Eschatology - Heaven

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and two-year study.
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This has been an overview of systematic theology.
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It started in September of 2018 and we are now at March of 2021.
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So it's more than two years and it's been a blessing to me to get to dive into some of the more nuanced areas of theology.
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We've talked a lot about the different theological systems as far as the, well, headings if you will, theology proper and Christology and Pneumatology and we even did Angelology and we did of course Soteriology, Hamartiology, Anthropology.
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We've done a lot in two years and we find ourselves at the end of Eschatology.
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Eschatology is the study of last things and tonight we're going to be looking at the new heaven and the new earth.
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Last week we talked about hell and afterwards nobody wanted to talk to me.
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Everybody was really sad and left in sort of a down beat.
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I understand hell isn't something that encourages a lot of joy in our minds and hearts but hopefully tonight will be a little different.
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Not only are we concluding two years of study but we're concluding I hope on a positive note.
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How many of you have been here the whole time? I think Pat, probably Pat and Dad and you and Lee.
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Well, I mean, yeah, people miss but I'm saying I've been here.
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Jackie, I know you've been here through the whole time and I want to say I feel bad for Jackie.
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I don't want to call you out but Jackie does the academy and she does Wednesday nights and she does Sunday morning.
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She's like the best student.
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She's always here but she has to hear the same thing a lot because I am doing, what, eight weeks of Eschatology.
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This is the last of eight weeks of Eschatology.
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Well, tomorrow night is our is our Eschatology class for the academy.
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So you go hear it again and so it's just, but repetition is the key to learning and the key to learning is repetition.
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So you'll be the best.
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You'll know it all.
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You'll get to come up and and be the speaker next time because you'll know it all.
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Well, tonight we are going to be looking at two main passages.
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We're going to be looking at John 14 1 to 6 and we're going to be looking at Revelation 21 1 to 4.
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Actually, we're going to be looking, we're going to read most of Revelation 21.
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But before we do that, I want to make, I want to just say a few words about the subject of heaven because most of us are familiar with the generic language of heaven.
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We think of that as the place where people go when they die if they are believers or if you live in a modern culture, if you most everybody believes they go to heaven when they die, no matter what they believe.
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So heaven has sort of a cultural connotation and that can lead to a lot of confusion.
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People think of heaven as sort of clouds and ethereal living and, you know, people talk about, oh well, this person died.
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They were just given their wings as if they become angels when they die and there's all these sort of, all these sort of bad misrepresentations of heaven.
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The King James Bible translates and uses the word heaven 582 times in 550 verses.
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The Hebrew word shamayim is the word for heaven or the heights and doesn't always reference the abode of God.
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It often just references the heavens, the sky, the place where the clouds and the sun, moon, and star and all that, you know.
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That's a reference to heavens in scripture and the same way the Greek word oranos is the same.
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It means the place that is high or lifted up, the lofty places, the heavens.
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And so this can be confusing because people will sometimes use a verse to talk about heaven where the heaven that's being spoken of there is not the heaven of the afterlife.
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It's simply the heaven of the sky.
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In fact, there are three heavens referenced in scripture.
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Paul references the third heaven in 2nd Corinthians 12.
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He said there was a man caught up to the third heaven and a lot of people believe that's Paul speaking autobiographically.
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He's talking about himself.
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He was the one caught up to the third heaven.
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There's a little debate about that.
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I want to get into that tonight, but ultimately the question of why did he say the third heaven? And the typical response, and I tend to think it's fairly correct, is that when the Bible talks about heaven, it talks about it in three different ways.
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It talks about it first as the heavens as the abode of the birds and the clouds.
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That would be what we would call the sky or the atmosphere.
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And then there's the more distant heavens, which would be the abode of the sun, moon, and stars that we would call space, right? So there's the atmosphere, birds and clouds and air.
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There's the past the atmosphere, which is sun, moon, and stars.
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And then there's of course the third heaven, which we would identify with the abode of God.
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That's the term I like to use.
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The place where God is.
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And you might say, well, God is everywhere.
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Yes, but when we refer to God in his throne room or we refer to God on his throne, we're referring to his heavenly throne room.
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We're referring to that abode that is uniquely his.
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And I don't necessarily think it's up.
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I think it is dimensionally different than anything we understand because, you know, we just keep going further and further up with our satellites and we keep going further and further up with our cameras that we're able to send out, like the Hubble telescope can look out.
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And I remember very specifically the the cosmonaut who said he went into heaven, he didn't see God, so he didn't believe in God because God wasn't there when he went into space.
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As if, you know, as if when he got to space that's where he was going to run into God and they were just, you know, he was just going to see God sitting out there on a on a chair or something.
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You know, what did he expect? I'm going to mention a pop culture reference.
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It's not new, but there was a movie, a Star Trek movie.
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And I was never a big Star Trek fan, but if you just happen to be a Captain Kirk Star Trek fan, he went, Kirk and Spock went to a planet and there was a being who said he was God.
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And they had that interaction with him and finally come to find out the being, of course, is not God.
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But the big moment in the movie was when the being tried to get Kirk to give him the starship, to give him the the Enterprise.
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And he says, what does God need with a starship? That's my Kirk.
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But that's that's sort of the idea, right? Is God's on a planet somewhere.
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God's somewhere in the solar system.
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If we just have a five-year mission to go in, you know, to go where no man's gone before, we'll finally figure out where God is.
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And that's the Bible describes God's presence as being as being beyond the natural.
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So the heaven, the abode of God is not contained within the natural realm.
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It is in the supernatural realm.
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And therefore, we can't consume God or assume that God is is sitting on a on a throne somewhere on one of the moons of Jupiter or something like that.
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No, God is in a realm that we can't experience in this life, at least not in the sense of naturally.
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Whoever this is in 2 Corinthians 12, too, got a glimpse of that experience and was able to talk about it.
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And he called it the third heaven.
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Now, it is very clear that there are many people in the world who do not believe in heaven.
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Karl Marx said, religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions.
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Religion is the opiate of the masses.
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You ever heard that? Basically saying that this is how you get masses of people to do your bidding is you tell them that there is a pie in the sky waiting for them upon death as long as they be good.
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And so Marx talked about that.
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And if you've ever read the book Animal Farm, which is one of my favorite non-Christian books, there is a character, a bird in the story who represents the religious people who is constantly telling all of the other animals about Candy Mountain that they will all go to when they die.
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You know, you're all going to get to go where all the apples are sweet and where you'll get to go enjoy Candy Mountain.
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And so that's the picture that often the world has of heaven.
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It's a pie in the sky.
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It's just something to keep people happy, keep them from going crazy, keep them being good little soldiers in the battle forward.
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Heaven isn't real.
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It's just something to keep people from dying of depression, give them something to hope for.
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Sigmund Freud said religious doctrines are all illusions.
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And even one of the most famous songs of the last century, written by John Lennon, famous for being a part of the Beatles, says this in the lyrics of the song, Imagine there's no heaven.
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It's easy if you try.
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No hell below us, above us only sky.
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Imagine all the people living for today.
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Of course, the title of that song is Imagine.
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What's the point of the song? We need to live for today because there's no heaven.
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There's no hell.
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There's nothing beyond this life.
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There's no hope beyond your next breath.
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Stephen Hawking said heaven is a fairy tale for people who are afraid of the dark.
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I like John Lennox.
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John Lennox is a Christian scientist.
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He responded to Stephen Hawking.
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He said, no, atheism is a fairy tale for people afraid of the light.
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It was a good response.
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But again, the world mocks the third heaven.
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They refer to it as pie in the sky, but the Bible gives us a clear promise.
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And today we're going to look at two passages that I think solidify that promise.
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We're not going to answer all the questions about heaven.
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If you want to ask me questions, I'm happy to entertain.
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You know your questions, but I will say right now the thing that I can really have, the thing I had the hardest time wrapping my head around is what heaven is going to be like.
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So if you're going to ask me what's heaven like or things like that, I don't know.
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I don't even know what it's going to be like to not sin.
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That's just just conceiving of myself without a desire of the flesh and without desiring to break God's law and without having that battle that goes on every single day.
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That that's the part.
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I mean, honestly, I just I'm excited to know that that's true, but I don't understand what it's going to be like.
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Had a kid one time.
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Give me the best example.
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It was a little boy.
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And we were talking and he said he went a little little.
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He's probably 12, but he was a young boy.
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And he said, Pastor Keith, he said, I think heaven when we go there, it's going to be like when a child is born, because when you're in the womb, you're you're comfortable, you're safe, you're fed, you're you know, but really you're you're very limited.
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You're in the womb and everything, you know, you would never go back.
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Having had the freedom of this life, you would never go back to the to the confines of the womb, even though it was comfortable and warm and and you were fed.
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You would never go back to that because now that you've experienced this freedom, you could never imagine that.
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Now, he explained he didn't explain it that that well.
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But this 12 year old boy said, I think it's going to be like when we're born and we're going to be so different there that we can never imagine this anymore.
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And I was like, wow, that's that will forever be an example I use.
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Thank you, 12 year old boy.
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That was it was such a good point.
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Let's look at John 14.
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One of my favorite passages, I preached this passage more than any other.
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And I know that because I preached this passage at just about every funeral I've ever done, even unbelievers, not to give unbelievers hope of eternity, but because of verse six, when I'm speaking at a at a funeral of an unbeliever, I still read this passage because of verse six.
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So let's read it.
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Let not your hearts be troubled.
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Believe in God, believe also in me.
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And my father's house are many rooms.
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If it were not so what I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you.
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And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself that where I am, you may be also.
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And you know the way to where I'm going.
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Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going.
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How can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life.
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No one comes to the father except through me.
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I mean, we close our Bibles and go home.
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That's enough.
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That's Jesus's sermon to us.
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But for a moment, I do want to sort of give you my thoughts on this passage.
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As I said, I've I've preached it so many times in so many various contexts.
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But look, let's we'll look at three things.
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We're going to look at the promise maker.
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We're going to look at the promise made.
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And then we're going ultimately and finally look at the promise means.
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So let's look first at the promise maker who's speaking.
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Jesus, this this is important because when someone says, why do you believe in heaven? Because I believe in Jesus and I believe he's not a liar.
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Right away.
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Jesus said, let not your hearts be troubled.
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Now, if you want to know what that's about, just go right before this to what happened before.
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Jesus just told Peter, you're going to deny me three times.
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That would give me a troubled heart.
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That would be difficult to deal with.
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And Jesus says to him and I believe to the other disciples as well, let not your hearts be troubled.
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And he says this, he says, he says, believe in God, believe also in me.
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But in the King James, I believe and a few of you have one.
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I know Mike does.
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It says you believe in God, right? Believe also in me.
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So what the King James does is it actually sets it up as an indicative and an imperative.
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And in the Greek, here's the issue is it's it's indescript.
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It can be either an indicative or an imperative.
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So we have to interpret it.
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You say, well, what's the difference between an indicative and an imperative? If I say you believe in God, that's indicative.
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That's something that indicates a truth.
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But if I say you should believe in God or you must believe in God, that's an imperative.
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That's a command.
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That's a call to action.
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Right.
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I believe that what we're seeing here, I believe Jesus is saying you believe in God indicative.
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You should believe in me imperative.
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And I would even say it could even begin with this.
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If if you believe in God, you should believe in Jesus.
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And this is often how I preach it at funerals.
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I say you came in here today knowing God exists, even if you are not a Christian.
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The Bible says every one of you knows God exists.
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Therefore, you believe in God.
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You should believe in Jesus.
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That's Jesus's whole point in this passage that you believe in God.
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You should also believe in me.
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And that just isn't that just powerful.
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People say, oh, I believe in God, but I don't know about Jesus.
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Then you don't know about God.
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There is no.
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There is no relationship with the father without the son.
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There is no entrance into the throne room of the father without the son.
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The son is.
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Not only sufficient to save, he is necessary to say you believe in God, believe also in me.
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And that's he is he's the one speaking, he's the promise maker.
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And what he's doing is he's calling them to faith.
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You you should believe in me.
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You should trust in me.
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And then he says in my father's house.
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Again, indicating a relationship with the father that he has that is unique.
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He says in my father's house, there are many rooms.
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King James Version says mansions.
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Not a big issue there.
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Just simply referencing that these are these are abodes that God has prepared for those who believe.
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And he says this is what we have to look forward to.
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This is the promise made.
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The promise maker is Jesus.
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The promise made is in my father's house.
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There are many rooms.
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And then he makes this statement, my favorite.
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If it were not so.
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And it depends on the translation in the ESV, it says, if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? It turns it into a question.
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But in the King James, I think it says, if it were not so, I would have told you.
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It turns into a statement.
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And again, in the Greek, it's somewhat ambiguous as to whether or not it should be a question or a statement.
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Remember, Greek didn't have question marks and period.
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So a lot of this, the translators are having to decide whether or not this is he's asking a question or making a statement.
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But the question assumes an answer.
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If it is what I have told you, the statement is I would have told you.
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So either way, it's the meaning is not different.
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He says I would have told you if it were not true.
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I would have told you if this was pie in the sky.
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I would have told you if there is no hope beyond this life.
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I would have told you if there is no heaven.
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I would have told you.
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C.S.
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Lewis said Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic or the Lord.
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And in this passage, he says, I'm not a liar.
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If I if it were not so, I would have told you I would not lie to you.
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So we have the promise made.
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And then we have the promise means.
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And by that, I mean the means to receive the promise, because Thomas asked the question.
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Good old Thomas.
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Thomas said, I just want you to think for a moment.
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What do we always call Thomas? Isn't that unfair? You know, we've all struggled with different doubts at different times about different things.
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Imagine if they just started calling you doubting Lee or, you know, doubting Keith or doubting Ed.
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Right.
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That's not exactly fair.
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In fact, one of my favorite stories about Thomas, not to take a quick right turn here, but when Jesus was told that Lazarus died, Jesus said, we're going to go.
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And the other disciples were like, no, if you go, they're going to kill you.
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And Thomas said, let us go and die with him.
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What a man.
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Why don't we call him the valiant Thomas? Sorry, I'm not a Thomas apologist.
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But it's just, you know, he had he had a few redeeming moments.
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Yeah.
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But in this moment, he did say, we don't know where you're going.
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Therefore, how can we know how to get there? How can we know the way? And Jesus said, I'm the way.
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If you walk out the hallway as you're going out tonight, you'll notice a picture.
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It's a painting.
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It's inspired a lot of people to stop and look at it.
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I don't know if you've ever noticed that it's in our knife.
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It's a painting of the cross.
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And on one side of the cross, there are people who are lined up to hell.
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And those who are going across the cross are going to heaven.
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And the people who are not going across the cross are going into the fires of hell.
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I've had a lot of people who are not Christians, like we do funerals here and stuff.
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And people just stare at it like they're amazed that we would even put a picture like that up.
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Remember, one lady was really like just looked upset about it.
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But the picture is worth a thousand words, because the idea that picture is that there is only one way to get across.
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There's only one way to the celestial city.
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There is only one way, and that is through Christ.
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And by the way, that's a term from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, if you're not familiar.
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The celestial city was what the Pilgrim's Progress was all about.
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That was where you were going to.
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It was going to be in the kingdom.
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By the way, that term kingdom is, I wish, that's one thing in two years of study.
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That's one thing we didn't do.
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Maybe after we do our series on the confession, we'll do maybe a little short something on the kingdom of God.
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It's interesting.
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The kingdom of God is not just heaven, but it's the reign of Christ, the current reign of Christ in our hearts.
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There's, you know, Jesus inaugurated the kingdom in his first coming, but there is going to be a final, you know, entrance into that celestial city.
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There's going to be that final thing that we're going to have, that new Jerusalem, the new heaven, the new earth.
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It's amazing.
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That's what we had to look forward to.
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How do we get there? Through Jesus, by faith in him.
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There is no other way.
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There is no other truth.
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There's no other life.
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He is the way, the truth, and the life.
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And no one comes to the Father except through him.
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He is the way.
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So now that we've seen that in John 14, I want us to turn in our remaining moments to Revelation 21, which gives us a picture of this place.
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We see on your notes, I mentioned that there's two realities there.
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There's a physical reality, and there's a spiritual reality.
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And I do want to point out that when I say there's a physical reality, I do believe the new heavens and the new earth are a physical existence, not an ethereal existence.
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And what I mean, the Bible says there's going to be a resurrection, and the Bible says there's going to be a new heaven and a new earth.
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And so the abode of the elect in the eternal state is not floating on a cloud like an ethereal mist, but rather will be in a physical resurrected body, which the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 calls a spiritual body, which is interesting because that almost seems like an oxymoronic statement, spiritual body, because spirit and body are too distinguished.
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God does not have a body like a man, but he's a spirit.
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So this is a juxtaposition, but he calls it a spiritual body, basically a body fit for a kingdom.
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And so we are in this kingdom, which is physical.
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And this is the part where I start asking the question, what's it going to be like? You know, I hope I don't look like this forever, but maybe I'll look something like this.
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I don't know.
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You know, I've got scars on my body.
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I've got pains and these things, which obviously I don't think I'll have anymore.
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But this is the picture that we have.
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This is the Revelation 21, 22.
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And by the way, we talked about preterism for all those weeks.
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Remember, this doesn't apply to 21 and 22.
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This is still yet to come.
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Only the heretical preterist would say all of this has been fulfilled.
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No, none of this yet.
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This is all what we had to look forward to.
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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.
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And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down.
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It's fine.
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Don't worry about it.
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Coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
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And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.
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He will dwell with them and they will be his people.
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And God himself will be with them as their God.
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He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more.
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Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away.
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All right.
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So that's verses one to four.
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Notice the physical reality.
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There is a new heaven.
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There is a new earth.
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There is a new Jerusalem.
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Now, certainly there is some symbolic language here, but yet we should not.
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We should not allow ourselves to think that just because something is symbolic, that means it's not real.
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Baptism is a symbol, but it represents a reality that's even greater than baptism.
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It's the reality of regeneration.
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That's the representation.
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The person who is baptized is being baptized because of what's happened in their heart.
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So the symbol is lesser than the reality.
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This is why I try to remind people about hell.
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People say, do you think hell is a literal lake of fire? I say, I don't know, but I know this.
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I know that whatever it is, is worse because that's the symbol that's used.
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And if you think of terms of lesser to greater, if the symbol is lesser than the reality, then the symbol is a lake of fire, is lesser than the reality of whatever it is.
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I will say this, whoever goes there doesn't want to be there.
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And whether it's literal fire pit or not, just like literal streets of gold, I don't know if that's the physical gold that we think of when we think of our rings and earrings and things like that.
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I don't know if there's a symbolism behind that that's meant to describe the very greatest thing we can imagine.
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In the ancient world, gold was of course used to line the temple and all these other things because that was the greatest of all precious metals and it was used for all kinds of things.
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It was the greatest thing that could be imagined.
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Whatever it is, it's greater.
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But we do know this, it's a new earth, it's a new heaven.
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The first earth has passed away.
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That's this earth.
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It's been essentially reconstituted.
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We have a new earth and this is the part that bothers some people, especially beach beach goers.
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It says the sea was no more.
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Folks who just love the beach get a little upset by that passage.
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But the word, see this is again where you have to understand some of the symbolic language.
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Among the Jewish people particularly, the sea represented turmoil and danger and fear.
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You go out on the sea, you're taking your life in your own hands.
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They were not a seafaring people.
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They were fishermen and things like that but they didn't go out on the sea for long extended periods of time.
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This is a dangerous thing.
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And so this is a picture of the fact that because people say, well, is there going to be water in heaven? Well, later it talks about the river of life, you know, so, you know, it's not saying there's no there's no water on this new earth.
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It's just referring to danger and turmoil and things like that.
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The holy city, the new Jerusalem coming out of heaven from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
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And this is the physical reality.
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But then we see the spiritual reality.
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Number letter A, it's on your note, it's on your notes, God is there.
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That's the greatest spiritual reality.
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God is there.
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Notice it says behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.
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Think for a moment, we're in Genesis.
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What was the garden? The garden was the place where man and God had a relationship that was undivided by sin.
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And man was able to fellowship with God without the division that sin causes.
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And what happens as soon as man sins, he is excommunicated from the garden, so as to keep him from the tree of life.
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But also he is no longer in the immediate presence of Almighty God.
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And throughout the generations, there would there would come a time where the only way to have relationship with God would be through a mediator.
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Right, Adam, even after the fall was able to communicate with God.
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And then we know Noah walked with God, Enoch walked with God.
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But there would later through Moses and through the Levitical priesthood, there would be men who would stand between the people and God because of sin and because of division.
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And then there was a there was a veil that stood between the holy place and the most holy place.
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And that veil was a picture of division.
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It was as thick as your hand.
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Right.
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It was it wasn't just a curtain.
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It was a it was a huge rug like material that was it could not be torn by human hands.
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But on the day Jesus died on the cross that it was torn down from top to bottom to show that God had done it.
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And in that moment demonstrated that Christ had torn down the veil.
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Now the access to the holy place was there, but it's through who it's through him.
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They're still a mediator.
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Right.
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Who is Christ? Christ is the great mediator in heaven.
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God will make his abode with us and we will be in his presence in a way that is.
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To my mind, incomprehensible.
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And then we noticed that the other spiritual reality, the no mores, they wipe away every tear from their eyes.
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Death shall be no more.
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Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for these former things have passed away.
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So.
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People ask me sometimes, well, what about if I go to heaven and I find out that someone I love very much is not there? And to be honest, that question is it's asked so frequently.
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That I think sometimes we make up answers to satisfy the question.
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One of the answers that is typically I want to say made up is that God will erase your memory of those people.
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I don't believe that.
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Somebody says, well, how can you be in heaven and be happy and know that your loved one is not? And I'm going to have to lean on Dr.
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John Gershner, who was the.
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Mentor of Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul and in their class on this very subject, Sproul tells the story.
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He said to the class, he said, when you are in heaven.
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Your sanctification will be complete and your understanding of God's justice will be so full.
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That you will understand.
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I find that much more satisfying than God giving me some form of spiritual lobotomy and forcing me to forget what is the most important.
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No more.
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You'll see that letter A, letter B, letter C says there's no more.
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Well, it's letter A and letter C are the same.
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There's no more separation from God.
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That's what heaven is.
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Keith, what's heaven like? You get to be with God all the time.
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There's no separation anymore.
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There's no division anymore.
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There's no more sin.
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There's no more desire to sin.
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And you get to be with him forever.
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Just keep in mind, guys, it's not pie in the sky.
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That is the hope of every believer.
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And it is the hope that should encourage us all of our days.
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Let's read to the end of the chapter and then we'll close with prayer, because this is the picture of what it's like.
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And he who is seated on the throne said, behold, I am making all things new.
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Also, he said, write this down for these words are trustworthy and true.
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And he said to me, I'm done.
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I'm the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end to the thirsty.
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Oh, I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.
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The one who conquers will have this heritage and I will be his God and he will be my son.
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But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral sorcerers, idolaters and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.
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Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full, the seven last plagues and spoke to me saying, come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the lamb.
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And he 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, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a Jasper clear as crystal.
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It had a great high wall with twelve gates and the gates, twelve angels.
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And on the gates, the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed on the east, three gates on the north, three gates and on the south, three gates and on the west, three gates and the wall of the city had twelve foundations and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the lamb.
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And the one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls.
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The city lies four square, its length the same as its width.
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And he measured the city with his rod.
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Twelve thousand stadia, its length and width and height are equal.
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He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel's measurement.
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The wall was built of Jasper while the city was pure gold, clear as glass.
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The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel.
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The first was Jasper, the second Sapphire, the third Agate, the fourth Emerald, the fifth Onyx, the sixth Carnelian, the seventh Chrysalite, the eighth Beryl, the ninth Topaz and the tenth Chrysoprase, the eleventh Jason, the twelfth Amethyst and the twelve gates were twelve pearls.
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Each of the gates made of a single pearl and the street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass.
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And I saw no temple in the city.
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I saw no temple in the city for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb.
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And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it for the glory of God gives its light and its lamp is the Lamb.
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By its light will the nations walk and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it and its gates will never be shut by day and there will be no night there.
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They will bring into it the glory and the 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.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the promise of heaven.
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May we be convinced of the reality of this promise in Christ's name.