1.
Grace,
mercy and peace to you from God our heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. What does it mean that
Jesus ascended into heaven? For many Christians
today Jesus’ ascension into heaven isn’t celebrated in the same way He
descended to this earth through His incarnation at Christmastime. We suffer from: Ascension Deficit Disorder. We
as a Church celebrate our Lord’s Crucifixion and Resurrection from the dead
more than we celebrate His Ascension.
But, Jesus’ ascension into heaven is another vital part of our lives as
Christians. His ascension reminds us
that in the same way He descended to
become one of us and die on the cross for our sins, He also ascended into heaven and promised to
give to us His Holy Spirit to help us carry out our mission to witness to His
work here on earth. Finally, Christ will
descend from heaven on the Last Day to judge both the living and the dead. The message today is taken from Acts 1:7-11
and is entitled, “Christ: Ascending &
Descending.” Dear brothers and
sisters in Christ.
2.
As I reflected on what to preach on
today I couldn’t help but notice the ring that’s on my right finger. Some of you may be thinking what does
Pastor’s ring have to do with Jesus’ ascension into heaven? Well, actually the ring that I wear on my
right finger is a replica of Martin Luther’s wedding ring that he received when
he married Katrina von Bora. If you look
at the ring closely you would notice that just above the place where it shows
Jesus being crucified on the cross there’s a little ladder. This reflects back to Genesis 28 when Jacob
had a dream where He saw angels ascending
and descending from heaven. In that dream God promised to continue in the
covenant that He gave to Abraham that all the peoples of the earth would be
blessed through the offspring of Abraham.
3.
What does Jacob’s ladder have to do
with Jesus ascending into heaven? Well,
many people today have a sort of Jacob’s
ladder theology in which they think of ways to reach God apart from Jesus
Christ. Even Christians today think of
their faith as a way of climbing a ladder to God. In Martin Luther’s day it was popular to see
this image of Jacob’s ladder as a way to reach God by trying to become perfect
on this earth. But, the problem with
this analogy is that it sets us off in the wrong direction as Martin Luther
later found out. It makes us concerned
with works of ascending to heaven, rather than thinking like our Lord to come
down to earth, to learn what it means to be a Christian here on this earth.
4.
Let’s look at what Acts 1:7-11 says,
7 He said to them, "It is not for
you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. 8
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." 9 And when he had said these things, as they were looking on,
he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 And while they
were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white
robes, 11 and said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?
This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as
you saw him go into heaven."
5.
Isn’t this an amazing account in
Acts chapter 1? Notice what Jesus says
in verse 7, he says its’ not for us to know all that God the Father has planned
for us, but it’s for us to trust in His plan of salvation found in His Son our
Savior Jesus. Here we learn that the
apostles were not to busy their minds with what they could not know trying to
climb Jacob’s ladder on their own. Rather,
they were to be occupied with the mission Jesus had given to them on this earth. To be Christ’s witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea,
Samaria and all the ends of the earth.
6.
After Jesus had spoken to them Acts
1:9 tells us that He ascended into heaven and a cloud hid Him from their
sight. Jesus being taken up and hidden
from their sight made it clear that the apostles weren’t to expect Him to
establish a political kingdom here on earth.
It brought home to them that they must wait for the promised Holy Spirit
to empower them for their mission on this earth.
7.
After Jesus ascended into heaven
they kept straining their eyes to see Jesus after the cloud hid Him from their
sight. The two angels who were there
asked the disciples a question as to why they continued to look up into heaven. Here the angels reminded them that they
weren’t to spend their time looking in the sky for Jesus, but to continue with
the work of spreading the Gospel message before Jesus descends from heaven on
the Last Day to judge the living and the dead.
8.
There are many people today that
want to do what the disciples were doing in Acts 1 after Jesus ascended into
heaven. In fact, in Martin Luther’s day
people were doing the same thing. This
is one reason why Martin Luther left his life of being a monk in a monastery
some 500 years ago. He was turning his
back on the piety of the ladder, the
belief that the Christian life must be understood as the task of ascending to
heaven by special spiritual exercises.
There are ways that people try to ascend or reach God today. One way people try to reach God is through
MORALISM. That is seeking to earn God’s
favor through moral perfection. Always
trying to do what is right, avoiding wrongdoing and keeping oneself under
control by sheer willpower. Many world
religions, such as Islam have this way of thinking. Another way that people try to reach God is
through SPECULATION. The belief that a
person can reach God through their own intellect. That if we attained some sort of “special knowledge” then we could come to
know more about God and how to reach him.
The final way that people try to reach God is in the form of MYSTICISM. That is attaining the ecstatic experience of
becoming one with God. This leads to the
false idea of becoming a god or becoming like God. We see this in the New Age movement and in
Hinduism. Even Oprah Winfrey, who calls
herself a Christian, believes in this Mystical way of thinking through her own
ideas and in approving Eckhart Tolle’s book, “The New Earth.”
9.
What makes Lutheranism different
from all these ideologies of reaching God is that it begins with the insight
that all human effort to reach God is pointless. Martin Luther said that our human will is in
bondage. Not only can we not fulfill the
moral law perfectly, we actually rebel against it. Our own minds are in bondage to our sinful
desires. Even our emotions that we try
to use in mysticism are in bondage and lead us astray rather than reach
God. Far from ascending to God, we spend
most of our time trying to run away from Him.
10.
That’s
why in our Lutheran beliefs we believe that it’s all what God does. To rescue us from our own sinful human
condition—Jesus became a human being Himself.
He accomplished the perfection moralists only desire to do and took upon
Himself the punishment for our moral failures by dying on the cross. Our own spiritual lives have to do with
recognizing God’s work—what He accomplished on the cross and what He continues
to accomplish in people’s lives through the Holy Spirit that He has sent to us
after His ascension. In fact, Jesus’
ascension into heaven is comforting to us as Christians because through His
ascension we can be sure that He’s present with us even today.
11.
The
heaven that Jesus ascended isn’t a realm of astronomers. It’s not a place where He’s confined or where
He’s retired. It’s the state of glory in
which He who shares in our humanity enjoys all the power and glory that He had
with the Heavenly Father from eternity. As
the Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 1:20-23, which says, “20 [God] worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated
him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and
authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only
in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And he put all things under his
feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body,
the fullness of him who fills all in all.”
12.
Jesus
hasn’t deserted us. His ascension points
to the fact that He’s involved and He’s in charge. The apostle’s acts and the Church’s work in
every generation including ours are His doing as He lives and reigns in Heaven
ruling over us right now. This work of
proclaiming the Gospel isn’t only done for
Him, but by Him. May God enable us to continue to look to our
ascended Lord and Savior that He ALONE is our ladder into heaven through His
own life, work, death and resurrection and ascension. Thanks be to God for what He has done for
us. Amen.
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