Friday, May 15, 2015
Luke 24:50-53 When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.
WHAT NEXT? WORSHIP!
What did Jesus' friends do after they saw Him go? They did what anyone does after seeing a great event--they talked about it. They sat up all night discussing it. They went over the events again. They relived everything that had happened. The Bible says they worshiped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God.
"Continually in the temple praising and blessing God ..." This was their heartfelt worship. This was their response to the ascension of the Lord they had witnessed just outside Jerusalem. They praised God--that is, they discussed and talked about and proclaimed how great He was and announced the great things He had done. They blessed God--that is, they spoke well of Him, they honored Him with all their words, with their speech and their actions they showed their appreciation for the great salvation He had worked for them. Christ had ascended! Now it was time for praise and blessing! We would call it worship. It was time to celebrate in heartfelt worship!
This is our reaction to Jesus' ascension too. Because His ascension means the same thing for us as it meant for them. We too see Jesus rising in triumph. We know that when He disappears behind the cloud He is not really "gone" from us but merely gone from our sight--and He is working day and night to get things ready for that moment when He will appear again and give us new life by raising us from the dead and changing our bodies from corruption to immortality.
His ascension leads us also to recall all the great things He said and did leading up to His rising into the sky. We recall His crown of the thorns and the scorn He endured as He went to the cross carrying our guilt before God on His own shoulders. We recall His death, how He was forsaken by His Father in heaven, enduring that sentence for each of us, and how the empty tomb then signaled that all was well again.
And after Jesus is ascended, what next? We celebrate in the same way those early disciples did. In worship, praising and blessing God.
