Grace Baptist Church, Nokomis, IL.

Text:

How can we picture “eternity”? Everything we experience in this life is limited by time. I don’t know about you, but I’m grateful that many aspects of life are time-limited. I’m glad that it doesn’t actually take forever for water to boil. I’m also glad that time often heals the pains of strained relationships.

But at other times I’d love to experience certain other moments for an eternity. I wish I could simply watch my kids smile all day long. I wish I had a bottomless bowl of ice cream that I could eat out of forever and ever and never gain a pound. Even good things in this life come to an end.

But Christ will reign forever and ever. He is the King of kings and Lord of lords. If we rest in His grace, we will forever worship Him.

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.” (Revelation 22:1-5)

This passage talks about the final state of how things will be. After all the events of history have taken place, this is a snapshot of what the rest of eternity will look like. I’d like sometime to do a study of heaven with you, describing its beauty and looking at the various elements that we know will be there. This passage mentions a few of these elements (v. 1-2). For this morning, I will simply point out that the tree of life will be there. But the tree of the knowledge of good and evil will not be there. This doesn’t mean that we’ll be ignorant. To the contrary, we will have a greater degree of knowledge than we can ever imagine now, because we’ll see Jesus for who He truly is (1 Corinthians 13:12). It means that we’ll have no desire to rebel against God.

Sin will no longer exist, and everything will be as it should be (v. 3a). We live in a world now where many things are accursed. Nature is accursed. It experiences tornadoes, earthquakes, famines, and floods. People are accursed. We experience disease and death. Those who do not know Christ are accursed. They miss out on the blessings of knowing Jesus in this life, and will be accursed in Hell because they did not humble themselves before the only One who could save them.

But in Heaven, nothing will be accursed. Everything will be perfect. God’s presence there will make everything holy (v. 3b).

I love how the Bible doesn’t attempt to explain some things. The text says that God and the Lamb will be sitting on the throne, and that His servants will worship Him, not them. There is one and only one God. Yet God eternally exists as Three Persons. All people in Heaven will know Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God (v. 4). If we were to see God now, we would die because we’re not worthy. But in Heaven, we will see God face to face, because we will have been made worthy and sinless by the grace of God.

Not only will we able to worship God always, not only will we be able to see God face to face, but we will also have the privilege of reigning with Christ (v. 5). Scripture is clear that Christ will reign forever (Exodus 15:18, Psalm 146:10, Lamentations 5:19, Luke 1:33). But we don’t talk as much about how we will reign with Christ. Perhaps this is because we don’t know much about how this will work. Perhaps this is because we’re uncomfortable with the idea. We’re not worthy. We’re not all wise. Know this: Christ has made us worthy. And know this: we will be always worship Christ. We will forever be grateful for His grace.