“Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” Romans 10:17

Prayer of the Day: O risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ, who by Your holy resurrection have conquered death and by Your heavenly authority still work through Your Word, grant us steadfast faith to believe Your Gospel, boldness to proclaim it faithfully, and confidence that You Yourself go with us in our witness. Strengthen us by Your Holy Spirit, that through our lives and confession many may come to know Your saving grace; for You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.

A last will and testament is a piece of paper that carries a lot of weight. It determines exactly how your estate will be handled after you die. And it is legally binding. If the person who creates the will passes away, it cannot be changed under any circumstances. To make sure that no one tampers with it for his own benefit, the will is placed in the charge of an executor who makes sure all matters in the will are carried out and distributed correctly.

What we have in our text this morning is Jesus’ last will and testament to His Church before He ascends into heaven. But Jesus’ will is unlike any will you have ever seen before. First, it is meant for God’s Church to fulfill every single day until the day comes when Jesus returns to judge the whole world in righteousness. Second, Jesus’ will does not rely on the authority of someone else to enact it or accomplish it. In other words, Jesus has no need of an executor because it is His authority, the authority of Christ at the right hand of God, that empowers our ministry.

The first important detail of this will ought to be the most obvious: how do we get to be a part of the will in the first place? It is faith, namely faith in the resurrection of Jesus. This is the very cornerstone of the Christian faith. Thousands of years before Jesus died and rose from the dead, Abraham clung to this hope in faith, and it was counted to him for righteousness. Almost exactly a thousand years before Jesus, David prophesied about the resurrection, and he found his faith in those words he received from the Holy Spirit. Whether you are an Old Testament believer or a New Testament believer, to be a part of God’s will requires nothing but a believing heart.

Have you ever received a phone call or had someone come to your doorstep trying to sell you something? It is pretty easy to tell the difference between a good, effective salesman and someone who is just there to fill a quota. The good salesman actually believes in what he is selling you, and that comes out in his pitch.

Well, you are not selling eternal life, but you are proclaiming the most important news the world has ever heard, that salvation is free through Jesus Christ. Jesus chides His disciples for their reluctance to believe that He had bodily risen from the dead. If Jesus’ disciples were to be His ambassadors to the ends of the earth, they needed to have a strong conviction in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. The same is true for us.

Thankfully, from the outset, we have the authority of Christ to empower this facet of our ministry. He has sent His Holy Spirit to create faith in our hearts, to firmly believe in our Savior’s death and bodily resurrection from the dead. He is the One who writes our names into our Savior’s will, the One who strengthens our faith so that we might have the confidence to share the Gospel.

The second important detail that Mark provides in Jesus’ last will and testament is the content of what your message is to be. “And He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.’”

Now maybe you have faced some hesitancy regarding the content of your message to other people. “Can I be this blunt? Won’t it just offend people and drive them away if I tell them that they will be condemned if they do not believe in Jesus?” Are we sometimes scared to preach the Law in its full force? To answer those worries, let us look to our Savior, who never shied away from preaching exactly what people needed at the right time.

One such example is in Matthew 23, when Jesus says, “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.”

In this example, the Law Jesus preaches is directed at the leaders of the church, and you will be hard-pressed to find harsher Law, but for good reason. By their teaching, they were keeping people from going to heaven.

It was not just the religious leaders. Jesus also preached harsh Law to the rich young ruler, the one who desired to enter the kingdom of God by the works he had done. What that man needed to hear was that there was absolutely no way he could keep God’s Law perfectly. There are many examples throughout the Gospels of Jesus preaching very harsh Law to people who needed to hear it, whose pride needed to be torn down.

But what about when Jesus preached the unmitigated Gospel? That happened too. Just think of all the times Jesus assured those who came to Him for help, “Your faith has made you well.” Jesus was always pointing people to put their faith in Him for salvation, that He was the Way, the Truth, and the Life, that no one comes to the Father except through Him, through His grace, through His love.

And among whom did this message resonate the most? Among those whose hearts were pricked by the preaching of the Law, those who knew their sin and sought Jesus for the all-healing solution.

Can you think back to a time in your life when, looking back, you realize how badly you needed the Law of God to shatter you? Maybe you were complacent in sin, or you simply did not know how truly corrupt your nature was. How did it feel to hear God’s Law and have it tear you down to nothing? Now think about when you heard the assurance of God’s forgiveness for your sins through Jesus’ death and resurrection, and how sweet that message tasted, what great peace it brought to your soul. You received what you needed at the right time. And yes, it may have come through a friend, a family member, or a pastor who brought you the Word of God, but it was God who was seeking you.

Remember this: the authority of Christ empowered the one who brought that message to you and empowers you to bring it to others. How God has dealt with you is no different from how God deals with other people, and you are God’s chosen mouthpiece. The authority of Christ empowers your ministry.

The third detail that Mark gives in the last will and testament of Jesus is His active role in accomplishing that will. “And they went out and preached everywhere while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.”

When Jesus sent the apostles out into the world, He gave them other gifts, such as healing the sick, drinking poison, and picking up deadly snakes. These were meant to affirm the disciples’ testimony. They were meant to affirm that these were God’s apostles with God’s Word. They were not the means by which people were converted. That only comes from the Word, as Paul says in Romans 10, “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”

You do not need the power to speak in tongues or to drink poison without dying. God did not even promise those things for us. Tell them how you were a lost sinner who deserved nothing but hell for what you had done. Tell them that there is a God who loved you so much that He sent His Son to take on human flesh, to live a perfect life that we could not live, to die a death that paid for every single sin in full, and who rose from the dead and ascended into heaven so that you could have peace with God and eternal life forever.

That is your sign, your life as a child of God. And if doubt still remains in your heart, remember this: the authority of Christ empowers our ministry. The key to the disciples’ success was not the signs and wonders they performed. It was the fact that the Lord Jesus, the Savior of the whole world, continued to work in them and through them.

After He ascended into heaven, Jesus did not just sit back and rest. Jesus got to work. He sent His Holy Spirit, as He promised, to go with His disciples, to aid them in their preaching, and to use His Word to bring many people to faith. And Jesus has not stopped working, not for a single moment, because even now He uses you to do the same in your part of God’s creation.

You do not have to worry about being the best trained or the most prepared. You do not have to worry about making it to the remotest corner of the world. God has placed His work for you in your corner of the world. That is your mission field. That is where you are to bring the Gospel message by His authority.

Remember, Jesus is the One who created faith in your heart. Remember, Jesus is the One who gives you the very content to preach that can change hearts. Remember, Jesus takes the Word you preach and uses it to call those who are His to faith. Let us depart then with joy, knowing Christ our Lord will fulfill the words of Isaiah 41 among us: “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.” Amen.

—Pastor Jonah Albrecht

Redemption Lutheran Church
Lynwood, WA

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