Sermon Tone Analysis

Last summer my family and I went to go visit my parents in Portugal.

It was a short trip but it was a pleasant trip.

My kids and also my niece were able to see and experience my parents home town.

Everyone enjoyed the time together until of course it was time to leave.

Whether my parents come and visit us here or we go and visit them there the good byes are always very emotional.

In fact my mothers neighbor was even in her window watching us leave and she was crying too.

Why are good byes so emotional.

Well the main reason why is because we never know when we will see them again.

We also know even if we see them next year or two years from now we are going to miss them, miss their voice, their smile, their stories.

There is rarely any benefit when we depart from someone close to us like that.

But there is one departure, one time someone left and it was actually a benefit.

In fact the people who watched the departure were overjoyed.

Of course I am talking about the departure of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

This morning we are going to look at Jesus’ ascension once again but as we look at this glorious departure what we learn this morning is how we have benefited from this departure.

Is it hard for you to say good bye to someone close to you that you know you won’t see for a long time?

Is there ever any benefit to this kind of departure?

Now Luke is the only one who has written about the ascension of Jesus Christ and we are actually privileged to have to separate accounts of Jesus ascension.

The first one we saw at the end of LUke’s Gospel.

Luke ended his gospel the same way he opened the gospel, with praising God.

Now in his letter about the Acts of the Holy Spirit we find this account once again.

Why would Luke provide this account of Jesus’ departure twice.

He has already mentioned the ascension in the opening of Acts we saw it in verses 1-2;

He has already mentioned it here right and this letter is written to Theophilus so Theophilus would have known about the ascension in the end of Luke’s gospel so just move on right.

Well I believe Luke mentioned it twice, or actually three times if you count the summary in Acts 1:2, because of the benefits the apostles receive and because of the benefits we receive from His ascension.

I also believe Luke mentions it in his gospel and in the book of Acts because of its importance to gospel message.

The gospel isn’t complete without the ascension.

The gospel message consists of the facts that first of all mankind is sinful, we all fall short of God’s own standard and there is nothing we can do to earn acceptance by God.

Mankind deserves one place and that place is Hell complete separation from God. God, however, being our creator and sustainer desired so much for all of mankind to have a relationship with Him that He sent His Son to earth to go to the Cross and die a death He didn’t deserve in our place so by believing in Jesus and that He is the Son of God, who is God and believing He took our place on the cross we can have eternal life in Him.

Of course the gospel message doesn’t end there.

Three days after Jesus died on the cross He was raised to life once again.

Never to die again, victorious over sin and death.

We have examined His resurrection pretty in-depth and we have looked at the proofs of His resurrection and there are quite a few.

These are the elements of the gospel message and these are the elements the apostles are eyewitnesses to.

These are elements of the gospel message which are crucial but the last crucial element of the gospel message which was only witnessed by a select few is His ascension.

Jesus after coming and going with His apostles and disciples was taken up to heaven.

Jesus’ ascension is crucial to the gospel message because of the benefits of Jesus’ ascension which the apostles recieved and so we.

We will see what these benefits are as we once again examine His ascension this morning as we look at our message, Jesus Taken Up.

We will see this in Acts 1:9-11

In our study of the letter of Acts as we have seen it is the Acts of the Holy Spirit working in and through the Apostles.

We looked last week at the Promise of the Holy Spirit in verses 4-8.

Verses 1-5 are a summary of the entirety of Luke’s gospel and then in verses 6-8 Jesus provides His orders to the apostles and these orders include their being His witnesses to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and the outer most parts of the earth.

Now as we look at verses 9-11 we examine Jesus’ ascension once again and we will really focus on the benefits of His ascension.

Verse 9 Luke provides here a bit of a progression.

Luke writes, “And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud recieved Him out of their sight.”

This progression actually provides us with the outline of our text this morning, with verses 10 and 11 fleshing it out a little more.

What we will learn this morning which is so crucial to our understanding of the gospel message is that there are the benefits of Jesus’ ascension.

The Benefits of Jesus’ Ascension

The first benefit of Jesus’ ascension is when Luke writes ‘after He had said these things,’ this points back to what Jesus has said in verse 6-8.

In verse 7 Jesus provides the final instruction to His apostles concerning the Kingdom of God.

He refocused them on Spiritual restoration instead of focusing on a physical, national restoration.

That time is for God to know and God has already set that day and it will happen.

Then Jesus promises the Holy Spirit in verse 8 and tells these men will be His witnesses from, ‘Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria and even to the remotest part of the earth.’

This simple phrase marks the end of Jesus’ training of these men.

Now mind you this doesn’t mean Jesus has nothing left to teach.

I am sure He has more He can instruct these men but for the time being Jesus’ time has come to stop teaching, finish His instruction.

Which means it is now time for Him to return to His Home.

This means now that Jesus has finished speaking and teaching He has left His apostles with the last of His teaching and the last words He said pointed to the coming of the Holy Spirit and this means simply if the Holy Spirit is coming then Jesus must first take His throne as King and send His Spirit to man.

Jesus has provided the last of His instructions to these men.

This is the last bit of training they will receive from Jesus physically face to face.

Jesus has come to fulfill Scripture.

He has done this through His teaching and His demonstration of mercy toward the nation of Isreal.

This was Jesus’ purpose in coming was to fulfill Scripture now in order for Scripture to continue to be fulfilled Jesus must finish speaking, or teaching.

He told them this would happen.

This means, however, now that Jesus has trained them and now that all Scripture has been fulfilled Jesus is ready to go back Home.

Not only is He ready but He also must return so that they can receive the promise of the Holy Spirit.

His Heavenly Rule

The second element to this progression deals with the means to which Jesus went to be home in heaven.

“He was lifted up while they were looking on,” now this word for being ‘lifted up’ is a passive which means the action Jesus recieved of going up to heaven was not of His own doing but it was acted on Him, God lifted Him off the ground as the others, ‘witnessed’ His being lifted up from the ground.

This is somewhat reminiscent of some Hebrew text pointing to those who didn’t die but were brought before God.

Enoch is one of them,

Enoch didn’t taste death but because of his trust in God, God took him from this world and brought Him into His own presence.

Another man who didn’t taste death was God’s servant Elijah.

So Elijah who was a prophet of God was taken up to heaven without tasting death.

The difference of course between these two men and Jesus is, well a lot.

First Jesus was going home returning to where He had come from.

The other two were humans only and they were taken from this place into God’s presence.

Not so with Jesus.

Jesus had left Heaven to come to Earth, He left His home and condescended Himself, making Himself lower then He should have had to in order to die a death He didn’t deserve for a people who in reality had to reject Him as God in order to hang Him on a cross.

Look at what Paul tells the Philippian church; Philippians 2:5-11

Paul is teaching the Philippians what it means to humble yourself and the example he uses is the example of Jesus giving up His throne and His place in heaven to come to earth and take on the form of His creation just so He can be rejected by them and die for them.

He didn’t allow His equality with God the Father to hold Him there but instead submitted Himself and perfectly obeyed the Father to the point of death.

This is why Jesus has been exalted because He was submissive.

Now He has been exalted and at His ascension He was taken up by the Father to go and to takes His rightful place on the throne.

The throne He came off of for our sake now He returns to it.

He returns as ruler with out authority and power being placed in His hands once again.

David understood this look at what David writes in Psalm 110

David is pointing to Jesus Christ, Jesus is the Lord of David’s who will sit at God’s right hand.

God is now taking Jesus back to where He belongs to sit on His rightful throne and rule from Heaven.

Now Jesus is alive in the flesh and He is being taken up from this earth not just to be in God’s presence but to take His seat as King over all creation.

These men are standing there watching Him lift up off the ground and float up into the sky.

Luke tells us, ‘while they were looking on.’

These men who have witnessed Jesus teach and perform amazing miracles and watched Him carry a cross and be hung on it, die and then see His empty tomb and then eat with Him after His resurrection now are watching Him be taken away from the earth.

He is departing from their sight.

These men had to witness Jesus returning to heaven.

The return to heaven marks the fact that He is fulfilling what He has said, He goes to prepare a place for them and for us.

As these men are watching Jesus go up they also see Him vanish from sight.

He is engulfed in a cloud.

Look Jesus didn’t go up on a cloud but a cloud surrounded Him and veiled Him from their sight.

This is to say He didn’t just keep going out into space and the cloud is also a representation of the glory of God. they watched as Heaven itself welcomed Jesus into its courts.

We find this cloud in Exodus