Today’s Reading: Luke 24:44-53
Luke 24:51 — While He blessed them, He parted from them and was carried up into heaven.
God promises great blessings. After rising from the dead, Jesus blessed the disciples with understanding, purpose, and power. He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. He showed them how the Old Testament revealed that He would suffer and die and rise from the dead on the third day. He gave them the gospel message they were to preach to all nations. And He promised the blessing of the Holy Spirit.
After being with Jesus for three years, the disciples finally began to grasp who Jesus was and to believe that He was whom He claimed to be. When Jesus opened the Old Testament scriptures to them, they understood that Jesus was at the center of all that had been written. The disciples’ minds were opened and they saw the true light.
One of the key elements of the Scripture were the prophecies about Christ’s death and resurrection and why they were necessary for the salvation of sinners. Jesus taught His disciples how His message of repentance and forgiveness connects to His crucifixion and rising from the dead. Jesus gave the disciples the good news of salvation and said that their mission was to proclaim it to everyone.
To enable the disciples to endure the suffering that would result from preaching the gospel, Jesus promised that He would send them power from on high—the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit would strengthen, teach, remind, comfort, and help the disciples in many ways when He came to live within them.
All of these were blessings that Jesus gave His followers before He ascended to heaven. We have been blessed with the same blessings. Jesus has given us the Bible, the body of Christ, and the Holy Spirit to be bless us with understanding, purpose, and power. We are to be Christ’s disciples, following in His footsteps as the original disciples did—worshiping Jesus with great joy and continually blessing God for His great blessings to us.
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