Luke 24:45-53

Luke 24:45-53 … We come now to the closing verses of the Gospel of Luke. Here, the resurrected Jesus is speaking to thirteen people: the eleven disciples and the two from the Road to Emmaus. Christ Jesus shares from the Old Testament all the prophecies concerning Himself and (24:45) opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. Amplified specifically for us, Jesus taught them from the Old Testament about His suffering (Isaiah 53) and resurrection (Psalms 16 and 49) and that repentance would be proclaimed in His Name to all nations (many places in Isaiah and the other prophets).

Then Luke gives us (24:48) a very abbreviated account of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) to go into all the world with the Gospel message, but cautions that they should await the coming of the Holy Spirit to give them enablement and power for the task. Also abbreviated (not giving much detail on the 40 days between the resurrection and the ascension), Luke takes us to the ascension in 24:50. He gives us a bit fuller account of the ascension in his second writing (the book of Acts), but there is enough here to allow us to reflect on the magnificence of all that God has done in Christ Jesus and in the fact that the disciples then and the Church now (the individual followers of Christ within the Church) have a great responsibility to be His witnesses to the world.