The Kingdom Goes Forward Part 1

Introduction

...

The Great Commission is not just a text about world missions and evangelism, it is foundational to the Christian’s view of the world, the identity of the church, and the hope of future glory and resurrection. It is the basis of our confidence in any and every situation, the rule by which the church engages in the world, and as we are not of the world yet it compels us to go into the world to bring souls out and into union with Jesus Christ our God and King.

The Meeting on a Mountain

The most important events in the OT Scriptures happened on mountains; they were seen as close to heaven and the places where the gods lived among ancient peoples. Some of the earliest Temples found in ancient Sumer (modern day Iraq) were ziggerates, which were essentially man-made mountains. Since these were seen as sacred spaces, God often used mountains for special occasions, especially when revealing himself to his people in a special way. The Garden of Eden was on a mountain, God showed Abram his inheritance from a mountain, he gave Moses the Law on a mountain; even the holy city of Jerusalem is on a mountain. In Matthew we have already seem mountains play an important role as a place where Jesus reveals himself and the Kingdom of Heaven to people. There was the sermon on the mount, the feeding miracles were on mountains, and perhaps most notibly the transfiguration happened on a mountain. So it is no surprise that for this last and most victorious command given to his disciples and to all disciples who would come after them, Jesus should give it on a mountain.

Here, the the disciples are in a natural temple of sorts, where God’s presence is made to known to them in the person of Jesus Christ, now in his resurrected and undying form. From here, Jesus will communicate what has often been called the great commission; the cornerstone of the church’s mission on earth. It is here that we see just how the Kingdom of God will spread, not through force or violence, but through a going to all the nations and peoples of the world to make them into disciples.

The Great Comission

Now, as we are at the very end of the Gospel of Matthew, it is important to remember that Matthew is writing to first century Jews testifying to them that Jesus is the Christ in accordance with the OT Scriptures. If Jesus is not the Christ of the OT, he is not the Christ at all. We’ve seen Matthew employ OT passages, themes, and motifs that other Gospel writers overlook because this is his goal. His unique inclusion of the Great Commission is no different; Jesus’ words here follow an age old pattern found throughout the history of God’s people Israel.

What is a Commission?

In the OT, comissions were decrees or commands that God gave his people that were based on a promise he gave to them. I’ve promised A, therefore go and do B. These commands are therefore a call to obedience based on faith, since obedience is only plausible if the promise is true.

Examples from the OT are too numerous to mention, but lets go over a couple of the famous ones:

The Commission of Abram

Genesis 12:1–4 ESV

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.

The command here is for Abram to go away from the security of his family and their gods and go into a land in which he would be a stranger. In the ANE, this is a suicide mission as you are essentially a household walking into a battlefield of tribes fighting one another continuously. But the impossible command is based on the promises, ...I will show you; I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; I will use you to be a blessing to the nations of the world who bless you, and a curse to those who curse you. As you keep reading the story of Abraham, you find in Genesis 15 a covenant made by the shedding of blood and the tearing of flesh, and in chapter 17 the purpose of the covenant command is clear: Abraham is to be a representitive of God to the world, to call them back to himself and away from their submission to demons and false gods.

So the commission is more than a divine command, it is an invitation to a promise based on faith. Although Abraham was justified by his faith alone, the call to excercise that faith was in the act of following. Living faith, as James famously tells us in James 2, always shows itself in action. So the call to obey was a call to believe that what God had promised Abraham was true. His response would show whether he had genuine faith or not. He did.

The Commission of Moses

Another example of a commission is found in Exodus 3:4-10 when Moses encounters God at the burning bush:

Exodus 3:4–10 ESV

When the Lord saw that (Moses) turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”

In this episode, the promise is that God has heard the cry of the Israelites suffering in the land of Egypt. God says he knows their sufferings and he has come down to deliver them into the land he had promised Abraham years before. God then calls Moses, an Israelite man raised is Pharoah’s court, a man who ran away because of his murder of an Egyptian who was abusing a Hebrew, to go and carry out the promise. He was to go back to the place where he was wanted for murder and go to Pharoah. Once again, a seemingly impossible promise is accompanied by a promise of God’s action; the reason he should obey God is not just because God ought to be obeyed, although that is our duty as his creatures, but beyond that it is because he ought to believe the promises God has made him.

The Commision of Joshua

A third and final example of such a commission is one given to Joshua after the death of Moses in Joshua 1:2

Joshua 1:2 ESV

“Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel.

Joshua 1:5–7 ESV

No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go.

Here, the command is for Joshua to take Moses place as the leader of Israel while they take possession of the land the Lord had promised them. Again, the command seems impossible to complete; if they are left up to their own strength, they will not get far. But once again, it is accompanied by a promise that “no man will be able” to stop them, that God will be with them as they go and recieve what God is giving them.

These promises come with two conditions: first, that Joshua be strong and courageous, not like the 10 spies who had turned Israel away from the promised land 40 years before. The second is that they keep the covenant law God had given Moses, including the 10 Words or Commandments.

So once again, God’s comissioned servant is invited not merely into wooden obedience, but into faith and trust. Because God has promised these things and will make them a reality, they can go forward with all the confidence in the world that they will be successful if they remain in God’s covenant and do not give way to fear.

A New Comission

Having seen that such comissions are quite common in the OT, it isw no wonder that these are the final words of Matthew’s Gospel, from the mouth of the Lord Jesus himself. Like the comissions of Abram, Moses, and Joshua before, this one contains a promised reality and a command to obedience in faith based on that very promise. It is an invitation to believe that his promises are true and to enjoy the blessings of them as they unfold.

Declaration of Authority

At the beginning of our text we see the eleven disciples, presumably along with the rest of Jesus’ followers, head to Galilee. When the eleven see Jesus they bow down in worship as this was not the first time they had seem him, as we know from Luke and John. Those who doubt are probably other followers. The Greek word for doubt here is never used again in the NT. Its not a great translation because its what we could call a passive doubt, not an active doubt, and is probably better translated as hesitated. That is, some who saw Jesus, rather than giving into the joy and worship of seeing him, are hesitant to believe their eyes. Could this really be the Jesus they saw die on the cross? Could their eyes be decieving them? We cannot hold this against them when we remember the initial doubt of Thomas and the hopelessness of Mary Magdelane. The eleven had also initially hesitated to believe the women’s testimony of the risen Christ.

The Commission begins with a declaration of victory and authority which gives the reason for the commission. Their success is guarenteed because of a new reality: that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus.

DA Carson makes the helpful note that this doesn’t mean Jesus, as God, was less authoritative before or that his ministry before now had less authority. Instead, the authority of Jesus has been expanded in scope. In other words, he doesn’t have a higher authority than before, but rather a broader authority. A king who has conquered a new region is not more of a king than he was before, but he is king over a broader area and people than before. So it is that, although Jesus was always God and had supreme authority as God, his dominion now extends into what was previously the domain of the false gods and fallen angels. When Adam and Eve, God’s original pair of image bearers, obeyed Satan rather than God, they submitted themselves and the created world to Satan as well. This is why God is always calling Israel his inheritance among the nations, because they were not to be submitting to satanic forces any longer. This is also why Satan was able to offer Jesus all the nations of the world during his temptation in 4:8-9. Now, Jesus has conquered death, which is the power that Satan used to enslave the human race in their sin. We read in

Romans 5:12 ESV

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—

But we see Jesus’ victory over death, and therefore over sin, in

Hebrews 2:14–15 ESV

... that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

With death defeated, the power of sin is defeated, and those who repent of their sins and walk in obedience to God display a saving faith that saves them from the power of sin. Now the image-bearers are able to partake in that resurrection life by faith, be released from the power of sin and death, and so all authority in heaven and on earth is given to Jesus by the hand of the Father who raised him from the dead. The enemy’s undefeated weapon has been disarmed, and so it is only now a matter of marching into the world which he keeps under his thumb with the power of sin and the fear of death and claim it for its rightful King.

It is from such authority, following the defeat of sin and death, and that Jesus is able to commission his people into the world where the “gates of hell will not prevail” against them.

Conclusion

Following the resurrection, Matthew leaves us with a very practical outcome of that meaningful event. His resurrection means:

That he has won the victory over death, and therefore over sin. Death, the great equalizer, the great victor of creation is no more in charge. Death, and the one who had power over death, and no longer in charge. The God-man Jesus Christ has overcome his tyranny and has ended death with life, sin with holiness, and evil with good. This is the happy ending of the story of this world.

Not only this, but this was done for our benefit and salvation. We who were the clames, the thralls of the evil tyrant the devil and his cruel rod of death which kept us enslaved to sin is defeated. Now, rather than sending us to hell with our slave master, Christ has mercifully offered freedom from this slavery to those who believe, and full sonship in his Kingdom. Not only to be citizens along with the angels, but princes and princesses along with Christ who shares his inheritance with the people he has called to himself.

All that he has called us to do is doable in his Spirit who dwells within us. The final words of the book, which we will look into in more detail next week, reflect one of the first things we learned about Jesus:

Matthew 1:22–23 ESV

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).

So here, we see this most glorious promise. We saw that all the commissions of the OT were based on God’s promises, here is ours.

Matthew 28:20 NIVUK

And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’

The promise here literally translates: the whole of every day until the end of the age. God is now surely with us, every moment of every day, and because the one who had victory over sin and death is with us all of each day until he returns, we have every reason to live our lives with such confidence. God in Christ by the Spirit is with you, so you need not fear death. He is with you, so sin must not and will not have dominion over you. He is with you, so you can go into the most hellish parts of this world, to the most hateful people in this world, and know that the gates of hell cannot prevail as you set out to do in faith what you have been commanded to do.