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The Image of the Triune God (King’s Cross)
Christ Church on June 19, 2025
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Dreams, Visions, and the Holy Spirit | Pentecost Sunday (King’s Cross)

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INTRODUCTION

How often have you heard someone say, “The Lord told me…?” Or maybe you or someone you know had a dream or vision in which they believe God was directing them. Or maybe sometimes you wish you had a direct word from the Lord.

We are no position to limit or deny God’s freedom to speak directly to anyone, but the Bible is clear that God’s clearest and fullest Word is Jesus Christ and the Scriptures spoken by His Holy Spirit (inspiration) (2 Tim. 3:16-17). The gift of the Holy Spirit poured out at Pentecost was not about giving a new or additional word; rather, the gift of the Holy Spirit is about giving believers the ability to actually hear the Word already given (illumination) (Jn. 14:26).

The Text: “… that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him: the eyes of your understanding being enlightened…” (Eph. 1:15-20)

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

The apostle says that after the Ephesians had come to faith in Christ, he began praying for them that the Holy Spirit would give them an even fuller knowledge of God (Eph. 1:15-17). Even though they were already Christians, he was praying specifically that the “eyes” of their understanding (or minds) would be given even more light (Eph. 1:18). Specifically, he says he was praying that they would know the hope of God’s calling, the glory of His inheritance (Eph. 1:18), and the greatness of His power at work in us (Eph. 1:19). He was praying that they would experience the same power in their own lives which raised Jesus from the dead and set Him at God’s right hand (Eph. 1:20).

CONVERSION & SANCTIFICATION

Scripture says that to the unconverted the gospel seems like foolishness (1 Cor. 1-2). It’s like there is a veil over their hearts, blinding their minds, so that they cannot see the light of Christ in the Scriptures (2 Cor. 3-4). At conversion the Holy Spirit is given and you begin to see the glory of Christ, but that same Spirit begins a life-long process of opening your eyes to more and more of the hope, inheritance, and power in Christ (Eph. 1:18-20). The final step in this process is called glorification, when we will be transformed to be able to see Him as He is (1 Jn. 3:2). To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, ‘How can we meet Him face to face, till we have faces?’

HE IS THERE & HE IS NOT SILENT

In the meantime, God has spoken clearly, but we are slow to believe all that He has said. Our eyes are not yet adjusted to His glory. Our ears are dull. But as Francis Schaeffer once said, God is there and He is not silent. He is always speaking in His creation: day unto day, night unto night, in every language (Ps. 19:1-4). And He has spoken most clearly in His written word (2 Tim. 3:16-17).

The apostles were given unique signs to confirm their authority to speak on behalf of God, including visions and dreams (2 Cor. 12:12). And where their word has initially gone, God has often confirmed it with extraordinary signs and wonders (Mk. 16:20). But the apostles urged Christians not to look for visions or some other word from the Lord, but rather to cling to the Word of God that was spoken to them and written down: “Now we beseech you, brethren… that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us… Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle” (2 Thess. 3:1-2, 15, cf. 3:14).

Likewise, in 2 Peter, it says that God’s “divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue: whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature…” (2 Peter. 1:3-4). And he goes on to say that he’s writing these things [those great and precious promises] so that they will remember them when he is gone (2 Pet. 1:15). He affirms that the apostles were eye witnesses of Christ’s glory on earth (2 Pet. 1:16-18), but then he says something extraordinary: “we have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Pet. 1:19-21). The written Scriptures are a more sure word than any vision or dream or spiritual experience.

APPLICATIONS

It is true that we long to see Jesus Christ face to face, to hear Him speak directly to us, but right now, in our current state, His Word in the Bible is a more sure word than any vision or dream.

You might say that you wish God would talk to you, and this is the clear answer of Scripture: He is talking to you all the time. But this is a bit like an ant asking for Einstein to explain his theory of relativity. Or change the image: it’s like looking up at the night sky and seeing a few stars but then looking through a telescope and seeing thousands. The stars are there all the time; you just can’t see them. You don’t need another word, a dream, or vision; you need your eyes opened by the Holy Spirit.

The Lord is not telling you to disobey Him. The Lord is not telling you to dishonor your parents, sleep with your girlfriend, or steal from your neighbor. You don’t need to pray about whether to become a drug dealer or accept homosexuality or transgenderism. The Lord does not contradict Himself.

Scripture says that if even an apostle or angel from heaven preaches another gospel, God damn him (Gal. 1). This would apply to Mormonism and Islam – both of which claim that angels spoke to their founders and radically altered what the Bible says. Dreams and visions can deceive and confuse: “to the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Is. 8:20).

So let this be the prayer of our hearts: “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Ps. 119:18).

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So Much Better Than The Angels (King’s Cross)

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INTRODUCTION

Forty days after Jesus rose from the dead, He ascended into Heaven. This is called the Ascension, and we celebrate that historical event on this Lord’s Day. The text before us says that the Ascension means that Jesus is so much better than the angels. Today we consider what that means.

The Text: “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son…” (Heb. 1:1-2:9).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

In the Old Testament, angels had been God’s more common messengers telling the prophets His Word (Heb. 1:1), but in the last days of the Old Covenant, God spoke directly by His Son, Jesus, the heir of the world by whom all things were made (Heb. 1:2). Being the brightness of God’s glory, the exact image of His person, and upholding all things, having purged our sins, He ascended and sat down on God’s own throne, far above all angels (Heb. 1:3-4).

Christ had a right to this glory because He is God’s own Son (Heb. 1:5). What angel is worthy of the worship of angels (Heb. 1:6)? Angels are certainly God’s ministers, but the Son sits on the throne of God and rules all things forever (Heb. 1:7-12). Angels are ministering spirits, but Christ reigns until all His enemies are put beneath His feet (Heb. 1:13-14).

Therefore, we must give far more earnest heed to His Word (Heb. 2:1). If God guarded His Word thundered by angels in the Old Testament, how much more jealous is He of the Word of His Son, even as it has been passed down by those who heard Him directly (Heb. 2:2-4)? The angels are not the ones inheriting the world; rather, this was God’s design for man, who was made a little lower than the angels but created to rule all things (Heb. 2:5-7). Jesus was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death in order to be crowned with glory and honor and bring many sons to glory (Heb. 2:8-10).

FOUR TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS TEXT

1. This text gives us a glimpse of a biblical cosmology: the angels were present and cheering when God laid the foundations of the earth (Job 38:6-8). Angels sometimes appear in human form (e.g. Gen. 19, Dan. 10), but also seraphim (fiery, dragon-like creatures) (Num. 21, Is. 6) and cherubim (sphynx-like creatures) (Ez. 10), as well as the “angel of the Lord,” a “theophany” of Christ Himself (Gen. 32, Ex. 3, Jdg. 13). Since angels are described as ministers and guardians of men, it seems likely that angels would have been like tutors for Adam and Eve (“a little lower than the angels”) (Ps. 34:7, 91:11, Mt. 18:10). Since Satan appears to be a fallen seraph, he was the original false teacher (2 Cor. 11:13-14). When man sinned, cherubim became guardians of God’s presence (Gen. 3:24, Ex. 36-37, Gal. 4), delivered the law (Gal. 3:19), and enforced His justice (Ps. 78:49, 1 Chron. 21). The only way back into God’s glory was through their swords, but no one could do that and survive.

2. So Hebrews is emphasizing the supremacy of the New Covenant by underlining the supremacy of Christ: No man or angel dares claim God’s majesty (Heb. 1:3). No man or angel dares sit on God’s throne (Heb. 1:8). No man or angel has laid the foundations of the earth or can claim to have made the galaxies (Heb. 1:10-12). No man or angel may say that his years will never fail (Heb. 1:12). No man or angel could taste death for sin and survive (Heb. 1:3, 2:9). To ascribe all these things to Christ is either perfectly just or utterly blasphemous. This is either a lie and fabrication, or it is delusional madness, or it is historical truth and reality. People try to split the difference and say that perhaps it was all a very pious mistake – they all had a very spiritual experience, and it changed their lives. But that isn’t what Jesus or the apostles said (e.g. Mk.10:37, Lk. 14:26, Heb. 1:13, 2:8). Either Jesus was a liar, a lunatic, or He is Lord.

3. If Jesus is God, His Word is the Word of God. Hebrews says that God has been speaking since the beginning in various ways (Heb. 1:1). And if there is a God and He has spoken at all, no human being may treat that casually, but if that God has now spoken clearly through His own Son, by whom He made all things, it is pure insolence to ignore Him (Heb. 1:2, 2:1-3). While the prophets and patriarchs and Israel had no excuses, it might have been understandable for someone far off to not be sure what the angels/prophets meant by their messages. But when Christ has come and spoken plainly, when there are hundreds of witnesses of His resurrection, four written testimonies, and over a dozen more documents attesting to what He said and done, there is no excuse (Acts 17:30-31). He has spoken. What will you do with His word?

4. Christ is King, and He will have dominion. Angels are ministers and servants. But Christ ascended to the right hand of the Majesty on high (Heb. 1:3). All the angels worship Him (Heb. 1:6). He sits on the throne of God (Heb. 1:8). He loves righteousness and hates all evil perfectly (Heb. 1:9). He made all things (Heb. 1:10). His kingdom is forever (Heb. 1:11-12). He ascended and must reign until all His enemies are made His footstool (Heb. 1:13). Christ is Lord. Christ claims all things in Heaven and on Earth, and this necessarily has implications for all rule and authority (Mt. 28:18-20). He is reigning until everything is in submission to Him: every nation, every city, every family, every business, every husband, mayor, president, judge – until every knee bows.

CONCLUSION

Christ became man to taste death, to eat death for us (Heb. 2:9). This was the promise of the prophets: “He will swallow up death in victory” (Is. 25:8). Christ, the Eternal Son of God, humbled Himself to be a little lower than the angels in order to suffer death for us who deserve death, in order to take away our sins, in order to restore us to the glory of the Father. “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” (1 Cor 6:3, cf. Heb. 2:5).

We do not yet see all things put under Christ, but we see Christ crowned with glory and honor. We see Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Majesty on high, and He will get His reward. You are either with Him or against Him. You are either under His blood or you scorn His blood. He is King. So crown Him.

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He Descended into Hades | Easter Sunday

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INTRODUCTION

Every Lord’s Day, in the Apostles’ Creed, we confess that Christ “descended into Hades,” although some of you may come from churches where you said, “descended into hell.” In Old English “hell” referred to the “underworld” or the place of the dead, which is what the original Latin and Greek words in the Creed referred to. However, over time “hell” has come to refer in common parlance to the place of eternal punishment of the damned, what Revelation calls the “lake of fire” or Gehenna, where the Devil and “death and Hades” are cast at the end of history (Rev. 20:10, 14).

This can create confusion: how could Jesus go to “hell?” The answer is that He didn’t. While it is true that He suffered the “hellish” torment due our sin on the Cross, when He cried “it is finished,” it really was, and as He told the dying thief next to Him, when He gave up the ghost, He went to “Paradise,” or what ancients would have understood as the place of the dead or Hades.

So as we celebrate the resurrection, it is fitting to ask, what does it mean that He “descended into Hades”? And the answer is: having fully suffered for the sins of all His people, Christ went down to that lowest place to release His people there and so prove that nothing can stop Him from bringing all His people to God in the highest place (1 Pet. 3:18).

The Text: “…When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?…” (Eph. 4:7-10).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

Paul is in the process of summarizing our great unifying inheritance in Christ, and in order to do that, explains that when Christ ascended into Heaven, He led captivity itself captive and gave gifts to men (Eph. 4:7-8, cf. Ps. 68). But Paul pauses here and points out that before Christ ascended, He also descended, not merely to earth but even into the “lower regions” of the earth (Eph. 4:9). And Paul explains that Christ has descended that far and ascended above all heavens in order to fill all things (Eph. 4:10).

A BIBLICAL COSMOLOGY

In the Old Testament, the word for the grave and the place of the dead was “Sheol.” In Homer, the “underworld” was a literal place called “Hades” that Odysseus traveled to, but even in Scripture, God forbids necromancy (trying to communicate with the dead) and when the Witch of Endor summoned Samuel’s spirit, it came up out of the ground and Samuel foretold that Saul and his sons would be joining him shortly (1 Sam. 28:12-19). David prophesied, “For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell [Sheol]; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption” (Ps. 16:10). When the Apostle Peter quoted that verse at Pentecost, he translated “Sheol” as “Hades,” using the traditional Greek name for the place of the dead, and said it was talking about the resurrection of Jesus (Acts 2:27).

In the parable that Jesus told about the rich man and Lazarus, He pictured Hades as a place of torment for the wicked but a place of rest for the righteous: “And in hell [Hades] he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom” (Lk. 16:23). The ancients also refer to this as “paradise,” which Jesus referred to on the Cross: “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Lk. 23:43).

A PROTESTANT “HARROWING OF HELL”

The Church Fathers sometimes allowed their imaginations to run away on this point (and some of this is probably the origin of the Roman Catholic notions of purgatory and praying for the dead, which we reject), but putting all of this together: before the death and resurrection of Jesus, all people went in spirit at death to the same place called “Sheol” in Hebrew and “Hades” in Greek, which was divided between a place of torment and a place of restful waiting (Abraham’s bosom/Paradise). But the saints of old could not enjoy the fullness of the presence of God until their sins were actually paid for, which is suggested in Hebrews: “And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect” (Heb. 11:39-40).

Therefore, when Christ cried out, “It is finished!” and breathed His last, His Spirit left His body and descended into Hades, the place where all spirits were waiting. But He went there in order to “lead captivity captive.” He went there to proclaim His victory over sin, death, and the Devil to the damned (1 Pet. 3:19) and to release the Old Covenant saints out of Abraham’s Bosom/Paradise in Hades and usher them into the presence of God in Heaven. This is why Jesus tells John in Revelation, “I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell [Hades] and of death” (Rev. 1:18). When Jesus rose from the dead, it proved that His soul did not remain in Hades, and if it could not remain there it is because He has the keys.

CONCLUSION

So this is the point: Christ went down to the lowest place to proclaim His victory and bring all of His own directly to God in the highest place. He did this to prove that nothing can stop Him from bringing His people to God. If nothing could stop Him from bringing Adam and Abraham and David to God, there is nowhere you can wander where He cannot reach you. There is no sin so dark that Christ cannot save you. There is no prison cell of sin so secure that He cannot release you.

Think of Jonah rebelling against the Lord fleeing to Tarshish into a great storm and swallowed by a great fish for three days and three nights, and Jonah prayed: “I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and He answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and You heard my voice” (Jon. 2:1-2 ESV).

Have you run from God? Have you rebelled in your heart? In your mind? In your actions? Call out to the Lord. He will hear you from wherever you are.

The Bible is clear that after death, there are no second chances: we will all stand before God’s judgment seat (Rev. 20:12, 14-15, Heb. 9:27). If you trust your own deeds, your own righteousness, you will only sink down further, but if you place all your trust in Christ, there is no pit so deep that Christ will not find you there and bring you to God: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Mt. 12:40).

And so He was, and He is risen from the dead.

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