Always with us
I am with you always (Matthew 28:20).
It is fundamental to the Christian experience to know the Lord’s presence. He left His disciples in no doubt that He would not desert them. Of course, the Lord Jesus is no longer physically here in this world. He is in heaven. But we should not think He is confined within a place. God is omnipresent – all-present. He is distinct from His creation, but present in it. Creation also witnesses to God’s omnipotence. He is all-powerful. God is supreme and has power over everything seen and unseen. This power is infinite. God is also omniscient – all-knowing. His knowledge embraces the past, the present and the future; He knows all things. These characteristics of God are beyond our comprehension.
It is the most astonishing thing to realise that the Person who made and sustains all things makes His presence known to His people; we know Him personally. The atheist thinks this is nonsense. Why would an all-powerful God have a relationship with tiny insignificant creatures on one tiny insignificant planet? But why do we assume that what is tiny is insignificant? We have all seen amazing images of the wonder and immensity of the observable universe. But do these come close to the complexity and beauty of what is found in your garden, the animal kingdom, the mysteries of the oceans and the wonder of the human body, mind and spirit?
The greatness of God is not confined to the scale and wonder of His creation. It is seen in Who He is: God is light and God is love. The revelation of who God is does not lie in the stars and planets, but in the lowliness and love of Jesus Christ. It was revealed at Calvary where He died in love for this world. In this tiny location, God chose to demonstrate the vastness of His eternal love and grace.
I was speaking to some children at a Christian conference last year. I wrote out the word “Goodbye” in different languages, and we had a lot of fun reading them together. But then I told the children something which I had not considered before. I said to them that Jesus never said, “Goodbye”. He told His disciples He was leaving them to go back to heaven. They were with Him the day that happened. They saw Him taken up in glory. But He never said “Goodbye” to them. He said, “I am with you always.” And more than this, He promised them the Holy Spirit:
“And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:16-18).
This morning as the people of God, we experience those words, “I will come to you.” He promised that “where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). The love of the omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient God was revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. In the Lord’s Supper, we remember His love, we joy in His presence with us, and we look forward to the day when He will bring all His people to where He is. This bows our hearts in worship.
