Sermon for the Ascension of Our + Lord (Observed)
May 17th, A+D 2026
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran
Churches
Custer and Hill City, SD
Based on Acts 1:1-11
Audio of the sermon available HERE.
Christ IS Risen.
But wait, there’s more. The God-Man, the eternal Son of the Father and
also the Son of Mary, has ascended to the Father’s right hand. And that is the Good News of the
Ascension. Your Savior, the One who has lived and died and risen from the
dead, for you, has also ascended into heaven, for you. By His being
seated at the right hand of the throne of God, He secures and prepares a place
for you. He is your entry ticket into God’s glory, forever and ever,
Amen.
That’s really great news. But wait, there’s more. A lot
more. Maybe you understood all the background of what I just
proclaimed. Or maybe not. Every believer is alive in Christ, and
God wills that we living Christians grow in faith and love, and in understanding,
wisdom and holiness, as long as we are pilgrims on this earth. And so
today, because these first 11 verses of the Book of Acts contain so much truth
and Good News, we will do well to walk through them, verse by verse.
Verse 1: In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt
with all that Jesus began to do and teach,
This could take a while.
After all, Luke starts our text with “In the first book, O
Theophilus…” Understanding the Book of Acts starts with understanding
the Gospel of Luke. But, it shouldn’t take me more than an hour to
summarize Luke…
O.k.,
who am I kidding? We could spend an hour just digging into who this Theophilus
that Luke addresses might be, let alone covering the basics of the whole
Gospel. Suffice it to say that Luke tells the story of the salvation of
sinners, from Adam on, the salvation revealed and won by Jesus Christ. Luke especially focuses on the Temple, as
Jesus, our High Priest and our Sacrifice, won the salvation of the world
through His own death and resurrection, opening the way into the Heavenly
Temple of God for all who trust in Him.
This is what Jesus began to do and
teach in Luke’s first book. Now, in the Book of Acts, Luke will talk
about Jesus ongoing work.
“Acts” is short for “The Acts of the Apostles.” But a better name for this book is “The
Ongoing Acts of Jesus Christ, through His Apostles, empowered by the Holy
Spirit.” Maybe that is a bit long for a book title. But we should
know that a major take away from verse 1 is that Jesus Christ is still active,
still doing and teaching, in His Church.
Verse 2: until the day when he was taken up,
after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had
chosen.
“Until He was taken up.”
The Ascension of Jesus is a hinge. Before, all of Salvation History was
condensing toward this point, when Jesus would complete His work and return to
His rightful place at His Father’s right hand, only now as the scar-bearing
Man, who is also God. Jesus sits down
because His task is finished. He has
done all that is needed to save sinners and bring them into His Father’s
eternal kingdom. Now, after Jesus’
Ascension, this work, which was condensed down to One Man dying on a Roman
Cross and then bursting out of the tomb on the Third Day, this work can now begin to
expand. Jesus commanded exactly this
task, to His chosen Apostles, who would be further taught and guided by the
Holy Spirit. We move from the 2nd
Article of the Creed to the 3rd, as Jesus extends His salvation
mission outward, through His Apostles, through His Church, by sending us His
Holy Spirit.
Verse 3:
To them he presented himself alive after his suffering by many proofs,
appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
The Crucifixion and the
Resurrection of God’s Son Jesus, Good Friday and Easter, is THE thing in
Christ’s Church, always. Jesus, who had
died on a Roman cross and placed into a tomb, presented Himself alive to the
Eleven Apostles, and later to Saul the persecutor, who would be transformed
into Paul the Missionary Apostle.
Why is
this so important? Because, while the
Cross and Empty Tomb are always the main thing, God in His wisdom chose to
communicate and deliver the victory of Calvary through eye-witnesses, who could
both attest to the truth of the Resurrection and also proclaim its significance.
That
is, the Apostles would proclaim the teaching of Christ, which reveals that in
Jesus, God has reconciled the world to Himself, making it possible for sinners
to be brought back into the Kingdom, back into the family of God, to live in
His glory and blessing, forever.
The
Apostolic Church is not a fable about an unbroken line of Roman bishops,
passing down their unique authority from generation to generation. No, the Apostolic Church is the body of
believers gathered, redeemed and sanctified by the Word of Christ, His true
teaching, which is maintained and empowered by the Holy Spirit. The Apostolic Succession is the faithfulness
of God, keeping His bishops, pastors and people alive in Christ, through His
faithful Word, which was recorded and taught to us by the Prophets and
Apostles.
This
is why Jesus stayed 40 days before He ascended.
Not 35, not 51, but 40. Jesus was
connecting the way God taught and prepared His Kingdom in the Old Testament
with the New Testament fulfillment and expansion of the same. The number forty is always associated with
times of instruction or purification, times of preparation for God’s
people.
In the
time of Noah, cleansing the world of wickedness required 40 days and 40 nights
of rain. Moses spent 40 days on Mt.
Sinai, receiving the LORD’s Torah, His instruction. Israel required 40 years in the wilderness to
prepare a new generation to enter the Promised Land. And so also, keeping the tradition, the Risen
Lord Jesus spent 40 days, giving His final face to face teaching, before
ascending into heaven. Verses 4 and 5: And while staying with them he ordered them
not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which,
he said, "you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be
baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now."
These
verses introduce the next phase of God’s Church building plan, and Baptism is
at the heart of it. Jesus had taught
Nicodemus (John 3) that being born again, born from above, the rebirth by water
and the Spirit, was required. He also
taught the Eleven explicitly about the coming of the Holy Spirit, who would
lead them into all truth. (John 16)
John
the Baptist prepared the way. But the
full blessing of Christian Baptism could not be delivered until after the Son
had achieved the full reconciliation of sinners to God, through His shed
blood. Miraculous and spectacular at its
inauguration on Pentecost, Holy Baptism is elsewhere in the Book of Acts
described as outwardly simple and not obviously impressive. But the promises God makes about Baptism are
heavenly, life-changing, the washing of rebirth and regeneration, able to save
our souls. (Titus 3, 1 Peter 3)
“Not
many days.” That turned out to be 10
days, the Lord arranging for the next big Holy Day to be back on the first day
of the week. But the Eleven do not know
it will be 10 days. “Not many days”
reminds us that God’s people are called to faith and patience, and submission
to God’s plan, even when we cannot understand it, even when we really hate
waiting.
Verse 6: So when they had come together,
they asked him, "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to
Israel?"
Luke
records one final foolish error by Jesus disciples, and one more face-to-face
correction Jesus had to make for them. There
may have been more, the New Testament never claims to give an exhaustive
account of everything Jesus said
to His followers. John in his Gospel
teaches us that if they were to record all that Jesus said and did, “even
the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” (John
21:25) But this last minute, fairly
gentle correction that Luke does record is extra important.
“My
kingdom is not of this world.” So our Lord explained to Pontius Pilate. (John
18:36) Christ Jesus also said
essentially the same thing in other words to the Twelve, the Pharisees, and to
the crowds, many times. We earth-and-time-bound
sinners naturally look to what we know and see, and then we imagine that God’s
kingdom is going to be a really nice version of something we already
comprehend.
Not
even close. God is able to do
exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, (Ephesians
3:20) and He is going to do just that for His faithful. Life with God in heaven will be altogether
different, and infinitely better, than we can grasp today. The reality of sin distorts everything in our
world, but in God’s new heavens and new earth, there will be no sin. No pain, no strife, no sadness, no tears, no
death.
As we
believe but do not fully understand the mystery that the One true God is also
Three distinct persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, so also we can understand
the words that the Holy Spirit speaks about the nature of the world to come. But fully grasping what heaven will be like
is literally beyond our imagination.
Christians are called to trust the Word, and look forward with eagerness
to living face to face with Christ, and all the good that will bring. It will be better than anything we know.
But
living with a heavenly focus is hard for us.
Our puny minds and hearts quite naturally lead us to imagine God’s
Kingdom as some earthly good, just a lot better. The Apostles assumed that the earthly kingdom
of Israel, as it was in its glory days under King David, would be
re-established by Jesus. And the Eleven would
hold all the key leadership roles. But
Jesus never taught that. His Kingdom is
not of this world. The Kingdom of Christ
on earth is like yeast mixed into dough, invisible, but still causing life to
bubble up, through the whole mass of this fallen world. (Matthew 13:33) And so, we Christians are pilgrims and aliens
on earth; our true citizenship is in heaven.
We make our way by faith through our lives in this world, always looking
forward to the next.
Yes,
on the Last Day, the New Israel will be visibly glorious, reflecting the face
of the One in Whose presence we will live.
But until then, we have this treasure in jars of clay. (2 Cor. 4:7)
The glory of the Church on earth is the victorious suffering of Jesus,
delivered to sinners through the Word, and in Baptism and the Holy Supper. We can adorn this Gospel with grand buildings,
wonderful music and beautiful artwork.
And that’s good and right, as long as we remember and confess that true
beauty, true and eternal glory, are always hidden in this world. Glory is hidden, at least in part, so that guilt-ridden
sinners might be enticed to approach and receive the medicine of immortality,
the gift of forgiveness, and so be able to look forward to the heavenly Kingdom
that is coming.
And
so Jesus responds to the Apostles Kingdom restoration question this way:
Verses 7 and 8: "It is not for you to know times or
seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy
Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all
Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth."
The
earthly glory for the Eleven, and so also for the Church they built, is found
in bearing witness, in extending the Church to every tribe and nation, to the
ends of the earth. They were given
authority, and power, but hidden power, the power of God’s Word, which the Holy
Spirit uses to convert sinners into children of God.
Such hidden
power all too often attracts the world’s scorn and rejection. In response, the Church and her Christians
are necessarily humble about themselves, but proud and bold about Jesus. For we know that truly there is nothing more
powerful, or more important, in all the world, than the Good News of His free
gift of salvation.
God
grant us that we always find joy in the glorious task of understanding better
and proclaiming more clearly the Glory of Christ, His Life, His Suffering and
Death, His Resurrection, and His Ascension to the Father’s right hand. We should definitely proclaim this message to
each other, all the time, to encourage one another. God knows we need encouragement. We should also share it with unbelievers, as
God gives us opportunity. For this is
the message, the only message, that will carry us, and all who hear and
believe, into heavenly glory, for eternity.
Verse 9: And when he had said these things,
as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their
sight.
How far
did Jesus travel when He ascended into heaven?
He moved up a little, enough to be enveloped by the cloud. But did He rise far away, or just leave their
sight? Is He still close by?
Jesus
is always close by His Church, even as He sits down at the right hand of God in
heaven. And just exactly where is God’s
right hand? Is it far away in outer space
somewhere? No, not at all. God is not bound by the spatial realities of
the universe He created. As Paul spoke
on Mars Hill in Athens, “in [God] we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)
The
right hand of God is the place of His power, and God’s power is present
everywhere. And so now, in the mystery
of the Incarnation, God’s Son taking human flesh into His being, Jesus seated
at the right hand of the Father is also present everywhere, God and Man forever
united in His person. And so at the end
of Matthew’s Gospel, just before ascending, Jesus promised: Behold I am with
you always, to the very end of the age.
[Matthew 28:20]
But
wait, there’s more. God, and so also
Jesus, is everywhere. But how do we
earthbound mortals find and gain access to Him? And is this a good thing? Is it safe for sinners to approach His
throne?
It is
true that the omnipresence, the “everywhere-at-once-ness” of Jesus, can
certainly be a Word of Law to us sinners.
We cannot hide from Him. If we go
to the deepest depth of the sea, or climb the highest mountain, O Lord you are
there. We cannot hide, for even the
darkness is light to You. (Psalm 139)
And as sinners, we are rightly concerned about coming into the Holy
presence of God. For the Lord hates sin.
But,
we do not despair, because we know the secret of safely approaching God. Which really isn’t a secret. We Christians should shout from the rooftops
that we know where we can go to meet God and receive His blessings. Certainly, we seek to invite other sinners to
join us. We go to those places and
moments where Jesus has promised to be present to bless. For whoever hears the Words of the Apostles
hears the Voice of Jesus. (Luke
10:16) Wherever two or more Christians
gather in the Name of Jesus, He is with them, to discipline, and also to bless.
(Matthew 18:15-20) And Jesus promises, “This
is My Body, this is My Blood, given and shed for you, for the forgiveness of
sins.”
The
Holy Spirit is the One who gathers and gives life to the Church in countless
local gatherings. And wherever the Holy
Spirit is, there also is Jesus. And the
Father too, for Jesus and the Father are One.
God rejoices
to see His gathered children, and is eager to rain down blessings upon them. The first blessing is always renewed
forgiveness and reconciliation for repenting sinners, which is followed by joy
and celebration, purpose and wisdom and community, and every good thing that
God loves to shower upon His Church.
[10]
And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by
them in white robes, [11] and said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand
looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will
come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven."
This
picture on the front of our bulletins, which is of one the paintings that hang
in the entryway to Our Redeemer, is this a painting of the Ascension of Jesus,
or is it of His Return on the Last Day?
Well,
I think it is probably meant to show the Ascension. But, as the two men in white robes teach us
today, Jesus’ Final Return will look a lot like His Ascension. He was received into a cloud, and He will
return, riding on the clouds, visible to the whole world at one time. Christ will return in glory to cast Satan and
all who believe his lies into outer darkness, but also to inaugurate the
joyous, sinless, perfect eternal Kingdom for all those baptized believers who
eagerly await His coming.
When
will that Day be? It’s not for us to
know, as Jesus taught the Eleven. So, please
remember, dear friends, any teacher who claims to know when Jesus will return
should be rejected immediately. He or
she does not know what they are talking about, and will certainly twist and
distort the rest of Jesus’ teaching.
Instead, God grant us to take great joy and
comfort from Jesus’ Ascension, and let us live from His Word of Grace, letting
it dwell in us richly, until the day He takes us home individually, or when He appears
one last time, to gather us all to His side.
Amen, Come Lord Jesus, Amen.
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