Thy Kingdom Come
The below is the transcript from a sermon I gave last week.
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I mentioned to my wife this week that Christmas is over and Epiphany has begun. She surprised me by rattling off the fact that 3 Kings Day is on January 6th — which marks the start of the Epiphany season. She went on to tell me that “El Dia De Los Reyes”, as it is called, is a traditional holiday in Spain and Latin American… something she and her family celebrated when she was growing up.
Both now curious, we looked together and learned that 3 Kings falls on the twelfth day of Christmas and celebrates the day the three wise men finally arrived after their journey to worship the baby Jesus. In thinking about this event, I began to wonder about these wise men…
Why did they go? All we really know is, they saw a new star, dropped everything and went after it. At first, this felt so mysterious to me. But the more I thought about it, it occurred to me, We’re all enamored by new things, aren’t we?
And to these star gazers, a NEW star could mean everything
I want to suggest to you that we live in a time perhaps more committed to newness than any other in history. We fear the traditional and desire the chic, the cutting edge— progressive.
The word “new” generally means “young”. It can mean a young idea or progressive development. We love:
New philosophies
New medicine & technology
New political platforms
New can also imply beautiful or robust. To capture this fleeting newness we use cosmetics, get plastic surgery; we exercise.
Our commitment to newness — I think borders on an obsession, WHY? Well, maybe we simply enjoy the experience of beauty. After all, we love museums and nature — there is something admirable and rare in the truly beautiful. Or maybe we maintain a hope that the next New Thing could save us from our greatest afflictions — personal, or corporate.
But I think we want even more than that. As CS Lewis observes:
We want so much more—something the books on aesthetics take little notice of, but the poets and the mythologies know all about… We do not want merely to see beauty...We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.
I think what Lewis is saying is that we want to be a part of something bigger. We want to connect with the eternal. We want to BE eternal — that if we look underneath our obsession with THE NEW and the BEAUTIFUL, it’s an acknowledgment that we're fading away. The Lion King tells us death is natural — just a part of the circle of life— but deep down, we know better. Dylan Thomas may be closer to expressing our collective angst as he implores us:
Rage, RAGE against the dying of the light.
We’re afraid of the looming darkness
So we seek eternity often in the most ethereal places. Novel ideas, youth and beauty preservation aren’t doing it. We need a new KIND OF NEW. We may find some help in the book of Revelation, where Jesus promises a New City.
Let’s read Revelation 21:1-7, 22:1-5 together
[21:1] 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. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” 6 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. 7 The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.
[22:1] Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
My dear friends, this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Please pray with me. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer. AMEN
Thy Kingdom Come
In August I shared some thoughts with you about living in the pandemic. As a brief reminder we talked about the exile we’ve experienced as a result of Covid-19 — suffering less access to the City — which as New Yorkers is kind of our home — and living under foreign rules or new regulations
As an analog, we explored the Jewish exile in Babylon in which the people of God faithfully wept over those things that weren’t as they ought to have been but also remembered God’s faithfulness. We stalked about the need to build altars to God — signposts to God’s past faithfulness — as a way of moving forward with hope into an unknown future.
We talked about our role as the City within the City, like the Jews were called to be in Babylon, a people who use our resources to serve the City of Man. We hinted — I think — at something we could not fully explore last time. The fact that the city within the city — as we referred to it — is really a pointer to a city that is yet to come.
We see here in today’s reading, in the last chapters of the last book of the Bible, that when God has ordered everything just as He wants it, it’s a new city — a city as it ought to be. History began in a garden but it ends in a remade city. Let’s ask the text 3 questions about THE NEW JERUSALEM.
What is it?
What does it mean for our lives?
How do we become citizens?
Let’s look together, First, what is it?
It’s important to notice, that the New City COMES DOWN from God. That’s what John tells us, as he records Jesus’ words in this Revelation. I expect most of us have heard this before — but WOW!! — what an image, right?! What a strange truth!
The world doesn’t actually END as so many speculate. Nor is it replaced by a heaven up UP THERE (somewhere). Our world is neither decimated nor abandoned. Heaven is coming down TO US. This isn’t just poetic imagery. This is our future I wonder…. how much thought have we put into this? — what this will be like or what it means for us now?
I don’t want to downplay the wondrous imagery in today’s reading. No doubt we can learn a great deal about our future Kingdom from the beautiful details in Revelation. We just don’t have time to touch on everything here. But taken as a whole I think it evokes in us an overwhelming sense of beauty, alignment and wholeness that clearly points us to a place we already know something about: The Garden of Eden. Look, we see:
The Tree of life and the river of life
God dwelling with his people
And nothing is cursed
There is no more mourning or weeping or suffering.
Everything as it OUGHT TO BE
It’s what Adam & Eve experienced before the Fall
Dylan Thomas captures so powerfully, that we despise the fading light, the drawing of the curtain. But we see here in Revelation that the best is actually yet to come.
The new Jerusalem is coming down and it’s going to be, in some way, like the pre-fallen world. These are epically beautiful promises of our guaranteed future. But — if we’re honest about our own lives — we still mourn and weep and suffer. How can we hold together the disparity between these promises and our present experience? This takes us to our second point.
What can it all mean?
To answer this question, I suggest we need to first consider what the text teaches us about the timing of God’s promises. Which means, we may have to look at some grammar. And in this case, the verbs are the most helpful!
Look with me….
He will wipe away every tear
Death shall be no more
I will give from the spring of the water of life
I will be their God
All future tense.
And (a little different here) he who was seated on the throne said “Behold. I am making all things new”.
This is present progressive tense—I am doing now. I am renewing now.
So while Paul tells us in Philippians 3:20 that we are citizens of God’s kingdom — right now — present tense...in Revelation we find that the Kingdom is coming but has not yet fully come: so is God’s New City now or not yet?
I suggest, if we take seriously what the Bible tells us, the answer is...it’s both.
We can be utterly certain right now:
That in Jesus, God's Final victory has been accomplished
That we are utterly loved and accepted by God right now
And that the world will end in the renewal of all things.
But the world is not yet perfected. We are not yet perfected. I am going to refer to this as the “now and not yetness” of God’s Kingdom. It’s an important aspect of our faith that I think can be tricky to understand and difficult to apply in our lives.
I’m sensitive that there’s an element of this that may like nose bleed theology. I don’t mean for this to seem like word play so let’s see if we can make it practical.
If we know who we are as citizens of God’s Future City, and we know God is also working NOW in our lives and in our world, we have at least three incredible resources:
Hope in our struggles
Meaning for our lives AND
The Promise of ultimate victory
Let’s talk about how now and not yetness affects our lives in these three areas: first, we have hope in our struggles.
Because we are citizens of God’s New City now, we can face the fact that we are not yet finished products. Notice ch 21 v.5. It is God on His throne — the King — who is making all things new. That includes us and that’s good news.
We haven’t fully dealt with God as King, have we? We have not yet fully made him King in our hearts. We still have idols and struggles and addictions. So we are not yet finished products. We need to come to terms with the fact that we are more sinful than we dare imagine, but more loved than we could ever hope.
Repentance means going to the throne. It means bringing the truth of his love and forgiveness into contact with our struggles, and the sin in our lives. It’s asking Him to be King in our hearts.
Friends, do we get down on ourselves instead of approaching the throne? Anxiety is an area of struggle for me and it often results in a lack of joy in my heart — sometimes anger. I know my anxieties are underpinned by sin and lies that I allow myself to believe — about myself and about God — but I am often not inclined to bring this before the throne. It shows my heart lacks understanding of the now and not yetness of the Kingdom.
God loves me just as I am. He does not expect a perfect record from me. He expects me to come to His throne of grace. The joy I need can only be found there and when I am before the throne, he continues his loving work of renewing my heart. Paul reassured the Philippines on this very point, telling them:
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion on the day of Jesus Christ. That is — when the new Kingdom is here, we will be finished products.
Do you see how this works? We can use this logic for any of the areas in which we struggle. We can be honest with ourselves and honest with God. God loves you just as you are, and too much to leave you that way. And he will finish the work he started in each of us.
So the first application of now and not yet is: go to the throne as you are. The God of grace awaits you.
Secondly: Our lives are BURSTING with significance
Some believe that Christianity is the opiate of the people, that it asks us to ignore our present moment as insignificant or even meaningless as we look to a future reward in heaven. This couldn’t be farther from the teaching here in Revelation.
If the New City is coming here (and it is), All of creation must be eternal. That means, nothing was made without purpose. Nothing was designed for the fire. So what we do and create must matter — this is why God calls us co-creators
Therefore, as we discussed last time, we weep and mourn all that is not as it ought to be and fight for its remedy. Here is perhaps my favorite take on living that out, from Nicholas’ Wolterstorff’s book “Lament For a Son.” In reflecting on the Beatitudes, he writes:
One can understand why Jesus hails those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, why he hails the merciful, why he hails the pure in heart, why he hails the peacemakers, why he hails those who endure under persecution. These are qualities of character which belong to the life of the kingdom. But why does he hail the mourners of the world? Why cheer tears?
It must be that mourning is also a quality of character that belongs to the life of his realm. Who then are the mourners? The mourners are those who have caught a glimpse of God's new day (sound familiar?), who ache with all their being for that day's coming, and who break out into tears when confronted with its absence. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one hungry and who ache whenever they see someone one starving. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one falsely accused and who ache whenever they see someone imprisoned unjustly. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one who fails to see God and who ache whenever they see someone unbelieving. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one who suffers oppression and who ache whenever they see someone beat down. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one without dignity and who ache whenever they see someone treated with indignity. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm of peace there is neither death nor tears and who ache whenever they see someone crying tears over death.
The mourners are aching visionaries.
So we work to mold the world more into the shape of God's future realm, but it doesn't stop there. What we create also matters.
Culture and art matter
Science and technology
Business and investing
What we create here will be renewed, perfected — not replaced or destroyed. We will dance our dance of worship in the New City, and it will finally be perfect
So we’ve seen that now and not yet means we can face our sins, and that how we spend our days is infinitely significant. Lastly, it means we can face our worst tribulations.
Because we hold fast to the promised Victory of the New City to Come, we can face — really anything.
Jesus’ testimony in Revelation was recorded to help early Christians face violent persecution and the threat of often gruesome execution. Understanding its teaching, Christians lived boldly in faith and many martyrs went to their deaths with poise and dignity, singing praises to God — even with the flames beneath their feet — bolstered by the certainty of the Coming Kingdom.
When we hold fast to the promise of God’s final victory as they did. We too can endure suffering. We can have hope in apparent hopelessness. We can have peace even in the shadow of death. And if we look hard enough, we can see as one of my favorite Hobbits did...that:
Far above…though the night-sky is still dim and pale… a white star twinkles.... And smote by its beauty, looking up out of this forsaken land, hope returns … (as) the thought pierces us that in the end the Shadow is only a small and passing thing: there is light and high beauty forever beyond its reach
Look, either The King is on his throne and our lives have meaning and purpose and will end in victory and justice or the throne is empty and nothing matters at all.
But we know that history is unfolding as it should, justice will prevail in the The City to Come and we will all drink from the Water of Life at no cost.
So, we face our sin, knowing we are justified. We face our days as co-creators and aching visionaries and we face our tribulations as victors over everything, even death. THIS is the new kind of new we need.
This week I kept thinking about the Wise Men and their Star. They were experts on stars and would have known all the knowns. This one was new. They must have been deeply thirsty for something new. Seriously, they dropped everything and just took off
Did they sense it represented hope and high beauty — something eternal? All we really know is they were thirsty enough to make the journey. Then I noticed Rev. 21:6: “To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life.” And so I realized what the wise men teach us — that the only way to God’s throne is to be thirsty.
Don’t miss this. It’s not the morally orthodox or the religiously chaste who come to worship the baby King. It’s those who notice the star and thirst for the eternal All you need is need. The wise men had it. Do we?
They had little else to go by — only a star and a glimmer of hope. But we have the benefit of knowing the baby they worshiped … as a man. And in reflecting on the Man, I can’t help but notice Chapter 22, v.3 — “No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it.” Do you see it?
The Lamb of God is on the final throne.
So when we to come worship Him, we worship not only the baby Jesus, but the man who died on a tree — the Lamb of God. And we reflect that he climbed this tree of death to give us the Tree of Life.
We remember that on the tree, he was thirsty. Because of his Cosmic thirst, we get the river of life
We believe that at midday, the sky went dark. Because he experienced eternal darkness, we receive the eternal light
And we understand what Galatians 3 explains — that Jesus was accursed by God. He took the malediction so that we could receive the ultimate benediction: I will be your God, and you will be my people.
“It is finished”, Jesus proclaimed on the cross, with his dying breath. And Jesus says here again in Revelation - “It is done.” He had unlocked the door to the New Jerusalem
The requirements for citizenship are merely to be thirsty and to desire the presence of the King.
The Ancient of Ancients is making all things new.
So we are free to approach the throne of Grace with empty hands and without merit. And there, kneeling with the wise men, we claim this promise:
We who hope in the Lord
will renew our strength.
We will soar on wings like eagles;
We will run and not grow weary,
We will walk and not be faint.