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-
hard pressed soil,
rocky soil,
thorns, or
good ground.
Jesus then interprets this parable for his disciples in Mark 4:14-20-
Mar 4:14-20 CSV The sower sows the word. (15) Some are like the word sown on the path (hard pressed ground). When they hear, immediately Satan comes and takes away the word sown in them. (16) And others are like seed sown on rocky ground. When they hear the word, immediately they receive it with joy.
(17) But they have no root; they are short-lived. When distress or persecution comes because of the word, they immediately fall away. (18) Others are like seed sown among thorns; these are the ones who hear the word, (19) but the worries of this age, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. (20) And those like seed sown on good ground hear the word, welcome it, and produce fruit thirty, sixty, and a hundred times what was sown.”
Jesus has shown us why most modern evangelical methods fall short of actually making a disciple.
The seeds of the Gospel only hits the hard ground, the rocky soil, or into thorns- People will hear the Gospel, MAYBE have a temporary spiritual high from it, then immediately satan comes and destroys that seed.
This is where we have fallen short. Converts and not disciples.
So let’s look how Jesus defined the word “Disciple”
This was an interesting study for me because modern society views Jesus as a really nice guy who says and does nice things, but that’s not the Jesus of the Gospels. He is actually fairly stern in many topics, and who exactly qualifies as a disciple is one of them-
This is what he says in Luke 14-
1. (vs 26) Hate your family…mother father sister brother, wife, and children, and even your own life. What Jesus is saying here is that if you are going to call yourself HIS disciple, HE becomes #1, and he will have no rival in your life.
2. (vs 27)- Carry your cross. Crosses are heavy and are a constant reminder that your life is not your own- you were bought with a price, and are now owned by Jesus. If you are HIS disciple, That means you serve HIM, not yourself.
3. (vs 33)- Give up everything you have. If you are HIS disciple, Everything you own, accomplish, or you treasure goes on the altar as a way of worshipping Jesus.
If you are able to agree and live by those three principles, you can call yourself a disciple of Christ.
That’s the difference between being a covert and a discple-
It’s not just praying a prayer- it’s a radical life change to agree to follow Jesus no matter where He might lead you.
So when we make a disciple, what do we do with them? What is part of the “some assembly required when it comes to starting them on the path?
Jesus gives us that answer-
I. Baptizing them
A. Water
A lot of people like to debate if a person HAS to be baptized to be saved or be considered a disciple of Jesus.
It’s kind of amazing to me that people becoming instant theologians or lawyers when we start talking about things like this.
“Well, technically the thief on the cross wasn’t baptized and Jesus said he would be with HIM In paradise, so the answer is no- you don’t need to be baptized”
Ok- deal, when you are nailed to a cross, I’ll give you that pass.
The exception to the rule doesn’t negate or cancel the rule.
If you are on a death bed struggling to breathe and running out of time- I’ll give you that pass.
Otherwise- get in the water and be baptized. If you are choosing the follow Jesus, why would you want to be disobedient to the first thing he asks you to do?
Baptism is your public confession of faith in Jesus, symbolizing dying to your old self, and starting a new life that is lived for your KING.
It’s something most church’s aren’t good at- but when we get a new convert we should make every effort to baptize them as soon as possible.
Don’t give the devil a foothold to allow them to be disobedient.
We also strongly encourage them to receive a second baptism described in the bible- and that is the Baptism in the Holy Spirit.
Now, John 20:22 the resurrected Jesus breaths on the disciples, restoring the Holy Spirit connection with God that was lost in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. That happens with anyone that repents of their sins and turns to follow Jesus.
In our fellowship, the Assemblies of God, we believe there is a second time the Holy Spirit comes upon us. In Acts 2 the Holy Spirit falls in the room in tongues of fire, clothing them with power from heaven. They all speak in a language previously not known to them, or a spiritual language- we call that speaking in tongues.
This is the Holy Spirit now clothing a new disciple in power.
A sinner who had spiritually been wearing the rags of sin is not clothed in robes of righteousness and power. You remember Adam hiding from God after Eve ate him out of house and home? Adam said I hid because I am naked.
That was the Holy Spirit being on Adam in power, and he knew it was gone and didn’t want to face God in his failure.
Disciples of Jesus Christ should yearn to be obedient in all things, including seeking and carrying that power with them where ever they go.
(speak to abuses in what some call HS outpourings)
The second part of assembling the new disciple is
II. Teaching them
In the parable of the sower, when the seed was thrown on the rocky ground, Jesus teaches that it wasn’t able to grow because it had no root.
The idea of being rooted is critically important when it comes to making a disciple.
If I go out in my yard and pluck up a flower, and just drop it in the grass, it will die- it has no way of being nourished, it has no connection to the ground so any breeze will blow it all over the place, and the sun will scorch it because it is not connect to a source of life.
People are the same way. If you consider what we do when we present to them the gospel and they accept and want to become disciples of Jesus-
We are ripping them out of the ground they have been attached to their entire lives.
Has anyone ever heard the phrase- “You break it, you bought it?” The same holds true for the new disciple.
It is then our job to replant into the life giving local church.
This was huge when Tammie and I started following Jesus. We would NOT have survived being young Christians if the church we were going to hadn’t showered us with attention.
Both sides of our family were against us becoming Christians
Our friends were all against it.
Our jobs were against it. My Army reserve unit thought I had lost my mind.
Huge pressure. In fact, when we got married my grandparents made a rare trip to Kenosha to be there. They were true northern Wisconsin people- convinced anything south of Eau Claire was just getting closer to the gates of hell.
My grandmother was convinced we joined a cult
So, Tammie and I were both at huge risk of becoming the seedlings that would not develop a root system.
However, at our new church, We had all kinds of people coming along side us to make sure we got to church. We had all kinds of invites to peoples gatherings, church events.
They even came to pick us up when we didn’t have a car. If the church doors were open, they made sure we were there. In a very short time, the church became everything to us, and even became our second family.
That allowed our roots to bury deep into Christ, to learn His word, and to watch others as they followed Jesus, and then do the same.
That’s really what discipleship is.
There is one more thing about discipleship that I have learned.
Our district holds seminars occasionally where they will bring in a speaker to talk to the ministers in the district. I don’t remember who this person was, but he taught us something that really stuck with me.
He taught us a way to avoid becoming spiritual stagnant in our relationship with Jesus, and how to grow as Christian.
He this idea to us through the apostle Paul’s life.
In Paul’s life he had three distinct types of people.
He had a mentor
He had a brother
He had a student.
Paul’s mentor was initially Gamliel- his rabbi. Later it became Jesus spiritually and the apostles in life.
His spiritual brother was Barnabas- someone on the same spiritual level he was and was both a friend and someone to hold him accountable for his spiritual life.
And his student was primarily Timothy, and later Titus and John Mark.
I encourage you that if you choose to really start following Jesus in the Great Commission, you do the same.
Identify your mentor,
your brother or sister,
and your student or person you are bringing up.
For parents, that’s primarily your children, but it could also be a newer person in the church, or a neighbor or coworker that is really struggling in life and needs a friend. Be that friend for them, and see Jesus really explode in their lives.
Let’s all stand. Prayer.
