His Perfect Love

Guest (Male): Pastor Matt VanderVen says there is no need for a sun or moon in the New Jerusalem, and here's why.

Matt VanderVen: There is no S-U-N in this city. There is no moon, M-O-O-N, in this city. It's all radiating and emanating from Jesus Christ himself, the perfection of God through this whole city that not only provides the light, but then refracts off of everything we're about to read that he has just made.

The way he even designed it to reflect off of him as he will reflect off of us, we reflect off of him and it provides the light to this whole city. Talk about being in perpetual Shekinah glory.

Guest (Male): Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore presents His Perfect Love with our pastor and teacher, Matt VanderVen. We're at the tail end of a study in Revelation, and today we come back to chapter 21 to hear more about the place God has prepared for his people.

One of the first things that grabbed the Apostle John's attention when given a guided tour of New Jerusalem is the glory of this city and the glory of God. It will have the Lord's fingerprints all over it, too.

Matt VanderVen: Notice that John doesn't have to even be introduced to it as a home. He doesn't look on it and go, "What is that?" He knows exactly what it is because he's been longing for it in his heart from the very time he was created.

If you're sitting here, you know the same thing. There's something about every one of us that has desired to have a place that's a home. Partly, we want the people we love to be with us in that home. He's just seeing these things.

The other thing is, as I was mentioning, no fear. John's not like, "Whoa, look at this. This is 12,000 furlongs, 1,500 miles." I'll get to that in a minute. He's not turned around looking at the enormity of this thing and going, "Oh my gosh, I got to run for fear."

Every other time John, when he sees something like that, he's either having fear or he's got to be told, "Wait a minute. Do not fear, John. Do not do these things, John. Do not worship me." John isn't told one thing about that here. He has no fear. He only has comfort. He only has a natural response.

Didn't Jesus say, "I go to prepare a place for you. If it were not true, I would not have told you"? Even Jesus spoke because where were the apostles, when Jesus was talking about ascending into heaven, what were they concerned about? "You're going to a place that I can't go, but I want to be with you. I want to be in a place where we're going to be home together."

What was the garden when God first walked with humans, Adam and Eve? He made it home. Man was discontent initially, and then God brought Eve. God dwelt with them. He named the animals. He familiarized the things around him, and it became home.

There is something very deep in every human being that is longing for that belonging. The reality is it can only be fulfilled perfectly in Christ Jesus. The fact that you have felt that since the minute you were born, certainly humans can help, but nothing can replace Jesus.

He is why you were created and that longing in your heart of what you've been looking for will only find its perfect fulfillment of harmony in Christ Jesus. He says, "I'm going to show you the bride." He shows the great city, the holy city.

Again, he makes all this happen and then he turns around and reminds us it's not something he's designed. It's a perfect design. God has already completed it, and it's this great holy city, and it's set apart from those who dwell there. They're holy because we will dwell with God and live with him.

He's showing us that and it continues to descend. It says the New Jerusalem descends and he sees such great detail and it gives us just a glimpse to the glory to come for you and I who have overcome through Christ Jesus.

As it descends from heaven, and God, we see he's there, he was in the altar, he's going to come down and dwell there. Again, John continues to point out this is God's design and plan. It all originates from him. At the center of his love was to provide this home. Look at verse 11. We're going to read about the brilliance, the walls, the gates, and the foundation here.

He goes back and he says, after we read how great it is descending out of heaven, "having the glory of God. Her light was like the most precious stone, like a jasper stone, clear as crystal." First, we read that the city has the glory of God. No question about it. This is God's perfect design. It's glorious and it has his fingerprints all over it.

"Her light was like the most precious stone," it says. John is first struck with the glory of the city, and then he shares the glory of God and expresses it through the radiance. Please remember, there is no S-U-N in this city. There is no moon, M-O-O-N, in this city.

It's all radiating and emanating from Jesus Christ himself, the perfection of God through this whole city that not only provides the light, but then refracts off of everything we're about to read that he has just made.

The way he even designed it to reflect off of him as he will reflect off of us, we reflect off of him and it provides the light to this whole city. Talk about being in perpetual Shekinah glory. That's what he's describing for us. It's a perpetual Shekinah glory.

What did Moses want? He only wanted one thing from the Lord at that time when he was passing by. He says, "Lord, show me more of your glory." How was that answered for him? He was unable to look on him with human eyes. It was too much. He could not see him. Instead, he was permitted to pass by and he could only look at the back of God because of the eminence, the perfection, the glory. He couldn't see it.

Here, you and I will partake of the full Shekinah glory of God, and it will emanate through us and through all matter, if we can use that term because matter changes as we understand it today, but through all of the city, the gates, the walls, and everything through it. It is going to be brilliant.

I'm talking a brilliance that we in our human eyes could not handle. How many of you know what it's like to be around snow, like a depth of snow? When I was younger we would have snow. I'm starting to sound like, "Well, it was both ways up." No, but really, I'm from Rochester, New York, and we would get a foot or two, three feet of snow like nothing. It was very common when I was growing up.

I can remember the snow came up almost five feet one time, blocked our front door getting out. We had the back door to get out. But I remember because Ma says, "Go get the shovel, we're going to basically go through take the window." We had storm windows if you're familiar with like a screen door. Take the storm windows out and we start shoveling that way to make a path so we could open the door.

I remember Ma saying, "Go get the shovel." I went and got the shovel and it was down in the basement, cellar. We brought it out and take out the storm window, you had these little sliders and it pops out. Just trying to look at the snow, I couldn't.

Because it was so bright. It was the refraction of the sun and the light against the most radiant, pure white snow that literally with my eyes, do you guys know what I'm talking about? You ever had that happen? You ever go sledding or skiing? The snow was so bright, you literally have to put on glasses.

That's what it was like. Think about the Shekinah glory of God. We in the glorified body are going to actually behold the pure beauty and radiance of God that we cannot in this earth suit. We couldn't. Moses couldn't. Nobody can. But in heaven, it's going to be so brilliant and it's going to be amazing and he wants us to see it.

He says her light is like the most precious stone, like a jasper stone, clear as crystal. That means unlike you and I in our house where there's glass and we touch it and then we get fingerprints on it, there's not going to be a single aspect of that in heaven. It's just a perfect design, the brilliance.

John is first struck by the glory of this city, then he moves to, most importantly, the glory of God. That's what he sees here and again he looks at the radiance that comes from her and says the light was like a jasper stone, clear as crystal.

I think it's talking about the brilliance and beauty of the city. These are some of the stones that we're going to see that are in the foundation wall. It's going to speak again about the brilliance and the beauty of this city. A jasper stone was red, yellow, or green. It says it's like crystal clear here, but it's going to shimmer like fine crystal.

You ever seen a beautiful crystal, maybe a lamp? So beautiful, so magnificent, the shimmer, the radiance. There's nothing that's going to be compared to this city. Look at verse 12 with me. "Also she had a great high wall with 12 gates, 12 angels at the gates, and names were written on them, which was the name of the 12 tribes of the children of Israel."

The wall is certainly not needed for defense because God spoke a word and fire came down. There is no enemy at this point. They've all been judged in the Great White Throne Judgment. But he talks about this great and high wall and he gives sort of the idea of a perimeter. It demonstrates that there are those that would be excluded from this city. Only the righteous can enter as we read in verse 7.

The 12 gates and the names written on them are the names of the 12 tribes of the children of Israel. The names of the 12 tribes communicate unity and heritage for the people of God, specifically the unity that came from his chosen people Israel.

God will never forget the 12 tribes even in eternity. The Jews are God's chosen people and they always will be, and they will have a prominent place in heaven. Look at verse 13 because he doesn't leave it there. He's going to talk about the Gentiles as well. There's either Jew or Gentile, scripture teaches.

In verse 13, three gates on the east, three gates on the north, three gates on the south, and three gates on the west. Some have thought this arrangement of the gates looks very similar to the camp layout that you can read about in Exodus or even Numbers chapter 2, North, South, East, West, where the tabernacle was.

Verse 14, now the wall of the city had 12 foundations, and on them were the names, and here it is, he now connects the New Covenant, the New Testament church, of the 12 apostles of the Lamb. We saw God's chosen people represented by the 12 tribes, and now in verse 14, he comes and he brings in the perfect harmony.

He says the foundations are the eternal testimony of the apostles and the permanent place in God's plan. Whose name's going to be written there? 12 apostles it says. Is it Matthias? Is it Paul? I don't know, but I guarantee all of us now will look when we get there. We'll want to know which apostle it is. Maybe it'll be Paul, I'm not sure.

He says it's written and he's connecting it all together for us. I just love how he's doing this. He connects it for us very simply. He says it's the foundation of the apostles. It's the right place for God's people to belong and to be.

God's very clear on how the apostles were the ones that laid the foundation of the church. He's also very clear on what the requirements were to be the apostle. There is no such thing as an office of an apostle today. Does everybody here understand that biblically? That's really important in our area because there's several churches in our area that started through this new apostolic reformation and I just need to talk about it for a minute.

It's just important doctrinally because there is no new doctrine. Galatians 1:6 constantly told us that even 20 years after Jesus Christ ascended into heaven, Paul in the church he planted in Galatia was already dealing with somebody trying to bring an alternate or a false doctrine in, Jesus plus something.

He says, "How so soon you've fallen for what you once knew? How so soon you would give that up and do this?" He was shocked, almost like, "What are you doing? You're alive of the generation that could see Messiah Jesus." Think 2,000 years here, you and I were not there at Calvary. That generation was.

How so soon you were willing to give up what you saw at Calvary and the fact that he appeared over to 500. You know these things to be true. Why would you ever compromise with an alternate doctrine? That's what he was saying to the people of Galatia. He rebukes them for that.

Turn in your Bibles to Ephesians. Go to Ephesians chapter 2. This is important because the office of an apostle, one of the requirements is you had to be alive at the time of Christ. You had to have seen Christ, you had to see his crucifixion, his resurrection. That was the requirement. It says it very clearly in the scriptures. There's actually three requirements.

You had to be around the risen Christ. Well, last I checked, after 2,000 years ago, there is no opportunity for that. Now, somebody's going to say to me, "Yes, but pastor, Ephesians 4," and I'm going to agree with you. I'm going to look at Ephesians 4 in a minute with you so we have a proper hermeneutical understanding of that.

The office of the apostle predominantly was to lay the foundation of the church. We don't get to do church just any way we want. We don't get to worship God just any way we want. Isn't that what Israel tried to do? It didn't end well for them. It doesn't end well for the Gentile church either.

As a pastor, I don't get up here and get to do whatever I want to do in this church or how I'd want to do it. No, Jesus Christ, when he came to the earth, he went to the synagogues and what did he do in those synagogues? It says that he opened the Bible and he began to read.

As he read to them, he then said this, describing what exactly happened. He read line by line as was customary at that time. He would read line by line and he said this has been fulfilled before your very eyes, speaking of the prophet Isaiah. That's exactly what he did.

That's not Calvary Chapel. That's not something we patented or was our idea. That's Jesus Christ. He came and that's what he did. He could have done anything when he was on earth. He could have said, "Let's just talk topical about the whole thing." He could have said, "Hey, let's just rumor mill around or let's just go do this or that." No, this is how he chose to do it.

Then he went and built a church laid on the foundation of his doctrine, the word of God. No man has the right to declare what a church is when the Holy Scriptures are very clear what it's supposed to look like because he went to great lengths to say that I've laid the foundation based on the apostles, the office, not the apostolos, which in the Greek means the individual because the apostolos in the Greek means a sent one.

We're all apostles in that regard because we're all sent ones after Matthew chapter 28 verse 19, "Go therefore." We're commissioned. We're all apostolos in the Greek, but that's not what he's talking about. There's offices. The foundation of the apostles was the foundation to lay the church. It was the office of apostle clearly.

Look at chapter 2 and it'll help make sense when I look at verses 19 through 22 with you. It'll make very clear what God is trying to say because he describes himself as the chief cornerstone here to this whole foundation.

Verse 19, "Now therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God." That's very familiar language. "Having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building being fitted together grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you are also being built together for a dwelling place of God in the spirit."

He's talking about the spiritual, he's talking about the physical, talking about the idea of home again as we're reading in the book of Revelation. As I promised you just a moment ago and I know we're limited on time, I just want to show you this so you don't think Pastor Matt's just up there spouting off his ideas because I don't believe in that and it doesn't matter what I think. We don't need any more man's wisdom. We need the word of God.

Ephesians chapter 4, just go ahead and turn to verse 11, please. You'll see this for yourself with your own eyes and you be Bereans and study these things to know them to be true. Better me man be a liar and God always be true.

Ephesians chapter 4 verse 11, "And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers." You can't split apart pastor-teacher. In the Greek, that's a kai conjunction. It's called the Granville Sharp rule. You're not able to take it apart in the Greek.

In the Greek language, they have their own rules of construction. You can't take apart the two roles or offices with a conjunction of a kai in the middle of it because the Granville Sharp rule says you break the construction of the Greek argument.

That means if you're a pastor, you must be a teacher as well. But if you're a teacher, that doesn't mean you're a pastor. You can have a home Bible study, you can teach from there, that's fine, but that doesn't make you a pastor. A pastor is supposed to lead, feed, and protect. That is the role of a pastor. A teacher also handles and shares the word of God.

What is the whole point of doing church? After all, it's all about the word of God and the conveyance of the Holy Spirit, God himself speaking to the hearts and minds of his people. Verse 12 tells us why we gather together. Verse 12 tells us why he commanded in Hebrews, do not forsake the gathering of the saints.

Verse 12 tells us what church is all supposed to be about. It's not a club. It's not a place that we just go to hang out while we might like to be with each other. I do enjoy being with you, but that's not the point. He says very clearly in verse 12, "for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, the building up, till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ," which will not happen until we're perfectly with him.

"That we should no longer be children, to be tossed to and fro, carried about with every wind of doctrine." It's like he knew. Of course he knew. That's exactly what he's talking about. "By the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but speaking the truth in love may grow in all things into him who is the head, Jesus Christ, from whom the whole body joined and knit together by every joint supplies according to every effective working by which every part does its share causes the growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love."

That's why I can't understand when you walk into a church and you don't feel like you're the best loved and best fed sheep. I don't understand it. It's not a church. Don't call it a church then. If we're not building each other up, if God isn't equipping us through his word to strengthen us, mature us, and to send us back out, then what are we doing?

That doesn't fulfill Ephesians 4. Having all kinds of programs and Nintendos and things that are put in padded rooms at some of these places and all these fancy things, while they might be entertaining, please don't call that a church because that's not how God defined the church.

The church is for the equipping of saints and last I checked, a Nintendo's not equipping me for the work of the ministry. While I might enjoy playing it, it's not equipping me for the work of the ministry. Can we all just agree on that?

This is important because it makes sense why he's making such a big deal in the book of Revelation about the foundation with the 12 apostles who are listed. It's all supposed to be based on the framework in which God established when he planted the church and it's not for man to come change it.

God didn't write off Israel, he never gave up on Israel. Israel's God's chosen people. We would all agree with that. The church never replaced Israel, and he gave 12 separate placements for that, too.

It would be no different than you and I looking at that and saying, "Well, yeah, of course, Jews are his chosen people." But now we come to the apostles and we turn around and go, "Well, that's not what he means there." No, of course that's what he means there. He's connecting it that it's all founded upon the apostles. It's based on that, that it's a constant memorial or reminder for you and I. It's a reminder for the Jews and it's a reminder for the Gentiles.

It's always going to be there in eternity. We'll always be reminded of that compared to all the other things that this earth and people on this earth have tried to make church or all these religious things about instead of understanding that it's culminating in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

That's what it's always been about, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, and building up his people in Jesus. Encouraging his people, bearing each other's burdens because we're going to go through a lot of difficult things in life.

To turn around and not have a family of God to be able to really lean on and when we go through those difficulties be able to turn to when we can't pay a mortgage, when we struggle with this, when we need help, when we get fired at work, to not be able to come and really lean on each other and bear the burdens together, then you're just playing church because it's like when we're kids and we're just playing house. Understand that this is the difference and I don't want to water it down because God put a lot of emphasis on this.

Guest (Male): That is Pastor Matt VanderVen on His Perfect Love. We're going through Revelation at the present time, and I'll remind you that you can hear the program again when you visit 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 will grow by his grace and love or even enter into a relationship with him.

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.

And then join us next time when Pastor Matt will pick up where we left off in Revelation here on His Perfect Love. His Perfect Love is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore.