Sunday Night, February 17, 2019 PM

That we have that hope now. So just thinking through it very carefully, when we are absent from the body and present with the Lord, our body is not yet raised. Our body is not yet glorified. So when we're in heaven, absent from the body, present with the Lord, we have something yet to look forward to, don't we?

Faith in Heaven While Awaiting the Resurrection

So do we still need faith in heaven? What do you think? So let's let's think about, let's think about a, let's think about a moment in time in Revelation 6 and verses 9 through 11. So when, when, when are our bodies raised?

When Christ returns, right? When he returns, the dead in Christ will rise. You were told that in 1st Thessalonians. So when the dead, when Christ returns, the dead in Christ will rise. But let's think about what's going on in heaven in this particular moment, Revelation 6 verses 9 through 11.

When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain. What did he see? He saw souls. Okay, so souls do not have physical properties. I mean, how do you see souls?

But again, this is apocalyptic literature. This is very figurative language. Nonetheless, extremely true. John saw something there in the vision he understood to be immediately by the, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

He knew these to be souls. These were souls of those who had been slain because of the Word of God. Here are some martyrs. Who would be among these martyrs that he saw? I don't know, but by this time, most of the apostles, those he had walked the earth with, with Christ, his dear brothers who have been slain for the faith.

Other martyrs, in fact, going all the way back to Abel, slain for their righteousness. So here are martyrs, and they had been slain because of the Word of God, because of the testimony which they had maintained.

And they cried out with a loud voice. Again, these are souls. They don't have vocal cords, but again, this is figurative language. Saying, how long, O Lord, holy and true, will you refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?

Their desire is a righteous desire. They're in heaven. They have been delivered from sin, right? They're not full of bitterness. They're not full of hatred and anger in a sinful way, are they? But they have a right desire in heaven for vengeance.

But they appealed to God, because vengeance is the Lord's. He will repay. But it hasn't happened yet. It hasn't happened yet. What should have happened, what they know should happen, has not yet come to pass.

So, they say, how long, O Lord, holy and true, will you refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth? And so, I see them in a position of faith. They need faith, because they believe that God is holy and true.

They believe him to be the judge and the avenger, even though he has not yet brought that to pass. There are many things that they believed that they are now experiencing in heaven. They have not yet seen this.

They have not yet known this. And so, verse 11, and there was given to each of them a white robe. And they were told they should rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed, even as they had been, would be completed also.

So, there are many things in the Bible that talk about when such and such is completed, then the end comes. Then Christ comes back. The gospel should be preached to all the nations, and then the end will come, Jesus says in Matthew 24.

Paul talks about the filling up of Christ's afflictions in his body, the church, before Christ comes back. This is closely related. The number of the martyrs has yet to be completed before Christ comes back.

And so, we see that these souls in heaven still need faith. They got to believe that God is just, that he is holy, even though the vengeance has not yet come to pass. So, there's still faith in heaven at this point.

And there's faith in heaven in another sense as well. Even if we're not martyred for our faith, when we are absent from the body, present with the Lord, many of the things that we believe we will know in full then, but we're still absent from the body.

So, there's still something we're waiting on. There's still something that we're still in a position of faith, because our bodies have not yet been raised, and our glorified souls have not yet been reunited with our glorified bodies.

So, we're still waiting on something, something good. We're still in the posture of faith, not the same as it was here. It is a vain task indeed to be able to detail the weight of glory that we will know in that time, but we're still in a position of faith.

As far as the new creation goes, after Christ comes back, and the dead in Christ are raised, and the resurrection occurs, and all things are made right, and the last enemy, even death itself, is cast into the lake of fire, and all things are made new, will we at that time still need to live by faith?

That's part of your question. Do we still need to live by faith then? I don't know. God dwells in inapproachable light, and we are never, I don't believe, and I could be wrong, but I don't believe we're ever promised to see the Father, but he is always revealed to us through his Son.

And if we never lay eyes on God, who is spirit, who dwells in inapproachable light, if we never actually see him, and if we do see something of him, will we ever be able to take him in in full to comprehend the whole?

Will we ever be able to do that? Will there always be more of the glory and the goodness of God beyond the scope of our vision, even in the new creation? I still think we're in the position of faith in the even new creation, because I think there will always be more of God than we will ever directly experience, because of the fact of who he is and who we are as his creatures, and I think that in that tandem is glory.

That is paradise, that is heaven, that we would always be pressing further up and farther in, as Lewis put it, to the glories of God. Without faith, it is impossible to please him who saves us, who made us, so I think faith remains, though it would be qualitatively different without sin.

When we think about Christ, who was the Son of God, God of very God, man of very man, that his life on this earth, in his death and in his resurrection, we find him to be, even then, a man of faith, always believing what his father said and always following through with what his father commanded.

Perfect faith. Again, I can't explain, but I'm saying we are, I think we'll still be in the position of faith to some degree, yes. You have a follow-up question. God the Son knows God the Father directly.

Absolutely, yes. In the divine sense, yes. Absolutely, absolutely. So if we've seen Christ, we've seen the Father. If we have Christ, we have the Father. He is, for us and for our salvation, the God-man, the mediator forever.

He will never cease to be the God-man. If he ever did, we would never have, we wouldn't have salvation anymore. He has to remain God incarnate. He has to remain our mediator. There is no salvation without that mediator.

Yes, oh yes. When there's concern about time, we understand from an early age that there's, our limits, you know, the day and the night, and then as we grow older, mortality introduced when our loved ones begin to die.

We understand that there's a limit to the time that we have. So we understand that here. On the other side, when we are living forever in Christ, these souls, the martyrs, are looking for a particular time of Christ's return.

They're still looking for Christ's return. The saints in heaven, the souls in heaven, cry Maranatha as much as the church on earth does. We cry that with one voice. We're in harmony. Maranatha, come quickly, Lord Jesus.

So we're still looking for the day to come. Now, in the new creation, will there still be time? Yes, there'll be this moment, to the next moment, to the next moment. We'll be conscious of passing moments.

Yes, that's how God made us. Will we be concerned about a time crunch? Nope. You know, absolutely not. It will be a completely different experience. Imagine little kids do this. Do it again. You know, you never find the end of that.

Do it again. Do it again. There's joy in the repetition. We tire that pretty quick. You can tell the end of childhood and the beginning of young adulthood when the repetition goes away. I'm bored. I don't want to do the same thing over again.

Yeah, so you can just tell that the child is going away and the adult is coming in, right? There's a growing sense of the press of time. In heaven, in the new creation, I believe there will be delight in counting the grass.

That's mind-numbing to us. But we always talk about each blade of grass is to the glory of, you know, this is my father's. Each little dew drop says something glorious of God. We don't have time to do that right now.

I mean, we say it, but we don't actually, you know, sit there and look at each little drop of dew and then go back and look at them again. We don't do that. We don't have time for that. In the new creation, those moments pass, but there's not this press of time.

We have all the time. Without death looming over us, we have all the time that we need to glorify God endlessly in what we don't have time for now. Yes, yes sir. Excuse me, 1 Peter 4? Okay, chapter 4, verse 6.

Okay, let's begin with verse 1. Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same purpose, because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lust of men, but for the will of God.

For the time already past is sufficient for you to have carried out the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, lust, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries.

In all this, they are surprised that you do not run with them into the same excesses of dissipation, and they malign you. But they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.

I think, is it the King James in the, is it in Timothy or here that it says quicken the dead? It's here? Quicken the dead. For the gospel has for this purpose been preached even to those who are dead, that although they are judged in the flesh as men, they may live in the Spirit according to the will of God.

So, we just read that Christ, as the judge of all men, that he will judge the living and the dead, those who have already died, those who are still alive, that all will have to give an account to Christ.

He's the judge of all. For the gospel has for this purpose been preached even to those who are dead, that though they are judged in the flesh as men, they may live in the Spirit according to the will of God.

Okay, so your question about this is? Yes. Oh, I see what you're saying. Okay. Well, we know from other passages of Scripture, such as Hebrews, for the appointed man wants to die, and after this comes the judgment.

So, I think that the import of this verse, and I know there's disagreement on this, but I think the import of this verse is that the gospel had been preached to those who have all, the gospel was preached to those when they were alive, but now they are dead, I think is the emphasis.

I could be wrong on that, but we, except for a couple of outliers, we really don't have anything in the Bible talking about the gospel being preached to people who are in some sort of middle ground between heaven and hell, which has more to do with Roman Catholicism than I think accurate biblical interpretation.

There's enough to say, for instance, backing up in chapter 3, verse 18, it says,. For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that he might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit.

In which, meaning in the Spirit, he also went and made proclamation to the spirits, now in prison, who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark.

So here, this verse combined with chapter 4 and verse 6, the question you're asking, has been used to develop an idea, a doctrine of when Jesus died on the cross, he went to hell for three days and preached to the disembodied souls there in hell, the gospel, after which he rose from the dead.

The number of cans of worms this opens is endless. It's Pandora's box, for a few reasons. One, Jesus told the thief on the cross where he was going to be. Today, you'll be with me in paradise. Also, in Hebrews, it says that Christ, when he died on the cross, he went to the true holy of holies with his own blood, propitiating our sins in heaven.

So I think I know where he was between his death and resurrection. But additionally, when we read in 1 Peter 3, it says that in the Spirit, he went and made proclamation to the spirits, now in prison.

So, but the idea is, they are now in prison under judgment, but when he preached to them, they were still alive. How did he preach to them? He did it through Noah. We're told that Christ, the Spirit of Christ, proclaimed the gospel through the prophets in the Old Testament.

So in 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 10 and 11, after the salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating, as he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow.

Christ in the prophets, through the prophets, preached of his own person and work. So when we find the prophets preaching in the Old Testament, we are to understand that Christ, through the Holy Spirit, is preaching of himself.

This is why when you open, when I open Jeremiah, I know I have Christ preaching of himself. This is Christ's word through the Holy Spirit in the prophets. And this verse in verse 11 is what explains what Peter means in verse 19 of chapter 3, that it was during the days of Noah that Christ, through Noah, preached to those who were there.

Noah preached for 120 years, and they rejected the gospel. And then now, where are they? Peter says, where are they now? They didn't listen. Where are they now? They're in prison. I don't believe so, because Christ's own teaching on that matter is one of finality.

He emphasizes again and again in his ministry and his preaching and in his parables, the time for repentance is on this side. And then beyond that, you're cast out into outer darkness, into weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And even when he goes into the details and begins to construct the regret and the loss of those who have died without faith in Christ, we have Lazarus the leper who was who believed and was justified by faith at the best seat in heaven, where the rich man who had the best seat on earth is now in Hades.

And the conversation that proceeds is instructive in that the man in Hades has no opportunity. Abraham knows the gospel. The Scriptures preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham. Abraham is there. He gives no gospel to the man in the prison.

Lazarus knows the gospel. He's in heaven. He doesn't preach the gospel to the rich man in Hades. The rich man has no recourse. He just wants a drop of water and can't even get that. And if he can't get the drop of water, he's definitely not getting the gospel and a chance to repent.

Further, he wants Lazarus to go back from the dead and preach the gospel to his living brothers. His hope is that they will repent before they die. That's the only hope. This rich man knows he wants his brothers to repent before they end up like him when they don't have the chance.

So what does he do? He doesn't say, well, when they get here, can you make sure you preach to them? No, he says, can you raise Lazarus from the dead, go back, and warn them before it's too late? And then Abraham's answer is what?

They have Moses and the prophets. If they won't listen to them, they're not going to listen to a man who came back from the dead. So the preaching of the gospel and the opportunity for repentance is indeed while there is yet breath, while we're still alive.

And we can move on. I understand this is one of those things where you're reading through the Bible and you have a couple of verses in somewhat close proximity, and then it gives you an idea. And you begin to think, how does this work?

But this is why it's a very important way to read the Bible. It's called the Analogy of Scripture, Analogia Scriptura in the Reformation, which was when the Roman Catholic Church accused the Reformers, the Protestants, the Protestants of not being able to understand the Bible and getting it wrong because they had no authority to tell them what to interpret it as.

The Reformers responded and said, no. Scripture interprets Scripture. So if you've got a couple of verses that sound like they may say this off this direction, you have to submit that to the whole witness of Scripture, and then see where it ends up.

Otherwise you're going to be unbalanced. I didn't say this earlier this morning, but if we only have a few verses that mean a great deal to us, and we hang on to that set, and we tend to not pay attention to the ones that may give a better understanding of what those mean, we're going to end up putting all the ballast on one side of the ship, and we're going to be listing doctrinally.

We're kind of like this in our understanding of God. We need all the passages of Scripture to balance this out. What was put in there for is, and I think that verse 19 of chapter 3 and verse 6 of chapter 4 are talking essentially about the same thing, that remember that those who are dead had the gospel preached to them.

To be honest, Ralph, I want to come back next week with a better answer. When Peter accuses Paul of writing some things that are hard to understand, you know, Peter's kind of projecting on Paul a little bit, because there are some things that Peter says, but Paul's, and by the way, this is a human book, and it's a divine book, okay, so the real human beings, Peter did not write like Paul, and his use of the Greek was not as refined as Paul's use of the Greek.

So every once in a while, we're going to be hitting things in Peter that are worded oddly, but that's the way that the Spirit wanted it worded through Peter to us. So Peter's main point is from earlier, verses 3 and so on, he says, the time's already passed, like, you know, give up on the unholiness, give up on the sin, you're supposed to be fleeing from that before you die, and it's too late, essentially.

And so he's pointing at the fact that when you're dead, the gospel has been preached, the gospel has been preached, but where are you going to end up after you're dead? I think this is his main consideration, but I'm going to look more into it, Brother Ralph, because I'm like you, and you look at it like, hmm, so I'm gonna look more into that, because I think that's something that we need to talk about, and we'll plan on doing that next time we're together.

Yeah, that's a good question. Yes, right, well, again, yeah, obviously, I think that those who have died and have suffered the judgment and they have encountered, they know exactly why they're where they're at by the judgment, by the judgment rendered by the God that they met as soon as they died.

So I think that part of it is going to be clear to them, even if they reject it. So, but again, I I'm gonna have to do some more study on it, and we'll come back, we'll talk about it next week. Yes, certainly the emphasis is on what they heard.

Who once were disobedient when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah. Right, so I definitely know what I'm studying for next week. Thank you, Brother Ralph. Well, let's go ahead and close with the doxology, okay?