The City Whose Builder Is God

Today's Scripture

Hebrews 11:8-10 — "By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents... For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God."

Revelation 21:3-4 — "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away."

The Big Idea

This plan ends where the Bible ends: with a city God is building. For thirteen days we have watched the gospel refuse to fit either party's box. Today we see why. Christians belong to a kingdom that no election can deliver and no election can destroy. That hope is not an escape from public life — it is the only fuel that lets us work hard for good here without despairing when we lose or gloating when we win.

Reflection

Pilgrims with a forwarding address

Abraham was promised a land — and spent his whole life camping in it. Hebrews 11:9-10 says he lived "in tents" like a foreigner, because "he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God." Tents versus foundations. Temporary versus permanent. Abraham could hold his present loosely because he held his future tightly.

The writer widens the lens to all the saints: Hebrews 11:13-16 — "These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar... they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city." A pilgrim is a traveler with a destination — not a wanderer, and not a settler. That is the Bible's name for God's people in this age.

Jonathan Edwards preached a whole sermon on this posture and pressed it into one question:

"It becomes us to spend this life only as a journey towards heaven... Why should we labor for, or set our hearts on, anything else, but that which is our proper end, and true happiness?" — Jonathan Edwards, "The Christian Pilgrim"

Picture a family living in a rental house while their real home is being built across town. They keep the rental clean. They mow the lawn, fix the leaky faucet, befriend the neighbors. But they do not take out a thirty-year loan to remodel the kitchen, and when the landlord repaints a color they hate, nobody cries. Their hearts are already living at the other address. That is Hebrews 11 in a suburb.

Now be honest about where we actually set our hearts. Think of an election night — the watch party, the knot in your stomach, the map turning the wrong colors. If a vote count can feel like losing your home, it is because you have quietly moved your home into politics. Pilgrims grieve losses too; they are not made of stone. But they do not despair, because their address has not changed. C.S. Lewis explained the ache beneath all our political longings:

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Every platform promises a version of home — safety, justice, prosperity, belonging. None can deliver it. The desire is real; the address is wrong.

A renewed world, not an evacuation

But be careful: the Bible's hope is not that we escape earth for somewhere else. It is that heaven comes here. God announced it through Isaiah: Isaiah 65:17-18 — "For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth... be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness." Peter repeats the promise: 2 Peter 3:13 — "But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells." Righteousness — justice — finally at home somewhere.

Then John sees it. Revelation 21:1-4 — a new heaven and a new earth, and the holy city coming down out of heaven. God moves in with us: "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore." Notice what the end of the Bible is: not souls floating away from a burning world, but a city landing on a healed one.

And the politics of that city are astonishing. Revelation 21:24 — "the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it." The best of human culture is not torched; it is carried in, purified. Revelation 22:2 — the tree of life stands in the city, and "the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." The nations — the very things we fight about and fight for — are not deleted. They are healed.

This is why Lewis insisted that heavenly-mindedness is not escapism but engine fuel:

"If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

The people who freed slaves, built hospitals, and taught the poor to read were overwhelmingly people convinced this world was not the end. Certainty about the destination does not make travelers careless. It makes them brave.

Why your work is not wasted

Still, a fair question remains: if God is going to renew everything anyway, why bother working for justice and mercy now? Paul answers at the end of his great resurrection chapter: 1 Corinthians 15:58 — "Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain." Watch the word "therefore." Paul has just spent fifty-seven verses on the resurrection of the body, and his conclusion is not "so sit back and wait." It is "so get to work — none of it will be wasted." Because Jesus rose bodily, what you do in the body matters. N.T. Wright unpacks that verse better than anyone:

"You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting that's shortly going to be thrown on the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that's about to be dug up for a building site. You are — strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself — accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God's new world." — N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope

Every act of honesty in a cynical office, every meal for a hungry neighbor, every fair ruling, every reconciled enemy — these are not sandcastles before the tide. They are bricks that will somehow be taken up into the city. That is why Jesus taught us to pray toward the future, in the present tense: Matthew 6:10 — "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." On earth. The Lord's Prayer is a daily protest against both despair and escapism.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from inside a conspiracy against Hitler, with no guarantee he would survive (he did not), and still he could say:

"I believe that God can and will bring good out of evil, even out of the greatest evil." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

That is not optimism. Optimism reads polls. Hope reads promises.

Everything sad coming untrue

So how do we know the city is really coming, and not just a beautiful idea? The Bible's answer is a date in history: a tomb outside Jerusalem found empty. Tim Keller put the stakes plainly:

"If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead." — Tim Keller, The Reason for God

The resurrection is the down payment on Revelation 21. The first piece of the new creation — the risen body of Jesus — is already here, walking out of a grave. Politics killed him; empire and establishment colluded to be rid of him; and God overturned their verdict in three days. Every earthly power has had its limit exposed ever since.

At the end of The Lord of the Rings, Sam Gamgee wakes up, finds the friend he thought was dead alive again, and asks the question every aching heart knows:

"Is everything sad going to come untrue?" — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

The gospel's answer is yes. Not "everything sad will be forgotten," and not "everything sad will be explained" — come untrue, swallowed up by a joy that reaches backward. That is what "he will wipe away every tear" means. And Augustine, closing the greatest book ever written on God and politics, described what waits inside the city gates:

"There we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise. This is what shall be in the end without end." — Augustine, The City of God

So here is where fourteen days land. Do not give politics your soul; it is too small a god and it makes its worshipers anxious and cruel. Do not abandon politics either; your neighbors live downstream of laws and budgets, and love refuses to shrug. Engage like Abraham — in tents, but not aimless. Work like the kingdom is coming, because it is. Lose without despair. Win without worship. The King is not up for election, the cross has already disarmed every rival power, and the city whose designer and builder is God is on its way down.

Going Deeper

Close this plan by taking stock. Write down two sentences: one conviction Scripture affirmed in you these fourteen days, and one it challenged. Be specific. Then pray the Lord's Prayer slowly, and when you reach "your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven," stop and sit in it for a full minute. That sentence is the politics of Jesus — and the pilgrim's daily vote for the city that is coming.