Heaven is Not Your Eternal Home (Isaiah 65:17)

Children's Lesson (click here)

I. Where is the 'Sweet By and By'?

Between 1850 and 1950, many popular songs and hymns described (or at least seem to describe) heaven as our eternal home. Songwriters spoke of going “to live in that home for evermore” and “singing His praise through endless days on heaven's bright shore.” These hymns declared that “when the roll is called up yonder... his chosen ones shall gather to their home beyond the skies.” They speak of “fly[ing] away” to “God's celestial shore... where joys will never end”; that in “Heaven's bright city, far away on that beautiful shore... we'll be happy forever and ever, in the wonderful, sweet by and by”; and that as “we gather at the river... washing up its silver spray, we will talk and worship ever, all the happy golden day”.

Now, there's no doubt that God's word teaches us that to “be away from the body” is to be “at home with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5:8) And that even now “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,” specifically, “the spirits of the righteous made perfect” (Hebrews 12:1, 23). But is that heavenly context our forever context? Is that what Scripture teaches? Let's invest-igate that question by first looking together at Isaiah 65 (from Our Bible Reading Plan).

II. The Passage: “New Heavens and a New Earth” (65:17)

As we've talked about in recent messages, the second half of Isaiah was, in large part, written as an encouragement for those who would, two centuries after Isaiah's time, be called out of exile in Babylon. In accordance with the 70 years prophesied by Jeremiah, these exiles were being called out of Babylon in order to return to the Promised Land. Beginning in chapter 40, time and time again, God is reassuring these exiles of his power, his presence, and of the glorious future that awaits them. Keep that in mind as we look together at 65:17. We read...

“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remem-bered or come into mind.”

So given the different ways that Isaiah (along with other prophets) uses language, we first need to ask, in what sense is God foretelling a new heavens and a new earth? That is, in what sense will they be “new”? Well, when you simply scan down over the subsequent verses (vs. 18-25), you'll find a number clues about the nature of this newness. What those verses seem to describe for us is a glorious future of joy rather than grief, of long life instead of lives cut short, of stability not uncertainty, of prosperity not lack, of peace & security, rather than social and political turmoil.

And notice how that last point is communicated in verse 25: “'The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain,' says the LORD.” Taken together with Isaiah 11:6-9, and the overall context of both passages, I believe it makes more sense to see that this passage is not talking about the animal kingdom, but about the predatory kingdoms of man; that there will be peace, as aggressors are pacified, and as the guilty suffer humiliation... 'in the dust'. When we understand how the imagery is used here, I think we can conclude that the newness Isaiah is predicting in verse 17 is more figurative than literal; more idealized than exact. This is not a new planet. This is a new future; like a whole new world of possibilities for God's people.

Had the exiles returned in deep humility and abiding faith, seeking to honor in all things the God of the covenant they had repeatedly broken, they would have experienced the kind of joy, and stability, and prosperity, and peace, and long life described so memorably in 65:18-25.

Okay. But what does that have to do with you and me and the question of our eternal home? Well, many centuries later, another writer picks up this same language in order to speak the glorious future in store for disciples of Jesus Christ. Turn to 2 Peter 3:10–13. We read there...

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. [11] Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, [12] waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! [13] But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

Unlike Isaiah, the Apostle Peter is not simply using idealized or hyperbolic language and imagery to describe a new and prosperous future in the land of Israel. Peter is talking about the destruction of the whole current order, even of things that seem fixed to us (like the sun, moon, and stars). In the context, this future judgment is compared to the flood waters in the time of Noah. When Noah stepped off the ark after the flood, in profound ways, in the most important ways, he was stepping into a whole new world. The same will be true for God's people on “the day of God”.

But clearly, the scope of what Peter is describing is far bigger than that. And this is confirmed by other passages in the New Testament (NT). Before Peter wrote, the Apostle Paul wrote about “the creation [being] subjected to futility,” and that one day, “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” (Rom. 8:20-21) After Peter, another Apostle, John, would record this vision in Revelation 21:1–3...

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. [2] And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. [3] And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

But isn't this just symbolic imagery in terms of the heavens, the earth, and the sea? Yes, but the imagery lines up with the liberated creation Paul wrote about, and even the “the new world” Jesus himself spoke about in Matthew 19:28. I like how one writer expressed this: “He will not be making all new things, but making all things new (Rev. 21:5), transforming creation into what it was al-ways meant to become.” (Sam Davidson) C.S. Lewis tried to tackle the nature of this new world in the final book of the Narnia series, “The Last Battle”. He wrote this about a new Narnia...

“It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste... [He goes on to give an illustration of seeing the ocean or a valley out a window, but then catching sight of the same scenery in a mirror as you turn away... he writes] ...the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different - deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more.”

The final, biblical affirmation that this new earth, rather than heaven, will be our forever home is the doctrine of resurrection. Just as Jesus was raised bodily, God's promise to us is that we will also be raised bodily. And as Paul went to explain in Romans 8, the redemption of creation is tied to this very thing, to “the redemption of our bodies” (v. 23). Yes, that body will be a glorified body, one prepared for an eternity with God. But it will still be you. Just as the heavens and earth will still be, in some sense, the “very good” creation of Genesis 1... but restored; redeemed; set free! Listen to how writer Randy Alcorn talks about this confusion regarding heaven and eternity:

“Many Bible-believing Christians would die before denying the doctrine of the resurrection... and yet they don’t fully believe it. I’ve dialogued with lifelong evangelicals who don’t understand what resurrection means. They really believe they will spend eternity as disembodied spirits. God’s revelation concerning the resurrection and the new earth — our forever home — eludes them. A Christian university professor wrote, “I was floored and dismayed to discover the vast majority of my students don’t believe in the bodily resurrection.” Some evangelicals even believe we become angels when we die. If I could eliminate one belief about heaven, it would be the heresy that the physical world is an enemy of God’s redemptive plan rather than a central part of it.”

III. Why It Matters

So as the final chapters of Revelation so beautifully depict using that book's powerful, symbolic imagery, our future is not ultimately us going to be with God forever. It's God coming to be with us forever. And that's what matters most. It's that fact that was not lost on previous generations of song-writers and hymn writers: the amazing, precious, comforting, and all-satisfying promise that we will be with God forever; that we will behold the face of Jesus forever (what some call the beatific vision). So why does this clarification matter; this clarification about heaven, eternity, and the new earth? Let me suggest three reasons why this teaching matters:

First, it matters because rightly handling God's word matters. No tradition, or popular idea, or song should ever tempt us away from careful study of God's word, and faithful teaching of everything contains... even when it rubs against some of our long-held beliefs.

Second, it matters because the goodness of God's design matters. God created man to be embodied. And for that body he created a world of mountains, and mountain springs, and rivers, and deserts, and fruit trees, and oceans, and eagles, and llamas, and coral reefs, and polar bears, and cacti, and sunsets, and prairies, and prairie dogs, and humpback whales, and every-thing else that God, in Genesis 1, called “very good”. It's that “very good” design for human existence that God will make even better. Brothers and sisters, everything that is truly wonderful and wondrous about life on this planet will be ours in eternal newness because of Jesus Christ.

Third, it matters because life in that world should shape our life in this world. That's exactly what Peter was telling us when he asked, “[if] all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness”. One answer: people who are wait-ing for a new world “in which righteousness dwells”. If your aim and your prayer is to become more and more like Jesus, not only will you grow in righteousness, then more and more, we will grow uncomfortable in and with a world in which unrighteousness dwells. You see, the gospel inspires in us hunger for that new world. To the degree that we hunger for the God to whom Jesus has reconciled us, we will also hunger for the new world. And the resurrection of Jesus represents the first, powerful breach (or crack) in the boundary between this world and the world to come. May that be our prayer, brothers and sisters: that such an amazing future with Him would powerfully shape our present with Him, bringing that very newness into our world today.