Mark 16:19

Mark 16:19

I. I suppose that our first impressions are to consider the Ascension of our Lord as the very greatest event connected with His appearance on earth. To our own mind, undoubtedly, nothing could be so solemn, so exalting, as the changing this life for another; the putting off mortality and putting on immortality; and all this we connect with the thought of the removal from earth to heaven. And had Christ been as we are, His Ascension would have been spoken of very differently from what it is now; and the account of His Resurrection would have been justly deemed incomplete without it. But to Christ, if I may so speak, His Resurrection was natural, it was His death that was the miracle of His love. Surely, as we need not to be told that Lazarus died again after hisresurrection, as we know that it follows, of course, because he was a man and no more; so we need not be told that Christ, after HisResurrection, ascended into heaven. We know that it follows, of course, for the dwelling of the Most High God is not in earth, but in heaven.

II. But we are told that He did ascend: and we are told it chiefly for the sake of two things that are told us with it. The one is contained in the text, "He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God;" the other is in the Acts of the Apostles: "Ye men of Galilee," said the angel to the Apostles, who were watching Him as He was taken up from them, "why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner, as ye have seen Him go into heaven." In these two things consists, as it seems to me, the great usefulness of the account of our Lord's Ascension. He is gone away, to come again in like manner as we saw Him go into heaven. And when shall that coming be? We can only answer in His own words: "Watch, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh." No speculation can be vainer than to inquire about the time of that coming, which is known to the Father only. But be the period long or short, our Lord has given us wherewithal to occupy ourselves till He does come: He has furnished us with a means whereby, for ever calling to mind His parting from us, we may look more anxiously for the hour of His return. He has given every man his work, and He has told us continually to break the bread and drink the cup of Christian communion, that we may show forth His death till He come.

T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. iii., p. 54.