James 2:5 Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? 
	We are deep in the midst of our consideration of the Biblical doctrine of Heaven. We are using Dr. Donnelly’s message series as the framework around which we are seeking after the Lord to reveal His heart with regard to Heaven. In our prior considerations, we began to see that Jesus Christ is Heaven’s Lamp. It is Christ Who brings us to heaven. He has redeemed us through His death and resurrection. He is the One who equips us to live in heaven through the working of the Holy Spirit in applying His Word into our lives. He is also our constant source of sustenance through His perpetual ministry on our behalf as our perfect High priest. As well, it will be Christ Whom we see clearly in heaven. He will be revealed in all His glory to us, and we will be able to see Him in all His perfect beauty and holiness. 
	This, then, brings us to this morning’s study that Christ is the very heart of Heaven’s blessings. As James tells us, God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him. Our inheritance is Jesus Christ. The richness that is ours is all set in Jesus Christ. 
At the heart of this blessing of richness is covenant theology. Quote, That may seem an intimidating term, but it is essentially a straightforward and thrilling truth. The covenant is the means through which God brings His people to heaven and at the heart of the covenant is the idea of a representative. God deals with human beings through a covenant head, a mediator, someone who acts on our behalf. End quote. 
	Many of you have probably heard of the example as expressed by Thomas Goodwin. Quote, He imagines two great giants, one called Adam and the other Christ. Each is wearing an enormous leather ‘girdle’ or belt with millions of little hooks on it. You and I, and all humanity, are hanging either at Adam’s belt or at Christ’s belt. There is no other option, no other place for us. And God deals with us only through Adam or through Christ. If you are hanging at Adam’s belt, you share in the experience of sinful, fallen Adam, and your entire relationship with God is through him. But if you are hanging at Christ’s belt, all God’s dealings with you are through Christ. When you received Jesus as your Saviour, you were involved in a massive and momentous transfer. The Almighty Himself, unhooked you from Adam’s belt and hooked you on to Christ’s. So you now have a different Head, a different Mediator, a new Representative. You have passed from Adam into Christ, and whereas God formerly dealt with you only through Adam, He now deals with you only through His Son. You are in Christ unchangeably and for ever. End quote.    
This is why union with Christ is such a vital reality in our lives. We are now united with Him in every facet and aspect of His life. It is impossible for a true believer, one who has been hooked to Christ’s belt by God Himself to ever truly fall away. We are secured by the very Hand of God. This union with Christ is at the very core of our being transformed into His likeness. Rom 6:5-13, For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin, once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 
Our lives, in union with Christ, are also united to His holiness, because we desire to be holy as He is holy. We are sanctified because we have now died with Christ and have been resurrected with Him. We are to live our lives in line with this truth. We suffer in this life because we are joined to Christ and partake of His suffering for the sake of others.  2 Cor 1:3-7, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort; who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort. 
	Because we are in Christ, united to Him in this covenant relationship, we no longer fear death. 1 Cor 15:20-22, But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive. Everything we receive, everything we have, everything we are, everything we hope for, everything we rejoice in, everything we deserve now in the eyes of God is in Jesus Christ. We are in Him, irrevocably, and eternally joined to Him and that is how God deals with us, in Christ Jesus. 	    
Rom 3:24 being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; 
Rom 6:11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 
	Verse 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
	Rom 8:1+2 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 
	Verses 38+39 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
	Rom 12:5 so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. 
	Rom 15:17 Therefore in Christ Jesus I have found reason for boasting in things pertaining to God. 
	1 Cor 1:2+3 to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 
	Verses 4-8 I thank my God always concerning you, for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
	Verses 30+31 But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, that, just as it is written, "Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord." 
	2 Cor 1:20+22 For as many as may be the promises of God, in Him they are yes; wherefore also by Him is our Amen to the glory of God through us. Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God, who also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge. 
	2 Cor 2:14-17 But thanks be to God, who always leads us in His triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life. And who is adequate for these things? For we are not like many, peddling the word of God, but as from sincerity, but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God. 
	2 Cor 3:14 But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ. 
	2 Cor 5:17-19 Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. 
	Gal 2:16 nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified. 
Gal 3:14 in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. 
	Verse 26 For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 
	Verses 28+29 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. 
	Gal 5:6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love. 
	Eph 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 
	Verses 9-12 He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fulness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things upon the earth. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. 
	Verses 18-23 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him who fills all in all. 
	Eph 2:4-7 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 
And verse 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
So it goes, on and on: In Christ Jesus, In Him, In Jesus, In Christ. We have such an overflowing catalogue of the richness of the blessing that is ours in Jesus Christ. Everything is purposed, set, fulfilled and accomplished in Jesus Christ. Every aspect of God’s dealing with us, from His great love with which He loved us, to our salvation, our justification, our sanctification, our glorification, our eternal inheritance of life, every blessing is in Jesus Christ. 
How can anyone then think that our relationship will change once we get to heaven? It is only through Jesus Christ and in Him that we will get to heaven! It is only in and through Him that God will ever deal with us! It is imperative that we utterly and completely see that our relationship with Christ can never come to an end! That is why it is so ludicrous to think that anyone will get to heaven apart from Him. We will rely and depend upon Jesus Christ in heaven as much, if not more, than we rely and depend on Him in this current life! He is our everything and we can never separate ourselves from that absolute reality! Jesus Christ is the heart, soul, and essence of all the blessings of heaven. Amen.
Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? Amen.

This morning’s benediction reading is Deut 10:14-21 "Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the highest heavens, the earth and all that is in it. Yet on your fathers did the Lord set His affection to love them, and He chose their descendants after them, even you above all peoples, as it is this day. Circumcise then your heart, and stiffen your neck no more. For the Lord your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God who does not show partiality, nor take a bribe. He executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and shows His love for the alien by giving him food and clothing. So show your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God; you shall serve Him and cling to Him, and you shall swear by His name. He is your praise and He is your God, who has done these great and awesome things for you which your eyes have seen. Amen.