The God Who Triumphs (Rev. 21:1–22:5)

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Biblical theology from Revelation 21:1-22:5.

Hello again, one last time. My name is Don Carson. In this final session, I want to talk about The God Who Triumphs. By this title I mean to say more than this God is actually there and not just a figment of our religious imaginations and that he eventually triumphs over all other ostensible gods. That is doubtless true, but the last two chapters of the Bible promise much more.

God is bringing the world to a consummation, the final restoration, what the Bible variously calls a new heaven and a new earth or the New Jerusalem. Not only will justice be done, it will be seen to be done. The final transformation of Christ’s blood-bought people will bring about resurrection existence and a universe so renovated that no hint of death, sin, corruption, hatred, and idolatry will lurk there.

Biblically faithful Christianity, including the call to sacrifice for others as we follow King Jesus, does not really make much sense unless it makes eternal sense. Christians look forward to the end, even though we know that end may be long delayed, but we hunger for it and we join Christians throughout the ages who have prayed, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

We come now to the last book of the Bible, the last two chapters: Revelation 21 and 22. I am not going to read right through both of them, but I will read Revelation 21 and the first few verses of 22. Let me begin, however, rather adjacently. In the Sermon on the Mount recorded in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, Jesus said that we are not to lay up treasures on earth for ourselves where moth and rust corrode, where thieves dig through and steal, or where the stock market can erode at all.

Rather, we are to lay up treasures in heaven where moth and rust cannot corrode, where thieves cannot dig through and steal, and where the stock market has no effect whatsoever. Then he adds an astonishingly important sentence. He adds, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Note carefully what he says. He does not say, “Guard your heart.” He says, “Choose your treasure.” There are other passages where we’re told to guard our hearts. “Guard your heart, for out of it are the wellsprings of life.” Yes, there are texts like that, but in this passage in the Sermon on the Mount that’s not what Jesus says. What he says is, “Your heart will follow your treasure, so choose your treasure right.”

In other words, if what you value the most has to do with treasures down here, things which may in themselves be good for which to give thanks, things to appreciate.… If, nevertheless, that is the entire horizon of your treasure, that’s where your heart will go. Heart now not in some sort of romantic or merely emotional sense. So often in the Bible heart has to do with the inmost being of a human being: who you are, what you think, and what you cherish.

If what you value out there has to do with everything in this life and that’s all, then that’s where your heart will go. That’s where your imagination goes. That’s where your energy goes. That’s where your creative imagination goes. That’s what you think about. That’s what you hope for. It may be if you’re a Christian at some sort of deep but fairly insignificant creedal level you also believe there’s a new heaven and a new earth, but it doesn’t mean a blessed thing about how you live because your heart has its treasures here.

If, on the other hand, though you can’t thoroughly appreciate all the good things God gives us in this life, and there are so many of them, yet what you treasure the most has to do with the new heaven and the new earth, that’s where your imagination will go. That’s where your energies will go. That’s where your heart goes.

Christians in parts of the world where there is a lot of persecution or violence or suffering, they have no difficulty understanding that at all. You meet Christians in the southern Sudan and they understand that. You meet Christians in Iran and they understand that. When we have so much in the West, then our heart follows so much here that it’s difficult for our hearts to go pitter-patter and become really excited about what’s over there.

That means one of the things we ought to do if we’re to take the injunction of the Lord Jesus seriously is take time pretty often to reflect from the Bible what the new heaven and the new earth are like. We need to fire up our imaginations so we see what it is the Lord Jesus is commanding us to treasure, to think about, to value, to run after.

There are few passages in all of the Bible more calculated to do that than Revelation 21 and Revelation 22. Again, they’re deeply symbol-laden, and there isn’t time in the few minutes left for me to go through every verse step by step. There are good commentaries out there. If you’re really curious, I’ll name some afterward.

Nevertheless, even at a superficial fly-pass, you begin to see what Jesus is on about. In chapter 21, the seer (John) writes, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’

He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ He said to me: ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give to water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children.

But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.’ One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.

It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.” I will skip down to verse 22.

“I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.”

Some of us at Trinity where I teach in introductory classes of what we call biblical theology sometimes give students the assignment to work through Revelation 21 and 22 and pick up every single allusion to anything in the Old Testament. There are scads of them! What these two chapters do is pull together so much from the Old Testament, so much of what we’ve seen in these 13 previous sessions.

We can only pick up a small part of them, but they’re wonderful. What does John see? He sees what is new (verses 1 to 8), what is especially symbol-laden (verses 9 to 21), what is missing (verses 22 to 27), and what is central (at the beginning of chapter 22).

1. He sees what is new.

(Verses 1 to 8) What he sees is, initially, nothing less than a new heaven and a new earth. Of course, that’s calling to mind the opening words of Genesis 1: “God made the heaven and the earth.” So the opening of the Bible connects with the very closing of the Bible, but now this new heaven and new earth, as we’ll see in the following verses, is untainted by any of the residue of sin of Genesis 3. It’s a new heaven and earth. That’s what he sees: a transformation of existence.

You find this language, a new heaven and new earth, going all the way back to Isaiah and coming forward from time to time in the Bible. It shows up, for example, in one of Peter’s writings. Sometimes the same thing is described in other terms. The apostle Paul writes about this whole world order groaning … groaning … like a woman in pregnancy waiting for the final transformation of God’s people when the whole universe will be transformed as well.

Then it changes. “I saw a new heaven and a new earth.… Then I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming out of heaven.” We’re not to think of a new creation into which the New Jerusalem comes. Rather, this is simply changing the metaphor. Apocalyptic is doing that. The ultimate state can be thought of as a new heaven and a new earth or it can be thought of as a new city, and you are seeing different facets of the same reality.

In the first case of the new heaven and the new earth, the thing John comments about is there was no more sea. For those of us who love the sea, that seems a bit harsh, doesn’t it? But what you must understand is the sea, so often for the ancient Israelites, is associated with chaos. They were not a sea-going people.

I was born in Canada, but my parents were both born in the UK, and basically, British people are born with saltwater in their veins. They’re an island community. They’re a sea-faring people, so their literature and their poetry are full of this. Even as a boy growing up in Canada with some of this heritage, I memorized poems like, “I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea in the sky, and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,” and so forth.

The ancient Israelites weren’t like that. They were a landlocked people, and the one time under Solomon that they tried to build a navy, in fact, the ships had to be manned by people from sea-going pagan ports up the coast. As a result, Israelite poetry is full of negative uses of the sea. It’s full of chaos and danger and the like.

In Isaiah 57, the wicked are like the sea which turns up muck and mire forever. In that kind of heritage, what John says is, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and there was no more sea.” This is not talking about the hydrological principles of the new reality, whatever they will be. It’s saying there is no more chaos, no more destruction, no more muck and mire.

The vision of a New Jerusalem calls down old Jerusalem, which was supposed to be the city of the great king, the city of the temple, the city where God manifested himself to his people, but now it’s a New Jerusalem without taint or corruption or being taken over by the Babylonians or anything like that, but it is a profoundly social vision.

So many of us in the West think of spirituality in highly individualistic terms, but this is a people of God in a social context. A city. I know in some of our Western literature, the city can be seen as the cesspool of iniquity, but in the Bible it can be seen both as a sink, a reservoir, of evil, and it can be seen as a glorious place of beauty where God lives with his people.

In fact, some people have tongue in cheek called the book of Revelation a tale of two cities, because in this book you have set out Babylon with all of its symbolism and the New Jerusalem with all of its symbolism. Then it changes again. “… coming down out of heaven …” It’s a city finally brought about by God. “… prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” You change it again. The city is now a bride.

If any of you young chaps are about to get married, I strongly urge you not to say to your wife on the first night, “Oh, you’re such a lovely city,” or “You remind me of a big city,” or any such thing. The aim here is not (typical of apocalyptic nature) to confuse the two metaphors but to leap from one to the other, for again and again and again, God is presented in the Old Testament as the kind of bridegroom of his people, and it comes along in the New Testament similarly.

Christ is the fiancÈ, and the church is his fiancÈ waiting for the final consummation, their final union, the marriage supper of the Lamb. It’s a spectacular way of saying, in effect, the joy, the intimacy, the pleasure, the knitting together of soul and mind and heart and body which we best know in our small corner in a well-ordered marriage is only an indication of the kind of intimacy and joy when the church is united with Christ forever. The marriage supper of the Lamb. That’s language that is used a little farther on in the same chapter.

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them.’ ” That language is used again and again in the Old Testament. In Leviticus 26, the third book of the Bible, when the tabernacle is being built for the ancient Israelites in the desert and there is not even the first land (the Promised Land), there is not a temple, and they have a tabernacle, that’s where God makes himself present among his people.

You read that God says, “I will put my dwelling place among you. I will walk among you and be your God. You will be my people.” Then when the new covenant is promised in Jeremiah 31, God says, “I will put my law on their minds. I will be their God. They will be my people.” You have the same language, but under the old covenant it was bound up with God’s self-disclosure, his manifestation in that tabernacle.

Under the terms of the new covenant, it’s God self-disclosure, his manifestation in Christ and in the church among his people. The same language but the whole thing gets ratcheted up! Now in the last stage, this same language: “I will be their God; they will be my people.” The same language but it’s ratcheted up to such a place now that the intimacy is so great (God is so much present with them) that it is unthinkable that any residue of sin or decay or judgment or loss or death can prevail anymore. There is a ratcheting up of expectations until this consummation of perfection.

So we read, “They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Here eternal blessedness is couched in negation. That is, no tears, no pain, no bad stuff. That’s only the negative side of the glory to come.

The positive side is depicted in the imagery that still follows. To be with him in glory and splendor, to see the limitless perfections all of eternity will still not exhaust because he is our God and we are dwelling with him and he with us forever. Incalculable. Then almost as if our faith needs to be reassured, “He who was seated on the throne …” That is, God himself. “… said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ He said to me: ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega …’ ” The first and last letters of the alphabet. “… the Beginning and the End.’ ”

“From creation to the consummation of the new creation, from creation in its perfection with this horrible dip of sin and destruction and decay to the work I have done in the sending of my own Son and the pouring out of the Spirit, now the consummation I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End.” The turning point is Jesus, and now we arrive at the consummation. “To the thirsty I will give water without cost …” There’s grace all over again. “… water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious …”

In this book, those who are victorious, those who overcome, are simply those who persevere to the end in confidence in Jesus. That’s what it means to be victorious. Not to be the kind of Christian who sails through life with nothing ever sticking to them. To be victorious in the book of Revelations simply means you persevere in faithfulness by God’s grace to the very end.

“Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” So what is new? The new heaven. The new earth. The New Jerusalem. The consummated union between Christ’s people and Christ. It’s spectacular.

2. He sees what is deeply symbol-laden.

(Verses 9 to 21) Here it would take an hour just to work through all the symbols. Let me just pick up one or two of them. I don’t have time for more than that. We’re told the city John sees shines with the glory of God. That is, the people, the city coming out of heaven, this social entity, it shines with the glory of God.

Let us be quite frank. The church here today, even the very best churches, the churches that are full of the gospel, the churches where there is discipline and accountability, where Christians really do love each other, we are a flawed bunch. The church is also full of sin. It’s full of sinners like you and me, declared just, yes, but sinners still not yet perfected. Not even close to what we will be.

But one day, the city itself will glow with the presence of God. No taint anywhere. The language is drawn from the Old Testament when the Old Testament prophets anticipated a Jerusalem that would be built after the exile looking forward to the ultimate Jerusalem. “Arise, shine for your light has come …” This is addressed to Zion, to Jerusalem. “… and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you.” That’s Isaiah 60.

Now, you see, God’s glory is manifested in the church, in the New Jerusalem. Notice the strange dimensions of this city. Verse 15: “The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long.”

The significance of the 12,000 and the 144 … Apocalyptic literature loves symbolism, and it’s calling to mind the 12 apostles, the 12 tribes of Israel. It’s a way of saying all of the old covenant people and the new covenant people together constitute this unified people, like the book of Ephesians, one new humanity in Christ.

A city built like a cube? Even the most spectacular of our high-rise cities doesn’t look cube-like, does it? This is symbol-laden again. You stop and ask yourself, “Okay. Where is there a cube in the Old Testament?” There’s only one. It’s the Most Holy Place of the tabernacle or the temple. It’s why I mentioned it on the way by.

The tabernacle was built three times as long as it was wide and two-thirds of it took up the entrance part, the Holy Place, and the last third, the ark of the covenant. Perfectly cube-like. The blood of bull and goat was poured out in the presence of God on the Day of Atonement. Perfectly cube-like.

It was the place where God manifested himself in his glory when the blood was poured out, and now, we’re told, the whole city is like a cube. That is to say, all of us are forever in the very presence of God. We don’t need any mediating priest. We don’t need any blood sacrifices. It’s equivalent to what we discovered when Christ was crucified. The veil of the temple was rent, and we can be immediately ourselves directly in the presence of God. Now the whole New Jerusalem is built like a cube.

3. He sees what is missing.

(Verses 22 to 27) First, “I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” There is no temple in this city because the whole city is built like a cube. You’re already in the Most Holy Place. You don’t have a temple within the Holy Place. The temple is the mark of mediation.

To change the language just a wee bit, God himself, the One who sits on the throne and the Lamb are the temple, the focal point, the mediating place. The whole city is that. It is in the presence of God completely, always, forever, so you don’t need these mediating temples that have served us across the millennia to teach us, to prepare us for the coming of Christ.

Then we’re told there is no sun or moon. “The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.” This is not a way of unpacking for us the astronomical structures of the new heaven and the new earth any more than the absence of a sea is giving us the hydrological arrangements. It’s symbol-laden.

The point is, in the ancient world, when you have night in a culture where there is no electric light then night was the time when you shut down the city gates. That’s when you had some security. You made yourself safe because the nighttime was bound up with danger and wickedness. So the sun and the moon not only give us our time spans but give us the cycles of life when the gates are shut, when there is more danger and you hope for the coming of the light. It becomes symbol-laden anticipating the coming of the ultimate light, the final light.

Now, we’re told, it doesn’t need the sun and the moon anymore, this city, “… for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there.” No danger. No curse. No sin. No rebellion.

Then, more sweepingly, no impurity. Verse 27: “Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” Have you ever tried to imagine what it would be like not only to be immaculately, perfectly pure but to live in a culture that was immaculately, perfectly pure?

It is so hard to imagine. What would it be like never, ever, ever to have lied about anybody or anything? What would it be like always, always, always to have loved God with heart and soul and mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself? What would it be like to live in a society where that was true of absolutely everyone around you? That’s normal. That’s normal in God’s mind.

It’s the way it was at the beginning. It’s the way it will be at the end, but now, with resurrection existence and no possibility even of falling, no impurity ever allowed to enter there.… None. No one-upmanship. No greed. No Holocaust. No hate. No betrayal. No jealousy. Above all, no idolatry. Completely and utterly and totally and joyfully God-centered because it’s the way it should be. And finding all of our supreme joy and contentment in the God who is there disclosing himself forever and perfectly, inexhaustibly before his own blood-bought people.

4. He sees what is central.

(Chapter 22, verses 1–5) Two things are reiterated. The water of life flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb (verses 1 to 3). The language is drawn in part from Genesis again. “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb …” Notice this throne of God and of the Lamb. That harks all the way back to the great vision of Revelation 4 and 5 that I mentioned in the previous session.

That is, the Lamb who emerges from the throne and is the One who brings all of God’s purposes to pass because he’s the Lion King. It is a shared throne, as it were. It is the throne of God and of the Lamb, and all that we need for eternal life comes from his reign. The water of life comes from his throne utterly dependent upon him with an immaculate supply.

“… down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.” The 12 months reminding us of the 12 tribes one more time and of the 12 apostles (all of the people of God) and such a transformation that there’s healing of the nations. No more sin.

Indeed, the most spectacular part of the whole vision is found in verses 4 and 5. It is sometimes called the beatific vision, the blessed vision. Listen to these words. “They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign forever.” They will see his face.

Do you remember Exodus 32 through 34 where Moses asked to see more of God’s glory, to see God’s face? God said, “No one can see my face and live.” The closest we can get before the consummation to seeing God as he has disclosed himself in Christ Jesus in the God-man, but now in this splendor we have been so transformed ourselves that our sinfulness, as it were, has been burned away. The last stages of the old nature and its sinful desires are all gone, and now in God’s grace, we have the privilege of looking at, of gazing at, transcendent holiness. We sometimes sing these things and scarcely understand them.

Face to face with Christ, my Savior

Face to face—what will it be

When with rapture I behold Him

Jesus Christ who died for me?

Only faintly now I see Him

With the darkened veil between

But a blessed day is coming

When His glory shall be seen

The wonder of the new heaven and the new earth is not in the first instance that you may be linked up with your mama who has gone on ahead. Undoubtedly, there will be a reunion of the people of God, undoubtedly, but the Bible says pretty little about that, actually, compared with how much it says about the sheer God-centered, spectacular, unimaginable glory that will be ours forever in an unceasing sweep of glory for all eternity as we contemplate God and his perfections.

All the other biblical language about the work we’ll have and the responsibility we’ll have and the worlds we may well supervise or cities we may rule over or whatever, it’s all there in biblical descriptions of one sort or another, but at the heart of everything … at the heart of everything … is the sheer Godhood of God which consumes us and empowers us and leaves us perpetually transformed.

Part of my job takes me to many different parts of the world. I fly far too much, but once in a while I’m closer to home and, then, I drive, and when I drive I bring lots of music. My music tastes, I have to tell you, are painfully eclectic. Not too long ago I was listening to Roger Whittaker, a Kiwi by origin, a New Zealander, a kind of New Zealand folk singer who sings the folk songs of many different parts of the world. He sang a folk song from Canada, which immediately perked up my ears. He sang a song of a Canadian part of the world, a song of Cape Breton, and the last stanza puts it this way:

If my time could end perfectly

I know how I’d want it to be

God’s gift of heaven would be made up of three

My love, Cape Breton, and me

I thought to myself, “My dear Roger, you just defined hell,” because Roger and his love would breed like rabbits, sinners still, and you’d have Cain and Abel all over again and another cycle of a downward spiral. God’s gift of heaven would be made up of three? He’s still thinking in self-focused terms. “How much I like the geography of Cape Breton and how much I love my love.”

God’s gift of heaven is first and foremost consumed with the centrality of God, such that for the first time, without any footnotes, any taint, we will know experientially what it means to obey what Jesus calls the most important commandment: to love him with heart and soul and mind and strength.

We will so be transformed in this beatific vision that we’ll know experientially what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves, so Christians in every generation in every century in every country all over the world have learned to come together and pray in words drawn from the end of this chapter, “Yes, even so, come Lord Jesus.”