His Perfect Love

Announcer: Pondering over what makes heaven such a blessing? Here's Pastor Matt VanderVen.

Matt VanderVen: Heaven isn't just surviving the fire. If your heart's desire isn't to be in intimacy with God, you've missed the whole thing of what the inheritance of heaven is all about. It's about being with Him in this intimacy. That is the blessing. That is the greatest gift.

And I would encourage anybody here who, if that's not the reason, please have an honest and sincere conversation with Jesus.

Announcer: Since heaven is to be our eternal home, we ought to prepare for it and cultivate what the Bible calls a heavenly mind as we journey here on earth. Today's His Perfect Love will help us with that. Glad you've joined us, and Happy New Year. We're at the tail end of our study in Revelation, learning what heaven is all about.

Just think of it. We'll be dwelling with God forever. No evil, no tears or death, just righteousness. Could it get any better? Here's Pastor Matt VanderVen in chapter 21.

Matt VanderVen: Some of us just saw in the last few weeks there was a design that was recently done in another country and we watched a bridge fall directly into the water. Physics and engineering matter. Good physics and engineering matter. When you look at creation as we understand it, it's going to change because now outside of creation, God, even in the cube that we're going to occupy all that cube, it's not just 1,500 miles in one direction, width, and height, but there's volume.

We don't even think that way today. You're talking about things like the Jetsons where you think about the flying car where we're occupying maybe the hundredth level without ever having to actually have—so that means our bodies are going to be different. And why else do I say that? Because right now we use a flesh-blood system. It's all based on a pump. What is that pump called? Your heart. It circulates a lot of things. It circulates oxygen through your whole body and different things.

What happens if you're too cold? You have something called hypo. Hypo in the Greek, what's that word mean or in Latin? Below. Hyper, up. I'm just bringing things to you because when we read Greek and we go through this, when we start to understand this, we really get the depth of what God is communicating to us. This is not meant to be a science lesson this morning, but it's just amazing because what God is trying to tell us is just how fragile in some ways the human body is.

You put us closer to the sun than where it is today, we burn up. You move the earth just slightly, and I'm talking slightly, away from where the sun is today, we all die and freeze. Our bodies can't handle it. It's not designed for that. You being in a body of an ocean, a sea, for more than 60 minutes, if you even survive at that point, because of hypothermia, everything slows down and then we have—the point is, when God's telling us here, right here, that there's not going to be a sea, there's not going to be plankton that way.

You and I, where we use our respiratory system for air exchange, it's all going to change. We don't need the carbon dioxide to oxygen exchange that we need now. Just think about that. We're not going to be limited. That makes sense because Jesus Christ could appear to somebody on a road in His glorified body. He could appear another place. He could appear over to 500 different people, and yet nobody saw Him walking to each place. He could appear in a room of apostles gathered together because one of them in there needed just a little encouragement in his faith. You know who I'm talking about. Thomas.

Touch. Am I not He? What makes you think if that's His glorified body, that you and I aren't going to have the same glorified body? Is He not the first fruits of the resurrection? He tied the glorified body to the resurrection. That's Jesus that did that. And we get the same resurrection because He says, if I'm able to do it for me, I can certainly do it for you. That's the guarantee. That's the inheritance. So He's going to resurrect us on our last breath here on this earth, closing of the eyes, opening them into the eternity, and we're going to have glorified bodies.

And He even wrote so much about that in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 of how this corruption's got to put on incorruption, this mortality's got to put on immortality. He tried to explain it in ways that we in human terms could understand. We could spend a whole hour going through the rest of this, but it's amazing because the systems and bodies must be different based on this. Breathing must be different. We have to all acknowledge that here if we acknowledge science and we acknowledge how the human anatomy and physiology, pathophysiology works.

There's nobody here that can go, "Wait a minute. The human being in a non-glorified state could exist in the new heavens and new earth." You cannot say that. You would be in error and you would be defying everything that we know from anatomy and physiology and pathophysiology. And anybody that's ever studied anything in medical would turn around and go, "Really? Try that. Try holding your breath or try withholding air or have no carbon dioxide exchange. Go into a room and turn around and lock that room airtight or just decrease the amount of air that comes in."

And very soon you're going to go—what we call cyanosis because it turns blue. What do we call it? That's right. Cyanosis. Good. It means that you're deprived of oxygen. Your O2 level is going down. Have you ever thought about any of this? Or do we just read these passages and go, "Okay, that's cool, Jesus." He's trying to tell us what the future's going to be like because He knows the greatest point of anxiety for every human being is the fear of the unknown. But once we know, we no longer have to have fear.

That's why He went to great detail. He doesn't waste a single jot or tittle. Let's look at verse two here. "Then I, John, saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." Okay, so this holy city, the New Jerusalem, again, this is the place of our real citizenship. Some of you might be dual citizens in here, or you might have a citizenship certainly in the United States of America. Philippians chapter 3 verses 20 through 21 tells you that your citizenship is really heavenly.

That was God's term. Our citizenship is really heavenly because that's our eternal home. How many of you like having a home, a place to go? Anybody not liking having a place to go? I'm kind of a homebody. I'm not big on traveling. I like hanging out with the kids, the family, like that. But I certainly look forward to this new home with God, the way it's going to be or the way it was intended to be before the curse, dwelling with our God.

You see, it's again part of the original design. Fellowship with our creator, the living God, Jesus Christ. It's significant that this dwelling place of God and His people is described and He chose to call it this: the holy city. That's how He described it for us. What does holy mean again, going back to the Hebrew origin? To set one thing or one apart. You are holy and set apart. Jerusalem, Israel, governed by God, set apart. That's what it means. He has literally said, "Now I have set you apart a place with me."

That's what He's telling us here. Isn't that good news? It's really good news. I like that. Again, cities are places where there are many people that gather, they interact with each other. Please know there's not isolation. If you're ever wondering about the future, "Well, I'm going to request 10 acres up there and I want the field farthest away. I want one of the corner lots in the cube." I've heard people say that.

But what is perfect koinonia? It's fellowship of the people of God with their God. That's what heaven's going to be like. It's the complete opposite with many of the things the world religions teach about the concept of the heavenly place. When you think about a Hindu or someone that subscribes to Hinduism, what do they believe? They believe this idea of nirvana, a conception of a blank slate. It has nothing to do with other people. It has nothing to do with God or a higher being. It's basically a blank canvas. That is their heaven: isolation.

Do you know what happens when you put a human being in isolation for long periods of time? They begin to not think clearly. That's why there's even standards even in prisons where isolation, they have to have somebody come in and check on them every so often. Even in hospitals and psychiatric wards and different things, there are nurses' standards that you have to go in every 15 minutes and you have to document in an electronic medical record every 15 minutes saying, "I checked on the individual. They're breathing. The respiration rate's normal. There's nothing that they're experiencing."

Because we know during so much of what was done unfortunately to the Jewish people in the Holocaust—because the Holocaust is real—and so many millions, they were experimented on. And some of the experiments they did was isolation. They would isolate them and then draw them to serious trauma of different things and then see where the human spirit and mind would crack. Evil. Evil and wickedness. That's not what Jesus is going to do in heaven. He's not going to turn around and create social isolation up there. No, we're going to love to visit, be together.

You're not going to wear out your welcome. You're not going to wear out your welcome. Do you long for that? You know, did you ever realize that we were created to be relational beings with our God? We're not supposed to be sitting in the dark chanting, entertaining some mystical contemplation in a circle of prayer. Run away from that junk. It's the new age Christianity where they want to draw the loops of circles and you start from the middle and try to work your way to the middle like it's—what are we doing?

The New Jerusalem will have something totally unique: sinless. It'll be pure. It'll be a community of righteousness. It'll be set apart for you and I with God as a holy city. You see, problems arise when we expect something different and we fail to realize that it's coming down out of heaven is perfect. It's not an achievement of man. That's what I love about how God does this. He says He sees and it comes down out of heaven. Heaven and the new earth is solely and uniquely a gift from God.

Does everybody see that? It's a gift from God. That's part of why your inheritance is a gift. And then He said that this is prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. He uses the most beautiful imagery you could use here, the most beautiful thing a man will ever see is his bride. I talked about this last week, it was Wednesday, forgive me. During weddings, what's the main attraction? I mean, we like the guys and we love seeing the guys. We don't go, "Oh, the guy just looks so beautiful in his tux." I have never heard that. I might hear, "He looks good. He's handsome."

But I'm not like, "Oh, I can't wait to see what the tux the guy is wearing." Like, I've never ever heard that. Maybe that happens. I don't know. But I know one thing, when the groom comes down or if he's standing up there and I'm doing a wedding, nobody stands at that point. It's not until the music starts, the procession begins, and a father or a loved one begins to walk their beautiful daughter or relative or some family member, friend, the bride, and everybody stands. This has been thousands and thousands of years this tradition.

And they turn and they face the bride. And what are they looking at? You know, we use the term "she glows, she's beautiful." The bride adorned walking down the aisle to the altar. Everyone stands to take a look at the most beautiful bride. Again, there's not a single mention of a man here. Guys, you remember that moment, right? I can remember it like it was yesterday. You don't forget that. And guys, if you did forget that, you better keep a straight face right now.

Verse three: "And I heard a loud voice from heaven," we're just moving on, "And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, 'Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.'" So God's going to dwell with humanity, humankind here. Did you see that? It's beautiful. I love how God explains this. A loud voice. What's this speaking to? Sometimes when we think of loud voices, we think of somebody yelling. That's not the idea here in the Greek.

It's talking about greatness. And this word is used to speak of greatness. So if you're taking notes, please don't misunderstand this because we don't have many words for "loud" in the English language the way the Greek is very expressive. It's the idea of greatness. Someone is speaking, that someone has greatness when they're saying it, not just amplification of sound. Now we're not really sure who this is yet. It might be God. Clearly in verse 5, it tells us that God is speaking. But that's verse 5. We're in verse 3.

And this person says that the tabernacle of God is with men and He dwells with them. Moses' tabernacle, the dwelling place of God, was on the earth. This speaks of the reality of His presence with you and I. This confirms with 100% accuracy, if you've ever wondered in heaven and this new earth are you going to dwell specifically with Jesus and with God, you are told here matter-of-factly you will. And never does it say for a moment it's as though we have this presence because of the Greek that it's not like I dwelt with you yesterday, but tomorrow will I be with another friend or will I be someplace else.

The idea in how it's written here in the Greek construct is that we are continually dwelling with God. And He's dwelling with us, and we're not separated from Him. Now I can't in my human limitation and ability, I can't explain how we're able to fellowship and be in different places but yet at the same time we're always in God's presence. I mean, I suppose that exists already today. In some way He's here amongst us because in Revelation chapters 1 through 3, He told us that He's in the church and that He comes and He's walking down.

We know that from reading earlier on in the church age, the age we're living in, that He's present among us, He's living in us. We also have already come upon us through His Holy Spirit. But there's something else here where He's talking about a physical intimacy where He's with us. It almost describes the physical presence, almost as if it reminds me of something you could reach out and touch. You know, we know that God is with us right now, but I can't physically—I haven't physically been able to touch Him that way.

He can certainly touch me in my heart and I can feel it from the inside out. But to physically touch, that is the idea that almost like it reminds me of when you were young and maybe you were with a loved one, maybe a parent, grandparent, somebody that was very close to you, the skin on skin. The idea that even if you were a little upset or a little nervous, sometimes even today as adults, right, when we're going through something traumatic or stressful, what's one of the things that we love when our spouse or our loved one or a friend does? They just put their hand on our hand. Just hold our hand.

Or sometimes, my brother Bobby, one of the things—he traveled all over, he worked for Coca-Cola, was high up as an executive, all these meetings, different countries, all these things. And his favorite thing was when he would get home, him and Barb, my sister-in-law, they would get together and the kids were older by then. He'd say, "Let's go put a movie on." They'd go just time to shut it down. That was his term, "shut it down." He'd go up, they'd go in the bed and they'd just sit next to each other in a chair or bed and she would just rub his arm.

And it was like all the stress just melted away. You know, and because he—I mean, if you've been on planes, trains, and automobiles, especially having your head on a swivel, it can stress you out traveling like that a lot, especially big important meetings. He would just come home and she just—it's touch. And it reminds me like God's physical presence is going to be with us like that in eternity, that we're going to feel that touch, that comfort, that love. And anytime we read nothing about an anxiety existing in heaven, and I wonder if that's because we're constantly in touch with God and we never have to fear or worry ever again. Something to think about, right?

He says He will dwell with them and they shall be His people. Again, it states the essence of God's desire and man's purpose. Man's purpose is to dwell with God. Woman's purpose, obviously humanity's purpose. Simply God's desire is to live in close fellowship with humanity and humanity's purpose is to be a people unto God, separated to Him. Please notice that's what heaven is all about. Heaven isn't just surviving the fire. If your heart's desire isn't to be in intimacy with God, you've missed the whole thing of what the inheritance of heaven is all about. It's about being with Him in this intimacy. That is the blessing. That is the greatest gift.

And I would encourage anybody here who, if that's not the reason, please have an honest and sincere conversation with Jesus. You need to have an honest and sincere conversation with Jesus. It's not an escape plan. It's not fire insurance, like bail out of a burning building. Because if that's not the right heart and motive, do you not think He doesn't know that? Of course He does. He knows all of your motives and my motives, my heart, everything.

And every time I think about this for me, it brings the greatest peace that I can ever have. I get "peaced out" every time I think about it. It's amazing that you could be having the most awful day, but when you begin to think about the time where it's all going to come to fruition, that God is going to be with man and wants to be with humanity, and man and the purpose of my whole life and why I was created was to always be with Him, and it will finally be that way.

Every one of us will never wonder, like, should we be somewhere else? Are we doing what we're supposed to be doing? Are we in God's will? We'll never ever have that thought or worry again. Am I doing enough? Are we not—are we doing too much? Am I neglecting this? None of those thoughts will ever come into our minds. And so it just gives me this peace out that even when something's overwhelming or awful or difficult from this temporal state, it literally takes the edge off by allowing myself to be taken to the place Jesus wants me to focus on: my purpose, your purpose, why He moved literally heaven and earth to make that happen. You ever wondered where that saying came from? You have it right before you.

Announcer: We'll stop right here for just a moment, but our tour of heaven isn't done. Pastor Matt VanderVen has a closing thought to share with us in a minute here on His Perfect Love. We're going through Revelation now at the present time, and I'll remind you that you can hear the program again when you visit hisperfectlove.org. That's hisperfectlove.org. We're also at oneplace.com, and look for us wherever you get your podcasts. We also offer a mobile app. This is a great way to take Pastor Matt's teachings with you on the go. You can learn more about the mobile app and start your download when you visit our website hisperfectlove.org.

We can't thank you enough for your prayers for this ministry. Please pray that as God's word goes forth, that lives will be greatly impacted for the glory of God and people would grow by His grace and love, or even enter into a relationship with Him. And if you have a prayer request, please send that our way. You can email that to us through our website at hisperfectlove.org. If you live in the Mechanicsburg, PA area, we hope you'll stop by for a visit. Just like you hear on the radio, Pastor Matt teaches verse by verse through the Bible here at Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore. Sunday morning services begin at 8:30 and 10:30. We have a midweek gathering on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM. We're located at 28 North Locust Point Road in Mechanicsburg, PA. Go to ccharrisburg.org for more information.

Matt VanderVen: All right, let's finish up our message now. Spurgeon, beautiful quote, and I'd like to just stop here today. Good place to stop, just you and Jesus and the whole purpose of life. Man alive. Can it get anything better today? Other than maybe a little food in the belly. But other than that, we're there.

This is the greatest glory of heaven and the ultimate restoration of what was lost in the fall. I do not think the glory of Eden lay in its grassy walks or in the bows of bending with the luscious fruit, but its glory lay in this: that the Lord God walked in the garden in the cool of the day. Here was Adam and Eve in their highest privilege, that they had companionship with the God Most High.

Announcer: We hope you have a blessed New Year in Christ, and remember what you have to look forward to in the new heavens and new earth. See you back here tomorrow when we'll dig a little deeper into Revelation chapter 21 with Pastor Matt on His Perfect Love.