Go And Disciple Series

Good morning! Last week we started a two-week study of the Great Commission. If you weren’t here last week, we began by studying verse 18 of Matthew 28, which is the part where Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on Earth has been given to me.” And in a nutshell, we learned about how Jesus created everything, he holds the universe together, and he has demonstrated that he has power and authority over all creation during his ministry. When he rose from the dead, we saw that he was given absolute authority and power over everything. Because of this, he now has the authority to send his disciples and the church out into the world, to command them to GO and MAKE DISCIPLES, because the war has already been won through him. Death is defeated, sin is now broken. Therefore, because of this, he tells his disciples to GO. And that brings us to the commission itself.

So here is how we are going to proceed, and I will warn you, you are in for another deep study today: First, we are going to read through our passage, and get familiar with it and familiar with the context. Then we are going to dive deeper into it, and do a bit of a study to flesh out the passage, what it meant for them, etc. Then we are going to go over the takeaways, what do we take away from this passage of scripture? What does it mean for us today? How does it apply to our lives, both as individuals and as the church?

So let’s jump right in and read the commission in its entirety and get familiar with it: Starting right back at verse 18, “Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Alright, let’s start out with a little bit of background and context of the story itself in Matthew up to this point: Jesus had been crucified, and then put into a tomb, dead. He then rose up from death. In Matthew it says that an Angel rolled away the stone that blocked the tomb, and sat on it. And the guards were terrified. The two Mary’s come to the tomb and saw this, and the angel says to them that Jesus is risen from the dead, like he said he would. So they rush away, and Jesus meets them and tells them to go tell his disciples to go to Galilee to a mountain, where they will see him. So the disciples go to Galilee, to this mountain Jesus had told them to go. Then they see him there, and most of them worship him. Then Jesus speaks, and says that all authority has been given to him, and then gives his disciples the great commission. This is how the story is told in Matthew.

So last week we focused on the authority piece, and now we come to the descriptive part of this, how they do this. So let's look at that with a little bit of depth, and see what is here. I’m going to up split the commission into three sections, His Command, His Instructions, and His Promise.

So the first section of the commission is the command to GO and MAKE DISCIPLES of ALL NATIONS, this is the command. Everything else in the commission is subject to this, so we are going to look extra deep at this part, Greek and all. When you start to study the Greek in this passage, you see that the command, the imperative, is to MAKE DISCIPLES. This is a verb, which means that it is something that we actively do. We kind of add the word “make” into this, but if we were to try and shoot for a more literal translation of the Greek, I think it would be more appropriate to say “Go and disciple all the nations”. The Greek word for the VERB disciple means “to initiate or instruct a disciple in the ways or teachings of a specific teacher or leader.” However, the Greek word for the NOUN disciple is a description, which means “a student who adheres to a teacher”. In this passage, it is the verb that is used. Jesus isn’t just saying, go create students. He is literally saying, Go and INSTRUCT / TEACH the students that you make.

So they weren’t just supposed to tell people about Jesus and then leave them, they have to ACTIVELY DISCIPLE them. And notice I use the word HAVE too. That is because this verb Disciple is ALSO an imperative, and in Greek that means that Jesus is giving a command.