So if I had to give you a passage for today, it would probably be John 1, 14. A very well-known verse, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory. Glory is of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. So I'm gonna go back to the very third verse of the Bible. Caused us to think about some things that happened there at the very beginning. It begins this way, and it says, and God said. And this little phrase, and God said, is repeated in verse six, nine, 11, 14, 20, 24, 28, and 29 by my count, okay? And what's even stranger is that this is half of all that phrase's appearances in the entire Bible. The purpose of God's speech in this chapter is that it creates things. When the word says, let there be light, there is light. And this is true literally of everything that was made. The word spoke it and it simply was. So we've seen previously in the last couple of sermons that this word is not mere speech. It is actually the son of God through whom are all things. As we saw a couple of weeks ago in first Corinthians. Now, given that the Word or the Son of God creates all things exactly where He wants them, this would have to mean that He is omnipresent, wouldn't it? What does omnipresent mean? It means He's everywhere. And we find the Bible affirming God's omnipresence in many places. Here's three verses. Jeremiah, can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him, declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth, declares the Lord. And Isaiah says, thus says the Lord, heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool. What is the house that you would build for me and what is the place of my rest? And then in the Kings it says, but will God indeed dwell on earth? Behold, heaven, the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built, Solomon prays. Now I would make an argument in those passages that the Lord here includes all three persons of the Trinity. A very special and important passage affirms this beyond dispute, and I want you to turn to this one, it's Psalm 139. I think we read this for the opening this morning. In our bulletin, this is verses seven and eight, it says, where shall I go from your spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. Now more than these other verses that I just read to you, this is a highly Trinitarian, So I want you to notice your spirit and then your presence. The spirit belongs to someone and the presence belongs to someone. To whom do they belong? Well, it says they belong to Yahweh, the Lord. Now, I said this is highly Trinitarian and someone at this point might hear me and disagree. See, if I talked about myself and I said, Hey, where would you flee from my presence or from my spirit? My spirit is not talking about a different person from me, but that is precisely the distinction that the church has made between the Father and the Spirit. They are the same essence, they're the same God, but they are different persons. So it is correct that my spirit is not a different person from me, but that is not how the God of the Bible has revealed himself. The Father possesses the Holy Spirit, and it is the Holy Spirit who is clearly in mine in that first part of that verse. Where will you flee from my, where shall I go from your spirit? So if you can accept that the Holy Spirit is there, then that makes understanding the presence part of it easier. But this also works in reverse. That is, if you can understand what God's presence is in Scripture, then you can see that it very clearly refers to yet another person, that is to the Son, and this helps you see that the Spirit is the Holy Spirit. Because if the presence is a person, it makes good sense that the spirit is too, and vice versa. So how might that be with the presence? You might say, that's a strange thing to equate the presence and the son. So there's this famous story in Exodus where Moses asks the Lord to show him his glory, and we read this today for the gospel. Show me your glory. And when you think about what God says, it seems like he isn't gonna answer him because he says, you cannot see my face. Have you ever noticed that before? Show me your glory, he says, you can't see my face. What in the world's going on there? Moses didn't ask to see his face, or maybe he did. You see, glory and face are in some ways interchangeable. both of the angel of the Lord and of Jesus. The angel in the Old Testament, Jesus in the New Testament. So let me give you some things to think about here. Here's Isaiah 63, nine. Listen for angel and presence and glory language in these verses, okay? In all their affliction, he was afflicted and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and in his pity, he redeemed them. He lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. So presence and face there are the word pana. That's one word for presence and face. You get various translations. Sometimes it'll say presence, sometimes it'll say face. For example, Ecclesiastes 5.6. Let not your mouth lead you into sin and do not say before the presence of the angel. that it was a mistake, the presence of the angel. Well, when you go and read the Septuagint, they said, do not set your mouth to make your flesh sin and do not say before God's face. So they've taken the presence of the angel and they just translate it as face. In other words, the angel is God's face. He is God's presence. He is the P'nei. Joseph Packard on Malachi 3 writes, he is called the face of God, that is the angel of the Lord, because Though no man can see his face and live, yet the angel of his face is the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person. In him Jehovah's presence is manifested and his glory reflected. For the glory of God shines in the face of, and then he says, Jesus Christ. And that's what we see in the New Testament. So 2 Corinthians 4, 6. God has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Or in 2 Thessalonians, speaking of Jesus, the presence of the Lord Jesus and the glory of his power. So my point in this is simply to establish this obvious theological point of the omnipresence of God and especially of the Son with the scripture itself. The word, the presence, the Son of God is omnipresent. You cannot go anywhere where he is not to be found. So why would I begin a sermon this way? Well, we're entering the third of five sermons on what I'm calling the W's of Jesus. And today we're looking at the where question. Who, what, where, when, and why? This is the where. Where is Jesus? Or where was Jesus? Or where will be Jesus? So that Jesus is everywhere has to be part of the answer to that question. You have to start there. He's omnipresent. But this is a question that's often overlooked for more exciting who and what and why questions. But I believe if you can understand this question of where, that it can have profound influence on your overall thinking of the Lord Jesus Christ. Why and how would that be? Well, the obvious answer from what we've talked about thus far is that if Jesus is omnipresent as the word and presence of God, then he is worthy of all adoration and fealty. For there's no one else who is omnipresent. Certainly you aren't omnipresent. No individual person is, and that includes angels and it includes Satan. Sometimes people think Satan is omnipresent, not even close. Even with all the collective minds and technology which often feels omnipresent these days, humanity is infinitely away from achieving anything that could be considered omnipresence. And it always will be. Big Brother, some of you like to go on to YouTube and watch about Big Brother. Big Brother's not omnipresent, but Jesus Christ is. He's literally everywhere. And if that doesn't blow your mind up, then I'm hoping that what we will focus on for the rest of our time might just finish the job. You might think, well, what could be more mind-blowing than the omnipresence of the Son of God? And my answer is this. It's the special presence of God in space and time that's even more mind-blowing than His omnipresence. And we'll see why that is after we look at what we mean by special presence. So let's think about this idea for a minute. What is the special presence of God, and what sense does that even make for an omnipresent being? I mean, think about this, if he's already everywhere, then what in the world are you talking about by saying he has a special presence? How is that even intelligible? So someone writes, the confession of divine omnipresence might suggest a kind of a flat, undifferentiated presence of God everywhere. One might imagine that the presence of God everywhere rules out his special presence anywhere, but that would be a mistake. In fact, it is precisely God's special presence in particular locations that demonstrates and confirms his presence everywhere. Now think about that, why would that be? It's because God's special presence can be and is seen anywhere that he desires to put it, and that presupposes that he's omnipresent to begin with. So let's ask about, let's ask more about what God's special presence even is. So we're Reformed Christians, and this language is most often used in our circles of things like the Lord's Supper and communion, or, and baptism. That somehow Christ is present in a special way when we take communion. It isn't just a bare memorial, as some think. It's not just a remembrance on our part. There is more to it because Christ is somehow present there. Sometimes we hear about the special presence in the giving of the gospel. And after all, that's what the supper is to all of our senses. That is when the gospel goes out, God is especially present in it to save and to sanctify by the word of his grace. This is why we call both of these things means of grace. And some have called this the special presence of God, his gracious presence. We will see that this special presence can do more than pour out grace. But the point is, this is different from God's omnipresence. Because in his omnipresence, God is basically there in his power and divinity, but not necessarily his grace. This is why the special presence should blow your mind. Because God is able to be gracious through it. Now a less abstract way of understanding the special presence is by linking it to the special comings. of one or more of the persons of the Trinity. So for example, I think about the baptism of Jesus, where you have the voice of the Father being heard, and then the spirit dove is hovering, and he comes to rest upon the Lord Jesus. You see, these things did not happen everywhere in the universe simultaneously, did they? They happened at the Jordan River, somewhere outside of the city of Jerusalem in Israel. So somehow the omnipresent God located himself in a particular spot. And what was the purpose of that? Well, it was to publicly anoint Jesus for his ministry and bear witness to the world that everything that he would do from that moment onward was an act of grace for sinners as the second Adam. But we're moving too far ahead of ourselves. If we want to start with the first place of Christ's special presence, where would you put it? You might think earth. I'm gonna put it in heaven as the first place to think of the special presence. And maybe you don't think of his special presence like this, but you should. Thomas Matten writes, God's special presence is in heaven and we are on earth. It's like Isaiah had said, heaven is my throne. Now while it is certainly true that the Father and Spirit have their special presence in heaven too, it's important to know that this is true of the Son as well. The same Isaiah tells us in Isaiah 6, 1. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, and the word there is Adonai, I saw Adonai sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Now he's not seeing the earthly temple here. He is seeing the heavenly one. And to make things clearer, that he was not seeing the Father, The Targum renders it this way. In the year which King Uzziah was smitten with leprosy, the prophet said, I saw the glory of the Lord sitting upon his throne, high and lifted up into the highest heavens, and the temple was filled with the brightness of his glory. A little bit different. Well, that's the very same language that John uses when he makes it clear that the glory is Christ. This is what John says, Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. Whose glory? He saw Christ's glory. Where's he seeing Christ? In the heavenly temple. A friend and I have been working on a book on the angel of the Lord, and we have run across, on several occasions, what we call the poof theory. You go, what's the poof theory? The poof theory insists that the angel of the Lord is a temporary manifestation of the second person, that when he is no longer seen here, he poofs out of existence. We do not believe that this takes things like the permanent divine council of Daniel 7 or the real location of heaven as a created place seriously enough. While heaven is not in our space-time continuum, and while I'm not sure how to think about where it is other than in a spiritual realm, I am confident that it is a real place and it really came into existence by the word of Christ. It exists somewhere. And when the angel left this earth in the Old Testament, that's where he went. It seems to be what Isaiah necessitates because he's there in his special presence on the throne in heaven. You need to think of Jesus as being in heaven. Think about this. How many people have this idea of Jesus as just a man? Right? If all of a sudden your mind goes to him as being sitting on a throne in heaven, in the Old Testament, how does that not have deep ramifications for your understanding of Christ? Well, this is true now that he has ascended as well. I'm talking about after his resurrection. Jesus told his disciples, I've told you that I go to prepare a place for you. And Peter says, he has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him. One of the great problems that all Protestants have with the modern version of the Roman mass is its insistence that when the elements are consecrated by a priest, they turn into the physical body of Jesus. They call it transubstantiation. But that means that Jesus is now down here physically. rather than in heaven where the Bible tells us that he is. Now, as Calvin and others believe, that doesn't mean Christ cannot be here spiritually, because as we've seen, the word is omnipresent. But the Lord Jesus took upon himself a human body, and this would seem to make his human body omnipresent if its transubstantiation is true, which would mean that it isn't actually a human body, because human bodies are not that way. But again, I'm getting ahead of myself, okay? The where question of Jesus gets more interesting. While the first place you're to think of him is in heaven, in terms of special presence, he told us himself, no one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. Now, what's he talking about? Well, the beginning of John is very important in this regard, and most people misread this when they go through the first 14 verses. Hey, think about this prologue again. John calls Jesus the light very early on, verse three or four. This is a very similar term to the glory. Glory is light, okay? He says the true light, this is in verse nine, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. Now that's easy enough to understand. He's getting ready to tell the story of Jesus that he himself bore witness to. But if you look at this, it's John 1, 9, and then verse 10, his very next words are, he was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. Now we raised this point in the who sermon, but I did it with verse 12. Now I'm doing it in the full context, starting verse 9 and 10. What does it mean that he was coming into the world, but he was already in the world? Well, it means exactly what it says, so long as you don't have a theological blind side that prevents you from seeing it. We saw in the what question that Jesus was there in the Garden of Eden as the prophet, priest, and king because he with Adam. John Frame explains exactly why he was there. The garden was his temple, a place of his special presence. And after the fall, he didn't want Adam and Eve to be there anymore. So why was the Eden a place of his special presence? Well, we saw the answer in Isaiah, and Frame confirms it here. The garden was his temple. That's where he is, he's located in his temple. It doesn't matter if it's a heavenly temple or an earthly temple. If it's God's temple, that's where Christ is. It was the holy place that he created and put his priest, King Adam, to serve and to guard and to tend and to keep it. So you need to learn a little bit here as we think about Eden about two related things. And to get at them, you need to learn a little bit more about what Eden is. Half of it you already know. Eden is said to be a garden. When you look at the motifs of God, that God had Israel plaster and embroider and carve in the various parts of the tabernacle and temple, what you find is that it's filled with fruit symbolism, animal symbolism, angel motifs, even tree and leaf ideas. Because he was having them represent in symbols the idea of the Garden of Eden. That was put into the actual furnishings of the tabernacle and temple. But Eden is also said to be a mountain. In Ezekiel, you were in Eden, the garden of God, you were anointed guardian cherub. I placed you, you were on the holy mountain of God. You sinned, so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, oh guardian cherub. Now, why does that matter? It's because throughout the Bible, and then seeping into the dim and perverted memories of even the pagan nations, God or the gods meet mankind on mountains. These holy mountains are essentially links between heaven and earth. I've seen a lot of mountains the last couple of days, and my mind just can't stop thinking about this thought when I drive through California, Nevada, and Utah, and Colorado, oh my goodness, okay? They're meeting points. They're places of deliberation and communication between the two realms. And in all cases they are viewed as sacred or holy because this is where the temple of God resides. And so the garden mountain ideas teach you in a very special way about the special presence of God. Just let me ask some rhetorical questions here. Why did God come to Adam on Mount Eden? Why in Jewish lore did the Watchers descend upon Mount Hermon? Why did God come to Noah on Mount Ararat? Why did the people of Babel build something that looked like a mountain? Why did God have Abraham go to the top of Mount Moriah? Why did Jacob see a ziggurat mountain at Bethel with angels going up and down on it and Christ standing on the top of it? Why did Moses have to go up to Mount Sinai to receive the law? Why did the people swear blessings and curses upon each other from the perches of Mount Ebal and Gerizim? Why did Moses ascend to Mount Nebo in his final moments? Why did the Lord choose Mount Zion as the place where the temple should be put? Why did Elijah challenge the prophets of Baal on the top of Mount Carmel? Why does Jesus teach the Sermon on the Mount from the Mount of Beatitudes? Why does he go up to the Mount of Olives to preach his great sermon on the second coming? And why did he choose to ascend to heaven from that same place? Why is his cross staked to the ground on Mount Calvary? Why is the proper translation of Armageddon actually Mount of Assembly? Why is our own assembly right now called Mount Zion in Hebrews? Well, we've seen the answers. These are temples or holy places. They are places where holy men meet with God. It's upon these places that the Lord gives instructions and commands and laws and sermons and visions. It's from here that he sent down power to destroy and grace to save. From heaven, he met and talked with his chosen servants here. And he even sits enthroned upon one of these mountains on top of an ark that sits there. Now on the other hand, why is it that God placed Adam in a garden? Why did Esther's king's palace have a garden? Why does the whole story of the Song of Solomon take place in a garden? Why is the prophecy that he would make Israel to be once more like the garden of the Lord? Why was Jesus last night spent praying in a garden? And why was he then buried the next day in another one? Why are Christians said to have access to the paradise of God? Why are the last chapters of the Bible fixated on telling us about the future garden that we will tend in eternity? Well, it's in these places that the Lord walks with someone gently and meets with his beloved and cries out in prayers of distress, has his dead body figuratively surrounded by flowers. It's where fruit and knowledge and life are found. Here our collective life began and here it will end. The symbolism is different and yet the same kind of communion with God takes place in these gardens. Because they're also meeting places where the heavenly and the earthly intersect. These are the places where Jesus chooses to dwell in his special presence. Now, as I've said to some degree, both of these are considered temples. And we should probably think about the tabernacle and temple for at least a moment. The tabernacle had designs that were revealed to Moses by God who commanded him very specifically through a multiple series of sevens in the book of Exodus to make it all exactly according to the plans that he had been given. The sevens bring our mind back to Genesis 1 and the creation of the original temples of earth and the Garden of Eden. But Hebrews tells us that the tabernacle was a copy of the heavenly tent. And as such, it is a depiction of a heavenly reality. And so there must be no deviation from the blueprints. The people must understand where Christ resides. The temple and the tabernacle and all biblical temples are partitioned into three sections. So you have a common space or what they call a courtyard where people can come and offer sacrifices. Then you have the holy place where the priests would enter to change the wicks of the candles and offer incense and have the place of showbread and so on. And then you have the most holy place. in the center. And this is where only the high priest could enter, and he can only do that even once a year. Because here's where the throne of Christ on earth resides, the Ark of the Covenant with its mercy seat and its Ten Commandments and its budding staff of Aaron and its jar of manna, all surrounded by gold on the walls, glimmering and brilliant and perfect. It's this idea of a most holy place itself separated off by a veil that no one can pass that we learn that God dwells in unapproachable majesty. This was evidence to the Israelites by the glory cloud which would descend upon the place. The glory cloud is an image of the special presence of the Holy Spirit. who would then deposit its occupant inside the most holy place. We even read that very thing in the Exodus 33 and 34 story. This is the angel of the Lord who then spoke to Moses as a man speaks to a man, and it says, Moses beheld the form of the Lord. All of this taught an ancient Israelite something that I'm just not sure that we appreciate enough. It taught them that while Christ did indeed come in special presence, he came in a way that they did not have direct access to. It had to be mediated by priests. It was walled off so that they couldn't enter it. It was so high up that they couldn't ascend to it. One mountain, Mount Sinai, shows that perfectly. When you look at Mount Sinai from the top, I don't know if you ever thought about this, but look at it from the top, Okay? It perfectly imitates the three tiers of the tabernacle in the temple. See, only Moses could go to the top, which is the center, if you're looking at it from a helicopter or an airplane. Seventy priests could ascend to the mid slopes, that would be the holy place. But a form of early police tape was placed at the bottom so that none of the Israelites could even cross the line lest they be put to death. This idea of the special presence of the Lord is awesome and terrible. Sometimes coming in judgment in these special appearances is important. In Eden, he kicked out our parents. In the flood, he killed the whole world. At Moriah, he almost had Abraham take his son's life. At Sinai, the people wanted to die. At other times when it was the angel and they are not near the mountain, they often did die. For the angelic body of Christ was itself a special presence that mediated the second person's bare essence to those few who were privileged to meet with him. The point of this is that because he took that form, he could go anywhere he wanted in his special presence. But still, it was on his terms, it was not on theirs. They could only gain access when he granted it and where he decided to let them. This is the story then of the wearer of Christ who descended in the Old Testament in long ages past. But we need to keep moving forward in our story. There is a prophecy that predicted a great change. It was a change that was dimly understood, especially given that God was already with them in a special way. Although for 400 years of silence, that was a little bit blurry, wasn't it? So the prophecy is given by Isaiah, and we saw it when we looked at the who question. Now I want to look at it with the where question in mind. The prophecy is very famous, comes from Isaiah, which means God with us. And it's the with us that's really important for this where question, because it's a game changer in every respect. In the Old Testament, we might say that God was among them, okay? He was among them. He was specially present in time and space, but he was only in their midst. And quite frankly, I couldn't think of any other way to say it, and I don't like that language, because Zechariah predicts something similar to Isaiah when he says, I will be the glory in her midst. And whatever in her midst means there, it has to mean something different than anything that had gone on in the past. And this is precisely where the context of Emmanuel comes into play. How will God be with them? Well, it's in the womb of a virgin girl. So by definition, virgins cannot give birth, not because they don't have wombs, but because they do not have physical relations to make it possible. And yet because she had a womb and was a woman, she is biologically able to bear so long as a miracle takes place. And that's exactly what happened when the Holy Spirit overshadowed her, bringing about a conception infinitely greater than Sarah's old barren womb or that of Hannah's. This itself is the special presence of God, both in the Holy Spirit overshadowing to make Mary the most blessed of all women and in the Son of God indwelling her womb in human flesh. The important language John uses of the birth narrative is that he dwelt among us. The verb to dwell is used, for example, in the Septuagint of Abraham pitching his tent. And so you could say that he tented among us. But there's a very special tent in the Old Testament, it's called the tabernacle, and we've just looked at it. And amazingly, the verb can be to tabernacle. So you could translate it, Jesus tabernacled among us. And of course, that isn't really a word that we use in English, so we don't translate it that way. But it gets the point across much more poignantly than just saying he dwelt with us. See, in saying it this way, we understand that Jesus himself becomes the holy place where God's special presence is mediated. His flesh is the tent. This is tent language that Paul uses even of our bodies. And it's in this way, through incarnating, that God is now with us. So what does this mean? We've seen it in an earlier study on Jesus, 1 John 1.1, that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we've looked upon and have touched with our hands. In other words, this was not a secret coming, not a select coming, not a private coming, not a hidden coming. It's not a veiled coming. It's not an unseen coming. It's not a mysterious coming. This is a public coming, it's out in the open, it's walking and talking and eating and drinking with us. In saying that the Son of God became a man, you are answering much more than the who question, you are answering the where question. It was where? In his body that Jesus did his ministry, because he is the temple of God. In his flesh, he offered up prayers. In his physical form he performed miracles and cast out demons and taught the law and gave the gospel and predicted his sufferings in his resurrection. This is now God with us and the world has never seen a wear like this before or since. There's a couple more wears I want to talk about. Jesus as the Logos is eternal, but he manifested in the where of heavenly created space. And then he descends to earth as the angel of the Lord in the various places of his choosing. And finally, he comes to us as one of us, as God with us, here on earth, walking around in the promised land. This was not the end of his where mission. I'm gonna talk here for a moment about the addition to the original apostles' creed that is very controversial and is among the most often asked questions that I get as a pastor. It says, he descended into hell. Pastor, what does that mean? People always ask me this question. Could it possibly be true? Well, my answer is, it is true, but only if you understand the original intent of the phrase. See, we have a problem. And it's especially an English problem. It's not really a biblical language problem. It's a problem for us. We translate at least three Greek words into only one English word. The three are Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus. but the one English word is the word hell. And so the way Jesus talks about hell is almost, if not entirely negative, isn't it? This is a place of outer darkness, a place of fire and sulfur, where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. This is not a good place. And thus, when we hear the word hell, we think of the place of the damned, the place of punishment, the place of torment. So you automatically can see what the problem is when people hear he descended into hell, right? There's another problem. This time, it's a lack of translation. Here's the problem. The word Hades translates a Hebrew word in the Greek Septuagint. And the Hebrew word is rarely associated with the images of judgment that Jesus gives. But instead, it's simply known as the place of the dead. It is where all go in the Old Testament, whether good or bad, saint or sinner. We read it this morning. If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. Here's the Greek translation. If I make my bed in Hades, you are there. If we were gonna be faithful and consistent, we would translate it, if I make my bed in hell, you are there. Okay, the word is Sheol. So sometimes our translations just transliterate it. I wish that they would do that with the Greek words, by the way. Just tell me it's Hades or Gehenna. Okay, I can figure it out. Other times they translate it just as the dead or the pit. Here's something interesting, in the ESV and the NIV and the NAS, these are probably the most three most popular translations modern, they never once translate Sheol as hell in the Old Testament, ever. The King James does do it sometimes. This creates a lot of confusion. See, when the ancients talked about Jesus descending into hell, here's what they did not mean. They did not mean he went to the place of the damned, or that he suffered God's judgment in hellfire, or that he even went and preached to people suffering in hell so that they could give him a chance, second chance or something like that. Nor, as the popular Reformed alternative has become, did they mean that he was suffering the hellish forsaking of God on the cross while he was still alive. I actually think he was doing that, but that's not what they meant when they wrote this phrase in the Creed. Instead, they simply meant that he went to the place of the dead. That's all it means. Jesus went to Sheol, Jesus went to Hades, because that's where dead people go. In other words, the purpose is to say Jesus really died in saying that he went to hell. But it's objected. Jesus told the thief on the cross that this day he would be with him in paradise. Surely, therefore, Jesus did not go to the place of the dead. Are you thinking that one in your head? Well, this is an answer from ignorance. It doesn't understand the geography of the afterlife. The parable of Lazarus shows quite clearly, as the Jews and even the Greeks thought of the place, that Hades had different sections to it. One section was the place of fire and judgment, what we would normally think of as hell. Another section, much lower and deeper, is the place where the rebel angels were thrown in the days of the flood. Peter talks about this. I think it's Hesiod talks about the same thing. This is called Tartarus. There's a third section in Hades, and it's a place of either blissful unawareness, if you're a Greek, they call it Elysium, or it's called Abraham's bosom. which you might think of as paradise. And by the way, paradise, that's garden language, isn't it? And it's right there in Hades. This is a very strange thing. The idea of descending into hell has a second component to it, and it relates to the prophecies in Psalm 68 and the teachings of Ephesians 4, where Jesus died. It says he went to the place to proclaim his victory over the underworld keepers of that place, and then to release a host of captives in his train, thereby emptying paradise in Hades and filling paradise in heaven. You see, until Jesus paid the penalty for sin, even David and Abraham went to Hades. But they went to Abraham's bosom. But it was still hell. And it was still a place of judgment for sinners. But here's how I'm thinking about this. It seems to me that in God's grace, he did not have his Old Testament saints punished in hellfire. That's what we read about in that story of Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, isn't it? This is because he knew what he would come to do when he came to earth as one of us. So I think he designed the place to accommodate them too even before Christ died. So the descent idea is really quite an important part of this where question of Jesus. Now there's a last part, because after Jesus did this, he came back to his human body in a resurrection. And in this way, for 40 days, he remained on earth in a glorified body. As Luke says, presenting himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God. But then, In an instant Jesus left and where he went we've already discussed. He ascended back into heaven and it's from this place that he will return to judge the living and the dead. Now this judgment needs to be seen also as a where question. In the Old Testament Jesus is the king only of Israel. That was the where for most of its pages. The where is Israel. But in the New Testament, because of his work, Jesus inherits all the nations. That's the new where-ness. He's now the king of all, and every knee will bow at the Lord of all the earth. Because he earned this as the second Adam, and he has every right to it as God. This where question then becomes vitally important because the stories of God in our faith are not some mythical, ahistoric, timeless principles or morals. It is historical manifestations with real people down here on this earth in various places and times. This is what we believe and this is what all our creeds confess and without them we are undone. For real people commit real sins and real parents committed the first sin in a real place at a real time on this planet. Those sins all needed to be atoned for here in space and time. And that's what has happened in Jesus coming here. And trusting it is true is the only way you will have eternal life. It's tempting to think that the where question concludes at Jesus' ascension, with merely a long gap between it and the second coming. But I think this is a huge theological mistake, and it's a practical mistake that you can make here. So let me tell you why in three concluding thoughts. First, as someone has said, God's special presence is closely related to his word. God is especially present where he causes his word to dwell. We've seen this in the manifestation of the second person who is the Word of God. But the Word of God can be understood in another way. That is what we're going to do right now. In a lengthy section of Romans, the Apostle defends his preaching ministry. Listen to the where of this little section of Romans 10. But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart, who will ascend to heaven? That is to bring Christ down. Or who will descend into the abyss? That is to bring Christ up from the dead. So do you hear the where there? The ascending and descending from heaven to the abyss. You don't need to do that, Paul says. You don't need to try to lift yourself up to heaven through spiritual or mystical ladders of speculation or merit or out-of-body experiences. Jesus has already ascended, even as he has already descended to the earth and below that for your sins. Let's continue reading and listen to the where. But what does it say? The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith that we preach. So it's a where. Where is the word? The word is in the proclamation of the gospel. He is there in the proclaimer's mouths and is there in the believer's heart. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved, it says. The word is found throughout the Bible from the first chapter to the last. Okay, this is another where thing. Have you ever thought of these two verses as a where question? You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life and it's they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. Or beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scripture the things concerning himself. We usually think that that's the who question, it's about Jesus. But it's where, where is Jesus to be found? He's found everywhere in the word, everywhere. Let's finish this part of the where with something utterly mind-blowing to me, and this leads to the special presence of Christ right now. So we alluded to it earlier in more than one way. Someone else writes, God's special presence is the place of worship. That knowledge ought to dictate what happens in that special place. See, when God's people come together like we're doing right now, they become the temple of Christ on earth because they are attached to their head in heaven as his body on the earth. He is the temple, as he says in John 2, and so we become his temple. And when we gather together, his special presence is among us right now. This is true especially through word and sacrament that we began with, because these are the things that give us the gospel that saves us and sanctifies us. This is why most of the church has believed since the beginning that God's special presence is somehow in or near or with the elements of bread and wine and water, even if we disagreed on exactly how that is. This is why our Protestant fathers put so much emphasis on the proclamation of the word and on singing the word and on praying the word corporately. It's because this is the special presence of God now in Christ. And that leads to the other half of the temple equation of the body because it's not merely the corporate body but the individual body that is God's temple. You see, all this happens because of the work of the Holy Spirit, whom you must learn to think of as Christ's Spirit. Paul calls Him the Spirit of Christ, and Peter calls Him the Spirit of Christ. And so if He's Christ's Spirit, then where the Spirit of Christ is, that's where Christ Himself is, through the Spirit. As someone else explains, the fact that God's special presence The fact of God's special presence in the just, the sending, the bestowal of God the Holy Spirit, his indwelling in the soul. The where now is that the Holy Spirit indwells his people and therefore Christ indwells his people. He is here now in us. And this means that the where question directly impacts how you are to live. Paul puts just one application this way. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits outside his body. But the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own. You were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. That's because of the where of God in Christ right now. John Frame writes, God's special presence with the righteous is a blessing that entails his special providences in their earthly lives and his gift of eternal life. And therefore, to the righteous, God is an ever-present help in trouble. The only way human beings can be righteous, of course, is through the grace of Jesus Christ. Those who are in Christ can never be separated from God's love because God is especially present in his tabernacle. His special presence moves with the tabernacle. God is especially present with Moses on the mountain. God's special presence is closely related to his word. God is especially present where he causes his word to dwell. The impending giving of the law makes the ground on which Moses stands holy. God's special presence coincides with his special speaking. And once this occurs, the location takes on a permanent significance because though he is present everywhere, he does not cause his word to dwell just everywhere. Thus the appropriateness of the urgent admonishment to seek him while he may be found. Thus Jesus' instruction to the newly healed man to go to the temple and show himself to the priest to offer the gift that Moses commanded for a proof to them. I want you to understand the movement of the special presence from heaven to earth, to being in the midst of Israel, to being with his people in the incarnation, and now actually indwelling his people like he indwelt all those temples before. What a great encouragement the where question should be to your soul. What a blessing the where question, this often neglected question, this question that when you think about it, takes up more space in the apostles' creed than all the others can be. if you understand it and if you cherish it. Let's pray. Our Father, we have talked about how you and your Son and your Spirit are omnipresent today, and where can I go and flee from your presence and your Spirit? And yet, we've talked about the special presence of especially Christ in all the manifestations that he's given to us in your word. We've talked about him in the Old Testament in the angel and the New Testament in the incarnation. The places that he went while he was alive on the earth, when he descended, when he ascended, the place where he is now and the place where he is especially in his people when they gather together and when they believe in Christ and become his temple. I would pray that you would help this where question to be something that you would impress upon our minds, maybe even the next time we read the creed, to think about where Jesus has been, where he is today. And I would pray, Lord, that you would help this not just be an academic exercise, but as Paul taught us, because of the where of Christ and his spirit, it ought to have profound impact on the way that we live our lives, the things that we do and say every moment of the day. Because it's not just your special presence that goes with us when we're, or that is with us when we gather together, but your special presence goes with us wherever we are as Christians. And we need to take that more seriously, I think, than we do. But I'm thankful, Lord, that you do these things and that you show your grace through your special presence. And I pray for anyone here who doesn't know that special presence, that when the judgment day comes and Christ is especially present to judge, that you might have pity on them now and open their hearts to receive the truth of Jesus so that he might show them grace on that day. Please hear my prayer in Jesus' name, amen.