Daily Meditations: Journey with Jesus After the Resurrection

Today’s reading is in Matthew 28:16-20.  One of the first things that jumped out at me as I read this passage was verse 17. It was the statement that some of Jesus’ disciples still doubted! This stopped me short. Jesus is right there in front of them!!! How could they still be doubting??? 

I did a little research on that verse and found that another way to translate this is “they worshiped, but they doubted.”  Here is Jesus standing right in front of them. They are looking upon Him. They have touched Him. They have eaten with Him. They have listened to Him teach them in these days and weeks since the resurrection. They knew far better than they did before the resurrection who He was and this leads them to worship Him as God! But even as they worship Him they are perplexed. They know what their eyes see. They know what their ears have heard. They know what their hands have felt. But in their hearts is the question - how can this be? They do not understand! They can’t quite wrap their minds around how all of this can possibly be true. And yet they worship Him - this Jesus - the Son of God - the Messiah - who is far beyond their ability to comprehend. They, in their limited and finite humanity, are in the presence of the incomprehensible God and so they worship Him. They worship even when they don’t fully understand! 

Can you see yourself in these disciples? We have God’s Word that has been given to us and it is through this divinely inspired Word and these eyewitness accounts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, that we also see God. We, through the pages of Scripture, are joining with the disciples in touching Him. Through their words we are taught what they were taught. We see what they have seen.  We experience what they have experienced. Through their words we have seen the resurrected Jesus. We stand with them on this mountain and we believe and worship this great God. And like them, “we worship, but we doubt.”  We look at Jesus and are overwhelmed by Him.  We struggle to fully understand Jesus - who He is and all that He has accomplished on behalf of sinners like you and me.  We are perplexed by His deity and His humanity. We cannot wrap our heads around His sacrificial death and resurrection and how that frees us from sin’s enslavement and satisfies God’s righteous wrath and judgment on us. We cannot comprehend a love so great as the love of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. But we worship Him. We worship Him even as we are perplexed.

Even though we and those first 11 disciples live in this tension, Jesus still stands in front of us and following this time of worship He commands us to go. Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all that Jesus has commanded! We believe today, 2000 years after these events, because these 11 doubting worshipers by faith obeyed the voice of their King. And now it is our turn to continue the Great Commission!

So we worship and we go in obedience by faith, trusting the One who has ALL authority in heaven and on earth...the One who promised to be with us even to the end of the age. We believe, Lord. We worship you Lord. Help us in our unbelief!