Bodies Fit For A Heavenly Home (Philippians 3:20-21)

Kootenai Church

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You will need your Bibles open to the book of Philippians in chapter 3, Philippians chapter 3.

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And we'll get to that here in just a moment. Let's bow together in prayer. Our Father, it is with great joy and delight that we can open up Your Word, that we can read it and study it and meditate upon the glorious truths that You have revealed in this book.

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We thank You for Your grace of salvation, again, for the forgiveness of sins and our justification, which is made ours through the death and resurrection of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And now, as we look at Your Word, we pray that You would give us insight and understanding in the truths of Scripture as we reflect upon some of the implications of the resurrection of our

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Savior. And we ask that You would be honored through this time and that You would be glorified to make

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Your truth impressed upon our hearts, the glory of Christ our Lord, we pray this. Amen.

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Amen. Most Christians have an underdeveloped theology of bodily resurrection.

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I think that that is true writ large. I'm not sure that it is true of those of you who attend here regularly, since the subject of bodily resurrection comes up in the preaching and teaching here quite frequently.

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It certainly has as we've been working our way through the book of Hebrews. Bodily resurrection is tied in with God's promise of our reward and our inheritance.

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And so we have found ourselves contemplating that truth from time to time. But for the most part, though,

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I think most Christians in our country, people at least who named the name of Christ would affirm that God raised

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Christ from the dead. Because without that affirmation, you can't even be considered a Christian. That is central to a

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Christian profession and to understanding of Christian truth. So that while people may affirm that God raised

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Christ from the dead, they, most of them, have not thought through the implications of what that means in terms of our hope and our inheritance and eternity, heaven itself.

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Most Christians really don't know what they can expect for the life that is to come. If I ask you to paint for me a picture of heaven, and I were to pick one of you at random, chances are good that some of you here would have an idea of heaven that you'd think.

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I think there's probably phantoms there, spirits, weird -looking angels.

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I've read Ezekiel. There's weird -looking angels there floating around. I picture probably in the back of my mind some organ music playing in the distance.

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And no matter how far you walk into the midst, you'll never find that organ. It's just ever -present. It's always there.

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And people kind of floating by once in a while, I'm floating by. And this is really exciting for a brief period of time.

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But after that, you kind of wonder, is this really what eternity is all about? Is this what we were promised?

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Is this what I've lived my life hoping to inherit? This? And this is it? And truth be told, if that's your conception of heaven, then that doesn't sound very appealing at all, does it?

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That doesn't sound very enticing, very inviting. It's difficult to get excited about that for a week, let alone for all of eternity.

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That is not what Scripture says that heaven is going to be like. Most Christians, I think, have an underdeveloped theology of bodily resurrection.

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So let me test it with three very simple questions. I'm going to ask you three, and these are going to be easy. These are true or false.

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And I don't want... In fact, this is how easy it's going to be. I don't want you to raise your hand. I don't want you to nod your head. I don't want you to affirm or deny.

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I just want you in your mind to answer each of these three true or false questions. Let's see how developed your theology of bodily resurrection is.

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Question number one, or statement number one, I should say. The Lord Jesus Christ is in heaven right now with a real, material, physical body.

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He's in heaven right now with a real, material, physical body, a body that could interact with this realm, a body that could eat fish, a body that could drink liquid, a body that could shake your hand, a body that could give you a hug, a body that could pat you on the back, a body that could move items, knock on wood, bang on the pulpit, a real, physical, material body, the

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Lord Jesus Christ in heaven right now, true or false? Don't answer it.

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Not allowed. Statement number two, you, if you are in Jesus Christ, you have repented of your sins and trusted

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Christ. I'm talking about you, Christian. You will spend eternity in a real, material, physical body, in a real, material, physical place filled with physical, material things, and other believers, saints, who also inhabit real, material, physical bodies.

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And by real, material, physical bodies, I mean the type of bodies that can eat fish and drink liquids, drink the fruit of the vine.

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I mean the type of body that can knock on a pulpit and move items, a body that can shake your hand, give you a hug, that kind of a physical body.

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In heaven, you, for all of eternity, will dwell in a real, physical, material body along with every other saint and believer in real, physical, material body, true or false?

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Question number three, all men and women who have ever lived will spend eternity in real, material, physical bodies, either in heaven or in hell.

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Real, material, physical bodies, so that those in heaven will enjoy the delights and the pleasures and the blessings and the joys of every good things in real, physical bodies that will never die, never deteriorate, and never be destroyed.

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In real bodies in which every desire will be satisfied, every longing will be satiated and fulfilled, while those in hell will also spend eternity in real, physical, material bodies that will never die, that will never be destroyed, and will never deteriorate, but they will suffer eternal wrath under the punishment of God forever and ever.

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And they will have desires and longings in hell, but they will never be satisfied. They will never be satiated.

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There will never be any fulfillment for them. In fact, those unsatisfied passions and desires and cravings of their physical bodies, part of the suffering of hell will be the fact that those are never satiated and never fulfilled.

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That will be part of the torment. Physical bodies for everyone who has ever lived, in heaven or in hell, forever and ever, the type of material bodies that can move items, eat fish, drink liquids, and pat each other on the back.

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True or false? Okay? To review, Jesus is in heaven right now with a real, physical, material body.

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You, if you are in Christ, will spend all of eternity in a real, physical, material body. And three, everybody who has ever lived will spend eternity in real, physical, material bodies, either in heaven or in hell.

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True or false? The answer to all three of those questions is true.

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All three of those is true. Now, if you got those right and you are not uncomfortable with that, in fact, if you got those right and you're not uncomfortable with that, and that creates within you an eager anticipation for the life that is to come, then you do not have an underdeveloped theology of bodily resurrection.

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If you answered false to any of those questions, or if hearing that makes you uncomfortable, it is because you have an underdeveloped theology of bodily resurrection.

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And you really do not appreciate what it is that Scripture says concerning the ultimate life that is to come and what

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God has for those who are His. And Resurrection Sunday is the perfect opportunity to think through and work out the implications of the doctrine of bodily resurrection because we celebrate the very real historical fact and reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ three days after His crucifixion.

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We celebrate that and the church celebrates that every Sunday. We do so because it is real, it happened in history, there was an empty tomb,

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He has risen, He has risen indeed, and He has ascended to the Father's right hand where He awaits the time when all of His enemies will be made a footstool for His feet and He will return again to judge the living and the dead and to establish

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His kingdom. That is what is yet future for us. So we celebrate the resurrection of Christ, the resurrection that was predicted in the

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Old Testament, predicted and promised by Christ Himself and then witnessed by eyewitnesses who saw Him dead and then saw

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Him alive three days later. So we affirm that Christ has risen and we sing of this reality, we read of this truth, we know that God raised

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Him up, that death no longer has dominion over Him, He is declared to be the Son of God with power by resurrection from the dead.

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Now this doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not an appendix to Christian teaching, it is not some add -on, it's not some addendum, it's not something that somebody tagged on in the

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Middle Ages at some point because they thought that would be kind of a clever idea to make people have a hope for the world that is to come, you know, as people are dying from plagues and diseases and famines and stuff.

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Let's talk about resurrection, that's a good thing, let's add that into Scripture. No, no, that's not how it works at all. Resurrection, bodily resurrection, and specifically the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not an add -on to Christianity, it is the truth, the fact, the historical reality without which there is no

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Christianity. That's Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 15. The doctrine of bodily resurrection, which includes the resurrection of the

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Lord Jesus Christ and the resurrection of all men, and I'm talking specifically today about your resurrection as a believer at the end of time, those two doctrines, those three ideas, they all go together, they are intertwined and interwoven and they cannot be separated from one another.

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If you deny that the dead are raised, then you must also deny that Christ has been raised, and if you deny that Christ has been raised, then you must also deny that you have been raised, and if you deny that you will be raised, and if you deny that you will be raised, then you are denying that there is any hope beyond this life, and this is what

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Paul means when he says, if we have hoped in Christ, in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.

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If this is all we have and our faith is only good for what we transact here, for what happens in this realm, and we have no hope of bodily resurrection, if we have no hope of life after the grave, physical, real, material life after the grave, then death has gained its victory, death has won, death has conquered something, namely us, and there is no hope, and so we are of all men most to be pitied.

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Those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished, Paul says, 1 Corinthians 15, and if we've hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied, because we would have then no hope for any life after the grave.

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There would be nothing left for us. You die and you become worm food, at least your body does, and if God does not grant us victory over the grave, then there is no resurrection at all.

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So there's a lot that hinges on this doctrine, and if death conquers us, and if there is no life after death, then death is victorious, then death has the final say, then death robs us of something that is never redeemed, and never returned, and never vindicated, and death cannot have the final say.

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So therefore, there must be a resurrection at the end of life, at the end of time.

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If there is no bodily resurrection for the believer, then the sting of death remains. It's permanent.

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Death takes something that can never be remedied and will never be remedied if there is no resurrection. It strikes us with the ultimate loss, the ultimate robbery.

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It conquers us, and it has the last word, and it is that implication, our bodily resurrection, which we're going to talk about this morning in Philippians 3.

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So you need your Bibles open there to Philippians 3. This sermon today is not an apologetic or defense of the bodily resurrection of Christ.

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We could do that. It's not a look at a resurrection account from one of the Gospels that we could do that. Those would be good things, but today we're going to be talking about one of the implications of Christ's resurrection, namely, the bodily resurrection of the saints or of believers.

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And I'm going to tie in, again, at the end of this, the reality of the bodily resurrection for all men. Philippians 3, beginning at verse 20 and 21, those are the two verses that are going to occupy our attention this morning.

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Verse 20 says, For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for a

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Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.

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Those are our two verses for this morning. I want to set up the context a little bit so you can kind of understand what the Apostle Paul is saying here and the importance of it.

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You may wonder why it is that in the end of chapter 3, he would mention our heavenly citizenship and even the coming of Christ, which we eagerly wait for, verse 20 says, we eagerly wait for the

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Savior from heaven. Why does he reference those two things? The Apostle Paul is trying to fix the mindset, the affections, the love, the attention of the believers in Philippi upon heaven and upon their reward.

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So he just simply needs to remind them that our citizenship is in heaven, but it's not everybody's citizenship is in heaven.

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There is a group of people whose citizenship is not in heaven, namely unbelievers and the false teachers that he has mentioned from time to time throughout chapter 3.

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So if your Bible is open to chapter 3, look at verse 2. He mentions these false teachers, beware of the dogs, beware of the evildoers, beware of the false circumcision, for we are the true circumcision who worship in the

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Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. There is a group of people whose minds are so set on earthly things that earth and their works in the earth and their hope is all wrapped up in this world and nothing in the world to come.

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So they have set their affections in this world. Their desires have to do with this world. Their hope of righteousness is in this world.

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Everything that they hope for in terms of forgiveness and salvation and their own righteousness, it is all conjured up from themselves, from inside of their own abilities and their own works.

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And the apostle Paul goes on to list all of the reasons why he himself might have put confidence in the flesh, beginning in verses 4 and following.

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He has all of this litany, the pedigree that he had of being born a

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Jew of a certain tribe and he was a Pharisee and he kept the law and he was blameless and he worked really hard.

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And in the eyes of most people in Paul's day, they would have looked at him and said, look, if he's going to miss heaven, then I have no hope.

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This guy is far more righteous than I, far more pious than I. He's a holy man of God. He thinks about God all the time.

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He's constantly working and serving God. Look at his pedigree. Child of Abraham, born of the tribe of Benjamin, a

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Pharisee of Pharisees, trained at the feet of one of the greatest rabbis of the day, Gamaliel. I mean, if anybody's going to get into heaven by his own merit, by his own works, it's certainly this man,

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Saul of Tarsus. But Paul says when he came to understand who Christ is and how he lacked righteousness before God, he says he cast all of those things.

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Look at verse 8. All of them aside, more than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing

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Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain

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Christ. Everything that I would have counted in my credits column as gaining me favor in the sight of God, I counted it as dung.

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I cast it aside. It is useless so that I may know Christ. And not just know

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Christ, but be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith.

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It is only by that righteousness that one can be saved. It is only by that righteousness, not your own, but the righteousness of another, an alien righteousness.

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In order to have salvation, in order to attain to heaven, in order to have the favor of God, you and I need righteousness to stand in His presence, but not a righteousness that comes from our own deeds, our own pedigree, our own works, our own abilities, but a righteousness that is credited to our account, an alien or a foreign righteousness that is given to us, imputed to us, credited to us.

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It's not a righteousness that we conjure up. This kind of righteousness doesn't come from within the heart of guilty sinners.

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So the Apostle Paul throughout this chapter has been focusing their minds on Christ and His righteousness, pressing on toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

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Verse 14, he's trying to fix their hearts and their minds and their focus upon heaven. And then look at verse 17, brethren, and here he returns to the theme of false teachers.

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Brethren, join in following my example and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us. For many walk, of whom

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I have often told you and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose

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God is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.

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That brings us right up to our passage. There is this group who trust in their own abilities for righteousness.

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They will not come to Christ. They will not repent. They will not embrace salvation that is offered in Christ and Christ alone.

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Instead, they insist on having their own way and insist on offering their own righteousness before God on judgment day.

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These are men who have their minds set on earthly things, whose God is their appetite, and whose glory is in their worldly or earthly shame.

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In other words, these are men of this world. They don't belong to Christ. They're bound to this creation, and so all of their priorities and their affections, their goals, their aims do not transcend this world at all.

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Instead, they're all wrapped up in this world and not in the world that is to come. And Paul says, these are the men that you want to shun or to avoid, have nothing to do with them.

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These are men who are of this world and they will perish with this world. Their end is destruction, but our end is not destruction.

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So verse 20, our citizenship is in heaven. Our citizenship isn't in this world.

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I mean, after a fashion, you do have a citizenship here, right? Most of you? You do have a citizenship here.

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But your real citizenship, the citizenship that matters, the citizenship that is eternally significant is not here.

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It's not in any country on this planet. Your citizenship is in heaven. Verse 20, our citizenship is in heaven from which we also eagerly wait for a

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Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory by the exertion of the power that He has, even to subject all things to Himself.

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In contrast to the unbelieving worldly whose mind and heart is set on earthly things is the believer whose citizenship is in heaven and therefore their mind and their heart and their affections are driven by heaven and set upon heaven.

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From which, that is, from heaven, we eagerly await a Savior. The single truth, and notice the reference to bodily resurrection in verse 21,

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He will transform the body of this humble state into conformity with the body of His glory. That's resurrection. That's resurrection.

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The single truth that will most effectively fix your heart and your mind and your affections upon heaven, our eternal home and our reward is the truth of your future bodily resurrection.

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The single truth that will fix your heart and affections upon heaven is the truth of your future bodily resurrection.

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You grasp this, you understand this, you cherish this, you work out the implications of this in your heart and in your mind, and it will drive your affections toward heaven.

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It will set your mind on the things that are to come. So verses 20 and 21 is our text this morning. We're going to look at three important things that He says here about future bodily resurrection.

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First, the person by whom we will be raised, that's verse 20, Lord Jesus Christ. The pattern after which we will be raised, which is the body of His glory, and third, the power with which we will be raised, the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.

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Verse 20, our citizenship is in heaven from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is just a reminder that our true citizenship is not found here on earth, it is found in heaven.

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In chapter 4, verse 3, the Apostle Paul says that there are those whose names are enrolled in heaven. There's a book, there's a book of citizens in heaven, and our name is there in that book.

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Our fellow saints are there, Old Testament saints, they're there, New Testament saints who have died, they're there, all the church history saints that have lived and died up to this point, they're all there in heaven.

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Our reward is there, our inheritance is there, our fellow citizens are there, our hope is ultimately there, this is where we are going to spend eternity, and the best part of it is that that's where our

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Savior is at too. It's not just that all the people that have gone before us are there, and all the people that we love and cherish who have died in the

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Lord have gone to heaven, but even more than that and greater than that and better than all of those things is the fact that our

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Savior is in heaven, and for that, we eagerly wait for Him, eagerly wait.

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That is a strong word that describes a definite expectation. It is an eager anticipation.

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Chances are good that it's possible for you to go through an entire day or maybe even several days without really longing for the coming of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, until something horrible hits you, until something horrible happens, then you're like, oh, Lord, please come.

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Or you see a news story and you think, I just, I don't know how this world can keep spinning the way it is,

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Lord, please return. But without those type of things that direct or drive our affections to heaven, it's very easy for us to lose sight of this and to really be caught in the middle of a day or a week without any eager anticipation or expectation of the

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Lord. Titus 2, verse 13, Paul says, we're looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great

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God and Savior, Jesus Christ. We're looking, we're anticipating, we're expecting it. 2 Timothy 4, 8,

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Paul says, in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness. Now listen to his eager anticipation, which the

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Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.

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Beloved, 1 John 3 says, now we are the children of God and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when

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He appears, we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is. Colossians 3, 4, when Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

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The one whom we long to see, when we see Him, He is going to transform us. He is going to change us.

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He is going to raise our mortal and perishable bodies into bodies fit and conformed with the body of His glory.

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This is what Jesus promised in John 5, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is when the dead will hear the voice of the

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Son of God and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in Himself, so also He gave to the

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Son also to have life in Himself and He gave Him authority to execute judgment because He is the

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Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, an hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear

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His voice and will come forth. Those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life and those who committed evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.

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Notice two resurrections, a resurrection to life and a resurrection to judgment. All who are in the tombs will hear

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His voice and come forth, raised to life or raised to eternal damnation. 1

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Corinthians 15, verse 51 and following says, I tell you a mystery, we will not all sleep but we will be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and we will be changed for this perishable must put on the imperishable and this mortal must put on immortality.

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But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory.

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Oh death, where is your sting? Oh death, where is your victory? Jesus will raise all men, all the redeemed and all the unredeemed, the redeemed to eternal life and the unredeemed to eternal judgment, but all will be raised.

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The Savior who gave you spiritual life through repentance and faith and died on a cross to pay the price for your sin so that He might forgive your sin, rose from the dead so that He might justify you and declare you righteous and give you

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His righteousness so that you can stand in His presence, not clothed with the tattered robes of your own self -righteousness but clothed with the perfect righteousness of the

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Son of God Himself. That is the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith that Paul talks about earlier in Philippians chapter 3.

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If you want to stand before God in the tattered robes of your own self -righteousness and offer to Him all of your works and all of your merits and all of your good deeds and the things that you have done and your justifications and your excuses while the book of the law is read aloud in your presence and guilty, guilty, guilty is pronounced over your head, good luck with that.

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There is only one thing that will avail for you on the day of judgment and that is to stand clothed in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ and Him alone, pleading no other cause, pleading no other case, pleading no other righteousness but Christ and Christ alone.

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So the answer to the question how can you be accepted in the sight of God is not well I have done this and I have done that and I have merited this and I have earned that.

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No, the only answer, the only appropriate answer that will avail for you on judgment day is this, another stood in my place and bore the wrath for my sin and He rose again and He justified me and now

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He says come and He has promised that if I come He will not cast me out and I have come and He promised me forgiveness and He promised me righteousness and it is on the merits of Him and Him alone that I am able to stand before a holy

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God. That is the only answer to that question. Who is it that will raise you? It is the one who died on a cross to pay the price for your sin and rose again so that you can be justified.

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And now He sits at the Father's right hand and He intercedes for you, dear child of God, to ensure that you will never be lost and that you will never perish.

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And He promises that on that day you will hear His voice and you will come out of the tomb to a resurrection of life.

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Notice the pattern after which we will be raised, verse 21, the Lord Jesus Christ will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory.

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Notice the contrast between humble state and glory. This is like 1 Corinthians 15, the contrast between the perishable and the imperishable, the mortal and the immortal.

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It's the same kind of contrast. The body in which we currently exist is the body of our humble state and we wait for the body that is conformed to the image of His glory.

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Look around you. You will see a bunch of bodies in humble estates, in humble states.

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These are all very humble bodies. As much as we doll them up on a nice resurrection Sunday like this and we dress them up and we put makeup on it to make it look really good, these are bodies that are in very humble states.

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1 Corinthians 15 .50 says, Brethren, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

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Now see, that presents me with a conundrum, doesn't it? My citizenship is in heaven and flesh and blood cannot inherit the imperishable.

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That's a problem. My citizenship is there, but I can't go there. I can't hop on a bus.

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I can't hop on a plane. I can't take a trip and visit the place where my citizenship is. I can't vacation there.

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Why? Because this body is a body that is destined to perish. It's perishable and it's mortal, and flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

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And therefore, you and I have a very serious problem. Something has to happen, namely,

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I need a new body. You need a new body. That wasn't supposed to be a laugh.

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Let me speak in the second person. You need a body that belongs to you that is transformed for a life in paradise that never ends.

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You need a body that is fit for worship and work and service and rejoicing and rest and creating and recreating and fellowship and eating and drinking and playing in a new creation forever.

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The body that you currently have cannot do that. It's not capable of that. It's perishable and it must perish.

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And no advances in transhumanism will stop that. No advances in medical technology will alter that.

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We may be able to extend our life on the margin for a little bit, but there is no way that we are ever going to suspend the laws of the curse and the laws of nature and nature's

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God and get out of this thing alive. All of us are going to die. So I need in order to enjoy the citizenship that I have, which is in heaven, by virtue of my faith in Jesus Christ and what

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He has done, I need a new body that is fit to enjoy that. In verse 21, the

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King James translates that humble state, the body of our humble state as who will change our vile body that may be fashioned into His glorious body.

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That word vile kind of suggests something that is repulsive or vulgar, disgusting, stomach -turning, but that's not what the word meant in the 1600s, it simply meant of low estate.

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This is the difference between the body that you now have and the body that you will have someday, child of God. It is now in a humble state and eventually it will be conformed to the state of His glory.

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In your current humble state, you get weak and you get tired, you get hungry, you get famished, you get sick, you get diseased, and you will eventually die.

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In fact, even right now, a third of your day is spent resting and rejuvenating and recuperating because 16 hours awake is just too much for us, isn't it?

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Just 16 hours awake taxes us, let alone the working and striving and everything that we do during those 16 hours.

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So we have to spend fully a quarter or a third of our day just recovering from the fact that we are awake for the other three quarters or two -thirds of our day.

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Sickness and disease and death plague us. Your cells are dying even right now. You are weaker now than you were when you walked into this building.

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It may be imperceptibly weaker, but it is weaker nonetheless. From the moment that you are conceived, your body begins to decay and you are on a trajectory that will end in death 100 % of the time.

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In fact, these bodies in which we now live, from the moment that they were conceived, we have been fighting against the natural tendency of everything, against all odds, just to stay alive.

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Congratulations, you made it to today. But eventually that is a battle that all of us will lose.

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All of us will lose it. So this is a humble state, but there will be a transformation.

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Our present bodies will be made new, immortal, imperishable, and glorious like the body of Christ's glory.

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We shall be changed. What will it look like? Well, we already have a proof of concept in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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The prototype has already come off of the assembly line, as it were, and we have an example in Scripture of exactly what that body is going to be like.

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Christ's body, when it was resurrected, was not mortal, it was immortal. Death no longer has dominion over him.

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He was able to eat and to drink because he ate fish, and he promised to drink of the fruit of the vine with us in the kingdom.

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He was recognizable to his friends, though he at times veiled their eyes so that they could not recognize who he was.

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It was the body in which he was raised, the same body that was crucified, though it was a glorious issue of that body, a glorious model, as it were, but that body still had the marks of crucifixion on it.

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So it was the same body, but different. It's the very thing Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, the passage that we read earlier.

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You sow a seed, you don't sow a pea seed and get corn, you sow a pea seed, you get a pea plant. Now, is the pea seed and the pea plant the same?

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Genetically, they are identically the same, right, though they are different forms. Same thing with the resurrection body.

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The body that you will have in the resurrection will be the body in which you currently are rotting, and it will be made glorious, so it will be the same body, but it will be a glorious and different form of the same body.

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It will be summorphos, as the word conformed, into conformity of the same form or similar form as the body of His glory.

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He was the firstfruits, and we are the rest of the fruits. He was the prototype. He's the first one coming off the assembly line.

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He is the firstfruits of the resurrection of the just. So that first resurrection that all of the righteous get to enjoy and are raised in, we already have the prototype, and it is the body of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. He will conform your body, will transform your body from its humble state into conformity, that is, into the same or similar form as His body, the body of His glory.

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We will all get bodies, bodies that will be raised, glorious but different. We will be able to eat, and we will be able to drink, because Jesus promised that He would drink with us in the kingdom, and we will enjoy the food of the marriage supper of the lamb, and we will eat the fruits of the trees in the new

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Jerusalem and the new heavens and the new earth. It will be real physical bodies without sinful desires, without sinful affections, without sinful thoughts, unburdened by iniquity, unweakened by disease or by death or by the curse, bodies fit for service, for worship, for fellowship, for rejoicing and joyful pleasures forevermore.

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That is what is promised to us. That's quite a bit different from just phantoms floating about, right, and organ music playing in the background.

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It's no wonder that most Christians have no taste or hunger for heaven, have no concept of what God has promised us, promised us.

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Bodies fit for heaven because that is where our citizenship is. Now you might say, well, why didn't God just purpose to let us die, our bodies rot in the grave, and then just exist forever in a spiritual disembodied state?

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Why didn't God just do that? You weren't created as a disembodied spirit, were you?

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You were created as a material creature. And if your body is not raised on the last day, then death will have had the victory.

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God did not intend when He created Adam and Eve for them to ever be disembodied spirits for all of eternity.

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His intention was that mankind would dwell in physical bodies where we would enjoy the delights and the pleasures and the joys of heaven forevermore, and all that that entails.

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Now if that bothers you, if the thought of this bothers you, then you have probably been influenced by some form of Christian Platonism or even

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Gnosticism, where you have in your mind that everything physical is evil, and sinful, and wrong.

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And that's only because you have only known a world in which everything that is physical is sinful, and evil, and wrong, or most things.

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You only know a world, I should say, where everything that is material has been corrupted by the fall. You've never known a world in which all of material things have been uncorrupted by the fall.

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You will know that someday in the new heavens and the new earth. But you and I need to orient our minds towards what it is that God has promised us for the new creation.

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We will have bodies capable of endless joys in a physical creation, in a physical recreation, a new heavens and a new earth, in which only righteousness dwells.

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Now what is the power by which we will be raised? Look at the person, the Lord Jesus Christ, the pattern is the conformity of His body. Look at the end of verse 21, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.

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How is this going to happen? Because we're talking about the resurrection of millions of people. No, we're talking about the resurrection of billions of people, aren't we?

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Billions of resurrections. Most of whom at the time that this happens will have been long consumed by the elements of this world.

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We're talking about people who have been burned up, people whose corpses have been consumed, people whose corpses have rotted away, people whose corpses have been eaten by animals or creatures or perished in the wilderness.

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Millions and billions of people whom you cannot hold up even a shred or a fragment of their corpse.

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There's not a cell left of Abraham's body anywhere in this world. Or Moses, or David, or Noah, or Adam, or any of the saints of the

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Old Testament. So how is God going to do this? From what is He going to raise them? He's going to raise them from the elements.

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Now notice that the Apostle Paul makes an argument from the greater to the lesser. He's going to do this act of raising all men, particularly believers, talking about the resurrection to life now,

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He's going to raise us according to the power or by the power that He has, even to subject all things to Himself.

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He has the power to make everything in creation serve His ends. He has power over all things.

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In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form. He has authority over all things.

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It has all been given to Him, He said in Matthew chapter 28. And in Hebrews chapter 1 it says that He upholds or carries along all things by the word of His power.

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That Jesus Christ holds together the entire creation and He carries it along toward its appointed end and He does so simply by the exertion of His power.

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So that power is the power that He has, that power is the power that He's going to use to raise us. It's the same power that He used to speak angels into existence and the entire cosmos, the galaxies, the stars, the nebula, the planets, to put them in motion, to hold them in motion, to make the stars form, to take the stars out.

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It's the same power that He used to create man, to populate the earth, to flood the world, to repopulate the world, to hold everything together.

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It's the same power that He had to come to earth, take upon Himself a human body, live a perfect life, perform the miracles that He did, and raise

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Himself from the dead. That's the power that He has. So what's a few billion resurrections, right?

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What's a few billion resurrections? To simply gather out of the elements that are there, the elements that constituted the bodies that once existed, and to create them out of nothing, those very same bodies.

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To create them and to raise them up for His people to dwell in and to live in and to worship

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Him with forever and ever. That's the power that He has to subject all things to Himself. So what are a few billion resurrections?

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Really not that much. He'll do it. Back to our three questions. The Lord Jesus Christ is in heaven right now with a real physical body.

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True, because He was raised in a physical body, a glorious body, a body that He lives in even now.

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He intercedes in even now. It is in heaven even now, a physical body, a glorious body.

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Second statement, our true and false ones, you'll spend eternity in real physical bodies in heaven to be a physical place.

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That's true. He will transform the body of your humble state into the conformity of the body of His glory. And third, all men and women who have ever lived will spend eternity in either heaven or hell in real material physical bodies.

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That's true. There is a resurrection of the righteous and a resurrection of the unrighteous, a resurrection to life and a resurrection to damnation.

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Do not marvel at this, Jesus said, for an hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs, that will be you someday, all who are in the tombs will hear

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His voice and come forth. Those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life and those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.

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The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the guarantee, the surety of our eternal life and our resurrection to that eternal life for all those who are

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His. And the resurrection of Jesus Christ is also the guarantee and the surety of a resurrection to judgment for all those who are not

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His. So now the question remains, which resurrection will you have? A resurrection to life or a resurrection to judgment?

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If you are sitting here and you have no sin bearer, nobody who has ever paid the price for the debt and the weight of your sin, and if you refuse to repent and trust in the only one who has borne the sin and the wrath for guilty sinners, namely the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and you die and you leave this life unrepentant, unregenerated and lost as a rebel against God and His kingdom, you will be resurrected again and you will suffer the torments of eternal damnation for all of eternity.

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You must acknowledge that you are a sinner, that you have violated God's law, that you have lied, that you have stolen, that you have blasphemed

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His name, that you have lusted in your heart, you have hated your brother, you've dishonored God, you've dishonored your parents, all the

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Ten Commandments, all the violations of God's law, they're stacked up over your head. And there are probably dozens and dozens and dozens of those every day that you have committed every day of your life so that your rap sheet is truly an unimaginable debt before a holy

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God. And it's not just that you have sinned against some earthly magistrate, you in fact have committed these crimes against the most benevolent, kind, and generous and gracious being in the whole universe.

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He is infinite in His glory and He is infinite in His righteousness, and your crimes against Him are real and they are serious, and they have heaped up upon your head a debt of wrath that you cannot even imagine.

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You cannot even imagine. That's the bad news. The good news is there is one who came into this world who died on a cross and He rose again the third day so that He could pay the price for all the sinners who will repent of their sin and trust

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Him in that sacrifice. And He promises you that if you come to Him, He will not cast you out. You must come to Him in repentance and faith.

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God is the aggrieved party, so you come to Him on His terms, not yours. You don't negotiate the terms of your surrender.

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You come in repentance, turning from your sin and believing and trusting in the sacrifice of the divine

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Son of God who paid the price for sinners on the cross. When you do that, God will cause you to be born again through a living hope, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

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He will take away your sins and He will credit you with the righteousness of His dear Son. If you walk out of this life, if you fall out of this life without a payment for your sin, you will stand before God, a holy

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God, dressed only in the tattered robes of your own self -righteousness, with nothing to plead your case except your measly works and your offensive sins, and you will perish on the day of judgment.

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So which resurrection will you have? If you repent of your sin and place your faith in Christ, you can be reconciled to Him and receive and enjoy the resurrection to life, the resurrection to glory.

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Paul said in Acts 17 .30, God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but He is now declaring to all men everywhere to repent, because He has fixed a day in which

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He will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead.

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God has appointed the judge, He has fixed the judgment day, and every single person here is headed towards that judgment day, unless you have one who will plead your case, not based upon your merits, but upon His perfect merits.

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That is the only way you can have eternal life and enjoy the resurrection to life. I beg of you, if you are not in Jesus Christ, to turn from your sin and trust

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Him today. Be reconciled to God through the death of His Son, or face that Son in His wrath on the day of judgment.

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Those are your two options. For those of us who are believers, He has risen.

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He has risen indeed. Let's pray. Our Father, we rejoice in Your unimaginable goodness,

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Your glorious promises that You have given for those who trust in Your Son. We thank

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You for a sacrifice for our sin, the Lord Jesus Christ, who paid the full debt and merited all the righteousness that we need to stand before You, faultless on that day before Your throne.

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We look forward to and long for that day when we shall see the Son of Man appear again, and this perishable will put on the imperishable, and this mortal will put on immortality, and we will be changed, and we will be made fit with bodies fit for our citizenship, which is in heaven.

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We pray that You would hasten that day, and that You would be glorified through our thoughts and our hearts in the meditation of them today.

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Be honored here by Your people, we pray, and we ask that Jesus Christ would draw to Himself through the

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Holy Spirit any who are here who do not know Him as Savior and Lord, that they may have eternal life and the confidence that comes with that.