Scripture Reading: Matthew 28:16-20
How big is your view of God? Then, how does your view of God color or affect your life? Too often, our theology is divorced from our lifestyle. If your theology doesn’t change your life, how much do you really believe it?
In one of Jesus’s last discussions with his disciples, Jesus gives one of the clearest statements about himself, claiming all authority in heaven and on earth. He wasn’t just a prophet, nor even an angel. No, Jesus was no less than the divine son of God, and he emphasizes his supreme authority in order to introduce one of his most supreme commands: as disciples, we are commanded to make other disciples. You might be theologically well informed at this church, but are you obeying one of our Lord’s most important and strategic commands to make disciples (not just donations)?
Jesus also states that the reason why we should obey this command is the same motivation for everything we do in all of life: the glory of the triune God, that is, do it to make God look supreme. This passage simply can’t let us see Jesus or the Holy Spirit as any less glorious, less powerful, less divine, less immortal, or less infinite than the Father.
Last, Jesus gives powerful reassurance with this weighty command: Jesus promises us that he will be with us until the end. We will never be alone, whether we’re showing the love of Jesus to a stranger, telling a neighbor about the loving sacrifice of Christ, or out in the desert of a Muslim country where our visa and maybe even our lives are constantly in jeopardy.
Who have you told about Jesus? What disciples have you made? What are you doing to intentionally get to know unbelievers? If we’re not careful we can become isolationist so that the only things we ever do are always with believers. How many unbelieving neighbors/family members/friends do you have and do you ever try to invite them over, go out with them, go shooting, go for a walk? In what ways do you support others who are going, and leaving houses and land and family and comfort and the familiar, counting it all as rubbish that they might make Jesus Christ known to a people that have never heard? (1 John 3:5-8)
