The Ending of Matthew and the Beginning of Our Lives

Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to join together

with you. We profess by faith in the

Nicene Creed that there is one holy, Catholic and Apostolic

Church, and it is a joy and a great gift to be given

opportunities to see with the eyes and to hear with the ears,

and to be present in the body to see manifestations of that.

And so it is a joy to be with you, my brothers and sisters,

now in person. And I send greetings from the

brothers and sisters as well in Hinckley.

Let me begin by praying and asking for God's help that he

would work through the reading and proclamation of the Word

which he inspired for our good. Please join me in pray prayer,

and then I will read from the end of Matthew.

Oh Lord our God, as the Greeks in the Gospel according to John

asked, we ask we would see this morning.

Jesus, we thank you, Holy Father, that Jesus your Son sees

us, and we thank you that you our Father see us and love us.

And the manifestation of that, the proof of that is the sending

of your Son. Help us Lord, to see him this

morning to the reading and proclamation of your word.

Grant our eyes light and grant our lives true life, and this we

pray in Jesus name, Amen. Please if you would open your

Bibles with me to the end of the Gospel according to Saint

Matthew, chapter 28 of Matthew and let us hear some famous last

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

words. They are on page 835 of the Pew

Bible. If you would like to follow

along in that copy. Matthew 28, verses 16 through

Matthew 28:16–20

20. Hear the word of God.

Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to

which Jesus had directed them, and when they saw him, they

worshipped him. But some doubted.

And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on

earth has been given to me. 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, teaching them to observe all

that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you

always, to the end of the age, the word of the Lord.

A few years ago, my family and I spent a holiday break putting a

whole lot of miles on our trusty and not too rusty red minivan,

scuttling back and forth across the state to see various family

members. And it was on the whole, a fun,

a refreshing trip for us. But the final leg of the journey

produced no little anxiety because our red minivan proved

to be not so trusty on the freeway.

Last leg, the dreaded check engine light came on.

And I call it dreaded because the check engine light is not

some random meaningless glowing diode.

It means something. It means something is running

amok. I remember very distinctly the

sinking feeling when my eyes saw the light flip on and my ears

heard the vans Ding, Ding, Ding. I remember how we were fresh off

of having done some major and expensive repairs on our vans

cylinder heads not too long prior.

I remember the panic that sprang up in me when the light first

flashed on. Pull over, pull over, grab the

women and children. Save yourself.

I remember the self pity. Woe is me, woe is my bank

account. I remember the confusion.

Why is this happening to us again?

And I especially remember how when the light flashed on, I

immediately began rehearsing possible explanations.

Perhaps I failed to tighten the gas cap fully when we last

filled up, and so I'll need to remember to twist it super tight

at our next stop. Perhaps.

Perhaps the shop that we took our van to last year for repairs

didn't do the job right. Or maybe they messed something

else up. It's their fault.

Or maybe, maybe some other massive engine failure has

occurred, one that is going to cost us thousands and thousands

of dollars, meaning no Christmas presents under the tree this

year. Or maybe, maybe just the check

engine light itself is a lemon. It has decided randomly to go on

and off for no real reason at all, and maybe nothing is wrong

with the engine and the light can be safely ignored.

I chose to believe that last story, and I ignored the light

for as long as I could. And dear listener, let me tell

you this morning that it was an excellent decision until a

little while later, it proved not to be.

What is very important to point out is that each explanation

that my mind raced through was a story.

It was a story in which I tried to make sense of our check

engine light going on. It was a story in which that

light could find its proper place and meaning.

Every possible explanation involves not just scientific

facts in a vacuum, but a history where events happen and changes

take place. Where some crisis arises, my

engine light has flipped on. Where some resolution must

appear on the horizon, a a repair must be done, or some

other solution must manifest itself.

Where where there are characters who play parts, crucial parts in

the drama, my family and I needing to be delivered from the

woes thrust upon us by our terrible labyrinthine engine.

The maybe. Maybe the character is the inept

repair shop that we took our van to the prior year.

The villain, the antagonist. Or maybe maybe the character is

the hero, a competent mechanic swooping in to save the day and

at a discount. Or maybe it's just the faulty

check engine light that I personify as the antagonist in

the story to explain the situation.

We always make sense of the meaning of things by locating

them in the context of a larger drama in which they are a proper

part. This is true of small things

like check engine lights, and it is true of large things like our

identity and the meaning of life.

We are always trying to make sense of ourselves as part of

some larger story, but getting the story right is no easy task.

With our check engine light, several possible narrative

construals are on offer. Which one makes the most sense

of reality? We can get the story wrong.

We can get the story wrong for self protective reasons.

I don't want to spend more money.

I'm going to pretend that this is the story of reality and if

we get the story wrong, bad things follow.

Telling myself that my van just had a faulty check engine light

was a wrong and an economically costly way of narrating reality,

but how in the world could I rightly decide among all the

other options? The uncertainty can be anxiety

producing, and it can be unbearably so when the matter is

of immeasurably more importance, such as the meaning of 1's

identity in life. The problem is that nowadays in

the modern industrialized world, there are vanishingly few clear

guides to help us narrate our stories in ways that truthfully

make sense of life. The traditional supports for

identity and meaning are disintegrating.

Maybe if I have already disintegrated before the forces

of late modernity. There is no long rootedness in a

place that could help you give coordinates for yourself.

There is no strong network of local relationships and

community. There is no shared big picture,

no unifying narrative to clarify who we are and what our lives

mean. Of course, there are plenty of

possibilities and proposals available.

Advertisements abound with stories to believe in.

A 30 second commercial is a story in miniature, prodding us

to narrate our lives in such a way that purchasing this or that

seems good and necessary. And to advertisements we can add

schools, political platforms and interest groups, news media

outlets, entertainment, streaming services, Twitter

feeds and culturally observed calendars.

All of these things promote possible narratives to inhabit.

We swim in a vast ocean of competing accounts of who we

are. We are consumer kings and

Queens, or we are patriots caught in a great battle for

constitutional rights, or we are cogs in the machine of big

business, or we are undersexed animals who just need to

copulate without the risk of procreation.

Or we are competitors scraping to survive in a dog eat dog

world. Or we are slaves in shackles of

body and place and tradition. We are confused about our

identity and the meaning of our lives, not because there are no

options when it comes to telling the story of reality, but

because that's all there seem to be.

Options galore. Inundated with possibilities, we

are frozen in indecision, flooded with confusion, fearful

that we might get the story wrong, and full of angst that

competing accounts might win the day and our identity and meaning

might be crushed. And it is not just an individual

problem, but also a corporate problem.

The church in the modern West can get very confused about its

identity and meaning and mission.

We are susceptible to many different accounts of who we,

the people of God are, of what story makes sense of our

identity and mission. Are we a separatistic folk in

constant self protective mode, seeking to seal ourselves off

from the sinful influences of the big bad world outside, just

bidding our time and our sealed off lives until everything

burns? Are we a spiritually minded

political interest group trying to mobilize a religiously

inclined voter bloc to join the efforts of a particular party?

Are we an activist group working to exhaustion in order to change

the world by our strength in order to bring about the Kingdom

on earth through social justice? Are we a social club of like

minded people who share certain preferences for musical

subcultures, or certain kinds of programming for our children, or

certain habits of entertainment, or certain even theological

ideas? Again, there are no shortage of

options. But there does seem to be a

shortage of unity. There's a plethora of competing

and conflicting stories in our present cultural moment with

which to try to make sense of the church.

Multiple voices seeking to narrate how we fit into a larger

drama. Well, this morning I propose

that Matthew means to be included as one trying to

properly narrate the church's identity and mission in the

world. He has written what we sometimes

call the first Gospel, or God by his Spirit, has inspired Matthew

to write this Gospel account so that we might know the true

drama of reality. In fact, Matthew writes this

story in such a way as to enfold our lives today.

In the story as one of its chapters, Matthew writes us into

the biblical drama as it were, giving us our own act to play

out. Why do I say it that way?

Well, in large part it is due to how Matthew structures his

Gospel account. As many interpreters have

observed, Matthew provides in the pages of his Gospel accounts

several extended speeches or discourses or sermons of Jesus.

Jesus long and mostly interrupted discourses or

sermons are are fairly easy to spot in the Gospel according to

Matthew. There are several of them, and

they're fairly easy to identify for.

For handy reference, I have laid them out in the printed outline

in the worship folders. These speeches of Jesus are very

strikingly visible. In particular, if you have a red

letter Bible in which the words of Jesus are printed in red.

So this is safe for you to do. You can do this.

You can flip through your Bible right now, and if you have a red

letter Bible, you can see it just paging through the pages of

Matthew early on in his Gospel account.

We come to chapters 5 to 7, and we find that these chapters are

all in red letters. They are all Jesus words in one

long unbroken speech. It is perhaps his most famous

one which we call the Sermon on the Mount.

Moving forward a little bit, in Matthew to chapter 10, we are

treated to a second sermon or discourse of Jesus, one that

addresses mission and martyrdom for disciples of Christ.

The Gospel goes on to give us three further lengthy discourses

of Jesus, for a total in this Gospel account of five.

And Matthew clearly signals where these discourses end with

a formulaic statement that's repeated each time when when

Jesus had finished these words or something very similar.

These formulas, these statements, appear five times,

at 7:28 and 11:00 one, and 1353 and 19 one and 26 one.

They appear at the conclusions of the five discourses, and they

appear nowhere else in Matthew. They function as transitional

signs, helping us discern Matthew's strategy of

structuring his story around the sermons of Jesus.

Jesus discourses, his speech, his teaching.

They are the literary backbone of this drama.

But Matthew does not only give us Jesus discourses in teaching.

Preceding each section of discourse, each section of

teaching, are chapters of narrative action in which Jesus

performs miracles and argues with the Pharisees and travels

to Jerusalem and so forth. That is as it should be, because

Jesus most assuredly did not only teach, nor did he only act

without explanatory comment. Jesus came acting and teaching

in his single unified ministry in life.

And so Matthew arranges his Gospel account, his narrative of

Jesus life, by giving us chunks of narrative action followed by

a sermon or discourse from Jesus, a block of events

followed by a block of teaching. Now, to my mind, the blocks of

teaching are paired with and follow blocks of narrative

action so as to interpret the action.

In chapters 3 to 4, for example, Jesus launches his mission and

calls his first disciples and then the Sermon on the Mount

comes around to explain the kind of mission it is and the kind of

life disciples are called to. In chapters 11 and 12, the

narrative action is a whole bunch of opposition beginning to

increase opposition against Jesus from the leaders of

Israel. And then the parables discourse

of chapter 13 explains a little bit of why many will reject the

good news of the Kingdom. In chapters 14 through 17, Jesus

in the narrative action, zeroes in on ministry to his disciples

in private. Prior to this, he had been

acting, speaking more publicly to all the crowds.

And now in chapters 14 to 17, he zeroes in on his disciples in

private to disciple them in the key marks of the new community

that he is gathering around himself.

And the discourse in chapter 18 instructs the new community,

which Jesus calls the church. About its needful practices of

discipline. In Matthew, the sections of

teaching help us to understand the import of the events in the

preceding narrative. They are meant to properly

interpret the events as the good news that they are.

Having said that, something conspicuously odd happens in the

final chapters which narrate the climactic actions, the climactic

events of the Good news. Matthew 26 through 28 concludes

the Gospel account with a 6th and final section of narrative

action in the Gospel narrating Jesus death and resurrection.

And based on how Matthew has structured the story so far,

this would lead us to expect a concluding 6th discourse, a

section following the preceding narrative action that explains

and interprets the cross and resurrection.

But Matthew doesn't really give us one.

The Great Commission that ends the Gospel is of course Jesus

directly quoted words, but this is not really comparable in

length or detail to the earlier 5 discourses of Jesus.

Matthew leads us to expect an ending that he doesn't provide.

And I think part of Matthew's point is this, the Spirit

empowered proclamation of the Gospel taking place right now in

the church age is the anticipated final section of

teaching in the story. After all, the Gospel's last

words in the Great Commission call us to make disciples of all

nations, which involves teaching them to obey all that Jesus

commanded, baptize them in the name of the Triune Godfather,

Son, and Spirit, and teach them what life in this one Godfather,

Son, and Spirit looks like. As Jesus has revealed.

All of this is to say that Matthew structures his Gospel in

the way that he does, in part to write us into the story, to

spotlight that we are characters with acting and speaking parts

in the Gospel drama. Matthew means to introduce our

act of the drama. In one sense, the Great

Commission is the great conclusion to Matthew's Gospel,

but in another key sense, this ending is really A to be

continued. It anticipates the next chapter,

our chapter, because this story is our story.

It is the story that makes sense of who we are and what we're

here for. In this light, we can understand

the Great Commission as something of a casting call.

A call for us to take up our role in the drama of those who

are baptizing Christ and believe in Christ and have been

instructed in Christ. Of going and being sent to make

disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the triune

name of God and teaching them to obey that all, all that Christ

commands. The King does want his Kingdom

to be filled with people from every tribe and tongue from all

the nations. And so he sends us now, in our

act of the drama, to all the nations.

And that will necessarily mean being sent going across

cultures, entering new frontiers to unreached people groups.

Likely it will involve moving away from comfort and security

and familiarity and toward difficulty in need.

This is the special edge of Christian missions in our part

in the drama to which God calls us individually and as the

Church of Christ in the Great Commission.

That is a big calling, and we must also admit it is a hard

calling, for there are hard places in the world.

I probably don't need to prove that to you.

There is a real enemy prowling around like a roaring lion,

seeking someone to devour. I hope I don't need to prove

that to you. In pursuing the honor of King

Jesus among the nations, we will encounter overwhelming pockets

of darkness and opposition, strongholds of sin and Satan.

They might be across the globe, among the hundreds of unreached

tribes still in Indonesia, or in the supposedly post Christian

Europe, or in the historically hard place which is known as

Japan, or in the nearly impenetrable North Korea.

They might be across the globe. They might be.

They are across the hallway and the street in our own homes and

families and neighborhoods with near neighbors who for any

number of reasons remain basically ignorant of and cut

off from the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Who are trapped in abusive homes or crushed under the colossal

weight of drug addiction or blocked off from the truth of

the gospel. Maybe by their own simple

assumption that they know they've heard all this Jesus

stuff before and so they don't really need to pay any attention

to it. But they've never truthfully

paid attention to it. They've never really heard.

The need is literally in our backyard and it is all over the

globe. But oh, how hard is the mission,

how impossible it can sometimes seem.

Well, does Jesus teach at length in Matthew on things like

rejection and opposition and persecution and martyrdom?

The Great Commission will involve hardship and sorrow and

suffering and awkwardness and foreignness and persecution.

This is our chapter of the story.

This is Our Calling in the Great Commission.

This is the act of the drama that we get to play a part in.

Happy Sunday. Let's close in prayer.

No, no. It naturally it raises the

question, does it not? Why would we ever willingly

enter into such a life, such a calling, such a chapter of the

story? Why would we turn away from

comfort and security and turn toward difficulty and danger and

awkwardness and need? And if, if we do take up the

call, where would we find the encouragement and the strength

persevere till the end of the long hard Rd.

Well, the story that Matthew tells, the story of which we are

a part, the story that makes sense of all things, including

mission and difficulty and suffering.

In hope. This story is written to provide

us with a whole boatload of answers.

Why go out in love and on mission into hard places?

Well, because we long to hear God's name hallowed everywhere

on earth as the Lord Jesus teaches us to pray for in

Matthew 6, as we ourselves prayed for earlier in the

service. Because Jesus was born to be

worshipped by Gentiles from the ends of the earth, like the Magi

from the East who came to worship Jesus in Matthew too.

Because Jesus shed his own blood for all nations to open up a new

covenant for all peoples, as he explains in Matthew 26.

So that whatever tribe or tongue you come from, whatever your

background, if you come to Jesus and confess His name and believe

in His blood, you can be forgiven and entered into

covenant relationship with God the Father Almighty, who now

calls you adopted beloved son or daughter.

Amen. And because by the blood of

Jesus, He is at work to change your affections and your outlook

on life and your direction. Well, because Jesus resurrection

proves that He has prerogative over the entire globe and He is

its rightful King and He is the one who already has authority

over it all, all of earth and also all of heaven.

Because Christ has come as the divine King in the flesh, God

with us, who has from Abraham's day till today been on mission

for the good of all families. Because Christ's coming is the

clear demonstration that God is faithful to all of His promises.

None of His promises will fall to the ground empty.

All of them will become publicly fulfilled and are even now

beginning, which we know by faith beginning to be fulfilled.

All of His promises, His promises to Abraham, His

promises to David, His promises to Israel, His promises to us,

the new Israel in Christ, because Jesus life and death and

resurrection is what God has done in the world to decisively

defeat all our truest enemies. Every single one of our truest

enemies is decisively defeated. And so whatever hardship,

whatever difficulty, whatever opposition, whatever threat you

face now, it cannot ultimately, ultimately lead to your defeat,

can it? And So what have you to fear in

going out in this mission? Ultimately, the victory is sure.

The mission cannot fail. Even our apparent defeats along

the way of faithfully following Jesus and heeding his call, even

the apparent defeats on that path, are in the wisdom and

might of our King, the means through which he is still

overcoming the world. Much like this King's own death

looked like the greatest defeat in all of history, and it was

not. We can go out with courage, with

hope, in love, on mission, because we know that the mighty

and conquering King lives never to die again.

And he is surely with us even to the end of the age.

And by his Spirit poured out on us, He will empower us and will

sustain us and will guide us and will uphold our faith and hope

and love. He will give us the words to

say. He will give us the wisdom and

the grace and the patience and the love and the joy that we so

desperately need to continue loving well and to witness in

truth and to bring honor to Jesus our King.

By the Holy Spirit poured out on us.

We can know that Jesus our King risen and ascended.

We can know that He is present still with us even now in this

very gathering of two and three and many more in Christ's name.

Here we have gathered together, or or rather, we have been

gathered together by our risen King, who calls us by His word

to the true mountain, the true mountain.

Zion is the author of Hebrews puts it.

We have been so gathered that we together might bow down before

Christ to worship Him in happy covenant communion with Him.

We have been gathered that we might be nourished as from His

own hand by the bread which is God's Word, and by the bread of

His own table, so that nourished and strengthened, we might go

back out into the world on mission for the life of all

nations. That life, that mission will

indeed go out into in a few moments, as in our benediction

and sending, will be commissioned anew.

And it is very much like what we find in the final verses of

Matthew. In these last verses of Matthew,

the ending of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, the

disciples meet Jesus on a mountain, they worship and

commune with their king, and they are sent out into the world

for the sake of love and the glory of Christ.

Every Lord's Day is a veritable reenactment of the ending of

Matthew. Or rather, the ending of Matthew

is the beginning of our lives, an invitation for us to enter a

new into this the greatest and truest of stories, because it is

our story. Let us close in prayer.

Everlasting God, you brought the nations to your light and kings

to the brightness of your rising.

Fill the world with your glory. Show yourself to all the nations

and empower us in this mission of witness and disciple, making

through Him who is the true light and the bright Morning

Star, Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns

with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever.

Amen.