Matthew 28:20 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Matthew 28:20

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‘Teaching them’, instructing them. There are two sides to this. You preach the gospel; you witness to the gospel in daily life; you represent Christ. We do it in word, also by literature, and by our lives. Of course, it's the Holy Spirit who makes disciples. It's not strictly us; we realise that. The commission is given to us – ‘Go and make disciples’ – but the Scripture overall teaches us that it is God who does the work. As we witness, we depend on him to move the heart, to soften the heart, to incline the will, to move the person to believe, to regenerate, to illuminate the mind so they understand and desire and respond. Every word of witness must be accompanied by prayer or it will be in vain, because it's actually the Spirit’s work. Yes, we need to make the message as clear as we can.‘Teaching them to observe.’ It comes from the verb ‘to keep, to watch over’. It includes the idea of observing – ‘to obey’ you could say. But you have to do it by watching; you can't live the Christian life automatically. You can't go through the day without a thought in your head of how you are to live. We observe, we keep in mind the commands of the Lord. We remember our weaknesses and our tendencies, and we pray for help. ‘And lo, I am with you alway.’ That little two letter word ‘lo’ is tremendous. It literally means ‘look’, but it means more than that. It means ‘mark this’, ‘be aware of this’. It is sometimes right to translate it ‘remember’, but here it’s obviously used in a more literal sense, because of the words, ‘I am with you.’ In the Greek the ‘I’ is emphatic; all the emphasis is on that word. This is the risen Lord. He has been crucified, slain, certified dead, taken down, anointed by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, his body wrapped in bandages, laced with perfume. He is known to be dead, observed to be dead, laid in Joseph's new tomb designed and intended for him, in a garden of tombs. A stone seals the tomb; a Roman guard of at least twelve men guard it. Now here he is, risen from the dead, and the wounds that he suffered on Calvary's cross are visible, the spear piercing. He appeared twelve times over forty days, and once to above five hundred people. Here he is, the risen Lord, standing before the disciples.

Application

Who does he promise to be with? Someone who is living for themselves, and their life and possessions: a bigger this, a better that, a better experience of something in this world? Or someone living for appearances? No, this is a promise for those who go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, whether it's a preacher like the apostle Paul, or whether it's a church member like one of us who joins in with the corporate church witness. If I'm one with my fellow believers – stewarding, praying, speaking when I can, doing all I can to take part in the work, ferrying the children to Sunday School, teaching class: thinking eating living for the Lord with these things first and foremost in mind – then the promise applies to me. We have got to work; we have got to earn bread, to keep home and family together, clothed and looked after, happy and educated; we’ve got to do all these things, but if we are true believers, and we have come to Christ, he is ever uppermost in our minds and hearts.

We have to honour all the counsel of God, everything that God says. There is a trend among Bible believers today, which comes from the Charismatic Movement, but it is getting among conservative Bible believers also. It says: ‘Oh we don't believe in duties. Duties, duties, duties! Isn’t the Christian life all about grace?’, we hear people saying. ‘You're making this legalistic, so that the Christian must remember this, remember that, do this, do that, avoid this, avoid that. That is wrong; God looks after us; we don't need to trouble with that.’ But this is the great commission of Christ: ‘Teaching them to [watch for] all things that I have commanded’ – every rule that Christ speaks, not only from his own mouth, but through the mouths of his apostles, inspired to write the rest of the New Testament. Does it conflict with grace? No, we are saved by grace alone. But having been saved, you can tell a true Christian, because he voluntarily wants to obey the small print, and to do his utmost with God's help. We must get that balance right, and resist the foolish trend which is coming in, which stands all the instruction of the New Testament on its head.

‘Even unto the end.’ We may not be there quite yet, but it looks as though we are heading there, when all the signs predicted in the Scripture are coming to pass. The gospel has been preached virtually throughout the world. The opposition to the Lord and the hate is rising to such a crescendo. The videos that are made against Christ and the faith, the hostility in the public places! Now the laws are being changed more and more to criminalise Christians for standing for the moral standards of the Bible. In the Scriptures at the very end, these things rise to a climax. In the Book of Revelations, the two witnesses, representing the witness of the church, are felled, and they die and they lie down, and they are repudiated and scorned utterly. Things are going to be very hard at the very end. So it is significant that Christ says, ‘Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.’ If Christ can uphold his people and make himself known to them, and assure them even in the last tumult of opposition – Satan's little season – then he can surely do it now as we approach those days. Don't you want your heart to be assured? Don't you want to prove him day by day by committing everything to him? Don't you want to see him with the eye of faith and be conscious of his nearness by the power of the Spirit? Then make him your priority, live for him. Pray often. May the Lord keep us serving him until we see our Saviour coming in glory.

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Matthew 28:20 Commentary and Bible Study