1198. Man’s Eternal Destiny

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. This semester we've had really a wonderful series on the theme of what is man and understanding man and creation, how we relate to God, man in the fall, man in salvation, and all that has been taking place. We've had some really very wonderful messages. So, this morning as we finish the last message in the series, Dr. Brian Hand, who is a professor in our seminary who teaches mostly New Testament classes, hermeneutics, New Testament introduction is going to come today, and really end up with what the end result of what God is doing in our life, and that is preparing us for eternity. Life is just a brief moment, it's a vapor, it passes away, but eternity is coming, and we all need to be ready and prepared for that event, and so Dr. Hand, you come this morning. Please turn to Revelation chapter 21 with me.

Revelation 21. Caricatures exaggerate a distinctive physical characteristic or trait of something to such an extent that people begin to identify that thing by the physical trait or characteristic. Sometimes caricatures can distort the truth so badly that they're actually communicating a lie, and Satan enjoys caricaturing particularly heaven and hell. For example, Revelation chapter 14 tells us that there will be music in heaven, but Satan has taken that image and warped it and caricatured it to the extent that he's caused many people to believe that heaven involves mindless, mind-numbing, tedious harp strumming on a cloud for eternity. Satan has also caricatured hell to such an extent that you've probably run across people in your life whose idea of hell is, hey, I'm going to be down there partying with all my friends, and I'd rather be there than be bored in heaven.

Do you think either of these portrayals reflects reality? Not according to scripture. Revelation chapters 21 and 22 give a specific attention to man's eternal destiny as communicated by God Himself. Let's begin reading in the 22nd verse of Revelation chapter 21. And I saw no temple therein, that is in the new Jerusalem, that is just descended out of God from heaven upon the new heavens and new earth, to the created earth. For the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it, and the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it. For the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it, and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it. And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day, for there shall be no night there, and they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it. There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie, but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life. And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 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. And they shall see his face, and his name shall be in their foreheads.

And there shall be no night there, and they need no candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light, and they shall reign forever and ever. In August of this year, a 12-year-old Taiwanese boy was visiting an art exhibit at a local museum with his middle school classroom, when he suddenly and unexpectedly tripped over a railing that was surrounding one of the paintings. As he put out his hand to steady himself, he went into the painting and punched a fist-sized hole in a 350-year-old painting by Paolo Porpora, estimated by some art critics to be worth about $1.5 million.

A security camera caught the entire incident, and the boy's shocked look and lack of understanding even of the gravity of the situation. What can you possibly do when such an expensive canvas has been destroyed? May I suggest to you that the art world's response to this damaged canvas is a pale imitation of God's response to what we've been studying all this semester. And that is the image of God in man has been badly marred. But instead of casting us away, God himself has undertaken to restore this image.

Porpora's image was simply a painting of flowers. But God put his image in man. In many ways, we are living, breathing reflections of something that is true about God. And yet, Adam, as it were, put a gaping hole in this image. He damaged it, badly defacing it.

And it was apparently irreparable. And every one of us since Adam, other than Jesus Christ, has actually joined Adam in gouging at and tearing and defacing the image of God in man. We have come short of the glory of God.

We are an offense to his holiness and his justice, his righteousness. What can possibly be done? Well, in the art world, art restorers have swept in around Porpora's painting, and they have painstakingly, turning it over, have connected the individual fibers of the canvas on the back. It's a process of restoration that is still ongoing here some three or four months later. But they're continuing the process, and one day they will touch it up again and finish the painting fully restored. And likewise, God has committed himself to restoring his image in man and bringing us back to better than our original condition.

Yet it takes deliberate time and deliberate effort, a deliberate plan on his part. The 12-year-old boy and his family were terrified, as you can well imagine, expecting to be billed for a $1.5 million painting, or at least the damage done to it. And it was an expense they could not possibly pay.

It was way beyond the amount of money that they possessed. And likewise, when we consider the offense that we are against God, and the penalty for that offense is death and eternal separation from God, it's a penalty that's too great for us to pay and then to escape or walk out on the other side of it. But insurance companies swept in and assured the family, no, you will not have to pay for the painting.

It was an accident. And God, through Jesus Christ, has stepped into the lives of each one of us who has believed, and offers to those of you who have not yet believed eternal hope and salvation through Jesus Christ, taking a penalty that he knows you could not repay and paying it himself so that you could be restored. But the story's not over. No one who is working on or who has worked on the painting intends for it to be restored and then to be put into a closet. But rather, they hope to display it again in art galleries and in the private collection of the owner of the painting. And God does not intend merely to restore you in salvation, only to put you away. But in some senses, he wants you eternally in his presence, glorifying him forever as a representation of his might and his goodness and his power to restore.

There will be no pointless existence for the child of God in eternity. You who have trusted in Christ get to look forward to a restored humanity in which the fullness of your faculties of creativity and even holiness will glorify God for all time. You will, in simple terms, fulfill man's eternal destiny if you have trusted in Christ. Just as a valued piece of art damaged by a fall is destined for repair in this world, you who have trusted Christ are destined for repair and glorification in the next.

Our passage then holds out for us this theme. If you are saved, you are destined for glory. So conduct yourselves now as a citizen of heaven.

If this is your eternal destiny, if this is what you will be, then live like it in the present. And the passage begins by showing us that you who are destined to worship God forever need to conduct yourselves now as citizens of heaven in your worship. So worship in verse 22 through 24 is first of all direct.

Verse 22 tells us that God and the Lamb are the temple of the New Jerusalem. Now temples in the ancient world did two things. They simultaneously brought the people near to the deity, but they also kept them at arm's length. They brought the people near by giving the people a place where supposedly the God dwelt. And in the case of the temple at Jerusalem, it really did bring people near to God. But the temples in the ancient world also kept people away from God because only the priests could enter into the inner portion of the temple.

Everyone else was shut out. But in eternity, this is overturned. It's already in some sense overturned in your life in that each one of us as a kingdom of priests can already approach the Father in prayer through Jesus Christ. But one day, God and the Lamb will be the temple, and we will be in their presence with immediate and direct access and immediate and direct worship of our holy God.

Think what this means for us. People flock to see the glory of the Grand Canyon. People actually pay a great deal of money either to rent cabins or even to buy second homes in the mountains or in the Caribbean so that they can appreciate the beauty that's around them. And no one has to call them to worship or, that is, to stand in awe of what's in front of them. They're naturally standing in awe of it. But we get to be in the presence of God Himself forever who is far more glorious and far more grand than any of the created order. Think of the most majestic sight that you have ever experienced, and God far outstrips this. And the worship will not be from a distance, as if somehow, yes, I've seen pictures of the Grand Canyon, but I've never gotten to visit there myself. It's not that we will see, as it were, pictures of God, but we will see Him for ourselves.

God and the Lamb are the temple. So is heaven boring? That's an absurd question. You might as well ask, are your vacations to glorious and beautiful spots on this earth boring?

Of course not. They're filled with meaningful activity, and even the awe and wonder and appreciation that you have is part of the glory of those experiences. Our application here is fairly direct, then. If our worship one day in eternity will itself be direct and directed at God, what about your worship now? If you find the worship of God tedious or boring now, what does that testify about your life?

I understand, and we all admit that there is this fleshly element in us that is insubordinate. It will never be brought under the power of the Spirit of God in the sense that it is constantly out of rank and pushing against the Holy Spirit. And there's part of that that, yes, doesn't want to get out of bed on a Sunday morning. It doesn't want to be in chapel. It doesn't want to hear God's Word. It doesn't want to sing praise, and it doesn't want to hear other people talk about God either. But is there part of you that aspires to worship, that really enjoys being in the presence of God?

Does your spirit resonate with these things? And when you hear testimony from the Scriptures, does your heart yearn to be in God's presence, to be holy as He says you will one day be? If not, maybe that's testifying that you don't know God at all, and that your eternal destiny does not involve standing in His presence and worshiping Him forever.

But the next aspect of our worship is that it will be reflexive or responsive. You know the people of God don't have to try to come up with things about God to worship? We don't invent His goodness. We don't have to try to imagine His power.

His goodness and power are simply facts that exist. You don't have to try to invent the glory that you see in the Rocky Mountains. Awe and amazement is reflexive. This past summer I had the privilege of being in Rocky Mountain National Park on Trail Ridge Road driving between Estes Park and Grand Lake. And we drove over it on a pretty cloudy day, and at one point we were actually completely enveloped in a cloud, and the altitude there is impressive, particularly to those of us who are from lowly old Greenville. So we're looking out at the whiteness and the brilliance of the cloud, and periodically it would break enough that we saw three different herds of elk right beside the road.

But there's one point that Trail Ridge Road crosses the ridge itself, a two-lane road, and on both sides of the road with no shoulder is a sheer drop-off of many hundreds of feet. It's terrifying and awe-inspiring. It's impressive. I wanted to pull the car over to the side, but there was, again, no shoulder.

I couldn't do so. But I can still reflect with wonder and awe at what I experienced that day. It was impressive. And I didn't have to have my wife beside me lecturing me on the impressiveness. I didn't have to have my children from the backseat calling out, Dad, now you do understand that the Rocky Mountains are an impressive feature.

No, I just did it. It was amazing. It was wonderful.

It was glorious. Do you know the more we understand about God, the more glorious He is to us, and the more we just overflow in worship? Eternity is not somebody twisting our arms behind our backs, compelling us to worship God, but rather a worship that simply bubbles up and overflows our spirits because we actually get to see Him in all of His majesty and power and glory.

And this encourages us then to think on God in the present age. When worship seems tedious to us, go back to the Scriptures and think on God and your heart will overflow in praise. While worship is a glorious part of eternity, it's not the only part. Man's eternal destiny involves worship, but it involves so much more. Our text indicates that God intends for us to engage in many other activities. For instance, our passage reminds us, You who are destined to work productively forever should conduct yourselves now as citizens of heaven. Work in eternity will produce objects of beauty and value. Can you see that in that text?

Look at it carefully here. We have to recognize that a city in the ancient world would shut its gates at night for a variety of reasons. One is to keep out robbers and, of course, invading armies, but another is to keep out merchants, people of commerce, who would otherwise interrupt the peace of the city with hawking their wares at night. But the Scripture passage here in front of us tells us that the New Jerusalem is a vibrant, lively, bustling city that will keep its gates open all day long. It will never have to shut them.

There is never a threat to security. And there's no night there, and so it is perpetually a vibrant and bustling city. Well, what makes a city vibrant and bustling?

It's not just the churches. It's all of the activities of genuine human culture that are redeemable, or that God can set in us and restore or remake in His own image. In other words, God intended Adam and Eve in the beginning to be productive people. They didn't sit around in the garden doing nothing. They were active about their work.

And God intends to restore that activity in the future. Work will produce objects of beauty and value. But second, our text links the concepts of glory and honor with the nations. And think in these terms. What is the glory and honor of nations? What possibly do nations possess that they can actually carry into the kingdom? The passage says twice they will bring the glory and the honor of nations into the New Jerusalem.

It has to be portable then. And may I suggest to you, based on this passage of Scripture as well as Isaiah 65 and 66, chapter 66 of which references the glory of nations in terms of industry and commerce, that one day in eternity there will be music, and there will be art and metallurgy and architecture. We will still work with our hands and produce many good things.

There may be poets and writers. There may even be technology. We don't know for sure. But God will take everything that is worthwhile, everything that is meaningful, and say, Go at it! For all time the nations of the world will create, and they'll get better and better at the creating.

They'll get better at their trades, better at their skills, wiser in what they're doing for all time. And all of this will be brought as glory to God himself. But this kind of work that we see in eternity will stem from holiness and truth. There is one exclusion that the passage mentions with reference to this work, and that is all that would corrupt our work, all the self-glorifying aspects of our work, all the selfish, greedy aspects of our work, all the gluttony and envy that we might pursue, and the pride of life that we have now, that is done away with.

But the glory of the work remains, and the opportunity to glorify God through that work remains. All that this passage rules out is wicked human activity. Now imagine a newly created humanity with a newly created heaven and earth that mines the earth so carefully it never does damage. Or farmers in the new heavens and new earth who never deplete the soil and who never have to pour harsh chemicals on it, where there is no pollution. Everything that is done is done purely and done perfectly.

Our work will absolutely exclude that which is wicked and that which is defiling. Imagine painters and musicians whose skill gets better every year. For all time.

For all time. In other words, what you are doing right now has value if instead of doing it for yourself and instead of living merely for the resources of this world, instead of making your way through this world, as if you are the object of your own art, you are the object of your own music, either performance or writing the music itself, composition. You are the object of your own accounting and your own business and management skills.

You are the object of your own political skills and writing of laws. Instead of living like that, if you live for the glory of God now, you're actually practicing skills that apparently apply in eternity. The nations will exist. At the very end of our passage, we will reign forever and ever. There is genuine, holy, sanctified human activity for all time.

Does your heart thrill with that prospect? Can you imagine carrying on your trade or your work, whatever you're training to do, but without ever getting tired, without ever getting sick, without ever mishandling or misusing it or misrepresenting God, either intentionally trying to serve yourself or just accidentally because we don't know Him perfectly yet. And sometimes our art and sometimes our music might misrepresent God, even if we're trying to glorify Him in the present age.

But one day, it will represent Him perfectly. And everything that we do will have value, and everything that we do is worthwhile. But our passage next turns to the fact that you who are destined to experience blessing forever should conduct yourselves now as citizens of heaven. And I'm not going to separate these next three points out too much, but God gives us perfect sustenance, perfect health, and perfect conditions in eternity.

Look at those in quick succession. We have the river of the water of life that flows directly from the throne of God. And the passage tells us it's a pure river, unpolluted. This is a river that has no Giardia cysts in it. It's not a river that has bacteria in it. It's not a river that we have to chlorinate or run through reverse osmosis in order to be drinkable.

It is perfectly pure. And God says, here, drink. And then He creates a tree of life that bears different fruits each month in 12-month successions. God provides variety in our sustenance for all time, a great blessing here. God provides perfect health.

This tree of life says it has leaves that are for the healing of the nations. Now, some people have misinterpreted that to mean, then, that the nations could fall sick, but we can just heal it. Rather, what the text is doing is saying, even if there could be sickness, there is an absolutely divinely provided perfect cure. There will be no sickness.

And the earlier part of chapter 21 has iterated that as well. There are also perfect conditions, other perfect conditions in eternity. Revelation 21, 4 reminds us, and then later on reminds us, there is no curse. The environment that surrounds the people of God will be one of sustained blessing. So if you're destined to live in a perfect environment one day, it is not, then, the social gospel to say that on this side of the cross, as redeemed citizens of that coming heavenly kingdom, you ought to exercise wise stewardship of that earth today. It doesn't mean you're a rabbit and some crazy environmentalist. You don't worship the earth.

There is no Gaia goddess. But as wise stewards. And if you can't envision yourself littering and marking up and marring the heavenly kingdom that is brought down out of heaven into the earth, the dwelling place of God and man for all time, if you can't envision yourself trashing that, then can I just recommend to you that it might not be the best thing that when you get out of your car in the parking lot to take your fast food cups and stick them under somebody else's tire, it might not be the best reflection of a Christian disposition to throw it in the back of somebody else's truck or to just drop it in the parking lot.

In other words, there are so many minute, practical ways. This is just one example, but I think you can think of probably hundreds or thousands of other examples in which if this is the perfect sustenance and the perfect protection, the perfect blessing that God intends for us in the future, then live in light of that now. We stop worshiping this earth and what it offers us, and instead we look to God and trust Him in eternity. Finally, this passage teaches us that you who are destined to enjoy a relationship with God forever should conduct yourselves now as citizens of heaven. The last three verses, chapter 22, verses 3 through 5, remind us that we have a relationship with God to such an extent that He will write His name on our foreheads. That's a mark of ownership. And while that might seem a little awkward to us because in the Western world we don't like the concept of people owning other people, that's because we're on par with each other and we have no right to own other people. But God is our Creator and He is our Redeemer. And His mark of ownership, far from being a brutal or savage, tyrannical ownership, He owns us having redeemed us from the curse. He owns us having saved us from sin and death and hell.

And His ownership then guarantees to us blessing in eternity. I have three children, and each time when I was there at their birth, I did not think, having held them for the first time, yes, I finally have another one to boss around. That child bears my last name. In some sketchy sense, you could say I own that child. The child has to obey me.

But that's not what a father focuses on, is it? Never ran through my mind that I finally have somebody that I can control. But what ran through my mind is here is one who is in my image that I can love and protect and provide for and take care of and witness to and lead in paths of righteousness, Lord willing. Your heart overflows with joy and love and so does God's for you. For Him to stamp His name on your foreheads is not a curse.

It's saying you are mine and it's the forging of an eternal relationship. So consider for a moment those things that make life worth living. Security, health, peace, prosperity, meaningful activity. Some of you got bored even over Thanksgiving. Now boredom every once in a while is okay. You just like not having to live a frenetically paced lifestyle.

But if you had nothing to do, it would be very tedious. The things that make life worth living are this activity, meaningful activity and God provides all of it in eternity. So the passage has reminded us if you are saved, you are destined for glory. Conduct yourself now as a citizen of that heavenly kingdom. Worship God now. Work productively with God in mind now. Live in light of the blessing that He's already given you in Christ now.

And in the end, enjoy this relationship with Him that you have already begun in the present. Father, we're thankful for the testimony of your word. We do pray that as badly marred as this image is in us, we will see the day in which the image is fully restored, that the sanctification of our lives will be complete in glorification, that you will take each one of us who knows you and make us like our Redeemer. We will see you and in seeing you, we will be like you. And Father, we also pray that those who are still here, who are still in the process of defacing that image and who have not come to know you, would hear a passage like this in which you represent yourself and the blessing that is held out for them and would turn from sin and recognize you are not a malignant and hateful deity. You are a God who loves His people and is calling each one of us into righteousness through Jesus Christ our Lord. In all things, may we fulfill for the glory and greatness of your name man's eternal destiny, for Christ's sake. Amen. You've been listening to Dr. Brian Hand, a seminary professor at Bob Jones University, and this concludes our series about the doctrine of man. Join us again tomorrow for another chapel sermon here on The Daily Platform.