The Beautiful Community: Destiny's Children

Introduction

Revelation 21:1–5 ESV

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.”

One of the rhythms of life that has been significantly altered as a result of COVID are weddings. Both my wife and I were born and raised in Brooklyn, got married in Brooklyn and spent our first few years as husband and wife in Brooklyn. So, I was excited for the opportunity to officiate my son and his fiancé’s wedding in NYC this summer. However, COVID threw everything out of whack. They couldn’t even get an appointment with the clerk’s office to apply for a license and opportunity for a virtual wedding.

So, I did officiate their wedding, but it was over Zoom after they moved to Chicago. Lord willing, we’ll be back in NY in 2021 for an in-person ceremony. And as crazy as it was, the wedding over Zoom was still beautiful because of what was taking place. It’s so easy, in dreaming about or preparing for a wedding, to become consumed with the details. Everything has to go perfectly for it to be beautiful. Yet, one thing many couples are learning through this dreadful COVID crisis is the enduring truth that the beauty of a wedding isn’t the perfection of the day, but the union that’s formed by the wedding.

If you’ve never been married, weddings can engender a sense of longing as you anticipate the day when you’ll be married. If you were once married and are no longer married because of death or divorce, while you might be happy for the newlywed couple, weddings can be challenging. They can remind you of your loss and the accompanying pain or disappointment of that loss. There can be a longing for relief from that disappointment or pain.

Whether your experience at weddings is delightful or difficult, whether your marriage experience is mostly picturesque or painful, it should amaze us that when God wants to give us a picture of what heaven is like, the imagery he uses is of a wedding. Do you want to know the destiny of those who come to God through faith in Jesus Christ? Picture the best marriage you can imagine and then multiply it exponentially. Take it to infinity and beyond! When God wants to declare to his people what their destiny is, have the picture in your mind of a beautiful bride decked out for her husband in anticipation of life together with him. Understand that the Bible begins and ends with a wedding. In the first two chapters, the pinnacle of creation is the man and woman. We hear these words from Genesis 2:24 at weddings all the time, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Those words weren’t just for repetition at weddings, they also set a trajectory forward in anticipation of these words in Revelation 21, “I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem as she descended out of heaven from God after being prepared and adorned as a bride for her husband…And I heard a great voice out of heaven say, ‘Behold the dwelling of God is with humanity. And he will live with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”

What does it mean to have this kind of destiny? What does it mean to be “Destiny’s Children”? It means a guarantee of beauty; personal beauty, collective beauty, where nothing that is not beautiful will ever exist again. It sounds like a fantasy, but it is backed by the full faith and credit of God himself.

So, I want to hone in on two things as we work through this passage, Longing for Beauty and Living for Beauty. Destiny’s Children live with longing for all things to be made beautiful. That is the longing for everything to be the way it ought to be. They have to become comfortable with the fact that as long as they are in this world they will not escape the reality of longing for something more and something better. Things are not as they ought to be. The wedding is scheduled but they don’t know the date. Secondly, Destiny’s Children live together in the reality that the future promise of beauty has broken in on the present world. As they are being prepared for life as it ought to be, they experience a life of beauty today. Therefore, life now is not a hopeless venture. They have eyes to see that renewal, renovation, and transformation is coming.

Longing for Beauty

John says in v. 1, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the former heaven and the former earth, they passed away.” Here toward the end of this last book of the Bible what we are seeing with greater clarity is how God intends to satisfy the longings of his people. One of the questions that God’s people ask him in the Bible is, “How long?” David asked in

Psalm 13,

Psalm 13:1–2 ESV

1 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

In Revelation 6:10 the martyrs cry out with a loud voice,

Revelation 6:10 ESV

10 They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”

How long can you wait for things to be the way they ought to be?

Do you know what words repeat themselves over and over again in Revelation? John keeps saying, “I saw this,” “I saw that,” I heard this,” “I heard that.” The covers are pulled back for him so that with his own eyes he sees, and with his own ears he hears the true reality. It’s not that the things you and I see and hear with our senses isn’t true. It’s that what our senses provide isn’t the full picture. There’s more to it. The Lord gives John and the Church insight to what’s going on behind what we’re able to perceive.

The curtains are pulled back and John sees a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and earth passed away. The sea was no more. John is letting us know, “This is where the world is headed. This is the world’s destiny.” Not only that, John says, but the holy city, the new Jerusalem, I saw that too. I saw that city as she descended out of heaven from God after she was prepared as a bride who had been adorned for her husband. “I didn’t only see the destiny of the world; I saw the beautiful destiny of God’s people.”

And John wasn’t the first to see it or say it. The Lord declared it to Isaiah centuries before John was alive. Israel was in exile, longing to be restored to her land. The Lord gives Isaiah a message in Isaiah 62:3-5,

Isaiah 62:3–5 ESV

3 You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. 4 You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. 5 For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.

In Isaiah’s day the people’s longing was too short cited. They just wanted to get back to that patch of land in Palestine. The Lord had to say to them, “Your vision is too small. It’s too short sighted. I’m not just concerned with some little piece of land. I’m remaking this whole deal.” And hundreds of years later, after Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world―after he comes to save his people, giving up his life on the cross for their sake, being buried in the tomb, rising on the third day in triumphant victory over death―after all of that his people are still waiting. When is our resurrection? How long, O Lord? The one who sits on the throne has to reiterate, “Behold, I am making all things new. Write it down John, because these words are faithful and true. It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”

You see, we ache. We groan. We long for things to be better than they are. The compromising and idolatrous nature of humanity is that we try to fix our longings for beauty ourselves.

I like to hold out hope for that beautiful, aesthetically pleasing athletic body. I batter my body doing CrossFit. I try to eat right, doing a Whole30 every year. And I tell people, “I’m just trying to delay the decay.” I know the decay is inevitable. I’m just trying to slow it down a bit.

The human mind has been able to discover and develop great medical advancements. We put our minds to use through technology, attempting to make life better, to heal what’s broken, whether it be bones or relationships. I’m glad that medical research is hard at work on a COVID-19 vaccine. I’m glad that the creative genius in humanity tries to strive for something better by making beautiful music and art.

However, In all of our striving, in all of our longing, we cannot make things so beautiful, so radically new such that there will be no more decay! Death is not the great enemy defeated by modern medical technology. Death is the great enemy defeated by the cross of Jesus Christ. John is declaring to us that only God can do this. He is the source of beauty. So only he, as the Preacher says in Ecclesiastes 3:11, can make all things beautiful in its time. Only God can make all things new. It’s not the outcome of human scientific or technological advancement. As one commentator put it, “The new city comes ‘down out of heaven from God,’ a sheer miracle, a gift [that is] bestowed at the end of history and not the outcome of history.” In other words, the beauty of the bride, the beauty of the new creation isn’t the outcome of human progress. It’s a gift from God. That word in the text, “Behold,” isn’t a call to first and foremost do something. It’s a call to observe and see. “Behold, I am making all things new.” Watch and see. It’s an invitation to look, believe, and rejoice. God is committed to the beautiful renovation of his creation. The word for “new” used in our text typically indicates newness in terms of quality. In other words, through the victory of Jesus Christ over death, God is executing his renovation project.

Living for Beauty

And this longing we have for our beautification and the beautification of this world can weigh us down. This is because, try as we might, we can’t successfully cover our eyes at the ugliness. The beauty we’re longing for is not the airbrushed sheen of the fashion magazine trying to hide the imperfections. Fleming Rutledge, has a recent book titled, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ. She puts it well in her section on Looking into the Heart of Darkness. She writes,

To grasp the depth of the human predicament, one has to be willing to enter into the very worst...Entering into the very worst means giving serious consideration to the most hopeless situations: for instance, a facility for the most profound cases of developmental disability. What hope is there for a ward full of people who will never sit up, walk, speak, or feed themselves? Tourists go to the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau and take pictures, but who can really imagine the smells and sounds of the most depraved of all situations? The tourist can turn away in relief and go to lunch.

Can I tell you something? Those who belong to Jesus aren’t tourists who turn away from the ugliness and go to lunch. We’re people live for beauty even as we long for it. However, when, in this life, we get glimpses into reflections of eternal beauty, the paradox of it - the seeming contradiction of the presence of eternal beauty alongside the ugliness and deep depravity of this life can be a burden too heavy to bear. In a recent talk on the paradox of beauty, artist Makoto Fujimura described his becoming a Christian in this way. He was in Japan studying an old form of Japanese paintings called Nihonga. He said that the way Jesus led him to faith was by confronting him with beauty. It was through the extravagant crushed minerals he was using in the artwork; malachite, azurite, gold, silver, and others; beautiful extravagant materials he was learning to use and was mastering. He said,

Everyday I sought higher transcendence through the extravagant materials. I found success in expressions through Nihonga materials. And yet the weight of beauty I saw in the materials began to crush my own heart. I could not justify the use of extravagant materials if I found my heart unable to contain their glory.

The presence of beauty now is hard to bear because its glory can be too much. Would you look with me a few verses beyond our text at the weight of glory, not just of God, but the glory of the Bride?

Revelation 21:9–11 ESV

9 Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” 10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, 11 having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.

The point of John seeing for us and describing for us this eternal beauty isn’t simply to make us long for the sweet by and by that’s to come. It’s even more to enable us to live for beauty in the nasty now and now. It’s for us to feel the weight of beauty that Fujimura described and not be crushed by it as we refuse to turn our eyes away from the very worst of the human predicament.

Destiny’s children hold on. Destiny’s children take their cues for living from what has been revealed by God. The churches to whom John was writing were in a fight. They were suffering persecution. They were facing poverty. They were facing political oppression. They were facing the temptation to compromise their faith so that life would be better and easier. They needed to know that God’s promise that their destiny was to be with him as he remade everything was more certain than what their eyes were seeing and their ears were hearing. It’s the same thing we need to know.

The people who have this destiny can live for beauty even as we long for beauty. What does living for beauty look like? It looks like pursuing the beauty of the bride. This bride isn’t a single person. It is humanity in the perfection of unity in diversity. Fractures, divides, hostilities, and contempt between peoples have been healed. John goes on to describe the city in ch. 22. He sees the river of the water of life...

Revelation 22:1–3 ESV

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.

Living for beauty now means pressing into the healing of the nations; through faith in Jesus Christ, the healing of our divides and our striving together in beautiful community. Can I tell you something Redeemer? Folks shouldn’t be able to look at a church and think, “That’s a church only for white people. That’s a church only for Asian people. That’s a church only for Black people. That’s a church only for Latinx people. That’s a church for people who lean blue. That’s a church for people who lean red.” It should be hard for people to look at your church and figure it out or label it based on the categories we like to use in society that marks people as “our kind of people,” or “people we need to stay away from.” No. People should look a the church and get a glimpse of where God is taking the world.

Living for beautiful community means living into a love for neighbors that actively seeks to bring into fellowship people who might have nothing in common except the fact that Jesus Christ gave himself up for them. This has practical implications for our lives.

It means that we’ll find ways to faithfully bring God’s Word to bear in our diverse communities such that it has an effect on the circumstances of the whole person. It means that we won’t truncate the gospel message as if it only addresses personal sin and brokenness. We will address the systems and structures in the public square and in the church that deny our neighbors their inherent dignity as image bearers.

It means that we’ll be willing to ask probative questions of our church. What’s the history of our church? What drives the content of our liturgy on Sunday? What ways are we simply catering to the majority culture and possibly hindering non-majority culture neighbors from experiencing welcome here? And what preferences are we willing to die to for the sake of loving our diverse neighbors better?

This is hard! In fact, it is impossible apart from the Spirit of God working in and through us! So let me end with this encouragement to you. Understand that because of who God is he can declare in v. 6, “It is done”? The Greek text literally says, “They are done!” Not a singular, “It is done.” Everything I said was going to take place, everything I promised they’re already done. I am the Alpha and the Omega. I’m the God of the beginning of history, of the end of history, and everything in between!

Therefore, nothing is wasted. Our effort to live for beauty is hard, but none of it goes to waste. The loud voice from heaven says to John that God will wipe away every tear, that there will be no more death, no more mourning, no more crying, no more pain. Those things will have passed away. But please know that today’s tears, deaths, mournings, cryings, and pains are not wasted. They’re not wanted, but they’re not wasted either!

Notice with me please that what John sees in v. 2 is the holy city descending out of heaven from God after it was prepared and adorned for her husband. These are passive verbs. The emphasis is that it’s God who prepared and adorned the Bride. He was the one who selected the wedding dress. He was the make up artist and the hair stylist. He even drove the limo because it says she came down from God! How did he prepare her for the wedding day? It was through the tears, mourning, crying, and pain. He equipped her to endure by faith as a part of her beautification.

This enables us to keep our eyes open and live for beauty right now, following Jesus’s lead. We live for beauty just the way our Savior did. The triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who exists in eternal beauty and glory, refused to turn his eyes away from the darkness of the world. So, the Son left his beautiful communion to take on our fragility and our weakness and our vulnerability so that he could restore us to beautiful intimate communion with God and each other. Secure in our own beauty, we see the darkness of our world and we keep looking for, pointing out how this world - even though things are often terrible and tragic - is still charged with the grandeur and glory of God, and we keep working for beauty.