Summary
God's Resolution to Be With You
Among the resolutions God made before the first word of creation—to forget our sins, to lift the burden of the law, to give His people a new heart and a new spirit—stands one more promise that holds the others together: He is resolved never to leave us. Jesus declares it plainly at the end of Matthew's Gospel: "And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age" Matthew 28:20.
The longing to have God near is older than Israel. He walked with Adam and Eve in the garden until sin drove a wedge between Creator and creature. Afterward, He drew near in measured ways: descending on Mount Sinai, dwelling in the tabernacle Moses built, filling the temple Solomon erected. Yet each of those dwellings included a barrier—a veil, a boundary, a holiness that sinful people could not cross. God was present, but not approachable.
That barrier came down on Christmas morning. In Jesus Christ, "Immanuel"—God with us—the second person of the Trinity did not merely visit His people but became one of them. As Philippians 2 confesses, though He was in the form of God, He emptied Himself, took the form of a servant, and humbled Himself to the point of death on a cross. The dwelling of God with man was no longer behind a curtain but in the flesh, walking, teaching, healing, suffering, dying, and rising again in glorified, immortal humanity.
When the risen Christ commissioned His disciples, He spoke as one holding a kind of blank check: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me" Matthew 28:18. With that authority, He turned to His Church and entrusted the work to her—"Go therefore 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 observe all that I have commanded you" Matthew 28:19-20. It is hard work; it has cost apostles and saints prison, beatings, and death. But it is not impossible work, because it is not done alone.
How, then, is Christ with us now that He has ascended? He told us where to look. "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them" Matthew 18:20. He comes through His Word, for "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" Romans 10:17—and that Word is Christ Himself, who became flesh and dwelt among us John 1:14. He comes in His own body and blood, for "whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him" John 6:56. He comes in the waters of Holy Baptism, where sins are washed away and the Holy Spirit is given. Word, water, body and blood—these are not symbols of an absent Lord but the means by which the present Lord keeps His promise.
When God resolves something, He does it. He resolved to forgive our sins, and the cross and empty tomb prove it. He resolved to lift the burden of the law, and He kept it perfectly in our place. He resolved to give us a new heart and spirit, and His Spirit is making us new. So when He resolves to be with you always, He will be—in the gathered congregation, in the preached Word, in the Supper, in Baptism, and at the last in the eternal dwelling where there will be no veil at all.
Video citations
- "With You" 12-27-20 — In this sermon series, we are talking about resolutions, God's, that is God's resolutions, and how he acts towards us, how he is resolved to act toward us. We have talked about how God was resolved…