Text: Luke 24:36-53
Date: July 13, 2025

Introduction

Opening: Today we bring to a close what for many in this room has been a two year journey through the Gospel of Luke. We have gone through this book in the bible with one great ambition, to know Christ, to experience his life, his teachings, his miracles, his sufferings. If there is one great theme that has held all of Luke together it is the glory of God on display in and through Jesus Christ, His Son, and our Messiah. On every page, and at every turn, we have been struck by.

Birth: We studied his birth which came through angelic proclamation, and the ministry of John the Baptist, the great prophet who prepared the way for Christ. And we saw God’s glory on display as hundreds of year old prophecies were fulfilled.

Temptation: We studied Christ’s baptism and temptation in the wilderness. And we saw as Jesus Christ gained victory over the wilderness by clinging to God Word. Where Adam had failed, Jesus succeeded. Indeed God’s glory was on display in Christ’s righteousness.

Teaching: We studied many of Christ’s teachings. And always we have been struck by how 2,000 years later, the greatness of his teachings are unchanging, ever able to prick our hearts, reveal idols we hold onto, and set us on a path of godliness. God’s glory on display.

Miracles: We have studied his miracles. Healing a paralytic, cleansing a leper, freeing demoniacs. In his healing it is as if the realm of heaven is bursting through into our human realm in the person of Christ. God’s glory on display!

Religious Establishment: Of course we have seen Christ’s reforms to the religious establishment. How he pushed back against the false religion of the Pharisees, and the call on our lives to fight for a pure church, unadulterated by false teaching and false ways. God’s glory on display in Christ conviction.

Death & Resurrection: And of course in recent days we have studied Christ’s death and resurrection. God’s plan through all the ages, to rescue for Himself a people from the terrors of sin, by becoming the lamb that would be slain for their forgiveness. God’s glory on display through His own sacrifice.

There is no greater glory than the glory of God, and there is no path to that glory but through Christ His Son.

Context: Today, as we close out the Gospel of Luke, we look to Christ’s final actions and words with his disciples. Christ has resurrected from the grave, a few of claimed to see him alive, and the rest are wondering with anticipation could it be true?

Doctrine: Today, our theme is Living Faith. Living faith is far more than simply knowledge about Christ. It is far more than conviction that Christ really is the Savior. Real faith is an inward, ongoing, experience of Christ & his offer of grace. Today we’ll try to answer the question, what are the markings of Living Faith.

Meaning & Application

MARK I: AN EXPERIENCE OF CHRIST’S PRESENCE & HEALING

Luke 24:36–43 “As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!” But 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 here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them.”

Finding the Apostles: When we find the apostles at the beginning of this passage they are gathered in a room together. They have begun to hear the reports of those who claim to have seen Christ resurrected from the dead. Mary Magdalene and other women had already visited the tomb and returned the disciples claiming to have seen Christ. Peter had sprinted to the tomb and seen the stone rolled away. Two unnamed strangers on the Road to Emmaus had unknowingly walked with Christ as he explained the Scriptures to them, only to realize it was him at the very end of their conversation. As we find the disciples in this passage, we must imagine that these rumors are gaining in traction.

Luke 24:36 “As they were talking about these things…

There was hope that these things could be true. A sense that they might be true, but an experiential knowledge, not yet.

Christ Appears: Then quite mysteriously Jesus Christ appears in the midst of them. His first words are “Peace to you.” This is an interesting moment. The disciples at this point are confronted by reality, Christ risen from the grave, speaking to them in the very room they are standing in. Yet, because they lack an experiential, a living, a confident faith, the first place their heart and mind goes is to find some way to dismiss what their eyes can see.

Luke 24:37 “But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit.”

Like Us: Pause here for a moment. Isn’t this like us? Are we not so very slow to see the ways God is moving in our midst. We are so slow to pick up the signs and lift our eyes up to the glory of Christ’s throne. Sometimes it is only with the benefit of hindsight that we look back on the road we have walked down, and have any sense of the way God was truly leading us and holding us by the hand along the way.

Christ Ministers to Them: And so what does Christ our Savior do? He ministers to them by holding out his hands and his feet. These doubting disciples filled with all kinds of fear gather around Christ in that small room and begin to place their hands over him. We can imagine the sentiment. In this moment they are not only feeling his body to see if he is real, but they are embracing their dear friend who only a day before was buried in a tomb. Christ here is ministering to them. He is filling them with experiential/living faith. It is one thing to be told by Peter that Jesus Christ is risen from the grave, it is another thing entirely to see and to feel and to experience the resurrected Christ for yourself. Remember the Bible does not tell us to hear and know that the Lord is good, we are told,

Psalm 34:8 “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!

Hearing and knowing, and tasting and seeing are two very different things. One is intellectual, never penetrates the heart in a way that changes a person, the other is experiential, moves an entire life.

The Great Danger: The great danger of modern Christianity, is that we turn the resurrected Christ into a person to be known about, and not a person to be known. I love history. I love to study the lives of great men and women of the past. And the more you read of a person, the more you can get into their mind, understand them from a distance. I can tell you quite a lot about John Calvin and Martin Luther and George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. I can even train myself to think like these men. But the one thing I cannot do is touch their hands and feet. Jesus is risen from the grave!

It is possible to speak great things about Jesus Christ with all boldness and fiery passion, and yet never have truly experienced his love and grace and presence in a personal way.

It is possible to cite the great Christian scholarly works of the past, to have read John Calvin front and back and understand theology to a degree greater than I ever will, and yet to never bask in majesterial wonder of His glory.

It is possible to teach your children the stories of the Scripture in order to pass on a set of religious facts, but never to taste yourself of the riches of his mercy towards you.

Illustration – Peace of God: I have the unique opportunity to provide pastoral counsel and care to many of you. And when a member of our church is going through a trial, there are many passages I might turn to. But one is Philippians 4. And I’ll sit down after listening and then open to this passage and have them read it to me.

Philippians 4:5–7 “… The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

And then I’ll ask “What does this passage teach us?” We’ll think about it and then give the response that it teaches us that we are to bring all of our worries to Christ, and to lay them on his shoulderes, and that God will grant us peace. Then we’ll sit a little longer with it, and I’ll ask again, “What else do you see?” They say “God will guard our hearts and our minds.” Yes, yes, and we discuss what that means. Then I’ll ask “What else do you see?” And you know most of the time, we do not see the most important phrase in this entire passage, the opening phrase “The Lord is at hand.” That is the basis of this passage. “God is with you.” No mystically or esoterically. No He is with you. The one who loves and and the one who governs the universe walks with you. He sees you. He knows your worries and fears. He delights in you as a Father delights in his child. And out of that presence of Christ in your life, we are to cast our worries on Him. Without that little phrase at the beginning, this passage becomes another religious work we must do, but with that phrase as the anchor, this is a passage of grace extended.

Taste and see that the Lord is good. Experience His presence with you. It changes everything.

Application: Indeed, growing in experiential faith is a gift of God, but there is also work on our end to fan our faith into flames. Let me give you two very practical ways you can grow in your sense of God’s presence with you.

1 Communing with Christ: First, we must learn to commune with Christ often throughout our days, as we might with a friend. If Christ is to be experienced, then practice experiencing him. As you walk down the street, bring your thoughts to him, bring your questions to him. Reflect on what He has taught you through the Scriptures that morning, or through the sermon that week, and learn to let your mind and heart often turn to Him. And what you will find is that as you turn to him, He has already been turned to you.

2 Meditating on His Promises: Second, train yourself to meditate on his promises, until they well up inside of you. I think of this like a faucet that has not been turned on for some time. When you turn the knob, you can hear the pipe shift, and nothing happens for a moment, and then the first bit of water to come out is dirty the dust in the pipe, but then eventually, the faucet flows with clean water. So it is when we meditate on the promises. At first, it just looks like a verse from the Bible, something that holds no power. But you sit with it, you pray over it, and suddenly the pipes clang a little. And then you start to think about what it would mean if that promise from Scripture were actually true, and a trickle of dirty water starts to emerge. Then you start to think about what it would mean for you to live your life as if this were actually true, and the stream begins to flow.

Close Section: Christianity is much more than knowledge regarding religious facts. It is a real, inward, ongoing, experience of Christ & his offer of grace. And the first way we experience that is through a sincere sense of the presence of Christ and his healing in our life.

MARK II: AN ALIGNMENT WITH GOD’S PURPOSES

The second mark of Experiential faith is that our heart and mind increasingly align with God’s purposes.

Luke 24:44–49 “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 his name to 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 power from on high.””

These words mark the final words that Luke records Jesus saying to his disciples in this gospel. And they are quite extraordinary. First, Christ has opened their hearts and minds to see the Scriptures and understand God’s purpose in Christ. Experience alone can lead us astray. Verse 45 declares that all our experiences must be submitted to the Scriptures as God’s authoritative word!

Aligning: What is he doing here? He is aligning them to his heart. He explains with absolute clarity the things of God, so as to bring their work into alignment with his heart.

It is Written: He says “Thus it is written…” He’s pointing back to our Old Testament, the prophets of old, and he shows that each and every event that happened in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection was written about in advance. God has laid it all out for us, so that we might have confidence and clarity.

Suffer & Rise (46): Verse 46, that Christ “should suffer and on the third day rise.” Jesus explains that his death was no blip in the plan of God, but was God’s plan from the very beginning. It was the reason Christ came in the first place. That he might die in our place as a sacrificial lamb. The Scriptures teach us that his death was a “propitiation”, a blood offering given to God the Father to atone for sin, to satisfy God’s justice. And that God the Father received that propitiation in full.

Repentance & Forgiveness (47): Verse 47, that “repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed to all nations.” It has been God’s plan to redeem a people for Himself, a bride for Christ, from among every nation on the globe from the beginning. The work has now been accomplished. The eternal blood of Christ has been accepted by God the Father, and now the bride must be collected. This is the great glory that God is after right now. To glorify His Son by gathering a bride to dwell with Him, and share in his love for all eternity.

Trinity (48-49): Then in verse 48-49, Christ promises the Holy Spirit, power from on high. I love that he calls the Holy Spirit, “the promise of my Father.” What a beautiful Trinitarian verse we have before us. Christ the Son, tells us that that God the Father has promised that God the Holy Spirit will empower them for their sacred task. All three members of the Trinity at work in the story of redemption.

Summarize: Living faith has a growing alignment with God regarding his purposes. What I mean here is that as we increasingly experience Christ, our hearts begin to beat like his heart beats. Our mind begins to think like his mind thinks. We long for the things he longs for. And that which Christ longs for, is to gather His bride from among every nation, through the proclamation of repentance and forgiveness of sins. There is no greater purpose for one’s life, that to find yourself wrapped up and immersed in this.

The Great Challenge: One of the great challenges I think many of us in this room face, is that we hear of this great purpose and passion of Christ in the world, and we feel so helpless and unequipped, and perhaps even detached from it. Our life seems full of simple little challenges, and the idea of being wrapped up in someting so sacred feels distant and removed from my daily life. But to have an experiential faith, we must experience his heart and be wrapped up in his purpose. Might I suggest two considerations right from our text to aid you in this.

Wonder at Your Church: First, the text says that God is going to win a people from every nation to Himself by the power of the Spirit. Church! Look around this room! See the faces of the bride of Christ. Each and every soul in this room that has repented and received the forgiveness of their sin, is the promise of this passage fulfilled. One of the greatest ways to begin to allow God to grant you an experiential alignment of your heart with his, is by pleading with Him to grant you eyes to see His Church with His eyes. There is nothing more beautiful in this world than the redeemed of the Lord gathering together on the Lord’s Day to sing praises to God and submit themselves to His Word. Here are the nations gathered. Here are the souls who have been won to Christ already. Not one of them will be lost because Christ is their guardian until the day of redemption. Because He loves His church, with an neverending, unfading, divine love. Each week, pray for eyes to see the blood bought saints of the Lord with Christ’s eyes. Experience the passion Christ has for his bride.

Power of the Spirit: Secondly, this passage promises that we will be “clothed with power from on high.” We must speak here briefly of the Holy Spirit, and the work of the Spirit in a believer’s life. When we are saved by Christ, we are filled by the promised Holy Spirit. There is not a Christian alive who is not filled by the Spirit. And yet, there are many Christians who are not led by the Spirit. I draw this distinction carefully and not without careful consideration of the the Biblical texts. We are reminded that it is possible for a Christian to live in such a way that “grieves the Holy Spirit.” I take this to mean that when a Christian who is filled by the Holy Spirit, does not permit the Holy Spirit to lead Him, he grieves the Holy Spirit. Do you want a faith that experiences Christ’s sweetness, his presence, his overcoming power, his gentleness, his comfort, we must train ourselves to be led by the Spirit.

Filled or Led: Is there any way we can tell if we are truly being “led” by the Spirit? Yes, I believe there are particular habits in a person’s life that are distinguishable. Let me give you what I believe are the top three.

An Overwhelming Love of Christ: The Holy Spirit is to serve as a spotlight, shining the light on the glory of Christ in a person’s life. Those who are led by the Spirit are increasingly adoring Christ, in awe of Christ and his glory.

An Overwhelming Love of Christ’s Bride, the Church: Show me a person who hungers for Christ’s bride to be purified and led faithfully. This doesn’t mean they always get it right, but they have a passion for the bride, the way Christ has a passion for the bride.

An Overwhelming Hunger for Personal Holiness in Alignment with God’s Word: Christ is in the business of making you holy. We were wretches before Christ got a hold of us. But he has begun a journey of sanctification, becoming like Christ. Are you hungering for personal godliness in your life! Not settling in any area?

To the Heart: What I am trying to summarize is the way in which God aligns our heart and vision with his. But please do not think that this yet another religious obligation you must do. No, no, that only leads to guilt upon guilt for not living up. Today I am talking about experiencing Christ. This is the fruit of drawing close to Christ, experiencing him. My wife and I are coming up at the end of this year on our 15 year anniversary. We’ve spent so much time together that each of us have taken on qualities of the other person. Slowly, our hearts and minds and desires, have come into alignment. This is what happens naturally in a loving relationship. So it is with Christ.

MARK III: AN ONGOING PURSUIT OF CHRIST

Lastly, and I will close briefly on this point, but I don’t want us to miss it. Living Faith is ongoing and renewed daily.

Luke 24:50–53 “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.”

Christ’s Ascension: Here in this moment, we have the ascension of Christ. As he blessed them, his physical body was carried up into heaven. There is a world of theology around the ascension of Christ and its significance. Suffice it to say, that Christ, after defeating sin, Satan, and death, after establishing his victory and authority over this world decisively, he ascended into heaven where He is seated on His throne, ruling and governing all of his creation. There, in the presence of God the Father, Christ intercedes for us. And he will do that until every last one of His elect, has been won to real and saving faith in Christ. And then He will return, as we saw him go.

Continually in the Temple: Look at that very last phrase. The disciples

Luke 24:53 “…were continually in the temple blessing God.”

Their faith was expressed in worship daily. There was an ongoing nature to their experience of Christ’s victory. Each day they woke up with their own set of challenges and hardships they would face, but they knew they could not live off of the past faith, or past spiritual mountains they had climbed. No, experiential faith is ongoing. When you taste and see, you must have more. It’s like a delicious meal, that you can’t turn away from.

Living off Past Faith (Call Up): Church, here this call from these final words in Luke. You are called to a living experiential faith today. You cannot live off of the faith of your parents. Nor can you live off of the faith of your spouse or your friends. God has not called you to simply know and understand that God is good, he has called you to taste and see it, daily. To experience him with you daily. Some of you have incredible moments of faith you have exemplified at different seasons of your life. But those were in the past. Praise God for those parts of your story, but today is the day of salvation.

Taste today and see that He is good and refreshing and lovely, and majestic, and holy, and worthy.

Bow on your knees today and appreciate His blood that was shed for you, his life that was given for you.

Look up to heaven today, and see him seated on his throne, ruling with his scepter of righteousness, where he is making his enemies a footstool underneath him, today!

Hear His very words in the pages of Scripture, the words of life, the words of God Himself, which is living and active, able to pierce through the mess of our lives and bring clarity and truth and peace.

Speak with him today! For he is a patient listener, and delights when we bring him our worries, our fears, our thoughts, our doubts.

Wrap Up: I want an experiential faith, an ongoing love of Christ to drive my life. Nothing less will do. All for his glory. All for his fame. All for his name. The name above every name, Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

In bringing this sermon to a close, we now close out the entire series of Luke. We have ended today on a very important note, a note that has been woven throughout the last two years of study, regarding Living Faith. Living faith is an inward, ongoing, experience of Christ & his offer of grace.

My Prayer: And so as we bring our study of the Gospel of Luke to a close this morning, my prayer for us is rooted in some of the opening words of Luke’s Gospel. When telling us his purpose in writing us is this account of the life of Christ, Luke writes,

Luke 1:4 “that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.”

Yes Church. Have confidence in Christ your Savior. Stand confidently on His Word, and you will achieve the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls, and the glory of our God.