Luke 24:36-53

Um, Albert is gonna read us.

We're in Luke, Luke 24.

Luke 24, there we go.

We got some Bibles.

Luke 24.

Okay, you got the text.

I need that.

That's my notes after you get done.

Okay.

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, Peace be with you.

They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost.

He said to them, Why are you troubled?

And why do doubts rise in your minds?

Look at my hands and my feet.

It is I myself.

Touch me and see.

A ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.

When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet.

While they still did not believe it, because of joy and amazement, he asked them, Do you have anything here to eat?

They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.

He said to them, This is what I told you while I was still with you.

Everything must be filled that is written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms.

Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures.

He told them, This is what is written.

The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.

And repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

You are witnesses of these things, and I am going to send you what my father has promised.

But stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.

When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them.

While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven.

Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.

Amen.

Thank you.

Amen.

And we believe that this text that we're going to study is profitable for correction in our life.

It's profitable for rebuking us where we need to be rebuked.

It's profitable for instructing us in righteousness.

So, Lord, we want to surrender ourselves, our hearts, our minds before you.

Give us the capacity to understand your word as you did with your disciples.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

You may be seated.

Someday I'll have uh stairs.

Maybe that's in the maybe that's in the budget, the church planting budget.

Man, listen, listen.

This is the end of Luke.

We have gone since December 1, 2017, through the book of Luke.

Only yeah, amen.

Only a handful of you have been with us from the very beginning.

And I want to commend those of you that have.

I'll remember it was that's right.

I remember.

We started it, we didn't even start it in this building.

We were in the compassion center.

Remember the compassion center, like, you remember meeting there?

Yeah.

That's kind of I try to block that out.

I have like, I that's why I go to therapy.

But you know, that's right, that's where we started, right?

It was good.

Good stuff.

Hey, this is here's the thing.

I I went and I copied my intro from that first sermon into my notes this morning because I just want to remind you, and maybe today is the first time you've been with us.

Just just remember, big picture.

Luke is the guy who wrote this.

Luke was a doctor.

He followed Paul the Apostle around on his missionary journeys and was sponsored by a man named Theophilus.

That was his the patron who paid for his way.

And so Luke did all this historic research to find out who Jesus was because he wanted Theophilus to really believe and have a secure foundation in his belief in Jesus.

This scroll, this book that we've studied, was written in a scroll.

It would have been 35 feet long.

It would have rolled out from that wall all the way over to this wall.

And when he was done writing Luke, he wrote another book called Acts.

And in the middle of this summer, we're going to study what we call the first 12 chapters of Acts, all the way up until Paul's missionary journey.

Luke wrote these two books, and he had these three significant themes woven throughout the book.

The first one was the reign of God or the kingdom of God.

You didn't need to be with us from the very beginning to often have heard Jesus talking about his kingdom, explaining his kingdom, and how God is breaking into the world and establishing a new order.

Right?

And the Jews were tripping out on this because the Jews were thinking in terms of political order, of the ethnic Jews being liberated from Roman oversight and being able to establish their own country and be autonomous from Rome.

But Jesus is talking about a completely different kingdom, the kingdom of God.

And then the second theme here is the unfolding plan of God.

Luke, all the way through his book, does not pull punches in reminding the reader that God has had a plan from the very beginning, and Jesus is the fulfillment of that plan.

And the way that that applies to our life is that you have order to your life.

You may feel like there is not an orderliness.

Maybe your bedroom is out of order.

Maybe your finances are out of order.

Maybe there's crisis in your life.

But here's the thing you need to know is that the God who breaks through in Luke and shows the plan of God through the person of Jesus Christ is the God who has a plan for your life.

God is working in your life.

And we've been reminded of that as we've gone through the text.

And the third reason why Luke writes this book is really, like we said already, to give believers in Jesus certainty regarding the historical narrative.

Now, in our text this morning, what you're looking at, there's three parts.

I'm going to break it into the three parts for you, real quick, just so you know what we're looking at, okay?

Verses 36 through 43.

36 through 43 is God helping, God helping the disciples believe in Jesus as the resurrected one.

And then from verse 44 through to the end of 49, this is the only teaching, this is the only teaching, come on in, guys.

This is the only teaching that we have of Jesus from Luke at the end of the book, right?

So there's a question, there's a question that exists.

Well, what did Jesus do?

In fact, we're gonna get to it here in just a second.

What happened in the last 40 days after the resurrection?

But the the third part, right, is this what we would call the ascension, and that's from verse 50 through 53.

50 through 53.

Okay?

So we're going to look at those three parts of the text, but I want to start with this question.

What happened?

We have birth, we have death and resurrection.

What happened for the 40 days after the resurrection?

And you say, Josh, how do we know it's 40 days?

Here's how we know.

Okay?

If you go to the beginning of Acts, right, Acts chapter 1, we see that Jesus is gathered with his disciples and he ascends up into heaven.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

So Jesus does not die a second time.

He just goes right up to heaven, right?

That's that's the last sighting of Jesus.

Okay?

Then the disciples are told, go back to Jerusalem and wait in Jerusalem.

Wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father, right?

Now, you've got to be a good Bible student.

You need to know John 14, 15, and 16 to know what's the promise of the Father.

Okay, that's right there.

John 14, 15 and 16.

Jesus gave all those instructions, and he's in the upper room with his disciples before he institutes communion, the Eucharist, right?

So they're going back.

Now, how long do they wait in Jerusalem?

You remember?

10 days.

Ten days.

And it's on the day of Pentecost.

Well, here's what we know.

We know that between the feast of Passover and the day of Pentecost, the feast of Pentecost, which is another Jewish festival, there's 50 days.

So if the disciples are waiting 10 days in Jerusalem until the day of Pentecost, we know that Jesus, between his resurrection, which happened the first day of the week, the day after Passover ended, till um 10 days previous to the day of Pentecost, we have 40 days, right?

Got the math there?

Okay.

So what happened to the 40 days?

That's the question.

And I want to review this with you, just kind of fill in the gaps.

I love making my church smart.

I love having you guys be Bible students.

I want you to school the people that come to you this week.

What happened in the last 40 days of Jesus?

Um, there's no reason why you guys can't be in seminary now, right?

You guys are sharp enough to be in seminary.

Okay, so we're gonna get it.

Okay, so Matthew tells us Jesus meets the disciples in Galilee.

Remember, the angels tell the women, go to Galilee.

Jesus is gonna meet you there.

So some of this, remember, last week we studied the two on the way to Emmaus.

The meeting that takes place the night after the resurrection, the night of the resurrection must have taken place, probably took place in Galilee.

Matthew tells us he's in Galilee.

The Jewish elders pay the soldiers to lie about Jesus' body.

Remember, soldiers, Roman soldiers, are posted at the tomb.

And they are guarding so that the body doesn't get taken.

But the body's gone.

Jesus is raised, and so the Jewish elders get this report back and they pay the soldiers to lie about Jesus' body.

The funny thing is, how do we know that?

We probably know it because some insider, one of these soldiers, probably became a Christian and said, Hey, here's how this went down.

Okay?

Then we have another insight from the book of Matthew.

Jesus commissions the disciples to make disciples.

Remember that?

Matthew 28.

Go and preach the gospel, right?

Go and preach the gospel.

That is what we find at the end of Matthew.

Then Mark.

Mark gives us the same summary of Matthew and Luke's material.

There's not much new found in Mark.

John.

John tells us this.

After eight days, Jesus appears again to the disciples while Thomas is in their midst.

So on a Monday, right?

Because we know he's raised on a Sunday morning.

On a Monday, the disciples are gathered.

Thomas wasn't there the first time.

He doesn't believe.

That's why we call him doubting Thomas.

He comes and he sees Jesus on the eighth day after the resurrection.

Then we have in John 21, 14, in association with that eighth day, it says this.

This is the third time Jesus showed himself to the disciples.

Okay?

Then we have in Acts, right at the beginning of Acts 1, it says that he showed himself by many infallible proofs that he was alive and spoke of the kingdom of God.

So as we put these pieces together, here's one more thing.

I think this is one more thing.

Instructions to wait.

Again, yeah.

Don't go anywhere.

Stay in Jerusalem.

So he's proving he's alive.

He's talking about the kingdom of God.

He says, wait in Jerusalem, and then he commissions them to go out.

Those are really the four things that Jesus is doing in the last 40 days on earth.

Okay?

I think.

Oh, we got more.

Acts.

Sorry.

Acts says, no answer to questions about the kingdom of Israel.

Remember, the disciples want to know when is the political reign of Israel going to be reinvigorated?

When will we see David's kingdom re-established on the earth?

And Jesus says, no, no, no, it's not for you to know those things.

Okay, and then, yeah, that's right.

1 Corinthians 15 also tells us a little bit.

1 Corinthians 15, which I'll preach from next week, says that there were sightings of the resurrected Christ, because he's proving the resurrection, that Jesus really did rise from the dead.

It says that there were sightings, and he goes through it chronologically, Peter Psalm, then the 12, then 500 at once.

We don't know what that was.

That's missing from our narrative.

But Paul says at one time Jesus was seen by 500.

Then James, this may be, this is probably not this James.

This is probably Jesus' brother, James, who wrote the uh uh epistle of James, and then we have the apostles, which seems, this seems to be a little repetition, right?

The twelve and then the apostles.

Okay.

That is everything that happened in the 40 days leading up to the ascension.

Okay?

So um what is here's what's important for us to understand from that.

Jesus is not hanging out with the disciples like he was before the cross.

Because it's on the eighth day, it says that's the third time he appeared.

What are the other two times that Jesus appeared?

One, he appeared to the um women at the tomb early in the morning, right after the resurrection, right?

The second time was the night of the resurrection, where he appeared to ten of them minus Thomas, right?

And then eight days later, so we go, we go a whole eight days until he appears again, which is the third time with Thomas there.

Then somewhere after the eighth day and between the fortieth day, there's this appearing to a big crowd and to his brother, James.

Um, and then what we're told in our text here is they're in Bethany.

Remember Bethany?

That's just right, it's like a suburbs of Jerusalem, Lazarus' hometown with Mary and Martha, and that is where Jesus is at.

They're worshiping, and Jesus, elevator up to heaven, right?

He's out.

That's it.

So that gives you a bit of the context as we go into this morning.

Let's talk a little bit about this idea of building their faith.

Uh Jesus built helping the disciples.

It says, while they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, Peace be with you.

They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost, and he said to them, Why are you troubled?

Why do doubts rise in your minds?

Look at my hands and my feet.

It is I myself.

Touch me and see.

A ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.

When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet, and while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, Do you have anything here to eat?

And he gave them a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.

Do you see how Jesus, do you see how Jesus is encouraging them to believe?

Do you see that process?

Jesus is encouraging the disciples to believe.

These are what we would call those infallible proofs.

Do you see how he says, touch me and see?

He says, Where's something to eat?

And they gave him a broiled piece of fish.

So when Luke chapter 1 talks about these infallible proofs, in other words, um they're believable, right?

Luke 1 · chapter mention

Jesus is he's he's saying, you're not just seeing an emanition of me.

You're not you're not um seeing a hallucination of me.

I'm not a ghost that's haunting you, I have flesh and blood.

Fascinating.

Fascinating.

Jesus is being very specific, and not only is he is he um he's really wanting to bring them to the place of believing in the resurrection.

Here's what's encouraging to me out of this text and from this text.

Some people talk about being a Christian takes a leap of faith, right?

To be a Christian, you've got to depart from reason and rationality to accept Christianity to be true.

But that is not at all the case.

In the same way that Jesus brings the disciples through a process, through a process to believe, God makes known, he makes himself known in a rational way.

He left evidence, he left evidence of how real he is.

Now, maybe you say, uh, maybe your contention with Christianity has always been, I'll believe if God comes down and appears to me, then I'll believe in him.

Let me ask you a question.

What gives you the right to set the terms on what is good evidence for God?

Now, now here's the thing.

Now you have the freedom, you have the freedom to decide what you're going to believe and not believe.

But but here's the here's the also the reality.

At the end of the age, right, when you stand before God and God says, I gave you this piece of evidence, and I gave you this piece of evidence, and I gave you this piece of evidence, and yeah, I didn't show up in the flesh in front of you, but I gave you all this other evidence, you're going to be a bummed person.

You're going to be disappointed, right?

You will be held accountable for your response to the evidence that God has given you.

Let me give you four.

Okay, you can go and Google these.

There's plenty of evidence for Christianity as being true.

The first is order and design.

The world that we look at has this strange thing.

It works.

Right?

If I take this piece of paper and I drop it, it falls because of the law of gravity, right?

There is an orderedness to the world.

Well, where does that come from, right?

When we look at the the world, we what we see is that there is uh there has to be somebody who has designed what we are engaging.

Now, the the big conflict with that is the theory of evolution, right?

So, so there is this predominant theory of evolution, which things, the idea that things have gotten to the place that they are through a process of evolution.

Man, I would encourage you to get outside of the echo chamber just a bit and engage some some Christian philosophers, even um whether they're Catholic, like Michael Beehey, if you're just like curious, write down uh Darwin's black box.

He goes down to a genetic level and he will show you, as a scientist, how uh Darwinism cannot work.

It is just it is flawed at a basic level, below like down um to a molecular, I believe it's a molecular level that he goes to to just show there is not good evidence for the system of evolution.

The second um proof of a God existing, right?

These are more the um what's the word I'm looking for?

We're uh the existence of God, basically.

We see the necessity of moral absolutes, right?

You our our our culture, maybe it doesn't agree with Christian the Christian right and wrong, right?

What the Bible says is right and wrong, but you can't deny that we're a very moral course culture.

You have some people that see um you know throw littering and throwing trash on the ground that that's That's sinful, right?

That's and the reason they're saying it's sinful is because they're wired morally, right?

Now you may have, you know, a uh what I would call a skewed sense of morality, but you can't deny that morality exists.

And we would we would claim that you don't have an absolute moral standard or objective morality without a moral lawgiver.

Third, you have scripture with supernatural elements.

That's a whole nother study.

But the reason why we don't just believe that there's a God, but by why we believe that Christianity is the true representation of who God is, that the Bible presents Jesus or presents truth to us, is because scripture is supernatural.

It predicts the future, right?

It has 25,000 references to archaeology and geology that have never been disproven, right?

It has um uh so it has continuity with over 40 authors contributing to it.

Um we have a unity of thought over 3,000 years.

So there is tremendous reasons just looking at scripture to believe in the validity, uh the veracity of Christian, the Christian ideal.

And then the fourth, I would just say, is changed lives, right?

You can look at so many people who were screwed up, and then they decided to turn and surrender their life over to Jesus Christ, and all of a sudden it's a different person.

It's a night and day difference that God has done a miraculous thing in that person's life.

And the invitation on that this morning is that maybe you're in that place, maybe you're that screwed up person and you're like, I want that change, and I've done a whole lot of life and I know I can't bring it about on my own.

Well, let me tell you, Jesus says, Jesus says that that invitation is open to you to have your life changed and to be an evidence that Christianity is true.

So let me remind you of this, okay?

Jesus is soliciting your total devotion, right?

He is soliciting your total devotion.

He's not looking for fans, he's looking for followers.

That foundation of your life, that it would be built upon him, that the values you live by would be sourced in his teaching.

He wants to be able to direct you, and he can't play that role in your life unless you trust in him.

And so we have a Jesus.

We have a Jesus who sits with his disciples and he's patient, and he says, Look at my hands, look at my feet, let me eat the bread with you.

You see, you may struggle to believe in God, but God is patient with you.

Your job is to surrender to him and say, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

Let strengthen me by your spirit to work in me, right?

It's a mustard seed of faith that God wants to do in your life.

We got to keep going here, church, because we're gonna run out of time.

The principle, the principle here in the text, the development of faith is a process.

Receive the evidence that God gives to mankind and let him build up your faith.

Are you willing?

Are you willing?

Maybe, maybe this is the thing.

You do enough life, you get cynical.

You get your heart broken.

Anybody get their heart broken ever?

Yeah, okay, good.

This side has.

Is that how our seating works in here?

Marvin's like, okay, you brokenhearted?

Okay, you can sit over here.

Your heart's still okay, okay.

You can sit over here.

That's all right, I'll just preach to this side over here.

Listen.

Listen, you do enough life, you get your heart broken.

And what that means is it's hard.

It's hard to trust.

You're you're guarded in your trust of God.

But God is like he is with the disciples here, he is willing to work with you where you're at.

He is willing to work with you where you're at.

Trust in him.

Let him show you his hands and feet.

Okay?

Just this week.

Just this week, say, God, I am willing to trust you this week with my finances, with broken relationships, with my own screwed-upness.

I am willing to trust you.

This is the painting, like this is the canvas.

You work, you work in this setting, right?

He doesn't need you to put pull up yourself by your bootstraps, right?

He needs you to just surrender to him and he will walk you through this process that we're talking about right here.

We got to keep going.

Verse 44 through 49.

44 through 49.

This is what I told you while I was still with you.

Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms.

Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures.

He told them, This is what is written the Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

You are witnesses of these things.

I'm going to send you, uh send you what my father has promised, but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.

Okay, so let's talk through this a little bit, right?

There's just some real basic stuff, really good stuff here.

First of all, the question is think for a second, how do you read?

How do you read the Old Testament?

What do you think about the Old Testament?

Is it for you just a bunch of stories?

God kind of messing around with humanity until we get to the good part with Jesus?

Is it like putting up with an Oreo cookie where you eat the black part just so you can get to the icing in the middle?

Like, what's the Old Testament?

How do you see, how do you see the Old Testament?

You know, the early church, it struggled, right?

So right after these 40 days, we go into the early church, right?

And and all of a sudden, here's this new wave of people that are they're discovering Jesus, and they're like Jesus is rescuing people from their sin, he's delivering them from idolatry, he's saving them radically, and they're like, some of them are Gentiles, like they're not even Jews.

They don't even know what to do with the Old Testament, and they're processing it.

What do we do?

What do we do with the Old Testament?

There's a man that we we respect a lot as a church father called Origin.

One thing that he didn't do well was interpret scripture, the Old Testament.

He advocated for what we would call an allegorical method, an allegorical method of interpretation.

That's this idea that there's what you see in the text.

So take, for example, the story of Abraham.

You guys know Abraham, right?

God calls him from Ur of the Chaldees into a land that he says, I'll show you this land.

Do you remember?

Um, you remember that story, and Sarah is there.

So Origen would say, like, okay, that's the story.

Who cares really about the story?

This is really a story about the church coming out of a pagan land and coming to Christ, right?

Well, you look at the story and like, I don't see the church there.

I see Abraham.

I see Sarah.

I don't see the church there.

You see, Origin struggled.

How do we make this story of Abraham valuable to us today?

And that's understandable.

There's a pretty big time gap between Abraham and today, but he missed this piece of Luke.

This piece of Luke that says, the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms, they are written about me.

They're written about Jesus.

And we don't need to go find some hidden meaning under the story of Abraham.

What we need to do is we need to ask the question: how does the story of Abraham point to what Jesus does?

Oh, that's real easy.

Because God comes to Abraham and he says, Abraham, I'm gonna make a great nation out of you, and it's through your offspring that there's gonna be a blessing that comes to the whole world.

Well, what's the blessing that comes through the line of Abraham?

Jesus.

It's Jesus, right?

We don't have that's not hidden, that's just right there on the surface, right?

So all that to say, handling of the Old Testament was tricky, right?

Origin taught some other really good things, and I'm trying not trying to dog on him.

It's okay, he's dead, though.

But you know, origin, origin screwed that one up.

The allegorical method is not how we interpret scripture.

We can interpret it literally and find Jesus being pointed to through the law, through the prophets, and through the Psalms, or what we would call poetry.

Now, I also want to draw your attention to very quickly.

Well, first of all, here's the principle.

Where's my principle?

Okay, well, there's no principle yet.

Let's go to this um idea.

He opened up their minds.

The principle is this we engage the Old Testament.

When we engage it, it's invital that we see it as the context for Jesus.

It was Jesus' scriptures.

That and that's important.

Like, like we don't want to dog on the Old Testament.

We don't want to see the Old Testament as less.

Because when Jesus read the Bible, he read the Old Testament.

He didn't have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, right?

Because he's the subject of it.

He didn't have the book of Revelation, he didn't have Paul's epistles.

The Bible for Jesus was the Old Testament.

So if Jesus here is like emphasizing it so heavily, so heavily, then um we need to value the Old Testament and know that, man, it has an important role for us.

Okay, we see this whole idea that Jesus in the middle of our text, he opened up their minds, right?

It says in um verse 45, then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures.

Over in John chapter uh 20, it says that he meets them in the upper room the night of the resurrection.

He breathes on them and he says, Receive the Holy Spirit.

I believe, this is my conjecture, that this is one and the same thing.

That these disciples are given the Holy Spirit, and they're simultaneously given the ability to understand the scriptures.

Okay, so let's talk about this just for a second.

When we look at the Bible, we see that the Bible approaches your intellectual capacity in two ways.

Okay?

First of all, there is the external work or active work of God upon a person to open up their mind to scripture.

We don't have time to look up these verses, but Psalm 119, 18 is this prayer.

If you're praying for God to open your eyes, then you're acknowledging a limited capacity to see, right?

You don't pray that unless you admit blindness.

Acts 16 talks about how Lydia received the gospel, but there it's he's opened up their hearts to the message of the gospel.

And you can go through these other texts, Acts 26, 2 Corinthians 3 and 4, man, great, great passages.

But then there's another passage, there's Romans chapter 1.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

So the question would be: if a person, if God does not do this work that that's spoken of right here, if God doesn't do verse 45, what is the condition of a human?

Let's say you're not a Christian, right?

You're not a Christian.

That means you're not, you don't have the Holy Spirit living inside of you, but you're reading the Bible, what capacity do you have to understand God's message?

You tracking with me on the question there?

Because we're seeing God opening up people's eyes.

So the question is, is it only possible to understand spiritual truth unless God shows it to you?

Or does God um, are you born, even as it as a sinner, are you born with the capacity to understand?

And I was I would say that in Romans chapter 1, which we're gonna read here for a second, Romans 1, 18 through 21 says that people who don't know God and don't have the Spirit upon them do have a capacity to understand limitedly, if that's a word.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

Verse 18, for God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

They're suppressing the truth.

People that don't know God are suppressing truth, since what can be known about God is evident amongst them because God has shown it to them.

He's shown it to them.

For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen.

See that?

Clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made.

As a result, people are without excuse.

That's very important, right?

We don't want to God sending people to hell unless they're accountable.

You track in with me?

That would be horrible if God's sending people to hell, but he's not giving them a way to escape hell.

So Paul is laying out God's case that he says they are without excuse.

They're accountable to understand this real revelation of creation, verse 21.

For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude.

Instead, their thinking became nonsense and their senseless minds were darkened.

Tons going on here.

We don't have time to unpack it all, but here's what I want to say about this.

Okay?

God makes himself known.

God makes himself known through creation.

And you are going to be held accountable to respond to God to the degree you understand.

And listen, we've got the Bible in our language, we have Christians all around us.

Nobody in this room is without excuse.

Nobody, he says, is without excuse.

But look, we are all a people.

Everybody here in this room right now has the capacity to know God exists and we live accountable before him.

And here's what that means: you either accept his plan or reject his plan, but God's gonna win.

At the end of the day, God's gonna win.

You can either be on the winning team or you can be on the losing team.

It's up to you, right?

But God's gonna win, right?

And the response for you is not come and get yourself all cleaned up and no, God's response is surrender your life to Him.

He'll work in your life, right?

Jesus is not like, you know, clean yourself up as a fish and then I'll catch you.

No, he's like, He catches the fish and then he cleans them.

All right?

You're okay.

However, you walked in the door today, whether you got a haircut this week or not, you're good with God.

He'll take you, he'll work in your life.

Okay, we got it, we gotta finish here.

This is really good.

I love the Bible, but we we're running out of time.

Um, here's the principle we know enough to be held accountable, but this is the other side of it.

This is important.

We are limited in our understanding of spiritual things.

We will be held accountable, but man, we need God to open up our eyes so that we can see spiritual things.

We need our eyes to be open- I wrote that, man.

See?

The thing that's on the screen is what I just said.

Okay, let's finish.

Let's land the plane.

Well, actually, it's hard to say you're gonna land the plane when you're gonna talk about the ascension.

They're in conflict with each other, aren't they?

Okay, verses 50 through 53.

When he had that he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands, he blessed them.

While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven.

Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.

Here's what I want to say.

Like the ascension has four significance points for us.

Four points of significance.

First, what happened when Jesus ascended into heaven is that he was seated at the right hand of the Father.

He was given a place in heaven that nobody else could have.

He was he was the only one that was worthy to be seated at the right hand of God.

In Acts, Philip sees him next to the Father in heaven.

He has this vision right before he's killed, martyred for his faith.

The second point of significance is that the Holy Spirit is sent to be with the believer.

So in Acts 14, 15 and 16, you gotta read, this is your homework.

You need to read Acts 14, 15.

I mean John.

John 14, 15, and 16.

Because Jesus warns his disciples about this very moment, right, when he's taken up, Jesus says, Here's what's gonna happen, right?

And and the Holy Spirit is given in says they're waiting, they're waiting in Jerusalem.

Actually, verse 49 says they're waiting for the promise of the Father, they're waiting for the Holy Spirit to be given, is what's going on.

So Jesus goes up to heaven, and the Holy Spirit, ten days later, is given to the disciples, to the to the church.

Then, third, not all prophecy is fulfilled.

And he says it's not for you to know the times of the seasons that the Father has put into his power.

Here's the thing Scripture, Jesus has just been saying the whole Bible speaks about the Messiah, right?

The whole Bible speaks about the Messiah, but then he leaves and he didn't finish everything, which tells us he's gotta come again.

He's gotta come again.

That's really important.

Not everything is fulfilled.

And the last thing that's significant here is that there's still work to be done.

And he said, You go do the work.

You disciples, you followers of me, it's your turn.

I'm leaving, I'm giving you the spirit, it's your turn to go and do the work.

That's why we live like Jesus.

We want to live as followers of him.

Jesus isn't here anymore, and in his absence, he has commissioned his followers to engage in his work.

That's the final principle.

Can I let's close with this?

In the middle of our text, in verse 47, Jesus is explaining to the disciples what's going to take place.

So in verse 46, you have the Messiah suffering and rising from the dead on the third day.

Verse 47, look at what it says.

It says, and repentance for forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations.

So heaven forbid we close out a preaching, a sermon without preaching the offer, the offer of repentance for forgiveness of sins.

If you came in this morning laden with guilt, knowing that you have sins that need to be forgiven by the divine judge, not by the Baltimore City Judge, not by county judge, but by God Himself, okay, who you're ultimately accountable to, Jesus has said to you, He speaks to you this morning, and he says, If you will repent and turn to Him, He has provided you forgiveness of sins.

That's the message for you this morning, okay?

Turn to Him and receive His forgiveness.

His forgiveness.

Amen.

So listen, listen.

A lot of us, a lot of us have experienced that.

A lot of us have have, we've turned, we made that initial turn, right?

We need to turn every day, right?

Because we screw up every day.

Like we're a mess.

We're just a total mess.

And we we need the forgiveness.

I mean, forgiveness, I think the older we get as Christians, we sin less, but we repent more.

Right?

We sin less but we repent more.

We're more and more aware of how terrible we are.

You know?

We sin less but repent more.

Thank you.

My hope for you as as believers in Jesus is that Satan isn't ripping you off, right?

That you're not that you're not bent over in condemnation because of sin, but you're understanding that to that the cross has already happened, that your sin has already been paid for, that you are already washed, right?

And you are loved by God, you are covered by the blood of God.

Okay?

Let's stand together.

In a minute, we're gonna sing our last song, which I'll have to use my but but here's the thing listen, if you're here this morning, if you're here this morning and you have never, you've never made a decision that you're gonna turn your life over to God, then