The Four Phases of the Great Commission - Leaders' Talks

What is at stake in how we view the Great Commission?

It's not only the lives of humanity, the lives of people that could know the Lord if we take this seriously.

The lives of marriages that could be transformed.

The lives of kids who could have dads as an example because they've been taught how to be a disciple of Christ.

It is so vital, but bigger than that, it's your life.

This is your mission in life.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on the road, visit the Road.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message.

All right, go ahead and grab your Bibles, and we're going to open up and we're going to look at the Great Commission, which is in Matthew chapter 28, starting in verse 16.

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 28, starting in verse 16.

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

This is what is called or known as the Great Commission.

What I want to do is I want to just look at it for a minute.

In fact, if we can all just read along, and then we're going to leave it on the screen for it to just soak in.

Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee to the mountain which Jesus had appointed for them.

When they saw him, they worshiped, but some doubted.

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

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 things that I have commanded you.

And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Now here's what I want to do.

I want I want to leave just that part up, and I want you to just look at it for a minute.

Just look at it and let God take an inventory of your life.

How are you doing?

What do you feel about yourself when you see that scripture?

In some ways, it feels like I feel when I look at my uh retirement portfolio, and I'm like, oh no, I'm way behind.

And I don't know whether to like find a third job and start putting money in, or just say, forget it, I'll probably die early.

But there's a sense of like, for me, when I look and it says, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, I feel like sometimes God, that is so far out of reach.

I'm just trying to wake up and be an example to my kids this morning.

Like sometimes even I, and I'm a professional Christian, um it's true.

Sometimes even I say, I don't, I just I don't know that that will ever actually be attainable.

And I think my fear is that when we look at that, we just kind of like people in their retirement, we just quit.

We just get so defeated that we say, Yeah, I'm not doing it.

But here's the deal.

If you have one conversation left on the earth, and you knew once I'm done with this conversation, I will draw my last breath and I am done.

Who would you call?

Who would you talk to?

And what would you say to them?

I don't know who you'd talk to, I don't know what you'd say to them, but I do know this it is the most important person to you, and it's the most important message that you could possibly share.

You would not waste those words.

And this is Christ's very last words as he begins to ascend into heaven.

And it's words for all of us.

What is at stake in how we view the Great Commission is not only the lives of humanity, the lives of people that could know the Lord if we take this seriously, the lives of marriages that could be transformed, the lives of kids who could have dads as an example because they've been taught how to be a disciple of Christ.

It is so vital, but bigger than that, it's your life.

This is your mission in life.

And when you say, Yeah, I'm not gonna do it, what you're saying is I quit on life.

The creator of all the world is doing a job, and he wants you to come on staff with him.

The honor that you should feel when you read this is like God is inviting me, literally, the creator of the sun, the creator of all the galaxies, the creator of this earth, the creator of Mount Everest, the creator of the sea, is saying, I want you to join me in what I do.

If you really, really believe that, your life would have impeccable meaning.

And I don't care if you're a plumber or a lawyer, I don't care if you're a school teacher or a homeschool teacher, I don't care if you're a pastor or a janitor, the person that did this the most in my life was my bus driver.

And she had an incredible sense of purpose that I couldn't understand because she was just a bus driver.

And I remember telling her one day because she would write Bible verses above our seats, she'd color pictures, she'd make rainbows, and she'd do the Bible verse, and you could sit in any seat you wanted to sit in if you memorized the scripture above that seat.

And I remember telling her, Miss Polly, this is a public school, and you could lose your job if I went and complained, and she said to me, I'll never forget it, she said, son, I am a bus driver.

If I lose this job, I'll find another job.

But don't sit down if you don't know what that verse is.

And then she'd tell me she loved me.

She grasped it.

So she was able to get on a bus with great purpose, because her purpose was not to do a bus route, her purpose was to go.

But here's the deal: this is greatly to me defeating.

And I think so many pastors, teachers, uh, small group leaders, we get so zealous for this scripture and for this mission that we stand up and we do a great injustice and we preach this scripture to people who are not ready.

And it's not actually good to just look at this and say, Yeah, I'm gonna go do it.

And this is what I mean.

So this year, um, the Lakers are probably gonna be really, really good because of the top five players in the NBA, two of them are on the same team.

And it would be like me taking you guys, this just this row, just any random row, and saying, hey, I've been given a job as a head coach for the 76ers, and you guys are my team, and we're gonna face the Lakers this year.

And you say, Okay, sounds crazy, but I'm in, what do we do?

And I say, just go out there and beat the Lakers.

Do you know what you're doing?

Are you a real coach?

Do you actually know what you're doing?

Or if that was my speech, if I just wanted to give you just enough passion to make you go out there, you know what you're gonna do?

You're either gonna not go out there because you're wise, or you're gonna go out there and you're gonna lose and you're gonna lose bad.

And I think that's what we do when we preach this without permission to grow as people.

So I want to look at the first part of this.

Can you go back to the first part?

Then the eleven.

Then the eleven.

You notice that doesn't say then the twelve?

That should tell you something.

He gave this to the people that made it through to the end.

There were twelve at the beginning, and at the end there were eleven.

And he said to them, Go and make disciples.

But he didn't say it to them on day one, he said it to them on the last day.

Sticking with the theme of basketball, uh, John Wooden.

Anybody know who that is?

Any UCLA fans?

All right.

John Wooden once won 10 championships in 12 years.

Ten championships in a 12-year span.

It's never been done again.

He won seven championships in a row.

And this is not pro where you go and buy your championships.

This is college.

So at best, you only have that team for four years.

So he was able to cycle through three teams and win championships with all three of them in 12 years, 10 championships.

Let me explain to you how he did it.

The first day of practice with the whole team, whether you won a championship the year before or not, practice started by him teaching you for two hours how to put on your socks, how to put on your shoes, and how to properly tie your shoes.

That's what he taught.

And he would meticulously unroll up the socks, put them on where there were no wrinkles.

He would teach you how to smooth out the bottom of your sock so that you did not get a crease in the bottom of the sock and would not wear a blister on your foot, so that when you were in the middle of a game-winning shot, your thought would be on the shot, not on the blister.

And so he was so meticulous about his coaching in the small things that until you learned how to put on your shoes, how to properly get the creases out of your socks, how to properly tie your shoes up, he thought it futile to move on to the playbook.

And that's what we're gonna do today.

We're gonna put on our socks, and we're gonna give each person in this room permission to be right where you are.

And we're gonna look at the four phases of the Great Commission.

See, when Jesus gave the Great Commission, it didn't start here, it started when he went to Peter, James, and John and he said to them, Come, follow me.

If you haven't learned to follow God, it's really weird that you would go out and try to make disciples of a God that you have not learned to follow yet.

Is that true?

Yeah, that's true.

In the same way, it's weird that lost people that have not taken an inventory of their life will get on a mission trip and go to Africa and share the gospel.

But they don't share it here at all.

That's weird.

And so when Jesus said, Come, follow me, he knew that one day he would say, Go.

One day he would tell them to go, but not today.

Today you need to come.

And you need to follow me.

And that requires surrender.

We've got to be able to surrender to God and say, I believe in you.

We were doing a, I was with Mercy Me at Red Rocks this last month, and a really, really famous, because they're recording this, I won't say it, but a really, really famous Laker came to the show, and he wanted to meet Mercy Me afterwards, and uh Mercy Me uh declined them because they said we're we're nobodies, we're just regular people, man.

We're nothing special, nothing uh to meet.

But this is one of the greatest of all time, and he was able to take fans or take teammates to multiple championships because they were willing to follow him.

They bought in to what he was saying, and when Jesus went to the disciples, he was saying, Man, you gotta trust me.

You gotta trust me.

You gotta lay down your life.

One of the things that concerned me at the concert was I heard that uh he made his way up to the stage and he was talking to some of the guys who was talking to a friend of mine who was the speaker for that show.

And he said, Yeah, you know, I'm not a believer, but my wife is a big believer.

That's scary to me.

Because the Bible does not say whoever is a believer.

The Bible says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, and whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

You can believe him and not believe in him.

But you cannot believe him, believe in him, and not follow him.

And they began to follow this Jesus.

They followed Jesus into places he would never, they would never go on their own.

They found themselves talking to Samaritans, they found themselves arguing with Pharisees who were always right.

They found themselves in homes where they would not normally go with tax collectors and sinners, and they found themselves around this crew of people that you would not think a religious leader would take them around.

But they began to be transformed because it's like, well, if he said go, I'm going because I believe in him.

So I am following him.

And for I would say a large portion of this room.

I'm not saying have you prayed and have you asked Jesus to forgive you of your sin.

I'm saying, have you laid down your life and said, I'm following you?

I don't care what that means, God, I am going to follow you.

And by following him, they were able to learn.

They were able to grow, they were able to sit down with God Himself and ask questions.

They had access to God.

But you have access to God too.

As you learn to walk with the Lord, your life begins to take great shape.

One of the best things my bus driver ever did for me was teach me how to read the Bible.

And she would say, Bobby, you should pray.

And when you pray, that's you talking to God.

But when you open your Bible and read it, you should expect God to speak to you.

And man, I've been doing that.

I've been doing that now for 30 years because she taught me how to do that.

When we moved to Nashville this last year, we moved into a house.

Turns out the homeowner probably hid some stuff as we were trying to buy our house to the tune of about$20,000 to$30,000.

And so my natural reaction is I'm taking him to court.

Like he's gonna pay because he should have never done that to me.

And then I was at uh Every Home for Christ this week, and I read uh Proverbs chapter 24.

Proverbs 24 · chapter mention

You don't have to go there, I'm just sharing my heart for a minute.

I read Proverbs chapter 24, and in Proverbs chapter 24, it says this.

Proverbs 24 · chapter mention Proverbs 24 · chapter mention

Proverbs 24, verses, I think it's verse 27.

Prepare your outside work, make it fit for yourself in the field, and afterwards build your house.

Felt like the Lord was saying, Don't get off course.

Don't go getting all weird about your worries about your house.

I sent you for a purpose.

Don't get off course.

And then it goes on to say this: do not be a witness against your neighbor.

For would you deceive with your lips?

Do not say, I will do to him just as he has done to me.

I will render to the man according to his work.

That's what happens when you're following God, and his word comes and says, Whoa, whoa, whoa, I need to talk to you for a minute.

He said, Follow me and I will make you.

You know what I love about this church?

I'm not I'm not hyping up this church.

You know what I love about this church?

It is the first church that I have ever attended, that I have ever been a part of, that has literally made me something different than I was when I came in.

That is what the gospel is supposed to do.

The church is not just a place to belong.

The church stretches you, it makes you, it changes who you are.

And if you're following God and you're not being made into something different, or if you're following God and you don't find yourself in places where you're like, How did I get here?

Why are we even here?

You're probably not following God, you probably just believe him.

But the Bible says, follow me, and I will make you into fishers of men.

And that's the result of following God, and that's the first phase.

If you're here today and you're like, man, I haven't started following God, you should do that.

The second phase of the Great Commission, many of us may be on here, and by the way, you can go back and forth, just so you know, you have to go in order, but I find myself constantly going back and learning to follow him better.

I find myself constantly going back into all these phases.

But the second phase is go and learn.

Go and learn.

If you would turn your Bibles right quick to Mark chapter 6, verses 6 through 7, and we'll fly through this part.

Mark 6:6–7

Mark chapter 6, verses 6 through 7.

Mark 6:6–7

And he called the 12 to himself.

So he's already gotten his twelve.

He called the 12 to himself, and he began to send them out two by two, and he gave them power over unclean spirits, and he commanded them to take nothing for the journey except a staff, no bag, no bread, no copper in their money belts, but to wear sandals, and not uh two, not to put on two tunics.

And then he began to tell them in verse 10, in whatever place you enter a house, stay there until you depart from that place.

So he's saying, Hey, don't go to Susie's house and it's okay, and then you find out that that the Smith house is even better, so you're gonna go over there and stay.

No, stay where you are.

And he went on to say, Eat whatever they give you.

And he had to give them instructions like, here's how it works.

And you know what it said to him?

Go do that, and then come back and let's talk about it.

He sent out one time 70 disciples, and those 70 disciples came back and said, This is incredible! The spirits submit to us.

Like you would not believe.

And Jesus said, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Don't rejoice that the Spirit submit to you.

Rejoice that your name is written down in the book of life.

And so he's teaching them.

One time Jesus was out with the disciples, and there was like several thousand people, and they said, Jesus, hey, we need to let these people go because they're getting hungry.

And he said, You give them something to eat.

That is the ultimate teacher to not just lecture but say, Here, here, do it.

Do it.

See how that works.

One time the disciples had gotten so confident and they were casting out demons, and then they came upon a demon that they could not cast out.

And then the crowd got mad at them.

Jesus had to come in and save them.

He cast out the demon and they looked at him and they said, Well, why couldn't we do that?

And they said, That he said, that kind of only comes out through prayer and fasting.

Some of you have had a really hard year trying to do your very best.

Some of you have tried to serve the Lord so hard this year, and it feels like every at every turn you hit a roadblock.

You know what that is?

You're learning.

Let me encourage you to do what Jesus had the wisdom to do.

You should go two by two.

You should take someone with you so that they can say, Hey, good job.

Hey, well, why don't we try this next time?

Or hey, remember the word says this.

It's been a great week for us to sit with some really good people in this church.

So many of you have invited us out for coffee or invited us over for lunch.

The encouragement that just filled us up because you guys said, hey, keep trying.

Keep going.

I'm praying for you.

I see God's hand on you.

But it has been hard.

And others of you know what it means to be in a hard season this year.

It's just a part of the Great Commission.

You just go and you try.

And then you talk to God and you say, What is there to learn about this?

And you grow as people.

And sometimes you're just going to your neighbor.

And sometimes you're just going to work.

And sometimes you are going to Africa.

And sometimes you are going to Guatemala or wherever you're going.

But sometimes it's like, God, this is my season.

He's not sitting there saying, Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up.

The Great Commission, we got to get you in shape.

He's saying, That's all right.

You give them something to eat.

Let's learn from this.

In the same way I put a wrench in my son's hand when I'm working on the car, it's not because I actually need him to help me fix that car.

It's because one day he's going to have a car of his own.

And I'm not going to be around to hold the wrench.

And I just want him to learn.

Let's look at the third phase of the Great Commission.

So one is come.

Another is go and try.

And a third is wait.

Wait on the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now we know a lot about Jesus, but I can bet you that most of what you know about Jesus happened when he was 30 years old or older.

We know very little about Jesus.

When he was younger, we knew he had a passion for the word.

We knew that he is the Son of God.

We knew about a virgin birth, but we know very little about Jesus.

You know when Jesus' ministry took shape?

When the Holy Spirit came upon him at baptism.

When he was empowered by the Holy Spirit in the wilderness.

So why would we think we could do the Great Commission if we don't have the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives?

If the Holy Spirit's not indwelling us in power for us to go out and do what God has called us to do.

He told his disciples, the eleven, he said, do not try this.

You will fail.

You need to wait on the Holy Spirit to empower you to do what he's called you to do.

How do you do that?

Practically, without getting, look, I'll just tell you, this is the phase I get stuck on.

This is the phase I struggle with.

This is the phase where I'm like, God, I just need to learn more because I need your power to do this work.

I do what Jesus did in the wilderness.

I pray, I fast, I war against the devil.

I try as hard as I can and as much as I can as I'm digging into God's word and I'm depending on God's spirit to defeat the enemy because he'd love to have his place in my life to make me ineffective.

What else I do is I sing.

I worship.

I learned to worship at this church.

I used to know how to sing.

Now I know how to worship.

I learned how to worship here.

Here's what you need to do in that phase.

You need to ask.

Just tell God where you are.

The Bible says He knows how to give good gifts, and He tells you to ask.

Ask for it.

The second thing you need to do is cultivate intimacy with the Lord.

Cultivate intimacy with the Lord.

That comes through reading your word.

That comes through having time with other brothers that sharpen you or other sisters that sharpen you.

That comes through worship.

That comes through fasting and prayer.

And by the way, fasting in prayer is not to get stuff.

You don't fast in prayer to get fast and pray to get to God.

You fast and pray to give God the channel He needs to get to you.

And so it's really about cultivating intimacy, guys.

And so that's my encouragement for you is wait.

Wait on the Lord to empower you.

And what does that mean?

What does that look like?

You need to be around with some brothers and some sisters that can sharpen you in discipleship and just say, hey, this is where I am.

And you just need to go try.

Just go try.

Just go serve.

And let God begin to work on you as you go to make disciples.

So once you've done all of that, then the very last thing that you do is you say, God, I believe in you.

I have trusted you with my life.

I'm following you.

Lead me wherever you want to lead me.

Lord, I'm going to go and try.

If that means I'm going to go into work tomorrow and say, hey man, how can I pray for you?

And they just look at you weird because you've never done that before.

Just say, Well, I'm trying a new thing, trying to exercise my faith.

Or maybe you get up in the morning and you do 10 minutes of prayer and you've never done that before, but hey, I'm committing to this.

I'm committing to this.

I give you a good book.

It's called The Hour That Changed the World by Dick Eastman.

It's just right up the street.

I would encourage you to just say, Lord, I'm going to start becoming a person of prayer.

Lord, I'm just going to try.

And then just learn to wait on the Lord.

And I'm going to tell you, you're in a good, good church to be waiting on the Lord.

Because I have learned so much about waiting on the Holy Spirit and walking in the Holy Spirit from being in this church.

Once you're there, then you know what you're ready for?

You're ready for the locker room speech.

You got your shoes on, you got your socks on, and now you can actually look at that verse and say, well, nothing else to do but go play the game.

So let's get it on.

As our worship team comes up, we're going to practice waiting on the Lord.

We're going to practice calling out to the Lord and saying, God, the Great Commission's important.

Maybe you've been at a place where you've said, I haven't been doing it because I'm just intimidated by it.

But I want to be a part of why you put me on this earth.

And the only place I know to start is to worship God today.

And so as you just begin to call out to the Lord, give him your heart and just say, Lord, I'll follow you wherever you want me to go.

Just speak to me.

Just let me be in your presence.

Just let me abide in you.

And maybe today, as we worship the Lord, we can take the burden off of everything we're not doing right, and the burden off of the things that we failed at in our minds we believe we have.

And God's saying, No, you haven't failed.

You're in phase two.

You're going and trying.

That's what happens.

Maybe you take the burden of all the things that you feel you haven't done right and why you don't measure up to the Great Commission.

And you say, God, well, all I can do is start here.

You know, I've coached basketball many times, and I've been down many times.

And my speech to them every time is just do the right next play.

We cannot worry about the score.

Just make the right next play.

And then we'll move on to the next play after that.

So I don't know where you are.

I don't know what's going on in life, but I beg of you to take the Great Commission seriously enough to just do the right next play.

But don't worry about what the score is right now.

God will work all that.

You've been listening to The Road.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

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