Sermon Bible Commentary
Matthew 28:20
The assurance was not given it could not have been given with effect until the Divine Speaker had certified His followers by many infallible proofs that it should be even as He said. Had the Ascension followed immediately upon the Resurrection had there been no manifestation of the risen life of Christ to the Church, no drying of the Magdalen's tear, no satisfaction of the doubts of Thomas, no breaking bread with the friends at Emmaus, no meeting with the fishers by the shore of Tiberias the promise would have failed of half its potency; the "Lo, I am with you," in that case, must have been, "Believe me, I shall be with you;" and though faith might have accepted the dogma of the Resurrection, love could hardly have appropriated the risen Christ. There are some art-creations which owe their influence upon us less to the beauty of detail than to the finishing-touch of the artist's hand. One streak of light on the canvas communicates to the whole an indefinable expression, which enthralls us as we gaze. Something analogous is the effect of the last touch added by the inspired penman in the text to the completed portrait of the Saviour's life. The image of Christ is felt to be no longer a thing external to us. Risen and ascended, He dwells in us, and we in Him. If the Church be indeed the body of her Lord, it must be that the principles of His life will be found to lie at the root of her own, and to contain within them, likewise, the promise and potency of the life to come.
I. We continually profess our belief in the Holy Catholic Church; what is it that we believe? The question is no simple one, for the Church, though one body, is diverse in function and in form, and men's thoughts vary widely in respect to the essentials of her life according as they are most attracted to this or that feature of the complex whole. The Church of Christ cannot be definitely measured by human language, any more than she can be compassed in her completeness by human eye. Men go about her, and think to tell her towers and mark her bulwarks, but her foundations are in the Rock which none may scan. Her limits extend beyond the bounds of space. She is no city of material build, but a polity of living spirits whose sustenance is derived from invisible sources. Her franchise is the heavenly citizenship. Her charter is hidden in the counsels of God. Let us, then, endeavour to forget the outward form she wears in this or that communion, and seek to rise to the height of those ideas of which she is designed to be the remembrancer. Briefly stated, her mission is this, "To declare a new fellowship among men, in consequence of the disclosure of a new relationship between man and God."
II. Christ came, it cannot be too often repeated, to reveal the Father. Not a man, but Man, the realization in One Person of all that man was created to be, so that while He represents us each to ourselves in idea as that which God would have us to be, His obedient children, He reveals God to us as that which He is in fact, a loving Father. From this revelation follows that of the universal brotherhood of man. These ideas are hidden in the bosom of the Church of Christ. To these she owes her catholicity. "Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more;" and in spite of all external divergence, in spite of priestly domination, in spite of the dogmatism of sects, the Church of Christ lives in the vitality of her ideas, casting off from age to age the imperfect systems in which man's error disguises them, appealing ever anew to the simplest trusts and aspirations of his heart, and beckoning him onwards continually to an ultimate union of manifold Divinity at the feet of his Father in heaven. The true progress of the race, it has been said, is hidden in the thoughts of Christ; and though Churches may prove unfaithful, these cannot die. A Church whose theology tacitly puts limits upon the love of God to man, whose authority restrains men from searching diligently into the Word and works of God, whose system bars the free access of man's spirit to the Father of all, whose hierarchy exalt their privilege of ministry into a right of lordship such a Church contains within itself the seeds of disunion and decay; it is untrue to the catholic ideal; it has lost the spirit of the Master. But the Church which remembers that it is constituted on Divine promises, and endowed with spiritual privileges in order to make known to men their new relationship to God, and furnish them with help to realize the duties which that relationship implies such a Church bears true witness to Christ; it is a living part of His body, and will necessarily become, through its own vitality, a centre of union.
E. M. Young, Oxford and Cambridge Journal,April 27th, 1876.
The New Obedience.
I. There is a twofold element in the law condemnation and the promise, type and instalment of redemption. Both elements were given in love; in both the purpose was one of mercy. But when the primary object of the law had failed, when men remained proud, self-satisfied, cherishing and excusing sin without humility and repentance, men failed also to see and enjoy the comfort of this promise, the meaning and substance of the type. Thus they who walked in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless were the very Israelites who waited for the redemption in Jerusalem; they honoured the law, and therefore longed for the Gospel.
II. Christ is come; and now, instead of condemnation, behold grace; instead of shadow and type, behold perfection and fulfilment, that is truth. And (1) let us remember that in Christ only the law of God found its realization and fulfilment. It had hitherto been only an idea seeking embodiment, a problem awaiting its solution, an outline looking for substance and life. Jesus, with the eyes of His heart, saw the law in its breadth and depth; He joyfully filled the entire outline; His willing mind, His loving heart, His filial spirit entered into the whole mind of God, and penetrated to the depth and substance of God's Word. (2) All men are under the law, till through the death of Christ they are freed from it. Christ is, to us who believe, the end of the law for righteousness. The law condemns; the Gospel brings deliverance and salvation. The law could not give life; it could not minister unto us the Holy Ghost. Christ hath quickened us, and by His Spirit dwells in our hearts, and therefore we are able to love. Love is the fulfilment of the law. And as the law could not attain it, so the love which our Lord gives us is something higher and deeper than the law demanded or foreshadowed. (3) The commandments of Christ may be summed up according to the various aspects of the inner and outer life. If we look at the heart, the source and root of life and action, all Christ's commandments are contained in His most touching appeal, "Abide in Me." If we look, again, at the manifestations of life, all Christ's commandments are summed up in His simple words, "Follow Me." If we look at our relation to God, prayer, meditation, and communion, Jesus' commandments may be summed up in one word in secret:"Enter into thy closet, and shut the door." If we consider our relation to the world, the commandments of Christ are summed up in one word mission.If we look, again, at the aim and purpose of our energies and lives, it is summed up in one word heaven:"Set your affection on things that are above."
A. Saphir, Christ and the Church,p. 130.
Truth, and its Questions To-Day.
I. We live in a time which is called a time of transition, when the old thoughts of men are contending in a sharp battle with the new so sharp that the very outsiders and camp-followers of the armies of the world, the idle men and women, take an interest and engage themselves therein in a desultory manner. Menand ideasastonish and confuse us. There is no certainty, it seems, in men. We become distrustful and indignant. But it is because we look to men too much, and have not faith in the Man Christ Jesus. It matters, after all, but little how men deceive us. We have one Leader who never disappoints, to whom truth is as dear now as it was to Him on earth, who encompasses our failure with His success, our weakness with His strength, our restlessness with His rest, and lo! He is with us always, even to the end of the world.
II. It may be, however, that other elements have come into our life which give us real reasons for dismay. There are times when a strange thing happens to us when old evils, old temptations, which we thought we had conquered, which had died out of our lives, arise again, and we tremble with the thought that past effort has been in vain, that sins cannot have been forgiven, because they appear again. But there may be an explanation even of this. I cannot but think that it is not always a note of retrogression, but a note of growth. (1) First, it is not an experience which comes to unaspiring spirits; it belongs especially to those who are possessed with the desire to advance, to pass beyond the bounds of mortal thought, and find the fount of truth. (2) Again, this resurrection of evil things and thoughts may in itself be caused, not by any cessation of growth, but by the progress of growth itself. (3) Because we may redeem the past in Christ, let us go forward with the patience and effort of men. We will not despair while we are wise, nor let the soul, in utter faithlessness, commit the sin of Judas. God is mightier than our evil, too loving for our sins. We shall be punished, but healed through our punishment. The phantom cloud of sins, errors, failures melts away in the growing light, and from the purity of the upper sky a voice seems to descend and enter our sobered heart: "My child, go forward, abiding in faith, hope, and love; for lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."
S. A. Brooke, Christ in Modern Life,p. 290.
The Perpetual Presence.
This is the Church's charter. By this instrument we hold our all. If this be true the gates of hell cannot prevail against us. If Christ, the crucified and the risen, is indeed and in truth present still, present for ever, with us who believe, then to be a Christian, a Christian all through and altogether, must be strength, and safety, and happiness, must be life, and glory, and immortality, assured by the word of One who cannot lie, of One who, raised from death, dieth no more. What, then, we ask briefly, are some of the characteristics of this perpetual presence, in the Church and in the soul?
I. It is a special presence. There is a presence in the universe. In Christ all things consist: withdraw Him, and there is chaos. It is not of this presence that He speaks. There is a mind and will, there is a power and a work, inside the community which a man enters by believing, distinct from that which orders sky and sea, replenishes earth with life, and keeps the stars in their courses. This special presence is that which accounts for the very start, and progress, and success of Christianity.
II. It is a spiritual presence. "The Comforter," which is the Holy Ghost, once dwelt with, now He dwells in the Church. The corporeal presence is gone, that the spiritual may come. This presence has influences direct and constant, which are the life of the body. What would the Word be, the book or the voice, without the presence? What would the sacraments be, the water or the supper, without the presence? It is the presence which changes idle sounds, bare materials, fleeting wishes into realities, into instrumentalities, into very powers of a world to come.
III. It is a manifold presence. Every gift and every grace are due to it. Every office and every function of the universal Church are due to it. Not action only, but counteraction; not institution only, but adaptation; not formation only, but reparation these, too, are parts of it.
IV. Above all else, it is a sanctifying presence. Men may cavil at revelation, fight over doctrine, ask all their days, "What is truth?" there is one thing they dare not malign, and that is holiness. If the presence were protective only, keeping alive in the earth, as a "sign spoken against," a spiritual religion, offering happiness, offering heaven, on the condition of faith in a Saviour, it might attract the weary and sorrowful; it would not appeal, as now, to the conscience and heart of mankind. The presence is proved by its effect. It is a light, it is a power, it is a life, it is a love; men do know for themselves what is the secret of their life, and other men take knowledge of it whether it is powerful and whether it is pure. If Christ can transform a life, if Christ can comfort a death, then I may doubt about many things, but one thing I see, that this is indeed the Saviour I need.
C. J. Vaughan, University Sermons,p. 233.
The Real Presence.
I. Jesus is with us as individuals. Here is our strength. Leaning on Christ our difficulties vanish. "Have not I commanded thee?" said God unto Joshua; "be strong, and be of good courage: be not afraid, neither be thou discouraged; for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest." Jesus is with us (1) in the days of prosperity and joy, (2) in our affliction, (3) when the soul feels deserted and is cast down within us, (4) when we are slow of heart, and cannot believe that He is risen, and walk in sadness. If Jesus is with us, then (a) we have all things. His presence is our all. He Himself is our Life. All the activities of the Church are the manifestations of Christ; of Him is our fruit found. (b) We can do all things. Is He not our Lord and our Strength? Does He not fight all our battles? This is the secret of sanctification. Not merely a remembered Jesus, not merely the motive of gratitude or fear, but the present Jesus. In every temptation, in every duty, in every sorrow lean upon the Lord, who is with thee, and His grace will be sufficient. (c) This is the secret of our influence. If Jesus be with us, sinners will draw near to hear Him, into whose lips grace is poured. The presence of Jehovah in the midst of His people will awe and attract many. The presence of Jesus in our hearts and homes will manifest itself in our character and conduct, and Christ in us will draw many to Himself. (d) Heaven itself is begun, for to be with the Lord is eternal life and blessedness. Jesus shall throughout all eternity be our All. We depend and lean on Him throughout the endless ages.
II. The words of the Lord refer also and primarily to the whole Church. We who believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost believe also that there is the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints. Jesus ascended into heaven, but He has thereby not left earth and His disciples here below. He who dwells in the high and lofty place dwells also with him who is of a contrite and broken heart. Taken away from judgment and humiliation, He delights now in glory to remember His sorrows and temptations on earth, and to sympathize with the saints, whom He is not ashamed to call brethren. Wherever two or three are gathered together in His name He is in the midst of them; He is with every one who loves Him; He is with our spirit.
A. Saphir, Christ and the Church,p. 233.
The ever-present Saviour.
These words of our Lord are like every other which He spoke after His Resurrection. All He said, and all He did, after He rose from the grave, was for believers only.
I. The word "alway," in the text, has perhaps rather lost the exactness of meaning which it carried at the time when our translation was made, and there is always a loss of power wherever there is a diminution of exactness. There is a great force and beauty in "all the days." It conveys at once the idea that before the mind of the speaker all the days lay ranged in order, to the last time that the sun shall ever set upon the earth. He saw each in its individuality, each with its own proper history. We are always stepping into an unknown future, but the foot cannot fall outside the presence of Jesus.
II. Most minds, whatever they be, do best in fellowship; very few are independent of the law of sympathy, and those few are the weakest. Now, conceive that you carry about with you, every day, the actual sense of the nearness, and the compassion, and the co-operation of Christ; conceive that you know that there is One at your right hand whose name is "Counsellor," to whom you can turn at any moment, and be sure of perfect direction; conceive that you are conscious of such an arm of strength that you can in your most burdened hour lean on it with all your weight: what a perfected existence would you be leading from that moment; what a path of light would stretch on before you, up to the realms of glory!
III. There is a presence, and if that presence be it must be the determining feature of every man's life, whether he have it or not. If you have it not there is a desideratum, and such a desideratum that I hesitate not to say that whatever you have beside, if you have not the feeling of the presence of Christ life is still to you a failure and a blank. But if you have it, and delight yourself in it, the more you make of it the more it will be to you. Let it be a fixed axiom of life, "Christ is with me everywhere." Do not measure it; do not treat it like the uncertainties of this little world. Time lays no hand upon it; no shade of altered feeling ever comes to darken it; no parting hour will ever sadden it with a last farewell; but from eternity to eternity, again as yesterday, so today, as today, so tomorrow, and as tomorrow, so for ever and ever. "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." And let all the new creation cry, "Amen."
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,1874, p. 345.
Truth, and its Hope of Progress.
I. "Lo, I am with you alway," was said by Representative Mankind to the mankind He represented. If Christ be with mankind as He is with Himself, present through and in the ages as their heart and brain, then He is the Source whence evolution flows. And because He is perfect, therefore the race evolves towards perfection, and evolution towards perfection is progress. It is impossible to bring forward one half of the proofs of such a progress; but one is enough. It is plain to those who read history more for the sake of human ideas than for its statistics that many of the ideas which restricted the equal freedom of men, which implicitly denied the two great universal ideas of Christianity, that all men are alike God's children, that all men are brothers in Christ, have been slowly dying away, and are now rapidly dying. In the decay of these progress is seen; in looking forward to their ruin is our best hope; in proving that their ruin is contained in Christianity is the reconciliation between the world and Christianity. We look forward, upon this "bank and shoal of time," to the destruction of all false conceptions of the relations of God to man and of man to man, to the hail which will sweep away the lingering remnants of every idea which limits, isolates, and tyrannizes over men. For the Redeemer is with us always, even to the end of the world.
II. But we must not expect that this will be done quickly or easily. Let no man or woman think, who is still young, on whom the necessary calm of age has not fallen, that they will have a quiet life, if they are in earnest, for many years to come, either in the world without or in the world within them. Development must have its rude shocks, evolution its transient earthquakes, progress its backslidings. Accept the necessity; count the cost; make ready to take your part in the things which are coming on the earth. See that you are an active part of the great evolution of the race. What matters, after all, the catastrophes, the convulsions of heart and intellect which you must suffer, the shattered sail, the midnight watch in the hurricane, the loneliness of the mid-ocean? It is life at least; it is more, it is moving with the movement of the world, and the world is moving in Christ.
S. A. Brooke, Christ in Modern Life,p. 305.
The Presentiments of Youth.
I. Three things, catastrophe, joy, and change, to either or to all of these we look forward in the hour of presentiment. We take them one by one; we ask if the forecasting of them has anything to tell us. And first, the presentiments of catastrophe, is there any good in them? (1) I think, when they are presentiments regarding others, that they make our life more delicate. They give a finer edge to noble passions. Love becomes clearer through the dream of loss, the joy of friendship more exquisite from our sense of its transiency. (2) But if the presentiment of catastrophe be for ourselves it ought to make our inner life more delicate more delicate, inasmuch as there are so many pleasant and gracious possibilities in our own nature which we neglect to educate. We go through the meadows of our own hearts, crushing with a careless step the flowers. There is no need to walk so fast. Tread more delicately, more thoughtfully, lest when the catastrophe comes you find, too late, that you have not got the good out of your own nature which you might have done.
II. Are we ready for the progress which ought to grow out of joy? We look forward to joy, but there can be no progress got out of it if we seek to drain it dry in a moment. We need temperance in our delight. Some plunge their whole face into the rose of joy, and become drunk with the scent, but in doing so they crush their rose, and break it from its stem. The leaves wither, the colour dies, the freshness of the perfume fades; their pleasure is gone. The wise man prefers to keep his rose of joy upon its stem, to visit its beauty not all at once, but day by day, that he may have it cool and in the dew; and thus his pleasure possesses permanence.
III. Lastly, we look forward to change, sometimes with exultation, sometimes with dread; with the former in youth, with the latter in manhood. Middle age comes upon us, and we need a higher help than our own to meet the change and chance of mortal life. They must come, and the solemn question is, shall we be able to conquer their evil? have we Divine life enough in the spirit to make them into means of advance? For it is wise to remember that any change may be our overthrow. But stay; are we alone, unhelped, forgotten, feeble victims of blind Fate? Not so, if a triumphant Humanity has lived for us; not so, if these words have any value, "Lo, I am with you alway;" for then we are in Christ, and to be in Him is to be fated to progress passing into perfection; for we are Christ's, and Christ is God's.
S. A. Brooke, Christ in Modern Life,p. 320.
I. In order to understand this somewhat remarkable statement we have to observe that the Saviour is speaking of something more than that presence which is inseparable from the nature of His own essential and eternal Godhead. Considered in His Godhead, the Lord Jesus Christ was present, of course, with His people before His incarnation, as well as after it; present after His Ascension, as well as before it; present, too, not only with the godly, but also with the ungodly, surrounding, enfolding, encompassing all. But in these consolatory words, addressed to the Apostles on parting from them, our Lord unquestionably refers to something which is not only more intimate and personal than the unavoidable proximity of the Creator to the creature, but which is also more closely associated with the human relation in which He had stood to them during the period of His earthly ministry. The "I" who is with us always is not only the exalted Christ, who sits on the throne, and sways the sceptre of the universe, but also the Friend and Counsellor, the gentle, tender, compassionate Companion, who trod with us step by step in the journey of life, and who condescended to admit us into the freest and fullest, into the most loving and satisfying intercourse with Himself.
II. The next point which we have to notice is the fact that communion with the Saviour is made possible by the advent of the Comforter; in other words, that the coming of the Spirit is, to all intents and purposes, a coming of the Saviour to the people who love Him. We know very little about the mysteries of the spiritual world, but what we do know will not make us unwilling to believe that there are modes of communication, of intercourse, of fellowship, between spirit and spirit, with which we are totally unacquainted, but which may be real and efficacious nevertheless; and if we believe this we shall not be disposed to deny that the Holy Spirit, God the Holy Ghost, can establish, if it so pleases Him, a communication of the most intimate kind between Himself and the spirits of Christian disciples. Christ is felt to have come, because the Spirit has brought Him.
III. Lastly, let us remember that this coming of Christ to His people, precious as it is, is suited to a state of imperfection and discipline. We look forward to something beyond that which we enjoy now. We look to another coming when Christ shall be manifested in bodily presence. This is the final, the exhaustive coming; there can be nothing beyond this. Then we shall see Him as He is, "being changed into the likeness of His glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby He is able to subdue all things even unto Himself."
G. Calthrop, Words Spoken to my Friends,p. 305.
The Friendship of the Living Christ.
It is evident that Christ meant this promise to express a truth of profound meaning and pre-eminent power for the men to whom He gave it; for it is a strange fact that He should, for the first time, promise to be with them always, at the very last moment before vanishing from the world, and we may be certain that words apparently so contradictory have a very deep significance. This promise, too, is the last that He gave them before sending them out as heralds of His kingdom. It is, therefore, in one sense, the sum and substance of all the consolations He had given them before; and we may be sure that this crowning message contains the elements of mighty power. Observe first and broadly, that the friendship of the living Christ is the grand aid to spiritual life. As the disciples needed the conviction that He was nearer to them when He had passed into the heavens than He had ever been while on earth, so until we reach that conviction we shall be unable to lead lives as earnest as theirs.
I. This friendship alone can mature the inner life of the soul. It is a deep and Divine law of our nature that fellowship develops the hidden powers in the spirit of man. We never know what we can do till we find a friend. There are within us sleeping capacities, great and beautiful, which never waken till then. A most mighty fact is this power of friendship, so that a man who has no friend is an enigma even to himself. In the deepest sense is this true of the inner life of the Christian.
II. This friendship alone can Christianize every action of man's life. The emphatic demand which God's Word makes of the Christian disciple is that he should be a Christian in everything. And this is a dream, an impossibility utter and final, unless we can realize the personal friendship of the present Christ.
III. This friendship alone can hallow the discipline of trouble. In this no mere creed-believing will do; no dead Christ is sufficient; nothing can help us but the perfect sympathy of a living Lord, who knows our sorrows, and who suffered for our sins.
IV. This friendship unites the present with the future world. It unites us with Him "who was dead, but is alive for evermore," and by it we learn to "follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth," for we walk with Christ as with a friend. Therefore, if you would make this life a dawning of the heavenly life and a schooling for its glorious offices, you must realize the present practical power of the words; "Lo, I am with you alway."
E. L. Hull, Sermons,2nd series, p. 168.
Christ's Promise.
I. In the Old Dispensation God deigned to abide visibly amongst His people when He did not abide in their hearts; and when the light and glory were departed from the mercy-seat men did not fondly insist upon it that they were still there, and that the glory of the second temple could not be less than that of the first temple; they saw and knew that it was less, and good men mourned for it, and comforted themselves with the word of prophecy, which told them that the glory of the second house should one day be greater than that of the former, because the Lord Himself with a more perfect manifestation of Himself should visit it. But when Christ was less present with His people under the New Dispensation, when the outward signs of His power were withdrawn, and falsehood and sin began to pollute His living temple, men did not open their eyes to see and acknowledge the change, but they closed them harder and harder, and went on repeating that Christ must be present, and that His Church must ever be possessed by His Spirit, when their own lie was driving His Spirit, which is the Spirit of truth, farther and farther from them, till not Christ, nor Christ's Spirit, but the very enemy of man himself, took his seat in the holy precinct, and called himself God, and was called so by those who worshipped him.
II. So it was, and again voices are busy in repeating the same falsehood, in talking loudly about holy times, and holy things, and holy places, saying that Christ is there. Oh, blessedness above all blessedness if indeed He were there! for then were the Church perfected. For so it is that when the most inland creek begins to feel the coming in of the tide, and the living water covers the blank waste of mud and gravel which was lying bare and dreary, then we know that the tide runs full and strong in the main river, and that the creek is but refreshed out of its abundance. But who will ever see the little inland creeks filled when the main river itself is so shallow that men can go over dry-shod? and who will ask the tide to fill these remote and small corners in the first instance, as if they were to make up for the shallowness of the great river? Not through outward ordinances, even the holiest, does the Church become holy; but if it might once become holy by the presence of Christ's Holy Spirit in every heart, then its ordinances would indeed be holy also; we might say that Christ was in them then, and we should say so truly.
T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. v., p. 287.
References: Matthew 28:20. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Waterside Mission Sermons,No. 15; J. C. Hare, The Victory of Faith,p. 315; Christian World Pulpit,vol. vi., pp. 95, 173; J. T. Stannard, Ibid.,vol. xiv., p. 216; C. M. Short, Ibid.,vol. xxiv., p. 389; Spurgeon, Evening by Evening,p. 363; Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 132; Preacher's Monthly,vol. i., p. 119; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 88; New Outlines on the New Testament,p. 29; Homiletic Magazine,vol. xii., p. 183.