The Triumph of the Lamb of God

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of end times in this address from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library.

Jesus said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal.” Then he added, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

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That last aphorism, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also, is sometimes misunderstood. It is taken to mean that followers of Jesus should guard their hearts or they will be misfocused on purely transient treasures. Now that is a true thought. Elsewhere the Scripture does say, “Guard your heart, for out of it are the wellsprings of life,” but strictly speaking, that is not what this text says.

This text does not say, “Guard your heart.” It says, rather, “Secure your treasure, for your heart will follow it. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” In other words, what we value will tug our hearts in that direction. That is what we will think about. It is what we will daydream over. It is what we will work for. It is what we will pursue.

If what your heart is set on is a new house or the excellent education of your children then you will pursue those matters. Within certain limits there is nothing wrong with either of those matters, but if that is where your ultimate heart’s treasure is, then in fact your heart, your whole being, will pursue something of merely transient significance.

It is extremely important, then, for Christians to maintain a high valuation of our ultimate destiny, of what is transcendentally and eternally important, if our hearts, our whole beings, are to pursue those goals. In other words, by constant reaffirmation, by constant meditation on these things, what we treasure most must be secured in heaven, or that’s not the direction in which our hearts will naturally gravitate.

Few passages will prove more helpful in establishing this high valuation of the new heaven and the new earth more than this one before us. It is full of symbolism, like so much else in the book of Revelation. In apocalyptic language, it focuses on the end of history, on the dawning of the consummation. It tells us what is new (Revelation 21:1–8), what is symbolic (Revelation 21:9–21), what is missing (Revelation 21:22–27), and what is central (Revelation 22:1–5). We’ll follow those four points. First then …

1. What is new (21:1-8)

It is nothing less than a new heaven and a new earth. “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.” This is picking up the language of Scripture. Isaiah 65:17–19 foresees the coming of a new heaven and a new earth. Romans 8 insists that this present universe is groaning in travail, waiting for the final consummation. In Peter’s second epistle he speaks of the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness.

Now exactly what does this entail? Undoubtedly it is beyond our capacity to grasp it, nor can we fully unpack the precise relationship between the new heaven and the new earth and this old dying heaven and earth. We know some things. We know, for example, about the resurrection bodies still to come, but John does not specify the mechanics. He’s interested in the central thrust.

The one detail he does here specify is that there is no more sea, but of course in the language of apocalyptic this isn’t talking about the hydrological arrangements of the new universe. In the language of apocalyptic that is saying there is nothing more of the fallen order. Passages like Isaiah 57, which I quoted last night, “The wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast a mire and mud,” the sea in Revelation 4 that distances John from the throne, the sea out of which the first beast comes in Revelation 13 … they’re all gone.

That is, the entire fallen order has disappeared. Then in verse 2 the metaphor changes. “I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband.” Now, this is not meant to be something other than the new heaven and the new earth or only a part of the new heaven and the new earth or one geographical location in the new heaven and the new earth. No, no.

The notion of a New Jerusalem unveiling Messiah’s coming finds its roots in the return to Jerusalem after the exile. If the return to Jerusalem spelled the coming again of the kingdom in some small way after the exile, so already Jews of Jesus’ day were talking about the New Jerusalem as the ultimate fulfillment of all of their hopes.

In a document, for example, written about the same time as the New Testament documents were written, in what’s called the Testament of Dan, the New Jerusalem is a place in which the saints rejoice and enjoy the glory of God forever. In another document, called 2 Esdras, the New Jerusalem is not just the old city rebuilt, but a new one built to a heavenly pattern. You see? This is the symbolism drawn from the return to Jerusalem but now picking up everything.

The New Testament does the same thing in Galatians, chapter 4, verse 26, “Our home is the Jerusalem above.” In Hebrews, we belong to a city whose builder and maker is God. In Revelation 3:12, those who remain faithful in Philadelphia are “inscribed with the name of the city of my God, the New Jerusalem which is coming down out of heaven from my God.”

The vision of a New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven embraces intrinsic elements. On the one hand it’s pointing back to Jerusalem, which was the covenantal center. It was the tabernacle center. It was the head of the kingdom. It was the place where the king dwelt, but coming out of heaven, this is an act of God. This is a new creation. This is a whole sovereign work which brings about the consummation, and it is a city. It is a social construct. It is not just salvation for individuals, a Lone-Ranger Christianity. No, no.

Christians don’t exist in splendid isolation. We think of large cities as cesspools, sinkholes of iniquity, ghettoes … yes, with sophistication, perhaps, but with a concentration of evil. The more people, the more sin, and this view is even reflected in the book of Revelation. The city in chapter 17 is Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots, the Mother of all Abominations. In fact, some have written along these lines, “The contrast between the earthly city as harlot and the heavenly city as bride is obvious.”

Some have said that the book of Revelation could almost be called a tale of two cities. There’s the city of Babylon and the city of the New Jerusalem. There’s the harlot, and there’s the bride. There’s the sinkhole of iniquity, and there’s God’s own creation, the New Jerusalem coming down, nothing other than the very consummation of all of our hopes.

Then the metaphor changes again, right at the end of the verse. It’s a city, but it’s a bride. Well a city is not a bride, but just as in chapter 5 the Lamb was the Lion, so also here the new heaven and the new earth is the city, and the city is the bride. Do you see? The reason for this, again, is steeped in Old Testament language, drawn through the New Testament, and anticipating the consummation.

In the Old Testament, God’s covenant people constitute the bride of Yahweh, and when the bride turns away from him it’s a spiritual adultery. That is the very heart of the book of Hosea, is it not? In the New Testament what does Paul say? “I have pledged you as a pure virgin to your groom, Jesus Christ.” So what do you have now? The consummation.

What is the most intimate act human beings can know? It is, finally, the sexual union of a man and a woman brought together in holy matrimony, with minds and hearts and bodies linked as one, and that is the language that the Bible dares to pick up, because in one sense that is merely a model of the most wonderful intimacy of all, the intimacy between God and his people. Isn’t that picked up explicitly in Ephesians 5?

“Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.” That means husbands are to love their wives self-sacrificially and for their good, as Christ loved the church self-sacrificially and for the church’s good, and the union between the husband and the wife, this is a great mystery, Paul says, wandering back and forth between the two, back and forth between the two.

Do you realize that your home, your union with your spouse is to be, in a small way, still only a very small way, an anticipation of the bliss of intimacy with the supreme Bridegroom, Christ himself, in the consummation? What does all this mean? It’s almost as if the images are too much, and a voice needs to explain it. Verse 3: “… a loud voice from the throne …” Now, as it were, not simply angels explaining things, but God himself speaking clearly, lest there should be any misunderstanding, a loud voice from the throne speaking.

In fact, John wants to stress the point. Verse 3: “… a loud voice from the throne …” Verse 5: “He who was seated on the throne …” In verse 5b: “Then he said …” Verse 6: “He said to me …” He wants is to be very clear that what is being said now is nothing other than the words of God in spectacular announcement of the glories of the consummation. What does he say?

“Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” There is, of course, a sense in which God has always dwelt with his people. Wasn’t that the purpose of the tabernacle and the temple? Didn’t it lie at the heart of the incarnation? Isn’t it true as God, the triune God, mediates himself by his Spirit today in the church? But it is always a qualified dwelling until the consummation, when there are no more qualifications.

Already the anticipations are there throughout the Old Testament. Leviticus 26: “I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians. I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high.”

Jeremiah 31, with respect to the new covenant: “I will put my law on their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people.” Ezekiel 37: “My dwelling place will be with them. I will be their God and they will be my people.” And now, without qualification, without any future anticipation of something other than what has now already been received, God says, “Now the dwelling of God is with men.” They will be his people. God will live with them and be their God.

So perfect is this dwelling of God with his people, so consummate is this relationship, that no sin or evil nor any result of sin and evil can possibly tarnish it. Hence, verse 4: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

Eternal blessedness is here couched in negation. That is, what it is not. It is not a place of death. It is not a place of tears. It is not a place of mourning, in part because the new and glorious order is more easily pictured in terms of what it replaces than by an explicit account to unpack what is still largely inconceivable to us in our present state.

This, too, arises from the language of the Old Testament prophets, does it not? Isaiah 35:10: “The ransomed of the Lord will return. They will enter Zion with thanksgiving, and everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sighing and sorrow will flee away.”

Some of you have been bereaved in this last year. Some of you will be bereaved next year. Some of you, I suspect, have cancer at the moment. If not, some of you will have it soon. Live long enough in this fallen and broken order and you will suffer. Your friends will die off. If you live long enough, your children will die off.

In England a friend of mine, Sir Norman Anderson, lost all three of his children. The first was a medical missionary, a daughter in what was then the Congo. She was raped in the Congo Rebellion. She came home to recover and came to California for a little further training before she was going back to Africa as a missionary. She tripped, fell down the stairs, knocked herself out, and drowned in her own spittle.

The second died an equally surprising death, and the third? The third was a boy, Hugh. He died when he was an undergraduate at Cambridge University, just about the time I was arriving in 1972. He died of a brain tumor. He was already considered so bright he was being touted as a possible future prime minister of England. Six cabinet members attended his funeral. They lost all three children.

Live long enough, and you will watch your children die or they’ll watch you die, but now there is no more death, no bereavement, no mourning, and no tears. None. Isaiah 25 says God will swallow up death forever. God still speaks in verse 5. “I am making everything new.” It is as if everything connected with the old order has so been tarnished, so corrupted, so connected with death and decay and transience and mourning that God must start over.

He makes everything new, and so that Christians may take comfort, he tells John explicitly, “John, I’ve just made an announcement. Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.” He is not saying yet that the consummation has already arrived, because in the rest of that verse it’s clear that he’s still making the announcement of the free offer of salvation.

In the vision it’s arrived. In God’s mind it has happened, just as the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the earth so far as God was concerned, so now God has provided for everything. The new heaven and the earth have been purchased. It has been secured. It has been announced, and in John’s vision it is here, but in reality it is not yet here. From God’s perspective, however, he says, “It is done.”

Hence the announcement: “To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.” You can look at these people from a variety of ways. They are in this chapter described as those whose names are written down in the Lamb’s book of life. Here they’re described as those who are thirsty and who drink. In the next verse they’re described phenomenalogically as those who overcome.

It is not as if only the good people go to heaven and only the bad people don’t. Paul reminds us when he writes with his long list of negations to the Corinthians, “Such were some of you, but you were washed, you were justified …” So also here. They come. They drink of the water of life without cost, which reminds us of Isaiah 55. They overcome. That is, they persevere. They press on, and they inherit all of this. In fact, although they can be viewed corporately as a city, they are also viewed individually. “I will be his God, and he will be my son.”

By contrast, “The cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars …” Not an exhaustive list, merely a typical list, “… their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur.” They are the cowardly. This is not simply talking about those who are less than heroic on the bravery front. It means they are so timid, so frightened of the world around them, that they do not persevere in the grace and demands of the gospel.

They are the cowardly. They are like the seed sown on stony ground, which crops up and promises so much, but under the first whiff of pressure and persecution it just keels over and dies. No staying power. Some small touch of grace displayed in their life, but not the kind of grace that so transforms that it perseveres.

“The unbelieving.” They have never learned to trust the provision God has made and the God of the provision. “The vile.” It’s a catch-all description of all that God detests. “The murderers.” Explicitly and in their hearts. “The sexually immoral.” Explicitly and in their hearts. “Those who practice magic arts.” Interested in the supernatural but not in the spiritual. “The idolaters.” That includes all coveters. “All liars.” Those who don’t deal in truth. “Their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

I did not have time to expound Revelation 14, but it is Revelation 14 that includes the most terrifying description of hell in the New Testament. There is a marked movement afoot in some evangelical circles today to think of hell as a place with variegated suffering until all who are in it are consumed. In that sense, hell is final, but there is no eternal suffering.

I do not see how the language of Revelation 14 can be reconciled with that interpretation. What do we read? “And the smoke of their torment rises forever,” chapter 14, verse 11. People make jokes about hell. It’s the place they’d like to go to because all their friends are going to be there. They tell us things like that, but there are no friends in hell.

Sin continues. Punishment continues. It is the place of all that is vile. Do you remember how the book of Revelation ends? “Let him who is filthy be filthy still. Let him who is righteous be righteous still.” The idea is of a continuing now that stretches into eternity. So what is new? What is new is a new heaven and a new earth. It’s the consummation that we have been looking for. It is a new city. It is a new arrangement of the most intimate sonship with God, the most intimate union with God and with the Lamb.

2. What is symbolic (verses 9–21)

There was a sense, of course, in which there have been many symbols in the first verses, but verses 9–21 pick up one or two of the symbols of the first section and then load them down with a whole lot of symbols. It’s almost as if there are symbols upon the symbols. We pick up with this language of the bride and of the city, and then the city is more fully described.

I do not have time to go through all of this language, but let me direct your attention to some of it. In verses 9 and 10, once again the New Jerusalem is the wife, the bride. What is now made explicit, though it was hinted earlier, is that the groom of the bride is, in fact, the Lamb. It is explicitly the Lamb, and now, for the first time in this chapter, the Lamb is introduced and recurs again and again and again.

Verse 14: “The twelve apostles of the Lamb …” Then, verse 22: “The Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” Verse 23: “The Lamb is the city’s light.” Verse 27: “… whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” In chapter 22, verse 1: “… the throne of God and of the Lamb …” Verses 3–4: “The throne of God and of the Lamb … They will see his face.”

Do you see? The Lamb, the Lamb, the throne of God and the Lamb, God and the Lamb. Here we have, in truth, the triumph of the Lamb. It is the consummation of all the movement in the entire book, from Revelation 4 and 5, where it is the Lamb that secures all of God’s purposes for redemption and judgment.

Now we look at the city in particular. One of the angels now is doing his interpreting job in verse 9. In verse 10 John says, “He carries me in the Spirit to a mountain great and high.” Not because there is some physical location now in the new heaven and the new earth that stands outside the new heaven and the new earth. This is simply part of the symbolism of the vision that enables John to get a vantage point in which to see everything.

We’re not to think in terms of concrete geography now but in terms of the nature and the import of the vision. “He carries me, then, to this mountain great and high …” So that John can have a good view, “… and he showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.” This is not a new descent. This is exactly what was going on in the first verses, where he says, verse 2, “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven.” Do you see?

The same vision, thus, is being picked up, but now it is being explained, and there are more details, the dimensions of the city are unpacked, and the building materials of the city are unpacked, so you begin with the symbolism of the city, and now there are symbols of the construction and the size of the city. Do you see?

That is why I have called this section what is symbolic. What, then, do we read in the symbolism used to describe this city? Verses 10–14 in the original constitute one long sentence, and what is said is very remarkable. Jerusalem comes down from heaven. It shines with the glory of God. Don’t forget, this Jerusalem is the consummated church, and it shines with the glory of God.

It is our abode, where God dwells, and it is heaven. It is also the bride, the actual people who actually have consummation with God himself. Do you see? And it shines with the glory of God. There is so much down here that shines with anything but the glory of God. It shines with glitter, and it shines with sleaze. It shines with fake luminescence that distracts, but in the new heaven and the new earth, everything shines with the glory of God.

“Its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper.” You will recall that the very throne room of God is made up of jasper. The throne of God is like jasper in chapter 4, almost certainly a white stone, an opal, or a diamond in the days before diamonds were cut perfectly symmetrically and could be clear. “Clear as crystal” is not, in my view, a good translation. Crystal, in the ancient world, was not clear. They didn’t know how to make it yet. It means sparkling like crystal. It is full of life and sparkling and luminescence.

“It had a great high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south, three on the west. The wall had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.”

Here you have, then, the old covenant people of God and the new covenant people of God brought together once again. This, too, is in part language drawn from Isaiah. What does the prophet say in Isaiah, chapter 60? “Arise, shine, for your light has come …” He says, addressing Zion, “… and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.” Now all of Isaiah’s hopes are in the consummation of the last day.

“The presence of the glory of the Lord” means the presence of the Lord himself. Isn’t that what Ezekiel 43 is about? “Then the spirit lifted me up and brought me into the inner court, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.” This is wonderful language. The 12 angels, the gatekeepers, probably reflect the pattern of Isaiah 62:6, of watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem.

The high wall itself is not assuming some defensive posture against attacking hordes. There are no people who are going to attack this city. It is merely part of the picture of an ancient monumental, majestic, secure city. In verses 15–17, an angel then proceeds to measure the city using a golden measuring rod.

The reed, this rod, was just over 10 feet long. That means the size is enormous, which suggests there is room for all, but above all, notice this city has a strange design. It is built like a perfect cube. It is as long and as wide as it is high. Have you ever seen a city built like that? Oh no, the symbolism is clear to those who know their Old Testaments. Where is the one cube in all of Scripture? It is the most Holy of Holies, the Holy Place in the tabernacle and in the temple.

You see, this is another way of saying that the entire city is the Most Holy Place. The entire city is where God dwells. The entire city is full of the shekinah glory of almighty God. There is no restriction now so that the priest enters just once a year. There is no restriction now so that anyone who peeks behind the veil without proper authorization will immediately be struck down. There is no distinction between priest and all of the others who may not enter.

Now all the people of God live in the city of God, which is itself in the very presence of God. This is the Most Holy Place. “Twelve thousand stadia,” we read. In most of the Bible the numbers are not symbolic, but in apocalyptic they are. The cube has 12 edges. Twelve times 12,000 is 144,000, the number of God’s elect in Revelation 14, and that doesn’t mean that there are only 144,000 elect, as in Jehovah’s Witnesses. Again, it’s symbolic.

Twelve, the number of the people of God, times 12, times 10 raised to the third power, 10 times 10 times 10. The completeness of all of God’s people, made up of the old covenant community and the new covenant community. The completeness of all of God’s people, that is what is at stake. John, as someone has said, “is struggling to express by symbols the vastness, the perfect symmetry, and the splendor of the New Jerusalem.”

The wall measures 144 cubits, we’re told. People dispute whether that’s 144 cubits wide or 144 cubits high. It’s not clear, but 144 is again 12 times 12. What’s the point? Again, all the people of God under the old covenant and under the new. The city itself, if you translate stadia into miles, is about 1400 miles on edge, but the point is not its dimensions, the point is its perfect symmetry, its perfect completeness, embracing all of the people of God and reflecting nothing other than the Most Holy Place where God in his shekinah glory meets with his people.

In verses 18–21, spectacular building materials are used. The wall was made of pure jasper. You can’t really build a wall of these dimensions of jasper. It is symbolism. The city is pure gold. Gold is not a construction material. No, no, no. The idea, again, is of purity. “As pure as glass,” again, suggests it’s burnished and bright and sparkling and wonderful.

“The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone.” People have disputed exactly the significance of this list. Many on the list are the stones akin to the stones used on the breastplate of the high priest. Someone has also pointed out, it is very remarkable, that if you take these twelve stones and lay them out in the order in which the points of the compass occur in verse 13 … Did you notice verse 13 … the 12 gates, three on the east, three on the north, three on the south, three on the west?

If you lay out the stones in the order in which they’re given, in the order of these four points of the compass, which is a strange order, east, north, south, west … That’s not the way we talk. That’s not the way the ancient world talked. East, north, south, west. Do you know what you get? It’s quite remarkable.

You get exactly the reverse order of the stones associated with the signs of the Zodiac, almost as if John is saying, “Listen. What I’m talking about is not astrological smarm. This is not some sort of spooky stuff. This isn’t connected with superstition. This is the exact opposite of that. This is reality.” It might be symbol-laden, but it is not unreal, and it is not mere superstition.

In sum, the New Jerusalem, the bride of the Lamb, is steeped in symbolism. The gates made of great pearl, possibly an allusion to Jesus’ parable, the pearl of great price, I’m not sure. Walking on streets of gold like priests in the Old Testament in the course of their temple work in 1 Kings 6. This is some of the symbolism that John uses, inspired by the vision that is provided for him, that we might better have a taste of what heaven is like. Then in the third place, there are some things missing in heaven.

3. What is missing (21:22–27)

There are four things missing.

First, there’s no temple. “I did not see a temple in this city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” The precise language is changing again, typical of apocalyptic. There’s a sense in which the whole city, because it’s a cube, is the Most Holy Place.

Now, in case that lesson hasn’t been learned, the language shifts a bit, and God and the Lamb are the temple. There is no need for mediation. God and the Lamb live there. There is no need for a temple structure. It’s another way of saying the same thing. This is the place of God’s presence.

Secondly, we’re told there’s no sun or moon. Why? Again, this is no more establishing the precise nature of the astronomy of the new heavens and the new earth as the want of water is establishing the hydrological principles. No, no, no.

The point, again, is that so much of the light we receive here is transitory: Day, night, day, night, day, night, day, night. Winter, summer, winter, summer, winter, summer, winter, summer. In any case, it’s secondary, but here is the unshielded glory of God. Who can look on God and live? “No one can see my face and live!” But now all of God’s people stand in the unshielded radiance of the glory of God and no other light is needed. “The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.”

Thirdly, there’s no night. The night was associated with danger. Night was when you closed the gates of the city. In Isaiah 60 it prophesied, “You will one day be so secure that your gates shall be open continuously.” Now the language is picked up here. “The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there.”

Again, this is not trying to establish: here is heaven, or the New Jerusalem, and then outside is something else that you go in and out to. That’s not quite the point. That’s making the symbolism walk on all fours. The point is the gates are always open because there is no succession of good and bad, night and day, nothing of that. There is always bounty, always security, always the blessing of God, and never any fear, never any terror, and never any cycles of history, but above all …

Fourthly, there is nothing impure there. Verse 27: “Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” No impurity at all, and every genuine believer necessarily says, “Even so, come Lord Jesus.” Every genuine believer is so tired at times of struggling with his or her own impurity. Is that not the case?

I know that with John Newton we can look back and we can say, “I am not what I was. I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I one day will be, but by the grace of God, I am what I am.” Yes, we do see the changes, but the closer we draw to the living God, the more we’re aware of the dirt, too, the double standards, the shifting motives, but there there will be no impurity. None. That brings me to my last point.

4. What is central (Revelation 22:1–5)

It’s almost as if John has to cycle around the same themes again and again to make sure they come home. He introduces the vision of the city, the new heaven and the new earth, and the bride. Then he unpacks it in the endless symbolism, the long stream of symbols. Then he comes back to saying the same sorts of things by describing what isn’t there. Now he has one more run at it. All this the angel provides John that we might have better anticipation of heaven.

We read, then, “The angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, down the middle of the great street of the city.” What do you have here? The water of life from the throne of God and of the Lamb. This is a return to Paradise. In fact, it eclipses the old Paradise, for this is eternal.

There is no possibility of fall here, and it comes from the throne because it is all God-provided, but it is not just the throne of God the Father. It is the throne of God and of the Lamb, because all of God’s purposes in redemption and judgment have been secured by the Lamb. Here is the Tree of Life, producing fruit all the time, all year round, so that there is never any possibility of death. It is another way of saying that eternal life, in consummated glory, with resurrection bodies, in the new heaven and the new earth, is secured by God himself and the work of the Lamb.

Nor is there any question of difficult access; it flows right down the main street. But above all, what is central is not simply this matchless provision, this water of life from the throne of God and the Lamb. What is central is what some have called the beatific vision, the vision of God. Verse 4: “They will see his face.”

If God and the Lamb were not in heaven, heaven would be hell. That’s the burden of all of this chapter. You hear some Christians talk as if the only reason they want to get to heaven is to see their dear departed mama. Well, there is joy and anticipation in the fact that Christians never say their last goodbye, but that’s not what’s central.

Driving over here from Chicago, I always bring a whole lot of tapes with me and stuff one after the other into the tape deck, and my interests are very varied. I listen to Mozart, then I listen to Mars Hill tapes, then I listen to some contemporary hymns sung by Welsh choirs, then I listen to some English folk music. I keep changing. My tastes are broad. I’m probably not disciplined enough.

I was listening to a tape by Roger Whittaker. He was singing a song of Cape Breton. The last verse runs, “If my time could end perfectly, I know how I’d want it to be. God’s gift of heaven would be made up of three; my love, Cape Breton, and me.” My dear Roger Whittaker, that would be hell, for the heaven that we long for is to see God face to face in the most perfectly intimate union that those made in the image of God can finally enjoy.

Face to face with Christ, my Savior,

Face to face—what will it be,

When with rapture I behold him,

Jesus Christ who died for me?

Only faintly now I see him,

With the darkling veil between,

But a better day is coming,

When his glory shall be seen.

“Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself as he also is pure.” Here, brothers and sisters in Christ, is where our treasure must lie. There was a time when the church disputed endlessly over the details of eschatology. That time, thank God, has slipped past. Now we do something worse.

We don’t live in the light of the end. This vision signals the triumph of the Lamb, our ultimate prospect, the place of our treasure, and calls us onward, demanding that we be homesick for heaven so that, with the saints in every generation, we too cry, “Even so, come Lord Jesus!” Amen.