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Have you ever heard young children arguing about their fathers & who has the best Dad? It can get a bit competitive, starting simply with ‘My Dad’s better than your Dad!’, but going on to pick out personal details. ‘My Dad’s bigger than you Dad!’ My Dad’s stronger than your Dad! My Dad’s got more money than your Dad! My Dad can do this … or that … or the other … better ! There may be a degree of truth in these claims, but often, if the argument goes on long enough, there is likely to be more than a little exaggeration as each child tries to justify how good their parent is and builds into their description something of the ‘ideal’ father of their imagination. In many ways, our father is better than any other father simply because he is our father and we know that he loves and cares for us. It is interesting that, in comparing fathers, children rarely say ‘My Dad’s better than your Dad because he loves me more, cares for me more, teaches me right from wrong’. After all, these are the things which count more in bringing up a child well. The best Father, without exaggeration, is our heavenly Father. Jesus, the Son of God, taught that we could call Him our ‘Father’. He will be our Father if we join His family, Through faith in Jesus as the Son of God and following Him, we can become children of God, brothers and sisters of the Lord Jesus. God is an Eternal Father an Almighty Father a Loving & Compassionate Father No exaggeration! He will not always give us what we want, as He wants the best for us, but He will be always there for us & we are always in His love and care.
There are two great occasions in the Bible when fifty days elapse between very special and significant events. In each case, the fifty days separates a sacrifice from the appearance of fire with the Word of God and the Power of God. The first occurred when the Israelites, in slavery in Egypt, followed God’s command to sacrifice a lamb and mark the doorposts of their houses with its blood (Exod.12.1-3,5-7). As a result, the angel of the Lord would pass over and only the first-born of the Egyptians would be slain (Exod.12.12-13). Because of this, Pharaoh allowed the Children of Israel to leave Egypt. Following this Passover and their exodus from Egypt, the Israelites journeyed to Mount Sinai and, on the fiftieth day, God descended in fire upon the mountain and met with Moses, giving him the Ten Commandments (Exod.20.1-17). To commemorate this event, an annual celebration of the giving of the Law was instituted. It was called the Feast of Weeks (for it was seven full weeks after Passover) or the Feast of the Fiftieth Day (Pentecost). It was also called by other names, including the Feast of Harvest or of First-Fruits, as it became a celebration of the wheat harvest as well. It was one of these celebrations, more than 1,000 years later, which became the second great occasion. Fifty days after the Resurrection, the Holy Spirit descended, in the outward appearance of fire and the sound of wind, on the disciples assembled in the upper room. The promise made by Jesus that He would send a Helper who would stay with them and reveal the truth about God (John 14.15-17) had been fulfilled. The original Passover, signified by the sacrifice of a lamb in each household, freed the Jews physically from the bondage of slavery in Egypt. In the same way, the crucifixion of Jesus, the sacrifice of the Lamb of God at Passover time, ‘sacrificed for the people’ according to Caiaphas the High Priest (John 11.49-50), has redeemed us from the slavery to sin. As the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai directed the Israelites to the way by which they could live which was pleasing to God, so the coming of the Holy Spirit in the upper room (Acts 2.1-4) has provided the power by which Christians can live the Christian life. The redemption of Israel was transformed, through the Cross and the Resurrection, into the redemption for all mankind. The Law given to the Israelites as an external pointer to the right way of living became, in the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the inner means for truly living the redeemed life in Jesus Christ. This is now celebrated by the Christian Church, We could do with another of those fifty day occasions today.
It may have been better for the modern mind if Jesus had ridden off into the sunset, as cowboy heroes sometimes do in Westerns, rather than to have ‘ascended’. We have difficulty with the concept of ascension but ‘Up, Up and Away’, taken up and obscured by a cloud, might have been the only way that God could have enabled those followers of Jesus assembled on the Mount of Olives to understand that Jesus had returned to His Father’s presence (Acts 1.6-11). Being lifted up into this cloud signifies the exaltation of Jesus to the highest place as the eternal, transcendent God, one with the Trinity. He who ‘humbled Himself and became obedient unto death’ has returned to take again the divine prerogatives He gave up for a time when He became a man, and is now the exalted Lord of all (Phil. 2.5-11). But ‘Up, Up and Away’ does not mean that the Ascension is Jesus’ ‘escape’ from the world. Far from it, for it tells us that Jesus is no longer subject to the physical limitations that we experience. He is present with His people in the whole of the world because He is no longer confined by our dimensions of time and space. Neither does ‘Up, Up and Away’ mean that our eyes should only be fixed on the skies for His promised return. The angelic messengers asked the disciples, ‘Men of Israel, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?’ - a reminder that Jesus had called them to an on-going work (Acts 1.8). With Christ’s Ascension, we do look up in thankfulness and praise, because His return to the unity of the Godhead confirms that everything has been done to ensure our salvation. He is not only our Crucified and Risen Saviour, He is also our Mediator and Advocate in the presence of the Father, the guarantee of all the divine promises of the Gospel. But we also keep our feet on the ground for Jesus has left us with - an Unfinished Task Matthew 28.19 an Unchanging Message John 3.16 an Unfailing Promise Matthew 28.20b The disciples returned to Jerusalem to continue, in witness and through prayer, the work given to them, knowing that they could both engage with the world and look to Christ’s coming again because of their Living and Ascended Lord. He calls us to do the same.