Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Christ’s Ascension and Ours

Well, after those wonderful songs of the ascension of our Savior, I feel like my sermon is superfluous, you know? It is a great blessing that we have in this church—these hymns and songs and psalms that we sing that have come down to us through the ages. I mean, if you just take the processional hymn today, use it for your family worship time or devotional time, and go through those verses and think of the implications, then really my sermon would be superfluous because its content is all there in that great hymn.

So these hymns are wonderful ways to celebrate all the aspects of our Savior’s life and his present reign. And certainly these songs on the ascension of our Savior bring us great joy as we sing them and should inform who we are.

Our topic today for this sermon is Christ’s ascension and ours. And I’m going to be reading from Colossians 3, verse 1. Please stand.

Colossians 3:1: “If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God.”

Let’s pray.

Lord God, help us to understand more of the implications—the wonderful things that are poured into this single verse from your scriptures. Bless us, Lord God, with an understanding of the ascension of our Savior, its significance to the world’s history, and significance to who we are in him. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

So we’re going to talk about the centrality of the ascension to our identification of who we are as Christians.

We live in interesting times—times in which the world has really moved radically away in some ways from Christianity. Although it’s interesting that a recent survey that came out said that while the number of Christians has declined in America over the last, I think, seven years, it’s gone from 78% to 70% of the country who call themselves Christians. So these 70% who identify themselves as Christians are of various stripes and varieties, but the number of conservative evangelical Christians so identified in the text—and that would be people like us, reformed as subsumed under the evangelical category—that’s actually stayed the same. It’s not in decline even though the numbers of Christians are.

So there’s two facts there. One: Christians are a vast majority of this country. Two: Bible-believing Christians, solidly Christian people who are like us, are one out of four people in this country. So when we look at what’s happened in our country, we can certainly say that some people are turning away from Christ and the culture—as a cultural manifestation, the political scene, etc.—has certainly abandoned Christ for the idea of secularism.

But the country remains solidly Christian. So what’s the problem?

Well, I think the problem is that all too often, Christians—we forget the ascension. We remember the resurrection, but we forget the ascension. And the resurrection, you know, kind of subsumed under that—even though these were all one event (you know, the resurrection and ascension are talked about together frequently in the scriptures), but the resurrection is the proof that we’re saved, right?

So we’ve emphasized personal salvation but not the ascension, which speaks of the reign of Christ at the right hand of the Father, bringing all nations under his rule and authority. And so when we don’t stress the ascension, we lose a tremendous aspect of what the Christian faith is all about. And I think that’s at least part of the reason why we end up with the kind of culture we have today.

You know, ultimately, the message of the ascension is one that has to go first to the church in America today. I was thinking, you know, we’ve talked about having an Ascension Day celebration at RCC at some point in time, but you know, maybe a much better thing to do next year would be to have an Ascension Day celebration with other churches—from the church in Oregon City—to re-emphasize, in the context of the extended body of Christ in Oregon City, the significance of the ascension, or at least put it on their radar.

Some it is, some it isn’t, but to come together jointly to celebrate that the ascension is always celebrated, you know, after. It’s not a Sunday. It’s never a Sunday. It’s, you know, 40 days after the resurrection. It’s always celebrated on a Thursday. This past Thursday was Ascension Day. And you probably didn’t even note it. This is sort of, you know, in other places of the world it is noted very explicitly.

So today I want to talk about the ascension. And hopefully what we want to do is understand who we are, our identity in the ascended Christ, and the significance of that for how we do our lives and the significance for the cultural times in which we live. And perhaps one of the major answers to the dilemmas we now face would be the reassertion of the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ and its implications for us.

I think it’s that important.

Now the church calendar has as its pivot these two Sundays we’re in now: ascension and then Pentecost. If you were to give the church calendar as it has historically been used for the last couple of thousand years, it has two halves to it. The first half is the life of Jesus; the second half is the life of Jesus through his church. And so the first half begins, of course, with Advent, continues through Easter, and then today is really the last Sunday of the first half of the liturgical year. Today is Ascension Sunday.

So Jesus leaves the world, ascends up to the right hand of the Father as we just read in our text. That’s where he is. Ascension Day marks the end of that. Pentecost begins the section of the calendar dealing with the church. So next week Chris W. will be preaching on Pentecost, and you know, Pentecost—the Spirit comes upon us and we now do the acts of Christ through our acts as the church.

Now if you read the Gospel of Luke and Acts—you know, he wrote Acts. So Luke and Acts as one book, right? You stick them together. Instead of seeing them as separated, you’ll see the hinge point of Luke’s comprehensive gospel. In other words, not just the life of Christ, but the life of Christ played out in his church through his people. That’s the gospel. So in Luke’s gospel, we could say the middle is the ascension.

The end of Luke’s gospel is the account—as was read earlier today—of the ascension, and a beautiful scene, right? Jesus blessing as he ascends, always blessing us from heaven and interceding for us there. So that’s how Luke’s gospel ends. The beginning of the book of Acts is the ascension. So the hinge of the gospel—the story of Jesus, our story in him—the hinge point is not the resurrection; it’s the ascension.

And so the church calendar has always done that. And after Pentecost, then there are the ordinary days, the numbered days. First Sunday after Pentecost, second Sunday after Pentecost, third Sunday, all the way for six months. And that’s because that half of the church year deals with the work of the church in carrying out the mission and task of our Savior. So in the church calendar, it culminates—it crescendos, as it were—in the ascension and the celebration of it.

So it’s a very important concept that we have the Lord Jesus Christ in our minds. We talked last week about being united to him and the riches of Christ. And the riches of Christ, you know, very importantly, are part of that the ascended Christ. The riches of the ascended Christ—his power and rule and authority over the world—is at the right hand of the Father. Okay? So the riches of Christ is really what we’re continuing to talk about in his ascension.

He is now the constantly exalted one. The constantly exalted one at the right hand of the Father. And he’s the one that we serve. And so his ascension is quite important for us in determining who we are—who we are and how we go about living our lives. What are we supposed to do in the context of the world in which we live? Well, it’s very important that we see that from the context of the gospel, and the ascension being the pivot point.

Now for years on our mail from RCC, we’d have as a tagline for us: “Proclaiming the good news of the ascension of the Savior King to the throne.” So the gospel of Jesus Christ, right, is Jesus—Savior, Christ, Messiah, King—the proclamation of the good news of the ascension of the Savior King to the throne. So that we understood the gospel as including this component message of the ascension: not just that Jesus died for your sins and you can be saved, but that the world is forever changed and we now are seated with Christ at the right hand of the Father. And there are all these implications for what that means.

So what is the ascension? Simply, for you younger children, right? The ascension refers to Jesus ascending, going up as his disciples were looking at him from the Mount of Olives. Jesus rises up and is received into a cloud, out of sight. And the scriptures tell us that when Jesus ascends, he ascends to the heavenly realm and he now sits at the right hand of the Father.

Now this is Jesus Christ. This is Jesus bringing our humanity. Our humanity ascends with Christ and sits at the right hand of God in heaven. And so that’s what the ascension, you know, literally is. It’s just the raising up, the ascent of Jesus to go into heaven.

I wanted to read a quote from R.C. Sproul. Let me read you what he says about the ascension and its significance.

Sproul says: “The actual event is described only twice in the New Testament. I am now convinced that no single event in the life of Jesus is more important than the ascension. No, not even the cross or the resurrection. It is dangerous business to assign relative values to the episodes of Christ’s life and ministry. But if we underestimate the significance of the ascension, we sail in perilous waters.”

“If we underestimate the significance of the ascension, we sail in perilous waters.” And I believe those are the waters that the church has sailed in, you know, for quite a long time here in America—undervaluing the ascension, paying really not a whole lot of attention to it. And we’ve now arrived in very perilous waters. And God is waking us up from the hollow of the ship through the difficulties and trials that our country is now facing.

The ascension is recorded in Mark 16 as well as the Luke text that was read earlier.

“So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message accompanying with signs.”

So the Lord leaves, they go doing his work, and the Lord is working with them. Again, that’s the message of Luke as we go from the ascension of Christ—the acts of Christ in his ministry on earth—and then the acts of Christ through the church. The Lord is working with them even though the text has just said he’s gone. He’s ascended. And because of that ascension, the Lord now works with us in a way that was not true prior to the ascension.

So that’s the ascension. And in the reading from Luke earlier, the disciples left seeing the ascended Christ with great joy. So the riches of Christ in his ascension are essential to the great joy that we’re supposed to experience as Christians here in the context of our ministry on earth.

So as we said last week—the last three weeks, really—the immeasurable riches of Christ means that Jesus is the whole deal here, right? Paul is Christocentric. We’re to be Christomaniac, so to speak. We’re supposed to follow Jesus in all that we do. He is our life. Okay? And so what we know about Jesus includes his ascension. And so a significant aspect of what we do in seeing ourselves united to Christ is an understanding of his ascension and the culmination of the gospels in their account of him being that ascension.

And the beginning of our work in the context of Spirit-empowered ministry begins with the ascension of Christ. So as we look at having you know Christ at the center, who we are is followers of Christ. Then followers of Christ should, of course, understand that they’re following in the context of his ascension as well.

All things are found in him. Let me read a few verses here on this theme—in him.

So our life is hidden in him. He’s the one, right? He’s everything we are and are about and are to do. And what we focus on is the Lord Jesus Christ who brings us to the Father as we’re empowered by the Holy Spirit. But in him—let me read some texts about the significance of this, our life, you know, the world really being focused upon the Lord Jesus Christ.

Colossians 1:17: “He is before all things, and in him all things consist.”

Colossians 1:19: “For it pleased the Father that in him all the fullness should dwell.”

Colossians 2:6: “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.”

Colossians 2:7 says that walking in him, then we’re rooted and built up in the context of our faith.

Colossians 2:7: “Rooted and built up in him and established in the faith as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.”

Colossians 2:9: “For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”

Colossians 2:10: “And you are complete in him, who is the head of all principalities and powers.”

Colossians 2:11: “In him you are also circumcised, but the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ.”

Colossians 2:15: “Having disarmed principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.”

So the Lord Jesus Christ—in him, in him, in him—is the message of Colossians leading up to our text in Colossians 3:1 that tells us then to seek him where he is seated at the right hand of God the Father.

In him. In him. In him. The message of the last few weeks’ sermons: the immeasurable riches of Christ. And in him, we see this immeasurable riches of his ascension. And in Christ, then we see that we are the ascended ones as well. Our ascension is clearly taught in the text.

So the text says: “If then you were raised with Christ, okay, so that’s resurrection life. If you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.”

Now, the sitting at the right hand of God is a reference back to Psalm 110, which we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes. But the point here is he’s assuming the ascension of Jesus. He’s sitting at the right hand of God. And because of the ascension of Jesus, Paul wants us to see ourselves in him—in our death and resurrection, but in him also seated at the right hand of God the Father.

And so our response to the ascension of Christ is to seek things from a heavenly perspective, that we might pray that things be done on earth as it is in heaven. We seek him. We seek knowledge, you know, from the ascended Christ at the right hand of the Father, because we are positionally in him. His ascension is our ascension. And as a result of understanding our ascension, verse two says:

“Set your mind on those things above, not on the things of the earth.”

Okay? So we’re to set our minds on heavenly things, have heavenly perspective. We come to church to get a heavenly perspective on our world and its difficulties. Today, I believe I’ve given you an accurate message: that one of the diagnoses of our culture is the lack of stress on the ascension of Jesus Christ by the church. Everything’s about the death, burial, and resurrection—wonderful, important, etc. But the ascension of Christ gets rather short shrift. And I think there’s a direct relationship between that and what’s happening in the context of our culture.

Going on to say then that if we’re ascended with him, that if we’re seeking things at the right hand of God the Father, if we’re setting our minds on those heavenly things, this is because it says:

“You died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

Your life is hidden with Christ. You’re united to Christ in God, and Christ is at the right hand of the Father. Now, I know Christ dwells in our heart by faith. I know the Holy Spirit brings us the realities of Jesus. I understand that. But the particular place where Jesus is now in the New Testament is at the right hand of the Father, and he’s not coming back until he makes all enemies his footstool.

The ascension of Jesus is his going up. The session of Jesus is him sitting at the right hand of God the Father. This is a term that the church has used: the session. It’s the rule of Jesus Christ. He’s not just sitting up there waiting. He’s sitting up there overseeing the actions of his troops, his warriors, his gospel proclaimers, his servants, his gracious, loving, merciful people. And he’s overseeing them to the end that all things be brought under his dominion and reign—that he might bring all his enemies even as his footstool.

So the session of Jesus is the active reign of Christ at the right hand of God the Father.

Now we have session meetings at RCC. Well, that’s where they derive their name. In Presbyterian circles, the elders or pastors, when they meet to make rulings or judgments, sit as a session because they’re really empowered by the right hand of God on high where Jesus sits and his rule is accomplished, among other things, through the session of the local church. I mean, this isn’t a metaphor. This is what we see as the reality of the Christian life.

So Jesus’s ascension is our ascension. We sit at the right hand of God the Father. And so in our lives, we’re to seek a knowledge and understanding of how things work and how we’re to go about, you know, discipling the nations—our great task. We’re to do that by looking at heavenly things and seeking the Lord Jesus Christ at the right hand of the Father. We are to seek those things actively, perpetually seeking the things which are above where Christ is and where we are in him.

And we are to set our mind on those heavenly realities.

So our ascension is talked about here. When Christ our light—Christ who is our life—appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Even when Jesus returns, right? We’re with him in that. And so our identification with Jesus, our unity with him and receiving his immeasurable riches includes our unity to him in his ascension.

So Jesus Christ in his ascension. Philippians 3:20 says:

“Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior.”

Hebrews 12:22 says:

“You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, etc.”

That’s where we are. That’s where we are. We are united to the Lord Jesus Christ in his death, burial, resurrection, but also in his ascension. And so that’s an understanding of who we are in Jesus. Our identity is in the ascension. Our identity is in the ascension.

So we have this in Colossians 3—the statement of his ascension, he’s at the right hand of the Father—is then related to our seeking him there in our particular lives.

Now, this seated at the right hand of the Father is an allusion to Psalm 110. And Psalm 110 is a great ascension psalm. It’s a great psalm to recite and learn and sing at Ascension celebrations and certainly on Ascension Sunday. According to some commentators, there are over 33 quotations or allusions to Psalm 110 in the New Testament. It’s the most quoted psalm in the New Testament.

Okay? Why? Because the ascension is an important doctrine. I think that’s at least part of what’s happening here. These continual allusions to Psalm 110 is to help us to understand the significance and the meaning of the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. So in the New Testament, in Paul’s epistle—just like here in Colossians—the accent falls on the exaltation of Jesus Christ and us with him.

Let’s read Psalm 110 then. If you have your scriptures, turn to Psalm 110. Otherwise, just listen.

Psalm 110, a psalm of David. The Savior obviously referred to himself by quoting this psalm in the gospels. This is really about Jesus.

Psalm 110: “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.’”

So when we read that Jesus is at the right hand of the Father in Colossians 3:1, this is the allusion. He’s at the right hand. And what’s going on while he’s there? Until I make your enemies your footstool. It is a process of history that the ascended Christ rules from heaven until all of his enemies be made his footstool—positively, until the nations are discipled and taught and praise the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what’s happening in history, and that’s being affected by the ascended Christ at the right hand of the Father.

“The Lord shall send the rod of your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of your enemies.”

So in this process of him being enthroned—as a result of the ascension, by the way, was he enthroned before? Was the second person of the Trinity enthroned before? Well, he was God, he ruled. Certainly. What’s significant about the ascension is Jesus—in his not just his divine nature but his human nature—being exalted to the right hand of the Father. So the human nature is really the subject of the exaltation, the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Reformed confessions have talked about this repeatedly. But Jesus is there now, right? And he’s going to be there until all his enemies are made his footstool. What’s the mechanism?

Well, he’s going to send forth the rod of his strength out of Zion. Okay? So out of the heavenly places, but Zion also is the meeting place of the church. So today we’re in Zion, so to speak. The rod of God’s strength will be sent out of Zion, right?

“Rule in the midst of your enemies.”

That’s a message that Jesus ultimately applies to Jesus, but it applies to us in Christ. When we leave the doors of Zion today, we are given the task of ruling in the midst of our enemies. Our identity is with the exalted and ascended Lord Jesus Christ. That’s who we are. And what does it say?

“Your people shall be volunteers in the day of your power.”

Verse three. So how is Jesus going to accomplish this? Through us. Jesus is the one reigning. Jesus is the one bringing the world, discipling the nations. But he accomplishes it—verse three says—through his people.

“Your people shall be volunteers in the day of your power, and the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning, you have the dew of your youth.”

So you see, Christ’s ascension is proclaimed, just as in Colossians 3, alludes back to that. And then secondly, our ascension in him is proclaimed as well in Psalm 110, where the mechanism—we’re exalted in Christ and where the mechanism by which is the rod of his strength—alluded to in Revelation, that the church will have the rod of God’s strength to rule over the nations in Psalm 2. That’s given to him in Revelation 2 and 3. It’s talked about with us, and it’s talked about later in Revelation when the King rides forth. The power of his word—the tongue that comes out of his mouth—and the rod again is alluded to there.

We have the word of the ascended Christ, and we have the power of the one who has been exalted above all kings, principalities, powers, nations, anything that exalts itself against our Savior. Good luck trying to storm heaven. And that’s where he rules from. And he sends the rod of his strength out by empowering us with an understanding of who we are in the ascended Christ—that Christ’s ascension is also our ascension in him. And he tells us to rule in the midst of his enemies.

He expects us to do something about the world in which we live. And so Psalm 110 is a great picture of the ascended Christ, but it also is a great picture of the identity of the Christian church, who are his means.

What does he go on to do?

Verse four: “The Lord has sworn and not relented. ‘You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. The Lord is at your right hand. He shall execute kings in the day of his wrath. He shall judge among the nations. He shall fill the places with dead bodies. He shall execute the heads of many countries. He shall drink of the brook by the wayside. Therefore, he shall lift up the head.’”

Jesus goes forth, just as in Revelation 19, guiding and leading forth his church to preach the word of God and accompany the preaching of the word with providential acts in history from Jesus Christ. So Jesus’s ascension is our ascension. Jesus’s ascension is the greatest political fact in history. And it declares that all nations, all political entities, will be discipled by the church of Jesus Christ.

And if they don’t submit to the discipling, then they’ll be placed off to the side and be replaced by people who will use their authority for the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ.

Psalm 110 talks about this rule, his authority, and that authority is extended to those who are with him in the context of his body, which is the church. The apostolic announcement was that the enthronement of Jesus Christ had taken place. That’s the gospel. The enthronement of Jesus Christ has taken place. That’s our message. That’s our message: to understand who we are and that ultimately, if we’re to have the apostolic message of the gospel of Jesus, it has to have as this very important component the announcement that he is now exalted.

He is the constantly exalted one who will brook no rivals, who will submit the world with the preaching of his word and with acts of loving kindness on the part of his people, accompanying the preaching of that word—great signs and wonders of a people who serve but call people at the same time to submit, to bow the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Revelation gives us that picture. In a way, I was thinking of that show. I don’t really watch it. Game of Thrones, right? So the significance of this is that we live in a game of thrones now, right? We got the Republicans and the liberals politically speaking. You know, we’ve got different economic entities. We got various people vying, and they—some people win for a while, other people win, and you got this stuff going on all the time.

Well, the ultimate scene, the last season of the true Game of Thrones begins with the ascension of Jesus Christ to the right hand of the Father. And history is about the submission, the subjection of all other kingdoms. All other thrones must be bound under the throne of the Lord Jesus Christ. As I said, this is a political event as well as a spiritual event.

In 1 Peter 3:22, we read:

“Jesus is gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God. Angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to him.”

So angels, when we read in Colossians 3:1 he’s at the right hand of the Father, that means that all things are now subject to him. That’s what the epistle of Peter tells us.

Let me read Athanasius. Here’s a quote he has, and he says, “The term in question, ‘highly exalted,’ does not signify that the essence of the Word was exalted, for He was ever and is equal to God. But the exaltation is of the manhood.”

As I said earlier, Chrysostom said this of the exaltation:

“We who appeared unworthy of earth. You and I have been led up today into the heavens. Ascension Day sermon. You and I who appeared unworthy of earth have now been led into the heavens in union with the Lord Jesus Christ. We who are not worthy of the preeminence below have ascended to the kingdom above. We have scaled the heavens. We have attained the royal throne. And that nature—on whose account the cherubim guarded paradise—today sits above the cherubim.”

The ascension is the declaration that us, humanity, has now been exalted to the right hand of the Father, far above all principalities and powers. Once under the angels, as the psalms tell us, now we’re over the angels in the Lord Jesus Christ in his ascension.

Philippians 3:20, again, as I read earlier: “Our citizenship is in heaven.”

Ephesians 2:6: “He has raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

And so the political dimension of this is that Christ exalts himself above all principalities and powers, and us in him.

Okay, I mean, this is a quote. I think this is from Rushdoony. “Unless the ascension and session of Jesus Christ—so the ascension of going up, session now sitting at the right hand of the Father—be confessed, men will seek their own ascension into omnipotence and their own session of absolute power over man. For a man to confess Christ and to espouse statism or socialism is to involve himself in serious contradiction and is a practical denial of Christ and his ascension.”

So apart from the doctrine of the ascension, men who are made in the image of God seek to establish their own omnipotence, their own rule and authority. And our history is, of course, replete with examples of that, including our very current histories. Right? So for a Christian to engage in those kinds of ascensions, those kinds of sessions of ultimate power being under the control of man apart from Christ, and to link himself up with the state as the vehicle for that—socialism, communism, various forms of governmental coercion apart from rulers who have bowed the knee to Jesus Christ—to engage ourselves and to cooperate with those people is essentially, Rushdoony says, a denial of the ascension of Christ and a denial, really, of the central aspect of the gospel.

The divine session and the statist session are mutually exclusive and incompatible.

I’ll read that again. The divine session and the statist session are mutually exclusive and incompatible. War must be waged. If we’re going to pray, you know, that the kingdoms of earth submit to Christ and be discipled, if we’re to pray that God’s will might be done on earth as it is in heaven and his kingdom might be made manifest, we’re praying against all other kingdoms that won’t submit themselves to his kingship, right?

Okay. As you walk out the door today, you walk out the door into a hostile environment in terms of the philosophies of rule and governance in our country, who are hostile to the session of Jesus Christ. You can have the resurrection. You can have your personal salvation, and when you go to church, you can talk about that stuff. But if you take that to be all-encompassing, comprehensive of what you do in your life, how you run your business, how you look at political action, and how you look at governance—well, no. We have to beat you back at that level because ultimately, we are fine with Christians having their teddy bear of, you know, salvation from sin—as significant and important as that is to us. But they don’t understand it. As long as we got the rubber ducky there and stay in our bathtubs, everything’s cool.

But when we go out into the hostile world and proclaim that Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords—he’s at the right hand of the Father, he is in the process of discipling all the nations, and he brooks no rivals—and he is in open warfare against a secularism that seeks to control the lives of individuals apart from bowing the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s warfare. That’s the kind of warfare we’re in.

Calvin said of the ascension and session that it meant that Christ was inaugurated in the government of heaven and earth. The government of heaven and earth. That’s what’s going on.

Rushdoony goes on. This is in Foundations of Social Order:

“There is no victory possible for men who wage war against God. But neither is there any hope for men who in the direct line of fire fail to see that a war is on.”

I think that’s where we tend to slide into—not recognizing the war and not recognizing that our job isn’t to dog paddle until the thing’s over. Our job is to go forth as ambassadors for the Lord Jesus Christ. He sends you—the people of his strength—out of Zion today back to the world to, in a thousand little ways, acts of love and kindness, proclamation of the ascension of Christ, the way you go about your business, your family, everything, submitted to the one who sits at the right hand of the Father.

And pray for—pray understandingly. Don’t pray as if you’re some kind of weak person. We’re not some sniveling group down here. We are centered with Christ and we are united to the only government that exists for all eternity, and to which all other governments must be submitted. We’re the ecclesia of Jesus Christ. That’s the called-out ones, called together to govern the church, to govern Oregon City.

Now, it’s really tough governing Oregon City if every 30, 40 churches are running in different directions all the time. Now, there’s diversity. That’s good. But, you know, when the church wakes up to its unity with Jesus Christ and his ascension and we see ourselves as the strength of God sent out of Zion—and we see that this means the body of Christ, which is knit together throughout the broader region of Oregon City—and we act that way, then I think things will change in a more dramatic way than what we see now.

And it’s because you can’t win a war if you don’t know it’s on, as Rushdoony said.

So the ascension has political implications for government. The Lord Jesus Christ blesses his people as he ascends. That’s a great thought of comfort. Effort. The perpetual image of Jesus ascending, blessing his people, hands raised. But don’t forget what the blessing is. The blessing isn’t just to comfort you. As important as comfort is—we talked about that last week. One of the immeasurable riches of Christ is his comfort to us when we suffer and struggle—but the blessing isn’t just comfort. The blessing is empowerment.

That’s what the Aaronic benediction is all about. Remember, it’s given as they’re going to go out and march ahead as warriors for Yahweh into Canaan. That’s the setting in Numbers of the Aaronic benediction that the church has used for 2,000 years. Jesus blessing us in his ascension is a reminder that he’s blessing us to be powerful people in the world in which we live—not jerks, not power in the sense that the world exercises power. We’ll look at that in just a minute. But powerful people nonetheless, who are affecting the discipling of the nations through the proclamation and living out their reality of the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, we practice this every week. You probably don’t notice it, but we do. What’s it? When we come to church, what do we do? We confess our sins. Well, we come in and praise God. We want to praise him. We confess our sins. He forgives us our sins. And then we have the Sursum Corda. You know, we’ve talked about how the liturgies of the CRC churches and other covenant renewal worship churches really reflect the liturgy that’s existed for 2,000 years. And that’s mostly true. This aspect is one that’s different.

The church in our day and age—in the last 30, 40 years—this movement of covenant renewal worship self-consciously made a change to the historic liturgies. The historic liturgies had the Sursum Corda—”lift up your hearts”—just before communion. And so the thinking of Jim Jordan and other people that are doing liturgical studies is: look, we hear from God the message of the gospel preached from the pulpit in the context of the throne room of God. We get up there earlier than the Lord’s supper.

Now the reality is that in the historic liturgy, apparently there were three ascensions. It was kind of complicated. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have ascensions prior to communion. But that’s why we have the Sursum Corda earlier than some older liturgical churches—because we think that worship takes place in the heavenly throne room and we have to ascend to get there.

Let me read you some quotes from Jeff Meyers about the Sursum Corda. He says:

“Just as the ascension offering follows the purification offering, so now the Christian worshipper ascends into heaven to praise Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and to hear the Lord’s verbal instruction in preparation for his fellowship meal with God. Appropriately therefore, the Sursum Corda—Latin, ‘lift up your hearts’—comes at this point in the service.”

So the idea is we’ve been cleansed of our sins—purification offering—and then we enter into the presence of God through the Sursum Corda, through the being called up into so we ascend on the basis of being forgiven of our sins into the throne room of God. As Meyers says, so. That’s what I just said. And so then he lists some of the elements of the service in terms of that. This is from the Lord’s Service, by the way, what I just said. And he says that in the Lord’s Service, this is not supposed to be just some kind of emotional feeling. There’s supposed to be an objective realization that we are ascended in Christ to the throne room.

Now, our lives are always hidden in Christ, right? But in worship, in the corporate worship of the church, we’re trained in all the elements that are so necessary for our lives. And right at the beginning of the service, we’re trained in all the things I’ve just talked about. We’re trained to focus upon the ascension of Jesus Christ. He’s at the right hand of the Father. And when we worship, that is where we worship, according to the scriptures and according to the traditions in which we now walk—people like Jeff Meyers, Peter Leithart, etc.

Meyers says that now we—how we feel—must be transcended by what we know by faith is happening in the liturgy in the Sursum Corda.

“The congregation is being summoned to accept by faith our heavenly positioning in Christ, the Lord who has forgiven us and now invites us in close to praise him and hear his life-giving word. This is objectively true whether we feel like it or not.”

Meyers, in his book The Lord’s Service, discusses the Sursum Corda, its placement, and talks about the significance that what we are doing here is liturgically patterning ourselves to see that our lives ultimately are united to the Lord Jesus Christ in his ascension. So we move through forgiveness of sins into the ascended unity with Jesus Christ and then hear a word by which we are empowered to be the rod of strength sent out of Zion. We’re not just forgiven. That’s the beginning place. The rest of the service occurs at the right hand of God the Father. It occurs in the throne room, worshiping our Savior at the right hand of God the Father.

Here’s from Peter Leithart when he described the liturgy of Trinity Church in Moscow, Idaho, and he pastored there. He says:

“Second, the ascension theme is hammered home in this portion of the liturgy. Every piece of service music expresses the faith that we are actually joining with the heavenly choirs of angels as we enter into the Lord’s presence. We sing the Gloria in Excelsis, the song of the angels from Luke 2.”

And he goes on to talk about other songs that they sing. So the point is: this is the pattern throughout churches in the CRC to understand that what we do in worship is happening in the throne room of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we practice this tremendously important truth. We pattern it. We have our lives patterned by it in the corporate worship of the church.

That’s what’s supposed to happen when you come to church next Sunday. As you go through that lift up your heart section, as we ascend into the heavenly throne room of God, understand that’s what’s going on. That’s what’s going on. And remember the significance and importance of the ascension of Jesus Christ.

Our own Sunday school curriculum says the same thing in the section on Leviticus:

“Having been assured of the forgiveness of our sins in Jesus Christ, the Lord now calls us fully into his presence, as pictured by the Sursum Corda, the raising of our hands and singing, which is a picture of us being raised up by God and ascending into heaven to the very throne room of God.”

This is, of course, the application of the ascension offering—the so-called whole burnt offering in Leviticus 1. The son of the herd, picturing Jesus, was wholly consumed on the altar, but he wasn’t consumed. He was transformed into smoke and went up. The smoke. And the actual word for the offering in Leviticus 1 is “ascend”—”go up,” Olah. It is not “whole burnt.” It is “ascend.”

So this is the ascending, the ascension offering, pictured as theologically the most significant of all the offerings in Leviticus 1–5 by its placement at the beginning. It’s not the first offering in the sequence—we know that later from Leviticus 9. But theologically, it’s the most significant offering. The Christian church for too long has thought the most significant offering is the sin offering. And in reality, Leviticus tells us the most significant offering is: having been cleansed of our sins, we are transformed and united with the ascended Christ. And that’s who we are now. And that’s what we’re supposed to do—be part of his sessional work in discipling the nations.

That’s the message. And that’s the message that every week we seek to pattern for you here in the context of the worship of Jesus.

There’s a nice little verse for your kids to think through this. Judges 13, right? The Lord’s angel of the Lord goes to Manoah—Samson’s parents, right? In Judges 13—and announces that this birth is coming. And then after that, we read:

“The angel of the Lord said to him, ‘Why do you ask my name?’”

So he asked his name. He says, “Well, my name is Wonderful.” The angel of the Lord says,

“Manoah took the young goat with the grain offering and offered it upon the rock to the Lord. And he did a wondrous thing—that is, the Lord—while Manoah and his wife looked on. It happened as the flame went up toward heaven from the altar: the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame of the altar.”

You know that story, right? It’s a great one to tell your kids this week about Ascension Sunday. You know there what is he doing? He’s preparing an ascension offering. And we know—because it’s related to the tribute offering. That’s what it says. The cereal offering, a tribute offering. He offers it upon a stone. By the way, why does he offer it upon a stone? Well, number of reasons, but in the Bible, every time worship happens, it is a going up experience.

In the patriarchs’ time, the fathers’ time, they would build stone altars. Even Jacob, when he’s going to have this image of the Lord ascending and descending, he takes a stone for his pillow. It’s related to altar stones. That’s what it’s about. You always have to go up because in the fall, man has, you know, gone down. And so to meet with God, we go up. We go up. In the temple, there were steps going up. And so this ascension is patterned from the very opening chapters of the book of Genesis with stone altars that cause us to go up in our worship of God, united with him in heaven.

And here in this wonderful picture—this little stone altar with the offering, the ascension offering and tribute offering offered on it—and what happens? The angel of the Lord, whose name is Wonderful—Jesus—ascends in the smoke. That’s the purpose. That he’s telling us. If we couldn’t figure it out from every other clue in the Bible, he’s giving us a very clear indication of what it is that Jesus did and what happens to us as we move through the ascension portion of our worship service. We ascend to the right hand of the Father.

Well, how do we do this? So that’s what I wanted to do today. It was primarily to give you a sense, again, of our identity in the ascended Christ and who we are. And secondly, to remind you that our liturgy itself reinforces this Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.

And let me just close by talking about what—how is this then worked out? What’s the “therefore” in the text? And Colossians does this, right? It says:

“Then if you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ is. Set your mind on those things above. For you died, your life is hidden with Christ. When Christ, who is our life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Therefore, okay, here’s the application.”

Therefore, on the basis of these truths—seeking those things—put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. So the end result of the message—the application—is how are we going to affect being the strong rod of God sent out of Zion? One: to remove idolatry from our lives. Because of these things, the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.

But now you yourselves are to put off all these things: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. You’re not those kind of armies. You know, they’re armies like that. Most armies are like that. Those are the kind of things going on in their heart and in their character and in their action when they go about waging war. That’s not the kind of war we wage.

“Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him.”

Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, enslaved or free, but Christ is all and in all.

“Therefore, as the elect of God, here’s the army that he does have, holy and beloved, put on tender mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, bearing with one another, and forgiving one another if anyone has a complaint against you, even as Christ forgave you, as you also must do.”

But above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfection.

“And let the peace of God rule in your hearts to—you know, how’s that peace rule? We’re confident. We know what the end is. We know what’s going on. We know who we are. We know what happens when we leave the church. We put off, we put on, and those are the things that’s going to make us an effective military unit following the Lord Jesus Christ through the proclamation of his message to bring all nations under his submission through their discipling.”

Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body, and be thankful.

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Be a Christomaniac, just like Paul had written in the Ephesians epistle, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

Wives, submit to your own husbands. I won’t go on, but see—you see the progression? Our ascension means that we’re more than conquerors through Jesus Christ. And as a result of that, therefore, we put on the whole character qualities of the Lord Jesus and we transform who we are. Not being divisive people, but uniting people in Christ. There’s no unity apart from Christ. And we have all these character aspects to what this army is supposed to look like.

And then he tells us specifically how that affects our families, our parenting, our vocations, speaking of masters and servants—everything else. So everything else flows out of this great truth that the celebration of the ascension of Jesus Christ is absolutely critical for understanding who we are as Christians and as disciples of Jesus.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for the ascension of our Savior, the significance of it. Help us, Father, to find ways to bring this message to other churches, particularly in Oregon City. Help us, Lord God, to understand the implication for us. Help us to be those who are encouraged by the ascension of our Savior today, recognizing our ascension with him, and bless us, Lord God, as we seek to put off sinful character attributes, put on sinless ones, holy ones, good ones from our Savior, and then go about the work you’ve given us to do. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.