Darren Tappouras - The Man Who Changed the World - Study 6 - Exhortation - The Ascended Christ

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   My dear brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ, and friends and young people, we've come to a close at our Bible school, and truly it's been a fantastic opportunity, a great blessing for all of us. To just help prepare our minds before we begin, we're going to take a reading from Acts chapter 7, verses 54 to 60, and our brother Matt Pitt will do that for us. Thanks, Matt.

2. 0:23

   We'll now invite a brother Darren Teporis forward to exhort us to the theme of the ascended Christ at the right hand of God. Thanks, Darren. Thank you, Brother Jared, and good morning, my dear brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ and our dear young people. We began our studies, it seems so long ago now, with this, I suppose, a nostalgic reference to a plaque that many of us had in our homes as children, and maybe our grandparents had the same plaque.

3. 1:03

   And on that plaque, the sentiments there really reflected many of the aims and objectives of our studies this week, and it captured many of them really nicely. The focus that we want to take away from this plaque and the sentiments on this plaque this morning relate to Christ being with us and yet unseen.

4. 1:28

   As the plaque says, the unseen guest. He's unseen yet with us, and that's the paradox we want to reflect upon this morning as we lead and prepare our hearts and minds for the emblems. There are many references we could look at that express this reality, and I've just picked a few that you will be, I'm sure, familiar with.

5. 1:52

   Matthew 18, very famous one, where two or three are gathered in my name. I am there in the midst. It's a very provocative word. That midst takes us right back to Genesis. The Lord God walking in the midst of the garden and this beautiful fellowship that existed between God and man before sin entered the scene.

6. 2:15

   And now Jesus says, I am in your midst. Another reference in Matthew, Matthew 28, Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world. Revelation 21, capturing the idea of the midst and the garden and fellowship with God. The reference here says, referring to Jesus. These things says he who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands, which represent, of course, God's people and his ecclesia.

7. 2:48

   And Hebrews 13 has some really powerful and also comforting words in this, on this topic. I will never leave you. You can take comfort in these words that I will never leave you or forsake you. So we want to try and think about this reality this morning. Because it's easy to read. It's easy to talk about.

8. 3:12

   And particularly when we're all here together and the atmosphere is conducive to spiritual thinking. We're all nodding along as we read those verses. Because they're all sort of in this environment easy to sort of agree with. But there is a reality, a day-to-day reality that we all experience. We live in a physical universe that's governed by these laws, the laws of physics.

9. 3:39

   A universe, apparently, by those who would know these things, what's called the part of the universe that we have access to, that we know about, is 93 billion light years big. 93 billion. Not million, billion. A light year is the speed of light. Travelling at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second.

10. 4:07

    So every second, tick, tick, 186,000 miles. And this universe would take 93 billion of those light years. Years made up of those seconds to traverse. It's sort of mind-boggling and it's outside even our brains to really comprehend the magnitude of that. But what I'm trying to get at is our Lord has ascended to heaven.

11. 4:35

    Whatever and wherever heaven is, it would appear, according to the laws of physics that we know, it's outside the constraints of our physical universe. So, in a sense, Jesus Christ is at least more than 93 billion light years away. And yet these verses are telling us that he's with us. And this is where our faith can be sometimes tested with this intuitive, we may not express this in words, but intuitively we feel that, we know that, that there is this great gulf between us.

12. 5:12

    It's an interesting little concept that is really featured prominently in Paul's speech in Acts 17. I've looked at this, referred to this speech a few times this week, where the Apostle Paul presents the gospel, starting with creation, drilling down to the trees and the flora and fauna of our planet, down to mankind, that's us in the purpose of God.

13. 5:39

    God has set the bounds of our limitation and created us. And then it says that, implying there's a reason behind God's creation. And what's the reason?

14. 5:50

    And when you're speaking the gospel to somebody and you're preaching about the reality of God and creation, this is the objective you're working towards, that, that the humans that God has created in his own image and likeness should seek him and perhaps feel their way towards him and find him. And that sounds, it sounds sort of staggering, doesn't it, to think that.

15. 6:18

    This God who would appear to live outside the universe that he created, wants us to seek him, to grope, some translations have to grope our way towards him, but actually find him. And then in a sense of encouragement, Paul says, this might seem like impossible, it's not. He says, yet, he's actually not far from each of us.

16. 6:46

    And in fact, in him, we live and move and have our existence. I want us to think about that. Because this challenges our human perspective somewhat, doesn't it? We're thinking of a universe that's 93 billion light years wide or big or large. And God's living a long way from us. And yet, the Apostle Paul says, no, actually, we live in him.

17. 7:13

    We live in him. In him, we live and move and have our existence. And I want us to try and make that real this morning, as we think about this in relationship to Christ. It may require us to just retweak our intuitions here and our thinking, the natural intuitions we have from our life experience.

18. 7:32

    We think of God and Christ living billions of light years away. That's our physical perspective, if you like. And so we know that they are aware of our actions. God and Christ are aware of what we do and think even. And so, in a way, we project this idea that they're a long way away, but they have an ability, like a miraculous telescope, in a way they can see all the way through the boundless fields of space, all the way through those billions of light years, and they can see into our hearts and see our actions, et cetera.

19. 8:11

    I want to maybe challenge you a little bit with that perspective this morning and say it may not be quite like that. We're still applying our limited physics to understand God and Christ by using such an analogy, which, as I said, intuitive to us in the way we sort of think. And I want to think about God dwelling in another dimension, which the Bible labels as heaven.

20. 8:37

    We know heaven's not just our atmosphere. We know heaven's not just space. What is heaven? It's another dimension in which our God and his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, live. Now, what is a dimension? Well, we understand something is one-dimensional when it's just a straight line. That's a one-dimensional object. A two-dimensional object has the length, like a line, but it also has breadth or width.

21. 9:08

    So it's like a photograph or a map. It's flat. And a three-dimensional object is something that has the length, the breadth, and also something called height. Now, we live and experience the three-dimensional physical world every day of our life, and we have done so since our birth. This rostrum, this thing here, is three-dimensional.

22. 9:33

    It's physical. I can touch it, feel it, interact with it, use it. Our whole world, the cars that we're going to drive home, the buildings we're in, everything is part of this three-dimensional physical world in which we interact with and we understand and we get. And yet, in a sense, God is in another dimension, which is not that far from each one of us.

23. 9:58

    Now, my exhortation will be, of course, focused on our Lord Jesus Christ this morning, and that's going to be the absolute focus of it. But if you just give me your permission for five minutes or so to just talk about the idea of dimensions, and then we'll bring that back and apply it to our Lord Jesus Christ.

24. 10:18

    I just want to present to you really quickly, just to help us sort of recalibrate our thinking here, a thought experiment. And it's something I found in a book written in 1864, actually, by a school headmaster called Edwin Abbott, and he's trying to explain how different dimensions interact with each other and how it's hard to conceptualise that as humans.

25. 10:41

    So he says in this thought experiment, he says imagine a universe where only two dimensions exist. So, like, everything's flat in this two-dimensional world. So you have, and he calls this flatland. In this flatland, everyone's flat, everything's flat, and we're confined to a plane of length and breadth. We don't have height at all.

26. 11:01

    We're in flatland. So there's a lot of variety in this flatland. There's triangles and hexagons and rectangles and squares, and they're all scurrying around. They all have a visual perception, but they only see the edge of the other flat objects that they interact with. Their brain has not experienced, nor can it comprehend, three dimensions, because that is the limit of their experience and their ability to comprehend.

27. 11:28

    He says, in this thought experiment, imagine that a three-dimensional being comes into contact with that two-dimensional world. As the three-dimensional being approaches flatland, the three-dimensional being, think of it as maybe a human, could place his finger a tenth of a millimetre above flatland, above the two-dimensional world, and no one would be aware of his presence.

28. 12:01

    He's so close, so close. A micro-measurement separates him from flatland itself. He is so, so close, and yet because of the different dimensions involved, the two-dimensional world cannot even comprehend, one, his closeness, or that he even exists. He goes on to say in this experiment, imagine the three-dimensional person now pushes their finger into flatland itself, into that realm.

29. 12:32

    What do the flatlanders see? The flatlanders don't see the full three-dimensional being behind. They see the tip of the finger. They see a round circle that presses into their flat world. They're unable to comprehend what is behind it. They have no point of reference. They have no ability to comprehend the three-dimension that exists outside of their experience and their world.

30. 12:59

    And in a way, this, I think, is a good way for us just to recalibrate our thinking when it comes to God and the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ is in our midst as we speak, as we hold this memorial meeting here this morning. God is closer than we can possibly comprehend.

31. 13:15

    Because God's proximity takes place in a dimension that we do not have access to or we do not comprehend or experience. I want to just put that concept to the test a little bit and then we'll come back and apply it to our Lord Jesus Christ and his presence in our life as well.

32. 13:34

    You might think this idea of two realms, a spiritual realm and a physical realm, and those two realms ever interacting seems a bit far-fetched. But I just want to give you a couple of quick Bible examples that depict occasions where these two worlds come into contact in an obvious way. One is in 2 Kings 6.

33. 13:56

    It's a really interesting story. It's the life of Elisha. Elisha is in a city called Dotham, which is up in the north part of Israel. The king of Syria, which is a superpower of the world at that time, has heard that... The king has heard that Elisha is a man of God and he's telling the king of Israel his plans in advance.

34. 14:18

    And so he determines to kill Elisha. And so Elisha and the town of Dotham, a relatively small town in the big picture of things, the town of Dotham wake up one morning and the city is surrounded by chariots and mechanisms of war. This is a superpower of Syria that has now come to their city to wreak vengeance and death.

35. 14:43

    And Elisha is on the walls of the city of Dotham. His servant is next to him and they're looking out at this sea, a sea of chariots, horses, encampments, military equipment, supplies, as far as the eye can see. And the servant goes, Alas! That's the King James reference. Alas! I love that. Alas!

36. 15:07

    He knows that this is an impossible situation. They're not going to get out of alive. And Elisha says, Don't worry. There's more that be with us than be with them. Now that, of course, was not physically true or real. And the servant is still bewildered, still overcome with fear. And Elisha says this little prayer.

37. 15:29

    And the prayer is, God, open the eyes of my servant that he can see reality. He can see there's another dimension at play. And so the servant's eyes are opened and he looks up and he sees representations of God's presence there. The spiritual dimension is represented by these chariots and horses of fire that overwhelm those of the Syrian army below.

38. 15:56

    And here we've got a rare insight of a human into the spiritual dimension that exists all around us. Another interesting one is Jacob on the run. He's just tricked his father and his brother. His brother's threatening to kill him. He's on the run. Comes to this town, once called Luz. He sleeps that night on a rock pillow and he has a dream.

39. 16:22

    And he sees, the King James says a ladder, but it's more of a staircase, like the ziggurat edge of those Mesopotamian pyramids that you see, it's this staircase going up to heaven. And he sees angels ascending and descending on this place where his head is resting. And it's a vision that says, in a way, God says, I am with you.

40. 16:44

    And this vision represents the divine connection between heaven and earth, between the divine realm and the physical realm where death is imminent and people are fearful and run for their life to get away from threats. And here's a spiritual dimension that transcends that, but interacts with it in this way, with the angels of God ascending and descending.

41. 17:07

    I haven't got time to dwell on that. I'd love to spend more time on this, but this image gets picked up in John 1 by Nathaniel and the interaction with Jesus. And Jesus says, you're going to see the Son of Man. You're going to see angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.

42. 17:24

    And so Jesus appropriates this town, which becomes called Bethel, the house of God, and the divine interaction and connection between the two realms. Jesus appropriates that to himself, the Son of Man. I'm going to be the connection between heaven and earth. Just keep that in mind as we go forward. Another example, the transfiguration.

43. 17:44

    That's an incredible event in the history of our universe, isn't it, where in some way, time and space come together and realign in a way where the Jesus, in a sense, is immortalised and saints are there and glory is revealed in this quite incredible way where the two realms intersect. When we get to the book of Ephesians, we've got this really intriguing verse where the very purpose of God is expressed in this really interesting way.

44. 18:19

    Ephesians 1 says that in the dispensation, which is the word economics, where we get the word economics from, it's a word like God's plan. If you want to think about God's plan, God's plan and all the moving parts that make up an economy, in God's economy, all the moving parts that make up God's purpose is working towards something.

45. 18:40

    The fullness of that purpose is what? That he might, the King James says, gather together in one. That's one word in the Greek, anakephalasis. Just one word, that he might gather together as one, unite together as one, in Christ. So Christ is the key here. Christ is this link between these two dimensions.

46. 19:05

    All things that are in heaven, the spiritual realm, and that are on earth, in this physical realm in which we live. The whole purpose of God is moving towards this. The eternal plan and purpose of God is to integrate these realms together. The heaven and earth are going to be brought together through and in Jesus Christ.

47. 19:27

    Now just keep those concepts in mind as we move forward. The spiritual realm, the spiritual dimension, and the three-dimensional world that we inhabit, that we know so well. And so it brings us to the sort of main consideration of our thoughts for this exaltation, something we call the ascension. This is the description we give to the event where Jesus Christ is taken up into what we call and refer to as heaven.

48. 19:59

    There are two accounts in scripture of the ascension. One's in Luke 24. And this is quite, I think we did refer to this in one of our earlier sessions. It's interesting, Jesus begins this process by opening their eyes and expounding to them that he was the one the entire purpose of God was working towards.

49. 20:21

    Before the world began, but through the history of Israel, God was working towards this point. And then he blesses them at the end of this section. And it says he's parted from them and carried up into heaven. And look at the response. They worship him and they return with great joy. And that's an interesting response.

50. 20:42

    Normally, when there is a physical separation of friends or loved ones, it doesn't generate joy, does it? Normally, if you're seeing off one of your children or your fiancé and they're catching a plane or catching a bus somewhere, there's not joy by seeing them go. There's joy normally when they come together. To see them go normally is something that generates tears or sorrow or some sort of negative emotion.

51. 21:10

    Here, Jesus physically leaving them in the physical plane generates joy. Keep that in mind. We need to make sense of that in a second. And then we've got the famous one that I'm sure all of you are very familiar with, Acts 1, where Jesus is taken up into a cloud and they're all still got their heads up looking up and the angel says, why are you staring up into heaven?

52. 21:35

    It's like a, I think it's a good lesson for us. Why are you gawking up into heaven? Get on with it. Get on with the work of the truth. And in fact, this Jesus is not that far away from you and you need, you've got work to do. So as we read on in Ephesians, we get a bit more insight into this heavenly realm, this spiritual realm.

53. 21:56

    This is where it gets really interesting and challenges our whole way of thinking, our whole way of conceptualising the universe and life because we're constrained by the physics of our universe. He talks about the work that God accomplished in Christ here in verse 20 of Ephesians 1 when he raised him from the dead, which has been our subject this week to some degree, and seated him at his right hand.

54. 22:25

    Now this is what we refer to as the ascension, this process of elevating Jesus or taking Jesus from the physical realm into the spiritual realm. the two are now connected or bridged by Jesus Christ and here it's described as heavenly places in your English Bible or heavenly realms as some translation have. The ascension.

55. 22:53

    I don't know if you've ever thought much about the ascension. It's sort of more of a logistics issue rather than a significance issue, isn't it, when we think about the ascension as just a movement. But I'm going to suggest this morning the ascension is an extremely powerful part of God's whole redemptive process and cycle.

56. 23:14

    You know, the ascension. I remember as I grew up in the truth as a young person, there was a lot of focus on the death of Christ, the sacrifice of Christ, the blood of Christ as necessary for forgiveness of our sins. And that focus is quite genuine and beautiful. And I, probably in the 90s or so, as I got older and I got married, certain leaders in our community started to say, that is fantastic to focus on the death of Christ, but our centre of gravity should probably be more focused on his resurrection because that is where the power lies.

57. 23:54

    And you might remember Brother John Martin published a book called Saved by His Life, which is based on a verse in Romans 5. It was the resurrection, it was the life of Christ, His life that He lived and His example and then that example being approved by God in the resurrection from the dead.

58. 24:11

    That is a focus shift in a way. Not that the other is not important, but they're all important, but don't forget to also focus on the importance of that. And I'm humbly suggesting this morning that there's even an extension of that to make the whole cycle complete is to look also at the ascension.

59. 24:31

    This next step that is far more than just logistics, it's the connection of heaven and earth in this really unique way that really helps us comprehend what we are doing here in our relationship with heaven and with the physical realm. And yet it's something we can easily overlook. As an example of that, it's overlooked in our world.

60. 24:54

    You know, the key events of Jesus' life we often get public holidays for. If you think about it, we get Christmas Day, which is apparently his birth or celebrating his birth on the 25th of December, which is just gone. We have Easter Friday, which is celebrating supposedly the Lord's death. And then we have Easter Monday as another public holiday commemorating the resurrection.

61. 25:17

    There's no public holiday that commemorates the ascension. And yet it is a really fundamental part of what God has done in Christ. So here, Christ is seated at the right hand, that's the ascension language, in this heavenly places, whatever that means, whatever heavenly places refers to. Now here's where it gets interesting. We go a chapter on in Ephesians, and here we've got this famous verse that talks about how we were once dead in trespasses and sins, but now we've been made alive through grace in Christ.

62. 25:55

    And the results of this gift of grace, this justification by faith, the result of this, not just a transactional forgiveness of sins like some, we've got some, you know, way of just getting our sins forgiven in a transactional way. It's a whole change of status. It's a whole change of your standing in the universe.

63. 26:17

    He has raised us up together and made us sit together. Remember what's Christ doing? Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. He's made us sit together with Christ in where? In heavenly places, in the heavenly realms, in Christ Jesus. Does that make sense? Christ is sitting at the right hand of God in heavenly places.

64. 26:45

    We are also with him together sitting in heavenly places. Christ is sitting with God in heavenly places. We are also sitting with God in Christ in heavenly places. In some way, the bounds of physics don't apply. We are sitting with Christ in something called heavenly places. In a spiritual dimension, we exist here because of grace, because of the righteousness of our Lord is now applied to us and we can dwell in the presence of God.

65. 27:16

    And now we can be in heavenly places in Christ. This changes everything. It changes the way you view life, the way you look at the world around you, the way you look at God. This is reality. This is ultimate reality. And this is a concurrent situation. These verses are concurrent. Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God.

66. 27:38

    We are also sitting in heavenly places with him. We need to make sense of that. And it's the ascension that makes all this happen. The ascension of Jesus is the cycle of redemption that God has completed in his son. It started with God. Those foundational words, those profound words from John 1, in the beginning was the word and the word was God.

67. 28:09

    It starts with God and his mind, his character, his thinking, his wisdom, his logic, and that word becomes flesh. And the divine begettal brings about God's son, the only begotten son of God in his birth. And these two dimensions are combined in a person, a human mother of this three-dimensional world, and God himself in the spiritual realm connected in this way that defies understanding, really.

68. 28:44

    We believe it by faith that now we have son of God, son of man, we have this person where the two dimensions unite and come together, and he lives a perfect and sinless life reflecting God to man. and we call him what? Emmanuel, God with us. The cycle begins with God, and it's all about God and goes back to God.

69. 29:10

    We know he dies, he's buried as the creed says, he's resurrected, and then he ascends. That's very vital in this process in our doctrine. He ascends to the right hand of God, and so by ascending he enters the very presence of God and sits at the right hand of God, and the cycle is completed.

70. 29:32

    God, as the famous God manifestation verse, God was seen in the world, God was preached, God was ascended to heaven through his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, that God manifestation cycle is completed and looped. But I want us to think about what it means for us, us humans. One of us, one of us, think about this, one of us has transcended the three dimensional world and has moved into the spiritual dimension.

71. 30:07

    One of us, flesh and blood person who lived and experienced human life, is now at the right hand of God in the spiritual realm, in heavenly places. This connects us to eternity, connects us to the spiritual dimension. This is quite profound and I just would love to spend time reflecting on that, but you need to do that in your own mind for now.

72. 30:32

    There are so many verses in the New Testament that highlight the importance of this situation for us. I haven't got time this morning to look them up, so I'm going to move through a few of them. Most of you will be aware of them and I want to quickly bring them into your consciousness.

73. 30:48

    I want you to soak them up for a minute and think about it. Hebrews 6, we have an anchor for our soul, sure and steadfast, which enters the presence, the presence of God, beyond the veil, beyond the limitations of humanity, he's now in the presence of God as our forerunner. Not that he's going to take us to literal heaven, but he's opening up the presence of God as our forerunner for us.

74. 31:12

    Hebrews 9, by his own blood, by his sacrifice and obedience to God, he has entered into the most holy place once for all. Hebrews 4, seeing that we have this high priest who has passed through the heavens. What are heavens? It's a plural word here. It sort of doesn't make sense, but in a way he's passed through our atmosphere, the boundless fields of space, wherever he's gone into the heavenly places in the presence of God.

75. 31:40

    He's not entered into a physical location made with hands, he's entered into heaven itself, into this heavenly realm in the presence of God for us. It's over and over again emphasised. By himself he cleansed our sins and he is now sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. This is what Christ has done for us.

76. 32:05

    This is the ascension in action and the result of it. For the joy that was set before him he endured, the cross of course despise the shame and he is now sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. We have a high priest who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty of heavens.

77. 32:21

    It is Christ who died. This is beautiful words from Romans 8. Christ is not condemning us, he's our advocate. He's not here to condemn us and be the prosecuting attorney. He's on our side. But he's risen and he sits at the right hand of God and makes intercession for us. There's a whole study just in that verse which we haven't got time to flesh out.

78. 32:44

    But this man after he is offered one sacrifice for sins forever sits down at the right hand of God. 1 Peter 3 he's gone into heaven and sits at the right hand of God. Over and over again this reality is reinforced. This is our hope, this is connected to our destiny. The connection of the two realms, the spiritual realm and the physical realm have been traversed by one of us, by the Lord Jesus Christ.

79. 33:16

    And now, this is mind-blowing, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him, one of us. One of us is now over all principalities and powers both on heaven and on earth in both realms. It's hard to comprehend.

80. 33:33

    And here's where it gets really interesting and becomes relevant to our thoughts. While Jesus was ministering on earth, he was of course bound by the limitations of physics. And we talked about the response in Luke 24 of where going away created joy because that's counterintuitive. Normally when you physically go away, it creates sadness.

81. 34:03

    But something is different in this going away, in this ascending. While Christ was on earth, he was of course bound by physics and limited by physics. So when people tried to interact with him as their lord and they wanted to engage with him and find succor and wisdom from him, it was hard to do.

82. 34:28

    I've got the story of the woman with the issue who's desperately trying to get near him and he's surrounded by oppressive people that are pressing hard on him and she finally gets a little touch on the hem of his garment. She gets a little touch of his clothing. We know the friends of the man who was lame, they're desperately trying to get to him but they're restricted by physics as well.

83. 34:51

    They've got a roof between them and Jesus and they dig up the roof and they let their friend down into the presence of Jesus. That's the only way they could get into his presence. It was physics stopping it and they had to overcome that as best they could but many couldn't. even when he preaches, sometimes they would put him in a boat so he could be pushed out a little bit offshore so he could reach more people from that amphitheater design of the shore and being on the boat and he was able to reach and interact with more people than he could have in a hemmed in crowded way.

84. 35:26

    However now Jesus says things are better. His whole speech between the the memorial meeting and his rest in John 14, 15, 16, 17, the whole speech, he's dealing with the paradox of this. He says I'm going to prepare a place for you. I have to go away. I don't want to leave you as orphans but it will appear that I'm leaving you but I'm not really leaving you.

85. 35:52

    I'm going to be with you forever. My father and I will dwell with you. We're actually connected, spiritually connected in a real way, more real than the physical world in which you live in. So don't be afraid. Don't be scared. Don't lose heart. Don't be sad. Actually be joyful because by leaving you it's actually better for you.

86. 36:14

    Now just think about that. John 16 verse 7 says I tell you the truth. It's actually I think the King James has to your benefit or to your advantage as some translations have. It's actually better for you that I physically go away in the physical sense because by going away I'm actually with you always.

87. 36:33

    Here's where it all changes. The spiritual dimension comes into play. So as Jesus ministered in the three-dimensional world he's limited to how many people at one time and he's also limited by the fact he needs to sleep and he needs to get to a mountain to recharge his spiritual batteries and the people get hungry and they have to then go and find.

88. 36:52

    He's limited by the three-dimensional world. now in the spiritual dimension he can speak to and be aware of and interact and be with all his people at all time of the day and night always. This is the big change the ascension made and it's for our benefit and our advantage that this happened.

89. 37:18

    So I've just put together this little infographic here just to try and get a picture of this ascension and what was achieved. The bottom pane is the three-dimensional world where Jesus physically is taken up and the top pane is the spiritual realm where Jesus is taken to the side of his father. So that Acts 1 verse 9 that we talked about he's taken up from them.

90. 37:45

    There's physical spatial language of movement. Luke 24 he's taken from them and so our Lord goes up in that way but in the spiritual realm we have that described in Daniel 7. There's God described as the ancient of days and there's another character that comes into his presence called the son of man and he as he descends into the clouds as he descends into the clouds when he's taken up he goes from those clouds into the spiritual realm his moves into the spiritual realm into the very presence of God and so we have the scripture gives us perspectives from both those dimensions.

91. 38:30

    There are so many scriptures I'd love to talk about that are affected by this perspective if we get this perspective of these two dimensions that are not that far from each other that in a way overlap each other in a way we can't really comprehend because we're bound by our physics like the two dimensional creatures in flatland we can't we don't get it but the spiritual realm is not far from every one of us as Acts 17 says.

92. 38:59

    Here's an interesting reference here this is where Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb and she sees a stone rolled away and she sees that Jesus' body has been taken and she turns around and sees someone she thinks is the gardener and once the gardener talks to her she realises who it is and she's of course overjoyed and she goes to hug of course that's a physiological response isn't it in our three dimensional world we want to hug we want to get close to the physical person and physically interact with them and we're shattered when we're removed physically when our loved one dies we've had an ounce today and as we lose people that are special in our life and that are precious to us there's sadness because we want the physical connection.

93. 39:46

    Jesus says actually Mary don't the word is the word touch is really better translated cling to me don't cling to me why I've not yet ascended it's going to be far better for you when I ascend than you and I are together forever but I've not yet ascended to the father I'm about to ascend to my father to your God to my God and I'll be with you I'll dwell with you forever in that sense.

94. 40:18

    And so brothers and sisters we want to have one more Bible example to help us get an appreciation of this. We talked about the Apostle Paul and his conversion and the dynamic nature of that how even historians have that as a documented fact. He was present at this occasion we know. on this occasion this beautiful man Stephen the first we call him the first martyr the first person killed in this way for his for his witness is he's dragged out.

95. 40:56

    He gives this incredible speech this beautiful speech a lot of it's got to do with the presence of God not being in temples and and and constricted like the Jews always taught and thought that God's presence is everywhere and his speech is quite beautiful. But during that speech as the pointed criticisms of the Jewish mindset are sort of growing and compounding the crowd gets angrier and angrier and they rush him at some point in the speech and they grab him and physically manhandle him and throw him to the ground and they're about to kill him.

96. 41:34

    Here we've got a three dimensional picture a stone mooning. Bits of our planet are picked up off the planet floor and physically smashed into the physical three dimensional body of one of God's servants and they physically smash through his skin and his bone and and they crush him as these physical pieces of the planet are smashed these three dimensional objects rocks are just smashed into him and crush his skull and his body.

97. 42:07

    And yet in the midst of that three dimensional death if you like in that three dimensional execution Stephen looks up and he's given something that really is for our benefit. He's given a rare glimpse into the spiritual realm and he looks up he's on his knees about to be smashed to smithereens in a three dimensional sense and he sees the heaven open and he sees Jesus Christ standing at the right hand of God.

98. 42:40

    He recognises the face of Jesus which means we're not talking about a kilometre in the air, 100 metres in the air, 50 metres in the air, we're talking just there to recognise his face. I mean I can at my age hardly recognise the faces of those at the last rows. He recognises the face of Jesus.

99. 43:01

    It's not that far. The spiritual dimension is just there, just above him and he gets to see his Lord in that way as he dies. Look at the transformational nature of this reality. He's about, he's been crushed to death by this three dimensional execution. He falls to his knees and look at the transformational nature.

100. 43:20

     He says, Father forgive them, or words to that effect, do not hold this sin against them. Where has he heard that before? From his master, from his Lord. He says, yeah, my three dimensional body's been smashed. But he says, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit, my mind, my consciousness, my memories, my loves, the things I hold precious in my life.

101. 43:49

     All those beautiful things, they're going to be preserved and held by his Lord. And a new three dimensional body can be created in a twinkling of an eye. That's nothing for God. But the essential Stephen is preserved in the memory of God, if you like. Receive my spirit. Because that's what we really are, aren't we?

102. 44:08

     That's our real us. And so the three dimensional body's smashed to smithereens. And yet his spirit, the essential Stephen, is preserved by his Lord, waiting the resurrection and a body like unto his master. God. So it's just an incredible picture, brothers and sisters. It's as real for us as it is for Stephen.

103. 44:32

     Stephen gets to, through the inspiration of God, to witness this so it can be recorded for us. That we might be lying there in a hospital bed, we might be at a cemetery, we might be at a funeral service, we might be at the bedside of a loved one, we might be experiencing things ourselves, but the spiritual realm is just there.

104. 44:51

     It's just there. And although we may, in a three dimensional sense, be destroyed and perish, our spirit is preserved with God. And hopefully that helps us appreciate that Jesus is the unseen guest. And this morning I want us to apply these words, yes, in our own family, in our own household, but let's think of us all here at Bible school.

105. 45:16

     Christ is the head of this house. He's the unseen guest here at every meal and the meal we're about to partake of together. He's a silent listener of all our hearts and our minds as we sit here before him now and meditate on his life and his importance to us and everything that's happening.

106. 45:39

     The quote we saw from Matthew 18 reminded us that he is actually here. Lord, you are here with us. And this morning, with your permission, brothers and sisters, I want to address him as we sit here now. We are in his presence. He is here. It's scripture. So please listen along and listen carefully to the words that I say and join me in these words and these sentiments as I address the Lord who is with us here as these two dimensions are together at this particular time in time and space.

107. 46:14

     Lord, Jesus Christ, our living head, our saviour risen from the dead. We show thy death in breaking bread and seek so much we seek, so, so seek for fellowship with thee. Thank you. out of out of