we are confirmed. That's how powerful the work of Christ is.

So that's why you have nations. If you don't, then Revelation 21 and 22 are not fulfilling the original plan of God. The devil corrupted that beyond work. And it is not enough to have a subdued sin nature. You know there is a big difference, if I say I have cancer but it is contained. There is a big difference in saying I have cancer and it is annihilated. That's what Christ does with His power. When all is said and done, sin is annihilated, and those paying the consequence for sin are in hell. Those in the eternal kingdom have no sin. The first things are gone with the first earth. So I take it these nations, these kings, they will be bearing children.

What do we have? We have a rulership structure. First let me do this and then I will give you the structure so you will know what you will be doing, you can begin to get ready. “In the daytime,” and there is a reminder here, “there will be no night here, its gates will never be closed.” So we just said the nations and their kings, so there is order. Remember God's plan is order. Egalitarianism is the devil's plan, hierarchy and order is God's plan. I keep reminding you, God made two human beings—Adam and Eve. They were sinless and placed in a sinless environment, the Garden of Eden, and yet one of them was in charge. We are told in the New Testament that God created Adam first, that indicates His plan that Adam would rule and Eve would be subject to him. She was created for him, in the New Testament . . . That's God's order. We have a world now going crazy on egalitarianism, everybody being equal which means the same. That's just the fight against God's plan. And it is not a result of sin. There are negative consequences because of sin. Man abuses his authority and we mistreat each other and all of that, but even in the Godhead there is order—God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. They are equal in the sense they are God. We are equal in the sense we are all the children of God. That doesn't mean we will all be the same. In unfallen angels there is hierarchy and order, and I take it through eternity there will be. And here we find out.

So what is going on? “The gates are never closed,” that means you don't have to say what time does the city open where we can go and worship God. It is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. “They will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it.” See, this is God's purpose, His glory. What is the purpose of the kingdom? A time when all His creation is bringing Him the glory due Him by the power of His redemption. Now in hell, even the wicked under condemnation will be bringing Him glory, but in a totally different way. They will be showing His justice in their eternal suffering as fit payment for their sin. We don't deserve salvation, God in His grace provided it. So they bring their glory and honor of the nations into it. So in this perfect world . . . but what would Adam and Eve have been doing? If they hadn't eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in rebellion against God, they would have lived forever. Well what would they be doing today? Whatever God planned, they would have been ruling over creation. So I take it, it will go on forever.

What about when we run out of room? What was God's original plan? What if they had run out of room? Are you saying He created a plan that could never work because He would have been boxed in? If Adam and Eve had just obeyed God, God would have been now in trouble, so Satan rescued Him by bringing sin and death so He didn't run out of room. There is no such argument. God will have to solve it. What about in a trillion years, will it change? Will we run out of room? That's like thinking won't I be bored? How much am I going to be able to rule over a perfect earth? If it is a perfect earth, it doesn't need much supervision. Well, God created there to be order.

So I take it those in the New Jerusalem will be those either spirit beings like angels who never had physical bodies, doesn't mean they can't have substance, but they are not just puffs of smoke. They are spirit beings. There will be people who have received resurrected, glorified bodies, different groups—Israel, church, other Old Testament saints. So they will reside in the New Jerusalem. Outside will be people who are in non-glorified bodies, they have never died. They will continue to go on, their sin nature will have been obliterated. I mean, I'm completely forgiven and cleansed, my sin nature is not an essential part of who I am as a redeemed person. God could wipe that out like that. He will evidently. So then what will happen? We will be ruling.

Now we have this, we have mixture of spirit beings, angels, glorified saints in resurrected physical bodies that have flesh and bone like Christ had. Remember He said, “grab onto me. A spirit doesn't have flesh and bone.” So even though angels can manifest themselves with substance, they are not made of flesh and bone because usually spirits don't have flesh and bone. But they can manifest themselves, be seen, touched. Jacob wrestled with the Angel of the Lord. Some of these things, it's going to be interesting to see. Yes, it will be. There will be a lot of things we'll be learning when we get there that we just get a glimpse of now. I take it we will be ruling, Jerusalem will be the capital of the world, the new earth, even as it was the capital of the millennial earth. But now the New Jerusalem is the temple, it is the center of worship for the world—what the devil tried to create. Remember at the Tower of Babel? We want to have this city being the worship center of the rest of the world. We contrasted Babylon the harlot in Revelation 17:1 with the New Jerusalem, the bride of Christ. That's the contrast.

So we will be ruling. I take it we can go out of the city, we go out to rule and reign. The angels leave heaven now and come down here to carry out the will of God. Like angels here, we don't see them but they exist. There we will be able to see. We will go out and rule and reign with Christ. Remember this is the capital city, everybody here is not all there is, so we go out and rule and reign with Christ. Under us will be angels because angels are ministering servants on behalf of the heirs of salvation. We will judge angels, Paul told the Corinthians, not meaning they will sit and we will evaluate, we will have authority there over them. And then there will be the people of the world. Out there, there will still be order. There will be kings and lower rulers, and lower rulers. That's the kingdom; that was what God planned when He created Adam and Eve. He said be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, rule over the creation. There were also angels, they'd be involved in that.

So this seems to be the picture, we are now back to God fulfilling what He planned when He created man and woman and put them in a perfect environment. Now we have the perfect environment but there will be no entrance of sin into it because it has finally been dealt with.

So verse 27 says, “nothing unclean, no one who practices abomination and lying shall ever come into it.” That doesn't mean there are people outside here who are sinful beings, but only those whose names are written in the book of life will come into this city. Why? Come back to Revelation 20:15, “anyone's name who was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.” So there are only two kinds of people left, those who are in the lake of fire and those whose names are in the book of life and thus are in the New Jerusalem. Down in Revelation 21:8 we were reminded that not everybody is going to enter into the glory. It's just like if I do a funeral and I talk about this glorious destiny of this believer and he is going to heaven. But I don't want to leave people thinking all of them listening to me are going to heaven. But I say there is something else you must know, not everyone is going to this wonderful, beautiful place. Some people are going to a place that is just the opposite, a place of suffering, pain, torment. And it is eternal also, it's called hell. All I am doing is drawing the contrast. That is what he did in Revelation 21:8. We are told in Revelation 21:4 He “wipes away all tears, all pain, all death. All that is gone on the new earth,” but verse 8, “there are those who will be in the lake of fire.” Their judgment was mentioned in verse 15. But you can't forget that. It's like my preaching on Sunday morning, I want to remind myself not everybody listening to me is going to heaven. So that is what he is reminding, not everybody will be there. But the distinction has already been made—if you are not in the Lamb's book of life, you've been cast into hell by this time. That happened in Revelation 20:15. So you are back and forth.

I want to take you back to a couple of verses in the Old Testament. Come back to Isaiah 60, we may not have time for much more than just Isaiah 60. We want to see how the Old Testament prophet goes back and forth, but he gave us a little bit of a preview of what we are studying and reading here in Revelation. Verse 20 tells us, verse 19 “you have the promised glory for the nation Israel.” Some of what he talks about will happen in the first coming of Christ, some of it will happen in the millennial phase of the kingdom, some of it will happen in the eternal phase. Verse 20, “A redeemer will come to Zion, those who turn from transgression in Jacob, declares the Lord. This is My covenant with them says the Lord, My Spirit which is upon you, My words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart from your mouth, from the mouth of your offspring, from now on forevermore. Arise, shine, for your light has come, the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Behold darkness will cover the earth, deep darkness, but the Lord will rise upon you. His glory will appear upon you. Nations will come to your light, kings to the brightness of your rising,” and so on. Sounds like nations come, kings come to the light of the glory of God among His people. Then he goes on through this.

Come down to verse 11. “Your gates will be open continually, they will not be closed day or night so that men may bring to you the wealth of the nations with their kings lead in procession.” That sounds like what we just read in Revelation—the nations come, the kings come, the gates are not closed. Go on down to verse 16, the end of the verse, “You will know that I the Lord am your Savior, your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.” Verse 19, “No longer will you have the sun for light by day nor for brightness will the moon give you light. You will have the Lord for an everlasting light, your God for your glory. Your sun will no longer set, your moon will not wane, for you will have the Lord for an everlasting light. The days of your mourning will be over, then all your people will be righteous. They will possess the land forever. The branch of my planting, the work of My hands that I may be glorified.” That sounds like what we are just studying about the new heavens and the new earth. Now remember there were no chapter divisions, there were no verse divisions when Isaiah wrote this. This would be like writing a book with no chapters, no verses. This was just a prophecy.

Now note Isaiah 61. “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me because the Lord has anointed Me to bring good news to the afflicted, He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, freedom to the prisoners, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” Wait a minute, do you know what happens? Verse 1 is about the first coming of Christ. We know that because in the New Testament during His earthly ministry He quoted this verse and said this was being fulfilled in your eyes right now. But proclaiming the favorable year of the Lord and the day of the vengeance of our God and bringing in the kingdom, well this is 2000 years later and we still haven't had that. So He talks about the kingdom, He talks about the glory of the kingdom, He talks about all these things. Then He is talking about the first coming of Christ, then He is back talking about the second coming of Christ.

This is the confusion in the Old Testament prophets, this is the confusion of those who don't take prophecy literally. They say Isaiah 61:1 was fulfilled when Christ came to earth, so everything else that is said in this context must be fulfilled as well. So the kingdom must be a spiritual kingdom in your hearts because when He came and preached the Gospel to the afflicted, He said He was doing that during His earthly ministry. That's when, and He is talking about spiritual light and we are lights. And Jesus told His disciples “don't hide your light under a bushel.” Paul told the Philippians, we are “light in the darkness.” So we are manifesting the presence of the kingdom on earth and the church is the kingdom. Don't get confused, I don't think that is true, but that's how they get into this.

We don't realize there is material on the first coming, there is material on the Second Coming, there is material on the kingdom that relates particularly to the first thousand-year phase, there is material that will not ultimately be realized until we get beyond the thousand-year phase. But we get a touch of it here. You don't need the sun, the Lord will be lighting it. It will be forever. All Your people will be righteousness, they will possess the land. That's going to go on.

So you see connections and you see dissimilarity. It is a New Jerusalem, it has been heaven and it comes down now to earth, the architect and builder is God. It is not built with human hands. We had a temple built according to the instructions given during the thousand-year millennium in Ezekiel 40-48. It has similarities with twelve gates, but that's all right, the tabernacle had similarities, too. A model, a copy has similarities or it is not a copy. If I say here is a watch, it is a copy of an airplane. You say, no, it might be a copy of a bigger watch but it's not a copy of an airplane. So the copy naturally is going to have similarities.

So the millennial temple has twelve gates with names of the twelve tribes of Israel, but that doesn't make it the New Jerusalem. I mean, we have these distinctions. That's the beauty of the book of Revelation, now we see how God in His plan is ultimately going to bring us so that what happened in Genesis 1-2 before sin entered in, Satan couldn't frustrate His plan. He couldn't change it, he couldn't alter it. So when we get to the end of the millennium there will be people going into eternity and they will be doing what Adam and Eve had done if they hadn't sinned. That was a delay, it has lasted quite some time but it is all part of the plan of God.

So what are we going to do in heaven? We are going to be busy. I don't have all the answers because of our finite minds, we only can grasp it, and that's why God graciously has connected it to things we identify with. And that was to prepare us. We will be busy. There will be a kingdom to be overseen, there will be order. What about the blending of spirit beings like angels, glorified saints and physical people? No problem. What about angels being here now? If an angel manifested his presence, sitting in one of the empty seats next to you, you say I didn't know you were there. Yes, I am here. And I take it you could touch him, there are those kinds of things that happen. But he is a spirit. So there will be a mixture there, there was already a mixture when God created Adam and Eve when they lived in the garden because there were angels, one of them Lucifer who came to bring about deception.

This is God's plan of salvation, it is clear, it is complete. Two gates, two roads, two destinies. Once you fix your eyes on these closing chapters of the book of Revelation, it enables you to back up and say everything here is of short value because it is going to be gone. That's why Jesus said, lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, and this will have to do with our role and functioning in this eternal kingdom. What a future we as believers have.

Let's pray together. Thank You, Lord, for the riches of Your word. Lord, we only can grasp but the smallest portion of what You have revealed here. Our minds, so limited, so finite have a hard time conceiving of such glory, such splendor, but Lord we believe it because You, the God who cannot lie, have said it is true. Hard for us to imagine, dwelling in Your presence in a city so awesome, ruling and reigning with Christ our Savior. Lord, we appreciate even more fully that we are heirs and co-heirs with Christ. Lord, may we not be taken up, discouraged, distracted by the things of this life, but may we be carrying out our responsibility of serving You with faithfulness in anticipation of the ultimate realization of what You have promised. We pray in Christ's name, amen.