Matthew 28:20

THE PRESENCE OF THE RISEN LORD

‘Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.’

Matthew 28:20

I. The presence of Christ as our priest.—Christ is present with us as our Priest. In dark and troublesome days, when persecution and disaster threatened the infant Church, St. John saw Him in vision at Patmos. Clothed in the vesture of the priest of old He was seen moving amongst the lamps of the sanctuary to light, to feed, and to trim their flame. Christ is still with His Church as its Priest, to light human souls, to feed them with His grace, to cleanse them from all that hinders their clear and bright shining as His light-bearers. Our Risen Lord is ever present with us to keep the lamp of His Church and of its members bright and clear even in the days when the thickest mists threatened to hide it and the angry gusts of stormy winds seemed likely to put it out.

II. The presence of Christ as our prophet.—Christ is present as our Prophet. The Risen Christ appeared to the disciples on the way to Emmaus, and went with them. Our Lord Himself is the interpreter to His Church. He will show us in His own way and in His own time that all the teachings of science, and all the discoveries of research, and all the changing lights of the twentieth century will only in the long run illuminate and verify that wonderful Book, the older part of which was His Bible and His final court of appeal.

III. The presence of Christ as our king.—Christ is present as our King. On the shore of the Sea of Galilee the Risen Lord had fed and revived the seven fishermen. He had restored St. Peter to the apostleship. He was slowly climbing the rough and narrow path that led from the shore to the top of the cliff. His disciples were following. And, pointing to St. John as they go, St. Peter asks: ‘Lord, and what shall this man do?’ And He replied: ‘If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou Me.’ ‘If I will.’ He tells us that He controls the future, that nothing happens but what He wills. He directs alike the course of nations, the destinies of His Church, the steps of His servants. Without His Will nothing can happen to them or to us. ‘In His Will is our peace.’ In such a transition age as ours we may be looking with anxiety into the future of (a) our Church, (b) our country, and (c) ourselves. He would have us take no anxious thought for the morrow. The Lord sitteth upon the water-floods. Christ is with us, as well as for us and in us, and His Presence is our birthright and the secret of our strength, our hope, and our peace.

—Bishop F. J. Chavasse.

Illustration

‘I have to do with its personal application; and from this point of view let me ask you to notice that it adds to the simplicity, and therefore the beauty of the power of Christ’s undertaking, that He will always be with us (if we translate that word as it is, more literally) “all the days.” “Lo, I am with you all the days to the end of the world.” All the dark “days,” and all the bright “days.” Joys come by “days,” and sorrows come by “days.” Life is only so many “days,” till eternity come, in which there will be no “days.” But just as the needs come “day by day,” so the sympathies come, and the voices come, and the hand comes, and the cheer comes,—the little destined time, “all the days.” “Lo, I am with you all the days to the end of the age. Amen.” And I know nothing which can make life so good and pleasant, and death so little a thing to die as this. And when those short days of life and health are past, it will be only as the scattering of a mist or the lifting of a veil—The Presence of faith will be the Presence of sight, and that Presence will be Heaven!’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

CHRIST’S PROMISE

Archbishop Magee said of this text that the whole life, history, and character of the Church are summed up in it. To the eleven apostles these words brought the comfort of the hope of the Lord’s abiding Presence. They were a final and conclusive attestation of His Divinity. We know, from nineteen centuries’ experience, how in the power of His risen life, Christ lives and works—Emmanuel, God with us.

I. The full extension of the promise.—It is a stream which runs unbroken to futurity, and it is an effective presence now making for our great nation’s righteousness. May we seek to draw the bonds of Church and nation closer still, seeking that the promised Christ may more and more shine through the Church into the nation’s life.

II. Let us look onward.—We make to-day what with His presence in her still the Church shall be. It is easy to look back—so hard to prophesy, but the true guarantee of prayers is the promise of Christ. With whatever change the future comes, let us cling to these principles:—

(1) The Church must first of all be spiritual.

(2) The Church must ever be the keeper of Holy Writ, which is the only standard of true righteousness.

(3) We must reverence His Day.

III. May each of us go forth to his work assured that Christ is in the midst of us, the Head, the King, the Ruler of His Church, and that His Presence may be in every one of us.

Bishop Creighton.

(THIRD OUTLINE)

A FIXED AXIOM OF LIFE

To none whom we have known was it ever given to say, ‘I am with you alway.’ The contrasts of this world are essential to the setting forth of the eternity of the resurrection-life of Christ and the value of His abiding Presence.

I. ‘I am with you.’—He spake these words after He had Himself passed through Death, after He had proved and tasted the bitterness of separation. But some will say, ‘Oh! that that Presence were but visible!’ It requires strong exercise of faith; that other sense added to the natural faculties—a gift of God—to be prayed for and cherished. But that invisible Presence once apprehended, it is more real, more precious than a visible. For a visible must come and go, as Christ did in the flesh. But now, always and everywhere, we carry it along with us. After our Lord’s resurrection He never once showed Himself, or uttered a single word, to unbelievers; all that He said and did was for believers only.

II. All the days.—But observe the full meaning of the words more literally rendered. ‘Lo, I am with you all the days, unto the consummation of the age.’ What force and beauty there is in those words, ‘all the days.’ They convey that before the mind of the Speaker ‘all the days’ lay ranged in order, to the end of time. He saw The Changeless Presence in the midst of the changeable and changing—that constant, lasting Presence. We are always stepping out into an unknown future; but the foot cannot fall outside the Presence of Jesus.

III. The promise.—The Promise as a twofold application.

(a) It applies to us when we are assembled together (as His people, in His appointed Place) on the Lord’s Day. How should you and I be encouraged, at this very moment, to pray or praise, to preach or hear, if we realised that Jesus was actually in our midst! And yet this is God’s own truth, and everything that questions it a lie (St. Matthew 18:20).

(b) The undertaking is not for one day (nor for a congregation only): it is for ‘all the days’ (and for each individual). Now, conceive that you carry about with you every day the actual sense of the nearness, the compassion, the co-operation of Christ. What a perfected existence would you be leading from that moment! What a path of life would stretch on before you up to the realms of glory! Where, then, would be solitude? Where suffering, weakness, fear, or death? Did ever living thing suffer or die, when He was not near?

If you have not the feeling of His Presence, then, whatever else you may have, life is still a failure and a blank. Let it be a fixed axiom of life, ‘Christ is with me everywhere.’

The Rev. J. Vaughan.

Illustration

‘Of all the common mistakes upon this subject of Christ’s Presence with His Church, the greatest is that of thinking it is something quite different from His Presence with His Disciples of old, and with His Redeemed hereafter. The only difference is in the manner of the Presence. When you come to meet your Lord in Holy Communion you come to meet the self-same Christ who taught those two Disciples on the road to Emmaus, Who discoursed to the Apostles on the night before He suffered. Who raised up Lazarus from the dead. When you come to meet your Lord at His Altar, you come to meet the same Christ who is now the joy of Saints at rest, and who will be the eternal joy of the Saints in Glory. The only difference is in the manner of the Presence. But the Person is the same, and exactly as Christ’s heavenly Presence will be all in all to Saints in Glory, so from out of His Sacramental Presence to us now there flows a complete supply of everything needful to illuminate our path while militant on earth. I do not say that Christ’s Sacramental Presence gives to us now all that it will give to the members of the Church Triumphant. But it gives us all that we are capable of receiving. It gives us all that our present state and condition admit of our receiving. It gives all that our present circumstances require.’

(FOURTH OUTLINE)

ALIVE FOR EVERMORE

No empty grave? No universal Comforter? If the story of the empty tomb and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is a fable, then we are of all men most miserable: but if it be true, then it has been a wondrous gain to the whole world.

I. An incentive to Christian work.—The words which the risen Christ left with those few helpless disciples of His, ‘Lo, I am with you alway,’ have become the grand incentive for all great Christian work. How comes it that poor men, and weak men, and helpless women have had some mysterious power given to them whereby they were able to stand fearless and courageous while the lions met them in the open arena, and that they could stand and smile while the fires were lit about their burning feet? The secret of this matter is told us in our text. The risen Saviour has promised to go with His disciples where’er they might find themselves, and be with them.

II. Christianity centres in a person.—The genius of Christianity which has turned the world upside down is a Personality, a presence, a very real presence, unseen to the eye of the world, but blessedly real and eternally beautiful. There is no excuse for us when we give way to temptation, because He says that with every temptation He has provided the way to escape, and we have to look to Him, and not to ourselves, to help us. We are all of us blind by nature. Are we ready to be led by the Great Guide? He is not going to drive us: He is going to lead us. ‘Lo, I am with you alway.’ The Eternal Son of God is going to be our Friend. How can we know what Christ commands? Only by reading His Word and praying to Him to make it come true in our experience.

III. Christianity builds character.—Character is better than knowledge. The Christian religion makes for principles, and principles are better than traditions. We shall be judged by our character, by our principles, we shall be judged here and there too more by what we are than what we profess, more by what we do than what we say, just as the world is our jury now and sums us up more by our actions than our profession. So Christianity teaches us that He comes hour by hour to put things right, and to square our character with the commands of His Word, to bring us up to that high standard of perfection without which we can never hope to see God.

The Rev. A. J. Poynder.