Jesus Ascends
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2022 · 5 June 2022
Let us go to Acts 1, and read verses 4-11, “And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, “which,” He said, “you have heard from Me; 5 for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” 6 Therefore, when they had come together,
They asked Him, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 And He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. 8 But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. 9 Now when He had spoken these things,
While they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. 10 And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, 11 who said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.”
Acts shows us that the Lord’s work of redemption, His cross work is completed. He has given the offering that sanctifies forever those who believe. He has provided the atonement to satisfy the wrath of God. He has born in His body our sins in His death, and we have died and risen in Him. So the work of redemption has been completed on the cross as far as the sacrifice of Christ is concerned.
However, the work of gathering the redeemed goes on, and it goes on in that first generation through the apostles, and then through the church as the apostles establish the church. So the responsibility for the proclamation of the gospel and the establishment of churches passes first to these 12. They’re actually 11 until a little later in the chapter when a 12th is chosen, a man named Matthias.
So this history goes on until the last person in the plan of God is redeemed, and then the church is raptured out of the world, and that glorious era comes to its fulfillment. So we’re seeing the Lord then pass the baton in those verses that I read to His disciples. You can see there that He is speaking about the kingdom, according to verse 2, to the apostles whom He had chosen.
So somehow, these men are going to change the course of human history. So the apostles become the focus of our Lord in this section before He leaves. These opening verses tell us how He has tried to get them ready. Our Lord has to provide the essential tools for them to preach the gospel and plant churches. These provisions are laid out in these first eight verses and with the addition of verses 9 to 11.
So first, you the need for the proper message. We talked about the fact that Jesus began, and He will continue this work through His apostles and through His church and through His people until He comes again. So in verse 3, Jesus spends 40 days speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God. Whenever God reveals Himself, He discloses Himself in words of divine revelation.
The Bible claims for itself that every word of God is pure, like silver refined seven times in a furnace. There’s a massive attack on the doctrine of inerrancy, but that’s not surprising because Satan wants always to attack the word of God going back to Genesis. When God reveals Himself, He doesn’t reveal Himself in impressions. He reveals Himself in words that are written down accurately.
It was never a question of the words. It was a question of the interpretation. Jesus taught so they understood the nature of the kingdom, and how to come into the kingdom, which is the gospel way and what the gospel was. And they were not only teach it, but to do the gospel ministry. Part of that was living exemplary lives to support what they preached, that is the claims of the gospel.
Secondly, we looked at the proper confidence. Verse 3, “He presented himself alive after His suffering by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over those 40 days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.” They needed to know it was really Him, and He proved it by many infallible proofs. And He was speaking about the kingdom of God as He was before.
And they also needed the right power. Verse 4, “Gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem.” Why? Wait for what the Father had promised, which He said, “You heard of from me.” Look at Ezekiel 36:25, “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.”
Verse 26-27, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.” He promised the coming of the Holy Spirit who will come and dwell in them. That is the promise of the Father.
At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry at His baptism, the Holy Spirit comes on Him. When Jesus begins His ministry in the city of Nazareth, He says, “I am here to fulfill the Old Testament prophecies about Messiah. The spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach the gospel.” So in a real sense, Jesus is the prototype of the filling of the Holy Spirit, the empowering of the Holy Spirit for ministry.
So what was promised in Joel and Ezekiel, the coming of the Holy Spirit upon God’s people took place first of all in Jesus Christ who is the prototype. We know that His whole ministry was basically operating in the power of the Holy Spirit. So Jesus began to promise to his disciples that they would have the very same thing, that the Holy Spirit would come upon them as well.
Then He says in verse 5, “John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” That’s a statement of fact for every believer. 1 Corinthians 12:13, “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.” We’re literally engulfed in the Holy Spirit.
Verse 8, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” The job is too great, too demanding to be done in human strength. Paul says in the letter to the Corinthians, “Weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but mighty unto God.” Every believer following Pentecost receives the Holy Spirit, which takes up residence. Literally the dominating power of our lives.
Ephesians 3:16-19 says, “God would grant you according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with power through his spirit in the inner man. 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height 19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge.”
And when that happens, He is able to do far more abundantly beyond all we can ask or think according to the power that works within us.” Paul is praying is that you would take advantage of the power, the Holy Spirit that is in you. How do you do that? Ephesians 5:18 says, “Be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Be dominated by the word of God because that’s where the Holy Spirit’s power is released.
Fourthly, the proper mystery. Verse 6 -7, “When they had come together, they were asking Him saying, ‘Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel? 7 He said to them, ‘It’s not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father has fixed by his own authority.’” The prophets who wrote the Old Testament didn’t know what season or what time. There’s a necessary mystery.
The Old Testament age is over. Messiah is here. He did the work of atonement. He’s alive. Now He’s saying the Holy Spirit is going to come, and Joel and Ezekiel 36 connect the coming of the Holy Spirit with the last days. And Peter, James, and John had seen Christ transfigured on the mountain and seen already a glimpse of His kingdom glory. So it’s a natural question: When is the kingdom going to come?
They were expecting the kingdom promised to Abraham, to David, with all the promises that were reiterated through the prophets. They were expecting that Israel would be saved and restored. They would be the dominant nation in the world. And that would include having the Holy Spirit. In other words, they believed in an actual kingdom for all of Israel with Jesus as the king.
So if you want to cancel the kingdom, you’re going to have to explain why Jesus didn’t do that. He says, “You can’t know the time. It’s going to come at an hour when you least expect it.” Here we are a couple of thousand years later, and we don’t have any more information on it than they did. It’s a good thing not to know that so that every generation lives as if He might come at any moment.
We work as if every day is our last, and we plan as if his coming was far off, and we leave the date up to Him, and that infuses us at every waking hour with tremendous responsibility. I don’t know when I die, and how I’m going to die and I don’t need to know that. Now all that leads us to a simple conclusion tonight. We need the proper mission. And what is this mission?
Verse 8 continues, “You shall by My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” The word witness came to be the word martyr because so many witnesses to the gospel died. Remember when Jesus said, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself. Take up your cross.” You have to be willing to lay down your own life.
Most of you older people grew up in a time period in America when there was cultural Christianity. They understood that morality came out of the Bible. So there was a kind of cultural morality that survived a long time in America. We remember the moral majority, the religious right. Well it’s all gone. In fact, the more distinctly Christian we are, the more we will be labeled as extremists.
The people who now vote in America couldn’t care less. They want to escape the extremism of cultural Christianity as they see it. But Christians should see the people who oppose them politically, morally, and socially as the mission field rather than the enemy. They had turned their mission field into political enemies. The gospel advances by personal testimony to Christ one soul at a time.
We’re closer to living in conditions like these people did in the Book of Acts. We’re like aliens in an increasingly anti-Christian culture. Our witness is to give testimony to Christ, to speak of Christ, to speak the gospel. If you are a Christian, you have received the Holy Spirit, and you are a witness. The only question is if you’re a faithful one or an unfaithful one. Don’t get mad at non-Christians.
Not only are we not willing to die for Jesus, most of us aren’t even willing to live for Him. We haven’t learned what it is to be a living sacrifice. God wants you to live for Him as if you couldn’t care less about anything, sacrificing everything you have for His glory: to be a living witness, a living sacrifice. You don’t choose whether you’ll be a witness or not, you are one. But are you any good?
Verse 9 -11, “Now when Jesus had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. 10 And while they looked as He went up, two men stood by them in white apparel, 11 who said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.”
That should be the great motive. Jesus is coming back. Listen to what John writes at the end of the Book of Revelation. “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming quickly.’” John says, “Amen. Come Lord Jesus.” My reward is with Me to give to every man. He’s coming suddenly, unexpectedly, and that kind of splits into two realities, a personal meeting and an eternal reward.
What’s the eternal reward? You’ll be rewarded for what is on earth gold silver and precious stones. The personal meeting says, well done, good and faithful servant, the eternal reward crown that He gives to faithful servants. So it’s a two-fold motivation that when I see Him face-to-face, I want to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and I want to receive my eternal reward.
That’s the message. To that first generation of 12 apostles, and here we are 2,000 years later, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, they were able to get it started right. And now Christianity in your generation is circling the globe in a way that they would never have ever imagined the day in which you’re living. Just imagine, there are people in Asia hearing this same sermon in their own language.
The gospel is circling the globe. We’re living in the greatest revival of Biblical truth in the history of the world simply because of its electronic capabilities circle the globe. We’re also nearer the second coming than we’ve ever been as the gospel is extending to the ends of the earth. Many verses in a New Testament encourage us to be faithful until He comes for the second time. Let us pray.