6-10-18 Open Up the Heavens!

Scripture  Revelation 21:1-7

Open up the heavens

We've waited for this day, We're gathered in your name, Calling out to you
Your glory like a fire, Awakening desire, Will burn our hearts with truth

Open up the heavens, We want to see you, Open up the floodgates, A mighty river
Flowing from your heart, Filling every part of our praise

Show us, show us your glory, your power, your glory, Lord

When we all get to heaven

Sing the wondrous love of Jesus, Sing his mercy and his grace
In the mansions bright and blessed, He'll prepare for us a place

When we all get to heaven, What a day of rejoicing that will be
When we all see Jesus, We'll sing and shout the victory

When the roll is called up yonder

On that bright and cloudless morning when the dead in Christ shall rise,
And the glory of His resurrection share
When His chosen ones shall gather to their home beyond the skies,
And the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be there

I’ll fly away

Some bright morning when this life is over, I'll fly away
To that home on God's celestial shore, I'll fly away

I'll fly away, oh glory, I'll fly away in the morning
When I die, Hallelujah by and by, I'll fly away

Worthy is the lamb with crown him with many crowns

Worthy is the Lamb Seated on the throne. Crown You now with many crowns. You reign victorious High and lifted up Jesus Son of God. Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon his throne, Awake, my soul, and sing of him who died for thee, and hail him as thy matchless King through all eternity.

Rev 21:1-7

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." 5 He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" Then he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true." 6 He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. 7 He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son.”

Richard Baxter was a very effective pastor in England in the 1600s. His whole adult life was spent battling one sickness after the other. He was harassed by a constant cough, frequent nosebleeds, migraine headaches, digestive ailments, kidney stones, and gallstones. He believed in supernatural healing and said several times he was restored to fruitful labor because of God's direct intervention. He said once a cancerous looking tumor in his throat vanished while he was in the pulpit testifying to God's mercies in his own life. Yet bodily suffering was with him to the end, and he once said that from the age of 21 he was "seldom an hour free from pain."

Richard Baxter's Regular Meditation on Heaven

One of the effects of this suffering was to make him intensely conscious of how temporary his life is and how inevitable death is. Once, at 35 he was so sick, he would probably not recover. He began to meditate on the joys of heaven and the age to come in preparation for leaving this world. He focused especially on "the hope of glory" and began to write his thoughts.

To his surprise he recovered, and his thoughts became a book entitled The Saints' Everlasting Rest. He took up the practice of meditating on heaven a half hour each day because of the powerful impact it had on his life. He commended the same thing to his readers. He said,

If you would have light and heat, why are you not more in the sunshine? For want of this recourse to heaven, your soul is as a lamp not lighted, and your duty as a sacrifice without fire. Fetch one coal daily from this altar, and see if your offering will not burn . . . Keep close to this reviving fire, and see if your affections will not be warm.

We Are Citizens of Another Age

This is good advice. Paul told us to do this in Colossians 3:1–4.

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

In other words, if our resurrection with Christ is so sure as virtually to have already happened, then we are to live in the constant awareness that we are citizens of His kingdom. We are not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. And that renewing means conformed to the newness of the kingdom to come, because God says, "Behold I make all things new" (Revelation 21:5).

Pondering the Greatness of the Age to Come 

I want us to focus on the objective reality of what is coming for us in the age of the resurrection. Romans 6:5, "If we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his."

The person who knows that his destiny is glorious and certain will be free to live the most radical life of love and sacrifice..

If somebody falls out of an airplane with no parachute on and you don't have one either, you aren't going to jump out after them. It won't do any good. Two deaths aren't better than one. But if you have a parachute on, you just might try one of those awesome rescue attempts, and free fall like a bullet to catch the helpless and pull your cord. It's the hope of safety in the end that releases radical, sacrificial love now.

Paul said in Colossians 1:4–5, "We have heard of the love you have for all the saints because of the hope laid up for you in heaven." It's the assurance of the hope of heaven that releases the radical, risk-taking love that makes people look at your life (like Peter says) and "ask a reason for the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3:15). What do those people see when they ask that? They see you jumping out of an airplane to save another person. So they say, "Hey how can you jump out of the comfort and safety of this airplane?" And you answer, "I have a parachute called the hope of glory."

What will it be like?

Four Ways in Which God Will Make All Things New

The purpose of God for creation will not be complete until all things are made new and the glory of the Lord fills them all. In verse 5 God says, "Behold, I make all things new." And he enforces the certainty of it in two ways. He is sitting on his throne when he says it—the throne of authority. "He who sat upon the throne said, 'Behold I make all things new.'" And after he had said it, he added, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true." So God wants us to read this and be sure of it. He wants us to have assurance that no matter how much evil and suffering and futility we see now, he will make all things new.

Let's look at four ways the newness is coming.

1. Spiritually and Morally New

The greatest frustration of this age is that we still sin. Romans 7:34 describes this painful truth: "I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind." This war is the most frustrating thing about life in this age—at least it is for the children of God. We want to be holy and we fall short of the holiness we long for. We want to love and we say hurtful things. We want to worship and we feel cold. We want to walk in peace and we feel anxiety. We want to be pure in thought and impurity bombards our minds.

There is some progress as the Spirit helps us in our weakness. But what we long for is deliverance from this bent to sinning.

That is what God promises when he makes all things new. We will be made spiritually and morally new—not just partially as now, but completely. Look at verse 2: "And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." This is a picture of the church prepared and beautified for her husband, Jesus Christ. When God makes all things new, he makes the church—the people of God—spiritually and morally beautiful for his Son. Look at the way this is described in verses 9–11: Then came one of the seven angels who spoke to me, saying, "Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb." And in the Spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God [the same image as in verse 2], having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.

When God makes the bride ready for the Son, the way he does it is by giving us his glory—verse 11: "having the glory of God." And this glory will purify us so deeply and so thoroughly that we will be like a rare jewel, clear as crystal. Don't you long for that day? Nothing hidden and nothing shameful. That's the first way the newness is coming. God will make us spiritually and morally beautiful for our final marriage with his Son.

2. Physically New

The Bible does not teach that the final state of glory is one of disembodied spirits. Plato and his kind wanted it that way because they thought the body was a drag on the freedom of the spirit. But the Bible teaches a very different destiny for God's people. God will make all things new—including our bodies.  Verse 4 points in this direction: "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away."

No more death. No more pain. No more tears. What that means is that the body we know now will be changed. Because it dies. And it hurts. And it cries. If death is gone and pain is gone and tears are gone, then the body as we know it here is gone. That may sound like Plato—good riddance to the body of pain. Revelation is plain that the point is not good riddance to the body but that God will make all things new.

Paul put it like this in Philippians 3:20–21, But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

There are a lot of people who feel that they didn't get a fair shake when the bodies were passed out. Some people have dramatic deformities, some have lost limbs, some are paralyzed, some can't hear, some can't see, some have extensive skin blemishes. But God has no intention of leaving anybody in that condition who put their trust him.

When God makes all things new, he makes our bodies new.

3. The New Creation

This is the point of verse 1: "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more." The hope of the prophet seems to be that this earth and heaven will be made new. God will renovate the whole thing—a kind of global rehab project. And everything futile and evil and painful will be done away.

Paul put it like this in Romans 8:21, "The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the liberty of the glory of the children of God." The newness and the glory of the church, the children of God, is primary and first. But then God promises that the glory of his people will demand a glorious creation to live in. So the fallen creation will obtain the very freedom from futility and evil and pain that the church is given.

So when God makes all things new, he makes us new spiritually and morally, he makes us new physically, and then he makes the whole creation new so that our environment fits our perfected spirits and bodies.

That leaves one last work of renewing when God makes all things new.

4. A New Relationship with God

John tells us about this in verse 3: "I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, '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."

It's true that God is with us now. His Spirit dwells in us (1 Corinthians 6:19). Jesus promised never to leave us to the very end of the age (Matthew 28:20). But in 2 Corinthians 5:6–7 Paul said, "While we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord, here we walk by faith and not by sight."

So there is a deep and painful sense in which we are "away from the Lord"—we do not see as we will one day see. "Blessed are the pure in heart," Jesus said, "for they shall see God." It's a promise. Something greater is coming for all of us in our relation with God.

Zaccheaeus couldn’t see Jesus without the help of tree. Revelation 22:4 tells us how we will see him in this new relationship: "They shall see his face and his name shall be on their foreheads."

When God makes all things new, he will make us spiritually and morally as pure as flawless crystal, he will give us a body like the body of his glory, he will renovate all creation to take all futility and evil and pain out of it, and finally he himself will come to us and let us see his face. And so forever and ever we will live with pure hearts and glorious bodies on a new heaven/earth in the presence and the glory of our heavenly Father.

END AS WE BEGAN – WITH A MUSICAL PRAYER

Prayer of seeing heaven while living radical lives for Jesus on earth.

The great I am

I want to be close, close to your side, Heaven is real and death is a lie
I want to hear voices of angels above , Singing as one

Hallelujah, holy, holy, God almighty, the great I am
Who is worthy, none beside thee, God almighty, the great I am

I want to be near, near to your heart, Loving the world and hating the dark
I want to see dry bones living again, Singing as one

Hallelujah, holy, holy, God almighty, the great I am
Who is worthy, none beside thee, God almighty, the great I am