The Ascension (Part 2 of 3)

After Jesus' resurrection from the dead, it was time for Him to return to His Father in heaven. His mission on earth had come to an end, but for His followers, their mission was just beginning. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg examines their unexpected reaction to Jesus' departure.

We continue in the Gospel of Luke in chapter 24, but we'll begin today in Luke chapter 9. In Luke chapter 9, in the record of the transfiguration, remember, Jesus took Peter and James and John with him, and he went up to a mountain to pray. And in the context of that verse 30, two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, and they were talking with Jesus.

And what did they talk about? Well, they spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. And in verse 51, Luke follows up with this notion, and he describes the timeline in relationship to his ascension. Luke 9.51, as the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven. Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. It doesn't say, as the time approached for him to die—although it may well have said that, and it says that in other places—but in this context, Luke says, as the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven. That's ultimately what he's doing. He is going back to the Father and to glory.

Everything else will take place in process until then. And in John chapter 20, when Mary Magdalene meets Jesus in the garden, post-resurrection, and falls at his feet and grabs him, Jesus, you remember, says, Mary, don't hang on to me like that. I have not yet ascended to my Father. I'm not staying here.

I'm in a transition at the moment, but I am moving forward. Now, the verbs were helpful to me in just setting the picture clearly in my mind. Verse 50, the verb to lead. And when he had led them out, the whole story of their journey had been about Jesus, their leader. He had come to them and said, Follow me. And they had begun to follow him. And here at the very end of it all, they're still following, he sets out before them.

He is in every sense their leader. And it surely was very meaningful to them that their final view of their beloved Master is a picture of him with his hands raised in blessing upon them. You see, that's another reason that without the transition, that would not have been the final view. It wouldn't have been the final view for Mary. It wouldn't have been the final view for Peter.

It wouldn't have been the final view for Thomas. What a gracious Savior! What a wonderful Lord we have! That he loves to lift his hands up in blessing upon his own. He says, I bless you with my love and with my life and with my power and with my will. He stood with his hands raised in blessing, and you will notice he leads them out.

He lifts his hands, and then he leaves them. Luke tells us with an eye for detail that while he was still blessing them, he left. So their very final picture of him, his posture before them, is this wonderful picture. God loves to bless us, you know. Jesus loves to bless us. Jesus is far more willing to bless us than we are to even take the time to ask him to bless us.

He loves to do so. Is that a picture you have of Christ, with his hands raised in blessing on your life? You may.

You should. Now, isn't it wonderful that he leaves in such a decisive and defining way? If it had all just been going away from them, dissipating, they wouldn't have known. And so Jesus very decisively and very wonderfully leaves them in no doubt that he is at the end. He's at the end, he's at the beginning. It is the end of the beginning, it's the beginning of the end. It's the end of all that Jesus has begun to do and teach, as Luke says in his second volume. Now the responsibility of teaching, now the responsibility of proclaiming the kingdom of God, is going to fall to his followers as they are empowered by the Holy Spirit. It's now over to them to take the news of repentance and faith to all the nations, and they're to begin this evangelism program, as we saw last time beginning in Jerusalem. But he wants his disciples to understand they will no longer be able to see him and talk with him as before, and they're about to discover that what he had told them previously about how good this was going to be, that he was true in what he said. Remember, he said in John 16, I'm going to go away from you, and when I go, the Father will send the counselor, the comforter, the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit will come, and he will abide with you forever.

And that's essentially it. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. There you have the ascension, in a sentence. And I say to you again that it is an ongoing matter of wonder to me that at the most pivotal points in Christianity, the Scriptures are so cryptic. There is no elaboration.

For example, the birth of Jesus. What do we have? A sentence. And she brought forth her firstborn son and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. That's the incarnation.

The incarnation! That God became a fetus. That the Creator of the universe accommodated himself to our humanity, that he walked into our life and into our experience.

It's not covered with some great forty-seven-page scientific journal, some great theological insight. It simply says, And she brought forth her son, he was born. When you get to the crucifixion, you don't have an hour and a half on the sufferings of Christ.

You have a sentence. And there they crucified him, between two thieves. And you come to the ascension, and you have a sentence.

And he was taken up into heaven. There must be something to this notion that we walk by faith and not by sight, don't you think? You see, nobody is going to be argued into the incarnation. If you're here today expecting some slick argument that will convince you of a resurrected Christ, I have long since run out of slick arguments. If you demand from me or from others some explication of the ascension that will appeal to your intellect and draw you to faith, I can only tell you it's not going to happen. But if you will humble your heart and mind before the living God, the Spirit of God will bring the Word of God home to your heart and take the veil from your eyes and convince you that these simple sentences are pivotal not only for life but for death and for all of eternity.

Yeah, but there's a ten-year-old boy here, and he's not happy with that. No, I think Begg's dodging, he says to his mother, I want to know what happened in the ascension. What happened? Is Jesus the first space traveler? Was it like Cape Canaveral, Cape Kennedy? Is that how it went? Well, God's power was certainly as much at work in the taking of Jesus in the ascension as it was at work in the resurrection. And it does say that he was taken up and a cloud hid him from their sight. So we know that Jesus was going up in the world.

All right? We talk about people going up in the world, don't we? We use that phraseology. Oh, I see George. He's going up in the world. He used to be on the fourth floor. Now he's on the seventh floor. He has a different key. And his own parking space. He's going up in the world.

Well, in a very realistic sense, that is what's happening here. Jesus is going up in the world. He, for our sakes, had humiliated himself and was born as a babe, didn't count equality with God, something to be grasped, made himself of no reputation, taken the form of a servant, made in the likeness of man, humbled himself unto death, even death on a cross. Now he's going up in the world. Therefore God highly exalted him. He said, Come on now, son!

Come up here! The father brings him home, advancing him, restoring him to his majesty and to a dignity that he knew with the Father and the Spirit before time began. Jim Packer, in an uncharacteristically down-there kind of illustration, says it is as if, having traveled successfully in the firm's interest, the son was now recalled to headquarters to become the CEO.

It's an approximation to the idea. What's happening here? Well, the son has traveled on the father's business, completed the task that he's been given. And now he's coming back to heaven, and he's going to be the father's right-hand man.

The father's right-hand man. Isn't that what we're told? That he sits at God's right hand, till all his foes submit and bow to his command and fall beneath his feet. Where is Jesus today?

Now, for my ten-year-old inquirer, I'll say just this. It's very important that when the Bible doesn't explain things, that we don't allow our imaginations to go crazy. Because we can imagine all kinds of stuff that isn't worthy of our thoughts. And I'm pretty sure that if we think of Jesus as the first space traveler zooming light-years away from us, we're probably got it wrong.

Probably. In fact, I think if we think of eternity as way up there and out there in sort of platonic terms, in spatial terms, then we've probably got it wrong as well. I think C. S. Lewis is probably closer to it when he thinks in terms of the sun being withdrawn through a fold in space. For those of you who read books about the fourth dimension, that's closer to it. As we live in three dimensions, Jesus has made nothing, really. He has conquered all the dimensions of space. He has liberated from any limitation that attaches to those three dimensions, even in his resurrection appearances. And so it's a nice idea for me to think of eternity not as being light-years away out there, somewhere that I have to go after I die, but that actually I'm just gonna pass through a scrim that I cannot see that takes me from time into eternity. The same way that an actor, when he takes his bow and then, when you look up, he moves, and it's as though he disappeared into the folds of a curtain. But he didn't. He actually disappeared in between two curtains. And when we think of the ascension of Jesus, however we try and grapple with that, we dare not miss the significant point—namely, that we are now faced with the absence of his physical presence. But we now enjoy the availability of his spiritual presence, as do all who call on him everywhere. Finally, the word reaction.

Transition, ascension, reaction. We've grown used to the reaction of these people by now. Everyone deserted him and fled. That was a reaction to the arrest of Jesus. They didn't believe the woman, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. That was their reaction to the story that had come from the empty tomb. They were startled and frightened. That was their reaction to the appearance of Jesus in the room beside them.

And all of those prior responses make their reaction here all the more striking. What is their reaction to his departure? Number one, worship. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshiped him. Then they worshiped him. They knew, as we know, that worship is due to God alone.

To worship anyone or anything other than God is idolatry. And if never before, then in this final departing moment, the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle all come together for these followers, and they say, We worship him. I like to think that they wrote the chorus there, which clearly they didn't, as they stood there, and as Jesus was taken from them, someone said, He is Lord. And antiphonally, somebody sang back, He is Lord.

And someone said, He is risen from the dead. And then together they said, And he is Lord. And someone said, Every knee will bow.

And someone said, And every tongue confess. And then together they said, That Jesus Christ is Lord. You see, their reaction was not bewilderment anymore.

The reaction was not chin down. Their reaction was worship. Worship.

That is significant. They get to worship in the same way that the leper got to worship one out of ten, admittedly, who, when he saw that he was healed, praised God, returned to Jesus, and worshiped. Worship.

What else did they do? They praise him. Verse 53, they are continually at the temple, praising God, thanking him for what he's done, adoring him for the wonder of his person. Worship marks them. Praise marks them. Obedience marks them. They returned to Jerusalem. That was an act of obedience. Jesus said, I want you to make sure that you stay in Jerusalem until you receive the promise of the Father.

And so they've said goodbye to panic. They've said goodbye to bewilderment. They have remembered what Jesus told them to do, and they're going to do it. Their reaction is worship, praise, obedience, and joy. Actually, there's an adjective there at the end of verse 52—great joy. Not the bewilderment of joy that is mentioned in verse 41. While they still do not believe it because of joy and amazement—that strange emotional reaction—but no, this was great joy.

Now, before I just fold this up, let's take those four identifying features of the reaction and take them to ourselves as both a challenge and as an example. Worship, praise, obedience, and joy. We're about to go back into the routine of our lives. We can reflect on the last week of our lives. Peculiar circumstances that came our way. Encounters that we had with individuals.

Ways in which we reacted to different things, some of which were hard for us and some did not appeal to us. How much of last week was marked in my life by worship, praise, obedience, and joy? Okay, forget last week. This is the first day of the week.

Fresh grace, clean page, new day. Only by grace can we enter, only by grace can we stand. It'd be dreadful if the message was, Now go out and try and muster up some worship, will you? And some joy and praise and obedience. Go on, do your best.

Have a great week. What a sorry testimony that would be. But Christ is all our worship, he is all our joy, he is all our obedience, and he is all our praise. And we are accepted in him. The Father accepts all his worship and joy and obedience and praise on our behalf, and in light of his gracious work within us, then, by his enabling, we follow his example. And finally, I think that Luke, in this final little section, fulfills in a masterful way his objective that he set out in writing his Gospel.

He said, I have carefully investigated everything from the beginning. It seemed good to me to write an orderly account for you, so that you might know the certainty of the things that you have been taught. And they stayed continually at the temple. They worshiped him, and they returned to Jerusalem.

This is just silly on my part, but you'll forgive it to me, won't you? I imagine him dictating this. And he says to his amanuensis, he says, Now let's just write these final few verses here. Write this.

They worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with joy. So the person's writing, he says, Wait a minute, have you finished that? He said, No.

He said, No, don't write that. Write, They worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. So the secretary says, Okay, great joy it is.

Why? Because when the secretary had written the earlier part of the account, and the angels appeared, and they told the story, good news, of great joy that will be for all the people. And the Gospel begins in the temple and ends in the temple. Go back to chapters 1 and 2, and there's a whole crowd of people there, and they are anticipating the advent of this Lord and Savior and King. They're living in hope on the advent of a Savior, and the angel has brought to them this good news of great joy. And here it ends with great joy, as the faithful wait for the empowering of the Holy Spirit and ultimately for the return of the King. And while they wait for the return of the King, they get about the business of repentance and forgiveness of sins being preached in his name to all the nations. At the bottom of the page, we ought to write there, To be continued. And go over to the Acts of the Apostles and go to the end of Acts, and right at the bottom of that, To be continued as well.

To be continued. In Cleveland, Ohio, we have a story to tell to the nations that will turn their hearts to the right, a story of truth and gladness, a story of love and light, for the darkness will turn to the dawning, and the dawning to noonday bright, and Christ's great kingdom will come on earth, a kingdom of love and light. Where is Jesus? He's ascended. He's king. What's he doing? Getting your room ready. Pleading your case.

Okay then. Chins up. Chins up. Alistair Begg with a great reminder that we can remain encouraged because we have an ascended king.

This is Truth for Life. Alistair will close today's program with prayer so please keep listening. The early disciples were witnesses to the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. It gave them hope for their own future resurrection.

This is something that all of us who are in Christ can look forward to. What does our future resurrection mean for us now? Well that's the topic of a book we're mentioning called Alive, How the Resurrection of Christ Changes Everything. The author of this book explains how our confidence in the resurrection of Jesus enables us to face death without fear and live each day with the hope of eternal life. Now if you find yourself questioning the truth of the resurrection, this book Alive walks through all of the credible evidence. You'll gain certainty that Jesus did in fact rise from the dead that he is now in heaven preparing a place for all who believe.

When you read the book Alive you'll learn what the resurrection means for you as you consider the reality of eternity. Request your copy of the book Alive when you give a gift of any amount. Just click the image you see on the app or call 888-588-7884. You often hear me mention the Truth for Life mobile app. If you're not listening to the daily program through the app today I want to encourage you to check it out. The app is free.

You can download it to your smartphone or your tablet. It gives you access to Alistair's complete teaching library. You'll find it when you search Truth for Life in your app store. Now here's Alistair to close our program with prayer. Father, forgive us for allowing our eyes to run with the gloomy, for us to furtively skirt around with the fearful as they look over their shoulders. Enable us by your Word and Spirit to lift our eyes and look up, because we have in the Lord Jesus Christ an ascended King. May that make a difference, we pray, in the way we go about the routine of our lives. For his name's sake, Amen. I'm Bob Lapine. Hope you can join us tomorrow for the final message in our series, The Gospel According to Luke. We'll discover how Jesus' physical absence on earth assures us of his spiritual presence. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.