Have you ever wondered, “What will Heaven be like?”

You know, as Christians, we’re surrounded by misconceptions about Heaven. For one, and this is an obvious one, there is a misconception in the world that there are many ways to get to heaven. Be a good person, and you’ll go to heaven. That couldn’t be further from the truth. You can’t be good enough to get to heaven. The only people who will get to heaven, are the people whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. We’ll see that tonight in [Revelation 21:27]: Nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Another misconception about Heaven is that we won’t have any work to do. That we’ll just float around in the clouds with harps, like an eternal beach vacation. Now that couldn’t be further from the truth either. Heaven is going to be better than a beach vacation, and we’re each going to have roles in serving the Kingdom. We’ll read tonight:

The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will worship Him.

-Revelation 22:3

Now there are five Greek different words the New Testament uses for worship. One word, προσκυνέω, is to bow down in worship. Another, σέβομαι, to show devotion, spending time alone with the Lord. Another word that’s used, λειτουργέω, is to minister or to teach. Another one, θρησκεία, is to observe God’s instructions for life, to live obediently. But this word, λατρεύω, is to worship by serving the Lord. We’ll all have roles in the New Heaven and the New Earth, and we’ll serve joyfully there, we’ll have purpose in serving the Lord. I’ll take this moment to point out that we have purpose in joyfully serving the Lord here on earth right now.

There are things you can do to worship through service right now. For one, if you’re musically inclined, come and serve on the worship team! There are also physical ways to serve in worship during service, whether that is in children’s ministry, helping set things up for service, take things down after service, running the slides for worship and preaching, greeting visitors, there are all sorts of ways to serve. Every time you have a gospel conversation, you’re serving the Lord. When we have park parties, jump on the grill, engage the community. This is a picture of Heaven. [Park Party Picture]

And a third misconception about Heaven, is that we’ll be eternally in some other dimension somewhere far off from here, some place completely different from this earth forever. We have a [picture] here of the coloring sheet we passed out for the whole family service. Not exactly accurate based on when we get into our text tonight. Now that’s a partly true conception when it comes to a Christian dying here on earth. To be absent of the body is to be present with the Lord. But that is not the final destination for the believer. We’ll be in the Third Heaven, that other dimension, or perhaps a physical place we just can’t see right now, until God establishes the New Heaven and the New Earth, and then Heaven and Earth will be combined into one, right here in this physical geographical earth we’re residing in today. We’ll look at this head on right when we get in to our text in Revelation 21, so take your Bibles and turn with me to Revelation chapter 21 and let’s get started.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.

-Revelation 21:1-2

More on the new Jerusalem when we get to verse 9, we’ll see what that’s like in detail, but do you notice that this holy city is coming down out of Heaven? Can you imagine what that will be like? The holy city from heaven, coming down out of heaven, from God.

Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God.

-Revelation 21:3

This is consistent with God’s covenant with Abraham from Genesis 17:7-8. That He will be our God and we will be His people. But this will be different in that ever since sin entered the world, God has resided in heaven. Now, God is residing with us here on earth. You know, I love this world. The splendor of the mountains, the beauty of the colors, the magnificence of the sunsets. In this world, we get these glimpses of what the new Heaven and the new earth will be like. But it goes the other way too. The grief, the crying, the pain we experience, those things are glimpses of hell, eternal separation from God. When this new Heaven and new earth are established, those painful things we experience, they all go away.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away. Then the one seated on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new.” He also said, “Write, because 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 freely give to the thirsty from the spring of the water of life. The one who conquers will inherit these things, and I will be his God, and he will be my son.

-Revelation 21:4-7

Now I want you to underline that word in your Bible, conquers. Do you remember that word from Revelation 2 & 3? “To the one who conquers…” 7 times, 7 promises. To the church in Ephesus: “To the one who conquers, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life.” To the church in Smyrna: “The one who conquers will never be harmed by the second death.” To the church in Pergamum: “The one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna.” Thyatira: “I will give him authority over the nations.” Sardis: “They will be dressed in white clothes.” Philadelphia: “I will make him a pillar in the temple of God.” Laodicea: “I will give the right to sit with me on my throne.”

How is it, that one conquers? We don’t have to deliberate this question, the Bible answers it for us. In fact, the Apostle John, same human author of Revelation, was given that answer in the book of 1 John:

“Who is the one who conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”

-1 John 5:5 CSB

Conquering is believing in Jesus. And in this life, you have two choices: either conquer, or get conquered! Look at verse 8:

But the cowards, faithless, detestable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars—their share will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” Hell is just as real as heaven. And remember from last week, that lake of fire means torment forever and ever.

-Revelation 21:8 CSB

You ever hear anyone say, “I just don’t like fire and brimstone preaching” Brimstone is another word some Bible translations use for sulfur, by the way. You ever go to Yellowstone, and you smell the sulfur from the geysers? What an awful smell. Hell will be an awful place. Jesus spoke about hell more than he spoke about Heaven in the Bible. Third time I’ve said this in this series from one pastor Adrian Rodgers, “Hell isn’t the reason you should become a Christian, but it is a reason.” It’s in the Bible, and it’s a reality we need to know about. But I want to point out the significance of the words in this verse. In the Greek text, cowards and faithless go together, they’re both adjectives in the Greek. To be a coward is to be faithless, to not have faith in Jesus Christ. Detestable is a verb. You could say, “having become detestable.” And these other words are nouns, describing the outcome of someone who has become detestable as a result of not having faith in Jesus Christ. Don’t let that be you! Follow Jesus!

Now do you remember when I said, we’ll come back to what that’s like when God lifts the new Jerusalem out of heaven and on to earth? That’s where we get to next.

Then one of the seven angels, who had held the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues, came and spoke with me: “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” He then carried me away in the Spirit, to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, arrayed with God’s glory. Her radiance was like a precious jewel, like a jasper stone, clear as crystal. The city had a massive high wall, with twelve gates. Twelve angels were at the gates; the names of the twelve tribes of Israel’s sons were inscribed on the gates. There were three gates on the east, three gates on the north, three gates on the south, and three gates on the west. The city wall had twelve foundations, and the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb were on the foundations.

-Revelation 21:9-14 CSB

Remember that the things you do on earth echo for eternity. In this case, the names of the patriarchs of Israel, and the names of the Apostles, are embroidered forever on this new Jerusalem. What will be your legacy? Because one day, if you’re in Christ, you’re going to be here. Conquer, or get conquered.

You know, a lot of people want to allegorize Revelation. To say that, well, everything here represents something, but it’s not literally what things will be like, it’s just a big metaphor for God’s big plan. I’m here to tell you that is not the right way to read this book. Sure, we’re not completely certain about some parts of the tribulation, between the flying scorpions and the swarms of locusts, but we know that each part presented in this book is telling us that the real thing is coming. And this new Heaven, coming out of the old Heaven, is gigantic.

The one who spoke with me had a golden measuring rod to measure the city, its gates, and its wall. 16 The city is laid out in a square; its length and width are the same. He measured the city with the rod at 12,000 stadia. Its length, width, and height are equal. Then he measured its wall, 144 cubits according to human measurement, which the angel used.

-Revelation 21:15 CSB

Picture that! It’s a gigantic cube, and we have its length, its width, and its height, in human measurement, literal measurement! Now a stadia was a Greek form of measurement, kind of like a mile like we use today. This system of measurement makes even less sense than our system of measurement, by the way, but the stadia was about 600 feet in today’s distance. In fact, it was the length of a famous Olympic race for ancient Greece. 12,000 stadia is about 1,400 miles. To put this in perspective, that’s almost 2,000,000 square miles. Think about the state of Texas, that’s pretty big, don’t you think? It takes 14 hours to drive from one side to the other without stopping. Texas is only 268,596 square miles. This will be essentially from the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, to the coast of California, and it’s as tall as it is wide! Over 600,000 stories tall! The tallest office building in Denver is 56 stories tall! This is unimaginable to the human brain.

The building material of its wall was jasper, and the city was pure gold clear as glass. The foundations of the city wall were adorned with every kind of jewel: the first foundation is jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. The twelve gates are twelve pearls; each individual gate was made of a single pearl. The main street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass.

-Revelation 21:18-21 CSB

And it’s adorned with all different types of precious stones. These stones echo the stones of the high priest’s breastplate from the Old Testament. God is consistent. He is unchangeable. In this new Heaven, we see the collision of all of God’s people, the tribes of Israel and the church, here to dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

You ever hear anyone say “Church is God’s house.” That’s not a biblically accurate statement. The Bible refers to the church as being God’s household, but never that a church building would be God’s house. We’re all members of His household, and we need a place to gather, so we need to have a building, practically speaking, but the church building is not God’s house. This 2.75 billion cubic mile metropolis, that is God’s house.

I did not see a temple in it, because the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, because the glory of God illuminates it, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it., Its gates will never close by day because it will never be night there. They will bring the glory and honor of the nations into it., Nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those written in the Lamb’s book of life.

-Revelation 21:22-27

Now before we go on to the final chapter of Revelation, I want to ask you an important question. Is your name written in the Lamb’s book of life? It’s a yes or a no answer. And if your answer is yes, I want to ask you to pray for someone you know whose name is not. And if your name is not written in the Lamb's book of life, it's simple to have it! Surrender to Jesus.

Then he showed me the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the city’s main street. The tree of life was on each side of the river, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree are for healing the nations, and there will no longer be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 Night will be no more; people will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, because the Lord God will give them light, and they will reign forever and ever.

Then he said to me, “These words are faithful and true. The Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.”

“Look, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.”

I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. When I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who had shown them to me. But he said to me, “Don’t do that! I am a fellow servant with you, your brothers the prophets, and those who keep the words of this book. Worship God!”

Then he said to me, “Don’t seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, because the time is near. Let the unrighteous go on in unrighteousness; let the filthy still be filthy; let the righteous go on in righteousness; let the holy still be holy.”

“Look, I am coming soon, and my reward is with me to repay each person according to his work. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.

“Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to attest these things to you for the churches. I am the Root and descendant of David, the bright morning star.”

Both the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” Let anyone who hears, say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come. Let the one who desires take the water of life freely.

I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share of the tree of life and the holy city, which are written about in this book.

He who testifies about these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.”

Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with everyone. Amen.

-Revelation 22:1-21

Now as we step in to communion, I want to ask you this question:

How are you living like Jesus is coming soon?