The Great Commission

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Transcript:

You know, I’ve always been rather surprised by the story. You know, I grew up in a little independent Baptist church, and there wasn’t really much of a missions effort of pulling money together like we have here, and I think it’s a good thing that we have here. And so the missionaries would have to come through and talk to your church if they wanted money and they needed money.

And so we’d have missionaries through all the time, and the church was just always pushing missionaries and pushing missions giving and all of that. I just grew up thinking that that was normal, as most of us probably did if we grew up in church. We just take for granted that that happens.

But I’ve always been surprised by the story of about 200 or 300 years ago, a man in England who stood up at a meeting of preachers with a radical idea. And it’s not usually a good thing when a radical idea is put forward at a meeting of preachers. Usually heads will roll.

But he stood up with a radical idea that he was to go to Asia as a missionary. And he wanted to raise the support of the churches that had sent representatives there to send him to Asia to preach the gospel. I’m not surprised by that fact, but what I am surprised by is the fact that he was opposed in that effort.

Not because of anything wrong with him, not because of anything wrong with his character or his teaching or his plans that he had, but he was opposed in that because they felt missions was not God’s will. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Apparently it’s God’s will that they have a lot of fun downstairs.

They believed, these preachers believed that missions, that reaching people for Christ was not God’s will. And a man whose name I wish I could remember, because I’d like to interview him someday in heaven, told the man to sit down and be quiet because when God deigns to convert the heathen, he’ll do it without your help or mine. The man went anyway, thankfully so.

The man’s name was Hudson Taylor, and he was the founder of modern Baptist missions. He was one of the first modern Baptists to go on mission outside of his home country. Now, to be honest about it, our people have been going for centuries to neighboring villages and neighboring towns and neighboring counties, and wherever there was the gospel needed, they were going.

But somewhere along the line, churches got the idea that missions were not really their job. They became engrossed in other things to the point where this one man, after reading his Bible, God got a hold of him and said, missions is your responsibility. and he tried to go out and preach the gospel, how dare he, and get support of the churches, get them behind him, and there was a huge controversy over it.

It’s almost unbelievable if it wasn’t historical fact. But Hudson Taylor went, he became a missionary, went overseas, went to China or India, I never can remember which one. I should have looked that up before I got up here.

But he went to Asia and he preached the gospel and multitudes of people trusted Christ as their Savior as a result. But there was a controversy, a ridiculous controversy at that time, where the Baptists split between what they called the hard-shell Baptists, the ones who didn’t want anything to do with missions, and the missionary Baptists. Folks, that name on our sign out front, that name on our bulletin, the name that we call ourselves is Eastside Missionary Baptist Church.

Would you like to hazard a guess as to which side we came down on in that debate? The missionary Baptists, and by the way, not everybody, all the missionary Baptists don’t call themselves that. There are Baptist churches that are missionary, whether they call themselves that or not.

But the missionary Baptists were the ones who came down on the side of missions and said, if we have any job as a church at all, it’s to reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. That name on our side is not just to point that we’re a certain denomination. It’s not just so that the world knows we’re BMA, that we’re BMA instead of ABA or SBC or BBFI or any of the other alphabet groups out there. It’s not to distinguish us in that.

It’s primarily because we have, as a church, supposed to have been taking a stand for missions. That we believe that if we have any job as a church, then that job, first and foremost, is reaching people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. That name means something. It’s not just out there for no reason.

And we as a church, by putting that on our sign, we have taken that stand. And again, that’s not to say that if you don’t have the word missionary in your sign, you’re not missionary Baptist. The church I grew up at in Oklahoma was missionary Baptist, one of the biggest missions givers in our association. and they don’t have missionary in the name, but they’re missionary Baptists.

But we’ve chosen to put it on the sign and advertise it. If we’re going to advertise it, we need to stand behind that. We don’t stand behind it just because we’ve advertised it, but because we’ve chosen that, we’ve accepted that mantle of responsibility from God, we have a duty to stick behind what God’s called us to do in the calling that we’ve accepted.

And I don’t tell you this. I haven’t come tonight to talk about what a pitiful job we’re doing or anybody else is doing for that matter. because we do a lot to support missionaries.

For a church our size, if you got the bulletin this morning and saw what Brother Phil had put in there, according to Brother Darrell and his calculations, 14% of our money went to missions last month. That’s pretty good for any church. We do a good job of supporting missionaries.

But folks, what we need to do a better job of and what really most churches need to do a better job of is about doing missions where we live and not just sending the money to support missions. We like missions in theory. And that’s a good thing for missionary Baptists to support our missionaries and send the money that helps them to go and helps them to live and helps them to pay for work funds so that they have the materials and the resources to minister to people.

But we also have a responsibility of doing missions right here in our own city. That’s our responsibility. I’ve told you the last few weeks that we were going to start a series tonight on evangelism.

To start a series on reaching out to the community around us. And really, not to sound too much like TV, but I’ve divided it into a few different mini-series instead of one several weeks-long thing. A few little chunks of four weeks each, and we’re first talking about the reasons for evangelism.

The reasons for reaching outside this church. Now, you may be thinking, I’ve grown up in church all my life. Some of you have.

You may be thinking, I heard this already. I know we’re supposed to evangelize. I know we’re supposed to tell people about Jesus.

Well, until we’re doing it, we need to be reminded and have it drilled into our heads. Because I’ve been in church since the womb. I trusted Christ at five years old.

More than 80% of my life I’ve been a Christian. And I’m still amazed on a regular basis at how much this has not sunk into my head. So we’re going to look at a reminder of reasons why we should evangelize.

Reasons why we should tell people about Jesus Christ. We’re going to start with that tonight. And the next group of messages are going to be about reasons why we don’t. Not reasons why we shouldn’t.

But we’re going to get honest and talk about some of the reasons we don’t tell people about Jesus Christ. Some of them are some of our reasons, and notice I say our reasons. I’m including myself in this. Some of our reasons are pathetic.

Some of our reasons are silly. Some of our reasons are understandable, but have an easy fix or simple fix. So we’re going to talk about the reasons why we don’t evangelize, why we don’t tell people about Christ. And then we’re going to talk about how to overcome those, how to tell people about Christ. And from there, I’d like to move in to talk about what do we do with them after we’ve told them about Christ. Because we also have a bad habit, and I don’t mean this church, I mean churches in general. We have a bad habit of leading people to Christ. We have a bad habit, if we’ve really led them to Christ at all, and we’ll talk about that some, but we have a bad habit of leading people to Christ, getting them to trust Christ, and then we abandon them to the world.

We say, okay, it’s another number, I can go back and report and make myself feel better, and you have a nice life. And the Bible talks about new believers as babes in Christ. It talks about them as baby Christians. That’s not my word.

That’s Paul’s word and Peter’s word. Talks about them as baby Christians. And I’m here to tell you that if we were birthing children and abandoning them to the world, if nine months ago, I had to think about how old Benjamin was.

If nine months ago, Christian had given birth to Benjamin, and I’d gone with him to the nursery, while they were getting her fixed up, I’d gone with him to the nursery and said, well, good job, you got born. Have a nice life. And we just left from there.

You better believe there would be some kind of investigation. I’d probably be facing some kind of charges. Folks, if heaven had a DHS, it would be on the churches.

Because we birth young Christians and then we abandon them to the world. When God’s given us a responsibility to raise, not to dig too much into the song I sang, but to raise those who come behind us to be mature, faithful followers of Jesus Christ. That’s our job. We’re not just catch and release fishing here.

In a sense, when we lead somebody to Christ, we’re taking them to raise. Folks, I really, I notice you’re all very quiet. I really am not telling you this because, oh, you’re just so horrible.

Why can’t you do things my way? I’m being honest about the problem I think we all have. 99% of people in churches have that we know we’re supposed to evangelize.

We know we’re supposed to tell people about Christ. And yet there’s some kind of disconnect between our brains and our mouths, between our brains and our hands and feet about actually going and doing it. Sometimes it’s fear. Sometimes it’s just not knowing the right words.

And sometimes it’s just flat out apathy. But instead of beating myself up, I don’t want to beat myself up. I don’t want to beat you up either.

Instead of beating us up about it, I want us to understand the magnitude of the responsibility that we have. That even it’s not just a responsibility, it should be a joy for us. I want us to understand what God has called us to do.

Understand what a great thing it is that He’s called us to do. And I want us to get equipped to do it and get excited about doing it. It doesn’t make any sense to just beat us up over what we’re not doing.

Instead, let’s fix it and let’s do it. And tonight, I want to start talking to you about the first of four reasons why we are supposed to tell people about Jesus Christ. Very tellingly, the title of this message is The Great Commission. It’s a passage of Scripture that most of you are familiar with.

It’s Matthew chapter 28. I was talking to my wife at lunch today about what I was preaching on tonight, because she’s downstairs. When I was talking to her about it, she said she couldn’t believe I hadn’t preached on this passage since I’ve been here, because at one point she told me, you know you bring that passage into every sermon you preach.

Well, hey, at least you’re paying attention. I didn’t even realize I did it. But this is one of, oh, I don’t know if it’s right to say if it’s one of the most important passages.

They’re all important. But as far as what our job is, this is one of the most important that we need to get a handle on. There are four reasons that I see in the Bible of why we’re supposed to evangelize.

And the first one is this great commission. Next week we’ll talk about the great need. In two weeks we’ll talk about the great reward.

And in three weeks we’ll talk about the great Savior. But the first reason is this great commission. We’re supposed to tell people about Christ because Christ commanded it.

Matthew chapter 28. We’ll start in verse 16 and go through verse 20. Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them.

And when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.

And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. So here, these are among Jesus’ last words on earth, as He’s preparing to ascend to the right hand of God the Father, and He gets His disciples together and says, here’s your job.

Listen closely, this is what it is. And contrary to what some people have chosen to believe, and what some people believed two or three hundred years ago, we’ll get into this in a minute too, there’s not an expiration date on this. This is still our job today.

And there’s nothing wrong with the programs and the things that most churches do. But any program, any activity we have should be based on or at least contribute to this idea of bringing people to Christ and making disciples. The other things we do, even if they’re good things, are too often a distraction.

This is the job He’s given us. And we are commissioned, we are commanded in this passage to make disciples. We’re commanded to make disciples.

You may say, where does it talk about disciples? It does not use the word disciple here. It talks about leading people to Christ. For a long time, I thought our job as Christians was just to lead people to Christ. It was evangelism.

I thought discipleship was something else that we did on the side. No, our job is to make disciples, and evangelism is part of that. So where did I get from this that we’re supposed to make disciples?

You’ll notice that the word teach, or some variation of it, is used in two places in this passage. And I probably won’t get the Greek words. I probably won’t pronounce them right.

But the first word teach and the second word teach are different when you look at the original Greek this was written in. The word for teach or teaching in verse 20 is one of the few Greek words that I recognize just by seeing it. One of the few.

It’s didasko, which means to teach. It means to impart information. I could be didasko teaching you right now by standing before you.

Somebody that you’ve never met before and will never see again could come stand here tonight and do didasko teaching by imparting information. But the word that Matthew uses in verse 19 when he says, Go ye therefore and teach, is a word called mathetuo, which has a different meaning. In mathetuo teaching, you’re still imparting information, but it actually talks about the enrollment of a student with a teacher.

And when you look at what they knew about Greece when they were writing, there were these informal schools that the philosophers had. Plato and Aristotle and Socrates, and their followers would follow them around. They didn’t just learn from them at one point because they taught them information.

They walked together with these people. They followed them around. They got to know them.

They taught them. They built them up. It wasn’t just imparting information.

It was imparting wisdom through relationship. And so when the Bible says, teach all nations, mathetuo, there’s an implication there that it’s more than just drive by, I’m giving you information, but there’s an element of relationship, I believe, to what it’s talking about. And when you start talking about building a relationship with somebody, where one is teaching or training the other, that’s discipleship.

In any way I know that we define it. When we’ve talked about discipleship, we’ve talked about the BMA’s Disciple Way program, or process. They don’t like to call it a program.

But when we talk about Disciple Way, that’s what it is. It’s not a class, but it’s people getting together and building relationships so that they can invest in one another and teach and train through that relationship, making disciples. Jesus didn’t sit down and have a class once a week.

He got 12 men who followed Him for three years. They were together almost night and day for three years. And He walked with them.

And He knew them and they knew Him. And He imparted His wisdom to them as a result of that. That’s the same command that we have.

To go therefore and teach all nations means that we are to go and make disciples of all nations. It’s not just a passing through, imparting information. But we’re commanded to make disciples.

Second thing that we need to know from this that we’re equipped for going forward with this mission. We’re equipped for going forward with this mission. We talk about this great commission of going and making disciples.

And going and making disciples is not, in one sense, it’s not an easy thing because we have to invest our lives in people. But in another sense, it’s not as hard or as complicated as we make it out to be because we don’t have to be brilliant theologians and we don’t have to have formal classes and sit down. It’s a matter of spending time with people and investing in their lives and passing on the wisdom about God that you do have.

I think this idea of making disciples sounds really hard. As I’ve talked to you before about making disciples, as I’ve talked to you before about the church’s mission of making disciples, it probably at first sounds really hard. It did to me.

When I first started hearing people talk about making disciples, it sounded really hard. It sounded like something that was for the preacher, or for the deacons, or for the Sunday school teacher. But at the time, I was none of the above.

I was just a teenager in church, thinking, I don’t know if I can do what they’re talking about. I don’t know if I’m equipped to do what they’re talking about. But he said, go ye therefore and teach all nations.

He didn’t start with that. If we back up into verse 18, he says, all power is given unto me in heaven and earth. Jesus Christ said to his followers, all power is given unto me in heaven and earth.

Now, from a standpoint of who he was and him being God in the flesh, he didn’t need any power given to him because it was his already. But in the sense that he was the mediator, in the sense that he was the deliverer, the savior, the one who could make peace between God and men, all power had been given unto him when it was finished. All authority had been given unto him.

And if you, well and good, he has all the power. Where does that leave us? Acts chapter 1 says, and ye shall receive power.

And as a result of that power, you will be my witnesses in Judea, Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth. When God gives us this mission of making disciples, he didn’t just leave us high and dry to go and accomplish it on our own. The God-sized tasks that we are given were not meant to be accomplished by us.

There are things that only God can do. Amen? Talked about some of that this morning.

I think we’ve well established that, for example, salvation, something only God can do. I had no part in earning my salvation. I had no part in earning my salvation.

If you’ve trusted Christ and been saved, you had no part in earning your salvation. If you’ve never trusted Christ, there’s no part you can play in earning your salvation. See, the very fact of it is that we can’t be good enough for God.

That’s why Jesus Christ died to pay the penalty that we owed. And He did it all. The same thing applies here.

When it comes to telling somebody about Christ, when it comes to trying to lead them to trust Christ, and trying to grow them as a follower of Christ once they’ve trusted Him, there is nothing that we can do to change men’s hearts and women’s hearts toward God. That’s something the Holy Spirit does. I’ve told this story so many times, y’all are probably tired of hearing about it, but I was in college before I realized the Holy Spirit played a role in evangelism.

I knew that I had been convicted by the Holy Spirit even at five. I know that sounds crazy. But even at five, I knew I was a sinner.

I had disobeyed my parents. I had thought things I wasn’t supposed to. I knew I was a sinner.

I felt that conviction by the Holy Spirit. But I didn’t put two and two together that it’s going to take the Holy Spirit to change other people’s hearts here. And for years and years, I tried to argue people into heaven.

Well, if I can just phrase it this way, if I can just get them to understand it like this, if I can just make this point, if I can just make them shut up and listen and understand, then they’ll get saved. Folks, that’s not a job that I can do. That’s a job of the Holy Spirit as He softens men’s hearts toward the Gospel.

He softens men’s hearts toward God. There are things that only God can do. Making disciples is one of them.

Whether it’s leading someone to trust Christ for the first time, or whether it’s leading someone to follow Christ, there’s nothing that I can say or do to convince you to trust Him or to follow Him if you are dead set in your heart that that’s not what you’re going to do. I might be able to annoy somebody so bad they’ll act like it on the outside. I probably could.

Not even an amen there. That’s good. I could probably annoy somebody badly enough that they would want to act like it on the outside.

But as far as changing their heart, I can’t do it. And so God, it seems, has sent us out on this impossible mission except for the fact that He said, all power, all power, all authority, all of it is given to me. And He says in Acts, you will receive power.

Just when you need it, God will work in and through you. And God will touch that person’s heart. God, the Holy Spirit, will convict of sin.

God, the Holy Spirit, will point people toward their need for a Savior. God, the Holy Spirit, will compel people to follow Him once they’ve trusted Him. God, the Holy Spirit, does the changing.

And so we’re not left alone to do this by ourselves. We are equipped for going forward with this mission. And it’s assumed by this also that we will be doing this.

There’s not even a question in here about maybe you’ll go, maybe you won’t go. I thought for a long time too that the command in here was, Go ye therefore and teach all nations. I’m not a Greek scholar, but I know some people who are.

And everything I’ve read, let me clarify this, every conservative source I’ve read, points to the fact that the way they phrased this in the Greek, with the verb tenses and all that, we could say, as you’re going, having gone. It’s understood and assumed that we’re going on about our way. What he’s talking about is not, go do this, but with the understanding, as we go through our daily lives, As we go through the work that God has already called us into, make disciples.

We think of missionaries only as the people who go over to Africa, or go over to Europe, or go to Southeast Asia. The command here was not go. The command was teach.

And that word means to make disciples. The command was as you’re going, throughout your daily life, make disciples. So that takes away part of our excuse.

If we say, well, I can’t be a missionary. I can’t tell people about Jesus. That’s for people who go, and He hadn’t called me to go.

Well, in this passage, he didn’t tell anybody to go. It was just assumed you’d be going somewhere. So let’s break it down for us today.

As you’re going to your neighbor’s house, as you’re going to the bank, as you’re going to school, as you’re going to work, as you’re going to the grocery store, as you’re going, wherever it is you go, as you’re going, make disciples. And that’s not to minimize the contribution of people who do go, because God sometimes will call us to go someplace out of the ordinary, but that does not leave the rest of us out. As we’re going, the command is make disciples.

To make a disciple, I’m getting ahead of myself. The third point here is that we are instructed on how to carry out the mission. We’re instructed on how to carry out the mission.

His mission to us is go and make disciples. And He’s equipped us with the power. We’ve got the indwelling Holy Spirit that deals with us and directs us and also deals with the heart of the person we’re dealing with.

So He’s given us the mission. He’s giving us the equipping to go and do it. He’s also giving us instruction.

Because even though it’s the work of the Holy Spirit, there comes a point when we do have to open our mouths. It’s also not an excuse to say, well, I’ll just live right in front of them and the Holy Spirit will convict them about that. Now, I’m not against lifestyle evangelism.

We ought to live a holy life in front of the world. We ought to. In as far as we are enabled by the Holy Spirit, we ought to live a holy life before the world.

Because if we’re not, if we’re out living wickedly and then we go and profess the holiness of God and the blackness of sin and the death of Jesus Christ to pay for it and we tell them about the wonderful change that God does in our lives while we are living wickedly and they know it, our testimony is already shot to pieces before we open our mouths. We do need to live a righteous life insofar as we’re capable with the help of the Holy Spirit. But at the same time, there comes a point where we’re responsible to open our mouths.

He says, Go ye therefore, or as you’re going, therefore, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. Two thoughts in there. of what discipleship is, about what it means to make a disciple.

The first is conversion, and the second is instruction. Now, where’s conversion in there? It doesn’t say a word about leading anybody to Christ. Where conversion is found in there is by the word baptize.

And I’m not saying baptism has anything to do with salvation. I don’t believe that. Just the opposite.

In the Bible, baptism is always taught as something that comes as a result of salvation. Something that comes afterwards. something that comes as a symbol to the world that I have been crucified and buried with Christ and raised again to this new life that He gives.

Baptism is a symbol of His death and burial and resurrection and of our part in that. And it’s always shown in the Bible as something that comes after conversion. And so in the Bible, if He says to baptize them, I don’t think God would forget His principle and say in this one point, this one point in Scripture, okay, we’ll go ahead and baptize them.

I forgot I said to convert them first. No, it’s understood that if you’re making a disciple, it’s already somebody who’s trusted Christ. So what we’re talking about here is what comes before that baptism, that there’s conversion involved, and then the baptism and instruction. He says, teaching them, again, that conveyance of information, didasko. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.

So we’re instructed on how to carry out our mission. Our mission of making disciples is not just building a relationship with people and loving them and getting them involved in the church. Folks, that should be a part of it.

I don’t understand the mindset that says I’m going to follow Christ and not be part of the local church. Nowhere in the Bible does it indicate that you’re not saved if you don’t join a local church. Our salvation is not dependent on our membership in any church.

However, as a disciple, as someone who wants to follow Christ, it would make sense that we would want to follow Him in His expectation that we would be part of this local body of believers that He has put together. And so we’re baptized into this local church. But that’s not all discipleship is.

is getting them involved and sitting down and teaching a class and explaining our doctrinal statement. I’ve seen discipleship classes where that’s what we do. We’re going to sit you down, you become a Christian, we’re going to baptize you, we’re going to sit you down and explain you through our doctrinal statement.

That’s a good thing. I agree wholeheartedly with our doctrine and what we teach. And we should teach it and we should make sure that people understand it.

But that’s not all discipleship is. He says teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. What he’s talking about here is the same kind of relationship that he had with his disciples, to have that with somebody else.

I don’t mean that we go out and die for them or that we claim that we can save them. That we go out there and like Christ did, we point them toward the way to peace and reconciliation and forgiveness with God, which for Jesus was himself. We point them to Jesus and then we instruct them on how to follow him.

It really is that simple. That discipleship, discipling somebody is not a class. It’s not a program.

I believe there are some things that we can do along those lines to help in that process. But discipleship means taking somebody who is where you used to be and helping them to get where you are now and beyond to where they need to be. That every one of us, if we’ve been saved, we can show somebody how to get saved.

We’ve been saved, we know how it happens. And we can tell somebody about it. And then when they get saved, we bring them along the journey with us.

And as we go about life, as we’re going, we walk with them and they walk with us. And we teach them through our life and through times of just talking together, times of doing ministry together, of serving together, of worshiping together, praying together, studying the Word of God together, all of these things. We teach them to do all things whatsoever He has commanded.

That’s discipleship. When you break it down like that, it really, I’m not going to ask you the question because some of you may still not be convinced, but it really sounds like something more of us could be involved in, doesn’t it? We’re just talking about a relationship here where we help people to grow in Christ. That’s discipleship.

That’s our job as a church is to make disciples.

and incidentally that’s why I hope in the coming m