Sept 27, 2026 - What Are You Waiting For - Week 2 - How Is God Getting Us There?

Welcome in everyone.

My name is Jason, and I'm one of the pastors of High Christopher Church.

On behalf of our team, I just wanted to say thanks for taking some time to journey with us through the scripture.

Our hope is that these words would cause you to think carefully about this Jesus we proclaim and that you would choose to trust him in your day-to-day.

As always, if you're in the Asheville area, whether you live here or you're visiting, we'd love for you to come join us at the corner of Livingston and Depot Street in person at the Dr.

Wesley Grant Senior Southside Center.

Our prayer is that God's words would equip you for every good work that He's prepared for you to do today.

This series is a lot of content, and I don't have time to refer to everything every week.

And so last week we talked about a big narrative piece to where we're headed for the next couple weeks when it comes to uh life after death, God's restoration of the world, all of these things that are very big picture.

Uh, because in Christendom and Christianity, we've kind of just said Christianity is about heaven and hell, and you don't want to go to hell, you want to go to heaven, and that's the only reason Jesus came.

That's not a big enough story for Genesis to Revelation.

The narrative that God is writing from the creation of the world to when he wraps things up on this side of eternity is a big story picture.

And that's where we're headed.

And so if you didn't get to listen to last week, I would encourage you to go to our YouTube channel, our Spotify, whatever, and catch up and kind of listen to the narrative pieces that may make more sense to where we're headed this morning.

I I'm trying to make sure everything makes as much sense as I can as we're journeying through.

But you know, when you got 25, 30 minutes to talk about big topics like this, you want to make sure your words count.

And so again, just trying to make sure you know you know you have access to all the stuff.

And as always, if you're like, hey, I would really love for you to clarify what you meant by this, I'd love those conversations.

You're more than welcome to shoot me a text, send me an email, we can go get coffee and those types of things.

So um, but last week, one of the things we talked about was the three different views on the afterlife that many people had in Jesus' day.

And we talked about how most ancient people had a very bleak view of death.

And early Israel was not very different from all the rest.

Their view of death wasn't viewed as a doorway to the greatest things you've ever experienced in your life.

For them, Sheol was what they called the place of the dead, right?

The abyss, all these different names that you kind of see in the Old Testament was very dark, and life was diminished to simply non-existence or existence as shadowy figures, but with no real joyful meaning behind that.

It's interesting, and you can catch glimpses of that as you read through the Old Testament.

In Ecclesiastes chapter 9, the writer says, the living at least know they will die, but the dead know nothing.

Ecclesiastes 9 · chapter mention

They have no further reward, nor are they remembered.

In verse 10, just a few verses later, the writer says, Whatever you do, do well, for when you go to the grave, there will be no work or planning or knowledge or wisdom.

So there's a pretty bleak picture of death in early Judaism.

With such a bleak picture, God's blessings were often understood only in the material.

So, like, as you're living, you have to experience God's blessing now.

And those were prosperity, long life, and descendants.

If you had those three things, somehow you were experiencing God's blessings because for most of them, they did not think there was much when you died.

But that created a problem because Israel believed something else very strongly.

Three words.

God is just that was something that they that to the core of who they were, God is just.

But here's a problem.

How can a just God allow death and evil to have the final word?

This was an internal battle.

This was a struggle, and it's part of the reason.

They begin to ask questions.

So if God is just, but righteous people suffer.

Help it make sense, God.

If God is just, but wicked people sometimes prosper, right?

I used to ask that question in high school all the time, right?

I'd I I started following Jesus in high school, and I thought everything would get better and everything would be awesome.

But then I'd look around and all my friends who were, you know, doing all the stuff they weren't supposed to be doing, they seemed like they had the best lives, right?

And here I am, this Christian trying to figure things out, feeling sorry for myself and not doing all the partying and all the stuff.

And but these guys look like they're having the best time, right?

You you wonder, you're like, God, what is that about, right?

If God is just, why do wicked people prosper?

These were questions that began to um cause questions about death.

So if God is just, but sometimes the person who did evil dies wealthy, how is that possible, right?

And then the person who remained faithful dies suffering.

How is that just, God?

Right?

If God is just, why these things?

So what happens when somebody dies before justice comes?

These were quite, again, like you you think our questions are important.

These are important questions too, right?

We have a problem with evil in this world, right?

If there's well, there's evil in this world.

So either God is not loving and he can't and he doesn't care, or he's not powerful because he can't do anything about it, right?

We always, these questions are centuries and centuries and centuries old.

And I love getting to have these conversations.

But for the early early Jewish people, what happens when somebody dies before justice comes?

Is death stronger than God's justice?

I mean, these are questions that people are dealing with at a base, at a core place in their lives.

Does the grave actually have the final word and God not have the final word?

You see the tensions.

You can see where everybody's kind of going, okay, then how does this work, God?

How does death get the final say if you're strongest and you're just?

That's the dilemma.

However, even in the Old Testament, as God continued to reveal Himself, and that's that is where we have to understand as Christians, Scripture is revelation.

It is God revealing to us things we do not know.

Okay?

That's the power of scripture.

Not us getting to interpret and say, This is what I think it means, this is what I want it to mean.

No, God ultimately, scripture is revelation.

It's got, it's, it's God going, This is who I am.

This is who you are.

This is my plan.

My son is the point.

Jesus is where everything is head.

Like all of these things are very important because these are things we did not know.

And so there was a time on the earth when people didn't know this stuff about who God was.

And so lots of questions were there.

So then you have these writers of the scriptures speaking up, God speaking through them.

Believers were starting to express I'm gonna dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Hmm, that sounds different than just going in the dirt.

I'm gonna dwell on the house of the Lord forever.

And a few texts begin envisioning this bodily resurrection.

This is what we talked about last week.

There were three views, primary views in ancient cultures.

The first was shadows, the second was escapism, the third was this Jewish view of resurrection.

Hmm.

But it had to do with God's justice.

Isaiah chapter 26, Isaiah says for us, but those who die in the Lord will live, their bodies will rise again.

Isaiah 26 · chapter mention

Those who sleep in the earth will rise up and sing for joy.

For your life-giving light will fall like dew on your people in the place of the dead.

So somehow, resurrection answers the question of is God just?

And the more you look at Jesus, the more you begin to understand what exactly the resurrection points us to.

Daniel chapter 12, Daniel and the lions, then Daniel, right?

Daniel 12 · chapter mention

He said, Many of those whose bodies lie dead and buried will rise up, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting disgrace.

We will talk about that in the vision of heaven, hell, all the eternal stuff.

We're gonna talk about that next week more.

But Daniel is the one who begin, we we get to hear these words of resurrection.

Those who are wise will shine as bright as the sky, and those who lead many to righteous righteousness will shine like the stars forever.

God's revelation is unfolding.

Israel's hope is growing larger.

They increasingly saw that God's justice could not be limited to what happens between birth and death.

This was most people's view.

If you were going to experience God's blessing, you needed to do it while you were breathing.

That was the only way, the dash, right?

In between your birth year and your death year.

The dash.

That's the only way you could experience God's blessing.

Israel didn't need a better place for dead people to go.

That was not what they were wrestling with.

They needed God to put his world right.

God will raise the dead, he will judge evil, and he will restore the world.

That is where history is headed.

God is going to be the one who raises the dead, he will judge evil, and he will restore his world.

So, no, death is not stronger than God's justice.

But how was God going to get his world from here to there?

To get there, we have to go all the way back to Genesis.

And last week we looked at a fuller picture of God intending a good creation and ultimately a world to come in which his purpose for creation is fulfilled.

But from Genesis 3 to Genesis 11, something goes terribly wrong.

Humanity moves away from God's intentions rather than towards it.

After humanity rebels in Genesis, the world spirals further and further away from God's purposes.

Violence fills the earth.

As Adam and Eve are made to leave the garden, jealousy, envy, and murder immediately begin to happen outside of God's presence.

Where God provided everything they needed, their identity, who they were, everything.

The minute we are away from God's life-giving power, that's where we turn.

Jealousy, envy, murder.

And you see this continue.

The flood, right?

The flood happens.

We think, oh, that's gonna fix it.

Nope.

The flood slows humanity's rebellion, but it doesn't cure it.

And then what happens?

Everybody's like, hey, we're gonna be awesome.

Let's build a tower to ourselves all the way to heaven.

Let's do this.

Babble, right?

And then God's like, bro, this is ridiculous.

And he spreads them out all over the world, confuses their language.

Babel, again, scatters things, but doesn't heal the human heart.

Then God does something really unexpected.

God chooses one to bless everyone.

Like this kind of a plan, this kind of a patience, this kind of a long suffering as God has described.

We are not used to.

He chooses one man named Abram, later known as Abraham, as Miss Angie pointed to.

Verse uh chapter Genesis chapter 12 is where the story picks up.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

The Lord had said to Abram, Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father's family, and go to the land that I will show you.

I will make you into a great nation.

I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others.

I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt.

All the families on earth will be blessed through you.

So Abram departed as the Lord had instructed, and Lot went with him.

Abram was 75 years old when he left Aaron.

75, the Lord's not done.

Right?

This means Abraham isn't a random Bible character appearing in Genesis.

I really wish in the Sunday school world they wouldn't tell these separate stories and make you think that these are just random, God-fearing people who just have it together and they're amazing and they do everything the right way.

But to tell the whole story from Genesis to Revelation, Abraham being a character appearing in Genesis, Abraham is going to be a part of God's answer to the problem we find in Genesis 3 through 11.

So Genesis 1 through 11, there is so much conversation about where things are going to head.

And that's where we see and we're introduced to Abraham.

God's promise is remarkable.

His promise is not simply, I will bless you.

See, many of us would probably hear that and go, I heard God's gonna bless me.

I hear God's gonna bless me.

Did you hear that?

Sarah, did you hear that?

Right?

God's gonna bless me.

I'm here for my blessing, right?

We have church language that enforces this idea that it's just for me, which is part of the reason I think we have a small view of eternity.

Because what we see God do through this is he says, through you, all the nations, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

God chooses one people for the sake of all peoples.

From that moment on, the story narrows to one family.

Not because God has stopped loving the nations, but because he intends to save the nations through that family.

That word through is so important from Genesis to Revelation.

See, we want to make it about four.

For me, for me, for me, but you change one word through me, and you begin to understand the biblical narrative more and more and more.

Imagine a father has two sons and he says to the older son, I'm gonna help you, my oldest son, build a successful business.

Now, I want you to hear me say this.

Don't mistake my intentions.

I am not going to just bless you for your own sake.

I'm actually gonna bless your younger brother through the work and the investment I do in you.

So if this father's intention is, I'm going to build this business with my older son to be a blessing to my younger son.

That's Israel's calling.

Israel wasn't chosen because she was big and strong.

God tells Israel that he chose her because he loved her.

Israel was chosen because God loved the nations so very much.

Through is the key.

Abraham isn't the destination, he is the vehicle.

One man becomes one family, one family becomes one nation.

Jacob is named Israel.

In Isaiah 49, he said to me, You are my servant, Israel, and you will bring me glory.

And through a nation, God gives Scripture, God gives the prophets, who begin not to just talk about Israel, but about how this thing God started through Abraham is going to go worldwide.

In Psalm 22, the whole earth, like this is such an amazing visual.

The whole earth will acknowledge the Lord and return to him.

All the families of the nations will bow before him.

Isaiah 2 says that the nations will stream toward the God of Israel.

And then later in Isaiah 49, he says, You will do more than restore the people of Israel to me.

I will make you a light to the Gentiles.

You will bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.

So when Jesus shows up, he doesn't just appear out of nowhere, folks.

Jesus is the climax to the Abraham story.

This story has been is being told, has been told from the beginning of the Old Testament to Jesus' day.

Galatians chapter 3, Paul the Apostle tries to give us words that help us connect the dots.

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

He says, Through Christ Jesus, God has blessed the Gentiles.

And if you're not Jewish, you're a Gentile, right?

Through Christ Jesus, God has blessed the Gentiles with the same blessing he promised to Abraham, so that we who are believers might receive the promised Holy Spirit through faith.

Jesus isn't a new plan.

He's not God part two.

He's not the loving God in the New Testament.

And there's Old Testament God who's just the old guy who doesn't, he's just mean, right?

This is not that kind of a separation.

The story has headed one direction the whole time.

And Jesus is the point.

The destination isn't one nation ruling over a bunch of nations, it's all nations gathered under the reign of Israel's Messiah, Jesus.

That's the picture.

That's the beauty of God's plan.

And the gospel becomes much bigger than Jesus came so I can die and go to heaven.

If your view is Jesus came so I can die and go to heaven, there is so much I believe God wants to reveal to you in this series.

Because he's doing a much bigger work than that.

Jesus comes as Israel's Messiah to bring God's promised blessing to humanity and ultimately bring creation under God's rule.

Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God being near, right?

People are like, well, he's just saying, heaven is here, heaven, heaven now.

Like we're gonna go to heaven.

When Jesus says the kingdom, he's saying we get to go to heaven.

It's weird.

We hear that through our Western ears, but the kingdom of God is not just another name for heaven.

It can mean partly that.

But when Jesus says the kingdom of God, he means God's rule and his reign.

It's here.

There's nothing out of his control.

And it is all headed where we want it to go.

Where the Father is leading things, when his time clock is ready, it's gonna get there.

Nothing, not even our rebellion, is gonna keep that from happening.

So Jesus isn't changing the subject.

Jesus doesn't come into the New Testament world and go, well, now it's just really about you praying a prayer of repentance and not going to hell, my friend.

Jesus is bringing the full picture of God's redemptive story, and he proves it by everything he says and does, and then ultimately, as he is hung on the cross but doesn't stay dead, resurrection.

God's just death does not get the final say.

He's announcing the thing Abraham had in in Israel and the prophets have been moving toward has arrived in him.

And now that blessing keeps moving outward through the disciples, through the church, throughout the entire world, until we see in Revelation chapter 7, one of the greatest pictures that you can ever see.

Revelation 7 · chapter mention

After this, John the the John uh John the apostle said, John, uh, after this, I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb.

They were clothed in white robes and held palm branches in their hands, and they were shouting with a great roar.

Salvation comes from our God who sits on the throne and from the Lamb.

The picture of a restored world involves the nations.

It started with one man and ends with a multitude that no one can count.

One man with every nation.

God has always taken the singular, the particular to bless the many.

There is an image that appears throughout scripture that I think captures this beautifully, and it's the image of a river.

And this river image runs all through scripture.

And when the river shows up, Ezekiel makes sure, and when God is this, God is the source and where it flows, life is given where the river flows.

Ezekiel saw a vision of a river flowing from the temple, bringing life wherever it went.

John, follower of Jesus, who wrote those words that we just saw in Revelation 7, says in Revelation 22, the last chapter of the Bible, which is what everybody runs to.

You're like, we run to that because Revelation is scary.

Everybody, I don't know about the beast and the thing and all the stuff.

I don't know, but I like this, right?

Revelation 22, the angel showed me a river with the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.

It flowed down the center of the main street.

On each side of the river grew a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit with a fresh crop each month.

The leaves were used for medicine to what?

Heal the nations.

Even at the end of this story, we see God's life flowing outward, bringing healing to the nations.

Jesus promised believers that if we would come to Him, what?

Rivers of life would flow from us.

And John understood that that river referred to the Holy Spirit in us on the move.

Coming to Jesus does not mean, look at all you've done for us.

We begin to ask different questions.

What could he do through us?

If God is the source of our life and God has every intention for that life to flow through his people, then what now?

What do we do?

Here's where the story becomes our story.

Here's where Genesis to revelation matters for all of us.

It's not just a narrative that we are going, I find an encouraging nugget here and I can get through my day.

No.

We are stepping into and participating with God and his good plan for all of history.

Somehow, think of this.

2,000 years after Jesus, not to mention four to five thousand years before Jesus, when God makes this promise to Abraham, on the other side of the world, from Abraham, the blessing made it to us.

That is crazy.

Think of that.

The generations, the nations, the individuals that you will never come into contact with this side of eternity.

That blessing made it to us through them.

We are a part of that nation that Isaiah saw coming to worship at the throne.

We are among the nations that Genesis 12 talks about.

It's humbling when you begin to understand through.

And it keeps you from having a small view of God's good plan of redemption and restoration for the entire world.

We are the people Isaiah saw coming from far away.

The blessing traveled through generations until somebody brought it to us.

But it didn't travel all this way to stop here, right?

And I think that's our problem.

It's like, look, it made it to me.

Cool.

Great.

That's fantastic.

Six, seven thousand years.

Cool.

Made it to me.

Are you not hearing yourself right now?

It's fantastic.

It made it to me.

Cool.

All the way down the line.

To me.

Great, right?

And we'll that's but that's what we've done.

That is absolutely what we've done, and we have forgotten about the through.

We have made Jesus and we've made God and we've made this story so central to us.

If God will just give me the perfect marriage, just give me the perfect kids, just give me the perfect, just give me the perfect, just give me the perfect.

If he'll fill up my bank account, just do something for me, God.

We're begging him, do something for.

And he's like, six thousand years?

It's not enough time for me to show you how much I really am invested in this whole thing.

And you want the blessing to stop with you?

Really?

Israel's problem was never that they weren't blessed, it's that they forgot what they were blessed for.

The blessing was to go through.

And when that stopped happening, things got problematic.

It comes to somebody because God intends for it to move through somebody.

That's the danger for us as God's people.

We can be so focused on what God has done for us that we forget what he wants to do through us.

God didn't just want to do something for Abraham.

Listen to the story.

He wanted to do something through Abraham.

He didn't just want to do something for Israel.

He wanted to do something through Israel, right?

He doesn't just want to do something for Angie.

He wants to do something through Angie, right?

That's crazy.

That's the way the story goes on.

And one day, through, we will see that redemptive invitation to come and sit at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

As the band comes, today is an interesting thing to think about in the life of Highland.

God has gifted Highland with so many resources, people, talents, treasures, knowledge, stories, opportunities, experience.

And today, exactly two years later, it's appropriate for us to think about what happened after Hurricane Helene.

Semitruck after semi-truck, pallet after pallet, meal after meal, water bottle after water bottle.

God placed all of those resources into our hands.

But what would have happened if we simply held on to everything we received?

There would still be stuff sitting and rotting.

Expiration dates would have been reached.

Needs would have gone unmet.

Waste.

Right?

What if we took all those things in and refused to move them through?

And we just chose to walk in that gym and go, look at all that God did for us.

And yet there's people standing outside banging on doors, going, I need toilet water.

I'm not sure when drinking water is going to come back.

I don't have any electricity.

I can't get to Walmart because the buses aren't running.

But we're inside that gym going, look at all God did for us.

It's where the church is at right now.

Through is the picture.

And there's this picture that has always meant a ton to me, and it's one of it's this picture.

I keep it pretty close by.

But Asheville City Schools called us and said, hey, we know that you guys are taking care of Erskine Walton Street, and you're trying to get Livingston taken care of, but we've got buses and we have routes that go through the other housing authority properties.

Do you think you could take the resources that have been sent to you that could go to those other properties as well?

I was like, Yeah, I don't know how to get them over there.

And they're like, Well, we have buses.

And so bus drivers, it was crazy.

It was this really weird feeling.

Like the day all the buses came rolling in, you're like, oh boy, this is crazy.

Like it, I mean, when you see big vehicles, like we had the military presence come by.

Like, it was like maybe day two or day three, they came by.

I was like, all right, reinforcements.

They're like, no, you guys look like you're doing everything, and they rolled out.

Literally left us by ourselves.

It was crazy.

But when those buses came rolling in, it was like, all right, we know what we gotta do.

We gotta take all that stuff that people have invested into us, and we gotta break it down, we gotta get it organized, and we're gonna take it out those doors, and we're gonna raid, get those buses loaded up so that they can get to the community centers and the other housing authority properties, and other people can get blessed and to be taken care of.

But it's through.

Like, what do we not get about that?

But yet, when it comes to this personal, private relationship with Jesus, all that He does for me.

What if the bigger picture is what could God do through me?

This week, maybe when you when somebody asks you how you doing, instead of saying, I'm blessed, say I'm blessed to bless.

Right?

It's just a simple shift.

It's not just about me.

I don't want to be where the the blessing gets stuck, right?

The picture of a stagnant water source that just keeps filling up and just stand put, or of a conduit that's sending that water.

It comes right through me and is able to bless others.

What has God done for me?

Or what does God want to do through me?

Those questions change the way you see what God is doing in the world.

Maybe this morning, as we close our time, you don't know what God has done for you.

Well, hopefully you've got a little bit of a glimpse of what he has done for.

But I want you to start your whole journey with Christ, knowing that it was never meant to stop with you.

It was meant to go through.

And through doing life with him, you experience that eternal, abundant life Jesus said he came to give.

So this morning, let's stand and we'll close our time in worship.

You know, maybe you've had a small view of God's big plan for life and eternity and the afterlife and restoration and all the things that God is up to.

Maybe you take a moment this morning and go, God, I am so thankful for what you have done for me, but I have forgotten about what you want to do through me.

I don't even ask that question anymore because I'm so obsessed with you doing things for me.

But what if the answer lies on the other side of understanding through?

Through is such a great word to connect the dots from Genesis to Revelation, but it also connects the dots for our lives to that river of living water that flows from us into the world.

We just wanted to say thank you for listening to the Highly Christian Church podcast today.

And if you ever want to connect with us, send a prayer request, ask questions, or for any other reason, you can visit our website, www.highlychristian.com, or you can send us an email at info at highlychristian.com.