Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

Heaven is referred to 550 times or so in Scripture and 54 times in the book of Revelation.

Scripture simply delineates three heavens.

In 2 Corinthians 12:2 it says Paul was taken up into the third heaven, that’s the heaven where God dwells, that’s the third heaven.

The first heaven is the atmospheric heaven, that’s the atmosphere around the earth, that’s the air we breathe.

The second heaven is the stratospheric heaven, that’s the heaven of the heavenly bodies, the planets, the stars, the moons and everything else.

And when you’ve gone through the atmospheric heavens and you’ve gone through the stratospheric heavens and come to the last heaven, it’s the heaven of God, it’s the divine heaven, the abode of God and angels and saints.

And people have asked throughout the centuries: where is it?

Where is it?

We believe it’s a place because there are some people there who actually have bodies.

Is that not true?

Like Enoch who talk a walk one day and walked right up to heaven.

And the prophet Elijah who went to heaven in a chariot.

And the Lord Jesus Christ who is there in a glorified body.

And there’s going to be a lot more people there in their glorified bodies because Jesus said in John 14 He went to prepare a place for us and some day He’ll come and bring us there.

And when He does bring us, according to 1 Thessalonians, our body is going to be transformed, we’re going to get a new body to go into that heavenly place.

It’s a place.

You say, “Isn’t it just sort of a spiritual consciousness?” No, it’s a place.

It’s a place where the spiritual and the transcendent glorified bodies of the saints will dwell with the glorified Christ and the holy angels.

Now, where exactly is heaven?

We only have one detail about the location of heaven and that is that it is up.

You say, “well, how do you know that heaven is up?”

Because that is what the Bible says about the location of heaven.

So, from John’s perspective and being on earth on the isle of Patmos, heaven is up.

Now, the next question is, “how far up is heaven?”

Well, to get there we have to get through the atmospheric heaven and then we have to get through the stratospheric heaven.

The moon is 211,463 miles, you could walk to it in 27 years if you could walk 24 miles a day, it’s not that far.

Now if we could just crank up your speed a little bit to like 186,000 miles per second, you could get to the moon in a second and a half, which is really the better way to go if you’re going to take the trip.

At that speed you could reach Jupiter in 35 minutes and 11 seconds cause it’s only 367 million miles away.

And if you could go 186,000 miles per second you could get to Saturn in 7 … in one hour and 11 seconds cause it’s only 790 million miles away.

Now remember, you’ve got to go 186,000 miles a second to get there in a hour and 11 seconds.

But you see, when you’ve gotten to Saturn and you’ve gone beyond, and you’ve even gotten to Pluto which is in to the billions of miles away, when you’ve arrived at the very extremity of what we know is our solar system, you haven’t even gotten out of the front yard.

You’re still at the very, very beginning of the stratospheric heaven because Alpha Centauri which is a star is 20 billion light years away, the North Star … 420 billion miles away, I should say … the North Star, 400 billion.

And then a star Betelgeuse, 880 quad drillion miles away.

And by the way, it’s big.

They have discovered it has a 200 million mile diameter.

And you want to know something?

When you get there, you’re still in our galaxy and there are billions of galaxies.

And they say that our galaxy probably has a diameter of 100,000 light years, that’s going at the rate of 186,000 miles a second for a year.

And when you’ve gotten through our galaxy there are billions more.

So when we say “up,” it is up.

But heaven is not only up, and far up!

But heaven is also near!

You say, “What!

How can that be?”

Jesus said to the thief on the cross.

There have been a lot of people over the years that have tried to explained all about heaven.

They have even uses some of those stories to make motion pictures; like, “Heaven is for Real”.

There is only one problem with the descriptions that those people have given about heaven and that is there is only one earthly person that has ever gone to heaven and return, and notice what he said about heaven.

So, they only man that went and returned was not permitted to speak about the wonders of heaven.

Ezekial tried to describes the wonders of heaven that he saw and he gives more descriptions that Paul about flashing lights and smoke, but none of that really helps us to imagine heaven.

John is taken up into heaven and tries to give us a glimpse of what heaven is like as we begin to study .

MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2014).

John MacArthur Sermon Archive.

Panorama City, CA: Grace to You.

I.

The Coming of the New Heaven and the New Earth (vs. 1)

II.

The Capital of the New Heaven and the New Earth (vs.

2)

III.

The Companion of the New Heaven and the New Earth (vs. 3)

Once John witnesses the melting, as Peter put it, of the heaven and earth and then the creation of the new heaven and heaven, then witnessed the coming of the Capital city of the new earth, Jerusalem coming down as the city of the Church, this is the capital city of the bride of Christ.

He then hears of great voice coming down from heaven.

This language, “μεγας φωνη”, which is translated “a great voice”, could only be a voice that it is representative of the voice of God himself.

The Lexham Greek-English Interlinear New Testament.

(2008).

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Bellingham, WA.

So God is speaking here and says “behold”.

It is the Greek word” ἰδού” and is used in the Greek and an attention getter, something that serves as a word that prompts attention to itself.

This could be something that is equivalent to saying, “Listen Up” or “Look here”.

It is used as a break in the discourse to get someones attention.

And why does God want John and also us to “pay attention”?

Because He makes the next great statement”

This is just a great, great hope here and one that makes Heaven all the more wonderful.

The word “tabernacle” is the word “σκηνή” and means “tent” or “dwelling place”.

And then there is that all important prepositional phrase “of God” in the statement as well.

This is what we call in Greek a “Possessive Genitive”.

And this is the use of the Genitive to show possession or ownership.

This is God’s house, He owns it and He is bringing it to the Capital of the New Heaven and the New Earth to dwell with us the text says.

You see God’s house and dwelling use to be only found in a special place in the Tabernacle.

Show slide of the Ark of the Covenant.

And if you wanted to be in the actual presence of Yaweh, you could only do that if you were a High Priest.

The Crucifixion made it possible that men could have access to God without the need of another human High Priest.

But in this text, John sees that the actual tent, the actual dwelling place of God, the place where God lives is no longer bound behind the curtain of a tent, but it will be the place where you and I will live.

That is the dwelling place that is among men of which the text speaks.

No longer will the form of God be hidden from us in the person of Jesus Christ, for we will live in His dwelling.

This is the hop that Jesus refers to in His sermon in .

Matthew 5:8

Jesus stated in his high priestly prayer:

We will learn later in the chapter, but I just want to mention it in passing, that there will be no temple in heaven.

There will be no need of the temple, because the God-Head will permeate heaven and there will be no need for their confinement in one singular tent.

This truth was so staggering and mind-blowing, that the truth of it was repeated in several different ways.

This will be a manifestation of God to His people that has never never in redemptive history and will be the culmination of everything that we have hoped for.

What will it be like to live in the presence of God?

This is staggering.

First, Believers will enjoy fellowship with Him.

Now, focus on that; lest we allow that great truth to go right by us as cliche.

The imperfect, sin hindering fellowship that we have with God in this life will be full, complete and unlimited.

In his book, “The Saints’ Everlasting Rest”, 16th century Puritain Richard Baxter had this to say about this fellowship with God.

Doubtless as God advanceth our senses, and enlargeth our capacity, so will he advance the happiness of those senses and fill up with himself all that capacity.…

We shall then have light without a candle, and perpetual day without the sun.…