Revelation 21 // The Lamb's Wife

[Music] burdens my understanding the mountains climb [Music] is like the ground beneath this crumbling and it feels i can't hold on my soul longs for all to be much clearer but the dust of [Music] when all my will is gone when i feel i can't hold on i can rely on you i can't rely [Music] cause the strength of your hand holds on sit hold on my life is yours [Music] lord have your way in me [Music] just lead [Music] the me you won the battle of flesh and blood with [Music] i can't rely [Music] there's the strength of your hand holds [Music] on though i stumble again and again you'll never let go you'll never go you are faithful from beginning to end [Applause] you'd never let go though i stumble again and again [Music] i can't [Music] i can't depend [Music] yeah the strength of your hair is the strength of your hand hold on [Music] all right calvary how you guys doing tonight sweet i heard nothing maybe someone said something you gotta shout a little bit louder you guys wanna stand you can if you wanna stay seated feel free but we're going to sing some worship songs this evening [Music] i count on one thing the same god who never fails will not fail me now you won't fail me now in the waiting the same god who's never late is working all things out you're working all things out yes i will lift you high in the lowest valley yes i will bless your name and yes i will sing for joy when my heart is heavy all my days yes i will for all my days yes i will let's try that again i count on one thing i count on one thing a same god who never fails will not feel me now you won't fail me now in the waiting a same god who's never late is working all things out you're working all things out yes i will let you high in the lowest yes i will bless your name yes i will sing for joy when my heart is heavy for all my days yes i will oh my days yes i will i choose to praise to glorify glorify the name of all names and nothing can stand against i choose to praise to glorify glorify the name of all names but nothing can stand against oh yes i will lift you high in the lowest valley yes i will bless your name yes i will sing for joy when my heart is heavy oh my days yes i will spin yes i will lift you high in the lowest valley yes i will bless your name yes i will sing for joy when my heart is heaven all my days yes i will for all my days yes i will for all my days and yes i will [Music] at your name [Music] the mountain shaking crumble at your name [Music] the oceans roaring tumble [Music] the lord of the earth we shout your name shout your name filling up the skies with endless praise in let's praise yahweh yahweh we love to shout your name oh lord [Music] there is no one like our god we will praise you and praise you there's no one like our god we will sing we will sing there is no one like our god we will praise you and praise you there's no one like our god we will sing we will sing there is no one like our god we will praise you praise you there's no one like our god we will sing we will sing there is no one like our god we will praise you and praise you there's no one like [Applause] [Music] lord of all the earth we shout your name shout your name feeling up the skies with endless praise endless praise yahweh away we love to shout your name oh [Music] the lord of all the earth we shout your name shout your name filling up the skies with endless praise endless praise yahweh yahweh we love to shout your name oh lord yahweh yahweh we love to shout your name oh lord [Music] so [Music] oh how high would i climb mountains if the mountains were where you hiding oh how far i'd scale the valleys if you grace the other side oh how long have i chased rivers from lowly seas to where they rise against the rush of grace descending from the source of its supply cause in the highlands and the heartache you needed more less incline i would search and stop and nothing you're just not that hard to find oh i'll praise you on the mountain but i'll praise you in the mountains in my way you're the summit where my feet are so i'll praise you in the valleys or the same no less god within the shadows no less faithful in the night leads me astray you're the heaven where my heart is in the highlands in the article is shame oh [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh how far beneath your glory does your kindness extend the path from where your feet rest on the sunrise to where you sweep the sinus past oh how fast would you come running if just to shadow me through the night trace my steps through all my failures and walk me out the other side for who could dare sin that mountain that valley hill called calvary before the one i call good shepherd who like a lamb was slain for me [Music] i will praise you on the mountain i will praise you in the mountains in my way you're the summit where my feet are so i'll praise you when the valleys are the same no less god within the shadow no less faithful when the night leads me astray you're the heaven where my heart is in the highlands in the heart it goes shame [Music] oh [Music] [Music] whatever i walk through wherever i am your name can move mountains wherever i stand and if ever i walk through the valley of death i'll sing through the shadows my song of ascent whatever i walk wherever i am your name can move mountains wherever i stand and if ever i walk through the valley of death i'll sing through the shadows my song of a sent my song of a sent whoa whoa [Music] my song of his [Music] pastures we call grace mighty river flowing upwards from a deeper empty grave i'll praise you on the mountains i'll praise you in the mountains in my way you're the heaven where my heart is in the rise you in the valleys are the same no less god within the shadows no less faithful in the night leads you're the heaven where my heart is in the highlands [Music] [Applause] some beautiful words to this song and i just taking back going through verse three actually the end of verse three and getting the first four i guess but the the part where it says oh how fast you would come running if just to shatter me through the night trace my steps through all my failures and walk me out the other side you know it just reminded me of how relentless god is towards us in the midst of our failures and shortcomings like he's not just there to condemn and grow tired and weary of our sin but he's there and ready and willing to receive us to forgive us and he runs towards us with mercy and arms wide open and he's gracious enough not to leave us in our sin as well he walks us through those hardships when we're struggling [Applause] and i just reminded of the grace of god as we're singing i just love that part of that song sing praise you on the mountain so i'll praise you on the mountain i'll praise you in the mountains in my way you're the summit where my feet are so i'll praise you when the valley is all the same no less god within the shadows no less faithful in the night leads me astray you're the heaven where my heart is in the highlands in the article the [Music] same [Music] am i worthy [Music] or am i true to be invited to sit with you the holy table is such a place where i can leave for my worries and mistakes bread of life broke for me what the enemy is stolen you've taken and redeemed blood and grace pouring free for the hope that you we promised has become my destiny bread of life [Music] so worthy you're so true all my failures can't compare to you the holy table is such a place where i can leave all my worries and mistakes what the enemy is stolen you've taken then redeemed blood and grace pouring free for the hope that you have promised has become my destiny bread of life [Music] your love i'm pulled out on a cross of wood and nails you made her wait for us to truly be set free your love poured out on across a wooden nails you made a wait for us to truly be set free your love pulled out on a cross of wood and nails you made her wait for us to truly be set free your love poured out on a cross of wood and nails you made a way for us to truly base that fiend bread of life [Music] broke for me what the enemy is stolen you've taken and redeemed blood and grace pouring free for the hope have promised has become my destiny for the hope that you have promised you were set in front of me bread of life [Music] well just thank you for that promise you give us and uh just commit the night to you god pray you be here speak to us in messes your name amen once you guys greet someone real quick guitar hi you guys you guys want to do some sharing you want to yell from where you're at if you have any uh we don't have the microphones out here but last wednesday they didn't use them anyway so if you have anything you want to pray for or anything you want to share raise your hand wave it at me or just start yelling going going what's what'd you say pray for seattle i don't want to pray for seattle [Laughter] yeah let's do it lord god we um we thank you that you're a god of mercy you're you're a god of grace you had mercy on grace on us when we were stupid and lord um so many times humanik humanity can just be stupid just do awful things for awful reasons and not not think it through and you still have mercy lord i pray for the people that are causing the uproar over in seattle just lord we know that you love those people that you want them that you want them to come to you no matter what they've done no matter what they're like uh lord uh we know that you want to pour out grace on them god just help us to have a loving heart towards people like that um yeah let's just help us lord and lord for them god we just pray that you'd be a witness to them that you bring people there that uh your gospel would be shared thank you for the stuff that brandon's doing over there and lord just pray that you turn that around lord we pray for the the mayor pray for the governor uh pray that you give them uh some wisdom on how to handle these things and uh lord we especially pray for the police department uh just pray for protection for those guys and um for perseverance lord because they're getting it not just from a criminal element but from uh the politicians and so lord we just we just pray that you'd have your hand on that whole situation in jesus name amen uh i don't know i don't know if you guys knew it but brandon uh went over to brandon's our worship leader if you're new around here uh he has gone over he's one of our worship leaders excuse me he's gone over to tacoma to start a church and one of the things that he started doing when this whole thing with chops and all that stuff was happening was he started taking groups down to that area and uh leading worship sessions he did a 12-hour worship worship session not too long ago and so they've been going over and and just with bull horns and stuff and uh you know the speakers that they have preaching the gospel and and just worshiping and so that's been that's been a pretty cool thing okay anybody else i'm doing it okay we're in revelation chapter 21. and uh i want to start from verse one again not because i'm going to go back over this stuff but just because i want to get context for verses 9 through the rest of the chapter it says now i saw verse 1 a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away also there was no more sea then i john saw the holy city new jerusalem coming down out of heaven from god prepared as a bride adorned for her husband and i heard a loud voice from heaven saying behold the tabernacle of god is with men and he will dwell with them and they shall be his people god himself will be with them and be their god and god will wipe away every tear from their eyes there shall be no more death nor sorrow nor crying there shall be no more pain for the former things have passed away then he who sat on the throne said behold i make all things new and he said to me right for these words are true and faithful and he said to me it is done i'm the alpha and the omega the beginning and the end i will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts he who overcomes shall inherit all things i will be his god and he shall be my son but the cowardly unbelieving abominable murderers sexually immoral sorcerers idolaters and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone which is the second death then one of the seven angels who had the seven bulls filled with the seven last plagues came to me and talked with me saying come i will show you the bride the lamb's wife and he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain and showed me the great city the holy jerusalem descending out of heaven from god having the glory of god her light was like a most precious stone like a jasper stone clear as crystal also she had a you know you guys um i know that the description that we have here is is is not something that's like specific uh you know in the in the sense that um it's telling you exactly what it what it looks like we're we're visual people and we're used to having visuals for us and many times when i'm going through passages like this i have to i have to kind of take it slow and think about what's being said and so as i'm going through this obviously i'm just going to read through it but i want you to think about what's being said here okay so let me let me start again in verse 11 having uh it had the glory of god her light was like a most precious stone like a jasper stone clear as crystal so crystal clear light also she had a great and high wall with 12 gates and 12 angels at the gates and names written on them which are the names of the 12 tribes of the children of israel three gates on the east three gates on the north three gates on the south and three gates on the west now the wall of the city had twelve foundations and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the lamb and he talked and he who talked with me had a gold reed to measure the city its gates and its wall the city is laid out as a square its length is as great as its breadth and he measured the city with the reed 12 000 furlongs its length breadth and height are equal 12 000 furlongs is at least 1377 miles 377 miles then he measured its wall 144 cubits according to the measure of man that is of an angel the construction of its wall was of jasper and that's a clear that's a clear stone and the city was pure gold like clear glass the foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all kinds of precious stones the first foundation was jasper the second sapphire the third calcite in me i don't even know if i'm pronouncing that right the fourth emerald the fifth sardonics the sixth sardius the seventh chrysolite this the eighth barrel the ninth topaz the tenth uh christ of praise the eleventh jason or jason and the twelfth amethyst the twelve gates were twelve pearls each individual gate was of one pearl and the street of the city was pure gold like transparent glass but i saw no temple in it for the lord god almighty in the lamb or its temple the city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it for the glory of god illuminated it the lamb is its light and the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory and honor into it its gates shall not be shut at all by day there shall be no night there and they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it but there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles or causes an abomination or a lie but only those who are written in the lamb's book of life and he showed me a pure river of water of life clear as crystal proceeding from the throne of god and of the lamb in the middle of the street and on the either side of the river was the tree of life which bore 12 fruits each tree yielding its fruit every month the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations and there shall be no more curse but the throne of god and of the lamb shall be in it and his servants shall serve him they shall see his face and his name shall be on their foreheads there shall be no night there they need no lamp nor light of the sun for the lord god gives them light and they shall reign forever and ever and let's pray before we get into this father we thank you for your word we thank you for the revelation that you give to us you know it's a book that we're in you you show us uh the things of the end and lord um as we're talking about this revelation it's not a thing of the end it's a thing of the beginning it's the beginning of the new heaven it's the beginning of the new earth it's the beginning of the the thing that you've always wanted um a righteous and holy relationship with people who are righteous and holy and a relationship where you love them and they love you and there's no holding back on any of it and lord we're looking forward to the time when this is going to take place looking for the forward to the time when this is going to happen just uh lord as we're going through your word we pray that you bless the time that we have here that you'd speak and that you'd help me to be as clear as i can be but lord that your holy spirit would be the teacher here and we ask that you do this all in the name of jesus amen okay so it starts off verse 1 i saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away also there was no more sea a new heaven and a new earth so this is a this is a new beginning um that that god brings about here um he's you know basically we're going through the book of genesis and everything that we had at the very beginning of the book of genesis is something that is restored to us in the book of revelation there's a there's a bunch of stuff that has to happen before this time can come about but what god does is he brings out a group of people and angels who are willing to serve and follow and love him willing to walk in righteousness who willingly give their lives over to him who willingly allow the holy spirit to change them in the case of people and that kind of thing and he gets rid of the old heaven and the old earth this this this world is not going to last forever the heavens that we see they're magnificent they're glorious the bible says the heavens declare the glory of god and the firmament in other words for the heavens shows his handiwork day in today they utter their speech there's not a language where they're not understood and god uses the heavens to to speak to humanity but those heavens that you see out there they're going to go away they're going to roll up god says he's going to roll him up like a scroll and they're going to be gone and then god's going to start over and when he starts over it's going to be absolutely pure absolutely without fault absolutely without the curse there's no curse anymore and it's it's going to be a new beginning for every single one of us not in the sense of salvation because we've already been saved but this is this is the universe as god wants it to be here's another thing that i want to i want to share with you about this because when you when you look at the passages that we're going to go through what john does is he focuses in on the city of god right and so he's focusing in on the new jerusalem and when we you you probably notice as we were going through and looking at that that description that it sounds like heaven streets of gold for example right and so it sounds like heaven this is not heaven this is the city that god makes for us and so it's just one part of the new heaven and new earth and in this passage it says that it comes down to the new earth that god's created and so we're not confined to a city so you know the uh again the bible uh in this passage specifically says that it's a new heaven and a new earth and so the new heaven is not going to be something less than the old heaven the new earth is not going to be something less than the old earth and so you know uh what i want you to to not fall into is the trap of thinking that everything that's glorious is focused in the new jerusalem and that there's nothing outside because that's that's not what the bible teaches it may it may not go into specifics about what's outside but it does say that there's a new heaven and so when we look at the heavens that that we look at they're awesome actually um i i think i told you this a while back i went uh i went down to get my mom my mom was she was dying of cancer and so she was going to come up and live with me for for a while and she ended up living with me for the last five or so months of her life and so i'm going down to get her and it was the kind of thing where i had to do it quickly because my mom's all over the page and so once she made the decision i needed to go get her and and bring her up and so i took off and i just drove all night i i took off from here and she lived uh she was living down in arizona i drove all night and one of the coolest things ever happened to me while i was driving and you're you're gonna think i'm a geek again but that's okay i'm driving through northern nevada and i'm going i don't even know where i was i was just following my my google maps so i'm driving through northern nevada and i'm going up into the mountains and i get to this pass and i'm i'm probably up about i had to be up about 6 000 feet or so up in this pass and it there is nothing out there nothing and the last city that i'd gone through was a little po dunk city that you know had you know they they closed up everything that kind that kind of thing and that was probably about 20 30 miles back behind me and so i'm driving along and i happen to look out my my side window and i look up and it's just stars just everywhere and so i'm a geek so i pull over and so i pull over and i get out and i'm on you know i found a an offs and off thing that i pulled over into and i'm out and i i go around to the front of my truck so so that my so lights from people coming up wouldn't get me and there was nobody coming so i was just out there all by myself middle of the night and i'm looking up and i can't find the big dipper because there were so many stars i couldn't see it and you know when i um sometimes i'll talk about being back in in big bear and i used to go out in the middle of the night and sit in a uh we lived on the on kind of on the border of a dry lake bed well it wasn't always dry but most times it was dry and i go out in the middle of this lake bed and i'd uh sit on my back and i'd pray and i'd just look up at the stars while i was doing it and it was like the heavens were ablaze that's you know you could clearly see the milky way just really awesome this blew that away it was like it was like five to ten times the intensity it was it was so cool you guys and when i think of the new heaven and the new earth i think it's better than that i think it's better than that i like to i like to look at hubble space telescope you know pictures and and that kind of thing there's just beauty out there that's amazing but it's a deadly place too radiation everywhere that kind of thing and i think that the new heaven is going to be something that's different one of the things that i also want to get across to you is uh this this whole thing with there being no more curse so we we read a verse 3 of chapter 22 there shall be no more curse but the throne of god and of the lamb shall be in it and his servant shall serve him we're going to talk about that a little bit later on but he's talking about no more curse not just in the city of jerusalem of the new jerusalem but in the new heaven and the new earth no more curse and the curse is all about decay the curse is all about you know when adam and eve sinned god told them that there's going to be a problem from now on there's going to be a problem with mankind there's going to be sin there's going to be a problem with the with the world the world changed so that the literally the the ground itself would not yield in the same way that it yielded it before there you know and then we have weeds that come in and and that kind that kind of thing it's the whole it's the whole idea of decay and when you when you look at this um from a science aspect we we have a we have a problem in our world and the problem is the second law of thermodynamics and basically what that says is everything's falling apart and you can you can do things to um postpone it but you're never gonna win everything's falling apart and we we see that on on a daily basis your clothes fall apart you know you you know you you get a shirt that you love and it only lasts a certain amount of time because it falls apart and it doesn't matter if you've got a car if you've got a house or if you've got a kid or if you've got your own body sooner or later it's all going to fall apart everything's falling apart and it's the same thing with stars it's the same thing with planets it's the it's the same thing with galaxies it's the same thing with the fabric of space everything is falling apart and and so when you look at the when you know when i became a christian i knew this from knowing something about science and i become a christian i read genesis chapter 3 and it starts talking about the curse and it's obvious that he's talking about the the principle of decay in the creation and i realize the curse isn't just something that came down on the earth it's something that came down on the heavens too because the same principle of decay that we have on the planet earth we see on the moon same principle of decay that we see on the moon we see on mars same principle we see on in the sun the same principle we see in our galaxies and so on things are blowing up things are dying the universe if it just was left to itself would die what was called a heat death everything uh all the all the atoms all the heat death is the idea that everything spreads apart so much that it's all been used and the and the universe comes to a temperature that it's that that is its final temperature and no energy can come from it ever again that's where that's where the universe is going and that's the whole principle of decay okay so do you see the implications there adam's sins and the principle of decay doesn't just happen in the garden doesn't just happen to him and the woman it has doesn't just happen to him and the woman and his children it happens to the whole creation on the earth in fact the bible in romans chapter 8 says the whole creation is groaning and in travail until now until this the revelation of the sons of god and then it says that it's going to be delivered from decay that's in romans chapter 8. and so that that whole decay principle didn't just apply to the earth it applied to the whole solar system and applied to the whole galaxy why would god do that why would he do that one of the things that god said to adam and eve when he created them was that he was going to make them masters over creation and you see that in genesis chapter 1 verse 28 and you know in in that passage he's going to make them masters over creation and so everything and he's specifically talking about the earth so i don't want to go beyond what the bible says but he makes masters over everything on the earth and then when they sin their their world falls with them and again the point that i'm making here is it wasn't just their world it was everything fell with them and so i think that there are implications there i think that there it it may be a situation where god intended for us to expand we're doing things right now where we're expanding out beyond the earth and we're getting into space and the expansion has stopped somewhat i was pretty excited back in the early 70s when they were doing the moon shots and then i became less excited as time went on because we'll just circle the earth you know just just hang out there i think i think that other things should be going on i just like that stuff and so um but we're beginning to expand and we're beginning to talk about bases on the moon bases on mars that kind of thing i don't know if that's going to happen because we're going to be in the last days here pretty quick but i think it's pretty cool and if we're expanding in a fallen state i wonder what the expansion would have been like in a state where we weren't falling and i wonder how that all would have worked and i wonder if the this whole principle of decay what what kind of changes were made in the universe when the decay came in i wonder if the universe might have been different if we hadn't fallen and i don't know what that difference would look like because i'm sitting here right smack in the middle of a universe that just works the way that it works and i don't understand how you could how you could do things without the second law for example without the second law you know i couldn't walk on the grass i'd be slipping all over the place so i don't know i don't know how all that stuff works but there's a principle of decay there and apparently it was gone when we get the new heaven and new earth there's not going to be any decay there's no not going to be any curse and so the universe is going to be radically different than what we see right now and like i said he's talking about a new heaven not just a new earth a new heaven and a new earth and so i wonder if we're going to have access to the new heaven the the universe that we see is vast there's no way that we can see all of it not even with telescopes we're never going to be able to see it all and in fact the distant edges of the universe are traveling so fast it's going the speed of light from the perspective of the earth and it um and when you get out beyond those areas of the universe that are traveling that quickly they just disappear they fade to red and they just disappear and so we can't see the whole universe but apparently it looks to me like we were made for that in fact the bible says that when you get your new your new body that it's going to be a body that's fit for the heavens right now you have a terrestrial body that's fit for the earth we've talked about this before so i've got a body that's great for getting around on the earth but if you take me up 75 miles and you you push me out the door i'm gonna go and bad things are gonna happen to me my my lungs are gonna have real problems and and uh my blood's gonna boil and and all that kind of stuff is gonna be taking place because the pressure differential my body is not made for the heavens uh it would be the same thing if you took me to mars and pushed me out the door the atmosphere on mars is like the atmosphere at a hundred thousand feet on the earth and so there's very little air there same thing with the moon and so on go to go to venus if i if i uh got pushed out out the door on uh on venus i would immediately just flare up into flame venus is hot enough to melt lead and so you know it's the the universe is a dangerous place and i want to have a body that's fit for that but the body that jesus had when he rose from the grave that was a body that could get around that was a body that could do stuff and i don't know everything about his body i do know that he can't die anymore and so it wouldn't matter if you were on venus or it wouldn't matter if you were on the moon if you wouldn't matter if you're on mars without a spacesuit you can't die and so he's got a body that can't die anymore and so that's cool and he's got a body that can get around in really cool ways because all he's doing is appearing in the middle of rooms he doesn't walk through walls he just appears in the middle of a room that's folding it folding yourself up in space it's like it's the idea of taking taking your body and and squishing squishing my body so if you looked at me straight on i was lying and then you squish your body this way if you looked at me straight on um or if you look at me from any direction now i'm aligned and then you squish me this way and now i'm a point and then you have to squish me again actually a couple more times so that i can disappear you're folding yourself through dimensions of space and just appearing in the middle of places that's cool and so if i can do that here the bible says i'm going to have a body just like jesus's if i can do that here i can just appear places i wonder if i can appear on mars this pink better than a transporter [Laughter] i wonder if i can appear 250 000 miles out and out in space and just sit back and and look at the moon rotating around the earth of course we're not go you know well it doesn't say we don't have a moon it says there's no need of a moon but you know just sitting out there looking at it and and gazing at that for a while and then again you look at the the creation that we've got right now this place is beautiful even the deserts in the uh on the planet are beautiful i've you know i've lived all over the place since i was a kid military family in that whole thing and so i've lived in pennsylvania and seen the woods and the appalachians and i've lived in arizona and just gone out and in into the desert and and played with scorpions and you know all that kind of stuff you know messed around with cactuses and cacti and that kind of thing and i've been to the sierras and i've been to the cascades and i've been to you know i've been to the ocean and i've been all over this place right and you know i'm not as well traveled as some of you may be but this place is beautiful it's beautiful even though it's fallen it's beautiful the new how the new earth that we're going to get is not going to be less beautiful than what we've got now and so one of the things that that i want to just kind of kind of drill into your head is that when you're talking about heaven it's not ghosty when you're talking about the the new earth it's not something that's less than what we've got now it's how god wanted it how god designed it in the first place it's going to be perfect and so if i'm looking around at the beauty and the glory of the creation right now and i know that it's imperfect how much more beautiful is that is that gonna be and so new heaven and a new earth sorry to spend so much time on that but i think i think we need to get that in our heads he says verse 2 the night john saw the holy city new jerusalem coming down out of heaven from god prepared as a bride adorned for her husband we talked about this uh when we were in in the study um last week and the week before one of the things that jesus had said in john chapter 14 is that he was going to prepare a place for us and if he went to prepare a place for us then he was going to come again and receive us to himself that where he was we would be also he said in my father's house are many mansions king jimmy many dwelling places and i'm going to prepare a place for you and so most likely what he was talking about was the city of god what he was talking about was a new jerusalem and so i believe that the new jerusalem is a place and i believe it's something that jesus has been preparing for us and it is a place that is compared with the bride of christ that's what you see again in verse 2. i saw the holy city new jerusalem coming down out of heaven from god prepared as a bride adorned for her husband when we get on later on in the passage you'll see what i'm talking about and so the city is in heaven and it comes down now the heavens and the earth have vanished away and so we're talking about a different heaven right if if he's preparing it now this is the point that i'm making if he's preparing it now we have the the earth that's here we have the heaven that's around the earth in the bible there are three heavens there's the heaven that's around the earth that's the atmosphere and then there's the heaven where the planets and the stars are that's space and then there's the heaven where god is and god is not out in space someplace he's not he's not lo you know there's not a planet somewhere you know that's that's heaven it's the third heaven and so it's something that's distinct from the first two right and so we're talking multi-dimensional here and so the first heaven and the second heaven are destroyed when god destroys the earth and the heavens but the third heaven is still there and so when god creates the new heaven and the new earth he's talking about the the new earth a new planet and the new heavens space and everything that's in space that's what he's talking about so when it talks about jerusalem coming down out of heaven it's going to include the idea of coming down and out of the sky that's obviously what you see here but it's but it's coming out of another dimension it's coming out of the heaven where god dwells actually i can't say that where god localizes himself for the angels because god is everywhere he doesn't hang out in heaven right and so it's going to it's going to appear out of that dimension and then it's going to descend down to the earth we already talked about it being over you know about 1400 miles across you know the the united states is about 3 000 miles across and so you're talking about a city that if you planted it on the earth right now would be rocking because the curvature of the earth couldn't hold the thing and so it would literally go halfway across the united states it's how big it is and so it's like you sit there and you imagine something that huge coming down out of the sky you guys remember the the movie independence day where the you know the the big the big uh alien saucers come down and come down over new york city and come down over over los angeles you know pretty cool movie those things were 15 miles across 15 miles across just huge scary kinda that kind of thing little kids oh that scares me you know actually what scared me when i was a little kid i don't know about little kids nowadays they're pretty sophisticated in any case doesn't compare with anything that you see in the context of the new jerusalem that's one of the reasons i remember last week i went when i was reading to you from cs lewis and he was talking about the the the new narnia where they where they went into the place that that was prepared for them he's talking about the new the new earth and they als they looked at it and they all saw it as being bigger it's bigger than what we had back then the mountains are larger they're farther away it's bigger i think that lewis probably got that from this passage because if you're going to have a city that comes down on the earth i mean god could do anything i mean he can he can take the foundations and he and he can he can shape them to the shape of the earth but you got a situation where this thing's poking up just hundreds of miles above the orbit of the space station you know where the where the shuttle you know the space station's about 200 miles up you're talking almost 1500 miles the space station would run into the side of the thing way down at the bottom of it so we're talking about something big and so i'm wondering if the new earth isn't big bigger than it was bigger and better and so i think it's bigger i think it's probably i know that it's going to be better and i know that it's going to be more beautiful it says down in verse 9 then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues came to me and talked with me saying come i will show you the bride the lamb's wife and so you have this introduction to the description of the heavenly city and he calls it the lamb's wife well who's the lamb's wife that's the church and so what does that mean and here's one of the things that i alluded to earlier on in the book of revelation in the book of revelation you have three main characters that are women and one of them is israel and you see her in revelation chapter 12 clothed with the moon and the sun and the stars and and that whole thing that's talking about israel and israel has a city that's connected with it the the people of israel what's their city and that city is jerusalem right and so it is israel has a city and then you have the unbelievers and they have a city too when we got to revelation chapter 17 there was a group of people that was it actually was called the [ __ ] of babylon and so it's the idea of pagan religion anything that's in rebellion against god and they've got a city and the city is babylon it's the it's the city that that that causes the fall of man there were a couple of falls of mankind so one was in the garden and one was in one was in babel when god had to disperse all the nations and so you have that city and all the way through the old testament and the new testament there's this conflict between babel or babylon and jerusalem um babylon speaking about the the the fact of uh the whole idea of confusion and jerusalem being the city of peace and not that jerusalem has been the city of peace because there's been a lot of warfare over jerusalem but it's supposed to be right and so you have israel pictured as a woman and she has a city you have paganism and ungodly religion pictured as a woman and she has a city it's babylon and then you have the church and the church has a city too and it's a new jerusalem so as you go through the the um book of revelation you see a woman with a city associated with the city then it goes on and it talks about verse 10 he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain and i wonder if that's a reference to the to the scale that you would have to have on the new earth in any case he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain and showed me the great city the holy jerusalem descending out of heaven from god um here's a here's another thing that's kind of interesting um when you when you think about the new jerusalem uh what jesus said was i'm coming to take you home to be with me i've got a place that's prepared for you and i'm going to bring you to myself that where i am you may be also that's going to happen for every believer in jesus christ every every follower of jesus who is part of the church is going to have that fulfilled we're going to go to the city and we're going to be with jesus in that city where i am you may be also it's an indication that uh that what jesus was talking about was a situation not where he was coming back to the earth to just resurrect you and have you hang out here in the millennium or something but he was coming to literally grab you and take you home to be with him and so some of us that period of time is going to last for seven years or so some of us uh some of the believers that have come before us it's been up you know it's been up to 2000 now but in any case we're all going to have a situation where we're with jesus in heaven in heaven in the new city that he's prepared for us and so that's a cool thing but what happens when jesus comes back and sets up the kingdom here on the earth do we not have anything to do with the city for a thousand years or what what's going on there there are some commentators that think that the new jerusalem actually orbits the earth during the time of the millennium and so not only would you see the moon up there um i'm going to talk about that a little bit more in a minute uh this is a good night to talk about this stuff because the moon's almost full it's going to come up just after the bible study about 8 22 and i want you to take a look at it okay and you'll you'll know why in a minute but not only would the moon be up there but you'd have the new jerusalem floating up there and so when it gives the the dimensions of the new jerusalem it's three-dimensional and so there's length and there's width and there's height and they're all the same and so people have come up with different ideas on what that looks like i kind of think it might be a cube and so you have this huge cube just floating through the air you know floating through the sky going over the top of you and when you look at the moon when it comes up it's still going to it's still going to be light and you know how the moon's kind of diffused when you see it in the sky during the day that's that's the kind of thing that you'd see with a new jerusalem during the day and then during the night it would just be blazing and so i don't know if that's true i don't know if that's true but it might be because again that's our city and we're connected with it and so that would be a cool thing which means that while we're here during the millennium ruling and reigning with christ over the people who lived through the tribulation we have a place to go home to right and so it's like work day is done been talking to these people all day and you know dealing with their stuff and you know blessing them and doing all the things that you need to do when you're ruling and reigning over over the people during the millennium and you go time to go home and so if home's floating up there how are you getting there it's not going to be in a rocket ship and again i propose to you that you just fold yourself up through space and off you go see where my head goes i'm all over the page in any case um the new jerusalem at this point um is not something that's just in heaven in the in the heaven again where god localizes himself for the angels but he uh the new jerusalem is coming down out of the heavens uh both of them and coming down to the earth and so now you have heaven and earth joined is the whole point here so sending out of heaven from god and having the glory of god and you know what let me i i just want to talk about this a little bit more again you got to think of perspective you think have to think of size you got something that's 1400 miles long you you can't see the end of it you we we can't we can't look out through our atmosphere and see 1400 miles and so if you were able to get high enough that you could get over the curvature of the earth and look at the at the side of the new jerusalem you know from a from a perspective that's like an angle you couldn't see the other corner it would just fade off and when you're when you're talking about looking up that's a little bit that's easier looking up because you're not looking through miles and miles and miles of atmosphere you're looking up a certain distance and the atmosphere gets thinner as it goes and so you can see farther up that's why you can you can easily see the moon and so you can see farther up but it's still going to do that fading thing that goes off and so this is one of the things that i do when i'm on trips when i'm on a road trip and i get to someplace that's flat and you know you can just see for miles and miles this is what i'm thinking about i think about this what would it look like for me to stand at the corner of the new jerusalem and then just look down the look down the wall at something that's 1400 miles long what would that look like what would it look like to see it going off up into space and fading off into the atmosphere what would that look like and you're gonna see that again verse 11 having the glory of god her light was like a most precious stone like a jasper stone clear is crystal and so usually uh people believe that a jasper stone was something like a diamond um something like that think of that also she had a great and high wall with 12 gates and twelve angels at the gates and names written on them which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of israel three gates on the east three gates on the north three gates on the south three gates on the west while the city had 12 foundations and on them were the names of the 12 apostles of the lamb and so on the gates you have the 12 tribes on the foundation stones those have to be huge foundation stones there's only 12 of them so they have to be huge they're miles and miles and miles long hundreds and hundreds of miles long and on each one of those stones it's written the names of the apostles i wonder how big the names are is it like you're sitting there i didn't do that i didn't do the math on this whole thing i'd have to go go through and diagram this whole thing to see what that to see what that looked like exactly how long those would be those would be big letters right in any case you have the names of the 12 apostles there and the 12 tribes and what you have there is a blending not only of heaven and earth but you have a blending of the old covenant and the new covenant you have a blending of the believers that came before christ and the believers who come after christ there's not a distinction anymore at that point and it gets more interesting as we go through here so again 12 matching the number of the 12 tribes and then it talks about the gates themselves and it talks about the fact that they're made out of pearl he walked with me or excuse me verse 15 and he who talked with me had a gold read to measure the city its gates and its wall city is laid out as a square length as great as its breadth and so on verse 18 the construction construction of its wall is of jasper the city was pure gold like clear glass the foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all kinds of precious stones and it goes through the the stones verse 21 the 12 gates were 12 pearls each individual gate was of one pearl and the street of the city was pure gold like transparent glass and so this is where you get the idea of the pearly gates and usually we're connecting that with heaven it's not connected with heaven it's connected with the new jerusalem okay so pearly gates so pearls where do pearls come from come from oysters right and so or are oysters clean animals or unclean they're unclean right and so you got the the names of the tribes of israel inscribed on jewels that come from an unclean animal you know when you're going through the book of matthew in matthew chapter 13 it talks about the pearl of great price the guy finds this pearl goes and sells everything that he has to get it and uh and then he gets it and and so on because he wants it and jesus compares that to us and him and a lot of times what commentators will say is that jesus is the pearl of great price and that we're going out and selling everything that we have to get him i would just submit to you that we are the pearl of great price and that jesus sold everything that he could had to get us and here's another thing a pearl is a gentile jewel jews dealt in pearls but they didn't use them themselves what they did with pearls was they sent the sell sold them to gentiles because they were unclean so you've got an unclean jewel here and the tribes of israel are written on the unclean jewel and that's the that's the whole idea that god's taking all those distinctions away once again here's another thing it says each gate was uh was of one pearl and you know how pearls are made an oyster you know gets an irritant in it and it begins to try to cover the irritants and it and it puts over layers and layers of mother of pearl until it gets to the size of something that we can use and then we go and harvest the oyster and we get we pull the pearl out and that's where pearls come from how big is that oyster to get a gate like that and obviously god can do anything he wants he doesn't he doesn't need an oyster but it would be funny if he used one just make a huge oyster and get the get to get a huge pearl out of it and then you got to carve the pearl up to get to get what you want and again you know god can just make it that way but again it's a gate of pearl and there's there's 12 of them one for each one of the 12 tribes of israel pearls are interesting also in that pearls are um pearls start as an irritant and then they're taken out of their place of origin to become a jewel and that's exactly what you are you're an irritant you're somebody you're somebody who was opposed to the things of god and then god took you and took you out of your place actually first he began began to shape you into something that you're going to be for the rest of eternity and then he takes you out of your place to become a jewel did you do you realize that the bible actually says that that he's going to take you he's watching you he sees your conversations he writes your conversations down in a book when you're speaking about him he's overhearing all the times that you speak about him and he talks about the fact that that you're going to be his and he's going to make you his jewels and that's in the that's in the old testament minor prophets and so that's talking about gentiles specifically the whole the whole idea of the pearl of great price is the idea that jesus would see the gentiles even though they were an irritant and he would take them and he would mold them and he would shape them and then he would take them out of their place of origin so that they could become an item of adornment and that's what you're going to be with the lord so gates of pearl and then you have foundations and again you have 12 foundations uh in in the passage again down in verse 19 it says the foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all kinds of precious stones the first foundation was jasper and you go all the way all the way down and you see that down in verse 20 the 12th was amethyst and that's really interesting too because you have these different stones that are mentioned here and is there a place in the bible where there are 12 stones specifically 12 stones with people's names on them you know where that's at it's in the old testament it's a high priest breastplate and so in the high priest breastplate it was a plate that they that they place that was hung around the high priest's neck and there were stones 12 of them each matching uh each one for each one of the tribes of israel and so it'd be reuben and gad and nathalie and you know all that and they're all the names are all printed there and it's the idea of god takes the people of israel he considers them to be again an item of adornment but they're not unclean these are not unclean jewels they're an item of adornment and his their names are written there he knows their names and they're on his heart that's a symbolism that you have behind the high priest breastplate but what's happened here is what god's done is he's taking taken the symbols one symbol for the gentiles and another symbol for the jewish nation and he's flipped them and so now the gentile jewel has the name of the tribes of israel and the jewish jewel has the names of the of the apostles of jesus the 12 apostles and so this is kind of interesting um josephus in and in the book of antiquities book 3 7 verse 7 says that each one of those stones not only was something that corresponded to one of the tribes of israel had the names of the tribes of israel written on it it was it was literally a stone that corresponded to what was called the matzeroth which is the zodiac and so we have again you know i mean i'm into astronomy i like this stuff and so we have what's called the zodiac and usually when when people think of the zodiac they're thinking of astrology and that kind of thing and so you pick up the the newspaper or whatever when's the last time you did that pick up a newspaper but you know you pick up the newspaper and you go you go to the astrological thing and they tell you you know what you're what you're you know what your day's going to be like and all that kind of thing all that kind of stuff and so i'm a guy who was born at the end of july i was born on what's called the cusp and so i'm a cancer leo and so generally more often you know it's kind of a cancer thing but i'm i'm on the cusp and that's the idea that where the sun sits right now the sun is sitting in leo so what that means is the constellation leo there's a constellation that looks actually looks like a question mark but it's a lion it's supposed to be a lion and it's back behind the sun so you can't see it when you're when you're talking about august and when you're when you when we get to september uh the constellation that the sun's going to be in front of is um uh virgo and so on through the year and so whatever whatever month you're born in that's the month that the sun is fr in front of a constellation that sits on what's called the ecliptic it's where it's where the sun and the moon go it's where the planets go okay and so that's where you get the 12 signs of the zodiac they've taken the the the ecliptic they've divided it up into 12 parts one for each month they've taken a constellation and called that one of the signs of the zodiac and so when i think of the zodiac in the in the context of of uh astronomy it's just a place in the sky right and so you can go out and look at it and so some of the some of the really clear ones right now are uh sagittarius and scorpio you can see those really clearly you know just in in this section of the sky just after the sun goes down okay and so that those are the zodiac well each one of the signs of the zodiac was something or each one of those um names of the zodiac was something that was associated with each one of the tribes of israel and so i just talked about the sun is sitting in front of leo guess what the sign of the tribe of judah was i just gave you a hint it's leo the lion and jesus was going to be from the tribe of judah and jesus is the lion of the tribe of judah and so you know kind of cool things with that okay and just to just give you a hint of where this whole thing goes um there's some indications that there's a that there's a possibility i'm just throwing this out to you it's not something the bible actually states but there's some indications that god used the signs of the zodiac to preach the gospel the gospel starts with the birth of jesus to a woman the see the seed of the woman and it ends with a conquering king who's the lion of the tribe of judah right and so in the in the um middle east and actually in all nations the the start of the year in ancient times was not in the middle of the winter it was in the month that's coming up it was in september right in that area and so their their year started during the time when uh the sun was in front of virgo and it ended when the sun was in front of leo the lion and so there's some books that you can get and actually i'm going to do this on sunday morning in in in the not too distant future i'm just going to go through and i'm going to talk to you about some of the signs and some of the or some of the constellations and some of the sub constellations that are connected with it you can get the gospel out of this out of the stars now that's been perverted it's been corrupted uh at babylon that whole thing was twisted and became gods and and all those kinds of things but there's there's really clear uh indications that god was using the constellations uh to share the gospel so for example orpheus is a guy who is stomping on the head of a snake and the bible talks about the seed of the woman was going to somebody be somebody who crushed satan's head and he was going to bruise his heel and so just you know just some of that stuff for you so each tribe had a standard now meaning a staff and each one of the staffs had the sign one of the signs of the mazerath on it and again for example judah was leo the lion and so you have a description of the high priest breastplate back in exodus chapter 28 15-21 and through 31-34 and 39 10 through 14. i'm not going to go through and look at that for well actually let's you know what i do want to do that turn back to exodus it's worth looking at exodus chapter 28. verse 15 it says you shall make the breastplate of judgment are artistically woven according to the workmanship of the ephod you shall make it of gold blue purple and scarlet thread gold represents deity blue represents the one who comes from heaven purple represents kingship and scarlet is about the blood of christ everything in this is something that points to jesus and five fine woven linen linen is white and it represents the purity of christ it shall be doubled into a square span shall be its length and a span shall be its width and you shall put settings of stones in it four rows of stones the first row so you gotta think of four it's rectangular and so four stones across the top all the way across three three lines of those stones the first row shall be a sardius a topaz and emerald this shall be the first row the second row shall be a turquoise a sapphire and a diamond the third row adjacent then agate and amethyst the fourth row of barrel and onyx a jasper they shall be set in gold settings and the stones shall have the names of the sons of israel twelve according to their names like the engravings of a signet each one with its own name they shall be according to the twelve tribes and so you have that in verses 31 through 34 it says you shall make the robe of the ephod all of blue there shall be an opening for his head in the middle of it and shall have a woven binding all around its opening like the opening in a coat of mail so that it does not tear and upon its hem you shall make pomegranates of blue purple scarlet all around its hem and bells of gold between them all around a golden bell and a pomegranate a golden bell and a pomegranate upon the hem of the robe all around and it shall be upon aaron when he ministers and its sound will be heard when he goes into the holy place before the lord and when he comes out that he may not die bells and pomegranates the jews believe the pomegranate was the forbidden fruit and so that's why you have that there and you know there's a there's another passage in uh chapter 39 10-14 that's basically saying the same thing okay so let me do this with you let's go let's go back through the book of revelation and here's one of the things that i want you to know about this um when i've gone through and studied this most of these stones i can identify and they go along with the high priest breastplate but there's some because the language is so old because hebrew is so old it's hard to be able to tell if you're talking about the same stone so this is not something that i can i can sit here and pin down and say for sure but i kind of think this is how this goes okay and so in any case jasper is pretty clear and so it's clear jasper is like a diamond so back in revelation chapter 21 when you have the these stones mentioned it says again the first foundation was jasper and so that's clear like a diamond the second foundation stone uh was a sapphire and a sapphire is hard blue some of you have seen sapphires before right and so again you need to be thinking about these things when you're when you're thinking about this this thing in context and you're talking about a stone that's hundreds of miles long that's this color it's gonna they're they're just huge the calcitini is greenish copper that's the third the third stone that you see here the fourth is an emerald and an emerald is green the fifth is a sardonyx and that's deep red layered with white and so it's going to have white lines in it the sixth one is a sardius and that's fiery red deep red the seventh one is a chrysolite and that's golden yellow the eighth is a barrel and that is green or excuse me sea green then the ninth one is a topaz which is usually greenish yellow the tent is a chris appraise which is gold with tints of green the 11th is jason which is violet and the 12th is amethyst which is purple and so again you have that so just beautiful and then when you when you look at the the wall of the city it says the construction of its wall was of jasper and the city was pure gold like clear glass okay so when you're talking about the wall the wall is something you can see through it's it's like jasper it's a it's a clear stone and so you can see through it and from the midst of the city looking through the wall you can see the city and it's shining like pure gold and so you you have to have this picture of a of a city that shines with a white light but from the midst of it you have this gold shine that's coming out of it and i know that i'm not doing it justice but in any case you you have that and then these beautiful stones that are on the bottom that are of all the different colors and so pretty cool then it talks about then you know just talking about the dimensions of the city the dimensions of the city uh basically get you a stadia is about 607 feet and you multiply that times 12 000 because that's what we're talking about here 12 000 stadia you get 1379.54 miles 1380 miles okay so being the geek that i am i go through and i start figuring out i when i see numbers i start figuring out what the numbers are you know what what they're looking like and what the implications are and so when i go through a stadia is something that we don't know for sure how long it is we've got some definitions in ancient history the shortest stadium makes the um walls of jerusalem of the new jerusalem 377 miles generally speaking like in my my more my modern uh bible program and and that kind of stuff about 1380 miles is what it would be but i always take the smallest number so 1377 miles is what i use for the numbers that i'm about to give you and i'm gonna give you a bunch of numbers okay so based on uh 1377 mile dimension the new jerusalem has a cubic mile volume of 2 billion 610 million 960 633 cubic miles okay so 2 billion 2.6 billion cubic miles is what we're talking about the volume of the moon is 5 billion 276 million 669 286.45 cubic miles so the new jerusalem has a volume of 2.6 billion cubic miles and the volume of the moon has 5.27 billion miles one of the things that that you need to know is that when you start figuring these numbers out there's a diameter to the moon right and when you're looking at the long axis of the new jerusalem this is what i mean if you go from one corner to the corner that's kitty cat kitty corner from it when you take that long axis on on all the all the different corners if you stuck the new jerusalem into the moon just stuck it in the center of the moon it wouldn't fill the whole moon up but the corners would be popping out of the moon that's how big this thing is and so again like i said this is a good night to talk to you about this because the moon's almost full and when you see it coming up just think of these four corners well actually it's going to be you know one two three four five six seven eight eight corners popping out of the moon and that's the size of the new jerusalem that's how big this thing is very cool and so then what i did was i started thinking about what kind of living space we have right now right and so when you look at the earth the surface of the earth um the surface of the earth has 201 million 61 929.83 square miles on the surface of the earth okay but most of that's ocean so the habitable surface of the earth is 66 million 350 436.84 square miles okay that's a habitable surface of the earth okay so i'm thinking about the new jerusalem and again i don't know for sure what this what this whole thing looks like it may be some people have said it's a pyramid some people have thought that maybe it's a it's a situation where it's not uh it's not cube shaped but it's uh square shaped with high walls around it i kind of think it's cube shaped and i think that the the dimension for the wall that's given is the thickness of the wall itself in any case if it is cube shaped then you know you're going to have jesus is making mansions in this place and so it probably has to have stories why would you have just one floor and not use the whole thing and so i think it probably has stories and so what i did was i went went through and figured out how much square footage you can get in these stories right and so on the first floor and remember you got 66 mil 66.3 million cubic uh million square miles of habitable space on the earth so when you're talking about the first floor of the new jerusalem 1 million 896 thousand 129 square miles okay so you know it's uh the earth is 66 times that basically 65 times that habitable surface of the earth but if you start putting stories in it if you make it 20-foot stories what you what you what you have is a situation where you have 689 billion 295 million 983 112 square miles of habitable space on in the new jerusalem that's 3428 times the surface of the earth it's 10 388 times the habitable surface of the earth if you use 20 foot stories if you want to squeeze the space a little more you can use 15 foot stories that's still good that's still a good size and then you got 45 400 and uh excuse me 4 571 times the surface of the earth 13 851 times the habitable surf surface of the earth you know the the planet has about you know a little over seven billion people on the planet right now we're we're starting to get close to eight billion i haven't redone my calculations yet and most people uh most um uh most of the scientists who study population believe that about half of the earth half half the people alive uh who have ever lived are alive on the planet right now that's just the way that the calcs go so half of everybody who's ever lived is live net right now and so you what you would have to do is you'd have to take that and double that to get the amount of people who've already died and who are alive at the same time right um if you take and you take everybody who has ever lived on this planet and you take them to the new jerusalem and say we use the 20-story thing again 689.29 billion square miles of space and you divide that by 14 billion people you get 49.24 square miles for every person who has ever lived 49 miles square miles that means 49 miles that way 49 miles that way that whole square is what i got to myself if every other everybody on the planet was saved who's ever lived okay if only half of them are saved obviously you double that that's 98.47 square miles per person at that point that's 63 021.35 acres per person i get 63 000 acres all to myself and i can take my mansion i can plant it right in the center of that and i don't have to talk to you if i don't want to if i do want to talk to you i can put it over in the corner we can have a little you know that kind of thing but that's a that's a lot of acreage right if you do that for 15 story 15 foot stories 919 billion square miles 919 61 million 310 816 square miles divided by 14 billion people gives you 65.65 square miles for every person who has ever lived if only if half of them are saved which probably that's not the case if half of them are saved you get 131.3 square miles per person that's 84 032 acres per person and again i can plant my mansion right smack in the middle of that and it's got acres all around miles of acres all around this is where you live right now this is where you live right now you take 66 million 350 000 so on square miles for the habitable surface of the earth and you divide it by 7 billion people you get .009479 square miles per person you get an average of about six acres per person right now so when you're talking about the place that god's prepared for you and obviously we can fudge those numbers you can take those numbers and you can have them and not 20-foot stories you can do 40-foot stories you can do even do 80-foot stories you can do you know pretty much whatever you want with them there's plenty of space in the new jerusalem and we're not going to be packed in there on any kind of level it's magnificent is the point that i'm making it's magnificent and so you know you go through and you you look at this this passage and it's hard for me uh obviously it's hard for john to describe it it's hard for me to describe it it's hard for me to do it justice but it's massive and it's glorious and it's more awesome than anything that you have ever seen in all of your existence and john sees this coming down out of heaven like a bride adorned for its husband and this is the place that jesus has made for us i'm looking forward to going home looking forward to going home it's not going to be a bad thing it's going to be a very very good thing so i just looked at the clock we'll stop it right there we'll we'll pick this up next week father thanks again for your word thank you lord i've just i've been having a lot of fun with this whole thing with some of the concepts involved but they're serious and um they should have an impact on us the bible talks about the fact that we need to look forward to your coming we need to look forward to heaven we need to have heaven on our mind and it needs to be something that impacts our lives because it's not very far away the day i stopped breathing is the day i wake up in this place the day my heart stops beating is the day i wake up in this place and it can happen very quickly and when that happens there are going to be things that i don't care about anymore they're going to be things on this planet that were you know that just had a hold on me and that that just distracted me that just seriously do not matter um and the way that peter put it you know since all these things are going to be burned up what what manner of lives should we be living it's all going to burn and then we're going to get the real riches father i just pray that you'd help us have our hearts set on heaven that we'd be so heavenly minded that we'd be all kinds of earthly good and uh god that you would just give us that hope looking forward to seeing you lord and especially as we can see that the day's approaching we want to be faithful to you god bless these people just be with them and honor them as they honor you and just ask this in jesus name amen one last thing i have a joke guy's talking to god and he goes god he's a rich guy he goes god you know i know that you said i you know there's nothing here that i can take with me but i really want to take something with me you know you've blessed me in all kinds of ways i just really want to take something with me and god goes what do you want to take and he goes well i want to take gold god's like you know you don't need to be looking at the gold you don't need to have that kind of attitude you don't need to be materialistic please god please and so finally god goes okay i'll let you i'll let you bring some gold and so the guy um what he does is he takes a suitcase and he fills it up with gold bullion and um you know coins from krugerrands from south africa or something and so he fills it up with that and um he knows that he's going to die in his bedroom and so in the attic above his bedroom he puts a suitcase so that when he goes he can just grab it on the way out and so he dies grabs a suitcase full of gold comes walking up to the pearly gates and peter peter's standing there because he always is that's where he hangs out and peter's standing there there at the pearly gates and this guy comes walking up and his name's phil and he comes and he comes walking up and peter goes phil how you doing buddy i'm glad you're here you know it's great to great to have you and then he looks down and he sees the suitcase and he goes what's that you got people don't usually walk in here with anything what do you got there and he goes well you know god told me that that i could bring something and he goes seriously the lord let you bring something and he goes yeah you know the lord told me i could bring something and he goes what's so important that you would bring you know you wouldn't want to bring it from earth to heaven and he goes well let me show you and so he sets it up on the table there because peter's got a table there by the pearl of gates also you know it's got the book on it you know where he looks to see if he should come in and so puts it up on the table he opens it up and it's gold and he opens it up and he goes it's gold and the guy goes yeah it's gold and he goes you brought pavement god bless you [Laughter] have a good

Channel: Calvary Chapel Tri-Cities

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Keywords: The End of the World in the bible, Truth, Jesus' Return, The rapture, the second coming, The book of Revelation, The Revelation Of Jesus Christ, The last book in the bible, The Bible, Calvary Chapel Tri-Cities, Steve Whinery, Gosphel, God, Biblical Prophecy, The End Times, End Of The World, The Millennial Kingdom, Revelation's meaning, Jesus

Id: qrK-Sb696rM

Length: 100min 0sec (6000 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 02 2020