The Authority of Christ Empowers Our Ministry

Text: Mark 16:14-20

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  Ascension 6 1 25
  
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  Ascension Sunday
  

Mark 16:14-20

Jonah Albrecht

Ascension Sunday

June 1^st, 2025

Mark 16:14-20

The Authority of Christ Empowers Our Ministry

¹⁶ 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. ¹⁵ And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. ¹⁶ Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. ¹⁷ And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; ¹⁸ 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.” ¹⁹ 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. ²⁰ And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.]

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us – to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever, Amen.

INJ Whose Ascension instills in us the courage and desire to spread His Gospel, DFR:

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. Typically, a will goes like, I, so and so, resident of this place, I’m a sound mind, sound memory, publish and declare this is my will, anything before this is null and void. And a will is legally binding. If the person who creates the will passes away, it cannot be changed under any circumstances.

And to make sure that no one would tamper with it to their own benefit, the will is put in the charge of an executor who will make sure all matters in the will are accounted for 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. It is meant for God’s church to fulfill every single day until the end of time, until the day comes when Jesus returns to judge the whole world in righteousness. What is unique is that Jesus’ will does not rely on the authority of someone else to enact it or to 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.

 

Now in Mark’s gospel, he summarizes quite a bit of time in the last few verses, approximately 40 days. He goes from the account of Jesus’ resurrection appearing to Mary Magdalene, to Jesus’ final words to his disciples, his ascension, and what amounts to the beginning of the book of Acts in just seven verses. But in these final verses is important detail on what the followers of Jesus, you and me included, are to do to accomplish his will when he returns to heaven.

It starts more basic than you might think. The first important detail ought to be the most obvious, how you get to be a part of the will in the first place. It is faith, namely faith in the resurrection of Jesus.

Jesus chides His disciples for their lack of or reluctance to believe that He had bodily risen from the dead. This is why there are so many specific accounts of Jesus appearing to the disciples, sometimes finding it necessary to appear individually like He did to Peter or to James. And if Jesus’ disciples were to be His ambassadors to the ends of the earth, well they certainly needed to have a strong and unwavering conviction in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

This is something that is the very cornerstone of the Christian faith. Thousands of years before Jesus died and rose from the dead, Abraham clung to this very 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 that 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’s pretty easy to tell the difference between a good, effective salesman and someone who’s just there to fill a quota. The good salesman actually believes in what he is selling you, and that comes out through his pitch.

The good salesman needs to believe in the product first, and then it is his goal to get you to believe in the same thing so that you will buy it. Well, you aren’t selling eternal life, but you are proclaiming the most important news that the world has ever heard—that salvation is free through Jesus Christ. And it goes a long way in proclaiming that message to actually believe in what you are preaching.

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 the faith in our heart to firmly believe in our Savior’s death and bodily resurrection from the dead. He is the one who writes our name into our Savior’s will, the one who strengthens our faith so that we might have the confidence to share the gospel with whomever and whenever.

The second important detail that Mark provides on 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.

There is but one message that we are to take into the world. Broadly put, it is the gospel that is the good news. But verse 16 gives us the specifics—how one is saved and how one is condemned. Now, maybe you’ve faced some hesitancy as to 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 don’t believe in Jesus?” Are we sometimes scared to preach the law in its full force? Well, to satisfy these 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. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselytite, and when he becomes a proselytite, you make him twice as much of a child of hell as yourselves.

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

It wasn’t just the religious leaders. Jesus also preached a harsh law to the rich young ruler, the one who desired to enter the kingdom of God by the work that he has done.And what that man needed to hear was that in no way possible could he keep God’s law perfectly, but needed to leave it completely up to Jesus. These are just two of many examples throughout the Gospels of Jesus preaching a very harsh law to people who needed to hear it, whose pride needed to be torn down.

What about when Jesus preached the unmitigated gospel? Well, that happened too. Just think of all the times that 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 who did this message resonate amongst the most? Among those whose heart was pricked by the preaching of the law. Those who knew their sin and sought Jesus for the all-healing solution.

Now you might say, well, I’m not Jesus. “How am I to know whether I need to preach the law in this case, or the gospel in that case?” Well, it is true that Jesus did this perfectly as He does all things perfectly and without error. And we ourselves are not perfect by any means. But remember this, the Authority of Christ Empowers our Ministry.

 

Can you think back to a time in your life where looking back you realize how badly you needed the law of God to shatter you? Maybe you were complacent in sin or you just didn’t know how truly corrupt your nature was. How did it feel hearing God’s law and having 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 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.

God is working through that Word to convict you of your sin and to assure you of your forgiveness. And it’s the same power that you are to use in your ministry. Because as you needed the law at the right time to convict you of your sin, and as you needed the gospel at the right time to restore and forgive you of your sin, so does every single person around you.

How God has dealt with you is no different than how God deals with other people, and you are God’s chosen mouthpiece. You are the one who brings God’s word to people who desperately need it. And there’s not some magical formula to figure out exactly what comes where and when. All you need to do is trust that your Savior will be with you. That the Holy Spirit will give you the right application of His word, as God has promised to do in Scripture.

And the third and final important detail that Mark gives on 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.

In the early days of the apostles, Jesus empowered his disciples with certain gifts that would aid in their preaching of the gospel to all creation. We will see this in action next week when we celebrate the festival of Pentecost. And you might remember how the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit, and were able to preach a gospel to thousands of people in their own native tongue. This gift broke down so many barriers that came from language that may have prevented the death and resurrection of Jesus to be preached among so many people.

And yet because of this gift, not the power of the disciples, but this gift from God, over 3,000 would be brought to faith on Pentecost alone. And from that point on, millions upon millions throughout the history of the world would be brought to faith by the apostles’ teaching.

Now, as Jesus sent them out into the world, He gave them other gifts like healing the sick, drinking poison, and picking up deadly snakes. These were meant to affirm the disciples’ testimony. They were not the means by which they were to convert people. That only comes from the Word.

 

Paul says in Romans 10, so then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. But what these signs did do is they set the truth of the true God, Jehovah, apart from all the pagan gods and all the false ideas of what the true God might be. It served as a confirmation that the power of Jesus Christ of Nazareth is real, and He is the one working through these men to bring the message of eternal life for all people.

So where are your signs? What signs do you have to testify to the power of your Savior? Dearly beloved, look no further than right in your own heart. You do not need the power to speak in tongues without studying a language or to be able to drink poison without dying. These things God didn’t even promise to be for us.

Rather, you are the living, breathing proof that Jesus’ death and resurrection makes a powerful difference. You want a sign to give to people that what you’re saying is valuable? Tell them how you were a lost sinner who deserved nothing but hell for what you have 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, to die a death that would pay 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 that 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 didn’t just sit back and relax. Jesus got to work. He sent His Holy Spirit, as He promised, to go with His disciples to aid in their preaching and to use His Word to bring so many people to faith. And Jesus has not stopped working, not for a single moment, because right now He uses you to do the same for every part of God’s creation.

You don’t have to worry about being the best trained, the most prepared. You don’t have to worry about making it to the very remotest corner of the world. God has put His creation right in your life. That’s your mission field. That’s where you are to bring the gospel message.

Remember, Jesus is the one who created the faith in your heart to be able to take part in bringing His gospel to all people. Jesus is the one who gives you the very content to preach that can change hearts.  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 43 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.