"And Jesus came and said to them, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.'” Matthew 28:18-20
In this paragraph, the resurrected Christ proclaims that all authority has been given to Him in heaven and on the earth. Based upon His kingly authority, he tells His disciples “go and make disciples of all the nations.” He gives this electrifying charge to a group of men who will later be described as “common and uneducated” (Acts 4:13). Therefore, He gives this confidence building statement, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
The enormity of the task of going to the neighborhoods, the nations, and the next generation and the promised provision of the authoritative, abiding, energizing presence of Christ calls for diligence on the part of His people in pursuing Him. This empowering presence of the Resurrected Christ is to be sought by His people and as they long for the strong reality of the Holy Spirit to be theirs in growing measure.
The main challenge for the believer is to see Christ for who He truly is and have affections that correspond to that reality. Because we are “leaky buckets” and easily distracted, we need the continual supply of the Holy Spirit to energize us to live out our faith. Therefore, we should continue to cry “come Holy Spirit.”
“(Based upon the promised work of the Holy Spirit 'He shall glorify me') It is as if the Spirit stands behind us, throwing light over our shoulder onto Jesus who stands facing us. The Spirit's message to us is never, ‘look at me; listen to me; come to me; get to know me’ but always ‘look at Him, and see His glory; listen to Him and hear His word; go to Him and have life, get to know Him and taste His gift of joy and peace.’ The Spirit, we might say, is the matchmaker, the celestial marriage broker, whose role is to bring us and Christ together and ensure that we stay together.” J.I. Packer, Keeping in Step with the Spirit, pp. 57-58
“The truth is, I don’t have the strength. I still wake up every morning needing God desperately. Like David, I often confess ‘I am poor and needy’ (Psalm 40:17). Perhaps that’s how God brought me this far (as a quadriplegic for 55 years). I can’t say, but I do know ‘the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him’ (2 Chronicles 16:9). God is searching high and low for weak people who love Him so that He can pour into them His strength.” Joni Eareckson Tada
THE CONFIDENCE BUILDING PROMISE OF MATTHEW 28:18-20 AND OUR UNION WITH CHRIST
"for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control." 2 Timothy 1:7
"for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me." 2 Timothy 1:12
1. The Pursuit
"Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you." 2 Timothy 1:13-15
"You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him." 2 Timothy 2:1-4
2. In light of the greatness of Christ and the mercy of our salvation, we were called to a life of effort and diligence (2 Peter 2:1,3).
”Follow the pattern of sound words … guard the good deposit entrusted to you.”
3. We are grace-strengthened believers as we glory in the cross.
4. The principle of non-entanglement.
“While the Holy Ghost is always present in His church, there are times when He draws manifestly nearer and puts forth a greater energy of power. Every believer is conscious in his own soul of changes corresponding to this; for the Spirit is always with him, abiding in him, and yet there are times of unusual communion and far more than ordinary life. Ands as the Spirit draws near to an individual, so does He draw near to a land then religion is revived, spiritual life is revived, spiritual understanding, spiritual worship, spiritual worship, spiritual repentance, spiritual obedience.” Alexander Moody Stuart, Pentecost-Today, pp. 24-25
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” C.S.Lewis, Mere Christianity