Speak the Name: Introduction
Introduction
Have you ever had a meeting that changed the direction of your life - for the rest of your life?
I want you to use your imagination. Imagine that a long limousine with the presidential seal drives up to your house. The President of the United States emerges and walks up to your door and rings the doorbell. You open the door, and the President requests permission to enter your home. You all sit around the kitchen table at his request. You know that this is not going to be a casual conversation. Not a routine check-in. This is the kind of meeting where Commander-in-Chief is going to say something that you will carry with you for the rest of your life — where the person across from you speaks with such authority and such clarity that when he leaves, you know that you cannot go back to who you were before he walked in – but you experience conflict with doubt.
The disciples had their life-changing meeting on a mountain in Galilee with their Commander-in-Chief- Jesus. This meeting was after Jesus rose from the dead and just before his ascension. They all had seen him. Thomas touched his wounds. They had breakfast with them by the sea, and now he asks them to go to the Mount of Olives, from where he will ascend to heaven.
They have already seen the risen Christ. They touched His wounds, ate with Him, and stood in the bewildering reality of the resurrection. A historical fact that not one of them could have invented, let alone have chosen to fabricate and propagate; and now on the Mount of Olives, they worship him. But Matthew adds a detail in Matthew 28: 17 that is too honest to be anything but true: “some doubted.” This nagging doubt, a lingering confusion among them about Jesus’ resurrection, undermines the theory that the disciples shared a corporate hallucination because they expected him to rise. They did not expect him to rise.
No. Some doubted. Even there, with the evidence staring at them, speaking to them, yes, even then some doubted. Now get this: they all were standing in the presence of the risen Lord on a mountain in Galilee, with the evidence of resurrection in front of them — even then some doubted. Please understand that Jesus does not wait for everything to become clear to the disciples before He speaks. He does not require that all things be resolved before He gives them His command. He walks toward them — toward the worshipers and the doubters alike — and He opens His mouth.
“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.” Matthew 28:18-20 (NIV)
What Jesus says in these three verses is not a farewell speech. It is a deployment order. This was the Commander-in-Chief casting his plan for conquest. And the name He speaks over it — the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit — is not a formula. In the name of God, he sent them on a mission to take back the world. It is the heartbeat of God. It is our mission which is derived from the heartbeat of God, his mission – the mission Dei – which in turn, Christopher Wright says is “a reflection of what God is like, what God has said and what God did (and what God is doing and has yet to do).