Sophia your catechism question this week is what will become of the righteous and your answer is they shall be taken to heaven now we use the word heaven in a Bunch of different ways and the Bible uses the word heaven in a bunch of different ways It can refer to the sky or outer space or that location to which the Lord Jesus has ascended where God makes his glory known and are most fully known, and those are referred to or thought of in the Bible as the heavens and the third heaven. So the heavens would be the first two heavens, the sky and outer space, and the third heaven is that place to which Paul says he was lifted up, doesn't even know if he was in the body at the time. just that he had this exceedingly glorious revelation which actually required for his spiritual health that he would receive the thorn in the flesh to keep him from being too exalted because of the greatness of the revelations. That's one way that we use the word heaven. And it is true that when a believer dies, his soul rests in the grave, his body rests in the grave, his soul is made perfect in holiness and immediately passes into glory or to the third heaven. This use of the word heaven, however, is talking about that glorious and perfect new heavens and new earth, which is full of the glory of the Lord, in which righteousness dwells, where the knowledge of the Lord covers the earth as waters cover the sea. And basically it's asking, what will happen in the last day or at the resurrection of the righteous? When it says they shall be taken to heaven, it means that we will get to enjoy our chief end. So what is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. That's what we were created to do, but then we fell from that and we were not able to glorify or enjoy God. And the Lord had done so because His intention was not just to create us to enjoy Him and to glorify Him, to glorify Him and to enjoy Him, but to redeem us to glorify Him and enjoy Him, so that we would glorify Him and enjoy Him not merely as a mere creature does, but in union with his son, who added creatureliness to himself, but continues forever, one divine person." So he did not add a creaturely person to himself, but one person. the eternal Son of God added a creaturely nature to himself, took a creaturely nature to himself so that we could be united to him, but we couldn't enter into then his fellowship with God, his enjoyment of God, his bringing God glory as those who have made members of the Son as members of his body, members of his bride, as Ephesians 5 applies to the Lord Jesus talking about the church, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. And since this is what God had intended from before the world began, and since the righteous are the ones for whom God sent Christ into the world, for whom Christ died, upon whom the Lord had set his love before the foundations of the world, and therefore to whom the Holy Spirit must certainly apply Christ through faith, The last part of all of the things that are considered in God's plan to redeem us, to glorify him and to redeem us, to enjoy him, is absolutely certain, absolutely sure. From God setting his love upon us from before the world began, to his sending Christ into the world for us, to Christ living a perfectly righteous life and dying a fully satisfying, atoning, propitiating death, and rising again and conquering death and on account of our justification and his sending his spirit to give us life and give us light to work faith in us that we would be joined to Christ Every single one for whom all of that has been done must surely be resurrected, transformed, glorified body, perfected soul, in which to glorify God as a member of Christ and to enjoy God in union with Christ. And that is what we call heaven. Now, the place in which that occurs is a new heavens and a new earth because we are still creatures and we are still bodily creatures. And so, just as he created in the beginning, the heavens and the earth, he, in the ending, creates the new heavens and new earth for us to glorify God and to use the language of the larger catechism, fully enjoy him forever. And we can hardly imagine, simply because we are not holy enough to desire glorifying God or enjoying God the way we ought to desire it, let alone anticipate what it will be to have that desire fulfilled by God himself, which is to say, infinitely and increasingly forever fulfilled. I cannot imagine how good it is. Many people think many things about heaven. The best thoughts that we have are formed by scripture. Any thoughts that are not formed by scripture are completely wrong and base and fleshly and will not even begin to think rightly. But even those that we have that are formed by scripture, because we see in a mirror dimly for now, Even the most heart-captivating ideas and feelings about what it will be to glorify and enjoy God that way are barely the first hint of a whisper of what it will actually be. all that we can know is that it is a glory and an enjoyment that is as big as God himself, a glory and enjoyment of which Jesus himself is worthy. And what then must this heaven be? And so, considering what hell is, you remember from last week, a place of dreadful and endless torment. We may think a little bit more, I think, next week. I forgot to check if there's one or two more catechism questions and what they are in the children's catechism. But certainly we do not want to end up in the place of eternal and dreadful torment. But We want that which is sure to come to everyone who is made right with God in Jesus. We want to be taken to heaven. So, the question is, what will become of the righteous? And the answer is, they shall be taken to heaven.