The Eternal Epic

Mark 16:19-20 ESV

19 So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. 20 And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.

Something that authors, movie producers, and film directors have tapped into that has been a goldmine is what we call a “sequel”. The sequel is a work that continues the story of an earlier made work.

Sometimes, let’s say, a movie producer will produce a film that goes over so well and is so popular that he knows that he can’t just leave it at the one film. He knows how much the public wants a follow up to how the movie ended, so he begins the production of a sequel… “Such and Such Part II”!

And because the first film was so popular, people can’t wait to get to the theatres to see the sequel, and even if the sequel is only half as good as the original film, it will probably still make twice as much money as the original because of all of the excitement surrounding it.

And if there is hype after the sequel comes out, the producer then may begin to consider making a sequel to the sequel, a “Part III”! And on some rarer occasions, there is a sequel to that sequel, and a sequel to that sequel, and so on.

But you know, eventually, people lose interest and it’s not profitable to keep making movies, and so the sequels eventually come to an end.

But you see, those are storylines, and storylines come to an end in the world of make-believe. In real-life, “sequels”, so to speak, take place with every new day.

And while what we read and worked through in our sermon last week may seem like a suitable ending to an epic narrative, we are only getting started. The Lord Jesus has risen, conquered death, and commissioned His apostles, but the story continues with us, God’s modern-day elect people.

We see the realization of this as this morning, we conclude our series of sermons from the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, the narrative concerning the resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus.

As we look at our reading for this morning to close out this series, we see first when what follows took place, when we look at the beginning of verse nineteen, which reads:

Mark 16:19a ESV

19a So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them

So, obviously, this takes place chronologically after the Lord Jesus “had spoken to them”. The speaking that is being referred to here is in reference to the Lord giving His apostles what we know as “the Great Commission”.

We are reminded of this commission when we look back to verse fifteen of this chapter when Jesus tells the apostles, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”

Thus, it was after Jesus had given this final command, this final commission to His apostles that we see, in the next part of this verse that He:

Mark 16:19b ESV

19b was taken up into heaven

So, with the Lord Jesus charging His apostles one last time with this final command of His while He was on earth, He was, at that time “taken up into heaven”.

So, what we notice in this statement is first, that Jesus was transported from earth. We see this as we read that He “was taken”. That the Lord was taken signifies that there was a force outside of Himself which carried Him from earth.

We read of that which had taken the Lord in the book of Acts, chapter one and verse nine, where we read:

Acts 1:9 ESV

9 And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

So, we see that the Lord miraculously rose from the earth, but was then received by a cloud, a cloud which He Himself had no doubt commanded to receive Him, and He was then, at that point, transported from earth alive.

But that was not the end. It is not as though Jesus had ceased from His works when He left earth and returned to heaven from whence He had come. No, not at all; and the last part of this nineteenth verse tells us this as it says that when He arrived in heaven, He:

Mark 16:19c

19c sat down at the right hand of God.

So, there are a few things to take note of here. That Jesus is at the right hand of God the Father reveals, once again, that Jesus is not just some exemplary moral person Who had taught some very good teachings, but that He Himself is God.

We also see in Him sitting at the right hand of the Father that He returns to His rightful place of dignity. And as I said, this was a return to His rightful place of dignity, for while on earth, He was not physically in that place of dignity.

As Charles Spurgeon once famously said: “The Lord Jesus Christ was eternally rich, glorious, and exalted; but though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor.”

The Lord Jesus, though fully divine, became temporarily poor, leaving the glory of His heavenly abode, at the right hand of His Father, so that through His life, sufferings, death, and resurrection, those whom He came to save would become eternally rich.

In the Gospel of John, chapter 17, verses 4 and 5, Jesus prayed to His Father:

John 17:4-5 ESV

4 “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.”

And here we see the Father glorifying the Son with the very same glory that He possessed before His incarnation, indeed, the glory that He possessed from all eternity.

But we must not move forward in our exposition without speaking on Jesus’ posture at the right hand of the Father.

Jesus “sat down” at the right hand of the Father, which indicates a posture of rest. Rest, because He has finished His work of redemption. Rest, because He, from His heavenly throne, takes possession of the kingdom that He had established on earth.

And having taken possession of His kingdom, He reigns, which is made evident as the Lord’s apostles positively respond to their King’s “Great Commission”.

We see this in the first part of verse twenty of our reading, where it says:

Mark 16:20a ESV

20a And they went out and preached everywhere,

Here we see the response that the Lord’s apostles gave to His commission back in verse fifteen when He said: “Go into all the world and proclaim the Gospel to the whole creation”.

Their response was that “they went out” from that place and preached the Gospel of salvation by the grace of God alone through faith in Christ Jesus alone in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and eventually, to lands where there was a Gentile majority, preaching the Good News to Jew and Gentile alike.

In fact, they were so zealous and laborious to fulfill this commission of their King that, as Paul makes plain in his epistle to the Romans, chapter 10, verse 18 that within but a few years the Gospel had,

Romans 10:18 ESV

18 gone out to all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”

So laborious and zealous were the apostles to fulfill the “Great Commission” that very quickly was the Gospel proclaimed amidst nearly every people group in the known world, which we can identify as the Roman Empire at that time. So, in every corner of the vast Roman Empire had the Gospel been proclaimed.

And of course, it was not merely the apostles themselves who had taken the Gospel to every people group, but it started with them. And as they made disciples, those disciples then spread the Gospel to others, making even more disciples.

But even that isn’t possible through human effort alone. It is for this reason that Mark is careful to say at the end of our reading that “they went out and preached everywhere”,

Mark 16:20b ESV

20b while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.

This is vitally important to be included in this narrative, as it is vitally important for every one of us to remember and to constantly keep in mind.

We live in a world that is very prideful. A world that, ever since it has been infested with sin, has been very prideful. Indeed, we come into the world in a state of pride. We long to say, “I did this, and I worked hard for it!”, “Everything that I have I worked hard for and earned every last bit of it!”.

Now, when we hear that, we may say “Eww”, but the next time that you accomplish something, some of those same thoughts may race through your head. We have this tendency to want to take the glory from God and say, “I did this! I didn’t need any help! Not even from God!”.

And because this is how the world naturally reasons, this same kind of reasoning has trickled over into the religions of the world as well.

What better way to appease man’s prideful desire than to adhere to a religion which tells you that you “earn, work hard” for your blessings? Maybe a religion that says that if I work hard at being a “good person” in this life, then I can be reincarnated as some kind of influential person, like a king or something in my “next life”?

Or a more modern approach masks itself in the form of godliness in saying that God provides everything that we need to be saved and to live a blessed life in this world, but we ourselves have to reach out and take advantage of what God is offering us.

Now, while this sounds good at the outset, what it creates is perhaps the most subtle form of pride, a pride that appears so godly that it’s usually not even recognized as pride. But what holding to such theology accomplishes is a pride that says, “What I have was offered to everyone, but I am among a very select few who had enough sense to take advantage of what was being offered to me!”.

And therefore, those who hold to this kind of reasoning, hold to what is called “synergism”, which means “accomplished by more than one”.

Those who hold to this say that our salvation is a synergistic salvation in that while we may confess that God played His part in our salvation, maybe we even recognize that He played almost every part in our salvation, we still say, “But I wouldn’t be saved if I didn’t do my part and “make a decision” for Jesus!” And thus, we say that God alone did not save us, but that God started it, and I put the finishing touches on it! We say that we helped save ourselves!

You talk about a sneaky, sophisticated theology! It seems to have the appearance of godliness, but in all actuality, it’s no better than blasphemously outright saying that I saved myself through my own works!

But you see that kind of synergistic Christianity is not legitimate Christianity. Legitimate Christianity is monergistic, meaning “one power, accomplished by one”. Our salvation is accomplished by One, and that One is not us; it is God. And furthermore, the maintenance of our salvation is accomplished by One, by God alone.

It is for this reason that Mark says that the apostles were able to go out and preach the Gospel everywhere to such an extent that it had gone out to all the ends of the world because the Lord “worked with them”.

God commissioned them and commanded them to go out, He made them to go out, and He worked through them as He caused them to go out. He worked through them, causing them to courageously proclaim the orthodox gospel ina world opposed to the truth, to a world opposed to the truth, convicting and converting many as He powerful penetrated hearts, causing them to come alive, to be born again.

And in addition to this, God confirmed the gospel message that He caused His apostles to preach by having the signs mentioned back in verses seventeen and eighteen of this chapter accompany them.

Indeed, this was the work of God! Jesus leaving this world was not the end of the story, no, it was the inauguration of God’s kingdom on earth! God the Holy Spirit continued to powerfully work through the Apostles as the kingdom was taking root and spreading all over the world.

But even that isn’t the end; the story, it continues today as Jesus is still actively ruling over His kingdom, as God is still sovereign, just as in control as ever, and still today, we as born-again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are commissioned to “Go into all the world and proclaim the Gospel to the whole creation”.

Beloved, may we, as the King’s subjects, be faithful to fulfill His commission!

Amen?