Ascension Day 2016

INTRO: Today we commemorate the ascension of Christ, when He went back to heaven. Over the years I have preached close to 20 messages on the ascension of Christ. As these messages are a year in between you will not remember a series of nine messages in nine years on the ministry of the ascended Christ. One of the things that bothers me as I consider my age is that I will get to preach so little of the Bible in my lifetime.

This morning we go to 1 Timothy 3 (read verse 16). The book of First Timothy, is the first of three epistles, called the Pastoral Epistles. These three books were written to Pastors, and that is why they are called the pastoral epistles. And in verses 14-15 Paul says that he has written to Timothy in order that he might know how to conduct himself in the house of God.

The 'House of God' is here further defined as the Church of the living God. The Church is and has been God’s greatest work on earth in the last 2,000 years, though most of mankind is oblivious to the fact. Now the Church of the living God is that sum total of all true believers of all the time of the Church age. This is the universal Church. And what held true for Timothy in the Church he was pastoring holds true for any local church at any time in the Church age.