Colours of Life: Yellow is for Life
Finding your place in God's story
The ‘Colours of Life’ are a series of five colours that Soul Revival Church has used extensively over the years to summarise the story of Scripture. This January, we are using these colours to preach through an overview of the biblical narrative. Like I say regularly to the children of Soul Revival, the Bible is a big book, but if you can remember five colours and what they stand for, you can know the key moments in the story and how you fit into the story of Scripture. Find out more here.
Below is the text of my third—but overall fifth—sermon in the series on LIFE.
Sermon Passage: Revelation 21
The Colours of Life
Eugene Peterson recounts how his grandchild would crawl into his lap and exclaim, “Grandpa, tell me a story and put me in it!”1
This is what we have been exploring over the summer with our Colours of Life series at Soul Revival Church. God is telling a story. The story of the cosmos. More particularly, the story of him and his people, and God’s desire to live with his people forever.
Here’s the story that God is telling, summarised into the five “Colours of Life”.
GREEN stands for CREATION; in the beginning, God made everything
WHITE stands for LIGHT; the light that comes from a perfect, unadulterated friendship with God
BLACK stands for DARKNESS; the darkness that comes from our sin and how that sin breaks our relationships with God and puts us under judgement and death.
RED stands for JESUS; both his love and his blood, which through the cross cleanses us from the stain of sin and redeems us from the judgement that our sin puts us under.
YELLOW stand for LIFE; the fullness of life found in Christ Jesus, that begins when you become a Christian, and last forever into eternity and New Creation.
The colours of life work on two levels. Firstly, this is the story that God is telling, regardless of whether you believe it or not. It is the story of Scripture, which God continues to write until it comes to its epic conclusion in the new heavens and the new earth.
However, there is another level to the story. Not just “tell me a story,” but “put me in it”. This story is not only historically and theologically true, but can be true of you as well.
“God is unfolding the great story,
and God invites us to find our place of belonging in that story.”2
GREEN; God made the natural world that you inhabit. The beaches you swim at, the parks you walk through, the gardens you plant, the stars you see. Everything that is good and true and beautiful in this world has its source in God.
WHITE; God made you to be in a perfect relationship with Himself. That is your purpose, your intended design.
BLACK; however, your sin puts you outside of that perfect relationship and places you under God’s right judgement, destined for death.
RED; but, Jesus life, death and resurrection is offered to you. You can be cleansed of your sins, have the penalty paid for, and be freed from bondage to guilt, judgement, and death.
YELLOW; which means that for all who accept this invitation, repent of their sins and turn to Christ, who find their place of belonging in the Christian story can have Life. Eternal life in the new heavens and the new earth, certainly. But as John’s gospel describes, that life, in fact, begins now. Those who are “in Christ” are already “in” their resurrected life.
New Heavens and New Earth
This morning, we are exploring the YELLOW colour and will focus on the new heavens and the new earth, as described in our passage for today, Revelation 21.
Revelation 21 is one of my favourite passages. I never get sick of reading and preaching it. One of the things that I love are the parallels between the first two chapters of the Bible and these last two chapters; between our GREEN and our YELLOW.
Both have gardens, both have trees of life, both have rivers. And most importantly, both have God living with his people. Let’s take a look.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Genesis 1:1-2
Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.
Revelation 21:1
In Genesis, God is creating the heavens and the earth, and the formlessness and emptiness of the earth, and the darkness of the waters hint towards a problem that needs addressing.
In Revelation, God is creating a new heaven and a new earth, and there is no unformed, watery chaos that needs addressing. This time, everything is perfect.
Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed… Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
Genesis 2:8, 3:8
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling-place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God… They will see his face.
Revelation 21:3, 22:4
The whole story of Scripture is about God’s desire to live with his people. We see it in the Garden with Adam and Eve. But the darkness of sin—BLACK—means that we are unable to live with God face to face. We see glimpses throughout the narrative of the Bible. Abraham meets with God, as does Moses in the burning bush. The nation of Israel has God dwelling amongst them in the tabernacle in the wilderness, followed by the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus comes, God incarnate, dwelling (“tabernacling”) with his people (Jn. 1:14). But none of these were permanent.
Now, in the life of the believer, God dwells with us through the Holy Spirit, the deposit, guaranteeing our future inheritance (Eph. 1:14). But the climax of the story, the end to which God’s narrative is headed, is the face-to-face, intimate, personal dwelling with his resurrected people on his resurrected earth.
Life With God
I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.
Revelation 21:22
Many Australian government buildings, Anglican and some Presbyterian churches, Scouts and Girl Guides halls, have something in common. They will often have an image of the British monarch hanging on the wall. I can remember seeing portraits of Queen Elizabeth II in several different settings (though I’m assuming that they’ve been replaced now with portraits of Charles).
Now, I don’t know this for a fact… but I’m going out on a limb and guessing that there are a few official, commonwealth rooms that didn’t have official portraits of the Queen hanging on the walls. Her bedroom. Her lounge room. Her own private dining room. I’m not talking about the room where she entertains guests and foreign dignitaries. I’m talking about the rooms where Lizzie slips into her Ugg boots, trackie-dacks and loose-fitting t-shirt at the end of the day. In those spaces, you don’t need a portrait hanging on the wall reminding you of your Queen. You have the real thing, Her Majesty’s real presence!
This is the picture that Revelation 21 is painting for us. Where we don’t need temples, or churches, or crucifixes on our walls or hanging around our necks, or Colours of Life wrist bands to remind us of the story of Scripture. We won’t even need the Bible to read about the “the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord” (Ps. 78:4). We will have GOD HIMSELF! We will be with God and the Lamb, personally, intimately, face-to-face.
What is life like when you are with God in his renewed Creation, face-to-face?
He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death” or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.
Revelation 21:4
All those things that characterise sin, darkness, BLACK, life in this world that is estranged from God, frustrated and groaning for liberation (Rom. 8:20-21)… it will all be done away with.
Australian pastor and Christian-Kids-Rock/Metal-Musician, Ben Pakula, put it like this:
Perfect peace, perfect health
Living in abundant wealth
No more death and no more sin
No more pain and suffering
Perfect life is found in Christ
And we will have it in the future
When Jesus Christ returns.
This is the end of the story that God is writing.
“And put me in it!”
And here’s the invitation of the whole series; the invitation inherent in the Colours of Life: this too can be your story.
To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God, and they will be my children.
Revelation 21:6-7
But this invitation comes with a warning:
But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practise magic arts, the idolaters and all liars – they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death.
Revelation 21:8
ALL those who accept the invitation of Jesus, to come to him in humble repentance and faith, to be forgiven of their sins and (spiritually) washed clean by his once and for all death and resurrection, are then adopted into his family, empowered by his Holy Spirit to live into their new reality, and assured of this YELLOW:LIFE by the deposit of that same Holy Spirit.
But we need to hear this…
All those who ACCEPT the invitation of Jesus, to come to him in humble repentance and faith, to be forgiven of their sins and (spiritually) washed clean by his once and for all death and resurrection, are then adopted into his family, empowered by his Holy Spirit to live into their new reality, and assured of this YELLOW:LIFE by the deposit of that same Holy Spirit.
Colours of Life: Your Story?
God has written a story, and he invites you into that story—to be a member of his Kingdom, his family, his eternal city. He invites you into his LIFE.
The question of this series is ultimately this: Is that your story?
Do you recognise that you are created with purpose: to be friends with God?
Do you confess that you have lived your own way, rather than God’s way?
Are you sorry for your sins, and have you repented of them?
Have you asked Jesus for his death and resurrection to be the means by which your sins are forgiven, your life cleansed, your spiritual state healed, your life and eternity changed?
If so, here’s the promise of the YELLOW colour: You have LIFE. Life with God, that starts now and continues on into all eternity.
For the majority of us here this morning, for whom this is already true, who are already in God’s story, our hope and prayer is that these five simple colours may be a means by which you are empowered to tell this story to others. When a neighbour, colleague, family member or friend asks, “What’s that whole Christian thing about anyway?”, you know you can answer, “It’s pretty simple, really. The whole thing can be summed up in five colours. Do you have 30 seconds for me to tell you?”
Thanks to Trevecca Okholm for this anecdote, found in her chapter ‘Bridging the Islands: Connecting Generations with Story and Wonder’ in Wilson McCoy (2025) Imagining All Generations.
Trevecca Okholm, p.133