Ecclesia Princeton
Ecclesia Princeton
||para||DOX-Colossians 1vv15-21; Revelation 21: Faith and Science
The intersections of faith and science have puzzled believers and skeptics alike through the ages. Pastor Ian Graham looks at the way the scriptural narrative holds them together.
Perhaps you've lived or heard the sort of cliche college story. Some of you grew up in Christian households and maybe as you grew up, you were told that there were certain incompatibilities, certain things that didn't fit with your faith. And some of those things are right and true. You know Call us to be holy and what that means oftentimes. But there are other things that perhaps you sort of heard that it didn't fit with your faith as you received it and you were like, huh, I wonder about that. And then people started to warn you as you went off to college hey, when you don't, don't mind that when you went off to college you got to be careful. The world is a it's a dangerous place, or people will try to tell you things, ideologies, things that that are scary, and it puts you in this sort of defensive posture. And perhaps you were told things that you learned about science didn't have any bearing on your faith in Jesus. And then you have the experience of sitting in Biology 101 or Earth Science 101. And all of these things you've been told about the world from your Christian vantage point are then being contradicted by a very smart man or woman telling you that everything you've ever learned is completely wrong, and actually you might be a bit of an imbecile for believing it. And so you have this immediate moment of crisis, oh no, and oftentimes the way these things are packaged is as a whole house of cards. If this thing is not true it's very specific to discussions of science or reason then perhaps these other things aren't true either. Perhaps we don't know as much about Jesus's life as the gospels tell us they do, and for many of us, this experience of trying to hold things at distances that often need to be held together can be quite disillusioning, create dissonance in our lives. For the past couple of weeks, we've been in a mini teaching series we've called Paradox, and the hope for that series has been to show you that things that we often hold apart actually do much better when they're held together under the lordship of King Jesus.
Speaker 1:I've started the process here of making some coffee and the question well, first couple things this, this Now I don't sell product here, so this is not like if you buy this, this is just on you, I'm not promising you any blessings, or there's no Dead Sea water attached to this or anything. This is hard coffee roasted in Portland, oregon, but it's also it's from Kenya. Now, africa is the cradle of Christian theology the origin of the Christian story goes back to Africa, we know that but also the cradle of coffee. Now, when you drink African coffee, you get like fruity notes, and one of the things that happens during the roasting process because they take these beans that are a fruit and they roast them is that carbon dioxide is trapped within the beans, and so when you get fresh roasted beans, you get all of that flavor just waiting to be let out. Now the problem is oxidation. Oxidation will begin to undermine and erode the flavor of the coffee, which is why you want to grind your beans fresh. If you're a snob, you're in luck. I so happen to be one, because when you grind the beans, you increase the surface area that is available for oxidation, right? And so the longer that that goes on, the more that the oxidation can transpire.
Speaker 1:So we've just ground these this morning and I'm going to start a little chemical reaction here. I'm just going to pour some. You don't actually want boiling water with coffee. That's tea. We want water at about 202 degrees Fahrenheit. We're going to start a little process called the bloom. It's about 30 seconds. It's going to prime the pump for the coffee to begin this chemical reaction process, which is an extraction. It's going to take all that beauty from the soil of Africa and bring it to our mouths here in New Jersey. So, all right, we've got about 30 seconds Now.
Speaker 1:The golden ratio this was Archimedes discovered this, you know. Like his principles about how you brew coffee, but it's 17 to 1, 17 parts water, one part coffee. So, like his principles about how you brew coffee, but it's 17 to 1. 17 parts water, one part coffee. So we've got about 20 grams of coffee here. We're going to just get a little pour here. Start that Now. I've explained to you. Now. Everything has influence on what the end product is Grind size, the grinders all have different settings where you can grind them in different ways.
Speaker 1:And wouldn't you know that Lydia, our incredible academic year intern, but also a brilliant theologian and we'll get to hear her preach in a couple weeks spent the morning grinding coffee for you to drink and brewing. It Isn't that incredible? Isn't that a note of hospitality? Water temperature, grind size, time of extraction all of these go into this end product, which is going to be just glorious. All right, we've got that there. We're going to let that sit for a second Now. I've just explained to you why this works the way it does.
Speaker 1:If we ask the question, why does a cup of coffee work the way it does? We could explain it in all of these different ways the chemical reaction, the catalyzing of the hot water, the soil and the terroir of the beans themselves. But when we ask that question, why we're really asking two questions at once, aren't we? And we've addressed one of them why that really has the texture of how, how does it work, how does it come together? But there's a better, more primary question that we have to ask why am I making a cup of coffee? Because I want a cup of coffee, and when we talk about faith and science, we often do something similar, don't we? We explain something, how it works, and we think that we've understood it. But there's still a question that has to be addressed why is there something rather than nothing? Why are you here? Is it accountable to the mix mash of chemical elements? That you're a carbon being that you evolved over the millions and millions of years? Maybe, but it's got to be so much more than that. Why are you here? Because, just as I wanted a cup of coffee God wanted you here, which tells you everything about who you are, about the kind of value you have, and Jesus will demonstrate this to the fullest as he gives himself for us. That's so mean that I'm just drinking that in front of you. We made coffee for you and Ecclesia.
Speaker 1:When we talk about faith and science, there are often two discussions that are happening in parallel, and we have to do the work of bringing them together. There is a first order question that asks the question why? And ultimately, the question who? And this is why we can absolve ourselves of all of these weird timelines when it comes to the age of the earth or how we got here. The Genesis story is not trying to hold on to those things. The Genesis story is trying to say in the beginning, the Lord God created the heavens and the earth and then he made you and I in his image. So from the very beginning we have the story, we're oriented in the story of why you are here Because there is a God who is eternal, who is uncreated, who made the world out of a declaration of divine love and wants to reveal his love to us and make himself known. That is the story and the question that is primary, and then the second question of how these things work, becomes an invitation to joy and to play and to discover, and we see this in Genesis 2.
Speaker 1:I'm going to show you a quick chart that kind of illustrates where we're going today a little bit for those of you who are visual. Just again, oversimplification, obviously, as any visual expression is. But when we talk about faith and science, as they kind of run on parallel tracks, what we're trying to do is move from these quadrants of immaturity, fundamentalism, secularization, to a place of wonder and praise Christian physicist John Polkinghorne, who's also an Anglican priest, talks about. If the Christian view of the world is the correct one, then we can expect four consequences. And he says we can expect the world to be orderly because the creator is rational and consistent. We can experiment and we can observe the world.
Speaker 1:If you read Genesis 2, there's all these funky little bits about gold and onyx and it would seem very extraneous details. Except the narrators of those stories did not include unnecessary details because paper was not in abundant supply. And also, if you're a good narrator, you don't include unnecessary details. Now I want you to hold that judgment as I preach a sermon, because you might be like. Well, some of us are good writers. Because the world is God's creation, it is worthy of study. You know what a fascinating thing. If you survey the populations that are in high-level academia and the humanities and philosophy, you'll find, proportionally, there are far less Christians than the sciences. If you survey academia and PhDs and the sciences, you'll find a high proportion of people that, through their study, have come to the conclusion this all can't be an accident, and so I need an integrated story that can help me make sense of all of this that God has declared his glory.
Speaker 1:As Psalm 19 says, the heavens are declaring the glory of the Lord and the more we discover about the world. For me and I have to be honest with you, just where I'm coming from today the science and the discoveries therein have never once shaken my faith. It's not because I don't pay attention to them, it's just not how I'm wired For me. God wired me to pay attention to philosophical questions. Those are the ones that keep me up at night, and not that these two things are different. Often you'll find that science and philosophy are just holding hands, but for me, it's about the presence of evil in the world. It's about suffering of children that I keep coming back to God and saying what are we doing here? God is gracious, he's kind, but for some of us in here, the questions of the archaeological record, the questions of evolutionary biology, have everything to say about our faith in Jesus, and what I find is that the more that we discover about the world, the more wonder, the more humility is attached to it, the more wisdom, the more beauty.
Speaker 1:And the last thing is that creation is not divine in and of itself. We're not pantheists. God is not confined to our imminent reality. He is sovereign, he is transcendent. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof Psalm 24. Heaven is God's throne and the earth is his footstool. He is transcendent and yet he reveals himself within the confines of our world, and so today, what I want to do is hold these things together that are often held at bay, and so, for those of you who are high-level scientists, I have to offer an apology, because you're going to care way more about this than I am capable of doing, and I am so glad that you are here.
Speaker 1:I remember the first time I talked to you, when we first started the church, we had a PhD among us and I asked him the very pressing question. I said what are you studying? He looked at me with a glimmer in his eye. He's like I'm studying the way that bubbles move through water when the water is heated up. I was like, yes, tell me more. And any of you who are scientists or love scientists you know that if you ask that question what are you studying you should prepare yourself. And this is a gift. It's the way that these little idiosyncrasies and paying attention to something very specific opens up into a wider wisdom about the world. It's a gift. It's the way that these little idiosyncrasies and paying attention to something very specific opens up into a wider wisdom about the world. It's a gift. But I have to apologize because I'm going to touch on these things in a way that may be unsatisfactory to you, but I hope you can give me the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 1:So what I want to do is just offer a few of the mythology that has sort of accumulated around science. In our world we live at the intersection of what's called modernism, which is that everything has cause and effect, everything is observable, and postmodernism, where nothing matters and nothing is true. So it's a good reason that we're all confused. But science has this kind of way. Have you ever passed one of those signs that says like in this house we believe in science? It's like, what does that mean? But science has this kind of apparatus that's built around it that really doesn't pay attention to actually how science works. And if you talk to any scientists they'd be like yeah, there's just a bunch that we're kind of guessing at, we don't know. So, which brings us to our first myth, that science does not walk by faith. Often the construct that we are given is that science is about what we can observe and everybody who's trying to live off faith believes in fairies and demons and all that other stuff. That's not exactly true. When you pay attention to how scientists work, any good scientist in here will tell you they'll give you insight into the incredible ingenuity and the inspiration that is required to do their work.
Speaker 1:We can listen to one of Princeton's most famous residents, albert Einstein. He says this there's no logical path leading up to the scientific laws. They were only reached by intuition based upon something like an intellectual love. Elsewhere he says this as far as the propositions of mathematics refer to reality, they're not certain. And as far as they are certain they do not refer to reality. Again, I? I don't veer towards the maths and the sciences, but listening to einstein I'm like I cannot agree with you more. And as einstein talks, this is the thing that strikes me and this I I see this consistent across people that really pay attention to their discipline, whether it be the arts or the sciences, is their language begins to take on the texture of love.
Speaker 1:Look at what Einstein says elsewhere. He says the mechanics of discovery are neither logical nor intellectual. It's a sudden illumination, almost a rapture. Later, to be sure, intelligence, analysis and experiment confirm or invalidate the intuition, but initially there is a great leap of the imagination. We'll get to just a minute how the scientific method is often described to us and endorsed to us. But there's something when you talk to real scientists about the work that they do. It's so much creativity, it's so much beauty, and they're trying to get us to see that. And for us we shortchange it when we think they're just looking at the world and making observations. It requires so much more than that paying attention.
Speaker 1:The next myth that has been sprung up around the apparatus of science in our world, especially the modern Western world, is the God of the gaps. This is from John Lennox. We essentially use God to fill in the bits of creation that we don't understand yet, but eventually science will account for all the gaps in our knowledge. For instance, the ancients didn't know where lightning came from. Didn't know where lightning came from, and so they said oh Zeus, he's throwing lightning. And now, as scientific discovery has elaborated, we now know that lightning is a giant spark of electricity in the atmosphere, between clouds, the air or the ground. In the early stages of development. You guys all know this, I'm just air acts as an insulator between the positive and negative charges in the cloud and between the cloud and the ground. When the opposite charges build up enough, this insulating capacity of the air breaks down. There's a rapid discharge of electricity that we know as lightning. I mean, you guys all knew that. I was just reading it to you.
Speaker 1:There's a little footnote in this website. This is from the National Severe Storms Laboratory. It says the actual breakdown process is still poorly understood, which again, is exactly right. Right, it's like here is everything we know, but if we're being honest and we're scientists, we don't know. John Lennox says if you think of God as the God of the gaps and X a placeholder until science comes up with some kind of explanation. Then you have to choose between science and God. Again, if God is just filling in the bits that you don't know in the beginning God created all the bits of the world that we don't understand then once that thing is elaborated in a way that's satisfactory, then you don't need God there. But if the Lord is the maker of heaven and earth, if he set in forth all the laws of nature, if he put them in motion, there's something else going on here. When Pierre-Simon Laplace presented his studies on the solar system to Napoleon, napoleon asked him where is God in your story of the universe? Laplace famously commented I have no need of that hypothesis. Eventually the story goes.
Speaker 1:We're told by the materialist world that we will have the data we need to understand everything, and materialism is basically there's nothing beyond that which you can see. And one of the primary myths of materialism is that at some point in the evolutionary history of humanity, your consciousness, your brain, your way of inhabiting and seeing the world emerged from all these imminent processes in the world. And I just find that hard to believe. Like think about the genius of an internet meme. Seriously, the symbolism that's wrapped up in that, the way that this slight signal has this way of opening up humor and creativity, and mockery, all these kinds of things, all of that just emerged. Or think about the game of football or basketball. Like we just evolved to a point where we're like you know what, what if we put a ball I mean football, is devolution at some level? Right, it's like all the creativity. Again, I know it's kind of ad hoc, but to me it's like oh so our brains emerged over this categorization of time? All of a sudden we emerged with all of these different abilities and processes? I don't think so, but the materialist vision of the world says that eventually we'll understand all of this.
Speaker 1:Cs Lewis says this. He says almost the whole of Christian theology could be perhaps deduced from these two facts that men make coarse jokes and that they feel the dead to be uncanny. Notice what's happening with Lewis. I'll read the rest of the quote in just a sec. Lewis is saying the fact that we have this whole symbolic world when we can come together in this way Is a sign, and the fact that we feel death to be an enemy, not the natural end of everybody.
Speaker 1:We were standing at a funeral. I've told this story before, but my dear grandmother died at 91 years old. She lived in every kingdom, measure, a beautiful life, and I stood there and I got to preach her funeral and it was a great honor. But I stood there and I got to preach her funeral, and it was a great honor, but I still stood there. In that moment I was like something is not right. Paul reminds us we don't grieve as the world grieves, but we still know, as 1 Corinthians tells us, that death is the last enemy to be defeated. And Lewis is saying that. These two things that give us a signal and a signifier to see that perhaps there's more going on. I'm going to skip the rest of that quote.
Speaker 1:One of the reasons I love quantum theory as a theologian is the way that it both expands our understanding of the world and the way that it humbles us. I have this book called Quantum Physics for Poets, which suits well, and according to that book, according to quantum theory, it has vastly expanded the domain of human understanding. Modern scientists expanded our intellectual horizon, but it came at a price, the price of accepting quantum theory and a lot of what they call counterintuitive spookiness and if you talk to any high-level theoretical physicists they're like it sounds a lot like talking about angels and demons and all the other stuff that we can't see as we peer deeper into the world of quks and chaos. Is light a wave or is it a particle? And the answer, according to every good theoretical physicist, is yes. The more we come to know about the world, the more that it humbles us Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom the more that we see that the heavens are indeed declaring the glory of God.
Speaker 1:The last myth that's been kind of built up around the scientific endeavor is that science is pure observation. Again, we touched on this just a minute ago. The famed 20th century atheist, bertrand Russell, supposedly simplified the scientific method. I wonder if this relates to how you learn the scientific method in your elementary school science classes. He says, in arriving at a scientific law, there are three main stages. The first, observing the significant facts. Who determines they're significant, I don't know. The second, in arriving at a hypothesis which, if it is true, would account for the facts. The third, in deducing from this hypothesis consequences which can be tested by observation.
Speaker 1:Notice what he's saying here. Science, he purports, is simple you observe, you hypothesize, you test by that which can be observed, which means that which is real to our senses. And it is this vast oversimplification that is behind what I would call the imaginary divide between faith and science. If we transpose this into other worlds, the idea that sounded like my phone ringing, I was like wait a second the idea that there are things that are called facts, that are publicly observable and everybody can see them, and we should all hold them in the public domain and all agree upon them, and the other things called values, which are private, which you should be quiet about because, again, there's no overarching truth. So how can you impose your truth upon their truth? And so we build up this divide and we very cleanly draw the lines. This is a fact, this is a value. The problem for us as Christians is that our faith is built upon a fact claim that the world consigns to the realm of values. We say that Jesus is Lord, which is a historical claim about something that happened within our time and space, which has renewed all of time and space. But that is a fact for those who declare that Jesus is Lord and, from the posture of our world, is viewed as a value.
Speaker 1:Look at what Leslie Newbigin says. He says if I do not know the purpose for which human life was designed, if there is no overarching truth, I have no basis for saying that any human lifestyle is good or bad. It is simply an example of human life as it is. Judgments about what is good or bad can only be personal hunches. If, on the other hand, it were a fact that the one who designed the whole cosmic and human story has told us what the purpose is, then the situation would be different. That would be a fact, a fact of supreme and decisive importance For the Christian. When it comes to matters of politics, ethics, philosophy and, yes, science, there is a supreme guiding fact Jesus is Lord, and it is my fundamental understanding that that phrase, jesus is Lord, is a coherent political, scientific and philosophical claim. This phrase illuminates, it integrates, it, orders the world under his good reign.
Speaker 1:Colossians 1, one of my favorite passages in the scriptures, says this he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth. You should catch that all things were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers. All things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven. By making peace through the blood of his cross, jesus is the image of the invisible God. Jesus in his incarnation, which we look forward to paying attention to explicitly at Advent, has shown us what God looks like. He has placed himself within the realm of our observable facts. He's revealed himself to us by sheer grace. Wh Alden says how can the infinite become finite? So beautiful?
Speaker 1:Look at the cosmic claims here that Paul offers in Colossians 1. He is the firstborn of all creation. This does not mean that Jesus is a created being. The words of the Nicene Creed are important for us to remember here. I believe in one Lord, jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made consubstantial with the Father. Through him, all things were made. Jesus, when it says that he is the firstborn, is saying that he has the place of primacy. Ultimate allegiance and authority are due to him.
Speaker 1:In verse 16, in him, tells us all things in heaven and on earth were created. This means that everything that we observe as scientific law, no matter how casually we observe it, like the law of gravity, or how carefully and meticulously we pay attention to it, like some of you who are academics among us Every law in nature was inscribed by the hands of Jesus, was spoken into being by the word that created worlds, the laws of gravity, the rhythms of the days, the movements of the planets, the rhythmic beating of the human heart, which you don't have to think about, all of it was set into motion by Jesus. Paul further spells out that all thrones or dominions, the biblical concept of both earthly governments and spiritual powers that are behind them, were created in and through and are relative to Jesus and owe him their allegiance. Then Paul, in the midst of this cosmic reflection, turns his attention to the church. He is the firstborn from among the dead. He is the head of the body, the church. The church is the new humanity, the signpost of the cosmic redemption, the place of Christ's dwelling. The church as the people of the resurrection of Christ are the sign that decay, or what the old Newtonian physics called entropy, does not get the last word. And, as verse 19 tells us, in Christ all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him God was reconciling all things by making peace through the blood of his cross.
Speaker 1:You see, we can easily peer into the biblical story and see that at Genesis 3, when we talk about the fall as a concept, something was broken, but usually we over-individualize what was broken. Our relationship with God was broken, our flesh became corrupted. There are all these theological categories, but we miss that there are corporate and cosmic effects to the decision of Adam and Eve to do that which God told them not to do. Because of you, the ground will not yield. And as we scroll through the story, what we see is this is not just a curse pronounced on the agriculture, but there's something fundamentally flawed and broken about the cosmos themselves.
Speaker 1:Isaiah, when he's looking at the story as it's playing out, he's looking both as the situation is for the people of Israel, he's looking into the future of a promised redeemer. And he's saying not only is God going to give us new hearts, as Jeremiah says, not only is God going to keep his promises, but he's going to make a new heavens and a new earth. And I want you to pay attention, as we read this passage from Isaiah 65, how viscerally Isaiah pays attention to that which inflicts all of us the pain, the sorrow, the brokenness, the decay of the world. You see, jesus isn't just Lord of all, in that he deserves our allegiance, our heart, our soul, our mind, our strength. He is Lord of all in that he is king of the universe and that he is going to redeem not just our lives, not just our bodies by his blood, but all things. Isaiah 65 says it this way see, I will create a new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind, but be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. Now pay attention, because this cosmic redemption is about to come home to many of us in profound ways.
Speaker 1:Never again, verse 20. Will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years. The one who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere child. The one who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed. They will build houses and dwell in them. They will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
Speaker 1:No longer will this world be defined by the curse of Adam, but because God is redeeming all things new heavens, new earth, undoing the reign of death and darkness and the dominion that it speaks of. Because of these things, in Jesus, in Christ, he is reconciling all things. No longer will they build houses and others live in them. Our world that is defined by exile and our refugee existence will be undone by the love of God. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people. My chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands. They will not labor in vain, nor will they bear children doomed. Amen, amen, amen, for they will be a people blessed by the Lord, they and their descendants with them. Before they call, I will answer While they are still speaking. I will near. This is just God saying. I am so near.
Speaker 1:The knowledge of God will cover the earth as waters cover the sea, as Isaiah 11 says, or as we'll see in Revelation in just a minute, verse 25,. It gives us again another insight into the cosmic ramifications of this redemption. The wolf and the lamb will feed together. Notice, it doesn't say the wolf will eat the lamb. That's not how they're feeding together. But the wolf's nature, that which hunts and consumes, will be changed by the presence of God. The lion will eat straw like the ox. The dust will be the serpent's food. They will neither harm nor destroy. On all of my holy mountain, says the Lord.
Speaker 1:In John's gospel, jesus performs a series of what we would call miracles, but John doesn't call them miracles. He has a very specific word for the things that Jesus does. Miraculous though they are, he calls them signs. It's common for us to call them miracles and again they're miraculous Things like turning water into wine, healing a man born blind, walking on water. But for John these are not miracles, these are signs. And it is so important for us to pay attention to the language as it's given to us. It may seem like a subtle shift, but from the vantage point of the scriptures, this shift is vital. If they are miracles, then what Jesus does is sovereign. Yes, but it is against the flow of nature, it is supernatural, it demonstrates his authority. But if in John's language they are signs, then the word made flesh is not just demonstrating his power over that which we call nature, but he is revealing the true shalom of nature where Jesus is Lord. Where Jesus is Lord, bodies are healed. Where Jesus is Lord, food is present in abundance.
Speaker 1:Again, when we talk about science, we're observing our world and what we observe. What Darwin observed were things like scarcity, that there isn't enough, and this drives some sort of competition. But what Jesus is saying is something quite different that where Jesus is Lord, that story of decay and entropy is undone by his presence, and these of decay and entropy is undone by his presence. And these friends are not meant to tease us, not saying wow, wouldn't it be cool if God did stuff like that here, aren't you sorry you missed out on that. They are signs of the world that is surely coming, because Jesus is who he says. He is the true story of the world, the fact that calls all to account. The true story of the world, the fact that calls all to account.
Speaker 1:I'm going to invite our worship team forward and what I want to do and just kind of a sustained moment of attention is kind of invite you into the end of the story, because I think the end of the story tells us so much about where we find ourselves in the story. It has so much to say about why we observe the world in the ways that we do. I want you to pay attention to Revelation 21 and 22. I'm going to read these kind of extended sections of scripture over you and I want you to pay attention and see that the kingdom of God has its own physics that aren't animated by entropy or death but are animated by the love of God. As the worship team plays, I'm going to read to you these extended sections. It says in Revelation 21, if you have a Bible you can turn over there. I'm going to read from it for you. You can just listen. It won't be on the screen. Sometimes I think just that kind of listening is good. You can close your eyes. I won't suspect you're sleeping, which would be fine anyway. The grace of a nap given to you at church.
Speaker 1:Revelation 21, verse 1. Then I saw in Isaiah's a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea. Now God doesn't have anything against the ocean. He created it. So if you're a surfer, be it, ease. The sea, from the vantage point of the scriptural story, was the place of chaos. So what God is saying here in Revelation 21 is there's no longer any chaos, no longer any threat, no primordial deep.
Speaker 1:I saw John goes on the holy city, 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 look, god's dwelling place is now among the people, and our physics has this disconnect between heaven and earth. But here we see them coming together, god dwelling with his people, because the story is about God stopping at nothing to be God with us. They will be his people and God himself will be with them and he will be their God. But look at what he does. He doesn't just rain from on high. He verse 4, will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things, the broken cosmos that breeds entropy, that breeds brokenness and pain and sorrow, has passed away. He who was seated on the throne of God said see, I am making everything new, all things being made new by the love of our Father. He said write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. These are facts. The uncanniness of death is undone by the hands of the Savior, wiping every tear from our eyes. And he said to me verse 6, it is done, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water without cost, from the spring of the water of life. Our world, defined by scarcity, is no more because of the abundance of the kingdom of God. He pours forth water. Verse 7, those who are victorious will inherit all this and I will be their God and they will be my children. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars, they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death. Now, this may feel out of place in this description of beauty of this world that is to come, but what John is saying here is the only thing that's against nature in this world is that which is subnatural, that which isn't in line with the flow of God's self-giving love. He says that won't be possible there.
Speaker 1:Verse 15 of Revelation 21,. The angel who talked with me and had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. Just picture that in your head for a moment, friends. John's describing this new creation city. He's saying the layout, the physics of this city are not just about urban sprawl, they're about reaching to the heavens. This city is as tall as it is wide. It's shaped like a cube, which calls back to mind in the story the center of the holy of holies, the tabernacle that would go as a sign of God's presence with the people of God. He's saying the whole city is a holy of holies. And he said he measured the city with a rod. He found it to be 12,000 stadia in length. Again, I know it's not a unit of membership measurement that we use, but it's estimated that that unit of membership would be equivalent to something taller than Everest, that this city is so vast in its physics and its four-dimensionality beyond our comprehension and beyond our scope. The wall was made of jasper. The city of pure gold.
Speaker 1:You scroll ahead to verse 21. The great street of the city was of gold as pure as transparent glass. I don't know about any gold that is transparent in this world. The elements of this world given by God have been transfigured by God. We see this in Jesus' resurrected body. He can eat with his disciples and he can walk through walls. And the answer to that is yes and amen.
Speaker 1:Revelation 22. Of the city, on each side of the river stood the tree of life bearing 12 crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. No famine, no drought. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city. His servants will serve him, they will see his face. His name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the redemption of all things, the new physics of the kingdom of God, of him transfiguring our lives and that which we seek after to be found fully in him.
Speaker 1:I'm going to pray for the Holy Spirit to come. I'm going to pray that God would minister to you as we come, receive from the table, as we respond in worship here this morning. Lord, jesus, we pray. Come Holy Spirit, god, would you descend upon dear daughters and sons in this place, lord, I want to pray specifically for a few in our midst.
Speaker 1:God first, for those who they feel like the story that I outlined is their story. The story of doubt or cynicism, bred by holding things in conflict. Lord, that you hold naturally together. Lord, would you, through the spirit of freedom, god, just bring a sense of lightness in this room? God, would you help us to see the wisdom which you have inscribed in the world, lord, to order it appropriately under your lordship and reign, god, but to know that we don't have to hold these things together which you haven't called us to hold together, that in you, all measure of wisdom, all things to be known, are hidden in the palms of your hands, jesus, and we seek you. We seek first your kingdom, and everything else is added onto us, god.
Speaker 1:We pray for those, lord, who need that glimpse of that new physics, god, the world where entropy and death and decay are undone fully. Lord, we've seen signs, god. We see signs still today of the way you are working, the way you are putting up signposts to say that world is surely coming to us. God, would you minister your presence in light of that new heavens and new earth, in light of the king that you are here today. Forgive sin, god. Help us to confess, knowing that there is nothing that we can do that could separate us from the love of God. When we receive your presence here today, god, would you comfort those who need every tear wiped from their eyes, even now, here among the land of the living God.
Speaker 1:I want to pray one last prayer for the scientists in our midst, god, god, we pray that you would give them ingenuity and wisdom. Yes, god, we pray most of all, lord, that that would be ordered out of our heart that longs for you. God, we thank you for them, god, and the witness that they are, jesus. We pray all of these things and more by the power of your Spirit, lord, the power of your blood that reconciles all things in heaven and on earth. I pray all these things in your name. Amen, ecclesia. In just a moment I'm going to invite you.