Revelation 21 14 and the wall
of the city Had 12 foundations and in them the names of the
12 apostles of the lamb Your first thought might be why are
the Apostles? Getting glory here when all that
we've seen so far about this New Jerusalem has been Christ
in his glory and It's it's easy to read it wrong The names of
those twelve apostles on the twelve foundations of the wall
stand as a monument To the grace and glory of Christ if you think
about what an apostle is First of all, they're apostles of who
the lamb The word apostle means messenger delegate One sent forth
with orders and So these names speak of him who gives the orders
Ephesians 2 19 listen to this now therefore you are no more
strangers and foreigners but fellow citizens with the Saints
and Of the household of God and are built upon the foundation
of the Apostles and prophets Jesus Christ himself being the
chief cornerstone Whom all the building fitly framed
together groweth Unto an holy temple in the Lord in Christ
the cornerstone We've are built up in whom you also are builded
together for an habitation of God Through the Spirit so the
building is us The foundation of the Apostles
and prophets is the gospel and that gospel concerns Jesus Christ
the Lord Calling attention to Christ's trophies of grace redounds
to his glory. A lot of people were following
John the Baptist in his day. He had multitudes follow him
around. What did that get those people that followed him? What
did they get out of that? Behold the Lamb of God, whose
shoes latch it, I'm not worthy to unloose. He must increase
and I must decrease. When you're in an art gallery,
you don't praise the works. You don't say that's the finest
canvas I've ever seen or that plaster is exquisite. You praise
and glorify the artist. And then in verse, look at verse
15. Revelation 21, 15. And he that
talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city and the gates
thereof and the wall thereof. and the city lieth four square,
and the length is as large as the breadth. And he measured
the city with the reed, 12,000 furlongs. The length and the
breadth and the height of it are equal. And he measured the
wall thereof in 140 and four cubits, according to the measure
of a man, that is, of the angel. Now, like the ark, There are
specific dimensions and capacity. This is God's church, and we
know that it's a number which no man can number, but God does,
has numbered every one of them. He's numbered, he said, even
the hairs on every head of his sheep. And that's not a testament to
God's record-keeping abilities. It's a testament to his love
for us. his intimate knowledge, perfect knowledge of each and
every one of his sheep. He loved every single one of
us enough to give his life a ransom for us. So he knows us very well. And so they're specific, it's
perfectly square and symmetrical. The word equal is used. I've built a lot of stuff. I've
been building stuff since I was a young teenager, and nothing
I've ever built has been equal. It's been close. It's been pretty
close sometimes. It's never been perfect, never
been equal, exact. These dimensions and these building
parameters are indicative of how that all that the father
gave to his son. have and shall come to him. There
are no shortages of material and there's
no overages. He said to his disciples, I go
to prepare a place for you. Christ went to Calvary and prepared
a place for all of his elect, all of those for whom he died
there in Calvary. There are specific numbers, there
are limitations by God's design. The atonement is limited no matter
how you look at it. It's either limited in the Lord's
ability to atone, who he wanted to, or it's limited in the number
that he died to atone. And if you believe the first
one, you have no God, you have no hope. The building materials are listed
in verses 18 through 21. Let's look at them together. The building of the wall of it
was of jasper, and the city was pure gold blackened to clear
glass. And the foundations of the wall
of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones.
The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third
chalcedony, Fourth, an emerald. The fifth, sardonyx. The sixth,
sardius. The seventh, chrysolite. The
eighth, beryl. And the ninth, a topaz. The 10th, a chrysoprisus. The 11th, adjacent. The 12th,
an amethyst. And the 12 gates were 12 pearls. Every several gate was of one
pearl. And the street of the city was
pure gold. as it were transparent glass.
The way I picture that is irrelevant, but I don't believe you could
see through the gold. You've seen perfectly smooth,
shiny gold. It looks like you could see through
it because it so accurately reflects what is in front of it. It looks like glass. But that's
just left to the imagination because we don't know for sure.
But one thing's pretty clear here. You reckon the Lord's trying
to tell us it's beautiful. I have a feeling that might just
be the message of this, that it's a beautiful play. We could
try to pick out all the different stones and based on the color
of them, try to determine what specifically they represent.
And we might even get one of them right, you know. There might
be something to that, but I don't know what it is, and you don't
either, and neither do the ones that have tried to do that. But the building materials, what
hits you right in the face, and that's the gospel. The gospel
is not a secret code. You don't have to figure out
what the barrel represented and the sardonius represented. All of that, you don't have to
figure out anything. Do you? What do you need to figure
out about that? What hits you right in the face
is it's beautiful. I mean, unimaginably beautiful. There's no way you can even imagine
it. How incredibly beautiful this
city must be. The church of God. Christ found
us in our blood. I believe we're gonna read that
in a minute together. He found us polluted in our own
corruption. And it says he put upon us his
comeliness, his beauty, his glory was put upon us by him. Remember what Job said in Job
2310, you've heard this before. He knoweth the way that I take
when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. He makes his children, his bride
to be beautiful. And that's the clear message
of this. And this is just a picture now,
a vision of that which is spiritual. But if you're gonna paint a picture
of beauty, can you imagine that? We can kind of try, can't we?
Because we've seen different precious stones and You know,
I've wanted to buy my wife some beautiful jewelry, and then I've
walked away sad because it's $1,000. You've done that, you
man, you've done that. Boy, man, that's the prettiest
thing here. Yeah, they know that too. We've seen those things,
but the gold is like a perfect mirror reflecting all of the
colors of all of the precious stones, the gems. There's no
doubt what our Lord is conveying to us here turn with me to Ezekiel
16. Let's read this together It's
been a little while. This is one of the most beautiful Passages
of Scripture That we could ever read Ezekiel It's after Psalms
and Proverbs and the major prophets here Ezekiel 16 verse 3 What a beautiful, beautiful passage
of scripture. Ezekiel 16, three, and say, thus
saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem, thy birth and thy nativity is
of the land of Canaan, heathens, godless people. And he's saying
this to Jerusalem. He's telling them what Paul said
thousands of years later. There is no difference. The difference
is made by God. God does put a difference between
you, his elect and everybody else. There's no difference.
You were born of Canaanites. Thy father was an Amorite and
thy mother an Hittite. And as for thy nativity in the
day thou was born, thy navel was not cut. Neither was thou
washed in water to supple thee, thou wast not salted at all,
nor swaddled at all. None of the things that happens
to a baby naturally happen to you spiritually. You were born
in corruption and nobody wanted anything to do with you. None
I pity thee to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion
upon thee, but thou wast cast out in the open field. to the loathing of thy person
in the day that thou was born." What a picture. When I passed
by thee and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, the Lord
didn't see anything different than what was true. I said unto thee when thou wast
in thy blood, live. Isn't that beautiful? Live. everything else worked towards
your death. No, absolutely no hope. And probably this baby pictured
here is already dead. You don't have to say live to
something that's alive. Live. Yea, I said unto thee,
when thou wast in thy blood, live. I have caused thee to multiply
as the bud of the field, and thou hast increased and waxen
great, and thou art come to excellent ornaments. Thy breasts are fashioned
and thine hair is grown, whereas thou wast naked and bare. Now
when I passed by thee and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was
the time of love. And I spread my skirt over thee
and covered thy nakedness, Yea, I swear unto thee, and entered
into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord God, and thou becamest
mine. Then washed I thee with water,
yea, I throughly washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed
thee with oil. I clothed thee also with broidered
work, and shod thee with badger skins, and I girded thee about
with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk. I decked thee
also with ornaments, and I put bracelets upon thy hands and
a chain on thy neck, and I put a jewel on thy forehead and earrings
in thine ears and a beautiful crown upon thine head. Thus wast thou decked with gold
and silver, and thy raiment was of fine linen and silk and embroidered
work. Thou didst eat fine flour and
honey and oil, and thou wast exceeding beautiful. It's prosper
into a kingdom you see how he uses gold and silver to portray
beauty That's how he described it your beauty your beauty And thy renown went forth among
the heathen for that beauty for it was perfect Through my comeliness Which I had put upon thee Saith
the Lord God You see how he uses these same
materials the gold and the precious stones to convey beauty And think
of this these are just building materials Can you imagine a street
in this world made of pure gold? We can't even imagine that you
make streets out of the cheapest ugliest stuff you can make them
out But there in that city, which is us, gold and silver
and gemstones are just common things. The real glory there is the presence
of the Lamb. Look at the next verse, verse
22. And I saw no temple therein for
the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb or the temple of it. You notice the temple is mentioned
before even the sun and the moon are mentioned. You think about
how necessary the sun and the moon are in this world. We don't live without the sun.
We need the warmth, we need the nutrition that it gives, we need
the plants and the animals that live because the sun lives. We
need the sun, desperately. I don't know how long it would
take us to die if the sun winked out. Probably not long. But you
know what we need more than that? To worship God. The temple. What about a temple? If there's
gonna be a city, there's got to be a temple. There's no temple
in this one for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the
temple of it. To understand what the temple
signifies in the Old Testament, you want to study the temple,
we've looked through the different parts of the temple, how it was
constructed, the tabernacle, and the temple. We just saw how
Solomon built the temple, and the tabernacle where the Lord
was worshiped, where the mercy seat resided before the temple
was built. And we've looked at the different
pieces of furniture there and what they represented and the
high priest himself and the sacrifice and the incense and the mercy
seat and every bit of it's Christ. If you wanna look at that and
study that in the Old Testament and understand what it signifies,
Look at what or who replaces it forever. Whatever the temple pictures,
if the temple is completely replaced forever by somebody, then everything
that temple was, this person is. If there's something about
that temple that's not fulfilled, that's not honored, some service,
a purpose that it served, that this person doesn't serve, then
that has to continue. But there's no temple here because
the Son of God, the Lamb, is the temple of it. All that is
in the temple is just a picture. The sacrifice, the high priest,
the mercy seat, the candlestick, the showbread, the incense, the
sacrifice was atonement. Without the shedding of blood,
there's no remission of sins, atonement, atonement. Fellowship
with God, the sacrifice was the blood of atonement, it was called.
But in glory, we have perfect atonement in Christ. We are at
one with God because of the blood of the Lamb. You see, the Lamb,
it doesn't say the King is the temple of it. That's perfectly
true, isn't it? Absolutely true. It doesn't say
the Son of God is the temple of it. It doesn't say the creator
is the temple of it. It says the lamb. The lamb is
the temple. God is worshiped in Christ and
him crucified. That's why we preach what we
preach and we look where we look to him who gave himself for us.
The sacrifice was atonement. We are at one with God because
the lamb is the light thereof. The priest was the representative
of the people, but he only pictured Christ who entered into the most
holy place, not made with hands for us. The mercy seat was communion
with God almighty, but then we will be in his very presence
and he will be our God. We'll be his sons. So the lamb is the temple. We
need that before we need light and warmth and life itself. We need to worship God. Verse 23, and the city had no
need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine
in it, for the glory of God did lighten it. And the lamb is the
light. thereof The glory of God lights
it and the lamb is that light So the lamb is the glory of God
Everything that a man needs Christ is He's the river that flows from
the throne of God He's the water of life He's the temple where
we worship whom we worship, while we worship. And he is the light, he is the
warmth, he is the life of this world, the world of his people.
And that's what this is now. It's the world. We'll see that
a little bit later here. Now, think of all that the sun
is. Can we ever look at a sunrise
again? or look at the moon shining at
night and the stars and not think of this wonderful word from God.
There's no need for it there. There is here. It's necessary. Think of all the sun is and the
moon we can see because of him. We're warm because of him. We
can eat and drink because of him. He turns the tides of fortune
in his hand as the moon. night We live in him It's that
simple. That's what this represents we
live In him and the glory of God and the lamb are synonymous
in this verse. That's that's key Christ is the
express image of God's glory He is the real beauty of heaven
now how beautiful is a diamond with no light and Could you tell the difference
between that and a regular rock in the darkness? Christ is the
real beauty. In fact, all you're seeing when
you look at a diamond is light. That's all you're seeing. When
you look at me, all you're seeing is light, not because I'm light.
But that's what we are at, detects the light reflected off of things.
There, the lamb is the light. He's the only real light there
is here. But we see things differently here than we will then. How beautiful
is a diamond in the dark? That's me without Christ. That's
you without the Lord Jesus. How will gold shine in the darkness?
The lamb is the light. I love the word shine. There
in our text, what a beautiful word shine is. There's no need
for the sun and the moon to shine, it says, because Christ shines
there in his church. Does he do that now, you reckon?
Doesn't he do that even now? He shines in his church. Number
624, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine
upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance
upon you and give you peace. Psalm 3116, David wrote, make
thy face to shine upon thy servant. Save me for thy mercy's sake.
The shining of his face is salvation. Matthew 1341, the son of man
shall send forth his angels And they shall gather out of his
kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and
shall cast them into a furnace of fire, and there shall be wailing
and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine
forth as the sun in the kingdom of their father, who hath ears
to hear, let him hear. That verse there, that passage
is talking about our text. Then, then, there, Then shall the righteous shine
forth as the sun. Now, if we're shining forth as
the sun, how is that when it's not us who replaces the sun in
glory? It's the lamb. There's no need
of the sun or the moon, not because we shine, but because he shines. That's what our text says. So
how is it that we shine? None of the things that describe
us in our texts have any light of their own. Gold can't shine. No gemstone can shine. Lamb is the light. So we shine,
but the lamb is the light. Verse 24 in our text and the
nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it
and The kings of the earth to bring their glory and honor into
it The nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light
of it and The kings of the earth to
bring their glory and honor into it now these kings they are description
of of believers whom Christ has made unto himself kings and priests. How do I know that? Because nobody
gets in here but believers. That's pretty clear, right? We're
gonna see that at the very end of our stuff here. If your name
is not written in the Lamb's book of life, you have no part
in this city. So we know this is talking about
believers, and we know that the Lord said that we are made kings
and priests unto him, by Christ, in Christ. Now they don't bring
their glory into it to add any glory to it. Think about this
with me now. Their bringing of their glory
into this city, the earthly glory that God has given them as believers,
his jewels, his loved ones, his precious ones. When they bring
their glory into this city, it signifies how that they abandoned
whatever earthly glory they knew to be swallowed up by his glory.
It's not adding any glory to it when we come in. We bring
our glory into it to be absorbed, to be overshown by his glory. There are no kings in this city
in the sense that there are kings now in this place. The Lord alone,
the scripture says, shall be exalted in that day. We shall
reign with him, not as rivals or even helpers, But in Him,
in Him who is the Lord alone, He only is honored in glory,
not His people. He gave us what crowns we have,
and it says we're gonna throw them at His feet. You see what
it means we bring our honor and glory into it, to just be abandoned at the door. We will walk in His light, you
see that? We're not gonna be shining any
of our own light. We will walk in his light. I
wanna do that now. That sounds like something that'd
be nice to do right now, doesn't it? Just walk in his light. And
believers do that in a sense now. Whatever light he gives
us, God give us grace to walk in it. But it's something else
that our text is talking about. To walk in his glory is something
that we can't even, We can't really imagine here We won't be adding to the glory
and honor of Christ Except that he's glorified and honored in
that he saved such a wretch as I am Now verse 25 and the gates
of it shall not be shut at all by day For there shall be no
night there The gates are never shut by day and all there is
is day. That's what it's saying. So the
gates are never, the gates of cities were typically open during
the day for the conducting of business and trade and the coming
and going of residents and visitors, but shut at night because anybody
coming at night is up to no good. That was always assumed. You
might very well be considered to have questionable business
if you're coming in the middle of the night. or you might just
be an enemy. But where Christ dwells, there's
no night nor enemies. The gate is always open. No night
is a great blessing. Night signifies trouble and heartaches
and sorrow. In the scriptures, did you know
that? Psalm 30 and verse four, sing unto the Lord, O ye saints
of his. and give thanks at the remembrance
of his holiness, for his anger endureth but a moment. In his
favor is life. Weeping may endure for a night,
but joy cometh in the morning. It'll always be morning in his
presence, always. Night even signifies evil in
the scriptures, because much evil is conducted at night. You
remember when the Lord Jesus, they asked the Lord, who is it
that's gonna betray you? He said, one of you shall betray
me this very night. And they asked him who it was,
and he said, to whom I shall give a sop when I have dipped
it. And when he had dipped the sop,
he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. And after the
sop, Satan entered into him. And then Jesus said unto him,
that thou doest do quickly. We don't give this much thought,
I'm afraid, usually as we read it. There's the 12, the choice
12 apostles, commuting with their Lord, having dinner, having the
supper, worshiping him and commemorating his death and his resurrection
that he had told them would happen. And Satan entered into one of
them. And it wasn't some secret plot
against the Lord. The Lord knew exactly. He said,
do it. Do what you're doing. Do it quick.
Get it over with. You reckon Judas? Well, the Lord purposes something.
It's done. It's done. Now no man at the
table knew for what intent he spake this unto him. Some of
them thought because Judas had the bag, he was the money keeper
of the treasurer, the keeper of the money, that Jesus had
said unto him, buy those things that we have need of against
the feast, or that he should give something to the poor. He
then, having received the sop, went immediately out, and it
was night. Reckon why it mentions that This
represents everything evil And as we read while ago the sorrow
that we endure in this world Is represented by night. So this
is a significant statement in our text. There's no night there. There shall be no night Isn't
that wonderful? Everything is worse at night There'll be no night there The
joy of the morning shall be ours continually. Because the lamb
is the light. Verse 26. and they shall bring the glory
and honor of the nations into it. Now, verses 26 and 27 belong
together. Listen to this. They shall bring
the glory and honor of the nations into it, and there shall in no
wise enter into it anything that defile it. This tell you who
gets in and who don't get in. Who gets in? The glory and honor
of the nations. That's the people of God. You
see, to Him, His world is His people. The point of it all. Why did God make a world? For
His honor and glory. How's He gonna get that? Only
His people honor Him and glorify Him. And they do that in Christ. Our worship is nothing unless
we come in the name of the Son of God. We come in Him. to worship God,
and so that's how God gets glory out of this world, the whole
purpose that he made it for. His world is his people. And that's who comes into this
city. It's talking about the kings bringing them in, but that's
just an expression of entering into this city. We are the offscouring
of the earth here. We're counted, it says in 1 Corinthians
4.13, we are counted as the filth of this world. But we're the Lord's jewels,
he said. Of whom, according to him, the world is not worthy.
The world is not worthy. We are accepted in the beloved.
We enter in because why? Because the Lord says to us,
it says in Matthew 25, 34, then shall the king, the king, the
king say unto them on his right hand, come, you blessed of my
father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of
the world. He made a paradise in the beginning
before he ever made a man. And he prepared a kingdom of
perfect, glorious. How do you describe where Christ
is? How do you describe him and being
with him and like him? How do you describe that? Or
that you had an adjective I haven't heard because the ones I know
are not good enough. Before he ever saved a sinner, He prepared a place for us. Prepared for you from the foundation
of the world because he is the lamb slain from the foundation
of the world. That's how one of those mansions
dwelling places, there are many of in glory. That's how one of
them is mad because of what happened on Calvary. I go to prepare a
place for you in my father's house or many mansions. If it
wasn't true, I would have told you that. But I'm going to see
to it that one of them is yours. Inherit the kingdom prepared
for you from the foundation of the world. And notice in closing in verse
27, and there shall no wise enter into it anything that defileth,
neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie, but they which
are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. So you have two peoples
here, the ones that are coming on in to this city, that are
this city, and the ones that have no part in it. And the difference
is not the excellency of the people themselves or lack thereof. What makes the Lord's people
the glory and honor of this earth is that the Lord wrote their
names down in the Lamb's Book of Life. which signifies what? That precious blood which he
shed on Calvary was shed for you. Christ crucified is salvation. And it is citizenship in this beautiful place. When
you go to bed tonight, maybe give a thought, try to picture
a golden place that's so perfect it looks like a mirror of gold. And then reflected in that mirror,
the mirrored walls of that city are all of the beautiful precious
stones that this world has. And then realize that that's
just the best human language can do. to describe the glory of our
Lord that he put upon us. He shed his precious blood for
them to redeem unto himself a what? Glorious church. Not having any of these things
in verse 27, not having spot or wrinkle or blemish or anything
like that. He redeemed unto himself a glorious
church. That's what's pictured in our
text. Every gospel message is Christ in him crucified. He is
the good news and the spirit and the bride say come. Let's pray.