From Eternity to Here: Rediscovering the Ageless Purpose of God

by Frank Viola

Consequently, you have a choice: to look through His eyes or your own.

Sarah, the wife of Abraham (Gen. 11:30ff.). Sarah foreshadows the restored bride of Christ. Let’s consider her for a moment. Here she is, ninety years old. And her husband, Abraham, is ninety-nine years old. They are on Medicare. Their Social Security benefits have run out. They have two cases of Geritol in their tent. Sarah is old, sagging, and bulging. She is covered with wrinkles, and her eyes are sunken in. Her womb is long dead. She is childless. Then one day the Lord appears to Abraham and tells him that Sarah is going to be pregnant the following year. When Sarah hears this, she laughs to herself, saying, “Shall I have pleasure with my husband, seeing how old I am?” On one unforgettable evening, Abraham rolls over and suddenly thinks to himself, I’m in the wrong tent! He looks over at the woman lying next to him and utters, “How in the world did this get here!?” What happened? God had restored to Sarah her former beauty. The Lord took her back to her youth and made her a knockout. She was no longer old. She was beautiful and vivacious. How do we know that? Because just beforehand, the heathen king Abimelech took her for his harem (Gen. 20:1ff.). Now no man takes a ninety-year-old woman into his harem unless she doesn’t look at all like a ninety-year-old woman. God made Sarah a perfect ten. He restored the beauty of her youth. And Abraham and Sarah had a wonderful second honeymoon. The net result was Isaac.

Let’s now turn our attention to one of the most beautiful portraits of the bride of Christ in all of holy writ, Rebekah. Rebekah depicts the bride of marital preparation. Revelation 19:7 (NASB) says, “Let us rejoice and be glad … for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready.” Genesis 24 is a heartwarming narrative teaching us how the Spirit of God woos the bride to Jesus and makes her ready for heaven’s ultimate wedding. The four main characters in this tender love story are as follows: • Abraham. He portrays God the Father. Abraham is wealthy and rich beyond measure. In the Bible, riches speak of money; wealth speaks of possessions. Abraham has both in great abundance. He illustrates God the Father, who owns the cattle upon a thousand hills (Ps. 50:10). • Isaac, the son of Abraham. Isaac is a wonderful picture of the Lord Jesus. Jesus and Isaac are the only two people in all of Scripture who are referred to as “the only begotten son” (John 1:18; Heb. 11:17). Both Isaac and Jesus are referred to as “the promised seed.” Both have a rich father. Both had a miraculous birth. Both were obedient unto death. Both were offered as a sacrifice by their fathers on a mountain. Both inherit all things from their fathers. • Rebekah. She is a digital image of that beautiful girl, the bride of Christ. • The servant. This man plays a fascinating role in the story. He represents the Holy Spirit and is sent by Abraham. The Spirit was sent to earth by God the Fa...

The call to Abram contains a profound truth: Involvement in God’s building often means leaving the traditions of our forefathers.

Abraham left everything that he knew: his conceptions of God, his comfortable surroundings, his country, his city, and his people.

Ponder this: In the tabernacle of Moses, only the high priest could stand before the ark of the covenant. He could stand before it only once a year, and he had to be ceremonially perfect or else he would die before God’s holy presence. Yet, now, in the tabernacle of David, a man with a track record of gross imperfections, failings, and trespasses is sitting as close to the ark of God as humanly possible—without fear, condemnation, or shame. (Please consider that the next time you fail in your Christian walk.)

Over and over again, Jesus Christ is presented to us as the foundation and the cornerstone of God’s house. In the first century, the cornerstone was the first stone that was laid in the foundation. It was also the main stone of the building. It aligned and united all the other stones together. Each of the stones in the building was measured by the cornerstone. The building had to be in complete conformity with the cornerstone, else it could not be approved. Jesus Christ is the main stone in the foundation of God’s house; all things are measured by Him.

Humans want to go to heaven. But God has always wanted to come to earth. Your final destination as a child of the living God is not heaven. It’s earth. The garden in Genesis will become a city in Revelation, and it will descend from the heavens to the earth. Note the closing words of Holy Scripture: And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. (Rev. 21:3 KJV) To paraphrase: “The dwelling of God is among men, the home of God is among men, the tabernacle of God is with men, the house of God is with human beings, and He shall dwell with them forever. The ageless purpose of our God has been fulfilled, and God is no longer homeless.”

Revelation 21 and 22 is a perfect throwback to Genesis 1 and 2. Recall that in Genesis 2, God built a woman out of Adam’s side (Gen. 2:22, Hebrew text). The word built holds profound significance. It informs us that this woman is a building. In Genesis 1 and 2, we have the building materials in the garden of Eden. But we also have the blueprint of the building. The blueprint is that beautiful woman who was inside the first man. Hence, the real building is a woman. The building of God, the city of God, the temple of God, the house of God is also a bride. She is the bride of Christ, the mystery of the ages. Behold your Lord’s ultimate passion: a bride for God the Son and a house for God the Father. And the bride and the house are the same person!

Like any homeowner, God builds His house in His own way. If the home is His, He arranges the furniture the way He wishes, for He is the master of His own home.

The burning intent of your God is that all of His living stones be built together with other living stones to form His house. Not for themselves, but for their Lord. To be the house of God, by God and for God. Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain. (Ps. 127:1)

The Lord Jesus Christ is looking for willing vessels who will abandon their Western-styled individualism and live a shared life with others under His exclusive Headship. This is our high calling.

According to the first-century use of the word, an ekklesia is a local gathering of Christians who live as a shared-life community and who gather regularly under the Headship of Jesus Christ. Ekklesia is not a building. It’s not a denomination. It’s not a church service. Neither is it all the Christians in the whole world. It’s a local gathering of God’s people who live as community and who assemble together regularly. So the Christian has a native habitat.

Egypt represents the world system. It speaks of the treasures of this present world. Consumerism, materialism, greed, commercialism, and turning pleasure into a god are the outstanding features of this system. The Christian living in Egypt lives for pleasure, puts earthly pursuits above the pursuit of the Lord, and sinks his life into acquiring “name, fame, and game.” Children of the living God should never find themselves living in Egypt. It is the city of bondage. Hence, when a Christian lives in Egypt, he is a slave.

The roots of Babylon are found in the ancient city of Babel (Gen. 11:1–9). In Babel, the people of the earth decided to build a tower that reached to the heavens. That tower was made of brick. Brick always speaks of the work of man. Man builds bricks, but God creates stones.

What is Babylon? It’s the human attempt to reach God by human strength, human wisdom, and human ingenuity. It’s also trying to make a name for oneself in the process. Simply put, Babylon is organized religion.

Consequently, the principle of Babylon is hypocrisy. It seeks to make a good appearance on the outside, while the inside is corrupt.

The Scriptures are fairly clear on this. Throughout the Bible, whenever God’s people were standing on the building site (Canaan), God was called the “God of heaven and earth.” But whenever God’s people were taken out of the building site, He was simply called “the God of heaven” (Gen. 14:1–19; Josh. 3:11–13; Ezra 1:2; 7:12, 21, 23; Neh. 1:4–5; 2:4; Dan. 2:18, 28; Matt. 11:25).

All said, Babylon is not your native habitat. It’s a counterfeit of the house of God. If we learn nothing else from the Babylonian captivity, let us learn this: Many of God’s people are living in Babylon today. He loves them, and He will bless them to the best of His ability. But Babylon is not God’s best, nor His highest.

Jesus Christ didn’t come to begin a new religion. He came to begin a new creation.

But it’s a detour; it’s not home. How long you spend there is mostly your decision. After the children of Israel exited the treasured city of Egypt, they quickly traveled to Mount Horeb. They then wandered in the desert for forty long years. Why? Because of their unbelief (Heb. 3:15–19; 4:1–11). The trip should have only lasted eleven days (Deut. 1:2). The wilderness is temporary, unless you choose to build a home there. God will eventually make a way out of the wilderness. But when that day comes, your faith will be tried. Leaving the wilderness may come at an obscenely high price. It is for this reason that many do not leave it.

Please burn this into your mind: We cannot receive the new until we first let go of the old. Old wineskins don’t patch well. For this reason, God has never been in the business of pouring new wine into old wineskins (Matt. 9:16–17).

There are essentially four ways you can spend your life. You can waste it in Egypt by living for worldly pleasure and material success (all of which are temporal and fleeting). You can waste it in Babylon by living for the growth and success of organized religion. You can waste it in the wilderness by living your life in transition. Or you can spend it on Jesus Christ in a building site in Jerusalem. So where are you living today? Egypt? Babylon? The wilderness?

The house of God is constructed out of cost. It is built on sacrifice and self-emptying. It is constituted out of conflict. Consequently, if a convenient and easy Christian life is what you are after, being involved in the building of God’s house is simply not for you.

C. S. Lewis once put it, “Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed, you might say in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in His great campaign of sabotage.”

There is no separation of the branch and the tree. So much so that it’s exceedingly difficult to locate where the branch begins and where the tree ends and vice versa. The branch draws its life from the tree. The tree and the branches are distinct, but they are not separate. They are vitally a part of one another. So it is with Christ and His body.

This is perhaps one of the most remarkable texts in all of holy writ. Saul is persecuting the church in Jerusalem. And Jesus Christ takes it personally! The Lord appears to Saul, but He doesn’t say what we would expect. The words “Why are you persecuting My church?” never come out of His mouth. Instead, He makes this incredible statement: “Why are you persecuting Me!?” How does Jesus Christ view His church? He views it as inseparable from Himself. What an incredible thought. The body of Christ, therefore, is not a nifty metaphor. Neither is it a bloodless doctrine or an abstract theology. It’s a reality. We are part of His body.

“Church” has been redefined as the place you attend to be educated and motivated to go out and live a better individual Christian life. Sadly, the individual emphasis in contemporary Christianity has overwhelmed and eclipsed God’s central purpose, which is corporate. To compound the trouble, we have been handed individualistic lenses by which to read, study, and interpret everything in the Bible. Please observe that it is not the individual Christian who is the fullness of Christ. It is the church, the ekklesia. Also observe that the vast majority of the Bible was written to a people, not an individual. That includes your New Testament, the bulk of which was written to Christian communities. Our new species lives, works, and behaves in community. We are a colony together. Thus the great need of the hour is for Christians to begin learning how to gather together and embody Christ in a shared-life community where they live. The Christian life is not about you or me. It’s about us. And that is the church.

To illustrate the centrality of Christ, I would like to rehearse a story that the Lord gave my friend Mike Broadie. It goes like this.… Every year Mary, the Holy Spirit, and the Bible get together and weep. As they are weeping, Mary says, “I brought Him into this world. I gave Him life on this earth. But they have worshipped me and have stolen glory from my son.” Then the Holy Spirit speaks and says, “I did not come to speak of Myself. I did not come to reveal Myself. I came to reveal Him. I came to magnify and glorify Him. But they have made Me central.” Finally, the Bible, also weeping, speaks and says, “I came to point men and women to Him. I came to testify of Him. I came to make Him known. But they have made a god out of me.” Point: When a group of believers makes Jesus Christ central, He is reflected in their conversations, their sharing, their ministry, their meetings, their songs—and their very lives. In so many modern churches, a set of doctrines, a certain theology, a charismatic personality, a set of special works or ministries, is the centrality rather than Christ. Mark it down: The centrality of anything other than Christ is a betrayal of the new species.

Imagine a church where the members pair off during the week—brothers with brothers and sisters with sisters. They seek the Lord together. Sometimes they will do this in groups of three, four, and more. What are they doing in these groups? They are allowing Christ to love them and they are turning that love back to Him.

Hence, the church exists to fulfill Israel’s original calling to be a “blessing to all the nations,” to bring “glad tidings, good news [the gospel] to the poor” and to be a “light to the world” (Gen. 22:18; Isa. 49:6; 52:7).