Go and Tell: The Final Command of Jesus

Show Notes

Episode 412: 
In this enlightening episode, we wrapped up our series on the major events in the life of Jesus. We delved into the final events in the Gospels, focusing on the ascension of Jesus as described in Mark 16, Luke 24, and Acts 1. We highlighted the importance of the disciples' mission to go and share the gospel everywhere, starting from Jerusalem and extending to the ends of the earth.

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You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Hey, good morning or afternoon or evening. We are the Bible Guys. You do that all the time. I do. I do because I want to say good morning, good morning, Yes, good morning. Yeah, there you go. Somebody just sent it to me the other day. They sent me the clip of Debbie Reynolds and Gene Kelly saying good morning, singing good morning. I watched the whole thing. Well, this is it right here. This is your last chance. Good morning, good morning. We talked the whole night through good morning, good morning to you, and I say, granted that being Louisiana, I say, this is your last chance. It's not that we're ending the Bible Guys podcast. No, it's just this is the end of the two hundred and fifty or two hundred and some odd major events in the life of Jesus, which is crazy that it's been two hundred and fifty. Yeah, yeah, isn't it incredible? Yeah, a long series. So anyways, that's the end of this series. Yes, and so you got to squeeze in one more good morning. There you go, and you know what, before we jump into that, Jeff, could you sing good afternoon, good afternoon, good afternoon that. Okay, we're we're going to play guess the word, which is our version of taboo. So if you are a watcher and you're watching on video, we're going to try to put these words on the screen for you, the words that I cannot say, because that's really the fun of the guests. The game. The game is me. It's harder for me than it is for you. So here we go. We're going to try to here doing nothing nothing but again it's just you all you carrying this whole segment, all right, So the first one is the hardest one. Ready, okay, okay, So you're you're you're when you you're raised to walk as a as a what you're raised to walk? Baptism? Yeah? Uh what's the next phrase? Newness of life? Yeah? Yeah, okay, So I'm about to say the word new because you said new. Okay, So when you say uh blank spanking new brand yes, brand brand new, yes, there you go. Okay, all right, so I had to I had to get you to say the word. Okay, all right, Now the next word, ready, we're gonna put, We're gonna put. By the way I should say, I wasn't allowed to say new or name. I can say it once you say it, yes, but I wasn't allowed to say new or name or product or label or export. So I was trying to really get around new. Okay, now this this, this next one is gonna be very funny. Okay, here we got ready. What was our theme for Easter Resurrection? New Day, a new day? The word was new. The next word was new new again, so we weren't allowed to say new. That was though, the other one was brand new. And then this one's new. Yeah. The first word was brand and then this word was new new yes, okay, and so and so new day. Well yeah, so I wasn't allowed to say old, fresh, brand, or recent or change. Okay, okay, all right, good job, Chris, thank you. Here we go. Here's number three. Did Jesus say that is our next series? There it is? Which which again when they hear it, we're gonna be a couple weeks into it, that's right. But I wasn't allowed to say television set, episode numbers or arithmetic, so I went with the with the church angle. Yes, Okay, uh, here we go. This is gonna be really hilarious. Okay, did Jesus say that is our blank series, new series or next next? Yes? Oh wow? Okay, so they're all related. Yes. So I wasn't allowed to say last beside door after or year, so pretty much I could have said a new day is our brand new next series. Well, think about this, the first four words brand new, brand new series next. Okay, yeah, so here's the last words. Okay, all right, ready, there's fifty two of them in a year weeks yes, or singular week yes. So the words they gave me were brand new series next week. There you go. So how clever this is awesome? Yeah, very clever. And I forgot to say for the word next, I wasn't allowed to say last beside door after or year. It was not to say the word year. There, Chris, if the ministry doesn't work out for you, I think you would make an amazing game show host. And then for a week I wasn't allowed to say day, Wednesday or Sunday. I actually think a talk show host is something that I would actually very much enjoy. Talk show host game show hosts. Oh well that too, Yeah, yeah, I think I would enjoy it. Like on Family Feud, the question is whether I would enjoy it. The question is when people enjoy me. Because I know that's a question that most of us are asking to answer you, because I know I would enjoy it. I would love to be a game show. Yeah. I think you do a good job. Yeah, I think I just heard that. Did Pat say Jack just die? What? I think? So? What how old is Pat say Jack? Pat Say Jack is seventy seven years old. Oh, okay, he didn't die. Okay, Okay, it must have been a spoof. Well I was gonna say, is this breaking news? No, it must have been a spoof. Saw. I think that comes up on social media all the time. You know, you know those two guys, How would you like to be the guy that he keeps coming up that you're dead? I know, you know those guys on Saturday Live. They give each other the news to read. Yeah, they make fun. They get each other to say things that are going to get him killed or whatever. Well, the guy gave the other guy, it's the guy who's married to Scroll Johansson. It's that guy anyway, he said, famous famous game show host Pat say Jack dies at ninety seven. Of course, I know it's spoof now because only seventy seven. But he goes famous game show host dies at ninety seven, and all of the fans watching who are avid watchers of the game show said, wow, that's young. Yeah, there you go. So you just you just took a shot at all of our listeners that also like I didn't Saturday Life. Okay, all right, well you made us all laugh about it. Yes, that's true. Okay, Well, now we're going to remove you from your role as game show host. You demoted. Oh no, I didn't hang out of that very long at all. Okay, Well, hey, this is it right here. This is the final event in the Gospels, and so it's in the extended ending of Mark chapter sixteen. And we're also going to look at Luke chapter twenty four, and then we're going to take a peek into Acts chapter one. So you gotta remember, as is Luke part two right? In other words, the author of Acts is Luke, right, And he really wrote him as you know, back to back stories. Yes, okay, it's like the sequel to his first book. His first book did so well, he wrote a second book, and they're thinking we can make this into two movies, okay. So Mark chapter sixteen, verse nineteen says, when the Lord Jesus had finished talking with them, he was taken up into heaven and sat down in the place of Honor at God's right hand. And the disciples went everywhere and preached, and the Lord worked through them, confirming what they said by many miraculous signs straight into the point. And Luke chapter twenty four, verse fifty says, then Jesus led them to Bethany, and lifting up his hands to Heaven, he blessed them. And while he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up to heaven. So they worshiped him and then returned to Jerusalem filled with great joy, and they spent all of their time in the Temple in God. And then in Acts chapter one, verse six so, when the disciples or the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, Lord, what Lord has the time come for you to free Israel and restore your kingdom? And he replied, the Father alone has the authority to set those dates in times, and they're not for you to know. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses telling people about me everywhere in Jerusalem, through Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And after saying this, he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see him. As they strained to see him rising into heaven, two robed men, white robed men, suddenly stood among them, men of Galilee. They said, why are you standing here staring into heaven. Jesus has been taken from you into heaven. But someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go. And that's it. You know what I can't get out of my mind. When I was a very young Babba college student, and you know those family entertainment videos, they were just they were like cartoons vhs. Yeah, I think some old Disney employees, yes, yes, from that company, Yes, who worked on the Black Cauldron in Disney. Anyway, Uh, there's a scene in the Ascension of Jesus where he flies up into the clouds and then the angels, you know, two men robed in white Uh said those phrases, and then they did they did this dramatic ending where uh, you know, like Oliver, you know, please say, can I have some mole? You know, like this little kid, this little kid who like tugs in your heartstrings. So so this little cartoon ends. Jesus goes into heaven, angels speak and then they zoom in on this little boy and he's got one single tear and he goes, come soon, Lord Jesus will always be watching. Then that's it. That's the last line. Okay, you know, just yes, because it's in my mind every time I read the scriptures, every single time. It's in my mind because it's says that even so come quickly, Lord Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, And it's the declaration that we should have, right, So it's the idea that we should, you know, look look for the second Coming and expect it at any given moment. And they just tagged it right onto the ascension. When you get to Heaven and you meet Luke, you can say, hey, I liked your books, but you know what you should have done. You should have had a little boy at the end with it. Come soon. You can straighten him out, straighten him out, Come on, Luke. All right, So anyways, here we are. Jesus ascends back to Heaven. Yes, and his disciples begin to go. But I think my favorite thing, and it's just so human, is Jesus literally has told them how many times in these last forty days. Now, listen, I'm going to send the Holy Spirit. And then I want you to go everywhere and tell everybody. Right, go everywhere. He says it in Matthew, he says it, Mark, he says it in Luke, go everywhere, tell everybody. They're like, okay, okay. Then he ascends to heaven. And then they're just standing there watching. They couldn't even see him anymore. They strained to see him rising into heaven, these two white robed men. Suddenly God has to sant angels. They go, men of Galilee, why are you standing here? Right? You're just standing into heaven. He was taking from you. He's coming back. Get back to work, right, And and isn't that just the typical Christian? God says, Okay, here's what I want you to do. Do this, okay, yeah, and then we just stand there and do nothing. Right. Yeah, No, I mean I mean, go do it. Okay, we should, you know, we should do it. Let's have a Bible study about how we should do this. Let's stand around and talk about it. Hey, Jesus is coming back at any minute. Let's just stand and watch Jesus coming back. Now he has us on mission. We're supposed to be on mission telling everybody everywhere that he's coming back and they need to be ready. But nope, we're just going to stand there and look. You know what that reminds me of is when I was working at my very first church. This was in the early nineties. I was going down how we won thirty eight in Jonesborough, Georgia, and there was a huge, massive typhoon rain. I mean it was just like a white rain, huge heavy rain, and we were backed up in traffic, bumper to bumper for like I bet it was forty five minutes, and we finally get up to the actual like thing. You know how people they rub their neck and they turn and they look at recks. Well, this wasn't a wreck. This was a simple refrigerator box. Theyn't have a refrigerator in it. It was just a box weighed like probably three pounds, five pounds whatever it was, and it was actually soaking wet, but it was huge, and it was right in the middle of the lane and people had to stop and slowly go around it, and then and it was it caused this massive block up, you know, for like, you know that forty five minutes. So finally when we got up there, we saw the problem. And as we're going around this refrigerator box, my boss Chuck, who was with me in the car, looks at me and he goes, oh, man, he goes, somebody could take care of this if they just go out there and just simply just pull that box off the side of the road. He goes, somebody ought to do that. I said yeah, as we passed it and kept on going right, and then we looked each other and we just cracked up because we knew that we weren't going to do it. And there's thousands of other people who drove past it saying the same thing. Yes, somebody should get that box right, right, and yet we just drove past it. And then we just cracked up because we were like, oh my goodness, look who we are. We're the people who said we should do it. We didn't do it right. God believes in us more than we believe in us. Right, So God says, okay, listen, through his son, We're going to give you power and We're going to give you a mission. Go tell everybody everywhere. Okay, okay, And then he has sense literally he just said, didn't he just say? When Jesus had finished talking to him, finished talking about what right before that, he says, I'm going to give you the Holy Spirit, and I want you to go everywhere and tell everyone yes, yes, and to the ends of the earth. Your assignment is listen, He goes, The Father alone has the authority to choose the dates when I do return and when I'm gonna do these things. But you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you. You'll be my witnesses. Okay, okay, and break just stand there and break right. It's us man, but it's symbolic of a lot of Christians. Okay, I'm going to pray about it, and if the Lord leads me, I'm going to do it. Right. How often you hear people go you ask them to do something, you know, and and it's an easy yes or an easy no, and they're like, I'm just gonna pray about it. I'm gonna I'm gonna really seek the Lord's will in this thing. Just do something. How about that? I really feel like when I come to the end of the Gospels. I just feel like, just do something. Have a predisposition to serve God, and if you're waiting for some super calling, just go. There was an old preacher back in the seventies and eighties named John R. Rice. Do you remember the name John Rice. I feel like we founded an old newspaper called The Sword of the Lord. Remember that, Oh my word, yes, yeah. Ok So he was in the fifties, sixties and seventies, pretty famous preacher in America. Very very conservative guy and all that stuff, but a great student of the Bible. Anyways, I can remember him. He was in he's probably seventy five seventy seven, and he said, so roughly the age of pats a Jack roughly yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, passe Jack in your mind, same right. So anyways, doctor Rice said at one point he said, you know, I never he said, I kept waiting and waiting and waiting for God to call me to ministry. He said, because he would hear preachers talk about these like earth shattering moments, like it would you know, there was an earthquake and it was like lightning from heaven and the angels spoke, the clouds rolled back and said, you are called in the ministry. He said, I never had that. I never had like some significant earth shattering moment in my life when I felt like God called me the ministry. But he said, I wanted to serve God so bad and I never got the call. So I just volunteered and figured he'd stop me if you wanted me to quit. And then he was fifty years later, having served, led tens of thousands of people to Christ, preached in every state in the country, had written all kinds of books and materials that had helped transform, you know, tens of thousands of families, and he said, you know, basically, he said, I got to the end of the Gospels and he said go. So I just went and figured if he didn't want me to go, he'd stop me. Right, And here we are fifty years later, and what he's saying is, you don't need a mountaintop experience to obey. Just go. Just do a thing, right, Just do something. What are you doing for the Lord today? What are you doing specifically to bring lost people to Jesus today? You don't need some kind of angelic message from heaven, Jesus told us. And yet most of us are just standing there looking in heaven. Boy, I hope he comes back soon, right, Yeah? And you know, it also reminds me of I was a part of a discipleship organization. The name of it's not important, but basically there was different shapes or different aspects of God speaking to us and discipleship, and one of them was centered around the idea of when God speaks, and basically it said it said, it's this simple, Okay, you should respond every time you feel like God is nudging or you know, speaking, or you know, you read his word and it feels like he's encouraging or challenging something whatever, whatever it is. If God feels like he's getting your attention, he goes, there's only two questions that you need to ask yourselves, God, what are you saying? And what do you want me to do? That's it, It's really it. And so what you're supposed to do is you're supposed to have a process of you know, trying to figure out, okay, God, what is it that you're saying? And then it breaks that down and it says, okay. The first half of that question would be okay, reflect, you know, reflect and say, Okay, what did God do here? And then to observe and then to discuss with people? Right, and then it says, okay, God, what do you want me to do? And then basically it says to uh account in other words like you know, get godly counsel and an account. And there was another word in there, and then I think it was uh and then it was act. The final one was act right, so and so yeah, the first breakdown was God, what is it you're saying? Okay, now that I know what you're saying, what do you want me to do? And again God is pretty clear, isn't it. He gives us the mission? And I love how it says Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria in the Ends of the Earth. And Jerusalem is the very specific city that they start in, right, it's smaller, and Judea is a region, and then Samaria is a region. Further it will be cross cross cultural, yeah, and cross cultural, and then to the Ends of the Earth is even further. So it's like a bullseye that starts in the middle in Jerusalem and it just goes ring after ring after ring after ring, and it goes outward and it says, start where you are in other words, in your neighborhood, in your workplace, in your sphere of influence. Right, and then so bring the Gospel both here and then also there, do your part and wherever you go. And by the way, I also love an old time preacher. I can't remember who it was, but I remember this old time preacher talk about when he said the word go, it was it literally translates into as you are going, as you are going, as you are going, that's right, And so it doesn't just it doesn't mean go. And then once you get to the destination, then preach the gospel. It says as you are going, which means every day on your journey, wherever you are, which is an incredible translation. So when you get that as you are going, which is what the original Greek, it's it's a way that you can translate the original Greek. The other thing is in the NIV does this really well? It says in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the ends of the earth, not then, right. It doesn't say go to Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria. It's all now. So God's call on the church is to go everywhere, all at once, right, which is which is a real big idea, so you everywhere we go. It's not like evangelism is a destination for some day somewhere you go on a missions trip. All mission is local mission, all of it. So as you're going wherever you are, and then if that happens, then Christians are everywhere, and so we would always be sharing the Gospel everywhere if we understood that it's not an event that happens when we get to a place, but that we're living it all the time and we're declaring the gospel. So yeah, yeah, I went to the Detroit Lions game downtown to meet my family. They were playing the Cleveland Browns, and I had this big ordeal where I was. I was in a crutch. Yeah yeah, back in a daily Oh you told it on this episode on this Well, basically I wasn't planning on going into details, but basically I ended up walking all the way to the to the stadium, forgot my tickets, went all the way back. I was well into the second quarter and as I was trying to ruffle and shuffle, uh, the guy who is parking the cars and watching the parking lot saw my Bible And as I'm trying to get my tickets and go back to the stadium to meet my family. He goes, Hey, I just have a quick question for you. He goes, how does the person know for certain they can go to heave when they died? And I was like, oh, is that all you know? I was like, well, I guess my time with my family is hijack because I'm not walking away from this right, And it's just the it's the idea of like, as you are going, right, and so here I am in the middle of doing whatever. Yeah, but you know it's the mission. Here I am in the middle of this parking lot. And then of course, you know, it's not as if I could lead him to Christ in twenty minutes. This poor guy, you know, he's got a thousand questions. And do you remember David would Yeah, And David Wood always taught us, you know, to say, hey, that's a great question. Let's put that question to the side, and let's talk about salvation, right, and then let's talk about the message of Jesus, and then at the end of that, let's answer your question. And chances are they won't have that same questions. Did dinosaurs roam the earth? Right? You know that kind of thing. But this guy, you know, he so basically, hey, it was all mission from that point on. So I love as we wrap up. I love how the Book of Acts chapter one explains this. They're asking Jesus, when are you coming back? So the things Christians want to talk about, when's Jesus come back? When's Jesus coming back? When's Jesus come back? When's Jesus coming back? And he goes, it's none of your business. He literally says, it's not for you to know, right, So it's not your business. So get to work, right, get to work. Go share the gospel. The work he gave us is go tell everyone everywhere. All the rest of the things we do, passing out programs and passing out coffee in church and making sure the floors are vacuumed, all those things are nice things, they're important things, but they're only for the purpose of being able to share the gospel right right, everything we do. So you go share the gospel. Learn to share the gospel personally. How do you close the deal with your sons and your daughters. How do you share the gospel with your neighbors? How do you bring up a gospel conversation? With your coworker. God called you to go, But I know so many Christians who are obsessed about end times, obsessed about end times and never share the gospel right, right, And so Jesus said, it's none of your business. Go, And then there's still standing there looking up and having going. I wonder when he's coming back, right, And so the angels have to remind him again. And so I think it's important that we be reminded over and over and over and over, because I think the hardest thing for Christians to do is to get up and go, whether it's across the office or across the street or ass over the world. Yeah, and you don't have to have a Bible degree. You don't have to know theology. You don't have to just like I'm referenced David Wood just a minute ago. You don't have to know the answer to every question that every agnostic has. The only thing you have to know is I once was lost and now I'm found. Yeah, you need to know your story, that's right, who you were before you became a Christian, What was the event or the things God used to catch your attention? And what did you do? Right? Hey, I confess my sin, accepted Christ my savior, and then what has happened afterwards? And if you know your story and you can learn how to tell God's story, the fact that God made us to love us, but we are sinners and Jesus paid the price for our sin and salvations by grace through faith. If you can figure out how to tell those things, your story and God's story, you're qualified to share the gospel. Right And I always advise people just re memorize John three sixteen. God loved, God gave, We believe we have. Those forwards are in that verse. Yep. So hey, that looks like our time. So as we read it, that is it. We wrap up this series. And so we will see you for great new information. Well tomorrow, tomorrow we're doing an entire day of stump the pastor. That's great. Yeah, so it's gonna be fun. All right. We'll see you then on the Bible, guys,