August 16

Revelation 21

1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had ceased to exist, and the sea existed no more. 2 And I saw the holy city – the new Jerusalem – descending out of heaven from God, made ready like a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: “Look! The residence of God is among human beings. He will live among them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will not exist any more – or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things have ceased to exist.”

5 And the one seated on the throne said: “Look! I am making all things new!” Then he said to me, “Write it down, because these words are reliable and true.” 6 He also said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the one who is thirsty I will give water free of charge from the spring of the water of life. 7 The one who conquers will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be my son. 8 But as for the cowards, unbelievers, detestable persons, murderers, the sexually immoral, and those who practice magic spells, idol worshipers, and all those who lie, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. That is the second death.”

9 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven final plagues came and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb!” 10 So he took me away in the Spirit to a huge, majestic mountain and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God. 11 The city possesses the glory of God; its brilliance is like a precious jewel, like a stone of crystal-clear jasper. 12 It has a massive, high wall with twelve gates, with twelve angels at the gates, and the names of the twelve tribes of the nation of Israel are written on the gates. 13 There are three gates on the east side, three gates on the north side, three gates on the south side, and three gates on the west side. 14 The wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

15 The angel who spoke to me had a golden measuring rod with which to measure the city and its foundation stones and wall. 16 Now the city is laid out as a square, its length and width the same. He measured the city with the measuring rod at 1,400 miles (its length and width and height are equal). 17 He also measured its wall, 144 cubits according to human measurement, which is also the angel’s. 18 The city’s wall is made of jasper and the city is pure gold, like transparent glass. 19 The foundations of the city’s wall are decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation is jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, 20 the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. 21 And the twelve gates are twelve pearls – each one of the gates is made from just one pearl! The main street of the city is pure gold, like transparent glass.

22 Now I saw no temple in the city, because the Lord God – the All-Powerful – and the Lamb are its temple. 23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, because the glory of God lights it up, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their grandeur into it. 25 Its gates will never be closed during the day (and there will be no night there). 26 They will bring the grandeur and wealth of the nations into it, 27 but nothing ritually unclean will ever enter into it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or practices falsehood, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life (Revelation 21, NET).

Revelation’s 21^st chapter is the penultimate chapter of the Bible, and it’s where we get a vision of the eschaton, the end (meaning both “final state” but also “purpose”) of reality. We only arrive at this beautiful vision after a series of cataclysmic images of the great and terrible day of the LORD which had been pointed to in many of the apocalyptic prophecies from the Old Testament, which Jesus had described in some detail in his teachings, and which his apostles had further elaborated on in the writings we call the New Testament.

Revelation is something of a culmination of these various writings and teachings and grabs a ton of varied and overlapping images and ideas from Israel’s prophetic history. It is extremely difficult to do a thorough study of this chapter without being familiar with the preceding 20 chapters and the various prophetic materials that John the Elder (church tradition usually identifies this as the same John who wrote the gospel and the 3 New Testament letters of 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd John) drew from. That being said, there are a few elements that one can see without doing too much of a deep dive into first-century Jewish apocalyptic literature.

One of the first things to note is that John describes “heaven” not as somewhere to which we’ll fly away (O Glory!). Rather, this holy city, a “New Jerusalem,” a very potent symbol as the original had been destroyed by the Romans by the time of this book’s writing, descends out of heaven to come into humankind’s space. We have a bit of a problem in English with this word “heaven” in that it means the skies, the stuff that feels “up” to us, as well as having this religious significance. It is helpful to think about “heaven” and “earth” as the stuff above and the stuff below, but it’s also helpful to think about “heaven” and “earth” as God’s space and human’s space.

Much of the Bible is concerned with how these realms of being interact. In Eden, there had been true overlap as Adam and Eve walked in the garden with the LORD, but sin drove them out of His perfect and holy presence, so the rest of the Bible shows us a Venn Diagram with the circles of heaven and earth only ever somewhat overlapping. God isn’t limited by our space, but because of our ignorance of Him, because of our hardheartedness, we are shown as usually not paying much attention to how God has given us space to seek and hopefully find Him. We’re given instances, glimpses of how the veil between these spaces thins at times in the building of the Tabernacle and then the Temple to be a location where people can go to sacrifice and to experience God’s mercy and justice, but these are clearly not the final idea in mind when God instructs his priests and prophets and kings to make these accommodations. The real, full overlap comes in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. As John describes in his gospel, God bodily entered our reality through Jesus Christ.

And you see that the same significant language used here in this chapter. Like when Jesus walked among us, dwelling among humankind, pitching his tent with humanity, at the end of all things, God will fully send a heavenly city to become a permanent dwelling place for Himself and the people of faith who’ve put their trust into Jesus who fully embodied God’s grace and truth in his life on earth. And rather than all of humankind being destroyed in the fire of His holiness, we see the lovingkindness of God expressed as our tears are wiped away, our grief and pain no longer have sway, and death itself is abolished in the presence of the eternal One who cannot cease to be. The dramatic separation of God’s space and our space caused by our sin has been bridged by the cleansing blood of Jesus and by the heart of repentance expressed in the Bride, this collective of all the faithful throughout history who, in the presence of One so potent and holy, are all fundamentally recipients of His justice and mercy.

We’ve already met the owner of the loud voice from the throne who describes all this. Spoiler alert, it’s Jesus, who is shown in chapter 5 as a Lamb who appeared to have been killed, but who was now alive in resurrection, embodying the Most High God, who John, in Revelation 4 in a very Old Testament scene, and I’m thinking of that scene we read from Isaiah 6 not too long ago, can’t even really look at. It is really interesting to see how John cycles through images and helps to slowly unfold this spiritually rich picture of the present and future reality, in a collage-like way showing us the same idea that Jesus communicated to his disciples when he’s asked by Philip to show them the Father. Jesus tells them that “The person who has seen me has seen the Father!” (John 14:9, NET).

And you see that overlapping of images too where the angel asks John if he wants to see the Bride of Christ in verse 9. John is then shown an absolutely massive city with all this imagery of preciousness and purity and perfection, pearly gates even. Significantly, there’s no temple because we no longer need a mediating presence between God’s space and our space in this ultimate end of things. God is all in all for everyone and all of the faithful find their place and purpose in Him. The kings and the nations bring their glory and grandeur to Him; the vision God laid out for Abraham, that his descendants would be blessed to be a blessing, to bring light into the world, is fully realized as God Himself supplants our need for other lesser lights.

It’s all very heady stuff, and admittedly, I do find understanding Revelation to be difficult. The images are so dense and have layers of meaning. The notion of death being done with is impossible to really imagine. What are the consequences of one’s having eternal life? What will we do? Not here do you see discussion of winged people floating on clouds and playing harps. Instead we have a living, vibrant city populated with a multigenerational, multiethnic people whose sufficiency is the All-Sufficient One. But what, as well, of no night? The rhythms of life eternal will inevitably be entirely different.

I think that’s one of the reasons why John uses such dense imagery. He’s trying to grasp something with his finite mind that is infinite and you see throughout Revelation these comic moments when his finitude leads him into confusion; one such example is in chapter 22, the final words of the Bible(!) John mistakenly tries to worship an angel who is bringing this message, these visions of hope to him. Though Revelation takes us into the realms of cosmic and ultimate justice, the destruction of hell and Satan, the ultimate victory of the Lamb Who was slain and Who rose again, the story remains grounded on earth. John remains very much a human writer doing his best to convey the great and wonderful and terrible things he was privileged to see to a people who need to be given assurance of God’s ultimate victory even as we still experience the tragic life of sin. The victory is already won. We are not yet living in the fullness of that victory as God continues to draw humankind to Himself.

My prayer for you this week is that you find comfort in Jesus’s victory. I also pray that you’d find the challenge to read Revelation, whether that’s just this chapter or to go back and look at the whole book, enriching and edifying. Talk with your spiritual brothers and sisters about it. Ask what they take hope in. Ask what keeps them going even when they experience the grief and pain that still have too much sway on too many of the days we live in this world of sin. And if you’re feeling at all encouraged as you read through this, point someone else to the cross and to the empty tomb, where justice and mercy embrace in the God-man, Jesus Christ.

Next week's text is Acts 9.