The Missing Key

Father, I ask that you will take the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart and you will use them to impact this great church, this great congregation, for your namesake.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

The date was April 15th, 1912.

It was a day that will live in infamy in the history of our country and of the world.

Because that was the day that the Titanic sunk.

Now most people know of the sinking of Titan of the Titanic due to its running into an iceberg as it made its voy uh made a voyage from Southampton, England to the United States.

But that was the second reason why the Titanic sunk.

The first reason why the Titanic sunk was a missing key.

Now a lot of people don't know about this, so let me tell you about the missing key.

On the day before the launching of the Titanic, David Blair, the second officer on the ship, was reassigned.

David Blair had in his pocket the key to the crow's nest locker.

Inside the crow's nest locker were binoculars that the man used, who was on the crow's nest, the high lookout point, would use to see out.

But because David Blair mistakenly took the key with him, the crow's nest locker was not available.

And so the gentleman who stood in the crow's nest looked out with just his human sight, and he didn't see the iceberg.

So the first reason why there was a catastrophe that cost the lives of over 1,500 people was there was a missing key.

What I would like to suggest to you is that while Jesus has a big fan club, there are millions of people who respect his name.

He has very few disciples.

It is the absenteeism of what Jesus Christ said to his followers that is contributing to the things we complain about in the breakdown of culture and civilization today.

When Jesus rose from the dead, he called a meeting.

It is the only meeting that he called that was scheduled between the time of his resurrection and the time of his ascension during that 40-day period of time.

Three groups attend the meeting.

In Matthew 28, verse 16, it says the 16, the 11 disciples attended the meeting.

Matthew 28:16

According to 1 Corinthians 15, it says, more than 500 brethren attended the meeting.

But then we're told at the end of Matthew 28, verse 20, he says, I will be with you always, even until the end of the age.

Matthew 28:20

Well, the age has not ended.

So you and I are invited to the meeting.

So we've got the 11, the 500, and all of those who claim Jesus Christ have been invited to mosey on up the hill to find out this commissioning of the Lord.

Now, there are five commissions in the New Testament.

There is Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts.

All of them have a commissioning by the Lord.

But Matthew 28 is called the Great Commission because it does something that none of the other commissions do.

It uses a Greek word pronounced mathetes, which is disciple.

When Jesus Christ appears on the scene, according to verse 17, they saw him, they worshiped him, but some were doubtful.

They saw the risen Christ, but they have questions, but their questions didn't keep them home, their questions brought them out.

They wanted to hear what he had to say.

And that's when Jesus Christ took the podium.

And it says, after they had worshiped him, after they had sung their songs, prayed their prayers, and did their praises, it was time for the sermonic presentation.

Jesus Christ comes out then behind the podium, so to speak, and he utters the most profound statement that could ever be made.

He says, All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth.

All authority is given to me up there in heaven and down here on earth.

All authority is given to me in eternity as well as in time.

All authority is given to me in the sweet by and by as well as in the nasty here and now.

What Jesus says is, I'm in charge now.

The Greek word for authority is pronounced ekusia.

There are a number of Greek words in the New Testament for power or authority.

The most noted one is dunamis, where we get our English word dynamite from.

But that's not the word used here.

The Greek word used here is ecousia, which means uh power in authorized hands.

It means the legitimate exercise of authority.

On a football field, the players are younger, stronger, and faster than the referees.

The referees are older, slower, and fatter than the players.

The players have dunamis, but the referees have ekusia.

The players can knock you down, but the refs can put you out.

Because what they have is kingdom authority that has been delegated to them that they exercise in spite of the fact that they're in an environment of conflict.

And so Jesus says, All legitimate authority has been given to me.

Now, the reason he could claim that is because earlier he had defeated Satan on the cross.

If you put a gun on me, since guns are in the news right now, you put a gun on me, you will control me.

You will tell me to sit down, I will sit down.

You tell me to stand up, I will stand up because you got the power.

And because you got the power, I'm going to do what you tell me to do, because if I don't, then I must succumb to your power.

But if I happen to find out that there are no bullets in the chamber, we just change the configuration of our situation.

Because when I discover you've been intimidating me by giving me the impression you have authority, when really the gun has been emptied, it changes how I view your authority over me.

On the cross, Jesus took the bullets out of the devil's gun.

So now he can only rule you by intimidation, but not by authority.

Jesus says, All authority is given unto me, and it's not just up there, it's down here.

Because I'm not only the son of God from up there, I'm the son of man from down here.

I not only got thirsty, I could also walk on water.

I not only cried like a baby, I also made my mama, who I cried to.

I not only uh got hungry, I could turn sardines and crackers into Moby Dick sandwiches and feed 5,000 men, not counting women and children.

I not only could die, but I could rise from the dead because I am up there and from down here.

All authority has been given unto me.

And now, since I'm in charge, here's what I want you to do: I want you to make disciples.

That's not make Christians.

Christianity to come to Christ is entrance into the kingdom of discipleship.

The word mathetis was used in classical Greek of the process of student replication.

In Matthew chapter 10, he says, a disciple is like his teacher.

Matthew 10 · chapter mention

The concept of discipleship goes all the way back to Plato.

Plato had a philosophy of life.

His Platonic theory separated the physical and the spiritual.

He trained a young man in his philosophy named Aristotle.

Aristotle developed a system of thinking called Aristotelian logic.

So he took the thinking of Plato, organized it into a system, and it became the training of Aristotle.

Aristotle built schools that we call today and that he called academies to turn people who got Plato's thinking through Aristotelian thought pattern into transferring it into livelihood.

So when you went to one of Aristotle's academies, you learned Plato's thinking, but you lived it out based on the training you got in his academy.

We saw in history this lived out.

If you remember your history, it's called the Hellenization of Rome, where Rome was the military power, but the culture was being influenced by the Greek presence.

When Jesus Christ picks up this mafetase word, he's picking up the concept of taking the values of heaven and living them out in the location of history.

So that back in Aristotle's day, if a teacher was living in Rome, she brought the thinking of Greek into the Roman classroom.

If a doctor was practicing in Rome, he brought the thinking of Greece into the operating room of Rome.

If they were a lawyer, they brought the thinking of Greek thought into the Bar Association of Rome because they have been Hellenized through this process of discipleship or transfer.

A disciple in the Bible is a visible verbal follower of Christ who is progressively learning to live all of life under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

A biblical kingdom disciple is a man or woman, boy or girl, it's a family or it's a church or it's a believer who is a visible verbal follower of Christ who is progressively learning to bring all of life under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Through our ministry, the Urban Alternative across the uh the uh nation through radio and television uh and the like and and and on our app and all of that, people will listen to our teaching.

Many times they call our national office and they want to order the CD of the message.

Well, the way it works is that I preach a sermon at our church on Sunday morning and it is recorded on a master CD recording.

That master records the content of what I had to say.

That master is then sent over to our national ministry and put on a master duplicating machine.

Plugged into the master duplicating machine are slave units.

The slave units run off 16 copies a minute from the master onto the copies so that we can now send them out to people who order our CDs or who get our messages regularly.

When a person gets the message, they get a copy of the master.

They don't get the master because there's only one master, but what they get is a duplicate of the master.

However, the duplicate of the master is so much like the master that it could be mistaken for the master because it's a replica of the master.

The whole idea of being a kingdom disciple is to look so much like Jesus, you could be mistaken for Jesus because you are a replica of Jesus.

He says, I want you to make disciples.

But he says, I don't just want you to make disciples of people.

He says, I want you to make disciples of nations.

Now, this is often skipped over.

The Greek word ethnos has to do with uh various ethnic groups.

I want you to disciple not only individuals, but also systems that affect individuals.

I want your influence as a follower of mine to be so graphic and so potent that not only are individuals transformed, but the systems that they influence on a governmental, civic, social level are transformed too.

One of the failures within evangelicalism is that we have discipled individuals without changing systems.

And that's why you can have all manner of evil take place, even among Christians and racial divisions, social divisions, and uh all kinds of cultural divisions, because we have not discipled people to affect the ethos, that is, the systems that they are a part of.

While Satan is reduplicating himself at massive levels, Jesus is not reduplicating himself at the same speed of influence, and that is why a small group of people can change the definition of marriage while Christians have church, because the systems have not been influenced for transforming the culture.

He says, disciple the nations.

So the question is, how does such a thing happen?

How do we have this discipleship of the nations?

Well, the process of discipleship is a process of authority transfer.

Let me say that again.

The process of discipleship is the process of authority transfer.

Follow the logic in the passage.

All authority is given to me.

Now I want you to make duplicates.

Duplicates of what?

Of my authority.

You see, when you become a disciple, you get to piggyback off of divine authority.

If you are a Christian who has not yet become a disciple, you're on your way to heaven, but you're not experiencing much of heaven while still here.

Faith alone in Christ alone gives you eternal life.

But becoming a visible verbal follower of Christ brings eternal life into your everyday experience as you share in divine authority.

Um, for many years I served as chaplain of the Cowboys, and uh my son Jonathan now has taken my place doing that, and and uh I'm still technically the chaplain for the Mavericks, and now he's starting to take over uh uh much of that duty as well.

Uh but when I went to the Maverick Games, they would give me four tickets, four tickets, and so I would ask some of the guys, uh, do you want to go to the Maverick game?

I said, now don't drive.

Don't drive, ride with me, because if you drive, you're gonna have to pay$15 a piece to park.

But I have a free parking pass right in front of American Airlines Center where the Mavericks play.

That is available to me, so y'all ride with me.

And if you ride with me, you don't have to pay to park.

But that's not because of who you are, that's because of who I am.

They don't know you, they know me.

So because they know me, they will accept you because you are with me.

Now, everybody else is going through the general public front door, but we're not going that way, we're going through a private door.

They're gonna let you through that door, but they're not gonna let you through that door because of who you are, but because of who I am.

When I okay you, they'll accept you because of me.

When we go downstairs, they're gonna serve a four-course meal.

You get to eat for free at no cost to you, but that's not because of who you are.

That's because of who I am, and because of who I am, you get to eat for free.

When the game is over and everybody's going to the exit, we're not rushing to get out like everybody else is rushing.

Because we're not going the same way everybody else is going.

We're going out a private door, up a private elevator, to a private exit, to a private parking lot, and we will be halfway home before most people have gotten to their cars.

And that whole evening's activity will have happened not because of who you are, but because of who I am.

Jesus says, if you will become my disciple, you get to piggyback on the rights and privileges that belong to me.

Families are falling apart because husbands don't want to be kingdom husbands, wives don't want to be kingdom wives, parents don't want to be kingdom parents, kids don't want to be kingdom kids.

They just have this amorphous definition of family.

God did not create the family for you to be happy, and I'm sure many of you already know that.

Happiness is the product.

He says, I'm going to bless you as you rule.

He says, I want you to rule under me, and then I will bless you.

The blessing comes out of the authority.

If you're not connected to the authority when you no longer are happy, then you no longer want to be married.

It is all tied to this concept of kingdom discipleship.

So to be a kingdom disciple, a visible verbal representative of Jesus Christ, learning to progressively bring all of life under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

He gives now three participles.

Go baptize and teach.

All those, all three of those are participles.

Whenever you have a Greek construct of an imperative, make disciples, with participles going, baptizing, and teaching, it means that the participles are giving the methodology to carry out the imperative.

So the method to carry out the imperative to make disciples is threefold.

Go, baptize, and teach.

Let's talk about the word go.

You can study the word go in Hebrew, Greek, Ugaritic, and Aramaic.

And go means go.

Go means don't stay.

Go means if you're going to be a disciple, you not only must have accepted Christ, you must be willing to communicate your acceptance of Christ.

To go meant to deliver the messianic word.

If you do not share your faith, you cannot be his disciple.

If you do not share your faith, if this Christianity thing is a private thing to you and you just keep it to yourself, you disqualify yourself from being a disciple.

He says, Go, that is to deliver, Matthew 10 says, the messianic message that Messiah has come.

Let me ask you a question.

On your job, if you were accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you, or would you be found innocent of all charges?

Because there is you have become proficient at being a secret agent Christian, a spiritual CIA representative or a covert operative, because there is no clear representation.

Now throw this in.

This is a little bonus.

I'll give you.

One passage that's often misquoted is Romans 10:9.

Romans 10:9

If you will confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart, God shall raise him, raise him from the dead, you shall be saved.

It's misquoted because in that verse they give you two ways to get saved.

Confess with your mouth and believe in your heart.

Yet the book of John, which tells you how to get saved, never tells you you have to confess to be saved.

It tells you you must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved.

So why does he add confess in Romans 10 9 when it's not a condition in the book that tells you how to be saved?

Because that's not a verse telling sinners how to go to heaven, because in the very next verse, he says, with the heart you believe unto righteous.

So you're righteous by your belief.

He says, but with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation.

Well, if I'm already righteous when I believe, what's my mouth got to do with it?

Because he's telling believers through confession how to get heaven down here when you declare Jesus is Lord or ruler over all of your life.

It's a place of authority.

That's why he makes Lordship the issue through your confession.

So if you're not confessing Christ, that's why he says in Matthew 10, if you deny me before men, I will deny you before my father.

If you confess me before men, I will confess you before my father who is in heaven.

Answered prayer is tied to confession.

If you can't acknowledge him when you call on him, he doesn't have much to say back to you.

You must be willing to go and be a clearly defined representative.

As I say a lot to Christian leaders, everybody else is coming out the closet.

You might as well come out too.

It ought to be clear where you stand.

Secondly, you are to baptize them.

Baptize them doesn't mean get them wet.

Doesn't mean get them wet.

The Greek word is baptizzo.

Baptizzo was used of a dye maker in biblical days.

The dye maker, when a mother wanted to uh uh make a pink dress for her daughter, the mother would get the cloth and take it to the dye maker.

The dye maker would dip the cloth into pink dye.

He would spread off or get rid of the excess dye, hang it up, let it dry.

So now what may have been a gray cloth is now a pink cloth, so mother could sew her daughter a pink dress.

So it was the dye that the um that the dye maker dipped in in order to get the color that the mother wanted for the clothes.

The dipping or immersing into the dye was called baptizo or to baptize the cloth into the color of the dye.

When Paul explains this in Romans chapter 6, verses 1 to 4, he says, You are baptized unto his life and you have now been raised with him.

Romans 6:1–4

The word the synonym word for the word baptism means identification.

It means to be identified as something.

When he says, I want you to baptize them, it means I want you to put it in them through the ordinance of baptism, which is only a symbol, it's like a wedding ring.

A wedding ring doesn't marry you, it just lets everybody else know you are married.

I want them to be identifiably Christian.

I want to be identifiably Trinitarians.

Baptize them in the name singular of three pronouns, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which is bad uh uh bad uh grammar, that is, unless these three are one.

So the one God made up of three co-equal persons, like a pretzel, one pretzel with three holes.

The first hole is not the second hole, the second hole is not the third hole, but they all tied together by the same dough.

There's one God composed of three co-equal persons who is one in essence and yet distinct in personality.

The father is not the son, the son is not the spirit, but they all tied together by divine nature.

He says, I want you to identify them as trinitarians.

Now, what does it mean to be a baptized Trinitarian?

It means that if you are a doctor, you're not just a doctor.

You're God's representative in the bar in the medical field, so the medical field sees what God looks like when God helps hurting people.

If you're a lawyer, you're not just a lawyer.

You're God's representative in the bar association, so the bar association gets to see what God looks like when God tries a case.

If you're a business person, you're not just a business person.

Your God's representative in business, so the business world gets to see what God looks like when God cuts a deal.

If you're a teacher, you're not just a teacher.

Your God's representative in the educational realm, so the educational realm gets to see what God looks like when God teaches a lesson.

In other words, you are a demonstrative representative of the Trinitarian true God of the Bible.

That's what that means.

You are identifiable during our past elections.

The Democrats were identifiable, the Republicans were identifiable, they could be identified.

You are to be identified as a representative of the king through the process of progressively bringing all of life under the lordship of Jesus Christ.

All of this is involving a transfer of authority.

The more you are identified, the more comfortable God is with you piggybacking on the authority that's been given to his son Jesus Christ.

Then he says, Teach them.

The third part is simple.

What do you teach them?

Pneumatology, ecclesiology, eschatology, angelology, anthropology.

No, he says, teach them to observe whatever I've commanded you.

In other words, the purpose of teaching is not information, the purpose of teaching is observation.

Teach them to observe.

Every time Pastor Morris speaks, the question should be, what should I do differently in what light of what I just learned?

If that question is not asked and answered, there's no power transfer.

There is no power transfer tied to knowledge.

The power transfer is only tied to acting on knowledge that you have, because when you walk in faith, therefore God detects movement and not just thought, then that means you're serious about what you just heard, which means God is more comfortable sharing his authority with you.

Then he closes with these words, and lo, I will be with you even until the end of the age.

Now the word I in Greek is written twice.

It literally reads I even I.

It's called the ego, I mean construction.

But he didn't write I first, they just intensified the one I, which is why in your Bible it says lo I, shown of I, for real I.

Okay.

Why does Jesus break out from the other two members of the Trinity?

Because in the other, in the previous verse, Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

But now he steps away from the Father and Spirit and says, I even I, because all authority has been given unto him.

This verse doesn't mean he's gonna be with you when you're sick, he's gonna be with you when you're sad, he's gonna be with you when you're depressed.

There are plenty of other verses to deal with this.

He's saying, I'm gonna be with you when you are a disciple and when you're making disciples.

I will share my specific authority with you.

Point.

Jesus does not have the same relationship to all of his children.

This is not an equal opportunity, power, participation.

He has different levels of sharing authority with the level of discipleship you have and are involved in.

That's why the end of 1 John chapter 2, the last three verses, says many believed on Jesus, but he would not commit himself to them because he knew they weren't ready yet.

1 John 2 · chapter mention

So they were on their way to heaven, but he wouldn't fully give himself to them because they weren't committed.

So I challenge you not just to be saved, not just to go to church, but to be a kingdom disciple, to go all the way with it.

Tomorrow when the Cowboys play, you will see 17 minutes of con 17 uh minutes of contact.

That's all in any football game, is only 17 minutes of contact.

But that 17 minutes is in a one-hour game.

So you sit for one hour to only see 17 minutes of actual action.

But that one hour game that gives you 17 minutes is part of a three-hour experience.

So you gotta sit down for three hours to watch one hour to see 17 minutes.

But then if you drive to the game, that's two more hours.

So that's five hours to sit for three hours to watch one hour to see 17 minutes.

But then you gotta drive back home, so that's seven hours to sit for three hours to watch one hour to see 17 minutes.

But then on your way home, you're gonna turn on the radio to hear reviews of what you just saw 17 minutes of.

Then you're gonna get home and turn on NFL Network and Sports Center, and you're gonna you're gonna get highlights of what you just spent seven hours on.

Then when you go to work tomorrow, they're gonna be talking about the cowboys.

But let me ask you something.

What have the cowboys done for you lately?

I want to submit to you today that Jesus Christ is King of Kings, Lord of Lords, risen from the dead, and he is worthy of your worship, worthy of your submission, worthy of you following him so that you experience the authority from heaven visiting you in history.

God bless you as you become kingdom disciples.

Father, bless your people, bless your people as they serve you.