Matthew 28:17

Your world has just fallen apart. The man for whom you had given up your whole life, you left everything to follow him, he just died. He had taught with authority. He had done miracles. He had chosen you even as one of his 12. And yet one of the others, one of the 12, betrayed him. And he was crucified by the Roman soldiers. And you saw him taken down from the cross, his limp body, and buried into the tomb. You had thought that he might be the Messiah, the one who is going to restore Israel and bring it to glory, but all that hope was for naught.

Until one of the other disciples one day tells you of this strange thing. He was approached by some woman, Mary Magdalene, and some other women that, in fact, Jesus is alive. They saw him. And they didn't believe it until they saw him as well. And then they're going on saying that Jesus told them to meet them at this mountain in Galilee.

And you're skeptical. How could Jesus be alive, what? Well, I mean, I'll go to the mountain. And so you go to the mountain with the other disciples. And you're waiting. And then you see a figure approach. And as the image grows in clarity, you see him.

Worshiping Jesus

So our first point tonight will be worshiping Jesus, worshiping Jesus. Matthew, in our passage today, records that at the sight of Christ, the disciples fall down and worshiped. Matthew says,

and when they saw him, they worshiped him.

Who is this man that the mere sight of him could bring other men to their knees in worship? Note that these are Jews who worship the one God alone. And how could he be a man?

There must be something about Jesus that his presence and his sight brings us to awe and worship, not only the disciples, because this is the same Jesus whom we worship today. So I just wanted to spend some time tonight just thinking about this Jesus whom we worship. This Jesus who's deserving of our praise, who brings our hearts to worship him. Jesus, the one we worship, he's the eternal son of God.

God of God, light of light, true God of true God, eternally begotten of the Father,

He shared in the glory of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit.

He planned together with them to save a people for himself. And he is the creator and sustainer of this world. He upholds the world by the word of his power. All the rocks and seas, oceans and beaches speak to his glory and the beauty of his creative power.

And he is God who humbled himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of us, men, in order to uplift us, our nature. He's the fulfillment of God's promises to his people of a Messiah, a serpent crusher, the son of Abraham, a prophet like Moses, a king like David, God himself who would come to shepherd his people.

He perfectly obeyed on our behalf. And he died in our place as the perfect Passover sacrifice to atone for our sins. We worship Jesus, the risen Christ, who conquered sin and death. We worship him because he satisfied the wrath of the Father. And now, in redemption history, we now know that He is currently ascended, seated at the right hand of the Father. He is sovereign over all, toppling kings, doing His will. He empowers us with His Spirit, whom He poured out at Pentecost. He grows us in His own likeness to be like Him, to worship Him. And one day He will return in glory to judge the earth, to bring home His people, to establish a new creation, and bring us to worship Him for all days.

Who is like this Jesus? There is no other who is like Him. And think about this, the disciples who were kneeling before him that day labored for years upon years, blood, sweat, and tears to make sure that you could know this. They brought the word, proclaimed the gospel in order that you could know of Christ and worship him. And he is our delight.

If you're trying to take notes this past time, it might've been very difficult because I was just speaking of just the excellencies of Christ. And they're not limited to this list. We could go on and on and on. Maybe if you want to try, you can get a new blank notebook and then try and take your whole life just trying to fill it up. And once that one's filled, fill out another notebook. It will do you great good just to think and ponder Christ, our God, our Savior, who became man, died for us and rose from the dead.

Do you long to see him as the disciples did? I mean, what glory to behold when eventually one day we will see him in heaven. Do you desire to see him or have you kept him at a distance? Maybe knowing of him, maybe hearing about what he's done. Maybe you think he's a good teacher. He's a good person, a good model for us. Maybe you're content to keep him as maybe a therapist. a cosmic vending machine, or a get-out-of-jail-free card. This is not our Jesus. If you truly worship him, your life will be changed. If you've been truly captivated by his beauty, you will want to see him and delight in him and worship him.

Doubting Jesus

But often there's obstacles in our worship. Though we want to worship, some part of us is fighting against us. The old man in us, the natural man from the fall, is fighting against our worship. And so that brings us to point two. Point two, which is doubting Jesus. Our text says, but some doubted, but some doubted. Let's go back to first century Israel. You're one of the disciples bowing before your savior, your God, Christ. You know that he is who he says he is. He's risen from the dead testifying to his own name. And yet there's a part of you that hesitates, that doubts.

Is it too good to be true? So first let's consider what is doubt? What is doubt? Doubt is disbelief at its core. If you're doubting something, you are disbelieving it. In our context, when we talk about doubt, we talk about disbelieving God as he has revealed himself ultimately in Christ. We're disbelieving the one true God. We're disbelieving in Jesus. Now, when we think of doubt, when you hear of someone having doubt, or maybe you feel doubt, what's your first reaction? Do you think of doubt as something taboo, where there's no room for grace?

You either see it as condemnation towards other people who doubt, or maybe just shame, self-pity in yourself. Or perhaps you have the opposite problem. Maybe you think of doubt as some special way to become more holy, and these people went through doubt and it made them holier somehow. Or maybe you even think that it's a way to break free of the chains of outdated religion and achieve some enlightened spirituality. Well, neither of these things are true. Neither are true.

The first thing that we need to be clear of is that doubt is sin. Doubt is sin. It has roots even in the first pages of Genesis. In Genesis three, when the serpent sows seeds of doubt, there are two main kinds of doubt. Doubting God's goodness and his authority. Did God really say? And surely God would not do this. And this is the doubt that lives on now as we've inherited Adam's sin. We doubt. And when we doubt God and who he says he is, we're putting him in a box that we think we know better than him. Or, on the other hand, when we doubt God, we make it so that God must do something that we want. That God has to be a way, has to be in a way that we would make him to be. And friends, that's idolatry. We're making a golden calf and worshiping it. And idolatry leads to destruction, as our brother Caleb reminded us. There's no virtue in doubt.

But we also have to wrestle with the fact that the text plainly says the disciples were worshiping and doubting. It says, but some doubted. But it also says before, they worshiped him. First of all, we have to ask, why did Matthew feel the need to include this?

It would have been a much better story if there was no doubt. If it was just the disciples worshiping and everything was happily ever after. I think this inclusion, but some doubted, makes it clear that Christianity is not some idealistic religion. It's grounded in reality. Matthew puts it there because it's real.

Some of the disciples doubted. This raises more questions like who doubted? Presumably Thomas, but we don't know who else maybe. And what types of doubts do they have? Was it about maybe this whole man being God thing and God being in heaven? Or maybe is this guy really Jesus who we're looking at? We don't know. The text doesn't say.

But what we do know is what it tells us about our doubts and our worship. All of us have doubts. Some of you may have the sorts of doubts that Matthew's probably recording. More significant doubts. Doubts that cause you to pause even when in the presence of Christ. Doubts about his goodness, who he says he is, the Bible itself.

And he's speaking to you, yes, but also to all of us. We all doubt and I can prove that because when we sin, we doubt and you have sin. Whenever you sin, you are doubting God's goodness and authority. You're violating God's law and questioning whether his law is good for us or whether he has the authority to give it to us. We all have sin in us. We all have doubt.

Trusting Jesus

But how then do we worship? Sin is a clear obstacle to our worship. Well, one thing we know is that doubt provides no threat to God's reign. Doubt is no threat to his own worship, worship that God has promised. He has promised to save a people who will worship him and give him glory, which leads us to point three, trusting Jesus, trusting Jesus. God is preparing us to worship him through Christ.

The next verse, the next verses actually, verses 18 through 20, the Great Commission, it's Jesus' response. Does he respond to the disciples' doubt in open rebuke or rejection? No. He responds with his word. When God meets us in our doubts, he often responds this way, that at the time of great suffering, of disbelief that you have and you ask God to help you out of it, oftentimes he does not answer the specific occasion of what has happened. He confronts us with himself.

He confronts his people with who he is and his promises. To the prophet Habakkuk, who is complaining and lamenting over the wicked prospering, God reminds him that he is judge of all and he is wholly seated in his temple. To the psalmist, he reminds that he has fulfilled his promises over and over and over again. And to the disciples, He reminds him of his authority. He says,

all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

And he reminds them of his goodness. After giving the command, he says,

behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.

And to respond to Christ In this way is our worship. We should worship Christ because of his goodness that he deserves and his authority. He deserves it in his authority and his goodness. Notice how he addresses our doubts and the root, the heart of our doubts in this. When we doubt his authority, he reminds us of it. When we doubt his goodness, he reminds us. And so doubters, everyone here, return to worship. Don't let your doubts get in the way of worship. By God's grace, you can worship. And so the first thing I would ask you to do, there'll be three of these, I think three, yeah. The first is to consider the alternatives. Consider the alternatives.

If you lean into your doubt, That's a road to apostasy. If you lean into your doubt, you'll deny the God who created you, deny the God who has held his hand out to you in grace, who is currently sustaining you by grace and will do that even after your doubt, who's being patient, and you'll reject him, pretending that he's not reigning on his throne, pretending that he will not judge, pretending that your life has a foundation apart from him, and pretending that the sin that you have gives you true joy.

If you're a Christian, you know that that life is not sustainable. You've tasted that life and found it disgusting and you've tasted something so much better in Christ. So do not return to it. Go to Christ with your doubts. Maybe your doubts have kept you from Christ. Maybe your doubts have kept you from accepting him and believing in him. And you're on this task like Sisyphus, trying to push up the rock, searching towards answers just for it to fall before the top. And it goes on and on and on. You find no satisfaction. All you find is emptiness.

I tell you that you can abandon your doubts today. It's not that you won't still have questions. It's not that doubts won't still live in you, but you can trust in Christ and the sure hope of his resurrection to know that you will have new life. You'll have a God who will accept your worship and lift you up out of those doubts.

And the second thing that we should do is to obey, obey. It's pretty clear, just right, the next thing in the text,

all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples.

We should make disciples because as we build up the church with God's word and as we bring lost souls in through gospel proclamation, it assures us of the grace that God has in his church and quiets our doubts. And the final thing is to behold God's promises.

God has promised, and so we should not doubt. Pray that you would believe them. Think of the father in Mark 9 24.

I believe, help my unbelief.

Let that be our prayer so that we can believe in God's promises. and also trust that Christ is making things new, that there will be a day when we do not doubt, when we will see the sight of Christ and worship him for all eternity. In The Pilgrim's Progress, written by John Bunyan, a Christian is on a journey to the celestial city.

He encounters obstacles of various kinds, and one of those is that when he sleeps in the wrong place, he gets captured into Doubting Castle, owned by a giant named Despair. And as he rots in this castle, he's abused by the giant. As he loses hope and is crushed under the weight of this doubt, He's only sustained by a friend named hopeful who reminds him of experiences of God's faithfulness. And ultimately he and his friend pray all night and as the giant despair schemes to destroy them once and for all to tear them into pieces.

Pilgrim as he in the early morning light as he finishes his prayer realizes that realizes something, and I'll just read the quote. Pilgrim says,

what fool am I thus to lie in a stinking dungeon when I may as well walk at liberty? I have a key in my bosom called promise that will open any lock in doubting castle.

If you hold on to God's promises, know that something better is waiting for you. One day faith will be sight. Take your key. Walk in the freedom that Christ has won for you. Worship him and know that the celestial city awaits. Let's pray.

Father, We thank you that you have shown us your son, Christ. Father, we thank you that you promise us that we will see him one day. Would you help us assure us of these truths in the midst of our doubts? Would you give us grace to believe? Would you help us to worship you and your son in the splendor of holiness for all our days? In Christ's name we pray, amen.