The evidence of God's Spirit in you is a desire to be with Him. The Spirit, Paul says, Romans 8, cries out from our Spirit, Abba, Father, my daddy, I want to be close to you. And if you're not excited about being with him here, you probably won't enjoy having much there. Hey friends, welcome to the Summit Life Podcast. I'm Molly Vitovich.
One of the great joys of this ministry is hearing how God is using Summit Life in real lives. Stories of encouragement, growth, and renewed faith. And recently, we heard from a listener who shared this. I had never heard before that there is nothing I could do to make God love me more and there's nothing I could do to make God love me less. Pastor JD's teaching on that opened my eyes and shed light on a fundamental misunderstanding I had about God and his relation to us.
That changed my life. I now pass that truth along to the girls I discipled. Stories like this remind us why this ministry exists, and we'd love to hear yours. How has God been at work in your life through His Word and the ministry of Summit Life? You can share your story by calling 866-4666-6666666.
335-5220 or by visiting the Share Your Story page at jdgreer.com. We've reached the end of our journey through Revelation here on the podcast, but we have more coming for you. In July, Pastor JD will be releasing a Revelation Bible study so that you can keep digging and growing through this important piece of the Bible.
So stay tuned for that. But for now, a glorious new beginning that comes at the end of the world. Right now at all of our campuses, I want us to stand together for the reading of God's Word. Reading of God's Word, I'm going to read from Revelation 21 and 22. Every week of this series, we've tried to read a significant section of Revelation because of the promises in Revelation about the blessing that comes to those who hear God's word read aloud.
So I want you to listen as I read it over you. Revelation 21:1. Then I saw, John said, a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.
Prepared as a bride adorned for her husband? And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, The dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither there shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore. For the former things have passed away.
And he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. Chapter 22, verse 1: 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 the 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 that 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. Hey, we will have no need of light, of lamp, or sun. For the Lord God will be their light and they will reign forever and ever. The angel said to me, These words are trustworthy and true. And the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.
And behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one. who keeps the words of the prophecy. Of this book, and all God's people said, Amen, amen. Thank you.
You may be seated.
Well, Summit Church, we are at the end. Not just at the end of the book of Revelation, and not just the end of the Bible itself, but the end of the world as we know it. And the Apostle John ends with a final vision of glorification. and the vision of a grand new beginning.
Now, there are two caveats I want to give as we start. Caveat number one is: I have never personally been to heaven myself, which might disappoint some of you because it seems like the most surefire way to publish a best-selling Christian book is to claim that you've been to heaven personally and that you're ready to tell everybody about what you saw. Those books can be interesting, but let me be very, very clear with you that everything that you really need to know about heaven is in here.
Okay, full stop. And in fact, I would even say that you need to be really careful. about anything that attempts to add to what we see here. Because at the end of the book of Revelation, John literally says: if anybody adds to the prophecies in this book, God will add to him the plagues described in this book.
So I would be super careful about trying to learn more. about heaven from sources outside of your Bible. The second caveat that I want to give is: I want to acknowledge that a lot of us. Have a secret fear about heaven. Mainly that it's going to be incredibly boring.
And maybe you have never admitted that, but that's probably just because you didn't have the courage to say it out loud. And I'm just going to go ahead and verbalize it for you. And you don't have to look at me all fake like you've never thought that, okay? But for some of you, it feels like an eternal choir practice, a weird floaty state. Where we meander about in diapers, you know, strumming our harps, shooting each other with nerf arrows and sipping on non-alcoholic piña coladas all day.
And you're like, look, man, I love a good church service as much as the next guy, but it just feels like it's going to be kind of boring and a bit tedious and a bit monotonous. See, that's because most of us grew up with the wrong vision of heaven. Revelation 21 and 22 gives you the right vision, but you got to know how to read the symbolism, which has been the key to our study of Revelation. There are four words that encapsulate the vision of heaven that we get in Revelation 21 and 22. Word number one is renewal.
And it's in verse one. You see, in verse 1, John says he sees a new heaven and a new earth.
Now this is very important. There are two different words in Greek for new. There's NIOS, which means brand new. And then there is kynos, which is the word used here. And that word means not brand new, it means remade or restored.
You say, well, why is that significant? It's because it means that heaven is not some brand new state, unlike anything we've ever experienced. Heaven, the new heavens and a new earth is a renewed, restored, remade, kinos version of the world we live in now. I mean, think about it. If a mechanic told you that he'd gone to a junkyard and found an old Corvette and restored it.
and he wanted to show it to you you would not expect him to bring out some completely different contraption a helicopter or a computer or a really nice watch.
Now, you would expect to see a flashy, beautifully painted, souped-up version of a Corvette. The final vision of Revelation is a fully healed, fully restored, souped-up version of Earth. The earth as God intended it to be, only now even more beautiful. for having gone through the process of shattering. and restoration.
Notice verse 2 says that this new Jerusalem comes down from heaven to earth. Why do I point that out?
Well, I point that out because we always talk about leaving earth and going up to heaven. But the biblical vision is actually the opposite. Heaven comes down to us. We don't go up to it. As the late Tim Keller said, heaven is not so much pie in the sky as it is a feast on earth.
British theologian N.T. Wright says that we get a glimpse of all this in the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus, the Apostle Paul calls the resurrection of Jesus the first fruits of the new creation. First fruits means the first produce of the harvest. That which gives you a sampling of what comes after it.
Jesus' resurrection was a sampling of the world's future and your future. Jesus' resurrected body was not some brand new concoction. It had continuity with his past physical body. People recognized it. He talked.
He walked, he ate food, and yet his body was also massively improved. It was fully healed. It was glorified. He glowed. He walked through walls.
He flew around. The new heavens and the new earth are everything that we loved about the old heavens and the old earth, only now healed from the curse of sin and supercharged with God's power.
So Tim Keller says. Deep inside every created thing right now. Every creative bit deep inside of us, men, women, mountains, all of it. are reservoirs of glory and power untapped. and completely hidden.
In the new heavens and new earth, all those hidden reservoirs are tapped into and fully revealed. Frankly Summit. I get downright giddy sometimes imagining what that's going to be like. I'm not sure we can get our minds around it. I mean, I'll just go right at it.
What does the glorified heavenly Hawaii look like? I mean, the still scarred by sin version is pretty good. What does the resurrected, restored, glorified Hawaii look like? What does a glorified rabbi taste like? What's it like to eat at the Glorified Waffle House?
How entertaining are glorified movies? Does Nicholas Cage star in every role? He has to, right? Church of the Dome was awesome, but what does worship in the glorified Dean Dome feel like? You tracking with me?
In heaven, we're going to experience pleasure without pain, beauty untainted by the curse, joy without end, the beach without the sunburn. Crispy cream, but where the hot now sign always stays on. Chick-fil-A open on Sundays, right? Disney World without the lions and the heat. The Jersey Shore without the jersey, okay?
By the way, there in heaven, I'm convinced that ice cream and hot donuts are good for you, and kale salad and broccoli make you gain weight, okay? I can't prove that, but who knows? You say, well, what was the deal in verse one about no more sea and no more night? I mean, watching the sunset over an ocean is one of the most beautiful, heavenly things I've ever seen.
Well, that's where you got to understand symbolism. In the Bible, the sea, ever since Genesis 1, has represented chaos. It represents a world outside the loving control of God. Night represents cold darkness without God. The Apostle John is not saying that.
There's literally no more ocean, or that the earth stops rotating, and heaven is like one never-ending day, or like we're living in Sweden in the month of June. He's saying that in the new heavens and the new earth, chaos and darkness and fear have been forever banished. The number that dominates these two chapters is the number 12. 12 angels at 12 gates with 12 foundations and 12 jewels measuring 12,000 cubits and 12 different kinds of leaves and several other 12s. 12 is the biblical number of fullness and 10 is the number of completion.
And there are 10 total 12s in these chapters. In other words, it's all fulfilled. It's fully complete. Creation is resurrected and renewed. Here's our second word.
Reunion. Reunion. This is verse 3. Verse 3 says that when the new heaven and new earth comes down, God takes up residence with his people. Death and pain are abolished.
And God wipes away every tear from our eyes. One of God's purposes in salvation has been to create an eternal family united by a love that never fades, where we never experience heartache and where we never have to say goodbye. There, Summit Church, in heaven. We will be reunited with those loved ones in Jesus whom we lost on earth, or at least whom we lost contact with. Many of the prophets talked about this day.
In fact, one of my favorites. is the prophet Isaiah when he says in chapter 49 of his book This is what the sovereign Lord says in that day, this day we're looking at in Revelation 21. And that day I will give the signal. And they, the angels, We'll carry your little sons back to you in their arms. They will bring your daughters on their shoulders.
What he's saying is to you parents who have lost. Children. Maybe through an accident or a disease. or a miscarriage. Isaiah is saying, one day you will see them brought back to you by the angels, carrying them in their arms.
What a day that will be. Of course, our greatest reunion is with God Himself. Verse 3, the dwelling place of God is now with man. In chapter 22, John communicates that through a metaphor. He talks about a river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb to the middle of the street of the city.
Also, on either side of the river, he says, the tree of life with its 12 kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. Tyler Staten showed us a couple of weeks ago. That a river is one of the oldest biblical metaphors for God's Spirit. God's Spirit flows from His temple into every nook and cranny of the new heavens and the new earth, bringing abundance and healing wherever He goes as He saturates everything.
When you become a believer, the Holy Spirit enters you. And in 2 Corinthians, Paul calls the Holy Spirit's entry into you as a new believer. He calls that the first fruits. There's that word again. or down payment of his eternal union with us.
Here in heaven, that union becomes complete. The filling of the spirit that we received when we became believers was just the first fruit. There, it's complete union with God as the river flows into every nook and cranny of the whole creation. Verse 4 of chapter 22 tells us that Jesus' name will be tattooed. On our foreheads.
Now to be honest, I'm not sure if that's symbolic or not. But a tattoo signifies something permanent, right? I've shown you my tattoo, okay?
Now V right there stands for Veronica. And it means that for the rest of our earthly lives, we're together. She said, well, what if I leave you? I said, well, if you flip it over, it becomes A for available. See how that works?
See, right there? Just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding. No, I told her: hey, if you ever leave me, I'm going with you.
Okay, that's how that works. And she got one, she got one the next year that has a J on it, right?
Now, by the way, these are super fun to get. I even snapped a picture of when I got it.
So it was painful, but that's the whole point. A tattoo like that implies permanence. There, God writes his name on our foreheads. He is ours, and we are his. Forever.
I want you to understand this. The greatest joy of heaven. is reunion. And the greatest reunion is union with God. And if that is not what you are looking forward to in heaven, then I think you might have missed the point.
In fact, John Piper asked it this way. The critical question for our generation and every generation is this. Watch this. If you could have heaven with no sickness, with all the friends you ever had on earth, all the food you ever liked, all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven if Christ were not there? In other words, ask yourself if you could have every other blessing of heaven, eternal life, streets of gold, no pain, all your loved ones present, but Jesus wasn't personally there, would it feel like heaven to you?
Because see the whole point of all of this This whole story has been God reuniting himself to his people, to you. That's what salvation is about. And if that's not what you most look forward to in heaven, then you got to ask yourself: are you even his child? The evidence of God's spirit in you is a desire to be with Him. The Spirit, Paul says, Romans 8, cries out from our spirit, Abba, Father, my daddy, I want to be close to you.
And if you're not excited about being with him here. You probably won't enjoy having much there. And if you don't love and trust him and want to spend time with him now, you're not going to suddenly start wanting that in heaven. He said, well, Pastor, I don't know if I have that desire. What do I do?
Ask God for it. That's what he says, right? Luke 11:13, Jesus said, Ours is a really good father. If anybody asks for the Holy Spirit, he surely will give it to him. It's one of the many things that flows from the finished cross and from the empty tomb.
The third word. Realization. Realization chapter 21, verse 4. Jesus tells us he will wipe away all tears and mourning. And crying will be no more.
Sometimes people ask like, well, does that mean he erases all our memory of pain? Like he pulls out one of those flashy sticks, like men in black, and he snaps it. And then we can't remember anything from before?
Well, no. In heaven, our awareness of things is increased, not decreased. In heaven, we will cease our mourning because we will see that God has transformed all our pain into good, just like He's promised. There's two metaphors that the Bible uses for how we'll see pain as we enter into heaven. The first is in Romans 8.
Paul says, in eternity we will see our pain here like the birth pangs before labor. Listen, having walked through this four times with Veronica. I know birth pangs are no joke. And I know I've never personally experienced them. But I told Veronica she's never had to be a man with a cold, okay?
So we're even, okay? But I know they're painful. I know they're painful. But it's amazing, it's amazing how the moment that child is born. And she held it in her arms.
She just wasn't thinking about the pain anymore. It's not that she can't remember it. It's just so outweighed by the joys of a new creation. I got a friend who's about my age who, when he was in his early 30s, got brain cancer, and the doctors told him that he likely would not make it more than a couple of years. Unspeakably tragic.
He had two kids, about my kids' age. But he had a deep and sincere faith in Jesus, and so he naturally spent a lot of time thinking about Jesus' promises to people in pain. And somebody asked him, they said, Hey, do you feel like when you get to heaven, Jesus will finally up there explain to you all the reasons for this pain? And he said, yeah, I guess. But I mainly feel like when I get to heaven, I'm going to be like, what pain are you even talking about?
It's not that I look back and see the reasons that bad things happen. I'm sure I'll see that. But it's not that I'm going to look back and be like, oh, that's why that happened. I'm going to be like, what bad things are you talking about? Because in that moment, I'll be so consumed with God's finished product, I'll scarcely remember.
The process that he used. Which brings me to the second metaphor. Digestion. In 1 Corinthians 15, 54, Paul says, death gets swallowed up in victory. When you swallow something, it becomes part of you, right?
That burger you ate last night literally becomes a part of you. And it's going to be that way for a long time, right? Paul says that our experiences of pain and mourning become a part of us. And we are better and deeper for having gone through them. I've told you about the ancient Japanese art form of kansugi.
Where the artist fashions a beautiful ornate pot, but then in the final step, He shatters that pot into pieces, and then he mends those pieces back together with gold in the seams.
So, that the value of the pot having been shattered and put back together with gold in the seams is exponentially more than before it was broken. That is the imagery here. God has woven his victory into our pain. All the cracks and broken places that life has left us with have become places where God Himself has filled us so that our value and our joy is exponentially more having gone through it all than it was before we were broken. You see, that does bring up an uncomfortable question for me.
What about our friends or our loved ones? who never trust in Jesus and don't make it to heaven. How could heaven be a place of no more tears if people I love aren't there? And I got to tell you, honestly, I don't I don't fully know the answer to that. This is one of those unanswered questions for me that I sometimes tell you about.
You see in heaven I know our capacity for love is increased, not decreased. And so I ask, how can heaven be heaven if somebody I love isn't there? And I don't fully know. Theologian J.I. Packer says that maybe in heaven our moral compass will be so fully aligned with God's, we'll see his glory and his justice just like he sees them.
And maybe that's what will resolve our questions. In his book, The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis makes the point that hell is self-chosen. In the story, people, he tells a story that people in heaven take a bus ride up to hell. And as much as they hate the torments of hell, they hate a place dominated by God's glory and his control and his beauty even more than they hated hell.
And so at the end of the story, they want to go back to hell because that's how badly they hate a place where God is fully in control.
So, in heaven, C.S. Lewis says, we understand and agree with God's justice, even though it means acknowledging the self-chosen ruin of others. That's what I think the answer is. Beyond that, I just I don't don't know what to tell you exactly. I just know that I trust Jesus.
He is the God who died for me and rose again and has proven himself to me over and over and over again. And I know I can trust him with this. Revelation 15 says that up in heaven, we will rejoice in the righteousness and justice of God, and we will say, Just and true are your ways, O king of the nations. Ain't nobody up there going to be going, hey, but God, what about? And how could you?
And why didn't you think about it? And I bet you forgot about it. Shouldn't you have done this differently? No. When you and I look backwards from eternity, what will amaze us is not the severity of God's judgment, but the magnanimity of his mercy.
And so for now. I just trust Jesus. I hold on to a bloody cross and an empty tomb, and I trust him. And I plead with everybody in my life to come to Jesus. At Summit Life, our mission is simple but profound, to take people deeper into the gospel and to advance it wider across the world.
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Together, let's bring God's healing and truth to the world. Fourth word. Rain. Reign, verse 5, chapter 22, and they will reign with him forever and ever. You say ran over what exactly?
Well, clearly it indicates creation itself, since that's been God's plan from the beginning, since Genesis 1. For us to have dominion over and rule over creation. But in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul also says, we'll rule over angels.
So there's something beyond just the earth that we reign over. It includes that in some way. C.S. Lewis thought that indicates that we will reign as kings and queens over future universes that God creates. In fact, my favorite part of all of the Chronicles of Narnia Mm-hmm.
is how C.S. Lewis ends book seven. And some of you never made it past book one. In fact, you are learning right now there were six other books in that series. You should read all of them, okay?
Get all the way to the end of the last book. The best part is at the very end. It's on the last page. Here's how Lewis ends the series.
So 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 beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia 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. To be clear, I am not... exactly sure whom we reign over. But I am looking forward to finding out. For right now.
That person sitting next to you? If they're a believer, look at them. Look at them. You better treat them right. Right?
Because that's a prince or princess right there. They are destined to rule. In fact, you might want to just reach over and touch him right now, okay? You are touching royalty. Four words.
Four words that describe our experience with heaven, renewal. reunion, realization, and rain. And they all start with R, which proves they are from the Holy Spirit, okay? Let me draw three quick conclusions from this before I go on to John's final vision. Here's my first conclusion.
Put up your bucket list. I told you this a couple weeks ago, but bucket lists are those things that you want to do before you kick the bucket because you assume you'll never have a chance to do them again after you die. But I asked you this a couple of weeks ago. It is a very reasonable. A logical question.
Is a bucket list ever really appropriate for a Christian? I mean, in Revelation, Jesus promises us a renewed heaven and a renewed earth. In chapter 21, verse 5, talking about the renewed heaven and renewed earth, Jesus said, Behold, I'm making all things new. Wouldn't all, wouldn't that include Mount Everest and the stars and the rivers and the oceans and the planets and the animals and culture and arts and music and extreme sports that you never got to experience? Does your Bible have an asterisk above that word all with a list of things in fine print that are not included in that word?
No, all means all, church. And that means for those of you who are single. The joys of marriage and family will be in some way even more greatly fulfilled there. I don't fully know how. To the childless.
It means the blessings of a full family. To the poor, it means eternal riches. To the physically weak. to those with chronic pain. It means strength and vitality, everything you miss out on now.
You will experience in abundance. Then, in fact, 2126, there's a little phrase in there you might read right over. It even says, They will bring into the new Jerusalem the glory and honor of the nations. You know what that means? It means the best of culture.
The best Italian food. The best of Arabian and colonial architecture, which are my personal favorites. Mardi Grasal without all the drugs and debauchery and hangovers. Not that you know anything about that, but you know what I'm saying?
So, in light of all that, friend, does it make sense if you're a believer to have a bucket list? No. Because YOLO That's not true. Right, you only live once? The reality is Yalf, okay?
You actually live forever. This is atheist. This is Christian right here, okay?
So, whatever you don't get to down here, you will have more than ample opportunity to do there. Except I told you for one thing. There's one thing you cannot do there that you can do here. And that you can only do here. And that is tell your lost loved ones about Jesus.
So put that on your bucket list. And go ahead right now. I don't care if you're in college or in high school, but plan to spend your retirement years investing in that, not going on some second-rate golf or yacht vacation. Because I promise you that compared to what's waiting for you up there, playing Pebble Beach is going to seem like one of those cheap pup-huck courses at Myrtle Beach. And if you spent your retirement years playing Pebble Beach and that's all you're doing and chasing yachts around the world, maybe you will have to play the pup-pup version of that in heaven.
I'm saying just delay it and do the right thing now and invest in eternity because you know what it says. Spend your retirement years winning people to Jesus. Serving your church and laying up treasures there. Here's my second thing. Cease your raging against aging.
Listen, I feel it, okay? I used to say this so smugly and self-righteously to all you older people.
Now I am one of you older people. I hate aging. I'll just say, I used to drink a two-liter of Mountain Dew and eat a sleeve of Oreos right before going to bed. And I gained no weight and slept through the night like a baby.
Now, I got charts that describe how much of what kinds of foods I can eat at what times of day, and what is the last possible minute I can drink caffeine. The other morning, my wife noticed I was limping and she was like, what did you do? And I said, I don't know. I was fine when I went to bed. I must have turned my ankle while I was sleeping.
Yo, apparently I'm at the age now where I get hurt sleeping. I mean, some of you know what I'm talking about. You're at the age where your back goes out more than you do. Am I right?
Okay. You 20 year olds laugh it up. Just laugh it up, okay? It's coming for you, I promise. In fact, I heard a guy say this.
He said, He said, as I get older, as you get older, three things happen. The first is your memory goes. And I can't remember the other two, okay? And the temptation is to fight so hard. To hold on to your youth, to nip, tuck, color, tighten, feel, inject, lift, whatever.
And I'm not saying that keeping yourself looking fit as you get older is wrong. I'm just saying that for some of you, it's driven by unbelief. You're losing life, and that despair is making you try to hold on to something. And that despair is fueled by unbelief in the promises of God. There is a river, John says, with constantly renewing power, and it's better than 10,000 shots of Botox, and it will not make you look as weird when it's all done.
In the new heavens and the new earth, as the river of life flows into us, we become newer and newer, brighter and brighter, more vivid, more coherent, more whole and more beautiful every second of every day, on and on forever.
So don't fight your body getting old now. Let it happen beautifully and gracefully, and let even your aging be a proclamation of the resurrection. Here's my final one. C, know where you belong.
Sometimes atheists and agnostics hear this, like, yeah, you Christians use this pie in the sky to motivate people. Join our team, and you get a free Disney World vacation when it's all over. That is not what this is. No, this vision shows you your, what philosophers call your telos, your telos. What's your creative form?
There's something deep inside of you that knows you're not just a biological accident, a bag of chemicals resulting from the explosion of a star, and now you have randomly firing neurons that has a few brief moments of consciousness, which is actually just an illusion, by the way, before devolving back into primordial soup. No, you were created by an eternal God in his image as a person for things that matter, for meaning, for eternity. And there's something about this vision of the new heavens and new earth that resonates deeply within us. And we say, yes, that, that is what I'm created for. It's almost like you're in, imagine you're in a room full of the most beautiful art, most beautiful paintings, but it's all ripped and scattered, and the vases are shattered and all pieces all around the floor.
You can look around at that room and know this room was not designed for this, it was designed for something much greater. That's what you're seeing in this vision of Revelation 21 and 22.
Well, summon it as much as I want to end this message right there. I can't. Because John includes in this final vision a glimpse of another destination. And that is eternal death. Let me go back and pick this up really quick.
Chapter 21, verse 8. But as for the cowardly, The faithless, the detestable, for murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars. Their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is The second death. You know, when I read this, I think of the words of Charles Spurgeon. He said, these are such weighty things.
That when I dwell on them I feel far more inclined to sit down and weep than to stand up and preach. I would vastly prefer to skip all of this. But see, there's this warning in chapter 22 that tells me. That if I take away anything from the prophecies that are written in this book. That God will take away from That person, any share.
of what's written in the book of life. In other words, I am not free. To edit. I am not free to improve or to soften this book. And neither are you.
This is the word of God. And it sometimes offends us, and sometimes it sits bitterly in our stomachs. But I am not free to change it because it comes with Jesus' authority. I am just the messenger. The question is whether or not you're going to believe it.
Or whether you're going to try to tell God that you know better than He does and then reshape Him and His Word in your image. There are three crucially important things we learn about hell from these last two chapters. Number one, we learn that hell is a place of eternal misery. Y'all, these images are awful. Fire, burning sulfur, eternal death.
And maybe you prefer to read those things as symbolic? Because y'all, even if there are symbolic elements, some symbolic elements in these images, and clearly there are some. They point to a terrible reality. It's like C.S. Lewis said: symbols in the Bible usually point to realities more intense, not less intense, than the symbols.
So whatever these things are pointing to, the reality is unspeakably awful. People say to me, is hell really eternal?
Well, I have to assume so. Because the same word in Greek used for everlasting and everlasting life is used for everlasting and everlasting death.
So it would seem inconsistent for me to say one is actually everlasting and the other is just a metaphor.
Now, I would love to be wrong about that. I would love to get to heaven and find out I was wrong about all of this. But I just don't see how to read this any other way. Which leads me to the second thing. Hell is a door locked from the inside.
Notice what the angel says about hell in Revelation 22, 11. But the evil doers still do evil. Let the filthy still be filthy. Let the righteous still do right and the holy still be holy. In other words, people in hell never change their mind.
Those who love filthiness here continue to love it there. The rebellious here remain haters of God's authority there. Those who love boasting in themselves here remain focused on that there, and they would hate being in a place where God gets the glory and God was in charge even more than they would hate hell. Yes, of course people in hell hate the torment aspect, but they hate the authority of God even more. Again, that is why in his book, The Great Divorce, C.S.
Lewis says the people from hell who go visit heaven, they want to go back to hell. Because as much as they hate the torments of hell, they hate being in a place where God is in charge even more. If you hate his authority now, you will hate it then.
Some theologians have said that this refusal and inability to repent is what's being communicated to the images of eternal fire and the worm that never dies. You see fire throughout the Bible represents insatiable desire. The more you feed a fire, the more it grows.
Well, Proverbs says that's like sin. The more you feed sin, the more it grows like a fire until it consumes your whole being. The worm never dying points to wicked temptations that burrow their way into you and eventually eat you from the inside out. Hell is where those sins you would not repent of on earth, where they consume you, burning in your heart like a never-ceasing fire, eating away at your soul like a worm until they consume you. Your jealousy, you become it.
Your selfishness, your racism, your hate, your pride, your lack of self-control, your bitterness, your dishonesty, your lack of trust. It just consumes you. Let the evil doer still do evil and the filthy still be filthy. Death represents a line where you become fixed eternally in the decisions you made on earth. But friend, hear me.
It is not too late to repent right now. You see, today is the day of salvation. If you let in, Jesus can forgive your sin and break its power over you. But if you ignore this day, if you ignore this river of life coming towards you, then there's coming a day when salvation is no longer possible. And you are hardened, you are fixed in the trajectories you set on earth.
There's one more. Hell is our current default destination. I know that's a shocking one. But let me explain. I want you to look again, real quick, at the list John gives us in verse 8 of those who go into eternal torment.
You got the ones you would expect, the detestable. Rapists and abusers. Murderers.
Sorcerers. Of course. Did you notice who else the list includes? The cowardly. In other words, those who wouldn't stand boldly for Jesus, who wouldn't confess Jesus in front of their friends, or who held back some of their convictions because of peer pressure or professional pressure.
The faithless. In other words, those who went to church, but just didn't trust God enough to fully obey him. Like, for example, they never tithed because they wouldn't trust God fully with their with their money. They could never really get to the 10% because, hey, I got to use that to pay for stuff. They didn't trust God enough to fully obey.
They didn't seek purity in their thought life because they thought illicit sexual pleasure was just too enjoyable to give up.
So, no matter how long they came to church, they never gave a pornography habit. Or those who worried all the time because they could just never be confident that God's goodness really was in control of their lives, the faithless. Idolaters. Idolaters, in other words, those who had something in their heart that displaced God as first in their affections. They had something that captured their attention and dominated their agenda more than God and His glory and His will.
The sexually immoral. Jesus said, of course, that includes not only those who act on sexual temptations, who are living together before they're married. It also includes those who fantasize, Jesus said, Matthew 5, about that stuff in their hearts. You look at a woman, you fantasize about her in your heart. Jesus said it's basically in God's eyes, you're committing adultery within your heart.
All liars. Those who bent the truth and weren't completely honest in their dealing with God or others, are there any of us? that are not represented on that list. There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none who does good.
There is none who seeks after God. We have all turned aside and become unprofitable. There is no one good, not even one, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Friend, every one of us by default is headed for hell. We think the default is heaven, and we only go to hell if we're exceptionally bad.
But Scripture teaches that we're all exceptionally bad. God only saves bad people because that's the only kind of people there are. Which is why Jesus had to come to save us. Oh, but friend, look at the incredible words that followed that awful list. Verse 17.
The spirit and the bride say, come. Not go away. Not even blew it, not get out of my presence, but come and let the one who hears say come. I don't know the one who is thirsty, come. Let the one who desires take the water of life without price.
There is a river of life flowing from the throne of God right now that brings healing and forgiveness, and it's offered to you right here, right now, today, without price, without price for you, because the price was fully paid by Jesus. There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stain. All you gotta do is come. And so Revelation ends with the voice of the Spirit saying, come. Come.
Have you taken up that offer? Blessed are those. who wash their robes.
So that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Because outside you see Outside of the dogs and sorcerers, and the sexually immoral, and murderous, and idolatrous. And all those people who love and practice falsehood who would not give it up and come to Jesus. But I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the offspring, the descendant of David.
The bright and morning star and the spirit and the bride say, Come. And let the one who hears say, come. And let the one who is thirsty come. Let the one who desires take the water of life without price. He who testifies to these things says, Surely I am coming soon.
Amen. Even so come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with. All. Amen.
The end. The end. John closes with grace. Because see, that's what's offered now, a river of grace to all who will receive it. Have you received it?
Will you? That's the whole point. I want you to bow your heads at all of our campuses, if you would. Bow your heads with me.
Some of you, under the sound of my voice right now, you've never been saved. You've never received Jesus personally. That's what I mean by that. You've never personally drunk from the water of life. Listen, friend, you don't get this automatically just by going to church.
You don't get it by being born in a Christian family. You got to personally choose to receive Christ on your own, you got to get into the river. If that's you, if you've never personally received Jesus or you're not sure you have, I'm going to give you a prayer that you can pray with me. I'm going to give you the words. These are not magic words, but if they represent a cry of your heart, Jesus will hear you.
If you're not sure you're saved and you want to be sure, here's what you could say. Say this, Jesus, I surrender to you. Say, Jesus, I surrender to you. Come into my life. and forgive me and change me.
Can you say that to him? Come into my life right now and forgive me and change me. Let the water of life pour over you right now. You might even sense it happening. That's the first fruits of the Holy Spirit coming into you right now.
Here at Summit Life, our mission is to help people dive deeper into the gospel and apply it to everyday life. And one area where we all need that kind of wisdom is our relationships. That's why we're offering a digital resource from Pastor JD called From the Beginning, God's Design for Relationships. When you give today at jdgreer.com, we'll send it to you as our thank you. And join us next week when we begin a new teaching series through the book of 1 Corinthians.
Thanks for spending this time with us. We'll see you soon. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries. Yeah.
