The Great Commission
Transcript
How are we doing this morning? This side's doing pretty good. My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We've got two more weeks. This is the second to last week of our Home Sweet Home series.
We've been walking through and just asking, what is the church? How has God designed the church? What makes for a healthy church? How are we supposed to organize ourselves? What are we supposed to look like? Today is very important for us as we kind of talk through this.
If we kind of miss today, we miss a lot. Maybe even like the essence of what the church is supposed to be and to do. And so it's a big day for us as we kind of are wrapping up this series and trying to look at, okay, this is how we're supposed to organize. This is how we're supposed to be designed. These are things that go into us being a healthy church. And now we're kind of asking, like, what do we do?
Why does the church exist? And so we're kind of answering that question. But I want us to, we're going to kind of start big picture as we get into this this morning. And so God created the world. He designed it beautiful and made it glorious so that we even now can look and just be taken aback by how majestic there are, things are in the world. Like I've been watching this TV series called Africa on Netflix.
And it's just crazy. Like every, I'm just, there's this, they do such a good job of like sucking me in on, I watch two giraffes fight each other. And like by the end of it, I'm like, who's going to win? And like they just, like one giraffe knocked the other one over and it's this English guy. And he's like, will this be the end for the king of the giraffes? And it's like, I don't know what's going to happen to the king of giraffes.
And it's like, and there'll be times where they're just like panning over a flower that's in the middle of a jungle. And I'm just like, that's crazy looking or zooming in on ants or like it's, there's just God made this world beautiful and amazing. And he put humanity on it. And then because God put so much good into us and because he made us with intelligence and personhood, like we as humans could choose to respond to God appropriately, to worship him and to relate to him the way we were designed to, or we could choose to hold ourselves as supreme. I don't want to spoil it for you, but we chose the second one.
We chose all of us to believe that we are the most important, that our happiness and our joy and our life matters more than others. Like we chose to promote ourselves over worshiping God. And here's the thing, worshiping God is the only right way to relate to God. A buddy of mine recently was getting, he was getting mad at a friend of his because his friend was being disrespectful to his mom. To his own mom. And so my buddy said he got in his face and was like, don't talk to her like that.
That's your mama. Like that's your mama. You don't act like that towards your mama. Like his, his only argument was she's your mom. You can't talk to her like that. And I agreed with his argument.
His point was just because of who she is, just by the nature of y'all's relationship, she's to be treated a certain way. Period. The end. And that's our relationship to God. Just because God is God, just because God's the creator, we're actually designed to worship him. It's the only correct response for creatures to, to respond to their creator in worship, to hold him up as holy and honorable and to praise him.
And what we said was, no, we want to be supreme. So this is where selfishness and racism and all of our pride and envy and murder and war come from believing ourselves to be supreme. So God's got a massive problem. He created the world to be good. He put some creatures on it that were designed to relate appropriately to him. And he poured a lot of himself into them.
And they immediately turned around and said, no, we're going to be supreme. They started making much of themselves. And so now God really kind of has a choice. He can just be done with it. He can just start over or he can try to fix it. He can try to fix the problem.
This is what we're presented with right at the beginning of the Bible. Now you may be wanting to go, okay, time out real quick, real quick. Two questions. One, if God made people and they turned bad real quick, isn't that his fault? Like, shouldn't that be on him? Like, didn't he make them poorly?
My response to that is, first of all, I don't really know. It doesn't seem like it would be. But secondly, and this, I think, is a better response than my first one. I want to talk to you about goldfish. You ever had a pet goldfish? Let's say you own a pet goldfish.
Let's say your friend did. You go to his house and he says, I want to show you the most loving and righteous and good and glorious of all goldfish. Still be just kind of a goldfish, right? Like, if you have a goldfish that is pure evil and a goldfish that is pure goodness, can you tell the difference? Like, there's not going to make much of a difference. Now, let's move to hamsters.
You got a hamster that's like a great hamster and like a mean hamster. There's some difference there. Like, one of them is going to bite you. The other one might, I don't know, like watch TV with you. I don't know what hamsters do. A cat?
Hypothetically, let's say there was a good cat. I know. I know it's hard. It's hard to get your brains there. Work with me here. Hypothetically, there's a good cat.
Like, there's some difference between like an evil cat and a good cat. Like, there's some difference. A dog? More of a difference. An eight-year-old child. You ever met like a really cool, great eight-year-old?
Yeah. Okay. You met a terrible one? Uh-huh. Seen him at Walmart? Like, there's some difference there.
Like, a really bad child or a really good child, there's a bigger gap there. What about like a full-grown adult? Yeah, bigger gap. What if that adult's more intelligent or has more power, stronger, or has more money? Here's the thing. God poured so much good into us.
He put so much intelligence, so much ability for emotion, so much of himself into us that we actually have the ability to be very good. But when we turn that, it actually makes us far worse. See, it's God putting so much good into us that makes humanity capable of so much bad. So it's actually that God poured himself into us that we could turn that one way or the other. And so I don't think it's his fault. I think that he poured good things into us.
Now, you could say, well, couldn't he made it where we could never do anything bad? And it's like, yeah, but not with us still having some choice. And is goodness really goodness if you have no choice? I think it's because God put so much into us that there's so much potential for bad. The second thing you may say, okay, well, all right, all right, well, why can't he just forgive us? If these first humans rebelled against him, why couldn't he just say, well, no big deal?
I had a friend ask me that recently. He is a very tall, kind of aggressive guy I've been hanging out with. And so I asked him, I said, okay, if we're hanging out with you and your friends, and let's say I walk over to you and I slap you. When I asked him that, he went, like, leaned forward at me like, are you serious right now? Like, you slap me, are you serious? And it was like, I said, I didn't actually slap you, just hypothetically, calm down.
But what if I slap you? I was like, what are our options? Who's going to pay for you being slapped? He said, you are. I was like, okay, that's an option. I was like, you aggressively assault me for slapping you.
I could pay penance for me slapping you. What if you don't go with that option? What are your other options? Who pays? He's like, well, I do. He's like, yeah, you pay for being slapped.
You take the pain. You have no outlet for your aggression. Your friends think you're a punk or they make fun of you or there's some kind of shame going along with having me slap you. Like, immediately it made sense to him. Now, some of you maybe don't think about life in terms of being assaulted. Let's say I was at your house and I just accidentally knocked your TV over.
Let's say I maliciously knocked your TV over and broke it. You can make me pay for your TV. You can pay for your TV. Or you can have no TV. But once it's broken, there's no option of just forgiveness without somebody paying.
So once we slapped God in the face, once we broke his good creation, he can't just go, well, magic forgiveness, because there's actually an exchange that's happened. Someone has to pay. And so what I want to tell you the story of this morning as we get started is the story of how God said he was willing to pay. How he was willing to pay for our sin, our brokenness, our rebellion, how God was willing to step in and pay for it. The same as if you decided to take this lap and be okay with it or you decided to replace your television and not make me pay for it. God stepped in and said, okay, it's broken, but I'll fix it.
Here's what he did. He tells the first people who rebel, I'm going to make this right. Then he picks a guy named Abraham out of the middle of nowhere and says, I'm going to turn you into a family. And through your bloodline, you're going to show the world what it's like to run away from sin, what it's like to know me. You're going to show them who I am. So he picks Abraham and Abraham begins to have this family.
But here's what we see throughout the Old Testament. There was not going to be a bloodline that kept sin out. So Abraham's family, it's like your family, really messed up. Some of you have your families here with you. Just don't make eye contact. Keep straight ahead.
But Abraham's family had sin and problems and distress and brokenness. And so God then tells his family, he says, okay, I'm going to take and make you into, I'm going to give you my rules, my laws, my morals. And I'm going to make you into a kingdom of priests. I'm going to turn you into a whole group of people who worship me correctly. And you're going to show the world what it's like to worship me. And through you, they're going to come to know me.
But the problem was even in the priesthood, even in the morals, even in the law of the Old Testament, they couldn't do it. There wasn't going to be a moral set of standards that people could live up to that could keep sin out. So then he looks and says, all right, I'm going to give you a border. I'm going to give you a land. I'm going to make you into a kingdom. And through this kingdom, you're going to show the world what I'm like.
And through you, they're going to come to know me. But it turns out no amount of border patrol could keep sin out. And that kingdom doesn't last very long. And sin is consistently a terrible, rampant problem. And so God says, okay. And he comes in the form of Jesus, which was his plan all along.
He'd been taking people and making them into a group of people to proclaim to the world what he was like. And then he comes as Christ. Jesus steps out of eternity. The Son of God comes, lives perfectly on our behalf, and goes to the cross to pay for our sin. But Jesus does what we couldn't do, fulfills the law, lives the way he ought to have, doesn't rebel against God, puts God first, worships him, and then swaps places with us to pay for our sin.
You see, sin was the issue. Even in the family, even in the priesthood, even in the kingdom, sin was the problem. It kept coming in. And so Jesus pays for sin. And then he does what he's always done. He grabs a group of people, and he says, you're going to represent me to the world.
And through you, the world's going to come to know me. And that's the church. You see, that was God's plan all along. He kept grabbing people and saying, through you, I'm going to show the world what I'm like. Through you, the world's going to come to know me. But see, Jesus had to pay for sin, and then he takes the church and says, okay, sin has been dealt with, and now through you, I'm going to show the world what I'm like.
And that's the church. That's our mission. That's our goal, to be a group of people called by Jesus to show the world what he's like. So we're going to go to Matthew chapter 28. So all the stuff we've been talking about in this whole series, how we ought to look, how we ought to act, what we're supposed to do is for the purposes of this mission that we've been given, of God's plan to redeem and save the world, that God has decided and chosen to use people to represent him to the world.
That's his plan A, is to pay for sin through the cross and then take a group of people and say, you're going to represent me to the world. Let's pray, and then we'll start reading in Matthew chapter 28. God, we thank you for your grace. Thank you for your goodness. We pray, Lord, that you would equip us to be on your mission, that we would see it clearly in your word and that we would follow actively for your glory. We love you and praise you in Jesus' name.
Amen. Okay, so we're going to pick up in verse 16. So Jesus has died on the cross. He was buried and he rose again and he told his disciples, meet me at this specific place and he's going to tell them what he wants them to do. Now the 11 disciples, so that's all of the disciples except for Judas who betrayed Jesus.
So these are the guys who've been following Jesus around for the past three years, seeing him perform miracles, being taught by him, doing ministry with him. The 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. Just so you all know, those are really the two options. Jesus walked around telling people he was God. They watched him brutally murdered and then he came back alive and started talking to him.
And those are really your two options. There's not really much of a middle ground. Either you realize this is Jesus and he's alive and so you worship him as God, the guy who's conquered death, or you just kind of doubt the whole thing. We're here. This is us. Like we're either kind of doubting or we're worshipping.
Those are really our options. And I love that this is the 11 disciples. So they're worshipping, but some of them who've fallen around are going, I don't know because of how dead he was really, really recently. And I'm having a hard time with this. If they were just trying to make up a story to convince us, I don't think they would have included that. But they were like, no, we need to be real about the fact that some of us were really having a hard time with this.
So they worshiped in some doubt. Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. So Jesus calls his disciples together.
He calls this group together that's been with him. And he says, go, it's your mission to represent me to the world. He's doing what he's been doing this whole time. Grabbing a group of people and saying, you're going to be my representatives. Through you, the world's going to come to know me. Peter, one of Jesus's disciples who's here in this moment.
Later, he's writing a letter to some churches and he explains it this way. We're going to have it on the screen. But he understood exactly what Jesus was saying. So how y'all been? Things going good? Boom.
Stay focused, guys. But you are a chosen race. So who's that? That's Abraham. That's the family. You're a royal priesthood.
Who's that? That's the people that God called together and gave him the law. You're a holy nation, a people for his own possession. So what Peter's saying is, we're the fulfillment of this now. God's plan all along was to grab a people, to make a priesthood, to make a nation, and he's saying, this is what he's done with us, with the church. We're the same thing.
We're the group of people who are going to represent God to the world. A people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. That's the church. The people of God who've been forgiven.
Who he's not held our sin against us because Jesus paid for it on the cross. And now he's called us together to be on mission to represent him to the world. That's our task. That's what we're doing. That's why what you're a part of the church is to worship and glorify Jesus and see more people worship and glorify Jesus, to proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. So we're just going to walk through and talk through this, what Jesus commands us to do, what he tells his disciples to do and how that applies to us and what that gets to look like and try to just understand what's going on here and what this looks like for us now.
That's our goal today. Some of you have been around the church for a while and you've heard this passage taught over and over and over and over again. Good. It's important. I heard Francis Chan put it this way one time and I thought it was very helpful. He's a pastor.
He said if he told his daughter, I need you to go upstairs and I need you to clean your room. She said, okay. And then later he went up to her room and it wasn't clean and he was like, what are you doing? And she's like, well, I've been thinking about what you said. I even memorized what you said. I can quote it back to you.
Go clean your room. He's like, yeah. She goes, I've written in my journal about what you said. I've even invited some of my friends over today and we're going to talk about what it would look like for me to clean my room. And he said she would have completely missed the whole point. She's supposed to just clean her room.
When I was in college, I had a guy I met with on a regular basis and at one point we had met, I don't know, for some weeks and he looked at me and said, hey man, I don't know if I want to keep doing this because every time we meet you tell me the same thing. I said, yeah, because you hadn't done it yet. I'm cool with us not meeting until you start doing this stuff. We're not moving to step two until step one's done. The reason we keep talking about this and I keep saying the same things is because you've never shown up. So our job, we're going to talk about this today, but our job is to do it.
To actually follow through with what he's commanded us to. All right, so let's see what he says. Some of you are new, you're new believers, you haven't been around the church too long. This may be new to you and that's great. This is why you're a Christian, because Jesus has used his church to do this. Jesus said to them, this is verse 18, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Okay, so this election cycle has been pretty crazy. Donald Trump doesn't have anything on that. He hadn't come close to saying anything like that. Could you imagine him starting one of his rallies like that? He plays a little music, he comes out. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
I'm huge. Like, could you imagine? Like, if this isn't true, this is like the most cocky statement you could possibly say. Jesus said he's in charge of everything. And he just rose from the grave, so I'm inclined to believe him. He says everything belongs to me.
All authority on heaven and earth, like all of it is mine. Go therefore. Bible study tip. If you see the word therefore, it's referring to something that's already come before it. So here it's pretty simple.
Why do we go? Because of all the authority given to him. Because all authority belongs to him. So go therefore, and make disciples of all nations. Okay. First thing we're supposed to do is go.
I think mostly that just means be intentional. Get up. Get after it. Make a plan. Go for it. It does mean go to the ends of the world.
Go to the people who don't know him. Go to the people who don't have a Bible translated in their language yet. Go to the people where you have to learn the language just to tell them about Jesus. But it also means go to work and go to class realizing that your job is to make disciples. Go to your neighborhood picnic. Throw a neighborhood picnic realizing that your job is to make disciples.
Have some intentionality behind what you're doing. Because we're all, as the church, called to this. Go therefore and make disciples. Okay. Now. You're a disciple.
Now. You're a disciple. Now. You're a disciple. Go make disciples. Immediately.
You're having like flashbacks. Because you know what he's talking about. So if you were in a math class. And the teacher got to the end and said. Would you come up? Called your name.
Told you to come stand in front of everybody. And said. Okay. Next semester. You're teaching this class. And then like handed you their stuff and walked out.
You would know how to teach math. Only because of what they had taught you. You would just reproduce what they did. So when he says go make disciples. He's talking to his disciples. So immediately they're going.
Okay. What did he just do? Like if you just. Somebody taught you how to run a forklift or a cash register. And then they said from now on you're going to train the new people. You're going to teach them what they just taught you.
So he says go make disciples. Well how did Jesus make disciples? Well. He called people out of normal life. Expected that he would be the most important thing to them from then on. Expected a lot out of them.
And built relationships with them. He was around them all the time. They walked around. If you read through the gospels. A lot of it is going to or from eating. Or to or from a party.
They hung out. They were around each other. In normal life. He had specific times where he taught them. He had specific times where he sent them off to do ministry. And then they kind of debrief it.
But he was around them. So when he says go make disciples. Yeah that means once a week at a coffee shop. It also means way more than that. Building relationships. Getting to know people in normal life.
Average everyday stuff. Intentional ministry. Like it. They immediately knew what he was talking about. Go and make disciples. Of all nations.
So the church is supposed to see people become followers of Jesus. And we're supposed to do this of all nations. Friends. When the gospel was first preached at Pentecost. Everybody heard it in their native language. Because God created everybody.
He speaks all languages fluently. In heaven. We're going to talk about this next week. John says he sees everyone from every language and tribe and people and nation. Do you know that when we get to heaven. You don't suddenly become less your ethnicity.
Because God designed them all. And they all belong to him. Muslims will be quick to tell you that God speaks Arabic. And if you want to hear the words of God. You've got to know and read Arabic. God speaks Arabic.
He also speaks Hebrew. And Spanish. And Yoruba. And English. All very very fluently. Because they all belong to him.
And there isn't one correct nationality or race that belongs to God. It's everybody from day one. Recently the United Methodists were getting together. And they're voting on some stuff. And there's been some increased kind of liberal tendencies in the church in the United States. And one of the things that we read.
That I read recently was that. One of the reasons that the United Methodists have stayed as conservative as they have. Is because 40% of the people that are a part of the United Methodists live in Africa. And Africa has been untouched by some of our cultural things going on in the United States. And I was so proud of our African brothers and sisters this past week showing up. And one of the things I read was they said.
I don't know why we're not reading the scriptures. And holding fast to them. And why we're allowing culture to affect us the way it is. And I was like thank you Jesus for being at work in the church in Africa. Even where you may need to be leading us to repent here in the United States. Like it's beautiful that the church does not just exist in one place.
But that it belongs to all of God's people all across all languages. All borders from the very beginning. And we're supposed to proclaim it to all nations. That's why a white church, a black church. They don't really exist. You can have a church that's primarily made up of white people.
A church that's primarily made up of black people. But the church is Jesus' church. And it's all nations all the time. Go make disciples of all nations. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teaching them to obey.
Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. Okay. People should become Christians through the church. That's what baptizing them means. So teaching them to observe means training people how to follow Jesus.
Baptizing them means proclaiming the gospel and seeing them place faith in Jesus. The people who are baptized in scripture are the people who've placed faith in Jesus. So as a church, we should see people come to know Jesus. We should have baptisms all the time. Because that's a celebration of someone's place their faith in Jesus. So we should see people baptized.
And we should teach them. And I've noticed that some people kind of lean one way or the other. So it's either like I just proclaimed the gospel. And if they believe in Jesus, good. See you later. Best of luck to you.
And some people are like my job is just to teach people. And it's like no. The whole church is to do all of it. Christians don't really believe in this vague progressivism. People talk about like this person's a progressive or we're working towards progress. And it's just kind of this like vague all of the world just slowly moves towards betterness into the future.
Have you noticed this? Like in general, like our culture is like anything that happened in the past was probably pretty bad. Because we're all just riding the wave of progress. Okay. First of all, that doesn't motivate me to do anything. Because if I'm just going to progress naturally, leave me alone.
I'll get there when I get there. I'm on the wave of progress. Just because I'm a few waves back. Don't be judging me. Progress will get me there. Take it easy.
See Christians don't really believe that. We don't believe progress is a tide. That even though it looks like it's going backward and forward, it's slowly coming in or slowly going out. Christians believe in active, open rebellion and reformation. We believe that we are called to rebel against hell and sin openly and actively now. Led by Jesus who openly and actively rebelled against sin in the way of the world.
When he made sure that he was going to openly and actively rebel against that. To the point that he was hated so much that he went to the cross to pay for our sin and our debt. And we openly, actively rebel against sin by walking into our places of work. And walking into our neighborhoods. And walking into our schools. And proclaiming that people are sinners that need to repent.
And they need to know that Jesus died for their sin. That the gospel is real and is actually good news. That's what we're called to do. To actually tell people about Jesus. To actively, openly tell people about Jesus. We live currently in a society that says that all viewpoints are equally valid and true.
If you are a Christian, you do not believe that. Because it's nonsense. It's dumb. All positions aren't actively valid or true. You can have your position. I'm not mad at you.
But if I believe that... Let me... My wife and I. I have a jacket that is obviously gray. My wife for years has told me that it is green. We have never said, you know what?
You see green. And I see gray. And the jacket is gray to me and green to you. And that's both true. We've never done that. Do you know why?
Because that jacket actually exists and is an actual color. Gray. And I pray for my wife that her eyes will get better. But we have continually... And she tells me that I don't know how to see. But it's like we continually point back and say, no, it's one or the other.
I was reading a book recently. And the guy's preface to the book, he wrote it to a friend of his. And he said, to my dear friend, who I believe most everything you believe is ridiculous and bad. And he said, and this has been the basis of a very good friendship. And he said, there's something to a good manly disagreement that has been the basis of our friendship. And I hope it never goes away.
And honestly, we've lost some of that. We've lost the ability to say, this is true. This is where I stand. I'm not mad at you, but I do disagree. And we've been told, keep your opinions to yourself. Don't share your religion with anybody.
Don't... Look, nonsense. If you're a Christian, you believe that this epic story we just told a second ago, it's true that people are destined for hell, but have a Savior who's paid for their sin and their debt. And we're called to tell them. We're supposed to see people baptized. We're supposed to see people come to know Jesus.
And we're supposed to do that now. We're supposed to actively, openly rebel against hell now. One of the goals and missions of our community groups is to be people that represent God to the world and actively, openly rebel against sin, rebel against the evil that is in the world, and fight for good and fight for holiness and point people to Jesus. One of the things that I pray on a regular basis, for people that I know aren't Christians but I'm not around a lot, when I get around them, I'll pray, you know, God, use me, help me to have good conversations with them, whatever. One of the things I pray for them, especially if they live in another place, is I'll pray, God, use your church.
Make Christians move in as their neighbors. God, give that Christian the courage and the boldness to harass this person every time they see them. God, use your church. God, send them Christian co-workers who love them and won't quit talking to them and won't quit chasing after them and won't quit sharing the gospel. God, use your church. And you know what I hope?
I hope that there's a mama who's like 85. And I hope and pray that every day she gets on her face before Jesus, four states away, and she prays for my neighbors and she prays for me. I hope every day she lays on her face and says, Jesus, chase my son down. Jesus, chase my daughter down and use your church. And I hope God has placed me there specifically to use me for his glory and to answer that lady's prayers. I hope in your classroom there's someone sitting two seats in front of you whose mom and grandparents every day lay on their face before the throne of God and say, send your church.
Use your people to proclaim the gospel that my son and my daughter and my granddaughter might believe. You see, let me ask you a question. Your neighbor's been sharing the gospel with you? Your co-workers been sharing the gospel with you? Have your friends at school been sharing the gospel with you? Do you know why God put you there?
Because he's using his church to infiltrate this world because it's his plan to redeem the world. It's to grab a people and say, you're going to represent me to the world and I'm going to use you to proclaim this gospel. The gospel's already happened. Sin's already defeated. But people got to know, we as a church should see people baptized because we should be opening our mouths and telling people about Jesus, that they need to repent of sin, that they need to place their faith in Jesus, and that he's the only way to God.
That, as John says, that those who would believe in his name, he gave the right to be called children of God. We're not all children of God. Those who believe in Jesus are children of God. Everybody's created by God, but we're not all his children. And honestly, I hope this is offensive. And our culture says, well, that's offensive.
You shouldn't say that your viewpoint is better. It's like, I don't care. I believe it. And I hope it's offensive enough to lead people to repent. I hope it's shocking enough so that my neighbors will turn away from sin. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
Okay. I love that it says observe, and I love that he says that I commanded you. Do you know what you need to do to make disciples? Be a disciple. Teach them to observe all that I commanded you, which means bring them in with you. He said this to 11 guys.
They heard this individually, but they knew the mission wasn't individualistic because Jesus had them together all the time. They weren't supposed to each go out and conquer the world on their own. They were given a team. And he says, proclaim the gospel and then teach them to observe. Show them what it's like. Follow actively after me.
And he says, all that I've commanded you. What did he command them? Love God with all their heart. Love their neighbor as themselves. Love their enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.
Oh, love the... I just want to point this out to y'all. Jesus says to love your neighbor as yourself. Okay. To love your enemies. And to especially love the church.
Who's excluded? He tricked us. Love your neighbor and your enemy. Everybody else falls in the middle. And then he says, and also love the church more special. More double special love.
He's like, okay. Like we're called to show people what he's like through the way we love them, through the way we serve them. He also says, deny yourself. Take up your cross and follow me. That everything belongs to Jesus. I love how unequivocal his call is throughout the gospels.
People are like, hey, I'll follow you, but let me go do this. And he's like, no. And it's like, whoa. Take it easy. Apparently you think you're something really special. Yes.
I think I'm God. Very special. Like that's, that's really like throughout the Bible. He just shows up to people's workplace. He's like, hey. Two second notice.
Give it to your boss. Let's go. That's, we're supposed to follow him with everything. That our wallets, that our time, that our efforts, that our energy, that our jobs, that our relationships belong to Jesus. Period. That's what a disciple looks like.
Period. These guys had jobs. They had things. But Jesus says, no, follow me. Now, for some of us, going means go to your job. Jesus put you there on purpose.
Some of it, it means quit your job and go to another country. Learn another language. Live your life pursuing the glory and the fame of Jesus because currently you're just pursuing the glory and the fame of you. You see that the undercurrent of our rebellion against God was that we were supreme. That's why Jesus comes in and says, deny yourself. Because he's reversing that.
We're not supreme. He is. So, that we would be disciples who make disciples. That's the call. Jesus says, and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. This is it.
It's all about Jesus. This is the call to the church. And guess what? It's worked. Plan A has worked. These 11 guys see the most rapid growth in any kind of organized belief system ever.
And it's traveled through Europe. And it's traveled through Asia. And it's taking names in China right now. And it's traveled through Africa and South America and the United States. And Jesus' church has continued to expand and to grow. And here's the thing.
We've gotten really comfortable. But this is our call. This is why we're Christians. This is what he's called us to do. He saved us to proclaim his excellencies and to make us into a group of people that would follow after him, making sure everybody else comes to know Jesus. If you're a Christian, you believe this story.
That our major problem is that we've removed God from his position, mostly placed ourself there, and that all of us are destined for an eternity, either set free from sin or absolutely completely engulfed in it, engulfed in the wrath and the havoc that sin wreaks on our souls. And God has saved you to proclaim his excellencies to your friends, to your family, to your coworkers, to your neighbors. And honestly, if they don't like it, if they don't like you, love them enough to not care. This is our call. This is what we're supposed to do. Two questions.
Are you a disciple? You following after Jesus? Does he own your time? Does he own your wallet? Does he own your life goals? Have you signed a blank sheet of paper and slid it across the table?
Said you fill it out? I'm yours? Question two. You making disciples? That's what we're called to do. When was the last time you told somebody about Jesus?
One of the things I think we think a lot of times is like, well, I'm not good enough. I don't know enough. I'm not far along enough. If you were going to help me go up a mountain and you were at the top of the mountain and just yelled instructions at me, I would get eaten by a bear and it would be your fault. Part of the best way to lead me up a mountain is to be two steps ahead of me so that you can see the bear first. And take off running.
Like that's one of the ways we make disciples is I just know a little bit more. Like I just, I'm just fumbling through this with you, but I'm trying to follow Jesus in normal life too. You know what I love about this call that Jesus gives? He starts it off with, all authority in heaven on earth has been given to me. Behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age. Jesus gives this call after the cross.
Every time I read this, I feel terrible. Every time I read the Great Commission, I'm like, I'm such a horrible person. I don't love people enough. I don't believe this enough. I don't trust God enough. I don't have enough faith.
Jesus gives us this after the cross where he's already paid for all of our weakness and all of our doubt and all of our rebellion and all of our lack of faith. And he calls us in his authority and in his presence to just be a part of his mission. You don't need to feel guilty. There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ. You don't need to feel terrible or scared. Like all of his authority and all of his presence, you just get to go.
Well, that's the hope we have in Jesus. But that's the point of the church. It's one of the reasons we focus on groups so much because we think it's the best way to make disciples. If we come up with another one, we'll talk about groups. We'll talk about something else. If we realize our church isn't making disciples, if we go through stages where we're not baptizing believers, if we're not helping train up leaders, if we're not multiplying groups, I'll actively work to shut this down.
If we quit proclaiming the gospel, this is what we're called to do. This is our job. This is our goal. This is our hope. We believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, died in our place for our sins so that we don't have to be good. Do you know how good that news is?
Do you know how terrible we are? How little we deserve? And how much we take the little bit of piddly mess that we have and prance around with it in front of God and act like He owes us something? And Jesus took everything and paid for our sin to welcome us to Him, and we're free. And then He says, go share this. Go share this hope and this life and this joy and this, my glory and my holiness with everybody else because they're all running around trying to fix themselves.
They're all running around with no hope whatsoever trying to win a losing game. Do you know how good the gospel is to your soul? How freeing it is when you think about it, when you remember it, when you meditate on it? Why on earth would we not want to share that with our friends and our neighbors and our coworkers? If you believe the gospel is burdensome, you don't believe the gospel. Someone has told you something wrong.
I would love to talk to you afterwards and explain to you very clearly how ineffective you will be at saving yourself. I can say it now. Very unaffected. Ineffective. Unaffected isn't a word. Somebody help me out, y'all.
Band's going to come back up. We're going to sing. When we leave from Sundays, I think sometimes we say stuff like, you're dismissed. That's not really true. You're sent. You see, we exist as the church on mission.
That's our call. And I pray that we believe the gospel so much as a church family that we don't care if our culture thinks we're offensive because we believe that it's true. And I pray that we believe the gospel so much that Jesus so grabs our souls that we can't help but in his authority and with his presence help other people come to know Jesus. I want you to take a minute and think about the places God has placed you because you've been sent. You've been equipped by his Holy Spirit. You've been given the gospel information, the knowledge that you need and the faith and the hope of Jesus and you've been sent.
And I want you to think about the people around you who don't know Jesus. And if you're here today and you don't know Jesus, maybe you haven't picked this up yet. That's all we want for you. I want Jesus for you. I've had friends before at work and they're like, oh, you want me to become a Christian? It's like, yeah, that'd be great.
That's exactly what I want. That's kind of one of the reasons that I will harass you forever. That's what I want. I want you to become a Christian. I think it's great. We're unashamed of the fact that Jesus saves and that he redeems and that he makes us holy.
I stand before God, holy and blameless and above reproach, Colossians says. I didn't do that. I actively every day do things to undo that. But Jesus did it and it's done forever. And that's my hope and that's our hope and that we've been called, we've been commissioned. God's taken a group of people and he said, you're going to represent me to the world.
So let's do that. God, we pray that you would empower us for your mission, that you would use our groups for your glory, that people would come to know you. There would never be a significant amount of time before we have to rebuild that portable baptistry and baptize people in your name. And I pray that we would be active in calling people to observe everything that you've commanded, that we would be disciples and make disciples. That you would empower that in us, that we would accept the call that you gave to your original disciples as we continue in that line of people who've believed in your name, who've been called out of darkness and into your glorious light.
We would proclaim your excellencies as the people called to represent you on earth. God, I pray that you would help us to submit everything to you. Most of all, our own names, our own glory, our own fame, our own happiness, all the things that we seek to fill ourselves up, that we would know that hope and joy and fulfillment only come through you. God, I pray that you'd send us exactly where you want us to use your church to see more people come to know you. I pray that there's a large section of people in Columbia in heaven because this church exists. People in West Columbia that get to gather together and celebrate that you equipped and sent Mill City Church to be a part of this city, to see people come to know you.
We love you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.
May 22