Worthy is the Lamb: A Glimpse of Heaven

In his letter to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul wrote, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” (Colossians 3:1–4, NIV84)

The command is to regularly think about Heaven, and heavenly things. For those who have been raised with Christ, i.e. “born again” turning our mind toward heaven, anticipating heaven, longing for heaven, ought to be a natural occurrence. After all ... This world is not our home, we’re just a-pass’n through.

Unfortunately, the Bible doesn’t give us an abundance of details as to what heaven will be like, but it does give us what we need to know. What Scripture does reveal to us we should take to heart so that we have hope. The Bible says that heaven is paradise. Jesus, when speaking to the thief on the cross who repents, says that he will be with Him that very day in paradise (Luke 23:43). Where is Heaven? I don’t have a clue, but for two millennia God’s people have been comforted with the promise, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8). To be with Jesus, wherever that is, will be enough.

In all, seven biblical characters are given a glimpse of Heaven. Six of them pass on to us important information about what Heaven is like.

Elisha and his servant. In 2 Kings 6:15-17 they are given a glimpse of the host of heaven. They saw horses and chariots of fire—a heavenly army—surrounding and protecting them.

Isaiah the Prophet catches a glimpse of the Lord, seated on a throne, high and exalted. He hears the seraphs crying out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory,” (Isaiah 6:3).

Ezekiel the Prophet was by the river Chebar, and he saw visions of God (Ezek. 1:1). Around the throne of the eternal, glorious God, Ezekiel sees a flashing, sparkling, spinning rainbow of brilliance. In pictures almost impossible for us to fathom, the Prophet describes the sovereignty, majesty, and glory of God and the incredible beauty, symmetry, and perfection of His heaven. Much of it very similar to the visions in the Book of Revelation.

Stephen, as he was about to be stoned to death for preaching the Gospel, looked toward heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, (Acts 7:55-56).

Paul the Apostle, in 1 Corinthians 12 is caught up into Paradise, and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak, (1 Corinthians 12:4).

And of course the Apostle John, hears a voice, looks and sees a door standing open in heaven, (Revelation 2:1). He enters, and what he sees and hears is recorded in the book we are studying.

In the glimpses we get of heaven in the Scriptures two features stand out; God is always central, and worship is the priority of Saints, and Angels, and Fantastic Creatures. As we arrive at the verses before us, we see the Church in Heaven after the dreadful end of the Great Tribulation.

I. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE KINGDOM

1. from vs. 9-17 we can glean six characteristics about God’s eternal kingdom

A. GOD'S KINGDOM WILL BE A LARGE KINGDOM

“After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.” (Revelation 7:9, NIV84)

1. John looks and sees a great multitude that no one could count

a. God is not stingy with His grace ... aren’t ya glad!

b. the NASB provides a more literal translation of Rev. 7:9 ... “After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, ... ” (Revelation 7:9, NASB95)

1) the word behold in our vernacular means hold on to your seat, ‘cause you’re about to see something really, really spectacular

2) John sees a sea of believers standing before the throne of God, and these are just the believers who came to faith during the Great Tribulation period

“Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, “These who are clothed in the white robes, who are they, and where have they come from?” 14 I said to him, “My lord, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” (Revelation 7:13–14, NASB95)

c. while rebellious mankind experiences the cataclysmic judgements of God, and the reign of the Antichrist tightens his grip on the world, revival sweeps the globe

1) a great multitude is swept into the Kingdom

2. this vision must surely have renewed the Apostle John’s joy and hope, as he realized that the church of the Lord Jesus Christ would not only survive, but that it would thrive

a. there is coming upon the faithful a time of terror such as the world has never seen

1) but John tells us that regardless of the suffering the saint on earth may endure during the Great Tribulation, that the glory of the kingdom will be worth all the suffering

3. God's Kingdom Will Be a Large Kingdom

B. GOD’S KINGDOM WILL BE A MULTI-ETHNIC KINGDOM

ILLUS. The Apostle Peter, in his encounter with a God-fearing Gentile named Cornelius, discovered that God is no respecter of persons.

1. in other words, God does not judge a person by their external ethnic characteristics

a. as I’ve been preaching through the Book of Revelation you’ve heard me say on several occasions... if you’re a racist, you’ll not enjoy heaven

1) you’ve heard me say it several times because the multi-ethnicity of the saints in heaven is a repeating theme in Revelation

2) could it be that God is trying to tell us something????

3) God’s kingdom is an inclusive kingdom

2. the Gospel is meant to bring men together, not divide them

“You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:26–29, NIV84)

a. what was God’s promise to Abraham?

1) God makes a promise that He will bless all nations through Abraham's family and descendants (Genesis 12:3)

2) Gentile Christians, along with Jewish believers in Messiah form what is now termed “spiritual Israel” — we call it the Church, the Body of Christ, the Fellowship of the Saints

ILLUS. In Romans, the Apostle Paul uses the illustration of wild olive branches— Gentile believers, being grafted into the cultivated olive tree—that is believing Israel. This makes every believer—weather Jew or Gentile—a child of Abraham and a part of the Abrahamic Covenant. The promise is that Abraham will have both a physical and spiritual progeny that will be as numerous as the star in the sky, or the sand on the shore.

b. in one of the great Old Testament prophecies promising to include the Gentiles in His redemptive plan, God says ...

“ ... I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’ I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’; and they will say, ‘You are my God.’ ”” (Hosea 2:23, NIV84)

1) Hosea is saying that God does not limit His redemptive plan to those who are the physical descendants of Abraham

2) He "counts" as "children of promise" whom he pleases—including Gentiles of every stripe

3. gospel-people must be as gospel-inclusive as is God

a. in Ephesians 2:1-10, the Apostle Paul describes the work of Christ that once and for all broke down the vertical wall of hostility that lies between a holy God and a sinful people

1) God’s grace is greater than all our sin

b. in Ephesians 2:11-22 the Apostle continues to explain that the work of Christ doesn’t stop there, but it even broke down the horizontal wall of hostility between people

1) God’s grace ignores the Melanin count in a sinner’s skin ... so should we

ILLUS. At the SBC Annual meeting last week in Dallas, a Georgia Baptist church was expelled from the Southern Baptist Convention over charges of racism. The convention's executive committee voted to withdraw fellowship from Raleigh White Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia. The church—which had dwindled to about 20 members—rented out its facilities to a Black Southern Baptist Congregation that ran about 150. But when some of the Black congregants showed up early one Sunday, they were told to wait in their cars, and denied the use the restrooms. The Mallary Baptist Association has also withdrawn fellowship from the church. After investigating the situation, the association found “intentional discrimination toward individuals based solely on the color of their skin.”

ILLUS. Unfortunately, racism is an equal-opportunity-sin. I was dismayed to read last week about a segregated meeting that took place in April at a conference called The Gospel Coalition. The organization describes itself as a Christian organization that seeks to serve the local church by providing gospel-centered and Christ-focused content. The closed meeting was a break-out session in the associated women’s conference. They were polite about it, but clear, the break-out session was a “WOC”-only event, WOC referring to “Women of Color.” In order to have an “honest discussion” about racism in the church, white Christian women were excluded. However you slice it, this meeting discriminated on the basis of race. Let that sink in for a moment. At a conference sponsored by The GOSPEL COALITION a meeting was promoted that forbade participation based on skin color. The sponsors of the meeting said that the segregated meeting’s aim was to build up the whole body of Christ.

2) friends, we don’t build up the body of Christ, by purposely segregating it

c. intentionally dividing the people of God into ethnic groups is—in a word, sin—and an appalling display of disunity and is a recipe for further cultural division

ILLUS. Tony Evans, a black Baptist preacher who spoke at last week’s Southern Baptist Convention Pastor’s Conference, nailed it when he said, “God has spoken, and He has not stuttered ... racism will make a good man bad ... you are a Christian first, you are not a Jew first. You are a Christian first, you are not a man first. It is technically wrong to say “I am a “black Christian,” or a “white Christian.” Because then you make black and white an adjective of the noun, and the job of the adjective is to modify the noun. So whenever you have Christianity in the noun position and you have your identity in the adjectival position the noun of your Christianity must subscribe to the adjective of your identity. You’ve got to flip that. You’ve got to put your Christianity in the adjectival position, and your identity in the noun position so that if anything changes it’s the noun of your humanity, and not the adjective of your faith. We’ve gotta get that thing straight!”

4. racism, ethnocentricity, and racial superiority are clearly not simply “social issues” that Christians can ignore

a. they are ideologies that seek to attack the gospel at its core

b. we respond with a robust Gospel that claims red, yellow, black and white—all are precious in His sight ... Why? Because all are bought with the crimson blood of Jesus Christ

c. the New Heavens and New Earth will not be inhabited by a homogeneous group of people who look exactly the same, but rather, a beautiful tapestry of people of different hues and features

5. God’s Kingdom Will Be a Multi-ethnic Kingdom

C. GOD’S KINGDOM WILL BE A CHRIST-FOCUSED KINGDOM

1. we also read that this countless multitude of saints is ... standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb ...

a. over the millennia many different cultures and advocated all kinds of ideas of what the afterlife is all about

As one of the oldest and most influential religions in existence, Judaism might be expected to be the source of our most profound notions of heaven, but it isn’t. In fact, there is no clear indication of a heaven or afterlife in the Jewish scriptures at all. The Pharisees, believed that there was an afterlife, and a resurrection, while the Sadducees, pointed out that there was no biblical evidence of such. Among orthodox Jews, the Garden of Eden is the final spiritual plane where the souls of the righteous go to spend eternity with God. It’s described as being 60 times better than what we experience on Earth.

In ancient Egyptian mythology, the deceased went to Aaru. Once they arrived, the souls would find themselves in a land of eternal peace, with magnificent crops and “bread and beer of eternity,” which would never go stale. Aaru was more or less exactly the same as the mortal world, just better.

The Islamic version of heaven is a paradise for those whose good works have outweighed the bad as determined by the straight path laid out in the Quran. Heaven is a garden where the faithful lie upon couches in a climate-controlled environment surrounded by “bashful, dark-eyed virgins, chaste as the sheltered eggs of ostriches.” Muslims will drink from drink from crystal goblets and eat off of silver vessels as “immortal youths” hover about them.

Then we have the totally secular view of what Heaven is like. A few years ago, People Magazine asked a bunch of Hollywood stars what their ideal heaven would be like. Here are some of their answers ...

▸ Edie Falco: Finding a parking space in front of my house.

▸ Billy Bob Thornton: Living on a lily pad with all the German chocolate cake and fried okra I could eat, with all my children.

▸ Sandra Bullock: No drama—and a pint of Häagen-Dazs.

▸ Dennis Quaid: Texas.

▸ Bill Maher: About 5’6, with blonde hair and ample booty.

b. one thing stands out in all these ideas about heaven ... it’s all about the place and what we get to do in that place, and the good things we get cause we’re in that place

2. in the New Testament, Heaven is all about the Lamb who sits on the throne

a. Heaven’s focus is on the Lamb of God who died and shed his blood for the multitude that stands before him

“He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.” (Colossians 1:18, NASB95)

3. God’s Kingdom Will Be a Christ-focused Kingdom

D. GOD’S KINGDOM WILL BE A HOLY KINGDOM

1. John looks and sees a multitude of people standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes

a. they are wearing white robes which everywhere in the Book of Revelation is symbolic of believers who have tasted the sweet forgiveness of Christ

b. vs 14 clearly identifies this multitude as Christ’s chosen race, his royal priesthood, his holy nation, and a people for God’s own possession (1 Pet. 2:9)

“ ... “These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” (Revelation 7:14, NASB95)

1) here is one of the spiritual paradoxes of the Scriptures ... robes made white by being washed in blood

2. only the perfectly righteous will be in heaven

a. but it’s not our righteousness that gets us through the pearly gates

b. we cannot stand before God in our own righteousness because our own righteousness is like filthy rags

3. God is the one who offers the sinner peace and grace through the redemptive work of the Son

a. Christ presents his church perfect to the Father

“Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—” (Colossians 1:21–22, NIV84)

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7, NIV84)

b. here is the ultimate goal of God’s redemptive plan—to present you to Himself holy, and blameless, and above reproach

ILLUS. St. Augustine said, “Thou hast made us and we are thine; thou hast redeemed us and we are doubly thine.”

4. God’s Kingdom Will Be a Holy Kingdom

E. GOD’S KINGDOM WILL BE A WORSHIPFUL KINGDOM

“And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” 11 All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying: “Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!”” (Revelation 7:10–12, NIV84)

1. the angels of God and the people of God will forever praise God

a. the worship we will experience in Heaven will be incomparable to what we experience on Earth because the God we worship is incomprehensible

1) the earliest Christian devotional writings repeatedly referred to the incomprehensibleness of the Godhead

2) the authors of that devotional literature encouraged Christians to remember that God is one and that God is unfathomable

“Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.” (Psalm 145:3, NIV84)

“But who is able to build a temple for him, since the heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain him? ... ” (2 Chronicles 2:6, NIV84)

2. God’s greatness always exceeds our greatest thoughts of His greatness

a. He is infinitely more worthy of our worship than the greatest worship we have ever given Him

b. God is incomprehensible and unfathomable, and therefore our loftiest thoughts about Him, our deepest affections for Him, our noblest worship of Him can never begin to match His greatness

3. in Heaven our natural instincts will be to fall face-down before the throne of God and ascribe to Him Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength (Revelation 7:12)

F. GOD’S KINGDOM WILL BE A BLESSED KINGDOM

“Therefore, “they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them. 16 Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. 17 For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”” (Revelation 7:15–17, NIV84)

1. the presence of a sovereign God will be a blessing

a. day and night, throughout all eternity, believers will serve God who

b. what Isaiah saw in his vision has not changed when he caught a glimpse of the Lord, seated on a throne, high and exalted

2. the presence of a tender shepherd will be a blessing

a. in this passage we find the Lamb at the center of the throne, and he is the Great Shepherd who will be our shepherd

b. what King David experienced as a Shepherd boy has not changed since the day he wrote a Psalm about it

“The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, 3 he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. 4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6 Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” (Psalm 23:1–6, NIV84)

3. in Heaven everything that distresses us, everything that terrorizes us, everything wearies us is gone ... no hunger, no thirst, no ravages of the sun by day, no tears

a. can you imagine?

How do you enter this Kingdom of Heaven? By accepting God’s gift of grace by faith. John is clear in Revelation 7:10, “And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”” (Revelation 7:10, NIV84).

In Jacksonville, FL, in 2015 Tito and Amanda Watts were arrested over the weekend for selling “golden tickets to heaven” to hundreds of people. The couple, who sold the tickets on the street for $99.99 per ticket, told buyers the tickets were made from solid gold and each ticket reserved the buyer a spot in heaven — simply present the ticket at the pearly gates and you’re in. The tickets were actually wood spray painted gold with ‘Ticket To Heaven – Admit One’ written in magic-marker. Tito told the police, “It was Jesus who give them to me behind the KFC and said to sell them so I could get me some money to go to outer space. I met an alien named Stevie who said if I got the cash together he’d take me and my wife on his flying saucer to his planet that’s made entirely of crack cocaine. You can smoke all the crack cocaine there you want… totally free. So, try to send an innocent man to jail and see what happens. You should arrest Jesus because he’s the one that gave me the golden tickets and said to sell them. I’m willing to wear a wire and set Jesus up…”

The amazing part? The couple made $10,000 selling their “golden tickets to heaven” which means one-hundred people bought a ticket!

The good news? Grace is free! You can experience all of the blessings of Heaven by coming to God by faith in Christ who shed his blood for the forgiveness of your sin.

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