The Greatest Commission | Matthew 28:18-20

for the month of February,

we're going to have a short sermon series

called The Greatest,

in which four different preachers over the next four weeks

will speak to you about some of the great themes of the Bible.

But I'll leave that to each man to convince you

of what they're speaking about and why it's so great.

Today, we'll be focusing in on the Great Commission,

which has been given to every single Christian

by our Lord Jesus Christ.

And we're doing this because it is a wonderful thing

for every single one of us to pause and reflect

and ask ourselves if we are really obeying

some of the last words given to us Christ's disciples.

And that's what I wanna speak to you on today,

because this really is the greatest commission

given to the church.

So in saying that, if we think about it,

we are a people who are actually under orders

from headquarters, from the King of Kings himself

to go and make disciples of him.

And so the words that we're going to look at this morning

aren't just a suggestion,

but a divine commission given to all of us.

And so one thing that we must be all thinking

about this morning and ask ourselves,

what is the Great Commission?

What exactly is Jesus asking of us?

Because of all the things that we wanna do

as a church and individually,

if we don't understand what Jesus is asking of us,

it's very likely that we'll go about it in the wrong way.

And if we're not careful,

ultimately go about it in our own strength.

But if we do understand our Lord's commission,

if we understand that Jesus has called us,

that he has commissioned us to the most awesome mission

ever given to humanity,

to a mission that only he can really accomplish,

yet one that he expects us to participate in,

then I think it will totally transform the way

that we look at evangelism

and disciple making in our church.

So that's what I'm wanting to do with you today.

I'm wanting as a church's disciples of Jesus Christ

to reflect with you on the words that have been given

to all Christians throughout all times

so that we might understand our calling

and be edified in that,

that this is something that the living God

not only wants us to do, but is with us in the work.

But before we do any of that,

would you please join me in asking our living God

to help us understand these words

that we're looking at this morning?

Would you pray with me?

Lord Jesus, it was once said to your disciples,

will you leave me also?

To which they replied, you have the words of eternal life.

These words are true.

These words are beautiful.

And we asked this morning

that you would pierce our hearts,

give us ears to help us to understand this commission

and that you would transform us

and be with us in the work

and help us to know that you are with us in the work.

We ask for this in your name, Jesus, amen.

Now, before we dive in head first

into the details of what our Lord has commanded us to do,

I wanna actually start with the greatest encouragement

that undergirds this passage.

And we see it in the way that grace bookends these verses,

which is the basis for the Great Commission.

Let me set the scene.

Jesus told his followers that he would rise from the dead

and that he would meet them on a mountain in Galilee.

And so after he conquers death, he meets them

and he says, all authority in heaven and on earth

has been given to me, verse 18.

And then after he's given them the Great Commission,

notice how he ended all.

He says, surely I'm with you always

to the very end of the age, verse 20.

Do you see what he's doing there?

Jesus bookends the Great Commission

in between two huge statements of grace.

He began by telling his disciples

that all authority in heaven and on earth

had been given to him and he ends with the assurance

of the promise that he will always be with his people.

Now let's step back and have a think

about the immediate context here.

Jesus is speaking with 11 guys

and he's telling them to go and make disciples of what?

Not of their local villages, towns or cities, but of what?

All nations.

That's what Jesus is saying here.

He's saying, you 11 guys are to go out and fish for people,

fish for people from every tribe, nation, tongue and people.

And so like the original audience

would have needed to understand God's grace in all of this,

we too need to understand it.

And so let's slow down here

and think about that first phrase.

All authority in heaven and on earth

has been given to me because understanding that

is hugely important.

Now I say it's hugely important

because Jesus is claiming to be the fulfillment

of Daniel's prophecy in which the prophet

saw the ancient of days, which is another name

for God Almighty, he gives the kingdom,

the eternal kingdom to the Son of man

and all power so that, and this is important for us

to understand here, so that all nations might worship him.

It's found right there in Daniel 7, verses 13 to 14.

Daniel 7:13–14

And that's what Jesus is claiming for himself here.

He's saying, I'm the one that Daniel saw God the Father

give everything to and indeed it has been given to me

so that all nations might worship me.

Now these 11 guys would have needed to understand that

because Jesus was sending them on an impossible mission.

Now I don't know how many civilizations

or known people groups would have been going

through their minds, but I'm sure that they would have been

thinking the same thing as we would in our own context.

And that's that there is a lot of people in this world

and the work can seem so overwhelming.

Just this week I had the privilege of hearing

from a mission organization called The Big Give

which started in Canada, which encourages the local church

to reach their local communities by putting on

a garage sale once a year where everything,

and I mean everything is absolutely free.

It's a really good idea.

They encourage the local church to feed, help, give,

and care for anyone who might come by

in real practical ways.

And one of the things that really stood out to me

was just how many people who they met,

who walked past their doors for years,

how they didn't have a clue who Jesus really is.

That's not to say that they might know about the church

or Christianity from pop culture,

which is never a great thing,

but they said not many people know who Jesus really is.

And that's the same in our city of Perth,

even here in Armadale.

Many might know that there's a church here

that we have jump and we have a wonderful food outlet,

but most likely many don't know who Jesus is.

And so the work that we have cut out for us

here at Grace Christian Church in just this city alone

can seem overwhelming when we start to think

about what Jesus has asked us to do.

And this is why understanding the grace of God

that undergirds the great commission is so important.

All authority in heaven and on earth

has been given to Jesus.

If we understand that church,

if we understand that our King,

who is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords,

if we understand that he has all authority

and that it's being given to him,

then we can walk confidently

into any city, town, village, suburb,

any situation and share the gospel

because no power on earth can stop that from happening.

And that's not to say that many might tell you

that you're not allowed to share the gospel

with them or even their nation,

but have a think about who's really in charge here.

Think about these words of the risen King of Kings,

all authority in heaven and on earth.

That means church, anywhere we go,

anywhere we might find ourselves, Jesus is in charge.

I don't know about you,

but that is such a freeing and glorious thing

when the media, when pop culture,

when Western society says you're not welcome,

you're not allowed to share Jesus in our schools,

in the public sphere with your work colleagues.

When it all seems too much,

well, we have the words of Jesus, he's in charge.

And he has commissioned us, his disciples, to make him known.

A five volume series called 2000 Years of Christ's Power

was recently recommended to me by our very own Ben Wright,

who was playing drums this morning.

Now the series covers 2000 years of Christ's reign

over this world through the church.

And historian Nick Needham has done the most outstanding job

in showing how Christ indeed did end up working

through these 11 guys who went on to establish the church

in Jerusalem and then Samaria,

and then later through Paul and then after them

to the ends of the earth through others.

And might I highly commend to you to study church history

because it attests to many, many Christians throughout the years

despite real opposition from every tribe,

nation, tongue and people.

Well, they keep going and they knew

that they weren't doing things in their own strength.

No, they took these words literally

that Christ has ultimate authority and power

no matter where they went.

And the church in Australia is both testament to that

and we need to remember that.

So that's first, the Lord Jesus has all authority and power,

but next we notice that He is with us in the mission.

We see that in verse 20, don't we?

Jesus says, I'm with you always to the very end of the age.

Now, as I said before,

we just have finished our series in the book of Philippians.

However, you might remember that it was there in chapter one

that Paul said to the church,

I thank my God every time I remember you.

In all my prayers for you,

I always pray with joy because of your partnership

in the gospel from the first day until now,

being confident of this,

that he who began a good work in you

will carry it onto completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Here, what our apostle is saying there.

He's saying that no born again Christian

on the face of the planet is working in their own strength.

No, we all have the spirit of God working in us.

And Paul is saying until the day of Christ,

when he returns in the power and glory of his kingdom,

Jesus is doing his good work in us

and is doing his good work with us.

In other words, we're not left alone to do the Christian life

or the Christian commission because Christ is with us always.

And that's the way we must understand these words

that we are gonna look at this morning.

That's the way we should understand the commission.

Yes, we are to be faithful to the work,

but ultimately it is Jesus who is working in

and through his church to do his work

until he comes again.

And it is he who has ultimate authority and power

no matter where we go.

And we see great encouragement in this

if we see the great grace that has been given to the church.

So we might ask ourselves,

what exactly is the great commission?

What does Jesus want us to actually do?

Well, we see the details beginning in verse 19.

Jesus says, therefore go and make disciples of all nations.

Now, I think the going parts pretty self-explanatory

and we'll look at that in a bit of detail in just a moment.

But we might ask for now, we are to go,

but for what purpose?

Well, that's what Jesus says here.

It's to make disciples.

Now, I just wanna be crystal clear on something.

It's actually impossible to make true disciples of Jesus

in our own strength.

Let me say that again.

It's actually impossible to make true disciples of Jesus

in our own strength.

Now, don't get me wrong.

We're called to share the good news of Jesus Christ

with others.

We can certainly do that and we must,

but ask anyone who has heard these words of Jesus

and put them into practice.

Ask them if they have ever been able

to give someone a new heart.

I'm sure they would all give you the same answer.

And that would be, no, it's impossible

to change anyone's heart.

It's impossible to make anyone born again.

This again, church, this again goes back

to our realizing that we need God in the Great Commission,

as it's only the Holy Spirit that can bring about new birth.

Jesus said it like this,

one of Israel's great rabbis and Nicodemus,

the wind blows wherever it pleases.

You hear it sound, but you can't tell where it comes from

or where it's going.

So it is with everyone who was born of the Spirit,

John 3.8.

In other words, you can tell the truth of God's word.

You can share the gospel with people and we must,

but it's only the Holy Spirit that can open their hearts

and minds to bring them to accept it.

And so we already see in just these first few words

that our Lord has called us to do something impossible

in our own strength and power.

We are called to go and make disciples,

yet we are unable to change the human heart.

That is what Jesus has called us to here.

And that's why we have to see

that we must depend on Jesus in the work.

Now, why am I telling you any of this?

Why is this important to know?

Well, church, this is where understanding

the Great Commission will help us not go wrong

in trying to obey it.

Because if we only understand discipleship

as getting people to come to church,

to join a church, to join a ministry,

even to become a member of our church,

then we're missing what Christ has called us to do.

That's because disciples, as the Bible sees it,

are people who believe, not just in Jesus,

but in what he had to say,

and they seek to live that out in all that they do.

Why?

Because the Holy Spirit has revealed to them

that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

He has opened their hearts to the gospel,

and they have been spiritually born again.

Brothers and sisters, as much as we might try,

we actually can't produce that sort of new

and willing heart in other people.

It is only the Holy Spirit that can do that work

in another person's heart, though,

and this is so important for us to understand this morning.

He uses us and our obedience to his commission

to bring that about.

So we're left with a question.

How do we go about all this work?

How do we obey our Lord's words here?

Well, we see it here in verses 19 and 20.

Three verbs, go, baptize, teach.

Those three things again, go, baptize, and teach.

That is key to understanding our responsibility

and how to make disciples of the nations.

So let's briefly look at each one.

First, we are to go.

Now, as I said before, the going part

is pretty self-explanatory

because remember who Jesus is speaking to here.

Many of his disciples were fishermen,

and it was to them, if you might remember,

at the beginning of his ministry that he said,

follow me, and I will make you fish for people.

And every fisherman on the face of the planet knows

that they're not to stand on the seashore calling out,

here, fishy, fishy.

It's lunacy, and the disciples knew that.

They knew that to be the case because Jesus said

for his disciples, the greatest model

of discipleship making that we could ever hope to have.

And we see it all throughout the gospel.

You see, God, the Son, left his heavenly home

and came to us.

God took on flesh so that he could be involved

in our humanity, in our lives, in our mess,

and then he showed us what it was to live in obedience

to our Father in heaven.

And so when Jesus said to his disciples,

go and make disciples, they knew exactly

what he was asking of them.

They were to go and model the life

that Christ had modeled for them.

Now, we could spend the rest of our morning

on just exactly what that looks like

and how we might do that,

not just here at Grace Christian Church,

but for us individually as well.

However, I just wanna say a couple of things here.

First, our going out day to day to our mission fields,

it might be to our own families, workplaces,

or to some other group, or like some families

in this church, you might be called

to literally pack up everything

and move to another nation.

However, whatever your mission field is,

Jesus expects that his people

are personally involved in the work.

That's what Jesus has showed us.

He got involved in the life of those he was discipling.

He modeled what he expected us to understand.

Second, Christ's vision for his church,

for his people, for his bride,

is that it would be full of people

from all sorts of places.

That meant for his immediate Jewish audience,

they weren't just to go to other Jews.

And so for us, though it might be more comfortable,

we must be very careful to not just hone in on people

who act, talk, or even think like us.

You know, this good news is for all people.

And we are called to go to them and to make disciples.

And so you might wanna ask the Lord this week

where he would have you go.

Who would he have you to speak to?

All that to say, brothers and sisters,

our responsibility in making disciples,

in modeling the Christian life,

is to first be disciples of Jesus Christ ourselves

so that wherever we go,

we model the Christian life for others.

That's why at Grace Christian Church,

we always endeavor to hold Christ among us high

through his word and ask for God's spirit to change us

more and more into the image of his son, into Christ.

Because it's as we know our Lord more and more,

it's as we follow him and know him more and more,

that we will go about our everyday lives

wherever we might find ourselves

and model what it is to be a disciple of Jesus.

So first we go, second we baptize.

Now you might have noticed in the newsletter

that went out this week that I'm going to be spending

this year walking you through the Westminster Confession.

And how the Westminster theologians

summed up the whole Council of Scripture

in regards to how we should think about

and practice baptism, it's wonderful.

And I'll hit on that in the coming months.

But for now, I just want to point out a couple of things

that Jesus says here in our text this morning.

First, we're to baptize in the name of our triune God.

And that is incredibly important for us to notice here.

Because it's here that we see that the first disciples,

the first Christians fully accepted Christ's claim

of deity as he commanded to give the sign

of the new covenant and seal people with his name

being on par with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

And second, the sign and seal is to be given

in the context of modeling and teaching.

That's the context that Jesus expects

this sign to be given in.

In the context of one having the Christian life

taught and modeled for them.

That's why baptism is to be done by and within

the local body of believers because it is meant to happen

in the context of Christian discipleship.

That's why when our church baptizes people,

you, the members of Christ's body,

make a vow to those being baptized to help them

in their discipleship by modeling the Christian life

for them.

We did that a couple of times just last year.

You might remember when we baptized Zayles and Raj,

we didn't just give the sign of baptism,

the sign of the covenant

and then wish them well in their individual journeys.

No, we baptized them in the context of the church

and made the promise to help them

in the whole discipling process.

How?

Well, by being there for them to model the Christian life

and to help them in the way that they should go.

It's a communal vow and acknowledgement

that we can't do discipleship as alone rangers.

No, we need one another in our Christian life

and discipleship.

And so baptism is to be administered by disciples

and they were to continue to disciple one another

in the local church.

That's why one of the great concerns

of the Westminster Presbyterian denomination

of which this church is a part is that we go

and we plant churches wherever God may see fit

to send our missionaries.

And we plant churches because it's important

that we have local churches for people to get to

because that's where disciples are made.

We never wanna go and tell people the gospel,

see them converted, see them baptized

and then pack up and leave without a place for them

to be discipled in.

So we go, we baptize third we teach.

Now Jesus is pretty specific in what he expects

his disciples to teach others.

We are to teach others not just to know what Jesus taught

but and you will notice it here in our text

were to teach them so that they might obey what he taught.

That is absolutely essential to the Great Commission.

You see brothers and sisters, we must be careful

not to think we're fulfilling the Great Commission

if we just talk to others about church,

about ministry, about philosophy, about history,

about our own personal experiences.

Now though those things might be helpful

in clearing the way and to get conversation started,

our ultimate goal is to teach people what Jesus taught

so that they might obey all that he commanded.

We need to see the difference there.

There is information and then there's transformation

and the commission states that we make disciples

by telling others all that Jesus commanded

so that as they hear the words of Jesus,

the Holy Spirit might open their hearts to obey

all that he has said.

That's why we use the Bible in our discipleship,

in preaching and teaching in all that we do

as all scripture is breathed out by God

and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction

and for training in righteousness

so that the people of God may be complete and equipped

for every good work.

Second Timothy 3, 16 and 17.

Church, I hope you have captured something this morning.

We have been given the greatest commission

to go and disciple the nations.

Admittedly, it is an overwhelming task if we look at it

and as we have seen this morning, absolutely impossible

if we go about it in our own strength.

That is why every step of the way in everything we do,

in everything we are, we need to keep our eyes firmly set

on the one who is not just the king of the nations

but has power over all things.

It is he who has given us the great commission

but it is also he who is in the work with us

every step of the way.

He is the one who opens the eyes of the blind

and brings about new birth from the spiritually dead

but and this is the most incredible thing.

He uses people like you and me to do so.

Church, Jesus is called every single one of us

to be disciples so as to make disciples.

We are all called to go, show and tell all those around us.

That is the goal of the great commission.

Not to have nations full of people that know something

about Jesus or the church but to know Christ intimately,

to love him and thus obey him and all that they are

and all that he had to say out of the overflow

of the work of the spirit in their lives

so that they too might go and impact others around them.

That's the great commission.

It is the greatest commission.

No wonder we need to know Jesus more and more

and more in our own lives because we can't do

any of this alone but in saying that,

as we've seen this morning, it was never designed

and given to be done on our own.

No, Jesus gave this so that we might partner with him

in his work to see the nations disciple

and nothing is impossible for our God

and those that trust him.

Would you pray with me?

Lord Jesus, we are thankful for these words

that you have given us, an impossible task to do on our own.

Lord, we ask that you would help us,

that you would show us what it is to obey these words

that we have heard this morning.

Lord, we wanna see many come into your kingdom.

We wanna see many born again.

We wanna see many set free from the power of sin and death

and we wanna see many love you and obey you

and that they would go out into their contexts

and share the good news that you have given to us.

Lord, these are all things that we ask of you

and know that we need from you.

And Father, we would ask that in the work of your spirit,

through your son, that you would hold Christ high here

at Grace Christian Church

and that you would draw all manner of people to yourself,

that you would convert people

and that you would use this place for your glory.

We ask for this in Jesus' name, amen.