Who You Are In Christ -The Inheritance of the Saints

All right, as I mentioned just a moment ago, we're going to be covering something that's very similar to last week's lesson in sound, at least, but the topic is slightly different. Last week, Kurt taught about us being Christ's inheritance. As believers, we are Christ's inheritance. This week, we're going to be talking about the inheritance of the saints. As believers in Jesus Christ, we're saints, and the scriptures speak of an inheritance that we have. Now, the interesting thing about this inheritance is... Well, I'll have to wait. I don't want to get ahead of myself. The interesting thing about the inheritance, though, compared to last week, is We are an inheritance, and yet then we will also receive an inheritance because of Christ. Because of what Christ did on the cross, we're an inheritance to Him. Because of what Christ did on the cross and our belief, we are an inheritance because of Him. So are we going to get an inheritance because of Him?

Let's just ask generally, see if anyone has any familiarity with what the inheritance of the saints is. Does anybody know what the inheritance of the saints is? It's kind of a trick question, but anyone have familiarity in studying the inheritance of the saints? If you were in the main service when my dad taught through Ephesians or one of the first Peter times that's been through, you would have been exposed to it. A question to think about as we go through this is also how finite is the inheritance of the saints? Is the inheritance of the saints finite and limited?

If God is going to be doing the giving, then the inheritance is not going to be, you know, here's your one token, you know, don't spend it all in one place. The next question I want to ask, just to kind of get your brain stimulated, is what is the nature of the inheritance in contrast to earthly inheritance? In earthly inheritance, somebody describe for me an earthly inheritance in your own experience.

If you had to, go ahead, Roger. My mother went to be the Lord. She left us I had the house to share with my sister, so that was an inheritance we received from my mother. Alright, so you got a house as an inheritance, but your mother had to go be with the Lord for that to happen. Exactly. You didn't just show up and say, we want the house now. She was loving the house. Yeah. I didn't get anything. You didn't get anything, alright. Your inheritance was not as robust as Roger's.

The earthly inheritance is something that we're very used to and we're very exposed to on a regular basis, but a heavenly inheritance is something that we're going to see here is quite a contrast. Before we jump into the New Testament text, let's take a look at an Old Testament context. This is slightly different than what Kurt taught on last week. Actually, we're going to open to the Old Testament, or New Testament, to talk about the Old Testament.

If you'll open up to Hebrews 11.8, please, if you've got your Bibles. Does everybody have a Bible? If you need a Bible, there's some on the back. I can grab you one. Dick, do you need a Bible? Would that be convenient? Oh man. That's impressive.

So Hebrews 11.8. Would somebody mind reading that out loud for the class? By faith Abraham was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going. Alright. Now this is in a whole stretch talking about faith which we don't want to under under play, but we're going to talk about the inheritance in this verse here.

What is the inheritance that Abraham was promised? If you've been in the main service, we've been going through Genesis, so hopefully you have a little bit of a heads up on that. What are the three things that were promised to Abraham? Land. seed and blessing. Remember those three things, the land, the seed, and the blessing for the Abrahamic Covenant. What's funny here is that the author of Hebrews uses the word inheritance for this. It's not in Genesis. You don't find the word inheritance in Genesis to describe what Abraham was expecting.

What you do find is another word that we're more familiar with and that would be promise. The Lord promised these things. When we think of Canaan and Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt, they were going to the promised land. So we have the word promise that we're used to using here. Now this brings up an important distinction for us.

An inheritance for us always involves somebody going to be with the Lord or dying, depending on how that goes. This is an inheritance for Abraham that God promised and God wasn't going to die so that Abraham could have the land. You know, God's like, well, I know I'm eternal, but I guess I'm not going to be eternal because I've got to give Abraham this land. God made the promise, and the promise was given to Abraham, and that was it. So when we look at the concept of the inheritance of the saints in the New Testament here, we're going to find that same pattern that we've been promised an inheritance. God's not going to die so that we can have that inheritance. We're going to die, and then we will receive the inheritance because it's heavenly.

Let's take a look at the first passage, 1 Peter 1 verses 3 through 5. How many of you have read through Peter very many times, at least once or twice, if not many, many times? My book of Peter is almost entirely underlined. Whatever the use of the underlining was at the point I underlined it, I should have taken more notes because it's just lined. It stopped being useful to have it be lined. But it's a rich, rich book.

Peter, when he starts out this letter, he's going to greet them and he's going to give them immediately an encouragement about who they are in Christ. So let's start in 1 Peter 3-5 and he's going to mention early off this inheritance. He says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." God is merciful and he brings us salvation. Upon salvation Suddenly a whole slew of things becomes true of us as believers. That's the point of this whole series But Peter brings out and he emphasizes this inheritance God he says who according to God's great mercy now can anybody think of another Bible passage where because of God's mercy something happens and Just pick one, there's a lot, so I don't care. I have one that comes to mind every time I think about because of God's mercy.

Romans 12.1, he says, because of the mercies of the Lord, our whole lives are to be offered as a living sacrifice. We think of grace. Salvation is by grace, but it's because of God's mercy that the grace was extended to us. So God's great mercy has caused us to be born again.

Now, we've already looked at the topic of being born again. That was actually one of the lessons that I got to teach. That means that we've been created as a new type in Christ. We're not of the Adam type anymore. We're of the Christ type as believers. And because of that, we've been given a living hope through the resurrection.

If I say living hope, Does that have a practical day-to-day impact on your life? Does it impact the way you live your life? If I say you've got a living hope, do you identify with the term living hope? For myself, it's very easy to be distracted by what's in front of me right now and not be thinking about what's going to be happening in a hundred years or a thousand years or an infinite number of years as I spend eternity with Christ.

We have a living hope. Now here's the thing, the hope is for the eternal thing, but because of the resurrection, Christ is living. Christ is not dead. He's there. But Peter continues on. He says we have this to obtain an inheritance. Now here is one of the funny things.

We're brought to this word inheritance again, and I've described this inheritance of the saints vaguely and asked you about it to see if anybody had any exposure to it. He doesn't say what the inheritance is. We're going to take a look at a few other passages and actually this is a tough lesson to teach because nowhere in the New Testament does it describe a complete list of this is the inheritance. And instead, we're going to get a description in First Peter here, but it's not the description that is based on a checklist or a list of complete things that come with this. Instead, we're going to see that it's good morning. We're going to see that it's robust and without a handouts. Oh, I mean, you don't have to have one. I bet you were having a good pattern here last week. What? Oh. I missed it. Broken computers.

Now, this was this was the result of a number of things. I didn't have any flying mooses to pitch to, you know, put on a PowerPoint presentation. For those of you who are new this morning in the main service, many times there will be a flying moose across the screen as some strange reference to a Greek word. But we've been made a new type and we've been brought to obtain an inheritance and this inheritance is not based on a task or a to-do list or a list of things or quantities in scripture. Instead it's described as something that we're going to find out about later. But let's go through this and take a look.

This inheritance is imperishable. Roger talked about getting a house. His inheritance that he had to split with your sister, I believe, was a house. Now, I live in a house that is perishable, I can tell you, because I have to repair it. There's always something that needs a little bit of tweaking or adjusting or fixing.

And our inheritance, through Christ, is imperishable, which would be a great benefit compared to the things that I've been exposed to. My body, I went hiking yesterday, we were camping, and my left knee got inflamed and really irritated, which was inconvenient because I was holding my two-year-old down for a mile. it's perishing. I'm 30 and I'm already experiencing this wearing out. But our inheritance in heaven, as the way of things are in heavenly sense, is eternal and it doesn't perish. The next thing here says it's undefiled. Our inheritance that we will get will be undefiled.

Bringing up houses again, It can be vandalized. A fire can strike. Or if you ever talk to Sue and Wayne, ask them about lightning striking their house. They've had it strike their house twice and cause lots of damage. If they invite you over for dinner, sit on the far side of the table. No, I'm just kidding. We've been over at their house for multiple meals and we haven't been struck by lightning yet. But it's undefiled and it will not fade away.

So this inheritance that we're going to have because of the work of Christ on the cross is going to be preserved. But let's ask something... Well, let's read the next stanza here, or segment of the verse here. It's reserved in heaven for you who are protected by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. What is unique about this is we have an awesome, imperishable, not fading away, preserved inheritance. But what good would that be if we could lose our salvation?

What would the use of that be? Hey, look, you have this to look forward to, maybe. It's kind of like the bait and switch you see on the advertisements. We'll get this, and then you go in and it's like, oh, that's not a good deal at all. I've got to sell my first child and do all this other stuff. so that I can get your deal.

In this case, Peter emphasizes that it's reserved in heaven for you who are protected by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. You have a secured salvation so that you can receive your secured inheritance. You don't have one without the other. There's not risk involved.

Going back to the Old Testament, to Abraham again, how did Abraham get the fulfillment of the promise. What did he have to do to receive the land, the seed, and the blessing? He simply believed. In that passage we looked at in Hebrews 11.8, he says it was by faith that those things took place. And he went, and his faith was credited to him as a down payment, right? That's not a small percentage. It was righteousness. His righteousness was in his faith, not in his works.

I mean, we could go back and read about Abraham and when he passed off his sister, or Abraham, Abraham passed off Sarah as his sister so he wouldn't get killed twice. His son did it once. Not a great pattern. Fortunately, Jacob didn't do that. He did other things. But his faith was credited to him as righteousness, not his works. He didn't have all the perfect works, and yet the righteousness was credited to him. For us as believers, salvation is secure so that we can have this inheritance, and it's not based on our works.

On an earthly level, if I really blew it, if I could think of some pretty nasty things that I could do in my life that would be sinful, I can imagine my parents cutting me off of their will. While Randy's got life sentence in prison, times seven for being an idiot, whatever it is, We might as well hand his inheritance off to other people because he's not going to be out for it. So my parents could disinherit me. It's not something that we face with a heavenly inheritance. Any thoughts or questions on 1 Peter 3-5?

I think something else to bring out there is that imperishable and undefiled are in the perfect tense. Indicating that you know, what you're saying, indicating that, you know, it's stored away, it's in safekeeping for you, and there's nothing that you can do to lose it. Yeah. That is an important linguistic detail. Yeah, the perfect tense is something that we don't deal with a lot in our world, unless it's marketing.

You'll be really happy if you buy this car until next year when we release the next one. So Randy, are you getting your new iPhone upgrade? Oh, I'm not even going to that. We won't discuss the iPhone. Although, never mind. I saw a video of these street preachers that actually were standing, people were standing in line to buy the iPhone, and these street preachers were out there harassing and haranguing them. Instead of sharing the gospel, they were being super legal. But we're going to talk about our inheritance, which is going to contain much better than cell phone connectivity.

Steve? Just a chronological question. Sure. So when it's saying revealed in the last time, somebody passes off the earth now and with the Lord, what is the connection with revealed in the last time as far as that? The way I've understood this, you know, one of the most interesting theological discussions I've had with various theologians was the issue of time-space continuum and how God is not bound by time and space, but we are on the earth. When we die, we go to be with him. what happens as far as do their souls go to be with the Lord and then they just get to hang out in what some have termed soul sleep until the rapture or they get to fast forward or whatever I'm not sure but when someone dies no matter what happens chronologically here in the sense of you know whether they're in soul sleep or God fast forwards them or they get to bypass how many ever minutes or years it is till the rapture they're with the Lord and then the rapture comes and they get to join him in their new bodies. Does that answer your question?

I mean, it's kind of hard to answer because it's somewhat ambiguous in the scriptures, unless Roger has... Well, I was just saying, actually, what kind of got me, if you think about Many concepts in scripture, there's a past tense, a present tense, and a future tense.

If you think about it, right now we're in the present tense of salvation. We're being saved from the power of sin. Well, this is like saying, hey, salvation is ready to be revealed. That's the future tense, where we're saved from the presence of sin. So if you put it in the past, present, put it in those kind of buckets, it helps me to understand that better.

Sure. Does that answer your question or is that, okay, I want to make sure, because I understood the question slightly different than Roger, but as long as one of us answered your question, that's what I want to have happen. Any other thoughts or questions? I don't want to race ahead here. All right.

The next one here I've got so I've selectively edited Ephesians 1 11 through 13 B and 14 Mostly because Paul covers a lot of material in those things, but but but I've got in your handout the edited version because it stays on topic. Paul has a really good way of bringing in multiple concepts and tying them together, but since I wanted to focus on the Inheritance of the Saints, I've edited it down in the handout. But let's go there and we'll read it in its full context because, theologically speaking, that's a better choice. But we'll discuss the edited version simply to stay on topic.

So Ephesians 1.11-14 You know, that's really a tough section.

Yeah, starting in verse 1 all the way through the first chapter is one sentence in the Greek. So it's like, wow, Paul. Actually, as just a side note to that, I was listening to Chester McCauley's teachings online, and he brought out an interesting thing that the Greek structure for the language, because they don't tend to speak in sentences the way that we do, is they build on something.

They'll make a statement and then Logically, here's the next thing from here. And so if you read Ephesians and look at that, Paul definitely has this logical buildup. Well, because of this, we have this. And because of that, we have this. And so there is one long sentence because he's building on one logical development. But it is one long sentence. So I'll go ahead and read out loud for the recording.

Also, we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined, according to His purpose, who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you are sealed in Him. with the Holy Spirit of promise, who has given us a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of his glory." So he's continuing on, the sentence for verse 11 starts with also, which of course is an indication of the building up previously. But on top of all of the things that he's listed before, we have also obtained an inheritance.

Again, he doesn't list out the inheritance. God has chosen to reveal that at the time of our salvation in the last days. When we're saved from the sinful body and then given our new body, he's going to reveal what the inheritance is. This is like a really well-written movie where you just don't know and you're Just gotta wait and find out. It's much better than anything anyone has directed on the Earth, though.

We've also, we have obtained this inheritance. Now the interesting thing is we've obtained this inheritance. Here's the interesting thing. We've obtained the rights to this inheritance, but obviously we haven't obtained whatever the mystery of the inheritance is. in a tangible sense, in a knowing sense, because we're waiting for that revelation of what it is on the day that the Lord returns.

He continues on, having also believed. We get the inheritance because we believed and because of that belief he continues on and you'll notice a pattern. This is consistent with 1st Peter. You were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise who has given us a pledge of our inheritance with a view to the redemption of God's own possession to the praise of his glory. So that belief comes with security of salvation again. But this is not just simply a security of salvation. This introduces us, at least in this topic, to an important doctrine that we've been sealed in Him. We have been sealed in Christ. You know, a neat thing there is if you go back to the Peter passage, the statement that heavenly inheritance is guaranteed on his behalf to make sure that that security we have is never forgotten.

We respond by faith. It's kind of like this is an active reminder by his power working through us to seal us and secure us from that truth. The power of God. He's using power to convince us of our security. In Colossians he talks about Christ sustaining the universe. And that's just a material matters and matter and particles sort of description. And then, as you pointed out, on the spiritual level, at the same time, he is sustaining our salvation. In our minds, we have a hard time focusing on more than several things at once, if we can do that at all. As a man, I can only focus on one thing at once.

I'll say that. I've watched Jessica handle many things. But God, in his infinite nature, is able to maintain not only the creation, but each one of us on an intimate, personal level, through his power, he's maintaining ourselves. I think every believer, particularly a future saint, falls into that position. You know, how can I have those thoughts or do these things that I'm going to say?

So this kind of thing. But it's not by our works, yeah. But we're sealed in Him. Now that concept of being sealed in Christ is one of those things that, having grown up in a more charismatic background, the thing that I got exposed to regularly was that the Holy Spirit would come and go. That was their theological premise. So you had to pray that the Holy Spirit would come back. They'd always flip back to Psalm 51, take not the Holy Spirit from me. See? David was worried about it. You should be worried about it too. So, here instead of resting in our position in Christ, I'm sealed in Christ.

Colossians 3.1. Set your mind on things above where Christ is seated in the heavenlies. And then he continues on to say that you're also seated there with him. 1 through 3. Here we see again, we're sealed. And now, going back to the 1 Peter passage, we're sealed so that we can be guaranteed that inheritance.

But we're sealed in Christ But what's interesting is on an earthly level, are you familiar with the concept of a king having a seal? In the Old Testament, if the king sealed something, that was a decree. When Daniel prayed to God and he was thrown into the lion's den, the king sealed the lion's den with his signatory. But God didn't use wax. He didn't use clay. He didn't use a malleable earthly seal.

Who's involved? God's involved with God. It's the Holy Spirit. Sealed with the Holy Spirit. In Him. God the Father sealed us into Christ with the Holy Spirit. We have the Trinity actively involved. And the Holy Spirit is described as with the Holy Spirit of promise. Again, there's that word promise again, tied in with the inheritance. This is a promised inheritance, and God's actively involved with making sure that promise is coming.

And here's an interesting description of the Holy Spirit. Now the Holy Spirit is a counselor. The Holy Spirit comes alongside us and directs us. But this is different. This is the Holy Spirit giving us a pledge of our inheritance. We are indwelled with the Holy Spirit. We are sealed with the Holy Spirit. So the whole issue of is the Holy Spirit going to come or go? No. He's staying. God has assigned him to seal us.

As a pledge for our inheritance, how will we be able to redeem our inheritance? How will we be able to collect that inheritance? We don't. Well, we don't actively. We receive it. But we will receive it or we will be able to be the receivers of inheritance because of the Holy Spirit. Oh, I'm with Him. That's one of ours. I know. Seal with me. So the Holy Spirit is there as a pledge for our inheritance.

Now, if you could... Oh, go ahead, Roger. Randy, that word given, I have a little note that says down payment. Okay. Which I think is kind of cool. Sure. So the fact that we have the Holy Spirit is a down payment. Yeah. Down payment of our inheritance. So it's sort of like getting your inheritance early, right? Well, yes. You know that you're going to get it. It's guaranteed. It's secured there, yeah. But it's given as a pledge, or given as a down payment for our inheritance there. Now, he says down payment, and then with a view, God with the insight and the view looking forward to the time of redemption, of God's own... What word does he use there? God's own... Possession. Do you feel...

I'll go ahead. I think Roger brings up an interesting point because if you think of a parent dying and giving you his or her inheritance, in a sense it's Christ's death that gives us our inheritance, right? Absolutely. So it's kind of like, I mean we think too often what's going to happen later after we're out of here, right? But in a sense that position is already there. We already have our down payment right now. And that's what we're studying right now. What's our down payment 24-7 right now?

And that's a wonderful Yeah, like wait for the check. Economic stimulation check. Actually I wrote about the economic stimulation check on my website and I just got a huge number of people, traffic just going, they search on Google economic stimulation check, bring up my website and they come to my website and I actually didn't have the information they were looking for because it was kind of a satirical article. Randy, not anything to do with economic stimulus, but what... I was going back to that, but I'm sorry, yeah. Go ahead, Kurt.

In the Old Testament, it was common for the father to give a portion of a child's inheritance before he passed. So before dad would die, he'd say, here's a portion of your inheritance. And then after I pass, you're going to get all these things too. So I think that does draw a parallel to what we're talking about. Because everything that we're talking about in this class is somewhat of an inheritance of what we're getting from God. All the characteristics that we're given in this, who we are in Christ, that's you know, I'm going to give you this now, and you're going to get all this stuff later too. So I think that draws an interesting parallel to, you know, it was true of the Old Testament people to give a portion and then some, and then the rest of it later. And I think we receive, you know, ours is similar. Well, then it's based on our position and that never changes, right? Right. Yeah. Well, I was going to say that later, but that's okay. It's good. Everybody listen to Kurt.

He's got, um, no, the, uh, The timing of our inheritance, we've been given this pledge, this seal that is there for the time that it's going to come. When he continues on, it's in view or looking forward to the time of redemption. This seal, this pledge that's been given is going to be redeemed. That's why I described how we're going to collect it. We've got a seal to redeem it, and of course it's the Holy Spirit.

But he doesn't stop there and just say, it's this own thing that God's kind of given us a pass for, he's given us a voucher for. Instead, he describes us as his own possession. Now that's something where, for the human pride in Adam, being somebody's possession, that gets under your skin.

Wait a minute, whoa, whoa, whoa, you don't own me. Especially here in America where we want to be free and have our own stuff and everybody needs to have their own iPhone and everything else. By the way, it doesn't work up in the Rockies. I was camping and it didn't work.

The redemption of God's own possession. Here we are possessed by God. And that's a tremendous sign of God's security of salvation for us. Not only do we have the seal, not only do we have the Holy Spirit sealing us and indwelling us so that we may redeem this salvation and inheritance, but we are God's possession in that. It's really hard to get away from security of salvation as we go through this class, but here's yet another example of this this very core doctrine that we have been made God's own possession.

There's a personal nature to that. It's not like he's got a corral of horses, you know, a corral of saved people. There's intimacy. It's relationship. He's not going to turn away and not worry about those rustlers that are out to steal the horses. We're sealed. We're in Christ. We're there. And we're going to be redeemed. to a heavenly salvation. Then he goes on and he says, to the praise of his glory, to the praise of God's glory. We talked a little bit last week about God's glory and that was a whole discussion kind of broke out from that. But let's ask an important question.

What can you do that doesn't, on one level or another, as a believer, cause God to be praised and give God glory? Is there anything you can do that on some level doesn't cause God to be glorified? I wrestled with this when I used to think that I had to be involved with works, you know, I had to be good enough. I always wanted to glorify God. Well, how was I going to glorify God? I was going to do good things. And so I was always worried about the things I was doing because I wanted to glorify God.

Instead, my salvation, my redemption, by its very nature, the way God made it, brings glory to His name. Now, Paul makes it very clear we shouldn't go out sinning, but even when we sin, God's grace is poured out. And when God's grace is poured out, what happens? He's glorified. This inheritance that we have brings glory to God.

Why? Because the angels look at him and they go, wow, you gave them that? They don't know what it is. But the angels are floored. Wow, look at this inheritance that you've given. And God's glorified. Even with what we know about it, that's mind-boggling as it is. way over the top. The fact that we have salvation, the fact that we have intimacy with our Creator, how can that be? But God is glorified through His graciousness. The mercy that He shows, glorified.

In our own lives, do you have anything in your life that you've ever seen that can produce guaranteed results? I see investment advice from various brokers that want to guarantee results so that I'll put my money in the stock market through them. And they can't guarantee that. Other things. We make promises. We try to do things. And we can't guarantee things like that.

I try to lavish love on my wife, Jessica. Ephesians tells me I need to wash her in the word and die to myself like Christ died for the church, to engage in my relationship with Jessica so that it would grow and be healthy and strong. And it fails to compare to the awesomeness of what God does for that intimacy with us. And then he's glorified beyond that. It's a powerful, powerful relationship.

We just read through, or worked through 11 through 14. I wanted to jump back to 3 to talk about, and you guys, several of you have already brought up the basic principle of this, but let's do it for the sake of emphasizing what the scripture says. Ephesians 1, 3 says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Our inheritance is in part the things that we've gone over in this class, that we've been reconciled and redeemed, and we've been in much more care of God. There's 33 things on the list, and we've been through a substantial number of them. But again, we've been given every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. That harkens to the concept of this unknown inheritance. every spiritual blessing, which ones? All of them, in the heavenly places with Christ.

That's a pretty substantial, broad description of what we have been given, we have obtained right now through salvation. Is that blessing the inheritance? That's a strangely worded question that caused discussion. Is that blessing the inheritance? Every spiritual blessing?

It sounds like a yes or no question, but I really wanted you to help me. Okay. Well, it would seem like it. I mean, you know, if we became everything, I mean, it's not that there'd be a link there. Yeah. It definitely seems to be very well tied in conceptually. It's at least a part of it. It is all-inclusive, is it not? Yeah.

Inheritance includes his life in us, doesn't it? For me to live as Christ in this game. I'm crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. Not I live, but he lives. That's all part of the inheritance, right? The inheritance is our life in Christ, His life in us.

When we think about life in the heavenlies, for the young believer it's sometimes difficult to think about heavenly things and not want to drag in earthly things. I once had a young man ask me if he was going to be able to teach Jesus skateboarding tricks when he got to heaven. I had to tell him no. I said Christ knows everything. He can do every skateboarding trick that's ever been invented and will ever be invented. Which was a little weird. I mean that's in principle and I'm not suggesting Jesus was a skateboarder. Or is a skateboarder.

He could he could be he's gone, but but the principal he doesn't want pretty sure But the principle of heavenly things is that we think of this every spiritual blessing and it causes us to have to think outside of the scope of earthly things. It's not money, it's not a house, it's not a car, it's not power, it's not those things that are of earthly value.

It may, you know, Christ says he's going to prepare a place for us. Okay. I don't care if it looks like A house or an apartment or a tent is with Jesus. That's what matters. I'm going to be given his authority in the millennium. I will be an ambassador for him as we all will be in the millennium. That's power. That's authority.

But it's not something I crave. I'm not seeking out power. A king has a prince son and that prince son inherits authority. we don't have that same connection. It's not an earthly inheritance with those weaknesses that come. I honestly hope we don't need cars in heaven, so I'm not worried about that.

But at least the streets will be golden. Price of gas will be better. That's funny, Bob. I'll be solar power. By God's light there will be no sun. I'm just sorry I didn't think of that first. I'm almost done. The bell is going to ring in just a minute.

The last question I have here is what is the significance of our position in Christ in relationship to this passage? and the relationship to this topic. What is our position in Christ ultimately? How does it tie into this? It makes possible all that inheritance. The inheritance is tied to that position.

We've talked about our position, we've talked about our condition, all of this is again wrapped up in our position in Christ. We're sealed in Him, in the heavenlies. We've been died, buried, resurrected, ascended and we're seated with Him now. Sealed in Christ in the heavenlies.

And this inheritance comes along. It's a tremendous thing. I've been meditating on this for the last couple weeks as I've been trying to prepare for this and I just keep coming around back into the same place of The unknown nature of it is really intriguing and exciting. And the revealed nature of the small amount that he has revealed about it, its characteristics, its unfading, all of the details of the security of our salvation. It's an encouraging thing to walk with knowing I'm not going to lose it. I'm not going to have some failure that I can somehow be tied in with. It's like, oh man, almost got that inheritance. Sir, any other thoughts or questions? Colossians 3, 1-3 is a good place to end. Sure. In terms of what you're just saying. You want to go ahead and read that, Bob? Yes. Pray. Then be risen with Christ. Seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ your God.

And that's really wrapped up in everything you've said this morning. Amen. Well, let's close in prayer and then we can fellowship. Heavenly Father, thank you for this time in your word. Thank you for the inheritance that we've been blessed with in you. And Lord, we just ask that you would constantly bring to mind in our lives the truth of who we are in you, the riches that we've been given in you. And we just thank you in your name. Amen.