Sermon - Ascension Day 2024 - Mark 16:14-20

The Alpha and Omega, Mosaic, Church of St Alphonsus Liguori, Rome, 1908

King Jesus Sits and Reigns Over All

1. Jesus sits upon His throne

2. All His enemies are beneath His feet

3. Jesus is Head over His church

If I were to sum up the feast of Ascension in two words, I might say: God Sits. Afterall, we heard that “The Lord Jesus, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down.” Or in the Introit from Psalm 47 it says “God sits.” Or in an additional Psalm appointed for today, Psalm 110, God the Father told God the Son to “Sit.” Upon first hearing, that sounds pretty lame. Why would we have a feast to celebrate that God sits down? Wouldn’t we want the opposite? 

Considering the state of things today, we’d rather have Jesus stand up and do something! We’d like to see some of those accompanying signs: casting out demons, speaking in tongues, handling serpents, drinking deadly poison and being unharmed, healing the sick. But instead we complain that God is silent, that He isn’t doing anything, that things go from bad to worse. We’re all acutely aware of the decline of Christianity in our country, so the last thing we think God should be doing at a time like this is sitting down on the job.

That’s what you might think if you don’t know the importance of Jesus sitting down. Because in fact Jesus sitting down fulfills all of our greatest hopes, because when Jesus sits it means that He has entered into His kingdom and He is reigning. The Ascension means that King Jesus sits upon His throne and reigns over all!

Typically I suppose when we think of a man becoming a king, we think of a coronation, a ceremony of crowning. But Biblically the event which made a man into a king was his enthronement, his sitting upon a throne. For instance, when king Solomon was made king after his father David, he was anointed with oil and seated upon the throne, afterwhich all the people rejoiced with such joy that the earth shook with their noise.

As great as King Solomon’s enthronement was, King Jesus’ enthronement is greater still, thus the people continue to shake the earth their their joy. “Clap your hands, all peoples! Shout to God with loud songs of joy! For the Lord, the Most High, is to be feared, a great king over all the earth. God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. God reigns over the nations; God sits on his holy throne.” We rejoice because Jesus is not sitting down to take a nap and rest, instead He is reigning over the nations.

As we confess in the creed, Jesus sits at the right hand of God the Father almighty. God the Father is spirit, He doesn’t have a body like God the Son. Thus, for Jesus to be seated at the right hand of the Father means that He is reigning with all of the power of God almighty. 

Consider Psalm 29, which speaks of God’s majesty while He sits, listen to these words: “The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD, over many waters. The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is full of majesty. The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars… The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness… The voice of the LORD makes the deer give birth and strips the forests bare, and in his temple all cry, “Glory!” The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD sits enthroned as king forever. May the LORD give strength to his people! May the LORD bless his people with peace!”

Jesus sits upon His throne, and therefore He is reigning over this, His whole creation. Therefore, since He reigns over us with such majesty, we pray that the Lord would bless His people with peace, because He doesn’t give peace to all the world. All His enemies are beneath His feet. “The Lord says to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make Your enemies your footstool…’ The Lord is at your right hand; He will shatters kings on the day of His wrath. He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses; he will shatter chiefs over the wide earth.”

Perhaps that seems pretty harsh and not very nice, and that’s true, but God is good and just, therefore He will not let the unrepentant evildoer go unpunished. God’s will shall be done, and His enemies will all be vanquished in the end. Don’t worry, God isn’t taking a nap and letting all of the bad guys get away with whatever they want, the devil is not winning right now, God is in control because He reigns as King and the devil’s time is short. God isn’t looking down at us and sighing, disappointed with the way that this world is going, as if His hands were tied and He were powerless. No! He’s almighty and He rules over this earth, and His enemies are going to be severely punished.

Keep those things in mind when you think that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, as they say. Let that also shape the way you interact with the evil world around you. “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them… Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Keep that in mind. Vengeance belongs to the Lord, and His vengeance will be far greater than we could ever muster. Perhaps by blessing and doing good to our enemies some of them may repent and become our brothers and sisters and be spared the wrath of God and share in God’s peace.

Jesus is seated upon His throne and He is reigning over the earth. He’s also reigning over His church, and He is Himself the church’s head. “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church.” The body of Christ, the church, shall never die; it will never be defeated or wiped out. Now, this doesn’t mean that there will always be particular congregations in specific locations. Nevertheless, the bride of Christ shall not die. Perhaps through various trials she shall be made lovelier and purified of some hideous accretions, but she shall not be destroyed nor lost because Christ is the head of His church. The Lord Jesus bled and died for His church, and He will surely preserve it. 

If the Lord has preserved His church through various wanderings and captivities over the past thousands of years, then He will preserve us still today. Even when it was whittled down to a mere seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal, or eight souls sealed in the ark, the Lord was head over His church and preserved it. Do not doubt that God shall preserve His church still today. Don’t be discouraged when your sanctuary has just a handful of believers now, and cobwebs accumulate in the unused pews and classrooms. It would be zero if Christ were not Lord of His church. God be praised that there are any Christians here!

Especially when the church is small God performs great things through her. There’s various versions of a popular phrase: great things come from small beginnings. There were not a ton of Christians on earth when Jesus ascended to heaven, and from among those Christians Jesus took eleven aside and told them: “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” That small group of eleven men “went out and preached everywhere.” All of them were met with violent hostility from the world, and yet they went with great joy, because “the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message.” From that small group of men of Galilee to this small group of Christians in Iowa, the Lord Jesus is seated upon His throne and reigns over His church.