Lifted to Reign | Psalm 110 & Acts 1 | The Mission of the Risen King
Watch This Message on the Ascension
Too often, we treat the Ascension of Jesus as a quiet conclusion to His earthly ministry. But Scripture paints a different picture. In this message, Pastor Mark walks through Acts 1:1–11 and Psalm 110 to show that the Ascension is the launch pad of Christ’s reign and the beginning of the church’s Spirit-empowered mission. The risen Christ is not distant—He is reigning now, calling us to worship, witness, and work until He returns.
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Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon from First Reformed Church in Edgerton, Minnesota. Each week we dig into God's Word, trusting that the Holy Spirit will continue the good work of sanctification in us. I can remember as a child being fascinated with rocket launches. And I don't know how often they broadcasted those events back then, But it wasn't something that you saw every day. We couldn't go watch the latest SpaceX rocket go into orbit on YouTube like you can now. Now it's almost common. I just randomly saw one of the rocket booster that can land itself so it's not wasted yesterday. I wasn't looking for it. It was just there. It's common now.
But back then, I was just fascinated with it. A long metal tube with enough fire blasting out the bottom of it is able to break the Earth's gravitational pull. That is quite a sight to see. As it leaves the launch pad, your eyes are fixed on following the rocket as it ascends. And the cameras would follow its path until it was out of view. And while there is elation as the vessel begins the ascent, there is a time of quiet as the people who are observing anticipate a successful departure from our atmosphere. There's a tension as the crowd waits and hopes that the rocket has reached orbit so that the real mission can begin. The launch is not the mission. The mission is what happens after the launch.
And as far as our personal experiences, that's probably the closest I can come to understanding what it might have been like to watch Jesus ascend into heaven. You have some excitement when the constraints of gravity are broken, right? Jesus is ascending. This is a fascinating thing. But as it continues, I think you would stand there in awed silence as he slowly leaves your sight. And the account that Luke gives us in Acts doesn't have the disciples cheering in celebration. They're just standing there. It's like if those involved in a rocket launch are just standing in awe at the launch pad in.
Once Jesus moved beyond the limits of their vision, what did they need? They had an angelic visitors, two in fact, to snap them back into reality. What are you doing just standing around? There's work to do. The mission has begun. So this past Thursday, as I mentioned, was 40 days after the resurrection, and that is the number of days that passed before Jesus ascended into heaven. So this Sunday, we take a moment to remember that event because it's essential to our understanding of the gospel.
Now, I think for us, the ascension becomes kind of an afterthought. We read what Luke gives us in the first chapter of Acts and our minds naturally go to the idea of his returning in the same manner in which he departed. I believe we neglect the idea of the in-between. We think about the ascent and the descent and forget this period of time that is right now. And I believe we neglect that to the detriment of our faith. It's important to our faith that Jesus is reigning right now. It impacts how we view the world. We focus on His absence and wonder why He hasn't come back yet. Rightfully so. We think, what could He possibly be doing? What is He waiting for? Why hasn't He come back yet?
Our earthbound minds, we focus on the absence of Jesus, but that isn't the focus of the New Testament. The ascension of Jesus isn't about His being separated from His people. Instead, the point of this whole story is about His authority. It's about His reign. It's about the fulfillment of what we just read in Psalm 110, that the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until your enemies are made a footstool. It's fulfilled. The Messiah has come. He is reigning.
Jesus wasn't abandoning the disciples on that day. He was lifted to reign. And it's from that exalted position that the once fearful disciples of Jesus, they go out with a message of salvation after Pentecost and they bring the gospel to the ends of the earth. The absence of Jesus doesn't weaken his messengers. You'd think it would. but instead it empowers them because He sends the Holy Spirit. And the historical event of the Ascension that we're considering this morning, it's not an ending to a story. You look at how fascinating and amazing the Ascension is, you would think that's an ending. It's not. Again, it's the launch pad of the mission.
And it's a calling on you and I to serve Jesus faithfully until he returns at the end of history to judge the living and the dead. So as we come to the opening of Acts this morning, we see Luke addressing this letter to Theophilus. Now this is the same Gentile man that the book of Luke was written to. He tells us that in his previous book he dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach. Now I find it interesting here that Luke even mentions that he deals with Jesus being taken up. We have an account of the Ascension in Luke, and then he writes about it again in Acts.
And in Luke's telling, in the Gospel of Luke's telling of the Ascension in his Gospel, one of the key ideas that we see there is that Luke tells us that the disciples are filled with joy. Now I love, I love how Luke's Gospel ends because the resurrected Jesus leaves his disciples after only 40 days following the resurrection. And what do they do? Do they weep? No, they're filled with joy. Not because Jesus is gone, but because they finally understand what all this means. The ascension doesn't mean that Jesus is absent. It means that he's enthroned.
And this makes zero sense to us. When someone we love leaves us and we don't know when they're coming back, what do we do? We cry. We might even be down for a while to the point where we might make some pretty unhealthy eating choices to console ourselves. The disciples though, They're filled with joy. And somehow, many Christians have been convinced that the church is plan B. That what we are living on now is because of the failure of all that happened in the New Testament. That the religious establishment and the Roman authorities killed Jesus and so he couldn't take over on earth.
And so he resurrected and that gives us eternal life and now he's off somewhere until later. Then he'll come back and he'll make all those people pay who cut down his mission when he was in his prime. But again, that's not at all what the New Testament, and really Scripture as a whole, conveys to us. The Old Testament types and shadows, they point to the sacrificial death of the Messiah and of the hope that one day death would be defeated.
And the Psalter, the hymn book, right there in the middle of our Bibles, it points to all those things as well. And it also points to the reign of the Messiah, breaking down the doors of heaven in Psalm 24. Essentially saying, open the doors now, the King of heaven is coming in, pointing to the ascension. And what we read this morning in Psalm 110, There's this idea of this coming messianic reign. I really think, as I mentioned before, that we miss just how central the ascension is to our faith.
It's something that's regularly rattling around in my brain. How can I make this tangible for myself, for you, for others? I joke. that if you're ever at a Presbytery meeting, let's say we're hosting Presbytery in the fall of 2026, right? If there's an exam for a pastor, for a teaching elder, and you're here observing, and during the theology portion, you see me get up and walk to the microphone to ask a question, nudge the person next to you and say, he's gonna ask a question about the Ascension. You'd be right. It's already sort of my reputation, and how long have we been in this Presbytery? Not very long.
And my questions always are around the idea of how can we make this tangible for people? Because it's important. It's significant, but we forget it so easily. And so as we look at this, I think Luke lets us know the importance of this in the way he talks about the days leading up to the ascension. First, he says that he presented himself as alive. Jesus was deliberate to make them understand that he was living and breathing. He was not among them only as a mystical, simply spiritual presence, but he was alive. He had defeated death.
And second, it says that he spoke about the kingdom of God. He's alive. And what that means is that the kingdom of God has come. He did not resurrect only to defeat death for his people, but he also is going to reign in that resurrected body. And before we continue on in the passage, I want to take a second to think about what that truth means for us. I think the most important thing for you and I to grasp here is that the world is not spinning out of control. I know it feels like it.
But the truth of what we see here is that Jesus has authority and he is on his throne. You know, we feel like history is on a continual loop. that things run in cycles, kingdoms rise and fall. It's easy for us to fall into this idea that all that happens in history is meaningless, but it isn't. History is moving in a direction. It's not cyclical and it isn't purposeless. My big point here is that the ascension lets us know not only that Jesus is alive, is that Jesus is in charge.
Though the world seems unstable, He is at work. He reigns now. Just because the world doesn't acknowledge Him doesn't mean that He isn't reigning. He works all things together for good. And we see this sort of emphasized to us here in Ephesians 1, 20-23. Take a look at this It says that he was raised and he is now seated at the right hand and he is above all rule and authority and power and dominion. It says that everything was put under his feet.
Like I mentioned, that messianic promise of Psalm 110.1, it's fulfilled. And as I mentioned before, I contemplate the significance of the ascension on a regular basis. And this is why. Because we see the exalted reign of Jesus as a distant thing. but it's anything but distant. It shapes our lives. And it's the mission of the church.
We see in this passage from Ephesians that he is head over all things to the church. That's more than just some sort of theoretical thing to hold on to. It's something that we should be living into. The church isn't meant to have the reign of Jesus as something out there that we admire from afar. Instead, we're supposed to live under the reign of Jesus. It's what motivates us. It's what sustains us.
It's a reign that is built up by God Himself, and Jesus prepares His disciples for it when He tells them in Acts that they're going to receive the Holy Spirit. So, Jesus gives clear instruction here in verses 4 and 5 that they're supposed to wait. They don't charge ahead on their own. They don't do the mission they are called to by their own power. Instead, they're to wait for divine power to come and guide them.
In just a matter of a few days, the Spirit will come and will equip them for the work that they've been called to. But we see in this passage that they aren't really sure what the mission is going to be. Even after the suffering of Jesus and His resurrection, look how short-sighted they still are. They want to restore an earthly kingdom. They want Israel to be restored. That's a really small piece of land.
We think of it as a country, so our minds say it's big, but if you look at a map, how small is that little tract of land in the Middle East? They think their mission is to one nation. They think their mission is to one people group. But here, Jesus lets them know that the project that is going to be set before them at Pentecost is about more than just Jerusalem and Judea. It also is going to Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
And the reign initiated by the ascension is global. Therefore, it can't be done by human strength, human power, human ideas. It requires the King to intervene with His power and the Spirit's presence, because the church is a move of God. And these men, they know their Old Testament, and they most certainly know the Psalms. They knew the Messiah was going to reign until His enemies are made a footstool, but they had envisioned that throne in Jerusalem.
For them, that was a big deal. That tiny tract of land on the east side of the Mediterranean Sea, that was their focus. It was likely something they had dreamed of, that one day that would happen. But the truth was that the work of the Messiah ushers in something far greater than their imaginations. He is a king over all.
God the Son did not take on human flesh to overthrow earthly powers and lay claim to the authority of a palace in Jerusalem. He did not suffer and die to have a big enough army to give the Romans the boot. He didn't resurrect to get revenge on those earthly figures who cut him down in his prime. Jesus came to suffer and die for the sins of his people, and he rose again to defeat death.
And that mission was about more than one group of people. It wasn't a rescue of Jewish folks from being under the thumb of the authority of the Romans. It was about rescuing all of humanity from our greatest enemy, death. And now the resurrected Lord Jesus, He is going to ascend and have authority over all the earth and all the people groups.
Death was a shadow on all of creation from the point of the curse. But now, our resurrected Lord and King is shedding light on the world. That message of the gospel is going out to people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, and they will receive the gift of faith in Jesus. So let's look what Luke has to say about what happens after they're told about the scope of their mission.
As we look at this, metaphorically speaking, we can say that Jesus has left the launch pad, that he is out of sight because that cloud has covered him. And here they The disciples look in amazement and suddenly two angels show up and they avert their gaze back to the earth, right? Don't stand looking into heaven. Jesus is going to return the same way you saw Him depart.
And this isn't a rebuke and the angels aren't scolding them. It's a reminder that there's a mission. Jesus told them their assignment, He promised them the power of the Spirit, and emphasized the authority that He has over all things. And for a lack of a better way of saying it, they're stuck there at the launch pad. And I'm pretty sure I would have done the same thing. I'd have been standing there amazed.
What else do you do after a moment like the Ascension? But the angels tell them of the return of Jesus not to keep them staring up into heaven to watch for him to return. The promise of the return of Jesus is supposed to bring their eyes down to the world. To make them look around and see the urgency of the mission that they've been given. The king is on his throne. Declare his authority. Share the gospel. Spread the word.
And as we close up, I want us to leave from here with three things to think about. First, we need to see the nudge that these angels give the disciples as something that's for us as well, because it's easy for us to be like the disciples and stand staring at the sky wondering when Jesus will come back. And we can so easily get bogged down in speculation or we can become passive thinking things on earth don't matter because Jesus is going to come back someday anyway.
But as we look at the call on the church that comes from the ascension, it's a call to go. It's a mission to the world. Christ is ascended. The Spirit has come. We are called to live on mission. So here's our first question I want us to think on. Where are you standing still in your faith? Where do you need to point your feet on earth instead of pointing your eyes to the sky? How can we step into action?
And as you answer that question, I want to encourage you to not be discouraged. The mission can feel impossible, but we need to remember that Jesus has authority and he has given the Spirit to his people So we don't serve on our own, we're empowered by God and we serve together. We can often bind ourselves up with thoughts that we don't know what to say or that we aren't bold enough. The disciples, I'm sure, felt the same way.
but they did not stay in that spot wondering why Jesus hasn't returned yet. Instead, they left that hilltop in Jerusalem asking the question, what has Jesus called us to do until he returns? Jesus isn't in heaven twiddling his thumbs with nothing to do, waiting to come back. He is ruling over His people. He is reigning over all the earth. His kingdom is now.
He calls us to take the good news of His reign into all the earth. And at the end of our passage for today, the angels let the disciples know that He will return just as He departed. That is a sure and certain promise. It will happen. The one who ascended on high to the right hand of the Father will return. He will put every last one of His enemies under His feet.
Every injustice will be made right. Every tear will be wiped from our eyes. But until then, we are called to be on mission for the kingdom. A kingdom of worship where we praise our ascended king. A kingdom where we witness and work to make the gospel known.
And we do all of this, not out of fear, but with the belief that Jesus has given us authority to take his message into all the earth. Because our king is on his throne. So we depart from here with our hearts and our minds on heaven, but with our eyes focused on the mission to take the gospel into all the earth.
Amen. Let us pray. Great and merciful God, we thank You for the gift of Your Word that it tells us not only of the state of affairs that we are in, of our need for forgiveness, and of your bringing it through Christ's death and the eternal life He gives us through His resurrection. But we thank you that we're given a purpose. that we have a king who sends us out to share the gospel with those around us.
And we know that it begins with sharing in our families and among our friends, but we pray, Lord, that we would labor to take it beyond those places to the ends of the earth. It's in the name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.
Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon. For more information about First Reformed Church, head to our Facebook page or website, edgertonfrc.org.
