Look at the Book
Matthew 28:18–20: I Am with You Always
In this session of Look at the Book, we're going to focus on Matthew 28, 18 to 20, the so-called Great Commission. Father, the commands given to us here are heavier than any of us can bear, and the promises and warrants for it are more magnificent than any of us can properly feel. So grant that we would feel the weight of the commandments and even more, the glory and the sustaining power of these promises and warrants. In Jesus' name I ask it, Amen. Jesus came and said to them, "This is the last thing He did and said in the Gospels of Matthew, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. So therefore, in my disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.'" Now, if you ponder the parts of this, perhaps you'll see that here in the middle are the commands, and we'll talk about those first, and before came this amazing promise of Jesus having all authority, and at the end came this amazing promise of Jesus being with them. So that's the way we're going to go at it. And the stunning thing to me here is how incredibly difficult this feels, surely to a little band of a few disciples in the first century and even today. So go. That's hard. This is a number of these ones. That's hard because going usually means leaving and leaving means pain that something precious is being left behind, is therefore, is clearly because of that. We're going to go because of that. We'll come to that in a minute. And make disciples, in other words, tell every religion, tell Muslims and Buddhists, and people following Confucius and Jesus denying Judaism and secularism, tell them all to stop following their religion and to become the disciples of Jesus. That takes a miracle in every single case that none of us is able to perform. And it's to be done with all the nations. There's, what, 16,000 different ethnic groups, if you count the ethnic group in each different country, 16,000 diverse cultures and ethnicities, how are we ever going to authentically put Christianity in every one of them, baptizing them. That's public. That's not private. You're going to sneak into the kingdom. This is public and it's a public symbol of death and resurrection. And so that's not very inviting in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So we have to make plain the Trinity and we're to teach them. And you might say, "Oh good, I can do that. I can teach. No, you can't." Because look, it says, "Teach them to observe, keep, do." It doesn't say teach them to know. Of course, you must, but that's easy. Transferring information is easy. This is teaching them to obey, teaching them to obey. Well, you can't do that. You can teach all you want and lots of people just want to obey what you say, which means, I said I was going to number these, didn't I? So go to make disciples three, all nations four, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, so that the Trinity five, and teach them to obey. So six reasons why this feels to me just enormously weighty and impossible for any human to do. Which is why now the previous promise and the following promise are absolutely essential and infinitely, infinitely precious. Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." There's no warfare in heaven I'm not in charge of. There's nothing you're going to encounter on earth that I'm not in charge of. He has all authority, which means we not only have, we have the warrant to call for change to all the religions, but we have a power that is going with us as well. This word authority here means he has the power and the right to exert himself in order to bring about his commission. So we don't go in our own strength and we don't go in our own privilege and we don't go in our own right. We go in the authority of the one who created the world and came into the world and redeemed the world and rules over the world and has all authority and rights to the world. Then it gets even better and behold, and I think this is just like the therefore means that this was a support for this and should lead to it. I think this behold means, and behold, here's another truth that will lead to this and lift that burden. I am with you always to the end. There will never be a moment when I won't be with you. If they throw you in jail, I'm with you. If they cut off your head, I'm with you. If you have successes in converting people, I'm with you, and I'm with you to the end of the age. If the promise is to the end of the age, so is the command valid to the end of the age. If you've got any notion in your head that this was somehow finished in the first century, this is not over and therefore this is not over. The way we sustain ourselves in this enormously difficult and glorious task of going and making disciples and indigenizing the gospel in all the nations and publicly calling people to give a symbol of death and introducing them to the Trinity and teaching in such a way that they actually obey Jesus. The way we're sustaining that is to never, never forget all authority belongs to Jesus and he'll be with us to the end. Old John Patton said that as he sat in a tree to escape his assailants in the New Hebrides as a missionary, he said he enjoyed sweeter fellowship with Jesus through this promise than he had ever known, and if forty years later he could, he said, "I would go back and join Jesus in that tree." [Music] (gentle music)
Some of God’s commands in the Bible are very difficult, if not impossible. Therefore, we need to pay close attention to the promises in Scripture that accompany God’s commands and equip us with God’s power to do the impossible.