Scripture Acts
1:1-11
STORY:
Meeting Jesus on a path in the woods and coming to a fork in the road.
In my former book, Theophilus, (End of Luke 24:39 Look at my
hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have
flesh and bones, as you see I have." Luke 24:50-51 When he had led them out to the vicinity of
Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them,
he left them and was taken up into heaven.) I wrote about all that Jesus
began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving
instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he showed
himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He
appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of
God. 4 On one occasion, while he was eating
with them, he gave them this command: "Do not
leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard
me speak about. 5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be
baptized with the Holy Spirit."
6 So when they met
together, they asked him, "Lord, are you at
this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" 7 He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has
set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you;
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to
the ends of the earth."
9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a
cloud hid him from their sight.
10 They were looking
intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in
white stood beside them. 11 "Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same
Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way
you have seen him go into heaven."
5 year old understands where Jesus is
“But I believe in Jesus too,” a five-year-old said to her father,
unconvinced by his explanation why she couldn’t have some of the bread and
juice during communion at church.
Here is how
the father recounts that story:
We had slipped out of the service after
I received the elements because she became rowdy with questions. I led her a
little bit away from the crowd and knelt down to meet her eye to eye. My hands
were on her shoulders, posturing to seize the moment, until my unsatisfactory
answer quickly led to a bigger talk as she continued her case.
Now staring off in her own thoughts, she
replied, “Dad, I believe in Jesus, but I mean,
I’ve never seen him before. I’ve never heard how he talks.”
This wasn’t a crisis. She was just
stating a fact. It actually came off a little bashfully, as if her faith might
not be as credible as mine because she’s never seen Jesus or heard his voice.
She was thinking out in the open, not realizing that her uninhibited inquiry
actually gets at heart of what we are doing here, of what it means to be
Christian in this world. What was fresh to a five-year-old mind is something, I
think, too few of us stop to consider. It’s the fact that we love and talk
about a person with a blaring dissimilarity to everyone else we love and talk
about, and that is, he’s not here. We’ve never seen Jesus.
Jesus Is Not Here
This is not a problem and it’s nothing
new. Believing in the Jesus we have not seen is an early-established staple of
the Christian life (1 Peter 1:8 Though
you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now,
you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy).
But what occurred to me in that conversation with my daughter was how this
truth is much more obvious to a little girl than to me, to many of us, I would
guess. The reality strikes her that our lives revolve around a real person who
is alive but unreachable. She doesn’t dismiss the fact he’s not here. Right
now, Jesus really is away (John 14:28-29 "You heard me say, 'I am going away and I am
coming back to you.' If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the
Father, for the Father is greater than I. I have told you now before it
happens, so that when it does happen you will believe.”) — and
that’s important.
Jesus
is also with us, as he said, in the sense of his Spirit. (Matt 28:18-20 Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey
everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very
end of the age.”)
But
the ministry of the Spirit isn’t the physical presence of Jesus. I wonder if we
(myself at least), because of the Spirit, assume Jesus is around in the wrong
ways. That’s why we’re okay with illustrations of Jesus sitting in the pews of
our churches. Or with the image of Jesus meeting us on a path in the woods. But
these images are wrong. Jesus is not a disembodied spirit who shows up when he
wants…or when we want. The truth for us
to remember is that The Father is God, Jesus is God, and the Spirit is God, but
Jesus is not the Spirit or the Father. The Father is not Jesus or the Spirit.
The Spirit is not Jesus or the Father. They are one and the same. They are one
but not the same! And that means, at least for the past 2,000+ years, Jesus has
not been making footprints in the sand.
Seated in the Heavenly Places
So if not here, where?
Where is Jesus? The Bible tells us that Jesus is seated at the right hand of the
Father in the heavenly places:
Eph 1:20-21
…which he exerted in Christ when he
raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly
realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title
that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.
Luke 22:69
But from now on, the Son of Man will
be seated at the right hand of the mighty God.
Acts 2:32-34
God has raised this Jesus to life,
and we are all witnesses of the fact. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has
received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you
now see and hear.
Rom 8:34-35
Who is he that condemns? Christ
Jesus, who died — more than that, who was raised to life — is at the right hand
of God and is also interceding for us.
Col 3:1-4
Since, then, you have been raised
with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right
hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you
died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is
your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Heb 1:3-4
The Son is the radiance of God's
glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his
powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the
right hand of the Majesty in heaven.
And his being there is
good news.
Why?
Jesus
is the ascended priest, king, and man, fulfilling the glory of humanity for
which we were created. The ascension matters for our salvation because if
Jesus’s sacrifice is to be effective and his kingship is to be real and his
humanity is to be glorified, he must be ascended and seated at the right
hand of the Father.
Ephesians 1:18-23
I pray also that the
eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to
which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,
and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the
working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him
from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far
above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be
given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed
all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the
church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every
way.
And
here’s the part that’s literally out of this world: we are ascended with him.
Just a few verses later, in Ephesians 2:6, Paul tells us that when God saved
us in Christ he actually raised us up with him and seated us with him in the
heavenly places. Right now, united to Jesus by faith, we are spiritually seated
with him at the Father’s right hand.
Eph 2:1-10
As for you, you were dead in your
transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways
of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now
at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one
time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires
and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.
4 But because of his great love for
us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead
in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved.
6 And God raised us up with Christ
and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order
that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace,
expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have
been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of
God— not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God's workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us
to do.
Where
is Jesus? In heaven at the right hand of God the Father. We are there with him,
by the Spirit. Jesus continues His work through the church by the power and
presence of the Holy Spirit.
John
14:12-17
I tell you the truth,
anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even
greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do
whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You
may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. "If you love me, you
will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you
another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot
accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he
lives with you and will be in you.
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