Christ Life In Us Romans 8:14-17 We Are Children of God

So I can't help but go on the internet and try to find cool pictures and free pictures. So I go look for free pictures and so I came across this one. I think it's pretty cool. Actually, what I realized, I don't have something to lay my notes on. So I decided to start off with And kind of the last part of verse 16, we are children of God. So we're going to talk about that. I think that's just kind of critical, as Miles pointed out. Paul kind of, he moves from, last week we talked about sons of God, now we move to children of God. And I think it's really interesting.

I'm not sure I've totally grasped everything that means, but I've, I think I've learned a lot along the way. So, one more thing here. So, so how did God accomplish this? For most of you folks, that shouldn't be any mystery, how He accomplished us becoming children of God. Some it might be. So, you know, pretty clearly, as we look in chapter 3 of John, we see that He talked to Nicodemus, the Pharisee, and said, "'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.'" So he, and he, you know, Nicodemus didn't seem to catch on to what that meant, but we hopefully, we've caught on to that, and I think we have in general. We responded to that. And so that born again is the idea to be born from above or born of God, other kind of parallel ideas with that. So how does this happen? You know, and I probably would answer this question different ways.

Certainly, we have to come to faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and His work on the cross. That's key. But, you know, there's a process that God has involved in that. God has given us His word, His marvelous word. And I think that's what He tells us. His word, even though only, you know, paragraphs, sentences on a page, it's powerful. And He tells us that.

We are studying that in 1 Peter and actually a little bit in the conference we did this, just this marvelous verse in the end of chapter 1 of 1 Peter it says, For you have been born again, just what we're talking about, how do you become, you've been born again, not a seed which is perishable, but which is imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring Word of God.

So this Word of God has two aspects, right? Well, first of all, it's not like a perishable thing. It's imperishable. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my Word will never pass away. So His Word is imperishable. And also it has two aspects. It's living and it's enduring. So those words on the page, even though we look at that and say those are just words on a page, what God says, I'm going to use that to draw men to myself. It's going to be through this living and enduring word of God. Just incredible. But it doesn't stop there. We come to know Him and become born again through this living and enduring Word of God. But what happens is we need that Word of God day by day. Just a beautiful analogy here, a beautiful picture.

Like newborn babies, and I looked that up, you know, it's really, it's a nursing baby. And I kind of talked about this last week in the First Peter class. You know, how often do you feed a nursing baby? When they're weeks old, months old? You know, is it four hours, three hours?

And no other moms are just wiped out totally. I can remember our first child, Mark, he just, I don't think, I'm not sure I can do another one. I'm totally, I've had it, I've just given all I can. The baby doesn't respect your sleepless condition. He wants to be fed.

And so what does God say? Like newborn babies, these nursing babies long, for the pure, or the unadulterated milk of the word, or to long, or to have a hunger, an insatiable hunger, and that's going to cause us, so that you may grow with respect to salvation. Speaking of our growing in grace and the knowledge of Him. So just a wonderful picture, wonderful picture of these newborn babies growing in God's Word. We start in God's Word, so we start in God's Word, we're born again by God's Word, and we We take in the pure milk of God's word.

That's the whole Christian life from beginning to end. It's all centered around his word. And if you look in John chapter one, what is Christ called? He's called the living word. Pretty amazing. Okay, so that's kind of the introduction to where we're going. So here's an outline of 14 through 17.

So you could say we start off, the Holy Spirit is in view in almost every verse here. It starts off the Holy Spirit leading us as sons of God. We are adopted as sons of God by the Holy Spirit. And the believer's intimacy is via the Holy Spirit as we cry out, Abba, Father.

So we go through 14, 15, talking about sons, sons, sons, and then all of a sudden in 16, he changes the picture from sons to children. And he says, the Holy Spirit is witness to us as children of God. So it's almost like he's speaking into us on a more basic level. You know, a son, you think of maybe being more mature, if you will, but children is down at the beginning level. And so he witnesses us as children of God. And then we talk about this wonderful airship. And since we're children, children have parents. And normally, your heir is to your parents if they have something left over, right, in the human sense. The believers airship because we're children.

And then we go on to the very last part of 17, we talk about this connection between suffering and glorification with Christ. We suffer with Christ, we're glorified with Christ. They go hand in hand. You really cannot separate that. If you think about our Savior, that's exactly the same picture, right? He suffered and then was glorified. We are sons of God, we are children of God. So we follow that same pattern. You can't change that. So I kind of thought, leading as sons and assuring us as children.

Okay, so that's kind of the introduction to these verses here. We're gonna concentrate, Miles did a great job last week on 14 and 15. I'm gonna just go back and just review the last part of 15, because it leads right into what we're gonna talk about here. 15b says, you have received a spirit of adoption as sons, by which we cry, Abba, Father.

I couldn't pass over this again, it's just such a beautiful section. So from last week, the wonderful truth of our adoption as sons. We've been adopted as sons. We're not only, it's kind of amazing, God isn't satisfied with one picture. He has multiple pictures, right, where we're adopted as sons, but we're also children. He has both pictures in view here.

So now we have the sons of God picture, by which, refers back to the Holy Spirit, we cry out. It's a loud proclamation with emotion, and it's the idea we're continually crying out. And actually, The indwelling Holy Spirit is the reason we do this, because we have His very life, we have the life of Christ, we have the Holy Spirit. So we cry out, and we're going to see what we cry out shortly.

But this cry out word is krodzo. It's one of those words like buzz. Buzz both makes the sound buzz, right? You say buzz. So buzz is, to get a big fancy word, onomatopoeia. It sounds like what it is. So this word krodzo sounds like a cry, right? We cry out, we krodzo out, if you will. It's used of, I think this case is, I would say my picture here is inarticulate. We don't necessarily cry out Abba Father. We could, it wouldn't hurt, certainly. But it also can be used in terms of crying out loud, and I actually have a couple of examples of that, this krodzo word.

Two blind men, in Matthew it says, two blind men followed him, Christ, or Jesus, crying out, krodzo, have mercy on us, son of David. And then in John 7 it says, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, if anyone has thirst him, let us come to me. So we have this crying out, You've received the adoption as sons by which we cry out, we crozzo out, and here's what we cry out, right? With loud proclamation, the believer cries out this word, with emotion it says, Abba Father.

Unfortunately, there's a rock group that decided to adopt that name, Abba. You know, you may or may not, anyway, that's probably an aside, but anyway, if you've heard of Abba, some people, if they never read scripture, they may have never heard, oh, Abba, that's a rock group.

Well, no, it's a word from scripture, and it actually has interesting form. Abba is Aramaic for father, and father is a Greek word, peter. So you actually have a double repetition of the word Father, if you will, with different words. So Paul used the Aramaic as well as Greek. This is from, I think, Constable, a term to highlight this intimate relationship, this crying out we have. And Christ used Abba Father. He used this term in relationship to God the Father. So we see that in Mark, Mark 14. He was saying, Christ was saying, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you.

Remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but your will be done. We see, I would say we see his humanity here when he's doing that. He knew what was gonna happen, but he still had this emotion, and he's a person. He cried out as a person, Father, Father, Abba, Father. So I actually had two paraphrases from Constable I came across.

You could say, and it's pretty obvious from what I just talked about, Abba Father is Father my Father, or you could say Father my own dear Father. So there's Abba Father for you. So it's not a rock group. It's a wonderful expression, a loud proclamation of the relationship we have with our Heavenly Father. Pretty wonderful.

Okay, with that kind of place in place here, the verses for today, there's a lot of with, I didn't actually highlight every single one, we have a with with the first, and this is actually one sentence, if you look at the grammar here, it's one sentence, so it starts off in 16, the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, if or better since children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, another if, A better sense, indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. So we see a lot of togethers with, and it's always with someone of the Trinity, if you will. First case is the Spirit, and the last three cases are with Christ. So we're testifying or we're fellow heirs with Christ in the second part. Okay, so let's get into this part.

So the Spirit himself, So in this one long sentence, the spirit himself is the subject. And actually notice it has the article, so it's a particular spirit, not just any spirit. And it's followed many times, not in this case, by of, of God, the spirit of God. Like in this case, do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the spirit of God dwells in you? So the spirit refers back to God the Holy Spirit.

And his was kind of cool. So in this case, there's two occasions where the writers of the New Testament have decided to have the spirit himself. And it really points to his humanity, I believe. It really points out that he's a person, that the spirit is a person. He's not just a thing. He's not just an it. The spirit himself, Otto.

So it tells us that he's a person. If you look carefully, and we're going to look at it shortly here, all the declarations, you know, the ladies were studying on Tuesday the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and the ministry is to believers, and it's about the Lord Jesus. But in that ministry, we see that He's a person, because we see that He can be grieved, He loves us, He guides us, and so on. We have a whole long list coming up here shortly. He's a person. He reacts like a person. He feels like a person.

You know, anyway. And then here's the other case where it's used, the Spirit Himself in Romans 8, 26b, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. So it's just amazing. If you think about God's, God has put Himself totally, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have put themselves totally into His creation. And that's to glorify himself, but it's interesting, his involvement, the level of his involvement is just mind-boggling.

And we're gonna see that in the ministry of the Holy Spirit. It just, you know, he gives us his word, that word changes us, we feed on that word, and he gives us his spirit, and his spirit is totally involved in our lives in terms of how we look at his word, how we live our lives.

So we're gonna see that. Okay, so this says the Spirit Himself testifies with us, and this is the main verb in this big sentence. It's a together word, together with another. He testifies with our spirit, it's gonna say. So we have a joint witness of another person. It's to collaborate, like in the trial situation in a court of law, you have evidence presented and you have cooperation sometimes with the evidence, it can be thought of that way. The verb tense is such as continuously going on, the Spirit Himself is continually testifying with us. The human example is when someone in a courtroom, if you go into a courtroom and someone comes along and says, you know, That really happened, and they cooperate. What happened, what you said happened, they cooperate. And that's the picture. They cooperate what you're saying. So the Holy Spirit is cooperating something that's true of us.

It's used by John the Apostle in Revelation. I testify to everyone who hears the words of this prophecy of this book. If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues, which are written in this book. Whenever I read that, I always think, Boy, I better be careful. This is God's Word. And just like I said, it's a miraculous book, not to be altered or changed outside of what it says.

Okay, let's carry on here. Testifies. He's testifying with the believer's spirit. So here we have the Spirit of God testifying, cooperating something about us. So we're told that the Holy Spirit is continually expressing Himself in and through your spirit. And that expression is about the fact that we are children of God. Just, just amazing. It's, you know, as we talked about, we talked about that being sons, and now we've moved to a really much more intimate idea. He's, the Holy Spirit is testifying. and reminding us that we are children of God. And I think about this, this is not some mystical thing that happens in a vacuum.

To my mind, it happens as we interact with God's word. As we interact with God's word, that's the milk, that's the food that causes this interaction to happen. As we do that, we see what God says about us, we see what God says about himself, And that's how that interaction happens. That's how we see this testifying with our spirit.

And the fact is that we are children of God, and this is not a one-time deal. It's continued. He doesn't stop us. We're always children of God. Once we have become a child of God, we continue to be a child of God. It's a permanent relationship maintained by God, and it's based upon our faith in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our part was faith. His part is to accept that faith, and he did that when we trusted him as our Savior. Okay, and this kind of answers my question that I kind of posed, or Myles' question at the very, very beginning.

What's the relationship between these two words, children and sons? So Constable takes a crack at it. I think it's not bad. He says the term children identifies our family relationship based upon being born again, Whereas sons stresses our legal standing based upon adoption. Not too bad, I think we can say more, but I think that's not bad as a starter.

The children thing talks about family relationships. He's talking about family here. We're talking about family, and it's amazing. We as believers, we talk about being the family of God. It sounds almost not very important. Well, you're in the family of God. Okay, you're the family of faith. The world kind of makes light of that, but it's really the most incredible relationship that we can think of, really.

Okay, so let's go on here. So now, at this point, I want to point out some of the ministries of the Holy Spirit, just to kind of nail this down in this verse here. And our brother Hal Malloy, back, I don't know, in the 90s sometime, maybe the early 2000s, he developed a list of the ministries of the Holy Spirit and believers.

And I think the ladies studied not exactly this list, but a list like this. And it's one of these things, you start in this list. There's actually 22 entries in the list. I only put down 12 for this chart. And if you want, I actually have a copy, and they're available if you want. Anyway, if you're a lady and you went to the study, these should be familiar.

The Spirit dwells in believers. The Spirit gives believers access to the Father. And there's verses for each one of these, or multiple verses in some cases. The Spirit has fellowship with believers. The Spirit teaches believers. And what we see is just like what Christ said.

What did He say when He left? He said, you know, I'm going away. I will send to you a helper, a helper of the same kind as myself. The helper in His name is the Holy Spirit. This is our helper. And what's this Holy Spirit gonna do? He's gonna just do what we're seeing right here. He's gonna teach us. He's gonna remind us of all these wonderful things that Christ has accomplished for us. So let's carry on.

The Spirit reveals the glory of Christ to believers. The Spirit transforms believers. The Spirit manifests His fruit, the fruit of the Spirit, through believers. The Spirit gifts every believer. The Spirit empowers believers. the Spirit fills believers, then I jumped to 13, the Spirit frees believers, and the Spirit guides believers.

And there's at least 10 more beyond this. But you get the idea, this is just, and his ministry is pretty incredible. He has every aspect of what is necessary to live the Christian life, the Spirit is involved in that. There's not one aspect he's left out, because we trust God's Word is complete. Everything we need, the Holy Spirit's involved in. So that's pretty key here. Okay, so that's verse 16. So now we move on from 16 into 17. It's actually the one sentence here.

It says, the Spirit himself testifies that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also. So now we're gonna kinda move from, if you think about, if we're children, if I'm a dreidcher, if I'm one of the dreidcher kids, and my dad goes to be with the Lord, My example's going to fall apart here.

His mom's still around. But anyway, if you're a Dredger child and your dad dies, you'll inherit whatever he has. Hopefully he'll have thousands of acres in Canada and thousands of acres in Colorado. I don't know. I'm just being silly here. But anyway, you'll inherit that. So what happens when you're an heir? you get to divide up that inheritance, right? Or if your dad says, well, so-and-so gets that, he'll make some declaration. So we're gonna talk about this idea of heirship. And you notice here, I'm getting a little ahead of myself here, he makes a progression.

He says, we're children of God. We're talking about our heirship with God. I mean, this is just incredible. God's gonna give us an inheritance. You realize that every believer has an inheritance. And he's going to describe that we're heirs. He says we're heirs to start with. He says we're heirs of God and then fellow heirs with Christ. He just keeps upping it. It gets better and better and better. It's just amazing. I'm getting a little ahead of myself here. Okay, so let's just track through this. If children or since children, you are heirs, the first time he mentioned that. So let's just back up a little bit.

Every believer is now a child of God, and the heir is just a logical extension. Just like if you're a dreacher, the logical extension will be that you'll have an inheritance from your dad, or from your mom, and maybe both. All children are born, all children who are born again are heirs.

So you have to go on that part. And also, here's the other part that's kind of cool. We saw this before from last week. We saw that you receive the Spirit, you're placed as adult sons. So you're, and then we know that So actually, you have twofold. In Roman law, it said that as an adopted child, you were an heir also. So in a way, you have heirship twice. You get it as an adopted, as you've been adopted, fully adopted as a son, and you're born into the family too. You're a child. So pretty cool. All right. So now we start this little chain here. So this is a little pattern we see.

Miles mentioned it before in other verses. Paul likes to use this idea. In the original language in the Greek, sometimes there's words that kind of indicate a comparison or a contrast, and this is one of these cases. So you could read heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ as follows. Heirs of God on the one hand and fellow heirs of God on the other hand. I like the picture doing it this way. I thank Brian White for the hand graphics. I just cut and pasted my words in there on top of that. So on one hand, you're heir of God, but on the other hand, you're fellow heirs with Christ. Paul's pointing out, there's a contrast here, there's a huge contrast. It's wonderful that you're an heir of God, but it's even more wonderful that you're fellow heirs with Christ.

Think of Christ's position before the Father, right? I mean, the Father, and there's passages we have in Revelation, other places that just say, the Father, because of his work on the cross, the Father has given everything to the Son, right? Everything, all, And what's needed, it says, we're fellow heirs with Christ. You kind of shake your head, how can that be?

I get to be heirs with God, and I'm also, because I trusted, I'm also fellow heirs with Christ. And we're gonna show what that means in a second here. Okay, so let's talk about heirs of God. So the bad news is, and you know, so we arrived on this planet, right? How did we arrive on the planet?

You know, I had this silly thought before I was a believer. I thought, when I have children, I'll have a child, I'll just tell them, you go this way or that way, I'll just direct them. I'll be able to direct them the good way and the bad way. I have total control over my children, no problem. I didn't realize that they were related to Adam.

That's a problem. If you're related to Adam, you got a problem. Okay, we arrive on this planet, not as a child of God, but a child of Adam, right? But when we trust Christ as our Savior, we're born again, and now we're a child of God. The whole thing has changed. And so our airship, and so here's the key point, and this is what I kind of stumbled with earlier.

The key point here, there has to be a death. For airship to happen, right, for an heir to get your inheritance, if you will, someone has to die, right? Your parents have to die, What's the person that provides it? Anyway, the parent, whoever it is that provides whatever you have left has to die. Well, in our case, we know that the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross for our behalf, right? So our inheritance has already started, right? We don't have it completely, but it's already begun.

Heirship is defined as a partnership. We see these words like joint, fellow, and with. So that's kind of the picture of heirship, heirship with God. Okay, so now let's look at the other side. Fellow heirs with Christ. So fellow heirs is the idea of a joint heir or a co-inheritor. So let's take the Dredgers again. Back to the Dredgers again. So now we're gonna show if they all trusted Christ, and I believe they have, here's what will happen. Here's gonna be the picture as a fellow heir, right? So what's the difference between an heir and a fellow heir? An heir, there's a division among the five of them, on the inheritance, right? But with a joint heir, look what happens here. They all get, every single one gets a whole inheritance. We say, humanly speaking, that's ridiculous. So they all get all the possessions. Well, they can't all have, it doesn't work.

But in heavenly terms, right, we get all of Christ. We get everything, all that he is. So Macaulay has put down We are joint heirs with Christ. Where He is, we will be. What He has, we will have. What He does, all His works, we have. We have the entire works of who Christ is. except his, we don't have his deity, certainly. We have it all.

I mean, that's the most incredible thing ever. Can you imagine going to someone and say, I have everything that Jesus Christ has. They probably wouldn't believe you, first of all, unless they had read scripture. Because scripture is the only one that can tell us that.

We have everything that Jesus Christ, he has given us everything. And you think, I don't deserve it, and that's exactly the point. You don't deserve it. He has done it all, and he's given it all to us. So we're heirs also, heirs of God, and fellow heirs with Christ.

So the preachers will get along. They're going to have all of Jesus Christ. Isn't that wonderful? They won't argue. They'll have it all. Sorry, guys, I didn't mean to. All right. Okay, now comes the interesting part. Now, here's the part, the B part of this verse, I don't know how many, you know, it has an if in there. People get hung up on ifs. Well, fortunately, the Greek scholars have helped us out here. If is this word, a pair. E-I is pronounced A in the Greek. I'm not sure I can tell you why, but anyway.

So, if indeed is, a pair, it's an intensified form of a fulfilled condition. So it's a stronger, look at the if at the beginning of 17, it says, if children or since children, this is even stronger imperative. It says, this is the fulfilled condition and it's rock solid, if you will. It could be translated since, or indeed, or since indeed, or as much as. Very strong statement of fact.

There's no, not a condition on acceptance, but it's a fact that we, it's an accepted condition. We suffer with him, present tense, continuous action. It's a fact, that's a fact. We're gonna suffer with him. And here's a word for suffer with. We're co-sufferers with Christ. Think about this. We're going to be co-inheritors with Christ, right? We're also co-sufferers with Him. So just like our Savior, He suffered, right? And He was glorified. We will follow the same pattern. We will suffer with Him and we will be glorified. Just an amazing picture. A couple of verses that kind of Verify that we're gonna have suffering or tribulation. So in this world, you have tribulation, but take courage. I have overcome the world.

Then Timothy, it says, indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Then Acts, it says, and this is talking to Paul here, right? He says, I will show you, Paul, how much you will suffer for my name's sake. So Christians are gonna suffer, and then we're gonna make the connection with that suffering to being glorified with him.

That's the last part of the verse. So that, so that is a, it's this Greek word called hina, it's a purpose, purpose kind of word, and this is a little bit beyond my understanding of Greek, but I know from reading it, I've seen it many, many times, when you have this so that connected with a subjunctive mood in the verb coming up, that is a, introduces a fulfilled condition. This construction shows us God's design. Present suffering results in future glory. Suffering with Christ is a necessary prelude for our being glorified with Christ. It just goes together. That was his life. Why shouldn't it be our life since we're in Christ? Why shouldn't that be the same kind of life that we have? And it is to be that way.

Glorified is this word, doxa, is kind of in the middle there, to glorify together with. And it happens to be an event, it's Aorist tense, it's an event we're going to be glorified with. And this talks, you know, glorifying or doxa at its core is ascribing honor to him, acknowledging him and his being and his attributes. And so right at the tail end of this verse, this very last part of 17, as we move forward into the last part of Romans chapter 8, we're going to see this section which is labeled the glorification section. It's going to show us all these wonderful truths about what happens to the believer when he's glorified. And it starts now, we have many of that right now, but it goes on into our time after we go to be with him. Okay, so what does this mean? I decided to put some verses down here. So what does this mean?

I would say, as a generalist, suffering qualifies the believer for being glorified with Christ, and that's God's will, that's His plan. And there's a bunch of verses that I want to present here, and they talk more about our suffering, and not to be surprised about that, and they all show up in 1 Peter, interestingly enough, at least the ones I chose.

So in Peter 4.13, But to the degree that you share in the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation.

Then 1 Peter 4.16, but if anyone suffers as a Christian, he's not to be ashamed, but is to glorify God in this name. Then lastly in 4.19, it says, therefore, those who suffer according to the will of God, notice that, they're suffering according to the will of God, shall entrust their souls to a faithful creator in doing what is right.

Okay, so, for my final thoughts, this is from Chafer, Lewis Barry Chafer, and he kind of goes through these verses and he just kind of gives them, he starts with talking about a will, a human will, I just like some of his phraseology here, so let's start here. He says, the purpose of a will, a human will that we have, is to specify the heirs that they may receive the benefit without fail.

None would contend that there's a danger that all that God the Father has bequeathed to Christ will not be delivered. He's saying God is faithful. Everything that he said Christ will get will be delivered to Christ. nor should it be intimated that joint heirs, that's gonna be us, will fail to get their portion. We're gonna get our portion. The revealed truth that God's bequeathed his riches to the joint heirs with Christ means that they are to receive this benefit. Otherwise, God has failed.

And I like, this is just a beautiful verse. And I always kind of scratch my head saying, wow. And Christ said, Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, be with me where I am." Just amazing. So what he's saying here, he's going to make an analogy here in a second, but he's saying this verse talks about the fact that what is our Savior's desire? Think about that. This is your Savior who loves you. What is his desire? First of all, you're a gift. Every believer's a gift. You've been given from God the Father to God the Son.

And He doesn't want you out in some, He doesn't want you in Arvada, as Mike would say sometimes, or in Commerce City. He wants it where you are. He wants you with Him, right? That's, your Savior wants you with Him. I mean, that's just amazing. He wants you with Him. He doesn't want you someplace else. He doesn't say, I'm gonna float in a cloud in heaven and out here. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. He says, I want you where I am. absent from the body, present with the Lord. He wants it with us. I mean, it's the most incredible thing you ever think about. So let's, he wraps it up here.

In like manner, the Father has willed to his heirs, believers, all the riches and glory. We get it all. We get all that Christ has, amazing. And to claim that they, the believers, will not receive their portion is to assume that God is defeated. And I added, impossible. We have to, if God has said it and declared it, it has to be true. We have it all because we deserve it all.

He has declared that and it will happen. And Christ wants us with him. Just amazing. Hopefully that was encouraging today. Okay, let's close in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank you, Lord. We thank you that just incredible truths, Lord. We're starting a section today and the following weeks, Lord, that will show us about this wonderful time that the believer will experience with his savior and were to be with him and all the aspects of that and how we have current benefits right now we thank you for that lord thank you that we can go we can look through these and and marvel at these we can praise you for all that you've done through your son we ask in his name amen