Rve 21:1-5 Christmas Eve
Intro:
We have seen the fall of the harlot in 17:1–19:10, and we are now at the end of this section on the King in 19:11–21:8. We have seen the King return (19:11–21), reign for a thousand years (20:1–6), and put down a final rebellion (20:7–10), and after the last judgment (20:11–15) the King and his bride enter into the new heaven and new earth (21:1–8). The final section of the book will be on the bride (21:9–22:9) and then the conclusion of the whole book (22:10–21).
Preview
Revelation 21:1–8 falls into two parts:
21:1–4
The Former Things Have Passed Away
21:5–8
“I Am Making All Things New”
Chapter 21 is often thought to refer to the period following the thousand-year reign, but it is more probably a retelling of the return of Christ from the viewpoint of the bride. Here we have clear-cut clues about the fact of a literary “retelling.” Just as chapter 17 was a recapitulation of the seventh cup and the fall of the harlot, Babylon the Great (compare the language of 17:1–3, which clearly introduces a “retelling” with the language of 21:9–10), so chapter 21 recapitulates the glorification of the bride of the Lamb (21:1–22:5). Now the story is told with the focus upon the bride. To be the bride is to be the holy city, the New Jerusalem, to live in the presence of God and the Lamb, and to experience protection, joy, and the everlasting, life-giving light of God (21:9–27). The tree of life grows there, and there the river of the water of life flows. There will no longer be any night; there will no longer be any curse, for the throne of God and of the Lamb is there. And there His bond-servants will serve Him and reign with Him forever and ever (21:1–5).
What began in Genesis is brought to completion in Revelation, as the following summary shows:
Genesis
Revelation
Heavens and earth created, 1:1
New heavens and earth, 21:1
Sun created, 1:16
no need of the sun 21:23
The night established, 1:5
No night there, 22:5
The seas created, 1:10
No more seas, 21:1
The curse announced, 3:14–17
No more curse, 22:3
Death enters history, 3:19
No more death, 21:4
Man driven from the tree, 3:24
Man restored to paradise, 22:14
sorrow and pain begin, 3:17
No more tears or pain, 21:4
As chapter 21 opens, all the sinners of all the ages, as well as Satan and his demons, have been sentenced to the lake of fire (20:10–15). With all ungodly men and angels banished forever and the present universe destroyed (20:11), God will create a new realm for the redeemed and the holy angels to dwell in forever.
The sea’s disappearance here may accommodate a literal (and typically ancient Jewish) reading of Isaiah 65:17, which mentions heaven and earth but does not mention the sea; another explanation may be the sea’s symbolic link with evil powers earlier in Revelation (the borders of the Roman Empire in 13:1).
We must preach the gospel not in the expectation that no one will believe, but we must proclaim the gospel to the ends of the earth, believing that God will somehow use our witness to His glorious salvation through the person of Jesus Christ to bring about a mighty triumph for the kingdom of God. Though we certainly cannot bring the kingdom of God on earth through human means, the preaching of the gospel does indeed offer hope for the transformation of life.
21:1–8 The final two chapters of Revelation depict the consummation of the purposes of God in the gospel. Picking up the whole-Bible motif of marriage, the people of God (represented in the new Jerusalem; v. 2) are wedded to the Lamb (symbolizing our eternal reconciliation, union, and presence with Christ; vv. 2–3).
We also see here the fulfillment of God’s creation agenda (vv. 1–4). The absence of sea (v. 1) reflects the absence of earthly disorder as was first accomplished by the Holy Spirit. It reminds us not only of the physical elements over which Christ had power but also of the peace he brought (Mark 4:39). The defeat of death is the good news realized in its fullness (Rev. 21:4), and those who conquer with Jesus are rewarded as Jesus himself has been rewarded in verse 7.
“No more sea” does not mean “no more water.” It simply indicates that the new earth will have a different arrangement as far as water is concerned. Three fourths of our globe consists of water, but this won’t be the case in the eternal state. In John’s day, the sea meant danger, storms, and separation (John himself was on an island at the time!); so perhaps John was giving us more than a geography lesson.
Even despite Scripture’s description, it is difficult to imagine what the eternal city will be like. John characterizes it as a holy city (see Rev. 21:27), a prepared city (see John 14:1–6), and a beautiful city, as beautiful as a bride on her wedding day. He amplifies these characteristics in Revelation 21–22.
God’s dwelling place is now among the people. Enduring fellowship between God and his people, which was lost in Eden (Gen 3:8, 24), anticipated by the OT tabernacle (Exod 25:8) and temple (2 Chr 6:18), promised by the prophets (Ezek 40–48), and made possible through Jesus’ incarnation (Matt 1:23; John 1:14). The new Jerusalem is presented as a glorious temple-city, fulfilling OT prophecies and patterns of God’s dwelling with his people. See “The New Jerusalem and Ezekiel’s Temple,” this page; see also “Temple,” p. 2340. They will be his people, and God himself will … be their God. Restored, intimate covenantal relationship (cf. Lev 26:11–12; Jer 32:38; Ezek 37:27; 2 Cor 6:16).
In the end this seething cauldron, fraught with unlimited possibilities of evil, will disappear. No-one lives on the sea. It is something to be crossed to arrive at one’s destination, but there is nothing permanent about it. The sea is one of seven evils John speaks of as being no more, the others being death, mourning, weeping, pain (v. 4), curse (22:3) and night (22:5).
John is conveying two thoughts, those of God’s presence and of God’s glory (which he reinforces with he will live with them). They will be his peoples (the better MSS have the plural); the redeemed will come from many nations (and be all one in Christ, Gal. 3:28). John adds God himself will be with them, the third time this thought has been expressed in this verse. He is their God (cf. Ezek. 36:28; Heb. 11:16). There is an intimate bond. In Ezekiel’s vision the name of the city was given as ‘THE LORD IS THERE’ (Ezek. 48:35). John writes of the fulfilment of what the prophet saw.
In his first epistle the apostle John described one of the main reasons Christians desire heaven: “We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is” (1 John 3:2; cf. Phil. 3:21). Believers will receive glorified bodies, similar to Christ’s resurrected body, in which they will “see Him just as He is” (cf. 1 Cor. 13:12). Then John gave the practical effect such knowledge should have on believers’ lives: “Everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (1 John 3:3; cf. 2 Pet. 3:14).
“for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:34).
A genuine and strong longing for heaven also brings joy and comfort in trials. Those who focus on heaven’s glories can endure anything in this life and not lose their joy. When they suffer, they can say with Paul, “For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17).
What will it be like to live in God’s glorious presence in heaven? First, believers will enjoy fellowship with Him. The imperfect, sin-hindered fellowship that believers have with God in this life (1 John 1:3) will become full, complete, and unlimited. In his classic book on heaven entitled The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, seventeenth-century Puritan Richard Baxter describes the intimate communion with God that believers will enjoy in heaven:
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.… We shall then have enlightened understandings without Scripture, and be governed without a written law; for the Lord will perfect his law in our hearts, and we shall be all perfectly taught of God. We shall have joy, which we drew not from the promises, nor fetched home by faith or hope. We shall have communion without sacraments, without this fruit of the vine, when Christ shall drink it new with us in his Father’s kingdom and refresh us with the comforting wine of immediate enjoyment. To have necessities, but no supply, is the case of them in hell. To have necessity supplied by means of the creatures, is the case of us on earth. To have necessity supplied immediately from God, is the case of the saints in heaven. To have no necessity at all, is the prerogative of God himself. (The Practical Works of Richard Baxter [reprint; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981], 7, 16)
What it declares is the absence of anything to be sorry about—no sadness, no disappointment, no pain. There will be no tears of misfortune, tears over lost love, tears of remorse, tears of regret, tears over the death of loved ones, or tears for any other reason.
Another dramatic difference from the present world will be that in heaven there will no longer be any death (cf. Isa. 25:8). The greatest curse of human existence will be no more. “Death,” as Paul promised, “is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15:54). Both Satan, who had the power of death (Heb. 2:14) and death itself will have been cast into the lake of fire (20:10, 14).
No living person has ever seen God in the fullness of His glory (John 1:18; 6:46; 1 John 4:12); He is invisible (Col. 1:15; 1 Tim. 1:17) and “dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Tim. 6:16; cf. Ps. 104:2), exposure to which would mean instant death for any living person (Ex. 33:20). But in heaven, “the pure in heart … shall see God” (Matt. 5:8), since they will be perfectly holy. They will be given an eternal and expanded vision of God manifest in His shining glory (21:11, 23; 22:5). Even the saints in heavenly glory will not be able to comprehend all the infinite majesty of God’s wondrous being. But they will see all that glorified beings are able to comprehend. Is it any wonder that Paul, thinking of the glory of heaven, had “the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better” (Phil. 1:23)?
No more will His presence be veiled in the human form of Jesus Christ, even in His millennial majesty, or in the cloud and pillar of fire, or inside the Holy of Holies. The amazing reality that “the pure in heart … shall see God” (Matt. 5:8) will come to pass. Christ’s prayer, recorded in John 17:24, will be answered: “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me” (cf. John 14:1–3; 1 Thess. 4:13–17). There will be “no temple in [heaven], for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” (21:22). Their presence will permeate heaven and will not be confined to one place of manifestation.
As we begin to consider these first four verses of chapter 21, note that in verse 1 “the first heaven and the first earth had passed away,” and then at the end of verse 4, “the former things have passed away.”
Why is this holy city in the new creation likened to a bride? The answer seems to be given in 21:3: “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.’ ” So this new Jerusalem is a city because God will dwell there, and it seems to be likened to a bride because God will be in covenant with his people who dwell with him there. The language, “they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” recalls covenantal language elsewhere in the Bible, especially in Jeremiah and Ezekiel (cf. Genesis 17:7, 8; Exodus 6:7; 29:45; Leviticus 26:12; Jeremiah 7:23; 11:4; 24:7; 30:22; 31:1, 33; 32:38; Ezekiel 11:20; 34:24; 36:28; 37:23, 27; Zechariah 8:8; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Hebrews 1:5; 8:10; Revelation 21:3, 7). So it seems that the most fundamental and intimate of covenantal relationships between human beings, marriage, exists to communicate the kind of relationship God will enjoy with his people (cf. Ephesians 5:21–33).
Revelation 21:3 describes the “tabernacle” of God and speaks of God “tabernacling” with man. The Lord promised to dwell in the midst of Zion in Zechariah 2:10 (cf. 2:14 LXX).
Revelation 21:4 describes what life will be like in the clean land in the presence of God: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” This fulfills what Isaiah prophesied in Isaiah 25:8: “He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces.” It fulfills Isaiah 35:10 (“… sorrow and sighing shall flee away”; cf. Isaiah 51:11) and Isaiah 65:19 (“no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress”). The upshot of 21:4 is that God will remove all the ill effects of sin and will guarantee that sin will never again result in death, disqualification, or disaster. Death is in the lake of fire and will not enter the new heaven and new earth (20:14). Verse 3 says that God will dwell with his people, and then verse 4 opens with the declaration that he will comfort them by wiping away all their tears. The rest of verse 4 proclaims that God’s presence guarantees that there will be no more sin, which causes death and mourning and crying and pain. Revelation 21:4 teaches that God will comfort his people and remove the sorrows of sins past, and God will protect his people such that never again will they experience what results from sin.
Revelation 21:4 says that “the former things have passed away,” and then in 21:5 the Lord declares that he is “making all things new.” This fulfills what the Lord declared in Isaiah 43:18, 19: “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing.”
The rest of 21:5 has the second of these three statements from God: “Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ ” Here God asserts his faithfulness. Every verse in 21:1–8 depicts the fulfillment of something promised in the Old Testament. God keeps his word. He will do what he says, and because he is faithful and true, he commissions John to write.
Let me invite you to look again at 21:3, 4 and see there that God is going to dwell with you and comfort you. Find in that hope the resolution to all tension, the comfort for all sorrow, the healing from every disaster, and the consolation that swallows up every disappointment. God is greater than all your pain.
21:4 He will wipe every tear … no more death. Alludes to Isa 25:8; cf. 7:17; Isa 35:10. God will bring perfect comfort (Matt 5:4) and remove the source of sorrow: the curse and brokenness of the “old order” of sin.
21:6 Alpha … Omega. See note on 1:8. To the thirsty I will give water without cost. God fully satisfies and provides for his people in the new creation (cf. 7:16; Isa 49:10; 55:1). See John 4:10, 14; 7:37 and notes.
Because the church is pictured in Scripture as a bride (2 Cor. 11:2), some have tried to identify the New Jerusalem’s inhabitants as specifically the church saints, excluding saints of other dispensations. However, the use of marriage as an illustration is common in Scripture, not only to relate Christ to the church but also Yahweh to Israel. Though the city is compared to a beautifully dressed bride, it actually is a city, not a person or group of people.
4. None less than God will be the consoler of his people. He will wipe away every tear. His concern is infinite. John gives a little catalogue of evils which will cease to be. Death is first with a certain emphasis. Death has no final triumph and it is well that God’s people see that ultimately it will cease to be. This is the reversal of the curse of Genesis 3 (cf. also 1 Cor. 15:54). So also sorrow and wailing and pain will cease. John sees a reason for this, namely ‘the first things (NIV the old order of things)’, the things pertaining to the first heaven and earth, will have been completely done away. Life as we know it is completely replaced by the new order. John had wept at the thought that there was no-one worthy to open the seals (5:4). Is there no answer to the problem of earth’s evil? His visions have answered that question. The Lamb has conquered. Now he finds that tears, too, have gone for ever.
What more could you want? Is what draws you away from God really better than this?
The last phrase of 21:6 is a promise: “To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.” This fulfills the call in Isaiah 55:1 to the thirsty who have no money to come and drink freely. The promise in 21:6 is designed to make us thirst for the water of life more than we thirst for anything else in life. For what do you thirst? Do you long to drink deeply from “the spring of the water of life”? What is this spring? In 22:1 we read of “the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb” (cf. Zechariah 14:8). This seems to be the spring in view in 21:6, from which the water of life flows. So I think this is a figurative way of describing being satisfied in God, who called himself “the fountain of living waters” in Jeremiah 2:13. There is a river of delights that flows from God. Do you want to drink from that river? Do you thirst for God? Do you love his justice and his mercy? Not to love God’s justice is to celebrate corruption. Not to love God’s mercy is to fail to love the most beautiful and astonishing reality that God has created.
The eternal city is so wonderful that the best way John found to describe it was by contrast—“no more.” The believers who first read this inspired book must have rejoiced to know that, in heaven, there would be no more pain, tears, sorrow, or death; for many of their number had been tortured and slain. In every age, the hope of heaven has encouraged God’s people in times of suffering.
The citizens of heaven are a satisfied people (v. 6). People who live in modern cities do not think much about water, but this was a major concern in John’s day. No doubt John himself, working in the Roman mines, had known the meaning of thirst. Tortured saints throughout the ages would certainly identify with this wonderful promise from the Lord. Free and abundant living water for all!
bride. An important NT metaphor for the church (cf. Matt. 25:1–13; Eph. 5:25–27). John’s imagery here extends from the third part of the Jewish wedding, the ceremony. Believers (the bride) in the New Jerusalem come to meet Christ (the bridegroom) in the final ceremony of redemptive history (see note on 19:7). The whole city, occupied by all the saints, is called the bride, so that all saints must be finally included in the bride imagery and bridal blessing. God has brought home a bride for His beloved Son. All the saints live with Christ in the Father’s house (a promise made before the church began).
The final revelation from heaven states that God will then dwell with men, that the saints will be His people and He will be their God. In eternity saints will enjoy a new intimacy with God which is impossible in a world where sin and death are still present. The new order will be without sorrow. God will wipe every tear from their eyes, and death with its mourning, and pain with its crying will vanish, for the old order of things will have passed away.
1. From the fate of the evil John turns to that of the good. He tells us that he saw a new heaven and a new earth (cf. Isa. 65:17; 66:22; 2 Pet. 3:13). For new see note on 5:9; ‘ “new in kind” not just “another” ’ (Sweet)
Two descriptive phrases reveal who will live in the glorious new heaven and new earth. First, a citizen of heaven is described as one who thirsts. That phrase signifies those who, recognizing their desperate spiritual need, “hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Matt. 5:6). They are the ones to whom Isaiah cries out, “Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost” (Isa. 55:1). Those who will be redeemed and enter heaven are those who are dissatisfied with their hopeless, lost condition and crave God’s righteousness with every part of their being. The psalmist expressed that strong desire in Psalm 42:1–2: “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God?” The promise to such earnest seekers is that their thirst will be satisfied.