The Ascension of Christ
Acts 1:6-11
July 26, 2020
Peter Yoo
Sermon Script
This morning will be the last sermon in our mini-series on the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. From his life, we have hope because he lived a life of perfect obedience. And he gave it to us by grace and we are rewarded even now as if we were Jesus. From his death, we have forgiveness of sins because we lived a life of disobedience before God. And we gave it to Jesus and he was crucified and died as if he was us. And from his resurrection, Jesus overcame sin and death. He is truly the risen Son of God. And his personal presence is not dead. Rather, brothers and sisters, Jesus is alive. And because of his resurrection, eternal life is ours right now and at the same time it awaits us. And it will be ours fully when Christ returns.
Our Lord is risen, yes, but he’s not bodily present with us right now. Mary wanted the personal presence of Jesus, but Jesus told her not to cling to him. And like Mary, we too as believers want the personal presence of Jesus Christ. But unfortunately we can’t have him physically. Not yet. And so, we live these days in this strange tension between victory and victory. We live between the victory of the resurrection and the victory of the return of Jesus Christ. But we, like Mary, can’t have Jesus physically just yet. He had to ascend to the Father.
Preview
But did Jesus leave us alone? No. Jesus gave us his Spirit and Jesus gave us his Word. And the book of Acts captures this idea beautifully, the idea that Jesus will never leave us and that he is always present with us through his Word and Spirit. Lord’s Day 18 of the Heidelberg Catechism tells us that Jesus Christ is true God, true Man. And according to his human nature, he is not now on earth. But in his divinity, majesty, grace, and Spirit, he is never absent from us. Do you, dear Christian, think sometimes that you are alone? Do you sometimes think that you are so separated from God because you don’t feel loved? Do you ever wonder if God is with you? I encourage you, dear saint, your Lord Jesus Christ will never leave you nor forsake you. God has never and will never leave his people. The abandonment that we deserve from God because of our sins has been put onto Jesus and the Father forsook his Son when he was on the cross. And though Jesus is not bodily with us, he is always with us by his Holy Spirit. And so, despite your current condition this morning, be assured of his everlasting love for you now and forever. Be assured, dear Christian, that you are loved.
Context (Acts 1:1-5)
Before we look at the book of Acts, I begin with some important notes to consider before we understand God’s Word for us this morning. Luke the physician, the Luke who wrote the third gospel, is the same Luke who wrote this book, the book of Acts. Why is this relevant? Both the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts are meant to be understood together. The book of Acts is easily, easily one of the most misinterpreted books in all of Scripture. But one step to help us understand the book of Acts is to understand Acts in the bigger context of Luke and Acts as one book. In other words, Luke and Acts are meant to be two sides of the same coin and they should be interpreted together.
And so, Luke summarizes his entire gospel in the first five verses of our passage this morning, with a special focus on the last chapter of his gospel. Luke writes both his gospel and the book of Acts to someone named Theophilus. And Luke tells Theophilus that in his gospel, he wrote about all the things that Jesus began to do and teach. Jesus began to do many things and Jesus began to teach many things. But it doesn’t end there. Jesus doesn’t just resurrect from the dead. Jesus, after he resurrected from the dead, showed himself to his apostles alive. He stayed with his apostles for forty days or so and he spoke to them about things regarding the kingdom of God. And Jesus commanded his apostles to stay in Jerusalem and wait for the Holy Spirit, which Luke calls “the promise of the Father.”
This is a strange request though. Why would Jesus tell his apostles to stay in Jerusalem? Jesus was rejected in Jerusalem. And yet, Jesus commands them to stay there. Why? Because Jesus knows that the place of rejection will become the place of conversion. Jesus knows that the Holy Spirit will descend on them on Pentecost and that Jesus’ resurrection message will go forth to people of every tribe and nation. In other words, Jesus commands his apostles to stay in Jerusalem so that everyone everywhere could come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
The Discourse of the Apostles and Jesus (Acts 1:6-8)
And so, after Jesus told his apostles to wait for the promise of the Father, the apostles asked Jesus the question, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” To us that’s a strange question, isn’t it? Because if you could ask Jesus one question, one last question before he ascended to heaven, what would it be? What would you ask him? We might ask Jesus something like, “Lord, when are you going to come back in glory?” or “Lord, what should we do as we wait for your return?” But no, that’s not what the apostles asked. Jesus was with them for quite some time, and so despite Jesus telling them over and over and over again, “I will rise,” “I will rise,” “I will rise,” the apostles didn’t get it and thought that Jesus would stay with them.
And it reveals something about their condition, doesn’t it? Israel has been through so much history. They’ve endured through wicked rulers, Assyrian exile, Babylonian exile, then now, oppressive Roman rule. So when Jesus comes and says that he’s the Messiah, of course they think that Jesus is going to deliver them from this oppressive Roman rule. In other words, because they believe Jesus is going to stay with them, they ask Jesus if this is finally the time that the Jewish people are free from oppression. Despite Jesus saying over and over and over again that his kingdom is not of this world, his own apostles ask him if he’s going to restore the rule to Israel.
But brothers and sisters, we’re like this too, aren’t we? Jesus speaks to us in his Word and he repeats his Law to us over and over and over again. But even as children of God, we don’t always listen to him, do we? And just like the apostles, we might even misinterpret his Word to mean something that we would like. We of all people understand why the apostles said what they said. Because sometimes, we want Jesus to be who we want him to be. And sometimes we don’t want Jesus to be who he really is. We would rather have an idea of Jesus rather than Jesus himself.
But our Lord is very patient with us, isn’t he? His response to his apostles is not out of anger. He didn’t say to them, “How many times do I have to tell you that my kingdom is not of this world?” He doesn’t say that. He lovingly tells his apostles, “It’s not for you to know.” “It’s not for you to know.” Our Lord Jesus tells them that the hidden will of God belongs to God. There are things that are meant to be hidden from us that only God knows.
But all of us want to know the hidden will of God. We want to know the things that only God knows. Some of us want to know what kind of school we’ll go to, what kind of job we’ll have in the future, what kind of spouse we’ll marry, how many children we will have, when this COVID-19 pandemic will end, we want to know these things. But Jesus lovingly tells his apostles, “It’s not for you to know.” “The Father has fixed (these things) by his own authority.” The apostles had to express trust in the sovereign will of God. And brothers and sisters, so do we. Let us trust the future things to God. God is sovereign. And he has appointed times and seasons by his own authority. Let us leave these things to God.
Jesus continues. He tells his apostles, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” This second part of Jesus’ answer is the key to understanding the entire book of Acts. Jesus outlined the entire book of Acts for us in this very statement. Actually, the outline of the book of Acts is more like an outward movement. The gospel will start in Jerusalem, and then move out to Judea and Samaria, and then move out even more to the end of the earth.
How will the gospel make its way from Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria, and then to the end of the earth? The Lord has appointed his apostles to be his messengers. And so, the book of Acts has been appropriately called the Acts of the apostles. But better yet, it should be called the Acts of God through the apostles. Why the apostles? What’s so special about them? Because the apostles were eyewitnesses of the resurrection. They have visibly witnessed with their own eyes that Jesus has, in fact, risen from the dead. They did not hallucinate Jesus’ multiple appearances to multiple people. Jesus ate with his apostles and spent time with them for more than a month, teaching them about his kingdom.
Brothers and sisters, I remind you yet again that our Lord, Jesus Christ, is really alive. He really died. He really was buried. And he really resurrected from the dead. And his apostles really witnessed with their eyes Jesus Christ in the flesh. Back then, there were no security cameras to record what really happened, so you needed at least two or three eyewitnesses to confirm whether something really happened or not. But Jesus did not appear to only two or three eyewitnesses. Jesus appeared to literally hundreds of eyewitnesses. Hundreds. And so, Jesus spoke to his apostles, “you will be my witnesses.” They witnessed his resurrection, and so they will be the ones to tell others about Jesus’ victory over death. And dear saint, your faith in Jesus Christ and his victory over death came from one of these apostles. Isn’t that amazing? In one sense, I can trace back your faith as it were, and it will always go back to one of these apostles. Whomever we heard the gospel from, they heard it from someone else, who heard it from someone else, and so on. But our gospel message always traces back to one of these apostles. Praise God for his work through his apostles. Without them, we would still be dead in our sins without resurrection hope.
When we tell others about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the gospel message continues to move outward. When we tell everyone that Jesus is alive, they share in the same apostolic faith that we proclaim. Think about it. All of us have heard about Jesus Christ and his resurrection from somebody else. Some of us learned about Jesus from our friends. Some of us learned about Jesus from our families. Some of us may have learned about Jesus from an evangelist on the street or someone from work or from school. And brothers and sisters, you can be that somebody else. You can be the one to tell others about Jesus. And believe me when I say, when God changes their heart, they will thank you. I still remember my friend who brought me to his church back when I was in middle school and I’m still thankful to this day that he did. And I never imagined that I would be sharing Jesus’ resurrection message like this. Brothers and sisters, let us share Jesus’ message, because this message traces all the way back to these eyewitnesses of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The Ascension and the Apostles (Acts 1:9-11)
And after Jesus told his apostles that they would be his messengers who herald and share his gospel message, “he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” Remember, Jesus’ apostles are his eyewitnesses. And Luke really emphasizes this idea that they were eyewitnesses. Notice the emphasis on eye language. In verse 9, “as they were looking,” “a cloud took him out of their sight.” In verse 10, “while they were gazing.” And in verse 11, “why do you stand looking,” and “as you saw him.”
And the apostles even saw the two men in white. These two men in white were actually angels, but to stress the emphasis on sight, Luke describes them to us as men. Just as Mary saw two angels in white when she was looking into the tomb, so did the apostles see two angels in white when they were looking into heaven. As Lord’s Day 18 of the Heidelberg Catechism tells us, while the apostles watched, our Lord Jesus Christ was taken up from earth into heaven.
And just as the two angels asked Mary the question, “Why are you weeping?”, these two angels asked the apostles a question, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?” And the angels, assuming the apostles were waiting for Jesus’ return, said to them, “This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” Brothers and sisters, our Lord Jesus Christ is not bodily with us. He is in heaven. But he is not in heaven because he died and stayed dead. On the contrary, he is in heaven because he’s alive and because he rose from the dead. How amazing it is that he ascended into heaven.
And after Jesus Christ ascended into heaven, he is described in Scripture as being seated at the right hand of God the Father. But Jesus is not literally sitting at the right hand of God the Father. Sitting at someone’s right hand is simply a figure of speech where the person on the right is honored above all else. In fact, when Stephen was being stoned to death for his faith in Acts 7, what did he see? When Stephen gazed into heaven, he didn’t see Jesus sitting at the right hand of God. He saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And then Stephen repeats this detail of Jesus standing at the right hand of God. What is so important about this detail of Jesus standing at the right hand of God? Back then, if you were condemned at a trial, the one who’s defending you was found standing. And at Stephen’s trial, when everyone was standing against him, throwing stones at him until he died, Jesus Christ was standing with him, and he was with him until the end.
Brothers and sisters, do you believe that Jesus Christ is alive and is in heaven defending you right now? In the best moments of your life and even in your worst moments, Jesus Christ stands before the Father on your behalf. Jesus Christ is your Advocate in heaven before the Father. Even in small prayers, even when you pray quickly before your meals, you are praying to your risen and ascended and exalted King. You are praying to the King who will never die because he has already died on your behalf. You can be confident, dear saint, that even when you forget Jesus on a daily basis, you can be assured that Jesus has never forgotten you. Just as he called Mary by name, he intercedes for you by name. Sometimes you might pray, thinking, “God, are you even there? Are you even listening? I feel like I’m talking to a wall.” But I remind you this morning that when you pray, even when you pray before meals, you are not talking to a wall. You are talking to the risen and ascended and exalted King of the universe. And all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him.
Brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ is not bodily present with us, but he is spiritually present with us. Regardless, whether Jesus is with us physically or with us by his Spirit, it is the same personal presence of Jesus that is always with us. That same personal presence that Mary was seeking at the tomb is the same personal presence that we have through his Holy Spirit.
Jesus Christ ascended into heaven so that the Holy Spirit may descend and transform our hearts from the inside out. And as Jesus taught his apostles all that he said and did, his Holy Spirit is instructing us of the very same things in his Word. As Jesus taught his apostles about things regarding the kingdom of God, his Holy Spirit teaches us things regarding the kingdom of God through his Word. And just as the apostles knew that Jesus would come in the same way as they saw him go into heaven, his Holy Spirit teaches us the very same truth from his Word. And it’s not just the book of Acts that beautifully teaches that God is always with us through his Spirit and his Word. The entire Bible is his Word to us and it is all a testimony to who Jesus Christ is and what he has done, and what he is doing on your behalf right now.
Jesus may be physically distant from us, but he is present with us by his Holy Spirit. Soon, he will be physically present with us when he returns. And until he returns, let us lift up our hearts and minds toward heaven where he is and fix our gaze into heaven, where Christ is. This earth is not our home. And I pray that his Holy Spirit would remind us of our heavenly citizenship daily. So that by the Spirit’s power, we might now seek earthly things, but the things that are above, where Christ is at God’s right hand.
Soli Deo Gloria