“The Ascended Christ and this
Materialistic, Political, World” - May 21st 2020
Mark 16:15, 19-20 NKJV
15 And He said to them, “Go
into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” 19 So then, after
the Lord had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sat down at
the right hand of God. 20 And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord
working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs. Amen.
My Christian friends: Some
American Christian churches are quickly learning that the Good News of
salvation in the resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ has
absolutely nothing to do with the Stock Market or Federal Reserve Bank, the
Covid-19 pandemic, nor politics. There is no variant text worthy of calling it the
Word of God that commands Christians to “Go into all the world and fight for
social justice and financial equality”.
Christ’s Church here on earth
needs to hear God’s Word, once again, as it clearly distinguishes itself from our
earthly estate. Your concerns should be with those priorities that St.
Paul exhorts the church at Colosse, namely, to seek those things which are
above. “If then you
were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where
Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind (affection KJV)
on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and
your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:1-3)
Paul encourages the Christian to
do truly good works, being moved by the power of the Holy Spirit after Christ’s
resurrection. That resurrection, as it is apprehended by faith, will no doubt
show itself in the things you say and do. You can feel Christ’s resurrection
power and may become aware of it working through you. And, just as Christ’s
resurrection can only be apprehended by faith, so the things which Paul speaks
of as holy living will be manifest, and still not comprehended by the world. It
is just as true the Christian himself may not always perceive the resurrection
life which he is living right now.
See then that St. Paul states,
“For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” St. Paul expresses
the same thing as he gives his personal witness to the Galatians (2:20): “I
have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives
in me.” But did Paul mean this metaphorically or as a mystical reality through
faith? Was Christ removed from Paul and
only now at the Right Hand of the Father in heaven, or was Christ, in reality,
with and in Paul?
The world can neither understand
the significance of the ascended Lord nor be able to understand the Christian’s
life because those of the world cannot and do not wish to seek these
transcendent, spiritual truths. These matters are spiritually discerned. And so,
all that the nominal worldly Christian can preach and teach is a social gospel
regarding the things of this world that involves the church in the politics of
socialism.
But Luther emphasized Christ’s rule this way:
And how should these Christians ever seek the things above since their preachers and churches are only concerned with the things below?
Jesus, upon His physical ascension into heaven, told His disciples to preach the gospel to every creature. It is a grave misunderstanding of the Gospel that has brought about such things as “liberation theology” and “social justice” and so forth ad infinitum. The Gospel that our Lord had told us to preach was not a social gospel, neither was it a Black nationalist’s gospel or White nationalist’s gospel, nor any political gospel which is the only so-called gospel discussed by the innumerable ministerial fellowships in America.
The real biblical Gospel Christians
are to herald, is the reconciliation between God and sinners by the incarnation
of Christ, the life of Christ, the death of Christ, the physical resurrection
of Christ, and, as we celebrate this day, the physical ascension into heaven of
Jesus Christ. All this was done for you.
In Mark 1:15, after John the Baptist was imprisoned, it is written that Jesus
began His ministry in Galilee with these words: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God
is at hand. REPENT, and believe in the gospel.” This
is what we are to preach to you and to all people everywhere. The world itself,
however, makes an effective roadblock for mankind in his life in Christ by
making the person a victim rather than the perpetrator of sin against God. 1
John 2:15 simply warns us, “Do not love the world or the things in the world.
If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
You cannot seek those things that
are above if your pastor doesn’t preach and teach the common faith held by
Christendom. Our youth should be allowed to grow up from infancy hearing
the teachings of the Word of God; hearing the two great teachings of the Bible,
namely, Law and Gospel. They need to understand that man is not basically spiritual,
as many Christian churches mislead them, but rather carnal, dead in trespasses
and sin. They need to hear how God so loved them that He left His throne in
glory to be humiliated in His sufferings and dying the death on that old rugged
cross of Calvary for them. They need to know that Jesus lowered Himself because
His thoughts were set on the heavenly things for them. And having been trained
in these heavenly teachings, you need to demonstrate these spiritual matters,
by Christ’s resurrection power.
By the power of the Holy Spirit,
you are to put away the works of the flesh with all its lusts and boastings.
Martin Luther, in a sermon for Easter Wednesday, had this to say about putting
to death what is earthly in you: “You must be dead to a worldly life of this
sort; a life striven after the heathen, who disregard God’s Word and allow the
devil to have his way with them. You must prove the resurrection of Christ in
you to be something more than vain words. You must show there is a living power
manifest in you because you are risen, a power which makes you live a different
life, one in obedience to the Word and the will of God, and called the divine,
heavenly life. Here this change does not take place, it is a sign that you are
not yet Christians but are deceiving yourselves with vain fancies.”
I know that there are pastors in
this world who would take issue with St. Paul and Luther. Luther, indeed, would
be called a legalist because he dares to say that some Christians might be
deceiving themselves with vain fancies. If you feel that my words are a little
bit fanatical for a Lutheran pastor, I say that Luther himself would not be
welcomed into the Evangelical Church in America, the church body called after
his namesake. For many of today’s churches have no comprehension why Christ
ascended into the heavens to fill all things. Jesus, indeed, transcends this
material world in which the church called by His name wishes with all its life
to hang on to!
Listen and understand that the
world wishes to circumvent the Word of God and make excuses for its
transgressions saying that God is all loving and would not condemn anyone
because they are weak in their humanity. The world would love to have
Christians always say that same thing; the world would have Christians reduce
everything to the Gospel message of “Smile, God loves you” or God has declared
the entire world justified and made righteous in Christ without faith.
But because Christians know God’s
Law to be holy and wise, as well as given for their benefit although not able
to save a single soul since it condemns all, Christians establish the Law
through faith in their Savior, and for this reason the world hates and
mistreats them. Yes, because the Christian acknowledges both the teachings of
Law and Gospel the Christian stands condemned by the world. The world will hate
Christians, as our Lord teaches in John 15:18-19, “If the world hates you, you
know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world
would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out
of the world, therefore the world hates you.”
Oh yes, Christians should be
hated by the world because we are indeed joint heirs with Christ in His heavenly
possession as Paul says in Romans 8:7 “…if indeed we suffer with Him that
we may also be glorified.” But if you disguise the teachings of our Savior with
humanitarian philosophies and Christian Psychologies, and politics, you mix your
faith with the goals of the world and you stand against the will of our
heavenly Father who calls us to “fear, love, and trust in Him above all things.”
The social gospel, for example, pretends to follow God’s will and yet makes man
dependent upon earthly governments, usually in a form of socialism or communism, that purports to be wiser than the
counsel that God Himself gives us in His Bible. God sets His goals for us to
follow yet we continue to ignore His counsel in our youth, into adolescence,
adulthood and even into old age. Then in old age you might feel that you are
just too set in your ways to think on these heavenly matters and your eternal
life.
It was Robert Browning, over a
century ago who penned: “Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be; the
last of life, for which the first was made. Our times our in His hands (here a
reflection on Psalm 31:14-15) who saith, ‘A whole I planned, youth shows but
half. Trust God; see all, nor be afraid.’” Don’t worry about injustices in the
world, for injustices will always be in the world. The same Law which condemns
the heathen will also condemn the righteous man who turns to iniquity. Jesus
died so that the wrath of God the Father might be turned away from the sinner,
but if the sinner does not confess his sin God’s wrath will surely stay on him.
The penitent sinner will look forward to the Day when Jesus comes again, or
even the day of the fullness of his redemption when the Christian is taken from
this life of sin and sees his high-minded goals established within his heavenly
home forever.
Also, while our world appears to
be in the grip of the on-going pandemic, take the example of Cyprian, the 3rd
Century bishop of Carthage, during a deadly pestilence, thought upon his sins
while maintaining his thoughts above, to be forever with Christ. In a sermon
Cyprian said: “Ceaselessly and with care and sorrow, we fight against carnal
desires, against the allurements of the world. The spirit of man is compassed
about and besieged by the assaults of the devil and can hardly meet, hardly
withstand them all. If avarice is overthrown, lust arises; if lust is put down,
ambition takes its place; if ambition is despised, then anger grows bitter,
pride puffs itself up, drunkenness assails, hatred breaks the bonds of concord,
envy destroys friendship. You must curse, though God has forbidden it; you must
swear, though it is wrong. So many persecutions must the spirit of man endure,
so many perils must the heart expect; and shall we still be glad to abide here
long among the devil's swords? We should rather long and pray that sudden death
may help us haste to Christ.”
There is great truth in what
Cyprian says, for the Christian who loves the Word of the Lord and constantly
sees his lost estate in this present world. Many times we may know the answer
to the wrong we all do, but if we refuse to put to death that which is earthly
in us, then the New Man is not being put on, that New Man which is created for
and in us by the Spirit of God for Jesus’ sake. Romans 8:5 is very explicit:
“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the
flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.”
The ascension of our Lord Jesus
Christ shows that he not only possesses heaven but He possesses all things and
is over all things, seen and unseen. Let us pray the final stanza of the Ascension
hymn “We Thank Thee, Jesus, Dearest Friend” translated by Matthias Loy: “Through
Him we heirs of heaven are made; O Brother, Christ, extend Thine aid. That we
may firmly trust in Thee and through Thee live eternally. Hallelujah” Amen.
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