The Throne Room

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at stories from the Bible that teach us about unity through the metaphor of language. We’ve seen how the world became such a divided place as a result of sin, and we’ve seen how every once a while, we get glimpses of unity breaking back into the world. In our final story, we’re going to see God’s ultimate plan for uniting humanity come to fruition, and we’re going to discuss how we can be a part of that. Let’s get to it.

This week’s story is unique in that it hasn’t actually happened yet. But we can read about it in Revelation 7. In this chapter, we get a preview of what worship is going to be like in eternity. Starting in verse nine, we read John’s account:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

Now, we’ll skip down to verse 13:

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

“Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

What an incredible future God has in store for his people!

In this passage, we get a glimpse of what heaven is going to be like. John tells us here that he sees a crowd standing before God made up of people from every nation, tribe, people, and language. This means that, in eternity, believers from every corner of the world will come together and worship our God.

Back in Revelation 5.9-10, some of the inhabitants of heaven are praising Jesus, and they say, “Worthy are you… for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom…” And now, just a couple of chapters later, that kingdom has been assembled before the throne of its king.

God’s kingdom is made up of believers from every earthly kingdom that exists now, has existed before, or ever will exist. It includes people of every background, of every shade, who speak every language that’s ever been spoken. In God’s kingdom, there will be people from China, from North Korea, from Uganda, from Iran, from here, from there, and from everywhere. And at the end of time, we will all come together before the throne of God, and we will say with one voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who is on the throne!”

We won’t have any language barriers then. There will be no disconnect, no division, no differences. We will be united as one kingdom: God’s kingdom. Because before the throne of God, the tower of Babel crumbles into nothing, and the division and brokenness that it caused disappear. They are no more. Because in God’s kingdom, we are all one. We are perfectly united, just the way God intended for us to be.

That’s the future we have to look forward to. Someday, we will live in a perfect place with no pain, no strife, and no conflict. And in that perfect place will be our brothers and in sisters in Christ from all over the world, and we’ll live in perfect harmony and unity under one shepherd. There won’t be any ingroups and outgroups. There will be only one group: us. The kingdom of God.

These stories teach us that God’s end goal for humanity is for us to be united in him. But they also remind us that we don’t have to wait until the end of time to participate in that unity. We can catch glimpses of it now, and we can choose to live into the reality of it even as we await its completion.

Did you know that while Jesus was on earth, he prayed for his followers? We read about it in John 17. In the passage, he starts by praying for the disciples who were with him right then and there, but then, he turns and prays for all of those who would come after them, including believers today. Here’s what he says in verses 20 and 21:

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you…

It was Jesus’ prayer for us as believers that we be united in him. That’s what he wanted for us. Unfortunately, we sometimes allow things to come between us, to divide us. This should not be so. Because there is nothing that could ever come between us, whether it be a disagreement or physical distance or a language barrier or anything else, that can take precedence over our bond as brothers and sisters in Christ.

One quick example, and then I’ll be done: Katherine and I recently got married, which means my family just got a whole lot bigger. Something you may or may not know about my wife is that she is Hispanic. If you look back a few generations, part of her family comes from Mexico. Which means that now, part of my family comes from Mexico.

So now, when I hear people talk about those of Hispanic descent, they’re not just talking about some faceless mass of people I don’t know. They’re talking about my wife, my grandmother, my siblings. When Katherine and I have children, they will, through their mother, inherit that legacy. So someday, they’ll be talking about my kids. And those of you who are parents know what it’s like when someone says something about your kids. For the rest of my life, through my family connection, I have a stake in what happens to that community and how they’re talked about because those are my people.

But if you’re a believer, a brother or sister in Christ, doesn’t that make them your people, too? In reality, we’ve got family—siblings—who come from every nation, tribe, people, and language living on this planet right now. And they’re all our people.

There is no us-versus-them in the body of Christ. There is no “not our problem” in the body of Christ. There are no barriers, language or otherwise, in the body of Christ because we are all one body. We are all one kingdom: the kingdom of God. And we are called to unity.

Their struggle is our struggle. Their pain is our pain. Their victory is our victory. And their concerns should be our concerns. If we are to live up to the unity that God has called us to, then we must remember this simple truth: We have brothers and sisters all around the world, and they are our people. We are called by God to be concerned for them because his kingdom has brought us together, and we shouldn’t allow anything to tear us apart.

Unity is hard. The tower of Babel teaches us that. But God is working in the world to create that unity among his people, and one day, he will finish his work. In the meantime, we’re getting glimpses, and we’re invited to share in his unifying work. Here’s the question for you: Will you take part? How will you take part?

Maybe it’s simply by choosing to remember that when we talk about events going on in the world, we’re talking about real people who are created by God in his image for a purpose and who are loved by him. We’re talking about our brothers and sisters. And every time we choose to speak, we need to keep in mind who we’re speaking about.

Maybe it’s by reaching out and getting to know someone who looks a little different than you do, or speaks a little differently than you do, or sees the world a little differently than you do. Honestly, how can you say you’re participating in God’s unifying work if all of your friends and loved ones look, act, and believe the same way as you? We’re called to do more than just sit contently in our ingroups. We can do better.

Maybe it’s by inviting others to share in God’s unifying work, as I’ve tried to do through this series. Or maybe it’s another way. However the Holy Spirit leads you, we are each called to participate in this work, because it is God’s work. He wants us to be united, and one day he will bring us all together in his kingdom. Until then, he’s leaving it up to us.

The world can be a less divided place, but only if we make it that way. I say we do it, together.

Pentecost

As part of my series on language and unity, last week I wrote about the story of the tower of Babel. We talked about the way that story reveals the source of the division in our world: It’s sin. And that sin has left the world in a pretty broken place.

But thankfully, God never leaves us in our brokenness. There is always hope because he is always working to redeem the world we live in. And sometimes, he gives us little glimpses of what that redemption looks like. This week, we’re taking about the story of Pentecost, where get a beautiful glimpse of that broken unity breaking back through into our world. Jesus has just ascended into heaven, and he’s promised the disciples that if they’ll just wait, he’ll send the Holy Spirit to them. That’s where we pick up in Acts 2.1:

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”

At this point, the apostle Peter beautifully and insightfully shares the gospel with them crowd, and in verse 41, we get to see the end result:

So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

What a beautiful image of what happens when the Holy Spirit comes onto the scene and people respond. God really can take a dire situation and turn it around can’t he?

So the disciples are following Jesus’ instructions and waiting around for the Holy Spirit to come, and meanwhile, everyone comes to town for Pentecost. In Jewish tradition, Pentecost was a time to celebrate God’s giving of the law to Moses. And just as God showed up at Sinai at the first Pentecost, now he’s about to show up again in a new way at this one.

We know that when the Holy Spirit falls, he’s going to do something big. And it was no different this first time. As the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples, there was noise and there was fire and there was a lot of commotion. Enough commotion, in fact, to draw a crowd. And the disciples, suddenly invigorated with the power of the Holy Spirit, were led to preach the gospel to the crowd right then and there.

And as they spoke, something amazing began to happen. Because this wasn’t any old crowd. The festival had drawn people from all over the world to Jerusalem, so this crowd represented every nation and people group imaginable. The passage even lists a sample of all the different places these people were from, including Egypt, Arabia, Media, even Rome. And each and every person in that crowd could understand what the disciples were saying. This was incredible!

You see, the disciples were Galileans fishermen. They weren’t fancy city folk. They weren’t eloquent. They weren’t educated in the languages of the world. They were just speaking what the Holy Spirit led them to say, but in his power, they were doing so in languages that they didn’t know, maybe even languages they’d never heard before. And miraculously, every person in that crowd was able to hear the gospel preached in their native tongue. Can you imagine? If something like that happened today, it would make international news, if anyone would even believe it.

As the disciples preached, every person heard, and thousands were converted to the cause of Christ. The church immediately grew from a tiny group in a tiny room to a vast collection of international believers spread throughout the world worshipping God in their homes. This motley crew of people from all over who couldn’t even understand each other suddenly became brothers and sisters in Christ. Linguistic barriers, cultural differences, and international conflicts were torn down in light of the gospel, and the unity of humanity was restored just a little bit.

Scripture goes on to tell us about what the church was like after Pentecost. The Christians met constantly in one another’s homes to worship God. They sacrificed and shared everything they had to make sure that each member had enough. They loved one another and cared for one another. They had what in Greek is called koinonia. We translate it a lot of different ways, but one way to translate it is “community.” They had true, deep community with one another, the kind that can only come from having a real connection with other human beings. I don’t know about you, but to me, that’s beautiful.

Here’s what I know: When the Holy Spirit shows up and our hearts are in tune with God’s, nothing else matters. It doesn’t matter what language you speak, where you come from, or what you look like, because we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. The things that would ordinarily divide us don’t seem to matter as much in light of all that Christ has done for us. When we’re in the presence of the Holy Spirit, we are united.

Now of course, the unity that the church felt at Pentecost wasn’t permanent. When it was all said and done, many of them still couldn’t communicate with one another because they didn’t speak the same language. They all still lived in separate places and eventually had to go back home. They weren’t fully reunited in every sense, but they shared one thing in common: their faith in Christ. And that was enough to start a movement that we now get to be a part of today, and that’s the universal church.

Pentecost was a glimpse of the restored unity that God is bringing into the world through the Holy Spirit. And today, we get glimpses of that unity, too. When families that were once broken are reconciled in the name of Christ. When enemies learn to forgive each other as Christ forgave us and become friends. When people from different walks of life come together to serve their community and their God. These are glimpses of the unity God intended for us.

My church is about to take a step in participating in that unity ourselves. In June, several of us are going to hop on a plane and fly to Puerto Rico to help rebuild a church that was destroyed by the hurricane there. We’re going there and doing that because we have decided that the people of that church are a part of our ingroup. They’re one of us. We’ve chosen to care even though we didn’t have to.

There are a lot of reasons we could use to not think of that church in Puerto Rico as part of our ingroup. After all, they’re so far away that we can’t even get there by car. We’ve got to fly just to reach them. And they don’t speak the same language as we do. We’ve had to use translators in our conversations with the pastor there to make our arrangements because working with someone who speaks Spanish is completely new to us. It’s different. It could be a barrier to working together if we allowed it to be.

But, there are so many more reasons that the church in Puerto Rico should be considered a part of our ingroup. They’re our brothers and sisters in Christ, first of all. Not only that, but they’re a part of the same denomination as we are. They’re also our fellow Americans. (Yes, Puerto Ricans are Americans. Look it up.) And even more importantly than all of that, they’re human beings created in the image of God, and they are loved by him.

I am so proud and excited that my church is taking this step to serve our Lord and his people. It’s already been such a blessing to everyone involved. And in doing this, we are getting to take part in that unifying work that God is doing in the world.

Here’s the secret that your brain doesn’t want you to know: As much work as it does sorting people into ingroups and outgroups, trying to figure out who belongs and who doesn’t, when you really look at the world from God’s perspective, we’re all one big ingroup. Sure, we may look different and speak differently, and sometimes we disagree on some pretty important things. But at the end of the day, every single person on this planet is created by God in his image for a purpose. He loves each and every one of us, and he wants to know us. And we’re all in the same boat: hopelessly lost in our brokenness without him. His plan is to save us, to redeem the world, and to bring humanity back together.

And he’s inviting us to take part in it. To look past the shallow things that separate us, to stop leaving our brains on default mode, to overcome our instinct to exclude, and to join our fellow human beings in their struggle. We’ll talk about it in more detail next week, but God’s plan for the world has always included bringing humanity back together. We’ve got some pretty important differences, but God’s got a plan to overcome them, and he’s giving us a chance to be a part. Don’t you want to be a part of what God is going?

We’re nearing the end of this series, but I promise that next week’s story is even better than this week’s. Thank you for reading, and I hope you’ll join me next week as we conclude this series with a look at Revelation 7 and the greatest worship service in all of history. I’ll see you then!

Babel

I’m currently doing a series on stories from the Bible that teach us about unity through the lens of language. Last week, we talked about the power that language has to create commonality among individuals and to create barriers between us. In this installment, we’re going to see where this unifying and dividing power of language comes from. Because it’s nothing new, and if we’re smart, we can learn from the mistakes of those who came before us.

The first story in our series on language and unity comes from Genesis 11. In this passage, we’ve just gotten through the flood with Noah and his family. They’ve gotten off the boat and restarted civilization, and now it’s time for humanity to spread back out over the earth as God commanded them to. Let’s read what happens next:

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

So here we are. God’s just hit the big reset button on humanity with the flood, and he’s ready to fill the earth back up with people. But instead of taking off and populating the world the way God told them to, they devise a different plan. They’re going to all stay in one place and make a name for themselves. The story specifically says that they decided to build this tower because they thought it would keep them from being spread out over the earth. These people didn’t want to go along with what God told them to do. They wanted to do their own thing. Sound familiar?

They were able to come up with this plan because they could communicate with one other. Up to this point in the biblical narrative, there weren’t different languages and people groups. The human race was still small compared to what it is today, and everyone spoke the exact same way. They didn’t have language barriers or cultural differences to work through. These people were able to set their minds to something and immediately get to work together as one.

Here’s what we’re seeing in this passage: This group of people was united, but they were united for the wrong cause. They were united in rebellion against God. And that wasn’t going to work.

We see a little bit of irony in verse five. This rebellious group decided that they were going to build a tower to heaven. But their efforts were so futile that the scripture tells us God had to come down to see what they were doing! Picture it: These ancient Babylonians working so hard to build the biggest thing they can imagine in order to reach God’s level, and God’s up in heaven squinting to see what they’re up to. What a great image of how foolish we look when we try to work against God’s plans for us.

Of course, this arrangement wouldn’t do. God had given humanity a second chance, an opportunity to do things the right way this time, and the first thing they did was mess it up. So he had to do something to get them back on the right track, and he pinpointed that the problem was actually their unity.

The plan was for everyone to spread out over the earth and speak a global language, and if these people had done what they were supposed to do, everything would have been fine. But since they united against him, God had to break up their little building project. And he did so by confusing their speech.

Can you imagine having a conversation with someone who suddenly started speaking in a different language out of nowhere? Or reading a book (or blog post) that randomly switched from English to French with no warning? If I could speak a second language, I’d start writing in it right now to give you an example, but sadly, I cannot. If I did, though, that would be pretty jarring, right?

Now imagine the confusion these people must have felt. They’ve never heard of another language before because there’s only one, and out of nowhere, they all start speaking in ways the others can’t understand. Everyone was talking, but it sounded like gibberish. They were babbling! (The pun works in both English and the original Hebrew the story was written in.)

Pandemonium broke out, and soon, frustration set in. The builders couldn’t work together because they couldn’t communicate. The project broke down because their unity was shattered. And soon enough, they went their separate ways and spread throughout the earth, just as God had told them to do.

And that’s the Bible’s explanation for why we have different languages today. It’s estimated that there are about 6,500 different languages spoken in the world today. Of course, some are more popular than others, and many people speak more than one language. But still, that makes for a pretty disjointed world. If language is the thing that separates us from other species and allows us to work together, then the fact that there are so many languages makes the world look pretty divided, doesn’t it?

In psychology, we talk about different biases that people have. Biases are just the brain’s shortcuts for processing information more quickly. As amazing as our brains are, there’s no way they could process and interpret each and every individual piece of data that we come across in the world. And so our brains identify and create patterns that we can use to help us avoid having to re-process information over and over again. This is perfectly normal so long as we remain aware of it and keep it in check.

Example: We all practice ingroup bias. Our brains are naturally wired to prioritize those who are most like us. This only makes sense. If someone didn’t care more about members of their family than they did for complete strangers, you’d probably think something was wrong with them. If you’re a part of a church or other community you find meaningful, then you know the shared sense of connection you feel for that group. I imagine that most of my readers live in the United States (though the logic would apply to any country). That’s an ingroup.

Sports teams. Marvel superhero fans versus DC superhero fans. Texas! These are all ingroups that one may or may not belong to.

We like our ingroups. We tend to look on them favorably, consider their needs to be more important than others, and side with them when we sense conflict. Our ingroups give us a sense of belonging and community. They remind us that life is about more than just ourselves, and we need that. Our ingroup bias is a natural part of who we are.

We also practice outgroup bias. As you can imagine, this is the opposite of ingroup bias. Whereas ingroups are the people we belong to, outgroups are those we don’t. They’re the “others.” The outsiders. The people we don’t identify with.

Rival sports teams. Rival superheroes. States other than Texas. These are outgroups.

Just as we tend to prefer our ingroups, we tend to downplay, ignore, or oppose outgroups. We see them as inferior. We see them as the competition. Often, we see them as dangerous, and sometimes for good reason. We may not hate outgroups, but we certainly don’t have any affection for them. Empathizing with them is hard because we just don’t connect with them the way we do with our ingroups.

All of this, by the way, is completely subconscious. Our brains are doing this for us all the time without us even noticing it. You may not even be completely aware of all the ingroups and outgroups your brain has created, although you probably could list several. And there’s nothing wrong with having these categories; it’s natural, and it helps us navigate the world. But it does create barriers between us that don’t necessarily exist outside our heads.

Language can be a strong indicator of whether someone belongs in an ingroup or outgroup. After all, it’s hard to build an emotional bond with someone you can’t understand. We like to be in groups with people we identify with, and finding that connection with someone through a language barrier isn’t always easy. And so, we rely on language to help us understand who is one of us and who isn’t.

Here’s the point: We live in a divided world. It’s chopped up every which way, from language barriers to national borders to ideological chasms the size of the Grand Canyon. And it all started at Babel. It all goes back to sin. We were united, and in that unity, we turned against God, so he had to do something about it. And ever since then, that unity has been broken.

None of us is immune to the brokenness brought into the world by sin. We’re all victims of it. But we aren’t just victims; sometimes, we’re perpetrators. And when we choose to participate in the disunity of the world by disregarding, devaluing, and downright hating those who aren’t like us, we’re making the world a little more broken. We’re making life harder for others. And we’re selling ourselves and those around us short.

The divisions we see in the world today are the result of sin. We all like to see ourselves as the righteous heroes of our own stories, but the truth is that we’ve all contributed to the brokenness. It’s a cycle that started long before we came along. We’re just a part of it, more often willingly than not. It’s a simple fact that the world is a divided place. The unity that God intended for us to have is broken.

I’m sorry to finish on such a bummer note, but that’s the end of my reflection on this week’s story. Babel is scary place to be, and it’s infected the entire world around us. But just so I don’t leave you feeling too hopeless between now and next Tuesday, I’ll give you a little hint of what’s to come: We broke our unity, but God never leaves us in a broken place. Next week, we’ll be looking at the story of Pentecost in Acts 2 and how God sometimes gives us glimpses of the unity he wants for us. Hope to see you then!

Unity and Language: An Introduction

Language is a powerful thing. It has the ability to create and to destroy. While a kind word can heal a wound, a harsh word can open one up. We’ve all experienced the way the words of others can affect us, whether positively or negatively, and the way we can affect others when we speak, sometimes without even meaning to.

In fact, language is central to the human experience. After all, it’s what sets us apart from other animals. Sure, they may be able to communicate simple information to one another, but only we humans can use words to create dialogue, to craft stories, and to compel others with our (sometimes) well thought-out arguments. As Jonathan Merritt puts it in his book Learning to Speak God from Scratch, “We are word-shaped beings who live word-shaped lives within word-shaped communities. This, it seems, is by design.”

We get our propensity for speaking from God himself. The very first verses of the Bible tell us that the universe was created when the Lord spoke it into existence. He said, “Let it be,” and it was so. And when he said, “Let us make humanity in our image,” he spoke us into existence with that same ability to speak and to impact the world through the words that we say.

Scripture is full of stories that illustrate the role of language in shaping the world. Throughout history, God has used prophets, authors, poets, and preachers to get his message out there. Moses transcribed the law. David composed psalms of praise and lament. Jesus delivered sermons on mountaintops and the decks of ships. Paul penned letters from prison. And all of these words have been passed down for centuries to shape the lives of those who serve God.

One very interesting aspect of language is its ability to unite or divide us. A simple word or phrase can let us know more about a person than anything else. The way someone speaks can tell us where they’re from, how old they are, and so much more. Language lets us know who is like us and who isn’t, who we’re able to interact with and who we aren’t, and who we want to be around. It is an instant identifier.

Have you ever been to a place where you didn’t speak the language? Maybe you went to another country or to a place of business where the staff communicates differently, or maybe you just visited a family down the street who speaks another language at home. You can hear people talking around you, but it doesn’t make any sense. It all sounds like gibberish. Clearly they understand what they’re saying to each other, but you’re left in the dark. It can feel very isolating, can’t it?

I feel that way sometimes when I hang out with people at my church. We have a lot of very handy people there, and when they talk about their projects, they start using jargon that is completely foreign to me. I hear them say things like “quarter-inch drill bit,” and I know they’re speaking English, but it doesn’t sound like it to me. They start talking about two-by-fours and four-by-fours, and suddenly, I’m completely lost.

Here’s what I mean: Language can bring people together, or it can push them apart. When someone starts talking about a topic or hobby that you’re fond of, you instantly feel a connection with them. When you’re in an unfamiliar place and you hear someone speaking your language, you perk up because you know that’s someone you can communicate with. Connecting with someone over common language can be like a breath of fresh air, while being unable to connect with others can make you feel like the wind's been knocked out of you.

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to look at stories from the Bible that touch on language and its power to unify and divide us. In reading scripture, we see both sides of the coin: the way that language can be a force for good and the way that we can use it to destroy others. The choice is really up to us, and we’ll see that throughout this series.

Really, these stories are using language as a metaphor for the connection, the oneness, and the unity we feel with our fellow human beings. We put a lot of stake in language and what it reveals to us about the people around us. And scripture actually has a lot to say about that.

I don’t know about you, but I’m excited to dive into it! So come back next week for the first story. (And if you’re one of those people who likes to read again, give Genesis 11.1-9 a look this week.) I’ll see you then. Thank you for reading, friends!