Brooks, Dale: New Jerusalem Our Eternal Home

And we'll be back in the book of Revelation this morning. The book of Revelation, chapter twenty one, verses nine through twenty one. 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 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 great and high wall with twelve 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, 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 who taught with me had a gold reed to measure the city, its gates, and its walls. The city is laid out as a square. Its length is as great as its breadth. And he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. Its length, breadth, and height are equal. Then he measured its wall, one hundred and forty four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of an angel. The construction of its wall was of jasper, 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 foundation, the first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fourth sardonyx, the sixth sardius, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysolpraz, the eleventh jacinth, 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. Thank you, John. Good job plowing through those, all those stones. Let's pause for just a moment and look to the Lord once again. Father, we've read a, an amazing passage as we get ready to unpack it and try to understand all of its meanings. I pray that you would open our understanding. Open my lips to say exactly what you want me to say and to leave everything else unsaid. Give us a fresh glimpse of our eternal home, one that would wep our app- whet our appetite to live in such a way and abide in you in such a way that we would have confidence and not be ashamed before our Lord at his coming. We might every day live with anticipation of being just one heartbeat away, one trumpet sound away from that home. I pray for any who don't have reservations there, who are not ready for their heart to stop or that trumpet to sound. They would be left behind, or they would go to an awful place. Lord, don't let that happen to anyone here. Bring them to an understanding of their need. Bring them to the foot of the cross. Grant them, Lord, the courage and faith to reach out, put their trust in Christ. Meet every need that's got represented here this morning as we are gathered through the, your spirit, taking your word, applying it to our heart. And toward that end, we commit ourselves, and we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. I read recently of a visiting pastor who spoke at the Winona Lake Brethren Church in Winona Lake, Indiana. I attended Grace Theological Seminary in Winona Lake a long time ago, and I know about that church, so the story caught my attention. The preacher told the congregation that as a child, he used to have a terrible time with car sickness. He would travel for twenty miles and then throw up, and he soon developed an inferiority complex from his childhood because his parents would apologize for him ahead of time whenever they rode with someone else. So happened that his grandmother lived about a hundred miles from home, and the trips to grandma's house were always terrible. But once he arrived, he would take off his shoes and roam about that beautiful country, and grandma would bake the most delicious cakes, and she always said yes to her beloved grandson. And for two or three days, he would thoroughly enjoy his stay at grandma's house until it was time to return home. And when at grandma's, the preacher concluded, he had forgotten all about the car sick trip going there. All of us have trouble in this life, some more, some less. Some of our church family are dealing with the financial strain of unemployment. Some are undergoing treatments for cancer. Some are facing the shock of a brain tumor. Some are caring for loved ones who can no longer care for themselves. Some face the heartache every day of a wayward child. Some deal with the loneliness every day of missing a spouse who's gone on to be with the Lord. All of us face difficulties on this journey through life, but when we get to the Father's house, the place John just read about for us, we'll forget all about the troubles along the way. Because, as we saw back in verse four, God will wipe away all tears from our eyes. For the former things are passed away. Troubles do play an important part in our lives on the journey, though, because they increase our desire to get home. Johnny Erickson was a happy, energetic teenager when she dived into the waters of the Chesapeake Bay in nineteen sixty seven. The water at that spot wasn't as deep as she thought. Her head hit a rock at the bottom, broke her neck, and from that moment, she's been confined to a wheelchair as a quadriplegic. God has brought her through those dark early years and given her a deep relationship with him and a great understanding of his love and the promise of heaven. He's also given her an international ministry that's touched millions of lives. In her book, A Step Further, Johnny tells how suffering in this life increases our longing for the next. She writes, it's hard to think about heaven when it seems so far away. Besides, we got to die in order to get there. Who wants to think about that? And so God gives us a little help in getting our minds on the hereafter. That's just what God did for me when he sent a broken neck my way. The dark despair which followed wasn't much fun, but it sure did make what the Bible says about heaven come alive. There's not a doubt in my mind that I'll be fantastically more excited and ready for it than if I were on my feet. You see, suffering gets us ready for heaven. How does it get us ready? Well, it makes us want to go there. Broken necks, broken arms, broken homes, broken hearts. These things crush our illusions that Earth can keep its promises. When we come to know that the hopes we cherished will never come true, that our dead loved one is gone from this life forever, that we'll never be as pretty, as popular, as successful, or as famous as we, as we'd once imagined. It lifts our sights. It moves our eyes from this world, which God knows could never satisfy us anyway, and sets them on the life to come. Heaven becomes our passion. There's no better passage in scripture to give us a glimpse of where our sights ought to be set than the last two chapters of the Bible. We looked together last time at the first eight verses of this twenty first chapter at John's description of a new heaven and a new earth. He's already mentioned seeing the capital city in verse two, but now he's going to focus more closely on this long-awaited city that will be our eternal home. So let's consider together what the Holy Spirit tells us here along the lines of the five headings I've given you on your outline. First, the describer of the city. Look again at verse nine where we're told that John is approached by an angel, and not just any angel. We are told that it's one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues. Note the, uh, repetition of seven. We're going to see a little bit later the repetition of twelve. But if you've, you've got your Bible open there, if you'll flip back, flip back to chapter fifteen, verse one, where these seven angels are introduced for us, and we're told, I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, fifteen one. And here's the great and marvelous sign that John sees, seven angels having the seven last plagues, for in them the wrath of God is complete. You remember the, the judgments of God in the book of Revelation are carried along by three groups of seven, the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven bowls. The seven bowls are right at the end of the tribulation period. We studied those in detail some time ago, and in chapter sixteen, they pour out, one after the other, pours out his bowl of judgment upon the earth near the end of the tribulation period, and horrible things happen on the planet. Well, one of those seven angels here comes to John, and he invites John to come and be shown an amazing sight. Now, you're, if you're in chapter fifteen, go forward 2 to chapter seventeen and I want you to notice the amazing, uh, parallel and the exact language used, chapter seventeen, verses one to four and chapter twenty one:ten. and we just read We read twenty one ten. Now, look at chapter seventeen. One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me, saying to me, come, exact, exact, uh, phrase in the, in the English, in the Greek. Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast. Now, on that occasion in chapter seventeen, which chronologically was more than a thousand years earlier, but John is seeing this in, in a vision, but when it's laid out, this, this happened before the millennium, before the end of the tribulation, and chapter twenty one, of course, is after it in the beginning of the eternal state. But he sees this woman, he's, he's invited to come, he goes in the spirit into this, into the wilderness, and he sees a woman who represents a city, Babylon, as well as a religious system. And she, uh, is, uh, has committed fornication with the kings of the earth. Now, in great contrast, in chapter twenty one, he's led in the spirit to a great high mountain by this same angel, and he sees another woman, but this woman is the bride, not a, an immoral prostitute, but the bride of Christ. And this one who's been caught up to heaven, the marriage of the lamb has already taken place, and now she is inhabiting this city, so this woman represents the city as well as, uh, all the people of God. So this n- that wasn't an a- an accidental, uh, repetition of that. He's contrasting the, the woman who in a sense was the bride of Satan with the woman who is the bride of Christ, who is us, all of us who know Jesus Christ. Now we're told that John is carried away in the spirit, verse ten. This is the fourth time in the book. In fact, some commentators would divide the book along these lines. Fourth time in the book that he, he said to be in the spirit. Back in chapter one, verse ten, he said, I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, on Patmos, when all of these visions began. In chapter four verse two, he was in the spirit in heaven before the throne. It represents the rapture of the church after the church age. He's, he's caught up to heaven, and he sees things in chapters four and five of grandeur, with the throne of God being the central focus in heaven. The next time that phrase is used is in chapter seventeen, we just read it, where he says, I was in the spirit and caught up into a wilderness to see this, this great wicked religious system. And the fourth and final time is here in chapter twenty one ten where he says, I was carried away in the spirit to a great high mountain to see the bride of the Lamb. Very similar, I put the reference there, Ezekiel forty verse two, where Ezekiel in his vision was also carried to a great high mountain, so that from that vantage point, he could see things that were going to happen during the millennium. John is ta- taken to this vantage point where he can see things are going to be in, in eternity, where he sees this, uh, this grand city that's descending, the capital of heaven coming down to earth. Quite often, when I, when I preach a funeral, I'll quote the lines of a song that go like this: Think of stepping on shore and finding it heaven, of taking a hand and finding it God's, of breathing new air and finding it celestial, of feeling invigorated and finding an immortality, passing from storm and tempest to an unbroken calm, of waking up in glory and finding it home. What John is s- seeing here is his home and our home as it's descending from heaven. It's not all of heaven, it's the capital city descending from heaven to rest on this newly created eternal earth that was just created, uh, back in verse one. The, uh, the one who's going to describe all this for us is John with the aid of this angel. Second, notice the designation of the city in verses, all in these same verses, nine and ten, and there's a threefold designation. First of all, the city is called the bride, the wife of the Lamb. We're told in verse two that he saw it coming down as a, as a bride adorned for her husband. The imagery of, we think of in just a few days, there'll be a bride coming down this aisle, uh, adorned for her husband. And John sees this city adorned for her husband, descending the aisle of space down to this earth. Why is the city called the bride? Well, it's called the bride because it contains the bride, and here the br- the imagery of the bride has been used for the church throughout the New Testament. But in eternity, it's expanded to refer to all the believers, and it also is used to designate the city because the bride lives in the city, and the city takes on her character. And as I mentioned earlier, here she is presented in contrast with the, the great prostitute in chapter seventeen and eighteen. Second, it's the holy city, verse ten, and it's holy for at least three reasons. First of all, it's holy because it's set apart, which is the, the root idea in holiness. It's set apart for eternal union with a holy God, just as, uh, uh, when couples say I do, they are set apart in a unique way for one another, and they turn their back on everyone else because now they, they're wearing a ring, they're committed, they're committing themselves to that one person for the rest of their lives, and this city and these people are committed to God, and he's committed to them in this holy eternal union. It's holy because the throne of God is there, and he's holy. It's, it's because the glory of God is in it. Verses twenty two and twenty three talk about that. We'll look at that next time. Over in chapter twenty two verse three, God dwells with his people. Verse three said that from now on, he's going to tabernacle with them, using this, the same word that was used for the tabernacle in the Old Testament, where God has set up a way where he could live, he could be localized in the midst of Israel. He had to set up boundaries to keep them from being being consumed, but there between the cherubim, over the mercy seat, the Ark of the Covenant, he localized his presence by the Shekinah glory, and he's always wanted to live with his people. And the first part of this chapter says, now the time is coming where he will tabernacle with them. By the way, that's the same word that's used in John one when it says that the Word was made flesh and tabernacled for a while among us. He dwelt with us. He set up home with us for a few years to prepare the situation so we could be at home with him for eternity. It's holy because every redeemed person in it is holy. We've already been told that all the wicked are on the outside, verses six to eight. There will be no, no s- s- unredeemed sinners. Everybody in the city will have been a sinner, but have been, has been redeemed. And so it's holy. It's called the holy city for those reasons. Third, it's the new Jerusalem. The new Jerusalem. The first Jerusalem, of course, was established as David's capital. We were going through second Samuel or through the Bible, we talked about the fact that David, once he was crowned king of a united kingdom, uh, and brought together the warring factions after, uh, uh, Saul had died, he, he chose a border town that wasn't even a Jewish town. The Jebusites had lived there since the time of Abraham. He conquered that fortress, he renamed it the City of David, and that became the first part of the city of Jerusalem, and it was his capital. And of course, that city had been lying in ruins nearly for, uh, twenty five years or so by the time, um, John wrote this because it had been destroyed by the Romans in seventy AD. Well, we learned in looking at the millennium a few weeks ago that there will be a renewed Jerusalem, and that will be Jesus' capital during those thousand years of reign on earth. Psalm two, many other passages talk about that. I've installed my king on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. But then that, along with the rest of the world, will be burned up by fire after the millennium, after the final rebellion, and then on the new earth, this newly created earth, there will be a new Jerusalem, and that will be the capital of the new earth forever. It's been in heaven. It's that city that Abraham was looking for that has foundations. It's that city that all the saints, Abel to Abraham, in in Hebrews eleven says they were longing for a better country, a heavenly country. That's why they can never feel comfortable in putting their roots down in this earth. They they said, no, that's not it, that's not it. But this is it. As I said last time, Randy Alcorn said every human being, whether they know it or not, is made for a person and for a place. Jesus is the person. This is the place. And it's finally coming down to earth. Notice next the description of the city in verses ten to fourteen. Now, John gives us, first of all, his first impression. Just imagine he had, he had seen it a little earlier, but now he's, he's focusing in on it. He's been taken up to this, this new, uh, vantage point, this great high mountain, and he watches it come down, and he, and he's just dazzled by what he sees. First of all, he gives us his general appearance in verses, the first part of, latter part of verse ten, verse eleven. He says it's coming down out of heaven from God. It was obvious this was not a man-made thing. This was something God had created, and it's coming down from God out of heaven, and it is shining. The thing that, that dazzles him is the brilliance of it. It is shining with the glory of God. That's mentioned several times. That's why there's, there's no need for the sun to shine, no need for a temple inside, because it il- it is illuminated, and in fact, the whole earth is then illuminated through it by the glory of God. That Shekinah glory that appeared between the cherubim, that Shekinah glory that was lifted, that Ezekiel saw leave the city because of the apostasy of the Jews, the Shekinah glory that the shepherds saw that night over Bethlehem, the Shekinah glory that shone for a moment in the garden when Jesus said to those who ask him, I am he, and they fell back. That glory that he had to veil in flesh so people could get close to him. Now that glory is on full display, and we can handle it because we've got glorified bodies. We would burn up in a second now. That's why flesh and blood can't inherit the kingdom of God, but glorified humanity will be able to, to bask in the glow of the his glorious presence. His glory is the outshining of his inward perfections, and that's what radiates through this city. He says its brilliance is like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper. Now, the jasper that we know about is, uh, is somewhat opec, or opaque, I guess is the best way to say that. Um, this jasper is different. In fact, many believe he's actually describing a diamond. As I'll mention in a moment, the word jasper here is simply a transliteration from both the Hebrew and the Greek, and what he's describing sounds much more like a perfect diamond. So that's what this city looked like, like light flashing through the many facets of a brilliant, um, diamond. And back in November of nineteen ninety three, I can't believe it's been that long, Doyle and Steve Overton and Doyle's brother and myself went out for a wonderful week in Montana. And on the way back, and that, you know, that's one of the bad things about things on Earth, uh, good things never last. There's always that last day. You always got to come back from the trip. That won't be true in heaven. There won't never be, there won't ever be a last day. It'll never be over. And tomorrow will just be better than it was today. But we were coming back that Saturday, I believe it was, we, we left before daylight and, uh, drove, uh, through from Montana. We came, we were going through the panhandle of Idaho, and just as we got to the Montana-Idaho border, I think it was the Noxon River. But we could see behind us this fantastic sunrise was about to just burst over the horizon. So when it came up, we just stopped, pulled off to the side of the road, got out with our cameras, and we're taking pictures. I don't remember if it was, I know it was the earlier time, but it may have been the sa- the same morning also. There were, I don't know, a half a dozen or maybe a dozen bald eagles perched in trees along that river. Fantastic. Brilliant orange, red. In fact, I got a picture of it in my, that very scene we snapped that morning in my office. It reminded me, thinking about that this week, of a little girl was riding in her, in her, in the car with her mom one day and saw this beautiful sunrise. And she said, mommy, if heaven is this pretty on the wrong side, imagine what it's, what it looks like on the right side. Well, this is what it looks like, what he's seeing here. And it is, it is beyond description. He goes from its general appearance to specific features, and here's where it really starts to get good. He says it has a great high wall, and when he says high, he means high, with twelve gates, and he says, stationed at each gate is an angel. Now, remember, there's an angel showing him this, and of course, angels are going to be around for all eternity. In fact, chapter five uh, verse eleven told us that there were tens of millions around the throne. And Hebrews twelve twenty two says, in this city there will be thousands upon thousands of angels. So some have posited, well, maybe there's one, one at a time stationed there, and they just kind of go on rotating shifts instead of one, you know, one standing there for all eternity. And they're not there to guard because there's no, nothing bad to come in. In fact, the gates stay open. But the angels are described as ministering spirits sent forth to minister to the saints, and it may well be that they will be doing that for all eternity. And but there'll always be at least one stationed at each of these twelve gates. And written on each gate is a name of one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Now that's surprising because we're talking about something eternal here. And it, it lets us know that God's whole plan of redemption, as it was spelled out in scripture, began in a specific way with his promise, first of all, of course, to, to Adam in the garden, but then he focused in on one people, Abraham. And he made promises to Abraham, and he says, I'm going to give this to your descendants forever, and then Isaac, and then Jacob, and then Jacob's twelve sons became the twelve tribes, and emblazoned on the gates of heaven for eternity will be the names of those twelve tribes. We're told that there's a gate on the east wall, there's three gates, on the north wall, three gates, on the south wall, three gates, on the west wall, three gates. Now here's a little assignment. I started to tell you, but I'm going to let you look it up. I gave you the reference to the Numbers, Numbers two and three. If you go back there this week, you'll find in the, in the wilderness, when the tabernacle was set up in the middle and they, and they, and they set up camp, they were told which, which of the three tribes were on this side, which on this side, which on this side, north, south, east, and west, and then where the, the Levites would be all the way around. And if you remember on, when we first started through the Bible, we're going through the Pentateuch, we set up our tables in the fellowship hall that way. In fact, we had little placards on each table representing a tribe. So, look it up and see what, see where they were stationed, uh, where the tribes were in the Old Testament. Also in Ezekiel forty eight, you have a little different order. That's the way they will be around the millennial, um, temple. But we're told that it has multiple foundations under the wall. Now, the New American Standard translates that foundation stones, and it, that may be the, the idea, or it may just be an entire foundation, twelve of them all the way around the wall that it's based upon, so it goes all the way down to bedrock on this, on this new earth. Un- under the wall are these twelve foundations, and on each is written a name of one of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. Now, the last time, uh, those names were given to us were in Acts chapter one. Judas was out, and they picked Matthias to take his place. So think about this, one of those apostles is telling us this story, so he looks up there and he sees his own name on one of those foundations, and they will be there forever, which lets us know that not only the, the place that Israel had in God's plan of redemption, but these transitional men, these twelve apostles that transitioned from Israel in the Old Testament to the church in the New Testament, they were the ones God used primarily to write the New Testament for us, and their names will be emblazoned on these foundations for eternity. In a, in a real sense, the, this future city completes the analogy with what God is doing now, because in Ephesians two, he says, he uses the analogy of a building. He says, every time somebody gets saved, they're another little bit living stone added to that building, and we're in the twenty first story now of that building that started in the first century, and it's built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone, and that will be visualized throughout eternity with the names of these apostles. What an honor. Not that they'll be worshipped or glorified in any way, but just the place that they had in God's plan, because they were chosen by the Lord to carry on his work in building the church after he went back to heaven. Notice next the dimensions of the city. We're introduced in verse fifteen to the measure. This angel, this one of the angels with the seven plagues, this is a much more joyful job he's got this time than it was a thousand years earlier when he had to pour out the plagues. Here he has a, a reed in his hand, a gold measuring reed, and if it's the same size as the one that Ezekiel was shown in his b- in his book, it would be about ten feet long. And that was what we know from antiquity, that would be about standard. This one was made of solid gold, and with it he measures the city, the twelve gates, and then the walls of the city. Now, back in chapter eleven verse two, John was given a reed to measure the tribulation temple, but he was to leave out the court of the Gentiles. In, in Ezekiel forty, Ezekiel is seen measuring the millennial temple, and the, the idea in both was God is claiming ownership. This is mine. I'm measuring what is mine. And this eternal city is his. He created it. He's going to rule in it and live in it and rule over it, and we're going to live with him. So it's measured. Now, notice the measurements, verses sixteen to seventeen. and here's where the description gets amazing. We're told that the city is laid out like a square. It's as long as it is wide. We can understand that, but it's also as high as it is wide and long. It's a perfect cube, and that in a real way parallels its closest earthly counterpart, which was the Holy of Holies, in the tabernacle first and later in the temple. If you compare, look up that reference, one Kings six twenty, when the temple was built, the the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctuary, was thirty feet by thirty feet by thirty feet, wide, long, and high. And it pictured ahead of time what this mammoth city would be. Now, a lot of scholars say, well, this can't be literal. Why? Well, you can't have a city that high. Why? Who said you couldn't? It, you see, if you, if you believe Genesis one one, you don't have any trouble believing anything else in the Bible. In the cr- in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. If he can do that, if he can speak the word, and it's there, billions of light years of space, then he has no problem building a city that's almost fourteen hundred miles straight up and set it on this earth. Well, this earth isn't big enough. Well, who said the new earth will be the same size? It could be bigger than Jupiter. It could be bigger than our present sun, we don't know. But this city will be exactly the way it's described here. There's no reason not to take it literally. It's twelve hundred furlongs or stadia, and that comes out to right at thirteen hundred and eighty miles, almost 1400 miles. This way, that way, and that way. Perfect cube. In fact, if you set it down on the United States, it would go from the Atlantic Coast to Colorado. It would go from Mexico to Canada. That needs to be moved up just a little bit to give you the idea, but that's how big the city is, and then it goes straight up that high. In fact, um, David Jeremiah has pointed out that, um, it would, if you, if you, um, put this down on Europe, and let's see what I do with the figure here, it would be roughly ten times the size of France and Germany, forty times size, the size of England. I mean, we've never seen a city like this. Of course not. It's not like any city, but it's, it's up there right now, and it's coming down here one day. If you figured out, it's over two million square miles on the surface, fourteen hundred by fourteen hundred approximately. But because it's a cube, we're talking over three billion cubic miles of volume. Henry Morris is an engineer, he's figured all this out. If, if there were twenty billion people living in this city, I hope there'll be more, but let's say there are twenty billion, then every person would have a space a third of a mile in each direction. You think that would be enough? That's with twenty billion people. Then we're told that the wall is one hundred and forty four cubits. That comes out to seventy two yards. Think about a football field. Go past the fifty, the forty, and the thirty, to the twenty eight of the other team. That's how, that's how wide the wall is, or two hundred sixteen feet. Now that's a, that's an enormously wide wall, but not when you think of it being fourteen hundred miles high. You say, well, it'll fall over. Who's going to knock it over? I think, I think the Lord that built it can keep it right up there. Nobody's going to be running up against it anyway. And finally, the details of the city. Let's talk about the materials of the wall in the city. We have that in verse eighteen. Basically, this entire wall, this mammoth wall that we just described, nearly fourteen hundred miles in every direction, is made of jasper. And as I said earlier, thi- this is, and I give you the words here, this is really a transliteration of the Hebrew and Greek words, and it's probably referring to a, a perfect diamond because it is crystal clear so that the light of God's glory shines through it in every direction. Dazzling. We, we can't imagine material, uh, like that, Two hundred sixteen feet thick, solid diamond, fourteen hundred miles into the air and in every direction. The city and the streets, we're told, are made of pure gold, as transparent as glass. Now, apparently we don't have any pure gold on the earth, because the gold we have is not transparent, but the gold in the city will be. In fact, everything is at least semi-transparent because of the, because the light of God's glory is going to shine through it. Then we have finally the materials of the, of the foundations and the gates, and I'll just, just mention this as, uh, quickly as we can in finishing up. The foundations, we're told, are decorated with every kind of precious stone, and then they're listed, and I, uh, I commend John for going through the list and reading them, and I was going to give you a list of what the colors were, uh, but the fact of the matter is, we don't know for sure, um, what some of these stones are because of the, uh, the difference in the words from ancient times till now. But you have, you have red and green and blue and purple and clear in all in these stones, semi-transparent so that the light flashes through them. Just imagine the beauty of that, this brilliant light coming through, uh, shafts with shafts of red and and green and and blue and purple and all of these, uh, amazing colors. And then we're told finally that the twelve gates are twelve pearls in each gate. And you know, usually gates go all the way up to the top. And so I'm assuming perhaps that these gates are, are like that. So imagine a gate going up to the top of this wall, nearly, and it is made out of not a whole bunch of pearls, but a single pearl. Now, of all these stones, the only one that's organic is a pearl. And you know how it's formed. The lowly oyster gets a grain of sand or something inside its shell, it begins to irritate it, and it begins to secrete this liquid that hardens around it so that it doesn't hurt it anymore. And that hardened little ball is a pearl. And every time we go through these gates, we will be reminded of the suffering of the one who made it possible for us to be there. The one who said, I'm going to prepare this place for you. It was there, and it will be there, and will be there, because someone suffered for us beyond what we can imagine. Two thoughts I want to leave with you. First of all, this is the place where Jesus told us to lay up treasure. With the, the economic downfall at the end of last year, half, half the wealth of the United States, the countries of the world, maybe your four o one k, your bank account, your savings, half of the wealth disappeared. Where'd it go? It's gone. Nearly seven trillion dollars lost in the stock market. Where'd it go? It was there, and now then it's gone. When Jesus said, don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moss and rough corrupt and thieves break through and steal, where it's there and then it's gone. Why, why give all of your, the best years of your life, your energy, your time, your talents to hoarding up wealth that can be gone like that. He said, let me give you a better plan. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. You don't have to worry about the moth, you don't have to worry about the rust, you don't have to worry about thieves. It'll be there when you get there. You can't take it with you, but you can send it on ahead by serving the Lord faithfully, by using what he's given you for his glory, by investing in missions and the work of the Lord. And nothing that's done in his name in that way is overlooked. Even giving a cup of cold water, he said, in my name will not lose its reward. Are your investments there, or are they all here? Everything that's here will be left behind one second after you die, but everything you send ahead will be there a billion years from now. And finally, this is the city where Jesus went to prepare a place for us. So the question is, do you have a home waiting for you there? I want to close with a, a letter that was given to a famous evangelist who is in heaven now. Charles Fuller once announced that he was going to be speaking the following Sunday on heaven. And during that week, a beautiful letter was received from an old man who was very ill. And this is part of what that letter said. Dear sir, next Sunday you're to talk about heaven. I'm interested in that land because I have held a clear title to a bit of property there for over fifty five years. I didn't buy it. It was given to me without money and without price, but the donor purchased it for me at tremendous sacrifice. I'm not holding it for speculation since the title is not transferable. It is not a vacant lot. For more than half a century, I've been sending materials out of which the greatest architect and builder of the universe has been building a home for me, which will never m- need to be remodeled, nor repaired because it will suit me perfectly individually and will never grow old. Termites can never undermine its foundations, for they rest on the rock of ages. Fire cannot destroy it. Floods cannot wash it away. No locks nor bolts will ever be placed upon its doors, for no vicious person can ever enter that land where my dwelling stands, now almost completed and almost ready for me to enter in and abide in peace eternally, without fear of being rejected. There is a valley of deep shadow between the place where I live in California and that to which I shall journey in a very short time. I can't reach my home in that city of gold without passing through that dark valley of shadows, but I'm not afraid, because the best friend I ever had went through the same valley long, long ago and drove away all its gloom. He stuck by me through thick and thin since we first became acquainted fifty five years ago, and I hold his promise in printed form, never to forsake me or leave me alone. He will be with me as I walk through the valley of shadows, and I shall not lose my way when he is with me. I hope to hear your sermon on heaven next Sunday from my home in Los Angeles, but I have no assurance that I shall be able to do so. My ticket to heaven has no date marked for the journey, no return coupon, and no permit for baggage. Yes, I'm all ready to go, and I may not be here while you are talking next Sunday morning, but I shall be there to meet you when you get there someday. Do you have a home there? Do you have that kind of assurance that if this was the last day for you, that's where you would go. You can, and if you don't, I invite you to it. Let's stand with heads bowed. Chris is coming to lead us in a closing song, and this is your opportunity if you don't know the Lord. Right where you are, you can reach out by faith and put your trust in him. Father, I want to thank you for the home that's awaiting us, and for the opportunity to focus for just a few moments on a, a little glimpse of it. It is beyond our imagination. But I pray that you would help us, as Paul told us in Colossians, to begin to set our affections on things above, where Christ sits at the right hand of the Father. Too often, we think only of this here and now, and we sink our roots down too deeply in this world system. And when some of it is taken away from us, we, we hurt. We shouldn't have been holding on so tightly in the first place. Lord, there may be some here who are not ready to go. They've never trusted the Savior. Lord, let this be the moment when your spirit breaks through and opens their eyes, and they see their need, and they reach out by faith and put their trust in Christ. Don't let anyone leave this place today unprepared. Lord, speak to hearts, and those of us who know you, give us a fresh glimpse, a fresh determination to live every day in light of that eternal home, and to invite others to go with us. We thank you in Jesus' name, amen.