As we open our scripture to Hebrews chapter one, we're looking at the ascension of Jesus Christ. And that word simply means he was here, and then he ascended into the heavens. He rose to new life, but then after that, he rose to his seat next to the right hand of the Father in heaven. There's a whole lot that we probably don't have time for in one message about all that's going on. One of the things that, that, that, that maybe you need to understand that was happening in the time after Jesus rose again, until the time he ascended into heaven, was the actual timeline.

It was 40 days after he rose again, until his day of ascension. And during that time, he. You think, like, what was he doing? We don't know a lot of that, A lot of it. We're not exactly sure what he was doing during all of that.

But one of the things that he did do was he wasn't hidden. He wasn't saying, well, they killed me once, I'm worried they'll kill me again. He was actually going around to people that had seen him, that knew him, that knew him before he had died, people that had witnessed his death, people that knew for sure that he was dead, and he showed up and spent time with them. I imagine it was a time that was largely without agenda or without a calendar telling him where he had to be or an appointment book that he had to be at. He just simply went around and visited the people that he had been close to, and they knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was alive.

There are several different appearances he made to his disciples. People that were close to him where he would say things like, you know, give me something to eat. You're thinking I'm a ghost. Why would they think he's a ghost unless they were 100% convinced he had been dead? He's.

He's dead dead, but comes back to life after three days in a tomb. And he says, you know what? I'll prove it to you. I'll eat some. I'll eat something.

So they hand him some broiled fish, and he eats that kind of a specific detail. They didn't just say, oh, they gave him a snack. They said he gave him broiled fish like that stuck out in somebody's mind. And they wrote it down so that it would be preserved for us to be able to, to reference later and say, okay, he's eating, like human food as a human being. He's alive again.

He didn't just raise back to life in a spiritual form that looked Like a human being. He wasn't just appearing to be alive again. He was alive. And he did this over 40 days. And they said he gave many convincing proofs that he was alive.

They give us a couple of those, you know, just little things that we can kind of look at and say, okay, sounds good. But they said there's a whole bunch more that he did, and they list the people that he had mentioned. You got a question?

So, yeah, let's get to that. That's a great question. He still had evidence of the wounds. I like that. That's good.

Thanks. If I ignore a hand, like, it's like, okay, I'm in the middle of something. Hang on. You know, I don't want to forget this, but that's a great question. So he.

He actually had some people that didn't believe they hadn't seen him, but they didn't believe that he was alive again. They're like. They'd heard some of their friends say, oh, we saw him. And they're like, nah, I really need to see it myself. And one of them, Thomas, he gets his bad nickname Doubting Thomas, because of, like, one dumb thing that he said.

Can you imagine if you said one dumb thing? And then for the rest of your life, they're like, no, no, that's you now, you know? And so Doubting Thomas, bless his heart, you know, like, there's. There wouldn't be Christianity in, like, places like India without the witness of Thomas going there. But anyway, you know, like, we don't remember him, that we just say doubting Thomas.

Thomas says, unless I can touch those wounds in his hands and. And see the wounds in his feet and touch where his side was pierced with the Roman soldier's sword, I won't believe it. So Jesus shows up another time with the disciples when Thomas is there, and he's like, hey, dude, you. You. You wanted some proof.

Here, Go ahead, go ahead. Put your finger in here. Touch my side. See that? Like, it's me.

And I was wounded. I was dead. So, like, even though Jesus was brought back to life, his body still bore those scars. It tells us something about when we are resurrected again in the future, that the scars of what has happened to us on this earth might still be somewhat visible, but they won't be painful. We might remember the experiences we had in life on earth, but when we're in our heavenly bliss, it'll just seem so faint and distant.

I've been reading the Narnia books with Emma, and last night was particularly trying because that girl Would not go to sleep. I fell asleep, like asleep asleep two different times and woke up again. And I'm laying on her floor with this book and I look up in her bed and she's there, wide eyed. I mean, we're talking 11:30 at night. I'm like, my goodness child, I'm like, you need to sleep.

I've fallen asleep twice on your floor. I'm tired of this, you know. But anyway, CS Lewis does this great thing in the Narnia series where he paints this picture of them being this place. Like once it's kind of all made new again and all the pain of the past is wiped away. And yet they still recognize it.

They can still vaguely remember it, but it seems like such a distant memory, like it was a dream almost. And yet they know they had lived there during the times when that earth was painful. The world of Narnia was painful and scarred. And yet then when, when the, the one who was ruler over at Aslan comes through, he. He sweeps through and renews all things.

It's a picture of what Jesus is planning on doing. And we're going to talk more about that later. So all that was unplanned. I was just kind of. Those are some opening remarks.

But the, the wounds were there. And so Thomas says, I believe. Now Jesus says, oh, you believe because you were able to see physical proof. What did the song say? The, the.

It says, when faith shall be sight in that day, the faith that we have becomes sight. Like the thing that we believe without seeing it. We will one day see the opposite of that was where Thomas lived. He says, I don't have faith, I need sight. Jesus says, blessed are those who believe.

Having not seen. We don't see the, the proof of Jesus. And yet we have that faith. And then later, one day, we'll actually see him face to face. So during this time, during this time after Jesus was risen again, he's with his people for 40 days.

He @ one point is seen by a group of 500 people. That's a pretty reliable number, I guess, of people that can say like, yep, we were there, we saw him. It's not a conspiracy. We were there. I'm a guy that loves conspiracies, by the way.

I don't think they're really a theory so much as it is there's a conspiracy. There are people that conspired to do something. The theory is just who and what and how, you know. But I know they did it. Like they're lying to me every day.

I know this just turn on the news and you're like, I know you're lying. You know, like, you guys aren't telling me the whole truth. It's not possible. You guys are telling me some lie. If you believe the news.

I'm sorry. Like, we can be friends, but we can't agree on a few things is what it boils down to. It's like, I hate being lied to. And so, you know, it's like, I just don't watch the news. But anyway, I'm probably still being lied to on the stuff that I do watch.

So, like, as long as you're aware of it, it's like, I don't story behind the lie. I just know that I'm being lied to. Well, Jesus proved to all these people, he's like, I'm not lying. They're not lying. It's not just a small group of people trying to cover up something or make something up.

This is true. And he appeared reliably to a whole bunch of people over a period of 40 days. But then while he's with them, he's with his disciples. And by the way, from the first interaction he had with somebody after he rose from the grave on Easter morning after resurrection, morning after the first day that he rose from the grave, the first person that he's talking with is Mary. And she's there and she wants to grab a hold of him.

And this is a question that Karen had earlier in the week. And I wrote a little paper on it to, to answer it because I had to study it. But he says, mary, don't cling to me. I have to ascend to my Father. From the very moment that he was out of the grave, he's already talking about his ascension.

But it's, it's, it's 40 days away from then. It's weeks away. But he's already talking about what will happen so that it wouldn't be such a surprise when it did. Because when that day does happen, Jesus is there and he's talking with his disciples. And then it's kind of like, it's like, hey, somebody tie a string on him.

He's, he's. He's leaving. You know, like, we want him to stay here. That was what Mary wanted, was she wanted Jesus to stay. She'd lost him, he died, and now he's back to life.

And she's accepting that fact, but she's, she's clinging on to him, like holding him there, doesn't want to let go of Jesus because she doesn't Want to live life without him. He says, hang on a second, you're missing something. I'm going to ascend to my Father, and it's good for you that I do that, because if I do that, I can send the Holy Spirit. So this is a beautiful thing, the ascension of Jesus Christ. After 40 days on Earth with those that were closest to him, those that he loved, and he spends his time with them, they're convinced that they're not just convinced a little bit, they're convinced so much so that many or most of them would end up dying.

Defending the truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's the one central thing that is, that is like, you can't be a Christian and deny this. Like. Like, you can't be a Christian and deny that Jesus was born of a virgin. You can't be a Christian and deny that Jesus was Rose again.

All the other stuff you can be like, I don't know about that, but those two central things you've got to be able to buy into. And if you have trouble with that, not right now, but I'd be happy to talk with you about it and be like, hey, here's the whole list of things that shows how plausible, how provable, how believable it is. But blessed are those who believe having not seen. So we're going to read our scripture in Hebrews Chapter one. I'm definitely going to need my glasses.

I was about to try it without glasses. In Hebrews Chapter one, we see this after God spoke long ago in various portions and in various ways to our ancestors through the prophets. In these last days he has spoken to us through His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things and through Whom he created the world. The sun is the radiance of his glory and the representation of his essence. And he sustains all things by his powerful word.

So when he had accomplished cleansing for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. Thus he became so far better than the angels as he has inherited a name superior to theirs. By the way, I want to clear up something on that last verse. It's not in my notes, but I was thinking about it when it says that he inherited a name far superior to the angels, Jesus was already superior to the angels. The angels were created by God.

Jesus is not created. That's something the cults of, like Mormonism and other things would say is that Jesus was a human that became God or that God the Father became a God. That's not true. They'll tell you that you can become a God. That was the first lie that Satan said to Adam and Eve.

If you eat this fruit, you can become a God yourself. That's a lie and that's not true. You're not able to do that. You weren't created to do that. But Jesus, Jesus, his name was already superior to that of the angels.

But now as a human, he has achieved a name superior to the angels as well in his resurrected state. So I just want to clear that up. That's like, not really part of the rest of the message. I just wanted to say, like, in case somebody's like, wait a second, he didn't talk about that there. Now I talked about it.

So let's get into it. The scripture says that long ago that, that God spoke through prophets. Now God spoke through prophets to his people. There's two ways that prophets primarily speak. They speak by foretelling and forth telling those two things.

Yeah, there we go. I think I got a slide. Foretelling and forth telling. Now foretelling is when people think, oh well, a prophet like tells about the future. You know, foretells what's going to happen.

That's what that's about. You're foretelling the future. You're telling ahead of time what God is going to do within the world in maybe in a large way or in a local area or something like that, or even telling of future things. Like there was a prophet that spoke up in the New Testament in the book of Acts and said, hey, there's going to be a group of. There's going to be.

Not a group, but there's going to be a place where there's a famine in the area of Jerusalem. There's going to be a famine in that region. And so the churches should take up an offering to support what's going to happen there in the poverty and food supply shortages that are going to be happening around Jerusalem. And so they did that because that prophet was telling of future things. But there's also fourth telling whereby somebody that has a prophetic spirit, the spirit of God speaking prophetically through them is talking about the times that we live in and saying this is the will of God to happen in this time and through God's people that's kind of speaking forth the things of God or the vision that God has, the plan that God has for us.

I'll tell you that that's actually a whole lot more common than foretelling. Now, even in the Old Testament, when the prophets spoke, they did in both ways. They spoke Sometimes foretelling of things to come, but many times they were just forthtelling what God was going to be doing in and through his people. So the scripture here says that in these last days, which is interesting because so many people say, I think we're living in the last days. 100%, I can promise you, yes.

I don't have to guess. I don't have to line like the book of Revelation up with the news or any of that stuff. I can tell you 100%, yes, we are living in the last days, in the end times. Because Jesus said it, he called it from when he was alive. He says these are the last days.

That tells us something about it, that the last days began at the time of Christ, and it goes until the return of Christ. These are the last days. It seems to be a long period of last days, but for, for sure it is the last days, the end of times. And so Jesus, it says that God spoke through the prophets before now, but in these last days he has spoke through His Son, Jesus Christ. He spoke through Jesus Christ.

And so what we recognize, especially if you go back to John chapter one, if you haven't ever studied the first 18 verses of John chapter one, you're going to be missing out on a lot of things. By the way, there are notes that go along with this sermon. If you see the little white dots on the seat in front of you, you can scan that if you know how to. It's called an NFC tag. And you just hold the top of your phone up next to it and it gives you an option to click on a little link.

And then that link will have a whole bunch of links. And the top two pertain to today's message. Just throwing that out there for you if you want to do that. It's something that you can use later on or right now if you want. And so Jesus, if we read in John chapter one, it says that all of creation was made through him.

In fact, it says that all creation was made through him, and not one thing was made without him. In other words, Jesus, we see, wasn't just born at a certain time. And that's it. He has been here forever from eternity past, and he's been with the Father, and he was with the Father at the time of creation, and it was all happened through him.

Jesus is what John says in this chapter is the Logos. That's a Greek word. It looks like Logos. L, O G O, S. He is the Logos of God.

Logos kind of means expression. He is the full expression of God, he is the one that. That expresses God completely and fully to us. And so if you were wondering at any point, like, what does God look like? In fact, one of his disciples says, lord, if you can just show us the Father, that'll be good enough for us.

He's like, haven't you been with me very long? Recognize that I. When you see me, I show you who the Father is. I show you the fullness of God, the full expression of who God is. So that's what Jesus was doing.

Now, Jesus had appeared before he was born. He had appeared before in something called christophanies. A christophany is an Old Testament appearance of Jesus taking on, for a temporary time, human flesh, a human appearance for a limited amount of time. Usually when somebody needed a very direct message and you couldn't say, well, I heard it in my head, or I heard God. I'm pretty sure it was God.

Have you ever been there, by the way? I think it was God telling me this, but I'm not sure. Always back that up. Does it align with scripture? Like, if God says, I want you to go and hurt someone?

No, no, that didn't happen. I know, like, last week we talked about Nehemiah punching some dudes and scalping them, you know, and cursing them. I'm not saying God told him to do that, but, you know, he was still the good guy in the story. Like, he was the good one, you know, like, oh, my. Anyway, the.

And. And as much as I love that, I don't plan on employing that as part of my ministry strategy for, like, growth in the kingdom of God, you know, it just doesn't seem to be the way, you know. But anyway, the Christophanies of Jesus was a time where he would appear for a limited time or limited purpose so that somebody would be 100% certain that they had had a communication from God. One of those people was Jacob, the grandson of Abraham. Except the way that Jesus appeared was as a wrestler.

I don't think, like, wwe, you know, with the weird costume and all that. I just think, like, I know what he did. He just wrestled with Jacob. And I don't know if it was a physical wrestling. I know it was, but I think it was more about this spiritual battle that was going on with Jacob where he didn't want to allow God to make him holy.

He still wanted to live his life on his terms. And yet he had promised God that if I go on my journey safely and come back to this point safely, you'll be my God and I'll worship you. And Jesus shows up, and he's like, hey, you said it on this date that you're going to do it. And I did it. And so you got to serve me with your whole life and your whole heart.

Jacob wrestles with him all night. Finally, it's daybreak. And he's like, let me go. And he's like, nah, I don't think so. And so Jesus touches Jacob and messes up his hip, and he's walking with a limp, you know, the rest of his life.

I don't know if that was a pimp walker or a limp. I'm not sure. I'm sorry about that. Anyway, so anyway, Jacob, he walks with that limp so that he remembers with every step that he is God's holy servant, that he has committed his life to God. So Jesus shows up in that place in a Christophany, and he's done that several times in different specific moments for people.

But now he's shown up, not just taking on human flesh for a moment, but born as a human. That had never happened before with Jesus. He's born as a human through the Virgin Mary. And he's born and he lives, he grows up. He has all the experiences of life that humans have, and he lives through all of those things.

And then he is. He is, you know, all those life experiences. On top of that, he is tempted by Satan, by sin, and yet he holds fast. He doesn't commit any sin. So Jesus shows up.

He. He's here for all times. And it's just amazing for me to think that he would do that, considering the fact that all creation was made through him. We saw that in John, chapter 1, verses 1 through 3. All creation is held together by Jesus.

We see in Colossians 1:17. And then lastly, his name, his power and his authority are above all others. You can look at Ephesians 1:21 for that. And so we see that Jesus is so much superior in all ways, and yet he consented to come to this earth, to live here and to live as a human and. And to die on behalf of you and me and all those who would accept him in faith.

So the question is, why would he come here and experience the entirety of the human condition? Like, with his superiority, with his. Like, he was here. He was like creation didn't happen without him. He holds creation together.

It says, all creation consists in Him. That's something they're still trying to figure out in some laws of physics. Like, how does this all work? You know, we still don't have a good definition for, like, how gravity works. We know what it does.

We know what it does. If it doesn't exist, by the way, there's people that don't believe in gravity. They just believe in, like, mass and, well, the Earth has to be flat for this scenario. But anyway, there's all these things, and that's fine. It's just like there's all these.

These different things we're trying to explain. How are we stuck here without just floating? And there's all this stuff, and it's like we still can't scientifically define that. For all I know is literally by the word of Christ, the power of Christ, that we're stuck down to this ground. For all I know, that's what it is.

Just because he says so. I don't know. I don't know. There's a whole lot of things that science hasn't figured out. And we love science when it's properly done.

Some people say, oh, Christians hate science. No, actually, science backs up the word of truth. It backs up what the scriptures say over and over and over again. And so we love science. We love archaeology.

Archaeology is a scientific method of looking through the dirt and seeing what happened in the past. And over and over and over again, we find so many proofs of what the scriptures claim to be, it ends up being true over and over and over again. We love this stuff. Well, Jesus, he came to this earth. The primary reason that he came to this earth is to deal with sin.

Jesus came here for a lot of reasons. He tells a lot of things that he wanted to do. He says, oh, I came to be the light of the world. He is the light of the world. He came to let that shine.

He says, oh, I came to preach to those lost in darkness. I came to preach to the poor the good news of the gospel to the poor. He talks about a lot of things. I came to heal. I came to redeem what was lost.

Jesus talks about all these things, but he says the big reason that I came here, the thing that he can do that no one else ever could, was to deal with the problem of sin. Elaine, you talked during that song about how much you love the idea that it says that one day that all of our sin, not just a little bit, not just part, but the whole of it, is nailed to the cross. And I don't bear it anymore because Jesus Christ did. Jesus Christ came to deal with our sin. The thing about sin is that it's so much of a bigger deal to God than it ever has been to us.

Think of this, think of this like cosmological thing. Like a few weeks ago I was on an airplane and we're flying over Atlanta. We're coming on approach to it and I look out my window, I think we're probably about 5,000ft high somewhere, give or take, as we're on approach. And I can see Atlanta now. Who's driven through Atlanta?

Who? Keep your hands up. Hated every second of it. As a passenger, as a driver, it's just like, ah, why? And the bypass, 285 going around it, it's no better, you know, it just isn't.

Just go straight through I75 all the way or 85, whatever you're going to. And it's just, you know, that's the only way to do it. It's just not great. Although I'll take it over I35 through Dallas. I hate that drive.

It's so terrible. Anyway, it's just like. Because you're stuck and up high, you know, Everything in Dallas is a bridge. I don't understand it for a city that doesn't have a big river, you know, it's like, why is everything a bridge? But it is.

Anyway, I'm on approach to Atlanta and I look out my window as we're kind of banking in, coming to the south of it, and I'm looking at Atlanta. And I could just go like that with my fingers. From far away and a few thousand feet high, it looked like nothing. I mean, it looked like nothing. And I recognized how small it seems from where I'm at.

But then if you go into low Earth orbit or the moon or way out to another planet or whatever, you look at Earth, you can't see us. Can't see my house from there, can't see me. I'm so insignificant. I'm nothing. You're nothing.

And yet to God you're everything.

We look so small from space, from a few thousand feet. I see the cars on the interstate as I look out the window of an airplane. And I think they look like ants in a line just, just making their way. Except even smaller than ants. They're just so tiny.

And it makes me think that the problems I go through every single day don't seem so big from 30,000ft.

God looks at the problem of our sin and he doesn't say, it's a tiny problem. He doesn't say, well, it's just sin. Ah, it's just that one little thing they did. It's just that one relationship where they got it wrong. It's just that one person they took advantage of.

It's just that one lie, or that one person they cheated or stole from. It's just a little bit. It's no big deal. God doesn't do that. He looks at sin and he says, that's a big problem.

And I will do the most seemingly extreme thing to deal with sin to bring you back into right relationship with me. Now, the question you might have is, Pastor Nick, you're talking about sin. What is it? What is sin like? Like, am I supposed to go back and follow all those laws in the Old Testament?

There's. There's the Ten Commandments. We've all broken a few of those. I promise. Some of us.

Maybe you've broken, like, let's say I hope nine out of ten. Like, I. I always hope there's at least not like, a murderer in the room, you know? Like, I really. I really hope that.

So, like, hopefully. But. But it's like. And maybe you haven't, like, carved a physical idol, but we've all carved some idols out of a few things, right? And so it's like, we've broken a bunch of these.

There's 631 total laws that he gave the Israelites. Are we supposed to keep all of those? No, actually, no, you weren't. You weren't supposed to keep all of those. That you're not an Israelite under covenant with God.

So you're off the hook on a lot of that stuff. But yet there's some of it that Jesus upheld some of those laws. He upheld some of those dated before that time. And so it's like, no, those are still the thing. Like, murder was actually before the Ten Commandments.

He had already said, like, don't kill another man or woman. You know, don't kill a person. You're not allowed to do that. Your. Their life is not in your hands.

And so it's like, yes, there's certain laws, but it's like, is that what sin is? Is that how he defined it? Is breaking a law again? No. I mean, yeah, it involves that, but that's not what the definition of sin is.

It is a definition of sin, like breaking a known law of God that needs a definite. Like a little asterisk next to it. A known law of God that applies to Christians today. I think we could say it that way. So there's no doctrinal statement that I'm quite happy with on this.

However, at the core of sin, what it is, is breaking the perfect law of love. When they ask Jesus, what's the most important commandment? He says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength. And love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two things.

When we fall, when we fall, when we have sin in our lives, it's because we have broken God's perfect law of love. Now, there's a lot of discussion today that people say, oh, people just need to love each other. Their definition of love sometimes is pretty messed up. It's not the kind of love that people say.

Other people, whoever's not you.

Nope. So Jesus talked. No, not other gods. Thank you for asking that. No.

Loving God and loving others. Other people. So when we do something that's not in step with the kind of love God has given us, then we're. We are sinning against God and against others. And Jesus came to fix that.

He came also to fix what's called an inborn sin or Adamic sin, The sin that we've inherited, the sinful nature that we've inherited from our first parents, Adam and Eve. It's that desire to sin. See, we all have a desire to sin that's within us. We see it in children constantly. Like, sometimes seems like they don't stop.

But then we look at ourselves and we're like, oh, I don't either. It's always there. And Jesus came to deal with that. Anyway, we got to move on. We got a lot of stuff left.

And I want to wrap it up pretty quickly here. So it's mind blowing to believe that Jesus would come to deal with sin, but God always treats our sin more seriously than we do. I've got a quote from a guy named R.C. sproul, who was a theologian he's passed on now, and it says, this sin is cosmic treason. Even the slightest sin a creature commits against his Creator does violence to the Creator's holiness, His glory, and his righteousness.

Every sin, no matter how seemingly insignificant, is an act of rebellion against a sovereign God who reigns and rules over us, and as such, is an act of treason. Treason against the cosmic king.

So the question is, what does Jesus ascension do for you and me today? Like, all the stuff that we've talked about, and believe me, there's a whole lot more that we're not getting to today. What does that do for us? Like, what does his ascension mean? What has he done since his ascension?

And how does that change not only my life today and your life today, but how does that change our future and our eternity as well? The first thing that we see is that Jesus continues to work. That's in several places, like Acts 1 and 2. When Luke is the author of this, he wrote the Gospel of Luke and he wrote the book of Acts. And he says in Acts 1 and 2, he says he addresses it to a guy named Theophilus.

And he says, theophilus, in my first book, the Gospel of Luke, I wrote about all that Jesus began do and to teach. Well, Luke talks about the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus in the gospel. So he's saying that's just the beginning. Jesus is still working after that. That's what the Acts is about, is what Jesus is doing through the power of the Holy Spirit, which working in the lives of his people that are believers in Christ.

And if you want more to see what is Jesus up to, like right now, just read the Book of Revelation, you know, like all of it. And don't get too caught up in like all the stuff you're confused about. Just see every time it talks about Jesus, he's talked about a few different, in a few different ways, he's sitting at the right hand of Father. He's described as a lamb that appeared to be slain but is actually brought back to life. He appears as he's called, the lion of the tribe of Judah.

There's a lot of different ways that it describes Jesus, but is talking about what Jesus is doing right now. The next thing that Jesus, you know, his ascension did was he lived. It says in Hebrews 7:25, says he lives to make intercession for us. I've got my Bible open to that, but I don't know if I have wanted to read it. He's able to save.

Yes, I did. He's able to save completely those who come to God through him because he always lives to make intercession for them. By the very life of Christ. He is making an intercession for you because he has died and rose again for you. His life provides an interceding.

Interceding is somebody that goes between two parties. And it's not that God the Father is opposed to us, but Jesus is standing on our behalf, lifting up our needs and our burdens to the Father. You don't have to go to anyone else. You don't have to go to a saint or somebody else that died, or Mary or any of these people. You have an advocate with the Father, the man, Jesus Christ.

Amen. Now the other thing that Jesus is doing for us is more than anything, he's preparing a place for us to Be with him. Now, he talks about this in John chapter 14, and we just can gloss right over that. John chapter 14 starts out what we call the farewell discourse. Like farewell meaning bye bye discourse, meaning talking a long time.

Jesus is talking a long time about his departure. And he's talking just to his disciples, his inner group of people, and he's telling them what's going to be happening. And so he says these words that we read and it doesn't make much like impact on our lives and our culture and language today, but he says, I'm going away to prepare a place for you and then I will come back and bring you to be there with me. And we're like, oh, heaven, great. Hold on a sec.

There's a whole long story. And in that, that little dot that I told you you could scan, there's a link there that's got a. I think it's a 22 page PDF. It's about Jewish weddings. I think you'll love it.

You might not. Maybe you're not as much of a Bible nerd as I am, but here's like the nutshell of what's going on was. And I'm like, I'm looking at the clock and I know what time it is. I'm going to try to as quickly as possible. I'm not trying to tell you 22 pages worth of stuff.

I'm trying to tell you what you need to hear. When a guy would want to get married to a nice young lady, he would go make a deal with her father. Now I know, like, they used to be treated as like chattel or something like that, but now it was a little bit more like, hey, I've got to ask permission. I've got to give a dowry price for her. But he would give a.

It used to be a large sum for women. Now it's not that they were worth less, but actually they would give less to the father and they would give gifts to their wife to be. And so she would receive gifts from her husband to be. The father would receive a little bit and he was actually supposed to give a large portion of that to his daughter as a gift. They would make the arrangement that he would marry this girl.

Now time would pass. He would actually give her these gifts. She would remember her fiance by these gifts. And as much like we do engagement rings today, it stems from that time. But she, he would leave her and he would go back home.

He would go to where his father's house was. Now they have like, we might call it a Compound. But they would have a large piece of land, maybe with the, the main house where the family lived in. But then there would be other places built in there where somebody would live, such as when one of the sons would get married, he would have to build a home to take his wife to. And he would build this home.

And. And so he comes home, he comes there and he builds it. Now the father, his dad would tell him how much work to put into it, because if it's just up to him, he wants to just hurry up and get married. You get it? And so he would like, find some scraps.

Like I found some scrap metal, a couple two by fours and some old boards. I nailed them up together. We got this little shack, we're good to go. And dad's like, you're not bringing your wife home to that. No way.

This is a nice gal. She's beautiful. By the way, Jewish brides, even if they weren't beautiful, like if they were an ugly chick, because let's be honest, like, sometimes there's going to be one, you know, they were, they were all considered beautiful on their wedding day because of the purity, because of what was going on, because of what God was doing. They that. So the rabbis taught that all brides are beautiful on their wedding day.

So if somebody says, isn't she beautiful? You're not lying when you say, yes, she is, because it's her wedding day. Tomorrow she might be a dog, but today she's beautiful, you know, like anyway, that's in the Bible too. Look at Jacob, you know, he marries like they give her the wrong girl, you know, by the way, that was part of the thing. They.

So, so what would happen is because of the story of Jacob and Leah and Rachel, like he marries the ugly one first, like he wants to marry Rachel. And then her dad sneaks the, the older sister in. He's like, nah, you got to marry this one. And he didn't realize who he had married because he didn't look under the veil. Well, what he does when his father tells him, like, hey, that house is good enough.

Now it's ready to bring your bride home to go get your bride. He would go, usually in the middle of the night, they would have a parade. They had this thing that they would carry that they could put the bride in, called a hoopa. And they would put her up in there. But what they would do first is they would come into town where she lived.

They would blow trumpets like ram's horns, they'd have torches to light their way they'd go in there, as they entered into the town, they would. She would probably. They would hear the trumpets. They'd know, like he is coming for his bride. So she would get dressed, get ready.

In the meantime, while he's been away building the house, she's been preparing herself. She's maintained her purity. She's gotten ready to present herself to her husband. She's learned all the things that it will mean to be his wife and how to live as a wife and to set up a household, how to raise a family. She's been learning all these things that she's been taught growing up, but she's learning them in full as a refresher course and all that during her engagement betrothal time.

And as he shows up with all of his buddies and they've got this thing, they blow the trumpet. She's like, it's time. She gets dressed, she gets ready. She puts the veil over her head. She gets in.

They put her into this hoopa. This carrier is adorned. It's really beautiful. He looks under the veil to make sure that it's his wife. They learned a lesson that Jacob got snookered on, you know.

Anyway, so they carry her. They carry her back to his home. They have a wedding ceremony. It lasts seven days. One hilarious slash weird slash.

Really? Like what? Thing that they would do is they would have the bridal chamber. They would go and consummate the wedding and there was the friend of the groom that's standing out there waiting for the. The groom to say, done, you know, or whatever.

I don't know. But somehow he would communicate like, this wedding is consummated. And he would say, okay, guys, everything's good. Like their business was like hidden but public, you know what I'm saying? And this was for everyone.

So I guess they were okay with it. I don't know. But anyway, like, his mom is there. That's what's really weird to me, you know what I'm saying? So anyway, it's like, okay, could have done without that part of the tradition.

I tell you that because if you know your Bible really well, you've been hearing stuff throughout all this that comes to mind from scripture. John, the guy that was baptized in everyone says, I'm the friend of the bridegroom that waits to hear. He's the one that's standing outside the door waiting to hear Jesus. When he told his disciples, I'm going away to prepare a place for you. He wasn't just talking about heaven.

I mean, that's what he's talking about, but he's using marriage language. He's saying that his believers, his church is his bride, and he has proposed marriage to them, to the church. He's saying, I am your husband. Paul talks into one of his letters. He says, I prepared you as a bride for one husband for Jesus Christ.

I set you up. I taught you to be prepared for Christ. So all throughout our scripture, we see all these things that they understood and that we're missing because we just go up, we buy a ring, we, you know, say, like, hey, you want to get married sometime? Like, sure. Cool.

Sounds good. We put the ring on, we set a date, we send out the invitations, we get married. We do it totally different than they did. But one of the other things that would happen, one of the most beautiful things that would happen is. And I mean, this dates way back.

Like, way back to when Isaac was supposed to get married to Rebecca. The servant of his father, Abraham, went to go find a wife for him. And when he comes, he brings 10 camels loaded with all kinds of gifts, some for the family of the bride and some for the bride herself. And as he gives her all these gifts, they are maintained as hers throughout the whole marriage. By the way, Jesus tells a parable of the woman losing one of the ten coins in Luke, chapter 15.

Those were probably coins she had received as a thing of value at her betrothal. And so this is something that she owns that can provide for her in case her husband dies or, heaven forbid, leaves her. And now she has something to take care of herself with. Well, the servant of Abraham gave all these gifts to Rebekah and brings her back to Isaac. They would do this throughout all of the history in the Middle east and in Israel.

Jesus, when he says, I'm leaving, but I'm not leaving you alone. I'm going to send you some gifts. I'm going to send you the Holy Spirit. See, the Holy Spirit is the gift that Christ has given to his bride in waiting, his church. That's to remain pure, to remain holy, to remain committed to her husband.

And he's going to prepare a place for us. They asked Jesus how long he would be gone. He says, the angels don't know that. You don't know that. I don't even know that.

The only one who knows that is my father. He's saying, my Father is going to tell me when I can come back for my bride. Until then, Jesus is at work on our behalf. He's at work preparing a place for us. He is at work holding everything together in all of creation.

He is the one we've been betrothed to that loves us and has given his entire life for us. And he has given us. And this is the last thing on the screen here, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. We look at that next week when we kind of commemorate and learn about the day of Pentecost and we look at what that meant for the Church then and what the possibilities are for the Church today with the coming of the Holy Spirit. So what did the Ascension mean for us today?

Jesus conquered everything. He's still at work. He lives to make intercession for us, cleansing us of sin, making us holy and righteous. And he sends his Holy Spirit as, as he is preparing his church to be his holy bride. And as he prepares a place to bring us home to.

We look forward to that day. We celebrate that day. We need to be working with the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives to say, make us the pure, holy and acceptable bride of Christ until the day that he returns. We don't know the day that he returns. We can't say, okay, I can wait until the last second and then clean myself up.

No, we live and maintain our purity until the day he arrives. Amen. That's what some of what the ascension of Jesus Christ is about and what it does for us today. I'm going to pray over you and I'm going to pray for our meal as well. We have a meal next door for those that want to stay for that.

There's food is provided, it's free. We invite you to stay there and get to know one another a little bit better. Let's, if you don't mind standing as we lift up a word of prayer.

Lord God, you're beautiful. We look at your face, we see you before us and we just revel in your glory and in your beauty. Lord, we just want more of you in us, more of you leading us and guiding us.

We want more of your Holy Spirit in our lives. Lord, make us holy and pure and acceptable before you. May your bride be something that truly is beautiful.

Lord, speak to us. We pray or for the food that's provided. We thank you for the fellowship. We pray your blessing over it that we would get to know each other not just on a superficial or surface way, but on a deep meaning and caring way.