The Ascension of Jesus (Acts 1:6-11)

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The Ascension of Jesus (Acts 1:6–11)

Prepared and preached by Pastor Steve Rhodes for and at Bethel Friends Church in Poland, OH on Sunday, January 14, 2024

At a past church, we used to sing a song that started out:

My God can never fail, He’s been proved time and again, trust Him and see, He’s got all the power you need.

We sang another song that started like this:

There’s no rock, there is no God like our God.

I wonder, do we believe that there is no God like our God? Do we live like that? Do we live with a trust that He is God and there is no other? Do we live with a conviction that He is the authority? Do you see how those two ideas go together? So many times, we forget or trivialize the power and authority of God, and this affects the way we trust Him. We so often trivialize the power and authority of God, and this means that we don’t live under the conviction that His ways are best and only His ways. He Is God, and we are not.

I once heard a powerful sermon by Francis Chan in which he talked about our mighty God. Francis talked about the Sunday School stories. You remember the stories, don’t you? As a child, you likely learned about how the young boy David trusted God, and God helped him conquer the giant (1 Samuel 17 and Goliath). We serve a strong God. Okay, another one, long before David, there was a man named Noah, and Noah trusted God and was faithful (Genesis 6, 7, and 8). So, though God flooded the earth, God saved Noah and his family. We serve a strong God.

What are other examples of our strong and mighty God in the Bible?

Please share… What are some examples that you remember from a recent study or something a long time ago?

Walk down and actually allow people to share a few examples.

We serve a mighty God. He is the Lord.

A few weeks ago, I shared a few of the verses that Chip Ingram talked about:

He is before all things: Psalm 92:

Rev 1:8: Alpha and Omega

He created all things:

Colossians 1:15-20

Heb. 1: He upholds all things.

He is above all things: Eph. 4:6.

Isaiah 45: I am the Lord, and there is no other…

Mary said that nothing is impossible with God.

Daniel 4: God rules all things.

When I was at another church, we sang a song that started out: Mighty, Mighty Savior, Mighty, Mighty Lord…

Today, we are going to look at Jesus’ ascension into Heaven, and I want to show you that once again, we see that Jesus is a Mighty God. Correction, Jesus is THE Mighty God. We will apply this passage as well.

Acts 1:6–11 (ESV)

6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” 9 And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, 11 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 as you saw him go into heaven.”

  1. The disciples ask the question.
    1. Notice that the disciples first ask plainly if He is now going to restore the Kingdom. The Bible says that they gathered around Him. It appears that the 11 disciples are with Him and there may be close to 120 people altogether with Him. Verse 15 tells us that there were about 120 people in the upper room.
    2. The disciples do not yet have the Holy Spirit, and though they have been with Jesus for some three years and Jesus has been with them for forty days post-resurrection, they still struggle to understand. They are still looking for Jesus to have an earthly reign. They are still thinking that Jesus is now going to overthrow Rome, but that is not what is going to happen.
    3. Now, in the context of Acts, Luke is the writer, and he is reviewing his gospel. That is why we discuss Jesus and the disciples in this sermon on Acts.
    4. Also, we must remember the disciples were likely young men, very young men. It is a big deal that Jesus has chosen and trained them, but without the Holy Spirit, they lack understanding. We also must put ourselves in their world. We must think that by their Jewish understanding, they were looking for a Messiah who would rule Israel as King David reigned in the Old Testament. They were looking for one to reign over an earthly Kingdom.
    5. But what about us? Where is our understanding of Kingdom, of God’s Kingdom? Do we lack understanding as well? We have the Holy Spirit to guide and teach us, but we also are still stuck in our mold of thinking, especially in that we interpret things based on our past understanding. When Mercedes was a toddler, she would be trying to unfasten a safety belt and she might say, “Stuck, stuck.” I would say, “Yes, Mercedes, that is stuck for a reason.” So, sometimes our thinking is stuck, sometimes because of our own fault, and sometimes simply because that is all God is allowing us to understand for the moment. For their moment in time, they were looking for an earthly reign.
  2. Jesus responds: So, now Jesus responds.
    1. They are not to know the times and the dates.
    2. Jesus says that the Father has set these times and dates. Do you think about that? It is by God’s authority that He has set these times and dates.
    3. Notice that Jesus didn’t rebuke their understanding of Kingdom. Jesus will eventually reign on earth. Jesus will eventually make things right. Jesus will eventually conquer all these powers. Jesus will eventually have His Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven. Jesus will eventually restore Israel. But not yet.
    4. Again, we serve a strong God, we serve a mighty God, we serve the only true God and He is in control, and we must surrender to trust Him.
    5. But they are to fulfill the great commission with the power of the Holy Spirit.
    6. Acts 1:8: But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
    7. Luke is likely alluding to Isaiah 49:6: … he says: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
    8. It is interesting that at first, Jesus simply says that they do not know the times and the seasons, but now He jumps to the Holy Spirit. Jesus says that they must fulfill the great commission. It is as if Jesus is stating that the Helper will come upon them, and they will receive power. They don’t need to worry about when the Kingdom will come. Instead, they must proclaim the Gospel.
    9. That is what we must do as well. We must trust in Christ always. We must understand that He is the Mighty Savior, and we must stay the course proclaiming the Gospel.
  3. Jesus ascends.
    1. Then Jesus was lifted up, and a cloud took Him out of their sight. The disciples are gazing up into Heaven in amazement.
    2. Let me ask: “Are you amazed at this narrative?” “Am I amazed?” I honestly was not amazed at first, but as I thought about this passage, it struck me. Think about it: They are watching, and Jesus talks to them, and then a cloud simply takes Him up and carries Him away. When was the last time you saw this happen? I am not talking about seeing this on television; I am talking about really happening. This really happened. This is so amazing that even though they had seen all those miracles before, this stood out to them.
    3. Eventually, two angels were standing next to the disciples. That is what the Bible means when it says, “Two men in white.” These angels tell the disciples that Jesus will return the same way, wow! It is as if the angels are telling the disciples to quit staring at the heavens and get to the Lord’s work and they do.
  4. What are the applications of this passage?
    1. We must trust Jesus as He is in Heaven ruling the earth. Jesus has ascended to Heaven and He is reigning.
    2. We must trust Jesus as He alone can know times and seasons. We must not doubt. We must surrender to God as He is God. He has things under control.
    3. We must trust Jesus as He is coming back in the same way that He left this earth.
    4. Jesus was taken away in a cloud; this shows His power and ability over creation. We must trust Him as He is the powerful, mighty God.
    5. This passage once again shows that we must be amazed by Jesus. We must be amazed by His power and authority. He is taken away, showing once again, that He is not limited by the earthly physics or laws of nature (compare to Jesus’ walking on water: Matthew 14:28; calming the storm: Matthew 8:26; Mark 4:39; Luke 8:24; Jesus raises Lazarus: John 11:43).
    6. We must await Jesus’ coming again in the clouds.
    7. We must be a witness, knowing that the Holy Spirit has come upon us, and we have this power from above.
    8. We must be a witness, starting locally and going far.

Conclusion:

Piper writes:

Albert Einstein’s indictment of preachers illustrates what I am trying to say. Charles Misner, a scientific specialist in general relativity theory, was quoted this way:

I do see the design of the universe as essentially a religious question. That is, one should have some kind of respect and awe for the whole business.… It’s very magnificent and shouldn’t be taken for granted. In fact, I believe that is why Einstein had so little use for organized religion, although he strikes me as a basically very religious man. He must have looked at what the preachers said about God and felt that they were blaspheming. He had seen much more majesty than they had ever imagined, and they were just not talking about the real thing. My guess is that he simply felt that religions he’d run across did not have proper respect … for the author of the universe.6

This is devastating, because I cannot imagine that from our vantage point sixty years later preachers would seem to Einstein any more moved by greatness than they did then.

What’s wrong? There is a disconnect between the greatness of God and the emotional response of the preachers. To Einstein it looked as if they were not “talking about the real thing.” It felt so out of proportion to Einstein that it seemed like they were blaspheming. In other words, if here is a God of the sort that Christians say they believe in, you have dealings with him and respond as unemotionally as that.

Scientists know that light travels at the speed of 5.87 trillion miles a year. They also know the galaxy of which our solar system is a part is about 100,000 light-years in diameter—about 587 thousand trillion miles. It is one of about a million such galaxies in the optical range of our most powerful telescopes. In our galaxy there are about one hundred billion stars. The sun is one of them, a modest star burning at about 6,000 degrees centigrade on the surface and traveling in an orbit at 155 miles per second, which means it will take about two hundred million years to complete a revolution around the galaxy.

Scientists know these things. Einstein was awed by them. He felt something like this: “If there is a personal God, as the Christians say, who spoke this universe into being, then there is a certain respect and reverence and wonder and dread that would have to come through when we talk about him. And certainly we would be talking about him all the time since he is the most important reality.”[1]

Do you know Jesus?

God created us to be with him. (Genesis 1-2)

Our sin separated us from God. (Genesis 3)

Sins cannot be removed by good deeds (Gen 4-Mal 4)

Paying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again. (Matthew – Luke)

Everyone who trusts in him alone has eternal life. (John – Jude)

Life that’s eternal means we will be with Jesus forever. (Revelation 22:5)

Pray

6 Quoted in First Things (Dec. 1991): 63 (italics added).

[1] John Piper and Mark A. Noll, Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011), 194–195.

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