Going Up
An Ascension Day Homily
I delivered this homily at our Ascension Day service last week. I hope it blesses you. My text was Ephesians 2:1-10.
Of the historic event of Christ ascending into heaven, not much is said about it except that it happened.
The Ascension, and the doctrine of it, is lost in the church today. We simply do not know what to do with it, and you know, after the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason it is kind of weird to talk about, isn’t it?
The resurrection is hard enough to comprehend: the dead rising from the grave, but then there is the Risen Jesus standing on a hill, and He begins to levitate on a cloud, where did the cloud come from!? And then He goes up, and up, and up until He is out of sight?
Most modern folks ask the question, “Well, where did He go? Outer space?”
Is the final act of Jesus on earth really Him floating away in the clouds? So weird.
What do we do with that? Mark barely mentions it. Matthew and John say nothing about it. Luke and Acts have a few verses, but that’s it.
The cross of Christ gets loads of attention in our churches, and the Resurrection of Jesus gets a hat-tip every Easter, and rarely do we know what to do with the Ascension of Jesus.
We might see it as a simple moment of history. Afterall, Jesus had to go somewhere, and this is simply the mechanism by which Jesus went to the right hand of the Father.
But as we have seen so often in our study of Exodus, there is not a shortage of biblical theology about ascending to God. It is nearly on every page of Scripture, and it is all significant.
Going up to God in a cloud is a weighty and important matter.
We can simply start by thinking of high ground, high places, mounts and hills, in the Bible. People always go up to be near to God. God is in the heavens, and so to get nearer to Him, you go up on a mountain. Physically going up is symbolically drawing near to God.
Why do people want to go up? Well, that’s where Paradise is. That’s where the Garden of the Lord is, with His special food. Remember that the Tabernacle is up above the ground, on all these bases and pillars and inside is holy bread and wine. The laver of cleansing which represents the heavenly water and firmament is up off the ground, to cleanse people from above.
Up on the mountain, ascending to God, is a desirable thing, because not only is there cleansing up there, not only is their paradise and food up there, but up on mountains is where God gives His Law.
The Garden in Eden was on a mountain (Ezekiel 28:13-14), and God told Adam not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He should have eaten of the Tree of Life, but he didn’t.
Abraham and Isaac go up Mount Moriah to worship God in sacrifice.
Moses goes up Mount Sinai and God gives him the Law.
Jesus gives a well known sermon, and we call it the Sermon on the Mount, the Sermon from the Mountain.
Moses met God in a burning bush, remember, where? On a mountain.
The Tabernacle is a portable mountain to travel with Israel in the wilderness, so that they can ascend to God.
Moses goes up Mount Nebo before he dies, and when he dies at the top of the mountain, his body cannot be found.
You remember that part in Deuteronomy when Israel is divided and the Law is read and all the blessings for faithfulness are proclaimed and all the curses for disobedience are proclaimed, and Israel responds, “All that Yahweh has said, we will do!” These blessings and curses of the coenant are proclaimed from the tops of Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim.
When Elijah goes to battle against the prophets of Baal, they are on the top of a Mount Carmel when God’s heavenly fire descends on the altar.
Or, think of the Gospels. Jesus is transfigured in glory on top of a mountain. Jesus is up on the Mount of Olives, the Mountain of Olives, when He condemns Jerusalem for their faithlessness.
Jesus is crucified on Golgotha, a hill that is called the Place of the Skull. We know the Latin, right? Jesus was crucified on Calvary’s hill. Calvary comes from the Latin Calvarium, the place of the skull.
Jesus, of course, ascends to heaven from the Mount of Olives.
We could keep going with all this. How many times in Acts do we have people in upper rooms? Or Peter on a rooftop, or Paul preaching from the upper story.
When we see Jesus ascend, go up, there is no lack of information in the Bible about what this means. It is every where.
We have all the whole burnt offerings, which are literally the Ascension Offerings. We have a section of the Psalms called the Psalms of Ascent, Psalms 120-132. Throughout Scripture we find here and there ladders to heaven as well.
The Bible is very concerned with the people of God going up.
And access to heaven, God’s presence, returning to the place from which Adam was exiled, is so very important, and what has prevented humanity from ascending to God has always been sin and death.
Remember back in Exodus 19, when Israel comes to Mount Sinai, Moses tells them that there is a barrier at the foot of the mountain and no one is allowed to cross it. If they do, if they cross that barrier line and begin to ascend the mountain to God, they will be killed.
This is what we read, “Yahweh also said to Moses, “Go to the people and set them apart as holy today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments; 11 and let them be ready for the third day, for on the third day Yahweh will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. 12 And you shall set bounds for the people all around, saying, ‘Beware that you do not go up on the mountain or touch the border of it; whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death. 13 No hand shall touch him, but he shall surely be stoned or surely shot through; whether beast or man, he shall not live.’”
What is dealt with at the cross? Sin. What is dealt with at the resurrection? Death. Sin and Death are dealt with, and then what happens to Jesus, the God-Man? Now that sin and death are dealt with a human being, in flesh and blood, truly ascends, for the first time in history.
Every ascension in Scripture is a foreshadow and longing for what Jesus has finally accomplished in His humanity. The Ascension is a significant turning point in the history of the world. Before the Ascension humanity was in one position, and now after His ascension humanity is in a new position.
Now we come to our text this evening in Ephesians 2. This is not first and primarily about individual conversion, but a historic and monumental shift in history and humanity.
“And you all were dead in the trespasses and sins” they, the Gentiles had to stay away. Being dead in trespasses and sins means being unclean with the stain of sin. Separated from God, unable to draw near. But not just the Gentiles, for Paul says, “among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” Jew and Gentile alike could only come up to the foot of the mountain, and no one could ascend and draw near to God. Unclean, unclean.
We all, Paul is saying, were in Adam, dead in sin, away from the presence of God. And he continues,
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses [even when we are ceremonially unclean, even when we under the judgment of death for our trespasses, even when we are down at the foot of the mountain under the threat of death], [God] made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved…”
He does not say that God made us alive in Christ, but with Christ. Christ’s life after death is our life right now. Christ’s death paid the penalty of sin, and His life overcome death. You see, in Jesus, sin and death are dealt with, and His life is given to us, and since His life is given to us, His life is our life. We are with Him.
Adam’s sin and death are no longer ours because Jesus dealt with it, and what we have is the death and resurrection life of Jesus the New Adam, and what does Paul say next?
“…even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
This is the gift of God to the church, the new humanity. We are privileged with ascent.
We have been given grace that Abraham, Moses, David and all the rest could only hope and wait patiently for.
The Ascension of Jesus is the historic moment, the capstone moment, of God’s work of salvation to deliver a people from sin and death to have immeasurable glory in the church through Jesus and His enthronement in the heavenly places.
Jesus’s resurrection and His ascension into heaven is the official moment of adoption for a new humanity—the church—to be established in this world as sons of God.
Before the Ascension of Christ humanity, even faithful humanity, was in a position of exile, of death, cast out of the Garden, kept away from God’s presence and food, until the day that humanity was enthroned in the heavens with Jesus beside the Father.
Before the Ascension humanity was dead in sins, after the Ascension, humanity is raised with Christ. This marks a shift in the ages.
And it is something we share together with Christ as members of His church. We share, and participate in, the monumental epochal change in history brought about by Jesus.
With Him, every barrier is gone. Men, women and children can come and ascend to God, go up to Him. Where our Priest-King goes, we go, remember. He is our Head, and we are His body. He is our Groom, we are His Bride.
And we ascend in the church. Remember, up at the top of the mountain there is the giving of the Law and there is food.
We lift up our hearts to the heavenly places, we sing the Sanctus, “holy, holy, holy!” joining our voices with the angels around the throne of heaven, our earthly host sings and joins the harmony of the heavenly hosts, and remember, we are welcomed in, we are invited up, because of our confession of sins in Jesus’s Name, through His death and resurrected life given to us.
And on the Lord’s Day, when we have ascended to God, what do we find? We find the reading and the teaching of God’s Word, and we receive heavenly food, the bread and wine, the body and blood of Jesus.
Each and every Lord’s Day we participate in the Ascension of Christ, and then at the end of the service we come down from the mountain after being with Jesus, and we are empowered to bring His Kingdom into the world.
Jesus did not simply restore what was lost in Adam, but through Him God has granted so much more.
In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.