Amen. People of God, let us turn to our Ascension evening reading, Luke chapter 24, the last chapter of Luke, the last verses of Luke. We'll read from 36 to 53. We'll look especially at 44 to 53. The details of how many times Jesus appeared and the days on which he walked on this earth between his resurrection and ascension, those are all found elsewhere, especially in Acts, but in various other places. The few details we have here is more than the other Gospels, and that Luke is the only Gospel who ends with the ascension. But we will be looking at, in those few details, what Luke focuses on for the last days of Jesus on this earth. So let us read Luke chapter 24, beginning at verse 36. As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, peace to you. They were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. And he said to them, Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? 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. And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, have you anything to eat? They gave him a piece of broiled fish and he took it and ate before them. Then he said to them, these are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and said to them, thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in the name of all nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my father upon you, but stay in the city until you are clothed with the power from on high. And he led them out as far as Bethany, And lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple, blessing God. The grass withers, the flower fades, the word of our Lord, our ascended King, endures forever. Dear congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the question of where to find Jesus is an absolutely vital question. Without knowing who Jesus is, without coming to Jesus, without seeing him, it is impossible to be saved. So then the question comes, well, where do we see Jesus? Well, we cannot go to Jerusalem to find him there disputing with the Pharisees in the temple. The temple is gone and Jesus has not been there for 2,000 years. We cannot go by the Sea of Galilee to hear Jesus preaching there to the multitudes anymore. That also was two thousand years ago. Indeed, the body of Jesus is now in the invisible realm. We cannot go to any place on this earth to find him. So if we cannot go to any place, where do we go? We go not to a place, but we go to a page. And not to a page, but to every page. Every page of Scripture. This is our theme this evening. See Jesus in all the scriptures. This we can and must do even though his body has left this world. See Jesus in scripture. He is there. see Jesus in Scripture will be our second point. He is not bodily here. So first that we are to see Jesus in Scripture because he is there. Now one of the blessings of having the four different Gospels is the different focus of each. And so Matthew does not speak about the Ascension at all, but Matthew would focus upon the Great Commission. And with that, he would bring his gospel to a close. In John, we don't have the record of the Ascension. We do have many words about the Spirit coming after Jesus leaves. And we do get many of the details of the appearances of Jesus to the disciples, including Doubting Thomas. In Mark, we get even less details. We get nothing about what Jesus did after he rose from the tomb. We are simply left to marvel at the empty tomb and then the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But here in Luke, we have a focus which does mention the ascension and which does show us the teaching of Jesus in those last 40 days some of his first words as risen Savior and some of his last words as risen Savior on earth before the Ascension and the focus is that Jesus is to be found in all the scriptures this is the focus of his first words recorded by Luke after after his resurrection. So we turn back to earlier in the chapter. We see the road to Emmaus and there's two of them. They're going towards the village Emmaus. Jesus begins walking with them. They do not even notice that he is with them and they're speaking, you know, what's going on? Why did he die? Why are we left here by ourselves? And then we read this, in Luke 24 verses 25 to 27. And he said to them, O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted them in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself. And so Jesus begins by speaking about how we will look to all of the scriptures and find Jesus there. And then that is what the largest portion of this last words of Jesus to his disciples is here in our text. And so while I was still with you, And so Jesus is talking about the things that I can still say that while I said while I was with you and while I have my last days with you and and Jesus says in verse 44. He wants to show them that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Now, when Jesus says that, he is focusing, as we read on, upon especially that he must suffer and on the third day rise from the dead. Verse 46 tells us that. But he's saying more than that. As the road to Emmaus makes clear, he opened, he began with Moses and showed them from all the scriptures how he is there. It's more than just the prophecies of his suffering. It's every page. It's all of the Old Testament. And indeed, that's what those words, Law of Moses, Prophets, Psalms, that's what that indicates. It indicates all of it. have our own order to the Old Testament today. Jesus and the disciples actually ordered the books a little bit differently, exactly the same books, just in a little bit different order. And this was the threefold division by which they named all of the Old Testament. So first, the Law of Moses, and that one we still use today sometimes to speak of the first five books. And then the Prophets, and here it's being used differently than we would use it. The prophets included not only the later prophets, whom we still call the prophets, but also what were called the earlier prophets, such as Joshua, and then the Psalms, which included not just the Psalms, but the Psalms and Proverbs and Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes and other books. In other words, Jesus is saying, look, what we call the three divisions of the whole Old Testament, all of it, I am there. I am there. This is what Jesus labored to open their eyes, to make them understand all of the scriptures. People of God, if you had 40 days left to live, what would those days look like? What would you talk about? What would you do? Well, I think we would do what we would call important things. Hopefully that would include speaking about Jesus and who he is, pointing others to him. Well, we know what Jesus did in his last 40 days. He spoke about himself. And especially this truth, that we can find him himself in all of the Old Testament scriptures. That's what Jesus did in his last 40 days on earth. At the beginning of his time, at the end of those 40 days, again, Luke's not the one who tells us it was 40 days, but we see some of his first words, some of his last words, and that he labored to open their minds to understand the scriptures, verse 45. To understand what? That I am there, Jesus says. Understand I am there. People of God, let us never miss this truth. Let it shape our reading of all of the scriptures, old and new. We have the new now, but of all of the old. This must be the first thing we see. When we go to the law, the first question we ask is not, how is this going to help me live my life today? The first question we ask is not, am I going to find inspiration for my life in the Psalms that I open up? The first question we ask must always be, where is Jesus? Where is Jesus in this passage? What is this teaching me about Jesus and the beauty of who he is and what he has done? You see, if we reverse that order, we're going to we're going to run into all kinds of trouble. Think about the law. What happens if we if we read the law? without putting Jesus first. Well, if we read the law without putting Jesus first, we're either going to fall into, you know, moralism thinking we can do it, which is also deception because we can't, or we're going to fall into despair realizing that we can't do it. But what happens when we put Jesus first and we say he is the law keeper? He did it all. Then we can come to it and see, this is my rule of gratitude. And this is what I am called to do as his servant. We must put Jesus first. When we go to Proverbs, what happens if we read it without putting Jesus first? then we can get stuck, lost, finding our own wisdom, living in our own thinking. But if we remember that wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord, that Jesus himself is our wisdom, now we can say, I'm seeking to make hard decisions as his servant, and I'm going to falter along the way. I'm not going to be perfectly wise. If we read Leviticus without putting Jesus first, we're just plain going to get lost in the maze of bloody details and it's not going to mean much of anything to us. But if we put Jesus first, if we ask the question as we are reading it, where is Jesus upon this page? We see that he is the perfect bloody sacrifice who paid for all of our sins and our uncleanliness. He is the one who's able to ascend the mountain of the Lord and pay for our sins. How do we read the scriptures? Do we put Jesus first before we ask anything else? This is not only for adults. This is, this is for children. You know, it's, it's tempting. Because children have a hard time learning how to be obedient, to go through family devotions, and to focus on things like, you know, scripture wants us to love each other, to be kind to one another. Scripture wants you to love your brother and you to love your sister, and to honor mommy and daddy. Now, those things are true. Those things are true. And we need to get there. But are we first showing our children, Jesus Christ is beautiful. Jesus Christ is the rule keeper that you need, that mommy and daddy also need. Do you see how it has completely changed the perception? Do you see how a child who would be constantly pointed out that truth will be perhaps less tempted to see life as merely a set of rules, but Lord willing, with their eyes directed to Jesus Christ, they would see his beauty first, and then be able to look at all else that God's word would call us to. It is a completely different focus for adults, for children, for everyone. This is what we must see. Jesus Christ is there. He is on every page and He is beautiful. Now our second point is that we must see Jesus in scripture because He's not bodily here. As we said in our introduction, we can't go to Jerusalem and find Jesus leaving footprints anymore. We can't find the body of Jesus. We can't find the dead body because there is no dead body. We can't find the living body because that body has ascended into heaven. We are not gonna find him here. We can also think about the teaching of scripture and think about the things that Jesus did not say. And we say this, Jesus did not say, look for me in visions, look for me in dreams, look for me in new miracle makers throughout the centuries. No, no, no, Jesus said, Look for me in the Scriptures. This is the only place you're going to find me. Think of how necessary this lesson was for the disciples as they begin preaching, as they begin the founding of the New Testament Church. The New Testament Scriptures haven't even been written yet. What are they going to turn to? Where are they going to look? They must be turning to the Old Testament Scriptures. Jesus isn't there anymore. Jesus isn't teaching the crowds. The New Testament's not written. What are they gonna do? They must open up the Old Testament. And indeed, when Jesus is gone, this is the lesson that he did open their minds to understand, and which they will carry out. We see so many examples of this in the book of Acts. We can begin in Acts 2, and we can look at the summary of the sermon that the apostle Peter preaches. And what is his text? His text is Joel chapter two. And where is he quoting from? He's quoting from Psalm 16 and Psalm 110. And he's also making reference to second Samuel seven. And that's all there in the 12 verse summary of the Pentecost sermon of the apostle Peter. And then following this very pattern that Jesus laid out for them first opening their minds to understand I am there and then to say, there must be a call for repentance and preaching the forgiveness of sins, proclaiming this in my name to all nations. And that's exactly what the apostle Peter does. After opening up the scriptures, after showing them the beauty of Jesus Christ right there in the Old Testament passages before them, they then say, what must we do? And the apostle says, repent. and be baptized. This is the lesson the disciples learned. Well, they then taught it to the other officers of the early church. And so we, there's so many examples in Acts. We're just going to pick three of them. The one we looked at already is Peter. The next one is the deacon, who's also an evangelist named Philip. And what does he do when he finds the Ethiopian eunuch? The Ethiopian eunuch is reading Psalm 53. And he says, who is here? And Philip says, Jesus is there. Jesus is there, believe in him, be baptized. Repent, you are saved when you look and trust in Jesus Christ with the repentance of sin. And then what about the apostle untimely born, the apostle Paul, who comes onto the scene later? What will be the focus of his preaching? We read that this summarized in Acts chapter 17. It's speaking about his stay in Thessalonica, but it mentions that this is what he always did. Acts 17, verses 2 and 3, and Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the scriptures. which, again, there's basically no New Testament scriptures written yet. He reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and rise from the dead, and saying, this Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ. He opened up the Old Testament and showed them that Jesus was there. This must be the first thing we see. It is the only way that we can now see Jesus and we can see Jesus here. He is found on the pages of all scripture. People of God, it is tempting to measure ourselves by what we have not seen. I have not seen the highest waterfall on earth. I have a list of great ancient wonders I have not seen that I want to see or whatever it might be. And we might be tempted to say, I have not seen Jesus walking on this earth. And then to be sad. We cannot see the greatest teacher who has ever lived, the healer, Jesus himself. But people of God, we have the precious sight of Jesus Christ. It's right here, from Genesis to Revelation and every book in between. And so the disciples, who were so sad when they thought Jesus was in the grave and when they were not understanding the truth that the scriptures had said that he would rise again after three days, when they were not understanding what the Old Testament said about Jesus, they were sad. But when Jesus does come, and teaches them this and leaves as the risen ascended king. Now there is no sadness. There is only joy. There is only joy. And that's how Luke ends. They worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they were continually in the temple, blessing God. That's where we go to see Jesus. We go to the pages of scripture and we worship him. in His special dwelling places, even as we worship Him with joy already as we're walking along the way. He is not here in His body. He is ascended. But people of God, we have the most beautiful sight, the sight of Jesus Christ and all that He has done. on the pages of scripture themselves. Amen. Let us pray. Lord God Almighty, we thank you that we are not left in sadness, in blindness, but that you leave us with many reasons to rejoice, including this great reason that we can find you so clearly revealed upon the pages of your Holy Word. We can see the full beauty of all that you have done and all of history working towards the perfect Son of Israel, Jesus Christ and His work of suffering, of dying, of rising again, of ascending, all of it, the Old Testament has already shown us, even as the New Testament shows us to it in even more clear beauty. We rejoice. Help us indeed to see Jesus first. In His name we pray, Amen.