Sunday Night, March 11, 2018 PM

The Parable of the Sower and the Condition of the Heart

In more than one place. As he went about, it would be his custom to tell these parables, to tell these stories as appropriate. And Matthew puts them all together in one chapter, so that we can look at them and compare them side-by-side and learn.

And in this particular case, he tells all these parables, and the first one is about the parable of the... Is it the parable of the seeds, or the parable of the sower, or the parable of the soils? Because those are the three elements, and the thing we see about the parable is that the sower is the same, and we see that the seed is the same.

Because, behold, the sower went out to sow, verse 3. As he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up. Others fell on the rocky places where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of soil.

When the sun had risen, they were scorched, and because they had no root, they withered away. Others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out. And others fell on the good soil and yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

He who has ears, let him hear. And when he explains that parable, beginning in verse 18, he makes it pretty clear that the sower is the one who sows the gospel, or preaches the gospel, and that's what the seed is.

The seed is the gospel. So, when the seed of the gospel is spoken to folks, depending on who they are, that's the different types of soil, depending on what their heart is like. Some hearts are hard, like a well-packed track in the garden, or on the farm, or like a road.

And the seed hits and just bounces around, and the birds have a meal. Or Jesus says, Satan comes and snatches it away. Satan is definitely operative. The enemy is definitely operating to remove the gospel influence from people's lives.

And so, that would be one kind of heart, hard heart. It doesn't even penetrate at all. Others seem to take to it, and they seem to really agree. And there's actually some growth that comes up, but the actual soil is not very deep.

So, it's just a thin layer of soil over some bedrock, maybe. Sun hits it, warms up the rock, the seeds germinate, but the roots have no place to go. And so, they just wither away. So, the gospel message penetrated some, but it wasn't a true faith, it wasn't a true conversion, because the first heart, the hardness was right on the surface and easy to see.

The second heart, the hardness is there, just a little bit lower, a little bit harder to see, but it's there still. And then the third heart, one that was choked out, by the cares of the world, just infatuated with the things of the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life, just chokes out the message of the gospel.

And then the good soil, I think in context, the good soil is going to be the one, the good soil, the one that is blessed by God. Jesus tells his disciples, just previous to this explanation in verse 16, blessed are your eyes because they see and your ears because they hear.

They are blessed because they see and hear. God blessed them and so they see. God blessed them and so they hear. And so, good soil produces real fruit. So, the seed is the gospel. And depending on what condition the heart is, you can see the reality of the gospel based on what kind of person it is.

And I think that this parable is helpful in the context of Matthew to explain why some people are rejecting him, some people are believing in him. What makes the difference? Is it the way Jesus tells it?

Does it matter who's saying it? Does it matter what is being said and how it's being said? No, it matters about the condition of the heart. Okay, so the word Sabbath just comes from the word for seventh.

And the seventh day in creation is the day that God rested. This laid out a model for those who would worship this God, this creator God. And the children of Israel, when they were delivered from Egypt, early on in the story of Exodus, they were instructed to gather twice as much manna on Friday so they would have enough for the Sabbath day.

So, they were to completely rest on the Sabbath, no work, don't go out and gather. And so, the idea of having that seventh day of rest was there prior to the Ten Commandments because it was modeled in creation.

In fact, Exodus 20, when it gives the fourth commandment to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, the reason given is because of the seventh day of creation. Now, there was an additional reason given in Deuteronomy 5, when the Ten Commandments are given again, that the Sabbath day is connected to the redemption of Israel out of Egypt.

So that they are to remember the seventh day and keep it holy, remembering how God delivered them up out of Egypt. And God did it, it was his work, so they rest in that work and they rejoice in his salvation.

So, the Sabbath day was a day set aside for the children of Israel to remember God as creator and as redeemer. And so, that was going to be a part of their normal pattern of living. And not only a Sabbath day, but there were also many other things that they were to observe.

Sabbath years, where they would not plant crops in their fields. Every seven years, they would let the ground lay. They wouldn't till it up, they wouldn't sow soil. And they did that seven times and there'd be an additional Sabbath year, the year of Jubilee, every 50 years.

There was also certain feasts and festivals that there'd be a Sabbath day. They would call it, this would be a Sabbath. We're going to rest during this time as well. So, the idea is, at first, seventh.

But then we find it extended in the law to other days that have nothing to do with a number, numerically, but have to do with rest and worship of God. So, that term gets expanded and utilized in different ways.

Christ as the End of the Law and the True Sabbath Rest

So, it is the fourth commandment to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. And the question is, what is the connection for Christians? How do we understand that commandment? How do we understand the Sabbath?

How do we observe it? And so, for that, we'll have to think a little bit about two things. One, specifically, how does Jesus deal with the Sabbath? And then secondly, how do Christians deal with the law in general?

So, we'll start with the general. And if we see, I want to make sure I go to the right spot. Let's go to Romans, I think, chapter 10. I could be wrong on this. My references are running around in my head.

Oh, here it is, yeah.

Romans 10, verse 4. Now, the context, of course, is Paul has a great burden for his fellow Jews. And you could tell that by his missionary journeys, how he would go and preach in the synagogue so they kicked him out.

And then he'd go preach someplace else. And he was disheartened time and time again as he would preach to those that he had this deep love for. And he expresses that deep love here in Romans. And so we see in verse 1 of chapter 10,.

But brethren, my heart's desire and my prayer to God for them, for my fellow Jews, is for their salvation. For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God. Didn't Saul of Tarsus have a zeal for God?

Didn't he?

But not in accordance with knowledge. Do you remember, is it the warning in Proverbs? A person with zeal with no knowledge. Watch out, it's like a burning wildfire. For not knowing about God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.

How is that so? For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. He is the telos in the Greek, the epitome, the completion, the goal, the absolute purpose of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

So in other words, we are not going to score points for righteousness by attempting to keep the Sabbath. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Now the Jews had a zeal.

Boy, did they have a zeal for the law. They thought very, very carefully about how to observe the Sabbath. On the Sabbath, you should not work.

What does that mean?

It means you can't walk too far from your own home because that would be work. Well, what is your home? Any place you have a personal item. Ah, I've got a business trip coming up. I'm leaving on a Thursday.

I'm going to Damascus. I've got to get back for Sunday, but Saturday is the Sabbath. Hmm, what shall I do? Oh, I know. On my way there on Thursday, I'm going to drop off my toothbrush and my little potted plant because these are personal items.

Therefore, these are my home. Therefore, I am keeping the Sabbath because I'm not walking too far from my home. On my way back, I can still keep the Sabbath mile intact. Don't spit on the ground. If you spit on the ground, it plows up the earth, and a seed may drop in there, and you may have ended up to be planting crops.

These are actual laws in the Talmud. A zeal for keeping the law, but not according to knowledge, Paul says. Oh, they're zealous, but they're not getting it right. Likewise, churches in the Bible Belt and tracking all the way back in an arc to the Puritans and all before that, there's been a lot of thought given to how do we observe the Sabbath?

Well, the thought goes, well, it's a commandment. We even see it before the Ten Commandments. Therefore, it looks pretty important. It looks like we're going to have to follow a Sabbath of some kind, but we're not Jews.

We're Christians, and they worship on the first day of the week. Ergo, Sunday is the Christian Sabbath. Ergo, you can't wear certain colors on Sunday. White shirt, not a colored shirt. No stores can be open, and you can't go out to eat on Sunday.

Sunday, children cannot play outside, but they are to sit in their room and study their catechisms. Since the Sabbath is about God first, they can't eat until they have quoted their catechisms appropriately.

These are different ideas. I'm not saying it's always that way. Again, this is a zeal.

How do we do it?

What are the regulations? How do we get this done? But we're missing the point, I think. Let's look at what Jesus has to say after we see the big picture of Christ fulfills the law. How does Jesus interpret the Sabbath?

And we'll go back to the end of Matthew 11. And what is the Sabbath about? Remember the Sabbath day. What's the Sabbath day about?

God is creator. God is redeemer.

It's about worship, remembering who God is, and honoring him and worshiping him to keep it holy. Set it aside. Set this time aside for worship. That's what the Sabbath is about. It's about what else? They had to stop working so they could do what?

So they could rest. That's the key word of the Sabbath, isn't it?

It's rest.

Rest.

In fact, I mean, the instructions given to Israel were literally this. Every man is to stay in his tent the whole day and do nothing. That sounds pretty good if we're war slick, if we're sick. But that's kind of hard to observe.

We're people of action. We can go do something. But they were supposed to rest. That's the key word of the Sabbath. Now we look to Christ's interpretation of it all, Matthew 11, verse 28. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Now, just for context, who is he talking to? He's talking to the people who are living in Israel under Second Temple Judaism who are weary and heavy laden. Did you tithe your cumin this month? Did you tithe your dill?

What about your mint? Did you give your temple tax?

It's the Sabbath.

I saw you spit. You're in trouble. They are weary and heavy laden. Jesus gave a woe, woe, woe to the Pharisees who tied up burdens on people and would not even lift a finger to help them. These people are weary and heavy laden.

They are being driven along by the whip of works religion. They are weary and heavy laden. He says, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you what?

Rest.

Where do we find rest? In Christ. We find rest in Christ. He says, take my yoke upon you. Hang on a second. He says rest, and then he talks about work. A yoke is an implement for work. You put that on the neck of oxen to go do something.

Now he says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me. It's his yoke because he's got his neck through it, and we're going to put our neck through it, and then he's going to guide us and show us. This is what you did with oxen.

You took the mature, full-strength ox, and you put the yoke on it, and you tied the harness in such a way that that ox was pulling the whole load. And then over here you put the new one, the one learning, in the yoke, and the only thing that little one was to do was to follow the patterns of the big one, wherever the big one went, and so that little one wasn't pulling any weight.

They weren't really doing much. They were just learning the ways to go, and the big one was doing it all, and that's what Jesus is talking about. He says, so take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

Rest for your souls. And this is a quote from Jeremiah 6 .16. We've gone over that in the services. We can go back to it. But notice he says, my yoke is easy, my burden is light. Why is the yoke easy?

Because he's the one pulling it. Burden is light because he's the one pulling it. He's calling us to rest by joining with him, and so we find rest by being in Christ, by abiding with Christ. By being with Christ, we have our rest.

Key word for the Sabbath is rest. Lo and behold, the very next verse is about the Sabbath. I was reading in the commentary the other day, and they were looking at a chapter division, and they called it infelicitous commentators.

It's not good. Unfortunate that we have a chapter break here because then we forget to keep on reading. There were no chapter breaks when Matthew wrote this thing. Just keep reading. My yoke is easy, my burden is light.

At that time, Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. Rest to Sabbath. And his disciples became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat. And in this, they broke several laws. By picking the grain, they are harvesting.

By rubbing it between their hands to get the grains out, they are threshing. By mixing the sweat of their palms with the grain, they are cooking. They are in a lot of trouble. His disciples became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat.

But when the Pharisees saw this, the Pharisees are always there, they're hiding in the bushes. They jump out. They said to him, look, your disciples do what is not lawful to do on a Sabbath. They have a zeal, Paul says, but not according to knowledge.

But he said to them, have you not read? Have you not read what David did when he became hungry? He and his companions, how he entered the house of God, and they ate the consecrated bread, which is not lawful for him to eat, nor those with him, but for the priests alone?

What's Christ's point? Who was David? He was God's anointed. So the bread, he could eat the bread. Even though if there were Pharisees back then, they would have jumped out of the bushes and said, that's not lawful for you to eat.

But it was okay for him to eat because he was God's anointed. And those who were with him, right? His mighty men, they were with him.

They could eat it.

Why? Because they were with him. They were with him.

So it was holy.

It was consecrated.

It was okay.

Verse five, or you've not read in the law that on the Sabbath, the priests in the temple break, break the Sabbath. They profane the Sabbath is actually the word that Jesus uses. They profane the Sabbath and yet are innocent.

What are they doing in the temple? They're doing heavy work. You ever slaughter an animal and process it? I mean, if you slaughter an animal for sacrifice, that's a lot of work.

That's a lot of work.

But then he says, but I say to you that something greater than the temple is here.

What does he mean?

And again, his point, my disciples are with me. How can they break the Sabbath? They're with me. How can they break the Sabbath? They're with me. The mighty men of David did nothing wrong because they were with David.

And the priests inside the temple don't break the Sabbath because they're inside the temple. How can my disciples break the Sabbath when they're with me? It's impossible. That's Jesus' perspective on the Sabbath.

And then he goes on to say, if you know what this means, a desire of compassion and not a sacrifice, you would not have condemned the innocent for the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. And goes on to emphasize that the Sabbath, that man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for man.

And so this is an important question. In about two Sundays, we're going to hit it in Jeremiah. So it's good prep work. How do we remember the Sabbath day? We remember God, our creator, God, our redeemer.

How do we keep it holy?

By abiding with our creator and our redeemer, Jesus Christ. Now, I don't know of no better way to keep Sabbath than to engage in the spiritual discipline of corporate church worship. I just don't know any better way to keep Sabbath.

Because when I gather, when I make time and purposefully gather with my brothers and sisters in Christ, this is what is most helpful for me to keep Sabbath. But I can show up on a Sunday to a church service and still be breaking the Sabbath because I'm not abiding in Christ.

I'm just there. I may be there on time, in dress code, and not go out to eat afterwards and break the Sabbath all over the place because I'm not abiding with Christ. And that's the difference. That's the whole point of it.

And, again, when we look at how the law was used unlawfully in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, we see that they were not really keeping the law because they were just going through the motions.

So that's an important thing for us to pay attention to the way that Jesus interprets it in terms of following him and being with him. Very important question. Here's your Sabbath to-do list.

The Promise to Abraham and the Growth of God's Land Promise

All right.

Let's take a little look at Genesis 15. We have the time. We left off talking about really how verse 5 and 6 get quoted a great deal in Romans 4. And we'll be going back there in a moment. So be prepared to turn to Romans 4.

But in Genesis 15, God reiterates the promise, the promises to Abram. And Abram is afraid. He is anxious. He's wondering where his heir is going to come from because he's childless. And God is very specific in verse 4, saying that Eliezer of Damascus will not be Abram's heir but one who will come forth from you, from your own body.

He will be your heir. And then he took him outside and said, now look toward the heavens and count the stars if you're able to count them. And he said to him, so shall your descendants be. So shall your seed be.

In chapter 13, God, after Lot splits from Abram and Abram stands there watching Lot depart, God speaks to Abram and says, look, this way, that way, this way, and that way. And everything you see is the land I'm going to give to you and your descendants.

And to be clear, Abram couldn't see it all. He was given more land than he could see. And he didn't really see it all. He never saw it all. He saw a lot of it, but he never saw it all. He was given more land than he could see, and he was promised more descendants than he could count.

Sound pretty good? More land than you can handle and more descendants than you'll ever know.

All right?

So these are big promises that God makes. And as we talked about in terms of the seed, so shall your seed be, that Galatians says the scriptures preached the gospel beforehand to Abram about Christ. Then he believed in the Lord and he reckoned to him as righteousness, verse 6 says.

We are justified by faith in Christ alone. And verse 7, and he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess it. And then we're going to see more about the way in which God affirms that these promises will be so by the cutting of a covenant.

And there's a lot there, and it's a lot of gore. So, you know, gear up for next time because you don't want to have a weak stomach when we go through the details. But in verse 7, I want us to think about that a little bit.

And I talked about it this morning in the sermon, and we sang about it tonight in the hymns, and we might as well spend some time thinking about it. God says to him, I'm going to give you this land to possess.

And he did.

Abram never owned the land except for a little part, which was a burial plot for his family from Ephron the Hittite. And his descendants wandered about just like he did. And they wandered about and wandered about, ended up in Egypt.

Seventy persons all went down to Egypt, and 400 and some years later, they came back up out of Egypt. The first opportunity they had to go and possess the land, they did not. And they wandered around the wilderness for 40 more years while something like, I don't know, 600 ,000 men and their wives all died.

Someone did the math on that. It was a gory number every day if you averaged it out. And the old generation died, and the new generation came up, and everybody from the first generation died and did not go into the Promised Land except for Joshua and Caleb.

Joshua and Caleb and all the new generation, they went into the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua, broke the back of the Canaanite defenses with a first thrust down into the middle of the land where they took Jericho and the surrounding cities.

They swept south and took care of a lot of nations down that way, and then they went north for the biggest battle of all, and they possessed the land at the end of the book of Joshua. He stands before the people and says, God's promises are now fulfilled.

You read it at the end of Joshua. They possessed the land. And then you find out that there were still pockets of resistance, people with iron chariots, hard to get rid of those guys. And they still had some problems, and they began to lose the land bit by bit in the book of Judges because they weren't faithful to God, so on and so forth.

This whole thing comes back under David. David, the king after God's own heart, leads the people in crusade after crusade to win the land back, and they do. And it's more land than they had under Joshua.

And again, the promises are seen as fulfilled. Under David. And Solomon's glory was unsurpassed as far as his influence in Israel and beyond. But they possessed the land, and they possessed the land. But when you read about the boundaries of the land, whether you read them in Exodus or you read them in Joshua or you read them in other locations, the boundaries of the land are not exactly the same each time.

It was a general region, and to the degree that the people were faithful to God and had the ability, they possessed what they could possess, and they did, and God fulfilled his promises in that way. This means that primarily, the land promise is an idea and its land.

But primarily, it's an idea. Why else would the borders change each time? Now, liberal scholars say, oh, contradiction, redaction, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that's not the way that God writes his word.

He doesn't write it full of errors and contradictions. He writes it in a particular way. So when you're falling asleep in your yearly Bible reading, as I often do in Joshua and other places, and you're reading about all these geographical know that those are actual places on a map, and that if you drew up the map each time, it looks different.

It is a land, but it's primarily an idea. I think it's helpful for us to pay attention to. Because this idea grows. God's promises grow. They don't get smaller. They grow. They get bigger. None of God's promises ever got smaller.

Do they?

Did God ever deliver less than what he promises? Does God ever deliver far more than what he promises?

Yes, absolutely.

And so that's why when you read through the Bible, the land just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger and more encompassing than ever before. So, for instance, in Micah well, let's start with as I said, from Romans, let's go back to Romans 4, because that is the primary connection we were making last week.

In Romans chapter 4, we were showing how Genesis 15, 5 was quoted once. Genesis 15, 6 was quoted three times. In Romans 4, it's unsurprising that we find a reference to Genesis 15, 7 as well in the same chapter.

Now, in verse 13, for the promise to Abraham or to his descendants again, literally seed for the promise to Abraham or to his seed that he would be heir of the world was not through the law but through the righteousness of faith.

Heir of the what? Heir of the world. Heir of the earth.

This is also like what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount when he quotes the Psalms and says, The meek shall inherit the earth. Whereas in the Psalms, very specifically, it says, The meek shall inherit the land.

So Jesus reads it and makes it bigger than what it was. Can he do that? Yeah, I think he can do that. He's the official interpreter of the Bible. The Apostle Paul, having been instructed by Christ, does the exact same thing.

He takes what was very specific and small and he interprets it as much, much bigger. Is he allowed to do that? Oh, absolutely. The Holy Spirit won't contradict himself. The good news is that God's promises get bigger.

They don't get smaller. They certainly don't fail. So keeping that in mind, why does Jesus and why does Paul just out of the blue start talking about the whole world or the whole earth versus one bit of land?

The answer is it's not out of the blue. That the prophets were saying this all along. That the prophets were looking at what was promised in Genesis and what was reiterated in different ways in the writings, and they were bringing it along to say things are going to be bigger than you think.

The prophets were saying that before the apostles ever said it. For example, so you go to Micah chapter 4. Micah is a good example. Micah chapter 4. And we'll look at verses 1 through 5. Where's the song?

Yes.

See, Miss Barbara's never lost in her Bible because she has the song memorized. Micah chapter 4. It will come about in the last days that the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains.

It will be raised above the hills, and the peoples will stream to it. Will, will, will. I think we have 1, 2, 3, 4 times. Verse 1. Hang on a second. All the nations are coming to the mountain. But the judgment is going to be for distant nations?

Decisions. Not wrath, but distant nations will be under his rule as well. So what will the land look like in the end? The mountain of the Lord is Zion. There's no argument there. Everyone's going to come to Jerusalem and yet still be in their place.

How is that possible? Micah, you're confusing me. All the nations are to come into Jerusalem, and yet there's still going to be distant nations who are under the rule of Christ.

Oh, that's so hard.

But again, the picture is not so much that. As you said this morning, it's not that everyone has to go travel to a kingdom someplace. The kingdom came to them. The kingdom came to them. Something that Ishwar and Mudaliar were saying Saturday.

The garden was really big.

How big?

It spanned to the Euphrates and the Tigris. Think of a garden. Well, a garden can only be so big. We have to let loose of some of those prejudgments. But Micah says it's going to expand out. Now Isaiah 2, 2 through 4 says the exact same thing.

And this will happen, and this will happen. And so the prophets are saying it's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. The land, the kingdom, who all is going to be spoken of as in Jerusalem? Who is going to be said that they are on the mountain?

That's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger, that definition. That's what the prophets said. So it's no big surprise. It should be no big surprise that Jesus said the same thing and the apostles said the same thing.

The preacher to the Hebrews says the same thing. So that's in Hebrews 12. And this is after specifying that those who walk by faith at the hall of faith in chapter 11, these people of faith, people like Abraham, people like Abraham in verse 13, chapter 11, verse 13, all these died in faith without receiving the promises.

All these died in faith without receiving the promises. But having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, they confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth, meaning that they were like in the same situation with Micah.

This will happen, and this will happen, and this will happen. It will. So now you go to chapter 12. And if we're paying attention to the tenses of the verbs, come to verse 22.

What does it say?

Just listen to the tenses of the verbs. Micah said will, will, will, will, will, future, future, future, future, future, verse 22. But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, who were enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the Spirit, to the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.

And in the present tense, verse 28, therefore we receive, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken. So in a very real sense, that which was will is now present, and that which was future is now present.

There's still more to come. There's still more to come. There's all sorts of wonderful blessings yet to come. We're not at the end of all things. But for the apostles, for the writers of the New Testament, that which the prophets said will be, they say it is now.

It has come, about in a real way, in Christ. I believe that God is going to fulfill all the promises he's ever made, and he's going to fulfill them through Christ, and they're going to be real and tangible.

But just so we're clear, in Revelation 21, in verse 9, this is what John sees. Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bulls, full of the seven last plagues, came and spoke with me, saying, Come here, I will show you the bride, the wife of the lamb.

The bride, the wife of the lamb. So we're getting ready for somebody in a wedding dress, right? Maybe it's going to be a sheep in a wedding dress. I don't know. The wife of the lamb. Please don't read Revelation like that.

You get really confused. It has to be the wife of the lamb, so it's a ewe. It's a ewe in a wedding dress. No. Come here, I will show you the bride, the wife of the lamb. You ready to see this person? Who's the bride?

Church. Okay. All right. So we know it's a church, so we're going to look for a church, right? Here we go. Ready? We're going to look at a church.

All right.

Here's the church. We're looking for the people, right? Okay. You ready to see the people? And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain. Sound familiar? Mountain. And he showed me the holy city, Jerusalem.

Sound familiar? A city on a mountain. Sound familiar? That's what the prophet said. Coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. Her brilliance was like a very costly stone, and so on and so forth.

Stones and walls and gates. And here's all the measurements. And you just read and read. Where is the people? You see the new Jerusalem. This description, the holy city, Jerusalem, is not where we're going to live.

It's who we're going to be. John says, I saw the bride, and it's the new Jerusalem. Look, it says what it says. It's the clearest reading of the text. Here is the bride, the wife of the lamb, and there's a great city, and look at her splendor.

Amuse on it for a while. Stare at it for a while. He says, here's the bride, and it's a city. Look at the glories of the city. So with all due respect to all the wonderful hymns that say we're going to be walking on streets of gold, brothers and sisters, we are the streets of gold.