The Great Commission by Luke.
The Great Commission by Luke.
In the previous post, I wrote about the Great Commission in Mark entitled “The Un-understood You”. I have previously laid out the five Great Commissions here. So today and over the next four posts I will be talking about each in turn. In each Jesus is ending a dialog with the disciples.
”He also said to them, “This is what is written: The Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead the third day, and repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And look, I am sending you what My Father promised. As for you, stay in the city until you are empowered from on high.”
Luke 24:46-49 HCSB
Jesus starts with the prophecies that had to be fulfilled to solidify who Jesus was. And this becomes our starting point for Jesus, He was beaten by the Romans, crucified on a cross, was buried and on the third day was risen from the grave and now he lives next to God in heaven.
Now we move to the personal response all of us have to make, “repentance for forgiveness of sins”. We must now admit before God that we are not perfect and that Jesus was the perfect son of God who died in our place.
Then we have to move on to telling others about Jesus, “repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations”. God is waiting for all nations, people, and tongues to hear the glad tidings of Jesus, but the most important nation is your own. I am not talking about the nation of the USA, for most of us, but your sphere of influence, the people you spend your time around. In Acts, Luke spells it out, “You will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Acts 1:8 HCSB But for us it is not Jerusalem but rather your home town. The disciples had to start in Jerusalem and when the persecution started they were to flee and continue to spread the glad tidings of Jesus around the world.
Next Jesus reminded them that they were witnesses of what Jesus did and we too are witnesses of what Jesus is doing today. We need to open our eyes to see it and then proclaim it to our nation. This is the last part of our testimony. The first part is what we were like before Jesus. For some of us, we were saved early in life so we have a very short before Jesus life. For others, we have a rock star testimony that we confess we lived as rock stars before Jesus. But many of us fall somewhere in the middle. The second part of our testimony will tell of how Jesus found you. It may have been in the pew of your church when you were seven or the gutter of sin you found yourself in at the age of 40 or somewhere between.
Next, Jesus told them that power was coming from Him because God promised the Holy Spirit.
”After this I will pour out My Spirit on all humanity; then your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your old men will have dreams, and your young men will see visions. I will even pour out My Spirit on the male and female slaves in those days.“
Guess what? We are still in line to have God’s Spirit poured out on us. He has never stopped! We just quit asking! It happened in Acts 2 and we are getting ready for another Acts 2 event in God’s house!
Luke seems to focus on our testimony and the power of the Holy Spirit in his Great Commission. Why did we as the church stop focusing on these things and lean on less stable means of preaching the glad tidings of Jesus?
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