X In the Name of Jesus X
Daniel 7,13-14
Christi Himmelfahrt 041 weiß, transferred
Boniface, Archbishop of Mainz & German Apostle, Martyr 755.
5. June 2011
1. O Lord, Almighty God and Father, who this day has made us glad through the glorious ascension of Your dear Son, most heartily do we thank You for this joy and consolation. He has entered into His glory, and has promised that we will follow Him. And we beseech You, enable us steadfastly to believe the same, and ever more worship and praise You in the Name of Your dear Son, our Lord. Hide Your face from our sins, and behold us in the face of Your Anointed, whom You have received, for our joy and consolation, to Your right hand. Be gracious unto us, O Lord, and hear our cry. Send down Your Spirit, so that we also may arise and seek those things which are above where Christ sits. Grant us grace to depart from evil and to follow righteousness, to love You, and in cheerful obedience serve You forever. O Lord, our God, enable us, with Him and through Him, to ascend and rule in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness (Löhe 141). Amen.
2. Our sermon text for this morning, dear brothers and sisters, is from the Prophet Daniel who writes: 13I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there arrived one like a son of man, and He came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him. 14And to Him was given dominion and glory and a reign, so that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him; His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which will not pass away, and His reign one that will not be destroyed. This is our text. 3. In the past two hundred years, the Prophet Daniel has been hijacked by false teachers who use his prophecies to prop up their heretical teaching of dispensational premillennialism. They put an unbiblical gap between Daniel’s sixty-ninth and seventieth week in order to make the holy prophet conform to their errant understanding of eschatology. They focus more on the Antichrist rather than the Christ. They see prophecy as the prediction of future historical events rather than the Biblical approach that prophecy points us to Christ and His ministry. The Biblical prophets were more concerned about forth-telling the arrival of the Christ and less concerned about foretelling of future human events.
4. A straightforward reading of Daniel clearly shows that the prophet is speaking about Jesus’ ascension into heaven. We know this on account of several theological points: 1. The „son of man“ in Daniel 7 is a reference to Jesus Christ. In the Holy Gospels, Jesus refers to Himself seventy-eight (78) times as the Son of Man. He never uses this phrase to refer to someone else; Jesus only applied this phrase to Himself. 2. The „Ancient of Days“ is a reference to God the Father. 3. The phrase „was presented before Him“ is a reference to Jesus’ post-ascension appearance before the heavenly throne. 4. The dominion, glory, and reign that was given to Jesus is His coronation as the King of all creation and more specifically His Kingship over His holy Church.
5. From the Prophet Daniel we therefore learn:
I. All history is centered upon Jesus Christ.
II. God the Father has given Christ a heavenly reign.
III. This heavenly reign is one of everlasting dominion and glory.
I.
6. All history is centered upon Jesus Christ. Almost every history textbook will tell you the exact opposite of this. We learn that dramatic world events and history-making decisions are the result of powerful leaders embarking on momentous endeavors. President Kennedy declared in 1962: „We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.“ President Reagan implored in 1987 at the Brandenburg Gate (West Berlin): „General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! “ In high school, my world history teacher told us that there are only three dates he wanted us to remember from Western Civilization: 1. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus in A.D. 30; 2. the fall of Rome in 476; and 3. the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
7. To be sure, there are plenty of momentous events in history. In 755, the martyrdom of Boniface, the Archbishop of Mainz, brought to an end his dedicated evangelization to the pagan Germans. To this day, Boniface is affectionately called „the apostle to Germany“. VE Day and VJ Day in 1945 liberated millions of people around the world who had been under the heavy boot of Japanese imperialism and German fascism. Christians can therefore honestly say that Jesus Christ is the most important person in this world’s history, and His ministry has impacted the world over more than any other person or regime. All history is centered on Jesus Christ. II.
8. God the Father has given Christ the heavenly reign. Kingdoms come and go. Empires rise and fall. This terrestrial Earth has seen mighty and glorious empires in its history: the majestic Egyptian pharaohs (3000-30 B.C.), the powerful Babylonian Empire (625-539 B.C.), and the mighty Roman Empire (27 B.C. – A.D. 1453). The grandest earthly reign was the British Empire (1583-1997). During the reign of Queen Victoria (ruled 1837-1901), the sun never set on her territories and her grandchildren took the throne in all the prominent European monarchies. Nevertheless (dennoch), Queen Victoria’s British Empire was a flickering candle flame against the blazing star of Jesus Christ’s reign, for the reign of Christ endures forever.
9. The Prophet Daniel was an eschatological prophet who dealt with the end-time reign of God. He forth-told the eternal glory of Jesus’ reign. Jesus stood as a king before Pilate, John’s Gospel records that: »Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, „Are you the King of the Jews?“ Jesus answered, „My reign is not of this world. If My reign were of this world, My servants would have been fighting, so that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But My reign is not from the world.“« (John 18,33.36). Jesus’ reign is not some temporal empire like Rome, nor is it a theocratic kingdom like Old Testament Israel. Jesus’ reign is spiritual. Jesus’ reign is manifested in His Church. III.
10. This heavenly reign is one of everlasting dominion and glory. Daniel tells us that all people, nations, and languages shall serve Jesus in His heavenly reign. Jesus’ glorious reign is manifested in His holy Christian Church which consists of two distinct realms: the Church militant and the Church triumphant. The militant Church consists of all the congregations and parishes that one finds throughout the world. Some are regal and hierarchical, like the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church with their bishops and patriarchs. Others are independent and congregational like the Presbyterian and Baptist Churches. Some Christians worship in churches with grand cathedrals in cultured cities made of stone, marble, ornate stained glass, and classical pipe organs. Others are simple tin-plated square buildings in the African bush where a cantor keeps the worshippers on meter with only his singing voice. The Church on earth is militant because she daily struggles against the Devil, that rebel-usurper, who has planted his tyrannical banner upon God’s creation. Jesus advances His reign through the Word and the Sacraments by which Church liberates those behind enemy lines. The triumphant Church, however, consists of all those dear Christians who have fallen asleep in the Lord Jesus and now enjoy the bliss of Paradise. These Christians behold Jesus in His ascended glory and dominion, and they are free of the cares and the struggles that the Church militant must bear. A spiritual veil separates the Church triumphant from the Church militant, but when Jesus returns on the last day that veil will be removed and both realms of the Church will be united together.
11. Daniel foresaw that Jesus’ reign would be powerful and mighty; it would not pass away nor be destroyed. Jesus’ reign is eternal. Jesus did not arrive at His first advent to establish a temporal kingdom that would rival the governments of this world. He did not arrive to reestablish the monarchy of Davidic Israel. He did not arrive to establish a Christian reign where morality and spirituality reign supreme. Jesus arrived as the true King of creation to overthrow the devil and his terrible tyranny. Jesus accomplished this by His crucifixion and resurrection whereby He opened up the reign of heaven to all believers. Jesus has commanded His Church, the New Israel, to proclaim the gospel of forgiveness and salvation in His Name through the preaching of the Word and the administering of the Sacraments. By these means of grace the devil is defeated and his wicked schemes are thwarted. 12. This morning we, Grace Evangelical-Lutheran Church, assemble in the Divine Service (Gottesdienst) whereby the Holy Spirit serves us with the gospel through the liturgy, the proclaimed Word, and the administered Lord’s Supper. We in grateful thanksgiving serve God with our hymns and prayers, and when we leave this sacred and holy space we honor God and our neighbor with our simple tasks of our various vocations. Our church is but a small estate in Christ’s militant Church that spans the globe from India, Asia, Europe, and America. Each Sunday we join other churches in Christ’s reign, confessing the regal phrases of the Nicene Creed: „I believe in Jesus Christ, who ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. And He will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end.“ Christ is ascended. His reign is an everlasting dominion. One the last day, Christ will return and „this present sinful age will be overtaken and supplanted by the new age to come. This new age will come with effects for the entire cosmos; the whole creation will be affected“ (Gibbs 29). We partake of it now, and one day also in the bliss of the Church triumphant, only and solely by the righteous merit of Jesus Christ that He gives us by grace. Amen.
13. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, Your right hand exalts and does valiantly, pour out upon us the Holy Spirit so that in the days ahead when we struggle as Your Church militant we may be comforted with Your promise that we will inherit Your heavenly reign on account of Your righteous merit. Amen.
One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you!
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All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4th Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27th Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
Löhe, Wilhelm. Liturgy for Christian Congregations of the Lutheran Faith. Copyright © 1902 Frank Carroll Longaker. 
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