After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”—Revelation 7:9–10

The Book of Revelation Is the Ultimate Spoiler …

Do you know what a spoiler is? Sometimes when you’re reading an online news article, perhaps about the latest movie or newest novel, there will be a warning label that warns you not to click into that article if you don’t want to know the outcome of that novel or movie before you’ve been able to enjoy it for yourself. For instance, how annoyed would you be if I told you just before you went to see “The Empire Strikes Back” in 1980 that Darth Vader was actually Luke Skywalker’s father?

The reason we love plot twists and mysteries in books and stories is because we get to remain as outsiders while we watch our protagonists rise and fall, come close to failing, but ultimately succeed. We get to have an adventure at the cost of our favorite imaginary character—then go home and sleep like a baby. No long term consequences. No PTSD. No scars.

But that’s just for fairy tales. In our real lives, we want to know what is going to happen. Will I ever find a job? If I do, will it pay enough? Will it be satisfying? We’ve been trying for years and years...will we ever have a baby? Will I be alone forever? If we’ve lost a loved one, will the pain ever subside? Will my son ever come back to the Lord? Will my daughter ever come home? Will this depression ever lift? Will my husband ever love me like he did when we were young? Life is full to the brim with uncertainty in the face of enormously difficult trials. Sometimes, we’d really like to have a spoiler once in a while—just a glimpse into the future for us to be reassured that everything, including us, is going to be okay. We just want to have some hope that we will live happily ever after.

That is why we have the promises of God. And specifically this morning, that is why we are looking at the book of Revelation.

Pastor Matthew Westerholm recently quoted scholar Jeremy Begbie as saying, “What most of us do is remember our past and hope for things in our future. But in Christ, when we remember our future, we have hope for our past.” And to that I would add, we have hope for our present.

So let’s take a look at the Bible and remember our future to see what God has in store for us as a people. This is what I see.

John, the writer of the book of Revelation, here in chapter 7 is in the midst of a series of visions from God. And now, in verses 9 and 10, John catches a glimpse of the worshiping church. What does he see? A group of people all dressed the same, wearing white robes. A group of people that have chosen to use the same object—a palm branch. A group of people that are not only uniform in their dress and accessories, but most importantly, in their activity—worship. And even more important than that is the shared object of their worship—the Lamb seated on the throne. Wow! Imagine the sight! That will be us one day. Make no mistake about it, that is where we are heading. One unified group of Jesus-loving worshipers. No more pain. No more tears. No more sin. And we get to see Jesus face to face! I am glad to have this spoiler.

But don’t think for a moment that this group of robe-clad, leaf-waving Lamb lovers are all the same. John began with this startling observation—that this single-minded, worshiping people are in fact people from every nation on the globe. It’s a collection of people from all of the tribes of the earth, all of the peoples from around the world, speaking every language that is spoken now, was ever spoken, or will ever come into existence in the future.

As we think about us, Bethlehem, being among that group in heaven, we should greatly rejoice. But it also makes me think about our identity as a particular ethnic group among that every-nation crowd.

Several years ago, Pastor John Piper asked us, “Would you want to go to heaven if Jesus wasn’t there?” This morning, I want to echo that question and ask you, Would you want to go to heaven if you might be a minority there? How would you feel if the great hymns you love were only dusted off once a year for heaven’s Ethnic Harmony Weekend as a nod to American culture? What if in heaven, America was only remembered the way we remember that the Byzantine Empire once ruled in the Middle Ages?

Many of you don’t know what it’s like to be a minority. But many of you have traveled overseas to places where you don’t speak the language, don’t understand the customs, don’t know what part of the food is the wrapper and what part you’re supposed to eat. What if your experience of culture in heaven was more like a month long mission trip than a Sunday morning at Bethlehem?

Would heaven still be as appealing? If not, what is your identity resting in? Do you identify more as citizen of America or a citizen of this multicultural heaven that we see in the book of Revelation?

What the spoiler of Revelation 7:9-10 tells us is that this reality, right here, right now at Bethlehem Baptist Church in 2016 is day by day surely but slowly becoming that reality in heaven. And it won’t be a fleeting reality. It is not a 30-minute worship set on Global Outreach Weekend or a visiting preacher for Ethnic Harmony Weekend. Worshiping the Lamb as great multitude from every language will be our forever reality!

So the question that comes to my mind is this: Why? Why is this God’s design?

At Bethlehem, we often talk about valuing Ethnic Harmony, and the reason for our valuation rightly terminates on God. Ethnic Harmony is his will. It is his design. His plan. But have you ever stopped to think about why? What is God after? Why is this his design? What’s he trying to do?

Asking these questions is important because there is much joy for us in the answers.

This is how I want to spend the remainder of our time together. I want to ask and answer four key questions.

1. Who are you?
2. Who are we?
3. Who are we becoming?
4. Why is the Kingdom of God a kingdom of diversity?

Who Are You?

Perhaps the best way for me to wrestle with this question of, “Who Are You?” is to answer this question from the inside: “Who Am I?”

My parents emigrated from Taiwan to the US in the late 1970s. I was born in 1979 in Albuquerque, NM. I was raised in a Chinese-speaking home, until Pee Wee Herman, Mister Rogers, and my older brother Nathan brought English into our home.

Growing up bi-culturally was great fun. I pretended to know kung fu, so no one ever messed with me. (And I still know kung fu so don’t mess with me.) I pretended to be good at Mathematics when actually I was amazing. No one knew how to use chopsticks but me, so naturally I became the instructor. I was the definitive expert on whether the Asian on the street was from China, Japan, or Korea. (I actually have no idea.) I would round out my eyes and say, “Look, I’m American!” My childhood hero was not Bruce Wayne or Bruce Banner, but…? Actually, it was Spiderman.

And, at times, it was painful. I couldn’t read Chinese, and still can’t. I am illiterate in my own first language. On my thirtieth birthday my parents wrote me a long letter in Chinese. I’ve never read it. It’s painful to think about that letter. And though I could have it translated, I’ve kept it unread as a token of who I am. Sending text messages now is effective for communication, but not communion with my parents. Unlike my parents, English is my heart language. It is the language of my thought, emotions, and life. I have chosen to speak English to my children, much to the dismay of my parents. Why? Because I value building the connection with my children that I never had with my parents because we shared two different heart languages. I was made aware by my parents that Americans were different than us. My parents called Americans 外國人. Foreigners. Oh, the irony. Well-meaning adults that I talked with would marvel aloud at how good my English was. This was always painful and embarrassing. What it communicated to me was that I was different. I was an outsider, a long-term visitor. I was not at home in America. It is an alienating feeling to be “accepted” and “warmly welcomed” into your own home.

“Where are you from?” they are continually asked. And when the answers “Oakland,” “New York,” or “Chicago” do not satisfy the questioner, they are asked, “No, where are you really from?” The underlying assumption behind these questions is that Asians cannot possibly be real Americans and do not belong in the United States. Instead, they are perpetual foreigners at worst, or probationary Americans at best.—Erika Lee, The Making of Asian America

But visiting Taiwan, I encountered the same thing. Everyone called me an ABC and marveled aloud that my Chinese was so good. My cousins called me stupid for not being able to read Chinese. I guess that I was not at home in Taiwan, either.

Probably the most painful part of growing up was always the first day of school. You see, when your name is 佟明璟 and you’re a kid growing up in Albuquerque, NM, you tense up when role is called for the first time. What I dreaded hearing most on the first day of school was own name. I was ashamed of it. I was not necessarily ashamed of being Chinese, I liked that I, unlike my classmates, could speak another language. But I was ashamed that my name was so strange and seemingly hard to pronounce. I dreaded all the laughter of the other kids. I wanted to be like everyone else with a “normal” name. So in kindergarten, I named myself Mike.

Lost

I was lost. I was lost in my own skin. I was lost in my home. I was lost in my country. I was lost outside of my country. I was lost and I was not at peace.

Searching for Identity

So I began to search for identity. By junior high school, my family had made its way to the Chinatown of the United States—Southern California. There, I found my tribe—Asian-Americans who were proud to be Asian-American. I no longer cared about being an outsider. I was now an insider in a third culture. I was found at last.

• In high school, we went to Norebangs all the time. These are Korean-style karaoke lounges where you rent a room and sing songs with your friends for hours on end.
• Dim sum for breakfast on the weekends was the norm. There, we ate turnip cakes and chicken feet, black bean pork ribs and egg custard buns, shrimp dumplings and cow-stomach lining. All my favorite breakfast foods in one place!
• We called ourselves bananas: Yellow on the outside but white on the inside. We even had one friend who was an egg: White on the outside but yellow on the inside.
• In high school, we ridiculed the FOBs and looked down our noses at the whites. We were Asian-American, and we were proud of it. Too proud.

Lost Again in Chicago

But coming to the Midwest in 1997 threw me back into confusion. I found myself at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago as an 18-year-old Asian in a very foreign world. I had never felt so Asian in my life. In the first week of school, I met a student wearing a cap that read “Clausen Farm.” I was confused how he could have grown up on a farm since family farms no longer existed. Suddenly, I was the only Asian anywhere, and all the questions started pouring back in. Do you know how to use chopsticks? How many people live in China? Hey, what does my tattoo say?

It was there that I discovered just how much my identity had become tied to the Asian-American enclave that was Southern California. And though my classmates and professors were warm and welcoming, there were always reminders that I was different than everyone else. My identity as Very-Asian-Not-So-American was reinforced.

One New Man

It was not until a few years ago that I had a radical shift in my understanding of what God has to say about ethnic identity.

Christians Named in Antioch

In his seminar a few years ago during Bethlehem’s Ethnic Harmony Weekend, Southern Seminary Professor Dr. Jarvis Williams presented a paper containing this excerpt:

Many in antiquity understood race/ethnicity as a group’s possession of certain theological, political, and social ideas and behaviors based on those ideas. Paul’s understanding of the category of race/ethnicity was similar to other ancient perspectives. But Paul, the Christian, seem to divide the world into three categories of race/ethnicity: Jew, Gentile, and Christian.

Williams proposed that in Acts chapter 11, where Luke records the “obscure” fact that it was in Antioch that they were first called Christians—that this was in fact the presentation of a new ethnicity. A new people. Christians.

For me, the dam broke at last. I was home at last. And my home was in Christ. I no longer needed to be Asian or American or Asian-American. I was “In Christ.” And that identity was exactly what I needed—and exactly what you need.

Identity in Christ as Ethnic Identity

As Christians, our ethnic identity is not tied primarily to blood, land, country, or tradition. Our ethnic identity is tied primarily to Christ.

The categories that God gives us in his Word for ethnicities far outweigh our modern categories.

If your identity is tied to your land or your country, what happens if those things go away? The United States will not exist forever, but the Kingdom of God certainly will.

The United States is not your home and American is not your identity, just as Southern California and Taiwan are not my home and Asian-American is not my identity.

Heaven is our home and our identity is in Christ.

Listen to this quote from Richard Lovelace, as found in Tim Keller’s Center Church:

[Those] who are not secure in Christ cast about for spiritual life preservers with which to support their confidence…. [A particular] culture is put on as though it were armor against self-doubt, but it becomes a mental straitjacket which cleaves to the flesh and can never be removed except through comprehensive faith in the saving work of Christ. Once faith is exercised, a Christian is free to be enculturated, to wear his culture like a comfortable suit of clothes. He can shift to other cultural clothing temporarily if he chooses to do so … and he is released to admire and appreciate the different expressions of Christ shining out through other cultures.

So each of us who are in Christ, we are Christians. But does this ethnicity erase my Asian heritage and culture? Am I not yet still an Asian-American living in the upper-Midwest land of hot dishes and don’t-cha knows? I am! And according to the book of Revelation, I always will be!

And whatever ethnicity the Lord has given to you, you will always retain. And rightly so. But some of you might say, “But Mike, you’ve very clearly Chinese and come from a rich heritage of great food and a Great Wall. What if I don’t have an ethnicity of my own?” How would I answer you?

This is where we come to our second question.

Who Are We?

What does it mean to be American? We hear all the time about being ethnically Chinese or ethnically Indian or ethnically African. We hear all the time, “I love ethnic food!” Let me ask you, is McDonald’s ethnic food? Well, I have bad news for many of you. The answer is yes. McDonald’s was born from a distinctly American culture. The hamburger is a distinctly American creation. “Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onion, on a sesame bun.” You think they’re singing along with me in China when they hear me read that? They’re not.

As with people from any culture, we’re too embedded in our own culture to see that we have a culture. One time, after talking about these things with college students, one student actually asked me, “How am I supposed to apply what you’re saying to my life if I don’t have a culture.”

Listen to this quote from Tim Keller. Now, I’ll warn you, this is not an easy story to hear, but I share it with you because it describes me perfectly.

When I went to seminary to prepare for the ministry, I met an African-American student, Elward Ellis, who befriended both my future wife, Kathy Kristy, and me. He gave us gracious but bare-knuckled mentoring about the realities of injustice in America culture. “You’re a racist, you know,” he once said at our kitchen table. “Oh, you don’t mean to be, and you don’t want to be, but you are. You can’t really help it.” He said, for example, “When black people do things in a certain way, you say, ‘Well, that’s your culture.’ But when White people do things in a certain way, you say, ‘That’s just the right way to do things.’ You don’t realize you really have a culture. You are blind to how many of your beliefs and practices are cultural.”

Let’s take a moment to dive just a bit deeper here on this point. Maybe this quote really bothers you. Maybe you think that Mr. Ellis’ presumption about Tim and Kathy—and you—is incorrect. And you might be right. You might not be anywhere near what he thinks.

I’d like to take a moment to talk about the value of listening. Did you know that the act of listening itself can be a great gift to someone? The act of listening is a wonderful demonstration of love. But what does it mean to listen well?

The Activities of the Body, Mind, Heart, and Imagination in Listening

Listening is not the act of quietly preparing your response while the other person finishes talking.

Body

• Posture and presence.
• When you are with someone, be all there. No phone.

Mind

• Intense curiosity.
• Know the characters and the plot.
• Build a narrative in your mind, know their story well.
• Plot holes yield insightful questions.
• Understanding characters helps you understand the speaker’s relationships.

Heart

• Allow yourself to feel what your speaker is feeling.
• Just as Jesus was made fully incarnate to be with us as he had never been before, place yourself in the midst of your speaker’s life in order to experience what they are experiencing.

Imagination

• Did you know that imagination is not just for kids? 
• Having an imagination is uniquely connected to bearing the image of God. 
• You can use your imagination to bless others. To see things in their story that they have missed.
• We can imagine what God’s will for them might be.

Now these activities are great and we can imagine doing these things next time people are pouring their hearts out to us about what is weighing on them. But can we listen like this when people are telling us what we have done wrong? How we have mistreated them or others? Or how our ideas are silly?

Ta-Nehisi Coates, National Correspondent for the Atlantic, has made a case for financial reparations to be made to African-Americans citing experiences of oppression in the African-American experience ranging from slavery to the Jim Crow laws to modern-day life.

What is your gut reaction when you hear this? Do objections immediately come to mind? Do you want to offer a rebuttal right away? Now, you may have valid objections and questions, but before we even get there, let me ask you. Did you remember that Ta-Nehisi Coates is a man made in the image of God? He is a man. And through our modern means of communication, he is your neighbor. He is not our enemy. We have an enemy, and he is not it. And Jesus calls us to love him.

So before we object to someone’s ideas, let’s take the time to patiently listen and understand, and even seek to feel what he feels until his ideas, though we may still disagree with his conclusions, make sense to us.

Who Are We Becoming?

It is not enough to know that we are Christians and Americans living in American culture. We must ask our third question: “Who Are We Becoming?”

Here we come to the question of creating culture. Did you know that God put us on the earth to create culture? Dr. Soong-Chan Rah says:

To explore and understand the role of culture from a biblical framework, we must go all the way back to the creation story in Genesis. The idea that humanity has been given a responsibility and duty from the creator to go forth and create culture originates from the theological understanding that humanity was made in the image of God. This concept is known as the cultural mandate, which calls for believers to engage rather than categorically reject the surrounding culture, and rises out of the doctrine of the image of God.

Because we are made in the image of God, we hold a unique position in creation order.

Genesis 1:26 says, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’”

This passage connects the unmatched quality of being made in the image of God with the responsibility of dominion over creation. God’s sovereign authority over creation is mirrored in a small way by the stewardship of creation by humanity.

Nancy Pearcey writes:

The first phrase, “be fruitful and multiply,” means to develop the social world: build families, churches, schools, cities, governments, laws. The second phrase, “subdue the earth,” means to harness the natural world: plant crops, build bridges, design computers, compose music. This passage is sometimes called the Cultural Mandate because it tells us that our original purpose was to create cultures, build civilizations….

By Default, By Design

As American Christians, what are we building from what we value as a culture?

By default, our fiercely American independence can make us believe that we don’t need God, that we are sufficient to supply all of our own need, that we can make it on our own without help from a community. But by God’s good design, our fierce American independence can help develop a culture that is full of innovation. American independence and ingenuity has contributed so much to man’s dominion, the flourishing of humanity, on the earth. The electric lightbulb. The telephone. Human flight. The internet. The ESV. The chocolate chip cookie, which was invented by Ruth Graves Wakefield in 1936!

By default, our distinctly American sense of justice can lead us to believe that we are right until someone can decisively prove us wrong beyond any reasonable doubt, that we have certain unalienable rights and that if someone harms us we must fight for justice until we have won back what was rightfully ours. We even put a dollar amount on our undue suffering and take people to a court of law to ensure that we get every penny to which we believe we are entitled. But by God’s good design, we can fight for justice to be served to those who have been beaten up or beaten down. We can protect the weak. We can love the orphan and provide care for the widow. We can speak up for those that cannot speak for themselves. We can work to provide a world where the rich are not favored over the poor. We can rescue those who are being dragged off to their death.

By default, we love prosperity. It’s literally written into our founding documents. Winning the lottery is the pipedream of every American. Wealth brings you status and power, and with power comes respect from others, and this is what gives you validation as person. If you are rich, you are someone. But in Christ, we learn that our reality is that all things are ours. 1 Corinthians 3:21-23 says, “So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” The world is ours. All of life is ours. The present is ours. The future is ours. In Christ, we are more secure than anyone on the earth. Therefore, we can take great risks for God. We don’t need to accrue more wealth, we already own it all. Now let’s start giving from our vast warehouses instead of hoarding up more.

We should be becoming a people who are distinctly the Americans that God has made us, with everything we love and do as Americans, in the most God-glorifying and neighbor-loving ways possible!

Why Is the Kingdom of God a Kingdom of Diversity?

Because the greatness of God cannot be contained in just one culture.

The wisdom of God cannot be known by the sages of just one people.

The holiness of God cannot be understood by the devotion of just one people.

The faithfulness of God cannot be demonstrated by the families of just one culture.

The beauty of God cannot be displayed by the art of just one culture. Look at the elaborate design of the Taj Mahal produced in India. The sophisticated music of Johannes Sebastian Bach from Germany. The stunning images of Ansel Adams. The magnificence of the pieta by Michelangelo the Italian.

The power of God cannot be felt in the influence of just one culture. Look at the spread of Western ideology arising from Western Europe. Look at the worldwide spread of technological innovation coming from Silicon Valley. Or the use of Chinese fireworks in virtually every national celebration on earth.

The wealth of God cannot be displayed by the prosperity of just one nation. Look at the terraformed island resorts of the United Arab Emirates. The creation of massive pyramids to commemorate the life of a single wealthy king. The Crown Jewels of Great Britain meant for the crown of a single monarch.

The knowledge of God cannot be learned by the scholars of just one culture. Look at the Library of Congress with its millions and millions of volumes of human discovery. The uninterrupted history of more than 3,000 years of Chinese literature. The hundreds of universities in Africa including Africa’s oldest university in Cairo, Egypt which began in the year 970 AD.

The creativity of God cannot be tasted in the food of just one people. From the elaborately spiced curry paneer of India to the simplicity of a single slice of toro sashimi in Japan. From the comfort of biscuits and gravy to the stomach-turning process of straining sun-rotted squid to make a delectable fish sauce. From the strictly vegetarian diets of holy Tibetans to the churrascarias of Brazilian gauchos.

The welcome of God cannot be felt by the hospitality of just one culture. Look at the Opening Ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. $100 million was spent on over 15,000 performers rehearsing for over one year amid 40,000 LEDs embedded in a screen that measured 500x70 feet. All that just to say, Beijing Huang Yi Ni. Look at the way the impoverished families will slaughter the fattened calf just to welcome you into their humble home.

The protection of God for his people cannot be seen in the defenses of just one nation. Look at the miles and miles of the Great Wall of China. The impenetrability of Masada overlooking the Dead Sea in the Southern District of Israel. The Doomsday Seed Vault located on a large, barren rock named Svalbard in the Arctic Circle where all the seeds humanity needs to survive are kept safe by blast-proof doors, motion sensors, airlocks, and one-meter-thick steel-reinforced concrete.

And the love of God was never meant for just one people, but for every tongue, tribe, and nation.

The creation of all the peoples more greatly magnifies the greatness of God.

Applications

1. Figure out who you are, and be that to the glory of God.
2. Understand that every day you are making culture. Every decision you choose to make shapes the world around you. So make decisions on purpose, for God’s renown and your joy.
3. Explore the cultures around you that are not your own. By doing so, you will get more of God.

(No discussion questions were created for this sermon.)