Bigger Conquest

Trinity Sunday, Year A

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What is happening next for the disciples? This is right before Jesus is about to ascend to his Father, and these are the final instructions that Jesus is going to give his disciples. So Jesus provides for them what now? Now that he has performed everything that he needs to do for their salvation, what's next? Well, Jesus having already destined for them to meet him back in Galilee, where everything began. This is where the disciples met Jesus for the first time. This is where they laid down their lives to follow after him. In Galilee, this is where Jesus begins his ministry. So Jesus rendezvoused with his disciples after his resurrection, back at the beginning. And what he does is he ascends to this mountain and he meets with his disciples on this mountain and he begins to tell them, I have now received all authority in the cosmos, in heaven and on earth. All authority has been given to me. Therefore, what's the therefore? Now that Jesus has all authority over sin and death and everything? What does he want to do with his authority? He wants his disciples to go and make more disciples. He wants his disciples to baptize others in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He wants his disciples to make disciples and to teach them to observe everything that Jesus has been teaching them to observe. And then he ends with the promise. And he says, And I will be with you to the end of the age. Jesus is what he is doing with his disciples, is he's giving them what's next, what lies ahead of their lives, while he goes to the right hand of the Father. And this isn't the first time that a scene like this happens. No, if you remember in the Old Testament, Moses, who redeems Israel out of the land of Egypt, into the wilderness, is about to die, but yet he can't go into the promised land because he did a no-no. He can't go into the promised land. So he goes up to a mountain, Nabu, and he tells Joshua, he commissions Joshua to go and take the people of God, the nation of Israel, into the land of promise. He can't go with them. So he commissions Joshua to do the exact thing that he can't do. So Joshua, he says, be strong and courageous. Go and take the people of the land and conquer it. Take it for yourself, and I'll be with you. Those, that same scene, even the same language, is exactly what Jesus is doing on a mountain now in Galilee where it all began, so his disciples can go and make disciples, not just for a specific group of people, not for a specific location, but for all the nations. We don't have time this morning to get into these four simple verses, but you should go back and read them on your own and just highlight every time it says all. Jesus says, All authority has been given to me. So go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the triune God, the fullness of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Teaching all that I have commanded you. That's how you make disciples. And listen, I will be with you always. Jesus and this moment, and how Matthew writes it, is this is a bigger and greater conquest than Joshua led Israel in. Because Jesus has all authority, the conquest is bigger. And he takes these 11 men that he discipled himself, and he says, Now go and make more disciples, in the exact same way that I made you into disciples. And that's kind of fitting, isn't it? Jesus began in Galilee and drew these disciples to himself. So he says, You know, after I raised from the dead, I want you to meet me back at that first place. And so he's on this mountain where it all started. And he says, Now that I did this with you and we began here, you do it with others and begin here. That's what Jesus is doing. He's telling, what's next? A greater conquest. We're not just going to reclaim a nation or a country, we are going to reclaim the whole world by making disciples. But Jesus doesn't do it in the way Moses does. Moses couldn't go to the promised land. Jesus is even a greater Moses because he says, I'm not going to leave you alone to do this. You're not going to go out into all the world without me, but I'm going to go ahead of you. And I'm going to go and prepare a place so that as you make disciples, I will be there waiting to greet each and every one of them that you've made. I go ahead of you. I go and promise of a land that I'm preparing for you. So this is a greater instance that we're given a small glimpse of in Deuteronomy, but now Jesus fulfills it and something greater is happening. And we are told that this not only applies to the 11 disciples. The disciples just don't go make disciples and then their mission's over. No, those disciples are then commissioned to go and make disciples. It's a multiplication conquest. This is how it's going to permeate the whole entire cosmos, how Christ is going to execute his whole authority over every place in every period of time to all nations by making disciples. So how do we learn how to make disciples from Jesus' teaching here, or what we get from the Gospel of Matthew? First and foremost, Jesus begins by establishing that he has all authority. Therefore, disciples must submit to not their own authority, but they make disciples on behalf of the fact that Jesus is in authority and this is what he's commanding to do. So it is because that we are submitting to the authority of Christ that all of us who claim to be following after Jesus as his disciples are to submit to his authority. This becomes your drive of your life. You might choose for yourself the vocation of how you make your money or what you do in day in, day out, but it must be something about making disciples if you are a follower of Christ. And let me be clear: this isn't just about making converts. This isn't about evangelism, which it seems like everybody in our modern day and time is all focused on. If we just proclaim the gospel, that's our job. No, Jesus says don't make just believers or converts, make disciples. There's a difference. Which means you don't get to stop just by proclaiming the gospel to others, explaining the gospel to others. You have to see the project all the way through. You have to see it all the way through to baptism, which is the initiation that a disciple is identified as a disciple. Baptism is a sacrament of the church. We are the ones that possess this ritual, this initiation into the life of Christ that you are meant to follow in. And so we gather together and celebrate and initiate those disciples through baptism. And what does baptism do? It unites your life to Christ. And by union with Christ, you have access to the Father and are given the Holy Spirit. On Trinity Sunday, this is good news that the divine life of God, the triune God, is not something otherworldly or something that you're absent from. But in baptism, you are united to Christ and thereby enter the divine reality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is something that has never been done prior to Christ. There is no way that people had full access to the triune God because of sin. And they would try to remedy this through their offerings, but we're told that even those offerings didn't fully satisfy the separation. But in Christ, the remedy is satisfied. Now, because of Christ, disciples can experience the divine life with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So we have to not only submit to Jesus' authority, but we have to make disciples, not just converts. And this isn't a private venture. This isn't some kind of individual thing that you go and do out there. Because baptism relies on us to initiate those. You can join all kinds of programs and other organizations and groups, and they all kind of have their own initiation right. And how is that initiation executed? By the people that are already a part of it. You're not just to make a disciple that is apart from a community. It might start there. You might witness to somebody they receive the gospel and you begin to walk with them in their private lives, but private life always leads to a community of other disciples. And you're going to see why here in just a second, that that is absolutely necessary. Disciple making doesn't exist outside of the church. This is the place where we observe the sacred moment of initiation and baptism, but also where the preaching and teaching of God's words that they're to observe exists. You could do private Bible study, but your mind might guide you in a direction that Christ never intended. So we gather and we listen to the word. I mean, that was a long first reading. That's a whole chapter of Genesis 1, but it's God's word, and he shows you how he created the world and how he created you. This is where we learn to hear from God. This is also where we learn to expound and teach the word of God. And this is where disciples are being made. You participating in this sermon is you being fashioned and formed into a disciple. One who listens to the commands of Christ and his word and observes them in your own life. This is how disciples are made. Not individually alone, but in community. And this is how we begin to make disciples. We need to understand that we make disciples for Christ alone, but never alone in Christ. This promise was not limited to the 11 disciples, but was given to every disciple from all generation for all time until he returns. He promises to be with them. He promises to always be with them to the end of the age. Doesn't mean that Jesus' presence was only localized here with the eleven, but Jesus' presence is real in reality and is always with his disciples. But is that the reality? Can we be real for one second and just say, all right, I trust and believe Jesus isn't lying when he says, all authority in heaven and on earth, the whole entire cosmos belongs to him? But then it seems when I look at social media posts and newspapers or read about the news that the world is still corrupt, that it still seems like evil men and wicked men are plotting and those things are happening and coming true. Is Christ still at the helm presently? Or has he lost some authority? Seems like his authority is not being executed. It seems like his presence is always felt. You might have experienced a moment where I don't feel Christ. I don't feel his presence in my life right now. Let me suggest to you to reframe your mind about what you think about authority and presence when it comes to Christ. Consider Christ's own life for his authority. Christ always had authority when he walked in his ministry, right? You remember this? You read the gospels and you see Jesus calming storms at the command of his voice, healing leopards, forgiving sins, calling Lazarus from the grave. Right? Even at his own I am statement in the garden when they all came to arrest him. They're like, we are looking for Jesus. He says, I am he. And all the troops fell down. He had authority. But it didn't seem like it, did it? At the end of his life? Or did he still wield his authority when he was being beaten? When he was being slashed open? When that spear jammed to his side, when he was hanging on that cross, didn't Jesus still have authority? Absolutely. He says as much. During his trial, he says, Nobody takes my life. I lay it down. Spoken like a king who is in full authority. That even though the plots of wicked men are being executed, Jesus is still using their plots and their wickedness and he's turning it into the good of those who love him. The cross teaches us exactly how Christ executes his authority in heaven and on earth. That though be though the things seem like men are getting away with things, Jesus is still in control. Matter of fact, he's so authoritative that when bad things happen, he turns them into good. Only people with true authority can do that. And Jesus executes it perfectly. But not only that, what about his presence? I don't know. I don't feel God's presence. Well, let me just call your attention to a Bible verse that might help you understand how Christ's presence in your life is manifest. How you can feel the presence of Christ. It says this in 1 John 4 12. I'm paying attention to this for the presence of God. John's real. He says, no one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, he abides in us. And he loves us, and his love is perfected in us. This verse teaches us exactly where the presence of God is most realized and felt and perfected. It's here. It's the person next to you. It's the person in the pew with you. It's me, it's you, it's us. Christ's presence is most realized when we are loving each other. This is why he never sends his disciples alone. This is why discipleship is not an individual sport. Because he promises to always be with them to the end of the age, and his presence is always realized when they're together, loving each other. You can't do that alone in the privacy of your own home. He sends them out two by two so that they can love each other along the way as they make disciples, and their presence, their love for each other, his presence will be felt in them. Jesus has given you his presence so that you can pour his presence through love into the life of other people. So the cross teaches us how Jesus executes his authority in the world filled with seeming evil plots, but the church becomes the place where his presence is most felt and realized. But the question comes for us: do we love each other enough? If that's the goal, should we love each other more so that every person that I'm looking at right now can feel the presence of Christ? And how is it that we feel? We pray for each other. And by praying for each other, we can feel the love of Christ being poured into our lives from each other. We share in each other's struggles. We fellowship with one another, we encourage one another. Is this church a place where the love of Christ and the presence of Christ can be felt because of the way we love each other? If Christ's presence can only be manifested to me through the love you have shown me, doesn't that you doesn't that require you to be present in my life? Yeah. I don't know about you, but I've heard a lot of people this week claiming to be depressed. Matter of fact, I told to uh I spoke to um a widower, a widow, uh from my other church. And she's all by herself. She was crying, she feels lonely, she feels depressed. And it dawned on me that we need to be checking in with people that we love so that they can feel loved by Christ. We need to minister to them, we need to show up for them. We need to be present here. And if you're going to be a disciple of Christ, you gotta sit under his teaching so you can observe it in your life. You gotta submit to his authority and trust in his authority, though it may seem in the world that things are going to hell in a handbasket, he's in control and he's working everything for good. And the cross is his teacher in demonstrating how he is. But also, we have to be a family, we have to be the church. It is my hope to begin to lead this church to being the true church as it was meant to be. That it's not always fun and games, but it is always about Christ and his love for each other. And I hope that's what we begin to make here. So Jesus stands on this mountain, gives his disciples a conquest far greater than Moses ever gave Joshua, more than he ever gave Israel, who failed to do it. Moses can only point to a land that he never entered, but Jesus doesn't stay behind us. He doesn't just go with us, he goes before us, preparing a place, promising to greet us on the other side and every disciple that we help make along the way. He has all authority in heaven on earth, and he will always be with us, even to the very end of the age. And when the world makes us doubt that, when it doesn't look like Christ has authority or that he's present at all, we remember how he actually wields his authority. The same Lord who calmed storms and raised Lazarus also submitted to the cross, taking what men meant for evil and turning it into good. His authority never slipped. It was never more at work than when it looked like it was most defeated. So go and make disciples and never alone. Be the church as we baptize, teach, gather, and love one another because no one has seen God, and yet if we love each other, God's presence will be felt and will abide in us. In Christ alone we labor, but never alone in Christ. We already know how this story of the conquest that we've been assigned ends. We know the outcome. We know the result. And so let us move on until Jesus returns, writing every chapter of the story, so that when he returns, we can look back at those chapters and we can see God's movement and God's glory in it as we celebrate meeting Jesus and being greeted by him. And him saying to us, Good job, good and faithful servant. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.