Please turn with me to the Gospel of Matthew chapter 28 and verse 20. I'm going to read from verse 18. And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen. I want to speak this evening just on these few words, I am with you always. I am with you always. As we come to the Lord's table this evening, I bring to you what I believe is the greatest promise in the New Testament. Now, it's a matter of opinion, of course, and that's only my opinion. But for me, it's the greatest promise in the New Testament, the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, I am with you always. And these words may be familiar to us, but these words have got to get inside of us and sink down deep within us and become a part of our understanding and of our lives. These words are wonderful. Here at the end of the Great Commission and perhaps overlooked because they are here and many people will say many things about the Great Commission and rightly so but these words are wonderful. I am with you. always. And some people have remarked how helpful it can be to take a few words and really lay some weight on them and emphasize them and I'm sure we'll all be able to remember throughout the week these words, I am with you always. Here is the promise of a reality that I think we all too easily forget. Sometimes we forget it, or maybe often we forget it, but we all, I believe, do forget it. I certainly do. It's a promise given by the Lord Jesus to his disciples, but it's a promise by extension to all of his people. Because if the Great Commission was only to his disciples, and the promises here were only to his disciples, then the world would have ended. And it hasn't. These things apply even to the end of the age. And we are still here. These words are valid. These words apply to us. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, This promise applies to you, Jesus says. I am with you always. And it's not only a promise, but it's more simply, I suppose, a statement of fact. And I think if we grasp the implication of these words, it changes everything. And I hope that if you are a follower of Jesus Christ this evening, then you'll become a better one. And I hope that if you are not a follower of Jesus Christ this evening, then you will become one, and that urgently, as we look at these words. Well, let's consider the context just for a moment. We always need to do that. What's been happening here, Well, there have been 40 days after the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, in which time he has been appearing here and there. He's been appearing to his disciples and to select others of his followers. A large number of people he has appeared to. He has been talking and comforting and teaching in various places. But he has also not just been appearing here and there, and walking through locked doors and things like that, he has also been disappearing. And it's very important to note that. He is preparing his people for what is to come. And what they're going to learn is that what is to come is greater than what has already been. And this is something we need to understand as well. We might wonder why it was that the Lord Jesus didn't simply reappear for the 40 days and spend the whole time with his disciples, but he didn't. He came and he went. He was here and there with one and another. We don't have the full record, we just know that he appeared to several hundred people in different places and different times. Well, why? He's teaching the disciples a really important lesson here in what he's done over the 40 days. And it's going to become vital to them as they go out on the most difficult and dangerous mission of making disciples, of fulfilling the Great Commission, and establishing churches wherever they go. And the lesson is this, and this is the lesson we need to learn too. He is really with them all the time whether they can see him or not. It's exactly what he says. I am with you always. He is really with them all the time whether they can see him or not. And by being with them sometimes and not others he is beginning to teach them. We all know that the disciples sometimes were a slow bunch. and found things difficult to get hold of, he is teaching them very carefully, very wisely by being present and absent. Now you know I've been to various sites in Israel and I suppose, I still think I was most moved by sailing on the Galilee, by walking around the ancient city of Capernaum, which is largely still there in ruined form. Those kind of real places with a direct connection to the Lord Jesus. Because you can say, well, he sailed across here. He walked through here. And he walked on the land and on the sea. It's also tempting. I mean, you might think, well, I wish I could do that. I wish I could go there. It's a privilege. I'm very thankful for it. It's also tempting to think to yourself, oh, it must have been amazing to be a disciple of Jesus. To be there at the time. To actually hear his words. And I'm sure it was. But it's tempting to imagine that theirs was a privilege of a level we can never hope to share. And that's not so. We might even think, well if I could just go to the Bible lands then I would have a closer connection to the Lord Jesus. That's not true. Nothing in fact could be further from the truth. What the disciples are in the process of discovering and what they will fully realize on the day of Pentecost only ten or so days after this, was the same thing we need to grasp this evening. That now, Christ was more closely with them than he ever was before, before his crucifixion. Even though they may have spent days and months in his presence, now, he is more closely with them, whether they see him or not, than he ever was before, when he dwelled within the limitations of a human body. Now he is risen, and now he has a glorious resurrection body. He is recognizable, yet he is different. Gloriously changed, as one day all who know and love Jesus Christ will be gloriously changed and given glorious resurrection bodies. He has his. He has his now. He goes ahead of us. Now, by the work of the Holy Spirit, they're going to know the presence of Christ to the fullest extent possible. And he is constantly with them, inwardly. And this isn't a matter of emotion, or some kind of worked-up feeling. It's nothing that we can arouse perhaps by one method or another. Today there is so much emphasis on feelings, feeling the presence of God, and knowing the presence of God, and let's come into a time of worship and all this kind of thing, and there is so much poured into this today in so many places, a hypnotic beat, a laser show perhaps and dry ice and drums and all sorts of lights and sounds and a great big band and lyrics and all that kind of thing to get the heart racing, to bring a tear to the eye, whatever it might be. It's none of that. And it's nothing worked up. It's simple reality. The Lord Jesus Christ promises to be with His people. It's just before you in black and white. I am with you always. He promised the disciples and he promises us the same thing. Their experience of him after his ascension is going to be greater than everything that came before. Everything. And that experience may be ours also. I'm talking tonight about reality. I'm talking about the real personal presence of Jesus Christ in my heart, in my life, in yours I trust. Sometimes a very uncomfortable presence, sometimes an overwhelming presence, but always an essential Presence. How we need to hear Him say, I am with you always. And realize that this is true. The presence of Christ is meant to be real to each one of us. Always. And this is the key reason He's given us the Lord's Table, you see. He says, do this in remembrance of Me. Remember Me. I am with you always. Remember as you gather around this table that I gathered my disciples around a table. He's not present in the bread and in the wine. It's not literally His body and His blood. He is more glorious than that. What a limitation it places on God to say that He is in the bread and in the wine. He's more glorious than that. He is Almighty God and He is always present with us, but He wants us to be aware of it. And He wants us to remember what He has done and to dwell upon what He is doing. Always with us, wherever, whenever. It's amazing. You say to me, well, hold on, hold on, hold on. It doesn't feel like He's with me a lot of the time. I struggle with depression. I struggle with sin, perhaps. I feel sometimes so far from God. Maybe when I'm in church, I feel perhaps like God is with me. Maybe when I'm with Christian brothers and sisters, I feel more like that. Maybe when I'm reading the Bible or praying, but there are times when I feel completely alone. I feel abandoned. I feel that God is not with me. Friends, However you feel, he said, I am with you always. It's never about how I feel. Oh, if we lived our lives based on what we feel then I don't think we would live our lives at all. We must live our lives based on what we know, not what we feel. And what we know is that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of sinners. And that He saves all who call upon Him in truth. And He says to His followers, I am with you always. That's what we know. And that's the basis on which we must live. Of course, we can grieve the Holy Spirit. Of course, we can sin. And the Lord will make us feel If you like, His absence. If we wander off into sin and refuse to repent, of course we will not feel His presence at all. We would rather feel the lack of it. He's still there. He's still with us. Even if He has taken His hand off of us. But what is His promise? It's just this, I am with you always. And assuming that we're not grieving Him with sin that we haven't repented of and with pride and refusing to live for Him, then where does the problem lie? It's not with Him. It must be with us. He says, I am with you always. So what's wrong? Well, we lose the sense of His presence. We fail to cultivate the awareness in our minds and hearts of the truth of what He has said. If you ignore Him, and you ignore His Word, and you don't think about His Word and what He says to you, then don't be surprised if you feel nothing of Him. If you don't pray, then don't be surprised if you look at His Word and He says, I am with you always, and you think, well, it doesn't feel like it. Well, that's not a surprise, is it? Think back to the disciples again. They were very poor followers of Jesus Christ. I find that encouraging personally because I think I'm a very poor follower of Jesus Christ too. But we look at the disciples and we see they were not exactly A-star students. They weren't brilliant followers of Jesus. They failed. They denied him. They all ran away. And after he had risen, They became changed men. Was it just because of the resurrection? People say, well, it's because they had seen the risen Lord Jesus, and that changed everything. Not quite. Not quite. In fact, Matthew 28 shows us that's not the case. Matthew 28, 17, when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. You see that there? This is the word of God, by the way, this isn't some kind of propaganda magazine, where everything is glossed up and made to look great. If it was, do you think it would say that? But some doubted. Oh no, no. When they saw him, they were all on the same page, and they all worshipped him, and so should you all, and nobody doubted at all. No, it's just the truth. They worshipped him, but some doubted. They were poor followers. They were weak men. But there was a work in progress within them. God was working in their lives, just as He works in ours. And so it must be with us. They knew He was risen, but when they saw Him ascend, and knew He was on the throne, that was something else. And when they realized that He was with them, just as He said wherever they went, that was something else. In all His power and glory. And they knew that he was coming back because he said so. And they knew that if they died before his return, they would be absent from the body and present with the Lord. The Lord in their lives is working within them this sense of one reality and truth on another. He is building it all up. They are being moved along in their walk with the Lord. Friends, don't we also know all these things? We know these things are true. Yes, we do. So, how can we attain this boldness which the disciples would later have? From the day of Pentecost onwards and so forth, where did they get this boldness from? They still had doubts and fears and worries, but by and large they truly were different men. We need to hear the Lord Jesus say, I am with you always. And there's great strength and comfort to be known when we believe in what Christ has said. But how we need the awareness, the awareness of his presence. You might say, well, how can we have that? How is that? Well, the answers are quite obvious, really. Very practical, truly. First of all, our hearts must be His, and His alone. He says, I am with you always. Do you want to know that? Do you want to feel that? Are you His and His alone? Who lives? Is it you who live? Or is it Christ who lives in you? Do you live for Him, for His glory? Is your heart His? It must be. Is He Lord of your heart? Is your life truly given over to Him? If you have not given your life to Him, if you have not given your heart to Him, then He is not King of your heart and you will not know what it means. I am with you always. You'll not have that, as much as you may admire Christ or claim to follow Christ, you will not have the power that He promises. You will not have the strength that He promises. You will not have that sense of His presence if you're not His. It's obvious really, isn't it? But secondly, we must be in daily prayer. And by daily prayer I don't necessarily mean that at an absolutely set time every morning for a particular set period of time you go to a particular room and you kneel in a particular place or whatever it is, and you may do all those things. Fine. But to be in daily conversation with God is what I'm talking about. To cultivate a life of prayer, so that prayer is not just a thing that you do out of duty, but a thing that you do in various moments of the day at various times. Speaking to a dear brother who comes here from time to time, who was telling me recently that one of the closest one of the dearest parts of his walk with the Lord is not the big things. It's bringing to the Lord his daily struggles in his advanced age to do things like threading a needle. Just can't get that thread through the needle and his hands are shaking. And he brings it to the Lord and says, please help me. And he says it goes through first time every time when he prays. That's what he says, I don't doubt him. But to be able to be in that position, if your heart is Christ and you live for Christ and you long to serve Him and to please Him, and you long to live a life that gives glory to God, and you're not just pursuing your own agenda, You can be in and out of prayer as easily as you can go in and out of conversation with your neighbor. And if it's not so, then something's wrong in your walk with God. And you need to get closer than you are. We'll not know his presence with us if we are not those who are able to go, as it were, in and out of prayer. Not in the formal sense. but in the daily sense, in the hidden sense, as we speak with the Lord and bring things to Him. I am with you always. How can we not speak with the One who is with us? If we know Him, and if He is with us, what business do we have ignoring Him? If it's really true, Is Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior? Is He Lord of my life? Is He God? Is He my King? Is He my friend? Is He the one who sticks closer than a brother? Then why, how can I go a day without talking to Him? If He is there, if He is beside me, how can I not speak with Him? So our hearts must be His. We must be those who are given over to prayer. And thirdly, And this is very simple indeed. We must remind ourselves because we're all thick. We're all dense. We must remind ourselves of his presence. We must. This is why the Lord's Table is so kind and so gracious. He says, I know your weakness. I know how prone you are to forget who I am and what I've done for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And so, to know his presence, we must remind ourselves of it. Take the time to turn to this promise. Lord, you said, I am with you always. And wonder at it, that the Creator of the heavens and the earth would be with me, where I am, and all my foolishness, and all my mistakes, and all my errors, all my sin, but that He would be with me, and walk with me, and live as it were within me by the work of the Holy Spirit we must remind ourselves of the reality of his presence and you know there is that text that people that piece of writing that people have hung in their homes which isn't a bad thing actually I forget everything it says now, but you know Christ is the unseen listener in every conversation, the unseen guest at every meal, all that kind of thing. It is no bad thing to remind ourselves, He's here, I am with you, and we need to do it. So our hearts must be His, we must be praying, we must be reminding ourselves, but vitally, fourthly, we must remember the work of the Holy Spirit. because it is He who makes the presence of Christ real to us. It is the giving of the Holy Spirit at the day of Pentecost that truly changes everything. It is by His agency, by His work, that we feel and know the presence of Christ. And we have a problem in the church generally, speaking in the wide sense, that the Holy Spirit is either everything or nothing. In the church, extremes on one side or the other. Far out charismatics who don't seem to have any discernment about anything at all, and everything is all about the Holy Spirit. And then on the other hand, the reaction to that, no mention of the Holy Spirit at all. No seeking His presence, no seeking His blessing, no laying hold upon His power. Nothing. We know the truth is in the middle, right? You know it. We must remember the work of the Holy Spirit who makes Christ real and present to us. He is vital. In John 14, the Saviour speaks to his disciples and says, if you love me, keep my commandments. 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 a little while longer and the world will see me no more but you will see me because I live you will live also. At that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. The glorious reality of what Christ has said, I am with you always, and we must seek the help and the work of the Holy Spirit in this. We must cultivate the awareness of the presence of Christ. Friends, it's life-transforming to grasp it. You struggle with sin, perhaps there is some sin you're ashamed of, and it keeps coming back to you, and you keep having this temptation, whatever it might be. Whenever it comes to you, you remember, I am with you always. He is there. He is there. He observes. He is grieved by your sin, but on the other hand, He is so close at hand that He can give you the strength to resist that temptation and to fight it and to see it down and to go on. It's life transforming to grasp the personal and the real presence of Christ with me. in the office, with me on the factory floor, with me at home, with me in the shops, with me in conversation, with me when I sleep, with me at my medical appointment, with me when I'm in pain, with me when I'm in sorrow, with me. And everything I experience is nothing compared to what he has experienced. He knows it all. He's been through it all. He can sympathize with our sorrows and with our sufferings because he's endured so much more. And whatever we know, he has already known. Think of Paul, Apostle Paul, standing before Nero, a wicked, wicked emperor. 2 Timothy 4, he talks about it. At my first defense, he says, no one stood with me, but all forsook me. May it not be charged against them. We're not surprised, are we? Paul's friends were terrified of Nero. They didn't want to be associated with him. When he went to stand before Caesar, this evil man. But he goes on, but the Lord stood with me and strengthened me so that the message might be preached fully through me and that all the Gentiles might hear also I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. Everybody went but the Lord stood with me. It's not a figure of speech. It's not a piece of pretty poetry. It's reality in the life of a man who will give his life for Christ. And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory forever and ever. Amen. That's what Paul said. Our lives ought to be this continual conversation with God. Prayer, not a thing confined to the pew or to the bedside. When we come to the Lord's table, Friends, may we realise with freshness, with power, with deep wonder that we are dear to our Heavenly Father, that we have been made precious in and through Jesus Christ, our Saviour, our Redeemer. It is Almighty God Himself who not just tonight but every day would hold fellowship with you and with me. Not just now, not just in this building which we all know and we love. and which holds a special place of affection for us and perhaps inspires in us higher thoughts than we might otherwise have because we would think of it as a place where God is communally worshipped and we love it for that reason. But not just now. Tonight when you go to bed, in the morning when you wake up, at the kitchen sink, in the workplace, in the shops, with your family, in a crowd, or quite alone. Many of us will spend times during this week when we are quite alone. Whether we're at peace or whether we're under stress, he says, I am with you always. I am with you always. It's not done for dramatic or poetic effect. He said it, because it's true. Friends, may it be that we get hold of this, this reality, and not let it go. Jesus, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, says to you, I am with you always. And when you grasp it, everything changes, and nothing is ever the same again. May we know it, and may we prove it, and may God bless us, each one. Amen.