Today's episode is a little bit longer than normal because it's a special episode, a celebration.

But before we get to the celebration, we begin with today's question from an anonymous listener who is putting together a few texts that we will be reading together in the next week ahead in our Bible reading.

Here's the question.

Hello, Pastor John, in Acts chapter 7, verses 44 to 50. We read that the

Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands, as the prophet says, heaven is my throne,

and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord,

or what is the place of my rest? So it appears that God has a dwelling, one that he made.

He is not confined to human-built tents and temples. And Jesus calls heaven the throne of God

in Matthew 534. And Stephen, during his stoning, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God

in Jesus standing at the right hand of God. That account is in Acts 7, 54 to 60. So it seems like God

has a dwelling place, a place where the resurrected Christ now dwells. If the incarnate Christ is there,

I assume it's a physical place, do you agree? Is heaven a real place right now? Where is it? Inside or

outside of our known creation? And is this our eternal home?

Is this what descends on earth as the new Jerusalem? What do you know about heaven as it exists

right now?

That's a big one. Oh my goodness. What do I know? My counsel for all of us as we ponder what it

means that God is in heaven, that the risen Christ with

his resurrection body is in heaven, that we will die and go to heaven, that heaven will be part

of the new heavens and the new earth at the end of the age. My counsel, as we ponder all of these, is let us put the primary emphasis on the relational dimension

of heaven, not the spatial dimension of heaven.

I'll try to defend that in just a minute.

I don't mean that we put no emphasis on the spatial, material,

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