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So Much Better Than The Angels (King’s Cross)
Christ Church on June 4, 2025
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The Ascension and You (CC Downtown)

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INTRODUCTION

Think of how you might feel if you were suddenly notified that you had been made a guest of honor at Buckingham Palace. In order to make it in time you were to immediately hop on the private jet that was waiting for you. However, through some cruel twist, you would not be allowed to change your clothes, freshen up, or brush up on which fork to use for the salad and which one for the main course. You might arrive and find yourself absolutely overwhelmed with the sense that you had two left feet, your hands were all thumbs, your mouth was full of teeth, and your mind full of cobwebs. The doctrine of Christ’s ascension, unlike the sense of being “out of place”, is meant to lead us by faith to understand that we are made acceptable before God.

THE TEXT

Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. John 20:17

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

Mary Magdalene had been conversing with who she though was the caretaker of the garden. Her request was that he give her the body of Jesus. However, after speaking her name she sees that He is in fact Jesus, risen from the dead. We know from Matthew’s account that she clasped His feet (Mt. 28:9). Here, however, she is instructed to refrain from touching Him. During His earthly ministry, His disciples ate with Him, infants and children were brought to Him for Him to touch and bless them, nor had He forbidden His feet to be washed. But now, after His resurrection the disciples must not think that He has simply gone back to factory settings.

Evidently, Jesus cautions Mary to not hold on to the old way of being near to Christ. Rather, as He will soon explain, a more potent way of enjoying His fellowship was soon to come upon all His disciples. His body was the same body. He could still be touched. He could still eat. He could start a fire on the beach to cook fish. But His body was also somehow––marvelously––different. He could walk through walls. He could disappear at will. Though the body was the same body, He was on His way to the ultimate glorification that a human body had ever attained. Thus, Mary must not cling to it.

Why? Jesus explains that He has not yet ascended to His Father. The implication here is that by ascending to the Father there is not a decrease in the fellowship which His disciples enjoyed with Him; rather, the glory and joy of their fellowship with Him is going to be increased. She is tasked with going to deliver a message to the rest of the disciples. That message regards His coming ascent. This message she is tasked to communicate to the rest of the disciples is profound for being at once simple and unfathomably deep. Christ is going to ascend to His Father. But by His ascent you should be assured that His Father is also Your Father. He is going to be brought unto His God, and this means that His God is also your God.

According to His divinity He is the eternally begotten Son of God. He is the Son of the Heavenly Father. Thus, in your union with Christ you are made a partaker of His divine nature (Cf. 2 Pt. 1:4). According to His humanity, He is the only one who perfectly served, worshipped, and obeyed the One True God; there was no instance in Christ of idolatry, falsehood, or uncleanness (Cf. Ps. 24). Thus, in your union with Christ, you are also made a partaker of His perfect humanity, and thus His service to & worship of God is now yours. Through Christ, God is your Father, for He has now adopted you into the joy of His household. Through Christ, the Father is your God, and your service to Him is acceptable. All of this because Christ arose from the grave and then proceeded to ascend to His place of ultimate exaltation and glory. As Matthew Henry put it: “The greatest joy of his resurrection was that it was a step towards his ascension.”

YOUR FATHER & YOUR GOD

It is unfortunate that Christ’s ascension is of so little cultural importance. When it comes right down to it, the Ascension really is the climax of Redemption’s story. After indisputably winning back His kingdom, the King receives His lawful crown. This is the happy ending of the story, even while some of the story lines still need to be resolved. By Christ ascending bodily to heaven, at least two things come to be true for those who have trusted in Christ and been baptized into Him. Notice the two things in our text: new Paternity and true Worship.

First, consider that the wrath of God was upon us precisely because of our first father. Paternity is inescapable. Adam passed on to all his children a sinful nature, because he willingly handed over the kingdom to a dragon. Jesus described Satan as being the father of those who make and believe lies. At the core of what it means to be an unredeemed person is that you have bought the lie that you are God. You believe that your sensibilities for what is good or evil are the best. And clearly, everyone should abide by your version of morality. Nevertheless, lies make fellowship impossible (Pro 18:8). Lies make family life impossible. Lies make justice impossible (Pro. 11:11). The result of a culture of lies is absolute carnage at every relational level: civil, religious, economic, familial. Christ ascending to His Father, should comfort you in this way. You now enjoy membership in a family whose Father is the source of all truth.

The best fathers are still imperfect fathers. A good father gives his children what they ask for, without refusing their requests. He provides for their every need. He guards them from all that would destroy them. In Christ, you can now ask the Father who made all things, from galaxies down to ants, for whatsoever you need. By this you know that the Father really does have your good in mind. This is a comfort in both our temptations and afflictions. Your Father picked this out for you. This circumstance is for your good. Your heavenly Father hears and answers your prayers, because Christ ascended.

Secondly, consider that due to the falsehood which our first father believed, we were brought to practice what Scripture elsewhere calls will-worship. The OT is full of instances of man crafting idols to embody what their overactive imagination wanted God to be like and do. Even worse than that, man sought to claim to be worshipping the true God, but with false means. So then, Christ, as the perfect man, offers perfect worship and service to God continually.

Instead of trying to appease the gods through guesswork, you can be assured that when you offer up your worship and service to God in Christ, it is received by Your God with gladness. Your worship, in this life, is still imperfect, but Christ offers perfect worship unto God on your behalf. Your labors for God’s kingdom, though they be inadequate and immature, are not in vain. Your labors aren’t the ground of your welcome or standing before your God. You stand in Christ, and He offers all your good works to His God, and they are reckoned as acceptable. You are not justified before God by your good works, but because Christ has ascended to His God, your life of worship and labor for God’s glory are received by Your God.

IN HIS PRESENCE

The central glory of all this is that Christ’s ascension is not the diminishment of fellowship with our Lord and Savior. He is present with the Father, that the Father, Son, and Spirit might be ever present with you. Christ’s exaltation makes it possible for you to know and believe two things: you are adopted into the warmth of God’s household and your service in His household is acceptable. Are you in Christ? Well then, you are welcomed by our Father into His everlasting fellowship. The Ascension leads us to understand that we shall one day ourselves stand before the face of God, beholding His glory, and not need to look away in shame or fear. Christ’s humiliation delivered you from your sin, and in His exaltation you are to understand the full extent of that deliverance. You are clothed in His righteousness. You are brought to rejoice with true joy. You are not out of place. You are most welcome.

 

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Blasphemous and Absurd (Ascension Sunday 2024)

Grace Sensing on

INTRODUCTION

We must learn how to stop doing is the bad habit of dividing the world up into separate compartments. Every aspect of our being—emotional, spiritual, psychological, mental—is occurring in the same created order. All truths that we affirm, whether biological, or theological, or anthropological, are true or false in the same created order. Christ remains your high priest, which means that He still has His resurrected and glorified body. That body is still within this created order, but because He has ascended, He is no longer under the sun. His authority is greater than that.

One of the great problems that secularists have is that they pay no attention to the things they are saying. But this problem is matched and compounded by the fact that we Christians too often pay cursory attention to the implications of the truths we confess. Remember that word implication. 

THE TEXT

“The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool” (Psalm 110:1). 

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

The introduction to this psalm is quoted numerous times in the New Testament, and in ways that are not in any way ambiguous about what it means.  In the gospel accounts, Jesus stumps His adversaries with the question of how David, ancestor of the Messiah, could possibly call his descendant Lord (Matt. 22:44; Mark 12:36; Luke 20:42-43). This verse is quoted to show the greatness of the Christ over all the angels (Heb. 1:13). And the whole glorious consummation is summed up in Acts 2:32-36. God raised Jesus up, with eyewitnesses (v. 32). He was exalted to the right hand of the Father, where He received the Holy Spirit, which He then poured out (v. 33). David didn’t ascend into the heavens, but he did prophesy it—with our text (v. 34). Christ will remain there until His enemies are made His footstool (v. 35). Let all Israel know that this “same Jesus,” the crucified one, has been made both Lord and Christ (v. 36).  

THE CENTRAL IMPLICATION

One of our central duties in this wicked generation is to set out various doctrines which we confess, lining them up on the table before us. Having done so, we need to stare straight at the central implication. 

Jesus of Nazareth is fully God and fully man, a fact we celebrate at Christmas. The hypostatic union of God and man was miraculously accomplished in Him. In this incarnate body, He lived a perfect and sinless life, which He then offered up on the cross as a perfect sacrifice. God showed that the sacrifice was accepted when He raised Jesus from the dead, a fact we celebrate at Easter. Christ ascended into the heavenly places, and in doing this, He did not leave the Incarnation behind—He is still our high priest. “Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us” (Rom. 8:34). He was there given universal dominion (Dan. 7:13-14). A human being, our elder brother, is seated at the right hand of the Father, and will remain there until all His enemies are subdued through the gospel, a fact we celebrate on Ascension Sunday. And last, He poured out His Spirit on Pentecost, which is what enables us to celebrate anything about any of this at all (Acts 2:3-4).

Now I have mentioned that word implications a few times. What are the implications of this? The implication is that the only principle of unity available to man is a unity that is outside the world. This, and only this, is the death knell of anarchy, for tyranny, and for anarcho-tyranny.  

SECULAR FUTILITY

Just as the secular mind oscillates between rationalism and irrationalism, so they also veer back and forth between radical individualism and total statism. Not only so, but each bounce on their teeter-totter gives energy to the opposite reaction. When they discover that they cannot hold everything together, they give up and it all disintegrates. But then they discover that they cannot live in such a chaotic world, and so they begin to flail, looking for a principle of unity that is immanent, under the sun, under the control of man. It might be the church, it might be the state, it might be the tribe, it might be some ideology. Whatever they settle on, it is down here, within their reach.

Tyrants want the locus of unity to be within the world, where they can control it. This pipe dream—seen clearly at Babel—was forever destroyed by the Ascension of the Lord Jesus into Heaven. What do we confess? We confess that there is only one possible locus of true unity, and that arche of unity is outside the world, at the right hand of the Father.  

“That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him” (Ephesians 1:10). 

He ascended into Heaven, and the yearning lusts of all despots (libido dominandi) were thwarted in principle.

The Lord told us plainly that His kingdom is not from this world (John 18:36). If it were, we would be trying to seize power the same way that the worldlings do. But the fact that the Lord’s authority is not from here does not mean that it is somehow impotent here. No, our weapons are mighty for pulling down strongholds (2 Cor. 10:3-5). 

THE DECLARED WORD

The fact that they are defeated does not mean that the secularist lords cannot still be conceited in their humiliation. They still sneer at us. How many regiments do we have? How many nukes? How many flotillas can we assemble?

Our weapons look paltry to them, but that does not distress us at all. It should not even slow us down. The Word of God is not bound (2 Tim. 2:9), and goes forth conquering and to conquer (Rev. 6:2). What do we have? We have word and water, bread and wine, and that is more than sufficient.

What do we have? Christ died and rose, and He reigns from Heaven. Just as they taunted Him to come down from the cross, in the same way they taunt Him to come down from Heaven in order to prove He rose from the dead. But the place where His proofs were ultimately received was the throne room of the Ancient of Days, and that proof was declared sufficient. The risen Christ is Lord.

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Real Roman Trouble (The Continuing Adventures of Jesus #28) (KC)

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INTRODUCTION

In 42 B.C. in the fields of Philippi in Macedonia, Greece, the armies of Brutus and Cassius collided with the armies of Mark Anthony and Octavian, and the latter soundly defeated the former. Octavian would become the emperor of the Roman Empire, taking the name Caesar Augustus and eventually lavish a great deal of prominence on the colony of Philippi as the site of that historic battle. 

Around 80 years later, in that same city, Paul and Silas began proclaiming the reign of another King, the Lord Jesus Christ, and a new way of being Roman. And as is the case wherever this gospel goes, it caused trouble – trouble that sets prisoners free. 

The Text: “And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brough her masters much gain by soothsaying…” (Acts 16:16-40

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

After a possessed slave girl followed Paul around in Philippi for many days, crying out that they were servants of the Most High God, Paul commanded the demon to leave her, and when it did, this ruined her soothsaying abilities, and Paul and Silas were brought up on charges to the magistrates (Acts 16:16-21). With some mob pressure in the background, the magistrates stripped and beat Paul and Silas and imprisoned them (Acts 16:22-24). At midnight, while Paul and Silas were singing praises to God, a great earthquake broke open the prison, but the prisoners remained and Paul saved the jailer’s life, preached the gospel to him, and he and his whole family were baptized immediately (Acts 16:25-34). The next day, the magistrates asked Paul and Silas to leave town quietly, but appealing to their Roman citizenship, they requested an official release and visited Lydia and the fledgling church before leaving (Acts 16:35-40). 

PRINCIPALITIES & POWERS

Literally, it says that the girl had the “spirit of a python,” which refers to the Greek god Apollo and his shrine at Delphi. This may be a general description of the kind of soothsaying she was doing, or it may mean that she was from that shrine or received her power from there. Regardless, she made her masters money and after Paul commanded the demon to leave her, she no longer could (Acts 16:19). What do we make of this? 

In 1 Corinthians 8, Paul says that idols are nothing and there is only one God, but then he goes on to say that pagan sacrifices are offered to devils and we must not have any fellowship with them (1 Cor. 10:20-21). Likewise, the phrase “principalities and powers” sometimes refers to human authorities (Tit. 3:1) and clearly at other times refers to spiritual beings (Eph. 6:12). And Daniel referred to spiritual beings ruling Persia and Greece (Dan. 10:13, 20). Putting this together, we should say that there are more material explanations for some things than we realize, but there are also sometimes spiritual forces at work. Superstition, illusions, science, and fear can do a lot, and sometimes the spirit of Samuel gets called up from the dead (1 Sam. 28). But in the resurrection and ascension, Christ has triumphed over all principalities and powers in heaven and on earth (Eph. 1:20-21, Col. 2:15). 

EARTHQUAKES & BAPTISMS

While Luke seems to describe the earthquake as a simple providence, worship is described in the Bible as an earth-shaking reality (e.g. Ps. 29). Regardless, Paul and Silas singing followed by an earthquake is a fitting picture of what the gospel is doing in Philippi: ‘exceedingly troubling the city’ (Acts 16:20). This is what the gospel does: it shakes heaven and earth, so that “those things which cannot be shaken may remain” (Heb. 12:27). It is shaking Philippi so that only the true Philippi may remain. The gospel addresses the spiritual realities at the core of human life and society, and in so doing, transforms all of human life (business and commerce, entertainment and arts, politics and law, education and recreation) into what it was created to be. We a see microcosm of this principle in the salvation offer Paul gives the jailer in the middle of the night: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house” (Acts 16:31). We might add: and thy business, thy neighborhood, thy hobbies, thy city, and thy nation. 

CITIZENS OF ROME & HEAVEN

This episode contrasts rival visions of what it means to be “Roman.” The masters of the slave girl protest Paul’s disruption of their customary way of “being Romans” (Acts 16:21), but Paul is actually embodying a new way of “being Roman” in Jesus Christ and requires the Philippian magistrates to at least partially acknowledge that (Acts 16:37-39). Later, when Paul writes the Philippians, he exhorts them to reckon their citizenship according to the gospel of Christ (Phil. 1:27) and as primarily rooted in heaven (Phil. 3:20). Being an imperial colony, they would have understood that this didn’t mean they were not loyal or patriotic citizens of Rome, but rather the true form of that citizenship was being impressed upon them from Heaven. By preaching and casting out demons and baptizing, Paul was teaching the citizens of Philippi how to be true Romans. 

APPLICATIONS

This is Ascension Sunday, and so we celebrate Christ seated at the right hand of the Father, far above all principalities and powers, and we set our affections on Him there so that we will be truly affective here in this world, in our city and nation (Col. 3:1-4). This is how we learn to be true Americans, true men, true women, true husbands and wives, businessmen and members of our various tribes. Christ restores our humanity.

We ought to fight the temptation to see demons behind every tree, and this includes the need for governing our thoughts to think about those things that are good, true, noble, and lovely (Phil. 4:8). But we should also pay close attention to the warnings in Scripture about where the Devil likes to creep in: do not let the sun go down on your wrath (Eph. 4:26-27); spouses, do not deprive one another sexually (1 Cor. 7:5); women, watch out for idle chatter (1 Tim. 5:13-15), and men, watch out for pride (1 Tim. 3:6). 

In a world gone mad, sanity is trouble. We are gospel-trouble makers, not out of spite or a desire for chaos. We are here to establish the worship of the Triune God, set prisoners free, teach true justice, and establish the customs of Christ in the marketplace, home, and governments for human flourishing.

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Into Heaven Itself (Ascension Sunday 2023)

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INTRODUCTION

One of the reasons Christians are not as bold as they ought to be is because they do not know what covenant they are of. We have heard the stories of saints who have smelled of heaven; they have sizzled with the aroma of angels. And this is just what we are after. Some, not knowing the kingdom of heaven, have looked upon such saints and mistaken their boldness for pride, their freedom for madness. Some believers, even, who have drifted too far from the Heavenly Father, have made this same misjudgment. Even so, this is what we are after: the full assurance of faith seen in the likes of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego before the fire, or Jonathan climbing up to the Philistine garrison, outnumbered.

THE TEXT

For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book, and all the people,

Saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you.

Moreover he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle, and all the vessels of the ministry.

And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.

It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.

For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us (Hebrews 9:19–24).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

After Moses spoke God’s Word to the people at Sinai, he took the blood of calves and goats, mixed it with water, and sprinkled both the book of the covenant and all the people (v. 19). This was not just any blood but the blood of the covenant (v. 20) that covered the covenant people, the altar Moses had erected, and the book of the covenant itself (Exodus 24:7). Thus far, Paul refers to Exodus 24 when the Mosaic Covenant was inaugurated in blood.

Then he carries this theme further into the history of Israel. The tabernacle itself and the vessels of ministry were also sprinkled with blood (v. 21). The tabernacle and vessels did not exist yet in Exodus 24. So Paul carries the theme of “sprinkled with blood” to the Day of Atonement which we hear about in Leviticus 16. On that day, blood was placed upon the horns of the altar and even brought within the veil and sprinkled on the mercy seat. This sprinkling atoned for the holy place and the tabernacle (Leviticus 16:16, 20).

This blood atonement was necessary for in the law nearly everything was cleansed by blood; without it there was no forgiveness of sins (v. 22). Therefore it was necessary that the patterns of the things in the heavens should be purified with blood sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with a better sacrifice (v. 23). For Christ didn’t enter into man-made holy places, which were antitypes of the true, but into heaven itself to appear before God for us (v. 24).

A BIT OF WORLD EXPLAINING

Those last two verses can raise the eyebrow. They don’t make sense without a little world explaining. God did not merely tell Moses to build a tabernacle, but He told him to construct a tabernacle according to the type he saw on the mountain (Hebrews 8:5; Exodus 25:40). The Old Testament tabernacle was constructed according to a real, heavenly one.

ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN

The pattern God regularly uses is: from heaven to earth. It was this way in the beginning. He made the heavens and the earth, not the earth and the heavens. We pray that our Father’s kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven not in heaven as it is on earth. David’s soldiers could go marching out to battle only after he heard the heavenly army marching atop the mulberry trees (2 Samuel 5:24). Many of our problems in life come from trying to boss heaven around. The other problems come from ignoring heaven, as if it had nothing to do with things down here on earth. The solution to these problems is to live on earth as it is in heaven.

THE HEAVENLY THINGS THEMSELVES

The stage is now set for the potency of our text. Where has Christ gone? Into heaven itself. What has He done? He has purified the heavenly things themselves by His blood. He is in heaven “for us” (v. 24). In another place we hear that we are seated with Him in those heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6). If you are forgiven there, you are forgiven here. By faith, you are already there while you are still here.

 BOLDNESS TO ENTER IN

The veil of the true temple has been torn in two and that veil is Christ’s flesh (Hebrews 2:20). You are in the holy place right now by faith in Christ. The tent made without hands has been sprinkled with Christ’s blood. The water from his side has washed you clean. The blood of the better sacrifice has been sprinkled on the true mercy seat, the true altar. The heavenly tabernacle is purified with you in it. What could you possibly be afraid of?

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