SPEAKER_01: Lord, thank you for bringing us here together this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for your grace.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for your mercy.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for your love.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for sending your son for us.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for his humiliation.
SPEAKER_01: How he laid aside the riches of heaven, put on the weakness of sinful flesh.
SPEAKER_01: How he was born in a low condition.
SPEAKER_01: How he suffered the miseries of his life.
SPEAKER_01: Death itself on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: The silence of the barrier.
SPEAKER_01: We thank you for these things, Father, because on the other side of them we know there is exaltation.
SPEAKER_01: So we thank you for the lowness of Jesus in coming for us.
SPEAKER_01: And we thank you for the highness of Jesus in rising from the dead and ascending into heaven and in sitting at your right hand.
SPEAKER_01: Help us this morning as we consider his exaltation.
SPEAKER_01: May it strengthen our faith, and help us to look forward to the day when he comes again in glory.
SPEAKER_01: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Alright, so last week we talked about the humiliation of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Christ's humiliation consisted in his being born in that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the cursed death of the cross, the wrath of God, and being buried and continuing under the power of death for a time.
SPEAKER_01: That was question 27.
SPEAKER_01: Today we come to question 28.
SPEAKER_01: Wherein consists Christ's exaltation?
SPEAKER_01: The exaltation, or Christ's exaltation consists in his rising again from the dead on the third day and ascending up into heaven, and sitting at the right hand of God and coming to judge the world at the last day.
SPEAKER_01: So resurrection, ascension, session, judgment.
SPEAKER_01: That's pretty much what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_01: So we'll start with resurrection, the resurrection of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Thinking, maybe objections you have to the resurrection before you became a believer, or maybe objections you hear from other people.
SPEAKER_01: What are some of the difficulties you encounter with believing in Jesus' resurrection?
SPEAKER_03: It might be like the Padducees and not believe and raise from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, that's that might be the default sort of uh worldview that you come across, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's not just that Jesus didn't rise from the dead, it's that Jesus couldn't rise from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: And why couldn't Jesus rise from the dead?
SPEAKER_01: Because people don't rise from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: Well, what if one did?
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, they can't.
SPEAKER_01: But one did, they can't.
SPEAKER_04: You see how that goes, right?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Any other objections you hear?
SPEAKER_01: Any other arguments that you can remember getting into over the resurrection?
SPEAKER_08: Jesus didn't die, did they place somebody else in the tomb?
SPEAKER_01: Right.
SPEAKER_01: So it couldn't happen.
SPEAKER_01: So how do we explain it, right?
SPEAKER_01: How do we explain the resurrection of Christ?
SPEAKER_01: How do we explain all these eyewitness accounts that people saw him walking around afterward?
SPEAKER_01: Well, someone else must have died.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe a lookalike.
SPEAKER_01: That's what some Muslims argue.
SPEAKER_08: What did the brother say when he saw the wounds in his hand?
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: There are a number of different ways that people object to the resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: And the you know, the first thing to notice is that they are all grounded in that materialistic, atheistic worldview.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe not all of them, but most of them.
SPEAKER_01: The typical objections you're going to encounter today.
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, you're going to have a number of different ways to try and deal with the fact that resurrection is so central to the Christian faith.
SPEAKER_01: Because the Christian faith is a historical faith.
SPEAKER_01: It's a faith that believes not just in God, but in the fact that God has acted in history in various and sundry ways.
SPEAKER_01: And he has spoken along with that acting in order to interpret what he has done as he's active in the world.
SPEAKER_01: And so the resurrection is a thing that happened.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus was born, Jesus died, Jesus rose again.
SPEAKER_01: It's a thing that happened that you have to believe in, you have to believe that it happened in order to actually believe the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: What does Paul say?
SPEAKER_01: You know, if you believe in your heart that Jesus, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is the Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will be saved.
SPEAKER_01: So you have to believe that it happened.
SPEAKER_01: And oftentimes what people will do is say, well, the resurrection is a metaphor.
SPEAKER_01: The resurrection is an illustration.
SPEAKER_01: It demonstrates something for us about the enduring value and quality of Jesus and his teaching.
SPEAKER_01: Friedrich Schleiermacher, he is kind of the patron saint of progressive Christianity, modern Protestant liberalism.
SPEAKER_01: And his view was that you know Christianity taps into something that's basic to everyone, this feeling of absolute dependence.
SPEAKER_01: That's what religion is about.
SPEAKER_01: It's about a feeling of absolute dependence that everyone experienced this.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, better than anyone ever before in history, knew what it felt like to be absolutely dependent on God.
SPEAKER_01: And so he was the best teacher of religion, religion, uh, in all of the world.
SPEAKER_01: And because he was so impactful, because he was so insightful, his influence lived on in the community of people who were most immediately and most significantly impacted by him and his teaching.
SPEAKER_01: Well, how does it live on?
SPEAKER_01: For some, it lives on as a kind of resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is still alive, he's with us, he's still teaching us.
SPEAKER_01: And you just have the spinning out of this myth, the spinning out of this story that becomes something like a legend, and that's what progressive Christian liberalism would take to be the nature of the resurrection of the Christian faith.
SPEAKER_01: But what's the problem with that?
SPEAKER_01: There are many problems with that.
SPEAKER_01: You know, anybody would care to hazard a guess?
SPEAKER_01: At a few.
SPEAKER_01: So we all ought to be dependent on other people.
SPEAKER_01: And I think Schleiermacher would say that Jesus showed us what it looks like to truly be dependent upon God.
SPEAKER_01: But why is it not enough to say that the resurrection is just a myth, just a legend?
SPEAKER_01: Where do you think that falls short?
SPEAKER_03: You cannot listen to the deity of Christ if you knew that.
SPEAKER_01: He's not to fulfill God's command in order to be real.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and this idea that the resurrection would just be a myth.
SPEAKER_01: Myths are the kinds of things that develop over long, long, long periods of time.
SPEAKER_01: But if you look at the New Testament, uh, Jesus is crucified and resurrected around 33 AD.
SPEAKER_01: And you have books being written, like late 40s, early 50s, mid-50s.
SPEAKER_01: That's a really short amount of time for a mythology to develop, just historically speaking.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't work like that.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't work like that at all.
SPEAKER_01: Because you start spinning these myths about Jesus, then the people who were alive when Jesus was alive, it's like, and then no, no, it didn't go down like that.
SPEAKER_01: You guys are making that up.
SPEAKER_01: It's completely impossible to account for the widespread of the New Testament accounts if these things don't actually ground in some historical truth and some historical reality.
SPEAKER_00: There's a motive for everything.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: There are motivations for everything.
SPEAKER_00: Right.
SPEAKER_00: And why, and we all know this, we've all heard it, but it's so beautiful to say, how does a coward, and I say that with all due respect, of Peter, we probably would have done the same thing, right?
SPEAKER_00: Right.
SPEAKER_00: How do these 11 apostles suddenly give their life, right?
SPEAKER_00: Or 10.
SPEAKER_00: Jews kill themselves John with the patmos, but point being is you don't die for a lie.
SPEAKER_00: You don't die for you saw the risen Christ, right?
SPEAKER_00: And and you you just you don't die for a lie.
SPEAKER_00: There was no motivation, there was no remuneration, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: They they got nothing out of it.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: So that's that's such an easy argument.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
SPEAKER_01: So so you can understand how and why people who don't believe in God would deny the resurrection, right?
SPEAKER_01: That makes that makes some sense.
SPEAKER_01: It's it's wrong, right?
SPEAKER_01: But if you have a materialistic worldview where everything's matter, motion, time, and chance, a hundred 100% of us don't make it out of this life alive, you can see the logic in it.
SPEAKER_01: And then you can see why, hey, maybe these people had this crazy experience of this person, and they just have this collective psychological delusion, or they want them to live on in their fables and stories and myths.
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I mean, there's a logic to it.
SPEAKER_01: It's wrong, it's historically wrong, it falls in a face.
SPEAKER_01: But there are also plenty of people who would say that they believe in God.
SPEAKER_01: There are plenty of people who would call themselves Christians who deny the resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: Part of the the uh origin story of our denomination is the PCA, is that you know, in American Protestantism, a lot of this liberal progressive thinking had taken over, and you had ministers who were being ordained to gospel ministry who were denying key facts of the faith, like the uh the virgin birth, the inspiration and authority of scripture, the bodily resurrection of Christ, uh the atoning nature of the cross.
SPEAKER_01: And so you do, you do you have it even today.
SPEAKER_01: I promise you that you could take out your phone and look through your contacts list, call up the people you know to be more progressive styles of Christian, right?
SPEAKER_01: And start asking them about the resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: Do you think that really happened?
SPEAKER_01: Nah, nah, I don't think that really happened.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's it's not that uncommon.
SPEAKER_01: So is it necessary for a Christian to believe in the resurrection?
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I asked that as a rhetorical question.
SPEAKER_01: Woohoo!
SPEAKER_04: You have an enthusiastic response.
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
SPEAKER_01: We got a hot mic here.
SPEAKER_01: But why?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, why?
SPEAKER_01: Why would you say that?
SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna unpack this some, but why would you say a Christian must believe in the resurrection?
SPEAKER_01: He's the firstborn of the dead.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he's the first born of the dead.
SPEAKER_01: We're following him.
SPEAKER_04: The first question you asked, like, you know, do we have a problem for you know with the resurrection?
SPEAKER_04: And it was like, no.
SPEAKER_04: Like, I couldn't think of any hesitation I had in that.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Because I just accept it as a as a fact.
SPEAKER_04: Because your eyes have been opened.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: I just accept it as a fact.
SPEAKER_04: And so I I would think that anyone who would profess themselves to be a Christian would have to accept.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, otherwise, what's the point of it?
SPEAKER_01: Right.
SPEAKER_01: Or if you're just a believer, right?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, do you believe in God?
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
SPEAKER_01: Do you believe that at least in some sense he created the world?
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
SPEAKER_01: Do you believe that he can change things in the world?
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
SPEAKER_01: Do you pray to him and ask him to do stuff?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I do.
SPEAKER_01: Do you believe he can raise a dead man from the grave?
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_06: It doesn't follow.
SPEAKER_06: There's legal as well.
SPEAKER_06: You have to hold just death and resurrection.
SPEAKER_06: So those two pieces together create legal implications, you know, for the Christian as well.
SPEAKER_06: And then you can get into, you know, Christmas victor versus the imputation of righteousness as we see it, you know, in our religion.
SPEAKER_06: But you know, there's that legal aspect of it that if that didn't happen, the dead is not waiting.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: So uh that's right.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: If we don't have the resurrection, then we just have a dead guy.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Just another failed Jewish upstart revolutionary.
SPEAKER_03: If Christ wasn't raised from the dead, then we of all people are to be hidden.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Corinthians 15, 17.
SPEAKER_01: If Christ has not been raised, then your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
SPEAKER_01: And the way that works in that argument there, and in Corinth, the people didn't believe in bodily resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: They believed in a spiritual resurrection that had already happened.
SPEAKER_01: And therefore, if you're already spiritually raised, then each tree can be married, right?
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter what you do.
SPEAKER_01: Go into the brothel, do whatever you want to do, because uh the Christian faith is not a bodily thing.
SPEAKER_01: But what Paul is arguing is there, it's like, whoa, whoa, wait a second.
SPEAKER_01: If people aren't raised bodily, then Jesus wasn't raised bodily.
SPEAKER_01: And if Jesus wasn't raised bodily, then we're all screwed.
SPEAKER_01: And that's where he goes on to start teaching about hey, if the first Adam was sown a spirit, a physical being, the second Adam has come as a life-giving spirit, and starts talking about the reality of the resurrection, the reality that Jesus is the first fruits.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Corinthians 15, 20 through 21.
SPEAKER_01: But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
SPEAKER_01: For as by a man came death, by a man has also come resurrection of the dead.
SPEAKER_01: So Christ is the first fruits, which means we follow in his train.
SPEAKER_01: Uh we, he's the first of the new resurrection life.
SPEAKER_01: He has already entered into the resurrection life, and we, if he has done that, can actually look forward to it for ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: But if he hasn't done that, if Jesus hasn't been raised, if Jesus hasn't entered into that new mode of resurrection, eternal life, then we have no reason to believe that we will.
SPEAKER_01: And so is the resurrection necessary?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's necessary.
SPEAKER_01: It's necessary based on the reality of what Jesus did, it's based on the reality of our hope, following upon Jesus, what Jesus did, and it's also necessary from the perspective of the story that God has been telling, the redemptive story that God has been telling since the beginning.
SPEAKER_01: Because remember what Genesis 3.15 says.
SPEAKER_01: I will put enmity, he's talking to the serpent, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.
SPEAKER_01: He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.
SPEAKER_01: So that's what happened at the cross.
SPEAKER_01: And how do we know that Jesus actually won the battle instead of being conquered by the serpent?
SPEAKER_01: He rose from the dead, right?
SPEAKER_01: In the resurrection, we have the declaration of victory over the serpent, right?
SPEAKER_01: That's that's the story of scripture, really.
SPEAKER_01: The seed of the woman versus the seed of the serpent.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus wins the decisive battle for the seed of the woman over against the seed of the serpent.
SPEAKER_01: He does it in the middle of time of the cross and the resurrection, and we he has done enough in that for us to have good hope that he will come in the end to consummate the victory.
SPEAKER_01: It's like the D-Day invasion back during World War II.
SPEAKER_01: That was the day America won the war.
SPEAKER_01: Once we took the beach and took the ground, it just took time for that victory to be realized in reality.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: So that's resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about ascension.
SPEAKER_01: So you have the resurrection on the third day.
SPEAKER_01: And then some 40 days later, you have Jesus' ascension into heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Heaven means a number of different things in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: It can mean the endless, self-sufficient life of God.
SPEAKER_01: It can mean the state of men and angels as they share life with God.
SPEAKER_01: It could also refer to the sky as an emblem of God's eternal life.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus entered into heaven in that second sense, the abode of men and angels with God.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus ascended into a place.
SPEAKER_01: And that's different than what, say, a Lutheran would believe about the ascension.
SPEAKER_01: Lutherans believe that the ascension is less spatial and more, for lack of a better term, regal.
SPEAKER_01: Or Jesus' ascension is him kind of entering into a kind of mode of power at the metaphorical right hand of God, which exists literally everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: And that's one of the reasons why a Lutheran can believe that Jesus is present, physically present in the Lord's Supper, even though it happens in 10,000 different places at any given moment on any given Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: Scripture, however, shows us Jesus actually ascending into a place bodily.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we don't know where the place is, we can't see the place, we can't go and visit it.
SPEAKER_01: You know, when uh I think it was Yuri Gregor, when he went up, was the first Russian in space, as far up as he went, it wasn't that far.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, he when he came back, he gave an interview and he talked about how he's ascended into space and he looked around and he didn't see heaven.
SPEAKER_01: I'm paraphrasing.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, I looked up, I didn't see heaven.
SPEAKER_01: There's no heaven.
SPEAKER_01: You're like, okay, well, I mean, that's a dumb thing to say.
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's something that you would expect an atheistic Marxist to kind of say.
SPEAKER_01: Like, but heaven isn't the kind of place that you can see.
SPEAKER_01: It's as if Jesus pulled back the curtain on reality and stepped behind it.
SPEAKER_01: And he is seated at the right hand of the Father right now, fully present, fully bodily, and yet in a way that we can't go and see and go and touch, and we're waiting for him to ascend or descend back down bodily.
SPEAKER_01: Ephesians 4 10 says, He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.
SPEAKER_01: He's he's he's enthroned, right?
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 24, 3 through 6, who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, and who shall stand in his holy place?
SPEAKER_01: He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false, and does not swear deceitfully.
SPEAKER_01: He will receive blessings from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob, Salah.
SPEAKER_01: So you have all of these texts about Jesus ascending to the right hand of the Father, taking his position of authority, taking his position of enthronement.
SPEAKER_01: He is seated there, waiting for the day until God makes all of his enemies a footstool for his feet.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Jesus is doing right now.
SPEAKER_01: And compare that to what we talked about a couple weeks ago when we talked about the kingly office of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Contradispensationalism, we're not waiting for the day when Jesus will take his seat on the throne and become our king.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is our king right now.
SPEAKER_01: And we're just waiting for the king to return.
SPEAKER_01: Like Caesar and I, we've been reading Return of the King.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, just one of the wonderful ways about how Tolkien tells the story and presents Aragorn to us, it's like the whole time he is the king.
SPEAKER_01: Even when he's a ranger out in the woods, even when he's questing with his people, people recognize him as the king.
SPEAKER_01: And even though he has not yet entered into the fullness of his reign and ministerial as the king of Gundor, everybody still bows the knee.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody still follows him.
SPEAKER_01: He does wield a kind of authority, even though there's still a battle left to be fought.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the king.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is seated on this throne.
SPEAKER_01: He's at the right hand of the Father.
SPEAKER_01: And the word we have for that in Latin is the word session.
SPEAKER_01: The word in Latin is sessio, means to see.
SPEAKER_01: So when we talk about Jesus heavenly session, we're talking about Jesus seated at the right hand of the Father, ruling by his word and spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Reflect on that for a minute.
SPEAKER_01: Several of you were here a couple weeks ago.
SPEAKER_01: So we talked about the kingly office of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: But what difference does it make?
SPEAKER_01: Before we unpack it a little more.
SPEAKER_01: What difference does it make that Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father right now ruling the world?
SPEAKER_01: That he has all power, all authority.
SPEAKER_03: That's what we believe.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning was the word, the word was with God, and the word was God.
SPEAKER_01: What are some of the things that Jesus has done, is doing, will do from the right hand of the Father?
SPEAKER_01: Interceding.
SPEAKER_01: That's a big one.
SPEAKER_01: It's a churchy word.
SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: What is Jesus doing for us right now?
SPEAKER_03: Making our prayers acceptable to us.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah he's bringing our prayers into the presence of the Father.
SPEAKER_01: And he's praying in the presence of the Father for us.
SPEAKER_07: He's preparing the money for us.
SPEAKER_01: What's that?
SPEAKER_01: He's preparing the place for us.
SPEAKER_01: I want to read a quote from J.I.
SPEAKER_01: Packer about that interceding bit before we come back to that.
SPEAKER_01: It's from his book Affirming the Apostles' Creed.
SPEAKER_01: It says interceding denotes not a suppliant making an appeal to charity, but the intervening of one who has sovereign right and power to make requests and take action in another's interest.
SPEAKER_01: It's truly said that our Lord's presence in life in heaven is the enthroned priest king, our propitiation so to speak in person is itself his intercession.
SPEAKER_01: Just for him to be there guarantees all grace to us and glory too.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah Jesus teaches us to pray to the Father it's interesting right so Jesus instructs us in other words prayer to pray to the Father and I know that we've discussed that before the the the the proper way to pray you pray to the Father in the name of the Son through the Holy Spirit so how is the Christ Jesus interceding for us?
SPEAKER_00: I mean I I talked to Jesus too but anyway it's a nuance there.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah so yeah Jack.
SPEAKER_02: And he's still acting in his priestly role as our covenant mediator for us as he our prayer father.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah mediator role.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah Jesus' entire life was a life of prayer and that's not just to say that he prayed a lot but actually his life and his ministry in itself were a kind of prayer a kind of offering to God.
SPEAKER_01: And when Hebrews 5 says that he you know he prayed with loud cries and tears and he was heard because of it and that I don't remember the exact words but God and God rescued him in response to his prayers what does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus still died right it's talking about the resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: And it's talking about the fact that you know when Jesus by way look at the whole of Hebrews Jesus by way of his perfect sacrifice he is the better priest who offers the better sacrifice and ministers in the better places.
SPEAKER_01: And so he's able to bring his own blood into the presence of God not the blood of bulls and goats but his own blood on our behalf.
SPEAKER_01: And so that priestly mediation that would happen in the temple by way of the priests Jesus is doing it effectively forever.
SPEAKER_01: Not because it has to be done over and over again but because his blood was that sufficient in the cross that it covers us and he continues to mediate for us he continues to plead for us he continues to pray for us he continues to uphold us as our priest king.
SPEAKER_07: It is finished.
SPEAKER_01: It is finished yeah so that's that's one of the things he's doing at the right hand of the Father right now.
SPEAKER_01: And he won't quit doing it until he comes again in glory and he makes all things new.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 5 7 Kang is it's so amazing.
SPEAKER_00: In the days of his flesh Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death and he was heard because of his reverence.
SPEAKER_00: There you go.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah I think the better translation there is to say he was saved out of death because again Jesus died he truly died.
SPEAKER_01: And when God heard him God saved him out of death he raised him to new life.
SPEAKER_01: Georgette mentioned he's preparing a place for us.
SPEAKER_01: That's another really important part too his entering into the presence of God secures for us spirit mediated access to the Father.
SPEAKER_01: And even right now even as he's preparing a place for us we're seated in the heavenly places with him right now.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Ephesians 2 6 says Colossians 3 tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus where our life is our lives are hidden with him in Christ right now.
SPEAKER_01: So this is already not yet tension right he's preparing a place for us in the presence of the Father in a sense we already inhabit that place and yet there's more to come in the consummation so he's preparing it for us and by his Holy Spirit he's preparing us for it.
SPEAKER_01: And the mention of the Spirit there's there's one we haven't we haven't said uh what did Jesus do right after he ascended into heaven what happened or shortly after the helper came.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah the helper came Pentecost he ascends to the right hand of the Father and then he pours his spirit out on his church just like he said he would talk about dependence back at the beginning what you're talking about here is what makes us 100% dependent upon Christ for any of this our hope of ever being able to receive any of these benefits makes us 100% it reminds us of the sovereignty of his benefits.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes the way we think about how this works is you know Jesus is the sovereign dispenser of divine goodies right like forgiveness and eternal life and blessing and all the things and what we do is we put our faith in Jesus and putting our faith in Jesus is like putting a coin in the machine right out comes the thing that we're hoping to get whether it's salvation or anything else.
SPEAKER_01: And when really the biblical view of things is by grace through faith you are united to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: So it's not as though Jesus takes something and hands it to you it's more that you are united intimately and spiritually with the one who possesses all of the benefits in himself.
SPEAKER_03: So you have him and that is the key that is the center and in and through him you receive the benefits justification adoption sanctification peace joy love hope all these things what you're hitting on that was something that I was thinking about this morning that being Father's day today our children that they they call me we called and and they were grateful for being born in our family you know that they received so and it's it's not like I handed it to them it's just the fact that they were mine they were my family.
SPEAKER_03: God is like that he's my heavenly father.
SPEAKER_03: Praise the Lord you know I've received the benefit of an option to be included in his faith yeah just like I had my kids at the part of my family.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah you don't get that from a metaphor you don't get that from just a philosophy of life you get that from an arisen and ascended Savior with whom you've been united through faith.
SPEAKER_01: So again thinking on his heavenly session thinking on his sovereignty reminds us that you know he is utterly and ultimately powerful to uh through the Spirit to graft us into himself and through that vital union to give us all of those benefits.
SPEAKER_01: And let's leverage those benefits right yeah we have to leverage excuse me leverage those benefits through study of the word through growth and knowledge of him when we don't do that we rip ourselves off of immeasurable blessings and it's that makes me sad when I think about Jesus living in us and we just scroll we troll we watch TV for on Saturday for seven freaking hours you know and it's like we have the Christ right here and then we don't plumb those debts in the word so and that's the evil one that's the brokenness of our you know of our human nature but still it makes mistakes Christ yeah so forgive me for my uh non-secular yeah we do you know we worship a risen king um and the thing about a king is you know maybe it's hard for us to to grasp this in America but like a king is someone you're supposed to rally around uh in an ideal setting right a king is someone that you want to look up to someone you want to love someone you want to adore I mean there's a reason why everything stopped in the UK when Queen Elizabeth died and you had this massive massive turnout across the whole country for her funeral right it's that's supposed to be our relationship with a monarch of you know the world screwed up right so kings are often not worthy of that sort of adoration but Jesus is and so when we look up to heaven and we look at our king seated at the right hand of the Father you know that's someone we ought to rally around someone we want to rally around somebody we want to follow someone we want to follow into battle even with that sort of battle idea in mind that we come to the last part Jesus exaltation because in the catechism question his exaltation consists of his resurrection his ascension at the right hand of the Father and also in his coming to judge the dead at the last day so why why why do you think that the writers of the catechism would include his coming in judgment at the last day as an element of his exaltation why do you think that fits here authority yeah so in Philippians 2 Philippians 2 is or Philippians is written to Christians in Philippi Philippi was a Roman colony it was started basically with a with an influx of former Roman soldiers who've been made citizens so that was it was a kind of militaristic place that was the sort of vibe and there was pressure there's pressure from Jews there's pressure from Romans and part of the main messages of Philippians is teaching the people of God how to be partners in the gospel how to be citizens of the heavenly city even as they live as citizens of the earthly city and one of the things that Paul does in order to orient their hope is he points them to the humiliation and exaltation of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: It's Philippians 2.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna read it because it's worth reading because you get the two moments of humiliation and exaltation says have this mind among yourselves starting verse 5 which is yours in Christ Jesus who though he was in the form of God did not count the quality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even death on the cross so that's that's all last week what we talked about last week.
SPEAKER_01: That's humiliation.
SPEAKER_01: That's Jesus coming low, becoming obedient, dying on the cross all of that.
SPEAKER_01: But here's where Paul takes it therefore because of his humiliation and all that he has done therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father so he comes low and then he comes high in the exaltation.
SPEAKER_01: And that's held out for for God's people as a model because before that it says hey no selfish ambition quit thinking of yourself more as than more as more than other people look to Jesus who definitely was more than everybody who made yet made himself less.
SPEAKER_01: Do that live like that love one another like that interact with your culture like that and I promise you on the other side of that humiliation there will be exaltation just like there was with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And the focal point of that here is not just resurrection it is that day when what is true in principle now will become true in reality where every knee is compelled to bow before Jesus some willingly some unwillingly and confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father every knee every tongue everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: Kenny this hits my heart true humility you don't care about the exaltation that you know what I mean it's like you don't look at that you don't look for the reward you just you just humble yourself because you're just falling into him and and you know that's one of the things that we've talked about in our men's group is that you know you you store up crowns for yourself I I don't and then you lay them back at the feet of Jesus but I don't care you know I'm just gonna get the footage I don't care about the exaltation I will affirm 95% of what you just said I'll take that and maybe the 5% comes in you know Jesus Hebrews 12 for the joy that was set before him took the cross despising the shame.
SPEAKER_01: So even Jesus himself didn't just go to cross because it was the right thing to do but there was a joy set before him a reward set before him even.
SPEAKER_01: So scripture you know God it's like you know we tend to think as fallen human beings about carrots and sticks as like tools of manipulation and we don't want to play that game and we shouldn't want to play that game.
SPEAKER_01: And yet God holds out the carrots to us not in the sort of one for one like do this thing and you'll be blessed sort of way but you know look at Revelation the book of Revelation is written to say for the people of God hey you're suffering this really sucks.
SPEAKER_01: Babylon Rome really has power over you in an earthly sense and they're really making your life miserable but have good hope because here's what's going to happen in the end.
SPEAKER_01: Babylon isn't going to win in the end.
SPEAKER_01: Rome's not going to win in the end whatever iteration that takes throughout church history they're not going to win in the end.
SPEAKER_01: And so and then Paul again here in Philippians it's it's it's it's not the carrot stick mentality but it is an encouragement to say hey keep doing what you're supposed to do keep taking the low road because on the other side it's not in vain right it's not in vain.
SPEAKER_01: You're not getting beat up you're not getting humiliated for nothing for no reason here's what's on the other side of it.
SPEAKER_01: So be comforted be encouraged keep going keep on keeping on so coming back to the idea of judgment right that this the the exaltation of Christ shows forth his authority like you said his authority over all things and the fact that in the end he will make everything right the king has that kind of authority.
SPEAKER_01: The king will win the last battle he will make everything right in judgment you know something that's closely related to resurrection in Acts 17 when Paul is on Mars Hill and he's arguing before the Areopagus he talks about the resurrection of Christ as being evidence as proof that God will one day judge the world through the one he's appointed.
SPEAKER_01: Paul's not arguing for the resurrection in Acts 17 he's arguing from the resurrection saying to them essentially you see the risen Christ that is proof positive God is coming back to judge the world and that's the one through whom he's going to judge the world and some people say Paul you're crazy and other people say I think there's something to that why don't you stick around and tell us some more Jesus so his resurrection is an evidence of coming judgment.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus himself is also the agent of judgment the Father has granted authority to the son to execute judgment over the peoples of the earth.
SPEAKER_01: That's from John 5 25 to 29 looking at Daniel 7 which is this vision of one to come on the clouds with glory like a son of man.
SPEAKER_01: God hands over the judgment of the world to him editing in real time again here the outcome of judgment you know revelation is scary revelation is scary but if you're in Christ it's not supposed to scare you at all sensationalize videos of planes falling from the sky and fiery demons coming to attack you and so on and so forth if you're in Christ you don't have to worry about any of that.
SPEAKER_01: Because the king is coming to deliver his people not to judge his people but to deliver his people and to finally put everything right in the world and on that day when there are no more tears when there are no more diseases when there when there is no more death Jesus will be fully publicly vindicated and exalted that's how the story will end.
SPEAKER_01: So I've got some notes here on eternal conscious punishment and annihilation and things like that but we covered that not too long ago in um in some of these classes in our class on Christology so I'm just gonna open the floor now to reflect on what we've talked about today or anything we've been talking about the past couple weeks with Jesus the ministry of Jesus as prophet as priest as king his humiliation his exaltation what do you you know how do you respond to what or you know what's kicking around in your head about what we talked about today?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus exalted at the right hand of the Father.
SPEAKER_04: The thing when so when I first started coming here was the first first time in my Christian life I ever heard the word or understood the word intercede.
SPEAKER_01: And that spoke volumes to me because to me it's it's I know like at the at the end of the days Jesus is like who's mine you for me you know and that just is that was like literally that was a beautiful thing yeah who will vouch for you when you stand before the throne of God's judgment um who will vouch for you uh I've known some good lawyers in my dead thank you really kind of you can say I'm a little embarrassed but thank you appreciate you I've also known James it's like um if you have to take one person in the universe to plead your case before the throne of God I mean you'd be my second call James Jesus right yeah Jesus who sends the Spirit to be your subjective advocate now so that you know you have Jesus on your side right but when you stand before the throne it's it's you know it's it's the guy seated up there in the bar with the judge who says no he's one of ours right he's he's good right he wasn't good but he's good now right I've got to plead you for you yeah alright right time served on the cross I'll start Jeff I'm just saying it's it's a comfort a great comfort knowing we have a living God that is actively hearing us and prompting us to go to him and our prayers just start floating up into the skies into the air yeah that offered himself for us yeah and continues to appear us yeah I saw hands I'm wrong I think of uh Romans 12 1 and 2 um that Paul um is begging them you know uh that they would present their bodies living in holy sacrifice which is acceptable and he goes on in two and says uh to be transformed by the renewing of your mind in Romans 8 he talks about minding the things of spirit now when I think about the resurrection I'm thinking about in Paul's exhortation or his plea that we would uh how do you put um brothers by the mercies of God protect your lives I that's what I think I am so overwhelmed at the great majesty of God that the least thing I can do is submit to God's mercy and you know and constantly looking at the word of God that is what I think what drives me is what puts me in my place yeah the key the king offers you peace terms why I mean the king of the universe right how foolish do you have to be to say no thanks as if you can win the fight take the peace terms and then even at that right once you accept the treaty once you come to peace with the king uh he doesn't treat you like a slave he doesn't throw you in prison he makes you not just a subject but a citizen and not just a citizen but a son or a daughter right so why why would you want anything?
SPEAKER_01: Why would you continue to fight against him?
SPEAKER_00: You lose the battle and get the inheritance yeah yeah you said that in one of your sermons which I think was so striking when not only are we declared righteous the judge sits and eats with us after you know after court you know comes in and and that's what the Lord says I will come and eat with you and um it isn't just you're declared innocent and you go back your way the actual judge says hey you're my son receive your inheritance and I mean that's just that's next level yeah all right well we are going to land the plane in a moment and I'll pray before we uh do I want to make sure I get to a little housekeeping before everybody stands up in skedaddles.
SPEAKER_01: The next two weeks we are taking a break from our regularly scheduled programming.
SPEAKER_01: Next week in the fellowship hall we're gonna have a state of the PCA report which is what I do every year the week after General Assembly where I'll just share some of the things that happened at General Assembly and what's going on in the denomination and answer any questions that people might have about that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_01: So that'll be next week and the week after is July 4th weekend uh it'll be July 5th on the Sunday so instead of having Sunday school as usual that day we're gonna get everybody together in the fellowship hall and we'll have a time of prayer and thanksgiving and fellowship just celebrating the 250th birthday of our of our country so hope you can make it to that the week after that we'll get back on with question 29.
SPEAKER_01: And we might meet in here again we might meet in the fellowship hall remains to be seen because we're gonna have this and we're gonna have a a Bible class on Nehemiah let's pray Lord thank you for sending Jesus thank you for raising Jesus exalting him to the right hand of the Father so that the one we worship is not just some religious guru who lived way back when, but a risen and ascended Lord, a king, who we can follow into spiritual war.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, thank you for uniting us to him.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for giving us all of his gifts and graces and access to the throne of heaven I pray that you'd be with us this morning as we worship you that you would send your Holy Spirit so that we could worship you in spirit and truth so that we would see Jesus more clearly and love him all the more freely and in our devotion show forth the riches of what you've done for us in we pray these things in Jesus' name amen.