We love him. And we are loved by him, and we know it, and we're not ashamed to say, I know God loves me. I don't have any doubt about that. Just because I'm going through hell on earth doesn't mean God doesn't love me. It's gonna hurt for a while.
1 John 4:8, He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. The essence of God. Job said, I know my Redeemer lives. And he said this while in grief, in agony. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston.
Ricky is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Revelation. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically, how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Today, Pastor Rick will be teaching in Revelation chapter 2 with his continuing study called Forever with God: Salvation's Outcome. Heaven includes restored life.
Without trouble. without discomfort, without defect, It is worth The effort.
So the promise in chapter 2 That those who were in right relationship with Christ would eat from the tree of life. John is now seeing that come full cycle. Trees factor large in Scripture. They're a big part of Scripture. And when they're talked about, they make some great points.
In Virginia, we've got some impressive trees. And it's just Virginia, the world is loaded with impressive trees. We have the loblolly pine with its armor plating. It looks like an alligator scale, it's thick plating. the smooth bark of the American beech, the muscle of the ironwood.
The shag bark hickory is poetic all by itself, especially in the fall when those leaves turn bright yellow. The silver maple's leaves in the summertime sunshine is fantastic. You can see it from a mile away. What is that white thing on that tree? The entire canopy glowing the underside of those leaves.
Trees, you know, they're weapons, they're tools, they're fuel, they come back again. They're one of God's ingenious creations. And trees are used in the Bible to communicate great truths. about God and man through literal events. Parables, dreams, curses, cures.
and the cross of Christ. The cross of Christ. The tree. that they crucified him to. There wasn't a tree that was standing up because he couldn't carry that through the streets.
It was Wood from a tree, of course. When God saved the Israelites from Pharaoh's army, the people danced and they sang, they rejoiced. I will celebrate, for he has triumphed gloriously three days later. They were nasty in the face of Moses because stress was on their life. Just three days, that's all it took.
Their song of faith lasted That long. Exodus. Chapter 15 tells a story. And so they wanted water. They ran out of water.
Instead of coming and say, Moses, can you pray to God for us if He can deliver us from the armies of Pharaoh? He can find water for us in the wilderness. That's not how they handled it. They murmured against Moses. Listen, Christians want to come into the sanctuary with food and drink, and the ushers have the unpleasant task.
of having to say to people who are going to resist them, Please, no food or drink in the sanctuary. And they get obnoxious many times. Christians. You'd be shocked at how slamming things, throwing it in trash, fine, making the little comments. You wonder why we don't see them again?
I can't tell you. Anyway. Are you not carnal, Rick?
Well, Lord, you understand though, right? Anyway, coming back to Moses having to deal with these nasty Israelites, not all of them, but enough of them. And so the waters they came to were bitter, and they were frustrated by this. And so it says, so he cried to Yahweh, and Yahweh showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet.
There he made a statute and an ordinance for them And there he tested them, and said, God speaking, If you diligently heed the voice of Yahweh your God, and do what is right in his sight, give ear to his commandments, and keep his statutes, I will put none of these diseases on you that Pharaoh's people had to endure, for I am Yahweh who heals you. the great physician. Jehovah Rapha Yahweh Rapha. The one who heals you. These leaves are for the healings of the nations.
That's already a done deal, but they are forever reminders. of the great physician, of the tree that he died on.
So that people could benefit. from what heaven has to offer. And that story in Moses is a type of the cross. The cross of Christ. takes away the bitterness of the curse.
The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. The tree of life speaks of Jesus, the great physician, as I said. The healings have already taken place. There'll be no sickness in heaven, only peace. He is the desire of the nations, we're told by Haggai the prophet.
So here's Haggai. They come out of captivity, the Jewish people. He and Zechariah the prophets that are going to motivate the people to finish building that house of worship. The people came out, they were excited, they put their hands to work, they laid the foundation, and then opposition rose up, they stopped. And for fifteen years There was no temple.
And God stirred these prophets up. And in the midst Hagai the older of the prophets, He said, God speaking through him, I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the desire of all nations. Haggai was saying, Our God is fantastic. He is amazing. Nobody's got a God like this.
He is the desire of the nations. To stir up in them not so much patriotism. for worship and adoration. It is powerful to pray, Our Father who art in heaven, holy is your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done.
If you pray that in the spirit. If you recite it, it's just Verbiage. But if you are in the Spirit, you're touching things that are not normal. They are spiritual, they are high and lifted up.
So the curse came by the tree. In the garden? and the cure came by a tree. on Calvary, Golgotha. The cross of Christ sprouted fruit like Aaron's rod.
Ripe almonds and leaves. Because if you're going to have almonds on this tree, you're going to have almond leaves there too. In case somebody tries to fact-check me and goes back and says, well, it doesn't say leaves also on Aaron's rod.
Well, You'll have to figure that out. If you've got the right almonds and buds, you're going to have the leaves too. Anyway, the word here. That um is translated healing. is where we get the Greek word that John wrote the New Testament in the Greek language.
And the word healing is where we get our English word therapeutic or therapy. And the idea, because it's also translated household in another part of scripture by some translators, because the word carries. The idea of care. The leaves are for the care of the people. God does care.
It doesn't seem like that when you're Back is on the wall and the firing squad is in front of you. But he does Will it hurt? Will this life hurt? Yes. one lifetime.
And no more. the righteous. The visions conclude We're returning to the creation in the Garden of Eden. That's what's going on here. God's intention in creating the first garden was to provide a garden of delight.
Because the word Eden means delight. in the Hebrew. Which the Old Testament was written in most of it and penned in the Hebrew. And the word Eden is delight. God wanted man to be delighted with his environment.
With his life. And now you gotta fight for that. You go through life waiting for the other shoe to fall. The people were not only to enjoy Eden, They were to care for it. They had ownership.
Their personality, their expression. Eve could say, no, you know, I like the two-tier effect of the shrubbery, and whatever.
So They had that freedom. Genesis 2:15, then Yahweh God took the man and put him in the garden of delight. to tend and And keep it. And man threw it away. But before then, their existence was oriented to God.
And when you first come to Christ, you may find, oh man, oh, you can't stop thinking about Jesus. You're all excited. You can't wait to pray. You can't wait to read the Bible. You can't wait to go to church.
But then the wilderness wears you down. The heat the parched land, The struggle. to find some delight So how are you doing 20 years later? Many of you Many of you are still in it. You're focused.
It doesn't matter how you feel. You know what your duty is. And Satan hates you for that. Others you've become complacent. You think it's fine.
Lightning's not striking me for sitting on my hands.
So I'll just keep sitting on my hands. I love when someone comes to church and they decide, you know, this is my principal place of worship. What can I do? Because there are many things to be done.
Well, explaining again why they were not to partake of the tree of good and evil was so that they could remain in life and friendship. and be oriented to God. And to take from that other tree Against God's will was to say, There is something better than what God has to offer. And maybe, if that was a person, that would be a valid statement, but not the divine creator. It's invalid.
And they disobeyed, and they lost their place, they lost their paradise, they lost their delight, and they sucked everybody else down with them. Eden has become One now, at this point in Revelation, with New Jerusalem. And that's why I'm spending time on these trees. That's why they're there. Eden does not appear In It's garden sense in the New Testament by name.
Paradise is mentioned, But Eden of Adam and Eve is lost as long as the curse remains. But now, God ends this curse. Verse 3. And there shall be No more curse. But the throne of God.
and of the lamb shall be in it. And his servants shall serve him. Death will be killed and forever dead. and good riddance. No more sin.
Or as the Greek says here, No more anathema. It goes deeper in many ways. There's a hatred in the existence of sin. It is a curse, it is vile. There's nothing salvageable about it.
There's nothing attractive, though Satan puts a lot of energy into making it attractive to our flesh and our fallen nature. No living misery. No hell. for those in the kingdom. Those who die in Christ are eternally safe.
There's no more curse, no more sin. No more chance of failure. But the throne of God and the Lamb shall be in it. This is God's place, and his servants shall serve him. Not only is God worthy to be served, But it's wonderful serving him.
And if you look at this from carnal eyes and you see the angels always saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. He says, Oh, how wearisome is that? Are we going to be sitting on clouds playing harps for all of eternity? That's such a parochial view. It doesn't merit a comeback.
Just look at how God creates. He's telling you. I have so many things to do. I have so much creativity. that I even spend it on freshwater fish for your little tanks.
Because if you look at you go to the pet shop and you go to the little fish section, you're just amazed at all the different fish, and it's just one little part of creation. In Judges, when Manoah, the father of Samson, met the angel of the Lord, who is what we call a Christophany, an appearance of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. before the manger, before Mary, And Manoah is interacting with the angel of the Lord. He knows this is a spiritual being, and he says. Which is fair.
What is your name? And the angel of the Lord said, Why do you ask my name? Seeing it's wonderful.
Well, the story just goes on. They leave that because there's no comeback. Manoa had no comeback for that. There will never again be non-servants in heaven. non-believers.
They won't be. We won't even have to debate. Theology. And you know, in the early years it's fun debating theology, but after a while it's like, man, you know, that's all right. You know, because you just want you want to build up.
You want to build people up. You want to save souls. You want to strengthen them when they get saved. And debates just drag you back. Those things that are not so pleasant, at least to me.
Others might like it. Verse 4: They shall see his face. and his name shall be on their foreheads. They shall see his face because they want him. on his terms.
Because we love him. And are loved by him, and we know it, and we're not ashamed to say, I know God loves me. I don't have any doubt about that. Just because I'm going through hell on earth doesn't mean God doesn't love me. It's gonna hurt for a while.
1 John 4:8, He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. The essence of God. Job said, I know my Redeemer lives. And he said this while in grief, in agony. betrayed Heartbroken, broken heart and grief are not identical.
But they both hurt. and there's no turn off switch on them. They have to fade down. I know my Redeemer lives, and he shall stand at last on the earth, and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I will see God. Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold him, and not another.
how my heart yearns within me Is that the story of living on earth and then living in heaven? That is it. The Bible is notorious for compacting into verses or sentences. whole truth that span years or eternities. In 1 Corinthians 15, verse 24, you have the return and reign of Christ to earth.
In the next verse, verse 25, you have the thousand-year reign. And then in verse 26, as well as here in Revelation 22, you have the new heaven. The old earth gone. The old heaven gone. And his name shall be on their foreheads.
Well, I've reserved a space on my forehead so God can mark it up all He wants. This is one's identity. In The Old Testament, again, we get it's sort of like a legend on a map, it tells you what the symbols mean. The forehead is the identity from God's perspective at looking at the individual. In the negative, we have here in Jeremiah When they were disobeying God, he says, You have a harlot's forehead.
You refuse to be ashamed. Your identity is this: you're shameless. You commit sins in my face. And you don't care. Here in heaven, we're going to have the identity of Christ.
of God, the Creator on us. To Ezekiel, he said, they're going to want to bump heads with you. These are God's people wanting to butt heads with the Prophet. intending to knock him out. And God said to Ezekiel, I'm going to make your head harder than their head.
That's how I'm gonna do it. Because my identity is in you, my prophet, not them. Their forehead is opposed to my prophet's forehead. Their identity opposed to his identity. And Christians still Or churchgoers, have it as you want.
They can still want to butt heads because secretly they have a problem with authority. And there's a time maybe where that's proper, but not in the house of God when you've got servants following hard after God. It's okay if you submit to authority. They're not going to come to your house and eat all your Cheetos and leave you without them. They're not going to take advantage of you.
you retain power in the pew. with your feet. If you don't like it, you walk away. It's a good system. It's a self-correcting system.
So, that if a pastor wants people who are not interested in the Bible, then just don't teach the Bible. They won't walk away, those who like that. If he teaches the Bible, those with feet will stay. They will plant their feet in the house of God and sit under the word of God. It is his system.
And it has been his system since. The days of the apostles. Verse 25. Again, back to verse 24, briefly, one's identity as God sees them is on the forehead. In verse 5, there shall be no night there.
Need no lamp. Nor light of the sun. For the Lord God gives them light, and they shall reign forever and ever.
So, John is pretty much saying, There's not going to be a sunshine for you to bask in. Do you have a problem with that? Because of his heaven, you won't have a problem with anything. And you're just getting a heads up just because. It won't matter when it's happening because you'll be in heaven and you'll be so in tune with God, there'll be no.
Well, why is there no sun? Anybody that is not in heaven When you get to heaven You will not miss them. You will not disagree. You'll actually be glad they're not there. Because God knows what He's doing, and you will be, we will be so completely locked into that.
Without that, you don't have. This crystal flow from the throne of God. You've got pollutants.
So no need for sleep. Don't look at that from your Human perspective.
Well, I love sleep. Yeah, I don't know. A weariless life. I don't know if you can have the option to sleep or not. I usually do mine when driving, because I find that I'm less annoyed.
Anyway. The loss of the night sky, the beauty. What about the stars? That stuff is. That's just like.
Kindergarten ought work to God. Any of you parents save your kids artwork? I threw them away as soon as I got them. They were horrible. And I tell them.
What is this? I'm not keeping that. I love you.
Now get out. If you got a loving relationship with your kids, you can have fun like that. But if you're all uptight, maybe you can't. Anyway. They need no lamp nor light.
of the sun, the Lord God gives them light. Darkness is created. Darkness is not a natural. part of God's existence. Psalm 104 verse 20, you make darkness and It is night.
In which all the beasts of the forest creep about, and they do. Go out in the woods with a headlamp, you'll find things creeping about, and it will give you the creeps. Anyway, coming back to this. There's a bobcat at large somewhere in Virginia, and he comes out at night. And I don't have time for the story, but just take my word for it.
Be armed.
So coming back to this, when God created, in the beginning, God created the heavens of the earth, and darkness was over, that darkness was created. If you took all creation away, it would be light. Because it would be God, the God of light. That's what illuminates, He illuminates. 1 John 4.
chapter 1 verse 5. This is the message which we have heard from him and declared to you. That God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. John wrote that before He wrote down the Revelation.
So, dissolve the physical universe. It would still be This is why nobody can sleep. Yeah. Turn the lights off and they shall reign forever and ever.
Well, wait a minute. Who's going to be subject to us? No, the idea is we're not going to be subject to anyone else. There's not going to be someone ruling over us. There'll be no need.
We'll know how to behave. We will be family, matured family in a perfect family. And I want to just close with this. Again, when I used to minister to many of the steel workers They had terrible fathers, many of them, who were drunks and gamblers, and and abusers of wives and children. And when I started preaching the gospel to them, and I would talk about our Father who is in heaven, God pointed out to me very early on.
They don't have a good father. You got to clarify that. Which I would. I would then begin to say: look, you might have a terrible father on earth, but your father in heaven, that distinction is a critical distinction. You can't look at the scripture from earth's perspective alone.
Anyway, we will be in a spiritually perfected state, in a spiritually perfected family. Our service to God will be out of love. and appreciation. We close with this verse. 2 Corinthians 12.
Let me pause. I hope you're saying. to yourself. I can't wait to get to this place that this guy's talking about. or that the Bible is talking about.
And that's how it should be. There should be this excitement.
somewhere and stepping out of this Dimension of our existence and into the next one. Yes, it's bittersweet. We leave behind loved ones. And hopefully, we leave the banks all in their money. We leave this life.
There are bitter things, yes, but it only hurts for a moment. God will take it. Second Corinthians 12, 4. Paul is speaking about himself, I believe. And he says I know such a man.
Whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows. how he was caught up into paradise. and heard inexpressible words. which is not lawful.
for a man to utter. Paul is saying, I saw things in heaven. That'd be a crime if I tried to tell you what I saw. Just for example, how would he describe a new primary color? How would he do that?
It would be silly to even try. Yeah. This is what God has for his people. And this is why his people want other people there too. This is why we have a burden for lost souls, not a guilt for lost souls.
A burden. A desire to be used to save souls. And This has been Cross Reference Radio with Pastor Rick Gaston. This program is a radio outreach of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville, in Mechanicsville, Virginia. Pastor Rick has been teaching through the book of Revelation, but if you're interested in learning about a different book of the Bible, we have hundreds of past episodes available to listen to on demand.
Just visit us online at crossreference radio.com and you'll find an archive of Pastor Rick's past teachings. While you're there, you can also find links to follow our program on your favorite podcast app, as well as links to get connected with us on Facebook and YouTube. There's also an interviews tab where you can learn more about Pastor Rick's heart for ministry.
Well, we hope you'll join us next time here on Cross Reference Radio. Hello. I didn't run up to the bottom of the city.
