As we settle into New Jerusalem, we enjoy being in the presence of God and Jesus, This devotional reading looks at seeing Them face to face while They are on the throne.
Nuggets
- Our lives will be better in Heaven because of the absence of sin and the presence of God.
- We will no longer have sin present in our lives.
- Our happiness should stem from the presence of God.
- The throne showcases God’s and the Lamb’s supremacy.
- We will serve God throughout eternity by worshiping Him.
- Our relationships with God will become much more cherished when we see Him face to face.
- God’s name on our foreheads shows ownership.
The best part of Heaven will be the presence of both our Father and our Savior.
Let's Put It into Context
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Devotions in the Eternity Begins series
The Bad Gone; The Good Better
“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” (Rev. 22: 3 ESV)
Our lives will be better in Heaven because of the absence of sin and the presence of God.
Curse Abolished
A good tour guide always lists the special attractions of the area. In Heaven, one of the main draws is there will no longer be any sin. That is what it means by there won’t be anything accursed.
The curse came right after God stepped foot into the Garden of Eden and found Adam and Eve hiding.
- The serpent is going to be crawling.
- Satan will lose to Jesus.
- Eve — and all women — will have a harder time during childbirth.
- Eve — and all women — will not be head of the household.
- Adam — and all men — will have a harder time earning a living.
- All mankind will experience physical death.
There are two reasons I see from these verses that tell us why sin won’t be in Heaven.
- Sin has been vanquished.
- God is present.
Sin Vanquished
We will no longer have sin present in our lives.
We will be free from its chains. We will be perfected.
“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Heb. 12: 22-24 ESV).
How come this curse was abolished? “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us — for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’” (Gal. 3: 13 ESV).
Christ saved us from the curse through propitiation and justification.
Because the sin is gone, God’s wrath will also be gone. There will be no need as sin and our disobedience will be gone.
God Present
Our happiness should stem from the presence of God.
We have it here but just think what it will be when we see His face! What? You don’t believe we have it here on earth?
Have you ever prayed the Lord’s Prayer? “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven” (Mt. 6: 10 ESV).
No, on earth isn’t only hooked to Your Will be done. It is also hooked to Your kingdom come.
We pray, God, come be with us on earth — in our hearts, in our minds, in our actions, in our attitudes.
We are to meet with God in prayer and in studying His Word. We are to worship Him and rejoice in Him.
Throne of God and of the Lamb
The throne showcases God’s and the Lamb’s supremacy.
Yep, John brought up the presence of God’s throne again. Well, that goes along with God’s abiding presence.
Jehovah is Sovereign God. He has absolute supremacy. He has dominion over all people.
The throne of God and of the Lamb — again John is talking singular.
Lockyer noted that God’s reign is currently delayed. He is patiently waiting to defeat His enemies.
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Why is God waiting? He doesn’t want even one person to miss salvation.
“… it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (I Tim. 2: 3-4 ESV)
God is waiting because of His great love for us.
I finally found a good description of why it is the throne of God and the Lamb. Robe explained it. He wrote,
“The throne of God, and of the Lamb, [expresses] this to us, that glorious Christ appears not only in His Father’s glory, which is naturally His, as He is one God with the Father, but also in that glory, [honor] and majesty, conferred upon Him as man and Mediator, as the reward of His sufferings and obedience.”
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Jesus has His own glory, plus He will be honored because of His obedience to God.
Serve and Worship Him
We will serve God throughout eternity by worshiping Him.
We talked way back in Revelation 1 that John would have had no problem being called a servant of God. While Jesus called John to be a disciple that day by the boat, he had to decide to follow that call.
Paul even called us slaves or bondservants.
- “This letter is from Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, chosen by God to be an apostle and sent out to preach his Good News” (Rom. 1: 1 NLT).
- “Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God” (Rom. 1: 1 NKJV).
Jesus noted that, regardless of title, our purpose to serve Him. “If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him” (Jn. 12: 26 ESV).
Parker said that, once we get to Heaven, we will serve God perfectly, powerfully, and continually. We’ve already said there will be no sin there, so we will serve Him perfectly.
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Our powerful service means that we will not grow weary. That is going to be a great reward.
There is all kind of weary, isn’t there? Right now, I am yawning about every other sentence I write. That is physical weariness.
Then there are times that I wonder how long I can keep doing this. But God tells me the next theme, and He tells me know He wants me to handle part of it.
And that weariness eases.
Lockyer addressed our misconception that we will find continual rest in Heaven. He wrote, “The true idea of rest, not only does not exclude, but demands service, providing there be adequate motive, scope, and strength. And in that life the motive shall be the noblest, the scope amplest, and the strength untiring.”
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In other words, we aren’t going to rest in Heaven because we’re weary.
Don’t the angels in Heaven now work? They sing praises to God. They deliver messages. Some think they guard us.
The point is don’t sit around. We won’t either.
God’s Presence
“They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads” (Rev. 22: 4 ESV)
See God’s Face
Our relationships with God will become much more cherished when we see Him face to face.
We are going to have a distinct advantage being with God than we do now. Lockyer told us what that was. He wrote,
“Our thought must be evermore replenished from His thought, our affection from His affection, our strength from His strength. Thus the ideal shall be ever growing in our soul, that we may act with growing intensity and success on the real — in that realm, as in this, achieving victory and laying hold of life.”
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Remember, this is a training ground for the next life. If we do it here now, we will do it there. If we are to do it there, we’d best be doing it here now.
Lockyer focused on growth. We may think we won’t need to do that throughout eternity.
Yes, we will. I don’t think we will get a data dump there any more than we did here.
We won’t need the Sanctification Road because we will already be sanctified and perfected.
But I see God having some kind of path we are to follow in order to grow. We will probably be learning of Him throughout eternity and still not completely know Him.
God is all about order. He will have some plan to continue our growth.
We will also see Jesus’ face. Spurgeon thought that would be our chief blessing – meeting the Man Who saved us.
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We want to be near Him. We have loved Him so long from afar, that we need the closeness. It will be a blessing and an honor to see Him.
One thing we should never forget is that this blessing and honor will be saved for those who are true believers. Lukewarm or — worse — fake believers won’t have their ticket punched for Heaven.
These are God’s servants. They are like Him.
- “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (I Jn. 3: 2-3 ESV).
- “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.” (Ps. 17: 15 ESV).
Robe put it in a nutshell. He wrote,
“To join them together, immediate and familiar communion with, and the enjoyment of God and the Lamb are hinted to us in this expression, as the attainment of the saints in heaven. An expression of more wonderful condescendency cannot be used, than that of Jehovah’s way of conversing with Moses (Exodus 33:11).”
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Faith will be sight. We will speak to God “… as a man speaks to his friend …” (Ex. 33: 11 ESV). We will never be separated from Him.
Name on Foreheads
God’s name on our foreheads shows ownership.
Hmmm. Name on our foreheads.
I can see that as a literal thing. I have no clue how God will accomplish it, but I can see Him putting His stamp upon us in some way.
Parker took a stab at trying to figure it out. He wrote,
“It denotes visibility of relation to God, that we are His servants and children, and that God is not ashamed of us, but will own, acknowledge, and glory in us. The mark of our belonging to Him shall be no secret mark, but open and conspicuous, as the graving of “Holiness to the Lord’ on Aaron’s mitre.”
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What is this about the priest’s mitre? This was the gold plate worn by the high priest. On it were the words holiness to the Lord. This plate included all Israel in the worship the high priest performed to God.
Maclaren noted that holiness is only in relation to God. What is important is that we are set apart for God, not just the condition of our character. This is the indicator of our submission to His Lordship.
This submission is a self-surrender.
- “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mk. 12: 30 ESV).
- “And he said to all, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me’” (Lk. 9: 23 ESV).
What was the first thing teachers wanted us to do when we were taking tests? Put our name on it. Show it was ours. Admit ownership.
God will show ownership of us. He is our Creator.
More than that, we are His children.
Maclaren addressed the how of the name on our forehead. He wrote,
“How does it come to be there? Read the clause before. ‘His servants shall see His face, and His name shall be in their foreheads.’ That is to say, the perfected condition is not reached by surrender only, but by assimilation; and that assimilation comes by contemplation. The faces that are turned to Him, and behold Him, are smitten with the light and shine, and those that look upon them see, ‘as it had been, the face of an angel,’ as the Sanhedrin saw that of Stephen when he beheld the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”
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Ooo, baby! Isn’t it sometimes hard to assimilate God’s character into our everyday lives. We start worrying about what the worldview people will think.
Thank You, sweet Jesus! That will be gone in Heaven.
Our happiness comes from being like God and Jesus. “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (II Cor. 3: 18 ESV).
We are transformed by the renewing of our mind. We change our attitudes back to being submissive to God.
Making the Connections #1
Only true believers can be blessed by God. Robe identified those as being “… upright in a good profession.”
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In other words, we ask Jesus to be our Savior and Redeemer for the right reasons. We truly believe we are sinners, and we believe that He is the only way that condition can be rectified.
It also means that we honestly want to be God’s servants. We want to do what He wants us to do in the way that He wants us to do it.
We don’t back talk. We don’t try to rewrite what God has said.
We give God our full obedience.
Making the Connections #2
We can’t forget the fact that this is all happening in New Jerusalem. This is all wrapped up in being the Bride of Christ.
Who is the Bride of Christ? True believers.
We also need to be humbled by the fact that God wants our relationships with Him restored. He wants us back. He did all of this to ensure that we could be welcomed back — if we chose to obey Him rather than continue to be disobedient.
Making the Connections #3
Ooo, baby! Clayton called it as he saw it. He wrote,
“Our obedience on earth scarcely deserves the name; our sinful dispositions render it more like slavery. We no sooner begin to live unto God, but conflict, toil, and fatigue, distinguish our services. Polluted are these services, in fine, as that which is corrupt cannot produce what is pure, servants so feeble and unholy must render of necessity an unprofitable obedience.”
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Ouch!
- What we as us doing so wonderful a job really isn’t.
- When we serve out of duty rather than desire, we make it slavery.
- We may start on the Sanctification Road the right way, but Satan soon attacks us to not only make our service impure, but also to kick us off the Road altogether.
- Service in this manner steals our blessing.
Pastor Steve keeps telling us that the blessings are in the obedience. Those who are saved are blessed.
Those who just think they are saved are goats masquerading as sheep.
Making the Connections #4
I know we know it, but the way Moule wrote it kind of slammed on the breaks for me. I have to read it once again.
Moule wrote,
“The servants and the kings are identical, they are alike the beings written in the Book of Life; the redeemed from the earth; those who have entered through the gates into the city. I take this twofold word from among the final promises of Him who cannot lie, not now to look upward through it upon the brightness of the eternal future, but to see the light of that future cast through it downward on our present life.”
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- Usually, we say we are to be like God. Like leaves some wiggle room. We aren’t God, so we can’t really be like Him, especially in these sinful bodies. What we really need to be is identical to God. No, we aren’t perfect yet, and we will never be the equal of God. We will be His servants. But we have to mature our faith to be the redeemed of the earth.
- We have to enter the city. We have to come in by the narrow gate (Mt. 7: 13-14).
- We have to believe that God doesn’t lie. If He said this and expects this, He will work out a way to accomplish it.
- Our future location must impact our current location. This life is the training ground for Heaven.
Making the Connections #5
Wait! What? You don’t think you are suitable to gain this blessedness????
You need to address that right now. We have to navigate the Sanctification Road by seeking God.
Searching for and Seeking God
Hearing His Word (Rom. 10: 17)
Reading His Word (Rev. 1: 3)
Praying to Him (Heb. 4: 16)
Studying His Word (Ac. 17: 11)
Meditating on His Word (Ps. 1: 1-2)
Memorizing His Word (Ps. 119: 11)
How Do We Apply This?
- Pray that God transforms our souls from moral darkness to His perfect light.
- Make our hearts God’s throne.
- Give God free reign of our souls to awaken our service, equips is for that service, and reveals opportunities to serve.
- Receive comfort knowing we will forever be before the throne of God and the Lamb.
- Possess a “… practical, heart-purifying, and life-sanctifying faith”, as Robe said.
- Make our highest ambition to be serving God by doing His commandments.
- Obey Him perfectly.
- Long to see the faces of God and Jesus.
- Evaluate where we are in our spiritual condition.
- Remember God is our Master.
- Remember that God is forgiving when we truly repent.
Resources
Father God. We have felt Your presence in this life. That isn’t enough. We wait to see You face to face. Amen.
What do you think?
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