Luke 24:50-53
Please remain standing and turn
in your copy of God’s Word to Luke chapter 24. We’ll be reading today verses
50 to 53 minus some gaps and breaks or absences. We’ve been
studying Luke for three years now. I think on the sermon audio
count, there are maybe 125 sermons on Luke. Now the Lord’s prayer
took, you know, maybe eight or 10 of those, but, but we’ve,
we’ve heard a lot of Luke. Well, fasten your seatbelts starting
next week, a whole lot more of Luke. Uh, he wrote the book of
Acts. And so today we end Luke’s gospel
with, uh, the ascension of Jesus Christ. And guess what happens?
Maybe a few verses into Luke, he tells about the ascension
again. So in two weeks, we’ll hear of it again, just maybe
from a little bit different perspective. Before we read God’s word, let’s
ask for his blessing. Lord, we know that spiritual
things are spiritually discerned. The man of the flesh cannot read
and understand and live by your word. And so open our eyes to
see Soften our hearts to recognize we are in the presence of your
written and preached word. We pray that our minds might
be transformed and be renewed for they are fallen and broken.
And we pray most of all that our hands and feet would be willing
and ready to go from this place and be your witnesses to the
ends of the earth so that people may praise you and bring glory
to your name in this world and in the world to come. We ask
this in the name of Jesus. Amen. Here now God’s word, Luke
chapter 24, beginning at verse 50, speaking of Jesus. Then he led them out as far as
Bethany 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 they returned to Jerusalem
with great joy and were continually in the temple, blessing God. Amen. You may be seated. One of the things that you will
hear over and over in our congregation And this is not a badge of honor. This is not something that we
brag about. It’s something we do because
we are commanded to do it, is that we worship God according
to the scriptures. Everything we do in our service,
we believe is commanded by God. From the apostolic greeting,
the call to worship, the hymn of adoration, the prayer and
invocation and adoration, creed and confession, doxology, singing
praise to our triune God, the confession of sin, the assurance
of pardon, the reading of the Old Testament, the reading of
the New Testament, public reading, the preaching of the word, the
sacraments when necessary, and on and on through the benediction,
we believe that everything we do is commanded by God in scripture. Take away one or more of those
elements and you’ll be missing an ingredient that makes up for
the whole of worship. No doubt you’ve been to a church
before where there was no call to worship. There was no pastoral
prayer. There was no confession of sin.
And I think one of the worst sins of all is a church service
where no benediction is given. In fact, if you go to many modern
day churches after the preacher or whatever he is, gives his
little advice speech. And the band comes up and plays
some soupy song to get you all riled up in heart to go do this.
Somebody just says, finally, see y’all next week. Well, that’s
very cordial, but it’s unbiblical. God commanded in the scriptures
to Moses all the way back in Numbers chapter six, Moses, You
tell Aaron and his sons, the priest to bless the people of
God. And so we have the, what we call
the Aaronic after Aaron benediction. The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord caused his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance
upon you and give you peace. And we add a few words usually
now forever until the day breaks, the shadows flee till the trumpet
sounds and the Lord returns and brings us home when we shall
see his face perfectly and forever. We, we add a few things to the
benediction, but the benediction is the oldest thing we do in
our service. It goes all the way back to Moses.
God commanded Moses to command Aaron. And therefore that command
comes down through the scriptures to the ordained minister today.
You put the name of God, you put the blessing of God on my
people and God will come through and he will go with his people
as he commanded Moses, Aaron and his sons to do. Now it’s
very interesting. This is where you’ve got to put
on your thinking cap and you’ve got to go back to your Old Testament
Bible reading, which maybe some of you have suffered through
others of you are ignorant of, but you need to see this image
when Aaron and his sons and all subsequent high priest and high
priest after them all the way through would make sacrifice. for the people of God. And then
the people of God who had come to Jerusalem for pilgrimage and
worship and sacrifice would prepare to go back to their villages
and scatter out of Jerusalem back into their daily living. The high priest would raise his
hands. and say to them, the Lord bless
you and keep you and so on. And so isn’t it very fitting
for Jesus, the true high priest, not a high priest after the order
of Aaron who needed successive generations after him. No, but
Jesus is a high priest as Hebrews tells us after the order of Melchizedek,
a priest and a king forever. Jesus makes full atonement for
the sins of his people, not in the temple, not with the blood
of bulls and goats and sheep and oxen and lambs and birds,
but outside the camp. He made full atonement for the
sins of his people. And then he stands before them
with the nail scarred hands and says, the Lord bless you and
keep you and cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious
to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give
you peace. Now, while we’re thinking rather
deeply here and spiritually, don’t you imagine the disciples
as he raised his hands, saw the scars. not but six weeks old
at the most, those scars from those massive nails that held
him to the cross while he suffered the wrath and curse of God were
before their eyes. And don’t you think it was very
meaningful for them to see those scars? And as he says, the Lord
bless you, they were reminded that the Lord cursed him. And
as he said, the Lord keep you, they’re reminded that the Lord
cast him away. My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me? And then as he said, the Lord
lift up his countenance upon you, they realized the curtain
was torn, atonement had been made, and that there would now
therefore be no need for a mediator between God and man except Christ
Jesus. Full access. The Lord caused
his face to shine upon you, his anger, fell upon Jesus and his
frowning countenance will not fall upon us again, maybe in
discipline as sons, but God has justified us and that justification
will never be undone. The Lord make his face shine
upon you and be gracious to you as Jesus, the great high priest
with those scarred hands, blessed his people. The word says he
parted from them. He went up to heaven. Paul says
somewhere in his letters to the Corinthians of Jesus that he
is the man of heaven. And it’s an interesting phrase.
Jesus, the man of heaven, is now returned to his home. At Christmas, we remember that
Jesus is from heaven. Very often, though, during the
week, during the year, during our normal Christian thinking,
we think of Jesus as from earth. He was born. He was a Galilean.
He was a carpenter. He had an earthly ministry and
so on. But Jesus is simply returning
to his former home. We love rags to riches story. Someone grows up in rags and
through hard work and well, a little elbow grease. And I guess we
think of it in America as good luck, whatever that is. A person
goes from rags to riches. Well, we like those kinds of
stories, but there’s a better story. Riches. to rags back to
riches. That’s the life of Jesus. He
left the eternal splendor of heaven. We sing at Christmas,
thou who was rich beyond all splendor. He left the ruby paved
roads of heaven for a dirt stable floor. And Jesus is simply, folks,
returning to his former dwelling place. He is returning back to
his position, his place of honor and glory. But there’s a little
bit more to it as he returns. The man of heaven must return
to his glory where he will sit on the throne. He will have all
authority in heaven and on earth. His high priestly work, his work
of atonement will be done. He will be the priest who sits
down and never offers another sacrifice. But he will also be
the priest who ever lives above, as we sing, for me to intercede. He is praying for us. He is praying
on our behalf. He is hearing the praises of
his brothers in the congregation here on earth. He is hearing
the prayers of his brothers and sisters on earth. And he is lifting
both the praises and the prayers up to the father. It is through
his atoning work. that they are accepted in God’s
presence and in God’s sight. And then as we read in Revelation,
Jesus is waiting for the day where God taps him on the shoulder
and says, it is time. Open the scroll, remove the seals. The end times must unfold. Jesus
must return and he must make all things new and pull his beloved
children into his eternal presence forever. But as Jesus goes up
into heaven and he, establishes his apostles for their mission
of the church, their mission of the gospel. Remember last
week he took them to Bible school. It’s the Old Testament. Stupid,
right? that tells you who I am and what
I came to do. Then he gives them a little brain
help. You need the spirit of God to understand the things
of God. And then he says, wait in Jerusalem until the promise
of the father power from on high, the Holy spirit comes and I will
bless you as you preach the gospel to the nations. Well, we land
at Jesus ascension and his blessing. And I want us to think very practically
for a few minutes about the man of heaven, and the blessings
he bestows on his children left here. We won’t get into it today,
but maybe in your own free time this afternoon or during the
week, read John 14, and 15, and 16, and 17. Read of Jesus’ desire
for you. As you remain on earth as strangers
and exiles waiting to be brought to heaven, he has a wonderful
desire set of desires for each of us. But as he goes away, he
does not leave us as orphans. He gives us the promised Holy
Spirit, but onto the blessings. As Jesus was carried up into
heaven, he raised his hands, his nail scarred hands, and he
blessed. He blessed his apostles. And so first, think of the Lord
bless you and keep you. We mentioned already, this is
the command of God to Moses, to Aaron, and passed down to
those of us who were ordained to give God’s blessing. You can
imagine, Jesus is leaving them. He’s going to depart. They’ve
had their Bible school. They’ve had their mission training.
He’s going to depart. He waited until Jerusalem, until
the power from on high comes. But don’t you think they knew
now after these six, seven weeks of bootcamp, this guy means what
he says. If he raises his hands and blesses,
it will come to pass. And we need to think of that
ourselves. They knew it for sure. They had
been immersed in a mountaintop experience for all these weeks.
We live a lot of life and we live between mountaintop and
mountaintop, often in the valleys. We don’t sing Psalm 23 enough.
We don’t read our Bibles enough. We skip church a little here
and there. And so we get weak because we
haven’t eaten our biblical Wheaties. We come into church weak and
wounded to hear again what’s good, right, and true. And what
are we hearing today? When God raises his hands and
blesses us with those nail scars, he’s gonna do it. I watched a
movie this week on Netflix about a football player. I won’t tell
you all the details because they’re inconsequential. But the theology
in this movie, the young man died a very tragic death. And
there was a devil character in this movie. And the devil character
kept telling the brother of the deceased football player, God
either could not help your brother or he was unwilling to help your
brother. That’s really sloppy theology, isn’t it? God is able
to do anything. And because we go through hardship
does not mean God is unwilling to help us. He’s actually giving
us more help in hardship than we know. That’s what Romans 8
is about. That’s what the book of Job is
about. God sanctifies our suffering to us to conform us into his
image. We have to go through suffering
before we can go through glory. And so when God blesses his disciples,
they know we’re gonna go through hell as we preach the gospel.
We’re going to be shipwrecked. We’re going to be beaten. We’re
going to be threatened. We’re going to be arrested, jailed. We’re
going to lose our families, our livelihood, every bit. They know
that it will be true. Jesus told them. but his blessing,
his ultimate blessing is there. And so every week as you leave,
uh, as you leave church, you’re going to go out into the harsh
world where your bodies are sick and failing. Your, your lives
are often turned upside down, but God blesses you and he promises
to keep you. And those nail scarred wounds
that the apostles saw are before you week by week. And you can
put, what Jesus says in the bank, and it will keep, it will pay
dividends. So there’s the benediction, the
blessing that God gives. I want us to think secondly of
a blessing of the risen and ascended Christ, his glorified body. We ask a trick question in Presbytery
when we have a young man who wants to be a minister, we ask
him this, is Jesus in heaven, the ascended Jesus, human? and they scratch their heads
for a minute and they think about this. And the simplest way to
answer the question is, of course, yes. A good way to remember that
this is true is the old Scottish theologian saying, the dust of
the earth is on the throne of glory. Jesus is the first fruits
of the resurrection. His being raised from the dead
guarantees your being raised from the dead. And His ascension
up into heaven guarantees you who are resurrected will also
be in heaven with Him. We forget very quickly, don’t
we, John? Chapter 14, Jesus tells His disciples, what? In my Father’s
house are many mansions, and I’m gonna go and prepare a place
for you. And so Jesus promises not only
will we be raised from the dead, but we will ascend to heaven
where he is and live in a mansion prepared by him for us. And so Jesus’ glorified body
ought to encourage you whose bodies are falling apart. It
ought to encourage you who have the wounds of an open heart surgery,
or have the metal in your hips and in your knees, or you have
the arthritic pains, or you popped so many pills this morning, you
had to ask your spouse because you’re getting forgetful, did
I take them all? Did I even take them at all?
On and on it goes. Your body is weak and falling
apart, yet we will have a glorified body. and the dust of the earth
is on the throne of glory, the dust of the earth will be redeemed
in glory. And so we have great hope as
God blesses his people. He means his words, but his resurrection
and ascension are a promise that ours will be so as well. There’s a third blessing of Jesus’
ascension, not just his words, the Lord bless you and keep you,
not just his resurrected and ascended body, but the third
thing is his reign. Remember the parable Jesus told,
it’s been months ago, we looked at it, but Jesus was the son
who went away to inherit a kingdom. And he’s going to return and
call his stewards to an account. Well, Jesus in his ascension
has gone to inherit that kingdom, which he earned at the cross,
and he has now gone and received, but he’s going to come back.
He’s going to return the second coming and he’s going to demand
an account of both the wicked and the righteous of their stewardship
of what has been entrusted. But Jesus, having gone to heaven
and received his kingdom now reigns. In fact, if we read the
great commission in Matthew, it’s a little different from
Luke. Jesus says to his disciples, all authority in heaven and on
earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples
of all nations. Jesus is reigning over all things. He is the head of the church.
He is the one now who sits in the heavens and laughs. He looks
down and sees all the towers of Babel being built. And he
looks down and says, what do they think they’re up to? And
who do they think they are? And he has a good belly laugh
in heaven because he rules and he reigns over all things. But
also think of the comfort of Romans chapter eight. How much
does God love us? Can anything separate us from
the love of God in Christ? God is able to save us. and He
is willing to save us, but He is also willing to let us go
through hardship, never lets go of us, but He’s willing to
let us go through things for His glory and our everlasting
good. God reigns in His glorified body
in heaven. Well, the fourth thing that we
wanna think of with the ascension of Christ is His triumph. Ephesians
chapter four, Psalm 68 tell us that in Christ ascension in his
victory over death it was in a sense maybe you kids like to
say this you do the little nanny nanny boo-boo thing Jesus in
his ascension he says to the powers of darkness and especially
to Satan hey I won Herod couldn’t kill me Jezebel couldn’t kill
me go through the list Pilate couldn’t kill me. Judas couldn’t
really betray me. Go through the list. The Messiah
has won. Oh, you thought you got me. Oh,
you thought those nails and that cross and the darkness and the
quaking earth. was the end, but it was the beginning
of a triumph. Jesus’ victory over death, where
all death is thy sting, he has victory over the grave. He has
victory over Satan, and as Martin Luther so well says, lo, his
doom is sure. One word, one little word shall
fail him, and that’s Jesus’ triumph. There’s a fifth blessing. There’s
six, by the way. There’s a fifth blessing of Jesus
Ascension. And it’s his high priestly ministry.
He ever lives above for me to intercede. He sits on the throne
of glory, praying for you, cheering for you. He’s not letting you
go. And we sing of our confidence
in this. We sing my anchor holds. We sing
about our anchor not going down into the depths of the ocean
and latching onto the sand or the rock or some object. But
we think of our anchor going up to heaven and it wraps around
the throne of glory where Christ is seated. And our hope is sure
this world may fall apart. Life may unravel in a moment,
but our anchor wrapped around the throne of glory forever holds. And Jesus is our great high priest.
He’s not a man. I mean, yes, I’m your pastor. You’ve had other human pastors. All we can faithfully do is point
you to Jesus. but we’re not God, we can’t absolve
you of your sins, we can’t help you through every crisis, but
we can take you to the one who can, who is seated above, interceding,
and ruling and reigning over his church. Oh, there’s a sixth
blessing, this is the last one. And it’s Jesus’ gifts to the
church. So the risen Christ, as he ascends,
he speaks the words of benediction. His glorified body in heaven
is a down payment a promise for us. He reigns. He triumphs. He’s
the high priest, but he gives gifts to the church. And if you
read Ephesians chapter four, when Jesus ascended on high,
he gave gifts. Our church, our churches, the
church is furnished first with the apostolic age. where the
apostle Paul and the 11 and others were commissioned by Jesus as
eyewitnesses to preach and proclaim his word. And now through the
ordained ministry, God sends gifts to his church. to preach,
and to encourage, and to provide worship, and to give all encouragement
in the growth in grace. I rattled off to you just a few
moments ago our diet of God’s word, Genesis, and contemporary
issues, and Daniel, and Luke, and Acts, and all the rest. That
is God’s gift to nourish you. Chapter one of our confession
of faith says of the holy scriptures, God in order not to leave himself
without witness, has established a testimony about himself in
his word, the 66 books of the Bible. And the purpose for his
establishment of that witness is several. The big thing is
to help you against your flesh remaining sin, the devil who
hates you and wants to deceive and devour and destroy you. and
then the world and its systems. And so the ministry of the church
through the gift of the ascended Christ through a minister is
a precious gift. And it’s a wonder to me sometimes,
and I know we get schedules and travels and whatever else. It’s
a wonder to me that we can barely make it to the word. It’s a wonder to me that we’ll
get three, four, five meals a day and even a midnight ice cream
run but the diet of God’s word is optional. And I say that in
love. I say that in encouragement.
If you, if you are at odds with this world, if you are struggling
with the flesh, and if you feel Satan in your life, you need
to eat your Wheaties and we serve it up here. That’s, that’s my
job. That’s God’s gift to you. That
is our duty is to serve the Wheaties that will get you through life.
If you can’t come, catch it on recording, listen to other good
things. We went in Sunday school last week through all these options
through our phones and gadgets that can help us grow in grace.
But dear friends, the ascended Christ, when he raised his hands
and he blessed his disciples with those nail scarred hands,
he said words and he provided the means for the growth. Now, what are the disciples going
to do? They’re going to go to Jerusalem. They’re going to wait
from the power on high. Power on high is gonna come and there’s
gonna be Pentecost and they’re gonna go preach the word. But notice
what it says while they waited. They went to Jerusalem to worship.
They went to Jerusalem with joy. And they stayed in Jerusalem
continually. It’s amazing to me how we as
Christians, we like the two minute devotionals. We as Christians,
we come to church for the Lord’s hour and then we get back to
business. And what did the apostles seem to show? It needs a little
more time than that. We need to marinate in the word.
We need to be in the word. We need to be with each other.
That’s why I say every Sunday morning as we gather, we’re in
the Lord’s house with the Lord’s people on the Lord’s day. It’s
good that God has provided this in his death and his resurrection
and his ascension for us. One last thing to think of, and
this is maybe a little bit of a pious thought, but I think
one that will sink in with you. The disciples looked up, they
looked up and saw Jesus ascend. The angel said, Hey, he’s going
to come back the same way. Don’t you worry. But can you
imagine, can you imagine Adam and Eve? They’re the ones that
caused this whole problem, aren’t they? When they see the risen
and now ascending Christ returning to heaven, Don’t you imagine
Eve, she can’t cry because there’s no tears in heaven, but can’t
you see her thinking what we have undone by our sin has now
been fixed by the blessed Messiah and God promised him that he
would come from my loins through the generations and he has come,
he has accomplished it and now he returns victorious. Friends,
think on these things, let’s pray. Our Lord, we bless you
for Christ, who was rich beyond splendor and for our sakes became
poor in order that we might become rich. And we now see just some
of the riches that flow from the throne of grace to us through
the ascended and blessing Savior Jesus. Lord, help us to treasure
these things. Help us to be stunned by your
love, by your provision. And now let us go into the world
with the light of the light of your countenance upon each of
us and proclaim to a dark and dying world how great a savior
you are. Bless us as we sing and as we
go in Jesus name. Amen.