In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A few years ago, when I was studying to be a pastor at our sister Seminary in England, I was on my way into town one day to buy some groceries when a street preacher decided to single me out from the crowd. He pointed at me and said, “You there, if you die tonight what’s going to happen to you?” I respond with something like, “If I die tonight, I’ll be with Jesus in heaven.” The man was pleased with my answer up to that point and proceeded to asked me what I can only assume was his standard follow up question, “So, you’re saying that you’ve been born again?” I said, “Yes,” and then he asked me if I’d like to talk about it with him for a little bit. But when I started to tell him how it happened a few weeks after I was born when I got baptized as a baby, the man cut me off mid-sentence and said, “That’s not possible.” I asked him why he thought so, and he said something to the effect of, “Because babies do not have the rational capacity required for faith, therefore babies can’t be born again.” When I told him that Jesus seemed to disagree, citing a few passages from the Bible that talk about babies believing and little children entering the kingdom of God, the man proceeded to tell me a story about how he once saw a woman miraculously healed from a goiter. At that point, I kept on going to get my groceries.

It's without question that according to God’s Word in order for a person to be saved and go to heaven when they die, they have to be born again. As Jesus Himself tells us very clearly in our Gospel lesson today from John chapter 3, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” And yet, as my conversation with the street preacher in England showed, there is a lot of confusion about what it actually means to be born again and how that happens in a person’s life. So, since this is such an important and controversial topic, and since we have a reading in front of us from the Bible that speaks to it directly, what I’d like to do in this morning’s sermon is simply take some time to explain what it means to be born again and how it actually happens.

We’ll start with what it means to be born again. According to God’s Word, the essence of what it means to be born again is to have true saving faith in Jesus. As we read very clearly in 1 John chapter five, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.” This is also what Saint John tells in the first chapter of his Gospel. There he writes, “But to all who did receive [Jesus], who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” And, of course, this is the exact thing that Jesus Himself was talking about in His conversation with Niccodemus from our reading. After explaining how a person must be born again to receive the kingdom of God, which is another way of talking about being saved, Jesus said, “So must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.” Therefore, to be born again simply means that person believes in Jesus and trusts in Him for forgiveness and salvation. It means that they have true faith.

Now, sometimes the Bible will also talk about being born again in the context of living a godly life. As we read in 1 John chapter 3, “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.” But even though this passage talks about being born again in the context of living a godly life, that does not mean that being born again is something more than having true faith in Christ. Rather, when a person has true faith in Christ, that faith shows itself in the way that they live. It is not as if people who are born again never sin anymore at all, but rather that their attitude toward their sin has changed. Besides trusting in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins, they also try and fight against their sin and suppress it in their life. Instead of “making a practice of sinning,” that is, sinning on purpose, those who have been born again do their best to avoid sinful things and repent of the times when they fail. They are sorry for their sins and want to do better. But none of this would be possible in the first place if they did not already trust in Jesus and have the Holy Spirit. It would not be possible if they did not have faith. As the author of Hebrews tells us, “Without faith, it is impossible to please God.” So, again, that is the essence of what it means to be born again. It means to have true faith in Christ.

In the second place, then, it’s important for us to also understand how this happens in a person’s life. How does someone become born again, meaning, how does a person come to saving faith in Jesus? As I’m sure many of you already know, nowadays the term “born again” or “born again Christian” is almost always associated with the concept of “decision theology.” Decision theology is the teaching that in order for a person to be saved they have to make a conscience decision of their own free will to come to faith, or, as it is often said, “give their heart to Jesus.” Upon having an intense spiritual experience, where a person becomes overwhelmed by the knowledge of their sinfulness, they are told to pray a special prayer, sometimes called the “Sinner’s Prayer,” where they invite Jesus into their life and ask Him to be their Savior. After that, it is said that the person has been “born again.”

But there are a lot of problems with this particular understanding of how a person is born again. On the one hand, Jesus tells us very clearly in John chapter 3 that being born again is not caused by an act of our own free will. When Nicodemus asked Jesus how it was possible for a man to climb back into his mother’s womb to be born a second time, Jesus explained how being born again is not a matter of something that we do, but something that the Holy Spirit does for us. As Jesus says in our reading, “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So, it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” And remember what Saint John said in that passage that I quoted earlier from John chapter 1? He said that we Christians are born again “not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

The reason why being born again, or coming to faith in Jesus, is not something that we do on our own, but something that God must do for us, is because on our own we do not have the ability to do it. That’s what Jesus is getting at in our reading when He tells Niccodemus that “that which is born of the flesh is flesh.” We aren’t born “basically good” as many people so often think. We are born sinful. According to our first birth from our earthly parents, we received from them a fallen and sinful nature. The worst thing about this sinful nature is that it leaves us incapable of bringing ourselves to faith in Christ. It renders us hostile to God and unreceptive to His Word.

Listen to how Saint Paul describes our spiritual condition prior to our conversion in Ephesians chapter 2. There He writes, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience – among whom we all once lived in the passion of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” Notice that when Saint Paul describes our spiritual condition prior to our conversion, he calls us spiritually dead. He doesn’t say that we are spiritually weak. He doesn’t say that we are spiritually wounded. He says that we are spiritually dead. How is it possible for a person who is spiritually dead, meaning they have no spiritual power within themselves, to do the most important spiritual work of all like bringing themselves to faith in Jesus? It’s impossible! It can’t be done! And that’s why decision theology, which teaches people not only that it can be done, but that it must be done for a person to be saved is so wrong. It stands completely against the teachings of the Bible. It gives the impression that we are born again because of something that we do. But that’s not how a person is born again.

Rather, a person is born again not when they give their heart to God, but when God opens His heart to them by giving them the gift of faith through His Word. It happens when the Holy Spirit, who works through the preaching of the Gospel, causes someone to repent of their sins and believe in Jesus, raising them to new spiritual life. As Saint James tells us in his Epistle, “Of His own will, [God] brought us forth by the Word of truth.” And as we read in 1 Peter chapter 2, “You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding Word of God.” When God’s Word is preached, and the message of salvation in Jesus is accurately proclaimed, that’s how God changes people’s hearts and gives them eternal life. That’s how He gives them faith. It is exactly how Isaiah describes it in Isaiah chapter 55, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” God always and only causes people to be born again through His Word. 

At this point in the sermon, then, it’s important for us also to say a few things about God’s gift of holy Baptism. It is the official position of the Lutheran Church that God causes people to be born again through our Baptism. The reason why we teach this is because of something else that Jesus says to us in our reading today from John chapter 3. Besides telling us that a person must be born again to enter the Kingdom of God, Jesus also teaches us that one of the places where this happens is in our Baptism. As He plainly says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one in born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Now, as I’m sure you know, many people do not believe that God causes us to be born again in Baptism. But there is no getting around the clear Words of Jesus. And instead of ignoring them, we should try and understand them. The reason why Jesus can tell us that Baptism gives a person the new birth from above is because Baptism is a Sacrament connected with God’s Word. Baptism joins the Spirit filled Word of God with the physical element of water. It’s not the water in Baptism that does something special, it’s the Word. Again, when God’s Word is spoken to us and over us, that is, when the Gospel is applied to us, that’s how God gives us the gift of faith and causes us to be born again. And that’s why God can use Baptism to do it. Because Baptism is God’s Word. It is the Word of God connected with the water.

Whenever we maintain that Baptism truly does give a person new birth, we should be prepared to respond to what others who deny this reality will most likely say in return. The most common argument that we hear from those who deny baptismal regeneration, which is what this teaching is called, is that if Baptism truly did cause someone to be born again, then why are there so many people who have been baptized that no longer live a Christian life? But the answer to this accusation is actually quite simple. Instead of saying that those people who got baptized but now reject the faith never had real faith to begin with, we can simply recognize the sad reality that it is possible to lose your faith. It is possible to fall away from the faith. As Jesus reminds us in the parable of the sower, “The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in a time of testing fall away.” Or remember what Saint Paul tells us about the sad case of those two men named Hymenaeus and Alexander? Paul says that they made “shipwreck of their faith,” meaning, they had faith, but then they destroyed it. That’s what can happen to anyone who has been born again. Instead of listening to God’s Word and cooperating with the Holy Spirit who is at work in their life through the Word, they can suppress God’s Word and turn away from it. They can plug their ears to what God’s Word is telling them so that they no longer listen to God’s Word anymore at all. But that doesn’t mean that they were never actually born again. It means that they gave up their birth right and forfeited their inheritance.

And yet, God’s Word also teaches us that our Baptism is not something that can be undone. Since it is His work and not ours, even if we should, for a time, turn away from it, that does not mean that God will not turn away from us. Like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, He will patiently wait for our repentance for as long as possible. In mercy, He promises to reach out to the lost with His Word of Law and Gospel, in order to safety return them to His fold. As we read in Philippians chapter 1, Saint Paul writes, “And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” These words should not be taken to mean that we can live a sinful life on purpose and still go to heaven, or that it is impossible for people who have been baptized to go to hell, but rather that everyone who is sorry of their sin and clings to their Baptism should have the confidence that Jesus will not abandon them no matter how bad their sin has been. He will forgive them, and continue to make them new, until the day that they are made completely new in heaven. God will finish what He started in their Baptism. He will bring them to the culmination of their new birth, where they received the gift of faith through His Word.

The other day I was thinking about that conversation I had with the man in England and it finally occurred to me why he told me the story about the woman he saw who got miraculously healed from a goiter. He told me that story because he could not show me anywhere in the Bible where it says that Baptism does not save us and that infants cannot be born again. And since he couldn’t give me the Word of God, he thought that it might be just as good to give me a miracle. But he could have told me about a thousand miracles. He could have performed one there right in front of me on the street. And yet, none of that would have made the Scriptures any less clear. Being born again is when a person is brought to faith in Jesus. This is isn’t something that we do for ourselves, it is something that God does for us. Just like we received earthly life from our parents apart from any decision of our own free will, we receive eternal life from our Father in heaven purely through His grace. We receive it when God’s Word is preached to us and the Holy Spirit causes us to believe it. We receive it when the Gospel is applied to us personally at our Baptism and all of our sins are washed away. We receive it as a gift. God can give that gift to anybody. He can give it to babies. He can give it to adults. He can give it to whoever He wants. So may the Lord help us to cherish this gift, and guard the new life He has given us through His Word. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We live in a time where there is a great deal of fascination with spiritual things, but little to no agreement in spiritual matters. On the one hand, there those outside of the Church who consider themselves to be “spiritual but not religious.” They say that spirituality is a very important part of their life, but they refuse to embrace any form of organized religion that defines in clear terms what a proper spiritual life is supposed to look like. They talk about being spiritual, but say nothing about the Holy Spirit. They go on and on about their own spiritual disciplines, but they will not go out of their way to come to church to receive the discipline and instruction of the Spirit of God.  On the other hand, within the Church, even though there is a great deal of talk about spirituality and the Holy Spirit, there is almost no consensus across denominational lines over what He does and how He actually works. Some churches claim to have immediate access to the Holy Spirit and that He talks to them directly even apart from the written words of the Bible. These churches often accuse our church of being void the Spirit. When they attended our worship services, they say that the they do not feel the Spirit’s presence there. They say that the way that we pray and how we preach and teach and conduct ourselves during the liturgy is a hinderance to the Spirit’s work.

People say a lot of things about spirituality and the Holy Spirit. But it should never be our chief concern what other people say. As always, we should be concerned above all with what God says in His Word. And there is no better day for us to listen to what God’s Word says about spirituality and the Holy Spirit then on the day when we commemorate the special outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. So, in the morning’s sermon, as we look more closely at our second reading from Acts chapter two, let us consider together who the Holy Spirit is, what His most important work is, and how He accomplishes that work in our lives.

First, who is the Holy Spirit? According to God’s Word, the Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Holy Trinity. He is not the mere energy of God. He is not the mere power or force of God. The Holy Spirit is God. The Holy Spirit is one with God the Father and God the Son, meaning that He shares together with them the one essence of God. And yet, the Holy Spirit is also His own Person. The Holy Spirit is distinct from God the Father and distinct from God the Son. On the day of Pentecost, the Bible says that the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit. It says that before this happened, they heard a sound from heaven like a mighty rushing wind and that tongues of fire appeared and rested on each one of their heads. It’s important to recognize that the Bible does not say that the wind and the fire was the Holy Spirit, but rather that these signs accompanied His presence.

In our Gospel lesson from John chapter fourteen, Jesus speaks to His disciples about the coming of the Holy Spirit. He says, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My Name, He will teach you all things.” Notice that when Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit, He does not talk about an object or a power, but about a Person. Jesus calls the Holy Spirit a “He” and not an “it.” Jesus says that the Holy Spirit teaches. He says that the Holy Spirit declares things. When Jesus describes what the Spirit does, He describes what people do. He does that because the Holy Spirit is a Person. He is not an object.

Now, the reason why all of this matters is because when the Holy Spirit is looked at as a substance to be harnessed rather than a Person to be listened to, we can easily set ourselves in the place of God. And that is exactly what we see happening among those who claim that they are “spiritual but not religious.” When people say that they are spiritual but not religious, what that usually amounts to in practice is wanting a god who does not speak. They want to speak for God. They do not want to listen to what God says in the Bible. They want to live their own life. They want to make up their own rules and follow their own way. They want to be spiritual on their own terms. 

Any yet, any spirituality that is not guided by the Holy Spirit is not holy. In fact, it is unholy. The Bible tells us, “Beloved do not believe every spirit, but the test the spirits to see whether they are from God.” The way that we test the spirits is not by listening to our own spirit, and doing whatever feels right to us, but by listening to the words of the Holy Spirit who speaks to us through the Holy Scriptures. As Saint Peter tells us, “No prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Again, the Holy Spirit is not something to be harnessed, He is someone who we are to worship. He is someone who we are to submit to, to listen to, and to put our trust in. The Holy Spirit is God.

So, what does this one true God do? That leads us to our second question for today, what is the most important work that the Holy Spirt does? The most important work that the Holy Spirit does is to bring people to saving faith in Jesus. On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit worked many different miracles. He caused the wind to blow with great force. He caused tongues of fire to appear on the disciples’ heads and not to burn them. He also gave them the ability to speak in other languages which they had not previously learned. These, of course, were all great miracles. But they were not the Holy Spirit’s greatest miracle. The greatest miracle that the Holy Spirit worked on Pentecost is the one that Joel prophesied of in the Old Testament. In the last verse that Saint Peter quoted from the book of Joel in his sermon on Pentecost, he said, “and it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” Shortly after Saint Peter said those words they were fulfilled. For on that same day, we find out that three thousand people who heard the Word of God, believed it, and were baptized for the forgiveness of their sins. Three thousand souls called upon the name of the Lord and were saved. 

The Bible tells us that all of that was and is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit caused these things to happen. Saint Paul writes in 1 Corinthians chapter twelve, “Therefore, I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says ‘Jesus is accursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.” Saint Paul, of course, does not mean that no one can literally mouth the words that “Jesus is Lord” without the Spirit’s help. Surely any unbeliever, who does not have the Spirit, can still say those same words and not really mean them. Rather, what Saint Paul means is that no one can truly believe in Jesus unless the Holy Spirit brings them to faith. No one can call upon Jesus’ Name from the heart, unless their heart has been changed by the Spirit. Coming to saving faith in Jesus is an impossible task for us to do on our own. It is something that must be done for us. It is a gift that God the Holy Spirit must give us. That is partly why it is the Spirit’s greatest work, because of how hard it is. The other reason why it is the Spirit’s greatest work, is because saving faith in Jesus is the only way to be saved. We are saved through faith alone. 

Sometimes when people hear about the events of Pentecost, they get caught up on the wrong things. They hear about the disciples speaking in tongues and they are more interested in how they spoke than in what they had to say. Like a little child who gets a present on their birthday, they are more interested in the wrapping paper than the actual gift that it’s wrapped up in it. But the gift of tongues is not greater than the gift of saving faith. Salvation is what we need the most. No one is saved just because they can speak a lot of different languages. No one is saved just because they have the ability to work miracles and do miraculous things. At times the Holy Spirit did give these special gifts to the Church. We know from the Bible that many unique gifts were present, for example, in the church at Corinth. We also know, though, that Saint Paul had to remind the Corinthians over and over again that God gives these gifts when and where He wills it, and that not everyone should expect to receive them. No one should look down on another just because they do not have them. The so-called special gifts of the Spirit, like speaking in tongues, are always to be used in service to God’s greater gift, the gift of faith. Even on the day of Pentecost, the gift of tongues was used in service to the proclamation of the Gospel and to communicate that the Gospel is for all people. 

Those churches in our day who speak in gibberish, claiming that it is the gift of tongues, and ridicule other churches like ours who do not do the same thing as they do are wrong. For one thing, speaking in tongues is speaking in real languages. The people at Pentecost said, “we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” Babbling with made-up sounds is not speaking tongues according to the Bible. Speaking in tongues is speaking in real languages. The other problem, and the greater problem, is that these churches who say that they can speak in tongues also often say that any church or any Christian who cannot is not a true Christian at all, or at least a Christian of a lesser kind. But that is extremely problematic. We should not feel like less of a Christian just because we cannot speak in tongues or perform miracles or do spectacular things. The Bible even tells us that at time is coming, or maybe has already come, when these special gifts of the Spirit will cease in the Church. Saint Paul writes, again in 1 Corinthians, “As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge; it will pass away.” But what will not pass away is the never- ending life that the Holy Spirit gives to us when He gives us the gift of faith in Jesus. That won’t cease. That will go on forever. So, that is the miracle that we truly need. And that is why the Holy Spirit’s most important work is the work of bringing us to saving faith in Jesus.

Finally, then, how does the Holy Spirit accomplish this work among us? How does He give us the gift of saving faith? Again, we should reiterate that faith is always a gift. We do not come to saving faith by an act of our own free will. We do not come to saving faith by a decision that we make to have saving faith. We come to saving faith when the Holy Spirit gives it to us. The Bible says that “the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” The only way that we fallen sinners can come to accept the things of the Spirit of God is when the Holy Spirit causes us to do so. That acceptance does not come before faith. That acceptance is faith. Faith is accepting what God gives. Faith is receiving the forgiveness sins. Faith is the trust that the Holy Spirit brings about in our hearts, causing us to believe the Gospel.

And notice how those individuals came to faith on Pentecost. It was through the Word of God. The Holy Spirit worked faith in the hearts of those who listened to Saint Peter’s sermon. Peter did not point them to the signs. Peter did not point them to the gift of tongues. And Peter did not point them to a decision of their own free will. Peter said, “Give ear to my words.” When some people accused Saint Peter and the other Apostles of being drunk, Peter pointed them to the Bible. Peter opened the Scriptures to the crowd and explained what they meant because that is always and only the means by which the Holy Spirit speaks to us and gives us the gift of faith. As the Bible says elsewhere, “faith comes by hearing, and hearing the Word of Christ.” The Holy Spirit works through the Word. He speaks to us through the Word. We know His presence and His voice, through God’s Word.

No doubt many of us have heard individuals criticize what happens in a traditional Lutheran worship service by saying that they did not feel the Spirit’s presence when they worshiped with us. But our services are filled with the Word of God. The services that we have inherited from our Lutheran forefathers are filled with the pure proclamation of God’s Word of Law and the Gospel. Many of the things that we sing or say in the liturgy are literally direct quotes from the Bible. We sing the Kyrie, “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.” That is a quote from the Bible. We sing the Agnus Dei, “O Christ though Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” That is a quote from the Bible. We sing the Nunc Dimittis, “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace” and the Gloria, the song that the angels sang to the shepherds, both of which are filled with quotes from the Bible. We sing hymns that teach what the Bible teaches. We confess Creeds that confess what the Bible tells us to confess. We hear sermons preached from the Bible, about the Bible, that use the Bible to explain what the it means and how it applies to our lives. We eat and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus according to His institution that we read about in the Bible. Our services are full of the Bible. They are full of God’s Word.

We should never be ashamed of what happens in our church. We should never concede that our traditional Lutheran worship services are void of the Spirit. We should never try to make our services look like the services of other churches that say that our services are not services where the Spirit is present. The Holy Spirit works through the Word. Our services are full of the Word. Therefore, our services are full of the Spirit.

It does not matter if people say that they do not feel the Spirit’s presence when they attend our services. People getting excited about something or feeling a certain way does not automatically mean that the Holy Spirit must be there. Did the prophets of Baal have the Holy Spirit when they worked themselves into frenzy in their effort to defeat Elijah? Does people raising up their hands up in the air and losing control of their bodies mean that the Holy Spirit must be there? Do those things demonstrate the fruits of the Spirit, one of which the Scriptures tell us is self-control? No, they don’t. The Bible never tells us to feel the Spirit, it tells us to listen to the Spirit. It tells us to look for the work of the Spirit in God’s Word. When we go looking for a church that simply makes us a feel a certain way, we are not looking for what the Spirit tells us to look for. When we equate the work of the Spirit with our emotions, we replace the Holy Spirit with a different spirit entirely. But there is only one Spirit who can save us. There is only one Spirit who can give us the gift of saving faith, and He works that faith in our hearts only through the Word.

We know that the Holy Spirit is present in our midst today not because there is a mighty rushing wind or tongues of fire on our heads but because we hear Him speaking. We hear Him in speaking in the Word of God. In God’s Word, we hear the Spirit proclaiming the same mighty works that He proclaimed all of those years ago on Pentecost. We hear Him proclaiming the mighty works of Jesus, who died for our sins, and rose from the dead to give eternal life to all believers. 

So, yes, there may be confusion in the world over spiritual matters. There may be disputes in the Church over how the Holy Spirit works. But we rejoice this day that God has made His Spirit known to us through His Word. We rejoice that we have received the Holy Spirit. We rejoice that He has worked faith in our hearts not through or because of our feelings, but through God’s Word. And above all we rejoice in what the Holy Spirit says to each and every one of us on account of the faith that He has given us: “And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.    

After Jesus ascended into heaven, the Bible tells us that His disciples “returned to Jerusalem with great joy.” This is a helpful detail for understanding what the ascension of Jesus is all about and what it means for the Church. The disciples were not sad when Jesus ascended. They were not angry about it. They were not bitter about it. They were glad about it. When Jesus ascended into heaven, it filled the disciples with joy. 

We should ask ourselves if it does the same thing for us today. When we think about what Jesus did forty days after He rose from the dead, does it still fill us with joy? Do we get excited about celebrating our Lord’s ascension, or is it something that we really don’t think about that much, or maybe even something that we don’t completely understand? My guess is that for most of us, if we are being honest with ourselves, it’s probably the latter. But if we don’t understand exactly what happened when Jesus ascended into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God, then we are missing out on the crown jewel of our Lord’s redemptive work to save us. We are missing out on something that Jesus accomplished specifically that it might bring us joy; that it might comfort us in the midst of worldly sadness and bring us the peace that passes all understanding.

So, in today’s sermon, as we celebrate this pivotal event in the life of Christ, let us answer two questions about it. First, what exactly happened when Jesus ascended in heaven? And, second why should what happened give us joy?

The Bible tells us in multiple places that forty days after His resurrection our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven and took His seat at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. In Acts chapter one, Saint Luke tells us that “[Jesus] was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” In His Gospel, Luke also adds that, “While [Jesus] blessed them, He parted from them and was carried up into heaven.” And Saint Mark reminds us that Jesus was “taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.” 

But where exactly is the heaven to which Jesus ascended, and what does it mean that He is now at the right hand of God? As difficult as it can be for us to understand, we should not think about our Lord’s ascension into heaven in the same way that we think about our loved ones who have died in the faith and whose souls are now at rest in heaven. The Bible does not just say that Jesus went to heaven, but that He ascended far above all the heavens. For example, Saint Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter four, that “He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.” Furthermore, Paul says, and this is also in his letter to the Ephesians, that “[God the Father] raised [Jesus] from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority… 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 ascension of Jesus does not mean that is now confined to heaven as the other saints are who dwell there with God eternally, but rather that He is far above heaven. It is not that Jesus was received by heaven, but rather that He received heaven, as in, He took up the rulership of heaven. The ascension of Jesus means that Jesus, as both God and now as a man, fully exercises His divine right as the king of heaven. He lords over heaven. He lords over everything. He fills all things.

That is also what it means when the Bible tells us that Jesus is at the right hand of God now. Again, the right hand of God is not a place on a map where Jesus is confined. That is not how the Bible describes God’s right hand. The right hand of God is God’s divine power. It is the way in which God accomplishes His holy will. His right hand is His omnipotence, His omnipresence, and His omniscience. It is synonymous with His almighty rule over all creation. Consider some of the other passages from the Scriptures that talk to us about the right hand of God. From Psalm 118 we read, “the right hand of the Lord does valiantly, the right hand of the Lord exults.” And from Psalm 139 it says, “If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.” When we say that Jesus ascended into heaven to the right hand of God, we are not saying that Jesus went to live someplace far far away from us, but rather that Jesus now rules over us and is constantly with us, even as a man. Jesus can be in more than one place at the same time. 

Now, of course, everyone who believes that Jesus is God, would say that this is true according to His divine nature. Since Jesus is God, and God can be everywhere, Jesus can be everywhere. But the precise meaning of the ascension is that now Jesus promises to be everywhere not only according to His divine nature, but also according to His human nature. Jesus, as a man, can be present with His Church bodily in more than one place at the same time even though He only has one body. Obviously, this is a profound mystery. The ascension of Jesus is sort of like looking at the sun. The more that we stare at it, the more it blurs our vision. The more that we try to figure out how these things are possible, the more that we struggle to believe them, and the more we will be tempted deny them.

And sadly, that is what many Christians do. Some Christians today even claim that because Jesus ascended into heaven, He cannot be with us bodily in the Lord’s Supper. If you know, this is actually one of the main differences between us Lutherans and the so-called Reformed, which would include the modern-day Presbyterians and Baptists. Reformed churches, following the theological tradition of men like John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli, say that because Jesus ascended into heaven the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper is only a symbol of Christ’s far off body and blood and not His actual body and blood. They say that when we take Communion we do no actually eat and drink Jesus real Body and Blood, but that we only eat and drink a reminder of it. But that is not what the Bible says. And that is not what the ascension means. And that false theology can lead people to eat and drink Christ’s Body and Blood without discerning it to their own spiritual harm. As Saint Paul writes in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, “anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.”

Jesus is not gone. Jesus is exulted. Yes, Jesus has disappeared from our eyes, but He has not disappeared from us entirely. Yes, we can no longer see Jesus as others once saw Him, but Jesus is still here. Jesus is still with us. And He is with us in the places that He has promised to be. As Jesus says, and this is also on the mount of His ascension in Matthew’s Gospel, “Behold I am with you always even to the end of the age.” Jesus does not tell us that He is with us only according to His divine nature. He says, “I am with you.” The “I” to which Jesus refers is His whole person, both His divine and human natures. All of Jesus is with us, and He is with us always. That is what His ascension means. That is what happened when He ascended.

So, why should what happened at Jesus’ ascension give us joy? Well, it should give us joy for at least two main reasons. The first reason, as we already talked about, is that Jesus is actually with us. Again, as our Lord says at His ascension, “Behold I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Jesus is truly with us. He is not symbolically with us. He not with us only in spirit. He is not with us only in our memory. Jesus is really with us. And He is with us where He has promised to be: in His Word and Sacraments.

We all know that there is a big difference between someone being there for us for real and someone only being there for us symbolically. There is a big difference between a friend actually standing by your side when you have to do something difficult, and him watching you from afar, giving you encouragement at a distance. We face real challenges in our lives on this side of heaven. We have real temptations that we face day after day. We have reals sins that we fall into day after day. We have real enemies that seek to do us real harm day after day. But Jesus is with us every day. And when we come to church to take Communion, He is actually there with His Body and Blood to feed us with the food that forgives our sins and strengthens us to meet every trail that we face. And that is because of His ascension. That is because Jesus is at the right hand of God, meaning, Jesus has fully taken up the divine authority and power that is His by right. He has stepped into His exulted state, which allows Him to be with us as a man wherever we men and women are.

The second reason why the ascension should give us joy is because not only is Jesus with us, but we are with Jesus. As Saint Paul writes in Ephesians chapter two, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” The Bible teaches us that through faith in Jesus we are seated with Him in the heavenly places. It tells us that because of Christ’s ascension we have the promise of our ascension too. All those who trust in Christ and cling to Him for forgiveness and salvation have the assurance that one day they will live with Jesus in heavenly glory too. 

The Church is the Body of Christ. The Church is all believers in the Gospel. As the Scriptures say, “If one member suffers all suffer together; [and] if one member is honored all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” What that means for us is that the triumph of Jesus is our triumph. Just like His death for sin is our death to sin, and His resurrection to new life is our resurrection to eternal life, His ascension to heaven is our ascension to heaven too.

In His ascension, Jesus showed us that He is the king of kings and the lord of lords. He showed us that He rules over everything. Nothing rules over Jesus. Sin doesn’t rule of him. Death doesn’t rule over him. The devil doesn’t rule over Him. And because we believe in Jesus, none of those things can rule of us either. Because we believe in Jesus, sin can torment us, but it cannot condemn us. Because we believe in Jesus, death can kill us, but it cannot destroy us. Because we believe in Jesus, the devil can accuse us, but He cannot judge us. We have victory over our enemies, because we belong to the One who put all of our enemies under His feet. We belong to Jesus. We have been united to the One who has overcome all our enemies for us already. We have been joined to Him who died, rose, and ascended.

When the disciples saw Jesus ascend into heaven they returned to Jerusalem with great joy. You can return to your life today with great joy too. No matter how miserable your life might look, no matter how hard your life might be to live at times, you can go back to your life with a greater joy than this world could ever know, because you know that your life is bound up with the life of your ascended Lord. Jesus rules and reigns to all eternity, and by faith in His word, you reign along with Him. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.