THOMAS: I have a mighty text, and it's "The Great
Commission." So, turn with me to Matthew 28 and beginning at verse 16, Matthew 28 and verse
16. "Now, the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed
them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to
them, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore
and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold,
I am with you always to the end of the age.'" Amen. So far, the infallible and inerrant Word of
God. May He add His blessing to the reading of it. This is a great text. It's like John
3:16. It's a preacher’s nightmare. What in the world can I say about
this text that you haven't heard a hundred times at annual missionary conferences?
I had a sermon on this text. It was on my files. I printed it out. I looked at it
yesterday, and I thought, "This is terrible." So, I've been up all night, trying to put this
thing together in a totally different way, and I want us not only to try and
understand the text, but to understand the pivotal power and importance of this text
in Scripture and in Matthew in particular. It answers the most basic of questions,
"What is the church here for?" What is its duty? What is its mission?
What is the church's purpose? Now, you may answer that question by
being a good Shorter Catechism person, "Our chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him
forever," and that's true of us individually, but it is also true of the church corporately. Our
mission, our aim, our purpose is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. But that's the
ultimate purpose, and if I may quote John Piper here in his most famous of statements
that "mission exists because worship doesn't." Worship is the ultimate goal, and I'm going
to speak about worship this afternoon, so there's a connection between this text and
the one that we'll look at this afternoon. There is a mandate here that Christianity
is meant to change the world. Let me give you two examples by way of an
introduction. Think of the uncertain world of the second century. The second century because
by that time everyone who knew Jesus personally had died, and now Christians were surviving on the
writings and memories of first century Christians. And the staggering thing about the second
century is just how much the church thrived in the midst of severe setback
and persecution and opposition. In A.D. 165, the middle of the second century,
a hundred years after the end of the Acts of the Apostles, a plague devastated the Roman
Empire. It ran rampant for fifteen years, and an estimated five million people died in
the course of that fifteen years in the empire. It shifted the cultural landscape of the Roman
Empire, but in the midst of fear and sickness and disease and the persecution of Christians,
the bishop of Alexandria wrote, "Christians were better able to cope." "Christians were
better able to cope," there's a word for 2021, because Christians believed in salvation.
Christians believed in eternity. Christians believed in heaven. Christians believed
that this world was not their home. And so, no matter what was going on, on
the platform of the visible and tangible, there was a city, which has foundations, whose
builder and maker is God, and it drove them...it drove them to see what was important. Even in the
midst of the devastations of the second century, it caused them to see the importance of the
Great Commission, and the church thrived. Or move to the sixteenth century and to Geneva, the late 1550s, early 1560s. And Calvin has
introduced the academy to train pastors, to send them to the ends of the earth as missionaries
and pastors. And five young men in their twenties, exiles from France, like
John Calvin was an exile from France, having graduated from the academy,
and they're going back to France with the almost certain conclusion
that they would be killed. The edict of the king of France, the reason why
Calvin had fled from France in the first place. And as they cross into France and spend
a night at an inn, they are betrayed and captured and imprisoned first in
Paris, and then they are sent to Lyon, and over the course of the next almost a
year or so, Calvin writes letters to them. We have five of these letters or so to these five prisoners in Lyon, and each one of
these letters gets more and more pessimistic and dark. And the final letter, it is certain
that these five young men will be killed, and they were. And Calvin commends them to
display an honorable death to magnify and glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. What would drive men in
their twenties to do this? The Great Commission. This is our task. This is our calling. This
is our mandate. This is why we are here. This is what we are for because we love Christ,
and we want to do what Christ has asked us to do. I want you to note one preliminary matter
before we look at the mandate itself, the context in which these men obeyed the commission,
because Matthew tells us that some doubted. Some of the disciples doubted. "Some" meaning more
than one. "Some" meaning perhaps more than two. There were only eleven left. And yet in
a few weeks, in six weeks, at Pentecost, there are 120. And then, when Peter preaches
that magnificent sermon at Pentecost, there's three thousand. And then turn the
page, and there are five thousand men, Luke says, and perhaps he means men plus five
thousand women and maybe five thousand children. And all of a sudden, the church is growing in the
face of opposition in Jerusalem and by Jews and by the Roman Empire. And yet the church is growing,
spreading to the ends of the earth. And by the time you get to Acts 28 or so, at the end of Acts,
the church has spread to the ends of the earth, as far as they understood the ends
of the earth at that time in history. Now in that context, Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and
earth has been given to me." The first thing I want us to see here
is a massive claim, a massive claim. And it's a massive claim to divine sovereignty.
"All authority is given to me." He is pantokrator. He answers to no one. He holds the universe in the
palms of His hands. All power, every force, every atom, every subatomic particle, quarks and
leptons and bosons and hadrons and whatever, He has authority over them all. He has authority
over everything at all times and in all places. His authority is totally unrelenting. Everyone
and everything, angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim, the twenty-four elders,
the church triumphant, men, women, children, creatures of the land, creatures of the
sea, creatures of the air, Satan and all of his dominion, and Jesus says, "All
authority in heaven and earth is given to me." He has conquered Satan. He has triumphed
over him. He has uttered those words, "It is finished," tetelestai. He has paid the
ransom price to God, satisfied the demands of divine justice, provided propitiation to appease
the wrath of God. He has become a sacrifice in our room and in our stead as a substitute.
He has given His life as a ransom for many. He has died on the cross in the place of sinners
like you and me. He has been buried and is now alive in a triumph of resurrection. He
is the Son of Man and the Son of God. He is kurios, He is Lord. Kurios is the
Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. It's the Greek translation
for the divine name, "Yahweh." He is Yahweh. When Paul writes to the Philippians,
"every knee shall bow and tongue confess that He is Lord," He is kurios, He is
Yahweh. "All authority in heaven and earth is given to me." He has authority over
you. He has authority over your family. He has authority over COVID-19. He has authority
over the president of the United States. He has authority over disease and wars and tyrants
and the Taliban. Abraham Kuyper so famously said, "There is not one square inch of this universe
that I do not call 'Mine,' Jesus says." That's the claim He makes. It's a massive claim.
It's an unrelenting claim. It's a claim with no exceptions. There is no small print. There's
not a...what is the collective for lawyers? There's not a gang of lawyers with
pages and pages of small print, get-out clauses. "All authority in its totality,
in the universe that you can't see and in the universe that you can see, all authority
is given to me." Jesus reigns. He rules. You wouldn't think that sometimes
when Christians get all het up when they read the newspapers and the headlines and send emails venting about this and that,
and you need to stop, you need to shut those streams of news off for a second or
two, and you need to remind yourself all authority in the entire universe is given
to Jesus. He's got this. He's in control. Nothing happens without Jesus willing it to
happen and without Jesus willing it to happen before it happens and without Jesus willing
it to happen in the way that it happens. It's a declaration of universal sovereignty.
He's got the whole wide world in His hands. Now, we need to remind ourselves
of this because what in the world is the point of evangelism? What is the point of
mission? What is the point of going to tell dead sinners that there's a way of salvation that they
cannot possibly believe by their own strength, unless Jesus has sovereignty? What is the point
of mission unless Jesus has absolute sovereignty? So, there it begins, the massive claim, "All authority in heaven and
on earth has been given to me." And then secondly, there's a massive mandate,
a massive mandate, to "go and make disciples," to go and to make disciples, "To go."
Yes, it's a command. I'm aware of those who suggest grammatically and syntactically
that this is not "go," but "as you go," wherever you are, in whatever context of
daily life, you should be a witness for Jesus. And that is true, but I don't think
it's the truth that's being taught here. I think that is both grammatically and
syntactically unconvincing, so it is an imperative, "to go," but that's not the main
verb. How could it possibly be the main verb? Where are you going, and what are you going to do when you get there?
That's the main verb. "Go and make disciples." So that's the principal verb
here, to "make disciples." Now, if I had a dollar for every time I heard a
preacher say that the Great Commission is to go and preach the gospel in every nation, I'd be a
rich man because that's not what the text says. Now, of course, making disciples
involves preaching the gospel. It involves proclaiming the unsearchable riches of
Christ. It involves telling sinners that "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son
that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." Yes, you go and you
preach justification that you can be right with God, in a right relationship with God by faith
alone, in Christ alone, apart from your works. Yes, you underline the need for saving grace and
for regeneration and for the effectual calling of the Holy Spirit. But the goal is more than just
regeneration. The goal is more than just being born again, profound and important and essential
as that is. It's to go and make disciples. And two things are involved in making disciples. Firstly, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Interesting, isn't it. That right in the
mandate that Jesus gives to the church, their marching orders, their
mission orders, He mentions baptism. Now, baptism is a church ordinance. Baptism
cannot be performed outside of the local church. It has to be done in a certain way and in
a certain manner and in a certain context. To be sure, when the church is young in the first
chapters of Acts, it is one thing. But by the time you reach the end of the New Testament, in the
time of Timothy and Titus when local churches have been established, and order has been established,
and deacons and elders have been established and so on, and connectional marks between the churches
have been established, baptism is a church ordinance. It's an ecclesiastical ordinance.
This is a mandate to go and plant churches. Calvin famously says, "You cannot have God as
your Father without the church as your mother." And note that the baptism here is in the name
of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the one name, in the name of the Trinity,
the triune God, the three-personed God. There is distinction within the unity of God.
There is subsistence within the unity of God. There is the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit, but they are one God. There are three subsistences, three persons
differentiated from each other within the single unity of essence that is God. And it's part
of discipleship to receive the covenant sign and seal that we are in union and communion
with Christ, that we are hid with Christ in God. It is a sign. Baptism is a sign to faith, of
regeneration, of adoption, of justification, of sanctification, of glorification
that we will make it all the way home. Now, there's something here that...I
don't know if Steve is in the room? Yes, he is. I'm going to upset you
now, Steve. So, close your ears for a second. But scholars and commentators and interpreters
of Matthew 28 have long since drawn connections between the Great Commission and the Abrahamic
covenant. When Jesus says to go into all nations, it seems to be picking up from the promise that
God made to Abraham back in Genesis chapter 12 that he would be a blessing, that through
him blessing would come to all the nations, and that seed of Abraham, that seed which is
Christ, as Paul says in Galatians, that seed would be a blessing to all the nations. And I think
there's a connection here. There's an echo here of an allusion to the Abrahamic covenant and
an allusion to a sense, perhaps, of continuity between old covenant and new covenant
and that therefore this baptism should be a baptism that includes the infant seed of
those who profess faith. I'll leave it there. The important thing here is the importance of baptism. There have been strains in
Christendom, even in Reformed Christendom, that have downplayed the necessity of baptism.
That baptism is a sacrament that divides, and we shouldn't be divided. We should be united
on the main things. And there's been a tendency, even in the twentieth century, and even
in circles that I moved in to sought to downplay baptism. And baptism was done, you know,
behind closed doors and in the vestry or somewhere and not brought up to the surface. But it's
right here in the Great Commission. It's central. This is not secondary doctrine. This is not
tertiary doctrine. This is primary doctrine. This belongs to the first things. It's the
sign and seal of the covenant of grace. It's the sign and seal of God's wonderful
promise to His people that in Christ there is salvation. This naming ritual,
which baptism is, that you're being baptized into the name of the Trinity,
so that in a sense your identity is being established in baptism, "Who are you?"
I'm a man, a woman by faith in union and communion with the Trinity, with the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, caught up in the embrace of His covenant. "Go and make disciples." And the
first thing is baptizing them, and therefore the emphasis here is on
the role of the church in discipling. But then secondly, he says, "to make disciples,
teaching them to observe all that I commanded you," teaching them to observe all that I
commanded you. I think that's exegetical of what "making disciples" means. What
does it mean to make a disciple? Well, it is to bring them into the confines
of the church. It is to baptize them. It is to bring them under the sign and seal of the covenant
of grace. But it's also to teach them to observe all that I have commanded you. What is
a disciple? There's a good question. A disciple is someone who observes
and obeys Jesus' commands, not in order to be saved, but to
demonstrate that they have been saved, teaching them to display the fruits of
the Spirit in obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ, teaching them to grow and to be stable
and to be mature in their faith. You see, Jesus isn't interested simply in those
who come to saving faith and make a profession. We've walked through that in the second half
of the twentieth century in certain circles, what we might call "easy believism," that all you
need to do is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you can live for the rest of your life like
the devil, but you will get in by the skin of your teeth, as it were, and so on. The Bible teaches no
such thing. "By their fruits you shall know them." True disciples say, "Oh, how I love your
law. It is my meditation day and night." They are discipled, meaning they are taught.
Meaning they are instructed in Scripture, in doctrine, in piety, in obedience,
demonstrating their commitment to the Word of God, showing that they are followers of Jesus,
and they have His law within their hearts. As converted sons of God, we
are inclined to keep God's law. That's the emphasis of John,
isn't it, in his first epistle in chapter 2 and verse 29, "Everyone who
practices righteousness has been born of Him." I tell young preachers to stay away from
1 John for the first twenty years of their ministry because they're inevitably going to sound
like legalists. You've got to have a good grasp of the gospel and how the gospel works in order
for you to understand what John is saying. John is saying something in addition to being born
again. John isn't denying the fact that we are not saved by works, that our salvation is by
grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, but what follows regeneration? Sanctification,
discipleship, growing in grace, maturity. He says again in chapter 3 and verse 7. "Whoever practices
righteousness is righteous." And then a few verses later. "No one born of God makes a practice
of sinning, for God's seed abides in him. And he cannot keep on sinning, because he has
been born of God. By this, it is evident who are the children of God and who are the
children of the devil. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is
the one who does not love his brother." Well, there are many Christians who hear that, and
they will respond and they will say, "Well, that's legalism." You are preaching obedience to the
law, and that's legalism. My friend, it is not. It is not. Legalism is obeying the law in order
to be saved. There is absolutely nothing we can do in order to win our salvation, in order
to merit our salvation. We are sinners, without hope in the world. Legalism is obeying the law in order to be
saved. Legalism is obeying laws which are not even in Scripture. Legalism is obeying the law
for false motives. But John is simply saying here that one of the marks of true discipleship,
one of the marks of a truly born-again Christian is that he loves the law, wants to
become a disciple, wants to obey that law, calls upon the Holy Spirit day after day
after day, "Help me keep your law today by the power of the Holy Spirit to
demonstrate more and more Jesus-likeness." Well, there's a massive claim,
and there's a massive command, and there's a massive comfort in this
Great Commission. And the comfort is, "Lo, I am with you always, to the end of
the age." That's beautiful, isn't it? The charge is huge and monumental, to go
into all the world and make disciples. Go into parts of the world where it might cause
great difficulty, might cost you your life. When I was listening yesterday to that
little address about "Voice of the Martyrs," and maybe it wasn't in here, but maybe it was
in the pre-conference sessions that we heard that in Afghanistan and Iran and North Korea and
elsewhere, and our hearts go out to these brothers and sisters and the cost. And they've borne that
cost forever. They have never known a time when being a disciple, growing and demonstrating
the fruits of the Spirit would cost you, cost you greatly. And if not by the authorities
that be, your family will set out to kill you. Well, for all of what's going on in this
crazy time in 2021, that's not where we are, and we should be thankful. And we should think
more and more of our brothers and sisters for whom this promise is a monumental comfort,
a massive comfort. "Lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age." He is Emmanuel, God with
us, God among His people. It is the promise that he gave to the disciples in the upper room.
"I go away, but I will come to you again." The ministry of the paraclete. The ministry of
the advocate. The ministry of the Holy Spirit. "I will be with you always," without gaps, without black holes, because all
authority in heaven and earth is given to me. I will be with you, fulfilling
every promise that I made to you. I will be with you, providing you with every
needed grace to fulfill the commission. I will be with you to shield you from the enemy. I will be with you to hide you
beneath the shadow of my wings. I will be with you, and my sword will be there to
protect you. My battle shield will surround you all the way to the very end. When mountains that
you ascend disappear into clouds, when trials fell you like great falling trees, for
better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death
us do part...no, no, no, no, no, no. Beyond death, forever, into the realm
of heaven and into the realm of the new heavens and new earth, "I will be
with you always to the end of the age." He's giving a solemn covenant promise. This
is a promise made in blood to His people. It's a promise that He cannot
break. He is immutable. He cannot change. His promises are yes and amen.
"I will be with you every step of the way." Now, my friend, what are we going to make of this? There's a massive claim that all authority
in heaven and earth belongs to Jesus. There's a massive command to go into
all the world and make disciples. There's a massive comfort
at every step of the way, to the end of the age, to that time when this
world will transform into a new heavens and new earth in which righteousness will dwell, Jesus
says, "I will be with you every step of the way." Now, let me ask you, what place does the Great Commission have
in your life and in the life of the church? It has been my experience, in
forty-two years of ministry, that mission, whether it's at home or across
the street or abroad, wherever it is, has been the interest and preoccupation of a few in the
church. And it doesn't matter if it's a small church or a medium-sized church or a large
church, I've found it always to be the same, that there is a group of people who
seem to be interested in mission. My friend, Jesus only has one plan, it's called church. In Matthew 16 at Caesarea
Philippi, when He asked the disciples way up in the northeast, "Who do men say that I am?"
And there were all kinds of answers, and Peter says, "You are the Christ, the Son of the
living God." It was a high point in Peter's life. And Jesus said to him and to the disciples,
"Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to
you, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say to you, I will build my church and
the gates of hell will not prevail against it." Now, sometimes when I hear Christians in 2021 – pandemic, Washington,
Afghanistan, whatever it is – the world is falling, the sea is boiling,
everything is coming to an end. My dear friend, listen to Jesus. "I will build my church, and
the gates of hell will not prevail against it." He builds His church. He always has built
His church in enemy occupied territory. 2021 is no different from many, many other
episodes in the existence of the church in this world from the very beginning. We've been here
before, and we will probably be here again, and so we need to set priorities to go into all the world. And this is a concern,
this is a command that He has given to you. Not just to a few. Not just to the
elect of the elect, but to you. And your responsibility is to pray,
and your responsibility is to support. One of the goals of Ligonier Ministries
is to fulfill this through the church, to be a help to the church to
fulfill the Great Commission. Oswald Smith famously said that, "Any church
that is not seriously involved in helping to fulfill the Great Commission has
forfeited the right to exist." That's strong. That's very strong. Any
church that is not seriously involved in helping fulfill the Great Commission
has forfeited its right to exist. It is right for Ligonier Ministries to consider
the global impact of how it can help the church fulfill this mandate so that Jesus' promise,
"I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it" will be seen to
come to pass, as we co-labor in the kingdom. But there may be someone here today, and
you have been wrestling with your vocation. And maybe God has been stirring your heart and
soul and spirit, giving you a sense of unease about what you are doing, and that perhaps
you should be doing something of greater significance and greater impact in the long-term
view of things, in the eternal view of things. I would ask you to get really, really
good advice from godly, godly souls, mature souls that you know. But maybe
the voice of Isaiah is in your head. "I heard the voice of the Lord
saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?' Then I said,
'Here am I. Send me!'" "Here am I. Send me" And maybe that is something that can be fulfilled
as you commit yourself to praying for the Great Commission and for missionaries in the world. And
maybe that can be fulfilled by saying, "I'm going to get more involved in my local church's advocacy
of missions. Maybe I can fulfill that by giving to missions and missionaries. And maybe I
can fulfill that by going into all the world and fulfilling the very commission that Jesus
gave to the church." He has only one plan, and it's called church, and He intends
to build it until He comes again. Let's pray together. Father, we thank You. Thank You for Your
Word in this passage. Some of us have heard multiple, countless sermons on this passage,
but it is the mandate that you gave to us. It is our charge. It is our mission statement.
And we pray for faithfulness to believe it and to respond to it personally, individually, and
collectively as the church of Christ. And we ask, Father, that Your blessing now would be upon
us. And we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen.
