Tyndale Chapel Podcast

GEORGE SWEETMAN: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our community chapel for today. We're grateful that you have come. I know that there's some people in downtown Toronto that typically ask their their spouse or partner, where are the car keys? And last couple of days, they've actually been saying, where's the car? They've been buried in snow on both the left and the right of the cars. But we are grateful that you have braved the elements to join us today for our community chapel.

Listen to these good words from the Psalms. "The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?" As we again gather in the presence of God, may we open our hearts and our minds in worship this morning.

We are grateful, deeply grateful, that the Reverend Dr Daniel Scott is with us this morning to preach. Dr Scott, many of you will know is the professor of Christian Ministries here at the undergraduate level. What you may not know about him is he and his wife, Kelly, have been married for over 35 years, and they have three children, four grandchildren. And he is also the pastor of St John's Presbyterian in Bradford, Ontario, a church that has actually been around before Confederation; started in 1819, Dan started a couple years after. No, he he has been there, though, for 30 years, as he has been at Tyndale. He was also at one point, the moderator for the Presbyterian Church in Canada back in 2021. We're grateful, Dan, that you're with us this morning.

Let's pray together. God of epiphanies, You reveal yourself to us in so many ways; through Your Word in prayer, in silence, in creation, through the gift of family and friends. God, we pray this morning that You would free us from the distractions that turn our focus away from You and Your word and presence. We pray that You will open us to Your truth that You are ready to reveal to us this morning. God be with us today. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. And just before I take my seat, I do want to acknowledge that there's several students here today participating in our Day in the Life at Tyndale. Checking us out, trying to figure out if this is the place that they should come; this is the place you should come. And we're just grateful that you are here and welcome. We hope you enjoy your day here. Come, let us worship.

DR. DANIEL SCOTT: Please join me in a prayer for understanding. Let us pray. Our loving God. Thank you that You inhabit the praises of Your people. Thank you that You are a God who has not remained silent, but has spoken. We ask now that by the power of Your Spirit, You might speak to us, pointing us to Your Living Word, even Jesus Christ. Thank you in Christ's name, amen.

Here now the reading of God's word for us today from the letter or the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 28 the last few verses, listen for God's word. "Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain, where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.''' This is the word of the Lord.

So when we look at these words that many of us know as the Great Commission, words that I just read, we notice that the word "all" occurs four times; all, all, all, all. Jesus possesses all authority. Jesus sends us to all nations. We are to teach all that Jesus has commanded. And as we do, we are to know that Jesus will be with us all the days or always. And Jesus begins with His authority. "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me", and this is no weak authority, because the one, the one who spoke it, is no weak person. He's the risen Lord, and all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him, and His authority is superior to and over all other authorities. Those authorities might be physical, they may be spiritual, they may be demonic, but He has all authority. His resurrection proves His authority over anyone or any power that can possibly be imagined.

I drove down Royal York Road in Toronto, not recently, years ago, during the season of Lent. And I saw on an Anglican church a very large poster, and it was the face of Jesus; mangled, blood, crown of thorns on His head, and underneath was the caption, "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild", and then, "as if ! ". This is no weak authority, all authority was given to Him.

The second universal statement is all nations, "panta ta ethne", and it's a bit surprising to me at least, that Matthew should end his gospel on this note. Each of the Gospels, as we know, has a unique character, even as that beautiful reminder of each book in the newer Testament has its unique character. John, perhaps is the most universal, and introduces Jesus as the Savior of the world. Luke, Luke's is a gentile or a Greek book, and it's usual to think of Luke as presenting Jesus as that ideal person, as well as the Son of God incarnate. And Mark, Mark shorter, seems to be writing to a largely Roman audience, and he stresses Jesus as a miracle worker, giving less attention to the discourses of Jesus that we read in the other gospels.

But by general consent Matthew, the piece that we read this morning from his gospel, Matthew is a preeminently Jewish gospel. And it's written to show Jesus as the Son of David and the fulfillment of the older Testament prophecies about the Messiah. And no other gospel is so limited to the immediate, ethnic and historical climate into which Jesus was born and in which He ministered. And yet this is the surprising piece, it's in this gospel, this gospel that ends on the most universal note, in this commission, in Matthew's gospel, we learn that the Jewish disciples who had followed Jesus through the days of his ministry, who were being commissioned finally, to his service, were not to limit their operations to Judaism, as we might expect, but were to go to all people with the gospel. Whenever the church has done this, it's prospered. When it's failed to do this, the church has stagnated and died. We're to make disciples of all nations.

Dr. Stan Walters was a professor of Hebrew Scriptures here at Tyndale for a number of years and I loved that man. He died a few years ago, and a graduation award is named in his memory. And Dr. Walters, brilliant Ivy League education, his PhD from Yale University, considers himself to be a disciple, a learner. His personal email used the Greek form related to the word for discipleship, "manthano". He was a learner. I remember meeting him at a restaurant north of here for lunch. He arrived before me, and he was seated outside the restaurant, and he had what looked like a small maybe Gideon New Testament. No, no, no, no. He was a giant. He was reading the book of Psalms in Hebrew. He said, "While I was waiting for you, I just thought I would read from my Hebrew Book of Psalms". He was a learner. We're to make disciples of this great teacher, this great rabbi Jesus, of all people, all nations.

And then the third universal of this so called, "Great Commission", is the command to teach all the things that Jesus has commanded. All things, all things. What we observe often in the life of the church seems to me to be the opposite. Instead of striving to teach all that Christ commanded, many of us are trying to eliminate as much of that teaching as possible. Concentrating on instead on a few things that are easily comprehended and unobjectionable. But I think a core such as this is distorted, and it's usually a heavy emphasis on grace. And grace is amazing, but without judgment it's a lot about love. And as we know from those great patron saints, George, John, Paul and Ringo, "all we need is love"; but, it's love without justice; it's salvation without obedience; it's triumph, not the band, but triumph without suffering. And the motivation of some of us for these reductions may be as good; we want to reach as many people as possible, but the method is flawed. Robust disciples are not made by watering down teaching.

Marva Dawn, in her lectures at the Westminster Choir College at Princeton, New Jersey, famously gave her lectures which were later published as "Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down". I'm proud to say Tyndale doesn't dumb things down, and today's church needs to recapture the whole counsel of God, and to many of us, this seems like a foolish pursuit. And if we are to ask many Christians what should be done in our day to win the world around us for Christ, it's likely that we'll hear many things. And I suspect that most of the conversation will focus on methods rather than content. By contrast, Jesus spoke about His commandments. "Teach all that I have commanded", certainly summarized with "Love, God. Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and all your strength. And love your neighbor." The second greatest commandment, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

The final all is always, and it's a great enduring promise, and it's wonderfully true. In the first chapter of Matthew, if you were to skip back in Matthew's gospel, Jesus was introduced there as "Emmanuel, God with us", and here, in the very last phrase of that same gospel, is that same idea that God will be with us. This is not the first and only time in Matthew's gospel that Jesus has promised His presence. Earlier on in the gospel, you'd undertaken to say that even if two or three are gathered in my name, I'm still there in your midst. And we often think, as I said in the prayer for understanding, that God inhabits the praises of God's people, which God does. But it's not the only time that we experience God, revealed in Christ, when we meet in his name; but it's also when we go in His name, He promises to be with us.

And so ends the first and the longest of the Gospels with these words that Jesus, echoing phrases from the older Testament, that Jesus will be with us as we go. We have a great task. The one with all authority has given us this task; to make disciples of all nations, to teach all that He has commanded and He's promised, to be with us, to be with us always, to the end of the age.

George mentioned the church in which I worship. I think this Tyndale Singers group was there for our 206th anniversary. And at the end, in my tradition, there's always a commissioning and a benediction. And the commissioning might be as simple as, "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord". The commissioning at Christmas might be, "Go tell it on the mountains", and it's followed then by a blessing. And as we go from here, take that commissioning as you go make disciples.

The Reverend Rockwell Dundas last week, and his reflections on being a fisher for Jesus, suggested that as you go into hockey rinks, as you go into church basements, as you go into soup kitchens and homes helping people on the streets, even there, make disciples. And it may seem odd that I'll end with a reflection of the last words of the Roman Catholic mass. The mass ends with a phrase, "Ite, missa est", which translated roughly might be, "We are dismissed", and you can hear that miss, ite miss, we're dismissed, but we're also commissioned. And a blunt translation of the Latin phrase, I'm not a Latin scholar, so let me go with it, is "Get out. Get out". The sisters who were treated to this place got out into schools and hospitals.

As you go, make disciples of all people. Let us go in peace and may the grace of the Lord Jesus, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, rest with each one of us as we go from here, as we get out. Amen.