Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

Dr. James Boice: While Scripture is sprinkled with glimpses of our heavenly abode, John gives us a clear and detailed tour of that city in the 21st chapter of Revelation. And what we find there is nothing short of awesome.

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, Inc: Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet project with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. God, in His great mercy and love, has given us a look into the destiny that awaits us.

And in contrast, most of the great themes of the Bible that precede it have more to do with our earthly expectations than our heavenly reward. Listen now as Dr. Boice takes us on a wonderful tour of the awesome city that awaits us: the Eternal City, the New Jerusalem, the city of our God.

Dr. James Boice: The funeral service of the Book of Common Prayer is a very beautiful thing: beautiful in its simplicity and wise in the way it uses Scripture. The Old Testament readings have to do with many of the Psalms. There's the 23rd Psalm, as you can well imagine, and the 46th Psalm, which tells us that the Lord is our refuge and our strength.

The New Testament readings include 1 Corinthians 15, the great chapter on the resurrection, and Romans 8, with its promise that nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ. There's a reading from Revelation 7 that introduces us to the people of God in heaven. John 14, where Jesus admonishes "let not your hearts be troubled." And just before that final quotation from the words of Christ, there's a reading from Revelation 21.

Revelation 21 gives us a vision of the heavenly city, New Jerusalem, the abode of the saints, the symbol of all that is pure and holy and permanent and blessed. And it's therefore that to which those who compiled the funeral service from the various texts in Scripture wanted to direct the minds of those who were sorrowing. I say that's wise and I'm sure you understand why. Because as we read it, we find it speaking there of a new heaven and a new earth and a New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God as a bride prepared for her husband.

This chapter is particularly meaningful here in the book of Revelation as well because the earlier chapters, as you well know, have introduced us to the great judgments of God. There's a judgment of the seven seals, one after the other of which are broken, and judgments pour out upon the earth. There's a judgment of the seven trumpets, which are blown, and as they're blown, judgments fall upon the earth.

Then there's the seven bowls that are poured out, and judgments pass upon the people of the earth as each of the bowls are poured out. We go through all of that, and we come to the destruction of mystery Babylon that symbolizes all that is secular and hostile to God. We come to the 20th chapter, and we find Satan cast into the lake of fire with all his followers forever and ever. And the last words we read before this chapter are the lake of fire.

And it's at that point that we read: "I saw a new heaven and a new earth and the New Jerusalem." That's a wonderful thing. If there were no New Jerusalem, if there were no new heaven, if there were no new earth, we could read to this point in the Bible, and at least on the basis of what we know of human sin, say the story is wonderfully told. Because judgments are what we deserve, and the lake of fire is what we have earned, and the overthrow of Babylon is what is due. But God in His great mercy, with which He loved us, has provided the kind of destiny for His people that's portrayed in this chapter.

It's really not possible to come to this chapter at this point in the Bible, right at the end, without realizing that when John has this vision of the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, this is in contrast to practically all of the great themes preceding that that have to do with our normal earthly expectations. Jerusalem is certainly contrasted with Babylon that's mentioned just a few chapters before.

Babylon stands for everything that is human in opposition to God. You have a great history of Babylon and the symbolism of Babylon in the Old Testament. You find it way back in the book of Genesis. Nimrod is the one who built Babylon, this man who's described as a mighty warrior, a man who set out to find the first world empire, to bring people together by force of arms to set up his kingdom. That's Babylon.

And Babylon grew and flourished and became the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar. The book of Daniel as it's written shows an interaction of a spiritually-minded man with the kind of secularism that was present in that city, symbolized by Nebuchadnezzar, who stood and looked out over Babylon from the roof of his palace and said, "Is this not mighty Babylon that I have built by my power for my glory and the strength of my majesty?"

Babylon's the secular city, you see. It's of man, and it's by man, and it's for man's glory. And because it's established in that way without reference to God, it's also a very, very wicked place. And it falls. It fell historically never to rise again. And here in the book of Revelation, it falls spiritually as Babylon, which represents all of the secularism of the world, all of the hostility of the world, all of the machinations of the minds of the men and the women of the world against God, is brought down.

You have that great fall of Babylon in Revelation 18 and the woes pronounced over the mighty city by the kings of the earth and the merchants of the world and the sea captains. "Woe, woe," they say to Babylon the great, for she has fallen never to rise again. You have that contrast, you see: the secular city on the one hand and here the heavenly city which is the destiny of God's saints.

I think it wouldn't be fair, however, to make the contrast merely between earthly Babylon and the heavenly Jerusalem without recognizing that there is also another contrast that strikes much closer home. Because we who by the grace of God have come to know Him through Jesus Christ could easily say, "Well, of course, naturally, we're with Jerusalem. We're not with Babylon. That's the world." And we sort of pat ourselves on the back at that point and not realize that not only do we have the contrast between Babylon and Jerusalem, but we also have the contrast between earthly Jerusalem and the heavenly Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven from God.

Earthly Jerusalem was to be a thing of great beauty. It certainly was a thing of great privilege because this is where God established His temple. This is where the worship of the true God conducted according to the revealed law of God was practiced. This is the very sight in which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was crucified, giving His life for His people. Earthly Jerusalem was a marvelous thing.

And yet, sad as it is to say this, it became quite secular and quite wicked as well. When you turn to Revelation 18, which talks about Babylon, Babylon is described as the great prostitute, the harlot. But if you turn back to the first chapter of Isaiah and find Isaiah writing to the Jerusalem of his day, you find precisely the same image.

Isaiah 1:21: "See how the faithful city, Jerusalem, has become a harlot. She once was full of justice; righteousness used to dwell in her, but now murderers. Your silver has become dross, your choice wine is diluted with water. Your rulers are rebels, companions of thieves; they all love bribes, they chase after gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; the widow's case does not come before them." That's what it is to be a prostitute in the sight of God. That's the wickedness that God has in mind. And this is Jerusalem, you see, that has become that.

It means the church. That which God has called into being and that institution, humanly speaking, which is to hold forth His glory before the world, that in which Jesus Christ crucified is to be seen, that becomes the harlot. And so the contrast, you see, is not merely as we wish it were alone, the contrast between Babylon and Jerusalem, but the contrast between the visible earthly church, earthly Jerusalem, and the New Jerusalem established by God.

When John begins to describe this, the thing that impresses him most about Jerusalem is that God dwells there. "I saw the holy city," he says, "the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men and He will live with them. They will be His people and God Himself will be with them and be their God.'" It's a very interesting text in the Old Testament which I am convinced relates to this and perhaps was something that John even had in mind as he composed these words or recorded them.

Jerusalem, you know, means the place of God's peace because Salem means peace. And the tragedy of Jerusalem is that it has been anything but a place of peace. That city which was to be a symbol of the peace of God and a place of earthly peace established through righteousness becomes a city of warfare. And with that background, I take you to the very end of the book of Ezekiel.

Ezekiel now has known the fall of Jerusalem and he's looking forward to the establishing of the New Jerusalem. But after he's described this new city, you find him saying, "The name of that city from that time on will be..." what it really says in the Hebrew is "Jehovah-Shammah." The Lord is there. You see, the name has changed.

Jehovah-Shalom, the Lord our peace, and which in the earthly experience was not a city of peace, becomes now Jehovah-Shammah, the Lord is there. And when we come to Revelation, that's precisely that in which we find John the Evangelist rejoicing. You see, what makes the New Jerusalem the New Jerusalem? Why, it's the presence of God. God is there and not only is God there, God is there forever because the destiny of the people of God is to spend eternity with Him.

But before I do, let's go on and look at the description. I think it's always hard when we study Revelation to know how much of the descriptions we find are to be taken literally and how much are to be understood as symbolism. Here we have a city that's described as being four-square, as having a great high wall, having gates in the wall, massive foundations, streets of gold, and jewels set into the masonry as it were. All these images are supposed to suggest to us the kind of existence we'll have with God in heaven and the kind of community that He's establishing. And it's no less real or no less significant because it's that.

But if you want to think in these literal terms, let me suggest that when it describes this city as having the same dimensions so far as length and breadth and height is concerned, that it doesn't necessarily mean a cube. It might have something like a pyramid in shape. At least I like to think of it that way. Have you ever seen pictures of Mont-Saint-Michel, the little island off the French coast where the tide comes in and surrounds the city at high tide? Coming in 14 miles from the ocean and coming in faster than horses can gallop. When the tide's coming, you've got to run and get off of the sands or you get drowned.

Well, Mont-Saint-Michel sits there. It's this massive thing that was built up in the Middle Ages, a monastic kind of community. It has a little village all around the bottom and the streets wind their way up. And it goes up in a majestic way to this marvelous cathedral of Saint Michael that's up on the top. And the highest thing sticking way up there is this statue of Saint Michael. I think maybe that's the kind of thing, only on a much grander style, that John is describing.

You see this massive, massive city prepared for the people of God but leaning upward, upward, not to Saint Michael, but to God and the Lamb who take the place of the temple within the holy city. And so as he begins to unfold this imagery for our understanding, he's saying, you see, not merely that this community of the saints in glory is a secure thing, but it's a community of those who have come in the way God has provided, namely through faith in Jesus Christ, the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world, on the basis of whose death through faith those who are godless and sinners are justified and enabled to stand before the holy God.

He has another set of imagery that he uses here and it's the imagery of jewelry or jewels, precious stones. This, I think, probably since there are 12 of them, has some kind of reference to the breastplate of the High Priest described in Exodus, a symbolism certainly that would be known to any Jewish reader. The High Priest, you know, had a breastplate made of gold, square, a span in each dimension. That's about the distance across a hand. He wore it on his chest. And on that breastplate embedded in the gold were 12 jewels that represented the 12 tribes of Israel.

And when the High Priest went into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, he wore the golden breastplate representing by the jewels the 12 tribes and representing them as he entered into the presence of God. Those things, you see, those people, those tribes, those individuals which were precious in the sight of God and were brought into God through the sacrifice. And here those jewels are embedded in the city, laid into the foundation as it were, because God has prepared that for those who come in that way.

In verse 22, John talks about something that apparently surprised him. He saw the city come down from God out of heaven. He noticed its brilliance and its walls, its streets of gold and all of that. But when he looked for the temple, after all, Jerusalem had this prominent temple, it was its most prominent feature. As he looked for the temple, he discovered there was no temple. And the reason there was no temple is that God and the Lamb were the temple.

A temple was a place of sacrifice. It was a place of approach to God where the sacrifices were made and the people were represented, though in point of fact their sins had kept them from God. Now there's no need for that anymore because this is the company of the redeemed, those from whom sin has been removed. And now you don't have to come with the sacrifices; all that's been done. God is there and the communion with God is intense and immediate and eternal.

From God and the Lamb, the temple in the midst of the city, there goes forth light, for God is light. And the stream of water, which is talked about in the first verses of the final chapter, the stream, the river of the water of life from which we are to drink and live forever. You know, when I read these verses that talk about God being in His city and being in His city forever, I think of something else that Ezekiel wrote about. Ezekiel at the very end of his prophecy gives that revelation of the new name for Jerusalem, "The Lord is there." But that itself, even in a reading of the prophecy of Ezekiel, makes you think of something that occurs earlier in the same book in chapter 10.

Chapter 10, you know, you have what is perhaps the lowest and most discouraging point in the entire prophecy. Ezekiel's standing on a height, perhaps the Mount of Olives, looking out over the city toward the west. And as he looks, it's nighttime, and God gives him a vision of what's happening in the city. He sees the cherubim and the wheels beneath the cherubim and he sees the Shekinah glory cloud of God. And it's moving. And he describes it. It's a disheartening thing to read.

He describes how as he looks down on that city in the darkness of the Judean night, he sees the cherubim and the wheels rise up from the Holy of Holies. And the Shekinah cloud of God that represents the presence of God, God's glory, move with the cherubim out from the Holy of Holies into the holy place. He describes how the cloud fills the holy place. Then out of the holy place into the courtyard, and he describes how that cloud fills the courtyard.

Then out of the inner courtyard to the outer courtyard, and then away from the Temple Mount down through the eastern gate that led to the Valley of the Kidron and on up the mountain to heaven. And the glory of God left the city. Ichabod: the glory of God is departed. And Jerusalem, the city of God, became secular Babylon, the kind of thing I described earlier in our study. And then you come to the end of the prophecy and he speaks of the New Jerusalem, and he says you see in that city now named "The Lord is there," the glory has returned and it's returned never to depart again.

I notice that the chapter ends, verse 27, with these words: "Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life." Why does it say that there? It says it quite obviously because the holy God does not coexist with sin or sinful men. In the earthly city, you see, the earthly Jerusalem, as the people sinned and would not turn from sin and seek God's face in order that they might be healed, God left the city.

But in this city where God has come to dwell forever with His people, the conclusion is not going to be that the city will sin and God will leave, but that this is God's city, God will stay, and no impure person will ever enter it. And so I make that point. This is the city of God. This is the New Jerusalem. This is the culminating point, if you will, in a certain sense of the entire Bible. This is the destiny for which we were created.

But unless by the work of Christ you are a new creature, not impure, not as it says earlier in the chapter, sexually immoral, practicing magic arts, an idolater, and a liar, all of those things, unless by the grace of God you cease to be that, you can take it on the authority of the Word of God that you will never enter that city. So we need to search our hearts. We need to make our calling and election sure.

We need to say, "Lord Jesus Christ, am I really Yours? Have You really changed me? Have I been made a new creature? Is there that within me which is destined for that city, the New Jerusalem, and an eternity of fellowship with You, or am I only playing at religion?" If you're only playing, the best thing I can say is that there is still hope.

The book does not end merely at that point, but it goes on to say in chapter 22, "The Spirit and the bride say come. And let him who hears say come. And whoever is thirsty, let him come. And whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life." You know where that gift can be found? It's found in Christ; it's found nowhere else. He is the water of life. He is the bread of life. He is the resurrection and the life. He is the Lamb. And if you want to dwell in that city with God's people, you must come to Him.

O our Father, we find ourselves sobered by Your word, even by so great and glorious a picture as this: the picture of the New Jerusalem. Because we find that glorious as such pictures may be, Your word never allows us to indulge our fancies in a false hope, but instead always challenges us to see whether we are what we must be if we would dwell with the holy God.

O our Father, speak to us. Whatever happens, don't allow us to go on in any false security, but speak to us of eternal things and begin to lead many, we pray, to a genuine faith in Him who is the Savior, even Jesus. Amen.

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