Commissioned to Tell

A Message on Luke 24:35-49

Jesus had appeared to two of His disciples as they were on their way from Jerusalem to Emmaus a village thought to be north of Jerusalem and within walking distance.  At first, they were unable to recognize Him. Jesus revealed Himself to them when He broke bread with them at supper and then disappeared from their sight.  They were filled with joy and headed back to Jerusalem within an hour to find the other disciples.  They were exchanging stories when Jesus suddenly appeared among them.

At first, they thought He was a ghost.  After all, one moment He wasn’t there, the next He was.  After assuring them He was not a ghost, He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.  Then He told them they would proclaim God’s message of salvation to the world, but they were to wait until the Holy Spirit came upon them.  Christ rose from the dead in an indestructible body.  You could see, hear, and touch Him.  He conquered death and it could no longer hold Him.  He commissioned the disciples to tell others about Him. As His disciples we need three things to fulfill that commission: 1) Understanding of the Scriptures; 2) We have to Tell the Story to others; and 3) We need the Power of the Holy Spirit. 

Understanding the Scriptures

We need to embrace Scripture.  Embracing is not just knowing it, it is loving it, and living it.  The Old Testament contains multiple prophecies that point us directly to Jesus being the Messiah, the Savior of the World.  The Old Testament also points out our sins and shows us our need for salvation. 

Two mistakes are commonly made when seeking to understand the Scriptures.  The first mistake is to believe that by legalistic obedience to the Law, we can be made right with God. The Pharisees and many teachers of the Law of the first century made this mistake.  Yet David said he was born a sinner from the moment he was conceived in his mother’s womb. (Psalms 51:5).  In that Psalm he turns to God requesting that a pure heart be created within him and that his sins be blotted out.  He did not depend on his “works of the Law” rather He turned to God for mercy.  He found that mercy in the love of God.

The second mistake people make about the Old Testament is to believe that it is irrelevant to Christians.  Yet before the New Testament was written the Old Testament was the Scripture for the early Church.  Jesus said the Old Testament Scriptures pointed to Him and that He did not come to do away with them, but to fulfill them.  Most Christian churches recognize that both the Old and New Testaments make up the Scriptures for the church and they provide the “final rule for faith and practice” in our beliefs and behavior.

A good knowledge of the Old Testament is of immense value in understanding what Jesus did for us as recorded in the New Testament.  Psalms 22 and Isaiah 53 give us a foretelling of the suffering Jesus would go through on the cross when He died for our sins.  They also speak of His joy in the resurrection and that His sacrifice would make many righteous.  Embracing the Scripture makes it part of our being.

We have to tell the story.

How are people going to know of Jesus’ love and salvation for them, if we don’t tell them? We have to tell the story.  The first disciples told others and wrote it down for us, so that we may believe.  Every Christian must tell the story of Jesus and the new life He offers to the people around them. God has arranged your friendship and acquaintances in such a way that you are uniquely positioned to tell them about Jesus. If we truly love our friends and acquaintances, we need to tell them the Good News of salvation and eternal life in Christ.  Hell is too hot to enter and heaven is too good to miss.  Jesus taught us everyone is going to end up in one place or the other and He is the door to heaven, He is the bridge to eternal life.

The tragedy was averted for many people in the recent bridge collapse in Baltimore when those who saw what was happening shut down the traffic on the bridge.  Six people were killed.  How many more would have been lost if they had not been stopped?  People keep trying to build a bridge to God but the reality of our sins keeps hitting the structure causing it to collapse.  But God has built a bridge through the cross of Christ that will never collapse, because Jesus, the sinless Lamb of God offered Himself as the sacrifice for our sins.  Jesus is the bridge that leads us safely home to heaven.  Trying to take any other bridge will only end in eternal death.  If we love people, we need to try with everything in us to get them on the bridge of Jesus Christ.  We have to tell the story of what He did then and what He is doing in our lives today.

We Need the Holy Spirit

We cannot successfully tell the story to others without the Holy Spirit abiding in us.  The Spirit gives us the right words and timing.  Jesus said, “And when he comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment. ⁹ The world’s sin is that it refuses to believe in me. ¹⁰ Righteousness is available because I go to the Father, and you will see me no more. ¹¹ Judgment will come because the ruler of this world has already been judged.” – John 16:8-11 NLT.  The devil blinds people’s minds so they cannot see the truth of the Gospel.  The Holy Spirit opens up people’s minds so they may be saved.  We are in a spiritual battle for the souls of men and women which we cannot fight on human strength alone, but our God is infinitely stronger than the devil.  This is why prayer and the fellowship of the saints are so important.  Jesus, the Messiah, spent many hours in prayer for the lost that they might believe.      

We need the Holy Spirit to empower us.  We cannot resist temptation alone. We need to drink from the water of life daily.  We need the light of Christ constantly in every part of our lives.  When the Light of Christ is there, the darkness cannot be there.  Light and dark are mutually exclusive.  Let Christ dwell in every area of your life.

Conclusion

If we love Christ and love people, we do whatever we can to help them find the road to heaven.  Jesus said, “You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell (the road that leads to destruction) is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. ¹⁴ But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.” ­ – Matthew 7:13-14 NLT.  Let us focus our prayers, energies, and witness to help others find the narrow way.

Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.