May 12 Sermon: Receive Your King

Explore the often-overlooked doctrine of the Ascension in our latest sermon, 'Receive Your King.' Discover why Jesus's ascension into heaven is central to our faith, how it affects our daily lives, and what it means for His reign as our King and intercessor. Learn how Psalm 24 reveals the majesty of Christ's authority and our call to holiness. 

Consider these questions as you listen to this week’s message from Psalm 24:

1. How does the Ascension of Jesus Christ enhance our understanding of His current reign as King and His ongoing work on behalf of His people?

2. In what ways can recognizing Jesus as our intercessor impact our approach to prayer and our daily challenges?

3. Reflecting on Psalm 24, how do we reconcile our imperfections with the call to have clean hands and pure hearts in order to stand in God's holy place?

Transcript:

This past Thursday was Ascension Day, forty days after the resurrection. Christians believe and we confess that the Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven and you have probably taken note over the years that whenever we get to this Sunday I make some sort of comment about how this is a pretty forgotten doctrine. But I do say that for a reason. This is a pretty forgotten doctrine, but I do say that for a reason. It is rather something that we don't consider all the time. As I've mentioned before, I don't have very many books in my library, whether digitally or in physical form, about the Ascension. I used to say I only had one. I now have two. Whoo, I doubled my books on the as ascension. I used to say I only had one, I now have two. I doubled my books on the ascension.

We don't talk about the ascension very much and when we confess it in the creeds it's kind of a passing statement. Right In both the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed we speak the truth that he ascended into heaven and he is seated at the right hand of the Father. We don't have any commentary on what that means. The creeds move on to the next important truth, that he will return from there to judge the living and the dead. Even the Athanasian Creed, which is far more wordy and that's why we don't ever say it, but it's another ancient creed of the church. It's wordy and even that doesn't do anything other than mention that he ascended into heaven at the right hand of the Father and will come again to judge the living and the dead. Now I get why creeds do this. The purpose of creeds isn't necessarily to apply any type of commentary on things. It's not giving us great details about many of the events that we believe and confess.

But the reason I bring this up, the reason I make this point, is that generally we don't seem to think about the ascension of Jesus all that much. And as I was looking forward to this Sunday and I was considering all of this, I thought it was interesting that we rightly focus on the earthly ministry of Jesus and we think of the work that he did for our salvation. I also thought about the fact that we often find considerable focus about his coming again to judge the living and the dead at the end of history. We think about this rather regularly, but how we experience Jesus now we don't think about this rather regularly, but how we experience Jesus. Now we don't think about very much how the church has experienced Jesus throughout nearly 2,000 years of history. We don't really consider it and we know Jesus is our ascended Lord and he is our king and he is at work for his people in this very moment.

But I don't know about you, but I rarely consider that truth. I rarely, you know, think about the ramifications of it, and I am often trying to, I'm looking for ways that I can work it into my study or into my preaching, but still, even though I know the importance of it, I don't find myself contemplating it very much. So that's why we take the Sunday after the Ascension, which is always on a Thursday, to focus on it, to consider its truth, because it does mean a lot to us, it is very important. So, as we start out this morning, it's my hope that you'll walk away from today with answers to two questions. Now I'm going to tell you what those two questions are and then we will answer them by looking at Psalm 24. So the first question I have is why is the ascension important? I want you to be able to answer this after today. As I mentioned, it's a passing statement in the creeds and most of us probably don't give much thought to it. But I want us to give great thought to it today and understand why it's important to the faith. And the second question I want us to walk away with an answer to is just as important how does the ascension affect my faith? We don't consider the ascension today just as something to talk about intellectually later or to say that we understand it or that we truly believe in it. That's important, but that's not why we look at it. I hope that we can come away with some application of why this doctrine matters in our lives as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, before we go to Psalm 24, I want us to go to what we read from the New Testament in Luke and refresh ourselves on those details that we read there. In his gospel, so Jesus appears to his disciples and he tells them that they're to take the message of his suffering, death and resurrection to all the nations. And so this is the moment at the end of the Gospel of Luke here where the mission is becoming clear to the disciples. Right, jesus died and rose again for a reason, and now that truth is not to only go to the people around in the region of Palestine where the Israelites are, or out to them. It's to go to the whole world. It's to go out from Jerusalem not just Jerusalem and just the surrounding little areas to those Jewish folk there we see, it's to go out to all the nations. And this seems like a daunting task. Now, we don't know what the thoughts of the disciples would have been when they heard this, but if I were them, I know what I would have been thinking oh, this is going to be tough, but at least we have Jesus along to help us.

Well then, the gospel of Luke tells us that, right after this, jesus ascends into heaven. And any thoughts that they might have had that Jesus was going to be along for this mission, those hopes are suddenly dashed. We see that he blesses them and he is carried up to heaven. And here, in this account of the ascension, luke tells us something important. We see some important, something important about jesus here.

We read here that the disciples worshiped him. Remember, these are are Hebrew people. They know the Ten Commandments and know the First Commandment they are to have no other gods other than Yahweh. And yet, what do they do? They worship Jesus. And you understand the significance of this. They know who Jesus is. Their worship of him that we read here acknowledges that they know that Jesus is God. And then another point to see here from Luke's telling of this event is that they return to Jerusalem with great joy. Now, what I want to draw out from that is that their friend and rabbi has been recently executed, but he rose from the dead. You know, they have felt an extreme range of emotions and they are certainly happy that Jesus is alive, and yet they are filled with joy when he leaves them. Remember, pentecost is 10 days away. We don't celebrate that till next Sunday and so this joy is not a joy that they have received the Spirit at Pentecost. They have joy that Jesus departed from them.

I think we struggle to understand this. We want presence. That's what we want. We want to be with people that we care about. When a friend or a family member moves away, we shed tears, and when we don't have presence, think about the level to which technology in our lives has been centered around trying to bring people who are a long ways away close right. We desire presence. So we came up with a way to talk on a phone, and when that wasn't enough. We found a way to talk to a camera and see them. We came up up with all these ways. Even when we don't have presence, we try to simulate presence, and so we struggle with this idea of the disciples having joy that Jesus has departed from them.

And what this statement here by Luke conveys to us is that, while the disciples might not fully understand the ramifications of Jesus ascending into heaven, they do understand that it's a better thing that he ascends into heaven. They understand that this is part of the greater plan of god. They get that. And as we start to answer this question that I've brought up on why the ascension is important important that's the first place that I want to go and consider as we look at p Psalm 24, that this is the plan of God. This is better than had he remained. See, the ascension was the plan all along. This is where things were going. Jesus didn't leave the glory of heaven and keep the law perfectly for his people for 30 plus years, so that the plan of God could be thwarted by some religious leaders using the Romans to execute him. There wasn't some greater plan that Jesus would stay on earth forever, but the Romans and the religious leaders executed him, and so now we need a plan B.

The resurrection and the ascension of Jesusesus are not, and never were, plan b. The resurrection well, the death, resurrection and ascension of jesus were plan a. It always was. This was the way it was to be, and we see this and luke mentioned this here earlier. I don't have it on the screen here but the fact that Jesus says that this is what was spoken of in the prophets and in the Psalms it's not just prophecies, it's not just in historical narratives that we see this idea that Jesus being glorified in his ascension is the plan. We see it in the Psalms and that's why we go to Psalm 24 today. We see that this is a part of his important work for his people. And so Psalm 24, this song begins with us seeing some well-known words that the earth is the Lord's.

And once again, I think it's important that I remind you, and we take a moment to remember, what our English Bibles do for us. Now, it's not up here I don't know why it doesn't do it in the software here, but if you were to look in your Bible in the pew, you would see that the word LORD is in all caps in this psalm and I pointed this out for us before. Whenever we see this in the Old Testament, the translators are telling us something really important as we come to this word In the original Hebrew, the word there is the proper name of God that he revealed to his people. It is the name Yahweh and, as you probably remember, the Hebrew people were so concerned with misusing this holy name that God had revealed to them that they wouldn't even say God's name. Instead, whenever they came across it as they were reading from scripture, they would say the word Adonai, which is the word Lord, and so this is why, in our English Bibles, we capitalize all Lord to indicate that if they were reading it then they would have said Lord, but it is the proper name of God. We just continue that tradition.

But it's important that we understand that the word Lord there is the proper name of God, and I remind you of this because it tells us something really important. This is not telling us that a Lord, someone that we give the title of Lord as a position of authority, that's not who we're talking about here. We're talking about somebody specific. There is only one who is over all the earth, and that is Yahweh. The psalmist here is very specific and we need to remember how different this idea would have been in the ancient world. You see, all of these people, groups. They would have had some regional pagan god who was over their group of people.

But what does the psalmist do here? He says that Yahweh, the God who has revealed himself to the Hebrews, he is the one who is over all the earth. He founded it, he established it and again, this is an outstanding claim. Their God is different than all the others because he is the God who is. He is the one who created and established.

And you might remember back to early 2023, when we were working our way through the Ten Commandments, I kept on going back to a particular point, and that point was that we see in the Ten Commandments a distinction between the Creator and His creation and the pagan neighbors of the Hebrews, of the Jewish people. They did not have a distinction between the creator and the creation in how they understood the world. They saw their pagan gods as a part of that creation, and so this here that we see in Psalm 24 is a declaration of Yahweh's superiority and the fact that he is other. There is a distinction between the creator and the creation. He is the God not just of the Hebrews, not just of the Jewish people. He is God over all creation. And because he is other, because he is distinct from his creation, he is set apart.

He is holy, and we see from that that the psalmist gives us a question that naturally arises from this understanding of who God is. He asks who shall ascend the hill of the lord and who shall stand in his holy place. You see, he is above all, he is other. So the psalmist asks who can go before him and he quickly gives an answer he who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does. And that's a clear statement, and it causes us to do some self-evaluation. Doesn't it To reflect on ourselves Right?

If the one who can ascend the holy hill of the Lord, the one who can stand in the presence of a holy God, are those who have clean hands and a pure heart and does not lift up their soul to what is false, how am I doing? Can we claim that our hands are clean and that our hearts are pure? No, we can't. We are fallen creatures. We've rebelled against a holy God. That is our problem. That is the problem that all of humanity has that God is holy and we are not, and we deserve to be separated from his presence. And we deserve to be separated from his presence. If we could keep our hands perfectly clean and our hearts pure. We read that there would be great blessing for us. We would receive blessing from God and righteousness from him. But, as I said, anyone looking within themselves acknowledges that we have not done these things. We have not kept his law perfectly. We have not loved God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are the problem. We can't ascend the holy hill of Yahweh, and this is the problem. That's not just a problem for the Hebrew people. They weren't the only ones who faced it. All of humanity fell into sin when Adam fell into sin and thankfully, by God's grace, we know the solution to the problem.

God himself condescended to us in the person of Jesus Christ. God, the Son took on our flesh and he had clean hands and he had a pure heart. He did not lift up his soul to false gods and he did not swear deceitfully, despite his deserving these blessings that are talked about here. Despite him deserving this the only one who ever did he was cursed. He took on the wrath of God that he might win victory for his people, and because of his being cursed, we now receive blessings from the Lord and we have righteousness from the God of our salvation. And he did this in our very own flesh. And so the response that we see is that it's time for the holy hill of the Lord to finally receive someone who has clean hands and a pure heart, a human who has done this. He has won victory for the people of God, and so open the gates.

Now, you see, in our very own flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ ascended to the Father, and there he now is. He is the king of glory. He is strong and mighty. He has come to the presence of the Father that we, as his people, might now have access to God because of his victory over sin, death and hell. The only reason we have confidence that we can go to the holy hill of God is because Jesus is there before us in our very own flesh, and this was the plan. Jesus didn't come to earth to take over earthly powers, and the whole thing hit a detour when those earthly powers executed him. His sacrificial death was the plan all along. The plan was that he would be cursed, that his people might be blessed. The plan all along was that he would rise in victory over death to assure resurrection for the people of God. The plan all along was that the king of glory would come in, come into the presence of a holy God on his holy hill, that our very own flesh would have access to God, the Father, through our mediator, the crucified, risen and ascended Lord. And he now reigns over all the earth and the fullness thereof. He is king over all the earth and I've said it twice before and I'm going to say it again this is not plan B, this was plan A all along and it's absolutely an essential part of the gospel.

We need to remember this. I commented earlier that the creeds don't spend much time on it, but I also want to point out and be clear that they also don't leave it out. It is an essential part of the Christian faith. The resurrected Jesus is not in hiding and he is not missing. He is where he was always intended to be. And remember, in the Great Commission, at the end of Matthew, he said something very important. Remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. He has ascended into heaven, but he is not absent from his people. He is reigning over us, at the right hand of the Father, where he is interceding for us on our behalf.

And so I hope that answers the question of why the ascension is necessary. Why do we need this? And, as our application, I want us to understand how this affects our faith in our daily lives. First, the ascension reminds us of the active work of Jesus for us in the present. Jesus has not saved us and forgiven us of our sin, and then he abandoned us to our own devices. As I just said a moment ago, he is at the Father's right hand and he is an advocate for us, interceding for us.

In just a moment, our confession of faith is going to be us saying the answer to Westminster Larger Catechism, question 54, together, and we're going to be reminded, as we say that together, of what this means and what it says is. It says that Christ gathers his church, he defends the church and he subdues her enemies. I absolutely love that. That might be my favorite part of the Westminster Larger Catechism. Christ is king and he is king over all the earth, and so that means that he is the one who's in charge.

While things from our perspective might seem negative, from the sovereign perspective of the Lord Jesus, he is doing. These things for us that we just read, or that I just said, are from the Westminster Larger Catechism, defending his church and subduing her enemies, and so we have certainty that Jesus is the one who is in control of all things, our lives, of history, because he is the king and he is in control and he has victory over all of our enemies. And in our daily lives, this means that we can live boldly, knowing that we have victory right along with our can. We have forgiveness of our sins and because we have been united to him in his life, death, resurrection and ascension, we know that we are victorious as well. So may we depart from here today, walking boldly in this world. Our King is in heaven and we are united to him by faith. May this great truth cause you and I to pursue holiness, that we might bring glory to our great God and King, who made us righteous, and he guarantees our place in the presence of God for all eternity.

The ascension is a great truth for the people of God. It shows us that we have victory, right along with Jesus, over all of our enemies. So may we live in confidence and faith, knowing that our King reigns. Amen, let us pray. Great and merciful God, we thank you for the gift of your word, that we realize that you are not hiding from us and you are not absent from us. Instead, you have ascended to reign over all the earth. The doors have been flung open and the righteous one has entered into the presence of God. And so, because we are united to him, we have confidence. We have confidence that one day we shall go into the presence of God, declared righteous, declared to have clean hands and a pure heart, not because of anything that we have done or will do, but because we are united to Christ in his perfect life, in his sacrificial death, in his glorious resurrection, in his fantastic ascension for his people. It is in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that we pray Amen.