chapter of Matthew's Gospel. Matthew chapter twenty-eight. Now, we have been studying in Matthew's Gospel all this week, every day. We have called the title of our talks this week the road to Calvary. And we've followed the footsteps of the Lord Jesus in that last night, that last week of his life here on earth. as he taught that lonely road that led to Calvary. Now I want to read from the sixteenth verse, the last few verses of the book of Matthew. I'd like you to open it, and I want to, there's some, not differences, but some subtle points here which I love. And I would like to read it direct from the original Greek, what they call the Koine Greek translation, and translate it as we go. From verse sixteen, and you compare, you see one or two little differences, not great. Then the eleven disciples journeyed to Galilee, to the mountain which the Lord had appointed them, which Jesus had appointed to them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him. But some were undecided. And Jesus came and said unto them, To me is given all authority in heaven and over the earth. Journey, therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father. Notice, it doesn't say the names, but the name, the one name of the three persons, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to hold or keep or retain all the things which I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you all the days, I am with you all the days, until the consummation, sin delius, Talir is the ending, and sin is the bringing the endings together, the consummation. And, Lord, I am with you all the days until the consummation of the age. The word, aonus here, sometimes translated world, in this case is the consummation of the age. We God bless thee, the reading of his own precious word. Shall we pray? Blessed God, our Father, we thank thee for this wonderful conference. And for all the ministry to which we have been listening week after week after week, thy beloved Son has been exalted and magnified and glorified in our midst. And we've learned many deep things from thy word. And oh Lord, we feel we should be different people. And we should be people who are praising thee and walking with thee and serving thee. And people who are expecting thy return again very soon. We thank thee for our studies this week in the Gospel of Matthew, the footsteps of the Lord Jesus as he trod that road which led to the awful place called Calvary. Think about our considerations on Friday night when he passed through that awful darkness, when thou discover the whole land in darkness, and the Lord Jesus there in those three hours took our place. When man had done all that they could do to him, then thou did shut man out. And then the God of heaven dealt with the question of sin. And the Lord Jesus bore our sins in his own body upon the tree. He who knew no sin was made sin for us. O Lord, we thank thee for that dreadful hour. terrible hour, but the hour in which thy name was magnified and glorified, and thy throne and thy justice and thy holiness were all vindicated when the beloved Son of God paid the price of sin. We thank thee that it's raising from the dead. We thank thee for the triumph of this Easter day, that he is risen, he is not here, the grave is empty, come see the place where the Lord lay. We thank thee that thou hast raised him and set him at thine own right hand, far above all principality and power and dominion and might, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. And thou hast made him head over all things. We bow in his presence now. And we pray that in the next few moments we might hear his voice and hear thy voice speaking to us. May the Holy Spirit take the words of God and apply them to our heart. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Now I thought it would be fitting since we've been studying in Matthew's Gospel to stick with Matthew's Gospel to the end here. Matthew doesn't say much after the resurrection. We read this morning the story of the resurrection from Matthew and then he said to the women whom he met, he met them, and said, O Hill, and they came and held his feet and worshipped him, and Jesus said unto them, Be not afraid, go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me. That's about all we hear. And then we get these last, what is it, five verses here, which tells us how he met them in Galilee. Now, of course, Luke tells us a lot more. Luke tells us all about that. journey to Emmaus, that wonderful, wonderful talk. We had a brother here this morning mentioning it. He said it was seven miles to Emmaus. I tell you what, I walked it. It was eight miles. We walked there and we walked back the same day. I had blisters on my feet the next day. But we went to Emmaus and we had a picnic there and a beautiful kind of park place. And of course there is no Howard Johnson restaurants or anything like that out there. We had to take our food with us and we had a wonderful picnic and sang some beautiful hymns and had a wonderful day of fellowship with God's people and walked back to Jerusalem. But it's the Sabbath day's journey, eight miles from a long walk. And the Lord joined them that afternoon and walked to a mess with them. and told them wonderful things. He said, Oh, how foolish you are not to believe the Scriptures. Ought not Christ shall suffer these things and enter into his glory, and beginning at Moses and all the prophets he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. What a wonderful Bible reading. He started with the first five books of the Bible, Moses, and went right through the Old Testament describing the things concerning himself. But that's not in Matthew. In John's Gospel, we get that wonderful conclusion to John's Gospel, the story of the Lord meeting his disciples by the lakeside, the miraculous draft of fishes, a hundred and fifty-three fishes, when they could catch nothing, they tarled all night and caught nothing. And then that wonderful tar, when the Lord said, To Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these. Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these. And again, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these. And he said, Yea, Lord, thou knowest all things. Thou knowest that I love thee. And then the Lord said to Peter, When thou was young, thou girdest thyself, and whenthest whither thou wouldest. But when thou should be old, another should gird thee and take thee wither thou wouldest not. This stake ye signify him by what death he should glorify God. And he told Peter he was going to be bound like he was to a cross and he would be crucified. Peter got a little inquisitive about John. He said, Lord, what shall this man do? And the Lord said, never mind John. What is it if I will that he carries if I come? What is that to be? Follow thou me. That's how John ends, telling us, follow thou me. But Matthew leaves out all that, and Matthew gives us this little description. Five verses of the visit, of the talk. I've called the talk tonight the risen Lord's command. We always call it the Great Commission. But the King gives his command. In Matthew, the Lord Jesus is the King. And here the King is giving his final commands before he goes. He told them, in verse, in chapter twenty-six, he had told them, And verse thirty-two, in thirty-one, verse thirty-one, then said Jesus unto them, That's when they had sung on him, and they left the upper room, they went out to the Garden of Gethsemane. And then Jesus said unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night. For it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered, scattered abroad. But after that I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee. There was the promise. After that I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee. And then when the Lord met those women, as we read just now, Jesus said unto them, Be not afraid, go, tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me. So we have an A royal appointment, the king, the king of kings. He makes an appointment with his eleven disciples. Now, as we saw this morning, a new era was starting. The history of the human race in the Bible is divided into ages or dispensation. There are seven dispensations. We won't talk about those for sake of time. They were living at the end of the dispensation of law. The law was given by Moses on Mount Sinai, and that was the dispensation of law, which lasted some fifteen hundred years. We are living at the end of another dispensation, the dispensation of grace. We're very near the end of the dispensation of grace. We're living towards the end of what Daniel calls the times of the Gentiles, the times of the Gentiles. When the Jewish people have rebelled against God and worshipped idols, finally God sent them into captivity. Under Nebuchadnezzar, they went to Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzar was the first king coming under this term, the times of the Gentiles. God is divided the history of this world, the times of the Gentiles. Let me put it that way. God is divided the times of the Gentiles up into three periods. There was the period of the Babylonian Empire. You just have to read secular history to read all about that. And then after the Babylonian Empire came the Medial Persian Empire. And after the Medial Persian Empire came the Grishan Empire. And after the Grecian Empire came the Roman Empire. All that is history. Gone past. And God has divided the world up. The history of the times of the Gentiles. But we're still in the times of the Gentiles. The times of the Gentiles will not finish until the Lord Jesus comes back himself in person and his feet touch the Mount of Olives. And he destroys the Gentile nation and sets up his own kingdom. That could be just seven years from now. If the Lord Jesus came back tonight, which He very well could, then we have the seven-year tribulation, and at the end of that seven years, the Lord Jesus will come back and reign. But it's two thousand years since He gave them these orders. It's nearly two thousand years since He ascended back into heaven. And in that two thousand years, God is carrying on a different work. He finished the work, not finished, but He laid aside, put aside the... his dealings with the Jewish people, when they crucified his Son, and they said his blood be upon us, upon our children, as we read this week, then God put the Jews on one side. I remember when I was a boy, about, probably fourteen, I went to hear four lectures. on prophecy. Now, at that age, I was saved when I was ten, but at fourteen, I had very little knowledge of prophecy, and I longed to know more about it. And a man came to our town called Algernon J. Pollock. I have some of his books, a great prophetic teacher, and he gave four lectures on four successive Wednesday evenings, way, way back in the year nineteen, thirteen or fourteen, somewhere around then, I remember. First Wednesday he spoke on this verse. And Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. And he showed that as a type of the church. Enoch walked with God, and he was not for God took him. And then he told us about the rapture of the church. When the church of God walked with God, and one of these days suddenly we're going to disappear. The Lord is coming, we'll be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and he was not for God took him. And the people are going to look around and say, where are all those Christians? They're gone. Why, there'd be some looting, wasn't there, in that morning? And he went, They find we're all gone, they'll all go and help themselves. And we don't mind all about that, because we'll be with the Lord. Then his next lecture was from the second chapter of, I was only a youngster, but all while that riveted itself in my mind that I had it for life. His next lecture was on the second chapter of Daniel. That wonderful image of Nebuchadnezzar, the head of gold and the breast of silver. and the belly and thighs of brass and the legs of iron and the feet of iron and clay, giving the history of the times of the Gentiles, those four nations. Thou art Nebuchadnezzar, thou art this head of gold, the golden image, the golden head, and so on. Then his next lecture was taken from Daniel eleven, seventy weeks of determined upon my people. And then he told of God's future dealings with the children of Israel. That there were times set and the times were given and we were shown how that the Lord, we talked last Sunday night here I think, and told that to the very day from the time the command was given to build the walls of Jerusalem, to the very day that was the day the Lord Jesus was rejected when he went into Jerusalem. But there's another week to come, a week of seven, seven, one week, that seven years still to come, the Great Tribulation, to bring the times of the Gentiles to an end. And then the next talk he gave was what went on. Revelation thirteen about a beast coming up out of the sea, the man of sin, the future ruler of this world. He may be alive today, and out of the sea of humanity he's going to arrive. and he's going to set him up as a God, and he's going to rule supreme, and all the nations will bow to him. They need a man. This world needs a man. God has arranged that the human race should be run by leaders. I believe in leadership. And God's plan was that they should be leaders, not democracy. That's not God's plan. No, I shouldn't be saying that because I'm an American citizen, but that's not God's plan. God's plan is not democracy, but autocracy. God's plan is theocracy. Theos, God is ruling. That's God's plan for God to rule. And when God rules, all is well. But when the mob's rule, the people rule, democracy... It goes wrong. And the people need a man. The world needs a man. They'll get him. Very soon they'll get him. Not until the church is gone. When he's gone, the man will appear and he will get all things into his power in his hand. And he'll put the world right. We'll have peace. Wonderful peace will come. We won't be here. We'll be in heaven. But the peace won't last long. Three and a half years it'll break down and then will be the great tribulation. The greatest war, the greatest carnage. the greatest slaughter the world has ever seen. The Great Tribulation, the time of Jacob's trouble. That's the outline. And this man, Algernon, Pollock, he said this. I remember it when I was a little boy. He said, to get the picture correctly, try and imagine it this way. He said, Here's a railway, and here's a train going along. running along the main road. He's been going along for years. Call that train Israel, Israel. It's running along the main track. But there comes a moment when God drops the signals, changes the switches, and that train is put in on a sideline and stopped. That's what happened at Calvary. And God dealings with Israel stopped. Now when Israel is safe in on the sideline, then the signals are dropped and an express train runs down the main line. That's the church. And when the express train has gone through and the line is clear, God will drop the signal and the Jewish train will come out and get on the main line again. But we are the church. Israel is put on one side. God is not dealing with Israel today. Through Israel it's gone. Oh, in a measure. Only in a measure. Because when the Lord comes, you send out His angels and gather them from all the nations of the world and bring them back. And Israel won't be that little bit of land that is feuding now when the Egyptian Prime Minister and all the others are saying how much they should have or not have. Israel will be from the river now to the river Euphrates, and all those Arab lands will belong to Israel. God gave them to Abraham long, long ago, and they're going to get them all back. when the Lord Jesus comes back to reign. And so all Israel is going to be saved and they're going to get back to the land. But that's all future. What I want to deal with tonight is just this little period the Lord's talking about. He's talking about the church age. Now there is a sense in which this commission here can go into the the tribulation age, because there will be a gospel of the kingdom preached in the tribulation age. And since Matthew is the gospel of the king, it could apply to that age as well. But what we are applying it to tonight is the gospel message. The Lord said to these eleven disciples, Now, the veil of the temple is raised in train. God is finished with the old Jewish system. We're dawning a new day. As we read this morning, it came to the end of the Sabbath and it dawned toward the first day of the week. A new era is coming in. The Sabbath will not be the important day. The first day of the week, the Lord's day, will be the important day. And we're starting a new era. And the Lord had told them, in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew that he was going to build a church. And now he gives them the commission how they're going to get about building this church. He says, All power is given unto me. First of all, when they saw him, it says, When they saw him, they worship him. Of course they did. Don't you think when we see him, we worship him? I do. When they saw him, they fell at his feet. But there were some. It says some doubted. Now, the word I read just now in the Greek, this word theastazo, stasis is a standing. And Leo is two. They had two standings. They had a kind of a double mind about the thing. They weren't too sure. The fact is they were uncertain. Some believed. When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some, they were certain. Like Thomas, when you hear it about the Lord Bemidji, he said, except I see the marks in his hands and his sight. I won't believe. It was a tremendous thing that happened. They thought all hope was gone. We had thought that he, it had been he who should redeem Israel. And there he is lying in a grave, and he said, beside all this, Certain people came from Jerusalem and said that he's risen from the dead, and so he was. And he met his disciples there in Galilee. They had to journey to Galilee, and there he met them. They worshipped him. Some doubted, or some had two minds about the thing. They were uncertain. The Lord used the same word when he reached his hand out to Peter, as he began to think. In the fourteenth chapter of Matthew, he said, all ye of little faith, wherefore did so doubt? Wherefore did so doubt? Now the Lord gives them this great commission. He says, All power is given unto me. His risen power. All power is given unto me. Look for a moment to Philippians chapter two. Philippines chapter two, we read the wonderful story and we've had this two or three, I think three times during our conference. We've had speakers talking about this wonderful second chapter of Philippines and neither of them clashed or contradicted. The other, they all agreed the thing fitted together beautifully, but it says, Verse eight, being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore, God also has highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, and in every tongue confess. That Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God. What does he say to his disciples? All power is given unto me. And the Greek word here for power is not the power of Zinomus, which is might and power, but it's the word exosian, which means all authority. All authority is given unto me in heaven and over the earth. All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. The Lord raised him from the dead. Let's look a moment at Ephesians chapter one, because I love the way it's put in Ephesians chapter one, when he speaks with it this morning, the power which raised him from the dead. Verse nineteen, what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us who are to believe? according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrote in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand, far above, his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion. If I had time, every one of these words is a different Greek word which can be translated power. Every one of them is a Greek word about power. I can't stop for the time, but far above all, principality, that's one word, power is another word, might is another word, dominion is another word, and every name that is named. Not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, and it's put all things under his feet, and gave him to be hid over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in us. when he stood before herod and they scourged his blessed back and they put a crown of thorns upon his brow as we saw last week and they put that purple robe on him and smote him on the head with a reed and spat in his face he'd never think that all power was given unto him But this is the pathway the Lord said. He went, the Lord trod when he went down, down, down to death, even the death of the cross. And then God raised him from that lowly place and set him in his own right hand. And so the Lord speaks now using these wonderful words which were coming out later in the epistles. He says, All power, all exorcism, all authority is given unto me in heaven and in earth. And now I am the king. And I have all authority, and I'm giving you my command. Go ye therefore, journey is the word. Go therefore, journey. And teach all nations. And the word teach is Massachusetts. It means make disciples of. Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. This was the job the disciples were given. This was their commission. This was the order of the king before he went back to heaven. Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations. And the Lord has never called that order back. Two thousand years have gone by. And the great commission means just as much today to you and me as it did to them in that early first day, the resurrection day. Go ye into all the world. make disciples of all nations. That is our duty. And when we don't do it, we're failing to do it. It says journey. And I love to think how God arranged, how the plan, God's scheme, God's wonderful schedule figured in. All those wonderful Roman roads were made. They didn't have to go through dirt tracks over the mountains. Roads were made, Roman roads. All roads lead to Rome, they said. And when the Apostle Paul went out with the gospel, he could travel on those great Roman highways to take the gospel. But, oh, listen, what's happening in our day? We don't even have to travel on the auto-bands and the great... interstate highways. We can get in a narrow plane and go to the far ends of the earth with the gospel. What a privilege we have. God says, journey into all the world and take the gospel and make disciples of all nations. How many of us are doing it? When you look down the mission book, we have the Echoes of Service Missionary Prayer Book. That's the English Missionary Prayer Book. They have two columns of pictures, one with the ladies and one with the men, and page after page after page, they're the sisters that are out on the mission field. Perhaps there'd be down that list eight sisters, two men. On this page, ten sisters, one man. Next page, twelve sisters, two men. The ladies are going out, but the men are too busy in business to get out with the gospel. God says, journey with the gospel. That's to say, be missionaries. That's what Paul did. He went to the furthest ends of the earth. He said, when I make my journey into Spain, that's the furthest limit of the then known Roman Empire. When I make my journey into Spain to take the gospel, that's how he took it. And that's what the Lord meant here. Go into all the world. Go ye therefore and teach or make disciples of all nations. Now some of us are too old to do this. I thank God when I was a younger man, God took me to Greece so I could spend ten years out there and did some preaching amongst the Greek people and God gave me. So we're getting old for that now, but we can all have that missionary prayer handbook and we can pray day by day for these missionaries. We can send and help them financially and we can do all that we possibly can to get the gospel out and help those younger ones. Two weeks from now, two weeks from yesterday, we're going to have a little group. of the Literature Crusade people coming here to tell us of God's plans for their lives in sending them out with the Gospel. A week next Saturday. I won't be here. I'll be up in Torino. Mind you, here. Saturday evening, the twenty-second at seven-thirty, there'll be a special meeting with Literature Crusade young men and women, and they're going to tell us something about God. It's called them to take the Gospel to the far ends of the earth. Go ye therefore. Journey is the word, and make disciples of all nations. And then when these people were saved, he gave them a definite command that they should be baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And that's what they did. You'll find as they led souls to Christ, they baptized them. Believers' baptism in water. Philip, when he led the unit to Christ, He took him down into the water, brought him up out of the water. That's baptism. That's recognizing that this place called Calvary, where the Lord Jesus died, is the place where I have died. I was reading the other day and I mentioned it here. I think it was last Sunday. I don't know. We have to teach people that they should be dead with Christ. We have to teach people that they are dead with Christ. When I accept Christ as my Savior, then I am joined with him, and I died in him. That was the end of the old man, the dead with Christ. And we live in a new life with new power, new resurrection power, this great power of the resurrection, to go out with the gospel. And so when we say, lead people to Christ, we baptize them, to bring this home in a real... by an example that we gave to Christ. Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost. teaching them to observe all things. When in Ephesians chapter four, the Holy Spirit tells us of the gifts that God's given to men. He says that they were apostles and prophets. Those were the first century gifts to the church. They're passed away, the apostles and prophets. Then he talks about evangelists. These are the ones that go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. The evangelists. And then he talks about pastors and teachers, or pastor teachers. I think the word is one, pastor teachers. And that's where this comes in, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. That's our business. That was not only the business of the eleven apostles. the message to the apostles is just as true and fresh and real for you and me today as it was for them. This is not only for men that have been through seminaries and got degrees and so on. This is for every true born-again believer in the Lord, Jesus. We should be making disciples. We should be witnessing. We should be winning souls to Christ and teaching them all things that God has taught us. Oh, we've slipped so far in It seems to me after the church today is entertainment and, I don't know, trying to attract people by entertainment. I want to attract people by the preaching of the Word of God. The angels of thy word give it light. Teaching them all things that I've taught you, that's our business. And that's what we seek to do here at the Paphos, the Father, to teach the Word of God. I was telling, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo. Oh, look at this drum. Lo, I am with you all the days. That's how it is in the Greek. Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the putting together in one the consolation of the age. The Lord Jesus promised that he'd be with us to the end of the age. Two thousand years passed by, but he's just as much with us today as he was with the disciples when they went out, as he was with them on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was given, and all down through the century the Lord is with us. And as the gospel is preached, the Lord is with us. Lo, I am with you all the days. I like that. Not always, but all the days. It means that not one day can come, but while he's with us. Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the consummation of the age. When the whole work is complete and the church is complete and the church goes back to glory, he'll be with us to the very end. Oh, what a wonderful study we've had. I tell you, I've thoroughly enjoyed these studies in Matthew's Gospel this last week. And I trust you have, and I trust God will write them on your heart, read them over and over, and let's put them into practice. The Lord is risen indeed. He went down into death, bore our sins in his own body on the tree, and there's salvation for everyone here tonight who will trust in the Lord Jesus. And believe that when he hung upon that cross, I was in shame. He died for you and me and bore our sins in his own body on the tree. Salvation is for every one of us. And then when we have salvation, our business is to go out and tell about salvation. So may God lead us on. We've had a wonderful conference. Let's go forward in his name to do exploits for him. Shall we pray? Blessed is God our Father, we thank you for these may be rambling, studied in thy word, but we thank thee, Lord, for these accounts in Matthew's gospel which we have been thinking about and talking about the last eight days. And we ask, Lord, that these talks may not fall in vain, but they may bear fruit in our lives. We hear the great challenge thou didst give us. give to thy disciples in that mountain thou hast appointed to meet them there in Galilee, and thou didst give them this wonderful challenge. Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the end of the age. We thank thee, the Lord said, All authority is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and Lo, I am with you always. Every day even unto the consummation of the age. Take us out of this meeting to serve thee, we pray thee. We ask that this coming summer some will journey, some will travel, some will go for vacations, some will go to conferences, some will be going north, some south. We pray, Lord, that we all might go with gospels in our pockets and tracks in our pockets and the word of God in our hearts that we might go out. to make disciples of all nations. Help us, Lord, to get on with the gospel work and hasten the day of the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for our conference. We thank you for being with us in every meeting. And we pray there may be some eternal fruit. And then, Lord, we bow humbly before thee. We submit to thy will, but we ask thee that if possible, Arrangements might be made that our conference might go on in all its strength and all its power. And thy people might be blessed. All this is in thy hands. We bow before thee. We'll only do what thou didst tell us to do. But we pray thou to lead us on. And that thy name might still be magnified and glorified here. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. you