Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): We're getting a peek into heaven with Pastor Bill Lubkeman, next on Hope from the Word.

Bill Luebkemann: It would seem to be a place where the light from the Lord penetrates anywhere and everywhere, you know? There's no dark corners, there's no back alleys, there's no hidden places where secret things are done, there's no closets. The light of God is everywhere. No need to go into a room and switch the light on. The light of God penetrates everywhere.

Guest (Male): Calvary Chapel of Marlton presents Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Lubkeman. Today we take another look at the new heaven and earth prepared by God. We've been looking at Revelation 21 and discovering what the Apostle John saw when Jesus allowed him a glimpse at heaven. Some people worry that they will be bored or get tired of heaven. Impossible. John describes a place more wonderful than we could imagine. Let's go ahead and get started, shall we? Here's Pastor Bill with more about this glorious city that believers have to look forward to.

Bill Luebkemann: So this city had a great wall around it and it was as long as it was wide and as it was high. And there was 12 gates on this wall here, three on each side. And each gate had the name of one of the tribes of Israel on it. Look, the wall's not needed for defense. There's no more enemies. They don't even lock the gates. They don't even I don't know if the hinges even work. I went to Wawa once. It was like Christmas Eve. They had a sign they were closing at 11:00 Christmas Eve, right?

They weren't open again the next morning at 7:00. And I said, you know, do you guys know where the keys are so you can lock the door here because you never close here? And the the manager said, actually we took us quite a while to figure out where the keys were. Well, these keys, they're not going to know where the key ring is in heaven because they're not going to need to use it because there's no enemies, there's nothing to defend yourself against. There's never any nighttime when we have to close up because that's when the enemies will come.

But what this does do is remind us that having this wall and these gates and these angels reminds us there's a perimeter to it and it reminds us some are not able to enter. Angels guarding the gates. Are they guards or are they really welcoming angels? Welcoming people in. I don't really think it's their job to keep people out because the people who are out are in the lake of fire. They're not in any position to be coming to the gate. So I I rather vote cast my vote for the fact that these angels were more like a welcoming committee.

Notice it doesn't mention anything about Peter, by the way, manning any of these gates. Everyone talks about Peter and the pearly gates. In a minute we're going to see where the pearly gates comes from, but there's 12 of them. It's not just, you know, one gate. And so 12 angels, 12 gates, maybe the angels work shift work, who knows? But the 12 tribes, their names were written on the gates. So we're reminded God's not done with Israel yet. Some people would have you believe, you know, God's done with Israel, they lost their chance. Uh now the church is now spiritually Israel.

That's baloney. God is not done with Israel yet and never will be. They're his chosen people forever, even in eternity. So we also see though that the church in some way is united with Israel because it is the church itself that is the bride of Christ and somehow God's plan includes bringing Israel in as well. And these names of these tribes were written on those gates and there were also what we said, there was three gates on each side, northeast, west, and south. So apparently heaven has directions. But we're reminded back in Numbers chapter two when the when Moses set up the tabernacle out in the desert, they were camped on the four sides of the tabernacle, certain tribes to the north, certain ones to the east, west, and south.

Maybe it's the same orientation here, maybe not. Different people have tried to figure out what this means. I'm not going to bother. There's there's three on each side and the names of the tribes are on them and that's good enough for me. I think it also you see some symbolism here. This city is open to everyone. There's gates on every side from anywhere in the world, from every country, nation, language, and people. The city of heaven is open to everyone. All may come from every direction and will come from every direction if they accept Christ as their savior.

In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free. Everyone is the same. And the work of the 12 Apostles permanently remembered here in heaven. Look, the wall of the city had 12 foundations and on them were the names of the 12 Apostles of the Lamb. Look, doesn't say who the 12th Apostle was either. Was it Matthias who you never heard about again? Was it Paul? You know, well, I won't tell you where I cast my vote, but Ephesians two verse 19 and 20, consequently you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, verse 20, built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

This is referring to the fact that the Apostles were the ones that basically met Jesus, walked with him, learned from him, and wrote it down so we could learn it. This is the foundation of the Apostles. And we'll see that the teaching that the Apostles have given us, which has been handed down, written down, and conveniently bound together in this book here, that's the foundation for what our whole belief is on. If we didn't have this Bible, we wouldn't be sitting here today. You wouldn't know me and I wouldn't know you and we'd be off doing something different.

The work of the Apostles was so important that that their names recorded on the 12 foundations of heaven. Now I don't know if they were stacked up foundations, 12 on top of each other with the labels of the names or if maybe different parts of heaven had different foundations. Somebody said maybe there was three foundations on each side. Underneath each gate was a different foundation. You can go wherever you want with that. I 'm not sure anywhere we go with it would be good enough. You know, there are people today that say their Apostles, not in any Calvary Chapels by the way, but there are people today claim to be Apostle.

Let's look at let's look at what the qualifications for an Apostle are uh in case you are wondering and you can if anybody if you ever go to a church and they say well, we we have Apostles here, well, here's the qualifications, Acts chapter two versus uh Acts chapter one 21 and 22. I had the verses right, but the chapter wrong. Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us. Beginning from John's baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us.

For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection. Apostles were witnesses. And when Judas did his thing and hanged himself um they said well, Peter said here, here's what the requirement is. We're going to have to select someone else, somebody who was with us the whole time from the very beginning, John's baptism, all the way through the ministry of the time Jesus was taken up from us, somebody who saw the whole thing firsthand. And well, they picked Matthias. Now well, how does that make Paul an Apostle? Well, Paul had an encounter with the Lord on that road to Damascus.

Paul had an encounter. Paul was with the Lord personally in in person on that road. Now some people today they'll say well, we're Apostles, we had an encounter like that. Well, that's nice. That's a bunch of baloney too. I don't believe that. Um there were 12 Apostles and they're and those 12 Apostles are the 12 foundations here or their names are the 12 foundations of heaven. And they're they brought us the teaching and the doctrine. Now there might be people today who plant churches, who go places, who start up missions groups, plant churches in different places.

They might have a ministry similar to what the Apostles did. But they better not be writing scripture, adding to the Bible more chapters and more books because the real Apostles gave us the doctrine that we follow today, that we know and through which we can be assured of our salvation. Verse 15, the angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates, and its walls. The city was laid out like a square as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 furlongs in length and as wide and high as it is long.

He measured its wall and it was 144 cubits thick by man's measurement which the angel was using. Look, the size here um the the first thing I want to say is this angel had a measuring rod and for him to measure something with a rod 1,500 miles long must have taken a little while. Anybody want to volunteer for that job? 1,500 miles, we're going to measure it with a yardstick. I mean have I mean this this was maybe this was a really long rod, something that we can't picture here. But this angel was with John and of course the angel could have already known what the dimensions of the city were, but he wanted to demonstrate it to John.

So he measured it 12,000 furlong. It was laid out like a square as long as it was wide and as high, the same, 12,000 furlong, 12,000 stadia in the Greek, approximately an eighth of a mile. This works out to be 1,500 miles on the side, roughly the distance from Maine to Florida. Draw a line from Maine to Florida. That's about 1,500 miles. Now go over to like West Texas from Florida and then go up into Canada and back to Maine. That's roughly the area that we're dealing with, 1,500 by 1,500 miles. If you multiply that, you get the 225 and four zeros.

So you get 2.25 million square miles in this city. But there's it's better than that because it's as high as it is long and wide. So now we're talking volume here. So you have to multiply 1,500 by 1,500 by 1,500. So you have to multiply 2.25 million by 1,500 and that's somewhere around three and a half billion cubic miles. We're talking about a very large space here. Imagine from Maine to Florida to Texas to Canada back and as high as that area is. Somebody calculated and I checked these numbers, but I didn't write them down and bring them in with me, but I took the 3.

whatever it was billion cubic miles and I figured well, each cubic mile is square feet, 5280 by 5280 by 5280. And I then I divided it all out. Somebody figured out if there was 100 billion people that lived on the earth and if 20% of them were saved and so 20 billion people were in heaven and if just um one quarter of heaven was set aside for us to live in, the rest of it being the public parks and where God lives and stuff. If just if just 20 billion people were sharing one quarter of heaven, everybody would get a cubic volume, 75 acres on a side.

Like you'd have a piece of ground 75 acres and and the ceiling, the walls would be 75 acres. That's how much space you would have. Imagine a 75 acre plot as high as it was wide, your little cube in there for each person. Somebody who says, you know, heaven's going to be crowded, that's not true at all. And this is all just with words. He's trying to describe something here with words that can't be put into writing. It's a very very large place. I worked it all out and I I confirmed the 75 acre was approximately.

I come up with like 81 acres. So we're talking about lots of room in heaven here. There's there's a lot of volume in this place here. And the Holy of Holies, you know, in the tabernacle when Moses made the tabernacle, the in the innermost place, the Holy of Holies, it was a cube 10 ft by 10 ft by 10 ft, right? The wings of the angels each were 5 ft. They were touching in the middle. They were each touching a wall. It was 10 ft wide, 10 ft and 10 ft. When the temple was built, when Solomon built the temple, I'm pretty sure the dimensions of the Holy of Holies in the temple were 20 ft cubed.

So we see the the tabernacle and the temple were just in some way a picture of what heaven is like. And the walls, look how thick they are, 144 cubits. A cubit's about a foot and a half. So you're talking about 216 ft thick the wall. Whoever saw a wall 216 ft, that's like from here to Main Street or something, more than two thirds of the length of a football field. The wall was made of jasper and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone.

The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth cornelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the 10th chrysoprase, the 11th jacinth, and the 12th amethyst. The 12 gates were 12 pearls. Each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of pure gold like transparent glass. Look, for jasper here, the wall being made of jasper um you can go back up to verse 11 where it said the city shone with with a brilliance like that of a precious jewel like a jasper, clear as crystal.

So we're talking about a wall that is a jewel that is made of a precious stone that's 100 216 ft thick and it's as clear as crystal, pretty amazing. And it doesn't just say that the streets were made of gold, by the way, it says the whole city is made of gold and not just any gold, pure gold, as clear as glass. No Windex is needed. It's the purest possible form of gold. It would seem to be a place where the light from the Lord penetrates anywhere and everywhere, you know? There's no dark corners, there 's no back alleys, there's no hidden places where secret things are done, there's no closets.

The light of God is everywhere. No need to go into a room and switch the light on. The light of God penetrates everywhere. It reminds me of the guy that got up to heaven and he was trying to get in past Peter here. We just read really isn't standing there at the gates, but so for the benefit of the joke you'll have to go along with it and he said, I got this suitcase I want to bring with me and Peter said, oh, you know, you're not allowed to bring anything with you. Well, this is very important and uh I wondered if you can make an exception.

It's very important. I spent a long time acquiring this. I really have to get it in and Peter said well, you know, it's just not permitted and the guy said well, you know, you think you could wave the rule this one time and Peter said, well, let me see what's in your suitcase and he opened it up and gold bars. And Peter said, you want to bring asphalt into heaven? Paving material? We spend our whole lives trying to get stuff and acquire stuff and have more stuff. And he who dies with the most stuff still dies.

And you can't take your stuff with you. And it you know, you wouldn't want to. It would probably melt or crumble or fall apart in heaven. Uh who knows? The molecular structure, it's probably completely different. Maybe it's all made out of antimatter and if you try to bring something in, it will blow up. Who knows? But why would we want to do that when when we can see here everything we need is there already and Jesus said, I go to prepare a place for you. So when you get here, you know, your place will be ready.

But yeah, we struggle and and and try to to get more stuff only to not be able to take it with us. The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone and it lists them all here. We saw earlier there were 12 foundations with the names of the Apostles written on them. Uh possibly maybe each of the Apostles had his own stone assigned to him. You know, one Apostle was chrysolite and one was that's not crystal light, by the way, that's chrysolite. And one was topaz and one was amethyst. I ripped that joke off from Joe Foash, give him credit.

We're not we're talking about something of enormous brilliance here and beauty and light. We're not talking about a gaudy waste of money like you might see somebody overdoes it today with a a mansion. You know, somebody let's say, for example, who's an environmentalist that says we should save energy, but their mansion uses 20 times more energy than your house does to light it all up and everything. I won't mention names, but not all of these stone names mean the same thing today either. So we don't really know for sure what each one of them are.

Some of them maybe, but we're not talking about a waste of money here, but rather we're talking about something that shows forth the glory of God. This is all about his glory. That's not something we acquired or we could get, we could say how great that is. This is God's glory being manifest and coming forth from it. And it's something that words alone can't get the job done with. And the 12 gates were made each made each was made out of a pearl. The 12 gates were 12 pearls. It doesn't say they were made out of pearls.

Each gate was a pearl. The 12 gates were 12 pearls. Each gate made of a single pearl. Now all I have can say about that is these are I'd like to see what kind of oysters they have up there. Man, Michael Cooper has a thing on his back of his truck, Reclaim the Bay. They're they're trying to to get more clams out in the Bay down there and that's great. Okay, cuz I like clam chowder. I hope they get a lot of those, but I'd like to see them put some of these oysters out in that Bay there.

The thing wouldn't fit. 12 gates, each gate a single pearl. Now how big is the gate? We already saw the wall is 1500 ft high or 1500 miles high and wide. 1500 miles, three gates. Is it just as tall as you are? Is it 50 ft tall? Is it 100 ft tall? Is it a mile tall? How how do you enter the upper levels of heaven? Does the gate reach to the top? Man, we we could be talking some really enormous oysters here, good seafood in heaven. But we can see a representation here, by the way, of Christ as the pearl of great price.

He is the way, the truth, and the life. And there's the great street of the city and that's made of pure gold, so pure it looks like transparent glass. And I did not see a temple in the city because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it for the glory of God gives it light and the Lamb is its lamp. Look, you know, you travel around the country today and every city you go to has a a temple or a church, you know, or a synagogue or or some place where people go and worship God.

If if they're Christians, they're worshiping the real God. If they're not, then who knows what they're doing. But you travel around the country today and everywhere there's places where people worship God. Some some towns down south have a church on almost every street corner, I think. Imagine a place with no churches, no temple. An atheist might say, hey, that's my kind of place, but he'd be disappointed because the whole entire place exudes the presence of God. It's a place where the Lord is present in person. You can see and talk to him. You know, I have a disagreement with you.

Let's go talk to God and find out what the answer is. Find out who's who's right. You don't need to go to church to worship him anymore because he's living there with you. There's no need to have a special place set aside for worship and prayer, you know, so to speak as church services are all about. That's what all of heaven is all about. The whole place is God's temple because he's there in person. It's not that the temple's gone been done away with, rather it's been expanded. The whole city is holy. And you know, at the temple they made sacrifices.

They the Jews would go to the temple, offer sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. It was a means to an end, you know, get the sins forgiven so that they could be spend eternity with God. Today we know our sins are forgiven through the offering of Jesus Christ. As I said at the beginning of the message, we don't need a means to an end when you've achieved the end. You go through college, you figure out how am I going to get into college? How am I going to pass these courses? How am I going to pay for it?

You know, am I going to make it through? Am I going to survive this experience? And when you get the degree at the end, you know, you no longer have to worry about those things. You may still have to pay off your bills, but you get the degree, all those things fall behind. You don't need to worry anymore about passing the SAT, you know, and do getting a good score on this or that or keeping the teachers happy, you know, because you've achieved the end. And that's what this city is like. And we don't need the means to the end because we're at the The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it for the glory of God gives it light and the Lamb is its lamp.

Look, you don't like you don't like candles at a picnic in the summertime. And if you did, if you were out there in your backyard at your pool on a nice sunny day with grilling hamburgers and you lit some candles from a distance you wouldn't even be able to see they were lit because the sun would overwhelm them. The amount of light given off by the sun is so much greater. And if that seems like an exaggeration, it's not. It's quite the opposite because we can't we just can't imagine the brightness of heaven, the glory of God, that there's going to be the contrast even more than we imagine, I'm sure.

The nations will walk by its light and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. 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. We see there's going to be lots of people there from all different nations. The nations will walk by its light. So everybody's welcome from the northeast, west, and south.

It doesn't matter their background, their color, you know, or anything. What matters is have they accepted Christ. All people who put their faith and trust in him and whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life will be there.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope from the Word. We're currently in a through the Bible series. You can hear this message or more Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Lubkeman by going to ccmarlton.org or wherever you find your podcasts. Pastor Bill's messages can also be found by downloading the Hope FM app on your smartphone or tablet. And finally, if you'd like a CD copy of the message, please call 856 983 1662. Again, that's 856 983 1662. We'd love to have you join us at Calvary Chapel of Marlton either in person or online. Our Sunday service begins at 10:00 a.m.

and there's a Wednesday evening service at 7:00. To catch us online you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton or just go to our website for the link at ccmarlton.org. And if you'd take a moment to write to Pastor Bill, it would be such a blessing to us. We're thankful each and every time we hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives and we want to pray for you too. Either email us through the website at ccmarlton.org or call 856 983 1662. We'll continue our through the Bible series next time on Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Lubkeman, a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.