CAUSES FOR THANKS—NOW AND FOREVER
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on November 25, 2018 under 2018 |
Bethany Bible Church Sunday message; November 25, 2018 from Luke 24:46-49
Theme: Jesus’ words to His disciples after His resurrection give us reason for eternal thankfulness.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
But please bear with me; and turn with me to Luke 24.
The end of the Gospel of Luke tells the story of what happened after our Lord had been crucified and was raised from the dead. The apostles—minus Judas—were meeting together, when the Lord Jesus was suddenly found standing in the midst of them. They were terrified—thinking that they were seeing a spirit. But He assured them that it truly was Him. He allowed them to see His hands and His feet, where the nails of the cross had pierced them. He allowed them to touch and handle Him. He even ate a piece of fish and some honeycomb before them (and although it doesn’t say so, I have often wondered if He even handed them the fish bones afterward).
And after He had assured them that He truly was alive and was standing before them bodily, He began to say some very important things to them. He told them, for example, that these things that had happened to Him were the very things that He had told them about beforehand; that all the things that had been written about Him in the Old Testament Scriptures must be fulfilled. Then, we’re told that He ‘opened their understanding’ so that they would be able to comprehend those Scriptures. What an amazing moment that must have been!—as the eyes of all of them were suddenly opened to the truths of the Scriptures about Him; and in ways that they had not understood before!
This was a crucial moment for these disciples. They were between two important events—our Lord’s resurrection from the dead, and His ascension to the Father. He was about to commission them to go out into the world and proclaim Him. Whatever the Lord Jesus would say to His disciples at any time would, of course, be very important; but His words to them at this particular time—because of the significance of the moment—would be especially important.
And that brings us to our passage this morning. In Luke 24:46-49, we read;
Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these things. Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high” (Luke 24:46-49).
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Now; we have just finished celebrating Thanksgiving Day. I suspect that, as we have gathered with family and friends, the celebrations in each of our homes have included a time of giving thanks to God together. I am imagining that we gave thanks for such blessings as our families, and our friends; for things like our freedom and liberty; for such material blessings as our homes, and warm clothing, and the things that make life comfortable; for things like our jobs and our health. And of course, we all thanked God for the good food we were about to eat.
It is good and right to give thanks to God for such things. The giving of sincere thanks is our duty toward God; and it is a vital part of our spiritual life before Him. We truly have much to be thankful for. But my guess is that most of the things that we tended to give thanks for this holiday were temporary in nature. The material and circumstantial things for which we most likely gave thanks will eventually fade away over time, or that will be consumed in the process of being used and enjoyed. We should give thanks to God for them; but they are only ours for a brief while.
But I was drawn to this morning’s passage, and—in the light of the holiday—saw the things mentioned in it in an unusual light. Our Lord spoke of blessings that belong to those who are His followers. They are blessings that are of an eternal nature; and for which His redeemed people not only ought to thank Him today but for which they will be giving thanks to Him forever. They are blessings that are of an immeasurably greater value to us than the things that we may have given thanks for on Thanksgiving Day.
They are things for which our Lord died and rose again to secure for us. They will be the cause of eternal joy for us. And I wonder—do we acknowledge these blessings, and value them enough to thank our Father for them as we should?
I guess you could call this morning’s message a ‘post-Thanksgiving’ thanksgiving reflection. I ask you to join me in looking again at these words from our Lord, and thinking of the rich spiritual blessings they present to us, and—with the help of the Holy Spirit—becoming moved by what we see to give thanks to the Father now for what we will be thanking Him for forever!
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The first eternal blessing that we can see from this passage is the one that makes all the others possible, and that secures them to us forever. It is …
1. THE COMPLETED WORK OF JESUS ON OUR BEHALF.
Verse 46 tells us that Jesus said; “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day …”
The particular translation that I am using has it that the things that Jesus did for us were not only “written”, but were also “necessary”. Those words “and thus it was necessary” are not found in some of the best ancient copies of Luke’s Gospel, and so you may not find them in the translation of the Bible that you are using. But I think that they do speak of an important truth. If the things that Jesus experienced on our behalf were promised in the Scriptures, as Jesus said they were, then it is obvious that they could not fail to have been fulfilled. And they, in point of fact, were fulfilled!
The apostle Paul once wrote about this. He made it an essential aspect of the gospel that he preached in all of the places that God had led him. In 1 Corinthians 15, he wrote;
Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures … (1 Corinthians 15:1-4).
Jesus died, and was buried, and was raised the third day; and all “according to the Scriptures”. Isaiah 53 tells us that the promised Messiah would die as a Lamb slain on behalf of sinners—and He was! Psalm 22 promised that His hands and feet would be pierced, and that He would be mocked and ridiculed as He died, and that they would cast lots for His garments—and so it happened! Psalm 116 promised that God would deliver Him from death—and so He did!
And why is this important? It shows us that the death of our Lord Jesus on our behalf was not an accident. Nor was it something that happened as a revision of God’s plan along the way. It was an intentional act of love and mercy on God’s part—decreed by the Father long beforehand—in order to save us from our sins. Revelation 13:8 tells us that He is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”. How thankful we should be for God’s gracious gift of the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf; and for how God planned our redemption from long ago!
And notice what a completed act this was! Jesus said that it was written that He would “suffer”. That speaks of how He Himself bore the guilt of our sins upon the cross, and how He paid the death penalty for our sins as our substitute. But we would never know that this was a completed work—that atonement has been completely provided, and that God was satisfied with the payment that Jesus made for our sins on the cross—if it weren’t for the second thing that Jesus mentioned; that He was raised from the dead three days later.
Jesus’ resurrection is proof to the whole world that God the Father is fully satisfied with the sacrifice that Jesus made on our behalf. It is proof that our sin has been completely atoned for, and that the full payment of our debt before a holy God has been made. All of our guilt was placed on Him; and all of His righteousness has been credited to us; and all so that we are now declared 100% righteous in God’s sight who believe on Jesus, “who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification” (Romans 4:25).
And I ask, dear brothers and sisters in Christ; are you thankful for this? You’ll very quickly forget about a lot of other things that you may have thanked God for this holiday, but if you embrace this with all your heart—and truly thank Him for it now—you’ll be thanking Him for it forever!
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Another thing that Jesus told His disciples—another thing for which we can be eternally thankful—is something that we might call the natural ‘follow-up’ to the completed work that Jesus has performed for us. And that is …
2. THE PROCLAMATION OF GOOD NEWS FOR ALL PEOPLE.
In verse 47, after telling His disciples about how it had been written that He would die and then be raised the third day, He went on to say that it was also written “that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”
Now; Jesus is telling us that one of the things that is promised in the Scriptures is the proclamation of wonderful news; and that is “remission of sins”. “Remission” isn’t a word we use very often today; but it simply refers to our release from the debt of sin. It’s another way of speaking of our forgiveness before God. The Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death; but our debt to God because of sin has now been paid in full by Jesus Himself, and we are now set free from the burden of it. Because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, the message of the complete forgiveness of all of our sins can be declared. That promise was made long ago in Jeremiah 31:34—in the passage that tells us about the New Covenant that God would make with people; where God looked ahead to the finished work of Jesus for us and said;
“No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more” (Jeremiah 31:34).
God promised to completely forgive the sins of those who trust in Jesus—so much so that He will ‘remember’ their sins ‘no more’. He would no longer count their sins against them, nor even bring the guilt of them to mind. It will already have been completely atoned for by Jesus. What glorious ‘good news’!
But there is a particular way we need to understand this; so that we respond to this good news correctly. In the original language, the way it reads is that the message of ‘repentance’ should be preached ‘with a view to’ or ‘in accordance with’ the remission of sins. In other words, the call to ‘repentance’ is issued because of the remission of sins already provided for—on our behalf—by what Jesus did on the cross.
Do you know what ‘repentance’ is? The word in the original language means ‘to change one’s mind’ or ‘to change one’s attitude’ or to ‘change one’s orientation of thinking’. And that’s what we are to do in our attitude toward God and toward the sin that separated us from Him. Because of our sin—in fact, because of how we continued to cling to our sins—we thought of Him as an enemy who is hostile toward us. We are afraid to draw near to Him. But now; the message is that God has sent His Son to die for us, and has proven that He is satisfied with what Jesus did on our behalf by raising Him from the dead; and that now, full forgiveness—full remission of sin—is provided by Jesus on the cross; and that we should now “change our mind” about God, and stop running from Him, and let go of our sins, and put our faith in what Jesus has done, and turn to Him and enter into a relationship with Him.
Sometimes, the Bible refers to this as being ‘reconciled’ to God. The barrier between ourselves and God was the guilt of our sin. He is holy; and as a holy God, He cannot look upon sin. But He removed that barrier in Christ so that if we place our faith in Jesus, we can now be reconciled and brought near to Him in love. Paul spoke of this—and was very glad to preach about it! In 2 Corinthians 5, he wrote;
Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:18-21).
The call to ‘repentance’ is good news if it is understood as a change of attitude toward God because of the full forgiveness of sins that is being offered to us through the cross of Jesus. And just think of what a great blessing such a message is—that repentance and remission of sins should be preached, in Jesus’ name and under His authority, to all people everywhere! What good news this is! There can be no greater blessing than this!
When was the last time you thanked God for that?
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Now; in verse 47, Jesus said that this good news was to be proclaimed to all nations, “beginning at Jerusalem”. That was where He was speaking these words. That was where the gathered apostles were.
And that, I believe helps us to understand what Jesus then went on to say in verse 48; “And you are witnesses of these things.” The “you” He is specifically speaking of is the apostles. It was they—who were standing right there, beholding a resurrected Lord Jesus bodily alive; who had seen Him with their eyes, and touched Him with their hands, and watched as He ate before them, and listened as He spoke words to all of them—who would then be sent forth into the world as the witness-bearers that Jesus has redeemed us from our sins!
And this, I believe, points us to yet another blessing for which to give eternal thanks …
3. THE RELIABLE TESTIMONY UPON WHICH WE BELIEVE.
The eleven apostles who were then present to see the Lord would go forth and proclaim that He was alive and that He has atoned for sin. And did you know that, historically, ten of the eleven apostles laid down their lives as martyrs for their testimony? According to historical tradition, the only one who did not die for his faith in Jesus was the apostle John. But he was, nevertheless, persecuted and brutally tortured for that testimony; and he eventually died as a prisoner on the island of Patmos because of his faithful preaching of the gospel. The apostle Paul was eventually added to their number. He too met the resurrected Lord Jesus, and he too laid down his life for the testimony that Jesus was alive.
Judas Iscariot, of course, was not among these apostles at the time Jesus met them. He had betrayed the Lord for thirty pieces of silver; and he went out and hanged himself shortly thereafter—never seeing the crucifixion of our Lord, and never getting to see our Lord raised from the dead. The only thing that Judas saw was our Lord’s arrest; and that was because he himself arranged it and betrayed our Lord into the hands of those who took Him. But even Judas the Betrayer bore a testimony of Jesus that has lived on throughout the centuries; because he sought to return the thirty pieces of silver, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.”
Our faith in Jesus, then, does not rest on hearsay or on speculation. It isn’t mere rumor. It was based on eye-witness testimony; and not from just one man, and not from just two, and not from just three or four or five; but upon the testimony of twelve men who gave their all for the message that Jesus was alive! Add their testimony to the testimony of the Old Testament Scriptures, and we have a powerful and trustworthy testimony upon which to base our faith. As Paul once put it; we are God’s household;
having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20).
And even though our Lord said that it was these apostles specifically who would be His authorized witnesses, isn’t it true that we also have the privilege of carrying their witness of these things out into this world? We, too—who have believed their eye-witness testimony and have placed our faith in Jesus—even we are our Lord’s witnesses to this world!
What a glorious calling and purpose we have! Isn’t that something worth our thanksgiving? If we are faithful to it, isn’t it something that we will be thanking our Lord for forever?
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And one more thing. Neither the apostles back then, nor we who are here today, bear that witness in our own power. We should be very glad for that fact, because it would be an impossible thing for us to do in our own power. But the last thing that our Lord mentioned—and for which we owe an eternal debt of thanks—is …
4. THE EMPOWERING MINISTRY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.
After telling His apostles that they would be His witnesses of all these things that He had done, He then tells them, “ Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.”
And you know the story; don’t you? Not long after speaking those words to them, our Lord ascended back to the Father before the watching eyes of the apostles. Then, in obedience, they waited in the city of Jerusalem. Then, in obedience, they waited in the city of Jerusalem. And just a short while later, as they were gathered in the upper-room, the Holy Spirit—the third divine Person of the Trinity—came upon them, and took up permanent residence in them, and filled them, and empowered them to be our Lord’s witnesses. I’m thankful that the Holy Spirit came and enabled them to proclaim this witness so faithfully and reliably; aren’t you?
And the Bible teaches us that the same ‘Promise of the Father’—the same Holy Spirit who came at Pentecost—also forever indwells those who have placed their faith in Jesus and are redeemed by Him. That, dear brothers and sisters, would include you and me. In Acts 1:8, Jesus told those apostles;
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
And though they all preached in Jerusalem, and though many of them preached in the regions of Judea and Samaria, none of them came so far as to preach “to the end of the earth”; because that’s where we live in relationship to Jerusalem. But their testimony reached us, and we believed, and here we are today! And the same Holy Spirit carries on that work of witness through us here—in this place—in the remotest part of the earth! What a privilege!
Do you ever consider what a marvelous blessing it is to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit? The other day, I was watching a television special about Dr. Luis Palau. I was marveling at the ministry the Lord has given him of preaching the gospel around the world. But then, I realized that even though I don’t have the same kind of ministry that he has, I nevertheless have the very same Holy Spirit living in me that has called and empowered him! I also have the very same Holy Spirit indwelling me that indwelt and empowered the apostle Paul—and all of the apostles our Lord sent into the world. And so do you!
In fact, dear brothers and sisters, do you realize that we have the same Holy Spirit indwelling us that empowered our Lord Jesus for His earthly ministry? The Bible even tells us that we have the same Holy Spirit who demonstrated the greatness of His power by raising our Lord from the dead and seating Him at the right hand of the Father in power and glory! We even have the same Holy Spirit—and what a staggering thought this is!—that conceived our Lord Jesus, in His incarnation, in the womb of Mary! He works in many different ways, of course; but it is the same Holy Spirit—the same ‘Promise of the Father’—who was sent by our Lord at the time of His return to the Father in heaven, and who now indwells those who believe on Jesus and empowers them for life and service to our Lord!
He will indwell us forever! His indwelling will be a cause for eternal thanks! How long has it been that you have thanked the Father for promising Him, and the Son for sending Him?
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Now; these are theological truths that we have drawn from our Lord’s words. They are precious ‘doctrines’.
But part of the problem comes from how we choose to respond to these things. If you hear them, and do not embrace them to yourself through faith in Christ, then they just lay there flat on the ground. But if you pick them up, and begin to think about them, and—most of all—begin to thank God for them, then the significance of them will begin to grow in your life. You will want to learn more about them. And they will begin to transform your life.
So think about it. Will you now pick these things up and embrace them as your own? First of all, now that you have heard about the finished work of Jesus on the cross for you, do you place your whole faith in Jesus and in nothing else? Do you now ‘repent’ of your old way of thinking and of your old love for sin, and become fully reconciled to God because of the remission of sins? Will you place your whole trust in the reliability of the testimony of our Lord? Will you proclaim this glorious message as witnesses of our Lord in the various places of this world that the Lord has you? And will you completely yield yourself to the enabling ministry of the Holy Spirit every day? Will you pick these things up, thank God for them, and let them transform your life?
If you do, you will have—in these things—cause for eternal thanksgiving.
EA
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