“Heaven” – Part 4 – Rev. 22:12-17

Okay, here’s the scenario.  Every month you pay your mortgage.  Every month it’s difficult but you get it paid but you realize that you just don’t make enough money to keep paying it every month like you have been.  So, you cut back.  You scrimp and save.  You use coupons and buy only what you have to to survive.  You start to sell things you don’t need and then you even have to start selling things you do need but you just can’t make the mortgage payment.  You have a family to support and provide for but there is nothing you can do.  This is awful.  You can’t afford to move.  What in the world are you going to do?

So, you go to the bank officer and start to tell him your problem, hoping that he will give you some kind of hope.  But before you can even finish with your appeal, the banker says, “Oh, don’t worry.  The mortgage on your house has been paid in full by a generous man in the community.” Wow!  That’s great, right?  Now, in this scenario, what do you do?  What’s the very first thing you would do?  I don’t know about you, but I would ask some questions first.  I would want to make sure that it’s not a mistake.  If it’s not, then what does this mysterious do-gooder want from me in return?  Before I run off to celebrate, I need to know some things about this situation because I know that if something sounds too good to be true then it probably is.

I want to know if this guy can be trusted.  Am I supposed to pay him back?  Why would he do this for me?  What’s in it for him and what is expected of me?  I’m going to be leery of this deal until I get some questions answered.  But suppose in our little scenario that you get your basic questions answered.  You find out that he has done this for lots of other people and he just does it out of the goodness of his heart because he is wealthy and wants to help people.

The banker knows the man well and can vouch for him that he is trustworthy and that he doesn’t expect to be paid back.  All that you have to do is sign the papers.  Now what do you do?  Again, I don’t know about you but as for me, hand me a pen or a pencil or a crayon or something.  I’ll use my own blood to sign if I have to.  Just show me where.  But then, just as you are signing, the banker says, “Oh, there is one thing…” and you think, “Oh, great.  Here it comes.” But the banker then says that all the good neighbor asks you to do is tell your friends and loved ones because he wants to do the same for them too.  He wants to pay for everybody’s mortgage.  Hey, no problem!  I can do that!  I want everybody I know and love to hear about this guy.  I’m going to sing his praises from the rooftop.  I’m going to put it on Facebook.  I’m going to walk across the street.  I’ll go around the world.  I’ll do whatever I can to make this guy famous.

Since the beginning of time, man has dreamed of there being more to this life.  God has wired us to want more, search for more and not be satisfied until we find out what the secret is to life after we die.  Some people have concluded that there is no life after death.  Some people believe that we are reincarnated and come back as someone or something different.  Almost every religion believes it has something to do with how good we are in this life.

But God gave us the Bible to fully explain everything we need to know about how to get to Heaven and I’ll be honest with you.  It sounds too good to be true.  The benefits are way, way beyond the price of admission, if you know what I mean.  So, when we learn about what Heaven is like, like we have the past few weeks, it should make you, first, ask some questions.  Then when those questions get answered well enough, it should make you accept the invitation to go there.  Then, lastly, it should make you want to announce it to the world just like if somebody said they were going to pay off your mortgage.

So, this week as we conclude our series on what the Bible says Heaven is going to be like, I want to go through those steps in a little more detail.  Let’s ask the important questions, then accept the invitation and then announce it to the world.  Turn to the last book of the Bible; the book of Revelation; the very last chapter of the last book, chapter 22, and let’s look at verses 12-17.  The author of this book is the Apostle John and we have read what John was told to write down up to this point.  I always think, “Poor John, having to write down all this incredible stuff that would be so hard to describe.”  But in this passage at the very end of the last book of the Bible, Jesus is doing the talking.  Let’s read what He says in Revelation 22:12-17. 

Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. ¹³I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. ¹⁴"Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. ¹⁵Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. ¹⁶"I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star." ¹⁷The Spirit and the bride say, "Come!" And let the one who hears say, "Come!" Let the one who is thirsty come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.

A little girl was talking to her teacher about whales. The teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because even though it was a very large mammal its throat was very small. The little girl stated that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. Irritated, the teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human; it was physically impossible. The little girl said, "When I get to heaven I will ask Jonah". The teacher asked, "What if Jonah didn’t go to Heaven?" The little girl replied, "Then you ask him.”

We all look forward to asking some questions when we get to Heaven and we all have questions about Heaven right now.  Well, here Jesus answers several of the most important questions we have; namely, who is going to be there and who isn’t?  He starts off saying He is bringing His reward with Him. Did you know that we will all be judged according to our deeds when Jesus comes back?  Every one of us, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Atheist – we all get judged according to what we have done and Jesus says here He is ready, willing and able to dispense with our rewards. 

If your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, then Jesus will reward you with eternity in Heaven and whatever good deeds you have done will be rewarded forever.  But that is only for true believers who, in this life, have come to have a life-changing relationship with the One True God through His Son Jesus.  When He says that He is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, He is saying that this world was created by Him in the beginning.  He will last forever and if your life reflects that fact and you have made Him Lord of all your life, then you can expect to live with Him forever in Heaven.

“Those who wash their robes” simply means that you have had your sins washed away by your belief that Jesus’ death on the cross and the blood He shed was sufficient to wash you clean in the eyes of the Lord and you will enjoy eternity as a co-heir with Jesus to all the good things Heaven has to offer.  That’s incredible!  That’s wonderful news.  But there is bad news for those who want to enter Heaven just based on their works or their deeds.  Verse 15 starts a representative list of those who won’t make it.  It’s not an exhaustive list.  This is not every sin in the world necessarily but Jesus says that to be sure, these folks are in big trouble for eternity.  Now, his use of the word “dogs” does not mean that all our furry, four-legged, Fido friends are going to Hell.  He uses the word as most Jews thought of them in those days as being of low character.

Then some of us read this list and we might think that because we have done one or two or all of these things that Jesus is saying we are going to Hell but as He says about lying or falsehoods, only those who love and practice these things.  If this is your lifestyle and you are unrepentant about it and you keep doing it, those are the ones He is talking about.  We will discuss this more in depth tonight at six so don’t miss that.

So, that is the most important question that any of us can ask and we should ask it.  Am I going to be there in Heaven?  The answer is, only through Jesus and His sacrificial death on the cross can any of us expect to be there.  But there are lots of other questions and you should ask them.  I want to go over some of the most popular questions I hear about Heaven.  They are good questions.  We know that we will never understand everything about Heaven until we get there and we need to keep in mind that if the Bible doesn’t answer the question, it doesn’t mean it’s not a good question.  It just means that we don’t have to know the answer to get there.

The number one question I hear when people talk about Heaven is always, speaking of dogs in verse 15, “Will my dog/cat/horse/gerbil/squid/whatever pet be there?”  For pet lovers like me, that’s an important question.  We know that in Revelation 19, Jesus and all His followers are described as riding on white horses and we know that during Christ’s thousand-year reign on the earth during the Millennium that there will be animals such as the wolf, lamb, calf and lion (Isaiah 11:6-9) but there is no specific mention of animals in the New Heaven or New Earth.

So, it doesn’t say we will have pets in Heaven but it doesn’t say there won’t be and I always answer this by saying that wouldn’t it be just like Jesus to bring our pets back to us in the next life?  Although I’ve had a couple that I’m pretty sure won’t make it.  In fact, if that one dog, Junior, who kept chewing up my Bibles is there, it won’t be much like Heaven for me.  Crazy mutt.

Okay, here’s another popular question.  It’s one we have touched on several times but for the record, let’s talk about what we are going to do in Heaven.  What do y’all know about it?  What are we going to do for eternity?  I sure hope we aren’t just gonna sit on a cloud and strum a harp.  No, we aren’t.  Heaven is sometimes described as a new Eden, as in Garden of Eden and that’s right.  Heaven will be similar to how God created earth to begin with before Adam and Eve sinned. 

In the Garden, Adam and Eve had work to do.  They were created to have dominion over the earth (Gen. 2); to rule and reign over it and we will do the same.  According to our faithfulness in this life, God will assign us to be rulers over different parts of the earth or of the universe even and that will bring great satisfaction to us as we will finally be doing exactly what we were created to do and since we will have new, glorified bodies, we won’t get tired and since there will be no sin, we will do it perfectly.

That leads to our next question, which is, what will our bodies be like?  If you read Luke 24, you will see that Jesus’ resurrection body was not limited by time or space.  He could walk through doors and walls and yet he had flesh and bones and was recognizable to His disciples.  He even ate food which, I think, answers another question and that’s good.  We all look forward to that.

In Colossians 1:18, the Apostle Paul describes Jesus as the “firstborn from the dead.”  The Greek word translated “firstborn” is the same word from which we get our word “prototype”.  The Bible says that Jesus’ resurrection body was a prototype of the bodies we will one day receive; bodies that are superior, and yet similar to our present ones. (Perfect Ending by Robert Jeffress, page 217)

So, those are the most basic and most asked questions about Heaven.  Who is going to be there?  What are we going to do?  What will we be like?  And, of course, will Fido and Fluffy be there?  Now, just like in the opening illustration of the man who paid your mortgage, you should have some questions about Heaven just like you would have questions about that man.  But you don’t have to know everything about Heaven to realize it’s a good deal.

You wouldn’t have to know the shirt size of the good neighbor paying your mortgage.  You don’t have to know his eye color or his favorite Kardashian.  You just need to know the basics about him.  What matters is if he is trustworthy and serious and if he is going to do what he says he is going to do and if he is then you just accept the deal.

It’s the same with Heaven.  We should ask those questions but what it boils down to is if God is trustworthy and going to do what He says about Heaven.  So, how do we know?  Well, how do we know if anybody is trustworthy?  We have to know if what they have said in the past is true.  Is their word reliable?  If it is, then just accept the deal.  Well, we have God’s Word right here in the Bible.  How do we know it’s true? Well, I’ll tell you what.  I could go all the way back to Genesis and start talking about how what God said would happen, actually happened.  I could tell you all about thousands of prophesies that predicted the birth, life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus hundreds of years before He was born.  Then I could show you in the New Testament all the places where those came true.  I could let you talk to friends of mine who could affirm the Word of God and some of them could tell wild stories of God’s salvation power.  But the best thing I know how to do to convince you of God’s trustworthiness is to just tell my simple story.

I became a follower of Jesus on February 16, 1975.  I was just a kid so my conversion story doesn’t have the flash that some Hells Angel, rapist, murdering, drug dealing thug might have but Jesus saved me that day nonetheless.  I knew that sin was anything that displeases God and I knew I was a sinner.  I could understand enough to know that Jesus was the only way to Heaven and that only He could forgive me of my sin and that without choosing Jesus, I was choosing Hell.  I understood enough.

Since that day, I have learned a lot and the more I study God’s Word, the more I realize I don’t know but I have never, not one time, found an error in His Word.  I have never known of Him to lie or be wrong or be late or unloving.  I don’t always understand Him but I know I can always trust Him.  I don’t have to know all the answers.  He has given me enough to know that He loves me and He is control and so I don’t have anything to fear or worry about. That’s how I know and you can know too.  Ask whatever questions you need to ask.  That’s good.  You should ask.  But at some point, you have to have faith and just accept the deal.  Accept that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life and that no man gets to the Father but through Him. (John 14:6) Accept Him into your life to be Lord of your life and then accept the fact that He will forgive you and make you into a new creation as 2 Corinthians 5:17 says.  All you have to do is accept the deal.

Then, do you know what God expects of you?  He expects you to go tell everybody you know about this deal.  He expects, actually commands that as we go, we are to make disciples of Him.  Do you remember what a disciple is?  We studied that a while back and I remember that a disciple is just somebody that learns from Jesus and then tells others what they know.

The subject of Heaven is a great place to start telling people what you know about it.  That’s exciting to think about and you don’t have to know everything.  It was funny.  A while back at Bible study, we were next door having a discussion about what the sermon was that morning and Jeanna asked some question I didn’t know.  (It’s not that hard.) When I told her I didn’t know, she kind of looked at me funny and said, “Now, I don’t want to be rude, but how are we supposed to have a discussion if you don’t know the answer?”  Well, I’m just a disciple just like y’all are.  I am a long way from knowing everything but what I do know, I want to share with my loved ones.  I want everybody to know Jesus and have a life-changing relationship with Him and so does this church and did you know that the Holy Spirit of God wants that as well? 

Look at verse 17 as we close.  It says, “¹⁷The Spirit and the bride say, "Come!" And let the one who hears say, "Come!" Let the one who is thirsty come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.”  The Spirit says come to Jesus.  The Bride, which is the church says come to Jesus.  I want to announce it from the rooftop, come to Jesus and do you know who I am talking to?  I’m talking to the elect.  I’m talking to those that the Bible calls predestined and do you know who is predestined?  The Bible makes it clear right here that whoever wishes is the elect and the predestined.

We don’t have to know how any of it works.  All we have to do is ask the questions, accept the deal and then announce it to the world.  If you have never accepted the deal then what are you waiting for?  You know enough.  I don’t want to go to Heaven without you.  I love you too much.  Accept the deal today if you haven’t already.