Before the Throne — Chapter Nine — The Heavenly City

This was talk nine, and the final talk, in a series preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2024. You can listen to this sermon on the podcast, or watch it here.

We are at the end. How have you gone with all this picture stuff — engaging your imagination — your ability to make images — if you have that ability — as we have worked through these images of heaven through the Bible together?

We started out with Paul’s prayer in Ephesians — that the eyes of the heart of his readers might be enlightened (Ephesians 1:18). If you are joining us, we have been leaning into this idea from Paul, and it is just worth recapping as we set the scene today. His prayer is that we might know the hope to which he has called us — the picture of the future that drives us. This is what hope is really; an imagining of a good outcome that shapes how we live. Paul speaks of this as the riches of his glorious inheritance in or for his holy people.

He has already unpacked a bit of this earlier in his introduction to this letter where he talks about God’s plans and purposes that he has revealed in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:8–9). He speaks of God’s plan for the fulfilment of time — where he will bring all things in heaven and on earth together in unity under Jesus. This is what we read John describe in his vision from Revelation. This is the hope Paul wants our hearts to be captivated by; what he is praying we will see.

In another letter — Colossians — Paul talks about God having all his fullness dwell in Jesus, and through him all things being reconciled — being brought together in harmony — whether that is on earth or things in heaven, or heaven and earth. This is secured, ultimately, through Jesus’ blood shed on the cross (Colossians 1:19–20).

The Son of God who reigns in heaven is reigning with the purpose of bringing heaven — where God lives — and earth — together. This is what that video from the Bible Project covered — the idea that our hope, the trajectory of reality as the Bible describes it, is heaven and earth coming together as one eternal reality where we dwell with God.

We have seen that Paul says in some way this is not just our future, it is our present. Those who have received God’s Spirit so we are united with Jesus where he is now, have been raised and seated with him in the heavenly realms — we have been located in heaven (Ephesians 2:6).

So we live on earth as walking temples, where God dwells on earth (Ephesians 2:21–22). We are walking, talking, imagining, living, serving pictures of the future of all things; those who have been reconciled to God, and to each other.

Paul says because of all this we can approach God with freedom and confidence — this is what we do as we pray — we approach God in this heavenly throne room (Ephesians 3:12). This is what Paul was doing for the readers of his letter as he prayed that the eyes of our hearts might be enlightened. This is the reality he was seeing as he prayed that his readers would see.

It is the reality he was encountering in a prayer we will come back to as he describes himself kneeling before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth — all the beings who will be brought together — derive our name. That is a way of saying we owe our existence and role in the cosmos to him (Ephesians 3:14–15).

Paul ends that prayer in Ephesians 3 with this idea that even as he is kneeling before God, imagining the splendour of the throne room of God — coming before the throne — even then our imaginations are limited. We are not getting the full picture of this reality of our hope in God’s goodness. God can do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine according to this power he has described — the power that has raised and seated us and that will reconcile all things (Ephesians 3:20–21).

Our imaginations will fall short, and the eyes of our hearts are always up for more enlightenment; more contemplation or imagination of the future; of our hope, through more time before the throne of God. This is so that we are more and more caught up in this calling to be living temples — heaven on earth people living in this overlap, anticipating and picturing the future in our imaginations and our lives.

There is this idea that we can spend so much time thinking about heaven as Christians that we become no use on earth. We sometimes see this in how Christians write off pursuing justice in political issues in this world, or speaking up — trading off doing “earthly stuff” against investing in evangelism — proclaiming the Gospel. Or in how we think about climate change, where maybe you have heard Christians say “it is all going to burn up so we should focus on saving souls.” Or maybe it is the idea that hope is a sort of naïve optimism that stops us confronting reality as it really is, and seeing the suffering not just in our lives, but in those around us as a serious indication of something deeply wrong with reality that should leave us grieving or crying out for justice.

But I think the opposite is the case. I think the more we spend time imagining this hope — an earth reconciled and connected to heaven — and see our calling as living like heaven on earth people, the more this time dwelling with God before his throne in prayer and worship, cultivating hope, will translate into lives that embody this hope now. It will shape lives that pursue a picture of heaven-on-earth life, and a hopeful vision of the future that frames how we suffer differently, and how we enter the suffering of others.

So the working theory this morning is that we maybe do not spend enough time hoping and picturing this future — we do not spend enough time before the throne, contemplating heaven. We would maybe be more useful on earth if we did, and even more effective in our evangelism. Priests in the Bible — those sent out to carry God’s presence in the world — are shaped by time spent in that presence; by understanding the God we represent. The working theory for this morning is that the more time we spend dwelling in this hope — imagining it, picturing it, meditating on it, prayerfully cultivating a sense of who God is, the God who will always be immeasurably beyond our imagination in terms of his goodness and love, the God who is committed to this reconciliation, this heaven-and-earth future — the more meaningful and purposeful our life on earth will be, and the better our witness will be to the world.

This is how John’s vision works in the first century. He is writing to Christians facing incredible suffering, looking at Rome enacting its vision of heaven on earth, tempted to jump ship and worship the emperor and enjoy the fruits of the empire, tempted not just by the carrot of sharing in that power and beauty but the stick of being set on fire as candles in a garden party if they do not. John’s vision of heaven is meant to reframe their reality, to hold them fast to Jesus, and to expose this Roman empire as a false, beastly, destructive vision of heaven — so they will live as faithful witnesses; God’s church, his kingdom of priests.

John’s vision ends with this picture of the end — of heaven and earth made new, the old passing away, and there is no longer any sea (Revelation 21:1).

Now — for those of us who love the beach — I do not think this means there is no more Sunshine Coast. The sea was a picture of chaos and destruction — think about the waters at the start of the story of the Bible. But in the context of heaven and earth — the sea is also that barrier separating the heavens and the earth — the crystal dome under the throne of God (Exodus 24:10; Ezekiel 1:22). Moses goes through it at the top of the mountain; Ezekiel sees it above the cherubim who are carrying around God’s throne, and it is in that giant bowl in the temple.

John describes this sea of glass in front of the throne earlier in Revelation (Revelation 4:6). I think we are meant to imagine this as the vault from Genesis 1 that separated water from water (Genesis 1:6–7). It is the dome God opened up to send the flood in the Noah story. For the ancient reader who did not have telescopes or spaceships, this was how they imagined a real physical barrier between God’s realm and ours in the sky. And that barrier is gone.

Because that barrier is gone, the holy city — the new Jerusalem — can come down from heaven into earth (Revelation 21:2). The new Jerusalem, this heavenly city, is the predominant image from what we read together. It is this heavenly city that ties all the images from our series together — the light, the mountain, the garden, the temple, the throne in the holy of holies where God acts as judge and king, and the dwelling place of the Lamb of God — the Son of God, the bridegroom as Jesus describes himself in John’s Gospel. Here we are meeting the bride — this city — prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. This is a picture of Jesus being united with his beloved church, a permanent union between heaven and earth.

A voice comes from the throne to interpret this image for us — “look, God is dwelling now with his people; the barrier is gone. God and humans are reconciled in this new heaven-meets-earth space” (Revelation 21:3). He comes as the God whose hands are outstretched to wipe away every tear from our eyes. He comes as the God who defeats all the things that harm us and separate us from God (Revelation 21:4) — no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the old order of things is dead and gone.

The one seated on the throne says, “I am making all things new.” All the sad things are coming untrue (Revelation 21:5). This is our hope, and the one on the throne says it is trustworthy and true.

Do you believe it? Can you conceive it in your imagination? Just take a moment. What would that mean for your life in the future? What does this look like, beloved of God — to dwell with him, to have all the remnants of sin and death removed from you, your grief and pain wiped away by the God who loves you?

Can you picture a hand wiping away your tears and with that swipe, removing the burden of everything you have done — and everything done to you — so that guilt, and shame, and trauma, and wounds are dealt with? These barriers that have left you feeling separated from God, feeling unworthy — gone. That shame you feel because you never measure up to your own standards, let alone the standards of others, even if only you know it. The harsh and violent words and deeds shouted in your face, or maybe worse — whispered. The indifference you have felt from those who should love you, the contempt. The never feeling like you belong. The guilt you carry because you have done the shouting, or the whispering, or the violence, or the contempt — the way you have consumed others in darkness, even just in the darkness of your imagination — dead, wiped away, as you are made new.

I know I need this picture. I know I need the comfort it offers. All things new. How might that hope shape your now?

Jesus — the one who was dead, and is now alive — joins his Father enthroned, and offers the water of life from this heavenly spring, to bathe in and be cleansed, to drink and never be thirsty — for free, without cost (Revelation 21:6).

This is what Jesus offers to those who are victorious (Revelation 21:7) — those who come to the throne and cling to him and worship him and are not lured into life — or death — with the beastly empires and destructive powers of heaven. The darkness. Children of God.

This newness can only happen as the old order is destroyed — which includes those powers committed to visiting violent suffering on others; those who have not been transformed by encountering God’s hand stretched out in embrace. They experience exclusion. This is uncomfortable for many of us, and we might hope that God is going to do that transforming work in every person whether we see it or not. But this pattern of death cannot exist in this new creation, and so the patterns — and those who live by them — are destroyed in the fiery power of the throne, in the second death (Revelation 21:8).

We might want to dwell on this idea, and it might devastate us to imagine this happening to us, or to our beloved — and I suspect it should. We should grapple with this as humans — humans who know we bring nothing to the table when it comes to God extending his embrace to us through Jesus. We know that we fall before the throne deserving whatever fate our neighbours experience. This is part of the vision that should motivate us to live as priests of the reconciling God who wants to bring all things to Jesus.

The marriage of the Lamb is totally consensual. He will not force those who reject him into this relationship, and this peaceful future cannot happen with those totally committed to ways of death that come from rejecting God, and God’s vision for life, destroying others in pursuit of their visions.

But we are not dwelling on that picture in John’s vision. John’s eyes are swept up, and so are ours, to examine this bride — the wife of the Lamb (Revelation 21:9–10). Here is where images we have contemplated come thick and fast. For starters we are on the mountain — great and high — seeing this holy city coming down, shining with the glory, the bright light of God (Revelation 21:11). It is bright like the jewels we saw in the prophets and earlier in Revelation — shining.

It has twelve gates. There are lots of twelves — it is a picture of completeness, like the twelve tribes and the twelve apostles — and there are twelve angels as well. It is a picture of heaven and earth coming together in this sort of fulfilment — filled up (Revelation 21:12). Then we start to get the hint that this city — the whole city — is a temple. Where the old Jerusalem contained both the temple and the palace so that God ruled from his throne and the Messiah from the throne in the palace, here there is one throne room (Revelation 21:15–16).

We are getting this tour from an angel who is carrying a measuring rod to help us see how this city is a square. This is a throwback to Ezekiel’s vision — also on a very high mountain — of a new temple in a city on a mountain (Ezekiel 40:2). Ezekiel also saw a heavenly figure with a measuring rod, as he saw a square-shaped building (Ezekiel 40:3). John is seeing a square-shaped city — it is huge, overwhelmingly big (Revelation 21:16).

Just as the temple in the Old Testament was covered in gold, this city is pure gold (Revelation 21:17). It is covered in precious stone, like the throne room of God. There are twelve walls with twelve types of jewels, and just in case you think “there is no such thing as twelve different jewels” — or if you are skeptical — John names them all (Revelation 21:19–20).

The gates are pearly. There is that sort of memey joke where we are meant to imagine ourselves standing before the pearly gates wondering if we get in. That is not the point here. Those united with Jesus are already in, and have already been behind the walls through the gates, in the city of gold, as those seated with Jesus (Revelation 21:21).

Because behind these walls there is no temple. This is a temple city; this is a holy of holies city. This is where God dwells. The Father and the Lamb “are the temple” (Revelation 21:22–23). This is where God’s throne is now located. The light is emanating from them. It does not even need the sun or the moon — those heavenly bodies that reflect God’s light and help us picture it. We are invited to imagine Father and Son as brighter than the sun, providing light to the nations. All the kings of the earth in this new reality — who do not serve beastly powers, but God — bring their splendour forward in worship of the one seated on the throne. They give as an act of worship, and the gates are open because there is no longer an enemy. There are no wolves lurking around at night waiting to do harm, that would make you shut the gates (Revelation 21:24–25).

Nothing impure will come in, nor those excluded who do what is shameful or deceitful. Only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life — those pulled out of death into life through Jesus’ blood, his death that makes peace and reconciles all things, offering reconciliation between us and God as heaven and earth are brought together (Revelation 21:26–27).

Then we get both a throwback to Ezekiel’s vision of the water being released from the temple, living water turning the earth into a fruitful paradise, and to the garden of Eden. Garden imagery is bursting out. We do not need gold carvings in a temple building, this is a picture of the real thing. The river is flowing through the city — like the waters flowed out of Eden and into the world — out from the throne. Not rivers of fiery judgment but watery life. Not a crystal sea working as a barrier, but life flowing from the throne (Revelation 22:1–2).

As the water flows, trees grow — especially the tree of life. It bears fruit constantly, monthly, giving life to all who dwell with God, and its leaves heal the nations, bringing peace and tranquility (Revelation 22:3). No longer will there be any curse. Nothing is separating us from God, from life in this place. We are no longer exiled from the tree, or from the gardener who plants it. Life is no longer secured through toil in a world turned against us (Revelation 22:3–4).

The throne is there and we will live before it, as God’s people, serving him. That is a worship word. He delights in giving light and life and love to us. We will see his face — a heavenly encounter impossible to conceive fully in the Old Testament, hinted at in the life of Jesus as people saw God’s glory in human flesh. Again — no more night, because God will give light, and he will reign forever (Revelation 22:5).

This is earth — all the goodness and wonder of God’s creation, heaven-on-earth spaces, being fused with heaven, all the glory and wonder of God’s throne room, and the heavenly human who rules on the throne with God, being brought together.

This is the story of the Bible — this is our hope. It seems beyond our capacity to fully comprehend, right — and I think all of this imagery is analogy — giving us images and language to shape our hope. At the heart of this hope is life; intimate life with the God who loves us and will make us new, and will give us life with him and with each other forever.

But it is not our present. Our present is life in this now and not yet. Now those who have God’s Spirit dwelling in us, so that through us — God’s living temple — God lives in the world. We are those who are reconciled to God and are a picture of heaven and earth being reconciled as we inhabit space and time. We are those who are raised and seated and can come before the throne of heaven — with all this splendour surrounding it — in prayer and worship, so that we carry the presence of the God who rules into the world. With the hope that all the curse, and tears, and pain — will pass, must pass — and that all things will be made new as we are being made new.

So what difference does this make for actual life on the ground? What difference do all these pictures make for us?

Well, for starters, I think, this changes how we understand and articulate the Gospel, and how we live as those who believe the Gospel. The Gospel is not just about our souls escaping to some cloudy disembodied life with harps. It is about God working to reconcile all things to himself — undoing the separation between us and him, and finally the separation from the beginning of the story of the Bible — between heaven and earth.

This happens and is secured through Jesus becoming human, shedding his blood on the cross, being raised from the dead, and exalted to the heavenly throne room as the Son of God and the Son of Man — the heaven-on-earth king becoming the human-in-heaven ruler.

With this comes the idea that we are not just saved from sin, but saved for life. We are saved for life with God, and life as God’s ambassadors of reconciliation; his heaven-on-earth people; his living temple who live lives that picture and enact our hope. Not because we can bring the transformation that only God can at the end of the story, but because through our witness God delights in bringing that transformation life by life through the Gospel, and bit by bit through the parts of the earth we cultivate in our work and service to tell this story.

And this salvation — this restoration and reconciliation with God — flows out through our individual lives into our communities and the things we create together as we work, perhaps in ways that give whole nations and societies glimpses of God’s goodness. It does not always. So often Christian attempts to bring heaven to earth look more cursed than blessed, and I reckon this happens most when we embrace the violent power games of the world, rather than encountering the God we meet in the crucified Lamb so that we see God brings heaven to earth through sacrificial, reconciling love that first seeks to embrace enemies, and to cultivate life not death, as witnesses to God’s nature.

I think our outworking of this story — this Gospel — goes wrong because we are not dwelling in God’s presence; in prayer, in worship, in meditating on his word — in ways that shape our vision and then our action. And it goes right, in truly beautiful ways, when we do; when our actions in the world are grounded in our life before the throne; where our acts serving God are shaped by worshipping God as God is.

But this is our job — right — bringing heaven to earth in a tangible way as temples, or as Paul says elsewhere, ambassadors, or citizens of heaven (Philippians 3:20-21). This is where we belong in a life-defining way, and our hope is that Jesus, who dwells there, will bring transformation by his power — the power that will bring everything under control — and will also bring that transformation to our bodies so that they will be glorious like his body is glorious.

In Philippians this hope — this citizenship — produces rejoicing, even in suffering, and a life marked by gentleness (Philippians 4:4-6). It frees us from being caught up in the worries about earthly things. This is not to say our bodies will not experience anxiety or be marked by trauma, or that we should not engage earthly help for those real phenomena. But we do approach these threats, our experience of pain and suffering, the scars and wounds we bear, knowing these are not ultimate. We are not bound by those who would limit our citizenship to our bodies on earth, and seek to destroy us by breaking our minds and bodies and conforming us to their desires.

Instead, we live as those near to God; those who have access to this heavenly throne room even in the midst of our worst embodied, earthly moments. We are not prisoners. Paul, though, writes this letter when his body is physically imprisoned. Instead, in every moment, in every situation, we can enter the presence of God; enter his throne by prayer and petition. We can close our eyes to earth and open them to heaven; to the wonder we see described in these visions, presenting our requests to God, being healed and transformed by encountering him.

This, I think, is what Paul is praying for his readers in Ephesians, where we started all this — that we might comprehend, as much as is possible, that this reality is really our reality now. That it makes a difference. That comprehending this power is the basis not just of our hope for the future, but our life in the present.

This is what Paul models as he prays in Ephesians; a prayer we might pray kneeling beside Paul — perhaps physically — as those who come before God.

Paul prays that we might really see the one on the throne; that we might really know his goodness and love as we dwell here — that this is all about something beyond our imagination, but that grappling with this begins with an act of imagination; of opening our hearts to where the Bible says we are.

September 25, 2025 Add Comment

Before the Throne — Chapter Eight — Joining the glorious worship in the heavenly throne room

This was talk eight in a series preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2024. You can listen to this sermon on the podcast, or watch it here.

We are getting to the pointy end of our series — we have worked our way from the beginning of the Bible’s depictions of heavenly space to the end. We have not just moved from light to mountains to gardens to temples to the heavenly throne room appearing in the prophets to Jesus the walking, talking heavenly throne room — we have moved from Genesis, through Exodus, into the promised land, through exile and the incarnation of Jesus as the end of our exile and our invitation back into heavenly space — and now we are at the book at the end of the Bible; a climax — and the book where images of the throne room of heaven come thick and fast. It is almost like the whole reveal in Revelation is about seeing this reality at the heart of all reality, and having it shape the lives of followers of Jesus on earth.

This is a book written for followers of Jesus struggling because there is an evil empire using violence to create its own vision of heaven. Revelation will picture it as beastly power, and this beastly power — the Roman Empire — is at the beginning of a period of persecution of Christians that will culminate in the emperor setting Christians on fire as candles in garden parties. Somehow this vision John offers is meant to be a comfort. It is meant to shape a life of faithfully committing to a different empire, a different king — and a different way of life pursuing a different picture of heaven. Not a life of violence and destruction, but of faithful witness to the reality of Jesus and the picture of heaven on earth we see at the end of the story — which we will spend more time in next chapter.

It is a vision that comes with a posture and a script — not just a way of life, but a way of worship. While we have been looking at these visions of heaven together thinking about how they might shape our prayers — this chapter— and I would not want to make too big a distinction between these two categories anyway — this chapter we are thinking about how these visions of heaven are the goal of and the setting for our worship. This particular sort of worship is meant to drive our way of life in the world as we serve the God we meet in heaven.

If you have been around for a bit you will have heard me say there are multiple words in Greek that get translated as “worship” in English. One is the word latreo — it is the word for service, what a priest or priestly community does mediating heaven on earth, serving God with our bodies. The other is the word proskuneo — it is a word built on the idea of a physical posture one would adopt before a king or a god — or really, at a throne. It is the idea of falling before this power in reverence. We can tease out the relationship between the two under the umbrella of worship — it is when we see the power and goodness of the one on the throne, and give our lives to that power — falling before it, giving up our own claims — that is what motivates worshipful service as priests.

It is interesting that in the Gospel, the disciples twice offer this sort of proskuneo worship when they encounter the resurrected Jesus. In Matthew 28 they fall at his feet and worship him the first time they see him (Matthew 28:9). And then, when they are up the mountain about to be sent out into the world as the priestly people who have encountered the one with all the authority of heaven on a mountain top, they worship him, and it is this word again (Matthew 28:16-17).

We are going to see — in this vision of the heavenly throne room — a whole bunch of worship. A bunch of images that accompany that worship — pictures of the whole creation worshipping the creator in posture and with words that come with that posture. This is stuff that will shape a priestly people; the sort of people who will represent the throne of heaven on earth. And I think the point here is that these pictures provide a motivation and a model for our worship — first in the sense of encountering the one on the throne, and then as those sent out into the world as priestly people.

Just as these images of the throne in the Bible are maybe meant to shape our imaginations as we pray — and encounter God that way — I think they are meant to form our imaginations and our hearts as we encounter God, as we praise God, and as we worship him. Whether that is when we gather for corporate worship — proskuneo style — or we are doing that alone or in smaller groups, this act — both in posture and imagination — is meant to drive how we serve God with our bodies in the world.

Does this make sense?

Just to orient ourselves before we take a look at these visions — and to set up why we are going to approach them the way we are — remember we are tackling this series through the lens that the Bible gives us as it says those of us who have put our trust in Jesus and received God’s Spirit — we have been relocated in some real way so that we are before the throne of God. We are in the heavenly throne, not just as bystanders but as people seated with Jesus, as those who have access to God (Ephesians 2:6).

And we have been doing this thing of pairing fact statements the Bible makes about this sort of thing with images — pictures the Bible gives us in passages like we are going to look at, or in stories, to help us imagine this reality. To move it from the facts part of our brain into the picture part of our brain and have those working together to shape how we approach reality.

So I thought I would start with this propositional idea. It comes from the bit in Philippians where Paul talks about Jesus — the one who is in very nature God — making himself nothing, less than nothing, being crucified. God’s response to this obedience and love is that God exalts Jesus to the highest place — in the Bible there is no higher place than the throne of heaven — and gives him the name above every name so that at his name every knee — every being — will bow. That is a worship posture.

And there is this strange bit here that pictures reality with three tiers — it is not just every knee on earth, but in heaven, on earth, and in the underworld. It is a picture of Jesus winning a victory that sees him worshipped — honoured — by heavenly and earthly creatures as well as the dark powers who the Bible depicts behind the violence and death, the stuff that infects the earth.

And not only will all these knees bow — an embodied posture of worship — every tongue will acknowledge that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:6-11).

If that is a statement of a thing that is true — that this is where reality is — Jesus being exalted — and where it is heading — every creature recognising that in worship — Revelation’s pictures of the throne room give us imagery to fuel our imaginations as we figure out how to live so this reality shapes our lives. Our posture of worship and our praise will flow out of this sort of vision, this sort of encounter with the Jesus who is exalted to the highest place — which is the picture John, who writes Revelation, opens with.

Now — we are going to skim through these descriptions from a few points in this book of Revelation — not just the bits we read. The idea is to fuel our imaginations with the imagery we get here, to start building out a picture of heaven from these readings. We will look at the postures and words modelled by the worshippers we meet there, and these might be things that flow into how we think about worship, and our bodies, and our words as people located in this place.

John hears this voice and he turns and looks. He sees the voice comes from this figure of someone like a son of man (Revelation 1:12-13). We are seeing imagery from Daniel chapter 7 here (Daniel 7:13). As we wander around the throne room as John depicts it, we are going to see his vision, his words, his way of understanding this heavenly experience aligning with earlier pictures from the Old Testament. This consistency makes me think these pictures are something we are meant to contemplate as some sort of biblical truth that is of value for us now. Only, John is doing something new. He is blending the images of God from the Old Testament with the image of God we see in Jesus.

So his description of the hair and clothing of this son of man lines up with the description of the Ancient of Days (Daniel 7:9, Revelation 1:14). That includes the fiery legs or feet and the voice that sounds like rushing waters, which Ezekiel says is the sound of the voice of the Almighty (Ezekiel 1:24, 27, Revelation 1:15). And the son’s face is shining like the sun in all of its brilliance (Revelation 1:16).

This is not the first time we have met Jesus described this way. Last chapter we touched on the heaven on earth moment of the transfiguration in Luke’s Gospel. When Matthew records the same event, Jesus is revealed with bright shining clothes and a face shining like the sun (Matthew 17:2, Revelation 1:16).

When John sees this vision of the resurrected Jesus, he does what the disciples did when they saw the resurrected Jesus — he falls at his feet, lying on the ground in front of him (Revelation 1:17). And in case we are wondering if this is the Ancient of Days or the son of man — the figure speaks, calling himself the living one who was dead and is now alive (Revelation 1:18).

This is John encountering Jesus — experiencing this reality of the heavenly realm and modelling a response: worship. As this vision becomes our vision John is modelling a response for us.

But as the book unpacks more visions of the throne room we are going to see John is just joining the posture displayed by other creatures and people we find there.

First though, John sets the scene for us — and he keeps drawing on scenes we have looked at together. I wonder if you can let this imagery of the throne permeate your imagination — if you can picture things in your mind, and if you find it helpful maybe just close your eyes; maybe you can try sketching this out or painting it later.

John sees this throne room of heaven and the one sitting on it. The one on the throne has the appearance of jasper and ruby — precious gems — and around the throne there is a sort of river of light, a rainbow, which you can maybe imagine making the jasper and ruby sparkle. The rainbow itself is sparkling like a jewel, like an emerald (Revelation 4:2-3).

This is imagery from Ezekiel — we are picturing brightness and colour and light (Ezekiel 1:28, Revelation 4:3). If we are in John’s shoes, we are standing there and this is washing over us.

And as we turn around there are these creatures — 24 other thrones where 24 elders are seated. These elders are dressed in white, wearing gold crowns, and there is lots of debate about who these elders are (Revelation 4:4). I am not convinced they are human. I think we are seeing a meeting of that divine council, this Old Testament image we have seen in the Psalms (Psalm 82:1), or something like 1 Kings where there is a heavenly multitude surrounding the throne (1 Kings 22:19). John is looking at some of these — we will see more. In Daniel’s vision there are multiple thrones and thousands of these heavenly creatures around multiple thrones (Daniel 7:9-10). Seeing these thrones in the mix is especially helpful for John’s audience.

Anyway — back to John’s vision, and now we have to move into imagining not just imagery — lightning — but sound, peals of thunder.

And in front of the throne there is a sea of glass (Revelation 4:5-6), which I reckon, as we have seen it in Exodus and Ezekiel, is that barrier — the vault between the heavens and the earth — maybe represented by that giant bowl of water, the sea, in the Temple.

John also sees four other heavenly creatures around the throne covered in eyes and with wings (Revelation 4:6, 8). John’s vision is combining a couple of Old Testament images we have looked at together. These creatures have six wings. We met the eye-covered cherubim in Ezekiel (Ezekiel 10:12), and the six-winged seraphim in Isaiah (Isaiah 6:2). These are the powerful attenders of God’s throne, the ones who carry God’s chariot throne around.

And John sees these creatures saying — though I think we are meant to think singing because of where we are going — “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come” (Revelation 4:8). This is the song of heaven, this is heavenly worship. These are the words the seraphim were calling out to one another in Isaiah — words we echo in our own worship as we join the chorus.

And in John’s vision whenever these four creatures lead the choir of heaven — giving glory, honour and thanks to God — those other heavenly powers with their thrones fall down before God. They proskuneo (Revelation 4:9-10). They worship in their posture. They lay down their crowns and say — or sing — words we too often echo as we worship God in song, words proclaiming God’s worthiness to be worshipped, to receive glory and honour as the Most High God because he created all things (Revelation 4:10-11).

As people raised and seated with Jesus, when we pray and worship God — when we enter this throne room in our imaginations, or with our bodies and words here on earth, conscious of this reality — we are encountering the God who is worthy, who is powerful, who creates and gives being to all things by his will.

As John’s vision continues after that bit with the scroll he sees the figure from chapter 1 — the one who was dead but now is alive, the human ruler who he imagines as a lamb. This is John whose Gospel opens with John the Baptist declaring that Jesus is the Lamb of God. This lamb who has been slain is standing at the centre of the throne, surrounded, like the Ancient of Days, the God Most High, by all these other powers, these heavenly figures (Revelation 5:6).

And these heavenly creatures and rulers — all of them — the four strange creatures and the elders — now they fall down before the lamb. It is the same posture of worship (Revelation 5:8). And they sing — specifically — a new song, not just the Old Testament song, but a song reflecting on the worthiness of Jesus who was slain and who purchased God’s humans through his blood out from under all sorts of other foreign power, foreign gods, making a people from every tribe and language and people and nation.

He has made them what Israel were called to be at the mountain in Exodus — a kingdom of priests, people from all over the earth who will rule on earth as God’s representatives (Revelation 5:9-10). Those who dwell in his presence so they can reflect it on the earth. This is the idea of heaven on earth people we have seen.

John zooms out and sees the whole heavenly host we hinted at — the thousands upon thousands — all in expanding circles out from the throne. They are joining their voices to the chorus: “Worthy is the lamb who was slain.” We literally sing these words, do we not? “Worthy is the king who conquered the grave.” Through his death and resurrection the lamb is worthy of receiving all the honour and glory and praise his father has.

Then John sees every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth joining the chorus: “To him who sits on the throne and to the lamb be praise and honour and glory and power for ever and ever…” Again — words we sing. When we sing this we are joining our voices to this heavenly choir as those already located here. Imagine that. Meditate on this imagery. Put yourself here as we sing.

When these words are sung, the heavenly creatures fall down and worship (Revelation 5:11-14).

This scene is a dramatic enactment of Philippians 2. God has exalted Jesus to the highest place and now knees are bowing and tongues are confessing. When we approach God’s throne in worship, when we fall on our knees in praise as we pray — if we do that — we are joining in to this vision. This is where we are even now, as those raised and seated with Jesus.

Let us just break out of the vision for a second, because this stuff is weird, and I just want to try to ground it for us all. We are probably sceptical or cynical about these sorts of powers, these creatures we cannot see. But I reckon if we can just stretch ourselves we might be able to understand how when humans worship things, when we put things on the throne in our life and bow before them and serve them in the world, when we have a view of heaven — it can motivate us to do things that are real and observable.

If you are a first century Christian living while Rome, and worshippers of Roman gods including the emperor, are making a real difference in your world — lighting your friends up as candles, arresting you or your family and forcing you to choose between bowing to Jesus or bowing to the emperor — these pictures do not need explaining. You know there are powers, and you suspect there might be some sinister “bigger than human” power behind these realities dripping in spiritual imagery and postures and words.

Maybe our issue is we just do not see spiritual powers behind our worship of money, or our ideas that violence is required to bring peace, or that we should take what we want or need with a certain amount of force in competition with others. Maybe we do not see dark spiritual powers at work in racism, or sexism, or wars in places like Ukraine or Gaza. But if we did — and if we had this vision of God actually being in control when it feels like we are losing, and that he is actually going to step in to deliver us, that the lamb slain by Roman power is actually risen and ruling — that is going to change how we see those powers in our world, who we fall before, and how we use our bodies.

I increasingly believe these images represent a real spiritual reality that has power in what we see in the world, having previously been sceptical. But even if you cannot get there, these images of the throne room and these powers and principalities bowing the knee to Jesus are images that, if they shape your imagination, change the way you live and use your bodies in the world.

Let us finish by jumping back into more of John’s heavenly vision from chapter 7. First, as we do this, you might be here checking out church, trying to figure out what Christians believe, not sure about all this weird stuff and just waiting to duck out as soon as it does not seem rude. This is a picture that I reckon captures the hearts of so many of the people you are sitting here with. This is a picture of the world’s most multi-ethnic, multi-age, trans-cultural, inclusive group living connected to each other and to the God we do not just believe made the world but, through Jesus — a real human from history who claimed to be God’s son — invites us to live with him forever, and deals with the barriers between us and God: our destructive worship of all sorts of other powers, our captivity or addiction to dark things that harm others and the world, and even death feeling like the end of our story. By dying and rising and saying “we can do that too with him.” It is a big jump. We get it. But a jump that has life-changing results not just now, but forever.

For those of us who do believe this stuff — some of us will be struggling to figure out the significance of all this, and I am hoping there are some really simple things we can pull out of these big pictures and ideas as we notice the postures and images and words. I wonder if we might consider how we are pretty great at engaging with the words — we are word people — we literally sing these words. And we are pretty okay at thinking about how some of this imagery should translate into our desires for earthly gatherings. Most of us would say we want the church to be a multi-ethnic community of people worshipping God.

I am not sure we are always mindful of “where we stand” in terms of imagining ourselves singing together and meeting together in the name of Jesus meaning we are coming before God’s throne and entering this reality, or even that we have access to this reality every moment of our lives. But I am very sure that most of us do not think about the postures described here. We might stand when we sing, but we do not come from a tradition of falling on our knees to pray. We do not do it as we gather, though millions of Christians meet in church buildings where the seats are equipped with kneeling bars for exactly this reason. And I imagine most of us do not do it in daily life. It is not a necessary thing, but I wonder if it might be a good thing as it connects us to this story.

John looks and he sees a great multitude. This, we will see, is those faithfully living before the throne from across generations and nations, throughout time and space — past, present, and future — standing before the throne, where we belong, dressed in white robes, like heavenly creatures, holding palm branches and singing out together in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the lamb” (Revelation 7:9-10).

More singing. More words of worship — not just for the Ancient of Days, but also for the lamb. They cry out “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the lamb.” These are people from many nations with powers, with visions of heaven, with methods of worship and service and loyalty, proclaiming their ultimate loyalty and belonging belongs in the hands of the God of heaven and his king.

And everyone in the throne room falls down before the throne — like John does in chapter 1 — worshipping, proskuneo-ing God, saying: “Yes. Amen. Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honour and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen” (Revelation 7:11-12).

This heavenly chorus features all those who have suffered and been persecuted, who have faced life in this world — especially for the first readers, life persecuted by the Romans. This is everyone who has been washed and made clean, made heavenly by the blood of the lamb, by the death and resurrection of Jesus. This crowd of witnesses — particularly those who have been martyred, faithful witnesses — their place, and ours, forever is this throne room, sheltered in the presence of the worthy God on his throne in his heavenly temple. This is our security, our shelter through and beyond the storms of life. If those dwelling there are as worthy as the songs we sing say, then this is a beautiful and comforting picture.

Where these people — including us — will not hunger or thirst, will not lack, will not be exposed to the brutality of the elements. Instead the lamb on the throne will shepherd us, leading his people to springs of living water, and God will wipe away all the tears from our eyes (Revelation 7:14-17).

This picture of a heavenly present and a heavenly future — that we will look at more next chapter from the end of the book — living in this reality, this grandeur, this hope, is meant to prompt our worship, us falling before the good king and offering our lives to him as he offers this life to us, and the way we serve him on this earth as other powers call for our loyalty and try to rule us while leading us to destruction.

Will you enter this reality — the throne room — and fall before this king in worship now in prayer, and as you next sing God’s praises with his people; so that we might be those who live as his priestly people ‘in heaven’ in order to carry his offer of life and shelter into the world?

September 24, 2025 Add Comment

Before the Throne — Chapter Seven — The hands of the crucified king

This is talk number seven from a series preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2024. Unfortunately the recording failed so there’s no podcast or video version of this one.

We have looked at some pretty abstract images in this series as we have thought about picturing the throne room of heaven as we pray — from the bright light of the sun, to fruitful garden paradises, to mountain tops, to temples, to raw fiery power, to that fiery power being where we go for justice rather than taking things into our own hands, and the picture of the slain Lamb ruling alongside this power.

And look, I do not know if any of these have been enlightening for you; if you have been able to imagine entering heaven using these pictures we find in the Bible.

But this has been our goal: to have the eyes of our hearts enlightened (Ephesians 1:18), as we learn to live as those God has raised with Jesus, seating us with him in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 2:6), as we ponder what it looks like to dwell in that reality so we live as those reflecting heaven on earth in this overlap as God’s heaven-on-earth people.

This week I am hoping—maybe—the image we will imagine from the throne room is something more tangible, less metaphorical even, and grounded in the story of Jesus. Mark begins and ends his story with reality tearing moments that demonstrate that the barrier between heaven and earth is thin; and that in Jesus we are seeing what God is like, and what life on earth representing heaven looks like.

Mark’s story is set up so that we understand it as good news about Jesus the Messiah—the anointed king—the Son of God (Mark 1:1). Now, that title “Son of God” has lots of significance. If you remember Doug’s sermon on Psalm 2, he made the point that this is about a human ruler raised to the throne at God’s right hand ruling over God’s people. If you were a Roman citizen it is language that the Caesars used, building on this idea that Caesar ascended into the heavens and became a god. That will be significant because of what the centurion says at the end of Mark’s Gospel. But whether you think it is emphasising Jesus’ humanity — like with Psalm 2 — or divinity — like with the strange bit of Genesis where sons of God come down from heaven and create the Nephilim — it is pretty clear Mark wants us to see Jesus as a human who bridges heaven and earth; who breaks the barrier between them.

Mark brackets his story of Jesus with these two reality-tearing moments in what’s called an ‘inclusio’. There is an interesting similarity being drawn out here: the heavens are torn open so that God can enter the story in the form of his Spirit at the baptism of Jesus, and the curtain that represented the barrier between heaven and earth — between holy space and the most holy space of God’s throne room — is torn open from top to bottom (Mark 1:10, 15:38).

This shows Jesus to be the promised Messiah who will baptise with the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:8), creating more human bridges between heaven and earth. This is what Mark’s Gospel sets us up to see as John the Baptist describes the king who is coming.

The scene at Jesus’ baptism marks the dawning of this new reality; it anticipates the curtain tearing as the heavens do tear open, and God’s Spirit descends to hover not just over the waters like in the beginning of the story, but to descend on Jesus to mark him out as a heaven-on-earth human (Mark 1:10).

Then the voice reinforces this message—this is God’s Son, whom he loves, in whom he is pleased (Mark 1:11); a model human. It is a combined fulfilment of Psalm 2 and of the promise in Isaiah of a servant who would lead people home to God (Psalm 2:7, Isaiah 42:1).

Here is the thing—this reality-tearing moment where heaven and earth are overlapping does not just happen here. Reality is altered from this moment. This is the start of God acting to create a people who are at home with him; people living before his throne; a kingdom. This is what Jesus announces his mission is all about: “The time has come.” He is now bringing the kingdom of God (Mark 1:14–15), the overlap between heaven and earth for those who repent and believe the good news of God. This change of reality is what it means for the kingdom of God to come near. And the Gospel story is a demonstration of this reality; a look at what heaven-on-earth life looks like as we see it embodied in God’s Son, the Messiah.

Which is a point we may not see in a bunch of the miraculous stories Mark records. But it is very clear in the transfiguration, where Jesus and his friends are about to go up the mountain and Jesus says, “Some of you—literally the people standing with him—some of you will see the kingdom of God coming with power” (Mark 9:1).

After a six-day wait — echoing the six days Moses waits to go up the mountain into the presence of God (Exodus 24:16) — some of them head up a mountain (Mark 9:2), a heaven-on-earth place, close to the skies, for a taste of the barrier between heaven and earth being gone.

What they see at the top is Jesus transfigured (Mark 9:2).

Now, when you hear the word transfiguration you might be thinking about Harry Potter and the idea of turning something into something else. But what we are seeing here is not Jesus being turned into something else — except maybe his clothes — it is Jesus being revealed as something else; as he really is; as the glory of God meeting humans on a mountaintop. To draw our attention to this, we meet these two Old Testament characters — Moses and Elijah — on the mountain as well (Mark 9:3–4).

There is conjecture about why these two appear, but it seems not so much that they represent the Law and the Prophets, but that they are two who also came into contact with the presence of God on mountaintops (Exodus 24:18, 1 Kings 19:11). Here they are meeting the glorious Son of God face to face. A scene from both their encounters — and one from the baptism of Jesus — repeat: a cloud of glory appears on the mountain and envelops them, and a voice says, “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him” (Mark 9:7).

This is the heaven-on-earth human. Mark wants us to see that heaven-on-earth life is not just the baptism; it is the whole life of Jesus—all the way until he is no longer on earth.

So Mark reports this little bit of Jesus’ trial, where he is asked, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” (Mark 14:61). And Jesus says, “I am” — a phrase rich with Old Testament meaning. From this point in the story onwards, people will see him not just as the Son of God, but as Daniel’s Son of Man, the ascended human ruler who will join God ruling in his heavenly throne room forever. They will see this: Jesus seated in the throne room at God’s right hand, and coming into that throne room on the clouds of heaven (Mark 14:62).

And in what feels like moments after Jesus paints this picture of glory — a reality he says is where this is all heading — the Messiah is crowned with thorns and then enthroned on a cross, with a sign above his head: “King of the Jews” (Mark 15:26).

The crowd is hurling insults at him — this heaven-on-earth human; a walking temple; a representation of the throne room of heaven — as though the building in Jerusalem stands vindicated, its holy place intact as this happens:

“So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!” (Mark 15:29–30).

“Let him come down”… Prove it. Those being executed with him also mock him (Mark 15:32). Right after this mockery there is another heavenly sign: the light stops—the light that is an emanation of God’s glory; God’s light reflected by the sun—goes out at the very time it should be at its brightest. For three hours this period of heaven-on-earth humanity expressed in Jesus is about to close, at least for a while (Mark 15:33).

Then, as the darkness ends, Jesus breathes his last (Mark 15:37). By staying on the cross, God’s Son demonstrates Spirit-filled heavenly life — the nature of the one on the throne. The Messiah shows us what God’s love for us looks like in the face of cosmic darkness, and he shows us that light triumphs. He has come to destroy the barrier between heaven and earth; to make the change brought about in his birth, expressed in his baptism and transfiguration, a permanent shift in the cosmic order. As the one who will give God’s Spirit — his breath — to all people who find life in him, he gives up his breath.

The curtain of the temple tears from top to bottom (Mark 15:38). The story of this heaven-on-earth life —at least as Mark tells it — is bracketed together, and everything that has been done so that God’s heavenly life can spill out of the holy of holies and into people throughout the world has happened. This is not just about us being able to come into God’s presence in that place in the heart of his temple, to live before his throne. It is about God’s presence coming to dwell in us as his Son launches the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven for all who turn to him and believe and receive this gift.

At this point the Roman centurion, who has been schooled for life on the idea that the ascended Caesar is the god-king who brings heaven on earth through his sword and power, sees something in the crucified, bloodied, beaten, crowned man in front of him that convinces him: “Surely this man was the Son of God” (Mark 15:39).

This is the king. This is heaven on earth.

I do not know if you are in the habit of reading the Gospel as a picture of heaven on earth, where Jesus is a kind of walking expression of God’s heavenly rule — his throne room. But there are clues in John’s Gospel too.

When John talks about the Word who is with God and is God becoming flesh — this is a heaven-meets-earth reality. When he says the Word made his dwelling among us, this is the word tabernacle — a mobile throne room reality. And when he says we have seen God’s glory when we see Jesus (John 1:14), this makes the connection clear.

John records the same promise that Jesus will baptise with the Holy Spirit at his baptism (John 1:33). But the heaven-opening stuff does not stop there. He also has this strange picture of angelic beings — like the cherubim and seraphim we have met in the last couple of weeks—ascending and descending (John 1:51), flying around Jesus, as a way of opening our eyes to the parallels between his life and the heavenly throne.

Then Jesus talks about his body as a temple (John 2:14, 21), and about living waters flowing from him to give life to the world. John explains he is talking about the Spirit (John 7:38–39). This is imagery we have seen in the temple as a heaven-on-earth picture of God’s throne room that reappears in Revelation as a source of divine life.

John uses all this to build to the idea that Jesus is the way into life with the Father, and even that when we have seen Jesus we know him and have seen him (John 14:6–7). When one of his disciples is confused, Jesus simply says: “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (John 14:9).

So as we imagine coming before the Father — before his throne — there is no better picture of the God we are approaching in prayer, who is approaching us in love to answer our prayers as he creates heaven-on-earth people, his kingdom, than Jesus himself.

We have talked a bit about meditation or contemplation from this book Meditation and Communion with God. I do not know if you have found this helpful — I really have. The idea is to take propositional truths from the text of the Bible — things we believe to be true — and pair them with images we get from narratives or poetry.

So if we were to take the proposition that we have been raised and seated with Jesus and can set our hearts on things above, where Jesus is at the right hand of God (Colossians 3:1), it makes sense to find ways to picture Jesus in this position as we believe this truth. This is a visual we are given multiple times as we contemplate the things above.

The writer of Hebrews tells us the Son is the radiance of God’s glory (Hebrews 1:3). If we want to picture that bright light glowing out into the world — Jesus is part of that picture. More than that, Jesus is the exact representation of God’s being. If we want to picture the God who is ineffable, beyond our categories or descriptions, Jesus is the bridge — the image. Now that he has made purification for sins, opening the way to be before God’s throne without his power consuming us, he is seated at the right hand of the Father. The heaven-on-earth human is now the human-in-heaven ruler. The Son of God is the Son of Man.

Hebrews keeps telling us to fix our eyes upon Jesus (Hebrews 12:2). But what does it look like to do this? One way is to look at stories about Jesus — the things he does as a heaven-on-earth human — and know that this same heaven-on-earth human is now ruling in heaven.

Not only is he there advocating for us as we pray, he is the perfect representation of the God we pray to — of his character and desire. Through him we approach the heavenly Father, united with the Son he loves, in whom he is well pleased, and through the Spirit dwelling in us — so that we are members of his kingdom, his family.

So let us run quickly through some scenes in Mark’s Gospel. I want to encourage you to pick a few, and as you pray, picture God being like Jesus in this picture, and Jesus being like Jesus as he advocates for you. There is a real intimacy and tenderness in many of the ways Jesus shows us what heaven on earth looks like between those heavens-tearing moments in Mark’s Gospel. Notice the posture of Jesus in these stories — how much they involve loving, tender touch. Touch that does not harm but raises up, even as it demonstrates the raw, creative, evil-destroying power of the throne of God.

In Mark chapter 1, Peter’s mother-in-law is in bed with a fever. When Jesus hears about this he is at her bedside immediately. He takes her hand — presumably gently, like one would take the hand of an elderly woman who is unwell — and he helps her up. He does not pull her violently, he helps her. And she is healed (Mark 1:30–31).

A little later a man with leprosy begs to be made clean — to no longer be horribly afflicted or socially isolated, untouchable. Jesus reaches out his hand. He is indignant, not at the audacity of this untouchable man asking for help, but at the disease itself. He reaches out his hand and touches him, willing to overcome the barrier — healing, cleansing, restoring him to life in community (Mark 1:40–41).

This is the Jesus who advocates for us as we approach the throne room of God, praying to be healed and restored — from sin and alienation from God, and from sickness and alienation from others. Jesus, with hand outstretched, is the image of the God on the throne.

Or there is the paralysed man lowered through the roof, where Jesus, at the sight of the faith of him and his friends, forgives his sins — before healing him with a word (Mark 2:5).

Or the Jesus who is powerful over the wind and the waves — the chaos terrifying his beloved friends—who stills the storm with a word (Mark 4:39).

Or the Jesus meeting the grieving mother and father of a child who has died — who takes her by the hand and speaks, telling her to get up. And she does. This is the Jesus in heaven who comforts us in our terror and grief, who speaks for us, and who offers resurrection hope to us in the face of death and the ferocious power of a hostile world (Mark 5:40–41).

Or the Jesus who uses his hands to break bread and then hand it out to feed multitudes (Mark 6:41), who teaches us to pray “Give us today our daily bread.” This is the Jesus who is raised and seated with God, who sends bread.

The Jesus who, as he walks the earth, is touched and held by so many who are healed as heaven meets earth (Mark 6:56).

The Jesus who places his hands on the deaf man who cannot speak, his fingers in his ears and on his tongue, and heals him (Mark 7:32–33).

The Jesus who touches a blind man and restores his sight (Mark 8:25).

The Jesus who, in the face of an evil power — a demon seeking to destroy a child, throwing him in fire or water — takes the boy by the hand and lifts him to his feet. The opposite of the evil power, who throws him down. Jesus takes him by the hand, lifts him up, delivers him (Mark 9:27).

And then a little later, he gives a picture of life in the kingdom of God — heaven meeting earth — when he takes children the disciples try to keep away into his arms and says: “Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” Prayer is like this — coming to the one who embraces us in his arms like children, offering nothing but prepared to receive everything (Mark 10:15–16).

And then, in that moment where reality shifts forever — in the lead up to the curtain tearing — Jesus is crucified (Mark 15:24). His arms are spread wide open on the cross, nails driven through those hands. The hands that now stretch out to us, as in all these stories, are scarred by nails. The slain Lamb is on the throne.

As we set our hearts on things above, as we imagine not just Jesus, but through him the nature and character of the God who rules — he rules with hands outstretched and arms open to receive us. To receive you.

Can you picture this?

What would happen if you prayed with this picture in your head?

That is a profound picture — a revolutionary picture — for us. To have the God who created the universe, who flung the stars into space, open his hands to receive us as we pray. How could we not pray?

The life of Jesus, as Mark tells it, is good news. It is a revolutionary moment where we see what heaven on earth looks like; what a walking throne room looks like; what the one enthroned looks like. It is an invitation through the torn curtain to have access to the throne. But it is also, through the torn curtain and the gift of the Spirit, a picture that frees us to offer the same posture to the world that he has to us: arms outstretched in love, offering embrace, and the chance to experience the kingdom of God through us.

September 23, 2025 Add Comment

Before the Throne — Chapter Six — Facing the Fire

This was talk six of a sermon series preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2024. You can listen to this on our podcast, or watch the video.

Last chapter we saw this picture of the throne room of God — and of God himself — as raw fiery power (Ezekiel 1:27). Yahweh — the God of Israel — is the ruler over all the other gods in heaven; holding court, rendering judgment (Psalm 82:1).

This is a common picture of the throne room — that it is the place where God acts as judge; where the God whose fiery power melts mountains will turn that power against evil in order to destroy it.

There is a Psalm — Psalm 11 — that brings together a few of our images. It is a Psalm of David, and he starts by saying he takes refuge in God like a bird fleeing to its mountain.

He is fleeing because injustice seems to be winning; the wicked are flinging arrows at him, shooting from the dark at the upright in heart. Where else can the good go but the heavenly throne; where God is — enthroned in his heavenly temple. These are images we have been bringing together — the mountain, the throne, the temple.

David is confident that God is, from his throne, examining the righteous — and the wicked. Those who love violence — he is judging them. He hates this violence with a passion, and he will rain fire: fiery coals and burning sulfur — there are those coals again. There will be a scorching wind as his power moves against the wicked in judgment; a sort of purifying fire. David is confident God is just; that he loves justice — and the upright will see God (Psalm 11:1-7).

The throne room as a courtroom is a picture we also see right at the end of the Bible’s story. Again these thrones in heaven are occupied by these authorities, but around the throne there is a cloud of witnesses — these martyred Christians, people beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus — people crying out for justice (Revelation 20:4).

This crew is first described back in chapter 6 of Revelation — the faithful testifiers who have been killed — who are at the throne asking, “How long, O Lord, until you judge and avenge…” until you bring justice for our deaths.

And they are told, “Wait… wait a little longer…” not because God is sitting on his hands, or because he is waiting for the world to turn to him. He says, “Wait until the full number of witnesses have been killed” (Revelation 6:9-11).

That is hard. It is hard when we have our own suffering and identify with those crying out. It is an awful reason to wait — if our suffering is ultimate; and often it feels like it is.

But in the vision of Revelation, God’s justice comes — these martyrs are raised up to reign on the throne with Jesus (Revelation 20:4). We are not going down the thousand year rabbit hole today.

Our eyes are drawn to a great white throne of the God whose power overwhelms the heavens and the earth.

And God is judging all the dead according to their actions — every human ever to have lived and died will come before the throne and be judged:

“Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.”
— Revelation 20:11-12

Ultimately death itself, and the place of the dead, and all those whose names are not written in the book of life — and especially those who have been opposed to God’s kingdom and his faithful witnesses who do not repent — these people will experience the fiery judgment of God. The power of God we saw last week is turned on them in what Revelation calls the second death (Revelation 20:14-15).

And this picture might make us uncomfortable — partly at the idea of the books being opened and our lives being exposed — but also for reasons on two poles. Some of us find it hard to believe an all-powerful, loving God could be violent like this; could judge — especially if he might judge us, or people we love. On the other hand — some of us who have suffered evil might be like the martyrs crying out for justice; wondering why God has not stepped in — if he is absent, powerless, or even if he is good.

Navigating this tension is one of the hardest parts of belief in Jesus. It is where the problem of evil and suffering leads people on either end of this spectrum away from God’s throne. I wonder what happens if we take these problems directly to God’s throne.

We can try to rationalise our way through these tensions, but I wonder if rightly imagining the throne room of heaven and encountering the God enthroned helps us resolve these tensions better than just knowing facts. If we add our voices to the witnesses around the throne, and see him as the one who can answer our cries — calling out for justice while experiencing mercy — this might help us with another tension.

See — we have been pondering how entering the throne room of heaven, as those raised and seated with Jesus, is meant to shape our lives on earth. So what do we do with this picture of God’s raw power falling with such violence in the name of justice?

Coming before God as the one who can answer these cries; adding our voices to those testifying in heaven; calling for justice while experiencing mercy teaches us that our job is not to enact God’s job for him, and to leave justice in his hands, or in the hands of those who wield the sword.

There is a theologian named Miroslav Volf who has been helpful for me in navigating these tensions. He is a Croatian who grew up in the Republic of Yugoslavia. His most famous book is called Exclusion and Embrace; his reflections on the genocide that took place as the Republic dissolved. Volf’s life is marked by injustice. His father — a pastor — had been held in a concentration camp. Volf himself was completing his PhD overseas when Serbian soldiers were conducting an ethnic cleansing of his homeland, targeting his neighbours and family. His PhD supervisor asked him if, given his commitment to non-violence, he would be able to embrace one of these soldiers. These are some of his reflections as we navigate our discomfort with God acting in judgment.

For Volf, a God not grieved — angry even — at injustice, who does not act to end violence, would not be worthy of worship. He argues that the belief that God will not, with some sort of violence, end injustice actually creates the conditions for human-on-human violence — there is no fear of God to restrain human evil. To commit to human nonviolence requires the belief God will bring justice; vengeance even — where we have withheld it.

For Volf — some of the discomfort we westerners feel about judgment and justice from God is a product of western privilege — a “quiet suburban home in a peaceful country.” This sort of judgment can feel unnecessary for us. Whereas in a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, where people are crying out for justice — it dies quickly.

Here is an extended set of his words:

“If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make the final end to violence God would not be worthy of our worship… violence thrives, secretly nourished by belief in a God who refuses to wield the sword… the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance… It takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God’s refusal to judge… In a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die.”

We will come back to Volf — but let us grant that this might be true — as we imagine coming face-to-face with the holy God who will bring judgment and justice. Our readings from Isaiah are a picture of doing this — of this heavenly court.

Isaiah approaches this holy God — recognising he deserves judgment — and is not destroyed, but is made holy; which, through Jesus, becomes our story too.

We read about Isaiah’s encounter with God in his throne room — which, like with Ezekiel last week, is part of his commissioning to carry a message from the throne to earth. And his message is one of judgment.

We read this in chapter one — Isaiah is carrying God’s declaration that his children have rebelled against him (Isaiah 1:2). Zion will be delivered with justice — there will be some faithful ones left, but rebels and sinners will be broken and those who forsake God will perish (Isaiah 1:27-28).

This Zion that is delivered — it is the mountain of the Lord’s temple. This is imagery we have seen of the heavenly throne room coming to earth. When this happens the nations will stream up the mountain, to the temple; before the throne. They will be saying, “He is going to teach us to walk in his paths.”

The law will go out from this temple mountain; the word of God from Jerusalem. And he will judge from his throne and settle disputes (Isaiah 2:2-4).

And just in case we think the task of those meeting God in this throne room — the God who is going to enact justice — should lead to violence in the name of bringing heaven on earth by eradicating evil ourselves — that is the opposite of the picture Isaiah paints. People meeting God in this throne room will forgo violence; they will beat their swords — their weapons — into tools to create food and peace and prosperity. Nations will not go to war against one another or train for war (Isaiah 2:4).

Now, this is a vision of the new creation — and while it would be amazing if all the combatants in modern wars were confronted with this picture of the heavenly throne room, or any violent individual laid down their weapons or their desire to hurt others — this is not necessarily a call to total pacifism now. God appoints people to wield the sword and to enact justice — and that has to be part of our picture when we experience evil and injustice.

But this is not the role of his heaven-on-earth people; the church; those called to walk in the light of the Lord (Isaiah 2:5). We can only do this — we can only choose non-violence as a “just” heaven-on-earth way of life if we truly believe God will act to bring this ultimate justice and use his power to make all things new.

I wonder how often our desire to seize control, and the small ways we choose violence, or wield power over others in various ways — with our words, or the way we position ourselves to exclude others, or the ways we seek revenge with whatever tools we have — shows that we do not always believe God will act this way. Perhaps part of this is because we are not in the habit of asking him to do so.

In chapter 6, Isaiah has his heavenly encounter where he is commissioned to take this message of judgment to his people and the world. He sees the Lord — Yahweh — high and exalted — seated on the throne. This is in a sort of heavenly temple — or a heaven-on-earth temple — because he sees God’s robe filling the temple; cascading down off the throne (Isaiah 6:1).

Where Ezekiel saw those heavenly cherubim, Isaiah sees seraphim (Isaiah 6:2). Their name comes from the word for “burning ones” — they are bright shiny creatures — sometimes pictured as winged serpents in nations around Israel. I guess you could call them fire-breathing dragons. They have six wings, and they are flying above the throne, singing:

“Holy, holy, holy, is Yahweh Most High — the Lord God Almighty — the earth is filled with his glory.” (Isaiah 6:3)

This is a song that emphasises some of the qualities of the one on the throne; especially his holiness — his absolute perfection; his inability to abide impure things, and the idea this light will consume everything.

The whole cosmic temple shakes and there is smoke (Isaiah 6:4). It is like when God settles on the temple in 1 Kings — and a bit like when tongues of fire settle on God’s living temple in Acts to mark us as holy.

Isaiah is overwhelmed; he is thinking back to Moses on Sinai and the threat of death that accompanies being in the presence of God’s holy power. He cries, “Woe to me! I am ruined — destroyed…” It is because he is not holy — he is a man of unclean lips. He falls short of God’s perfection. He is meant to be a prophet whose lips will speak God’s words to a people whose lips should speak for God. He falls short of God’s holiness and has entered the most holy place. Now his eyes have seen the King — the Lord Almighty — enthroned in heaven, and this should be the end for him (Isaiah 6:5).

Only — rather than the fiery power of God obliterating him — he experiences mercy. One of the burning ones, who serves the burning powerful God with his burning throne, flies over to Isaiah with a live coal in his hand from the altar (Isaiah 6:6). This is fire from heaven. There are rules in the Old Testament law about the fire on the altar in the holy place never going out (Leviticus 6:13), because it was lit by God when his glory appeared when the tabernacle was completed (Leviticus 9:23-24).

As this burning one approaches, Isaiah must imagine he is about to be burned up, but the seraph uses this heavenly fire to purify his unclean lips. This heavenly fire becomes a gift; his guilt is burned away; his sin atoned for (Isaiah 6:7).

When God asks, “Who will I send to speak for me?” Isaiah says, “Pick me” (Isaiah 6:8). It is not an easy message either. He is carrying the message from the start of the book — an announcement of God’s fiery judgment (Isaiah 1:2). His job is not to cleanse the lips of these rebellious people, but to show how their commitment to dead idols has deadened their hearts. Isaiah’s words are going to confirm this judgment; their hearts will become calloused in response; their eyes blind; their ears deaf. They will hear this message and will not turn back and be healed. Anyone who has been crying out for justice will see it, while those who oppose God’s plan for a heaven-on-earth renewal will experience it (Isaiah 6:10).

This is where Isaiah asks, “How long, Lord?” — “How long do I have to carry this message of judgment and despair?” And God says: until the stuff that gets in the way is cleared; until the land is empty and a blank slate for re-creation (Isaiah 6:11). That is an interesting parallel to the martyrs at the throne in Revelation — God’s people asking, “How long?” “When will you act?” (Isaiah 6:11; Revelation 6:10).

The delay between the announcement and the judgment creates this period where people hearing can respond; but their response will often be to confirm that judgment is deserved as they turn on God’s witnesses (Isaiah 6:11; Revelation 6:11). That can feel hard when we are part of those witnesses — or when we are experiencing the violence of the wicked and seeking refuge in God’s throne room. That wait is only bearable if God will act justly; if he will actually make amends and heal and restore.

The end of the book of Isaiah depicts God speaking in judgment:

“Heaven is my throne, the earth my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will I rest?”

But nobody is building this house; his nation has chosen their own ways, not his — delighting in abominations, rejecting God — so he will remove them. When he called, nobody answered; they were too busy doing evil (Isaiah 66:1-4). So Yahweh promises he will come with fire; fiery chariots like his throne from Ezekiel — bringing his anger and rebuke and flames of fury; coming with fire and his sword and executing judgment on all people (Isaiah 66:15-16).

Why? How can a God who is good and loving do this?

We would have to believe the evildoers are actually doing evil — and humans doing evil should not be hard for us to imagine. As a thought experiment: imagine that God is good and has held off as long as he could, but has to balance the reality that inaction fosters evil — and weigh this evil against his holiness and his desire for renewal; a world free of evil. How can God claim to be just if the violent and wicked truly prosper?

This is so the vision of Isaiah 2 can happen — people from all nations coming to the mountain throne, becoming priests of God. In a new heavens and new earth the opposition to this plan has to be removed so those who dwell in God’s presence can endure forever and live lives of peace (Isaiah 66:20-22).

Isaiah’s throne room encounter is a picture of this; of a human coming into God’s presence to be made holy; to be purified; to become a witness to God’s kingdom as he receives forgiveness of sins — atonement — so that he can not just be in God’s presence in heaven without being destroyed, but carry God’s word into the world.

This is a confronting picture, is it not? When we imagine God as holy and just, turning heavenly power against evil — even the evil that lurks on our lips and in our hearts. Are you prepared to expose yourself to God for this to happen — knowing it might involve some pain, but that to refuse to come before the throne of the judge means being brought before the judge on his terms?

Isaiah is a picture of this, but not the final picture. His encounter points to God’s redemption of humanity — his invitation into his throne room through Jesus. To come before his throne still involves being transformed — being made holy — by heavenly fire, but this happens because Jesus absorbs the fiery judgment of God to remove our guilt, atoning for us as the Lamb of God, so that the fiery power of God — the Spirit — might dwell in us without destroying us.

John — who (I think, though this is debated) wrote Revelation — says a bunch of things about Jesus that we will look at next week, but there are a couple of things in chapter 1 of his Gospel that are crucial as we imagine coming before the throne of the judge. John talks about Jesus, the Word of God, coming into the world — his own — and being rejected (John 1:11). Crucified. This is the ultimate expression of violent human rebellion. When he describes Jesus “tabernacling” with us, he says that in Jesus we are beholding God’s glory; there is not a God in heaven who is not revealed in the life of Jesus (John 1:14). Then he calls Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29) — a lamb did that in the Old Testament by being a sacrifice in the place of God’s people; whose blood would lead God’s judgment to pass over his people.

In one of his letters, John also talks about Jesus being our advocate in heaven; standing for us in the throne room like a lawyer when those books are opened — saying, “This one is mine” — and the atoning sacrifice for our sins; the one who absorbs the blow, like a sacrificial lamb, so that we might enter the throne room and not be consumed — and not just us. His offer is to the whole world (1 John 2:1-2). Jesus is God’s offer of merciful embrace to the world; an invitation to be included in his life. He changes our picture of heaven — when John describes his vision of heaven in Revelation he sees a slain Lamb on the throne (Revelation 5:6).

When we imagine heaven and this throne, we are not just picturing the raw, fiery power of a vengeful God, but a just God with his beloved God-King enthroned with him — a slain Lamb bearing the scars of encountering human violence and evil; scarred on our behalf so he might advocate for us, bringing us before the throne, testifying on behalf of those who testify to him, and sharing his throne with us in his kingdom — sins forgiven, scars healed, raised to life with him forever, while justice is served.

Miroslav Volf — who observed the horrors of human violence up close — says this image helps resolve our concerns about God’s judgment. While Revelation pictures Jesus riding a white horse, violently destroying those who have harmed his faithful witnesses, Volf says:

“The violence of the Rider on the white horse, I suggest, is the symbolic portrayal of the final exclusion of everything that refuses to be redeemed by God’s suffering love.”

Revelation wrestles with the tension of the timing of this judgment, but it has to come because, for God not to act — not because he is eager to pull the trigger, but because every day he is patient and holds back — violence (the same sort of violence turned on the Lamb) multiplies.

Volf again:

“The day of reckoning must come, not because God is too eager to pull the trigger, but because every day of patience in a world of violence means more violence. God’s patience is costly, not simply for God, but for the innocent.”

God’s patience comes at a cost for those harmed by evil — and some of us feel that cost and bear those scars. But it is the slain Lamb who offers comfort to those of us who are scarred; who cry out, “How long?” Those of us wounded and suffering have a wounded and suffering King who knows our pain; and it is the slain Lamb who reminds us of God’s love and mercy — that he is good and just; that he has suffered evil; that at the heart of God’s heavenly rule and his justice is the cross. “At the center of the throne, we find the sacrificed Lamb… At the very heart of ‘the One who sits on the throne’ is the cross,” Volf writes. The one who rules — who we approach in prayer; who we might picture as we picture the glory of heaven — took human and cosmic rebellious violence upon himself while taking on God’s fiery power, to make the unholy holy, to conquer enmity and embrace the enemy. “The world to come is ruled by the one who on the cross took violence upon himself in order to conquer the enmity and embrace the enemy. The Lamb’s rule is legitimized not by the ‘sword’ but by the ‘wounds’; the goal of its rule is not to subject but to make people ‘reign for ever and ever.’”

So how do our lives on earth reflect this reality in heaven — where God the Father and God the slain Lamb exercise judgment from the throne, and the Lamb advocates for us? What do we do with this picture?

First, if judgment is a reality, we — like Isaiah — can find refuge by approaching God’s throne in confession and repentance, knowing our sinful hearts and bodies and mouths should be destroyed by this fire; but coming all the more willingly because we know that our sin and its punishment have been dealt with not by fiery coals from the altar, but by God in the violent death of the Lamb, so that we can be forgiven and atoned for — and made holy as we receive the Spirit as our own fire from heaven.

Second, if we have found refuge here — as forgiven sinners — and if we have been transformed, there is an obligation to testify to this Lamb who testifies on our behalf; not just proclaiming the fiery God who will judge evil, but the slain Lamb who offers embrace. We can name the evil in our own lives and bring it to God’s throne to be transformed, and be sent into the world. And part of lives that testify to this reality is not to embrace violence in pursuit of justice, but to embrace the non-violence pictured in Isaiah (Isaiah 2:4), trusting that God will judge and be just; and that while our cries might feel unheard, he hears and will act.

Third, as those with access to this throne room — who have the slain Lamb as not just our King but our advocate — those of us whose hearts are captured by this vision of God’s nature are able to cry out for justice; naming the way our own wounds and scars are products of the evil of others — and even knowing we will be resurrected and enthroned — we are able to call out, “How long, O Lord?” and to expect an answer, and to know that we do not just have permission to call out to God this way, but an advocate and a God who delivers justice, not just at the end of the world, but as its ruler.

A few weeks ago, when we pictured heaven as a mountain, we looked at how the Psalms of Ascent might become part of what shapes our language and imagination as we approach God’s throne. As we think about crying out for justice there are a couple of types of psalm we might use to shape our prayers. We might be moved to lament — to carry our anger and grief to God, knowing that he cares and will bring justice — and that our own healing and transformation happens through encountering him, not running from him. But we might also be moved to call down judgment from heaven — there are psalms called imprecatory or curse psalms. Some of them are full of graphic imagery as God’s people cry out for justice; for judgment; for the destruction of the wicked. It is fair to say Christians have not been sure how to pray these psalms — and that we should be careful not to position ourselves as judge, or to refuse the idea of mercy, or that God might embrace those who have hurt us in a way that brings them to transformation and repentance. Yet in our experience of injustice these psalms might give us some words to say to God, where — even if our limits and perspective are wrong — they bring us towards God, rather than away from him, in our suffering. About one in ten psalms include the psalmist crying out for justice.

One of the more famous — and more graphic — is Psalm 58. It says “even from birth the wicked go astray.” It says they are like snakes; spawn of the evil one; their poison is destructive (Psalm 58:3-4). This is another psalm of David, and he prays that God would break the teeth in the mouths of these evil humans — these powers — that their evil might fail, and that they might be destroyed and disappear (Psalm 58:6-7).

It is not ungodly to come before the throne of the just judge to pray for the destruction of evil; for those who have harmed or are harming us; to ask him to act. We would have to have a wrong picture of heaven if we never did this.

September 20, 2025 Add Comment

Before The Throne — Chapter Five — Chariot Of Fire

This was part five of a sermon series preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2024. You can listen to this on our podcast, or watch the video.

I want you to imagine you are in the new creation — heaven and earth have merged, and you are sitting with the prophet Ezekiel.

You are having a chat — and you are trying to explain solar power to him — we just dragged these glass panels up on the roof — and they did not just reflect the radiance of the sun, they captured it and harnessed its power and transformed it into energy we could use.

And then someone from 50 years in the future — you will have to check if this is the right time frame in 50 years… someone walks up and says “wait till you see what we did with hydrogen.”

Explaining power — energy — raw unharnessed might — is pretty tricky. I wonder how you would go explaining the power generated in atomic fission — what is going on in the heart of a nuclear reaction — and what would happen if you were standing in the presence of that sort of reaction.

Lots of the power generating options with this sort of raw energy involve bringing water into the mix and creating this steam which is used to spin things really fast and transform it into energy that flows out into the world to be used. The raw power is both destructive and transformative in ways that spread energy and turn on the lights.

Anyway… Ezekiel is doing something like this exercise in what we have just read — trying to use words and images to capture the glory — the majesty — the power — of God’s presence in words people can understand. We are going to try to build a bit of a bridge back in time as we look at his imagery, just like he would have to come up to speed when it comes to the pictures we might use.

We have been on a bit of a journey over the last few chapters, and have arrived at our destination; we are looking at depictions the Bible gives us of the heavenly throne room.

We have been trying to remap our view of reality so we can live as God’s heaven on earth people — people who have got a vision of heaven driving our lives on earth.

We looked at Paul’s prayer that the eyes of his readers’ hearts would be enlightened (Ephesians 1:18-19) — like his eyes were enlightened when the heavens opened for him and he was overwhelmed by bright light on the road. He wants us to see that God’s power which was at work in raising Jesus from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavenly realms — above all these authorities and power and dominion (Ephesians 1:19-21) — is at work in us as we are raised and seated with Jesus (Ephesians 2:6). We are talking about what it means to set our hearts and minds on things above — where Jesus is.

We have worked our way towards the throne room — starting with the idea of being raised and seated in paradise; a garden — a new Eden — regaining access to this sort of heavenly space that was lost and shut off by a cherubim with a flaming sword in the beginning of the Bible’s story (Genesis 3:24). And then we looked at how heaven is pictured as a mountain top — in the heavenly Mount Zion — the temple mountain of God’s dwelling place (Hebrews 12:18, 22).

Mountains and gardens and temples are pictures of heaven — they all merge — so Ezekiel describes Eden as a mountain garden (Ezekiel 28:13-14), and the temple is decorated with cherubim — heavenly creatures — and fruit trees from the garden. It is also a picture — a copy of God’s heavenly dwelling; his sanctuary — and throne room (Hebrews 9:24). Jesus invites us into the holiest part (Hebrews 10:19); where God’s throne is represented in the “copy” by this golden box, called the ark, into God’s presence; his throne room.

Well, now we’re in the throne room, and we’re looking around — and in some spiritual sense, that is also true and real, this is where we belong. This is where the Bible says we live; where we see and encounter and speak to God, and where he sees us as we approach him in prayer and worship and devotion as his children. As people who, because God’s Spirit dwells in us on earth, and unites us to Jesus in heaven — we are heaven on earth people. And our lives on earth are meant to be shaped by this throne room being our ultimate reality. But this was not always the reality for humans in the Bible. There is a time where it appears that heaven on earth spaces are disappearing — that they are totally separate — that other powers — maybe other gods — maybe powerful people — it looks like they have won. So God’s people have to grapple with where this means God is, if he has abandoned us, or if he is really there at all, and how to live with those questions. I wonder if we spend lots of our lives feeling more like this — and how we might deliberately cultivate a different picture.

This is the situation facing Ezekiel and other people carted off to Babylon with King Jehoiachin. Ezekiel is 30 years old — he is among the exiles in Babylon (Ezekiel 1:1). This is before the full force of Babylonian power falls on Israel — that bit we looked at last week from 2 Kings, where the temple is desecrated, and Jerusalem is left in ruins. Ezekiel is among the first political prisoners in Babylon — and here God is choosing him as the spokesperson to go back to Israel and tell them what is coming for them.

This is how the scene is set for his work as a heaven-on-earth speaker — a prophet — who speaks these words, that are then crafted into a book Israel will treat as part of God’s word as they contemplate life both in exile and back in the land afterwards. We get a little third person description of the scene in verse 3 to make sure we know he is in Babylon, and that others believe the hand of God is on him in this moment. He is by the rivers of Babylon and the skies open — he gets swept up into this sort of heavenly vision — visions of God — it is a vision explaining the situation of Israelites in exile.

“In my thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.”
— Ezekiel 1:1

They are wondering if the looming end of the temple and maybe the kingdom of Israel means they have been abandoned by God; that his throne room is gone; that he has lost a sort of cosmic battle between ancient deities. But Ezekiel has his eyes opened and he is looking at the heavenly throne room the earthly one depicts.

And we are starting to get some visuals here — some colours and descriptions and an audio visual display it is worth taking a moment to imagine and dwell on and to see how it aligns with other descriptions from the Old Testament as we build a picture.

Ezekiel’s vision starts with a windstorm — an immense cloud with flashing lightning and brilliant light — there is a fire and the middle of it looks like glowing, molten metal — this is like a furnace (Ezekiel 1:4). It is a moving version of the glory of God that settles on the mountain in Exodus — where there is — again — thunder and lightning and a thick cloud — a sort of terrifying scene — awe inspiring (Exodus 19:16).

And the mountain in Sinai is smoky because God’s presence is like a fiery furnace (Exodus 19:18). There is nothing more powerful in the ancient world than a thunder cloud and lightning and a furnace — they did not have nuclear bombs and mushroom clouds — so when they are looking for a visual to describe this sort of raw power — well — look at some of these descriptions from the Psalms. In Psalm 18, David describes smoke coming out of God’s nostrils and consuming fire and blazing coals from his mouth as he comes down from heaven on dark clouds — mounting the cherubim — this is an image we will come back to — soaring on the wind, riding the clouds and controlling lightning — thundering from heaven — it is the same sort of picture (Psalm 18:8-13). Psalm 97 describes God reigning from his throne — where there are clouds and darkness again — and fire. His fiery heat is the sort of smelting furnace that melts mountains — or makes them smoke as he comes down. Mountains are the biggest thing they could imagine smelting (Psalm 97:1-5).

And — not for nothing — this raw, smelting, fiery power — approaching the presence of God — it is meant to be transformative. There is a risk it is deadly and consuming, but even approaching the foot of the mountain and this fire — Moses says — even not seeing God as he speaks out of the fire has a refining impact. God has no physical form in encounter — he was raw transforming power — and this encounter is meant to shape how they use power; their own smelting fires. It is meant to stop them forming images of gods in the world that deform them as they worship; to avoid corruption, because they are formed by this fire (Deuteronomy 4:11, 15-16).

We have got to be careful — I reckon — even as we are trying to engage our imaginations and picture this heavenly reality — realities described in picture language — and as we seek to encounter God; to behold his glory — that we are being transformed rather than deformed by wrong images.

Encountering God’s raw power — these heavenly visions are meant to transform and transfix Israel so they will worship this powerful God, not use their own smelting fires to make idols. We are not meant to make images to worship because as soon as we reduce God or our object of worship to humans or animals, or the bright lights of the sky — worshipping them — or the things given to other nations to worship — we become deformed in that worship, instead of being the people formed by God. God’s people are those formed by encountering his power and might. God is the furnace, and his worshippers are his image bearing heaven-on-earth people in the world (Deuteronomy 4:16-20).

This is the goal: to approach his presence — his throne — so we radiate his glory in the world.

This is what is happening for Ezekiel — he is learning some worship-shaping perspective that will shape his life in the world as a prophet. Ezekiel is seeing the God from Sinai, and the Psalms and the temple — seeing him enthroned — but he is in Babylon, when the skies open and he sees God’s throne on the move. It is mobile — it is a chariot throne being pulled around by these strange creatures. Now — we started with Ezekiel’s vision from chapter 1, but he records an almost identical vision in chapter 10, and we are going to pull some bits back from that to make sense of what we are seeing.

So there are these four living creatures — they have got four faces and four wings. They have got gleaming bronze cow legs and human hands. The wings are touching, and their four faces are animal and human. Now — we can get into all sorts of knots trying to picture these things (Ezekiel 1:4-10). Or asking an AI image generator to picture this description for us and they become wild and wacky alien figures — which I have done, so you do not have to.

This joins a long tradition of trying to capture the imagery here — here is someone’s attempt from the 16th century — and I reckon when we do this we might be pointing the camera at the wrong bit of the picture — but also I think we are trying to represent beings from a reality outside ours in ways the descriptions do not quite let us. Ezekiel is stretching language to its limits to describe images he saw — and there is this word that is at the heart of what we are trying to do with our imaginations this series that is important — Ezekiel is imagining and trying to describe something ineffable; something beyond our ability to describe in words — but using evocative picture language to spark our imaginations and push us to our limits.

But the thing is — people reading or hearing this vision in the time Ezekiel is speaking know exactly what he is describing. This is where we need a bridge — it is as foreign to us as solar panels are to him.

Israel’s neighbours all had versions of these winged creatures — and lots of them played a task of being the chariot pullers for god-kings. So here is an inscription image from Megiddo — a city that will ultimately become part of Israel — where a member of the royal family is riding a chariot pulled by a winged creature.

But — more importantly — people from Israel know what these four creatures are, because they are living, flying versions of the creatures from the throne room of God. They are cherubim — which is what Ezekiel will actually call them in chapter 10:

“Each of the cherubim had four faces: One face was that of a cherub, the second the face of a human being, the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle.”
— Ezekiel 10:14

And there are four of them because in the holy of holies — around God’s throne — there are four cherubim (Ezekiel 1:8-9). The two giant ones covered in gold (1 Kings 6:23, 28), whose wings touch above the ark (1 Kings 8:6). And there are two on the ark lid whose wings reach over the lid and touch as they represent holding up God’s throne (Exodus 25:18, 22).

Ezekiel is seeing the reality represented by these statues. This is why we are seeing four cherubim — and in his vision these are burning too; the fire and lightning that accompanies Yahweh as he travels on the cloud in the thunder is flashing among them as they speed around (Ezekiel 1:13-14). And they have got a job to do which has to do with these weird gyroscopic wheels. Wheels within wheels that are beside them — the wheels are sparkling; jewelled; majestic (Ezekiel 1:15-16). These creatures are chariot pullers — pulling this platform — on these crazy wheels that are also full of eyes. Where the cherubim go, the wheels go. There is a sort of spiritual bluetooth connection between the cherubim and the wheels of the throne-chariot (Ezekiel 1:17-20).

Above them there is this vault — a sort of crystal dome that might also get called a sea — and it might be part of what separates the heavens and the earth and the ground and sky waters in Genesis 1. The vault is sparkling and awesome.

This whole scene is vivid and multicoloured and multimedia and it is meant to stretch the language about power and beauty and grandeur to its limits (Ezekiel 1:22-23). God’s throne is on the vault, and there is the same blue crystal — lapis lazuli that Moses sees on the mountain top.

Our eyes are drawn upwards from the creatures, to the vault, to the throne, so we are not looking at the weird ineffable creatures — but this figure like that of a man. Now — it is tricky to know how to picture God — right — we are wrestling with something ineffable here because on the one hand we are told God is the one in whom we live and breathe and have our being of raw power — who has no form — a sort of infinite and omnipresent grounds of being — and then at the same time, right from the first page of the Bible we are told humans are made in his image and likeness — and here Ezekiel is seeing this heavenly figure who is human-shaped — but not human. From his waist we have got the sort of molten metal that was at the heart of the cloud — full of fire — surrounded by the brilliant light we imagined in week 1. He is radiant; like a rainbow breaking through storm clouds. Overwhelming radiance.

And Ezekiel is in no doubt that this is the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord; the personified glory of Yahweh. And so when he sees it he falls facedown — this is a picture of absolute awe-filled worship. Reverence. A certain sort of fearful respect (Ezekiel 1:26-28).

But he is encountering this vision of God’s glory not in his temple on Zion, but in Babylon.

God’s throne is mobile; it is not limited to the temple on the mountain — just like the ark went with Israel wherever they went between the exodus and the construction of the temple — God is able to move.

And actually, this encounter — this vivid vision of the ineffable God and his chariot throne in all its fiery, cloudy, lightning glory — with the colours of crystals and light and rainbows flashing around, as Yahweh is carried by his cherubim-throne pullers — this is a perspective setter for Ezekiel.

He is commissioned to go from meeting the glory of God in this vision of his heavenly throne room — in Babylon — to being sent to Israel — a rebellious nation — to tell them that their rebellion means God’s throne room is leaving the temple (Ezekiel 2:3). And Ezekiel could be terrified of these Israelites still in Jerusalem; their might and their power to harm him. But this perspective is meant to make this human opposition to God’s power and might small (Ezekiel 2:6).

And I wonder if sometimes this is the sort of perspective we are lacking — when human power, and humans who loom large in our lives, feel terrifying; like they have got too much control over our lives and our fates. We get caught up in people-pleasing or people-serving, or not being prepared to speak truth to power for God’s sake, or for the sake of the poor or the oppressed, because of the cost we might face in our earthly lives. Ezekiel’s antidote to this fear — and he is going to have to do a lot of confronting, symbolic stuff to carry this message to Israel — is this encounter with God’s glory and the knowledge that God is still enthroned and still ruling even as Babylon and its massive army crushes Jerusalem and the temple, and even as the political leaders of Israel reject his message and so also are crushed. Ezekiel is not to fear them because he has this perspective that God is enthroned among the cherubim; ruling not in a shadowy temple but in cosmic reality.

This picture of life before the throne — this encounter with the awesome, majestic, mountain-melting God — is what gives him perspective.

It is also a vision that is meant to give Israel perspective when they are in exile; when it looks like Babylonian power has won, and the gods of the nations — these other possible supernatural powers — might be more powerful than Yahweh. Ezekiel’s vision of God ruling — enthroned in heaven — even while his people are in Babylon is a vision shared in the book of Daniel — in Daniel 7 — which expands our vision of heaven.

This connects with an idea Paul touches on in Ephesians — that Jesus has been raised above all powers and dominions (Ephesians 1:19-21). It is a bit of a category breaker for us, but changing our understanding of heaven can challenge us to worship God; to fall before him, and to put the powers at work in the world — and the idols or other things we might choose to worship rather than worshipping God — into perspective.

The Old Testament talks about Yahweh not just as “Yahweh” — the name he gives Moses on the mountain — and not just as “Elohim” — a word for God — but as the Most High God. In one of the psalms we looked at earlier, he is “Yahweh Most High” (Psalm 18:13). Yahweh — Israel’s God, the maker of heaven and earth — is the ruler of all the heavenly beings, not just the earthly ones; the ruler of other powers that nations of the earth might have turned into gods and worshipped.

In Daniel, we get this vision of God ruling in the heavenly courtroom — the throne room — as the nations who worship these other powers go to war. Thrones — plural — are set in place, and the Ancient of Days — another way of speaking about God — takes his seat. It is a heavenly council meeting (Daniel 7:9; cf. Psalm 82:1). He is glowing and bright — clothes white as snow; white hair. His throne is flaming with fire — and it has wheels; this is his chariot throne like in Ezekiel — the wheels are ablaze (Daniel 7:9). A river of fire is flowing, and he is attended by hundreds of thousands in this heavenly court (Daniel 7:10).

As judgment is handed down — as God’s rule is displayed — a figure enters the throne room: one like a son of man who comes with the clouds of heaven — like Yahweh does in the visions in the Psalms and in Ezekiel. This is a human who looks like the glory of the Lord in Ezekiel. He is led into the presence of the Ancient of Days (Daniel 7:13), and this Son of Man is given authority and power over all nations; a dominion above every dominion. The rule that had been enjoyed by these other powers — now subjected to judgment — is given to this Son of Man (Daniel 7:14). As Daniel explains his vision he talks about a spiritual force that will rise up and animate armies to oppose God’s people, but the court will sit, and that power will be taken away and destroyed, and the rule given to the holy people of the Most High under the Son of Man who will rule an everlasting kingdom (Daniel 7:26-27).

For God’s people in Babylon, and then under foreign rulers, hearing these words — capturing this vision of God’s throne on wheels and God as ruler over all the other powers, gods of these nations — it is a reminder that they are where they are because they rejected God’s rule. But it does not mean their God is not the Most High, or is not ruling.

All of this could be empty if the kingdom had fizzled out in Babylon; if these words and images had just died out and been lost to history. But they have not. And while many want to take this heavenly vision and push it to a distant future with bits yet to be fulfilled, fulfilling this mission was the mission of Jesus — the human Son of Man — the heavenly human.

Have you noticed how Jesus picks up this same imagery from Ezekiel’s fiery clouds of glory — a sort of heavenly chariot — to describe his coming as the ruler of the heavenly court, commanding angels? In Mark’s Gospel: “At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens” (Mark 13:26-27).

This is not just a picture of his return to make all things new — there is a fun thing where the Greek word for “coming” can also mean “going.” In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus talks about a time when he, the Son of Man, will be like the lightning — more Ezekiel imagery (Luke 17:24). He says, “From now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of God” — Daniel will be fulfilled (Luke 22:69).

In Acts, Luke leans into the coming/going idea as he describes Jesus ascending in the clouds to heaven, while the disciples gaze into heaven. Two heavenly men appear and ask, in effect, “Why are you looking into heaven?” They say this same Jesus who has been taken from earth into heaven will come back in the same way. He has not abandoned them; he is committed to this heaven-on-earth project (Acts 1:9-11).

As Acts unfolds, one of Jesus’ followers, Stephen, is killed — and it looks like worldly powers are winning. In that moment Luke tells us Daniel has been fulfilled: Stephen looks into heaven and sees Jesus there, the Son of Man enthroned with the glory of God (Acts 7:55).

Our vision of heaven is different to Ezekiel’s now because it includes this human king enthroned — as Ephesians says — above all the other powers that might try to shape our lives on earth (Ephesians 1:19-21). The writer of Hebrews describes Jesus as the radiant reflection of the glory of God — a high king enthroned in heaven, victorious and worthy of our worship (Hebrews 1:3).

This vision is meant to teach us that God has not abandoned us; that he is powerful and victorious — that consuming fire — but also that this power can now be approached without fear that we will be destroyed, and in a way that transforms us. We are invited to dwell in this power and have it set off a reaction in us — so that we are like metal that melts and is formed into living images of God; or like turbines that spin next to a nuclear reaction and turn on the lights in the world. We are invited into the throne room of God to encounter this power on the throne in ways that stop us worshipping — giving our hearts — to any other bright light or imagined power. This helps us see humans not as terrifying people who can rule our lives — even if there is a threat of harm — but to have the eyes of our hearts — our minds and imaginations — filled with the power and glory and majesty of God in ways that consume us and destroy, or refine away, the bits of us that do not reflect him, or the image of him we now see in Jesus.

I want to encourage you to pray; to enter the throne room, and to consider how when we pray we are coming to God’s throne in worship; and how when we sing — as those who sing before God’s throne; singing words like those in the Psalms that help us capture this imagery of God’s majestic power, it’s designed to transform our hearts and send us out into the world like electricity from a nuclear reaction.

September 18, 2025 Add Comment

Before the Throne — Chapter Four — The Heaven on Earth House

This was part four of a sermon series preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2024. You can listen to this on our podcast, or watch the video.

What should God’s house look like?

If you were building a physical thing on earth to teach yourself, and others, what heaven looks like — or what heaven on earth looks like — dwelling with God — somewhere you could go to visualise this reality — what would you build?

This is the dilemma that has faced church architects for centuries — right — from the time Christians met in houses, to when we could meet publicly in halls, to when we could build structures.

And part of that dilemma is: are our churches temples? How should they relate to the temple in the Bible? The temple is often called God’s dwelling place in the Bible — but what is a temple? What does it mean for the God of heaven to dwell on earth anyway — especially as we are looking at how followers of Jesus are raised and seated in the throne room of heaven, so our lives on earth reflect this reality (Ephesians 2:6).

Back in week one we touched on this idea that we — God’s “heaven on earth” people — are his temple (Ephesians 2:21–22).

So how do we be a temple?

What pictures should shape our imaginations? What vision of heaven should shape us as we live in space and time? How do the passages in the Bible about temples shape what we become?

This is not easy. What we are going to do today is a little ambitious, and this theme is so broad and rich that really it is just an example of the sort of meditation on some imagery in Scripture that we are trying to practice together this series.

There are lots of other rich threads you might pick up over a lifetime. I reckon you could pick any aspect of the design of the tabernacle or temple in the Old Testament — or its furnishings — to contemplate, and see how they are fulfilled in Jesus and point to the ultimate heaven on earth reality he brings us into. Not just our current location in the heavens with him, but the future reality of heaven and earth being brought together as one as we live in God’s presence — his house — forever.

We have also got some limitations in our tradition when it comes to thinking this way. If you were answering this question — about what God’s house might look like — both anticipating heaven, and looking back to the story of the Bible as someone in the Orthodox tradition, sitting — or standing — in church — you would just have to look around.

In the Orthodox tradition churches are built to tell this story — right from the ground — the floor plan, which maps out who lives where on earth — to the ceiling, where you might find a dome as a picture of the heavens above.

In a traditional Orthodox church, those not part of the church yet — those not baptised or received into the life of the house — remain in the narthex, while the members of the church gather in the nave, and the priests and bishops “mediate” heaven to earth from the sanctuary, which is where the Eucharist is served from as Jesus’ body and blood are given to the congregation. It is separated from the nave by a wall with doors that is covered with icons — imagery of saints — those in heaven.

You go to church in this sort of space and it teaches something about their view of heaven and earth. It functions a bit like the temple.

We do not tend to think about imagery or architecture like this — and we are often worried about idolatry — but there is a danger this stunts our imagination, leaving us just with the words in the Bible, without aids to picture what those words describe. This is tricky territory to navigate, especially if part of our task as image-bearing people is to live in ways that picture heaven-on-earth life now. And maybe it leaves us with fewer tools than God’s people in Israel, who had a whole architecture and set of rhythms to teach them life as God’s people; architecture fulfilled in Jesus, pointing to him.

The writer of Hebrews draws heavily on imagery from the temple and the life of Israel — and connects this to the story of Jesus and our place now in a heavenly temple. They say Jesus is a high priest — the king seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven also serves in a sanctuary — the “true tabernacle” — that is a dwelling place — built by God, not by humans (Hebrews 8:1–2). This is the temple we now have access to through Jesus as those raised and seated with him. They also say some things about the reality of the previous dwelling places of God… and the earthly temple in Jerusalem before it was destroyed by the Romans…

The writer of Hebrews tells us that these Old Testament designs — built by humans — were, right from Moses with the tabernacle, attempts to build things on earth that reflected this heavenly dwelling of God that Moses sees on the mountain. They are tools designed to reflect what heaven is like, what God is like, and how to live as people who dwell with God. They are “a copy and a shadow of what is in heaven” (Hebrews 8:5).

The tabernacle that belonged to what the writer of Hebrews calls “the old covenant” — an old way of doing business with God, in relationship with him — is contrasted with the new covenant described in a bit we skipped, which quotes Jeremiah talking about God writing his law on hearts, rather than on stone tablets they keep in a box, where people will not need a temple to teach us how God works because they will know him (Hebrews 8:10–11), where sins and wickedness will be forgiven and made no more (Hebrews 8:12).

For the writer of Hebrews this happens as the perpetual sacrifices in the temple are replaced with the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus. The old covenant had patterns of worship — rhythms of coming before God — and architecture — a sanctuary with a floor plan, and furnishings that lined up with this way of doing things, helping people picture and live out this arrangement between heaven and earth. It had a holy place and a most holy place, and furniture that helped people move from one place to the other — or a priest to do this — through sacrifices and being made symbolically clean — in order to enter heaven-on-earth space. There was a golden altar and a golden ark of the covenant, and above the ark there were these cherubim — pictures of heavenly creatures from the throne room of God — which the writer of Hebrews does not dig into — and maybe preachers like me could learn from them (Hebrews 9:1–5)… because we are going to dig into the details a bit… but let’s finish the Hebrews thread first, which stresses how old covenant priests did a bunch of business in the outer room, but could only go into the most holy place once a year, with blood offered as an atoning sacrifice on behalf of the people. That word atonement — it is a word about restoration of relationship, not just forgiveness — a sacrifice so people could keep living with God at the heart of their community.

The Holy Spirit was using this imagery — this architecture, and these rhythms — to show that the way into life with God, the most holy place, heaven on earth, was not open, and could not be while this first dwelling place — the tabernacle, and then the more permanent temple — were functioning (Hebrews 9:7). Which I guess means whatever architecture and rhythms we take up would have to help us see how the way is open. This was an illustration — a picture — an image — of the first covenant being inadequate for actually transforming a worshipper into a heaven-on-earth person. Not just the people, even the priest. A picture fulfilled (Hebrews 9:9).

But now, Jesus the true high priest has made a way into the true temple — the heavenly dwelling place — the place we are trying to imagine ourselves in now (Hebrews 9:11). He did not enter through animal sacrifices offered up once a year, but his own blood — as the Son of God — obtaining eternal redemption and opening up access to this most holy place — not just the illustration, the shadow, but the heavenly reality (Hebrews 9:12). So those cleansed by his blood are actually able to receive this new covenant, forgiveness and life with God — so that we can actually serve the living God as his priestly people who actually live in his presence in order to reflect it (Hebrews 9:14).

If we go a little past Hebrews 9, we are told Jesus enters this heavenly sanctuary — a sort of heavenly temple — in order to represent us in God’s presence; in his throne room (Hebrews 9:24). So that, as Hebrews says later, we can now — now, not just in the future — come behind the curtain into the most holy place — through this new and living way — not just the dead body of Jesus cleansed by his blood, but his living body because we are united to him and that is where he is seated.

We can now draw near to God with sincere hearts — changed hearts — hearts of the new covenant — cleansed by sprinkling, like the priests would sprinkle the altar, having our bodies washed with pure water (Hebrews 10:19–22).

This is where we now live. This reality is our reality. We might just need to open our minds up to see ourselves behind this curtain and understand what this means. And to do this, we might dip back into the Bible’s story; to look at the shadow or illustration to get a clearer picture.

A shadow alone lacks detail, it is two-dimensional. But when you add shadow to a picture it makes it three-dimensional, it gives it depth. If you think of an illustration like a guide for making flat pack furniture — the picture is not the real thing, but it does help you picture what the real thing should look like and build it.

So we will look at some of the architecture of the temple, and how the story of the Bible picks up these things and shows them fulfilled in Jesus in order to furnish ourselves with some pictures to contemplate as we live lives behind the curtain, anticipating the future the temple points to where the whole earth becomes like a temple — which is where the story heads — with that vision of a new heavenly city coming down from heaven (Revelation 21:10).

Only, there is no temple in this vision because God himself — and the Lamb, Jesus — are the temple (Revelation 21:22–23). God is dwelling in his new creation where heaven and earth are one, the heavenly reality merges with our reality — so there is no need for a halfway house to teach us what heaven-on-earth life looks like.

There is some imagery from the temple picked up in this vision though that is fun to think about and to guide our imagination now; an example of things we might contemplate or meditate on as we open our eyes to heaven.

We get the plans and patterns for the tabernacle — the tent dwelling of God — in the book of Exodus. If you were with us last year we looked at these in depth, and if you were not those talks are online. So we are going to jump in to when David’s son, King Solomon, builds a house for God in Jerusalem.

It is a house — a temple — built on a mountain to evoke images of the garden, and of heaven. It has a floor plan that the writer of Hebrews describes, marking out holy space from the most holy space. And it is built from incredible materials. If you want to try to picture life in the temple — it is full of gold; it is shining brightly everywhere you look. Everything is overlaid with gold: the walls, the chain ropes, the interior of the inner sanctuary, and the altar (1 Kings 6:21–22).

The walls are decorated with cherubim — heavenly creatures — and palm trees and flowers and fruit — and these are covered in gold. It is a golden Eden, and the sanctuary, guarded by cherubim and walled off, is a picture of paradise lost — the dwelling place of God is still not accessible even if people can come really close… except, once a year, by the priest (1 Kings 6:29–30).

The description of the temple includes a bunch of time devoted to this huge bowl of water — it is called the sea (1 Kings 7:24). It sits outside the holy place. It is bronze not gold, and there is a bronze altar where sacrifices are offered as people arrived at the temple. This sea is weird to imagine — it is a giant bowl decorated with pumpkins, gourds — propped up by twelve bulls facing outwards (1 Kings 7:25).

It is like a giant flowercup and it holds two thousand baths (1 Kings 7:26) — or 44,000 litres — which, for scale, is what you could carry in this truck.

This sea is placed on the south side of the temple — specifically in the southeast corner (1 Kings 7:39). Remember that.

Second Chronicles tells us this sea is for the priests to wash themselves (2 Chronicles 4:6). It is not just about having clean hands, this washing is part of cleansing themselves as they move towards heavenly space, from the earthly space outside the temple.

It is a bigger, more permanent version of the bronze bowl Moses puts in the tabernacle, next to the altar, where the priests had to wash themselves when they entered the tent of meeting — the tabernacle —

so they would not die. They had to be clean any time they were going to carry something from earth to heaven in the form of an offering to God (Exodus 30:17–21).

Now look, you might be lost — so let’s re-orient for a second. We are zoomed in on the part of the temple used for washing people clean, next to the part of the temple where people would spill blood to deal with their sins.

These are shadows of what the writer of Hebrews says happens for us through Jesus that allows us to draw near to God (Hebrews 10:21–22). We will just look at two more details from the temple setup in 1 Kings before tracing the story through.

The priests bring in the ark of the covenant to the inner sanctuary, the most holy place — God’s throne room on earth (1 Kings 8:6). This is a special box built when the tabernacle is built — it is a picture of the throne of God — it symbolises his heavenly rule on the earth:

“There, above the cover between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the covenant law, I will meet with you and give you all my commands for the Israelites.”

— Exodus 25:22

Moses meets God there “between the cherubim” (Numbers 7:89). And God is often described seated on the ark or enthroned — ruling between the cherubim (1 Samuel 4:4; Psalm 99:1). When this throne arrives in the centre of the house at the top of the mountain, God’s glory cloud fills the temple of the Lord. He comes to live in his house. And things look good for God’s people (1 Kings 8:10–11).

They live before the throne of God; you would think they would learn, with this holy architecture and this furniture, how to live like God’s people. But they do not. Their hearts are not in it. The old covenant does not transform them from the inside the way the new covenant does. This temple is not enough to teach them.

And the story of the Old Testament is a story of deconstruction of this heaven-on-earth space. We get stories like the story of King Ahaz, who gives all the treasure of the temple to the king of Assyria (2 Kings 16:8). Then he goes off to their temple and sees a fancy altar to their gods, and has that altar copied and built in the temple. Where Moses saw the tabernacle designs in the heavens, he is getting his blueprints from idol temples (2 Kings 16:10). He moves the sea (2 Kings 16:17).

One of his descendants, Manasseh, goes further — he builds a bunch of altars in the temple to the starry hosts — the bright heavenly lights God created — who, even if they are imagined as being like cherubim, are not meant to be the objects of worship (2 Kings 21:4–5). And he puts an Asherah pole — a symbol of another god — in the temple where God’s name is meant to dwell; where he is enthroned (2 Kings 21:7).

Even when King Hezekiah gets rid of these altars and idols and smashes them to pieces (2 Kings 23:12), these insults were enough — God is going to move out (2 Kings 23:27). And this happens as Babylon moves in. Nebuchadnezzar takes all the treasures that have not been given away (2 Kings 24:13). His generals set fire to the temple (2 Kings 25:9), and break up the altar and the bronze sea and take it all off to Babylon (2 Kings 25:13).

And losing this temple and furniture — well — that is also meant to teach God’s people something. They are not living in his presence anymore.

The prophet Ezekiel provides a sort of from-the-heavens view of these earthly events. He is operating around the time these events are happening — as King Jehoiachin is taken into exile by Babylon (2 Kings 25:8, 12). Ezekiel starts seeing visions in his fifth year of captivity (Ezekiel 1:2).

And then in year six he sees this vision from heaven of an idol in the temple (Ezekiel 8:1, 3), and of God’s glory going above his seat between the cherubim and heading stage by stage to the exit — from the ark to the threshold, and the cherubim take off too. It is no longer a heaven-on-earth house (Ezekiel 10:18–19). In the midst of this, Ezekiel promises a return — with an echo of Jeremiah’s promise of the new covenant — that God will give his people an undivided heart and a new spirit; restoration to life with him as his people (Ezekiel 11:19–20). Before the cherubim and God’s glory — his throne — take off as a sign of the spiritual reality of exile (Ezekiel 11:22–23).

When Israel returns from Babylon to rebuild the temple in Ezra, they start with the altar. But there is no ark, there is no sea, there is no glory of God in the temple (Ezra 3:2). And as they lay the foundation, those who saw the first temple weep (Ezra 3:12). The glory of God is not there. Even as, at the order of the Babylonian courts (Ezra 6:3), the treasures are returned to the temple, there is still no ark, and no sea — which is significant because it is not a house that is teaching people how to live in God’s presence, before his throne anymore (Ezra 6:5). It is a bit hollow. It is not the renewed temple Ezekiel describes as he sees God’s glory returning to dwell with his people, entering the temple and filling it again, coming to sit on his throne and live with his people again in a heavenly home (Ezekiel 43:1–7).

There is an altar, but it is not the temple with water — the sea — in a bowl cleansing priests so they can approach the throne — or where this water flows out as a picture of transforming life. Here is a fun thing. Maybe.

“The man brought me back to the entrance to the temple, and I saw water coming out from under the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east).”

— Ezekiel 47:1

We looked at Ezekiel’s vision of water flowing from the temple when we worked through John and saw Jesus — the walking temple — call himself living water over and over again [I haven’t posted these, but here is a link to the podcast]. Here is this picture in Ezekiel of a renewed temple and I want to suggest there is no sea in this picture. The bowl has been overturned and the cleansing flood is washing down the mountain and transforming the world into something like the garden — because — remember where the sea, used to purify the priests, was placed in the temple; in the southeast corner (1 Kings 7:39). As Ezekiel looks at this living water flowing out of the temple it is coming from the southeast corner (Ezekiel 47:1) — under the threshold toward the east, but from under the south side, south of the altar — where the sea was placed.

This water turns the salt water into fresh, so abundant life emerges; so where the river flows everything lives (Ezekiel 47:8–9). Fruit trees grow on this overturned sea, bearing fruit monthly because the temple waters them, healing and feeding those by the waters (Ezekiel 47:12). It is like a garden. Paradise. Eden.

This is a sort of heavenly temple — the heavenly temple depicted again at the end of the story — when John sees the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21:10). The old temple was this square building covered in gold; this is a city of pure gold (Revelation 21:18). In the heavenly picture there is no temple because the Lord Almighty and the Lamb are the temple (Revelation 21:22–23). Their throne is in the centre; providing glorious light to the world (Revelation 21:23). And water flows from the throne — just as water flows out of the temple — as this river of the water of life, surrounded by the tree of life. This is the heavenly temple (Revelation 22:1–2). This is the “behind the curtain” reality where Jesus now sits, enthroned with his Father, that we have access to as we come before the throne now.

The sea of water — where priestly people had to be cleansed with water to approach the throne — instead, turning salt water into living water, there is no longer any sea (Revelation 21:1), but a river of the water of life flows from the throne room bringing life (Revelation 22:1–2).

This is a view of the perfect tabernacle (Hebrews 9:11). And our way into this most holy place is to be cleansed by the blood of the Lamb; the king and high priest who makes a way through a new and living curtain, which is his body (Hebrews 10:19–20). A cleansing we illustrate with our baptism — our bodies being cleansed, washed pure by water — and as we receive the living water — which Jesus says is God’s Spirit — becoming not just a kingdom of priests but a living temple — the dwelling place of God on earth (Hebrews 10:21–22).

The glory of God did not turn up to live in another temple building, but as Jesus ascended, he joined his Father in pouring out his Spirit on his people — making us temples (Acts 2:2–4).

It is the community of people worshipping God in the “holy of holies” together; as those who have been baptised not just by water, but his Spirit, entering God’s presence — through Jesus’ body — in prayer and worship — being transformed by his Spirit into his likeness — picturing life united to the heavenly temple — and so living heaven-on-earth lives who are the architecture that teaches us this story here on earth. And it is entering this reality through prayer and worship, setting our hearts and minds on things above, that teaches us the story from a heavenly perspective — and this is what we do together as we gather.

You might be reading as someone who, in an Orthodox church, would be left in the courtyard, looking on. I want to invite you to enter a church community; to join God’s people, to meet Jesus with us, and in us, as we gather, to see this story and be swept up into it.

You might be wondering where you belong as someone who follows Jesus — someone who has been cleansed by his blood and washed in water — a priest, a temple. The trick is, if this story is right we do not belong in some “less than sacred” place. We all belong through the doors, past the wall, in the holy of holies, at the throne — the heavenly temple — with our high priest and king.

And if we want that design to shape us — or to design our lives and spaces on earth to teach us this story — well, the writer of Hebrews’ point last week remains: we should keep our eyes on Jesus; on the throne; in the holy of holies as the author and perfector of our faith; basing our life there — and we should be gathering as this living temple.

Where we meet, we do not have the gold walls or the altar or the candles or the giant sea. We have a communion table and a baptism pool and God’s word, and our houses, and our tables, and each other — glorious people filled with God’s Spirit being transformed into the likeness of Jesus together. Which is why, I think, the writer of Hebrews follows up this thing about us having been brought into the new covenant, with forgiven sins and cleansed hearts, by calling us to draw near to God with this instruction to help us live heaven-on-earth lives as those who dwell in the holy of holies — holding on to our hope of a heaven-on-earth future while tasting heaven-on-earth life now (Hebrews 10:23).

And we should keep meeting with other heaven-on-earth people — to spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, but encouraging one another all the more as we see the Day approaching (Hebrews 10:24–25).

This is what “God’s house” — the temple — looks like on earth as we draw near to God in heaven through Jesus and the new and living way opened for us that is his body.

So let’s imagine ourselves entering the most holy place, coming before God’s throne as we pray, and in gatherings where we enter physical space and come together to the Lord’s Table — with no barrier to cross — remind ourselves that Jesus has made a way for us to enter the heavenly temple through his body and blood.

September 17, 2025 Add Comment

Before the Throne — Chapter Three — On the Mountain Top

This was part three of a sermon series preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2024. You can listen to this on our podcast, or watch the video.

There is a song you might know — an old nonsense song.

“The grand old Duke of York…”

Sing it in your head.

“He had ten thousand men. He marched them up to the top of the hill, and then he marched them down again. And when they were up, they were up — and when they were down they were down — and when they were only halfway up they were neither up nor down.”

We are thinking about heaven as a mountain top this morning, and I guess we are trying to figure out where we are — are we up, are we down, are we neither up nor down — or are we both up and down at the same time?

How are you going with this concept we are unpacking in this series — the idea that we are not just alive on earth, at the bottom of the mountain, and clearly not just in heaven, on the top of the mountain — but in this overlap — both in heaven and on earth — raised and seated with Jesus so that we are before the throne of God in heaven? It is tricky, is it not? And I wonder if it is trickier for us because we do not have the same relationship with our bodies and with physical space that the people in the Bible had, or the same understanding of heaven and earth as overlapping realities.

See, God’s people in the Old Testament had their own songs — not nonsense ones like the Grand Old Duke of York, but songs they sang every year, every time they climbed a mountain, to teach them how to live in space and time as people who lived with God.

Israel had a physical mountain — the temple mountain of Jerusalem, Zion — where God’s house was on top of the hill as a symbol of his heavenly throne room but also a picture of him dwelling with them. We will look at this structure more over the next couple of weeks. Today we are looking at the mountain itself, and the mountain top as a picture of heaven.

Every time the people of Israel climbed the mountain to go to the temple for feasts and festivals they would sing these songs from the book of Psalms. You will find them in our Bibles with the heading “a psalm of ascent.” They start in Psalm 120 and there are 14 of them. These were songs to be sung on the road, songs to connect the singer’s body to a journey from the bottom of the mountain to the house of God — a sort of ascent from earth to heaven in the imagination of the singer.

The second of these Psalms starts with the singer gazing to the top of the mountain — Zion — looking to the peak, to the temple, and towards the heavenly throne where God, the maker of heaven and earth, sits as helper (Psalm 121:1). The singer is not up yet, but they are on their way.

Some of the songs seem to have come from the other side of exile, after the southern tribes return from Babylon, looking back at how God restored them to the land and restored their fortunes, bringing joy and laughter (Psalm 126:1–2). Just keep that idea in mind and hold it alongside the picture of mountain life in Hebrews 12:18-29, maybe especially:

“But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”

These Psalms were songs God’s people sang all the way through to the time of Jesus — they were probably even on the lips of the crowd as Jesus made the journey up the mountain at Passover to be crucified, to truly end the exile, restore Jerusalem, and rebuild a real temple in the place of the one built by Herod about fifty years earlier. People might not have been feeling this joy when Jesus arrived.

But they certainly had this mountain at the heart of their imagination of heaven on earth — the idea that God’s blessing to the world flowed down to Zion, and then down the mountain into the rest of the world (Psalm 128:5). Because Zion — this mountain — was his dwelling place forever and ever, where his throne is (Psalm 132:13–14). This is the picture of heaven on earth in this song book. People sang these songs while climbing the mountain — orienting themselves towards heavenly life and the idea that they were about to enter heavenly space.

Now, we have to be careful here, because this idea of Zion, specifically, the Zion of this world — an earthy mountain in Jerusalem as God’s dwelling place — can lead to all sorts of heaven-on-earth projects that end up looking more like hell on earth, creating death and destruction as we take building heaven on earth into our own hands.

Where the Bible depicts this forever reality, right at the end, being God’s act of renewing creation and removing the curse of sin and death — when the New Jerusalem emerges in Revelation it is heaven being brought to earth, not humans building a bridge between heaven and earth (Revelation 21:2).

The Bible has a story about how that goes wrong right at the beginning — the story of Babel, an attempt to build a stairway to heaven (Genesis 11:4), which, when we looked at Genesis, we saw was a common impulse of nations around Israel.

This looks like a mountain, but it is the ruins of a staircase temple called “the house of the mountain.”

This is the kind of thing you do when your model of reality has heaven in the skies above a dome.

There are dangers when we try to bring heaven down to earth on our terms and for our benefit — not just at a political scale, but in our own lives and what we pursue. But these Psalms and that journey up the mountain to the top — they are capturing something of what we are trying to do this term as we see that we have been raised with Jesus and seated with him at the right hand of God. Part of setting our hearts on things above, and our minds on things above, not earthly things (Colossians 3:1–2), is a bit like the Psalm singers who looked to the mountain in order to look towards God (Psalm 121:1). We are learning what it means to live lives shaped by the top of the mountain, and having been there — and not being halfway up between heaven and earth — but living in this sweet spot as heaven-on-earth people.

And if you caught this in the bit we read from Hebrews, the writer suggests we should understand ourselves as mountain-top people. They say: “We have come to this mountain, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Hebrews 12:22). This is where we are in some real sense. And they draw on more of the Bible’s use of mountains as heaven-on-earth spaces to shape our imaginations.

Saying: “You are not on a mountain that can be touched but that is burning with fire and stormy and scary, where if someone or some animal touched it they would die” (Hebrews 12:18), where Moses was so afraid of God’s presence he trembled with fear (Hebrews 12:21). He is talking about Sinai, and the Exodus story. You are not on that mountain, but on Zion.

He is tapping into a mountain-top story that runs through the Old Testament. If you have read my other ‘sermons as articles’ or tracked with me for a while, you might have heard me talk about mountains before, but maybe not mountain tops — so here is a quick re-cap. See what I did there — re-cap…

I reckon we — or at least I — mostly think of the Bible and its events as though geography does not matter. We are so removed from the physical landscape of these events, but so often the narrator will point us to the environment, or assume we know it, or as the Scriptures unfold will paint more details in for us. So we are not just imagining heaven and trying to picture things this series, but engaging our imaginations to think about life on earth differently too, and maybe to think ourselves into what is called the “cosmic geography” of the first readers of these stories.

So the first mountain in the Bible is — according to Ezekiel — the mountain garden of Eden. The heaven-on-earth garden dwelling of God we looked at last week. Ezekiel describes the location of this garden as “the holy mount of God” (Ezekiel 28:13–14). Trust me when I say there are lots of other mountain moments in the Bible and it can get quite confusing trying to distinguish them all — you can ask me about some of them later.

The big story after Eden, and the escape from Egypt, is the shift from Sinai, in the wilderness, to Zion, in the promised land — the new Eden.

Sinai is where where God descends to meet Israel in the wilderness, and makes the top of the mountain a gateway into heaven (which then becomes the model for the Tabernacle as a ‘mobile mountain top’). The mountain is burning like a smelting furnace because God is going to forge Israel to be his priests, people who bring heaven to earth (Exodus 19). Moses eventually goes up this mountain with some of the leaders of Israel and gets this heavenly vision of God.

Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky.

— Exodus 24:9-10

Take note here, because this account does not describe God, but it does describe this floor under his feet — at the ceiling of the mountain top — this bright blue. That is what lapis lazuli is — this bright blue sparkling pavement. Maybe something to add to the visual bank. At this point these leaders eat and drink, seeing God (Exodus 24:11).

Then Moses goes further, beyond the ceiling, it seems, and into God’s glorious, bright presence — on the top of the mountain (Exodus 24:15–16). To people looking on it looks like he has stepped into the brightness, the smelting fire (Exodus 24:17). And ultimately he comes down glowing, radiating, bringing some of this heavenly glory to earth (Exodus 34:29).

For the writer of Hebrews this is the scary mountain, and it is not our home. They sum up this movement described in the Old Testament from mountain top to mountain top. There are songs about this in the Psalms. Songs like the one that sings to other mountains, this Gentile holy mountain, Mount Bashan, aka Mount Hermon (Psalm 68:15–16). We looked at it in Matthew as the mountain where Jesus is transfigured [note: I didn’t quite get to posting that one as an article, but the podcast is here], and as the mountain where people believed the Nephilim landed in Genesis 6 (at least according to the book of Enoch). Anyway, this other mountain is described as being envious because it is not God’s home. Mountains do things in the Psalms like singing God’s praise. But this one is envious because God is going to choose a different mountain to reign on and dwell forever. He is on the move with his heavenly host from Sinai, in the wilderness, to his sanctuary, his mountain-top home (Psalm 68:17). Which other Psalms explicitly name as Zion, the mountain of Jerusalem, his throne room (Psalm 132:13–14).

The prophets are full of mountains too. Isaiah talks about the end of exile involving a new mountain home for God, on the highest of mountains, where all nations will flock to this place — this heavenly throne. Going up the mountain, ascending to the house of God to learn his ways, the ways of heaven, in order to take those ways down to earth (Isaiah 2:2–3). Isaiah also pictures a mountain, “this mountain,” being the place where God would prepare a feast, and a mountain being where he would destroy the ultimate enemy of all people — the enemy that enters the story when humans leave the first mountain, Eden — destroying death (Isaiah 25:6–8). And he pictures foreigners coming to bind themselves to Yahweh as his priestly people too, and being brought to God’s mountain and given joy in his house of prayer (Isaiah 56:7). Again — remember the joy in the bit of Hebrews we read. This comes from entering this sort of heaven-on-earth reality, temple life, mountain life.

Isaiah says when disaster strikes, people who cry out to dead, breathless gods will be carried off in the wind, blown like breath, while those who take refuge in God will inherit the earth and possess his mountain (Isaiah 57:13), because God — in the prophets — lives on a high and holy place, the mountain, while also dwelling with the lowly (Isaiah 57:15).

This mountain imagery is everywhere in the Old Testament shaping the imaginative world of God’s people as they climbed a literal mountain to meet with God and then sought to live as his heaven-on-earth people.

But like the Grand Old Duke of York’s men, Israel was never sure where they were. They kept living as though they were shaped by earth, worshipping man-made idols in Babel-like temples. They had all the songs in the world, but they did not have God’s Spirit making them heaven-on-earth people.

This is what has changed for the church after Jesus comes as the heaven-on-earth human who also is the human-in-heaven Son of God.

Jesus comes as God’s king fulfilling Psalm 2, as the king installed at his right hand, on Zion, the holy mountain (Psalm 2:6). Jesus climbs that mountain in Jerusalem, perhaps singing these Psalms, to be killed on a mountain, but then raised and seated at God’s right hand (Ephesians 2:6). And as we receive God’s Spirit we are also now people who are raised and seated with him, at God’s right hand — on the mountain top.

We are like Moses, but different. We are now — as Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians — able to be in God’s presence and contemplate his glory (2 Corinthians 3:18); that bright light from a few weeks ago, past the barrier, the blue stones, and in the throne room, being smelted into his image as we encounter this glory, by the Spirit.

This is what the writer of Hebrews is picking up too. We are on the mountain; not Sinai, not even old Zion, but the heavenly mountain-top city that God will bring to earth when he makes all things new (Hebrews 12:22). And as we go up to there, but also live down here, we are being forged to live these heaven-on-earth lives that shine like heaven; not building Babel or trying to reclaim Zion, but living this life of joy and hope, even in suffering, described in Hebrews.

Hebrews gives us some more images to contemplate as we pray and dwell on the mountain top. They invite us to picture thousands and thousands of angels, that heavenly host from the Psalms, in joyful assembly (Hebrews 12:22–23) — a massive gathering. That is what the word “church” means — we have come to this gathering too, the gathering of the firstborn, of Jesus.

We have come to the Father, the judge of all, to gather with all those made perfect — humans, together — to Jesus who brought us into this new covenant, this new arrangement with God by his blood as the mediator, the true priest (Hebrews 12:23–24). And this comes with a new allegiance. We are, if we are going to dwell here, going to be people who listen to the one who speaks from the throne, and not refuse him. If we are heaven dwellers we have this bigger responsibility than those who only heard God on earth and turned away from him (Hebrews 12:25).

Hebrews 12 has some heavy stuff. But look what it says — this voice shook the earth, but now promises to shake the earth and the heavens (Hebrews 12:26). This is a promise to make all things new; it is the same as the vision from Revelation — to bring heaven and earth together into this unshakable forever reality where God will dwell with his people (Hebrews 12:27). We live in this heavenly mountain place hoping and expecting that God will act in this way in the future and give us life in this kingdom that cannot be shaken. And what should we do with this hope? This picture of the future? As mountain-top dwellers already, we should be thankful and worship God with reverence and awe, because the God enthroned in Zion is actually the same smelting God from Sinai. But we come to him as children he loves — united to the Son he loves — to be transformed, not destroyed (Hebrews 12:28–29).

It is keeping our eyes fixed on the top of the mountain — not just “as we ascend” but seeing that we are already secure and home there — that is meant to shape us for life on earth. We are not neither up nor down, we are both. Just before this stuff about mountains the writer of Hebrews opens this section with another image that is meant to shape our life on earth — another heavenly image.

They say: “Since we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses” — this is not about the angels, it is talking about all the faithful examples of faith and hope in Jesus (Hebrews 12:1); in God’s promises through history listed in Hebrews 11. Since we are captured by this heavenly vision we should throw off the earthly stuff that hinders — things that prevent us seeing reality this way, and the sins that entangle and want to keep us living lives stuck on earth. Lives of sin and destruction and rebellion against God.

Sin is the stuff where our imaginations get captured by worldly things and false gods so we get trapped in the unreality that this world is all there is. Hebrews says throw that off, and do it not just by looking at it and trying to see worldly things differently — do it by fixing our eyes upon Jesus — the one at the top of the mountain, raised and enthroned at God’s right hand — the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, the one who ascended to the top of the mountain not just showing us the way, or carving out the path, not just marching us up to the top of the hill, but carrying us there. We should fix our eyes on him — this, too, is an act of imagining the throne room of God — and we should be shaped by his example. For the joy set before him — his own vision of the top of the mountain, his own vision of God’s unshakable kingdom becoming a reality — he suffered and endured the cross. His vision of heavenly life and God’s faithfulness, this joy being a picture that drove him — he endured the cross and then sat down, enthroned, in heaven at the right hand of God (Hebrews 12:2–4). This vision, and this example of life shaped by it, change how we live on earth.

Keeping our eyes on heaven and the throne together is the Bible’s antidote for smashing into one another and pulling each other down. And it is the antidote, it seems, for sexual immorality — for using human bodies for idolatry (Hebrews 12:16). Thinking other human bodies, or our own, are where we experience heaven — that sex and sensuality are the ultimate goods, or our goal for fulfilment. This is a form of godlessness. It, and other forms of being entangled by worldly things, are a form of the mistake Esau made back in Genesis when he gave up his inheritance, his place in the family, for a single bowl of food to satisfy his hunger. We can get so caught up with visions and fantasies and imaginings of life on earth — good things we want to grab hold of at all costs, things we desire: sex, money, comfort, pleasure, holidays, joy — and miss the joy that comes from eternal hope in Jesus. Not seeing that we are located already on the mountain top, the heavenly mountain top, and longing for the unshakable kingdom to come as God brings heaven and earth together forever.

We are shaped for life in this world — to be those who reflect God’s presence — by spending time in his presence “on top of the mountain.” This is the pattern of the Bible: it is Sinai (Exodus 24). It is the calling for Israel as those who ascend the mountain to meet with God in the temple in their feasts and festivals (Psalm 121). And it is there at the end of Matthew’s Gospel in the Great Commission. The disciples meet with Jesus on a mountain top; they encounter the risen Jesus as he is about to be raised to the heavenly throne. They worship him (Matthew 28:16–17), and they are sent down the mountain to make disciples, those being transformed into his image (Matthew 28:18–20). And it is what the writer of Hebrews is inviting us to do (Hebrews 12).

For us, this series is about imagining what it is like to enter God’s presence as we pray; as we close our eyes to the things of this world and open them to heaven, so that when we are living on earth we are living as people who also dwell in heaven with God, awaiting, longing for, anticipating, modelling, the plans he has for earth. We are thinking about what it means to set our hearts on things above — to lift our eyes to the mountain — and see God.

Last chapter I introduced that idea of meditation on the Bible where we pair propositional ideas with poetic imagery from the text of the Bible. And maybe the writer of Hebrews is actually modelling that. As they place us on the mountain as a picture of heavenly life, seated with Jesus. In doing this we are brought into the imaginative realm of the Psalms; they become our songs. We are invited to sing and meditate on these words, fixing our eyes upon the mountain, singing songs of praise, worshipping God — because he, and the author and perfecter of our faith, are enthroned on this holy mountain, and we are invited to come before his throne.

Psalm 48 is an interesting one to meditate on, calling us to praise the God of this mountain. You can imagine someone in Israel’s peak, in Jerusalem, looking down the mountain to the surrounding country, or at the other peaks in view, singing:

“Beautiful in its loftiness, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion — the city of the King” (Psalm 48:2).

Or while wandering through the temple, singing about meditating on God’s unfailing love (Psalm 48:9).

Or wandering around the walls of the city imagining its strength and security (Psalm 48:12–13), so long as God dwells there. And you can imagine someone singing it in exile, longingly looking back, but also hoping for renewal — a safe and secure home restored with God like he promises.

We too can sing about God shining forth from Zion — a beautiful heaven-on-earth hilltop, with God shining forth — where Zion reflects Sinai (Psalm 50:2–3). We can imagine ourselves on the mountain top with Moses walking through that crystal barrier into God’s throne room. We can sing the Psalms of Ascent, lifting our eyes and hearts to the mountain of heaven, where we are raised and seated with Christ so that we do not get caught up in the things of this earth — as people who do not live halfway up or down, but both up and down, bringing heavenly life to earth.

It is interesting that when Paul talks about setting our minds and hearts on things above he encourages us to let the message of Christ dwell among us richly as we teach and admonish each other through Psalms, and as we sing (Colossians 3:16). Owning and meditating on the Psalms as our songs fulfilled in Jesus, because we now dwell on the mountain with him, waiting for him to make all things new. This is part of living heaven-on-earth life now.

Maybe this week you could climb a mountain and read the Psalms of Ascent, alone or with a few other people, picturing life on the heavenly mountain top, spending some time with God away from the things that hinder or the sins that entangle — fixing your eyes on Jesus, and enjoying the future he has secured for you. We do not actually need to physically climb a mountain, but maybe it would help to engage your body and think differently about the lay of the land. Let’s head to the mountain top in our minds now in prayer.

September 17, 2025 Add Comment

Before the Throne — Chapter Two — Paradise Found

This was part two of a sermon series preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2024. You can listen to this on our podcast, or watch the video.

This is one of my favourite places on earth. Paradise. A house on a hill in Inverell.

It was my grandparents’ home. It was safe. It was secure. It was where I experienced — and probably learned — generosity and hospitality… And I have snapped a picture of the back corner of the garden on Google Street View. This was my pa’s veggie garden. Pa loved to garden.

Next to the veggie garden was a fruit tree — a persimmon tree. You might never have tried persimmons — I bought some this week and they are not ripe yet… they get this “jelly texture” and for me they are a taste of generous hospitality; a taste of heaven.

We are thinking about heaven — about tasting it, seeing it, imagining ourselves before the throne of God because — as we saw last week — those of us who have found life in Jesus are raised and seated with him in the heavenly realm (Ephesians 2:6). This is our reality now — and in this chapter we are imagining heaven as a fruitful garden; a garden where we experience abundance and hospitality and are home. This is an image that opens and closes the Bible that can shape our prayers, and contemplation of heaven, and how we live now in the overlap between heaven and earth — as people who dwell in both.

This is not just an image from the start and end of the story of the Bible; it is there at the climactic moment of the story.

John emphasises that Jesus is crucified and buried in a garden (John 19:41), and when he is raised as the start of a new creation, his friend Mary thinks he is the gardener (John 20:15).

In Luke there is a reference to a heavenly garden we might miss — here, on the cross, with the rebel being crucified next to him who turns to him and asks to be remembered in his kingdom (Luke 23:42), Jesus says “truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

When we hear the word paradise we might be imagining a beach, or a silent room with a couch and no interruptions… But Jesus says “Today, you will be with me in the garden.”

Paradise is a Greek word we have turned into an English word but it literally means garden — and Jesus says “today this is your reality” to the bloke next to him…

While we think of heaven as a future “after death” reality, and might take comfort in this promise of paradise for us too — from this moment of Jesus’ gift of his life to us — his people are also with him where he is; and he says he is in paradise. A garden.

This language pops up a couple of times in the New Testament to describe our physical future; often in moments where the curtains are being pulled back and someone is staring into heaven — so the book of Revelation — which we will spend some time in this series — John has this vision of heaven driving his message to the church for how we live in this world; and in one of the letters at the start he says the victorious one, the one who finds life with Jesus by his Spirit — we are given the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise — the garden of God (Revelation 2:7). John will come back to this at the end of his vision where the new heaven and new earth come together; as heavenly life descends to unite with a renewed creation (Revelation 21:1) — and in the bit we read, John describes a heavenly garden throne room — there is a river of the water of life flowing out of the throne of God in this garden city where there is this tree of life spanning the river bearing fruit for his people every month (Revelation 22:1-2).

This is the paradise Jesus says the rebel on the cross will join him in — this is heaven — a vision of heaven that is meant to shape our imagination now as we live as people raised and seated with Jesus reading these descriptions in the Scriptures God has given his church to navigate life on earth. These pictures matter not just because they are our future reality; but they are our spiritual reality now —
and I threw this verse from Paul’s second letter to Corinth up last week where I suggested he is talking about himself in the third person — and just notice how he describes the vision of heaven that drives this particular bloke — it is paradise; a garden (2 Corinthians 12:3-4). A new Eden.

The throne room of God when it becomes heaven on earth is Eden-like. This is because Eden is one of those heaven-on-earth places in the story of the Bible like the temple, where God dwells with his people.
So let us look at this bit of the Bible we read together — and just notice a couple of things we might not have looked at in the past… and we are going to skip ahead a little into Genesis 3 and read some of that back into our imagining of life in the garden.

In the start of the story of the Bible we meet God as creator — a sort of artist who generates a system geared towards life — he is satisfied and calls it good. What we see of God in his actions in chapter two is that God is a gardener (Genesis 2:8). He gets his hands in the dirt to bring out life. He makes trees — and they are not just trees to play a part in an ecosystem — stopping soil eroding, and pumping out oxygen to sustain life — they are beautiful; they are pleasing to the eye — this teaches us something about God — there is a delight and desire to be delighted in going on here as God creates — and they produce fruit “are “good for food.” Then there is the tree of life; we get hung up on the other tree, rightly — because of what happens in the next chapter — but these two trees are probably also pleasing to the eye, and, if God had said so, good for food (Genesis 2:9). Just notice there is a river here too, like in Revelation (Genesis 2:10).

God, the gardener, puts the man he has made in the garden — paradise — to work it and take care of it — to garden like he does — to cultivate this heaven-on-earth place — to be his priestly, image-bearing creative, artistic, generous, hospitable, fruitful people shaped by life with him (Genesis 2:15)…

The next thing we learn about God as we contemplate him in this heaven-on-earth space — he is generous. Hospitable. He has made this beauty to be shared and enjoyed.

The man is free to eat — God has planted these good and beautiful things for him to enjoy — to eat from any tree — including the tree of life — which he will say later is about living forever in this hospitable place in relationship with God (Genesis 2:16-17). Any tree but one — and it is easy, in our imaginings to imagine God in heaven as stingy — as holding back from us when we pray; when we come to him with our desires and they are not met — and this is what the serpent will play on when he pulls humans to death — but this picture is a picture of God the gardener as the giver of life and beauty — the creator of this garden paradise where life is to be enjoyed within its boundaries, as God, our creator, gives us not just what we need, but things to enjoy and delight in. And to enjoy and delight in with him, in paradise — walking with him as he delights in his creations; the beauty of the paradise he crafted with care; crafted to be enjoyed as the gardener God — we see him coming to walk with the humans in chapter 3 in the cool of the day (Genesis 3:8).Now they have already made the decision that will see them exiled from this heaven-on-earth space; losing paradise — they have chosen earth alone, not heaven-on-earth — which is reflected in the curse right — dust to dust — the earth is their present and future (Genesis 3:19). But here is God coming to find them when they are hiding from him — walking in the garden in the “cool of the day” — it is literally “in the breeze” and it uses the Hebrew word “ruah” which is also the word for the Spirit. There is a lot we could unpack there; but I wonder if just for a moment you might imagine hanging out in a garden, or a forest, surrounded by trees — fruit trees, or maybe just the trees on the walking track you love — walking in the breeze with God the gardener as he delights in pointing out every clever or beautiful detail in every tree; in its markings, the shape of its branches and leaves — the colours — the particular texture or taste of the fruit — just delighting and exploring and feeling the wind; the Spirit; wrapping around you as you feel comfort beside him. That is what gets lost for the humans in the story at this moment. They could have been walking with him; they should have been walking with him — but they are hiding. Then they are evicted; cut off from the tree of life; separated from heaven-on-earth space; a barrier between them of a fiery heavenly creature that will be represented by the curtain in the temple — this is paradise lost (Genesis 3:24).

The search for paradise is part of the story of the Old Testament — the deep desire to be home; to find life in the garden, with the gardener — God’s people live craving access to something like the garden — looking for this life in all the wrong places; feeding off idols that lead to death rather than life — this is how Isaiah describes what leads Israel out of their garden city — Jerusalem, the jewel in the Eden-like land flowing with milk and honey — full of flowers and fruit trees for the bees, and grassy pasture for the cattle — where they have the temple as a picture of life close to God again. They lose this, Isaiah says, because they have imagined walking with gods — divine beings amongst the sacred oaks in different gardens (Isaiah 1:29). Isaiah pictures exile as being cut off from this sort of life; becoming like a garden without water; losing paradise again (Isaiah 1:30) — and later in Isaiah God promises restoration to paradise; that God’s people will experience heavenly life again; barren deserts becoming like Eden — the garden of the Lord — paradise (Isaiah 51:3).

A few hundred years before Jesus — pretty much smack bang in history between Isaiah and Jesus’ words on the cross, or John’s words in Revelation — there is another book written called Enoch; it is a book that is not in our Bibles, but it does get quoted by New Testament authors — Enoch pictures heaven as this mountain garden (Enoch 24:3-4):

“And the seventh mountain was in the midst of these, and it excelled them in height, resembling the seat of a throne: and fragrant trees encircled the throne.”

He is maybe borrowing an image from Ezekiel here which pictures Eden as on a mountain (Ezekiel 28:13-14). Anyway the writer of Enoch is imagining a time when exile ends; when paradise is found — and there is God’s throne in a garden, and there is a fragrant fruit tree there.

“And amongst them was a tree such as I had never yet smelt, neither was any amongst them nor were others like it: it had a fragrance beyond all fragrance, and its leaves and blooms and wood wither not for ever: and its fruit is beautiful.”

— Enoch 24:4-5

Beautiful — you can almost imagine the smell wafting through this room; it never dies — like the fruit in Eden its fruit is beautiful — this is Enoch imagining heaven — God’s throne room, with the tree of life right there; God’s throne room in a garden — and he is told “yeah, that mountain that looks like a throne it is where God — the Lord of Glory — will sit when he comes to visit the earth with goodness; when he restores people to paradise, and when that happens, the tree of life — in the heart of this paradise, will be food for God’s people, planted in the heaven-on-earth space of God’s temple.

“This high mountain which thou has seen, whose summit is like the throne of God, is His throne, where the Holy Great One, the Lord of Glory, the Eternal King, will sit, when He shall come down to visit the earth with goodness. And as for this fragrant tree no mortal is permitted to touch it till the great judgement… It shall then be given to the righteous and holy. Its fruit shall be for food to the elect: it shall be transplanted to the holy place, to the temple of the Lord, the Eternal King.”

— Enoch 25:4-5

Before Jesus turns up on the scene God’s people imagine heaven as a garden; the garden of Eden restored — because of the imagery from the story of the Bible, and from the architecture of the temple, and from the promises of the prophets. They are outside of paradise looking in. Longing. Waiting.
You can see how John’s vision in Revelation might fulfil this hope… And how Jesus’ words on the cross change the story from paradise lost to paradise found. Today — he says to the rebel on the cross — and maybe to all of us — today humans have access to paradise again.

Today, as God’s king turns up to end the exile, to invite us out of false worship and fake heavens and into life with God — Eden is restored; paradise is open — and we are invited to find paradise again
as those raised and seated with Jesus; living with the gardener king anticipating a time where the earth will be made new as we live now as heaven-on-earth people with the Spirit of God not just blowing around us as we walk with him, but dwelling in us.

I am not sure this is the God I encounter enough in my prayers, I am not sure I have prayed enough as though I am entering this garden and delighting and enjoying not just the garden, but time with the gardener — this is home; my time as a kid running around the veggie garden on George Street in Inverell, eating fruit from the persimmon tree, is a sort of picture of this I can relate to in my experiences — maybe you have got your own version of that, or maybe it is something we can cultivate together as ways we can learn to dwell in the garden of heaven and have it shape life on earth.

That house in Inverell would not feel like home for me anymore — the garden does not look like it is there any more in the photo, but the gardener definitely is not — he has gone home to paradise. And he — with my gran — was what made that place home for me really; what made the garden wondrous and the persimmons special.

And this is part of the challenge as we imagine heaven, really — to be imagining it not just as a place; not just as a garden with trees — or just a throne room — the throne is not empty. The gardener is home and we are invited to frolic with him in the garden in the cool of the day; to shoot the breeze; to wander around in the Spirit — to be there with our king, Jesus, who laid his life down on a cross to invite us into his kingdom to feast on the fruit of this heavenly garden, and the creation he made for us to enjoy and cultivate in anticipation of him making all things new so that in it. Even as we enjoy fruit and wandering through gardens and forests — we are in his presence, discovering his goodness; experiencing heaven on earth in this overlap… Closing our eyes in prayer and opening ourselves to this heavenly reality changes how we see earth, and our calling here as God’s children.

So I want to invite you to contemplate this heavenly garden; to picture it in your mind’s eye — and I know for some of us this act of imagination is tricky; we do not all picture things in our mind’s eye — which is where some tangible experiences — getting out in a garden or forest and meditating on the beauty of trees and flowers — biting into a piece of fruit — might be a helpful exercise — and this evocative language in the Bible is maybe a helpful prompt too — conjuring something up for us as we read.

This sort of contemplation or meditation maybe is not part of the Christianity you have grown up with —
it is certainly foreign for me — and as part of opening the eyes of my heart this way I have read this book Meditation and Communion with God. It is not a cheap book, and there is plenty of tricky stuff in it as he makes the case that Reformed Evangelical folks like us who love the text of the Bible should grapple more with what it says about how our union with Jesus means we have been raised and seated with Christ in the heavenly realms — this is part of what the Bible says — and how the Bible describes behaviours and images — it is not just words on a page — that shape our lives and even our imaginations.

As he talks about what contemplation and meditation looks like he says that studies on how our brains work; how we learn and are transformed — which is often how we think we change, right — information leading to transformation — he says actually even at the brain level science is showing we have separate channels in our brain for processing visual information and stuff we hear — especially words —
and we learn better and understand better when pictures are added to words.

“Human beings have separate channels for processing visual and auditory information… Learning comprehension and retention is improved when pictures are added to words…”

— John Jefferson Davis, Meditation and Communion With God

He reckons meditation on Scripture can work best by linking words and images — especially pairing texts with propositions — texts that make truth claims — with texts that evoke images or tell stories of stuff we can picture:

“In our meditation on Scripture, we intentionally try to combine words and concepts with concrete images and narratives… A propositional text is paired with one or more pictorial or narrative texts that share a common theme.”

— John Jefferson Davis

So, we might take the proposition that we are raised and seated with Christ in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 2:6) — or the story of Jesus telling the rebel that he will be with him in a garden because of his desire to be part of Jesus’ kingdom of heaven (Luke 23:34). We might pair this idea of heaven being a garden with descriptions of a heavenly garden like we find in Revelation (Revelation 22). Where there is a vision of God’s throne room that kind of lines up with the prophets and Enoch — water flowing from the throne — and Jesus, the lamb is there too — and on each side of the river the tree of life is there — in a way that is hard to picture — it is on both sides of the river — maybe arching over it — bearing fruit that is to bring life; and healing…

I wonder if we imagine this image and pair it with the paradise garden of Eden, and all its beautiful fruit trees pleasing to the eye — and we place ourselves in this sort of garden with God’s throne in the middle — a place where we hang out with the gardener, and delight, with him, in his hospitality and abundance and artistry — the way he takes delight in each good thing he made in part because he made it to be enjoyed — and if we imagine prayer as walking with God, the gardener, in the breeze — in the Spirit — in the cool of this garden — I wonder if you realise you have access to this paradise any time you pray — no matter the circumstances going on in your life around you — that this is real and available; that we can close our eyes to the mundane; to our hunger and longing — to our temptation to find life in the hustle and bustle of other garden cities — or when life feels like a wasteland; we can be tempted in those moments to feel like we are exiled from God, but through Jesus that is not the case — we are in the garden again; we just have to go there in our imaginations.

Now — this might just feel like escapist fantasy stuff of little value when you are suffering — but it is also kind of the Bible’s answer to dealing with very real persecution. Revelation was a vision John sent to a church facing incredible persecution under a violent, beastly regime where Christians were occasionally set on fire in garden parties, or fed to wild animals for the amusement of the king — and this vision of heaven was a comfort in those moments — and the garden of Eden and the promise of the prophets was a comfort for God’s people living in Babylon. It translated into the real world too; it was not just part of holding on to Jesus — but these sorts of heavenly visions in their imaginations; a reminder that God is with us even when we feel like we are in the wilderness or suffering. Escapist fantasy is actually necessary if we want things to change — too — how else do we get a different pattern to what the world offers us in its sacred groves with its false gods — like prisoners, sometimes need to imagine our escape in order to get free.

How can we live as heaven-on-earth people with no images of heaven to shape what we pursue on earth? What we cultivate?

This is not just escapism. These descriptions in the Bible are not just escapist fantasy to comfort folks with some picture of the future — this sort of imagination of heaven is us envisaging what the Bible says is the future of this world — heaven and earth coming together — so that we live as citizens of heaven now. Imagining heaven as a garden was part of Israelites in exile planting gardens and building homes in Babylon — imagining paradise helps us create homes of beauty and hospitality that reflect the life of God — places of refuge or sanctuary… George Street Inverells where people experience fruit and hospitality and embrace.

It is as we enter heaven in our imaginations — using the imagery God supplies in his word, to spend time with him, that we are shaped to do the good works he has prepared for us (Ephesians 2:10), it teaches us how to be human, just as time in Eden, in the garden, was where the first humans in the story were meant to learn to cultivate and keep heaven-on-earth space, so they could be fruitful and multiply and spread God’s presence on earth. As we spend time with the gardener, tasting the goodness of heavenly life, it shapes us for fruitful life in his world.

September 16, 2025 Add Comment

Before the Throne — Chapter One — Gazing at the Son

This was part one of a sermon series preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2024. You can listen to this on our podcast, or watch the video.

I do not know if you are the sort of person who follows news stories about strange phenomenon in the heavens — notable movements of planets, and stars, and the sun.

It turns out there are some heavenly events where if you want to look at them you need special glasses like this:

There was a total solar eclipse visible across a particular band of the U.S. in April 2024, and, well, when people looked at this heavenly light — or the darkness of the eclipse without special glasses — let us just say Google searches for “My eyes hurt” spiked specifically along the path of the eclipse as people looked to the heavens.

This event was not just big for sun watchers — there is a strand of Christian theology that teaches there will be a rapture as Jesus returns; where faithful Christians waiting for his return will be swept up in the skies into heaven — some of you might read the New Testament this way.

Rapture watchers in the U.S. were particularly excited that the town of Rapture, Indiana was in the direct path of the eclipse.

There is a little bit of a problem I think we hit when we want every prophecy to directly apply to the modern western world — and our brothers and sisters in the U.S. are sometimes particularly guilty of thinking these prophecies are going to be triggered events in their nation.

Anyway — this rapture idea is the idea that heaven is this skywards reality where, for God’s future to unfold, we need to be sucked up into heaven, and in some versions there forever in disembodied form — our souls living in this alternate universe forever in the future. If you wanted to map this out — and these are stills from a Bible Project video that is well worth a look — you would, in ‘rapture’ thinking treat heaven and earth as separate spheres, where we are presently living on earth but heaven is our future.

If that is your view then life on earth is about getting rapture ready, or ready for heaven — both for you, and for people you love. How we view heavenly phenomenon and where we are in the scheme of things actually shapes how we live now — and how we interpret events going on around us, even in the skies.

This series is an attempt to orient us; to help us think about where we are — how heaven and earth work, and how that shapes our life as people who believe the Gospel of Jesus.

If you have been around for a bit you will have seen this picture before — it is an attempt to show how ancient people — readers of the Old and New Testaments — would have pictured reality — where earth is a present reality for us creatures — while heaven is a present reality for the spiritual realm; God and other heavenly beings — sky beings.

And we can think of ourselves living earthly lives, cut off from any sort of heavenly reality…or denying it exists…

Or be, as the saying goes “so caught up in heavenly realities we are of no use on earth.”

The sweet spot — the spot that is our challenge as followers of Jesus who are dwelling places of God’s Holy Spirit — is to live in this overlapping reality — because this is where we are.

We are going to spend some time thinking about what this means — to live here — how we do it, and especially how to imagine heaven — from what we are given in the Bible — in ways that shape the way we live on earth. We are people who now live before the throne of God in heaven. We have access to heaven now — as a present reality, not a future one — and this is especially true as we pray — communing with God — and as we worship him. The time we spend “before the throne” will shape how we live.

In his opening to Ephesians, Paul says God, the Father of our Lord Jesus, has blessed us — he is talking about those who have found life in the story of the Gospel — it is possible in the first instance that the “us” he is describing is specifically Jewish Christians (Ephesians 1:3), but he will come back to apply all this to Gentiles as well in verse 13 — saying we are also included in Christ through the Gospel (Ephesians 1:13). God has blessed those of us who have had the Gospel change how we see reality; giving us the map. He says Jesus has blessed us — that is in the present tense — in the heavenly realms — this is not a future thing — with every blessing in Jesus (Ephesians 1:3).

His summary of the Gospel is this picture of God bringing all things in heaven and on earth under Christ — there is a hint here that heaven and earth are realities that will continue forever under God’s plan, but be united (Ephesians 1:8–10). Those of us who have believed that Jesus is the fulfilment and ruler of all things receive the Holy Spirit — becoming heaven-on-earth people — united to Jesus (Ephesians 1:13–14).

Paul opens his letter praying for his readers — that their eyes — or rather the eyes of their hearts — and by extension ours — might be opened to this reality behind the Gospel. Enlightened (Ephesians 1:18). Now, I reckon there is a story behind this idea of enlightening — Paul’s story. The story of when Paul met Jesus and had a vision of heavenly reality.

Paul’s back story in Acts actually begins with this bloke named Stephen. Stephen was one of the blokes appointed by the apostles to wait on tables and serve people so they could be freed to preach — and, well, he does not quite get the memo, because he preaches too. Stephen is seized and brought to the leaders of the Sanhedrin — the temple authorities. Stephen gives a sermon unpacking God’s good news story — the Gospel of Jesus. And it makes the watching crowd so furious they decide to kill him (Acts 7:54). And as the mob descends Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit — remember Paul’s words in Ephesians — looks to heaven — and this is not just the sky, he is looking into the throne room of heaven — heaven opened up — where he sees the glory of God — that is this Old Testament idea of an overpoweringly bright light — and Jesus, standing at the right hand of God — as the Son of Man from Daniel; the Son of God — the human and divine king. He sees this, and he tells them he is seeing it (Acts 7:55–56). At this the crowd starts stoning him to death, and Luke tells us this happens under the watchful eye of this Sanhedrin young gun named Saul — that is Paul (Acts 7:57–58).

As he dies Stephen keeps his gaze on the heavenly throne room and he speaks to the king he sees there — “Lord Jesus receive my Spirit” — and he echoes the words of Jesus on the cross when he said “Father forgive them” — and he dies (Acts 7:59–60). And Saul approves of his killing (Acts 8:1). In fact, Saul will go on to get papers from the Sanhedrin allowing him to kill anybody like Stephen he finds; he is going to destroy the church — going house to house (Acts 8:3).

And you might know the story — on the road to Damascus he is overwhelmed by a bright light from heaven (Acts 9:3–4). He is not wearing his special glasses — so his eyes hurt; he goes blind. He hears a voice, from heaven, saying “Saul, why are you persecuting me?” — and it is the voice of Jesus (Acts 9:5) — the Son of Man Stephen saw in the throne room speaking to him — and I reckon Paul is having the same sort of vision Stephen did.

But when he opens his eyes back to earthly realities after this heavenly encounter, he cannot see; the old Saul has been eclipsed (Acts 9:8). And a new man emerges as his eyes are opened; as a bloke named Ananias is sent by Jesus to restore his sight as he receives the Spirit (Acts 9:17). His eyes are opened as this happens (Acts 9:18), but I reckon the eyes of his heart have been opened by this heavenly encounter and his receiving God’s Spirit too — and he marks this by being baptised. From here on in Paul lives his life as someone who sees heaven and earth differently; shaped by his vision on the road of the risen and ascended Jesus.

I think Paul is reflecting on this experience when he writes some weird stuff in 2 Corinthians boasting about this “guy he knows” who was caught up into heaven — in paradise — where he saw inexpressible things (2 Corinthians 12:2–4). And his prayer for people reading Ephesians is that we might be swept up in this same life-altering vision of reality (Ephesians 1:18); that just as his encounter with heavenly light changed the way he sees everything, he wants this experience for everyone; that the eyes of our hearts might be enlightened (Acts 9:3; Ephesians 1:18); that we might see this heavenly reality so we know the hope we have been called to — the power of God at work in us (Ephesians 1:18–19) — not just to pull us to heaven when we die or in a rapture. God’s power is the power that raised Jesus from the dead — resurrecting power — and it is ascending power — it raised and seated him in the heavenly realms above all these other powers. It is the power God is ultimately going to use to reconcile all things — heaven and earth — through Jesus (Ephesians 1:19–21).

And this power is applied to us already, because again, this bit is present tense — as Paul talks about our lives now — where we are now. God has already raised us up with Christ and already seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus — that reality Stephen saw, so that he could see heaven opened and speak to Jesus as he was stoned to death, is our reality. This is where we are, in some sense, even while we are on the earth in our bodies (Ephesians 2:6).

This is a sort of mind-bending thing — Paul will write about it in other places, like in Colossians — this being our present reality. Since God has raised us with Christ — who is seated in the heavenly realms at God’s right hand, his human king in the heavenly throne room — this is where our hearts should be set (Colossians 3:1). And then our minds should be set — not on earthly things, but on heaven (Colossians 3:2–3). There is some sort of experiential thing we are meant to have because this is where we are… because it is where Jesus is. And this is what we are grappling with in this series.

Now. This is a challenge — right? We all know that bodily we are located physically in the very space we occupy as we read these words (or watch or listen), trying to get your head around this idea. I am not claiming this is simple, but the Bible is claiming it is true — and we are probing into what it means to live as though this is true — to know where we are on the map. In Colossians Paul sees this transition in how we think about where we are as part of how we are remade for life on earth.

Being transformed so that the image we bear is renewed and reflects the life and nature of its creator; the one enthroned in heaven as we see him revealed by his Son (Colossians 3:9–10).

So we live in this sweet spot.

Somehow, as our hearts and minds are opened up — as we see this heavenly reality — it is going to transform the way we live on earth. And there are — it seems — ways we can orient ourselves and locate ourselves in this overlapping reality so that it changes how we live — or die — like it does for Stephen and for Paul, and has for so many followers of Jesus since.

Part of this is about access — we are not excluded from God’s presence any more. If we conceive of heaven as a throne room where God rules — and we will spend some time looking at how the Bible pictures this sort of throne room — we are not kept out by guardian creatures with flaming swords. We are no longer far away from God, exiled from him.

Through his death and resurrection and ascension, and by giving us his Spirit, Jesus has brought us near — we are united to him; where he is, we are.

And we now have access to the Father through his Spirit who dwells in us (Ephesians 2:13, 18). We are situated there whether we are thinking about it or not, but I think one of the ways we should understand accessing the throne room is that we do this every time we pray; as we shut our eyes to earth we are opening them to heaven. But this is not just meant to pull us out of earth — rapturing us. Heaven is not our future reality; living in this space in the present also changes how we see life on earth. In the ancient imagination both images of gods and temples were heaven-meets-earth people and places.

Paul says as we are joined to each other and to Jesus by the Spirit we are a holy temple; a heaven-on-earth community built together as a dwelling place of God — by his Spirit — on earth — who are also united by his Spirit in heaven. So we approach God together as a sort of human temple — or priests — as we worship God; as we pray and recognise where we are together in our gathering and praising God (Ephesians 2:21–22). And I reckon the way we encounter God as those raised and seated with him is part of how God creates us in Christ Jesus. This word “handiwork” — it is the sort of word used of a craftsman. We are fashioned by God in Jesus to do good works on earth God has prepared in advance for us to do; we are his image-bearers crafted by him to bring heaven to earth as we embrace this new reality (Ephesians 2:10).

Paul’s prayer is that we — not so much with our earthly eyes — but with our hearts — as our hearts meet God’s Spirit — we might see this truth: that we are located in the heavenly throne room; seated with Jesus — that we have access to God — proximity to him — as beloved children of the Father who can approach him not just to ask him for things, but to come to know him (Ephesians 1:18; 2:6, 18).

There is a little hint of the Lord’s Prayer in the mix here I reckon — as Jesus teaches his disciples that we can approach God as our Father in heaven — that is a location — asking that his name be made holy; that his kingdom might come — his rule be reflected as his will is done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:9–10). We only get a sense of what “in heaven” looks like as people in this kingdom if we spend time with our hearts and minds set on things above. We can only operate in this middle space in our bodies — as God’s handiwork and temple — bringing heaven to earth if we are captured by this vision of Jesus on his throne with his Father and that glorious light; like Stephen or like Paul.

And look — the pun is way overdone so I am sorry — but Paul is inviting us to be people who stare at the overwhelming brightness of the heavenly body of the Son, and the glory of his Father — not with special glasses, but by his Spirit. I am sorry… truly.

We do not need a rapture to take us into heaven — we are already there, and perhaps all we need is to see; to close our eyes in prayer and open our imaginations to see ourselves located before the throne; to have Stephen’s vision or Paul’s encounter with the resurrected Jesus occupy the eyes of our hearts.

One of the things I am hoping we might do in this series is think about how we engage our imaginations as we pray and praise God — as we come into the throne room. I am convinced that there are words on the pages of the Bible that are poetic — they convey images — and that these images might help us set our hearts and minds on things above; they might help us close our eyes to earth and open them to heaven and be useful metaphors or images that we can talk about, and picture — and perhaps even meditate on or contemplate as we encounter created images — art, or natural phenomenon — that help us set our eyes upon heaven. We will look at one a week — though they will overlap — and this week it is this idea of God being light — bright, overwhelming, blinding light — light that would make our eyes hurt if they had not been adjusted or enlightened so we can gaze upon it. There is a really rich thread of this metaphor you will find all through the Bible — from Moses through to Paul — and in descriptions of heaven — whether that is with Stephen, or in Revelation, or in the Old Testament prophets.

Like in Ezekiel, who describes Yahweh on his heavenly throne as almost impossible to look upon because of the radiance or gleam of his glory — gleaming, fiery, bright glory (Ezekiel 1:27). I wonder if as you pray you ever picture God as you speak to him, or his throne room. Part of this series was prompted by me realising that for a long time I kind of imagined God as just a bigger cosmic version of my dad. Now, you could psychologise that for me; I reckon it is a sign both that my dad did not do a terrible job of being a father — and there are lots of ways I know the image of God as a Father is confronting and challenging for people where that has not been your experience, and ways that image could be super unhelpful. And I kind of pushed into my thinking here because I reckon we have a tendency to fashion God in our own image in our imagination, not to look so much to the pictures we get in the Bible — and I was wondering what it would look like to pray imagining the God Ezekiel pictures on the throne he pictures in a way that crashes through our false imaginings… Or at least to see prayer as opening the eyes of my heart; setting it on things above. Imagining heaven the way the Bible invites us to.

And so I wonder what it would look like to pray, taking some of the images from these passages to fuel your imaginatoin; if as we close our eyes and reflect on this image for a bit — we might see this sort of picture in your heart differently as we approach God and locate ourselves in heaven; seeing not just the shining, radiant bright God, but his Son next to him. A Son of Light — light from light as we say in the Creed — or, as John’s Gospel puts it — Jesus is the light who shines in the darkness (John 1:4–5). He also describes God as light in one of his letters (1 John 1:5).

Both John and Paul use this language of coming into the light and being children of the light to describe having access to God again (Ephesians 5:8), and giving him access to us as we invite him to dwell in us by his Spirit. As we see God as this glorious, purifying, life-giving light who destroys darkness — the powers of sin, and death, and the ruler of the kingdom of the air — Satan — through Jesus. As we see God the way Stephen and Paul see him. As we come into his light we let this light expose us and kill those bits subject to earthly or other spiritual powers so we are illuminated; shining like Jesus does — shaped as children of the light (Ephesians 5:13).

I am going to invite you to use your imagination a you pray; to see yourself stepping into this light; being exposed; exposing yourself to God in ways that bring these things Jesus has destroyed to him to have them destroyed, so that we, his people, might become a light to the world. Pray Paul’s prayer that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened; that we might be those who gaze at the bright light of heaven; eyes opened to heavenly realities by the lens of the Spirit — that we might see him — without fancy glasses.

I want to suggest a bit of an exercise for you this week too — and I want you to be careful not to burn your eyes. I want you to make some time this week to head outside, on a sunny day — and just glance up at the sun and get a sense of its brightness. It is not as bright as the God who is light; it is an analogy of God’s brightness. Glance at the sun and then pray imagining yourself drawn into this light.

I hope that as we are able to see; to imagine; to position ourselves with Jesus in the heavenly realm it might help us see earthly life with a different perspective — whether we are facing suffering — even persecution — like Stephen, or tempted to hide in the darkness and wallow in sin; being caught up in the things of this world — the light might expose those as deadly and hollow and destructive. It might help us see heaven as this ultimate reality — a present and a future — so we devote ourselves to seeing God’s kingdom come on earth as in heaven — catching the vision that saw Paul turn from destroying God’s church to praying we be enlightened and swept up into God’s heaven-on-earth plan as those who have the power of God working in us.

You might not want to be part of this sort of weirdness — I totally get it. This is uncharted territory for most of us. But if you are someone who has been raised and seated in the heavenly realms — I want to invite you out of the comfort zone of your seat, and into this heavenly location, to experiment with praying imagining yourself entering the gloriously bright throne room of heaven as the Bible describes it.

September 15, 2025 Add Comment

Being Human — Table of Contents

The typical function of the Blogging medium is to promote a sort of recency bias, ordering things chronologically rather than logically. This is ok. I guess. But, the nature of, say, a sermon series presented in ‘chapters’ is that each chapter builds upon the previous. So. For completeness, here is a Table of Contents. There was a logic shaping the movement from chapter to chapter — it developed along the lines of Genesis 1 to 3, unpacking things we learn about our humanity in its ‘ideal’ setting and how that all fell apart, and Genesis to Revelation, while also exploring ways the ‘disintegrating’ forces of our world and ‘integrating’ practices grounded in church traditions aligned with these bits of the story. Each talk also explored the way Jesus is presented as a new Adam and a solution or fulfilment of our ‘origin story’ (the series also drew on the work I’d done in Genesis, Matthew, and Revelation that I’ve previously posted as articles here — although I didn’t finish posting up the Matthew series as I stopped posting things for a bit).

I’m also about to start posting up the next ‘book’ — think of this as a sort of trilogy I guess, where each integrates. The next series (preached a couple of years after Being Human) was an exploration of a different way of viewing and participating in reality called Before The Throne, and the third installment was a series called Inhabiting which was about cultivating practices to live life as those simultaneously located on earth, and united by the Spirit, to Jesus so that we live before the throne of God. I had planned to write some other things about church and life and formation — and I still will, but recent events online have made me want to build out a system of thinking that is reflective and contemplative and principled — cold takes ultimately — from which I can then process other phenomenon more carefully.

Being Human was an attempt to sketch out an anthropology grounded in the story of the Bible — incorporating creation, fall, our redemption and re-creation in Jesus and union with God’s life by the Spirit, and our telos — towards new creation. It was an attempt to recognise tensions and paradoxes — the relationship between our hearts and what we point our hearts to in worship and the external systems (and beings) who might work to shape our hearts in ways that disintegrate us.

I believe that any truly theological anthropology begins with the nature of God, not our own nature. So that’s where we began. Anyway. Here we go.

  1. Chapter One — The Trinity — The universe is created by a God who makes himself known in relationship. Modern conceptions of humanity that do not start with a God who is love end with a limited picture of human existence.
  2. Chapter Two — Connected Individuals — We are individuals, and, exist in relationships and community with one another — while being created for communion with God.
  3. Chapter Three — Made to be Makers — To be made in God’s image is to be made with imaginations; as those who make tools and shape the world and tell stories; this capacity to make can see us ‘cultivate’ life in the world, or create idols that bring death.
  4. Chapter Four — Life in the Cloud (Is Transhumanism the Answer) — We are made not just with bodies, but as bodies — life as humans, forever, involves our bodies — visions of the future that involve harp playing cloudy Spirits, or digitised consciousness pull us away from what it means to be human.
  5. Chapter Five — Sense and Sensuality — We are made with bodies that have desires and emotions wired in to our reaction to beauty and goodness. This desire — sexual or otherwise — is created for us as image bearers who are made for intimate relationship with God and one another, but can also go haywire when we dehumanise or objectify others or ourselves.
  6. Chapter Six — A world of (im)pure imagey-nations — We are made with eyes that recognise beauty, and the capacity to picture realities in our head and work towards those. Where we set our eyes and hearts and imaginations will shape the way we use our bodies. Where we look for life matters.
  7. Chapter Seven — The Jig is up. Habitats shape habits — As embodied humans we are placed in spaces. We shape our spaces (or they are built by others) and our habitats shape our habits, which shape our hearts. Many spaces (and tools) in our world have been created to make us consumers and addicts using techniques of ‘scripted disorientation’.
  8. Chapter Eight — Being true-ly human in an age of deception — There are forces — algorithms, agendas, and propagandists, at work doing the work of the deceiving serpent who said ‘did God truly say’, in order to lead us to destruction. Being truely human means learning to recognise and speak and live by truth.
  9. Chapter Nine — What’s the story: mourning glory? — Life this side of Eden involves longing to get back, but living in a world of violence and destruction as people try to carve out Edens for ourselves. In the modern west, much like in Babylon, this looks like the ‘myth of redemptive violence’ in the presence of a system some call the ‘Military Industrial Complex’. We need a better story to guide us back towards Eden.
  10. Chapter Ten — On mean(ing)s and end(ing)s — We can work out how we should live now by knowing how the story ends; the purpose or ‘telos’ of our humanity is connected not just to our beginnings, but to the end of the world (and the beginning of a new world through Jesus). Just as Jesus is the ‘telos’ of the story of the Bible — and is the ‘telos’ of history, becoming like Jesus as those united to him is the ‘telos’ of our humanity.

September 15, 2025 Add Comment

Being Human — Chapter Ten — On mean(ing)s and end(ing)s

This is an adaptation of the tenth talk from a 2022 sermon series — you can listen to it as a podcast here, unfortunately, due to a technical error, there was no video for this week.

It’s not unhelpful to think of this series as a ‘book’ preached chapter by chapter. And, a note — there are lots of pull quotes from various sources in these posts that were presented as slides in the sermons, but not read out in the recordings.

We have put ourselves in various moments in time this series—imagining the past, and the future. This time round I want to take you all the way to the end.

How is the world going to end?

Now, of course, as Christians, we have an ending described for us in the book of Revelation. Jesus is coming; he will reward his people with life with him and the tree of life (Revelation 22:12–14). But I am wondering how much difference that ending makes in how we think about being human—and how you live.

What difference would it make to your life without that ending? If you believed every part of the Christian story to be true but there was nothing about the future—about what happens after death or at the end of the world—how would you live? If you knew God revealed himself and his character in the crucifixion, but we had no resurrection or return, would you live differently today?

You might be here this morning still not convinced about the whole Christian story. This might actually be where you are at. I am going to suggest this end makes all the difference—that it is the end of the world’s story and the human story as we know it—and this is meant to shape how we understand being human.

And just for a moment I am going to try to put us in the minds of people who do not buy that ending, using Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, where in book two there is a time travel service that will take you to the restaurant at the end of the universe, so you can sit and watch the world end with a ‘Gnab gib’ — the opposite of a big bang — and go back to your life knowing that all that comes after death and after history ends is the void; oblivion. The point of this book series is to offer a deliberate guidebook to a technological world without God. He creates a galaxy to show how if life in time and space is all there is, the hunt for meaning is meaningless. It is not “42;” it turns out that is the answer to the wrong question—and the whole point of the books is pointlessness. It is to stop people looking for meaning, so that we are not crushed when we find out there is none. There is this device, a Total Perspective Vortex in the books, that shows you as a tiny dot in an infinite universe, and it crushes anyone who thinks there should be a meaning in life or the world—anyone not totally self-centred. You are better off not looking.

The ideas of the end of the world and the purpose of our lives in it are deeply integrated.

When we see the world ending with the void—or life ending with death—and no God in the picture, we are left figuring out what our own life is for; how we should use it. I reckon most of our neighbours reckon we are facing the void, or just adopting the “she’ll be right, mate” idea that everything is going to pan out. And so life in the modern, disenchanted world ends up being the expressive individualism we have talked about, where you are responsible for making your own purpose, even if that comes from connecting yourself to some bigger agenda. Adams ends up being a prophet for this disenchanted world.

In theology land the way we talk about the end of the world is with the word eschatology—it is from the Greek word for last. And the way we talk about the purpose of human life—the ends, like in “the ends justify the means”—is the Greek word telos, which means something like living towards the fulfilment of a purpose. If you are a Presbyterian and I say “the chief end of man is…” you will say “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” That “chief end”—that is a telos. It is the built-in purpose that guides our actions.

That guy Alisdair MacIntyre, who says we are story-telling animals who “need to know what story we are living in to know how we should live, as we saw last chapter “can only answer the question ‘what am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”; he also reckons we have been left feeling like life is meaningless because we have lost a sense that our lives are headed towards a telos. This ‘end’ or purpose for our lives came from understanding our lives as living in a story that came from beyond ourselves, that was pointed somewhere beyond ourselves, but life facing the void, where we are left trying to make meaning and find a purpose from within ourselves—maybe, like the author of Ecclesiastes suggests—that sort of life is meaningless, if it just ends in death.

“When someone complains that his or her life is meaningless, he or she is often and perhaps characteristically complaining that the narrative of their life has become unintelligible to them, that it lacks any point, any movement towards a climax or a telos.”

— Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue

The Christian story suggests life is not meaningless, that it has a telos. We might be inclined just to look back to our origin story, to Eden, to figure out what we are made for—and we will do that—but we have also got to look to the end of the story to find our ends. So we are going to try to hold this tension—these furious opposites—and maybe see how the Bible holds it for us, because when we integrate our lives with God’s story, its beginning and its ending, we find our telos; we find life; we find what it means to be truly human.

Back in Genesis we saw how the image of God is not just a static thing in us (Genesis 1:26); it is not just a noun that describes us; it is a verb we are made to be; a vocation. It has a telos built in—to be truly human is to rule his world, representing his rule, his kingdom.

This idea is built from what images of gods were in the ancient world, and off the work of scholars like John Walton who suggest what it meant to be something in the ancient world was not just to have material qualities, it was to belong in a system, with a function; it was to have a telos.

“People in the ancient world believed that something existed not by virtue of its material properties, but by virtue of its having a function in an ordered system.”

— John Walton

But not only is the image of God not just a static thing in us, it is not a static thing only defined in Genesis; our understanding of what it means to bear God’s image, this function, develops with the story of the Bible. We do not just look back; we work out what it looks like as we see characters breaking it; it is frustrated as people sin—falling from this function—and are exiled from God’s presence. And we see it restored, and developed, as God creates a priestly people, Israel, to represent him in the world, and then kings who are meant to be representative rulers of his image-bearing people.

And so we come to Psalm 8—which we looked at lots in our Genesis series—where we are told it is a Psalm of David; where we are told humans have been crowned with glory and honour (Psalm 8:4–5). That God made us rulers over the work of his hands; there is a Genesis 1 reference happening here (Psalm 8:6).

Now, we have this tendency to democratise the Psalms, to jump to making this about us—there are just a couple of steps I think we need to take before we do that. We can also democratise it by looking back to Genesis, but we should be careful here too.

Now, I have quoted stacks of scholars this series, and they can feel distant and overwhelming. So today I am quoting a biblical scholar who is the opposite of distant. In this article by Doug Green, our Old Testament scholar in residence (well, not quite — note for readers, Doug is an elder in our church), Doug invites us to consider that with this Psalm of David, which could be a Psalm about David, we are meant to imagine David wearing a crown like the first readers would. So these words are not so much about all humans, but the dignity and worth and glory and honour of true humanity: humans living and ruling in a way that represents God, which is Israel’s role in the world, and David’s role in Israel as the true human.

“Psalm 8 is less interested in the dignity and worth of humanity in general, and more concerned with the dignity and worth, the glory and honour, of the true humanity, Israel, and the true human, David (and his descendants).”

— Doug Green, ‘Psalm 8: What is Israel’s King, That You Remember Him’

Doug reckons the Genesis creation story works to teach Israel what true humanity looks like; how to live as replacement Adams—humans—after Adam and Eve’s failure. Israel is a new humanity, but more than that Israel’s Davidic king is presented as an image-bearing ruler.

“But this story is a background for the real focus of the Old Testament: Israel’s role as the replacement for the First Humanity of Genesis 1, and David’s role as the replacement for the First Human (Adam) described in Genesis 2 and 3.”

— Doug Green

This king will either lead people to life with God, or death and exile. And this Psalm is about someone—it could be a son of Adam—crowned with glory and honour, which is, as Doug points out, royal language.

“The Davidic king was thought to be a second Adam, Adam reborn, as it were… True Man is crowned—can you hear the royal language?—with God’s glory and honour!”

— Doug Green

Doug reckons as we read this Psalm knowing David’s failures we are meant to read it eschatologically—wondering where in the future we will meet a true human, a divine image bearer. Someone who fulfils the purpose, the telos, humans are made for.

“But once I interpret this psalm in connection with Israel and especially Israel’s king, I am now bent in an eschatological direction. The stories of Israel and David are covenantal stories and therefore stories with a telos, or destiny.”

— Doug Green

Our idea of an image bearer gets developed in contrast with the failures of would-be image bearers as we keep waiting for a true human to turn up at the climax of history.

“The primary thrust of Psalm 8 is not creational and static (what all humans are in Adam) but re-creational and eschatological (what Israel and ‘David’ will become at the climax of history).”

— Doug Green

The writer of Hebrews reads it this way too; when they quote this Psalm (Hebrews 2:6, Psalm 8:4), they say, you know we do not see this everywhere, it is not the general pattern for human life. But we do see it in Jesus, the fulfilment of this Psalm; a true image-bearing human crowned with glory and honour, because he suffered death—that is the whole cross-shaped kingdom thing from last week.

“But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”

— Hebrews 2:9

He is the Son of David, the Son of Adam, the true human image bearer, who does not fall to the powers. And he brings many sons and daughters—many true humans—with him to our glorious telos; to being able to function as those who represent God (Hebrews 2:10). The telos, the purpose of humanity, is to reflect—to radiate—God’s glory. Hebrews calls Jesus the pioneer of our salvation, made perfect—these are significant words. The word here for pioneer could be translated author in your Bible; it is this word archegos—it means first, or model, or archetype. And this word perfect—it is the word teleiosai—it is the word for fulfilling your telos; being made complete according to your purpose. Jesus is the model telos-fulfilling human, the true human, through his suffering and his resurrection, through representing God’s glory.

Hebrews will come back to these same two words when it talks about how we should live; how we should run our race towards an end, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter (Hebrews 12:1), the model and telos-fulfiller, the true human, the new David, the new Adam, who because of the joy set before him—not because the cross revealed God’s character, but because of the glory to follow—endured the cross, and then sat down at the right hand of God, crowned and glorified.

These words come up a few more times in the New Testament. John uses these same words in our passage in Revelation, where Jesus does not just say he is the first and last and beginning and end (Revelation 22:13), but arche—the model—and the telos—the fulfilment (Revelation 22:14). And the last in verse 13 is actually eschatos; he is the fulfilment of the human—our telos—and the eschatological human who brings the new creation. He is the one the Scriptures have been waiting for since Adam.

We covered 1 Corinthians 15 earlier in the series—where Paul says the first man Adam was a living, breathing image of God, and Jesus is the last Adam, literally the eschatological Adam, who brings God’s Spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45). Those who are united to Adam, that old image, die, disintegrating into dust. But those who see the fulfilment of the image in Jesus, seeing his true humanity, those belong to him as the new David, the king—we will follow him into his glorified life, bearing his image (1 Corinthians 15:49). When we are united to Jesus, his story becomes ours—we live under his rule, waiting for our new life to be made whole; for the Spirit working to produce fruit in our mortal bodies to be matched with spiritual, immortal bodies, waiting for the defeat of the last enemy, literally the eschatological enemy: death (1 Corinthians 15:24–26). This will happen when Jesus returns to make all things new.

Living in this story—with this ending and telos—shifting from the old Adam to the new, is how we become truly human, images of God. It is how we share in his glory, which is what Paul is on about in Romans 8 (Romans 8:16–17). Our becoming truly human as we receive the Spirit and are re-created and liberated, in a way that gives our life meaning, even when we suffer.

The Spirit, Paul says, makes us heirs of God, his children, his image-bearing people who will share in the glory of Jesus. We become truly human as our telos becomes to become like Jesus, and our future is secured. And this gives meaning to our sufferings now, both as we take up our cross, following Jesus’s example (Romans 8:18–19). Suffering is not an end in itself; it is not our telos; our destiny. We might hear it said that “to be human is to suffer well,” to bear the weight of being. But to be truly human is to suffer with the hope of glory; that is our new destiny. Our suffering—whatever it is, whether it is the cost of curse, or what we experience as we follow our crucified king—is not our purpose or destiny. It is incomparably small compared to the glory that is ours as we become truly human through Jesus.

Our lives are shaped by a new image of the fulfilled human life where death leads to resurrection, and a new destiny that is not just for us, but for the world. Creation itself joins in the expectation of liberation from bondage to decay, as it is brought into the freedom and glory we are brought into (Romans 8:20–21). Just like creation itself is anticipating liberation, we live hoping for the redemption of our bodies. We live lives shaped by hope, knowing that God is working for our good, that he has called us according to his purpose—that is actually a different word to telos—that we have been chosen to be conformed to the image of his Son, to become truly human, so that Jesus might be the first of many brothers and sisters, bringing us to glory as we are conformed into his image (Romans 8:23–24, 28–29). This is the trajectory we are now on—as chosen and justified people with failures forgiven, one where we are re-created as true humans and glorified (Romans 8:30). So that Jesus’s present and future becomes ours, so in him we are more than conquerors, people who cannot be destroyed by death, or demons, or the present or future, or the powers that we have seen at work in the world. Nothing will be able to separate us from Jesus, from God’s love, from being truly human (Romans 8:37–39). Because, as Doug puts it:

“It is only as we are united to Christ and indwelt by his Spirit that we humans can claim to be bearers of the divine image, crowned with glory and honour.”

— Doug Green

Now—we are on the home stretch in this series. And here are our take-homes for today, and for the series. Being truly human means living lives integrated with God’s story. This story gives us, and the world, a telos—to be an image bearer is not simply to suffer, even as we take up our cross—it is to reflect God’s glory, to glorify God and enjoy him forever you might say. And we see this telos fulfilled in the end of our story. The Bible’s story about humanity, this story tells us who we were made to be, and what our destiny is, and invites us to be truly human. This ends, and this ending give us meaning, and the means we should employ as we become characters in God’s story.

We are not hitchhikers in the galaxy, facing oblivion at the restaurant at the end of the universe. In Jesus we are sealed, and seated at the banquet at the end of the universe, and it lasts forever. We are not insignificant, finite nothings, just made to suffer and die, but immortal and glorious and loved by God.

C.S. Lewis talks about this in his sermon The Weight of Glory. He reckons we are too quick to embrace self-denial and suffering as ends, as though that is our purpose, when we are actually made to follow Jesus into glory and to have our desires satisfied.

“The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.”

— Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Lewis says we need to live knowing we are not small and insignificant, but that we will outlast anything earthly. Nations, culture, art — those things that seem big and significant are tiny compared to our glorious future.

“Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit…”

— Lewis

This means it is actually other people — those with God’s Spirit — immortals — who are truly significant. We should see ourselves this way, as gloriously beloved by God, and it should change the way we see others. This capacity is in every human, and already at work in those gloriously united with Jesus.

He says that other than when we recognise Jesus in the sacrament — which is what’s happening, in his theological frame, during communion — other than the presence of Jesus in us, your neighbour is the holiest object in your life, holy in the same way as Jesus because Jesus, the glorifier and the glorified, the archetype and the telos, is hidden in them.

“Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If they are your Christian neighbour they are holy in almost the same way, for in them also Christ the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.”

Lewis, The Weight of Glory

But what difference does all this talk of glory make? I reckon we can be a little obsessed with still seeing ourselves as sinners — and we are — but not as those being re-created and liberated by the Spirit — which we are.

Killing our sin — what gets called mortification — is part of our transformation, but we could do more to remind ourselves that this is who we are in Jesus; holy and being made glorious and being transformed by God’s Spirit in us. We might see our new life not just as putting sin to death, but also cultivating new life, in what gets called vivification. You — if you belong to Jesus — are no longer a slave to the flesh; no longer the old Adam. You are the new Adam, and God’s Spirit is at work in you conforming you to the image of Jesus, revealing God’s glory in your life. That’s your telos, and where your story is going.

And this means our lives can be marked by hope — not just in the face of death, but hope about the future that we enact in our life now. We can see our longings — our desires — as parts of us pulling us towards our end goal.

Both C.S. Lewis and his friend Tolkien had this hope in ways that made their stories remarkably different to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. That was disenchanted science fiction about purposeless life in a material universe that ends in the void, while Lewis and Tolkien wrote fantasy set in enchanted worlds, shot through with longing for glory. Tolkien talks about how our longings are a product of life exiled from Eden, and his stories are about finding the answer to these longings.

“Certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature… is still soaked with the sense of ‘exile’.”

— Tolkien

Lewis talks about passing beyond the natural world into the glorious splendour where we will eat from the tree of life — straight out of Revelation:

“We are summoned to pass through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects. And in there, in beyond Nature, we shall eat of the tree of life.”

— Lewis

This is an image he evokes at the end of The Chronicles of Narnia, where the characters enter a new eternal story:

“All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

C.S Lewis, The Last Battle

As they go further up and further in into a garden paradise:

“Further up and further in… So all of them passed in through the golden gates, into the delicious smell that blew towards them out of that garden and into the cool mixture of sunlight and shadow under the trees…”

C.S Lewis, The Last Battle

Tolkien has Frodo and the Elves sailing to a land in the west featuring white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise. And in his brilliant short story Leaf by Niggle, he describes Niggle — a painter — finding life in the garden paradise of his painting coming to life, as he goes further and further upwards towards the mountains:

“He was going to… look at a wider sky, and walk ever further and further towards the Mountains, always uphill.”

— Tolkien, Leaf By Niggle

Both Tolkien and Lewis had more than an inkling. They understood how the end of our story should shape our desires, and their stories — like their lives — were attempts to evoke these desires in us, to pull us further up and further in. We would do well to soak our imagination in enchanted stories of hope, because this is our story.

And cultivating the hope of glory has to shape how we live as a hopeful witness to those following the old Adam towards a destiny of dust and death. Some people reckon thinking eschatologically runs the risk of having us so set on heaven we are no use on earth, but the theologian Stanley Hauerwas reckons how we see the end of the world — eschatology — is the basis for Jesus’ ethical teaching, as he calls us to our telos; our re-created purpose.

“…we mainline Protestants have charged eschatological thinking with being ‘other worldly,’ ‘escapist,’ ‘pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by’ thinking… the biblical evidence suggests that eschatology is the very basis for Jesus’ ethical teaching.”

— Stanley Hauerwas

Hauerwas says Christian ethics — how we live — is built on Jesus being the eschatological Adam, the new David, who launches God’s kingdom in the world now, and that the Sermon on the Mount describes the end of the world as it was — the world of Adam and Satan, that ends with his crucifixion and resurrection — and a new way of life, the ends we should live towards.

“There is no way to remove the eschatology of Christian ethics. We have learned that Jesus’ teaching was not first focused on his own status but on the proclamation of the inbreaking kingdom of God… In the Sermon [on the Mount] we see the end of history, an ending made most explicit and visible in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus… The question, in regard to the end, is not so much when? but, what? To what end?”

— Stanley Hauerwas

Hauerwas reckons living in this story makes us resident aliens, as he calls us — an adventurous and hopeful colony, a community living in a society of unbelief. In his diagnosis our culture has not just lost a telos, but a sense of adventure, because we have turned in on ourselves as we have lost this big story.

“The church exists today as resident aliens, an adventurous colony in a society of unbelief… As a society of unbelief, Western culture is devoid of a sense of journey, of adventure, because it lacks belief in much more than the cultivation of an ever-shrinking horizon of self-preservation and self-expression…”

— Stanley Hauerwas

This community, embodying and telling this story, is where Christian ethics makes sense. The world tells us being truly human is about self-expression, because this is all it is, but our eschatological messianic community tells us that to be truly human involves self-denial with our eyes fixed on the eternal rule of King Jesus, and being united to him.

This community — the church — is where we tell each other the Gospel; truthing in love.

“The ethic of Jesus thus appears to be either utterly impractical or utterly burdensome unless it is set within its proper context — an eschatological, messianic community, which knows something the world does not and structures its life accordingly… A person becomes just by imitating just persons. One way of teaching good habits is by watching good people, learning the moves, imitating the way they relate to the world.”

— Stanley Hauerwas

This community is where we find examples to imitate as we learn what a life shaped by our ends, shaped by Jesus the true human, looks like. It is where we are formed in order to be sent into the world. It is where we run the race together as we learn to fix our eyes upon Jesus.

It is hard for us to set our eyes on Jesus in a literal sense, given that he is seated in heaven. We can do that in prayer, and in what Paul calls the eyes of our heart, but we can also fix our eyes upon Jesus in a way that teaches us to be human by looking at one another, finding examples who are living in this story to imitate.

Before they say this, the writer to the Hebrews has just told the church to keep meeting together, spurring one another on, before they say run the race by fixing our eyes upon Jesus.

Part of pursuing our telos is seeking to be those who follow the example of Jesus, and this might involve watching and observing and imitating those around us who already are. Those whose lives are marked by hope, those whose lives express the fruit of the Spirit, those who are living adventurous lives of self-denial because their hearts are set on heaven, and because they know that to be truly human, in Christ, is to have conquered the powers, and anything in creation that wants to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

Ends.

September 11, 2025 Add Comment

Being Human — Chapter Nine — What’s the story: mourning glory?

This is an adaptation of the ninth talk from a 2022 sermon series — you can listen to it as a podcast here, or watch it on video. It’s not unhelpful to think of this series as a ‘book’ preached chapter by chapter. And, a note — there are lots of pull quotes from various sources in these posts that were presented as slides in the sermons, but not read out in the recordings.

Content warning — we are going to be talking about violence; and I am going to touch on the way that violence is gendered, especially around family violence, and I do not want that to take people by surprise.

If I asked you to describe the stories you have been consuming lately in a sentence, how would you do it?

Here are a few of mine:

An elite soldier’s unit and family are killed as a result of a deep state conspiracy involving the military and big pharma, so he goes on a rampage, killing everyone involved.

Or…

A retired military police officer hitchhikes around the U.S. and manages to stumble into a deadly conspiracy; he uses his investigative skills and capacity for violence to solve it.

Or… and this one was a favourite… A folk-singing spy with PTSD, whose father works for the CIA, is sent undercover in an engineering firm so he can prevent the election of a pro-nuclear Iranian presidential candidate, or failing that, assassinate him; he sings his way through his trauma and questions about the cost of participating in violence.

At the time of preaching this series, Amazon had just launched the new Rings of Power Tolkien epic, which is fascinating because Tolkien thought very carefully about stories and their power — and about technology and the way it changes us.

In a letter about Middle Earth he explains that magic in his world — especially the destructive magic of Mordor — was a picture of the machine in ours.

“He will rebel against the laws of the Creator — especially against mortality. Both of these will lead to the desire for Power, for making the will more quickly effective — and so to the Machine (or magic).”

— Tolkien

The machine is operating through:

“… all use of external plans or devices instead of development of the inherent inner powers or talents — or even the use of these talents with the corrupted motive of dominating: bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills.”

He sees this as the operations of “the enemy” — who he calls the “Lord of Magic and machines.” He says:

“The enemy in successive forms is always ‘naturally’ concerned with sheer Domination, and so the Lord of magic and machines.”

This created stuff warps us — like the One Ring warped Gollum — and anyone who wields it, and perhaps like swords and weapons shaped those who wield them; coming with a cost — the sort that get explored through the violent battle for Middle Earth.

The thing about stories is that they are powerful; they shape our understanding of the world — they shape our imaginations and desires, just like images — stories are part of what Charles Taylor, and Jamie Smith (who was the guy who wrote You Are What You Love), call the social imaginary — the background to our beliefs; the stuff that shapes our imagination.

“A social imaginary is not how we think about the world, but how we imagine the world before we ever think about it… it is made up of, and embedded in, stories, narratives, myths and icons.”

— James K.A. Smith

It is not just architecture and images that shape us — stories do as well. They help us make sense of the world; stories are what help us figure out what data we receive as “truth,” and what we do not.

“These visions capture our hearts and imaginations by ‘lining’ our imagination, as it were, providing us with frameworks of ‘meaning’ by which we make sense of our world and our calling in it.”

You could argue that telling stories — whether it is history, or fiction, or the myths — the big stories we live by — is part of being made in the image of the God who has structured history, and his word, as a story; that one of the things that separates us from other living creatures is that we tell stories — you do not see koalas building libraries.

Stories also shape the way we live — they teach us how we should live. There is a philosopher, Alisdair MacIntyre, who reckons the modern world has become a bureaucratic machine, where asking “how should I live?” gets reframed as “what is the most efficient way to make things happen.” He reckons the way out of the machine is to recognise the place of story in our lives, and in cultivating virtue; and that we can only know how we ought to live in this world if we can understand ourselves living in a story — knowing our origins, our beginning, our setting, and our destination — and who we need to be to get there.

“I can only answer the question ‘what am I to do?’ If I can answer the prior question: ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”
— Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue

The “machine” means we often treat “non-fiction” — facts — as more important than stories, but this is making the mistake of treating us more like robots than humans; we live and breathe stories.

We spent some time previously unpacking Israel’s origin story — the creation story in Genesis — and imagining how it shaped the life of God’s people, not only living as God’s priestly image-bearing people in the Eden-like promised land, looking after the temple —

but imagining how that story might have shaped Israel to live differently in Babylon, where life was defined by an altogether different story — we dug into it a bit — the Enuma Elish — the story of the gods of Babylon creating the world through violence, from the bodies of dead and defeated gods.

Last week we talked about the powers and principalities that the New Testament describes operating to keep us captive; these spiritual powers are the animating forces behind the systems that make us less than human as we get swept up in them so that we are imprinted by them to represent those powers; to live, so to speak, as characters in their stories (Ephesians 6:11-12). In Babylon the powers operated through an idolatrous regime that celebrated violence.

Walter Wink was a Pentecostal theologian — he wrote a book called The Powers That Be about these systems that we can observe in the world. He was probably less inclined to see spiritual beings pulling the strings behind these observations, and more inclined to see collective human rebellion against God — but he talks about how the same story that animated Babylon, through its creation story — the idea that killing is in our genes; that to be human is to fight against evil, to destroy enemies, with violence — animates the empires of the modern West. He says of the way this story permeates our imaginary:

“The implications are clear: human beings are created from the blood of a murdered god. Our very origin story is violence. Killing is in our genes.”

— Walter Wink

It is this story, that he calls the myth of redemptive violence — the idea that whatever the problems we face, at the end of the day victory will take violence — heroic standing up against the forces of evil and triumphing, throwing them back into the abyss while wielding a sword.

“This Myth of Redemptive Violence is the real myth of the modern world. It, and not Judaism or Christianity or Islam, is the dominant religion in our society today.”

— Walter Wink

It is this story, not the Gospel, that shapes the politics of a post-Christendom world; and is the dominant religious story in our world; it is behind how we “imagine” the world before fleshing it out.

“By making violence pleasurable, fascinating and entertaining, the Powers are able to delude people into compliance with a system that is cheating them of their very lives.”

It is the myth you will find making violence entertaining — in The Terminal List, and Reacher — and even in Rings of Power — deluding people into compliance with a deadly and dehumanising system. Our stories are a little more complex — all these stories are critiquing violent conspiracies and evil, even embodied in a deep state — but they are offering violent solutions, even if, like in Patriot and Middle Earth, the stories leave us asking questions about the cost of wielding the sword. These powers — idol machines — do not just use one story, but this myth of redemptive violence is built into our world, and it is destructive.

Wink reckons there is more going on under the hood in our entertainment, the stories we consume, than we realise. He says in this story politics becomes ultimate; the state and its armed forces are responsible for throwing chaos into the abyss, and those who buy the story will offer themselves up for holy war.

“Salvation is politics: the masses identify with the god of order against the god of chaos, and offer themselves up for the Holy War that imposes order and rule on the peoples round about. Peace through war; security through strength: these are the core convictions that arise from this ancient historical religion, and they form the solid bedrock on which the domination system is found in every society.”

This myth props up what the former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex as he left office in 1961. We talked about this back in our Revelation series.

He was worried about the rapid development of an arms industry as a product of the Cold War. He said American factories once made ploughs, but they had learned to make swords, in a permanent industry of vast proportions designed to supply the armed forces.

“American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well… We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions…”

— Dwight Eisenhower, Farewell Address, 1961

He reckoned people had to be really careful about the way people making money from this industry would chase power and influence, because it had the potential to change the economic, political, and spiritual makeup of the country.

“We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.”

And this seems a world away from us, here in a small church in a city across the world, but the degrees of separation might be smaller than you think. Our military industrial complex is a lot smaller than the U.S. We look at their gun culture as an idol, while consuming the same stories that justify those cultural norms — the same stories that prop up this idea that nations solve problems with violence — and these stories also prop up the idea that individuals should use violence to solve problems, and especially that men should; they shape how we understand masculinity.

Did you notice that the three shows I started out talking about all have violent men as heroes? There is a certain view of the world that sees masculinity as being about male power — the capacity for violence — so they can be protectors, and so women can swoon over such masculine men.

It is not just our entertainment — so much of our Christian content, the books we read, the stuff we listen to or watch, comes from the U.S. And the church in the U.S. has shown itself, in the last few years, to be marching in lockstep with the dominion system. This same myth of redemptive violence is used to justify grabbing hold of political power to win a culture war, or any sort of conflict against your enemies.

There is a writer in the States, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, who wrote this book Jesus and John Wayne, exploring how this same myth has embedded itself in the church.

We are products of our culture; of what we consume, she says:

“The products Christians consume shape the faith they inhabit.”

She traces the way that the modern church has developed a sort of “militant masculinity” — idolising power and the capacity for violence, militant heroes like the western star John Wayne.

“For many evangelicals, these militant heroes would come to define not only Christian manhood but Christianity itself… Wayne modelled masculine strength, aggression, and redemptive violence… Little separated Jesus from John Wayne. Jesus had become a Warrior Leader, an Ultimate Fighter.”

This is a picture of our “social imaginary” preconditioning us to read the Gospel stories in a particular way that is more Babylonian than Biblical.

She has the receipts — she quotes a guy named Doug Wilson, who, thanks to the Internet, enjoys a pretty wide readership in Australia. In one of his books, Wilson says it is essential for boys to play with swords and guns; to meet a deep need to have something to defend, something to represent in battle. You might have heard stories like this; that there is this inbuilt capacity for violence that is necessary in case you have to save someone.

“… it is absolutely essential for boys to play with wooden swords and plastic guns. Boys have a deep need to have something to defend, something to represent in battle.”

— Doug Wilson

Note: since preaching this series in 2022, Wilson’s infamy and influence has increased and in a recent “no quarter November” he was selling branded flamethrowers.

For Wilson, to beat our weapons into pruning hooks too soon — to not be part of the military-industrial complex and buying the myth of redemptive violence — that will leave us fighting the dragon with a pruning hook.

“And to beat the spears into pruning hooks prematurely, before the war is over, will leave you fighting the dragon with a pruning hook.”

— Doug Wilson

Like Eisenhower, he has this passage from Isaiah in mind — where God will bring restoration and a transformed world, replacing war, violence, with peace, so that instead of making weapons people will make farming tools, pruning hooks and ploughshares.

“He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”

— Isaiah 2:4

Folks like Wilson do not think that day of the Lord has come yet. For them we should still be armed and dangerous, with the weapons of the world.

Du Mez also points out just how angry Wilson got at the idea women might be warriors, for a bunch of reasons including that they are not as good at the “important work of violence.” Now, you have probably got your own thoughts about women becoming soldiers, but that is not the point. When you make the enemy someone who can be stabbed, you rob women of their place in the battle against the powers.

“… they were a sexual distraction to male soldiers, they could get pregnant, they distorted ‘covenantal lines of authority,’ and they were not as good as men in ‘the important work of violence.’”

When Eve is created as Adam’s helper (Genesis 2:18), it is the word ezer; a word with military connotations — more like ally — that is used of God throughout the Bible. Ultimately this myth of redemptive violence, that wants men wielding swords and fighting people, is the myth of redemptive patriarchy; a myth of redemptive male violence.

It is a myth built on the cursed pattern of relationships in Genesis 3 where “he” rules over “her” — not where they rule together and she is an ally in the cause. And we do have a problem with the myth of redemptive patriarchy and male entitlement through power here in Australia. It is expressed in the rate of family violence perpetrated by men in our country, and the soaring numbers of sexual assaults perpetrated by boys in our schools. This does not come from nowhere; it is supported by narratives that paint heroism as using power to make the world what you think it should be. Domination, rather than the sort of dominion we were made for, is built into our lives at a societal level, and an individual level.

I am not sure these folks going on about taking up the sword, with a vision of masculinity that sees an inherent capacity for violence, have read their Bibles, where our enemy is not flesh and blood, but the devil, and his schemes, these powers, spiritual forces (Ephesians 6:11-12) — a real gun is not going to be much more useful than a toy one at this point.

And the “armour of God” we use in this fight — it is not armour geared towards violence; the sword in this war is the word of God; get your kids to play with it. And the way of life that prepares us for this fight is not playing with guns, it is prayer (Ephesians 6:17-18).

Plus, even though our enemy is the dragon-serpent — if we take up the sword and respond with violence, the story of the Bible seems to be that we defeat ourselves and choose his side — and the victory over the dragon comes through non-violent redemptive sacrifice.

Satan enters the scene as some sort of legged serpent, a dragon (Genesis 3). And then, when Cain is angry at Abel, God says sin is crouching at the door — like some personified wild animal, a power, desiring to have him (Genesis 4:7). And when he gives in to that power, he gets violent; he kills his brother (Genesis 4:8). This is a thread we traced through Genesis; to Nimrod, the violent killer who built Babylon and Assyria (Genesis 10:9-12).

The temptation Satan offers through the powers is the same one he offers Jesus in the wilderness — as we saw in Matthew — the temptation to grab hold of the kingdoms of the world with power (Matthew 4:8-9); to play the Babylon game; to run a domination system, or enjoy its rewards. To bow down to the dragon and serve his kingdom, embracing his way of death. And Jesus does not grasp. We do not actually fight the dragon — we are not the hero. Jesus does. Jesus is. And he tells us his kingdom features peacemakers (Matthew 5:9), that his people will reject violence, and turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39), and love our enemies (Matthew 5:44), and he tells his disciples to put away their swords, because those who draw the sword will die by the sword (Matthew 26:52).

The whole point of his life was to model something different to a life under the powers, the power of Satan — the violent dominion systems, because he came to model the kingdom of God, and invite us to join him in it. Even if Revelation depicts him defeating the dragon, his victory is won at the cross, through the blood of the lamb (Revelation 12:9, 11). He confounds the beastly myth of redemptive violence and provides an altogether different story for us to live by, just like Genesis did for Israel. And he calls us to put away our swords, deny ourselves, and take up our cross — following him (Matthew 16:24). Jesus invites us to life not under the powers — the power of Satan — the violent dominion systems, but in the kingdom of God. He invites us to life in a different story — the story told in the Old Testament from start to finish — from Moses to the Prophets — Jesus says he is what holds the story together (Luke 24:26-27). He says the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets — the whole Old Testament — are written about him; that he has come to fulfil them (Luke 24:44), and that this fulfilment is not found in wielding a sword, but suffering and death on a cross, by being crucified by those who wield swords, so that he might bring forgiveness of sins and new life by the Spirit (Luke 24:46-47). His death and resurrection are the climax of history, and of the integrated collection of books in the Old Testament.

The whole story of the Bible is a story that invites us to be truly human by resisting violence and domination and the powers, and finding life in God’s kingdom.

In this story we are not the hero. We cannot save ourselves or fix the world, and the military industrial state cannot throw back the forces of chaos, because they are often aligned with the forces of chaos, even as God appoints them as the sword. Heroism in this story is not about the sword; the sword is deadly. It does not just kill our enemies as we swing it, it destroys us with every blow; violence disintegrates us, taking us further away from the life of love we were created for, that Jesus embodies.

The way of life that comes with the story of Jesus is to take up our cross. It is the life Paul describes in Philippians 2 (Philippians 2:5). A life shaped by Jesus and his story, because his story is now our story, and it provides the pattern for all our relationships. And I want to suggest that life in this story is going to involve two commitments that change how we engage in the world in ways that make us truly human — first, a commitment to being better readers of stories, and second, committing ourselves to living in God’s story, the story of Jesus, and so embracing non-violence as we embody the story of Jesus.

This will mean becoming better readers of the Bible — the sword we are meant to wield — and participants in its ongoing story, so it shapes our lives and actions (Ephesians 6:17). I reckon, often, we are not great readers of the Bible, and part of the key to reading the Bible well, especially in narrative bits, is not just to see Jesus as the fulfilment of the story, but to ask “am I seeing behaviour that is like Jesus in this story, or like the pattern of the dragon, or cursed relationships?”

The Bible is full of descriptions of violence, but that violence normally gets destructive and out of hand rather than being redemptive. So we will celebrate David slaying his giant — explicitly without a sword (1 Samuel 17:50) — but not notice how violence becomes embedded in his family system and basically destroys everything as his sons go to war with him, and each other (2 Samuel 12:10). And somehow we will say Christian men need swords or guns or violence (or flamethrowers). The story of the Bible exposes the problem with our hearts, and with the idea that we can turn to violence to solve our problems.

Being better readers of stories might also mean reading better stories. Karen Swallow Prior, who I mentioned last chapter, is a professor of literature. She has written a book called On Reading Well, about how the stories we choose to engage with can be paths to cultivating virtue, because stories do actually teach us how we should live. She reckons stories work better than facts, or other forms of education that focus on techniques, because they let us imagine different experiences so we can explore new ways to live.

“Literature replicates the world of the concrete, where the experiential learning necessary for virtue occurs. Such experiential learning does not come through technique.”

We see characters reacting to situations in ways that are concrete where ideas might be abstract. So the sorts of stories we watch, and the sort of characters that shape our imagination — that matters. As we judge the characters we encounter that shapes our own character.

“… the act of judging the character of a character shapes the reader’s own character. Through the imagination, readers identify with the character, learning about human nature and their own nature through their reactions to the vicarious experience.”

But this will also mean being more sensitive to the formative power of stories around us — not just the myth of redemptive violence, but visions of the good life built on grasping and consuming and being the hero of our own story — so we can spot the powers and disarm them, and expose them to rob them of their power over us and others; and that we might even choose stories that cultivate virtue in us.

And maybe we need more Inklings — more Tolkiens and Lewises telling stories — whether in books, or TV, or video games, or just to our kids at night — that subvert the powerful myths of our world, that offer escape, and even what Tolkien called “the eucatastrophe” — the unexpected happy ending.

“The eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale… the consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn.’”

— Tolkien, On Fairy Stories

Tolkien believed our hearts desire this eucatastrophic moment because we are created to experience the unexpected happy ending caught up in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

“The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels… among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable Eucatastrophe.”

So that is the first bit. The second bit is a commitment not just to believing the story of Jesus is true, but to living in it — which will mean letting it provide the shape of our life. That will mean rejecting the myths offered by our world, by the powers, including the myth of redemptive violence, and arming ourselves instead with the sword that is God’s word by taking up our cross and following Jesus. This is harder than it sounds, but it is also less abstract than it sounds, because it is exactly what Paul is describing in Philippians 2. This is, in MacIntyre’s words, the story that teaches us “what we are to do” in any moment. The death and resurrection of Jesus are the culmination of the story of the Bible — the story that reveals the truly human life to us, both the way to life and a way of life.

The theologian Michael Gorman has been mega-helpful to me with this stuff, and he reckons Philippians 2’s retelling of the Gospel is both the central organising story of Paul’s life, and of our life as Christians. He says in the cross and resurrection Paul sees God revealing that faithful and holy opposition to evil — redemption — is not found through inflicting violence, but through absorbing violence and death, turning the other cheek.

“Covenant fidelity, justification, holiness and opposition to evil are not achieved by the infliction of violence and death but by the absorption of violence and death.”

I want to be careful here, because I am not saying that if you are being abused by the sort of person who believes that violence is a legitimate answer you should stay subject to that relationship, or the violence. What I am saying is that responding with violence, taking up the sword, produces a vicious cycle, and to forgive and relinquish that right to take up the sword and destroy your enemy is to embrace the way of Jesus. Wielding the sword, turning to violence, will always shape us, and it will shape us to believe and participate in a story that is counter to the Gospel. This also does not mean we do not let those whom God has given the sword — the government — pursue justice.

But this is where we go wrong when we think the idea for raising masculine men is teaching boys to play with guns and swords, encouraging them to kill the giants or dragons in their lives, to be the hero, and teaching girls to look for a violent protector, rather than teaching them to fight evil not by repaying evil with evil, but by embracing life in God’s story.

In this story the dragon loses as God’s power is displayed in the weakness of the cross, in Jesus’ refusal to grasp power the way Satan tempts us to, and as the full weight of the violent dominion system is brought against Jesus, God is liberating humans — his violent enemies — by forgiving us instead of crushing us and destroying our rebellion.

“The normal human temptation to squash enemies, to eliminate the impure other, is not the response of God in Christ. Instead, God reaches out to reconcile: people to God, and people to people.”

This is not the myth of redemptive violence but the story of redemptive love and grace. Our normal human impulse to squash our enemies is not the way God works. God works, through Jesus, to reach out and bring reconciliation; between us and him, and between us and each other.

This experience of love as the story of the Gospel becomes our story shapes how we live as disciples of Jesus; as we take up our cross, not because we have to throw the forces of chaos back into the abyss, but because we recognise that this is how Jesus did it, this is how he resisted the powers. He did not grasp, or embrace violence, but gave his life, suffering death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8).

Gorman says these verses are showing us what true humanity looks like, in contrast to Adam, and what true divinity looks like, as we seek to bear God’s image in the world. He says to be truly human is to be Christlike, which is to be Godlike — and for Paul, and for Gorman, this means to be crosslike in our life in the world.

“The incarnation and cross manifest, and the exaltation recognises, Christ’s true humanity, in contrast to Adam, as well as his true divinity. Therefore, to be truly human is to be Christlike, which is to be Godlike.”

The Gospel is a story that does not just restore our relationships from a pattern of sin, to a pattern of godlikeness, it transforms the way we see masculinity, or femininity — our humanity — it reshapes all our relationships, and how we understand life imitating our hero as we are transformed into his image. It calls us from violence and into communion and love and a life of reconciliation and peacemaking.

He says the church is a community that inhabits the life of God by inhabiting God’s story, as God inhabits us by his Spirit and transforms us into people who reveal his character in our lives. Our life story, in relationships pursuing the way of Jesus, embody and proclaim the story we are part of. The participation in this story and retelling of this story shapes us because it becomes the story that shapes our actions in the world.

“The church inhabits this triune, cruciform God, who in turn inhabits the church. Thus the church’s life story embodies and thereby proclaims the narrative identity and gracious saving power of the triune God.”

God is inviting you into his life, and into his story — to leave the stories of the powers behind, the violent ways of death and destruction, and find life together with him, and so to become truly human. Will you keep living as people shaped by his story as we dwell in it together?

September 10, 2025 Add Comment

Being Human — Chapter Eight — Being true-ly human in an age of deception

This is an adaptation of the eighth talk from a 2022 sermon series — you can listen to it as a podcast here, or watch it on video. It’s not unhelpful to think of this series as a ‘book’ preached chapter by chapter. And, a note — there are lots of pull quotes from various sources in these posts that were presented as slides in the sermons, but not read out in the recordings.

We have covered a lot of ground this series. We have looked at many of the ways we are being disintegrated as humans; pulled apart because we are pulled in so many directions all at once; we are bombarded with images in the spaces we occupy, in ways that shape our desires; our technology allows us to overcome the limits of our bodies, and there are narratives telling us the best thing we could do is leave our bodies behind and become immortal by making ourselves one with the cloud.

We have seen how there is a real sense that as we have shifted from Christendom, where there was a shared story about the world — where God was God, and the King and Queen were the rulers, and everyone knew their place, and you did not change — to a modern liberal democracy, where we are free from forces beyond ourselves; and we have closed ourselves off to those forces, and to the supernatural — in the West. How we now prefer to express ourselves and be authentic as an expression of this liberation. We saw how this means we have lost a great narrative; a story that unites us as humans — to each other, and to God. And this also meant moving away from communion with God — the triune God who is a community of love — being how we understand what it means to be human. We have now become authorities — self-authors of our own lives.

We saw how the world has become not just complicated, but complex.

We are caught in global webs and supply chains we do not understand. We have seen how our technology shapes our brains — through dopamine hits and how this is been co-opted by limbic capitalism — and how what we see is shaped by the algorithms of surveillance capitalism; to sell us stuff based on our desires and addictions and patterns of behaviour. If all this is true, it presents us with a challenge when it comes to knowing what is true — and being able to tell when we are freely acting as individuals — who are meant to be free from powers outside ourselves, and free to express ourselves. How do we know if we are expressing our own desires, or the desires implanted in our head by the machine world?

When we talk about these unseen forces shaping our thinking so we will use our bodies, and our energy, and our money in service of their kingdoms — while telling us we are free — this is what the beastly powers and principalities the Bible talks about look like in the real world. This is how — in Paul’s words in Ephesians 2, we are dead, captivated to fleshly desires, and under the power of the prince of the air. Being truly human is about being liberated from the serpent’s coils, and his lies (Ephesians 2:1-3).

Part of the disintegration happening to our humanity — and perhaps our own individual experience — involves our inability to know what is true because we are not just bombarded with images of the good life that fire up our desires, but with competing ideas about what is true. And if the systems we plug into and play with are not just geared to shape our desires, our beliefs and our thoughts through ‘scripted disorientation’ in ways we cannot see, we are going to find it tricky to know what truth is. This makes the task of building one another up “speaking the truth in love” or literally “truthing in love,” difficult, and makes it likely that, instead, we will be swept all over the place; ‘blown here and there’ (Ephesians 4:14-15).

So as we start tying up these threads — looking at the world that is disintegrating us — I want to suggest that we are made to be integrated; that we are made to be whole; joined up; connected — one — integrated in body, mind, and soul — sure, but also integrated into community — with other people — in the body of Jesus as our reading describes us and united — one — with God. This is the key to being truly human and holding it all together; and what has happened with all the social change we have covered is that these integrities have been pulled apart — because we — together and as individuals — live lives in the world that believe the lie of the serpent.

This is especially challenging in our age of digital propaganda — empires have always used imagery to enforce beliefs in truths within their system — Israel had the temple and sacrificial systems and its ritual life, Babylon had its stories and idols, Rome had its temples and statues and stories and spectacle — but in the 20th century a guy named Edward Bernays — Freud’s nephew — drew on his uncle’s insights and applied them to public persuasion — in his book Propaganda.

It was a popular book in the image management project for the Nazis in Germany — but it is also a handbook for modern politics, advertising, and “public relations” — you might know that is the field I worked in before ministry.

In his book’s opening paragraph Bernays says the manipulation of our habits and opinions is foundational to democratic society.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.”

Edward Bernays

While we feel free, it is like we are caught in a web by these spider-men who spin their lines so:

“We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”

Bernays

And these spider-men — not the friendly neighbourhood variety — are the true ruling power in our societies.

“Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

Bernays

There has also been a massive increase in what the academic Harry Frankfurt called bull**** (note, I didn’t use this word when preaching, I called it ‘bullpoo’) — a technical description of deceptive speech that is not outright lies, but does not bother trying to be true.

Frankfurt reckons we are surrounded by spin, by misrepresentation, by bull****, which he says is a type of speech “… unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about…”

He suggests it arises from “the widespread conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least everything that pertains to the conduct of his country’s affairs.”

He has just described Twitter (now X); but also the animating forces of fake news and troll machines and the outrage industry, and the spiders spinning political speech who cannot speak straight sentences but use what George Orwell called doublespeak.

Like surveillance capitalism, and limbic capitalism, these propaganda machines are unseen forces manipulating and shaping our beliefs by spinning webs of half truths — the powers and principalities in our world propping up empires built on spin and idolatry and deception and that bull****.

If these forces are at work in our world how can we know what is true? How can we live truly? Especially if it is all fragmented and now there are multiple spiders spinning multiple webs — all offering their own truths according to our interests — like in a democracy — there is a reason people say we live in a post-truth world. Part of the shift away from God has involved separating big-T truths — facts — about earth from our spiritual values — personal little-t ‘truths’.

The author Nancy Pearcey borrows a picture from Francis Schaeffer of a two-storey (and two-story, pun intended) house to describe this shift and the way it plays out on modern questions of truth about our bodies, and our lives — in this metaphorical house, empirical objective truth — the scientific realm — is one storey, the facts, that shape public life, and beliefs about God falling into the subjective storey of private beliefs — values — where what is true for you is not true for me.

But what if those areas — morality and theology — are areas where there is actually capital-T truth that should shape not just our lives, but society?

And — to be fair — part of what led to this fragmenting was a lack of integrity on the church’s part — historically, with the corruption that prompted the Reformation. The Reformation created multiple ways to be Christian; it made multiple truths imaginable in Christendom — but it is happening presently too, where the church, which is meant to teach us truth, has acted like the powers and principalities — using our power to abuse and force people to conform while claiming to represent the capital-T Truth — and then employing spin and propaganda and cover-ups — people have inevitably — as they have walked away from those abusive institutions — walked away from the truths they proclaimed.

This has led a bunch of folks my age and younger towards deconstruction. This might be where you are at — right now. Now — I am all for deconstruction when we are deconstructing falsehoods and abuses in the church — both church traditions here are children of the Reformation; and I am all for recognising the way abusive institutions have caused wounds that intersect in damaging ways with the truths we have been taught by those institutions — and I recognise at times it can be super tricky to separate God from the church… but our deconstruction also has to extend to the powers and principalities corrupting the church — to seeing if these behaviours are true — if they are godly — and the risk with deconstruction is where we find ourselves “did God really say” and being drawn by those same powers to grasp onto things God says are bad for us. Deconstruction will only get you so far — it becomes disintegrating and destructive without reconstruction being part of the picture; without some sense that truth exists and that to be fully human is to live a life of integrity — one that is true.

If we want to be truly human — well, our origin story has something to say here — not just Genesis — but the Gospel — and Ephesians 2-4 (the Bible reading for the sermon) — unpacks what it looks like to find our life in that story, rather than the propaganda pulling us back into the serpent’s coils.

We do not live in a two-storey universe where there are facts related to the material world and values related to the spiritual side of life; if the same God is the creator of heavens and earth then — sure — there are two storeys — but there are truths in each; that we split them is a product of a disenchanted world where we get rid of the heavens and spiritual thinking, and see it having no bearing on reality.

And then ultimately we see that the Bible tells one story of the two storeys being brought together. Jesus turns up to end the exile — from Eden and Israel — as the tabernacle-in-the-flesh who brings heaven on earth — who comes to save us from homeless life in non-places — and he does not do this by restoring the temple to its former glory — as heavenly space — you might remember as we worked through Matthew’s Gospel that our origin story — the Gospel — is the story of heaven and earth coming together as the heavenly human brings the kingdom of God. To be truly human is to get our facts straight about heavenly life; about God and who he created us to be as we reflect heaven on earth as his image-bearing people.

We also live in a two-story world — in the narrative sense — we are either living in God’s story, or the serpent’s. The serpent was the first creature to introduce uncertainty about facts when it came to the upper storey — the heavenly realm — he got humans questioning ‘did God really say’ — questioning ‘is God really good’ (Genesis 3:1). He was a propagandist… putting the ‘pagan’ in pro—pagan—da. And since that lie worked so well he has been using this same deception to devour others. To disintegrate us — using powers and principalities — elemental forces — to shape the world and so shape our beliefs.

Humans became captives to deception — to deceptive idolatrous systems that harden our hearts into stone — like the people of Judah (Jeremiah 17:1). Idols and sin rewrite and rewire so that our hearts are “deceitful above all things” and “beyond cure” (Jeremiah 17:9). We need new hearts — with truth written on them by God, rather than idolatry inscribed on them by us — so we will see what is true (Jeremiah 31:33).

Which is what Jesus came to bring — the Word of God from the beginning — God tabernacling in the world (John 1:1, 14), as he came to liberate us from the father of lies — the devil — and those — like the Pharisees — who would build systems of deception to pull people away from God (John 8:44-45). Jesus used his “I am” statements through John to identify himself with the God who created the world and he describes himself as the way, the truth, and the life — the one in whom both storeys — the heavenly or spiritual — and the material — are held together and expressed as one integrated truth (John 14:6-7). And he calls us to find life in him — and John says he writes so that we might believe this true human is the path to true life (John 20:31).

So that we might — as Jesus puts it — find life in oneness with the triune God, being drawn into the eternal communion of love — through him (John 17:20-21),

as he provides hearts that point us to the truth by giving us the Spirit — the Spirit of truth (John 14:16-17, 16:13).

What is interesting in John — given the way he sets up deception as devilish and truth as found in Jesus — is how he reports Pilate’s words at Jesus’ trial — here Jesus is up against the face of the bull machine — Rome — in Jerusalem; the deceptive idolatrous regime that claims to be bringing heaven on earth, and is full of spin — and Pilate looks at Jesus, who claims to be king — not Caesar — and that is the charge against him — Jesus says he has come on the side of truth; to testify to the truth, that everyone who listens to truth — two-storey truth — listens to him (John 18:37), and Pilate says “what is truth” (John 18:38)?

We are all Pilates now…

Pilate does not recognise truth when it is standing in front of him. He becomes wrapped up in the serpent’s schemes, and the schemes of his children: the Pharisees. Jesus is executed. And in that moment — as the serpent strikes his heel, the serpent is crushed (Genesis 3:16); his grasp on humans — built through deception — comes unravelled as he is exposed; and as God’s nature — his love — is exposed for those who can see the truth — we were dead — in our sins — following the serpent’s story (Ephesians 2:1-2), but now, God who is rich in mercy has made us alive… by grace (Ephesians 2:4-5).

If you sit here and you are convinced by the evils of a world built on deception and manipulation and what that does to our humanity in a world where we have walked away from God — that is the serpent — that is the same force at work in the world that is exposed as a deceived world kills God’s son. Come out. Believe the truth. If you are tempted to deconstruct, or disintegrate — to proclaim one truth and live another — come back to Jesus. Away from death.

Not only is the serpent diabolical — literally — God is good and loving and shows that in the way Jesus radically refuses to use his power to manipulate and deceive; to the length he goes to in order to not be coercive, so that he dies, humiliated, on a cross to make a way to life with God, and expose us to the truth about God.

Jesus — the way, the truth, and the life — offers the pathway to the integrated life of communion with God, and others, we were made for — and the path away from the deception of the serpent, and our deceitful serpent-like hearts. He reconstructs us.

Paul talks a couple of times in his letters about people having been bewitched — and enslaved — to the elemental spiritual forces of the world — who are opposed to Jesus (Galatians 3:1, 4:3). He talks about these forces built on hollow and deceptive philosophy, rather than on Jesus — the fullness of God in human form (Colossians 2:8-9). He says we died to those with Jesus, and so we should stop living by their scripts (Colossians 2:20). It is interesting that in both cases he is talking about people who want to operate as though we are under law creating rules as truths to live by — not grace — but there is a pattern where spiritual forces are being used to pull people away from truth. Away from oneness with Jesus.

In Ephesians 4 he describes what this looks like — what it looks like to be one with Jesus. One with each other. In communion — as one body and one Spirit (Ephesians 4:4-6). He describes a life grounding ourselves in the truth, and speaking it to each other — whether that is through particular speaking roles in church; or speaking to one another as the church — the goal is that we be established in the truth of the Gospel and united and mature in Christ, so that we are not infants tossed around by the deceitful scheming of people in the world who are serpent-like (Ephesians 4:11-14).

Paul’s antidote to a poisonous post-truth world hell-bent on our destruction is being people who “truth in love” — that is the literal translation — in the body of Christ — living integrated lives grounded in truth as we grow together… built up in love. This “truthing” in love certainly includes speaking the truth — because Paul is going to come back to that — we are to avoid lies — and, I would suggest — as much as possible propaganda and that bull (Ephesians 4:25).

Paul talks about the same heart-hardening that the Old Testament sees as a product of idolatry (Ephesians 4:17-18) — and that is part of the picture for us in a world where we are bombarded with lies and images that shape our hearts — so that we give ourselves over to greed and indulgence (Ephesians 4:19). Paul is describing their world — and ours.

But we are people who are committing to be taught in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus (Ephesians 4:20-21); putting off the selves shaped by deceit, that spin our webs of deceit even as we are caught in them — to become new people shaped by the truth, and committed to speaking it in a world of deceit as we become like God again, reflecting his righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:22-24).

And that is hard. Because deceit is hardwired into our world — and — without the Spirit — it is hardwired into our hearts. And we have to learn this. We have to learn to hear truth, and we have to learn to speak it — and speak it in a way that makes it plausible in our disenchanted two-storey world where this stuff is ‘value’ rather than fact — and where the institutional church has often been complicit in propaganda and that bull and abuse… and where we are formed to have — and voice — quick opinions about everything.

I am going to suggest two ways we might change how we approach truth, as people — how we work towards integration rather than disintegration — that will hopefully make us more likely to speak truth and less likely to spin that bull.

If what the Bible says — what Jesus says — not what the church says — if it is true, then Jesus is truth — and the truth about Jesus operates both in the material world — the world of facts — and the spiritual world — the world of values — in fact, he integrates the two; and so should we. We should reject the idea that we have a public and a private self — or that there is no truth — we are all going to pick a framework to work out truth from anyway; and none of us is free from powers beyond ourselves — so we are not losing anything if we choose to start with God — the creator — being the one who gets to declare what is true — and with Jesus’ claims that he is the way, the truth, and the life — and God in the flesh — as a starting point for assessing other truths.

I want to suggest the first real act of pursuing truth is contemplation — prayerful contemplation — the philosopher Hannah Arendt — whose intellectual project was trying to figure out how people in Germany came to believe the lies of the Nazis — she reckons we can only know truth; and live truly, if we stop moving and speaking — if we cease — if we be still and know that God is God. We have to free ourselves from the webs that entangle us.

“Every movement, the movements of body and soul as well as of speech and reasoning, must cease before truth. Truth, be it the ancient truth of Being or the Christian truth of the living God, can reveal itself only in complete human stillness.”

Hannah Arendt

Contemplating truth will mean listening to God — making headspace and time to engage with God’s word and pray that God’s living and active Spirit might guide us, through his living and active word, push us outside of the forces at work in our world against God, and towards God.

We will look more at this next week — but there is a trick to reading God’s word in conversation with other humans — within traditions that might need deconstructing — it is not always easy to separate our experience of people using the Bible without love, from the truth the Bible contains — and there is a whole internet industry geared towards deconstruction that basically sounds like people asking “did God really say”… but I reckon one guide is to read the Bible the way Jesus did — as one story — that testifies about him so that we receive Jesus as God’s truth.

True speech is actually going to require listening — to God — first of all — and to others — before we run around with our opinions. This sort of contemplation is not just an individual act — it is one we pursue as we engage in “truthing in love” together. I reckon the modern church is too geared towards actions and words — and online hot takes — that bull — without truth because we do not live contemplative lives.

Part of this contemplative life is going to involve cultivating the humility to recognise your limits; that your access to truth is limited by your brain, and your body, being stuck in a particular time and space — so you invite other people to speak the truth in love to you — and — as much as possible, receiving that truth without being defensive — this is something I am working on, personally — but if you are subjected to powers outside yourself, and told you are free — and that you have your own truth — you need someone to burst the bubble; we are not in a good position to be objective about ourselves, or the world — our standpoints, our experiences — the forces that have worked us over — we cannot see them, but others might be able to — especially older folks who have been through a bit — and older folks — I think I can still speak on behalf of the younger folks — we need you. But, there is a flipside where older folks might have been stuck in bad traditions so long a younger perspective can be helpful too — this is where the “in love” bit comes in to our truthing — so younger folks, let me embrace middle age and tell you we need you to speak truth to us older folks too; calling us to repent; to deconstruct and reconstruct our lives around the truth.

C. S. Lewis reckoned we should also listen to dead people — not in a spooky way — but by reading older books from outside our time — books from our time are a product of our standpoint, but in the words of older, dead, Christians we might find ideas that critique our take on the world.

“Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.”

C.S Lewis, in his prologue to a translation of Athanasius ‘On the Incarnation’

In the olden days there were monastic folks who would withdraw from the city and go live in the desert — these desert mothers and fathers had a totally different perspective on their time — and the practices of the church — and listening to voices outside our experience; and outside the norm — might be part of proper humble contemplation. Read less white men. Listen to the people who are deconstructing because of the way the church has bought into lies, and contemplate how we are part of that picture as the church; the body of Jesus.

This contemplation might liberate us from forces we cannot see in our own time, and our own hearts — it might help us deconstruct lies in order to reconstruct our lives around truth. It might help us actually speak truthfully, rather than speaking that bull. We need that sort of truth in our lives.

The second practice is integration — it relates — but if we have this capital-T truth about God and humanity that truth should be true in every sphere and integrated into our lives and our actions and our other beliefs. It can be tempting in a world built on lies to embrace scepticism about all claims — but I wonder if integration — starting with a foundation — is a more hopeful posture — where, rather than being suspicious of voices that do not conform to our experience — our standpoint — we ask ourselves “how does this fit with what I know to be true because I know Jesus?” We are kind of perfectly positioned in how we are meeting together as two traditions to humbly recognise that different human traditions have limits; that there will be truths we have been blinded to by our traditions, and to humbly seek to reform and integrate those truths into our lives — our habits — and our beliefs as we seek truth together. Real truth is truth that is embedded into our lives — and a community — that is how “truthing in love” is about more than just words — but speaking truthfully to each other also requires the work of both contemplating and being able to integrate the words we say with true things about the world, and about God.

Part of the disintegrating nature of spin and that bull is that it is almost never substantial or integrated with deep traditions — with ideas beyond itself. Spin, or bull****, emerges from a lack of expertise, rather than expertise. The writer and academic Karen Swallow Prior has this great advice she gives her students about the pursuit of truth being about integrating deep knowledge, rather than creating totally new thinking, built off an old story by Jonathan Swift about a spider talking to a bee…

“This story within the story consists of a discourse between a spider (a “Modern,” who symbolizes for Swift the worst of modern subjective thinking) and a bee (an “Ancient,” who symbolizes the best of traditional classical learning).”

Karen Swallow Prior

The spider has spun a deadly web built from within itself, just to entrap others — and the bee, facing its death, points out that the spider brings darkness and death — it produces nothing but excrement and poison from its work; it is disconnected to anything beyond itself, while a bee builds a nourishing house of life-giving sweetness by connecting the life it builds to a community and to a structure it puts together from outside itself. She reckons our approach to finding and speaking truth — in her case it is about students being “bees, not spiders.” Integrating knowledge in their essays is about avoiding spin and building knowledge from good sources outside ourselves, but she sees her task in a post-truth world as, increasingly, helping people spot the difference between the poisonous lies of the spider, and life-giving truths — nectar.

“I see now that the challenge is increasingly to better equip students to distinguish between poison and nectar, to build from strong materials rather than to create airy edifices which, like spiderwebs, are easily swept away once their lethal work is done.”

Karen Swallow Prior

She, like Paul in Ephesians, sees the key to not being swept away, or sweeping away others, as being firmly planted in the truth of the Gospel, and having it integrated into the other truths we believe and speak.

Be bees. Not spiders. People committed to living truthfully and in love together; one with God and each other — and to speaking truthfully to each other and the world as we bear witness to the true human who is the way, the truth, and the life.

September 8, 2025 Add Comment

Being Human — Chapter Seven — The jig is up (how habitats shape our habits)

This is an adaptation of the seventh talk from a 2022 sermon series — you can listen to it as a podcast here, or watch it on video. It’s not unhelpful to think of this series as a ‘book’ preached chapter by chapter. And, a note — there are lots of pull quotes from various sources in these posts that were presented as slides in the sermons, but not read out in the recordings.

We have done a few “go back in time” exercises so far; this time I want you to imagine yourself in some present-day places — and I’ll use photos to help — I want you to imagine you’re in Paris, at the airport.

This shouldn’t be hard, because all airports look the same; there are certain architectural features — like check-in desks, security, and those arrival and departure boards that are basically the same.

Which means the airport looks the same in London.

And in Brisbane.

It is the same with train stations… Paris

Looks like London…

Except for the bears…

Looks like Sydney…

Supermarkets also look the same everywhere — France…

… England…

Australia… in a global market you will even find the same brands everywhere you go.

And then there is the Swedish embassy… IKEA. Which looks the same in Stockholm, in London, and in Brisbane…

Have you thought about the architecture of these places; what they do to us? Whether that is the places we go to go somewhere else that all look the same — airports… train stations… or the places we go to consume — to buy?

Even if you haven’t — others have — very deliberately. What about the shopping centre? Like Garden City…

The first ever shopping centre was created by the architect Victor Gruen as somewhere people would go to lose themselves in the bright lights and the indoor gardens with fountains and the mazey design, while finding themselves through buying stuff.

The exact moment that you lose yourself and start buying things you didn’t really want is called the Gruen Transfer; it is where you reach what is called “scripted disorientation” — you have lost yourself, but you are following someone else’s script.

Disorienting scripts shape the layout of the supermarket; like how at the shops the milk is up the back, so you have to go through the chocolate or biscuit aisle to get there. Even where things are put on shelves and what is at eye level is calculated to make you spend more…


IKEA is built as a maze, so you have to walk through the showroom maze, and then the buying maze, walking past stacks of stuff you weren’t going to buy…

This is choice architecture — a deliberate shaping of consumer habitats to shape our consumer habits so we will buy more.

The philosopher Matthew Crawford wrote a book, The World Beyond Your Head, showing how spaces are shaped to sell us stuff by grabbing our attention.

He tells two stories — one from Korea, which is kind of “in the future” for us — where buses come equipped with “flavour radios” that pump the smell of Dunkin’ Donuts into the bus, as an ad for donuts plays over the speaker, as the bus pulls up outside Dunkin’ Donuts…

And he talks about airports — this picture is from the site selling advertising space at the Brisbane Airport — where every space is covered with advertising — even the security trays — and your attention is demanded at every turn by people selling stuff…

That is, unless you pay for silence in the corporate lounge; where the sorts of people who create the habitats where our consumer habits are formed as we are bombarded with noise, pay for silence so their attention is free from distraction.

Crawford reckons our attention is our most valuable commodity.

“I would like to offer the concept of an attentional commons… Attention is the thing that is most one’s own: in the normal course of things, we choose what to pay attention to, and in a very real sense this determines what is real for us.”

Matthew Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head

He reckons we should create an attentional commons — we should see public space as common space for the common good and cut out advertising noise so we are able to pay attention and not be scripted and disoriented in public spaces like we are in shops. He makes a distinction between nudges — made famous by this book — and jigs…

“In general, when we are faced with an array of choices, how we choose depends very much on how those choices are presented to us (to the point that we will choose against our own best interests if the framing nudges us that way).”

Crawford

Nudges operate below the surface, framing how we approach decisions — like an IKEA floorplan — so we think we have decided ourselves. They can be good if they point us to things that are good for us.

Jigs are how we set up our environments to produce the actions we want — like a carpenter who uses jigs to make repeat cuts, or a chef who has set up their workstation just right for their task.

“A jig is a device or procedure that guides a repeated action by constraining the environment in such a way as to make the action go smoothly, the same each time, without his having to think about it.”

Crawford

And if character is stamped on us by repeated action — jigs make character-forming actions easier.

“The word ‘character’ comes from a Greek word that means ‘stamp.’ Character, in the original view, is something that is stamped upon you by experience, and your history of responding to various kinds of experience…”

Crawford

If we want to build character we might choose to shape our habitats to produce the habits we desire, or other people will do it for us. Because we are matter in space; spaces matter.

This French philosopher Marc Augé describes most spaces in modern cities as non-places. Places — he says — have three characteristics.

“Places have at least three characteristics in common. People want them to be places of identity, of relations and of history.”

Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Super-Modernity

They are where we go to understand and perform our identity; to relate to a community, and to be connected to history — to a shared past, and a shared story.

Architects of places deliberately structure them so people can act according to these characteristics.
Churches in medieval villages were places like this; they were cross-shaped buildings, with a steeple reaching up to heaven; they would host festivals and saint days and inside there would be a pulpit, where a story was preached, and stained-glass windows and art telling stories.

You would receive communion, with your community; while the graves of dead people from the church would be just outside.

Going to church meant participating in that place; that story; with those people — living and dead. It was not just to create roots, but grow from roots created by others… And there is something pretty cool for us City South folks about the relationship our Church of Christ family have with this space, and a privilege we might grow into as we share this space and cultivate life in it together.

Church spaces were once at the centre of city life; but now — well, they are still there — just surrounded by transport hubs and places of commerce and outdoor advertising. City squares are now non-places.

Non-places are the opposite of places — they are fast-paced places where we do not belong but move through as transient anonymous individuals.

“A space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place.”

“The real non-places of supermodernity are the ones we inhabit when we are driving down the motorway, wandering through the supermarket or sitting in an airport lounge waiting for the next flight.”

Marc Augé

The spaces we enter as driver, or consumer, or passenger — they are spaces where we are bombarded with advertising imagery that reinforces transience in the place of transcendence. Augé reckons they are inherently narcissistic, and they leave us simultaneously “always, and never, at home…”

We increasingly do not live where we are born, around familiar landmarks and people; we will not be buried in a graveyard next to our churches… we spend so much time in transient non-places; we live as pilgrims or exiles; disconnected from place and community and history.

Home is where we feel understood and known and connected, but transient people in non-places can feel home because they are familiar. If you are a traveller feeling disoriented in a foreign country, being in your car as an individual on a motorway, or walking through big stores — IKEAs — or staying in familiar hotel chains…

“But that we encounter the world as travellers creates a ‘paradox of non-place’ — where ‘a foreigner lost in a country he does not know can feel at home there only in the anonymity of motorways, service stations, big stores, or hotel chains.’”

Auge

Shopping and seeing brands you know can feel like a relief; these act like landmarks giving us a sense of connection…

“But that we encounter the world as travellers creates a ‘paradox of non-place’ — where ‘a foreigner lost in a country he does not know can feel at home there only in the anonymity of motorways, service stations, big stores, or hotel chains.’”

Victor Gruen’s original vision for shopping centres was a response to non-places — he wanted to create hubs where people could live and work and play locally — he hated cars and roads, which he called:

“avenues of horror, flanked by the greatest collection of vulgarity — billboards, motels, gas stations, shanties, car lots, miscellaneous industrial equipment, hot dog stands, wayside stores — ever collected by mankind.”

In other words, non-places. When his vision was not realised he moved back to Vienna, where a brand new shopping centre was being built… he had created a giant shopping machine…

“My creation wasn’t intended to create a giant shopping machine. I am devastated…”

Victor Gruen

He said he wanted to make America more like the village he had left, but had made Vienna more like America. He wanted the end of the shopping centre.

“I invented the shopping mall to make America more like Vienna and now I ended up making Vienna more like America. I hope all shopping malls end up neglected, abandoned and forgotten.”

Gruen

But now they are everywhere — as churches have moved to the margins, we have shopping centres. And as the theologian Jamie Smith points out; shopping centres function as temples; offering visions of the good life complete with routines and liturgies and priestly salespeople. Now — I just want to throw one other sort of physical space in the mix — another modern temple to the gods of fortune; the casino.

Casinos are designed to disorient… and worse — Natasha Dow Schüll wrote this book about modern gambling called Addiction by Design. She compares common places designed to build community rhythms and practices with casinos. One design style is wide and open and well lit.

“While modernist buildings sought to facilitate communitas through high ceilings, wide open space, bountiful lighting and windows, and a minimalist, uncluttered aesthetic…”

Natasha Dow Schüll

While casinos are designed with low ceilings, and maze-like layouts that direct your gaze, and your body, to the gambling machines; they are designed to keep you anonymous and disconnected.

“…casinos’ low, immersive interiors, blurry spatial boundaries, and mazes of alcoves accommodated ‘crowds of anonymous individuals without explicit connection with each other.’”

Schüll

They are lit in certain ways, and have no clocks, so that you will be disoriented — or rather — oriented towards the machines. There is a script for this disorientation.

“The intricate maze under the low ceiling never connects with the outside light or outside space. This disorients the occupant in space and time. One loses track of where one is and when it is.”

Schüll

She quotes Vegas heavyweight Bill Friedman’s book called Designing Casinos to Dominate the Competition, which proudly describes the purpose of the maze as being to confuse and confound; to get people lost so they will give themselves to the machines:

“The term maze is appropriate… it comes from the words to confuse or to confound and defines it as ‘an intricate, usually confusing network of interconnecting pathways, as in garden; a labyrinth… If a visitor has a propensity to gamble, the maze layout will evoke it.’”

Bill Friedman, Designing Casinos to Dominate the Competition

This sort of thing should make us angry. I reckon. It is also the same strategy that drives IKEA, except their maze gets you to buy Scandi furniture and homewares. But there is a new strategy in casino design competing with Friedman’s design — where rooms are open, and well lit, and beautiful… one where a guy named Roger Thomas sees himself not as an “architect” but as an “evoca-tect” — he wants to make rooms that will delight and excite; so that people will spend money.

“My job is to create excitement and delight — a task I’ve come to call evoca-tecture.”

“People tend to take on the characteristics of a room, they feel glamorous in a glamorous space and rich in a rich space. And who doesn’t want to feel rich?”

Roger Thomas

He says people take on the characteristics of a room — our habitats shape our habits, in part, by evoking our desires, and this has become a more popular design strategy — and you can bet the super-casino and lifestyle precinct built on our river will look more like this; while the pokie room at your local club will look more like Friedman’s… but what they will have in common is that the architecture is designed to take your money, and so are the machines… they are designed to disorient and addict and destroy…

Natasha Dow Schüll describes how designers adapt their machines to “fit the player” to make more money as gamblers will “play to extinction.”

“The more you manage to tweak and customize your machines to fit the player, the more they play to extinction; it translates into a dramatic increase in revenue.”

Schüll

This means playing till they run out of money; but it is a bit more sinister; talking about the use of the terminology by a speaker at a conference for pokie design, she said:

“The point of ‘extinction’ to which she referred is the point at which player funds run out. The operational logic of the machine is programmed in such a way as to keep the gambler seated until that end—the point of ‘extinction.’”

Schüll

They are designed to keep people on the machine till they absolutely have to leave, like those stories of video gamers who play so long they die at their keyboards… these machines are calibrated to needs, longings, and the pleasure receptors in our brains to pull people out of space and time — their bodies — addicts describe entering a zone where any sense of existence outside the machine disappears.

“Instead, the solitary, absorptive activity can suspend time, space, monetary value, social roles, and sometimes even one’s very sense of existence. ‘You can erase it all at the machines — you can even erase yourself.’”

Schüll

This sort of manipulation of the vulnerable should make us feel angry. Only, these same addiction mechanics are being used in our digital devices — not just by gambling apps, but by games for kids — and adults — with in-built micro-reward mechanisms that trigger exactly the same part of the brain — and Schüll says social media companies too — anyone making algorithms to keep your eyes hooked, and your hands active — people setting up the devices we carry with us to create the same scripted disorientation — the Gruen Transfer — everywhere we go — so they can make money from our addictions.

“Facebook, Twitter and other companies use methods similar to the gambling industry to keep users on their sites. In the online economy, revenue is a function of continuous consumer attention — which is measured in clicks and time spent.”

Schüll

Dr Anna Lembke wrote Dopamine Nation about how addiction works in our brain chemistry — she describes our phones as needles operating 24-7 to deliver digital dopamine.

“The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation. The world now offers a full complement of digital drugs… these include online pornography, gambling, and video games.”

Dr Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation

She describes our apps — games, social media, gambling, and porn — even shopping — as drugs geared towards addicting us; hooking our brains on dopamine — the pleasure chemical — and leaving us wanting more. And more.

She talks about a dopamine economy — or what this other guy David Courtwright, who wrote The Age of Addiction, calls limbic capitalism — where a system is built and propped up by government and industry and technology — to capitalise on chemically hooking our brains — our limbic system, where dopamine works — by stimulating us in targeted ways geared towards excessive consumption, and then addiction.

“Limbic capitalism refers to a technologically advanced but socially regressive business system in which global industries, often with the help of complicit governments encourage excessive consumption and addiction.”

David Courtwright, The Age of Addiction

His book is terrifying; it suggests like the pokie-machine player, we are working towards “extinction by design.” And if this is true, how can we ever feel at home in a world; in spaces; geared towards our extinction?

Especially if these forces are at work in our homes; Aussie academic Adam Alter wrote about why we are irresistibly addicted to technology; he reckons we are wired for addiction and disposed towards consuming — some more than others — and this is also wired into the technology we build into our lives — our spaces — in ways that reinforce our wiring. Addiction is an inevitable product of the places — environments — we occupy, including the technology we use.

“In truth, addiction is produced largely by environment and circumstance… A well-designed environment encourages good habits and healthy behavior; the wrong environment brings excess and — at the extremes — behavioral addiction.”

Adam Alter

He reckons well-designed environments are the key to good habits and healthy behaviour; to avoiding addiction, which he says is not about lacking willpower in crunch moments — if we are already nudged towards the habit, or hooked on it — one of the keys is avoiding temptation in the first place through how we have built our spaces…

“This contradicts the myth that we fail to break addictive habits because we lack willpower. In truth, it’s the people who are forced to exercise willpower who fall first. Those who avoid temptation in the first place tend to do much better.”

Alter

This starts at home. Our habitats shape our habits; we are made to be at home in our bodies, and in places that form us. And it turns out the more our attention is pulled out of physical places into digital non-places, where we engage as viewers, browsers, and users — the more homeless we feel. The evidence is stacking up that digital non-places make us lonely — disconnected — exiled — and narcissistic. Online spaces like Amazon and Facebook are like pokie machines; designed to pull us in; our experience is shaped by algorithms that are scripted to adapt the machine to us, while our dopamine-hungry brains crave bigger hits. It is a brave new world.

And maybe what is worst is when church spaces become non-places rather than sanctuaries from this world — when we copy the architecture of the shopping centre, or casino — building mega-facilities people drive to like shopping centres, where people flows and signage guide us into black-box rooms, where our attention is oriented towards screens.

And notice how all these churches end up…

looking…

… the same. Even the Presbyterian ones.
Like non-places built for transience, not transcendence.

Some of us met in buildings like this in West End — one was a theatre, one was the church building pictured in the first image — that was the pentecostal service meeting in the morning slot. Can you see how these habitats might subtly set us up to think about church as a product, or as entertainment; where our attention has to be grabbed and directed towards our desires, like at a casino, or we will leave unsatisfied? Where familiarity creates the illusion of belonging; rather than being places where family connection is cultivated and shaped by the story of the Gospel; places for us to inhabit with the people around us — those we commune with, whose faces we see — because the lights are not off — as God works in us through his word — that we can see without using a screen — and by his Spirit and his people?

The Bible does not set us up to live in non-places — but to live and interact as creatures in the created world; and even to make places in it as images of the God who creates place. Habitats for life, that prime us to engage in character-building habits.

God places Adam in a garden — a place — with fruit trees that are beautiful and good to eat (Genesis 2:8-9). Trees he’s to eat from — eating would be a habit that would teach him about God’s love; his provision; his hospitality (Genesis 2:16-17). The pleasure of seeing and eating that fruit was made to create something in our hearts as the pleasure chemicals kicked in. God created dopamine hits; they are meant to orient our hearts towards him, and each other, and so we could love and enjoy his world in ways that made us more human. To eat otherwise is to eat to extinction (Genesis 2:17). Our grasping, addictive, narcissistic hearts are the fruit of embracing sinful desire for self-satisfaction, and our self-declaration that things that are not good for us are good (Genesis 3:6). Chasing dopamine hits on our terms…

There is an interesting relationship between idolatry, desire, and place-making after Eden. Adam is placed in a place he is to cultivate and keep (Genesis 2:15) — these are space-making words. They are used for how priests are to maintain the tabernacle and temple as Eden-like spaces where God meets his people. The sanctuary — and altar — spaces that teach Israel about God (Numbers 3:7-8; 18:4, 6).

These spaces teach God’s people about God’s desire to be present and in relationship; his holiness; his grace; the shape of heaven and earth and the barrier represented by the curtain; his ongoing provision of life; even the smells and taste of meat and fruit and bread connected to sacrifices and feasts and festivals taught Israel its story in places; there are habitats jigged up to shape Israel’s habitual worship, stamping character — the image of God — on God’s priestly people.

Only Israel kept bringing idols and their rituals into their environment; they were a dopamine nation. Solomon is particularly instructive here, as a place-maker — while he builds the temple (1 Kings 8:12-13), he fails to cultivate and keep Israel as a place-space for life with God; by building high places and bringing in idols with their dopamine-inducing incense and sacrifices (1 Kings 11:7-8); the character-shaping habits of idolatry.

So Israel ends up in exile — in Babylon — with its hanging gardens and lush places and massive towers and idol temples — the whole environment of Babylon was scripted; designed; like our casinos, our scent-distributing buses, and our smartphones — to direct attention and habitual worship to their gods and king. But what does faithful life in Babylon look like? Place-making.

“Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.”

Jeremiah 29:5-6

Planting their own little Edens; making spaces that are reminders of their story — of God’s hospitality, his desire for presence; that he is the source of blessing and that he calls his people to be fruitful and multiply and bless those around them — they get back in the land and rebuild their spaces, but something is missing.

And then Jesus turns up to end the exile — from Eden and Israel — as the tabernacle-in-the-flesh who brings heaven on earth — who comes to save us from homeless life in non-places — and he does not do this by restoring the temple to its former glory — as heavenly space — but his death tears the curtain, the picture of the barrier separating heaven and earth; representing our exile from Eden; from God (Matthew 27:50-51); and this does not mean that space-making is over; that suddenly we are meant to exist without habitats that shape our habits — without a temple.

Jesus makes a new temple — new tabernacles-in-the-flesh in Acts, by pouring out his Spirit on people — the church (Acts 2:33). The first church did not have cathedrals, or even church buildings. They meet in houses. Homes (Acts 2:46-47). They go to the temple, as well, in Jerusalem — but the home is the normal habitat as the church spreads into the rest of the world; and presumably there are some dopamine hits happening as they eat with glad hearts and praise God.

The home is the habitat for the Acts 2 habits — it is where they devote themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer — meeting together (Acts 2:42). The house becomes disciple-making architecture; homes become places connected to the story of the Gospel; of God making his home with his people, who are now temples of the Holy Spirit. The shared table is a setting geared towards teaching people about hospitality; to position those around the table as members of a household — it is a picture of us now being home with God; no longer exiled, but connected to him as family. Home is the ultimate place.

Look at what Peter says in 1 Peter 2; the church — people — are chosen by God and precious to him. As we come to Jesus — the living tabernacle — we are built into a spiritual house — or temple of the Spirit — we are the holy priesthood (1 Peter 2:4-5), the new Adam, the new Levites — with the job of cultivating and keeping the space where heaven and earth come together; where we learn about God and are shaped by him as we declare the praise of the God who has re-created us for this purpose through Jesus.

Our sense of homelessness in non-places is part of our longing for home; and this longing is satisfied as God makes a home with us, promising to dwell with us in a new heavens and new earth forever (Revelation 21:2-3). Our home-life — our space-making — is now an opportunity to testify to this story. Peter describes the church both as the home of God — home with God (1 Peter 2:5), and as exiles (1 Peter 2:11)… like foreigners in Babylonian spaces and other temples that wage war against our souls.

We have a weird relationship to earthly space. We are not home. It is like every space not oriented towards heaven — the transcendent — is a non-place, oriented towards earth, and transient.

“In the world of supermodernity people are always, and never, at home.”

Marc Augé

We feel homeless in a world full of people who feel homeless; but we know where home is, and our neighbours don’t. This transient never-at-home-ness and the places built to satisfy that longing with earthly stuff — casinos and shopping-centre temples, even digital spaces — are expressions of a longing to be home with God; part of being exiled.

But we are home because God is going to renew earth and make it heavenly, and we are heavenly people who can make little embassies of heaven in anticipation… pointing to the transcendent.

Our spaces are not temples — we are the temples; the church is the people not the building — but because we are place-making humans made in the image of a place-making God, and we are formed by our habits, and our habits are formed by our habitats, our place-making is an act of worship and of cultivating the world according to our story; whether that is at home, in our workplaces, or in our public spaces — like the church. It is also an act of embassy-building for us citizens and ambassadors of heaven… as we live good lives in Babylon, navigating idol temples, while making good places.

Abstaining from sinful desires raging war against our soul (1 Peter 2:11) requires resisting scripts that want us to forget our story; the story of the Gospel by cultivating habits of saying no to Babylon; acting with deliberation where the world wants us to act like automatons.

So here are some guiding principles from all this — we have to grab control of our attention — wrestle it back from limbic capitalism and its addictive extinction machines. We have to pay attention to the scripts that are disorienting us; pulling our feet from the path — whether in the physical environments we enter, or the digital spaces we occupy and devices we use. This might even look like deliberately walking the wrong way at IKEA or the supermarket — or sticking to a list — to resist impulse buying, or blocking ads on your browser, or limiting your screen time.

Maybe we could catch the vision of the attentional commons — in the spaces we control, but also in public — there have been some Christians who have campaigned for G-rated outdoor advertising; I wonder if we should go further; fighting against the privatisation of public spaces, for the good of our neighbours, especially fighting against gambling ads. We could pay more attention to the insidious and addictive gambling industry and how entwined it is in our culture — it is not a small problem.

And we should notice how the same techniques are embedded in our culture, and our lives, through desire-shaping technology, and advocate for the regulation of online spaces and technologies in ways that limit their addictive potential, rather than participating in platforms that make us lonely and narcissistic and are designed to drive people to extinction.

We are not saved by good habits; but we are saved to become disciples who are home with God; saved to devote ourselves — and we are given new hearts, by the Spirit, and new tools to do it, and a new story. Saved to break bread together; to have glad and sincere hearts, and to praise God in ways that are recognisably good in a world facing extinction. We have got to see where we are being nudged, and push back accordingly. And one way to do this is by cultivating our own spaces with jigs that make good habits feel automatic.

Whether that means creating a spot in your house where your phone is charged that keeps it away from your pocket, or your bedroom at night — or working out how to keep good things within reach; whether that is art on your wall, or photos on your fridge prompting you to pray for others, or physical copies of your Bible close to hand, or a picture on your homescreen; or your Bible app in the shortcut bar on your phone so you have to deliberately scroll past it to get to your distractions…

We have to consider the physical architecture of our houses, and our lives; one of my big regrets in the design of our house is the way we have oriented our couch towards the TV; that fuels my gaming addiction, and makes the screen our default.

There are implications here for how we create and use public space like this building — church buildings should not be non-places, or disorienting temples to consumption that are another form of limbic capitalism; it is tricky because those temples, like the hanging gardens, are often imitation Edens.

There will be wisdom and discernment involved in avoiding designs that nudge us towards extinction; and in cultivating spaces that teach us about God and evoke our sense of his goodness; just as there is in creating communal dopamine hits that are humanising because they come from encountering God through our bodies, rather than addictive.

Whatever the future looks like for this building, or a space for our communities — we should resist creating places without stories and connection to history and to people — living and dead — and should create places where community happens… places where we do not experience scripted disorientation, but Scriptured orientation — where we point our hearts towards God together; praising him through worship; through embodied life together in space and time.

This might include us appreciating the art on the walls downstairs as a picture of the faithfulness of a previous generation, but it might also involve us collaborating on new art, and beauty, and activities that bring life to this space. This might involve us resisting a tendency towards transient nomad life or being travellers, and seeking to put down roots; in space and time — but with our eyes looking towards our eternal home. This might involve us cultivating hospitality and habits and pictures of life and generosity that flow from here — like with Food Pantry and lunch together — in ways that celebrate God’s presence with us, as temples of his Spirit, and look forward to his hospitality in the new Eden.

September 5, 2025 Add Comment

Being Human — Chapter Six — A world of (im)pure imagey-nations

This is an adaptation of the sixth talk from a 2022 sermon series — you can listen to it as a podcast here, or watch it on video. It’s not unhelpful to think of this series as a ‘book’ preached chapter by chapter. And, a note — there are lots of pull quotes from various sources in these posts that were presented as slides in the sermons, but not read out in the recordings.

How does this image make you feel? Is your stomach rumbling?

What about this one? Are you salivating just a little?

And what about this one — can you imagine sitting in this lounge room?

How about this kitchen? How does it make you feel about your house?

It’s interesting — isn’t it — the way images work in our minds to create desires.

I could have shown you images of beautiful people — but I’m trying to keep things PG and these pictures of food came from the #foodporn and #houseporn hashtags on Instagram.

It’s not just Instagram that stokes our desire for food or furniture — you can have your senses tantalised on MasterChef, or My Kitchen Rules — and you can cultivate dissatisfaction with your kitchen appliances on The Block.

The Block had extra drama in 2022, with a couple bailing after one episode; because it wasn’t on-brand for them — it didn’t mesh with their image; Elle Ferguson’s in the image business… she’s a world-famous Instagram influencer. Being an influencer is a desirable new career path; the ABC is even reporting on children becoming professional influencers — and how powerful these influencers are.

It’s a tricky life. Aussie academic, Nina Willment, says influencers live with the constant threat of not being seen; if they don’t keep making content they might be punished by the machine overlords — the algorithm.

“The threat of invisibility is a constant source of insecurity for influencers, who are under constant pressure to feed platforms with content. If they don’t, they may be ‘punished’ by the algorithm – having posts hidden or displayed lower down on search results.”

Nina Willment, The Dark Side of Content Creation

But it’s not just influencers who reduce themselves to images and perform for a machine-like audience; in the age of expressive individualism, Instagram’s on hand inviting you to express yourself with the tools they provide.

Image making is part of being human; it’s what God does, and it’s part of images made in the image of an image maker (Genesis 1:27).

The catch is, when we live as images in a world where we have cut ourselves off from God — where we’re “buffered” — we’re not sure what image it is we’re meant to be like, and so we often end up choosing other people… And often it’s not just our parents, in our visual culture it’s celebrities — or, increasingly, influencers.

Christopher Hedges wrote the book Empire of Illusion, about life in a world dominated by images that are produced to manipulate us and keep us playing along with the image makers; the celebrity-making machines, and he says when we turn to celebrities — or influencers — as idealised forms of ourselves, it ends up impacting us; instead of being fully real, or fully self-actualised, we’re never sure who we are.

“Celebrities are portrayed as idealized forms of ourselves. It is we, in perverse irony, who are never fully actualised, never fully real in a celebrity culture.”

Christopher Hedges, Empire of Illusion

Maybe we’re not buffered selves, but buffering — always trying to become who we are more fully, but never quite finished and ready to go.

With the sheer volume of evolving images how could we feel whole? We’re perpetually looking for the next image — whether that’s a meal, a house design, a holiday, a relationship, or some visionary version of ourselves.

In an article updating the argument in his book after Donald Trump’s election — Hedges says we’re worshippers of the electronic image — our modern-day idols shape our fantasies; our hearts and our lives. Even our interactions with others are shaped by all sorts of pixelated pictures, whether that’s through interacting on screens; or spending our time seeing people’s bodies in pixelated form.

“Electronic images are our modern-day idols. We worship the power and fame they impart. We yearn to become idolised celebrities. We measure our lives against the fantasies these images disseminate.”

Hedges, Worshipping the Electronic Image

Hedges reckons Donald Trump’s reality TV instincts made him a perfect politician for the digital image world — he’s mastered the cultivation of political images — we saw this in this image during a series of FBI raids.

Bizarrely Trump seems to be the embodiment of all the vices from Colossians (Colossians 3:5), but his image-making machine controls the Republicans, and about 80% of people who identify as evangelical Christians in the US — and we might feel a world away, but consider how much of the imagery in our culture and on our screens is pumped out from the US…

Trump’s image-making is catching — those following his playbook can look like images in a live action role playing game, or like they’re playing multiple characters at once.

This isn’t new; we’ve always been shaped by images — once it was stained glass windows, and paintings that told the story about an enchanted cosmos, what’s new is the medium; and it’s much cheaper to make a digital photo than a stained glass window; today our icons are the pictures flashing across our screens.

“In the Middle Ages, stained glass windows and vivid paintings of religious torment and salvation controlled and influenced social behavior. Today we are ruled by icons of gross riches and physical beauty that blare and flash from television, cinema, and computer screens.”

Hedges, Empire of Illusion

And it’s not just foodporn, obviously — porn itself is embedded in our culture and our imaginations — our image making. Both as an image maker and in the way its norms flow into the way human bodies are presented in advertising and entertainment.

Hedges is a lapsed Presbyterian minister who became an award-winning war correspondent — his book has a whole chapter on porn — and it’s like he’s covering a war; it has way too much information to be comfortable reading — he reckons porn both shapes and mirrors the violence, cruelty and degradation in our society the same way war can; and that porn is producing a loss of empathy by reducing human beings — and human bodies — to being commodities.

“The violence, cruelty, and degradation of porn are expressions of a society that has lost the capacity for empathy… It is about reducing other human beings to commodities, to objects.”

Hedges, Empire of Illusion

He suggests porn is part of a society that kills both the sacred and the human, replacing empathy and human desire — eros — and compassion with power, control, force and pain — and the idea that we are gods, and others will literally bend to our fantasies…

“It extinguishes the sacred and the human to worship power, control, force, and pain. It replaces empathy, eros, and compassion with the illusion that we are gods… Porn is the glittering façade… of a culture seduced by death.”

Hedges, Empire of Illusion

And we’re seeing the costs of this society in our society — in our schools even — I read this news story about how young boys raised on porn are sexually assaulting their classmates in record numbers.

Melinda Tankard Reist from Collective Shout wrote about the impact of porn not just in assault, but in the expectations placed on teen girls in dating relationships a few years ago where she said the culture, for teens shaped by porn, is that sexual conquest and domination are untempered by the bounds of respect, intimacy, and authentic human connection — that young people are learning cruelty and humiliation not intimacy and love — this is what happens when we’re just bodies ruled by desire, or see each other just as pixelated images in the flesh, where our desires have been shaped by dehumanising images.

“Sexual conquest and domination are untempered by the bounds of respect, intimacy and authentic human connection. Young people are not learning about intimacy, friendship and love, but about cruelty and humiliation.”

Melinda Tankard Reist

The culture we live in that commodifies people by turning them into images isn’t just happening in Instagram, or porn, it’s shaping dating — our relationships are increasingly mediated by digital images. One third of all new romantic relationships now begin online, it’s the most common way people get together.

And platforms like OkCupid — who promise dating for every single person — that’s clever — and who can even cater for niches like “people who like kissing while sitting in pie.”

Success on these sites requires cultivating an image that’ll make you attractive to others. And pictures create heaps more interaction than words; they have run studies.

David Brooks — who writes for the New York Times — wrote an article about online dating in 2003, celebrating how it was reintroducing a formal structure and ritual to dating, which he thought had been lost:

“Online dating puts structure back into courtship. For generations Americans had certain courtship rituals.”

David Brooks, Love: Internet Style, New York Times, 2003

He reckoned these platforms were all about love…

“But love is what this is all about. And the heart, even in this commercial age, finds a way.”

Brooks, 2003

In 2015 he wrote another piece — and he had changed his tune — he noticed something about the way these platforms worked — when we go to an online dating site on the same browser they use for their online shopping, we inevitably bring the same mindset — we shop for human beings. He says these platforms commodify people particularly by reducing people to a picture.

“People who date online are not shallower or vainer than those who don’t… It’s just that they’re in a specific mental state. They’re shopping for human beings, commodifying people.”

David Brooks, ‘The Devotion Leap,’ New York Times, 2015

And this process is more or less the opposite of love.

“Online dating is fascinating because it is more or less the opposite of its object: love.”

Brooks, 2015

Things have become more complex since 2015 — dating sites like OkCupid have lost market share to apps focused on instant gratification and immediate availability; where even the rituals of the old web dating have been deconstructed with a swipe of the finger, and where image is everything.

Photography itself is interesting — it has rapidly evolved as part of everyday life since the mechanisation of camera production in the 70s; before then most people didn’t spend time taking photos; even then cameras had built-in limits — like film — but the jump from mechanical to digital means we now have a seemingly unlimited capacity to capture every moment — and then see everything on our screens.

Susan Sontag wrote a famous essay ‘On Photography‘ in the 70s where she was worried then that to capture and shoot images was an act of aggression — think of the words “capture” and “shoot.”

“There is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera.”

Susan Sontag, On Photography

Photographers, she says, are “always imposing standards on their subjects,” and objectifying them.

She saw the need — once families had cameras — to capture every moment as an addictive aesthetic consumerism.

“Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted.”

Sontag, On Photography

She suggests industrial societies turn their citizens into image junkies, and this bombardment of imagery becomes an irresistible form of mental pollution.

“Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.”

Sontag, On Photography

This was before the smartphone. Imagine how she would feel about the digital society…

Have you thought about it this way? The idea that images are polluting our brains, and shaping our desires, and reshaping our bodies — but we’re bombarded with images and these images shape our desires and produce reactions in our bodies; and we’re being discipled by our digital society — even by algorithms — to interact with images and present ourselves as images… and normally as images that keep making people more money, by stoking more desires and selling us the answer.

God made us as image bearers to see… to imagine… and to make images.

God made beauty.

He made fruit that was pleasing to the eye and good for food (Genesis 2:9); but this visualising — our capacity to imagine — either leads us to or away from God. “Pleasing to the eye” and “good for food” is how Eve sees the fruit she’s been told is not good to eat too (Genesis 3:6). Then this pattern of seeing and desiring and being led to destructive sin repeats — it’s the same story with the Nephilim (Genesis 3:6, 6:2), and with David and Bathsheba (Genesis 3:6, 2 Samuel 11:2-4).

This relationship between sin and desire is also caught up in idolatry — so the Ten Commandments include a command not to make graven images of God (Exodus 20:4-5); and Deuteronomy commands Israel to watch themselves carefully and to avoid making images of living things to worship them (Deuteronomy 4:15-18), because those images will profoundly shape our vision of God and our life in the world.

What do you think Moses would have said about Instagram?

It’s interesting, though, that Israel’s holy spaces — the tabernacle and temple — involve man-made images of trees and fruit (Exodus 25:36); Israel’s eyes and bodies are meant to participate in worship — and making beautiful images of things God made can be part of that — but you won’t find carved images of God; or of animals, or of men or women — images of images of God, because Israel weren’t to worship images; they’re to be images… as soon as we reduce God to an image, or make an image our god, we’re working with a false picture of God; a God who is an image of our making.

This tendency to turn images into gods is pretty ingrained — Ezekiel talks about idols being set up in our hearts; the seat of our desires and loves (Ezekiel 14:4-5)… That’s where images go… Isaiah re-tells an idol making session with someone cooking food over one half of a chunk of wood, then carving an image of a god with the other (Isaiah 44:15), and he says something those of us who live with our phones wedged into our hands with our eyes hunched over giving all our attention… “Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?” (Isaiah 44:20).

Are not these images that bombard me, and keep me looking down, and that shape my desires — aren’t they built on the same lies; the same call to misplace our desire, that the serpent used with Eve… Won’t they leave me always dissatisfied? Humans have always been fixated by images.

The New Testament church lived in an image-saturated world — there were statues of the emperors and the Roman gods everywhere; temples on every hill and corner in a city — they also lived in an age of spectacle that upheld the imagery; the degradation of human bodies in blood sports and sexual immorality — and this presented a major challenge for the early church;

They were pretty serious about Jesus’ commands on lust and the heart, and the idea of your eyes causing you to stumble (Matthew 5:28-29), and about his teaching on the eyes and the heart being linked (Matthew 6:21-22). For them, even attending the Roman spectacles; these games, was seen not simply as renouncing your Christian faith, but as announcing you belonged to the ancient empire of illusion. They wanted to cultivate a way of seeing the world that helped them see God, and so live as his images.

Two Aussie theologians — Ben Myers and Scott Stephens — co-wrote a paper about disciplining our eyes in a visual culture; they reckon we also live in a society of spectacle and one of our great moral challenges is deciding what images to look at.

Christians today live in a society of the spectacle. Our lives are dominated to an unprecedented degree by images and by the moral act of looking at them.

Without minimising the damage that sexual imagery does to us; they suggest all imagery is essentially pornography.

“All images today are pornographic: they arouse—but without danger, obligation, or contamination.”

Myers and Stephens, ‘The Discipline of the Eyes: Reflections on Visual Culture, Ancient and Modern,’ in HTML of Cruciform Love: Towards a Theology of The Internet

We’re so conditioned to objectify and worship — that imagery in ads and in social media streams arouse us without the danger of embodied commitment; without creating obligation, or without the complications that come when we actually use our bodies. And the spectacle shapes us.

And I know that some of us are here and we’re struggling with lust; with addiction to porn, and I’m not wanting to minimise that by saying that most of us are struggling with image addiction, in a machine world where the algorithms are geared towards ruining us by making us consumers — I don’t want to minimise it, but maybe I want to reframe the conversations about porn so that you see it as part of a dehumanising world that has objectified and commodified everything and everyone, where we’re taught that a fulfilled life is one where we satisfy our every longing and desire and that we can do this just with imagery — and maybe I think the rest of us should be confronting our own addictions too…

It’s easy for us to look across the ocean and judge the image-driven life of American politics; but ours is the same. It’s easy for us to throw stones at churches built on image, where that goes wrong — like at Hillsong’s New York campus where the image cultivation machine was operating in overdrive. But what about in our church? How do we go about avoiding the worship of images — whether that’s online, or the way we express ourselves?

This is something I’ve been pretty aware of as someone who lives online in an image-soaked world — I’ve resisted selfies, I don’t post or scroll on Instagram, I do scroll Facebook, and find myself comparing and contrasting to all sorts of people — especially other pastors. The sin of comparison will kill you just like any other. One of the ways I compare myself is that I hate when churches post photos from within a church service, especially of preachers — in a way that just creates a sort of #churchporn. Where are you engaged in image-based comparison? What spectacles can’t you turn your eyes from? What online images are shaping your hearts?

We aren’t going to think our way out of idolatrous practices that shape our desires; our loves; our worship — we actually need a new way of life; a new sort of worship and a new image to pursue.

How do we become worshipping images, where images — even the pictures on the screen — help us worship God rather than conforming our imaginations?

This, I take it, is what Paul is teaching the Colossians to do in their own world of idolatrous spectacle; he starts his letter by introducing Jesus as the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15-16). Jesus is the one worthy of our worship, because in him and for him all things on heaven and earth were created; and because he has redeemed us and is reconciling us to God…

And then he calls his readers away from idolatry by calling us to lift our eyes; not focusing on the images we’re inclined to worship; but because we’ve been raised with Jesus and because he’s seated at the right hand of God in heaven, and that’s our future and what should be our desire; we should fix our hearts and minds on things above (Colossians 3:1-2); and this’ll mean cultivating a new way of looking at the world.

Because we’re called to take off the old self — with its practices (Colossians 3:9-10), that’s going to include practices of seeing, as we put on a new self with new practices of seeing and worshipping, so that we’re renewed in the image of its creator — which Paul says back in chapter 1 is not just the Father, but Jesus as well.

We’re to put to death what belongs to our earthly nature (Colossians 3:5-6) — a nature shaped by worshipping earthly stuff — seeing, desiring, and taking — by how we approach sex, lust, desire, and greed — which is idolatry — and I reckon Paul’s saying the stuff that belongs to our earthly nature is idolatry — these are paths to death; to God’s wrath. So kill them.

And take up new life — clothing ourselves with compassion and kindness and humility and gentleness and patience, and forgiveness — seeing others the way God sees them — and ourselves as God sees us — and over all this; love — the virtue that binds them all (Colossians 3:12-14).

When Paul talks about practices in the world — and with others — and these virtues — these practices have to include new ways of looking at the world, and at others — we can’t look at the world, and others, as objects to be consumed — lusted after — desired. That’s deadly idolatry. That’s what porn is; it cultivates death in you — your eyes, your heart, your body are all being aligned to death — but it’s also what any idolatrous image making and image-viewing does for us; instead we should be looking at others and at the things God made in order to learn compassion and kindness and humility — self-denial — gentleness and patience — these are the virtues opposite to pornworld and the age of instant gratification; and when we embrace these new patterns of looking it should transform our community so that we are images who look like Jesus in compelling and truly human ways.

The sort of practices we’re going to need are — like last week — ascetic — cultivating the discipline not to look; to self-deny — and aesthetic — cultivating an ability to look through the goodness and beauty of created things; and to use our desires and our eyes in ways that throw us towards the one in whom all things are made and reconciled.

But we need a third practice; too — one of keeping Jesus — keeping heavenly realities before our eyes, and shaping our hearts — so that as we say no to idolatry and yes to beauty our hearts are being governed by the image we worship; the image of God. This’ll be what stops us being buffered — closed off to God — and buffering — never fully human — we become fully human as we worship God who made us, and are renewed as his image bearers.

In terms of saying no — you might need to do an audit of your image viewing; being confronted with images in an age of spectacle is inevitable, but what can you do to not just turn your eyes, but keep your eyes looking where they should be. What apps do you need to delete? Delete them now. Just say no. What social media platforms or TV shows or games or magazines are cultivating your idolatry? Step back from them until you can step into them as an image bearer captivated by Jesus.

Job has that famous line about making a covenant with his eyes not to look at a woman lustfully (Job 31:1-2) — and there’s an app you might use to fight porn called Covenant Eyes, but if all imagery is pornographic — maybe we all need to make commitments not to look lustfully at sex, or violence, or food, or symbols of wealth, or whatever it is that turns our heart… and the word lustfully here is key; it doesn’t say don’t look at beautiful people or things God made; it’s about our hearts.

Ben Myers and Scott Stephens reckon we need to — in community — cultivate visual disciplines; periods of asceticism — where we put the screens down — as necessary parts of our spiritual life.

“Do Christian communities still believe it is possible to cultivate visual disciplines, and periods of visual asceticism, as necessary parts of the spiritual life? Do we recognize the moral value of providing havens from the dominance of the image, while also nourishing alternative traditions of perception?”

Myers and Stephens

They reckon this sort of discipline is necessary to give our eyes a break.

This is one of the reasons we do so little on social media and the web as a church — there are other reasons, like not wanting to put church forward as an “image” thing to be consumed — but you don’t need your screen. And we need to cultivate other ways of using our eyes; our perception as well.

Myers and Stephens remind us that we can see one another — the faces of living saints — as part of being shaped by images, but also suggest works of art might play a part. In Christian traditions other than ours; like the ones with stained glass storytelling; people’s imaginations were formed — catechised — using pictures; art.

“Do we offer catechesis in the use of holy images, whether these are works of art or the faces of living saints?”

Myers and Stephens

We Protestants tend not to have an aesthetic, or a sense of the place of art and beauty — both making and appreciating it — in our lives as a form of discipline or disciple making; art is a life-giving alternative to the death-taking imagery of porn and advertising…

And here’s where we might cultivate what Alan Noble calls an aesthetic life as a disruptive witness to the world — a life that values and even collects beauty because beautiful things — art, poems, flowers — create an allusionary sense that the world is enchanting, in a world of illusionary images, we need these allusionary images — images that allude to the beauty and character of God as creator.

“What makes a work of art, a poem, or a flower beautiful is the way it suggests more, the way it opens up possibilities, the way it alludes to other things in creation.”

Alan Noble, Disruptive Witness

He reckons this approach to aesthetics resists commodification — recognising beauty and the creatureliness or createdness of people and things reminds us of the creator; and reminds us we’re not just commodities where nothing matters — the world doesn’t just exist for our grasping; but is shot through with meaning that we’re meant to probe, as humans.

“Aesthetics reveals an irreducible universe — a universe that resists our attempts at totalizing and controlling it, that is always just out of grasp, that always offers us a little more meaning.”

Noble

This might even involve how we decorate our homes, and the food we serve on our tables — not just with images from Instagram; where people are trying to cultivate a sense of self through performance, but images that have a more artistic and allusionary quality that pull us towards the enchanted world; it might also involve practising noticing beauty in creation without taking photos at all, connecting with God’s world — and your body — and receiving beauty with thanksgiving.

Paul’s big solution to guide us as we do this is that we let the message of Christ dwell among us richly as we teach and admonish one another — with wisdom — contemplation of God’s world and how to live in it — through creativity; through poetry — through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit — songs we humans create as temples of the Spirit in response to setting our hearts on things above, and through engaging our voices and hearts as we sing to God — with gratitude in our hearts.

And his goal is that whatever we do — whatever images we make or see — as we live as renewed images — whatever we do we’re to do in the name of the Lord, giving thanks to God the Father through him. If you can’t do that when you encounter or create an image, then there’s a good chance it’s an idol (Colossians 3:15-17).

September 3, 2025 Add Comment