Greetings to you in the name of our Triune God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I have been pretty busy lately, but what is new there. Pastor left on vacation yesterday so I am on my own for the next two weeks. I am also quickly winding down here with only two and a half weeks left until I leave here. I hate that but it is what it is. I am also extremely dreading packing everything up again, but I have next week to do all of that. This weekend I ran down to Nebraska for a friend's wedding on Friday. He was my roommate senior year, and it was good to see him again. Then yesterday, I preached and taught adult Bible study. Then right after church we had our church picnic. It turned out to be a beautiful day at the park. We had a really good turn out and the food was awesome. Then the whole church got a bags tournament going and I and another guy ended up winning the entire thing. Then after the picnic I had orientation on campus for new incoming students. It is really hard cause I am excited to tell these freshman what the group will be doing and excited to get to know them, except then I remember I wont be there to do those things with them or the chance to get to know them. However, I am glad to still be getting some interested freshman to leave for the new vicar. Then I painted more of my house for several hours. We are almost done with the first coat and then will need a touch up second coat. The trim will all need to be painted too, but I told them that since I painted most of the house I am not doing the trim. I also am not a neat enough painter to do that. Then I went and visited a high school member of ours who broke his wrist in baseball Saturday. He and I have gotten pretty close so I spent some time bugging him.
Today we Harvest Table which is where organizations and churches take turns preparing food and feeding the needy of Brookings. I am excited to help with that, but it will be from 1:30 until about 8 tonight I am guessing. Then I have to call my dad since I failed to do that yesterday. I thought of him though if that counts for anything. I have been thinking about my dad a lot lately. There are a few members who are upset that I do so much work around the church that they think is not "my job" to do. I mow quite a bit, helped redo all the pews, did some plumbing, landscaped my house, and now am painting my house. To me though this is where my dad taught me by example that if there is a job to do, you just get it done. It doesn't matter that I am technically not responsible to do it, it needs to be done so I just do it. I can be extremely lazy, but I am getting better about working on things that need to be done instead of just sitting around. People have told me I am a hard worker and I just laugh and tell them they should meet my father. I have never known a harder working guy. I am just thankful a tiny portion of his work ethic rubbed off on my, and yet I wish I could get that up to be even half the worker he is. I remember one time in college I went to work with him on the farm and I loaded a trailer full of square bales and then I crawled up in the barn and as he unloaded them, I stacked them in the barn. I kept falling behind and he would have to slow down and wait for me. Finally, we got done with that load and I crawled out of the barn sweating. This is when dad told me he had already done four loads that size today and the other guy never once slowed down for him. Right then and there I knew it didn't matter how old I got or how old my dad got, I would never be able to out work him. I mean he is going to be 65 this year and he builds fence all day and then goes to his second job of working on the farm in the evening. I sit at a desk all day, and then go paint for a couple hours and I am tired. I don't know how he does it, but I am so thankful for him and everything he has done for all these years. He has worked so hard all his life to provide for our family and make sure us four kids wouldn't have to work like that to get ahead. So thank you dad for being so selfless to always put your family first, but also for being a great role model of a hard worker, never prideful, and a good Christian man.
Here is my sermon from yesterday.
Our text for this morning is the Gospel reading of Matthew 28:16 to 20 “16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 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, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit grace and peace be to you.
Our text this morning is a magnificent passage that wraps up the entire book of Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus has already died on the cross, been raised from the dead, appeared to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary and told them to go tell his disciples to meet Him in Galilee. His disciples hear the message from the women and go to meet Him on the mountain where He had designated. If you just focus in on Matthew’s post resurrection account, this is the first time the disciples have seen Jesus in the flesh, alive and walking around. They immediately worshipped Him. He is alive and standing in front of them and then He speaks these beautiful words most commonly known as the great commission.
Matthew’s Gospel was written to be addressed to the Jewish population. One of Matthew’s main themes or focus point throughout His entire Gospel is showing that Christ is the Messiah, the true Son of God, the one who has been promised throughout all of the Old Testament, He is the one who God promised to send from the Garden of Eden at the very beginning of the fall. The way Matthew writes his Gospel, the idioms he uses, the references he makes, and some of the certain events that Matthew chooses to include that the other Gospel writers do not, all show us that Matthew wanted the Jews to know Jesus was the true Son of God.
One of the classes I took at the seminary was a class devoted solely to the Gospel of Matthew. For part of the class we were assigned to read the whole book three times a week for seven weeks. So out of the 21 times I was supposed to read it, I accomplished it I think 17 or 18 times. This really did help me see a lot of themes and repetition in the book that you may not see reading it in pieces. However, it was not until this last week as I went back and read the first half of Matthew again that I noticed something quite spectacular. Chapter 1 of Matthew is sometimes tempting to skip over because of all the hard names in the genealogy of Christ that Matthew decided to start with. But I resisted the temptation and read through the names, butchering most of them, and then in the next passage, still in chapter 1, is the birth of Jesus. It is in this passage that we see the angel of the Lord speaking to Joseph telling him to stay with Mary and to name the baby that she will give birth to Jesus. Then, since Matthew is appealing to a mostly Jewish audience, he references an Old Testament prophet. Matthew knew the Jewish people would know the Old Testament scriptures very well, so he refers back to them to show how the things that the prophets prophesied about are being directly fulfilled by Jesus, the Son of God in the flesh, the Messiah. So referencing one of these Old Testament prophets, Isaiah to be exact, he includes in this passage – Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel. Then Matthew includes what Immanuel means, which is GOD WITH US. So already in chapter one, Matthew, using Old Testament scriptures, is highlighting that Jesus, the son conceived in and born of a virgin, is the promised Messiah, the one to be called Immanuel, God with us.
Then Matthew continues through the rest of His Gospel to show the life and ministry of Christ. Through the baptism of Christ, His ministry throughout Galilee and Judea, His teaching in the synagogues with authority, His preaching from the Old Testament scriptures, His healing the sick and lame, and His performing miracles for the crowds, throughout all of these, Matthew continues to use references back to the Old Testament prophets who said that the one who would be the Messiah would do these things. Matthew is trying to make it very clear, very clear to the Jews, but also to the Gentiles, or to anyone reading his book including you and me, that this Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the incarnate Son of God, the Messiah God promised to send to redeem His people from the slavery of their sin.
Matthew of course also includes Christ’s arrest, trial, crucifixion, and burial in great detail. Then in chapter 28 we see His resurrection through the women first finding the empty tomb, and then seeing and worshipping the risen and living Jesus Christ as He tells them to go tell His disciples to meet Him and that brings us right back to our text for today. You see Matthew’s conclusion of these five verses does not only point to Christ’s resurrection, it also wraps the entire book up in a neat and clean ending taking it all the way back to chapter one. The last half of verse 20, the final words of the book is Jesus reminding His disciples, “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” He is the fulfillment of the Immanuel, God with us, and now after His death and resurrection He Himself promises to be God with us by saying, “behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” This is the spectacular thing that I saw for the first time the other day. Matthew bookends His entire Gospel, starting with the Immanuel reference and ending with Christ speaking these words, He bookends His entire Gospel with the fact that God is with His people.
You see Matthew also knew the Old Testament scriptures, that is how he is able to reference them so much in his Gospel. He knew the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He knew the story of the Israelites in the wilderness. He knew the stories of all the kings of Israel, and the story of the people in exile who heard the word of God through the prophets, and he especially knew the story of the disciples who had been with Jesus. Matthew knew there were two things to be true throughout all of the history from Adam and Eve right up to the disciples seeing the resurrected Jesus. First, that God had always been with His people. Second, that people are very quick to forget that fact. The Israelites in the wilderness, the kings, the people hearing the prophets, and even the disciples let the sin of this world distract them, lead them astray, or cause them to question and doubt if God was really with them. The effects of sin can do this to us all. The loneliness, the sadness, the hurt, the pain, the suffering, the struggles, the tragedies, all of these things distract us, lead us astray, or cause us to doubt and ask, “Is God really with me?” or, “If God is with me, how is He with me?” How is God with His people?
Well, this being Holy Trinity Sunday I could answer with the fact that God the Father created us, giving us our bodies and souls, eyes, ears, and all our members, our reason and all our senses and still takes care of them. And the fact that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has redeemed us, lost and condemned people, purchased and won us from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil with His holy precious blood, innocent suffering and death. And the fact that the Holy Spirit has called us by the Gospel, enlightened us with His gifts, and kept us in the true faith, daily and richly forgiving us of all our sins. This is all most certainly true. However, on this Holy Trinity Sunday we are reminded that even though there are three persons, there is only one God. As we confesses in the Athanasian Creed there are indeed three distinct persons, each person being uncreated, infinite, eternal, almighty, God and Lord, and yet only one Uncreated, one infinite, one eternal, one almighty, and one God and Lord. So the three persons each have their own roles in the Godhead, they are still only one God and thus whenever and wherever one of the persons of the Trinity is at and working, there also the whole Godhead is working. So as the Father created us, the Son and Spirit were there also. As the Son redeemed us, the Father and the Spirit were there as well. And when the Spirit called and enlightened us, the Father and the Son where there working too. Three persons, one God. This is how God is with us, by creating and sustaining us, by redeeming and saving us, by calling us into the faith and sanctifying us. Through all of this, God is always with us. So it is Christ, who has been given all authority of Heaven and Earth, who tells us He will be with us, but knowing where He is the one Godhead is, we know the one triune God is always with us. What Christ is really saying when He says, “I will be with you always,” is “The one Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is with you always.”
Matthew uses His entire Gospel to show us Jesus Christ is the Son of God the promised Messiah. His gospel begins with Jesus’ birth and the reference to the title Immanuel, God with us, and ends with Jesus post-resurrection pre-ascension promising this very same thing. Yet another reason why I absolutely love how Matthew chooses to wrap up his entire Gospel is because it is open ended. He uses the genealogy in chapter one to tie the life of Christ all the way back to Adam, the first man. He uses 28 chapters to show us the life and ministry of Christ including His death on the cross and resurrection, and then ends his book with this opening ending of the Great Commission. You see Matthew knew that even though this was the end of his written Gospel, it was not the end of the Gospel story. The Gospel story continues through the disciples who he gave this command to, to go and baptize, making disciples of all nations. The Gospel story of Jesus Christ as the one true Son of God, who died for the sins of all mankind, and rose from the dead to give life to all believers, that Gospel story did not end with these words of Jesus, it did not end at His ascension, and it has still not ended. As the one true God, all three persons of the one Godhead work to create new lives and call some of those new lives into the one true faith of Christ’s redemption, the Gospel story continues on. We are still as much a part of the one Gospel story as were these disciples who heard Jesus give them this commission. God is still working through us to make more disciples of all people, bringing them to the waters of baptism, where the name of the one Triune God is placed upon them and the redemption Christ won for all people on the cross becomes their personal and individual justification. Just as His redemption won on the cross became yours and my individual and personal justification through the waters of our baptism when the name of the one true Triune God was placed on us. We are still a part of this ongoing Gospel story, and this conclusion that Matthew uses for his book, that was true for those disciples who heard Jesus speak these words; this conclusion is still true for you and me, and this conclusion will still be true and ever so fitting every day right up until that final day when Christ returns again. This conclusion that Matthew writes for His book is open ended and fitting for every day that the Gospel story continues to last because no matter how long the Gospel story continues Christ will still have all authority on Heaven and Earth and He will always be with His people. The one Triune God will always be with the faithful whom He has created, redeemed, and called into the faith through the waters and the Word of baptism. Whether Christ comes again tomorrow or a hundred years from now or a thousand years from now, these words of the Great commission will always be true, because Christ the Son of God will always have all authority of Heaven and Earth and He will always be with His people until the end of the age. And you are part of that one great Gospel story because the one Triune God created you, won your redemption on the cross, gave you that redemption personally and individually through the water and the Word of baptism, and called you into the faith so that you may know Christ is the Son of God, and He is always with you until the end of the age.
In the name of the one Triune God who is always with you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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