1:1 In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, 2 until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. 3 He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
4 And while staying1 with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me;5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with2 the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
The Ascension
6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”9 And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, 11 and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
1:1 In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, 2 until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. 3 He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
4 And while staying1 with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me;5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with2 the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
The Ascension
6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”9 And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, 11 and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Joel Brooks:
Tonight, we're gonna be taking a break from the gospel of John to look at the Ascension, but actually this is part 1 of part 2 that we will resume when we hit John 16 next week. But we're gonna be looking at the book of Acts. So if you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Acts chapter 1. It's there also in your worship guide, and we'll begin reading in verse 1. In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when He was taken up after He had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom He had chosen.
Joel Brooks:
To them, he presented himself alive after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God. And while staying with them, he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, you heard from me. For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, it is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.
Joel Brooks:
And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, 2 men stood by them in white robes and said, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. This is the word of the Lord.
Joel Brooks:
If you would, pray with me. Our father, we ask right now through your spirit that the words we have read would be so much more than black ink on white pages, But they would be your words and you would be speaking directly to us. We pray that my words would fall to the ground, blow away, and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:
Amen. If you remember a couple of years back when we were going through the book of Exodus, we saw how after the Lord had delivered the Israelites from the bondage of Egypt, he took them on a journey right to the foot of Mount Sinai. And when they arrived there at Mount Sinai, their savior Moses, the one who had led them there, he was called up to the top of the mountain. And as he was there, ascended up into the mountain, the presence of God met him there and all of Sinai was enveloped in a thick cloud, an impenetrable cloud that no one could see through. And Moses was there for a long time lingering.
Joel Brooks:
Nobody knew what was going on. They didn't know when Moses would come down, if he would come down. And this led for a time of testing for the Israelites. It was a time of perseverance, a time of waiting. And so the question is, would they pass this test as they waited looking into the clouds?
Joel Brooks:
And the obvious answer because we've been through Exodus is no, they didn't pass the test. We read this when we get to Exodus 32. When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together, Aaron, and said to him, up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. I wanted to open with this story from Exodus because we're in a very similar situation.
Joel Brooks:
A similar time of testing. We wonder what has happened to Jesus? What what's going on? Why why is he there so long? Will he ever return?
Joel Brooks:
And if we're not careful, we can fall into the exact same trap as the Israelites did during this time of testing, and we can commit idolatry. Now we're not gonna melt down pieces of gold and make a golden calf and bow down to it. That's not what idolatry looks like in our lives. But what we do is we manufacture a different Jesus, a different Jesus than who he has really revealed himself to be. Jesus who is not seen as all powerful, not Jesus who is not seen as all powerful, not seen as currently ruling over all things.
Joel Brooks:
He's not a Jesus or a Lord who can demand absolute allegiance. Expect us to obey without hesitation. He's not supreme. He's not majestic. He might be risen.
Joel Brooks:
We have no doubts that he is risen, but we don't treat him as ascended and exalted and supreme, currently sitting and reigning at the throne of God. Now to prove this point, all one has to do is look at how we pray to see that, we're failing in this area of testing. The Western Church and the Christianity that we export to so many parts of the world of the world is a version of praying to Jesus like one would pray to an idol or a good luck charm. That's what our prayer life looks like, in which we were praying for healings. We're praying for traveling mercies, we're praying to have a good day, we're praying that the food we eat won't turn sour in our stomach.
Joel Brooks:
We treat Jesus like this little good luck charm. Now praying for those things aren't bad. Please don't leave here thinking Joel said I'm not supposed to say a blessing at the meal. That's not what I'm saying. Pray for a blessing.
Joel Brooks:
Pray for traveling mercies. But don't stop there. What we're missing in our prayer life is prayers like this found in Ephesians chapter 1. The father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of him. Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you.
Joel Brooks:
What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints? What is the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us who believe, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ, when he raised him from the dead and he seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places. Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the age to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all and in all. Now when is the last time you've been to a prayer meeting, and you've heard somebody pray like this?
Joel Brooks:
I mean typically you know what a prayer meeting is anyway. It's 50 minutes of sharing prayer requests, squeeze in a few minutes of prayer. I've been part of a lot of prayer meetings, and we pray from everything from sick dogs to, lots of relational drama, lots of financial instability, job insecurity. Once somebody asked prayer request was, I need a match for my antique chair. I was like, well, okay, we'll pray for that.
Joel Brooks:
But what about prayers like this? I don't know if I've ever heard anything really close to this. Paul, as he's praying this, he's clearly being gripped by this vision of not just a risen Jesus, but a risen and exalted Jesus. And his prayer life reflects this. Is this how you pray?
Joel Brooks:
Now usually, we think of the resurrection of Jesus as the time when Jesus was exalted. And that's why we make a huge deal of Easter. I mean, we make a pretty big deal of Easter here at our church. We have champagne for Easter, alright? Easter is a pretty big day for us to celebrate.
Joel Brooks:
But we largely ignore the day of Christ Ascension. Most churches do. However, it might surprise you to find that nowhere in scripture, not a single place will you ever find Jesus being described as exalted through his resurrection. Nowhere does it say he is exalted in his resurrection. He's exalted in 2 places.
Joel Brooks:
He's exalted on the cross and his death and he's exalted in his ascension. Those two places. And if either one of these places are forgotten in the church, it creates a vacuum in our worship. They fill it with with different forms of emotional manipulation, but they're all masking over this this one giant giant issue that we don't see Jesus as supreme, as glorious and as exalted. And the elephant in the room at these churches is that Jesus isn't physically here, and we feel his absence.
Joel Brooks:
We feel it, and we don't have a picture of of what he's doing and where he is. And and so we create this vacuum and we try to fill it with all of these other things, all of these idolatrous ways. But unlike Israel, which could not look through that impenetrable cloud, we know it's happening through the veil, because we have his word. We have his word. And when we look at his word, we get to see the exalted Jesus who has sat down at the right hand of God, the father.
Joel Brooks:
And what I want us to do is I want us to just take a look at a number of these scriptures that show us what Jesus is currently doing. We can start off by looking at the passage that we just read in acts, which describes Jesus being lifted up. He was lifted up in his ascension 40 days after he'd risen from the dead. By the way, don't take the lifted up to to mean literally he's just kind of floating up into space. That's led to a lot of bad artwork and some Monty Python movies, in which Jesus's feet are, you know, dangling down from the clouds.
Joel Brooks:
You laugh at that, but people really thought that's what was happening. So much so that when the space program began, the astronauts were looking for the body of Jesus floating around in space. When they didn't find it, C. S. Lewis had to write an article called The Seeing Eye to explain like that's not really what happened.
Joel Brooks:
That it lifted up, think of it as, you know, when you graduate from 7th grade up to 8th grade, or you get a job promotion, you're moving up in your job. It's not a spatial relationship. You're you're now in a different status though, a different state of being. Jesus has moved from earth's earth space into God's space, wherever that is. He has moved from earth to heaven, not up into the clouds.
Joel Brooks:
As the disciples are watching Jesus ascend, they just stand there gazing at it. Maybe as they're getting a glimpse into the heavenlies, they're just, they're gazing at this and they can't move. And so an angel comes and has to rebuke them. And it's a gentle rebuke, but it is a rebuke. Nevertheless, look at verse 10.
Joel Brooks:
Says, and while these disciples were gazing into heaven as he went, the whole 2 men stood by them in white robes and said, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven, he will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. You see the disciples at first, they're thinking of this ascension as a terrible loss. They're losing Jesus. They don't know what to do.
Joel Brooks:
And so they were just stagnant. And this is what happens to the church when they don't understand the ascension. They become stagnant. They do not. They think of the absence of the the body of Christ.
Joel Brooks:
They think of it as a incredible loss. I mean, how could Jesus leaving be better than him staying? That's the question we're gonna look at next week in John 16. We have the same reaction as Mary does after the resurrection. I love this story.
Joel Brooks:
When Mary, she goes to the tomb of Jesus, and she encounters the resurrected Jesus. And so when she sees him, she runs and she embraces him, and she has like a death grip on him. He got out of the grave, but he's not escaping Mary's hold, alright? And she's just holding on and she is not letting go, and then Jesus says these curious words to her in John 20. He said, do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the father.
Joel Brooks:
But go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my father, and to your father, to my God, and to your God. So he says, Mary, you know, pulling her off, let let go of me. You gotta let go of me. I'm resurrected, yes, but I'm not ascended. Yes, I have defeated death, I have defeated sin, but I do not have my ascended body yet.
Joel Brooks:
Let me go. And then he says, I want you to go and I want you to get the disciples, tell the disciples, but he doesn't say go tell the disciples I'm risen. He says go tell the disciples I'm ascending. Because that's what Jesus has always been longing for. He was resurrected so that he might be ascended.
Joel Brooks:
And this is the news that he wants to share. The ascension was always his aim. Now Mary, she didn't wanna let go of him, because she thought she might lose him. But she's not going to lose him. And Jesus, when he says let go of me, I need to ascend.
Joel Brooks:
He hinting at something we will see next week, saying that when I send my spirit, there will be a closeness you cannot imagine. You need to let me go. And once Mary got this, once the disciples understood the Ascension, they turned the world upside down. Let's look at what happened at the Ascension. Let's go through a few verses here.
Joel Brooks:
According to Paul in Ephesians 1 verse 20, when Jesus ascended, his father seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the age to come. Hebrews 1:3, after making purification for sins, Jesus sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels, as his name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. Hebrews 10 verse 12. But when Jesus had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.
Joel Brooks:
These verses, and there are more, they all tell us that when Jesus ascended, He went into the throne room and He sat down by the right hand of God. Now when we think of sitting down, we think as somebody is resting, but that's not that's not the image here. Jesus is not resting. I mean, we read that in Acts 1 when Luke says he was describing all that Jesus began to do. Jesus is just beginning to work.
Joel Brooks:
And when he sits down, he is beginning a new work. He's sitting at the right hand of God, meaning that he is assuming all of the power of God. Actively at work. And when he sits down, he's given all power, he's given all glory. We just read that when we went through Philippians 2, where Paul says, therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.
Joel Brooks:
Said that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the father. Hear me. This is what Jesus had been longing for his entire earthly life, Not resurrection, but to ascend and to be exalted. We see this in John 17, what we call the high priestly prayer, we read this.
Joel Brooks:
When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and he said, father, the hour has come. Glorify your son, that the son may glorify you. Glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. And father, I desire that these disciples also whom you have given me, may be with me where I am and that they may see my glory. The glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
Joel Brooks:
So the cry of Jesus's heart was that he might return to his father and be glorified, and that it would be witnessed by us here in this room. That we would be there present at that moment, and we would receive the life and the joy that radiates from his glorious presence. That's what Jesus longed for. That was his consuming desire was the ascension. On earth, Jesus, he was certainly glorious, but but not like the glory that he had beforehand.
Joel Brooks:
Not the glory like he has now. That we get a glimpse of this when we read through Revelation. Revelation chapter 4, in which John describes this glory, John gets a glimpse of the throne room. And when he sees the throne, he just can't stop speaking about it. And we read this.
Joel Brooks:
At once, I was in the spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven with 1 seated on the throne. And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald. Around the throne were 24 thrones. And seated on the thrones were 24 elders, clothed in white garments with golden crowns on their heads. 7 torches of fire, which are the 7 spirits of God.
Joel Brooks:
And before the throne, there was as it were a sea of glass like crystal. And around the throne on each side were 4 living creatures full of eyes in front and behind. The first creature like a lion. The second like an ox, the third with the face of a man, and the 4th like an eagle in flight. And the 4 living creatures, each of them with 6 wings full of eyes all around.
Joel Brooks:
And day night, they never cease to say, And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the 24 elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne, and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne. And they say, worthy are you, our lord and god, to receive glory and honor and power. That's glory. The word throne there, it's mentioned 11 times in 10 verses, you kind of get the idea that it left quite an impression on John when he saw this throne room and he who sat on it.
Joel Brooks:
And can you imagine how it would change our worship if we were to see such a thing? This glorified Jesus is the Jesus that Paul saw on the road to Damascus. Paul didn't just see the risen Lord. Paul saw the risen and ascended Lord on that road. And the risen and ascended Lord didn't need to say, come, look at my hands and feet.
Joel Brooks:
Come put your hands and feel my side. The risen and ascended Lord didn't need to eat fish before them just to prove that he was real. When Paul saw this risen and ascended Lord who was shining brighter than the sun, it left him blind. The ascended Lord left its mark. When John had his vision and revelation of the exalted Jesus, we read that he fell to his feet and he thought he was dead.
Joel Brooks:
And Daniel, when Daniel saw his vision of the glorified Jesus, scripture says that his color changed, literally the blood just left his face and he fell down like a dead man. In acts chapter 7, when Stephen gets to look at the risen and the ascended Lord, he doesn't even notice he's being stoned. I mean, seriously, we read this in acts 7. It says, but Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven. And he saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
Joel Brooks:
And he said, behold, I see the heavens opened, and the son of man standing at the right hand of God. And they begin to hold their ears, and they rushed Steven, and they begin stoning him. Do you think he even cared? As he's being pelted with these things and he's seeing Jesus standing by the throne and nowhere else do you see Jesus standing by the throne. The only thing I could think is Jesus is standing there welcoming Steven into his presence.
Joel Brooks:
And these stones are hitting him and they feel like little mosquitoes. He could care less as he sees his glorified savior. How that would change our worship if we were to see such a thing. I not made this discovery till 3, 4 years ago. But actually, if you read through the epistles, you're gonna notice a difference in the way that James and Jude and Peter write versus how John and Paul write.
Joel Brooks:
You're gonna you're gonna be able to tell a marked difference between those 2 different types of epistles. Now, James, Jude, and Peter, they have a very exalted view of Jesus, obviously. But actually, it's not as exalted as John and Paul. John and Paul simply cannot stop gushing and gushing over the exalted glorified Jesus. And the reason they can't stop doing it is because they actually saw the exalted ascended Jesus.
Joel Brooks:
Peter, James, Jude only saw the risen Lord. John and Paul saw the risen and ascended Lord. And when you look through their writings, you get the sense like Paul is struggling so hard to communicate what he has seen. As he begins praying like crazy things like God send your spirit just just to hold our bodies together so that we will have the ability to understand something that's not understandable. See things which which we really have no ability to even see.
Joel Brooks:
He's just straining to try to communicate this exalted Jesus to us. Because when he met the risen and ascended Lord on Damascus, the road to Damascus, it left him forever changed. It's amazing to think that one day we will see Jesus ascended as well. And when we see him, we are promised that we will become like him. We get a sneak peek at the ascension from heaven's point of view when we look at Daniel chapter 7.
Joel Brooks:
Daniel 7, it's a somewhat famous chapter in the Bibles. I think it's often misunderstood to talk about Christ's return, but it's actually not talking about Christ's return to earth, it's talking about his ascension to his heavenly home. This is where we get the son of man title that Jesus uses so much. So Daniel chapter 7 verse 13. I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven, there came 1 like a son of man, And he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him.
Joel Brooks:
And to him was given dominion and glory in a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom, one that shall not be destroyed. So Daniel here, he's describing the Ascension when Jesus goes back to the Ancient of Days here. And Jesus thought of this text so much, he meditated on this text so much that when he wanted to pick a title for who he was to describe who he was, he would use the title found here. He called himself the son of man.
Joel Brooks:
This is the text that he most identified with right here, the son of man. He used it more than any other title when talking about himself, because his mind was always on the ascension. Jesus quotes it when he's on trial in Matthew chapter 26, and he's on trial before the high priest. And the high priest says, I adjure you by the living God, Tell us if you are the Christ, the son of God. Jesus said to him, you have said so.
Joel Brooks:
It's one of the very few times Jesus speaks. But he does open his mouth here and he says, I tell you, I tell you this. From now on, you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven. Jesus tells his high priest, you kill me. You kill me.
Joel Brooks:
That begins the ceremony of my enthronement. Go ahead. You kill me and I will ascend, and I will be king of a kingdom that will never end. Can you imagine what that looked like his enthronement? We just get that little sneak peek in Daniel 7.
Joel Brooks:
But can you imagine put put on, you know, what I call a sanctified imagination and and try to think through what that would have been like? I mean, if myriads of angels have a party of just one sinner repents, Can you imagine the party that happened when Jesus came back victorious over the grave? Can you imagine? Can you imagine the procession as Jesus is going back home and as he's approaching the heavenly gates and and thousands upon thousands upon thousands of angels are all coming out of the city gates to welcome him in. I want you to try and picture this and all of these angels here, all of the ones that had to be held back by God at his crucifixion, The ones that wanted so desperately to stop every hammer blow driving the nails through his hands.
Joel Brooks:
The ones who wanted to stop the crown of thorns being put on his head. The one who in the garden of Gethsemane, they they wanted to whisper words of encouragement, but for some reason were mysteriously held back by God and said, be silent. And now, the son of man, he is coming home and the father says, be silent no more. Be silent no more. And this is where we get Psalm 24 as as Jesus is proceed proceeding there and he he pictured the the flags unfurled and the trumpets blaring and the people responsibly the angels responsibly calling back and forth to one another, calling out this.
Joel Brooks:
Lift up your heads, oh, gates. Be lifted up ancient doors that the king of glory may come in. Who is the king of glory? He's the lord, strong and mighty, mighty in battle. He's the king of glory.
Joel Brooks:
Lift up your heads. Be lifted up, oh, ancient doors that the king of glory may come in. Who is the king of glory? He's the Lord of hosts. He's the Lord of all of you angels.
Joel Brooks:
He is the king of glory. And they call back and forth to one another in an incredible celebration as Jesus comes to his throne. And Jesus comes and he enters in his throne room and he sits down. And do you know what he says? He looks at his father and he says, when I left, you promised me something.
Joel Brooks:
You made a promise. You promised me the nations as my inheritance. I'm asking you to give me what you promised. And the father, what what father would deny that request from such a son? And so the father releases his Holy Spirit.
Joel Brooks:
And this is where we get Pentecost. Pentecost is both the result and it is the evidence of the Ascension. It's it's the evidence of the enthronement of Jesus. And the churches often overlook this, but but Peter, he certainly understood this when Pentecost happened. When when Peter rushes out of that room like his hair is on fire and a crazed look in his eyes and he begins preaching, he understood what was happening.
Joel Brooks:
He preaches this in Acts 2. He looks at these people and he says, this Jesus, God raised up. And all of us here are witnesses of that and being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the father the promise of the holy spirit. He has poured it out. He's poured out the spirit that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.
Joel Brooks:
For David did not ascend into the heavens. But David himself says, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. So let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made Jesus both Lord and Christ. This Jesus whom you crucified. The foundation of missions is the Ascension.
Joel Brooks:
Let me share one more thought. We've got the time. It's a good one. It's a thought though that's so wonderful, I've often hesitated to share it. We'll have to deal with it more when we hit chapter 17 in John.
Joel Brooks:
I would be convinced I was a heretic in saying it if it wasn't found so many places in scripture. It's just so wonderful. I would think I was blaspheming if it wasn't so certain. Now there's several passages we could turn to, but I wanna just look at one, one that we looked at a couple weeks ago in Revelation 3:20. Everybody stops 1 verse short when you're reading Revelation 3:20.
Joel Brooks:
You need to keep going. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him and he with me. Great verse, but read on. The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne.
Joel Brooks:
As I conquered and sat down with my father on his throne. If you have an ear, hear. I mean, did you did you hear that? Did he have an ear to hear that? Jesus is saying that for those who conquer and that means for those who who have faith and they they trust in Jesus to save them and they keep that faith for their life.
Joel Brooks:
Those who conquer, if you do that, then you get to sit with Jesus on his throne. Let me say it another way. When we trust Jesus for salvation, he gives us his spirit and his spirit so unites us to him that already we are described as being seated with him in the heavenlies. Paul says that. But someday what we are experiencing kind of just through our spirits now, we will experience physically, bodily someday.
Joel Brooks:
We will sit with him on his throne. That's that's the remember the throne? The throne we just looked at in Revelation 4. That's the the throne. Jesus says, I will grant that you sit with me on my throne.
Joel Brooks:
I don't know how many billions of Christians there are going to be. I have no idea the physicalities of this house actually gonna work, but he promises it, and I believe it, that we'll somehow share in this kingly rule, in this ownership of the world, kinda like a glorified Adam who had been given dominion. This is what Paul means when in Romans Romans 8, he says that we are heirs with Christ. That what Christ inherits, which was the nations we inherit. This is what Paul means when he told the Corinthians.
Joel Brooks:
He says, all things are yours, even the world. Like, just kind of like this little throwaway note. All things are yours, even the world. It's all yours. When I when I read things like that, I just think such things are too wonderful for me.
Joel Brooks:
I don't really know how to close this, I'm just gonna read from Paul. Paul says this, as it is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him. These things God has revealed to us through his spirit. Pray with me. God, may you reveal those things to us through your spirit.
Joel Brooks:
Because I know for a fact that my words have fallen short. All words fall short. So right now in this moment, will you press in these truths to us through your spirit? May you give us the eyes to see this glorified Jesus that sometimes we so casually sing about. May the reality of him supreme and glorified and ascended and seated at the throne, may it grip our hearts, central focus of our lives.
Joel Brooks:
Through your spirit, make that so. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.