A River Runs Through It: A Sermon on Heaven
Too often, mention of heaven feels trite. A loved one is ripped away from us by death, and we are reminded they are in a better place. We are weary with pain, and a well-meaning friend tells us to put our hope in the eternal bliss that awaits us. Although true, the words usually land flat.
Why? Among other reasons, such mentions of heaven are abstract. There’s nothing concrete for our minds to reach out and grab. There’s no fodder for our imagination, and therefore, no food for hope. Heaven, in a sense, needs to be brought down to earth.
As someone whose job is to comfort and bring hope to the hurting, this is in many ways a counseling issue worthy of thought. When I was recently given a chance to fill in as a substitute preacher, I decided I’d try and fill in the gap - to imagine heaven, which the book of Revelation calls the New Creation.
I’ve linked the sermon audio below, as well as the manuscript.
Bless you,
David
A River Runs Through It: A Sermon on Heaven
“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
A River Runs Through It - anyone remember that Robert Redford movie from the 90s? It’s about a fly fishing family in Montana and tells the story of Norman Maclean and his brother Paul (played by Brad Pitt). At the end of the story, when Norman reflects on the tragic death of his brother, he says this: “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.” Clearly, that’s the line the movie and book get their name from. And being the son of a Presbyterian minister, there is only one thing Norman could be referring to - the very passage we read today, where, in the New Creation, “all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.” Norman is reflecting on this because he is looking beyond the current sorrow of his brother’s death to the future hope of their reunion. But that reunion is not in just any old place - but in one that has a river running through it where they can fly fish like they did as boys.
I’d like to do something similar with you today, to try to look beyond the pain and difficulty of this life, even if only for a brief moment, beyond the tragedy of the Guadalupe River. Like Zacchaeus, we’re going to climb up the sycamore of Revelation 22, above the crowd of our present troubles, and see what we can see of the coming King. The apostle Paul once said no one can imagine what God has prepared for those who love him, but Paul did not forbid us to try. So our task today is simply that - to imagine the kingdom. Thankfully, we are not left to our own ideas but have passages like the one we just read to keep us grounded.
First, let’s look at the joys of the New Creation. Verses 1-2 say: “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.” Then notice also verse 5, “They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light...” All of this brings us back to the first Creation. Here at the last chapter of the Bible, we’re circling back to first. There is light. There are trees yielding fruit. And like Eden, there is a river running through it all. But our passage goes further - all these things have been upgraded. Not that it’s become less than physical - it’s certainly that, but it’s also more than physical. This is Creation 2.0, the New Heavens and the New Earth.
In this upgraded reality, everything - everything - has become holy. The light making the grass grow is coming not from the sun but from God’s face. Apparently it was not a figure of speech when Jesus said he is the Light of the World. Or when you’re hungry and go and pluck fruit from the tree, it will not only feed your body, but your spirit, too, because it’s the Tree of Life. And when you step into the river in your hip waders to fly fish for trout, you’ll be simultaneously cleansed by the water of life. This is the setting for eternity, a place where there is no longer any division between the physical and spiritual. A place where the natural world is radiant with God, where our spiritual life is no longer by faith but sight. And not just sight, but by touch and taste and smell and sound. Everything becomes, as it were, sacramental. To use a somewhat silly analogy, it reminds me of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, where trees and leaves and flowers are not only beautiful, but edible, where even the wallpaper is not merely functional, but tastes like pineapple and snozberries. Likewise, in the New Creation, where the physical and spiritual have been once and for all fused together in Christ, nothing will be merely physical, but holy and full of grace.
So if you’ve ever secretly yawned in boredom at the thought of being spirits floating around in the clouds stroking harps for eternity, this passage is good news, because it shows us that’s not what awaits us. The heaven we are destined for is actually a New Earth. And like Peter and Edmund and Lucy at the end of the Chronicles of Narnia, we will forever be going further up and further in, exploring with ever-deepening joy an earth that has been recreated, returned to God, and blessed in ways too wonderful for our fallen minds to grasp.
There are other joys to imagine, too. Have you noticed - there’s something peculiar about this New Creation. It’s not exactly the Garden of Eden, is it? It has streets. It has a throne. It is civilized and, as the previous chapter says, it has walls and gates and a name - the New Jerusalem. It’s not a garden, but a city. A garden city. Rather than the Tower of Babel, this is what the Garden of Eden would have become if mankind had cultivated and developed it without turning away from God. “Thy kingdom come,” we pray every Sunday, “on earth as it is in heaven.” Here, our prayer has finally been answered. The kingdom of God is no longer merely a spiritual reality.
For this to be possible, mankind has finally given up its independence and become reunited with God. No longer ruling ourselves, humanity has fully and finally submitted to the lordship of Jesus. And as an eternal reminder that he is Lord and we are not, in the midst of this city is the throne of Christ the King, the God-man who reconciled heaven and earth. I love verse three, “No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it.” It’s precisely because this place is ruled by the rightful King that there will be no curse. When we dethroned him and became our own rulers we cursed ourselves, but under his lordship we flourish. Notice also, verse 2 says the leaves of the Tree of Life are for what purpose? “The healing of the nations.” Here in the New Jerusalem, every tongue, tribe, and nation are gathered under his reign like chicks under the wings of a hen, where they heal and flourish as they were originally designed.
Let’s imagine as well the kinds of things we’ll do in the New Creation. The end of verse three tells us, “His servants will worship him.” We came out of the womb looking for someone to worship. Yet, we’ve found no one on earth truly worthy. Since we were children, we’ve longed for something we could give our entire selves to. Like the children’s book, we look to everything, asking, “Are you my mother?” Yet, we’re perpetually disappointed. We’re all, as the parable goes, merchants in search of fine pearls. But finally, here, sitting on the throne is the One we’ve been looking for, inviting us to come and worship. This is the moment, as CS Lewis said, that “the door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.”
To understand this joy more fully, it’s worth considering the term translated “worship.” It’s not the usual Greek word that’s used, which means to bow down in honor. Instead, this is a much more expansive word. The NIV and King James translate it “to serve” - “his servants will serve him.” It could also be translated “work.” We will work for him. The idea here is that we will not only be worshiping like we are today. Certainly that. But service or work of any kind will fill our hearts with the adoration of God. As we wash the dishes after the Supper of the Lamb, our hearts will burn within us. We’ll be unable to sweep the streets of gold without dancing a jig. This is why David said he’d rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God for one day than spend a thousand days elsewhere. Because even in the most menial work, we will be marveling, “I’ve found it. The Pearl of Great Price I’ve been looking and longing for my whole life - I’ve found it!”
We won’t only be serving though, because verse five tells us we “will reign with him forever and ever.” What exactly does that mean? I can only speak of what I know, which is this - in the beginning, mankind was put on earth to be God’s representatives, to extend his dominion and presence over all the created order. We were made in his image so we could express him to the natural world and to each other in a thousand different ways. My guess is that we will be doing something similar as we reign in the New Earth.
The supreme joy of the New Creation, of course, is not the river and trees, nor the work we’ll do nor even the prestige of ruling over it. The supreme joy is in verse 4: “They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.” We will see his face, and his name will be on our face. First, how do we understand this name on the forehead thing? To put it simply, this is our identity in Christ. No longer will our status as saints be something we cling to in faith, it will be a reality we can see in the mirror. There will no longer be room to doubt that we belong to him, and greater still, that he belongs to us. Because his name, which is another way of saying his person, will be imprinted on us once for all. We will bear the unmistakable family resemblance. We will be remade in his image all over again, this time with no chance of defacing it.
Yet, wonder of wonders, I don’t think we will even be looking much at ourselves. Instead, we’ll be lost in awe at the sight of his face. You may remember - Moses was not allowed to see the face of God. Even the seraphim, the mighty angels who flew around the throne in Isaiah 6, cover their eyes to keep from looking a holy God in the face. And yet here in the New Creation, he will not hide his face from us. Somehow, someway, our resurrected bodies and souls will have the capacity to grasp the beauty of God without imploding. Our eyes will be able to see his glory without it reducing us to ashes.
Not long ago Jess and I got to see an exhibition of the artist Bruce Herman at Park Cities Presbyterian in Dallas. He had painted a breathtaking series of portraits. Listen to Bruce’s words as an artist who has spent years studying faces: “The face is the place of revelation. It’s where the mystery of personhood in all its drama unfolds. Faces can be masks, but they are more often the site of candid unveiling. The essence of a thing or of a person is almost impossible to depict apart from studying and evoking its face.” Then Bruce adds this: “Christ is the full manifestation, the face, the image of God in human form.”
Likewise, Paul says: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as I am known.” That, I think, is the best definition we will get - to see the face of God is to know him like he knows us. We’ll no longer have to memorize John 3:16 to know that he loves us. We’ll see it on his face. We won’t have to read it in a book but will hear it from his own mouth. My five year old, Hope, is known for her random, quirky outbursts in our home. Two weeks ago, in a moment of distress, she closed her eyes tight and called out, “I want to see Jesus for real life!” Keep knocking on that door, Hope, and it will one day open at last, and you will see him for real life.
Now, having considered the joys, let’s try to imagine the cost of the New Creation. I recently saw on the news that the most expensive room at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City is $50,000 a night. If you were to see a nobody like me spending a night, much less an eternity, in such a place, the thought would no doubt arise - ‘I wonder who’s paying for that guy’s stay. He must have a rich uncle or something.’ Obviously I couldn’t have paid for the room, but of course someone did.
Our eternity in the New Creation is similar. We are, all of us, a bunch of nobodies. What right do we have to be in a place like the New Jerusalem? Adam bankrupted us all with his sin, and all of us have only compounded the debt ever since with our own sins. In an act of generosity, God donated his Son to us, sending him to earth as a Second Adam to clean up the mess of the First. Picking up the tab for us, Jesus paid the penalties and fees we owed to God, offering himself as payment, the greatest donation in history. In this way, he expunged his followers’ criminal records and cleared their names through the Cross.
Yet, he did more than just bring the account balance to zero. If you remember, the Garden of Eden didn’t have one tree, like the New Creation, but two. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was there originally as a test of trust and obedience. A test the first Adam failed, which is what got us into so much poverty in the first place. But Jesus, Adam 2.0, passed the test, trusting and obeying in all the ways the first Adam failed. And having passed the test, he became wealthy beyond belief. But he died without ever spending a penny on himself. And as a final act of generosity, in his last will and testament, he left his whole inheritance, his entire estate - the New Jerusalem - to nobodies like you and me who believe in him. We really do have, in a sense, a rich uncle.
Recently I finished a biography of Vincent Van Gogh, the famous painter. I had no clue how much the man had suffered. He spent his thirty seven years of life in total obscurity, rejected by much of his family and thought crazy by society. He suffered from epilepsy and bipolar. Having only sold one painting in his lifetime, he lived in poverty and often went about in rags and without food. Despite today being considered one of the greatest painters who ever lived, he could count on one hand the number of people that liked his work. Eventually, he began to notice a pattern in his life - that he could not paint when he was comfortable and happy but produced his best work when he was miserable. Therefore, he embraced suffering. Eventually, after cutting his ear off in an epileptic fit, he committed himself to an insane asylum. As I was in this part of the biography, I was amazed to read that he continued to paint. I thought, “What could he have possibly painted in the midst of such suffering.” I looked it up and couldn’t believe it. It was looking out the tiny barred window of his insane asylum that he painted his most famous work Starry Night. In fact, every one of the paintings he is famous for was painted in this three year period at the end of his life, when he was most tormented in body and soul. Painting cost him everything, yet, through his suffering came some of the most exquisite art we’ll ever know. What was pain to him became beauty for us. What he experienced as a dark night of the soul, we experience as Starry Night.
Poet George Herbert makes the same point about the Cross: “Love is that liquor sweet and most divine, Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.” The love that means joy for us meant agony for him. The tree that brought him death became for us a Tree of Life. What is free to us cost him everything. Thus, while we are going further up and further in to the bounty of the New Creation, we’ll be always aware of the love that paid for it all, and we’ll worship him all the more for it.
Now, some of you may be thinking, “Ok, well, that’s great and all, David, but for the foreseeable future I’m stuck here in the Old Creation. What’s all this pie-in-the-sky have to do with life on this side of glory?” It’s a fair question. However, if you are asking it, you are forgetting something. According to the Bible, eternal life has already begun. No, of course not in full. Yet, we live in the twilight of the two ages, an overlap. What we sometimes call the ‘already but not yet.’ I’ll mention a handful of ways Scripture affirms this, and then we’ll be done.
First, think about the way Jesus spoke of the kingdom. The same Jesus who taught us to pray ‘Thy kingdom come’ also said ‘The kingdom is at hand,’ already ‘among us.’ The kingdom is stubborn, refusing to stay in the future, but shifts through time, breaking into the present in power and grace. And all of us who believe in him are proof of that.
When Jesus defined eternal life in his priestly prayer he said, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Having come to know Jesus, this means eternal life has already begun. We have the essence, the seed of heaven, even if it isn’t yet fully grown.
And though we await the return of the King, Paul says we are citizens of heaven already. Eugene Peterson defines the church as “a colony of heaven in the country of death.” The New Jerusalem, in other words, has colonized this world. As we learn to love, serve, and worship, we’re learning to speak the language and use the manners of our home country. Our community life here at Grace Pres is a dress rehearsal for life in the New Creation.
As far as the Old Creation, Psalm 19 tells us that even in this fallen world, the heavens declare the glory of God and creation pours out speech about him. We can’t fly fish yet in the crystal clear river of the water of life, but we can still enjoy God’s goodness catching catfish off a jon boat in the muddy waters of Lake Bistineau. This world is transcendent for those who know its Creator.
And lastly, think of how Paul speaks of the Holy Spirit, which he calls a down payment of the glory that awaits us. Forgiveness, sanctification, power over sin, fellowship with God - the blessings we currently enjoy through the Spirit are all part of the first installment of the joys of heaven. And chief among these blessings - consider the Supper that we have each week. Theologian Michael Horton says, like the olive branch brought by Noah’s dove, the Spirit brings us the bread and wine as signs of the New Earth, as a foretaste of the communion we’ll have when we see him face to face.
No doubt, our project today to imagine the kingdom was a setup for failure. Paul warned us, didn’t he? The fallen, finite human mind simply isn’t capable. Even so, as you’ve climbed the sycamore of Revelation 22, even if all you’ve seen is a fleeting glance of the New Creation from the corner of your eye, may it sustain you until you arrive there. And like Zacchaeus, as we climb down from the tree back into the Old Creation, let’s not forget the Savior is here, even now, inviting himself into our homes and lives.
