Ascension Sunday 2026

0:00 You would be forgiven for thinking that the ascension is something of an afterthought to the Easter story. Sometimes by the way we talk about it or don't talk about it. It can be seen as just the end, the end of a great story. And if you think about it, we celebrate Christmas with the day off. We have Good Friday, we have Resurrection Sunday. You know, there's still some cultural cache to those things. And when you take time off, then you know something's important. Ascension Day is...

0:32 When's Ascension Day? As if to prove my point. Thursday the 14th of May is Ascension Day. I hope that if you take this talk seriously that you'll put that on your calendar. I am working, so I can't take it off. But Ascension Day is a thing that we don't really think about because, you know, it's just a little bit of an afterthought. Also, sometimes the way in evangelical circles we talk about the death and resurrection of Christ. We properly and rightly emphasize those, but sometimes to the exclusion of talking about the ascension, the gospel, when we think about it, the horizon of that is filled with Jesus' death and Jesus' resurrection, and the ascension doesn't necessarily quite fit into it.

1:16 And two, a superficial reading of the New Testament would say it's maybe not that important compared to the other texts. We have long narratives in the Passion story, but the Ascension story is really only mentioned twice by one author, the end of Luke and the beginning of Acts, and it's very, very brief. I mean, you can read it in seconds. We're going to read it in seconds. You can read it in seconds and be over and done with, and you think, okay, well, maybe it's just not that important. However, whenever you read across the whole of the rest of the New Testament, you find that the Ascension is almost everywhere when we're trying to understand what it is that Jesus does now and the significance of what it is that he did when he was here. The ascension isn't just the end of the story. It's the goal and the climax of Jesus' entire ministry.

2:05 Now, to be fair, the narrative of the ascension is very short, but the New Testament is much more concerned with the facts and the effects of Jesus' ascension than it is with the mechanics of how it went down. And so what we're hopefully going to do here this morning is explore a little bit about that, some of what the ascension means and the significance of it. Let's read in, I can't see, the end of Luke and the beginning of Acts. Luke says, And Jesus led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God. Then in Acts we read, and when he said these things, we're going to come back to the things that he'd said and the conversation they had later on. But when he said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight.

3:03 And while they were gazing into heaven, as he went, behold, two men stood by him in white robes and said, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way that you saw him go into heaven. And that's it. All of the story, all of the narrative about Jesus' ascension, we have just read there now. Now, when New Testament is interpreting these events for us, the fact of this event, it does it primarily through the lens of Psalm 110. Psalm 110 is a prophetic psalm. It's a psalm of David where he one day envisages one of his descendants ruling on God's throne forever. Now, this psalm is the most quoted piece of the Old Testament in the New Testament, fundamentally significant.

3:52 It's also the way in which Jesus discloses who he is and what he's doing. If you remember in his discussion with the Pharisees, he says, and refers to this psalm, do you remember it says, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies of footstool. And he's using this as a way to indicate who he is and what it is that he's doing. Now this idea of sitting at my right hand, it's a phrase that you'll see all over the New Testament when understanding what Jesus has done as part of his ascension. And it's a way of indicating, it's a royal phrase. To sit at God's right hand is to sit on the throne of God. It is to be God's king. So whenever it's using this phrase, it's saying Jesus has ascended.

4:38 He's not just physically going somewhere else, although he has, and the mechanics of that we need to, you know, wander and let our imaginations work on that. But it's not just about the transportation of his body from one place to another. It's about his ascension to a throne. Imagine a coronation ceremony where a would-be king or a prince takes up the steps and sits down at the throne and is pronounced king. That's the idea here. Jesus ascends into heaven. It's not merely a physical transportation, it's his enthronement, it's his crowning, it's him taking his place as God's king. And whenever we see this idea mentioned across the New Testament, it gives us an indication as to the significance of what it is he does.

5:20 Here are a couple of examples. We read in Acts 2, Peter's preaching to the Jews, he says, being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. It's a massive thing. What is it that they were experiencing? The Holy Spirit is poured out and manifested in these tongues and this profound, demonstrable, supernatural event. And Peter says, the reason this is happening is because Jesus said it would happen. He's poured out his spirit. And the reason why he is able to do that is because he sits at God's right hand.

5:59 He possesses the power and the authority to do that. only he could do that. We recently had a coronation of King Charles and he sat on our King Edward's chair, an historical chair, it's like four or five hundred years old. No longer than that, doesn't matter. Just pretend it's four or five hundred years old. And he sits down in this sort of archaic wooden chair and it was part of his ceremony. I was thinking that I can sit on chairs, I can sit on chairs as they're as good as anybody else. And if I went and sat in that chair, it wouldn't make me king.

6:35 There's only one person who can really do that. There's only one person who can give out the spirit. It's the person who possesses the authority of God's king and who's sat down and been enthroned. Here's another example from Hebrews 1. We've been reading this in our Hebrew series. The writer says, he is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. And he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

7:05 Here we have a development of the same idea, this power, this authority to actually do something, to purify sins. But we also have a picture of majesty and glory. Imagine all the pomp and ceremony surrounding an ancient enthronement or coronation ceremony. Here we have Jesus pictured in his majestic form. He is the King of Kings. He is the Lord of Lords, and he sits in that place of authority. We don't have a sit at right hand language here, but we do have the same idea extended in Acts 10, Peter says, and he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be the judge of the living and the dead. Now, this is a really important idea.

7:50 In our context, in our systems, we separate out, you know, government and economics and the judicial system and all the rest. It's all separated out. In the ancient world it was all combined. No constitutional monarchies for them. The monarch was the center of all power. So they'd include the judicial authority to pronounce sentences and to pronounce judgment. And so what we have here is pictured Jesus both the interim and final judge of all things. And I think intuitively we recognize the need for a judge, the need for someone to say, "This is right, that is wrong."

8:27 And this is the sentence and the judgment for the people who do right or do wrong. And all of our attempts at justice, and we should attempt at justice, but all our attempts at justice in the criminal and civil systems here, they're all approximations of justice. You do a crime and we maybe fine you this amount, or we put you in prison for this amount. It's not really an exact equivalent. It's an approximation. What we long for is somebody who has the authority and who has the purity of mind and heart and who has the ability and responsibility to actually judge and say, this is right and to make things right. Peter says, this is what Jesus has. Fulfillment of the Psalm 110, it says, he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.

9:15 He will execute judgment among the nations. I think we all understand the need for that kind of righteous judgment. So to summarize, and there are many other things that we could say, but in Jesus ascending to the throne of God, he is possessing full power and authority and honor and status and judgment. It's essentially saying, the ascension is saying, Jesus reigns over all things. He staked his claim on the earth. He says, this is mine. All of this is mine. And I'm claiming it for myself.

9:50 And I'm entering into this world with that kind of authority and status. Now, a reasonable person would be forgiven for asking how well it's all going. If you're looking out in the world and you say, I don't know if it looks like Jesus is raining out there. If you're familiar enough with the church and you look inside the church, you're like, I'm not really sure Jesus is raining in here. either. And if you look in your own hearts and your own minds, in your own lives, and be like, where's the evidence? Where's the impact of Jesus having this authority and power and dominion and so on?

10:31 And the fact of the matter is that that's not a surprise. It's actually part of the New Testament witness that Jesus' kingdom, it is, he does have all power and authority and dominion, but for now, it's fundamentally contested. It's violently and viciously contested. Jesus, when he was here, he had enemies, human enemies and spiritual enemies. They attacked him. They fought against him. They fought against what he stood for and what he achieved. They ultimately killed him.

10:59 Jesus still has enemies. As king, he still has enemies. And whilst one day every knee will buy, whilst one day every tongue will confess, nigh, not every tongue confesses. And nigh, not every knee buys. There is this contested period. And there are spiritual forces at work. We see the satanic and demonic forces at work to blind the minds of unbelievers so that they wouldn't come to an understanding of who Jesus is and what he did. We read in Ephesians 6 that there's actually a war on against the satanic forces and God's people so that it would thwart them in their attempts to follow him.

11:38 It would discourage them. It would get them to doubt. It would get them to fall into temptation and so on. Satan and the demonic forces blind on believers and thwarts the effort of believers. And so we're fundamentally in an age of conflict, one that's characterized by conflict between Jesus' kingdom and the kingdom of this world. And so if you remember in Matthew 13, in the parable of the wheat and the tares, Jesus says, this is the way that it's going to be. For now, the weeds and the thorns, they're going to grow up with the plants and they're going to attempt to choke it out. And we're not going to separate them now, but at the end of all things, at the end of time, when I finally step in and pronounce my final judgment, then we'll separate out everything.

12:21 But for now, we're fundamentally got the plants and the weeds growing in together. We've got this mixture of the two kingdoms, this conflict. Now, New Testament, we talk about this as the now not yet tension. We have the now, Jesus is king now, but his reign is not fully comprehensive. There's this not yet element. and the time between Jesus' ascension and his final coming and the new heavens and the new earth and the establishment of all of that, we talk about this period in between as the now, not yet tension. And that's really important for us to try and think, what does it look like for the church to live and to practice in that period of time? 'Cause the answer's not always obvious.

13:03 And historically, the church has got it wrong by falling down on one side or the other. So if you think of the medieval period of papal theocracy was a real emphasis on Jesus reigns right now, his throne should be established, and sure, let's set up human governments that are essentially theocracies, and we'll try and force Jesus' kingdom on everybody. That leads to all sorts of problems and crimes and abuses of power. But then we can emphasize the not yet. Sure, it's not really here, it's not happening, maybe we shouldn't really try anything, and you can have a withdrawal from society. The church is sometimes done at different points in history, where we just build a fortress around us and we try not to be impacted by what's happening out there in the big bad world. It's really a fundamental truth that at each point in time and in each society and in each context, the church has to work out for itself. What does it look like for us to live in the now not yet tension?

14:01 What does it look like for us to take up our role in Jesus' kingdom as his subjects and citizens and pushing his agenda whilst living in a world that is conflicted with his. There are a couple of things that I think that we are weak on and potentially vulnerable to in our particular society. And one of them is the way in which we relate to the historical roots of our culture. And I read on social media, as I want to do, you know, the country's gone to the dogs and society is this and that. We need to get back to our Christian roots and all the rest of it. And there's a vague time whenever we were really Christian or we at least practiced Judeo-Christian values in our society and so on. We need to get back to that. And essentially what I see a lot of Christians doing is complaining about the culture as it is, complaining about how things are, and we need to go back to a better time whenever things were much better than they are now.

15:01 Now, there is truth to that. And it's demonstrably true that our culture is becoming increasingly hostile to Christianity on a number of different axes. But that's not really the point. The point is how we respond to it or how we think about it. And I think that we're vulnerable to thinking that it shouldn't be this way. Whenever the New Testament witness for 2,000 years has been, Jesus' kingdom is a conflict with the kingdom of the world, what were you expecting? This is exactly the way he said it would be. The question isn't whether or not there's conflict, but what it is that we should do about it.

15:39 And I think the tendency to complain about the culture for not being as good as it used to be, assuming that it used to be good, but it's not being as good as it used to be, essentially looks like Christians complaining that the society doesn't want them, doesn't do what they want it to do. And it looks a lot more like complaining about a loss of cultural privilege than it does by concern for the consequences of people rebelling against God. And of course, those two things aren't the same thing. So what is the response? It's not going to be complaining. Actually, Jesus sets it up as an invasion. He used invasion language. We're talking about two warring kingdoms.

16:18 And he says, my kingdom is coming into this world. You know, the gates of hell will not oppose it. They'll not be closed to it. We can storm and all the rest of it. And that's language is sometimes scary for people. Are we talking about setting up a military? look out here, there'd be some kind of military that would be set up. We're not talking about militaristic language.

16:36 We're also not talking about political language fundamentally. Although, of course, there's a place for, you know, arguing for the value of Christianity in a pluralistic public square. But ultimately, it's certainly not going to be militaristic, and it's not going to be political. The invasion that the church does and participates in, Jesus' invasion is one of faithful witnessing to who he is and what he's done. No matter the cost, no matter the hostility. Faithful witnessing. And ultimately it's going to be the winning or the victory or the taking ground in that invasion is going to be people genuinely, in an uncoerced way, coming to faith in Christ. That's what we're talking about.

17:22 And actually you see that it's bound up in this whole idea of Jesus' ascension. It's not tangential at all. The conversation that Jesus has before he is ascended in Acts speaks to this issue. The disciples say, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? That's a political question. Jesus, are you setting up your government? I'd love to be a part of it. Are you setting up your government?

17:45 Are you going to rule and reign? Are you going to bring this place back? It's gone to the dogs. Are you going to establish your kingdom right here and right now? And Jesus says, very politely, it's not for you to know times or seasons the Father has fixed by his own authority. Essentially, it's none of your business. I will do that. I will set up my throne.

18:05 I will establish my authority. That is coming one day, but it's not now, and it's not for you to know. The job that I have for you to do is to witness. He says, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses. in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the end of the earth. That's the role that you've got to play. That's the envision that you're going to do. That is the kingdom warring against another kingdom.

18:32 It's going to be that of faithful witnessing. Now, I've played around with this phrasing, and it hasn't gone well. To witness a witness must witness. Does that make sense? Okay. Listen, be impressed with it. To witness a witness must witness. There is, I guess, two ideas to the idea of witnessing.

18:57 So to witness to something, if we're giving the police a report about an accident that we saw, we're essentially conveying the truth about an event that took place, or we're telling them something that we know to be true, we're passing that on. But in order to be a valid witness, you need to have seen something in the first place in order to convey that. And so the first, the apostles, They actually were eyewitness, eyewitnesses of Jesus, and they conveyed that, and we have that preserved for us by the Holy Spirit through the scriptures down the centuries. Anybody who's witnessing to Christ today, unless they're very old, is not going to be an eyewitness. We have a fundamentally different role. But we're still witnesses, and we're still called to witness to something. And unless we've seen something, unless we've experienced something, then there's really not much to say. I'm sure you heard Alan, who was teaching a few weeks ago, and then Simon was teaching about sharing our faith in January as well.

19:55 And I found both of those talks annoyingly challenging. They hurt my feelings. But one of the things that they did was they said, you know, they really clarified the fears that I have about sharing my faith, which is really, really helpful. I recommend you go and listen to them. But one of the things that came up in both talks for me was I want to be honest whenever I'm sharing my faith in Christ. I want to talk to, I want to be authentic. I don't want to say something that I don't really mean. I don't want to say something I don't really mean.

20:28 But in my life and if I don't perceive that, if I don't feel drawn by those convictions, if Jesus and what he's done by his death and his resurrection and his ascension, if that doesn't actually capture my imagination, talking about it feels a little bit disingenuous and I'll be reluctant to then talk about it. So one of the things that we need if we're going to be genuine, authentic and effective witnesses for Christ is to actually have seen something, is to be gripped by convictions that are real, for God to have captured both our minds and our hearts and our imaginations, for us to say, you need to come and see what I see, or let me tell you what I know. And not just, I guess, a bland and heartless recitation of facts, but a witness to the reality and the power of the risen and ascended Christ. And again, those aren't the same thing. I think you see some of this in the ascension by the renewed vision that the disciples have of Jesus. If you remember in John 14, the night before Jesus' arrest, he's meeting with the disciples, and it's all very somber, and it's all very sad. He says, you know, don't let your hearts be troubled, and then we've got a couple of chapters of their hearts being troubled, and they're feeling the weight of him just about to leave, and that's understandable.

21:59 After years of being with Jesus day in, day out, he's telling them, I'm going away. And so they're really coming to grips with the reality of that. And that's really, it's obviously very hard for them. And even after the resurrection on the Ames Road, whenever the disciples encounter Christ, the end of that conversation is our hearts were burning in our chests. But the beginning of it is them reeling from the trauma of witnessing his death and his loss. But then we get to the end of Luke and the beginning of Acts. and they see Jesus ascended, and they leave with great joy. And they're going back to the temple, you know, shouting, celebrating, worshiping God, they're blessing God every day in the temple.

22:42 What accounts for the difference? Because Jesus said, don't let your hearts be troubled, I'm going away. But then what we end up with is great joy. I think part of the difference is who they understood Jesus to be, because Jesus did actually leave in the sense that he said he was going to, but they understood where he was going and what it revealed about who he was. They saw him ascended to the right hand of God. They saw him take on, they understood later on that this was him taking his seat on God's throne and that the person whom they loved and they served and whom they followed was actually God's king. He wasn't really leaving. Now he was reigning.

23:25 And in a few days' time, he would send his Holy Spirit so they wouldn't be alone. In order for us to be effective witnesses, we need to capture in our minds, in our hearts, in our imaginations, something of the truth, of the reality of Jesus' ascension and enthronement. And we need to have our minds renewed along those axes. Jesus' ascension then also motivates witness. It doesn't just tell us to witness, it actually prompts it. And there are a couple of things that we can see why that does that. Jesus' reign as ascended king is protective. Remember he said to his disciples, you know, a servant's not greater than his master.

24:05 If they persecuted me, I mean, they're almost definitely going to persecute you. And he doesn't make them any promises about how good things are going to be. In fact, he promises them the opposite. It's going to be really, really tough. It's going to be terrible. Just to give you a heads up. He says, if they persecuted me, they'll persecute you. A servant's not greater than his master.

24:22 You're my servants. So expect that. But, but, but, but. As we've been reading in Hebrews, that Jesus is the Melchizedekian priest king. That comes from Psalm 110. That Jesus both intercedes for his people, praying and bringing to God their needs and pouring out power for them to be able to achieve what he's asking them to do. He doesn't say, be my witnesses and I'll make it dead easy. He says, be my witnesses and whatever difficulty comes your way, and there will be difficulty that comes your way, I'm interceding on your behalf and empowering you to do the witnessing that you need to do.

24:58 It's precisely as Stephen is being killed that he witnesses the resurrected or the ascended Christ. This text always grabs me. It's an amazing sort of positioning of murderous hate and insight into the reality and power of Jesus. Luke says in Acts 7, And when they heard these things, people are arguing with Stephen, they were enraged and they ground their teeth at him. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. What we need in order to be effective witnesses is not the absence of trouble or for circumstances to be okay or for a particularly welcoming society to like what we have to say. What we need is an experience and an understanding of Jesus at the right hand of God.

25:57 Jesus' reign is also shared, which is an interesting motivator. But if you look across the New Testament, the now not yet language that we sometimes see is sometimes expressed spatially. So whenever Paul is writing in Ephesians, he says, You know, he talks about believers being blessed in Christ. But because they are in Christ, because Jesus has so identified with those who follow him, they can actually say, you're actually in Christ. And being in Christ, you get all the benefits that he gets. So in Ephesians 2, he talks about believers being seated with him in the heavenly places. So it's spatial language to say, I mean, we're obviously not going to stand right here. We're obviously not right now, but we might as well be.

26:44 So in Christ are we, and he is seated at God's right hand, and we are seated there with him. And you see it in a number of other places. We will share his throne, or we will sit on his throne with him, or we will reign with him. Now, I don't actually know what that looks like in practice, except to say we will have a role in the new heavens and the new earth to reign in whatever capacity Jesus says that we should. And the mechanics of it, again, don't really matter. What matters are the facts and the effects and the motivating impact. We can let texts like Revelation 19 to 21 capture our imagination and use the ideas that are there to help us think, oh, this is what it might be like. But the point is, this is what's going to happen.

27:27 Believers are seated with him. They will one day reign with him. And whatever that looks like in practice, it will be glorious. And it will be something that he shares with us by his grace. So all that to say, what we need is God's help to see Jesus ascended and the implications of that for us so that we can be an effective witness to the reality and the power of God. What I'd like to do is finish by reading a prayer. I'd like to finish by praying and reading a prayer in New Testament from Ephesians that speaks to this exact issue. So if you're happy, let's pray together.

28:06 I'll read this out from Ephesians 1, actually it is, 15 following. This is Paul praying. He says, for this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. And having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him his head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Amen.