Sermon Tone Analysis

If you were to describe your lifestyle how would you describe it, (be honest)?

Do you feel as though your way of living is swayed by the world, people around you?

There has been a genre of television that has been extremely popular, it is reality tv.

If anyone has ever watched reality tv the premise is to bring to the audiences unscripted lives and events of those on the show.

The idea is for audiences to watch how certain people react in certain situations on a day to day bases.

This genre can include anything from a game show style program, to following around real families.

Millions of people tune in to watch how the people will treat one another and how they will respond in difficult situation and even how they respond in joyous situations.

As Christians if you had a camera crew following you around and video taping your lifestyle what would the show look like?

How would the audience see you? Would you be different then you are now or the same?

This morning we are going to look at what the Christian’s lifestyle should be like, we will have an understanding of how we react and why we should react in that way.

When it comes to being a Christian, a Holy one of God, there must be a natural response from the Christian.

That natural response should be to worship Jesus with great joy and public gratitude for what God has done and is doing and will do.

Worship is only and must always be attributed to God and God alone.

Worship, true worship, comes from the heart which is an attitude of worship and it is expressed in action, rejoicing and showing gratitude to God.

It is an honoring of the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of life and all that is in and on the earth.

Worship and praise is not a Sunday morning thing, it is an everyday lifestyle.

We are going to see how knowing Jesus as Redeemer and trusting in His promise can lead us to worship and praise of God the Father, Creator, God the Son, Redeemer, and God the Spirit, Sustainer.

We are going to see this as we roll up Luke’s first volume on the Holy Spirit’s active work in and through Jesus’ earthly ministry and in two weeks we will open up Luke’s second volume and we will see how the Spirit was active in and through the Apostels to bring about the Church.

My prayer for all of us this morning as we roll up this scroll is to have an attitude and actions that are evident in the apostles in these last four verses.

I pray we can be like these men and women and our praise of the Savior will be obvious to all those around us.

Let’s go ahead and take a look at The Praise of the Saints.

The Praise of the Saints

We find this response at the very end of Luke’s gospel account of Jesus’ earthly ministry.

In Luke 24:50-53, Luke provides a summary statement of Jesus’ ascension.

This as we know from Acts 1 happens 40 days after the resurrection.

So for forty days we have Jesus coming and going and teaching, instructing and eating with His disciples.

As we saw last week Jesus has also commissioned His disciples to be His witnesses and they are to wait to be clothed with power from on High.

We saw last week this being clothed with power from on High is the promise of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who is the One who will lead these men to proclaim the gospel with power and strengthen the church and be a testimony to God and the finished work of Jesus Christ.

He was not only promised by Jesus but also promised by God in the Hebrew Scriptures.

It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that we have the passed instruction, and we have present understanding of the passed instruction and that we can trust in His present office, His powerful indwelling of the saints.

Now Jesus has commissioned these men and as we look this morning these men are going to be moved by what Jesus has done and they will be moved to worship Jesus and publically praise God.

Let’s go ahead and take a look at The Praise of the Saints.

We find this in Luke 24:50-53.

As I have just told you Luke is summarizing the events of Jesus’ post resurrection instructions and now we have arrived at the summary of Jesus’ very last moment with His disciples.

Only Luke records for us the ascension, no other gospel writer does this and Luke provides it twice, the summary here and his extended ascension narrative in his second volume the book of Acts.

Now as we close this chapter we first see here in verse 50 that Jesus is leading His disciples out as far as Bethany.

It is funny here in Luke’s telescopic view he provides a very specific location which is the town of city of Bethany which is located on the eastern side of the Mount of Olives.

In the book of Acts Luke only provides a general location of the Mount of Olives.

There is absolutely no reason to see this as an inconsistency because the two location overlap and even more so then this Luke is here closing the chapter on Jesus’ earthly ministry and in Acts he is opening the chapter on the apostles going fourth as the witnesses to the events they saw and took part in.

Luke tells us here in verse 50; “And He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands and blessed them.”

This ties our study last week with what we are looking at this week.

Jesus is blessing the saints, or as The Saints are Blessed.

Blessing the Saints

The Saints as the term is used in Scripture means ‘Holy Ones.’

The men and women of the Hebrew Scriptures who were faithful servants of God are called Saints and these men and women here are also called saints and this also goes for us here.

If we have come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior and placed our faith in His finished work on the cross then we are also saints, ‘Holy Ones’ of God.

So Jesus is here blessing the Saints.

Jesus was providing a benediction of sorts here.

We saw that He has commissioned these men by telling them to wait until they are clothed with power from on High.

This is the same thing.

If we take these last two passage as two different times Jesus provided a great commission it would make sense He would be providing a blessing at His ascension.

Jesus taught many times the promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit and now as He is about to go and be with the Father and take His seat at God right hand He in His last words and His last action provides the invocation these men need.

The blessing is a sealing of sorts of the commissioning of the disciples.

This actually becomes common place in the New Testament church.

This is a charge to the men and women of the church in the fact that they are about to be His servants and they are about to continue the work of the gospel.

Jesus provides for them a parting word a divine charge to serve Him and to serve God.

He is also placing on them a blessing from God, a looking forward to the fact that God will guide them and lead the success of His call upon their lives.

Luke here doesn’t provide any words from Jesus in this event it is not about what Jesus is saying to them it is a changing of the guard so to speak.

Jesus is going to go be with the Father and sit on the throne, the apostles with the power of the Spirit will take up the mantle of continuing the work Jesus began and this is in a sense confirming for the apostles that God will cause them to prosper.

Do you consider yourself a saint?

If you consider yourself a saint what makes you a saint, if you don’t why not?

So here Jesus is commissioning these men and He is providing them with an encouraging benediction and as He is doing this we see that He departs from them.

Verse 51 says this; “While He was blessing them, He parted from them and was carried up into heaven.”

The blessing, the benediction Jesus is providing happens at the same time as He is departing from their sight.

There is a difference here from the other times we have Jesus come and go, when He would vanish and pop in out of nowhere.

The difference is the finality of His present departure.

Each of the other times He only disappeared from sight this time He is not just disappearing from sight but He is moving from this present world as we know it to be with the Father in Heaven.

His present work is now complete and as He moves from the earth to heaven providing a divine benediction on His disciples there is a close to one chapter of God’s active work in the world and the beginning of a new chapter of God’s active work in the world.

Jesus is blessing these saints and the reaction of the saints is dramatically different then what we have seen through out not only chapter 24 but through out all of the Gospel of Luke.

The Saints for the first time have offered something to Jesus that He absolutely deserves but wasn’t fully recognized until this moment.

The saints offer Jesus worship.

The Saints Offer Worship

Verse 52, “And they, after worshiping Him.”

This is the first time Jesus has ever received worship.

Worship has always been reserved for God and God alone.

Now these men fall on their knees and worship the Lord Jesus.

They finally recognize as Jesus is ascending to heaven His true and mighty power, He is God.

The word that is used here for worship is the word proskyneo, which we derive our English word prostrate from the Latin transliteration of the Greek.

The idea when it comes to the word in the New Testament being used of worship it always carries the idea of bowing down.

It even is used of Jesus and God.

There are two instances where worship is wrongly attributed.

First in the book of Acts when Peter goes to Cornelius Acts 10.

Cornelius begins to attribute homage to Peter and the way in which He does this is by falling on his knees at the feet of Peter.

Peter doesn’t accept this homage because he knows he doesn’t deserve it.

Then there is an instance in the book of Revelation;

See John was taken back by what the angel had said to him to write in the letter and as he fell to the ground at the feet of the angel the angel refused the worship.

The angel, like Peter knows very well he didn’t deserve worship, honor and adoration.

He is a created being just like John is, just like Peter, and just like you and I.

The only One who deserves adoration and honor is the God head, God the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

The disciples for the first time realize exactly who Jesus is.

Yes I know Peter provided that amazing confession of Jesus being the Christ, the Son of the Living God but even though the Spirit moved Him to say this it didn’t mean the disciples truly understood the depth and the brevity of what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God.

For Jesus to be the Son of God, it means He is God.

Every part and essence of God is in Jesus and vice versa.

These men now see Jesus for who He has always been, God.

As He is being raised to heaven on a cloud never the less, they bow to the ground and pay homage to Jesus.

Jesus never tells them not to worship in fact while they are worshipping Him He is blessing them.

Do you honor and worship Jesus because He is God?

This is a big deal because if you know the Jewish law you know that the only one they are to worship is God.

They would take this seriously.

I know and understand if you read through out the Hebrew Scriptures there are times they would bow down to foreign God’s but in this instance as we look at this gospel written by a Jewish man who is providing as accurate account as he can and being divinely inspired we find these disciples worshiping Jesus being He is God.