Sermon Tone Analysis

Good to be back.

Thank you Pastor Zach, Jamie Stinemetz, Kyle Waters, and Robert Bragg for filling the pulpit while I was gone.

You may also notice I have a slightly different dialect here this morning, and no its not from spending 10 days in Birmingham Alabama.

Braces

As Robert showed us last week in eph 4.1-6 Paul focuses on unity within the people of God.

Unity has been one of the major themes of Ephesians thus far.

Mainly seeing that through Christ the dividing wall of Jew and Gentile has been torn down and now we are all one in Christ.

Paul mentions in 4.1-6 seven “one” statements

We are all part of One body

We are indwelled and sealed with One Spirit

We all share One hope

We bow before One Lord

We have One Faith

We are marked out as Christians through One baptism

And we believe and worship One God

This is who we are, we are one body, unified together by the triune God himself.

Now, being unified, being of one mind and one heart, moving toward one hope, is not something we are able to do on our own.

Left to ourselves we tend toward chaos and division, not unity and love.

So Paul moves to describe the grace that we have been given to enable us to be this united people - this one body.

In verse 7, Paul moves his attention from the whole and zooms in to the particular, to individual Christians who make up the one body.

Here Paul is saying that grace has been given to each individual Christian in the form of gifts.

And these gifts are to be used to facilitate godly unity within the body of Christ.

Now, if you look in your Bibles if you were to take out verses 8, 9, and 10 you will see that verse 7 moves very smoothly into verse 11

It would read like this...

7 But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift… 11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,

But this is not what Paul did, Paul wanted to make sure the Ephesians understood the significance and purpose behind the giving of gifts, which is why Paul adds this parenthetical section on Christ’s ascension.

So what we are going to do this morning is focus on verses 8-10 and explore why Paul pauses here to highlight the descending and ascending work of Christ.

The ascension of Jesus Christ after his resurrection is often viewed as a footnote to the gospel.

We think of the gospel in terms of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.

I think a better paradigm to look at the gospel would be life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus.

The bible is very much concerned with the ascension of Jesus, it was prophesied in many way throughout the OT.

Most explicitly in Dan 7

You see, the ascension is the exaltation of Jesus Christ into his glory.

The ascension is where Jesus is given dominion, power, glory, and cosmic rule over all the nations of the earth.

It is the King receiving his crown and sitting on his throne.

One of the many reasons why its important to us is that if Christ had not ascended, we would have no representation before the throne of God, for when Jesus ascended he ascended as our high priest who now lives to make intercession for us.

The ascension is a massive and glorious topic that Paul wants us to understand before we can truly understand the gifts this exalted king has given us.

So that will be our mission this morning, following the contours of Eph 4.8-10, we will seek to focus in on the meaning and purpose of the ascension.

So look with me at Eph. 4.8-10

So with that, lets start by looking at verses 9-10 and will will come back to verse 8 in a moment

Paul knows for us to understand the ascension we first have to know what it means that he descended into the lower regions of the earth.

The Church Fathers often argued that this descending to the lower parts of the earth refer to Christ’s work between his death and resurrection.

When Jesus died he descended into sheol and proclaimed to all the souls his victory over satan, sin and death.

As the OT Saints were waiting for the day when their sins would be finally atoned for.

Their ultimate salvation was secured by the work of Christ just as much as ours.

And though this is theologically true, I don’t think this is what Paul is referring to here in Eph 4.

Paul is making a Christological point here, that Jesus Christ, the one who ascended to the right hand of the father, first came from the father.

- He is speaking of his incarnation.

Jesus says in John 3:13 when he is talking to Nicodemus

So the descending here in Eph 4 is speaking of Christ, the eternal God putting on flesh and dwelling with his people.

Jesus descends as a man, so we might ascend with him to God.

For we cannot ascend to the father unless we are in Christ.

The only one who can ascend is he who first descended from heaven.

This is message of the gospel.

Christ has descended, he put on flesh, he took our sins in his body, was sacrificed for our sins on the cross, and he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places.

For us to draw near to God we must be in Christ, for we cannot ascend to the presence of God on our own.

And this is what happens when we pray, we pray in Jesus’ name, we pray in Christ.

in our prayers we ascend in Christ to the throne room of God where we make our requests known, and thank him for all he had done.

And we do this in Christ, for he is the one who has ascended, and he has ascended on our behalf.

This powerful truth is seen foreshadowed throughout the OT.

In the OT the idea of ascending was linked to two activities:

1. Drawing near to the presence of God

2. Enthronement after victory

Ascension: Drawing Near to God

First, Drawing near to the presence of God

God often meets with people on mountains

Moses had to ascend the mount sinai to meet with God

Abraham went up a mountain when God spoke to him

Elisha went up mount sinai to hear from God

The people of Babel knew to be like God they had to ascend… thus they built a tower - they tried to ascend on their own.

Even in Revelation we see John taken to a mountain to receive the vision of Christ and his Church.

The Tabernacle was set on a hill where people had to go up to it

The Temple was on a mountain so the people had to ascend to the presence of God

There is a whole section in the book of Psalms called the Psalms of Ascent (120-134), which were the songs and chants of worship the people of God would sing as they approached the temple during the festival time of Israel.

Perhaps one of the most interesting pictures of ascension is found in Lev. 1 with the ascension offering.

You see the heart and soul behind the sacrificial system was for God to be near his people.

However, due to sin humanity could not ascend to the God, for if they did they would be destroyed.

For God is far to holy, and before his righteousness sinful man melts away.

So God set up the sacrificial system which would be a way for God’s people to draw near.

Illustration

So lets say your a hebrew family during the days of Joshua.

its Sunday morning and you get the kids up to go worship God.

You load up the family drive to the temple.

You would park and begin the ascent toward God - as the Tabernacle was set up on a mountain.

You would enter the courtyard, which is as close as you were allowed to go.

You were not allowed into the tabernacle, only the priests could do that.

So how would you ascend the rest of the way to be close to God?

You would send an animal on your behalf to bring your praise and thanks to God.

The first thing you do is You lay your hands on the animal and lean on it.

This language is taken from the ordination of the levitical priests (Numbers 8)

The laying on of the hands was ordaining the animal to be a priest on your behalf.

You need a priest to go into God’s presence for you, so you ordain the animal making him a four legged priest.

You then slaughter the animal

The priests would then help you by taking the blood and and anointing the alter next to the entrance to the tent of meaning.

the priest would then cut the animal into pieces and lay it on the wood of the alter to be burnt up.

EDEN?

The smoke would then ascend to God and it would be a pleasing aroma.

You see, You don’t want the animal only to die on your behalf, you want it to be burnt up and taken up to God on your behalf.

This is what ascension means in the bible, it means to draw near to the presence of God.

And this is what Christ has done, he was sacrificed for our sins, and he ascended to God on our behalf.