Well, today we are indeed looking at the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the theme of this first part of our time together is that the drama of redemption is not complete without the resurrection. You may say that's obvious. But I want to tell you, there was a day when I was, I'd been a Christian about five years and I was sitting, listening to somebody give a talk on something different, sort of, and all of a sudden it hit me that I'd been making a mistake for five years as a Christian. For five years as a Christian I had focused on the idea that Jesus died for my sins. Now you may say where's the mistake. Now the mistake is that I almost never thought of his death for my sins and his resurrection for my justification, his resurrection for my life. He didn't just die for my sins, he rose for my life when he rose, I rose in him. And I'd heard it, but it had never penetrated, I'd never taken it in in my five years as a Christian. The drama of redemption is not complete until the resurrection takes place. That is his victory. Jesus did not just die for our sins, if he merely died then death has the last word. He rose in victory over his foes, in victory over sin, in victory over death. That is the good news of the resurrection. The resurrection reveals more of the person and the work of Christ than we've seen up till now. Now when we talk about the resurrection of Christ and maybe I will just look at these, the crucifixion led to death. Jesus really died. He died and he was buried and as we've looked at a little bit already he was laid in the tomb. That would be a tomb from the first century AD. That's where they laid. There would be space for three bodies here. And here's another very different sort of a tomb from the first century AD. Again, space for several bodies, these are actually shallower. The first group would be about five feet deep and dug deeper if the body bones were longer. These are more like three feet deep. These are a very different place and there the body would be folded up and laid in there. And then after decomposure it would be then the bones would be laid to rest in an even smaller space. They buried people twice in antiquity. Here is a view or maybe two views, not the greatest ever photographed in the world, but two views from inside a tomb looking out. Here's one and here's another. There are a couple places in Jerusalem should you visit where you could see a special place that's well developed called the Garden Tomb and may feel like a tourist trap somewhat, but it's about as little a tourist trap as any of the places like that you'd see. It seems to be very well preserved in the way it originally was. Jesus' body was taken by Joseph of Arimathea and probably laid in a place like this where nobody had been before. There would be space for several. There's a new tomb and Jesus' body would be the first one laid in this central place. He was really dead. He died and then he rose again. When I say it was not just a, when I say Jesus rose from a dead, it is a resurrection and not a resuscitation. A resuscitation would be him waking up and unwrapping his grave clothes and walking out. That's not what happened. Jesus passed through his grave clothes and the left. Jesus' body did not simply come back to life. His body was changed. Now we're going to see in the gospel of Luke a little bit at least that he could still eat. You could still touch him. Luke and John make it clear. He had a real body, but it was a different body. People didn't recognize him right away. He was physical. He walked. He moved around, but he also could apparently pass through walls. So he was again changed. It's absolutely essential that we realize that this is not only something that happened to Jesus, but it happened to Jesus as his representative to us. Jesus is, in the words of Paul, Jesus is the first fruits of the resurrection. If you've planted a garden, if you've had an apple tree or a peach tree or whatever the case may be, there's always one fruit. There's always the first tomato, the first pepper, the first zucchini, the first beans, the first apples, and they tell you that the rest are on their way. The Jesus' resurrection is the beginning of the harvest or the resurrection. Now in this case, the rest of the harvest is delayed until his return. But we are integrally united to him. His resurrection is connected to ours. Our resurrection body is somewhat like we don't know exactly, but is kind of like what our resurrection body will be like. It is absolutely essential to the Christian faith to assert the physical resurrection of Christ. Our eternal life, if Christianity is not just a religion of ethics, but if it's a religion of redemption that his resurrection cannot be compromised. Now you know that people do try to compromise it, and I want to talk about that. The historical accuracy, the facticity, the reliability of the gospel accounts, and I'll ask you if you would to turn to the three classical, first the three classical, critical views, skeptical views of the resurrection a little bit later, a little bit farther back in your notes. I want to take those up now. Then I want to tell you, after we look at those three for a little bit, I want to tell you in the next place about what's happening today in terms of critics who deny or doubt the resurrection of Christ. Historically, there are three reasons that people advance, or three explanations that people offer to, I'll say, explain away the resurrection to say that he didn't really physically rise, that the miracle didn't take place. The first theory is what's called the swoon theory, and that says that Jesus didn't really die, he just lapsed into a coma, how many of you heard this at some point? Okay, after the beating, and after being put on the cross, and then after resting in that cool tomb, he came back to a consciousness and revived, now that's the theory, what's wrong with it? Well, problem number one is that the Romans were trained executioners. They should have known when their job was done. Problem number two is that they're striking eyewitness testimony to his death, not only from Christian sources, the Bible, but also Roman sources, say that Jesus was executed, but the biggest problem with it is that even if it were true, it couldn't possibly hold water. But Jesus swooned and came back to consciousness in the tomb after two beatings, one lighter one that Pilate gave him to try to placate the Jews, then almost certainly a second more severe beating, that beating by itself sometimes killed people before they ever got to cross. Then you have to add to that the fact that he didn't probably have anything to eat, or maybe probably eat nothing or virtual, nothing to drink, if you trace things out for more than 24 hours, and then have him put on the cross just hypothetically, if he did wake up, if all of that didn't kill him, he would have the problem, first of all, of having been wrapped from head to toe in yards and yards and yards of cloth, he'd very probably suffocate. But then, of course, he would have to unwrap himself, but the problem is that his hands are wrapped up too, so how would he ever get out? And if he did somehow overcome all that and get out, then he would have to encounter the stone that weighed maybe 500 pounds, and if somehow, in his unbelievably weakened and feebled condition, he pushed the stone away, he would then have to overpower the Roman guards who would be killed if he escaped. And then, of course, even if somehow or other he did that, he had to give people the impression that he was an angel, another world being, or something, so they fell at his feet when they saw him. I mean, if you saw somebody who'd gone through, what Jesus had gone through, you probably wouldn't fall at your feet, you'd say, please, let me help you up. The very idea that he would even, even rouse at all, is so improbable. Josephus tells near the end of one of his works about the end of the Jewish war, he was with general, at the time, Titus, and after the Jews had been vanquished, Titus and his troops started to crucify some of the Jewish leaders along the road. Again, this was, I'll say, I won't say customary, but it was not all that rare to do something like that. And Josephus, as he went down the road, saw three of his old friends there. Josephus had fought with the Jews originally in the war, and then I'm not going to go through his life, but had, through a variety of events, come to be on the Roman side in the same war, the war of 66, the 70 AD, he saw three of his friends. He said, the Titus, these are my friends, please take them down, they'd only been crucified for a few minutes, they had not been beaten the way Jesus was beaten, they were given the finest medical care available in the Generals on Taraj, and yet two of the three died. Just from being put up there, they were almost, well, two of the three died. So it is inconceivable that Jesus swooned, lapsed into a coma, and then escaped, it would take, it takes more gullibility to believe that than it does to believe in a miracle. The second theory is that Jesus' body was stolen, the disciples here would be accused of overpowering or bribing Roman guards at Jesus' tomb and stealing the body. The first problem with that is that, again, the Roman guard could be, and it was considered to be a capital crime, you wouldn't necessarily suffer the loss of your life, but it was a capital crime to fail in your duty on the watch, on something like that. The second problem is that the disciples were in no mood for such an escapade, or such an attack after Jesus' death, they were crushed, not energetic, when they first heard the accounts from the women of Jesus' resurrection, what did they do? Do you remember? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, what happened? Their first reaction was disbelief. The first thing they did was not believe the women, so if they didn't even believe it when they heard it, why on earth can you imagine that they would plot it? That's another problem. Another one is, how could this possibly account for the change that took place in the disciples from cowering to bravery? Something had to make them change, they didn't change themselves on their own, they were not prone to change. But the biggest problem is that if the disciples stole his body and hid it somewhere, one of them eventually, surely would have cracked, eventually, when they were getting nothing but persecution, no fame, no position, no money, no honor, being hounded, being killed, one by one, don't you think? Eventually, one of them would have said, we made it all up, please, let me live. I mean, people die for lies, they do. But they don't die for lies very often, that they know a lie, especially if the lie has brought them nothing but pain. People don't do that. Now there may even be one person that would do it, there may even be two people do it, but not 12 out of 12 that would die for a lie, that they knew was a lie that got them absolutely nothing. So this one doesn't hold either. A third view is that the disciples had a hallucination, and it would go like this, they remembered Jesus, they remembered their hopes, and somehow they passed from the idea, we wish he would live, we would hope he would live, he must live to the idea of the dream, the hallucination, he does live. The problem with that view is that people have hallucinations one by one, not in masses of up to 500. See, it's not common for 500 people to have the same hallucination, the same hallucination at the same time, the same place, in fact, it's never happened in the history of mankind. And Paul says 500 people saw Jesus, as if to say to the Corinthians, if you don't believe me, you can check it out, they're still alive, you can talk to them, many of them at least are still alive. And of course, if it was a hallucination, it would be put to rest very, very easily, all the Romans would have to do is say, look, here's your hallucination, here's the body, take a look at it, and that would be the end. These are the three classical objections that have been raised for over 100 years out of an anti-supernatural stance or anti-supernatural bias by those who have a closed view of the universe. It is to say, no God, no miracles. If there is a God, he's splurred away and not really interacting with things very much. These three views, however, are not only recognized by you and me as highly improbable and taking an enormous level of credulity, but even the critics of Christianity recognize how flawed these views are. And so, today, you will not encounter many people, if they're up on current trends, you will not encounter people who take these views, who try to explain the resurrection away in this manner. You know what they do today? They avoid the issue, they try to skate around it, or there's another approach and that is to give a frontal assault on the reliability of the gospels at all. Here's the most common thing, and that is to simply avoid the issue. There's a very well-known scholar, brilliant man, named EP Saunders, S-A-N-D-E-R-S, who said this, I do not regard deliberate fraud as a worthwhile explanation of the resurrection accounts. So theft or hallucination, certainly theft, he thinks is impossible. But Jesus' followers, and later Paul, had resurrection experiences, is in my judgment a fact. What the reality was that gave rise to the experiences, I do not know. That's called being evasive. Something they believed it, I don't think they made it up, and all I can say is they believed it. And I can't say anymore. Here's another one, so if you read Luke Timothy Johnson's Real Jesus, and if you read that book, it gives a number of things that he says, have to be reliable from the gospel accounts. I was his teaching assistant a number of years ago, and years ago he came out pretty strongly for the physical resurrection of Christ. But in this book, and another book that he wrote a little bit earlier, he said something else. He said simply this, and if you read the book, you will recognize the phrase, something happened. Something happened. Now, what that something is, he won't say whether Jesus actually rose or whether people were convinced that he rose, but somehow something happened to change the convictions of the disciples. That's all I can say. Something started the Christian movement, and he leaves it at that. That's common among people today. The other view that people take is that the gospels are simply grossly unreliable, and the person who probably is most identified with that view is a man named John, a dominant croissant, and he has this criticism of the gospels. He says the gospels are fundamentally unreliable, they have virtually nothing you can count on in them. What you really can count on is the gospel of Thomas and Q. That's the saying of Jesus. Jesus was just an itinerant teacher, and all we really know about Jesus is what he did. Croissant is friends, funk most famously, and some others as well, are radical anti-supernaturalists. If the Bible says something supernatural occurred, we know in advance that can't be true. But also, Jesus was influential, therefore he was influential as a teacher. Croissant says this about Jesus' body, what really happened to Jesus' body, his statement. Those who cared did not know where it was, and those who knew did not care. Those who cared, the disciples didn't know. They fled, suddenly the Bible is reliable when he wants to pull something out of it. They fled, so they didn't know, and those who did know it was just another body to be disposed of. His view, and I almost take to say this, but you need to know what's being said, is most likely Jesus' body was devoured by scavenging dogs. That's his view. Now, that's really close to what I would call blasphemy. I will say, for what it's worth, as I mentioned last time, it's not ludicrous in this sense that it was not a given that a dead body would be buried. Joseph of Eurymothea did something that took courage in claiming and caring for the body of Christ. It also took money, but it took courage too to identify with that. So I'm not saying, Chris on as a fool, I'm saying he's an anti-supernaturist. He is against the Christian faith, and that is what stands behind him. So, if you read the book by Boyd, Sinek Sage, or Son of God, one of the reasons why you might have read that book is because Boyd rightly points out, for these people, nothing counts as evidence for the supernatural life of Christ. Nothing, no matter what you would advance, they are committed in principle to disbelief. And so, once you rule out the possibility of Jesus as God, once you rule out the possibility of miracles, the God is especially here in Jesus' prayer or anything, then you have to come up with something, and that's the something that Chris on comes up with. So, that's the way it's attacked today. And here, what we have to do in terms of an answer to that, is kind of go back to the beginning of the course and show how the gospels are indeed historically reliable. There's not one silver bullet, you just go point by point by point through some of the things that we looked at earlier. I want to say that I've been spending some minutes now defending the historicity of the resurrection, and I'll give you a chance to ask a question if you want to ask one or make a comment about it. But we have to realize that it's about half of our task to defend the historicity of the resurrection, have to defend the facticity of what God did in Christ. But it's also true that we have to not just have the fact, we have to have the understanding of the fact. When I was a pastor, there was a woman in my church, a very devout, just a great woman in the church, who was married to an atheist. Now they got married when they were both atheists, or she was at least a non-Christian, and then around the age of 32 or something. She became a Christian. She'd been a Christian maybe a few years, one a matter. Her husband came to church to support her sometimes, just to be nice. And he had some interest in common with me and we'd get together from time to time. We went on a sort of a camping thing once, and we ended up staying up till one in the morning talking about the gospels. And somehow with an atheist we got onto the reliability of the gospels, and by one o'clock in the morning, by one a.m., I had him to the point that he would say, well, I guess then it must be true Jesus rose from the dead, but I'm still not a Christian because who knows how it might have happened. I mean, amazing things happen. So I guess you're right, but that doesn't prove that I have to change my life to follow this man just because he rose again, you see. There's actually a Jewish rabbi alive today wrote a book along some of the similar lines. It said Jesus was a great prophet, and that God vindicated him by raising him from the dead, but that rabbi is not a Christian as a result. He just believes that God performed the miracle in the case of Jesus. It is vital to affirm the fact, but you also have to understand what it means, which will turn to in just a minute. But first, Scott was at you with a question about the resurrection. If it's a capital offense to let the body, to let, you know, to not guard the tomb, not to guard the body, then how could they have let them off and bribe them to boot? Now, let me just go back to what I said. I said it was a murderous, a capital offense in America, right? But not everybody who murders loses their life, right? It's potentially a capital offense. You could be executed for failing on a watch, and in fact, maybe you ordinarily were, but they did have the idea of extenuating circumstances, and here, of course, the extenuating circumstance is to make life easier for the high priests. In other words, it was more useful for them at that time to have them go along with a lie that it would have been to execute them. Their main goal here was not to punish the guards that are responsible, but to stop Christianity, to stop the disciples, and they were willing, it seemed to them, wiser, to let them go and to stop the rumors that Jesus' body was gone, and he'd raised from the dead. In other words, a short answer is, they were expedient politicians, any other questions? Okay, so what does the resurrection of Jesus mean, then? Let's think about that for a little bit. Fundamentally, it means that Jesus is all that He said He is. Jesus made claims. He claimed to be God. He claimed that in about a dozen different ways that we studied a couple of weeks ago. He used divine titles such as the Messiah and the Son of God, and called Himself, or let Himself be called the Son of David. He said before Abraham was I am, He forgave sins. He claimed to judge the world. He claimed explicitly and implicitly to be God. The resurrection proves that His claims are valid, and I guess this is for the men here just a little bit. Have you ever gotten involved in talking about sports with somebody with whom you never played? It maybe it was soccer, it was football, it was basketball, whatever the sport may be, and you're sitting around, you're talking or golf or tennis, whatever the sport is, and you're sitting around talking and talking. There's a guy there who you've never played with. Maybe there's seven people there who played with most of them. There's one there, just talking and talking about how He did this and how He practiced that and how He achieved the other thing, and then He leaves the room, and one of the other people just kind of turns and says, well you know He talks a good game. What does that mean? That means that one of the other people is saying, well I've played with him, and the talk is better than the action, right? The claims of Jesus are very impressive, but if He didn't rise, then the comment is He talks a good game. If He says He's God and dies and doesn't rise, then all of His talk is undone. If He says He's God and He rises, then it is proven. It's proven that Jesus is all that He said He is, now who did He say He is? Well first of all He said He's a prophet, excepted the title of prophet and teacher. And here of course, the resurrection vindicates or validates of Jesus as He says He is, because He said He would die and rise on the third day, and so He did. Furthermore His prophet, He interpreted His work on the cross, saying things like, today You'll be with me in paradise because I open paradise, and it is finished, and into your hands I commit my spirit and so forth. Second, it proves that Jesus is priest. Jesus is fulfilling the great and central task of a priest, and that is to offer pleasing sacrifices for sins. What Jesus proves by His resurrection is that the penalty for sin is exhausted on Him. With the Old Testament priest, now we're kind of in the book of Hebrews here, with the Old Testament priest in their sacrifices, they had to offer over and over and over again. Why? What does Hebrews say? Because they never finished dealing with sin. They gave a sort of a temporary covering, but when Jesus dies and then rises, I say He exhausts the penalty. He bears it, and then it's done. There's nothing more left. He rises afterward, unlike the bulls and the goats and so forth. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He died for their sins. He rose for their justification. That's what His resurrection proves. Jesus' resurrection also proves that He's king. Now this is something we heard at the beginning. Remember how at the beginning of Jesus' wife there were some references to Him being a king, for example today someone's born to you, who's born to you in the city of David, the king of the Jews, Christ the Lord, in Luke, in Matthew. The king of the Jews has been born. The wise men brought gifts to the king of the Jews, but then for a long time His kingship was hidden. Hardly came up throughout most of the Gospels, and then all of a sudden at the crucifixion it started to rise again. And there's the discussion of it. He says, he's the king of the Jews. Are you the king of the Jews? Pilot asks. And then of course Pilot puts the placard over top, the title over the cross, the king of the Jews, and Pilot says, behold your king and so forth. It comes up over and over again. The Romans think that it's a joke. They put a crown on his head, a crown of thorns. They put a regal robe, purple robe. That's the color of royalty, and they mock before the king. But the truth is Jesus is king, and it's proven first by his death and then by his resurrection. By his death, he defeated Satan and sin and death. That's one of the things a king does. He defeats the enemies of his people. He protected them. That's the second thing a king does. He protected them from the great danger, the great danger of sin and death. He provided for their welfare by providing eternal life for them, and here especially by rising from the dead. And he continued to lead them even after his resurrection. So Jesus proves by his resurrection that he is indeed the king of the Jews.
Matthew chapter 28, I want to look at the way it actually spins out. It's kind of a long, general set of comments on the resurrection. I want to look at some particulars and the way the story is actually told in the gospel of Matthew 28 verses 1 to 11. The story begins with Mary Magdalene and the other Mary going, it says to look at the tomb, and they arrive, and whether it's the exact time is not quite clear, but it simply says there was an earthquake and an angel descended and the stone rolled away and the tomb was empty, and the women came and saw an angel like lightning, it is appearance, dazzling white as bright as the lightning. And everybody who was there was afraid. It says in verse 4 that the guards shook and became like dead men and also says implicitly the women were afraid because it says that the angel told the women, don't be afraid. I know you're looking for Jesus, the one who's crucified, he's not here, he's risen just as he said, come see the place where he lay and go quickly and tell us the disciples, he's risen, it goes before you into Galilee, there you will see him. The women who have been told fear not were still afraid. It says in verse 9, they heard away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, fear now mixed with joy and ran and told us the disciples and we'll pick up maybe the rest of it a little bit later. The authorities in verses 11 to 15, cook up a story to cover for the disappearance of Jesus body while the disciples go forward to meet Jesus in Galilee. Now what is Matthew trying to teach us in this resurrection account just briefly sketched? First of all, you need to notice, and I'm going to try to show it to you how it happens, that he's linking the crucifixion and the resurrection scenes together in a variety of ways. He uses, for example, the word shaking and the word beholding a lot. For example, it says in 27.55 that the women beheld the crucifixion and now in 28.1 they come to behold the tomb, to look at the tomb. And then again, there's shaking. It says in 27.51 that the earth shook and the rocks split when Jesus died. And then when Jesus rises, there is a great earthquake when the angel comes to the tomb and the guards, it doesn't show this in your English translation, but it's the same word in the Greek. The guards are also quaking. The same word that you use for an earthquake is the word that's used to describe what's happening to the guard. You might say there's a big quake and then there are men who are having a little quake as a result, or there's an external earthquake and an internal earthquake. There's also a thematic interest in fear. There is certainly fear and dread in the crucifixion scene. But I think the main thing is that the resurrection scene, it says that the guards were afraid. It says that the women were afraid, but the way that fear is addressed is striking. You see it says the guards are afraid and then the angels said to the women, don't be afraid. Or is that leave the guards? You'd be afraid. It's alright for you to be afraid, because you're not on the right side of this. You do have a reason to fear. Now the women don't fear, but you guards are the best thing you can do as quake. Because indeed this is trouble for you. Then when they hear the word, their fear remains, but now it is mixed with joy. They're seized with joy as well as fear. They're also told that they should understand what has happened. Jesus is risen as he said. He's been raised just as he said. He has accomplished what he said he would accomplish, and now just turning back to chapter 27, he's also accomplished what the Jewish authorities feared he would accomplish. Chapter 27, verses 62 to 66, one little detail we sometimes forget about, maybe not a detail, but a little fact that we forget about, is why the guards were there in the first place. You see the disciples forgot the Jesus said he would rise. But the authorities remembered. And so the authorities, especially it says the chief priests and Pharisees, Matthew 27, 62, say, you know, we remember that he said he would rise again. So let's make the secure the guard, the tomb, as secure as possible until the third day. Because otherwise the disciples will come and steal the body and tell people it's been raised. And things will not be improved. We'll have killed them, but we'll still have trouble with this movement. And pile an answer simply, take a guard and make the tomb as secure as you know how. Again, if you would go to the place that is called the Garden Tomb, and if you would go to Israel, you know, depends on who your guide is, the good guides are the ones to talk honestly about probability and not certainty. The Garden Tomb, they're candid enough to talk about probability. They say this may be the place where Jesus was laid, it certainly fits. It certainly shows you can prove various ways that it's a first century tomb and that it fits what's in the gospels that it may have been elsewhere. If it's the right place, the stone that was in front of that tomb, I'll put it this way. You know, I'm a touch over six feet tall. I had to bend over, okay, to get in. The average person back then was about five average male. By the way, if anybody here is a short male, you want to feel good about yourself and a little bit on the short side, average male and Bible times is probably about five feet tall. So just about everybody here is tall. If you go back to that, you know, go back in time a little bit. And if you, you know, you also go to lots of third world countries, you'll be tall there too. Because of nutrition. Anyway, you have to bend down. It's probably about, the lip is probably about five feet. And then there's a stone that would go over that, so the stone is about five and a half feet. And it's a circular stone, it's about maybe this thick. And anybody here who's a weight left here, how would you like to lift a circular stone, about five and a half feet? And about that thick, I don't think so. Make it as secure as you know how. And then a contingent of guards, they did their best. But you know, bodies passing through rock and angels coming down from heaven just can't be stopped. And there they were, Jesus' body is gone and his disciples gone to meet him. Well, meet him they do and that leads us to the great commission. Well, let's look at the great commission for a few minutes and see how the gospel of Matthew takes its story, now that Jesus has been raised to its end. And it goes this way. We call this story this episode, the great commission. And I think that's a very good title for it. It is indeed a commission. In the Old Testament, we have people like, oh Moses and Joshua and Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 6 and Moses, you know, and Exodus 3 and 4 and Abraham in chapters 15 and 17 commissioned. And there are certain things you see in a commissioning scene and they include things like an introduction setting the scene and then a confrontation God meeting somebody and then a reaction and then a charge and then some assurance that you can do what you've been commissioned or charged to do. Those are the elements. And an introduction, a confrontation by God, a reaction to meeting God, then a charge do this, the commission itself, the commission proper we might say. And then an assurance that God will give you grace or aid to do it. Think of that in Isaiah and Joshua in the case of Abraham, Moses and others. And we're going to see it here. So here goes, first of all, the disciples, now it is 11, who go to Galilee to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go a little bit earlier in verse 10, we kind of skipped over at the moment. Jesus encountered some women verses 8, 9 and 10 and Jesus greeted them, they clashed this feet, they worshiped and he said, don't be afraid, tell my brothers to go to Galilee, there they will see me. And so they're going to Galilee. And now they're going to see him. And as they see him, it says, again, when they saw him, they worshiped, but some now my English translation is doubted, I would rather use the word hesitated. I think a better translation here would be hesitate. They saw him, but some hesitated, what are they hesitating over? I don't think it necessarily means they are unsure if it's Jesus or they're unsure if they're believers or not, but rather they aren't quite sure what to do now, you know, he's maybe in his glory, they don't see him, they don't understand him, they don't know what to do. And so they pause. It's the same word that's used back in Matthew chapter 1431 when Peter hesitated when he was walking in the water. It wasn't exactly that he doubted, he had no faith, it's that he had little faith. Well the issue here is not that they wonder if they should believe in Jesus or not, but it's difficult to finish the journey. It's difficult to come all the way to be sure Jesus is who he says he is, to be sure they should worship him, there's just a little bit of hesitation there. It is not an easy thing we might say to grow to full understanding, to full appreciation of who Jesus is. And then we get the commission itself and it has a structure that I call a sandwich and if it's not too simple for such a noble thing, if it's not too homely, we could think of a hamburger. A hamburger, if it works for you then it works, okay? A hamburger has a bun, it has a top and a bottom that holds things together, then of course if you're reading a hamburger there's also a burger, there's the meat, the essence of the thing and there's also what we sometimes call fiscans or what do you call them? You call them fiscans? Condiments, yes, where are you from, Scott? Kansas? Yeah, I don't think they call them condiments in Mississippi, do they? Nope. Well whatever you call them, there are other things that make the burger less plain that dress it up to give it its flavor and we have those elements here and here we go. First of all, we might say the bottom or part one of the bun, I hesitate to stick with this metaphor but I guess I will once I've started. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Now what he's saying here is I'm going to give you a commission, it's his biggest life itself and I have the right to give it to you. All authority has been given to me. Now you know when it says all authority has been given to me we're supposed to say by whom if it doesn't specify what's the answer? By God. God has given Jesus all authority. It's not that Jesus lacked authority earlier or that his words didn't count earlier before his resurrection but we might say his authority is enlarged, it's now his largest life, it's his largest creation, it's as big as the universe, all authority. He has no longer confined to a ministry to Israel, his ministry is as big as the world. All authority has been given to me. He says, he is king of heaven and earth, he's the son of man who came to serve and now he's going to give orders, he's going to be served by his disciples. All authority has been given to me. See there's an allusion here to Daniel chapter 7 where the son of man receives an eternal dominion over all the nations, maybe an allusion also to Jesus confession before pilot. Are you the Christ? Jesus says yes and from now on you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of God coming in the clouds of heaven. Now he has that authority, now he will wield, now he sits at the right hand. His vindication begins, his humiliation is coming to an end, his glory is going to become manifest as the church spreads, as they fulfill his obligation. Daniel 727 says that the nations will submit to the glorious son of man and that's what's going to happen. Now in Daniel it may not be entirely clear whether the nations submit willingly or unwillingly. Certainly in the book of Revelation we understand that when Jesus returns everyone will submit willingly or unwillingly. As Paul says, every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess willingly or unwillingly. But now in this age until the last day it is the responsibility of disciples to get the message of Christ, the authority of Christ out to all the nations so they will submit willingly. These are people, the job is to make willing converts to the new king. Now if that's the first part of the great commission, the foundation, all thought he's been given to me, Jesus reign is now beginning, that's the starting point. Then we come to ask the question, what is the essential aspect of the commission, I want to ask you a question here, what is the greatest thing I want to answer this and you may not get the right answer. So just relax and feel free to err here, okay? What is the greatest thing a Christian can do? Come Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength to witness, to be obedient, to oh boy, to disciple, I don't think your answer is so good, I'm not even going to repeat it for everybody because I want to say it myself in about a minute, okay, is that fair? But everybody knows this you now, so that's okay, all right, here's one of the things people say. People say the greatest thing a Christian can do is to win somebody for Christ, to evangelize somebody, to convert somebody, to win them to Lord. Common thing, if you ask a bunch of people, not as smart as all of you, but if you ask a lot of people, a lot of Christians, they'll commonly say the best thing you do is bring somebody Christ. But see, that's not the essential command, the essential command is not witness, essential command is not evangelize, essential command is not win, essential command is make disciples, which means to take, and maybe I'll conflate the two answers, to take people to the point that they love the Lord to God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, and can teach others about that, see, when you've really finished the task is when you not only have taken that person as God's instrument, not that you do it, but you've taken that person to the point of faith, then to maturity, then to the point that they can lead others to Christ and to the point that those others whom they lead to Christ themselves are mature and can take others to the Lord. That is the highest level of Christian achievement or the highest task, make disciples, and if you look at the language that Jesus uses, he says, I want you to make disciples, and there are three, and it doesn't come out again so clearly in most English translations, some have it this way. But in the original it goes like this, all authority has been given to me, therefore going make disciples, teaching them, sorry, baptizing them in the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit, and teaching them. You see the participles, baptizing, and teaching, going is also a participle in the original. Some translations have that not many, have it that way, so the main thing is make disciples and you do it three ways, you do it by going, and this is to say you don't wait for people to come to you, you go to them, that's a difference between the old covenant and the new, people are always free to come to Jerusalem, but now we go from Jerusalem out to the world, going. Second, baptizing, and here we think of well, depending on your background, babies in white
outfits, cute little babies, or adult converts, but maybe we need to think a little bit different way, something broader, I certainly believe that baptism is essential, but what he is saying here is this, making a public, recognizable commitment to the Christian faith, that's the issue here, see. Now I believe in the inclusion of infants in the covenant family, my children were baptized before they were, you know, when they were little, okay, so I'm not, don't misconstrued what I'm saying, I'm not doubting that, that's something I believe. The point is, especially in that first generation, when everybody was a new convert to Christianity, to be baptized into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit was to say, I am a Christian, I'm not a Jew, I'm not following the faith of the Jews, I believe that faith is completed in Christ, one. It's also a repudiation of the gods of the Romans and the gods of the Greeks, when you were baptizing the name of the Father and the Holy Spirit, you were saying, I now have a new allegiance. And a little bit before the day of Augustin, a very, very famous philosopher, no longer known at all, really except for the fact that he's mentioned prominently in Augustin's confessions, or maybe, I won't say not known at all, I'll say hardly known, except for the fact that he's mentioned by Augustin, became a Christian at about the age of 75 and he had attacked Christianity for decades and then in the process of studying Christianity to attack it, he slowly became converted to it. And then he told people about it and they said, well, a man of your dignity and your years and your reputation, we're so glad to have you. We don't want to embarrass you by having you have, you know, going with everybody else into the river and everybody to gawk at you and so we'll baptize you privately. He said, no. For all these years, I have publicly reviled my Lord and now I will publicly profess him. That's what this is about. To be baptized is to take the public's stand, no secret Christians, that's the theme here. And then of course, teaching, teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you, a literal translation would be teaching them to obey everything, whatever I commanded. What he's trying to say is not teaching to obey some things or favored things or palatable things or things that are trendy but to teach everything, whatever it is, to obey it. One person put it this way to me not too long ago. They said, you want to know what God is saying to the church today? Go to your Bible and read all the parts that aren't underlined. That's what God is saying to the church today. Because it's a really good chance that a lot of the stuff you have underlined is what you like. And there's a good chance that what you like is what's palatable in our culture. So go to the parts you don't like and go read them and then you'll see maybe what's important. Obey everything whatever it may be. That's the test of discipleship. Go make the nations into disciples. What you may ask the question, how do you make the nations into disciples? How do you teach them everything? Well of course, what Matthew I think is saying here is, go back to chapter 1. You want to know what to teach them? The gospel Matthew is the gospel for disciples making. It's the gospel with the teaching material in it. Go back to the sum of the mount if you want to know how to live what the character of the disciples. Go back to Matthew chapter 10 if you want to know what missions are about. Go back to chapter 13 if you want to know about the kingdom. Go back to chapter 18 if you want to learn about community life. Go back to 23, 24, 25 if you want to know how to be ready for the Lord's return and how to use your gifts. That is what it's about. And then to go back to our, we've got a hamburger. We've got cheese and we've got mayonnaise or whatever and tomato and lettuce that's going and baptizing and teaching. And we've got to have the top of the bun and that is, and surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age. God's presence is there. That's the assurance. You can do this. Why? Because I will always be with you. Always. That is the promise of the gospel. That is the conclusion of the message. Questions or comments? Let me make one to you and then you can make one back to me if you want to. People look for a lot of different things in their pastor and their church. But this passage tells us what to look for in a pastor and in a church. A place where disciple making is taking place. See, people have many conceptions of a spiritual leader of a pastor. And of course, some of them are only quasi-Christian that run around in our culture. Sub-Christian ideas like a pastor is an insurance agent. You know, buy your fire insurance here. Come and say yes to certain questions and you will be free from the danger of a really big fire in times that come. An insurance agent or maybe a policeman, you know, to keep moral order in our society is useful for that sort of reason. Those are sub-Christian ideas. There are also some semi-valid ideas about what you should look for in a pastor. Some people look to their pastor as a father figure. Sort of hold their hand, pat them in the shoulder, tell them they're all right, and tell them how to live. That's not all wrong. It's not all right either. Some look to a pastor as a role model. Here's, I want to be like him. I want to do like him or maybe a spiritual mentor. Maybe a woman would look to a woman. I want to be like her. That's better. I would like to give you a different picture. And that is the picture of a coach. Or the picture of a private instructor in things like piano or violin or painting or again a coach in a sport. You name the sport, you know, soccer or golf or tennis or baseball. And the good coach, like the good piano instructor, has played the instrument or played the game. And so there's that aspect of being a role model. You know, you want to learn the sport from somebody who's played the sport well. But they're not just a role model. They don't just say do as I do. They also explain it to you. They say, here's what I'm doing. Here's why I do it well. And this is the way to do it well so they talk it through. They don't just say, watch me play the piano. They say, watch me play the piano. And now I'll explain to you what I just did. But then there's another thing that are really good coach or really good music instructor wants. And that is they want their student to beat them. They want their student to be better than them someday. You want, if you're a golf coach, if you're worth the name, you want your students to be better than you someday. You want your tennis students to beat you someday. You want your soccer students to score goals on you someday. You want your piano students to tackle pieces that you can't play that well yourself someday. You want them to go farther. See the goal is not among, the goal is not for Christian leaders, not for people looking into their leaders, to try to someday be as good as the leader. We're all striving for Christ and the goal is not to make little clones of ourselves, but to make as best as we can, clones of Christ make disciples who go as far toward Christ as possible. The goal is making disciples, not for ourselves, not of the leader, but of Christ.