TEXT: Luke 24:46-49

SUBJECT: Luke #93: The Great Commission

The Great Commission can be found in three Gospels. In the first two, it comes in the form of a command, "Make disciples of all nations…Preach the Gospel to every creature". Both emphasize our duty; Matthew and Mark tell us what Christ wants us to do.

But Luke doesn’t. His version is not a command, but a prophecy or a prediction. The Lord doesn’t tell us what to do (directly), but He tells us what we will do.

This is more than a fine point of grammar. The commands of the Lord Jesus can be disobeyed—and often are. But His prophecies? They never fail. What He says will happen will happen. No matter how lazy His servants are or how stubborn and cunning His enemies may be.

The god of Open Theism is not sure of the future. His guess is better than yours and mine, but that’s all it is: a guess. But the God of the Bible doesn’t have to guess at the future because He is in control of it. His Lordship is over every created thing, and time is a created thing, therefore, He’s Lord of the future, as well as of the past and the present. I’m not chopping logic here; all this is in the Bible.

Jesus Christ is God and therefore, what He says about the future of evangelism and missions will come to pass. Even if it seems impossible. Even if the disciples are not up to it. Even if Peter is scared, Thomas is doubtful, and the Brothers Ben Zebedee have a really bad attitude!

This is what today’s story is about. The disciples have already done some preaching and had enjoyed some success. But now, they’re being called to Something Big—far bigger than what they expected or even wanted--and with the big call comes a promise even bigger.

Before He gets to the future, however, the Lord reminds of them of the recent past.

For the disciples, the last few days have not been the same old same old. In fact, they have been full of excitement—sorrow, fear, surprise, and now, joy unspeakable and full of glory.

Three days before, the Lord had been arrested, tried, tortured, crucified, and buried. These things shattered the disciples. All their hopes were bound up in Him and now, He was dead and buried, and so were their hopes.

But then, after crying their eyes out and not knowing what to do with themselves, the Lord came back to life. He wasn’t alive in their memories or their dreams: He was alive at their dinner table! They weren’t thinking about Him, they were watching Him, listening to Him, talking to Him, and touching Him. His body was warm, His voice was normal, and His table manners were the same as they had been before.

The Lord is risen. The Lord is risen indeed.

Rising from the dead has a way of catching your friends off-guard! You wouldn’t blame them if they were surprised at seeing you sitting in your favorite chair after coming home from your funeral!

But the Lord does blame them. He’s not harsh about it, but He’s not pleased by it either. They should have known He was going to suffer and die and rise again. Why? For two reasons: firstly, because He told them He would! Just a few weeks before—it seems—He said,

I’m not sure how He could have made Himself clearer than He did. Some time before He said pretty much the same thing,

He did this over and over. The Gospels are littered—or maybe punctuated is the word—by the news that the Lord must die and come back to life. In body and soul.

They should have known this because He told them. A bit earlier, the angels chide the lady disciples for not listening carefully enough.

But here that part of God’s Word is skipped over. The Lord emphasizes, not the words they heard over the last three years, but the words they had read all their lives.

Thus it is written means the Bible foresees the sufferings and death of the Messiah--and His victory over them. The Gospel may be new to the disciples that day, but it’s not new. It’s as old as The Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms. Older, in fact, than the Bible. For God promised it to His people long before it was put down on paper.

The death and resurrection of Christ were not accidents or unforeseen events God is trying to adjust Himself to and make the best of. No, they both took place, as God said they would, according to His determinate counsel and foreknowledge.

This is what happened. And God was in charge of it all.

Why did it happen? Why did the Lord Jesus die on the cross and rise from the grave? The most popular answer would be: To save sinners. That’s right, the Bible says so: He was delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification. More scholarly answers would add words to the first, but not much content. The Lord died and rose to save us from our sins.

But that’s not quite what the Lord says here—He doesn’t contradict it, but He looks at it from another angle. Why was the Lord crucified and resurrected? V.47 says:

The Lord went into the tomb—and got out of it—so that the Gospel would be preached worldwide. But how does one follow from the other? Solomon was a rich and devout man. Why didn’t he send out missionaries to Egypt or Ethiopia or Greece or Persia? Ruth was from Moab and her husband had money. Why didn’t they found the ministry, Moabites for Messiah? Daniel, Ezekiel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and other saints were in Babylon, yet they made little or no effort to reach the Babylonians for God. I think Jonah is the only exception to the rule.

It seems that the holy preachers of old were inhibited by something; held back from foreign missions. But after the Resurrection, the Gospel breaks out of Israel and in thirty years Paul can say,

Look at a Bible atlas and you’ll find the work of a handful of men, without money or immunity turned the world upside down in one generation. While Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Solomon, Elijah, and all the rest, had almost zero Gospel effect on the nations around them. What did the Apostles have that the prophets didn’t have? We’ll get to that shortly, but here, let’s turn it around: What did the prophets have that the Apostles didn’t have?

Was Jeremiah a lazy man? Was Ezekiel a racist? Instead of running them off, why didn’t Nehemiah reach out to Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem?

They were not bad men! They were good men…living under the Old Covenant. Did the Mosaic Law forbid witnessing to foreigners? No it didn’t. But it did not emphasize the duty and the ceremonies of Israel made it nearly impossible. Paul said the Old Covenant—though God-given, holy, and precious—was also…

A middle wall of partition between Jews and non-Jews. The wall was not built by Hebrew pride or bigotry; it was put up by God Himself! Israel’s danger was not being too standoffish with the Gentiles, but not standoffish enough. Peter was not quoting the Pharisees when he said,

It was. But not any more. Because more than a human body was nailed to the cross. The handwriting of ordinances that were against us were wiped out and taken out of the way, being nailed to the cross.

What ordinances were done away with at the cross? The ones about food, drink, new moons, festivals, and Sabbaths.

These are the Laws of the Old Covenant! Crucified with Christ.

So, should the ceremonial laws still be read and preached? Yes, by all means! But not as they were first given, but only in light of the New Age that was begun with the cross and empty tomb of Jesus Christ.

Because the middle wall of partition is knocked down, we can preach the Word to all. What is the Word? The Lord sums it up in two words:

The first is repentance. The Gospel is more than announcement; it’s also a challenge. It calls people to repentance. To repent is to change your mind—that’s the basic meaning….

…But that includes far more than a mere change of mind. It means being sorry for your sins and ashamed of yourself for them. It means giving up your pride and all efforts to save yourself. It means fleeing to the mercy of God. If it doesn’t save you, you won’t be saved. It means submitting to the Lordship of Christ—not perfectly, of course, but really doing it.

Repentance is the first thing preached; the second is remission of sins. Those who repent will be forgiven. Not may be forgiven, but will be forgiven—must be forgiven!

This includes you—no matter what you have done or how often you have done it: repent and be forgiven. If your repentance is weak, the One who forgives you isn’t!

Repentance and remission of sins are not part of a self-help course, but are preached in His name. Repentance without Christ is another form of pride! Remission without Christ is a lie—forgiving yourself when God doesn’t! Feeling innocent when you’re still guilty!

The Gospel is not about straightening up your life, it’s about receiving life! Life from God alone, through Christ alone, by grace alone.

The Word will be preached in Jerusalem first. But it won’t be left there. The Lord says beginning at Jerusalem. On the Day of Pentecost, many nationalities heard the Gospel, but they were all of Jewish descent—Jewish Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Egyptians, Cretans, Romans, Arabs, and others. Within seven weeks thousands will hear the Gospel—and many will respond to it.

But then the Word must get out of the capital. And, if you read the Book of Acts, you’ll see it did: first in Judea, then in Samaria, it later reached an Ethiopian, then a house full of Italians, and by the end of the book, it’s everywhere—Rome, Athens, Cyprus, Antioch, all over the place.

Worldwide evangelism starts with a Savior who was crucified and raised for all the world.

After telling the disciples what God is about to do with them, He reminds them of their unique privilege and the responsibility it lays on them.

Within a few weeks, thousands will hear the Lord is risen. But the people in this room saw it with their own two eyes. They are to emphasize this in their witness. They will not be expository preachers of the Bible or theologians—so much—as eyewitnesses, as reporters, as people who saw it for themselves!

We have not seen the Risen Lord ourselves—no one on earth has. But we have the testimony of honest people who were not looking for it and were hard to convince. Their testimony is credible. Especially when it is supported by the teaching of the Inspired prophets, by the work of the Holy Spirit in us, and by the changed lives of millions of people worldwide over two-thousand years.

The disciples have received a great honor—to be the first witnesses of the Lord Jesus Christ and the first to preach salvation in His name alone!

But the work will not be easy. And the hardships are compounded by several things. The disciples are not distinguished men (for the most part). Nicodemus and Joseph are, but they’re probably old men—and won’t be the leaders. In a world that very much esteemed learning and eloquence, the disciples had neither. They were blue-collar men. And part of the most despised minority in the world! They’re all Jews!

Add to this their opposition: The Rulers of Israel crucified the Lord and wouldn’t mind doing the same to His followers. When the Romans got wind of what they really believed, they’d throw them to the lions and burn them at the stake. The Greeks were so sunk in their philosophy and idols that they would laugh off the disciples—or riot against them! And, then there’s the devil.

As if these weren’t enough, you have to remember the bizarre and offensive nature of their message. To the Jews it is a stumbling block, to the Greeks it is foolishness.

Had Peter, James, John, and the others had the time to think through all this, they might have killed themselves! But they didn’t have time for suicide or even much thought. For no sooner does the Lord tell them what they are to do, then He reminds them of what He’s going to do:

The Lord is not going to sneak off and watch His people flounder and fail. He’s going to heaven and, when He gets there, He’s going to pour out the Holy Spirit. The Spirit was promised to Him and now that He’s got the Spirit, He’s going to give it to His Church!

The men will preach, not in their own wisdom and strength, but with the power of God.

This was fulfilled fifty days later, at the Feast of Pentecost, when the Spirit was poured out on the Church and the name of Christ was lifted up for all the world.

The disciples are so dependent on the Holy Spirit that they’re told to sit by and do nothing till He comes. This recalls the Children of Israel long before. Shortly after leaving Mount Sinai, twelve men were sent to spy out the land. They came back with good news and bad: the Land is everything God it was, but He forgot to mention the giants and we can’t take it.

Waving off the counsel of Joshua and Caleb, the nation chose not to go in. God told Moses they would have their wish—and more. No, they won’t go in—for forty years they will blunder about the wilderness until all the cowardly adults are dead. Then they’ll go in.

When they hear the bad news, they change their minds. But God doesn’t. They muster an army without God and the Amorites throw them back with many dead and wounded.

What the nation did back them, the Church won’t do this time. They’ll wait in Jerusalem. And then, boom!

The message of this story is most encouraging: The work of Christ will be done by Christ through His Church! For three years, He did nearly everything Himself. Now, He’s going to give us a bigger share in His work. But it is always His work—not just work for Him (though that’s true too), but work done by Him through us. We are workers together with God; we are partners in the Gospel and our Senior Partner is Jesus Christ!

Instead of guilt-tripping you about your failure to evangelize the lost, let me remind you that the work will be done by Christ. And it’s your privilege—and mine—to do it by Him. We are not only in the hands of Christ, but we are the hands of Christ.

When the Son of Man is lifted up, He will draw all men to Himself. And He’s going to use us, His Church, to do it. The disciples had the honor of starting the great harvest and we’ve come in later to do our part. So let’s do out part.

To the praise and glory of Jesus Christ!