[00:00:01] Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's Word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find
[email protected] be sure to also check out our Bible Study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:37] I want you to imagine with me spending three years with Jesus.
[00:00:43] Not like you got with him, you know, occasionally and maybe had a prayer breakfast once or twice a week, or you took some time to open up the scrolls and read from Isaiah and let him tell you a little bit about that and what it really meant and how it may have even been talking about him. I'm not talking about those kinds of things.
[00:00:59] I want you to imagine that you are with Jesus around the clock for three years.
[00:01:07] You see everything that makes him amazing. You see the way he interacts with people. You see his kindness, his compassion. You see his firmness with people.
[00:01:17] You see him being patient with people that really don't deserve to be patient with.
[00:01:22] You see him in all of these different environments and you watch as people come and they. They see what he has to say. And speaking of that, when you hear him speak, the Bible says that he was speaking as a person who had the authority of God.
[00:01:37] He literally spoke as the oracles of God.
[00:01:40] But not only that, but you see all these amazing things. I mean, if you were with him and you were one of his disciples, you would have spent day in and day out and you would have watched him. And the idea was that they were kind of on the go all the time, that they were just moving from one place to the next. And whatever he came across in those situations, he dealt with it. And oftentimes you would see desperation in people's faces. You would see them coming to him and throwing all of their needs at him and all of their struggles and all of their sorrows and their ailments, they would bring all of those things to Jesus and he would take his time to love on them, to talk to them a little bit, to meet them where they were, heal their infirmity.
[00:02:20] You know, this is a guy who you watched a person who had never seen before open his eyes and not just in the Gospel of Matthew, but as you think about the other Gospels and as we continue to think about them, imagine all these little pieces and parts coming together. And you see, you know, a man who has never been able to bear his own weight, pick up his mat and walk away.
[00:02:44] And you know, like, you're here and you're hearing what he says, and you can't help but, like, just witness the. The consistency in which he lives his life. Not only does he say all the right things, and not only does he speak that is consistent with what God's word has to say, but he also is living that every day. And you are there in his presence, and you are witnessing God in the flesh, and you're seeing him in all of his perfection.
[00:03:13] And you don't find yourself intimidated in that moment. You find yourself just wanting to be at his side all the time.
[00:03:22] And even when he gets onto you, he talks to you in a way that convicts you of your sin. But he also says it in such a way that it softens your heart, and you just want to become more like him. Like, you're seeing the standard right there in front of you.
[00:03:38] And you've watched him do all of these great things, and then all of a sudden you hear that these people have opposition to it and that. That he's in trouble, that he's having to escape from place to place, that they're looking to stone him, that the things that he says, they're kind of inflammatory. Even though they're just God's word, they're causing problems, and that people are coming after him. And so you love this man. You've watched him, you've seen him do all these great things, and you can't understand it in your heart at all why someone would be so hateful and awful toward him.
[00:04:07] And yet it does happen. After you've seen all those things and as you've experienced him and you've been with him and you've walked alongside him every day, that you are looking at perfection. And you find yourself, maybe even saying to yourself, why me?
[00:04:22] You know, all of these people are coming in desperation. They just want to hear what he has to say. They just want to see him. They want the chance that he would come their way and talk to them and help them with their challenges in life. And you find yourself going, I've got the VIP pass.
[00:04:38] I'm backstage with him.
[00:04:41] I'm watching him. I'm listening to him. I'm hearing the words as he prays to God, hearing what Reverence and awe of God sounds like.
[00:04:55] But I'm seeing it reciprocated in the Son.
[00:05:00] And I find myself just thinking, he knows everything about me, and he still loves me and accepts me. Why would he accept me?
[00:05:12] And I don't know if that hits you in the heart a little bit as we think about our own insecurities, but you're there, and he's only done good.
[00:05:22] He's only gone about, and he's helped people.
[00:05:27] And now they're taking him and they've arrested him.
[00:05:32] And the rest of the story goes, he's beaten, he goes through trials, and ultimately he finds himself on the cross. And if you, as his follower, were standing there, and when they took him, you scattered for fear.
[00:05:48] And maybe from a distance, you're looking at this, and you can't get past this image of the brutality that he's experienced. And you can't help but look, but you don't want to look. And you're feeling this sickness inside of you because of what he's gone through. And you've heard all these things, all these teachings that he said, and some of them were kind of ridiculous, so you turn the other cheek, like, forgive those who have done things against you, like love your neighbor, love your enemies. All those things are just so foreign, and yet they're the heart of God. And he's saying these things, and you can't fathom why they would treat him so poorly.
[00:06:23] And he's there on the cross. And as everybody's screaming and shouting and as they're taunting him and calling him King of the Jews, you stand silent because you're afraid of what might happen to you.
[00:06:37] And with that lump in your throat, with tears swelling up inside, you're watching what he's going through.
[00:06:44] And as you watch what he's going through, you hear him utter the words, father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing.
[00:06:57] And you can't get past this image in your mind of Jesus on the cross, lifeless, his body evacuated of all of its blood.
[00:07:10] Nighttime is coming, Sabbath is coming.
[00:07:13] And his lifeless body must be taken off of that cross and put somewhere.
[00:07:20] So they do. They grab his body, they pierce it in the side to make sure he's dead. And water and blood come out separated, which gives an indication that he was dead way before that.
[00:07:31] And they put his body in a tomb and they roll the stone over it, and it's Sabbath, so they can't do anything else.
[00:07:39] I just think about sacrifice, and I don't know what it does for you. But when I see someone sacrifice for somebody else, when I see someone giving all they've got to a certain cause or something like that, it always stirs me up. You know, I think about Pam Waller and I think about the work that she does with Helping Hands and there's other ministries here, too. But you can see the sacrifice of time. You can see her passion for it, and it makes you want to get there and give the same effort, right? And in this case, you've got Jesus on the cross, and he literally has paid it all.
[00:08:15] Peter, in commenting about this later, would say this.
[00:08:18] He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.
[00:08:21] Why?
[00:08:23] So that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.
[00:08:30] Do you catch that?
[00:08:33] He did this one because of his love for you, but second of all, to inspire you to something, and it was to reject sin, to die to it, to bury it, and to live to righteousness.
[00:08:49] And then he wraps up this statement with, by his wounds, you have been healed.
[00:08:54] Can you fathom that? Have you made that personal enough?
[00:08:58] Have you put that in your own heart and understood what Jesus has done, not just for the world in this abstract terminology, but what Jesus has done for you and for your personal sin?
[00:09:11] Sacrificial leadership has a way of kind of moving us beyond, like, what we're getting out of this and moving us more to what is the mission? What is the effort? What is the thing that we are all, you know, circling the wagons for? What were we going to jump in and serve together on? It has a way of pulling that together to get us through that collective mission together. Right?
[00:09:34] But the reality is it only causes us the desire to do more if we've made it personal enough.
[00:09:45] Because if that sacrifice that's been made is not something that kind of applies to me, that it doesn't really touch me, it doesn't, like, move me inside. That's not gonna be enough for me to get out and do that. And so there's something for us to consider here, right? As we think about what Jesus has done for us, what is it and how is it that we are going to respond to what he's done for us?
[00:10:07] Matthew 28 this morning it will be our text, and we'll spend all of our time here.
[00:10:13] Matthew 28, verse one says, early on Sunday morning, as the new day was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went out to visit the tomb.
[00:10:20] If you can't for just a moment imagine all those things that they experienced and the lasting image that they have of him on the cross and the powerful display of his strength and courage in the middle of all of that and his desire to finish the mission that he came to finish.
[00:10:41] Mary's not coming to the tomb to see a resurrected body.
[00:10:46] She's not coming to, you know, see if maybe he's alive.
[00:10:50] In fact, In Mark, chapter 16, it kind of gives us a little insight as she's going. One of the things that she was going for was the very idea of anointing his body. See, they weren't able to do that well enough on that Friday night.
[00:11:03] And so here they are on this Sunday morning, and they're going in to anoint his body, to properly prepare him for burial.
[00:11:10] And in the middle of all that, I mean, it comes up that it's like they're still so distraught that maybe, like, who is. Do we even think about who is going to roll that stone away? They're not necessarily thinking what they're about to experience is going to happen. They don't have any concept of that at this point because as far as they know, the lasting image in their head is that of Jesus on the cross.
[00:11:32] And isn't it true that our sight has a way of blinding us? Sometimes we don't. We know we're supposed to respond in faith, but it's really, really difficult for us to move past some of the things that we've seen. And in this case, Jesus has been mercilessly killed on the cross.
[00:11:52] So their hope was in Jesus.
[00:11:55] But now, as far as they're concerned, he's in the tomb.
[00:11:59] But as they're going, as they're showing up, as they're closing in on the tomb, suddenly there's a great earthquake as an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and rolled aside the stone and sat on it. Now, I don't know how you see this in your mind, but as I imagine, I almost felt like there's a, you know, like a jet stream behind, like. Like he's coming down and he lands. And, you know, it just tremors everything.
[00:12:24] And what's cool about it is the stone is rolled away and he just sits up on top like. Yes.
[00:12:31] And it has an effect on the other people. What it says is his face was shining like lightning and he was. Clothes were, like, brilliantly white. And that scene must have been amazing as you see him sitting there and obviously a frightening situation, because what it says is the guards shook with fear. And it says when they saw him, they fell into a dead faint. And, you know, I was Thinking about, what is it that helps me see that. How can I imagine, like a dead faint? And all I could think about was, you know, those slingshot rods that you see at the parks? And someone will go up and they're like, you know, well, like this guy right here, like you, you know, that's how I imagine it. The angel comes down, he lands on it, and they're like. And I don't know how many there were.
[00:13:11] There seems to be like there at least had to be two to four, maybe more of them than that. And because of the situation and the struggle that the Jews were having with Christ, there probably had to be several of them there on the scene. But all of them apparently are laid out. And I don't know if Mary shows up and sees these guys, and that's part of the fear. But the angel of the Lord says, hey, don't be afraid. And can't you imagine that in that moment of absolute, horrifying experience that the one who is the horrifying person is the one who says, hey, don't be afraid.
[00:13:45] I know you're looking for Jesus who was crucified, but he isn't here.
[00:13:48] He is risen from the dead. And just as he said it would happen, come and see where his body was lying.
[00:13:55] And I can imagine that that would have been one of those things. Like what? Like, you know, shock and awe. Because they're not thinking in the same way you and you and I can, with this side of perspective and this far away, removed from that moment.
[00:14:10] Come and see where his body was lying.
[00:14:13] I love this. While faith is required to follow the king, his promises are not without empirical evidence. And I love that.
[00:14:20] There's lots of things in the Bible that tell us that Jesus was seen by other people. In 1 Corinthians alone, chapter 15, I think it says there were 500 people that he made an appearance to, that people saw him and had exchanges with him. We know when we read in first John and some other texts that, you know, John says, that which we have seen, which we have heard, which we have held with our hands, that we proclaim to you that Jesus is risen. He is the one. We've experienced it. We've seen this face to face, face. It's not just one of those shots in the dark. No, no. It's not a mystical thing. Jesus was raised from the dead and he made his appearances.
[00:14:55] And so the angel says to her, now go quickly tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead.
[00:15:01] He is going ahead of you to Galilee you will see him there.
[00:15:08] Where are you, if you're Mary, in this moment, the angel is. The stone is rolled away. You've seen this. You know this is from heaven.
[00:15:16] You go in, you see those cloths laying in the place where he was. His body's not there, but the cloths are there.
[00:15:23] You come out and he says, hey, go to the sergeant. He's going to meet you there.
[00:15:27] How would you respond?
[00:15:29] Trying to relate to that. I was thinking back to 1997. I went on a mission trip to Panama, and Robin Nichols was there with me.
[00:15:38] She was actually in my youth group 100 years ago.
[00:15:41] And we went on this trip to Panama, and we were gone, I think, maybe 10 or 11 days. And we were coming back, and Robin's parents were going to pick up Cindy and bring her to the airport, and we were going to see each other there. And I have to say that as I was coming back, we'd been married about a year. We had not been away from each other for any amount of time. This was one of those first experiences of coming back to see each other, to be reunited. And I got to tell you, I think both of us would acknowledge we were kind of nervous. We had, like, this nervous, like, butterflies, like, you know, Cindy got a new outfit. She got her nails all did and her, you know, lipstick. I was like, hey, girl. You know that it was good like it. But I can tell you that when I got to see her, there was this nervousness, like this joy, but it was like, oh, I'm gonna meet this. And she was so beautiful when I saw, you know, just so beautiful that that reunion was so sweet. I'll never forget that.
[00:16:35] But, you know, there was no life or death in that.
[00:16:38] There was no real risk. I mean, anything is risky, but there was no risk of me, like, being in harm's way or anything like that. There was no life and death element to it. But how many of you have watched these military videos where people who have been off on deployment and they come back and see their family, and it is life and death. They are in areas where it's dangerous. There is fire that's coming in your direction. There is, you know, a general element of it's not safe here. And those people come back and you see the reactions when they see their family. I can't take. Turn my eyes away from those videos. I can't help but cry every time I watch them because you see the joy and the excitement of seeing someone that you thought you may never see again.
[00:17:25] And that's kind of in the background of my mind as I read this text. And it says the women ran quickly from the tomb. They were excited to see Jesus and but listen what it says about. They were frightened and also filled with great joy. And they rushed to give the disciples the angel's message. And when they went, guess who? Jesus met them and greeted them and they ran to him and they grasped his feet and they worshiped him. Can you imagine what that reunion was like?
[00:17:50] Can you imagine what that was like to go and to fall at his feet? And I love it because it says that they were mixed with fear and joy. And isn't that the way that all of us are in our life at times there are moments where we have anxiety, we have concerns, we have fear, real fears. But then there are times where we just need to go and worship God. And I just want to say to us, when our hearts are right, fear and joy are best expressed when we come in worship at the feet of Jesus, when we lay it all to Him. That's still good for us today.
[00:18:19] When I think about the passages in Philippians, it says, you know, don't be anxious about anything. But with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And what the peace of God will surpass, all knowledge will guard your hearts and minds. How in Christ Jesus you can come and still lay your fears at his feet. You can still come and say, I've got concerns in my life, I've got doubt, I've got struggle. You can still come and lay those things at his feet, but also come to him with joy, with excitement. And in this case, maybe they thought they would never see him again.
[00:18:56] And they do.
[00:18:58] And Jesus says, don't be afraid.
[00:19:01] Isn't that just like him, to bring comfort in that moment? Now go tell my brothers to meet me in Galilee.
[00:19:10] As far as I know, this may be the first time in scripture where Jesus used that terminology for his followers. There's a very family centric tone to it, right? There's a very reunion based. It's like one of those heartwarming moments like tell my brothers that's the closest I can make it to come and find me so I can see again.
[00:19:32] But in the middle of all this, and you have to be understanding about this because all of us, when we come to Christ, you have to know that there's a certain element of people out there that are going to do their very best to undermine, to discount, to try to explain him away.
[00:19:49] And even in this circumstance as he has been raised from the dead. And that is joyful in all amazing ways.
[00:19:56] There's plots and plans going on behind the scenes to help diminish the validity of that claim.
[00:20:05] Verse 11 through 14, as the women were on their way, some of the guards notice that, said some of the guards. So it's probably more than just one or two. Some of the guards went into the city and told the leading priests what had happened. And a meeting with the elders was called. That means they grabbed the Sanhedrin, that governing body that's spiritual, religious, but also kind of a government type operation.
[00:20:29] They come together and that meeting was called and they decided to give the soldiers a large bribe. It says they told the soldiers, you must say, Jesus disciples came during the night while we were sleeping and they stole his body.
[00:20:40] Well, that. Honestly, that claim alone doesn't make much sense. If you think about it, if these guys were asleep, the earthquake didn't wake you up. I mean, rolling the big stone away didn't wake you up, the bright shiny angel didn't wake you up.
[00:20:55] And not only that, if you were asleep, then how do you know that it was the disciples that came? There's lots of things that there are holes in their issues, right?
[00:21:02] But that was the story that they were told, they had to tell to other people.
[00:21:07] And he goes on to say, hey, we got some safeguards for you too. If the governor doesn't want to hear that, if he hears about it and he's upset with you, we'll basically stand up for you. We'll try to attest that, you know, this is. In fact, please don't kill these guys. Because a Roman soldier, if he fell asleep at the job, the penalty was death. That's how steep this was.
[00:21:25] So they said, we'll stand up for you so you don't get in trouble.
[00:21:30] So let's look at this Sanhedrin cover up real quickly.
[00:21:33] It looks like we just pulled this off the page of cnn, right?
[00:21:37] They knew the reality of the Resurrection, they conspired together. And I'm sure they had all their little creative plans together, thinking, how can we explain this away? There's got to be a logical way that we can explain this. They created a false narrative out of that meeting. They paid hush money to the guards, and the Bible says enough money. So whatever they were asking to be silent and to kind of keep this until they died, no more would they be able to share this story. Anything but this, you know, they gave them enough money to keep them quiet.
[00:22:08] They promised protection if they were caught, and then they went about spreading that misinformation.
[00:22:15] So it says the guards accepted that bribe and they were told what to say. And their story spread widely among the Jews, and they still tell it today.
[00:22:27] So at the time of Matthew, when he was writing this document, that story was still circulating as an explanation for what happened and why this movement can't be the real movement of God.
[00:22:42] So the 11 disciples left for Galilee and going into the mountain where Jesus had told them to go.
[00:22:47] And when they saw him, they worshiped him.
[00:22:51] And it says, but some of them doubted. And that bothered me a little bit, you know, I mean, how can they now have seen him face to face? It's kind of like, you know, you know, Thomas, he said, if I don't see his hands and his feet, and if I don't see him face to face, if I don't touch it, I will not believe this.
[00:23:10] And so before Thomas even has an opportunity to ask that question, Jesus appears in front of him and says, hey, Thomas, see my hands and my feet?
[00:23:18] Like there's a reality now. Jesus is risen, and we should celebrate that. And yet what I want you to see here is a struggle that maybe some of us have from time to time is they did worship, but some of them still had some of their doubts.
[00:23:36] That's wild, isn't it, that we could still come and worship but still struggle with doubt. But when I look at that word, though, I wanted to understand kind of what it meant. And as I looked at it, it had like two double or duplicate as a part of it. It's a compound word. The second part of it is stance. So, like, position or conviction or those kinds of things.
[00:23:53] So what it's saying is these people had a divided heart. They had seen certain things, and in their mind, they had to cope with it. And if you can imagine the emotion of that moment, trying to deal with that, try to accept the loss of Jesus.
[00:24:11] And so you work through that for a few days, and it's really a short window of time. And all of a sudden he's back. And so their heart is kind of divided. Like, is this for real? Is this really happening? Are we seeing something we shouldn't be seeing? Because again, it goes back to that whole idea that sometimes the conflict that we face is what we see and what we have a hope in, right? It's the struggle that we battle.
[00:24:34] Like, I know what I'm supposed to believe, but I'm looking at things right in front of me. And because of that, my faith is kind of struggling here in this moment. So I don't think it's one of those things where they didn't believe in him. I think it was one of those things that they're battling with, not just the belief, but also, what does this mean long term? What does this mean for our lives?
[00:24:52] He's risen and he's with us.
[00:24:57] And so Jesus comes to calm their fears.
[00:25:00] And he says to them something very powerful. He says, all authority has been given to me on heaven and on earth because Jesus had come to this earth, died, was buried and was raised.
[00:25:17] Because of that, Jesus had been given full carte blanche over everything here between heaven and earth.
[00:25:25] What that word really means is that it's a legitimate power and control. It means from divine decree to earthly rule, everything belongs to him. Empowering his followers to carry out the mission. That mission was what? To save mankind. To reach out and share with people the truth of the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Christ. And because of that resurrection and because of the promises that were fulfilled in that, we too can hope in eternal life together, like an amazing thing. And Jesus has been brought into the world to bring these things together, both what heaven has promised and what earth has yielded.
[00:26:03] And so here is a passage in Ephesians chapter 1, where Paul is trying to explain some of these things. And he says, and this is the plan. At the right time, he will bring together everything under the authority of Christ, everything in heaven and on earth. As he spoke to the Colossians, he kind of said it this way. He said, for God in all fullness was pleased to live in Christ. And through him, God reconciled everything to himself.
[00:26:25] What does it mean? He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ's blood on the cross. You may remember this last week as Andrew was talking, One of the things he said is we had a separation problem, right? We had a distance that was created between us. And when Jesus died on the cross, his blood was poured out to pay the penalty for our sin. You remember, the veil was torn asunder. And because of that, we have now access not just symbolically, but we have access to God. And we are brought closer to him because Jesus blood has paid the penalty for our sin. It took that separation and brought us closer to him. And you may say, well, Brandon, I've got a lot of sin. Get in line.
[00:27:06] You may say, hey, I've done some things in my life that I'm really embarrassed that no one knows about.
[00:27:11] What I want you to understand is Jesus died For all sin.
[00:27:16] He didn't just die for the big things or even those little things that come across. He died for everything you've ever done.
[00:27:26] Now you're walking with Jesus for three years, and he can see directly into your soul.
[00:27:35] He knows your heart. He knows your intentions. He knows the thoughts that you have.
[00:27:40] He knows all those things.
[00:27:43] And yet still he says through his blood, you'll be forgiven.
[00:27:50] So when you think about, I have all these sins and I have so much to be sorry for, listen to the next part of this passage.
[00:27:57] This includes you, who were once far away from God. You were enemies, separated by him from your evil thoughts and actions.
[00:28:04] Yet now he has reconciled you to Himself through the death of Christ in His physical body. As a result, he has brought you into the presence, into his own presence. And you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.
[00:28:25] I don't do this to make you feel guilt again, but just think about the things that you've thought of in your life.
[00:28:36] The roads that took you to a sinful location.
[00:28:40] Think about the intention of your heart when you knew it was wrong.
[00:28:45] When you pursued a lust that you knew was wrong.
[00:28:51] The battle that you face every day. That temptation, that struggle that you.
[00:28:56] All of your sin.
[00:28:59] Jesus took that sin and he bore the shame, every bit of it. Not just the sin itself, but the shame of it.
[00:29:08] And it's with his stripes we are healed.
[00:29:11] And because of that, because of that gracious gift, because of his love for us and his sacrifice on the cross, he has brought us close to God Himself. And we have, because we have Jesus, we can stand before him blameless, without fault.
[00:29:32] So what does it mean for him to reign in us?
[00:29:35] Well, it means that as our king, it means that it's his authority that saves us. It means that it's his authority that sends us. It's his authority that guides us.
[00:29:45] And it's his authority that empowers us to do this mission.
[00:29:51] And what is that mission?
[00:29:53] Jesus said it this way.
[00:29:55] Therefore, because of all these things, go into all the world, make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
[00:30:08] Now, as I look at that, he says, go and make disciples. And that's kind of an unusual term, right? Make disciples. We can't create anybody to do anything in particular. That's kind of a weird situation. And I think oftentimes we just think that just means to go out and share the Gospel with people and they will become Christians. And that's what we do. But if you look into this word, there's so much more depth to it than that.
[00:30:29] And not to get into the deep, deep weeds, but just to give you sort of the different levels of depth that come as a part of this word that is used for making disciples. First of all, it is the full command that's given in this text. The other things, like baptizing them, teaching them, all those things come as a supplement to the idea of making disciples.
[00:30:51] And it's more than just creating a convert or bringing someone to the Baptistry. It's not about that. It's about a person who is willing to accept a lifelong apprenticeship with Jesus Christ.
[00:31:04] It's a 247 immersion into who he is. It's us investigating everything that he has to say. It's about modeling his behavior. It's about adapting our life to be more in line with what he teaches and what he says.
[00:31:20] It's the idea that something inside of us is changing because we are near Him. It's the idea they use this expression, like, you need to be walking in the dust of your rabbi. That the idea is that we're following a teacher. And because we're following that teacher, we're following so close that even the dust that comes off of his shoes are symbolically coming onto us. Because we want to be more like him. We want to model his behavior and live for him.
[00:31:44] But it's also the concept in this is the idea of servanthood.
[00:31:48] Like we're bound to him and we do whatever it is he ask of us. It's 100% all in for Jesus Christ.
[00:31:58] Well, that's different than, let's see how many people we can baptize. Right?
[00:32:04] That's different. Understand that the making disciples part of it means that we're creating people who are learners, who are people who give themselves to learn the trade of Jesus, which is teaching others about salvation and how they can draw closer to God. And that's the whole thing is our whole existence is wrapped up in that one thing.
[00:32:23] And so he says, teach these new disciples to obey all that I've commanded.
[00:32:28] And be sure of this, that I am always with you, even to the end of the age.
[00:32:33] I love that his presence, his resurrected presence, promising to be with us till there's no more of a need for him to be with us.
[00:32:44] And that's a powerful promise that he's given us.
[00:32:49] And also, we have the Holy Spirit and we have God with us. And they help us as we're going through this life.
[00:32:56] And they help Us as we're teaching others and when we're sharing this message.
[00:33:01] But my question sometimes comes is while we know that the Bible has its script and we teach those things and we teach what God said was important for salvation, we teach what it's like to live and follow Jesus.
[00:33:13] But what does a disciple really look like? And this list is a little bit more intense because John said it this way, by this will all men, or Jesus said this, by this all men will know that you're my disciples. If you do what you have love for one another. And also in John chapter eight, you know, he talks about abiding in his word. That means you stay close to what he says and you begin to emulate, you begin put those things into practice. And so you apply the Scriptures to your life and you make that change in your life till it more reflects and mirrors that of the Scriptures. But also, he says, bear much fruit. The idea here is in John chapter 15 is Jesus is the vine, we are the branches, right? We are a part of him. And so we are to bear the fruits that he yields. But also self denial, the idea that we will be willing to follow him no matter what, that we will take up our cross and follow him, that we'll deny ourselves, that we'll obey him, that everything that he has said, we will model that in our lives.
[00:34:14] And then here's the kicker that's a reminder to all of us, and maybe it's convicting on some level, is that his disciples actually make more disciples, is that there's an element in which God is calling us into this kingdom, mission, and that Jesus himself is inviting us to be a part of something that is so special and so amazing and because it leads to the salvation of souls. And so he brings us in and says, hey, that is now your job. And you may say, well, he was talking to the apostles and yes he did. But you remember on the road to Damascus when Paul received, you know, that bright light and it blinded him and he was to go into the city to find out what he needed to do. And you know, he was told to arise and be baptized and have your sins washed away. Call on the name of the Lord. And it says, immediately Paul got out there and started teaching and going into the synagogues and doing these things and going all over the place and establishing churches and talking to people. And then you get over into first and second Timothy and he has a little. He has a guy that he's working with that he's mentoring. His name is Timothy and he says to Timothy as he's finishing up his second letter, he says to him, you then, my child, meaning my convert, my little brother in Christ, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
[00:35:29] And what does he say to him? And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust those to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Do you see how that gospel message, the reality of Jesus, death, burial, resurrection, the idea of following him, growing closer in our relationship with God, salvation, forgiveness through his sacrifice, all of those messages are meant to be passed down through the ages. And so through the ages, they have been passed down. And now you and I have it.
[00:35:58] And the kingdom mission is still going.
[00:36:01] And so until the Lord returns again, it's our job to go about and to make disciples. And that is one of those things that we're required to do.
[00:36:10] Like I said, sacrificial leadership. It has a way of pulling us together, right? It has a way of, you know, me pushing away my personal pursuits so I can be a part of something bigger than myself.
[00:36:24] And that's what Jesus has invited us to.
[00:36:27] And that works unless we're not motivated by the sacrifice.
[00:36:33] So I want to ask us all this morning, what is your motivation?
[00:36:39] And what is it that drives you to do the right thing this morning? I hope that what you're hearing is that God has brought you into this great mission that is worldwide.
[00:36:53] It's the most powerful message that could ever be shared. And it's that no matter what you've done in your life, Jesus Christ is the answer for that struggle.
[00:37:05] Whatever deficiency you feel in your faith, Jesus Christ is the answer to that mission. And it's out of gratitude and love and appreciation for the sacrifice he did for me that I can accept that forgiveness and that grace and mercy.
[00:37:23] And now I have no other obligation but to go out and to share what he's done for me so that others may also become disciples who teach others. Also.
[00:37:35] This morning, I hope that it's encouraged you to be a part of it.
[00:37:40] I hope that if there's a desire in your heart to be more assertive and you need the courage, that you'll come forward and get that in the encouragement from our people, but also our prayers.
[00:37:51] But that all of us will realize that this whole study that we've been doing is about Jesus reigning in our hearts and him reigning in every decision that we make, that he rules our priorities and that He's a part of why we live the way we live.
[00:38:07] So this morning, if there's anyone who has a need Please come while we stand and sing.
