Heaven and Light

Have your Bibles with you, and I truly think you would Revelation chapter 21. Look at verses 22 through 27 this morning and also no temple in the city for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb and the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it for the glory of God gives it light and its lamp is the Lamb, by its light will the nations walk the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it and its gates will never be shut by day there will be no night there.

They will bring it into the glory and honor of the nations but nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life is good.

Our Lord in prayer.

Heavenly father, we are studying heaven again all Jesus that we long for it. We hunger to see you face-to-face.

We long to touch her nail scarred hands. We want to behold your glory. We desire to have this sin nature eradicated so there will be no obstacles hindering our fellowship with you. This passage of Scripture focuses on light father. Your light is glorious. It reveals and purifies and exposes sin on earth, but heaven. It creates joy and illuminates who you truly are. This passage also deals with the glory of diversity you did make us all alike.

We have different gifts different skin color, different backgrounds, we come from different cultures. Those things cause division and the secular world they create unity in the church, not just in heaven but right now heavenly father open the word of God to us today. Help me preach as a dying man to dying people may Jesus be exalted by this congregation beatified keep my lips from arrow 40 is the holy and precious name of Jesus that we pray. Amen. You may be seated.

Several weeks ago when I was preaching on the subject of hail. I spent a great deal of time talking about the horror of darkness and that last week I mentioned this again folks darkness inhale care is a darkness that can be failed is a darkness that grips the soul is a darkness that that goes into the deep recesses of the heart of those that are inhale is a darkness that creates anxiety and fear and trepidation several years ago there was a movie starring Audrey Hepburn and Richard Crenna called white until dark. I saw what I was a teenager. So it goes way back.

But it was an interesting interesting movie. Audrey Hepburn played a blind lady and in this particular movie. There was a man that had was a serial killer and he had just came from the prison and somehow worked his way down into the neighborhood where this apartment was, and somehow I got into the apartment building or a radio message came across saying that this man had been escaped from prison and that he was in that particular neighborhood. When Audrey Hepburn, the blind lady heard about this. It absolutely scared her to death. Just feel her heart with care.

Well the the serial killer was down in the lobby of that apartment building hurt. Some people are just talking and overheard a conversation about this beautiful blonde blind lady that was in this particular apartment as he went up on her floor fan that exactly where the apartment was waited for her to open the door and when she opened the door or when she opened the door he slipped right in the rest of the movie is about the terror that this woman experienced as she was doing everything she could to to keep away from this guy to keep him from just absolutely destroying in her here. She was a woman that could not see that was in complete darkness in her greatest fear was the unknown, where was C.

Where could she hide it if he called her what was he going to do to her. All that was going on and on in her mind and when I was a kid I saw a lot of horror movies and most of them were supposed to be frightening and that most of them were not but I'll tell you this one was different that this woman's terror you could actually feel if you were watching that movie I got on Wikipedia while back, looked up the movie found out it came out in 1967 and that it had been voted number 10's on bravos scariest movie moments. It was that that one scene was particularly scary when I put myself in that blind lady shoes and I feel her her terror. Then I take that multiplied by a million times that I have a little glimpse into what the darkness of hail will be like books, the darkness of hail will be. I had a darkness that we can feel are not we a darkness that they can feel that it'll be a darkness or they can be that can be failed, a darkness, that that is absolutely fear inducing, terrorizing, and soul gripping as we get the last verses. Revelation 21 we come to find out that heaven will be the exact opposite. In heaven there will be no fear for there will be no darkness. My mama used to have terrible but migraine headaches and when she would get a headache that she couldn't stand being around the light and so she would make our house just as dark as absolutely possible to close all of the blinds put curtains up. She put the just put the drapes together cut off all the lights. Our house was dark about a friend of mine from high school up into the house one day and we came in from the bright sun and it was it was very dark in that house and immediately in the went to the living room any tripped over a chair and scraped his day and he got terribly aggravated decent man turn some lights on around here.

He said that this place is always like a dungeon, but I want you to know that heaven will never be done. Ginny heaven will be resplendent glorious light that will do something, even to the soul have glories that will be books. What about darkness that we need for sleep.

What about when it's bedtime.

We needed to get dark so we can sleep well when we clear that up right quick and heaven there is no connection ever made was sleep. Some hundred 21 verse four tells us that the Lord never slumbers nor sleep. In heaven we will not either. We won't slumbers sleep.

In heaven we won't need it for our bodies will be absolutely perfected and will not need replenishing. And so for those of you who are catnap first and love to sleep. You just have to get over it because your desire for sleep is going to be gone finally break down this passage, the six points only share with you.

Number one. The new temple. Look at verse 22. Unless all the temple in the city for the temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb for Christian to essentially study the Scripture and who have delved into the symbolism of the tabernacle and the temple gone into churches and sing beautiful altars and and beautiful gorgeous stained glass windows, or maybe have taken a trip to Western Europe and have gone in some of the great cathedrals and basilicas. When you hear the idea that there is no more. There's no temple in heaven.

It had a shot. She and you say no template heaven, why not why in their temple there is no need for a temple provokes the tabernacle of temple were places where the presence of God would meet with the people of God, all of its symbols, all of its pictures, all of its types are pointing us to one thing and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.

In heaven we will need the temple because we will have the reality. In heaven we will be right there with Jesus Christ himself person to person face-to-face. We will be able to see the nail prints in his hands will be able to talk with him face-to-face. We will be with the omnipresent God, and there will be no place in heaven where God is not in heaven there will be no longer any need for buildings or altars or communion tables or baptismal fonts to represent God's presence and glory because Almighty God is literally and directly accessible to every inhabitant of this place that we call heaven.

Joel Vicki said the following to Dr. RC Sproul had a sickly father as a young man, he often had to help his father walked to the dinner table after his father died.

Dr. scroll told me that he often dreamed of his father in his needy condition, but one night he dreamed that he and his father were in heaven. His father had no more infirmities, but was fully energized in his dream. Dr. scroll said to his father. Dad take me to where I can see the glory and his father said he and son.

It is all glory is all glory. That is why there is no temple because all his temple shared with you a couple weeks ago that I love my wife and when I have to travel in and gone and not with her for a day or two. I take her picture in my billfold during the day all take it out just look at it and when I get home I put that picture back. I don't take it out any longer and longer and while not because when I get back home. I have the reality. I don't have don't need the picture.

I can't hug a picture I can't kiss and talk to the picture, but when I have seen the I have the reality and we can communicate at a whole lot better.

That's a whole lot better than the picture. Jesus said it this way in John 14. Three. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am there.

You may be also.

I guess we could say it this way in heaven. There's a church that there is no building and that's true here on earth. The church is not the building.

The church is the people of God, how important it is. But some of the most powerful worship experiences that I've ever had been done outside of the church building. I was so experiencing one particular time in a barn. It was out in the boondocks and it was freezing cold.

There was no heat. I was with a Romanian church that was undergrad and underground church and we were they are and and there was the reading of Scripture, there was the preaching of the word of God that there was the partaking of the Lord's supper. There was the singing of hymns was taking up of an offering only taste something Jesus was there. You say in a barn yeah in a barn. It didn't matter. The church was thus not the building. Don't get me wrong I love our building here. I think it's functional things pretty and it's warm in the winter. It's cool in the in the summer. I love this building, but it if this building was demolished, we'd still be the church we could get on top of that rubble and steel. The, the church folks when we leave this building. The presence of the Holy Spirit leads with us the conscious presence of Christ does not reside in the building, like it did in the old covenant when it was in the temple or the tabernacle we leave the building today and and go home.

The Holy Spirit will not stay here and wait for us to come back next Sunday.

He will go with us. Dr. Douglas Kelly said the following about verse 22.

He said in the fullest sense God and the Lamb are the temple there presence of the bonds of the Holy Spirit makes that place full of sacred joy in life. Another way of looking at it would be to say that the whole city itself. The new Jerusalem, all the redeemed people of God are also part of the temple, the holy of holies in Solomon's Temple was structured in the shape of the cube. We have seen that acuity was the most perfect architectural form.

John describes the new Jerusalem of the new church in the glory rail is being cube the most beautiful shape to the ancient mind in a sense, all believers are sharing in the body of Christ help to form that temple which the Lord feels constantly with his overflowing thrilling love. Believers in that place are never outside the Lord blessed immediate presence and all that it means one of the glorious meanings of verse 22 is that there be no more sad goodbyes never again separated from our Christian loved ones. This in Revelation 312 that speak to that very issue and read this in the new King James version nothing it says it better is that he who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of my God, in the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God and I will write on him my new name.

The phrase that I want you to focus it on there is this, he shall go out no more. This is a wonderful promise. This is a family reunion. If you ever been to a family reunion in and you just there's people there relatives chancing a long time and you've missed him and you just so enjoy the fellowship that you're having with him. Finally that day comes to an end. He got will even you just wish he didn't have to go in heaven we will never have to go in heaven we will never be separated from Christ or from our loved ones again. What you think of the father who is at home and is get ready go to work. He gets his last sip of coffee, kisses his wife goodbye. The kids are grabbing at his pants leg cleaning on his pants leg begging dad, don't go don't go stay here. He knows he can't do that. He's gonna go to war. Gonna put food on the table got I got empty bellies that need to be field. He's got mortgages need to be paid is gotta go to work and many mothers have talk to you over the years and had to to work to supplement the income or maybe their single mothers and it's just tough it got no way around it and so they take their kids to the daycare and all the way to the daycare.

The kids cry and then she dropped the kids off and that all the waste from the daycare to work. She cries for think of burying a blood relative. You go out to the right side and the pastors. Larry opens his Bible.

He reads the Scripture and share some encouraging words with the other people over. They are the family and the friends and in any way praise them one by one, the friends begin to leave, they walk out of the car and they go and then he the family or source to layer and there that the people that are there with the shovels are waiting for you to go to so they can lower that casket down into the grave so they can cover it back over with dirt bikes in heaven, they shall go out no more men.

The holy city, us believers are part of the temple. Now why is that. Look at verse 22 again and I saw another tipple in the city for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are we part of Christ. Yes, you are the body of Christ. That's who we are.

But Jesus said that I am the vine and you are the branches. Jesus told us to abide in him and think of all the times that we read to the New Testament, we see that little two term two word term in Christ in Christ in Christ over and over again in Ephesians 221 to 22 it says this and then the whole structure being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

In him you also are built together into a dwelling place for God by the spirit of God and the Lamb are the temple, but yet he bills his people into union with their Lord and with their Savior making us the dwelling place of God.

I .2 no sun or moon verse 23 and the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it for the glory of God gives it light and its its lamp is the Lamb CS Lewis used to say, the sun, moon and stars have an important natural purpose for the human race. They provide heat, light, and endure and gravity pull they are they are to control the tides in the oceans. The stars are there to give directional guidance, but Lewis said you know he said these are not the major purposes for the sun, moon and stars. The major purposes is much, much deeper than that. He said the major purpose is to is for the sun, moon and the stars to point us over and and beyond into the future to the star maker who will shine his precious light on his people.

For John 15 says God is light and in him is no darkness at all. Then say that God has liked and say that God contains light then say that God gives licenses that God is light and important. That is God is light and in him is no darkness at all that do something to your soul that do it. Is that just, send shivers up and down your spine when you when you hear that is sometimes when I'm talking to a person that disagrees with me on what I believe about creation and were talking and I believe that the earth was created in six literal days. 624 literal 24 hour days and I so will.

That's not what I believe I shall believe the days represent long periods of time, perhaps millions or billions of years and then they'll say you know at, say, the sun wasn't even created until the fourth day so that means that the first second third day would not have an evening and a morning, and so if you have no son, you can have an evening or morning S&S that's not right that's absolutely wrong and I so why's that I said well to have an evening and morning, you don't need a son. You need a rotating earth and directed light invokes God is light and that first day, the second day the third day of creation, God directed his light, then to a rotating earth. The earth rotated in a 24 hour. Just like it does now and from morning to evening was one day and that was a 24 hour literal day God's light is glorious powerful purifying and cleansing human when Moses went up on Mount Sinai to receive the 10 Commandments of God. He got up there.

God made the two stone tablets. God wrote the commandments out by his own finger. He gave the good of the stone tablets to Moses. Moses carried the back down the mountain something else happen while Moses was there. Moses was in the presence of the Shekinah glory of God. The bright shining presence of God so powerful that it altered Moses countenance and when Moses went back down the mountain. He didn't realize it but the people saw it and they were absolutely frightened to death of what the Shekinah glory had done to Moses face brightened it, purified it while Exodus 3429 3030 says this when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain. Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God, Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses and the whole the skin of his face shone and they were afraid to come. Nearing, but that is the power of God's light.

In heaven we will need no son, no moon, no light, no artificial artificial light. It all. We won't need that for God is light and is light cleans and it purifies and it brightens on earth.

Jesus said that that people loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. In heaven we will hate darkness and love, light, because our sins will be washed away and we will have nothing to hide. 1.3 is glorious diversity. Look at verse 24 box light will the nations walk in the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. The Lord will be honored and glorified through our differences several months before this pandemic hit was just looking out over a convert congregation and I started thinking about where different people came from to get here at Grace and it was very interesting came from England from Harrisburg from Alabama, California, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, the Congo, Ukraine, Germany, China, Vietnam, Belize, Mexico, Mongolia, Nigeria, and I might've missed some folks I saw Blacks and whites.

Reds, yellows and browns and I thought to myself praising God. This looks like heaven. That's what heaven is going to look like hay in heaven. The electoral stand before God from every tribe, kindred tongue and nation and we will have the same color the same ethnicity that we had when we were here on this earth. And God will be glorified through our diversity and through our unity.

Must have a Grace Church. It didn't matter what color you are, what matters is that we are one and the only color that's important is the color red and that color red is the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that washes away the sin of the black man in the white man in the red man in the yellow man and the brown man have glorious and how wonderful that is which culture which race which ethnicity has booked the worship that is most pleasing to God. None of them, and yet all of them. It's the entire plethora of races, cultures, and ethnicity mingled together mingled together, praising God and washed in the blood of the Lamb that brings Christ the greatest amount of glory what we have in common the black Christians in the white Christians the Arab Christians of Jewish Christians, the Russian Christians. Ukrainian Christians, the, the Chinese Christians.

The Mongolian Christians the Nigerian Christians usually got in, two things.

Number once we have seen in common. We've all seen the come short of the glory of God.

Number two, we have salvation and, if you're Christian you have been washed in the blood of the Lamb of worshiped a lot of different places of worship, Harrisburg, Minnesota and Virginia and Orlando, Abbeville, South Carolina, and Germany and Israel in Romania and Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and Austria, South Africa, Kenya, Mullally, Canada Jordan, Belmont, Clemson, Belize, Charlotte and Craig Moore which one is best.

All of them are for Jesus is glorified when our diversity promotes unity not conformity, but unity was watching television over the last few days watching the news and a been watching the riots are taking place all over the United States and Ives just seen the horror of the things that are happening all the people are there being hurt and I had asked myself the question, what is the answer for all this in the answer is Christ. Christ is the answer brothers and sisters answer to racial, ethnic, and cultural strife in this world is Jesus. Jesus brings black-and-white together. Jesus brings Arab and Jew together. Jesus brings the Ukrainian and the Russian together. Jesus tears down the just the horrible things of hatred and discrimination and racism were my favorite movies is a Civil War movie glory. It's a movie about a black regiment in Massachusetts that is fighting for the for the union.

They have a quite general's name is Gen. Shaw is played in the movie by Matthew Brodrick and Denzil Washington played a black private in that movie and there's one scene where the general has to tell his is regiment that some news has come in and so he says to the regimen. I'm sorry to tell you this but he says the the black regiment has just got received a pay cut in your pay is going to drop from $13 a month to $10 a month and none of the white regiments had a pay cut. All of them stayed the same. Will Denzil Washington was not a happy camper when he heard that Annie took his up a voucher and he held it up and he screamed out to do his whole regiment. He said we are fighting for the same country. We are being shot by the same bullets and he said we we are dying just like the white soldiers are dying and he held his his voucher up once again and he screamed out and said this tyrant up pizza just tear it up if we can't get equal pay, then will take no pay carrot up and all of a sudden there was all this noise begin to rise up from that particular regiment and then all of a sudden it was the noise was was broken as the general shot his pistol into the air.

Everything got quiet and Gen. Shaw looked out over that that regiment of Blacks and he said to them, if you men will not take pay, then we will not take pay. We will not take pay.

We stand with you and the whole regiment began to scream out in unison carrot up tear it up tear it up and from that point on the whites and the Blacks in that regiment were one. They were absolutely united brothers and sisters that will be our testimony in heaven. We don't need to see any color in heaven and we won't see any color in heaven, but red and that red is the precious blood of Jesus that washed away our sins that all of the our testimony in heaven and it will be but it all to be our testimony right now. Take our racism in our prejudice and our stinking pride and tear it up puts there's no room for racism in the Christian faith. Absolutely no room for it.

We are all equal. At the foot of the cross. We are all equal and we will rejoice in the diversity that God gives us in heaven that rupture for the wrong way. Then turn a cat around. I'm sorry but tear it up. Praise God tear it up high point for open gates. Look at verse 25 and its gates will never be shut by day and there will be no night there when I was a kid we go to the store in our car and and my dad mom with always leave the car doors that we go in the store come back when we go to sleep at night. We never locked the doors ever.

When I was a teenager or young teenager had a paper route and the early morning paper route and I would ride my bicycle at 330 4 o'clock in the Morning Down Wilson Blvd. in West Charlotte and we picked up our papers at a little barbershop right off Wilkinson Boulevard. A lot of times I get there. The papers would get there yet and so I just lay down on the sidewalk of the awning that barbershop go to sleep and the of the papers would come and they throw him down and wake me up. I get up, go now, would I be that carefree today. Not hardly. The folks today. People will steal your car there break into your home. If you rely on the sidewalk and in West Charlotte today you you very well might get robbed or or you might get killed so so why do we not do those things today.

We don't do those things today because of fear.

I want you to know in heaven we won't have to worry about that any longer for. In heaven there will be no evil thing that will come in. That will come into our present no thing that can get into that gate.

Even the evil one will be gone for he will be suffering in a burning like a fire, never to be seen by us ever, ever again. Who's in heaven Trieu God. The elect angels and every child of God, who is ever lived. Every child of God is Everly of and we will all have a sin nature that is been absolutely totally eradicated. I shared with you last week that the open gates met unbroken access to God's presence and that will be glorious. We take it mean something else to the gates wide open me no more fear. The Scripture says here, there will be no more night will have nothing to fear for there will be no darkness.

God's light will shine into every crevice of heaven in the way nothing but light and joy .5 the honor of the nations. Verse 26 they will bring into it the glory and honor of the nations. Richard Phillips of the following, the statement that the nations will bring their glory into it. Suggest a continuity between our present lives in the eternal glory to come.

Christians will bring all kinds of godly culture into the new Jerusalem.

This likely includes our hymnody poetry and tales of heroic faith, the perfect unity of the glorified Church retain a harmony of all that is a body worth from within the national stories in the cultural inheritance of the world's people.

Douglas Kelly cites the legacy of the Ukrainian church under the godly ruler jerk jostle off the wise who built St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev for God's worship and tied money from his royal lands for the Christian education of children. More recently, the persecuted Ukrainian church.

The light of Christ alive under communist oppression. Kelly foresees the day when the Saints of Ukraine go marching into the new Jerusalem, under the banner of Christ. He wonders, will their glory include especially beautiful singing and poetry because the Ukrainians are wonderful singers, musicians and poets. To this day. Will the marks of 70+ years of crucifixion as a church for the love of Christ under communism be turned into insignia a splendid beauty of the resurrected bodies and ransom spirits. I don't know if you ever notice or not, but sometimes we will sing him here song that Eugene has composed and what we are being told here is that some of those things that we did for Christ on earth like the composing of hymns will be reiterated in heaven, and will be used in heaven to give God glory. How wonderful it .6 nothing unclean.

Verse 27 says, but nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life. Most people believe that they are basically good people and that they'll probably go to heaven on the merits of their goodness, and I want you to know that is absolutely wrong.

We are all totally depraved, which means that every fiber of our being is tainted with sin, and yet the Scripture says here that no unclean thing will enter into heaven. So who will enter into heaven.

The Scripture tells us here. Those who are written in the Lamb's book of life and who are those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.

All those who by the sovereign grace of God have turn from their sin and repentance and trusted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. While I think when the apostle John got to this point, the book of Revelation. I think his evangelistic heart began to really deal with him and I think the questions that he's asking here.

Are these questions, do you know this God have you come to to to know and love the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you know that your sins are forgiven. Do you know that you have had imputed to you the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Have you repented of your sins and trusted Jesus.

So was it mean to trust Jesus means that you are trusting that what he did on the cross was a substitutionary atonement and a substitutionary sacrifice that paid your sin debt in full. It means that you believe in the resurrection that the third day after Jesus died on the cross he was resurrected from the dead to break the power of death over us. What you have to do to become a Christian, you must repent of sin and trust in Christ repent of sin and trust in Christ, if you're here today and you're not a believer. My encouragement to you with all my heart. Is it that might happen before you leave this building that you might turn from your sin and turn to Jesus in faith is pray. Heavenly father. What a glorious privilege we have the data gathered together to praise you with singing songs, hymns and spiritual songs to praise you with the privilege of giving to your work to praise you through the confession of our sin to praise you with the reading of Scripture and the preaching of the word. As we were studying heaven. Our souls were excited Bussey and a little of what our future will be like brothers. Please help us to be more heaven minded. Help us to hunger after holiness and genuine fellowship with you, Lord, you have a glorious plan. Thank you for making us a part of it. 40 is in the holy and precious name of Jesus that we pray.

Amen