Making Jesus Known: Last Words

Famous Last Words

Ive tittled this message Famous last Words: You know when someone decides that they’re going to do something dangerous.

You think to yourself: ‘yeah that’s not a good idea.’

But you don’t want to be that person that’s all ‘no you’re going to hurt yourself!’

So you make a joke and say: “Famous last words.”

In all seriousness though, if you knew that your next sentence would be the last words you’ll ever speak to another person, what would you say?

Were Gonna look at what Jesus’s last words to his disciples are.

Matthew 28:19 ESV

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

Mark 16:15–16 ESV

And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

Luke 24:45–47 ESV

Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

Jesus’ famous last words, his final instructions were to go and tell the world about Him. we already dicussed a few weeks back Mathews account of the great comission

If you knew the you only had a few minutes or hours to chat with someone you love you would probably be rather intentional and make it count. you’re likely going to think: “what’s the most important thing I can say to them?”

when you look at what Jesus’ followers did immediately after His ascension, they established the church in Jerusalem, looked after a few matters there, then just began sending people out like crazy. The most popular being Saul the Christian killing Pharisee who became the apostle, traveling evangelist and church planter Paul.

And right after the 4 gospels of Jesus, we get to the book of Acts, or, Acts of the Apostles we see people going to all nations discipling people, baptising them, and signs and miracles and wonders taking place along the way.

This Sounds a bit like what Jesus said we should do and it looks like what would happen if we obeyed.

Invite

Christianity is at its core a relational and evangelistic religion.Meaning we have a relationship with God. This relationship is one of a king and servant but also father and child as well as one of friends

And part of being a Christian, or follower of Jesus is that we persuade others to follow Jesus too.

Exclusive

Jesus makes the claim that He is the ONLY way to God and eternal life.

John 14:6 ESV

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

This means that there is no other option to get to God it is only through Jesus.

Narrowness is God's protection of us. God is saying: “I understand the frailty of humanity and that you are but children. So I will keep it real simple. The options: only two: Jesus Christ, or eternal death. That's it.”- Rev. Derek Michael Osborne

This leads to next point

Evangelistic

Since the Gosepl litterally means good news why wouldnt we want to share it?

The christian faith is meant to be shared we are meant to make disciple we are meant to invite others into the family of God.

We share good news we were made for that ?

we discussed last week The idea of being ashamed of the Gospel

Jesus emphasizes the importance of US telling the world about HIM with His own famous last words.

Romans 1:16 ESV

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

Im going to suggest a few things that i hope make us uncomfortable

If the message of Jesus is such good news, why aren’t we literally telling everyone about it?

What it really boils down to,

We Dont Really Believe in Him

Now I say this in the harshest way I can to get the point across. Our faith wavers. Our faith isn’t always rock solid, at least probably not as solid as we’d like.

Because if we really believed that Jesus is the ONLY way, we would be telling people all the time about Him. You really couldn’t keep it to yourself.

We Dont Believe in Hell

Those who confess Jesus as Lord go to glory with God (we call that heaven)

Those who don’t confess Jesus as Lord go to eternal darkness, with unquenchable fire where there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth (we call that hell)

The bible is full of references to Hell.

Hell is for those who dont believe in Jesus and more importantly those who dont confess him as Lord and savior.

Hell is truth known too late.

J.C. Rule

Conclusion

I want you all to ask yourself a very real question:

Has Jesus made a real difference in your life?

If he hasn't then of course why would you share with anyone?

But then you haven't really met Jesus.

If he's made a difference in your life you can't help but tell others.

There are two decisions that we can make.

CSL frame the options to follow in his work Mere Christianity “God’s will be done.” Now and forever.The second is God saying “Your will be done.”

The first allows God to be king and for us to be servants who love and follow him

the second is for those who lived a life where they chose to follow their rules and be God of their own life