Sermon Tone Analysis

Today is the last day in the VBS series.

Two weeks ago we started by talking about our theme verse.

Isaiah 43:2, I read it at the beginning of the service.

Remember it?

I will put on my paddle guide outfit here, and we will do the VBS theme verse.

When you pass through the waters.

I will be with you.

Last week, we looked Matthew chapter 4. Jesus called four disciples, and told them He will take them from fishermen and make them fishers of men.

We said the call of the gospel is a call to discipleship.

Disciples are followers of Jesus.

Disciples are with Jesus, all the time.

Once again there is this idea of God being present with us, as we follow Him through life, through the good times and the difficult times.

Today, we are going to look at the passage from the last day of VBS.

This lesson is from the book of Matthew chapter 28, starting at verse 16.

These are Jesus’s instructions to his disciples, to carry on His mission of the kingdom of God, after He is no longer going to be physically with them.

Eventually they will complete, this mission with the Holy Spirit of God indwelling them.

Just before this passage, Jesus had died on the cross for our sins, according to the scriptures.

He was buried, three days later he rose again and he appeared to the 11.

This passage called the great commission, is the very end of Matthew’s gospel.

After Jesus rose from the grave, and before he ascended to heaven he gave the disciples these instructions.

He was speaking to the whole group.

This is a group instruction, and we are part of that group, because, as we said last week, as response to the gospel means that we becoming followers of Jesus.

As followers of Jesus we do what Jesus says to do.

We will begin on Easter Sunday.

Jesus had just risen from the dead.

He appeared to Mary, and Mary Magdalene, and we read in Matthew 28:7.

Jesus is going to Galilee.

That is the region around the lake, where the fishermen were from.

It is in the vicinity of where he found the disciples.

It is a going back to where it all began.

Matthew makes a point to remind us that were only 11 left.

Judas, the one who betrayed Jesus could no longer live with the guilt of having betrayedJesus, the innocent Holy one, and had hanged himself.

The eleven that were left went to the mountain.

Slide MT Tabor

This may possibly be the same mountain on which Jesus was transfigured.

We don’t know exactly but exactly but that would make sense.

Although we don’t know for sure, since the name isn’t mentioned, this is mount Tabor, and it could very well be the mountain, since it fits well with the location.

When they, the 11 saw him, they worshipped Him.

They had seen the risen Lord Jesus Christ, and they worshipped him.

Jesus Christ, had risen from the dead, just as He said He would.

This validated everything Jesus had been saying.

He was the God-man that had taken away the sin.

Sin and death was not victorious, Jesus was victorious, so they worshipped Him.

They are giving Jesus the glory, the honor and the praise he deserves.

Then Matthew says something odd, but some doubted.

It says they worshipped, but some doubted.

By worshipping they are saying that Jesus is God.

The act of worship is ascribing deity to Jesus.

Usually you don’t worship and doubt simultaneously.

It doesn’t seem like they would doubt who Jesus is.

Jews only worshipped God.

They would not intentionally give there worship to anyone but God.

Perhaps, though the doubt here does not refer to doubting in Jesus’s identity so much as the doubt refers to a more general sense of the doubt of the success of the mission.

The word doubt, perhaps is not applied to an unbelief in the person of Jesus, not to His work on the cross, and the fact that he rose form the dead, but perhaps the doubt is a general worry, concern and nervousness surrounding the mission of the the kingdom of God.

In other words they worshipped the risen Lord Jesus as God, but some of them were doubting as to what was going to happen to His kingdom mission.

Is this the end of the mission?

Is this all there is?

Is he going to leave us here now.

Now look what comes next.

They worshipped him, but some doubted, then look what it says next in Mt 28:17?

What does it say?

Then Jesus came to them, and said.

Are you seeing this theme develop.

Week one-When you pass through the water- ---what?

I will be with you.

When Jesus called them He said, Come follow me, Come be with me, be with Jesus.

And here, when some doubted, then Jesus came to them.

When it looked like the mission was done…Then Jesus came to them…When it looked like the end…Then Jesus came to them.

And what does he do when do when when he comes to them?

Does he give them the “Buck up little Camper” speech?

Does he tell them -Pull yourselves up by your bootstraps?

Does he say I have full confidence in you because you have worked so hard?

Does he say, you guys are wonderful, You really are something special now go and do it.

NO! Jesus does not do that.

Instead Jesus reminds them, not of who they are, but who He is.

“All authority in heaven, and on earth has been given to me.

All authority.

Everywhere, There is not a place that you can go in heaven and on earth that Jesus does not have complete authority.

There is not a thing that Jesus does not have complete authority over.

The Bible says not a sparrow falls to the ground, there is not bug lives except by the will of Go.

The Bible says that all things are held together by Him, the entire universe is held together, by HIm.

Jesus has complete and total authority over the Roman government.

The same government that will arrest and persecute the disciples.

Jesus has complete and total authority over the storms that will shipwreck the apostle Paul.

Jesus has complete and total authority over the illness that will plague Paul, and the banishment of John.

Jesus had complete and total authority over the Pharisees, Jesus had complete and total authority over the people that crucified Him.

And by His resurrection form the dead Jesus has shown that he has complete and total authority over sin, and even over death itself.

And the disciples need to know that.

The need to know that the waters will not overwhelm them, they need to know that when they walk through the fire they will not be burned.

They need to know that because, the mission is not easy.

Go

This is an impossible mission for group of fishermen and tax collectors, doubters, deniers and sinners.How are they supposed to go to make disciples of all nations.

We don’t think too much of that today, because we can charge a plane ticket to virtually any country get there tomorrow if we wanted.

But it was not so simple for them.

They had to walk, or by horseback, and be threatened by robbers.

Travel by small boat, and threatened by storms, and illness.

There were hostile governments, foreign languages they could not speak.

Customs, and things that they new nothing about.

Most of these men had not even travelled more than 100 miles from where they were born and raised, and now Jesus was sending them to ALL NATIONS.

They would need to know that Jesus had all of those troubles, under his authority.