Our Present Suffering...

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All right, well, we are again in Romans chapter eight, I have handouts, does anyone tonight not have their handout and they need one? OK, I made extra copies.
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I figured there might be at least one who needed one.
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There you go.
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And if you don't have the top blanks, don't worry about it.
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I'll I'll I'll give you I got one over here for you.
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We'll give you the blank, we'll give you the fill in the blanks later, because we're we're starting at, let's see, starting tonight at verse 17.
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So if you want to open up your Bibles, we're going to be in Romans chapter eight.
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And our focus for the evening is only going to be on verses 17 and 18.
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So we're not going to go real far tonight.
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However, we're going to talk about some very important truths.
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If you look in your Bible, you'll notice that verse 17 is, if you're at least in the ESV, it's caught mid sentence.
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Verse 17 begins in the middle of a sentence.
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So I'd like to go back.
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In fact, why don't we go back to verse 12 and we'll read through verse 18.
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And our focus tonight, again, is on 17 and 18.
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So when we get there, focus on what we're saying.
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Verse 12 gives us the context.
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He says, so then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.
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For if you live according to the flesh, you will die.
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But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
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For all who are led by the spirit of God are sons of God.
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For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father.
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The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.
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And if children, then heirs.
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Heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
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All right, that's where we're going to end.
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We pray God out his blessing to our study tonight.
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Our focus tonight is going to really center around the concept of glory.
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And one of the great shouting statements of the Reformation, one of the great things that the Reformation taught us was a statement that often in Latin is pronounced solely Deo Gloria.
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And who knows what solely Deo Gloria means to God alone, the glory or glory to God alone.
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And the reason for the statement glory to God alone or to God alone be the glory was because within the Roman Catholic system, there had come a system of glorifying priests, glorifying bishops and particularly glorifying one individual who they called the Vicar of Christ, also called the Pope.
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Vicar being a shortened phrase for vicarious or one who stands in the place of.
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That's what the term Vicar of Christ means.
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One who stands in the place of Christ in the world.
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And that's what they consider the Pope to be.
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And the reformers in rebellion to such teaching said, no, we do not glorify man.
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We do not glorify priests and bishops and particularly the Pope.
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The glory is to be given to God alone.
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Now, with that, I want to make an addition because I absolutely believe in solely Deo Gloria.
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I, the five solo statements of the Reformation, I think, are some of the most beautiful in history in regard to the description of the Christian faith.
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However, we do have to realize that there is a sense in which the Christian will be glorified because the Bible says that the Bible says for whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son and whom he predestined he called, whom he called he justified and whom he justified he glorified.
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Right.
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That's the end result of our salvation is our being glorified.
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Now, is it the same way in which God is glorified? No, not at all.
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And of course, that would be an inane thing to even consider.
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However, for us to forget that the end result of Christ's work on our behalf is our ultimate glorification would be just as inappropriate as for us to glorify a Pope.
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It would be inappropriate for us to miss the point that because of the work of Christ and because of being in Christ, we will be glorified.
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In fact, when Paul describes our glorification, he describes it in such a way as it's already taking place, because when the promise of God is given regarding a truth that is for the believer, God can speak of it in the past tense because his promises are not bound in time.
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When God makes a sovereign pledge, it is a pledge that need no time limit.
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It's done in the economy of the universe.
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It is as good as done.
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That being said, when we have we have through our outline of Romans eight, we have only looked at the first Roman numeral, which we entitled Life in the Spirit.
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And when we looked at life in the spirit, there were three parts.
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We said the spirit frees us.
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We said the spirit changes us.
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And then we said the spirit confirms our adoption.
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Now we're going to move to the second Roman numeral of the lesson, and it's on the back, I think.
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Is it start on the back? No.
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Yes.
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OK, good.
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Mine is thirty five pages long.
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I think I was only two.
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So it's a little different.
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The we're going to look at the guarantee of the spirit and the first letter under the guarantee of the spirit is the gain of glory, the gain of glory.
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So let's look first.
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I want to tell you the very first you see all those one, two, three, four, five, all those blanks, those all come from one verse.
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So I told you we're going to spend a lot of time in just two verses tonight.
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We're going to we're going to we're going to look at five blanks from the first verse.
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All right.
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The very first blank is air.
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H.E.I.R.
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I used the wrong side of the pen.
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Do the whole thing.
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That's not working.
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The air of glory.
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Looking at verse 17, we've just learned in verse 16 that the spirit himself bears witness with our spirit, that we are children of God.
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We talked about last week.
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Not everyone is a child of God.
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How does someone become a child of God? Are they born into the family? No, they're born.
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But they're born again.
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Yeah, yeah, yes.
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And yes, but I was just trying to put there that we're born into the family of humanity.
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But we are born again into the family of God.
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So we become children of God.
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As a result of that, it says in verse 17, and if children then heirs, we have here an if then statement.
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The if then statement means if one thing is true, then the next thing is also absolutely true.
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It's a logical deduction.
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If I said, if you have on shoes, then I can't see your feet.
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Well, that's a logical deduction.
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I can see your shoes, but I can't see your feet.
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It's an if then statement.
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Well, this is Paul's explanation of an if then statement.
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He says, if we're children, then we're heirs.
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It's a natural deduction, since we are the children of God, by having been reborn, we are naturally the heirs of God.
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The word heir there is clear on Amos, and it means a share by lot or a possessor or an heir.
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An heir is a legal recipient of the inheritance handed down by the parent.
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And of course, there is no greater parent than God to be the one to whom we are going to be the recipient of his inheritance.
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So we know we are heirs of glory because we have been born again into his family and we are his children.
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And we're going to go through these a little quick, but we'll slow down in a minute.
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The second one we see is the source of glory.
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He says in verse 17, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.
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The reason why we have the ability to be heirs of God, the source of our inheritance is Christ, is the work of Christ.
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Because Christ is the natural heir of God and we are in him, so we get to become, by extension, heirs of God.
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Now, what do I mean when I say Christ is the natural heir of God? What does that mean? I hope you use the word.
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You got it, because that's what I want to focus on.
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I want to focus on that word you just said, monogamous.
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Now, I know that's not what you said, but it's not what he said, but it is what he said.
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The term, what we use, the term only begotten is a Greek one word or is one word in the Greek, is a Greek one word.
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It's one word in the Greek and it's monogamous and monogamous means, well, let's break it down.
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It's a compound word.
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Mono means what? One.
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You know, we talk about monotheism, monolithic, things like that.
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Mono is a singular or one and gamous means origination or cause.
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All right.
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So when we talk about the monogamous, we're talking about Christ being the one caused son of God or the one originated from God.
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There is no other person in the universe who is called in Scripture the monogamous.
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Christ is and some of the newer translations use the term rather than only begotten.
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Some of the newer translations use the term the unique son of God, for God so loved the world that he sent his unique son.
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Now, even though that doesn't fully express the idea of monogamous, I do think it hits on one aspect of it.
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The point of one origination or one cause or one, this one begotten.
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The key is that there's no other one like him.
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And I do want to make a theological side note.
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And some of you may find this very interesting.
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Hopefully all of you will.
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We'll see, because when we start talking about Jesus being the only begotten son of God, make sure I handle this correctly.
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This is what I'm about to talk about is a little difficult because there is a theological discussion about what we call the eternal sonship of Christ.
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What that means, in essence, is was Christ God's son before he was born in Bethlehem? I see I see some of you like I don't know what to say.
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Well, theologically, the term only begotten, some people consider to relate only to the event at Bethlehem, that when it talks about Christ as being begotten, that's talking about the physical begotten nature of Christ's physical human body.
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However, when we talk about Christ, we call him the eternal son of God, don't we? Don't we say Christ? We say God, the father, God, the son.
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We don't say God, the father, Jesus.
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We say God, the father, God, the son.
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We use language that indicates that there is a relationship within the Godhead that Christ is begotten of the father.
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However, one of the most important theological statements that was ever made in the history of Christian discussion was when the writers of the early creed made this distinction.
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They said Christ is begotten, but not created or begotten, not made.
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Meaning Christ does not have a point at which he wasn't and then he was, you know what I mean? There's not a point at which God was just sitting there and he said, I'm going to have Christ.
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Christ was begotten.
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However, we still say Christ is begotten because Christ is from the father.
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But it's not as if the father created him.
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It is as if the father has always begotten him.
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Let me let me and I want to give you my I came up with this.
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I didn't steal this from R.C.
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Sproul.
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I do that a lot.
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But I'll tell you this next this next illustration.
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I'm not saying this is exact, but I pondered this when I was working on my book on the Trinity.
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I spent a lot of time with the concept of monogamies.
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This is one of my favorite terms.
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I ponder the concept of God.
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And Christ and that relationship and the Holy Spirit and that relationship and how the father begets the son and the son and the father, the spirit proceeds from the son and the father, that's what the ancient creed said.
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So I had to consider this and I had to mull this over.
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Something I thought about was this.
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And please know that this is not an exact analogy.
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There cannot be one.
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However, what I'm going to say, some of you may want to talk about it and say, Keith, I don't think it's right now.
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I mean, now I might never use it again, but tonight I'm going to use it because I like it and I'm teaching.
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Um, ever since, ever since Keith Foskey was, because there was a time when I was not, but ever since I was, I have begot thoughts every second, every moment of every day that I have been alive, I have begot thoughts.
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They proceed from me.
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My thoughts are in my brain, but they're coming from me.
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There hasn't been a day.
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There hasn't been one moment in my sleep where my mind wasn't working.
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I know I have some of the weirdest dreams ever.
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My mind works all the time.
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My point is this.
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When we think about Christ being begotten and not made, think of it like this.
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As long as I have been, my thoughts have been, but I beget them as long as God has been, Christ has been yet God, the father begets the son, it's an eternal begetting.
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Now, that may just have shot shot right over your head, but the point of the matter is when we talk about only begotten, it's not just Christ in Bethlehem.
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We talk about the eternally begotten son, the eternally unique son of God, the relationship of the Trinity transcends Christ's physical arrival in Bethlehem.
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The Trinity existed in eternity past.
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God has had a relationship of love in and of himself, father, son and Holy Spirit forever.
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And to me, that just blows my mind.
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So I wanted to share that with you, because when we talk about Christ, this is I'm raffling it up, bringing it back to Romans 8 now.
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I'm bringing it, I promise, because when we were brought into the family of God by virtue of the work of Christ, we became joint heirs with him.
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That's the key that all of the blessing of Christ we get to.
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That's the part I was trying to get to is he's so unique.
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He has this eternally begotten nature.
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His his position with the father is without any parallel.
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Yet when we are brought into the family of God, we are made fellow heirs with him, nobody shouts ever.
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Yeah, but I would.
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But that's a little that's a little different theological direction in the in what I'm saying, because when I talk about thoughts, that's what I say when I talk about my thoughts that can easily be miscommunicated, misunderstood.
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And I don't want that to happen.
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I was just saying how something can be begotten.
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From eternity, if God forgets Christ, God, the father begets the son, but it's an eternally begotten, we still say the son is not made.
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You were going to say, Richard, that I already preached this once.
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Well, it was in the passage.
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OK.
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Yeah, that's right.
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Yeah.
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Christ has always been.
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Yeah.
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We are not begotten children of God.
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Christ is the only begotten son of God.
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But as a result of Christ's work, we become joint heirs with he who is the natural heir.
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And that's what Paul is trying to get us to see.
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All right, now let's move on to verse or part C, because this is also.
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Yes, sir.
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Yes.
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Yes, sir.
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By grace, we we get to be we get to be glorified and something we don't deserve as glory.
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But because of his work, we get to share in that glory.
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All right.
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Now, the third one is the proof, the proof of glory.
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We've already seen the air of glory, that's us, the source of glory is the work of Jesus Christ, the proof of glory.
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He says, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ provided that we're provided there is there is a stipulation, if you will.
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He says, provided we suffer with him.
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Now, this portion of the verse, I find to be exceedingly interesting because it says that our assurance of glory is contingent upon our suffering with Christ provided.
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Actually, if you look it up in the if you kind of look it up in the original, the word provided there means if so, be that like this kind of sounds funny.
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But basically, if you say we will be glorified with him, if so, be that we suffer with him.
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That's the sound.
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Good English.
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That's why we come up with the word provided, because it takes the place of the word.
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If so, be that.
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But you I kind of like the putting it that way.
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If it so be that we suffer with him, we know we'll be glorified.
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And you know what? That echoes what Jesus thought.
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Jesus said in Matthew 16, verse 24, if anyone would come after me, let him do what? Deny himself and take up his cross and follow me for whosoever will save his life will lose it.
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And whosoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
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Now, I mentioned that passage because when Jesus said, take up your cross and follow me.
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This was a period of time before Jesus went to the cross, that statement wasn't made on the way to the hill of Golgotha with Jesus, with the cross being laid across his back.
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Jesus was teaching his apostles and he says, if any one of you will come after me, you need to deny yourself.
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They would have understood what that means.
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And he said, you need to take up your cross.
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Now, in that time period, everybody knew what that meant.
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I don't think anybody knew Jesus was going to the cross.
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So we have to understand Jesus is here painting a mental analogy for them that they would understand outside of what we understand.
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We look back at the cross.
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They had no thought that their master was going to one day be hung on a tree, a cross tree.
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So when Jesus uses the analogy of the cross here, he's using it in such a way that they have to think about what the cross means.
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But it wasn't that hard for them to come up with the answer because and I do not have the numbers in front of me and I wish now that I would have looked it up in my notes.
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But there was only a very short time in history where crosses were used.
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But in the time that crosses were used, it was used very prolifically.
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It was done a lot.
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And it wasn't very uncommon that the Romans would crucify men on the side of the road as a warning to other men who would rebel.
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And they would crucify them naked and they would leave their bodies up to rot and be eaten by the scavenging animals and birds.
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And it was a sign post that said, if you disobey Rome, this too will happen to you.
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So Jesus already knowing his cross, obviously, because Jesus is God's son, but knowing they didn't know, he's using an analogy they would know and saying, look, guys, to follow after me is a potential death sentence.
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However, if anyone is going to come after me, he needs to be ready to give up everything, take a hold of that death bearing cross and follow me.
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Something that we need to remember is that there is a price tag for being identified with Jesus.
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There is no price tag for salvation because that penalty has been paid in full.
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However, our identity with Christ is something that bears a burden along with being heirs of glory.
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Paul mentions that we will have suffering that we will face.
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Now, what kind of suffering will we endure? Well, if you go back to the first century, there was economic difficulty, there was social persecution, and then some of them even faced death as a result of their claims of Christianity.
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And in many parts of the world today, you could go and you could see the exact same thing.
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If you've ever done any work looking into the voice of the martyrs, I must admit I have not done enough looking into their work.
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But the voice of the martyrs, of course, and other organizations like that that simply seek to help out those who are being persecuted and the things that are happening in the name of political correctness and in the name of anti-Christianity today are horrible.
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And even in countries where Christianity is tolerated or encouraged, Christians must not become complacent.
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To live as Jesus did, serving others, giving up one's rights, resisting pressures to conform to the world, always will exact a price.
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And that's why this word provided is important.
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We are heirs provided we suffer, which means if we are believers, we will suffer.
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Some of us will suffer more than others, but we will all suffer for our faith.
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I would even go as far as to say this.
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If you have never if you have never experienced persecution for your faith at all, it's likely because no one knows about it.
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I mean, if you've never if you've never had to stand for Christ, it's probably because no one knows you are.
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Matthew chapter 10, verse 32, says this.
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So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will acknowledge before my father who is in heaven.
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But whoever denies me before men, I will also deny before my father who is in heaven.
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Jesus makes that very clear.
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And I got to tell you, honestly, if you really want to start suffering for Christ because you're concerned about this verse, start living for him very actively.
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And it's it will it will soon there.
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Now, don't be foolish.
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You know, don't protest funerals and things like that.
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That's just that's that shows no love.
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But live for Christ and speak the name of Christ publicly and you'll find very quickly that people will have not much to do with you.
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However, Jesus tells us in John 15, if the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you.
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If you were of the world, the world would love you as its son.
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But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world.
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Key verse there.
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I chose you out of the world.
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Therefore, the world hates you.
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First John 3, 13.
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Brothers, do not be surprised when the world hates you.
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That's what Paul is talking about here.
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Our assurance comes when those persecutions stand before us and they offer up to us that opportunity to deny Christ, to reject him or to stand for him.
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When the Holy Spirit empowerment within us gives us that power to stand, we can look back at this verse and we can say we are joint heirs with Christ because we know we have suffered.
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Not that we earned it through our suffering.
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But that our suffering was the mark of our because nobody stands under persecution without the Holy Spirit's empowerment of faith.
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Now, two more, we're doing good on time, two more, the extent of glory, the extent of glory.
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He says, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
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You know, we may find it hard to suffer as believers, but this suffering has a wonderful reward.
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Our reward is glory and being glorified with Christ, the same glory with which Christ is glorified.
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We will share with him because we will be in him.
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Most of you know Ephesians 2, but I want to read to you just a portion of Ephesians 2 very quickly.
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Paul says in Ephesians 2, 1, he says, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins, which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air.
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The spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of the flesh, carrying out the desires of our body and mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.
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That's where you were, dead in sin, children of wrath, just like everybody else.
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But God, two most beautiful words in the Bible, because if it weren't for that, we'd still be there.
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But God, being rich in mercy, it doesn't say being rich in goodness, it says, but God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace, you have been saved and raises us up with him.
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And here's the part, and seats us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages, we might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Jesus Christ.
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Our position in heaven will be to glorify God simply by being there, because we are whom Christ died for, by being seated in the heavenly places, Christ's, it's like the story Jesus told, you remember the story Jesus told, he said, my son, there was a king, and he says, my son is going to have a banquet, and nobody wanted to come.
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Total depravity, nobody wanted to come.
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So the king sent out and compelled those to come in another picture of God having to go out and save us because we're not naturally going to come in on that.
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That's a great, great parable, by the way.
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But he says, he says, go out and compel him to come in.
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Why? So that my banquet will be filled, so that my son will be glorified in the presence of many attendees.
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God saves us to glorify his son.
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And in turn, because we're in his son, we share in that glory.
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Oh, that's good.
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That's that's amen stuff right there.
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I am in myself.
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A lot of pastors do it, I guess I have to start.
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But no, but that that to me is important because there's a reciprocation of the glory there.
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We glorify Christ by being there because God saved us for Christ.
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We are a gift from the God to the son.
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All the father gives me will come to me.
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The the the elect are God's gift to the son.
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So that the son's banquet will be filled and as such, the son will be glorified and we who are in him will share in that glory.
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So that is the extent of our glory.
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It's it is to be glorified with Christ.
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This doesn't mean we're divine like him.
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It doesn't mean we have the God glory that he has, but we share in being glorified along with him.
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We share in his glory.
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All right, now we do want to look at verse 18, because even though in your ESV it does start a new paragraph and all that paragraphs weren't in the first verse.
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It was written.
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The original Greek was written in what's called unsealed text.
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That means all capital letters, no punctuation, no spaces even.
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So don't you let that paragraph marker throw you off because we're going to we're going to jump into the next paragraph with both feet.
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Because in verse 18, what we see is we see the comparison of glory in verse 18.
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We see the comparison of glory because he says in verse 18, for I consider means I've been come convinced.
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I am convinced that the sufferings of this present time.
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Remember, he just said we're going to suffer.
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And sometimes when you tell people that it kind of gets them down, nobody wants to suffer.
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No one gets excited about suffering, but he just said, if we're Christians, we're going to suffer.
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It's our lot in life because of following Christ.
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The world hates him and by extension will hate us.
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He says, but I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
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That to me is one of the most reassuring passages in all of the Bible, because we will suffer if we are Christians.
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But the suffering we receive, no matter how bad it may be or become, will never compare to our glorious blessing.
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Sometimes the only way to face painful suffering in our life is to remember that all trials are temporary for the believer.
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I know and I hear people, people ask me all the time, why does that evil person have all those nice, good things and their life just seems so easy? I say, well, first of all, we don't know how easy their life is.
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You know, evil people have, I mean, rich people have problems too.
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So we don't know how easy their life is.
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But I'll say this, the unbeliever may have a positive life.
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He may go through his life, never even stub his toe.
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He may have the best life ever.
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But if he remains in his unbelief, he will have an eternity of suffering.
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And likewise, the Christian may spend his whole life in a prison for Christ.
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But the glory that he is going to receive is not even worthy to be compared to every day suffering, every minute of this life.
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The suffering present that we have is not even to be compared with the glory that's going to be revealed to us.
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I want to end tonight, I want to read you something.
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I want you to go with me because we're drawing to a conclusion.
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I want you to go to Revelation chapter 21.
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I've done, I've never counted them, but I think I've done 30 funerals or something like that in my five years.
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Now, this is January, by the way.
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January is my fifth year as a pastor here, starting my sixth year next month.
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So and in five years of being the pastor here, I've probably done about 30 funerals over the years.
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It's just been most of them not for our people.
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Most of them is for friends, family, people that people that know us or know me or know y'all and ask me.
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But I read this, I read this verse almost every funeral I do because of the promise of glory for the believer.
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Now, I don't always do believer funerals.
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In fact, a lot of them I do it for unbelievers.
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And I have to say, look, you know, I'm here preaching to the living.
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Funerals aren't for the dead.
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They're for the living.
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You know, I'm here preaching to them.
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But this is one verse, I'm sorry, Revelation 21, verse one, Revelation 21.
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And we're going to read one through four.
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This is the picture of the promise of glory for the believer.
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This is the hope when Paul talks about the hope of glory.
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This is it.
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Then I saw a new heaven.
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And a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more.
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And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
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And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.
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He will dwell with them and they will be his people.
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And God himself will be with them as their God.
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He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
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And death shall be no more.
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Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.
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This is the glory that the believer has to look forward to.
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I can't describe to you because there are no words to describe the new Jerusalem.
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The Bible does the best that English can do, the best that man's language can do.
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But the glory that I see here that has always caught my heart and grabbed my heart is when it says the dwelling place of God is with man.
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Beloved, if you want to know what glory is, that's what glory is.
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I hear a lot of people, and I do not want to tread upon your feelings or conditions tonight, but I have heard a lot of people when they talk about heaven, they talk about seeing their mama and their daddy, and that's great and that's wonderful.
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But the first relationship we have in heaven is with God.
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The primary thing that you are going to do in heaven is glorify God.
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And I'll tell you what I want to see, Jesus.
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That's what I want to see.
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Can you imagine that? The glory of seeing Christ.
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It's beyond words.
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That's the glory that the believer has to look forward to.
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Let's pray.
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Father, we thank you for your word tonight as we think about the glory of heaven and the promise that you've given us, the glory that was lost in the garden but has been redeemed in Christ, the second Adam, the last Adam.
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God, we are just filled with amazement and awe at what we had to look forward to as believers.
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And God, we just pray that tonight that we will be reminded of our responsibility as believers to live for Christ.
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That in living for Him, we might at times have to suffer, but knowing that that suffering is not to be compared to the glory that will be revealed to us.
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Give us now, oh Father, safe travel as we leave and remind us every day of the hope of glory that we might live for you.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.