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Acts 1:1-11, Daniel 7:13-14, Colossians 3:1-4
1:1 In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, 2 until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. 3 He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
4 And while staying1 with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with2 the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 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.”
(ESV)
13 “I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
14 And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed.
(ESV)
3:1 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your1 life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
[1] 3:4
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Good morning, Redeemer Church. My name is Joseph Ray. I'm one of the lay elders here at Redeemer. My family and I moved back here to Redeemer in the summer of 2018. We were at Redeemer pretty early on, my wife and I were, and then moved away to Indianapolis for a few years.
Speaker 1:And really been glad, grateful to come back, be back here with what kinda always never stopped feeling like our church family. I never thought that my first occasion preaching for redeemer would feel quite like this does, but it is Memorial Day, so it's probably not that different from how it might look on a Sunday. I'm gonna assume you're laughing really hard at that, that I'm very funny over camera audience. So we're gonna study the ascension today from 3 different texts. The first one comes out of acts 1.
Speaker 1:It's verses 1 through 11. And then I'll read the other 2 as we come to those points in the sermon. So if you would, turn in your bibles to acts chapter 1. I'll read the first eleven verses. In the first book, Otheophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands to the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he'd chosen.
Speaker 1:He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God. And while staying with them, he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the father, which, he said, you heard from me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, it's 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.
Speaker 1: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. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, 2 men stood by them in white robes 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. This is the word of the lord. Thanks be to God.
Speaker 1:Pray with me. Jesus, today, we have the honor of acknowledging that you are in authority over all things, physical and spiritual, visible and invisible that you right now are ruling, even though your creation is still broken and even though many parts of your creation are still in rebellion against that rule. And by your grace, you have redeemed a people to yourself and continue to redeem people to yourself, not because we are great, but because you are gracious. And you stand not only as our king, but also as our high priest in heaven, securing our hope. And so I pray that as we study the ascension, you would give us wonder at who you are, that you would give us confidence in submitting to your authority, and you would give us trust in your hope and the knowledge that you will come to complete your kingdom when you bring it back to earth.
Speaker 1:We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. So the ascension is the celebration that we make of when Jesus was taken up from the physical creation from earth, and he was seeded or translated into the spiritual kingdom of heaven, which is every bit as real as earth. You could say more real than earth, even though it's the kingdom we cannot see now. And we proclaim the ascension every time we as a church say the apostle's creed together.
Speaker 1:We say that Jesus ascended into heaven, and he sits at the right hand of God, the father almighty. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. But we don't think about it or talk about it nearly as much as we do Jesus' incarnation, which is where he came from heaven to earth to be born as both fully god and fully human. Or as we talk about his death and his resurrection, or his, payment for sin and his victory over that, when he rose from the dead? Joel told me he once joked that you never see an Ascension Day mattress sale, and then someone sent him a picture of a store in Germany offering an Ascension Day mattress sale.
Speaker 1:So I won't say there's no knowledge of it whatsoever. But I bet that if you ask the average non Christian what Christians celebrate at Christmas and Easter, they could tell you. But if you ask them why we celebrate the ascension, you'd get a what now? So the ascension, we just read the physical event of it, the physical details, but it's a very symbolic event. Which means that to really understand it, we need to grasp its meaning, not just the physical details.
Speaker 1:Even if you're not familiar with Christianity or not a Christian, we still have symbolic events. So for example, a man and a woman would usually dress up nicely, and they'll come and stand in a place before a bunch of people. It's usually, but not often not always a church. And then someone, again, usually a pastor, will say some words and lead them in saying some words. And then they'll put a ring on one another's fingers.
Speaker 1:The pastor will say some more words, and then everybody celebrates. And now if you're seeing this as, like, an alien observer, like, from a strange planet comic strip, you might say, like, the they're happy the rings fit. I don't know. Like, what's the reason for celebrating? But because we know the symbolic meaning behind those actions, we know what's really going on.
Speaker 1:We know that, something real has happened and real has changed. They're now married. And so their legal status has changed. Their relational status has changed. And even their spiritual status has changed as the symbolic meaning behind those physical details.
Speaker 1:In the same way, the physical details of the Ascension are pretty straightforward even if they seem odd, but they signify a new reality. Not just for Jesus, but also for us and for the entire creation. So the account we read here in acts 1, Luke says that after Jesus is raised from the dead into his new physical body, so that's one that's healed of all the wounds that he sustained, he didn't survive the crucifixion. He was completely restored from it, even though he still bears scars in his wrists and his side. That he spends 40 days with his disciples, teaching them and explaining how the old testament scriptures pointed to his life and work.
Speaker 1:So he explained the kingdom to them. And after 40 days, he draws his disciples together one more time, and they think you know, they know how the story is supposed to go. And so they think, alright. This is the time that Jesus restores the kingdom to Israel. That's what they asked him in verse 6.
Speaker 1:They know that after God's chosen king, comes to earth, he conquers death by dying and rising again. The next step, the next part of the story is that he is crowned king over all things. And they think that God is gonna remake the world here, establishing an eternal kingdom on earth with Israel at its center. That's why they asked him that in verse 6. But Jesus says, essentially, the father is gonna take care of that on his own time, and you're not gonna know when that happens.
Speaker 1:And then he says, but you're gonna receive power. So he says in verse 8, and you're gonna be my witnesses. So you're gonna proclaim my kingdom, not just in Jerusalem, the center of Israel, but in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. So he gives them a mission, instead of saying, now's the time for the kingdom. And then after that, Jesus is taken up into a cloud and disappears.
Speaker 1:For a bit of context, this isn't a normal cloud like we have in the sky. In the old testament and the new testament, God often manifests a cloud of glory to show his presence and his holiness. To show that kinda the the great mystery of heaven is breaking into earth a little bit. When Israel receives the 10 Commandments at Mount Sinai, God manifests a cloud on top of a mountain, and he speaks to them from that cloud. And in Jesus's transfiguration, which is where he gives 3 of his disciples a brief vision of what he looks like in his glory in the kingdom of heaven.
Speaker 1:Then, in Luke 9 verse 34, Luke writes, as Jesus was saying these things about who he was and what he was like in heaven, a cloud came and overshadowed him and his disciples. And the disciples were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud saying, this is my son, my chosen one. Listen to him. So it's not an ordinary cloud.
Speaker 1:This is a cloud that signifies the presence of God. It would have been visibly different. And so the then as Jesus is taken up into this cloud and disappears, his disciples are watching, and then 2 men in white robes appear and say, 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 same way you saw him go. This is an anticlimactic, almost a funny end to these physical events.
Speaker 1:As 2 angels appear, not to sing or to make a majestic announcement, but just to say, what are you doing? He's gone. He's gonna come back. Just run go on home now. They just send them away.
Speaker 1:So the physical details are simple. Jesus gives his last his disciples a last command and then disappears into a cloud of glory. Just like the man and woman put rings on one another's finger while a pastor says some words. The physical details are simple, but the underlying reality has totally changed. The Ascension changed the underlying spiritual reality, not just for Jesus, but also for us as Christians, and also for the entire physical and spiritual creation.
Speaker 1:And so we're gonna look at 2 symbolic meanings behind the ascension today. That's where our other two texts are gonna come from. And we're gonna spend a lot longer on the first one and then on the second one. So if you're one of those time anxious people who are wondering, you know, why I'm droning on and on, that's I know what I'm doing. So, but the first symbolic significance behind the ascension is that the ascension sealed Jesus' authority.
Speaker 1:One of Jesus' most common terms for himself was the son of man, which was an incredibly loaded term. In the book of Daniel, which is written 100 of years before Jesus' birth, Daniel had a vision of one like a son of man, which means a human being. Our first text our second text is Daniel 713 and 14, where he has this vision. So if you'll turn to Daniel 7, I'll read verses 13 and 14. Daniel writes, I saw in the night visions.
Speaker 1:And behold, with the clouds of heaven, there came one like son of man. And he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. So Daniel has this vision of one who is like a son of man, which means one who is like a human being.
Speaker 1:And this human being comes before the ancient of days, comes before the, holy presence of God, and he has given eternal authority over all peoples of the earth. He's given glory and a kingdom and dominion that all peoples and nations and languages should serve him, and that dominion is eternal. Daniel says, it's everlasting. So the Jews in Jesus's day, would have understood this to be the Messiah, which is God's chosen king. And even so, they would have kinda hesitated or wondered how any mere human being could receive all the glory and honor and, eternal dominion that this King does.
Speaker 1:It seems, kind of on the edge of blasphemous for a son of man to receive this kind of honor. So for Jesus to call himself the son of man, meant that he was claiming that title and those expectations for himself. C s Lewis, Christian apologist and author, writes somewhere that someone who talks like this is either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. So they're either a con man who's deceiving everybody. They're a mad man who's crazy, who thinks that they are God incarnate, or they are man, like no no no one has ever seen before.
Speaker 1:A man that has never existed before and never exists since. One of the reasons that Jesus was hated by the Jewish leaders of his day is that they understood exactly what he was saying, and they thought that he was blasphemous. But the wild thing is about this so Jesus claims this title for himself. He dies. He rises from the dead.
Speaker 1:In Matthew 28 verse 17, when he when his disciples see him toward the end of his life after the resurrection, it says that some of his own disciples still doubt. Matthew makes pains to inform us that still, after seeing the risen Jesus, some of his disciples still aren't completely sure that he is who he says he is. Resurrection is a huge miracle. They understood that absolutely, but if Jesus is just on earth, he's still here, and he might die again. We don't they don't know.
Speaker 1:We don't know. But this moment of the ascension, this event, it seals it for his disciples. To see Jesus, who called himself the son of man, not just raised from the dead, but taken bodily into a cloud of heaven was the final sign that he deserved every bit of authority that he claimed for himself. From this moment forward, we're gonna see the disciple the yeah, the apostles, the disciples, they're gonna sin, they're gonna fail, but we never again see them doubt or despair. For the rest of their lives, they're rejected by their own people.
Speaker 1:They're imprisoned. They're exiled. They're beaten and beheaded, but every one of them lives and dies committed to the belief that Jesus is the living ruling king of the universe. They have no more doubts. The ascension was the coronation of Jesus as the authority above all physical and spiritual powers.
Speaker 1:Paul writes in Philippians 2 beginning in verse 9, that God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. So that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the father. Well, this is part of why the Ascension doesn't have the same quasi Christian cultural appeal as Christmas or even Easter. Because in Christmas, we celebrate god's goodwill to the world, and we get to have, you know, in the, immortal words of Talladega Nights, little baby Jesus with his golden fleece diapers and his little fat balled up fist.
Speaker 1:At Easter, we get hope and new beginnings and, bunnies, because sure. But the ascension tells us that there is an authority over all things, whether we like it or not, whether we believe it or not. It tells us that one day we are gonna bow to that authority and proclaim that he is Lord. I have 4 kids, and the oldest turned 6 a week ago. And yes, I said those numbers correctly.
Speaker 1:Through this season, as I've worked from home and they've done school at home, we've kept a rhythm of recess, by which I mean, we lock the oldest 3 in the back yard for an hour while the baby naps. One thing that happens, let's be honest, every recess, is that, one of my children will take it upon themselves to exercise authority over another one unjustly. It's usually in the form of theft or violence. And what they take to be my absence, they become a law under themselves. But as they find out, again, every time, the laws of our household still obtain, even when they seem to be on their own.
Speaker 1:And because, you know, what passes for my office in our small house is very close to the back door, I'm usually aware of exactly how they have broken the laws of our household. They haven't figured that out yet. When I have to step out and reassert order, my authority can seem like good news or bad news depending on kind of what they've done in light of that. In the same way, the ascension means that there is one rightful law giver over the earth. And one day, we are going to answer for how we lived in relationship to his authority.
Speaker 1:We will either bow to him in joy, seeing our king face to face at last, or we will bow and despair because we have been an enemy instead of a friend. We preach through the book of acts here a year or so ago, and we saw that the evangelistic sermons in acts aren't therapeutic or comfortable at all. They sound more like the allied army in World War 2 walking into an axis town and calling for it to surrender. Peter's first sermon, which is in the very next chapter of this, the book of acts, it ends with this heartwarming line. He says, let all the house of Israel he's speaking to Jews.
Speaker 1:Therefore, know for certain that God has made him both lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. Jesus holds authority whether we believe it or not, Whether we submit and respond to that authority in this life or not, determines whether we spend authority under God's grace or under God's judgment. And we're gonna see more about that towards the end. A second implication of the ascension sealing Jesus's authority is that it gives absolute confidence to those who believe in him. The early Christians gained notoriety for refusing to worship the Roman gods or the Roman emperor, insisting that only Jesus deserved reverence, that only Jesus was Lord.
Speaker 1:And over and over again, Christians chose to die rather than to worship Caesar. These once respectable Jews and Romans threw away their lives in the eyes of their own people, because they were utterly confident that there is a living king who's more powerful than the Roman Empire or than death itself. Because Jesus had ascended alive into heaven, they knew that there was a hope beyond this life that was worth losing anything for. Whenever we're faced with tragedy, it's common to ask, how could a good God be in charge of all this? How could God be in control of everything that's happening?
Speaker 1:Our current season with the threat of the coronavirus and the economic disaster is an especial occasion for that question for many people. And you could say, if our guy's in charge, if we believe that a benevolent, all powerful king is on the throne of the universe, why would this happen? It might seem like this makes the doctrine of Jesus' kingship harder to believe. But the early Christians suffered precisely because they believed in Jesus's authority. And we never see them questioning whether he really was.
Speaker 1:We have no record. We have record in the old testament of people bringing coming to God and saying, where is God when this happens? We see nothing like that in the new testament. And we see nothing like that in, the early accounts of the early writings of other Christians. We never see them struggle to reconcile Jesus's kingship with their own suffering.
Speaker 1:They knew that even though the creation was broken and that parts of it are in active rebellion against the king, The king yet reigns. They knew that because of the ascension. The African American pastor Charles Tenley wrote in the hymn, Beams of Heaven. He writes, right may often yield to might. Wickedness of while may reign.
Speaker 1:Satan's cause may seem to gain, But there is a God that rules above with hand of power and heart of love. One of the most famous early martyr accounts we have is of a young woman named Perpetua. She was a Roman wife and new mother from a respectable Roman family who's put in prison for refusing to worship Caesar. We have her diary actually and an account written by an eyewitness to her death who, kinda finished the rest of the story. The account doesn't mention her husband once, which means that he probably rejected her, that he wasn't a Christian.
Speaker 1:Her father, who was a pagan, begs her 3 times to have pity on him and recant. Once, he beats her for refusing. And once he is beaten by Roman soldiers in front of her, because she won't reject Christ. Her baby is so young, she's still nursing and has to wean the baby before she's executed. She records these things in her diary, including the concerns and the fears and the conversations that she has, But never once does she question whether Jesus is really on the throne because these things are happening.
Speaker 1:Never once. She's utterly confident. And that's because of the third implication of the ascension sealing Jesus's authority. He also set the authoritative pattern for the Christian life. If he was exalted to the throne of heaven because he humbled himself to be born as a human being, to live for God's glory and others good instead of his own, and to die unjustly under God's own wrath for our sins, who are we to think that we can live differently or should live differently?
Speaker 1:This is why the early Christians were willing to suffer for his sake. If this is the way our king lived and died, why should we do differently? If he gave his life to service, if he accepted persecution without complaint, and he gave up glory in this life for the sake of the new creation, why would we do otherwise? Because of the season that we're in right now, I'll say is an application that early Christians also gained fame in the Roman Empire because, in 2 great plagues that struck the empire, 1 in the mid 100 and 1 in the mid 200, the Christians responded to those plagues by taking it upon themselves to care for the sick. Not just their own sick, but even their sick neighbors.
Speaker 1:They gave care that helped the many people survive who might have died otherwise, just bringing them through the worst of the illnesses with basic nursing, and they put their own lives at risk, they were willing to suffer and die to care for others. In the mid 300, after the Roman Empire had converted to Christianity, a an emperor who tried to repaganize it complained that the impious Galileans, that means the Christians who aren't pious, they don't worship the true gods. He would say the Roman gods. They not only feed their own poor, but ours also. He says, it's embarrassing that our people starve and the Christians take care of them.
Speaker 1:One of the reasons that Christianity spread like it did, is that its members follow this pattern of caring not only for themselves, but also for their neighbors and were willing to disadvantage themselves to do that. Now, mercifully, today, our state and our church haven't been that impacted yet either by the virus or the economic consequences. We still don't know how things are gonna play out. But so far, we, as the church leaders, have been very impressed by how willing our folks have been to directly keep in touch with one another, to keep caring for one another, and to offer their resources to those who need help. We honestly we have more, you know, set aside and offered to help people than we have need to give that out right now.
Speaker 1:And that's because you have been following the pattern that Jesus set in that way. We're thankful for it. Jesus' path to glory, his path to having his authority sealed at the ascension, ran through the cross. He set the pattern of obedience, humility, and concern for the good of others. And God's exaltation of him to the throne of heaven confirmed that that's how we are meant to live.
Speaker 1:His ascension sealed his authority. That's the first symbolic meaning. Now for the second, if Jesus was only an authority, we would know God's will for our lives, but we would be dismayed by it. I would know that Jesus said the law of God can be summarized as love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself, and I would see how often I act selfishly. I am so selfish.
Speaker 1:I would know that the king of you the universe gave up his life for others, but I get angry when my kids interrupt me while I'm working. I would know how far I fall from the standard and the example set by Jesus. And I would know that I will never deserve glory on my own. But why should I, the sinner that I am, expect any good from Jesus's authority, not just despair? But the good news is that the ascension didn't just seal Jesus's authority, It also secured our hope.
Speaker 1:And so we're gonna close with this third passage, which is Colossians 3 verses 1 through 4. Colossians 3 1 through 4. I'll read it. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
Speaker 1:For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. The ascension wasn't just about what we call Jesus' kingly ministry. About him earning and sealing his authority. It was also about what we call his priestly ministry.
Speaker 1:In the Jewish worship system, priests were mediators between God and Israel. There was kind of a concentric circles of holiness, where at the very center of Israel, spiritually, was the holy place of the temple, which symbolized the presence of God on earth. And only one high priest could enter that most holy place once a year after extensive purifications and sacrifices for his own sins. And then from there, there was a a temple that priests could enter. There was a court that, Jews and then Gentiles could enter and it it went out from there.
Speaker 1:The priests, made sacrifices to atone for the sins of the people, to bring the people, back into right relationship with God by, letting God accept the life of an animal given for their own sin. And they also represented the people in the holy places of the temple. So they symbolized God accepting humanity into his presence. So when Jesus ascended to heaven, he took his human nature. He didn't stop being human.
Speaker 1:He has been human and still is human and divine. He took that human nature into the true presence of God. He entered the true holy place, which the temple was just a shadow of, carrying humanity with him. He brought his own shed blood to secure the forgiveness for our sins, the death of the perfect God man, for the life of sinners. One of the hymns we sing often is, before the throne of god above, and it contains this incredible lines, because the sinless savior died, my sinful soul is counted free.
Speaker 1:For God, the just is satisfied to look on him and to pardon me. So Jesus carried the the evidence of this his sacrifice, the payment for atoning for our sins into the presence of God. And he is there now. He is interceding for us, says in Romans 8. And so he secured our atonement and he secured our place in the presence of God by hiding our lives in his own.
Speaker 1:Colossians 33 says that you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God, that we have died to this earthly existence, and our true life is right there in the presence of God now, because we have graciously been folded into the life of Jesus. God counts it as if we have died and he considers us with all the joy and the satisfaction that he has for his own son. Not because we've earned our right to have that, but because God by grace, God has given us that. And he has given us the faith to trust that Jesus is the king and to belong to him to claim his kingship and his authority over our lives in this life now. The Bible says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Speaker 1:That's why we say we're saved by grace through faith and not by works. And then finally, verse 4 in Colossians 3 says that when Christ who is your life appears, you also will appear with him in glory. Christ, our life, is now in heaven. And one day he's going to return in glory like the angels told the disciples in, Acts 1 verse 11. And that means that everyone who believes in him is also gonna be glorified.
Speaker 1:When God comes back and he recreates the world with no sin and suffering where everyone sees and knows his glory. And it says, the earth is as filled with it as the, sea the seabeds are full of the ocean. That when that happens, everyone who's believed in Jesus and accepted his authority in this life, again, not lived it perfectly, but acknowledge it and given ourselves to him, that we will be recreated too and we will inherit that eternal hope. That's the message that the apostles took from Jesus and proclaimed to the world. And again, that's like a third benefit of the ascension, like Joel said, is Pentecost, which we're gonna cover next week.
Speaker 1:We can't touch it here. But the message that we have is that Jesus is king, and that in his kingship, he has secured our hope. He secured us the hope of resurrection and new creation and the presence of God to one day be received in a restored recreated kingdom on earth. So that's the hope that we have as Christians. That's the hope that everyone on earth can have who believes in Jesus.
Speaker 1:And that's the hope that animates us to follow his pattern of, sacrificing our lives for the good of others and proclaiming his hope to the world that needs it. The world is in, rebellion. The world is broken. The world does not show his kingship now. But one day, it will.
Speaker 1:And we can have confidence in that because Jesus has not only died and risen, but he has ascended into heaven. Pray with me. Lord Jesus, I pray that we would see your kingship. I pray that through, your holy spirit who brings your presence to earth, that you could give us eyes of faith to see you for who you are and to live accordingly for your glory. I pray that the world would know your kingship.
Speaker 1:That just as the gospel has never ceased to go further and further among the peoples of the earth, that it has brought us into your kingdom by grace. I pray that it would continue to go forward, even with the the suffering and the uncertainty that we're facing now. I pray that we could see the hope that we have, that we would have confidence and that hope. And I pray that we could worship you and represent you on this earth. Pray these things in your strong name, which is above every name.
Speaker 1:Amen.