Can I Ask That – Part Thirty – What is the Ultimate Goal and Purpose of the People of God

Eddiebromley   -   August 12, 2025

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%2021%3A1-22%3A6&version=NIV

Introduction

Good morning, friends.
This morning, I want to ask a question that’s bigger than most of us usually dare to ask:
What is the ultimate goal of the people of God?
What is it that we’re actually being saved for?

We often talk about salvation as a rescue from sin, from judgment, and from hell. And that’s true. But salvation isn’t just rescue from something.  It’s a rescue for something. Something bigger, something beautiful, something eternal.

Scripture tells us that God’s great project is not just to snatch souls out of a burning world, but to make all things new. To put broken people back together. To restore a creation that groans. To prepare us, yes, us, to live in a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness is at home.

But this hope is not automatic. It’s not inevitable. It comes with a choice.

In the Gospel of Matthew, a Roman officer once approached Jesus.  He was not Jewish, not religious, not even part of the covenant people. Yet Jesus was amazed at his faith. And then he said something stunning.  He said that many outsiders will sit at the table in the kingdom of heaven, while many insiders will find themselves in outer darkness.

That’s a warning. But it’s also a window.  It’s a window into what Jesus came to do. He came to heal what’s broken. He came to gather a people from every nation. He came to prepare us not just for heaven, but for new creation.

So today, we’re going to talk about heaven. About hell. And about the good news that God has not given up on you, or on this world.

He’s making all things new, and that work begins now.

Let’s begin.

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 What Is the Ultimate Goal and Purpose of the People of God?  

Originally Titled: Heaven, Hell, and the Good News of Recreation

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When Jesus returned to Capernaum, a Roman officer came and pleaded with him, “Lord, my young servant lies in bed, paralyzed and in terrible pain.”

Jesus said, “I will come and heal him.”

But the officer said, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come into my home. Just say the word from where you are, and my servant will be healed.  I know this because I am under the authority of my superior officers, and I have authority over my soldiers. I only need to say, ‘Go,’ and they go, or ‘Come,’ and they come. And if I say to my slaves, ‘Do this,’ they do it.”

When Jesus heard this, he was amazed. Turning to those who were following him, he said, “I tell you the truth, I haven’t seen faith like this in all Israel! And I tell you this, that many Gentiles will come from all over the world—from east and west—and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the feast in the Kingdom of Heaven.  But many Israelites—those for whom the Kingdom was prepared—will be thrown into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Then Jesus said to the Roman officer, “Go back home. Because you believed, it has happened.” And the young servant was healed that same hour.” 

– Matthew 8:5-13

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In this morning’s story, we see Jesus healing the servant of a Roman officer.  In this story, we see the compassion of Jesus for the suffering and we get glimpse at the nature of his mission and ministry, which is to put broken people back together.  But we also get a one of the strongest warnings about those who refuse to be part of this mission.  Jesus warns of outer darkness, of weeping, and of the gnashing of teeth.  In another place, he adds to the warning of the fires of judgment.   From these warnings we get our basic understanding of hell and final judgment.   What are we to make of them? I thought Jesus was supposed to be the merciful and gracious One.   Why would Jesus say such things to us, and what might they mean?

Our first sightings of this kind of language are found in the Old Testament, where God gives us warnings about his impending judgment.  Now, lest you think that the Old Testament is just brimming with words like these, let me assure the casual reader that it is not.  

After my conversion to Christianity, I began reading the Old Testament.   Far from thinking that God was too quick to act, my opinion was that he was far too slow.  Because of his mercy, he would often relent from judging, all together, and, when he finally got around to holding people accountable for the terrible things they had done, it would be sometimes after decades, or, even centuries of warning them.  As 2 Peter says, “God is not being slow to act, but be patient, giving all people a chance to turn from their sins and be saved.”  

Additionally, God reserved his sternest words of judgment for two kinds of sin:  1.  Injustice to the poor, the powerless, and the marginalized.  And, 2.  For leaders who misled their people into idolatry.  

The first one I think I understand.  Those who are purposely making the world worse for others deserve judgment and the rest of us need God to hold them accountable for the evil they do.  But why such anger over the second, which is idolatry?   Why should God care if we worship the wrong things?  Is he just being petty?  

No.  Actually his righteous anger over idolatry is for our sake.  When a priest, a king, or a false prophet seeks to to lead people away from God, that leader is actually endangering the lives of others.   God’s reaction to this behavior is like the behavior any good parent would have to one of their children bringing a bomb into the house, or bringing fentanyl to his or her siblings.   A fierce protective spirit would come over that parent, because the people she loves most have been put into mortal danger.  And God is, after all, our Heavenly Father.  

But these Old Testament passages about idolatry seldom use the language of God as Father.  Instead, when the Bible speaks of idolatry, it invokes the image of adultery to speak of what this sin is like.  It is now hard to move people with this language, since adultery has become so common in our culture.  Quite a lot of modern romance stories are based on the premise that you should pursue the desires of your heart, even if that means breaking the sacred vows you made, promises to love and cherish that person until you are parted by death.  You are encouraged by our culture to leave a good and faithful spouse if they are just not doing it for you anymore.  After all, the heart wants what it wants, even if such selfish behavior shatters the life of another person, or the lives of many people, if the person you are chasing also has a spouse, and perhaps young children, who will also be damaged by the behavior of grown ups behaving badly.   

The reason turning away from God is compared with adultery is because you were made to love God and to be loved by God. That is why you exist.  Thus, your very reason for existing cannot be realized apart from the One True God.  But, so what?  Isn’t God just being selfish and domineering?   No.  His anger is for our sake, as will his grief be if we ignore it.   

You were made to love God.  In the end, if that ultimate love is turned toward God, you will gradually become someone capable of enjoying God’s infinite love and joy.   But if your ultimate love is turned away from God, it will attach itself to something else, such as money, power, or sex, which is what all of the pagan gods were projections of.  But, in reality, all of these are just projections and expressions of our own primal urges, which is to say, they are projections of ourselves; which means, if we do not worship the One True God, we will end up worshipping ourselves.   

That, by the way, is what most of the Satanic movement is about.  It is about self-worship, which is every bit as dangerous as demons of black magic. To worship ones self is a great tragedy and misdirection of the human life. 

And God will allow us to worship ourselves, which in turn will warp us and our primal urges into something subhuman.   But, God will do everything in his power to pursue us, and to convince us not to run down that path.  Well, everything short of refusing us the right to make that decision.   But, eventually, if we persists long enough, he will give us our way, even though he knows it will not satisfy us.  

See, the ultimate destinations of heaven and hell are about more than locations.  They are not less than locations, but they are certainly more than locations.  They are the conditions the soul takes for eternity.   Let’s talk about them.

Jesus’ words speak of banishment to outer darkness.   I’ll start by saying, we cannot physically go somewhere where God is not present, but that does not mean that we cannot move away from him.   

In the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden, we have the first act of sin and the removal of the first man and woman from the Garden of Paradise.   But notice that the removal from the Garden only validates the distance that has already been created by the first sin.   

When God comes walking through the Garden, he looks for Adam and Eve and cannot find them.  He then asks, where are you?

There are two Hebrew words used to ask the question: “where?”  One in the word “eipho” which is asking about something’s location.   But, the word “ayeh” is asking why something is not where it is supposed to be.  It is asking, what happened to it?  

When God asked Adam and Eve where they were, he was not asking about their location.  He is not confused about where they are.  He is asking them why they are not where they are supposed to be.  Why are you not where you’re supposed to be be?”

“You’re supposed to be walking beside me in the cool of the evening.   Why are. you hiding from me in shame?  You were naked the whole time. I created you that way. Why, all of the sudden, is this a bad thing?”

If we persist long enough in trying to move away from God, at some point, he will allow us to experience life and the universe without him, though we will not like that experience in the long run. But without a God centered universe, we will have to construct some kind of other reality for ourselves.  And what we will create around ourselves is a tiny, cramped, universe deformed and misshapen, because it is has been made to fit around us.   But such a universe will be something so pathetic that we cannot ever hope to be happy in it for long.  Or, it will be cavernous, but empty.  Why?  Because you and I make terrible gods.  As little gods, we end up making ourselves and those around us miserable.  

Have you ever been in a room with someone who didn’t want to be there?  Or, even worse, have you ever been stuck on road trip with someone who refused to be happy?

When we ask God to leave our lives and our world, he eventually stops interacting with us, banishing himself as much as us.  That is what Jesus means by us being cast out.

But Jesus’ language also includes the warning of darkness.  At some point, without God, our world falls back into the primal darkness and chaos our world was in before God starting bringing order and goodness into our world in the first days of creation.  When we reject God’s role in our world, our world soon begins feel less like a paradise, and more like the primordial chaos that was its state before God started brining order and beauty out of it.  

Jesus also warns of the fires of torment.   Turning back to Adam and Eve, notice what happens next in Genesis.  Right after the story of Adam and Eve,  we have the story of Cain and Able.   Cain cannot get hold of his animal passions, particularly anger, and he murders his brother.  Lust, anger, fear, greed, negativity, and sloth, to name but a few, are all allowed to run wild.  And when they do, they devour everything in our lives, and prove impossible to satisfy.  Those who pursue theses paths do not have to wait for the afterlife to experience the wreck these can cause.  These are the fires of torment. 

But, Jesus also says there will then be tears of sadness and regret as we get what ask for.  Every hopelessly addicted and dysfunctional person knows exactly what Jesus is talking about.  Addiction and the dysfunction of sin robs us of all that is good in our lives.   But, soon the tears give way to great anger, which is the part about the gnashing of teeth.  Having insisted on our own way and having received exactly what we asked for, we look back at the wreck our soul has become and we rage at God.  We shake our fists and gnash our teeth, screaming at the top of our lungs, how dare you do this to me!   How dare you give me what I asked for!  This is all your fault.  

What is to be done?  This is the part where we talk about heaven and God’s plan to put broken people back together.   You and I were meant be with God, but our lives are polluted and distorted by sin.  That is a problem because God is a perfectly good, Holy, and a consuming fire who will not co-habituate with sin.  

And if you and I are going to share eternity with God, he is going to have to refine us as a goldsmith refines gold, by burning away the dross of sin.

Zechariah 13:9 says, 

And I will put this third into the fire,

and refine them as one refines silver,

and test them as gold is tested.

They will call upon my name,

and  will answer them.

I will say, ‘They are my people’;

and they will say, ‘The LORD is my God.’ 

Paul says the same thing

1 Corinthians 3:11-13

“For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have—Jesus Christ. Anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials—gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value.”

For any younger children here, please do not understand this language to mean that God is going to put you into physical fire.  This language means that God is going to do whatever it takes to help us become the people we need to be, even if that means using some rather painful experience to achieve that.  

The point is not to harm us.  The point is to shape you and me into the people we were meant to be.  The experience might be compared to going to dentist to have work done on our teeth.  Most of us do not look forward to such an appointment.  But a good dentist is not there to cause us harm, but to fix what is wrong.  

All of this is to speak of grace.  Prevenient grace is how God works to get us to a place where we can hear the truth about ourselves and eternity.  Until then, we may not understand that anything is wrong; or, if we do, we may not understand precisely what is wrong or what to do about it.

Justifying grace, is the gift of forgiveness God offers to us, after rebelling against him and making life a mess for ourselves and those around us.  He offers to not hold any of this against us.  Jesus paid for our sin and offers us pardon.

Sanctifying grace is the process whereby God begins to transform our lives and free us from the sins and addictions that caused our lives to be so out of control in the first place. 

Like a good physical therapist, the Holy Spirit begins to retrain us and help us to develop the ability to move in grace.   All of this is for the purpose of heaven, which is about more than where we go after we die.  

You and I were created to to glorify God and enjoy him forever.  One of the old catechisms says this exactly.  When asked, “What is the chief end of man” in other words, “Why do you and I exists?”  The old Westminster Confession says, “To glorify God and to enjoy him forever.”  Jesus came to restore in us his image – to put us back together so that the purposes of God can be realized in us.   

In the old Wesleyan parlance, It is not just about trying to get us into heaven.  After all, what is the purpose of trying to get us into heaven if God cannot get heaven into us?”

Remember, heaven, like hell, is more than a place.  It is the condition of the soul.  Heaven is the condition in eternity where we are cable of receiving and enjoying God’s love.  

The seventh stanza of O For A Thousand Tongues to Sing says,  

What does it mean to own that love is heaven?  If means to understand, to let it sink in that what heaven is is God’s love. That is why this whole message comes down to a choice; do you want God’s love, or will you insist on God withdrawing his offer of love?   The choice comes with consequences both now and in eternity.  

But notice nothing changes on God’s part, only ours.  

C.S. Lewis wrote a fascinating little book on hell called The Great Divorce.  Commenting on that book, he notices something very interesting that the book of Revelation says about the time following the final judgment.  

In Revelation 21 we read:

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Notice verse 25 which says, “On no day will its gates ever shut.”  

Isaiah 60:11 says the same thing.

Your gates will always stand open, they will never be shut, day or night, so that people may bring you the wealth of the nations— their kings led in triumphal procession. – Isaiah 60:11

If some are excluded, it is not because the welcome mat of grace was pulled in, but because those who chose sin and destruction chose not to come in.

Closing Invitation

Friends, the message this morning is as sobering as it is hopeful.
God has not abandoned this world. He has not given up on you.
His judgment is real, but so is His mercy.
His fire purifies, but it also refines.
And His ultimate desire is not your destruction, but your healing.

The gates of the New Jerusalem are still open.
The invitation still stands.
But you must choose to enter.

You were made to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
That joy begins now, not only in the life to come, but in this one.
God wants to begin His work of restoration in you today.

So I invite you to say yes.
Yes to His love.
Yes to His grace.
Yes to becoming the person you were created to be.

If you have never placed your faith in Christ, or if you’ve been walking your own path for far too long, let tonight be the night you turn around and come home.

And if you are a believer already, then recommit yourself to the path of sanctifying grace.

Let the Spirit shape you for eternity, starting today.

Closing Prayer

Let’s pray.

God of mercy and fire,
You see us clearly, every failure, every wound, every misdirected desire;
And yet you love us still.
You don’t turn away in disgust. You pursue us. You warn us. You weep for us.
And You offer us more than we could ask or imagine:
To be made new.

So today, we ask for courage to say yes.
Yes to your refining fire.
Yes to your rescuing grace.
Yes to the joy of knowing you and becoming like you.

Shape us for heaven, Lord.
Not just so that we can enter it, but so that heaven can begin to live in us now.
Let your kingdom come.
Let your will be done in us, and through us.
In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

Benediction:   Fr. Pedro Arrupe once said:  “Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in love in a quite absolute and final way.  What are you in love with?  What seizes your imagination will affect everything.  

It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.    Fall in love.  Stay in love with God and it will decide everything.