Heaven on Earth

A few years ago I came across the book "The year I lived by the Bible".

Author A J Jacobs is a New Yorker, not very religious.

Listen to his presentation of the book:

"The year I lived by the Bible" is my quest to live the ultimate biblical life. To follow every rule of the Bible as literally as possible. I obey the best-known rules:

• The Ten Commandments

• Loving your neighbor

• Be fruitful and multiply

But also the hundreds of rules that are often ignored.

• Do not wear clothing made of mixed fibers.

• Don't shave your beard

• Stone sinners ... concretely, he threw small pebbles at someone who confessed to him that he had cheated on his wife.

This book is written with great humor.

But it does raise a serious question.

For what kind of life ... does God ... save us?

Connexion Church was delighted to celebrate dozens of baptisms. Baptism is when someone publicly testifies that they have begun to believe in Jesus.

Imagine this scenario. After a baptism, one of the baptized comes to you and asks: what happens now? What will my life be like? I believed in Jesus. I know what I've been saved from. From my sin.

Tell me, what was I saved for? ... What kind of life?

Am I living the way I want? Do I follow my desires, knowing that whatever happens, I'll go to heaven?

Or do I have to spend all my time in church?

Should I try to follow all the rules of the Bible, even if it means never shaving my beard again and walking down the street with a sheep on a leash?

What kind of life did God save me for?

The question arises at the beginning of the Christian life. It also arises throughout the Christian life, as individuals and as a church.

When we set up the project to buy premises for Connexion, we had to ask ourselves: what are we here for?

What is God calling us to? What should our church life look like?

We know what he saved us all from.

But what did he save us for? For what kind of life?

We've reached the point in Exodus where God was in the process of answering this question for the Israelites.

He had rescued them from Egypt, led them to Mount Sinai and invited them to enter into a relationship with him.

Last Sunday, we began to see what it meant to have this relationship - to obey the 10 Commandments.

The challenge this morning is to know what God wants to tell us, through his rules on how to cook a kid, what to do if your ox kills the neighbor's, and, let's not be afraid to quote the elephant in the room, how to treat his slaves!

The answer may come as a surprise.

We'll see that what God saves us for is to lead a life that anticipates heaven.

That's the message behind these commandments.

To invite us to lead a life that anticipates heaven.

In all areas, including the most mundane, anticipate by the way we live the life of heaven - of the kingdom of God.

Three points

The prototype of heaven on earth
The problem of heaven on earth
The promise of heaven on earth

The prototype of heaven on earth

It's election time. Leaflets are arriving in our mailboxes for the European elections.

These are the elections the French are least interested in. I encourage you to vote anyway.

But even in these elections, in which many take little interest, political parties try to present their vision of what needs to be done to move towards a model society.

We need to change the law in this area. You have to add laws in this area. You have to regulate this, liberalize that and so on. If we do that, we'll have the society we want.

Exodus 20 verse 22 to Exodus 23 verse 19 contains what is known as the book of the covenant, which presents nothing less than a prototype of society as God desires it.

A prototype of heaven on earth.

If you've read this passage in your community group, some of the rules may have struck you as odd. So did I.

But taken together, they present a society in which God reigns over all areas of life.

There is no separation between the religious sphere on the one hand and the rest on the other. There is no 1905 law in Israel. God reigns over everything.

Let's take a look at the structure. It's a sandwich structure.

The text begins and ends - the slices of bread - talking about the worship of God - how to build an altar and the great religious feasts.

Just inside, the salad leaves, it talks about protecting vulnerable people - slaves, foreigners and the poor.

In the middle - the meat - are penalties for personal injury (homicide, assault) and property damage (theft).
So here are the essential ingredients of the heaven on earth that Israel was to be:

• The Lord is at the center

• Vulnerable people are protected

• Life is valued X 2

• The Lord is at the center

Look at Exodus 20.22

"The Lord announced to Moses, "This is what you shall say to the Israelites: 'You have seen that I have spoken to you from heaven. You shall not make gods of silver and gold to associate with me; you shall not make them for yourselves."

God is unique!

He's not like the false gods of other peoples, he's a God who deserves exclusive love. The one and only central place in life.

It gives concrete instructions to guarantee it.

Verse 25

"If you build me an altar of stone, you shall not make it of hewn stone, for by passing your chisel over the stone you would make it profane. You shall not ascend to my altar by steps so as not to reveal your nakedness.'

The reason for not cutting the stones was no doubt so that we wouldn't focus on the craftsman's talent, but on God alone.

The absence of steps to prevent the priest's robe from being seen from underneath was probably a way of distinguishing himself from pagan religions, where sex and religion were mixed.

Your God is different! He's holy and he doesn't accept rivals!

Is that intolerant, someone might ask? Only as intolerant as a man who doesn't tolerate his wife sleeping with other men!

God saved Israel for a relationship with him. It's only natural that he should demand exclusivity.

Let's skip to the end of the passage

Exodus 23 and verse 14

"Three times a year, you will celebrate feasts in my honor."

The Israelite calendar revolved around three major feasts: unleavened bread to remember liberation from slavery, and the harvest and reaping feasts to thank God for putting food on their plates.

They were a reminder of God's goodness. He is not an indifferent or capricious master, but a generous one to whom we owe everything.

So Israel's whole life was to be one gigantic cult of praise.

Their whole lives revolved around the worship of God.

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And all their lives had to revolve around loving their fellow man.

Starting with the most vulnerable

Look at chapter 22 verse 20

"You shall not mistreat the stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in Egypt. You shall not harm the widow or the orphan. If you harm them and they come to me, I will hear their cries."

The compassion they themselves had received by being saved was to be imitated towards the vulnerable.

It was written into the equivalent of their labor code

Chapter 23 verse 10

"For six years you shall sow the land and reap its harvest. But in the seventh year, you will give it respite and let it rest. The poor of your people will enjoy it, and the beasts of the field will eat what remains. You will do the same for your vineyards and olive groves.

Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, so that your ox and your donkey may have rest, so that your slave's son and the stranger may catch their breath."

Protecting vulnerable people.

There were to be no beggars in Israel.

No abuse.

No second-class citizens.

No unsanitary migrant camps.

No need for social services or shelters for battered women.

No employees pushed to the point of exhaustion.

In this prototype of heaven on earth, the vulnerable had to be protected.

And finally, in this prototype of heaven on earth, life is valued.

Exodus 21 verse 12

"Whoever strikes a man dead will be punished by death. If he has not set a trap for him, and God has caused him to fall into his hands, I will designate a place where he can take refuge. But if anyone acts wickedly against his neighbor, using cunning to kill him, you will go so far as to tear him from my altar to put him to death."

The practice of the death penalty can shock us. In France, it has been abolished for forty years.

But let's remember the situation. The Egyptians had killed Israelites with impunity, drowning their babies in the Nile.

It wasn't sanctioned by the authorities; it was encouraged!

Behold, God declares that from now on, if you kill intentionally, you will receive the most severe punishment.

Why is this so? Because God places great value on human life.

She's precious to him. Blood is not shed with impunity.

It's striking to compare these laws with those of other peoples of the time, who practiced the death penalty for offences against property, such as theft. Less so for crimes against the person, such as homicide.

Not in Israel. In the prototype of God's heaven, life was valued.

So maybe you hear all this and you think: I'm not convinced this fits my image of heaven on earth.

And it's true that these laws are specific to a particular time and place. We'll see that they no longer apply to us as they are.

But once again, let's remember the context. The Israelites were emerging from generations of slavery. Their God had been ignored, their people had been oppressed and their lives had been worthless to the Egyptians.

These laws were a huge leap forward.

It's a bit like a child growing up on the street surrounded by crime.

His parents neglect him. He sees the worst crimes as normal. The only law he knows is the law of the strongest.

Then one day he's adopted by a family with rules.

We don't tolerate violence here.

We don't insult each other.

We respect each other.

The setting may seem harsh at first

But if he has eyes to see, he'll understand that all his rules are good, that they show that his adoptive parents love him and want to give him a better life.

This was the Israel experience. Out of oppression, to live a prototype of heaven on earth.

What about us? The first thing to understand is that when God saves us, he has life in that kind of world in mind for us. That's what he saves us for.

A world where the Lord is at the center, the vulnerable are protected and life is valued

I don't know about you; I dream of a world like that.

I'd like my daughters to have nothing to fear walking down the street at night because their lives are valued.

I wish the ladies sitting on the floor begging in front of my bakery didn't have to, because society no longer lets anyone fall through the cracks.

Above all, I'd like everyone I come into contact with - my neighbors, my friends, my family - to know, thank and adore the living God, to whom they owe everything.

I dream about it. Maybe you do too.

When God saves us, he does so with life in that kind of world in mind.

He doesn't just save us from our past and then go wherever we want. He saves us for a future. A future that looks like what we described.

But how? Clearly we don't live in that kind of society! Does this mean we have to campaign for these laws to be passed in France? Should we try to follow them on an individual level like A J Jacobs? What should we do?

I said it's a prototype, and the purpose of a prototype is not to be used. The purpose of a prototype is to give a glimpse of what is intended, and to identify flaws that need to be addressed.

These laws are the prototype of heaven on earth.

But they also reveal the problem of human attempts to build a heaven on earth.

The problem of heaven on earth

The problem is sin, which these rules highlight.

Look at Exodus 21:2

"If you buy a Hebrew slave, he will serve six years, but on the seventh he will go out free, without paying anything."

Let's face it, these verses, which seem to authorize slavery, have been exploited by Christians to justify the most atrocious practices over the centuries.

Let's face it, this verse is also problematic because the Old Testament seems to contradict itself.

The book of Leviticus forbids Israelites to own Hebrew slaves.

How come Exodus seems to allow it?

The answer that convinces me is that God is not naive.

God knew the hearts of the Israelites. He knew they would have slaves. These rules are there to limit the damage.

Free release after 6 years

Prohibition on selling a female slave to foreigners.

If a female slave marries the master's son, she receives the same rights as his daughters.

If you kill your slave, you're punished.

If you hurt your slave, you must set him free.

Safeguards to limit evil.

Still, these laws in Exodus are based on the premise that we fish.

They recognize and reveal the hardness of the human heart.

It's the same everywhere.

22.15

"Whoever strikes his father or mother will be punished by death."

"Whoever abducts a man, whether he has sold him or he has been found in his hands, shall be punished by death."

"Whoever curses his father or mother will be punished by death."

Sin is everywhere in these chapters. It is not eradicated. It is exposed. All these laws could do against sin was try to frame it.

That's why, for me, these texts have a bitter-sweet taste.

On the one hand, we see how good Moses' law was, and how good life in Israel must have been - at least better than in Egypt.

But at the same time, as we read, we think of another country, at the beginning of the Bible, that we haven't yet found - Eden.

The sinless heaven God had intended in the first place.

These laws try to turn us in this direction while knowing that sin stands in the way.

It's very good to have laws against murder. It's even better not to have murder.

It's all very well to frame slavery. It's even better not to have slavery.

As long as sin is present, heaven will always be out of reach.

This is why any human attempt, whether religious or secular, to build a heaven on earth is doomed to failure.

The communists discovered it. The capitalists discovered it. Christians who have tried to build a Christian society have discovered it.

When people try to build a utopia, it usually ends up as a dystopia. Because we're still sinners.

This is also why any attempt to live for God by rules is doomed to frustration.

A J Jacobs, the author of "The Year I Lived by the Bible", who is not a Christian, says in an interview that the more he tried to follow the rules of the Bible, the more he realized it was impossible.

It just showed him how sinful he was. He recognized that he couldn't try to live up to them all or he'd go crazy.

This is why the answer to the question "what kind of life did God save me for?" cannot be, a life under Old Testament law.

Because this law can't change us.

Some Christians are gravely mistaken on this point, believing that we live for God by following the Law of Moses, just by adding Jesus.

This can't work.

The law aims for the right things, but is incapable of giving us those right things.

It offers a prototype of heaven on earth. It also shows the problem with this heaven on earth.

God gave it, not for us to practice today - A J Jacobs beg to differ - but to lead us to his true solution.

This is our 3rd point

The prospect of heaven on earth

What kind of life does God save us for?

What is the Christian life supposed to look like?

The answer is a life that awaits and anticipates ... the arrival of the true heaven on earth ... that Jesus makes possible.

There will be a place where the Lord is at the center, the vulnerable are protected, and life is valued.

There will be a place where a woman will have nothing to fear when she returns home.

Where no longer will anyone panhandle in front of a bakery, and where God will be worshipped unceasingly.

Please go to the end of your Bible - Revelation chapter 21

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride made beautiful for her husband. I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God among men! He will dwell with them, they will be his people and God himself will be with them, [he will be their God]. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, death will be no more and there will be no more mourning, nor crying, nor pain, for what existed before has passed away.""

Israel was the prototype. The finished product is the new creation.

God will be at the center of everything.

The cry of the oppressed will no longer be heard.

Life will definitely replace death.

There will be a day when heaven arrives on earth

We're not going to establish it through legislation.

Look at verse 5

He who sat on the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new."

Jesus will create it.

Jesus, through his perfect life on earth, fully fulfilled the law. A God-centered life, compassionate for the vulnerable and valuing life, he lived it perfectly!

Jesus, by his death on the cross, paid for the problem of our sin. The obstacle to heaven has been removed. So everyone who believes in him receives the promise of being able to live there.

When Jesus returns, he will judge the evil that plagues our world. Revelation says that nothing unclean will enter.

Jesus offers the prospect of heaven on earth.

So back to our conversation with the newly baptized. What happens now? Okay, I'm no longer a slave. I've crossed the water. I have a relationship with God. What happens now? What is he calling me to?

It can be summed up in three words: faith, hope, love.

(It would be a good name for a church - already taken)

Faith.

A J Jacobs was right to find the law impossible for a sinful man to follow.

We don't need to do it anymore.
We look to Jesus, who fulfilled the law for us, who obeyed even unto death, we rejoice ... and we trust ... him.

Quite simply. We trust him to give us the right to enter his heaven.

Maybe there are people here who haven't figured that out yet. Who believe that what matters is our own efforts to be right.

Let me disabuse you of that notion.

Faith, simple faith in Jesus, who has accomplished everything for us.

Have you discovered this Jesus?

Hope - living in joyful expectation of the heaven to come.

Speaking of heaven, it's possible we're imagining all kinds of nonsense.

Maybe we've been looking at too many medieval paintings and imagine ourselves dressed in white togas, sitting in the clouds playing the harp - that's not it!

Our passage from Exodus helps us much more.

It's life on earth as God wants it, without all the things that spoil it.

Every morning I try to meditate and pray around some aspect of the new creation.

The end of wars. We won't have to read the death toll in Ukraine or Gaza every day. Human life will be protected forever.

The end of poverty - no more stories of people drowning while crossing the sea. No more people in precarious situations. No more begging on public transport.

The end of crime - I won't have to worry about my daughters being out alone.

The centrality of God - the God to whom everything is owed - will no longer be ignored or rejected. All will worship him.

Another idea - take a leaflet for the European elections, look at the themes mentioned - security, economy, ecology etc. - and then meditate on what it's like to have the hope of the new creation. - then meditate on what it means to have the hope of the new creation.

Friends, we live in a world full of beautiful things, but also full of trials and disappointments.

I'm sure that for many people here, there's something that's weighing you down or weighing on your morale right now.

Think about this and ask yourself: how will the new creation be different?

What will make it better?

Maybe it's bad choices from the past that are chasing you.

A painful situation.

What does this hope change? It should change something.

Faith, hope ... and love.

Whenever the New Testament summarizes the Law of Moses, the word that always comes up is love.

A little disagreement among Christians about the place of the Law of Moses for us. No orthodox Christian believes that we are obliged to keep all the commandments of the OT. My personal conviction from reading the Bible is that not being under the Law of Moses means that none of its rules bind us... unless they are repeated in the New Testament. You want to eat a kid cooked in its mother's milk for lunch, knock yourself out!

The commandment that binds us today and sums up all the others is love.

Love was to be at the heart of life in Israel. Love for God, love for the vulnerable, love for human life.

He will be at the heart of life in the new creation.

But that means that the life God saves us for is a life we can already anticipate here and now!

Not in the sense that you can have health or prosperity from heaven

No, we simply anticipate it by loving.

The new creation will breathe love.

So the person who seeks here and now through concrete acts to do good to his neighbor offers a foretaste of the new creation! :-)

It happens first and foremost in the local church - the outpost in this world of the new creation.

That's why a community like Connexion should be a context where vulnerable or precarious people, for example, are safe.

I won't list all the implications.

But it's worth asking ourselves who are the people around us who are going through a difficult time and could use a gesture of love.

Maybe a phone call to ask for news.

An invitation to eat.

Babysitting to take their mind off things.

I was in an assembly where we had several paid church weekends a year. If someone wanted to come but couldn't afford it, his or her Bible study group would first be generous enough to help.

We had another example with the men's conference yesterday. Erwan generously offered to help those who were hesitating because of money.

Faith, hope, love - this is the life for which God saves us.

It's possible that some people this morning are struggling with this question: what's the point of my life? I don't know where I'm going. I feel like I have no perspective.

If that's you, go back to Exodus. God doesn't just save us from our past; he saves us for a future.

He invites us to a life that awaits and anticipates his promised heaven.