His Gospel

"Our only commission is to do what He did ..."

JESUS WENT FROM city to city preaching the good news. So many times I have asked what this meant. We are given sermons He preached. The Beatitudes in Matthew 5, 6, and 7 is an example. We are given parables He spoke with in-depth meanings. Yet, what specifically did He say in Galilee and Capernaum, Jerusalem and throughout Judea that caused people to change their hearts forever? How did what He said affect the church's foundation in Acts that they spoke so boldly about salvation and Pentecost?

I've heard the Lord's prayer preached in many ways, but the heart of it is the gospel. Each phrase is what Jesus told the crowds that followed Him everywhere. He was the hallowed name of God which brought the will of God from heaven to earth to forgive our trespasses and be the bread of life. That’s what Jesus spoke again and again, and He confirmed God's heart in it, He displayed God's love for people by the signs and wonders that followed.

READ: “The Lord’s Prayer: An Overview.”

There was no salvation yet. None of Paul's epistles. No leather-bound book which combined both Old and New Testaments. There was no New Testament until He died and fulfilled the Old, until He was Resurrected. There was no one calling upon the name of Jesus for deliverance. Look back at David's psalms, how he begged God not to be angry, not to hold his sins against him. God has now set aside His wrath forever to show mercy. But in David's day, it required such great faith to believe in righteousness. Today, God has provided enough grace through His love to rescue every human being that has ever lived. But those who heard Jesus speak didn't know any of that. John hadn't had his vision. The Holy Spirit hadn't fell at Pentecost. He was with the disciples but not in them (John 14:17). Yet Jesus laid hands on the sick and cast out devils. Yet He commissioned the disciples to go out and do the same in His name.

“And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two; and gave them power over unclean spirits;” (Mark 6:7)

“Then he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases. And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick.” (Luke 9:1-2)

Let me ask you a question. Aren't we commanded to go and do what Jesus did? And I’ll ask this, What “marveled” Him the most? What caused Him the greatest wonder? In modern lingo, we'd say, He asked, "But why?" Or But why not. The answer: He was most amazed when no one in His hometown believed what He said, and He could not do any mighty work there. When He could only lay hands on a few sick folk, He was disappointed.

Do you know why? And why did the faith of a Roman centurion blow His mind? Because here was a man not of Israel with no history of God and yet more faith than anyone who'd been given the Law and the covenant. Abraham's own children rejected Him, yet this Roman didn’t even require Him to lay hands on his servant and yet knew he would be healed. Why was Jesus disappointed in Nazareth? Because He'd come to save people, to heal bodies and mend souls, to give peace to troubled minds. He preached the gospel of peace, of goodwill toward men, they saw and were astonished but didn’t believe (Mark 6:2).

He hasn't changed. We are not called away to another gospel. What Jesus spoke, what He did in the multitudes which followed Him, to heal them all, is our calling. It is His heart to save, to cleanse from sin. He wants to heal and deliver from demonic works. He discipled His followers to do as He did. That's King James for "taught." He taught them how to preach, how to lay hands on people, through His example, and it says they returned to Him rejoicing, "Even the demons are subject to your name." (Luke 10:17) There is no other ministry we should be doing.

The work of apostles and prophets, pastors and teachers, of lay people and children of God is to be the love of God to dying people. We are never "free" from preaching salvation. We are never exempt from laying on of hands. The writer of Hebrews called this a foundational doctrine of the church. If men before Jesus' death, before they even understood the happening of the cross, were willing to cast out devils, then where is our reluctance?

There isn’t another doctrine. That was Jesus' doctrine then, and it was the doctrine of the church in Acts, it was what converted a Pharisaical murderer into the most influential apostle of that day. It was why 12 Jewish men and countless women stopped following the Law in the midst of a strict Jewish population and dared to preach Jesus’ life and Resurrection.

We've made church about us when our heart is only clean because His heart is forgiveness. Jesus still loves people. He still hungers for hearts. He still longs to set people free, to raise them up from their deathbed and make them a testimony of how good He is. Our only commission is to do what He did, and any other ministry, any other style of church service, anything that focuses on our comfort and ignores John 3:16 is not Him. We are full of excuses to stay the same. There isn't one. We need to do what He desires.

Signs and wonders are confirmation of His truth and His power. Being filled with the Spirit is the power to go forth, unstoppable. It is a well of compassion fueled by the Man, always God, who died to show how deep runs the goodness of God, who rose to prove He is life and there is no one else. None else. There is no other gospel to be spoken in no other way and to be always demonstrated in power great enough to empty the grave, than His.

“And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” (Mark 16:17-18)

“Come then, stiffen the sinews of drooping hand, and flagging knee, and plant your footprints in a straight track, so that the man who goes lame may not stumble out of the path, but regain strength instead.” (Hebrews 12:12-13, Knox)

Image by Karen .t from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com