In Matthew 27, Jesus was crucified.
He was decisively killed.
The life left his body.
It was absolutely unmistakable.
He was hanging on a cross.
The Romans were experts at killing people.
The Romans were absolute consummate professionals at ending people’s lives.
They were one of the most brutal empires that has ever existed in all of history.
They have rarely been matched before or since.
And the crown jewel of their brutal killing regime was the cross, the crucifixion.
So God comes down from heaven to die in our place, and he dies in the most brutal and excruciating and nauseating and unbearable way possible.
You could not survive a true crucifixion, a complete crucifixion, and Jesus received exactly that.
He was brutally flogged.
They used whips that were filled with metal balls that were heavy, and bits of bone, shards of bone, that were sharper than knives.
So whenever they whipped you in the flogging before your crucifixion, what it actually did was slice into your skin, and it would rip skin off of your body.
And then those heavy metal balls would pummel the meat, the muscles under your skin, and it would actually cause the muscles to begin to crush and fall off of your bone.
So before you even get to the cross, after being flogged, being lashed again and again and again, Jesus was given 39 lashes.
That is one short of what would typically kill you right there on the spot.
So if they had given him one more lashing, he probably would have dropped dead right there before even arriving at the cross.
But because of the flogging that the Romans would give you before you get to the actual cross, you would begin the process of bleeding to death.
But it would be a slow bleeding to death.
So sometimes it would take hours for you to bleed to death.
Sometimes it would take a few days for you to bleed to death.
But your fate was already sealed before you even got onto the cross to be crucified.
So just to be clear, there is absolutely no way Jesus could possibly have survived this.
But then they bring you up onto the cross.
They hang you there in such a way your body is actually in a very specific position that makes it nearly impossible to exhale.
It forces your lungs into a permanent inhale state, and it takes 100% of your energy to lift yourself up so you can exhale and then get more air in.
So as you are bleeding to death, you are also very slowly suffocating.
What happens is that the strain that is being put on your lungs in all of that causes your lungs to begin filling up with bodily fluids.
So as you are sitting there suffocating, as you are hanging there bleeding to death, at exactly the same time your lung capacity is getting less and less and less.
So your breaths have to get more shallow and more shallow and more shallow, which means that you have to lift yourself up to take breaths even more often.
So you are bleeding to death, you are suffocating to death, and you are dying of exhaustion from the work you are having to put in to lifting yourself up and breathing.
And then, at the very end of the process, they stab you with a spear when it seems like you’re dead to see whether you are truly dead.
There is a medical condition—I cannot remember exactly what it is called—but essentially, after you die, a water-like substance kind of mixes with your blood when you are stabbed or punctured.
And so they can see it.
It would have looked like blood and water coming out of him when they stabbed him.
So the American Medical Association, I think about 30 years ago, actually did a formal review.
They looked at the four Gospels.
They looked at all of the historical records related to the crucifixion of Jesus.
They looked at all of those things, and they examined them from a medical standpoint.
And they officially and decisively declared, by their expertise and authority as the American Medical Association, that there is no way Jesus could have survived this crucifixion.
Three Historical Facts
So for a long time, it was extremely common for some skeptics and other people who don’t believe in Jesus, do not believe that he is who he says he is, do not believe any of that, so they have to find other explanations for the resurrection and so forth.
He dies, and then on the third day his tomb is empty.
So they have to find an alternate explanation that doesn’t involve him dying and rising again, because that would be supernatural.
And if Jesus died and rose again, then he is who he says he is.
He is supernatural, and we need to listen to whatever he says about himself.
So for skeptics who do not want to come to that conclusion, they have to find a different explanation.
And for a very long time, for literally hundreds of years, beginning in the 1700s and 1800s, it was extremely common for many skeptics to say that Jesus didn’t actually rise from the dead.
What happened was, he didn’t actually die.
They claimed that what actually happened was the Romans mistakenly took him off the cross before he died.
So then he recovered from his wounds and then started going back around preaching and teaching.
So people mistakenly believed he had died on the cross and then risen again, but that it was actually all a misunderstanding.
Problem is, based on what we know about Roman execution practices, Roman crucifixion practices, based on the medical examination of the historical record of his crucifixion by the American Medical Association, we know for a fact Jesus died.
That’s why today, in 2025, every serious historian accepts the death of Jesus as a historical fact.
In fact, every serious historian, every credible historiographer, accepts three fundamental facts.
Number one, Jesus decisively and unmistakably died on the cross.
Number two, on the third day afterwards, his tomb was empty.
We will get to that in just a second.
And number three, all of his disciples and immediate followers swore on their lives that they witnessed him alive after crucifixion.
Those are three historical facts that every serious and credible historian accepts.
There are people out there who do not accept those three historical facts, but the overwhelming majority of them are cranks.
They are—I almost said a bad word—but they are doofus conspiracy theorists.
They are on the fringes and are, for the most part, not taken seriously by historians and stuff like that.
The Da Vinci Code, so many of these other kind of conspiracy-theory-oriented books and movies and theories and stuff like that that say either Jesus didn’t really die or he wasn’t really seen alive afterwards, those are all fringe theories that are not taken seriously by genuine historians.
So number one, Jesus decisively died on the cross.
The Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea
And then number two, Jesus was buried in a very specific type of tomb.
He was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.
Now, Joseph of Arimathea was a wealthy man who was connected to the Sanhedrin.
So it’s important, all throughout Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we see the religious leaders, the Pharisees and the Sadducees and so forth, attacking Jesus, opposing Jesus, and ultimately plotting to arrest and kill Jesus.
But that is not true of every Pharisee.
That is not true of every Sadducee.
That is not true of everyone in the Sanhedrin.
So when I talk about the entrenched religious leaders who were in it for power and prestige and stuff like that, I am not talking about every single ancient Israelite religious leader, because so many of the early Christians were people like Joseph of Arimathea, who was connected to the Sanhedrin.
He was connected, they believe, probably to the Pharisees.
So he was actually probably a religious leader.
He was a wealthy and powerful religious leader, but he was a religious leader who believed Jesus and followed Jesus.
The same thing was true of Nicodemus, who we are going to meet in the Gospel of John.
He was a well-known religious leader, Pharisee, in the first century, and he became a follower of Jesus.
So when we talk about the wicked Pharisees and Sadducees, we are talking about a group of wicked Pharisees and Sadducees.
They were powerful and influential, and they included the high priest Caiaphas and Annas and so many others who had the power to have Jesus arrested and executed.
But we are not talking about all Pharisees.
We are not talking about all Sadducees.
We are not talking about all of the entrenched religious leaders.
We are not talking about all of the ancient Israelites.
We are not talking about all of the Jews.
We are talking about a very specific, powerful, influential, important group of ancient Israelite religious leaders who despised Jesus because he was not the kind of Messiah they were looking for.
But so this faithful religious leader, this faithful man, Joseph of Arimathea, donates his personal tomb for Jesus to be buried in.
He wants to honor him.
Now, why does it matter that Jesus is buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea?
It is because the tombs of wealthy Israelites were designed to be impenetrable.
The tombs of wealthy Israelites were not like normal tombs.
Often, people were buried in extremely simple burials, extremely simple tombs, extremely simple crypts that were very, very brittle and easy to get into.
But wealthy Israelites built impenetrable tombs for a very specific reason.
It’s because grave robbery was common in the first century.
Plenty of grave robbers would go to the tombs of anyone they could find, and anything that was placed in the tomb, they would take it.
So often people would be buried with their jewelry, or they would be buried with some of their valuables and other things like that, and grave robbers would go and they would steal the valuables from the tombs.
And so wealthy Israelites built grave-robber-proof tombs.
They built these tombs that had actually an interlocking pair of stones.
So there was a giant stone that would take 10 men to roll over and put over the mouth of the tomb, and then there was another stone that was—I don’t even know how they did this, I really don’t understand this—but there was a kind of flat disc that they would then force into the opening, like force into the seal where the heavy stone was placed.
And when they locked those two stones together, it became basically humanly impossible to open the tomb back up again.
So no grave robber could ever get into that tomb.
That is the kind of tomb that Jesus was buried in.
Now, what does that mean?
That means that nobody, whether it was a disciple or a religious leader or anyone else, nobody could have gotten to the tomb and forced it open to steal the body of Jesus.
They literally would not have been able to.
So historical fact number two that every historian accepts is that the tomb was empty on the third day.
But the problem that creates for us is that it is not possible for his body to have been stolen, because it is not possible for his disciples to have gotten the tomb back open.
It was sealed, and it was impenetrable after it was sealed.
The Guards at the Tomb
But at the same time, historical fact number two creates another problem for us, because at exactly the same time, we know from history and from the text here of Matthew that the tomb of Jesus was guarded by two separate sets of guards.
Number one was the Jewish temple guard, and number two was the Roman guards.
Now, both the Jewish temple guards and the Roman guards had one thing in common, and that is that they were bound by death not to fail at their task.
If a Jewish temple guard failed at their task, they would be executed.
And if a Roman guard failed at their task of guarding, they would be executed.
If you fell asleep on the job, you would be executed.
If you let someone through that you were not supposed to, you would be executed.
If you weren’t able to fight off people coming to try to break through the line, you would be executed.
These were highly trained elite forces in the ancient world, and there were two of them together guarding the tomb of Jesus.
The Pharisees and Sadducees, for some reason, remembered better than Jesus’s own disciples, because Jesus’s own disciples are in despair at this point.
And yet the Jewish temple guards, the Roman guards, the religious leaders, they remember Jesus said, “On the third day, I will rise again.”
So they said, “Okay, his disciples might try to steal his body and say he rose again, so we need to put as many guards as we can.”
And they put not only the Jewish temple guards, but they got permission from Pilate to put Roman guards there in order to keep his body from being stolen.
So one, the disciples can’t steal the body of Jesus because they can’t get into the tomb.
It is literally impenetrable.
But two, even if by some insane miracle they get into the tomb, they can’t get past the temple guards or the Roman guards.
They will be mowed down.
One Roman guard could have killed 10 just random Jewish extremists.
One temple guard could have easily dispatched 10 random Israelite revolutionaries or insurrectionists or militia people.
That is how well-trained and elite these two different sets of guards are.
So the disciples couldn’t get through the guards to get to the tomb, and they couldn’t get into the tomb even if they got to the tomb.
So there is absolutely no way they could have stolen the body of Jesus.
And yet, historical fact number two: on the third day, his body was gone.
And at the same time, on the third day, the disciples claimed to witness the risen Jesus.
They claimed to see him alive after his crucifixion.
That is historical fact number three.
Every serious historian accepts that the disciples of Jesus and the first generation of his followers claimed to have witnessed him alive after his resurrection.
Did the Disciples Steal the Body?
Now, here’s the thing.
The religious leaders use their power and they use their wealth, right?
So they use their authority and they use their resources to bribe these guards into lying and saying that the disciples stole the body.
So that is part of where that theory comes from.
If you read the ancient Jewish Talmud, that is what the modern Jewish religion is very heavily based on.
It’s not just based on the Old Testament.
It is also based on the Jewish Talmud.
There were several books that all together make up the Talmudic writings, but in the Jewish Talmud, so much of it was written by first-century Pharisees who opposed and rejected Jesus.
So if you want to get some insight into the mindset of the religious leaders who attacked and slandered and ultimately arrested and executed Jesus, read the Talmud, because a lot of what’s in the Talmud is actually written by either these religious leaders or their immediate followers.
But in the Jewish Talmud, it claims that the body of Jesus was stolen by his disciples.
Actually, the Talmud says quite a bit about Jesus.
There’s a bunch of anti-Christian propaganda in the Talmud.
There’s a bunch of anti-Jesus propaganda in the Talmud.
And you should read that anti-Jesus, anti-Christian propaganda, because on accident they confirm several things.
One of the reasons historians almost universally accept that the tomb was empty on the third day is because the Talmud, written by the enemies of Jesus and the early Christians, says the tomb was empty on the third day.
It says the disciples stole the body of Jesus.
But here’s the problem with that.
If the disciples stole the body of Jesus, that means that they know for a fact he did not rise from the dead.
If the disciples stole the body of Jesus, that means that they know for a fact that they are lying about Jesus.
If the disciples stole the body of Jesus, then they know for a fact Jesus is not actually who he said he was.
If the disciples stole the body of Jesus, that would mean that the disciples already know themselves firsthand, for a fact, that everything Jesus said was fake.
All of it was nonsense.
All of it was false.
So if the disciples stole the body of Jesus, that means that the disciples are lying about everything they go and preach and teach for the rest of their lives.
Now, why is that unlikely?
It’s actually very simple.
People lie all the time.
Religious people lie all the time, right?
And just to be clear, a lot of times people believe things that are not true.
People believe things that are false.
People build their whole lives on things that are false.
You know, so many Islamic extremists are willing to die for their faith, but that doesn’t make it true.
So what’s different about the disciples?
What’s different is this.
If you are one of the disciples and you know for a fact that Jesus did not really rise from the dead, are you going to willingly die in order to maintain your claim that he did?
If you’re one of the disciples, if you stole the body of Jesus, if you know for a fact he didn’t really rise from the dead, are you going to endure under severe torture for that claim?
I doubt it.
The Witnesses Refused to Recant
Because here’s the thing.
The Roman government was absolutely masterful at torture.
They weren’t just pros at killing people.
They were also pros at pain.
They were pros at inflicting such excruciating pain on people that they could not withstand it.
They were incredible at interrogations.
They were incredible at getting people to back down from things.
They were incredible at getting people to recant from things.
So if you were an early witness to the resurrection of Jesus, the Roman government, which was trying to stop the spread of Christianity, they were trying to crush the early Jesus movement.
And so what they did was the Roman government arrested every single one of the disciples of Jesus.
They arrested every single person who claimed to have witnessed the risen Jesus, and they subjected them to the worst tortures imaginable.
Google this.
Look it up.
I’m going to give you a quick run-through, but just for the full impact, you should read a little bit about this yourself.
But the Roman government would regularly arrest witnesses to the resurrection, and they would feed them to animals while they were alive.
They would have wild dogs and lions and others start eating them, beginning at their feet, and they would eat their way up.
They would eat off the skin and the flesh from their feet, and then after that they would pull the animals back and say, “Now, you can stop this if you will just say, ‘I didn’t really witness Jesus rise from the dead.’ We will stop this, and we will let you go home and heal up, and we’ll leave you alone forever if you will just say, ‘I lied. I did not actually witness the risen Jesus.’”
But every single one of the witnesses said, “No. I saw it. You can do whatever you want to me, but it’s true. I saw it.”
So they would have the animals continue eating up their legs and then up their calves, and then they would get to the most precious part of their body, and they would eat that as well.
And they would just keep going until they bled out and died.
But at every single stage, the Roman government would say, “You can stop this. You can put an end to this if you will just recant your testimony to having witnessed the resurrection of Jesus.”
But not one of them recanted.
That was one form of torture.
They also did a thing where they would cut off one body part at a time.
So they’d get your hand, they would cut off your pinky, and then they would say, “Now, you can stop this if you will just say, ‘I didn’t really witness the risen Jesus.’”
And then they would cut off another one and say, “You can stop this if you will just say, ‘I didn’t really witness the risen Jesus.’”
And they would cut off another one, and then they would say, “You can stop this if you will just say, ‘I didn’t really witness the risen Jesus.’”
They would go through all of your fingers.
They would go through all of your toes.
They would go through your ears.
They would go through your nose.
They would go through your genitals.
They would go through every part of your body, and they would just keep cutting and amputating.
And every step of the way, they’d say, “Hey, we will stop this. We will fix you back up, and we will leave you alone if you will just take back your testimony about witnessing the risen Jesus.”
But not one of them recanted.
They boiled people alive, and as they were boiling, they would say, “We will pull you out of there and nurse you back to health if you will just say, ‘I didn’t witness the risen Jesus.’”
They threw people to the gladiators in the Colosseum.
If you’ve seen either Gladiator 1 or 2, in both movies there’s sequences where they pull out a bunch of Christians, and they’re literally there just to be mowed down by the gladiators for the entertainment of the people.
But right before they sent them out, they would say, “Hey, we won’t send you out. We will send you back home, and you’ll be fine. All you have to do is take back your claim that you witnessed the risen Jesus.”
But not one of them would recant.
We could go through all different kinds of torture methods, but I’m going to leave it there.
Google it, but not before lunchtime.
If the disciples stole the body, that would mean they were lying, and that would mean they knew for a fact he didn’t really rise from the dead.
But if that were the case, why would they have endured all this torture and refused to take it back?
If you were lying about it and someone threatened to cut off your hands and your feet and your testicles, would you maintain your lie?
Seriously.
I know that this is gruesome, and I know that this is unpleasant to hear about, but this is important.
Would you keep the lie going if it meant losing so many of your most precious body parts?
If it meant slowly being eaten alive by wild dogs?
If it meant being ruthlessly boiled alive for hours on end?
I doubt it.
And so, whatever happened, the disciples did not do it.
The disciples did not steal the body of Jesus.
Three Very Inconvenient Facts
So we have these three very inconvenient facts.
We know for a fact that Jesus died on the cross.
We know for a fact that on the third day his tomb is empty.
And we know for a fact that his disciples claimed to witness Jesus alive after the resurrection, and they maintained that claim under the most horrific tortures imaginable.
Every single one of the disciples of Jesus was murdered by the Roman government and viciously tortured in the lead-up to it.
The only exception is John, and that’s because, for some reason, the Lord didn’t let John die.
They were boiling John in hot oil, and for some reason the Lord protected John from dying as a result of the boiling oil.
And so there’s this really funny story where he just kept saying, “Hey, it’s a little bit cold. Can you make it hotter? Can you stoke the fire a little bit more?”
And at one point, one of the people who was boiling him got curious, so he reached his hand into the boiling oil to see if he was telling the truth, and it burned his hand.
And then he had to run and go see a doctor.
But so every single one of the disciples of Jesus was mercilessly tortured.
Every single witness to the resurrection was mercilessly tortured, and every single one of them maintained, “I am telling the truth. I witnessed the risen Jesus.”
The First Witnesses Were Women
But at exactly the same time, there’s another reason why these three historical facts are very difficult for us to explain away.
And that is because the first people Jesus appeared to in his resurrection were the women.
So the 12 disciples were not the only people who were following Jesus.
They were not the only people who were learning from Jesus.
They were not the only people he was teaching and raising up and preparing.
He was also teaching and raising up and preparing a pretty large group of women as well.
And several of these women went to the tomb of Jesus on the morning of his resurrection, and they found it empty.
And then they met the risen Jesus.
He appears to this group of women.
Now, why does that matter?
It matters because, one, the first witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus were women, which is important because, two, in the ancient Near East, the testimony of women was considered invalid, specifically in the context of first-century Judaism.
Now, this is not from the Bible.
God did not make this rule.
Humans made this rule.
Women were not allowed to testify in court.
They believed that women were so untrustworthy that you could not be confident of any testimony that they gave.
They believed that women were so hysterical that you could not trust any testimony that they offered.
They believed that women were so driven by their emotions that you couldn’t trust them to just tell you what happened without falling into some flight of fancy and fantasizing a bunch of nonsense.
And so the testimony of women was considered legally invalid in first-century Jewish culture.
Very frequently, Jewish priests would pray on a daily basis, “I thank you, O Lord, that you did not make me a slave, a Gentile, or a woman.”
There was this deep contempt for women, not in the Old Testament, not in God’s commands to his people, not in the Old Testament law, but in first-century Jewish culture.
In ancient Near Eastern culture, women were ignored.
They were invalidated.
They were despised.
So the testimony of women was considered literally invalid.
It was considered useless.
Now, why does that matter?
It matters because Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all testify together that the first people to witness the risen Jesus were the women.
So what?
Here’s what.
If the disciples were lying about the resurrection of Jesus, if the disciples were making up the story of the resurrection, if the disciples stole the body and then falsely claimed that Jesus rose from the grave, if they’re making up a story to convince everyone, it would make absolutely no sense for them to make up this story.
Because by claiming that the first witnesses of the resurrection were women, they are shooting themselves in the foot.
By claiming that the first people to see Jesus alive after his crucifixion were the women, they are immediately preventing anyone from listening to any of the rest of what they had to say.
Because immediately everyone listening would say, “Well, yeah, a bunch of hysterical women are going to say something stupid like that, aren’t they?”
That is how everyone would have reacted when they proclaimed this in the first century.
So if this was a lie, this was a profoundly stupid and incompetent lie for them to come up with.
Do you really think they would be that stupid to make up a false story about the resurrection and then make the lead into the story be, “Hey, the women saw the risen Jesus”?
No.
The only reasonable explanation for why they testify that the women were the first people to witness the risen Jesus is because that’s what happened.
The only thing that could justify something this tactically inept would be if that is literally just the truth.
Jesus Rose From the Dead
So we have these three historical facts that every historian accepts.
Jesus died on the cross.
On the third day, the tomb was empty.
And all of his disciples claimed to have witnessed the risen Jesus, even under profound torture and death by the Roman government.
Historically speaking, we have no reason not to believe that Jesus really rose from the dead.
And if Jesus really rose from the dead, that means a lot of things, but above all, it means that we need to listen to whatever Jesus says about himself.
And what did he say about himself throughout the Gospel of Matthew?
Jesus said, “I am the God who created you.”
He said, “I am the God who gave the law. I am the God who gave the commands of the Old Testament, and I am the God who now gives you good and right and just commands.”
Jesus is our God.
Jesus is our lawgiver.
And he says, “I am the King of all the universe that you’ve been waiting for.”
Jesus is our divine King.
Jesus is our Shepherd.
Jesus is our teacher.
Jesus is our Savior.
He is our Savior and God and King.
And that means we need to throw ourselves on his mercy as our Savior.
We need to submit to him as our King, and we need to worship him as our God.
We need to obey him as our lawgiver.
We need to learn from him as our teacher, and on and on and on.
If Jesus really rose from the dead, which historically speaking, we have about the same amount of evidence that Jesus rose from the dead as we do that Julius Caesar lived to begin with, right?
So historically speaking, it is a historical fact that Jesus died and apparently rose again.
And if that is true, we need to listen to what he says about himself, and we need to do whatever he says to do.
And that is exactly where Matthew 28 ends.
The Risen King Gives Us Our Mission
Because in the final verses of Matthew 28, Jesus says, “I am taking up my kingly authority.”
“All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.”
—Matthew 28:18, WEB
And then he gives us three jobs, three callings, three marching orders.
1. Introduce People to the God Who Wants to Redeem Them and Restore Them
He says, as my kingdom people, number one, go introduce people to the God who wants to redeem them and restore them.
Go tell people about me.
Go tell people the good news of what I have done.
He says, go be fishers of people.
He says, go be harvesters in the harvest.
He says, go out and find the lost and the hurting and the broken and the struggling and tell them the gloriously good news about me.
He says:
“Go and make disciples of all nations.”
—Matthew 28:19, WEB
That’s number one.
2. Gather Them Into the Church
Number two, he says, as my kingdom people, gather the lost and the broken and the hurting and the struggling into the church to serve and worship and follow me.
He says, when you find people and proclaim the good news to them, find the ones who believe it and gather them together into my people.
“Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
—Matthew 28:19, WEB
When you are baptized, you are saying, “I am a follower of Jesus. I have given up my old life in repentance and faith. I’ve become a member of God’s family. I’ve become a part of God’s church, and now I’m going out on God’s mission.”
He says, gather the people who believe the truth about me into my people, into my assembly, into my ecclesia, into the true Israel, into the church, to serve and worship and follow me.
That’s number two.
3. Teach Them to Become Kingdom Workers Too
And number three, he says, teach them, mentor them, grow them, invest in them as your spiritual children to become my kingdom workers too.
He says, as I have discipled you, you disciple them.
“Teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you.”
—Matthew 28:20, WEB
He’s saying, gather the people who believe your proclamation of the Gospel into the church, and you teach them.
You mentor them.
You grow them.
You invest in them.
You become their spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers as your spiritual children, and you train them in how to know me and how to listen to my voice, how to follow me, how to obey me, and how to join you as my kingdom workers.
Teach them how to join the kingdom work of finding the lost and the hurting and the broken and the struggling and introducing them to the redeeming and restoring God.
That’s number three.
“I Am With You Always”
And he says, this is a massive task, and you cannot do it on your own.
You cannot do it in your human power.
But you can absolutely do it because I am doing it through you.
He says all of this is possible through his sustaining and empowering presence.
“Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
—Matthew 28:20, WEB
The sustaining and empowering presence of Jesus with us and in us is what makes it possible for us to introduce people to the God who wants to redeem them and restore them.
The sustaining and empowering presence of Jesus with us and in us through the Holy Spirit is what makes it possible for us to gather people into the church to serve and worship and follow him alongside us.
And the sustaining and empowering presence of Jesus with us and in us through the Spirit is what makes it possible for us to teach and mentor and guide and grow and invest in people as our spiritual children and train them up to be kingdom workers with us, because his Spirit is acting through us.
We are his hands and his feet.
We Are the Modern-Day Disciples of Jesus
And this calling is not just for the 11 remaining disciples here in Matthew 28.
This calling is for the modern-day disciples of Jesus today in 2025.
Matthew and Peter and James and John and Andrew and Philip and Nathaniel and Simon the Zealot and so on, they were the disciples of Jesus in AD 33.
We are the disciples of Jesus in AD 2025.
They were the kingdom workers of Jesus in AD 33.
You are the kingdom workers of Jesus in AD 2025.
And if you look out your window and you look around at the world, there is kingdom work for us to be doing today.
The harvest is plentiful today, just like it was in AD 33.
And so when we look at the plentiful harvest, we should be riled in our spirits the same way Jesus was.
When we see the people of our world, the people in our surrounding community, wandering like sheep without a shepherd, we should be filled with compassion the same way Jesus was filled with compassion.
And we should go out and we should fish for people.
We should harvest the lost.
We should seek out the lost and the hurting and the broken and the struggling and introduce them to this God who wants to redeem them and restore them.
This Is the Story of Matthew
That is the story of Matthew.
That is the reason Matthew has written all of these things that we have trekked through over the past 28 chapters.
He has written this to us so that we can meet Jesus, and we can know Jesus, and we can submit to Jesus as our King, and we can throw ourselves on his mercy as our Savior, and we can worship him as our God, and we can begin following him as his disciples, as his fishers for people, as his harvesters, as his kingdom workers.
And we can go out into this fallen and broken world and proclaim the gloriously good news of Jesus and his kingdom to the weary people who’ve been languishing and suffering in this fallen world alongside us, so that they can be redeemed and restored and then mobilized along with us as we, one, introduce them to the Lord; two, gather them into the church to serve and worship and follow him; and three, teach and mentor and grow and guide and invest in their spiritual development so that they can become kingdom workers too.
That is our calling.
And so now it is time to go out and take up that calling.
All of the reading you have done in Matthew’s Gospel has been training and preparation.
Now go do what Jesus has trained you to do.
Leave a comment