"What Is Dispensationalism? The church has a new purpose" Matthew 28:19-20 Sunday Evening Worship Service

So tonight I want to give you kind of an overview of how I see the meta-narrative of the Old Testament, the plot of the Old Testament, kind of the biblical theology of the Old Testament, the storyline of the Old Testament, and how it runs into the New Testament and then diffuses or diverges there.

So this is going to be kind of an overview of the Bible history, and then I think that's going to bring us to a place where we understand what the purpose of the church is and how it's unique in church history or in world history, really.

But I'm using the phrase the purpose of the church, and it is helpful to think of what a purpose statement is or a mission statement of an organization.

I want to read to you a few different mission statements, and you in your own mind are supposed to guess which organization this mission statement belongs to.

Here's one.

To empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Anyone know?

Oh, I heard it.

Microsoft.

Whoever said Microsoft wins the prize, Pastor Michael, you win it.

To empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, they just changed their mission statement, too.

So that's that's impressive, Michael, that you got that.

Uh here's, I think, an easier one.

We seek to be the world's most customer-centric company where customers can find and discover anything they may want to buy online at a great price.

To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.

Yeah, Nike, just do it.

Um, to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Google.

Yeah.

Um, to give this is by far my favorite one.

To give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same thing as rich people.

Yes, Walmart.

To make people happy.

Oh no.

Somebody said McDonald's for the recording.

The the mission of McDonald's is not to make you happy, but to make you critically ill.

To make people happy is Disney.

Yes.

Jeez.

I thought we'd have parents here, but they're all in a wana, I guess.

All right, how about this one?

To make mature followers of Jesus Christ who seek the Lord daily, serve each other faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.

Yes.

IBC, that would be our mission statement.

Good job, everyone.

Uh if you had a mission statement for your life, it's worth asking yourself what you think that it would be.

And uh your mission statement, of course, is what governs your conduct, what motivates you when you wake up in the morning and say, This is what I'm doing today, because this is my mission statement.

This is why God made me, this is why I'm on the earth, this is what I want to do with my life.

And I think the New Testament gives you your mission statement here at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus commands you to go into all the world preaching the gospel, making disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey all that he has commanded us.

That really is the Christian's mission statement.

It's repeated in different ways.

It's at the end of all four gospels, at 2 Corinthians 4, Paul says it, that your job is to cause uh grace to abound to more and more people, so that God's glory is magnified.

This is divine mathematics.

The more people you share the gospel with, the more God's glory is magnified.

Not that God's glory is multiplied.

Uh God doesn't have more glory when you evangelize, but his glory is magnified through evangelism.

You're one person who's glorifying God, you share the gospel with somebody else.

Now there's two people who are glorifying God through their common faith and so forth.

God's glory is exponentially magnified in the earth through evangelism.

So that's the Christian's mission statement.

I think just about every Christian would agree with that and understand that.

But what I want to do for you tonight is I think it's just so helpful to fit that mission statement in redemptive history, in the meta-narrative of the Bible, so that you understand what a privilege that mission statement is and how unique it is in world history, honestly.

I think a good place to look at that mission statement goes back to Genesis 3, where sin entered the world.

And in Genesis 3, uh you see, you begin to see God's calling for the world as Adam and Eve fall into sin.

They are banished from the garden, and then the first promise of redemption comes to them in the garden.

This is Genesis 3 verse 15, where God says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.

Genesis 3:15

He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

I'll put that verse on the screen for you so you can actually see it.

This is the beginning of God's unfolding plan of redemption, where he tells Adam and Eve that I'm going to bring a Savior into the world.

Sin has entered the world through your transgression.

And through your transgression, sin is going to go to many.

However, I'm going to bring forgiveness into the world also through this charge right here.

I'm putting enmity between you and the woman.

This is a rebuke to the serpent.

And between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his seal.

We've looked at this verse many, many times over the last few years.

But understand in this verse is the promise of redemption.

It's the promise that the Savior, the Redeemer, the one who will end up crushing Satan and restoring the world back to a garden-like condition, that will be a person that does that, a descendant of the second Adam.

Somebody who comes from Adam and Eve will be the one who brings peace to the world.

It will not be an angel who does this, even though Satan himself is a fallen angel.

It will not be an angel that defeats Satan.

God is going to defeat Satan through a human.

He's going to usher the world back to Eden.

At this point in redemptive history, you don't know how far the world's going to get from Eden.

In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve haven't left it yet.

That's coming up.

They're about to walk out of the garden.

But before that, God promises one day you'll be back.

The you here is not Adam and Eve.

The you here is mankind.

Mankind will be back to the garden.

God is going to return the world to paradise, only it'll be better.

It won't be changeable.

It won't fall again.

And he's going to use the offspring of Eve.

You see in here the virgin birth prophesied in the middle of the verse, and it will be between your offspring, the devil, and all the false religions that he's going to spawn, and her offspring, speaking of the seed of the woman.

Well, that's not how babies are made, of course.

This is every human being ever is made from the seed of the man except for this one.

This baby will be fully human, will come from Adam and Eve, but the seed will be from Eve.

This is a prophecy of the virgin birth, buried all the way back here in Genesis 3.

And this starts history on its course.

From this point forward, the great question in the Bible is who is the Redeemer?

Who is it going to be?

You're wondering through the promise of redemption, how is God going to bring the Savior to the world?

It becomes a bit of a mystery, the Bible does at that point.

As people are going their own way from God, they're rebelling against God, and yet in the background, kind of running in the background of Genesis 3 forward, is this idea that there will be a savior.

The Bible, as I said, it's kind of a mystery novel at that point.

Who will the Savior be?

Adam and Eve, of course, thought that it might be Abel, but Abel was murdered by Cain.

Adam and Eve have another child named Seth.

Seth, of course, means seed, by the way.

Seth is the Hebrew word for seed.

And so you can tell what Adam and Eve are thinking here.

They have a promise that the Savior will come from Eve's seed.

They now have a new baby after Abel was murdered, and so they name him Seed.

They name him Seth.

But Seth is not the promise.

Noah, his parents thought it might be him.

Remember, they named him Noah because he could give his people rest.

That's the one thing Noah was not able to do.

I mean, that's the opposite day right there.

Noah didn't usher in rest to the world, he ushered in a global flood.

If you fast forward from there, you see for the first time in world history, God institutes nations after the flood.

And the nations come, and now the seed is kind of lost.

If you're tracking the seed, nations are now at play.

There's barriers up, there's languages up, Tower of Babel scatters the languages.

The great question is, where will the seed come?

And that's kind of the next stop in this history.

You see the promise of redemption in Genesis 3, but you see the need for grace back in Genesis chapter 11.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

Genesis 11 describes the confusing of the languages.

I'll put that verse on the screen for you.

Therefore, the place was called Babel because there Yahweh confused the languages of the whole earth.

From there Yahweh scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.

So now you have confused languages.

This is what I mean by the need for grace.

If you're trying to, it's a shell game here.

Where did the seed go?

Where did the promise of the Savior go?

Did he go that way?

Did he go that way?

Is he in this nation, that nation, this language, that language?

There's the need for grace, but there's not the availability of grace.

Nobody knows what nation will be the one that brings the seed into the world.

And this leads forward in the meta nerve of the Bible to the plan of redemption.

It's more fully unveiled in Genesis 12.

Genesis 12 is where Yahweh calls Abram.

He lets you know that he's not going to bring the seed to one of the existing nations, but rather he's going to choose a new nation, a nation that's not a nation, is how he says in Deuteronomy 7.

I chose you even though you weren't a nation yet.

I chose you to be the nation for the Savior because you were no nation.

Unless you know God is, in a sense, not playing favorites, he's not looking at all the nations of the world in Genesis 12 and saying, I choose this one to have the Savior.

No, he looks at all the nations of the world in Genesis 12 and says, I choose none of them.

I'm going to start a new nation, a nation that is rooted and founded in faith.

Genesis 12, verses 1 through 3.

Genesis 12:1–3

Yahweh said to Abram, Go forth from your country.

This is letting you know the change here.

Everything was defined by countries in Genesis 11, but not in Genesis 12.

You're going to leave your country.

You're going to leave your relatives.

You're going to leave your father's house to the land which I will show you.

I'll make you a great nation.

I will bless you and make your name great.

So you shall be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you.

The one who curses you, I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

This, of course, is speaking of Israel.

Israel will be established here with this calling of Abram.

They will be the blessing to the world.

Israel will not be a blessing to the world through any means other than through the Savior.

They will steward God's law.

They hold God's law in their nation.

They steward it until the time that the Savior comes to fulfill it and complete it.

That is the means by which Israel will be a blessing to the nations.

And then when the nations ultimately receive the gospel, they are receiving it through the seed of Abram.

In you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

This is a very particular promise to Abram.

In him resides the seed.

The promised seed is in him, and it will go to the new nation.

The seed will come from Israel.

The savior will come from Israel.

That is the promise.

That is the promise of the plan of redemption.

But the plan of redemption doesn't stop there.

God goes forward and promises that Israel will be isolated.

God then gives Israel a law.

And the law God gives Israel is designed to cut them off from the nations around them.

They will have their own language, they will have their own customs, they'll have their own calendar, they'll have their own food, they'll have their own dress.

They won't intermarry with the nations around them.

They will be isolated.

You understand this even with how Israel fled Egypt.

I mean, when they plundered them.

When Israel set off from Egypt, they plundered them.

They took their gold and their silver and their treasure, they plundered them.

All of Israel's firstborn died, and their army was drowned in the river.

So this is not a strategic move if your goal is like long-term friendship and relationship with the nation.

If you're gonna start a nation right next to them and you want to be political allies here, you don't start yourself by drowning all of them and killing their firstborns and stealing everything.

But this is how Israel was found.

And I say stealing, I know they weren't really stealing, in a sense, it was back wages.

But they took it.

They were isolated, and they would remain isolated throughout the history until the Savior came.

They would have their own language, their own customs, their own holidays, their own food.

Everything about the Torah was designed clean, unclean.

That's it.

That was the Torah, clean and unclean.

The Gentiles, unclean.

Unclean.

The Jews could be clean, but lots of uncleanness, lots of repentance, lots of bathing and sacrifices and ceremonial washings, but everything divided between clean and unclean.

This was designed to isolate Israel.

Why did God want to isolate Israel?

Well, the answer is because it's going to guard them, guard the seed, guard the promised seed until he arrives.

Had Israel intermarried, had Israel diluted and intermarried with the nations, the promised seed and the identity of the promised seed would be lost.

But through the isolation of Israel and the continuity of the twelve tribes until the time of Christ, the genealogies as the New Testament begins with, is showing you the importance of this, you're able to trace the Savior back through Abram.

That's the idea.

Israel will be isolated until the Savior comes.

Not only will Israel be isolated, but Israel will be a witness.

Israel is going to be a witness to the nations.

And here's where you see just a monumental contrast in the Old Testament.

Israel was supposed to be attracted to the nations so that the nations would find out about the seed.

But Israel was not supposed to be a witness to the nation in any way like the church is a witness to the nation.

So don't confuse those.

Israel is supposed to be a witness to the nations through what I would call an attraction model.

This is described in Deuteronomy chapter 4.

Deuteronomy 4 · chapter mention

Yahweh says, I've taught you statutes and rules.

As Yahweh commanded, this is Moses speaking, as Yahweh commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you're entering to take possession of.

Keep them and do them.

This will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, Surely this is a great nation and a wise and understanding people.

For what great nation is there that has a God so near to it as Yahweh, our God is to us, whenever we call upon him.

What great nation is there that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law they say before you today?

So this is the way Israel was supposed to function.

They were supposed to keep the Torah.

The Torah was supposed to isolate them, they were supposed to keep it.

And you think, how would the nations know about the promised Savior if Israel is so isolated?

Because of their transformed lives, it would have a gravitational pull.

The nations would come to Israel, they would hear about the justice and the mercy that is on full display in Israel, and they would come to see if it's true, and they would find out that lo and behold, it is.

This is the model of the Old Testament.

They would be a witness to the nations.

You see this sometimes, of course, with the Queen of Sheba who comes, with others who come, but let me chart this for you this way.

This is the way the Old Testament was supposed to function.

Israel is supposed to lead a transformed life, and through the way they kept the Torah, the other nations would be gravitating towards them.

They would find out through their encounter with Israel that they are leading a transformed life because of the promise for the Savior, because of the holiness of Yahweh, their expectation that the line of David ultimately would bring the Savior into the world.

This is what the nations would rage against, of course, in Psalm 2, but this is the promise that would also be attractive to them.

That's Old Testament.

That's the mission of Israel in the Old Testament.

Did this ever work?

Well, sort of.

1 Kings 10.

The Queen of Sheba does come.

Happy are your men, happier your servants who continually stand before you.

This is the Queen of Sheba's declaration.

Blessed be Yahweh your God, who's delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel because Yahweh loved Israel forever.

He's made you king.

That you may execute justice and righteousness.

You know, if you read all of 1 Kings 10, the Queen of Sheba comes, she can't believe the wealth of Israel.

There's pieces of silver on the ground because people are too lazy to pick them up.

It's only silver.

That's Israel in 1 Kings 10.

They were wealthy, there was righteousness, justice, but there was wisdom from Solomon.

There was the promise of the line of David that even the Queen of Sheba identified.

Blessed be Israel forever, because he made you king, Solomon.

The Queen of Sheba is recognizing that the promised seed is inside the line of David, resident in Solomon.

This is the way it was supposed to work.

But you know the next verse in 1 Kings 10 is Solomon marries a thousand women.

And he he brings in paganism to Israel.

That window is closed.

It's never opened again, really.

You know, the only other times you see it open in the Old Testament is when, you know, Naaman the leper, the Syrian military officer, is sick and is desperate, and it's an Israelite slave who tells him, You should go to Israel.

He goes, not because of Israel's justice and mercy.

I mean, if anything, the opposite.

He goes out of desperation.

But it's Gentiles like that.

I mean, the Gentiles you see that are encountering the hope of the promised seed in the Old Testament weren't drawn like the Queen of Sheba was, weren't drawn like Deuteronomy 4 commanded Israel to do.

They were drawn out of desperation, the widow of Zarephath, who just, you know, it's ravens bringing Elijah food.

I mean, that's what's happening in the Old Testament.

Those are the kinds of Gentiles that are drawn to Israel.

Absolute desperation, like Naaman and others.

God, of course, still has a plan for Israel.

His plan is for Israel to take the gospel globally.

He says in Isaiah 49, verse 6, I will make you a light to the nations so that my salvation can reach the end of the earth.

Isaiah 49:6

We saw a similar phrase.

In fact, that was the phrase you read tonight.

I'll make you a light to the nations.

Israel was designed to illuminate the nations.

They weren't supposed to go into all the world.

Do you understand that?

Israel in the Old Testament was not called to go into all the world.

Israel didn't send missionaries to Egypt or to the Assyrians.

The Israelites that went there were taken there captive.

In fact, the one obvious exception to this is Jonah, and Jonah stands as condemnation to Israel.

Jonah was not leading the kind of, or Israel was not leading the kind of life that could attract the Gentiles, and so Jonah was sent away.

And Jonah understood this.

I'm convinced Jonah understood this, that his being dispatched to Nineveh was a condemnation on Israel and their conduct.

This is why Jonah was reluctant to go, of course.

He was an enemy to the Assyrians.

The Assyrians were a brutal people, and there's all that.

But beyond that is the actual narrative of the Bible that Jonah understood this was Israel's judgment.

It's Israel's judgment.

And then to make it worse, Nineveh repented in the same exact same way that Israel refused to repent.

This is why Jonah is so angry at the end of the book.

Nineveh repented, but Israel wouldn't.

It's really a heartbreaking story.

And of course, it's picked up in the Gospel of John, where the Pharisees understand that Jesus can't be the Savior because he is from the same town that Jonah was from, and nothing good comes from that town.

No prophet can come from there.

I mean, Jonah isn't even recognized by them as a prophet, really.

Because he took the news out of Israel.

He was utterly rejected by the Jews.

It's a sad story of Israel's failed witness.

And of course, Jesus steps in.

But when Jesus does step in, you recognize when the New Testament starts that God's heart for the Gentiles is not new.

God has always had a heart for the Gentiles, going back to his call to Abram, that he Abram, remember the very call of Abram, he's going to start a new nation.

The nation will be Israel, but in that is God's heart for the nations.

Remember the very first call we looked at it earlier, Genesis 12, Abram, you're going to be a new nation, but in you the nations of the earth will be blessed.

And so it's been consistent in God's revelation that he has a heart for the nations.

And that's been consistent.

You see this in the New Testament, where how it begins.

Luke 2 verse 29.

Luke 2:29

When Jesus is born, he appears in the temple.

The prophetess says, Lord, now you're letting your servant depart in peace according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation that you've prepared in the presence of all the peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for your glory to the people of Israel.

There's so many other examples of this in the New Testament that I'm not going to take the time to show you, but it's just one after another.

I mean, so many people see Jesus and recognize him as the light to the nations.

The woman who says, even the dogs eat the crumbs off the floor, even the good news can go to the Gentiles, can't it?

And Jesus responds to that by saying, I haven't seen this faith inside of Israel.

People that came to the birth of Christ, the wise men, Gentiles arrive there to honor Christ.

I mean, this is consistent.

The centurion who says, Behold, this is a righteous man.

When Jesus prays for forgiveness of his persecutors, the first persecutor to be forgiven was the centurion, a gentile.

I mean, it's very evident in the even the gospel narratives that.

God's heart for the nations is consistent.

So that's not new.

But what is new is what happens after the resurrection.

Do you remember through Jesus' whole ministry?

He kept telling people to stay where they were when they found the good news.

He even told them not to tell people.

Jarius' daughter resurrected from the grave.

The wailers are out, the mourners are outside.

Remember, the professional mourners, Mark chapter 5, are outside, clothes ripped, wailing.

Mark 5 · chapter mention

It's a little girl who died.

They're wailing and they're playing the dirge and screaming and freaking out.

And there's a whole entourage of Jesus.

Remember, he has a massive crowd with them following him to Jarius' house.

He somehow gets them all to stay outside.

He goes upstairs, resurrects the girl, and then tells everybody in the room, the parents, don't tell anybody.

And then leaves.

But this is consistent so many times in the New Testament.

Jesus says, Don't go tell people yet.

You know, can I go with you?

The demoniac asks.

And Jesus says, No, go to your own town.

Go to your own people.

The woman at the well, go back to your people and tell them what the Lord has done for you.

It's not a go, go, go.

Except for the apostles.

They're the ones that are being dragged along with varying degrees of reluctantness, if that's a word.

And then after the resurrection is where it all changes.

And this is what I want to draw your attention to tonight.

All four Gospels end with it because it's just so really outrageous.

It's the New Testament change.

The New Testament, it becomes go into all the world.

That becomes the command.

Go into all the world.

This is a new command.

When you encounter this, this is what I want you to get tonight.

If you get one thing from me tonight, it's this.

When you encounter the command to go into all the world to make disciples, that is a new command after the resurrection.

That is a radical change in the way God has been unveiling his grace in the world throughout redemptive history.

It is a brand new thing.

This is why I wanted to choose this passage for a study on dispensationalism, because it represents a discontinuity that I think is unexplainable by any concept other than the newness of the church.

The Great Commission and the Church are inextricably linked.

God makes the church to raise up mature followers of Jesus Christ and send them to the nations.

That's what the church does.

It's impossible for me to conceive of a church that exists before that kind of command.

A church that is not raising up missionaries and raising up those who want to reach the nations is not a healthy church.

It's not a functioning church.

And I refuse to believe that that's the kind of church that was normative in the Old Testament.

God never commanded that until the New Testament, until the birth of the church.

And even when he does command it to the church, by the way, it's still you're going to go to all the nations, but wait, wait, wait until the Holy Spirit comes in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

And then it's go.

Then it's go time.

I mean, it's not a coincidence that the Great Commission begins with the Holy Spirit and the day of Pentecost filling them with the divine supernatural power to go into the nations.

He said to them, Go into all the world, proclaim the gospel to all of creation.

I know there's textual issues with Mark 16, but the fact that it's at the end of the gospel, I think, really highlights the point of how, you know, people just couldn't conceive of a gospel ending without some form of the Great Commission.

Luke 25, verse 45, he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations.

Beginning in Jerusalem, you are witnesses to these things.

The Gospel of John.

Jesus said to them again, peace be with you, as the Father sent me, so I am sending you.

Jesus was sent to the world.

He is sending his disciples into the world.

This is the New Testament command.

But then, of course, the most obvious one of these, Matthew 28.

It's not called the Great Commission for nothing.

Beginning in verse 19, all authority.

In heaven and earth has been given to me.

And I don't take from that a new reality when Jesus says this.

He's talking about a pre-incarnational reality here.

He's talking about an eternity past, the authority of the very Godhead resides in him.

And that authority has been validated by his resurrection from the grave.

Of course, he rises from the grave.

That is putting on his authority over even death itself on full display for everybody to see.

And now he's referencing them back to this, to a pre-temporal reality that he has all authority in heaven and on earth.

I mean, that's just such an insane thing to say if it's not true.

All authority in heaven has been given to you.

What authority is there in heaven?

God's authority.

That's what authority is in heaven.

What Jesus is saying is, I have the authority of God, which is another way of saying that he is God.

He's claiming divinity for himself.

It's the authority over all of revealed history, all of the narrative of the Bible, the unfolding drama of revelation, all of the stages we looked at before.

Jesus is claiming that for himself.

He's saying that that's his.

And then he says, in light of that, go.

Now there's the command.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.

Go into the world.

Baptizing them, of course, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Teaching them to observe all, I've commanded you, and behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age.

This is the structure of the command.

It's helpful to look at these words at a time.

Every word in here is very profound.

It begins with go.

I mean, that's the commands.

That's the thrust.

I don't want to get too obnoxious on you, but the word go means to go.

You know, BDAG, which is the best Greek dictionary there is, says this quote, literally, and this is like a non-ironic use of literally.

This is BDAG is, you know, predates people who say literally for everything.

BDAG says the word go here means literally a going from one place to another with a destination in mind, contrasted from the point of origin.

Let's go.

So, yeah, I don't buy the as you're going thing, as you're minding.

Some people say this is not a command to go.

It's just as you're going about normal life, you know, as you're getting milk at the grocery store.

I mean, certainly that's true, but that's not what the word go means.

It means you're going somewhere in contrast with where you began.

The verb is a aorist participle for you, seminary students out there.

Uh aoris just means timeless.

So it has this perpetual effect to it.

That it's it's something that you are doing.

It does not mean or imply as you're going.

Um, the way an aorist participle works is it takes on the force of the main verb in the sentence.

The main verb is not go, by the way, even though it's the first word in the word order.

That's not the main word.

The way an aoris participle works in Greek is it takes on the tense of the voice, uh, the force of the main verb in the sentence.

The main verb of the sentence is the next word in Greek, which is making disciples.

Methusite.

Which means you're it's something you do to somebody.

It's a transitive verb.

Transitive just means that the action is going from one person to another.

So you're making disciples.

You have the action of making disciples, and you're acting it out.

The action is going through you to someone else.

So you're not making yourself a disciple, you're making other people a disciple.

That's the command.

That's the imperative.

It's in the imperatival voice.

It's an it's a command to you to make disciples.

Um it has an object to it.

If it didn't have an object, it could be make yourself a disciple, but it's got an object, which means the action's going towards the dis the object.

In this case, the uh the object is the all nations.

The B DAG again says the definition.

This word is quote, to cause someone to become a follower.

I love the word cause in that dictionary definition.

That's what making a disciple means.

You're causing somebody else to follow Jesus.

What a cool word.

That's the command.

And you've got to go do it.

You've got to go do it.

Make disciples of all is the next word in the Greek.

Um here.

Again, obnoxious seminary voice, but all here means all.

It's descriptive of making disciples of all nations.

In the sense, it is absolutely mission impossible.

All the world will not be saved.

Every human being will not be saved.

Of course, we know that.

People have died without Christ already.

But that's your aim.

Your aim is to bring the gospel to all nations.

If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time.

But if you aim at the whole world, you might hit one person, you know?

That's your goal.

Aim at the world and maybe make one disciple.

Nations here.

Um, it's got the article on it in Greek, which means those who are by identity different nations.

If it lacked the article, it would mean those who are by quality.

It could be ethnicity.

If it lacked the article, it would just mean like, you know, you're by your quality, you belong to a different nation.

But it has the article in Greek.

And if you're not tracking with me, I understand that in Greek there's two different ways to describe nations or ethnicities, like we have the word in English.

You know, you can be an American but a different ethnic group.

That's not this concept in Greek.

Here, the concept is actually your national identity, the passport that you have, by identity, what nation you belong to.

That's who you're supposed to make disciples of.

Obviously, this requires going.

It requires a worldwide missions movement.

That's what it requires.

I know America has been blessed with immigrants coming to our country from all over the world, and that's what a fertile field for the gospel that is immigrants come, they can be exposed to the gospel.

It's much cheaper than sending missionaries out, but that's not the Great Commission.

As immigrants come, they can hear the gospel, great, and then they should be trained up and sent out.

But the point is there's an actual going to the other identifiable nations with the gospel.

That's what's wrapped up in this command.

Jesus could have used the word, the Greek word Laos, which could mean people, people of different nations, but he does not use the word for people.

He uses the word for nations.

Ethnos.

And it shows that it's referring to non-Jewish people.

That's the thrust here.

It's not fulfilled in Acts 2.

You have people from all the nations in Acts 2 that come to Jerusalem.

They're all Jewish, though.

That's not what this Great Commission is about.

It's not fulfilled in Acts 2.

There have been those in church history that argue that the Great Commission was fulfilled in Acts 2, by the way.

Some of the reformers argued that.

But it's just not sustainable with the Greek here.

It's not talking about people from the nations coming to the temple on Pentecost.

It's talking about the church scattering, going to the actual nations to cause people to become disciples.

Baptizing is the next word in the Greek.

Which means, of course, to immerse.

I don't want to harp on that too much, but that's what it means.

It has the participle again, which means it's taking on the force of the main verb.

So you're supposed to go, you're supposed to make disciples, and the command and how you make disciples is by baptizing them.

So there's going to be an order here.

Baptizing them is the introduction to discipleship.

So a person is going to hear the good news before they get baptized, they got to believe the gospel, they hear the good news, they come to faith.

Now they're baptized.

Notice they're baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

It's the threefold declaration here.

Name just means according to the authority of or according to the will of.

You understand this.

Jesus says, if you pray to God, ask anything in my name, which means in accordance with my will, and it'll be granted to you.

The will of Jesus and the will of the Father are one in the same.

And so you pray according to the name of Jesus.

You probably end many of your prayers that way in the name of Jesus.

It's not a secret phrase to get God's ears tuned on, like, oh, he said the magic phrase, now I can hear his prayer.

When you end your prayer within the name of Jesus, it means if it's in accordance with the will of Jesus, then God will answer it.

That's wrapped up in baptism.

Baptism is you're being saved according to the triune, pretemporal, before time, will of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In other words, the whole narrative of the Bible, everything from Genesis 3.15 to Genesis 12, the call of Abram, to all of the whole narrative of the Bible.

It's leading towards the point that somebody gets saved.

And when they get saved, that's been the plan all along.

That's been the will of God from before time for that person to get saved and baptized.

And then making disciples.

This is the word for didactic instruction.

Where you're instructing people in everything that Jesus said.

That's what it means to make a disciple.

When is discipleship complete?

When the person knows everything that Jesus said.

By the way, what's the nearest, closest antecedent?

What's the most proximate thing that Jesus said that you would include in discipleship?

The Great Commission.

Go into all the nations.

That's a basic part of discipleship.

This is what it means when the Romans 10, back in Isaiah, the passage we read for a scripture reading, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.

I mean, it's a basic part of discipleship that you disciple somebody, you introduce the gospel to somebody, or somebody the gospel, they believe it, they esteem you because your feet brought them the good news.

Now you're teaching them how to use their feet to bring others the good news.

I would chart this out this way.

That the church is supposed to go to the nations, raise up missionaries, send them out.

Now it's probably hard to see on the screen, but there's little tiny arrows inside there.

See the little tiny arrows?

I want you to be impressed with those because that was a lot of PowerPoint work to get those little tiny arrows right there.

The church is itself leading a transformed life.

The church is drawing people to it because of how they lead transformed lives.

The world will see the way the church loves each other.

From that, they will see how the son loves the church and the father loves the son.

So people see that the church, you see this in the book of Acts.

They see the church is generous and giving and that God is holy.

They see that the widows in the church have no needs.

There's Hellenistic Jews that are widows and they're being fed by the church.

There's Jewish widows being fed by the church.

There's none of that conflict in the church.

And we know behind the scenes there was all that conflict in the church, right?

But to the outside world, they're like, whoa, those guys have it together.

And you're like, man, don't go to a deacon's meeting.

But the outside world, they're like, this is going well, and they're drawn to the church.

And they go there and they're confronted with their sin and the reality of the gospel and they come to faith.

So that's the little arrows there.

There's still that magnetic effect of the church as the world sees how the church loves each other.

The world sees the boldness of the church, the courage of the church to preach the gospel, the courage of the church to not fit in with the culture.

That attracts people.

Especially today, I feel like.

Especially today.

I mean, today, there's so much compromise in the world, there's so much hypocrisy in the world.

Hypocrisy is just like the norm in the world.

I think that non-Christians can actually be attracted to the church when they see people with courage of convictions that are consistent in their application.

That has a jarring effect on people, more so today than even a few years ago.

So that's true.

But that's not the goal of the church.

That's just a byproduct.

That's a byproduct of normal Christian living.

The goal of the church is the sending out of people to the nations to preach the gospel.

Now, this of course doesn't mean that every Christian is supposed to be a missionary.

Because then there's nobody left to send.

And so Christian, not every Christian is called to be a missionary.

But every Christian is called to be a disciple.

And part of discipleship is teaching people the Great Commission.

And healthy churches raise up missionaries and send them into the world.

That's the way that the New Testament is designed for the church to function.

I just want to bring you guys to the point tonight where you recognize how new this is in world history.

This was not the command of Israel.

This was not the command of believing Israel.

Not all Israel is Israel, Paul says in Romans 9.

Even in the Old Testament, there were some Jews that were circumcised in flesh only, not in heart.

In fact, that was the most of Israel.

The minority of those were circumcised in their heart as well, true followers of the Lord.

But they weren't given the Great Commission.

In fact, if Jews in the Old Testament left Israel, it was often a sign of apostasy.

It was a sign of weakness, a sign of lack of faith in God.

Go try your luck in Moab or something.

Maybe there's bread there.

But in the New Testament, that's normal Christian living.

There's very practical applications of this.

I don't want to spend too much time on this, but is the church called to transform society?

I mean, Israel was called to transform their society based on how they lived.

That's not what the church is called to do.

The church isn't called to transform society, except our society within our walls.

We're called to raise up people and send them into the world.

Now you know that big picture, as people come to faith in Christ, their lives are changed, that has a sanctifying effect like salt on society.

But that's a byproduct of the church's mission.

I think some churches err when they get sidetracked onto uh what's called today justice-style issues, and those things become a distraction to the real mission, which is to make disciples of Jesus Christ.

And that's not an excuse to turn a blind eye to immorality or injustice, of course not.

But it is to calibrate the church's right approach to it.

I spent time on this when we were going through Ephesians 6 with slavery as Paul addressed that.

He didn't end the institution of slavery as such, but rather he taught an ethic that eventually would lead to its demise.

Another application question.

Is the church called to minister to the poor?

And you see the homeless people on the median out there.

Is the church called to minister to them?

And I would say in the situation of Israel, yes.

But those commands aren't given to the church.

The church is not commanded to those kind of things.

The church is commanded to go into the nations.

In fact, you see this in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Holy Spirit comes, the church begins their evangelistic endeavor.

Peter and John meet a beggar who asks for money, and they tell him we don't have money for you.

Even though the previous verse, all the disciples sold everything they had, they had all things in common.

They just liquidated all their assets.

They had silver and gold, okay?

But then they tell the beggar, we don't have it for you, is the key concept there.

But we do have, we do give to you in the name of Jesus Christ.

Stand up and walk.

You know, they point him to Christ.

Now, you in your own life, you scatter into the world, and you are steward of your own resources, and you have opportunities to do good to people and to help people and to leverage that for gospel opportunities.

And that's up to your discretion.

You know, you use whatever resources you have to bring the gospel to whoever you encounter.

And that's up to your own wisdom.

Another application here.

Who are Christians called to care for?

Christians are called to care for their family, 1 Timothy 5, verse 8.

1 Timothy 5:8

They're called to care for their church, 1 Timothy 5, verse 17.

1 Timothy 5:17

And they're called to care for their neighbors.

Matthew 12, verse 33, and verse 34.

Matthew 12:33

And that's how individuals, Christians, are called to function in society.

So you still have some of that Old Testament ethic in you, that you care for those that are around you.

You love your neighbor as yourself, of course.

But the main point I want to bring you tonight is that the church has been giving a calling.

And the calling is evangelism, and it's unique in the history of the world.

Amen.

Have a conversation with an animal?

That'd be fun.

Not the snake, though.

Let that guy go away.

The pre-flood world where evil reigned.

People live forever.

I mean, they live hundreds and hundreds of years.

That's got its own advantages to it, I assume, but it just was used to the multiplication of evil.

It would have been fun to live in the world before Babel.

You can go anywhere.

Speak to anyone.

Everyone speaks the same language.

You can travel anywhere.

It would have been fun to live in Israel.

There's a temple there, the Lord dwells in it.

Incredible to think about.

You read so much of the Old Testament, you think, I wonder what that was like.

But in this age, right here, what you have that's unique is the ability to take the gospel to the world.

That's the command.

That starts with the church.

I pray, I pray that you would appreciate the uniqueness of what God has given you and your role in it.

Lord, we're grateful that you've made the church new.

You've given us elders that we looked at last week, communion, baptism, deacons, a whole new structure you gave the church.

Worship, gathering on the Lord's Day, all those things you gave us.

But our mission, Lord, which we receive with gladness, is to take the gospel to the world.

I pray for anyone in this room that is thinking of being a missionary.

I pray that you could confirm their calling in their life.

If that's your will, their friends and their church, that you would help them give them the courage, their convictions to act on that calling in their life.

I'm thankful for Emmanuel Bible Church, a church that has raised up so many missionaries.

Thankful for Pastor Michael and his oversight of our missions department and all the money we spend on missionaries around the world and all the good that they do.

People coming to faith all over the globe because of their work.

We're so thankful to be a part of a church like this that has a heart for missions, and we recognize that this is a unique thing we have right now, this church age.

We're grateful for it, though.

And we give you the thanks in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.