Well, we have young people. We have young people. There we
are. We've missed you. Good to have you back. Good to
have you back. Though I've still got to kind of keep my head looking
this way so it gets captured on the microphone. I'll glance
that way as often as I can. So we're looking at big events.
Big events. And everything about our Lord
Jesus Christ is a big event. Really, we could pick out everything
he did and say it's a big event, because the Lord Jesus is coming,
his ministry is the big event, the whole big event of all of
Scripture, that all its big events were leading up to this big event.
And every part of his ministry, everything he did is rich in
significance. It's full of meaning because
he didn't waste his time. And the whole plan was that everything
should reside in him, that he should have God's plan of salvation,
carry it forward to absolute fulfillment and completion. But
we've seen his life. We haven't seen his birth. We've
seen his death. We saw his resurrection. Now
we come to what we call his ascension. So we're this side of Easter,
I know, and ascension's the other side of Easter, that's a fact.
But these events are true for any day and every day. So having
been, and we say this, humiliated, a state of humiliation, that
is Christ in the flesh, Christ suffering, Christ being put to
death on the cross, Now it goes upwards. It's his exaltation
and it begins with his resurrection and then it continues upwards
and upwards and upwards. And our Lord, when he met Mary
Magdalene and she'd just come from the grave and she mistook
him for the gardener, she clung to him. And he said, do not cling
to me. Got to go to my father. And this
is his ascension, going up, going up to heaven. Heaven, how do
we understand heaven? Where is heaven? Well, that's
a dimension. That's a dimension to try to
think about. But for us, we always think of
going up. That's what he was going to do.
He's going to go up. And there was a lot going to
happen when he went up. But we're just staying with the
fact of him going up at the minute. So he took his disciples, having
been raised from the dead 40 days, going in and out among
them, teaching them about the kingdom of God, instructing them,
telling them things that were gonna happen that they needed
to be aware of, opening their minds a bit more to the Bible
so that when the spirit of God came upon them, they would be
there and ready. So he took them out to a little
village near Bethany and on the Mount of Olives, There he was,
blessing them, teaching them, still to the last minute. And
then he was taken up, went up from before them. There they
are, one moment, watching him, and their eyes are traveling
upwards. Can't do too much, we'll miss the microphone, but their
eyes go upwards. and he's received in a cloud, like the clouds that
we have that give rain and that sort of thing, the cloud of glory,
for where those clouds are like God's presence, that's his glory.
And so he's received into those clouds, into the glory of God,
and of course then disappeared, disappeared from their view.
They watched him go, and they were still looking up when an
angel told them, men of Galilee, Why are you standing, intently
looking up? That Jesus that you've just seen
go up will in like manner one day come back. And they were
basically told, you've got work to do. Don't stand looking in
the clouds. He's gone up and there's a lot
gonna happen because he's gone up into glory. That will wait
for another week, but it's good that his exaltation, him being
lifted up, so him having been lowered May, very humble in that
way. Now he's being lifted up because
God wants us all to know he's the one. Watch him. You want salvation? You want
your sins forgiven? He's the one. I'm very, very
pleased in him. Rose from the dead he did. taken
up to glory, taken up to heaven. God doesn't take people up to
heaven on a whim. There has to be something very
special just to have automatic right of entry. We haven't got
automatic right of entry. We need him. But look, there
he is, straight up received, and God was very, very pleased
to welcome him there. We'll find out next week a little
bit more about what happened when he was received in glory
and welcomed. So we have a hymn that takes
us to something of this, 255 in our hymn books, 255, Triumphant
Christ Descends on High.