What Now?, Part 1

Before Jesus disappeared into the sky, He gave His disciples a plan. The plan Jesus set in motion before He ascended back into heaven is the only plan that will work, the only one He will honor and bless because it is the inspired plan. That's why it is called the Great Commission, the Great Commission.

That's why it's great. When obeyed, it works. You've chosen a very significant day to join us. Today on Insight for Living, our Bible teacher Chuck Swindoll presents his final study in a brand new and comprehensive teaching series. From January 2021 until now, we've been walking through all 28 chapters of Matthew's Gospel. Today, tomorrow, and again Friday, his teaching series will culminate with a message from Jesus. During one of Jesus' last resurrection appearances, He gave His disciples a mandate to make disciples around the world.

At Insight for Living, we take this charge very seriously. So let's get started by reading from Matthew 28. Please turn in your Bibles to the last five verses in the Gospel by Matthew. We have journeyed through this great Gospel account written by the former tax collector turned disciple who wrote it for the Jews, which explains the numerous references to the Old Testament, promises given to the Jews, and references that the Jew would understand much better than any Gentile reader. Today is as important a message as anything that has been said in these 28 chapters. It's as if the Lord saved the best for last. In the next two Sundays, I plan to do a brief synopsis or survey of what happened to the disciples as a result of Jesus' words from the Great Commission.

What did they do? Where did they go? How did they handle life without Him among them? That will take us, of course, into the earliest verses of the book of Acts and perhaps other scriptures as well. But today we want to look at these five verses that appear at the end of the book of Matthew. As we look at these words together, even though they're familiar, let's follow along as if we're hearing them for the very first time. I do that every week as I begin my study, and I ask you to do that today.

Listen with fresh ears and an open heart. Matthew 28 verse 16. Then the eleven disciples left for Galilee, going to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go.

When they saw him, they worshiped him, but some of them doubted. Jesus came and told his disciples, I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this.

I am with you always, even to the end of the age that has reference not just to the end of your life and my life, but to the end of time on earth. Amazing promise. You're listening to Insight for Living.

To study the book of Matthew with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scriptures studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now the message from Chuck titled, What Now? I am always looking for ways to make a message stick. By that, I mean to make something that I'm saying memorable. We hear so much information, we are exposed to any number of voices, all of whom are hoping that you'll remember that message. But when we come to the scriptures, my desire is that you not forget what you have heard. This is especially true today.

In order to make this as memorable as possible, I'm going to do something different. I'm going to begin with a legend and end the message with a story. As is true of all legends and most stories, they are fanciful and frequently fictional. Sometime they are true, but usually the lesson they teach is timeless. There is a timelessness in what you will hear in both legend and story today.

So listen well. First, the legend. It takes us back to the day that Jesus returned to heaven as he ascended from earth back into the Father's presence. His body bore the marks of suffering, the scars of abuse. His hands and feet had fresh scars from the rough Roman spikes that had held him to the cross beams as he hung suspended for hours before he died.

The years of mistreatment showed on his face they had taken their toll. Before he took his seat by the Father's throne, the angel Gabriel came near and said, Master, you must have suffered terribly, to which Jesus responded with gentleness and grace. Yes, yes I did. So, continued the archangel, do all the earthlings now know how much you love them? Do all of them now understand that you accomplished their salvation by dying on the cross for them? Oh no, no, not yet, replied Jesus.

Right now, only a very few know. My most loyal followers who are in Galilee, some of them in Judea, they know. He said that with a heavy sigh.

Gabriel stared at him perplexed, troubled. Then he asked, what have you done, Lord, to spread your message around? How will all others find out that you died and rose again for their salvation? How will they know of your love and your forgiveness, your grace and your plan for their lives?

For the first time, Jesus smiled, pleased with that insightful question. He answered, I have issued a command to Peter and James and John and the rest of my most faithful followers. I've commissioned them to stay engaged in a great plan. They are to make disciples of all the nations going and baptizing and teaching. Others will hear the message and they will believe it. And then they in turn will go and tell it to others who will believe it, who will in turn go to others who will broadcast the message. And it will be believed by more and they will tell others. They will believe it. And on and on, my message will travel around the world to all the nations.

If they will do it, the plan will work beautifully. Jesus then sat down for the first time since he had left heaven 33 years earlier. He sat down at the right hand of the great Father, God the Father, having finished the mission he had been sent to accomplish.

But Gabriel was still troubled. Turning over in his mind was one of those what if questions. So he stayed a bit longer and then leaned closer to the Savior and asked, what if Peter and James and John and those others grow weary? Or what if the people they tell believe but then later start to drift into other pursuits? What if way down into the 19th and 20th and even 21st century on planet earth, many just aren't committed to your Great Commission? And they lose heart and they drift off to things that occupy their interest and spend their money on things that are selfish and self-absorbed and their witness becomes silent. Have you made other plans, Lord?

Evacuous silence filled the throne room. The Lamb of God looked up deeply into the eyes of the winged celestial servant, shook his head and said, no, I have no other plan. The one I set in motion when I left this earth below is still the only one.

I will honor and bless. It is the only plan I left for them to follow. The legend ends there, but the timeless and true lesson, as you can see, lives on. The plan Jesus set in motion before he ascended back into heaven is the only plan that will work, the only one he will honor and bless because it is the inspired plan. That's why it is called the Great Commission. The Great Commission, that's why it's great.

When obeyed, it works. To fully appreciate it again, we return to the scene where it was first given. Matthew 28, beginning at verse 16. We come to the actual setting right there in the land of Israel, in the region of Galilee where Jesus and the disciples had their rendezvous. The mountain is never revealed specifically, so we don't know which one of the mountains, but we are told that the disciples left for Galilee. They were in Judea down south, but they left having been told by the women who had been at the tomb.

They sent the message to the disciples, Jesus will meet you in Galilee, so they are following instructions and they come to this place in Galilee where he had told them to go. Look closely. Look at their response when they saw him. Remember now, he is in a glorified state. It doesn't mean he's glowing. It means that the whole molecular structure of his body has changed. He is able to go halfway around the world in a split second.

He's able to move through rock or any other solid substance with no resistance. He is in a glorified, resurrected state. But they know him, he looks as he looked before, and he's able to speak to them. He has already eaten a meal with them by the seashore, and now they are listening to him as he gives them instructions. But we observe the first thing they do when they see him is they worship him, just as you and I will do when we first lay eyes on Jesus. I would imagine most of them fell to their knees, some of them on their faces, as they acknowledged him because he alone is worthy of worship. Perhaps they poured out their praises as they said their words of gratitude and honor to him. But Matthew adds this comment because he was there with them. Some of them doubted.

How could that be? How can you worship and doubt? Well, if I may, you and I do it all the time. Even when we gather to worship, there are those doubts that lie perhaps unexpressed at the moment.

But there they are, nevertheless. I wonder how that situation will go tomorrow when I'm with my doctor. I wonder if what was earlier diagnosed is true. I wonder if my son will ever come back to the Lord. I question and then on and on the doubts go. So they doubt it. What would they doubt?

Well, think about it. Up until now, they've always had him with them. After a night's sleep, they would wake up and there he was. During a day when they met up with a situation where someone was struggling with demons, there he was to deal with the demons. Or there was someone who was crippled and unable to get around, he was there to heal them.

Or the sea was troubled, he was there to calm it or to raise the dead. But he's going to leave them. So they wonder what will happen then. What will it be like when we won't have the Master with us? Surely that was one of their concerns.

Before, you were always there, but now it feels like you're abandoning us. So they're struggling with doubts as well as experiencing true worship. There are so many unanswered questions in their minds. So Jesus speaks. I'm confident that much of what he said calmed their questions and doubts and settled their hearts. Jesus knows this and, realizing this, decides to tell them what will be their marching orders from here on.

And by the way, following verse 20, will you look in your Bible? It's blank. There's a blank space. This is it. This is the plan.

This is the great commission. There's nothing of a P.S. or an addendum. Or later on I will give you this information.

No, this is it. Here are the instructions for the disciples who will follow Jesus after he's left the earth. I have placed in your worship folder an outline of today's message. I rarely call attention to that, but because I've left you spaces to fill in actual lines to write things on, again, this will help the message stick. If you will pull out that outline, open it up, and let me show you now that we're at the great commission itself in verses 18, 19, and the early part of 20, I want to point out four things I observe about it.

I think it will help make it even clearer than you may already think you know it. So with your pen handy, let me observe with you these four things. Each begins with the name of Jesus. First, we read in verse 18, Jesus came and told his disciples. Stop right there.

Here's what I want you to write down and remember. Jesus spoke to very ordinary people who knew him personally. He spoke to very ordinary people who knew him personally.

Unfortunately, we have lived our lives surrounded by those who have wanted to convey the sincerity and the devotion of the disciples, and through the artist's brush or perhaps the words of a very colorful artist or author, we have seen the work on canvas or we've read in books words that describe the disciples in ways that make them appear as though they are some kind of super spiritual human beings. They were not. They were ordinary people. When I was a little boy, it was during World War II, we only had one car.

My dad used the car to go to his workplace since he was too old for the draft, and he worked at an armament place that was involved in the building of the tanks and the landing craft of the war. So he took the car, and the only way we could get to church was to walk, and we walked to the end of the block on our little street there in East Houston, and we went to a church named St. Andrews Methodist Church. As you would imagine, inside the church was a statue of St. Andrew.

St. Andrew. My dad would say, there are no saints, and I would go, well, what's he? It's just a statue. The people he talked to were folks just like us. They had no halos. Not until the Holy Spirit came on them did they have any power. They just were men. That's what it says. He told his disciples.

Now we're ready for the second. Jesus presented his plan, which was brief, simple, and clear. He presented a plan that was brief, simple, and clear. He spoke calmly and deliberately, no theological jargon, no mumbo jumbo, no secret code language, didn't require an explanation. He doesn't explain the words. He just gives them because they are all self-explanatory. Look for yourself. I've been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teach these new disciples to obey all the commands.

We'll go on in a minute, but just stop right there. He had authority over everything on earth and in heaven. They didn't. He does. We don't. He does. And he makes that clear. So he has the right to level a command.

He certainly outranks us. As the second member of the Trinity, he has the right to declare a statement that requires obedience. This is not a suggestion. This is a command.

This would be their marching orders from now on. Chuck Swindoll is talking about the master plan of Jesus to reach the world with the gospel, and this is Insight for Living. To learn more about this ministry, please visit us online at insightworld.org. As we conclude this message, it's important to remind you that these daily studies with Chuck are available to a global audience because of the generous support that arrives during this time of year. To that end, we're calling on friends like you to join us in the all-out effort to make disciples in all 195 countries of the world. At this very moment, while you're enjoying this program in your own hometown, Chuck's teaching spans the globe, not only in English, but often translated into local languages as well.

Through Vision 195 and together with friends like you, we can implement the Great Commission of Jesus by making disciples through radio, our website, the mobile app, CDs, books, DVDs, the podcast, our live stream feed, and more. One of your fellow listeners told us an encouraging story. She said, Chuck, several years ago we had a Chinese teacher living with us. She was not yet a believer, but was interested in hearing more about the Bible. Together, she and I listened to all of your sermons on each book of the Bible. We took notes together, and when she didn't understand something, she had stopped the tape so we could discuss what you had said. Your sermons touched her heart, and before she had to return to China, she asked to be baptized. Since her return to her home, she has faithfully shared the gospel. I thank you for preaching those sermons.

Isn't that great? Just one more way God is using Insight for Living Ministries to make disciples around the world. To support this effort, go directly to insight.org slash donate. To give a contribution by phone, call us. If you're listening in the U.S., dial 1-800-772-8888. Or, to give a donation online, once again visit us at insight.org. Join us again when Chuck Swendall continues his final message in our study through the Gospel of Matthew, Thursday on Insight for Living.