Trevor Laurence
Atop the mount of transfiguration, Jesus speaks with Moses and Elijah about his approaching exodus (ἔξοδος), “which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31). Moses and Elijah each experienced an exodus of his own, and Jesus’ will fit the pattern established in theirs.
Moses led Israel out of Egypt’s bondage and safely through the waters of judgment before journeying up Sinai into God’s presence, receiving instructions for the tabernacle, and descending with the law of the Lord. Jesus travels through the judgment flood of death in his cross and resurrection, leading a new Israel out of slavery and into life, before ascending into the presence of the Father and giving his people the Spirit who fills them up as his temple and writes the law on their hearts.
Elijah embarked on an exodus through the Jordan and out of Israel (2 Kgs 2:1–8)—because Israel had become as oppressively idolatrous as Egypt—where he was taken up into heaven, and he gifted Elisha with a double portion of his spirit so that Elisha might re-cross the Jordan and begin a new conquest of cleansing (vv. 9–14). After Jesus’ exodus—which, like Elijah’s, is a resounding indictment of the state of Israel1—Jesus, too, ascends to heaven. And Jesus, too, gifts his followers with his Spirit so that they can go into the world with the good news that cleanses rebels and makes a holy people for God.
By the time we get to Luke 9, the reader who knows the stories of Moses and Elijah ought to expect that Jesus’ story will end with an upward ascent and an outpouring of blessing.
Luke’s narrative in Acts 1–2 resonates with these Old Testament accounts of both Moses and Elijah. But there is another, not-so-immediately-apparent pattern from Israel’s Scriptures that Luke weaves into the story of Jesus’ ascending and the Spirit’s descending.
The Ascension of Yahweh in Psalm 68
Psalm 68 sings of God’s journey to Zion, rehearsing the movement of Israel’s divine warrior king to his temple mountain.
The Lord “leads out the prisoners” (v. 6) in the liberation of the exodus and takes his people from Sinai, through the wilderness, and into the land he promised them (vv. 7–10). In verses loaded with echoes of the song of Deborah and Barak from Judges 5—which, significantly, celebrates Jael’s head-crushing victory over serpentine Sisera—Yahweh defeats the enemy armies in the land so that his people may possess it (vv. 11–14). And having triumphed over his foes, the Lord ascends Mount Zion to be enthroned in glory:
The chariots of God are twice ten thousand,
thousands upon thousands;
the Lord is among them; Sinai is now in the sanctuary.
You ascended on high,
leading a host of captives in your train
and receiving gifts among men, even among the rebellious, that the LORD God may dwell there. (vv. 17–18)
Victory over the enemies of God and his people is followed by a victory march up the mountain to the temple where Yahweh takes his throne and receives the tribute he is due. The glory-presence that descended upon Sinai has now ascended to the sanctuary atop Zion, “the mount that God desired for his abode, yes, where the Lord will dwell forever” (v. 16). The conquering work and enthronement of Yahweh establish a place on earth, a new Eden, where redeemed image-bearers live and worship in the presence of God—which is, of course, what image-bearers are made for.
The psalm ends with a doxology:
Awesome is God from his sanctuary;
the God of Israel—he is the one who gives power and strength to his people.
Blessed be God! (v. 35)
The ascended Lord who receives gifts from men in his sanctuary is the ascended Lord who gives gifts to his people from his sanctuary—namely, the power and strength necessary to overcome the enemies of God’s temple-kingdom,2 to witness in worship to the nations, to be the people he has called them to be in the world.
Psalm 68, however, is not mere historical recital. It is historical recital as the basis for deliverance petition, for while Yahweh reigns in the land from his temple mount, the nations yet rage against the Lord and his anointed. Psalm 68 rehearses the former victory of God as a divine precedent for the present salvation that Israel requires if the Lord’s temple-kingdom is to be preserved. The psalmist thus anticipates that God will “strike the heads of his enemies” (v. 21) and pleads for Yahweh to “trample underfoot” (v. 30) rebellious peoples.
Yet, in the vision of Psalm 68, God’s defeat of Israel’s foes will elicit the praise of the nations, and Yahweh will welcome the homage of the kings and nobles of the peoples who journey to his temple bearing gifts (vv. 29, 31). The warrior king will justly judge every unholy power that stands against his purposes for Israel and the whole creation. And the warrior king will graciously bring the nations into his kingdom, into his presence.
The Ascension of Jesus in Acts 1–2
In his redemptive work, Jesus answers the prayer of Psalm 68 by following in the footsteps of Yahweh’s prior victory march.
Jesus liberates God’s covenant community from their bondage to sin, death, Satan, and every imposter king in the exodus of his dying and rising, and his self-sacrifice and subsequent vindication deal a fatal head-blow to the serpent who wars against his people. As the promised seed of the woman (Gen 3:15), Jesus tramples the serpent underfoot and strikes the skull of the deceiving accuser. Having disarmed, shamed, and triumphed over the rulers and authorities (Col 2:15), Jesus ascends to his throne in the heavenly temple, the heavenly Zion, just as God ascended to his throne on Zion’s earthly temple mount.
And there—enthroned in his sanctuary—Jesus, too, receives and gives gifts.
Near the end of his Pentecost sermon, Peter proclaims what Christ has accomplished in terms that evoke the memory of Psalm 68: “This Jesus God raised up. . . . Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing” (Acts 2:32–33).
Recall the key movements of Psalm 68—victory over enemies, triumphant exaltation to the throne in the temple, reception of gifts, and the subsequent distribution of gifts. Peter’s proclamation touches upon each—victory through resurrection, triumphant exaltation to the right hand of God in the heavenly temple, reception of the Spirit from the Father, and the subsequent outpouring of the Spirit upon his church.
The apostle alludes not to a specific phrase in Psalm 68 but to the entire narrative pattern of the psalm (quite like Paul in Eph 4:8),3 and in so doing he declares that Pentecost is the glorious consequence of the enthronement of Israel’s God in his temple. Christ recapitulates and fulfills Yahweh’s mountain march because he is Yahweh, he has vanquished his people’s truest enemy, and he has reestablished the kingdom over which he reigns from his heavenly sanctuary.
The man Jesus is the divine warrior king for whom Israel has been waiting and praying, God incarnate to win the victory, and while the manner of his conquering and the shape of his temple-kingdom are unexpected, they are in fact better than anything Israel experienced in the past. In former days, God defeated the Canaanites, ascended to Zion’s sanctuary, and blessed the people he planted in his presence. In these last days, Jesus defeats the powers of the kingdom of darkness, ascends to the cosmic sanctuary, and blesses his people by planting his presence in them. In former days, God gave power from his mountain temple (Ps 68:35). In these last days, Jesus gives the Spirit from his heavenly temple.
That the Spirit is to be associated with the “power” of Ps 68:35 is corroborated by the somewhat peculiar way that Luke talks about the Spirit in his two-volume record. After his resurrection, Jesus explicitly instructs his disciples about the coming of the Spirit: “Behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49).4 And just before his ascension, Christ declares to the apostles, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” The whole complex of Jesus’ saving action from passion to Pentecost fits and fills up the paradigm of Yahweh’s kingdom-inaugurating, communion-securing, blessing-effecting work in Psalm 68, and in line with the psalmic pattern, the Holy Spirit is the power with whom Jesus blesses his people from his sanctuary.
This gift of power in the person of the Spirit equips the church to participate in Jesus’ fulfillment of Psalm 68’s hopes. The Spirit-filled community created by Christ’s triumphal enthronement treads upon the kingdom of darkness in faithful witness and prayer. They conquer God’s enemies by baptizing them into his family. They welcome the kings and nobles and poor and forgotten of the nations to come into God’s presence bearing tribute and to be made bearers of God’s presence throughout the earth—Jesus receives the gifts of the nations and gifts them his Spirit that they may be gifts to the world. Through the ministry of his temple-people, the ascended warrior king bids the peoples to come and worship and tramples his foes until he descends again in glory “to strike the heads of his enemies” (Ps 68:21) under the feet of his saints (Ps 68:23; Rom 16:20).
Trevor Laurence is the Executive Director of the Cateclesia Institute and the author of Cursing with God: The Imprecatory Psalms and the Ethics of Christian Prayer (Baylor University Press, 2022).
Image: Jean II Restout, Pentecost
- God’s vindication of Jesus in the resurrection overturns the idolatrous and oppressive verdict of all the Israelite leaders who conspired to put him to death. The Egypt-esque quality of Israel is indicated in several places in the Gospels. Israel’s king is Pharaoh redivivus, slaying the little boys of Israel (Matt 2:16), and Israel’s leaders lay burdens on God’s people (Luke 11:46) just as Pharaoh set burdens upon them in slavery (Exod 5:4–5).[↩]
- See James L. Mays, Psalms, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1994), 228–9.[↩]
- So Derek Kidner, Psalms 1–72, TOTC 15 (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1973), 261, n. 82; Timothy G. Gombis, “Cosmic Lordship and Divine Gift-Giving: Psalm 68 in Ephesians 4:8,” NovT 47, no. 4 (2005): 367–80.[↩]
- Cf. the annunciation, where Gabriel tells Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35). In the parallel phrasing, the Holy Spirit is the power of the Most High.[↩]