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
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