A reading from the Revelation to John.
Then one of the seven angels who had held the seven bowls filled
with the seven last plagues, came and spoke with me.
Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
He then 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, arrayed with God's glory.
Her radiance was like a precious jewel, like a Jasper stone,
clear as crystal. The city had a massive high wall
with 12 gates. 12 angels were at the gates.
The names of the 12 tribes of Israel's sons were inscribed on
the gates. There were three gates on the E,
3 gates on the N, 3 gates on the South, and three gates on the
West. The city had 12 foundations and
the 12 names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb were on the
foundations. I did not see a temple in it
because the Lord, the God Almighty and the Lamb are its
temple. The city does not need the sun
or the moon to shine on it because of the glory of God
illuminates it. In its lamp is the Lamb.
The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the
earth will bring their glory into it.
Its gates will never close by day because it will never be
night there. They will bring the glory and
honor of the nations into it. Nothing unclean will ever enter
it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only
those written in the Lamb's Book of Life, the word of the Lord.
Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you that these
great promises, these great images from the Book of
Revelation come straight from your mind and heart.
And so now, Lord, we pray that you would align our mind, our
heart, our thoughts with yours. And we pray that as you fill us
with your vision, that you would help us walk out that vision. 1
loving step at a time. We pray this in the name of the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Well, please be seated. Great to see you.
All. This past August and September,
we've been in a sermon series called Sacred Spaces, and we're
looking at all of the spaces where heaven and earth
overlapped and people met God and were set apart in a special,
unique and powerful way for their calling in this earth.
And we've gone from Genesis and now we're we're ending in
Revelation. The last sacred space that we
find might surprise you. And it's and it's the city
that's the final sacred space where people encounter the
presence of God. It's a renewed city where God
makes all things new. If you're asked yourself this
question, do I have to escape the city to find God?
Henry was 28 years old, prestigious degree in hand, with
a bright career ahead of him. The world was Henry's oyster.
But as Henry looked more closely at that oyster and experienced
it, he found that that oyster was kind of filled with grime,
and it really turned him off. In 1830s New England, all Henry
saw as he looked around was factory pollution, shallow
ambition from the social climbers, widespread slavery
which was accepted by polite society.
Henry was so turned off he actually built himself a sacred
space which was a cabin in the woods by a body of water called
Walden Pond. And he found that nature and
solitude brought him the sense of of healing and peace.
And then he wrote these words, quoting here, What is the great
attraction in cities? It is universally admitted that
human beings invariably degenerate there.
It is a swamp too dismal and dreary even for me.
When I leave the towns behind, life becomes gradually more
tolerable, if not even glorious. Do we have to escape the city to
find glorious encounters with God?
Henry David Thoreau said. Yes, you do.
Was he right? You know, about 30 years ago, I
left a home which was surrounded by nature.
There was woods in our backyard. We had a pond and a lot of
grass. And when I came to Chicago, I
found the city like thrilling, overwhelming, intense.
Sometimes it turned me off, sometimes it was exciting, but
it wore me out. And I, I found I, I needed some
respites in nature. And actually, I still need
respites in nature, but something happened along the
way. I came to love this city.
I came to love Chicago. You know, not just the beautiful
parts, but also the the quirks and the flaws and the incomplete
parts of our city. And actually, I learned to meet
God here. And I still, I still meet God
here in this city. And over the years, I've
wrestled with this question, how do we encounter the God that we
love without abandoning the city that we love?
Can we find sacred space right here, right in the midst of
urban Chicago? Now the best place I think to
answer that question are the visions written down in the Book
of Revelation. The apostle John received this
revelation from the Spirit of God when when the world and his
life was in a time of great crisis.
You see, John was a pastor, but he was exiled from his home.
He was imprisoned for his faith on an island, remote island, and
he was actually separated from his church, which he was called
the pastor. And what happened is that in
this time of crisis, the living God gave John a vision of the
city to come. And that vision was heaven
coming down to earth, Not people on earth escaping to heaven, but
actually a very earthy conclusion to heaven, which was
the new city. It was a city filled with
beautiful light, filled with the presence of God, a city that was
cleansed and scrubbed clean of anything impure, of all abuse,
of all greed, of all lies, of all immorality.
Everything in the city of man that doesn't belong in the city
of God was scrubbed clean, but all the good parts were kept.
And by giving John this vision, God was giving him hope.
And he was giving him hope not just for his life, but for the
city we have. Because it is here, friends,
that God is building the city, that he loves the city to come.
And it's given hope to every generation from John's time to
our time. It's going to give us hope this
morning. So I'm going to explore this
together from Revelation 21. And I just want to say, like, if
you're here and you find that there's something in you that's
a little skeptical as you hear the vision, I want you to know
like that skepticism is OK. Like that's it's OK to wrestle
with some of these visions. They're not easy to digest all
at once. There's a lot of, like,
visionary fiber in them, you could say.
But give it time, friends. Let it soak in.
And you might find that the visions of this book align with
the deepest desires of your heart.
And if God gave you those desires, is it possible at all
that he sees fit to see them come true?
So cynics welcome. Skeptics welcome.
Let's look at this together. The first thing that we're going
to notice from Revelation 21 is that when the city of man leaves
us lonely, the city of God adorns us in love.
When the city of man leaves us lonely, the city of God adorns
us in love. Verse 9 of Revelation 21.
Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with
the seven last plagues came and spoke with me.
Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
I will show you the bride, the wife.
Let that sink in for a moment. The angel's about to introduce a
city, and he calls the city bride.
He calls the city wife. And not just any wife, the wife
of the Lamb. This is Jesus Christ, the
ultimate bridegroom, who out of every bride you could ever
choose in all of human history, chooses, chooses this bride to
be his forever. She is loved.
She is chosen. As we'll see, she is adorned.
In fact, this Lamb gave his life, He gave everything he had
to be married to this bride. And like a bride, she's been
prepared. She's been decked out on her
wedding day, not by a team of bridesmaids, but by the Almighty
God himself. Verse 10 describes then he, this
is the Angel carried me, that's John away in the spirit to a
great high mountain. And he showed me the great the
holy city, Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.
This is the bride. It's a holy city.
John's up on the highest mountain you can imagine.
And here's this huge, gargantuan city and other parts of
Revelation. It's described as 1500 miles
wide and deep and high. And this is a massive, massive,
supernaturally large city and it's gorgeous and it's
beautiful. There's radiant light coming
from this city. Verse 11, It's a raid with God's
glory, Her radiance. Her radiance was like a precious
jewel, like a Jasper stone, clear as crystal.
What a beautiful city. There's the color of a precious
stone and yet it's it's translucent.
It's you can see through it comes with light.
Why are stained glass windows so beautiful?
It's because it's the combination of color and light
beautifully mixing together. Jasper is most likely that red
surrounding Old Saint Patrick. Jasper blazing with light.
The city is adorned in a way that only the living God could
adorn it. This is breaking our
imaginations, but we're using the stock of the city.
We have to find it to find the vision of what God has in store
for everyone who would enter this city.
When I went shopping for my wife's engagement ring years
ago, I learned about the four CS cut.
How well designed is the stone to reflect light?
Clarity. How perfectly can you see
through it? Are there blemishes or not
color? How purely white is the diamond
carrots? How big is the rock?
And that led, invariably to the fifth.
See, cash. How much do you love your
fiance? And so I emptied my wallet.
I brought the brightest ring I could.
I wanted Laura to know you're worth a huge sacrifice.
Do you know that that ring will one day turn to dust?
Do you know that all forms of human love will one day turn to
dust? Because it's fleeting, Because
it's imperfect, Because it won't last.
If we build our self worth on feeling loved by other human
beings, they will always disappoint us.
Sooner or later the love is going to run out, but God's love
for you and for Laura and for me and for all of us will clothe us
and adorn us forever in this new city.
In her book, Uninvited Living, Loved When You Feel Less Than
Left Out and Lonely, author Lisa Turkhurst says this God's love
isn't based on me. It's simply placed on me and
it's that place from which I should live.
Loved. God's love isn't based on me.
It's placed on me and it's from that place that I live as a
loved human being. I was praying for Emmanuel this
week and I was actually starting to pray specifically that our
community and church would be filled with this love that John
is describing right here. I was praying that our community
and everyone in it would be filled to the brim and overflow
with the love of God, the love of Christ who would give
everything for us to join Himself for us in a covenant.
And I was praying this specifically because I was aware
that many in our congregation simply do not feel loved, do not
feel seen, do not feel included, do not feel selected, do not
feel sacrificed for. So if I want you to, if that
describes you, you are not alone.
It's a terrible experience to feel left out and uninvited and
unseen, but it's a very common human default experience in the
City of Man. In some ways you could say the
City of Man is built on rejection.
That's how things get built sometimes, and it's not good.
The City of Man is filled with people, but it's often lonely
and it moves fast, doesn't it? It moves really fast.
It moves at 1.3 or 1.7 speed and it leaves people behind.
What if Emmanuel Anglican became that sacred space where God's
love gets placed on everyone who walks through these doors?
And then from that place we begin to live as God's beloved
and we start to see and delight in the people who are getting
left behind and feel lonely and unseen.
That was my prayer for us this week.
I will continue to pray for you and for us that we would be
marked by the love of God from the city to come, invading the
city of man right through, right here through us.
Now. Love is important, but if danger
is like lurking around the corner, it feels really fragile.
And that's why John is shown not just a radiant bride, but a
fortified, protected city. And this brings us to the second
observation of the text, which is that when the city of man
shakes us, the city of God will secure us.
When the city of man shakes us, the city of God will secure us.
Years ago I was on a gang related murder case jury for
Cook County and once all of the evidence was presented, the jury
was discussing it and we were getting really close to a series
of guilty verdicts. But there was 1 holdout.
And the one holdout was a young dad and he was raising his
family near the courthouse where the same gang operated.
And this young dad was afraid of retaliation on his family.
Now eventually he came around, but he did not come around with
his without without. I could see the anguish in his
body because he still wanted to protect his family.
And so at risk to himself, he he joined in everyone else and said
the defendant is guilty. Life in Chicago had left him
shaken, left him traumatized. You know, I have to say,
sometimes Chicago gets a bad rap.
But The thing is, like, Chicago is no different from anywhere
else in this world. It's filled with human beings,
and human beings are capable of both good and evil and
everything in between. But if you've been personally
impacted by the evil, whether in Chicago or anywhere else, you
know how vulnerable that can leave you feeling.
If you've ever been shaken friends by the city of Man or
anyone within it, let yourself take in this healing image of
the city of God. Verse 12.
The city had a massive high wall with 12 gates. 12 angels were at
the gates. The names of the 12 tribes of
Israel's sons were inscribed on the gates.
Tuck that little detail away in your brain.
But for now, let's just notice the security apparatus of the
city, the massive and high wall which serves as a defense
against every threat. However, you can't enter the
city. There are gates, 3 on each side,
12 in total. The gates are there to welcome
in the pilgrims that are coming from the four corners of the
earth. They surround the city's
perimeter and they never close, according to verse 25.
And they never close because it's never night.
Stationed at each gate is an Angel.
There are 12 angels. They are Watchmen keeping guard
over the city of God. If you come with evil
intentions, the angels will stop you and they will send you away.
You are not allowed in the city of man if you have evil false
foul intentions. Anyone who would defile this
ultimate sacred space. With any violence, with any
greed, with any sexual immorality, with any idolatry,
they are kept out. That being said, remember that
curious detail in verse 12? The names of the 12 tribes of
Israel's sons were inscribed on the gates.
Here's another mystery. Verse 14.
The city wall had 12 foundations, and the 12 names of
the 12 apostles of the Lamb were the foundations.
So if nothing unclean can enter this city, how in the world are
the 12 tribes of Israel's sons inscribed on the gates?
Do you remember, for those of you who who, like, I don't know,
grew up in Sunday school, that those 12 sons, 11 of them, beat
up Joseph and sold them into slavery?
These guys were scoundrels. Some committed terrible things,
terrible sexual acts, murder. Some of them were murderers.
They were liars. Some of them worshipped false
gods, and so did their sons. Now what about the apostles?
Their names are on the foundations of the city.
These guys were egotistical, they were cowardly, and they
abandoned the king of the city right before he was going on
trial. So let's ask the question, how
could this city ever be safe and anything but false and violent
if people with that kind of record have their names
emblazoned on the gates and foundations?
The answer is in verse 27. Who are the people who get into
this city? It's the people whose names are
written in the Lamb's book of life.
The Lamb has a book, and it's a book of life, and it's writing
all the names of the people who are allowed into this city.
The Lamb who was slain for the sins of the world and was raised
up standing before the right hand of God and unlocked all the
promises of God, has a book and He's writing the names of anyone
who will come to them with the sin and the violence that is
inside of them. See, what the Lamb does is that
he deals with the dangers out there by dealing with the
dangers in here, which is where they begin, right at the root.
He's taken their violent and Stony hearts, and He's replaced
them with hearts of grace and truth.
He hasn't just made them safe, He's made them saved.
They came to Him in repentance. They came to him for life.
And so he wrote them in the book.
And he can do the same thing for you, my friend.
All you have to do is ask. Lord, write me in the book.
Write me into your city. Write me into your story of
grace. Blot out my sins, save me from
myself, put my name down in that book of life.
And friends, that book and that city is the most secure place
for us to be even now. Saint Paul once wrote this, your
life is hidden with Christ in God.
He wrote that to people living through tough times, uncertain
times, and he said your life is hidden.
This word hidden means secured, protected, covered.
Isn't that a comfort, friends? Our names are written and our
lives are hidden in this city to come.
Now think with me about Emmanuel Anglican.
What if our place? What if, What if this church
became a place where people who had been shaken by the city came
in and felt safe, felt protected, felt covered?
You and I were ministering this protective covering of the city
to come, this sense in which our lives are hidden with Christ and
God. And what if from that place of
security, people, people had their names written by faith.
They, they were, they learned to trust in the safety of the King
of kings and their names were written in the book of life and
they went from safe to secured from, from, from safe to saved.
I believe this can happen. I believe this is God's heart.
And once we feel safe, friends, our, our hearts begin to ask
another question, which is this? Is there anything worth hoping
for? Because if we're honest, the
City of Man has a way of burning through our hopes.
And this leads us to our final observation from Revelation 21.
When the City of Man burns us out, the City of God blazes with
light. When the City of Man burns us
out, boy, the City of God blazes with light.
You ever been to a dangerous bonfire?
There's something compelling about those bonfires.
People are drawn to them. It's interesting, but it burns a
little too hot, a little too fast.
Too many things get thrown in that it can burn you, but also
it burns out, burns through the fuel too quickly.
It's not sustainable. Now the City of Man has a way of
like setting our hopes ablaze. Here we find amazing meaning and
a pursuit of justice and purpose and community and beauty and
education and power. And we burn and we burn and we
burn and our schedules are filled up, but we have so much
to do. But it's a little too hot and a
little too much and a little unstable before it's too late.
Our hopes and our dreams turn to ash.
Or like, I can't take this anymore.
I got to. I have to leave.
My hopes are gone, and so is my energy.
What I love about John's vision of the city of God is it does
not burn us out, but instead it blazes with light, it blazes
with glory, it blazes with meaning and purpose, and there's
no diminishing whatsoever. Now the light of the city, the
glory of the city, comes directly from the Lamb.
Verse 22. I did not see a temple in it.
I did not see a temple in it because the Lord, God the
Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.
Now why? Why do people go to temples?
Why do people go to sacred spaces?
To meet with God, to find rest and to find purpose, to be
refreshed in His beauty and forgiveness and wholeness.
And now what the Lord God is doing is He's providing all of
those things, but there's nothing mediating it anymore.
There's no need for a mediator. It's directly from God and the
Lamb who is God. And they both blaze with light
and there's no filter. There's glory everywhere.
Verse 23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on
it because the glory of God illumines it and it's lamp is
the Lamb. There's no need friends, there's
no need. Can you imagine a city without
needs, a need for light or anything else?
There's a sense of overflow and blessing and glory.
The nation's verse 24 will walk by its light and the kings of
the earth will bring their glory into it.
Its gates will never close by day because it will never be
night there. They will bring the glory and
the honor of the nation's into it.
You ever think about this question?
What do you do with your trophy case when there's no one else to
show it to? Anyone have a trophy case
growing up? Anyone have a like a metals
collection growing up? School transcripts that you were
really proud of? Boat collection?
I don't know. What did you collect?
What do you do with it? What do you do with the What do
you do with all the accolades? What do you do with all the
Instagram likes? What do you, what do you do with
all your, your growing and expansive network on LinkedIn?
What do you do with all the stuff we accumulate in this
life? You know, some of the saddest
people who burn out in our city are the people who got what they
came for, but they don't know what to do with it.
And so their hearts get turned to ash because they're like, The
thing is, you can do two things with all the stuff of your life.
You can bring all of it to the bonfire of history and watch it
burn, or you can bring it to the altar, the ultimate altar of the
ultimate sacred space of the ultimate city.
And it will blaze with glory in the light of the Son of Man.
That's really kind of what we can choose to do with our lives.
And the kings of the earth, the people at the peak of power,
what are they doing? They're taking the best of their
cultures and the best of their cities and the best of their
countries, and they're hauling it all before the King of kings.
And they're saying, this is for you and this is for the Father.
And it is our joy just to be in this light, to be in this glory.
We won't hoard this stuff. We won't let it rot.
We won't let moth break in and steal or whatever.
We are going to let this give glory to God.
Here's another question. What do we do with all of our
unanswered questions in this life?
What do we do with all of our scars?
What do we do with all of the things that didn't go well?
What do we do with all the years the locusts have eaten?
Have you ever thought about that?
It's one thing to bring your success to God, but there's kind
of two things that we can do with our suffering too.
We can turn in on it and let it define us and, and let it be our
ultimate story and, and let it in in some ways like turn to
bitterness and curdle. We can let it mean nothing or we
can we can do what the Lord God has promised throughout the Book
of Revelation to do, and that is to bring people who have
suffered injustice. They can bring that to the table
as well. In fact, there's a symbol in
Revelation of people who have been killed for their faith, and
they're actually taking shelter in God's house.
They're taking shelter and they're asking him for justice,
and he promises him that they will give it.
And the city of the king is going to include the
marginalized and the former slaves and people with suffering
and people with tears. And he's going to turn all that
tears into triumph. And he's going to build a
community of like the formerly weak and the formerly powerful
and everyone who's got any kind of trophy or anyone who's got
any kind of scar. And he's going to bring all of
it together, not into a quickly burning out bonfire, but to but
to a city that blazes with light forever, where all the questions
will be answered, where all the stories will come together in
the most satisfying way possible.
This is the city that we were made for, my friends, where all
is made right. If you knew that your future
would blaze with light, what hope would that give you in the
city of man? What hope would it give you even
if the things that secured you before begin to crumble before
your very eyes? Something happened in the year
410 AD that no one thought was possible, which is that the
Roman Empire got sacked by invaders and fell.
And people asked this, They had an existential crisis.
They said if Rome could fall, what hope do we have?
And also they look for someone to blame.
And they started blaming Christians.
So this is where a pastor named Agustin, now known as St.
Agustin, looked at the Book of Revelation and looked at the
Bible and he made this argument. There's a there's a city to
come, which is the city of God. And if you become citizens of
that city to come, it will make you the best citizens of the
city, city that we have right now.
It will let you do what Jeremiah has asked us to do, which is to
seek the welfare of the city where we have been placed.
This week I heard about a remarkable way someone decided
to do this. Olivier Messian was a French
composer and he was captured in World War 2, and he was actually
held in a prisoner of war camp in Germany.
And it was perhaps one of the bleakest action experiences that
anyone has had in the city of Man.
They were cold. They were, they were like on the
they were like starving. They were packed and overcrowded
in this, in this place. But Olivier had something that
he held onto, which was actually the vision of the Book of
Revelation. And he held onto that vision
with all of his heart. And with that hope, he composed
a piece. He he drew upon his musical
skills and giftings and training and he composed a piece called
Quartet for the End of Time. And he built it around
instruments that he could find in the prisoner of war camp.
An old piano which had keys that stuck together, and a cello with
only three strings left and an old clarinet and an outer tune
violin. And he gathered the musicians
and they practiced it. And in January of 1941, in the
freezing German cold, Olivier and his prisoner musicians got
their instruments ready, and the guards and their fellow inmates
huddled around them, also shivering, and there was a
hushed quiet. And they began to play one of
the most haunting, moving pieces of music ever written in the
20th century that captured both the bleakness of the city of Man
and the hope of the city of God. Messian later said.
This Never was I listened to with such attention and
understanding in the bleakest moment.
Friends of the 20th century, the sacred translucent beauty of the
city of God, shown with a radiance from another world.
Do we have to escape the city to find God?
Thoreau said yes, you do, but God says no, you don't.
He has prepared us a city to come, and he is building it
right here in the city. We have, in the name of the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.