Today is Ascension Day in the Christian Year, and this week we've been reflecting on why

the Ascension of Jesus was and is so important. Yesterday we were thinking about the fact that

there are two aspects to the work of our Lord Jesus as Prophet and Priest and King. We

call them His finished work and His unfinished or ongoing work. As Prophet we saw yesterday

that the Lord Jesus continues to speak to His church through the ministry of His word

to us, but He also continues His priestly ministry. We've seen before that when we think

about priestly ministry we tend to focus on sacrifice and certainly our Lord Jesus

at the heart of His priestly ministry has sacrificed Himself for our sins. That of course

was fundamental to the work of the Old Covenant priests and it's certainly fundamental to

the ministry of our Lord Jesus. The Old Covenant priests kept standing because theirs was

not the real sacrifice and they continued to make it daily. Hebrews tells us that our

Lord Jesus Christ has made a sacrifice of Himself once and for all, and now, thinking

about the Ascension, He has sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on High. So Christ

has made a sacrifice and finished His work. But that isn't the end of our Lord Jesus

priestly ministry. Making sacrifices for sins was one part of the priest's regular ministry,

the other part was making intercession for the people. It was His responsibility and

we see this in different ways in the Old Testament, His responsibility to care for the people.

And the priest did this in a variety of ways, but central to those ways was that they

interceded for the people. They expressed to God their care and love for the people and

carried their needs into His presence. You remember how this was seen in a very visible way

in the person of the High Priest? He wore a breastplate where 12 different kinds of stones

were each engraved with the name of one of the tribes of Israel. And there were shoulder

...