Would you turn with me in your
Bibles to the 21st chapter of the book of Revelation. Revelation
chapter 21. I'd like to read the first four
verses and then spend a little time on verse 2. Revelation chapter
21, verse 1, And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the
first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was
no more sea. And I, John, saw the holy city,
New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as
a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out
of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men,
and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his God, and
God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears
from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow,
nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former
things are passed away. Well, last week we looked at
that first verse and looked at some of the things about a new
heaven and a new earth and the scriptures. Isaiah shares words
about the new heaven and the new earth. Peter shares some
words about the new heaven and the new earth. Since, excuse
me, since the fall, there has been a promise given of a new
heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. The old
earth got really tainted and if you've been going through
the book of Genesis again you've noticed that the progression
down to Sodom and Gomorrah the world paid a dear price for the
sin of Adam. And it's the earth, in fact,
Paul shares with us that the earth groans in itself. And it's looking, the earth is
looking for this redemption also. It's at stress now. They call
it tectonic plates. It's just nothing more than stress
due to sin and due to the results of the fall. And that's going
to be new. And a new heaven is going to
be needed because sin has been there. Satan has been there.
and it's going to be taken care of. God's going to clean it up.
It'll be as new. He'll burn it with fire. However
He wants to do it, He's going to take care of it in such a
manner that it will be a dwelling place for the saints, for the
church, and for the church's groom, God, the Lord Jesus. All right, and then in verse
1, John saw something, and I wrote down on the edge of my Bible,
mercy, mercy, mercy. First of all, John got to see
it. He got to see the bride. it's called the holy city now that's mercy that anything
is called holy but God that's mercy that's God's work and it's
new Jerusalem is coming down from God out of heaven prepared as a bride adorned for
her husband." Every step of that, every statement of that is a
declaration of God's mercy towards His people. Because this, what
we see, is a representation of His people. It's a figurative
language, it's a figure of speech, we can call it, it's a What an
allegory we can a lot of words we can describe it, but this
truly is not a Walled city as we know it in our world. It's not a walled city as it
was known in the old world As old Jerusalem was was a walled
city in fact there were several walls as the city grew it's not
like that it is a spiritual city and It is coming down from a
spirit, God. It is prepared by God. It's spiritual. It's everything
that we don't know about. We're dealing with visible things
and God created invisible things. God is a spirit and they that
worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. That's
the part of us that the Holy Spirit gives to us that that's
the only way we can truly worship Him. It's everything we can't
see. It's an area that we just cannot
fathom. And we don't, we can't, the words
do not represent the beauty of it. The words do not represent
the grace of it. The words do not represent the
mercy of it. But we have the best we have.
This is what God gave to us and for us to vision. Now, as I look
at this city, this new Jerusalem, this city coming down out of
heaven from God, and prepared by God, prepared as a bride,
I have to say that the person who is strong in faith is strong
in the doctrine of grace and they become more and more overwhelmed
and bowed down with the sense of God's mercy and increasingly
affixed to the justification by the merits of Christ and Christ
alone. As we see this coming down, there
is nothing we contributed. We didn't contribute to the glory.
We didn't contribute to the grace. We didn't contribute to the mercy
We didn't contribute to the well, it says there that prepare we
didn't contribute to the preparation It just it we stand in awe as
we see this church prepared by God coming down from God coming
out of heaven and I'm sure that John as he saw this with his
physical eyes in this in this revelation that he was awestruck
because there was nothing that he contributed. He didn't even
send ahead a bag of sand for mortar. He knew that it was an
impossibility to contribute to the city. And as I was reading
over there, reading as we go through Genesis, Adam and Eve
didn't contribute a thing to that covering that they were
given by the Lord. Those coats of skins. They contributed
nothing. He had to hold their hands up
so he could put them on or have them out by the... I don't know
how he dressed them. But he contributed to nothing.
As I read about those fig leaf aprons again, how temporary. I know what a leaf is like. We
used to pull them off and put them in a book and come back
sometime later and pick them out and they just shatter if
you're not careful. We know how temporary was Adam
and Eve's preparation for meeting God. And it didn't stand the
test. And God had to prepare them and
they contributed nothing. So as we look at the city coming
down from God, there is absolutely no contributions from those who
make it up. We are totally dependent upon
the grace of God, the preparation of God, the heaven of God, the
God of God, to have this city as it is, adorned. Now I didn't
look that word up because that's... Probably going to be a next lesson,
but just think about that. To be adorned as a bride, to
have preparation, to be adorned, to be the jewels, the beauty,
the time spent. God spent time on making his
bride eternity. As I was thinking about a city,
what is there about a city? Well, this city, like the city
Old Jerusalem, was a place of worship. That's where the temple
was. And truly this city is a place
of worship because that's where Christ is going to dwell. He
dwells now, He will dwell there. In fact, it goes on and tells
us, in the very next verse there, verse 3, He is going to fulfill
the covenant of grace in this, the church of the living God,
the called out assembly, the saints of God, the saved of God,
the elect of God. He's going to make his dwelling
there. And so that's going to be the
place of worship. We'll not worship anywhere else.
We'll worship Christ. Jerusalem, old Jerusalem, carried
with it a lot of history. This city carries with it a lot
of history. It goes before the foundation of the world. Our
history is there. Every bit of our spiritual history
is with Christ in this city. We have no history without it.
We are, in fact, it tells us in the book of Hebrews, that
if we don't have this history, we're bastards and not children.
We're illegitimate. We don't have any tie to Christ. If we don't have his history,
he has to bring us the history. He has to bring us the tie. He
has to bring us the line. He has to bring us the genealogy.
In him we have our history. They also kept the records of
genealogy in this town, in Jerusalem. Those Jews were very meticulous.
We're told now, don't give ourselves over to endless genealogies.
Don't keep track of a long list of religious paraphernalia that
goes back a long way. Don't brag on what your grandfather
was. That's what it's saying. Your
boast is in Christ. Don't ever answer someone and
say, well, do you know the Lord? Well, my grandfather was a Baptist. Well, whoa, I heard that. You hear that. People answer
that. That's not the right genealogy.
We need this genealogy. Over there in the book of Ephesians,
we read that the other day. Chapter 1 is our genealogy. Being
predestinated before the foundation of the world. That's our genealogy.
And this city has our genealogy. This city has our history. This
city has our place of worship. This city has walls. They're
spiritual walls. Psalm 18 verse 2, we spent eight,
there's eight phrases in there that declare the wallness of
this city, the protection of this city. Christ is the protection. He's the high tower. He's the
rock. He's the cleft. He's all of those
things. And those old cities in the Middle
East, they all had wall cities. What made Jericho so No human
was going to take that city. It took God to take that city.
He brought those walls down. Well, these walls will never
be brought down. The walls of this city, the protection of
this city, we lost it in Adam. Adam had protection. Keep your
mitts off that tree. Don't eat that fruit. And he
did. And the walls came tumbling down.
And he was naked before God. And then he covered himself with
the fickleness of leaves. I'm surprised he didn't try to
make some bamboo aprons, you know, a little longer lasting
at least. But the fickleness, the temporariness,
the grace which justifies is outside the person. will never
find the grace that justifies. The grace for this city is not
in the city. The grace is outside of the city. We're going to find out as we
go through the scriptures that God never uses anything inside
of us. He never uses our heart. He gives
us a new heart. He never uses our spirit. He
gives us a new spirit. He never uses anything in us. He doesn't use our works. He
gives us works. Works of righteousness. He never
uses anything. He doesn't use our mind. He gives
us a new mind. Let this mind be in you, which
is in Christ Jesus. He gives us everything. The grace which justifies, as
we look at this city coming down from God, out of heaven, holy
city, New Jerusalem. The grace which justifies is
outside the person. The righteousness which justifies
is outside the person. He never uses our righteousness.
We have so much said in the Bible about our righteousness being
as filthy rags and then goes downhill from there. He never
uses our righteousness. He never uses our sanctification.
He never uses our justification. He never uses anything of ours.
And that's what makes this city great. Now, as you drive around
the Dalles now, it may have been like this when we moved here,
but I think it was a little better. The streets are going to pods.
We came across 11th so we could park on this side of the street,
and we thought that there was someone giving us a high sign
with the lights. They weren't. They were just falling in dips.
The city's going to pause. We haven't spent much on our
infrastructure. Patching, patching. That's one thing that we don't
have to worry about in this city. It's not patched. We used to
use bale and wire. Gosh. We'd never throw away a
piece of baling wire. We're going to have to use it.
You built fence with it. You held fence to the post with
it. You just did all kinds of things. That was a miracle drug.
Well, this city doesn't have that. Nothing's falling down. Nothing's decrepit. Nothing's
going to pods. The streets are holy. the access is holy, the king
is holy, the city is holy, and is prepared coming down from
God out of heaven. This city Jerusalem, this view
of the church that we have before us tonight is not a literal wall
city. It is holy and it's new. It's the church of the living
God. It's complete and perfect. Every chair is filled. This city. Now we're waiting
for this time when every living stone will be placed in it. I've
said this many times, I'll say it again, there's only one thing
holding back the coming of Christ. The last of His sheep has not
been saved. the long suffering of the Lord
means salvation now he's not going to shorten the day so he
can keep out some of his sheep there's just going to be the
right time and they'll all be brought in every living stone
will be placed on the foundation and that foundation is Christ
and it will be complete it will be holy it will be made up of
only things God has created We are a new creation in Christ
Jesus. We have new righteousness His.
We have new holiness His. Everything is new. New heart,
new spirit, new. And He never asks us to contribute
a thing. And we're presumptuous when we
expect to contribute things to this city. We're saying it's
not enough for God to do it. We must contribute and that's
where we're going to be in real trouble facing God on those grounds. to distinguish between it and
the earthly Jerusalem. Now, turn with me if you would.
There's a lot of things said in the Bible about the city.
Old and New Testament. And the more and more I read
the Bible, the more and more I want to take out those middle
pages. I should do that. I should do
it tonight. Just show you how to do it. They're
not the middle pages, but the pages that separate the Old and
New Testament. And much ado has been said about
this. And true, there is 400 years
between this between Malachi and Matthew.
There's 400 years there. But the Holy Spirit is still
active. Here we go. I got some of the Bible on one
of these pages. But this is a misnomer. This
is a bookmark that's permanent that shouldn't even be here.
Because this is the gospel according to Isaiah, Nahum, Jonah, Moses,
Isaiah, all the Old Testament writers. That's the gospel according
to them just as much as it's the gospel according to Matthew,
Mark, Luke, or John, or Paul, or Revelation. And it's a misnomer
that they do this to us. And the reason most people do
this is they say that the Old Testament has very little value.
We ought to spend our time in the New Testament. It's just
history and it's just law. Well, it's history, it's law,
but it's the gospel. And the New Testament writers
used it as their texts and then went from there. So, sometime
I'm going to find one that doesn't have this. Okay, well turn with
me over here in the gospel according to the Psalms. Psalm 48. As we think about that
city coming down, it's a picture, it's a wonderful picture of acceptance
in Christ. It's a wonderful picture that
He supplied all the material. It's a wonderful picture that
He's lifted all of these. He's hewed all the stones out
of His own quarry. And He's made them as they are. And they're all equal. There's
no bigness and littleness in the kingdom. And once we begin
to look at people with a jaundiced eye that I'm doing a little bit
better than they are, then we're depending on what we are and
not His righteousness. what we are and not his justification. What we are and not his sanctification. So we start looking at people
and saying, I'm just a little, I'm just a little, not bad, not
much, but just a little. We're not depending on his righteousness. And that's what makes all the
difference in the world. His righteousness, his blood
and righteousness. All right, Psalm 48, verse one
and two. Psalm 48, verses 1 and 2, it
says, Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the
city of our God, in the mountain of His holiness. Beautiful for
situation, the joy of the whole earth. Every kindred, nation,
people, and tongue called out of everywhere in this world. The joy of the whole earth is
Mount Zion. That's the church on the sides
of the north in the city of the great king. Now, this is just
a description of what John saw coming out of heaven. It's mentioned
throughout the Old Testament. This is God's promise. This is
what He intended from the very beginning. He intended to have
a city where he would dwell. He intended to be the point of
worship of all his people. The covenant of grace says, they
shall be my people and I will be their God. And it's repeated
throughout the Old Testament and brought up again in the New
Testament and finalized here in the book of Revelation. I
shall be their God and they shall be my people. That's the fulfillment
of the covenant of grace. All right, in the book of Isaiah,
Book of Isaiah chapter 26, we have some words about the city. There's a song, city built four
square. That doesn't mean that it is
X number of miles this way and X number of miles that way or
leagues or furloughs or whatever. It means it's perfect. It's a
perfectness. When we look at that cube, it's
a perfectness of God. He's not talking about the size. He's talking about the perfection.
The church will have no bounds. Christ has no bounds. The church
will have no bounds. It's speaking about its perfection. And its perfection is Christ. He's the one that hew out the
stone. He's the one that made the cube.
I was down in my brother-in-law's shop down in California. He was
a shop teacher. He had a piece of metal about
this big. It was a cube and he had it sitting on his desk and
you could not lift it off of his desk. There was a vacuum
between, I don't know, it was so close to the same flatness. There was no imperfections and
you had to slide it to the edge to get it off and it wasn't a
magnet. It was just the tolerances of the desk and that piece. A man did that. Just think of
the perfection God has with his city. It is perfection. I know I'm talking about a term
we don't know anything about. We've never seen anything perfect.
Now we can call some cookies perfect and some cakes perfect. But we don't know perfect. We use a term that we don't know
anything about. We've never met anybody perfect. We've never
seen anything perfect. Oh, that was a perfect sunset. We don't know what perfect is.
Adam saw it. That's a perfect tree. No, that's
a blighted tree dying every day. We do the best we can with what
we have, but we don't know perfection. Someday. See Bill Foursquare? It is perfect. It is based on
the holiness and righteousness of God altogether. And there
will be such a perfection in the hearts and minds of His people
that they'll know Him as they are known. Now that's something. Paul used those words, that's
just, that's flabbergasting. To know Him as we are known,
that's going to be perfection. Have a mind to comprehend that.
And then when he shares about grace, we'll be able to say,
I know what you're talking about. Then when he talks about holiness,
we'll say, I know what you're talking about. Then when he talks
about righteousness, we'll say, I know what you're talking about.
There'll be perfect knowledge about all of his characteristics
and attributes and his blessings to the church. All right, Isaiah
26. Isaiah 26. It's holy because
it's been purged and cleansed from all sin by the blood of
Christ and by the power of His grace. If we look at this city,
it is perfect. It is holy. There's only one
that's holy and that's God. And I remember Todd and I were
bringing a message at our camp one time and he referred to that
word holy as oneness. God has a oneness about Him that
nothing else does. But the saints are holy as He
is holy. They are at oneness with God.
That's why there's no fear of meeting Him. There's that oneness.
It's holy as He is holy. All right. Verse 1, Isaiah 26. In that day shall this song be
sung in the land of Judah. We have a strong city. Salvation
will God appoint for walls and bulwarks. Open ye the gates that
the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in." What
a statement! Strong city, salvation will God
appoint for walls and for bulwarks. Deliverance. This is God's doing
and marvelous in our eyes. Abraham looked for a city whose
builder and maker was God. He didn't see it in his days,
but he saw it. He dwelt in tents, and all the cities he saw, the
largest cities he saw, he saw the smoke of them ascending up
to heaven as God washed them from the face of the earth. There
was other cities, but those were the most prominent ones there.
And God did with them what he will do to this earth, and then
it will be perfect. All right, turn with me. Again
to Galatians Galatians chapter 4 Galatians chapter 4 This is a city holy city coming
down from God out of heaven and Adorned Taking care of Galatians
chapter 4 verse 26 Now, this allegory that the Holy
Spirit gave the Apostle Paul, Abraham, Old Testament. Sarah, Old Testament. Hagar,
Old Testament. Right there in the book of Genesis.
And he's led by the Holy Spirit to look at Hagar and Sarah allegorically. Hagar speaks of Jerusalem, which
now is. They're depending upon their
temple service, their genealogy, their wall cities. And Rome showed
them these walled cities are not very valuable. Now it took
a while and what they did, the manpower that went into it, but
they still destroyed that city. They just built a pathway at
an angle up to the walls and walked into it. It took a long
time but they overcame it. I don't want to live in a spiritual
city that over a period of time someone is able to come in and
destroy it. That's what a lot of people have. It's a haphazard
city. Except the Lord keep the city, they that labor, labor
in vain. So He's got to keep it. And He does. Here in Galatians
chapter 4 verse 26 it says, But Jerusalem which is above is free. Now that's a city. It's free. It's not encumbered. It doesn't
have this legal connotation hanging over it. It doesn't have judgment
hanging over it. It doesn't have the judgment
of God hanging over it. When we meet God, when the church
meets God in the righteousness of Christ, He is automatically
going to refer to the cross on our behalf and say, welcome.
Now that's inexplainable to me, but that's just the way it is.
How the son could do what he did on the behalf of the church
and make it so complete that the father says, I'll never bring
it up again. You're clean, sanctified, holy,
righteous. My blood is sufficient. for it
is written rejoice thou barren that bearest not, break forth
and cry thou that trevelest not for the desolate hath many more
children than she which hath a husband now if you go over
there Abraham's a hundred years old and Sarah's ninety years
old and they both agreed we're past the time of having children
both of them agree on that and both of them, Abraham laughed
inside, Sarah laughed outside This is an impossibility. Well, if we realized the new
birth was just as impossible, we wouldn't have near as much
difficulty with it. It's impossible. We'll just never
get it done. It has to come from the outside.
It doesn't come from the inside. I've had people tell me, my belief
is what gave me the new birth. I'm sorry. The new birth came
and that's how you got your belief. If you've been born again, that's
how you got your belief. There is no life in there to
do anything until life is given from outside. And it has to come
from outside. There's no sparks. Oh, religious
work. There's just a little spark in
there if we can fan that. I want to say bull. Bull. That's
not it. It is not it. It is of God. Everything has to come from Him.
Alright, turn with me if you would to Hebrews 12. Hebrews
chapter 12. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 22. This city is a marvelous city.
It's the creation of God. It looks like God. has every
characteristic and attribute of his father. Every saint is
in it, but they're in it by grace and grace alone. It's his righteousness
they depend on, not their own. It's his holiness they depend
on, not theirs. Hebrews 12, verse 22, it says,
But ye are come unto Mount Zion, we read that through the Psalms,
Mount Zion, unto the city of the living God, the heavenly
Jerusalem, and to innumerable company of angels. to the General
Assembly and Church of the Firstborn, which are written in heaven,
and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men
made perfect, and to Jesus, the Mediator of a new covenant, and
to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than Abel.
Everything is provided by God." He didn't use Abel's sacrifice. I mean the sacrifice of Abel.
It only cried, would you punish the offender? But this blood,
the blood of Christ, speaks peace. Because it was not spilt so much
by man, but it was spilt by God. He demanded it. If people would
be saved, He demanded the spilling of His own Son's blood. Alright,
turn with me back one chapter, Hebrews chapter 11, verse 13. And it says here, these all died
in faith. I like that. If you're going to die, die in
faith. That's a good place to be. And
we're all, these all died in faith, not having received the
promises, but having seen them afar off, they saw the promise. And were persuaded of them, and
embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and
pilgrims on the earth. for they that say such things
declare plainly that they seek a country." And truly if they
had been mindful of that country from once they came out, if they're
referring to Ur of the Chaldees, they could have gone back. If
they desire Egypt, they could have gone back. In fact, most
of the Israelites that came out of Egypt never left Egypt. The extension of Egypt just moved
with them. They just moved the borders.
They didn't move anything. They didn't have God. They didn't
have Christ. They didn't have the gospel.
They just moved Egypt with them. That's what religion does. You
just move this over here. Alright, and it goes on to say
here Truly they had been mindful that country from once they came
out they might have had opportunity to return But now they desire
a better country that is a heavenly Wherefore God is not ashamed
to be called their God for he hath prepared for them a city
We're seeing it come out of heaven, there in the end. And God is
making up His church, the Bible says, daily, such as should be
saved. He's making up His city. everything
about it and then uh... going back there to the book
of revelation chapter twenty one in verse two it says that
the city uh... i saw the holy city mercy mercy
mercy new jerusalem mercy mercy mercy what mercy the church bows
and thanks god for the Righteousness imputed. It's the only way we'll
be part of this. New Jerusalem. Coming down from
God out of heaven. Now the only way that could come
down out of heaven as it is in that way, there has to be a new
heaven and a new earth. The church cannot survive the
air on the old heaven and the old earth like this. They're
aliens to it. The old heaven and the old earth,
they're aliens to it. They need a new heaven and a
new earth to come out in this form. And then it says, prepared,
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. The church in her
eternal glorified state beautified with all the perfection of holiness
in perfect conformity to the Lord Jesus Christ and this was
God's purpose from the beginning. This was his purpose from the
beginning. Turn with me to Ephesians 1.4. Ephesians 1 for this is
his purpose it be prepared by God Ephesians Chapter 1 verse 4 According as he has chosen us
in him before the foundation of the world why I that we should
be holy and without blame before Him in love. He purposed it. He purposed this city. He purposed every living stone
in this city. He purposed the foundation. He
purposed the means by which people, the stones would be placed in
it. That We should be holy and without blame before Him. This
is on purpose. This preparation is on purpose.
And Romans chapter 8, Romans chapter 8, verses 29 and 30. Let's read this whole chapter. Romans chapter 8, verse 29. Verse 30 ends with glorified. That's his purpose. He purposed
the church to be this bride coming out of heaven, glorified, holy.
It says, for whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be
conformed to the image of his son. He purposed that, that every
one of his children would look like his son. that he might be
the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate,
them he also called. And whom he called, them he also
justified. And whom he justified, them he
also said, We'll come out of heaven as the city will be glorified. They will have the glory of God,
glory of the Father. And then finally, back to the
book of Ephesians, chapter 5. Ephesians, chapter 5. This is the purpose of God from
the beginning. The covenant of grace covered
all of this. beginning he purposed to have
this church this assembly of the Saints these children gathered
together kneeling at the feet of Christ and worthy as the Lamb
Ephesians chapter 4 verse 25 5. Husbands, love your wives, even
as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it. Why? That he might sanctify and cleanse
it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present
it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or
any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. That's what that's his purpose. He purposed to do this. It was
on purpose from eternity That's why our genealogy in our history
or before the foundation of the world Our history is there the
history of the church is in the covenant of grace our genealogy
Why where is it? It's before the foundation of
the world in the covenant of grace And it just lines it out
in Ephesians chapter 1 and here's that beautiful beautiful bride
of Christ adored by God prepared by God everything in it he has
supplied he has not permitted any outside that verse over in
Corinthians a little leaven leaven is the whole lump if God permitted
one little bit of human righteousness it would ruin the entire thing So he doesn't allow it. I'll
take my son's righteousness. It's good. All right, we're going
to stop there. And Lord willing, next time we'll
pick up on that verse. I heard a great voice out of
heaven saying, behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, the fulfillment
of the covenant of grace.