The Ascension

In the mission of the church, the reason we exist is to bear witness to the present reign and rule of Christ, who is at the right hand of God. If you try to do it in your own power, it's as if Jesus said, you will fail. That's why I'm not going to leave you this earth-shattering task of bearing witness to me throughout the whole world, not just in Jerusalem, not just in Israel, but to the Gentiles as well. I'm not going to leave that to the flesh.

I'm going to empower you. Jesus didn't stay in the grave. He is risen. But He also didn't continue what had been His earthly ministry in Jerusalem or on the shores of Galilee.

So why did He ascend, and what is the mission of God's people today? I'm glad you're joining us for this Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind as we conclude a thematic series considering the crucifixion of Christ through to His ascension. Our past sermons were from the Gospel of Luke, but today R.C. Sproul will preach on the ascension from the book of Acts, and this sermon will conclude this series. So for one day only, not to be repeated next Sunday, if you'd like Dr. Sproul's line-by-line commentary on Acts, request it with your donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org before midnight tonight.

And if you'd prefer the e-book edition where you live outside of the U.S. or Canada, that offer is available for you at renewingyourmind.org global. Well, here's Dr. Sproul on the events leading up to and the monumental moment of Christ's ascension. Now if we can just exercise our imagination for a moment and suppose our Lord found it within His interest to manifest Himself visibly to you this morning, that your eyes could behold Him in His resurrected glory, and He spoke to us audibly and invited us, each one, to ask Him one question. And you had the opportunity now to see Him, to hear Him, and to speak to Him.

What question would you ask? Well, I'm sure each one of us would have a different question that we would have for Christ if we could see Him and hear His voice this morning. But in the text we have the record of the last opportunity that the disciples of Jesus had in His presence to ask a question. Here's the greatest teacher that ever lived, the supreme and divine Rabbi whose disciples studied at His feet for three years and who must have peppered Him endlessly with theological question after theological question. Now it comes down to departure time.

They have time for one more question, and let's look at it. We are told that they were assembled together and He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father. That in itself deserves a whole sermon because one of the most difficult things it is for any Christian is to wait for the promises of the Father. But Jesus is about to depart, and He said, I'm leaving.

You're staying. And what I want you to do right off is not to run out onto the highways and the byways, engage in evangelism. I don't want you to take care of the orphans and the widows this week. But for the meantime, for a short time, wait. You wait for the promise of God, which He said you have heard from Me. For John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.

Now that's the occasion of this instruction. It's the occasion of this mandate that Jesus gives to His disciples that now they present their last question to Him. What would you think that they would ask? Yeah, I would think they were going to say, well, what would this baptism of the Holy Spirit be like?

What kind of power are you going to pour out on us? How does it differ from the baptism that we saw John performing by the River Jordan? Or what's it going to be like where you're going?

What are you going to be doing there? Those are all options, but they were not the question that was raised by the disciples. Listen to what they did say. Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, Lord, will You at this time, that is, will You now restore the kingdom to Israel? They asked the question about time. They asked the question about a kingdom. They asked a question about Israel. And they asked a profound question about restoration. They were all advised of the prophecies of the Old Testament Israel. They, like every other pious Jew down to the centuries, look forward to that day when the glory of Israel would be restored, when, as Amos had prophesied, the fallen booth of David would be righted anew. Because at the present time, David's kingdom was hidden. It was under the suppression of the Roman government.

There had been no restoration of the kingdom of Israel. That's why so many people were disappointed in Jesus, because they looked to Him to bring that kingdom to Israel, to bring the restoration, to write the fallen booth of David. This past summer, we had the opportunity to visit many of the places where the Apostle Paul visited on his missionary journeys, as well as going to the island of Patmos, where John received the vision for the book of Revelation. But two places stand out in my memory, our visit to Ephesus in Turkey and our visit to Corinth in Greece, because those two towns have the most comprehensive rebuilding and restructuring of ruins from antiquity that can be found anywhere in the world. Number one is Ephesus. Almost the whole town has been reconstructed from the ruins. But even though so much of the town is reconstructed, there are still many, many pieces of buildings, of pillars, of columns in Ephesus and especially in Corinth that still are lying in the weeds. And we were reminded again of that artistic information we learned when we were in school about the three kinds of columns, you know, the Doric, the Ionic, and the Corinthian. How many of you could identify the differences among those three right now?

Not many. But we all learned that at one time, and I failed the quiz when I was there until we had it drummed into us as we saw one example after another. And of course, the most adorned of the three types of columns adorned of the three types of columns was the Corinthian column. And we saw multitudes of those lying in the weeds, slabs of this beautiful artwork with the weeds growing around it and obscuring it and moss on the side of it. And as I looked at these ruins, I thought, this is the image that Amos had in his mind of the throne of David, that where he had once reigned in glorious splendor, now David's throne was turned over. It was smashed into pieces.

The weeds were growing all around it, and it was covered with moss and dirt. And Amos had said the word of the Lord that someday God would restore the throne of David. And for centuries, the hope burned in the breasts of the Jewish people for that historic moment to come. And now Jesus is on the Mount of Transfiguration, and the disciples say, is it now?

Now are you going to do it? Are you going to restore the throne to David? Are you going to restore the kingdom to national ethnic Israel? See, they were still thinking of the kingdom strictly in terms of earthly national boundaries, restricted to the borders of Israel itself. They hadn't grasped the central teaching of Jesus during His lifetime when He proclaimed the kingdom of God that would go far beyond the boundaries of Israel, and that the greater Son of David would initiate a kingdom that would have no end, that would be spiritual, but at the same time would have manifest implications for this world.

They forgot what He taught them to pray in the Lord's Prayer when He said, when you pray, pray like this our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.

Where? On earth, as it is right now in heaven. And so the Lord Jesus reigns right now as the King of kings and the Lord of lords in heaven. That's what the ascension is all about, by the way. But in the meantime, like His disciples, we yearn for the day when that kingdom is manifest, when at the end of His reign He consummates it all with bringing the new heaven and the new earth and bringing the kingdom to its fullest consummation.

We still look forward to that to this day, and every day we say, Lord, now are you going to do it? How does Jesus answer this? Let me first of all tell you what He doesn't say. He doesn't rebuke His disciples and say, how many times do I have to tell you that I'm not going to restore the kingdom of Israel? How many times do I have to tell you that from now on the Jews have no part in my kingdom? How many times do I have to tell you that my kingdom is completely spiritual?

Let's know what He did. Listen to what He says. It's not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. Beloved, if there is a thematic passage for the book of Acts that defines the whole scope of this book, it's the verse I just read to you.

Let me read it again. It's not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in His own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. This passage the church has recognized for centuries as the Great Commission. This is the passage in which our Lord gave His marching orders to His church. He's saying in effect, it's none of your business when the kingdom is going to be consummated. That's in My Father's hand. It's under My Father's authority.

Tend to your knitting. What you are called to do now in My absence is to be My witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the uttermost parts of the earth. Now you wait because the first thing I'm going to do after I leave and ascend into My Father and go to the throne where I will be seated at the right hand of the Father and be given all authority on heaven and earth and reign as the King of kings and Lord of lords and enter into My kingdom, which will be invisible. And as soon as I get there to My coronation, as soon as I receive My crown, the first edict I'm going to do is to declare the sending of the Holy Spirit upon you, upon My church to empower My church for its mission.

And the mission of the church, the reason we exist is to bear witness to the present reign and rule of Christ, who is at the right hand of God. If you try to do it in your own power, it's as if Jesus said, you will fail. That's why I'm not going to leave you this earth-shattering task of bearing witness to Me throughout the whole world, not just in Jerusalem, not just in Israel, but to the Gentiles as well. I'm not going to leave that to the flesh.

I'm going to empower you. And we'll look at that when we study the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. You say, but the reason for that outpouring of that Spirit is not to make you feel spiritual.

It's not to give you a spiritual high. But I'm going to give you My Spirit so that you can do the job that I've given the church to do. The day I left last week for Washington, I had lunch with a man, an extraordinary man, a man who spoke here at our church about his ministry in the Sudan. And as we were eating, he showed me a picture of his family, his wife, four, five, or six kids. And there's this picture of all these kids carrying guns, the adults, AK-47s, and the younger kids with different kinds of rifles, shotguns, and everything.

I said, what's that? A militia? He said, no, they're going to church. They're going to church? What are they doing going to church? Why are they carrying guns? He said, because the church has been bombed ten times by the Muslims there.

And we have to have our guns or they won't stop shooting at us. And this man is on the front line of mission work every single day of his life. And as I listened to his story, I was astonished. And I thought, but that's what we need at St. Andrew's is to be in touch with people like that. It is our responsibility not just to minister to Sanford here locally, but to make sure that Christ's kingdom is being witnessed to throughout the world. We were called to be a missionary church last night for dinner.

We had special guests with us. And just recently, they were in Ecuador, and they told me the story of going to church in Quito, and it wasn't expected the day they went there, who happened to be present, but Nate Saint's wife, her name is Rachel, isn't it? Rachel Saint, probably name doesn't probably mean much to many of you, but how many of you have ever heard of Elizabeth Elliot? Okay, one of the great books of our time was her book called Through Gates of Splendor, which chronicled the slaughter of her husband and four other missionaries, including Nate Saint, who were missionaries to the Auca Indians in Ecuador. And how when they had dropped gifts and they tried to make a visit and they came in and they were ambushed and they were all murdered, and it made the front page of Life magazine, there were pages after pages of photographs from that scene of these five missionary martyrs. And then Elizabeth Elliot went back there and continued to minister to the Auca Indians who killed her husband, and she raised her daughter in the midst of that group, and converts among the Auca Indians babysat her, the same people that killed her father were the babysitters, and the same thing with Rachel Saint. And now she was back over there, and our friends just tell us that just the other day, they go to this church and there's Rachel Saint, and there are these Auca Indians there in the same church who were numbered among the ones who murdered the first missionaries to them.

That's the Great Commission. That's the church obedient to the instructions that Christ gave them at the moment of His departure. You shall be my witnesses. Let me change that, what Jesus said, you must be my witnesses.

Here, there, everywhere. Calvin said it this way, that the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Christ right now, is invisible, and it is the task of the visible church, that's us, to make the invisible kingdom of Christ visible, to manifest to people what it would be like to live in a commonwealth ruled by Jesus, that we would bear witness to a reign that was based on righteousness, on truth, on mercy, on charity, as we would try to show the world what the reign of Jesus looks like. I really believe that within 30 years, the largest and strongest branch of Christendom will be in Africa. And I think it's absolutely critical that the church in the United States right now pour as many resources as we possibly can into the emerging churches of the third world, and particularly in Africa. I asked the missionary to the Sudan, how can we help?

He said, well, they don't…our people over here are on fire, but they don't have a whole lot of study materials, but they get it, they grasp the Bible, they believe Reformed theology, and your books are here in some measure, and they devour them. I said, well, what can I do? I said, how about if we send you 10,000 copies of The Holiness of God?

I said, oh, they'd love that. Why stop at 10,000? Why not 50,000?

Why not 100,000? We have the materials. We have the things that these people need to be grounded, to be strengthened for future generations, and they can't provide it. But we can.

And I just think everything that we do is going to be but we can. And I just think as we continue in the book of Acts, we're going to see the first century church in action, the first century church crawling over glass, pouring out blood, giving their lives to obey this last command, be my witnesses. Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the uttermost parts of the earth. And when he said this, while they were watching, he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight.

This is the Shekinah cloud. This was predicted in the book of Daniel, where the Son of Man appears before the Ancient of Days, arriving on the Shekinah cloud of glory. It is his return to heaven from whence he had come in the first place. He came in humiliation to this planet. He returned on the glory cloud, being elevated into heaven to the right hand of God.

And they stood there transfixed, and they watched, and they watched, and they watched until the ascending Jesus is nothing more but a speck in the horizon. And we live in central Florida, not very far away from Cape Kennedy, where we have the rocket launches periodically. And you see the roads jammed from here to the Space Coast with cars of people from the tourists on this world, because they want to be able to see the liftoff of one of these rockets, right?

But we know the secret. We don't have to drive over there. We just keep the TV on, and as soon as they announce the thing, we don't even have to watch the TV. We just walk outside. How many of you have done that? Just walked out and watched it.

Watch out from your front yard. You stand there and you look, and you can see the rocket go up. It's an amazing thing. You never get tired of seeing it, do you? How long do you watch it? When I watch it, I watch it until the last contrail disappears, and I can't see it anymore.

And I think, that's amazing. And that's what the disciples were like. It wasn't a rocket ship they were watching. They were watching the King of Kings going to His coronation. And the angels appear to them, and they have a question for the disciples. Men of Galilee, what are you doing? Why are you standing here gazing into heaven? This same Jesus who has departed from you before your very eyes today will return in the same manner as He departed.

He will return in glory. In the meantime, it's time to go to work, fulfilling the Great Commission. It is time to go to work, and I hope today's sermon has encouraged you to do just that. Today's sermon on Renewing Your Mind was preached by R.C. Sproul, the founder of Ligonier Ministries. And one of the reasons most days we have a resource offer for you is not only so we can help equip you with a biblical resource, but so through your donations, you can help take those same trusted resources and make them available to Christians around the world. Dr. Sproul spoke today of the great need in Africa for trusted teaching, and your regular support has enabled more than 70,000 Reformation study Bibles to be placed into the hands of pastors, church leaders, and seminarians throughout Africa. And this Study Bibles for Africa campaign that Dr. Sproul launched has now expanded. Think Study Bibles for the world.

25,000 have already been distributed in Latin America and 8,000 in India, with more shipments arriving as funding allows. And none of this would be possible without your generous support. And when you donate today, in support of the global reach of Renewing Your Mind and all of the Gospel initiatives of Ligonier Ministries, we'll send you the hardcover edition of R.C.

Sproul's commentary on Acts. Visit renewingyourmind.org to give your gift or use the link in the podcast show notes. But this is a one Sunday only offer. So if you'd like to add this volume to your collection, respond before this offer ends at midnight tonight. Thank you for both your prayerful and financial support as we each seek to fulfil the Great Commission. From the end of Jesus' earthly ministry to the beginning, next Sunday we'll be in the Gospel of Mark and Jesus' calming of the sea. Join us then here on Renewing Your Mind.