Monthly Archives: May 2020

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – A NEVER-ENDING STORY

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A NEVER-ENDING STORY

“‘What comes next is very important. I am sending what my Father promised to you, so stay in the city until He arrives, until you’re equipped with power from on high,’

“He then led them out of the city over to Bethany. Raising His hands He blessed them, and while blessing them, took His leave, being carried up to heaven.”

“And they were on their knees worshipping Him. They returned to Jerusalem bursting with joy. They spent all their time in the Temple praising God. Yes.” Luke 24:49-53.

Luke’s story of the earthly Jesus comes to an end but never has a story ended like this before. His story could never have originated in human imagination; and to have been told as fact and truth would have been the biggest fraud ever spawned on the human race.

Unlike any other story, Luke writes only the first chapter here. He wrote chapter 2, recorded in the Book of Acts, for the same reader, Theophilus, and in the same straightforward, factual style, as a sequel to the life of this amazing Man, and the outcome of His life, death and resurrection. What other human figure has impacted humanity as He has?

The first chapter of Jesus’ story closes with His return to the Father; the second opens with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. He had assured His followers that they would not be abandoned as orphans. He would send His representative, one exactly like Himself, with the same disposition and mission who would not only be with them but in them.

Of what value would their three years with Him and everything He had taught and demonstrated, be to them without the power to carry out His instructions? They would be no better off than the Israelites who had God’s teaching, but no inner strength to put it into practice. The Holy Spirit had been present and active in the old dispensation, but there always remained the barrier of sin between them and their God which animal blood could not remove.

Jesus had established a new covenant with them, sealed with His own blood; not just a cut on the wrist, but every drop poured out as an atoning sacrifice for the sin of the world. There was nothing left to alienate humanity from the Father for, in that offering was the forgiveness of sins and cleansing from the uncleanness sin had brought.

The Father was now free to send His Spirit to take up residence in the spirit of human beings once again, when they chose to respond to the invitation to return to their original status as sons of the living God.

The disciples were no longer sckeptical and suspicious of Jesus. Had He not opened their understanding and given them the whole picture? They were overflowing with joy as they returned to the city, having watched their beloved Master go back to the unseen realm of the Father’s presence. It seems strange that they were rejoicing at His departure. Did that mean that their faith was so strong that they anticipated with joy the promise He had made?

They waited and worshipped in the Temple, no longer intimidated by the religious leaders who had so terrified them days before. They were convinced and they ignored the very people before whom they had cowered. Jesus was alive and that was all that mattered.

 

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – A TOTAL LIFE CHANGE

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A TOTAL LIFE CHANGE

“He went on to open their understanding of the Word of God, showing them how to read their Bibles this way. He said, ‘You can see now how it is written that the Messiah suffers, rises from the dead on the third day, and then a total life change through the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed in His name to all nations – starting from here, from Jerusalem! You’re the first to see and hear it. You’re the witnesses…'” Luke 24:45-48.

Finally! It’s all out in the open, as clear as daylight to the disciples. Three years of listening, watching and puzzling culminate in the most profound Bible study they had ever experienced. Step by step, Jesus took them through the Scriptures as He had done with the two on the road home to Emmaus.

It was imperative that they understood the message because they were the first ones to proclaim it to the world. They would stand up against the might of Rome and the false and arrogant claims of the emperors that they were Son of God, Lord and Saviour. They were eyewitnesses of a story they were seeing and hearing and their testimony would impact their generation and echo down through history as the truth.

In a nutshell Jesus gave their commission. They were to tell the facts of His death, burial and resurrection, and the meaning of it for the whole world. It was the culmination of a plan God put into operation from the beginning of time, and spoke about the Messiah through the prophets before it happened so that there would be no mistaking who He was and what His coming was all about, and completed it in the things that had just happened.

It was a daring plan to reverse the consequences of the first man’s rebellion, to deal legally and justly with the barrier of sin that keeps God and man apart and to extend an open invitation to the whole world to return to the Father because He has no more issues with His estranged children.

But they still needed one more piece to complete the puzzle. God’s people had His presence and His Word. He had chosen them to be His people, in covenant with Him and in contact with Him through their system of worship and the prophets who spoke to them from God. In spite of these things, they were still far from Him and lacked the inner power to respond to everything He had done for them.

He had given them the message but they lacked the energy to make it effective. He was about to put the final piece in place, at the exact moment when the high priest’s prophetic action of pouring oil through bread made with yeast, would take place, the coming of the promised Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – THE SCRIPTURES MUST BE FULFILLED

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THE SCRIPTURES MUST BE FULFILLED

“Then He said, ‘Everything I told you when I was with you comes to this: All things written about me in the Law of Moses, in the Prophets and in the Psalms have to be fulfilled.'” Luke 24:44.

The prophetic fingerprints of Messiah are woven into the story of a nation, the Hebrews, from its beginning as a single and initially childless couple, through the growth of this family in Egypt, their miraculous deliverance from slavery and their journey to, and life in the Promised Land.

It is a record of their chequered history as a people who persisted in rejecting their God and living in rebellion against His teachings. Their disobedience and idolatry brought them back into slavery to another wicked and idolatrous world power, Babylon, from which God again graciously restored them to their own land although it remained occupied territory under Persia, Greece and Rome.

The most important details of Messiah’s life, death and resurrection are encoded in this book, miraculously preserved and passed down over a period of four thousand years. It was written by some forty authors from every ancient walk of life and yet it is one story, a record of the Creator God’s dealings with man, and specifically the Hebrews, whom He chose to be His own people, and their response to Him.

God’s master stroke was to weave the story of Messiah into the story of His people as His signature of authenticity. What other religious book contains a signature like that – with one hundred per cent accuracy of fulfillment? Through the prophet Isaiah, He claimed supremacy over the idols they so loved to worship, which were powerless to speak and act, let alone predict the future.

Apart from His resurrection, what else would have convinced His followers that He was who He said He was? For three years they had followed Him. They had walked with Him, listened to Him and watched him do miracles and interact with all kinds of people. Their experience of Him had brought the growing conviction that He was their Messiah, but the events of the previous few days blew their hopes apart. They thought they were the victims of a terrible hoax.

Jesus brought them back to the Scriptures they knew so well. He was the one of whom the writers of their sacred books had written, whose fingerprints were on every page of their carefully-copied scrolls. He took them through their Bible, book by book, and highlighted every prophecy that He had fulfilled until they were convinced beyond doubt that He was their long-awaited Messiah.

If these men, who were fearful and faithless until Jesus opened the Scriptures to them, were so convinced of His identity as Messiah and Lord that many of them paid the supreme price for the truth, can we not take their testimony at face value and trust the person and words of Jesus as they did? That conviction, empowered by the Holy Spirit who came on the day of Pentecost and took up residence inside them, energised their lives and gave them the courage to die for their testimony.

The same Jesus is Lord today and the same Spirit energises us to stake our lives and our destiny on Him because everything written about Him in the Scriptures is true.

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – IT’S REALLY ME!

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IT’S REALLY ME!

“While they were saying all this, Jesus appeared to them and said, ‘Peace be to you.’ They thought they were seeing a ghost and were scared half to death. He continued with them, ‘Don’t be upset, and don’t let all these doubting questions take over. Look at my hands, look at my feet – It’s really me. Touch me. Look me over from head to toe.  A ghost doesn’t have muscle and bone like this.’ As He said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. They still couldn’t believe what they were seeing. It was too much. It seemed too good to be true.

“He asked, ‘Do you have any food here?’ They gave Him a piece of leftover fish they had cooked. He took it and ate it right before their eyes.” Luke 24:36-43.

The Bible doesn’t give us carefully worked-out doctrinal schemes, but a little bit of detective work can yield some valuable clues to satisfy our curiosity; about the resurrection, for example.

Jesus assured us that, if we believe in Him, even though we die, we shall live. Obviously, dying would refer to physically dying which none of us will escape except those who are alive when Jesus returns. But we know that when we die, we leave our bodies behind to return to the ground. However, without our bodies we are not completely human. We are not angels who are spirits without bodies.

Jesus’ body was placed in a tomb to decay, but when He rose from the dead, He did not rise in a newly-created body but in His renewed body, leaving behind only the empty grave clothes. He invited His disciples to check Him out. The marks of His crucifixion were still there as an eternal reminder of His sacrifice for us. He had the same physical features which they recognised as their Master.

The Apostle Paul assured us that our resurrection bodies would be like Jesus’ body, not newly created but renewed, like a plant which grows from a seed. Our bodies will be sown into the ground and raised in an indestructible body just like the body of Jesus.

Jesus’ body was touchable. He was not an apparition. He had muscle and bone; He even ate fish to show them that He was real, not a phantom or a product of their collective imagination. There is no way they all could have imagined Him at the same moment and heard Him speak the same thing to all of them.

His body, though real and material, was much more than that. He came to them through a closed door. He was there and yet everywhere at the same time. Although He was not physically present in the Upper Room to hear Thomas express his skepticism about His resurrection, He knew what Thomas had said, came to him and invited him to put his fingers in the wounds to confirm that He really was alive.

Not only will our bodies be incorruptible but also our spirits. Jesus defeated death, the end result of sin. Since we cannot die, it will be impossible for us to sin. We will be as perfect as Jesus is. We will be like Him, in perfect unity with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when He appears we shall be like Him for we shall see him as He is.”  1 John 3:2 (NIV).

Perhaps the most awesome of all is that Jesus is our High Priest, representing us to the Father in His human body. So great is the miracle of Jesus becoming a man that He will always be a man. “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” 1 Timothy 2:5 (NIV). We will fellowship with Him in His kingdom as fully human.

THE GOSPELOF LUKE – THE PICTURE ON THE BOX

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THE PICTURE ON THE BOX

“Back and forth they talked. ’Didn’t we feel on fire as He conversed with us on the road, as He opened up the Scriptures for us?’

They didn’t waste a minute. They were up and on their way back to Jerusalem. They found the Eleven and their friends gathered together talking away: ‘It’s really happened! The Master has been raised up. Simon saw Him!’

“Then the two went over everything that had happened on the road and how they recognised Him when He broke the bread.'” Luke 24:32-34.

What a moment for everyone! Jesus was alive! He had shown Himself to them at last! The mystery was solved. All their doubts and disappointment were swallowed up in this unforgettable moment.

Some of them were revelling in their own personal encounter with Him. Others were enjoying the story they were being told. There were too many now to doubt the truth that He was really alive and that He had really met with them and spoken to them.

All the pieces of this giant puzzle they had been living with for the past three years were falling into place. The picture was crystal clear and they had become convinced believers in an instant. For three years, Jesus had been showing them fragments of the puzzle but they had never seen the big picture. How could they believe the whole thing if they had not yet seen it?

As the two trudged along the road back home to Emmaus, they poured out their heavy hearts and dashed hopes like a torrent to the stranger who walked with them. They just did not know how to put it all together. Moses and the Prophets had spread out the pieces. Jesus put them all together for them in that matchless Bible-study-on-the-move!

But the final piece that would complete the puzzle was missing – Jesus Himself. He savoured and kept that piece until they had emptied themselves of all their doubts and misgivings. It had to be so because He could only reveal Himself to them until their false beliefs were all out in the open. It was He, His living presence and His truth that would clear out the lies they had believed and replace their bitter sorrow with joy.

For those disciples, it was a life lesson they never forgot. It was their unwillingness to believe His disclosure about His suffering, death and resurrection, and their insistence that He was dead, that produced their pain and despair, based on a lie. Their interpretation of the events was faulty, no doubt spawned by the father of lies. Only an encounter with Jesus could reveal the truth, change what they believed and replace their pain with joy.

Emotional pain is not something we have to “work through” – which we never really do. It is something that we have to own, and the lies we believe that are producing the pain. The moment we expose our hearts to Jesus, He “shows up” by revealing the truth about the situation, and replacing it with His peace. This is not a long-term process we have to go through but an instant release and exchange which is permanent and maintenance-free as long as we keep the truth in place.

A simple summary: The two disciples believed that Jesus was dead. With His death, all their hopes that He was their Messiah died. The lie they believed produced their painful emotions; grief, disappointment, disillusionment, betrayal, anxiety about their future. They shared their feelings with the stranger who accompanied them. He revealed His identity in a “light-bulb” moment. The revelation of truth set them free from their lies and they exploded into joy!

As with them, so with the other disciples. His presence was enough to convince them that everything He had told them was true because He was alive. And so with us. When we own our pain and the lies that are producing it, Jesus fulfills His ministry outlined in Isaiah 61:1-3 in us. He gives us “beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of despair.”

For His disciples, this whole experience was like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box to guide them. Our lives, too, and the unpleasant things that happen to us, make no sense and lead us to unnecessary grief and pain until Jesus shows up. He is the only one who can show us the picture on the box.