V . HIS EXALTATION TO GLORY
Acts 1: 9; Hebrews 2: 6-9; Acts 2: 32-36; Ephesians 1: 19-23. Acts 7: 55-60; Ephesians 3: 8-11; Acts 9: 3-6;
Philippians 2: 6-11; Acts 9: 15-16
What I purpose this evening is that we should consider the Lord as Man in heaven, the glorified Man, the glory of the Christ, that is, that we should follow Him from His resurrection into the heavens, follow the cloud. Its says in the passage we read in the first chapter of Acts, “he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight”. Now that cloud is the same cloud that rested over the tabernacle; that rested on the mercy-seat in the most holy place, filled it; it was the symbol of the glory of God. So we see Him taken up into heaven and received by the glory of God. That accords with what we have in 1 Tim 3: 16, “God was manifest in the flesh; justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory”. The One in whom God has been manifested, is now received up in glory, so that if we follow the cloud, we shall follow it to the place where it rests on the blessed Man. There is a Man in whom that glory has found its rest, its perfect satisfaction. How delightful for us to follow the cloud and to see it rest on a blessed Man in heaven. Now if we thus follow the Lord into His heavenly place in glory, we shall find ourselves in the region of divine purpose and counsel, He is the beginning, centre, and pattern of the heavenly and eternal system; all the eternal purposes of God had in view Christ, and Christ as a glorified Man, and now that blessed Man has taken His place according to divine counsel, God can unfold to us that which had been hidden in Himself from eternity—all the apostles testified the fact of Christ being glorified in heaven. The apostle Peter, on the day of Pentecost, declared that the One whom the Jews had crucified, had been raised up by God, and had been exalted to the right hand of God. Man had dishonoured Him, and put Him on a cross of shame, but God had raised Him up by His mighty power, and had exalted Him. He is exalted to the highest point of heavenly glory above angels, principalities and authorities and every name that is named.
The apostle quotes Psalm 110, “the Lord said unto my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I have put thine enemies to be the footstool of thy feet”. When He had been despised and rejected by man, and cast out of the world, Jehovah said to Him, ‘Come up here; I have a place for You, sit Thou at My right hand’—the highest conceivable place of glory. That is provisional, it is not to be for ever, ‘until I make Thy foes Thy footstool’. It is what characterises the present period, the day of grace. While He is sitting there the testimony of grace for all men is going out through the One who died and rose again. But the day is coming when He will rise up and come forth in glory, and all His enemies will be put as a footstool under His feet. God having exalted Him, has “made him both Lord and Christ”, Acts 2: 36. As the Christ, He is the Head in whom God has established all His thoughts of grace and blessing for man; all He had in His own infinite love and wisdom purposed to bring about for the blessing of the creature; all has been established in the Christ, and everyone who receives blessing derives it from Him; righteousness, salvation and every blessing God has for us, we have not to wait for it, it already subsists and is given to us in the Christ.
Then He is Lord, too; He is set in a place of supreme authority and power, that He may be the Administrator. All that has been established in Him as the Christ, is now administered by Him, so that if we receive anything of the blessing established in Him, we receive it through Him. It is in acknowledging Him as Lord, that souls receive any blessing or grace. It is all through His name. Whatever blessing it is, it all comes through the Lord Jesus.
Now that is a very great part of the truth connected with Christ as Man, exalted by the right hand of God. All the apostles bore testimony to the fact not only of His resurrection but of His exaltation and glory as Man. But in the early part of Acts, we get the presentation of Christ to Israel once more. They rejected Him in humiliation, but God, in His mercy, gave them one more opportunity, so that the apostles preached that if they would repent, Christ would be sent to them again. The fruitless fig tree was spared one year longer. But they did not repent, they forfeited everything. Now when you come to Stephen he reviews the whole course of that nation, and shows how consistently they had rejected the Holy Ghost all through their history, so that it is all over with Israel according to the flesh, and there was nothing to look for as far as the earth was concerned, but then he, being filled with the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven. The Holy Ghost directed his eye away from man, away from the earth, he looked up steadfastly into heaven. If we were under the control of the Holy Ghost, He would direct our eyes and our hearts away to Christ where He is. We have nothing to expect in connection with this world; nothing to expect in relation to man after the flesh; nothing to expect in relation to ourselves naturally, but the Spirit would turn our eyes, as He did Stephen’s, to heaven. What did he see? Well, he saw heaven opened. That was a new thing for heaven to be thrown open to man (it had been opened to Christ). He saw the glory of God. He turned away from a scene filled with the wickedness of man, of all that was dishonourable to God, and he gets a vision of the scene that is filled with the glory of God. What a relief to turn our eyes to heaven and look up into a scene that is filled with the glory of God. God has glorified Himself, in raising and glorifying that blessed Man who had glorified Him on the earth. In the epistle to the Philippians we read, “God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow … and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”.
There in the centre of that glory is Jesus. Stephen said, “I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man” (the One whom you have rejected here) “standing on the right hand of God”. Now that passage is characteristic. It is one of the things that characterise the present moment in which we are found, that heaven is no longer shut up. The heavens are thrown open to us, and having the Holy Ghost, and by the testimony of the Holy Ghost, what has taken place in heaven has been revealed, and we are able in that way to look straight up into heaven, and to see the glory of God resting on Jesus, and all that God has been pleased to unfold to us of what He has established in Him according to His eternal purpose. Well, now, that is a new start, earth was done with for the time being, heaven is opened.
Now the next thing we find is that Saul, who was the great enemy of Christ, and who would destroy every witness to Him, as he is in his mad opposition going to Damascus, a light from heaven shone upon him and he heard a voice from heaven; heaven speaks. The light from heaven comes to him, and the result is, in that light he is convicted, brought down, all his self-righteousness withered up, he is fallen to the earth a helpless sinner (in his own estimation the chief of sinners (1 Tim 1: 15), but he hears a voice: it was not a voice of thunder, it was a gracious voice, it was Jesus the Lord speaking to him. He said, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” ‘What have I done?’ ‘Why should you hate Me so?’ and in the light of that glory he says, “Lord”; owns that blessed One, Jesus, to be Lord. “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”, Acts 9: 6. The light and the voice changed him into another man; he came under the control of Christ, under the power of His love, so that he could say, “For me to live is Christ”, Phil 1: 21. “The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me”, Gal 2: 20. He was now to become the chosen vessel to open up to the saints the glories of Christ and God’s purposes in Christ, as he says, “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ”, Eph 3: 8. What unsearchable riches! As I have said before, all that God has revealed of Himself, and all His purpose in regard to man in that blessed Christ, this was Paul’s ministry.
Let us consider the passage read in Hebrews 2, a quotation from Psalm 8, where the Psalmist says, “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the sun and moon which thou hast ordained” (he looked at the creation in the heavens), “What is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” We may well wonder at this, that man, the creature that had fallen, should be an object of interest to God; we may well consider this. Do you ever wonder at it that God should ever take up a creature like you and make you an object of interest to Himself? In all God’s eternal purposes, before the world was made, man was the object that God had in view. Wonderful thing! “What is man that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him?” What a wonderful thought that God should exalt man and that man should be crowned with glory and honour, and all things set under his feet, things in heaven, as well as earth. All this found its full expression in the second Man, the Son of man, the Son become Man: “who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour”. You and I are going to share that glory another day. “But now we see not yet all things put under him”. Every thought of God found its answer in that blessed Man, but they are not yet carried out, publicly we do not see all things put under Him yet, “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour”, Heb 2, 8, 9.
Now the epistle to the Ephesians carries us a little further. The apostle there speaks of the power that had wrought in Christ when God raised Him from the dead, and he adds, He “set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body”, Eph 1: 20-23. His headship is universal, but it has not yet come into display. All things are not yet brought under His headship, but in the millennial day everything in heaven and earth will be brought under the headship of Christ; He will fill all things and bring about a state of unity in heaven and earth a state of peace; a state of life and blessing everywhere, so that God’s will will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. That is what we are waiting for, but in the meantime, He is Head over all things to the assembly, which is His body. We have already come under that blessed Headship, the body derives everything from the Head. The body here takes in all the saints from the day of Pentecost, to the day when the Lord will come to receive His own.
In the next chapter we are said to have been quickened together with Him, and raised up together, and made to sit down together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. That is the true relationship in which the church stands to Christ. There is no other company in any other part of God’s world that will stand in the same relation to Christ as the church does now. It is like Adam and Eve, when God first created Adam, and made him head over all creation on the earth, He provided a helpmate for him (a wife). He was head over the creation, but he was not head over the wife, he was head to the wife. That is a little picture of what we have here as to God’s thought; the church is that wonderful company that, in the sovereign love of God, had been called out and is being formed to occupy this remarkably exalted position in relation to Christ, to be the object of His affection, and to share in all His glory for ever. Like Eve, the church derives her life and being from the Head. Nothing could be united to Christ, but that which is of Christ. Nothing would be suitable to Adam, but that which was taken out of Adam, as we read, God put Adam into a deep sleep, and took a rib from his side, builded a woman and presented her to Adam, so that he could say, “It is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”, Gen 2: 23. That is how the apostle Paul presents the assembly in this scripture.
Now that brings me to another consideration. How had He come to occupy the present position in which He is as Man in heaven, in relation to God? The apostle, in Ephesians 1: 3, speaks of God as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now in one sense His exaltation and glory is God’s righteous answer to His life of obedience and His death on the cross. He was willing to suffer everything for the will and glory of God. What should be a righteous answer to that? How could God display His righteous appreciation of that blessed Man? Well, nothing less would do, He must exalt Him to glory. God’s righteousness would be displayed in raising Him from the dead and exalting Him to glory, so that His position in glory is the expression of God’s righteous appreciation of all His obedience and self-sacrifice. It is a matter of righteousness.
There is another thought—He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. What does that convey to us? Well, “Father” brings in the thought of love. What would the Father’s love do for His well-beloved Son? His well-beloved Son was willing to come into this world, to enter into death, that the Father might glorify His name. Then we read He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. The Father’s glory demanded that He should be raised from the dead, but not only that, He set Him before His face in glory. That is what the Father’s love would do. The Father took up His well-beloved Son out of death and set Him in the highest place in relation to Himself in heaven. He is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, what about that? Why, that is how we know God; what He is as the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, that He is to every true believer, and every true believer can say, ‘This God is my God’. All the power and the righteousness, all that God is in that way in connection with Christ, is available for us; “this God is our God for ever and ever”, Ps 48: 14. Then what He is as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, He is to us. We are brought into the place of sonship, loved as He is loved; “Taken us into favour in the Beloved”, Eph 1: 6. How has He taken us into favour? In the Beloved One. He has taken us into favour not through Him, but in Him, so that we can speak of Him as our God, and as our Father, we know Him as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is Paul’s ministry by the Spirit.
Now with regard to John’s ministry, it is presented on a different line (read chap 3: 12, 13). Here is One who has come out of heaven, He is about to ascend into heaven, and can tell us about heavenly things. Then chapter 6: 62, “What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?” That is from John’s point of view; He, as Man, goes back into the position He had as Son with the Father from eternity. It is not exactly something that is given to Him, or something that God does for Him, but the Son of Man ascends to the place where He was from eternity.
Now I will refer to a passage in chapter 13: 1, 3. The hour was come for His departure from this world, when He would depart out of this world, and go to the Father, knowing that He was come from God and that He went to God. Having accomplished the mission for which He had come, He goes back to the One who had sent Him. He says in chapter 17, “Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee”. Though it is His own right, He takes it up as Man, and receives it in that way as the Father’s gift. In chapter 14, He says, “I go to prepare a place for you … I will come again” (it is His own act) “and receive you unto myself that where I am, there ye may be also”. Now in chapter 16: 28, “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world; again, I leave the world, and go to the Father”. He speaks in the consciousness of what was His own right and title; He did not belong to this world; He came into it for the will of God, to accomplish the work that God had given Him to do. Now He says, “I came forth from with the Father”, again “I leave the world and go to the Father”. There was One who had been with the Father from eternity; was in full communion with the Father’s thoughts of love; the blessed Son, and He comes forth into Manhood, and after accomplishing all the Father’s will, laying the righteous basis on which the Father could accomplish the purposes of His love and glorifying His name, He leaves the world and goes back to the Father. He takes it as His own proper place. In the well-known verse in chapter 20, when He meets Mary Magdalene after His resurrection, He says, “Go to my brethren and say unto them, I ascend” not, I am going to be exalted. In Mark’s gospel He was “taken up “ into heaven; in Luke’s gospel He was “received up” into heaven, and the disciples “saw him carried up”. But here it was His own act; He was going to the place to which He belonged—“I ascend to my Father and your Father”, John 20: 17. I hope you catch the difference as to the way it is presented in the ministry of Paul and John. In the former it is what He is made, or, what is given to Him as Man by God. In John it is in accord with the whole tenor of the gospel in which His personal glory shines in every chapter. He re-enters the glory in His own personal right, now having accomplished His death and having glorified God thereby. He can associate others with Himself, so that we get the same blessed truth as we have seen in Paul’s ministry, viz, our relation to the Father in the Son—“my Father, your Father; my God, your God”. You get the double thought again, only in the reverse order.
Well, think about it, consider it, dwell upon it, pray about it. In whichever way we think upon it, whether as presented by the Spirit in Paul or John, it is the delight and joy of our hearts to contemplate this blessed Man, Jesus the Son of God, in His heavenly place in the glory into which He has entered as Man, in all the glory God has given Him, which glory will be displayed publicly in the world to come.
God give us, by the Spirit, to have our eyes and hearts so directed to Christ that He may fill the vision of our souls, and that He may engage the affection of our hearts, so that we may be transferred in Spirit from earth to heaven, and find all our life and joy in contemplating His glory. God bless His word.