I'm going to ask you to open your Bibles with me to Acts chapter 1. Now you know why I haven't been talking this morning. And you know why the sermon probably will be a little short. Now don't get too excited. I prayed about that. Few experiences in life produce anxiety like change. The reality of change, however, in this world is it's one constant. Because of that, lots of people have lots of anxiety most of the time. We face anxiety when we move to a new location.
We face anxiety when we go to a new school, as some of you will be doing next fall. We face anxiety when we graduate from one program and we're not sure what step is coming next and some of you are in that case today. We face anxiety when we're about to undergo a marital change status. We face anxiety when we lose our jobs or we're going to have a new assignment in our work. There are lots of reasons for anxiety. They all relate to change. A change for some people is like a new pair of shoes.
It can be very uncomfortable until you get used to it. The problem is that just when you get used to it, there's another change before you. We as a church are facing some sort of change in upcoming months. Your participation in the process that begins tonight will help define what that means for us. I hope that you will participate and be a part of it. It is good as we face change to realize that that's part of life.
Abraham Lincoln back in 1859 was speaking to the Agricultural Society in Wisconsin. He was talking about change and the fact that we face it in life. He told the story about an Eastern monarch who wanted his wise man to go throughout the world and find the wisest statement they could find. A statement that would be true in all times and all places among all peoples. They came back with this statement, all this too shall pass away. It is good for us to be reminded that change is a part of life.
The disciples as we go to Acts chapter 1 were about to face some change too. Jesus had told them that he was going away. What would that mean for them? They had left everything to follow him and now he is going away? Acts chapter 1 beginning in verse 1, Luke the beloved physician is writing here by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and he says, the former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach. We're not sure who Theophilus was.
He may have been a Roman official. His name means dear to God. So he may have been a Roman official who had been converted to Christianity and who had sought for some record, some written account of Jesus' life and Luke being Roman and being a gifted historian as well as physician took up the assignment by God's will to write down the history of Jesus' life and now more than that the history of the early church.
We'll begin in verse 2 again, until the day in which he was taken up after he through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen, to whom he also presented himself alive after his suffering by many infallible proofs and being seen by them during 40 days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God and being assembled together with them, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to
wait for the promise, the promise of the Father, which he said, You have heard from me. For John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. Therefore when they had come together, they asked him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.
And you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. When he had spoken these things, while they watched, he was taken up and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven?
This same Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will so come in like manner as you saw him go into heaven. So we have Luke's account of the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ, the most full account that we have in the Bible. The ascension of our Lord brought change to him and to his apostles. That's what I want to talk about this morning.
This is not without application to you and to me because the changes that we're going to see make a difference in who we are and what we are to be about in the world also. Years ago when covered wagons were the main transportation to the west, one of the problems on the trails was the ruts that were created by the wagons, especially when the ground was wet. It is said that there was a sign put up at one location that said, Avoid this rut or you will be in it for the next 25 miles.
Well, if you've ever driven on a dirt road or a gravel road that has collapsed through the frost and thaw process of the winter, you know that ruts can be bad. Well, Jesus is going away and believe me, there are no ruts for these apostles to follow. The first change that I see in our text is a change of work. His work on earth was finished. His work in heaven now began. This was a change that took place at the Ascension. His work on earth was for sin.
It was a work that was fully accomplished at the cross when he paid the price through the shedding of his blood as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Hebrews 10 tells us that once for all Christ died. It never needs to be repeated nor can it be repeated. Because once for all of eternity at that moment in time, the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished the work he was sent to do in the world. A work for all time. But it happened at one moment in time. And it's a work that was finished.
He never needs deal with sins penalty again. He will execute his full judgment on sin and sinners and Satan one day, yet in the future. But the price was paid at the cross. The judgment was accomplished there. And his work was finished. But now as he returns back to heaven from the Mount of Olives, his work changes. Now he is going to work in heaven for saints.
Turn with me to the seventh chapter of the book of Acts and we will see a text that tells us for sure that Jesus arrived in heaven safely. In Acts chapter seven we have the record of Stephen's tremendous sermon delivered on the occasion of his death, the first martyr of the church. When he had said certain things, verse 54 says, when they heard these things, his hearers, they were cut to the heart and they gnashed at him with their teeth.
They were so filled with rage and anger that they literally gnawed their tongues. They ground their teeth. They could not wait to get their hands on this man. But he, Stephen, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And so we have an account of a man who was alive on earth and who looked up into the sky and heaven was opened and he saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
I did this speculation with some of you on a Sunday night a number of months ago, but my speculation is that heaven is not far away. I don't believe that heaven is beyond the moon, beyond the sun, out there beyond the edge of the universe. I believe that heaven is right up there. It's invisible to our eyes. We cannot see it. You say, well, where up there? Well, I'm not real sure. You can't point to something that's invisible.
But my point is this, that Stephen was standing on earth and all he had to do was look up into the sky and he was given the vision to see heaven. Heaven was opened for him and it was close enough that he could see Jesus and recognized him and saw him standing at the right hand of God. Our Lord Jesus Christ's ministry changed. His work changed when he went back to heaven. His work on earth was finished. His work in heaven began.
His work in heaven is essentially two offices that he now fills for you and for me, advocate and high priest. Now, I need an advocate and I'll tell you why if you won't tell anybody. It's because I sin. It's because I blow it. It's because there are times when I think things and say things and do things that are wrong before God. Now, I know you won't tell anybody so I don't mind telling you that. But I need somebody to stand as a defense attorney before me, before God on my behalf.
And that is the work of our advocate, the Lord Jesus Christ. When the accuser of our souls, Satan, accuses us, we have one who stands before God to say, I paid the price. I satisfied that claim against your child when I died on the cross. So that Satan never has a just basis for an accusation against me. Because the Lord Jesus Christ is the satisfaction for my sins. Therefore, he stands as my advocate before God and never can I be accused by Satan before God.
Justly. Because I have a defense attorney who is there to say, just a moment, your honor. Father, just a moment. I paid the price. See my hands? I have paid for that penalty. And then I need a high priest too. A high priest is a little different. And that a high priest is one who understands sympathetically the needs of his people. And therefore he goes before God to pray on their behalf. It's not dealing with sins so much as it is their weaknesses. Their trials, their pains, their hurts.
I need somebody to go before God on my behalf. I've been sick enough the last couple of days, I haven't felt much like praying. I know some people get very spiritual when they get sick. I'm not one of them. It's hard for me to pray. It's hard for me to read the Bible when I'm sick. I was comforted this morning as I was croaking out the few words that I could in prayer that I have a high priest who stands before God on my behalf. I said, Lord, you know what I always pray for on Sunday morning.
Take care of it. This saved me about a half an hour. I have a high priest who knows what's on my heart. He knows the burdens that I have. He knows my weaknesses. If you don't ever need mercy or grace, then don't worry about it. But if you're like me and you need mercy and grace in your pilgrimage in this world, be thankful that the Lord Jesus Christ is in heaven today as your high priest. And he sympathetically understands what you're passing through.
And therefore is able to take that concern, that burden, directly to God on your behalf, perfectly intercedes. The second change that I see in our text is a change of presence. He was with his apostles occasionally. Now he is with his servants continuously. Usually there were ten times over the forty days from the resurrection to the ascension when Jesus appeared to his disciples. Five of those times were on the first Easter Sunday. The other five times were spread over thirty-nine days.
We're reading here about the last time that he appeared to them. So he was with his apostles before his ascension occasionally here and there, in Galilee as we've seen, there at the seaside where he fixed breakfast for them. He was up on the mountain where he gave them the great commission that we studied last week. And now they're back down at Jerusalem. And they're out on the Mount of Olives near Bethany, which is just a little ways outside of Jerusalem.
He is with them again as he has been over the last thirty-nine, forty days occasionally. But now he is going away. He's going back to heaven. By the way, if you go to the Holy Land, you can see the rock that his foot last touched, according to somebody. There's a rock there that has a footprint in it, more or less, which is said to be the rock that Jesus left from. Now whether he did or not leave from that rock, I don't know. But he left from that mountain. He went back to heaven.
And one of the reasons he did was so that from that point on, I should say from Pentecost on, he could be with all of his people continuously in a spiritual sense. You say, well, that's not real. Yes, it is real. It is spiritually that Jesus is with us all, all the time. It is very real. Spiritually he is in heaven, but spiritually he is with all of us continuously. Let me give you an example of that right here in the book of Acts. Turn to chapter 9. My the Lord is answering prayer.
I'm going to be going past time here this morning if I keep this up. Acts chapter 9 verse 1 says, Then Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked letters from him to the synagogues of Damascus. Now notice that. He is breathing out threats and murder against whom? The disciples of the Lord. Now he wants official authorization to go to Damascus and continue his work there. Now look on down to verse 4.
This is after Jesus has appeared to him. There's this flash of light that stuns him, that blinds him on the road to Damascus. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Notice not why are you persecuting my disciples. Why are you persecuting me? He said, who are you Lord? He said, I'm Jesus whom you are persecuting. I want you to notice that.
To strike out against the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ is the same as striking out at Jesus himself. Saul was persecuting the disciples, but Jesus said, Saul, you're persecuting me. Why is that? Because his presence was with them continuously. He was there in a spiritual sense, a very real sense, and it's so real that to attack a child of God is to attack the Lord Jesus Christ. So wherever you go and whatever you do, he's there.
And never in a true sense are you ever alone because he is with you and with all of us who know him continuously. There's a third change, a change in venue. The center was in Jerusalem. Now the commission is to the world. Up to this point, the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ and his disciples focused on Jerusalem. He had come to Israel, to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He offered himself to Israel as their king. He was rejected by Israel.
He told his disciples, wait in Jerusalem until the promise of the Father comes to you. For 10 days they prayed and did what seemed necessary, which was basically to appoint someone to fill the role of Judas, 1 Matthias. They waited in Jerusalem. Everything is focused on that city. But now he sends his followers beyond Jerusalem, beyond Israel. He says, begin in Jerusalem. It starts here. But it also means to go to all of Judea and Samaria, that place of the outcasts.
And then to the uttermost parts of the earth, I commission you, I send you there to be my witnesses. There's a change of venue here. Up to this point, everything's in Jerusalem. Now it's the whole world. There's a change. It brings me to ask this question, are you a Christian who is world conscious? Are you a world Christian? Do you look at the events in other parts of the world as to how they impact God's work? The advance of the Gospel?
What's the breadth of your interest and your vision in world events? What is your burden? How do you pray? Jesus has accomplished a change of venue. We're no longer to be centered on our own Jerusalem. We start here. But our interests are to go beyond here to the whole world. A fourth change, the change of enablement. The Holy Spirit was present. The Holy Spirit now indwells and empowers His people to witness. The Holy Spirit was present before the day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit is deity.
He is omnipresent. And in some special sense, Jesus had given the Holy Spirit to His disciples on Easter Sunday. He said to them that evening, He said, receive the Holy Spirit, and He breathed upon them. So that there was some temporary kind of infilling that they experienced on that occasion. But now Jesus is returning back to heaven. And the reason He's going back is that He might send the promise of the Father, which is the Comforter, the Holy Spirit.
So now you and I have one who indwells us. He doesn't just come upon us occasionally for temporary periods. But we have a Spirit from God, the Holy Spirit, who indwells us and who empowers or enables us in our witness in particular. But also in our living, our godly living. Divine enablement is essential to do anything that will pass the judgment of God. So there's a change of enablement.
The Holy Spirit, who helped some of God's people sometimes in the Old Testament, now indwells all of God's people all the time to enable us, to empower us. That ought to really encourage us. Even the little things that we do, God uses those. They're done in the power of the Spirit. There's a great Scotsman by the name of James Haldane, who joined the Navy when he was still a teenager as a matter of fact. But he rose quickly through the ranks and eventually was given command of a warship.
It was called the Melville Castle. On one occasion he was fighting an enemy in a fierce battle. And he looked around and saw many of his experienced sailors who were dead or wounded on the deck. And so he ordered some of his newer recruits to man the guns and to fight the battle. He began to swear violently at them. They were not as capable as the men who were first wounded and were rather inept. So he wished them all to hell.
When the battle had ended, one of the survivors, who was a Christian, stepped up to him and said to him, Captain, if God had answered your request a little while ago, where would we all be now? Then the man followed that gentle rebuke with a witness, which the Holy Spirit used. The Holy Spirit took those simple words and brought conviction to the heart of James Haldane. He became a believer.
And sensing the call of God upon his life, he abandoned his career in the Navy and became a preacher in Glasgow. His brother Robert, who was a very wealthy man and a commentator on the word of God, a remarkable Christian, built him a tabernacle to preach in with a seat of 3,000 people. This would have been 200 years ago. And for over 50 years James Haldane preached the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ in Glasgow.
During his ministry he led many to Christ, including his brother, who eventually built a church for him. One of the men that came to Christ was a man named Felix Neff that God used to spark a revival in Switzerland some decades later. Now how did all of this begin? By the way, Robert Haldane, who was led to Christ by his brother and who was wealthy, paid for the seminary education of more than 350 men that they might go into the ministry. He just paid for it. You think of all of that fruit.
Where did it all begin? It began back with one sailor who in the power of the Holy Spirit talked to his captain about something he had said in blasphemy against God in wishing all of his men to hell. The Holy Spirit empowers us so that even the simple words and the witness that we have can be used of God to do great things and even impact the history of nations, as is the case I just told you about. Then there's the change of perspective, finally. Christ went away. Christ will come again.
His leaving the way he did was a public act of God demonstrating the uniqueness of his Son and his acceptance of his Son into his heavenly ministry. Wouldn't it have been something to have been there on the Mount of Olives that day as Jesus was speaking with them and suddenly he began to rise up from the ground where he was standing? The disciples saw him being lifted up and up and up until a cloud. It could be a cumulus cloud or some other sort of natural cloud made out of water vapor.
It may also have been the Shekinah of God, the glory of God that appeared as a cloud in the Old Testament. The point is that when Jesus got to a certain point there was this cloud-like thing that took him away from their eyes and at that moment he entered into the heavenly dimension of things, the invisible realm. They waved goodbye to him and they stood there wondering, looking. Then there were these two angels who appeared dressed in white beside them.
The angels said, fellas, what are you doing here? Didn't you hear what Jesus said? Get busy. Do what he told you to do. This same Jesus who's taken up from you is going to come again just as you saw him go away into heaven. You see, there's a change of perspective here. Up to this point the disciples have been looking at Jesus as one among them. He had come in answer to the prophecies of the Old Testament and now he's going away. What would we do without Jesus?
Their perspective changes as they say, yes, he went away, but he's coming again. A whole new perspective, a hope was created in their hearts. We're to be an expectant people as the people of God. We have a lot to look back upon with gratitude, but listen, we of all people in the world ought to be looking ahead with a positive, joyful attitude about the future. Not because we expect great things out of Washington.
Not because we expect great things out of any government in the world, but because we expect the Lord Jesus Christ to come again. That is our perspective. It was a perspective that came on this day of the ascension. I believe it can be argued that the ascension is just as important to the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ as was Calvary and his resurrection from the dead. I don't know why we don't have more hymns that talk about the ascension.
I don't know why we don't hear more about the ascension than we do. This event is a significant event in the world history and it brings tremendous change. We've talked about how those changes impacted the disciples and how they impact us. One thing that doesn't change though is the relationship we have with the Savior. Once it is established, it is a solid, it is a rock solid, unchanging relationship that takes us right through all of the changes of life.
That relationship doesn't change, but at the same time we change, God does things in our lives to make us new people. I wonder today if you have that relationship with God. If this Christ who ascended and went back to heaven who is coming again is one that you know personally because you believed on him. Do you have a relationship that carries you through the change of this week and next year? Has that relationship been demonstrated by change in your life?
You see this Christ who is changeless himself changes us when we believe on him. It does really no good to say, well I've changed, I go to church a lot now. That's not going to affect your eternity. Not that it's bad, but the thing you need is a relationship with God, not come to church. You say, well I've gone through all the sacraments, I've done all of those things. Does that mean I've changed?
Well that may signify change, I don't know, but the real change is the change of character and attitude and heart. The old is passed away and you're a new person and your wife knows it, your husband knows it, your children know it, the people at work know it. Not that you're perfect, but there's been a change because Jesus is there. The Lord Jesus Christ today is here with us spiritually.
He is in this place and his great desire is that he might have a relationship with you, that he might change you on the inside and by his changeless power take you through life and one day to his presence in heaven. Let's pray together. With our heads bowed and our eyes closed, I wonder if there's someone here who says, pastor, today I need Christ, I need to be saved. God knows that my tongue doesn't show any change. God knows that my thought life doesn't show any change at all.
Outwardly I have trimmed off some of the rough edges, but in my heart I'm not a new creation, but I want to be. I want to have that relationship with Christ that will change me and make me a new person. Would you by the uplifted hand say, pastor, pray for me because I need to be changed? I will pray for you. And ask Jesus Christ to come into your life for you to believe on him. I'll pray for you. Is there someone? Let's stand together.