Deo Gloria
Sermon for May 26, 2019
Pastor Martin Bentz
Text: Revelation 21:10-14,22-27
Theme: Set Your Sights High!
- On your heavenly home
- On Jesus Christ, the Lamb
When we were in Michigan, I knew a little boy by the name of Terry. Terry was a pistol—a cute, little kid, one you couldn’t help but love, but a pistol all the same. The year was 1996, an election year, and Terry was in first grade. Like many classrooms that fall their classroom held a mini-election of their own. The teacher handed out little pieces of paper for ballots and she wrote the names of the candidates on the board. She then instructed the students to vote for the candidate they wanted to be president. After all the children had placed their votes in the little ballot box, the teacher began to tally the votes. And everything went smoothly. They didn’t have to do any recounts or mess with broken election machines. And if I remember right, Bob Dole won in their election. But when the teacher opened the last ballot, she had all she could do to keep from laughing. Here on the little piece of paper was a write-in candidate—in first grade, a write-in candidate. You guessed it. It was Terry. He had voted for himself.
What are your goals in life? Would you like to be a teacher some day, a doctor perhaps, a musician? Do you want to own your own business, be the CEO of your company, develop some new product? Is it your goal to be the next Bill Gates, the next Taylor Swift, the next Steph Curry? Do you want to be president of the United States some day?
This morning I’d like to encourage you to set your sights high. If you want to be a doctor or lawyer some day, great. We need good, Christian doctors and lawyers. If you want to be a teacher or if you just want to stay at home so you can be there for your children and teach them as they’re growing up, that’s great too. Lord knows we need good, Christian teachers as well as moms who are willing to stay home with their children. If you want to own your own business or be the president of the company, that’s great too. But no matter what you do in life, it is my hope and prayer that you will always keep your sights set on another goal, indeed the highest goal, and ultimately the only goal that really matters: the goal of eternal life in heaven.
The book of Revelation is a vision, a vision seen by the apostle John and recorded by him. God gave John this vision in order to encourage him and the other early Christians who were experiencing hardship and persecution on account of their Christian faith. It was meant to lift their eyes from the troubles and hardships they had to endure and to focus them instead on the ultimate goal: the joy and glory of heaven. During this vision John actually caught a glimpse of heaven itself. And he describes what he saw in the verses of our text. Naturally there are many things about heaven we could look at this morning, many more than we have time for. What I would like to do is focus on just three of the main features.
First of all, heaven is a place of breath-taking beauty. Have any of you ever been to the Grand Canyon? My family and I had a chance to visit the Grand Canyon quite a few year ago. People had told me how beautiful it was, but I still wasn’t prepared for what I saw. I had seen pictures of it too, but even the pictures didn’t do it justice. The day we were there was a beautiful, sunny day. And the view was awesome, absolutely breath-taking.
The same is true of heaven. John describes heaven as a city made out of gold, gold so pure that it was like glass. Can you imagine a place like that? The wall of the city was made out of jasper, a gemstone that is usually red in color. The foundation of the wall consisted of various jewels: sapphire, emerald, topaz, etc.. And the gates were made out of pearl. Each gate made of a single pearl. Again, can you imagine the beauty of such a place?
Maybe you’ve been to Duluth and marveled at the beauty of the Congdon Mansion. Or, maybe you’ve been to see the Hearst Mansion in California. They’re impressive places. And yet they pale in comparison to heaven, the place our Savior is preparing for us, the place where we will live for rest of eternity.
Heaven is also a place of perfect peace and security. In v. 12 John notes that it had a great, high wall. A little later the angel measured the wall and we learn that it was 144 cubits thick. That’s about 200 feet. Our church is only about 50 feet wide. In other words, the wall around the city of God in heaven was four times as thick as our church is wide. What a comforting picture for God’s people! You have to remember, back in the days when this was written, every city was surrounded by a wall. The wall protected the residents of the city from attack by their enemies. If some enemy army did break through the wall, they could steal your property. They could destroy your home. They could do harm to you and your family. So the bigger the wall the better. The wall protecting God’s people in heaven is pictured as being 200 feet thick. God’s people are safe and secure.
The same point is made in v. 25, where John notes that “on no day will the gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there.” Again in ancient times the gates were normally shut at dusk so no enemies could sneak into the city under the cover of darkness. In heaven the gates are always open, because there is no night and there are no enemies.
In this world of ours we hear all too often about school shootings and disgruntled employees bringing a gun to work and people being beaten or killed right in their own home. It makes you wonder if you’re safe anywhere anymore. In heaven you will be safe. In heaven there will be no more wars or rumors of wars. In heaven there will be no more gangs or disgruntled employees or convicted criminals released on parole. In heaven no one will be able to harm you—not even the devil and his evil angels. The devil won’t be able to tempt you in heaven. He won’t be able to lure you into sin or weigh you down with guilt or fill your heart with fear. He and all his demons will have been totally and utterly defeated, cast forever into the lake of fire, never to be seen or heard from again. Heaven is a place of perfect peace and safety.
And it is a place where God himself is present. In v. 11 John states that the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, “shone with the glory of God.” Literally, the Greek says it “has the glory of God.” Later in v. 23 John says that “the city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.” And in the previous verse he notes that he did not see a temple there, “because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple”(v. 22).
Have you ever seen God? Have you ever seen his glory? Have you ever spoken to God face to face? Moses did. He met with God face to face on Mt. Sinai, but only for a while, for a period of 40 days. Solomon and the people of Israel saw the glory of God on the day they dedicated the temple in Jerusalem. In that instance we are told that “the glory of the Lord filled [the] temple”(1 Kings 8:11); but that too only lasted for a day. In heaven we will see the glory of God every day. We will see what the disciples saw on the Mount of Transfiguration. We will see the Son of God in all his glory. We will see the Father in all his glory. Can you imagine what that will be like? To live with God, to be able to see him all the time, to walk with him and talk with him as you would with your best friend–that’s what you and I will have the privilege of seeing and doing in heaven.
There’s a popular, Christian song that captures these thoughts pretty well. It’s written from the perspective of a believer who has died and gone to heaven, and he’s speaking to his friends and relatives who are still on earth. It goes like this:
Our prayers have all been answered. I finally have arrived.
The healing that had been delayed has now been realized.
No one’s in a hurry. There’s no schedule to keep.
We’re all enjoying Jesus, just sitting at his feet.
If you could see me now, I’m walking streets of gold.
If you could see me now, I’m standing tall and whole.
If you could see me now, you’d know I’d seen his face.
If you could see me now, you’d know the pain’s erased.
You wouldn’t want me to ever leave this place, if you could see me now.
That’s what God has in store for you, that’s his plan for your eternal future: to live with him in a perfect place, a place of awesome beauty, of perfect peace, of endless joy, to live in such a place with him forever. Don’t ever lose sight of that. Don’t allow Satan to deceive you and lead you away from that goal. Don’t allow your friends or your peers to get you off track and take you down some other path. Don’t allow the things of this life or the pleasures of this life or the sorrows and heartaches of this life to take your eyes off that goal. Rather, as Paul says in Colossians, ch. 3: “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory”(vv. 2-4). Set your sights high.
Yet even more important than keeping your sights set on your heavenly home is keeping your eyes focused on Jesus Christ, the Lamb. You see, even though the gates of heaven are always open, not everyone is allowed in. Take another look at what John writes in the very last verse: “Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” The word translated “shameful” literally means an “abomination,” something that is abominable or detestable in the eyes of God.
In the book of Proverbs we read the following:
There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers. (6:16-19)
Let’s take them one at a time, shall we? 1.) Haughty eyes, in other words, pride—do you like to boast? Do you like to brag to others about your grades, about your promotion, about how you did at the track meet? 2.) A lying tongue—do you ever lie to your parents, to your teacher, to your boss? 3.) Hands that shed innocent blood—that’s called murder. The Bible says anyone who hates his brother is a murderer. 4.) A heart that devises wicked schemes—Did you hear about the teens who plotted to take revenge on one of their teachers? While he and his family were gone one weekend, they broke into his home and trashed the place. The damage came to over $10,000. 5.) Feet that are quick to rush into evil. When one of your friends suggests doing something you know is wrong, do you say, “No way” and walk away, or do you say, “Yeah, let’s do it”? 6.) A false witness who pours out lies—My younger brother is a police officer down in the New Ulm area. He said the thing that bugs him more than anything else is not the people who speed or those who drink and drive. What bugs him more than anything is the way people lie in court, the way they get up on the stand and just lie through their teeth. And 7.) A man who stirs up dissension among brothers. Do you like to pick on your brothers and sisters and stir up trouble or do you do whatever you can to keep the peace?
Let’s be honest, you’ve done those things, haven’t you? Maybe not all of them, but some of them. And you expect that God is going to let you into heaven, into his holy city? Better guess again. God is holy. If you’re going to live with God in heaven, then you need to be holy. You need to be sinless. Are you? Me neither. As the Bible says, we all have sinned. We all have done things that are an abomination in God’s eyes. So how on earth could we ever hope of getting into heaven?
On our own we can’t. You and I could never live with God in heaven except for one thing: Jesus. Did you notice how Jesus was pictured throughout these verses? That’s right, a lamb. It reminds us of that passage John recorded in his Gospel: “Look the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”(1:29). By his sacrificial death on the cross Jesus paid for all our sins. He took them away, washed them away in his own blood. Through him we have forgiveness. Through him we are holy and righteous in God’s sight.
That’s what happened when you were baptized. When you were washed with water in the name of the Triune God, your sins were washed away. You were clothed in the robe of Jesus’ righteousness. You were made holy in the sight of God. That’s also when faith was created in your heart, faith to trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior; and when you were adopted into God’s family as one of his children. Yes, your name is written in the Lamb’s book of life, in God’s family registry. You can enter heaven. So is mine. Everyone who believes in Jesus Christ as his Savior has his name written in the Lamb’s book of life. When this life is over, they can look forward to living with God in his heavenly home, provided they never lose their faith.
You aren’t planning to lose your faith, are you? I didn’t think so. Then by all means don’t take your faith for granted as so many people do. Don’t neglect your faith and fail to give it the nourishment it needs. Come to God’s house regularly and often to hear his Word and to keep your eyes focused on the Lamb. Come to the Lord’s table regularly and often to be reminded of the sacrifice the Lamb of God made for you. Come to be assured of your forgiveness and to be strengthened in your faith. Read your Bible at home regularly and often in your own personal devotions. Do everything you can to keep your faith strong and to keep your eyes focused on the Lamb.
No matter what your goals are in life—whether you become a doctor some day or a teacher, the president of the company or even the president of the United States—no matter what you do I pray you will always keep your sights set high, on your heavenly home, and on Jesus Christ, the Lamb. Amen.