Blessed Reassurance

Jonah 1: 17 - 2: 10         Luke 24: 36 -49

Troubled hearts need peace

Jesus speaks peace to the calloused hearts and darkened minds ofHis people (Mathew 13: 15). Without His light we have ears that hear not and eyes that see not. In Romans 1: 21 natural man is described as having foolish darkened hearts with futile thinking.

The newly resurrected Jesus speaks to such hearts, (translated minds), in the closed room where His followers were hiding in fear (John 20: 19). In Luke 24: 38 we read "Why are you troubled and why do doubts rise in your minds? (hearts)"

It is this despondency that Jesus addresses. He is engaged in bringing blessed reassurance. He shows them solid evidence that it is really Him, risen from the dead and that as a result of this everything can be looked at from the sunny side.

His risen presence changes everything.

Yet He is aware that His disturbed followers need positive reassurance and reinforcement from the Scriptures. He speaks to them about His risen identity from the Old Testament, from the writings of Moses, the prophets and the writings beginning with the Psalms.

This Biblical explanation leads to an exposition on the impact of this risen reality on their mission for the future.

He was desiring to empower them by affirmation, exhortation and blessing so that they would shake off their anxieties and focus on the certainties of his Kingdom expansion and their vital part in its process.

He tells them, though, to stay in the city until they have been clothed with power from above which would most certainly arrive, sent to them from the Father, as promised to His Son. The Son would send the promised Holy Spirit who would activate from within their new hearts and minds and lives so as to witness for Him in the world to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem.