The Ascension of Jesus


Sermon Notes: The Ascension of Jesus. Acts Chapter 1:1-11

What is the Ascension of JESUS? We know that it is something that happened to JESUS after His Resurrection and before the coming of the Holy Spirit – 10 days before Pentecost on Ascension Thursday. 40 days after Easter is when Jesus leaves His disciples here on earth and in His human body ascends up into the heavens to take His place at the Father’s right hand.

The Ascension marks the completion of Jesus’ earthly work. And what was His earthly work? It was to come and provide a sacrifice for our sin, so that we could be forgiven and enter into an eternal heaven through the doorway of the Cross.

John 4:34, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent Me and to finish His work. I’ve come to finish the work.’ And when He did finish the work He said from the Cross, ‘It is finished.’

After 33 years away, now the Father receives His Son JESUS back to glory.

The Ascension is the Father saying, ‘I validate, I approve everything that my Son did in His life on earth, His death and through His Resurrection, and now raised to My Right hand on high. He is restored to limitless intimacy with His Father.

If JESUS is taken up through the clouds in his Resurrected Body, He is going to a real place called Heaven. It is NOT a myth or a crutch. Heaven is for real people.

Jesus tells us in John 14:1-6, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said, ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way? Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me.’

So, Jesus tells us that Heaven is a real place where He is going, and where He is going to prepare for us, who love and follow Him. Sometimes people laugh at Christians, they think it’s all pie in the sky. But JESUS tells us plainly that Heaven is a Real place. It’s a prepare place for a prepare people.

Acts 7:55-56, ‘But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Look, he said, ‘I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’

Stephen the first martyr sees Jesus standing at God’s Right Hand in Heaven – a real visible place. It’s like putting on 3D glasses – you see a different dimension that is there all along.

When we believe in Heaven we are believing in a real place – a real world and not some crutch for emotionally weak people. Heaven is Real and JESUS is there.

The story of the Ascension is the story of our Saviour JESUS who is the glorious, victorious, totally undisputed, Conqueror and King of Heaven and earth. How does that change things for us? What things would change? What difference would it make?

It would totally change our perspective on our troubles here on earth. It would give us a new God given confidence, boldness, conviction, joy in the middle of those troubles we have here on earth. Jesus the King of Heaven, seated at the Father’s right hand – He is all powerful – He is interceding for us, His Church on the battlefields of earth.

What an incredible future for every child of God.