Revelation 21:9-27
Good morning!Have you ever come into the Quiet Dell sanctuary about an hour before sunset on a sunny day? If you do, there is an amazing thing that happens. I have been here on a cloudy evening, one of those evenings where the clouds are overhead, but there is a clear sky to the far west of us that will let the sun shine through for five minutes before sunset. Inside the church, it is often gray, with all the color washed out in the darkness. It reminds me of the early part of the Wizard of Oz, living in Kansas where the world is black and white and gray all over.
But the people who built the church lined up the church in such a way that as the sun goes down, the sun’s light streams through the reddish-orange cross above the altar, and suddenly, this wonderful red light illuminates the pews and the aisle with a beautiful glow. It is as though you had landed like Dorothy Gale in Oz and opened the door to a world of color. And if you walk to the center of the glow and stand in it, when you look at the cross, it nearly blinds you with the bright golden light that makes it almost float in the air. It is a wonderful, beautiful experience. The cross, of course, is not the actual cross of Christ, but it is an image of a cross, ethereal, unreal, floating in the air, reminding us of the glory of Christ’s death and resurrection. Stop by some evening and watch for it. You’ll be glad you did.
Occasionally, when I’m talking to someone and the subject of God comes up, I’ll say something about God’s character, and once in a while the person replies to me, “We’ll, that’s your opinion, but I have a different opinion.” And I’ll listen to the person talk about God as an abstract concept, as a Thing not quite real, and usually, usually, we’ll get somewhere with our discussion. But in the back of my mind, there is often a little voice that is saying to me, “Yes, but what is the opinion of the God Who is Real?”
In our world around us, most of the people that we meet during the ordinary course of our day are people who are not particularly religious, and in fact, don’t go to any church anywhere. Surveys show that about 2/3rds of the people in this county have not attended church this year even one time except for possibly a funeral or a wedding. And this is pretty typical across the country. Yet, surveys will also tell us that more than 9 out of 10 people in this county consider themselves to be Christian, which is actually higher than normal – the average across the country is about 8 out of 10.
In fact, of every 8 random people you meet, 1 denies being a Christian, 2 go to church regularly, and 5 claim to be Christians, but don’t go to church.
So what’s the deal with all the non-church-going Christians, which amounts to about 5/8’s of the population? 5 out of every 8 people you meet don’t attend church, yet claim to be Christian. Are all these people lying? Are they all watching Trinity Broadcasting Network? Or do these people have a deep misunderstanding about what it means to be a Christian?
Some people are truly Christians, but are homebound because of health reasons or financial reasons. I know of people that simply cannot come to church because they are chronically sick and can’t make it. I also know of people who could and probably would come to church if someone picked them up every week, but they don’t have a reliable car – or they can’t drive. Perhaps 1 of the 8 people fall into this category.
But most of the people, probably half of the population of Harrison County, have a deep misunderstanding of what it means to be a Christian. 4 in 8 people claim to be Christian, but don’t understand what it means to be Christian.
For most people, being a Christian means that “I accept the existence of God”. Going a bit further, they know that they aren’t Jewish or Moslem or Hindu or Buddhist, so in their own mind this means that they are Christians.
But this is where they miss becoming Christians.
There are actually five gods that people who claim to be Christians believe in, in this country. Which god do you believe in?
First of all, there is the god who is seen as the kindly rich grandfather. The grandfather god lives a long way off in his home in heaven, and there he gets daily printouts of all our prayers – I guess they are emailed to him. If he likes you – and he likes everybody, he’s such a jolly old fellow – he’ll read your prayers and send you what you asked for. In fact, according to some television preachers, if he doesn’t send you what you asked for, it’s because you either didn’t ask him or you didn’t trust him enough, and so he ignores you. We’ll call him the Red-and-Green god, since he behaves so much like Santa Claus. Most of his worshippers stay home on Sundays because the grandfather god would rather you slept in than wake you, that’s how nice he is. Of course, he sounds like a fairy tale – and he is. But many people still believe in him.
The next god that many Christians believe in is the god of wrath. This god is the god who waits for you to mess up so he can punish you and curse you. The minute you say a harsh word, the minute you accidentally take home a pencil from work, and especially when you drink or smoke or do anything sexual, he’s ready to blast you into the mud with his thunderbolts. He reminds us of an angry, drunk father that some have had, and he is ready to destroy you if you get the least bit out of line. Did you put the full 10% in the collection plate today? If you missed it by a penny, he’ll be waiting for you when you get home.
We’ll call him the Black-and-Blue god, because that’s what you’ll look like after he gets through dealing with you because you weren’t on your knees praying today. His worshippers usually make it to church absolutely every Sunday – or else they are currently so afraid of him they won’t come near a church for fear he’ll remember them and punish them. Of course, he sounds like the evil witches from Grimm’s fairy tales, and so he is another fairy tale character, developed to punish and frighten children who misbehave, and is not real. But many believe believe that he is the god of Christianity.
The third god that many Christians believe in is almost the opposite - the god of love. “God is love” people have said, and so many people worship this god. Since “god is love”, it does not matter in the least what you do, this god will still love you. Nothing ever upsets the god of love, except when you say something disapproving to someone else. No matter what a person does - stealing, murdering, hurting people through your selfishness, reveling in all manner of selfish lustful desires - it does not matter. According to those who follow this god, all people should be loved by us, and what is more, all of their behaviors should be loved, also, no matter how self-destructive or destructive of others those behaviors are.
If we worship this god, we will never suggest a different path to anyone, for this god loves all people exactly the way they are and lets them continue with their self-destructive behavior, for anything else would be “un-loving” or “hateful”. We’ll call this the Pink-and-Purple god, since the colors of Valentine’s Day go well with this god-who-is-love. You’ll find a lot of worshippers of this god at home on Sundays relaxing and resting with their partners – many no longer get married, because the god of love puts no demands upon us. You’ll also find many worshippers of this god teaching at seminaries, for this god allows academics to hold discussions with members of many other denominations and even religions without ever having to debate issues of right and wrong belief. And this god is not a fairy tale, but is more the sort of character created by the Madison Avenue advertising agencies to bring you into church – not real, but attractive.
The fourth god that people worship is the god of nature. This Green god is only found in the woods, or by the seashore, or on a mountain. He (or she, for many of the worshippers of this god fall into the habit of calling her “mother nature”) the nature god hates towns and cities and all the works of humans. The Green god considers all species of animals and plants to be far more important than any human life, than any human family, than any human happiness, for if we would simply get rid of the humans in the world, the world would be a better place. And the nature god is growing restless, ready to smite us by changing the weather outside, according to those who worship the Green god. Another fairy tale – or ancient fable – stories have been told about the Green god by non-Christian cultures for thousands of years.
The fifth God that Christians worship, though, is the God Who has revealed Himself in the Bible. Three distinct persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – the Holy Trinity of Christianity is a God of wrath, justice, and might – ready to destroy entire countries for constantly ignoring him – and is also a God of love, who sacrificed Himself in the person of Jesus Christ, God walking upon earth, to show how much love he has for us.
The God of the Bible loves us, yes, but attempting to reduce this most complex, intricate Being in the Universe to simply the embodiment of one emotion is gross blasphemy. For the God of the Universe also tells us that some behaviors are wrong, in very clear terms, and He has destroyed towns and cities and sent countries into slavery for those wrong behaviors.
Yet, God has raised those who have repented of murder to great positions of leadership, and has lifted up those who persecuted God’s people to positions of great respect, and even put in charge of His mission to the people on earth the man who three times denied even knowing God’s Son, Jesus Christ, a man who had lived for three years in the company of Christ and made the first recorded pronouncement that Jesus was the Son of God. Yes, God loves us – but God also removed from power His first king of Israel for disloyalty – for consulting a medium to speak with the dead. The real God can be God of wrath, the God of love, the God of nature, and the kindly Grandfather. But God is also your best Friend – and your Teacher. God is your Counselor – and your Guide. God created the Universe – and someday will destroy this planet.
The God of the Bible tells us humans that we are created a little lower than the angels – yet are also to be good stewards and keepers of all the earth, with each human life worth much more than we each can possibly imagine – yet also understanding that the other lives in the world have value also, if only for our own ability to understand and worship God. And we alone were created in the image of the real God.
Those who attempt to give us a simple one or two color picture of God’s character, who proclaim that “God is wrathful”, or “God is love”, or “God is nature”, or “God is a kindly grandfather” – those who attempt to simplify God have made a grave mistake. Understand this: God is not just the most complex Being in the Universe, God planned and created the entire Universe. God actually had to make a space in which to create the Universe. And so, God is “bigger” than the Universe, more complex than the Universe, and so very different from us. God cannot be reduced to one or two colors. The real God created all the colors and has far more colors than the biggest Crayola crayon box ever made.
Have you noticed the complexity of God and the things God has made? If we make an object - or a god - using man-made materials, the object is almost always made of one or two colors, such as the cross or a plastic table, and has a rather simple geometric shape like a sphere or a rectangle. But if God makes the object or materials, such as a tree or a mountain or a man or a woman, the object has fine detail, a detail which at first glance appears to be repetitive, but then when we look closer is never the same each time it repeats. And there are hundreds and thousands of colors and shades of colors used.
Think of the difference between a linoleum tile floor that uses man-made three-color linoleum, and a natural hardwood floor that has a grain that is intricate, has hundreds of shades of color, and never repeats exactly. Think about trees or mountains or people – everyone is different and has infinite detail. A natural hillside shows us dozens of shades of green in summer – and thousands of different colors in fall. God has the time and ability, you see, to put in the details. We humans never do, and so we pride ourselves on our ability to make things uniformly. But which is more beautiful? A home made from identical bricks, or one made from natural stones, each one different?
Consider yourselves. Do you try to smooth out the details in your face, in your hair, in your personality? Do you try to look and act exactly like everyone else in a mass-produced society? Isn’t there something sterile about those beauty salon colors, where every hair is exactly the same shade? On the other hand, do you accept that God has made you slightly different, and let those fine details come out – that bit of gray hair mixed with natural brown and blonde, that freckle on the nose, that quirk in your personality where you actually would prefer to read a story about veterinarians in Yorkshire, England than get free tickets to a Taylor Swift concert?
We are made in the “image” of God. An image, as we commonly know it, is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object. A photograph of a cat is not the cat, but only looks like the cat. How many different photographs of the cat do you need to take to capture the “real” cat? Can you do it with 3 photographs? But what about close-ups of the cat’s teeth, or his claws? What about close-ups of every different hair that makes up his fur? Perhaps it takes a lifetime of photographing the cat to see the “real” cat.
Even a movie of a cat is not a cat, for there is a reality about that cat that cannot be captured in just two-dimensions, or even in the three-dimensions of a 3-D movie. Think about it this way – a 3-D movie of a cat does not include what is in the cat – the guts, the liver, the lungs, the heart, the mind of the cat. The most important parts of the cat are missing from the image of the cat that is the 3-D movie of the cat.
Or think about our stories of Pinochio, the wooden puppet that wants to be a real boy, or the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, or, more recently, Lego people or robots. We know that they are not “real” people, for although they look and sound real, there is something important missing. They are merely images of people that are more or less faithful to what real people act and speak and look like.
In the same way, we are mere images of God. Each one of us shows a slightly different view of the character of God, for God made each of us into the people we have become. Now let me put this clearly – we are NOT part of God – God created this Universe and everything in it, but the things of this Universe are not God.
But yet, we are projections of parts of God. That’s what it means to be images of God. Like the beautiful cross that glows every sunny evening in the sanctuary at Quiet Dell, we are projections of different parts of God. Is your image an attractive, beautiful image? Or is it a wrathful, scary image? We become like the God we worship.
There is something much more real about God than what we know as everyday “reality”. We are mere images – God is the reality. If we are images of God, there is something about the real God that we can never know, something that gives God four and five and even more dimensions, dimensions that we do not have. And there is an inside to the real God that we never see, internal thoughts that we cannot know, that we-who-are-outside will never know, for we will certainly never put the real God into an MRI machine.
The real God is not only bigger than us, the real God is not only more complex than we are, God is more real than we are. God is intensely real – we are mere images of God, shadows against the wall in comparison, our bodies merely a thick fog walking around in the shape of humans compared to the dense reality of the real God, a reality which is denser than gold, tougher than diamond, and hotter than the sun.
The character of the real God that rules the Universe is not a matter of opinion. He exists, and it is through God’s existence and creative power that we exist. Before we blather on about what we think about God, it would be wise to ask God what God thinks about us, wouldn’t it? For isn’t that much more important?
In our reading, we see the descent of New Jerusalem from the clouds. This real wonderful city, where the intensely real God will provide the light, where the real God will rule, where the real God will live among us, is a fabulous real place. Verse 11 It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.
Now, we’re not sure what was meant by jasper, but it was probably not the jasper of the present day. Some authorities think it means diamond – others think this refers to rubies or even very clear emeralds. The Emerald City, descending from Heaven?
John goes on to describe the city:
18 The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. 19 The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, 20 the fifth onyx, the sixth ruby, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth turquoise, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst.[f] 21 The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass.
23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. (NIV)
Can you imagine? This wonderful place, glowing and glistening with wonderful colors – most probably with colors that we cannot even know. I fully expect that for us who live in this world of trouble and sorrow, where one crisis follows another, where people who do not have God are always searching for joy but never finding it – I fully expect that for us when we first see the New Jerusalem, it will be like Dorothy Gale opening the door from the black and white and gray of Kansas into the brilliant colors of Oz. There will be colors of a brilliance we have never before seen. There will be sounds of beauty that we have never before heard. And there will be joy like we’ve only occasionally felt the image of, as we see the reality that is God and His Son dwelling with us.
For today, we only see the images of God. We see a Mother Theresa, or a Billy Graham, and we see a beautiful image of God. We are drawn to those images that are the most beautiful and attractive, we want to be near those people, we want to walk beside them and listen to them because their joy is contagious and lifts us up. And if mere images can do this for us, imagine what it will be like when we see and hear and speak to the Reality Himself!
That’s why we go to the mountains this time of year. We see in the trees on the hills around us the reflections and the projections of the colors of New Jerusalem – not the actual colors, but only the dim glow of what is far more spectacular – the real colors of the real Heaven itself.
John says a bit more about New Jerusalem: “The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. 25 On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. 26 The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. 27 Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”
Is your name written in the Lamb’s book of life? For those of you who are stuck on the first few chapters of Genesis, as a man who has a degree in astrophysics and was once an atheist, stuck on reconciling Genesis and the teachings of science, I say to you: The God that created the Universe is fully capable of having done it through the Big Bang, through Membrane Theory, or with a snap of His fingers. He is just as capable of directing the writing of poetry – which the beginning of Genesis is - for the hundreds of millions of people throughout time that had no concept of millions of years as He is of directing the writing of four precisely detailed histories of the working life of Jesus Christ, which we call the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Many, many Christians believe in a seven-day literal creation. Many, many Christians believe in an earth that is 4 ½ billion years old. It may be your stumbling block, but you need not check your mind at the door when you become a Christian. Instead, focus upon answering the question: Who was Jesus Christ? Was He crazy? Was He a liar? Or is He the Son of God, worthy to be called your Lord?
Perhaps there is something we all need to become “real”. Perhaps the reality that God has and many people don’t have is a spirit which gives life. So many people seem to be like Tin Woodmen without hearts, scarecrows without wisdom, or robots without souls. They walk and they talk and they look like real people, but something is missing. Something is missing that would make them complete and real.
Christians believe that when we publicly accept the leadership of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, and become baptized, the Holy Spirit of God comes into us and fills the hollow shells that looked human, but weren’t completely “real”. That Holy Spirit which proceeds from God and Christ is what makes us “real”, with a real existence in eternity. Without that Holy Spirit, we are but grey shadows on the wall of life, like dead trees in winter, ready to be cut down and thrown into a fire. With the Holy Spirit, we become filled with the colors of an abundant life, like apple trees covered with ripening fruit in September, suitable for Heaven.
Have you made your public declaration of allegiance to the Lamb, Jesus Christ? If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to talk to me this week to become a member of this church, or to become baptized. Zig Ziglar said, “If you want something you’ve never had, you have to do something you’ve never done.”
Come to the altar to pray for yourself or another, or to talk to me during this final hymn. Be certain that you will enter into New Jerusalem one day and see the colors of Heaven.
