2024
Our Advocate
Passage: Acts 1:1-14
“Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” — Romans 8:34
“Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.” —Hebrews 7:25
SERMON OUTLINE:
1. What is the ascension?
2. What does the ascension mean?
3. How does the ascension benefit us?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
What has helped shape your imagination? Is there a movie, a story, a practice that has expanded your imagination or helped you enter into another world of possibility? C. S. Lewis wrote, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” What has helped fuel that desire in you?
Read Acts 1:1-14. What encourages, surprises, or challenges you in this passage? What images or phrases stand out to you?
What are some of the phrases in these verses used to describe Jesus and his ministry?
In verse 9, Jesus was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. Jesus isn’t literally up in the clouds. In the Bible, clouds are often associated with the presence of God. This wasn’t an ordinary rain cloud, but the cloud of God’s glory. Jesus ascended to the presence of God the Father in heaven. How does this reality shape the way you think of Jesus today?
At the right hand of the Father, Jesus is our advocate (Hebrews 7:25, 1 John 2:1). His role as advocate highlights the legal sense of Jesus pleading our case for us. He intercedes on our behalf not just to ask for mercy, but to stand in our place for us to demand justice; our debt has been paid. In what ways does Jesus’s ongoing ministry on your behalf provide comfort and peace? What practices help you to remember this reality and let is shape your identity?
How does the certainty that Jesus will come back again affect our actions, expectations, and values today?
PRAYER
Share with your group how they can be praying for you: what is weighing on you from this past week? What are you praising God for from this past week?
Therefore, my dear brother and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give you yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. 1 Corinthians 15:58