Clothed with power from on high!

Day Nine  Luke 24:38-49       from Jesus Last Days, A Model For Our Days

³⁸ And He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? ³⁹ See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” ⁴⁰ And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. ⁴¹ While they still could not believe it because of their joy and amazement, He said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” ⁴² They gave Him a piece of a broiled fish; ⁴³ and He took it and ate it before them.

⁴⁴ Now He said to them, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” ⁴⁵ Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, ⁴⁶ and He said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, ⁴⁷ and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. ⁴⁸ You are witnesses of these things. ⁴⁹ And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

Jesus is again showing evidence to His friends, proving that it really is Him. In verses 39-43 He is presenting physical evidence, showing the wounds on His hands and feet, then eating with them. In verse 44 Jesus goes beyond the physical, He cites the written word, reminding them of the things He had spoken to them. It’s interesting to see His words here,   “that all things must be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me”     Remember back on day four of our reflection on these last days, Jesus said, the two commandments, loving God and loving others summed up all the law and the Prophets. Jesus declares here that He has in fact fulfilled all that was written about Him.

It is amazing to study how accurately prophecy predicted the Messiah’s coming and how completely Jesus fulfilled what was predicted. There are at least 45 Messianic Prophecies from Genesis to Zechariah which are fulfilled by Jesus. Even to list them here, let alone attempt to study them would go far beyond the time we have in this type of reflection. What we can see though, through the model of Jesus last days on earth that we are looking at, is that Jesus gives us a perfect example of the fulfillment of the two great commandments. His perfect love for God is displayed through His obedience to the will of His Father. His obedience, even to death on the cross. His perfect love for man is displayed in His paying the price for our sin, by His sacrifice, His death on the cross. John 15:14 says: “You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.”  What did Jesus command us? “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind and you shall love your neighbor as yourself."    Again, Jesus never asks us to do something He has not accomplished.

It’s all so simple, yet we fail so miserably. Take heart though, the apostle Paul suffered the same failure. In Romans 7:15 he says: I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate, I do.    All of us, because of our old sin nature, struggle to do what is right.  Jesus says we are His friends if we do what He commands us. We need more than just knowledge of His commands we need obedience to them. We, like Paul, constantly battle with our old nature. We cannot win the battle in our own strength. Jesus supplies the answer. The key to our victory is in Luke 24:49. “Behold I send  the promise of My Father upon you, but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.”   The promise of the Father is of course the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised that it would be better for us after He was gone because He would send the Helper(John 16:7) In the KJV,  Jesus tells the disciples to tarry. The word tarry used here is the Greek word kathizo, which means: to sit down, to settle, to hover, dwell, continue. The disciples were to tarry until they were endued with power. The word endued is the Greek enduo, which is in the sense of sinking into a garment, to array, clothe with, have or put on.

The Holy Spirit is promised to us. Jesus says: …you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.(John 14:7)   We though, just as the disciples, need to tarry. We need to sit down, to settle. We need to continue so hard after Jesus that we dwell and hover in His presence. Then we will be endued with the power of the Holy Spirit. It is beyond comprehension that God, in the person of the Holy Spirit, actually dwells in us.  How much more awesome, that we can be clothed and arrayed with the Holy Spirit, to be so endued with power from on high that we like Peter in Acts 5:15-16 can experience people being healed in our presence, by the power of God. That’s the power we are endued with. It is that power that we need to fulfill His commission in Matthew28:18-20. And Jesus came to them saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”     We are instructed to teach what Jesus commanded. Jesus commanded that we love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind, and that we love our neighbor as our self.

Endued with power, to bring the power of God's presence into other people's lives. Loving God and loving others.   May we be true to this simple and glorious call, as we go on with Jesus.   

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