Transcription
Recording in progress. Perfect, doesn’t get much better than this. So this morning we’ll be reading from the Old Testament, Psalm 8, on your page 435 in your pew Bible.
I’m reading from a slightly different Bible so my words might not match yours. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! For you have set your glory above the heavens, and the lips of the children and infants you have ordained praises because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is the man that you were mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings, and crowned him with glory and honor.
You made him ruler over the works of your hands, and put everything under his feet, all flocks and herds and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the sea. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! And our Old Testament lesson from the Gospel of Matthew, the last chapter of Matthew, the last verses of Matthew. So Matthew 28, verses 16 through 20.
Hear God’s word this morning. Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted.
And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.
And remember, I am with you always to the end of the age. Let us pray. Gracious God, we thank you for your word that lights our path and guides our hearts, that shows us how to be disciples in this world in which we live.
Guide us and lead us, challenge us and convict us, O Lord, through your word. Show us how to be your disciples through pain, through joy, through all times and all ways. Be with us, Lord, in your name.
Amen. The glory of the final promise. That’s what one commentary called this section.
This small four verses that ends the book of Matthew. The final promise. But there’s so much more than just one final promise that Jesus makes in this.
It’s an assurance or confirmation of Jesus as the Son of God and his power. But also there’s a commissioning, a sending, a go forth and do that is told to the disciples who would gather. And so we have to kind of look at what Jesus is saying on all the different levels that he is.
Now, it goes without saying, as we see Luke, we see Mark’s gospel right on the next page, that this is the end of Matthew’s gospel. No additional books, no acts to come later. That’s Luke.
So as you read Luke, what happens? Luke becomes Acts. Same author. Matthew, well, Matthew is writing where it ends.
Here. So this is where Matthew is telling you the last little bits of information he thinks and believes that you need. He’s telling you those last pieces of information.
Now, right before the empty tomb was discovered, the disciples are in that worry-wandering place, and they have been told to go to this mountain. There’s even included in Matthew a little cover-up, because who doesn’t love a good cover-up? You don’t have to read the Pelican Brief or something like that. Maybe I’m showing myself really old by citing that particular book and movie.
But the fact of the matter is, Jesus is alive, and the disciples are taking those next steps that are required of them for the future. For the future of this movement that Jesus has begun, that we call the church, that the original believers called the way. And so they gather together and wait and look for Jesus.
And so they go up to the mountain, and they see Him. And what we have is a little bit of a condensed version of what goes on. Because when they get to the mountain, some of them see Jesus and don’t quite believe.
There’s still doubt within them. Doubt that Jesus is fully there. Over the last few weeks in Acts, we’ve been looking at Jesus showing the disciples that He is back.
He is fully God, fully human, still has all the power. But here, Matthew is challenged with expressing that in these few verses. And so Jesus calls and says, All authority under heaven and on earth has been given to me.
All the power I had, I still have. But that’s not where He leaves it. Now, I know that we look at the idea of Jesus, the Son of God, needing to show the disciples that He is still all-powerful, is a little weird.
He rose from the dead. Now, I don’t know about you, but can you think of a top ten other way that Jesus could show that He is the most powerful on the earth? Self-resurrection? I can’t think of a way to top that. And yet, somehow, He still has to prove to the disciples that He is fully God.
And so He is proclaiming to God, to everyone gathered, to us in ages beyond, that He is still the Son of God. And in this proclamation, He also gives orders to the disciples, marching orders, if you will. Their next steps.
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And if you remember those words, we use it in our baptismal liturgy. When we baptize people, we say those exact words as part of our worship.
Instead of sending the disciples off to a peaceful retirement on the coast, where Peter can watch the fishermen fish, and the tax collectors can watch the tax collectors do their thing, they kick up their feet and enjoy old age. They have work to do. And here, their work is not hard.
Well, not complicated, let me say that. They aren’t supposed to revolt against Rome. They aren’t supposed to attack every Roman they see.
They are supposed to go and make disciples of all nations. It’s not a difficult thing to say. Go, therefore.
And Jesus does something absolutely wonderful and terrifying in that moment. He doesn’t tell you how to do it. It’s beautiful because suddenly there is the ability to do ministry how you want.
How the Spirit guides you. How you are led to do. And not how your mother says you have to do.
Not how your grandfather says ministry has to look. Think about this. When I was in seminary all those many years ago, I had a Greek professor.
And Dr. Volkins announced to us we had to write an exegetical paper. Please, if you ever have to write one of those, don’t come to me for help. I will run the other way.
You have to write a paper analyzing the Greek words. And going through all of these various steps, it doesn’t look like a nice, neat paper. There are pieces and parts that you have to include.
It’s more of an extremely complicated test. And she handed us the paper and said, do this. There was no how included.
She thought that we were old enough, mature enough to where we were going to look and make it our own. Do our own leap of faith and go. But we didn’t know what to do.
We were lost and we would bother her every day with questions of, well, what are you looking for? I’m not looking for anything. I want you to go and do. But what do you want us to do? How do we know what you want? How do we get our A? Go and do.
It’s this excruciating, painful moment when someone who trusts you gives you the leeway to go and do and allows you to make it your own. Do you think that the early church would look at worship as we do and look down on it? No. They would say, God bless you.
You’re worshiping. Their way was to go into the catacombs. I know all of you are like, let’s go out to the cemetery for worship.
Attendance might be a little low that Sunday. Right. But their worship started in the catacombs.
It was in the temple. Their worship is different than ours. And yet and yet ministry continues.
Ministry happens. That whole maxim of go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations is beautifully vague. And wonderfully vague.
Because it allows the church to let the Holy Spirit move. Because here is the thing. When you say this is how it has to look and has to be, how much air are you giving to the Holy Spirit to lead you? To lead you to serve God? If you’re saying this has to look this way.
All the way. Every time. The challenge here is not, not what Jesus tells the disciples it has to look like.
But the fear of having to let the spirit lead them. The fear of letting Christ, God, the Holy Spirit, tell you to go and do and lead you and push you to go and do. And not be able to have a cookie cutter that you can just plug in and keep your head down and get it done.
Think about this and understand we are 2,000 years into trial and error of the church doing this. Everyone has different gifts. God has blessed each and every one of us a little bit differently.
Dino, you’re blessed a little differently than Wally. Wayne, you’re blessed a little bit differently than Bob. We are all blessed differently with our abilities and gifts.
And God thankfully doesn’t tell us that we have to spoon our gifts into the wrong package. We are allowed by God, beautifully and wonderfully, to use the gifts that God has blessed us to the full extent of those gifts. With freedom for those gifts.
Andrew, James, and John were, yes, fishermen. But differing in their abilities and how God had made them. Peter is differently built and formed spiritually and physically than Thomas.
We are not called to serve all in the same way by God. When God says, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, God has a different plan and path in mind for Fred and for Bill. Different path for Jeannie and Chris.
All of us have a different path set before us by God. And the challenge for us is to welcome the freedom. To welcome the ability that God gives us to live and serve and use those abilities and gifts to the fullest.
The challenge for us is what happens next in all of this. What happens next when the Spirit pushes us? In uncomfortable directions. In uncomfortable ways.
What happens when the Holy Spirit challenges us to do something more? To teach Sunday school. To leave Michigan, that beautiful state with its great lakes, and move to New York? Cooksake? Okay, the New York part was just fine, the cooksake part, no. But the reality is, God is challenging us.
God is giving us the abilities to embrace this. But do we? Do we actually embrace this wiggle room? Or do we want a cookie cutter that says, I’m going to serve you and I’ve got my checklist of how I’m going to do it. Forget the gifts you gave me, God.
Forget those. One of the challenges we always have every November, every church across the board has this. Some more so than others.
Do we want somebody whose abilities fit for what we need for consistency? Are we looking for a warm body? Or the rightly gifted body? Now, I hope that every church has the ability to find the right set of gifts as deacon. The right set of gifts for elder. The right set of gifts for Sunday school teacher.
The right set of gifts. The challenge for us is when God is nudging us, sometimes gently, sometimes not so. When God is nudging us, what are we doing when it happens? When God kind of comes up beside us like that good friend and says, you know, at some point you’re going to have to say yes to consistency.
At some point you’re going to get asked to serve. Are you? And then, next thing you know, myself or one of the nominating committee members comes up to you and says, would you be willing to serve? And you say, oh no, I can’t. How could I? I don’t have the gifts.
Who are we not listening to? When we are called to help with Sunday school, to do something, to serve God in whatever way, whatever capacity. Be it writing a card to a friend who’s in need. Are we going to do that? Are we going to accept that? That push, that nudge? But there’s one more piece that Jesus gives the disciples.
So it’s three really huge, complicated pieces that he gives them. He tells them this last piece that makes that little burden of go therefore and make disciples of all nations a little lighter, a little more palatable. He says, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
I am with you always. At good times, like yesterday afternoon when the weather started to cooperate. In bad times, like yesterday morning about 9.30 when the pop-ups all almost careened down Main Street.
I am with you always, even to the end of the age. It’s not a timeline that will ever hit. Think about this.
When all of us were training in a job, some of us it’s been a little more long in time than others. But when we were training in a job, how long did you get before your mentor finally said, all right, you’ve got it. If you need help, give me a call.
I love that phrase. When you need help, give me a call. What that really means is in the next two to three weeks, if you need help, give me a call.
But after that, you’re kind of on your own. I’ve done enough. I’ve trained you well enough.
If you can’t do it, you’re a hopeless cause. That’s what that really means. But what God is saying here is not call me in three weeks and after three weeks, don’t worry about it.
God is saying no matter what, no matter how bad things get, no matter how wonderful things are, I am with you always. Even to the end of the age. Not to the end of this week.
Not to the end of this month. Not to the end of this generation. To the end of the age.
And you know what age we’re talking about? The age where Christ is not with us. So until Christ returns, he is still with us. Until he comes back and the kingdom has fully come on this earth, Christ is with us through the Holy Spirit.
He is with us no matter how bad things get, no matter how good they are. He is with us always. As we go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.
Christ, well, he gives quite a bit at this. He gives comfort, he gives care, he gives peace. And he gives a lot of work to do.
The challenge for all of us is do we embrace the comfort and care and the work that is to be done? Or do we just embrace one or the other of those? Or do we embrace none at all? The challenge is God has called all of us to a ministry of some form. And in whatever way it is, God is calling us. But are we listening? Are we willing to serve even though we don’t have to serve alone? He is with us even to the end of the age.
Brothers and sisters, let us go. Let us go make disciples of all nations. And let us go knowing he is with us in that journey.