Let me pray. Father, I do pray for each one of us gathered here that we will be encouraged and built up in our faith as we consider again what it is that you have purposed, what it is that you have accomplished in your triumph through the frailty of your son. The people of Israel could never imagine that their God would arise and He would do the mighty work of destroying His enemies, liberating His people, ending their exile. He would accomplish all of that through the bloody and the brutal self-giving death of the incarnate Son. Who could have ever imagined? Who would have ever thought? And yet, Lord, that is the marvelous way that you work, not in the earthquake, not in the mighty wind, not in the raging fire, but in the still, small voice, in the most unremarkable ways, the most astonishing ways, so unpredictable. And Father, this is what motivates your people to trust you. to not trust their expectations, to not trust their experiences, to not trust what seems to make sense to them in their logic, but to trust the God who is faithful, who works in astonishing ways. The God who accomplishes all things often without even being known to those among whom he's working. So may we find our strength in being weak, our strength in your strength. May we ask not that we be delivered from the things that challenge us, but that we would find all sufficiency in Christ. To discover, as Paul did, that it's when we're weak that we're strong, and therefore we can rejoice in our weaknesses, in our infirmities, persecutions in our sufferings for Christ's sake, knowing that it's in that manifestation of your love, as unseemly as it may be, we find the strength that we need. When we are weak, then we are strong. And Father, help us to rest in the fact that you remain faithful. That as we look around at a world that seems out of control, a world that seems utterly beyond your reach, beyond your power, a world that perhaps even you've given over to itself. May we trust not what our eyes see. and what our hearts tell us, but may we trust the God who is faithful, the God who has demonstrated his faithfulness in the most astonishing triumph in the Lord Jesus Christ, a triumph that we are parties to, and we are to be heralds of and ambassadors of in this world. So bless us in our time of consideration. Teach us and build us up. Equip us for the work to which you've called us as your people in this world, that Christ would be glorified not only in the church, but in the world through the faithfulness of your people. It's for his sake that we ask these things. Amen. Well, we've seen, I hope at this point, how the Spirit is really the focal point Pentecost has this outpouring of the Spirit as the great hope that even the Old Testament Scriptures had said would come. God would pour out His Spirit in the last days and the Spirit would be the one through whom God would do this mighty triumphal work, bring about this transforming, cleansing, renewing accomplishment that He had promised. And so as we considered even this issue of the church's internal life, this principle of unity and harmony and oneness, all of that is in the spirit. It's the spirit who joins us to Christ, and therefore it's the spirit who joins us to one another. Recall again, Paul in Ephesians 4 says, give all diligence to preserve the unity of the spirit, the unity that the spirit has affected. one faith, one Lord, one baptism, one God and Father of us all. So the spirit forms the church as God's sanctuary and in that way also affects the church's conformity to Christ, making the church his body, making the church, importantly, his presence and his testimony in the world. We are Christ in the world. Remember Paul's language of the church being the fullness of him who fills all in all. And he prayed that the spirit would open the eyes of their hearts, the Ephesians, that they would understand these things, that they would own them. So the spirit is not only the spirit who brings about the life and the existence and the internal harmony of the church, but he is the ongoing active power that informs and empowers the church's mission. If we're gonna talk about the church's mission in the world, it has to be seen through the lens of the spirit. not just that the Spirit empowers it, but what the Spirit has done even informs how we understand what our mission is. As we look historically, and certainly as I say here in the modern era, if you ask Christians what is our mission, There's obviously a reason that God has us continue on in the world. If it was just about getting souls into heaven, then the minute we're saved, then God would just get us out of here, right? Why are we here? What is this about? What is the church's vocation with respect to the world? And people tend to answer that in terms of two things. Soul winning or making the world a better place. We tend to associate it in our culture more with conservative Christians versus liberal Christians. And the liberal side of things is more the social justice, social reform, social action side of things. The conservative side is no, it's getting people saved. The church's mission is soul winning. But as I argue here, and hopefully this will become clear, both of those views taken in themselves reflect a skewed understanding of God's purposes in the world, and therefore our responsibility towards those purposes, how the church achieves those purposes according to God's intention. And both of those ways of thinking about the Church's role actually, and obviously, reflect back on how we understand Christ's person and work. What was the significance of His coming? What was it that He accomplished? What was, in a most focused way, what was His cross all about? What was the person and the life and the work of Christ all about? And these two views of the church's mission derive from a different understanding, a different perspective on the significance of the Christ event. As I say, in the one tradition, Jesus' life, death, and resurrection were concerned primarily, in some people's minds, entirely with the problem of human sin and condemnation. as you've heard me say so many times through the years, just the fact that we take the atonement of Christ and we make it an issue of how many people are getting saved, general atonement, limited atonement, shows that we really don't understand what the atonement is fundamentally about. So from the one side, if this is all about people getting saved, then the cross of Christ, Jesus, ultimately what he came to do, what he accomplished, what we understand by his death and resurrection, is that God was dealing with this problem of human sin and condemnation. So the goal that God had in sending the Son was to provide sinners a way of escape from eternal punishment and that they would obtain the blessings of an eternity in heaven. And I'm generalizing, but that's often the way people think about the purpose of the coming of Christ. And so, therefore, the church's mission is in service of that. On the other side of it, Jesus is treated often as a singular example of the sort of human life that God intends. He is a way-shower. Jesus lived by the ethic that God intends for human beings, and our responsibility as Christians is to model that ethic, model that way of doing human life and human social structures, building human societies, working for the good of the human race, if you will, working to build God's kingdom in the world. So I want to consider in view of those two things, and again those are generalizations, but Christians tend to fall out more on one side or the other when they think about what is really our mission in the world. And you see this in the way that even missions organizations apply themselves. But I want to look at two fundamental considerations. The first is related to what I just spoke of, but that's this consideration of kingdom and cross. How do we understand them? And then secondly, as I hinted at earlier, this principle of already but not yet. And ultimately what these two considerations are about is how do we understand what it is that we, the church, and even we individually should be about in terms of our vocation as believers in this world. Why does God have us here? So when we think about these two viewpoints, as I said, soul winning or social action, social justice, often those are defined, or at least sometimes they're defined in terms of a cross focus or a kingdom focus. So the cross focus sees the church's vocation in terms of soul winning, as I said. The cross is about Jesus making atonement for sin so that people can be saved. And that's where our energy goes. That's what we're to be all about, is seeing people come to faith. And to the extent that we get involved in practical needs, social needs, societal needs, it's unto that goal of seeing people get saved. I have this little quote here. I've heard this many times over the years. Starving people can't hear the gospel. So often even missions organizations, you know, a missions organization that goes into third world Africa, it will be involved in digging wells and building roads and hospitals and schools and infrastructure, bettering the lives of the people. but ultimately they will say with the goal of seeing people get saved. But when somebody is starving or their children are dying of disease, they're not going to hear what you're telling them about Jesus. So really the issue is getting people saved, but sometimes you have to tend to more practical needs in order to get their attention so that you can get around to what's really important. Others say, well, really what the issue is, is modeling this love of God, this ethic of God, of people living better lives, you know, dealing with issues of social injustice. This is what lies behind liberation theology, which has been around for a long time, but it became big in the post-World War II era, very much tied to Marxism. Liberation theology was a very common way of thinking about the Christian mission, particularly in Latin America and other places. where you have a handful of people with all the power and all the wealth and all the land, they have all the control, and they crush all the rest of the people, and Christians should be working for societal reform. That's really what God would have us to do. He loves this world. He loves people. He wants to see us be about manifesting Jesus' own way of living and loving and caring and tending to people's needs in the world. But I'm going to argue here that kingdom and cross are not two separate perspectives or orientations. They're actually inseparable and they imply each other and they interpret each other. So my first argument, and hopefully we understand this, but I challenge you to be Berean about this and see whether these things are actually so, if this is what the scripture teaches. But my first argument is that the kingdom of God is actually the reason for and the goal of Jesus' death. And I'm not denying that the cross pertains to personal salvation. But God's goal isn't saving people from eternal punishment. God's goal is delivering his creation from its bondage to corruption and dissolution and seeing it become what he created it to be. It's this kingdom defined by a new heavens and new earth. That's his ultimate purpose in sending his son. That's why even when Paul deals with the issue of the atonement, he says that by the blood of the cross, God was reconciling to himself all things, all things in the heavens and the earth. And Paul says that God who has accomplished this triumph in the Messiah is now working in administering the fullness of the times towards what end? Seeing people get saved? No, towards summing up everything in the heavens and the earth in the Messiah. So the messianic work is to establish the kingdom of God. When Jesus comes, and you see this in the very beginning of Mark's account, but it's true in all the gospels, the good news, the gospel is the good news of the kingdom. It's not a salvation formula, it's the good news that the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. That's what Israel was waiting for. That's what God had been promising. that he would arise and he would come and he would conquer all of these enemies that had taken his people and his creation captive. He would end the exile. He would banish the curse. He would renew all things. He would take his place again in the midst of his creation. That was the kingdom of God that he was promising. And he revealed that at the very time of the creation. The creation account builds a picture of this kingdom. God inhabiting a world that he is present in and reigns over through the creature that shares in his image and likeness. So he pledged it. He revealed it at the time of creation and pledged it at the time of the fall. He bounded up in Israel's life and history as the Abrahamic people. And he kept promising and promising that he was going to bring about this kingdom that would see all things renewed and restored to him, related to him in and through his human image children. So this new creational kingdom would have renewed human beings at its center. And this is where the personal salvation dynamic comes into the picture. It's not that it has nothing to do with people getting saved, but people getting saved is not the end game. The end game is God being all in all, being related to his creation, a cosmic renewal that has renewed human beings at the center. So the kingdom is the goal and the reason for the cross, but the cross was the necessary ground for the kingdom because the new creational nature of the kingdom necessitated the cross. So the two can't be understood separately, and if they're rightly related, which means biblically related, then that relation between kingdom and cross has to inform and drive our understanding our orientation and our implementing of our mission. We have to understand those two things together. We're not just out there building a kingdom. We're working towards a kingdom that is the result of, centered and interpreted through the cross. But we're also not just out there winning souls for heaven, as if this idea of the kingdom of God is irrelevant. And unfortunately, we live in a time where the kingdom of God tends to be viewed in terms of a future millennium, right? So there is some kind of remote connection between the cross and the kingdom of God, but not in the way in which the scripture presents it. So Jesus' death was unto his resurrection as the first fruit of this renewal of the creation. He is the beginning of God's new creation. which ultimately by God's design will embrace the whole created order. As I said, the way Paul puts it is God is now working towards his goal of summing up everything in the creation in Christ. What is God doing since the resurrection and ascension and enthronement of the Christ? What is God doing through his spirit? He's working towards summing up everything in the creation in his son. So whatever the church's mission is, it's got to be tied to that. And we'll deal with this more down the road. I'm just laying a foundation today. So God's intent for creating was to create a world in which he would mediate his presence. He would be present in his world, related to it through human beings. This is what you see in Genesis 1 and 2. Already we see what the purpose, the meaning of the creation is in the creation account. and thus he created human beings to be a royal priesthood. Jesus, the priest-king, is the first in a human race of priests and kings. And that has to do with the relationship of human beings to the creation. That human status, that vocation, has been realized in the resurrected and enthroned image son. So the scriptures teach us that Jesus is the beginning of God's new and true creation, and he is the true man around whom all creation is to be rightly related to God. That's what Paul means when he says that God's intent is to sum up everything in him. So Christians then are the yield that follows out of Christ as first fruit. Remember the offering of first fruit was an act of faith on the part of the Israelites. When the very beginning of the harvest started, they took it and they offered it to God. not just to give him the first and the best, but as their faith in the fact that the one who had begun the harvest would bring the whole harvest in. So they gave it to God as an act of faith, trusting him for the rest of the harvest. Well, Jesus is the first fruit. This is 1 Corinthians 15. And now out of him, through him as first fruits, God is bringing forth more of a yield. The vine and the branches context in John 15, think of that. And we talked again about Galatians, you know, Paul's statement, I have been crucified with Christ and yet I live. but not I, but Christ lives in me. The life that I'm now living, having been crucified with Christ, I live within the faithfulness of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. The life I live is Christ living his life in me. The church is the fullness of him who fills all in all. The branches are in the vine. Jesus said, I'm the true vine, you are the branches. If you abide in me, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing, right? This is this imagery. Same thing in Ephesians 1 going into verse 2, right? When you were dead in your trespasses and sins, God made you alive together with Christ. He raised us up in him, seated us in the heavenly places in him, so that now the church is the fullness of him who fills all in all. Christ is our life. Christians are the offspring of God's last Adam and therefore the fullness of the Messiah. They are the body of whom he is the head. And so, enlivened, directed, and empowered by his spirit, Christians are Christ's presence in the world. They manifest him and they carry forward his work. Think again about the way Luke begins Acts. He says, as he writes this second, Luke, he writes Luke and then he writes Acts, which is the continuation effectively of Luke. And he says, he's writing concerning the things that Jesus began to do and teach. Jesus began to do and teach. Well, now Jesus is doing and teaching through his people. That's what he's saying in the book of Acts. So this is the sense in which believers are commissioned to proclaim Christ and him crucified. This is our evangelistic mandate. We're not called to promote either a salvation formula gospel or to promote social justice and social reform, to fight to make the world a better place. But we're to proclaim God's good news as embodying it We are the gospel that we proclaim. We're the good news. We are that reality of new creation. And so we labor with the Spirit in His work of creational renewal. Does this involve trying to bring people to faith? Yes. Does this involve social action? Yes. In a certain way, from a certain vantage point, and that's what we're going to talk about more next time. In the same way, Christians take up their cross when they own their own death in the Messiah and their resurrection in him, which means that they recognize that they are the living manifest evidence of his inaugurated kingdom and his kingship. As I say, we are the gospel we proclaim. If the gospel is the good news of the kingdom, the good news of the lordship of Christ over all, We are the embodiment of that, because it's the kingdom that is God's new creation. The kingdom that God calls all people to enter into. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, and he's talking to the Corinthians about the gospel that he brought them, and what his burden is for them. And he says, the love of Christ constrains us, or directs us, or controls us, because we have concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died. If Jesus took up our humanity as a son of Adam, then when he died, all of Adam's race died in him. He condemned sin. He condemned fallen humankind. He condemned Adam's race. put to death sin in his own body. When he died, all died. And he died for all that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf. A whole new paradigm of existence. And so from now on, we recognize no man according to the flesh. Even unbelievers in a very real way are within the kingdom of God. And I'll talk about this more next time. Because if Christ has put to death the old order, then all that exists now in substance is the new order. And the condemnation of human beings is insisting in living according to a paradigm that was put to death in the Messiah. They are embracers of a lie. They are denying the fact that God has put to death the existence that they know. So from now on, we recognize no man according to the flesh. Even though we knew the Messiah according to the flesh, we don't know him that way any longer. And so if any man is in Christ, new creation. The old things have passed away, new things have come. And all of this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and entrusted to us the ministry of reconciliation. What is this thing that we proclaim? What is this ministry of reconciliation? It's that in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting men's trespasses against them. And he's committed to us this word of reconciliation so that we are ambassadors for Christ as though God himself were entreating through us. We are that gospel that we proclaim. And so we petition on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. God made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we should embody, we should become, embody the righteousness of God in him. We are the gospel we proclaim. the faithfulness, the integrity, the truthfulness, that God has done what he said he was going to do, we embody that in ourselves. We are the gospel we proclaim. That's what Paul is saying in 2 Corinthians 5. So that's how cross and kingdom are held together, and that's how they have to be central in our understanding of our witness and our faithfulness to our vocation in the world. Then the second thing I want to talk about briefly, and this may be more or less familiar to all of us, I'm not sure, this idea of already but not yet. I think often even, and I hear this when I talk to people who are familiar with the concept, they still tend to want to think in terms of already but not yet refers to Bible prophecies, how many have been fulfilled, how many have not been fulfilled. Already is the prophecies that have been fulfilled, not yet is the prophecies that have not been fulfilled. I remember watching a, it was a pastor's conference and they had like eight or 10 theologians on the stage, you know, and they were talking about this issue. And so they asked them, okay, I want all of you to get up and arrange yourself on the stage based on the least futurist and the most futurist, or preterist versus futurist. Preterist meaning things have been fulfilled, futurist not fulfilled. So you see all these guys standing and looking at each other and milling around and trying to decide where do I fit in this ranking of how much has been fulfilled, how much has not been fulfilled. But already, but not yet, that principle doesn't refer to Bible prophecies in the way we think about it, or how much has been fulfilled and how much has not been fulfilled. Rather, it deals with the fact of fruitfulness and consummation or completion. It says God in Christ has fulfilled all that he has promised. As Paul says, all of the promises of God are yes in the Messiah. everything that God promised he has accomplished in his son, but there is a fruitfulness to that that is unto a consummation of that. It's the way that I would think about the parable of the kingdom in terms of the leaven in the lump of dough. When you put the leaven into the dough, you don't do anything. Once you've done that, you don't do anything more, right? But it's having its internal leavening transforming effect until the whole lump of dough is leavened. And Jesus says that's how the kingdom of God works. So you're not doing anything more. It's been fulfilled, but now it's bearing its fruit. That's what the already but not yet refers to. So again, Paul said that God's purposes were to sum up all creation in his glorified image Son, that God should at last be all in all. Has that happened? Not consummately, but in substance. I've mentioned before, people ask me, like in Revelation 21, John's vision of the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven. Now the dwelling of God is with men. Right? Now they dwell with him. He dwells with them. The merging of God's space and the earthly space, such that now the heaven and earth reality coming together becomes sacred space. And people say, is that a future thing? Well, it can only be future if it's already happened in substance. And the way in which it's happened in substance is in Jesus himself, first and foremost. He is the bringing together of the heavenly space and the creation space. He is the reality, the substance of this truth, now the dwelling of God is with men. The word became flesh and tabernacled amongst us and we beheld his glory. So what's being portrayed in Revelation can only have a future significance if it's already substantially true now. That's this already but not yet principle. So God's purpose for his creation is that it should become sacred space, his consummate perfected dwelling place where he rules his creation through his imaged children, human beings who have attained their destiny by sharing in the likeness of the true image son. What was portrayed in Genesis 1 and 2 is to be finally realized with the Christ event at the center of that, the place in which that's substantially realized. So the already but not yet principle applies to this process, this intent of God, and the state of its completion in all of the particulars. As we go through the Old Testament, how does God talk about this purpose that he has? It's ultimately that he's going to restore the human race in and through Abraham, right? And you all the families of the earth will be blessed. But when God restores the human race, it's unto the human race fulfilling its own vocation to be priests and kings on his behalf, to be the ones through whom he is properly related to and present in his creation. And that's why Paul says in Romans 8 that the creation is groaning, waiting for the revealing of the sons of God. Because when they are revealed, then it too will be revealed in the glory God has intended for it. Then the creation will experience its own participation in this great redemption and renewal. It's still groaning in exile, the creation. It's waiting. That's why the structure of the Old Testament scriptural narrative is creation, calamity, Israel, redemption and renewal, consummation. That's the way its message is structured, and it has within that all of these threads and themes of man as priest-king, sacred space, alienation, exile, redemption, restoration, kingdom. All of those threads and themes are bound up in, again, this intent of God. that all converge and find their fulfillment and their meaning in the Christ event. This is what it means when Jesus and the New Testament writers say all the scriptures testify of him. So I just want to give you a couple examples because I'm saying this already but not yet pertains to all of the particulars of what God has promised and that he has now fulfilled in his son. And the first and foremost thing that the scriptures promise is that what happened with this thing that we call the fall, and I agree with those who say it's better to be thought of in terms of the loss, because what happened through that event of Genesis 3 is exile, curse and exile. Loss of intimacy, loss of proximity, loss of relationship with God. not a fall from grace or a fall from our perfected human who we were. It's a calamity that is the losing of this relationship between God and people and between God and his creation. Exile. And so at the very starting point of God's promise to put things right is that he's going to undo this curse. He's going to arise and he's going to deal with the powers that have taken his creation captive. And in the Old Testament story, the way that God shows his faithfulness, his commitment to that, is he keeps arising on behalf of Israel and liberating them, delivering them from the human entities, Egypt, Babylon, these various forces of national powers that have taken them captive. But even when he brings them out of Babylon, he ends that exile in the sense of the proximity of the people. They're now back in the land, yet at the same time, their exile continues, right? Because what caused that exile was the alienating of the relationship between God and Israel. Their idolatry, their unfaithfulness is the reason he left, he sent them away, He brought this desolation that we read in Isaiah 34. He promises a renewal, but that's going to require the renewing of the relationship. He has to deal with the problem that brought about the exile in the first place. What really is the subjugating, captivating power? And that's why we see that in the Christ event, Jesus doesn't come to destroy Rome, even though that's what they think this is about. He comes to deal with the actual true enemies that had brought about Israel's and the wider creation's alienation and exile. From Genesis 3, the fundamental problem is creational exile, of which Israel's exile is a microcosm. So the ultimate enemies are sin and the dark forces that wield the power of death. God conquered those enemies by Jesus' death. He condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus. And Jesus said, this is the hour and the power of darkness. But when I am lifted up, I will draw all men to myself. This is the hour and the power of darkness, but he has nothing in me, but that it might be known that I love the Father, so I'm going to the cross, right? So these powers have lost their authority and their ultimate power, and yet both continue to assert themselves in the world, even as conquered foes. God has defeated the enemies of sin and death, and the Satan, the powers that are anti-God, anti-creation, and yet they're still operative. You see this in Revelation 12, right? The woman with the 12 stars, she gives birth to the man-child, and the dragon is poised to destroy him, but God pulls him away and delivers him, and enraged, the dragon goes to make war with the rest of her children, the brethren of the man-child. Right? It's a depiction of Israel who gives birth to the man-child and now she bears other children who are the brethren of the, it's the Isianic language, right? She goes to, the dragon goes to make war with them, but they overcame him by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony, though they did not love their lives unto death. And John says, greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world. And Paul says, sin shall not have mastery over you. because you have been raised up in the Messiah. You have died to that which formerly defined you. The first imperative in Romans is reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. And yet he says, don't continue yielding yourselves, your members to sin. It shall not be master over you, but do not continue yielding yourselves to it. So there's this already, but not yet, right? Already alive in Christ, yet still dealing with this life. Already the dragon is defeated and yet he goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. These are ways in which we need to even think about our lives in the world and how it is that we have authority and power. You know, Jesus sends out his disciples with authority to proclaim the triumph of the kingdom, power over demons, power over sickness, power over all of these things that reflect the curse. And he says, I saw Satan falling like lightning from the heavens. There is this defeat that has come about, and yet, and yet. So secondly, what the powers have done is created this exile captivity situation, and God kept promising that he would deliver Israel and their exile. This is Isaiah 35, a renewal. Israel's plight was a microcosm of the curse that bound all creation. So when Yahweh liberated his people, it was going to involve also the creation's liberation. That began with the incarnation. Atonement has its substance in incarnation, as we saw. Atonement is about the putting right, bringing back together God and his creation. that has its substantial fulfillment in the incarnation reached its climax for the sake of the cursed creation more widely with Jesus' death and resurrection. That's what broke the bonds of alienation and death for the sake of the creation and yet the creation still groans under the curse. It's waiting for the future day when it will participate in the cosmic redemption and renewal that God has enacted in the last Adam. This is Romans 8. So it is with us. God has ended the exile and yet the creation still is dealing with exile. He's defeated the enemies and yet the enemies are still operative. So also this end of exile is unto the renewal of creation. Jesus is the first fruits of that and we as sharers in him are a part of that harvest. we are a part of God's new creation by sharing in his resurrection life. If our gospel is the good news of new creation, people say, where is it? Well, it's in us. It's in the people of God, individually, but more importantly, corporately, as they do human life in a new sort of way. And yet, already we are alive in Christ. Already we are a part of this renewal, and yet our bodies remain bound over to corruption and death. This is why Paul says the creation is groaning. It's waiting for the revealing of the sons of God. And so we also groan within ourselves, waiting the redemption of our bodies. This earnest of the spirit, this new life that we have is a down payment, as it were. It's the guarantee of the renewal of the body. The body is dead because of sin. The spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the spirit that raised Christ from the dead is within us, then the spirit that raised Christ will also give life to our mortal bodies. That's Philippians 3 also, right? The God who has triumphed in the Messiah will raise up our bodies to conform to the likeness of Christ's glorified body. This is why the Bible almost deals with nothing to do with the intermediate state. What happens to our souls when we die? Paul says to be absent from the bodies, to be present with the Lord, and that's better by far. But that's all he says. Because the issue is resurrection and creational renewal. That's what this is about. And when we make it be all about souls getting saved to go to Heaven, we're really depreciating what really is God's program. Yes, it is about human beings becoming a part of God's renewed community, His new humanity, but for the sake of their crucial role in a new creation that takes everything into its grasp. A new heavens and a new earth. And even within our renewed spirits, they are not yet fully conformed to the resurrection life we now possess. Paul came to the end of his life and he says, I have not yet taken hold of all this, right? I want to know Him. I want to be conformed to Christ. I share in His resurrection life. I want to be conformed to His death so as to attain to that resurrection in my body. I haven't attained all this or already been made perfect. I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. All who are mature should take that view of things. So even in our spirits, we can say, as John does in 1 John, behold how marvelous of a love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called children of God. And such we are. And yet, it doesn't presently appear what it will be. then we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. It doesn't presently appear what we shall be. Even now, Paul says, put off the old self, put on the new self that has been created in God. Already, but not yet. Already, but not yet. And this is true comprehensively of this idea of the kingdom of God. As you read through the Gospels, Jesus' presence means that the kingdom is breaking in. If I do these works by the power of the Spirit, then know that the kingdom of God has come upon you. And yet, as you move through and he's coming towards his death, he talks about how all of this is going to come to a consummating of the kingdom with a second coming, right? already but not yet. God promised a kingdom that would see him reigning over a purged and renewed world characterized by harmony and peace, secured through the power of his Spirit. This has been inaugurated. This is what we proclaim. This is what we work towards. But we work towards it because it has not yet fully come. This is what it's all about. So next time we'll look more in terms, okay, what does this look like in terms of Christian vocation or evangelism or social action or whatever it happens to be? But this kind of lays a foundation for understanding what is it that we're a part of and what we're actually proclaiming. So let me go ahead and close us in prayer. We'll sing this last song and then we'll have our discussion, okay? Let's pray. Father, I do pray that you will help each one of us to get our heads and our hearts around these things, that you would break down patterns of thinking or patterns of understanding that need to be reshaped, that need to be rethought, perhaps to some extent need to be set aside altogether. I don't know. But my prayer is that we will think rightly about what it is that you have accomplished in your son, what it is that we're a part of, what is it that we're to herald and proclaim and to manifest. What is the work to which you have called us in this world? What does it mean for us to walk in the Spirit, to be co-laborers with the Spirit? What is it for us to be proclaimers of Christ and Him crucified? So I pray that you will give to each of us willingness and eagerness to do business with these things even in the coming week that we'll pray about these things, we'll study, we'll read, we'll meditate on them and think about what really this means for us even individually but certainly what it means for your church and its mission in the world. So be gracious to us, be patient with us, lead us into all understanding, carry us forward in this transforming work by the renewing of our minds through the Spirit who makes us sharers in the life of Christ, through the Spirit who animates us, through the Spirit who even defines our existence as new human beings, a part of this new humanity in the Spirit, in Christ our Lord. If he is the man of the spirit, we are men of the spirit. And I pray that your spirit will meet us in our need, meet us in our weakness. Bless us in these things. We ask all of this in the name of Christ our Lord and for his sake, amen.