Matthew 28
Reading from Matthew chapter
28, verse one, we hear these words. Now, after the Sabbath
toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene
and the other Mary went to the tomb and behold, there was a
great earthquake for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven
and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance
was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of
him, the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the
angel said to the women, do not be afraid for I know that you
seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here for he has risen.
And as he said, come and see the place where he lay. Then
go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead
and behold, he is going before you to Galilee. There you will
see him. See, I have told you. So they
departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran
to tell the disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and
said, greetings. And they came up and took hold
of his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, do not
be afraid, go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee and there they
will see me. While they were going, behold,
some of the guard went to the city and told the chief priest
all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with
the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of
money to the soldiers and said, tell the people, his disciples,
they came by night, they stole him away while we were asleep.
And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and
keep you out of trouble. So they took the money and did
as they were directed. And this story has been spread
among the Jews to this day. Now the 11 disciples went to
Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And
when they saw him, they worshiped 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, teaching them to observe all
that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always,
even to the end of the age. Pray with me. We thank you, Lord, for being
a God who speaks, and we thank you that when your word is opened
and when it is faithfully proclaimed, that it is not man speaking,
but it is you speaking. And so we ask now that in these
next moments that we would hear a word from you, not hearing
worldly wisdom, not hearing man’s opinions, not hearing practical
advice, but that we would hear your very voice. We remember
that your word says that Jesus says, my sheep know me and they
hear my voice. And so now, oh, great shepherd
of the sheep, speak and let us know of your holy will for us.
We pray in Jesus name. Amen. I don’t know about some
of you, but I really disliked school. I really disliked being
cooped up in a cinder block building with 30 or 40 other stinky children,
noisy and boisterous. I hated keeping schedules. I
hated other people’s attitudes. I disliked the boredom, the bad
pizza, the tater tots, the bullies and all the rest. I was bored. And when I was in school, I was
always looking out the window. I was always looking out the
window for something to explore, for dreams of being at home in
the basement tinkering with something, something that I could put my
hands on and do. The classroom was not really
for me. Now, some of you may feel the
same way. School is not for you. School wasn’t for you. Others
may have loved school. You may have thrived in the classroom.
You may have loved being there. But you know, after being in
school all week and not liking it, As if to add insult to injury,
we had Sunday school. We went to school all week and
then we went to church on Sundays and had to go to Sunday school.
It was school, school, school, and more school. Well, we need
to learn. We’re a people who have been
made by God in His image with the capacity to learn. We need
to learn how to love God and how to live well in the world
that he has made and that world that he has made us regents or
kings over. We need to learn who God is,
his purposes, his ways, his way of salvation, his wisdom, and
how to live life. You see, in the Bible, when we
read in Genesis chapter three of Adam and Eve and their fall
into sin, We read through the rest of the Bible that the effects
of sin on mankind are radical. They are widespread. They are
far-reaching. In fact, our theology says that
we are radically corrupt or we are totally corrupt. Sin corrupts
us in every part of our beings. And we know that to be true with
our inclinations, with our desires, with our speech. But we often
don’t think of the effects of sin on our minds. There’s a fancy
little word in our theology that speaks of the noetic effects
of the fall. Maybe some of you who’ve studied
Greek or Latin know that this word relates to our minds. We
are fallen in all kinds of ways, but our brains, our minds, our
thinking, they’re all affected by the sin that we have been
born into in Adam, and they need redemption. And so one of the
great aspects of the church is the redemption of our minds.
The apostle Paul speaks in chapter 12 of Romans. He says, be transformed
by the renewal of your minds. You see, we speak often too little
of salvation. When we evangelize, we say things
like, do you want to go to heaven or hell? Of course, the answer
is I want to go to heaven, unless you meet some obstinate atheist.
who wants to go to hell. You do meet those on occasion.
But we’ve reduced the gospel to a ticket out of hell and a
ticket to heaven. But redemption, as we say over
and over in the life of this church, is way more than simply
a bus ticket or a train ticket to heaven. God, through Jesus
Christ, is at work redeeming us. And one of the ways that
God redeems us is He redeems our minds. And he does that through
giving us knowledge of Jesus and all that he has taught us.
And so for those of us who don’t like school, we hear the command
of God in the scriptures to learn, to have that effect of the fall
on our minds reversed. Today I want us to consider the
topic of discipleship. And I go to Matthew chapter 28
because it gives us our marching orders. And so today I want us
to consider three aspects of the church’s ministry of discipleship. And that first aspect is this,
Jesus commands it. We see very clearly in Matthew
chapter 28 that Jesus commands that the church go into the world
and make disciples. Now recently we’ve had a change
of presidents. Some of you probably watched
the inauguration. Some of you have been attuned
to his transition period before the inauguration. And the president
establishes his cabinet. Now, some of you may think that
it has to do with the stain of the kitchen cabinets in the White
House. No, it’s his people that he gathers
around him to advise him and to serve on his behalf. But he
will appoint ambassadors, ambassadors to nations, ambassadors to the
United Nations, ambassadors to all sorts of places that need
his representation. And when the president sends
an ambassador, he sends them with the power and the authority
and even a message. And that message is from him.
The terms are his. And that person can only go on
his terms and serve in the way that he has sent them. And that’s
true of the church of Jesus Christ. We see in Matthew 28, Jesus commissions
his disciples. He sends them into the world
to be the church. The apostle Paul uses very specific
language in a couple of places where he says, we are ambassadors
for Christ. And the apostle was using that
word in the language and in the context of the Roman culture,
a great empire, a vast empire, where many ambassadors were employed
and sent around the world to represent the Caesar. And what
does the Apostle Paul, what does Jesus say? He sends the church
with a message. He sends the church with a ministry. And we can only be ambassadors. We can only make disciples. We
can only serve in the way that Jesus says to serve him. I have a book on my shelf that
says, it has this title on it, it’s titled how Jesus runs his
church. And you see, we forget that.
We want to run the church. We want to make disciples. We
want to convert people to our own version of Christianity.
We want to convert them to our rules, our methods. And we forget
that Jesus is the one who gives marching orders. He is the king,
and it is he who gives us all authority to serve on his behalf,
Matthew 28. At the very end, he says, go
into the world and make disciples of all nations, baptize them
in the name of the Trinity, in the name of the Father, Son and
Holy Ghost. And then he says, teach them to observe all that
I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you even
to the end of the age. One of the things we have to
understand when we read Matthew chapter 28 is it is a complex
sentence. And without going into all the
grammar and boredom of that, it simply says this. While going,
this is the church, while going, the church should do two things.
It should baptize and it should make disciples. We can spend
another day on baptism, but it commands us, it charges us, it
gives us the marching orders. as ambassadors for Christ, as
disciples of Jesus, as men and women of the church. It says,
as we go into the world and we baptize or initiate people into
the church, our task is to make disciples. And it gives a specific
task. He says, teach them all that
I have commanded you. You see, we You need to understand
that in the Old Testament, as well as the New Testament, God
has passed down the traditions, He’s passed down the scriptures,
and He’s done it generationally. He’s done it through families.
But He does it through the generations of the church. We read in Deuteronomy
chapter 6 just a few moments ago how the church or the family
is to be a primary means of teaching the next generation who God is
and what he’s done and what he requires of us. But you see,
it’s also the duty of the church. Deuteronomy 6 may be the great
commission to households. But Matthew 28 is the great commission
to his church, and God uses both. He uses homes to nurture children,
but he uses the church to nurture the church family. He uses both,
and he uses both greatly and mightily. But the marching orders
for the church is to make disciples and to teach disciples all that
God has commanded. We are to pass down from generation
to generation all that we have learned. The apostle Paul says,
to Timothy and trust to faithful men the gospel. We see that now
through seminaries. We see that through the elders
of the church teaching the next generation of the church. We’re
to pass down all that Jesus has taught us. That is our marching
orders. So what are the practical things
that we should be thinking about as Jesus gives us these marching
orders. Well, simply put, we must know
our Bibles. We must know all that is in them,
all that Jesus teaches in his sacred word, in his sufficient
word, in his authoritative word, his word that seeks and saves
the lost, his word that comforts and builds up the saints. In
our confession of faith in chapter one, when it speaks of the holy
scriptures, it says that one of the main reasons that God
gave us the scriptures is He knows where we live. He knows
that we live in the realm of this world with all its attractions
and all its own ways of life and philosophy and thinking.
He knows that we live with remnant sin in us, our flesh as the Apostle
Paul calls it. And he knows that we live with
the devil being a real and present danger. And so he gives us the
Bible He gives us preaching. He gives us the church. He gives
us the ministry of discipleship of the home and church to ensure
that we have every possible tool to fight against those enemies,
the world, our flesh, and the devil. It’s why Martin Luther
wrote the ancient hymn that we just sang at the beginning of
our service, a mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing. We have all these things around
us to fear, but God’s word is forever sure and true. And that
same word of God, one little sentence from God will destroy
Satan. It will change the world and
make it new. And it can speak new life into each of us and
make all things new. unto salvation. We need to know
our Bibles. We need to teach our Bibles.
We need to make sure others know what God’s word says to us. So
that’s the first thing we want to consider from this subject
of discipleship, is that Jesus commands it. The second, though,
is this. Jesus provides for it. God always graciously gives what
he commands. Whatever he asks of us, he provides
the means and the way and the blessing in order that we might
fulfill all things. Think about periods of time in
your life where you had the right people to serve you. As a baby,
you were born into the hands of parents who took care of you.
They nursed you. They changed your diapers. They
taught you how to live. They raised you. And very likely
you lived not only with parents, but with generations. You had
grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and brothers and
sisters, and they helped you along the way. And in many other
ways, we could give examples about how God provides for you
along the steps of the way. Well, one of the ways God provides
for you, one of the ways Jesus provides for his people is through
the church. And it’s through the office of
the pastor and teacher. It’s through the office of the
ruling elders of the church. In Ephesians chapter 4, the apostle
Paul is speaking to the church at Ephesus. And he says to them,
when Jesus ascended on high as a king, marching victoriously
back to heaven after his earthly life, his earthly ministry, his
death, his resurrection from the dead and the 40 days after,
he ascends into heaven like a king marching back to the great city
after war. And instead of the people paying
homage to this king and giving him gifts, as would have happened
in the ancient culture, It says Jesus gave gifts. And he gave
gifts to the church. He gave apostles to get the church
going. He gave pastors and teachers,
now in our era, to nurture the church. And he’s done that for
many reasons. But I want you to understand
that when Jesus commands the Great Commission, go into the
world baptizing and making disciples, he gives us the provision for
it. The risen victorious Christ,
as he has ascended into heaven, has given gifts to the church,
and he’s given pastors and teachers, or as your English standard version
may say, shepherds and teachers. And he’s given pastors and teachers
to help you with the renewal of your minds from the effects
of sin and the effects of the fall. And it’s why in the church
we center our lives around the scriptures. If you are part of
the life of this church, yes, we’ll fellowship. Yes, we’ll
eat together. Yes, we’ll pray together. Yes, we’ll do a lot
of things together. But primarily, we want to be
in the scriptures together. God wants us to be in his word
together as his people. It’s during sermons. It’s Sunday
school. It’s weekday Bible studies and book studies. It’s one-on-one
conversations. It’s pastoral counseling. gathering
with the elders for some help and counsel for how to live life
in this world or deal with difficulties. You see, Jesus has given us the
ministry of the church through the shepherds of the church to
proclaim his word. And that is to help us grow in
our knowledge of him. The church, according to the
Apostle Paul, when he wrote to Timothy, is the pillar It is
the buttress of truth. And so over the years, the church
has developed what it calls Christian education. Maybe in the older
days, it was called Sabbath school. Now it’s Sunday school. But we
want to educate people in the knowledge of Jesus. And Ephesians
chapter 4 goes on to say that the purpose of the work of the
pastor teacher is to equip the saints. It’s to equip them to
service. so that they can serve one another,
but it’s also to fill them full of the knowledge of the Savior
Jesus Christ. We’re a blessed generation in
the church. We don’t, like our forefathers
did in the old covenant days, have to go to Tabernacle and
see a scroll opened in red and then rolled back up and put away.
We have copies of God’s word in our hand. We have copies of
God’s word on our computers, our tablets, our smartphones.
We have copies of God’s word, probably several of them in multiple
English translations on our shelves, in our nightstands, under our
beds, in our cars. We even have enough copies where
if we leave one at church, we still have one at home. But even
more so than that, we have sermons and Bible teaching on TV and
radio and through internet, through podcast and in print. We are a blessed generation in
the church. Jesus has provided for us. And
the challenge for us is to think this way. We have no reason,
virtually no reason at all, with all the resources of the church
and even the parachurch around us, not to be ignorant or impoverished
or starving of God’s word or for his word. You see, Jesus
not only commands that we make disciples, but he provides the
way. And in this generation, he has
done so very richly. The final thing we want to think
of, though, is that Jesus not only commands discipleship, not
only does Jesus command it, he provides for it, but finally,
Jesus is the goal. Jesus is the goal of Christian
discipleship. Let me tell you what I mean.
Just the other day I was walking through a store, and you know
how shopping can be seasonal. You go through at Christmas and
there’s Christmas decorations, then there’s Valentine’s candy,
then there’ll be the Easter candy and after the first of the year
there’s stuff to help you get your house organized because
everybody has New Year’s resolutions and you want to organize your
house so they sell the plastic tubs and Rubbermaid organizers
and all that. Well just yesterday or the day
before I was walking through Walmart and they had kits for
planting your seeds and getting your seedlings ready for spring
planting outside. And it made me think of the Apostle
Paul’s word to the Galatians. In fact, we studied it this past
week in the Ladies Bible Study on Wednesday, where the Apostle
Paul says, I am in anguish of childbirth over you Galatians. I am in anguish until Christ
is formed in you. And seeing those seedling kits,
those seeding kits where you can plant a seed and let it germinate
and grow under safe conditions out of the harsh cold of winter,
maybe in a greenhouse or in your basement and under artificial
heat lamps. I’m reminded of the nurture of
the church, and it is to take people with the seeds of the
gospel into water. It is to nurture and it is to
plant and to tend and to make it grow and to pray the Holy
Spirit will help. And that is the goal of the Christian
life, is that the seeds of Jesus, the seeds of the gospel, the
seeds of discipleship will be planted in you and nurtured and
strengthened and fortified and fertilized and the weeds pulled
out until we all grow into the nurture and the knowledge and
the glory of Almighty God. Remember several weeks back as
we considered the great benediction in Hebrews chapter 13. The writer
of Hebrews says, now may the God of peace who brought again
from the dead, the Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep,
through the blood of the eternal covenant, may he equip you with
everything good that you may do his will. May he work in you
that which is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ to
whom be all glory forever and ever. And God is saying through
the writer of Hebrews, as he does through the words of the
apostle Paul, he wants to equip us. He wants us to equip us so
that we have all the proper knowledge and so that all the fullness
of Jesus is in us. He wants us not to be left in
the image of Adam, sinful, weak, and broken, but he wants us to
be in the image of Jesus, holy, perfect, obedient, virtuous,
full of the Holy Spirit and the fruit that comes from it. You see, redemption is not momentary. redemption is lifelong. God,
through his word, is at work in you. Yes, you are saved in
Jesus. Yes, you are in a very special
moment, justified by God before his throne. He sees you just
as if you’ve never sinned and just as if you’ve always obeyed.
But through the work of the word and the church, through the ministry
of discipleship, God is at work making you more and more like
Jesus. And so what does that look like?
What does it look like to be full grown, mature, full of goodness
and virtuous? Well, it’s simply to be made
like Jesus, to look like him, to follow his ways, to live his
commandments, to love as he has loved. The question is, are you
there yet? You know, sometimes we think
we have arrived, but the Bible tells us that until we get to
heaven, we are always growing. We are constantly learning. We
are constantly seeing our sin and hating and forsaking it and
loving Jesus. Maybe some of you grew up in
the same household where you marked your height on the walls
and you have dates and little hash marks on the doorframe where
it says Johnny was this high and this high and this high on
these dates or Susie. Maybe you did that. We often
need to think of that way in the church. How do I measure
in the stature of Jesus? How well do I know him? Am I
short? Am I way down here? Or am I growing,
as the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 4, up to the measure and the
stature of the Lord Jesus Christ? And that can only be measured
as we put ourselves under the standard of God’s holy word.
What do I know? What do I believe? How do I live?
Am I conformed to the world and all that is around me? Or am
I conforming my life and letting the scripture transform me? You know, I didn’t like school
growing up, but I came to like school. And I came to like school
at the moment when I was learning subjects that I really enjoyed,
things that I like to learn. And I’ve become what you might
call a lifelong student. There’s certain things I could
care less about, but there are things I love to learn and investigate,
things I love to pick up and read or watch a video on or go
and visit a certain place. And that’s the attitude that
we ought to have as Christians. We can’t hate the Christian school. We can’t dislike or think boring
about learning about Jesus and all that is for us in the scriptures. We need to be schooled in the
school of Christ. Jesus commands it. Jesus provides
it. But Jesus is also the goal. Let us pray together. Our gracious God, we thank you
for this word today that we pray that we would love your word,
that we would live it and that we would desire to read it, to
be engaged in it and to learn until we are full of the knowledge
of Christ and are properly measured in the stature of Him. And we
pray that through this church we all might grow together in
the knowledge of Jesus through preaching, through Sunday school,
through fellowship under book studies and Bible studies, and
through encountering the things we read and hear during the week
that help us. Thank you for the blessing of
the church and for all the resources that are ours and help us to
use them well and for our growth and for your glory. We do pray
in Jesus’ name, amen.