There are some things that were never meant to be torn apart or separated.
. For my son ketchup and most food belong together - they should not be separated. For me, winter and NHL hockey belong together. they should not be separated. What's going on right now is terrible.
. Al Neufeld spoke two weeks ago and shone a light on marriage and family. showing how families were not meant to be ruptured.
. I did a funeral a month back for an incredible but sorrowful young couple who were burying their infant son. few things have felt so unnatural in my life. There are things not meant to be torn apart.
. Dean described the Garden of Eden this last weekend and how one wrong choice led to the devastating tearing apart of heaven from earth.. God from humanity as they knew it.
. Alyson and I went and watched the movie, The Forgotten on Sunday night. I'm not sure I'd recommend it, but the premise of the show is all about how a mother and her child have an innate link - a bond that should never be broken.
. I look at people groups in the middle east - divided and torn apart. I even look at creation itself - shredded, torn apart and laid waste.
. We can all point to things that are not supposed to be ruptured, dislocated, and torn apart. Relationships, ourselves, our economy. And it's easy to point to things that do the tearing: racism, sexism, exploitation, depression, death and illnesses of all kinds.
Some things were never meant to be torn apart.
We can even look at Humpty Dumpty. Kids continue to talk about this guy. Humpty sat on a wall. Then he had a great fall. All the kings' horses and all the kings' men couldn't put humpty together again.
I don't doubt that Humpty had a good thing going. for him to get his own nursery rhyme and all. but I question his legacy. I doubt he would have cracked the Top 10 Canadian list if he were from Canada.
For instance, if you're an Egg, do you really think you're being responsible if you're sitting up on a wall?
I mean, Humpty sat up on a wall and put himself in a precarious position. and he fell. to pieces. my scrutiny of Humpty doesn't stop there.
All the king's horses and all the kings' men couldn't put him together again. All the king's horses and men come to the scene. I think it was the great modern thinker Jerry Seinfeld who questioned this. What did Humpty think the horses were going to do for him? Beyond maybe counting how many pieces he fell into?
So, he's in pieces on the ground and in this moment of crisis who does he turn to? In his greatest need, Humpty trusted the wrong people to put him back together.He went straight to the government (all the kings horses and men)... straight to the government when things got bad. which makes me think that if Humpty were alive today, he may have been a farmer in SK.
Even this nursery rhyme creates uneasiness in us because something that was meant to be together became fragmented.
Things continue to come apart. And when things do come apart in and around us, where do we turn? Where should we turn?
The failsafe Sunday School answer is the right one here - Jesus.
On Saturday, my son and I were making snowmen. or snow-people as it were. We started to roll the base of the snowman and his bottom fell apart of couple of times. Brennan said he had an idea - that we should pray for the snowman. He did. And the snowman stayed together - all three parts. Then we made a snowwoman (Brennan's idea). and he highlighted the key difference from the snowman - he knocked the hair off snowman's head (I tried not to take it personally). After we had them both up we went inside. An hour later we looked out the window and the snowman was still standing there but the snowwoman was in three pieces on the ground. Half joking while chatting with Brennan I recalled to him that we prayed for the snowman but not the snowwoman. It made sense to him that the snowwoman fell apart. This story has a few holes in it but when I thought about it while reading Ephesians, it hit me fresh that Jesus is the God who brings things together - little things and big things. In Ephesians, Jesus has this cosmic significance in being the center around which things torn apart come together . Things come together in him . If Ephesians is about power and identity, Jesus is the one around whom our identity is formed and by whose power we come together. And when things come apart, Jesus is the person to turn to. Jesus is the one who can put them back together.
Read Ephesians 1:1-10
What is this mystery we are invited into?
These verses speak to some amazingly good news about the salvation afforded to us in Christ - we're adopted, he's our father and we're redeemed and we're forgiven. But this good news also goes beyond our personal salvation. Jesus is restoring the universe and we're in the middle of it. We're a significant part in the middle of it, no question, but it seems we're in on something bigger than just our personal salvation.
For thousands of years, various religions and cultures and kingdoms have lamented the gap between the heavens and the earth. Last week I spoke about these two domains, two spheres. One in Christ, the other in the world. I spoke about power and identity being the primary focus in the book of Ephesians.
That who we are totally depends on where we are. And where we are dictates the power at work in our lives. If we are in Christ we belong and have at work in us and around us the very power that raised Christ from the dead.
But we all know too well that while our position in Christ is solid and unchallengeable, our experience tells us that we spend a good deal of time in the other sphere where another power is at work and where things that are not supposed to come apart come apart. And we know that as long as that domain exists, and as long as we exist, we'll wander in there.
The problem is that there are still two domains. Our position is in Christ but we wander off sometimes. Our citizenship is secure but we cross the border sometimes. And as long as there are two domains, things will continue to be torn apart.
That's one of the reasons why Jesus went beyond taking care of our personal salvation. because he's about restoring all things. Chapter 1, verse 10 says that Jesus is tackling the insurmountable rupture of heaven and earth - he's bringing the two domains together.
This is a significant shift. a shift that makes the potential shift along the San Andrea Fault look small. This makes the discovery of a planet or another solar system or galaxy back-page news. Bringing heaven and earth together. a huge cosmic shift... And he's invited us along, in him.
Professional God-thinkers call this the dignity of causality. For some reason he's dignified us by inviting and equipping us to join him reclaiming heaven's place on earth.
Since heaven and earth were ripped apart long ago, God and humankind have been doing things to get things back together - God in his way, us in ours.
Heaven is essentially when God is with us, reigning without rival.With us without hindrance. God with us. That's how it was in the garden - innocent people dwelling with God in creation, ongoing face to face encounters with the almighty, before the sin rupture.
When sin entered the picture there was fragmentation, dislocation and rupture. Things that were supposed to be together were ripped apart. Things that were never meant to come undone, came undone. And from then on, the things that are supposed be together continue to be ripped apart.
From the garden on, we see attempts to recapture the way things were supposed to be.
There was Moses on the mountain, hoping to see the face of God but barley being able to withstand the tail end of God's glory.
Then there was the Tabernacle: A tent for God so he could travel in a tangible way with his people. This was God's way of meeting with the people without the people being overpowered by his glory. But only Moses was allowed all the way in.
Then there was the Temple. It had an outer courtyard and then three inner chambers. The farther in, the fewer people were allowed to enter. Few people wanted to enter. You see, the farther in one went, the more pure heaven became. And the God-encounter became overwhelming for someone spending most of their time living in another realm. It would be like being freezing cold and then coming near a blazing furnace - while you want the warmth, it hurts against your frozen skin - the difference is so extreme. So the high priest lived his life, careful not to jump too deep into earth for fear of not being able to withstand heaven. Heaven happened in the innermost core of the Temple - a place called the holy of holies. This section was separated by a thick curtain. The Holy of holies was a cube-shaped area, small but powerful when inhabited by God. And it's recorded that the priest would come out of that cube with his face glowing from the powerful presence of God.
And for centuries it was like a see-saw. When the people made way for God, his presence was powerful. When they made no room for heaven, the temple was quiet. For the Jews, the temple was everything. Life began and ended with it. Their culture as well as their economy revolved around the Temple . and why wouldn't it? This was one of the ways that God chose to meet with humanity. where heaven and earth came together.
As our tendency goes, the Jews did little to accommodate this encounter, squeezing God and heaven out of their lives, settling for rules, institutions and autonomy instead.
This is where Jesus steps in. When Jesus came on the scene he came announcing that Heaven was back like never before. And it was. in him. He became the new temple since the other one wasn't being used properly.
And from that time on in Jesus, heaven began squeezing out the other domain. Like a mustard seed, Jesus said. the smallest seed growing into the largest, strongest tree.
And when Jesus went to the cross we read that he breathed his last only to break open heaven with yet a new power. The curtain in the temple - the one that separated the holy of holies from the outer room (Heaven from earth) that curtain was torn from top to bottom when Jesus breathed his last(finally something made to be torn apart). and the earth shook. and the mustard tree grew.
Around 10 or 11 years ago, my brother and I had a conversation. It was stubborn, prideful yet adventurous guy-talk, start to finish. It's the kind of thing boys do periodically in life to make sure they're alive. Especially when younger, we'll put in a check every now and then to make sure fear isn't winning. Fear. that thing that steals life.That monster that grows every time you decide not to confront it. We decided to combine a long-time dream with a battle-plan against fear and jump out of an airplane.
So, we took some lessons, paid some fees and the next thing we knew we were in a small plane 4000' feet off the ground. He did it first, then me. We stepped outside of a plane which had slowed to 90 miles per hour and let go. And in turn, we spent the next 4 minutes loving life and pushing that monster called fear way back into the far-off recesses of our lives.
We reclaimed our lives, at least against fear. The blow we dealt fear that day lasted quite a while. For a while, calling a girl for a date was easy and taking a test in school was a small hurdle. I had invaded the realm previously occupied by fear and displaced fear and reclaimed life.
When Jesus went to the cross he did some reclaiming of his own. Heaven and earth were never made to be divided. The Devil or the divider that Dean mentioned this last weekend - the one who lies and deceives in order to tear things apart - was dealt a death blow that day on the cross - a blow far more severe than the one I dealt fear when I jumped out of that plane. And Heaven invaded earth like never before. The invasion is ongoing and it won't stop until it is finished. The finish is in sight. The ending for fragmentation, rupture and dislocation is described in the second last chapter of the Bible. Here we have a detailed description of the mystery alluded to in Eph. 1:9-10.
Read Rev. 21:1-4; 10; 15-16
I have to be honest, even as a kid I never really got excited about this city that's coming from Heaven. It's a giant box with 12 levels in it. It sounds like a really big, fancy apartment building.
The book of Revelation can do this. It can come across as really weird, really far out at times. There are rules we need to employ to read different books of the Bible. Revelation is like only one other book in the Bible. Both it and part of the book of Daniel require some disciplines while reading it. Like GK Chesterton once said, the only thing scarier than the monsters in the book of Revelation are some of the books' commentators.
If we're gonna be consistent reading this book we have to let symbols be symbols and statistics or statistics. And most agree, this book is a book of symbols. At least I hope so because as an example, earlier in the book it describes Jesus as having 7 eyes and 7 horns. That would be awkward - which eyes would we look into? But 1 st century Jews - the original audience of this letter - would catch the drift here. Eyes were symbolic of wisdom and horns symbolic of strength and the number seven was a symbol of completeness or perfection - therefore in this book Jesus is being described as completely wise and perfectly strong. The number 6 is symbolic of incompleteness and imperfection - always less than 7. In Revelation, the Devil or the divider is emphatically incomplete and imperfect in strength and wisdom as he gets three 6's to mark him. Jesus is completely strong, the divider is emphatically less than Jesus.
Not only is the book symbolic but it has over 300 allusions to the Old Testament - you can't understand Revelation without understand the 65 books that come before it. Eugene Peterson believes that nothing new is shared in the last book of the Bible.
So when we come to chapter 21 (near the end) and we have this city in the shape of a cube coming down out of heaven we have to ask ourselves if we're really getting a cube-city. Or is the cube symbolic of something? I'm glad to say, I don't think we're getting a cube. What we can be sure of here is that Heaven is coming together with earth. How?
Well, since there are over 300 references to the Old Testament prior to chapter 21 we look there for a clue again. There is only one other place in the whole Bible that describes a cube and I alluded to it earlier. It was in the Temple - the building made for God to dwell with the Jews. Remember? It was the innermost chamber. The holy of holies set aside for the high priest. That little cube where heaven in God came near and made the face of the priest glow with radiance.
Folks, Revelation 21 is describing the holy of holies coming to rest on the earth. 21:22 says there was no temple in this city because God is the temple and He dwells everywhere.
Chapter 21 also goes into great detail describing the measurements of this cube. People have manipulated these measurement in every way you can imagine - if they read these as statistics instead of symbols.
But look at these numbers. 12,ooo Stadia, 144 cubits. These are numbers with a common root. 12,ooo. is 12 x 10 x 10 x 10. 144 is 12 x 12. Does that number ring a bell? 12? 12 Tribes, 12 Apostles. The number 10 speaks to completeness or fullness or total in 1 st century Palestine. This city of God has room for all who want to be there. It is completely the right and appropriate size.
As a side note of interest, in the 1 st century they hadn't yet discovered most of the world. Did you know that if you opened this multi-layered cube up and spread it across the earth that it would have roughly covered the dimensions of the whole earth as known in 96 AD when Revelation was written? God. heaven. is coming to earth and will cover the whole earth and the whole earth will be filled with God as in the holy of holies. And because in Christ we're redeemed and forgiven we can dwell in the holy of holies.
We're not gonna spend eternity in a luxury apartment block. This is the fulfillment of the mystery in Eph.1:10 - Jesus is bringing heaven and earth back together again and we get to be in on this titanic cosmic shift. I like earth and I'm glad it's gonna be around for eternity.
This titanic cosmic shift is well on its way and it's happening here and now. 1 Corinthians 3:16 says that we are God's temple. that the Spirit of God lives in us. Next week Lee Barbour and Gloria Reimer will touch on what it means to be the temple of the Holy Spirit. The mystery is that through the Spirit at work within us, the God who puts things back together is putting the biggest thing back together: Heaven and earth; the creator with his creation; the Father with his children. 1 domain instead of 2.
Conclusion:
And if Jesus can do this through us, he can put our snowman together too. and he can put us together. and he can bring a mother and her child together. He's the God at the center who brings things together in him . Humpty Dumpty looked for help in the wrong place.
For thousands of years, various religions and cultures and kingdoms have lamented the gap between the heavens and the earth. Jesus is taking care of that gap because he is the God of restoration. He is the God of healing, the God of hope. This is good news for the middle east where fracture describes their world. This is good news for Africa where the land needs to be renewed, forests rebuilt and vegetation needs water.
This is good news for you. Do you have something fractured in your life? Do you have relationships that are fragmented? Do you feel like you've come apart inside? Is life in pieces for you?
Some things were never intended to be torn apart. The Divider has been and is being conquered. Jesus is perfect in strength and wisdom and invites you into the middle of this cosmic work to join him. And while you're there he'll work on you too, repairing and restoring in your life. |
