Jesus’ Last Words

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Tonight we’re going to be in Matthew chapter 28, Mark chapter 16, and Luke chapter 24. If those do sound familiar, they are the final chapters of each of what the theologians call the synoptic gospels, the three gospels that are closely similar to one another. And we’re looking at those for a reason.

Don’t panic, we’re not going to read. We’re not going to go over the whole chapter of each of them. Matthew 28, Mark 16, and Luke 24.

We’re going to go over parts of these. Not so I can pick and choose what I want it to say. Be very leery if a preacher tells you, let’s turn 15 pages in our Bibles and we’re going to look at all these.

I’m not saying that’s always a bad thing. I have done that. But be careful that they’re not cherry picking verses to make it say what they want it to say.

The reason I’m having us look at three different passages is because we’re going to look at the same thing from three different perspectives. Because each of the apostles who wrote these things down recorded things just a little bit differently. Not to say they were contradictory, but to say they each remember different details of the story and we get a full picture when we put them all together.

Today, this morning, into this afternoon also, my dad ran in the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon. And it was his first time to run a full marathon. He’s run half marathons before.

I think he’s been doing the Oklahoma City Memorial Half Marathon for several years. He used to come over when I lived in Arkansas, and he’d do the Bentonville Half Marathon. And I think I’ve told you all before about my one and only 5K I did with him.

And it was, well, the end of the story is I was the last one to finish the race who was not in a stroller or a wheelchair. And I’m lucky I wasn’t in a wheelchair after that. But he ran the full marathon today, 26.

2 miles on purpose. And I think it’s crazy, but he enjoys it and it’s a challenge. And he said now that he’s done it, he doesn’t have to do that again.

And I thought it was funny. He got home this afternoon after we’d all already had lunch. And he ran 26.

2 miles today, but we had to carry him the last 30 feet up to the house. My cousin Whitney usually runs with him. She did the half today, and she ran that last mile with him and then drove him home.

So if any of you ever see, this has nothing to do with the message, but if any of you ever see on Facebook where I will post pictures of my dad, I was asked by people at the church in Arkansas, who is that woman in the pictures with your dad? Our cousin Whitney. She runs with him.

Anyway, I am going somewhere with this. He ran the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon 26. 2 miles on purpose.

And yesterday he was filling out his registration packet. I guess he’d registered before, but they have some kind of packet they had to turn in today. And one of the things in there was emergency contact.

And that’s when I should have known, but it really hadn’t hit me before. Oh, my goodness, there’s a chance of being able to get hurt. I guess sometimes people run marathons, they trip and bust their face, or they get hit by a car, or some of them have a heart attack.

Yeah, have a heart attack. My mom was following him. It’s neat and creepy all at the same time that you can now track somebody by satellite from their iPhone.

And mom was watching where he was on the course today. She said, as long as that little dot’s moving, I know he’s okay. But he was filling out, who should be my emergency contact?

He asked Mom, should it be you or should it be Whitney because she’s there? Mom said, we’ll put Whitney down. And I got to thinking, okay, he’s having to make some arrangements for what happens if the unexpected happens.

God forbid some final arrangements. He has a heart attack out there on the track, and what happens then? Well, that just got me thinking all kinds of things.

I wasn’t worried about it. I knew he was going to be okay. I knew he’d train for theÑnow, if I went out and tried to run 26 miles, Well, yeah, psychiatry.

At the very least, I’d have to be committed afterwards. But it got me thinking about the whole thing about final wishes. He’s having to make a reign.

Now, it doesn’t say who’s your funeral director in the packet. Thank goodness that would be a little morbid. But he’s having to plan ahead in case the unexpected happens.

And it got me thinking about times that I’ve been with somebody, that they’ve made those arrangements, that they’ve made those final wishes known. They’ve uttered final words. And those are always things that we take very seriously, or should be things that we take very seriously.

What are somebody’s final wishes? Even if you’re not with somebody when they step out of this life, you always remember what the final, or in my experience, you remember what the final words were. What was the last thing they said?

What was the last thing they wanted me to know? One thing in particular I remember was my grandfather. He’s actually my grandmother’s second husband after my grandfather passed away.

But we adopted him as a grandfather, wonderful man, passed away a few years ago. And he always used to say on the telephone or when we were leaving, I’ll talk at you later. Not I’ll talk to you later.

That always struck me weird, but I remembered it. I’ll talk at you later. Well, a few years ago, he had an aneurysm and ended up in a coma and he died after a couple months in the hospital. And I ended up preaching his funeral. And I remembered the last thing that he had ever said to me before he fell into that coma was, I’ll talk at you later.

I remembered that at the funeral. It made an impact on me. And I said, you know what? He said, I’ll talk at you later.

I said, he will. We’re going to meet again someday. You know, when somebody starts making their final arrangements or what they want you to know or what they want their final words to be, or maybe they didn’t know anything was coming and you remember what their final words were to you.

Those are things that we remember and we hang on to. Where I’m going with this tonight is we’re going to look at Jesus’ last words. Not his last words before he died, although we could spend a lot of time talking about those.

But his last words when after he died and then after he undied, if you want to put it that way, after he rose again from the dead. I’m still, I don’t ever want to get to the point where the resurrection becomes a routine part of the story. He was dead and then he stopped being dead.

That’s amazing. He rose again from the dead. He walked with his disciples about 40 more days.

And then when the time came for him to go back to be with the father, he gave them some final instructions. These were his last words to them during his earthly ministry. Now we’ll hear from him again.

But these were the last words he gave as part of his earthly ministry. These are things that the disciples obviously felt it was important to remember. There are not, we can’t look at every story in the Gospels and say, oh, they all thought this was important to remember and all wrote it down.

There aren’t that many stories that they all four talk about. There’s the feeding of the 5,000. There’s the crucifixion and resurrection and the ascension.

I’m pretty sure John mentions the ascension. These are some of those things that they all thought were important enough to talk about. We’re just going to look at Matthew, Mark, and Luke tonight and each of them, their perspective on what were Jesus’ last words.

Because if we’re going to look at our earthly loved ones and say, what was the last thing they told us? And we’re going to hold on to that. Or knowing that something could happen during the race today.

What did he want us to remember? What did he want to happen? And we remember that.

How much more important is it to remember the last words of our Lord during his time on earth with us? So if you haven’t already done so, I invite you to turn to Matthew chapter 28. We’re going to look starting in verse 16.

Then the 11 disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. It’s amazing that even at that point, there were some who still said, can this really be real?

But it says they doubted. I don’t know how strong that doubt was. I don’t know that they were hardened skeptics saying he’s going to have to prove something to me.

Thomas was probably the most skeptical of the bunch. He said, unless I see him with my own eyes, I will not believe. Well, then Jesus showed up and offered to let him touch the wounds.

Now, did he or didn’t he? I don’t recall the Bible saying that he actually did touch the wounds. I think in that moment, he saw Jesus and was convicted.

The Bible doesn’t tell us he did or didn’t. I’m assuming then he did not because he saw him and he believed. But to whatever level it was, whether it was somebody saying, no, there’s no way this is real. Or it’s somebody doubting to the extent of, I still can’t believe what I’m seeing.

This is incredible. They still had questions. They still doubted.

And Jesus came and spake unto them saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, because all power has been vested in me. Remember, Colossians says that in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

He’s not lesser in the Godhead. He’s not a lesser God. He’s not a man.

All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily. He said, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Because of that, you go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Now, I’ve spent a lot of time separating these words out and teaching on the importance, not here necessarily, but teaching on the importance of all these words.

And I can tell you what he’s actually saying is, as you are going, make disciples. Folks, the Christian life is not supposed to be, here we’ll go out and do evangelism, here we’ll go and do evangelism, Here we’ll go do evangelism and in between is regular life. As we are going through regular life, we’re supposed to be teaching all nations along the way.

Now, if God sends us to, Brother Franks is going to be here in a few weeks. If God sends us to Ukraine and says, I want you to be missionaries to Ukraine, then as you’re going to Ukraine, you make disciples. In Ukraine, you make disciples on the way.

If God sends you to spend out your life working and raising a family in Lindsay, Oklahoma, then while you’re doing that, teach all nations along the way. As you’re going, teach all nations is the sense that we get from the Greek. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. See, what are we teaching them?

Well, something that’s followed up with baptism. We don’t see any example in all of Scripture of somebody undergoing the ordinance of baptism without having first made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. So what are we teaching them? It’s not be nice to each other.

That’s important, but it’s secondary. It’s not live a good life. That’s important, but it’s secondary.

We are teaching them the gospel that then transforms from the inside out. We are teaching them that Christ died for the sins of the ungodly. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. We lead them to Christ. We baptize them.

And then he comes back around to that T word again, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. Teach them the gospel. Baptize them.

And then train them to follow me in all things. And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. How in the world are we going to follow these instructions?

How in the world are we going to carry out this commission? This is such a huge job that has been given to the believers. How in the world are we going to do this?

He says, lo, I am with you always. Okay, great, he’s with us. Don’t forget back there in verse 18, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

So we’re not just backed up by anybody. He says, go and do my work. As a matter of fact, let me work through you.

And I’m there with you always. And I have all the power in heaven and in earth. Amen.

That’s me commenting on that statement and that’s how the passage ends as well. Let’s turn to Mark chapter 16. And Mark records the same exchange.

We look at it and say, well, why are the words differently? First of all, they each cover different parts of the conversation. It would be a contradiction if they all said these are the exact words that he said from beginning to end, we got everything.

and then they all say different things. As they’re jotting down notes, I noticed some of you jot down notes when I’m up here preaching. I’m sure if we compared all of your notes, you don’t write down all the same things.

Doesn’t mean one of you is right and the others are wrong. Just means you wrote down different parts of the story. I wondered though, when they do cover the same parts of his speech, of his message, why are the words not exactly the same?

There could be a couple reasons. It could be that somebody wrote their book down in Hebrew first or in Aramaic, and then it was translated into Greek. Translation often can adjust the wording without changing the meaning.

It could be, and I’ve read this, that they were not as concerned in their day with word-for-word quotes. You know, we can change a word and somebody says, well, you misquoted me. That’s why reporters today use tape recorders, because they want to prove, well, no, President Clinton used the word is there.

Well, what does is mean? Okay, they were not that ridiculous and caught up in, well, he used this word, and so he meant this, or he didn’t use the preposition to there. They were writing down the meaning of what he taught.

It’s not that there were contradictions. It’s not that they remembered it wrong. And so we go to Mark’s record of the story.

Afterward, he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat and upbraided them because of their unbelief and hardness of heart. Two things we already see here in common. The eleven were gathered together, and some of them still had questions.

Some of them weren’t quite there yet. And he upbraided them for their unbelief and hardness of heart because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen. And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

Now that may not be a word-for-word copy of what Matthew said. Which, by the way, if it was a word-for-word copy of what Matthew said, then the skeptics would just say, well, they got together and got their story straight and copied off of each other. We can’t win.

whatever God had done, some skeptic was going to come along and say, well, see, that proves it’s not true. Okay. Saying the same thing.

It may not be a word for word copy of what Matthew said, but he’s saying the same thing that Matthew records. Jesus said, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned.

Wait a minute. Whoa. We’ve got to be baptized to be saved.

Notice he doesn’t say he that believeth not and is not baptized is not saved. He says he that believeth and is baptized will be saved. It’s not that baptism saves you.

We could take that out of context and it looks like it’s teaching salvation by baptism. But we have passages that are very clear that salvation is by grace through faith. We have other passages that are not so clear that look like they could say baptism is part of salvation.

It’s a basic principle of interpreting scripture that we let the clear passages interpret the not so clear passages. And you look at it from their day and their perspective, you got saved, you got baptized too. That’s just what you did.

You trusted Christ and made this profession of faith. If you’re going to profess it, you might as well profess it all the way because you’re already all in and you’re already risking your life. Now, I’m not saying it’s a, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing because quite honestly, churches are too full of people who want to make a half-hearted commitment.

That’s not to say anything about this group of people. I’m just saying churches in America by and large are too full of people who want to make a half-hearted commitment to Christ. And so they undergo baptism and join the church and they’re not sure what they want to do. So I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to wait and be baptized.

I’m not saying it’s a good thing either. You be the judge of that according to the scriptures. But what I am saying is they didn’t do what we do nowadays where, well, I’m going to make a profession of faith in Christ. Let me wait a few weeks.

Let me wait a few years even. Let me wait until I’m on my deathbed to be baptized. I’m one of those cases.

I was saved in January of 1991 when I was five years old. I didn’t undergo baptism until August because I didn’t understand what baptism was. I didn’t understand that it was a commitment.

I was told by other kids that it was so you didn’t get dirt on you in heaven. I thought, well, what’s the big deal? It’s not that I was trying to be disobedient, but once I finally understood that it was a sign of commitment to Christ, then I underwent baptism.

They didn’t do that in their day. You as an adult made the profession that you trusted Christ. Here is water. What does prevent me from being baptized?

They went out and they did it. So connecting the two here and saying, he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. He’s not saying, I don’t believe, based on what we see in the rest of scripture, that baptism is part of salvation.

He’s just saying the profession and the baptism go hand in hand. And if somehow you made the profession and then you died before you got to the water, I don’t think you’re any less saved. I don’t know how I got off on that rabbit trail, but just want to, on a Sunday night, on a Sunday night crowd, I probably shouldn’t have to make that clear, but I just always want to make sure that nobody misunderstands what it’s saying.

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned. It’s the non-belief that condemns a man. And these signs shall follow them that believe.

In my name shall they cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. All right, there are some things in there I don’t want to do.

and I’ll let you take a guess at what they are. But you know, there are other passages in the Bible that talk about where there be tongues, they will cease. Where there be knowledge, where there be prophecies, they shall vanish away.

There was a time and a place where the tongues and the prophecies and the words of wisdom and the ability to tread on snakes and serpents and drink poison, where that was going to be needed because there would need to be signs to validate the ministry of the men who came after Christ prior to the scriptures being completed. And yet I believe the Bible teaches there came a time when those things came to an end. Were they real?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m not against speaking in tongues.

I just don’t think it’s how God normally operates today. I’m not going to say it has never happened. As Baptists, we tend to run from that.

Oh, that’s the Pentecostals. No, that happened in the early churches. That’s not something we have to run from.

Now, if we want made-up languages in church today that are not real languages and people hearing in real languages that, excuse me, people speaking real languages that they don’t know how to speak. And, excuse me, I lost my train of thought which way I was saying. If God, I don’t believe these gifts are today, are for today.

But if God intervened and we had people stand up in church and speak real languages that they don’t know how to speak and other people understood and heard the gospel in their own language and were converted as it was done in the early churches, I’m not going to be the one standing there saying, God, you can’t do that. The gift of tongues is not for today. But what we see going on so much is not what’s described in the Bible.

But these things are real. And he said, you’re going to go out and you’re going to have the power to do miraculous things. Does that mean we can cast out devils today? I don’t know.

Maybe. I mean, I think the name of Jesus still has the power it always has. Can we drink poisonous things and it not hurt us?

I mean, that’s up to God. I’m not going to try it unless he tells me, unless he specifically tells me to do it. The snake thing, I don’t know.

God might just have to get me for disobedience. I don’t know that I have the faith for that one. But he said, you are going to have power.

And you know what? We saw the fulfillment of all of these things in the New Testament. We saw where they spoke in tongues and people were edified.

Their ministry was validated. We saw where the Apostle Paul had an open door to share the gospel with the people on Malta because he was bitten by a serpent. And they thought he was a dead man for sure.

And when his hand didn’t swell up and he didn’t die, they thought he was some kind of God. And that opened the door for him to share the gospel with a pagan people who had never heard it before. so God said you’re going to go forth in my Jesus said you’re going to go forth in my power is that not the same thing that Matthew said all power is given unto me in heaven and earth go ye therefore and lo I am with you always even unto the end of the world it wasn’t because the disciples were powerful it’s because Christ had the power and sent them and went with them and so we look at Luke’s gospel and what he said, what he recorded of what Jesus said.

Luke chapter 24, starting in, well, let’s start in verse 41. And while they yet believed not, oh, there we go again. They were doubting and Luke records it too.

And while they yet believed not for joy and wondered, he said unto them, have ye any meat? And they gave him a piece of broiled fish and of a honeycomb, He took it and did eat it before them. So he sits down with the eleven and eats with them.

That’s what Mark said. And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning me. And he opened their understanding that they might understand the scriptures.

And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sin should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. Now that’s a little bit different way of saying what Matthew and Mark both recorded, but it’s the same thing. You’re going to go and you’re going to preach my name to all nations.

And you know what? It’s possible too. Let’s look at it from this perspective.

It’s possible too that Jesus said every one of these things word for word. I don’t think he just said one thing about evangelism and then moved on. It was important.

I don’t think he said one thing about making disciples and then moved on. And it’s possible that they each recorded different parts of different things that he said. And that repentance and remission of sins.

Remission means forgiveness. That repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things.

What does it mean that their witnesses go out and tell people. And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you, that tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high. So these three passages together make up what we know of Jesus’ last words to his disciples during his earthly ministry.

I want to just very briefly tonight share with you five things that he was talking about in these three passages. some of them he hinted at in one and some of them he addressed in all three but five things I see among these three passages that that we as his followers now two thousand years later should not take any less seriously just because of the time between us and then but we should realize that these were his last words given to his followers during his earthly ministry and they’re important for us to remember and hold close to us even today the first is that he he unveiled his understanding to them. He wanted them to know and understand the scriptures.

He said, it says in Luke 24, he said unto them, these are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning me. Then opened he their understanding that they might understand the scriptures. That’s when he told them that repentance and remission of sin should be preached to all nations.

We need to understand just as they needed to understand before we go out and try to and minister to him, that he is the fulfillment of all of scripture, that all of scripture is about him and testifies to him. I’m not saying every detail of every story. Oh, let’s look at the story of Abraham and Isaac that I talked about today, this morning.

Abraham went to sacrifice his son. Well, Abraham was a picture of Jesus. Isaac was a picture of Jesus.

The ram was a picture, the knife was a picture. I’m not saying that every detail in scripture was some kind of symbol of Jesus. What I am saying is that we are hard-pressed to find any story, any account, any book in Scripture that teaches us anything that does not reflect back on the coming or the ministry or the character of Jesus Christ. I think the ram was a picture of Jesus Christ. How incredible that a mighty ram would get stuck by the horns in some thorns.

I would think a big thing like that could have pulled out of those thorns, And yet there he was. And just at the moment, just coincidentally happened to be there at the moment that Abraham was about to sacrifice his son to the Lord. Are you kidding me?

I don’t have enough faith to disbelieve the Bible accounts. That was not a coincidence. I believe the idea of God providing a sacrifice.

Gee, where have we heard that before? I believe that was a picture of Jesus Christ. I’ve told you before, my Bible classes at school have heard this many times too. When they sinned in the Garden of Eden, God provided them a covering of animal skins.

Somebody innocent had to die to cover the sins of the guilty. There we are way back in Genesis chapter 3 pointing to Jesus already. We go through every story and we can see how in some way it points to something that Jesus Christ was going to do.

When we get at that in our understanding, and he wanted them to understand that. If we get that through our understanding, through our minds, as one of my co-workers says all the time, when you know that and you’re a knower, it opens the scriptures to you in a brand new way. I shouldn’t say a brand new way, in an old, old way that too many times we forget that it’s all about Jesus.

It makes more sense that way. So he unveiled his understanding to them. He encouraged us to evangelize.

He said, we’ve got to go out and share the gospel to share the good news. He said in Matthew 28, 19, go ye therefore and teach all nations. I’ve already hit on this, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. What are we teaching them?

Well, if we’re teaching them something that leads to baptism, it’s the gospel. It’s the fact that Jesus died for our sins. Mark 16, and he said unto them, Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

I used to quote this in high school, and one of my classmates would crack up because they imagined me out preaching to a possum or something. You know what? If a possum is the only one that’s going to listen, preach the gospel anyway.

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned. He said, go preach the gospel to everybody who will listen. Luke 24, that repentance and remission of sin should be preached in his name among all nations.

That doesn’t just mean every country. That means, as the Bible says, every nation, tribe, and tongue. Every people group, every community, every culture.

The gospel needs to permeate the world. Not everybody’s going to believe it, but everybody should be given the opportunity to hear it. And so he encouraged us to evangelize.

Go out and endlessly, ceaselessly tell people about the Christ who died for them. Third of all, he directed us to disciple. He told them in Matthew 28, Teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.

Don’t just stop at the evangelism. Go further. And I think that’s where a lot of times churches have fallen down on the job, is that we have worked really hard to, if we’ve worked at it at all, we’ve worked really hard to evangelize, which is a good thing.

And we have birthed new baby Christians, and then we’ve just abandoned them to fend for themselves. And the faith of many has been shipwrecked in that way. We wouldn’t birth a baby into this world and leave it out on the porch to fend for itself, and we shouldn’t do it spiritually either.

We’ve got a responsibility to raise up not only children, but young Christians. And a young Christian can be a 70-year-old. If they’re young in Christ, we take young Christians and we shelter them and we nurture them and we raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

That’s the job of the church is to, I can’t remember now where Paul wrote it, but he talks about warning every man until he can present every man perfect in Jesus Christ. That word perfect means complete. It’s our job to bring one another and new believers to maturity in Christ. Fourth of all, he gave access to his authority. We don’t do these things.

We don’t minister. We don’t serve him under our own authority. I’m going out because it’s my opinion and it’s a good thing to do.

We’re going out because he told us to. We serve him and we do the