To witness for Christ in a corrupt world requires strength greater than our own.

And we are called to bear witness to the kingdom of God, which is invisible.

This is Jesus' left, so he could send a spirit on Pentecost and empower the church for its mission throughout the ages.

There is often a lot of discussion and interest in the return of Christ, but as we consider the work of Christ we must be careful not to skip from the resurrection straight to his second coming.

Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and thank you for joining us today for renewing your mind.

At the end of his earthly ministry, Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father.

And as Arcy Sproul will explain, the ascension of Christ has been a topic that's been woefully neglected in the church today.

To stay with us as we continue our week-long study on the work of Christ and discover four significant things that occur because of the ascension of Jesus.

Here's Dr. Sproul.

We're going to continue now with our study of the work of Christ, and today we're going to focus on his departure from this world in the ascension.

If there's any dimension of the life and the work of Jesus that I think is woefully neglected in the life of the church today, it is concerned for his ascension.

And yet in New Testament categories, this is the acme of Jesus' work in as much as after he finishes his task of the atonement and the resurrection, he returns to heaven.

You recall at the very beginning of this series, we talked about the incarnation as a desension, and we read that no one ascends into heaven,

except he who has come down from heaven.

And so when the New Testament speaks of the ascension of Jesus, it speaks of something far more wady than his merely going up somewhere.

But it's what he is going up to, and for that is so important in our understanding of Jesus' work.

Before I look at that, let me just read for you the brief description that we receive of the ascension of Jesus from the pen of Luke.

He records the ascension both at the end of his gospel, and also in the first chapter of the book of Acts.

Let's look at the record in the gospel of Luke, where we read, and he led them out as far as Bethany, and he lifted up his hands and blessed them.

And it came to pass that while he blessed them, that he was parted from them and carried up into heaven.

And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God.

Now there are just a couple of small details that are added in the version that Luke gives us at the beginning of the book of Acts.

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