Ascension: Jesus Reigns (Ephesians 1:15-23)

Hi, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning into Newsung Churches Podcast.

We're a biblically faithful, gospel-centered Anglican church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

You can learn more about us at Newsongportperry.ca.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

The second reading is from the first chapter of Ephesians, starting at the 15th verse.

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of heaven, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.

Not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

In our hearts, let's make Paul's prayer our own.

That he worked in Christ when he seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.

So, Lord Jesus, would you impress upon us by your word and Holy Spirit this truth?

That there is no higher place in the universe from which you can reign.

That you are our King today, and you are King for forever.

So, Lord Jesus, would we grasp a little bit more deeply, a little bit more clearly the reality of your kingship and what it is to be members of your kingdom?

Would that be our comfort?

Would that be your assurance today and every day?

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So what happens after Easter?

I'm not just talking about the uh bellyache we get from all the chocolate.

What happens when Jesus rises from the dead?

Does he say?

I heard one Sunday school uh student, what is the first thing Jesus said when he rose from the dead?

That was the question asked in Sunday school.

In the Sunday school child looks up and goes, ta-da! So that is great.

Having had his ta-da moment, so to speak, what does Jesus do?

Does he retire to Florida, get a nice little beach condo, and just live out the rest of his days until he, you know, dies at the end of his life?

Well, no.

We read in scripture that Christ, having been raised from the dead, will never die again.

Death no longer has dominion over him, right?

I was always a Superman fan growing up, so I love the image of bullets bouncing off a Superman.

It's like death just has no hold on Jesus.

It bounces off of him by way of his resurrection.

He can't die again.

Okay, so if he doesn't die again, then what does he do?

Does he, I don't know, wander the earth for the rest of his life?

Like, I don't know, Bill Bixby and The Incredible Hulk, just place to place to place?

No?

No Incredible Hulk fans?

Okay.

Sorry, that's two superhero references in like under a minute, so I'll pace myself, I promise.

One to go.

One to go.

Then I get cut.

Yeah.

What do we read in scripture?

We read that Jesus ascends.

That's what we've read in Acts this morning.

That's what Mike read for us from Acts chapter one.

This is the pivot point between Luke's first book, The Gospel of Luke, a biography of Jesus, and his sequel, the book of Acts, which is all about the early church and its mission.

The ascension is the hinge point, the pivot point for Luke, which makes it pretty significant.

But here's the question.

For those of us who read, you know, the passage on the ascension or thinking about it, maybe some questions come to mind.

Here's one question that comes to my mind.

Why would Jesus ascend?

Why wouldn't he just go back to Jerusalem and set up court?

I mean, imagine what the Christian faith would be like if generation to generation wasn't talking about Jesus' ascension, but it's just like you can go talk to Jesus in Jerusalem, like right now, you know.

Why is it that he ascends?

Well, if we've wondered that question, by the way, we're in good company because the disciples ask almost exactly that question.

I, you know, take their question that they asked Jesus to sort of betray what they're really after.

Acts 1, verse 6, they say, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?

Acts 1:6

You know, is this the time, Jesus, where you're going to set up your kingdom in the way that we expect you to?

You know, you're going to march into Jerusalem and take it back and this is it?

Well, Jesus has an interesting response to them, right?

What does he say?

He says, Well, it's not for you to know the times or the seasons that the Father is fixed by his own authority.

God's got a plan in mind.

Elsewhere, Jesus says to his disciples, when he tells them ahead of time that he's going to be going, he's going to be ascending back to the Father, he goes so far as to say to his disciples, It's to your advantage that I go in John chapter 16.

John 16 · chapter mention

That's very puzzling to me.

And it's puzzling to those of us who wonder why didn't Jesus just stick around.

What is advantageous about Jesus' ascension back to the Father?

Here's where I could preach three totally different sermons, uh, and I'm going to really try and pace myself here.

There's a few answers we can give to that question.

Why is it to our advantage that Jesus ascended?

Number one, there's the answer we find in the book of Acts, but also in John 16, when Jesus tells us it's to our advantage, it's because he is going to send the Holy Spirit.

And we're going to talk more about the significance of the coming of the Holy Spirit next Sunday when we celebrate Pentecost Sunday.

But Jesus desires to send the fullness of God's empowering presence to us.

And that happens when he first goes to heaven.

That's advantage number one.

Advantage number two, we read about in Hebrews chapter 8.

Hebrews 8 · chapter mention

When Jesus ascends into heaven, he ascends as the eternal priest who fulfills an everlasting priesthood.

All of the priests of the Old Testament lived and ministered and then died and then passed it on to the next generation and so on and so forth, but not Jesus.

Jesus dies once, and now death has no dominion over him.

And he doesn't just serve in an earthly temple, he goes into the heavenly temple, of which the earthly temple was really just a shadow and a copy.

Think about that.

In the most real sanctuary that there ever possibly can be in heaven itself, Jesus is our high priest right now, and he is praying for you and I.

Think about that for a second.

Jesus establishes a permanent priesthood in heaven.

Here's the third answer we could give to this question: why is it to our advantage?

This is what we're going to dive into this morning.

It's to our advantage that Jesus ascends, because now Jesus reigns.

He is our priest, and he is our king.

And there is no higher throne to which Jesus can ascend.

This is what we read about in Ephesians chapter 1.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

So open up your Bibles or open up your order of service to Ephesians chapter 1.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

That's page 917.

Here's what we're going to see in Ephesians chapter 1.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

It's a very interesting passage.

Ephesians chapter 1 is Paul's prayer for this congregation gathered in Ephesus.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

Paul is opening up his prayer journal, as it were, for this congregation and letting them know, here are the things I'm praying about for you.

And so we kind of have to walk through a couple of doors to where Jesus to get to what Paul wants to say about the ascension.

But let's just track with the order of this passage for a minute.

Let's just get a sense of its scope.

So Paul recognizes the Ephesians' faith and their love.

He gives thanks for them and he prays for them.

That's what he says, verses 15 and 16.

Verses 17 to 23, he answers the question, Paul, what are you praying for?

Well, let me tell you what I'm praying for, Paul the pastor says.

I'm praying that God would give you, number one, wisdom.

I'm praying, number two, that God would give you revelation, his own self-disclosure.

And number three, I'm praying that God would give you enlightenment, which is a very interesting word, illumination.

I don't know what images come to your mind when you think enlightenment, but I sort of think someone levitating on the top of a mountain is someone who's very enlightened.

Paul wants us to be enlightened today.

But it's a very interesting direction we as Christians go to find enlightenment.

Let's figure out where we go.

Again, here's all sorts of sermons we could preach.

What does Paul want us to be enlightened about?

Well, number one, the hope to which we've been called, verse 18.

Also, verse 18, the riches of God's glorious inheritance.

I think that suggests, by the way, that we are God's treasured inheritance.

God is ours, certainly, but we're also his, which is pretty wild to think about.

Okay, but number three, this is the door we want to go through.

What's Paul praying for?

That God would enlighten you concerning the immeasurable greatness of his power.

This word power gives us our word dynamic, dynamos, dynamic.

It's transforming power.

And it's power demonstrated in two ways, Paul says.

Number one, it's demonstrated in the resurrection.

That's what we celebrate on Easter, isn't it?

But number two, this is very interesting.

What does Paul pair with Easter?

Ah, he pairs Ascension Sunday.

This is power demonstrated in Jesus ascending on high.

How does he put it?

The power that he worked when Christ was, pardon me, when God seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, verse 20, verse 21, far above all rule, authority, power, and dominion and every name that's to be named, etc., etc.

God's immeasurable power is displayed in the resurrection, that's true, but it's also displayed in the ascension.

And what does the ascension show us?

It shows us two things.

Here's what I want us to zoom in on Jesus reigns over the cosmos, and Jesus reigns over the church.

This is where Jesus' ascension, his reigning, his kingdom is being made known.

In the cosmos we live in and in the church we worship in.

So Paul's prayer for these Ephesian Christians, I hope, is our prayer today, that God would enlighten us to the power he demonstrates in his ascension, so that we can know Christ who reigns over the cosmos and over the church.

Okay.

Let's dive into that first one.

Jesus reigns over the cosmos.

Verse 21.

What do we mean by cosmos?

Jesus reigns far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but in the age to come.

I'm going to pause there.

So we're catching that sense of far above, right?

We're catching that sense of there is no higher place to which Jesus can be exalted.

We're not strictly speaking spatially, you know, in terms of three dimensions.

We're talking in terms of authority.

There is no greater authority to which Christ can ascend.

He rules over everything, every rule, authority, power, dominion.

This word dominion, by the way, really key Bible word, isn't it?

Maybe it triggers in our minds Genesis chapter 1, where God creates human beings in his image, men and women.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

And then what does he do?

He gives them dominion.

Let them have dominion, God says, over the sea, pardon me, fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, over the livestock over the earth, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

Human beings are meant to be God's vice-regents in his good creation.

We're meant to exercise dominion not just for our good, but for God's glory and the good of all creation.

And yet we know that the human story in Genesis chapter 3 goes from glory to tragedy.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Our first parents choose to reject God's calling and substitute their own, their own self-determined good or determined good and evil for themselves, I should say.

So what's happening here is Jesus is becoming.

Jesus is ascending to a place where he can exercise a sort of dominion that both restores humanity to God's original design, exercising dominion for the good of all creation, but even beyond that, not just of the world we live in, all of the universe.

This is an amazing act of restoration that Jesus is doing in the life of our humanity as he assumes the place of supreme honor and executive authority.

And I take these authorities, powers, dominions to refer to demonic forces or whatever forces of evil would oppose Jesus' reign.

Now it's true in the resurrection, all forces of evil are defeated.

Death has been defeated.

It's a defeated enemy, but it's not an enemy that's conceded defeat yet.

We still skirmish with evil, don't we?

We still skirmish with death.

We anticipate that day when things will be fully realized, when God's promise and the resurrection will be fully realized and death will be no more.

For now we skirmish with an enemy that is defeated but not conceded.

Paul goes on to say, it's not just that Jesus is reigning over everything, it's that he reigns for all time.

Did you notice that?

Not only in this age, Paul says, but also in the age to come.

Charles Dickens writes a book, uh, Tale of Two Cities.

You could describe the Bible as a book of two ages.

The Bible divides time into this present age that we live in and the age to come.

In this present age, God is certainly at work by grace.

God has worked our salvation, God has worked his redemption.

He is reigning through Christ as king over everything, and yet the fullness of his reign is yet to be completely realized.

We live in this kind of already not yet tension, don't we?

But in the age to come, Christ's glorious reign will be fully realized.

This is what we're saying together in the creed, isn't it?

That he will come again in glory and judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We're anticipating.

We're on a pilgrimage towards that age to come, aren't we?

For now we live in the shadow of this retreating enemy of sin and death.

Very interesting.

Romans 12, 1 is a very well-known verse.

Don't conform to, uh pardon me, there um do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

This word that gets translated world is this same Greek word that gets translated as age.

That's very interesting.

Don't be conformed to the ways of this age, but always live in mind of the age to come.

We as Christians are called to live in such a way that we are anticipating the fullness of the realization of salvation, the fullness of God's kingdom, live now as things will be then.

That's how we live as Christians.

So Paul summarizes this whole idea that Jesus reigns over the whole of the cosmos by saying, verse 22, God put all things under Christ's feet.

If we remember Psalm 110, we know uh the psalmist writes, I don't have it in my notes.

We we know that the psalmist writes that uh God has put the Messiah's, all things under the Messiah's feet, under his rule.

This is the fulfillment of that promise in the Psalms.

Are you looking it up, Rachel?

Shout it out for us.

Verse 1.

The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your way.

What's Paul saying?

That's been fulfilled.

Thank you, Rachel, for reading that.

Well done.

Our Messiah King is come.

Now, this presents a problem to some of us who know what it is to still skirmish with sin and with death.

But we still know what it is to live with diagnosis and catastrophe.

We know what it is to age and see our body deteriorate.

And we might wonder when we turn on the news, is Jesus really reigning as King?

Is this really what I'm seeing right now?

And the Bible does not give us a mathematical equation to figure this problem out.

It gives us something more important, which is this it's a promise.

It's a promise that the evil and death we experience in this age will one day be past tense.

This is not to be counted against Christ's reigning.

It is to cause us to anticipate the day when his reign will be fully known.

But, friends, this gives us great comfort, I think.

Comfort to those of us who know what it is to grieve the effects of sin and death.

But also comfort to us who know the anxiety of forces that oppose the goodness and truth of God.

I mean, there's so many videos that bounce around TikTok, and I see these videos, or I get sent these videos from time to time.

And sometimes I worry that we Christians, we are anxious in a way that we need not be anxious.

We are anxious in a way that forgets that Christ really does sit on the throne right now.

And that's not to say that there isn't evil in the world.

That isn't to say we shouldn't be concerned citizens.

It doesn't mean we shouldn't take action.

It can mean all of those things, but as Christians, we are always centered in this reality that Christ will not be overthrown.

There is no power of evil that will overcome the one who has overcome evil itself.

And there is no power of death that can push back on Christ's kingdom.

So, friends, this can guard us against the sort of anxiety that says we could lose the whole game at any moment.

That's not true.

If Christ is risen and Christ is ascended, there is no more secure place to be than in Christ.

So we can guard against anxiety.

You know, I have a friend who's involved in um spiritual warfare, deliverance ministries, and he's very careful with what he shares about me.

But, you know, he shares with me this one fact.

He says, you know, Creighton, theology really matters when you do uh deliverance, you know, when when forces of evil are in work in a particular way, in a powerful way in someone's life, and you pray that those would be expelled, right?

Exercised.

And he says it matters that we believe that Jesus reigns presently.

Because if we have a theology that says Jesus will reign someday, then all the best you can say to demons is like, please don't, you know.

No, what he says, what you need to say is Christ is king, so go back to hell.

It matters in our own lives.

We need to preach that gospel to ourselves.

Jesus reigns.

Jesus reigns.

That doesn't cure all anxieties, but it does center us to the truth of the gospel, doesn't it?

Jesus reigns over all the cosmos.

That's what Paul wants us to know.

He wants it to hearten us, to secure us.

We can see God's power at work in it.

Jesus reigns over the cosmos, but he also reigns over the church.

And this is amazing.

Verse 22.

We've just read that God put all things under Christ's feet and gave him, that is Christ, as head over all things to what?

The church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

God gave Christ as head over all things to the church.

Christ is our head.

And what does that mean?

I think it means at least two things.

Number one, what does a head do relative to the rest of the body?

Should give the body some direction, shouldn't it?

It's the brain that's sort of calling the shots and the body that's working them out, isn't it?

In that sense, Jesus is the head of us, our ecclesial body, right?

But a head can also mean like a representative, right?

You think of the head of a company who represents the rest of her company or whatever else.

Or you send a head, you send a representative.

Christ is also our representative as the new Adam, the one who represents humanity and a renewed humanity before God.

Christ is our head as a representative, a high priest before God.

God has given Christ as though he were.

Or a gift to the church.

And he has the technical term is, are you ready for this?

Recapitulated us.

He has given us a new head.

Adam, our first head, failed.

But in every way that Adam, our first head, failed, Christ has restored us.

Even more than that, he is glorifying us.

Christ is our head.

He's given him as head to us, the church.

And we might ask, what is the church, right?

Other translations, more literal translations, might say an ecclesia or a gathering or something like that.

What are we talking about when we talk about the church?

Paul has at least two things in mind here.

What is the church?

Number one, it's Christ's body.

Verse 23, did you see that?

It is his body.

Now think about that for a second.

Because I don't think Paul is merely talking in figurative language here.

I think there's something very real, something very organic there.

And I think Paul knows that very, very well because you'll remember one of the very first things that Jesus said to him, right?

When Paul was formerly known as Saul and he spent his nine to five persecuting the church, right?

Putting Christians to death, when he encounters Jesus, that life-transforming encounters Jesus on the road to Damascus, what is it that Jesus says to him?

Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

His answer was not, no, no, I'm not persecuting you, I'm going after the church.

Jesus' point is very clear there, isn't it?

His church is part of his body.

And so before the church is an institution, and yes, the church is an institution, but before it's that, it's an organism, right?

We are spiritually, vitally united with Christ by the Holy Spirit.

We are his body, which means we are also Christ's presence here in earth.

That's what Christians are meant to be.

By way of our baptism, our incorporation into Christ, we now live out Christ's presence as his body here on earth.

And so when we gather saints as a church, as a local body, we are gathering as a body of Christ to bear witness to our head and to delight ourselves in him.

People tell me that it's, you know, when we're the seats are full, we have a full church on a Sunday morning.

You know, there's something just so wonderful about that.

And it's true, you know, there's an energy to a large concert or something like that, but I think there's more than that going on in the church.

When the body of the church gathers together in its fullness, it's like we're bringing the fullness to Christ to bear one to another.

And there is a fullness, a diversity, a joy, a liveliness to Christ when we all of us as his people gather together, as we're called to do.

We are Christ's presence toward one another and towards the world.

And that's an interesting way, by the way, of think of thinking about the Lord's Supper.

Because we we puzzle a lot over how is the Lord Jesus present to us exactly in the Lord's Supper.

And there might be many things to say about this, but there's certainly this to say about it.

When we think about Christ's presence, when we think about what's happening in the Lord's Supper, it's not just that Jesus is, you know, present to us in bread and wine, but he is communicating to us the reality that we are his body as we participate in him in this sacrament.

And so once again, I am missing my quote.

But tell you what, I've got my note, I've got my book right here, which is very exciting.

Wonderful little read, by the way, Eucharistic participation for those who are a little bit more theologically inclined.

Listen to what this theologian, uh, Adok theologian, by the way, uh, says about uh the purpose of the Lord's Supper.

He says the purpose of the Eucharist or the Lord's Supper is not the change of the elements or whatever else we think may happen in connection with the elements.

No, he says this: the purpose is not ultimately the change of the bread.

The ultimate reality, the ultimate purpose is our change, not that of the elements.

He writes this the purpose is that we may be changed into the body of Christ.

What's the Lord's Supper doing?

It is bearing witness to the fact that we ourselves, by the word, by the Holy Spirit, are being transformed more and more into the body of Christ, who bears witness to our head.

That's something we delight in.

That's something we glory in.

And it's something that we do every time we come to the Lord's table.

What is the church?

It is his body.

The church is also the fullness of Christ, is what Paul says in the rest of verse 23, which is a very curious phrase.

You could interpret it at least two ways.

You could say that the church is the fullness of Christ in that Christ considers himself to be incomplete without the church, which might be true in a way and is pretty wild to think about, or that the church is filled with the glory and presence of Christ.

Either way, Christ and his church are not separable.

These are not Lego bricks, you just pop off one another from time to time.

Christ and his church always go together.

And so when the Lord Jesus looks at us at New Song, or he looks at his church as we gather around the world today, the Lord Jesus sees something that is not separate and apart and distant from himself.

He is looking at his own body.

So church reformer John Calvin puts it this way: he's explaining this word fullness.

It's as if a father should say, My house seems empty to me when I don't see my child in it.

Or a husband will say, I seem to be only half a man when my wife when my wife is not with me.

Husbands, we understand that feeling, right?

After the same manner, God says that he does not consider himself full except by gathering us to himself and by making us all one with himself.

What's he saying there?

God looks at us and says, You complete me.

Not by necessity, God is full and perfect in his nature, but God is glad to look at us and says, It is my joy to welcome you in.

It is my joy not to consider you separate and apart, but a part of my very body.

And this is the privilege of gathering as the church, isn't it?

We have the privilege of delighting ourselves as his body in our head, to be filled with the fullness of Christ, and to fill Christ.

So, friends, you know, I remember being a young theology student.

I remember being scandalized by this uh early Christian, uh Cyprian of Carthage, who wrote, um, he wrote this sentence, I wonder how this lands on you.

He wrote, There is no salvation outside of the church.

I remember being scandalized by that, because I was a Bible-believing Christian, and I thought, hold on, that sounds like you're adding something to scripture, right?

I'm saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, right?

And it's certainly not to say that God is impotent to save anyone unless they've entered the doors of a church, but that's not what Cyprian is saying.

If we take what Paul is saying here seriously, that the church is his body, and that we are saved by way of the body of Jesus given for us.

And if these things are inseparable, then to think about the reality of our salvation, we by necessity have to reckon with the reality of his church.

Right?

We're not saying God is impotent to save someone who's never been to church, but we are saying we cannot break these things off like they're Lego bricks.

Christ and his church go together.

And when we gather, we delight ourselves in our Savior who secures our salvation.

Christ reigns over the church, his body, his fullness.

And that makes church more than just a good idea, doesn't it?

It makes it essential, makes it delightful.

Because we gather to find our joy in Christ.

Friends, Jesus reigns over the cosmos, over the church.

God's power is being made known in Christ's ascension, in his reign over all things, visible and invisible, in this present age and in the age to come.

So, friends, if you'd like to be spiritually enlightened, don't feel like you've got to levitate today.

Look to Christ.

Look to his ascension.

Find your assurance and the reality of his reign over all things and over your life, and you will find no greater way to be assured that the outcome of all of history and the outcome of your life is a sure thing, and that you will live and reign with Christ forever in his kingdom.

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's word today.

If you live in the area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 AM.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

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Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.