"Christ Ascended = the Church's Provision" Part 3 May 27, 2018 AM

Let's begin with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for hearing our prayers. We thank you for showing us that you are a good Father, that you know our needs, you know our frame, what we're made of, that we are but dust.

You have breathed the breath of life into us. You have given us your Son to raise us from spiritual death now, to raise us from physical death in that day when he will return. You have given us the Holy Spirit that we would be filled with your life now.

We ask that you would help us to worship you this day in spirit, by your spirit, and to dwell by your spirit so that we would be filled with your truth and worship you according to your truth in your holy scriptures.

We ask, Father, it's not something that we would prefer. It's not something that we merely like or enjoy. This is something that is of vital importance to our life. We ask that you would give us what we so desperately need, a gift of worship, communion together with you.

I ask that you would do your work in our hearts, that you would accomplish your will in our lives, all in accordance with your word. We pray these things, we ask for these mercies for the sake of Jesus Christ, the one with whom you are well pleased.

Amen. Please open your Bibles and turn with me to Ephesians 4. We're going to be looking at verses 7 through 16 again, particularly looking at verse 8 this morning. We have been thinking about what does it mean that Jesus Christ ascended?

What does it mean that Jesus Christ, after he was raised from the dead, that he ascended to his father's right hand? What does that mean? Why is that important? What impact does that have on us as a church, on our lives as Christians?

And verse 7 talks to us about the gift of Christ, that to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. And we have been thinking about that for a couple of weeks. Christ's gift is an individual gift to each one of us.

It is an undeserved gift. It's a matter of grace. It's an immeasurable gift as we see from the end of chapter 3. It is a personal gift because it's from Christ himself and it's a completed gift, something that is given to us past tense when we come to faith in Christ.

So let's give our attention again this morning to Christ revealed in Ephesians 4 verses 7 through 16. His ascension means our provision. If you would please stand with me, I'm going to read Ephesians 4 verses 7 through 16.

But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore it says, when he ascended on high, he led captive a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. Now this expression, he ascended, what does it mean except that he also had descended into the parts of the earth.

He who descended is himself also he who ascended far above all the heavens so that he might fill all things. And he gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming, but speaking the truth in love we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head even Christ from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by whatever joint supplies according to the proper working of each individual part causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Verse 14 tells us that we are infants in a typhoon of lies. Without the gift of Christ, we are like children, we are like infants tossed about by waves and wind.

This is a storm of lies and scheming deceitful ideas. Yet with the gift of Christ, blessed by the gift of Christ, having each of us received grace according to the measure of Christ's gift, we are no longer that way.

It seems to me that this gift is absolutely essential. I don't want to be an infant in a typhoon of lies, but this is what we are without the gift of Christ. In Christian vernacular, somebody who is an infant in a typhoon of lies is just plain lost.

We use that term, someone's lost. When you're trying to get somewhere and you've never been there before, you might get lost. Sometimes, if you're trying to get somewhere you've never been before, a few decades ago, two decades ago, if you did not have a map, you had to rely on someone telling you how to get where.

Why don't you stop and ask for directions, is the cliche request from the wife to the husband. Stop in that gas station, just ask them. They tell us where to go, and normally they'll say something like, oh, it's just right over there.

I've heard that before. It's just right over there. You just go past such and such, and you'll see this and that, and then you just go, it's right over there, and 30 minutes later, you might find it. 30 miles away, it's just right over there in country speak.

Nowadays, you don't necessarily have to rely on the personalized instructions and incidental signposts from somebody who kind of knows the territory. I remember when someone gave to us their out-of-date, old-fashioned GPS system, and it was old, and we thought it was newfangled.

This was neat. We could just punch in the address, and it would tell us where to go, where to turn. Now, it didn't always give us the smoothest ride. Sometimes it wasn't always the most direct route, but we got there.

All we had to do was just pay attention. Why did this gizmo know where to go? Well, thanks to a global positioning system, the top-down perspective, not the horizontal perspective, not the perspective of somebody who lives on the ground and kind of knows maybe how to get over there, but this was the perspective of mapping out and seeing where everything is from the top down, and so we didn't have any problems getting to where we needed to go because we had a top-down perspective.

It may look like we're lost because we're in a weird area that we've never been before, but we're not lost because we have a top-down perspective. As the church, we need to have the top-down perspective.

We need to have a mind shift, a different perspective. We need to have the ascension perspective, the top-down perspective, that our directions in this life are not being given by someone who's on ground level, and saying it might be a good idea to head over there, and you might see such and such.

Our instructions, our direction is being given by someone who's at the right hand of God, having ascended to the highest heavens, and he knows exactly where everything is going, and so his perspective needs to be our perspective, and it may look like we're in a weird area we've never been before.

We might be doing something new that we've never had to do before, but we're not lost. We're not off track as long as we're following the directions that Christ gives to us, and I think that is what verse 8 of Ephesians 4 helps us with, is if we can think about this quotation from Psalm 68 that Paul uses in this context in Ephesians 4, that we will grab hold of the ascension mindset.

We'll have a top-down perspective, and this leads us to the sixth point under this heading of Christ's gift. It is an individual gift. It's an undeserved gift. It's an immeasurable gift. It's a personal gift.

It's a completed gift, and it is a victorious gift. It is a gift given by the merits of Christ's victory. Verse 8 says, Paul quoting, therefore it says, quoting Psalm 68, 18, when he ascended on high, he led captive a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.

Why the quotation? Paul has just made a fantastic claim. Staring at verse 7, I had no idea how to deal with it in a single sermon. Somebody else could have done it. I can't. I don't know how to deal with everything in verse 7 in one sermon.

So, there's a lot there. It's a fantastic claim that Paul makes that to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. That is a very tall claim, a very large claim. Paul, you want to back that up?

And he does by quoting Psalm 68, verse 18. He gives the proof by saying, look at this passage. Jesus was also fond of doing the same thing. Have you never read? He would ask the scholarly Pharisees and point to the scriptures.

He would say to the Sadducees, have you never read? He would take up the images of the Old Testament and tell stories with them to the common folk. He was always quoting and alluding to and using the Old Testament to explain the gospel.

Paul does the same thing. Have you ever noticed how the psalmist and the prophets will quote the law or allude to the stories? How the prophets will quote earlier prophets and the law and the writings?

How Jesus continually quoted the Old Testament, always talking about it? Have you ever noticed how the apostles quote Jesus and parts of the Old Testament and not even just that, but they would also quote other apostles?

What do we learn by this that scripture keeps on quoting the scripture that the Holy Spirit is inspiring the authors of the Bible to quote other parts of the Bible? What do we learn by that? We learn that we have a reliable, continual source of truth that we can rely on, that we can always turn to.

That when it comes to trying to establish what is true versus what is false, when it comes to piloting through a typhoon of lies, when it comes to making sure that we're not being tossed to and fro, where are we going to go?

It's not going to be our feelings. It's not going to be our experiences. It's not going to be some outside secularly authorized philosophical source. We are going to go to the scriptures and we're going to see them revealed in Christ and we'll have a sure rock, a sure anchor in the midst of many, many lies.

Paul wants to ground the Ephesians in truth. He does not want them tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, by all these evil schemings. And so what does he do? He roots them in the truth of scripture and says, look there in Psalm 68, 18, look there, there's Jesus Christ ascended and the Holy Spirit given.

And we ought to look there. Psalm 68, feel free to turn back to Psalm 68. It's rather a lengthy Psalm. It's not one of the short ones, but the whole Psalm recalls themes of God's royal victories through Moses and through David.

The deliverance of Israel up out of Egypt, how these slaves, these captives to Pharaoh, how they were delivered and brought up out of Egypt through wilderness to the promised land, to freedom, to prosperity.

It recalls the theme of David reclaiming Melchizedek's throne in Jerusalem. The defeat of the Jebusites in Jerusalem. It recalls the scene of God's own throne on earth, depicted in the ark of the covenant and the mercy seat on top of the covenant.

God's throne ascending up Mount Zion to the future building place of the temple. These themes encourage our worship of Christ. And indeed, as you read David's Psalm, David wrote Psalm 68, as you read him, you find that he's not seeking to exalt his own personal exploits.

Look at the amazing things that I have been able to do, or even just look at the amazing things that I was allowed to experience. His attention is fixed upon Christ, whom he calls God, our savior, and God, our King, my God, my King.

And that is why this victory Psalm is properly interpreted by the apostle Paul has fulfilled in Christ and his victorious ascension to the right hand of God. And his ascension was victorious because it happened after his sin and Satan defeating sacrifice on the cross and his death defeating resurrection from the dead.

And Christ ascends as the bearer of the covenant. No more ark of the covenant is necessary when Christ himself and his own person and work carries the covenant. He occupies the throne of heaven. He reigns in the heavenly Jerusalem.

He's the wall of fire about her and the glory in her midst. He has ascended and he is now seated at the conqueror, having finished what God sent him to do. Ascension is the right of the victorious. Psalm 68 shows Christ as victorious because he is ascended and in his victory, the spirit, the Holy spirit is Christ's gift to us and the spoils of his victory is grace.

This is the background to what, to what Paul is, is writing, but look closely at verse 18 in Psalm 68 says, you have, you have ascended on high. You have led captive your captives. You have received gifts among men, even among the rebellious also that the Lord God may dwell there.

David writes this and he writes it to Christ. It says, you have ascended on high as a prophet. He sees that this will happen. This will occur. He's seen it in tight. He has seen it in shadow. It has happened in his lifetime that he sees the ark of the covenant ascending up to Mount Zion.

He has seen it in the figure, in the pattern and in the time by faith. He sees Christ ascended and you have led captive your captives. You have received gifts among men. You've led captive your captives.

Some translations read you have led captivity captive and we have to be clear on what that means. It's not that Christ led captive the idea of captivity, but rather this term captivity stands for a host or a group of captives, even as the circumcision refers to a group of Jews, captivity refers to a host of captives.

So Christ has led a host of captives. Who are these captives? Who are they? Well, just from Psalm 68, just from Psalm 68, we hear that there's at least two kinds of captives that he has led captive. There are prisoners being led out of slavery to Egypt.

He's captives being brought up out of Egypt into prosperity through a wilderness in verses four through seven. In verse 21 to 23, we hear of a procession that involves defeated enemies, captives doomed for judgment and immediately following that gory scene, we have another procession, one of which singers and dancers enter God's world sanctuary with praise and worship.

So it seems that there are those who are for Christ and those who are against him, but both are in procession. Colossians 2 .15 envisions the captives as enemy powers. 2 Corinthians 2 .14 envisions saints led in triumphant processional in Christ.

And so asking the question, are these captives the enemies of God or are they captives that he has captured away from the enemy? Well, Christ's victory entails both. It entails both, doesn't it? In fact, you see both in Psalm 68 verse 18 itself.

You have led captive your captives, the ones that he has, he has captured and you have received gifts among men, even among the rebellious. Also, we have two different groups, even in verse 18. An illustration of this, I think was given a good one by Bishop Andrews.

It's an old Anglican commentary back in the 1800s. Shifting was still done by ships, you know, not by planes and drones. But here's the illustration. When an English ship takes a Turkish galley, wherein there are held many Christian captives at the oars, both are taken, Turks and Christians.

Both become captive to the English ship. The poor souls in the galley, when they see the English half the upper hand, are glad, I dare say, to be so taken. So it was with us. They to whom we were captives were taken captives themselves and we with them.

So both of us came into Christ's hands, they and we, his prisoners both. I think he's on to something there and I think he is on to something simply because Christ's own illustration is even better. In Luke 11, the Pharisees are spreading rumors that the reason why Jesus Christ can cast out demons, the reason why he has spiritual power, is because he's really in league with Satan.

And Jesus exposes the idiocy of that idea. A house divided against itself cannot stand. This is not Satan casting out Satan. No, I'm more powerful than Satan. That's the idea and he gives an illustration.

Verse 21, when a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are undisturbed. But when someone stronger than he attacks him and overpowers him, he takes away from him all his armor on which he had relied and distributes his plunder.

In other words, Christ binds the enemy, plunders him. In other words, the enemy is taken captive and his captives, what were his possessions are now Christ's and Christ is the victor. That's the idea, the victory that we're seeing in Psalm 68.

When he leads a host of captives captive, this is his victorious procession he has won. And they say that history is written by the victors. History is written by those who win. That's a deconstructionist maxim.

It implies that the writing and telling of history is merely a power play. It's just verbal oppression. It's divorced from what's actually happening. Mr. Lessing's wide, ugly ditch cannot be passed. The truths of reason have nothing to do with the accidents of history.

So everything we read, we should have a hermeneutic of suspicion. Nobody can really know what happened because history was written by the winners and so therefore they slanted everything their way and it's all a big lie.

This is what you learn if you go to college. Well, what if history was actually written by the victorious Christ? What if history is written by the victor? What if the eternally existing word with God who is God reveals the whole scope and meaning of history in terms of his own significance?

Where there was only one who is worthy to open the scroll of God's sovereign plan for history and break its seals. And why? Because he is the victorious ascended king. He has overcome. And we need this objective, victorious truth.

We need this top-down perspective. This ascension mindset when we live in this typhoon of lies. Brothers and sisters in this world, we will have trouble but take heart. Christ has overcome the world.

As the church, we are still fighting on the beachheads of grace, penetrating the jungles of darkness, marching the long road of perseverance, and there are many, many rumors flying about. We're ill-equipped.

We're too few. The enemy is too strong. We're cut off. This isn't working. Apply that to how sometimes we feel about the church in the world, the church in North America, the preaching of the gospel, missionaries on the front line.

Apply it to the way you're trying to raise your children. Apply it to the way you're trying to strengthen your marriage. We live in a world of troubles and the rumors flying about say it's not working.

We don't have enough people. We don't have enough strength. This isn't working. And yet here is this message from the scripture that comes crackling through on the radio. It is finished. Christ has ascended.

The spirit has been given. And what does that tell us? That the critical all-important objective has been met. That the vital battle has been won. So keep on. We have everything we need to accomplish the mission and the war will soon be done.

And every lie of the enemy that somehow tries to convince us to stay hunkered down in our foxholes waiting passively for the end, every one of these kinds of lies is once destroyed by these twin glorious truths, our Christ ascended, the spirit given.

With his victory established above us and his spirit dwelling within us, any order except advance on all fronts is a cowardly and treasonous plan. Do we really believe that Christianity is at its most effective when we have the most governmental support?

Is that what we need for Christianity to flourish, to truly flourish? What we need is full governmental support. Is that what we really need? Is what we need is popular support? If only we had real popular support in this nation, then Christianity, only then could it flourish.

What did Jesus say? Jesus said, he told us that we'd be at our most effective. With him ascended and the spirit indwelling in us that we would abide in him. He says that's when we're most effective. That's when we're most effective.

The narrative of history will conclude with Jesus Christ coming on the clouds of glory, his robe dipped in blood and the sword of his word laying waste to his enemies as he rides the white horse of victory.

That's how history concludes. And all those with him will ride the wake of his righteous onslaught as those who have overcome through their faith in him. So it seems to me that every variety of bunker eschatology puts very little faith in the notorious ascended Christ who will soon return.

Let's not wait around for the rescue squad to get us out of the unpleasantries of a sinful world. Christ has given to us the Holy Spirit empowering us to be the rescue squad advancing to the tribulations of the sinful world.

That's the ascension mindset. That is the ascension top-down perspective. Too often, too often we live like Christ rose from the dead and will soon return and forget all about him ascending to reign.

He's at the right hand. He's reigning. This is a victorious gift that we have been given the Holy Spirit. It's also a mediated gift. Verses seven and eight again, but to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.

Therefore it says when he ascended on high, he led captive a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. Last time my aunt Diane was up from Texas, she gave me some gifts from my grandpa Brown. He died in 2003 in a construction accident.

He was helping a friend. He died with his boots on. He was a faithful man. He was a Sunday school teacher. He was a deacon. And one of the gifts she gave me was his work knife. And I noticed when I was opening it up that the tip of the main blade is broken off.

There's a couple of notches in that. And there's a piece of the resin casing that's broken off. Now this is a little bit of aluminum that he somehow fastened onto the top of it. It's kind of bent and misshapen, but it's still there.

It still works. And this is my grandpa's knife, you know, but as I look at it, I remember him. It's an artifact in whose defects are etched my grandpa's tales of ingenuity and resourcefulness and thoroughness and diligence.

And this gift came to me through my aunt. And to me it's a time capsule. It's filled with messages of working hard and finishing well. Gifts sometimes come to us like that. They were first given to somebody else, but then they're given to us.

And so it is with the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit who was given to Christ who gave him to us. Of Christ's fullness we have all received in grace upon grace, John 1 16 says. Now Paul quotes Psalm 68 instinctively.

Why is it traditional for the Jews to sing Psalm 68 on Pentecost? Pentecost is a harvest feast, a feast of firstfruits, which makes it an excellent theological background to the giving of the Holy Spirit, the firstfruits of new creation.

Christ ascended and he gives the Holy Spirit. And both of these are evident in Psalm 68 verse 18. Notice, you have ascended on high. That is Christ. You have led captive a host of captives. That is Christ.

You have received gifts among men. Again, this is Christ. Even among the rebellious also that the Lord God may dwell there among men. Christ has ascended, so who is the Lord God dwelling among us? He's the Holy Spirit.

This is the perfect verse to quote in reflection on Pentecost, in reflection on the gift of the Holy Spirit. We also notice an important change when you read Psalm 68 verse 18, then you read Ephesians 4 verse 8.

You hear a change. Psalm 68 verse 18 says he received gifts among men. Verse 8 of Ephesians 4 says when he ascended on high he led captive a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. We say received and gave are opposites.

Well, sometimes with the Hebrew is a little bit more flexible. You see, the Hebrew word here for received in the psalm, he received gifts among men, and the word translated as gave, that Hebrew word is frequently used in the sense of to take for the purpose of giving to another.

In King James, you'll find it sometimes translated fetch. This person is going to go receive something from someone else to give it to the person who's supposed to have it. That's the idea of the word, and so Paul here, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, expounding on the glories of Christ, emphasizes the giving side of this verb.

Yes, he received gifts for men, but he received, but he received them to give, and what does he give? These gifts, these, these graces? He gives them through the Holy Spirit. This is the language that Peter uses in his Pentecost sermon in Acts 2.

In verse 32, he says, this Jesus God raised up again to which we are all witnesses, therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured forth this Holy Spirit whom you both see in here.

The anointing of the Holy Spirit, the full way of the blessings of the covenant were granted to Jesus Christ, and he gives then to his people. He distributes the rewards, the spoils of his victory throughout his kingdom.

Remember that as Christ was on earth to do the will of the Father, as Christ on earth was filled with the Holy Spirit without measure, so even now in his exaltation to do his work in us, he fills us with the Holy Spirit.

When my aunt gave me my grandfather's knife, it made me want to honor his legacy. You know, I wanted to prove myself diligent and resourceful like him. On a scale far more thorough and important, Christ mediates the Holy Spirit to us so that we will be like him in all his ways.

A knife may connect my affections a little bit more to my deceased grandfather, but the Holy Spirit unites believers to our living, reigning, risen Savior Jesus Christ. Remember we've already said that the gift Christ gives to us in our salvation is the Holy Spirit who gives to us Christ our Savior, and it's to this end that we would be like him.

Paul says many things to this end. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.

And if there's any confusion at all, if there's any confusion at all as to how Paul lives by faith, he clarifies it in the very next six verses in which he says that life comes by receiving the Spirit.

Having begun a new life by the Spirit, we hear God's word with faith because God has provided the Spirit to us. He makes it very clear that this new life that we have in Christ is by the Holy Spirit. And I wonder if we're taking these matters to heart, we're fully accounting for this truth.

Many times Christians say things like, well, I'm no saint, or I'm not the Holy Spirit. And while the first is not true, and the second is very much true, both may perpetuate falsehood that we're not really expected to do very much or make it very far.

Well, I'm not the hook. But I wonder what Christ's expectations are of us, having ascended and having given us his Holy Spirit. What are Christ's expectations of us? John 14, 12, in this chapter in which he talks about the giving of the Holy Spirit and the necessity for him to go away to the Father so that he may send the Comforter, he may send the Helper, the Spirit of Truth.

What does he say? What are Christ's expectations of those to whom he gives the Spirit? Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also. And greater works than these will he do because I go to the Father.

That's a little difficult to wrap our heads around. How could I ever be said to do more things than Jesus did? Didn't John say at the end of his gospel, his very same book, that all the books in the whole world could not contain the full volume of what Christ did in just even his three years of public ministry?

How could it be said? We're going to be doing greater deeds than what he did. Jesus knew very well. Jesus knew very well it was to our benefit that he go to the Father to send the Holy Spirit. He knew very well that it was all part of God's eternal and global plan for the gospel not to be raised up and restricted to Galilee and Judea, but that the word of the gospel would spread to all nations, to all peoples, to all tribes, to all tongues.

You and I are not greater in power than Jesus Christ. You and I are not greater in holiness and in love and in perfection than Jesus Christ. This is true, but he has ascended to the Father for the express purpose of sending to us the Holy Spirit that our work would continue as his body on earth and that the scope of the gospel message would be in greater boundary, be in greater scope, go beyond the places where he preached, the places that he ministered.

That's his expectation. He goes to the Father to send us another helper, the Spirit of Truth. And so as part of our ascension mind shift, the top-down perspective, since the issue is that we want to avoid being infants in a typhoon of lies, this renewal of our minds, which is so essential, means that we must adjust our beliefs and thus our expectations and thus our prayers and thus our obedience to be in conformity to Christ's own expectations, all according to the grace that each of us has received according to the measure of Christ's gift.

These last days are not a time for tame belief, tepid expectations, timid prayers, and token obedience. We are those upon whom the ends of the ages have come, and we have been given the Holy Spirit. So let us rise to the heights of our Master's challenge according to the wealth of our Savior's provision.

Let's pray. Father, we need this truth as a guiding light in our decision-making and our orienting of our lives that Christ is victorious, he is ascended, and he is mediated to give the Holy Spirit to us, that we would live out the ramifications of his victory in this world.

Oh, help us, Father, not to be falling so short in our courage and in our faith from what Christ has called us to. Encourage us and comfort us, give us clarity with this thought that Christ is ascended.

Strengthen our faith, help our unbelief, give us a willingness to go to strange places, to make progress into areas that we've not been before, but all the while holding fast to Christ and following his direction.

And we pray all these things in the name of Jesus.