3:20, 4:3 Topic #3 Heavenly citizenship #1

Well, we're down to kind of the third topic. And we kind of picked these topics somewhat kind of looking at Philippians and kind of seeing what themes are kind of in there. And one of the themes that kind of comes out in Philippians is the idea of heavenly citizenship.

So we kind of have two sessions on that. And then we go into a little bit later, we have Paul and the gospel. And then the very last part, we're going to kind of review the humiliation and exaltation of Christ. So, you know, a lot of this is, all these verses we're going to cover we've covered before, but it's kind of good to do it again.

So let's just kind of jump in here to, so basically New Testament talks about citizenship in general. There are a variety of words. They're all part of the kind of family of words that has the word politic, kind of immersed in it. And this is heavenly politics, not earthly politics, thankfully. Amen. Earthly politics is a mess, but heavenly politics is holy and righteous and just.

So we're going to talk about the fact that we're in contrast to our heavenly citizenship. We're going to talk about that we're strangers, aliens, and there's kind of a couple of different aspects of the way that's used in scripture. And then under heavenly citizenship, there's really two parts. The part today, we're going to talk about the verses in Philippians. And then next week, we're going to kind of expand that and look at other New Testament books, other verses about our heavenly citizenship.

So that's kind of the plan for this week and next. So let's just kind of jump in. So what I did here, I looked at vines. And I kind of, since this is a holiday week, I had a little less time than normal. So I kind of cut and pasted all these all these Greek words in here and so hopefully I can pronounce some of them. We'll see how it goes here.

They're all politics. I'll have the word politic in there. So the first one is a noun. It's, let's see if I have it, polytase. I think it's at least how my computer pronounces it. I have this computer generated voice that sounds a little bit you know, computer-generated voices are not superhuman, but they're, you know, they're okay.

So, polytheis, and the idea of this word, according to Vine, is that it's a member, it's translated citizen in our Bibles most of the time, a member of a city or state, or an inhabitants of a country or district. So I want to look at some of these verses here that Vine mentioned, and I'll look at some of those verses and see how it's used. So the first one, is in Luke 15. Can I get a volunteer to read that?

So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. So I'm just looking here for how this word, it's just used in a normal sense. And this is the prodigal son, I believe. Basically, this talks about, so he hired himself out to a citizen of that country.

You're going to get there, Roger, I'm sure, but the Greek word for these various forms of citizenship is different, right? Yeah, well, I want to show you a bunch of nouns and there's a verb in there. There's actually five Greek words, but they're all kind of centered on Actually, that's kind of the...

And then there'll be a suffix in some cases. The next one's going to be a suffix to polytase. And then we're going to see some other ones. And there's actually... I don't have them all here. This is just... I have five of... There's even more. I didn't... This is an exhaustive... This is the ones that seem to fit in to kind of... I'm going to expand this into heavenly citizenship. So I kind of use this as a beginning. Okay, so let's look at another one of Luke, Luke 19, turn over a couple of chapters, Luke 19 and verse 14 and could someone read that please?

But his citizens hated him and sent a message after him saying, we will not have this man to reign over us. Okay, all right, and that's the context there is This is a parable of a certain nobleman. Okay. So the citizens hate him. Okay, so that's citizen. Let's see if there's another one that's... Let's look at the Acts 21 passage. Acts 21. So this is just used in the normal sense of being a citizen.

And you'll notice, I don't know whether you picked up on this, but many times you say, well, how do these people get the definition of these words in the Greek language? Well, a lot of times, they do just like we're doing. They look at how it's used in the context, and that's how the definition is formed. So sometimes they'll have how it was used in Greek literature. But many times, they'll just write from scripture. So you can form your own definition by just looking at how it's used.

So the next one is Acts 21.39. and could a volunteer read that?

Pope Paul said I am a Jew of Tarsus in Sicily. So let's see how that's going. A citizen of no significant city, and I beg you, allow me to speak to the people. Okay, so Paul's appealing the fact that he's a citizen. He's a member of a city or state. And we're citizens of our country here. But we also have another citizenship, which is kind of cool. We have dual citizenship. Okay, and let's see.

And the last one is Hebrews 8. Hebrews 8 and verse 11. They shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen, Everyone is brother, same know the Lord. For all shall know me from the least to the greatest of them. That's kind of an interesting way to use there. Actually, this is kind of a good transition.

We're going to transition to, the way it's used here is a little bit, it says fellow citizens, but we're going to see that actually there's a compound word, sun polites. the combination of the base word, and this is used kind of uniquely in Ephesians 2.19, which is kind of neat.

Ephesians 2.19 now. And this is going to kind of get into this contrast I want to make here.

So could someone read Ephesians 2.19?

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints. ender of God's household. Okay, so here's one of the contrasts I wanted to kind of make, and we're going to see it when we get into the strangers and aliens, that it talks about, we've transitioned from being strangers and aliens to being fellow citizens with the saints. So, as the collective body of Christ, we're fellow citizens of heaven.

And we kind of know, we kind of know that from many verses, so that's kind of a neat OK, so here's the two. So now we're going to go from citizens and fellow citizens to the idea of citizenship. And that's basically the relationship in which a citizen stands to the state. The condition of a citizen, citizenship. And let's look at Acts 22. Acts 22 and verse 28.

The commander answered, I have this citizenship with a large sum of money. And Paul said, but I was actually born a citizen. Yeah. So here's a contrast. And if you notice the one that's been supplied in the last part of verse 28, it's in italics. So Paul's saying I was actually born a citizen, but the word isn't there. But the citizenship this commander was talking about, he acquired through a large sum of money.

OK. And let's look at... Okay, so here's another... Actually, we're going to see this a couple of times. Let's look at... back to Ephesians. Ephesians 2.12.

I was just thinking, Roger, that's what the Catholics think. That they can buy citizenship. Yeah, and that's interesting. That's interesting. Yeah. I just happen to think about that. That that's sort of... You know, that they do enough. That they're penitent. That they give enough. I mean, and that's practically what they're doing, is buying their way. And think about this, actually. If you live under law, you're kind of, well, I'm carrying out my citizenship. I'm carrying out, and I'm going to do all these things, and it's all about me and what I do, and I'm a good citizen. So that mentality, not used properly. Just like this Roman. Right. Exactly. That's good.

So let's see, Ephesians 2.12. At that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. Now a lot of times what will happen is this word commonwealth kind of comes up. You know it's funny, at first I thought what is a commonwealth? Does somebody know what commonwealth means?

Without looking at your... No, I'm not there yet. This is slow. I'm just giving you a hard time. That's okay. I need a hard time. Well basically it's a people of a state or nation, commonwealth. So sometimes this word for citizenship, the word commonwealth is used. So they're somewhat interchangeable. Don't we have some states that are... Yeah, I was thinking the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Virginia too. And Kentucky? Maybe. Pennsylvania? No. I don't know. Oh, there's like a handful, right? Right.

So it's either people of a state or nation. So they're citizens. The British always have called themselves also a commonwealth. Then there's another variation. If you notice, all that first polytase is kind of the ... This one here is polytumea. This one, basically ... We're going to look at this more in detail in a bit here, but this is a condition or life of a citizen.

We're going to look at Philippians 3.20 quite a bit here in just a little bit, and we looked at it before too. And then there's another one, polytumeia, and it's a verb. We've also looked at this one.

This is the one that occurred in Philippians 1.27. So these two are two of the occurrences of this word for citizen, kind of the core word. One is a noun, and one is a verb. One is the conduct of a citizen.

And we're going to see our standard for conduct is a heavenly standard, not an earthly standard. So quite a bit different. By the way, for those of you who are trivia interested, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Virginia, and what's the fourth? Pennsylvania. So those are the four. Okay. Back to the Bible. No, that's good. Thank you. That's being recorded, right? Not to worry. So we're going to dive in a little bit here into the polytomia, both the noun and verb form in just a little bit here. Those are the two that we're going to.

So actually, I wanted to kind of spend a little time on looking at how to do a similar thing with strangers and aliens. Why didn't that work out? I thought I had it nicely, so it would just come in one point at a time. Anyway, okay, we'll just do it quick. Okay, first word. Actually, what happened there? You went back a slide. No, I did. Let's just try it this way. That's what I did wrong. Okay, thank you. I pushed the right button to get the right results.

Okay, so this is a word for stranger, and it's xenos, and basically it's a stranger, a foreigner, not of one's family. It's used metaphorically as not belonging to. that the word stranger and alien somewhat used, depending on the translation, were used somewhat differently. I mean, not every translation was consistent that I found. So, and actually, let's just go back for a second. This word stranger, let's look in Matthew 25, Matthew 25, 35. I didn't put them on the slide, but here's some verses that have some of these words in it. Matthew 25, 35. Can someone read that, 2535?

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in. So basically, Christ is talking here, I was a stranger, the Xenos word, you took me in. It's also used a little bit later in Acts, talking about visiting strangers, strangers visiting. And then there's the word alien, And actually, the word sojourner kind of comes up. Does anyone know what sojourner means? This is another word that kind of like, what does sojourner mean?

Actually, this almost tells you what it means. I imagine what it means when I give you that. What I have is to say, in a place for a time being. You're not permanently there. You're kind of wandering through like the... What's the people that... Drifter. Drifter, yeah. I was thinking of the ones like... The nomads. Okay, good. Bonnie, what were the ones that came by that asked for food and clothing sometimes? Gypsies. Gypsies. There's another... Yeah, okay. Right.

Basically, sojourner, one who dwells in a foreign country on a temporary dweller, not having a settled habitation, Okay, so actually what's interesting is we're going to see stranger and alien applied to us before we're a believer and then applied to us as believers. We're going to see that in just a minute here, which is kind of interesting. And then there's another word which is kind of a, actually it's translated exile sometimes or stranger again, and that's where it gets a little bit confusing unless you look at look at the Bible that has what words are there, and this is the idea. It's a compound word, sojourning in a strange place away from one's own people. So it's basically from combined with epidema, to sojourn, and then a people. And let's just look at the verse that uses that word here. It'll kind of go into our section about kind of significant verses. Hebrews 11, Hebrews 11, 13. Someone has that.

All these died in faith without receiving the promise of God, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on their What was the, 1116? No, I'm sorry, did I read that right? 1113. Let's try 1113, thanks. That is what he wrote, 1113. Okay, thank you.

Okay, all these died in faith. So basically, this kind of talks to the point that I was trying to make is that this is the hall of faith, we call it sometimes, all the people that trusted the Lord. So this said they died in their faith without receiving the promises, And they were kind of referred to that they were, as we are, they were strangers and exiles on this earth.

All right, so then I have a few more I thought that were, that kind of shows the contrast I was trying to get. So let's look at, we actually covered this before, but let's go, I think we did, Ephesians 2. Actually, I want to go, I want to read 2.11 through 13.

Ephesians 2.11 through 13.

This will make it, kind of makes the point about this contrast between strangers and aliens. Wherefore remember that you being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who were called uncircumcision by that which is called a circumcision in the flesh made by hands, that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world.

But now in Christ Jesus, you who sometimes were far off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ. So it's interesting, he's using a little bit different context here. He's using the fact that this is before they were believers. They were excluded from faith, from the establishment so to speak, right? From the nation of Israel. Strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope. But now in Christ Jesus, they're falling far off. Now you've been brought near. So it's kind of used for the forward believers. And it's also used in the context that we're strangers and aliens roaming around. This is not our permanent home. And then there's, just go down to verse 19.

It says, Ephesians 2.19, it says, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you're also fellow citizens with the saints and are of the household of God.

Actually, this should be 1 Peter 2.11, not 19. This one says, Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.

So this is basically talking to believers, kind of used in a little bit different way here. Okay, all right, so we all kind of have a citizenship, and the contrast to that is strangers and aliens. And so now I want to talk about heavenly citizenship. And this chart is just going to talk on maybe a summary of its use. It's used three times. It kind of depends on how you count talking about citizenship.

It's used in Philippians 1.27. Conduct yourself. This is a verb form. And then to live or conduct yourself as a citizen. And then it's used in 3.20. As announced, citizenship is fixed in heaven. And then there's a third one. And Verne likes to count this as a third. That's why I kind of included it, because he calls it the third. But he doesn't actually use the word citizenship.

He kind of talks about, and we covered this earlier, about our names are recorded in the Book of Life. So in a sense, you could say that's a role of all the citizens of heaven, in that sense. So we're not actually going to cover it, since we've covered that before. So I wanted to kind of go back, and we've covered both of these two occurrences, 127 and 320, and kind of just go through that again. So, only conduct yourself in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. And we've seen this, conduct yourself, this is a verb, conduct yourself. And we looked at, I think, most of those verses.

Let's look at the, we didn't look at the Acts, we looked at the Acts 23, Acts 23.1. Let's just look at that for a second. And could someone read that? They got to it.

And Paul, earnestly beholding the council, said, Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day. So here it's kind of, the way it's translated here, I have lived my life, or conducted my life. It's the same word here. I've conducted my life. live my life. What does the King James have that? I am the King James. Oh, okay. Good. Life is that same word. Right. So sometimes it can be translated like conduct yourself to live or conduct your life. So basically, this is a chart that I borrowed when I covered this before.

Where is our citizenship at? I think this is referring, if you look at the context here, in a manner worthy, the idea here is suitability properly, and it's comparing conducting our life in terms of the gospel of Christ. Or to conduct our lives in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. And we can't do that from an earthly perspective, we only can do that from a heavenly perspective.

And actually what we're going to do later on, I think Jim's going to do it, we're going to trace through the gospel and how Paul used that in Philippians. And then there's various verses about the gospel of Christ. So let's go on. The next one is, and I think Bob covered this one. He taught this when he was going through chapter 3. For our citizenship is in heaven. So I just kind of broke it down. We're going to cover that part first. The subject is our citizenship and it's the Polychromia.

Our citizenship is and what's interesting is the word is here I think King James is as well. It's actually not the normal word for is. Like if you look in scripture, you'll see like in 1 John, you'll see God is light. And that's a different word than the word you use here. Typically it's like this word eimi. God is light. God, and the word eimi, it's a state of being. He continually exists as God. He continually exists as light.

Well, in this case, it's a little bit different. The word is hapakaro. I didn't put it down there, but it's the idea of being exist or has a fixed location. I thought this was really neat. And it's in the present tense that our citizenship is fixed or has this location in heaven. And that's not just a temporary thing. That is fixed and unchangeable continually. So we have a permanent citizenship in heaven, even though we aren't there yet. That citizenship is, and that's how we're to view things. Whereas the last part is so neat. We're to view our life from that citizenship perspective.

And there's kind of another parallel verse here. And the last part of that is this prepositional phrase, in heaven or literally in the heavens. There's a parallel verse in Philippians. Philippians 2. So we'll turn to Philippians 2. Philippians chapter 2 and verse 6. Let's go back to verse 5. Philippians 2 starting verse 5.

Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who although he existed, that's our word, in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. So our citizenship exists, it has its fixed location in heaven permanently, 24-7, And then the next part is going to tell us how we view life, from which we also eagerly wait for a Savior. And the last part just defines who the Savior is, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So we, Paul and us, eagerly wait. This is another kind of neat word. Expectantly wait. It's another present tense verb. So we're continuing to expectantly wait. And people have tried to get the idea of this word, and they have various... The Amplified Bible says, earnestly and patiently await. Another one says, intensely yearning. It's an intense yearning and waiting. Go ahead, Bob.

Well, the thing that I find that's even more profound than I think when I covered this is the term, from which. Isn't that incredible? If you think about it, we have dual citizenship, as you point out. The old man and the new man both live in this earthly sphere. Yet, our citizenship is truly in heaven. That's where God sees us. We're perfectly righteous in Christ. But as we look down from that position, we're waiting for the Savior?

What's that all about? Isn't this miles and from? Bob's absolutely right. The cool part is this little prepositional phrase, from which, or out from where. It's sort of like, you know, like you're standing there with the Lord in heaven, you know, we're seated with Christ and you're saying, boy, how am I doing down there? Oh yeah, wow, that's totally different than saying, oh Lord, you know, it's flipped around. What it says is they think we're seen by the Lord Jesus totally in Him, positioned above, and from that position we are identified But yet, that position is carried into our condition. That's what the conduct's all about.

Exactly. And so, from which, I mean, we look for the Savior as holy and righteous. That's why we look for Him, right? Right, exactly. But looking for Him is an earthly experience, is it not? I know. What's funny is, you're looking in heaven for this earthly experience. I mean, it's just kind of, your mind gets kind of wrapped around that. You think, wow, I'm up there looking at heaven for the Lord to come, to come for me down here on the earth. Because in our earthly existence, we probably, even as believers, you know, we have doubts, we have all that. So the only place we can really continually look for Him to come is from that position. Right. Do you guys ever watch Monk? We love Monk. Or I love Monk. Bob is Monk. No, he doesn't like Monk. Do I have to respond? I have a little analogy. I'm not sure it's really... Let's change the topic. I want to draw on the episode.

There's an episode in San Francisco where the garbage has been on strike, and there's garbage all over the place. And Mike just can't handle it. He just cannot handle his garbage. He goes to a psychiatrist. I'm Mike Garvin. So what he does, he goes into a clean room. And he's just so happy. And I'm thinking, this is it.

We're up there in heaven. We don't have the clutter of this garden. Our minds can be clear. Our minds can be clear. And we can think like we're supposed to think as heavenly citizens. Oh, that's what it is. I don't have to Next time you see one of the clean rooms, pick them up and you'll see. We'll watch it this afternoon. We have that episode. He's just beaming. Oh, this is wonderful. I want to clean it. It's already clean. Anyway.

Am I sure I can stop there from this lesson? Yeah, let's get back on track. There's a couple of other verses that use this concept of eagerly awaiting or expectantly issues of other things. Let's look in Romans chapter 8. I'm just teaching about monkeys in Sunday school right now. People are listening, oh I can listen to that tape. Okay, Romans 8...

Romans 8.23. Can someone read 8.23 in Romans? And not only this, but also, we ourselves, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves grown within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.

Great. So there's our waiting eagerly. Same word as here. And the other one was in 1 Corinthians 1. So that you're not lacking in any gift awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. So that concept of waiting eagerly is not just confined to the Lord's return. And now what happens is the next verse that Bob covered that is talking about the Lord's return in Philippians there.

But it is neat. It is neat that we're waiting from heaven. I mean, that is just so good. I mean, it's just so different than what we know. I'm waiting down here. I'm going to get through another day. No, we're waiting from heaven. from where our home is.

I think in the first Corinthians verse indicates it's the body. Are we taken out of this earthly body? I mean his return does relate to our bodily resurrection, doesn't it? Body is part of the earthly existence, right? But our spiritual and eternal citizenship is in heaven. That's great. Well, actually, the object is the same way, even the way in the Savior.

So actually, that's actually all I had for today. So next week what we're going to do, there's actually quite a few other verses in Ephesians and other places that we're going to look at in terms of our heavenly citizenship. So we're going to expand it and get in more detail next week and look at the other, and we're going to find other aspects of our heavenly citizenship.

I think there's no more profound truth of the believer than this issue of society. It just is so critically important. And it's the view truly from above. And when we fall into kind of the self-life, the Adam-filled life, the sin nature, I mean ultimately you respond to that by the great grace God has shown us, right? And you know, we're not citizens of this earth any longer, we're citizens in heavenly place. I mean it really, it's something so profound.

No, it is. And it's so different than the way that we typically conduct our lives. It says conduct your life this way, but we conduct our life many times we say, I just want to navigate through and I want to minimize the problem somehow. I'm the same way. I don't want to have a lot of problems. I don't like, you know.

Especially this time with all the things that are going on in the world today. Politically and everything else. We should really be focusing on that. And getting uptight over the things and the direction things are going. Because we know that's the way it's going to go anyway. It shouldn't be a surprise. And don't you have friends, I have so many friends who are so upset and they're apoplectic almost about all the stuff that's happened and that's exactly what I say to them. We're not citizens of this world. What makes you think that anything's going to get any better? Right, I know. We are not of this planet.

And it's more like you have to bring them back to the reality of who they are in Christ. And even if that's not the teaching that they've been getting, when they hear that, it's like, you're right. That is, you're right. People have just been so upset. Right, exactly.

What strikes me is, it's amazing that things are as good as they are on this earth. Especially in this country. You think, wow, You know, people are honest for the most part. Actually, it's a pretty good place. I mean, from a humanly perspective, it's, you know, this isn't a bad, but this is not what the Lord, this is not, this is not it. This is not as good as it's going to get. This is, you know, where aliens and strangers are walking through this. And there's some, quote, good things, earthly good things that happen here.

We have children and we're blessed with that and all kinds of wonderful things, blessed with fellowship with other believers, but that's not what the Lord has in mind. Not that he doesn't want... I'm not putting that down, but I'm thankful for that. He has so much a better perspective and a better Well, I'll let you guys go early today, it looks like. All right.

Dear Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for our time today, Lord. Thank you for the truth, Lord, that we have about who we are, that we are heavenly citizens seated at the right hand of God, and that we're waiting eagerly, waiting expectantly for the Savior to come and to catch us away. And we're thankful, Lord, that your desire is that we look at life, we look at our time here on this earth from that from that perspective, Lord. And we pray that that would be more the case as we see your word and we study it and we hear it, Father, that we would have that view of our time here on this earth. In Christ's name, Amen.