Introduction illustration: The Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk
After the success of their first flight on December 17, 1903 on the outer banks of North Carolina, the Wright brothers immediately sent a telegram to their father, who was a Methodist Bishop. The telegram read “Success (stop) Four flights Thursday morning, all against a 21 mile an hour wind (stop) Started from level with engine power alone (stop) Average speed through air thirty one miles {per hour} (stop) Longest 59 seconds (stop) Inform Press (stop) home Christmas - Orevelle Wright”
When Bishop Wright received the telegram, he excitedly rushed down to the local newspaper to give this good news to the editor. He asked if he could print the information from this telegram. The editor read it and replied “Certainly.” The following day’s headline of the local newspaper read “Sons of prominent local bishop home for the holidays.”
A person employed to spot news missed the setting in motion of one of the most epic events that has ever taken place in man’s history. What does that say to us? Danger: be careful! It’s the easiest thing possible to have the greatest message of truth or strategy and presume it out of business and end up printing the wrong thing. George Peters said, “The greatest need in the worldwide church today is a meticulous, word by word, serious reexamination of the Great Commission of Jesus.” This is big, and it’s a whole lot bigger than we’ve given it credit. There is no way we can squeeze and exhaust this text. A veteran missionary to Nigeria once said, “There is more in the Great Commission than you can see, think, or do even if you had 10 lifetimes.” I wholeheartedly agree.
Let’s use Kipling’s editorial friends to break down and understand the last words recorded in the book of Matthew of our best friend and leader, Jesus Christ! Rudyard Kipling: “I have 6 honest, serving men, who taught me all I knew; their names are what, when, where, why, how, and who.”
“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.” - Matthew 28:18-20
1. WHO?
“Who” is to carry out the Great Commission?
v.19 – “Go ye…”
The word “ye” in the original language and implied in most modern translations is plural and literally translated “every single one of you.” This meaning has not changed and will not change until every person of all nations is reached or Christ comes again.
The text is often misapplied as a corporate commission, given to the local body to carry out as a whole, without giving individual responsibility to each follower of Christ. While I absolutely believe any and every local body should take responsibility for the Commission, it is also the personal responsibility of every believer. In fact, the local church is supposed to prepare and equip each and every believer to do the work of the Great Commission (Eph.4). Instead, in most local churches in western evangelicalism today, the commission is portrayed as a “missionary” text, given to the pastors, ministers, and missionaries with the job of the laity to pray and financially support.
The Commission is given to every single follower of Christ, and what is everyone’s responsibility becomes no one’s responsibility, and so it has in today’s church, as millions of believers sit faithfully in the pews every Sunday but are yet to take their first step in fulfilling the Great Commission.
Further evidence that Christ did not intend for the Great Commission to be applied to a local body versus each individual follower is that the local NT church was not even established yet when Christ gave the command specifically to His followers. The NT Church is birthed in Acts 2 at Pentecost. Here we are in Matthew 28, and Christ is commanding His followers to individually carry out the commission.
Finally, the Great Commission starts in the home for every believer. According to Deut.6 and Eph.6, parents are called to disciple their children in the Lord. It is not the responsibility of the local church to parent the young people, but the responsibility is the parents. Therefore, each individual believer MUST be able to carry out the terms of the Great Commission.
The Commission applies today to every born again follower of Jesus Christ. “Who” is to carry out the last words of Jesus Christ in His Great Commission? I am!
2. WHAT?
Well, if it’s given to each and every one of us to fulfill, we must know what EXACTLY the Great Commission of Christ is calling each one of us to do.
Audience Exercise: Count the verb forms used in these words of Christ, from v.19-20. (Answer: 7) Now count how many of those are action verbs. (Answer: 4) Now I want you to hold up fingers for how many of those 4 action verbs you think are a command. (They hold up fingers.)
The answer is ONE!! There is only ONE command in the Great Commission of Jesus Christ. Now that you know this, tell me in unison what that one command is: 1…2…3…
Audience: “GO”
You: “NO”
The one command of the Great Commission of Jesus Christ is not “Go” but “Make Disciples.” If you’ve been told that it’s “go,” you’ve been misled. Often the G.C. has been taught as a missionary text with the emphasis put on the “Go” when that was never the intention of Christ. The command is not that we “Go” to all nations physically, nor that our job is merely to either go, support, or pray for someone who is “going”. That you go, support, and pray are Biblically supported elsewhere, but not here. The ONE command of the Great Commission of Jesus Christ is “TO MAKE DISCIPLES!!”
So what’s a “Disciple?”
A disciple is simply a “follower” or “learner.” So a disciple of Christ is simply a follower of Jesus Christ. The picture is of an apprentice. Luke 6:40 says, “A student will become like his teacher,” which is the goal of discipleship.
A definition of a true follower of Christ should necessarily entail certain qualities, and therefore could read something along the lines of: “A world-visionary, world-impacting, radically committed, follower and learner, and reproducer of Jesus Christ.” I heard Tim Keller once say that everyone is converted to something. Either it’s God or something else. Same with building disciples, you are shaping those around you to something. It’s either to the image of Christ or the image of something else, most likely you.
So “what” is the one command of the Great Commission? To Make Disciples.
What is a disciple of Christ? A “follower” or “learner.”
3. WHEN?
When are we to “make disciples” of Jesus?
Back to the word “Go” that we all thought was a command.
It is actually an aorist tense circumstantial participle literally meaning “Having gone” which can be translated in the present tense, “As you are going” or “While you are going” or “Since you are going.”
So the Commission literally begs the question, “Having gone, did you MAKE DISCIPLES?” At any chapter in our lives, we should be able to look back over our shoulder and see a “down line” of believers/disciples built for world impact for the glory of God and by the command of Christ.
The command therefore reads, “As you are going…MAKE DISCIPLES!” Understanding the verb structure helps us to understand the flow of the Commission. The “Go” is simply a lead in to the command. It is a set up. “As you are going,” there is something you must always be doing, and that something is “to make disciples!”
4. WHERE?
“Ta ethnae” = “All nations” That’s right; you are “to make disciples of all nations.”
How is this possible? By being faithful RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE!! In other words, if you will simply take part in the Great Commission according to the strategy Christ has given us, Christ will reach the ends of the Earth through your life in due time through the multiplying of His influence through you into future generations.
The word for “disciple-making” is “mathetusate” which is where we get our word for “mathematics.” God has rigged multiplication into the process so that we must simply be faithful where we are and allow Him to reach the ends of the Earth through our lives.
Illustrate:
· Jesus’ Life
o Never left more than 200 miles from His hometown, and yet 20 years after his ascension into heaven, the Gospel had been made known “everywhere” – literally, all over the world. How? He built reproducing disciples who built others, who built others, and His influence and the Gospel message multiplied.
· The Thessalonica Church
o In Acts 17:1-10, we see Paul training the Jews in this church for about 3 weeks and the Greeks a bit longer. A year after being driven out of the city from this church, Paul writes “For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything.” – 1 Thessalonians 1:8.
5. HOW?
By “GOING,” “BAPTIZING,” and “TEACHING!” God has surrounded the central command of the text with specific instructions for carrying it out through these 3 supporting participles.
First we must “Go.” This means we must get up off the sidelines and engage in the war at hand. We must put on our Great Commission goggles and get out of bed each morning with our antenna up, ready to make a disciple out of whomever God decides to sovereignly drop in our path. By “going” we take on the Great Commission as a lifestyle.
“Baptizing” is the evangelism step of disciple-making. Disciple-making begins with evangelism (though many times you will adopt a spiritual infant who has been evangelized already but has never been matured past spiritual infancy - due to the lack of disciple-making over the past two decades, we have spiritual infants running rampant in our church today, so this is largely the case).
Baptizing does not represent the dunking or sprinkling that we see up front on Sunday mornings; rather, what we see up front on Sunday mornings represents the baptism that has taken place in one’s life. The Holy Spirit has baptized a new believer into the Body of Christ, and we simply symbolize in front of a local body with a public, outward profession/expression of what has gone on personally with an inward confession.
But the Commission is referring to more than just the public water baptism, but the work of leading someone to an inward confession, leading them to Christ. “Baptism” literally referred in the first century to association, or re-association, into a group of people. A Jew had to be now associated with Christ in order to be a disciple. So “baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Spirit” is the introducing of someone to the tri-une God of the Bible. In that moment they are now associated publicly and permanently as a member of the Body of Christ, with Christ Jesus Himself as the Head. The ceremony that then follows is simply an outward expression on an inward confession that has taken place.
Now that one has been introduced to Christ, or evangelized and is now a functioning member of the Body, they must be taught in order to be matured in the Lord.
“Teaching” is not simply formal classroom teaching. In fact, this is not even the primary source of teaching. The primary source of teaching must be in the classroom of life, where disciples are built in context. Jesus used every possible circumstance over 3 years as a teaching lesson for building the twelve. We must do the same. We must teach both “sound doctrine” (as Paul commands Timothy) as well as practical living (Manhood, Spiritual Life, etc) but most important is to remember that making disciples at its core is life and truth transference in the context of relationship. More than any great knowledge of theology, this takes time and love. You must sacrificially carve out time and give of yourself in order to ever build a disciple. It is not enough to simply teach the Word of God in a Bible study setting. This simply builds Pharisees if not done with the proper paradigm and through the proper grid of disciple-making.
It's as if, you were to lay aside the one command in the Commission ("Make disciples"), the other three action words (participles) would become progressive. They reveal a sequence. The "going" is automatic, the "baptizing" occurs for each convert only once, but the "teaching is to be a lifetime process from the beginning of the Christian life. They seem to be the activities that purposefully "make disciples."
6. WHY?
Jesus said to!!! The Commission begins with v.18, where Jesus states emphatically that “ALL” authority has been given to Me,” and He therefore, having ALL authority, commands us (His followers) to MAKE DISCIPLES. Therefore, if one has a problem with the Great Commission, then they have a problem with the Lordship of Christ in your life.
And to stretch this a little further…why would Jesus tell us to do this? John McArthor answers, “God loved a lost world and sought to win it to Himself for His own glory. Christ came into the world out of love and sought to win it for the Father's glory. Believers also are to go to the world in love and to seek to reach it for the glory of God. The church's mission is the same as God's.
Jesus said, "This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on the earth" (John 17:3-4). Reconciling man to God is the greatest way to glorify God. That's the reason Christ came (Luke 19:10). Believers are an extension of the ministry of God the Father and Son in receiving glory by the salvation of lost sinners: " As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world" (John 17:18). "As" conveys intention. As the Father sent the Son into the unredeemed world, so the Son has sent believers. We have no different mission in the world than the incarnate Jesus Christ.”
Conclusion:
1) Who? Every single one of us…
2) What? Make Disciples! (What’s a disciple of Christ? A world-visionary, world-impacting, radically committed, follower and learner, and reproducer of Jesus Christ…)
3) When? As you are going…
4) Where? All nations…
5) How? Going, Baptizing, Teaching…
6) Why? Jesus said to!!! And why would he tell us to do that? To glorify God!
Jesus said, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one.” - John 10:27-30.
