revelation 21:8 spurgeon revelation 21:8 spurgeon

And as for ourselves, dear friends, mournfully as we sometimes think of the flight of time, we are wont cheerfully to look out upon the new epochs as they begin to dawn upon us. The mercy-seat, what a different place it is now! You young people, as soon as ever you know the Lord, I exhort you to study well that word "covenant." Astronomers tell us that, within living memory, several starry worlds have burnt out, and vanished out of sight. Peter 3:7. We cannot demand the servile wage because we have already all that our Father possesses. He makes all things new." REVELATION 21:2 The new Jerusalem. That is, all who love anyone or anything better than God. Revelation 21:2. REVELATION 21:1 Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. THE NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 20:4; Revelation 20:11, in a succession. Listen! You will break your resolutions, and be nothing bettered by your attempts at reform. 8 But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars-their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. O anxious one, it can turn you! I will pray, "Lord, make my children new." I have known the Lord on a sudden to turn darkness into light, and take away the sackcloth and the ashes from his dear children, for "he doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men." it was there that the new world was born! Sorrow shalt cease, and tears shall be wiped away. Genesis and Revelation contrasted. If our calendar suggests some dismal memories in the past, our calculation forestalls some happier prospects in the future. t _TOMLINSON'S COMMENTS_ what a blessed world it would have been! But equal if not greater glory must be ascribed to the great Regenerator, the New Creator, shall we not all sing together to his praise? iv. "But why, my dear brother?" "Behold I make all things new." I believe that Jesus Christ has in some of you not only made you new, but made everything new to you. That dolorous pain, then, of the Master was the world's new- making. That was all I was able to say just then. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. Rather, by God's grace, may we henceforth believe more in him, and, according to our faith, so shall it be done unto us. This might naturally be understood as in Revelation I am persuaded that the most of us are beggars when we might be millionaires in spiritual things. The usual introduction to a new vision (cf. Lord, give us pardon for the past, And strength for days to come.". The process which we have roughly described as taking place in ourselves is in other forms going on in the world. He who in the beginning created the heaven and the earth now reveals to the gaze of faith His second and final world. Site by Mere. WE shall take these words as referring to heaven. JOHN was the beloved disciple, the choicest spirit of the twelve, the , Heaven Above, and Heaven Below And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers. Certainly it is most true of the celestial city, as well as of the millennial city, that the throne of God and of the , Till We Meet Again And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. CHAPTER XXI. Every healthy boy and girl in many countries loves the ocean. That Church he sends into the world to act upon the rest of mankind. THE first saints could never be long without speaking of their Lord and Saviour. As I walked the other day down the streets of Paris, and saw the soldiers with their pretty dresses, and the knives and forks which they carried with them to carve men and make a meal for death, I could not help thinking this is a pretty world, this is. The moment the divine life comes into the heart we believe: the moment we believe the eternal life is there. We have the first-fruits of the Spirit, and we groan within ourselves while we wait for the fullness of that new creation. "I make all things new," begins with the bringing in of a better hope by virtue of a better covenant. Charles Haddon Spurgeon : Numbers 21:8: A Song At the Well-Head: Spurgeon, Charles Haddon: Numbers 21:16-20: The End of the Righteous Desired: Spurgeon, Charles Haddon: Numbers 23:10: The Star of Jacob: Spurgeon, Charles Haddon: Numbers 24:17-19: The Census of Israel: Spurgeon, Charles Haddon: Numbers 26:63-65: This is the world of weeping, but it passes away. 5, 6. He that sitteth on the throne can do for you what you cannot do for yourself; and, as he made you once, and you became marred by sin, he can new make you; for he saith. If he will but work upon us by his grace, we cannot tell what he will make of us before he places us in the position he has appointed for us in the glorious city that rests upon these twelve precious foundations. They have been as deeply sunken in sin, and as hardened by habit as ever thou canst be, and they thought themselves given up to despair, as thou thinkest thyself to be; yet the Spirit of God carried out the will of the Lord Christ, and made them new. are burning and wasting it beneath our feet, fires everfeeding on THEN I SAW A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH. . The day shall come when this world shall be as fair as it was at the primeval Sabbath; when there shall be a new heaven and a new earth, wherein shall dwell righteousness. I do not know that I admire brethren for calling out in the service as our friends did just now; but I certainly do not blame them. The old, old gospel is the newest thing in the world; in its very essence it is for ever good news. glorious state of the church, not in the times of the apostles, or I am going to talk to-night for a little upon the great transformation spoken of in the text, "I make all things new;" and then upon the earnest call in the text to consider that transformation: "He that sat upon the throne said, 'Behold': attend, consider, look to it!" We were like Ezekiel's deserted infant unswaddled and unwashed, left in our pollution to die; but the Son of God passed by and saw us in the greatness of our ruin. Why, it is because we get away from him who says, "Behold, I make all things new." I should be very much surprised if some of you that come here, time after time, are not converted. everlasting Glory of the Place. When he says, "Let there be order," chaos says, "Nay, I will maintain confusion." _The wretched state of the ungodly_, 8. In praise we will vie with angels and archangels, for they are not so indebted to grace as we are. He has come to make the world new. John sees in a vision the blissful glory of FROM NOW TO THE END OF TIME kingdom __ The old way of life was, "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." He spends a life of weariness and sorrow amongst those who despise him, and if you want to know first and foremost how he makes all things new, you must see him sweating great drops of blood in the garden that is the blood of the new world which he is pouring forth! It is written, "By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities"; and this scripture is fulfilled in all those who believe in the Lord Jesus unto eternal life. REVELATION 21:1 TO REVELATION 22:5. The doctrine of the new heaven and the new earth goes back to Isaiah He said, "I should have been very much surprised if he had not been." And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. The regeneration of his people, their new birth, is a foretaste of what is yet to happen to this whole world of ours. There shall be a new heaven and a new earth, so says the first verse of this chapter; and therefore there will be nothing to weep over concerning the Fall and its consequent miseries. revelation of the things beyond the end. Yet most people today have never heard of John Gill. And I saw a new Heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and Our path to eternal glory is the road of faith, "The just shall live by faith." Revelation 21:26. 'A New Creation' and 'Sermon for New Year's-Day', A Sermon Published on Thursday, July 15th, 1915. Also there was no more sea._ "Commentary on Revelation 8". "Because I asked the Lord to convert him, and I kept on praying that he might be converted; and I should have been very much surprised if he had not been." You may take a precious stone to a jeweler, and ask him what its value is, but he will say, I cannot tell what it is worth until it has been cut and polished. That is how the Lord will prove the value of his living stones. Aug. omits . And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful." Blessed be his name. Why, himself. (Revelation 21:1) Th _aor. My own health is precarious. Subterranean fires The wilderness of destruction lies before you. It was there in the travail of his soul did you ever catch that idea, the travail of his soul? They shall not hunger nor , The Followers of the Lamb Look at the text, "Behold I make all things new." We have seen men become new husbands, and women become new wives. Yet most people today have never heard of John Gill. God grant you may! It is filled with a divine enthusiasm which it once rejected as fanatical. The Holy Spirit, though the old nature is still there, has been pleased to put within them a new nature. That same Spirit of God who taught us that we were ruined in our old estate, led us gently by the hand till we came to the New Covenant promise and looked to Jesus, and saw in him the full atonement for sin. When he saith, "Let there be light," darkness saith, "There shall not be light." This new principle is, from day to day, gathering strength, and winning the victory. And there was no more sea. 20:11, etc.). But there came a serpent, and his craft spoiled it all. When he says, "Let there be holiness, let there be love, let there be truth," the principalities and powers of evil withstand him, and say, "There shall not be holiness, there shall be sin; there shall not be love, there shall be hate; there shall not be truth, there shall be error; there shall not be the worship of God, there shall be the worship of stocks and stones; men shall bow down before idols which their own hands have made." How pleased we are with that which is new! Why should we not lift up our voices in his praise? And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb's wife. You kept thinking about it, and Compare Isaiah 65:17. Thus we fell into condemnation through another, and we rise into justification through another. Here as in Revelation This is the first day of a new year, and therefore a solemnly joyous day. John saw, in vision, the glorified Church of God coming to dwell on the new earth, descending for a while from heaven to be the very glory of the newly-created world. We are not what we shall be, but assuredly we are not what we used to be. Our wretched, formal prayers, if we did offer them what a mockery they were! My business is a thorny maze. Yet God could do even that; and so he can reverse the course of your fallen nature, and make you act as a new man. The first heaven is passed You know that they are Sabbath-breakers, and utterly godless, and you tremble for their eternal fate. Shut gates signify war; open gates mean peace. The endless end of evil has passed before the vision of the seer, and Amen. Revelation xxii. , DISCOURSE: 2529 We are crossing the line now. God has breathed into them a new life. and face of the church; but some apply it to the state of the church 8 But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. What do you yourself do with a bad servant? THE NEW HEAVEN AND NEW EARTH The Judgment is over. The curse fell on him, as it is written, "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." _God dwells with men; the happy state of his followers_, 3-7. Oh! last time, and we behold the new universe. ", We ought not, as men in Christ Jesus, to be carried away by a childish love of novelty, for we worship a God who is ever the same, and of whose years there is no end. But Jesus Christ, who knew that we should never make this world much better, let us do what we would with it, designed from the very first to make a new world of it. It loves what once it hated; it hates what once it loved. But, even if you do not, we shall pray for you; and we were sure that you opposed our intercessions, and were even angry with them, we should pray all the more, for we mean to have you won for Jesus, by the grace of God, and you may as well come soon as late. Revelation 19:1; _Revelation 21:1 and Revelation 22:1_ Friends have said in wonder, "What a change in John! And they will be brought in, I feel assured; but, oh, that it may be this year! THE SEVENTH VISION: OF THE HEAVENLY JERUSALEM. There they are, perfect, and holy, and just, and good; but, alas, dear friends, you and I have broken the commandments. The house of God, how different it is from what it used to be! But, oh, the grace of God, how it can tame us! Let every one that has been a great transgressor remember how Manasseh received a new heart, and repented of his evil deeds. act. It is otherwise with Christ. "A servant abideth not in the house for ever." I cannot doubt of the possibility of your salvation, my dear friend, whenever I think of my own. Such gold as never was, nor is, nor ever shall be on this earth until that time when God shall have purified it. It were hard to say which has the stronger power over the human mind antiquity or novelty. CHAPTER XXI There shall be no more fear of war, no Gog and Magog to gather together to battle, no Armageddon to be dreaded by the glorified Church of Christ, which shall be in perfect peace for ever. earth_ succeed in the room of the _first heaven and first earth,_ I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. The Lord Jesus Christ was speaking of lofty themes, of worlds newly made, and yet in the very middle of it all he puts this gracious promise. Do you not agree with our prayers? Rev 66:22. Though there is no real difference between it and any other day, yet in our mind and thought it is a marked period, which we regard as one of the milestones set up on the highway of our life. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. Oh, what a blessing it would be for some workers if God would make them strong! And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. radically changed. _CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES_ As for myself, my consciousness of being a new man in Christ Jesus is often as sharp and crisp as my consciousness of being in existence. When men "cross the line," they find no visible mark: the sea bears no trace of an equatorial belt; and yet mariners know whereabouts they are, and they take notice thereof, so that a man can hardly cross the line for the first time without remembering it to the day of his death. This is commendable resolving, but what will come of it? He can make that prayer-meeting no longer a dreary affair, but quite a new thing to you and all the people. "Well, I am going to mend myself," says one: "I have taken the pledge, and I am going to be honest, and chaste, and religious." App-133. You say to him, "There are your wages: go." Blessed book; it is just the same, but oh, how differently do we read it. Our curiosity has been excited full often to ask a vast number of questions, but after being excited, it has never been gratified, for Gods word has told us little about , A Voice from Heaven changes in their appearance, that they seemed to be just created CHAPTER 21 Amen. Numbers of Christians seem to live in the marshes always. 8:2; _WONDERFUL FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD REVELATION 21:1-7:_ God's faithful THE NEW JERUSALEM Jerusalem, temple, light, Paradise (Chap. --- The Toward a Hence we read of being "justified by faith," and being made acceptable to God by faith. The greater the sinner, the greater the joy to loving believers when they see him saved. By making new men he makes a new society, which society he calls his "Church". wanting REVELATIONNOTE ON REVELATION 21:1 The destruction of death will Revelation 21:15. We have seen many transformed into new parents and new children. In the things of God the old is ever new, and if any man brings forward that which seems to be new doctrine and new truth, it is soon perceived that the new dogma is only worn-out heresy dexterously repaired, and the discovery in theology is the digging up of a carcass of error which had better have been left to rot in oblivion. As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.. Why should some of you be living at a penny a day and starving yourselves, when your Father would give you to live like princes of the blood royal if you would but trust him? Heaven is God's dwelling place. Revelation Our children's eyes sparkle when we talk of giving them a toy or a book which is called new; for our short-lived human nature loves that which has lately come, and is therefore like our own fleeting selves. Now, we are beyond the thousand years. Ver. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him he glory and dominion for ever and ever. A has "Why?" I SAW A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH, &C. _A new heaven and a new Revelation 21:8. You may put it among the most golden sentences like a precious stone in a setting of pure gold, and it will never be out of order come when it may. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. You may build a brick house, if you please; but, build it as you like, it will be a house of brick upon whatever principles of architecture it may be constructed; not until that brick shall be transformed to marble can you hope to "dwell in marble halls." And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God. Revelation xiv. If Jesus has not made us new already, let the new year cause us to think about the great and needful change of conversion; and if our Lord has begun to make us new, and we have somewhat entered into the new world wherein dwelleth righteousness, let us be persuaded by the season to press forward into the center of his new creation, that we may feel to the full all the power of his grace. We ought never to forget this bottom of everything, this making of all things new by the fashioning of a new covenant, so that we have come out from under the bondage of the law and the ruin of the fall, and we have entered upon the liberty of Christ, into acceptance with God, and into the boundless joy of being saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation, so that we "shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end." This vision relates to a If you go through the valleys of Switzerland, you will find yourself get feverish and heavy in spirit, and you will see many idiots, persons with the goitre, and people greatly afflicted. From the moment that we trusted in Jesus, a new life darted into our spirit. It seems at first to be astounding that the height of a city should be equal to the length and the breadth of it; but if you have traveled in Italy, you must have seen many a city, perched upon a hill, which seemed to be even higher than it was broad or long, if you included the wall of the city, and the houses one above another right up to the loftiest minaret or tower. And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is of the angel. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters. Revelation vii. The apostle Peter has told us that this world also will be destroyed by fire, but it will afterwards be renewed, and a new sky and a new earth will appear after the first firmament and the first earth shall have become extinct. BEHOLD AND TO BELIEVE. HEAVEN. 3. None but a Savior on the throne could accomplish it; and therefore let him have the glory of it. 4 Those who have suffered death for their loyalty during the great but, brethren and sisters, we do not know; since the Lord saved us, there cannot be any limits as to what he can do. II. It is his high prerogative to make and to destroy. I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell--you see, I have For which I thought he was a wise man: but yet I do not wonder if men who have tasted of the grace of God, and feel that the Lord has done great things for them, whereof they are glad, do feel like crying out for joy. This is unfortunate, since his works contain priceless gems of information that are found nowhere except in the ancient writings of the Jews. Swelling words have been spoken and great attempts taken in hand to renovate society, but you can never renovate society till you have renovated the individual members who compose society. THE MARRIAGE OF THE LAMB Yes, we shall come to this if we are believers. he now observes the resultant order. New - in the sense of being There shall be no death, nor sorrow nor crying, nor pain, nor trial of any kind; all shall be happiness for all shall be holiness. "Ay, but it is not," says one; and I am sorry I cannot contradict him. ", I should not wonder, therefore, if the mere words of my text should sound like a pleasant song in your ears; but I am thankful that their deeper meaning is even more joyful. No mercenary motive now stirs the new creature: "My God, I love thee not because I hope for heaven thereby, Nor yet because who love thee not Must burn eternally.". Christ makes new servants, new masters, new friends, new brothers, new sisters. Had it possessed a teeming population like its present one, and if, one by one, those godly ones had been caught away, like Elijah, without knowing death, to be succeeded by pious descendants oh! INTRODUCTORY WORDS I labored to win heaven by self-righteousness, and this is as real a rebellion as open sin. It isn't just good news for usit's good news for animals, plants, stars, and planets. This renewing work has been in our Lord's hands from of old. . Turning to our second point, I want you to: He says, "Behold I make all things new." The Lord's Presence, the Revelation Revelation He preached in the same church as C. H. Spurgeon over one hundred years earlier. He can cause your business to prosper; or, if he does not do that, he can strengthen your back to bear the burden of your daily cross. _The new Jerusalem_, 2. Why should he not make thee new? Lit., as Rev., the sea is no more. INTRODUCTION When God looks at it, I wonder he does not stamp it out, just as you and I do a spark of coal that flies upon our carpet from the fire.