NT Framework - A Man on God's Thrown

Yes indeed, a man in a physical body is indeed sitting on the thrown of God at the right hand of the Father; and yet this is no normal, mortal man. He also is God.

More information about Beyond the Walls, including additional resources can be found at www.beyondthewalls-ministry.com 

This series included graphics to illustrate what is being taught, if you would like to watch the teachings you can do so on Rumble (https://rumble.com/user/SpokaneBibleChurch) or on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtV_KhFVZ_waBcnuywiRKIyEcDkiujRqP).

Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner. 

Transcript

Welcome And Series Context

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and our series on the New Testament framework. Today, a smaller, bite-sized piece from the larger lesson.

The Session And Third Heaven

Resurrection Body And A Real Location

Why Creation Matters For Christ

SPEAKER_01 0:08

So we have to know from other passages what happened. And the other passages are called the session. And that is where he sat down at the right hand of the Father in the third heaven. And I'm saying a lot of things right now. I am saying so many things. I just said for there's third heaven. I didn't even talk about the first two that he passed through, but that would be our atmospheric heaven, the starry heavens, and then he goes to the third heaven. That's heaven, heaven, right? The highest heavens where God dwells, and there's a throne there. And he sat down. Now, what we have to realize is that he's in a resurrection body. He's in a human resurrection body. He's in the exact same body that he appeared to over a period of 40 days, right? In the gospel accounts. And one occasion more to more than 500. And that's the body that's actually at a what we would call a geometric point of reference. He's actually there. Like there's a location. I mean, if we had GPS for the whole first, second, third heavens, we could say this is the GPS coordinates for where the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ is. That's what we're supposed to think of. Now, that means that a human, who's actually a God human, a god man, is sitting at the helm of the universe. And this is an astonishing idea, right? Now let's just back away because we said all that. But let's back away and say, what do we need to know before so that we can really understand what all that means?

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Well, first thing is if he is the God man, then we have to know who is God, what is a man.

Creator Creature Distinction

Incarnation And Hypostatic Union

SPEAKER_01 1:55

And so we would immediately begin to back up when we're thinking about Jesus and his resurrection, all the way to creation. Because this is where we learn who God is and who man is. And so we have God and the creator-creature distinction, right? God is the creator, we are part of the creation. And creation includes man and nature. So God is not a part of his creation. He is separate from it. He's the creator of it. So there's the creator-creature distinction. That means that when we get to the person of Christ, since he is the creator and he's also a creature, that that's what is happening at the incarnation. So now we're jumping all the way over here, right? And we're saying, okay, we're going to look at the birth of the king. We're looking at the virgin birth. We're talking about Trinity because He's God and He's all, but He's also man, so that's hypostatic union. And this is complicated. If you don't have a good categorical understanding of who God is and who man is, how can you ever understand ultimately really who Jesus Christ is? So it's complicated. So we go all the way back, right? And we remember that the very first truth that God taught is Genesis 1:1.

Knowing God Through His Attributes

SPEAKER_02 3:14

In the beginning, God. Then he created, right?

Image Of God And Human Corollaries

SPEAKER_01 3:21

And there's that creator-creature distinction right there. So we want to know who God is, and we have an acronym for that, Sergey Lewis, right? Sovereign, righteous, just, loving, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immutable, eternal. Okay? There's some attributes of God, nine of them. There's others, but this is a basic level course, right? It's a simple way to remember who's God. Well, he saw J. Lewis, okay? And you can write that down and you can remember it forever, and you can teach it in Sunday school classes across the world. And everybody needs to know who God is. Now, man is made in God's image. He's not God, but he's made in God's image, right? So if God is sovereign, righteous, just, loving, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immutable, eternal, and man is made in the image of God, don't we think that man reflects the nature of God? Sure. So what we do is we start with sovereignty, and we say, well, if God is sovereign, and we're able to define this, which we are able to do, then we say, Well, what does man have that is a corollary to that? It's that we have choice. We have choice. Uh when we say God has is uh righteous and just, which means he's a standard for what's right and wrong, and he doesn't play favorites, right? Man has a corollary to that. We have conscience. Conscience. The conscience says, hey, there's something wrong. This is right, that's right, that's wrong. It's judging according to what? Some standard. Um then you talk about God, you say, Well, the next one is he's loving. Okay, well whenever we say God is loving, we mean in an infinite sense. His love is not conditioned on anything outside of himself. Okay, it's conditioned on who he is. In other words, he is love. That's the point. Doesn't matter. I mean, how could he love us if it was conditioned on love? In a word, just sinners. He can't love sin. So if he loves us, it's got to be based on his own character. Now we have love too, right? But it's finite. Okay, so you might capital L for God's love, lowercase L for our love, right? Shows the difference, okay, in His infinite quality and our finite quality, right? We have now we have by the way, on the as we talk about this, remember we have all these things because He He He is these things. That's why we are the way we are, made in His image. We talk about God being omniscient, meaning He knows all things, actual and possible, even all the what-ifs of history, right? Well, we don't have that, but what do we have? We have knowledge, we do have finite knowledge. Uh but it's a difference because God never learned anything. And uh everything you know, you learn. Almost everything. So there's a difference in our knowledge, okay? When we say He's omnipresent, we say, well, what do we have that's corollary to God's omnipresence? Omnipresence means God is completely everywhere, both inside of space and anything that's outside of space, because the universe is a space.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Uh there's something outside the universe, but it's not space, it's not created. It's God. Okay.

Omniscience Omnipresence And Our Limits

Fully God Fully Man In One Person

SPEAKER_01 6:23

That's what it is. Now, um what do we have that's a corollary to this omnipresence? Well, we have the concept of geometry and space. You take up a space, I take up a space. We can't take up the same space. Right. So um we have a finite analog. So at each, and we could go through all the attributes, but the point is when you begin to talk about the incarnation, about Jesus Christ, you're talking about the two of these being. You're talking about God and man coming together, okay, in one person, so that he is fully God with all the attributes of God, sovereign, righteous, just loving, and so forth. And then yet, at the same time, as a human, he also as he also has all the characteristics of man. He has choice, he has a conscience, he loves, he has to learn to gain knowledge. Isaiah even prophesied this about the Messiah, that he would sit every morning, the Father would wake him up and teach him. You say, but he's God. Yeah, but he's also 100% man. And it's in his it's in his humanity that he had to learn the word of God. And we we marvel at this, right? We should marvel. But that's what we mean by showing that if you don't have a good view of creation and a good understanding of who God is and whose man is, you're you can't have a good understanding of Jesus Christ. Okay, because he's the most complicated person that ever came into the history of the world. And he's the most complicated topic that we can ever think about.

Where To Find Visuals And Closing

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas. If you would like to see the visuals that went along with today's sermon, you can find those on Rumble and on YouTube under Spokane Bible Church. That is where Jeremy is the pastor and teacher. We hope you found today's lesson productive and useful in growing closer to God and walking more obediently with Him. If you found this podcast to be useful and helpful, then please consider rating us in your favorite podcast app. And until next time, we hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.