BibleProject - The Heavenly City – The City E13

Episode Date: July 17, 2023

In the Bible, cities have a bad reputation as centers of immorality and unrighteous living. First-century followers of Jesus continued to live in cities, but they lived by an other-worldly ethic set by Jesus. Their way of living was so different that Jesus’ followers began to talk about their citizenship being primarily in a coming heavenly city, rather than the physical city in which they lived. In this episode, join Jon and Tim as they wrap up our theme study of the city.  View more resources on our website →Timestamps Part one (00:00-21:17)Part two (21:17-27:20)Part three (27:20-47:11)Part four (47:11-1:05:17)Referenced ResourcesNew International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, Willem A. VanGemerenThe Garden City, John Mark ComerInterested in more? Check out Tim’s library here.You can experience our entire library of resources in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.Show Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TENTS“Lost Love” by Toonorth“Acquired In Heaven” by Beautiful EulogyShow produced by Cooper Peltz with Associate Producer Lindsey Ponder, Lead Editor Dan Gummel, and Editors Tyler Bailey and Frank Garza. Mixed by Tyler Bailey. Podcast annotations for the BibleProject app by Hannah Woo.Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, this is Tyler at Bible Project. I record and mix the podcast. We've been exploring a theme called the Chaos Dragon, and because it's such a big theme, we've decided to do two separate question and response episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the first Q&R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by September 13th and send it into us at infoatbibelproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, and try to keep your question to about 20 seconds. And please transcribe your question when you email it in. That's a huge help to our team.

We're so looking forward to hearing from you. Here's the city. In the Bible, the first city is founded by a murderer, on the run, wanting to protect himself from others. The origin of cities comes from this human rationale of fear of death. Kane's city has a wall to keep others out and uses the threat of violence to keep peace. The desired preserve life in a land of scarcity and death, creates a city with walls where peace and prosperity is secured at the cost of human lives. When Jesus shows up announcing the Kingdom of God, he gives a vision for a new type of city,

a city that's run by a different logic, a city based on the trust of God's abundance and provision of eternal life. In the city of Jesus operates by a completely different type of rationale. Cain's city takes the life of others, but Jesus founds a city in which he sacrifices his life for others. Jesus died, dedicated to that vision, trusting that God would vindicate him and raise him to new life, and found the heavenly Jerusalem right here on earth in the form of his followers.

Followers of Jesus in the first century continued to live in cities, but they began to talk about having a citizenship and a city to come, a heavenly city. Right now, what's most true about followers of Jesus is not the city that they happen to live in at the moment, but rather is defined by this citizenship in the heavenly Jerusalem that operates according to the polar opposite of the city of Cane and Lemek in Nimrod because at its heart is an infinite source of abundance and life. Today Tim McEnie wrap up our conversations about the city with a look at the Gospels, Paul's letters, and the scroll of the revelation. I'm John Collins,

and you're listening to Bible Project Podcast. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hey, Tim. Hey, good morning, John. Good morning. You know, we always say good morning to each other. Of course, that has no connection to whenever.

Any of you all who are listening, what time of day it is for you. But listening, what time of day it is for you, but that's the time of day it is for us. Good day. Good day, time. There you go. I like that. Good day. It's very British. All right, we're gonna try to land the plane here. On the city, the theme of the city. On the theme of the city. Yes. And we've covered a lot of ground. You're gonna take us into the Apostles' writings. And I'd like to hear kind of you set the scene from where you want to go, maybe as a form of summary. Yeah.

Well, I feel like those of you listening, if you've been tracking with the conversations, I feel like we had some new clarity around the really core ideas and other connected just in the last few episodes here. At least what we want to do with the videos and the content we want to make. So we begin with a garden ideal of a heaven-honored spot with Eden and it's safe and it's secure. It's a place where life is generated and preserved in peace because there's so much abundance and there's no threat of scarcity. And so because the humans foolishly forfeit the ability to stay in that garden ideal,

they're exiled out into the wilderness and in the next generation you have the first murder with Cain. And Cain is exiled from the garden, and he fears for his life. And God wants to provide a sign that will protect him, but Cain instead goes and provides his own form of protection. And this is the origin of the city. And so what we traced is from Cain, and then to his descendant Lemak, the first human city also is a space that's dedicated for the preservation of life. That's why Cain builds it. He's afraid somebody's going to kill him. But the ethical logic of that city is protect yourself from those who might harm you. And if that self preservation comes at the cost of another person's life, so be it.

So be it. So you preserve life at the cost of life. And that's the ethic of Lemic and the song that he sings about. I killed a man for wounding me. It was the ethic of Cain too. And it was the ethic of Cain. But now it's become a cultural ethic in the city. Of the city. That's accumulated to the point where a guy like Lamek could just sing a song celebrating the culture of the city. That's right. Because Cain was concerned had a scarcity mindset. If God is going to exalt and favor my brother, then what that means is there's no more favor and exaltation left for me. And so that drives him towards a self-preservation ethic. Kill my brother?

Why don't you have opportunity for me? Yeah, totally. Yeah, exactly right. So that's the core logic of the city. It's what we're calling it. And if Cain was lured into the murder of his brother from that envy and scarcity mindset, and if that lure or that inner voice is called

by God a monster, like a creature. The creeper, the the croucher. The croucher, the thing crouching at the door of Eden, but you can rule it and it's called sin. So Cain, as it were, lets the monster within. And he lets it rule him, both in the murder of his brother, and then that continues forward in the creation of the city, which is built on the same logic. Yeah. The monster that Cain let within became the monster that we live within. Yeah. The humans then live within.

That is, because the city is like a scaled version of Cain. Yes, it's the accumulation of a bunch of us together, an extension of us, but now the monster isn't just my own personal little monster that's making me want to just murder my brother or you know protect myself. Yeah, really it's about protecting oneself and one's clan at the expense. Whatever the expense might be if it costs other lives than so be it. The monster has, it's still there but it now has it become something that is in the culture and it's in the infrastructure and it almost like we create it, we live within it and then it creates us. Specifically. Yeah, that's right. so the city becomes this, just a maldamation of the monster.

Yeah. Forming us in its own image. Yeah. And this is what gets intensified and carried forward in the next Big Bad City, which is Babylon, which is founded by Nimrod, another one of these violent warrior dudes. And what's interesting about Babylon is that with its city and tower that reaches up into the heavens,

it's humans trying to construct by their own wisdom and scheme to make a name for themselves. And remember perpetuating your own name is about a gravity-turnal life, as it were, making your name last through the generations, so that your name is not forgotten. It's a way of living on, living forever. Yeah, and building the tower to the skies is a way to try to attain divine status, divine life. That heaven-honored ideal that the garden represents, Babylon is built as a rival, a human ideal that the garden represents Babylon is built as a rival, a human rival to that. Basically, with those two cities or those three steps from Eden to Cain's city to Babylon, you kind of get the basic plot tension of the city, which is God has a heavenly ideal

that he wants to bring to earth and humans forfeit it and then they create this alternate pseudo-edin That is for the protection of some life and it actually makes a lot of sense like if someone's gonna come and destroy you Mm-hmm build a wall. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and if we have the capability to like create something marvelous like a tower Yeah, let's do it. They totally. You know, like, yeah. Why, you know, what's the problem? That's right. And the point of the tower of course is to make a statement to ourselves and everybody in the city.

But how great we can be. Yes, and that we have built up a path to the heavens. We don't need God. We've got our own, we can create life on our own terms. Yeah, we can reach up to the realm of the gods by our own wisdom and make the city our own little divine refuge. And when you juxtapose life in the garden to life in the city, in the garden, the tree of life is at the center. It's God's throne and the city, the towers in the center, it represents us on the throne. Now, also to keep in mind though, this is written by the Israelites who have been trampled on.

Trampled on by cities. Centuries and centuries. So born out of Egypt as oppressed slaves, but then later taken out by Babylon, earlier besieged by Assyria, the idea of a city becoming great in their imagination is a massive problem. And so it's kind of no wonder that these first stories of cities are portrayed as negative. Yeah, that's right. But there is one city in the biblical story that gets reclaimed as an outpost of the heavenly ideal. And that city is Jerusalem. And so we've talked about that, how the story of David bringing

the symbol of God's heavenly garden ideal in the tabernacle. He brings it to the middle of Jerusalem after he makes it the capital and makes it an outpost as a word of God's dwelling, and God accepts this, and chooses this as this special earthly hotspot where the garden presents in the divine throne will take up residence for a time. And this is a big turn in the story because you could imagine that the story goes, let's just go back to the garden. Yeah, or you stay in the wilderness. We gotta, oh yeah, the motor tent,

in the wilderness. Yeah, portable garden in the tavern at Gold. And reclaim the Garden of Eden, but let's stay out of cities. Yeah, yeah. Instead, the story gets to a point that says, let's take the throne room of God, the garden throne, let's bring it into the city.

And now you've got a new thing. Yeah, the garden city. The garden city. And it's awesome for a hot moment. That's right. Yeah, when David is living by God's wisdom, surrendered to God, ruling injustice and righteousness, sharing the benefits of God's blessing and abundance

with the people of the city city and they're having fig cakes Just like those from those fig trees in Eden, right? It's just a good party until the David and Bashiva movement and then That in the narrative begins the slow corruption of The Garden city to become yet another Babylon, eventually taken out by Babylon, you know, centuries later. And so this sets this drama that actually sets us up for this conversation. So there's this distinction between earthly cities, they're created by humans, and then there's this heavenly ideal.

Yeah, the city of God. And there's one city in the biblical story where those two merge together for the time, the Jerusalem. And for that season, especially in the biblical narrative, it's presented as a heaven on earth, opportunity in season for Jerusalem. But then slowly, as the kings from line of David do what they do, do what humans do, they turn the garden city back into another city of Cain and a new Babylon. And so it's as if the heavenly Jerusalem and the earthly Jerusalem are one

for a bit, but then they're driven apart, where they become separable. You just added an idea out of nowhere, which is the heavenly Jerusalem. The heavenly Jerusalem. So I guess I'll just fill out the logic is that once the garden is thrown of God, lands in Jerusalem, in David, from then on in the biblical story, you can talk about the heavenly ideal as a garden or as a heavenly city. In other words, the heavenly presence of God takes on another layer, a new layer of imagery. You can call it the garden, or you can describe it as

the heavenly city or Jerusalem. And when the earthly Jerusalem is being run and ruled and operating by the wisdom of God, it actually becomes an incarnation of the heavenly city and temple. But when its leaders lead to disdray from that purpose, like Adam and Eve, but instead of being exiled from it, they just corrupted it. It's as if Adam and Eve stayed in the garden and began to just ruin the garden. And God let them until the point where it's just too much.

And so the tree of life uprooted and left. And then God lets the wild animals just take over the garden. That would be the equivalent of what God allows to happen in Jerusalem. Yeah, might be interesting to start then with the idea of, you don't call it the heavenly Jerusalem at first, but that's the heavenly throne. The Garden throne. Well, but it's not the garden yet.

The abstracted God in the skies ruling the heavenly throne. Transcendent above all. And when it touches down on earth for the first time. Oh, yeah, right. What do we get? Yeah, we get the Garden of the... Get the Garden, yeah. We get the first time. Oh, yeah, right, right. What do we get? Yeah. We get the garden of you. We get the garden, yeah. We get the garden thrown.

And then we've got cities, which are saying, okay, we're not going to, God's not going to drop down on the sky for us. Cain's like, I don't believe you're going to protect me. So I'm going to build something and I'm going to try to reach up to the sky. Yeah, yeah. And now you've got the'm going to try to reach up to the sky. And now you've got the city. Now you've got the city. And so, Druselum is the first time to say,

it's God's heavenly throne coming back down to the thing that we've been trying to do the city, to create a new type of touchdown like the Garden of Eden, but new. Because now it's like dealing with the monster we've created and claiming it. Like that would be claiming it. Yeah, that's right. And then it gives the prophets this new vocabulary of talking about the heavenly rule as the city of God. The language as the city of God.

The threat. And so in the Psalms and the prophets, the heavenly realm of God is from that point forward described as once the heavenly rule of God is identified with Jerusalem or connected to it in the story of David. After that point, city imagery is now a fitting way to talk about the heavenly realm of God's rule. Along with gardening and material combined. Along with the garden city. That's right. That's why I saw in 46, there is a stream that makes glad the city of God.

It's the river of Eden irrigating and providing water for a heavenly city. Yeah. That's right. That's good. Yeah. It feels clear. Yes. So when Jesus comes onto the scene, here's some fascinating things that have taken place.

After the God allows Babylon to come and burn the city and destroy the temple and haul off lots of Israelites into exile, and some of them come back within a hundred years and rebuild the city, rebuild the temple, but it's nothing like its former glory, and it's all under the thumb of new imperial oppressors. And so Israelites, as they read and meditated on the scriptural story regarding the city, they came to see a separation between the earthly Jerusalem and this heavenly Jerusalem. And recognizing that the earthly Jerusalem is not, all it is is a potential symbol of the heavenly reality. This is Old Testament prophets, Hebrew Bible prophets?

I think it begins in the book of Isaiah, which we've explored. But I just want to- Oh, the inter-testamental period. Yeah, this Jewish literature of the second temple period. And I just want to, I'm going to mention two examples. I'll read one. One is in work that now is called second baroque. Is this in the Catholic canon? No, no, no. No, it's in a collection. It's not a part of a collection. It has been collected together in second temple Jewish literature that's called the Suda Pagrpa. Suda means false.

So these are writings that are portrayed by their authors as coming from ancient characters from the biblical story. But it's patently like the author doesn't expect the reader to necessarily buy that claim. It's a literary persona that authors could put on. So Baruch, the scribe, who's mentioned as Jeremiah's partner, and responsible for part of the composition of the scroll of Jeremiah, it's all of a series of visions and dreams that he has trying to understand the long period of Israel suffering under oppressive cities and empires. And so there's this one section in 2nd Baruch, chapter 4, where Baruch is looking at the ruins of the city of Jerusalem. And there's an angel there kind of helping him process through it all.

So Baruch is looking at the ruins of Jerusalem and the angel asks, Do you think that this is the city of which I said, quote, on the palms of my hand, I have carved you? That's a quote from Isaiah, being said about Jerusalem in Isaiah. The angel says, It is not this building that is in your midst now. It is what will be revealed with me that was already prepared from the moment I decided to create paradise. And I showed it to Adam before he sinned. But when he transgressed the commandment, it was taken away from him as also paradise. I also showed it to Moses on Mount Sinai. When I showed him the likeness of

the Tabernacle and its vessels and behold, now it is preserved with me as paradise. This is what we were talking about with the pattern. Exactly. That Moses got a pattern, David got a pattern. This is the like vision of what God's heavenly throne and rule looks like in the heavens. Yeah. But then become something that they could then create here on the land. This is why I want to show this to you because the summary that we just did, we're not making this up. Right. Like this is a second temple Jewish author. Seeing the same thing. Who sees the same thing.

Namely, the God's heavenly rule has multiple earthly incarnations. Yeah. But each of them gets forfeited or ruined in some way that now, once it gets ruined, what you can say is, that's not the real thing. Yeah. It could have been maybe Wurichetta, but it's not. The real city of God is something yet to be revealed, and it's with God and will come about here on earth when God brings it. Isn't that interesting? Yes.

Yes. And I love the thought experiment of God showing it to Adam. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So from the very beginning of this conversation, I've kept asking, like, what if Adam and Eve just chilled with God in the garden? What would they have built? Yeah, right. And this is kind of a thought like yeah God would have showed him a pattern and they would have done it Yeah, just as a quick note. This is why Second Temple Jewish literature is so Important to read as a the link in the chain between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament

is because it shows you how Jewish Bible nerds were reading and making sense of the storyline of the Hebrew Bible. And often when Jesus and the apostles quote from or allude to the Hebrew Bible, they're doing it, but through all the developed thinking that was happening in the centuries in between. And this is a great example. So in other words, this same idea is what appears in the New Testament text that we're about to look at. Okay, but this isn't second-brook's idea. This is an idea that's actually there in the Hebrew Bible. So the move that we made in the last couple episodes is saying that this pattern of what

God's heavenly throne and rule looks like it comes down with Jesus. Yes, and that it's not something that humans then get to build, but it's actually God Himself become a human. The gospel authors present Jesus as the newest incarnation of that heavenly ideal throne of God taking up residents here on earth. Not in the form of a city, in the form of a person. And it's fundamentally different than the pattern given to Moses or David. But how would you describe that difference?

Well, it's not a structure. It's not a building. It's not something man creates. Yeah, it's a human, but a human whose origins can't be traced to human planning, scheming, or ingenuity, right? It's a miraculous conception of a human in a human womb, but it's not made by human hands, so to speak. Here. Yeah. And, you know, it illuminates a little moment in the Babylon story back in Genesis 11, where they describe the city and the tower like a person that has built a city and a tower whose head is up in the skies. They describe their city as if it's a kind of person that has a head.

And the head is up in the clouds. Now, head can be used metaphorically to talk about the top of things. So I might be making that up, but I might not be. But in this case, the heavenly ideal rule of God in the garden city above becomes a person. And Matthew wants us to see Jesus as that. That's why in the birth story with the wise men, he uses all the language of the passage from Isaiah about the New Jerusalem city, but describes Jesus as in the place of the city. And that's why Jesus calls himself and his followers the city on the hill that shines

a light to the nations. Yeah, which is polling from other parts of Isaiah and other prophets. We didn't really dig into this much and I think we'll do a theme video one day of the idea of the Remnant or of the the servants. Yeah, but this idea of a faithful crew of Israelites who will be connected to the coming and anointed one. Yeah, and in Isaiah 61 rebuild cities. Yeah, that's right. They're the rebuilding. That's right. And when a flood of justice comes on a city, it's what they do that will remain. That's right. In our last conversation, we traced how Jesus saw earthly Jerusalem as a corrupted version

of what could have been incarnation of God's heavenly dwelling. And so he announces that it's going to go the way of all cities, namely to be overwhelmed by a flood of violence that's God will hand it over, just like he's handed over every other violent city. But he and his followers are building and are the foundation of the heavenly city. And that's how Jesus presents himself, the gospel authors's present Jesus, being enthroned in the earthly corrupt Jerusalem as the king of heaven and earth. And so Jesus becomes the king of the heavenly city and of all creation by being brutally murdered

according to the logic of the earthly city. Yeah, there's not enough for us. Jesus, you can't be claiming to be the anointed one. Yeah. There isn't an anointed one already. Mm-hmm. And your threatening are rule here. Yeah. In fact, the leaders of Jerusalem, this is stated both in John's account and of Luke's animatius.

They're worried that Jesus will be perceived as a revolutionary in the eyes of the Roman governor, and that Rome will come and take away our freedom. It's all about scarcity. It's all about the threat of violence. The threat of violence? It's worried about the fear of the others. Which is not an unfounded fear. Totally.

No, that's exactly right. And so Jesus is murdered and executed according to the logic of Cain and Lemek. Oh, well. To preserve life in Jerusalem, we had some heads that got a role. And one of them is this upstarted Jesus of Nazareth. He's got to go. But Jesus willingly surrenders his life to the logic of the city of Cain and Lemek in order to found a new city. A city whose inhabitants have their legions and loyalty and hope and identity based in a city that's run by a different logic, a city based on the trust of God's abundance and provision of eternal life. And Jesus died, dedicated to that vision, trusting that God would vindicate him and raise him to new life and found the heavenly

Jerusalem right here on earth in the form of his followers. That's how he talked about his death and his followers. And as we're going to see, that's how the earliest Christians talked about who they were and what they hoped in. As founding the city of God, not something made by hands, but people knit together by their allegiance to their heavenly king. This is what Jesus said, Build your house on the rock. What does that mean?

What are you going to build? Yeah, so with all that track laid, I just want to meditate on a few texts in the New Testament that when you see them from this light, it just makes perfect sense. What's going on? So for now, let's turn to Philippians, Paul's letter to the followers of Jesus, living in a Roman colony called Philippi. Yeah. There's a lot of important history here, and here I'll just flag the work of an important New Testament scholar, who's also a friend, Nijay Gupta, is actually Pauline scholars, specifically doing great work on the letters of Paul and lots of other topics.

But he has a little introduction to Philippians called reading Philippians, a theological introduction, but he's also got a bigger commentary project that he's working on. So I'll just refer to his work, but he draws attention to a lot of scholarship done on Philippians that the colony cultural atmosphere of Philippi, as an outpost of the Roman Empire, is an important backdrop to a lot of the comments that he makes within the letter itself. Specifically here, a set of lines in Philippians chapter 3. He's contrasting in context about the way of life that's common in the city, where they live. Then he says a contrast statement for the followers of Jesus. He says in Philippians 3 verse 20, for our citizenship exists in heaven.

It's the Greek word, Palituma. And I actually could be translated our commonwealth. What does that word mean? Oh, commonwealth refers more to like a realm of... Our homeland? Yes, our homeland. And the homeland that unites us as common members of that place, Yeah. That is citizenship. Right.

So our defining identity as citizens exists in heaven. And this is in the sky. Yeah. And this word, Palituma, citizenship. I mean, even in English, the word sitazinship, the word city is there in the root word. Yeah. The polis, Palituma, Palituma, the word sitazinship, the word city, is there in the root word? Yeah, the polis, polittumah. Polittumah has the word polis, which is the Greek word for city, where we get the word politics. That's right. And sitazinship, our city zinship, city zinship.

Yeah. So our defining identity is defined by the city of heaven, from which we eagerly await a rescuer, the Lord Jesus Messiah. He will transform our mortal humble bodies to be conformed to his body of glory in accordance with the power that enables him to subject all things to himself. So right now, what's most true about followers of Jesus is not the city that they happen to live in at the moment, but rather is defined by this citizenship in the heavenly Jerusalem. And Jesus is raining there. He also rains over earth, but not everybody on earth recognizes that rule, but there's

coming a moment where the reunion of heaven and earth will happen. And it's not about the hope of going to that heavenly city. It's the hope for the heavenly city and its king to come here and remake creation and its heavenly likeness. And recreate us. And recreate us, yeah. As this passage continues to talk about. Yeah. The focus here is on yeah, recreating us. So that's a good example where the heavenly

Jerusalem isn't mentioned. Yeah, yeah. But the idea is assume, just like in Second Brook, like the relevance of any given earthly city is kind of demoted and what's most important is not where you live on the planet. It's who your allegiance is to and heavenly king. So that's one example, okay? Here's a little more complicated example about this interesting. It's in Paul's letter to the Galatians. And I guess the important context for this passage we'll look at in Galatians 4 is that he's writing to a community of mostly non-Israelite followers of Jesus, but there are some passionate followers of Jesus who are Israelites, and they really believe that to be part of the family of the Messiah of Israel, non-Israelites need to, what do you say, conform their life to the basic practices of the Mosaic Torah, and specifically Sabbath, kosher food laws, circumcision, keeping the liturgical calendar

and so on. Paul passionately disagrees, and he keeps referring to the stories of Abraham, saying God's promise was that the family of God would be made up of all nations and that the specific ways that God set apart Israel for work for a time to keep Israel, Israel until the coming of Israel's Messiah, but that Messiah is for all nations. And so the defining entry card for membership in the family of the Messiah and Abraham is just trusting in the Messiah and not these prescriptions of the Mosaic Torah. So that's the bigger context. So he goes into this reading

and interpretation of the story of Abraham and Sarah and Hegar is really fascinating. So he goes in chapter 4 verse 21, tell me, you who want to live under the Torah, do you really understand the Torah? Ha ha ha ha ha goes on. You know, it is written that Abraham had two sons, one from the female slave and the other by the free woman. Sarah. Sarah. But the one, the son that came from the female slave was born according to human descent. And the one born by the free woman was just born from God's promise. It's actually important for the themes that we've been. So there's one sun that's born according to the scheming and the plan and what seemed

good in the eyes of Abraham and Sarah. Right. To be really clear about it, Abraham and Sarah are old and infertile, and they can't have a kid. Right. And so Abraham and Sarah decide the Abraham kind of a kid with a slave, a hagar. And so by human descent descent meaning hey, we can pull this off. Yeah, we could create our own Sun. We can create a Sun Yeah, not from me and Sarah and like we're the ones that got me the promise to but maybe there's another way we could create a Sun And that would create stability. Yeah a family future someone to inherit the land and carry on my name. We could yeah, we could take the divine promise Mm-hmm make it real through our own ingenuity. Yeah, that's right Yeah, and if you go back and read the story Genesis 15 and 16

It's full of hyperlinks back to the stories of Adam and Eve and Ken and Abel The rivalry between Sarah and Hegar is all full of vocabulary from the rivalry of Cain and Abel. Super interesting. So Paul's not like pulling this out of thin air. He's reading the story of Abraham and Sarah and Hegar in light of the design patterns I'm in Genesis. So he says, one son was born of human descent that is planning and scheming.

The other one's born of God's promise. Just a son brought out of the womb of Sarah when it's sheer just miracle of God's creation. When there should have been no possible way for her to have a kid. She's too old and even if she was young, like she was an amokit. So what he says is verse 24, these things that are spoken are allegorical. It's literally a Greek word, oligarumina, which has a fascinating prehistory that I would love to do more, home work on. But what it essentially means is our symbolic. And so there's lots of people who think that he's just creating his own little simple set here. There's some scholars that think that. There are other scholars that think, no, he's actually

tracking with the way the symbols work within the design of Genesis itself. What are you talking about is design patterns? Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Or we've been calling design patterns. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So the word allegory has all sorts of associations now, especially in the Protestant Christian traditions, that are primarily negative and associated with reading the Bible in a way that really is unanchored from what the authors were trying to communicate. And that has happened. And sometimes the word allegory does refer to that. The question is, what does Paul mean? Right. What does Paul do? Yeah. What you're saying is Paul is actually reading the Bible by its own grain. Yep. And the patterns that are there, he's surfacing up. Yeah. Now, we haven't gotten to

the heavenly Jerusalem. But he called it. Well, then he's going to go on and he's surfacing up. Yeah, now we haven't gotten to the heavenly Jerusalem. But he called it. Well, then he's gonna go on, and he's gonna call it a two-men-two covenant. Yeah, these women are also two covenants. One represents Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery, that's Hegar. And this is where I don't understand how that move. Yeah, now Hegar is Mount Sinai in Arabia,

and corresponds to present-day Jerusalem. Yeah, that's, I mean, he just made two massive moves. For she that is present-day Jerusalem is a slave along with her children, but the Jerusalem above, so Hegar represents the covenant Mount Sinai, represents present-day Jerusalem. Okay, can we stop there? Yeah. And what way is Mount Sinai? Yeah.

Human descent. Yeah. Human scheming. Yeah. Right? If nothing, that is God coming down from heaven and saying, Yes. Yes.

Here's the pattern, lived by. Yes, but let's go meditate on Exodus 19 to 24 or Exodus 19 to 40 and When God shows up and reveals his ideal to the people and invites the people to come up on the mountain to see and experience it all They don't want to go up. Okay They're afraid that God's going to kill them. And so they send up only Moses. And only Moses gets to participate and see. And then when Moses brings down all of the divine wisdom, the people, the first thing they

do is break the two commands of the government. So it's a mess. Yes, a mess. So the point is what Mount Sinai was supposed to do, which is create a people that could live by the will of God, ended up actually. So God came to do a miracle, essentially, like in the way that he gave Sarah a miraculous son, he came to deliver to Israel like a covenant that would be unbelievably miraculous for them to become the priests to the nations, but he was going to do it.

But instead you're saying the Israel schemeed. Yeah, or more that they didn't take up the invitation. They didn't take up the invitation. To go through the wall of fire and enter God's heavenly, heaven on earth, presence on top of the mountain. They stayed below. Yeah, God continues to keep the covenant with them, to attempt to keep the covenant with them. Yeah, so it's not like he goes, oh guys you did it wrong. All right, well that didn't work. Yeah, that's right. He reveals the covenant and the heavenly pattern to Moses.

And what Moses goes down and finds is that they want a God of their own making rather than the smoking fire mountain God. I guess what I'm trying to say is maybe it's I mean for rhetorical purposes I understand why he's saying like Haggar is Mount Sinai, but it feels like it's actually a mixture right? It's like yeah yeah God is doing his miraculous thing, but he's meeting resistance, which then creates the conflict of the wilderness. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, where Paul's going?

And here you have to read Galatians and his discussions about the Torah in Romans 6-8. But what he has in mind, in the fact that the laws of the Torah and the covenant agreement didn't end up bringing eternal life to Israel. What it brought was continual cycles of breaking the divine command and then suffering the consequences for it in greater, greater scale, leading to present-day Jerusalem, which is living under Roman occupation. And God's people living under foreign oppressors is one of the consequences for not living by the covenant made at Mount Sinai. So Mount Sinai didn't lead to the liberation of Israel. It led to their continual enslavement to foreign cities. And again, read Romans 6-8 and his discussion

of the Torah in Romans 3. That's what's in Paul's mind. So what led to Hegar and Ishmael, what came from Mount Sinai, what led to present day Jerusalem, it's all about humans trying to do by their own wisdom. what they can never accomplish. You can't build a city up into the heavens. You can't produce a miraculous sun by your own scheming. You can't build, nursily, city by the logic of can and lemme and create the city of God. But he says, the miraculous sun from Sarah that came from Sarah's womb, and he's for sure

God parallel to the Virgin birth on his mind here, corresponds to the city of God that no human hands has made. And that city is our mother. That's what he says in verse 26. And here he's saying in different language, the same thing he said to the Philippians, which is our citizenship followers of Jesus Messiah Which is a multi-ethnic family

That is itself the children of a city. That's our mom That's his language here and they quotes from Isaiah 54 Which is a poem about The heavenly Jerusalem depicted as a woman giving birth to a huge family. So this is a lot more complicated. Yeah, yeah. Clearly, because of these symbolic associations. But what I'm trying to say is one, in all these allegorical pairings,

he's actually tracking with the design patterns at work within the authorially intended design of the Hebrew Bible, but then viewed also through the fulfillment of the story of Jesus. The way we've been saying it with Jerusalem is that it was a touch point of heaven and earth for a moment. I mean, it had the potential, had the possibility. Because even the stories of those glorious moments are flawed, this flaw is in them. You're talking about the story of David bringing an arc to Jerusalem. Yeah, yeah, was full of problems. Right, yeah.

And then David passing on the reign to Solomon, and you know, just like... The city of blood. The city of blood. Yeah. So we were describing it as like kind of a momentary like the new Jerusalem touching down with Jerusalem creating the city of God. Here Paul just says, look, no, actually it was always yeah sure. You know it like it wasn't that yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's true because I would

describe Sinai as that same thing It's the moment where there was a touchdown. It was happening. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was a heaven on earth moment But that was forfeited and not fully enjoyed because of the fear and then scheming up to people Mm-hmm. Yeah, he's pairing all these moments where heaven could have touched earth But people ruined it because of scarcity, fear, self-preservation. With Sarah, though, he still got the sun came. Yeah, that's true. So with the Thray. Sinai, the Covenant still did come. Is now the Covenant in Sinai he saying is.

Ah, I think when he says these women are two covenants, one from Mount Sinai, and then he never mentions the other one. He just says Mount Sinai is Hegar, corresponds to present-day Jerusalem. It just feels like the sorry to sit in this. I think the new covenant represents the new covenant passages from the prophets, which

once again is about God initiating a recreation of the human heart, resulting in a human who loves to live by the will of God. It's their delight and joy. So if we could fill out Paul's logic when he wrote the paragraph, it would be, Hey, Gar is Mount Sinai, corresponds to present Jerusalem. Sarah is the new covenant hoped for by the prophets, which corresponds to the Jerusalem above. I think that's what's underneath here, though he doesn't say that explicitly. Yeah, I guess where I would want to iron this out some more

is like in the Hebrew Bible, there is a true celebration of the Torah and the covenant. Right, it's good, yeah, yeah. So it's not like, oh, we screwed it up. And now we have like a covenant that's not the real covenant. Yeah, we got the slave. Instead, it's like, no, we got it. Now let's just follow it.

Mm-hmm. That doesn't seem to be... No, it's a good point. I think probably also what work here is Paul's rhetorical skills being put to use for this crisis that he's facing in this church community. So he's portraying the covenant Mount Sinai in pretty negative terms here. When you turn to Roman 7 and 8, it's much more nuanced. The Torah is all entirely positive and what's negative is the human inability to live by the

laws of the Torah, which is I think probably more what he means here. It's probably underneath here. That's what I was saying. There's some rhetoric here. Yeah, okay, great Awesome. So The Jerusalem but this gets to the punchline. Mm-hmm. The Jerusalem above is free. She's our mother She's our mother and it's free because it's not bound to the scarcity mind self-preservation mindset of the city of humans. It's the free city of God, which means like Psalm 87, it can be the mother of all the nations.

So having the heavenly Jerusalem as your mother is what creates the opportunity for unity across diversity in the family of the Messiah. And I think that's how it fits into Paul's argument that the Messiah's family, whose hope is in the Jerusalem above, whose identity and citizenship is in the Jerusalem above, means that when we sit down to take the bread and the cup of Jesus together, there is no male or female Greek or Jew, slave or free, we are all one in Messiah, Jesus.

I'll just mention a couple other examples. And then we got to land the plane with the last page of the Bible. I'll just note that the theme of the heavenly city appears throughout the letter to the Hebrews, too. And I think in chapter 11 and chapter 12 specifically, what's cool in chapter 11 is he retells the story of Abraham. And talks about how Abraham was hoping for a heavenly city. And even though he never got to experience it, that's what he was looking for as he continually camped outside of cities. Anyway, it's this reflection on how why did Abraham never make his residence in a city?

We talked about that. Like he stayed away from cities. He stayed away from cities. Yeah, and the author of Hebrew sees in that, as he reads that in the context of the whole biblical story, that's because he was looking forward to the heavenly city. And he says in chapter 12, that you all, like followers of Jesus,

have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. It's already happened. You've come to it. Yeah. Look around, you've made it. You're here. And what he describes is like a worship gathering.

You've come to myriads of angels, to the general assembly, to the church of the firstborn that's enrolled in the heavens. You've come to God, the judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous, who are made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks of better word than the blood of Abel.

It's packed. Oh, it's just straight, super dense biblical theology right there. But what he says is, I think he's describing that when this group of followers of Jesus comes together to worship Jesus, they're participating in the liturgy and the worship of the angels and the saints that's simultaneously happening in the heavenly temple and heavenly Jerusalem. They've went up to Mount Sinai. Yeah, totally.

Or here's more explicitly Mount Zion. Yep, that's right. And they're there, but where they actually are, is in someone's like house. House, yeah. And yeah, people debate whether it's in Rome or some other city, they actually are is in someone's like house house. Yeah. And yeah, people debate whether it's in Rome or some other city in the Roman Empire. Right.

It's not explicit. But the point is is when Jesus people are together in a house, taking the bread and the cup, they've come to New Jerusalem. They are simultaneously participating in the liturgy happening in the heavenly city. It's a portal of sorts. Yes, heaven honors moment. Yeah. Where it is, he says in chapter 6 through the Spirit, you are tasting the powers of the

age to come. Whoa. Yeah. That's in chapter 6. Yeah. That's a cool line. It is a cool line. Yeah.

It's a portal. The worship gathering can become a portal to the heavenly Jerusalem Where we join the saints and the angels who are worshiping King Jesus So rad. That's a whole thing we could go down but It's saved the choice for last The revelation we could do a whole episode and maybe we should have in a way, the revelation is another tale of two cities, of the heavenly Jerusalem and Babylon, are the two main cities. The cosmic Babylon.

Yeah, cosmic Babylon. Yeah, who represents all the cities? All the mountains, all cities. What's interesting is, in the first time that the heavenly Jerusalem is named, in the revelation, is in the speeches that Jesus makes to the seven churches at the beginning and the conclusion of his speech to the church in Philadelphia. He says to the one who overcomes and that's a promise he makes to all the churches. Some that are facing affluence and apathy. Others facing danger and persecution.

And he makes a promise. He says, to one who overcomes, that is who follows me and is faithful to me, I will make them a pillar in the temple of my God, and he will never have to leave. I will write on him the name of my God, the name of the city of my God, the New Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven from my God. And also, I'll write on him my name, my new name. Who's speaking here?

Jesus. He's making a promise to his followers who are faithful and to death that even if the city of man executes you for following me, I will make you a pillar like part of the foundation of the city of God. And you'll have a inscription on the pillar, which was a typical thing to find inscriptions on pillars about dedicating this pillar, this part of the building to an honorary founder of it. Okay.

And what would be written on the inscription? On you, the pillar. The name of the city. Go. And Jesus' name, but his new name. And the name of God. Yeah, the name of God. Yeah, in other words, you will become a part of the heavenly city,

which we know as people. Jesus said that. The city, the heavenly Jerusalem is the new humanity. Yeah. So this corresponds and you're like, oh, wow, the heavenly city is going to come down out of heaven. You learn that in Revelation 3 and that points forward as a bookend to the final And that points forward as a bookend to the final scenes in Revelation 21 and 22, which is after the Babylon fallen, Revelation 18, and evil is eradicated from God's world, chapter 21, verse 1. Then I saw a new skies and a new land, for the first skies and the first land passed away. Let's Genesis 1, 1, new heaven in earth. There is no longer any sea.

The chaos. No more of those dark chaos waters. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven for God, made ready as a bride. Here's the city as a woman again. Like, connects to all that stuff back from the Garden of Eden

Story. Then I heard a loud voice from the one on the throne saying, look, the tent of God, the tabernacle of God is now among humans, and he will tent dwell among them. They will be his people, and he will be their God. And then he goes on to take a tour of the city of its walls, but with gates that are always open and never closed. They're made out of precious stones, like the stones of the Garden of Eden. And then there's trees and a river in Alps and the Garden.

But look at the imagery. It's a new creation, a new heaven and a new earth, and a new city that is also the tabernacle tent that's also a woman that's also a garden. So he's bringing all the motifs together from throughout the Hebrew Bible and kind of putting them together into one. And we combine this with the promise that Jesus made back in chapter 3, where he says the new Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven from my God,

the name of that city is also my name. So is it actual city? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is New Jerusalem? What is it? It's a garden city, tent temple, woman,

new creation, cosmos. When it's described, it's just a bedazzled, like, yeah. Spectacle. Yeah. But the tree of life, like woven through it. Yeah. You know, like it's on, like, tree of life is, yeah, on both sides. Not just in one spot.

It's just like on both sides of this river. The river flowing out of the throne. There's no temple in the city because the one sitting on the throne and the lamb are the temple. Which is the purpose of a temple is for the throne. There's no temple, but there's a throne. So here we have a city that operates according to the polar opposite of the city of Cain and Lemek and Nimrod, because at its heart is an infinite source of abundance and life, generating life, right? Just life flows out in wherever the river goes, it just trees and life and food. The gates of the city, walls, are never closed.

Yeah, and this is connected to that, is it, is it a 60? Yeah, that's right. It's actually a direct quote from Isaiah, the line of Isaiah 60. And there we get a fuller picture of nations streaming up and almost this picture of like a reuniting of humanity as brothers. Yeah.

And learning to live by the wisdom of God. Mm-hmm. And then in Revelation later, he says the tree of life, there in the city, like is in some way heals. Yeah, for the healing of the nation. Heels things. And so then this idea of that and Isaiah 60 of like, there's no more war.

That's also in Isaiah 2. Or Isaiah 2, okay. Yeah, it's all combined here. So in other words, the rationale for the city of Cain, the origin of cities comes from this human rationale of fear of death, the desired preserve life in a land of scarcity and death, creates a city with walls where peace and prosperity is secured at the cost of human lives. And here, all that has been completely healed and inverted through the colonizing of that heavenly city here on earth through the story of Jesus.

And the one sitting on the throne is a lamb with its throats lit. It's the one who let the city of humanity kill here. I would a different type of image of a king than a lamek for Nimrod. Oh, yes. Right. Yes. That's good. I like that. Yeah. If you really feel like you need to kill me to save your life, do it. Do it.

My citizenship is in the heavenly city. And it will reunite with Earth one day. My name is written and enrolled in that city. And so you can kill me or you can take my stuff. This is the sermon on the mount. This is the story of Jesus. But this is what the earliest Christians really believed. And this has been the challenge of what it means to live as if your citizenship is in this heavenly city. Yeah, you talked about how for you after our last conversation, what you continued to meditate on was sermon on the mountain as the ethic of the

city of the heavenly city, heavenly city. Because this vision of a time when there's abundance and peace and healing, it makes sense. You're like, okay, like I don't have to fear because we've been transformed. Everything's made new. I mean, I don't fully get it. But there's this moment now that we live, which is we're hoping in that. We're believing in resurrected life. But we're living in the monster. Yeah, that's right.

Threatening to take our lives. And so when you're facing like the threat of death or the threat of losing something that you love, that's incredibly hard. Yeah, it's a very powerful instinct that kicks in. I need to protect myself. Yeah. And the sermon on the mount is this treaty of sorts

saying like we can creatively and bravely like move through those situations in a way that can create peace, but it might also, and it probably will mean some suffering. Yeah. And some loss. And some loss. Yeah, and some loss. And some loss. But that's the way.

Yeah. That's the way. It's the way of the heavenly city. Yeah. And in a city which has the lamb at its center as a source of unending life, in that city that makes sense, that kind of approach to living makes sense. Yes, but when you're outside that city that makes sense, that kind of approach to living makes sense. Yes, but when you're outside that city,

Yeah, when you're living in the monster of the city of humanity, it is scary. Yeah. And I think that's the challenge that Jesus represented to the people of his day. When he said all the things that he said that made people not want to follow him, and it represents the challenge of Jesus and the apostles and of the saints throughout history, you know, who have lived. There are many, many followers of Jesus who have lived this way. And who are living this way right now?

Yeah. I think as I take stock of my own life, I can see some ways where I am, where I'm trying, and other ways where I've figured out a compromise with the city of man. And I guess that's one way to think about the gradual process of discipleship to Jesus and transformation is letting more and more parts of my actual how I live and structure my life

to reflect more and more the ethic of the heavenly city. Yeah, that's a good word because there's this. You could have a sense of, I just can't do this. Yeah, it's way too much. Yeah, I'm just, I'm a complete fraud. If I'm saying I'm actually doing this, yeah, totally. Yeah, will you just paint it there was a picture of saying, with humility going, I can see where I'm not doing it. And it's not okay.

So I'm going to just find opportunities to slowly align those things back. And it's not going to be all at once. Most likely. It's a... I'm not sure that's psychologically possible, but maybe it is. I don't know, I should be very tentative here because God's Spirit does all kinds of things with all kinds of people. People do it all at once. They look real weird. Sure. Yeah, but I think it is possible for anybody wherever they're at on the journey of following Jesus to begin

to change, like their habits of living and spending and consuming and relating to embody this generosity ethic of the heavenly truce alum. I have to believe that's true because that seems to be the course that is happening in the lives of so many people I know, including myself here in Portland. Yeah. I think it's also true that it doesn't take much to make a real impact. Mm-hmm. That when someone acts generously, even just for a moment, in a way that just doesn't make sense to the logic of the city of man, like it can transform someone.

Yep. Yeah. Even if it is just a momentary alignment with the ethic of the New Jerusalem, like, it can do some real something really beautiful. Yep. Agreed. So, Lord, have mercy on us. He has, and he does, and he will. But what a rich journey of reflection through the story of the Bible. I feel like I've learned a lot, gained a lot of new clarity as we've followed this theme throughout the storyline of the Bible. Yeah, me too, thank you. Now, you know, we're going to continue to think about this, but in real time in the podcast,

we're gonna turn our attention to a new theme. We'll probably wrap this up with a Q&R. Okay. And, uh, yeah, but we are onward to another theme. Yeah. Thanks for listening to this episode of Bottle Project Podcast. Next week we're responding to your questions from this series on the city. We are?

We're going to do it right at the end. Cool. Today's episode was brought to you by our podcast team producer Cooper Peltz, associate producer Lindsay Ponder, lead editor Dan Gummel, editors Tyler Bailey and Frank Garza. Tyler Bailey mixed this episode and Hannah Wu provided the annotations for our annotated podcast on our app. Bible project is a crowdfunded nonprofit and we exist to experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus.

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