Go Therefore and Make Disciples of All Nations

Matthew 28 records Jesus' words to His disciples, Go and make disciples of all nations. Notice what Jesus doesn't say. He doesn't say, Go and evangelize. He doesn't say, Go in, blow in, blow up, and blow out with some big crusade, and go back and report how many people heard and responded to the gospel. He doesn't even say, Go and translate a Bible in the tongue or the language of that people.

No. He says, Go and make disciples. That statement in Matthew 28 is known as the Great Commission, Jesus' directive to His disciples and those who would follow to go everywhere, proclaiming the good news of the gospel. But is it more than that?

Here's Dr. Burke Parsons. In this session, we come to the great commandment of the Great Commission of Jesus Christ, that part where we hear Christ's very clear directive to go. Now, with the Great Commission, we see that this is, in fact, a commission. It's a command. Christ is telling us to do something.

It's not the great suggestion or the great option. It's not something that Christ puts to us that we can either decide to do or not do. Another one of the significant motivations for missions and evangelism and fulfilling the Great Commission is, simply put, that Christ has commanded us to do it. And that alone is sufficient as a motivation for us to go and to be faithful in fulfilling the fullness of the Great Commission. As we come to verse 19, we see how Jesus says, Go therefore. That therefore is connected to what He has just said in verse 18, that all authority has been given to Him in heaven and on earth.

That is, again, Jesus' motivation and foundation for why we go. Jesus is connecting this command to go with the fact that He has authority. Because He has authority, go.

Because He has dominion and sovereignty over everything, go. And we go with that authority. We go not with our own authority. We don't have any authority in and of ourselves. As a pastor of a local church, we as pastors don't have any inherent or innate authority. Our authority is ministerial authority.

It's declarative authority. Our authority is not rooted in us. Our authority is rooted in the Word of God. Our authority is in God Himself. So our job is to give people the Word of God, to teach people the Word of God, to proclaim the Word of God, because ultimately, ultimately, we are accountable to God as under-shepherds of Christ, the Chief Shepherd, and you're accountable to God. That we would be faithful stewards, giving people His Word.

And that was the authority with which the disciples were called to go. Not with our own authority, not with some sort of pompous arrogance, but to go as humble servants and stewards of the Lord. And that's how we are to go.

We are to go. Notice how Peter says when people ask us about the hope that is within us, we are to give them an answer for that hope, right? And how are we to do it?

With meekness and gentleness. We're to go forth as humble servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, proclaiming and teaching and sharing the gospel of God and the whole counsel of God. And we're to go pointing people to Christ and not ourselves. Evangelism and missions and fulfilling the Great Commission is not about us getting applause and accolades and people thinking highly of us and, wow, what an amazing evangelist He is or what an amazing missionary He or she is, but rather that they would see shining through us the glory of God, the authority of God, and the beauty of His Word.

That we would be people constantly pointing to Him and not to ourselves. We don't evangelize. We don't do missions, and we don't fulfill the Great Commission in order to get notches on our belt or so that we can constantly brag and boast about those whom we've saved.

No. The Lord is the one who saves. The Lord is the one who regenerates, and we are called to be His faithful servants in proclaiming His truth, His gospel, His Word. May He get the glory from our evangelism, from our missions, from all our support, from all our sending, from all our mobilizing, from all our training.

May He get the glory. Now, many people in coming to the Great Commission and coming to this great command of the Great Commission where Jesus says to go, and most of your translations rightly translate this, go. Now, many who are studied students of Scripture, they know that this word, especially those of you who are here in seminary who've studied the Greek language, you know that this word is a participle, that go is actually a participle. And so sometimes people say, well, this should be translated as you are going or simply going.

But that isn't quite right. This is translated properly as an imperative because this participle and the way it is constructed in this sentence and in this phrase really takes the place of a command itself. And so it is rightly translated in the form of an imperative, in the form of a command, as go. And that means that we are called to go. And where are we called to go?

Well, Jesus says, go, therefore, verse 19, and make disciples of all nations. We are to go to all nations. We are to go to all peoples. We are to go to all people groups.

We are to go to all languages. We are to go to unreached peoples, and we are to go to reached peoples. We are to go to the reached peoples and continue training, continue discipling, continue helping to mature and grow them in the word of God and the example of Christ. And we are to go to the unreached peoples and the unreached nations that they might hear, that they might know, that they might believe, that they might worship. And how will they hear unless missionaries are sent?

How will the nations hear unless we go, unless we support, unless we give sacrificially, unless we mobilize, unless we produce resources that can help people go and can give people tools in their hands so that when they go, they have things to give and to teach and to train. That's one of the reasons we're here, isn't it? It's one of the reasons Ligonier Ministries exists. It's one of the reasons most parachurch ministries exist, to come under the church and serve the church, to provide the church with good resources so that the church around the world might know, that they might grow, that they might worship as faithful followers of Jesus Christ.

That's why we're doing this series, isn't it? That the church might be impassioned and inflamed and have a desire for fulfilling the Great Commission because of the love of God and the command of God, because we know God and we want to make His name known to the ends of the earth. But notice that Jesus doesn't just say, go to the nations, He says very precisely, go and make disciples of all nations. Notice what Jesus doesn't say. He doesn't say go and evangelize. He doesn't say go and make converts. He doesn't say go in, blow in, blow up and blow out with some big crusade and go back and report how many people heard and responded to the gospel. He doesn't say go and simply leave a gospel tract.

He doesn't even say go and translate a Bible in the tongue or the language of that people. No, He says go and make disciples. Now let's be careful here because evangelism and making converts and giving gospel tracts and translating Bibles into the native tongues of a particular unreached people, even holding crusades, even doing evangelism from a soapbox or from the pulpit in a church. All these things are part and parcel of making disciples. But the mistake that many people make, the mistake that many Christians and many churches and even many missions organizations have made over the past and throughout history is that they have come to the conclusion, not looking carefully at what the Great Commission actually entails, that fulfilling the Great Commission is only about evangelism or that it's only about making converts.

You see, here's the hard reality. If you've gone and evangelized or if a missionary or a missions agency has just gone and evangelized or just gone and made converts, they have not fulfilled the Great Commission. If we have gone and held evangelistic crusades or services or revivals, as some people want to call them, and they see people come to Christ, they have not fulfilled the Great Commission. The Great Commission is fulfilled only when we are making disciples as the New Testament defines what a disciple is. Discipleship is hard, and it takes time.

It's not easy. It means face-to-face, one-on-one training. As we'll see a little later on in this passage, it's not just teaching people things. It's not just telling people things. It's not just going proclaiming things. It is actually proclaiming and teaching and doing the hard work of training. It's one-on-one, face-to-face discipleship.

See, it's not just a Bible study. It's actually walking with people, coming alongside people, arm in arm and hand in hand, walking with them, pointing them to Christ, exemplifying the life of Christ even in our own lives. As Paul said, follow me as I follow Christ. And so even as Calvin says that we would follow others only insofar as they follow Christ, but that we would live among them. We would show them what it means to love the Lord and follow the Lord, what it is to bear fruit in the Lord, what it is to walk worthy of the gospel, what it is to forgive, what it is not to grow bitter and not have vengeance against another Christian, what it is as the disciples of Jesus Christ to show and demonstrate love among us to the watching world as the church's greatest apologetic is our love for one another. Jesus said, that's how they'll know that you're my disciples.

And so as we do this, as we do it here, as we do it there, as we go and do it wherever we're called to go and do, we fulfill the great commission by making disciples through proclaiming, through teaching, through training, through discipleship, through mentoring, through older men coming alongside younger men and teaching them, through older women coming alongside younger women and teaching them and training them and showing them the old paths of what it means to know God, to love God and to follow His ways. And this is what Jesus did, didn't He? He made disciples. You know, a lot of people say, well, Jesus was born to die. Well, that's true, but Jesus wasn't only born to die. Jesus was born to live. And in His life, He not only fulfilled all the righteous demands of God's law, He not only lived the perfect sinless life according to the standard of righteousness that the Lord has set forth, but Jesus also made disciples.

Again, common, ordinary people. He took them and He trained them. A disciple is what?

A disciple is a learner, literally a follower. And in Jesus' ministry, a peripatetic ministry like the ancients, as He walked, as He taught, as He lived His life in front of them, so His disciples came in behind Him. They followed Him. They walked with Him. They learned from His ways. They listened to His commands.

They saw how He interacted with people. And so this is to be the work of the Great Commission, making disciples. This is the prominent verb that controls the entirety of the Great Commission, make disciples. And I have to say, though it's sad to say, that in the world today, in the church today, we have done a very poor job at making disciples. We've done a very poor job at discipleship.

People think that if they can just get certain doctrines right in their heads, if they can just affirm certain doctrines, then that's sufficient. Or if we can just get people coming to church, just get people coming to corporate worship, well then we've made disciples. Well, it's important to point out that coming to church, going to corporate worship, learning right doctrine, is in fact part and parcel of how each and every one of us, and every faithful church member and attender, is actually in part as a fulfillment of the Great Commission, and having being reached with the gospel, are actually week in and week out in part fulfilling the Great Commission, because when we go to worship, when we study the Word of God, when we get on our knees and pray, when we work with our children and teach them the things of God and pray with them in the things of God, then what are we doing?

We're fulfilling the Great Commission. You see, for those Christians who don't go to worship, who don't belong to a local church, for those people who claim to know the Lord, but avoid going to corporate worship, avoid being in the Word of God, the reality of it is that they're being disobedient to the Great Commission, not to mention the fact that they may not actually be reached with the gospel to begin with. They may not actually know the Lord, because someone who knows the Lord wants to worship.

Someone who knows the gospel and loves the gospel of Jesus Christ and loves Jesus Christ wants to worship. We want to be in the Scriptures. We want to pray.

We're motivated to do it. Why do we do these things? Why do we come to worship? Why do we give sacrificially of our time and our money and all our resources? Why do we do it? Because God has put a motivation and a desire within us to do it.

He's given us the drive to do it. That's why you're here today. You're here because you care about these things and you want to learn these things and grow in these things. We're studying these matters because God has put a desire in our hearts. He's given us a passion to learn. He has given us the desire to be disciples and to grow as disciples and not merely remain babes in the faith, but to grow up into full maturity. We want the meat of the faith, but not only the meat in our heads, not only the doctrines of our heads, but that that doctrine in our heads would flow out into all of life as we absorb it in our hearts and as it exudes from our hands and our feet in all that we do in life.

That learning and studying and following the Lord Jesus Christ would be in all our lives every day as we live and as we breathe, as we worship, as we praise, not just on the Lord's day, but each and every day and each and every hour of our lives that we as disciples of Jesus Christ would see the great delight, the great privilege that we have of being followers of Jesus, that it would shape everything we think, do, and say. So Jesus calls us to go and to make disciples, to make learners, to make followers, not just converts, not just people who understand doctrine, but people who live out their doctrine. You know, Jesus in much of his ministry was not only giving assurance to those who lacked assurance, granting faith to those who humbly came to him and wanted faith. Those who came to him and wanted healing, Jesus also gave forgiveness.

And throughout his ministry, what do we see Jesus doing? We see Jesus also challenging people who had a presumptuous faith. That is to say, they didn't rest in the Lord. They didn't rely on the Lord. They weren't trusting in God. They were presuming upon God. They weren't resting in grace. They were presuming upon grace.

And what did he say to them? He said, if you love me, if you say you love me, then what will you do? You'll follow me. If you say you believe in me, then you'll keep my commandments. If we really believe the Lord Jesus Christ, if we really know him, then we are going to want to follow him. We are going to bear fruit naturally because we're united to Jesus Christ. If we know the gospel, we'll walk worthy of the gospel. If we know the Spirit, we'll walk in the Spirit. This is the natural, organic way in which true disciples bear fruit in life. If we don't have any fruit, if we don't have obedience, what does that mean?

As James tells us, we don't even have real faith. So as we make disciples and as we make disciples here in our homes and our churches, as we ourselves are striving to be more faithful disciples, to learn the Word of God and things of God and the example of Christ. And as we go to the nations and make disciples, we are called to go and help, to serve, to come alongside.

And that means we're not just sort of blowing in, blowing up, and blowing out and think we've done our job. We are called to take our lives, take our money, take our time, our energies, and give ourselves to this most important command that Christ has given, to make disciples and learners. Now this central verb, to make disciples, has two subordinating clauses. Part and parcel of what it means to be a disciple, for a disciple to be made, Jesus first says, is baptism. Look there what He says in verse 19, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Now this is significant because if what Matthew, he records what Jesus has said, if it's important, the word order here and the placement of baptism, well then what we see here is that baptism is not a graduating right, it's an initiating right. That baptism is not something that comes when someone has arrived, but it's rather something that is given and something that is administered when someone comes in, when someone comes into the family of God and to the covenant community of God's people. That baptism is something that is given to all those who believe and as we believe, to their children.

As we see even demonstrated in the Acts of the Apostles, the living out and the fulfillment in part of the Great Commission in the Acts of the Apostles, we see these household baptisms where those who believe are baptized and then all those in their household are baptized along with them because there's a special familial solidarity, a special connection that those children have to their believing mother or father. A special connection brings them into the covenant community because children, children of Christians, children in the family of God and children who are part of the covenant community, we don't treat them as outsiders, do we? We treat them as part of the family of God. And in doing so, what do we teach them to do? We teach them to grow as disciples. We teach them the things of God. We teach them how to read the Bible and how to pray and how to sing. We teach them what it is to know the Lord, knowing all the while that it's not their baptism that saves them, it's the grace of God by faith alone in Christ alone that saves them, hoping and praying each and every day that the Lord will save them, that they will know Him, that they will trust the Lord Jesus Christ. But we treat them as disciples, don't we? We treat our children as disciples hoping that they will indeed know the Lord, that they will indeed trust the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. And they're not saved because they're in our households, they're not saved because they're baptized, they're saved because of the grace of God in their lives by faith.

And that's what we pray for, that's what we hope for. It's significant that Jesus says, let the little children come unto Me. And not only does He rebuke the disciples when they try to prevent them, Jesus is angry with the disciples. He says, let them come unto Me, do not hinder them. But notice what else Jesus says. He gives a warning and a woe to any who would lead one of these little ones astray. Jesus says it would be better if a millstone were hung around His neck than that He should lead a little one astray.

What does that imply? It implies that we are discipling and teaching our children. Fathers are called to train up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Children are not outside of this great commission. They are part and parcel of whom we are called to go and to serve as we serve families, as we serve men and women and children, teaching them so that they might be disciples of Jesus Christ, baptizing them into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And notice, it's not three names.

It's one name because our God is one. And Jesus says that this is the first aspect or the first way in which we make disciples in baptizing them. The Great Commission. It encompasses everyone from every nation, young and old. Thanks for listening to Renewing Your Mind on this Wednesday. I'm Lee Webb. Ligonier Teaching Fellow Dr. Burke Parsons is taking us through his series, The Great Commission, walking us through every phase of Jesus' command.

We're learning how to fulfill it in our homes, in our churches, in our communities, and to the ends of the earth. We put all five messages from the series on a single DVD, and we'd be happy to send it to you for a donation of any amount. You can find us online at renewingyourmind.org, or you can call us with your gift at 800-435-4343. The videos will also be added to your online learning library, which allows you to watch online and through Ligonier's free app. We hope to hear from you.

Our phone number again is 800-435-4343, and our web address, renewingyourmind.org. And in advance, let me thank you for your generous donation. Speaking of Ligonier's free app, you'll find hundreds of messages and articles by Dr. Parsons, along with the other Ligonier Teaching Fellows.

You'll find hours of helpful content at your fingertips, all for free when you search for Ligonier in your app store. In making disciples of all nations, what exactly are we to teach? Is it just a matter of sharing our testimonies? Tomorrow Dr. Parsons returns to explain what it means to teach them to observe all that Christ commanded. I hope you'll make plans to join us Thursday for Renewing Your Mind. Music .