On the Heels of the Resurrection

Acts 1:1-2

I have read many of the resurrection passage that are given in Scripture and have always dreamed of what it must have been like to see a resurrected Christ!  That dream will be a reality one day!  But, honestly, my dream ends there and I can now sit back and rest – Selah.  As I began to ponder this thought I had a strange feeling that I was forgetting something.  Shouldn’t seeing the resurrected Christ be enough for anyone?  As I read this text in Acts 1, I realized that something was missing.  Jesus didn’t stop his work after the resurrection; He continued to pour his life into his followers.  In Luke 24:45-49, Christ appears to his disciples after the resurrection and “connects all the dots” for them.  You see they thought, like I did, that after the resurrection everything is over.  Verse 45 says that Christ opened the minds of the disciples so that they could understand the Scriptures?  But I thought they already knew the Scriptures?  Yes, but there were more Scriptures to be written!  Thus, verses 46-49 summarize what will take place as we read through the book of Acts: the disciples preach the resurrected Christ, salvation for all nations is offered beginning in Jerusalem, the disciples will be His witnesses to all people, and Christ will send the Holy Spirit to give them the power to accomplish these things.

Then it hit me in a phrase like this: we must not stop with the resurrection; we must continue on to fulfill the Great Commission.

So what does all this mean for readers of the 21^st century?  It means we must follow through.  Christians cannot be content with only the resurrection, and the hope it gives us for the future.  We have a job to do now.  We must carry out the Great Commission just like the followers of Christ did in the book of Acts.  Forgetting to follow through can cause us to become selfish.  By this I mean that if we don’t share the gift of salvation with others we are being selfish.  When refuse to move pass the resurrection toward the Great Commission we become selfish.  Now, this entry is not to discuss the many facets of the Great Commission, of which I believe there are as many as there are kinds of people.  But here’s the bottom line as I try to pull all this together.  The disciples imbibed all they could from the ministry of Jesus for 3½ years, but there came a time when they had to put what they absorbed and learned into practice.  They could not continue to sit at the feet of Jesus like Mary did, it was time for them to get up and serve like Martha did.  Continuing to sit at the feet of Jesus and not pass on what they learned to others would be selfish. 

If we are going to follow through then let’s make sure we have soaked with Jesus first, then we can unselfishly serve Christ by obeying his command to make disciples.