Saturday, October 31, 2015

Short Introduction to Rev. 21:9-22:5


SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/31/2015 11:38 AM

My Worship Time                                                  Focus:  A Short Introduction to Rev. 21:9-22:5

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Revelation 21:9-22:5

            Message of the verses:  In Today’s Spiritual Diary I am not going to write the verses that we are going to be looking at over the next several days as they are many and can be read in any Christian Bible.  These verses speak of “The New Jerusalem,” something that is a real place and a place where all believers will go to some day when this world is destroyed by fire as we have been learning about in our previous Spiritual Diaries.

            Last night my wife and I went to a memorial service for a friend of ours and the Pastor whom I know and have great respect for did a wonderful job in his sermon, and his sermon was about heaven.  As I sat and listened to what he had to say about heaven I went back to what we have been learning about heaven in our studies from the book of Revelation, especially these last chapters.  It is comforting to believers who lose a loved one to the enemy of death, and this is the way we all will go unless the Lord returns in the Rapture to take us to be with Him while we are still alive.  As I thought about heaven last night I thought about how important it is to study about heaven and to let others know about heaven, for as the Pastor said last night Heaven is a real place and will be filled with real people, people who have in their life here on earth have put their faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ to save them from their sins, as He died on the cross to save all who will come to Him in faith.  When love ones die who have trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord it surely gives us great comfort knowing that some day we will see them again when we get to heaven.

            Let us look at some verses that come from the lips of our Lord on the very night that He was taken to be tried and later on killed Jesus told His disciples “1 "Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. 2  "In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. 3 “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”  The disciples of Jesus needed to hear this, just like we need to hear it and that is that our Lord is preparing a real place for us to go to when our work on this earth is finished.  Thomas was not sure how they were to get there so Jesus said to him and to us:  “"I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.  (John 14:1-3, 6)

            As we look at several verses from the book of Hebrews we will see that the OT saints knew that there would be a place where they would go to be with the Lord when they died.  Before we look at these verse I have a quote from John MacArthur on the New Jerusalem which is the Capital City of Heaven:  “Because it is the capital city of heaven and the link between the new heaven and the new earth, the New Jerusalem is central to the vision and is described in far more detail than the rest of the eternal state.”  Now we look at Hebrews 11:8-10 “8  By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise; 10 for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

            MacArthur goes on to write “In the next chapter, the writer penned the following description of the New Jerusalem”:  “22  But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, 23  to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.”  “As he closed out that epistle, he reminded his readers that ‘here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come’ (Heb.13:14).

            “What Abraham, the writer of Hebrews, and the rest of the redeemed have anticipated by faith was revealed to and described by John.  His view of heaven’s capital includes several features:  its general appearance, exterior design, internal character, and the privileges of its inhabitants.”

            That, of course will be the outline that we will be following as we look at these verses in Revelation 21-22.

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  God’s timing is always perfect even if we don’t realize it until later, but listening to the sermon last night and studying about heaven has brought great peace to my heart over the loss of our friend.

My Steps of Faith for Today:  I have a rather long prayer list that has different things for me to pray about and one of the categories has people who are ill, and another is for God to give strength to widows and widowers and I hate to cross one off who has been sick and not recovered and then put their spouse on the widow and widower list.  This happened again on 10-19-15.

Answer to yesterday’s Bible question:  “Profane and old wives’ fables” (1 Timothy 4).

Today’s Bible question:  “What kind of worship does God desire”

Answer in our next SD.

10/31/2015 12:17 PM

 

No comments:

Post a Comment