Go Therefore

Isn't it surprising that when Jesus says, go make disciples, He sums up disciple making in two very brief points. If somebody said, what would it take to make a disciple of Jesus Christ?

How long would you go on for? How many points would you have? Jesus only has two. And Dr. Robert Gottfried will talk about those two points today here on Renewing Your Mind. Welcome to the Friday edition of our program. I'm Lee Webb, joined by our President and CEO, Chris Larson. And, Chris, as we think about the Great Commission, I think about the great privilege we've had to come alongside the Church to be part of that disciple making process.

And for so many years. We are celebrating Ligonier's 50th anniversary this year. Really, August is our birthday month. And this is not so much about our birthday as it is remembering God's faithfulness through the years as the Word of God has been taught through Renewing Your Mind. Just listen to this testimony that came in from Austin up in Charlotte, North Carolina. He says, I was a committed atheist by the time I left high school. When I was saved as a young adult, I knew the gospel was true, but I had so many questions. A friend recommended Dr. Sproul's Renewing Your Mind podcast. I listened every single day for two solid years.

That bore so much fruit in my life. I'm about to finish seminary and in preparing for the ministry. I really don't think that would have happened without God's kindness to me through Dr. Sproul. Thank you. And just to say thank you to our listeners and to continue to pray for men and women whose lives are being changed by the preaching and teaching of God's Word. Thank you, Chris. And we look forward to having you join us on several other programs throughout the rest of this year as we mark 50 years of ministry.

But for now, let's listen to this message by Ligonier teaching fellow, Dr. Robert Godfrey. It's titled, Go Therefore. I don't usually quote movies, but did any of you ever see Ferris Bueller's Day Off?

If you watch the credits at the end, no one stays to watch the credits to the end, but at the end of the credits, Ferris Bueller reappears and says, Why are you here? Go! Go! And that's what I'm supposed to talk about today. Why are you here?

Go! And so our text is the Great Commission, Matthew 28 verses 16 through 20. This is God's own Word. Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them, and when they saw Him, they worshipped, 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. You know, I've heard many sermons on the Great Commission, but I'm always struck, and I don't know that I've ever heard anybody really preach on it, that they worshipped Him, but some doubted. I keep thinking back to that question, how do you counsel someone struggling with unbelief?

Maybe that's a verse to turn to and say, Look, at least a couple of the disciples themselves standing in the presence of the risen Lord, probably on the mountain where He preached the Sermon on the Mount to them, doubted. So we all need encouragement. We all need direction.

We all need help. Why are you still here? Why don't you go? Go therefore, Jesus said.

And I want to think with you about that, and then it will be time to go. Jesus said, Go make disciples. And we've spent some time in this conference talking about the difficult circumstances, the increasingly difficult circumstances, it seems, in which we find ourselves as American Christians. So the question, how do you make disciples, is perhaps more pressing, more crucial than ever. How do we make disciples? And I have, you'll be amazed to hear, three points that emerge from what Jesus says here. He says, Go make disciples.

Go as the church. I think sometimes we miss that, or at least don't emphasize this enough in this great commission that Jesus gives us. I think we have often in the past very much stressed the responsibility of individual Christians to be witnesses for Christ. And that's true, and that's important, that's vital.

I don't want anything I say to seem to undermine that. But I think Jesus here is primarily thinking more communally. He sends disciples to make disciples. And when He sends disciples out, He usually sends them more than one at a time. He wants disciples to go make disciples. In Luke we read about sheep making sheep.

Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel as sheep. Jesus is sending not angels, but fallible human disciples to make more disciples, and we go as the church. At the center of Jesus' thinking is the church. The church is at the center of what Jesus is doing. He's building a church. He's building a people. He's building His new Israel. He's building that new humanity that will be His forever in glory. And He's sending us out together to call people into a new community.

That's crucial for us to bear in mind. We are never called as Christians. Well, never. We are hardly ever. Most of us never called as Christians to be Christians alone. There are times when Christians feel entirely alone. But God wants us to feel and experience and be part of a community of faith. And we're to go together. We're to go as disciples, as those linked together in a common faith to pursue a common goal of building the church of Jesus Christ around the world, discipling the nations.

It's a community confronting a community to build a bigger community. And so this is crucial that we see that, that we're called to be serving Christ's great commission as the church. If you don't have a church, you need to find one. That's the calling of Christ. And don't be a floater.

I'm well past that age where you begin to have floaters in your eyes, little black spots that float by. There are Christians who relate to the church that way. There are little spots that float by. And there are Christians who are constantly saying, oh, this church isn't quite good enough. I'm going to move on to the next, and then the next, and then the next, and then the next. We are not called to be floaters.

We are called to be constituent parts, active participants in the building of a church, not primarily a physical building but a spiritual building, a family, a community that cares for one another. People can't care for you if you float in and out. They won't know you. You can't care for others if you float in and out.

You won't know them. And so this is a wonderful time to take a bit of personal inventory and ask, am I as connected with my church as I ought to be? The fun thing in these conferences is to talk about what's wrong with all those other people.

So since I can leave soon, I can be more annoying and ask us what's wrong with us. Are we really connected to a church? Are we part of a church? Do we have a sense that we're part of a community?

Do we have a sense that if we left this community, they would be sorry to see us go, they would feel impoverished? This is why the Reformed have always said discipline is part of the true church. Elders should have watch over your souls. If you're an elder, you ought to be watching over the souls of your people.

You ought to know who's there and who's not there. You know, the Dutch Reformed do all things perfectly. And they had an institution that was called Heisbazook, house visiting. The elders would come to every family at least once a year.

In Geneva it was four times a year, so the Dutch are a little, you know, slacking off. But think of that, coming to your house once a year to ask, how goes it spiritually? Are you growing in grace? Are you connected to the church? Can we hear what you think about how things are going in the church? No, we're not here to hear endless complaints about the ministry. We're here to see how we can all grow closer together, how we can all grow closer to Christ. And I really believe as we live increasingly in a world in America where families are falling apart, where neighborhoods have fallen apart, where we don't know people anymore, where all sorts of people are isolated, the church as community of love and faith and discipline is going to shine ever more brightly in this world to people who are lonely.

Some years ago we had friends whose grandson, little boy, was killed in an automobile accident. And the highway patrolman came to visit them a day later and he said to them, you must be Christians. And they said, yes, why? And he said, because there are so many people coming to visit you. He said, you can't imagine the homes I visit where tragedy has hit and they're alone. No one is there.

No one is coming. And what a light to the world that the church is the place of love and care and compassion. And so ask yourself, am I doing what I ought to be doing to be part of Christ's church? Because the commission is to go as the church.

And then to go according to the commission. We're not to go just with our own bright ideas. I hate to be the bearer of bad news. I really, you know, I'm easygoing Bob. I'm optimistic.

Everything is good. I'm the bearer of bad news. You're not that bright.

You're not that clever. You need to go with the commission that Christ has given us. Can you still be surprised by the Great Commission?

Do you know it so well that there's nothing in it that surprises you? Isn't it surprising that when Jesus says, go make disciples, He sums up disciple making in two very brief points. If somebody said, what would it take to make a disciple of Jesus Christ?

How long would you go on for? How many points would you have? Jesus only has two. And one of them is about baptism.

Now that's surprising. I think for a lot of us, if we're asked, how do you make disciples of Jesus Christ? We might eventually get to baptism, but we probably wouldn't start with it. The way Jesus does. You know, it's very important to let the Bible surprise you sometimes. And when the Bible surprises you, shocks you, now we're too pious to say this, but or annoys you, that's the time to pause and meditate and reflect and ask, what am I missing here that it surprises me? I think Jesus is giving us a summary of what it takes to make disciples, partly to say it's not that hard.

It is hard, but it's not that hard. Two things to make disciples. Bring them in and build them up.

How about that? Bring them in and build them up. That's what Jesus did for us, didn't He? He brought us in and He built us up. How is baptism being used here to describe the bringing them in? Well, I think it encourages us to reflect on the fact that we shouldn't think of baptism narrowly. I don't think Jesus is just referring to the moment of water. Now that's clearly in His mind.

It's the sort of culmination of the bringing them in. But I think He's encouraging us to think sort of all that we were taught about baptism, and particularly maybe to go back in our minds to John the Baptist. In some versions, John the Presbyterian.

Alright, alright, alright. What do we read about John? We don't read about John that he just came with water, right?

He didn't come with a fire hose sprinkling everybody he could get with water, and that was all he did. No, we're told he came preaching good news. He came preaching good news.

And what was the good news? The kingdom of God is at hand. The King is coming.

So, baptism in the broad sense of what John was doing was first of all preaching, preaching good news about Jesus and salvation in Him, preaching the call to repentance. You need a new life. You need to be a new person. You need a new identity.

You need to change. That's what John came preaching. And he said, pretending won't do. Going through the motions won't do.

Just having the water won't do. You have to hear the good news, believe the good news, repent, and bring forth the fruit of repentance. So, bringing them in isn't having them sign a decision card. Bringing them in is a big deal. It involves a lot, a lot of telling, a lot of helping, a lot of instructing, and then bringing them to the new identity that the waters of baptism represent.

And so, this bringing them in is really crucial. And the waters of baptism and the preaching that surrounds baptism, it's a new covenant. It's a new covenant.

And all of those of you who, as who hasn't, have spent time meditating on the sixteenth-century Dutch Reformed baptismal liturgy. The sixteenth-century Dutch Reformed baptismal liturgy is a marvel, and it has these arresting phrases, and one of them is, all covenants have two parts. That's an important thing to remember about covenants.

They have two parts. And the first part of a covenant, the new covenant that John has preached that Jesus will inaugurate fully, this new covenant, first of all, has promises. And baptism speaks of the promises of God. And bringing people in to be disciples requires a knowledge and an embracing of the promises of God. And this form takes note of the fact that Jesus has baptized them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And if you stop and think about that for a minute, in terms of promises, you can begin to see the Father has promises, and the Son has promises, and the Spirit has promises to us. When the gospel is coming to us and calling us to come in and share in the new identity and the new covenant that Christ is establishing, what are the promises of the Father that He'll adopt us as children and heirs?

Is that good or what? That we'll be adopted as children and heirs. That's the new family.

That's the reunion people look forward to, children and heirs. And what does the Son promise us? He promises that He'll wash us in His blood from all our sins and incorporate us into the fellowship of His death and resurrection so that we, freed from all our sins, are accounted righteous before God. What a promise! What a promise is held out to us in baptism. And the Holy Spirit, what does the Holy Spirit promise us? That He will dwell in us and sanctify us till we shall finally be presented without spot amongst the assembly of the elect in life eternal, adopted, washed, sanctified, glorified.

What a promise! Now, I want to be clear. This is not what baptism does. This is what baptism means. Some Christians have gotten confused and think the water of baptism does something apart from the Word and the Spirit. No, baptism means something. Baptism promises something. Baptism declares as a visible Word the promises of God to those who need a new identity, who need to be adopted and washed and sanctified.

And that's how we bring them in, hold out those promises. But in all covenants, there are two parts. And therefore, am I by baptism obligated unto new obedience, a new life, a new lifestyle, so that I have to be committed to what baptism promises me. And that means faith, and it means repentance, and it means a new life. And that's what it means to bring them in.

Are you excited about that? Isn't that a wonderful thing that we are a new people and that newness is marked in baptism? And the great thing is that that newness is ours when we embrace it by faith and follow Christ in new life. And we ought to pause and think more often of ourselves as a baptized people. The problem is when we talk about baptism, if we talk about it at all, we only talk about who ought to be baptized.

And like I've said before, there are some people right about that and some people wrong. But more important really than who ought to be baptized is the question, what does God say to me as a baptized person, not only at the moment of baptism but through my whole life, whether I can remember my baptism or not? The reality of my baptism says constantly to me, God has made promises to you. Do you believe them?

Do you follow them? Has God brought you in? If you're brought in, you live out your life in thankfulness for the promises He has made and that He is fulfilling in you. That's what it means to make disciples according to the Great Commission. And then He closes with this wonderful promise. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. There are three alls in this Great Commission, all authority, all nations, all that I have commanded. And then it's a little harder to translate the fourth all effectively into English. I think the best way would maybe be, and lo, I am with you all days to the end of the age. You know, always is kind of abstract or general.

It's not general in the Greek. It's every day I am with you. What an encouragement.

Jesus is with us every day of the life we live serving Him, making disciples, bringing them in and building them up. What an encouragement. And here I hear an echo of Psalm 23. See, you need to know your Psalter to hear the echoes all through the New Testament. Psalm 23, Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. You are with me. David knew the Lord was with him.

David, in the worst struggles of life, knew the Lord was with him. And Jesus reminds us all, I'll be with you. You don't go to work for me by yourself.

You don't go on your own. You don't go without me. I will be with you. I will be with you every day as you do my work.

So what's left to say? Go! Go!

Why are you still here? Go as the church. Go according to the Great Commission. Go with confidence that God will use you to accomplish His purpose. And whether we see great things happening or see relatively little happening, Jesus says, I'm with you. I'm accomplishing my purpose. Don't worry.

Don't fret. Not one will be lost. And when I return in glory, all the elect will have been gathered, and then forever will be with the Lord. Comfort one another with those words.

We do indeed find great comfort in those words. We're called to preach Christ and to call people to repentance and to trust in Him. Then we're to teach them what Christ has revealed so that they will persevere to the end and inherit eternal life. Today on Renewing Your Mind, W. Robert Godfrey is considered the importance of discipleship and how our making disciples has an eternal impact. Dr. Godfrey expands on this in his Table Talk magazine article this month.

In it, he says this, The Church needs theology to make disciples, both those who are brought into the Church and those who are built up in the truth. We invite you to contact us today so that we can get a copy of this August issue of Table Talk into your hands, and we can continue sending you this helpful monthly devotional magazine for a full year. Request it today with a donation of any amount when you call us at 800-435-4343.

You can also make your request online at renewingyourmind.org. And I don't want to neglect thanking you for your generosity to this ministry. Believers around the world benefit from the various outreaches of Ligonier, and your gifts make those outreaches possible. So thank you.

Well, Dr. R.C. Sproul was never afraid to tackle difficult topics and doctrines, even those that might be considered controversial. The doctrine of justification by faith alone is at the center of Reformation theology and remains critical for all believers today. But this doctrine is under continual assaults. So I hope you'll make plans to join us next week as R.C. helps us understand this doctrine more deeply, because as he says, without it, there is no gospel. That's starting Monday, here on Renewing Your Mind. .