The Great Commission for You and Me - Life of Christ Part 116

How many Star Trek fans do we have here?

All right. Well, you know, I know that there's the new generation and I know there's deep space, but I got to tell you, in my opinion, there is nothing like the original. Right? Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, and all the rest of them, exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new civilizations, boldly going where no man has gone before. Now, if you've ever watched the show, you know that the crew of the Enterprise were under strict orders never to interfere with any culture that they found.

Remember that? And there was a name for this order. It was called the Prime Directive. And the Prime Directive shaped the mission of the Enterprise everywhere it went. What's really interesting is when we look in the Bible, we find as Christians that God has given us a Prime Directive. And God wants the Prime Directive He's given us to shape our lives and our mission here on Earth in the same way that the Prime Directive of Star Trek shaped the life and the mission of every person on board the Enterprise.

And I want to talk to you today about the Prime Directive. Sometimes it's been called the Great Commission that Jesus gave us as his followers before he left. It's here in Matthew 28, and I'd like us to look together. Let's look beginning at verse 18. Jesus now has been raised from the dead.

He meets his disciples in Galilee before he goes back to heaven. And here's the conversation that they have verse 18. Then Jesus came to them and said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. The money changers when Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple, when he healed crippled people on the Sabbath, when he said to people that their sins have been forgiven, the rabbis were constantly asking him the same question, Matthew 21-23, by what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority?

And it's a good question. And here Jesus gives the answer. Look, he says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Philippians chapter two says that God has given Jesus Christ a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

And every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Jesus Christ has been given all dominion in heaven and in earth. And he didn't steal it. He didn't usurp it.

He didn't weasel it away from somebody. He's entitled to all authority in heaven and on earth because he's almighty God wrapped in human flesh, because he went to the cross and gave his life for the sins of mankind, and because he rose from the dead, which nobody else has ever done, to prove that all dominion had been given to him. He's entitled to this. Now, in light of the fact that Jesus has all authority, look what he says, verse 19. Therefore, in light of the fact that all the authority in heaven and earth belongs to me, I'm going to give you an audacious mission, he says. I'm going to give you an audacious mission.

And here it is. Here's your prime directive, Jesus said, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and 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. This is the Great Commission. This is the prime directive that Jesus Christ left you and me with as Christians. And there are four things about the prime directive about the Great Commission that I want to point out to you as we study it this morning.

And here they are. Number one, would you notice, first of all, that the Great Commission is not optional. Jesus said, go and do something imperative. If you know anything about English grammar, you know when somebody uses an imperative, they're giving you a command, not a suggestion. I have a son at the Naval Academy and he said, Dad, I learned real early when I got here, there's a difference between a suggestion and a command.

A suggestion is something that you're entitled to think about. A command doesn't involve you thinking about it, it's just something you're expected to do. And folks, the Great Commission is not a suggestion.

It's a command. Second of all, would you notice that the Great Commission has a well-defined message to it. Mark chapter 16, Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel to everybody. This is how we make disciples. We go and we preach the gospel. Now you say, what is the gospel? What is this thing exactly that we're supposed to go preach? Well, the gospel is, I don't know, a lot. It's just kind of the whole thing, you know?

No, no, no, no. We've got to be more precise than the whole thing. Look with me, keep a finger here. We're coming back to Matthew 28 and flip over with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 15, if you would. This is page 815 in our copy of the Bible, page 815, for a definition of what this thing called the gospel is that we're supposed to preach. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, look at verse 1, page 815. Now, brothers, I want to remind you, Paul says, of the gospel that I preach to you which you received and on which you've taken your stand. In the gospel, verse 3, for what I received, I passed on to you.

And here it is. The gospel has three parts to it. Number one, that Christ died for our sins according to the scripture. Christ died not as a victim, not as a martyr, not as an example, not as a misguided zealot, not as a mistake, and not for his own gain. He died for our sins according to the scripture, the way the scriptures in the Old Testament had predicted for hundreds of years before it ever took place in time and space that this was going to happen. He died for our sins according to the scripture. Second part, and he was buried. Why was he buried? Because he was really dead. That's why he was really dead.

And third part, and finally, he was raised on the third day from the dead according to the scripture. This is the gospel. And this is what Jesus commissioned us to offer people as the church.

He did not commission us as the church to offer people feel-good flattery, pious platitudes, car washes, bake sales, or bingo. This is not why we're here. We are here to offer people the gospel, which is something that the rest of the world cannot offer people. We're here to offer people things that they cannot get anywhere else in the world. We're here to offer them forgiveness of sin and reconciliation with God. We're here to offer them release from guilt and eternal life in heaven and a transformed life that's worth living here on the earth. These are the things that are involved in the gospel proclamation. And these are the things that Jesus Christ left us here as Christians to offer other human beings. And all you have to do to get this, Jesus said in Luke 24, is repent. Say, what's that mean? I got to stop smoking, stop drinking, do penance, climb steps on my knees.

No, no, no, no, no. All repentance means is a U-turn. It's just a U-turn. To get eternal life and to have Jesus Christ become part of your life, all you have to do is make a U-turn in your relationship with God.

And if you're here this morning and you're going in a direction away from God and you've never embraced Christ as your personal savior, and you don't know for certain that your sins are forgiven and you're not absolutely confident if you died tonight that you have eternal life, what can you do to get these things? Is it hard? No. Is it complicated?

No, you can do it this morning. All you got to do is be willing to say, God, I'm making a U-turn in my relationship with you. I'm coming home because I wasn't before. And I hope you'll think about that. Well, there's a well-defined message.

The third thing I want to show you is that the Great Commission has a well-defined scope. What do you mean by that, Lon? What I mean is that there is a scope of who we're to take this gospel to. Look what it says back in Matthew 28.

Let's go back. Jesus said, go and make disciples of all nations. Now, the word here used for nations is the word ethnos in Greek, and we get our English word ethnic from this. Jesus is not talking here about political nations. He's talking about ethnic groups. Go and make disciples of every ethnic group on the face of the earth.

I don't care what political nation they're in, doesn't make a bit of difference, but every ethnic group, no matter what level of development they may be at, whether they're Stone Age or modern technology, every ethnic group lies within the scope of what I want you to go and do, and that's take the gospel to these people. Now, folks, this represented a radical redefinition of who the disciples understood Jesus to be. They understood him to be the king of the Jews. They understood him to be the Jewish Messiah.

But Jesus says to them, no, you're wrong. I'm not the Jewish Messiah. I am the world's Messiah. I am the international Messiah. Don't have such a limited scope that you think I only came for Jewish people.

I didn't. I came for everybody. Everybody. And Jesus reinforced this universal scope where he said in Mark's gospel, Mark 16, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every living creature, Jesus said. God wants us reaching out in the name of Jesus Christ to every single person we know, every single person we have relationship with, every single person we meet. There is not one single person in the entire world that lies outside the scope of the Great Commission.

Finally, not only does the Great Commission have a well-defined message and a well-defined scope, finally, it has a well-defined goal. If Jesus says here, go and make disciples, go and make disciples. Our goal is not to produce more nominal Christians, more Christians in name only, or to expand the ranks of insipid Christianity. Folks, believe me, on Sunday morning, we have already got too many members of Mattress Methodist and Bedside Bible Church. You understand what I'm saying?

We don't need any more people like this. We need disciples. He said, well, Lon, what exactly is a disciple?

I mean, what's the difference? Reminds me of the story of this chicken and this pig and the chicken and the pig over here, this farmer talking about the fact that he's planning to have bacon and eggs for breakfast. And the chicken says to the pig, well, what do you think about this? And the pig said, well, I don't think it's a good idea. And the chicken said, well, I don't have a problem with it. And the pig says, you don't understand. A bacon and egg breakfast for you is a minor inconvenience.

For me, it's a total commitment. And you see, this is the difference between a disciple and a nominal Christian. Nominal Christians are chickens.

It's a minor inconvenience to be a Christian. But disciples are pigs. Now, don't take that out of context.

But if you understand, you've got to tell the joke for it to make sense. But disciples are pigs, friends, meaning that for us, it's a total commitment. A disciple is a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ who has crossed some lines and said, this is a 100% commitment. Now, Jesus refers to this in what he goes on to say here. Look, he says, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I've commanded. There are two areas where a disciple is distinguished from somebody else in what Jesus says here. You say, Lon, I don't see it.

Good, I'm going to explain it to you. The first one is a disciple is a person who has devoted themselves to Jesus Christ being number one, primary, supreme in their life. You say, where do you see that here? I see it in Jesus saying that a disciple should be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In the first century, if you were a Gentile and a member of the Roman Empire, you were expected to worship the Emperor. He was expected to be supreme in your life. When you got baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, what you were saying to the Emperor is, you are not number one in my life. You are not supreme in my life. Jesus Christ is.

You put your life on the line when you did that. And if you were Jewish, you were saying to the rabbinic community, I'm sorry, I'm rejecting Christ as the Messiah, and I don't care what kind of price I have to pay. I'm accepting that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, no matter what you say about it. See, when you were baptized in the first century, you were going to pay a price for being baptized. There was no free baptism like there is today. I mean, in our culture today, if a Gentile is baptized in a church, it's so culturally acceptable, we don't even think anything of it. That's not the way it was when Jesus spoke these words. You got baptized, you were making a statement, Christ is number one in your life, and you knew you were going to pay a price for it.

And many people paid with their lives for this. And if you're Jewish today, it's still that way. If you're Islamic today, it's still that way.

If you come from a number of cultures in the world today, it is still that way. You get baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and buddy, you are putting yourself on the line. So what is Jesus asking disciples to do?

He's asking them to make him number one in their life. When I was a brand new Christian, I was 21 years old in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and I'd accepted Christ as my personal Savior. And I was having a blast just learning what it meant to walk in the steps of Jesus Christ. The man who led me to Christ came to me and said, now we need to baptize you. And I went, what?

Do what? He said, we need to baptize you. I said, pal, I don't think you understand. I'm Jewish. These people do not get baptized.

He said, well, you've got a decision to make, Lon. If Jesus Christ is really who he says he is and you've really given your life to him, then you've got to make a decision whether you're willing to stand up and proclaim he's number one in your life and just let the chips fall. I've got to tell you, folks, I gave more thought and consideration to being baptized as a Jewish person than I did to accepting Christ. Because I knew once I got baptized, man, the gloves came off in my family and they did. You say, did you have to pay a price?

I sure did. Every Jewish person I've ever met that got baptized in the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit had to pay a price. And in the first century, it was true of everyone. Number two, he's looking for disciples who are devoted to the lordship of Christ over their daily activities, over their behavior.

Look what he says. He says, verse 20, and teaching them, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. Now, it's very interesting that so many Christians leave the word obey out. They read this verse and teaching them everything I've commanded you. And we get the impression that being a disciple means just piling up Bible knowledge and the more Bible knowledge I pile up, the greater a disciple I am.

This is not true. Jesus didn't say we were to be devoted to Bible knowledge. He said we had to be devoted to obedience.

He said and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. A disciple is a person who just doesn't know the Bible, friends. A disciple is a person who has committed himself, herself to obey the word of God, to obey God when it's convenient and to obey God when it's inconvenient, to obey God when it's easy and to obey God when it's not easy, to obey God when it's fun and to obey God when it hurts. This is a disciple because a disciple has made a decision and the decision is that convenience nor fun nor ease is Lord of their life. But Jesus Christ is Lord of their life.

A disciple is a person who sings, I have decided to follow Jesus, the world behind me, the cross before me. Though none go with me, still I will follow. No turning back. No turning back. What do you think? Can I get in the choir?

Nah. Dean won't have me in the choir. But hey, it doesn't matter whether he lets me in the choir. I can still sing the song and I'll sing it to my own liking. And the point is not whether I'm on key, but the point is what the words say. The world behind me, the cross in front of me, if nobody else wants to go with me, that's all right.

But there's no turning back. That's a disciple. And folks, God does not send us out into this world just to reach people for Christ and turn them into nominal Christians who've accepted Christ and that's as far as it goes for whom Christianity is like chicken religion.

It's a minor inconvenience. We're out to make pigs out of people and you know what I mean by that. That's what we're out to do for whom Christianity is a total commitment and there's nothing held back. That's our goal, the Great Commission. A well-defined message, the gospel, with a well-defined scope. Every ethnic group, every person in the world with a well-defined goal to bring people to personal faith in Christ and then make them into disciples. And folks, it's not a suggestion.

It's not a suggestion. Now that's the end of our passage, but it leaves us with a real important question. What's the question?

Slow back. You know, I go out to Hume Lake every summer and it's a great privilege to go out there and my friend Dan McKinnon meets me out there and brings a couple of motocross bikes and we go up in the High Sierras and ride motocross every afternoon. It's just a great time. I think about you guys all the time.

I'm just riding along up there just thinking how great it'd be if you all would be there. But anyway, my friend Dan was in a real bad accident about three years ago, four years ago. He was on a little two-lane road in California heading up into the Sierras with a friend of his to go camping and as he's coming, he looks the other way and here comes this big old tanker truck and on the right-hand side of the tanker truck, off the road, in the gravel is this jeep passing the tanker truck in the gravel.

It's this young kid and when the kid tries to go and pull back on the road, the road, of course, was above the gravel. He lost control of the jeep. The jeep swerved out of control, came over into Dan's lane and they hit, each doing about 60 miles an hour. Now, Dan did not have an airbag. He did have a seatbelt. The guy in the jeep was killed and my friend Dan broke four or five ribs, collapsed a lung, shook up a bunch of other little pieces in there, you know.

They had him in intensive care for days and I called him in California when I heard about the accident. He said, you know, Lon, here's what he said to me. He said, I should have been dead. He said, I guess God left me here because he's got something for me to do. Now, I don't know if anybody has ever said those words to you before, I should have been dead but God left me here because he's got something for me to do.

But I suspect many of you know people who've said something like that to you and whenever somebody says that to me, I always find myself thinking, well, I wonder what that thing is that God left them here to do. Could I suggest to you that there's only one bottom line reason why God leaves any of us here as Christians once we become Christians? I mean, heaven is so awesome. Heaven is such a wonderful place. Paul said, that's where I really want to go. I don't want to stay here with you guys, he said in Philippians 1. I want to go to heaven.

I've seen it. The only reason God leaves us here, my dear friends, that I would like to suggest to you is not so we could make a living and not so we can contribute to society and not so we can make a name for ourselves and certainly not so we can enjoy the amenities of the world because the amenities of heaven are much nicer. God leaves you and me here as Christians for one reason only and that is so you and I can be a part of fulfilling the Great Commission, so we can be a part of fulfilling the prime directive. And I'll never forget as a young Christian when this dawned on me that this is why God left me here. Why didn't God take me right to heaven? I've given my life to Christ. My sins are forgiven. Let's go to heaven.

I'm ready. And God said, you don't understand, Lon. I'm leaving you here because you need to be a part of fulfilling the Great Commission. That's why you're here.

Man, that changed my priorities, it changed my ambitions, it changed my whole outlook on life. To realize that the reason I'm alive today is to be part of fulfilling the Great Commission. And the reason that I've got the job that I've got and I work where I work is because I'm there to fulfill the Great Commission. And the reason that some of you are mothers at home with children is because you're in that home with those little lives to be part of fulfilling the Great Commission with those people's lives. And the reason that God's given you and me the material resources that he's given us is so we can utilize them to be part of fulfilling the Great Commission. And the reason that we've got health and strength and energy like we have today is so that we can use those things to be part of fulfilling the Great Commission.

That's why you're here if you're a Christian. Everything else is secondary. Working for a living is secondary. Making an impact on the world and making life better and being a contributor to your community is secondary. The Great Commission is why God left you here. If you weren't part of fulfilling that, there'd be no reason to stay if you're a Christian.

Let's all go to heaven. Man, I'm telling you, realizing that altered my life. And I hope that you'll realize that same thing this morning and it'll begin to alter your life. Can I confess something to you today? Say, sure.

We love that. Okay, well, I need to. You know, even though I know this in my head, I got to confess to you that many times I fail to live it out in my daily life like I should.

And you know why? It's real simple. Because I get too absorbed in my own world. I get too absorbed in my own problems and my own agenda and my own shtick. And I get like blinders on and I get like tunnel vision and I forget all about the fact that I'm here to fulfill the Great Commission.

I'm just totally into my own little world. I was at a meeting this past week with parents of this little special needs pre-kindergarten class that my little girl goes to. And there's about 20 parents, you know, some husbands and wives, a lot of single parents sitting in this meeting. It was at the school and they were going over, the administrators were going over, okay, well, now, you know, here are the things that lay ahead for your children.

Here are the options and yada, yada, yada. And I was sitting there, I got to tell you, really feeling sorry for myself. I'm sitting on one of these little tiny chairs and I'm thinking, you know, why am I in this meeting? Lord, why do I have to have a child with these kind of problems and these kind of struggles? I don't want to be here. I don't want to be dealing with this pain. I don't want to be dealing with these decisions. I don't want this stress in my life.

I mean, this is like a bad nightmare, God, except I don't wake up. And why am I in this situation? I don't want to be in this situation. You say, you were really listening to the speaker, weren't you? No, I wasn't. I wasn't. And leave me alone.

I didn't want to listen. And that's how I felt. And I'm just having my own little pity party there, completely absorbed in my own problems. And I'm asking this question, why am I in this situation in life, God? And I really felt the Holy Spirit kind of tap me on the shoulder like, pssst, ah, yeah. And here's what God said to me. He said, Lon, let me tell you why you're in this situation in life.

I'll answer your question. You're in this situation in life to advance the Great Commission. That's why you're in this situation in life.

Now, buddy, drop the attitude. Look around the room here and see if there's anybody in this room that you can reach out to and help fulfill the Great Commission with. And if you didn't have a daughter like you've got, you wouldn't be in this room with these people, but some of these people in this room need the Great Commission.

Now, get rid of the pity party. Give your daughter to me. I'll take care of her.

And look outside yourself and get involved in the Great Commission in this room, son. I was like, thanks, I needed that. Yeah, okay, yeah, okay, thank you. And you know there was somebody in the room like that? There was an African American single parent that was in the room and she shared a little bit and talked about the fact she had three children and the youngest of the children was a little girl with a very serious seizure disorder and the husband had left the home and she was managing all these people by herself. And as soon as she started talking, I said, Bingo, there's my assignment for the evening. Thank you, Lord. And we went over and talked to her for about a half an hour, had a fabulous conversation with this lady. We're going to try to reach out to her.

I want our single parents ministry to try to help this lady. But you see, folks, I don't know about you, you know, the Great Commission was sitting right there waiting to happen. I was just so involved in my own problems, in my own agenda that I was totally blind to the Great Commission happening right in front of my eyes. And if you're like I am, I'll bet that happens to you a lot too.

You know the neat thing? Look what Jesus says here. Jesus says at the very end, And surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age. See, what that means is that Jesus doesn't want us absorbed in our problems. He doesn't want us absorbed in our own agendas, in our own worlds. That's because he's with us and because we're not alone. We can take our problems.

We can take our struggles. We can give them to him, as the Bible says, casting all our cares on him because he cares for us. And in response, he'll give us the peace of God that passes all understanding. And then with our problems gone and the peace of God in charge of our life, we can get beyond ourselves. We can look beyond our world to be part of fulfilling the Great Commission. See, so many times we get so caught up in our own problems, we deactivate ourselves from being part of the Great Commission. And what God wants us to do is give our problems to him.

That's why he said, you're not in this alone. I'm with you. Let me give you the peace of God and activate yourself to be part of the Great Commission. Listen, I'm telling you something. In your office every day, in your neighborhood every day, in your family every day, at 7-Eleven where you go for coffee and donuts or whatever, every day, at the gas station every day, the Great Commission is happening. It's right there. If you and I will go, not absorbed in our own problems, but anxious to be part of fulfilling the Great Commission, you won't believe what God will open up for us.

That's my challenge to you. God did not leave you here to be absorbed in your own problems. He's with you.

He'll take care of the problems. He didn't leave you here to work for a living. He didn't leave you here to be a big shot. He left you here to be part of reaching the world for Jesus Christ. And I hope you believe that.

And I hope it'll change your view on what you're doing here and why you have the resources you have. Let's pray together. With our heads bowed and our eyes closed, I'd like you to take just a moment. And if you've got some problems and if you've got some burdens that just seem overwhelming and you're so caught up with them that in a sense you've really deactivated yourself from the Great Commission, I want to invite you to take a moment this morning and do what I had to do in that little room in the school, and that is give those problems to God. Lay them at the foot of the cross.

Transfer them to Him. Let Him give you the peace of God that passes understanding in response. Let God carry those things on His shoulders.

They're too big for your shoulders. And being free of those burdens, let God take the blinders off and activate you to become part of the Great Commission, this morning, today. Take a moment and commit those things to God if you need to. Lord Jesus, forgive us as your people for the many, many times that we are so absorbed in our own world, in our own problems, in our own agendas, that we let the Great Commission pass us right by. Lord Jesus, remind us that you didn't leave us here for any other reason than to be involved in fulfilling the Great Commission.

Everything else is a secondary priority. And Father, I pray that you would take the problems and the pain and the heartache that we prayed about and that you would take those things on your shoulders. Take them off of our shoulders, God.

May we transfer them today. And in response, may you give us the peace of God that assures us that you love us and you're with us and you're going to handle those problems and that our job is not to be consumed with our problems but our job is to be consumed with the Great Commission. Activate us, God.

Activate us. And take us out into the world to do what you left us here to do. And that's make disciples for Jesus Christ. And may you use this church family, I pray, as an activated church family to change this community for Jesus Christ. Bless our efforts beyond our wildest dreams, I pray, Lord. And we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.