Category: Christianity

Inhabiting — Chapter Five — Setting the Table

This was a sermon preached at City South Presbyterian in 2024. You can listen to the podcast here, or watch it on video. Some of the block quotes were on screen and summarised but have been included in full.

Let’s talk about Paris. The city of love and liberty — from kings and from gods… any gods.

Let’s talk about the 2024 Olympics — a public, global event where all the nations of earth come together in a festival, celebrating the human body and the human spirit. An event tracing its heritage back to Greek paganism, that now includes people from every tribe and tongue and nation and religion.

And — let’s talk about the opening ceremony.

Did you see it?

In a performance that ran through France’s secular history — its revolution and liberation so it’s now a society that celebrates unrestricted love and beauty — there was a fashion show that became a bacchanalian feast, and there was a moment where Jolly created a scene that looked like Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper.

That’s an important distinction — right — that he copied a painting of the Last Supper, not the Supper itself. We Presbyterians have a tradition of thinking any representation of Jesus in a picture runs the risk of violating the second of the Ten Commandments — whether it’s Da Vinci’s white Jesus, or Jolly recreating that scene with Jewish lesbian, Barbara Butch.

Jolly re-presented this painting using humans; re-framing a famous artwork consistent with his own religious convictions. Describing his intention he said:

“We wanted to talk about diversity. Diversity means being together. We wanted to include everyone, as simple as that.”

We’ll come back to this.

Because as the camera zoomed out in the opening ceremony it was clear this wasn’t just the Last Supper — Da Vinci didn’t paint a smurf on a platter.

The performance was (apparently) a homage to a painting, The Feast of the Gods, by Jan van Bijlert from the 1600s, which you can find hanging in a French gallery.

People who made this connection suggested Christians were silly to be outraged; we should calm down; it’s not even a painting of Jesus — only — the French museum has a guide to its artworks where — in a bad French-to-English Google translation — we’re told the Reformation meant less demand for paintings in “temples,” which I assume is a translation of “churches”:

“In the context of the Reformation, in which the commission for temples had disappeared, the artist found a stratagem to paint a Christlike Last Supper under the cover of a mythological subject…”

With mythological, pagan features… the Greek gods feasting on Mount Olympus. Apollo in the place of Jesus. All the gods are included, as Jesus is replaced.

And, just for fun — there’s another painting hanging in a gallery in Paris — a Last Supper scene on the River Seine — its title is a pun; I won’t mangle the French but “Last Supper,” “the scene,” and “the Seine” all sound the same.

When Paul visited Athens he was introducing a new God to a pagan landscape. Where we sit, any religious revolution — any paganism — has to account for Jesus and his impact on the west. While most of the ancient Athenians laughed at the idea of a resurrected God, who had been mocked and ridiculed — powerless — on a cross, modern paganism laughs at a God they have found repressive, exclusive, and powerful.

Anyway. How did this image — this event — this mockery and idolatry make you feel?

Whether you interpreted it as a direct insult to an image of Jesus, or just the image of a feast of pagan gods supplanting Christianity’s claims of exclusivity in the west, in the name of inclusivity of people often excluded from the table by Christians… however you saw it — what was your response?

Disorientation?
Offence?
Distress?

And what’s your response to the response — both from other Christians, or the apology from the Olympic committee — or to the death threats received by the person at the centre of the image, or by the artist — or the Vatican issuing a statement condemning the display?

How you think we should respond or react to this is kind of a picture of where we are up to in our series today about inhabiting the world. We’ve looked at building our own lives, at being part of a household or family, at creating habitats that shape us in our homes or church spaces. This week we’re thinking about how we live in public; in cities — or a world — designed with its own conforming pattern; its own architecture or habitats that shape hearts and minds.

How we react to this moment around a global festival, this overt display of religious worship, this appeal to form our minds is a bit of a test case; a way to explore how we imagine life inhabiting spaces like Athens, or Paris, or Brisbane, as people who have inhabited and been formed by the living God — as his temples.

We started our series in Athens, where we saw Paul’s reaction to the pagan art and performances of that city — its idols, and altars, and temples — he was greatly distressed (Acts 17:16). It’s literally the word provoked.

I think some of us are hard to offend and might minimise the distress others feel in response to blasphemous dismissals of the God we worship; the desire to see his name hallowed. We might miss that idolatry is an affront to God, and not be provoked by this enough — whether the performance was directly the Lord’s Supper, or just a pagan feast replacing it — but I reckon some of Paul’s distress is not just about love for God, but love for humans — and his understanding of what idolatry does to humans; how it excludes us from life with God; life at his table.

Paul’s distress doesn’t just lead to a classic Old Testament response to idols — he doesn’t tear them down or smash them with a hammer or “devote them to destruction” like Deuteronomy says:

“This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire.” — Deuteronomy 7:5

He preaches to them. He invites them to the table, to meet the living God (Acts 17:18).

He uses their human impulse to worship; their idols and altars (Acts 17:22-23) — their artists, poets, and philosophers to point them to their Creator (Acts 17:28) — who made them to inhabit time and space (Acts 17:26)… and to seek and find him (Acts 17:27). He uses all this architecture — including art and images — and their desires — to aid this search; pointing them to the Creator they are ignoring in their pagan worship.

He doesn’t come with a hammer, but he calls them ignorant — and tries to inform them so they might be transformed. While God overlooked this offensive paganism in these nations before Jesus, now he commands all people to repent (Acts 17:30); to leave the gods of Mount Olympus and their feasts and festivals to find transforming life at God’s table, with him. God, our creator, has us inhabiting space and time so that we might find him, and the way to find him is through Jesus, in his kingdom.

This speech in Athens is part of Luke’s two-part volume about who Jesus is and what his kingdom looks like. When our church worked through Luke’s Gospel earlier this year, we saw how this kingdom is revealed at the table:

“When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table… he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.’” — Luke 22:14, 19

Whatever that meal symbolises, it is a picture of life feasting with God, and how God invites us to this feast through Jesus. Our desire to be included in human community might well be part of how God has wired us to look for connection and belonging and inclusion — a desire that is best fulfilled at his table, rather than filled with pagan feasts.

And we’ve seen how the Christian habitat for being formed as God’s people is a household — homes, spaces where people meet together and break bread, remembering Jesus’ body and his blood given for us so that we might become children in God’s family; so we might be transformed as we turn away from destructive idols, and patterns of life, and inhabit the city differently.

But what should this look like? This transformation? Life in this kingdom? Life at this table — and why choose it rather than the feast of the gods around us?

If you think way back to the start of the year to our second talk in the Luke series (podcast here), we saw how in Luke Jesus proclaimed the good news — the Gospel — as the beginning of a party with God, the year of Jubilee (Luke 4:18-21). He came to fulfil this.

Some part of inhabiting the world as those feasting at God’s table involves this preaching — a proclamation that comes as an invitation to feast at God’s table, and away from other tables, altars, and gods.

We get a picture of this transformation from the Old Testament passages Jesus says he fulfils. His good news announcement of Jubilee comes from Isaiah 61 — which is good news for the poor and the oppressed, for captives who are in the dark (Isaiah 61:1). Now — we either tend to read this and see a picture of justice being meted out for any oppressed people, and see God’s heart to include excluded and oppressed people — or we tend to spiritualise this idea of freedom and rescue and make it just about sin and forgiveness. And God certainly liberates us from sin and death and the rule of other powers and principalities. But Isaiah is written to the nation of Israel, and this is — as much as anything — a promise that exile from God will end; that being excluded from his presence is not forever; that God will regather a people for himself.

And those of us reading after Jesus who are Gentiles — most of us — this regathering comes with bonus inclusion: the end of an exile from God for all nations, nations who had worshipped other gods, with pagan feasts like the one on Mount Olympus. Pursuing liberty — freedom from God, freedom to rule our own lives and pursue our own feasts.

Isaiah suggests this idolatry is destructive and dehumanising — we become what we worship:

“All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless. Those who would speak up for them are blind; they are ignorant, to their own shame.” — Isaiah 44:9

And we are left “feeding on ashes” (Isaiah 44:20). The worst thing is to be formed in the image of these false gods, and to find ourselves as enemies of the God of all nations.

Anyway — Jubilee is not just about liberation and inclusion and diversity. It is about invitation and transformation. Through it, God will take those — first of all — those of his people on Zion — and replace their ashes, the way they had been marked by mourning, with a crown of beauty. Bringing the oil of joy instead of mourning. This is beautiful imagery, isn’t it? Restoration. God will make these people righteous; like trees planted to display his splendour (Isaiah 61:3). These people will be rebuilders of cities — specifically in this case it is about Jerusalem — they will create shared architecture that points to life with God (Isaiah 61:4). They will be priests of the Lord, benefiting from the produce of fields and vineyards, receiving abundance — a double portion, an inheritance. Joy-filled (Isaiah 61:6-7).

God will make a covenant with this people and reward them. Their descendants will be known among all the people of the world as his blessed people (Isaiah 61:8-9); clothed in salvation and righteousness; a fruitful, garden-like people who will multiply praise as God makes them grow in righteousness (Isaiah 61:10-11). This is what Jesus says he fulfils. This is the sort of people we are invited to be as we become part of his household. This picture of life as God’s people — who dwell at his table and model fruitful life in the world.

How should this idea of being fruitful, righteous, rebuilders of cities work when we live in cities more like Athens than the new Jerusalem?

Another image that might help comes from another prophet, Jeremiah, who talks about God’s people preparing themselves for the promised end of exile while still living in Babylon. God promises them they will return to life with him, and to prepare by building houses and planting gardens — creating homes that operate as habitats where they are formed as God’s people; gardens that echo Eden and the temple they lost (Jeremiah 29:5); being fruitful and multiplying (Jeremiah 29:6); seeking the prosperity of their neighbours because their prosperity will be found as the city prospers (Jeremiah 29:7). God promises he will end their exile — bring them home — but the pattern of life in a hostile city is to build and plant, to generate life, to bless their neighbours, anticipating restoration to life with God — to practice the sort of things Isaiah pictures as restoration.

And there is something very Genesis-y about both these pictures — isn’t there — some explicit language that connects to the mission God gives humans in the beginning. As he blesses them and calls them to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28); to fill the earth and rule over it as his representatives. And then as he commissions his gardening human to cultivate and keep the garden — his dwelling place — where he gives a feast (Genesis 2:15-16).

So this is who we are to be. God made us to inhabit space and time, and he has called us into life with him. Jubilee life at his table. Life in his kingdom. Calling us to cultivate space — planting and building — that reflects his rule, while inviting others to the party; to be transformed as they find the God who is seeking them through his resurrecting king.

But what does this look like? How do we live like this when there are so many other feasts, other gods clamouring for our worship, forming our minds? Provoking us? We are invited to be cultivators, builders, planters — to live constructively, not to seek the destruction of these idols and their tables or altars.

There’s this Japanese-American artist-slash-theologian, Makoto Fujimura. He makes art drawing on his Japanese heritage and his Christian faith, and writes books about how Christians might think about participating in our culture — our Babylons — while anticipating the heavenly city.

Where some folks suggest our job is to fight a culture war, he calls us to culture care, and to an approach that summarises all this Old Testament stuff — to a life of generativity. It’s a good word. He describes it as bringing flowers into a culture bereft of beauty:

“Culture Care is a generative approach to culture that brings bouquets of flowers into a culture bereft of beauty.”

— Makoto Fujimura

Being fruitful and multiplying; generating life.

“God creates and calls his creatures to fruitfulness… We call something ‘generative’ if it is fruitful.”

— Fujimura

He applies this idea to his art — and to critiquing other sorts of art or creativity. And it is a useful idea when we are confronted with art — or life — that feels degenerate: paintings, performances, pagan feasts, idol statues, or modern altars and temples that turn our hearts and habits away from God.

“We can also approach generativity by looking at its shadow, ‘degenerate’ — the loss of good or desirable qualities.”

— Fujimura

This allows us to respond to something degenerate or degrading with imagination; trying to introduce beauty to the ashes. Gardens to Babylon. Where, like Paul in Athens, we focus on being fruitful and multiplying; pursuing abundance; being constructive not destructive — inviting others to encounter this life.

“What is generative is the opposite of degrading or limiting. It is constructive, expansive, affirming, growing beyond a mindset of scarcity.”

— Fujimura

“Generative thinking is fuelled by generosity” that responds to God’s generosity; hospitality that responds to God’s hospitality — reminding us not to commodify or objectify life; to dehumanise other humans, or treat God as an object in our own plans to consume.

He says: “An encounter with generosity can remind us that life always overflows our attempts to reduce it to a commodity or a transaction.”

I love this stuff.

So often the “culture war” dehumanises the other — in the Paris situation this looks like not seeing the humanity of those at the table; and Thomas Jolly or Barbara Butch getting death threats. Generativity means building movements or creating things that seek to make our cities — our culture — more humane and welcoming, and inspire us to be truly human.

“Thinking and living that is truly generative makes possible works and movements that make our culture more humane and welcoming and that inspire us to be more fully human.”

— Fujimura

So. We might see the Olympic opening ceremony — the Olympics themselves, and the controversial “feast” in particular — as degenerate. Degenerating. Like the idols and altars and feasts of Athens; designed to dehumanise. We might — like Paul — be distressed.

But let’s examine not just our distress — but our response. It would be a problem if our distress did not move us towards where it moves Paul: towards inviting people to encounter God as God actually is; to find life in a feast with him. But instead to our own sort of degenerative behaviour where we dehumanise the other, the opponent — where we pick up our sledgehammers and attack the idols with our own angry art.

It would be a problem if, when we saw a table full of people typically excluded from church community and life with God — dressed in drag, or gender non-conforming folks, or queer people like the lesbian DJ Barbara Butch in her crown — we joined the crowd of people yelling hate or sending death threats.

To respond with outrage at the idea that these folks might be included would be to perpetuate their exclusion, and probably to join in seeing them as less than human. And our distress or outrage might be around the idea of who is at that table and what they represent, rather than the portrayal of Jesus.

Reframing Jesus as part of another pagan festival — replacing him with Apollo, and serving up Dionysus — is dumb, insulting, and blasphemous. It is degenerate, as was plenty of the sexual stuff, the celebration of promiscuity around that particular image. It is dehumanising, and like any idolatry it offers a dead end.

The modern idol of inclusion and diversity — without Jesus and the transformation he offers everyone through resurrection and re-creation and life at God’s table as his worshipping image bearers — that’s also a dead end. But it is a longing tied in with our search for meaning, for God, for love and connection and inclusion — the same impulse that led artists and architects to build idols and altars in Athens.

There’s also an interesting sub-thread here with the anger about the inclusion of the “other” in the culture war here — queer folks — at the table. The comparison here is not exact; but where our intuition is to see anything not binary as an affront to God’s design of image bearers as male and female, we have to grapple with one of the primary pictures Isaiah gives us for exile and restoration, and the way he challenges our categories — in a thread explicitly picked up by Jesus.

In Isaiah 39, Isaiah tells the king of Israel that exile is coming; Babylon will cart off his household, and Israel’s images of God — humans — in this case, sons of the royal house will be turned into eunuchs (Isaiah 39:6-7).

For Israel, a man whose sexual organs were mutilated would be excluded from life in God’s house under the law:

“No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord.”

— Deuteronomy 23:1

This was common practice in Babylon in a way that reflected their creation story — where the god Marduk creates through violence and dismembering other beings. In Babylon’s religion, only the king was the image of God, of Marduk. Babylon’s kings would routinely gather up the most beautiful sons of conquered nations, and make them into eunuchs to serve the royal household (Isaiah 39:7).

This probably happened to Daniel and his friends, who were literally given to the “chief of his court officials,” which is “chief of the eunuchs” in Babylon (Daniel 1:3-4). Someone made a eunuch before puberty would develop different feminine bodily characteristics. They would not fit a typical gender binary. An Israelite would see this as an affront to God’s design, his law, and an expression of idolatrous worship and power. Such a person would be excluded from the table.

But as Isaiah pictures the return from exile God promises, he pictures eunuchs — the excluded, these humans whose bodies were marked by the idolatrous empire that included them at the royal table, in the king’s family, who do not conform to a rigid gender binary image. They are being included in the temple, God’s house, as a prophetic picture of God’s rebuilding and recreating and liberating work, of Jubilee (Isaiah 56:4-5).

Some religious folks in Isaiah’s day, familiar with the law, may have found this image incredibly provocative and distressing — or they may have been moved by compassion and by excitement to be part of something God was going to do, rebuilding a people.

Jesus continues this inclusivity when he talks about eunuchs as a picture of faithfulness in Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 19:12). He describes those who are born this way, those made this way by others, and those who choose to live this way for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, as he speaks of those who will choose God’s kingdom over sexual expression that rejects God’s design.

It is striking, too, that the first Gentile we meet included in God’s kingdom in the book of Acts is the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:27)… who is reading Isaiah (Acts 8:32).

Now — this is a broad category and it does not only or exclusively map on to the sorts of people at the table in the opening ceremony image. There are complex dynamics around individual circumstances and biology and sin working out for any person who comes to God’s table seeking inclusion and life with him.

Practicing generativity and generosity will mean looking to see the humanity of the other we might dehumanise, as we build communities with a desire to see all people come to the table with Jesus to be transformed by him as their exile ends and Jubilee begins.

Our reaction to a picture of queer people at the Lord’s Supper, our outrage, risks closing the door to this sort of inclusion; to creating a prophetic community where those harmed by Babylon, or Athens, or Paris, and its worship, find adoption and life in God’s family, at his table. Where we see those in this picture as less than human, or do not desire their presence at God’s table, or close the door, we are missing the pattern of life we are invited into.

A culture war posture of outrage — our response when we feel attacked — might fail to recognise the deep desire folks have for inclusion; to feast at the table of God. To see how when this desire misfires in degraded, degenerative, pagan worship that dehumanises, there is an opportunity to proclaim the one who is at the table offering his body to give life.

What if — though we are provoked, distressed — by pagan parties that mock Jesus — we reacted with a generous invitation, like Jesus does from the cross. Where he says “Father forgive them,” or invites the rebel next to him to join him in the garden.

What if, when we see a picture like this, we do not see an awful attack on Christianity, but — in the artist’s words — a search for inclusivity that, without Jesus and the transformation he offers, is just a dead end.

So we do not pick up the sledgehammer or keyboard in a culture war, but set the table with culture care.

And look — you might say “but this is not what the artist meant, it was deliberately offensive and you are letting them off the hook”… But I am pretty sure the people who built the altar to the unknown God in Athens did not mean for Paul to make it about Israel’s God either.

What if instead of seeing these folks taking the seats of Jesus and his disciples, we saw them at the other side of the table; across from Jesus.

What if we imagine Jesus in this picture offering his body and his blood — his loving hospitality and invitation to these folks just as he did for us? Offering inclusion and transformation to those prepared to repent and be transformed.

What if this was our posture in real life too — not just our reaction to the opening ceremony? To build and plant homes and spaces in our city — amongst the idol tables — that offer this life to others.

What if our building and planting — our generativity — were generated by our own weekly re-enactment of the Lord’s Supper at this table; a picture performed for us, and the world, as we remember and proclaim the good news that Jesus has given his body and blood to include us, to transform us, as we bring our lives, our crowns, and our sin to the table and repent. Laying those things down and taking up the life of Jesus so we might carry it into the world with us.

September 30, 2025 Add Comment

Inhabiting — Chapter Four — Habitats For Humanity

This was a sermon preached at City South Presbyterian in 2024. You can listen to the podcast here, or watch it on video. Some of the block quotes were on screen and summarised but have been included in full.

You can’t believe everything you read on the Internet. In July, rumours of the death of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter circulated, leading to an outpouring of grief for the 99 year old some months before his actual death. Carter was an interesting guy if you watch the horror show that is U.S. politics; he seems to be universally loved — and one of the reasons he was loved, was because of his work with the charity he helped make famous, Habitat for Humanity — it is a charity that builds houses — habitats — for humans.

It exists in Australia as well — and it is built from the recognition that we need a home; a habitat to survive and thrive, as we inhabit time and space. The spaces and places we call home — their rhythms and rituals, the furniture and the people who fill them — form us.

Back in week one of this series we were in Athens and we imagined the shift facing Damaris and Dionysius — these two people who believed the Gospel (Acts 17:34) — from the architecture of Athens and its idols to the rhythms we saw in our reading from the start of the church — both the rhythms of meeting together with other Christians — a new household — and of meeting in a very different sort of sacred space — the home (Acts 2:46–47).

This is the architecture described in the New Testament as the first habitat for this new community, the church, which we saw last week is called the household of God; a kinship network that teaches us how to be human — the church and our households within it — as we wisely build our lives — and we saw the way the New Testament uses the metaphor of building a house for this process.

The physical spaces we live in, where we meet together and eat together, structure our lives. And to live in the household of God means changing the furniture — these structures — the architecture of our lives as our habits change.

And so I wonder, first up — if you think about your house — what are your physical spaces geared towards; what are they producing in you? What about your workspace or other places you spend time habitually — what about church?

What are the rhythms and rituals in your habitat? Who lives in your habitat with you?

What changes can we make to our habitats to become the humans God is inviting us to be in his household — and so we offer the hospitality and transformation of his household to others drawn in to this ecosystem?

How is your home shaping you?

I want to acknowledge up front that many of us are living in non-ideal situations; not where we imagine for ourselves, and we are already at the limits of what we can afford in the current economy — interesting if you remember last week that is a household word — we are finding the household management of the world pretty unbearable.

And so what I am not saying is move — change in ways we cannot afford; but maybe there are changes to how we live in our spaces — whether at home or in shared spaces that we cannot afford not to make — especially because we will see this idea as we explore our two readings is about both our habits and who we are habitually connected with.

Anyway. Here is a tour of our house — I took these photos when there were dogs around, but fewer humans than normal — and this is not me saying our house was well designed to form us — it was a mix. The photos are our house as it was — since preaching this series we moved out and conducted significant renovations.

When you walked through our front door there was a hallway, and on the wall there were pictures our kids have made hung on a string.

On the left of the hallway were our bedrooms — there were three of them for five of us — we added another bedroom to minimise fights between the residents who share — the kid ones — and to provide a little more space away from each other — I will not show you pictures of the bedrooms both because they are pretty much just bedrooms, and because of privacy and mess.

Bedrooms are for sleeping — although there is a desk in our room, and bedside tables covered in books, that are also where we charge our devices. Which means they are on hand as we go to bed or wake up in the morning.

Our living area is open plan — we like this because it means we can see what our kids are up to. We built these desks into this set of shelves so kids would work there and not take screens into their rooms.

We really love our kitchen where there is a big communal island bench, where multiple people can prep food together — and breakfast bar — there is a fruit bowl in the middle to encourage us all to eat fruit, and some flowers because they are beautiful, and mess because we are a family and both parents are working pretty much full-time jobs and we still had not cleaned up fully from Growth Group a couple of nights before.

There is the coffee machine that keeps me sane — one that is great for firing up to make coffees for more than one person at a time.

A dining table in the corner crowded in by the dog crates — and our couches, which are both pointed at the TV so that when we collapse onto them once the kids are in bed we are inevitably drawn in to the screen.

The next biggest thing on our wall is the clock — well, it is maybe the painting — but in the morning we are ruled by the clock; racing against time to get everyone out the door in chaos.

Out the back we have got another table — with more clothes and toys — and a pizza oven in the corner so we can have people round, and play equipment for the kids because we want them to be habitually active.

This is the habitat shaping our household — it is built for chaos and hospitality — filled with marks of conflict, and mess, connection and distraction — and there are good and deliberate bits built around eating together and being together, but other bits that rule us more than they should; the screens on our wall and on our bedside table — part of thinking through our architecture means curating what is on our screens; and where our screens are — both the TV screen and all the stuff you are paying for to stream distraction into your life, and the stuff on your phone and in your browser.

What does your habitat look like? Are there ways you have set it up to make certain practices repeatable and easy? As an expression of your values — or just as something shaping them by shaping your habits?

Most of us spend lots of waking hours at work — like I said last week, my workspace tends to be my couch — or the desk in our room — or the dining table — when I am not working from a café or meeting people — but I used to work in a cubicle, and so I wonder how your workspace is set up…

Maybe you have a cubicle — what pieces of “flair” — the idea made famous by Office Space — is expressing your personality but perhaps even drawing your eye and prompting your thoughts when you have a moment in your cubicle? What is on your screen?

What your space looks like is going to vary widely based on what sort of job you do — you could drive heaps where your only real decision is what you listen to on the road, or if you hang something from your mirror that reminds you to pray, or something like you will often find in a car driven by someone whose religion involves more icons or images.

How have you structured things to aid your work? Or your formation? Some of this is silly window dressing, but changing our habitats can shape the way we work. Carpenters in their workshops use these things called jigs — deliberate structures they will turn to for repeated tasks that make them faster and more automatic.

The author Matthew Crawford is a motorbike mechanic and philosopher — he is all about keeping our heads and our bodies connected. He reckons we could all learn from carpenters and have jigs that produce the repeated habits we want to see more effortlessly; where our habitat assists us automating our habits. He defines a jig as:

“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 having to think about it…”

— Matthew Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head

This fits with the brain science we have been looking at a bit this series; the idea that we think about things in one part of our brain, but have this automatic set of processes on the other — one of the guys who made this brain-system thing popular, Daniel Kahneman, says we form the fast side of the brain the way we learn skills with our body — through repetition; habit — and the best way to fast-track that is to set up our environment — our habitat — to produce the behaviours we want to repeat.

“The acquisition of skills requires a regular environment, an adequate opportunity to practice, and rapid and unequivocal feedback about the correctness of thoughts and actions.” — Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow

We will find these jigs — this environmental organisation — working to form us in ways we do not notice in stuff designed to addict us, to automate harmful behaviours — and in things like weight machines at gyms as opposed to free weights that guide our motions along a repeated path to help us develop a muscle.

So what about this habitat? Where we repeatedly come together — habitually — how are we being shaped as we walk through these doors and sit in rows — learning not to look at each other eye to eye, which we saw last week is super important — but to stare at and listen to people up the front — and some of that is feeding into the slow-process part of our brain — the rider of the elephant — and this is important. The rider’s job is to steer things around and decide what skills to develop and how to do that — we focus on hearing from God’s word; and we participate in habits with our bodies — standing and sitting to sing; engaging in prayer, sharing communion — breaking bread together up here, and then eating together downstairs.

But what are our jigs? The structures that guide our actions in church life? The pews… the pulpit… the communion table… the baptismal pool… the coffee machine… the tables where we eat together downstairs?

The architecture of this space works to produce behaviours that we repeat that work to produce us.

I wonder how this architecture could shift — or how we could think of our movements through this space — so we are working not just on knowledge but on attachment and joy and skill development — learning the skills of loving others intuitively because we love God intuitively; because we have learned that intuition through practice.

And who are we gathering with? Who are the people forming our habitat? Our household?

If we want our habitats to be jigs that help us learn a skill; set up to make repetitive right action shape us, we want to make sure both the context and the content of what we are trying to form in ourselves — who we are trying to be, with a picture of how we are going to get there — like a trainee carpenter — an apprentice in a workshop, or someone working out in a gym — it helps to have teachers around too. Examples who are part of the furniture; the habitat, and who are teaching us and correcting us as we practice our humanity.

I reckon that is what we see in Acts, as these believers whose hearts are being reformed to be directed to God are devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to time with God in prayer while eating together in houses in this new community. And in Hebrews, the writer is building on this idea that we are located in God’s house now — behind the curtain in the Temple, as we saw last series — we are living in holy space; this is our habitat (Hebrews 10:19–20). We have Jesus as our holy personal trainer; the master builder who is the priestly head of the household of God (Hebrews 10:21), and we are caught up in this exercise of coming to God (Hebrews 10:22) — this is the practice that will shape us most, knowing our hearts have been cleansed; our sins have been forgiven through the blood of Jesus, and we have been cleansed so we can come close to God — and the writer of Hebrews pivots from this to say “OK — the goal is drawing near to God” to the call to “hold unswervingly” to this hope. This is an active thing — a directed thing — “hold this hope” (Hebrews 10:23). This is a practice. Practice hoping because God is faithful.

Our habitat should be jigged up to teach us this skill of hoping; knowing that God is faithful to his promises — and what else? To ‘love and good deeds’ — we spur one another on — encourage one another towards practices that shape us as God’s children. “Love and good deeds” — the stuff Jesus taught and calls us to practice (Hebrews 10:24).

And how do we do this? We stay in the habit of meeting together (Hebrews 10:25); we habitually enter habitats that will shape us in a certain way in our practice of meeting and our practices together — especially the practice of encouraging one another. And why — well — because of where we are going — towards this Day. Now. I almost stopped here. This would have been an easy thing to apply, and to talk about — but the passage keeps going. Verse 26. It is a doozy. I reckon the hardest verse in the New Testament to balance against our understanding of the Gospel.

“If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.” — Hebrews 10:26.

It is a warning to persevere — to keep building wisely rather than turning away from the foundation that is Jesus; those who are saved will be those who stick at it, those who do not stick with Jesus will — the foolish builders — well, the storm that will hit and test our house is not just suffering in this world — it is the testing of God’s judgment. This feels weird coming hot on the heels of a claim that we should come to God with full assurance…

But this is a theme the writer of Hebrews has banged on about all the way through the letter; the way to have assurance that you are part of God’s family (Hebrews 3:16), his household, is if you are hanging on to hope that God will be faithful, because Jesus is faithful, and we have just read about the practices that will keep you there — the practice of sinning, rejecting Jesus, will stop you being faithful to Jesus (Hebrews 10:29). I do not know about you, but I can forget that hope, or feel it slipping in moments when I turn to sin — and that is a pathway that leads to bad places.

There is a particular warning here against finding life in Jesus; building on him, and then deliberately, habitually, rejecting him and turning away. To do this would leave us especially deserving of punishment — knowing the holiness of God and treading him through the dirt. The writer of this letter is making a pretty strong case to choose life and joy and God’s love in the face of this Day, rather than the alternative. And the point of this rhetorical move, like in Deuteronomy in the Old Testament, is to choose life, not death; blessing, not curse; and to build habits that will prepare you for that Day so that you can endure all the other days between now and then (Hebrews 10:32) — and any conflict or suffering — as people of joy and hope — connected; not alone. In The Other Half of Church the authors talk about that connected joy we looked at last week, where we are together with people who are glad to be with us — reflecting God’s delight to be with us — being vital for growth — it is also vital for surviving suffering.

“Our identity is built and formed by joy-bonded relationships. The identity center in our brain grows in response to joy.”

— The Other Half of Church

It protects us from trauma; which they reckon happens when we suffer alone; without joyful security and people to process with.

“Suffering turns into trauma when we are unable to process our suffering with God and other people.”

— The Other Half of Church

The writer of Hebrews does not want people suffering alone; or suffering without having habitually built the relationships that might protect you from traumatic harm. They say “remember how just after you trusted Jesus you endured suffering” (Hebrews 10:32); being publicly insulted, persecuted… being side-by-side with those suffering and being persecuted (Hebrews 10:33) — suffering with those in prison — hoping together (Hebrews 10:34). This is a picture of occupying a household together; a habitat — they even had property confiscated and stayed joyful because their true home is in God’s presence… and holding on to our hope; our confidence — persevering — habitually — leads to being home with God.

Drawing near to God.
Holding on to and professing their hope.
Spurring one another on toward love and good deeds.
Meeting together habitually.
Encouraging one another.

You imagine they are doing what the Acts 2 church did too — praying. Studying the teaching of the apostles; the Gospel. Breaking bread — communion and eating together — in houses. Learning by heart the skill of hope and perseverance and joyful connection to God and each other.

Our habitats matter — who we fill them with matters — because our habits matter; cultivating habits of perseverance in faith and hope; drawing near to God through Jesus is how we exercise our faith and how we are formed; how we hold on to rather than throwing away Jesus (Hebrews 10:35). This is what persevering looks like; and persevering is what forms us as we draw near to God (Hebrews 10:36).

We are formed in this habitat for our new humanity; as we learn skills by heart; as we automate this perseverance by habit. And we form habits — getting in the groove of godliness — by structuring our environments and repeating our actions in loving environments. So it becomes easier to repeat right actions than wrong ones, and so we limit our freedoms to choose badly.

We will find these jigs — this environmental organisation — working to form us in ways we do not notice in stuff designed to addict us, to automate harmful behaviours — and in things like weight machines at gyms as opposed to free weights that guide our motions along a repeated path to help us develop a muscle.

This might mean keeping your phone out of your bedroom — or screens away from places where you know you are likely to engage in bad habits when nobody is around — it might mean turning couches towards each other, or eating at the table, or all sorts of things — it might mean reaching for God’s word in the morning, whether that is in a physical Bible or an app, before you reach for or hook into an algorithm; it might mean not being ruled by the clock — it might mean adjusting how you redeem the time in your car or your cubicle or the little visual prompts you use that remind you who you are at work, where things get stressful…

It might mean changing how we approach church so it is not just a place where we sit and look forwards and hear one or two people speak, but a community where we gather together to look at one another and direct each other’s gaze to the throne room; encouraging one another.

People are part of our habitat — perhaps the most important furniture in our lives — so tweaking our environment involves making sure we are connected to God’s household in a real way — that joyful and connected way we talked about last week — and this is not just about meeting together where safety and joy are the end point; those things are the soil that enables transformation when we encourage one another towards our goal; our hope.

This also means choosing not to meet together with God’s people is a choice to be formed by a different habitat — to not be encouraged by God’s people, or to encourage God’s people as we do this for one another. To risk not persevering.

So what is this encouragement thing — really — I reckon sometimes it is the “keep going” idea — where we suffer together and say “keep going,” “hold on,” “remember the destination”… stay faithful… prodding each other towards perseverance… holding on to the hope we profess — but part of this will be about calling folks back to holding on. Back to hoping. Back towards love and good deeds; towards being and becoming the sort of people Jesus calls us to be (Hebrews 10:25).

I reckon we are comfortable working at being a joyful and connected community — even with eye contact (which we “practised” at communion and in singing together the previous week) — one where we want people to be included and feel safe and maybe hear some good stuff or sing some good stuff to each other — I am sure we can get better and better at noticing the good things people do as part of cultivating joy and gratitude — being glad to be together — but I reckon some of this encouragement stuff is actually about saying hard things to one another — calling one another back to being who we are meant to be — and our habitat needs the sort of people who teach us skills by telling us when we get things wrong — and by showing us how to be who we are learning to be.

I am not sure we always have the relational security or the joyful attachment we need for that sort of speech to happen well — and then I am not sure we have practised this encouragement and spurring one another on when the pressure is not on, so that we are able to do it when it is real…

After joy and hesed, this is one of the practices suggested in The Other Half of Church for forming this side of our brain; forming our character. The authors talk about building a habitat of relationships in terms of forming group identity and calling each other to live together in this community — now — the book warns about how this can go wrong in cults and abusive contexts, we should not be naïve about this — but I reckon those of us who have experienced abuse and trauma — abuses of power or authority — can respond by rejecting all authority and just trying to do our own thing — which is another way of being formed but one that leaves us alone, or just with peers, or people we have got authority over like our own kids, or people we are teaching in various contexts.

I know I have struggled to work out what authority is and even if it can be used well, without harming others. I have found this part of my job the most difficult bit; because I recognise the harm done to so many of us through bad authority, and I do not want to compound that, but this fear — driven by love — pushes me — and others — away from hard and necessary conversations.

This is not who we are invited to be for each other. It is not who we say we are for each other. One of the values of our church is that we speak truth in love to one another in vulnerability and honesty. This love bit involves that security and joy — but this speech bit can be hard. Scary.

“We are vulnerable and honest about our own sin and brokenness, living and speaking the truth to one another in love, and welcoming to those not yet trusting Jesus.” — City South Presbyterian, Mission, Vision, Values

And while there might be a role for spiritual parents or those in authority to have these conversations, this is a one-another job — we are to spur one another on as we meet together — and the authority we are trying to point to is Jesus’ authority, not our own; we are part of his household, not our families of origin or our ideal communities, and so this sort of conversation involves discernment.

Anyway — the book talks about how important it is not just to talk about beliefs but about values; the sort of people we are and who we want to be, not just what we think — and about the need to proclaim these values habitually.

“One way a community can build a strong character identity is by speaking regularly to each other about what kind of people we are.” — The Other Half of Church

They say some traditions recite doctrinal statements — like we do with the creed — but we have also got to learn the vocabulary for how we live; our shared values — the commands of Jesus — so that when we are not being consistent we have a framework we can use to call people back to love and good deeds.

“Some traditions recite doctrinal statements as part of their Christian practice. We also need to do the same with how we live. We need constant reminders.”

— The Other Half of Church

This kind of correction is hard because it involves shame, inevitably — when we are told we are doing something wrong — but when there is genuine love and joyful connection, shame does not threaten our relationship or isolate us, knowing we are loved and secure helps us regulate that shame response and direct it towards growth — when this speech is genuinely encouraging it spurs us not just away from wrong action, but towards a correct path.

“Without hesed, shame will push us to isolate and hide, which naturally sinks us into unhealthy shame. Our hesed helps us regulate the emotional energy of shame.”

— The Other Half of Church

They talk about a template for this sort of conversation — a skill to develop as we seek to help one another be transformed by the renewing of our minds; as we proclaim the Gospel to one another to build hope and to persevere together — their template involves a reassurance of the hesed — the love — that connects us to God and each other, and by saying “I believe you did this,” not “you did this,” invites a conversation and listening.

“I love you but believe that you stopped acting like yourself. Let me remind you how we act in this situation.” — The Other Half of Church

Framing the “spur” or prod as a recognition of where we have stopped acting like who we are, with an invitation back to shared values and action, does not cast out — like bad shame — but invites closer; prodding; spurring; encouraging. It is a terrifying idea, right?

This sort of speech takes real love; and real agreement on shared values for it to be helpful.

We will not always get this right; and sometimes someone might raise something with you, in love, where they are wrong — that is an opportunity for more encouragement, and perhaps to invite spiritual parents — those more mature than us — into the mix if it feels like it is going wrong.

Our habitat will shape us not just when we structure our physical environments right, but when we fill them with people filled with God’s Spirit — God’s household — who love us and direct us towards Jesus.

September 29, 2025 Add Comment

Inhabiting — Chapter Three — the Household

This was a sermon preached at City South Presbyterian in 2024. You can listen to the podcast here, or watch it on video. Some of the block quotes were on screen and summarised but have been included in full.

I need to give a bit of a content warning — we are talking about family — about parents — and I know some people have had damaging relationships with their parents, so this is a traumatic topic to engage with.

We are also talking about church as family — which, in high-control environments, is language that can be used coercively or abusively — probably in ways that overlap with those family experiences.

I am hoping we will steer clear of these dynamics, but acknowledge there will be an overlap with language that may have harmed you; deforming rather than forming some of us.

There is also a caveat I want to add up front; sermons have limits. The sort of ideas we open up today about our households, and our church as a household, might require deep recalibration of our lives. I am sketching out a framework for how we think of discipleship; our formation as children of God. This is a conversation starter, not a conversation finisher.

I am also opening with a confession. I am worried I am not a good parent; and the more time I spend with those of you whom I love, who have suffered at the hands of bad parents; the more I have seen the cost of these wounds, the more I fear how I am deforming my kids. I need help.

At home I am short-tempered. Distracted. Focused on what I want to do. Trying to cope. Parenting is hard. Kids are always fighting. Always noisy. Always too slow to do what I want. Our house is too small, and we just always feel angry at each other. It is overwhelming… and it needs to change. I need to change.

And look, I am on social media — I know I am not alone in this sort of feeling.

A few years ago Robyn and I visited these psychologists — a couple — who specialise in ministry families. If you have been around for a while you will know I have not always been great at work-life boundaries — another thing I inflict on my kids. Robyn is quite insightful; she had recognised that this was not sustainable for either of us before I did — and one of the things she brought up was that it is a real problem for her, and the kids, when I work from home; from the couch.

I reacted pretty badly to this — some of you will know I am in the family business; as a kid, my dad never felt available. In his first church he had an office across the yard from our house; we knew when he was in the office we should not interrupt. Then, when we moved to Brisbane, his office was downstairs — and the door was always closed. I had decided not to be behind a closed door; to be present and accessible. It turns out a clearly marked-off workspace is probably a wise thing — but — my folks had been looking after our kids, and when we picked them up after our session they asked, “What did you say about us?” — because you always talk to psychologists about your parents.

I told them I had brought up the closed door and how I worked from the couch so I could be interrupted; and Dad explained he had worked from home, in his office, because my mum’s dad — also a pastor — his office was in town, and he was always absent, and Mum did not want that.

Dad worked from home to be available and the door was closed because the air-con was on. I had to re-narrate that closed door… because, as you know, “love is an open door…”

It is funny how much I had been impacted by this part of my habitat; the closed door; and how my own choice with the couch was not a fix. I tell this story because it is a picture of how we learn to be human in a household. And how we set up our households is part of what forms us, and others — perhaps especially kids. And even if you do not have kids yourself, you are probably conscious of having been formed by those around you.

Last chapter we looked at the analogy of the human life as a house; one we each build either on the foundation of Jesus — or something else — where we take responsibility for building wisely (1 Corinthians 3:10).

This week we are mixing our metaphors — or building them up a little — moving from house to household. This is language we find through the New Testament; a picture of the church as a household — the household of God (1 Timothy 3:14-15) — not just a biological family. We modern Western folks are quick to equate a household with a nuclear family — and plenty of our experience of a household is a product of this move; our families — our households — inevitably shape us; our habitats shape our habits; we inherit patterns of life in the world from others — or define ourselves against them — like in my story; three generations of pastor-dads choosing where to work and messing up their kids.

We will look at 1 Timothy here, and while we will look at the content, I also want us to think about the nature of relationships this letter is operating in and trying to create. Paul is writing to Timothy — last week we saw Paul holding up Timothy as his beloved son who follows his example (1 Corinthians 4:16-17); his way of life (1 Corinthians 4:16-17). Also — while we are looking at 1 Corinthians, remember that bit from last week where Paul calls the church the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16). He uses a Greek word for house in this bit where he says God dwells with us; it is maybe more literally translated inhabits; God’s Spirit inhabits the church; and this word, it is all through 1 Timothy; where Paul is writing to his true son in the faith (1 Timothy 1:2). Paul is Timothy’s spiritual dad. We do not know what has happened to Timothy’s biological dad — he is not described as a spiritual influence when Paul reflects on the role Timothy’s mum and grandma played in teaching him God’s word (2 Timothy 1:5).

Anyway, in Paul’s opening words there is a household reference we lose in english that shapes the whole letter. Here in this warning about avoiding faithless controversies that get in the way of advancing God’s work (1 Timothy 1:4), is actually this same house word; oikos — “managing God’s work” is oikos nomia; the Greek word we get economy from; it is the idea of household management. Paul is writing to Timothy — his spiritual son — about building God’s economy; his household, which is what he calls the church.

And, up front, the goal of his instructions — the task of stewarding God’s household — is love (1 Timothy 1:5). Love from a pure heart; a good conscience and a sincere faith — you might summarise that as a transformed mind — this is a particular kind of love too — it is the word for committed, sacrificial, connected love for another person; it is about giving, not getting.

So Paul’s point in writing the instructions for what kind of examples should shape the church — spiritual parents in the household of God — is part of this guide to love; to the sort of conduct that happens — the practices — that produce the character of the household of God (1 Timothy 3:14-15). Paul gives a list of behaviours for men and women who are going to be model parents in a church community — parents who do not follow worldly patterns. In the Roman Empire in the first century there were patterns and expectations for a male head of a household; a patriarch.

Paul subverts a bunch of these as he writes to men who occupy this sort of presumed role about shaping a new type of household by not acting this way; he says these spiritual dads should be above reproach — exemplary — faithful to his wife — not engaging in the predatory sexual power games of the culture, he is to be self-controlled — not violent or striking out in anger like a Roman patriarch could when they felt wronged; hospitable — able to teach — picture taking on apprentices here, rather than just lecturing… someone who is not ruled by alcohol or money or their passions (1 Timothy 3:2-3)… someone already doing this job in their family (1 Timothy 3:4). Again — this is the same house word in Greek — it is not just about the nuclear family; though it mentions his children — a Roman household was a little economic unit; home to multiple generations, single friends and relatives — and often slaves or clients — he has got to be running his little economy — in a manner worthy of respect, of imitation — before he can be an example; a spiritual parent, an economic model in God’s household (1 Timothy 3:5).

This is true for any of the examples Paul uses in the letter; if they are not modelling it in their own households they cannot be models in God’s household (1 Timothy 3:12).

There are not just instructions about exemplary men in this letter — or this passage — some of this feels pretty gendered to us, but I reckon Paul is inverting certain stereotypes that are documented as part of Roman culture — in a patriarchal culture, not universal gender norms — and the idea is really that both exemplary men and women are worthy of respect; and — I reckon this word should actually be translated wives (1 Timothy 3:11) — Paul is mapping out the patterns of matriarchs and patriarchs — patterns — in this new household of connected love — not the self-seeking competition and power in other economies. This is not to say unmarried people cannot be heads of households, or examples to follow — as we will see…

If we flip over a few pages in 1 Timothy, in chapter 5 Paul keeps unpacking the dynamics of this new family system — Timothy is to see those he is in community with as family — older men as fathers; younger men as brothers, older women as mothers and younger women as sisters — with purity — the sort of love that comes from a pure heart (1 Timothy 5:1-2); and this pattern spreads through the community in particular ways — families care for each other — especially when suffering occurs — so we get these instructions for how to care for those within biological families, and without a biological family (1 Timothy 5:4). Kids and grandkids should care for widowed mums and grandmas — practicing our religion — that is another habit word — by caring for those in our immediate household; our families; recognising they have cared for us — this is tricky if they have not; if our family have harmed us and not loved us in ways where this care would be an act of reciprocity — and we will talk more about this; it is a challenge in the face of broken family relationships and trauma and abuse to practice our faith this way — but, just notice — and this is important — Paul has very harsh words for those who fail to care for their relatives — including parents who do not care for, or abuse, their kids — they have denied the faith and are worse than an unbeliever (1 Timothy 5:8); they have put themselves outside this network of connected love; God’s economy; the task of loving people into the love and likeness of Jesus.

Where people in the church community do not have others to care for them — where these households have failed — the church family is their household.

There is a widows list (1 Timothy 5:9-10), where the church will pay exemplary women to keep being motherly or grandmotherly examples in the life of the church — those known for their good deeds; there are big overlaps between the women provided for in these ways and men who are held up as leaders of the church — raising children… showing hospitality… serving others (1 Timothy 5:10)… while younger widows can provide for themselves — whether that is through marriage if that is an option — or through managing their own households (1 Timothy 5:14) — a type of leadership — being exemplary motherly types who care for others, presumably to cultivate this same way of life.

All of this is about the household of God; this new family that we are brought into as God makes his home among us and builds us to be his household (1 Timothy 3:14-15); his children in the world as we learn how we ought to live from people doing it; people embodying godliness — finding it expressed in the foundation of the house — the source of true godliness — Jesus — who appeared in flesh, was vindicated by the Spirit in his teaching and life and resurrection — was taken up in glory and who now forms the basis of our faith and practice; shaping our economy (1 Timothy 3:16).

So what has this letter to Timothy got to do with us — you are not an apprentice or adopted son of the Apostle Paul — but Timothy is an example for the church to imitate; a model for us — that is a lot of pressure for a young bloke — and Paul says “do not let anyone judge you for being young — focus on being an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12) — a picture of life in the household of God; the life of love the letter is designed to produce — this comes through devotion to reading the Scriptures (1 Timothy 4:13). Timothy is to keep the message of Jesus at the heart of the household — but not only this; he has also got to live it; his example; his progress — his growth in maturity — is to be visible to all; we are all learning what it means to grow up and mature in God’s household together — even our leaders — Timothy is to keep his life aligning with his doctrine (1 Timothy 4:15-16). Because this is the pattern we are growing into; our examples and communities form us as children of God.

While perfect habitat will not perfect our heart — that is page 2 of the Bible — our habits, our households are either part of the conforming patterns of the world, or, in the household of God, part of the transforming and renewing of our minds as God’s Spirit makes his home in us. We will be shaped by the household we belong to. To inhabit the world is to be formed by life in a household; the architectures and rhythms and examples of who we live with and where we live — or who we do not live with when we feel disconnected from others.

One of the obvious ways we inhabit time and space is by being born into a family — a household with a story or history — every human has to navigate this reality — whether our parents, or households, aid us or hinder us in seeking God. Someone born into a household in ancient Athens would be shaped not just by the architecture of the city, with its idols and temples, but the architecture of their household — their family gods — shaping their lives too. And this is true for us, and our patterns of worship.

The household we are brought into profoundly shapes our elephants — more than the city; the world around us — we have been thinking about our minds — what we carry into the world using this metaphor of the rider — our thinking brains — and the elephants — our ingrained intuitive responses to the world. That part of our mind is profoundly developed — whether positively or negatively — whether through presence or absence — by those humans who shaped us; and can be reshaped by a new household built around habits of love and connection.

I mentioned Jonathan Haidt’s idea of the brain featuring a ‘rider’ and an elephant, and this book The Other Half of Church in chapter one — which is about how we are not formed just by teaching the rider; the bit of our brain shaped by listening to sermons and talking about stuff; we need to form the bit of our brain that does the heavy lifting; the automatic, intuitive bit that accounts for most of our behaviour.

The authors suggest this ‘fast’ part, or ‘elephant’ comes from who we are; who we have learned to be in our connected or disconnected relationships; this formation begins in our families as babies and infants — but it keeps happening in our bodies as we experience all the way into adulthood; we do not stop being children; we do not stop being shaped by our households. Even in my 40s I am learning that I am a child; a child of my parents; a product of my family system, my household — even as I parent my own children — I just need to keep learning to be a child of God.

My parents were pretty good, really — I have had to re-narrate the closed door and a bunch of other stuff as I have found out how hard parenting is… but there are things I want to do differently as I set an example for others — including my kids — new patterns to learn — and I know that for some of us this is a bigger battle, because the patterns of our families have traumatised us; leaving our elephants scared and scarred. Trauma shapes our elephant; this part of our brains — because trauma is a function of broken relationships; not having a secure way to process suffering.

Humans need a household — whether that is biological or not; the households we define ourselves around — and their rhythms and our experience of embodied life within them — produce our character, shaping our hearts and minds. Children of God need households operating according to the values and conduct of the household of God; his economy, where spiritual parents provide examples of maturity and love for us in secure and connected relationships; love that reflects God’s love. If you are a parent who wants your kids to know the love of Jesus — whether they are infants or adults — you might need to assess where your spiritual parenting is forming those in your household — including you — are you conforming to the patterns of this world, or being transformed by God’s Spirit dwelling among you? What are your routines — when you get up in the morning is it the “get out the door” rush that teaches work and school and success are important — or connection to each other and to your heavenly Father that guides your steps? What do you talk about together? When do your kids experience encouragement and connection? When you discipline are you discipling?

I know I have got some work to do as a parent on this front. I have still got things to learn and unlearn from my own parents, and from other spiritual parents in our community. And I need help. But I grew up in a household that wanted this for me.

If your biological parents have been abusive or harmful — worse than unbelievers — you might — even as an adult — need spiritual parents, in a community lovingly teach you a new way of life as you submit to learning their example rather than imitating or reacting against those who harmed you. Family trauma — broken attachments — not being cared for — stops us growing up because the people who were meant to model these things have failed us. When we are in this situation we need a new household. New models.

Lots of people who have experienced trauma or exclusion from their biological families have created new household structures — using language like “chosen families” — which is great — but often these chosen families are peer networks, often with others who have experienced similar patterns, with an inbuilt suspicion — and trauma response triggered by parent-like figures. I wonder if we do not just need chosen families but chosen parents; those in the household of God who can teach and model life in God’s family for us — and — perhaps — actually start undoing some of the ways we have been harmed. And there is a role here in our community for some of you older folks — or us older folks — to serve as chosen parents or grandparents in the faith. If you are older you might need to take steps to build some of these connections with others, while if you are younger you might need to deliberately ask some older folks to be part of your life; to open their households to include you. Growth groups are part of that in the rhythms of our church family.

I mentioned this book The Common Rule, in chapter one, and this quote from Justin Earley about “the house of his life” being decorated with Christian content while the architecture of his habits was like everyone else’s.

“While the house of my life was decorated with Christian content, the architecture of my habits was just like everyone else’s.”

And because I would like to make changes on this front for me, and for my household, I was excited to read his follow up, called Habits of the Household — it is another book full of quotable quotes and ideas of practices and rhythms to build into home life.

He seems to be zeroing in on 1 Timothy when he says our households should be little schools of love; habitats that teach inhabitants to live our calling; to be formed as lovers of God and neighbour.

“The most Christian way to think about our households is that they are little ‘schools of love’… places where we have one vocation, one calling: to form all who live here into lovers of God and neighbour.” — Justin Whitmel Earley, Habits of the Household

He chose the word “household” not “family” because he reckons we should think bigger than the nuclear family…

“Thinking in terms of the household, instead of just the family unit, encourages us to think bigger about how God is working through our families… People do not join our households just because you wish for them to. They become part of the household because there is a rhythm or a pattern that invites them in.”

But apart from his chapter on hospitality, which imagines making ways for others to become part of the household at the table, his book is really about the nuclear family… and about parenting.

It was disappointing — the households of the first century; multi-generational groups of connected people — not just biologically related to one another — were a brilliant structure, and as we have reduced life to biological families living disconnected lives in the modern world we have created all sorts of problems for ourselves; especially when it comes to learning to be human and the pressure placed on parents, and kids. And plenty of households in church communities are not nuclear families with two parents.

There are some helpful practices in the book that can be applied in various contexts, but if we see the church as the household of God — made up of households — and that this might happen in chosen family groups, and different structures — not just biological families — then I reckon it is worth engaging with The Other Half of Church — and, for homework, I would love you to read it, or listen to The Other Half of Church podcast — especially the episodes on joy and hesed. Hesed is the Hebrew word for connected, committed love — in Greek it is translated into ‘agape,’ the love Paul says is the goal in God’s household.

The writers of this book are incorporating the work of modern psychologists like Allan Schore — I read some of his work this week and he seems legit — his work on attachment theory is built on the idea that we develop attachment through our eyes and our faces — especially through experiencing joy; connection to a person looking at us who is glad to be with us — an open door.

“If Dr Schore is right about the definition of joy being what I feel when I see the sparkle in someone’s eye that conveys ‘I am happy to be with you,’ I was experiencing joy… Our identity is built and formed by joy-bonded relationships. The identity center in our brain grows in response to joy.”

— The Other Half of Church

This is identity-shaping; elephant-shaping… so much of my parenting has communicated the opposite — especially when I have been working on the couch and been annoyed by an interruption; gazing at screens does the opposite — anyway, they reckon our identity; our right-brained sense of self is formed by joy-bonded relationships — they build on this idea that biblically, joy is connected to God’s face shining upon us — and that we experience this in face-to-face community aimed towards this sort of connection — and where churches do not habitually express and include this joy face to face, eye to eye — our ability to produce fruitful life is depleted — they use the analogy of cultivating the right sort of soil to grow towards maturity.

“If my community is not in the habit of expressing what God sees as special in each of us, our eyes do not meet and our faces do not shine when we see each other. Our soil becomes depleted. Soil that is low on joy is primed for growing addictions. When our brain looks for joy and does not find it, we become vulnerable to ‘pseudo-joys.’”

— The Other Half of Church

Where we do not have this joy we start looking for it in pseudo-joys — addictions; things like consuming; looking at people’s faces on social media; porn; the stuff in the list of behaviours that spiritual parents in God’s household should model avoiding. They reckon we need to practice face-to-face “joy transmission” in our households.

“If joy is transmitted primarily through our faces and eyes, we need to practice letting our faces light up with each other… Our brains draw life from our strongest relational attachments to grow our character and develop our identity. Who we love shapes who we are.”

— The Other Half of Church

We share in communion as a community; a household — connected by bonds of love; by God’s love — his Spirit dwelling in us — inviting us to be at home with him as his household. The people around you as you take communion are prime candidates to be this household for you — a community we are attached to, where we experience hesed — this love — God’s love.

Our elephants are formed by the joy we experience in strong relational attachments — who we love shapes who we are. This is true of our attachment to God, but we learn this from each other as we take up the task of forming one another towards maturity; listening to the word of God and taking on the character of Jesus; the source of godliness — and we only do this when we build our community wanting this attachment with each other, where we experience a different economy; one not built on consumption or self-service, but on connected love where we come face to face not just with people glad to be with us, but the God who adopts us into his family.

September 28, 2025 Add Comment

Inhabiting — Chapter Two — Learning Jesus By Heart

This was a sermon preached at City South Presbyterian in 2024. You can listen to the podcast here, or watch it on video. Some of the block quotes were on screen and summarised but have been included in full.

There is something you do not know about me. Probably. I cannot tell you. But if you were there when I gave this as a talk, I tried to show people by playing a song on the piano.

As a kid, I learned piano. I reckon my parents spent thousands of dollars so I could learn — really — that one song. It is basically all I have to show for it — that, and I can still play most of the scales. Maybe I should have just done that.

I was not great at practicing, but I did learn — and practice — that one song, until it became part of me. I can play it without looking — or thinking — and I play it much faster than it is meant to be played, and probably much less well than it is meant to be played.

But I remember it. I know where my fingers are meant to be and what it is meant to sound like — and I know it without thinking. What the people heard when I played was automatic; it was muscle memory.

There is a phrase we use when we learn something that we can produce automatically, is there not? We talk about learning something by heart. And we know we have not learned it through some process of our heart — that organ — magically latching on to a thing. When we learn something by heart, when we get it to the stage of being natural or automatic, it is a product of practice. Of repetition. Of bedding something down deep into our bones.

And we think of this sort of automation as good when it comes to learning an instrument, or a sport, or how to drive a car — so that we are making those movements without deciding.

I stopped learning piano — practicing — because I did not love it, so only one song comes naturally to me; I only know one “by heart.” While I am almost 42 and still playing soccer; still practicing hoping more things might become automatic because even though I am uncoordinated and nothing feels automatic, I love it. I have given my heart to it, and I am hoping my body will automate some things if I keep repeating the actions. I wonder how we go though at following Jesus by heart; learning to live as a disciple of Jesus.

That is what we are thinking about this series — we are thinking about how we be who God has made us to be; those who inhabit time and space in order to seek God like he made us to (Acts 17:26-28). And we do this as those who have found God because he has revealed himself to us in Jesus so that we are now trying to be formed as disciples. Trying to be transformed as we saw last week, rather than conformed into the patterns of the world (Romans 12:2).

I wonder what your model for this transformation looks like — whether we think of learning to follow Jesus as like learning to pass an exam at school, or like becoming more like him from the heart. I wonder if our approach to discipleship should look more like learning an instrument, or a sport — something we do with our bodies — rather than something we do by thinking right. If you are doing the Practicing the Way course in your growth group you might have heard them talk about thinking about discipleship as more like an apprenticeship than a university degree.

Last week we looked at the metaphor of an elephant — where the idea was that the world and its patterns — the architecture and idols that surround us — are designed to shape us in particular ways, and to shape our hearts or minds in particular ways as we use our bodies in these spaces, pursuing what we love. And we talked about how often we slip into thinking about our minds as the bits of us that are conscious — we borrowed the analogy of the rider and the elephant from the psychologist Jonathan Haidt. We think about our minds as the rider and about discipleship as informing the rider with the right information about God, but most of what we do is shaped by the elephant — our intuitions, what we have made automatic, our instinctive sense of who we are in the world. These elephants are shaped, like when we make piano playing automatic, by what we do, what we experience, who we are around, what we learn to love, and what we practice.

And this week we are picking up a different metaphor — it is one we will expand over the next few weeks — we are going to think of our lives — our bodies, our minds, our growth and formation — and especially our heart, the core of who we are — as a house.

And rather than examining the architecture of our city, I am going to invite you to think about your life and its structures — how you are being built and formed as a human house; what the plan is, what is foundational, what is load bearing, what is giving you a shape, and how you are building your life, piece by piece. How you are building not just the plans — which might be the rational thinking part of your brain — but the structure; your loves, what is automatic, who you are actually becoming.

We are going to do this looking at the teaching and example of Jesus — and then the teaching and example of one seeking to become like Jesus — the Apostle Paul.

So Jesus, in our reading, he is located on the plains — a level place (Luke 6:17). This is interesting, right — because there is a parallel between what Jesus says here in Luke, and his teaching from a mountain top in Matthew (Luke 6:17, Matthew 5:1). What we are hearing from Jesus is like his stump speech. I heard this week that President Biden gave basically the same radio interview to stacks of different stations around the country; reporters are given pre-vetted questions so he can stick to his script. Well, here is Jesus sticking to his script — this is a core part of his teaching about what the kingdom looks like, and how we should think about being formed as disciples.

Both Luke and Matthew have this first metaphor of a tree producing fruit — it is literally making fruit — this will be important as we roll on. But Jesus says good trees make good fruit (Luke 6:43, Matthew 7:17). You can tell if a tree is good from the fruit, and if the fruit is good from the tree.

And just like that, humans are trees. If fruit is being made, it is coming out of the heart of a person (Luke 6:45). The good things are stored there — literally, treasured there. Our lives that we live, what we make and what we say, are a product of our hearts.

Jesus is picking up an Old Testament idea here — one you will find in the wisdom of Proverbs — that we should guard our hearts because everything else flows out of this part of us (Proverbs 4:23).

And straight up, the next bit in Luke — well — it is a shift in metaphor, but I think Jesus, as he talks about building a wise life as building a house, is talking about building a wise heart that will produce this sort of fruitful, kingdom-shaped life. There are a couple of links we lose in our English here — Jesus literally says “and do not ‘make’ what I say” (Luke 6:46) — it is the same root word for what the tree produces — and then in the next verse where we get “practices” — which I think is a great word — it’s the same word again, this “making” word (Luke 6:47, Luke 6:43).

A tree makes good fruit when it is a good tree. Jesus is asking why do you speak as though I am Lord if you are not producing the fruit, the practices, the way of life that comes from his words. It is not just about belief, this discipleship caper — the link between who we are and what we do is about this link between our heart and our actions.

And to be a disciple — someone who calls Jesus Lord — is to take Jesus to heart; to learn his way by heart — through practice — where our practices reflect his practice and his words (Luke 6:46, Matthew 7:24). Jesus is the ultimate good tree — his words and actions come from his heart, and for us, fruitful, wise life looks like being like him because he is our Lord.

There is this formative cycle between doing what Jesus says and our hearts being fruitful, so that our actions then reflect our hearts.

And here the stump speech continues with this metaphor of a house — of our lives as a house (Luke 6:48, Matthew 7:24). Those who hear Jesus’ words and put them into practice — having them shape what we make, what we do with our bodies — these people are humans, wise humans, who build a house on a secure foundation. A rock.

So that when flooding waters come they do not shake the house — the life of the person — because it is well built (Luke 6:48).

The point of this metaphor is to construct a well-built house, right? To build wisely — starting with the foundation you build on. Starting not just with listening to Jesus’ words but putting them into practice. It is almost like the well-built house is about a heart that has treasured up and stored goodness so that it produces goodness and is not destroyed.

The alternative to the wise builder is the one who hears the words of Jesus and does not put them into practice (Luke 6:49). Just pause there — he does not say the fool does not hear the words of Jesus. The fool is the one who hears — perhaps even believes. Perhaps, to throw back to the model of our ‘mind’ in chapter one, this is the person who just thinks life is about the rider, where you just have to hear and believe, but where that does not translate into wise building, into elephant training, into treasuring and being formed by the words of Jesus as we practice them and make fruitful life.

The person not building a house on the rock — but just on any piece of ground, with no foundation — their life gets swept away when the storm hits; it is destroyed (Luke 6:49).

If we want to be wise builders — houses that are formed as good, disciples of Jesus, truly human — we need not just a building plan, but to build well. Not just a foundation — Jesus — but the practice of doing what he says, which is how we store up treasure in our hearts; how we learn by heart to live with the new hearts he gives.

Jesus teaches plenty of stuff in the Gospels that his stump speech — whether it is the Sermon on the Mount or the Plains — invites us to practice; to make our way of life. There is another consistent message across the Gospels — a summary of what we are invited to practice; to take to heart and learn by heart as we build our lives.

In Luke it is recorded as Jesus meets a guy who reckons he has got it all together — an expert in the law — who asks what must I do to inherit eternal life. Jesus asks him, “What does the law suggest?” (Luke 10:25-26).

And this bloke says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and mind” (Luke 10:27). This is a command to treasure God; to have our heart shaped; to learn his ways through how we honour him with our bodies. And this flows through into how we love other humans. Our neighbours. Jesus says, “Yep. Do this” (Luke 10:28). In Matthew he calls this the first and greatest commandment (Matthew 22:37-38), and that all God’s word hangs off these two commands (Matthew 22:39-40).

So I guess we could start there.

But I reckon there is one other bit of Jesus’ teaching that is worth having in mind here as we think about our hearts and becoming disciples. And it is that we do not do this as people disconnected from Jesus, not as individuals left to our own devices, our own ability to work our way into new habits.

If we are calling Jesus Lord and our hearts are longing to, and treasuring him — then this itself is an act of God’s transforming, heart-changing grace in us. We are not earning our way in as we seek to be disciples. This is a pattern of life for those who have listened to what Jesus says and are seeking to put his teaching into practice because he is our Lord, our foundation, and we are in the process of being transformed not just to be like him, but by him as we live with him and listen to him.

A disciple — an apprentice — has a teacher. And we also have this picture from Jesus of coming to him to have our hearts transformed not just by habits of working to improve ourselves, but the life-transforming habit of not relying on ourselves, but coming to him. Jesus invites us — those of us tired and overwhelmed by the world and its patterns; those of us buffeted by the storms and recognising that anything we build will never be strong enough to hold us secure in the storms, or in the face of death — who feel the constant gnawing sense that we need to do better, work more, build a better us on our own. Jesus invites — commands even — us weary ones to come to him, to learn his ways as we rest (Matthew 11:28-29), as we pass him this burden and learn from him, like a trainee learns from their trainer as they carry the load, and as we learn to be like him — gentle, humble in heart, good — while we find rest for our souls; rest from the relentless pressure to do better.

This is why he can say his yoke — the bit of wood on the shoulders of a beast of burden, connecting them to the one walking beside them so they would share a load — this is why he can say his yoke is easy and his burden light (Matthew 11:29).

Even as we also embrace the paradox of denying ourselves daily and taking up our cross — dying — and following him (Luke 9:23, Matthew 16:24). But note, part of this dying is dying to the idea that we are kings or queens of our own lives; that we are Lord; that we have to save ourselves and build our own security and always be better. And it is hard to write that story into our bones; to die to the false gospels that say be better, do more, self-justify, self-improve, self-satisfy, and to the bits of our heart that still believe that deforming lie. We have learned that story by heart — some of us — from the world, from our families, from our inner voice, and our loves for false gods.

Jesus offers a different foundation, one that will last, one we can build on differently as we inhabit his life and take on new habits that we learn by heart.

I reckon we see a pattern of discipleship in Paul, in 1 Corinthians 3. Paul picks up the words of Jesus and calls himself a wise builder (1 Corinthians 3:10). At this point he is talking about the way he has taken the words of Jesus and not just used them to form himself as a house disconnected from others, but to produce fruit — loving and serving the folks he is writing to. He has laid a foundation for them and now he wants this church to build with care; to produce their own wise lives.

Jesus is the foundation not just of the church — as a corporate reality — but for Christians. And this passage keeps the corporate and the individual in tension. Each one should build; each one is a house (1 Corinthians 3:11). But we all together are God’s house — his temple — where the Spirit dwells in our midst (1 Corinthians 3:16).

This week we are thinking about the individual part — how we live in the world in our body and pursue a wise life with a heart that produces fruit because we practice what Jesus teaches ourselves. Next week and the week after we are going to expand to think about the corporate realities we are part of as we inhabit space together.

Paul will take this idea of being a temple of the Holy Spirit to apply it to how we use our bodies — reminding us that Jesus, our Lord, redeemed us. We — the church — are the fruits of his life, his listening to God, what he is building. That we have the Spirit is part of God’s plan to recreate humans; giving us new hearts that can love and obey God as fulfilment of the prophets. So as those bought at a price, we are invited to honour God with our bodies (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

This is what it looks like to build with care on the foundation laid for us by Jesus (1 Corinthians 3:10); to learn the life of Jesus by heart so that what we treasure in our hearts brings forth good, not evil, as we practice what Jesus teaches (Luke 6:45).

Building with care is not just about thinking, it is about creating this way of life in the body that honours God — that means good things come out of a heart that treasures Jesus and a life built on him (1 Corinthians 3:11, 23). Paul is a wise builder, building on the foundation of Jesus toward the reality that we are now of Christ, just as he is of God.

As Paul unpacks this idea in the next chapter, he urges the Corinthians to build this life by imitating him, and in his absence, by imitating Timothy — who is also faithful in the Lord, who is an imitator of Paul following in this chain of imitators (1 Corinthians 4:16-17).

Timothy will remind the Corinthians of Paul’s example — his way of life in Christ Jesus, which lines up with what he teaches (1 Corinthians 4:17). Timothy is a disciple of Jesus and an apprentice of Paul. Paul’s way of life is not just words, it is this visible pattern. He will say later they should imitate his example — what they hear and see in his life, and Timothy’s — as they imitate Jesus. This is part of how discipleship happens: finding wise people who are imitating Jesus who will teach us. But it is also about following a way of life that lines up with the message of Jesus, and with his life.

I asked earlier what the model of transformation you have in your head is — how you would go about learning a new way of life by heart — and what that looks like when it comes to discipleship. A lot of the resources I have been reading for this series are from a guy named Dallas Willard, or a second generation of pastors and counsellors deeply impacted by him. Willard’s book Renovation of the Heart sketches out his basic idea that discipleship is about character formation that comes about as a result of our inward renewal — a renewal brought about by the Spirit as we connect with and imitate Jesus; as we become apprentices of his way, those yoked to him who do what he says.

One of his offsiders was a guy named James Bryan Smith. He came up with a shape to summarise both Willard’s framework and the New Testament. It is a kind of picture of the building blocks that seem to lead to this sort of transformation. If you remember that triangle from the video last chapter of unseen forces shaping us, these are a kind of antidote.

He suggests our path to transformation involves embracing the story of Jesus as our story, so that we learn how Jesus lived and what he calls us to, and having this enacted and embodied in communities where we find examples that we want to imitate and where we act as examples for each other. This formation is not just about introspection, it actually happens in relationships where we experience and practice the love of God and love of neighbour together. And the third corner is about practicing things; exercising — learning Jesus by heart, becoming who we aim to be by imitating Jesus repeatedly, practicing his commands as we encounter them in the Gospels and the New Testament. And the Holy Spirit is at work in each of these activities.

This seems to me to be a reasonable shape. We will look more at our community and relationships over the next few chapters. But I wonder what practices you might adopt to learn the way of Jesus by heart; what rule of life or way of life you might build to be a wise builder who is treasuring him in your heart.

His book has a bunch of suggestions for soul training, but so do some of the other books I will mention like The Other Half of the Church and the Practicing the Way course. Over the course of this series we will be thinking about the rhythms and structures — how we live in space and time. We want to build into our lives so we are practicing the way of Jesus, glorifying God with our bodies.

This starts with us. It starts with how we feed our hearts through the way we use our bodies, which is a question of who we serve, who we are ruled by. Are we going to be people ruled by Jesus, who call him Lord and practice what he says, who build our life-as-a-house on him as a foundation, shaped or structured by his rule at the level of our practices?

Or will we be ruled by someone or something else, serving someone else, having our hearts — our habits — shaped by the habitats set up by other masters who are not as gentle, or forgiving, who place heavy burdens on our shoulders?

If we are not deliberate about embracing a rule of life where we are ruled by Jesus, then other people — other rulers — will fill that vacuum. Or we will be practicing some other way and being formed accordingly. This sort of practice — taking on new habits, shaping the elephant, writing things into our bones so they become automatic, building our house wisely — it is not easy. It is not easy to learn to put off the heavy yoke of the world, what we are used to, to replace it with the easier burden of Jesus. Automating godliness.

It is hard work to unlearn things, and at times you might feel like I do on the sports field or at the piano. But hopefully it will be life-giving and liberating. And at its core the idea is to build on Jesus, to be planted in him, yoked to him.

Discipleship is about practicing the teaching of Jesus, imitating him, imitating those in our lives who imitate him, so that we learn him by heart. But it is not about self-mastery, it is about finding life loving God and knowing his love wholeheartedly so that we can love others. It is about making time and space to spend time with Jesus, in prayer, in listening to his word, so that we can put it into practice. It is about learning and experiencing that he is good, that he is humble in heart and gentle, learning to stop striving to carry our own burdens, being overwhelmed by busyness and the burden of self-improvement or self-transformation, coming to him for rest, taking up our cross and dying to those false gospels and the patterns of the world they create and that sustain them while destroying us daily.

And because we know Jesus is good and that he is leading us to life, being prepared to suffer when we reject those patterns and experience the cost, or even being prepared to suffer like Jesus as we engage in costly love for our neighbours because we are learning the goodness of God. This is what it means to produce fruit — fruit that comes from a heart shaped by Jesus and practicing his commands.

September 27, 2025 Add Comment

Inhabiting — Chapter One — The Architecture of our Lives

This was a sermon preached at City South Presbyterian in 2024. You can listen to the podcast here, or watch it on video. Some of the block quotes were on screen and summarised but have been included in full.

If Being Human was about who we are (or whose we are) and Before the Throne was about ‘where we are’ — on earth but also ‘raised and seated with Jesus in the heavenly realm,’ this series is about how we live in time and space; how we inhabit the world as humans, and as followers of Jesus.

The idea is that if we want to be disciples of Jesus — people being formed by him because his love and Spirit are transforming us — this happens as we inhabit time and space, and this happens at the level of our habits.

Forming these habits that form us is tricky, because the world we live in — our habitat — has been set up by humans to deform us with an entirely different set of habits; leading us to worship entirely different gods and so forming different habits in us; habits we have to combat and unlearn.

We are not always good at spotting our habitat and how it shapes us. In fact, often we do not think about habitats or habits. We can slip into the modern, western way of thinking where we do not really reckon with the power of habits — unless we want to change to be “super successful,” where we might buy a self-help book about ‘atomic habits’ or ‘the power of habit.’

Right from school we are taught that we change — we are formed — by thinking the right thing; having the right ideas so we can choose how to live. This is true for how we think of church too — we emphasise content, listening to sermons, reading the Bible, talking about ideas — hoping education about God will transform into our character.

I know we have been combating this idea as a church for a while; thinking about what it means to live before the throne, and to see God’s kingdom on display at the table as we eat together in unity as a family or household united in Jesus. But this has been stuff we have thought about. What does it look like to change the architecture of our lives — our habitats and habits — to reflect these ideas? To move ‘ideas’ into ‘habits’?

And how much is the habitat we live in — our city, our homes — priming us towards different habits; forming us to worship different gods? There is an idea in our world that religion is a private thing best left for church spaces or your home — where the architecture of our world would be “neutral” — nothing like the Athens in our reading — and not like somewhere like Sri Lanka.

If you were the apostle Paul walking through Kataragama last year you would have recognised a community that is very religious — and then you would have seen a procession of elephants getting out of control and trampling the crowd, injuring thirteen people.

This will be a bit of a parable for us this morning. I think there are two principles to pull out: all space is set up to produce behaviours — habits — and these habits are a kind of worship that form and shape us. It is just easier to see how that is true in the stomping foot of a living elephant than in the architecture of our lives. We can try to stop that impact by grabbing the elephant by its tail — but it is better to be consciously deciding where that formation is happening.

Let’s jump into Athens, where the religious architecture is made of stone rather than flesh, and set the scene by looking at the end and beginning of our reading. At the end, Paul has given what looks like a pretty compelling sermon to the council in Athens whose job it is to decide whether a god will get space in their assembly of gods — symbolised by the Parthenon, that massive building that still dominates the skyline in the city of Athens today.

When he is finished, there are a few people who are convinced to change the architecture of their lives; to alter their altars, so to speak. Some want to hear more, some believe, but it seems most of the crowd sneered (Acts 17:32). They are entrenched in their beliefs; their habits. They have been formed as worshippers of the gods of their city; their convictions align with the convictions carved into the architecture of Athens.

What Paul sees in the opening of our reading as he wanders through this city is that it is full of idols (Acts 17:16). I do not know if this is your experience when you wander down the Queen Street Mall, or Boundary Street, or West End, or in Garden City or your local Westfield — can you spot the architecture of these habitats and what it is designed to do to human hearts and minds? The trampling elephants?

It is more obvious for Paul in Athens because it was a city filled with statues and altars and temples — full of things designed to pull people away from the worship of Yahweh, the creator; to form them — or deform them. Paul’s heart is attuned to this, and to the impact of this sort of habitat. He is distressed.

He starts inviting people to meet the living God — he is preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection (Acts 17:18). He ends up with an invitation to the Areopagus, this council — and there is some evidence he crafts his speech according to the rules they used to accept or reject new gods as he speaks to them — but he is also drawing on his observations of their habitat.

“I see that you are in every way very religious”

— Acts 17:22–23.

Now, let us suspend for a moment our belief that our city is not religious; that religion is a private matter — and let us imagine that religion is about what we give our lives to; what we serve because it is what we see as ultimate and powerful. Let us take a moment to consider how our city’s architecture is just as contested and confusing as the polytheism of Athens, and how religious we still are. Our cities are full of monuments to human ingenuity — our capacity to shape the world using technology and technique; to money — banks and skyscrapers named after banks; our belief that education transforms — and so our universities, where the architecture is often similar to the architecture of the Athenian forum — and our belief that we can buy or consume our way to the good life, through pleasure and purchasing. This is before we get into the ground-level architecture of our own lives.

Athens, though, is so religious it has every box ticked — even an altar to an unknown god — which is an opportunity Paul cannot pass up. There is not much architecture in their city pointing to this God — no church buildings, and not many Christians living lives that model the gospel yet.

One of the criteria Athens had for introducing a god via this council was to address the question of what sort of physical architecture they would need — what sort of temple and altar and cycle of sacrifices. Paul challenges this category — not so much by saying “do not think about habitats,” but by claiming that the whole world is meant to be geared to the worship of its creator. The Lord of heaven and earth — the God who made the world — does not live in temples built by human hands (Acts 17:24–25). This is part of the game-changer that happens in the start of Acts, where God’s Spirit comes to dwell in humans who receive life from Jesus as his gift to us. This life is not a thing we earn through ritual; but it is a life that comes with new habits as we are transformed into living temples. We do not serve God the way a pagan god is served through sacrifices on various altars, because the living God has served us through his sacrifice. He is not a taker, like the other gods of Athens — but a giver — even to the Athenians who are not worshipping him. He gives everyone life and breath and everything else (Acts 17:25).

An Athenian believes their prosperity — if they have any — comes from the specific collection of gods they have chosen to serve; to worship; to sacrifice to — that their prosperity is earned through getting the mix right between their efforts — their habits — and what those efforts trigger as they engage in their habitats — these religious spaces. But Paul says everything they have is actually a gift from a God they do not even know, let alone worship.

Here are the key verses for our whole series. Paul says all nations — all the peoples of the earth, who have built all the cities of the earth — all our habitats — all people are made by this one God so that we might inhabit the whole earth. This is a throwback to Genesis and the idea of being God’s image-bearing people who are fruitful and multiply and fill the earth — and it is God who locates each nation — each person — in time and space, marking out the time and the space we will inhabit (Acts 17:26) — with a purpose — so that we would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him (Acts 17:27–28).

Maybe this is why idols are so distressing for Paul — they get in the way of this purpose; they stop people being truly human; imaging the God who made them. These images and the habits that come with them — the habitats we build around idols — stop us inhabiting the world the way God created us to; they deform us; they keep us from reaching out for him and finding him; they blind us to how proximate he is, and even how much he wants us to know the source of our life and breath and being.

And look — maybe you are here with us this morning still searching; maybe you have come along to church because you have noticed that the architecture of our city still includes these spaces and these communities offering some sort of answer; some sort of meaning — and pointing to some sort of God amidst all the other choices you have. I hope you can find meaning and purpose with us — not in us — but in God — the God who wants you to find him, and who gives life.

Maybe you are here this morning as someone who is a Christian but you feel this gnawing sense; this lack of meaning and purpose; or like you are caught between so many choices; so many options; a habitat that is confusing and a set of habits that do not align with who God wants you to be — sins, addictions, wired-in responses to the world based on what you have done, or what has been done to you. This series is an opportunity to take a fresh look at the architecture of your life and to let God do some reforming.

Paul’s message in Athens is a message for us — whether it is about our idols, what we look to for meaning or purpose; or our self-help — our self-actualisation or self-idolisation — where we work on our self-image through sacrifice, even harnessing the “power of habit” out of some legalistic desire to be better.

We are God’s children — this is all humans, not just Christians — and so we should not think that being more human is a matter of human design and skill (Acts 17:29), whether that is idol-building or harnessing the right power of atomic habits. It would be easy, as we talk about inhabiting time and space and the way our habits form us, to become Christian legalists who think nailing good works is a path to the “better us,” the “truer us” — to focus on self-improvement and make us the drivers of our destiny. This is a tension Christians have grappled with for the entire history of the church.

That is not the gospel though. The gospel liberates us from legalism, and from false worship, and from self-reliance because it liberates us from human rule — whether the rulers of the cities we live in, the architects of our behaviours and our slavery to sin and to deforming powers and deadly idols — or just our need to master ourselves through skill — and places us as children who are invited to learn life from our heavenly Father and from his Son — our king — Jesus. This comes with different habits, and it helps us to think about the architecture of our life differently — but hopefully in a way that is liberating and life-giving and re-humanising and good for us, rather than destructive — because we are pursuing what we are made for; not on our terms by discovering the “true self” within and never being sure if we have quite understood ourselves — but by understanding the nature of the divine being in ways that mean we begin to reflect his life in his world.

There is some fun stuff in the background of this Acts sermon around the nations and their gods — and God overlooking ignorant worship (Acts 17:30). I will not go super deep into it, but there is an interesting thing where, if you dip into the Old Testament, the nations do not tend to be condemned for idolatry — they have been given to powers and rulers who are not Yahweh — and you can kind of pinpoint this moment in the story to the story of Babel when the nations are given their boundaries (Genesis 11:9), or to this idea in Deuteronomy that the nations have been given to other powers — “sons of God” — while Israel have been marked as God’s children (Deuteronomy 32:8). The story, though, is that all of these nations are human; all created by God, and that God is greater than all these powers one might worship. In Jesus — and his victory over sin and death and Satan and these powers — God now commands all people everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30); to come back to him and find their humanity in his kingdom; in reflecting him. As we saw in our last series — this is the turning point in the Lord of heaven and earth’s plan to bring heaven and earth back together as one.

This day — this future — is where he will judge the world with justice through the man he has appointed — Jesus — the one raised from the dead (Acts 17:31). This day — this future — is now the guidepost for life inhabiting time and space; a reason to seek out and perhaps find the God who sought us in Jesus.

And if we are those who hear Paul’s message and believe, this comes with a new architecture; because the architecture of the city of Athens — its idols — is a dead end and will not last. You have to wonder what life was like from here on for Dionysius, who was a member of this gatekeeping council, or Damaris (Acts 17:34). Luke, who writes Acts, often does this thing where he names people along the way, where I think he is both indicating they are a source in his investigation and description of the life of the church, and that they are people in these church communities; living, breathing witnesses for his first readers. You can imagine Dionysius going home and cleaning the idol statues out of his home, and maybe renouncing his job deciding which idols do and do not get worshipped, and Damaris rethinking who she turned to in prayer to secure her fortunes — and even what “fortune” looked like — as she worked out how to serve a living God of heaven and earth, not a statue contained in a temple. That this came with new habits and a change of habitat as they discovered what it means to live as children of God; and, hopefully, a sense of liberation from the need to get everything right in order to live.

Their challenge in their city is our challenge in our city: inhabiting God’s world as God’s children. Inhabiting our time as the time God has appointed us to exist in — in history, within the boundaries of our lands. Inhabiting time and space is not a choice; it is a given — given to us by God.

Habits are not just atomically powerful tools for transformation; they are not just areas for legalism and self-actualisation or self-improvement; they are also, to some extent, givens. We are creatures of habit; shaped by the habitats we operate in and our vision of the divine, and what we work towards and serve with our bodies.

The architecture of our lives — the space we inhabit — whether our city, like Athens, or our homes, and how we structure our time — is full of idols. It is geared to produce habits and rhythms, and if we are not deliberate in our choices, or fortunate enough to occupy spaces deliberately shaped to form us in godliness by others, the habitats we operate in deform and trample us like elephants.

In Romans, Paul talks about this architecture as the patterns of this world, and he invites worshippers of Jesus, as we engage in worship — the habitual use of our bodies — in view of God’s sacrifice, his gift of life for us, to not conform to the trampling elephants of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1–2). For Paul, this is a product of God’s Spirit being at work in us, transforming us into the image of Jesus.

It is this idea of our minds I want to zero in on today as we begin this series. Preachers get into big trouble trying to sound like experts on brain science — in part because the science itself is always developing and is pretty contested because we are complicated.

One study suggested just using a picture of a brain scan in a news story — and probably a sermon — means you can make just about anything seem plausible; that the image provides a physical basis for something abstract, and that we tend to want simple explanations of cognitive phenomena — brain stuff.

“We argue that brain images are influential because they provide a physical basis for abstract cognitive processes, appealing to people’s affinity for reductionistic explanations of cognitive phenomena.”

— McCabe and Castel, ‘Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning’

But another study debunked this one; they tried to replicate the experiment and found that brain images exert no influence on people’s agreement, but that “neurosciency language” can make bad explanations seem better.

“We arrive at a more precise estimate of the size of the effect, concluding that a brain image exerts little to no influence on the extent to which people agree with the conclusions of a news article.”

— Michael, Newman, et al, ‘On the (non)persuasive power of a brain image’

With all that in mind — and with us thinking about transforming our minds as we inhabit time and space — Daniel Kahneman was a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and economist who wrote Thinking, Fast and Slow about how our brains work.

He brought in this idea of “System 1” and “System 2” thinking. System 2 thinking is the kind of stuff we aim at in churches when it comes to formation — thinking; rational decision-making where we are conscious and applying principles of logic and agency.

He reckons System 2 accounts for about five percent of our actions, while System 1 does most of the work — it is our intuition and instinct; what we do on autopilot.

Jonathan Haidt is another psychologist — he is going a bit viral at the moment because of his book on social media and anxiety — but before that book he wrote a couple of books about how our brains work and how they shape our moral actions and judgments.

He used a metaphor that is a bit easier to grasp for System 1 and 2 thinking: the rider (System 2) — the conscious part of our brain — and the elephant (System 1) — the automatic part — where the idea is that it is nice to think that the rider is in control; that we steer our elephants towards goodness and truth, but really so much of who we are, and what we believe is right and wrong, happens at the level of our emotions and guts.

I reckon this is true of our discipleship too — the question of what god we serve and how we live that out. I do not know if this is your experience with sin, but I reckon I can be believing, in my rider-brain, all the truths I get up and preach and read and speak, while at the same time feeling pulled again and again into anger and lust and all sorts of patterns of this world and passions of the body — ruts, addictions, bad habits — that deform me and harm others without conscious thought.

The battle to be in control feels like a battle to steer an elephant before it tramples me, or others — trying to grab its tail while it is stampeding.

So here is my theory: the architecture of our idolatrous world is set up to feed our elephants and steer them in destructive ways.

Idolatry and worship work not just on the conscious mind, but our whole minds — our intuitions and instincts. These are the patterns that need renewing and transforming, not just our thinking. While it is great to get our brains in control and try to steer the elephant, maybe we also need to work at training the elephant with a new architecture — to pull us towards godliness; to keep in step with the Spirit so God produces fruit in us, rather than us producing destruction.

One of the ways we feed this elephant is through habits. It used to be a criticism of churches that did lots of ritual stuff that, over time, the repetition became less meaningful — but I wonder if that is because it moved from being conscious to automatic, and whether we live in a culture that puts a disproportionate amount of importance on the conscious bit of our brains because we like the idea that we are masters in control with the right information.

The Other Half of Church — a book about brain science and how we think about church and discipleship — is worth grabbing if you are interested in thinking through some of this.

We will dip into it throughout the series. The authors take the same model — the slow and fast parts of our brain — and suggest we have built churches to cater just for the bit that is impressed with good arguments and logic and stories and strategies, at the expense of shaping our intuitions and relational depth.

They reckon this part of the brain — the elephant (though they do not use Haidt’s model) — is shaped through attachment; through schooling our emotions and our intuitions by feeling secure, and connected, and attached to God — like children to a loving, nurturing parent — and in a community where we are being shaped and nurtured.

The problem is that often how we approach church is about our rider; the slower system — and we live lives that are hurried and almost constantly on autopilot — another function of our habitat. We can try to put the rider in charge but, to do that, we need to be slow and unhurried, and not anxious or panicked. That elephant stampede happened when loud noises startled the elephants.

“We were pursuing discipleship by focusing on strategies centered on the left brain and neglecting the right brain.”

— Jim Wilder, Michel Hendricks, The Other Half of Church.

So this series is an invitation to slow down, to be deliberate; to try to get the rider in control — to use our time and space to make conscious decisions aligned with the truths we believe, but also to bed down habits and security into the elephant so it does not get panicked and crush us or others; so we automate godliness rather than sin.

It is to discern some of the habitats we live in — the idols in our architecture — the patterns of our world — and their deforming power, and to make decisions about our habitats and our habits. It is to take up this search we were made for; reaching out for and finding the God who lives; who is in heaven; who is not destructive like a rampaging elephant, but a generous giver — who gives us life and breath and everything else — because we are his children (Acts 17:28). When we find him we find a good Father, who is also seeking and reaching out for us, delighting in a relationship with us.

Repenting means turning from the gods and patterns — the elephants — who stomp us into their image, and returning to him as our Father, the giver of our life, and being shaped accordingly. It means restructuring our lives — how we inhabit time and space — as those who have found life with him.

Justin Earley has written a couple of resources we will look at this series for how we live together in time and space. In his book about building habits of purpose for an age of distraction, he talks about realising how the shape of his own life was a bit like Athens. His house might have been decorated with Bible verses and imagery — Christian content — but the underlying architecture of his habits, his habitat, was like everyone else’s.

Repenting involves transforming not just the decorations in our life, but our structures and rhythms — how we live in the place and time God has put us, with our bodies and our time, as children of God; knowing what he is like and experiencing joy through our attachment to him as those who can come before his throne.

“While the house of my life was decorated with Christian content, the architecture of my habits was just like everyone else’s.” — Justin Earley, The Common Rule.

When we are imagining what life might have looked like from then on for Dionysius and Damaris in Athens, I reckon it is safe to assume the pattern of the first church — its habits and habitats — might have shaped their lives. Those who repented and found life in Jesus devoted themselves not just to learning — shaping the rider through the apostles’ teaching — but to connection: fellowship with God and each other, the breaking of bread, and prayer (Acts 2:42). They met together as a rhythm; not just in the temple — which they could do in Jerusalem — but in homes, around tables, eating together, praising God, experiencing joy and security and connection (Acts 2:46–47). Inhabiting time and space together with God; learning to be like Jesus.

The final resource we worked through in small groups during this series was the Practicing the Way course. We used their material in Growth Groups — meeting in homes — where we are not just learning information, but experiencing this connection. We used this video as an introduction to assessing the architecture of our habits; trying to spot the way elephants are stampeding us.

September 26, 2025 Add Comment

Before the Throne — Table of Contents

If the ‘Being Human‘ series asked the question ‘who we are’ (or whose we are), this ‘Before the Throne‘ series asked ‘where we are’. The next series-into-blog-chapter thing will be a series exploring how we inhabit this reality at the level of our habits in time and space.

These were the chapters, the ‘imagery’ suggested for aiding our imaginations in prayer as those ‘raised and seated in the heavenly realms’ for each week is listed in the parenthesis.

  1. Chapter One — Gazing at the Son (Glorious light)
  2. Chapter Two — Paradise Found (The Garden)
  3. Chapter Three — On the Mountain Top (Mountains)
  4. Chapter Four — The Heaven on Earth House (Temple)
  5. Chapter Five — The Chariot of Fire (Throne)
  6. Chapter Six — Facing the Fire (The lamb seated on the Throne of Judgment)
  7. Chapter Seven — The Hands of the Crucified King (Jesus)
  8. Chapter Eight — Joining the Heavenly Crowd in Worship (The heavenly choir)
  9. Chapter Nine — The Heavenly City (The garden-mountain-temple-city)

September 26, 2025 Add Comment

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 1 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