The appearance of this city of God, the new Jerusalem, is in a certain sense the culminating point of the entire Bible. This is the destiny for which we were created. But unless, by the work of Christ, you are a new creature, you can take it on the authority of the Word of God that you will never enter that city. So we need to search our hearts. We need to make our calling and election sure. We need to say: “Lord Jesus Christ, am I really yours? Have you really changed me? Have I been made a new creature?

John begins to describe some of the other details, and he talks about this great wall all the way around it. A wall would symbolize protection, and so you have an image there of our eternal security and safety. He talks about the twelve foundations. Why twelve? Well the reason is that they relate to the twelve apostles of the Lamb in verse 14. And the reference to the twelve apostles goes along with the twelve gates in the city, which represent the twelve tribes of Israel. This shows us the kind of base upon which this heavenly community is established.

When John begins to describe this in chapter 21, the thing that impresses him most about Jerusalem is that God dwells there. He writes, “I saw the Holy City,” he says, “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. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God’” (vv. 2-3).

It’s really not possible to come to this chapter at this point in the Bible, right at the end, without realizing that when John has this vision of the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, this is in contrast to practically all of the great themes preceding this that have to do with our normal, earthly expectations. Jerusalem is certainly contrasted with Babylon, which is mentioned just a few chapters before. Babylon stands for everything that is human in opposition to God.

A funeral service of the Book of Common Prayer is a very beautiful thing—both in its simplicity and in the wise way it uses Scripture. The Old Testament readings have to do with many of the psalms. There is the twenty-third as you can imagine, as well as the forty-sixth, which tells us that the Lord is our refuge and our strength.