Welcome back. Hopefully nobody got any sunstroke out there this afternoon. I'm glad we can not have to be in the hot sun together right now. We left off with the accursedness of the curse and the sinfulness of sin, that joyful message. Not really beautiful concepts in themselves, but if that's where we are in the flow, right, creation, then fall, The question then is what our catechism asks did God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery Did God leave us in the fall without any help or any hope and there's a long answer Well, not that long but a long answer in the shorter catechism, but the short answer is no He did not leave us and that is such good news And I just want to read so we start to think about this concept of redemption. I want to read from Ephesians chapter 2 Ephesians 2 Verses 1 through 9. And this is the Word of God, Ephesians 2, 1 through 9. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. That's the redemption we're talking about here. We were dead in our trespasses and sins, but God did not leave us there. And that is such good news. And so the next big theme we're looking at here is this redemption. And the redemption that God has given us is another place where we see God's glory in particular. And it's a glory that we can reflect in how we approach the arts as well. And so I want to go through a few different ways that we see God's glory in redemption. And then we'll be able to see another and see how we can apply that glory in the arts. So the first kind of glory that we see is the glory of God's grace and mercy. It's a little hard for us to wrap our minds around how God's plan for history and human responsibility go together. How can God have planned for the fall to happen, but we still chose sin and we're responsible for it. Those things are a little bit hard to put together. But I want to have someone read Romans 9, 22-24. Someone be ready with that one. Simeon's got that one, Romans 9, 22-24. Somebody ready with Deuteronomy 7, 7 and 8? Evelyn. Then John 15, 13. Back there, John 15, 13. I think I'll read those parts myself. Isaiah 61 verse 1. Isaiah 61 verse 1. Okay, I think that's what we'll do. I'll just dull those out for right now. But as we think about God's glory that he's revealed to us, when you think of, you know, his glory and creation, we've already talked about those, just his goodness in the good things we see in the world around us. But there is a particular glory that we see in his mercy. And you see this in Romans 9, 22 to 24. Okay, it is a question. That was good. He ended it with a question mark. Did you catch what Paul is saying in Romans 9? He's saying God planned, predestined for there to be sin so that he might show the riches of his mercy. So that he might show, make known the riches of his glory by showing mercy. Again, that's hard to wrap our heads around. that God would plan for a redemptive plan for history that includes sin, He's not responsible for it, we make those choices, but so that He might show us the riches of His glory, in His mercy particularly. In other words, there wouldn't have been an opportunity for mercy if there had not been sin in the first place. And there are people who have gone down this path and gotten into some really funky philosophical places. I don't want to just, I want to just stick with what scripture has told us here. We don't need to delve into that in too much depth necessarily. But the idea here is if we ignore the darkness and corruption of sin, if we ignore the fall peace, we don't see the glory of redemption. If you miss the darkness of our state in sin, you miss how good the light is, right? You miss how great mercy is. And particularly, you miss the fact that the good things that we enjoy are undeserved. Can anybody define grace and mercy for us, or one or the other? What are grace? What is grace? What is mercy? Right, grace. Okay, it's almost like you took it out of my nose. That's great. So grace is getting something good you don't deserve. And people here from Sterling hear me say this all the time, so sorry, you're getting sick of this, but you should really get this down. Grace is good things you don't deserve. Mercy is not getting bad things you do deserve. And so, the concept here is, because of our fall into sin, we deserve judgment, right? We deserve God's wrath for sin, and mercy is God not giving us that. Praise the Lord, right? I mean, that's the mercy, that's the beauty of mercy. In both cases, though, in grace and in mercy, The shared concept there is we don't deserve it, right? God doesn't save us because of who we are, something inherent in us. He doesn't look at us and say, hey, you know, he's really great, I'm gonna save him. Or, you know, she's really fun, I'm gonna save her. No, he saves us purely by his grace, purely by his mercy, and that's a glorious thing. Deuteronomy 7, 7 and 8 emphasize this idea that God doesn't choose us because we're so great. It was not because you were more in number than any other people, the Lord set his love on you and chose you, but for you were the fewest of all people. But it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that you swore to your daughters, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh and of Egypt. Okay, so this is God speaking to Israel. He says, it's not because you were so great. Right? I didn't choose you because I, it wasn't like God looked at all the nations of the earth and said, man, Israel's really got it together. I'm gonna, I'm gonna help them. No, he says you weren't. You were, you were not a great nation, but I set my love on you. Why? Because he'd made a promise to Abraham, and in Abraham's case, it wasn't because Abraham was so great either. God just gave him a promise graciously, and that's the beauty of mercy. Um, and so as we think about this idea of something being undeserved, um, in the arts, I've seen this happen a number of times, where someone will take something that isn't desirable in itself, something that was unremarkable, something that maybe wasn't any different from anything else around it, but the person took that object and loved it and made it beautiful, and that's a picture of grace and mercy. You take, like, you got a whole bunch of rocks, and you take this one rock, and you do something really beautiful. It didn't look any different from anything else around it. but you take that rock that doesn't particularly deserve your attention compared to anything else, or that piece of wood, or whatever it is, and you lavish your love on it, you make it something special, you make it beautiful. And that's just one tiny little piece, or one little shadow of how God shows grace and mercy to us. It's a little picture of how we receive much that is undeserved. And I will say at this point that if you haven't received grace and mercy, in your life, if you don't think you need grace and mercy from God, that's going to affect the way that you approach the arts. And maybe you find yourself in your life, not just in the arts, maybe you find yourself being pretty ruthless. And you only act in terms of justice. And you only give people exactly what they deserve. And you expect other people to only ever give you what you deserve. And it may be, if that's the case, if you are a 100% justice, 100% ruthless person, maybe you have not received grace and mercy from God. Or maybe you don't really understand God's grace and mercy. Because the only way you're going to be able to show grace and mercy is if you understand that you've received grace and mercy. um, any mercy that we show to someone else, any mercy that we show in our arts is only gonna, is, pales in comparison to the mercy that God has shown us, that we didn't deserve any of the good things that he's given to us. So that's one of the things that we see, the glory of grace and mercy in redemption. We also see the glory of the broken restored. There's something really deeply satisfying to us to see something that was broken restored, right? To see something that was not working properly. I mean, there's whole, right, your feeds of whatever kind of social media, it feeds you all these videos of things being restored, right? People love those things, like rust being cracked off of things and making things whole, or like, you know, there's a guy down in Wichita here nearby that does lawn care, and he just, like, takes these terrible properties and makes them look beautiful, and people, millions of people watch it, because we love to see things that were not functioning made whole, and made beautiful, made, uh, and, and fixed. And a really beautiful picture of this, um, was brought up by Makoto Fujimura. Makoto Fujimura is a, a Christian who's an artist who writes about art, and he's got some funky ideas. I don't endorse everything that he says, but In his book, one of his books, he mentions the Japanese art of Kintsugi. Kintsugi, K-I-N-T-S-U-G-I. And this is the idea that they take in Japan, they take a piece of broken ceramics, say a broken teapot, and they fix it with lacquer, but they put gold dust. in the lacquer so that what was a really ordinary teapot when it's fixed actually is more beautiful than it was and more valuable than it was when it was before it was broken. And what a beautiful picture of God's glory and mercy that the the way that God has loved and cherished us by his grace and mercy actually is a greater glory than what we ever had, than Adam and Eve had prior to the fall. That's a really beautiful picture, and I've always thought that's a really great example of this idea of the broken restored being a beautiful thing. And so it's true, especially in our society today with the way that manufacturing works, most of the time it's actually more cost effective or in terms of utility, it's better to just throw something away and get a new thing, right? And most of the time that's actually more functional. But is it possible that maybe you could show the world the goodness of the broken being restored by actually sacrificing to restore something? Taking something that's old and broken down and crusty and takes so many man hours, you could have bought three more new ones. But you put the time in to make that old broken down thing beautiful and whole again. And you get to give the world, if you do that, you give the world a picture of what God has done with us. and restoring as a great sacrifice to himself. So I'm not saying that, I mean, a lot of times you just chuck the old thing and get something new and you've got better things to do with your time, but maybe there is a time for you to take that time and really restore something because that's what God has done, has done for us. It's a picture of what Christ, a picture of what Christ has done for us. We also see the glory of self-sacrifice. John 15, 13. Somebody read that, whoever I dabbled that out to. John 15, 13. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. That's the greatest love there is. And of course we know it's talking about Christ, right? He's the greatest example of this. Not just laying down his life, but even suffering the wrath of God for us. What a beautiful and glorious thing that is. And how often do we see that in literature or in movies, stories, films, all the storytelling media? How often do you see a moment of self-sacrifice as the pinnacle of the book, the pinnacle of the story? Because we know it's the best part of the best story there is, right? We understand that deep down in our hearts. In A Tale of Two Cities, how many of you have read A Tale of Two Cities? Okay, this is kind of a spoiler alert, but it's been out for 165 years, so. If you haven't read it, I'm sorry. The pinnacle of that book is a moment of self-sacrifice where someone who looks a lot like somebody else goes to the guillotine on the other guy's behalf. And it, like, hits us like a ton of bricks, right? Like, wow. Like, it's amazing. like brings tears to your eyes as you read, because it is the story, right? It's the story of Christ, and there's so many opportunities for us to do that in stories and to tell people how good that is, how good the sacrifice of Christ is in kind of a roundabout way, where it'll help them to see the goodness of Christ in these things. I think it is a fairly prevalent theme still in things today, but I'm starting to see a shift where self-sacrifice is not valued the way that it used to be. And part of that is our culture of self-care. There are some good aspects of our culture of self-care. We're not supposed to destroy ourselves. We're not supposed to run the car and never do an oil change, right? You're supposed to take care of yourself for the glory of God. And there's some good aspects to that. But there is an aspect of that culture today that says, at the end of the day, you've got to put yourself first. and self-sacrifice is not glorified quite in the same way it used to be. I think one prime example of this is in Adele's recent album, maybe not that recent. Not too long ago, Adele, the singer, came out with an album where she's talking about, part of it is they're talking about her divorce. She has a young son, and one of her songs is to her son, where she recognizes, I destroyed your life. She sees how much she hurt her son by a divorce that, as far as I can tell, didn't have any biblical grounds. I don't know that for sure. But she essentially tells him, I had to do this for me. And that's what she's singing about. Now, I'm not sure, there's a bit of a tragicness to it in the song. So maybe there's a bit of just describing what's happened. But that does seem to be what you're being told to do today. It's like, at the end of the day, you have to put you first, not your children, not your marriage, not your family, not your friends. But greater love is no man than this that he lay down his life for his friends. So let's not lose that. And I would say if our culture continues in that direction, we're going to stand out more and more for glorifying self-sacrifice. And maybe that'll help people see the goodness of self-sacrifice more clearly when they can see that difference from the world. We also see this glory of self-sacrifice in Revelation 5. I didn't hand this one out, but in Revelation 5, I like to think of this, this is a vision of John's in the throne room in heaven. I like to think of this as the other side of the cloud when Jesus ascended into heaven, right? Jesus ascends into heaven and he's hidden from view in the clouds and the disciples don't see what happens. Years and years later, John gets to have a vision of what happens when Jesus gets back to heaven. And it's just beautiful. Listen to this. Revelation 5. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals. And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it. And I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. And one of the elders said to me, weep no more. Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has conquered so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals. And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a lamb standing as though it had been slain. A lamb standing as though it had been slain. And then a little later it says, they sang a new song saying, worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals for you are slain. And by your blood you ransomed people for God. And later on it says, worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing. That sacrifice by the Lamb is so glorious, and we have an opportunity to show that in our storytelling, in our arts, as we glorify self-sacrifice and show people that it is the source of all good that we have, and it is such a glorious thing. We also see the glory of captives freed. Isaiah 61, verse 1. Can I give that to somebody? Isaiah 61, 1. Liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound. Primarily, that's talking about spiritual bondage, right? We're all in bondage to sin. But I think sometimes we forget, because we've lived in such a free society, because we enjoy so many freedoms, we forget just how, what good news freedom is, that Christ sets us free. And again, that's something that is celebrated so often in, in stories, in the arts, as we celebrate that freedom of those who are oppressed, those who are suffering injustice. and those who are bound, who are in prison, being set free. But that's a theme that I think we need to not lose sight of, especially because maybe we're not quite as tuned into it as Americans, because we've enjoyed so much freedom, that we need to make sure that we are seeing that as a glorious thing. So that's some of the glory of God in redemption that I wanted to go over here. Are there questions about redemption before we go on to the consummation? All right. Now we come to the consummation, or the new creation, or the restoration. I was watching a TV series a few years ago, and this series had all kinds of complicated challenges going on. There were lots of battles and struggles between good and evil. And there were bits and pieces of resolution along the way. Little things would get better. But most episodes ended with a cliffhanger. Because they do, right? They want you to keep watching the show. So you keep going and you're carried on by this desire to see things resolved, right? And so I was like, man, how are they going to do this? How are they going to make this all right? And I kept watching, kept watching. And then the series started to take a turn where characters were doing bizarre things that didn't really fit with who they'd been before. And it was just the wheels were coming off. And it suddenly hit me, nobody knows where this is going. The writers have no idea where this is. Nobody has a plan. And it was deeply unsatisfying, right? I mean, you're watching this all unfold, and you're like, wow, how is this going to work out? And then you find out it's not. It's not going to work out. And it's so frustrating, right? Because we are designed to want things to work out, to want things to be resolved, to want loose ends to be tied up. There is good coming. There is amazing good coming in history. There is something better coming. There is a happily ever after. And that should shape the kind of art that we produce and the kind of art that we enjoy. I think one of the ways to think about how this relates to how we think about how much we think and talk about the fall as opposed to how much we talk about things becoming better. I was really helped by Francis Schaeffer, I mentioned earlier, talking about Christian art's major theme and minor theme. He says that in, this is his proposal for how we should approach art, but he says that the minor theme in Christian art, or Christians doing art, is the abnormality of the revolting world. He's saying the fall, right? The minor theme of what we do as Christians in art is this, you know, people in revolt against God are hopeless, and so there is a hopelessness that we can highlight there. And that even in the Christian life, there is a defeated side to our life still. We are not entirely victorious. Christ is victorious, it is finished, but we don't ever attain moral perfection in this life. We continue to sin, and that's a reality in our lives. And so highlighting that or presenting that in the arts is a minor theme for us. But he says the major theme is the meaningfulness and purposefulness of life. And he says if our Christian art, this is Francis Schaeffer. If our Christian art only emphasizes the major theme, then it is not fully Christian, but simply romantic art. That's the kind of art that only emphasizes the good, never talks about the bad things. On the other hand, it is possible for a Christian to so major on the minor theme, emphasizing the lostness of man and the abnormality of the universe, that he is equally unbiblical. In general, for the Christian, the major theme is to be dominant, though it must exist in relationship to the minor. The idea here is we need to have a sense of proportion in how much we focus on the fall and on the dark things and how much we focus on things getting better and on the good future that we have. And I think we can get a sense of this proportion in the Psalms. There's one Psalm in all 150 that has no explicit note of hope in it. Does anybody know which Psalm that is by any chance? 88, right? Psalm 88 is the one psalm that has no note of explicit hope. Now, the fact that the psalmist is talking to God is itself a note of hope, but in the words of the psalm, there's no explicit hope. Now, if you look at the rest of the psalms, there aren't that many psalms that are pure praise. There are, there are more than one, quite a few more than one, but there aren't that many that are just pure positive praise. Most of them are mixed, right? And most of them have that turn. If you're reading in the Psalms, watch for that, watch for that turn. Often it's the lament, it's pouring your heart out, it's crying out, maybe really deep, heartfelt lament, but then there's a turn. You say, yet I will praise him, right? You say, he will save, or he has saved. And so think about the proportion of that. We've got one Psalm that is pure fall, right? out of 150. We've got a few that are pure praise. and we've got a lot that's a mixture, right? But always with that turn or that bent or that orientation towards the salvation that God provides, the restoration that he provides, the redemption that he gives. And so I think that should shape, I'm not saying that we have to analyze the statistics or the percentages of that and make our art exactly fit that, but that kind of proportion should shape the way that we approach things. And so as we think about the consummation coming, we're not there yet. And so the things that we highlight that show the glory of the consummation are not going to be true to life in the sense that we aren't experiencing them yet. But it's really good for us to point people's minds to those things. So what I'd like to do here is to think about some of the themes in the consummation that are good things for us to present in the arts and to celebrate in the arts. And to do that, I want to turn to Revelation 19 to 21. Revelation 19. If everybody could turn there, there's quite a few things we're going to look at here in those chapters. Revelation chapter 19 through chapter 21. The first theme that we see here is victory. The victory of good over evil. If you look at Revelation 19, starting in verse 11, we see this person appear. And it's a rider on a white horse. It says, behold, I saw heaven open, and behold, a white horse, the one sitting on it, is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood. And the name by which he is called is the word of God. And the armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down nations. And he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. So we have this hero arrive riding on a white horse with a sword at the head of his army. And then what does he do? If you look at the rest of that passage, chapter 17 through the end, or sorry, verse 17 through the end of the chapter, he goes to battle with the forces of evil and he slays the beast, right? He throws the beast into the lake of fire. And then there's a, we won't get into the dynamics of Revelation 19 into 20 and the recapitulation of, of some of the same events here. But if you look then at chapter 20, verse 7 and following, we see this final defeat of Satan talked about again there. And then in chapter 21, verse 2, who, who appears? Chapter 21, verse 2, who shows up? The church, and how's she described? A bride. Okay, have you heard this story before? The hero arrives on his white horse with a sword, slays the dragon, and gets the girl. That's not original to me. I've heard other people summarize it that way before. That's the greatest story ever told, right? That is the story of history. Jesus comes at the end, slays the dragon, and gets the girl. That's why so many of our stories go that way, because we're designed to love that story, right? That is the greatest story ever told. It's the story of Christ saving his church. And people today often scoff at fairytale endings. Maybe you've been one of those people. I've been one of those people sometimes. Say, ah, it's another fairytale ending, right? Now, one of the reasons we might scoff at fairytale endings is because it's not true to our lives here on Earth. And when people tell a story as if you get a fairytale ending here on Earth, like, you fall in love and it's happily ever after, and you ride off into the sunset and this life is just gonna be daisies and roses, you say, no, I'm sorry, that's not how life works. And so it doesn't feel true to us in that sense. So there's a sense in which we can not like fairytale endings for that reason. But it could also be because our world doesn't believe in happy endings. Our culture does not really sincerely believe that there are happy endings, or that we can know that there will be a happy ending. We don't know, as a culture, our culture does not know the good will conquer evil in the end. It doesn't really believe that. And so when that keeps happening in stories, our culture kind of gets sick of it because they think, well, that doesn't really sound true to me. Right? That good will not conquer evil. The best that we can do is to shut our eyes to how inevitable death is and how this world is just grinding to the disintegration of the universe. Right? That's the outlook of our godless world around us. I don't know how many of you have seen the Mario movie. My kids love the Mario movie. But in that movie, there's a little blue glowing character. The internet tells me his name is Luma Lee. Or her name, I don't know. A little blue glowing character that's in the prison with the other characters in these cages hanging over the lava in Bowser's castle. And when they first arrive in this prison, this little blue glowing character has this child's voice, but it's saying all these really hopeless things. It's saying, you know, hope is an illusion, and talks about the inevitability of death, and all this stuff like that. And it's sort of funny, but all the other people in the prison can do is tell them to shut up. They don't want to hear it, right? They don't have a reason to say it. They don't say, no, this is why we have hope. They just shouted him until he shuts up, right? And then at the very end of the movie, Hero, okay, spoiler alert, Hero beats the dragon, gets the girl, right? At the end of the movie, it cuts to black for the credits, and here appears the blue character again, this Lumily character, and it says, now that's a happy ending, or is it? Because everything's over now, and all that's left is you and the infinite void. Kind of makes you want to play saxophone, doesn't it? And then he starts playing saxophone. There's your existentialism I was talking about earlier. It's all absurd, let's just laugh at the absurdity of it. I'll play saxophone, right? They can't let you have a happy ending! Right? I'm sorry, they. The movie creators have to stick in that little note of like, oh, it's too good. Maybe that's not really what life is like. It doesn't really get wrapped up well. It doesn't really come to a happy ending. But we believe there is victory coming. And that is a really good thing, that good is going to conquer evil. We also see the glory of justice. While we're talking about kids' movies, I don't know if any of you have seen the Lego Batman movie. That's a fun one. The Lego Batman movie starts with a black screen in it. Batman's voice, he says, black. All important movies start with a black screen. And music, edgy music. Right? It starts, it sets it up that way. But at the end of the movie, it fades to white. And he says, white, all important movies end with a white screen and tying up loose ends. But he says that because it's kind of true, right? We start with the black, we start with the conflict, we start with the problems, and then it ends with tying up loose ends. Because that's what we want, and that's what really will happen. If a movie has all kinds of loose ends, Critics are going to, that don't get tied up, critics are going to pan it, right? That's a common thing you'll see in bad movie reviews, is saying there were aspects of the story that never got resolved, the ending didn't really fit the problems that were happening earlier in the movie. We find that deeply unsatisfying. We don't like to see stories like that, and that's because that's not the way this world really will end. We want loose ends tied up. If that resolution at the end of the movie leaves things unresolved, that is not going to be a good story to us. But what do we see happen here in Revelation 20, verse 12? Can somebody read verse 12 for us? I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God. The books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged out of those things which are written in the books according to their works. The dead, great and small. That's everybody. Every single person who's ever lived, and there are books with a record of every single thing that every single person has ever done, and they are judged by what is in those books. God is a God who does not let things fall through the cracks. He is a God of perfect justice, of omniscient justice. Every careless word that has been spoken, every thought will be brought to justice on that day. And we praise him for his mercy. because we could not stand that test. But that mercy is not a mercy at the cost of justice. That mercy only works because Jesus paid for every single specific sin that every one of his people has ever committed. So that when those books are opened and those sins are read out, Jesus says, I took that one. It's not God closing his eyes and giving us a pass. It's God giving perfect justice, either by punishing the sin and the person who committed it, or punishing Christ in that person's place. That is the justice of God, and we want this, and we should want this, and we do instinctively, in a sense, want that justice, even if we don't like, if we don't like the concept of God's justice always. And so as we think about this idea of justice and tying up loose ends, it is appropriate, it is good and appropriate for Christians to write stories with happy endings. And it's even appropriate for Christians to write stories that have more happy endings than life really has. Because a lot of lives have a lot of hard things in them. Your life may not have a happy ending in this world, but we have a happy ending coming that this world can't see. And so if we write stories with resolution, with happy endings, with a glorious end to it, we're telling people, we're reminding people that that's how this world is, that's how we are as Christians, even if we end our lives on this earth with not much to celebrate. And so it's good for us to write stories with happy endings. I also think there's some interesting trends in music recently that pertain to this idea of tying up loose ends. I'm seeing a lot more music these days that doesn't like, we're going to get a little music-y here, but hang on, doesn't like to resolve. that doesn't like to come back home. So it used to be a lot of music. I'm going to sound like an old person here. It used to be a lot of music would start somewhere, would go away for a while and create tension. And then the point was to resolve that and bring you back home. And harmonically, there's some interesting things that used to be standard that aren't anymore, where so much more of music is looping. Anyway, having just done some looping myself. There's a lot of music that is looping that even seems to avoid your home chord, your home note. It's like people today don't really like it when things resolve. And I think that may be related to the philosophy of our world around us. We don't really believe it's true. We don't believe that we come home in the end. And so we as Christians should, I'm not saying you have to write music that only ever resolves perfectly at the end, but we should be people who believe in resolution, who believe in things being brought together in the end. We also see the theme of resurrection. Chapter 20, verse 13. Somebody read that verse for us. In the seed of the dead, we reject the gates of the dead, Okay, the sea gave up the dead. Do you understand how staggering that is? This is a way of saying the most lost a body can be. A body could be at the bottom of the ocean. A body could be disintegrated completely and God will bring it back. That God is going to raise the dead on that day. That we will be bodily raised. Our souls will be reunited with our bodies. and we will have bodies for eternity. John 5, 28 and 29. Did I give that one out earlier? Okay, I'll just go ahead and read this one. John 5, 28 and 29. It says, Jesus, do not marvel at this for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out. Those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. Do you know that? Do you believe that? All people will be raised on that day, some to the resurrection of life, some to the resurrection of judgment. No one, no human being will spend eternity as a disembodied spirit. You will not spend eternity as a disembodied spirit, as I said this morning. You will spend eternity with body and soul, because that's what you're created to have. To be human is to have both body and soul, and it's a temporary state. It's an intermediate state, as we say in theology, to have only to be a disembodied spirit. And so we will be physical beings. We will be raised to glorify God, which means that part of us glorifying God in heaven, in the new heaven's new earth, is going to be having a body. And we will praise him and we will glorify him in our bodies. And so we should not view our bodies as just the prison house of the soul, as it's so often called. We recognize these bodies are breaking down. Maybe you guys don't realize it yet. You'll get there. These bodies are breaking down. And in a sense, they do become a great burden on us towards the end of our lives, especially. But to be a body, to be a body and a soul is not ultimately an evil thing. And you will be human in body and soul for all of eternity. And if you know the Lord, that will be in heaven. If you do not know the Lord, that will be in hell. But we will have bodies for all eternity, for all time everlasting after this. And so as we think about that, as you think about our body, that should change how we act towards our bodies. It should change how we think about ourselves. That so much of... What's going on in our culture today is the idea that the inside person, whoever you are on the inside, is who you really are, and your body is just sort of this shell. You can do whatever you want with the body on the outside. You are both body and soul. And so you should want to glorify God with your body, not just with your mind, not just with your thoughts. You should want to glorify him with what you do with your body. And so one of the things we haven't talked much about, we talked about briefly at the beginning, is the idea of dance. Right? The Bible talks positively about dancing. Again, there's a lot of bad things that are done in dancing. A lot of dance is done to incite lust. There's also problems with dancing. But there's a good way to dance. And if you never move your body along with music to celebrate, That's something God has given us. It's a great joy as human beings. And we are bodily creatures. God has given us that capacity. And he's given that art of dance as a way to celebrate, and also a way to celebrate the bodies that God has given us, to celebrate the agility and the strength and the form that he has given the bodies that he's made that are good, that are part of who we are. Another thing that we need to keep in mind with the consummation is the not yet. 2 Corinthians 4, 17 and 18 says this. 2 Corinthians 4, 17 and 18. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. The things that are seen are transient, the things that are unseen are eternal. This is a pretty important concept as we approach the arts. This is one place that I disagree with Makoto Fujimura, the Christian artist that has written several books on these things, that he believes that our artworks we create in this world are going to survive into the new creation. I can't say with certainty that that's not the case, but this verse says what we see in front of us is not going to last. Certainly anything that we do for the glory of God is storing up treasures for us in heaven. And I think it'd be really beautiful if there's some kind of corresponding thing in heaven that matches what we've done on earth for his glory. But what we're told is what's in front of us, what you see right now, is gonna get, is gonna get purged with fire. It's gonna go away. And what's unseen is eternal. That we do, even though we believe in the goodness of the physical, the goodness of our bodies and those kinds of things, those things are transient. And our spiritual labors, our spiritual work is what is eternal, is what is lasting. And so the reality is that as you prioritize spiritual things, you may not, if you're in the arts, you may not be able to be as sold out to your craft as your peers are. If you are really in the arts, if you're really, especially you think of things like dance, or if you go to Juilliard for piano or for, you know, one of the string instruments or something like that, people are sold out for these things. And they're practicing eight, 10, 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Can you do that as a Christian? If you really love the Lord, if you have a priority on spiritual things, certainly you need to take the Lord's day at least. But even more than that, you may not be able to be as good of an artist as the guy next to you because you prioritize what is unseen. And we have to keep that in mind. We're not missing out on anything. Whatever time you're missing out on doing those arts today, you've got plenty of that to come, right? There's no end of it to come with the Lord. But for now, you may not get to be. You may have to sacrifice opportunities, especially more and more in our society today. You will have sacrificed opportunities in your field of art for moral reasons. I have friends who are in the theater, who are in theater programs, and it gets to be nearly impossible to honor the Lord's Day and to be professional in the theater. to not work on the Lord's Day, right? Those are some decisions you may have to make sacrifices in those things. And our hope in that, though, is that we are not living primarily for this life, that we are living for something better to come. Abraham Kuyper is another theologian who's written quite a bit on art, and he says this. He says, repeatedly, God shows you and gives you a sense of what your lot on earth would be and how ugly the world would be if the curse had been carried out to its ultimate conclusion. And then God lets you behold an exhilarating natural phenomenon that makes you homesick for paradise. Then you sink again back into the ordinary where nothing excites you or repulses you, but instead where everything around you lacks any vitality and chills your enthusiasm. That's the experience of humans on this earth, is that we see the darkness of depravity, we get these peak moments every once in a while of natural beauty, of glory, and then we have a lot of the mundane. And as you look at the world around you, most people are going to be chasing those peaks. And they make those peaks out to be the pinnacle of the human experience. The most important thing that you can do with your time is to chase those peaks, those amazing pinnacle moments of the high points of life. It's that arena concert that is just the high point of your year, right? Or it's that moment of peace in that pristine museum where you sit and you get to look at this piece of art and just bask in this sublime work of art. Or it's dancing to that perfect song with the person that you're in love with. And in that moment, people chase those moments and say, this is what life is about. And you need to get as much of it as you can and do everything you can to just cherish those moments and get as much and enjoy as much of it as you can while you can. But we don't have to do that as Christians. We don't put our stock in those things primarily. We don't have to fight tooth and claw to get every last little moment of artistic bliss out of this life, because we know that there's much better coming. And those glimpses of glory that we do enjoy, and that God's given us as blessings to sustain us, are just tastes. They're just foretastes of good things to come. We're on a road trip to glory. And those are the snacks and the rest stops on the way, right? They're great. I love snacks. I love rest stops. I don't want to stay there, right? That's not the be-all and end-all. I want to get to where we're going. People in this life are making the snacks and the rest stops out to be the be-all and end-all, and they're fighting to get those moments and live in them and cherish them. And we don't have to do that because we believe we're living in the not yet. But we're not there yet. And in the end, you're going to get to enjoy those moments more than they do because you're not putting that weight on those things. You're not making them out to be the be all and end all. And you could say, man, that was a great concert last night. And someone else could say, oh, that was a great concert, but I wish that person next to me hadn't been singing along on a tune the whole time. It ruins it for them, and they can't enjoy their lives because that was supposed to be their pinnacle moment. We could say, too bad. There's going to be much better singing someday for me in the future. Friends, we are looking forward to something so good and so beautiful, and that helps us actually enjoy the good things that God gives us along the way. Psalm 27, verse four. It says, one thing I have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. We get taste of that now. We will have it in fullness when Jesus returns. And that should be reflected in how you engage with the arts and the arts that you produce. We have a few minutes now for questions. I heard a couple of questions that came out of discussion groups earlier that I can bring up that we may want to try to discuss. Are there questions about any of the talks at this point? Yeah, so laying up treasures in heaven is in Matthew's, it's in the Sermon on the Mount. I'm trying to remember which, it's 5 through 7, if I know which chapter that is. Is it 6? Is that what I'm hearing? I think it's Matthew 6. Yep. Laying up the treasures in heaven. Seek first the kingdom of God. Any other questions? Yes. Yeah. I can, sure, I can talk about this. So, question is, what about pictures of Jesus? Um, and so, uh, if, yeah, sounds like we had some good discussion about this earlier. Um, this comes back to what we talked about with the Ten Commandments, right? Um, the Second Commandment says we're not supposed to make images to bow down to them, right? So we're not supposed to have images that we worship. Now, there's debate about exactly what kind of images we do worship, which, can you have an image that you don't worship that is an image of a God? In the case of images of our God, of Jesus, or of any person of the Trinity, I don't see how you can make an image of God and not worship it. because he's our God and we worship him. So if it is the God we worship, how can you not, even in a moment, even if you just a glance at it, how can you not worship him in that moment? Also, I think that we forget, I think we need to be careful about the power of images to last in our minds and to create a picture of something that becomes our definition of that thing. And so think of how many of you, you know, when people talk about this person looks like Jesus, What do you mean it looks like Jesus? It looks like the pictures that people make of Jesus, and he's usually kind of blonde and blue-eyed and doesn't look anything like a Middle Eastern man from 2,000 years ago. But that's not the primary problem. The problem is you have a picture of Jesus in your head. And we worship him. And God specifically says, you didn't see an image on the mountain. You don't, we don't have an image of God that is an accurate representation of who he is. We, and so, so in my, my understanding of this, I don't think that we should be making pictures of Jesus or, or interacting with pictures of Jesus. I understand there's differences about that. I'm not, But that seems to be what the Second Commandment teaches to me. And that's tough to do. And I hate those kinds of distinctions that make it hard to do things with other Christians. As a parent of small children, trying to find story Bibles or storybooks that don't have pictures of Jesus is kind of a pain. Um, and I don't want my kids to grow up thinking that Jesus doesn't exist. Right? We talk about Jesus all the time. We find other ways to tell the stories of Jesus. But I also, at the same time, don't want them having some cartoon face in their minds when they're worshiping. Right? So that's where I would come, that's how I would approach pictures of Jesus. Um, and again, I know there's a lot of debate about that. Any other questions? Yep. Do you see any examples of Jesus' life? Yeah, so examples of being Christ-like in the arts are examples in Jesus' life of interacting with the arts. Well, so two things that come to mind immediately is that we know it was his practice to go to the synagogue, right? And they sang the psalms, right? They sang and worshipped. We know that we see him sing with the disciples at the end of the Lord's Supper, right? Before they go to the Mount of Olives, they sang, and that was probably Psalm 118, and that's a really great—get into all that and why it's such a perfect psalm for that setting. He sang, certainly. We know he sang. His skill in rhetoric or his skill in telling parables as a storyteller, that's an art in itself. And so I think we see some of that. We can take cues from the way he interacted with those things. But certainly he's an example more in some ways of having to sacrifice those things for the sake of his mission. Like I was saying, that we may not be able to be as sold out to our arts because of what we have to do. Jesus had an immense mission to accomplish, and so he didn't have the luxury. He talks about how, you know, he doesn't have a place to lay his head. He didn't get to build a home and build a life on this earth because of the seriousness of his mission. And so I think he gives us more of an example of that, that sort of sacrificing some of those things for the time being. Yeah, there you go, that's a great point. Jesus is a carpenter, right? Sorry, that's a great example. So, architecture, the beauty of woodworking, those kinds of things, for sure. Yes? It's beautiful and true, right? And that's how we ought to approach art or make art, and we should think in that direction. At least in our discussion here, we kept talking about things, and it sounded very, very similar to how art is structured in work, and how our work is supposed to work. Okay, so the difference between the work of a Christian and the art of a Christian. I think there's a lot of overlap. And I think a lot of our work involves more of the arts than we think. Um, and I would say, for example, when I was, I worked in auto parts for a while, and it was amazing to see how, you know, these, these painters and these, um, body work guys would put so much thought and care into getting just the right finish on some things, which, functionally, is not the most important thing in the world. I guess the distinction, this is where I didn't get into it a little bit, but the distinction is, I think of art as primarily being things that are not related to utility. So, in other words, there is a functional way to do things, and you could do it purely for function, for utility. Art is whatever aspect of that thing, or maybe an aspect of that thing or something else that doesn't have anything to do with utility. And so, at the international conference, Joel Ward, in his talk on this, was talking about how art is associated with leisure. and that in societies, as leisure increases, that there's the opportunity for the arts, because it isn't about survival. Because that's where I would see maybe the line between the work and art, is that art is often extra, or it's often not related to utility or to survival, if that makes sense. Whereas work, so much of it is, I need to pay the bills, I need to get food, that kind of thing. Does that help? Yes, for sure. So they're defined differently, but we definitely interact with them in the same way. We could have a whole talk about how these four things impact work, right? Let's do that sometime. Tell somebody else to talk on that sometime, right? Have a discussion about, okay, how does this affect school? How does this affect your job? How does this affect how you run your home, right? So these are principles that certainly the way we approach all these themes impact how we do our work as well. I would say that all art makes statements about what is beautiful and what is true, but it may be wrong. So art today may say there's no such thing as beauty, but really what it's doing is upholding things that are not beautiful. So I would still say that art is a presentation of what is beautiful and what is true, but the person may not be right about what's beautiful and what's true, if that makes sense. Yes. with our art and movies and music. Can we enjoy it? How should we enjoy it? Or should we just throw it out? Obviously, we don't need to imagine how to watch movies. Right, yeah, so how do we interact with secular art? That's your job to figure out after today. No, again, and I want to be careful here. I don't want to start, like I said, you're all dealing with, your parents all have different rules and those kinds of things. You're going to come to different conclusions on these things. Part of what I've been hoping to help you see is that a lot of these principles can be applied to art that's done by unbelievers, but that still actually gives glory to God. And so an example of this that I would give is Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. Sublime. It is incredible. Go look up the Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber. You've probably heard it before. You don't even realize it. It's amazing. And it's getting at some of the glory of God in this creation that is possible. It's getting at human ingenuity. All of that gives glory to God. Samuel Barber himself was not a godly man by a long stretch. And I won't get into all of that in his life. He was not a godly man. But we can, in that case, there's no words, there's nothing that's going to point you down the wrong direction. It's just the beauty of music and the way that God has created it. So in that sense, I think you can interact with some of those things that way. It does get harder when you're dealing with things that have words, that have messages that are more explicit. And that's a really tough thing to sort through. And that's where I think I was trying to get into with talking about the fall. Is this glorifying sin or is this just depicting sin? And so a lot of art made by unbelievers is going to glorify sin. And so there are times when you need to not interact with them. There are times when you can say, I'm not Believing the message they're giving me and I'm not participating in sin by by interacting with this But I can't tell you exactly which movies you should watch which ones you shouldn't And and I would just tell you at this stage in your life Trust older believers more mature believers more than you do on these things because I remember being your age and I was like Like, you don't understand. Like, this is awesome. I can, I'll be fine. I can watch these things. I can listen to these things. Trust, trust people who are more mature than you in the faith and ask people for advice on these things. Any other questions? Okay, I've eaten into your discussion time a little bit, but I do want to close with singing Psalm 27b.