Your Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20)

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April 15, 2019 we were in the hospital, not for a bad thing, but for a good thing. It was the birth of our fifth, our fifth kid, and now we’ve given birth on the 14th, but it was the 15th, and we were watching the hospital, you know, they put the TV screen in the room, and we are seeing Notre Dame up in flames, right? Just as we’re in the country, and we’re shocked we’ve been here. We’ve we love this place. This is a massive tourist destination, and there’s just burning. The effort that took place from then until December 8, when the doors just opened, just a few weeks ago, was an unbelievable effort of reconstruction of this church, some 340,000 donors from 150 different countries contributed 846 million euros to rebuild. They brought in the best experts in the field, brought out the blueprints. The original blueprints. Got to work redesigning everything that it had been destroyed, and this UNESCO monument is now back open to the public. It’s a beautiful place. And the principle there is fairly obvious. When something you love and you value is burning to the ground, particularly a church building, it can inspire a sense of mission to come alongside and say, let’s all help contribute rebuild in the rebuilding of this place. And I want to make the metaphor in the spiritual sense to the spiritual church, because we know from Scripture that buildings are not churches, technically speaking, yes, we call it that, and that’s fine and common parlance, but the church is the people of God. And when we were sent to France, one of the first things we did was look at some of the research, and we were trying to reach North African peoples, unreached people groups in France, and I looked at some of the stats, and it looked like we were seeing amidst the couple teams that we had in the country, about five to 10 North Africans giving their life to Christ every year, for which we’re super pumped, super thankful for that. It’s a miracle when one person comes to know the Lord, let alone five or 10. Now you add to that, we’re not the only orgs there. There’s tons of churches and tons of other orgs. So let’s, let’s multiply that. Maybe there’s 100 or maybe 1000 North Africans coming to Christ every year in France. The problem is, you then compare that to the growth rate of North Africans in France of about 40,000 a year, and you realize that actually it feels like some good stuff’s happening, but actually the scales are tipping more and more and more and more away, and the church is burning. Now, I haven’t done a lot of research in America, but I’ve in the past 10 years, I’ve heard and I’ve looked at a few Gallup polls now and then, I think there was a recent one a few years ago that said the percentage of people consistently attending a service on a Sunday morning, whether that’s Christian, Jewish, Mormon, Muslim, any kind of service, religious service, it was 42% in 2000 and now it’s down to 30% which, you know, you slice that even further down for actually, who’s actually Christian and going to services, you think, well, that still sounds like a lot, but I mean, that’s a 40 million person loss in the past 20 years. And that trend is still going on, if anything, it might accelerate. And so you start thinking about it, and for me, I think, man, that’s like, Notre Dame burning. It’s like there’s a drastic change that’s been happening for 50 years in the culture, in the society. And as we look at the church, we see, we see, we see it burning at the same time. What’s so encouraging is that we can go back to the scriptures, we can bring out the blueprints, we can get back to the basics and look at the mission of God. And today we’re going to see we’re going to see how the power, this is the big idea of the message. Today we’re going to see how the power the prescription and the promise of Jesus can motivate us afresh to play our part in the Great Commission. The power of the prescription and the promise of Jesus can motivate us afresh to play our part in the Great Commission. The text today is Matthew 28 if you want to look in your pew, Bible or the Bible you brought Matthew 28 I think the page number is written in your bulletin. If you want to look at that, I’ve got one of these, and it’s on page 811, i. Matthew 28 the last words in the Gospel of Matthew, we know last words are important. We hear somebody’s last words. We tune in. We want to know what’s the last thing they’re going to say. And these are Jesus’s last words. So let’s go ahead and read it, starting in verse 16. Then the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him. But some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age. Now I want to just say a couple quick introductory comments about the context of this before we dive in to the text, just quickly think about the geographical context. In verse 16, the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. Now what’s going on? Matthew loves to tune in to geography in his Gospel, and we’ve started in Galilee. Jesus is the light to the Gentiles. We’ve we’re ending in Galilee, and not just anywhere, but up on a mountain. A lot of scholars think this is Mount Arbol that Jesus was probably on top of about a 1200 feet high, which gives an excellent view of the Sea of Galilee here. And you just imagine, put yourself in the shoes of the disciples there and Jesus. They’re looking at all the places they’ve just experienced, miracles, the Sermon on the Mount, teaching of Jesus, the calling of the first disciples, the healing, the demons being exercised. There’s what Jesus walking on water. They’re visualizing all these places. So it’s really a perfect place to end for Jesus to give his final marching orders. Besides the geographical context, we’ve got a spiritual context too. If you noticed in verse 17, I love this verse. It’s so interesting. Is this, when they saw him, they fell down and worshiped him, but some had doubts. You two. Now what’s crazy is that Jesus does not block either group. It’s crazy for different reasons. The first group are those who fell down to worship Him. Now we know the Apostle Paul and Barnabas had this happen to them. In Acts 14, they started doing some miracles, and the people bow down and started worshiping them. And Paul and Barnabas said, Stop, stop, stop. You got you got the wrong guy. Worship God. Don’t worship a human. We’re not God’s What’s crazy is Jesus doesn’t do that here, and this has been Jesus’s MO all along. He receives worship from humans, and he doesn’t deflect that, or he receives it. He says, Yes, worship God, and yes, you may worship Me too, because Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He is divine and human. So he doesn’t block the first group, but he also doesn’t block the second group who are doubting. And you might think, how are they doubting? These are like inner circle disciples. These aren’t someone that randomly heard, yeah, Jesus is going to be on the mountain at this these are the disciples that he told to meet me here for this appointment. These guys have seen it all miracles, and now they’ve seen a resurrect. This is Jesus, who was dead and now is resurrected, but they’re still doubting. And for me, that’s encouraging, because as I try to live on mission for God, I still have questions and doubts in my life. I go through seasons. I always have a couple questions in my head that I’m working through in relation to the Bible or relation to something that I’m I’m not sure about, and for me, it’s a great comfort that Jesus does not reject them either, and he says, You’re all a part of the mission right now. Now. Thirdly, another note on context, the canonical context, or just that means, is where this story falls in the big story of Scripture. And I just want to remind you that
this is a hinge point. This is a turning point in God’s big story, a major turning point the prophets. I’m going to zoom in on Isaiah, just to give you a flavor. We already saw some of the verses, but these are the Christmas verses that we love, but Christmas is synonymous with mission. I don’t know if you’ve thought about that connection, but Christmas is the mission of God coming to Planet Earth, and then whoever experiences something wonderful and joyous and incredible is naturally compelled to go on mission and talk about it. And we see that with the wise men coming, we see that with Jesus sending out, we see that all sorts of things in the Christmas story are speaking to mission. But let’s just remember Isaiah 1110, which we read a second ago in that day, the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples. The nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious. Isaiah, 56, seven and eight, for my house will be called the house of prayer for all nations. The Sovereign Lord declares he who gathers the exiles of Israel, I will gather still others to them, besides those already gathered, the still others are the nations. And then Isaiah, 6619 the very end of the book of Isaiah, I will set a sign among them, and I will send some of those who survive to the nations, to Tarshish, to the Libyans, to the Lydians, famous as archers, to Tubal and Greece and to the distant islands that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory, they will proclaim My glory among the nations. And here we are. King Jesus is we’re at the hinge point where all the prophecies are coming true. The Messiah is on earth. He’s inaugurating His kingdom. And now all these prophecies about the nations and gather it. It’s starting to go viral. It’s starting to happen on a big scale. We saw the hints of it all throughout the Old Testament, but now we’re getting the massive wave, the tsunami, that’s going to go out and God’s glory is going to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. So this is the context of these precious verses on mission. And I want us now just to zoom in on what Jesus actually says here. First of all, the power. Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. I don’t know if you caught that, but that is an unbelievable statement to say, for any person to say that it’s just they’re crazy or something’s going on that’s different than any other leader. I mean, there’s no Alexander the Great Mohammed. I’m trying to think of like the greatest worldwide leaders that have ever existed, Syrian Empire, the American empire. Of you know, nobody has said or claimed with any credibility all authority in the whole world. Oh, and by the way, the whole heavens is actually mine now, but that’s what Jesus is saying, and just a few days before, he was dying on a cross. So you see this radical dichotomy of the King who suffers and dies to accomplish his purpose, and now he’s being enthroned and given the greatest authority imaginable. Now this statement is the grounds of the Great Commission. This is the logical grounds for the Great Commission in many, many ways. I’m just going to give you one or two. The first thing to note is that the Great Commission is not motivated by any inkling of colonialism, cultural superiority, racial supremacy, political maneuvering, financial gain. These are all things that naturally go with empire building, right? These are the normal worldly motivations that motivate empires to get bigger and bigger. But Jesus’s Empire is not motivated by that in any of these statements, it’s motivated by the fact simply that he is the Emperor. That’s it. He has all authority. And so all authority is due Him. And it’s like living in line with it’s like the grain of wood. You want to go with the grain. You want to live with the grain of the wood. You don’t want to go against the grain. If Jesus has all authority, let’s live as if he has all authority. Bow the knee to him and help others to arrive at that place as well, or be going against the grain of the universe. Now I know this has never been popular, sorry, am I this? Is this distracting? With the breathing Brandon a little bit extension, how about this? Alright, no more breaths. Sorry about that. We’re not going to start over. We’re going to keep going. But think about the you know, how unpopular This is today. It was quite unpopular in the old days, in Jesus’s day as well, Roman Empire Caesar, kind of a big deal. He also claims ultimate authority. He also receives worship, and this is butting up against Caesar’s claims. This is why Polycarp, the first record we have of a martyr, written down in a beautiful story of Polycarp, you can read it. It takes like 15 minutes to read, search it on Google, but I. He’s being offered. People are saying, Just bow your head, just give a vow to the Emperor, and you’ll be fine. We’ll stop this whole martyrdom. But he’s dragged in front of an arena, and he refuses to do so because of this, there’s no I serve the ultimate emperor. His name’s Jesus, and I will not give any other form of ultimate allegiance to another earthly ruler ever, and he ends up getting killed. This is never popular. It’s definitely not popular now in post Western, post Christian America, definitely not popular. To believe this, to talk about this, the common world view today is believe in whatever higher power you want and be a good person. That’s really what matters. If you do that, well, I’ll get along everything we could. Now, there’s something appealing about that, and I appreciate the desire for peace and locking arms. And I think as Christians, we need to have the greatest spirit of peace towards everybody, the greatest sense of diversity and desire to lock arms with anybody, but not at the cost of surrendering this belief that Jesus is the ultimate, that he’s the authority and that we have a mission to accomplish. It’s not popular where I serve in the world, either. It’s a completely different perspective than America, but it’s equally unpopular I work with Muslim peoples, and in any given week, dozens of conversations that will they start really good, in the sense that they start out like, oh, well, we we respect Jesus too. Jesus is one of our prophets as well. We love Jesus just like you love Jesus. Why don’t you love Muhammad? Like we love Muhammad. That’s the weird part for them, I understand that. So it starts kind of like, Oh, we love Jesus too, but what’s really going on if you take some time to study Islam? And I’m not trying to throw Islam under the bus here. I just want you to understand and to be a little bit equipped to discuss with Muslims in your own life. But as you go a little deeper, the initial pluralism of oh, we accept all prophets. We love your Prophet too, it kind of fades away, because when you get to the Jesus of the Quran, you’re dealing with a different character. It’s the easiest way to put it, it’s not the same Jesus that’s in the Bible. It’s the same name, but it’s not the same person. And that’s true of a lot of the characters in the Quran. You’ve got the same names, but they become mouthpieces to just simply say the Islamic doctrine. I’m just going to give you one example of this. This is from surah five, 116 and 117 and on Judgment Day, Allah will say, Oh, Jesus, son of Mary, did you ever ask the people to worship you and your mother as gods? Besides Allah parentheses, there’s also a misunderstanding. We don’t worship Mary, right? This is what they’re seeing. He will answer, glory be to you. How could I ever say what I had no right to say. So Jesus is denying that, and he’s saying, I never told them anything except what you ordered me to say, worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord. So this Jesus becomes a spokesperson to propagate the same simple Muslim faith of there’s one God. His name is Allah, and Muhammad’s His Prophet. That’s the basis. And Jesus reiterates that when he surfaces in the Quran. So as we go deeper in conversations, we realize actually we are dealing with a Matthew 28 issue. Matthew 28 the Jesus in Matthew 28 is saying, All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth, and you can worship Me, and this Jesus is saying something quite different. So I deal with that day in and day out. And I just want to encourage you,
when we speak of Islam, I want to speak with utmost respect and encourage a respect. I also want to encourage a kindness. As an ambassador of Christ, we’re called to be kind and to embody the character of Christ, but we also need to be equipped and be able to share the truth of Christ, who he is and what he came to do. And if that’s interesting to you, if you have neighbors or coworkers, or if that’s just an interesting subject, you want to recommend a short, simple book. It’s by a professor at Southern Seminary in Louisville. It’s called reaching your Muslim neighbor with the gospel. And it’s a quick read. He’s got great advice, and he’s got some great explanations of Islam and also how a Christian could go about sharing their faith in a respectful, kind and meaningful way. So quick recommendation on that, but lastly, on this little bit about the power of Jesus, it’s not just the logical basis that gives us the impetus to go out, but it’s an incredible encouragement. It’s an incredible encouragement when the boss, who has the power says, I’ll, you know, I’m, I’m going to be with you, and I have all the power. I just imagine, I worked with Mike Fenley for a few years. He’s here today and the landscaping crew. And when you’re new on a job and you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s really encouraging when the boss comes along and says, I’m going to be here and I’m watching you. I’m right beside you. I’m working too, and I’m here to correct you. I’m here to help you. All cover your errors, stuff like that. Now that didn’t prevent me from cutting the big cable line and, you know, cutting the multiple times. But the point being that when the boss is there who has the authority, it’s incredibly encouraging. And once a week, we go out to, or this was a thing that we started in France, we would go out to an all African marketplace, North African, and it’s all Arabic being spoken, and 100% Muslim. And we would set up a little coffee stand and put our Bibles out, and put out a couple little pieces of literature, and we’d offer free coffee, free cake, have great discussions with people. And the first couple times I went, I felt like a teeny, teeny minnow in an ocean, and I was scared, just scared to do that, to be there looking behind my back. Am I going to get killed? Am I get something horrible going to happen? But the encouragement for me was this phrase that someone told me a long time ago. They said, with Jesus, me and Jesus are the majority wherever we go. And that was something someone told me in college when we were trying to reach dorm, different dorms for Christ, you and Jesus, you might feel like it’s just you, but it’s you and Jesus equal the majority wherever you go, because he has all authority. So it’s incredible encouragement to step into the mission. Now that’s the power of Jesus. I want to move on to the prescription of Jesus. It’s probably the most famous line in the verse. It says, Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, for those that are newer to this text, or maybe just a refresher, there’s one main command and three participles. The one main command is, go make disciples. That’s the focus. Go make disciples. And then there’s three participles that modify that and say, how does that happen? There’s the going, there’s the baptizing, and then there’s the teaching to obey. And so just briefly, when you think about making disciples, I want to just give you a new year’s challenge. Look at that command. What does it look like for you? There’s a million different ways. I’m not going to say this is a method. You have to do it, but what does it what is the way for you to say in 2025 I want to make it my goal to make one disciple, and you’re not alone. It’s not a one on one project. There’s the whole church, there’s God, what God’s done in their life all up to that point. But how do you help someone move a little bit further from where they are in their faith journey forward, and we see the whole spectrum of the faith journey in the three things. The first thing, well, the first thing says, Go, right, go. You have to kind of go. And that’s why I’m giving you this challenge. It doesn’t just happen even when you’re in the business, so to speak, as I am, or Brandon as or Kyle you. It doesn’t automatically happen that you make disciples, it takes a certain LISTENING to the Holy Spirit, a certain who is in my life, at work, in my family, in my extended family, at church, in the youth group, who is, who’s out there that I could make an impact on. So there’s a listening, and then there’s an actual intentionality to go and it might be someone anywhere on the spectrum. We see the whole spectrum here laid out baptism. Think about a spectrum from negative 10 to 10. Negative 10 somebody is as far away from God in Christ as possible. Zero is their moment of faith in baptism, and 10 is they’re obeying everything, super mature, obeying everything, including this command Jesus is saying, just pick anybody on that spectrum, and you can move them forward. If they’re at negative 10, your your role in their life might be for one year to move them to negative nine. If they’re at negative one or negative point five, you might be the one who gets to see them come to Christ. And that’s an amazing, amazing experience. And you can help them be prepared for baptism. And then after baptism, we enter a discipleship phase. And discipleship, you can take people, you know, any, anybody, can help somebody grow right? And so this is the great challenge. This is the great prescription that I want to encourage us all to step into and in just another as I share this. This is one of the texts that I turn to with my Muslim friends often, because they will commonly say they’ll commonly say, Jesus was a great prophet, but the Christians. And the the Roman Empire and Constantine, they kind of made them into a god, you know, right around the time of the Council of Nicea, they they did that stuff, and then the legend became the reality and the dogma, and it just continued. And so, whether you’re working with Muslim people, I think I have a picture of some the three. There’s very a lot of people believe that. I call that the common myth today. Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that, Muslims teach that, and then skeptics, modern skeptics, teach that, like Dan Brown, that this is some kind of conspiracy thing that happened in the church. But this verse, verse 19, is like hard proof that this is original to Jesus. This is from the original source text that we have baptized them into the name of one God. Yes, but who’s that one God, Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit? I mean, the Trinity is from the beginning. It’s it’s there in the source texts of Christianity from the beginning. This isn’t a weird evolution and a political thing. So I love this verse in helping someone see now this is actually original to Scripture. One final story. Steve Bailey, an old youth pastor at this church, used to say to me, relationship plus the Word of God equals impact. And the youth group used to be called impact. I don’t know what it’s called now, but relationship plus the Word of God equals impact. And that is a simple formula for what discipleship looks like. You draw near to someone in relationship, you share the Word of God. You can look at a passage together. You can come do a Bible reading plan together. You can do a Bible study together. The church probably has great opportunities for you to do that together as well, and that leaves an impact on somebody. And so that’s my challenge for you guys in 2025 to think of this prescription of Jesus in the Great Commission. And then finally, there’s the promise, the promise of Jesus. We look the power, the prescription and the promise of Jesus in verse 20, he says, and I am with you always to the end of the age. Anyone who’s worked with kids or has kids knows the power of presence, inevitably, and our son still does this. I’m thinking of our fifth son. There’s always a reason why he can’t fall asleep. Always. I have an itch, I’m a little thirsty, I’m hearing a noise, I’m scared, right? There’s so many reasons, and all it takes is one of us going upstairs and laying behind beside his bed and saying, It’s okay. The itch is going to go away. Here’s a little bit of water. This is going to be okay. And after a couple minutes, he’s calm, and he goes to bed. It’s the same for adults with all of our fears too, whatever situation is causing anxiety in your life, you hear these words of Jesus, I am with you always. And in light of a mission, in light of a church burning of Notre Dame that’s burning in light of a declining Christianity, all this stuff. It doesn’t matter when Jesus is with us. The presence of Jesus is so encouraging, and he’s with us by His Holy Spirit, right? Because Jesus is going to ascend to heaven,
but his ability to be with every single human is made possible by the fact that he sends the Holy Spirit, who can literally be with every single Christian at the same time, which is an amazing reality. And we need this because all of us are going to put up some kind of excuses, just like my son trying to go to sleep. There’s always going to be some reason why this great commission is difficult. It might be the classic like, Well, hey, that’s great for pastors and missionaries, but that’s not my spiritual gift. I don’t make disciples. I leave that to the professionals. I don’t want to screw anything up. I’ve heard that a lot, and I understand there’s there’s situations that warrant and some expertise, like a messy divorce or walking with somebody who has mental illness, there are situations in discipleship that do require expertise, but a large part of discipleship is the ordinary. It’s the regular, the ordinary situations, and that’s given to all Christians. This command, I would argue, is not just for apostles. It’s not just for pastors missionaries. It’s for for all Christians, because they’re commanded to teach them to obey everything, and that everything includes this command. So by extension, everybody’s included in this command, right? You? Uh, just to remind you of a verse along these lines, when we think of pastors and missionaries and people who do this for a living or full time, their role is not just to do this. Ephesians, 411, God gives apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, to do the mission, no, to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, which means we’re all in this together. We all have a really important role in the mission of God and to remind us of our equal identity. Sometimes people say, Well, I’m not a pastor. I don’t do that. I say, but you are a priest. And they’ll look at me funny and say, You’re a priest. I’m not a priest. I’m not Catholic. I’m not no, no. First, Peter, two nine, you are a priest. You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. God’s special possession that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. This means priests connect God to the people and the people to God. They’re intermediaries. That’s what priests do, and we are all priests. We all have that privilege, whether that’s like I said, someone in your immediate family, a child, someone in the youth group, a co worker, a colleague, someone at work, someone you know, a neighbor, we all have a an opportunity to bless somebody that the pastor does not have and cannot do for us, and no missionary can do for us, but if we band together, we can rebuild Notre Dame, we band together. This isn’t rah rah speech. This is just the sober reality of this command. I don’t want you to be motivated by just the need. My hope here is that going back to the big idea that the power, the prescription and the promise of Jesus can motivate us afresh to play our part in the Great Commission. Let’s pray,
Father God, thank You for Your Word, which is the source of true life change by your Spirit, Father, thank You for everybody in this church that has impacted me. Lord, I am privileged to be here and to be able to just teach this simple passage, Lord, where you take us back to the blueprints and remind us how we can build together the Church of Christ, something far more glorious than Notre Dame, something far more lasting than a physical church building. Lord, to be able to take part and be co laborers with you in the construction of the invisible Church of the people of God, what a privilege. I pray for every person that you bring one person to mind this year, one person across their path, where they can help move them in that faith journey from negative 10 to 10, that we can all be disciple makers, Lord where you have put us. I pray this in Jesus name, Amen.