God Unveils His New Universe (Isaiah Sermon 78)

Well, this morning, you’ve already heard the text that Chris read. We’re going to look at one of the most provocative and powerful sections of Isaiah’s prophecy, the vision he had concerning the future universe as recreated in Christ, the new Heavens and the new Earth that are coming. The aspects of it here seem like it might be discussing elements of what theologians call the Millennium or the Millennial kingdom. And so we’re going to have to look at that as well and try to understand it. No matter what we end up believing this passage is the truth and tells us in some kind of language of a glorious future that should fill all of us with hope, and joy. And that’s the outcome, the ultimate outcome. My desire is to create in each one of you who listen to me today a forward-looking perspective, that you’re going to be looking forward to what is coming. Colossians Chapter 3, verse 1-4 says, “Since then, we have been raised with Christ. Set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things for you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.” So, set your minds on things above, and clearly in that text, things to come. When Christ appears, the Second Coming.

Hebrews 11:10 says that Abraham was “looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” Looking forward, that’s a faith perspective. Again, 2 Peter 3:13, it says, “In keeping with his promise, we are looking forward to a new Heaven and a new Earth, the home of righteousness.” So this looking forward, this forward-looking perspective, can only be done by faith, really can only be done in Christianity. We have a supernatural religion based on prophecies given to us by the eternal mind of God. And there’s no other religion in the world that has this, predictive prophecy of what is yet to come. And so only by revelation, only by the unveiling that Scripture does, can we see both the invisible God and the invisible world that he is promising us.

Faith is the eyesight of the soul, and God is the revealer of the unseen. Faith comes from hearing the Word. So my desire is that your faith will rise from an exposition of Isaiah 60:5, and your eyesight will get clearer, and that you will see the unseen, the invisible, the invisible God and the invisible coming worlds.

I. Dreams of a Perfect World

Now we all have, I believe, within our hearts, dreams of a perfect world. Throughout recorded history, mankind has imagined perfect world, perfect societies. This is all over the world. People do this. Since the fall of Adam into sin, the world has been cursed. In Genesis 3, to Adam God said, “Because you listen to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, you must not eat of it, cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil, you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you will return.”

So that’s the curse. So both the Earth itself and human labor on the Earth was cursed there. And the struggle for survival was on, the bitter struggle for survival was on, and it is bitter. Life on Earth became an instant grief to the human race. Ecclesiastes 1:2-4, “Vanity of vanities… Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation comes, and a generation goes, but the Earth remains forever.” Sense of emptiness, of vanity to our labors in our life, doesn’t mean anything. And creation itself has been groaning under this, the burden of this curse. Death has been rampant, constantly threatened, both for man and for beast. Ecclesiastes 3:19-20. It says, “Man’s fate is like that of the animals. The same fate awaits them both. As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath. Man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go back to the same place. All come from dust, and to dust, all return.” Ecclesiastes 3.

Now, human hearts and therefore human society, was corrupted to the core by sin, by the sin of Adam. We are corrupted in our hearts. Adam and Eve, as soon as they ate from the tree, their eyes were open. They realized they were naked, and they hid from each other in shame and they made fig leaves to cover their shame. It wasn’t long after that that Cain killed his brother Abel, the very next chapter. So we see an expansion of sin. And by the time of Noah, the contagion of sin had spread to epic levels. All over the world, all the thoughts of human hearts were only evil all the time. And the link between human sin and nature’s groaning is clearest in the flood. All the air-breathing animals that were not on the ark were killed, swept away because of human sin.

Man sinned, animals died. So, this lamenting, this groaning pain-filled seemingly meaningless existence seems so wrong to us, doesn’t it? Something’s wrong here. We have a sense of a perfect world I believe, imprinted in our souls, like paradise in our souls. And mankind has always yearned for it and imagined it. Authors and poets, cult leaders and statesmen, conquerors and song writers, scientists and architects have all yearned for a paradise, have used their skills to kind of describe it if they can, some kind of a utopia that could be ushered in, a golden age free from this frustrating curse. Plato’s Republic written around 370 BC, is one of the oldest efforts in human literature, to capture this desire for a golden age, a perfect society. About 150 years before Christ, a Greek merchant, Iambulus, wrote a book called Islands Of The Sun describing a perfect society in some distant island, in the Eastern sea.

In the year 421, after Christ, a Chinese writer named Tao Yuanming wrote a fable called the Peach Blossom Spring in which a fisherman accidentally sailed up a river into a forest made entirely of blossoming peach trees. The river, led to a grotto with a narrow passage way through which he was able to squeeze and there he found a village, with animals and people of all ages. The villagers were shocked to see him but they were friendly. It was an ideal society cut-off from the outside world. He left and marked his path with signs so he could find his way back, but he could never find it again. A yearning for a perfect world, a perfect society.

In 1516, Sir Thomas More in England, coined the term utopia by writing a book with that same name, the word, literally means no place. And it describes an island in the recently discovered new world, Columbus had discovered the new world just a few decades before that. And in that island there was a perfect society. Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, HG Wells kind of expands it out to other planets.

So we’re going to be moving through the cosmos finding a planet with a perfect society. The quest goes on and on. It’s deeply rooted in our hearts. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “God has set eternity in the hearts of men,” but I think he’s also set paradise there too, a sense of a perfect world, free from this curse. However, no vision is better than the Bible’s, amen? We just heard it sung, we’ve read it again and again in Revelation 21, and 22, and when we come to Isaiah 65:17-25, we come to Isaiah’s vision of that future perfect world. God alone has, if I could use this word, the imagination and the mental power to create a perfect world, in terms that we understand. God alone can work out all the details of that world in a way most glorifying to him and most perfectly satisfying to us. The Bible actually does describe a perfect ideal world, in which people live in harmony with nature and with each other. And it’s coming. It’s not just an idea, it’s actually a prophecy, it’s coming. Many passages in this book of Isaiah describe it so also does the book of Revelation.

So we come to Isaiah 65:17:25, and we come to an unveiling of God’s perfect future world. “Behold,” says God, ” Behold,” right at the beginning, “Behold me, and my perfect world.” And then the questions that all Christians struggle with in understanding not just this perfect world, but we are so curious, “I want to know the details,” and friends the details are going to probably just kill us as I walk through it in this text, but we’ll do the best that we can. I was talking to somebody recently about this sermon, I have been working on this sermon for two months that’s why it’s, you know, an hour and a half long, it just keeps going on and on and on. It actually was going to be two sermons in one, we were going to do some Isaiah 65. We’re going to spend a bunch of time in Revelation 20, and this morning I said, “Okay, we’re not doing that.” I think all of us, everyone, not just some of us, all of us are like, and please forgive this geeky illustration, but we’re like circuit breakers. We can only take so much current flowing through and then we trip over.

And the amount of information that you all… That we all can handle is limited. And so I’m going to do my best to make it clear, to try to just walk through Isaiah 65 and explain these words, and to try to explain, especially verse 17, and verse 20 and how hard they are to harmonize and to describe the Millennium whatever that means, and to do it in a way that helps all of us. Now, as I said, what we’re doing here as Christians is something that we’re the only ones that can do, it’s the only religion in the world they can do this. We’re looking at predictive prophecy. We’re looking at words written by God that tells us what’s going to come, what’s coming in the future. God again and again claims to be the only one that can do this. Isaiah 46:9-10, he says, “I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like me, I make known [listen to this] the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say my purpose will stand and I will do all that I please.” So God has pleased to think of the end and now he is sovereignly going to bring it about.

So we come to this and the questions of the millennium. Isaiah 65 is going to bring us to ask some of the most exciting and debated questions there are in Christian eschatology, the study of the end of the world, that’s what eschatology means. Age old debates about the possibility of a literal thousand-year reign of Christ on earth after his second coming, the possibility of a greatly enhanced life on earth, something that’s free, essentially, for the most part, from the curses that we labor under, in which the effects of sin and death are greatly reduced though not totally removed. That’s the essence of the Millennium verses the Eternal State. These questions will come up not naturally from Isaiah 65, but from the Bible as a whole, with Isaiah 65:17-25 as a key reference text. If there will be a literal thousand-year reign of Christ on earth before the Eternal State, the new heavens and the new earth, and if life in that Millennial kingdom, is described anywhere in the Bible, it is almost certainly described in this text here.

Now that’s a lot of careful speaking, isn’t it? If and if. But if there is going to be a Millennium it’s described here. Either way, either whether there’s going to be a Millennium or not, Isaiah 65:17-25 is legitimate prophecy for us as Christians. It’s either going to come true in the Millennium or in the Eternal State, either way we get it and we’re blessed and we should be happy and filled with hope.

Now, I have a certain level of uncertainty in this, I suppose you can already tell. It’s not a good thing. No topic in theology that I’ve studied for decades has so eluded final resolution as this one for me. I stand before you today like a theological ping pong ball. And you might ask, “What side are you on today?” Well, today I’m essentially amillennial. I don’t know if I will be at the end of this sermon. Something might happen in the middle, and some new aspect of 1 Corinthians 15 or Revelation 20 or something will hit me and I’ll ping back again.

This is bad, this is not a good thing, this is a bad thing. Howard Hendricks said to all preachers, “A mist in the pulpit is a fog in the pew.” Now, we have decided with our worship services to avoid smoke machines, we don’t want the fog machine wafting from the front across the congregation, so, we walked out in a total fog. I don’t want that, but I’m going to do the best that I can.

II. Isaiah 65: God Says “Behold Me… and My New Universe!”

First let’s get a little context in Isaiah 65, this is my second sermon in this chapter, I preached the first last week and we followed the keyword as you remember, behold, behold, that word of unveiling. And I gave you a four-part outline to the whole chapter. We did the first three parts last week, now the fourth. So it began with the word behold, that archaic word, that unveiling word. “Behold me,” says God, God’s humble self-revelation to Gentiles, remember we peered through the Book of Romans, the Apostle Paul said, “This is the Gentiles.” Isaiah 65:1, “I said behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name.” Those are the Gentiles. So God stands in the gospel before Gentile nations around the world and says, “Behold me, look at me,” and that’s through Christ, through the Gospel.

Secondly, “Behold my judgments,” verses 2-7, God says, “Behold it is written before me, I will not keep silent, I will repay.” And there the context Paul tells us is unbelieving Jews who’ve had the rich blessings of the Mosaic covenant, but who are Pagans, essentially pagans, living a Pagan life.

And then thirdly, we saw, behold my servant singing while the wicked are shamed and excluded. And so God speaks to the wicked as outsiders telling them the blessings that he’s going to give to his servants.

Verses 13 and 14, “Behold my servants shall eat but you shall go hungry, behold my servants shall drink but you shall be thirsty, behold my servants shall rejoice but you shall be put to shame, behold my servants shall sing for gladness of heart, but you shall cry out for pain of heart and wail for breaking of spirit.”

And he does this now in the text to warn outsiders to stop being outsiders, but to come in while there is time so that they can feast at the end of the world.

III. Walking Through the Text, Weighing Its Promises

But now, we look to verses 17 and following, “Behold, I will create a new heavens and a new earth.” And then again in verse 18, “For behold, I create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy.” So those are last two beholds. So there’s this unveiling of the new heaven and the new earth, and an unveiling of the new Jerusalem. Let’s just walk through the text and let’s just weigh its promises. What is described here is an idyllic experience of rich blessing, never yet seen on this sin-cursed earth. This was not fulfilled after the exile to Babylon ended, nothing like this happened at all. So this is as yet unfulfilled, we are still waiting for this. This is a future prophecy.

Listen to the text again verse 17 and following, “‘Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for behold, I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more.  Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; he who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere youth; he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed. They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands. They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the LORD, they and their descendants with them. Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,’ says the LORD.”

Alright, let’s look at key points, verse 17, God declares that he will create a new heavens and a new earth. The future creative work of God similar to Genesis 1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” but greater, better. It will be so radically different it will drive out all the thoughts of the old world so radically improved. Verse 17, “For behold I will create new heavens and a new Earth. The former things shall not be remembered neither shall they come to mind.”

Notice that it begins with the words, “For behold.” Verse 17, the word “for” which doesn’t show up in some other translations but all of those that are precise have the word “for,” it causes us to look back at least one verse, verse 16, alright, and verse 16, it says, “Whoever invokes a blessing in the land will do so by the God of truth. He who takes an oath in the land will swear by the God of truth, for the past troubles will be forgotten and hidden from my eyes, for behold, I will create a new Heavens and a new Earth and the former things will not be remembered.”

So that’s the whole thing. You’re not going to remember the past things, all of the past sorrows and grief. Now, as we read this obviously Revelation 21:1-4, comes to mind. There it says, “Then I saw a new heavens and a new earth, for the first heavens and the first Earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband, and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, now the dwelling of God is with men and He will live with them, and they will be his people and God Himself will be with them and be their God, and He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there’ll be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain. For the old order of things has passed away.” Do you not see the beautiful harmony there between Revelation 21 and Isaiah 65? They come together.

Now the new heavens and the new earth in Revelation 21 is what most people just simply call heaven. But I think we forget the new earth part. Can I just say this right now? If you vigorously believe, as you should, in a coming physical new earth and a spiritual new heaven that is harmonized in Christ, with the throne of God on that new earth, and you will walk on that new earth in a resurrection body and you are eager for that future world to come, it doesn’t make a difference what you believe about the Millennium. It won’t affect your missions at all, it won’t affect your prayer life at all, it won’t make any difference whatsoever in your marriage, in your parenting, in your church membership. None of it matters. The only reason we care is we’re trying to be faithful to the text and understand it, “But what… Pastor, you’re saying that this actually won’t make a difference, your sermon will not be applicable at all.” I’m not saying that. I want you to set your mind on eternity, the blessings that are described here could be begun in the Millennium and perfected in heaven. Set your heart on the new heavens and the new earth, that will affect how you live. That will affect your marriage, it will affect your parenting, it will affect your prayer life, it’ll affect everything. But the precise difference between the two? It won’t matter, if you vigorously believe in a new heavens and new earth, and they are coming. So now you can check out some of these like, “I don’t need to wander through the Millennium,” stick with me. There’s good things yet to come. The new heavens and the new earth in Revelation 21, what most people simply call the Eternal State or heaven, there, clearly all death and misery are gone forever. They’re gone. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.

Now, back to Isaiah 65 it says verse 18, it will be a place of eternal joy, where people will have cause to rejoice forever. The naming of the city of Jerusalem and her people is a source of eternal joy. “Behold I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy.” So it’s a place of delight, joy, satisfaction. Verse 19, God declares that he will rejoice over Jerusalem, eternally, and the sounds of weeping and mourning will never be heard in it again. Do you see that in verse 19?

Now we get to verse 20. Let tell you something about verse 20. Verse 20 is one of those amazing moments. You know those trendy expressions like this one, “Wait, what?” You ever heard that one? What is… What happens? What is, “Wait, what?” It’s like we’re going along and then something happens like, “Wait a second, what just happened?” Verse 20 is like that. It’s maybe one of the greatest, “Wait, what,” moments in the whole Book of Isaiah. Look what it says, “Never again will there be an infant… ” Wait a minute, what? “An infant who lives but a few days or an old man,” wait what was that? An old man? “Who does not live out his years. He who dies at 100 will be thought a mere youth and he who fails to reach 100 will be considered accursed.” Like, okay, I thought we were in the new heavens and the new earth. That’s what verse 17 said, right? Now we’ve got birth, aging, death and curse? What about Revelation 22:3 which says, “No longer will there be any curse”? What about Mark 12? It says, “When the dead rise, they neither marry nor given in marriage,” there’s no more procreation, no more infants.

So the seeming existence of birth and death in verse 20 are the very things that makes some people think this must be the Millennium. That’s the difference between the Millennium and the Eternal State is the presence of birth, aging and death and sin. And the rest of the chapter tells us the rest of the aspect of the Millennium, a greatly enhanced experience in which your works are blessed and will not be frustrating. You’ll build things and they will work out and you’ll plant things and you’ll get a full harvest. So that’s the enriched experience of life. But still, there’s birth, aging death and sin. That’s the essence of what the Millennium is all about. Verse 21 through 23, it says, “They will build houses and dwell in them. They will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plants and others eat. For as in the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people. My chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands. They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune, for they will be a people blessed by the Lord, they and their descendants with them.”

This lavish language here, Old Covenant images I think, the blessing of the Earth, the rich harvest, the curse is either completely removed or at least greatly reduced. Verse 22, an unusually long life like the redwood trees, living just centuries old. “As the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people,” but trees do die. Even redwoods die. So there’s the sense of long life. The overall language as I’ve said if you’re familiar with Old Covenant blessings and curses language, which is in the Book of Deuteronomy and then in the prophets, this is just like it. Agricultural rich blessings. Verse 23, “They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune, they will be a people blessed by the Lord, they and their descendants with them.”

Verse 24 promises amazing access and intimacy with God. “Before they call I will answer. While they’re still speaking I will hear.” There’s that intimacy with God. And then verse 25, a repeat of earlier language on the amazing supernatural piece that comes on earth by the transformation of animals. So the animals have basically, essentially a different nature, different than what we’ve known. Look at verse 25, “The wolf and the lamb will feed together and the lion will eat straw like the Ox, the dust will be the serpent’s food, they will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.” It reminds us distinctly of Isaiah 11:6-9, which says, this should sound very familiar, “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together and the lion will eat straw like the ox, the infant will play near the hole of the cobra and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest, they will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea,” that’s Isaiah 11:6-9, very similar language.

This seems to be talking about an idyllic relationship with the animal kingdom. No more of an adversarial predator-prey type of relationship. Wolves will stop acting like predators against lambs. Leopards will be the same toward goats. Cows will stand side-by-side next to lions, with no fear, the carnivorous destructive nature of the animal kingdom will be changed. What Alfred, Lord Tennyson, called nature red in tooth and claw, all that mindless ripping and shredding that animals do with each other. That seems to be done, gone, even the serpent, the cobra and the viper is transformed from an enemy to a friend, or humbled in some amazing way, the infant has nothing to fear at least. And then in Isaiah 11, there’s that universal knowledge. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. To sum up it seems that this section of scripture speaks of a stunning level of blessing on earth so great that it has never been seen in the history of the world.

It comes under a title in verse 17 of new heavens and new earth that God will create, it’s centered in Jerusalem. It involves such amazing joy that the sounds of mourning will not be heard in it at all, it involves rich agricultural blessing, sowing and reaping, no crop failure at all, building houses, other structures, no destruction at all, work is lavishly therefore blessed and successful. There seemed to be no enemies, no danger, no sorrow but there is birth and death, there are infants there and people live unnaturally long lives. So the combination of the term, new heavens and new earth with the presence of birth and death is problematic for every Christian interpreter of this passage. No one knows what to do with those two things. There’s not an interpreter on earth that’s totally comfortable with 17 and 20. People try to harmonize as best they can. Now I heard a preacher say years ago, there’s not a preacher, on earth that hasn’t at least once been tempted to give God advice on how it would have been better for him to have written this text.

So Lord, if you don’t mean a Millennium why did you give us verse 20? Can I just make a suggestion? But listen, who has ever given counsel to the Lord, that the Lord should listen to him. God knows exactly what he’s doing and he wants us to wrestle and so we wrestle, and do the best we can.

We need a little bit of history about Millennialism, pre-millennialism, evangelicalism just to know where we’re at in our context. First of all, what do I mean by the Millennium? The word literally means the 1000 years, 1000 years. Mille is the Latin for 1000, annus, mille, annus 1000 years. That idea comes only in one place, the literal 1000-year citation as such, but what we’re talking about here is only found in one place in the whole Bible: Revelation 20, it’s no where else. Ideas concerning it are debatably in other texts as we’re looking at today, but the Millennium itself is only found in Revelation 20. Now, in the 20th century, biblical Christians fought a battle against modernism or theological liberalism, in which there were severe questions raised about the Bible.

Post-Darwinian evolution and all that, they were just questions raised about the inerrancy of the Bible, the truthfulness of the Bible and that battle was fought, frequently called “The Battle of The Bible” began with the fundamentalists at the beginning of the 20th century. And at that time, DL Moody, other evangelists kind of link themselves together with a certain eschatology involving prophecy. And they basically said, “If you’re Evangelical, if you’re a Bible believer you’re going to believe in the literal 1000-year reign and the premillennial coming. Jesus is going to come back and then the 1000 years, and that’s almost a litmus test of whether you believe the Bible or not. Unfortunately, it got linked with other completely vital and valid issues such as the virgin birth, the substitutionary torment of Christ, his bloody death on the cross, his atoning sacrifice for our sins, his bodily resurrection from the dead, his actual working of literal miracles in space and time all of those things were part of the fundamentalist movement, part of biblical conservativism, but premillennialism got woven in there as well, and I think it shouldn’t have.

And so it came to the point where if you didn’t believe there was going to be a literal 1000-year reign of Christ after the second coming, you didn’t believe the Bible. And that is really just not true and it doesn’t show much knowledge about history. Some of the most passionate inerrantists passionately committed to every word of the Bible, were amillennial, they didn’t believe in a literal reign of Christ, physical reign of Christ on earth in this pattern. So I think we just separate them. People, pastors lose their jobs over this. I hope I’m not going to, I hope we don’t have a growing premillennial, kind of faction in the church. I think it’s possible to believe every word of the Bible is God’s word. But recognize that prophetic literature and apocalyptic literature are hard to interpret. We just do the best we can to interpret them.

IV. Could This Be the Millennium?

So, could this be the Millennium? Well, the word 1000 years comes from Revelation 20:1-6, which mentions the 1000-year period, seems after the second coming of Christ, if you take a consecutive order there in which the devil is bound with chains somehow, thrown in a pit and some, if not all, of the saints are resurrected to reign with Christ. After the 1000 years, the devil’s set free. That’s where it comes from, Revelation 20.

The idea of a period of rich blessing during that time is not found in Revelation 20. You don’t get any of that there. It’s just the binding of Satan so that he should not deceive the nations anymore and the raising up of souls that were beheaded during the reign of the Antichrist and they are resurrected and reign with Christ for a thousand years. At the end of the 1000 years, the devil is released and apparently he causes trouble again. So in Revelation 19, we have a clear description of the Second Coming of Christ in which Jesus comes back, destroys the beast, the Antichrist and his army, this huge army. Destroys the beast, throws the beast into hell, into the lake of fire. Huge carnage at that point.

Then you got Revelation 20, which is 1000 years. Satan is bound so he cannot deceive the nations. Martyrs slain by the beast are raised from the dead and sit on thrones and reign with Christ for a thousand years. At the end of the thousand years, Satan is released from his prison. He goes once again on the Earth and deceives people. Gathers them for one final battle. The evil army of rebels is massed and marches against the city of God’s people, but God destroys them with fire from heaven. Then at last, the devil is cast into the lake of fire to be tormented forever. After that comes the Great White Throne Judgment in which all human beings that have ever lived are judged by the books of God. Everyone whose name is not found written in the Lamb’s Book of Life is thrown into the lake of fire. Revelation 20.

Then Revelation 21, you heard sung so beautifully for us today. That’s the New Heaven and the New Earth. I’ve already read it. Descends from heaven, you have the Eternal State. Revelation 21 and 22 seems to be heaven, the Eternal State. So the sequence is important for premillennialists. They think first the Second Coming in Revelation 19, big battle, Second Coming. Then the 1000 years, that’s the premillennial. Then the eternal state. Alright.

Why do premillennialists have a good case? What are arguments for it? Why do I act like a ping pong ball, back and forth? Alright. Well, the sequence of chapters in Revelation 19, 20, and 21 seems pretty weighty. And it was very weighty for a counselor of mine who is a teacher at Southern Seminary who I asked advice on this when I had to write this chapter or commentary. And he had switched from being premillennial to amillennial in the three years that I had talked to him. That was not helpful. I was very disappointed. I wanted some premillennial help and he said, “Sorry. I can’t help you. I’m an amillennial now.” Maybe he switched back in the last month. I don’t know. But I had to write the chapter. So the sequence is determined if he told me that. And he said it’s first, the Second Coming, Revelation 19, then the 1000 years, and then you’ve got the Eternal State. Secondly, the binding of Satan.

So apparently, he has no ability to roam or to deceive the nations is troublesome for amillennialists. because we know that Satan is very active on planet Earth. It says in 1 Peter 5, “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.” Seems like he is free to roam, free to deceive, free to tear people apart. So it seems like the vigorous binding that’s described, that is the essence of the 1000 years there, is not happening now, so it must be in the future.

Also, the Millennium seems to be the best way to understand Isaiah 65:20. I don’t know how else to… What do you do with this incredibly, richly blessed world in which there’s birth, life and death? I don’t know. If there’s not going to be a Millennium, I don’t know what to do exactly with those words.

And then one final argument for premillennialism is, it seems to make sense big picture. Redemptive history. What was it all about? You know what I think it was all about? At the garden, the human race through Adam and Eve wanted an education. Do you remember? It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So we wanted an education in evil. Well, we’ve gotten one. And what’s it been like? At every level of redemptive history, I’m not a dispensationalist, but at every unfolding of God’s redemptive history, as more blessings have been poured out on His people, sin has stubbornly remained and made it difficult, including right now. Do you know what I mean? We have Pentecost blessings, we have the Indwelling Spirit, we’re adopted as sons and daughters, and still we wrestle every day with sin. And it’s like kind of like the final step of that drama is Jesus physically reigning on Earth, having already come and all that and still there’s sin. It makes sense, doesn’t mean it’s true, but it does make sense.

What about amillennialism? First of all, amillennialism is a misnomer. It means like there’s no Millennium. Amillennials don’t believe that there is no Millennium. It’s just that it’s a symbolic number in the Book of Revelation. 10 cubed. 10 times 10 times 10. There’s a lot of this cubing thing. I’m about to preach through the Book of Revelation all the way through to the end. So I’ve got a long time to figure out what I believe about Revelation 20, so you can pray for me. Also, I want you to know this is the very topic I’ll be discussing on Wednesday night at 6:30 up in the Upper Room in Acts. We’re right here in our eschatology study, Millennium. So come and argue with me, debate with me, whatever you’d like to do. That’s a good format for that.

Amillennialists don’t believe there’s no 1000-year binding of Satan. We just think the binding is going on now in a limited sense. It’s specific. He’s bound so that he cannot deceive the nations to the end that they would mass together and to attack the people of God wholesale and try to destroy them. That seems to be the way the binding is. Or you could say he’s not able to deceive the elect of the nations concerning Christ. When Jesus came in Matthew 12, he’s talking about driving out demons. Remember that? And they said it’s by Beelzebub that he drives out demons. How can Satan drive out Satan?

You want to know what’s really going on here? Matthew 12:29. He says, “How can anyone enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can rob his house.” So that’s a huge verse for amillennialists. They’re saying the binding happened at the First Coming of Christ so that he cannot deceive the elect of the nations and believe in Jesus. It’s not incredibly convincing when you read Revelation 20, but it’s at least a possibility. Another reason for amillennialism. It’s just the simplest answer for everything. Ever heard of Occam’s rule? Just choose the simplest answer. Alright. The next thing that happens after escalating tribulation and the Antichrist is the Second Coming of Christ, all of Jesus’ enemies are destroyed, all of his elect are resurrected, judgement happens then an Eternal State.

For me probably the weightiest reason why I believe that amillennialism is the way to go is because it says in 1 Corinthians 15, that at the second coming of Christ He will destroy all his enemies not some of them, and the last enemy to be destroyed is what? Death, death. So after his second coming, there can be no death. I think that’s a very strong argument.

Sam Storms who’s probably the most articulate advocate of this position said, that if you’re a premillennialist there are several things with which you have to reckon. Number one, you must necessarily believe that physical death will continue after the second coming of Christ. Secondly, you must necessarily believe that the natural creation will continue beyond the time of Christ’s second coming to be subjected to the curse in some measure of the fall of man. After the second coming that curse is going to continue, they’ll mitigate it. Thirdly, you must necessarily believe that the new heavens and the new earth will not be introduced until 1000 years subsequent to the return of Christ. Fourthly, you must necessarily believe that unbelieving men and women will still have the opportunity to come to saving faith or reject Christ for at least 1000 years after his return in kingly glory. Fifth, you must necessarily believe that unbelievers will not be finally resurrected until at least 1000 years subsequent to the return of Christ. And sixth, you must necessarily believe that unbelievers will not finally be judged and cast out into eternal punishment until at least 1000 years after the return of Christ.

So what’s wrong with this? Well, it seems the New Testament explicitly denies each of those six things. It just seems the second coming is when it happens friends. At the second coming all… Everything is settled. 1 Corinthians 15, 22 and following: “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive but each in his own turn, Christ the first fruits then when he comes those who belong to him,” do you hear that? That’s the timing. When he comes, “Then the end will come when He hands over the Kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until He has put all His enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” And then again, 1 Thessalonians 4, “We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.” Jesus is coming back, he’s descending from heaven, in the clouds, he’s going to bring with him those who have fallen asleep, those are the dead in Christ. So Jesus will descend, the voice of the archangel, the trumpet call of God, the second coming of Christ and the dead in Christ will rise in resurrection bodies and they’ll go up and be caught up together with the Lord in the clouds.

And then those who are still alive and are left will also be caught up and in a flash, in a twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet they will be resurrected and at that moment all of the believers in Christ will have resurrection bodies and then he descends, finishes his judgment on all his enemies and the Eternal State comes, that’s the way the amillennialist sees the order.

V. Applications

So my evaluation? It really doesn’t matter, what does matter is, do you believe in the new heavens and the new earth? And are you preparing yourself for it? That’s the thing. 2 Peter 3, says, “The day of the Lord will come like a thief, the heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and Godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed it’s coming. Be holy, be evangelistic, internal journey, external journey, be holy as you look forward to the day of God and speed it’s coming.” That’s what Peter tells us to do in light of what’s coming. I would add one other thing, Peter would not mind I don’t think, be hope-filled, be filled with hope about all this.

This is a glorious chapter. Do you see the beauty of this? All difficulty between verse 17 and 20, set it aside for a moment, the radiant beauty of what’s coming should fill you with hope. Let your hope shine to lost people around you, let them see the hope that you have, let them see how optimistic and joyful you are. You don’t get dragged down into the current events, you are floating above that to some degree, very aware of what’s happening but so filled with hope and let that joy give you a platform for explaining the Gospel to the lost.

My final word is to those of you who are lost and you know that you’re outside of Christ, please don’t leave this place lost. God our Heavenly Father, who set all of this up, sent his Son our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who lived a sinless life, who died on the cross, a bloody death in your place as a sinner, you have violated God’s laws, you have broken the 10 Commandments, you’ve broken the two great commandments, we all have, all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. God sent his son to save sinners like you and me, don’t leave this place unconverted. Call on the name of the Lord, trust in him, just look to Christ, look to him and all of your sins will be forgiven and then this beautiful promise will be yours as it belongs already to all of us. Close with me in prayer.

This morning, we are going to look at one of the most provocative and powerful sections of Isaiah’s prophecy… the vision he had of the future universe as recreated in Christ. God calls it the NEW HEAVENS and NEW EARTH… but the aspects of it here seem like it might be discussing the final stage before the eternal state… a final stage often called the MILLENNIUM.

Either way, this passage should fill us with a deep longing and expectation for the future…

It is essential to the life of faith to LONG FOR the future as it is promised in the Word of God… to LOOK FORWARD to what God has said he will do:

Colossians 3:1-4 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Hebrews 11:10 Abraham was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

2 Peter 3:13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.

This “looking forward” can only be done by faith, for the eternal city and the new universe that are coming do not yet exist… they are described for us in scripture… and only by the REVELATION of scripture by the Holy Spirit can we see the invisible God and the invisible world that is coming… faith is the eyesight of the soul, and God the revealer of what is unseen

God the INVISIBLE… God the UNSEEN… dwells in a spiritual realm that surrounds us, but we cannot reach it

And we cannot KNOW anything about this mysterious, hidden God except that he REVEAL himself to us

I.  Dreams of a Perfect World

A.  Throughout Recorded History… Mankind Has Imagined a Perfect World

1.  Since the Fall of Adam into sin, the world has been cursed… God said to Adam “Cursed is the ground because of you… it will produce thorns and thistles for you… and you will sink back into the dust”

a.  So… both the earth itself and work were cursed and the struggle for survival was on

b.  Life on earth became an instant grief to the human race

Ecclesiastes 1:2-4 Vanity of vanities … vanity of vanities! All is vanity. 3 What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? 4 A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.

c.  Creation itself has been groaning under the weight of this curse

d.  Death has been rampant and constantly threatened, both for man and beast

Ecclesiastes 3:19-20 Man’s fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. 20 All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.

2.  Human society was corrupted to the core by sin

a.  Adam and Eve hid from each other when they sinned… their eyes were opened and they made fig leaves to cover their shame

b.  Soon after, Cain killed his brother Abel

c.  By the time of Noah, the contagion of sin had spread to epic levels… the thoughts of the human race were only evil all the time

d.  Noah and his sons brought the contagion on the ark with them… and it resumed spreading after the earth cleansing flood

3.  The link between human sin and nature’s groaning is clearest in the Flood; all air-breathing animals that were not on the Ark were swept away in a Flood designed to punished the human race… man sinned and animals died

4.  This LAMENTING, GROANING, PAIN-FILLED, seemingly

MEANINGLESS existence seems so wrong, down to the very core of our beings

5.  We have the sense of a perfect world imprinted on our souls… and mankind has always yearned for it and imagined it

6.  Authors and poets, cult leaders and statesmen, conquerors and songwriters, scientists and architects have all YEARNED for a paradise, a UTOPIA, that could be ushered in, a golden age free from the curse

a.  Plato’s Republic was written around 370 BC, one of the oldest efforts in human literature to describe a perfect society

b.  About 150 years before Christ, the Greek merchant Iambulus wrote a book called Islands of the Sun, describing a perfect society on some distant island in the eastern sea

c.  In the year 421 after Christ, a Chinese writer named Tao Yuanming wrote a fable called The Peach Blossom Spring in which a fisherman accidentally sailed up a river into a forest made up entirely of blossoming peach trees; the river led to a grotto, with a narrow passageway through which he was able to squeeze; there he found a village with animals and people of all ages; the villagers were surprised to see him, but they were friendly… it was an ideal society cut off from the outside world; he left and marked his path with signs so he could find his way back, but he never could find it again

d.  In 1516, Sir Thomas More coined the term Utopia by writing a book with that name; the word literally means NOPLACE; it describes an island in the recently discovered New World with a perfect society

e.  Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels are among the more famous efforts…

f.  Many modern science fiction novels follow people like H.G. Wells in seeking to describe other planets with ideal societies…

g.  This quest goes on and on… it is deeply rooted in the heart of humanity

Ecclesiastes 3:11 God has set eternity in the hearts of men

So God has also set paradise in our hearts as well…

B.  HOWEVER: No Visions are Better than the Bible’s!

1.  God alone has the imagination and mental power to create a perfect world in terms we understand

2.  God alone can work out all the details in a way most glorifying to him and most satisfying to us

3.  The Bible actually DOES describe an ideal world in which people live in harmony with nature and with each other

4.  Many passages in this book of Isaiah describe it; so also does the Book of Revelation

5.  As we come to Isaiah 65:17-25, we come to an UNVEILING of God’s future perfect world… BEHOLD, says God… Me, and my perfect world

6.  The question all Christians struggle with are the DETAILS, the particulars…

C.  The Power of Predictive Prophecy

1.  Again and again, we’ve seen the utterly unique power that the God of the Bible has to predict the future…

Isaiah 46:9-10 I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. 10 I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.

2.  Christianity is the only religion in the world with this power… no other religion even claims to be able to make real predictions about the nations and history ahead of time

3.  This is the consummation of all of history… the destination to which all of history is moving

D.  Questions of the Millennium!

1.  Isaiah 65 will bring us to ask some of the most exciting and debated questions there are about Christian eschatology… teaching about the end of the world

2.  Age-old debates about the possibility of a thousand-year reign of Christ on Earth after his Second Coming

3.  The possibility of a greatly enhanced life on earth—a life in which the effects of sin and death are greatly decreased though not totally removed

4.  These questions will come up, not naturally from Isaiah 65, but from the Bible as a whole, with Isaiah 65:17-25 as a key reference

5.  If there will be a Millennium, and if life in that Millennial Kingdom is described anywhere in the Bible, almost certainly it is described here in this text

6.  Either way, Isaiah 65:17-25 describes an Earth so richly blessed by the power of God that we should eagerly desire it to come…one way or another, we will get these blessing in Christ! Either this text describes the ETERNAL STATE in the New Heavens and New Earth, or it describes the Millennial Kingdom… or BOTH

E.  My Own Uncertainty

1.  No topic in theology has so eluded my analysis as this one!

2.  I stand before you today like a theological ping-pong ball; I go back and forth and back and forth on this topic!

3.  This is BAD!

Dr. Howard Hendricks: “A mist in the pulpit is a fog in the pews.”

In other words, if the pastor doesn’t fully understand what he’s preaching on, how much less will the people listening to him!

4.  The best I can do for you this morning is show you as clearly as possible the options for understanding the future world as the Lord has revealed it in the Bible

First… context in Isaiah 65:

II.  Isaiah 65: God Says “Behold Me… and My New Universe!”

A.  Key Word: Behold!

One word that has been used by scripture again and again for powerful moments of revelations is BEHOLD… as we discussed last time

In Isaiah 65, the word “Behold” is used NINE TIMES… only the KJV translates them all, but the ESV gets most of them

These nine times that God says “Behold”, it’s as though he is saying to the human race—WATCH WHAT WONDERS I am about to unveil before your eyes… you will see amazing things, things you have not known, that never would have entered your mind except that I revealed them to you… WATCH AND BE AMAZED, look on with wonder at what I will display to you… hidden things you have never seen before!

B.  “Behold, Me!”: God’s Humble Self-Revelation to the Gentiles (vs. 1)

[Twice] Isaiah 65:1 I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name.
C.  “Behold, My Judgments” on Wicked Rebels (vs. 2-7)

Isaiah 65:6 Behold, it is written before me: “I will not keep silent, but I will repay

D.    “Behold, My Servants Singing… While the Wicked Are Shamed” (vs. 8-16)

[Four times] Isaiah 65:13-14 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: “Behold, my servants shall eat, but you shall be hungry; behold, my servants shall drink, but you shall be thirsty; behold, my servants shall rejoice, but you shall be put to shame; behold, my servants shall sing for gladness of heart, but you shall cry out for pain of heart and shall wail for breaking of spirit.

E.  NOW: Behold My New Universe (vs. 17-25):

III.  Walking Through the Text, Weighing Its Promises

A.  What is described is an IDYLLIC EXPERIENCE of rich blessing never yet seen on our sin-cursed planet

Isaiah 65:17-25 “BEHOLD, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. 18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for BEHOLD, I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. 19 I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more. 20 “Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; he who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere youth; he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed. 21 They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22 No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands. 23 They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the LORD, they and their descendants with them. 24 Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear. 25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,” says the LORD.

1.  Key points:

a.  Vs. 17: God declares he will create a “new heavens and a new earth” so radically different it will drive out all thoughts of the old world

ESV Isaiah 65:17 “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.

Note that it begins “FOR BEHOLD…”

The word “for” follows from the previous verse, the concept of God’s chosen people being free from the curse of his judgments:

Isaiah 65:16 Whoever invokes a blessing in the land will do so by the God of truth; he who takes an oath in the land will swear by the God of truth. For the past troubles will be forgotten and hidden from my eyes.

Now… Isaiah 65 immediately calls these famous verses to mind:

Revelation 21:1-4 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 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. 4 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.”

i)  BUT… the “New Heavens and New Earth” in Revelation 21 is what most people call the eternal state or simply “heaven”…

ii)  Clearly death and all misery are eternally gone forever

iii)  BACK to Isaiah 65:

b.  Verse 18: it will be a place of eternal joy, where people will have cause to rejoice FOREVER; the naming of the city of Jerusalem and her people as a source of eternal joy will stir passions among the Jews

Isaiah 65:18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy.

c.  Vs. 19: God declares he will rejoice over Jerusalem eternally and the sounds of WEEPING and MOURNING will never be heard in it again

d.  Vs. 20: WAIT… WHAT???

Isaiah 65:20 “Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; he who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere youth; he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed.

i)  There are INFANTS?? And people AGING… and DYING???? And the possibility of some dying younger than they should and being considered ACCURSED?? I thought death was gone forever… and all curses! What about this:

Revelation 22:3 No longer will there be any curse.

And this:

Mark 12:25 When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.

Back to Isaiah 65:21

ii)  The seeming existence of BIRTH and DEATH in verse 20 are the very things that make some people think this MUST BE the millennium

iii)  A greatly improved existence, but not quite heaven!

iv)  BUT verse 17 says “I will create a NEW HEAVEN and a NEW EARTH”

v)  Very difficult to put verses 17 and 20 together!

e.  Vs. 21-22: rich building of homes that will not be seized by enemies; planting of vineyards that will bear a rich harvest

Isaiah 65:21-23 They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22 No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands. 23 They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the LORD, they and their descendants with them.

i)  The blessing of the earth… rich harvests, either the curse completely removed or at least greatly reduced

f.  Vs. 22: unusually long life… like the redwoods I mentioned in Isaiah 61’s sermon… “as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people”… and yet, trees die

g.  The overall language is of the blessings of the Old Covenant richly poured out

Isaiah 65:23 They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the LORD, they and their descendants with them.

h.  Vs. 24 promises amazing access and intimacy with God:

Isaiah 65:24 Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.

i.  Vs. 25: a repeat of earlier language on the amazing, supernatural peace that will be on the earth:

Isaiah 65:25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,” says the LORD.

Isaiah 11:6-9 The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. 7 The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. 8 The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest. 9 They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

This seems to be talking about an IDYLLIC relationship with the animal kingdom… no more of an ADVERSARIAL relationship; wolves will stop acting as predators against lambs; leopards the same toward goats; calves will stand side by side with lions with no fear; the CARNIVOROUS, destructive nature of the animal kingdom will be changed

Alfred Lord Tennyson: “nature red in tooth and claw”… the seemingly mindless ripping and shredding of animal flesh by other animals… all of that it seems is DONE FOREVER

Even the SERPENT (cobra and viper) is transformed from enemy to friend; the infant has nothing to fear

Universal knowledge of the Lord…. AS THE WATERS COVER THE SEA

To sum up, it seems that this section of scripture speaks of a stunning level of blessing on earth so great that it has never been seen in the history of the world… It comes under the title of a NEW HEAVENS and NEW EARTH that God will create; it is centered in Jerusalem, and it involves such amazing joy that the sounds of mourning will not be heard at all… it involves rich agricultural blessings—sowing and reaping, with no crop failure at all; building houses and other structures, and no destruction at all… work is lavishly blessed and successful. There seem to be no enemies, no danger, no sorrow… BUT [IT SEEMS] THERE ARE BIRTH AND DEATH… it seems there are infants born there, and people live unnaturally long lives…

The combination of the term NEW HEAVENS and NEW EARTH with the presence of birth and death is difficult for every single Christian interpreter of this passage

B.  Basically, there are one of two main evangelical approaches to this: 1) this is describing the millennial reign of Christ on earth, established after the Second Coming but before the final state; 2) this is rich, Old Testament language for the blessings of the New Covenant under Christ, culminating in the eternal state… and the verses don’t actually say there will be birth and death, but it is just using well-known Old Testament language for rich blessing in Christ.

C.  A word about Premillennialism and Evangelicalism

1.  Evangelicals believe the Bible to be the inerrant word of God

2.  20th century: the Battle for the Bible… fought MODERNISM or anti- supernaturalism

3.  Prophecy became a major litmus test for being evangelical

4.  Many believed that if you did not accept a LITERAL thousand year reign of Christ on earth, you were a theological LIBERAL…

5.  That is not true… of course many theological liberals do not believe in the literal thousand years reign, like they don’t believe in a literal Virgin Birth or a literal bodily resurrection of Christ

6.  BUT it is possible to believe that every word in the Bible is inspired and inerrant, and that Christ truly was born of a Virgin, truly did miracles, truly died on the cross, truly rose bodily from the dead, and truly will physically return again at the end of the age… and NOT believe in a millennial reign of Christ on earth

7.  It has to do with how difficult Isaiah and Revelation are to interpret! So many difficult images and words and visions… SO HARD!!!!

IV.  Could This Be the Millennium?

A.  What Is the “Millennium?”

1.  The word literally means “one thousand years”… the key text is Revelation 20:1-6, which mentions a thousand year period (perhaps after the Second Coming of Christ) in which the devil is bound and some (if not all) of the saints are resurrected and ruling with Christ; and after the thousand years, the devil is set free

2.  The idea of a period of rich blessing in the Millennium is not openly taught in Revelation 20, but people usually reach for Old Testament prophecies (like in Isaiah and Zechariah) to describe such a time of blessing… a time of rich blessing, BUT NOT YET FULLY HEAVEN… there is still death, still unbelief, still the threat of a rebellion at the end of the thousand years

B.  Looking Quickly at Revelation 20

1.  Understanding the sequence of chapters in Revelation

a.  Revelation 19: the Second Coming of Christ… the Beast (the Antichrist) assembles a huge army to destroy God’s people, and Christ Himself returns from heaven to destroy the Beast and send him to the Lake of Fire;

Christ returns from heaven with the armies of heaven and they slaughter the Beast and his followers in one massive battle

b.  Revelation 20… the Thousand Years…: Satan is bound so he cannot deceive the nations; martyrs slain by the Beast are raised from the dead and sit on thrones and reign with Christ for a thousand years; at the end of the thousand years, Satan is released from his prison and he once again goes forth on the earth and deceives people; he gathers them for one final battle; the evil army of rebels is massive and marches against the city of God’s people, but God destroys them with fire from heaven; then at last the devil is cast into the Lake of Fire to be tormented forever; after that comes the GREAT WHITE THRONE judgment of all human beings that have ever lived… everyone is judged by the books of God… everyone whose name is not found in the Lamb’s Book of Life is thrown in the Lake of Fire

c.  Revelation 21-22: the New Heavens and New Earth… as quoted earlier, where there is no longer DEATH or mourning or crying or pain… the eternal state

d.  So… the SEQUENCE of the chapters is important for millennial interpretation: wrath on the earth, the Second Coming of Christ, the chaining of the devil for a thousand years; the release of the devil for a final battle, then the New Heaven and New Earth and eternal state with NO DEATH

2.  Understanding progressive parallelism

a.  The idea that the Book of Revelation is teaching the same thing over and over again… the stretch of time between the First and Second Comings of Christ

b.  So the seven seals and the seven trumpets and the seven bowls in Revelation 6-16 covers that same period in different ways… a time of great suffering for the church as God pours out judgments on the earth for their treatment of his people

c.  Generally: Revelation 1-11 unfolds the suffering of the church in the world; Revelation 12-20 gives the deeper spiritual background of this struggle… especially revealing SATAN’S activity in all the earthly persecution of the church

d.  Thus Revelation 20 depicts the restriction of Satan during this phase and his final doom

3.  Unfolding Revelation 20 itself:

4.  This is the KEY PASSAGE on the millennium… the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth is taught openly nowhere else in scripture

Revelation 20:1-10 And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. 2 He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. 3 He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be set free for a short time. 4 ¶ I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. 5 (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. 6 Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years. 7 When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison 8 and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth– Gog and Magog– to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. 9 They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. 10 And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

5.  Walking through it:

a.  It begins with an angel who descends from heaven with a key and a chain

Revelation 20:1 And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain.

NOTE: the “abysss” means a deep pit, in the Bible, a holding place for demons before their final condemnation in the Lake of Fire

b.  The angel seizes the dragon (Satan) and binds him with the great chain

Revelation 20:2-3 He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. 3 He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be set free for a short time.

c.  This binding of Satan has a clear purpose: to restrict his freedom on earth and prevent him from deceiving the nations

d.  At the end of the thousand years, Satan is set free again

e.  Next is described the resurrected and ruling saints:

Revelation 20:4-6 I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. 5 (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. 6 Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years.

f.  The binding of Satan and the resurrection of the saints are the KEY INTERPRETIVE issues of this passage

g.  The saints said to be raised here are designated as those who were beheaded for their testimony of Jesus and the Word of God during the reign of the beast and his image… thus it seems to be a LIMITED resurrection of only some of the saints

h.  There is a clear blessing spoken on those who are resurrected at that point… but no such blessing spoken on those resurrected later

i.  There is NO DESCRIPTION of life in the millennium; all such questions are left to other passages of scripture… including Isaiah 65 and other OT prophecies

j.  At the end of the thousand years, Satan is set free and wreaks havoc once more:

Revelation 20:7-9 When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison 8 and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth– Gog and Magog– to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. 9 They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them.

k.  This seems to be a reenactment of the battle Jesus fought at the time of his Second Coming, described in Revelation 19

l.  This final rebellion is crushed by fire coming down from heaven like Sodom and Gomorrah

m.  Then Satan is finally corralled and thrown in the Lake of Fire

Revelation 20:10 And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

n.  What follows at last is the Great White Throne Judgment

Revelation 20:11-15 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it.
Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. 13 The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. 14 Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15 If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

6.  This is the only text in the Bible that teaches the Millennium openly and directly

C.  Arguments for Premillennialism

1.  The sequence of the chapters Revelation 19-20-21 seems to teach the Second Coming of Christ FOLLOWED BY the thousand year reign FOLLOWED BY the New Heavens and New Earth

2.  The binding of Satan in Revelation 20:1-3 seems to imply that Satan has NO FREEDOM TO ROAM the earth at all, and no ability to deceive the nations AT ALL; if this refers to this present church age, that does not line up with the present activity of Satan in ruling this world and attacking the saints

3.  The millennium seems the best way to explain the very passage we’re looking at today—Isaiah 65, in which there is a better experience on earth but still birth and death

4.  AND the millennium also fits into a general sense of the UNFOLDING of sin in progressively better, more gracious scenarios, showing how SIN IS SO DIFFICULT TO ERADICATE

Genesis 2:9 the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Genesis 3:5 you will be like God, knowing good and evil

Genesis 3:6 the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom

Education in EVIL… step by step…

Romans 5:20 The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more

God DRAWS OUT sin like poison so we see how evil it is!!

a.  After the Garden: a great increase of evil, resulting in the flood, but also the rescue of righteous Noah

b.  After the Flood: a great increase of evil, resulting in the Tower of Babel and the confusing and scattering of the peoples… then the call of Abraham

c.  After the Call of Abraham, the Law of Moses, the Old Covenant… the whole Jewish history resulted in a great display of evil and the exile to Babylon

d.  After Christ, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the church age… but sin is STILL PRESENT, still STUBBORN, still so very hard to eradicate…

Romans 7:15 what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

e.  After the Second Coming of Christ, during the Millennial reign… no Satan, active reign of Christ on earth… but still sin is present, and results in a final rebellion

f.  STEP BY STEP… we have learned how stubborn sin is to deal with

D.  Arguments for Amillennialism

1.  Amillennialists do not believe there is NO THOUSAND YEAR period of the binding of Satan and the life of the martyrs…

a.  The number 1000 is SYMBOLIC… 10 times 10 times 10… a long period of time

b.  The binding of Satan is specific: so that he should not deceive the nations and so that he should not gather them in a concerted attack on the church

c.  Satan’s binding happened at the FIRST coming of Christ specifically with regard to the ELECT:

When Jesus’ enemies said he drove out demons by the power of Satan, Jesus said this:

Matthew 12:25-26 “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. 26 If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand?

Matthew 12:28 if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

Matthew 12:29 how can anyone enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can rob his house.

In other words, the Kingdom of God advances BY POWER, by the BINDING UP of Satan so that his former slaves can be plundered from him

2.  Simplest explanation of everything…

a.  A time of increasing persecution of the church in the world, culminating in…

b.  The reign of the antichrist as a powerful world figure who blasphemes and who martyrs tons of Christians, culminating in…

c.  The Second Coming of Christ in which he defeats ALL of his enemies, culminating in Judgement Day, finally culminating in…

d.  The New Heavens and New Earth

3.  The progressive parallelism approach to Revelation seems the best

a.  Revelation 20 does seem to go BACK OVER the same ground again, especially when Satan attracts a huge number of people to attack the people of God and are destroyed by heaven’s power

b.  The “resurrection of the martyrs” in Revelation 20 seems best described by comparing Revelation 6:9, and 20:4

Revelation 6:9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained.

Revelation 20:4 I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

In both places the same phrase is used to describe those persecuted for Christ in this present world… persecuted by Satan;

The “coming to life” may not be a resurrection at all, but like the martyrs in Revelation 6, they were ALIVE spiritually through faith in Christ and were ruling with Christ in heaven

4.  Premilliennialists have a hard time explaining why the millennium is not taught at all in the works of Paul or in the rest of the New Testament

Sam Storms: If you are a premillennialist, whether dispensational or not, there are several things with which you must reckon:

•  You must necessarily believe that physical death will continue to exist beyond the time of Christ’s second coming.

•  You must necessarily believe that the natural creation will continue, beyond the time of Christ’s second coming, to be subjected to the curse imposed by the Fall of man.

•  You must necessarily believe that the New Heavens and New Earth will not be introduced until 1,000 years subsequent to the return of Christ.

•  You must necessarily believe that unbelieving men and women will still have the opportunity to come to saving faith in Christ for at least 1,000 years after his return in kingly glory.

•  You must necessarily believe that unbelievers will not be finally resurrected until at least 1,000 years subsequent to the return of Christ.

•  You must necessarily believe that unbelievers will not be finally judged and cast into eternal punishment until at least 1,000 years subsequent to the return of Christ.

So what’s wrong with believing these things, asks the premillennialist? The NT explicitly DENIES these things…

Especially the resurrection happens at the Second Coming of Christ; so also the defeat of DEATH and all Christ’s enemies:

1 Corinthians 15:22-26 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 23 But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. 24 Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

1 Thessalonians 4:14-17 We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. 15 According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

The resurrection of ALL the saints happens at the Second Coming of Christ! Not a partial resurrection of some saints

And how do you have some in resurrection bodies who then procreate?

Matthew 22:30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.

These are serious problems for the premillennial position.

E.  My Quick Evaluation

1.  So… will there be a thousand year reign of Christ on earth? MAYBE, maybe not

2.  Some days I think yes, some days I think no

3.  The problem just has to do with proper interpretation of Isaiah 65 and Revelation 20

4.  It actually doesn’t change the way I live my life

V. Applications

A.  What Benefit Comes from Pondering the Millennium?

1.  Compared to the New Heaven and New Earth, not much

2.  Most premillennials seem to spend a lot more time thinking about the millennium than they do the New Earth

3.  All of the richest blessings of the millennium will be EVEN BETTER in the New Earth, with NO DEATH and no UNBELIEVERS

4.  Stick with Peter’s applications:

2 Peter 3:10-13 the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. 11 ¶ Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. 13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.

a.  LOOK FORWARD to the future that we are sure of… the Second Coming of Christ and the New Heaven and New Earth

b.  Think about it daily… set your hearts upon it

i)  Think about the beauty of the coming world

ii)  Read Isaiah 65 and imagine a day in which these kinds of blessings will come… the curse removed from the earth and from our labors on it

c.  Concerning THIS AGE: Realize that everything around you will be destroyed by fire

d.  So…Live for eternity

e.  Be ready for your own death and for the deaths of loved ones, neighbors, coworkers, fellow citizens, fellow humans

f.  BE HOLY… don’t get sucked into the Babylon lifestyle

g.  SPEED THE DAY OF GOD… by evangelism and missions

B.  A Word to Unbelievers: FLEE TO CHRIST!!!