Please now turn in your Bibles to the New Testament Scriptures and to Luke's gospel, chapter 24. Luke's gospel, chapter 24, commencing to read at verse 33 and reading through verse 48. Luke's gospel, chapter 24. Beginning to read at verse 33, and reading through verse 48. Again, please give your careful attention as we read God's Word. Luke 24 at verse 33, and there, that is the two disciples who were on the road to Emmaus, And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together saying, the Lord has risen indeed and has appeared to Simon. And they told what had happened on the road and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread. 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? And 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 before them. 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 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. Amen. And thus far the reading of God's holy, inspired, and infallible Word. People have many reasons for not believing in the resurrection of the dead. Some people simply do not believe in life after death at all. These are the kinds of people who say, when you're dead, you're dead. There is nothing after that. Other people may believe in life after death, but think that the life to come is merely some sort of spiritual existence. They have some idea of floating about, disembodied somewhere. in some other place. And then there are people that hope that there is some resurrection of their bodies after their death, but they still find it very hard to believe that. A dead body seems so lifeless, doesn't it? If you've had that sobering experience of standing at a grave. If you have seen a body that is dead, then it seems so lifeless doesn't it? How can it possibly come back to life? Such a thing certainly seemed impossible to the first disciples. They found it hard. They found it very hard. to believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. And so in our passage this morning in Luke 24 verses 36 through 48, Jesus appears to His disciples and preaches the gospel of His own resurrection and its implications for the world. As we look at this passage, we are going to consider four things. First of all, the first Easter evening. Secondly, the bodily resurrection. Thirdly, disbelieving for joy. And then lastly, the first Easter sermon. We turn then first of all to the first Easter evening, verse 36. Earlier that day at dawn, a small group of women had gone to the garden where Jesus had been buried. As we remember from the narrative at the beginning of chapter 24, they had gone with their spices to anoint the dead body of Jesus, as was customary at that time for burial. There they had seen the angels who had made this stunning announcement that Jesus was risen from the dead. And so soon people started spreading reports that they had seen the risen Christ. But to those who had not seen Him, this was hard to believe. Hard to believe for those who had not seen Jesus for themselves. They were perplexed. They were finding it hard to make anything of what others were saying. Such were the two disciples who had been on the road to Emmaus. They had left Jerusalem early that afternoon and headed for this village some few miles out of the city. Jesus Himself had met with them, hadn't He? And revealed Himself to them as they had eaten together that evening, when He suddenly disappeared from their view at table. They immediately went back to Jerusalem and told the joyful noise to the eleven disciples and those other followers who were with them. Again, as they were talking about the other reports that had come in. Suddenly, Jesus appears in the flesh, bodily, in the midst of them. Verse 36, He stood among them and said, Peace to you. Now Jesus had granted the disciples His peace. If you remember in the upper room on the night He was betrayed, John 14 at verse 27, peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. And now Jesus was granting them peace again, wasn't He? Only this time He grants them that peace from the other side of the grave. He grants them peace from their sorrow and their grief and their perplexity. He was not dead. He is alive. He assures them that they are the recipients, the beneficiaries of peace, peace with God, that which had been the basis of hostility. between God and sinners like them had been dealt with by Jesus at the cross. All their sins were forgiven in Christ through the cross where he had shed his precious blood that sins might be remitted. Jesus appeared and said, peace to you. Brothers and sisters, He continues to come to disciples, to Christians, to His people in the same way. He comes this morning and says to us, peace to you. In whatever circumstances you may find yourself this morning, even when the way has been hard and we have felt that life has been anything but peaceful. Perhaps when we have failed, perhaps when we have fallen this past week in the Christian life, when we have not been faithful to Christ, when we have broken our many promises to Him, when perhaps we might even have fallen away, backslidden, turned our backs, when we have been wrestling with doubts, unbelief. Jesus yet comes to his people and says, peace to you. That was His great message as He appeared on that first Easter evening to troubled, distressed, perplexed, sorrowful disciples. He comes in the same way to us. Peace to you. That brings us in the second place to the bodily resurrection in verses 37 through 43. The bodily resurrection. Even after Jesus makes this great declaration, this great promise of assurance, of peace, the disciples were still troubled, weren't they? Verse 37, when they first saw Jesus they were startled, frightened. They thought they saw a spirit. Many people still think the same way today. They have some belief in life after death, but the kind of afterlife they think about, they imagine, they anticipate has no solidity to it, has no substance to it. It's a realm of shade, of spirit, of immateriality. Sometimes even Christians think this way. They think of heaven as somewhere immaterial, where spirits just float about somewhere, that their final state will be non-substantial. One of the commentators puts it this way, he says, quote, the gospel is not a ghost story. It's a great statement, isn't it? The gospel is not a ghost story. Jesus appeared here bodily, in the substance, in the reality, in the material reality of His body. His body was raised again from the dead, and so will ours be. Our mortal bodies will be raised again in the likeness of His. even for all of our present physical weaknesses, even where we might suffer greatly in these bodies, and they may be wearing out, they may be failing, and we might wonder, how can this body ever last for all of eternity in heaven? Even when the ravages of living in this fallen world are taking their toll, That comes to reality every time you perhaps, even if you don't have anything present, troubling you physically when you go for your annual physical year by year and you start to get to the age where I am. And there are more things to discuss than there ever used to be. Things that just used to be routine, the blood works just were normal, just used to go in the file until next year. Well now somehow you're getting out on those charts a little beyond what is the norm. Maybe it's nothing serious yet, maybe it's nothing to be overly concerned, but there are issues. But what the gospel proclaims to us, whatever may be our present situation, whether it be minor or major health issues, the promise of the gospel is that these present weak, failing bodies will be resurrected into the likeness of the glorious resurrection body of Christ. We were created physical beings, body as well as soul. And those bodies, those physical bodies have the blessing of God upon them. Now if you know anything about the ancient world, you will know that many of the philosophies of the day had no time for physical things. They were just temporary things that had to be tolerated. But they hindered you. They got in the way. They were not good. And so your whole aim in life was to escape the body and to exist in some immaterial spiritual existence. That was the great aim. of the Greek philosophers. That is not the truth of Christianity. That's not the truth of the Bible, the truth of the Scriptures. God created man, body and soul, and He pronounced it both, body and soul, good, very good. And so, whilst our body, yes, in this world will die if our Lord does not return. That body will decay and return to the dust as it is laid to rest in the grave. But we will rise one day brethren, and we will rise in resurrection bodies. We will rise to be redeemed on that last great day, body and soul, to live in the glory of heaven forever and ever. Now Jesus proved this gospel truth to His disciples by appearing to them in the full reality of His glorious resurrection body. Now as we saw a little last week, there is some mystery to this that we do not yet fully understand. This resurrection body had properties that I cannot explain to you. how it could disappear from their sight around the table at Emmaus, and how it could appear to the eleven and others who were assembled in such a way that they were startled. How could it do that? I don't know. But it was nevertheless a real body. Paul describes the resurrection body in this way, 1 Corinthians 15 verses 42 through 44, he says, it is a glorious, powerful, imperishable, spiritual body. You say, well, I don't really understand that. What does that mean, a spiritual body? It means it's a real body, but it is a body that is different to the one that we understand right now. It's not subject to the weaknesses, to the many things that we suffer at this point. It's a body in the Spirit as we were thinking in our Sunday school hour. All that it means to dwell in the Spirit, to the fullness of what we are in humanity, body and soul. That's what Jesus demonstrated here in His body as He appeared here to His disciples. Now the reality of this was something that startled them, even made them afraid, Luke tells us. They didn't understand what that meant and what that body could do. It was beyond their present understanding. Their hearts were troubled, even as our hearts are always troubled until we believe by faith what Jesus says. But notice how Jesus confronts their unbelief, that unbelief is always irrational and unreasonable in the light of the Word of Jesus. Notice what He says, verse 38, "'Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts?' He doesn't ask them whether they fully understand everything that a resurrection to body can do right now. But whatever that is, he says, it shouldn't trouble you, nor should there be doubt in your heart that this is a true body and that I am Jesus raised from the dead. The questions here that Jesus asks are good questions. Good questions that we would all do well this morning to consider. Why are you troubled? and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Do you believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ the Lord? If not, let me be very straightforward and blunt this morning, why not? Why not? What causes you to doubt what the gospel writers say here in the Bible? about an empty tomb? What causes you to doubt what Jesus says about the resurrection, and in particular about His own resurrection? Our doubts can only be dispelled by listening and looking to Jesus. But as we do so, He is the perfect cure for troubled hearts. Maybe this morning as you think about these things, you too, if you are being honest, will admit you are troubled. You don't know what to make of all of these things. Perhaps most of the time you just push it to the back of your mind. You don't want to think about it. But God in His providence this morning confronts you again with the reality of this, and you have to admit that as you are forced to think about it, you are troubled, even startled by it. What is the remedy for that? The remedy for that is to listen to this one who was raised bodily from the dead. Notice what he does with his disciples here. He shows them the physical evidence for the reality of his bodily resurrection. Verses 39 through 40. His hands and feet plainly display here the marks of his crucifixion. Come see. marks of nail imprints in hands and feet. He is the same Jesus. The same Jesus who died on the cross for sin was standing there right before them in the flesh bodily. Those wound marks will remain on the resurrection body of Jesus. They are a permanent reminder of everything that he has done for the salvation of his people. The Marks bear witness to the cross and his great atonement where he died for sinners. That is not to say that they are wounds that are gruesome, that are dripping blood. Many times the art in this world has not done justice here to what the text says in truth. They've portrayed macabre things that the text gives no warrant for. But nevertheless, they are evidence. They can be seen to be the wounds of His atonement. but they are glorified in a glorified body. His hands and feet belong to the resurrection body now that came out of the empty tomb in all of the glory of being raised in the power of the Spirit. As we've seen many times in these final chapters of Luke's gospel, Jesus died. In His human nature, He truly died. He was a true man, real body, reasonable soul, and He died upon the cross. But then in that same body, He rose again in resurrection life. What does that point us to? It points us to the great gospel, doesn't it, of Jesus Christ, the great good news that by His sinless life, His atoning death on the cross, and now by His glorious resurrection, our sins may be forgiven and we may have the free gift of eternal life. But Jesus was not yet finally finished. He gave his disciples here one final proof, verses 41 through 43. You see, Jesus did not merely seem to have a body. Many people have said that, well it just looked like it. It just appeared that way to their eyes, so they saw what they saw. No, no, Jesus actually had a body. Peter witnessed to this, you remember in the book of Acts, Acts 10 verse 41. He said, we have been chosen as witnesses who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. An apparition cannot eat and drink. It may look very convincing. Your eyes can be deceived. But this was not just an apparition that looked the part. this body ate and drank with the disciples. Peter says we ourselves have done that with Jesus. We've been chosen as eyewitnesses of these things. Now we ourselves here this morning as professing believers cannot say that same thing as Peter could say. we have only heard the Word of life. We have not seen Jesus with our physical eyes. We have not touched Him with our hands as He invited them to do. Remember doubting Thomas? Remember how he greatly protested to the others because he was not there the first time that Jesus had appeared? Remember, children, what he said had to happen before he would believe? I need to put my fingers into the nail prints and my hand into His side, otherwise they will not believe. And the Lord appears the second time and invites Thomas, says, come then, Thomas. How gracious is the Lord Jesus. We say this with great reverence, but if it had been you or me, do you think we would have done that or do you think we would have been berating Thomas for his unbelief by now? But the Lord in His great mercy says, okay, Thomas, come. Put your finger into the nail prints. Put your hand into my side. Stop doubting and believe. We've not had the opportunity to do that. And we've not seen him eat the physical food as he did here. As he showed the evidence again of the materiality of his body. Didn't just take the fish and suddenly just drop through this apparition onto the floor. We've not had the opportunity or the privilege of those things. But what we do have, brethren, is this. We have the reliable testimony of those who did. You ever thought about that? We make so much of saying, but I did not have it myself, I did not do it myself, as if that is the greatest impediment then to our believing the truth of this. Let me ask you, how many things do you believe this morning that you have not done yourself personally? And if anybody wants to come and make a claim that there's not one thing, then let's talk about that over fellowship lunch, because I'm sure, I'm pretty sure I can find one thing for every one of us. So that's not the issue, is it? We have the eyewitness testimony of those who did do these things. Peter says, we have been chosen as witnesses who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. You're talking, you're hearing from someone who did. And that is credible, reliable testimony. eyewitnesses of the risen Christ, men and women who touched Jesus with their own hands, who saw Him eat and drink with this resurrection body. Well that brings us in the third place to disbelieving for joy, verse 41. So what happened then when they saw all of this testimony? Well some people believe in the resurrection and some do not. Very interesting the way Luke describes these disciples, verse 41, he says, they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling. It's an interesting way to put it, isn't it? Disbelieved for joy and were marveling. They were witnessing here the most extraordinary thing they had no doubt ever seen in their The living, immortal body of someone who had been dead, who had been buried, and had come alive again in a body that would never die ever again. Nothing like that. Think about it again, even in the other gospel accounts where Jesus raised others from the dead, they would still die again. They were not yet in their full resurrection bodies when he brought them back to life. Whether it be the son of the widow of Nain or whether it be Lazarus, they were not in resurrection bodies. But he was Jesus in the glory of his resurrection body. They'd never seen anything like this in their lives before. And to put it in the words that perhaps we would use today, it just seemed too good to be true, didn't it? It seemed too good to be true. You hear perhaps people today talk like that, don't they? They say, well, I just can't believe it. It's an amazing thing, but I just can't believe it. Sometimes we speak that way ourselves, don't we, of all sorts of things, of more mundane things of life. Perhaps if you're at college or if you're doing your studies and you pass a test you didn't expect to, you say, well, I can't believe I passed that test. We speak in that way, don't we, in some sort of measure of disbelief. Or perhaps if you're watching your favorite team and they win when you didn't really expect them to. They were taking on an opposition that were far better than they were, and they weren't expected even to win, and they do. And you're very glad they did, if you're a faithful fan, but in your heart of hearts, you have to say, I don't even believe that, really, that they actually won. It's an incredible thing to me. how the disciples here felt, didn't they? It was still somehow. They were overjoyed, but disbelieving for joy, hardly believing it. You see, they were just starting to understand the reality of what it meant for Jesus to be risen from the dead. It was, to again perhaps put the words in the way that Luke does here, it was unbelievably good news, but they yet still struggled with it. They could hardly believe it. There are many people still like that today. The problem is they remain more in the unbelieving, skeptical experience. They remain best perhaps agnostic as we call it. At worst, still skeptical. Some refusing to believe. What happens to people like that? Maybe you are one of those this morning. You say that's unbelievable. But what you mean by that is not you're struggling to understand, but you are beginning by God's grace to see and you are seeking with God's help to understand more. No, you are skeptical, saying, well, you know what, after all you've said, I still don't believe it. Many people like that, aren't there, today? Acts 17, verse 30, Paul preaching to the Athenians, well-known for their skepticism. In the ancient times, Acts 17 verse 30, he says, the times of ignorance God overlooked, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent because He has fixed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom He has appointed. And of this He has given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead. Do you have any right to be skeptical this morning, agnostic?" Paul says, you don't. God is forbearing. In times past with such ignorance, He is born with that. He didn't bring His consummate judgment. But now He commands all men everywhere to repent. That includes you, as it includes me. He's fixed a day in which He's going to judge the world according to this truth. And according to this man, the man Christ Jesus. And how can you be assured of that? Because He raised Him from the dead, Paul says. That's how we can know. So we have no right to remain agnostic and skeptical and refusing to believe. And yet we see here, even though there were still struggles in the hearts of these true disciples, it brought a great joy to them, didn't it? That's what the hope of the resurrection does. It brings joy even where we may yet still have some measure of struggle in understanding all of its implications and meaning. That's true for Christians today. We see the principle of death at work everywhere, don't we, in our universe. But the gospel brings us the great hope that one day, the reality of the new heavens and the new earth, wherein will dwell righteousness, will be the reality. And this world, with its principle of death and decay, will be no more. Be burned up, Peter says, in the Lord's judgment. It doesn't mean we go from this physical world to an immaterial spiritual world, physical matter will be redeemed by Christ in the new heaven and the new earth. And that, whatever else it means, means your physical body, Christian. And the hope of that does bring joy, doesn't it, when we have to presently endure physical sufferings. And I know for some, at least in this congregation, that is a very present reality. And for some, it has been for a very, very long time. And how often, when we have to suffer such things, we can begin to wonder, is there really any hope of anything better than this? Perhaps when this particular condition began, or illness, You had some hope and thought, well, okay, it might just be for a short period, a week, a month, a year, but now it seemed so long. What hope can there be? What this tells us is whatever the Lord's sovereign providence might be in this life, even if his providence is that we have to endure certain health conditions for the rest of our days, Whatever pains we may experience, brethren, in these earthly bodies, whatever weakness, whatever disability, whatever disease, God will make perfect again in your body when we rise again in the glorious resurrection. Do you know that? There won't even be a twinge in your resurrection body. We all know what those are like as we get older, don't we? And there won't be any getting weaker when we don't have the strength anymore to do what we once did. And there won't be the trial of disease and health issues that in the Lord's sovereign province He's appointed for us at the present time. No more sadness or pain, only a perfection of health and joy. And that hope brings a special joy even when we come to face that last great enemy, as Paul calls it, death itself. Sooner or later we say goodbye to the people we love most in the world if the Lord appoints that they die before us. If that is so, we have to lay their bodies in the dust. If the Lord appointed the other way around, then they do that for us and we leave them. But for the Christian, even though his body has to rest in the grave, or even though he must lay another loved one in Christ in the grave, resting, awaiting the resurrection, though we go down to the grave, as we might say, through faith in Jesus and the power of the resurrection, brethren, we will rise again. Do you believe that this morning? We will rise again. That's why it's not a sad thing for Christians to look at graves of other Christians. It's sobering. It reminds us of the reality of death, but death has not the victory. That's why Paul could make those great statements as he does in 1 Corinthians 15, where, O death, is your sting? Where, O grave, is your victory? It's not. We will rise, brethren. so that even if we yet still struggle to understand it all, we can have great joy, both in the days of this world of difficulty, whatever it may entail, and at last when we have to face death itself. We believe it for joy, we will rise again. And then lastly and fourthly we come to this great first Easter sermon that Jesus preached to these disciples gathered in Jerusalem. Verses 44 through 48. When Jesus said in verse 44, while I was still with you, it suggests that He's about to leave His disciples. He's hinting at that at least, if not telling them directly. But before He goes, He prepares them for what they will have to do, their great task to take this good news to the ends of the earth. And so He preaches for them here what we might call the gospel of His own resurrection. and its practical implications for the whole world. So, we just want to take a few moments as we close out this sermon to think about the sermon that Jesus preached here. There are many practical applications for preachers who want to learn how to preach better and preach like the master. There are implications for hearers of sermons. What sort of sermon do you want to hear? A sermon like the Master preached. So what sort of sermon did Jesus preach here? Well, first of all, verse 44, Jesus preached a biblical sermon in which He proclaimed the gospel promise from the Old Testament. Now, that might seem a very obvious thing to say and say, well, Pastor, why would you even say that? Isn't that obvious that a sermon has to be biblical? Sadly, in our day, it is not. And that's tragic. But we need to say, we need to preach the Bible. We don't preach our own ideas, our own thoughts, our own experience, our own aspirations. In that sense, it's not about us, either as preacher or hearer alike, first and foremost. We preach the Bible. That's what Jesus did here. He'd done that all of his earthly ministry. You remember back in Nazareth when he began his public ministry in the synagogue. What did he do? He preached the good news from the prophet Isaiah. He kept doing that throughout all of his public ministry. And now in his last sermon here, that's recorded for us by Luke, he does exactly the same thing again. He tells them what he told them before. He preached the Scriptures. What Jesus preached came from the Bible. When he came to this very practical matter of how they were then to preach that good news, their mission to the ends of the earth, notice here that Jesus did not begin with their personal spiritual experience. Though in the end, Peter would say, we are eyewitnesses. We saw and we heard that. There's a place for that. But that's not where we start in personal experience. We start with the Scripture itself. We preach the text. So many preachers need to relearn that lesson, I think. And so many preachers who, by God's grace, do it need to keep learning that lesson so they never stray from it. Brother, and I know you pray for me and I'm never weary of hearing people pray in prayer meeting for me, or perhaps sometimes when I'm in your home and we pray, people pray this way. It's a great encouragement to my soul. But pray this more than anything else. Preach the Bible. Preach God's Word. Pray that God would always ever deliver you from a man who does anything else. Preach the Bible. Why is this so critical? Well, because this is the Word of God. The life of Jesus was governed by the prophecies and the promises of God's Word. He came to do what it said he would come to do. came into the world the way the Word says He would. He lived the way that the Word said He would live, in all righteousness. He died the way the Word said He would die, as an atoning sacrifice for sins. And He rose again the way the Word said He would rise again. Jesus, He had preached a biblical sermon, didn't He? But not only that, he preached what we would call in theological terms a Christ-centered sermon. He's the only one who's allowed to preach in a sermon about himself. The only one. None of the rest of us are to do that. But Jesus could because as we remember, as he said, the scriptures are all about him. And so he preaches a Christ-centered sermon. Any biblical sermon is going to be a Christ-centered sermon. It's a tragic thing, particularly when we think about the Old Testament Scriptures, even as Jesus was preaching from them here. As one of the commentators once put it, he said, you know, many Christians, many Christian ministers preach sermons that are no different from a Jewish rabbi would preach that text from the Old Testament. Why does he say that? because actually Christ was almost totally absent from the sermon. Totally absent. Christ did not preach that way. He preached Christ-centeredly. The gospel promise given in the Old Testament, the promise of the Christ to come to save the people of God finds its fulfillment where? Tell me, where does it find its fulfillment? in Jesus and His work and in nowhere else. That's why we need to preach Christ-centered sermons. It's all about Him. What did these men need more than anything else? They needed to hear that, didn't they? They needed to hear again about Christ and His saving work. And they needed that one of whom He was then speaking to come and open their mind to hear it and understand it, which is what He did. You see, bringing sinners like you and me, brethren, to know Jesus and His great salvation is the work of God's Spirit, as we know. But how does the Spirit do that? Does He do it in some kind of mystical, strange way that somehow we have no idea how He does that? No. Yes, there is some mystery to it, but the means that He uses is not mystical in any way. How does the Spirit do it? He does it through the Word when the Bible is preached, centered on Jesus Christ. Do we want sinners to be saved? then we preach the Bible and preach the message of the Bible, which is Jesus Christ and Him crucified, because that is what the Spirit is pleased to use to save sinners. He's a great example for our evangelism, whether we think of it in terms of the formal preaching of the Word or whether we're seeking to witness to others in slightly more or more informal settings. How do we do it? Through the Word. telling them about Jesus and what He has done. How did Jesus preach? He preached Himself incarnate. He preached Himself fulfilling all righteousness. He preached Himself crucified, atoning for sin. He preached Himself risen from the dead. So sermons are to be biblical, they are to be Christ-centered, but they're also to be evangelistic. If we believe the gospel as it's promised in the Scriptures, and as it is accomplished by Christ, the One who was sent, then there is a demanded response. We are to repent of our sins and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of sinners. The Lord's Sermon did that, didn't it? He called people to respond by repenting and receiving forgiveness for their sins. There needs to be that demanded response when the Word of God is preached. And then finally, Jesus concluded His biblical sermon, His Christ-centered sermon, His evangelistic by also preaching a missionary sermon. One of the commentators puts it this way. He says, quote, first, we believe the gospel for ourselves, confessing our own sins and trusting in Jesus. Next, we are to proclaim that gospel message to others, verse 47. Then Jesus said, verse 48, you are witnesses of these things. The sermon of Jesus at Easter time was a missionary sermon, wasn't it? A missionary sermon for the whole world. The whole world is to hear this message and call to repent and believe. That same Old Testament that said that Christ would suffer and rise again and that promised repentance and forgiveness also said that this saving gospel would be preached throughout the world, even to the ends of the earth. And so, just as it was promised that Christ would suffer and rise again, so it was promised that forgiveness would be preached to the nations. And Jesus sent His apostles, His church, to fulfill that mission. They would go, and those to whom they passed on that message, that torch, would go and continue to go. That's what they did. Luke records that for us in the Acts of the Apostles. One day, relatively soon, I hope to come to that. Sometimes, rightly so, they call the Acts of the Apostles really Luke volume 2, because he goes on. Not really the Acts of the Apostles, it's the Acts of the Holy Spirit through the Apostles. The Acts of the Spirit of Jesus through the Apostles, as we were thinking in the Sunday school hour. That's what they did in fulfilling, heeding the missionary sermon that Jesus preached to them this evening. That's what continues to happen every time one of Christ's ministers preaches a biblical, Christ-centered, evangelistic missionary sermon, fulfilling the will of Christ, preaching like the Master, calling them to repentance and faith. all Christians are called to be witnesses. Some are called to be ministers, to formally herald the Word. Not every Christian is called to that, but we are all called to be witnesses. Maybe not eyewitnesses in the physical sense as the apostles were, but still witnesses, those who have heard the testimony of an eyewitness. Those who have heard the Easter sermon of Jesus Himself through Luke's gospel, we too carry that message to wherever the Lord has placed us in His providence, in your workplace, in your college classroom, in your community, in the store where you happen to purchase something this coming week. Maybe places you go regularly, somewhere you go occasionally. We carry that message to the ends of the earth. But when we think of the nations, we should not think only of people who live far away. We tend to think that way, don't we? And sometimes we tend to think that we're actually going there through the help of others, missionaries who were sent out from the church physically to places a long, long way away. So we think of our brethren in Asia and Africa, and we think of our brethren in Latin America, and we think of our brethren in Europe and in Australasia, and all of these ends of the earth locations. Of course, we very rarely go there ourselves. But we should not think just of that. The nations include all the people who presently are outside of Christ, who need to hear the gospel, who do not yet believe, who need to hear the great good news of forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life. What does that mean? It means in this community. It means in this neighborhood. It means in the place where God has placed you in your workplace, in your neighborhood of the place of your home. There are two other nations. One of the commentators puts it like this, he says, quote, some of the people who are farthest away from God are the people who are closest to us, end quote. You ever thought about that? Maybe it's an unbelieving family member. Maybe it's an unbelieving neighbor on the next property or on the street where you live. Maybe it's a co-worker. Farthest away from God are people who are closest to us in the Lord's providence where we have the opportunity to tell them the good news. Who will be their witness? We have the opportunity as a church in these next few weeks, as we have in the Lord's Providence often, Thanksgiving and Advent, to tell people in this community, some who may be the farthest away, but they're closest to this church. We go to our friends at Gold Country, some of whom believe and are joyous to hear the message, the Bible preached and Christ-centered. Evangelistic, missionary way, but many who do not. Some of you may remember the time we were at Gold Country and there was one older gentleman and he came out from the dining hall and he looked and he saw what we were doing and you saw the opposition in his eyes. And he purposely, very slowly, walked across right in front of where I was preaching to all the rest of the other people, almost defiantly. Like, you're in my place, I live here, what are you doing here? I don't want you here, and I'll do whatever I can, even in his frailty, to show you I don't really want you here or to hear. I remember that, it's burned upon my brain. As the Lord brings him to mind, I still pray for that man, that one day, whatever was in his mind to oppose the gospel of Jesus Christ, to rise up, perhaps not in the strength of all that Psalm 2 envisages, but certainly in whatever he could muster in his heart and mind against God, his Christ, his anointed. But he was given opportunity. However long he was there, he heard something. We ought to take the opportunities that God gives us that we might be witnesses to Him of His great gospel, whether we preach formally or whether we witness to it informally, that we might tell others of the Scriptures, biblically, of Christ, Christ-centeredly, to do so evangelistically, demanding a response, repent and believe. and to do so with that missionary intent to reach out even to the ends of the earth. May God so help us. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, mortally risen from the dead. We thank you for the great evidences that he gave to demonstrate the reality of his glorious resurrection body. We thank you for his great forbearance with still perplexed, often unbelieving disciples. And yet we thank you for the reality of that great joy that came even in their unbelieving We thank you, O Lord, for the greatest preacher of all, the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Grant, O Lord, in whatever capacity you have called us, that we might witness faithfully to you and to do so in the likeness of the Master. Grant us, O Lord, even your favour as we seek to take up opportunities, whether it be in the immediate days or even in the future weeks, whether it be, O Lord, in formal occasions as we go to Gold Country next Saturday, or whether it be in the times of Saturday as we go to our neighbours and knock their doors and invite them. or whether it be in the informal ways where we meet people. O Lord, wherever you have put us in your divine providence, grant us as we are thinking our Sunday school hour to live in the light of eternity, thinking not just for ourselves but to think of others and the great peril in which they are. Grant us to proclaim Christ to them and call them to believe whilst they may. here as we ask for Christ's sake. Amen.