holy word. After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven crying out, Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for his judgments are true and just, for he has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality and has avenged on her the blood of his servants. Once more they cried out, Hallelujah! The smoke from her goes up forever and ever. And the 24 elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who was seated on the throne saying, amen, hallelujah. And from the throne came a voice saying, praise our God, all you his servants, you who fear him small and great. Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters, like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, hallelujah, for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exalt and give him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, write this, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb. And he said to me, these are the true words of God. Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, you must not do that. I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. I'm gonna give you two illustrations here at the beginning of this sermon. They might seem kind of strange to you, but trust me when I say I'm going somewhere with them. One of my favorite movies is the movie The 13th Warrior. It came out about 25 years ago. It's this vision of the Nordic afterlife that is told in an ancient prayer sung by the warriors on the eve of the great battle of that movie. And these warriors, They say, there do I see my father. Lo, there do I see my mother and my sisters and my brothers. Lo, there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning. Lo, they do call to me. They bid me take my place among them in the halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever. Eaters of the Dead is the novel that was written by Michael Crichton from which this movie is adapted. And in that book, he retells the first three chapters of the true story of Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, a 10th century Muslim traveler who was sent out from Baghdad, and of his journey north where he met an ancient Viking clan. And from there, it proceeds to retell the Beowulf story in a new and very frightening way. That's what the movie's all about. Now at one point in the book, the warrior Herger tells Achmad, it is always thus now and in Valhalla, which is their idea of heaven. In this heaven, which is to them a great hall, warriors battle from dawn to dusk, and those who are dead are revived and all share a feast in the night with endless food and drink. That's the first story, here's the second. In August, 480 BC, the Persian Empire under Xerxes I was on the doorstep of Greece. Brave King Leonidas, said to have descended from Hercules himself, took a minuscule force of 1,200 men, which included only 300 Spartan hoplites, and he staved off the inevitable march of what Herodotus tells us was two million Persians with 300 men for three glorious days by forcing the battle to be waged in this narrow pass that is now called the Persian Gates. As retold by Herodotus, although extraordinarily valor was displayed by the entire corpse of Spartans and Thespians, yet bravest of all was declared the Spartan Dionyches. It is said that on the eve of battle, he was told by a native of Trachys that the Persian archers were so numerous that when they fired their volleys, the massive arrows blocked out the sun. Dionyches, however, quite undaunted by this prospect, remarked with a laugh, good, then we'll have our battle in the shade. At dawn on the third day of this battle, when the Greeks had learned that they were trapped, in the past, Leonidas is said to have told his brave remaining soldiers, let us dine, fellow soldiers, for we shall sup in the netherworld. In this brilliant retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae, Stephen Pressfield puts the quote this way, now eat a good breakfast, men, for we will all be sharing dinner in hell. Now those are actually very different ways of putting this, and together with the previous story, they help us, lead us into today's final subject on the church. Now before explaining how they're different, which I'll do a little bit later, first notice that in both of these stories, you have a war that leads to a victory. But it's a victory that's only going to be celebrated in the afterlife, okay? Last week, we discussed the church militant. This week, we are going to talk about its pair, the church triumphant. What does this mean, the church triumphant? We've been singing about it, we've read a little about it, open here with this idea. What is the church triumphant? Well, based on a misconception of the church militant, many people have this mistaken idea that it means some kind of political victory, one with armies, navies, and air forces. This kind of thinking goes a long, long way back. In Israel, during the days of Jesus, there were four main sects of Jews. The Pharisees are the best known. They were basically the conservatives of the day. The Sadducees were the liberals. The Essenes were those who sought to escape the world and live out in the desert. And the fourth was called the Zealots, one of whom Jesus actually chose Simon the Zealot to be one of his 12 disciples. Zealots were a political movement in the first century that seemed to have been founded by one Judas of Galilee, or Judas of Gamala, in 6 AD, after Publius Seplicius Quirinius, a Roman aristocrat and governor of Syria, mandated a census be taken in the newly formed Roman province of Judea. Judas and his zealots didn't like any form of Roman rule, and Josephus tells us that they agree in all other things with the Pharisees, but they have an invaluable attachment to liberty and say that God is to be their only ruler and Lord. Now, like Judas Maccabees before him, this Judas led a revolt, and some scholars speculate that some thought that he must be the long-awaited Messiah. Josephus even seems to put the blame for the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD at this Judas's feet as it was his followers all those decades later who instigated the war with Rome that led to the obliteration of their temple and the entire way of life which to this day has never been the same. Judas represents a form of zealotry, a triumphalism, as some have called it, which seeks to bring the eschatological victory into some form of present political triumph. But is triumphalism, is political freedom the kingdom that Jesus came to bring? Is this what we mean when we talk about the church triumphant? Well, clearly even the disciples were all, at least in some sense, expecting and hoping that Jesus would be their political hero. Just before he ascended into heaven, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? Or as the Message Bible puts it, Master, are you going to restore the kingdom of Israel now? Is this the time? This question presupposes that it wasn't just Simon the Zealot who was hoping for this. They all were. When they didn't get it and their master died like a criminal on a cross, their expectations were dashed. But now that he had risen from the dead, their hopes were renewed, probably infinitely more so. Now what had Jesus just said that caused them to ask this question? Well, he just told them something coming in the future. The two verses before this have Jesus ordering them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father. Acts 1.4 says, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. That was the very last thing that Jesus said prior to them asking if this was when he was finally going to restore the kingdom to Israel. They thought that's what those words meant. Now, of course, we look back on this with hindsight, knowing how Acts continues, and we say how silly they were, because we know Jesus was talking about Pentecost, not some kind of military victory over Rome. It's more triumphalism that they have. This makes the way all Christians speak about one another regarding our own eschatology at least slightly ironic. Eschatology is the doctrine of last things. And we might say that this was precisely what the apostles were thinking Jesus was talking about, last things. And of course he was. In fact, Hebrews says, in these last days, God has spoken to us by his son. And on that very day of Pentecost, Peter himself preaches, in the last days, it shall be this way. But when the apostles asked that question and answered it, they hardly had in mind what Jesus was about to do. And it makes me wonder about our own views of eschatology, because we are similar in so many ways that we don't want to admit. How so? Well, premillennialists have been called triumphalists because they have a political rule of Jesus prior to the eternal state. Let's bring the eternal state to bear now. Postmillennialists have been called triumphalists because they see the nation's kings bowing down to Jesus prior to the eternal state. Amillennialists have been called triumphalists because they see the millennium happening now and the millennium is supposed by those who make the claim to be a golden age, an age of political triumph. Now of course advocates for each position will often argue that theirs is not triumphalist because that term is taken on a very negative meaning in our day and no one wants to be called that. Well triumphalism is a kind of golden age mentality brought to bear on earth now, prior to the eternal state. Even apart from millennial eschatology, like the Jews of old, Christians often have thought patterns that run the same way, even outside of the church. One is the idea that such and such a political figure is going to save the planet and bring God's righteous rule to earth. In recent years, we've seen that from the left with some supporters of Obama and on the right with some supporters of Trump. Although to be fair, their visions of what God's righteous rule might be are almost diametrically opposed. But of course, it isn't just Christians. Non-Christians also have these thought patterns. You have New Agers and the World Economic Forum calling for a return to the golden age of the past, but with a merging of technology and humanity and politics that will usher in Gaia's utopia. Socialism is a form of triumphalism, and communism usually heads up that class. You see, this helps you see the point about triumphalism versus the church triumphant. What exactly do we mean by the church triumphant? Is that what we mean? Well, I wanna return here to our two opening examples. We saw in both of them this idea of a battle that would be so fierce that no one would make it out alive. Yet, the belief was that they would celebrate a kind of victory in the afterlife, even if they lost the war on earth. This is what we mean by the church triumphant. For as long as there has been a New Testament church, the view of the church triumphant is that it refers to the saints already gone before us in heaven. They are the church triumphant. We see this again, Hebrews 12, 23, where it says, we have come to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven. Those are the church triumphant. Now, we previously talked about them as part of the church invisible, but now I want us to think about them as the church victorious. See, on earth, they were, like us now, the church militant, God's saints at war in the spiritual battle against the world, and the flesh, and the devil. But though some may have seen some victories in this life, none of them saw the final victory played out before their eyes on the earth. In fact, many of them died as martyrs, suffering greatly for their faith in Christ. Yet today, alive, but in the presence of God, they celebrate victory together in heaven. In a nutshell, that's the church triumphant. But there's a lot more that I wanna discuss about this. Let's return to our song, The Church's One Foundation. You know, of all the doctrines that this song teaches, it might be surprising to learn that the majority of it speaks not about the war, not about even our doctrine, but about our hope. And since it's about the church, then this hope is the church triumphant. The doctrine's our foundation, the war is our present reality, but it is our hope that the song sets before us. The first moment we see this in the song is when we sing these words, and to one hope she presses with every grace endued. He uses Ephesians 4 for both of those lines. In the same passage where we get things like one Lord, one faith, one holy name, the apostle says, we're called in one hope of our calling. Now I want you to notice again, I pointed this out last week especially, that this is plural. It is our calling, not just my calling. This is the whole church's hope. Now we could use other passages as well. I think about Romans 4, 18. It talks about Abraham in regard to hope. It says, in hope, he believed against hope that he should become the father of many nations. As he had been told, so shall your offspring be. There was a promise that was given by God to him and he believed even though it seemed impossible. He believed for the future. And yet Hebrews, in its great chapter on faith, talks about the patriarchs, more than one, not just Abraham. And it similarly says, these all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. But as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Now very importantly, hope is something that we possess right now. Even though the object of hope is something that we do not yet possess, at least not in its fullness, that's what we are gonna talk about more here as we go along. We might be able to taste it or see it from a distance, but the reality is still just a bit out of reach. So what is hope? Well, I went to Webster 1828, the great dictionary, Highly recommend it, more than I do today's dictionaries that change our definitions every year it seems. He defined hope this way, a desire of some good accompanied with at least a slight expectation of obtaining it or a belief that it is obtainable. He says hope differs from wish and desire in this that it implies some expectation of obtaining the good desired or the possibility of possessing it. To use a popular current slang term as a foil, hope is the opposite of hopium. What's hopium? Hopium is the combination of hope and opium, which mocks true hope because it rests on blind faith and wishful thinking. Like a drug, hopium promises something it can't deliver, but hope can because it rests on the promises of God. Now there's several metaphors that we can use to help us grasp hold of this hope of the church triumphant. The first I'm going to use is the idea of supper. So I wanna return to that quote from Leonidas that I gave two forms of. First one said, let us dine, fellow soldiers, for we shall sup in the netherworld. And then the second one was, now eat a good breakfast, men, for we shall all be sharing dinner in hell. Now we're gonna pick up the hell part of this later. Here I'm interested in the dine or dinner versus breakfast and the sup, supper versus dinner. Now, as I said earlier, these are not the same. And Diodorus Siculus demonstrates this in his original quote of this. Dinner and supper are the original. Well, how in the world would they be different? Well, this can actually be rather funny, as people call different meals of the day different things. And then we argue about which one is right. Have you ever done this? In some houses, dinner is lunch. And supper is what you have at night. In my house, at least in my way of thinking, I always remember thinking that dinner is just what you have on Sundays. Supper is what you have every other night. And then there's pippin. Remember pippin? What about breakfast? You already had it, Strider responds. Oh, we've had one, yes, but what about second breakfast? I don't think he knows about second breakfast, Pip, Mary whispers. What about elevensies, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner? He knows about them, doesn't he? The etymology of dinner and supper are interesting to think about. According to the online etymology dictionary, the word dinner was in 1300 A.D. the first big meal of the day that was eaten between 9 a.m. and noon. It comes from an old French Dizner and the Gallo-Roman designare, to break one's fast. So technically breakfast is dinner, which I'm pretty sure none of us say. Supper, on the other hand, comes from soper, evening repast, the last meal of the day. So sadly, this makes me wrong about thinking dinner was supper. Now, you're like, why does any of this matter at all, right? Well, in his great commentary on the church fathers, Cornelius Allapity considers Matthew 22, verse two. That verse says, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. And then he comments this way. But you will ask, what was this supper? Some understand it by the incarnation of the word of God, the preaching of his gospel, the redemption wrought by him. For this is the great supper to which Christ, when he became incarnated, invited us. Saint Matthew calls it a dinner. And then he says this, it is a dinner as regards the church militant, a supper with respect to the church triumphant. And then he says, in this sense, Leonidas addresses his comrades before the battle. Let us dine, fellow soldiers, for we shall sup in the netherworld. For the church militant here on earth is striving eagerly to attain the church triumphant in heaven. In other words, one meal is considered by the fathers in two senses, because there's one church at two periods of time. They base this on the idea that the early meal might lead to death because it was the last meal before the battle, while the final meal was the first in the life to come. I found that super interesting. One is for us still living, the church militant. It's our first meal, the meal of war. It's our dinner. This corresponds to communion, which we take like Melchizedek and Abraham in the context of war. Jesus, that very night, was heading into the fray of battle. Our song sings about this. Partakes one holy food, to one hope she presses with every grace endued. This meal is in the context of the church militant. And again, it says, mid toil and tribulation and tumult of her war, she waits the consummation of peace forevermore. Yet she on earth hath union with God the three in one and mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is one. Yes, the church triumphant is here in these words, but it's in the context of the church militant, having communion with God and the church in heaven. The other meal is the church triumphant, or the other way of thinking about it. This is our last meal, our meal of victory. It's our supper, not our dinner. This is Abraham and Melchizedek eating after the victory has been won. Notice, I just used Abraham and Melchizedek two ways for one meal, two perspectives. It's the focus of the wedding supper of the Lamb in Revelation 19. See, the multitude in heaven are crying, hallelujah, salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for His judgments are true and just, and He has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality. Again, they sing, hallelujah, for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exalt and give Him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready. And then I saw heaven open and behold a white horse and the one sitting on it called faithful and true and in righteousness he judges and makes war. Then I saw an angel standing in the sun with a loud voice and he called, come gather for the great supper of God. This is the supper we await in the consummation, which even today the saints in heaven partake in as the church triumphant. So the first idea to help you think about is the supper. Second metaphor is brought out in our song. With all her sons and daughters, who by her master's hand, led through the deathly waters, repose in Eden land. You're like, well, I don't remember singing those words. That's because there's basically one verse that we've left out of our hymnal. Let me read it again. With all her sons and daughters who by the master's hand led through the deathly waters repose in Eden land. There past the border mountains wherein sweet veils the bride with thee by living fountains forever shall abide. The Anglican J.M. Neal in his commentary on the church and medieval fathers on the Psalms considers Psalm 15 one. says, oh Lord, who will sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? And he says, we must understand the tabernacle, the tent, of the church militant, and the holy hill of the church triumphant. And in this sense, it is well said, the tabernacle or tent, because tents are the habitation of them that are engaged in war, not of those who are at rest. But by the mountains, as the gloss beautifully says, eternal beatitude is represented. Where is the vision of peace and the perfection of love, where none contends in the vehemence of the conflict, but everyone rests in eternity of peace. The mountain in which it pleased the Lord to dwell, yes, the Lord will abide in it forever. Now it's clearly an older way of looking at this verse that sees these two senses of the church here. But the metaphors are correct. Clearly the tabernacle, which went everywhere with Israel in the wilderness, it's God riding on the seat at the Ark of the Covenant, going before the people in war, is a symbol of the church militant. Only when the wars had all been fought and the land had been taken did God allow a permanent place for his rest in his temple. Eden, which the song does not get at specifically, was actually a mountain with a garden. And we often think of it only as a garden, but a mountain is just as important as the mountain was the place of the meeting of the divine council upon which Adam originally had a seat at the table. That the mountain is a place of rest, you just read something like Psalm 132, for the Lord has chosen Zion. He has desired for it to be his dwelling place. This is my resting place forever. Here I will dwell for I have desired it. Zion, of course, is a mountain. And it's where God put his temple and rested in the confines of the most holy place where the ark was permanently kept. Now there's a reason why Hebrews 12 says that we have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to innumerable angels in festal gathering, to the church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven. See, it is our great hope, somehow tasted even now in the church militant, that we come to this. We come to it at this very moment in the church, right now. And this way, we actually share communion with the church triumphant. Bavinck says this, although there is no room for veneration of saints and intercession of the dead, there still is and remains a communion between the church militant on earth and the church triumphant in heaven that cannot be broken. Believers on earth, when they became Christians, came to the heavenly Jerusalem above, which is the mother of us all, to the innumerable angels who serve and praise God there, to the assembly of the firstborn, that is, the devout of the Old Testament, who are enrolled in heaven and have their citizenship there, to the spirits of the just, that is, the Christians, who have already died and reached perfection, the consummation, to Christ, the mediator of the New Testament, and to God, the judge of all. This communion does not imply that there has to be direct interaction between the members of the militant and triumphant segments of the church, for though this is lacking also between the two different persons and peoples who lived at different times and places on the earth, humankind is still an organism made up of one blood. The personal contacts that every believer here has on earth are limited to a few persons, but believers are nevertheless members of one holy Catholic Christian church. The unity that binds all believers together, the dead as well as the living, is anchored in Christ, and through him in fellowship with the same Father, in the possession of the same Spirit, and in joint participation in the same treasures of salvation. These comments lead me to consider that hope raised earlier that we talked about. What was the hope of the Old Testament church? I think it was slightly different than our own hope. It was stated by Job, after my skin has thus been destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God. Now, you say, well, that sounds an awful lot like the New Testament hope. But the difference is that there was something in the intermediate state for the Old Testament saint that's different from the New Testament saint. David spoke of his hope this way. He said, God will not abandon my soul to Sheol or let your holy ones see corruption. The sons of Korah said the same thing. God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol for he will receive me. Now you say, well, what's so different about this from today? Well, the Septuagint translation helps you understand this better. God will not abandon David's soul to Hades, he says, that's hell. God will ransom my soul from the power of Hades, from the power of hell, the sons of Korah. And I said I would return to Leonidas' comment on hell. But notice, it's not unbelievers saying this, like Leonidas, but believers. Because everyone in the Old Testament age went to Hades, believe it or not. Believers or not. The hope of the Old Testament, not the hope of Leonidas, but the hope of the saints, was that somehow God would not leave the believer there. That somehow God would ransom them from its power. So I'm gonna contrast this hope with the hope put forward in one of my favorite passages on hope, Romans 5. It says, therefore, since we've been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. And we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance. Endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. who he has given to us. Now there's nothing here or anywhere else in the entire New Testament about a hope of being remembered in Sheol because the New Testament believer does not go there. For through Christ we have obtained access by faith into the grace which brings us straight to God when we die. Today to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. What a glorious thought for the church triumphant. Our hope is more firm and sure, not because they were not justified by faith, of course they were, but because we are justified by faith in Christ who has come in the flesh and done something profound for us, something that changes where we go when we die. We learn something related to this in our song. The church shall never perish, her dear Lord to defend. Her dear Lord to defend. This part is certainly about the church militant, but it speaks, however, about Jesus defending his church so that she will never go fully away in this world. See, the legal war has already been fought. The captives of the old in the prison of death have been set free. That victory has already been won, and all our battles that we wage as the church militant today are fought in light of that. Not only does he defend her, but he guides, sustains, and cherishes her, and is with her to the end. In this, we have the promise of Christ. Lo, I am with you always, even to the very end of the world. Now, who is he with? Who is he talking to? He's talking to his disciples. So did he only mean them? Well, if so, does this mean that when they died, the end of the world or the end of the age came? Some have wanted to say that, but no, this is a promise to the church, not just to Christians, which is true, because as we have seen, the apostles are the foundation of the church. The church's mission did not end with the death of the disciples. It continues today until the very end of the age. The song is a proof text for the church never perishing. It's Matthew 16, 18. Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. This promise rests on something Christ did for his church that's rather mind-blowing, but not very well received by Christians today. In the context, Jesus talks about the keys. The very next words say, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Keys to the kingdom of heaven is an image of the church being the door, with the keys of the door unlocking the entrance into the kingdom. That's the context. Now in Revelation 118, Jesus says, I died and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades. But we find Hades also in Matthew 16, that the gates of hell shall not prevail, thus Jesus gives the keys. And so one scholar writes, the promise that the gates of Hades would not overcome the new people of God seems to parallel the implied promise that death in Hades will not overcome the church in Revelation 118. Both passages seem to have in mind the descent of Christ to the underworld as spoken about in the Apostles' Creed. This is where Jesus descended into the heart of the earth for three days, pillaged the gates of hell, and led his people out of captivity. New Testament saints no longer go there. Otherwise, how can this promise to Peter even make sense? And thus the church triumphant rests upon the finished work of Christ, the divine warrior of our faith, who has defeated sin, death, and the devil. He has taken the keys, objects that were known throughout the ancient world as being held by the underworld gods. And he now holds the power of life and death in his hands. He unlocked the gates of hell, released the captives, freeing them from their bonds of death. He unlocks the door of the kingdom of heaven, and through the church, people enter into its blissful glory, both now and in the age to come. But how does that happen now? Well, it's because of Christ's glorious ascension. And this may just be the very best part about our hope, because it's here that we see the future hope of the church triumphant is actually more than just a dream. Because this future reality is, in fact, in some sense, here, right now, the church triumphant. How could that be? If the church triumphant is the church in heaven, how can that be? How can we be the church triumphant here now? Is that even possible? Most people don't talk about this when you read about this topic. But you have to keep in mind all those analogies that we looked at earlier, a few weeks ago, about the church in Christ. We, together, are organically linked to Christ, like branches to a vine, like a bride to a husband, as stones to a temple, as a body to a head. But now here's the question, where is our head right now? Where's our head? He's not with us on earth. He's in heaven. But what is the church triumphant? It's the church in heaven. We often think of this only in terms of death. However, think about what this living, organic relationship to Christ necessitates. Because we are linked, and we could add even more living vitality to this through the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus sent to indwell us, this means that we are in heaven inasmuch as our head is there. Right now. This is a present reality, even though we are not yet dead. Calvin put it this way. He said, faith perceives that the Lord, by his ascension to heaven, has opened up the access to the heavenly kingdom, which Adam had shut. For having entered it, our flesh, as it were, in our name, it follows, as the Apostle says, that we are in a manner now seated in heavenly places, not entertaining a mere hope of heaven, but possessing it in our head. If this is true, then what kind of power must the church possess? The church originated in the heavenly plan. She is to be present in heaven forever in the future. But even now, the very power of heaven itself pulses through the church through our head, who is in heaven at the right hand of the Father. This is a power that's unlike any other power. Kings and princes, commanders and generals can only dream of the power the church has. It's a spiritual power to loose bonds, to free captives, to bind the devil, to overcome sin, to command worship. This is why the church matters. This is why she's so vital in the world of men today. This is the already not yet mystery that is the militant and triumphant. We wage battle in spiritual realms knowing that Christ has already won the war. We await our final consummation knowing that Christ has already gone ahead of us into heaven. And so we can sing, happy ones and holy, Lord, give us grace that we, like them, the meek and lowly, on high may dwell with thee. Now as we wrap up this short series on the church, I want you to consider the words of Charles Wesley in a different song that we didn't sing today that he wrote called The Church Triumphant in Thy Love. The church triumphant in thy love, their mighty joys we know. They sing the lamb in hymns above and we in hymns below. Thee in thy glorious realm they praise and bow before thy throne. We in the kingdom of thy grace, the kingdoms are but one. We've seen that worship, which is sung about here, is in fact our chief means of Christian warfare. We've now added to it that the church triumphant and church militant, one church, separated only by spheres of existence, are singing together the songs of the Lamb. With our one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and our means of grace, the visible and the invisible cries out together, how long before the awaited consummation? How long, Lord? And then suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, with the vision glorious, her longing eyes are blessed, and the church victorious shall be the church at rest. The question before you is simple. Are you in this church? Now you say, I'm sitting in church right now, Pastor. That's not what I asked. I didn't ask if you're sitting in church, but if you are in Christ's church, The first and only way this happens is when you come to the Lord Jesus by faith, trusting in his glorious death and resurrection to atone for your sins, to make you right with God and give you eternal life. That's coming to the church. But our series has taught that it's not just the invisible church that you come to, it's in fact the visible church. There's only one church. When you come to Christ, you come to his bride. and you become his bride along with millions of countless elect souls down through the ages and continue until the very last soul converts prior to the second coming. The point here is not merely that you will long for salvation individually, personally, yourself. That, I pray, is something you long deeply for and that you seek with all your heart because God puts that seeking into your heart and you find it only through Christ. But the point more is that you will learn to see your salvation in the context of a mass of people that are all your brothers and sisters, parts of your own body, little branches with you on the vine, members of one household, stones built up together into a temple, and that you would learn to love this household, this visible church, this church around the world, this church universal, the place where the keys are to be found. Too many people despise the church, even some who call themselves Christians. Long ago, Cyprian had this famous quote. He said, one cannot have God as his father without having the church as his mother. Why? It's because in church, you are nourished, fed, sanctified, washed, clothed, and sent out. Jesus died for his church, specifically and specially. He saves each Christian into the church. And there's only one church, though with many local manifestations. To hate the church is to hate the bride of Christ. And yes, she has a myriad of problems. The tumult over war, as the song tells us. A war that's fought as much against enemies within as bombardment without. But in the midst of the ugliness of the church militant, there's still Christ's pure bride. And this is what you're to long for as a Christian. For here you find rest from the battle waged today. And here we find hope for our eternal rest in the age to come. Turn to Christ, and then to his bride, and love her as he does. Spend your life anxiously doing all you can to help her, to uphold her, to be part of her, to cherish her, to pray for her, to make her spotless, to do battle with her, to rescue her. That's what Christ has done and continues to do until the great day of consummation, when he shall return for her and take her to his eternal home, which he's been preparing since he left his disciples, looking up in the sky, wondering when he would return for them. Let's pray together. Lord, it is a strange thing to me to think that we are the church militant and that we don't fight this war the way that most people think. And that also that we are somehow, because the Lord Jesus is our head, we here are the church triumphant. because he's in heaven with the saints who have gone before us. And that's what I want people to understand here today. It's not merely to look forward to some kind of a future glory, and it's not just to do that as individuals, but it's to think about even right now, we are triumphant because Christ has triumphed over these powers that have held us in, humanity in such horrible conditions of slavery and death. Since Adam fell into sin, you give your church the keys of the kingdom, and you have told us that nothing will be able to conquer us, and that when we go out, we will conquer whatever we set our sights to because of your power. The gates of hell cannot prevail against it when your church goes out. That means that we're triumphant already. And I pray, Lord, that you would give us a sense of this triumph in the midst of a church that we look around and we go, what a disaster. What a wreck. It's because we're at war. And I pray that the church victorious would help us to wage the war better today as we still are the church militant until you bring us into our heavenly glory. Father, I would ask that those who don't know you would understand what it means to know Christ, that you would open their hearts and their minds. and that you would allow them to enter the kingdom through faith, and I pray for those who do know you, that you would help them to see the glories of the church in ways that they have not considered before, that you would use these words for our benefit, for our salvation, and for our sanctification. Lord, as we come to the table now, we ask that you would do the same thing for us, and we ask that you would hear our prayer in Christ's name, amen.