Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1590
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, March 27, 1881
“And there shall in nowise enter into it anything that defiles, neither whatever works abomination, or makes a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.” Revelation 21:27.
THE text refers to the glorified Church of our Lord Jesus Christ. That perfected company of the elect and sanctified is set forth in this wonderful chapter under the image of a city descending “from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” Her workday dress all laid aside, the bride appears in garments of needlework and raiment of worked gold. The militant Church, the Church of the present day, is comparable to a tent and is well imaged by the Tabernacle in the wilderness—it is lit up within by the Glory of God’s Presence and covered without by the fiery cloudy pillar of His eternal Providence! But to the eyes of men it is mean and inconsiderable, for verily it does not yet appear what it shall be. By-and-by this same Church which, today, is likened unto a structure of curtains readily removed from place to place, shall become a city—fixed, permanent, high-walled and compact—a “city which has foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God.”
The comforts and trials of the desert life shall be exchanged for the quiet and comfort of a city dwelling. There shall be nothing of the wilderness about the Church triumphant—it shall be a right royal abode, the metropolis of the universe, the palace of the great King! Everything that is lustrous, pure, precious, majestic shall be there. Rare and priceless things which are now the peculiar treasure of kings shall be the common possession of all the sanctified. The Church shall be no longer despised, but shall sit as a queen among the nations while at her feet they shall heap up all their glory and honor. In that Church there shall remain nothing for which men shall reproach her, but everything shall be manifested in her for which they shall do her honor. Her very streets to be trod on shall be of pure gold like unto transparent glass and her lowest course of stones shall be of jasper.
Everything about the perfected Church shall be the best of the best—she shall be recognized as being the fairest among women, the bride, the Lamb’s wife, the crown and flower of the universe! We read the sparkling figures of John’s vision as emblems of moral and spiritual excellence, but we doubt not that beyond the spiritual riches of the Church, all materialism will also be at her disposal and the restored creation shall bring her choicest beauties to adorn the chosen bride of the Lamb. We have said that the glorified Church will be the crown of the new creation and it is into the new heavens and the new earth that she is represented as coming down from God. He that sits upon the Throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.”
The creation which is round about us at this hour waxes old and is ready to vanish away. Wise men tell us that there are evident preparations in the bowels of the earth for a burning up of the earth and of all the works of men that are upon it, for its center is an ocean of fire. God shall but speak and as once the waters leaped upon the world and utterly destroyed all things that were upon it, so shall He call to the waves of flame and they shall rise from their hidden furnaces to melt all things with their fervent heat. Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness! The former things shall have passed away and a new creation shall dwell beneath the new heavens, filling up the new earth—and the flower and perfection of the new creation shall be the Church of the Living god in her full bloom and perfection!
Even now the regenerate are a kind of first fruits of God’s creatures, the forerunners of the renewed universe. But then they shall be its center and glory! The new birth is the beginning of the new creation—we lead the way, even we who are the Church of the First-born—but the whole creation groans to follow us so as to be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God! It is the glorified Church, I say, that is here spoken of and,
therefore, the text may be said to refer to Heaven, for at the present moment the nucleus of the glorified Church is in Heaven and from Heaven every defiled thing must be shut out.
Hence, too, it may refer to the kingdom of the millennial age, when the saints will reign with Christ upon the earth for a thousand years, when even upon this battlefield our conquering Leader shall be crowned with victory and where His blood was shed, His Throne shall be set up, for among the sons of men shall He triumph, even among those that spat in His face. The text may also be read as including the eternal world of future bliss, for of that glorious, endless, undefiled inheritance, the Church glorified will be the possessor—but out of her shall long before have been gathered all things that offend and them that do iniquity.