HEAVEN, HELL AND HOPE: BETTER THAN YOU COULD IMAGINE
We are jumping into a new series called Heaven, Hell and Hope which is series about life, death, and eternity and we want to get a biblical perspective on what it means to live life through the lens of eternity.
You know as well as we do that there are many different mindsets amongst Christians regarding Heaven.
You get the escapist: “I cannot wait to get there, get me outta here!”. The romanticist: Heaven is light and fluffy with pearly gates, welcome drinks and a reception party with all of your best friends. You get the distracted who have biblically informed concept of Heaven and Hell established and no great expectations regarding eternity.
And then you get the hopeful, who is expectant for the promise of eternity with Christ but aware of the potential of this momentary life before eternity.
But some of us struggle with the concept of Heaven. We live in an age of instant gratification where we want everything now and if we can’t get it now then it doesn’t fit into our vision for life.
One of our greatest problems is that we are too quickly and easily satisfied in this life.
C.S. Lewis, in The Weight of Glory, says it this way:
“Our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We’re half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition. When infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum, because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
What is it that makes the prospect of our eternal abode so appealing? What makes heaven so heavenly?
We can find a great perspective on Heaven in the book of Revelation.
The book of Revelation is a symbolic vision that brought hope and challenge to the seven 1st Century churches, and every generation of Christians.
It reveals history’s pattern and God’s promise that every human kingdom eventually becomes Babylon and must be resisted in the power of the slain Lamb. But there’s a promise that Jesus who loved and died for this world, will not let Babylon and all the evil of this world go unchecked. One day, Jesus will return to remove evil from His good world and make all things new, including his people! This is a promise that should motivate faithfulness in every generation of God’s people until the King returns. Through the book of Revelation we see that Heaven promises several things:
1. HEAVEN PROMISES A LIMITLESS LIFE
Revelation 21: 1-4
1 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
This life is filled with limitations. We have limited time, limited finances, limited emotional capacity – in every aspect we have limits. The worst thing about our broken human condition is that we are limited in our ability to have unlimited time in god’s presence.
Heaven promises us unlimited access.
What makes heaven heavenly isn’t the absence of the things that we dislike now on earth, but the presence of God. The new heaven and new earth will be glorious not primarily because there will be no sin or death or pain or tears, but because God is there. God will be with us, we will be his people, and he will be our God (Revelation 21:3).
2. HEAVEN PROMISES EVERY PROMISE WILL BE FULFILLED
Revelations 21:6-7
6 He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. 7 Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children.
Heaven is a promise and an inheritance for God’s children. It is a home for Gods children, not an orphanage where we are doing time until the next place comes along or a new opportunity opens up.
Heaven is a forever home for God’s children! In eternity to amazing promises are fulfilled:
It is a spring of life, every promise will be fulfilled and every desire satisfied, and it is a forever inheritance for his children.
3. HEAVEN PROMISES NEVER-ENDING SATISFACTION
In this life, there is the law of diminishing returns.
It is the principle of when you add more of one good, or one action to a process, each additional unit being added produces less of an output than the previous unit did. As the return on each additional unit decreases, there will come a point where more units will not add any more output, and in fact, will start reducing the total output.
In Heaven, there will be never-ending, ever-increasing satisfaction.
But how can we know that this joy and deep delight in God will be endless? Countless things in this life satisfy, but only for a season. Virtually everything on which we depend comes and goes. No matter how much of an experience we relish, it eventually fades and over time it loses its capacity to enthral and excite.
The answer of how is rooted in God’s infinity. He is without any limit. There is no end to his attributes and with each attribute, there is an infinite height, depth, width, and breadth. If at any time anything about God were to reach a conclusion or be exhaustively comprehended, he would cease to be God. God is by definition infinite in goodness, beauty, power, and majesty — and these are only the beginning of a never-ending supply of characteristics and attributes and features.
This means that what can be seen, known, and experienced of God is likewise without limit.
4. HEAVEN PROMISES A NEW GARDEN OF EDEN
In John’s symbolic vision of this great rebirth, he saw a new heaven and earth—a clear reference to the very beginning of the biblical narrative.
Revelation 22: 1-2
“Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”
It’s an all-new Garden of Eden, the paradise of eternal life with God! This is an image of the Old Testament prophetic echoing all the way back to the first pages of Genesis. John saw the tree of life there, accessible to all and eternally yielding fruit. It could do this because its roots had access to the eternal river of life, which can dispense nourishment to all the new creation because it flows from the presence of God himself.
However, in John’s account of a garden, humanity wasn’t represented by a couple. John describes seeing all the nations there, working to cultivate the garden as Adam and Eve did in Genesis. For John, the fulfilment of God’s purpose through Jesus would result in the restoration of humans to their place as co-rulers of God’s world, ready to work with God to take creation into uncharted territory.
5. Heaven promises a New Jerusalem
Revelations 15: 15-21
15 The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. 16 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 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long. 17 The angel measured the wall using human measurement, and it was 144 cubits thick. 18 The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. 19 The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, 20 the fifth onyx, the sixth ruby, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth turquoise, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. 21 The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass.
It’s not just a return back to the garden; it’s advancement into a new Jerusalem, a great city where human cultures and all their diversity work together before God.
Jerusalem itself was a powerful symbol for John. It was the first and only city where God resided in a permanent holy house, the first city where kings worshipped the true Creator. At the heart of the Israelites’ Promised Land, Jerusalem represented the ultimate Promised Land: all of restored creation.
John depicts the reunion of heaven and earth as the descent of a new Jerusalem. Unlike the old Jerusalem that was corrupted and dishonoured by most of Israel’s kings, the new Jerusalem would be ruled by a divine king. This new city would be built by God, not by human hands.
6. HEAVEN PROMISES WIDE OPEN SPACES, NOT A NEW TEMPLE
Revelations 21:22-27
22 I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 23 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. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. 25 On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. 26 The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. 27 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.
There will be no temple building in the new creation! The presence of God and the lamb that was once limited to the temple will permeate every square inch of the new world. We will be a new humanity there, fulfilling the calling placed on us, all the way back on page one of the Bible.
It means there will be no need for a physical temple or Holy of Holies in the new creation because the fullness of God’s presence will be everywhere. All of the new creation will be God’s Holy of Holies.
7. HEAVEN PROMISES A WHOLE NEW CREATION
John’s visions leave most of our questions about the new creation unanswered—and that’s not a bad thing. John’s goal wasn’t to satisfy our curiosity about the new world, but to instil confidence that the creation would be reborn just as Jesus was resurrected from the dead.
This is the hope of the story of the Bible: God’s world and our world will one day completely unite. All things will be made new, death will be replaced with life. The whole earth will be a recreation of the garden, and the glory of the temple will cover it.
Every nation will be blessed through the power of the resurrected Jesus, and God’s own personal presence will permeate every square inch of the new creation.
Why do we need to have this perspective of Heaven? Because we need to live life with an eternal perspective, a perspective that will hold, a perspective that will stand through trials and temptations.
There is hope in Heaven because we have a King named Jesus, seated on his throne and He has prepared a place for you.