WWUTT 808 No One Has Ascended Into Heaven?

John 3 .13 says no one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the

Son of Man. So no one goes to heaven when they die? There's got to be a different context of that verse when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ.

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Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you Becky. We come back to our study in John chapter 3, and I'll start again in verse 9, but today

I'll go all the way to verse 21. The Apostle John wrote, Nicodemus said to Jesus, How can these things be?

Jesus answered him, Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.

If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only

Son of God. And this is the judgment. The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

But everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.

But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

This section that goes from verses 16 through 21, we'll look at this in a little bit more detail next week.

But for today, we're going to finish the section that we've been studying this week and how it flows into that next section that starts with verse 16.

Now there's kind of a break there. If you're reading your English Standard Bible, you'll notice that there's a break between verses 15 and 16 with the heading for God so loved the world.

So the ESV editors have kind of made that into its own section.

But even as it stands in the original Greek text, like if we were reading this without any of the chapter and verse markers, there would still be a break there between verses 15 and 16.

And I'll explain why here in just a moment. But first, let's go back to verse 13, which was kind of where we finished off yesterday.

Jesus said to Nicodemus, no one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the son of man.

And often a question that I'll get related to this verse is, well, if no one's ascended into heaven except Jesus, then what do we say about Enoch or Elijah?

In fact, there are Hebrew roots guys out there that will say that Elijah never ascended into heaven. He was just relocated on the earth to another location.

He didn't actually go up into the heavens. It's just the heavens in like a physical sense.

He went up into the air and God deposited him somewhere else. So there are Hebrew roots guys that will say that Jesus or Elijah rather never actually went into heaven.

And the proof text that they'll use to support that is John 3, 13. No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the son of man.

But as I mentioned yesterday, this is not talking about the heavens in general or heaven,

God's dwelling place in general. It's talking very specifically about the place where God issues his decrees from.

No one has entered into the council of God, his very throne room in his presence except the son of man.

He is the only one who has been there to witness the words that God has proclaimed for Jesus himself proclaimed them.

He is the originator of the word of God. Since as we started at the very beginning of this book stating in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was

God. So Jesus is that very word that has been spoken from the mouth of God.

And so Jesus has been calling claim to this as he's been providing these answers to Nicodemus again every time he says, truly, truly,

I say to you, he's making a claim to his divinity that the words that you have heard that have come from God, meaning what's been written down in the scriptures,

I have firsthand knowledge of those words because I am the originator of those words.

That's what Jesus is claiming when he says, truly, truly, I say to you.

So this statement in verse 13 calls attention to that, that same understanding.

No one has ascended into heaven. No one has been there to hear the counsel of God delivered except he who descended from heaven, the son of man.

And Jesus referring to himself here in the third person, because it's not yet his time to reveal himself to the

Jews as being the Messiah, God himself in the flesh.

That wouldn't come until the end of his earthly ministry. And for saying that he will be put to death.

The Pharisees will accuse him of blasphemy because they know he has claimed to be

God himself. Now, coming up in the next chapter, in John chapter four, Jesus does reveal who he is to the

Samaritan woman at the well. He says, I am he, I am the Messiah who is coming.

And then with rejoicing, she goes running into the city and telling everybody, hey, come and hear a man who knew everything that I ever did.

Could this be the Messiah? Jesus revealed himself to this Samaritan woman, that which he would not reveal to the

Jews at least not yet. Now, his disciples knew it. Of course, he had said it to his disciples. And you have that conversation in Matthew, chapter 16, where Jesus asks his disciples, who do you say that I am?

And Peter says, you are the Christ, which means Messiah, the son of the living God. And Jesus says, blessed are you,

Simon Bar -Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven.

So Jesus, not yet ready to show himself to the Jews, does not make this personal first person claim before Nicodemus here.

But he refers to himself in the third person. No one has ascended into heaven except he or except me, who has descended from heaven.

And that is the son of man. Those who will use this verse to try to say that no one is in heaven right now or no one has ascended into heaven will only use the first part of that verse.

No one has ascended into heaven. But they don't use the second part of the verse except he who descended from heaven.

So no one has ever descended from heaven except Jesus. Don't the angels descend from heaven?

Yes, they do. Don't they ascend back into heaven? Yep. They do that also.

So there is a certain context here by which we are supposed to understand these things.

It's not some sort of blanket statement and certainly not declaring that there's no one in heaven but God.

We know that Elijah and Moses are in heaven for when

Jesus appears before his disciples at the Mount of Transfiguration glowing in all of his glory,

Elijah and Moses appear there with him and the disciples even recognize them somehow.

But it's it's Jesus showing that he is still the glorious God. He might have that glory veiled for the time being covered in human flesh while he is accomplishing the

Father's will here on earth. But he at no point ever ceased to be God.

And the disciples got to see that. They got to see that Jesus is God at that moment at the

Mount of Transfiguration. And there was Elijah and Moses there with him.

Where did they come from? Well, they are in heaven with God. The book of Revelation actually shows us things that are going on in heaven right now.

Now certainly John sees things in the future that have not yet transpired. He also sees things that have already happened in the past.

He just sees it from a different vantage point. But there are things that he describes in the book of Revelation also happening in heaven right now.

Essentially what happens when Jesus returns is that the veil that separates the physical world that we inhabit now from the spiritual world that we will inhabit later, that veil is lifted.

And so Christ is revealed to this earth and comes judging the earth with fire.

It's not like Jesus is way out on the edge of the universe. That's where heaven is, where the universe ends.

And so when he comes back, he just travels billions of light years across the universe and we see him coming in the sky. That's not how that's going to work.

God is here even now. He's never absent. He is always with us. But we don't see him in his glory because there is a veil that separates the physical world from the spiritual world.

Now Isaiah got the privilege of seeing that veil lifted for a moment and he saw something in heaven that terrified him.

And he thought he was going to be killed because he was an unholy man living among unholy people and he knew he was looking into the

Holy of Holies, the very place where God inhabits. He described it as God sitting in his temple and the train of his robe filling the temple.

And he said, I am undone for I'm a man of unclean lips. And one of the angels took a coal off of the altar and came down and touched

Isaiah's lips with it so that he would be purified and he could converse with God without his brain melting out of his head.

But what Isaiah saw was not a physical man sitting in a physical temple with a physical robe filling the place.

That's just the best way that he could describe it in words that we could understand. But what's going on in that spiritual realm is beyond comprehension.

Our finite minds cannot understand it. The Apostle Paul rebuked the

Corinthians for thinking about heaven in such physical ways. That's what you have in 1

Corinthians 15. In verse 35, he says, but someone will ask, how are the dead raised?

With what kind of body do they come? And then he says, you foolish person, what you sow does not come to life unless it dies.

And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.

But God gives it a body as he has chosen and to each kind of seed its own body.

For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, another for fish.

There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind and the glory of the earthly is of another.

There is one glory of the sun, another of the moon, another of the stars, for star differs from star in glory.

So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable. What is raised is imperishable.

It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness.

It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body.

So what we are now is not what we are going to become. Even when we die and go to heaven, that's not our final state or our final resting place either.

In Ecclesiastes 12 .7 it says, the dust returns to the earth as it was and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

So when we die, our body goes into the ground, our spirit goes to be with the Lord. But a day is coming in which our body is going to be raised and it's going to be made to be imperishable and our soul will be reunited with our body.

But we will be different then than we are now. It's not like the body is just raised again and it's reassembled, but this time it's perfect and it's not going to decay and boom, here's the soul back into it.

And now you'll have wings like eagles and run and not be weary and walk and not faint.

That's not how that transition is going to take place. What the body will become when it is raised is going to be different than what it is now.

In Philippians 3, Paul says that Jesus will transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself.

And what we will be transformed into will be perfect and holy.

And we will be in the presence of God and see him as he is because we will have been given an imperishable body by which we can dwell in the presence of God, which we cannot do now.

So these are all things that we're looking forward to on that day of glory when

Christ returns. When you die, you go to be with the Lord. But then when Christ returns, even those who have gone to be with God are going to come back and be reunited with their bodies transformed to be imperishable.

So there are those who have ascended into heaven. It's those who have died. They've gone to be with the Lord. But again, there's a context here in which

John is saying or Jesus is saying to Nicodemus anyway. John is writing. Jesus is the one talking.

And he says that no one has been there to hear the counsels of God proclaimed except he who descended from heaven.

And that is me speaking in third person, of course. But that's the reference. And then in verse 14, he says, and he makes another

Old Testament reference here. Remember, he's called attention to Ezekiel in previous passages.

And here he goes to the book of Numbers. Verse 14, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

So once again, Jesus is telling Nicodemus earthly things. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

So he's showing Nicodemus again how Christ is the fulfillment of the scriptures.

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even that story, that which we read about in the book of Numbers was pointing to Christ.

And you remember the story of the serpent being raised up in the wilderness, right? This is

Numbers chapter 21, starting in verse four from Mount Hor, they set out by the way to the

Red Sea to go around the land of Edom. Now, this was after the Israelites had complained.

And so God had cursed them to wander around in the desert for 40 years. And that's what they're doing. The people became impatient on the way.

Imagine that. And the people spoke against God and against Moses. Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?

For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food. Then the

Lord send fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people so that many people of Israel died.

And the people came to Moses and said, we have sinned, for we have spoken against the

Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord that he may take away the serpents from us.

So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole.

And everyone who is bitten when he sees it shall live. So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole.

And if a serpent bit anyone, that person would look at the bronze serpent and they would live.

And Jesus is taking that story and showing Nicodemus that it was referring to him.

Now maybe in Nicodemus's mind as he is learning these things from Jesus, he is thinking that this story in Numbers chapter 21 is referring to the coming

Messiah. Maybe he didn't know right there and then that Jesus was the Messiah that was being prophesied.

He didn't connect the dots and he didn't understand that Jesus was making these references about himself.

But Jesus is showing him how this story is pointing to Christ so that later

Nicodemus will be able to put the dots together. After Jesus is crucified, he sees this is what he was telling me about a couple of years ago when we had that conversation saying, just as the serpent in the wilderness is lifted up, so must the

Son of Man be lifted up. And I saw it. I saw him crucified on the cross. Nicodemus does come back up again in the

Gospel of John two other times. One time he is defending Jesus against the Pharisees and then he is present at Jesus' burial and provides all kinds of ointments and spices for his burial.

So we kind of have an indication that Nicodemus did come to understand that Jesus was the

Messiah and was pointing to himself as the Messiah, even in this conversation.

So Nicodemus sees him up on the cross. He remembers that Jesus said, just as the serpent was lifted up, so must the

Son of Man be lifted up. And as the people looked at the serpent and they were saved.

So when we look at Christ on the cross, we are saved, we are forgiven our sins, we are rescued from death, we are given life and not just life to wander around in the desert again for 40 years, we are given new life and the promise of eternal life that we will dwell with God forever in his holy habitation on the day that Christ appears in glory.

So all those who believe in him who look to the cross will have their sins forgiven, the poison and the venom that is infecting your members that leads to death.

It will be healed, cured. You will be rescued from that sentence of death and you will be given life in Christ.

When we know that Jesus died for our sins as an atoning sacrifice and he rose again from the grave conquering death so that all who believe in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

For we go on in verse 16 to read, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son and whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Jesus made reference to something that was given to the Jews in verses 14 and 15, salvation from the snake bites, but Jesus pointed to himself and said,

I must be lifted up in front of the entire world so that all who believe in me, not just from the

Jews, but also from the Gentiles will not perish but have eternal life.

That's where we'll pick up our study again next week. Let's conclude with prayer. Our wonderful God, we thank you for the salvation that has been given to us in Christ that we've been rescued from death, that we have been transferred into your eternal kingdom, that we have hope in this life now, knowing that this life isn't hopeless, that it isn't meaningless, that everything that happens has an ultimate purpose and it is for your glory.

And so I pray that we might learn to give praise to God, that we might give honor and glory unto you even in the midst of fiery trials.

For we know that Jesus went through suffering and we share in the sufferings of Christ, that we may be made to be like him.

We would grow in holiness and sanctification, knowing that all things are working together for our good because we are loved by you and called according to your purpose.

So let us give praise to you all day, every day for the glory that we have been given in Christ and desire to obey you every day and live as Christ day by day until Christ appears in glory.

And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the

Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study.

Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers.