It's good to see y'all tonight. I'm excited to walk through the second week of our study on heaven together. I have been trying to think about how to get us into this after hearing so many great questions. Did everybody get one of these? Anybody need one? I've got some, a couple more. I've been trying to think about the best way to kind of get us going, and so what I want to think about tonight is how we define heaven. Defining heaven seems like a good place to start, because I think if we can understand what the Bible means when it talks about heaven, in various places. I think that's going to set us on a good trajectory to thinking about how we can answer some of those big questions that we've been asking. So we're going to think about defining what heaven is tonight and some of the implications of that to the scriptures. So let's pray and then we'll jump in. Father, thank you for another opportunity to be together. Thank you for the chance to think about that glorious day when we get to see Jesus and all that comes with knowing him and being loved by him. Lord, I just pray that as we study heaven, that you would create a longing for heavenly reality in our hearts, that we would become a community together that expresses heavenly hope. and that you would use us to be instruments of grace in the lives of others that help them to see the glory of Jesus Christ in the heavenly places and to enter into his glory through faith in him. Lord, bless all that we see in your word tonight. Use it for fruit in our lives, I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So we're defining heaven, super simple place to start. And we're gonna begin with one overarching set of questions. The first big question we're gonna ask is what is it? What is heaven? And I think we need to start with just the words, okay? So what can the word heaven describe when it appears in our English Bibles? When we talk about the heavens or heaven, what does the Bible mean when it uses that word? There's actually several different things. Yeah, the sky, right? So we can talk about the heavens in terms of the sky. Other things? Yeah, so it's an eternal home. It's a place that we go. That's the big overarching picture that we're kind of pursuing, so we're going to spend a lot of time there. Yeah, so the place where God is, right. Okay, so the second heaven, so I'm not sure if we may mean the same thing or we may not. We're gonna talk about that tonight. When I hear second heaven, I think what they mean in the scriptures is space. Is that what you mean? Yeah, what's that? Yeah, so depending on who you talk to and depending on how they're understanding things, there are three kind of components. It's tricky to place the atmosphere. It kind of depends on who you hear from, but there's three kind of components when we talk about heaven. But before we jump into what those are, I want to teach you a little bit of biblical languages, okay? So we're going to pronounce these things together. The first one is a Hebrew word, Shemayim. Can you say that with me? Shemayim. Shemayim. So that is a plural word. You can tell a plural Hebrew word because you have to read from right to left now, but on the end, which is the beginning on the screen, that very first letter from left to right is an M, and then underneath that one, that little dot, is an I, so it's em, so it's plural. Shemayim is the word there. The word in Greek which overlaps almost completely in meaning with the Hebrew word Shemayim, is Uranos. Can you say Uranos? All right, we'll say it like we're from America. Uranos. Okay, so there's different ways of pronouncing Greek. By the time of the New Testament, they probably would have said Ouranos, but historically we would read it Ouranos. So that's the Greek word for heaven. So those two words are the words for heavens in the Old and New Testament. Shemayim is heavens in Hebrew, so when you read, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, Shemayim is the word that's used there. In Greek, the word is uranos, which can be used for the same kinds of things as it's used for in the Hebrew Old Testament. By the way, when I say uranos, does that sound like anything that you recognize? Uranos. Okay, so yes, so it's actually, think out beyond that, think in space, Uranus. Uranus, you hear that word? Uranus, Uranus, all right? So those are the words in the scriptures. They refer to three things, and I've heard them all, so let me make sure we hit them. The word for heavens, it's often plural, especially in the Old Testament, can describe the following things. Number one, it can describe the sky, okay? So we can talk about the heavens in terms of the sky. You'll have some scripture references there. 1 Kings 21-24, this is a weird scripture reference but we're going to roll with it because it shows the point. Anyone belonging to Ahab who dies in the city the dogs shall eat and anyone of his who dies in the open country the birds of the heavens shall eat. The birds are in the what? They're in the sky, right? They're up in the sky. Deuteronomy 11, 11. But the land that you are going over to possess is the land of hills and valleys which drinks water by the rain from heaven, right? So we can speak of the sky, the atmosphere, right? The place where the birds dwell and also the place where the clouds are and from which the rain comes. So we have this idea of the sky. A second one is what we often call space, right? So you go past the sky far enough, you're going to end up in space. And so this is the use of heavens that you see, for example, in Genesis 1 when God creates the lights for the seasons, for the days. He says, let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens. That's that word here, Shemayim, to separate the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons. and for days and years, and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth. And it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night and the stars." To give you an example from the New Testament to show you that this kind of goes the same way, from Acts chapter 7. But God turned away and gave them over to worship the host of heaven. This is a reference to the people worshiping celestial bodies, stars, planets, all of those different things as though they are their gods themselves. So you have space. The last thing, and the one that we're gonna devote our attention to, as much as I might wanna talk about astronomy or meteorology, especially after yesterday, that's not really my realm of expertise. So we're gonna go to something that's a little bit more manageable for us, and in some ways even harder for us. So the last thing is it's God's abode. It's the place where God is. One of the things we're gonna have to think about is, as we think about all of these things, And this is a question that I don't want to make a light of it because it can sound ridiculous even as you ask it. But one of the things that I'll ask some people sometimes as we talk about these different heavens is, so if we got in a spaceship that was supplied enough and powerful enough that it could propel us past the sky and all the way through space to whatever the end of the universe is as the universe expands, would we stumble into the pearly gates? And we all kind of look at that and go, no, but we need to understand what we talk about when we talk about heaven in terms of God's abode. And so that's where we're going to focus tonight. When we normally use the word heaven in Mantee, Mississippi in 2025, what do we mean? Which of those is the one that we're going for? Yeah, God's dwelling place, right? We're thinking in terms of that third. We just call them today sky and space or whatever we choose to use, atmosphere or some of those different words. But when we're talking about heaven, we normally mean the place where God dwells. So I want to think together today about God's dwelling place a little bit. We're going to think more theologically today, and then in the coming weeks we're going to trace some of these themes through the Scriptures. So we'll look at the Old and New Testaments, especially about God's dwelling place. So, let's turn to God's dwelling place together. How does the Bible distinguish heaven from earth? What's the difference between heaven and earth in the way that the biblical authors talk about them? Some ideas, I'm not asking you to have all the answers. Okay, yeah, so there's a spatial dimension that we talk about, but I think it's more than spatial as in heaven's way up there and we're way down here. I think it's drawing attention to the separation, right? There's something glorious, there's something transcendent in our minds about heaven in comparison with the lowly earth, as beautiful and wonderful as it is, right? So we have this separation, this above-ness and this below-ness. What are some other things that come to mind in terms of how the Bible distinguishes heaven from earth? Okay, so that's a really great question. We're going to chase that a little bit. My okay is like a scary response, I feel like. I'm like, okay. So that's something to think about, right? So when it says that God created the heavens and the earth, We don't know what eternity past was like in its fullness, but the angels were created, right? There are certain things about heaven that are created, but in terms of God and Him having a place where He dwells, because God is eternal, whatever that means, there is something eternal about God's dwelling place, if we define heaven as where God is, okay? Does that make sense? We're getting into some deep waters, and I want to be careful about that. Other things, how does the Bible distinguish heaven from earth? That's right, okay, that's what we're going for. So we're gonna talk about how we need to be very careful about how we parse some of those details out, theologically and biblically, but that's the way the Bible talks. Ecclesiastes 5.2, be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. You all know the Lord's Prayer, right? Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So there's an implied difference in terms of our experience of God's presence on earth and in heaven. The difference is, in some sense, how we experience God in these two places. So I want to think about some additional language, though. And some of this is going to be a little bit of repetition because we would have mentioned some of this last week. But what additional language does the Bible use to refer to God's dwelling place as we call it heaven? What are some things that come to mind? That's right. Yeah. So we have this picture of a throne room, right? The train that is, well, that's a different one. Yeah, so temple too, right? So this picture in the Scriptures of the priest king, there's this tight connection between God's dwelling place, a throne room, and the temple, a place for worship. What do they call the top of the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament? the mercy seat, right? So this language of mercy seat is picking up on this idea, depending on who you read they're going to say different things about it being God's footstool, the ark being God's footstool, but the idea is that in the center of the temple where you would find a deity, in any other temple in the ancient world you don't find anything You find a seat and you might find an experience of the manifest presence of God. But the idea is that a temple is a throne room. And that's where God sits enthroned in the midst of his people. And the author of Hebrews explains that the earthly tent and tabernacle, the earthly temple, actually points to the heavenly reality. So God is enthroned in his temple in heaven. All right? So there's a throne room and there's a temple language. We're going to chase that down next week, I hope. I hope. Are there other language? We talked about the second heaven, so there's a third heaven, all right? So that's one of the ones we'll hit. What you got, Mary Margaret? Uh-huh. That's right. So we're going to hit paradise at the end tonight. Paradise is a really important word, and it's a really important word for helping us to tie together some of the themes in Scripture, for sure. This is going to sound really petty because you're going to think that's just saying heaven, but let's run through three. The second one is going to be funny. The first one is the third heaven. This comes from 2 Corinthians 12, 2-4. We don't know what Paul is doing here. It sure seems like Paul is talking about somebody else, but then he says little things that make it sound like he's talking about himself. We don't know what Paul's doing. But he says, I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up into the third heaven. Whether in the body or out of the body, I don't know. God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise. There's that word. whether in the body or out of the body I do not know. God knows and he heard things that cannot be told which man may not utter." So Paul has this vision going up into what he refers to as the third heaven, which is God's dwelling place. Another biblical reference to heaven, which this is the one that's gonna sound weird, or maybe obvious, is Hebrews uses the language heaven itself in Hebrews 9.24. For Christ has entered not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. The reason the language heaven itself is important is some of what we were hitting on with the temple imagery. He's pointing out that whatever the earthly temple represents, it's ultimately pointing us up to the heavenly reality. So as much as the high priest might have had some experience of God's presence, as much as Moses, more than anybody in the Old Testament, would have had some experience of seeing God's presence, the truest and fullest experience of that is not in any earthly tent, it's in the presence of God in heaven itself. The last thing is from Ephesians, and it's the heavenly places, the heavenly places. So all throughout Ephesians 1 and 2, Paul uses this language. Ephesians 1, 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Ephesians 1 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. Ephesians 2.6, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So over and over and over again, Paul uses this language of heavenly places. This is gonna be important in just a little bit because we're gonna see what exactly Paul means by that and how that compares with our understanding of heaven as we talk about it. Now, I want you to turn in your Bible to a passage because we're going to think about a question together. Turn with me to 1 Kings 8, verse 27. 1 Kings 8, verse 27. And we're going to read this together. This is in the midst of the dedication of the temple. So you remember David wanted to build the temple, but God said he couldn't. God said he'd build David a house, and by that he meant that he'd give him a royal house that would last forever through Jesus. But he also speaks to the fact that David's son, in a time of peace, Solomon, is going to build a temple for the Lord. And in verses 22 and following of 1 Kings chapter 8, we have Solomon's prayer of dedication. I just want to draw your attention to one verse, 1 Kings 8 verse 27. This is what Solomon says. But will God indeed dwell on the earth? He's speaking about the tabernacle. Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you. How much less this house that I have built. How does what Solomon says here, how does that characterize the relationship between God and the place that we call heaven? He feels it. Exceedingly, exactly. Heaven is not able to contain God. This is an illusion to God's transcendence and His omnipresence. So we can speak of God being in heaven, but we can also speak of God being all places. that God is not bound by our own conceptions of space, right? I can occupy a certain amount of space. It's bigger than most of us, but I occupy my own set of space, okay? And you occupy your space. What happens if I stand up and try to run over Isaiah? Do we mix together and occupy the same space? No, he moves, right? We occupy a single set of space at any given moment, but the Bible teaches that God is not bound by physical limitations or space. He is not corporeal, he's not bodily, he's spirit, and so we need to think of him in those terms. He's omnipresent, he's present everywhere, and he's transcendent, right? He's not limited in the sense that you and I are. Now, this again raises questions. So we talk about God being in heaven and yet Solomon straight up says heaven can't contain you. Heaven can't hold God in. He fills heaven, as Tim said, to its fullness and even exceedingly so. So if we speak of God's relationship to heaven in those terms, if God is transcendent and omnipresent, there's another scripture reference there for you, Jeremiah 23, 24. How can we say that he dwells in heaven? What do we mean when we say that God is in heaven if he's omnipresent and transcendent? What do y'all think? Okay, so he's everywhere, but what is he in heaven? How can he be everywhere and be specifically in heaven? Does that make sense? That question shouldn't make sense in a sense, but what is that sort of forcing us to acknowledge? Okay, so everywhere he is, he is in... His presence is transformative, right? So here's what I wanna say, I wanna be careful, I don't wanna try to lead you on a rabbit trail through my thinking, because who knows where that's gonna take us. Let me put it this way. When we think about God's presence, right, we can say that God was especially present in church today. Do we mean that God is more present now than he was when we were at home before we came to church? No, what are we saying? we're more aware of his presence, he may more strongly manifest his presence to us. So here's the idea that I'm getting at. God may be omnipresent and he may be utterly transcendent, but heaven is the place where God most strongly manifests his presence in created reality. Does that make sense? You're tracking with me? So I want to explore some other ideas about heaven as we go. But I just want us to see, as we talk about heaven, that heaven is where God most strongly shows himself. You have a quote there. This week's lesson comes heavily from this book. It's really helpful. I always give the caveat that in every book there's going to be stuff you agree with and stuff you don't. but this is a quick reference guide. There's a whole series of these and all of them have been good that I've looked at. They're called the 40 questions series. This writer, his name's Alan Gomes, he says, so when we speak of heaven or God dwelling in heaven, we should understand heaven as that location in which God directly manifests his presence and in which he reigns to a preeminent degree. The place, in other words, where God's will is now done completely. So when we're talking about heaven, we're talking about the place where there is no resistance to God's will. There is no refusal to bow the knee to God and His sovereign authority. There is no refusal to recognize Him as King. His will is done completely and His presence is manifested most completely. Does that make sense? So, to Margaret's point, and I don't want to rush past that idea, one of the things that when Jesus teaches us to pray, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, in one sense we're praying that God would bring heavenly reality down. And that where Christ goes, where the Spirit goes, heaven breaks into our present experience. So, that's what we're asking for. When we ask God, in some sense, to grant us an extra measure of His Holy Spirit, that's not because the Holy Spirit is not present with us at any other time. We're asking Him to manifest His Spirit in such a way that we almost feel like we're touching heaven. I want to be careful about the language that we use, even in pulling from history, but in Celtic Christianity, they talked about there being these thin places, these places where it felt like whatever the barrier between heaven and earth, where it just wasn't quite so strong and so tight. Does that language make sense? It's thin. That boundary is thinner here. Now, I don't mean it in the way that some of them meant it. I think they would talk about literally this cave over here is a thin place and you can go in this cave and find God. But I do think when we gather together as a church, It ought to be a thin place where we anticipate meeting with God in ways that we may not in other points in our lives. When we read the scriptures, the scriptures become a thin place, a place where heaven and earth seem to touch in ways that we don't experience in other ways. So we need to be willing to acknowledge that God dwells in heaven and our hope and our desire is that we would experience some of that as his presence comes to dwell among us through his spirit. Anyway, that was a side comment. But what I've been driving to all this way is that heaven is where God dwells and heaven is where God most significantly manifests His presence. That's not to deny that He's present with us here on the earth now, but that's to acknowledge that that's where He's most strongly present. Alright, so heaven is God's dwelling place. We all good there? Any questions? Coming back to that, hang with me, because it's got to be and we've got to talk about that. Okay, so now to lead us into that next bit, if you've got a question you can throw it at me in a minute, but let's talk about heaven's additional inhabitants. Because the Bible teaches that though heaven is God's dwelling place, God himself is eternal God created other creatures, didn't he? And he didn't just create creatures that dwell on the earth, he created creatures who dwell in heaven, right? So what other additional beings inhabit heaven? What are some other beings that inhabit heaven? Angels, okay? So we have angels, I'm not going to get into classifications of angels, but some of you may have studied that in the past. So you have seraphim and cherubim and you have allusions to archangels and all these different things. We can get crazy with speculation and that's not helpful, but there seems to be different classifications of angels in heaven. But they're angels. What else is in heaven? That's right. So departed, departed saints are in heaven in terms of God's dwelling place. Yeah. One more that I'm looking for. Okay. So this, that's the language of revelation, right? There are those who have died for their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We've given their lives for him. And I think that it's, we would think in terms of new Testament, but I think we could probably reach back and pull from the old Testament as well. Okay, we're going to talk about that with angels. In some sense, at least at some point in history, Satan and the demonic could appear in God's presence in heaven. So we've got to think about that. That's right. So one more. Who else is in heaven? Jesus. Okay, so Jesus is God, but He's the incarnate Son of God. He's the ascended Christ. And that's why we've got to talk about heaven being a place. So we'll come to that. So three things as we think about beings that inhabit heaven, and there'll be some subcategories here. But number one, Angels. So angels are in heaven. The word angel refers to a messenger, by the way, and so it has a technical meaning when we start talking about heavenly creatures, but the language of angel itself means a messenger. We often use it with respect to messengers from God when we talk about angels. But There's other language in the scriptures. We have these different heavenly attendants. So who are God's heavenly attendants? Who do we see in Isaiah 6, 2, and 3, for example? Anybody know off the top of your head? Yep, so seraphim, right? So they have the six wings with two face, two feet, two they fly and they're forever crying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. Okay, I'm not, I'm going to leave some meat on the bone, but there's also this allusion to this idea of a heavenly council. So this gathering of angels, depending on who you read, they're going to say that the let us make man in our image and after our likeness is either the Trinity, which there's, there's reason even from people that study Hebrew to acknowledge that, but there's also this history of this idea of this divine council. So God is speaking as king to his gathered assembled council of angelic beings. And so, we see this show up in Job 1, and we're going to come to one of these characters here in a minute, but we read, Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan, the accuser, also came among them. This idea also shows up in Psalm 82. Psalm 82 is a little bit challenging to interpret, but listen to Psalm 82. God has taken his place in the divine council. In the midst of the gods, he holds judgment. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah. Give justice to the weak and the fatherless. Maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy. Deliver them from the hand of the wicked. They have neither knowledge nor understanding. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken. I said, this is God speaking, I said, you are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you. Nevertheless, like men, you shall die and fall like any prince. Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit all the nations. How many gods are there? Well, who are these gods that God is talking about? The Old Testament uses the language gods, little g, to refer to angels, angelic beings. If you look at the scriptures, when the New Testament writers, the Old Testament writers refer to people worshiping false gods, what do they say is kind of working through those false gods? Demons. And demons are? fallen angels. So these are beings of massive power and ability and they are in God's presence all the time and the Bible can speak of them with the language of sons of God. And yeah, I've got to leave that alone because that's a big issue, okay? If you have questions about the sons of God, we may have to take that up in a separate series. Okay, so we have these pictures. Now, kind of flowing out from that, we have angels, these different heavenly beings that are good in God's presence, but according to these passages and then Ephesians 6-12, if you're familiar with that one, who else inhabits the heavenly places? Who else shows up there? So who's there in Job? The angels and Satan, okay? Who else is there in Psalm 82? So he's speaking to this divine council and he's telling these people they've messed up. Who are these creatures? They're fallen angels, they're demons, right? Okay, Ephesians 6.12, listen to this, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. So the picture of the New Testament and the Old Testament together is that in some senses when we talk about this spiritual place, this place that God dwells, it seems like there's not just the presence of God and good angels, but there's also the presence of Satan and his legions of fallen angels. Now this leads to a question, how could God and his good angels inhabit the same space as Satan and his fallen angels? Any ideas? That's it. Same dimension, but different spaces. I don't know physics well enough to talk about this, but some people will say if you look at physics and the way that they think of dimensional reality, the idea is this could be a different dimension of reality into which we don't have access. We're confined to a certain set of dimensions. But I don't know about all that, but what I do know is that I think this heavenly space has to be big enough that it can encompass more than just God's throne room. It's a spiritual reality, a spiritual place. Listen, this quote is here in your notes, this is not me, I'm not going to take credit for it, but I think it makes sense. Perhaps we can solve this seeming discrepancy by regarding the term heavenlies or heavenly realms as a broader and more comprehensive expression that includes the world of spiritual beings transcending our earthly sphere. However, within that broader realm, we can distinguish between heaven itself, where God and His good angels abide, and Satan's more limited sphere of operations. Thus, the sphere of influence of Satan and his legions is entirely on this side of God's realm of light. Now notice this, in any event, the popular notion that Satan is currently in hell is assuredly false. Now we need to understand that, that's really important. When the Bible talks about Satan being bound to this lake of burning fire, that's after everything's been done, okay? Satan is able to be very active right now. And at least if we take Job seriously, at least up until a certain point, and we should, at least up until a certain point, Satan walked freely into the presence of God to levy his accusations against God's faithful people. So there is this spatial reality, but I think in light of the work of Christ, we have to acknowledge that there are limitations, right? God can embody or can inhabit all of this space. God and his good angels are in heaven itself, God's heavenly temple. But there seems to be a larger spiritual world in which Satan and his demons have some measure of dominion until God says no more. Now, I want to link, this ought to be something, I hope, if I make some sense and I haven't stretched this too far, what we're about to talk about ought to be praise-inducing, okay? So, here's the question. Does Satan still appear in God's heavenly council? Is Satan still able to go in and out of God's presence to make accusations against God's people? Okay, so I'm not dying on this hill, but I don't think he is. I think Satan has in some sense been cast out and limits have been placed on him. In Luke 10, 18, Jesus says, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. In John 12, 31, now is the judgment of this world. Now will the ruler of this world be cast out. Now, this is difficult. Revelation is hard and it takes some interesting twists and turns. But at the very least, Revelation 12 is talking about the birth of the Messiah coming from the woman who I think is not just Mary specifically, but Israel. And I think the picture here is in some form or fashion in this milieu of what's happening with the birth of the Messiah, Satan gets cast out and confined in his authority to earth. He no longer has access to heaven. Listen to what John says. Again, I'm not dying on this hill, you may disagree with me, that's fine, but listen to this. And a great sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars. This is Revelation 12 if you wanna follow there. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains in the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and on his heads seven diadems. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast him to the earth. Who's that? I think it has to be Jesus. But her child was caught up to God and to His throne. Okay, Jesus has been caught up to God and to His throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place prepared by God in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days. Now, you could argue that there's a gap, okay, between that description and what happens in the next verses. I want to suggest that even if there is, I don't necessarily think that the text says it's a long one, okay? Now, a war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come. For the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God, and they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives, even unto death. Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell on them, but woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short. And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. And we could keep reading. But I think the picture, what? That's right. Right. And that stopped, but that, yeah. And it says that he can't anymore at some point. Now that's the, Right, and that's the argument. It's when does that moment happen? When is the moment where he can no longer levy accusations against God's people? That's where we may disagree, okay? So that's my point. I don't want, I'm not, I. Well, hey, you should sometimes. So I think that that's right now. And here's why I think that that's right now. Again, we're having to tie some texts together. But Colossians chapter two. Colossians chapter two, verse 13. And you who were dead in your trespasses in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of death that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. Now listen, he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them and him. Here's the picture I think Paul is painting. And this is true now. It may not be true in its fullness, okay? So we can debate about that. But this is true right now in some sense. I think the picture is that Satan rolled up into heaven through a lot of history and looked at God and said, you know how terrible Reeves Garrett is? And just spat all the bad stuff that Reeves Garrett had going on. And his accusations had merit, okay? He was a good attorney. and he had every right to bring a condemnatory sentence down on me. What happened to that sentence? The reality of my guilt was nailed to the cross, right? So that now, because that guilt has been dealt with through the person and work of Jesus Christ, Satan doesn't have an accusation toward me anymore. So even if he's there saying stuff, God doesn't have to listen. because your sin has been dealt with through Jesus Christ. Whether we want to say that Satan can still appear in God's heavenly council, which may be your view, that's fine, or we want to say that he is confined in his authority as great as it is to the earth, we have to acknowledge that Satan's mouth has been shut in the ears of God. and we ought to praise the Lord for that, because that's what God has done for us through Jesus Christ. So there's the presence of Satan and demons in the heavenly places, whatever that means, but because of Jesus Christ, the heavenly places are being cleansed, and the day will come when they are thrown into the lake of fire, never to come out again, and we can enjoy the perfection of God's presence forever, okay? Does that work? All right, I may have created more questions than you had when you came in, but I want to move us on a little bit, okay? What time do we got? Okay, I got nine minutes. What's that? Oh, good, okay, second one. This one right here, the ascended Christ? Yep, so that's where we're going next. So Christ is in heaven. I'm only gonna try to take on just a little piece here, okay? So we're gonna do this one, and then we'll pick up next week. So the second thing here is the ascended Christ. So where is Jesus right now? Where does the Bible say he is? He's heaven. The language we often use is that He is at God's right hand. And that comes from the Old Testament, doesn't it? It comes from Psalm 110. Psalm 110 is perhaps the most important passage about Jesus in the Old Testament. We could debate that. Psalm 22 is pretty important. Genesis 3.15 is important. But the New Testament authors are stuck on Psalm 110. Am I right? Okay, so Mr. Tim and I like to talk about Psalm 110. So the Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Romans 8, 34, who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who is indeed interceding for us. Colossians 3, 1, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. You can go on to Hebrews 1, Hebrews 9, 1 Peter 3, there's a bunch of passages there. Jesus is heaven. Yep, Psalm 2, right. So this picture of kissing the Son, right, as you pay homage to Him, there's this idea that He's there, right? The risen Christ is in the presence of God, and it's true all throughout the Scriptures. Okay, does Jesus still possess a physical resurrection body? Yes. He does. Yeah. And that's the point, we're about to, Ethan asked the question, is heaven a place? And so much of me would wanna go, maybe it's more of a condition, right? It's where our souls that don't have bodies go, so it's not a space, it's not a place you can go, except for Jesus is there. And Jesus, when he ascended, didn't shred the shell of his, or shed the shell of his body and go up as a spirit. Christ went to heaven in his body. So, can we accurately describe heaven as a place with some kind of physical existence? We have to. We have to. Now, this last question is not really a question. It's just In light of the presence of the embodied Christ in heaven, how does the very idea of heaven stretch our understanding of reality? I'm not even going to make you answer it, okay? We talk about heaven as being this place of spiritual reality, where there are these beings that they inhabited. It seems to be a reality that operates at the same time as this one, parallel in some sense to this one, the physical reality in which we live, but somehow the embodied Christ is there. And I can't explain it. And there are certain things in the Bible, and this is, look, with teenagers, they don't like this kind of stuff. But we're grownups, okay? And so I'm gonna say it this way. There are certain things in the Bible that we just go, I can't explain that. And there are two options when we do that. Number one is we go, this Bible stuff can't be true because I can't explain it. Or number two, we say, this Bible stuff has to be true because I can't explain it. It defies every ability of my brain to wrap its arms around it. You go study other religions and other mythologies from the ancient world, so many of those things are just designed to explain stuff they couldn't explain. And the Bible is sitting over here raising questions about physical and spiritual reality itself that we can't answer, and we could only come up with the revelation from God. So when we look at those kinds of things, there ought to be a part of us that says, I don't know. Reeves has been through multiple, I'm using the third person, that's weird. I have been through multiple operating systems, okay, in my ministry. You have a computer, you have operating systems, so you might have IOS 16, 17, 18, if you have a phone, or you may have Windows 7, 8, 9, 10, you know what I'm talking about? Rage has had multiple operating systems. Whatever the one that got reprogrammed when I came to Mantee, realized one really important thing that I needed to do as a pastor, which is to say, I don't know. Because there's things we don't know. And that's okay. And I don't know that I'll ever know. And that's okay. But what I do know is that what the Bible teaches me is that Christ has ascended into heaven. He has gone there to prepare a place for me. And whatever that looks like, whatever that means, I praise God and I look forward to seeing Jesus face to face. So that's where I'm gonna leave us tonight. Any questions, we'll take up the next, if you can't, if you can't, if you need that last blank filled in there, we have more, but just this section number three, I'll go ahead and give it to you by the way, it's Departed Saints, okay? And we'll take up this next time, and that'll help us, I think this is, God'll work all this out, we'll finish out some of these things next time and we'll roll into the Old Testament and look at the idea of God's dwelling place.