Sermon

May 20, 2001
Easter 6
Revelation 21:9-14

Picture Yourself In Heaven!

(Revelation 21:9-14) One of the seven angels...said to me, "Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb."10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.11 It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. 12It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel.13 There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west.14 The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb... 22I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.23 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.

In Christ Jesus, who is both the Light of this world and the world to come, dear fellow redeemed,

This past January, there appeared in our Forward In Christ magazine, a wonderful article entitled Heaven's Camera. It was the story about a family who, while ministering to their dying mother, found an old camera of hers that still had film in it from forty years ago. The film was quickly developed and the dying woman soon found herself looking at pictures that had been taken on her daughter's confirmation day in 1961. Here's the truly amazing thing, on almost every picture the woman appeared with her daughter, her husband and her parents, all of whom had gone on to heaven before her. Cherishing their find, the woman and her family began referring to that old camera as "heaven's camera" because the images it had captured so long ago brought joy to this believer in Christ as she pictured herself soon standing in the company of those very same people in heaven above.

Today the Apostle John does something similar for us. The verses of our text serve as heaven's camera, capturing a photograph of all of us. So as we give thought to John's words today, I want you to PICTURE YOURSELF IN HEAVEN, in God's Holy City and in God's glorious company.

Our picture tour is being conducted today by one of the Lord's angels. Our vantage point for the tour is the same as that of John, a mountain great and high from which we will be seeing, not an exact and detailed representation of heaven, but a symbolic portrait of what life will be like for us there. The first image caught by heaven's camera is that of a bride. John tells us: "One of the seven angels...said to me, 'Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb" (v.9). But no sooner does this image come into focus and it suddenly shifts. John says: the angel "...showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God....It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west" (vv. 10, 12-13).

In this last book of the Bible, the number twelve is clearly a reference to God's church, a church that was in Old Testament times associated with the twelve tribes of Israel and in these New Testament days built on the God-inspired teaching of the twelve apostles. So the number twelve is used here repeatedly to let us know that we're looking at a picture of God's church, not the church militant here on earth, the church that is presently doing battle with an unbelieving world and its supreme commander, Satan, but the church triumphant in heaven. This is a picture of our heavenly future, showing us what things will be like when our current existence is nothing more than a dim memory.

The picture of us as the bride of the Lamb is, in part, a picture of the eternal celebration we're going to enjoy in heaven. The word bride is carefully chosen to let us know that our honeymoon with Christ is never going to end. Our marriage to the Lamb will be forever new.

But the picture quickly changes to that of the Holy City to let us know that invitations to this eternal celebration go out only to holy people. Contrary to popular thinking, not everyone who lives on earth is going to end up in heaven. Many who consider themselves here and now to be very good people are going to be in for a shock when they discover that though they were good in their own eyes, they were not holy in God's eyes. Heaven is pictured here as a walled-fortress with gates, above which are written the words, "Israel Only!" And posted at those gates are angel sentries who will grant entrance only to those individuals who on earth were a part of God's holy people, Israel.

So can you see yourself in this picture or having heard these things are you too afraid to even look at it? How could we, sinners that we are, expect to end up in photograph of heaven? It would seem that few of us have any ties with Israel and none of us can claim that we have lived a holy life. Rather than picturing ourselves in heaven, it seems much easier to picture ourselves among the people John describes in the verse immediately before our text where he says: "But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars--their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death" (Revelation 21:8). If you have ever told a lie; if God has ever taken a back seat in your life to your work, or your money or the things it can buy; if you have ever relied on a horoscope; if in the private thoughts of your mind you have ever starred in your own sexual fantasy, if you have ever hated someone, if you have ever doubted even one of God's promises, if like a coward, you have ever failed to stand up for God's Word and will because others might ridicule you for doing so, than like me, you deserve to die the second death, the one that comes after the body dies, the death that separates a person from God forever and delivers that person to the unending torments of hell. That is what we all deserve.

And that is the punishment we would all suffer, if not for our heavenly Bridegroom, Jesus of whom Paul says in Ephesians 5, "...Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless" (Vv.25-27). Our lives were a collage of sin, but then God's grace put Jesus in the picture. He became our double, standing in for us, giving us cleansing credit for his perfect life, removing the stain of our sin by taking all the blame for it upon himself and, then, suffering its curse on our behalf in hell's burning lake of sulfur.

Jesus has made us his holy bride by pledging himself to be our Savior from sin. He makes this pledge in the gospel that he gave to his apostles to proclaim and record. This is why in verse 14 of our text, John pictures those men, and more specifically their message, as the foundation of heaven's walls. Jesus has used their message, first proclaimed to us at our baptism to make us all a part of Israel, that is the people or church of God. You see, Israel here is not a reference to an earthly nation of people connected by a physical bloodline. This is a group of people connected to God and to each other through the faith God has given them in Christ. With this very thought in mind, Paul says to all of us Gentile believers in Ephesians 2:19-20, "Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone." We were not born holy, but Christ declares us holy on account of his saving work. We were not born into Israel by reason of our physical birth, but all of us are now the true Israel of God through our rebirth in baptism. All who believe in Jesus as their Savior from sin are Israel. So thanks to Jesus alone, to his saving work and his saving Word, heaven's doors are wide open to us pardoned sinners. For this reason you can picture yourself in heaven, standing there in God's Holy City and you can picture yourself dwelling in God's glorious company forever.

While I have you thinking about such things, I want you to do one more thing. Imagine visiting a land that had not one single church building in it. We might consider such place God-forsaken. As strange as it sounds, for a brief second John might have had this thought about heaven. He says, "I did not see a temple in the city..." (v.22). That would have seemed very odd to John. The temple had been that special place in which God made his presence known to his Old Testament people. It was there that God's forgiveness was pronounced and God's peace experienced. It's not all that different for us Christians. The church building remains an important part of our worship. It is here at the baptismal font that our children come into the family of God. It's here that God's servants proclaim our sins forgiven. Here our faith is nourished and strengthened by God's Word. Here our burdens are lightened and our hopes are renewed by God's promises. Here we commune with our Savior, receiving on our lips the very body and blood he gave and shed to free us from Satan's clutches and hell's punishment. When we are away from this place it means that we are out in the world where Satan rules, where temptation is powerful, where sin's guilt weighs us down and where doubt plagues our faith. And so we long to come back to this place, week after week, a part of us wishing we could stay here, like those disciples who wished to remain in the presence of their transfigured Lord forever and ever. But that is not possible for us, not here and not yet. But it soon will be in heaven. There is no temple or church there, but then, again, there is no need for such a structure for as John tells us, "...the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 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" (vv.22-23).

In heaven we will live in constant communion with our God. The peace and presence of God that Old Testament Israel experienced at Jerusalem's Temple, the peace and presence of God that we experience in this house of worship will fill every square inch of heaven because God's glory will fill every square inch of heaven. This is the glory that brightened the skies around Bethlehem on the night of our Savior's birth. The shepherds basked in that glory for only a few moments and then it was gone. But in heaven that glory will never fade. Instead that glory which shines and sparkles like an indescribable gem will dispel sin's night once and for all and we will live in the eternal light of God's Son, spending a never-ending day in the comfort and security of God's glorious company where sin and the sorrow it causes will never, ever touch our lives again.

Picture yourself in heaven, my friends and keep that picture in your minds for too often we can become discouraged by losing sight of what awaits us. Soldiers fighting in a war like to keep the pictures of their loved ones with them at all times to remind them of what their fighting for. Today we've received a picture of us an our loved ones standing together in heaven. May this picture serve as a powerful and lasting reminder of the war against sin and Satan that has already been fought and won on our behalf by Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.