All right, today's study will
be a continuation of last week's study in Revelation 21. It actually takes in a little bit
of Revelation 22, but I don't think we'll get that far. Last week we looked at verses
nine through 13, and we talked about the privilege of hearing
from God. That really made an impact on
me there in those verses where John said, and I, John. Very seldom did John ever mention
his own name. He always called himself the
disciple whom the Lord loved. He very seldom mentioned his
name. But here, in the excitement of it and realizing the privilege
of it, he said, and I, John. The Lord talked to me. And we
talked a little bit about the means and methods of God as he
gives to his elect the saving revelation of himself and his
son. But the bulk of our study was
about the Lamb's wife, the bride of Christ. And the gist of the
study is this. You cannot truly see the bride
until you see her descending from God out of heaven. That's
where we see the bride. John said it does not yet appear
what we shall be. You can't look at me or look
at yourselves in the mirror and say, this is what the bride,
no, far from it, far from it. You can see the bride only as
she's descending from God out of heaven. When did she do that? Well, she descended from God
out of heaven in His Son. That's where we see the bride.
We see the bride through His Son. And this is the predestinating
purpose of God, that we all be conformed to the image of His
Son. So this is what the bride is
going to appear as the Son. We did this in union with the
Son of God as He was born of a woman and made under the law. But we see Him now as God has
set Him forth in His Word. That's where we see the Son.
That's where we discover these beautiful revelations of God.
We see them in His Word as God sets forth His Son. And we see him now as those who
were eyewitnesses described him and gave us his teaching. But
then we'll see him face to face. We'll see him as he is. And the only way now to see the
Lamb's wife as he shall be is to see her descending from God
out of heaven. And the lesson ended last week
talking about the walls of the city. I just briefly mentioned
that. And that's where I want to take
up the study this morning. And if you'll recall, I showed
you in Galatians 4.26 that Jerusalem, which is above, is another way
to view the bride of Christ as a city, a community, a gathering. She's likened unto a great city,
a number which no man can number. She's likened unto a holy city. Back in the day, Jerusalem was
the center of all worship. I don't know if you've ever read
that or studied that at all, but those who would go up to
worship God at Jerusalem, they would leave their crops and leave
their homes and leave everything behind and journey up to Jerusalem
during those feast days to worship the Lord. And the Lord told them
not to worry about thieves and robbers while they were gone,
just to pack up, go to Jerusalem, and all their stuff would be
taken care of by the Lord. This was the center of worship,
the place where God would commune with his people. And his beloved
bride is sometimes called his church. His church, the great
congregation, sometimes called the general assembly, the church
of the firstborn, which are written in heaven. And as she is symbolically
set before us as a great city, he tells us that she is Surrounded,
this great city is surrounded by a great wall. What is this wall? We look at this wall, it talks
about being a great wall, talks about there's a way through the
wall, entries made, three doors on each side, on all four sides,
12 gates entering into the city. Well, what is this wall? This
wall is our God. The wall is our God who is our
salvation. Christ is God our Savior. And
there's no other way than Christ. In Zechariah chapter two and
verse five it says, for I, saith the Lord, will be unto her a
wall of fire. You remember back when they journeyed
out of Egypt, he was a wall of fire about his people. And here
he says, I'll be to her a wall of fire round about and will
be the glory in the midst of her. And in the verses we're
studying in Revelation 21, our Lord tells us several things
about this wall. First of all, he tells us in
verse 12 that this wall was a great wall. It was a great wall. It was impenetrable. There's
no possibility of breaching this wall. When we think about God
in his true character and in his true glory, there's no way
to pass through that except the satisfying of that character
and that glory, which was done by Christ. So this wall is impenetrable. You can't dig through it. You
can't scale over it. There's no possibility of breaching
this wall. Secondly, this wall was high.
No ladder can reach the top of this wall, no rope long enough
to scale it. This is a high wall. God is high
in the standards of his character, his being. He's all-wise, all-knowing,
all-powerful, everywhere present. He's holy. This wall is high. His standard is so high that
the scripture says there's none good but God. You think about
that. Thirdly, this wall completely
surrounds the city of God. Doesn't matter how you approach
God, from what direction you come, you're going to have to
deal with this wall. Now the angel goes on to describe
the city. He tells us in Revelation 21
verses 15 and 16 that the city was four square. What's he talking
about there? What's he telling us there about
this great city? This city is a city of equality. I grew up in religion and religion
tells you that there is no equality in heaven. Religion tells you
that you're sending up material to build that house. How ridiculous
is that? That your good works is all lumber
being sent up to heaven and they're preparing for you up there. So
you can have a mansion or a log cabin, it don't matter. all this
kind of nonsense. And they talk about people up
there being held in higher esteem than another and all this kind
of stuff. You can't find that in the scripture.
The children of God are one. That's what Christ said. As I,
Father, and you are one, even so, they are one. And you love
them as you love me. There's equality in this city
of God, in the church of God, in the people of God, because
they're all saved by the same grace. You see, grace is the
great equalizer. Grace brings the wise man down. He brings the ignorant man up.
His grace makes all things the same. We're all saved the same
way and saved by the same grace. And we're actually rewarded for
a work done for us. Can you even imagine? I want
you, when you get home after a while, go in the bathroom,
look in the mirror, or in your bedroom, look in the dressing
mirror, and try to imagine God looking at you and saying, well
done, my good and faithful servant, because of something you did.
You can't do it. You can't do it. No, but he rewards
us for works that he's done for us and works that he's done in
us. And he rewards us for it as though we did it ourselves.
The city is equal. It's equal on all sides. There
is no poor and rich, educated and uneducated, because it's
all of grace. It's all equal. It's four squared. And then in verses 18 through
21, he describes the city and its walls as being of precious
minerals. Precious minerals, all manner
of precious stones. Jasper and sapphire and emerald
and on and on the list goes. Each gate made of one pearl,
the pearl of great price because Christ is the only door. I know
here it depicts many doors, but every one of those doors is Christ,
it's Christ. And then he tells us that the
street within the city is of pure gold throughout and transparent
as glass. The city of God only has one
street, one street. I sometimes think that was symbolized
there where he sent Paul, he said, you go down to the street
called Straight. That's what this street is. The
city of God has one street, and it's the street called Straight,
and it is the street that leads from the gate to the very throne
of God, and this street is the gospel of Jesus Christ. It leads us to the very throne
of God. A way, he said, made for us. And there is but one way for
a poor sinner to find his way to God, and that is by the gospel
of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Now, Peter talks about this in
1 Peter 2, verse 4. He said, to whom coming as unto
a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and
precious. And then again in verse seven,
unto you therefore which believe he is precious. The wall's precious. That's what he's telling us.
Our God is precious to the believer. He's not the man upstairs. He's
God. You know the old writers, the
old scribes when they would pin the scriptures when they transcribed
the scriptures, every time they wrote the name Jehovah, they'd
throw the pin away. Every time. God is hallowed, he's precious. Not everybody knows God. Not everybody loves God. Not
everybody hears from God. God is precious. So here the
wall is precious and the gates are precious and the way is precious. It's all precious. Everything
within this city is most precious, most precious. And so he describes
those things and things which are precious to the natural man
in this world, gold and pearls and emeralds and all these things.
But unto them which be disobedient, Peter said, the stone which the
builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner,
and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense, not precious
to them, but an offense to them, even to them which stumble at
the word, being disobedient, whereunto also they were appointed. Now everything about this city,
in this city, and under this city was precious. These precious
gems are symbolic of the preciousness of Christ and the preciousness
of his bride to him. All right, let's go back to our
text, Revelation 21. Let's read verse 22. And I saw no temple therein. He looked within this city, this
city, he passed through the gates of pearl, he went through the
wall of precious gems, he walked along the streets of gold, and
he got inside the city and he looked and there was no temple.
There was no temple therein. For the Lord God Almighty and
the Lamb are the temple of it. They are the temple of it. They
always were. Now let's talk about this for
just a minute. Some of you little ones here may not have ever even
thought about this. You hear mom and dad talking
about going to church. You can't go to church. That's
something we picked up from our past. The church is not a building. The church is the people of God. That's
the church. The church is not a building.
The church is the congregation who assembled in the building. And I preached in some big, fine
buildings, and I preached in thatched huts down in Mexico.
I preached from some good pulpits, and I preached from out of people's
living rooms on whatever they had handy. But God's city, the
General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn, don't need a temple. They don't need a building. Jesus Christ is he's the he's
the body. He's the temple and God Almighty
in Hebrews 9 11 the Holy Ghost tells us but Christ being come
a high priest of good things to come by greater and more perfect
tabernacle The tabernacle preceded the temple, so that's what he's
talking about here And this tabernacle not made with hands, that is
to say it's not of this temple, it's not of that old tabernacle.
Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood
he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal
redemption for us. And then turn with me to Ephesians
chapter two. Let me show you something over
here about this temple. In Ephesians 2, Paul sums up
what all these special privileges he's been talking about, and
especially this special privilege and what it was for a Gentile
to be heirs of these things and chosen to become sons of God.
And then in verse 19 of Ephesians 2, he said, now therefore, you're
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. Now watch this. In whom all the
building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple in
the Lord. That's the holy temple in the
Lord. in the Lord, in whom ye also
are builted together for inhabitation of God through the Spirit. And
then Paul said in Philippians 3, 3, we are the circumcision,
which worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and
have no confidence in the flesh. They that truly worship God,
they worship Him in Spirit and in truth. They don't need a building. The buildings that we have today,
let me just say a few things about that before I pass off
the subject. The buildings that we have today are important.
They're not important to us for worship. They're important for
us as a neutral place where sinners are not dissuaded to come. It's a neutral place. When you
meet in your home, that's fine. We can meet in your home and
worship, but you can't meet in a house. You've got this big
wall of superstition going on here with the people, and you
can't get the people in there to hear. You can't get them to
come to hear. So building is important in our
day. It's a neutral place where people
can come, a public place. And that overrides a lot of suspicion
that people have about cults and stuff. If you got a building,
a nice building, I don't need one with a bunch of statues and
crosses and all that kind of nonsense, but just a nice building
for people to come and sit down in and hear the gospel. I believe that we must have some
sort of building, some neutral place where men and women can
congregate and hear. But it's not needful for worship.
We worship God in spirit and truth. We can worship, Paul worshiped
God at midnight in a jail cell. And there's no temple in the
city of God. God Almighty and His Lamb are
the temple. Revelation 21 verse 23. And the city had no need of the sun. had no need of the moon nothing, nothing up in the sky
to shine down in it had no need of the sun nor the moon for the
glory of God did lighten it and the Lamb is the light thereof in the beginning of John's gospel
it said in him was life and the life was the light of men That's
the light. Jesus Christ. He's the light. And it is, what
is this light? What is this eternal life that
he's talking about here? It's to know him. It's to know
him. And if you know him, we don't
need a sun. We don't need a moon. You think about it, everything
you believe, everything you rejoice in, all of those things, where
do they come from? They don't come from this world. They come
from Christ. They come from God out of heaven. John 17 three, he said, this
is life eternal that they might know thee the only true God and
Jesus Christ whom thou sent. He gives us this revelation of
God in His Son. In 1 John 5, 20, He said, and
we know that the Son of God has come and given us an understanding. That's where we get our understanding.
I tell you, religion will leave you upside down. It'll leave
you so mixed up, you won't know which end is up. And what you'll
do is the same thing I did. You'll look at yourself and you'll
just say, well, I guess everybody else seems to know what's going
on, everybody but me. I guess I'm just too stupid,
too ignorant to understand it. No, they didn't understand it,
that was teaching it. We know that the Son of God has
come and given us an understanding that we may know Him that's true,
and that we're in him that's true, even in his son, Jesus
Christ. This is the true God and eternal
life. He's the light of the city. He's
the day star that arises in our hearts. And he's the sun which
we have, which rises and sits. And this sun that does rise and
set, it's just a picture of him. That's all it is. He's the light. God put that sun in heaven. It
divided the darkness from the light. But in that day, and even now
in the kingdom of God, Christ is the light. The Lord God Almighty
and the Lamb are the temple of it and the light of it. And the
light he furnishes is the glory of God in the salvation of sinners. That's the light. And then let's,
just briefly, let's read the last verse of chapter 21. And
there shall no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither
whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie. But they are,
which are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. I used to read books about preachers
who talked about carnal Christians. Carnal Christians. And these
carnal Christians were to be included in the kingdom of God,
but here it says no such thing. No such thing. No partly cleansed
or half-dressed children. He that attempts to come into
this city without the wedding garment shall be cast into outer
darkness. That righteousness, that cleanliness,
that holiness, that goodness, that perfection that God looks
upon is given us in Christ. And there's nothing that enters
into that city that's not perfect. Nothing. And this city is a city of grace. And this grace takes in all the
means of our salvation, especially that of our acceptance and cleanliness
in Christ. May the Lord give us all some
understanding of what these verses declare about this great city. Thank you.