If you have a bible, I invite you to turn to Luke chapter 24. Luke 24. Last week, I had a young lady come up to me after the 8 AM service, to let me know how much she was just really enjoying this series through Romans. And I said, well, then apparently you haven't been listening, because there's been nothing but bad news every single week. At least that's what Romans chapter 1 and Romans chapter 2 is, is a lot of bad news.
Joel Brooks:So I thought we would take a break from that this morning. And we will look at the Ascension of Jesus, because it is Ascension Sunday. So happy Ascension Sunday, everyone. If it snuck up on you, that's okay. It sneaks up on a lot of Christians.
Joel Brooks:The Christian calendar tends to be marked by 3 major events in Jesus' life. You have His birth, celebrating Christmas, his death, Good Friday, and you have his resurrection celebrated on Easter. And, and then 40 days after Easter is when we are supposed to be celebrating His Ascension. But that usually just kinda falls through the cracks. I actually went to Walmart this week to try to find some Ascension Day cards to send all of you.
Joel Brooks:I'm going to assume you beat me to it because there was not one Ascension Day card to be found. It's really a shame that the ascension has gotten so little attention. Because the ascension reminds us that Christianity is not just a faith of the past. It's not just a historical faith. But it's a faith of the present and of the future.
Joel Brooks:Yes, Jesus, He did come to this world. He lived a perfect life. He died, and then He rose again. But that is not all that Jesus did. He is currently doing things.
Joel Brooks:He is sitting on His throne. He is ruling and He is reigning. He is our King. His work did not end at the resurrection. He was just getting started.
Joel Brooks:A matter of fact, that's how acts begins when it talks about the Ascension. It says, My previous book, I told you all that Jesus began to do, but Jesus is now still at work. And that might be one of the reasons that the Ascension has gotten so little attention among Christians is because honestly, we're not really sure what Jesus is still doing. Most Christians I found are kinda fuzzy on that. We kinda have this vague notion of, I guess Jesus is up in heaven and He just kinda sits around and listens to us sing.
Joel Brooks:We really don't know what He does. And we're gonna look at the things that He does and the benefits that come our way when we do understand what Jesus is doing now, reigning in heaven. So Luke chapter 24. I'll begin reading in verse 50. Then Jesus led them out as far as Bethany.
Joel Brooks:And lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Joel Brooks:Pray with me. Father, I pray now that through your Spirit, you would, indeed, fill us with great joy, that our entire lives would be spent blessing the name of God. Lord, I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Amen. So if you remember back when we were going through the book of Philippians, and we got to that glorious chapter, chapter 2, in which there's the great hymn of Jesus. Paul records this hymn for us. It goes like this. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. But he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, Being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, 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 shall confess that He is Lord, to the glory of God, the Father.
Joel Brooks:It is a gorgeous and breathtaking hymn that Paul lays out for us. But did you notice what was missing into him? What was missing about Jesus's life? We have Jesus's incarnation. We have His life.
Joel Brooks:We have His death. And then there is no mention of His resurrection. Paul just jumps straight from Jesus' death to His ascension, thus proving that Paul grew up Southern Baptist. I don't know if you ever grew up Southern Baptist. I did.
Joel Brooks:And we always skip the 3rd verse in our hymn. We would always go verse 12 and verse 4. I'm not sure why we would do that, but we always skip verse 3. And Paul does the same thing. He's like verse 1, well, it's his incarnation.
Joel Brooks:Verse 2, well, it's gonna be his death. Verse 3, skip over that. And now we go to verse 4 and His ascension. And it's not that the resurrection is unimportant. The resurrection is of huge importance to us as believers, but it was never the end goal of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:The resurrection was not the ultimate event of His life, His ascension was. In Acts 7, we read something similar. This is when Stephen is giving his great speech before he is going to be martyred. And in this speech, he walks through Israel's history. And then he gets to Jesus and he tells how the Jews killed Jesus.
Joel Brooks:And then he never mentions the resurrection. He goes straight to the ascension. Now, when when Stephen mentioned how the Jews had killed Jesus, they of course, got very angry. But when Stephen said, he saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God, we read they literally covered their ears, and they stormed after Him. And they lifted Him up, and they dragged Him out of the city, and then they stoned Him to death.
Joel Brooks:Why did the ascension cause such a reaction with the people? I mean, you can understand them maybe getting upset if, you know, Stephen was accusing them of killing somebody that they thought was guilty. You you can understand maybe they would get upset at that. You can understand if they mocked Stephen if he mentioned the resurrection, people often were mocked for that. But if you tell a person that the person that they killed is now seated at the right hand of God and is currently ruling over all, and will come and someday judge them, well then they're gonna be furious.
Joel Brooks:That's how you get such a reaction here. Because at that point, you either have to bow down and worship that king, or you have to full on reject him and maybe kill the person who is proclaiming him. And I think that's one of the reasons that the ascension gets so little attention for us today. We we've mentioned this in years past, but but you can't market the Ascension. You're never going to see an Ascension mattress sale.
Joel Brooks:There's no way that the world has found where we can market this incredible claim of Christianity. I mean, with Christmas, well you can have Santa, and you could talk about, well, it's just really about joy and hope and things like that. With Easter, well, you've got the Easter bunny and it's just a time you dress up in spring. Things are turning new again. But what do you do with the ascension?
Joel Brooks:You either believe He's King or not. You either obey him or you don't. There's there's not a non religious spin that you can put on the ascension. Now I have no desire for us to, you know, start having ascension day mattress sales out there or, you know, for us to have the Ascension Day bunny, you know, maybe giving candy to kids or whatever it is. I I don't care about that, But we really miss out when we don't take the ascension seriously.
Joel Brooks:Look how the disciples responded to Jesus when He ascended. We read that when He left them, they worshiped Him. And then they returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And were continually in the temple blessing Him. The Ascension unleashed joy in them and unleashed worship.
Joel Brooks:If you're struggling with joy and struggling with worship, perhaps you don't understand what happened at the ascension. Now I can understand why the disciples maybe, you know, would have been in awe at the ascension. Maybe why they worshiped at the ascension. But being filled with joy, I confess, is an unusual reaction to have when somebody you love so dearly departs. Even if you know they're they're going on to bigger and better things.
Joel Brooks:My my oldest daughter, Caroline, she's about to leave to go off to college. Lauren and I are soupy, super, soupy. Just imagine what's gonna be about a 3rd service. We are we are super happy for her. But I tell you what.
Joel Brooks:When we drop her off at her dorm, there's gonna be sadness. And although, you know, we could call her up every day, I told her, you know, we'll call you up 2, 3, 4 times a day. Nothing big, you know. Even if we call her that many times, it's different than if she's physically present with us. It's just going to be different.
Joel Brooks:And so although we are gonna be happy for all that she's gonna experience for this new life that she's gonna have, when she leaves, we will be sad. But you don't get a hint of sadness with the disciples here. Why not? How is it that they can be filled with such great joy and knowing that they likely will never see Jesus again in this earthly life? There's got to be some pretty huge positives about His leaving that more than compensate for whatever pain they are feeling at His departure.
Joel Brooks:And there is. And I want us to look at just a few of those. And perhaps, that will unleash in us joy and worship as well. Alright. In order to understand the first benefit that we have with the ascension, we've actually gotta understand what we mean by the ascension.
Joel Brooks:What actually took place at the Ascension of Jesus? Because this has been a doctrine or an event that's been greatly misunderstood. It's actually led to some really awkward awkward art. Have any of you ever seen the artwork where it basically has the clouds and Jesus' feet, you know, coming down, hanging down from them? Or or, you know, 1961, the Russians sent up the the world's first cosmonaut.
Joel Brooks:And so he went and he circled. He know the earth and he came back. Do you know what one of the takeaways was from that? He proclaimed that Christianity was false. Because he didn't see Jesus there.
Joel Brooks:It was actually a common understanding at that time that if Jesus had ascended, then of course, when you finally went up into the heavens, you would see Jesus floating around in space. And he came back and said there was no signs of Jesus there, no evidence that he was there at all. And therefore, he proclaimed Christianity to be false. C. S.
Joel Brooks:Lewis actually did a rebuttal of that in an article called The Seeing Eye. But that cosmonaut just greatly misunderstood what we mean by the ascension. Because Jesus did not ascend to the heavens or the sky. He ascended to heaven. Heaven, which is where God lives.
Joel Brooks:It's where God's throne is. When you think of the ascension, don't think of it so much as Jesus rising higher and higher and higher. Think of it as this. Jesus ascended to His throne. He ascended to His throne.
Joel Brooks:When we speak of someone ascending to the throne, we don't mean that this person was getting higher and higher and higher. Although, there very well might be steps that that person has to climb in order to get to the throne. We're not talking about the steps. It's not so much where, you know, a spatial change that we're talking about. We're talking about any relational change that happens when one ascends to the throne.
Joel Brooks:When someone ascends to the throne, they begin relating to people differently. They begin relating to the world differently. This person has become king. We have become his subjects. This person has a new title.
Joel Brooks:This person has been given all power and now can issue commands that must be obeyed. That is what we mean when we talk about the ascension of Jesus. He has ascended to his throne. And now He sits. And He is on this throne.
Joel Brooks:And He has been given a new name, a new title. And He has begun His reign. This is what Paul talks about in Philippians 2. When he says, therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. So at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.
Joel Brooks:And every tongue confess that He is Lord. Or as Paul says in Ephesians 1, God has seated Christ at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named. The reason that this is so important to us is because what this now means when Jesus has ascended to his throne and he has this new place of authority is that Jesus can take everything he was and everything He accomplished in His earthly life. And He now, from this new position of authority, can apply it. He now releases everything that He was and everything He accomplished in His earthly life.
Joel Brooks:He, from His throne, now releases it to us. Do you remember when Mary Magdalene, back in John chapter 20, after Jesus rose from the tomb, she didn't know this, she goes to the tomb to, to to go to mourn Jesus. And she actually encounters him. He appears to her. You remember what Mary Magdalene does?
Joel Brooks:She grabs hold of him. She's like, I'm not losing you again. I mean, she just she can't believe he's the resurrected Jesus is in front of her. So she just clings to him with with everything she has and she is not letting go at all. And you can't really blame her.
Joel Brooks:But then Jesus says, He's really curious words to her. It's kind of a a rebuke in a way. He says, stop. Don't cling to me for I have not yet ascended. Don't clean let go of me.
Joel Brooks:I have not yet ascended. But go tell my brothers, the disciples, that I'm about to. Now, why did Jesus do this? It wasn't because He was afraid of people touching his new resurrected body, because he had already been telling people to touch his body. Thomas, touch my hands.
Joel Brooks:Look at my side. Come. People had already touched the resurrected Jesus. He wasn't scared of that or it wasn't something about He couldn't allow people to touch Him. And it wasn't because He was being un affectionate to Mary.
Joel Brooks:As if this newly resurrected Jesus had also become cold and distant. It's actually the opposite. Jesus is telling Mary, you need to let go of me. Because if you let go of me, I will become closer to you than you could possibly imagine. And not just to you, but to everyone who follows me.
Joel Brooks:You see, when Jesus was here on earth, He was limited. He He could only be one place at one time. And so if He's teaching in Capernaum, He couldn't also be teaching in Jerusalem. If He's feeding 5,000 in Bethsaida, then Jesus, He can't, you know, be fishing with Peter at the Sea of Galilee. And if He's giving Mary a hug here, well then He can't be giving other people a hug over there.
Joel Brooks:And so, He's limited. But when Jesus ascends, those limitations are cast off. When He begins His reign from heaven, then through His spirit, He could be absolutely everywhere. And all the benefits that Mary received from His physical presence there, could now be multiplied a 1000000000 times over. And this is why once Jesus ascended, Christianity spread like wildfire.
Joel Brooks:Jesus began his rule. He began ruling and reigning from his throne. He began advancing his kingdom. Jesus no longer had to encounter 1 person at a time, and 1 person at a time to change them. He began changing hearts of people from all over the world.
Joel Brooks:He was no longer limited to speaking at a hillside. Jesus today is speaking on thousands of hillsides to people. Opening up hearts, changing people, drawing them to himself. He's done that to you. He has given you a new heart and drawn you to himself.
Joel Brooks:And this fills the disciples with joy as he ascends. They know that he will be with them in a new and a better, more powerful way. And they know that kingdom they've been longing for is now gonna start advancing. So that's one of the benefits of the ascension. Another benefit of the ascension is it provides us with access to heaven.
Joel Brooks:It actually secures for us our own personal access to God, the Father. This is actually what we mean. You might not know this. But this is what we mean when we say that Jesus is the way. He's the way we get to God.
Joel Brooks:He is the way we get to heaven. When we say that, we're actually speaking of his ascension. In John 3 13, this is right after Jesus just told Nicodemus, you must be born again. And it's right before He gets to the most famous verse in the Bible, John 316. You know, for God so loved the world.
Joel Brooks:He sent His only son. You know, tells us how to get eternal life. So right in between, you have to be born again. This is how you get eternal life. We find this one verse there.
Joel Brooks:In which Jesus says, no one has ascended into heaven, except for he who has descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And that verse is actually the bridge uniting these 2 together. You wanna know how to be born again? You wanna know to have eternal life? Well, you need to understand me and my ascension.
Joel Brooks:There's only one who can ascend. And it's the one who has come down and is talking to you. So what does that mean for us? I mean, because we all want to go to heaven someday. We all want that.
Joel Brooks:But if in the entire history of man, only one person has ever ascended, what chance do we have to get there? How can we ever hope to get to heaven if only one has? And the answer is we have to see Him as the way and we must cling to Jesus with everything we have. We cannot buy our way into heaven. We cannot work our way into heaven.
Joel Brooks:Our only hope of getting into heaven is to cling to the one person who has access there. We must be found in him. This is what Jesus means when he calls himself the way. And that no one has access to the father except through him. Saint Augustine wrote about it this way 1600 years ago.
Joel Brooks:When writing about the ascension, he said, cleave to Christ, who by descending and ascending has made himself the way. Do you wish to ascend? Then hold fast to him who ascends. For by yourself, you can never rise. So the ascension is how we actually get to heaven.
Joel Brooks:We cling to Him, cling to Jesus with everything we have. Another benefit that we have, and it's related to this one, is Jesus, when He ascended, He went off to prepare us a heavenly home. We read about this in John 14, in which He tells His disciples, believe in God. Believe also in me. In my father's house there are many rooms.
Joel Brooks:If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself. That where I am, you may be also. So Jesus isn't just in heaven, you know, sitting around His throne, you know, eating nachos or whatever. Listening to harps.
Joel Brooks:Like, He's actually doing something. And one of the things that we know that He is doing is He's working on building us a home. He is preparing a place for us. And John, in Revelation, he describes this home as actually being so large. It's better described as a city, an entire city.
Joel Brooks:And within that city, there are many many rooms. And one of those rooms is being prepared for you by Jesus. Another benefit. And we'll end with this one. A final benefit I want us to look at that we receive.
Joel Brooks:And there's there's a bunch. You have to just limit this down. But then when Jesus, when He ascends, He becomes our intercessor. He becomes our high priest and our intercessor. And there are so many scriptures we could we could pull to, we could draw from to demonstrate this.
Joel Brooks:Really, the entire book of Hebrews is about this, but I want us to just look at one. And it's Hebrews chapter 7 verse 25. We read these words. Jesus is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them. Every single word of that verse is packed full of joy.
Joel Brooks:Let me read it again. Jesus is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. At first, we read not only is Jesus able to save, but He's able to save to the uttermost. I love that the author of Hebrews had to add that word uttermost as if we didn't believe that Jesus can just save. No.
Joel Brooks:He saves to the uttermost. He doesn't almost. You are completely saved. You are not partially restored, you are fully restored. You're not kinda forgiven.
Joel Brooks:You're 100% forgiven. It doesn't matter how bad your sins are. Jesus saves you complete to the uttermost. And the reason He is able to do this is because He always lives to make intercession for us. Once again, Jesus is not just sitting on his throne listening to us sing.
Joel Brooks:He's doing something. A matter of fact, it says He always lives to do this. This is like His desire. He can't stop doing this. This is what Jesus continually keeps doing and that's interceding on our behalf.
Joel Brooks:You see on the cross, Jesus paid for our sins. He paid for them. But it is through His constant intercession that He actually applies that payment. And He keeps paying for it and paying for it moment by moment. Dane Ortland in his book, Gentle and Lowly, which I know a number of you have read, we're actually gonna get several hundred copies of that as a church and we'll hand them out later, this summer.
Joel Brooks:But in his book, Gentle and Lowly, he says that if we don't understand that Jesus is currently interceding for us, we can actually begin to think of our salvation in purely transactional or mechanical terms. We sinned and therefore, we acquired a debt that we cannot pay. Jesus on the cross paid for those sins, canceling out our debt. And so there was a transaction. We had a debt.
Joel Brooks:Jesus paid for the debt. End of story. He said, but when you understand Jesus as our intercessor, you begin to see our salvation as being oh so personal. It is so personal. Jesus is always thinking about us.
Joel Brooks:He is living to make intercession for us. And He's always doing this because we're always failing. He doesn't just say, you know, for one moment, this I'm just, I'm forgiving Joel's sins, all his past, present, and future sins in this moment. I grew up hearing that, but that's not what Jesus does. He doesn't forgive all of our sins in a moment.
Joel Brooks:No, He lives to make intercession. He has forgiven my sins there and then I keep on sinning. And He says, and I forgive you for that sin. I sin again, He says, And I'm gonna forgive you for that sin. And I'm gonna forgive you for that sin.
Joel Brooks:And He's pleading with the Father, don't hold that sin against Joel. Don't hold that sin against Joel. Always making intercession on my behalf. And He does it joyfully. And His father receives it joyfully.
Joel Brooks:Jesus is always thinking about me. He is always thinking about you. And can you just imagine what it would be like if you could hear Jesus praying for you? I thought of how different my life would be if I could overhear Jesus praying for me in the other room. Have you ever overheard somebody, you know, giving you a compliment, you know, you know, you have three levels of compliments.
Joel Brooks:1, if somebody just says it to you. Well that kinda means something. And then if somebody says something to you in front of others, well, that's even better. But the best compliment possible is when you overhear somebody complimenting you to others. When you overhear that, you're like, woah.
Joel Brooks:Can you imagine what it'd be like to overhear Jesus praying on your behalf? Pleading with his father for your joy. Pleading that you might be filled with His spirit and that you might be bold in Him and might might have courage. That you might be free from anxiety. That you might truly trust Him and have faith and to live the life that He's called you to live.
Joel Brooks:If you were to hear the way Jesus is talking about you. In a way that He is praying forgiveness over that sin. Like, how that would embolden you and forever change you. If you could actually hear Jesus praying for you, you would be overcome with joy. This is why joy and worship were unleashed with these disciples when Jesus ascended because remember they had heard Jesus praying for them.
Joel Brooks:They heard him praying for them in the upper room. And now they those same prayers that they heard then, they know that Jesus is praying that same thing. But not just to them in the upper room. Now Jesus is on His throne. And He is saying these things to His Father in heaven from a position of power and authority.
Joel Brooks:Praying these same things. Father, make them 1. Father, oh, I love them. Guard them. Father, keep them from the evil one.
Joel Brooks:Father, forgive them. He's praying those same things now, but in a position of authority. And when they know that, they are filled with an unshakable joy. That's why they leave the Ascension, full of worship, full of joy, continually blessing God. If they could be filled with such joy at such a thought, shouldn't we?
Joel Brooks:Shouldn't we be filled with such a joy when we think of our ascended Lord? Brothers and sisters, we have an invitation, Jesus to now boldly go to Him who now sits on His throne of grace in all power and all authority. And we need not fear because we know that he has accepted us and he has loved us. And he lives to make intercession on our behalf. Pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Jesus, you are a king. You are highly exalted. You're sitting on the throne, ruling and reigning over this world, and we are the joyful recipients of that. And I pray that the knowledge of that would light our hearts on fire. Thank you, Jesus, that you live to make intercession for us.
Joel Brooks:Thank you that you've gone to prepare a place for us. Thank you that you have given us access to the Father into heaven. And we celebrate these truths today. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.