Revelation 21:1-22:5 | Heaven On Earth: The New Heaven and New Earth, Part One Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (143)

We Will Live with God

What is it about heaven that we so desire?  Is it the benefits of the place or seeing God’s face?  Another way to ask it is would heaven be heaven without God?  Or, if God weren’t in heaven would you still want to be there?  Do you desire God or his gifts?

Finding God is heaven.  Not finding him is hell.  We want God more than anything else in the world.  If our ultimate desire is for God, then it makes sense that the most important thing about heaven is that it’ll be where we live with God.

This is exactly what we find in the Bible’s fullest description of heaven in Revelation 21-22.  This week and next we’ll focus on what this text tells us about our ultimate home.  This week we’ll see that our ultimate home is with God.  Next week we’ll see that our ultimate home is with God and with each other on a new earth.

We’ll talk next week about some of the specifics about life in the new universe.  Today we’re focusing on the central and most important reality of the new universe: we will live with God.

A Garden-Like Temple City

The main point of Revelation 21-22 is that God will dwell with his people in the new heaven and new earth.  Or, to say it another way, our ultimate hope and final destiny is living with God.

We see this in several ways in these verses.  Notice that in verse 1 John sees a “new heaven and new earth” and then in verse 2 he sees a holy city, the new Jerusalem.

Why does he start by saying he sees a new heaven and earth but then only focus on a garden-like temple city in the rest of the vision?  Why doesn’t he see the full panorama of a new earth with mountains and rivers and valleys and forests?

You could say that he sees the new world and then sees a city-temple in the new world, but it seems like he’s equating the new world with the new city-temple.  Verse 27 says that “nothing unclean will ever enter” this urban temple.  It’s unlikely that John means that nothing unclean will enter the new city but may enter the new world.

Another reason to think that John is equating the new temple with the new world is that verse 3 says that God’s “dwelling place,” or tabernacle, is now with men.  God “tabernacles” with his people in a new creation that is the new Jerusalem.[1]  The new earth is the new Jerusalem, where God lives with his people.  Verse 2 interprets verse 1 and verse 3 interprets verses 1-2.

The new earth is more than just a new earth, it’s a new temple, a new sanctuary where God lives with man, just like the Garden of Eden, the first sanctuary.  And the new Jerusalem is more than just a new city, it’s a new temple.

This is how John describes the new Jerusalem in verses 10-21.  The precious stones in verses 18-21 reflect Solomon’s temple which was also overlaid with gold and had precious stones on the foundation (1 Kgs. 5:17, 6:20-22).

Notice that John describes the new Jerusalem as a perfect cube (21:16).  The only other cube specifically mentioned in the Bible is the holy of holies, or the inner most part of the temple (1 Kgs. 6:20).  Both the holy of holies and the new Jerusalem are golden cubes.  This means that the new Jerusalem is an expanded holy of holies.  John makes this clear in 21:22.  By associating the temple with God, John implies that the whole city is a sanctuary.

John sees the new Jerusalem as a temple-city.  And if we can equate the new Jerusalem with the new world, then the entire new cosmos is God’s sanctuary, his Garden-like temple city where he lives with his people.

You could summarize this chapter like this: The new world is a new city is a new temple where God lives with his people.  Given that this is where history is headed, is it any wonder that our deepest desire is to live with God?

The End Will Look Like the Beginning

The end will look like the beginning.  The Bible ends with a vision of a holy garden-like city that fills the new earth where God lives with his people.

The Bible begins with a similar picture.  Genesis opens by telling us how God created the earth, on which he places a human couple.  The earth is designed to be a divine residence where God intends to coexist with people.  God’s plan is disrupted when the first human couple disobey God and are removed from his presence.  The entire story of the Bible that follows is about how the earth can once again become a place shared by God and man.

God undoubtedly intended the opening and closing scene of the Bible to match closely in order to frame the entire story of his work in the world.

The Beatific Vision

We were literally made to live with God on the earth.  That’s how the story started, and that’s how it ends.  It’s easy to think that living on a new earth will be the best part, and it will be indescribably amazing (more on that next week).  But the best part is that we will, once again, live with God.

“Living with God” sounds a bit vague and abstract.  We sometimes live with roommates we rarely see.  But living with God will be deeply personal and intimate.  How do we know?  Because John says we’ll see his face (22:4).

The moment we see God’s face has been called the “beatific vision,” a term coming from three Latin words that together mean “a happy-making sight.”  This will be the happiest moment of our lives.

Do you know the feeling of seeing someone you love after you’ve been apart for a while?  The feeling of a longing fulfilled.  The feeling of reunion after separation.  The feeling of home after being away.  This is what it’ll feel like to see God’s face.

Perhaps it’s closer to seeing someone you’ve never seen before but in your heart you love.  For example, when your children are born, you see their faces for the first time and the feeling of sheer joy and amazement and honor and blessing and glory leaves you speechless.

Why We Can’t See His Face Now

We long for this moment.  We were made for this moment (Gen. 3:8).  Our sin has taken us from before his face.  We don’t even want to see his face.  We’d prefer to look at ourselves.  So this promise is shocking in light of our posture toward God, and in light of who he is.

If we understand God’s transcendence and holiness, then being told we can see his face is shocking.  In ancient Israel, only the high priest could go into the Holy of Holies, and only once a year.  When Moses asked God to show him his glory, God said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you…but,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live…while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.  Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen” (Ex. 33:18-23).

God let Moses see him, but not his face.  Paul says that God “lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see” (1 Tim. 6:16).  Seeing God’s face is unthinkable, so when we’re told we’ll see his face in Revelation 22:4, it should be shocking news.  For this to happen, something radical has to happen.

How Can We See the Face of God?

We’re not allowed to see his face now, so what gives us access then?  The death and resurrection of Jesus is what allows us to see God’s face, and both are alluded to in our passage.

In verse 6, Jesus says, “To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.”  This reminds us of Jesus and the woman at the well in John 4.  She’s had a messy life but Jesus says he can give her water that if she drinks it she’ll never be thirsty again.  She thinks he’s talking about physical water, but he’s talking about eternal life.  He says he can give her a foretaste of the water in the city of God for free.

How can it be free?  Because on the cross Jesus took our thirst.  On the cross, Jesus said, “I thirst” (Jn. 19:28).  This wasn’t just physical thirst because he also says he feels forsaken by God.  On the cross, Jesus experienced the cosmic thirst we deserve so that we could have the water of life without price.

Jesus lost everything he had, took our punishment, and received the cosmic hopelessness that we deserve so we could get a hope that we don’t deserve.  He got the cosmic thirst we deserve so we could have the river of life.  When you understand that he did that for you, then you’ll begin to see his face.

But Jesus didn’t just die, he was raised again.  21:5 says that he is “making all things new.”  That started with his resurrection, which was the firstfruits of the resurrection of all things.  Jesus is the beginning of the newness of life, giving hope to all who trust him.

Donald Grey Barnhouse was pastor at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia back in the mid-twentieth century.  His wife died when their daughter was around ten.  A truck almost hit her while they were walking one day.  He picked her up and tried to comfort her.  He said, “Did the truck hit you?”  “No,” she said.  “Just the shadow of the truck hit you.  In the same way, death didn’t hit your mother, only the shadow of death hit her.  Death hit Jesus and because death hit Jesus and we believe in him only the shadow of death can hit us.”

If you believe in the resurrection, you have hope that death won’t hit you but only take you to Jesus’ face.  If the death and resurrection happened, and if you believe it happened for you, you’ll one day pass through death and into life where you’ll see the face of God.

These promises create so much expectation and joy and longing in us.  Imagine what it’ll be like when they come true.

After Gandalf returns and is with Pippin at Minas Tirith, Pippin looks at him and is surprised at what he sees: “Yet in the wizard’s face he saw at first only lines of care and sorrow; though as he looked more intently he perceived that under all there was a great joy; a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to gush forth.”[2]

The eyes of Jesus Christ will light up our faces with joy for millions of years.  Our destiny is to live with him and enjoy his smiling approval in a garden-like temple city.

Do You Want to See God’s Face?

Augustine proposed this thought experiment.  He says imagine that God appeared to you and said, “I’ll make a deal with you if you wish.  I’ll give you anything and everything you ask: pleasure, power, honor, wealth, freedom, even peace of mind and a good conscience.  Nothing will be a sin; nothing will be forbidden; and nothing will be impossible for you.  You will never be bored and you will never die.  Only…you shall never see my face.”[3]

Would you take that deal?  Peter Kreeft asks, “Did you notice that unspeakable chill in your deepest heart at those last words?”  He says that the deepest part of us knows that what we want more than anything else is God, that our heart is restless until it rests in him.  Kreeft says, “You may not consciously realize it because this is the truth the human race keeps very, very busy hiding twenty-four hours a day by a million diversions…we fill our cities, minds, bellies, wallets, and wombs, (but) we remain unfulfilled in our hearts.”[4]

We desire a thousand things, but God is the one we really long for.  As Randy Alcorn says, “Our longing for Heaven is a longing for God…Being with God is the heart and soul of Heaven.  Every other heavenly pleasure will derive from and be secondary to his presence.  God’s greatest gift to us is, and always will be, himself.”[5]

What is it about heaven that we so desire?  Is it the benefits of the place or seeing God’s face?  If God weren’t in heaven would you still want to be there?  Do you desire God or his gifts?  Can you say with the psalmist, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you” (63:1)?

The offer of eternal life in the city of God with God is free: “Let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price” (Rev. 22:17).  God made you to live with him forever.  All you have to do is admit your thirst and look to Jesus to quench it.

[1]See G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, New Studies in Biblical Theology 17, ed. D. A. Carson (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 23-25.

[2]J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 50th Anniversary One-Volume Edition (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004), 759.

[3]Peter Kreeft, Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing, rev. ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 49.

[4]Ibid., 49-50.

[5]Randy Alcorn, Heaven (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2004), 165.