Word of Salvation – Vol. 36 No. 39 – October 1991

 

Christ’s Ascension Into Heaven

 

Sermon by Rev. H. O. Berends on Acts 1:9-11

Reading: Exodus 33, Acts 1:1-14

 

Brothers and sisters,

Today is a feast day which, unlike Christmas or Easter, is but little known by those who are not Christians.  It is not a public holiday, at least not in our country.  And even in many Christian circles it is hardly remembered.  I am referring of course to the fact that today is the day of Christ’s ascension.  After Christ’s resurrection ‘he appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God,’ Luke writes.  And if we take that as an exact period of time then it was on the sixth Thursday after Easter that Christ said farewell to his disciples and returned to his heavenly home.

Today is Ascension Day and so I want to talk about the ascension this evening.  About that event which is mentioned in only a few verses in the Bible.  Only here in Acts chapter 1 and in Luke 24 and of course both books were written by the same author.  It was an important event for it marked the end of an era.  Important enough to be included as a separate statement of belief in most of our Creeds and Confessions.  ‘He ascended into heaven’, we confess almost every Sunday evening.  And so we will look together at the significance and the meaning of the ascension of Christ.

First of all, what were the facts, what exactly was involved in Christ’s ascension?  What exactly happened on that final Thursday?  We read it in our reading.  Once again Jesus had appeared to his disciples.  He had done so on many occasions after his resurrection at one time to more than 500 people at once, Paul tells us in 1Corinthians.  But this time, it seems, a much smaller number was present.  And so he leads them to the Mount of Olives. (Luke 24:50).

And there, as he is talking with them, he parts from them.  He had, of course, parted from them many times before.  Christ would come and go at will in his post-resurrection appearances, but this time it is different.  The disciples realise that this time he does not just disappear but they see him leaving the ground and rising up towards heaven; ‘He was taken up before their very eyes,’ as our passage puts it.  ‘And a cloud hid him from their sight.’

What happened?  Jesus was taken up before their very eyes.  That’s what happened.  One moment he was standing there amongst them the next they saw to their amazement that his feet were no longer touching the ground and he was rising before their eyes, up towards heaven.  Until a cloud hides him from their sight and they can no longer see him and he is gone.

Jesus was taken up before their very eyes; that’s the fact of the ascension.  You know, brothers and sisters, there are many people who do not believe that.  And especially in this age of space travel people say: ‘What nonsense.’  Surely here is a very clear example of the fact that the New Testament writers held to outmoded conceptions.  Even some so-called Christians hold that view.  I once read about a group of liberal seminary students who released a large balloon somewhere in a public place on Ascension Thursday.  A large balloon with streamers trailing, and a sign attached which said that they were remembering Jesus’ ascension into heaven.  But what they were really doing, of course, was poking fun at the Bible.  With their irreverent antics they were saying, in effect, ‘We don’t really believe in Jesus’ ascension.  In this modern age, such belief is quite outmoded.’  And these were seminary students’; men training for the ministry of the church.  By now most of them will probably be standing on pulpits, perhaps this very day, denying Christ’s literal ascension.

It reminds me of reading how Yuri Gagarin, the first Russian cosmonaut, once boasted that he didn’t believe in God because he had looked out of his spaceship porthole and he hadn’t seen him!  And that’s how many people think about it.  Heaven isn’t up there.  Up there is only space, with a few stars and a bit of dust and nothing else.

Yes, that’s what many people are saying, and so they do not believe in Christ’s ascension.  They say that the Bible writers were working with outmoded concepts.  In other words, that this is nothing but a myth.

But, brothers and sisters, is that what we have to believe?  Of course not!

Do you know why many people have such difficulty in accepting the story of Christ’s ascension?  It is because they miss the point of it – because they misunderstand its significance completely.  It is because they wrongly assume that the point of the story is to prove that heaven is somewhere just above the clouds or somewhere ‘up there’.  It isn’t.  Oh yes, the disciples may have believed that, and if they did they were wrong, but that doesn’t really matter.  Because that is not at all the point of the story.  The point of the story is to show not where heaven is, but that Christ has gone to heaven.  The point is that the disciples realised, in the clearest way possible, that he had returned to heaven to be with his Father.

Christ, by his ascension in front of their eyes, showed the disciples in the clearest possible way that this time he had not just disappeared again temporarily, but permanently.  This time he had gone back to heaven.  Do you realise that that is also the significance of the cloud in the story?  For that cloud is significant.  It was not just a convenient cloud which was floating by at the moment.  No, that cloud was like the cloud of our Old Testament reading which stood at the door of the tent when the Lord spoke with Moses.  That cloud signified the presence of the Lord in the tent of meeting.  For just as Moses disappeared behind the cloud to meet with God so Jesus disappeared into a cloud and the disciples would immediately have grasped the meaning.  They would have realised immediately that the Son had returned to his heavenly glory, that he had entered into the heavenly tent, the heavenly tabernacle, to make intercession on their behalf with God.

Secondly, I want to touch on the significance of the ascension.  Why did Christ ascend, why did he go back to heaven?  Did he go back to take a well-earned rest?  Did he go back to recover from his ordeal here on earth?  No, of course not!  Oh yes, in a way he did, that too is what the Bible teaches.  ‘After he had provided purification for sins he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven,’ we read in the first chapter of Hebrews.  Christ did return to heaven to sit down at God’s right hand, to take up his former glory.  But he also returned to heaven in order to continue his work for his people.  To prepare a place for them, as he says in the gospel of John.  And to intercede on their behalf to be their Mediator, their Intercessor before God.

Christ returned to heaven to be our Intercessor; brothers and sisters.  Do you know what that means?  You know, that’s what Moses was doing too in that tent of meeting.  We didn’t have time to read it all, but that is the context of our Old Testament passage.  This passage is set just after that incident with the golden calf.  I’m sure most of you know that incident in Exodus 32.

Moses went up Mt Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God and while he was gone the people got sick of waiting.  And so they began to pester Aaron and eventually they got him to make a golden calf and they proclaimed that to be their god and began to worship it.  When Moses got back he was terribly angry.  Yes, but God was even more angry because the Israelites had sinned against him, and he decided to punish his people.  And he did.  Thousands died by the sword and from sickness.  But that was not all, for then God decided that he no longer wanted to lead his people either.  He said to Moses: ‘I will send you an angel.  He will lead you into the promised land, but my presence will no longer go with you.’  ‘Because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.’

That’s what God had said to Moses as we read at the beginning that passage.  And so Moses had gone to the tent of meeting into the Lord’s presence to intercede on the people’s behalf.  And in doing this Moses was, as so many other Old Testament saints, a type of Jesus.  He was a symbol of Christ; for Christ too is our Intercessor.  He went, on our behalf, not into an earthly tent, but into the heavenly tent, the heavenly tabernacle.  ‘For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one, he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence,’ we read in Hebrews 9:24.  And in Romans 8:34 it says that ‘Christ Jesus …is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.’  Jesus is in heaven interceding for us, pleading with God on our behalf, just like Moses pleaded for his sinful people.  He is our Mediator, to stand between us and God.

That is why Jesus ascended into heaven.  That is the significance of the ascension, brothers and sisters.  Do we known that?

Sometimes, I think, the ascension means so little to Christians.  Perhaps that’s because, in our society, intercession is so seldom necessary.  When we want to speak with someone we just make an appointment.  Well, you cannot do that with God, brothers and sisters.  Our sins will not allow that.  We cannot just come into his holy presence.  He will not hear us.  We have no access to him, except if we come to him through Christ.

Christ sits at God’s right hand and continually intercedes for us.  That is the significance of the ascension.  Do we realise just how significant that it is and that is the only reason God will hear us?

The story is told how one day a soldier entered the office of president Abraham Lincoln and sat down, together with about 50 other people, to see him.  While he was waiting the President’s little son, Tad, came in and noticed the man, because he was dressed as a soldier.  And he took the boy’s fancy and so the boy started talking to him and asking him all sorts of questions.  And the man told him about the war and various anecdotes and the boy loved it.

But by then it was late in the afternoon and a secretary came out and said ‘I’m sorry, but the president cannot see anyone else today; you’d better come back tomorrow.’  And so the soldier got up to go, but the little boy asked what it was he had wanted.  So the soldier said, ‘I had hoped to see the President.’  And the boy said, ‘Oh, that is my father.’  ‘Don’t go, I will get you in!’  The boy disappeared while the soldier waited.  And after a time the secretary came out again and said to the soldier, ‘The President will see you now.’

The soldier did get in.  Why?  Because the son got him in and so it is also with Jesus.  God’s Son has gone back to heaven to be our Intercessor with God the Father.  And we can come to God only through him.  But when we do come through him we may be sure the Father will hear us.  And there, of course, we find a difference with Moses.  When Moses went to the tent of meeting, all the Israelites stood at the entrances to their tents and you can imagine them anxiously looking at Moses.  ‘Will he succeed; will God hear him, will God take pity on his sinful people?’  But when Jesus entered into the heavenly tabernacle there was no doubt about the outcome whatsoever.  Oh yes, I know, we read that the disciples too were staring after him.  Just like the Israelites staring after Moses.  And it took two angels to tell them to stop looking up and to get on with their earthly business.  But when they did, they did so in full assurance.  And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, Luke tells us.  They knew that Jesus’ work on earth was over.  That the price for their sin had been paid and that therefore Christ’s intercession with God on their behalf would never fail.

One more thing, brothers and sisters, about Christ’s ascension into heaven.  And that is that one day he will return again from heaven.  Just like Moses returned from the tent after speaking with God, so too will Jesus come again.  We don’t know when that will be.  The Bible does not tell us.  ‘It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority,’ Jesus told his disciples.  But though we do not know when, we do know that Christ will return, as the angels told the disciples.  “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.’  One day he is coming back, in the same way he went – on the clouds of heaven.  But that time there will not be just two angels.  No, there will be thousands upon thousands.  He will return with power and great glory, and all the earth will see him.  And on that day he will take his own and take them to heaven so that they too might be with him in the kingdom of God.

In the meantime, let us get on with our work, just like the disciples.  We are told that they returned to Jerusalem with great rejoicing.  And there they waited for the coming of the Holy Spirit, Christ’s new representative on earth.  And when the Spirit came, as he did soon after, they began to tell men everywhere about the things that had happened.  They told how Jesus had come and had lived and died for their sins and how he had how returned to glory.  And how he is now interceding for us as we await his second coming.  And that is what we too must do, brothers and sisters.  In the power of the Holy Spirit, we must get on with the task of passing on the message.  Until he comes again.

AMEN