Today especially we celebrate the ascension of Jesus, a date marked out 40 days after his resurrection, when he departed from earth and returned bodily to heaven (Luke 24:50–53, Acts 1:9–11). Three helps in learning/relearning/delighting in the this wondrous part of Christ’s redemptive work.

1.) On first glance, Jesus rising up in the clouds may seem like something out of a Monty Python skit. It’s perhaps a little difficult to understand, maybe even a little bizarre to grasp, and even more difficult to apply. And yet the ascension of Jesus carries with it a full range of implications for our lives, something we discover in today’s episode of the Authors on the Line podcast.

2.) Jim Packer (dude was en fuego when he wrote Concise Theology)

While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. LUKE 24:51

Jesus’ ascension was his Father’s act of withdrawing him from his disciples’ gaze upward (a sign of exaltation) into a cloud (a sign of God’s presence). This was not a form of space travel, but part two (the Resurrection being part one) of Jesus’ return from the depths of death to the height of glory. Jesus foretold the Ascension (John 6:62; 14:2, 12; 16:5, 10, 17, 28; 17:5; 20:17), and Luke described it (Luke 24:50-53; Acts 1:6-11). Paul celebrated it and affirmed Christ’s consequent lordship (Eph. 1:20; 4:8-10; Phil. 2:9-11; 1 Tim. 3:16), and the writer of Hebrews applied this truth for encouragement of the fainthearted (Heb. 1:3; 4:14; 9:24). The fact that Jesus Christ is enthroned as master of the universe should be of enormous encouragement to all believers.

The Ascension was from one standpoint the restoration of the glory that the Son had before the Incarnation, from another the glorifying of human nature in a way that had never happened before, and from a third the start of a reign that had not previously been exercised in this form. The Ascension establishes three facts:

1. Christ’s personal ascendancy.     2. Christ’s spiritual omnipresence.     3. Christ’s heavenly ministry.               (Ascension article by Packer)

3.) A prayer

Nope.

I don’t find my heart resonating with Paul’s.

Thanksgiving as a primal and primary response to the Christians that He knows? How I needed (need, and will need) to hear Paul’s words in Philippians
I thank God upon every remembrance of you.

I was helped by this reflection by Jim Boice:
Isn’t it interesting that the first word of Paul’s prayer in his various letters involve thanksgiving? Paul did this:

— with the church in Philippi (1:3) where there was MUCH to be thankful about

–with the church in Rome (Romans 1:8) whom he had not yet met

— with the church in Corinth (1 Cor.1:4) who were behaving badly as Christians and causing Paul much distress.

In his prayers Paul always thanked God for the evidence of spiritual blessings among Christians. Although Paul was sensitive to the problems in his churches, he was even more sensitive to the mercies of God. He knew people’s hearts. He knew that there is no good in man that can satisfy God. He knew that Christians live a great deal of their lives in the flesh instead of in the Spirit. He knew that we all fall short of what God would like us to be. But Paul also was acquainted with God’s grace and he gloried in it. He knew that God has provided wonderfully for His children—for their salvation and for their constant and continuing growth in the Christian life. Consequently, Paul was continually thankful for these things.   –James Montgomery Boice was a minister of 10th Presbyterian Church in Philly last century

Oh God, work it in me, work it in all of us.

In the Fall we prayed and nominated.
In the Winter we prayed and trained.
Today we prayed and elected an elder and deacons.

All the men received majority votes and will be ordained and installed on May 19. See their names and bios.

Part of God making a person a saint–setting them apart—is His promise and power to grant new desires and abilities that FAR transcend a little improvement.

cue the Lewis quote about horses

‘Niceness’—wholesome, integrated personality—is an excellent thing. We must try by every medical, educational, economic, and political means in our power to produce a world where as many people as possible grow up ‘nice’; just as we must try to produce a world where all have plenty to eat. But we must not suppose that even if we succeeded in making everyone nice we should have saved their souls. A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world—and might even be more difficult to save.
    For mere improvement is not redemption, though redemption always improves people even here and now and will, in the end, improve them to a degree we cannot yet imagine. God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man. It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature. Of course, once it has got its wings, it will soar over fences which could never have been jumped and thus beat the natural horse at its own game. But there may be a period, while the wings are just beginning to grow, when it cannot do so: and at that stage the lumps on the shoulders—no one could tell by looking at them that they are going to be wings—may even give it an awkward appearance.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952; Harper Collins: 2001) 215-216.

Sunday during our Communion service we will profess our faith using the Nicene Creed.

“The Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds challenge every generation of the world church:
do you still stand with us on the Trinity?
on the Incarnation?
on the second coming of our Lord, and the Christian hope?
If not, why not?

Are not our positions scriptural?

Go to the Bible and see. And if you find they are, will you not labour to teach and stress and defend these things in your day, as we did in ours.”

–JI Packer