Written by Pastor Jack Wellman– Matthew 28:20
In Your Calling
Just after Jesus had found Andrew and Peter, “He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow Me’” (John 1:43) and the other 12 disciples. Jesus is the Good Shepherd and leaves the 99 to seek out and save the one lost sheep to bring it into the fold. Since the Bible teaches that no one seeks after God (Romans 3:11), we must realize that the Shepherd came for us. Lost sheep can’t find their way home; the Shepherd must seek them out and bring them home. Such is our Good Shepherd, Who brought us safely into the sheepfold.
In Your Life
The Apostle Paul gives some very serious counsel in writing that we must “examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test” (2 Corinthians 13:5). What he means is to see if Christ is really in you. You’ll know it when you begin to live a life that pleases Him and seek to walk with Him in the ways in which He did.
Forever Faithful
God is faithful to His own word. When Jesus says He will never turn any away or lose any that come to Him (John 6:37-39), then we know He cannot break His own word. The author of Hebrews writes, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). The psalmist writes, “I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread” (Psalm 37:25). It’s just as Jesus said: “I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20).
Until the End
As Jesus was about to go back to the Father, He tried to encourage His disciples that “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20) and to wait in Jerusalem when they’d receive “power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). This power didn’t come from within themselves but was supernatural. Jesus is also with us and in us to the very end of the ages.
Conclusion
Whatever Jesus says is more trustworthy than what we see with our eyes because we can trust God and take Him at His Word. He sought us and bought us and brought us into the kingdom. What good shepherd would bring his sheep into the sheepfold only to lose them again?
