`Word of Salvation – Vol. 26 No. 28 – April 1981
The Small Commission That Comes Before The Great
Easter Sermon by Rev. A.I. de Graaf on Matthew 28:10b
Scripture Reading: Psalm 22:19-31
Psalter Hymnal: 358; 483; 172:5 & 6; 37; 357
At the end of this chapter, Mat.28, we find what is known throughout the Church as THE GREAT COMMISSION: Go and make disciples of all nations baptising them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.
That is a great commission all right. Not only is it a call to go and change the very face of the earth as nations turn from idols to the God of all of life. The world at last begins to feel the gentle but powerful breath of God’s life on it again. But there are two commissions in Matthew 28: TWO times, “Go and tell”. Before GO and TELL the NATIONS there is this SMALL commission: GO AND TELL MY BROTHERS. Yet this small commission makes the great one possible.
THE SMALL COMMISSION THAT COMES BEFORE THE GREAT
1. A new way to address old sinners
2. A new sheen to brighten an old name
3 A new plan even for that new Day!
On the day He rises from the dead, that wonderful Day, unique in the history of the world, Jesus changes everything. Mourning He changes into laughter, Fear He changes into joy and uncertainty into glad faith.. But now look at THIS change: The ANGEL’s message was: Go tell the DISCIPLES, but Jesus makes it: Go tell MY BROTHERS! Disciples…. that seems already too much honour for that bunch of traitors and turn-coats. They had run when their Lord was captured and killed: Man did THEY let Him down! And yet the same Jesus who BEFORE THAT had already said to them, “I call you no longer slaves or servants but I call you friends…..!” now goes a step further and calls them that unprecedented name: My brothers!
No one has talked to Him; no one even has said to Him: “Lord I am sorry”, or “Lord, you know that I love you….!” Sure, there were Peter’s tears and Jesus has seen them. But no one made a confession yet or put anything right. But Jesus says “Brothers” or – the way He puts it to Mary of Magdala: You now for always have My Father as YOUR Father. ‘My brothers’ says the King of kings, who is the very Son of the Almighty.
What an address it is to call old sinners like they were and like we are, “Brothers”. We are quarrellers and proud defenders of our ego’s….! But Jesus says, brothers. That new address He wrote with His own blood not ours. If any instance brings out the total grace-character of the Gospel, it is this message that Jesus gives on this Great New morning. And whoever may learn to see himself as a traitor and then flees for salvation to This Lord will also hear Him say: You are my are my brother. Now go and do my Father’s will. You are my brother, a child of the king, now go and hear the GREAT commission……! The Christian Church may look splintered and split. At times it is a mockery of the Gospel…. “scornful wonder” all right!
Yet the greatest truth about that church, that bride-in-rags, is that it consists of people Jesus calls His brothers. Psalm 22 starts with His lonely cry of agony: “My God my God why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
Later it has in it that wonderful prophecy where THIS suffering servant of God says: I will proclaim YOUR name to my brothers, and I will praise you in a GREAT Congregation. Due to His initiative it is a GREAT congregation. His love is before ours. His sacrifice is done while we betrayed Him.
Oh that Judas would have seen that! Had he seen ONE glimpse of this wonderful love of Jesus he would not have committed suicide. He would have cried like Peter and found the door open. It is a new address on an old sinner. Never forget it, brother! Never forget it….. when Jesus says “Brothers”. Does that not mean that you and I should be willing to start again, too? Never mind what happened? Living by grace is – start anew each day.
So: tell my brothers first…. before telling the WORLD. The small commission before the great…
1 A new address for an old sinner.
Now…
2 A new sheen put back on an old name.
“Go tell my brothers to go…. to GALILEE…..” “to Galilee” – Here there sounds from the lips of him who has been to hell and back, through death and into this world again, that well-known name: Galilee.
This is where most of these “brothers” came from. Yet it was where the Big Shots of Israel thought nothing good could come from. But the Lord Jesus has NOT forgotten that name. The Glorified Lord mentions the humble region where they came from. It is as if you hear Him say: Groningen, or Box Hill or Bethnel Green near London, or wherever is the humble spot of your home town where you have all those childhood memories. Tell them to go there, says Jesus, THERE THEY WILL SEE ME. He will show Himself in His risen glory by those fishing boats and those tree-studded grassy slopes around the Lake, in that very concrete piece of world. Today people may walk with Him like Enoch walked with God, while rearing sons and daughters he walked with the Living God. “Galilee”, He says.
Yes, that is the place where He Himself grew up. And now He has grown too great… that the heavens of heavens cannot hold him, but he has not forgotten that small spot. There He says… There they will see Me. That to me still is one of the greatest truths of the Christian faith.
We have a Lord who came to share our life, and to whom no place is too small or too far-out to be a place where we may meet Him, the Living One, and learn to sing the new song again.
And then finally:
3. A NEW PLAN FOR A NEW DAY
Jesus’ Word is TRUTH He never lied. His Bible never lied, either.
They WERE to see Him in Galilee as Paul later wrote. Yes…. and yet how full of surprises is this LORD…! How full of surprises is also His Word! For that same day, when they were still around in Jerusalem, Peter was to see Him and James…. and yes, that very same evening, the whole lot of them in that locked-up room.
Jesus says: “To Galilee….”, yet comes to surprise them a good deal earlier. You know, we should never rob Him or His Bible of these surprises, this love this fresh newness in which He comes to meet people while we make it all into a system which is too static and rigid.
He is the Living Lord. In spite of what He told the women. In spite of a repentant Peter and the faith of John, in spite of all in that the locked room. He says to Himself – “It’s too long to let them wait till they’re all in Galilee with all the hundreds still there who love Me.
I’ll go and give them a surprise visit tonight. It is too bad about Thomas. I will have to stay another week and come to them again. And so there He is at that first SUNDAY evening service which the Christian Church ever had. Did you realise you who may worry what will come of our Sunday evening services – that the first service ever came as a surprise from our Lord? I will go tell them, “Peace with you” for didn’t I make peace between them and their God? So we see, the unchanging One changed His plan.
But love always makes this possible for Him. And He asks us, His brothers, to do the same. Faithfulness to Him never means just to stick to a cold time-table just to hold on to a strict system. He has a plan which is no wild experimentation. In that plan He could still surprise. We must be conservative in that deep sense of the word the way He spoke to the Church of Philadelphia “You are small in strength but you have KEPT My Word”.
But that Word is a word of love, that Word is a word full of surprises. This was the small commission He gave so that later on, burning with this love of His, His brothers would go out into the world with that GREAT commission. They were Brothers of the Risen Lord who never forgot Galilee.
Amen.