Ascension Sunday
Acts 1:1-11
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+1:1-11&version=NLT
Acts 2:32-36
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+2:32-36&version=NLT
Head/Mind – Helpful Information
Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians do a great job teaching about the Ascension of Christ. Protestant, Evangelical, and Charismatic Christians do a particularly poor job teaching their people about the Ascension. Mostly, they ignore this part of the story, and as a result, we end up missing important connecting pieces in our theology. We end up not being able to keep all the pieces together about Jesus’ earthly life, the present work of the Holy Spirit, and the return of Christ in glory.
The Ascension is an especially important in helping us to understand how all of these pieces connect into one continuous story. It also helps us to understand our part in this story. Understanding the Ascension helps us to understand what chapter of the story we are currently in, and what is expected us in this part of the story. With all of that in mind let’s talk about the Ascension and its importance for us today.
Heart – The Personal Connection
The Ascension Is Not About How Jesus Got To Heaven
One of the ways in which the scriptures talk about the reality of heaven is to speak of the God above us. When the Bible speaks of heaven in this way, it actually uses the same word as it uses for sky. Speaking about heaven as a reality above us is not the same as speaking about its geography. It is speaking about the order of things. Spiritually, God reigns from above. But this does mean that Jesus kept floating further up until he reach heaven.
The Bible sometimes speaks of heaven as something that is all around us, yet just beyond our reach. The book of Hebrews speaks of those who are already with God in heaven and it says that they surround, like a great cloud of witnesses. That is, they are present to us, yet just beyond what our senses can fix upon. The Irish Christian spoke of thin places, times and places when the veil between us and them lifts just a bit, and we glimpses of glory.
Psalm 121 says, “I lift my eyes up to the hills, from where does my help come from. My help comes from the Lord, the maker of the heavens and earth.” In this imagery, heaven is just beyond the horizon. C. S. Lewis, in his Chronicles of Narnia describes heaven as being just beyond the horizon. We will spend eternity exploring this new land, while always having a call to go further up and farther in.
After the Resurrection, Jesus had the ability to walk through locked doors and appear and disappear at will. That means, Jesus did not have to float away to get to heaven. He could step back and forth from heaven to earth as easily as you and I might move from room to room. So, what does happen in the Ascension? Well, I can tell you what doesn’t happen. Jesus doesn’t abandon us.
How do we know this? Because Jesus promised that he would not be absent from us. At the end of Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus was giving his followers instruction to make disciples of all the world, he promises them what?
In Matthew 28:19-20 (New Living Translation) we read Jesus’ words:
“Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
As Jesus’ followers, we go into the world to complete the awesome task of making disciples of all the nations. As we go about this task, we go in the confidence that we do not go alone, but that Jesus will always go with us.
In order to get our minds wrapped around this promise, we have to understand what the church means when we talk about the Trinity. When God chooses to save the world he does not send someone else to do the dirty work. If that’s what you are picturing, then you are picturing something like what happens in gangster movies, where the mob boss sends some else to do what he himself is unwilling to do. No. God himself comes to us. When we say that he sent his Son, it is to say, God sends his second self. He, God, comes to us in Jesus.
The same is true of the Holy Spirit. If you do not understand that the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, then you will have trouble understanding what Jesus says in John 14, as he was preparing his disciples for his death. He keeps speaking of leaving them. This, of course, causes them a lot of alarm. But he also speaks of sending them another helper. Now, if this other helper, the Holy Spirit, is not God, then it is like something that happened to me in second grade.
My favorite teacher announced that she was having baby and would be leaving at the end of the school year. But not to worry, we would get a new teacher. Our little minds began to wonder, who will this new teacher be? Will they be as good, or better than our teacher? Or, will they be worse. Who knows. All that we knew is that our teacher wasn’t coming back.
But in the midst of all of this talk about leaving, Jesus assures them, saying in John 14:18
John 14:18 (New Living Translation)
“I will not abandon you as orphans”
How can this be? How can Jesus leave but not be abandoning us? The answer is in the Ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit. The word that Jesus uses for the Holy Spirit, saying another helper is a word that tells that the Holy Spirit will be equal in kind and quality to Jesus. He will be another Jesus for us. Jesus was God with us, the Holy Spirit will be God within us. Without a good grasp on the doctrine of the Trinity, we cannot really understand the ascension. When Jesus ascended into heaven, some things changed, while others stayed the same. And one of the things that has stayed the same is that church has never been without Jesus’ constant presence.
When Jesus ascended to heaven, the reason for him floating up into the clouds is not because heaven is somewhere about 150 miles or so above the earth. The ascension had nothing to do with how Jesus went about going back to heaven. It also needs to be said that he ascended not as act of abandonment.
It was God’s plan that Jesus would come to earth as one of us. We have talked about this in length in other sermons, so I am only going to recap here. By coming to earth as a human, Jesus gave us an up close look at and demonstration of what God is like. Jesus was and is our living illustration. Also, as a man, Jesus was able to do for us what we could not do for ourselves, which was facing and defeating the curse of sin and death. He fulfilled the human vocation to perfectly love and serve God.
It was important for Jesus to dwell with us for a while as a man. But it would not have been a good thing for him to have continued among us in that way. For starters, as a man, Jesus could not be fully available to everyone all the time. Had Jesus continued to dwell among us in that way, very few of us would ever have any direct contact with Jesus. After all, there are about 2 Billion Christians alive today. How often would Jesus be able to schedule us in if he were still dwelling with us as a human being? It wouldn’t be often. Maybe you could see him once in a your lifetime, but even that would not be guaranteed.
In both the writings of John and Luke, Jesus doesn’t say that he is going to stop dwelling with us. He says that he is going to dwell with us in a new way, through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus will now be present in an ongoing way to each and every one of his followers, because the Holy Spirit will not only be among us, but will live within each of Jesus’ followers. Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. The Holy Spirit is God within us.
The Ascension becomes a powerful way of helping us to understand that Jesus will continue to be available but in a new and different way.
Thus, the Ascension means that Jesus is not absent. Later in the year, we are going to talk about Jesus’ return. But, it is really more accurate to talk, not of his return, since he remains among us; but rather to talk of the day when his glory will be revealed to the whole world.
See, right now the world is largely unaware of who Jesus is because of their spiritual blindness. Someday, all people will see him for who he really is.
Even we as believers see with only partial vision.
In 1 Corinthians 13:12 (New Living Translation), Paul says,
“Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.”
The brokenness of this present age also keeps us from seeing as clearly as we might, but as this old world fades, and the new world brightens we will see things for what they really are.
2 Peter 1:19 (New Living Translation) says,
“Because [of Jesus’ earthly life], we have even greater confidence in the message proclaimed by the prophets. You must pay close attention to what they wrote, for their words are like a lamp shining in a dark place—until the Day dawns, and Christ the Morning Star shines in your hearts.”
Later in the year, , we will talk about what it means to believe that Jesus will return again in glory. But, for this week I want us to keep our mind focused on the fact that Jesus has not truly left, and what we really wait for is the day when his perfect glory is revealed to all creation.
The Ascension is Jesus’ Coronation
The Ascension means God has honored Jesus above everything and everyone else.
In the Jewish mind of the 1st century, to be hung on tree was to be cursed or abandoned by God. It was inconceivable that the Messiah could have be crucified. At very least, the fact of Jesus’ execution, was just one more sorrow to add to the long list of Jewish sorrows. The Jewish people had often been treated as the heal of the shoe. At best, Jesus was just one more Jewish boy killed by this world, just one more martyr whose life ended too early.
To those in power, to the Romans, Jesus was pathetic. They beat him and mocked him. His death was just one more demonstration that Rome was superior to Jerusalem. Even today, some take Jesus’ death as proof that he failed in his mission; that he expected God to intervene, only to be tragically mistaken.
But the Bible says, that despite what the cross might look like to some human eyes, the Cross was not Jesus’ defeat, but was instead his victory over sin and death. The Bible says that God, in an amazing demonstration of self-giving love, went to the cross to face the enemy we were powerless to defeat. And because of Jesus’ Victory, God has given Jesus a name above all names.
Hebrews 1:3 (New Living Translation) says,
“The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven.”
To talk about Jesus sitting at God’s right hand is not to talk about where Jesus is, but to speak of his status. He shares in the Father’s glory and authority. That is Jesus’ position, his status is above everything and everyone.
To acknowledge that Jesus sits at the right hand of God is to acknowledge that there is no authority higher than Jesus. There is no one who can be rightly honored above Jesus. And while Christians have always worked to be good citizens in the countries in which we live, and while we submit to whatever governments and authorities that have been put in place, we have always reserved our highest allegiance for King Jesus.
The Ascension is God’s evaluation of who Jesus is and of what the Cross means. On the day of Jesus’ death, men and women debated about what it all meant. Some looked upon his body, wracked upon the tree and said, “Anyone who ends up like that cannot be the savior of the world.” Others said, “Well, he was still a good man, even if things did not turn out so well.” Others held on in hope, believing what Jesus had said, despite what their eyes were telling them. When God raised Jesus up to life, and then lifted him up to the heavens before the disciple’s very eyes, it was God having the final say on who Jesus is and what it was that was happening when he died on the Cross.
Hebrews 2:8-10 says,
“Now when it says ‘all things,’ it means nothing is left out. But we have not yet seen all things put under their authority. What we do see is Jesus, who was given a position ‘a little lower than the angels;’ and because he suffered death for us, he is now ‘crowned with glory and honor.’ Yes, by God’s grace, Jesus tasted death for everyone. God, for whom and through whom everything was made, chose to bring many children into glory. And it was only right that he should make Jesus, through his suffering, a perfect leader, fit to bring them into their salvation.”
Hands – the Practical Application
The Ascension shows us that Jesus is King…But also,
The Ascension means there is work to be done. #ascension
Christians have always wanted to know when Jesus will return. And I admit that I would like to know. Jesus tells us that he will return, to keep our eyes fixed on heaven, so that we will have the strength to fulfill what he has asked us to do. But no sooner do the disciples turn their eyes to the heavens than God redirects them to the world around them.
“So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, ‘Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?’ He replied, ‘The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—to the ends of the earth.’” And after Jesus ascends, the angel says to them, “Why are you standing there starring into the sky?”
See, focusing too much on Jesus’ return can become a distraction, causing us to leave off doing what it is Jesus gave us to do. There is a balance here. If we only focus on our present world, forgetting about heaven, we will soon forget that there is a task to complete. But if we focus too much on heaven, we soon lose the desire to do the task.
The Ascension reminds us that there is work to be done. We are to continue doing the work of Jesus until he returns in glory. That is what we do in the time between his ascension and his return. Through the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit, we continue to do what Jesus did until his work on earth is done, and he reveals his glory to all of creation.