Well, if you have your Bibles turned to Revelation chapter 21 And I think that you know if we could just simplify that We're gonna see quite a few pictures here. If we could simplify it all under one theme. I think the theme could be stated in this way, in a question. Where is all of this headed? All the chapters of your Bible, All the things that you've heard of this weekend from Scott's introductory talk about the glory of God, you know, Paul Washer on the on the fall of the family and the faithfulness of God and Noah.

All the talks that you've had, where is this all headed? In a sense, you could say that you've been looking at the different legs of the journey of redemption, of God rescuing his family. And when we take a long journey, you know where there are a lot of stops and a lot of legs in the journey. That journey is affected each stage. How you feel about that journey is altered by how you feel about the destination.

My wife and I on the way over here, right before we were headed this way, the day before her aunt passed away, and so we had a funeral that we had to go to and I had to preach and so that kind of altered our schedule some. So on our way from the Memphis area over to here driving, we stopped in Alabama to be a part of a family funeral. So how you went mile after mile from Memphis to Alabama, it was affected by the realization that you were about to see people who were pretty broken hearted, and I was going to have to say some things. But if you, if your journey was just to the camp this weekend, you know, then, then everyone's excited. You get to see friends.

It affects how you do everything. In the town of Cambridge, the city of Cambridge, England, there's a beautiful bridge called the Bridge of Sighs. I think it's actually a copy of a bridge in Venice. And the Bridge of Sighs is called the Bridge of Sighs for a couple of reasons in Cambridge One is that in ancient Cambridge? There was a little bridge there that people crossed if they were Being arrested and they were going to be life in prison and so you would walk across that bridge leaving the town Headed to the prison and a bridge of size later The University st.

John's College Which owns the bridge? Later they they developed a habit of giving the students their final grades after they crossed over the bridge. So you'd have to walk over the bridge to get your grades. And if you're expecting a terrible grade, then every step of the bridge is one way. And if you're expecting a wonderful grade, then every step of the bridge feels very different.

So what we're going to be looking at for our final time together is we're going to be looking at the destination, not only for the benefit of understanding the destination, and there's a great benefit in that for us but we're also wanting to have a clearer view of the value of every leg in the journey that you've been looking at and the unfolding of God's eternal plan of rescue Because each leg of the journey will be affected by how you view the destination. And so the clearer picture we can get in our minds of the glories that lie ahead for the bride of Christ, for the family of God, the more you ought to be able to appreciate each step in the journey. Well, let me read with you in Revelation 21. We'll just read verse one through 10 or verse 11, halfway through that, but we're going to cover 21 and 22 in a pretty quick way. John wrote, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth passed away and there was no longer any sea.

And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the tabernacle of God is among men and he will dwell among them and they shall be his people and God himself will be among them and he will wipe every tear from their eyes and there will no longer be any mourning or crying or pain. The first things have passed away. And he who sits on the throne said, behold, I am making all things new. And he said, right, for these words are faithful and true.

Then he said to me, it is done. I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things and I will be his God and he will be my son. But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

Then, one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues, came and spoke with me saying, Come here, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb. And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. Let's pray. Our Father, we ask that in the midst of all these wonderful sites, that you would open our eyes to behold things in your word, And that you would give us grace and a yearning to make room for every Everything that you have for us and that we might be a people who reflect a God unlike any other God Especially as we see your glory viewed in the completion of all these things until we see him face to face. God lay hold of us with these things.

We ask it in Christ's name and we ask it for his name. Amen. Well, for the Christian, when we look at the last stages or the end of a number of processes, we really want to be very clear. And I find this hard to even say because it doesn't come natural to me. We look back at all that God has done, whether it's the creation of all things or whether it's the incarnation of Christ at Bethlehem, the crucifixion of the Son of God at Calvary, the resurrection, the ascension, the enthronement.

But whatever you look at in the past, there is a sense in which we can say that the best in the kingdom of God and in the family of God is what lies ahead. And we say that because it's the completion that lies ahead. And how emptied all those legs of the journey, all those deeds of God and the unfolding of redemption, how empty they would be of meaning, how empty they would be of splendor if they failed to ultimately come to the completion and at the end of Revelation we have three great labors completed and there's nothing more for God to do in these in chapter 20 God deals with sin and it's every poisonous influence fully, finally, and justly dealt with. That's chapter 20. Chapter 21, God deals with this creation, Which has been affected by our sin and it will be remade into a perfect creation that will outshine the Garden of Eden It will be a refashioned home for the people of God and then chapter 21 and 22 we see God completing his work of his bride or his people or his family, gathering them from the ages and every corner of the earth.

She is perfected with the perfection of her Lord And she will be and enjoy with Christ forever far more than Adam ever was or enjoyed But before we look at two of those three things we don't have time for chapter 20, but before we look at the new home and the completed family, I want to say just two quick things. These symbols are meant to teach biblical theology with sights and sounds. And so in a sense, we don't approach them the same way we approach the epistles we're not logically pulling them apart and seeing the stream of thought in a sense we're walking into the greatest theater ever and there are sounds you know the kind that rumble through your body and there are sights that astonish you that you can never forget and they get behind all of our walls and our armor, and we leave the room not able to shake what we saw. But it is biblical theology, and so if you come to Revelation, and you come up with ideas of what is yet to come that don't match what we find in the epistles or in the Old Testament prophecies, then you have misunderstood the symbols.

And the Second thing is this, while the symbols are quite astonishing and they really do baffle us, the realities that the symbols are preparing you for or pointing you toward are far greater than the symbols. These are not hyperbolic. These are not exaggerated pictures to kind of get the point across. You know what I mean where we use exaggeration so that people really pay attention to what we say. God is not exaggerating the goodness of the coming home of the believer and God is not exaggerating the glory of the completed church, his family, in order to get your attention.

No one could accurately describe the hell of chapter 20, the new universe of chapter 21, or the beauty of a completed Christian in 21 and 22. So what we have is theology for children given in a picture book. Well, let's take a look at the new home and the completed family first the new home It is a new creation that Christ builds for his people and the scenes that we see here as I mentioned are given to help us to lay hold of what we could not lay hold of if it were just Accurately described so Paul says in 1st Corinthians chapter 2 things which I has not seen and the ear has not heard and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love him." Paul could not accurately describe what lies ahead, but John can give us the pictures that he saw. Well, let's run through them very quickly. The new home for the believer.

First it is new, but it is not new in a sense of entirely different, but new in the sense of remade, renewed, refashioned creation. And I think that there's an important theological point here and an important practical point. But one good parallel for understanding that is the glorified body of the believer, the glorified body of Jesus Christ. When Christ died and was raised again, it was the same physical body that he died with, but it was glorified. And so there were abilities given to that glorified body, which the physical body did not have.

And yet it was still the same physical body just elevated and refashioned in a sense, glorified. It still had the scars. When the Christian dies and at the end of time Christ calls us from the grave, it will be this body that we lived in on earth brought before him. And when he is clothed in his everlasting glory at the end of time, Every believer will be clothed with glory. The body will be glorified.

Same basic body, made wonderfully new. When we think of the new creation, think of this creation unmade, remade. Two practical points with that is, first of all, we are not going to be spending the rest of eternity in a dematerialized Spiritual fog where we float around in kind of an ooze of glory, maybe with a harp in your hand. I think the new creation that C.S. Lewis pictures in one of his books in his Chronicles of Narnia, and I cannot recommend everything C.S.

Lewis says in the Chronicles of Narnia, but I do like this, where he describes the new creation. And in the new creation, there's mountains and streams, there's sunshine and colors and smells and sounds, but everything is infinitely better. The Mountains are higher, the streams are sweeter, the light is brighter, the colors are more brilliant. In the new creation, there will be a physical universe for the believer to live in, somewhat like this universe, but infinitely better. And not like the Garden of Eden simply, but even better than that.

Second, when we say a new creation and we mean a remade version of this, a glorified, completed, corrected version of this creation, it does help us to realize that God's victory is ultimate and absolute, and there is no part of the victory that is stained with sin Keeping in its hand any trophy. So here's what I mean when this body of John Snyder dies And then one day Christ calls it from the grave the very same body that was used by me for sin and then rescued Will be taken from like a trophy snatched from sins grasp and it will be forever this body that was once the vehicle sin will be forever the vehicle of knowing and loving and serving and enjoying Christ and this body will not be a trophy of sin at the end of time. Well, you saved John's soul, but his body is the trophy of sin. This creation, Paul describes the effects of our sin on creation. He says this in Romans 8.

The anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him, God, who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. It's quite a startling picture. All planet Earth, all our solar system, all our galaxy, the Milky Way, all our universe, groans under the stain and the guilt and the weight of our rebellion. And Paul's Greek word there is that that creation is standing on its tiptoes yearning to see the moment when Christ clothes himself in glory and returns and he brings his bride together and when we are made complete then creation will be remade This earth which has witnessed and participated in, in a sense, the rebellion of Adam's fallen race, on that day will be remade.

And so this creation glorified and perfected will be consecrated to the uninterrupted use of the Lord Jesus Christ and his people for an everlasting holy pleasure And each moment in its new existence will be a loud trumpet blast of the faithfulness and the goodness and the wisdom and the power of God. But it will also be a great shout of victory over every lie of sin and over every example of sin on this planet as even the earth does not remain a trophy in the hand of the evil one, a new heaven and earth. Now, he goes on to describe the glories of this new home by what is not there. And that's not normally how we do it, is it? If you're looking for a home, and so let's say, dad, you come home and your wife's been looking and she said, I've been looking online and I found the perfect place.

You don't usually ask this, tell me what's not there. But John does, God does. He gives us a list of things that are not there. First of all, he says, there will be no sea, no ocean. Why?

We like the ocean. Because in the book of Revelation, the sea with all of its turbulence and its peril and danger is a picture or a symbol for the chaos that flows from a life of rebellion against God. In Revelation 13 verse one, John records this, I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having 10 horns and seven heads, and on the horns were the 10 diadems, and on his heads were blasphemous names. This symbolic portrayal of world powers aligned against Christ, and it flows from this sea, this sinful source of rebellion. The other time we see the sea in the book of Revelation is a very different picture.

In chapter four, when John sees the glorious representation of God the Father on the throne, and he describes the throne, and then he describes what the throne is sitting on, and he says this in verse six. And before the throne, there was something like a sea of glass like crystal The point there John is making is all the turbulence and the chaos of sins rebellion under the throne of God is silenced and there's only this tranquility in the new creation in the new home this is a home where the source of all rebellion against God and every resulting conflict between us or between us and God Will be impossible. There is no possibility of conflict in the new home second In verse 4 he says the first things will not be there. They will be no more. And then he's explained what the first things are leading up to that.

Tears, death, sorrow, pain. These all entered our human experience when? When Adam opened the door to the lie that said, you could be like a God. And Adam opens the door and like all of us since Adam have learned to do, we opened the door a crack and We ask our favorite sin to come through and our favorite sin comes through and throws the doors open wide and every possible misery and emptiness follows. These came in when Adam opened the door and tried to close it as we have throughout the centuries, we've not been able to, but when the new home is complete, these will not be there.

And it's not just some inevitable outcome of Christ's victory. So Because Christ is victorious, obviously you can't have sorrow and tears and pain. You could make that argument, but that's not what God gives for us. He tells John in this picture that the king himself will dwell with the people And the king will personally guarantee the absolute comfort and the healing of every broken heart, not as just the outcome of victory, but of God's care. In the new home, there is no possibility of sorrow when the king is with us.

Third there are there is a there is a happiness of this new home Described as who will not be there when Adam and Eve sinned obviously they are they are exiled from the garden in this home part of its happiness is who will not be in the home. And verse eight gives us a list. But for the cowardly, the unbelieving, the abominable, the murderer, the immoral person, the sorcerer, the idolater, and every liar, they will be burned in the lake of fire. They will not be in this home. Now some of this list, of course, we expect, and there's no shock Some of the list bothers us think of it every liar That is every person whose life is Distinguished by spiritual deceit that is you lie to yourself and you lie to others.

Church is a great place to do it. Camp, conferences, great place to do it. It doesn't take much to look a certain way for a few hours over a few days. But God knows whether you are misrepresenting what's real. If you're a spiritual liar, cowards, spiritual cowards, people that would say, I wanted to follow Jesus Christ, but, and so they stopped short.

Unbelievers. I tried. I wanted to be a believer, but I just couldn't seem to trust him. And God knows that it's a lie because unbelief is not some sickness we're afflicted with. It's a willful choice.

We have a God who has never lied to us, and we have sin that lies to us every day, and we continually believe sin. They will not be there. Let me give you two strange things, Two strange things. Verse 22 and verse 23 of chapter 21 mention two other things that won't be there. And it's not normally the way we would think of happiness.

There will be no temple there and there will be no sun there. S-U-N. There is going to be a place of perfect happiness, but in the new home that God builds for his people, there won't be any church buildings, no chapels, no prayer rooms. That's not what we expect Until we realize later when we describe the bride in chapter 22, it is because God himself is with his people in such an unhindered and unlimited manner that the building of a church or a prayer chapel would be totally irrelevant. All that we know of gathering together to seek the face of God now, which is precious to us now, in a sense is irrelevant there because he will be the uninterrupted environment of his people.

No Sun, stars or moon. Why? Because Christ himself will be the one that illuminates life. Now that's what will not be there. What will be there?

He will be there and that's really all he tells us. I know we would like to know more about it You know we go to funerals and and we hear these kind of grandiose explanations or very base explanations. I remember being at a funeral where I was co-preaching. It was a man that I had never met, but I was the pastor of a little country church. He lived next to the church.

So another preacher and I were preaching it. And the other preacher got up and said something like, you know, brother so and so, we know he's with God, he's fishing with Jesus in heaven, and we know he is because he never came to church because he always went fishing. And I just sat there, kind of, it was my first funeral and I was so nervous, you know, I thought I'm going to say something really wrong. And when that guy said that I thought well I won't be able to say anything worse than that because he just lied. The cause of every aspect of the infinite happiness of God's people in this new home is that God lives there.

And without him there, nothing else matters. Verse 22 of chapter 21, this is the heart of the happiness, Emmanuel, God with us. We know that God through the scripture, the God that made creation, but in creation he made a garden, this in a sense of living temple and he walked with Adam in the cool of the day. We know the God that when man sinned provided a way for mankind to draw near to him in the tabernacle or the temple. We know the God that sent his son who lived among us, but that even that was limited 33 years, one place at a time.

When we killed the son, God sent the spirit, the father with the son, send the spirit to indwell his people. And that's far greater. So much so that every believer is described as a living stone being built together with every other believer. But none of that compares to the intimacy that the believer will have with God. Your sweetest moments of the nearness of God, as you remember back through the decades of walking with him.

Your sweetest moment of intimacy with him will pale in comparison like a candle compared to the sun, like a flashlight that's no longer needed when the sun rises, how will it compare to life with God among his people? Samuel Rutherford, I mention him every time I come, I think. I actually do own more books than Rutherford, but this is what Rutherford said when he was in prison. Imprisoned for preaching, and he said that he enjoyed such extraordinary degrees of the nearness of God. He'd never had them in that way before, that he had to ask God to restrain that presence because he could not bear anymore.

I have never had that. Maybe you have. But whatever Rutherford had, it pales in comparison with the city, a home where God himself dwells there. Now let me just stop and say, I think it is to our everlasting shame as evangelicals that we have allowed the other nice things, the kind things that God promises us will be there, loved ones who have gone before us, on and on, to become the focus of our thoughts of heaven. I remember growing up in church, especially during Revival services.

So we always had a family show up that could, everybody in the family could sing. Did you ever have those? I don't know where those families are. Like my family, none of us could sing. So it would be like the Johnsons and they had a bus and they all got out with instruments And every one of them was really good.

And they would sing, but eventually they'd get around to songs about heaven. And it would always be so far beneath. Chapter 21 and 22. And it wasn't until I went to a church in the UK that had this weird little hymnal, and maybe you've heard of this hymn. It was based on the writings of Rutherford from prison by a woman named Anne Cousin, who took his writings and put it into a poetry form.

And it's called The Sands of Time Are Sinking, or another name it's known by is Emmanuel's Land. And there are a number of verses about heaven This was the first time I ever heard anybody sing about heaven in a way. I thought match the scripture Let me just read you two verses verse 3 Oh Christ He is the fountain the deep sweet well of love the streams on earth. I've tasted, more deep I'll drink above. There to an ocean fullness, his mercy doth expand and glory, glory dwelleth in Emmanuel's land." But listen to this, the bride eyes not her garment on that day, but her dear bridegroom's face.

I will not gaze at glory, but on my King of grace, not at the crown he giveth, but on his pierced hand. Why? The Lamb is all the glory of Emmanuel's land." Well, that's the place. Now let's look at the bride. In chapter 21, verse 9 and 10, we have this paradoxical kind of situation.

An angel comes to John and says, let me show you the bride. The next verse says, I saw a city. Now which one is it? It's both. It is the bride.

It is the gathering of Christ's people. It's God's family but it is but the the joys and the Perfections that she has in eternity are being described through the symbol of a city of a Collective group of people not just a single woman who's a bride. We're going to look at that, but let me say before we look at that, in chapter 17, and we don't have time to look there, in chapter 17, we find this exact opening. One of the angels who had one of the seven bowls of judgment came to John and said behold I will show you a woman Chapter 17 Then you get to chapter 21 and one of the angels that had one of the seven bowls full of judgment came and said to John, behold, I will show you a bride. And the reason I mentioned this, and I think the reason that there's this clear parallelism here is in chapter 17, he shows him this enticingly Sensuous woman who's covered in expensive jewels and beautiful clothes She has a golden cup in her hand that she offers to the nations to drink from anybody that wants it And she's a prostitute or a harlot Later, she is compared to a city, Babylon.

She is immoral. She brings death in her cup. Whatever she tells you is in the cup, it's only destruction. She is the counterfeit of the bride of Christ. The harlots, the Babylonian prostitute is not a picture of the governmental powers that try to crush Christ's people under its feet.

It is the picture of man-made religion that seduces everyone that Christ doesn't conquer. One of the most beautiful pictures here in this is that the bride of Christ is so categorically different than what the best of man-made religion provides. The prostitute that brings death, She's everywhere, guys. She's in every denomination. She loves every creed.

She can quote the Westminster. She can quote the 1689. She can be reformed or Armenian, charismatic, Greek Orthodox, mega church, home church. It's religion where we fashion a God and a gospel that fits what we want and it serves us. But in the end, his death.

How different Now when John is looking at the picture of the new home and the angel comes to get him and says, come with me, and he takes him up. Come with me, I'm going to show you another woman and how different she looks. Now I want to say also that John on the Isle of Patmos has been a pastor for a long time before this vision and John knows what the church, what the bride looks like in her earthly condition with all of her imperfections and all of her heartbreaking sins. And John was the one that Christ gave the seven letters to, six of which are full of very pointed rebukes to the churches John knows the ugliness of the church or the bride in her present condition This is the first time that John the disciple will see the church in her perfected beauty in these symbols Well, we find a description of the church's beauty and happiness first It says that she is clothed with this the glory of the Lord and that really that's the highest compliment Think about a wedding day on earth. Everything goes into the wedding day.

And whether you spend truckloads of money or you do it very simply, they all have the same thing in common. They have a bride who does everything she can to look her most beautiful on that one day. Everything's perfect. She comes and she's presented. Here we see the bride being brought to us by God, completed.

This bride is made beautiful with the perfection of Christ, with the splendor of God, the glory of God, the moral brilliance and purity of God. It's not her beauty that we're viewing, it's God's beauty reflected in her. She is made radiant with Christ's radiance, she is illuminated with Christ's splendor. And we see this in a number of ways. One of the ways is that she's described as being like a crystal clear jasper.

Now, the problem is that John is stretching our minds here. The stone jasper, the semi-precious stone doesn't come in a form that's clear. It's always colored. We would think of like a diamond, a crystal clear gem. John uses that description earlier when he describes God the Father's glory on the throne saying it was like the brilliance of a crystal-clear jasper.

In other words, the beauty you're about to see in this completed family is not hers, it's the beauty John saw on the throne shared with her. He describes her as a crystal clear Jasper and in chapter 21 verse 18 he says she is like a city that's fashioned and everything in the city is fashioned of gold, but not like the gold that we know, but a gold that is translucent, that light can pass through. No matter how you look, Christian, when you look in the mirror now, one day you will be made so perfect with the perfection of Christ that Your moral character will be more like a city made of diamond or of translucent gold. I think the picture, it's just so beyond us, but it's beautiful. Imagine you not reflecting the imperfections of this life.

You not reflecting the power of sin's temptation. You instead being like a city or a person made completely of diamond or this translucent gold. Imagine a city In which you took the sun, the S-U-N of our universe, and you brought the sun right down into the heart of a city. But every building and tree and blade of grass in this city is made of this translucent gold, this transparent gold, And it absorbs all the light of the sun and then reflects it and refracts it throughout. If you could imagine a person that looked like that, You could imagine the beauty of the perfected bride, the completed family.

It's the brilliance of Christ. She's not only pure, it says, but she's holy. Now, separated, that is God has made her beautiful, made beautiful by Christ, but made beautiful for Christ. Another thing he says about the bride is she is like a city that is bigger than any earthly city. The measurements in English miles is this, 1500 miles long, 1500 miles wide square.

Now that's 2, 250, 000 square miles. I did double check that with somebody in my church because I always get math wrong. Then can you imagine that? Can you imagine a city, 2, 250, 000 square miles, if you added together, if you sewed together every major city of planet earth from the beginning until now, you would not come close to it. But then you must go 1500 miles high and then you're three point something billion cubic miles.

The point is this, There is room in the bride, in the family of God, for everyone who wants, who repents, who turns, who hopes in Christ. I know that we understand something of the doctrine of election that God has chosen a people. I know when we look out at the world right now, even when you look at the religious culture around you, you may feel that the true believer is a very small part of the culture. But why would we look at that and forget this picture and come up with the idea? If I were sketching it, I would say, John turned and saw a small village.

Even the nations, John said, will come to this city and the kings will bring their wealth to it. Next description. The bride is like a city that is walled with an unbreachable wall. She's safe. It's 216 feet tall.

Now it has 12 gates, three on each side. Each gate has an angel at the gate and each gate actually is never closed. In the ancient world, When nighttime came, the gates were closed. So no more business, no more visitors coming in and out. If you didn't make it to the gate in time, you didn't make it.

I was reading the biography of Hudson Taylor and he did not make it to a certain city where a man was dying and he was a doctor. So he was there to help the man and he got there too late and they closed the doors and they would not open them for him. Cities in the ancient world closed at night and wouldn't reopen, but that's why John says all of these 12 gates with these guardian angels, they never close because it's never night. Now the picture is this, whatever happiness God has given his bride by drawing her to himself, it is a happiness that is secure and stable. In other words, you never have the mixture that we have on earth of thinking, this is a wonderful moment, but one day it must end.

Or this is a wonderful moment, but what if something goes wrong? The happinesses that the bride enjoys with her Lord will never be tainted by the danger or the limitations that would end their happiness. The what if of tomorrow morning will never haunt The bride there. She's beautiful, but she's not frail. No enemy enters.

Then he describes another thing that is in her life, and that is there's a throne in chapter 22 verse one, and there's a river flowing from the throne and there are streets attaching every home in the city to the throne. And with the street, every street, the river goes by the street and there's a tree of life by every home and the stream. So the picture is obviously collective. It's not just there's one stream. The picture kind of goes beyond what we can imagine.

There's a throne and from this throne flows this great stream, but somehow this stream runs by every individual's house and their house is directly connected to the throne. And right in front of every individual's house is the tree of life. What's the picture? Every happiness that the completed family of God will have is rooted in the rule, in the throne of God. But there is an intimacy with the king.

Your home is on the road directly that leads to the throne. So there's access to this God and the river of life that flows from the rule of God goes directly to your house as if you're the only one. And the tree of life is there to satisfy and to heal our brokenness. These are the pictures that God gives us of the destination, the home, the family. Now let's apply it.

How do you make room for these words? I think there's some really simple applications. First of all, in all that we're seeing, what we're really seeing is Ephesians chapter two, verses four, five, six, and seven, where Paul says this, but God being rich in mercy, all right, made us alive with Christ By grace you've been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus Listen so that in the ages to come, he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. If you come to Revelation 21 and 22 and you are astonished at the magnitude and the beauty of the pictures, just go back to Ephesians chapter two, and there's the explanation. These are the extraordinary riches of His grace Being displayed as he is being kind to his family forever and ever.

Second, everything we have in the book of Revelation is a gift. Chapter one, where we read that the father, this is the revelation of Jesus Christ, the unveiling of Christ, that the father gave to whom? To the son to give to his church who were servants. Most gifts we receive are not essential for life, right? I have never had a birthday present or a Christmas present that I needed to stay alive.

Whether it's a it's what we call in Mississippi a happy, you know what a happy is? It's when people give you a gift that doesn't cost anything, it's just a nice little thought. I hate happy's. When people say, I have a gift for you and it's a happy, I'm like, I don't want any more of these in my house." Whether it's an inexpensive little nice thought or whether it's a really sacrificial gift that you value the rest of your life, it's not essential. It's not life and death.

But when the Father gives to the Son the privilege of unveiling the future and the glory of God in the completion of His church, in the making of a home, and the Son turns and gives it to the church from love for his people. You do understand that this is essential. There are aspects of the Christian life that no church will live or apply. There are parts of Christian living that you'll never be able to do if you do not live to some measure in the grip of those realities. By faith, like Abraham, we risk everything believing what God says is real, even though at the moment we don't see it because he doesn't lie.

John Newton, the hymnist and pastor, gave this illustration of the coming inheritance of the Christians. So certainly it applies to these chapters. Newton said, imagine a man who's about to, who's just been informed that he's about to inherit an enormous fortune. Now this is Newton's day, 1800s. So he gets in his cabbie, you know, his horse-drawn carriage, And he gets the guy to drive him into the heart of the city where his lawyer will sign papers over to him and he'll take it to the bank and he will be rich forever.

Now this poor man gets in his little buggy there and he's going along and the wheel breaks and the cabbie is broken just a few, we'll say a few blocks from the lawyer's office. And Newton asked this, If the man were about to inherit countless millions, would he kick the cabbie and complain and throw himself down on the ground and moan and die of self-pity? He said, no. He would say to the cabbie, don't worry, nothing could ruin this day. And he would just run the last two blocks.

Christian. If we could have some site of the home and the family of what's yet to be, Surely it would help us to get through the small hassles that we have day to day and live happy. And to say in a sense to this world for the 70 or 80 years that God gives us, it doesn't matter. Nothing you could bring today would make me unhappy. I have just a few more blocks to go.

It is an essential gift. It lays hold of us. It makes us prisoners of hope when everything around us seems so unlike this. By the way, if you want to know if you're included in this picture, we know who's not included, chapter 21, verse eight. We mentioned them, but in chapter 21, verse six and chapter 21, verse seven, there are two descriptions of the bride before the completion.

Let's say it this way. This is her maiden name. You know when you see people And they've gotten married since the last time you saw them and maybe you read their name and it's their new married name and you think, I don't know that person. And they say, oh no, you know, her maiden name was blah, blah. When you knew her, she was, you, oh, that was, yeah.

So she's been married. What's the maiden name? Maybe you don't recognize this bride, this family. Maybe you don't know if you're really in it. So the maiden name would be really helpful.

Verse six, thirsty. Verse seven, overcomers. Has God ever brought you to the place where you are so desperate for him to be right with him, to have all that he gives, and to give yourself to him that the only earthly explanation, the only earthly description that fits it is thirst. I'm dying of thirst. I don't mean that you're dry and miserable and you complain about how dry life is, I mean you're so thirsty you get up and run to the fountain.

Have you ever been that thirsty person, overcomer? Has God worked in the heart in such a way that you've been made new and alive and by the work of God within you and by laying your hands on the work of God for you in the new covenant, you are daily, day by day, hour by hour in a life and death struggle with the old sins that once befriended you. And you're laying them at the feet of Christ, not perfectly, but really. Or are you a person who has a lifelong ceasefire with your favorite sins and you let them lodge in your heart safely? If you want to know if you're in this bride, in this home, ask yourself, am I the thirsty?

Am I the overcomer? Let me give one last application. Is this a picture of the ideal church or the future church or today's church? Well, innocent, you could say, yes. Obviously the things that are represented here cannot be enjoyed fully until this actually occurs.

So this is the future happiness, the future home and the future happiness of the perfected family of God. But do you not recognize things that God is giving you right now in these pictures? Paul says it this way, the spirit of Christ has been given to you as an earnest, as a down payment, as a little foretaste. You have the beginnings of this, though you do not have the full enjoyment of it. Do you not find that you have been Transformed by the love of God and by his grace you are now beginning little by little to Resemble Jesus of Nazareth or as Paul says in 2nd Corinthians we go from glory to glory Looking unto Jesus Focusing on Christ.

I am slowly being transformed into the image of Christ. It's already started. You don't look like a golden city made of diamond people, but you do begin to look more like Christ. And what about the real nearness of God? Do you not find that God's God's Undisturbed ungrieved presence with you is your treasure now and not just in heaven Do you not rejoice in the safety that he has given you you are more safe than any gated city wall of 217 feet tall in the covenant of grace.

How far can you go on the earnest payment, on the down payment. How much of these future privileges can you have right here? Well, no one has ever reached the end of them. Every symbol in these chapters will one day be replaced with a substance that makes the symbols look drab and dull. But that will happen when you see him face to face.

Why not beg God that for the glory and honor of his son, He would help you to have as much of that substance here and now Until you that day until we see him face to face Let's pray Father we thank you That you have granted us just a glimpse of the destination of the new home and the completed family. So we ask that the pictures would haunt us graciously, befriend us, follow us, move us for the glory of Christ, as well as for the happiness of our souls, even when on a journey, even when embattled. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Amen.

Thank you.