In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
See, the Lord ascends in triumph;
Conquering King in royal state,
Riding on the clouds, His chariot,
To His heav’nly palace gate. (LSB 494:1)
This hymn begins by describing the scene of the ascension with dramatic imagery. See Jesus in all His glory. The clouds are His chariot and heaven is opened to receive its King. The angel choirs bow before Him and greet Him with songs of praise.
The second stanza gives us more of heaven’s perspective to the ascension:
Who is this that comes in glory
With the trump of jubilee?
Lord of battles, God of armies,
He has gained the victory. (494:2)
The angels are watching Christ enter into heaven and they name Him as their Lord, the true Commander of their hosts. They call Jesus the Lord God of Sabaoth– that means the God of the heavenly armies. That’s also what we call Him in the Sanctus during the Holy Communion: Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of Sabaoth. Our God is a warrior, the Commander of a great and mighty army. He leads both His heavenly division (the holy angels) and His earthly division (the Church on earth). So, with the angels we recognize the Lord Jesus as our mighty leader in the fight against sin, death, and the devil.
The hymn also reminds us where and when our Lord fought His decisive battle and won His victory:
He who on the cross did suffer,
He who from the grave arose,
He has vanquished sin and Satan;
He by death has crushed His foes. (494:2)
This is why Jesus is able to ascend into heaven and sit at the Father’s right hand—because He is the One who made satisfaction for our sins. His holy blood took away our sins and broke the devil’s power. Satan can no longer accuse us of sin because it has been atoned for by Jesus. His holy death meant the destruction of death and the beginning of new life for all who believe. And so because Jesus died and rose again, He is given all authority in heaven and on earth. The Father seated Christ at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And the Father put all things under Christ’s feet (Ephesians 1:20–22).
But now we come to the really interesting stanzas of the hymn. The hymnwriter used Old Testament figures to describe the ascension and its meaning. These men are called types—meaning they prefigure or foreshadow Christ. They’re not strictly prophecies, but their very lives are prophetic. They point forward to Christ by their deeds and by what God did for them.
First comes the patriarch Enoch.
He who walked with God and pleased Him,
Preaching truth and doom to come,
He, our Enoch, is translated
To His everlasting home. (494:3)
Enoch was one of those ancient fathers mentioned in Genesis before the Flood. Like so many other patriarchs, he was a prophet and preacher of God’s Word. But Enoch gets a mysterious mention in Genesis: Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him (Genesis 5:24).The writer of Hebrews explains: By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. And without faith it is impossible to please Him (Hebrews 11:5–6). But what does this have to do with Jesus? Jesus is our greater Enoch, so to speak. He perfectly walked with God in His sinless life. He pleased God by trusting in His Father and doing His Father’s will by dying for us. He preached the truth and even the impending doom upon those who would not repent and believe. And just as Enoch’s faithfulness was rewarded by being taken bodily into the heavenly home of God, so also, Jesus was taken up bodily to sit on God’s throne.
The Old Testament symbolism gets even deeper in stanza 4.
Now our heav’nly Aaron enters
With His blood within the veil;
Joshua now is come to Canaan,
And the kings before Him quail.
Now He plants the tribes of Israel
In their promised resting place;
Now our great Elijah offers
Double portion of His grace. (494:4)
Aaron was the first High Priest, whose job it was, on the Day of Atonement, to take blood from the sacrifices, go behind the temple curtain and enter the Holy of Holies where God dwelt. There he sprinkled the blood on the Ark of the Covenant and made atonement for the sins of the people. Now, Jesus is our greater Aaron, our eternal High Priest, and by ascending into heaven He entered the true Holy of Holies. But He was not a sinful man like the human priests, and He did not bring animal blood which can never really cover sin. Jesus is our perfect High Priest who entered God’s presence with His very own holy blood and so made atonement for the sins of the world. Now, Jesus forever stands in His Father’s presence, serving as our priest, interceding for us, as the one Mediator between God and man.
Next we sing about Joshua. Both he and Jesus actually share the same Hebrew name: Yeshua, meaning, The Lord saves. Joshua was the commander of God’s army, who led the tribes of Israel into the promised land of Canaan. The kings and armies of the Canaanites trembled and fell before the Lord just as those mighty walls of Jericho fell. And our greater Joshua, the Lord Jesus, is the One who leads His people into our promised land: the kingdom of heaven. By faith in Jesus we come to our true resting place and know that we are at home with God.
And then we sing about Elijah, one of the greatest Old Testament prophets. He is also the only other Old Testament figure to ascend bodily into heaven. At the end of his ministry, he was taken up into heaven by the fiery chariot. But before he left, Elijah directed Elisha to succeed him and gave him a double portion of his spirit. To be honest, it’s not completely clear what that means, but Elisha did end up doing more miracles than Elijah did. And it also meant that Elisha was set apart from the rest of the prophets at that time. Of course, Jesus is greater than Elijah or Elisha. Jesus is the greatest prophet of God, for not only does He come with a message from God, but He is the true and eternal Word of God. And Jesus also says that whoever believes in Me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father (John 14:12). Not that what we do is more miraculous than what Jesus did, but that the work of the Church continues and goes beyond what Jesus did during His earthly ministry, because the ascended Lord is still at work through His Church.
So, again, what are all these Old Testament figures doing in this Ascension hymn? Well, they show that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises. The lives of those old saints were not random or inconsequential. They prepared and pointed forward to the long-awaited Savior. And as the ascension of Jesus is really the completion of His redemptive work—the final step of His going to the Father—then singing about these Old Testament types reminds us that this culminating moment was also predicted ahead of time. Long before it ever came to pass, God had His plan that His Son would become a man, live, suffer, die, rise, and return to His heavenly throne where He would then continue to reign as a man.
And that brings us to the really big point of Ascension, and the final stanza of this hymn. What’s even better than Jesus fulfilling and representing Israel is that Jesus fulfills and represents the whole human race. He is our Second and greater Adam. Our victorious Lord Jesus is a man like you and me and He represents you and me. That’s why we can sing these stunning words in stanza 5:
He has raised our human nature
On the clouds to God’s right hand;
There we sit in heav’nly places,
There with Him in glory stand.
Jesus reigns adored by angels;
Man with God is on the throne.
By our mighty Lord’s ascension
We by faith behold our own. (494:5)
Jesus, true God and Man, reigns in heaven. Really think about what that means for the human race. “Our poor human nature was carried up in Christ above all the hosts of heaven, above all the ranks of angels, beyond those heavenly powers to the very throne of God the Father” (Leo the Great, ACC: Mark, p.254). This means that “the ascension of Christ is our elevation.” Not only does Jesus restore us to the perfection of Eden, which we had lost due to sin, but He does us one better (ACC: Luke, p.393). He takes us up higher. We belong with God in His eternal and holy presence. We share His divine life.
Jesus made this new pathway for us. In His ascension, we see our own glorification. By faith, we are with Him now, seated in the heavenly places. And in His Word and Sacraments, He is with us now, giving Himself to us even here on earth. And by faith in what our Lord Jesus has done, we know that one day we will be with Him in His glory that will never end.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
In the Holy + Name of Jesus. Amen.
