Show Notes
Clay
Chapters
- (00:00:01) - The 50 Days of the Life of Jesus
- (00:07:12) - Easter and Pentecost
- (00:14:17) - The Reasons Why We Bow Down to Jesus
- (00:20:14) - Jesus' Words of Life
- (00:26:02) - Luke 13: The Real Presence of Jesus
View Full Transcript
Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] This morning I want to start looking at this period from the.
[00:00:04] From the resurrection of Jesus until Pentecost.
[00:00:08] It's 50 days.
[00:00:10] 50 days from the day that Jesus is resurrected from the dead until the start of the church, until the Spirit of God comes on the disciples of Jesus in such a way that they begin to proclaim all that Jesus had done. In such a way they begin to transform the world. That their work in communicating Jesus and becoming the disciples of Jesus in the world begins to shift all of humanity.
[00:00:46] We don't spend a lot of time talking about those 50 days. What goes on in those 50 days? I usually just think about, like, you've got, you know, you got the time before that, you've got three years where Jesus is, like, building up and he's like, teaching and he's healing and he's casting out demons and people are, like, excited and they're following him. All this leads up to Jesus entering Jerusalem. And when he comes into Jerusalem, that's when he's supposed to reveal himself to all of the Jewish people as the Messiah, the Savior, the one who is going to rescue his people from the oppression that they're suffering.
[00:01:25] Jesus is thwarted from that. It appears he's killed.
[00:01:32] The Roman leaders rejected him, the Jewish leaders rejected him, the Roman leaders crucified him.
[00:01:39] And the disciples of Jesus scatter.
[00:01:43] Three days later, he's resurrected. Easter Sunday morning happens, celebration.
[00:01:49] The next thing that I think about is the ascension of Jesus. When he. Before he.
[00:01:55] Before he goes up into heaven, he tells all the disciples, he gathers them together and he gives them the great commission. Go into all the world, teaching them all things. I've commanded you.
[00:02:08] And then the next thing I think about is like, in Acts, when the spirit of God comes over the church, comes over those early Christians, and they begin to witness.
[00:02:19] And people start following Jesus at that point.
[00:02:24] But that's a really abbreviated kind of almost inhuman way of looking at it.
[00:02:33] There's like, in any story, there are the things that happen. They're the, you know, like, yes, you can rattle off, you can check some boxes and say, here's some events that occurred, but people aren't robots. And when those events happen in a particular way to you, it's more than just checks, boxes. It's more than just like, these things that occurred.
[00:02:57] You have to think about the intense emotions that are occurring, the intense emotions that are happening as the disciples are coming into Jerusalem. This is like.
[00:03:10] This is the apex. This is like everything that they have been building towards for three years. When everybody else is scattering. They're saying, where else we go? You bring the words of life. We're following you no matter what.
[00:03:22] He's coming into Jerusalem. He is going to bring about this change. He's going to reveal himself as Messiah.
[00:03:30] And then when he's killed, all hope is gone.
[00:03:36] I have never. I've thought about that when I've been thinking about this sermon series, like, this experience that they had.
[00:03:44] I have never experienced the total loss of all hope.
[00:03:53] I have experienced a moment when I thought that I thought I had ruined my life.
[00:03:59] And I'd almost. I had, like. I saw a start. I was, like, having a hard time breathing, like, hyperventilating, because I thought.
[00:04:08] I thought, this is it, you know, what have I done?
[00:04:12] But even in that moment, I didn't think.
[00:04:16] I didn't think my parents would reject me.
[00:04:19] I didn't think that, like, I didn't experience what they experienced.
[00:04:29] My.
[00:04:30] My belief in the entire world that goodness does exist, that I have a handle on the fact that God loves me. All that kind. None of that stuff was at play for me. I didn't experience the loss of all hope.
[00:04:48] But you think about what it's like to be one of these disciples, and you have abandoned your entire life. Like, you've abandoned everything that you were before, and you've made your entire identity, all of your friendships, all of your aspirations in life are wrapped up in Christ. And you know.
[00:05:07] You know that he is the Messiah. You don't just, like, think it. You don't just, like, you know, I'm gonna. It's not like you're just rooting for a team. This is your favorite team. Like, this is your life.
[00:05:23] And when Jesus dies, the degree of shock that that must have been for them, fear, depression that they must have experienced at that moment, must have been overwhelming.
[00:05:45] And to think that these people, these people that had lost everything then show up in Acts, chapter two, and they become the vessels from which the spirit of God fully infuses them, and they become the start of the church. Like, something happens from the depths of despair that I can't. That I have not come close to myself to being these perfect vessels for the Spirit of God, totally equipped and ready to bring about the mission of God through these men. Like, something happens in these 50 days that's, like, far deeper than I have experienced in either direction.
[00:06:29] These 50 days are the crux of the entire origin of the church. Whatever happens to these people in this time is essential. It's necessary. And I want to kind of. I want to see a little bit what happened with these people, these followers of Christ, Kind of look through these next few weeks at the stories that we have about what we went through and what was going on during that time and just kind of like get into this story a little bit more.
[00:06:57] Not just to rattle off the check the boxes for what occurred, but to really deeply appreciate it and to maybe see it in a way that reflects back on the journey that we have and are following Christ.
[00:07:12] First, I just want to talk about these 50 days. The resurrection of Jesus occurs.
[00:07:17] You know, we call it Easter, but it occurs right around Passover. This is a time. This is one of the three big Jewish holidays. This is when Jews are celebrating the salvation of their people from Egypt, that the angel of death passes over their homes, that they are saved, and they ultimately come into the promised land. This is a big deal for them.
[00:07:45] But the second of the three high holy days was what we call Pentecost or like the.
[00:07:53] Is it Booths? Is it the Feast of Booths? Yeah, and it happens just 50 days afterward. It's when they celebrate the harvest, but they also celebrate the giving of the law by Moses.
[00:08:04] And these days happen so close together that they are often kind of celebrated in tandem. So when you're celebrating these high holy days, you're supposed to come to Jerusalem, come to the temple and celebrate as a people. The idea was that originally, the idea was that these Jews who were scattered all throughout the promised Land within a day or two walk, would come into Jerusalem and they would celebrate that. But for really pious and religious, even as Jews started scattering all across the Roman and Persian and pre empires, the really, the really righteous ones, the ones that were like really committed to God, they would still make these trips back to Jerusalem. So during this time of the Passover and during the time of Pentecost, Jerusalem would have been filled with people who saw themselves.
[00:08:58] They weren't just Jews coming back to. To Jerusalem. These were the most committed Jews. These were the most, like, had the most religious zeal or conviction that were coming back and filling up Jerusalem at this time. They were the ones who would have been most interested in the coming of a Messiah, for instance.
[00:09:19] So this is what's happening around them. There's this energy that takes place. And when they came from Jerusalem, they came from all over for Passover. The expense and the difficulty of trap, especially if you were like, say from Rome or from like, if you're from the Far east or the Far west, it would have been more expensive and more difficult to travel there for Passover, go back and then come back again for the Feast of Booths or for Pentecost. So a lot of them would just stay for these 50 days. They had temporary houses. They had these places that were set up all around Jerusalem where these very pious religious Jews would spend basically two months living in and around Jerusalem. So this entire time period where these first Christians, these followers of Christ are going through this deep transformation, they're in an environment in and around Jerusalem where there's this heightened sense of messianic hope that there's this. Like, there are a lot of people around them at this point, that there's an energy that's buzzing around Jerusalem. These aren't people.
[00:10:36] The followers of Jesus weren't from around Jerusalem. They were from up north. They were country boys.
[00:10:42] They're in Jerusalem in this heightened environment during this time. And at the very start of it, they are in shock and despair.
[00:10:57] That's the start.
[00:10:59] Now, where this is important for me, when I was.
[00:11:01] I love Easter morning. I love the celebratory nature. Like the whole week before, I'm thinking about the passion of Christ and what he endured. And then Easter Sunday morning.
[00:11:15] This is the Lord Jesus Christ who has defeated death and the celebration that occurs.
[00:11:21] That's not the experience of those first Christians, their first Easter Sunday morning. I want to read from Luke and have him. Have him describe for us what that first Easter Sunday morning was like for them.
[00:11:34] Luke 24. Now, on the first day of the week, at early dawn. So this is like just as. Just as the sky's, like, not just a hint of pink in the sky.
[00:11:46] The women. The women among the disciples went to the tomb taking the aromatic spices they had prepared. Now, this was common. You would want to do this if you cared at all for the person. Because the stench and decay that would occur in these tombs was pretty intense. And it was just a show of respect that they would do this. They found that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb, which would have been shocking to them. Now, they weren't. They weren't the ones there to. To have buried him. That was Joseph at Arimathea to start. But they would have heard about it. They would have known that there were. That. That tomb, that that rock was supposed to be there. So, you know, everything's dark. Everything is still. It's super early.
[00:12:35] They are at least depressed, if not shocked.
[00:12:41] They are not in a proper state emotionally. And this is very important for us to think about as we're reading through this passage.
[00:12:52] We often just think of them as Us, in these moments, these people are not in a healthy emotional state.
[00:13:03] All hope is gone.
[00:13:07] I can't stress that enough.
[00:13:10] I can't. I don't have the proper imagination, honestly, to appreciate what it means for all hope to be gone. I hope you don't either, honestly.
[00:13:20] But that's where they were.
[00:13:23] They see this stone rolled away, but when they went in, they didn't find the body of the Lord Jesus.
[00:13:29] Stunned, in despair. They've come here to do their duty, and they can't find his body.
[00:13:38] While they were perplexed about this.
[00:13:41] Have you ever been so tired or whatever that you look at, you just know that your brain's not working properly? I see that something's not there. Something is there that's not supposed to be there. And it just stones me. I'm just perplexed, but I don't know what to do. I've come here.
[00:13:57] I've come here to take care of his body. His body's not here.
[00:14:06] You know what I mean? It's like that. It's just like they're stopped.
[00:14:11] They're just going to stand there not knowing what to do while they're plex.
[00:14:17] While they were in this deep state of perplexion, despair and hopelessness, suddenly two men stand beside them in dazzling attire. Hard to get this across. They were radiant. What that means is, like, sometimes you might see this in movies or something or maybe like old paintings where it's like everything's dark, but then somehow there's like luminescence out of this one individual. Like, they've got this, like.
[00:14:46] Or maybe it's like the girl who's, like, wearing all sparklies. Everybody else is wearing black and she's wearing pink sparkles or something. Oh, look at that. You really stand out.
[00:14:56] They didn't belong. Like, they're so.
[00:14:59] They not only don't belong in terms of the brightness of them, but in contrast to the depression that they're experiencing. Not only physically don't they belong, but the radiance that they give off doesn't belong.
[00:15:16] They don't fit.
[00:15:18] These people that they see here are overwhelming in every way possible.
[00:15:25] The women, terribly frightened, they bow their faces to the ground.
[00:15:32] Now we're used to thinking like, oh, yeah, in honor you, I'm going to bow to the ground. But that's kind of like the idea of bowing to someone for us is kind of like an honor that we do like to make you feel good.
[00:15:45] What that's supposed to signify, though, is that I find you so overwhelming. That my knees can't hold me up.
[00:15:53] Like, to really bow before somebody. You're not, like, saying, like, oh, I'm going to show you respect.
[00:15:59] You're just nothing compared. You're just.
[00:16:03] You just physically, what your body does when you're overwhelmed, like, this is. It bows down, okay? That's like. That's what your body can't handle because it's too much.
[00:16:15] This is.
[00:16:16] This is the thing behind what we call bowing down.
[00:16:21] They bowed down to this man, but the men said, why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He has been raised.
[00:16:29] I guarantee you they heard this and they didn't comprehend a thing about it.
[00:16:39] They're standing there holding their spices.
[00:16:42] They have one job to do. Like, literally, they just barely have enough in their head to get there with this stuff. And to do the job, nothing is happening like it's supposed to. The body isn't present, the stones rolled away.
[00:16:56] These radiant people that are making my insides feel like mush are standing before me. I collapse to the ground. I can't hold my body up. And then they say, why are you looking for the dead?
[00:17:10] Looking for the living among the dead.
[00:17:13] I don't even know what you're talking about.
[00:17:15] I can't process this.
[00:17:19] It's too much.
[00:17:22] This is the part of the story I feel like we miss.
[00:17:25] How overwhelming Easter Sunday morning was for them.
[00:17:33] I don't mean celebratory overwhelming, but it doesn't fit.
[00:17:40] It's not just, oh, good, now I'm celebrating. It doesn't fit.
[00:17:46] Despair fits. Shock fits. My brain not working fits.
[00:17:51] Just doing. Just making one fit work. Like, move in front of the other, get to the tomb, do what I'm supposed to do, lay it all there, come back to the men in the upper roof. All that fits. But none of this is working for me.
[00:18:06] It's overwhelming.
[00:18:08] That's what Easter Sunday morning is for. These women.
[00:18:15] There's more.
[00:18:17] These guys say. These radiant, overwhelming beings say, he's not here. He has been raised.
[00:18:26] And then he says, remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and crucified and on the third day, raised again.
[00:18:38] You remember he told you that? What are you even doing here? To which, if I'm not appreciating the state they're in, if I'm not appreciating what's going on here, I might think, like, yeah, why didn't you have faith in Jesus, man? Like, gosh I believe he's raised from the dead. What's wrong with you?
[00:18:55] Okay.
[00:18:56] Jesus has a habit of saying things that were totally true, totally made sense if you understood what he understood.
[00:19:06] But if you didn't know the world the way he knew the world, you couldn't figure out when he was telling an analogy, a parable, or like, he was just telling things how it was. Let me give you an example. I tried to think of it as an example that might work. Let's try this. Imagine we're from a different age. So Jesus, for Jesus, the kingdom of God is normal. Like, this is all normal for him. And when he talks about the way that sin and death works against God, he's talking about it in ways that are true, but for the average person. Doesn't make sense. He is from a different kingdom.
[00:19:38] I could talk to you about from a different time, not a different kingdom. Let's talk about this. What if I said, yeah, I went to Chile and I flew. I flew to Chile, right? You're like, oh, yeah, that makes sense, of course. What else are you going to do, right?
[00:19:54] 150 years ago I said I went to Chile, that you'd be like, probably you did not.
[00:20:01] No one goes to Chile.
[00:20:04] And I told you I flew to Chile, in which case you knew I was lying.
[00:20:13] That's a nonsense. It's not just that.
[00:20:16] It's a nonsense thing to say. Going to Chile is nonsensical enough, but then you flew to Chile.
[00:20:24] That's clay doing clay things again. Like, that's Jesus saying that Jesus stuff. I don't know. You know, he heals people, he says great things, but then he says stuff. I don't know. It's not that he's lying, but I don't know, whatever he is. So one choice, which. A lot of people listen to Jesus and they totally rejected what he had to say, right? They're like, he's nonsense. A lot of people just turned their backs on him. Some people said, you have the words of life. His disciples, but they didn't understand it. A lot of times. A lot of times they thought, like, you have the words of life. We don't get it. Or we think that it's, like, poetic.
[00:20:59] Oh, you flew there, like, in spirit. Like, you.
[00:21:03] Your heart reached out to these people across the world and your spirit soared to Chile, right? Okay.
[00:21:11] Or you were, like, crazy enough to think that I meant it literally. And if you thought that, then what you thought was, I sprouted wings out of my back and I flew to Chile.
[00:21:25] You didn't have a chance to think that what I actually did, I did 150 years ago. You didn't have a chance. If I told you, man, 150 years from now, I'm going to fly to Chile, no chance at all that you would get that right. Okay. I think a lot. I think this is happening to the disciples quite a bit. Jesus says things that are just stone cold true. I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna be crucified. I'm gonna be raised again in three days. And they're like, I don't.
[00:21:52] Jesus, you know, whatever you say stuff, I believe you don't understand you right? So when they're like, what do you like, he told you he was gonna be raised again in three days? They're like, for first of all, he's telling them this, right? Their brain is barely.
[00:22:07] They barely have enough energy to still be. To not be passed out in this moment.
[00:22:12] And he's reminding them of things that they didn't understand the first time they heard it.
[00:22:16] This is the spot that they're in.
[00:22:18] This is tough.
[00:22:21] Then the women remembered his words.
[00:22:25] And then when they returned from the tomb, they told all these things to the 11 and to the rest.
[00:22:31] So they remembered that Jesus said this.
[00:22:36] And they have this entirely impossible experience.
[00:22:41] And they're reminded of something that they didn't understand the first time.
[00:22:45] And they go back and tell other people who weren't there with them in the tomb all that occurred. How do you think that goes? Let me tell you.
[00:22:54] Well, it says now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary and other mother of James and the other women that told them these things to the apostles. These are like, these are all solid people, people that were trusted by the disciples.
[00:23:07] But these words seemed like pure nonsense to them.
[00:23:13] Yes, it would also seem like pure nonsense to you.
[00:23:18] It is crazy what they're saying occurred.
[00:23:32] You needed Jesus to be the Messiah.
[00:23:37] Your life depended on it.
[00:23:39] You put your whole hope in that. And what the Messiah meant was that he was going to be powerful enough to overcome Rome, powerful enough to transform the hearts of these religious leaders, powerful enough to redeem and prosper all the people around you. And you, you that were the most committed disciples, you were going to be right there beside him. You trusted him, and he was going to trust you.
[00:24:07] And there was going to be a glorious life ahead of you.
[00:24:14] And all that was gone.
[00:24:16] All hope was gone.
[00:24:22] And then these ladies come and tell you, Jesus body is gone. It wasn't where it was supposed to be.
[00:24:30] And these People that were these two guys that were bright and radiant told us that he's not among the living, not among the dead, but among the living.
[00:24:42] And that's why he's not there.
[00:24:46] Jesus told us he was going to be born again, and he was.
[00:24:49] They said all that to them, to people who weren't just like, down, but they had lost all hope.
[00:25:02] Most of them just sat there. They didn't do anything about it. According to Luke, Peter got up and ran over to the tomb. According to John, John. And Peter went.
[00:25:13] According to John, John was quicker than Peter in getting there.
[00:25:17] But Peter thrashed on ahead, went into the tomb and he sees it says he bent down and he saw the strips of cloth which if his brain is even working well enough in this moment, he's thinking, why would someone steal the body of Jesus and then take the time to take all the strips of cloth off of him?
[00:25:42] It doesn't make any sense.
[00:25:44] Why would you do that?
[00:25:47] Why would someone take him?
[00:25:49] And if they took him, why would they take the burial cloths off of him?
[00:25:57] So he goes home wondering what happened.
[00:26:02] Easter Sunday morning is strictly confusion.
[00:26:07] It's not celebration. It's not wonderment, it's not joy.
[00:26:12] It's not like they participated in the redemption of all things. They. For them, it was nothing is making sense into a state of pure.
[00:26:29] Depression. Probably the world makes even less sense. And he goes home and he just goes. I almost imagine that he's like, I just have to. I have to go home, put my pillow over my head and just avoid life at this point.
[00:26:46] That's Easter Sunday morning for them.
[00:26:49] Now, the reason I want to really get here, I want to see this in this chapter. What Luke is trying to get across here is because the sheer depths of frustration, confusion, hopelessness is going to contrast insanely to the day of Pentecost just 50 days later. The transformation that happens for these followers of Christ is unbelievable.
[00:27:16] It's almost as if they had died with Christ on that cross. Everything that they were had people had died with them.
[00:27:27] And their resurrection happened 50 days later.
[00:27:32] Jesus died on that cross. And Easter Sunday morning, he rose again.
[00:27:38] Their death took a little longer. Their resurrection took a long. The disciples that they were coming into Jerusalem died on that cross. The disciples that they were coming out of Pentecost was radically different 50 days later.
[00:27:55] Something happens in these 50 days that's.
[00:27:59] That's instructive for us about what it means for us to die and to be born again, for us to become brand new people. What does it look like to walk with Christ, to be attentive to Christ, to begin to begin to place our hope in the correct things. Begin to understand what we have been rescued from, what salvation is and what His Lord really is.
[00:28:22] Something I didn't mention, but in the first slide, Luke refers to Jesus as Lord Jesus. This is the first time in the entire book of Luke that Luke refers to Jesus as Lord.
[00:28:38] All throughout Acts he refers to him as Lord. But until Christ was resurrected from the dead, Luke never refers to him as Lord. The idea, the idea of Lord is like Master, complete dominion. The idea that what you say goes, you are the one empowered, you have full power. Now. They thought of him as the one empowered beforehand. They followed him as the Messiah, assuming he was the one empowered. But Luke never refers to him as the one empowered until he reveals what his power is over. His power is not over Rome, his power is not over the Pharisees in Jerusalem. His power is not over like it's. There are these like conditions that we have that we wish he would change.
[00:29:26] His power is over much more than that. His power is over the sin that generates those things we don't like. His power is over death, which is the end result of all those things that generates all those things that we don't like his power. His lordship is far more than they thought going into it. When they committed their lives to following Christ, they didn't even understand what he was actually Lord of.
[00:29:53] All throughout Acts, Luke refers to Jesus as Lord like 90 something times. He only refers to him as Savior twice.
[00:30:03] Twice.
[00:30:05] And I wonder if in this death and resurrection that we're going to see them experience through these 50 days.
[00:30:13] I wonder what we need to die to in our understanding of what he is actually Lord over.
[00:30:25] I don't know.
[00:30:27] I don't know. For you.
[00:30:30] I think that there is a strong emphasis sometimes on following Christ because of what we get get from Him.
[00:30:39] The idea that he can save us from something that we don't like, that he is our Savior. It's true.
[00:30:46] That's a true thing that he is Savior.
[00:30:49] The thing that is predominant is that he is Lord, is that he is empowered, meaning I am not. All the other things that I used to be afraid of are not those carry no power.
[00:31:05] An assertion of him as Lord means that he is Lord of Me and that I have placed myself in subjection to Him.
[00:31:14] He is the Master, the ruler of me. This is the dominant relationship.
[00:31:20] And I think the disciples assumed that they had that relationship beforehand.
[00:31:25] But it was weak in comparison to what that savior follower relationship became just 50 days later at Pentecost.
[00:31:37] I want to look at that over these next few weeks. Look at this transformation of these men and women as they move from following the Messiah that they assumed he was to the Messiah he revealed himself to be on Easter morning. And how much time it took for them to really own that and become these new people that were his true disciples.
[00:32:02] Let's pray, Father God, as we take these next few weeks and just pay attention to the steps you took walking with your disciples and incorporating them into this new idea of what. What your heavens and your earth look like, what your majesty and your lordship looks like.
[00:32:25] God, I pray that our understanding of you expands in such a way that you become greater and we become less. Our relationship with you becomes more honest. Because you are Lord of all, Lord, all.
[00:32:40] And in that we find hope.
[00:32:43] God, I pray that whatever fears are holding us back, whatever anxieties, whatever.
[00:32:48] Whatever is holding us back from really experiencing your lordship. God, I pray that we see that they are nothing. We have.
[00:32:56] We have accepted too low of you, of who you are, of what your mastery is, of what your lordship is.
[00:33:03] And God, that as you become larger, we become filled with your spirit. Even as your disciples did in Pentecost. And nothing becomes impossible as a result of our deep followship of you, Lord, are being filled by you.
[00:33:19] Nothing is impossible in you.
[00:33:22] We love you. Amen.
