Revelation 21-22 Garden to Garden
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Bible Reading
Bible Reading
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.
2 I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.
3 Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God.
4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away.
5 Then the one seated on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new.” He also said, “Write, because these words are faithful and true.”
6 Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will freely give to the thirsty from the spring of the water of life.
7 The one who conquers will inherit these things, and I will be his God, and he will be my son.
8 But the cowards, faithless, detestable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars—their share will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
9 Then one of the seven angels, who had held the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues, came and spoke with me: “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.”
10 He then carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,
11 arrayed with God’s glory. Her radiance was like a precious jewel, like a jasper stone, clear as crystal.
12 The city had a massive high wall, with twelve gates. Twelve angels were at the gates; the names of the twelve tribes of Israel’s sons were inscribed on the gates.
13 There were three gates on the east, three gates on the north, three gates on the south, and three gates on the west.
14 The city wall had twelve foundations, and the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb were on the foundations.
15 The one who spoke with me had a golden measuring rod to measure the city, its gates, and its wall.
16 The city is laid out in a square; its length and width are the same. He measured the city with the rod at 12,000 stadia. Its length, width, and height are equal.
17 Then he measured its wall, 144 cubits according to human measurement, which the angel used.
18 The building material of its wall was jasper, and the city was pure gold clear as glass.
19 The foundations of the city wall were adorned with every kind of jewel: the first foundation is jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald,
20 the fifth sardonyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst.
21 The twelve gates are twelve pearls; each individual gate was made of a single pearl. The main street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass.
22 I did not see a temple in it, because the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.
23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, because the glory of God illuminates it, and its lamp is the Lamb.
24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.
25 Its gates will never close by day because it will never be night there.
26 They will bring the glory and honor of the nations into it.
27 Nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those written in the Lamb’s book of life.
1 Then he showed me the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb
2 down the middle of the city’s main street. The tree of life was on each side of the river, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree are for healing the nations,
3 and there will no longer be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will worship him.
4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.
5 Night will be no more; people will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, because the Lord God will give them light, and they will reign forever and ever.
At last, we are here – at the end of our series. We have walked from the Garden of Eden, and now 52 messages later, we arrive at the gaden city. The city of God.
And having walked through this journey together, I think we can now say what the golden thread is that ties the story together. It is the story of God coming to live with his people by dealing with their sin in his Son Jesus Christ.
And that is what the whole book, the whole Bible is about.
It starts with God, walking and talking withhis people in the cool of the day. There way back in the garden of Eden, God was with his people. They felt no shame, there was no sin, no curse. They were completely open with each other, and with God.
And God looks as this situation and declares it very good.
But then sin enters the world. Adam and Eve chose to reject the good life God gave them, and want to be their own God, to decide right and wrong for themselves. They take of the fruit God had forbidden them to eat from, and they eat, and in so doing they bring a curse to this world. A curse that ultimately separates God’s people from God himself.
And in Genesis 3:8 all of a sudden we read – then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden, at the time of the evening breaze, and they hid from the Lord God…”
This is what had to take place. Because if God met them in their sinful state they would be destroyed.
And this is the main problem that drives the narrative of scripture. How will this situation be resolved? How can a holy God come together with his people. How can he live among his people.
Because God is stubbornly committed to living with his people.
126 times throughout scripture, God or one of his spokes people declare that God will live among his people. Here are a couple of examples.
Gen 17:8 – after God makes the covenant with Abraham, he says, I will give the people the land of Canaan as their permanent possession and I will be their God”. I will be their God.
Exodus 6:7 God says to the Israelites. I am going to bring you up our of Egypt, I will take you as my people, and I will be your God.
Then later on, Israel as a people agree to this – they covenant with God and say, yes we want you to be our God. And God says, If you obey my Covenant, you will be my own poseesion, and I will be your God. Exodus 19:5-6
And to show that indeed he was with his people he tells them. Make me a dwelling place, the tabernacle. This was to be a perfect cube shape. And it represented the perfection of heaven, and God would send his presence to live in the tabernacle. And the tabernacle would be in the middle of Israel’s camp. And God would come to live with his people.
But of course the Tabernacle presence is kinda flawed. God was with his people, but not really. They still had to make sacrifices, they still had to atone for their sins. God was with them, he was their God, but his presence was fearsome and terrifying. If you entered into his presence, without being pure you would get burnt up, destroyed.
But this is a real problem. Because the issue with people is not that sin is out there – out in the world. Sin is inside here, inside our heart. Sin follows us from our conception to the day of our death, and we cannot escape it.
It is for this reason, that while Israel still lived in the dessert, in the tents with the tabernacle, God instructs that when a woman has given birth, she is to offer a sin offering. The very act of reproduction has been tainted by sin. (Lev 12:1-8)
And so despite God’s insistence that he will be present among his people, the problem of sin remains. God cannot be with his people fully, because sin remains. And yet still, he promises again in Lev 26:11 – I will live among you, I will not reject you, I will walk among you and be your God and you will be my people.
And as the story progresses, problem is explored.
The solution isn’t good leadership – the book of Judges makes that clear. Every leader, when they don’t have the Holy Spirit living in them will be worse than the one before. Because sin is in here – not out there.
The solution isn’t good government – King Saul was a good king, but he turned to the idols that his wives brought with them, and he started worshipping other Gods. Because the issue is in here, in the heart – not out there.
The solution isn’t even a good King – we have David, the best king, and yet he fails horribly. When he takes his eyes off God, he turns to adultery and murder. Because the issue is in here, not out there.
God can’t live here, because we have an issue in here.
And yet even in the midst of telling us about David, the author of scripture, the Holy Spirit reminds us – this story is not about David. After David becomes king, in 2 Samuel 7, and Israel is finally at rest and it seems as if the kingdom is finally taking shape, David says to God “You have established your people Israel to be your people forever, and you O Lord have become their God”.
David highlights this promise that God would be with his people, and live among them, and he looks at all the good that has happened to Israel, and he can’t help but think. This must be it. God is with us.
But he isn’t there.
Not fully.
He is still living in the tabernacle – separated from his people. The people live around the Lord, not among him.
But God’s will is set. He will live with his people, and so when Solomon starts building the temple for God (1 kings 6:13) God again makes this promise. I will dwell among the Israelites and I will not abandon my people Israel”.
But the problem is not out there, the problem is in here. And so despite God’s dogged insistence that he will be their God, and they will be his people, and that he will not abandon them, they abandon him.
Israel turns from God, chases after foreign Idols and again and again worship other Gods. Finally they are carried off into exile. And in the middle of exile, while Israel reaps the reward for continually rejecting God, God’s promise comes again.
In Isaiah he promises, one day “I wil create a new heaven and a new earth, and the past events will not be remembered or come to mind. The sound of weeping and crying will no longer be heard in Jesualem”.
And in Jeremiah he says that the way this will happen is because God himself will fix this issue we have in here – he will fix our broken hearts.
He tells us in Jer 24:7 that he will give his people a new heart, a heart that will know him. And again the promise comes.
And they will be my people, and I will be their God because they will return to me with all their heart.
In Jeremiah, this promise that “They will be my people and I will be their God” is repeated.
5 times God declares this.
In Ezekiel he promises this 6 times.
He promises it in Hosea again, and 3 more times in the book of zecheria.
And then, at last God comes to dwell with his people.
Matthew 1:23 – The virigin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel – whis is God is with us.
And as we have seen, Jesus shows people exactly what it means when God is among us, when God is with us. The dead are raised, the sick are healed, the brokenhearted are restored and the downtrodden are lifted up. Sickness flees from him, Demons scatter and submit to him, even the wind and the waves obey him.
And when God with us is born, the world changes forever.
But again the problem was not out there, the problem was in here. And so what did we do with Immanuel, with God with us?
We killed him. We put him on the cross. And when he hangs there, he now suffers the separation from God that has plagued us all from the very beginning.
This is why when Jesus hangs on the cross, just before he dies, he cries out – My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?
Why did God forsake him? Because the iniquity of us all was put on him. The sin that was in here, the sin that separated Adam and Eve and all of us was put on him. And Jesus takes the consequences on himself.
God had warned adam and eve hadn’t he? If you sin, the reward is death.
Romans puts it this way: the wages of sin, the payment you get for sin is death. And so Jesus takes that death on himself and he dies in our place. He experiences utter and complete separation from God the father, So that we would not have to. And so Immanuel, God with us, dies as a God abandoned son.
But that is what was necessary for us to be saved. But more important that was what was necessary for God to achieve what he had promised to do.
If he would live among his people, if we could truly have a relationship with him, then the only way that could happen, would be through him putting the payment of our sin, on himself. And dying in our place.
And I should mention, this did not come as a surprise to Jesus. The trinity, God, Fahter son and Spirit, had agreed that they would pay this cost, already before the world was even created. Jesus dies in our place willingly, to deal with the problem that is … in here.
And then Jesus comes back from the dead, he is resurrected, and he commissions the church to spread his good news to the world.
And so when the Holy Spirit comes a few week later.
And Immanuel, God with us, becomes God’s spirit, within us.
But the story hasn’t finished.
One day, one day, God will complete his promis fully.
The promise that God would live with his people one day, will find it’s fullness. For while it is true now, that God lives within his people through his holy spirit, you know as well as I do, that we are not yet perfect. We turn from him, we sin, we walk away from him. We turn back and repent and are thankful for his forgiveness, but none of us are perfect.
The world isn’t perfect.
But one day it will be. And on that day God will be with his people forever.
Revelation 21:1–4 (CSB)
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. 2 I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.
3 Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away.
Finally here, v3, this promise that forms the golden thread that travels all throughout scripture comes to fruition. A new heaven and a new earth is created. And a whole new Jerusalem, God’s holy city comes down from Heaven, from God.
Now notice, this is heaven coming to earth, not earth going up to heaven. When we die, we go to heaven, but ultimately that is a kind of wonderful waiting place, until eventually heaven invades earth.
And when this happens, our attention is drawn to the conclusion of the final thread of the story.
Look. God’s dwelling is with humanity.
God has finally come to dwell with his people. But this time, there is nothing that separates us from him any more. Because not only is God’s dwelling with humanity, he will live WITH them. They will be his peoples (plural) and God himself will be with them and will be their God.
What a day that will be. How great it will be that finally we get to live with God. And not only do we get to live with him in all his goodness and love and power and strength and holiness, we don’t have to ever worry about being separated from him again.
Why? Because sin itself will be gone.
Revelation 21 and 22 makes this perfectly clear.
21:22 tells us that there is no temple in the city any more, because the point fo the temple, which was to deal with the issue of the people’s sin, has gone. God himself will light up the city.
23:27 also tells us that nothing unclean will ever enter the city, nor anyone who could commit sin. Only believers will be able to enter.
It tells us in 22:3 that there will no longer be any curse. The curse of sin that has plagued the world will finally be lifted.
The city itself is will be a perfect cube:
15 The one who spoke with me had a golden measuring rod to measure the city, its gates, and its wall.
16 The city is laid out in a square; its length and width are the same. He measured the city with the rod at 12,000 stadia. Its length, width, and height are equal.
Now a 12000 stadia is about 1800kms -2500kms long. So this is a massive city. We are supposed to understand that this city is bigger and better than anything this world could ever have produced.
And it is a perfect cube. This reminds us of the tabernacle which was a perfect cube too. We are supposed to see that as big and as wide and as tall as this new city is, it is perfectly holy.
There are no dark alleyways, no places where you have to be scared of anyone, eveyrone there will have only the glory of Jesus on their mind. None of us will ever be able to be selfish again, or hurt anyone, or be hurt again.
But even more amazing than the size of teh city, the holiness of the poeple that live there, or the fact that the curse of sin will be gone, there is something even more amazing there.
God will be there.
1 Then he showed me the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb
2 down the middle of the city’s main street. The tree of life was on each side of the river, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree are for healing the nations,
3 and there will no longer be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will worship him.
4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.
5 Night will be no more; people will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, because the Lord God will give them light, and they will reign forever and ever.
God will be there, and his servants will worship him, and tehy will see his face.
Wow. In all teh rest of scripture, if we saw God’s face we would be destroyed, we would be consumed, but here, like in teh garden of Eden, again we see teh Lord face to face.
And we can walk and talk with them. And together we will rule over the spaces God gives us rule over.
And we will find ourselves back in the garden, with a special tree in the middle of the garden.
But the garden is more wonderful than teh garden of eden ever was, because this is a garden city.
And the tree is a tree that doesn’t produce the knowledge of good, and the knoweldge of evil. But this tree is the tree of life. And it will sustain God’s people for all eternity.
And God will look after us, and we will worship him.
And he will be our God, and we will be his people.
And the story of scripture will find it’s final fulfilment.
And like the apostle John, I look forward to that day with great anticipation. And I say, come Lord JEsus, come quickly. and He responds as he does at the end of scripture. Yes, says Jesus. I am coming soon.
I want to finish by quoting a children’s song about the book of Revelation.
What started with a garden where the Bible did begin
has ended in with a garden city free of pain and sin,
Our journey’s coming ot a close,
or a beginning, I suppose
We can read this final book with ease, if we focus on the forest not the trees.
Don’t let details, bog you down, Just back right up and take a look around
all these symbols tell a story, of a God who comes in glory
to destroy the evil that has made us frown,
just back right up and take a look around.
Though the trouble’s not yet done,
we know the battle has been won,
and though the symbols can be odd,
they tell the story of a God
who has a wonderful, glorious, marvelous, victorious
plan to set things right,
so we can live with him in the light.
And at last we find a very happy end
for the ones through JEsus whom he calls his friends
And you know these’s gonna be a celebration
When finish you finish Revelation!
And that is how you get from garden, to garden city.
Amen.