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Then the seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.” And He said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” (KJV)

Dearly Beloved Fellow Believers,

In a church on a Sunday morning, after the service was over, one of the members asked to speak to the pastor privately. After they had gone into the pastor’s study and closed the door, the man informed the pastor that he was resigning his membership in the congregation. He had with him a signed letter of resignation that he handed to the pastor, asking that it be presented to the church council.

The pastor was very disheartened at this. The man had been an active member, an asset to the congregation and a help to the pastor. His departure came as a surprise. Worst of all, his reason for leaving was a purely personal one, the kind of thing that a Christian should not let come between him and his church.

The pastor dreaded having to break the news to the other members, fearing that they, too, would be disheartened by it. And of course they were disheartened by it. But the pastor told them that, regrettable as this was, it was also a good lesson: our hope and trust are in the Lord, not in people, for they can disappoint us. It is good to rejoice in the good things that we see the Lord doing in our congregation and in our church body. It is good to see how He has called, gathered, enlightened, and sanctified others. It is good to rejoice over baptisms, confirmations, expressions of faith, and acts of love. But our greatest joy is not in these things, but rather in this, that our names are written in heaven.

Our names are written in heaven—what an amazing thought! Who would dare to think such a thing if it were anyone but Jesus Christ Himself telling us that it is so. And that is what He tells us here, for we too are His disciples. Let’s consider the implications of this great fact that our names are written in heaven, so that we may know and remember that

WE ALWAYS HAVE CAUSE FOR REJOICING

We don’t always have it in success that we can see.

Today we are celebrating the Ascension of our Lord. Ascension Day on the church calendar was this past Thursday, forty days after Easter, for we know from Scripture that Jesus ascended into heaven forty days after His resurrection (Acts 1:3). The account of the Ascension is one of our Scripture readings for this day. After completing His work for our salvation, Jesus ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of the Father. There, at that position of honor, authority, and power, He lives and reigns as Lord over all things. He uses His power and authority for the benefit of His Church, and will do so until the day when He comes again to take us home to the place He has prepared for us. The Ascension is truly a great event—a momentous event for us to remember, commemorate, and celebrate. It means that our salvation is assured. It means that our prayers are always heard and answered. It means that we are never alone—not now, not tomorrow, not in the hour of our death. It means that we always have cause for rejoicing.

But here in our text we notice that Jesus cautions us about rejoicing. He doesn’t say that we shouldn’t rejoice; on the contrary, Jesus wants His disciples to rejoice. He cautions us against basing our joy too much on some things. He teaches us to be careful to rejoice in God’s words and promises and assurances, things that are absolutely certain and that will not change or disappoint us.

The disciples had just returned from a mission on which He had sent them. He had chosen 70 of His disciples and sent them out in pairs to places that He Himself intended to visit. He had sent them to heal the sick and proclaim the kingdom of God. When their work was done, they rejoiced Jesus in high spirits. Apparently none of them were saying that the work had been hard or discouraging, even though when Jesus had sent them out He warned them that they would encounter opposition. So, no doubt there had been opposition, but the Lord had been with them. He had sent them out in His name and with His divine authority. Wonderfully, they had been able to do the same works that Jesus had done.

We can imagine that the disciples had preached the kingdom of God with great power. We can imagine that they had healed many who were sick, just as Jesus had been doing. But there was one particular kind of work that they had been able to do that had especially amazed them. “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name,” they said. They had cast out demons, just as Jesus Himself had done.

The disciples understood that the power for this belonged to Jesus. The demons were subject to them in His name, they said. And Jesus assures them that they would always have that authority over Satan. After His ascension when the disciples would go out with the Gospel, the devil would not be able to stop them; the gates of hell would not prevail against them. Satan would try to stop them; he would throw serpents and scorpions in their way. But Jesus would protect them, and the progress of the Gospel would continue.

Now we wouldn’t expect Jesus to follow this with a word of caution, yet that is what He does. “Nevertheless,” Jesus says to them, “do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you.” In saying this, Jesus isn’t rebuking them for their joy over this, but it was not to be the main cause or ongoing cause for their rejoicing.

Why not? Because the disciples’ experiences in the future wouldn’t always be exactly like that of their recently completed preaching trip. There would be opposition greater than what they had just experienced. They would be imprisoned and beaten in some places—the book of Acts records some of these incidents. So, at times it would look as if Satan still had the upper hand. If the disciples rejoiced only in the kind of dramatic success that they had seen on this first preaching mission, they would soon become downcast and discouraged when they weren’t seeing it. The Gospel would never be preached in vain—there would always be results—but the disciples wouldn’t always see those results.

We always have it in the assurance that we are God’s children.

Jesus points the disciples to something in which they could always rejoice: their names were written in heaven. They were cleansed of all their sins by the sacrifice of Christ. They were reconciled to God. They were God’s own children. God Himself knew them and recognized them as His own. He had chosen them before the foundation of the world. That assurance they would always have. No matter what else happened to them they could at all times take comfort that their salvation was assured.

We too have this same cause for rejoicing. We were by nature lost and condemned sinners, but God has touched us with the Gospel of salvation. He has established His covenant of grace with each of us in Baptism. The Holy Spirit has opened our hearts to Christ and led us to believe in Him as our Savior. By this we know that we too are God’s chosen ones and that our names are written in heaven. There is something especially comforting about that assurance of our salvation. The Bible speaks of it in that way several times in both the Old and New Testaments. In Exodus, Moses refers to God’s book and to Moses’s own name as being written in it, and God assures Moses that his name would not be blotted out of that book (Exodus 32:32, 33). The apostle Paul writes of his coworkers that their names were written “in the book of life” (Philippians 4:3). The expression “book of life” also occurs repeatedly in the book of Revelation. This is God’s book in which are recorded all the names of the elect. God Himself has inscribed them there. That is a continuing, unchanging cause of rejoicing for all believers. This is what our Lord would have us remember at all times and bear in mind throughout our life.

Like the disciples, we too rejoice in seeing Satan cast out. We rejoice when a child is baptized, when an adult expresses faith in Jesus, when someone who has fallen into sin repents. We rejoice when we hear reports of people hearing the Gospel and coming to faith in far off places. But we also see, hear, and experience things that cause us sorrow and grief. Children who were baptized and instructed sometimes grow up to be adults who are indifferent to the Word. People who profess faith in Christ sometimes do not continue in that profession. Congregations and church bodies don’t always grow; sometimes they shrink. These—and many other things—can get us down. But when they do, let us remember Jesus’ words, “Rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” And remembering them, let us praise God and rejoice. Amen.

—Rev. John Klatt

Watertown, SD

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All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version.