Discipleship- The Goal Of The Great Commission Series

The Goal of the Great Commission

CCCAG 3-3-24

Scripture: Matthew 28:18-20; Mark 4:14-20

Let me ask everybody a quick question- how many of you have ever had to buy a gift for a child?

Almost everybody here

As a new parent you check out toys for safety, quality and if they'll hold up to a child playing rough with it, and if they'll even play with it for more than one day and then it ends up in the bottom of the toy box.

For anyone here thinking about buying a gift for a child I want to teach you something that will save you endless hours of frustration. When evaluating a new toy for a child always look for these 3 words “some assembly required”

That is three lies for the price of own. I am pretty sure, based on my experience, that I have put together toys with more parts than the space shuttle.

Those 3 words can cause hours of frustration during one of the busiest times of the year, especially if you live in a small house or an apartment, it's virtually impossible to have private time to put these things together.

I remember one year I was working on the ambulance on Christmas Eve at our Kenosha station and I had to drag my partner to my house to put together a couple gifts so they were ready in the morning when I got home and we opened presents.

But we do these kind of things as parents because we love seeing our children's reaction to receiving these kinds of gifts.

I thought about the words “some assembly required” and then thought about the training of a new Christian.

All of us who have come to faith in Jesus and are following HIM as disciples have all had that spiritually stamped on us- some assembly required.

We call that assembly - discipleship, and we get that idea from the verses in the bible we call the great commission.

Jesus gives the church these gifts called converts or new Christians, but they come with the idea that some assembly is required. That is the primary function of the church in the Kingdom of God- to take these baby Christians and help the grow up to be mature in the faith, and pick up that mantle and pass it to the next generation.

Let’s look to see how Jesus explained it to us in Matthew 28

This is Jesus, after the resurrection, and right before HE ascends to heaven.

Mat 28:18-20 CSV Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. (19) 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, (20) teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Prayer-

These verses are called the Great Commission, and primarily have to do with spreading the Good News of Jesus to those who have not heard. It’s the primary reason for evangelism, for missions, and for the idea that the local church is to serve as an embassy for the Kingdom of God on earth.

I got saved in 1993, and since then have been exposed to dozens of evangelistic type programs that teach you the best way to share your faith. The goal was always to get a person to pray a specific prayer that would guarantee they would become a Christian and be saved.

About 15 years ago, We used one of these programs at our last church- we all spent a week going door to door and talking to people we ran into on the street.

When it was over, we a big celebration- WE had used the program on over 400, and over 250 of them prayed this sinners prayer so they were saved.

The evangelist that had led this outreach left, and you’d think we would have had to go to multiple services for these 250 people, hire more staff, recruit more volunteers to handle this large influx of people.

Do you know how many of those 250 people we saw come to our church?

Zero.

Why?

Because we chose the wrong metric to use to determine a person’s salvation. It’s not just a prayer- it’s a complete change in a person’s life that comes from the regeneration of their hearts.

And that is the point here- we need to make disciples, not just converts.

When it comes to making disciples Jesus said that the secrets of the Kingdom were held in a few parables. One of these parables, the Parable of the Sower, shows us these secrets.

In Mark 4, Jesus teaches about a farmer scattering seed. Jesus describes the different ground this seed, which represents the WORD of God or the Gospel will fall on-