Spoiler Alert: God Is Doing Something New
- Rev. Dr. Chris Holder
- Sep 8
- 3 min read
We have all heard the phrase “spoiler alert.” Someone is about to give us information that we don’t want to have yet: the score of a game, the ending of a book, or a key scene from a movie or show. When that happens, we quickly cut off the person by blurting, “Spoiler alert!” A signal for them to stop telling us so we can discover it for ourselves.
Yet as followers of Jesus, God has given us the ultimate spoiler alert. We can know the climax and end of the story. The climax of the story is well known—Jesus rose from the grave conquering sin and death. We also know that He has promised to return one day and fulfill all the promises He did not fulfill in his first coming. Yet, God’s final plan for us as connected to these promises are often overlooked or misunderstood. In his book Surprised By Hope, N. T. Wright effectively makes this point by reminding us that the goal or purpose of the church is not to send people to heaven. While heaven will be the temporary place for those in Christ whose earthly bodies die before Christ returns, this is not the final place for any of us.
Wright even points out some dangers in preaching or teaching that God’s plan is to take us from the physical earth—which is bad—and rescue us to the spiritual heaven—which is good. This can easily lead to the idea that it doesn’t matter how we treat the earth. After all, we are leaving here anyway. Kind of like the idea of lighting the match as you leave a place to which you will never return.
But here is the spoiler alert: God is doing something new. And that something new is what he calls the new heavens and earth, the coming together of both places, which is also the final dwelling place of all who are in Christ. Several hundred years before Jesus, God declares through the prophet Isaiah. “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, l create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness” (Isaiah 65:17-18). This new thing that God is doing is so much better than our bodiless souls just going to heaven. It’s us being with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit forever, a physical place of joy, where God’s people embody gladness.
Then in Revelation, John is given even more insight into this new thing God is doing. “And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. . . . And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb” (Rev. 21:10 & 22). This incredible vision of the city of God—Jerusalem coming down to earth out of heaven with Jesus, the Lamb, as the temple—serves as the ultimate “spoiler alert!”
While this future reality is certainly something to look forward to, God is not just preparing us for the something new he is doing when Jesus returns. No, he is doing something new each and every day. Every time a person believes and is baptized in the name of Jesus, God is doing something new. Every time a broken relationship is reconciled, God is doing something new. Every time a new church or ministry is planted, God is doing something new. So, we must all ask ourselves then, what new thing is Jesus doing for which He is inviting me to be a part?