The Revelation 21:22 | Episode # 1184

April 30. 2026

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

The Revelation 21:22

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life. Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up

his word to you and allow you

to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today in Jesus Name last chapter.

Almost to the last chapter. We're going to do first and second Thessalonians next, which will be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward forward to that, actually. Read through it again yesterday or the day before both of those books, making sure that's where the Holy Spirit was leading us. And anyway, I've got something on me, but that's okay. It's not unusual for a Harrison man to have something on them, especially after a meal. Although it's blue lint. I don't know how that happened, but anyway, it's. It's good. Good to be with y' all this evening. I'm. I'm gonna deal with Revelation, chapter 21 and remember the city. Revelation chapter 1 presents what a lot of people call heaven. If you think about it, most of the songs that are songs about heaven will allude to this chapter. And then the whole idea of God reigning on the earth and the earth being a place of his abode, meaning that God dwell with men, is a very important scriptural idea. The whole point of Jesus coming. In fact, one of his names is Emmanuel. God with us. And so God's desire has been and is to be in our presence and to dwell with humanity, to dwell with us. In fact, he made us in his image so that we could uniquely have a relationship with him, that no other creature, nothing else in creation, could have that relationship with Him. And so when we get to the city, the descriptions, you know, I mean, the description is just fascinatingly wild. Am I right? I mean, it is. It is unbelievable. And. And just to give you a recap, if you weren't here last week, because it's always fun to talk about it. It's a city that comes down from heaven, and it is. It is 1380 to 1400 miles long and 1400 miles wide. But that's not the most fascinating part of it. It's 1400 miles high. It's 1400 miles high. Okay? And I made sure that everybody kind of understood. Understood the dimensions of that. Dimensions of that would be if you. If one corner of the city started in. In Panama City, Florida, the. The other. The other corner of the city would be somewhere just across the Mexican border, south of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Okay? And then it would go up through Colorado and, and Montana and. And it would go about 60 or 70 miles into. Into Canada and then come across and go about 60 or 70 miles just above the upper peninsula of Michigan. Okay? That's the size of the city. When Jesus told his disciples, he says, I go and prepare a place for you. And where I go, he says, you know where I'm going. And Thomas says, you know, Lord, we don't know where you're going. And he says, he says, I go and prepare a place for you. Where I go in my Father's house, there are many mansions. And I go and prepare that place. And then he says, then he says, and I'll come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, you may also be. And so the city that he is being prepared is. He's preparing is the city for the believers, both Old Testament and New Testament. The believers of the Old in Old Testament and New Testament saints are going to live in that city while he rules the earth. And I'm going to show you that because so many people think that it's. That. That it's going to. It's going to be just us, and that's not what happens. And he rules for a thousand years, and it's called the Millennial kingdom. And you'll hear people say that a lot of people don't understand that, but that is prophetic because that was prophesied to David that his heir would rule. And then Scripture tells us that he will rule for a thousand years, and Revelation tells us that also. But let's read this. And then I want to take you to. Because it's tied to so much. It's tied to somewhere else in scripture, Hebrews chapter 11 and 13, but mainly Hebrews chapter 11. I want to take you to that and read that. Another passage out of Hebrews 11 that I didn't read last week, it says, but I saw no temple in it. Okay. If he was gonna build a city, obviously, if you think about all the cities in the world that you would go to. And in fact, if you really. The truth is, if you think about any major city in the world, one of the major Attractions usually is what, some church somewhere, Am I right? Even if you go into Asia and the Pacific realm, anywhere you go there is always a place where maybe a church, but some spiritual building that is the cornerstone of that area. Anywhere you go in the world, Anywhere you go in the world, one of their places is always a church or something like that. The Bible says. And by the way, by the way, it's not like in the Old Testament. It's not like in the Old Testament that God didn't place an emphasis on there being a place like that. In fact, when they come out of, when they come out of Egypt and they begin their journey into, to the promised land, this is prior to them deciding not to go in. What does God do for them? Well, he gives them his law. He brings them to the mountaintop. And remember, they don't go up on the mountain. And I never bring up the mountain where God led his people to without mentioning this, because I think it is of the utmost importance and it is one of the saddest and most important ideas that we have in scripture. God brought them to the mountain of his presence. He brought them out there to that so that all of Israel would go up to the mountain and meet with him. Okay? In fact, as they've scientifically tried to figure out where that mountain is, we do know it's somewhere in the Saudi, somewhere near Saudi Arabia. And we know that they won't let us go to the mountain. But we've got something that close to it, it's called a satellite. Anyway, we've got satellite imagery and we know what the mountain is. And by the way, the mountain, the mountain is flat on top. It's able to, it's able for, for a huge group of people to meet him on that mountain. But they wouldn't go up, right? What do they say, Moses, you go talk to God and you come back and tell us what he says. Now I want you to hear me, that is, that is the beginning of the devastation of the Old Testament, okay? And what I mean by that, well, they wanted him to do is go up there and get God's law or God's character, nature and come back and tell them what it is when God wanted to tell them himself, okay? And the New Testament's about breaking that barrier also where you, where you have access to God. That's why consistently we're presented in the New Testament as a kingdom, a priesthood. We have the ability to go into the presence of God ourselves. We have the ability to go meet with God on our Own. When you pray, you get to pray actually to the Father. In fact, when Jesus was asked by his disciples, when he's asked by disciples, how should we pray? Remember, Jesus said. He didn't say pray this. What did he say? Pray like this. Which means I'm going to give you the outline of. I'm going to give you a good outline of how. How to pray. And what does it start with? Our Father, which art in heaven. Well, the only way you could speak to the Father in heaven is if you're able to somehow speak to the Holy of Holies. Okay? And the only way that would be the case is if somehow you have the ability to enter the Holy of Holies in some way. All right, now that's not telepathic. Are you with me? You spiritually have the life of God. So your spirit, when you speak to God, enters into the presence of God in his holy of holies. Are you following me? All right. In heaven, in the throne room, in the Holy of holies, your spirit is in the holy volies. That's why the Bible says, approach the throne of grace with boldness. Boldly approach the throne of grace. How do I do that? It's not dimensionally here. How am I going to. If the Bible is instructing me to do that, how do I do that? Well, you do that when you pray to God. Your spirit is interdimensional. Your spirit exists in all places and all times. Your spirit is as the Holy Spirit is. You have the ability to be in the presence of God. And so when you speak to God, your spirit speaks to God. In fact, the Bible says that your spirit groans within you, okay? Which means. And it speaks things to God that you in your mind, cannot even conceive or know. How many of y' all knew that. All right, you have the power to speak to the presence of God. Why? Because you are a co heir with Christ. You are an heir to the throne. You have a right to speak to God. That's why Jesus said, our Father. Now, if you'll notice, he didn't hide the ball. He said, who art in heaven and all. You know this because, you know, you said it real fast before the game, right when you were growing up, if you played ball, it really started out like this. Our Father, who art in heaven. Halloween came to come to the Woodman. And then it just got so fast at the end that, you know, by the end, I was sitting there going, did we even pray? I think that was just some kind of crazy mumbling that we just did Right there. But. But he says, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. How can I say that to God if I am not in his presence, okay? If I'm not, if I don't have access to Him. So they. God gave them instructions about how to build the Tabernacle. It's a picture of Christ, okay? Later on, he gave them instructions on how to build the temple when they got into the promised land. It's a picture of you. You are the temple of the Holy Spirit. God dwells in you, okay? And that was promised that God would no longer dwell in buildings made by man, but he dwell in man himself. That's what Jesus said. He said he dwell in you, okay? He said, it's necessary that I go so the Holy Spirit comes so that you could be indwelt by the Holy Spirit. All right? So we have that right. Now, when we get to the new city, you would think that there'd be a giant temple complex. Am I right? You would think there would be, right? We've had the Tabernacle and the temple. We're trying to rebuild the temple. I mean, we rebuilt it three times. We're going to rebuild it another time. Am I right? I mean, you know, we need to get this thing finished up, right? One permanently in the right spot. Nope. There's no temple in the New Jerusalem. You know why? Because God dwells with his people there. He. There's not a temple for him to live in made by human hands. He dwells with us. That's what it says. There's no temple in the New Jerusalem. You would think there would be, but there's nothing. He said there's no temple in it for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. You have access to the presence of God. You have access to the very. The very presence of. Of Holy God Yahweh. Okay? As you go today, I pray that

the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.