SPEAKER_00: Good morning, First Baptist Wimberly.
SPEAKER_00: This is Mike Gibbons.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Friday.
SPEAKER_00: Well, this Sunday we will have reached the end of Luke's Gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And what a glorious ending it is, the ascension of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Christ rising in the clouds to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: The glorious ascension not only concludes the Gospel of Luke, but provides a bridge to the sequel book, The Acts of the Apostles, which begins with the ascension.
SPEAKER_00: We learn in Acts that the ascension did not immediately take place on Easter evening, but forty days later.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to Acts chapter 1, verses 1 through 3.
SPEAKER_00: In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.
SPEAKER_00: He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: So the ascension is not focused on a whole lot in sermons or otherwise, but it is essential to our faith.
SPEAKER_00: The ascension of Jesus to heaven brought about his super exaltation, our exaltation, his intercession for us at the right hand of God, his presence with us, and his power through us.
SPEAKER_00: To emphasize the importance of the ascension, we need only look at the last two verses of Luke.
SPEAKER_00: And they read as this.