Dear Family at Christ Community,

We will bring our series on the Abrahamic Covenant to a close with the Lord’s Supper this Sunday. We will need the encouraging nourishment of the bread and cup following the challenge that will come from Jesus’ words of commencement in Matthew 28:16-20. The Great Commission is delivered following Jesus’ resurrection on a mountain in Galilee where He had previously told the disciples that He would meet them. Their response is not unlike ours as we come together each Lord’s Day as we are called to meet Him corporately. We too respond with a mixture of worship and doubt. Remember, they had all fled in fear of their lives and utter bewilderment following the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus. It seemed that his was a faithless act of desertion which had been predicted in Christ’s quotation of Zechariah 13:7. What would the risen Christ say to those who had so quickly forgotten His promise of resurrection and given in to their fear and flesh? R. T. France in The Gospel of Matthew captures this tension as he writes, “…the last time these eleven disciples had seen Jesus was as they ran away from him in Gethsemane; so what sort of reception could they now expect from the master they had deserted? The conflicting instincts to worship the risen Jesus and to avoid a potentially embarrassing encounter make very human sense in this context.” Some were afraid that Jesus was going to punish them in some way for their lack of faith so they doubted instead of worshipped. We too come together wondering at times if God will judge us or refuse us for our previous week’s failures in faith and holiness causing us to doubt His grace.

This doubting could be true for all of us after a sermon on Matthew 28:16-20 which minces no words in what it commands us to do missionally in fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant in union with Christ. This commission is clearly a tall order if it requires us to first recognize that Jesus is universally sovereign and secondly that He is present with us until the end of the age. In order not to struggle with doubting God’s grace, we must remember that redemption always precedes the call to obedience and provides exactly what is necessary to be obedient. The Lord’s Supper is an amazing reminder of these things. Before we can go from the service to make disciples as commanded by Jesus, we must first be nourished and enabled by the broken body and blood of Christ.

Take time this week to give thanks to God for providing for the fullness of our redemption in the perfect person and work of Christ. Confess where you are struggling to remember the truth of the Gospel and doubt God’s love and desire to use someone who so easily forgets and gives in to their fear and flesh. Ask the Lord to nourish your faith and grant you courage to share this Good News with others who so desperately need it. Pray for our church to be marked by and display God’s glory in the fruit of redemption as reflected in fresh justification and deepening sanctification.

In Christ,

Cameron