And as you turn to Luke chapter 24 prepare your hearts for the reading of God's Word Richard has Bibles if you need a Bible This is page 885 if you have one of the church's Bibles and we're coming to the end of Luke's account of Jesus life and ministry at least Luke's first account which he's writing to Theophilus who needed to know these things and we need to know them too and And you'll remember last week we saw Jesus meeting his disciples in the upper room. What follows begins with the word then here in verse 44, but it would seem that these verses we're going to look at today don't necessarily indicate exactly what Jesus said in the room right there as they stood disbelieving for joy. He may have gone on to say some of these things right then, but it seems more to be a summary of what he taught in the 40 days before he would ascend into heaven. And these, of course, form Luke's great commission. So Luke's edition of the Great Commission. So before we read God's word, let's ask him to bless our hearing of it. Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you and we thank you today that you have spoken to us And that Jesus reminds us of that here in these words. We thank you that you've spoken to us in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms. We thank you that you've spoken to us in these last days through your Son. And we thank you that His witnesses, His disciples, have written these words for us. And so it is our great desire today, Lord, that you would open our minds to understand the scriptures as you did the disciples in Jesus day so that we would see Jesus for who he really is and that we would see his purposes for our lives. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. This is the word of God. Luke chapter 24 beginning in verse 44. Then he, that is Jesus, 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 and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And 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. Thus ends this reading of God's holy and inspired word. We pray that he would be pleased to write it on our hearts today and forever. Well, just over two years ago, I was in India, and at the end of that time, we were in the city of Rishikesh, which is one of the Hindu holy places. And while we were there, we saw some leading Hindu figures. These were priests dressed in hunter orange, and they would sit with their legs crossed, often hands stretched out. somewhat unkempt we might say in our culture and they were sitting there as beggars seeking peace and holiness as they would meditate. And as we walked around, there was one particular character who was dressed up as the monkey god. This was quite a strange sight, of course, to my eyes, but it's a part of Hindu tradition. And this fellow was walking around. And while we were in the restaurant together, I saw him out the window, and I pulled out my phone and took a picture. And he pestered us for the rest of the day because I had taken his picture. And so therefore, I was, in his mind, obliged to give him something in return. being a Hindu holy person. And I suppose it's somewhat similar with politicians in our culture, you know, you get these photo ops and then you give so much money, something like that. But just with religious overtones, right? He had apparently performed a service for me by his very existence and he thought that I should, that he should be served by me. Well, what you see in all of this is a striking thing of the religions of the world, where people are seeking peace in these Hindu ways, at least, by doing nothing. We see people pursuing peace in our culture in any number of ways, but that peace is always something that is elusive, and people end up with a hollow feeling, wondering, what am I doing? And what am I doing with my life? Well, Jesus, as he met his disciples here in the verses that we looked at last week, came and he pronounced peace to his disciples, but he didn't just stop by giving them his peace. He didn't say, so just hang out here in the upper room, stick to yourselves and meditate. He didn't only give them peace, he gave them a passion to go forward. He didn't just settle their souls, he sent them out. He didn't just bring them comfort because of the knowledge of the forgiveness of their sins by His resurrection. He gave them a calling. And we, as the people of God, sometimes struggle with our calling. You may struggle internally with your own sense of, what is my life really all about? What am I doing here? And we engage in these struggles as we grow up and wonder, what am I supposed to do with my life? We think about these things as we switch jobs, as we engage in relationships, and in a host of different ways. What Jesus wants us to see here is that we will find our calling in this world, ultimately in his calling that he gives to his disciples, which he also gives to us here. We are not simply a people who are settled in heart, but we are sent and we are sent with vision and with purpose. And we see Jesus giving this kind of vision to his disciples as he tells them that his name and all of the blessings of his name should be proclaimed beginning from Jerusalem to all nations, and that his people are going to be witnesses of these things. Well, if we're gonna find our calling and our sense of direction in life from these words of Jesus, what is it that we need to know in order to have this sense of direction? Well, there are two things I propose that we need to see here that I think flow clearly from the text. The first thing is that we do need to know. There are some things we need to know as the people of God, first of all. There are some things we need to meditate on. There are some things we need to take to heart And then secondly, we need to be a people who go. So there are things the Lord wants to impart to us. What is it that we need to know? First of all, we'll look at what Jesus says here. It's fascinating as he gives his commission to his disciples. He doesn't simply start by saying, get out there. but rather he goes back and he covers material that we've already seen before in a host of different ways through the book of Luke. But he summarizes his ministry and he says, 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. If we're going to have purpose and direction in life in Jesus' commission, we need to know the scriptures. Jesus doesn't simply say you need to know me, but he's grounding, he's rooting his ministry, and he's rooting the lives of his disciples in the scripture. What he wants them to see is that all of human history and all of the scriptures were ultimately leading to him. Moses, of course, summarizes the first five books of the Bible. The prophets would be the historical account of what happened with the people of God, and then those prophets that came and spoke. And the Psalms that he mentions here would be those poetic works, those things that are written in the scripture that are so easy for us to memorize, to guide our very lives. And he's teaching his people here that we need to grow in deeper ways in understanding how what is written in the word of God had to be fulfilled in Jesus Christ. all of the accounts of God's mighty doings of creation and providence that we sang about earlier. The covenant promises that he gave beginning with Adam and then to Noah and to Abraham and to David and to the others. These are all of the words that God has given to us and we need to see how they all lead to Jesus Christ. One commentator says, Without Him, the Old Testament remains unfinished business, enigmatical, literal, and lifeless. But through Him, it becomes illumined and a source of light and spiritual refreshment to the Christian. So we need to be a people who are in the Word of God, in the Old Testament. And just a question you might consider is when was the last time your reading and your thinking was in the Law of Moses? When was it in the prophets? When was it in the Psalms? When was it in the Gospels and in the Epistles and in the Book of Revelation? Are you meditating on these things and are you seeing how they all pull together and are fulfilled in Jesus Christ? That God is uniting people who have fallen into sin. He's uniting them to himself through Jesus and he's shown us how he's brought that to pass through history in the Word of God. We need to be a people who are putting ourselves under the Word of God, under the Word of God preached, under the Word of God read every day, under the Word of God as it's memorized and meditated upon going through life. It is as we're under the word of God that his truth will come alive and notice what he does with the the disciples here Not only do they need to know this text on a page. They need to have their minds open Look at verse 45 says he opened in these days in these weeks their minds to understand the scripture Now we know in other parts of scripture that we're told that The problem with our minds is that they're hardened by sin. Listen to these words from 2 Corinthians 3, verses 14 through 18. It says, but their minds were hardened, and to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because it is only through Christ is it taken away. Paul's writing there and he's speaking of the Jews, he's saying there's a veil over people's eyes. Even though they're reading the right words, there's a problem. Their minds haven't been opened. And it happens to us too. And when we can't see straight, we have no sense of direction. Growing up with sheep, they're not very bright animals, and we'd have five-gallon buckets of water or a feed, and sometimes they would stick their heads down in there to try to get the last of what was at the bottom of the bucket. They'd jerk their heads up quickly, and the bucket would stay on their head. And what happens next? they get nervous, they start going every which direction, banging into other animals, into walls, and so forth and so on. Absolutely directionless. Until they finally get that veil off their face. And that's exactly what we look like when we have a veil over our eyes. We're just bumping into all kinds of different people and ideas, but we have no sense of where we really ought to be going. And how is this veil lifted? Well, it can't be lifted by human effort. But Paul goes on in Corinthians to say, but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image, from one degree of glory to the other. For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. And in the first epistle to the Corinthians, He reiterates the same sort of thing where he says, see also that no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit. interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person doesn't accept the things of the Spirit of God for they are folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. We need the work, you see, of the triune God in our lives. These words that are given by the Father, they're through the Son, and the Son, of course, is the Word incarnate, but we need the Holy Spirit to illumine our hearts so that we might understand these things that are freely given to us by God. And so, we need to be pleading each day as we come to the Lord, who is the Spirit, that He would open our minds to behold wondrous things from His law. And as we do that, we begin to know who we really are, because we begin to see who God really is as well. And this is what John Calvin talked about as really the essence of understanding as he began his institutes of the Christian religion. The two things that we need to know most of all are who is God and who are we? We're gonna have any sense of mission in life We have to have a sense of identity, of grounding, of being rooted in understanding where we are before God. And when we understand the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms, we understand God's plan for not simply all of humanity. But we begin to understand His purposes in our lives. If we peek ahead here to verse 46, we see something of what it is that they're to proclaim. They're to proclaim that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations. But before we go proclaiming it to others, who do we need to proclaim it to first? We need to proclaim it to ourselves. that it's in Jesus that the sacrifices of the Old Testament are fulfilled because the Lamb of God has come. It's in Jesus that all the promises of God are yes and amen because we are made the people of God through the Son of God become flesh to represent us to the Father. And what a wondrous thing this is. We need to understand and to know the gospel, what it is that God has done. J.C. Ryle puts it very succinctly here and in a beautiful way. He says, the death of Christ was necessary to our salvation. And this is what we need to understand. His flesh and blood offered in sacrifice on the cross were for the life of the world. Without the death of Christ, so far as we can see, God's law could never have been satisfied. Sin never could have been pardoned. Man never could have been justified before God. And God never could have shown mercy to man. The cross of Christ was the solution of a mighty difficulty. It untied a vast knot. It enabled God to be just and yet the justifier of the ungodly. It enabled man to draw near to God with boldness and to feel that though a sinner, he might have hope. Christ, by suffering as a substitute in our stead, the just for the unjust, has made a way by which we can draw near to God. We may freely acknowledge that in ourselves we are guilty and deserve death, but we may boldly plead that one has died for us, and that for his sake, believing on him, we claim life and acquittal. That's the gospel, brothers and sisters. That's what the Lord has taught us in these words. through all the Old Testament and the New Testament, and we need to be laying it to heart. And so the catechism says that the word may become effectual unto salvation, we must attend thereunto with diligence, preparation, and prayer, receive it with faith and love, lay it up in our hearts, and practice it in our lives. We need the word of God and we need to know it because in knowing it we have our very life because we know Jesus. And you can't know him any other way. So are you in God's word? God opened the minds of the disciples that day and you know your brain is a muscle. And it won't work unless you exercise it. We know that it is through the renewal of our minds that we know the Lord. He loves to work there in that space. And the spirit changes hearts and minds, but he always does it through the word of God. And so we need to be a people who are exercising those muscles and its work. And I'm here to tell you, friends, there is no other way to draw near to Christ other than to be in his word much. Dr. Pruto is going to be beginning his prophets class here in just over a week. And when I took that class in seminary, as I've told you before, working on a paper in the book of Joel, I labored for hours and I came to know a book that I had read who knows how many times before. as I'd read that prophecy of Joel. But now I was studying it in a more intense way, and there in the stacks of books in the library, with books stacked up all around me, I came to God's promise there in Joel chapter two, that he's going to restore everything that the locusts have eaten. An imagery that shows us that in spite of my sin, in spite of all that I have thrown away in life, God in Christ, can not only restore that, but he can give far, far more. And those words came to life and my mind was opened and I just broke down weeping because God's word came alive in a whole new way to me. And He'll do it for you. And if you know Jesus Christ, you know those kinds of times that I'm talking about where you've been reading God's Word and all of a sudden it just comes alive. And you're either convicted of sin or you're drawn to exultant praise, but your life is changed in that moment. And the thing I would challenge you with today, if you know that feeling, is don't rest on your laurels. Don't say, oh yes, I've had those experiences before and it's been really great. What God's calling us to do is to know Him by asking, how am I going to experience that today and tomorrow? And expectantly through the week to come to the word of God and to see your mind opened and changed. So we've got to know these things. And it's as we know these things, we know Jesus Christ. And there's no better grounding for having a sense of mission in life than to know who we are in Christ, to have that profound sense of identity. We see this in our communities, don't we? People who know who they are. They've been part of the warp and woof of the community maybe for a long time. They know what the community needs or maybe they're coming in from the outside and they have fresh eyes, but they still know who they are and they still know what they're what they're calling is. There's a confidence that that wells up inside a person that is not inappropriate. They know what they've been created to do and to be. And it's as we are in the word of God and we experience the forgiveness of sins on a daily basis that we have a whole new sense of where God wants us to go. So we gotta know first, and ultimately that's to know Christ through knowing His Word. And as we do, we're then given the commission to go. And these, of course, are words written specifically to the disciples. But there is carry over for us. And as Jesus calls his disciples to go in verses 46 and following, there are three different aspects of it. First of all, there's the message that they're to proclaim. Secondly, there's the the target audience, the people that they're to go to. And third, there is the power that they receive to accomplish the task. So look at the message, first of all. In verse 46, the message is simply this. It's Christ and Him crucified. That the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead. And that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name. This is the great message of salvation that we have, that God has entered into human history, that God has become flesh, He's taken the sins of His people, He's nailed them to the cross, He's blotted them out, and He has risen for our justification on the third day, and that is such good news that it cannot be contained. This is not a difficult message, but it is a profound and a marvelous message that proclaims and declares that Jesus is triumphant. and that He is ascended to the Father's right hand. And this makes all the difference in the world. And we ought to understand that, yes, the rest of the world may not like this message. Why might it not like this message? Because it shows Jesus is in charge and people have to submit to Him. He's on the throne. And so our calling in life then is not to grab for power for ourselves, or for any political party or for any particular cause, but to stand for the name of Christ. And this has implications. People sometimes say, you know, we should sort of back out of our involvement in the world. We shouldn't worry so much about our callings out there. Christians should just focus on the gospel. People have rightly asked the question, should William Wilberforce have just focused on the gospel? Just stay out of that whole business of the slave trade and all of those kinds of things. No, the claims of Jesus disrupt people's lives. They disrupt sinful trade practices. They disrupt habits of life in communities where those habits of life are not in accord with God's word. That's what we proclaim. So when Rich Johnston goes to Liberia next month, and when he goes out with Travis Sheets to see how farming God's way is proclaimed in the villages, there will be power encounters with the witch doctors. Why? It's because the witch doctors have power over the people in those places and they love that power. And they tell the people that the only way for their farming to be effective is to use these bits of magic potion around the four corners of your field and do all this other hocus-pocus and mumbo-jumbo to see your crops prosper. And what Travis does is he goes in and he proclaims, the Lord reigns. The earth and its fullness, it belongs to the Lord. And he's the one who has shown us that he has come to conquer evil and false gods. He proclaims the triune God and then proceeds to show them how it is that we ought to be fulfilling Genesis chapter one. To see the fruit of the earth brought forward through the cultivation of the land, through sound and wise practices. that sometimes other people would look at and say, well, it's just common sense. But you see, it's a power encounter because we're proclaiming that Jesus has not only died for our sins, and it's not just that he's a nice guy that wants people to love him, but he has risen and he has power from on high, and he intends to fulfill what Adam failed to accomplish, and that his reign and his authority will be seen over all things. But what good news this is for people who are locked in bondage to sin. and who are serving Satan. And it's not just true in places like Liberia. It's true in the offices and the factories in which you work. It's true in the neighborhoods in which you live. And so we, as the people of God, take this great message of Christ and him crucified and him resurrected to those who are around us. Well, that's the message. But in taking the message, we also need to understand that that message is directed to a particular group of people. Look at who this group of people is. It's there in verse 47. The repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in Jesus' name to who? All nations, beginning from Jerusalem. God had promised to Abraham that it was in him that all the nations of the earth would be blessed. And Jesus fulfills that. And everything in the Old Testament was pushing us forward to Jerusalem. It's pushing us forward to Christ. And we saw it even here in the book of Luke. Where directionally does the book of Luke go in terms of geography? Well, aside from the birth narratives, it starts where? It starts with Jesus' ministry in Galilee. And chapter by chapter, where did Luke lead us geographically? He leads us to Jerusalem. Why Jerusalem? Because it's where the sacrifice is made, it's where Jesus is crucified, it's where God visits the earth in His wrath, and it's where He visits the earth with His blessing through the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And then Luke is going to write a second account, the book of Acts, There's a sense in which here we're just halfway through Luke's writing, but in the book of Acts we see that the geographical direction goes the other way. Everything's starting from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth. So you have this wonderful literary structure that Luke has put together to show us what it is that God is accomplishing. He has brought salvation in Jerusalem. And Jerusalem was the city in which the greatest wickedness on the face of the earth has ever been seen in the crucifixion of the son of God. And it's in the place of the greatest sin that the earth has ever seen, that God causes the greatest blessing that the world could ever dream of knowing to go forth from. So God says here, you're to be my witnesses to all nations. We're called to be the witnesses for God. The disciples were, of course, in a special way in that they were eyewitnesses who wrote down the inspired word of God of the New Testament. But we're called to be his witnesses as his church as well. And our calling is to go to all the nations. Why all the nations? Because all the nations are under the curse. All the nations are under the wrath and curse of God. And there are people made in the image of God at the four corners of the earth who today are dying in darkness. And it's happening here in Indianapolis. Your friends and your neighbors. But Jesus has come. to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins in his name. And it's our great privilege then to call people into that fellowship. And one of the ways in which we can practice that, you know, we become overcome with fear sometimes in terms of taking this good news to other people. One of the ways in which the Lord builds confidence is he teaches us again and again who we are by we talking to ourselves. And this is why every week after church, we ought to be engaging with one another about the Word of God as it was preached. What did you learn? What did you get? What is the Lord teaching you? What are the sins that you need to be repenting of and for which you need forgiveness? How is your life changing? How are you drawing closer to Jesus? We should be asking our children these kinds of questions as well. And as we become more and more comfortable with this kind of close fellowship among ourselves, will grow again in understanding our identity and our love for other people then just begins to spill out. So start where it's easy, with one another today, proclaiming these things to each other. And then we go forward from there to see the Great Commission fulfilled. But it's not simply up to us. Right. We are witnesses of Jesus and we are under his authority as his people. And he tells us that he is going to send us power. He's going to give us himself. He's going to give us his Holy Spirit so that we might be empowered for this work. Look at verse 49. 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. And for the disciples, that would be just a few days more. when the Holy Spirit would be poured out at the day of Pentecost. But it's fascinating here that the language in terms of the work that's going to happen is very, very similar to the promise that God gave Mary at the beginning of the book of Luke. In Luke 1, verse 35, the angel had said to Mary, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God. When God gets ready to do something really powerful in a place, He sends His Spirit. And that's what He did with Mary, so that Mary would conceive Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. And radical change happened as Jesus was called into his ministry, a ministry of service. And now we as his disciples, we receive that same Holy Spirit who sent Jesus into the world to complete his mission. And what a powerful and comforting truth this is. Jesus has just taken these disciples who are marveling, they're scared, they're wondering exactly what they're seeing when Jesus appeared to them in the room, and he's promising, I'm going to give you power from on high, so that you will be able to stand before kings. and before friends and before family members. And you will be my witnesses. And of course, that word is the word for martyrs. Others are going to want to even kill you because of the message that you proclaim. But you have this privilege. And we have this privilege because we know that this is nothing that Jesus didn't experience himself. He came proclaiming the gospel of his kingdom. And what did they do to him? They killed him. We have the same message to proclaim, and Jesus tells us, what should we expect? Well, that they'll want to do the same thing to us. And yet this is what serving is all about. This is our purpose and our calling. Our calling is not to sit with our legs crossed and our hands out, trying to be peaceful and be holy and hope someone will give something to us. We're called as the people of God to go out and lay down our lives every day because Jesus himself has already done it for us. And how much more powerful than all the other religions of the world that are seeking something for themselves to know that we as the people of God are called to be those who are sent out giving. Not just giving something, We're giving the Word of God, and we're also giving our own selves, which is gonna happen as we, like the disciples, meditate on these things together, even here today, and then go out as God's witnesses, knowing that we have the power of His Holy Spirit on our side so that we might see the work of God go forward in our day. It's pretty basic stuff, but profound. We come here today to worship God, and maybe today doesn't seem that much different than yesterday. But if we meditate on these truths, and we draw near to the living God, friends, then our prayers will change as to how the Lord would lead us forward in our callings. And as we meditate on God's Word, our hearts will be set aflame, and our eyes, by faith, will see things in the Scripture that we have never seen before. And we will receive the power of the Holy Spirit in our hearts to give us a love for people that we haven't loved before. There will be a willingness on the part of us as God's people to pour ourselves out for those who are in great need and who walk in darkness all around us. And as we do that, we will see even more of the power of God. as He changes hearts and lives, starting with our own. Let's pray. Lord, we thank You that You have given us Yourself. Thank You, Father, that You've revealed Yourself to us in Your Word, that You've sent Your Son into the world so that we might be united to Him and have a brand new identity, and that You've given Your Holy Spirit that our eyes might be opened Lord, may it be that we would never cease to be amazed that we would be called the children of God, that we would have fellowship with the triune God, and that we would know your peace. But Lord, we thank you that you haven't simply given us peace to sit still, to lead contented lives, but we thank you that you have sent us forth on a mission that takes expression in a million different ways as we go forward into our callings and to our different jobs, We pray, Lord, that you would show us how it is that in each of our individual callings, you're bringing your great calling to pass of making your name glorious as repentance and the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed in Jesus' name throughout the world today. So thank you that you've made us to be our witnesses and give us grace that we might be faithfully so in Jesus' name.