Who You Are In Christ - Heavenly Citizens

Well, this morning we're going to start into, actually, I would say it's almost a section with heavenly citizenship. You know, this is who we are in Christ. This basically is speaking of truths about every single believer, whether he's a mature believer, immature, it doesn't really matter. Scripture declares these things about a believer. And actually, Dr. Schaffer in his book has has compiled 33, but you might, depending on how you count them, you could count them and get maybe 55. You can get any, you know, you get a larger number conceivably, but I think it's just really excellent to go through and see what God, how God sees us and how we're to see ourselves in Christ.

So we come down to this section started with, this is the 20th one, heavenly citizenship. And then if you notice the next two below that, And Bob will be doing it next week of the Family and Household of God. And then the Fellowship of the Saints. It's almost a little section about the closeness and the relationship we have.

You don't often take a citizenship as being a closeness. You say, well, I'm a citizen of the United States. Well, that can be a closeness. I mean, I had the opportunity to live overseas for five years. And I felt a closeness when I would see an American on the street I would identify because he was an American, and I had some closeness to that person. And so there is a closeness of citizenship, and even more so of being in Christ.

Okay, so actually, before we start, let's just look at a verse here, maybe it'll get you thinking here a little. Let's turn to John, the Gospel of John 18, chapter 18. Christ is speaking here. Let me get to it here. What verse? Give me a second. You didn't know what page we wanted to be on. Oh, okay. What page? See, my Bible is 1084. Your whole church has a certain version of Scripture. I know, I know. You can do that. I don't think so. Chapter 18, verses 35 and 36. Let me just go ahead and read this.

This is actually the word of Jesus before Pilate. It says, Pilate answered, I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priest delivered you to me. What have you done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then my servants would be fighting that I might not be delivered up to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not of this realm. So what do you think about that verse? What's Christ saying here when he says, my kingdom? My kingdom is not of this world.

And there's a couple of things I see here. And hopefully one of them is going to apply to what we're talking about today. It's not a kingdom of this world. Right, and actually if you look at it literally, when it says of, it's that word ek in the Greek.

It's not out of this world. God didn't come along and say we got the Republicans, we got the Democrats, and now you're going to have a new system. No, he didn't do that. He said my kingdom is not of this world. I have a kingdom that doesn't have its roots or anything to do with this world system. It's a heavenly kingdom of righteous people based upon his death on the cross.

So I was taking that verse, kind of looking at, thinking about heavenly citizenship. I was thinking, the person who asked you, if you were on trial and they were saying, you know, and you said, well, my citizenship is not of this world. And they would probably look at you kind of strange. And actually, in a way, don't we have dual citizenship? I mean, we have an earthly citizenship, we're citizens of usually some country or city or town or whatever. But we also have a spiritual citizenship and that's what we're going to be talking about today, our spiritual citizenship.

Go ahead. I think he's saying something more than, my kingdom is not in this world. He's saying, I am king. He is king and... My kingdom. In his kingdom he's totally ruling and reigning. But he says, This earth right now, actually we know from other scripture, the prince in power of the air is ruling this kingdom. This kingdom is being ruled by him. Why are you talking about the future kingdom? He absolutely is the king. My kingdom, I will rule and reign and he will. And eventually he will rule and reign this earth. If you reflect on biblical Christianity, that our kingdom is not of this world, then we talk about two natures.

That sounds like schizophrenia. It does sound like, and the thing is you say, well I got, it's sort of like, you know, the thing of the old cartoons. They don't do much anymore. The good, it was like the, who's the cartoon with the cat, Sylvester the Cat? Bad Sylvester and Good Sylvester. You know, you run around there. Bad Sylvester, you see there'd be a little, usually a little devil over him, and then there'd be a good Sylvester.

And so you tell somebody, well wait a minute, I have two natures. And they almost think you're, well, that sounds strange. But scripture, declares that we are two-nature people. Some try to get past that and try to make other conclusions, but if you're careful in reading Scripture, we have two natures. And what's wonderful is we have the very nature of the Lord Jesus, which is the most exciting part of that, but we still have our Adamic nature. And the thrust of Scripture is, abide with me, trust me, walk with me in your new nature. sucked in by the desires of the old nature. And then we move on to the kingdom of the heavenly citizenship. We have two citizenships. We have an earthly citizenship and we have a heavenly citizenship.

Okay, this is all kind of in preparation for where we're going here. Actually, I think Bob's going to find out too, I started looking, there aren't that many occasions, usage, there's a lot of usage, and we're going to see there's kind of In the Greek, there's like a stepping stones here. You have city. Well, let's just go into it here. Keywords. The first keyword I show up here is city. In the Greek, it's this word, maybe you've seen it, polis. P-O-L-I-S. And it means a city. That actually was named for a Greek ancient city. And actually, that's actually the root word of politics. And so we're gonna be talking politics today. Heavenly politics, not earthly politics.

But I thought we should be wise to look at, so the next word after city is citizen. And this is just right out of the dictionary. A native or nationalized member of a state or nation who owes allegiance to its government and is entitled to its protection. So we're gonna see, there'll be some scriptural definitions here we'll see. Actually, I'm not gonna cover, I think citizen, We're going to cover citizenship, basically, which is the next word. The state of being vested with the rights and privileges and duties of a citizen. And then the third word, which is used sometimes synonymously with citizenship, is commonwealth.

And actually, in my study, I found that how many states, that's not actually, I've given that to Nancy. You can't say that right. There are some states that are not states. Does anybody know what states those are? That's really ridiculous when I say that.

Okay. Commonwealth. Another one? Virginia. Right. Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania. And there's one more which I forgot. Anyway. But they're commonwealths. So I mean that's just kind of interesting. We'll take it along the road here as you study some of these words. But the commonwealth. Is it a fourth you said? It's a fourth. Well, I actually think about the Great Britain, the Commonwealth, that was called the Commonwealth. So it's another terminology for a familiar phrase.

And we're going to see it's going to be used synonymously with, in fact, some of your Bibles will use the word Commonwealth in place of citizenship. Well Roger, heavenly citizens, we would have to be the only one we could be to be naturalized. We cannot be a native.

That's a good point. Roger, he kind of prefixes the word. It sounds like a warning to me. It says right here, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews. Right, right. In other words, he had the power to call 10,000 angels. Exactly, exactly.

But he wasn't going to fight over to be the ruler of Rome. I mean, that wasn't Christ's intent. You know, he didn't come to set up his... The Jews thought he was going to do that, right? They wanted a really, like a Roman ruler. They wanted somebody that was really... He said, I'm not going to do that. My kingdom is not here.

That's good. So, but I'm not sure we... Back to your point, your point was, I'm sorry, Doug. That's alright. Okay. We cannot be native. And I agree with you. That would mean we'd be citizens of heaven when we're born. Exactly, and that's absolutely right. We have to be naturalized. We're naturalized by our trust and faith in Christ. In that particular case as far as heaven.

But then you could take about the fact that when we trust Christ we're born again. So I mean you could look at this, and that's part of the problem I had. After a while my head started spinning here. And the key verse here is going to kind of hurt your head too in a minute.

We haven't got to it. Bob? Doug, what do you do with Ephesians 1, 3, and 4? Blessed be the God and Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spirits, who has blessed us with heavenly places, according as he hath chosen us in him. before the foundation of the world.

I couldn't hear you so. My point when we are not born I think it's important that we're adopted. Absolutely. in a fashion that cannot be undone. Absolutely. You can't, you know, send it back to the pound or whatever. It's like when you adopt a dog and then you send it back, right? I understand that. Well, that's what the great comfort is. I think that's what the sad thing is. If you don't accept that once you've trusted Christ as your Savior, that it's an irreversible process, then you're always worried about keeping that or maintaining that. That's a never-ending cycle that you don't need to go there. He wants us to trust what he's done. He's accomplished that. He's able to maintain it. So it's neat. OK. So let's go on with that, with all those good comments. OK.

So actually, there's only two verses we're going to cover today, actually. And they're both in Philippians. Philippians 127. Now, we're going to cover them and look at about a ton of other verses. But Philippians 127, and then we're going to look at Philippians 320.

And they will contain, like I said, the word for citizenship has a verb form and a noun form. And it turns out that the verb form is really kind of hidden. In fact, if you like to mark your Bibles, I would do it here. This conduct is actually the verb form of, if I can pronounce it here in the Greek, it's polytulmine. It's from the root word for politics or city. But it's the conduct characteristic of a heavenly citizenship. So that's kind of hidden there. You read that and you would never, I mean, I never realized that.

And so when you start studying this, that's a verb form of what we're going to see in Philippians 2.20, which says we're heavenly, you know, that our, for our citizenship is in heaven. This is a verb form. Because if you didn't know that, I mean, that looks like a command, doesn't it? In fact, it is a command. I mean, only conduct yourself. You're going to do it yourself. I mean, it could be interpreted that way. I think what it's saying is, live in light. It's saying, you are a heavenly citizen. This is who you are, so live in light of that. And the Lord tells us that many of us abide in me.

And actually, I misspoke here. I miss colored, too. My coloring skills are going. It's actually Conduct yourself is actually the Greek word and not just conduct. Conduct yourself is really polytomai which is conduct characteristic of a heavenly citizen. So the command is a command here. Conduct yourself as a heavenly citizen in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. So in essence Be who you are. Live the life of who you are. You're a heavenly citizen.

Finding this verse is kind of neat, I think. Therefore, conduct your citizenship. It's a present tense verb. It's a command. And actually, there's a corollary verse that has the same polytomy. Let's look in Acts. Can I get someone to read Acts chapter 23, verse 1? And you know, somebody gets there first or second or third or whatever. And Paul, earnestly beholding the council, said, Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day.

Okay, here again, it's tucked in there and you're going to, okay, and actually I don't have it on the screen. Depending upon your translation, it's a part of the phrase, I have lived my life, lived my life is poly to my. So basically, but this is a little bit tricky and it took me a while. What do you think here?

What citizenship do you think Paul is referring to here? He says, brother, in fact, actually my numeric standard actually has a footnote conducted myself as a citizen. I don't know if you guys have a numeric standard, but if you do it, it has a footnote on lived, lived, conducted myself as a citizen. I have conducted myself as a citizen with perfectly good conscience before God up to this day.

So, so what kind of, um, and maybe it's both. You think he's referring to his heavenly citizenship here or his earthly citizenship? You don't have to do heavenly with your conscience. It has to be Roman citizenship. Okay. Okay. Or, okay. Or could it be Jewish citizenship? A good Israelite? And I kind of struggled with it.

Wait, who's he in front of? Well, let's see. Who's he in front of here? The council. This is Sam. Yeah. So this is Jewish Pharisee. So in this case, I think he's saying, I've lived, I've been a good citizen and Paul was an excellent citizen. I mean, he was a Hebrew of Hebrews. You couldn't find a better Hebrew citizen than he was. And he says, you know, my whole life, I never, And now he's a believer. My conscience was clear. What I knew, I believe, and I have a perfectly good conscience. And the Lord showed him what he needed to know about the Lord Jesus. Well, doesn't the verse say, before God? Yes, before God. I mean, my conscience is before God. Exactly. So, I kind of struggle with this.

And actually, some of the translators, like Weiss, for example, have, I conducted myself as a citizen of God's commonwealth of Israel. So you could think of the Old Testament concept that he was absolutely true to the God of the Old Testament. He did not vary one, you know, as humanly possible, he did not change, he did not deviate from that. So in that case, it seems like he's kind of referring to the Old Testament, you know, the God of Israel. But because he's talking to the council, because he knows that their eyes are blind, they don't see any of that.

But sometimes Paul has double meanings in what he says. Absolutely. If you're a believer, it has a meaning for you there. You could say both, really. And they would say, well, okay, yeah, Paul, you are the most zealous person we know. You're absolutely right.

In conjunction with what we were saying earlier that our two natures are alive and well, and with him understanding that, where do you think he was in relation to what he was saying right here, considering that the two natures are alive and well? Are you alluding to the fact that obviously Paul still continued to sin?

Yeah, because I mean our teenagers don't allow us to just totally be perfect all the time. So I'm wondering what his understanding of that was in this context right here. Yeah, that's a good question. I think it's important who he was talking to. I think that's part of the picture here. I think that's why maybe the translators looked at that as being the God of the Old Testament.

I think he's saying, look, my lifestyle was consistent. I have a clear conscience about that. I did not do something contrary to my conscience. Even though when he became a believer, right, he realized, and he quotes all the rest of it. He tells us he's a chief, one that tells us about our two natures. It kind of follows to us now and that is that me living in good conscience that becomes a very personal active thing for me today to be able to say that and yet realize that I still have that Adam nature working as well.

Well, you wouldn't have a problem with the fact that as you realize that you sin, you acknowledge that before God, right? Part of my conscience is recognizing those two realities and the total operational grace of God with those two natures working. here, this may be a little bit off center, but I think it helps. I mean, the three C's of coming to a saving relationship is creation, conscience, and Christ, right? I mean, in other words, our conscience, the problem with conscience as a mechanism for salvation is it stops short of Christ, plus conscience is so influenced by who you're with and your culture, right? So the issue is Paul's conscience here is before God.

Right. And I think, you know, in other words, I guess the example would be if you're born in an aboriginal society in central Australia, you see the creation around you. Praise God. And then you have a conscience that probably means that you don't kill your brother. I mean, I don't know.

There's just kind of God gives an inherent conscience to everybody, I think. But I guess you could live in a society where conscience that we all have. And then there's Christ. And the idea of creation, conscious, gets us to Christ and gets us to salvation. You're not saved by your conscience. But I'm thinking those are three ways that God calls man to himself. But the conscience here is before God. I mean, even though he's standing before the council, his conscience is before God. I don't know, I found this, and I had two, I looked at it two different ways. One could be I don't know. And that's an excellent point. Go ahead. I was just looking at the chapter before this.

Paul has been put in jail and the commander decides, well, he's a Roman citizen, so what exactly are the Jews accusing this guy of? And that's why he comes before the Sanhedrin. And up in verse 27 of chapter 22, it says, tell me, are you a Roman citizen?

And he was, wasn't he? He was also a Jew. And he also has a heavenly citizenship. So he is probably defending the Roman and the Jew by his statement here, I have fulfilled my duty to God. I'm wondering if that statement was kind of directed at both the Jews and the Romans. I don't know. Like you said, he might have had twofold what he was saying.

And he also understood his citizenship. He did. So he admitted that before God he was blameless. No matter what. I mean even though those guys didn't have a clue. I mean he could have He could have said that to them and they would have looked at him like he was from another planet.

Exactly. Just like if somebody said, you said, well, my citizenship is not here. Exactly. But I think he's like he said, he's kind of appeasing all parties, but he's he's really knows exactly where he stands before God. Except the examples. You said before God, I've answered this correctly. They said, well, you answered this falsely. Well, no, I didn't.

My conscience is clear. And you said, my conscience is clear. I've done what's right in this matter. So, okay, that's good. That's good. Okay. So actually, I wanted to kind of go back to, you know, there aren't too many occurrences of this word polytomai. And this is a verb form. And the noun form is going to be and the other verse we're going to look at in just a second here.

But I want to just kind of look at a couple of the translations of Philippians 1.27.

Only conduct yourself in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ or conduct yourself as a heavenly citizen. And actually, Luis has only see to it that you recognize your responsibility as a citizen. And then he puts in brackets of heaven. And then the Amplified has only be sure only be sure as a citizen so as to conduct yourself.

So this is conduct. This is a verb. You're doing something. You're conducting yourself in concert with who you are as a heavenly citizen. So that's what Philippians. And then actually I just wanted to look briefly at a manner worthy. And that's the idea. And there are a couple of places of that.

Worthy, and this is manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, the good news of Christ. I kind of looked at that, and there are several phraseologies in scripture. Some say worthy of God. Some say worthy of the Lord. Some say worthy of the saints. And that's other verses, not this verse. So there's maybe three or four occasions where this phraseology is used.

And this is conducting your heavenly citizen worthy of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. Okay, so let's just go on. Okay, so here's basically the main verse. For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. So I think this is just, I mean, before we even start, I want to go through citizenship. The word is, I feel like I'm on the news or what's is. in this verse, and then heaven, and then a couple other things with this verse. But this basically is a key verse that tells us that it's the only one that kind of compacts it. For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. So before we jump into this, let me just ask you, let me go to the quick here.

Isn't it interesting? I thought we're waiting for the shout. waiting for the shout to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So this is telling us we're waiting in heaven? What's going on here? And I've kind of flipped things around a little bit because I want to kind of think a little bit here. And I thought, when I first started looking at this verse, I said, wow, we're waiting, we're waiting in heaven? This hurts my head. I think we talked about, you know. But also I'm waiting for the shout. Is there anything that resolves this in scripture? Go ahead. identification, because we are identified with Christ. And the location here is our position, because we're positioned on earth.

And it's kind of similar to what you were talking about before. There's two ways, actually, to conduct yourself. One, you can follow the speed limit, because there's a law that says that if you get picked up, you're going to go get a ticket. Or you can follow the speed limit, because you know that's what the direction is for the country or the city that you live in.

Okay? It's not because you have to, but because you want to. There's a difference there. One is you comply with the law. The other one is because you comply with your conscience or your character. Okay. All right. Well, okay. Let me just, I'll give you my little take on this. Basically, this is saying that there's a, and your first statement, it was just excellent.

You know, we're looking at our identification with Christ. Well, if we're identified with Christ, we're seated in heavenly places, right? And our citizenship is there. So, from what's called our positional aspect, our position in Christ, we're waiting for Christ as a citizen.

Just like you might say, when I was overseas in England, I was waiting to return to the United States at some point, right? I was a citizen of the United States, So I could come right in, have my passport, say I'm a citizen, let me right in. I didn't have to go through the line that says, you're not a citizen, you need a visa. I was a citizen.

So as a citizen of heaven, we're waiting for Christ to return. We're waiting as a citizen, but also, conditionally, we're waiting for the Lord to return for us in our condition. So there's two parts of this waiting. To me, this was kind of, wow, I'm waiting. heaven for the Lord to return it just I mean I had not thought of that aspect of it so I thought was just kind of and Let some puzzle books here. Go ahead Roger as citizens. We have rights and responsibilities.

Yes, that's true Okay, we have both right Well, that's actually the verse talked about that right says conduct yourself as a citizen So we've kind of talked about the conducting yourself. This is saying this is a noun form which would just show it here This is the noun form, which is slightly bit different. Polyitume signifies the condition or life of a citizen, or citizenship. That's who you are. We're a citizen of heaven. So there's conduct, right? We conduct ourselves in light of who we are.

And this is just saying The last part is from which we eagerly wait for a Savior. So we're eagerly waiting for a Savior in our position as a citizen of heaven. I mean, that's mind-boggling to me. I think that's just exciting that we're So you'll think, well, I'm waiting for the Lord, I'm waiting for the rapture. Well, okay, that's wonderful. But you're also a citizen of heaven waiting eagerly for the Lord.

So I think, once again, scripture is so consistent. It talks about position and condition. It describes each one of those aspects over and over again. Once you get synced up with position and condition, you'll say, wow, it's just about my position and my condition. And here's our positional waiting for the Lord, which is a wonderful truth.

Bob? Well, the other thing is you need to put and they see that cross, right? So if you go back, yeah, and the alternative of being destroyed is an enemy of Christ or the cross. Ultimately, we have eternity and we're waiting for, do you have a savior in your, what's the Greek say? I have the savior of the kingdom.

Okay, actually, okay, just a second. I would, I mean, either way it's the same thing. Give me a second here. Too many pages here, Bob. Actually, it's a savior. There's no definite article. According to my Greek here. So we need to wait for a savior? Yes. And then basically, yeah, you wait.

Yeah, there's no definite article. in reference to the need for it. Actually, I've forgotten the rule of thumb that when there's no article, Vern says it all the time, I lose it there sometimes. When there's no article that the character of who he is, I've just forgotten that. When there's no definite article in the Greek, that's kind of a rule of...

It's emphasis. Emphasis on the person, I guess. If there's an article, then it's a specific... It is. And obviously he's a specific person, so we're not... I think this is relating more to the need for a... A need for a... We need a savior. Even though it is Jesus. It's only one... It's saying that there's a need for a savior. That's good. Amen. is not there. There's no the in the Greek. There's no what they call definite article like it was being the hospital or the town.

You need a savior or you need salvation, I think is what's being conveyed here. And the person that fulfills that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Now you might argue that the Greek could have been the savior. I mean, it seems like I could work the other way too, but I'm not that good of a Greek person. So we're waiting for a savior. We need salvation. And this savior is the Lord Jesus Christ. OK. OK. So actually, I'm at Zodiaty's. I don't know if you know. He has various aids. I use him sometimes. He's pretty good. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

And he says in the New Testament, he's talking about citizenship or polytume. It's a state itself, community, commonwealth. Use metaphorically of Christians in reference to their spiritual community. And then I put down two translations here. Here's Wiest. And here's for commonwealth. For the commonwealth of which we are citizens. So that just defines that word citizenship. And then the amplified. But we are citizens of the state, the commonwealth, which is heaven.

So the implications of this are just really neat. That's our point. We have a heavenly status right now. And I think that's just so important because we see so many other places that we have every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. In fact, this could be expanded by looking at what do we have based on our position. So this is all position.

So basically what you're saying is there's no illegal aliens in heaven, right? Absolutely. Everyone will be a legal, one again believer. And we do that without border guards, right? Right. Because the Lord knows. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the border guards knew every heart that walked across the line? They'd say, I'm sorry. You know you shouldn't be here. And they'd say, yeah, you're right. And they'd turn around. I'm dreaming here. Was there a question?

Okay, so now we're going to look at is. The normal Greek word for is is A-M-E-E-I-M-I and it's what's called a verb of status quo and if you forgot what status quo means, The verb of status quo means the current state of affairs. So this word, I'll give you a couple of examples. The state in which something continuously exists. So I have a couple of examples of that. So this is what is, is not. This is not the word we have. I'm going to show you the opposite and I'll show you what we do have. Hopefully it will be helpful. You wonder, sometimes you get off on a rabbit trail and never get back to the main point.

Okay, 1 John 1.5. A very familiar verse. And this is a message we have heard from him and announced to you that God is a me, is light. Status quo. That is who God is. The status quo. He exists as light. He never will cease to be light.

Okay, so that's one case. The other one, I put them chosen all in 1st John, or both in 1st John. 1st John 4, 15, whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, Jesus Aimee, Aimee, Aimee, lost it here, Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So there's the two cases. So it's not that is, and actually, you know, I thought about, it seems to me that, you know, it could have been the other way, but it wasn't. The Lord wanted to, and scripture wanted to, so this is the word it is.

It's this word hypokaro, I'm not sure I'm even pronouncing it right, is to be in existence. And the cool thing about this is, so it says, our citizenship is in existence in heaven. It involves, it's to be in existence. So it actually makes it really concrete. It's not saying, well, that's just, you know, you guys, that's just a fluffy little thought in your mind. No, you have an existing citizenship in heaven. I think it just kind of drives the point home. It could have been the other word, but I think it just by being this word, it just drives it home saying, you're a citizen. If you went to heaven and say, show me my papers, they would be there. It exists in heaven. There's no doubt about it. So I thought that was really kind of neat.

And there's actually a verse that, let's look at Philippians 2.6, and this uses the same word to be in existence, and this talks about the Lord Jesus.

Does someone like to read Philippians 2.6 for us?

2. Although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. Okay.

So here's translated existed. So it actually would have read kind of strange if he had is in there, wouldn't it? It would have said, although he is, well maybe not, he is in the form of God. So here's translated that existed is our word here. He existed in the form of God.

He did not regard equality with God as a thing to be grasped. So it speaks of fixedness. It says here, a condition involving an existence or condition which is both previous to the circumstance and continuing after it. So the Lord Jesus existed, and that word for form is the nature or essence of God. He's always been God. He existed in eternity past, through eternity future, in the very essence of God. That was the Lord Jesus. So that makes it neat. So we have a citizenship which is fixed in existence in heaven. So if somebody asks you, you say, well, just go to heaven. You can check it out for me. OK. I'd like to read, I didn't actually copy them down, but I'll put them on the screen.

We surrendered this. Our citizenship has this fixed location out from which we, with our attention withdrawn from all else, eagerly wait to welcome the Savior. And I couldn't really find this part. It has the idea that this fixedness kind of is to give us confidence of who we are.

And I think he tries to draw on that. And then actually, the Amplified has, which is in heaven, from which we, let's see here. Actually, it doesn't show the word exists, so I might just skip that one. But let me just read the Weiss again. It says, for our citizenship has its fixed location in heaven, out from which we, with our attention withdrawn from all else, eagerly wait to welcome the Savior, the Lord Jesus. So I think that's just really tremendous. OK. Heaven. OK. So I'm going to go. OK.

So there's three terminologies in scripture in terms of heaven. There's something called the first heaven, which is actually the atmospheric heaven. Let's just look at Daniel here real quickly. Some people call this the bird heaven in Daniel 7.13. Thank you. Okay, 713. I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven, one like the Son of Man was coming, and he came up to the ages of days. So basically, the clouds of heaven are kind of the first heaven. The second heaven is the stellar heaven.

Actually, Vernon went over this, and I'll have to turn to it, but basically it says God created the the lights in the sky, the lesser lights and the greater lights, the stellar heaven, that's what's called the second heaven, and then the third heaven, let's look at that, 2 Corinthians 2.12, I mean 12.2, I'm dyslexic here today. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago, whether in the body I do not know or out of the body I do not know, God knows, such a man was caught up to the third heaven. Now this is the first place in scripture where it kind of gives a numerical number and what people have done They said, well, wait a minute, if God says there's a third, I'm going to go back, I'm going to work backwards. So you won't find, I haven't looked, but I read, you will not find a second heaven, a first heaven. By deduction, you say, well, if God says there's a third heaven, I'm going to number the other two, and they kind of work backwards. So hopefully that doesn't bother you too much. It didn't bother me. I said, well, OK, I kind of see there's a stellar heaven, and there's an atmosphere where the birds fly.

So the third heaven is where Paul is claimed to be. I know such a man, whether in the body or apart from the body, I do not know, was caught up into paradise, and paradise is another term that's used, kind of being characteristic of the third heaven, and heard inexpressible words which a man is not permitted to speak. Sorry to stop you there. So basically, the question is, this shouldn't be hard, which heaven is being spoken of in this verse?

This was a this isn't you know, okay, and actually we already talked about this. Yeah, I kind of flipped it around me. So let's just go on There we go Thank you. So we're eagerly waiting. So actually, we've come to answer this question already, too. It's positional, right? Actually, there's two aspects. We were talking about that. There's two aspects. Because if in fact, as you talked about before, we know we're already there, but we're eagerly awaiting, that's huge. Right. Out there, we wouldn't be eagerly awaiting.

I scratched my head a little bit. I know I said, well, wait a minute, but that's a positional truth. I mean, so I don't know. It hurts my head. OK. Eagerly await or expect to await. Expect eagerly. Well, maybe in the interest of time here, I'll just read, I have three verses. I'll just read you the three verses.

Romans 8.23 says, in fact, let me just skip the last two. They really kind of speak to the point. So we're eagerly awaiting the Lord Jesus, and these kind of speak to that aspect. Colossians, not Colossians, Corinthians, boy, I got a tough time today.

1 Corinthians 1.7. So that you are not lacking in any gift awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus. And then Hebrews 9, 28. So Christ also having been offered once to bear the sins of many will appear a second time for the salvation without reference to sin to those who eagerly wait for him.

So we are eagerly waiting for the Lord Jesus. I think the challenge of this verse here is just the mind-boggling part is that our citizenship is in heaven. It exists there as if we could go there and examine it. And that's a wonderful position of truth. And the Lord wants us to, just like we're to live from our position, we're to live and realize we're waiting for me eagerly in heaven. And we're also eagerly waiting for him bodily to take us to be with him. So I kind of came away with those two aspects. I'm to remember that in my position, my citizenship exists in heaven, is verifiable, and that I eagerly wait to save it to return from there. So I thought that's just, that's something that I actually, before I looked at this, I had not ever thought of. I mean, it's amazing. I read that verse many times, but never really grasped the significance.

Doug? Roger, he also says he's preparing a place for us. Absolutely. Which is citizenship. And that's the part, so he's, I go to prepare a place for you, right? Now the question would be, that's, eventually. Right. So that's a, so I think we have to distinguish between physical, conditional things, and positional things, right? And this is position. And that's the part your head starts going, doing things on you after a while. You think, well, wait a minute, what's going on here? But I think this is a wonderful truth. And this class is all about our wonderful position. So you would expect to find this verse here. That's what Schaefer is so true to himself.

He would not give us a conditional verse. He gives us a positional verse. Actually, Bob is going to go right on the heels of this. He's going to talk about It's his verse. In fact, I actually messed up, Bob. I prepared the chart for your verse. Why did you just show up? No, no, no, no, no, no. Because actually your verse talks about our citizenship too, I think. It'll be a neat kind of follow on. On a different note, I think it's important to let the class know that as of last night, David and Greta are engaged to get married.

So congratulations. And one additional thing, I was reading, I was talking about heaven, I was reading about heaven, thinking about heaven, and it was interesting, it said, heaven is a term that Christianity has such a grasp on because they believe it. And that that has permeated society so much that people kind of just, they just, you never find, you find a few people that won't, they'll say, well heaven, sure, I don't have a problem with that. Talk about hell and they have a totally different perspective. It kind of shows you. People want to take part of the truth and embrace it, but not all the truth.

And it's a shame. Heaven, oh yeah. I love heaven. Sounds great. A wonderful place. And it is. And they all think they're going there too. Exactly. They're all going to be there. I heard some data from a survey that indicated 90% of people accepted heaven as a viable concept. That's exactly right. And what I was reading was it says...

But not created. Well, all the things that, you know, he basically was talking about the wonderful, you know, that wonderful aspect only came from God's, you're not going to find it, the true information about heaven and the wonderfulness of it, because Christ is there. And, you know, his wonderful love for us only comes out of the scripture. It does not come, you know, you think other religions, you know, it's all kinds of weird stuff, all kinds of, you know, like we had our friend there, David? David Solomon.

Yes. I mean, he had, All the distorted, even sin in heaven. I mean, you're talking about all this awful stuff. That's in heaven? That's what I'm looking forward to. Rivers of wine and all kinds of debauchery. That's heaven? It makes no sense. Scripture clearly defines what heaven is, and it's a wonderful place. Go ahead. This probably isn't important, but I'd like to know. Do you think that the third heaven is beyond the three dimensions like time, space and matter. Because God lives in eternity.

Okay, here we go. Let me go back here. You see my last part there? What's that? Unrevealed location. What do you think that it would be? Well, I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't know. concept and so all these things about seeing heaven as a material place and sin and all these other things and comparing it to earth. It's beyond comparison to earth because it's in this other realm. And so it's something that we can't even approach with our physical mind. I agree on that. I don't know.

God is a spirit so it's a spiritual dimension possibly. But you have a tough time. Yeah, Roger, and the expression we use a lot and we hear is, we're seated with Christ in the heavenlies. Right. That's purely spiritual, isn't it? Right, exactly. Right, I mean, that's using a, what, anthropomorphism? Anthropomorphism.

Yeah, you know that characteristic to God that, of course not God, but it's along that line where Like we're seated, it gives us a picture that we're at rest with him. Well, thanks guys. It's been a great class. You guys, you know, you taught the class. I just listened. Good class. All right.

Dear Father, we thank you so much, Father. We thank you for your wonderful word, Father. We thank you that Lord is just kind of mind-boggling that we're that we have a citizenship and it exists in heaven and it's fixed and we're waiting for the Savior from the Heir Father. We're thankful also that we're waiting physically to be caught up to be with Him in the Heir Father, to always be with Him. Thank you for your marvelous word. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.