Christ's Ascension


Psalm 47:1 Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy. 2 How awesome is the LORD Most High, the great King over all the earth! 3 He subdued nations under us, peoples under our feet. 4 He chose our inheritance for us, the pride of Jacob, whom he loved. 5 God has ascended amid shouts of joy, the LORD amid the sounding of trumpets. 6 Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises.

This psalm reminds us of the glorious and joyful ascension of the Lord. Forty days after His resurrection, Jesus took His disciples to the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem. (Forty days after Easter would be today.)

When He finished speaking His final words of instruction and comfort, the Lord spread His hands over them in a blessing. Then He began slowly and majestically to rise heavenward from the earth, higher and higher. Finally a cloud removed Him from the disciples’ sight.

In the ancient world, a king would often make his defeated enemies lie down before his thrown. After this the king would sit down on his throne and use his enemy’s head as his footstool to indicate that he was completely victorious.

Jesus began His triumphant procession from the Mount of Olives, ascending to glory. He then sat down at the right hand of God, using Satan and the powers of evil as His footstool to show that He had subdued all our enemies under His foot. (v3)

Christ’s sitting at the right hand of the Father means that He is controlling everything in the universe for the good of His believing brothers and sisters, His Church. He has the whole world in His hands.

The victory and triumph of Jesus is our victory. Everything that He did, He did for us. Therefore when we see Him, our victor divine, enthroned in glory, we know that our salvation is certain. He has given us the victory over sin, death and the devil. No one can say that our sins are too great to be forgiven or that there is no place for us in heaven. The Ascension makes all these things certain.

Because of Christ’s ascension, we clap. We shout. We shout. We praise Him with our trumpets and with our voices.

Join us tonight at First Evan Lutheran Church at 728 Villa St in Racine. Our Ascension Service is at 7:00 pm with trumpets and voices of choirs, adults and children.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Justified in Jesus

Image
Matthew 27:27–31 27 Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole cohort of soldiers around him. 28 They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him. 29 They twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand, knelt in front of him, and mocked him by saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” 30 They spit on him, took the staff, and hit him repeatedly on his head. 31 After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him. 1) Jesus on cross picture. We are still in the five hundredth anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation. With the Reformation, the Lord of the Church allowed His truth to be retold through the writings of Martin Luther. But, God also used artists to visually portray this gospel to the minds of His people. If we wanted to “picture” the Reformation in our mind’s eye, there is no better “picture” than The Weimar Altarpiece . In thi
Read more

Water into blood and water into wine

Image
Here are some thoughts that didn’t make it into Sunday’s sermon. The Old Testament lesson for the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany is the account of Moses turning the water of the Nile River into blood. The first of the ten plagues God used to get the Israelites out of Egypt. Exodus 7:14-24 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Pharaoh's heart is unyielding; he refuses to let the people go. 15 Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he goes out to the water. Wait on the bank of the Nile to meet him, and take in your hand the staff that was changed into a snake. 16 Then say to him, 'The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to say to you: Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the desert. But until now you have not listened. 17 This is what the LORD says: By this you will know that I am the LORD: With the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood. 18 The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink; the Egyptians will not
Read more

Jesus has prepared a place for you - A funeral sermon for Jim Hermann

Image
John 14:1-4 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.  2  My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.  4  You know the way to the place where I am going.” “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” Did you catch the difference between what I read just now and what I read in the Gospel lesson? The Gospel lesson was from the NIV. The second verse I read was from the King James Version. If you’re older than 50, that’s the version of the Bible that you heard in church and learned in catechism class. But, even if you’re older younger than 50, you know about the mansions. “The mansions of heaven” is a term Christians use pretty often. Preachers say it, poets write it, people
Read more