Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #3 of Revelation chapter 21 and we are going to read Revelation 21:2-3:

And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 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.

I will stop reading there.  We are presently looking at verse 2.  This is the point in the Book of Revelation where God is letting us see the climax of His entire Gospel program of salvation.  All of Biblical history has been rushing onward to the point of the passing away of this world and this universe and the creation of a new heaven and a new earth and the passing away of the “evil generation” of mankind, the unsaved of the world, and the deliverance of all the promises to God’s chosen people that have been redeemed and made holy by the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ.  The Bible has told us about these two things.  God has told us of His plan of salvation for His elect and of His intention to destroy the wicked and the present cursed creation and to create a new heaven and a new earth.

We are in the last Book of the Bible and we are getting toward the end of this Book and the end of the Bible and it is very appropriate and fitting for God to discuss the finality of all things and the final actions He will take, which involve the creation of a new heaven and a new earth. 

It says in Revelation 21:2:

And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

In verse 1, John had been given a vision of the new heaven and new earth or the new creation and verse 2 is directing our attention toward the new creatures that inhabit this creation.  The people that God has saved are likened to “the holy city, new Jerusalem.”  It also mentions a “bride adorned for her husband.”  Both of these statements refer to those that were predestined to become saved before the foundation of the world.  They are all those for whom Christ died and He paid the penalty of sin on their behalf; they are all those whose names were written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.  God is using the language of a “holy city” or “new Jerusalem,” and we might think it is a place and not a people, but when we look up the words God is using we will find it is the people of God that are actually in view.

Let us look first at the term “holy city.”  God says that John saw “the holy city, new Jerusalem.”  What makes something holy?  The Bible uses the word “holy” quite often in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, but why does God use that word?  Why is the Bible itself called the “holy Bible”?  First of all, when we think of “holiness,” we have to think of God Himself.  It says in 1Peter 1:15-16:

But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.

God is holy.  It is an attribute or characteristic of God.  It is a fact that God is holy and to be holy means one is pure or identified with that which is pure and set apart, and so forth.  God is without sin.  He is perfect in holiness and, therefore, He commands His people, “Be ye holy.”  Of course, none of us can become holy unless God first does a work in us in creating a new heart and a characteristic of that new heart is holiness.  It is without sin as God is without sin and that is how the people of God can obey inwardly that command to be holy.  We try to obey in our life in this world by turning away from sin in order to do the will of God and to live a life that follows after holiness.

God is holy.  We read a good verse in Romans, chapter 7, which tells us why the Bible is called the holy Bible.  It says in Romans 7:12:

Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.

The law and the commandment is holy and that covers the entire Bible because the Bible is a Law Book.  It is full of the commandments of God and the commandment is holy – it is pure, right and good.  There is nothing wrong with God commanding you and I (and all mankind created in His image) to love our neighbors, for husbands to love their wives or for wives to submit to their husbands or for children to honor their parents, and so forth.  In the Bible, God goes on and on with His commands.  He commands us to keep Sunday as the Sabbath and to keep it holy.  We are to do what He commands us to do on His holy day.  Why is Sunday His holy day?   It is because God selected that day in the New Testament to emphasize the resurrection of Christ and He changed the Old Testament Saturday Sabbath to the first day of the week (Sunday) Sabbath.  It is the day God determined to be set aside for spiritual activities like getting out the Gospel, prayer, and so forth.  God made Sunday “holy” and man disregards it and treats it as any other day because that is the nature of (unsaved) man.  What man wants to do is to take that which is holy and make it common or unclean and unholy.  That is what man does with all of God’s commandments.  When God says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” that Law is holy and good and just.  Man ought to obey it because God says, “Be ye holy, as I am holy.”  In order to attain any degree of holiness, you must keep His commandments. 

If you disobey and transgress the holy commandment, then you are living an unholy or ungodly life.  You are living as a sinner and sinners do not live in a holy way.  That is why they mock the word “holy.”  The word “holy” is thrown around.  Anyone that reads the Bible and prays and speaks of God is called a “holy roller.”  They try to use the word “holy” as though it is something bad if one is trying to be holy and, yet, God commands, “Be ye holy.”  That is the life of the believer.  When the Bible says, “Let your light so shine before men,” God is basically saying we are to be holy in our conduct, behavior and conversation.  We are to follow the commandments, in other words, because they are holy.  As you follow the Law of God and when you are able, by God’s grace, to keep God’s commandments you will be living a holy life, to some degree.  And that holiness stands out in this evil, evil, world where nothing is holy, according to the world.  The world does not know anything about holiness.  It is what God determines and what God sets apart that is truly holy and His Word, the Bible, is rightly called the “holy Bible.”  It is a holy Book and it is the holy Word of God.  Does this Book not stand out among all the other writings in this world?  Why?  It is because the Bible, alone, is holy.  It comes from Holy God and it is itself His holy Word.

The Bible was found in Israel of old.  The Jews were the caretakers of the Oracles of God, which is the Word of God, the Bible, and that made Israel of old a “holy place” and it made the temple in Jerusalem a “holy temple,” because God’s presence was in the temple and His Word was there.  Therefore, Jerusalem became known as the “holy city,” historically.  The actual city of Jerusalem was a “holy city” at one point, but when Jesus went to the cross and the veil of the temple was “rent in twain,” God let it be known that His presence no longer resided in that temple.  It was no longer a “holy temple” and if the temple was no longer holy, then the city of Jerusalem was no longer the “holy city” and the land of Israel or Judah was no longer the “holy land.”  That is why it is such an error for churches or anyone to speak of the land in the Middle East as the “holy land” or of Jerusalem as the “holy city.”  It is no longer holy.  God made those things holy due to their association with Him and we could say that God brought profaneness to them by departing from the temple and Jerusalem and from the Jews.  The Jews are no longer the “holy people” of God.  That also goes back to the time of the renting of the veil of the temple.  At that time God divorced national Israel and they were no longer His representatives to the nations of the world.  He ended the intimacy He had with them and He began to evangelize the world through the churches and congregations.  The corporate church became the caretakers of the Word of God at that time.  If you went to a church during the church age, you would find the “holy Bible” in that church and, therefore, the churches became identified as the “holy place.”  God mentions this in Matthew, chapter 24, in the chapter that deals with the Great Tribulation, which was the time of the judgment on the churches.  It says in Matthew 24:15:

When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)

Once we properly understand what happened at the cross when the veil of the temple was rent and God ended His relationship with the temple and with Israel, we also realize that the same thing happened to the corporate church.  Here, Jesus is answering His disciples’ question, “What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?”  We realize that the “abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place” has application in our day at the time of the end and there is no way Jesus could be talking about the literal land of Israel, the literal temple or the literal city of Jerusalem.  It is not possible that this refers to them in any way because they had not been the holy people or the holy place for almost 2,000 years, but there was another “holy place” that would be in existence at the time of the end and that is the corporate church.  God uses the figure of “Judea” or “Israel” or the “temple” to apply to the churches and congregations and those that inhabit them are likened to Jews.  In parabolic language, Jesus is explaining that when you see the abomination of desolation (Satan) “stand in the holy place,” It is referring to the churches. 

Notice that Christ says, “Whoso readeth, let him understand.”  In other words, do not try to take what He is saying literally or you will be a million miles from truth.  But if God opens your ears and it is the time of the end (because these things were sealed to the time of the end) and God opens the Scriptures to increase knowledge, then we can have an expectation to understand what He said.  And we do understand and we can see it clearly, from verse to verse, because God has revealed these things to His people. 

Again, the “holy place” in this passage is pointing to the churches.  In Revelation, chapter 11, God speaks of the Great Tribulation and the judgment that came upon the corporate churches of the world.  Notice that He uses the language of the Old Testament in order to hide truth.  He spoke in parables to hide these things until the proper time.  We read in Revelation 11:1-2:

And there was given me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.

Again, when God uses the language of the “temple” and the “court without” and the “holy city” being tread under foot, there is just no possibility that the churches (which have been given over to Satan and have devised a Biblical hermeneutic of looking only at the plain, literal meaning of Scripture) will have any chance of finding the truth of these kinds of passages.  They disregard that Christ spoke in parables and they disregard so many Scriptures in which God explains how the Bible must be understood.  Using that kind of hermeneutic, they stand no chance at all of understanding the Bible.  Their hermeneutic leads people away from the truth.

We understand that the “holy city” and the “temple” referred to here in Revelation, chapter 11, is the corporate church.  However, the “temple” or “holy city” can also refer to the elect.  It is just like the word “church.”  When Jesus speaks of the “church” in some verses in the New Testament He had in view the corporate church that was comprised of both the wheat and tares, but in other places when He speaks of the “church” He is only speaking of the eternal church comprised of the elect.  For instance, when Christ said that the gates of hell would not prevail against His church, He was only referring to the elect.  When it says in Ephesians, chapter 5 that husband are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, He is referring to the elect, the eternal church.

Likewise, there are two “Jerusalems” the Bible mentions.  Sometimes some people listen in to us and they are in the churches and they just do not understand these things because they are not saved.  They probably “roll their eyes,” and say, “Two Jerusalems.  Here he goes, spiritualizing again.”  Yet, what does the Bible say?  This is not me spiritualizing and these are not my words concerning Abraham’s two sons, one by a bond woman and one by a free woman, as God says in Galatians 4:24-25:

Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.

Did you understand all that?  The word “answereth” would better be understood as “corresponds to,” but God is saying that there are two covenants.  The one is “Agar” from mount Sinai and genders to bondage.  First of all, she is likened to mount Sinai where the Law was given and she corresponds to Jerusalem which now is.  Wow, talk about spiritualizing.  This is God speaking and He is spiritualizing and teaching us how we ought to be looking at the Book of Genesis and the entire Bible for the deeper spiritual meaning.  Then He says, in Galatians 4:26:

But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

Here, He likens her to Sarah and to Jerusalem.  He speaks of two Jerusalems.  I did not say this, but God did say it.  One corresponds to Agar, which identifies with the Law which serves to bondage and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is (the churches in the world).  The other corresponds to the Jerusalem above, the heavenly Jerusalem that comes down from God out of heaven in Revelation, chapter 21.  It is the “Jerusalem above” that has been hovering above in the heavens throughout history as God saved His people and added them to that “holy city” throughout all the generations as He built his “temple” or built his “holy city.”  But all the while on the earth there was an earthly Jerusalem or an earthly church, and so forth.

Lord willing, in our next study, we will look a little bit more at the difference between the earthly “holy city,” the corporate church, and a heavenly “holy city” and how God uses that word “holy” in relationship to His people.