Christ’s Ascension.
“And it came to pass while he blessed them he was parted from them and carried into heaven.”—Luke 15:51.
The coming of the Lord to the nations of the earth was not that He might advertise Himself as a candidate for some high office among the nations, or in the nation to which he belonged. He came not as the Jews expected Him, for they were looking for some temporal ruler who would re-establish their temporal kingdom on the earth. Their idea was that some man would come and sit on the throne of David. Their dream was that the Hebrew people would be formed into the most powerful nation on the earth, and that in some mysterious, some mystic way, this great feat would be accomplished. God’s own chosen people at that time had practically no spiritual conception of what the Kingdom of God meant. The disciples of Christ most frequently misconstrued His teachings on this subject. The case of Nicodemus is an illustrious example of the spiritual misconception of the Jews.
Christ came on a special mission, the saving of the lost, the saving of man. He is therefore represented as the Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world. When John, the Baptist, saw Him coming towards him, walking on the shore of the river Jordan, he exclaimed, “Behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” This spiritual work of Christ is unchanged. He will rule until the kingdoms of this world, become the kingdom of God.
“He came unto His own and His own received him not,” we read, because He did not come doing the temporal work which they expected Him to do, but He came unto His own, and in a grand sense it was through this coming, that the world has received a true conception of this Kingdom, and millions of hearts have experienced this Kingdom set up in these hearts. The Kingdom of God is within you, and as heaven, it will work in and through you, until you are entirely made spiritual. Christ has ever been the Light of the Word. He inspired our Pilgrim Fathers; He was the friend of the poor Samaritans; He sought and saved the needy, poor and sinning of His day. Indeed, the human founders of His Kingdom on the earth were the ignorant fishermen of Galilee. The law came through Moses, but grace and truth by Jesus Christ. His presence, His revelation, His manifestation, His power, His goodness, thrilled the angels when they sang, “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good-will to men.” We are here to laud and to praise Him, and to say as the Scriptures say, “Blessed is the womb that bare thee and the paps that gave thee suck.”
Sir Knights, we congratulate you on this noble spirit of acknowledging the ascension of Jesus Christ. We are here not to talk about the mystic ties which bind you together as a noble band of brothers, but to honor and glorify Him who rose from the dead that our life and immortality might be brought to light. You have come from your asylum to this tabernacle that you may pay tribute to this ascension, the ascension day of the King of Kings. As Christ climbed the rugged hill of Calvary that He might set the captives free so we have climbed, as weary pilgrims, the holy mount of privilege that we might view the landscape o’er of our liberty on this and that side of Jordan. Let us raise our banners and wield our swords for the defense of our country, and our helpless women and children. Let us be valiant soldiers not only of our own teaching as knights, but also of the Cross of Jesus Christ. We can know but one real captain; we can follow but one real leader; we can march in but one army; we can have but one victory; these are all in the Kingdom of God.
When Jesus arose from the dead, He met His disciples and blessed them, and having completed His mission on earth, He went on High, but He has drilled us as He drilled those disciples; He has left us human leaders in His name and with His authority, and to us He said, “If ye would be my disciples, deny yourselves, take up your cross and follow me.” His work on earth is done, excepting through you and me, the human agency which He employs. He is doing His work at the right hand of His Father’s throne that we may be able here, to come off more than conquerors through Him.
He passed through the scenes of Gethsemane, He died on the cross of Calvary; He descended into hell or Hades that He might taste death for every man, and forty days after the resurrection, He ascended on High. He went up on the pinions of the clouds until they received Him out of their sight. Then two men stood by the disciples who were gazing into heaven and said to them, “Why stand ye gazing into heaven, as ye see Him go up ye shall see Him likewise come down again. You have heard of Zerubabel, you have met Darius and Cyrus, the Great, you have seen Jesus Christ ascending; those great men will not return, but Jesus will come again to take you with Him in the next ascension. He will not come again as the victim of pagan hostilities or Jewish persecution, but He is coming without sin unto salvation as the spoiler of the grave, the conqueror of the world, the hero who conquered hell, and will lead us to victory over Satan and his forces.”
The Gospel and the Word are preached to you because you dwell in His secret place; thus you are abiding under the shadow of the Almighty, stay with Him, fight on through the conflict, the battle may be fierce, but you shall win. You see the triumph from afar, your faith is your power. God the All-Glorious One is with you, for remember that when star will shine no more unto star, and planet cease to revolve around planet, when flowers fade to bloom no more, the Word of our God endureth forever. Heaven is His throne and earth His footstool, and we are His children.
I exhort you therefore to take Him more than ever before, as the Man of your counsel, the friend that sticketh closer than a brother.
He has gone to prepare a place for you that where He is there ye may be also.
“Unto Him who hath loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, be glory and dominion now and evermore.”
There is death in the pot.—II Kings 4:40.
In the year 895 B. C., in Syria, a certain woman resided. She was the wife of Obadiah, a devoted companion, a good, genial spirit; she was a model wife, but misfortune overtook her, and the bright days of prosperity and enjoyment passed under the dark clouds of adversity. The pleasant fragrance from the flowers faded and her husband too had passed to the bourne from whence none returns.
She is now a widow left to contend against the hard and unsympathizing world.
“Trouble like a gloomy cloud
Gathered fast and thundered loud.”
Her husband and father was God above. Her old-time friends who knew and recognized her in her prosperity, now passed her by unnoticed. Adversity makes a great change in friendship. It renders friends, strangers, and breaks asunder the dearest ties. These friends were willing to see her suffer and her children torn from her side and sold into slavery that her debts might be paid. There was no helping hand, no money to loan, no salvation from this awful condition, no one to become her surety, but above all this darkness of night and of cloud, God was dwelling, and watching. He never forsakes His own, He may seem to do so, but never, never.
God sent His servant Elisha to her and through him relieved her of all her troubles. Elisha was a mighty man of God. He had received the mantle of Elijah and was a student under him. He was full of wisdom and understanding, going about in the spirit of Jehovah serving the people, instructing them, leading them to higher life, and making them acquainted with God and His ways.
Elisha during a famine had the people to gather herbs that their hunger might be relieved. Among those herbs which were thrown into the pot, there was some poisonous herb which some one had gathered by mistake, it too was thrown in. In the boiling of these together, the poison was spread through the pot. When they began eating the vegetable soup, the poison was discovered. Elijah was informed and destroyed its bad effect.
It is well for us to note that.
I. The world is the pot.
The world has been cursed by sin. There is in it both the good and the bad, both food and poison. God has placed us in the world that we may as Christians, do the work which Elisha did in his day. When we look about us, how many people we see who have been poisoned. There are murderers, suicides, thieves, robbers, liars, all these are acting in the way they act and live, because they have in them poison. It is well for us to understand that we need not expect in this world to find the good unmixed from the evil. Christ prayed that God would not take His own out of the world, but that He would keep them from the evil in the world, and we are taught in the prayer called the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” As God’s children, we cannot mix with the children of this world. We cannot allow the amusements of this world and its allurements to lead us away from God and His Kingdom. We are in the world, but not of it. We are but pilgrims, passing through, on the way to the country of God, but all that we are and have are in this world; just as all the herbs were thrown into the pot, but there is also poison there. Is there any pleasure, without its tinge of pain? Is there any hope without the presence of a cloud? Is there any expectation without some kind of a disappointment? But Christ is our Elisha. The poison in the pot can be removed and He will remove it for us. The pleasures of the world may be rendered sweet and pure. The work of this world can be raised to the highest dignity. The power of this world may be turned to the highest good of all. We are not left helpless and hopeless.
II. The temptations of the world are the fire under the pot.
The question of temptations is a very interesting one, for the Christian. There are many who find their greatest trouble in temptations. They are not able to distinguish a temptation from a sin, and confusing them, they look upon themselves as very great sinners, because they have very great temptations. This is a false idea. A temptation is a trial. All temptations are not evil. There are also temptations that lead us to noble action. God is not tempted of evil, neither does He tempt to evil, but He does tempt us to the good, and indeed, He permits Satan to ply us with temptations, and we by overcoming these temptations may grow strong and pure.
Christ, the sinless man, was in the world, full of temptations, but He overcame them. His temptations were genuine, they were sinful, they would have proven destructive, but He overcame them and He overcame them without sin.
It matters not what the temptation may be, however dark and sinful, it is with you as to the result of that temptation in your life.
“Yield not to temptation,
For yielding is sin.”
It is the yielding that is sin. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Make friends of him and he will live with you. He will become a part of you, he will drag you down, he will work your destruction.
How often we realize that dark, sinful thoughts, pass through our minds. They are sins like a black cloud, sweeping over the beautiful landscape of the soul. Well, does this constitute sin? By no means. It is only when these thoughts remain in the mind, when we harbor them, when we become fond of them; this is what forms sin in the soul. It is your work to expel them, to drive them out, to hate them.
Paul said, When I would do good evil is present with me. How true this is with us today. Even in our holiest exercises, such as prayer, praise, worship, sin is found lurking in our aspirations after God. Selfishness enters our prayers, selfishness frequently inspires our holiest hopes, selfishness poisons our love, doubt weakens our faith, and so we find in our religion and its life, the element of sin. This is the death in the pot.
So the whole Bible deals with the problem of sin. The plan of salvation is simply the plan for removing sin from within and from without us. The mission of Christ is to save the sinner from his sins. Frequently Christians get the idea that salvation is to bring us at last to Heaven; well, that is in a manner true, but remember that is the last work of salvation, bringing us to Heaven. Salvation deals with thousands of things in our lives here, before we are ready for Heaven. And indeed we can never enter Heaven with sin in our natures. Sin must be rooted out here in some manner. So we have our Elisha, he can and does remove the death from the pot. He is the bread of life, the water of life, in which there is no poison.
I beg you, therefore, to take this text with you. Ponder over its deep meaning. Apply its truths to your own life, come to our Elisha that He may remove the death from your pot. Try and understand the deep meaning of your religion and that it is a rule of life for every-day living. That it furnishes you with the wisdom and the power to overcome all the sin within you and all the temptations without you. Therefore watch and pray. Be diligent in season and out of season and put your trust in your Elisha, and He will make all things work together for your good. This is His promise.