Sermon.

Seated In Heavenly Places.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our life, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

The Gospel scripture read out today has an important message for all of us from Jesus; for all those who believe in Him.

There are so many things in this passage that I cannot cover all of them in this sermon.

I'll hit the highlights and just fill out one of the points. You can use your own study time to go over the others if you wish.

So Point No 1. We must be born again; or born from above! This makes us a new creation. We should no longer be acting like worldly people; or each day we should be acting less and less like worldly people!.

Point No 2. We Christians are born of the Spirit. And that which is born of the spirit IS Spirit. We have a NEW spirit. That's why some translations say that, “We are new creatures!”

What's more, people will hear what you say and see what you do and they will think, “how come they don't behave like people in the world?

Point No 3. So far Jesus is just talking about our life in Him using earthly analogies. But then He says if you don't understand these, how will you understand Heavenly things?

He goes on to say that no-one has gone up into heaven except the Son of man who came down from heaven. Notice that this is before his death and resurrection, yet Jesus says he has gone up into heaven! Some literal translations add, “Who IS in heaven!”

Jesus was telling Nicodemus something about the true, born again, Christian. We are seated in the heavenly realms IN Christ Jesus! You can check that out in Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 6.

Point No 4. We are coming to the last three verses of today's Gospel. People often think that they know all that John 3:16 is about!

But, have you noticed that this verse starts with the word “For”? Whenever you see the word “for” in the bible you should always ask yourself what it's there for!

It means that what follows is dependent on what went be-for-e.

As Moses lifted the serpent up in the wilderness, so that the Israelites would be saved physically if they looked to it and believed; so Jesus will be lifted up and those that believe on Him will be saved spiritually, be given eternal life then, and become a “Child Of God”! God has provided this for mankind because He loves all men as much as He loves the Children of Israel.

As a child of God you are led by the Spirit of God and rise above the petty and the mundane. You are in Christ and in Christ you are seated far above all principalities and powers, in heavenly places!

That's the Christian calling that we should all be proud to spread.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all,

Amen.

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