Joy to the World...at Last!, Part 2

Joy to the world, the Savior reigns. A day is coming in the future when that song will have even greater significance.

Listen to these lyrics. Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns. Let men their songs employ, while fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains, repeat the sounding joy, repeat the sounding joy. For the coming kingdom is a time of joy. There will be joy to the world finally. Jesus Christ is the sovereign King of the universe.

We know that that's true. Right now, He rules the universe from His kingdom in heaven. The Bible speaks of a time to come in which Jesus will rule over this earth from the earth. Jesus will come again. He will be physically present, ruling His creation.

That's a truly amazing thought. We're studying that period of time, known as the millennial kingdom, here on Wisdom for the Heart. Stephen Davey began this message last time, but didn't have time to complete it.

It's called Joy to the World at Last. If you were with us in our last discussion, we began answering questions related to John's revelation in chapter 20 regarding the millennial kingdom. Who will be the subjects in the coming kingdom? Very quickly, Daniel 7 promises that Old Testament saints will reign in the kingdom. The New Testament saints or the church will also, of course, reign. We have here in Revelation 20 verses 4 and following a third group, that's the martyrs, those who died during the tribulation, they're resurrected, glorified, and they will also reign. The fourth category of the subjects of the kingdom would be living mortals who survived the tribulation without dying. They accepted the gospel and they entered the kingdom in this way.

Let me summarize it this way. Let me give you two categories, then, of people occupying the earth during the millennial kingdom. Those with glorified bodies, we'll call them in the language of the Apostle Paul, immortals, and mortals, those with natural earthly bodies.

Now, the immortals are made up of three different categories of individuals. The first are Old Testament saints who are resurrected, who reign, Daniel 7, Daniel 12. They will include both Jewish and Gentile followers of God by faith in his plan of atonement. In the Old Testament era, he looked forward to the fulfillment of that one who would die as the final sacrifice. Second to that, you have the second category, you have the New Testament believers.

Clothed, Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15, with immortality, that would be you and me. The church today, by the way, is composed of Jews and Gentiles, is it not? In fact, the first church created by the Spirit of God was primarily Jewish, and it all got started in what city? Jerusalem. Like the prophets of old, the 12 apostles were all Jewish men.

In fact, the great ambassador to the Gentile world is a converted Jewish rabbi named Paul. And Paul will remind the Corinthian believers, composed of Jew and Gentile converts, that the church will one day, he writes in 1 Corinthians 6, 2, be judging or ruling the world, a reference to the kingdom. The third group of immortals, again, are these tribulation martyrs.

Now, on the other side of the column is the second category of kingdom subjects. They are the mortals. They enter the kingdom having believed the gospel during the tribulation. They are still in their natural, non-glorified, earthly bodies, the ones they were born with.

They haven't died. They will become the population of the world, and their children and their children's children will populate the earth over whom we, the immortals, will reign. Now, according to the prophets, these mortals will marry, have children.

They're going to flourish. They're going to enjoy all of the kingdom benefits. Their children will have to accept the gospel of Christ. They will be sinners. There will be crime. The good news is there's going to be a just system of jurisprudence.

Nobody will be bribed. Everything will be honest because we will reign and we will rule over them. But they will be sinners in need of salvation. Just because their parents are confirmed having believed in the tribulation who entered the kingdom, that doesn't give them a free pass.

God doesn't have grandchildren or great-grandchildren. You know, I've asked people before, are you a Christian? Well, yeah, my father was a preacher.

That might actually be a bad sign. I've had people tell me, yeah, my grandfather was a preacher. I asked you, are you saved? Have you been born again? Have you personally received the merits of Christ on your behalf?

Have you asked him to forgive your sins? Without it, you will not enter heaven and certainly not the kingdom before that as an immortal one who will reign. These who grow up in the kingdom, and there will be probably several billion of them flourishing over this thousand-year reign, they will have to accept the grace of God through his atoning plan of salvation. David wrote in Psalm 48 of this coming kingdom, Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, his holy mountain. Now notice this, beautiful in elevation.

Something's going to change. Beautiful in elevation. The joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion in the far north, the city of the great king. So David refers to it as God's mountain to an elevated place, and he references universal joy. What about this city?

You go all the way back to Abraham, and we understand that these patriarchs, and even before to Adam, before him were given revelation about the atonement system and the kingdom, so that Abraham, way back there, is waiting. He's looking for this city. And it isn't the Jerusalem that you think of now. It's a city made without human hands, whose architect is God. Doesn't exist yet in this fashion. There's something different about it. It's elevated.

It's magnificent. It's divinely designed and created by God's own power, which leads me to another question. What will Jerusalem, what will this capital city, look like? One author, in his work on the millennial kingdom, refers to all the prophecies that allow us to understand the topographical changes that are going to take place at the end of the bowls as Christ returns, and we've already studied that, and we don't have time to repeat it, but the changes of the earth's surface that are going to take us back to Eden-like conditions. Listen to Zechariah describe Jerusalem and the surrounding area. He says in Zechariah 14, 10, all the land will be changed into a plain level, south of Jerusalem, but Jerusalem will rise and remain on its site.

It's literally going to come up and be elevated. What exactly, he says, from Benjamin's gate, as far as the place of the first gate, to the corner gate, from the Tower of Hananel, to the king's wine presses. In other words, Jerusalem proper, inside the city walls. Then Zechariah adds, they will live in it, and there will no longer be a curse, for Jerusalem will dwell in security and peace.

So a lot of things change. The city will be inhabited on its ancient site, and it will be inundated with this attribute that we know it does not have, peace, security. The prayer request of the Jewish nation for centuries has been, pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Peace will genuinely and finally come to pass in the millennial kingdom as Christ rules on planet earth. And beyond that, around the globe, marked by this wonderful rule of our Lord, who rules the nations. Our world does not know security, or peace talks about it, talks about it more and more as time goes along. It attempts to find it, and that's a noble objective. But our world doesn't know peace.

In fact, I laughed when I read one author. He said, whenever he hears of someone being arrested for disturbing the peace, he wonders where the guy found some of it. Where did he find peace to disturb?

Well, peace will one day come when the prince of peace comes. Now the prophet informs us that the Lord will make the wilderness like unto Eden, Isaiah 51-3. Her desert, like the garden of the Lord, joy and gladness again have joy found therein.

Thanksgiving in the voice of melody or literally music. Now all the topographical changes around the globe are specifically formulated to create a high mountain or plateau upon which Jerusalem sits and commands with this rather commanding view, not only from it, but to it. In Ezekiel's vision, chapter 40, verse 2, God takes him to the land of Israel and sets Ezekiel on a very high mountain.

And to the south, he says, there was a structure like a city. Now we can only imagine what the golden city will look like, the place where we will have residence as immortals, and from there go out and serve the Lord wherever he puts us somewhere on the planet. There are many scholars who believe this capital city will actually hover above the earthly Jerusalem during the kingdom and then come down after the new earth and heaven are created. Other scholars believe this divinely created capital city, this enclosed golden palace, so to speak, is planted on this high plateau which would then correspond with the need for the elevation of the city during the kingdom.

Either way, it's a win-win. Every immortal will have at least two residences. Every one of us who believe will have a residence inside this city of God and another residence wherever God has us serving as co-regents with Christ. But we're going to have a place in there what Christ refers to, I believe, in John 14 as the Father's house. We're told that in the Father's house are many monae, translated into King James mansions, NASB, dwelling places, or rooms. We need to get the idea out of our minds that we've got this big palace and 40 acres, and then we've got another mansion and 40 acres, and you've wondered how close you'd be to God. If you're like me, you think, I'm going to be in China. That's how far away it'll be, right? No, we're all in the Father's house and we have a dwelling place there. I believe it's this golden city.

I think there's a good reason for holding to this ziggurat view, this step pyramid view. By the way, we don't know. There's one rather thin reference where it refers to the steps of God's creation that may refer to this.

Not enough to be certain, but let me take you back in time and why I believe it is. If you just go back and you watch what mankind does, having the truth of God written on their heart, you go all the way back to the beginning days of Genesis 11, where you have this man rebel. Having heard, I believe, like Abraham and others of the coming city, he rebels, and what does he do? He builds, Nimrod does, his own city, and he builds this ziggurat, and at the top level there is what will become the zodiac. Even unbelievers trace the development of this false religion back to Babylon. We refer to the tower of what? Babel, and the confusion that came because of God's judgment. So you have mankind building this ziggurat, and at the top level, instead of it being the throne of God, which will be the future city of God, you have the zodiac.

You have symbols, and we've discovered many of them going back centuries. You have the symbols of the zodiac, meaning at the very top is their worship, not of creator God, but of what? Creation, which is a perfect fulfillment of Romans chapter 1, that unbelieving man resists the truth of God, and he worships creation rather than creator God. So when Nimrod rebelled against God, he built a city and a tower, a pyramid of ziggurat, whose top represented the heavens which he worshipped, and all those with him.

Let me ask and answer another question. What will our worship system be like for us and for the mortals over which we rule? What will that be like? Well, our communion as immortals will be face to face with Christ.

It will be intimate, physical. That's why John in chapter 20 of Revelation and verse 6 says that we'll be priests of God and Christ. In other words, there's nobody in between, and that'll be so much more wonderful than what we have now because with us our faith is without things being seen, right?

We'll have things to see, and we'll have the face of Christ to see as well. Ezekiel informs us of the millennial temple located on this raised plateau. That holy allotment Ezekiel talks about, which there's varying degrees of size depending on the commentator or the scholar, anywhere from 37 square miles to 50 square miles. On that holy allotment you have this golden city. You have dwelling places for the priests who will serve in the millennial temple, and the millennial temple will be in the very center of this holy allotment.

The temple will be the central piece in the worship of God throughout the millennial kingdom. Now, in this particular sketch, you can see a portion of this plateau. As realistically, depending on the imaginations you can get, this 37 square mile region, which will include our dwelling place inside the city of God, to the left of the picture you can see a little golden orb that represents to scale as best as it can be rendered the millennial temple.

By the way, this view here is stunning, isn't it? As you consider just the scale of the golden city. Revelation chapter 21 verse 16 gives us some measurements, and many believe that the measurement is actually a cubed measurement, which would mean that the golden palace, the city there, would stretch some 11 miles high. Maybe in the future when we get to heaven, I mean our study of heaven, I'll show you a picture that shows this golden palace, as it were, compared to Mount Everest. Mount Everest looks like just a little dot.

It's pretty amazing. Well, the prophet Isaiah mentions that in the city of Jerusalem, rendered in this sketch, there will be this unique feature to that area where at night the cloud canopy over the city will have the appearance of fire. In other words, in this city, both in the kingdom and throughout the new heaven and new earth, the curtain of glory and light will never close. Isaiah chapter four verses five and six.

This particular sketch shows Jerusalem at night in the kingdom. Now Ezekiel informs us that the millennial temple and the temple worship system will reinstate animal sacrifices that blend in certain aspects of even the church age. Animal sacrifices will be reinstated as memorials to the sacrificial death of our great king. They're gonna be a wonderful lesson, a memorial to teach and re-teach to all of those generations that are born and grow up in the millennial kingdom. They're gonna need to hear the gospel. What better way than to reinstate these sacrifices and teach them? One author provoked my thinking when he said how needful these sacrifices will be. Imagine you are born and you grow up, you dwell in the blaze of Messiah's glorious throne.

How needful to have ever before you some memorial of the cross, some tangible record of the humbled Jesus, some visible demonstration of his sin-bearing work by which you have been forgiven, saved, and loved. All those generations who populate the earth will owe all of their blessedness to the plan of salvation and to the grace of God. So the millennial kingdom then, ladies and gentlemen, is gonna require teaching, teaching, the exposition of scripture. It's gonna require that mortals who come to believe in the gospel could also be trained to go out and tell other mortals, right, of the truth of what exactly this kingdom represents and that there is a coming judgment. See, they'll be able to deliver the same message. That judgment will be the final judgment, the great white throne, in the next few verses of this same chapter. They need to be saved. So perhaps teaching stations will explode around the globe as mortals are taught the truth and they train and they teach the truth to others.

One more question briefly. What will we do throughout the kingdom? What will we, as immortals, as co-regents, do?

And the reason I can be brief is because we haven't been given much. Now, I don't have a verse on this, but I'm pretty sure that we'll all be smiling a lot. We're gonna be incredibly blessed. I think we're gonna pinch ourselves. I think we're gonna say, wow, to think that I'm here. Does that sound odd to you?

A lady who's in her 90s with her hand armed through the arm of a gal who's taking her to Sunday school class, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and she said, to think that I'm gonna be able to be there is an amazing thought. See, that's spiritual maturity. Not, okay, where's my throne? Come on.

No. You mean I get to be here? Through faith in Christ my Redeemer who now sits in throne, wow. Praise God.

No wonder joy keeps showing up. Joy throughout the kingdom. So we're not told, but since I'm your pastor and I get paid to use my imagination, I've come up with a few things.

Let me just suggest some things to you. Maybe for one of you or many of you. It could be some educational post of leadership as immortals strategize to deliver the truth to and through the mortals, all of the millions who need to hear the truth about this king. Perhaps for you it could be a cabinet position or some political rule of a city or state or country. Perhaps it could be some kind of leadership in the system of law. There will be crime, there will be sin, there will be a population to control with grace and dignity and balance and honesty.

No more bribing, no more let me give you a free pass here, no more I know you and it'll be perfectly just. Perhaps you'll be involved in that system. Maybe for one of you or more it'll be an agricultural post of some high level of decision making in order to ensure that the resources of earth are managed with beauty and dignity and balanced distribution.

Maybe for you it could be the highest level of financial stewardship. Imagine the monetary oversight that's going to be needed as the nations of the world flourish for a thousand years with a just system, with an honest government, with righteous jurisprudence. Can you imagine how the economies of the world will flourish? Can you imagine the inventions of the world?

I know two inventors and both of them invented a product and then they spent years doing what? Having to go to court to keep it because somebody lied and said it was theirs. Maybe for some of you it could be the highest seat of some judicial bench as nations have to get along. The prophets indicate or imply that the nations will have to have things resolved.

Maybe the resolution will come from you. Maybe you'll have a chief position in some musical academy for the composition of new music to be sung in the Golden City. We've been told that there will be music there.

All of the above I believe are not only possible but they are only the beginning of positions matched with royalty and dignity and authority and effectiveness and fruit and wisdom and balance and joy. Isaiah 51 3 is a text I've already referred to but let me read it again. He refers to Zion and the region around her, the wilderness he will make like Eden, her desert like the Garden of the Lord, joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and sounds of music. Isaac Watts, by the way, tried to capture the truth of the kingdom and the joy related to the kingdom by composing a hymn. He actually took the music of Handel, the same who wrote what we know as Handel's Messiah. There's a brief phrase in that hymn, Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room, that immediately the church took it and said, okay, that's Christmas. He wasn't writing about the first coming. He was writing about the second coming and I think he'd be a little surprised and disappointed to find that we only sing it one or two weeks out of the year. He's referring to the second coming of Christ.

Listen to some of the lyrics. Joy to the world, the Lord is what? Come, let earth receive her what? Her king, listen to these lyrics, another stanza. Joy to the earth, joy to the earth, the Savior reigns, let men their songs employ, while fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains, repeat the sounding joy, repeat the sounding joy.

Here's another. He rules the world with truth and grace and makes the nations prove the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love and wonders of his love. What a great hymn for the coming kingdom. It is a time of joy. There will be joy to the world finally. There will be joy on the planet at last.

As the knowledge of our God covers the earth like the waters of the sea. No wonder Isaiah says it will be a time of joy and melody. We will sing of the glories of his righteousness. Watts adds in the wonders of his love. That was Stephen Davey and a message called Joy to the World at Last. It comes from his series out of Revelation called Thy Kingdom Come.

We'll be bringing you the rest of this series in the days ahead. During the month of May, we have a free resource to celebrate and encourage mothers. Stephen has a booklet called Motherhood in a Variety of Settings. There are several things that are true of mothers. Mothers are consistently underpaid, often undervalued and many times taken for granted. Mothers are the ones their children call for when they're sick. Once you're a mother, you'll never not be a mother ever again. You're in this for life and you're giving it just that, your life.

You're not alone. In fact, God has delivered some encouraging truths, especially for moms. Those truths are revealed in the home life of a mother named Eunice. This is a free digital download that you can access from our website. Go to wisdomonline.org for information. There's a link on the home page that will direct you. We do have a print version of this booklet as well, but the e-book is free today and is available at wisdomonline.org. Thanks for joining us today. I hope you'll be with us for our next Bible lesson, right here on Wisdom for the Heart. .