Bible Talks - Sunday Night Church
Series: 40 Days With The Risen Lord
Proclamation in God’s Plan
Sunday, 03 April 2005
How much do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus?
That may sound like a strange question to ask in a church like ours. But it’s a pretty crucial question for everyone who calls themselves ‘Christian’
Take last Sunday as an example. Last Sunday – Easter Sunday, tens of thousands of people stood and wept.
On the day that Christians everywhere celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, they wept.
Why?
They were weeping because the Pope couldn’t speak a few words of ‘blessing’ to them as they gathered in square below St. Peter’s in Rome. While I understand their concern for the man who is the Pope, and the fact that his health was fast failing, they were badly, sadly, misled.
On arguably the most significant day in the Christian calendar, those thousands of people are focussed on what?
On a man who says he is God’s representative on earth. A man who at times, says he speaks with the authority of God, but who’s role is anathema to bible-based Christianity.
But they were focussed on a mere mortal human, and not on the man Jesus Christ, God’s son who beat death and rose again.
Why are they allowing themselves to be misled like this?
It is in part because they don’t understand the resurrection.
Now, in some ways, I don’t blame them.
Even today, 2,000 years after the events of Resurrection Day, someone coming alive again after being executed and placed in a tomb is not something that we accept readily.
The Roman Catholic church would say it’s a matter of ‘faith’. That is, blind faith – believing something because someone else has told you to. But the trouble is, that kind of belief is very limiting, and in fact, has nothing to do with the resurrection.
But even if you feel able to say “yes, I believe in the resurrection”, I have to then ask “In what way do you believe it?”
If you were to ask the recently-retired most senior Anglican clergyman in the country, Peter Carnley if he believed in the resurrection, he would say ‘yes’. But he doesn’t believe it in the same way I do. He revealed in an article in The Bulletin a few years back what he believes about the resurrection, and the difference between his belief and what the Bible says is huge!
Carnley has a type of head knowledge of the resurrection. He believes that Jesus did not rise bodily from the dead, but rather the resurrection is a ‘spiritual truth’ to comfort us, to give us a vague hope that there might be something beyond this life. And you know what? I think that’s what many, many people who claim to be Christians also believe.
But I’m afraid that’s not good enough Mr. Carnley!
Take a look at the passage we read earlier. And tell me: of all that happens in Luke 24, what would you say is the main event of the chapter? Is it not that Jesus sets out to make very clear to the disciples that he is indeed alive, that he is not a ghost or an apparition, or a figment of their imagination!
And what is their response?
They thought it was too good to be true! v41 read it with me:
”And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marvelling, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?””
So the disciples were having the same kind of reaction that I suspect you and I would have in the circumstances – except that they couldn’t deny that Jesus was standing right in front of them, with the holes in his hands and his side, asking for a bite to eat!
He had walked and talked and eaten with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and now he appears among the rest of the disciples and addresses the main issue at hand directly: Follow me from v38 “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 marvelling, 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.” (v38-43)
We need to be very, very clear about this issue, folks.
Without a clear, unambiguous embracing of the truth of the risen Lord Jesus, you can move no further in your relationship with God, in fact, you salvation may well be in doubt.
If you have difficulty believing that Jesus was raised from the dead – and I can fully appreciate that tendency – then I would urge you to read through this chapter in Luke again. And then read Acts 1 and 2, and then read Matthew 28, and while you are reading write down all the reasons given in those passages for believing that Jesus has been raised from the dead. And all the while praying that Jesus would do for you, what he did for his disciples in Luke 24, and reveal himself to you as the risen Lord of all!
A wise person once said that the difference between knowing something and believing something is about 30cm – the distance between your head and your heart. And on last Monday, the 40 Days Prayer Journal highlighted the issue of being really convinced of Jesus’ resurrection, and of how vital this is if we are to be serious about our life in Christ.
Our passage today challenges us about our understanding of Jesus’ resurrection and about the place of proclaiming it in God’s great plan for the world.
Because unless we know the resurrection to be true, we have absolutely nothing to proclaim!
[Repeat]
As Paul said in 1 Cor 15: “And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain... if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins... [and] we are of all people most to be pitied.” (v14-19 edited)
God’s plan and proclamation.
So, in the latter part of Luke 24 that was read for us, we have four powerful and compelling points for us to consider:
The first, we have looked at: Jesus is really, truly, physically alive.
2. The resurrection is very important, absolutely central, in God’s plan for the world.
3. Proclaiming that news to the world is urgent.
4. He gives us the power to proclaim.
Those last three present us with a great encouragement and a significant challenge.
I wonder if you’ve ever fought the tyranny of the urgent? It is a dreadful condition that I constantly fight with. It occurs when things demand my immediate attention, pretending to be urgent, but often are not very important at all.
Ministry is a fairly unstructured occupation, and so it’s important to impose some structure on my working week, in order to achieve something useful. But there is always tasks that pop up and demand to be attended to immediately. Some do need urgent attention, but most do not.
The proclaiming of the good news about Jesus is different though, and this passage tells us why it is both important and urgent.
2. The resurrection is very important in God’s plan for the world.
If the big news of Luke 24 is that Jesus is really, truly, physically alive, then the second biggest news in this chapter is how the resurrection fits into the much bigger plans of God for the world.
Twice in this chapter Luke records for us Jesus sitting down and explaining this point to his disciples.
First it is to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, in v27 where Jesus interprets “to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”
Down in v44-46 he does something similar to the rest of the disciples. In fact, they get an even better deal than the long sermon on the road, v45 tells us “Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,” – they didn’t just get told the facts, rather Jesus gave them an understanding of the scriptures – of how they consistently point to him as being the fulfilment of God’s biggest plan for the world. Not just for their own pleasure and understanding – but to equip them for what was to come next.
But Luke was clearly concerned that his readers hear and understand this point, because even back in chapter 4 of his gospel, we have Jesus at the very start of his public ministry, standing up in the synagogue, reading part of Isaiah 61 – which is a prophetic passage speaking about the Messiah – rolling it up and declaring that Isaiah was talking about him, Jesus!
In fact there are more than 300 passages in the O.T. that talk of the Messiah – the special person that God was going to send one day to bring God’s rule to all people in an unprecedented way. 300 passages all pointing to one person, Jesus Christ, and mainly about his death and rising again..
That’s why we can say with confidence that Jesus and his death and resurrection is such an important and vital part of God’s plan for this world.
God has not hidden his agenda away and kept us guessing. All down through the centuries of the O.T. he kept on giving us clues and hints about the climax of his plan to bring all people back to himself. For hundreds of years, the picture built up. Many, many people of course failed to see the clues and the signs, because they were looking in the wrong place. But for some, the faithful who read and believed Moses and the prophets with a humble and teachable heart, Jesus arrived with something like a giant neon sign over his head, pointing at him flashing “this is the one!”, “this is the one!”. Simeon in Luke 2 was like that. What did he say when he set eyes on Jesus for the first time? He declared to God: “my eyes have seen your salvation”.
God has not hidden his plans for the world away. He has made them clear, he has shouted them from the mountain top when Jesus arrived.
And in particular, Jesus’ resurrection was the crowning glory on the plan, because it announced that man’s greatest enemies – sin and death – had now been dealt with and soundly beaten!
What message could be more important?
3. Proclaiming that news to the world is urgent.
So we have important news that we need to be proclaiming, but this is also urgent news. And it becomes more urgent with each passing day.
We know from elsewhere in Scripture that Jesus will return one day as judge, bringing an end to this world as we know it. On that day, people will be divided into two groups: those who have sought forgiveness for their rebellion against God through Jesus death and resurrection, and those who haven’t.
When Jesus returns, that will signal the end of the opportunity to accept God’s amazing, generous offer of forgiveness and eternal life. There will be no second chance. And we do not know when that day will be.
Nearly 2,000 years have already passed since Jesus rose from the dead and spoke the words he says in v46-49. We are 2,000 years closer to the day that Jesus will return. We have had 2,000 years of disciples of Jesus proclaiming “repentance and forgiveness of sins in his name to all nations”, and still billions of people are yet to hear and understand.
People’s eternal destiny hangs in the balance.
If Jesus should return today, which of your family, friends and acquaintances will be hell bound?
The answer is every single one of them who hasn’t responded to that proclamation with humble repentance and trust in Jesus’ death and resurrection...
Can there be a more urgent need than to proclaim repentance and forgiveness in the risen Lord Jesus?
Is there anything else that should take a higher priority in our life as a church, as a body of God’s people whom he has already saved?
4. The power to proclaim.
What an exciting, stirring call to action this is!
But just in case we make the very common human mistake of thinking that we can handle this all by ourselves, look at v49 of our passage: “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.”
The importance and urgency of this message is such that God can’t just leave it to us – he knows only too well that we would stuff it up (just read almost any part of the O.T.!).
So, it is part of God’s ongoing plan, that while we, as his people, are to be a key part of the proclamation of this message, it will happen through the power of the Holy Spirit – the “promise of my Father” that Jesus speaks of here.
And again, lest you make the mistake of thinking that the Holy Spirit’s role in all this is a bit ‘intangible’, a bit vague, go and read the books of Acts! That book – also written by Luke of course, simply explodes with the transforming power of the Spirit of God! The disciples are changed from a timid, frightened bunch cowering in the upper room in Luke 24, to a mighty mini army of bold, spiritually-confident men, powerfully used by God to do exactly what Jesus told them to do in v 47 – “proclaim repentance and forgiveness to all nations”! And what happens when that is proclaimed?
Passages like Acts 2:41 tells us that the proclaiming on one day alone adds 3,000 people to the Kingdom of God!
That same transforming power is still available today...but how?
5. The key for us.
Look around, and you don’t have to look very far to see the Spirit at work, and perhaps you see quite a few ways already that we can take this and apply it to our lives and ministry here.
If you have, that’s great!
If you can see that many aspects of our life as church in some way reflect the importance and urgency of proclaiming the good news of Jesus death and resurrection, then I’m encouraged! Because, areas of ministry like MTS (which is all about training people to be proclaimers), the church plant plans, the plans for an ESL ministry, the promotion and encouragement of Scripture in schools, and a vibrant, healthy youth ministry, and many other ministries and activities that go on here are all part of us being proclaimers.
But to finish up with, lets go back to the fundamentals:
Proclamation of repentance and forgiveness in Jesus is absolutely central to God’s plan for this world. Luke 24 says that clearly, but so does all the rest of Scripture. We cannot dare call ourselves the people of God without understanding this is a powerful call to action.
If proclamation is central to God’s plan for the world, it must be central to our lives and our ministry as a church, and it must be spirit led!
And this is where prayer fit into this. We can see later in the book of Acts how prayer really kicks for the disciples after Jesus’ ascension. They found - and we need to re-discover - are that prayer and proclamation fit glove in hand, but how do we see this worked out in real life?
Certainly we see the role of prayer in the lives of the disciples as they seek to live out their part of God’s great plan in the book of Acts. And we too have to realise that prayer is perhaps the first response we need to have to the challenge that proclamation lays before us.
Indeed, if we are to ask the Holy Spirit to come upon us in power as He did the early disciples, then prayer is the manner in which we initiate this.
Jonathan Edwards was a great theologian and he said these words that are quoted in last Friday’s Prayer Journal: “When God has something very great to accomplish for his church, it is his will that there should precede it, the extraordinary prayers of his people”. If you haven’t done so already, please start earnestly asking God to send His Spirit upon us, his people, in such as way that we might be utterly convinced and convicted of the central place that proclamation needs to have in our lives, and that all we do as a church and how we live our lives as individuals, should reflect that – that God’s name would be honoured and glorified...
[Pray prayer from Prayer Journal]
