Luke 24:36-49 | His Resurrection, Our Response

Preacher: Scott Hollingshead

Text: Luke 24:36-49

Big Idea: Everything required of our response to the resurrection is supplied by the risen Jesus. 

1. Lacking peace, Jesus offers proofs (vv. 36-43) 

2. Lacking perspective, Jesus opens minds (vv. 44-45)

3. Lacking purpose, Jesus orders proclamation (vv. 46-48) 

4. Lacking power, Jesus anticipates the promise (v. 49) 

Transcript

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Church, let's pray. As we pray, we're gonna come out of Psalm 57. Father, it is so good to worship your name. It's so good to be in the house of the Lord. It's so good to be encouraged by one another. It's so good to have worship leaders that call us to respond. I could tell a notable difference when Kaman was said and hearts lit up, realizing this is our opportunity on your day to praise your name with everything in us. And so, Father, would you hone our attention now? Would you continue to do that work? Psalm 57, verse 5 says, Be exalted, O God, above the heavens. That is what we want. God, we would ask that we would be a small part in the privileged opportunity to exalt your name, to do it through this church, not because it makes you exalted, but because you are exalted above the heavens. And Lord, we desire that your glory be over all the earth. This is what you've called us to a passion amongst a people to spread the good news of Jesus to the ends of the earth, that your glory may be over all the earth. So, Father, be merciful to us, be merciful to us as your people, for in you our soul takes refuge. In the shadow of your wings, we will take refuge till the storms of destruction pass by. We know where we can go. So when our lives are spinning out of control, we know we can come and cry out to you, God most high, and remind ourselves that it is you, God, who fulfills your purpose for us. You will send from heaven, you will save, you will supply, you will put to shame our enemies, you will send your steadfast love and your faithfulness. God, give us faith-filled hearts to believe that. Sing praises to you, do it here, and pray that it takes place among the nations, for your steadfast love is great to the heavens and your faithfulness to the clouds. God, would you bless the preaching of your word in disproportionate measure by the power of your Holy Spirit? We pray this in Jesus' name. And all God's people said. Amen. As we continue in worship, want to have you grab God's word if you have a copy of God's word. If you don't, there's tables on the sides of the worship center. We'd invite you to pick up a copy, and that is yours to keep if you don't already own one. And turn to Luke chapter 24. So we come to the second to last message in our series in the book of Luke. Luke chapter 24, beginning in verse 36, reading down to verse 49. And as we do this, we're reminded, man, with smiles on our faces and joy in our heart, we get to hear the word of God every single week together. Let's not tire of that, church. As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, Peace to you. But they were startled and frightened, and thought they saw a spirit. And he said to them, Why are you troubled? Why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have. And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, Have you anything here to eat? They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it before him. Then he said to him, These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and said to them, Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer, and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I'm sending the promise of my Father upon you, but stay in the city until you're clothed with power from on high. Love ones, this is the word of the living God to you today. May the Lord write these eternal truths on your hearts, and with that you can be seated. Good morning, A30. Hope you're doing well. It was great to sing with you this morning. I definitely sensed an elevated singing when our worship team said, Come on. Did you guys sense that? So every once in a while, when people are like, Who needs worship leaders? And why should we even have worship leaders? Because of that. Because sometimes we're singing and we're not really singing, we're not really singing to the one who's worthy of our singing with all of us, right? Wholehearted singing to the Lord. Now after that, it was like something clicked among us, and then I heard all the voices of the people singing. And so, yes and amen to that. So easy to just kind of lapse into a bit of a uh, I don't know what you would call that, lull. And uh, it's too precious of a moment to miss, right? Way too precious of a moment to miss. Gathering with God's people. All right, my name is Scott Amalit, pastor here. Hello. If I haven't met you, would look forward to meeting you out by the first time visitor desk and uh excited to get into God's word. I cannot believe you guys, it's the second to last message in the series. For me, that's uh that's a it's a triumph. It's a lot of it's a lot of sermons. It's a lot of sermons. I hope they were beneficial to your soul already working on the book of Acts. I know that's coming in time, and uh excited to see how these books connect in many ways. Series title Looking to Jesus. Today's title of the message His Resurrection, our response. His resurrection, our response. Again, it's not an exaggeration to say that Jesus' resurrection is life altering. Okay? Jesus' resurrection is life altering. If you've properly understood the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it should, and you should be able to say it has re-altered my life. Now, one of the things that comes when we say that is there's this exchange that takes place, right? His resurrection, disciples' response. We can go into that and go, all right, Lord, you raised from the dead, we'll take it from here. All right? I know we're the church, we're meant to get this to the nations, no problem, God, we got this. We're your people. And that's the mentality that is so far from the truth and so easy to believe amongst Christians is okay, the Lord did the hard work of resurrection, now we do the work to take the gospel to the nations. In fact, this text, you could say, is Luke's great commission text. The great commission that we know in Matthew 28, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you, and lo, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. Be Matthew's version of it. Mark's version, go into all creation and preach the gospel, right? And now you come to Luke, and here is Luke's great commission text. But when you think about what Luke is telling us, it is a daunting command, isn't it? Hey, you 12 or 11 really, you guys are gonna be responsible to get this message out to the entire world. That is a daunting command. You don't go, cool, Jesus, got it from here. The transition from Luke to Acts to see the gospel go from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth. You think about how important a text like this is for our church. You know that our church is founded on the mission of glorifying God by making disciples. This text is at the very center of what we do. Church, we have an opportunity in our day and age to lead a network of churches called the Great Commission Collective. We're planting churches all over the world of the kind that we are. Well, we just want to respond faithfully, right? His resurrection, our response, you got it, Lord. Here's what I'm trying to say. The story of church history, the story of the early church, is not Jesus raises from the dead and the church takes it from there. The story of the movement of the gospel is not that people are the hero in the story. It's not even that the early church was the hero of the story. It's not even that the eleven were the heroes of the story. It's not that famous preachers are heroes of the story, it's not the social media influencers, and now there's a ton of those, right? Thank God we have those. We're gonna reach the ends of the earth, one click, one follow at a time. It's not the story of the church. Let me see if I can articulate it to you in this way. The science of missions is a book. Listen to how the author of The Science of Missions describes the church on mission historically. He says this the church's mission has been fraught with difficulties from the very beginning. The book of Acts teaches us that the church was extremely slow and even unwilling to engage in mission, even though it had the very recent command of Christ and his words still echoing in their ears. The book of Acts dramatically describes how God wrestled with his church. In short, God breaks through every barrier. God breaks down all obstacles and removes all hindrances. The Holy Spirit, with irresistible force, compels the church to do what he would have it to do. He goes on to say, such is the interesting panorama of the history of missions. It's really a work of the glorified Christ. In fact, it should be called the Acts of Christ through the apostles rather than the Acts of the Apostles, for it repeatedly emphasizes that everything that is done is done by Christ. End quote. Now that is the most encouraging thing I could ever imagine hearing about the grandest command given to God's people. Because what he is saying, and what I'm trying to say to you, is that the story of the Great Commission, the spreading of the gospel to the ends of the earth, is not a story about the church's strength, but about Christ supplying what the church needs to go forward and accomplishes the mission, oftentimes in spite of us. Can I tell you how encouraging that is? Because as the pastor, I feel like I'm the one trying to mobilize a bunch of people, like stuck in the mud, and then I realize my own heart, and I feel stuck in the mud, and then there's this big struggle, like, well, are we accomplishing what we need to accomplish, Lord? And I'm just met with this text and overwhelmed by the mercy of God. Such is the case as we look at our text this morning. The risen Lord appears to an entire group, right? And by seeing him, there's this connection between the resurrection and a response. But the response of the disciples, by extension, the response of ourselves is a response all of grace. The great theologian Augustine in this book, Confession, said it like this of the word of God, right? You read the word of God and you're like, there's no way any human being could actually obey this text all the way. But it clicked for him when he said this. He understood this was the pattern that God had set. Command what you will, Lord, so long as you'll give what you command. This is what we see with the Great Commission. Here's the big idea. If you're not following that, if that big old intro left you completely confused. One sentence, I want to bang this nail. Everything required of our response to the resurrection is supplied by the risen Jesus. You are not the hero. Thank the Lord. Everything required for our response to the resurrection is supplied by the risen Jesus. Could we extend this and say everything required for our life and godliness is provided by the risen Jesus? This is really the refrain over our lives, this is the refrain over our mission, this is the refrain over the existence of our church. The question is, will we believe this? And we see it four different ways this morning. The disciples lack peace, Jesus offers proof. The disciples lack perspective, Jesus opens their minds. The disciples lack purpose, Jesus orders proclamation, and the disciples lack power, Jesus anticipates the promise. There's the sermon for you in less than thirty seconds. So let's look at it. Number one is this lacking peace, Jesus offers proofs. Who are we in the story? We're the ones before the comma. Okay? Take a good look up there. Who are we? We are PCs, pre-comma people. Okay? We're the lackers. We are the lacking peace individuals. Jesus is the provider. Jesus is the supplier. Where do we find ourselves in the story? Well, the evidential testimony to the resurrection is mounting, right? The women saw him. Peter saw him. Clepus saw him with the plus one. Maybe his wife? Doesn't matter. Plus one saw him. They get so fired up on seeing him as they're leaving Jerusalem that they take the seven-mile journey back to Jerusalem to go tell the disciples, right? Who had already heard about Peter seeing the risen Christ. Now they come back, and according to John chapter 20, the door is locked where all the disciples are. It's locked. So they, by the way, it says he's it's locked for fear of the Jews. This wasn't their uh best moment, if you will. This wasn't their strongest moment, this wasn't the we're gonna conquer the world moment. This was the I'm scared to death, such a wuss moment, right? That's where they were. Okay. When all of a sudden they're having this conversation, right? Jesus appeared to Peter, and they're talking about what happened on the road, and as they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them.

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Right?

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The same guy who vanished last week in a moment, bam, just appears out of nowhere. That's that's some crazy X-Men stuff with that new body, right? But but listen, stands among them and says to them, listen to these words, peace to you. A phrase that has been so pivotal, a word that's been so pivotal in the book of Luke. It was the words announced at the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ at his birth, right? And on earth, peace among them with whom he is, among those with whom he is pleased, right? The triumphal entry, peace was established and announced, and now to the disciples specifically, peace to you. Now think about this for a second. This is wonderful considering the circumstances here. This is wonderful for someone who constantly has this sense of, man, is the Lord just perpetually disappointed with me? When he sees me, does he look and first just kind of like shake his head like JC Ryle, a great preacher, said it like this. What a text, considering it was addressed to eleven disciples who shamefully had forsaken Jesus Christ and fled. All of them backsliders, cowards, yet, not a word of rebuke is spoken, not a single sharp saying falls from his lips. Calmly and quietly, he appears in the midst of them and begins by speaking peace. Listen to this. He is more willing to forgive than men are to be forgiven. Free, full, and undeserved forgiveness to the very uttermost is not the manner of man, but it is the manner of Christ. Infinite willingness to put your sins away. This is the response to the resurrected Jesus. Not you guys ditch me in my worst moment, I've got a word of rebuke for me. I felt every last one of your desertions in my being as I was suffering at my worst. None of that. The resurrection of Jesus, the risen Jesus comes to the people and offers peace. Yes, it's a stock phrase, welcome, but there is so much in that. No words could be more sweetly spoken to the soul. But they were startled. They were frightened, and they thought they had seen a spirit. See, this is the issue. This isn't Jesus. There isn't Jesus. If you have this picture of Jesus as he shows up, that he's in like transfiguration glory everywhere he's going, right? The radiation of glory and dazzling appearance. No, no, no. It's not like that. They're not startled because of his appearance, they're startled about how he got into the room. You probably experienced something like this when are you one of those that if you think you're in your house by yourself and it turns out your kid or your spouse is in another room and you're like ironing a shirt, and then out of nowhere you hear like something rustling around, and they just, hey, and it scares the how do you? Are you one of those? I I'm one of those. And my voice goes, ha ha ha ha ha ha when I get scared. It's like, ha ha ha. I don't know how you respond, but naturally I respond really tough. Like uh I'm ready to punch afterwards, but the beginning is this high ha ha ha thing that I do. I don't know what it is. I don't know what's up. Hey, we're safe here. I don't know what you do. That's what I do. Anyone being there that shouldn't be there can scare us. Imagine something coming in the room that didn't open the door to come into the room. This is where we are. Jesus says to them, Why are you troubled and why do doubts arise in your hearts? If you were to pinpoint the doubt, the most central, focused area, what were their doubts coming from? The hardest thing at this point for them to grasp about the resurrection was the body of Jesus. The risen, resurrected body. Was he really in front of them? Or was this an apparition? Was this some sort of a spiritual hard to put my arms around it? What is this moment? I mean, it's in general, it's fascinating, isn't it? The resurrection body of Jesus. Paul takes a whole chapter in 1 Corinthians 15, trying to walk through it all. You're sown in, you know, a perishable body, it's raised in imperishable body, you're sown in dishonor, it's raised in glory, sown in weakness, raised in power. Like he's trying to give us categories to understand the resurrection body that we will inherit. If you are in Christ, the same thing that's true of Jesus becomes true of you, right? You will inherit a resurrected body. This is just like blowing their minds. So, what does Jesus do? He provides these proofs, doesn't he? He gives a couple different proofs. The first one is he gives a sensory proof. I want to show you that this is a real body. I am truly in front of you. How does he do it? Verse 39 sensory proof. See my hands and my feet. By the way, interesting little side note there. We don't get clarity in the Gospel account of Luke that his feet and hands were nailed into the cross. Assume that by the fact that he says, see my hands and my feet. See the place where they nailed me to the cross. That it is I myself. You know how that reads in the Greek? It is I am. That's ringing a bell. That would be the phrase for Yahweh in the Old Testament. It is I am. Which perfectly plays into what Jesus will say later about the Old Testament, about how all of it points to him. He goes, I want you to get close. I want you to get really close. Jesus wants you to come here. Come here. Touch me and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. Come here. Come touch my hands and my feet. See. And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. Now they're still overwhelmed, right? It says, now while they disbelieved for joy, it's like taking all this in in real time, the phrase would be like, This is too good to be true. Like, no, like that, this is crazy, is probably what we would say these days. This is crazy. No way. It's right in that moment he gives the second test, which I call the Ghostbusters test, because all I could think about was the comparison with, yeah, oh yes, we're going here, with Ghostbusters. You remember when Slimer is at the buffet and he's just crushing all the extras, right? And it falls right through him to the ground. Do you remember this? Okay, this is my favorite movie growing up, right? Well, second to Rocky, we all know that. Rocky's number one, Ghostbusters is number two. Nobody's seen it. Alright, so imagine a ghost just scarfing down a buffet, and you're watching this shot of all the food just drop to the ground through the apparition, through the ghost, right? This is kind of the test Jesus is doing. If I'm not real, this food will go in and it will drop out of me. But it doesn't. While they disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, Have you anything to eat? This is going to prove he's got a real resurrected body. They gave him a piece of broiled fish and he took it and ate it before them. He had a real body, could be seen, could be heard, could be touched, he could eat. It was resurrected, not re-vivified. This isn't like Lazarus. This is a whole new thing. But real, substantial, in front of them, bodily, Jesus. We see Jesus putting doubts to rest, such marvelous condescension to the doubts of the disciples, such a kindness of the Savior to meet his disciples in the place of doubt. You think he does that with us? See, your faith is built on undeniable eyewitness proofs. You do not have to shy away from what you believe. Rather, if you're struggling with proof, if you're struggling with doubt, here's what you do: you bring your doubts under the divine testimony of the Word of God. You surrender the kind of arrogance that says, well, unless I was personally there. No, there were people there. They did it for you. You don't need to be the guy. You need to trust the ones who are recorded for us under divine inspiration. To seal the confidence. Because here's the thing: when you bring your doubts under the divine testimony and you see the proofs for what they are, you go from doubting the proofs to proclaiming the proofs. I mean, fundamentally, that was the sermon on Easter, wasn't it? It was about the proofs of the resurrection. That ends up getting preached to people. You end up testifying to and helping people understand Jesus Christ truly rose from the dead, and here's all the evidence that explains it. Because in the end, your response to his resurrection is definitely going to be affected by your doubts. And so what you lack, the Lord supplies. You lack peace, he supplies proofs. Everything required of our response to the resurrection is supplied by the risen Jesus. But then this we see this. Number two, lacking perspective, Jesus opens minds. He gives more proof. From sensory proof to scriptural proof. For you notice what he says to him in verse 44. Then he said to them, These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you. That everything written about me in the law of prophets, excuse me, the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Now, one of the things that we as modern American evangelical kind of oriented Christians is we have found a way, stunningly so, to make the Bible all about us. We put ourselves at the center, don't we? We have whole application study Bibles that are about you. And the problem is, here's one of your struggles. I mean, I don't understand the Bible, I don't understand the Bible. I don't get it. And I think part of it is because you're looking into it as if you're the center of it. I have a problem, I go to the Bible to fix me. I have an issue, I go to the Bible to fix me. I'm gonna go see what the Bible says to help me. You'll never grow into the disciple that the Lord calls you to be and will empower you for by believing you are the center of the scriptures. The Bible's not primarily about you, it's about Jesus. Things will really start to click when you understand that. The question is: who are you looking for when you read? You looking for yourself or are you looking for the Savior? See, Christ, this is the whole point. This is what he's been trying to show post his resurrection. He's the fulfillment of the whole Old Testament. The totality, the major divisions, law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms, that was a way of just putting your arms all around the Old Testament, going, all of it. The totality of it speaks of me. Anticipates my suffering, my death, my resurrection. It's amazing how Jesus Christ in him, all of these Old Testament themes fused together in a way that was, we will call it dimly lit, but all there in the Old Testament, right? He fulfills prophecies, that's the big one we talk about, but it's not just that. He fulfills Old Testament patterns, he fulfills Old Testament types, he fulfills Old Testament institutions. Luke, the way he's reading this, wants you to see he's the fulfillment of the Old Testament. One theologian trying to summarize everything we learn about Jesus through the book of Luke says it like this: quote, Luke presents Jesus as the last Adam. Presents Jesus as the true Israel of God in Luke 3 and 4. Presents Jesus as the long-awaited virgin-born son of King David in Luke 1, 2, and 6. He's the rejected prophet of Israel, Luke 4. He's Yahweh incarnate, who redeems his people in the second Exodus and leads his people to the promised land of the new creation in Luke 3, Luke 9 through 19, Luke 20. He's the new Moses, Luke 6. He's Daniel's son of man, Luke 9, Luke 21, Luke 22. He's Isaiah's suffering servant, Luke 1, Luke 22. He's the new temple, Luke 19, he's the resurrected one, Luke 24, and he's the great interpreter of Israel's scriptures, Luke 24. Yeah, are we excited about that? We are mediocre excited about that. No, I know it's because we're focused, right? But it's overwhelming. We have touched on all of these subjects over these two and a half years. All of these subjects, all of these themes. Now, when you start to see that Jesus is the sum of the scriptures, things start to make sense. However, you can't merely get to spiritual understanding by effort. Spiritual understanding is not merely discovered, we have to continue to understand this, and Jesus presses us again this week. It is a gift. Spiritual understanding is a gift from God. Or as I've said in many sermons before, it takes God to know God. So are you driven there by understanding Jesus is the center? Who are you looking for when you read the scriptures? You're looking for Jesus. He is the Savior, He is the one who comes and provides everything required for your response to Him and the good news of the gospel. But notice what it says in verse 45. Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. I man, it's so challenging. You're like, I will I really wish he had said that once. And then we could explain it away and talk about when you get Jesus and it just happens that you start to understand the scriptures. No, you need to have your mind open to the scriptures. Now, there's a lot more going on here. There's a lot of Old Testament implications going on here as Jesus opens their minds. He's reversing the disciples' spiritual blindness. Think about this as we've covered this last what? Since about Luke 24, 15 or so. We've talked about the disciples having what? Blind eyes, deaf ears, dull hearts or mind. Last time I checked in the Old Testament, all those phrases stock language for idolatry. Right? That's what idols are like. Blind, deaf, dumb. You become like what you worship. This is an expression of God giving the people over to blind eyes, deaf ears, dull minds or hearts. And we see this pattern playing out over and over and over again, right? Israel was uh completely corrupt to the core. You saw this in the first Exodus, right? Deuteronomy 29, it says, You have seen, this is in the first Exodus, out of Egypt, all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all of his servants, and to all his land, the great trials your eyes saw, the signs and those great wonders, but to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear. And Isaiah goes on to assume this is gonna happen again because there's a promise of a second Exodus, and that second Exodus is gonna come, and they're gonna fail to perceive God's redemptive work in that second Exodus. But here's the good news. Isaiah also promises to reverse that spiritual blindness. And at the resurrection of Jesus Christ, he begins to do that work. He not only lifts the spiritual scales off the eyes of the disciples here, but also in some way leverages this promise and the rejection of Israel to actually get the gospel to the nations. It's one of those both and promises. I will reverse that idolatrous blindness of my people, but I will also leverage that idolatrous blindness to bring the gospel to the nations. So the Lord Jesus does both in it. But the situation is really clear. Jesus must open your mind to understand the scriptures. Has Christ opened your eyes to behold the glory of Jesus Christ as revealed in the scriptures? Do you know him? Do you see him? Do you savor him as he is in the Bible? Or are you one of those, man, I just need more than the Bible? Well, here's the thing: you have a more sure word here. Oh, if he just appeared to me and did this, if he just showed himself in this way, you start setting the parameters if I can show himself. This is what this is what Luke has been telling us about in stories before. Man, if you can't submit to the Christ that's revealed to you in the scriptures, you're not going to be able to submit to Christ even if he showed up in some form you want him to show up in. 2 Peter 1, you have the more sure word. Has Christ opened your mind? Have you asked him to, right? Faith in Christ, a real faith in Christ, a saving faith in Christ flows from a faith rooted in Jesus Christ as he's revealed in the scriptures. Not the Jesus you want him to be, not the Jesus you make him out to be, not imaginary Jesus, rooted in the biblical Jesus. Has your faith been rooted in the biblical Jesus? When it is, you begin to see it because that word that's ministering to your heart ends up ministering out of your heart to others. Which leads us to the third element of our response. Everything required of our response to the resurrection is supplied by the risen Jesus. You lack peace, Jesus provides proof. You lack perspective, Jesus opens minds. You lack purpose, Jesus orders proclamation. So one of the things when you know you're really wrestling with the Lord Jesus, that he has gripped your heart, is that he becomes Lord. He is the risen Lord, and as Lord, he starts to order your life. You don't walk the way you used to walk. In the best way possible. You're a terrible conductor of your life. Isn't that the testimony? There's two kinds of people: those who know they're terrible conductors, and those who pridefully, stubbornly resist the reality of that. You're one of two. Jesus frees you not by just setting you free to do whatever you want, but putting you under the right lordship. You can be Lord, you can be enslaved to your sin, or you can be enslaved in the right sense to the Savior. There's really no other option. And as the risen Lord, he orders our lives, he provides purpose. I'll give you one example. You go, what do I mean? I mean that because of the Great Commission, because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, he calls you to something. You have a purpose, church. Where do I get that purpose language? Well, it's embedded into the text, but it's exemplified in the book of Acts. You remember with Paul in Acts 26, he's before Agrippa, he's testifying of his conversion, and he's talking about how Jesus spoke to him on the road to Damascus. Do you remember this? And he says, This is Jesus speaking, I have appeared to you for this purpose. To appoint you, speaking to Paul, as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen, to whom I am sending you, listen to this language, I am sending you to open their eyes. What? So that invisible work, that spiritual work that God does, takes God to know God. God opens eyes. How does he do that? He sends Paul proclaiming the gospel to open the eyes of the blind. Is Paul literally open eyes spiritually? No, but the gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit through his servant Paul is being used and leveraged by God to open the eyes of the blind. He says, To whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. So it's like whatever you think your purpose is in life, wherever you work, whatever you do, the kind of overarching purpose in your life is to make much of Jesus Christ. And one of the things we're realizing as we do this is it's not, it's not about you. It's not about how heroic you are, it's not about how brave and bold you are. It's about how good God is to supply everything you need that he would be made much of through his own strength in and through you. But it's something to lock into and go, okay, here's my purpose at work, here's my purpose everywhere I go to make much of the Lord Jesus. This is what he tells his disciples. Here's the message, verse 46. And he said to them, Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. Which I love so much. Acts 1.8, he'll say, You will be my witnesses, right? There's a kind of confidence here, but the same confidence here, you are my witnesses. Any of you, a toll scaredy cat, you're in that group, you're like. Here's the thing, you are. Not like, hey, you interested? You are. These disciples, witnesses of the resurrection, you are my witnesses, and you're gonna go back and you're gonna proclaim it. But here's the good news everything required of your response to the resurrection is supplied by the risen Jesus, including the message, including the power, including the effect. All of it supplied by the risen Jesus. Your tools in his hands, the power is through you by his spirit. There's no opt-out clause in this either. You are. We get to participate. It's one thing you can't do in heaven, right? You can't witness to the lost in heaven. We get to do this. And by the way, you're gonna start in Jerusalem. What a what a place to start. God bless you. That was amazing. You're gonna preach like he sneezes, you know, just bold, just man, aggressive. That was awesome. Back to Jerusalem, scene of the crime, hard ground, idolatry rampant, anti-Jesus. Go start there. Go preach the gospel in Jerusalem. Tell him about repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Man, repentance gets a bad rap. It's either not understood at all, or it's overly played. Like repentance is your way of working your way to God. Repentance is not working your way to God. Repentance is turning from yourself. Turning from your own way, turning from your religious pursuits, turning from anything in which you find your own righteousness. It's literally a turning from your sin, from yourself, towards Jesus. That's it. It's not a work. It's a turning. It's a complete 180. And it's the consistent message of the gospel. Repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Now you go, where's faith in that? Listen, faith and repentance, two sides of the same coin. Right? The way to apprehend the benefits of Jesus Christ is by a repentant faith or faith-filled repentance. Turning and trusting in Jesus. Turning and resting in Jesus. This is the message. You want your sins blotted out, you want your sins forgiven that you will give an account for. At the end, you will not be able to earn your way out of your sins. You can trust in the one who by his blood blots out your sins in full. You can receive the free gift of God's grace. That is the only way, and it is the most glorious message in the world because it doesn't matter how bad you are. If you'll rest in the work of Jesus Christ, if you will trust in him and who he is and what he's done, he's the hero, he's the savior. You do nothing but turn from your sins and go, I don't go my own way. I bring nothing to you. But the brokenness that I need healed, but the sin that I need forgiven, but the life that I need redeemed, spiritually dead as it is. And he saves. You know, one of the interesting things too in the history of the church is the same book, Science of Missions, talks about spontaneity. He goes, when you go looking throughout church history and you think about gospel preaching, you think about how many of you grew up with like evangelism explosion or something like that, right? Or some sort of program. You're like, this is the program that's gonna change the world. Right out of our American, you know, pragmatic Uber, just follow these steps and the whole world's gonna get saved. Do you know actually, those who study the movement of the church find that the most successful times in the church's history is when the gospel is spontaneously being shared. When you're so filled up in here, it comes out out there. And it's happening naturally. And then when you're getting sent places, you're so overflowing, the gospel just starts to come out. Here's one of the things that I noticed in the book. He says, in the history of missions, you gain the impression that a vital role was played in missionary activity of the early church by many men and women who held no other office than that of believer. Meaning not a pastor, not a missionary, not a church planter, regular people, most effective strategy in the church. When you're spontaneously fired up about the Lord Jesus going where you go and testifying where you testify, that's been the most powerful thing in the history of the church's mission. And so are you first among the forgiven? Are you one who says, I am confident because of the work of Jesus Christ, I am forgiven. I have trusted in him, I've turned and I've trusted in him. And then the next question is, are you bearing witness? Are you filled up and so you're overflowing? It's coming out of you no matter where you go. If that overwhelms you, then the last verse is for you. The final thing we anticipate in this text is this lacking power, Jesus anticipates the promise. If you get nervous and you're like, man, I don't know, I don't really talk to people that well. How many of you would say, I'm a killer evangelist? Maybe one, maybe two. Guess what? That's the story of the church. How many say, man, I wish I would pray more? It's like everybody. Do you see what the point of the message is? Jesus Christ accomplishes through a weak and stubborn and broken people, and he moves us along in his strength. And one of the ways he does that is when you lack power, he is anticipating for the disciples the promise. The promise of what? Or should I say, who? And behold, I am sending. I am sending. Like it's already in progress. The promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high. Tell me, what is Jesus talking about? The sending of the Holy Spirit. In whom Christ Himself, you say, how will He, how will Jesus continue to be present? He will be present with us by His Spirit in His church, mobilizing His people. You go, everything we need, He supplies. The same Spirit overshadowing Mary in the incarnation, the same Spirit empowering Jesus is the same spirit that will empower his church. When you look back on the history of the church, you look forward to what in our lifetime we can see happen by God's grace, what it comes down to is that the fact that the church accomplishes what it does shows that they were instruments in the hands of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. There is way too much Christianity happening in our own efforts. Verse 50 is the promise that you can depend on the Spirit instead of your own strength, and you ought not to go a step further in your own strength. Stay still, stay low, and wait for my spirit. What if we did that in general? Don't do anything until you're empowered by the Holy Spirit. Don't do anything until you sought the Lord for power by his Spirit. But ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit, that's what missions is all about. That's what life is all about. And the story of missions is all that Christ accomplishes through us, and oftentimes in spite of us, which is massively encouraging news. Let's pray. Father, we thank you. What a message. What an encouragement. We are witnesses. You've done all the work and you continue to do the work. You continue to supply. We are the lackers, Lord. You are the supplier. When we get discouraged about how much progress we're making, are we amounting to much? I am so fearful of this. I don't think I can do. You supply everything we need. God, this is amazing news. For this, you should be praised and honored and glorified. This is all about Jesus Christ, all about his empowering of his people to accomplish your purposes to your glory. God, will you draw many more in to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ? Would you do it in this very hour amongst this people? Bring them to turn from their sins and themselves and simply trust, reach out for, and trust, if you will, in the work of Jesus Christ, who suffered and died for sinners and rose for their salvation. In Jesus' name. Amen.