This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day two of our look through Revelation chapter 21, this
awesome chapter about heaven, this guided tour to this place that we're going to
spend, this perfect place that we're going to spend eternity. Yesterday we
looked at the fact that this is going to be a new heaven and a new earth and
just barely touched on the glory of that. Today we have an opportunity to just
barely touch on the truth that God will dwell, God will dwell with us.

The Bible says in Revelation chapter 21 verses 3 to 5, "And I heard a loud voice
from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live
with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be
their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes.

There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of
things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making
everything new. ' And he said, 'Write this down, for these words are trustworthy
and true.

'" These are amidst my favorite verses in all the book of Revelation. These are
verses that I read at almost every funeral that I'm a part of because they look
forward to eternity, but they're not just verses for funerals. They're verses
for my life today.

They're verses for your life today because they talk about the fact that God
will dwell with us. That's what you hang on to in the book of Revelation. God
will dwell with us.

In one sense, the Bible is a description of where and how God dwells with
mankind. It's one way to read the Bible, the dwelling of God with us. Let me
just walk you through the Old and New Testament on this.

If you read through the Old Testament, in the Old Testament you find something
called the tabernacle, which is the tent of the meeting with God. Or later it's
the temple that is built in Jerusalem. In the Old Testament, for the people of
God, that is where God lived.

You might think of it this way. In the tabernacle, in the temple, God dwelt
beside us. When people wanted to connect with God in the Old Testament, they
would have to get close to the temple.

God dwelt beside us. Now God is everywhere, but his dwelling, and that
specifically means the place where God's people experience his presence. His
dwelling is the place where you and I experience his presence.

His dwelling in the Old Testament was beside us in a physical location. You
could get close to him, but you couldn't be in his presence. Just the high
priest could go into the Holy of Holies, where God's presence was in that
temple, and only once a year to make sacrifice for the sins of the people.

So you could be beside the glory of God, the presence of God. But then you move
to the New Testament. And in the New Testament, through the Holy Spirit, God
dwells not beside us, God dwells in us.

In the New Testament, when Jesus died on the cross, you might remember this.
There was a curtain in this temple that divided the holy place of God's presence
from the rest of the temple. And that curtain, the moment that Jesus died on the
cross, that curtain was torn in two from top to bottom.

It was God saying, "I'm not living here anymore. I'm changing my address. I'm
moving from this being the place of my presence to I'm going to make my people
now my temple.

" So that's why the New Testament tells us that we are temple of the Holy Spirit
now. God dwells in us. God's presence came to dwell on us as believers, and he
does that through his Holy Spirit.

So that means God dwells in you everywhere you go, everywhere that you are. In
the tabernacle, the temple, God dwelt beside us. Through the Holy Spirit, God
dwells in us.

But here in Revelation chapter 21, in heaven, God will dwell with us. Think
about what that means. Right now, as you walk through your life as a believer,
you realize God is dwelling in me.

And you know, theologically, that he is there all the time. But wouldn't you
like to have a sense of his presence every moment? Wouldn't you like every
moment to be able to have this sense that you can sit down and talk to him face
to face?

You can't see God in heaven. He is unapproachable light even there. But Jesus,
you'll be able to see.

And in heaven, there will be something new in your relationship with God. You'll
be able to sense his presence everywhere that you are, every moment, in a way
that's beyond description. Even though you have the Holy Spirit dwelling in you
as a believer right now, isn't it true that sometimes you go, maybe for hours,
maybe even for days, without recognizing God's presence in your life, even
though he's living in you, you don't recognize it.

You don't see it. That's not going to be true in heaven. In heaven, he will
dwell with us every moment, every day.

You'll have a sense of your relationship with God and how perfect it is.
Relationships in heaven with God and with people, they are so much better than
they are on this earth. They're out of our league of understanding.

That's how much better they are. These simple words, he will dwell with us. I
don't know about you, but there's a feel in those words.

There's a sense in those words that lets me know the greatness of our
relationship with God in all of eternity. Now, what does this mean that God will
dwell with us? He goes on to describe it.

It means that we will be his people. It's been God's desire from the very
beginning. In the Old Testament, he called the people of Israel apart so that
they could be his people.

In the New Testament, he calls the church apart so that we can be his people. He
wants us for all of eternity to be with him. It reminds me of what Jesus said to
his disciples the night before he died on the cross.

He looked at them and he said to them, "I'm going to prepare a place for you. "
Because he said, "I want you to come and be with me where I am. " He wants us to
be his people.

He desires for us to spend all of eternity with him. There's joy in his heart
that we're going to do that. We will be his people.

And then these wonderful words. He will wipe every tear from our eyes. No more
death, mourning, crying, or pain.

That hits every one of us. Wouldn't you want to be in a place like that? Don't
you sometimes get tired of the crying, get worn out by the pain, tired of the
fact that life does not work out like you thought it was going to work out?

We all do. We all long for something more. And God tells us here that longing,
that's not a lie.

I am promising you something more. That place is going to happen. God will dwell
with us.

And when he dwells with us, that means no more death, crying, any other thing
like that because the old order of things, it's passed away. And then he says
these five words. These five words are the words I want to anticipate in my life
today.

This is the what now of God dwelling with man. These five words are the words
that I want to live out in the way that I do my relationships, in the way that I
have my conversations, in the way that I think about this world. I want to bring
these five words into the way that I live my life today.

What are those words? God says, I am making everything new. I'm making
everything new.

I encourage you, anticipate with all your heart those five words. I'm making
everything new. That's what heaven's going to be all about.

In heaven, you're never going to hear the words been there, done that because
everything is new, constantly new in heaven. Every time you do anything in
heaven, there is a sense of newness to it. Every time you involve yourself in
something in heaven, there's a sense of excitement to it.

There's a thrill and a shine of newness on everything. It's always fresh. It's
always vibrating with life.

You ever get bored on this earth? Of course you do. We get bored with a new car
sometimes in a few months.

The new smell is off of it. We get bored with it. Do you remember your
Christmas, your birthday present, maybe even from last year?

We get bored with these new things, these shiny things. We even get bored with
relationships. We get bored with ourselves.

We get bored with our life. Sometimes we think that's what heaven's going to be
like. You will not be bored in heaven.

It's always new. Sometimes when you get bored with life, we need to realize what
that's telling us. It is a longing for this place where God is making everything
new.

When I get bored with life, it's telling me I need to anticipate eternity.
Sometimes when people get bored with life, they think I'm going to give up on
this relationship or I've got to go buy a new thing, and they go for the quick
fix. Never works.

Oh, it works quickly, but so briefly. That's not what you're wanting. That's not
what you're longing for.

When you get bored with life, it's not telling you you need a quick fix. It's
telling you this life is not all there is. It's telling you that God has
something more to offer.

I've got one of two choices when I get bored with life. I can either go back to
what was old or I can look forward to what's new. That's the choices you have as
a believer.

When you get bored with life as a believer, when you realize it's not perfect,
you can go back to some old way of thinking, some old sense, some old habit,
some old pattern that you were in before you were a believer. You can do that,
but it's not going to work. You'll feel even worse.

Or, and this is what the Bible tells us to do, you look forward to something
new. In this world, you can experience great joy in Christ. But this world is
still going to leave you in some ways unsatisfied.

Because in this world, we're going to realize we don't have all that there is.
That's what heaven is all about. When you feel this boredom with this world,
this I need something more, anticipate these five words.

I am making everything new. One day, I'm going to live in a place where God is
saying every moment, every day, I am making everything new. We live for that
day.

That's where we find our joy. That's the future that God has prepared for us.
That's the what now of God dwelling with us.

Let's pray together. Our Father, thank you. When you promise to make everything
new, you can fulfill that promise.

You created the heavens and the earth. You create the new heaven and new earth.
And there'll be this constant sense of newness in what you do.

Heaven is not going to be eternally boring. Just a long experience that we get
tired of very quickly. No, it's going to be eternally new.

Every moment, every day. Because you are there, the center of it all. You will
dwell with us.

And for that, we praise you. In your name, in your name, amen. Tomorrow, we're
going to look at how God's person and plan are at the center of it all.