The Necessity and Profit of the Right Understanding of Ascension Day

Dear readers, if it pleases the Lord to spare us, we will this month commemorate Ascension Day. In the Netherlands our denomination and some others have a service in the morning and some also in the afternoon. It is a holiday for the entire country, but then mostly for sports events. Combined with Friday, Saturday, and the first day of the week, the Lord's day, it is called a long weekend. This neglects the fact that the Lord's day is the beginning of the week and is a day of rest.

Because of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, a change came for the Jewish people, so that the churches come together on the first day of the week to hear the preaching of God's Word, to collect the gifts for the service of the Lord, and to rest from our slavish labors. In addition, for those in whose heart true, saving faith has been planted, it is the beginning of the eternal Sabbath. What a blessing is given by the Lord on His day.

A Sabbath well spent,
brings a week of content,
And health for the toils
of the morrow;
But a Sabbath profaned,
whate'er may be gained,
Is a certain forerunner of sorrow.

However, it is not our intention to speak about the Lord's day, but about Christ's ascension. As we know, this took place forty days after His resurrection. He ascended actually, visibly, and locally. This was prefigured in the Old Testament when the ark was brought to Jerusalem (Psalms 24, 47, and 68), and was foretold by Him during His sojourn upon earth: “For the poor always ye have with you; but Me ye have not always” (John 12:8), and “But now I go My way to Him that sent Me” (John 16:5). There is another text in John 17:11: “And I come to Thee.” It was also foretold by Him in the text at the beginning of this meditation: “What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before?”

Every year you hear the preaching about it, and hopefully you also read about it in your homes. However, can we understand it?

Why is this text in the form of a question? To answer this, look in your Bible and see what is written a few verses before, where we also see a question mark. There many of His disciples said, “This is an hard saying; who can hear it?” That hard saying, which was hard in their ears and understanding, was the statement of the Lord Jesus about eating His flesh and drinking His blood, and that they who do so have eternal life. Yes, when we take that literally, or, as in verse 63, “in the flesh,” then it is a hard saying. Then it is true, “Who can hear it?”

Christ answered them, understanding, as the all-knowing God, God and Man in one Person, their inward resistance against the words He had spoken. He also understood what they did not realize, namely, Satan's hidden activity to stir them up in their misinterpretation, with no other purpose than to keep the preciousness of Jesus Christ for a lost sinner as hidden as possible. All this caused Christ to say, “Doth this offend you?” Then He would make it still more difficult, more impossible, for He said, “What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before? Can you not understand what it means to eat My flesh and drink My blood, and to what a great eternal profit this will be for your poor souls? What then when you will be an eyewitness of a human body, in which is a human soul, lifted up before your eyes without seeing a hand or a cord or anything that draws this body on high from the earth? What and if you shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before?”

Reader, have you seen it already? What was the effect? Every year you hear the preaching about it, and hopefully you also read about it in your homes. However, can we understand it? But is that not also true in regard to His birth, His sojourn upon earth with all the wonders which He performed, His crucifixion, and His resurrection? When Paul wrote to Timothy in the first epistle, chapter 3, verse 16, he said, “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” And the Lord Jesus, following verse 62, said, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”

Oh, reader, His ascension was just as necessary as His birth. From the place to which He would ascend, that place where He was before, He would send to His church the Spirit that quickeneth, to fill that empty place which there would be after His bodily departure from them. Think of what He said to Mary Magdalene in John 20:17. But it was to their profit that He would leave them, for otherwise the Comforter could not come. By His sending the Holy Spirit only ten days later, they would learn the profitable lesson to walk and to live by faith, not having any longer a bodily, visible, and present Jesus, but that same Person now for them at the right hand of the Father. There they are in Him already as their spiritual Head, and therefore they are to seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God, setting their affection on things above, not on things of the earth.

Read of this in Colossians 3:1-2, but also read that which is so comforting in verse 3: “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” And then read further. Oh, that mortification of the flesh out o f the understanding of His ascension will be such a defeat for Satan and the old man. But then it is so necessary to believe His ascension, as it is also an article of our faith. The fact that the disciples returned to Jerusalem with great joy after they had seen His ascension and the angels had spoken to them is a clear proof that they had received that faith in regard to His ascension.

As you know, the essence of faith consists of knowledge, assent, and trust. Do we now also see that every facet of the particulars of salvation gives a deeper knowledge of Him, who He is, and how He restores the church to God? Did not Paul say in Romans 8:34, “Yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us”? But do we then also understand that we will never go directly from His birth to His ascension, and that it all needs to be given us to understand all these things experimentally for our souls? There are steps in grace, just as there are steps in Christ's humiliation and exaltation; but then we will learn that every step has its own profit for our soul.

Does this offend you? Does it offend you that without that quickening Spirit we will never understand it? Let it not be so, but pray the Lord for the working of that Spirit as you listen on Ascension Day to your minister or to the elder reading a sermon on that occasion. Realize that we have brought ourselves into that deep darkness and ignorance in which we with our children are lying by nature. It is a time that the spiritual understanding of Ascension Day is very scarce, yet it is so precious and profitable. Oh, pray the Lord for that Spirit's enlightening work in your life.

It is from that place where His ascension brought Him that He will come again. One step of His exaltation is yet unfulfilled, namely, His coming to judge the quick and the dead. Happy is that people who may expect Him from thence. “Blessed is that servant, whom his Lord when He cometh shall find so doing” (Luke 12:43).

Young people, the world is at war with God, and upon this world there are wars and rumors of war. Many of our young men and women are involved in it. May the Lord remember them and their dear ones. But may He also teach you to go in His ways. As we already mentioned, in the Netherlands Ascension Day is for thousands a day for the flesh. They are offended by every warning they receive. Is that also your case? Or are there among you those who may have a desire to know the Lord, to please Him, and to obey Him, but do not know how?

Oh, understand and believe that through the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ the heart of the Father is opened to receive sinners, just as the father did in the parable of the prodigal son. All of you have been baptized in the Name of a Triune God, and it was as a fruit of the ascension that the Holy Spirit came. As a fruit of that coming, a Triune God was known by the disciples and many thousands more, as we read in the book of Acts. What a blessed time that was for the church of those days. Now you, as young people, live with us in such another time spiritually, yet the Lord is still the same. Seek Him while it is still the time of grace, the time to be converted. This is also true in dark times, such as the present time.

People of God, think about the text quoted from Romans 8, “Yea rather,” may it become Ascension Day in your life. Then God will receive the honor and your soul the eternal profit. So be it.

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