Mark 16:19

ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN

‘So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, He was received up into heaven.’

Mark 16:19

Why is it that the festival of our Lord’s Ascension is so little noticed? Is it because of the practical irreligiousness of our day? Or is it that Christians do not realise the priceless blessings brought thereby?

Throughout the New Testament the Ascension was regarded as a fact, without which the Church could not have come into existence.

The Incarnation of our Lord demanded His Ascension.

I. For Himself.—This is part of the joy He kept before Him, which enabled Him to endure the Cross and to despise the shame. St. Paul in the passage, Christ ‘emptied Himself,’ wherefore ‘God hath highly exalted Him,’ links together as cause and effect the Incarnation and the Ascension.

II. For us.—Taking the manhood into God, He came where we were and descended with us into temptation and trial, sorrow, pain, and death; carried our nature into the shadow of death, bore it triumphantly through the grave, rose with it on the third day, ascended with it into heaven, and has made us sit together with Him in the heavenly places.

In our ascended Lord lie the vast possibilities, the unthinkable future for human nature. ‘To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father in His throne.’ Union with God. This is the beginning, the middle, the end of our religion.

Bishop A. T. Lloyd.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

REJOICE!

We should rejoice on Ascension Day. Why?

I. We see in the Ascension the glorification of our Master.—Now He shows Himself a King—not like a king of this world, of limited power, a terror to his subjects, yet only mortal; but One full of power, almighty, overflowing with mercy, eternal.

II. We see in the Ascension the earnest of our glorification (John 14:1).—When an army is besieging a city, if the general mounts the walls the soldiers know that they will follow. If a storm-tossed fleet sees one vessel, the flagship, enter the port, they know that they will enter after it.

III. We rejoice because now our union with Christ can be perfected.—(a) The sanctifying Spirit has much to do to prepare us to inherit the Kingdom into which nothing defiled can enter (John 16:7). (b) Now that Christ has gone up above the white cloud, and entered within the veil, He can be touched sacramentally (John 20:17).

IV. We rejoice because we know that our Mediator is interceding for us.

V. We rejoice because henceforth we need not fear death.—The Ascension is the consummation of the Resurrection. What though the dark river of death has to be crossed, if He be waiting for us beyond?

—Rev. S. Baring-Gould.

(THIRD OUTLINE)

THE PURPOSES OF THE ASCENSION

I. There was the triumph over His enemies and ours.—St. Paul describes this in his Epistle to the Colossians (Mark 2:13).

II. To distribute gifts to those whom He had redeemed (Psalms 68:18).

III. Further, that He might intercede for us (Hebrews 9:24; Romans 8:34).

IV. To prepare heaven for us (John 19:2); and while He is preparing heaven for us, He is preparing us for heaven (Colossians 1:12).

How grand and glorious, then, the Divine purpose! (Ephesians 1:18).

Illustration

‘We are not to think of the Ascension of Christ as of a change of position, and a going immeasurably far from us. It is rather a change of the mode of existence, a passing to God, of Whom we cannot say that He is “there” rather than “here,” of Whom we all can say, “God is with me,” and if God then Christ, Who has ascended to the right hand of God. When, therefore, we declare our belief in Christ’s Ascension, we declare that He has entered upon the completeness of spiritual being without lessening in any degree the completeness of His humanity.’

(FOURTH OUTLINE)

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ASCENSION

It was a solemn hour when Jesus stood on the Mount of Olives on the day of the Ascension: before Him Jerusalem and the Temple, at His feet Gethsemane and Bethany, beside Him the disciples, above Him heaven and the glory of the Father.

I. For Himself.—What was the meaning of Christ’s ascension as regarded Himself? Here below was less the home of Jesus than it is ours, who are called ‘strangers and pilgrims.’ If we have here no abiding city, still less had He. His home was most certainly not on earth.

(a) It was for Him, therefore, the return to His Father’s house.

(b) The entrance of a Victor in a woeful fight into the inheritance He has won (Psalms 47:6).

(c) The eternal session of Christ as the Head of the Church. Now He rules all nations from His throne; all events of the world’s history are the developments of the Kingdom of God (Php_2:9-11).

II. For His Kingdom.—Jesus is not to be separated from His work, the King from His Kingdom. His Ascension is not only, therefore, significant for Himself, but for His Kingdom. It is clear from this ascension that it is no worldly kingdom. Had it been, He must have stayed longer upon the earth, in order to lay its foundations.

III. For us.—(a) Without this ascension we should be robbed of the sacraments of grace. They could no longer have any meaning. (b) Because of this ascension our thoughts are continually to aspire heavenwards (Colossians 3:1; Colossians 3:3).

(FIFTH OUTLINE)

THE BLESSINGS OF THE ASCENSION

What blessings we are to expect from the ascended Christ may be gathered—

I. From His last command.—‘Go ye into all the world.’ They are blessings for all men. He Who gave the command will give power for its fulfilment.

II. From His last promise.—‘In My name,’ etc. This is a promise conferring special powers on the Apostles and them that believe.

III. From His eternal session.—He is ‘sat on the right hand of God.’ What for? It is to rule the world and the Church.

Illustration

‘Between us and His visible presence—between us and that glorified Redeemer Who now sitteth at the right hand of God—the cloud still rolls. But the eye of Faith can pierce it; the incense of true prayer can rise above it; through it the dew of blessing can descend. And if He is gone away, yet He has given us in His Holy Spirit a nearer sense of His presence, a closer infolding in the arms of His tenderness, than we could have enjoyed even if we had lived with Him of old.’

(SIXTH OUTLINE)

RESULTS OF THE ASCENSION

There are some results which come to us from firmly holding the belief in Christ’s Ascension.

I. The strengthening and increase of our faith, which is ‘the evidence of things not seen.’ ‘Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.’ His ascent is the cause and His absence the crown of our faith. Because He ascended we the more believe; and because we believe in Him Who hath ascended, our faith is the more accepted.

II. The strengthening of our hope.—We could never expect our dust and ashes should ascend the heavens; but seeing our nature has gone before in Him, we can now hope to follow Him. ‘Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, which entereth into that within the veil, whither the Forerunner is for us entered’ (Hebrews 6:19).

III. The lifting up of our affections.—‘For where our treasure is, there will our heart be also.’ Where Christ is ascended up on high, we must follow Him with the wings of our meditations and with the chariots of our affections (2 Kings 2:1; Colossians 3:1).

IV. From the Ascension of Christ follows the descent of the Holy Spirit, and therefore power in the preaching of the Gospel. ‘If I depart I will send Him unto you.’

Pearson (adapted).

Illustration

‘There are two closely connected ways by which Christ, after His glorification, began a new work for mankind, the one inward, towards God; the other outward, towards the world. The first is the exercise of an immeasurably increased power of intercession. The sacrificial task was at an end when His life was laid down on Calvary—which answered to the slaughter of the typical victims. The whole point of the sacrifice lies in the presentation of that life, enriched and consecrated to the utmost by having undergone death, and still and for ever living in the inmost presence of God. (See the sprinkling of the blood upon the mercy-seat, Hebrews 9:12.) Christ then has passed within the veil to complete His merciful work for men by pleading for them in the irresistible power which His perfect discharge of His mission has given Him. The second activity of the glorified Christ is a result of the first. He is always engaged in sending the Holy Ghost to us from the Father (John 16:7). Before His exaltation Christ had not yet won the gift by His Passion; men were not capable of receiving it, so long as they had Christ with them in the flesh.’