The Trinity in the Great Commission

The Authority of Christ and the Great Commission

You'll turn with me in your Bibles, please, to the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 28. Before we look to the Word of God, let us pray once again and ask His blessing upon our time together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, as we open Your Word this day, we would ask that by Your Spirit You would be with us.

You would help us to understand. You would help us to worship. You would help us to hear. Lord, we pray that Your Spirit would be with us because we confess once again that without His ministry, we can accomplish nothing during this time.

We desire You to be honored. We desire to be changed and made better servants of Jesus Christ. So be with us now, we pray in Christ's name. Amen. The Gospel of Matthew, we have studied many times in the past, is a Gospel that proclaims Jesus as the King.

And in this Gospel, the specific audience, of course, are the Jewish people. There is a tremendous focus upon that, but also a recognition all the way through the Gospel that this message is going to transcend the national boundaries of Israel.

And right toward the end of the Gospel, we have what has become known as the Great Commission. The Great Commission. Unfortunately, very often the Great Commission is understood primarily in the context of what we are supposed to be doing, and it certainly has a lot to do with that.

But its primary emphasis is actually upon the authority of Jesus Christ. And so I would like to look this morning at the subject of the end of the Gospel of Matthew. You may have noticed in the hymn selections today, each of the hymns made reference to the doctrine of the Trinity.

Well, certainly that will be central to our understanding of what we will be seeing here in Matthew chapter 28, beginning at verse 16. Matthew chapter 28, beginning at verse 16. But the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had pointed out or designated.

And when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some were doubtful. Some doubted. And Jesus coming to them spoke to them saying, All authority in heaven and upon earth has been given to me. Therefore, go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name, singular, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep, to observe all things, whatever I have commanded to you.

And behold, I am with you all the days until the consummation of the age.

Amen.

The Reliability of the Ending of Matthew

Now, we know these words and you could tell that I was emphasizing a few things that will probably become important before the end of this particular hour. And once again, the danger is that we are looking at a text that we know very well.

Sometimes when you have a text memorized, it is difficult to stand back and to see it in a different light and to remove it from some of the emphases that maybe have already been connected to it in your past thought.

But once again, I want to, before looking at the specific words, I want to address an issue with you that you may not be aware of, but I want you to be aware of it should you ever encounter it. And that is, there are some who would say that the very end of this particular section is not original to the Gospel of Matthew.

Now, obviously, these are individuals who do not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. And they would say that there is a contradiction between what we have in the book of Acts, for example, where everyone is always baptized in the name of Jesus, and here you have baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, assuming, wrongly on their part, that what you have in the book of Acts is a specific formula relating to exactly what was spoken by the individual at the time of baptism, rather than recognizing that Matthew is giving the specific formula and what Acts is relating to us is simply the fact that people experienced Christian baptism over against any of the other baptisms that existed in that day.

But they will actually, and I've had many people make the argument, well, this just wasn't original, this wasn't there. The reality is that you probably can find a manuscript or two somewhere that is lacking this section.

But for what reason?

Well, think about it with me for just a moment. This is the last part of the book. And if you know anything about ancient manuscripts, you know that the last leaf of a book was the most likely to be damaged and lost.

We have many manuscripts where the end of the book is missing because when you think about it, for some reason, we don't know why, Christians always preferred the codex form of manuscripts. There are just a couple, but there are almost no Christian scrolls.

Obviously on a scroll, the best place to be would be on the inside some place that you're going to get the least aware at that particular point in time. But the codex form is what Christians preferred.

And if you have a book, if you have, you know, we've got this,.

I don't know why we have this.

Is this for self-defense or something?

I mean, I'm not sure if there's, I never really noticed it, but I just noticed something. Guess which pages of this book are in the worst shape and look like they're coming out. The very last few pages.

In fact, the poor Book of Revelation here, I'm going to have to repair it because we don't want any of the curses of the Book of Revelation to come upon us, but they've gotten folded. Wow, I can't even, wow, is there something,.

There's something wrong with the Book of Revelation here. There we go.

All right.

Revelation chapter 19 is damaged.

It really is.

And I wasn't going to use this as an illustration, but it's a good illustration. Look at how it's been folded right back into the, see, see it right there. You can see those pages right there. Didn't even know that was going to work for me, but there it is.

There's an example. The last pages in a codex, they're the ones that are most likely to get damaged. But what's interesting, what is very interesting, is that when we have a gospel manuscript, that is, it has more than one gospel, Matthew normally followed by Mark, et cetera, et cetera, nowhere to my knowledge ever have we ever found a manuscript that has Matthew followed by something else where these verses are missing.

Why?

Well, because they're original, first of all, and secondly, if it's no longer the end of the book, then there's no reason for why it would be damaged. So every gospel manuscript, to my knowledge, that we've ever found that has more than one gospel in it,.

This text is right there.

So there is absolutely no reason for anyone outside of theology to make the assertion that, well, that section about baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit,.

That just shouldn't be there.

The only people who really make that kind of argument are people who have a theological axe to grind, so to speak, and are trying to get rid of this testimony found in the Gospel of Matthew. Now, obviously, we all know what the context is here.

The context is after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have the eleven disciples, Judas no longer being amongst them, and they proceed to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated. So there is a communication between the Lord and the disciples that he is going to meet with them at a particular place.

Most probably, and we're not 100 certain, but most probably this is the same situation, this is the same incident that Paul records where you have the 500 who saw Jesus at one time. Now, why would we say that?

Well, it's on a mountain.

It's not in an upper room.

You're not going to stick that many people in an upper room. It's on a mountain where you can have that number of people available. There's enough space. But not only that, I think the best reason for thinking that is verse 17.

In verse 17, and seeing him they worshipped. You could put the word him in there if you wish. Some manuscripts do, but it's sort of assumed one way or the other. Seeing him they worshipped, but the last three words in the original language of verse 17 are very interesting.

But some doubted. There were doubters. There were doubters. Now, I can guarantee you amongst the 11, especially after the visitation of Jesus and his encounter with Thomas, there weren't any doubters left.

So there's other people here other than just the 12. And so that's why many people have concluded that, well, it is possible, of course, that Paul's making reference to a meeting between Jesus and disciples that no one else mentions.

That's a possibility. But if that's not the case, this is probably the same situation. And those who had not been in the upper room, but maybe had seen the events from afar, or certainly knew of the events, they certainly knew how effective the Romans were at killing people.

Maybe they still had the understanding of the Jewish resurrection, that it's down there, it's down there. They hadn't yet understood the concept of Jesus as the first fruits of the resurrection, so on and so forth.

Whatever it is, I'm very appreciative of the fact that verse 17 says, there were some doubters.

Because the reality is,.

That speaks to me of tremendous honesty on the part of the writer of the Gospel and the Spirit of God. Because, well, we know Thomas did. We know that Thomas, unless I see, unless I touch, so devastating was the loss, and so complete the certainty of the death of Jesus Christ, that the men walking along the road to Emmaus,.

They're down, they're sad.

We thought that he would be the one. There was no question of the reality of the death of Jesus Christ. And so, to come up upon a mountain, and to be one of those who had not yet seen the risen Lord, you're going to be looking around going, what's really happening here?

I don't understand. And some of them may not have been nearly as instructed as even the disciples themselves. And we know that they had to have their minds open to understand the Scriptures. And so, it would be the natural, in fact, proper thing.

I mean, most of us should not go around assuming that someone that was just taken to mortuary is going to be walking down the street saying hi to us the next day. That's not how the human mind works. That's not how our experience is.

And so, notice Jesus does not engage in any kind of apologetic dispute or debate, I don't think, obviously, that Matthew is intending to give to us, exactly how Jesus dealt with those who were doubting.

Just simply hearing His words and encountering Him would probably be enough. And surely, the next couple of sentences are not an exhaustive account of what Jesus said during this time. In fact, what bothers us, if we really want to be honest with ourselves, is what we would like, what would be nice, is if the Bible gave us a whole lot more detail about the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus.

That's what we would like.

We would like to have, how about just a whole book? I mean, you probably could have filled a book, couldn't you? I mean, there was a fair amount of time. And if you just wrote down everything that Jesus said, let's just say in Luke 24, when He opens their minds to understand the Scriptures and He starts from Genesis and goes all the way through, wouldn't you like to have that book?

I would. That would be great.

That's what we would like to have.

We don't have that. And I can't tell you what all of God's purposes are there. Maybe we are to glean what was taught to them through the sermons that we find in the book of Acts.

And the epistles and so on and so forth.

But the fact is that in our hearts and minds, there's somewhat of an arrogant spirit whereby we want to say to God, well, you know, it would be easier for me.

If you had just given me some more.

And I'd like to know about these things. And of course, over the next couple of hundreds of years,.

That's exactly what people did.

Especially heretics wrote entire books, which now scholars are digging out of the ground and making a lot of money publishing editions of and saying, see, this was the original view of Jesus and this was, you know, and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

And some of them are just really, really starting to become annoying, including the fellow who put a book out just this week who back about 2007 did the tomb story. And then between now and then he came out, he founded the Nails of the Cross.

And it's just starting to become, even the liberals are starting to look at this guy going, come on, really? Seriously? Hopefully this most recent book will sell about 12 copies, mainly to his family and friends.

And that will be the end of that. But maybe not. I don't know. But those people were around back then and they wrote these books and they were trying to fill in the things the Spirit of God chose not to reveal to us because they were not necessary for life and godliness.

And so there's a lot of things about this period of time that are not revealed to us in Scripture. But what is revealed to us in Scripture should be extremely important to us. First of all, verse 17, And when they saw him, they worshipped him.

Now, once again, the term that is used here is a word that can be used as simply bowing down before someone. And a lowly Roman soldier might bow down before the emperor or even a centurion or someone like that, and it doesn't mean religious worship.

That admitted and that placed in the record that has very little to do with the many times the term is used specifically of religious worship. In the book of Revelation, when John bowed down, using the same term here, it's prostuneo, bowed down before the angel.

What did the angel say to him? Don't do that. Prostuneo, worship God. And so whether it is religious worship or not is determined by the context. Now, you tell me. If you're going to the mountain to meet a religious leader who has risen from the dead, do you think that's the same as a soldier or maybe religious worship?

Pretty obvious which one it is, but it's amazing how many cults, isms, and liberals there are that will miss that rather obvious reality. And seeing him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. I would say that the difference between doubt and worship was knowledge.

Knowledge, knowing who Jesus was, knowing what had taken place, knowing the truth of who he was. The disciples now, they knew. They had had their minds open to understand the prophetic scriptures and the testimony of the scriptures to Christ and to his redemptive ministry, his death, burial, and resurrection.

And so what's the difference? They all see Jesus, some doubt and some worship. The difference, I would say, is an accurate understanding of who he was. And Jesus, then, came up and spoke to them. So, he approached the disciples.

Evidently, they see him from afar. He comes to them, here on this mountain, and listen to the words he says. Now, again, this is not an exhaustive accounting of everything that he said, but it certainly is that which Matthew felt was appropriate as the very conclusion of the entirety of his gospel.

And I would say a large portion of us in this room either have these words completely memorized or at least know them so well that you probably don't even have to look at your Bible.

But think of them, once again,.

Not just as the last few words of Matthew, but as the words that he chose to be the final statement of his gospel, a summary of what he was attempting to communicate in all of those parables, in all of those stories, in all the narrations that he gave to us.

Here is the last thing he wants us to be... Here's what he wants ringing in our ears as we close his book. Jesus says, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. All authority has been given to me.

Now, immediately you go, Well, if it's given, then it's secondary, derivative, lesser, etc., etc. That's the mindset of the Unitarian. The individual who attempts to read out of Scripture the great revelation of who Jesus Christ was, who doesn't listen to, for example, Matthew 11, 27, that section that's called the Gospel of John and Matthew where you have the intimate knowledge of the Father and the Son.

No one knows the Father except the Son. No one knows the Son except the Father, so on and so forth. You read that part out. You read out all the fulfillments that were found from the Old Testament as to this One who is coming.

You read all that stuff out. You want to have a rationalistic Jesus. You want to have a Jesus who was a great moral teacher or an apocalyptic prophet or something like that. So, what Unitarianism does is it reads out of the divine Word anything that doesn't fit into that nice, simple category of a merely human Jesus.

And so, they'll see it. Its authority has been given to him. And I simply respond by saying, first of all, what creature could ever exist in this universe who could bear all authority in heaven and on earth?

This One took a specific role. He was the Messiah. He has now entered into the role of the One who has risen from the dead. And now He is commissioning His disciples. And the entire commissioning, the sending of the disciples, the commandment to them is rooted in His claim, all authority has been given to me in heaven and upon earth.

This is the One who sends His disciples forth. And this is the exousia, the authority, the power by which the church is to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, Jesus grounds the commandment He's going to give in an amazing claim that He, who was once a carpenter from Nazareth, in a sense, at least the son of the carpenter from Nazareth, that He who walked the dusty streets of Galilee, that ate the broiled fish with the disciples so many times alongside the sea, that this One who was born of a virgin, lived a true human life, has risen from the dead, and now as that resurrected Lord, claims to possess and to wield all authority in heaven and upon earth.

That is the foundation of the Great Commission. And I would say to you that when the Christian church loses sight of the glory, power and might of her Lord, her proclamation becomes a mere suggestion rather than the powerful command of the gospel itself.

Look at what has happened. In our day, when a rationalistic Jesus, when a Jesus who is a moral teacher, who is just along the same levels as the Buddha, or Mohammed, or Gandhi, or whoever else, when you put Him in the same category, you no longer have biblical Christianity.

You have a weak and spineless religious corpse. Is that not what we saw? Is that not what we see regularly in religious liberalism in our land? Once the supernatural claims of Jesus are abandoned, there really is nothing left.

I mean, if you want to take those claims out, what's left, that shell, really can't compete too well with man's religion because it was never meant to. It was never meant to. The foundation of the very commissioning of the church is really, in essence, bookmarked here, bookended here.

What do I mean by that? Well, you have verse 18, All authority has been given to me. And then notice, after what they're to do and the amazing revelation of the nature of God that is to be a part of the teaching of the church was found in the baptismal formula, which we'll look at here in a moment.

Notice what the last words are. And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. That's the standard translation, but it's interesting. When you look at the original language, I, behold, I, with you am, all the days until the consummation, the finishing up of the age.

That's literally how the last phrase is presented. And so you have, on both ends of the commissioning, all authority, heaven and earth. And the one who has all authority in heaven and earth will be with you as you obey his command to go and do these things, to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, teaching them.

As you do this, the one who has all authority in heaven and earth will be with you continuously throughout the entirety of the time period where the church is to be obeying this command and fulfilling this command.

I am with you. The one who has all authority and power does not abandon his people,.

Does not go away and leave them.

Now you say, but he went to heaven.

Exactly.

How is his presence with us today? Well, very clearly. How did he teach it in John chapter 14? If I don't go away, then the Comforter won't come to you. I and the Father will send the Comforter, and we will make our abode with you.

By what means?

By the presence of the Holy Spirit. I've said it before, I'll say it again. You cannot make heads or tails of the New Testament revelation unless you read it as the religion of the Trinity.

You simply can't make heads or tails of it.

There's just so much that makes no sense whatsoever. I will be with you, but I'm going away. And I'm going to send the Comforter. If you can't see how these all fit together, if you can't see how in God's providence they were meant to be placed together, and they were meant to be read together, one of the greatest failures of modern, quote-unquote, Christian scholarship has been to break the New Testament apart and not allow those beautiful threads and themes.

To be woven through the entire fabric.

They've chopped the garment up into pieces. It's supposed to be that beautiful, multicolored garment that Joseph had. What they've done is they've taken the cuffs off. Here's the arms. Here's the collar.

Here's another arm.

Here's the buttons.

And they've taken it all apart. And then they sit there looking at it and they're looking at a pile of buttons going, I don't know what you're supposed to do with this.

This is really confusing.

Now, don't get me wrong. I understand that it's important to allow John to speak as John and to interpret John and to look at his vocabulary and he has certain purposes and Matthew has certain purposes and we recognize that Matthew's writing to a different audience and mind than, say, Mark is.

It's perfectly fine to recognize all those things. I'm not saying you just simply wipe out all the differences and that kind of stuff. But, unfortunately, what has happened is because of that emphasis upon allowing each of the Gospels to speak, you then cut them apart and they were never intended to be cut apart by the ultimate author of all of the New Testament.

And that is the Spirit of God.

And so, when you allow the whole light of the New Testament to shine, the entire revelation of the New Testament to shine, the depth of the revelation and the balance and the beauty of these threads that are woven together come to clarity for us.

The Trinity in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

So, when you think about what Jesus is saying here, all authority,.

I have all authority in heaven and on earth. In heaven and upon earth.

Both.

We need to hear both of those things. Because it's one thing to say, well, you know, I can see how God.

Would give someone a tremendous amount of authority upon the earth.

But Jesus says he has authority in heaven. On the other hand,.

There are people who say,.

Well, a spiritual authority in heaven, but Jesus has authority upon earth where sinful men are. Both have to be kept in mind. And the one who sends us out, not with swords, he doesn't say here,.

Form armies.

And we're going to take over the world. He doesn't say form armies. The one thing he commands us to do is to make disciples of all the nations.

And how do you do that?

Well, proclamation, baptizing, teaching.

Well, what about all the other stuff you need to do? No, it's the Spirit of God.

That does all the rest of that stuff.

And even in nations today.

Where our brothers and sisters are under tremendous,.

Tremendous persecution,.

This is still being fulfilled. Still being fulfilled. Today, our brothers and sisters in North Korea suffer horribly. Has Jesus abandoned them? No.

No.

And when a single soul.

Bows the knee to Jesus Christ in that deep darkness, what it proves is the light of the Gospel can penetrate any of the darkness. And Jesus is fulfilling His promise.

To be with His people.

That's what we're seeing. It's all around us. It's all around us. There is no authority in Heaven and Earth that can resist the authority of Jesus Christ who has all authority in Heaven. Just last night it was incredibly encouraging.

Well, actually just last week.

I got an email from a former Muslim from Pakistan. And I'm really thankful when people take the time to do this. But he wrote to us and he said, I just wanted to let you know that I have left Islam. I have bowed the knee to Jesus Christ.

And your book on the Forgotten Trinity was one of the key things that allowed me to understand what it was and to break through the deception that Islam had presented in regards to who Jesus Christ was.

And then last night another fellow who was a convert here in the United States and converted to Islam came into our chat channel.

And he said,.

I was a convert and so I really got into living here in the United States. There's a lot of Christians and so I got into the Dawa. I got into the Islamic apologetics and stuff. And when I started searching around for people I'd be searching for people,.

Muslims.

And your videos kept coming up.

And your debates kept coming up.

I started watching them. And it was about three years ago I bowed the knee to Jesus Christ.

You just shredded these people.

And it was their inconsistency. It was their inability to consistently answer the questions. And it's so encouraging when someone takes the time to do something like that.

And you think about the barriers.

That something like Islam will present to someone's understanding.

And I, you know,.

A couple of the debates that I did in South Africa, one of the debates in particular, let's just say it wasn't very close. To anybody who's really thinking it through, but I would sit there and I would look out and I would see the ones who were troubled.

I would see the ones who were, but then I would see the others. And they were not hearing a word. And if I believed it was up to me to break through that kind of mindset.

And deception thing,.

Man, I would have become.

A computer geek a long time ago and just given up on it. That's just all there is to it. But I recognize, I recognize the sovereignty of God and the grace of God and the necessity of the work of the Spirit of God.

And what makes me keep going, even in those difficult contexts, is the recognition that there is no power in heaven and earth. When the Spirit of God chooses to open that heart and that mind, there is no power in heaven and earth.

That can resist the one.

Who has all authority in heaven and earth and is building his kingdom in South Africa.

Or wherever else it might be. Wherever else it might be.

And so, here you have the foundation of our commission. And what is our commission?

Go, therefore,.

And make disciples of all nations.

Now, we all know that.

That first word,.

Go,.

Is not actually an imperative.

The imperative.

Is make disciples. But, very frequently, a participle being used in this way will be flavored by the verb with which it is used. So, you can't go so far, as some people have said,.

As well,.

Just as you happen to be going. But, at the same time, the emphasis is upon the making of disciples. So, you have to be balanced in how you look at the language. And so, the primary emphasis is upon the making of disciples.

Disciple-ize all the nations.

Now, how do you do that?

How do you get someone to be a follower of Christ? Well, you have to communicate to them. That's what preaching the Gospel is all about. You must communicate. That's why God has chosen to leave us here.

If He just wanted to save people, just reach down to that people.

And save them,.

He could just take them out of the world.

Right then and there, straight to heaven, all would be well. But that's not how He's chosen to do it. He has chosen to use means. We are that means. And we are to go into all nations. There is no border.

There is no border to the claim that Jesus made that all authority is given to Him in heaven and upon earth. That pretty much wipes out all the borders. We are to disciple-ize.

All the nations.

Now, what's involved in making disciples? Well, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe, to keep, to hold to whatsoever I've commanded you. Let's look at those two actions.

Baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Now, obviously,.

The triune name that is there is something we need to focus upon, but it is fascinating that for many, many people, baptism is somewhat of a secondary issue. Now, trust me, I know. Some of you know that I've debated the baptism issue in the past.

I'm not sure how many of you know that every time I've done it, I was the one that was challenged to do debate. I've never challenged.

Any of our Presbyterian brothers.

To do debates on baptism. I just got another challenge. A fairly well-known Presbyterian. It looks like March of next year in Florida.

To debate baptism.

And I will do it because.

I think it's important. Because it's not just about that. This has a lot to do with much more. It has to do with the nature of the Church. It has to do with the nature of the New Covenant. It's connected to a lot of other things.

Baptizing them, anima, into the name of Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Now, there's been a lot written.

About that phrase.

And I can't even begin to summarize.

All of it right now.

Let me just make sure that you understand some of the important elements of it. It does not say into the names. It's into the name.

Singular.

Now, again, our oneness Pentecostal friends will say,.

Well, that's the name of Jesus.

The name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is Jesus. Never is the Father identified as Jesus. Even in John chapter 10 when Jesus said, I and the Father are one. The verb there is plural. I and the Father, we are one.

There's always a distinction. Everywhere in the New Testament. You cannot read the New Testament that way. It turns Jesus' prayers into a joke and makes a mockery of the language.