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I want to pick up on something I alluded to last week and I'm going to start us I promise we're not we're not actually reversing as much as it looks like but I'm going to start Us in Genesis 11 this
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I know it only took me three quarters of the study to get out of Genesis I'm going to read the first nine verses of Genesis 11 the the account of Babel
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out of The New American Standard Version this morning this morning now the whole Earth used the same language and the same words it came about as they journeyed East
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that they found a plane in the land of shinar and settled there than they said to each other come let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly and
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they used brick for stone and they used tar for Mortar they said come let us build for ourselves a city and a tower whose top will reach into heaven and let us make for ourselves a name otherwise
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we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole Earth the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built and the Lord said behold they are
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one people they all have the same language and this is what they began to do and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them come let us go down there and confuse
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their language so that they will not understand one another's speech so the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth and they stopped building the city therefore its name was called Babel
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because there the Lord confused the language of the whole Earth and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the whole face of the Earth
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we see here in contrast to some of the things we've talked about in terms of the creative activity of God a contrast a contrast the creative activity of man
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man in this state is seeking his own self-glorification perfecting his self-serving ends Tim mentioned to me after our class last
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week as we were talking about some of those things the the phrase that came out of the Renaissance you know summed up in the man is the man as the measure of all things man is the as the highest
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form of being that sorts uh inculcates into the the thinking of art and culture and I think many of you have have done things with art or history in your background and are aware of just how
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quickly man moves from reflecting the image of God to creating himself in the image of God there is a a quote that I've not been able to find
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the attribution of the idea being that man man sits for the portrait that he paints of God the man is always comparing himself using himself as the
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image of these things and so we want to be careful to examine what scripture the self-revelation of God has to say about these things but here in Babel and we see a couple of things man's
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seeking of self-glorification in his creative Endeavors that man is seeking to establish himself to be glorified um we see the phrase here they seek to
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unify and and to hold themselves together they say lest lest we be scattered lest we be cast abroad we should get together and do these things and God in his wisdom sees fit to hinder
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this creative power of man we we have man as we've talked about man in the image of God man reflecting the creativity of his creator of his maker
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but here even in the Echo you know man is not God but in reflecting the image of God man is very very powerful we see God referring to it here that if they
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gather together they get together in this way and exercise that creative ability nothing they purpose to do will be impossible for them um and so quite quite different from the
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image that is promulgated in our culture of of early man as backwards and Cave people your God is literally saying here basically I I need to Nerf them I need to to knock back their ability to
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exercise this creative power man seeks to build to reach into heaven to claim as it were God's territory for their own they say let's build this
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tower that will reach up into heaven and of course I I think I've mentioned before I always do enjoy Moses's little cheeky bit of humor here that this Tower reaching into heaven God had to come down to see it
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but man is not content to hold his Dominion on Earth God had given him a role given him a responsibility given him an exercise of authority of power of dominion over the Earth and yet man gathers together here and says well
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we're going to take Heaven too we're going to reach up there and we're going to be like God the Lord gives them as their punishment the exact fear that they State at the beginning of the passage it's just nine
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verses but we see them Gathering Together saying come on we got to get together we got to be unified we got to build this Tower in case we get scattered across the whole face of the Earth and God says you know what that's exactly what we're going to do
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we're going to scatter you over the face of the whole Earth he does so by confusing the languages their understanding of one another is diminished we read that they could not
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understand one another's speech language students have of course struggled ever since in trying to acquire various languages that they were not born into
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so we see here in Babel the creative activity of man and God responding to it by confusing them by reducing their ability to exercise that power that is in the image of God I want to read a
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passage here and then connect these things for you it will make sense when we get into the New Testament New Testament out of Exodus 19.
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because we're going to connect a couple of things together here in a an event in the New Testament but in Exodus 19 of course we're getting to Sinai in The Exodus story
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and in Exodus 19 16 we read of the Lord coming down upon the mountain it says so that it came about on the third day when it was mourning that
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there were thunder and lightning flashes and a thick Cloud upon the mountain and a very loud trumpet sound so that all the people who were in the camp trembled and Moses brought the people out of the
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camp to meet God and they stood at the foot of the mountain now Sinai Mount Sinai was all in Smoke because the Lord had descended upon it
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eaten fire eaten fire and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace and the whole Mountain quaked violently when the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder Moses spoke and God
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answered him with Thunder and the Lord came down on Mount Sinai on the top of the mountain and the Lord Called Moses up to the top of the mountain and Moses went up went up and again just a little further down in
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in 20 all the people looking up at Mount Sinai perceived the Thunder and the lightning and the flashes and sound of the trumpet and the mountains smoking and when the people saw it they trembled and they stood at a distance
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so we see the Lord descending we see him coming down in fire upon the mountain and this is not the only place but we see the
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Advent of the Lord appearing here as fire descending upon the mountain which leads us to what I hinted at last week Pentecost so if you want to turn with X to we're going to be mostly an ax the rest
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of this morning I'm going to read the first 15 verses there set the stage for us
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mm-hmm Acts chapter 2 beginning in verse 1. when the day of Pentecost had come they were all together in one place and suddenly there came from heaven and noise like a violent rushing wind and it
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filled the whole house where they were sitting and there appeared to them in tongues as a fire Distributing themselves and they rested on each one of them and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with
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other tongues as the spirit was giving them utterance them utterance now there were Jews living in Jerusalem devout men from every nation under heaven and when this sound occurred the
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crowd came together and were bewildered because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language they were amazed and astonished saying why are not all of these who are
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speaking galileans and how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born parthen parthians and medes and elamites and residents of Mesopotamia Judea and
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Cappadocia pontus and Asia um phrygia and pamphilia Egypt and the districts of Libya around Cyrene and visitors from Rome both Jews and
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proselytes cretans and Arabs we hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty Deeds of God and they all continued in amazement with great perplexity saying to one another
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what does this mean but others were mocking and saying they are full of sweet wine but Peter taking his stand with the eleven raised his voice and declared to the men of Judea and all you who live in Jerusalem let this be known
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to you and give heed to my words for these men are not drunk as you suppose for it is only the third hour of the day
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Babel and I would argue here in Acts chapter 2 at Pentecost
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we have effectively God's reversal his reinvention of the events at Babel
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the acts in in Babylon of course or in Babel in Pentecost they're of course foretold prophesied in a couple of places we see of course John the Baptist saying there's one who comes after me who will baptize with fire Jesus himself promises to pour out the
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spirit on him we have those things anticipated but if we look at the details of what we just examined in in Genesis 11 and we look here in Pentecost
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I think we will find some some interesting similarities that Babel man sought to reach up into heaven man sought to climb and to ascend by his own power up into the Heights Here we see
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God descending upon them as a spirit coming down and meeting man upon the Earth in effect where at Babel man was attempting to reach into heaven as it were to claim
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God's territory here we find God very directly reaching down to establish the New Kingdom upon the Earth in his people reaching down his arm to anoint them with his spirit
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at Babel man was seeking to establish a name for himself here at Pentecost we find what is typically considered to be the inauguration of the church the Christian Church the Christ ones those who will be called by his name who will establish
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the name of the Lord upon the Earth in the face of all the nations we see a reversal of the tongues whereas in Babel they were unified and were scattered by the confusion of the
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languages here we find an example of we're told by the writer every language that was on the earth at the time all of the languages in that whole region everybody was represented
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there and they all understood one another the understanding was reversed though they were speaking in their own tongues God gave them understanding to hear one another with understanding so
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he's reversing what happened at Babel with the confusing of the tongues the dimming of the understanding by the creation of those languages
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and with that reversal we find Unity whereas at Babel God introduced the many tongues and the dimming of their understanding in order to scatter them and to disperse them here he has drawn them together from every tongue tribe
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and Nation to give them that understanding to give them wisdom to unite them in unity before they return as lights to those various communities
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in their own language there were some who've heard in their own language but there were some who obviously saw obviously saw regardless right so they heard a lot of chattering and they heard a lot of
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things best as we can tell it's similar to some of the things that are going to happen later so it says specifically that they were speaking
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uh where does it say here they were speaking as the spirit gave them utterance yeah for they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the spirit was giving them utterance
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the details are not entirely plain but most people think given the number given the size given the fact that Peter stands up and addresses the whole of Israel in his speech they
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were probably were probably right in the perimeter or area of the temple at the time this was happening and so yes you have those who were anointed those who were called and those who were not those who who were not
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blessed in that way so yes there is a witness of the Nations that that they are they are calling but Peter says they're not drunk
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because that would have been hurt by even unbelievers from those regions and intelligible right so what was what we call tongues right but it was also a miracle of hearing in those
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who were receiving the gospel right right and so that's what I started to say and I lost my my thought halfway through there it seems to be similar to some of the things that Paul is talking about later speaking in tongues that has
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since become a point of contention and confusion but it seems to be yes tongues as a category there's a lot of argument about um and frankly there's a lot in the rabbinic
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writings and and a lot of the early patriotic writings about what the language that was spoken at Babel before the introduction introduction of the various languages and whether speaking
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in tongues is speaking in the original language and of course many of the rabbis would contend that Hebrew was the original language original language I'm not getting into all that because it's not written um but yes there certainly seems to be
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those who were given understanding and those who were not yes correct yes correct um but the point being here I frankly you know this is largely out of
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um Beals work and I agree with him on this point
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I do think that you can look at Pentecost has a reversal of Babel pointedly that in the inauguration of the church he is undoing these things and this comes back to
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um you know we think about sort of the wording here in Acts 2 that he lists out a bunch of countries at the time that was effectively the
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known world that was every category of of nation that they were aware of at the time and I think it goes you know we use the phrase and it gets misappropriated
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in missions a lot but every tongue tribe and nation that we read in Revelation 7 when John is seeing them all assembled Before the Throne of the Lord and he counts out all the tribes of Israel and
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then he says and they were representatives there of every tongue tribe and Nation on upon Earth uncountable we're seeing the the beginnings of that the the initiation of that that really here at the very first
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the very beginning anointing of the spirit is sending out members into every one of the represented Nations there right at the
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and I want to make this point because I think it goes back to something that Chuck mentioned the last week in regards to when God created Chuck used the phrase he gave himself a need he created
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something to work on he did not simply create and spin it off into ether to be left to its own devices he created in such a way that he would
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continually be involved and in contact with it and I think you can honestly go through just about every major phase of Revelation and find something that God is
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what's the right word making a new creation of creation of in this new heavens and new earth you look here at you know think of Genesis 3 as an example the fall of Man
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well that's the big one that goes through Revelation that we're all looking for the reversal of course the reversal of the fall of Man but it's not just a reversal and that's
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the point is it is reversing the effects but it's not merely a reversal
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so take as an example Genesis 3 where man originally in the garden dwelt with God walked with God in innocence now man walks
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saved man walks with God in unimpeachable unshakable imputed righteousness it is not movable the way man's original state was it is not removable or
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revocable because it stands by the power of God so it's not merely restoring man to his original state it is making man something greater than he was before so as God is reversing the fall of Man he
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is also making of man something more than his original estate we look here in Genesis 11 he is not merely reversing the confusion of the language or the circumstances of Babel he is anointing
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his kingdom upon the Earth as he's doing so he's making that new Temple and we're going to get into that here in a minute um you think about you know the law the
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law of God and all the things that come with that well what do we promised later on God does not reinvent the law God does not abolish it he writes the law on our hearts he gives us that wisdom that knowledge that understanding that comes
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out of his scriptures written on our hearts we're told it is something more than what it was before you look at the destruction of the temple what does Jesus say that confuses everybody you know tear down this Temple that's taken
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you so long to build and I'll Build It Up in three days speaking of his own body but also speaking of his body and that's where we're going with this is the church has the temple as the
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creative activity of God we've hinted at this multiple times that the church is that current Temple of Christ where his name dwells where he meets with man it's something more than merely the
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signs and symbols that the temple and the Tabernacle represented before you could even say this about our flesh God made man made some version of the
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flesh that we currently experience though we experience it in corruption and in sin yet we are told you know you think of the visions of the various people who saw Jesus in his resurrected form how
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astonishing that was and then Peter tells us that when he appears we shall be as he is even our flesh our physical frame will be something more than what it was in its original state
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and so God does not merely um take these things and restore them he is building up making greater perfecting his work in every aspect as he works it
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out through the history of man and his own Redemption and revelation and so that's one of the things I want to make the point of as we go through and we think about the creative activity of God is
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it's not it's not God never does anything just right not just in terms of justice but he never just does the minimum that that needs to
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be done be done he is not merely fixing the problems he is not merely reversing the effects he is not merely as though that were a mere thing
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sustaining the entire created order and universe by his power and authority he is improving on his very good work that he began in the beginning that
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everything he's doing he's the expression of his will upon the Earth and in our lives and in just every circumstance God is creating better than what he started with
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so God's creative activity continues God created a need and make you know continues his involvement in it and his his Improvement his refurbishing if you like of the things that he is doing
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we have of course hinted at it several times now and we'll pick up the concept of the church as the temple the temple of God and I want to do a couple of things out of Acts there's a lot of
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different ways around we could do this because there's a lot of references but since we're in Acts let's turn over to Acts chapter four
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as Peter and John are responding again the Peter as the spokesperson The Voice tells them here and he's of course quoting from the Old Testament but in his response to the high priest and to
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Caiaphas he says um I'm going to start in verse 8. Peter filled with the Holy Spirit said to them rulers and Elders of the
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people if we are on trial today for a benefit done to a sick man as to how this man has been made well let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of
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Jesus Christ the Nazarene whom you crucified whom God raised from the dead by this name this man stands before you in good health he of course meaning Jesus is the stone
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which was rejected by you the builders but which became the Chief Cornerstone and there is salvation in no one else there is no name no other name under Heaven that has been given among men by
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which we must be saved and so we look at the again contrast between
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the establishment of the name as Peter is reminding them very clearly in this reference back to prophecy about the temple and about the Cornerstone Jesus Christ is the Chief Cornerstone of that Temple very clear Temple language
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being used here as he is rebuffing them again in Acts over in Acts 6 and 7 during Stephen's defense
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Steven's defense is always interesting to me because it kind of does the entire course history of the Redemption and and narrative the life of Israel in a couple of sentences couple of paragraphs but as he
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41 or so well I'll start down in 44. so as he's rebuking them and and going through this history with them he gets to The Exodus and then he says in verse 44 our fathers had the Tabernacle of
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testimony in the wilderness just as he who spoke to Moses directed him to make it according to the pattern which he had seen and having received it in their turn our fathers brought it in with
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Joshua upon dispossessing the Nations whom God drove out before our fathers until the time of David David found favor in God's sight and asked that he might find a dwelling place for the god
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of Jacob but it was Solomon who built a house for him however the most high does not dwell in a house made by human hands as the prophet says Heaven is my throne
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and Earth is the footstool of my feet what kind of house will you build for me says the Lord or what place is there for my Repose was it not my hand which made all of these things you men who are
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stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit you who are doing just as your fathers did which one of the prophets did your
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fathers not persecute they killed those who had previously announced the coming of the righteous one whose betrayers and murderers you have now become you who received the law as
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ordained by angels and yet did not keep it so this is right before this sort of very pointed concluding indictment he wraps up with this idea of God gave them
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a pattern to build the Tabernacle he gave to Solomon to build the temple you have all of these things that you hold up these physical physical edifices as symbols of God's presence with you but
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God has in fact already told you this isn't it my permanent residence my Dwelling Place cannot be made with human hands and so we see uh prefacing an idea
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that God is building the temple building his Dwelling Place By His Hands by his and that it may in fact not take a fully
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physical form in um acts 15 . again I think we often think of this one in terms of the
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very contextually accurate and and significant conflict between the Jews and the Gentiles and whether there should be should be the law of Moses apply to the Gentiles
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and all of these things but there's an interesting phrase here in James's judgment James's response um as James answers them
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he says here at the very beginning of my Bible has the heading James's judgment but after they present their case here in verse 13 of Acts 15 it says after they had stopped speaking James answered
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saying Brethren listen to me Simeon has related how God first concerned himself about taking from among the Gentiles a people for his name
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with this the words of the prophets agree just as it is written after these things I will return and I will rebuild the Tabernacle of David which has fallen and I will rebuild its ruins and I will
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restore it so that the rest of mankind May seek the Lord and all the Gentiles who are called by my name says the Lord who makes these things known from long
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ago so he's clearly looking at this looking at the church looking at the nascent bringing in of the Gentiles and clearly identifying God is right now rebuilding
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that Tabernacle he he could basically point out the window at the temple at this point still there and say these words God is rebuilding the Tabernacle he is restoring the ruins of David
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because he's building his church so he is putting together he is making that place for his name to dwell he is fulfilling his promise to David to
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establish the kingdom to have the presence of his name and of his people upon the Earth and so we look at these things and we say you know the the glory of God in
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not just reversing but as he is building he is making something new or something greater something glorious and the prophets agree
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are there questions about that before I go on to the next we're going to look at a couple other references before we close this morning
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of reference to the idea of of the church as the temple then so Jesus answers to the
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to the disciples in John Chapter 2 saying destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up we already referred to this um but it says in in John in verse 21
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he was speaking of the Temple of his body so when he was raised from the dead his disciples remembered that he says said this and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had
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um we of course understand through the various places in Scripture that we're told that we are the body of Christ that we the Believers are fulfilling that same that raising of his body is not
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just or strictly his physical body but he is now building the body of the Church of of which Jesus is the head as Paul tells us elsewhere
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since we believe in him as as Lord and Savior and that we are a body of Christ we too are a temple of the Holy Spirit
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he writes in the Corinthians in in his first letter to the Corinthians now God has not only raised the Lord but will also raise us up through his power do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ and again a little
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later now you are Christ's body and individually members of it and then backtracking in Corinthians back to chapter three do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the spirit
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of God dwells in you and so he's tying together in that book these ideas of the
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that we as members of Christ's body are Temple of the Holy Spirit and this goes back again to hammer this point home God again is not simply reversing or recreating circumstances of what he did
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before in the garden God walked with man in the temple in the Tabernacle he came down as a presence among them here at Pentecost we find well really you have the sort of mini Pentecost in John 20
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that we could go look at where he sends his Spirit into the disciples but largely at Pentecost we have the emergence of the Holy Spirit dwelling in man and so we have gone from
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from dwelling with man to dwelling in man and I don't know how often you find yourself reflecting on this or you know Sundays is as good a day as any to think about it
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all the prophecies all the I mean we've spent all of these many weeks talking about the creative activity of God the establishment of his created order of his creative activity the fact that he
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gives this pattern and he sees to it that man follows through and man builds for him the Tabernacle and then the temple and frankly we see even the in um
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oh we might as well turn there and refer back to it in John chapter 2 as the um disciples are marveling turning the wrong way
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wrong way disciples marveling at the glories of this physical Temple
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in verse 13 as the Passover was near and the Jews went up to Jerusalem he found in the temple those who were selling and he he drives them out says take these things away describes it as his father's
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um and then the Jews answer him in well I'm going to start at 19 it says Jesus answered them saying destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up 20 the Jews said it took 46 years to
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raise to build this Temple and you will raise it up in three days but he was speaking of the Temple of his body we see I think in the other gospels as the disciples are basically marveling at
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it they're wandering around staring at you know the the high ceilings and the great glories and the coverings of gold and all of these things and you know we have the example in the prophets of
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um you know when they rebuild after the Babylonian exile the Weeping of the people at how small and seemingly insignificant this Temple was and then of course Herod goes to this this effort
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and this expense to Spruce it up to make this Temple that they were marveling at this glorious physical structure and what we're reading through the prophets and I think what Jesus is getting at
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with them here where they're standing around marveling and all this and he's kind of dismissive of it
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in the conception of God this is far more glorious than any of those things that went before this is so much more marvelous in his plan to be here than all of those beautiful structures
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Bible so it says it's a new creation exactly so it's not a greater creation because there's nothing wrong with the first creation right it's just a new creation
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right it's a word a bad word so here's here's the way I think about this is you look at what the writer of
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Hebrews does in his writing he talks about Moses and he makes these contrasts between Moses and Jesus he's never putting Moses down he's always
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very careful to describe how great Moses was how glorious it was how providentially used of God he was just the the intense blessing that God brought to man in Moses and then he
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basically says and now consider Christ you know how much greater than even that he has made Jesus Christ to me that's the difference between
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the Beauty and the glory that we enjoy and see around us here this creation that is good and great and an intense blessing and again we've spent all of these weeks looking at it as the
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creative activity of God it is it is the work of his hands it is good and it is glorious and yet how much more glorious this creation and that's that's what I'm getting at is the
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it is an intensification it is a a higher estate a greater level it's hard to conceive of how God can
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make one thing inferior to another but you can cast your mind back to Genesis we see the phrase a couple of times it was good it was good and then at the end it was very good so he he clearly is is
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tackling some tackling some scale or some level there and again it's not in any way to diminish the glory of the current Creation in which we live but it is described as
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I just have a hard time saying that this is better than the original creation you recognize as it is I think there could be no comparative degrees in God
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yeah so yeah so yes it's it doesn't increase his glory because his glory cannot be increased
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right it increases the magnification or the visibility of the manifestation I would agree with him I think it's from our perspective
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Paul says that he is manifesting his glory to glory to to the cosmos to all the powers and principalities which includes the Angelic host himself I couldn't I think I
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God is full and he's not he's not he's not increasing in degrees
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yeah I you know I don't disagree that there is there is there is no shade in God I guess your your term there from our perspective because that is how he is
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communicating to us he's communicating in terms that are intelligible to us and from the place where we stand um we can't fully put ourselves into God's mind in any sense so yes I I would
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he's not changing his mind or his plan right this has always been his purpose but it is being revealed in degrees and and and I guess that's where we're trying to get to is is the fact that and
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we we talked about this a little bit in preceding weeks preceding weeks we have our sort of five you know
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Genesis one to revelation to revelation 21 and we we're standing in here somewhere and yet God is Transcendent above his creation
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and so all of this is in his scope all of this is in his and we're standing somewhere on this timeline
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okay looking at it standing in the middle of of of history of of God's revealed purpose as it as it unfolds as it expands
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I do think as far as we see it the way he's revealing it to us though he is you know again to go back to the example of God created man in His image and he created him very good as he is redeeming man for himself he
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has created as he tells us in the scriptures both vessels for Destruction and vessels for glorification there's a difference now in man
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man has saved cannot be shaken cannot be fallen again cannot be unmoored there's
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I'm struggling for the right term for it there's a there's a stability there stability there that is different from the way man was originally created does that make sense in the sense that man has originally
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created had the capacity to fall man has redeemed God's purpose in Saving man will not fail he will not allow one of his own to
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be taken out of his hand there is an unshakableness there that was not previously in the nature of man does that make
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again I don't disagree there is no shade of of degree in God he is in and of himself perfect in all of his aspects and and
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attributes but as we stand on the timeline and as we see his purpose unfolding there is this is where we're trying to go and this is probably going to be since we
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have five minutes left you know the the majority of next week's lesson is is about the new creation man as the new creation what do all of those things mean because there's a lot of disagreement about what it is to be the
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new creation but what I'm getting at is God's original creation as we read it here in Genesis 1 and and Man created upright but with the capacity to fall
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because we know that must be true because he did in his his old creation then as man falls as Sin enters into the world is
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subjected we read to futility it is subjected to sin it is subjected to corruption as God is making this new creation we're going to read in in Revelation he is casting all of that
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corruption off to the side and He is building this new creation no sin can enter there no dishonor can enter there uh we read these things in in Revelation
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okay starting in verse 22 he says I saw no temple in it for the Lord God Almighty and the lamb are its Temple and the city has no need of the Sun or the moon to shine upon it for the glory of God has loomed it and its lamp is the Lamb the
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Nations walk by its light and the kings of the earth will bring their Glory into it in the daytime for there will be no night there its Gates will never be closed and they will
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bring in the glory and the honor of the Nations into it and nothing unclean and no one who practices Abomination and lying shall ever come into it but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life
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there's this difference of a state in this place and again I do appreciate the the point and I try to be careful with my
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phrasing but he has in a way that is not current separated the two split the the futility the subjugation of the sin apart from his Heavenly dwelling his his new city
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that comes down upon the Earth and one of the things that that's curious about this is we've talked a couple of times and Aaron even asked me the question in the in the
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arrangement of the Tabernacle and the implements why is the seven-armed lamp stand where it is in the Tabernacle what does that communicate to us you notice here as far as we can read
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those heavenly bodies have been done away with we don't have the Sun and the Moon we the light of God is suffusing this creation what's going on with that why do the celestial bodies why are they
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removed and I think there's an element of um kind of goes several weeks back to Ariel's point about Jacob's Ladder as he's laying there and he's seeing that ladder sort of extending from the earth
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through the heavens up to heaven where God dwells the heavenlies exist not as we can see them in our material frame but they seem to exist metaphysically as the bridge as the
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space between where God dwells and where man is upon the Earth and in Revelation he's pulled that middle out those heavenly bodies are gone because
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God has come to dwell fully and finally upon the Earth with man in that physical reality now and so that intervening that that interstitial space is gone
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and in the new creation that's an excellent point so they are they are the markers of time and of Seasons it even tells us here there will be no night time there will be no shadow of turning because it will be consistent
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and and and and established again there's a stability to the New Creation that is distinguished from the existing creation is is the
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point I'm trying to get at are there any other questions or comments before comments before I don't think I don't think the creative activity of God will ever cease and I
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don't think the creative activity of Man created in the image of the Creator will ever cease you know it's
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more courage yeah and I have no idea what that'll look like but I sure look forward to it I mean it kind of goes back to some things Chuck's mentioned from from his studies a number of times you read man had a job to do man had work in Genesis 1. it isn't until later
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in Genesis 3 and 4 that that becomes work such as we call it now I don't think we're all going to be sitting around all the time I think
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there will be things to do things to glorify I mean we read here the idea that the the Kings the nations are coming in to the gates bringing things in I don't know what that means precisely what we will be doing but I
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think we will be active and I think God will be active in his his creation and his his creative power and in all of those attributes that we see those things continue in the you
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know it's one of the reasons why you could throw a bombshell at us in the last minute before class ends it's one of the reasons why damnation is eternal because the justice of God will be
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eternally his attribute will not cease in the destruction in some kind of termination uh cessation of that judgment
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well on that cheerful note let's close and go upstairs for worship him in our service together
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father we do thank you for your word for your glorious attributes we ask that you would be with us this morning that you would anoint us with the holy spirit that we might be able to magnify you for we know there is nothing within
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ourselves within our own feeble conceptions that are able to glorify you as you ought to be but we ask that you would be at work in us that our Praises
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would be acceptable that they would be a banner before the Nations for the glory and for the name of God that has come to dwell here that you would Advance your kingdom today as you have promised to do
