What will that new heavens and that new earth be like? That is our question this evening. We turn to this most amazing text at the end of Scripture itself. It is a text that describes for us the climax of all of God's dealings with his creation and with his creatures. It is a text that describes for us the glorious good news, the ultimate state as we will experience it, the finality of God's work and his dealings, his creation, his redemption, his providence, his care, his promises, his work amongst the children of man.

What will the new heavens and new earth be like? There have been many attempts to describe what the final state will be like (the ultimate state of affairs between God and men). Some describe it not in physical, earthly type of terms, but it has been described in terms that have been popularized with little wings upon our backs, and we each have our own little cloud or some kind of a magical carpet. It is described in sort of nebulous, ethereal, non-tangible spiritual ways.

What will it be like? Will it be a place that is invisible or will it be a place that is visible? What will I be doing there? What will God and Jesus Christ be doing there in that place?

On the other hand, there are those that say that at the end of all things, things simply continue as they are. You maybe have seen those who like to knock on your door on Saturdays passing out their Watch Tower and Tract Society or Awake magazines. They have nice colourful pictures of the new heavens and new earth, with nice smiles on people's faces and nice wonderful things happening amongst those people there.

What will the new heavens and the new earth be like? I have described for you heaven. Heaven is the place that exists now. It is a place that God created. It is a place where God himself has condescended to dwell within, so that when his people die and go to be with the Lord, they have some way of experiencing him. Heaven is another state/realm. We cannot see it. On the other hand, I have described for things that will be after Jesus returns. So now there is this intermediate state called heaven or hell (an intermediate place of blessing or punishment), but when Jesus returns, he who has already been raised bodily, he will raise up his people and also all peoples of the earth, and he will judge them. What happens after that judgment? Where do we go? Where will Jesus be? Where will our loved ones be? Where will the enemies of God, and especially the devil, be?

So what will the new heavens and the new earth be like? We think about that in our text in Revelation 21 and part of Revelation 22 in terms of three basic points. In the first place, the text of Revelation 21 describes for us a new creation. In the second place, there is a new Jerusalem. And in the third place, there is a new Eden.

A New Creation⤒🔗

Notice what verse 1 says: a new creation.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. Revelation 21:1, ESV

Of course, this text should bring to our recollection the opening text of all of Scripture: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). So when Jesus Christ returns—when he comes with his glorious angels and his Church triumphant to come upon this earth, and to raise all people and to transform those who are alive at his coming, and to judge the living and the dead—Jesus shall bring with him a new creation. And John sees this vision of the end of all things, and amazingly, he describes it in similar terms as the first creation (“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”). Here we have: In the end, God shall recreate a new heavens and a new earth. A new creation!

But the question is this: What does the word ‘new’ mean? What is a new creation? What is a new heavens and a new earth? Will this current heavens and this current earth, and will everything God has made—his universe, his creation—cease to exist? Will it be annihilated, as some theologians describe? Will this present creation—the old creation and heavens and earth—be annihilated? Will it cease? Will it end? Will God take it and roll it up like a scroll, as the Psalms say, and throw it away? And out of nothing, ex nihilo, will he create a new heaven and a new earth? After all, this heavens and earth is tainted and stained and fallen into sin. Will this new creation be completely new? 

Or on the other hand, will the new heavens and new earth (this new creation) be a renewed heavens and earth? Will God take the earth, so to speak, which is in his hands (as the little children's song says), and will he throw it away and create a new one? Or will he take that terrestrial ball (as the hymn describes it) recreate it? Will he purge it of its sin? Will he cleanse it of its unrighteousness? Will he make it as it ought to have been in the beginning—a perfect place of fellowship between God and men?

A Creation Renewed←↰⤒🔗

Our Confession of Faith describes for us the latter. I would encourage you to read Article 37, the final paragraph or two of the Belgic Confession of Faith. This describes for us the fact that when Jesus returns, he will “declare himself the judge of the living and the dead” and “set this old world afire, in order to purge it.” That language comes from various texts in the Old and New Testaments, which describe the fact that in the end God will set this world on fire. Fire, though, can be taken in two ways in Scripture. Fire can destroy. That is the first way. It annihilates this heavens and earth. Fire is also an imagery of purging and of cleansing. Many of us used to sing a song that describes the cleansing aspect of fire: Refiner’s Fire.

God will renew and he will purge this heavens and earth by fire (not by a flood, but fire) to cleanse it, to purge it, to remove from it all impurity, all taint of Adam's sin, all of our unrighteous deeds, all of its fallenness, all of its futility. God will cleanse it! And so when we see that John describes that “I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away,” he is describing for us in vivid terminology and prophetic language what we would simply say is this: that God will make a new heavens and a new earth out of the present.

I say that for a few reasons. Let me give you two illustrations of the recreation of the heavens and the earth. This might sound new to many of us. Think about, in the first place, regeneration. Think of when you were lost, when you were outside of Jesus, before you were saved. And then God the Holy Spirit came into your heart, and he regenerated you. He caused you to be born again. Did God completely get rid of who you were and make you completely new in that sense? Annihilating your personality and who you were before and making you completely new? Did he superimpose a new body or a new soul, a new spirit or something else within you? Or did he take you—your personality, your weaknesses, your failures, your strengths, your gifts and your talents—and then out of that did he remake you, reform you and recreate you?

That is the first analogy: the one of regeneration. God took us as we were. Paul describes in the New Testament we are a new creation in Jesus Christ; “the old has passed away…the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). We were “created in Christ Jesus,” as Ephesians 2:10 says. We were transformed, as 2 Corinthians 3 and 4 say ('metamorphosis' is the Greek term). So just as God did not make us ex nihilo (out of nothing), but God took you where you were and how you were and he formed you and fashioned you according to his image, in the same way, at the end of all things, God will take this heavens and this earth as it is and he will use it to form and to fashion a new heaven and a new earth.

A second illustration of this is: Think about the resurrection of Jesus. When God raised up Jesus, did he leave his body there lying in the tomb and then give him a completely new body? No, they found there nothing but the burial clothes and the head covering. God raised up Jesus physically (as we saw a few weeks ago in 1 Corinthians 15). He raised him up as he was, but yet taking him as he was, he transformed him. So it is at the end of all things. God will “raise” this fallen creation. He will resurrect it from its present state of sin and fallenness and taint and futility, and give it new life.

And that is the meaning even of the word itself: 'new'. “I saw a new heaven and a new earth.” This term is used in ancient literature and also in the New Testament to describe that this new heavens and new earth is “new” in the sense that what is old has become obsolete. The old has become obsolete. The oldness, that is, of this creation. The fact that it is tainted. God will get rid of that. But he will not get rid of what he has made. God himself called all things in the beginning “good,” and then at the very end of the days of creation “very good.” And what God has made good and to reflect his image, to reflect his very own handiwork and his creativity, God will not get rid of. It is “very good.” It is we who are not very good. It is we who have turned it on its head to become that which it was not intended to be. God is a God of continuity. Just like he regenerated you and raised up Jesus Christ, so too he shall regenerate and revive and resurrect this present heaven and this present earth.

“The Sea Was No More”←↰⤒🔗

Notice the end of verse one before we move on. The text itself gives us an illustration of this when it says: “and the sea was no more.” A new heavens and a new earth, for the first had passed away, and the sea was no more. Will God get rid of oceans? Will he get rid of water? Will he get rid of large bodies of water that are in between pieces of land, called seas? No. The imagery here of the “sea was no more” is the language of the Old Testament. The sea is a metaphor of ungodliness. The sea is a metaphor of the world around the enemies of God and the enemies of Christ and his people. The sea tumults, the psalmist says. The sea roars. The sea rises up its waves to overtake the Church. But God is mightier than they, the psalmist in Psalm 93 says.

God will not get rid of the sea in that sense. The sea was “no more”: God will take the heavens and the earth and he will remove the “sea” from it. He will remove all ungodliness, all of his enemies, all those who seek to destroy the Church, all those who hate God and who hate his Christ. You can read that in the Psalms. You can read it in the book of Isaiah. You can read it in Daniel. The sea is a metaphor of ungodliness. God shall revive the present heavens and earth by removing from it the “sea” of the world: the flesh and the devil.

A new creation, then. What will the new heavens and the new earth be like? It will be a new creation. Just like you will have a resurrected body. Just like Jesus was raised from the dead and he walked upon the earth and he ate breakfast with his disciples, so too you with a resurrected body shall walk upon a new earth! The language of our text describes for us that the new heavens and the new earth came down “out of heaven from God” (verse 2). The imagery is meant to evoke in us the fact that heaven and earth—that which is above and that which is below—shall be merged together once and for all. There will be no more division between that invisible and visible realm—that place of God's presence of his perfect holiness, and a place that is tainted by our sins. But yet God will recreate in the sense that he will merge together heaven and earth. Heaven shall be on the earth; heaven shall be the earth. We shall walk upon this earth. We shall live and fellowship upon this earth. We shall see that tree of life and the waters like crystal upon this resurrected, recreated, regenerated earth.

God is a God of physical stuff. God is a God who makes matter. God is a God who has declared matter, stuff, to be “very good.” He will not simply chuck it out at the end of all things. He has given you a body, he has given you a place to live, he has given you eyes to see and all the senses that you have, and he will reform those things to their ultimate glory and their ultimate end. No longer will your eyes be used for sin or your ears or your mouth or your hands or feet, but all things shall be made for his glory.

A New Jerusalem←⤒🔗

And then John describes for us a New Jerusalem. He describes a new creation in terms of Genesis, but then he describes a New Jerusalem. Because Jerusalem was “the city of the great king,” the psalmist says (Psalm 48). Jerusalem was the place where the house of God dwelt upon the highest peak. This was the very house of the Lord himself upon this earth. Jerusalem was a miniature of the entire cosmos. One day, not only will God dwell in that one temple and that one city and that one nation, but God will dwell upon the whole earth in that very sense! His special, glorious presence shall fill the earth. John sees this imagery of a New Jerusalem.

The Church as the Bride←↰⤒🔗

But what is so amazing about his imagery? Notice in verse two: “I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem.” Immediately we will think about the real physical city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. But notice: How does he define and describe this New Jerusalem? “Prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” And then verse 9: “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And then he describes in verse 11 the glory that the city has: “The glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.” And is adorned with all the amazing, wonderful things that God has made. Its walls, and its gates made of one pearl! What does this teach us? The New Jerusalem is a metaphor of the Church. The New Jerusalem, the city, is a metaphor for the people of God.

Remember that God dwells amongst his people. Paul describes the Church as the bride of Jesus Christ. And as the bride of Jesus Christ, he washes her with water by the word, that she might be holy and “without spot or wrinkle” (Ephesians 5:26-27). That is what is said here. What Christ is doing now is sanctifying us. Here we see it in glorification. The perfection of the Church of Jesus Christ. The Church comes down out of heaven from God. She is like a bride adorned for her husband, glorious, all decked-out in all of the amazing array of a bride. Here is the Church of Christ—perfected, purified, sinless, glorified, triumphant—coming “down out of heaven from God.”

The Presence of God←↰⤒🔗

John himself uses this language in Revelation 3:12. There is this imagery of pillars and the temple, the new city, the walls, the gates, etc. It is a picture of the Church, the people.

The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name. Revelation 3:12, ESV

“The one” (he or she) “who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God.” He describes interchangeably the person being like an animate pillar, and the inanimate pillars (the city) being the person—being the Bride of the Lord Jesus Christ. So that new heavens and that new earth will be a place where God dwells, because it is in the midst of the city of God (the Church of Jesus Christ) that God himself dwells. As it is described for us, as John hears these amazing words:

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. Revelation 21:3b, ESV

It is a new creation. As the New Jerusalem, it is the very centre of the presence of God. God in the midst of her; the Church surrounding: This is the language of Revelation 4 and 5. Now in heaven we have the throne of God in the centre of heaven and all the hosts of heaven surrounding him. In that day it shall come down out of heaven to the earth. The New Jerusalem is that throne of God; it is that city of God; it is the people of God. In the midst of her is God himself, wiping away their tears, wiping away death, taking away mourning and crying and pain, causing the former things that pass away (“Behold, I am making all things new,” verse 5). This is why in verse 8 he lists off the faithless, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, and so forth. They are not the city of God; they are not the people of God; they are not the holy bride adorned for her husband. The Church is!

A New Eden←⤒🔗

And finally, he describes for us a new garden. There is a new heavens and a new earth: a physical place; a real, resurrected, revived, regenerated, restored earth. [It is] is the very presence of God itself. [It is] described like this New Jerusalem. God himself is their midst, holy and perfect. But there is a third image in Revelation 22:1-5. There is a third way of seeing the new heavens and the new earth. He describes it as a new garden: The garden that was in the land of Eden.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and from the Lamb. Revelation 22:1, ESV, emphasis added

The rivers that were described in Genesis 2 are described in the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel as coming down from the mountain of God. From a great high mountain in the land of Eden flowed these rivers, and one of those rivers went into the land of Eden. In the new heavens and the new earth it is described as a “river of the water of life,” and that water flows out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. The holy mountain, the holy sanctuary, sending forth its reviving waters.

On either side of the river, the tree of life…

That is Genesis 2 again.

…with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. Revelation 22:2b, ESV

Did you ever wonder where the tree of life went after the Fall? When God forbade Adam and Eve to enter into the Garden, barring access to the tree of life—the visible sacrament, the sign and the seal of everlasting life in the presence of God, which they could no longer grab hold of and eat? Where did it go in Scripture? We find it again in the book of Revelation. The only difference is that in the book of Revelation the tree of life is freely accessible. It is available to all those who hear and all those who believe. It is available to those who overcome, who suffer with the Lamb, who worship in that holy temple, who are in that new creation, who are members of that New Jerusalem. Its leaves are for “the healing of the nations.”

“They Will See His Face”←↰⤒🔗

And that is why he says in verse 4: “They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.” As Adam walked with God in the Garden, as our forefathers saw miraculous signs and wonders (smoking fire pots, flaming torches, etc.), so we shall see his face: The face of Jesus Christ. God himself, being spirit, is invisible, but we shall see the face of Jesus Christ. “And he who has seen me,” Jesus says, “has seen the Father” (John 14:9). We will see the face of God and the face of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We will see God in his presence before us, and we shall worship in that presence. For he and the Lamb are its temple. He and the Lamb are the centre of that throne, the centre of that city, the centre of that creation. We will see his face. No more curse. No more barring us from fellowship with God. No more barring us from access into God's most Holy of Holies. We shall see his face.

How much clearer could he describe for us entrance into the presence of God? Here is the essence of what the tabernacle and the temple and all the types and the shadows were pointing forward to: To see God. To behold his beauty. To inquire in his temple. To gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. To fellowship with him. To hear his voice. To worship his name. And that name shall be upon our foreheads, marking us out as his own holy, special people! John stretches vocabulary. John stretches imagination. John stretches the wonders that all of us have deep down in our hearts to understand. But he seeks to give us something of a glimpse. That is why he uses the metaphors, the images, and the language of the Old Testament.

What shall it be like? All we can say is that it will be a new creation. What this creation is like it shall not be. It shall be a new city. What the Church of Christ is like now in all of its sin, it shall not be in that place. And it shall be a new garden. What we have now in fellowshipping with God is through a glass dimly, as Paul says. And as John says, what we will be we do not even know, but we will be like him (1 John 3:2). That veil shall be lifted. We shall see him in the face of Jesus. And may we who have not even seen him now, as Peter says, “rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8b-9).