Let me invite you to turn in the Scriptures to 1 John 2, verse 28. This is found on page 1400 in the Pew Bible in front of you. 1 John 2, 28. We'll go as far as chapter three, verse three. Pay attention, this is the word of God. And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him. Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called children of God. Therefore, the world does not know us because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be. But we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as he is pure. So far from the word of God. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever. Amen. We had the privilege of considering this passage this morning. That we are the children of God because as a Father, God has lavished His love upon us. And as a Savior, Jesus has expressed the Father's love through His grace given to us by His Spirit. We heard of the adopting love of the Father that makes us His children and brings us into His household. And we also heard of the glorious appearance of the Son that radiantly transforms us, body and soul, to be made like Him. Tonight, we want to further investigate this passage, this time to behold not only the glorification that we shall experience when Christ returns, but also how it is that God keeps or preserves us unto that glorious end. As Paul says in Philippians 1.6, for I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. John here, along with many other writers of scripture, hold forth an expectation that as children of God and fellow heirs with Christ, we will only enter Christ's glory through a valley of trial and suffering. An eternal crown is received only after we bear our cross and suffer with and in Christ. And to be clear, that crown is not because of our suffering, but rather it is because of Christ making a path for us, and therefore we share that path with him. It is for our good. It is for God's glory. Paul also says in Romans 8, 17, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. And yet Paul will go on to say in chapter 8, verse 18 of Romans, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us. And you have to appreciate Paul is not minimizing or dismissing the suffering of the Christian when he says that the present sufferings cannot be compared to the glory that shall be revealed in us. Rather, the Bible, in a very honest and helpful way, wants us to rightly place the Christian's suffering within a greater context of eternity, within a greater context of the Christian's glory. Amid the bitterness of trial and tribulation, we have not only a good and wise and powerful God, but a loving and merciful Father in heaven who never ceases to promote and accomplish our salvation. And who also promises that he will pull us out of our temporary suffering. unto His glorious presence and eternal fellowship. There is a glory that is to be revealed in us, and this causes our present troubles to fade away, to one day be forgotten. Peter, another writer of scripture, says in 1 Peter 5, after you've suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. What a glorious promise. Well, tonight we want to then consider three points as we move through our text, which will be verses two and three this evening. We wanna consider first that God preserves his children. Secondly, that God perfects his children. And thirdly, that God purifies his children. And these are three distinct points. And so first we come to God preserving his children, God preserving his children. Look again at verse two. Beloved, now we are children of God. And it has not yet been revealed what we shall be. It's fascinating, the tension in this one verse. The tension of our present identity and experience, as well as an expectation of a fullness of the very same experience and identity. We are children of God and yet we shall become children of God. What could he possibly mean by this? We're going to get into that this evening. But here's what I want you to think about first before we get to this idea of moving from one state of the glory of the children of God to another state of glory. I want you to think about the fact that he highlights that we are now children of God. And you know experientially, you do not always feel like children of God. You know by your own reality that there are times when you really question, when you really doubt, when you wonder. Am I a child of God? And here, John holds forth for us this great encouragement that you are a child of God, even now, and yet there's going to be a day when Christ is revealed, that you're going to experience this in its fullness. What John wants us to be encouraged by, and if you read his first letter, you find he's constantly feeding us with assurances, promises, confidence in our God, our triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit. And so when he says, now we are children of God, he really is encouraging us that there is a perseverance that takes place in the life of the Christian. that we will be carried through, that even if subjectively we don't always feel like the children of God, objectively we are and we shall be carried through to that time when we will experience a transformation. And that's what I want to consider first. When John says, beloved, now we are children of God. He's saying not just that we're called children of God there in verse one, but we are children of God. The Father's love has changed us into his children. And in Christ, we received a status change from children of wrath to children of God, from unlovely to beloved. And God maintains this persevering love until the end of his plan and purpose. You can think of Jesus' own teaching on the idea of persevering and enduring unto the end. Truly, truly I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death, has escaped death into life. or all that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out. This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me, I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day." Or maybe this passage in John 10, which actually provides for us a double confidence when he says, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give eternal life to them and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand. I and the Father are one. And I say this is a double confidence because we have here this idea, and you can see it, children, in your mind's eye, being held in the hand of Christ and then being held in the hand of the Father, there is a double holding. How can we be let go? How can we be lost when we have two holding on to us? This is the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. And why is it that we find ourselves challenged by the idea that maybe I'm not a child of God, maybe this is not about me? There's a host of reasons. There's a host of reasons. I just wanna identify one, because it happens to be the most common reason. Maybe I'll say two. The first one I would say is this. Often people wonder if they're children of God because they find themselves suffering, in the midst of hard suffering. And we talked about that this morning, that actually that suffering is the hammer and the chisel of God that is intended to help mold and form us to make us more like Christ. But another reason why we often struggle in believing that we are children of God is because we find ourselves at times slipping into casual, lazy, spiritually lethargic, or consumeristic Christianity. All of us. The servant of the Word of God up here preaching the Word finds the very same experience that you do. And this is not what our Christian walk is to look like. It is not what we are to experience. And the Bible would discourage us from ever presuming upon the grace of God. Shall we sin that grace may abound? God forbid. Rather, when we find ourselves in those moments, in order to bring our hearts to a place of repentance, in order to, as it were, apply the truth of God to break the hardness of our heart. And that is a work that we are to seek to do. We are to remember that it is God who keeps us. God keeps you by his preserving power through the means by which he partners with you. Therefore, we are to cast off all sin. And as children of God, we are to run to our Father in Christ. Listen to this pastor who speaks of God's keeping you. You're not kept because you have regular personal worship, but your Savior employs that regular habit to keep you. You are not kept because you are faithful and participating in the gathering of your church for public worship and teaching, but God uses that commitment to keep you. You are not kept because you commit yourself every day to live inside of the boundaries of God's commands, but God uses that discipline to keep you. You are not kept because you abandon your kingdom and give yourself to the work of God's kingdom, but God employs that surrender to keep you. God does the extraordinary work of keeping us until the end through the ordinary means of the regular habits of the Christian life. You see, this is where, again, we do this teeter-totter. We either have a very high view of ourselves and think that we're doing wonderfully, or we have And the same kind of arrogance, a very self-loathing view of ourselves because of how terrible we're doing. And in both of these ways, our eyes are off of our Father in heaven. What does Paul say? Philippians 2.12, so then my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. There is a working out of your salvation with fear and trembling. There is a consideration. God says I'm his child. What does that look like in my life? God says that I am united to Christ. What does that look like in my life? And if I find myself lacking, I am not then to just walk away discouraged. That's the very area that God wants me to give my attention and focus to lay it before the feet of Christ and to be dealt with. One Puritan says, did Christ finish His work for us? Then there can be no doubt, but He will also finish His work in us. Why are you saved? Why have you been made a child of God? Why has God forgiven you of your sins? It is not merely to to feel comfortable about life. It is not merely to have this sense of assurance that I was in trouble and now I'm not. There's something greater in all of this. It is that we would be brought into communion with God, that we would have a relationship with God. That is the end of our salvation. And He perseveres us, relationally, moment by moment, day by day, season by season, by His Word and Spirit. I'm going to keep moving. I have so much more to say about this, but I really want to move into the next point, which is this, that God perfects His children. We ought to be encouraged that God preserves his children. Now you are the children of God. Even when you don't subjectively feel that. But God wants you to feel that. He wants you to experience that. And so he gives to us these wonderful doctrines concerning his perseverance in our lives, the endurance that he holds onto us in our lives, and he will carry us to the end. And what end is He carrying us to? Well, let's look again at verse two, and this is our second point. God perfects His children. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be. But we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Though we are now, presently, in God's family, and we resemble the family characteristics, Yet we are going to be, yet what we are going to be has not yet been, John says, revealed. It has not yet appeared what we shall be. It is not yet manifested in this life. In fact, as we said this morning, it can hardly be comprehended. One theologian says, if our present privileges as God's adopted children are so great that the world cannot grasp them, our future prospects are so glorious that even we cannot fully grasp them. And so what does God do? He gives to us faith. And he tells us in wonderful imagery and metaphor and analogy what we shall be like. John here says it hasn't been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him. And here John is speaking of glorification. Glorification. Let me define the doctrine of glorification for you. Glorification is the final event in the order of salvation, in which believers receive their complete and final redemption, being made perfect in righteousness. They are fully freed from sin and enjoy unhindered communion with God. When I say When I speak of the doctrine of glorification, I'm curious if you can come up with scriptures that highlight such a doctrine. Just for sake of time, I didn't read 2 Corinthians 4 and 5. And really, you could start back at three. And I would commend those passages to you. But where I wanna start this evening as we just think about the doctrine of glorification in the scriptures is actually the Old Testament, not the New. I wanna think about this idea of future glory. And we can go all the way back to the garden. All the way back before the fall. where we see this future glory with God pictured in this covenant of works or covenant of life with Adam. You remember there were two trees in the midst of the garden and one of them was called the tree of life. And that tree of life was withheld from Adam once he fell. He was not allowed to eat of it. And the scripture tells us why. God says, because man has become like us, knowing good and evil, and if he eats from this, he shall remain. He shall remain in a state of fallenness. And so we see the tree of life symbolizing a future unchangeable fullness of life and glory and joy and eternal communion with God through Adam's obedience. I would say just simply like this, if Adam were to obey God personally, perpetually, perfectly, the way that he was called to, there would be a point in which God would say, well done, good and faithful servant. Now you and all of your posterity may enter into a new state, a greater state, a glorious state of eternal life. How do I know that? Because the New Testament tells me every time I read of the tree of life, it's this thing that is given to us in Christ now, the second Adam. And it is a an inability to be taken out of a sinless and fully free and fully experienced communion with God. There's more. This future glory was imagined or imaged in the Old Testament in the ascensions of certain figures, like certain men, like Enoch and Elijah. They were carried, body and soul, into heaven, and they inhabited another realm, a spiritual world, not only as living souls, but they dwelled in heaven, body and soul, which means, I mean, how could they reside in the glorious presence of God unless they were somehow transfigured, unless God changed them, body and soul, unless He glorified them? Isn't it fascinating that right there in the first 10 generations of humanity, of God's people, he is teaching them glorification. This future glory was also predicted in the Old Testament through various prophets. In Psalm 17, this morning we read, as for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness. I will be satisfied with your likeness when I awake. Or the prophet Isaiah, that by the way is the prophet David. The prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 26, your dead will live, their corpses will rise. You who lie in the dust awake and shout for joy, for your due is as the due of the dawn and the earth will give birth to the departed spirits. This idea of coming into a resurrected state. Daniel chapter 12, many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake. And then interestingly, Daniel distinguishes between the ones who go into everlasting life and the others who go to disgrace and everlasting contempt. A resurrection of both the just and the unjust, the believer and the unbeliever. So we have the prophetic witness. And then this future glory as understood is tied to God's purpose and plan for our redemption, beginning with His eternal love. In Paul's letter to the Romans, chapter eight, he speaks of this order of salvation. Those whom he foreknew or foreloved, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. all of them in the past tense. We're not glorified yet. And yet all of them in the past tense to emphasize the certainty of God's decree. Fifthly, this future glory of God's children is most clearly manifested in the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. Philippians 3, 20, our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself. Or Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2, it was for this He called you through our gospel, that you might gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. We love those passages. Why were we saved? You were saved for the glory of God. You were saved for communion with God. You were saved to be heirs with Christ. And here you were called through our gospel to gain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's hard to describe this glorification of body and soul. Our only observation is by faith in the way that God describes this glory in the Scriptures. And so John is very honest here. He says, it has not appeared as yet what we will be. It has not yet been revealed. What it means for us to be children of God. That means that being a child of God in heaven will actually be of greater experience than this. Christian, your life is mixed. There are good days and there are bad days, okay? But your best day, your best day in this life as a child of God will not be like any day in heaven. Your best day here will pale in comparison to every or any day in eternity. Paul speaks of this in 1 Corinthians 15, which we heard read this morning. And so also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body. It is raised an imperishable body. It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. There's a natural body, there's also a spiritual body. And John confidently declares the very same things, but with much fewer words. We shall be like him. We shall be like him. And you think about what is being described there by Paul. We will have an imperishable body. No more disease, no more disability, no more death, for the glorified cannot die anymore, Luke 20, 36. And by his scourging, we are healed. All tears shall be wiped from our eyes. And when this mortal will have put on immortality, then death will be swallowed up in victory. Imperishable glory. Or how about what he says here, a glorious body, a glorious body. Presently, we have the privilege of reflecting Jesus Christ in the way that we live our lives, the way that we walk in this life, the things that we say. We presently reflect the glory of Christ. Children, I like to think of it like this. and I'm not the first one to come up with this, it's something that was taught to me, but you go outside at night and you see the moon, and the moon has its own light, but it's not a light that comes from within itself, it is reflecting the light of the sun. And in the same way, we are moons, reflecting the glory of Christ, the light of Christ. We bear the image of God. And yet the way that we reflect the glory of Christ shall pale in comparison with the way that we shall reflect the glory of Christ in heaven. At best, in this life, we are full moons, but in heaven we shall be suns. And I mean S-U-N, sons. We shall be stars in heaven, still reflecting the radiant glory of Jesus Christ. This is what Daniel says. He says that those who are in heaven shall shine brightly like the brightness of the expanse of heaven, like the stars forever and ever. The difference is, is that our inner humanity shall be completely set free from any presence of sin. Therefore our outer humanity shall shine. We shall partake of the divine nature. We will share in the likeness of Christ's glorified humanity. So we'll have imperishable glory. We'll have a glorious body. We'll have a powerful body. We shall be raised through God's power and made complete in holiness. And we will join Christ in the clouds when he returns. Enabled to ascend and descend, whatever that means. But this power will originate internally because of our transformation. Maybe one of my favorites is what's said next, a spiritual body. A spiritual body. We will be able to inhabit the heaven of heavens. We will be able to gaze into the face of God. We will not need food or sleep or cleansing as we presently do. Will we even need the ordinances of the Word and sacraments? For we shall stand in the midst of the Word of God and He shall be all in all. In meditating on the idea of a spiritual body, that Puritan Richard Sibbes highlights another feature. He says, whereas in this life we find ourselves greatly influenced by our bodily needs and desires, so in heaven we shall be driven by our spiritual needs and desires. We shall be, as he says, obedient and attentive to the very guidance of the sanctified and glorious soul. You understand, I struggle here in this life to be spiritual, to be spiritually minded, to prioritize my spirituality, to prioritize my communion with God. But in heaven, my spirituality will be the dominant part of me. I will have a spiritual body. There will be no struggle. There will be no burden to worship and commune with God. In this passage about our raised and glorified body in Christ, Paul concludes that we are to live now in light of sin's final defeat. And that's what John pushes us to as well. And this third point, it's a point of application. It's very brief. Thirdly, God purifies his children. Look at verse three. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as he is pure. I just want to highlight two ways in which our future glorification in Christ purifies us now. Purifies us now. First, God purifies us through hope-filled meditation. God purifies us through hope-filled meditation. When we think about our existence in glory in heaven, when we fill our thoughts and our hopes with heavenly glory, with the glorious presence of Christ, What happens is we become, we get drawn out of this world. We get pulled into heaven now. In desiring and expecting such transformation, this transformation grows within me. In anticipation and expectation and hope, I actually long more for that glorious eternal home, and I become just a little bit less entangled with this world. We walk in the light, we commune with God, we want the things of God, and we experience purification. One theologian says this, the believer lives in the hope of becoming conformed to Jesus Christ, and the more they contemplate this truth, the more they purify themselves of sin. They seek to cleanse themselves from sin that contaminates body and soul. Constantly they strive for holiness and reverence to God. And so John is telling us, meditate on the glories of heaven and be purified. Secondly, God purifies us through our making use of the means that He gives to us to commune with Him and to grow deeper in our relationship to Him. In reflecting on our separation from sin and idols in Christ, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 7, therefore having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. We are to participate in God's work of sanctification. However, the burden of our sanctification does not rest on our shoulders, but on the infallible, the infinitely capable shoulders of our Savior. I quoted Philippians 2.12 earlier, let's go back to that. So then my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. See, we are to obey and run after everything that is ours in Christ. And yet, our purification does not rest on our obedience, but on the powerful, ever-present, always active, saving grace of God in Christ by His Word and Spirit. And so how do we get our meditations filled with hope? How do we get more heaven in our minds? We gotta use the Word and prayer. You're not gonna get it from watching movies. that have analogies to Jesus and redemption. You need the Bible to actually interpret those things in that way. You need to go to the source, to the fountain, to God who speaks in and by His word. The theologian John Murray says, the truth is that our working is grounded in God's working. Our working receives its urge, strength, incentive, and cause from God's working in us. It is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. If you find yourself meditating and thinking more about heaven, know that it is God's persevering hand in you, which is where we started. drawing you to Himself. Psalm 63 verse 8, I cling to You, O God, and You uphold me by Your right hand. We're only able to cling to God because He's holding us so close to Him. So, God purifies His children. We are purified by our meditation on the glories of heaven. God is guarding His children. He maintains and sustains us so that we persevere as His children. He will glorify His children. He will change us into the glorious humanity of the Son. We will reflect Him. And He is growing His children. He is bringing our double-hearted hearts into a single-heartedness with Him. Let us fill our hope then and our joy and our assurance through meditation of heaven, our meditations of Christ, our meditations of future glory with him. Salvation belongs to the Lord and God will bring us all the way to the house of the Lord forever. Let us look to him, amen. Let us pray. Our Lord God, we thank you for the truth of perseverance and the truth of glorification. We don't know. It has not yet been revealed what we shall be like, but we know that we shall be like our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, Lord, help us then to fix our gaze upon Him, to have our mind opened up to thoughts of heaven, thoughts of the glorious presence of God in the face of Jesus Christ, thoughts of sinlessness and freedom to worship you. Oh Lord, we pray that you would draw us closer to you and that you would do that purifying work in us through these glorious and heavenly thoughts, we pray, until we would enter into the glory of Christ. We ask this in his name, amen.