“Nations Walking in the Light of Christ”
Revelation
“And in the Spirit he carried me away to
a great, high mountain
and showed me the holy city
coming down out of heaven from God.”
That opening phrase from today’s scripture
Reminds
us of the temptation of Christ in Matthew
When
Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness
To be
tempted by the devil and
the devil took him to a very high mountain and
showed him all the kingdoms of the world and said “All these I will give you if
you fall down and worship me” and
Jesus said “Away with you for it is written ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.
In the Matthew Jesus is tempted by Satan
And
responds by worshipping God
In
Revelation Satan has been defeated and
We
stand with Jesus on that mountain,
All
the nations worshipping God alone
and we share not a
vision of nations
vying for
power but of people
united
in a new Jerusalem
which means
“vision of peace”.
The images set forth in Revelation invite us to
imagine
What
the world would be like if and when
Instead of the vision of the world’s power
We were able to embrace the vision of
Christ’s peace.
The words of the ancient prophet Jeremiah:
“The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will
make a new covenant with the house of Israel: I will put my law within them,
and I will write it upon their hearts; I will be their God and they shall be my
people.”
When John was painting a picture of the New Jerusalem
He had
this prophesy in his mind.
It’s
a strange vision of
From
an architect’s perspective:
Its length and width and height are equal
The city is
a cube!
It’s
beautiful with all the 12 different precious jewels
It’s it symbolic of the whole people of
God with
Twelve gates opening from east, west,
north & south
And
twelve foundation which represent the Apostles
But
it’s a cube!
That
seems curious to us but to the Jews in ancient times
it would have made perfect sense.
The
Holy of Holies in the
Where
only the priest were allowed to go
Where
they were in the actual presence of God,
The
Holy of Holies was a perfect cube.
There is no
What John is
saying is that everyone is in the presence of God
The
ancient words of the prophet have been fulfilled
“I will be their God and they shall be my
people.
No
longer shall they teach one another, or say to one
another, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me,
from
the least to the greatest.”(Jer. 31:34)
So is this image painted by John,
an image of the “by and by, in the sky”?
Something
that he envisions came only happen
In
the far away distant future?- I don’t think so!
It
is an image that John paints for the present.
Jesus
describes himself in Revelation as
“The Alpha and Omega, beginning and the end”
And the word
for end “telos”
literally means
completion or fulfillment.
John has a challenge for us in
Revelation 21 and that challenge,
once we have seen the
light of God in the Lamb is:
“The nations shall walk by its light and the
kings of
the earth will bring their glory into it.”(Rev. 21:24)
The challenge of Revelation 21 and 22 is the same as
the
Challenge
that Isaiah gave to the people of
“The people who lived in darkness have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness-
on them the light has shined.” (Is. 9:2)
It’s the culmination of the challenge
that God gave
“I will give you as a light to the
nations,
that my
salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
Now we can’t vouch for other nations in the world.
Revelation
says that “The nations (in a universal sense)
shall walk in God’s
light.”
We can and should ask ourselves if our
nation
Is walking
in the light of Christ.
We are
allowed to ask whether the actions we are taking
With
respect to God’s creation,
the care of the
least of our brothers and sisters,
our
relationship with other nations in the world,
whether these actions bear witness to
the light of Christ or darkness.
The
challenge that Revelation offers us is not
Democrat
or Republican, Liberal or Conservative,
the challenge
is for the whole rainbow,
the whole spectrum
Are
we walking in the light of Christ?
This will be the lens through which I will evaluate
The different candidates vying to lead our nation.
This is the lens through which I will evaluate
Questions
like the Gambling Referendum.
Are
we walking in the light of Christ?
And
that is perhaps the toughest criterion of all
There is a popular song by John Mayer called
“Waiting on the world to change”
where the singer expresses his feeling
that he doesn’t
have the power to change
anything so he
just waits.
He is
expressing what the early Christians probably felt
And
he is expressing what many of us often feel,
Powerlessness to change the world.
But the
writer John in Revelation is painting
A different picture.
We
do have the power but it’s not power
As
the world understands power…
It’s the power of the crucified and risen
Christ;
It’s
the power of the Holy Spirit to change
One
heart at a time;
it’s the power
of hope that shines through
in the gospel
of Jesus Christ.
Our confirmation class at their retreat
at
Coined
an interesting phrase as they wrote their own
Statement of faith.
They
talked about scripture which empowers our faith,
enlivens our spirit,
Energizes
us to live and love.
That’s what God is doing for those early
Christians in Revelation
If
you look at Chapter 22 you’ll notice allusions to
The “tree of life”.
This
is the same tree of life that God referred to in Genesis 3:22
When
Adam and Eve are driven out of the garden
So
that they will not reach out and eat of the tree of life.
So here at the end of these scriptures
that started with the fall
And
the expulsion from the garden and the tree of life
Is
the reinstatement of humanity in the garden,
A new Jersualem, living by the water of life
And eating of the
tree of life.
This is a challenge of Revelation from
God to us
Not
to live in disobedience like Adam and Eve
Or
to be violently enraged as Cain was toward Abel,
Or
to lust for power like the builders of
Or
to be consumed by the wickedness of the world
As
the friends and neighbors of Noah were,
But
rather to believe the witness of the Christ,
Who
shed his blood that we might not live in sin
But
be free to live in the light of the Father and the Lamb
We
are challenged by God in Revelation
If
we have indeed seen the light
To
live in that light,
And
to be a nation that walks in that light every day.
Amen