The Eternity We Await

On Monday, I finished my 16th time through the Bible, and because my reading plan takes me through Scripture canonically, I start with the creation of the earth and I end with the destruction of the earth. It's not a particularly pleasant picture if you leave the story there, however. And God doesn't.

Revelation presents the new heaven and new earth in its closing two chapters, and this eternal picture is one of glory, victory, perfection, and majesty. This was the revelation God gave to John, while he was in exile away from all other human companions. And here, on the isle of Patmos, the Lord provides His presence to John and commands him to write what he sees and hears.

Revelation 22 describes some of the characteristics of the new heaven, and I found it interesting to compare and contrast them with the newly created earth of Genesis.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need to light of the lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. (Revelation 22:1-5, ESV)

Here, the angel shows John what this new Jerusalem looks like. The water of life flows from the throne of God, representing eternal life given to all God's children. In the Garden of Eden, God provided water as a source of nourishment for people, plants, and animals. He used it later as a means of judgment. Christ, in His ministry on earth, proclaimed Himself to be the living water--whoever drinks from it lives forever. "Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." (John 4:14) In eternity, Christ will be our eternal life, physically and spiritually, and we will reign with Him forever. This water of life will never end.

The tree of life, once resting in the Garden, now is pictured here providing satisfaction and life by its fruit. Once inaccessible because of man's sin, the tree of life's blessing and healing is now freely available to all who believe. Sin's presence, too, will be nonexistent, for Jesus bore that curse on the cross, and in the new heaven and earth it is completely gone. God will never need to judge sin, forgive sin, or remove it from our lives because it will have no hold over us again, and it's curse will have vanished.

There won't be a physical temple in the new heaven and earth, but His children and the angels will worship Him nonetheless, for Christ is our temple. We will worship at the throne of God and the sacrificed Lamb, and we will praise Him for all eternity. We will see His face. Adam and Eve were once banned from direct communication with God, but as citizens of His kingdom, we will be completely holy and able to look on the face of a holy God without fear of consequences. And He will know all His people, for His name will be on and in us. We are His possession, bought with a price--His blood--and no one can pluck us out of His hands.

Night and day, created at the beginning of this world, to give us time for rest, growth, seasons, months, and years--this will be gone, also. The darkness of the night will be scattered, for the Lord's glory will fill the earth and heaven. Lamps or the sun's light would not help, nor could they compare, for the brightness of God's glory reaches further. Jesus is light, and in Him is no darkness at all; therefore, darkness will flee, and light will reign. We will reign with Him, for as His servants, we are also His citizens. Citizens of the better country--the heavenly country that the faithful of Hebrews 11 earnestly desired. There will be no more hoping for eternity, no more faith in that which we can't see, because we will be there and we will see Him and live in His holiness. We will love and serve Christ in a state of perfection for all of time. That will be glory. That will be victory.

C.S. Lewis summed it up well in his last book in the Chronicles of Narnia:

Aslan: "The dream is ended: this is the morning."And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginnig of the real story. All their life in this world...had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. 

So I will drive these roads in thunder and in rain
And I will sing your song at the top of my lungs
And I will praise you, Lord, in glory and in pain
And I will follow you till this race is won
And I will drive these roads till this motor won't run
And I will sing your song from sea to shining sea
And I will praise you Lord, till your kingdom comes

Till there’s no more faith and no more hope
I’ll see your face and Lord I’ll know
There’s no more faith, there’s no more hope
I’ll sing your praise and let them go
‘Cause only love, only Your love remains
Only love
("No More Faith", Andrew Peterson)

June Quotes

Once more, Never think that you can live to God by your own power or strength; but always look to and rely on him for assistance, yea, for all strength and grace. 

-David Brainerd

There is nothing you can do to make God love you more, and there is nothing you can do to make Him love you less.

-Unknown

I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am. 

-John Newton

Elijah was a man who walked by faith and not by sight, and walking by faith is not a mystical or nebulous thing but an intensely practical experience. Faith does more than rest upon the bare letter of Scripture: it brings the living God into a scene of death, and enables its possessor to endure by ‘seeing His who is invisible.’ Where faith is really in exercise, it looks beyond distressing and distracting circumstances and is occupied with Him who regulates all circumstances. …Faith looks beyond the promise to the Promiser, and God never fails those who trust alone in Him and rely fully upon Him.

-A.W. Pink

A servant of God has but one Master. 

-George Mueller

It is not powerful men, strong men, valiant men who make headway in the kingdom. It is desperate men who have nothing and only hope is in Christ.

-Paul Washer

The human heart doesn’t like taking orders from the mind. The time will come for all of us when we won’t feel like doing the godly, responsible thing we’ve resolved to do. The question is, how will we respond when our hearts lead a full-scale rebellion? If we don’t prepare ourselves for an uprising, we’ll feel tempted to abandon our principles and standards.

-Joshua Harris

A faithful friend is a strong defense; And he that hath found him hath found a treasure. 

 -Louisa May Alcott

As I went down from the present peak into the valley between the mountains, I was often shadowed by the very peak I had been enjoying. This I interpreted in a sense of failure and this often led to despair. I felt I was going down into the ‘slough of despond’. I see now that I was wrong in this ‘feeling’. The going down was merely an initial moving forward towards the next higher ground, never a going back to base level. The shadow was only relative after the brightness of the sun; the valley could provide rest for working out the experiences previously learnt, a time for refreshment before the next hard climb. Had I understood this meaning of the sunshine and shadow in my life rather than interpreting my experiences along life’s ways as ‘up’ and ‘down’, I might have saved myself many deep heartaches. 

-Helen Roseveare

I shall rise from the dead...I shall see the Son of God, the Sun of Glory, and shine myself as that sun shines. I shall be united to the Ancient of Days, to God Himself, who had no morning, never began...No man ever saw God and lived. And yet, I shall not live till I see God; and when I have seen Him, I shall never die. 

-John Donne

There are four things that we ought to do with the Word of God - admit it as the Word of God, commit it to our hearts and minds, submit to it, and transmit it to the world.

-William Wilberforce

I will charge my soul to believe and wait for Him, and will follow His providence, and not go before it, nor stay behind it.

-Samuel Rutherford

The Promise of Salvation and Resurrection

This week I read from Mark 10 to Acts 16. Acts is a book that recounts much of Jesus' ministry as the disciples proclaim the gospel to the Jews and Gentiles. And many times in their preaching, Paul, Peter, Philip, and many others, take their listeners back to the Old Testament Scriptures, pointing out that Jesus was the New Testament fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies.

In Acts 2, Peter is preaching to the people Jerusalm and Judea on the Day of Pentacost. Standing with the eleven other disciples, Peter defends the inerrancy of Scripture and the deity of Christ using the words and life of Jesus, as well as the words from OT believers such as Joel and David.


One of the passages Peter quotes comes from Psalm 16:

For David says concerning him [Christ], I saw the Lord always before me, or he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh also will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence. (Acts 2:25-28, ESV)

 Going back to Psalm 16:8-11, we read:

I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure. For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption. You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

David, in this psalm describes his confidence in the Lord in the past, present, and future. Past, because he has consciously placed the Lord at the forefront of his mind, knowing that this will cause him to be steadfast regardless of people and circumstances around him. Present, because the core of his being ("heart" and "whole being") rejoices in God and is secure in the love of God. And future, because David knew that God removed the immediate threat of death, and would keep him safe in His will until the day he was resurrected into complete joy and pleasure.

Peter then takes these words of David's and brings them into his sermon defending the Lordship of Christ, especially that of the resurrection. For the resurrection was the event that proclaimed that Christ was who He said He was. David words--For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption--while speaking of his own physical death and resurrection, also spoke prophetically about Christ. And indeed, Peter uses these words to describe Christ's resurrection. David's body had never been raised, as of yet, but Peter goes on to say that Jesus was the fulfillment of these verses, in that He was raised from the dead and exalted at the Father's right hand. God kept His promise in preserving His Son's soul from corruption, and the disciples were witnesses of that fulfilled prophecy. Peter pointed to the crucified Christ and proved that He was exactly who He claimed to be--the Savior of the world and the long-awaited Messsiah of the Jews.

Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. (Acts 2:29-33)

Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. (Acts 2:36)

And so, this same promise was given to us, also: that the Lord Jesus was raised from the dead and exalted by the Father, and through Him we have the forgiveness of sins, the promise of a resurrected body, and the expectation of "fullness of joy" and "pleasures forevermore" when we enter Christ's presence.

For this promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. (Acts 2:39)

That promise should give us hope.

Rest in Jesus

Mark 6:30-32

The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, "Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while." For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves.

Matthew 14:22-23

Immediately he [Jesus] made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone.

Mark 1:35

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he [Jesus] departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.

Luke 5:15-16

But now even more the report about him [Jesus] went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.

Matthew 11:28-30

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Psalm 62:5-7

For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken. On God rests my salvation and my glory; my mighty rock, my refuge is God.

Isaiah 65:17-19a

For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people.