20/20 Vision for 2024

Our Mission, Part 4

(Matthew 28:18-20)

Review: What is our mission for 2024 and beyond? The mission is still the mission. How we go about it will change, but the mission does not change. If everything goes well in 2024, we follow Jesus’ Great Commission. If everything is an uphill battle, we follow Jesus’ Great Commission.

The Structure of Matthew 28:18-20

(18) All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

(19) Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations,

–baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

–teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you;

(20) And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

• Three main sentences
• The first and last bookend the central one, which has one command and three participles. Structurally:
  • going
• make disciples
  • baptizing
  • teaching

1. The why of our mission: the authority of Jesus

• All authority as God the Son; all authority here as resurrected Lord
• Daniel 7:14: And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom,

that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

• Similar: all authority; all nations; always, to the end of the age/eternal.
• Phil 2:5-11
• Jesus is not a tribal deity. He’s not just over this one ancient near eastern people who live a few generations. He is the Lord over all.
• There is not a culture or an ethnic group or a society or a religion or a language where Jesus does not have the right to be worshiped as Lord. He has authority as king and Lord and Savior everywhere, to everyone. This is why he commands us to make disciples in all the peoples of the world. The authority and supremacy of Jesus over every other religion and culture and society and over all gods is the basis of world missions.
• Missions exists where the worship of Jesus doesn’t. John Piper
• Jesus is the Lord of the universe and has commanded us to call every nation, every people and every religion to repent and believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins and eternal life with the one true God.
• Jesus commanded us to go and make disciples among every people. Christianity is a missionary faith. We aim to make disciples in every group and build up the church among every people.
• We do not spread our faith by war or violence, but by the proclamation of great news and persuasion and by the demonstration of love.

2. The what of our mission: make disciples

• The only command in this commission is to make disciples. It is the primary verb here and is the essence of this commission.
• “Make disciples” is the imperative in the Greek.
• Going, baptizing, and teaching are participles.
• “Make disciples”: disciples listen to and practice Jesus’ teaching
• The verb make disciples is unusual in Matthew (only two other times, 13:52; 27:57), but the noun occurs 72 times in this gospel!
• When Jesus commands the disciples to make disciples, he is telling them to do with others what he has done with them—call them to follow him, instruct them in truth, show them how to follow God, correct bad teaching and behavior, show how Christ relates to every aspect of life.
• They are not to be the new rabbis and make their own disciples, but are to make disciples, who are disciples of Jesus and his kingdom.
• Making disciples includes evangelism and the entrance to the kingdom, and it includes teaching how to follow Jesus.
• “In the first century a disciple did not enroll with such-and-such a school, but with such-and-such a teacher” (Morris).
• Disciples are followers: we know Jesus as Savior.
• Disciples are students: we follow Jesus and his teachings.
• Disciples are practitioners: we follow Jesus as Lord.
• Disciples know Jesus, love Jesus, love others, follow Jesus’ teachings and ways.
• Modern examples:
• medical resident
• mechanical apprentice
• business intern
• teaching intern

3. The who of our mission: all nations

• Jesus’ universal authority is the basis of our universal mission (Morris).
• There is only one Lord to worship: Jesus.
• There is only one gospel: the good news of Jesus.
• There is one pattern for our lives: we are disciples of Jesus.
• All of us, no matter our culture, are to be like Jesus.
• But we will be like Jesus in ways that reflect our culture.
• Why? Because we reach out to and make disciples of all nations.
• So, Jesus is the mold, but there are endless cultural applications.
• No cookie cutter.
• Jesus did not say that the world would know we are Christians by our clothing but by our love.
• “all nations”, ethne—Gentiles or peoples, people of every tribe and tongue (“people groups” is too modern but close; it refers to clans, families, tribes; not mean geo-political nation states; includes Jews).
• In Matthew 10:1-7, Jesus commands his disciples to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and here in this commission, he stresses that they not only reach out to Jews but also the Gentiles.
• The phrase panta ta ethnē, “all the nations,” has occurred already in 24:9, 14; 25:32, to denote the area of the disciples’ future activity, the scope of the proclamation of the “good news of the kingdom,” and the extent of the jurisdiction of the enthroned Son of Man (France).
• In 1:1-2. Matthew begins the story of Jesus by showing his connection with Abraham. Notice the connections from Genesis 12:1-3.
  • God calls Abram to go, in his case from his own land (Babel) unto the land God would give.
  • God blesses Abram by making his family into a great nation.
  • God blesses Abram in order to bless all peoples on the earth.
• Psalm 67: May Godbe gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, shall bless us. God shall bless us; let all the ends of the earth fear him!
• God’s mission to reach the nations is launched with Abraham. God’s mission is centered in Christ. Now in Matthew 28, God’s mission is shared with us. The mission of God is our mission. Chris Wright
• Luke 24:46-47: It is written,that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. 
• Acts 1:8, Eph 2:11-22
• Rev 5:9-10: And they sanga new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”
• Rev 7:9: Behold,a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
• We are to reach all peoples, here in our area, California, US, globally.
• And we team up with global Christians.
• We pray, give, and go; and they pray, give, and go, too!
• We are on mission together!
• One Lord, all nations.
• One gospel, into all cultures.
• One church, many local churches.
• Ashley’s material here.

4. The how of our mission: going, baptizing, teaching

• Going

Go to make disciples.

• “Go and”
• “Go” isn’t the main verb but highlights the command: make disciples.
• Matthew uses “go” as an introductory circumstantial participle that is coordinate to the main verb—here “Go and make” (Blomberg, Carson).
• Matthew sets up commands with participles, including going.
  • 28:7: “go quickly and tell his disciples”
  • 2:8: “go and search for the child”
  • 5:24: “then come and offer your gift”
  • 9:13: “go and learn what this means”
  • 10:7: “and going, proclaim” (here it functions a bit differently because he has already commanded them to go)
  • 11:4: “go and tell John what you see and hear”
  • 17:27: “go to the sea and cast a hook”
• Each time the participle establishes the motion that is necessary for the accomplishment of the command. “Go” here is the necessary action to accomplish the command of making disciples.
• Genesis 12:1-3: Abraham was called to go and the first step in being blessed to bless all nations.
• Matthew 10: Jesus gives the disciples authority and sends them out: Go to the lost sheep of Israel.

Go as a witness.

• Acts 1:8: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses In Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
• Witness: share what we have seen and heard.
• Share your testimony:
• Before (before Christ)
• During (when you trusted Christ)
• Now (now in Christ)
• Share my testimony.
• If an old friend/family that you have not shared with yet: We have known each other for a while. We have talked about almost everything under the sun: baseball, weather, family, jobs. But I have never shared with you the most important part of my life: my relationship with God.

Go with the gospel.

• Forgiveness is needed: sin (Rom 3:23).
• Forgiveness has been provided: Christ (Rom 5:8).
• Forgiveness must be accepted: faith (Rom 10:13).
  • Forgiveness is available to all, but it is not automatic.

Go to all nations.

• Locally and globally
• Going around the world and next door
• If we are to make disciples of all nations, then crossing cultural boundaries is an integral part of the commission. Craig Keener
• Reaching out to people of all cultures.
• Taking the time to learn about people and their cultures.

Go in love.

• Romans 9:2-3: I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen.
• Romans 10:1: My heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.
• Matthew 9:35-38: Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction.When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
• God loves them, and so do we!
• We are burdened for them.
• We feel their pain in our stomach.
• Go as a friend, not a salesman.
• Value you them as a friend, not a target.
• Build relationships with them.
• It takes time. The seed is planted, watered, harvested.
• Damon Horton: the starting pitcher begins the game, other relievers come in the middle, and then the closer finishes.
• When the missionary Hudson Taylor was asked, “Mr. Taylor, do you think the people will be lost if you don’t go to China?” Hudson Taylor responded, “They are lost. That’s why I am going there!”
• Charles Spurgeon: “If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions; and let not one person go there unwarned and unprayed for.”
• Who has God placed in your life who needs to know Jesus?
• Write two names down, and daily ask the Lord to save them, commit to share your testimony and the gospel with them this year.

Go and invite.

• Easter, ESL, VBS, camp, July 4, movie nights, Harvest Festival, Christmas Eve, Christmas, various group activities.
• We are teaming up with you as you try to reach your friends for Christ.
• Easter
• Go to who?
• Family
• Friends
• Co-workers
• Fellow students
• Sports and hobbies
• Neighbors
• People you bump into
• And people you don’t know yet: all nations.

And if you do not know the Lord yet:

• Forgiveness is needed: sin (Rom 3:23).
• Forgiveness has been provided: Christ (Rom 5:8).
• Forgiveness must be accepted: faith (Rom 10:13).
  • Forgiveness is available to all, but it is not automatic.
  • Trust Christ today.

God loves you and so do we.

Come at invitation.

Come talk to prayer partners.

• Baptizing
  • “baptizing” for new believers, a once-for-all, decisive initiation into Christian community; “teaching” is a life-long task (Blomberg).
• Baptizing and teaching are participles dependent on the main verb “make disciples” and specify what is involved in discipleship.
• Baptism is a once for all commitment to Christ, a symbol of repentance and identification with Jesus—Matthew 3:6-13
• Baptism is a commitment of allegiance to Christ and the Trinity (“into the name of”). Jesus is the object of the disciples’ faith and worship, including himself in the baptismal Trinitarian formula.
• Recall the Trinity in Jesus’ own baptism: The Father speaks, the Spirit descends, and the Son is baptized.
• Baptism occurs after we go and is the initial commitment of becoming a disciple. It follows Jesus’ example, confesses our faith in Christ, and identifies us with Christ.
• Eckhard Schnabel notes, “it is surely significant that baptism is mentioned after the winning of disciples: it is people who have been converted to faith in Jesus Christ who are baptized” (1:357).
• Making disciples is linked to the church. Their baptism is also entrance into the community, and their growth occurs in the context of the church (Schnabel, 1:356).
• Develop theology of baptism here.

• Teaching
  • They are thus told to do what Jesus himself did (Jesus is referred to as teaching in 4:23; 5:2; 7:29; 9:35; 11:1; 13:34; 21:23; 26:55; see also 5:19 (Hagner).
  • Like baptizing, teaching is a participle dependent on the main verb “make disciples”, shows what is involved in Christian discipleship.
  • Until now in Matthew, Jesus alone is the teacher. Now Jesus gives his disciples authority to teach others what He taught them.
  • “teaching them to obey” reveals that discipleship is more than the dispensing of knowledge. It includes the teaching of truth and behavior, content and practice.
  • “teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you” shows us that we are to teach what Jesus taught.
  • So, they are to teach not their own ideas, but what Jesus has “commanded,” entellomai, a term which hitherto has been especially associated with the “commandments” (the cognate noun entolē, cf. 5:19; 15:3; 19:17; 22:36–40) given by God through Moses. The basis of living as the people of God will henceforth be the new “commandments” given by Jesus (France).
  • The focus is on Jesus’ commands, not OT law. Jesus’ words, like the words of Scripture, are more enduring than heaven and earth (24:35); the expression “everything I have commanded you” is as the authority of Yahweh (Exod 29:35; Deut 1:3, 41; 7:11; 12:11, 14; Carson).
  • Deut 7:11: You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today.
  • Remarkably, Jesus does not foresee a time when any part of his teaching will be rightly judged needless, outmoded, superseded, or untrue: everything he has commanded must be passed on “to the very end of the age” (Carson).
  • What the disciples teach is not mere dogma steeped in abstract theorizing but content to be obeyed (Carson).
  • What does that mean? Matthew shows us and includes five teaching sections in his gospel: 5-7, 10, 13, 18; 23-25. We hand down the teachings of Jesus, which are focused on the kingdom. The focus is on Jesus’ teachings, not the law (Schnabel, 1:360; Carson, 596).
  • Sermons
  • Bible study groups
  • 1 on 1 discipleship
  • Personal reading of scripture
  • Serving, putting it into practice

• Multiplying/Reproducing
  • Teaching them to obey all things includes the Great Commission!
  • Disciples are to make disciples.
  • One of Jesus’ commands is to teach all he commands. Failure to disciple, baptize and teach the peoples of the world is already itself one of the failures of our own discipleship (Carson).
  • Reproduction!
  • Multiplication!
  • To/through

Come

Belong

Grow

Multiply

Chart (on March 10 and 17)

5. The when of our mission: from now until to the end of the age

• From Jesus’ resurrection until Jesus’ return!
• In 24:14, Jesus, “this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed through the whole world as a testimony to all nations, then the end will come.”
• We make disciples to the ends of the earth, until the end of the age!
• It is his mission, but he chooses to use us as his means! We are not indispensible, because he can call others to the task. Yet he chooses to use means (the gospel and the witness) to bring people to faith. What a privilege to be able to participate in God’s mission!

6. The hope of our mission: the Lord Jesus

• The call to make disciples of all nations is enormous, even overwhelming.
• He previously calls his people the salt of the earth, the light of the world. The disciples could not imagine that they were the salt of Galilee or light of Jerusalem, let alone the world.
• How is this possible? Our abilities are not up to this challenge.
• The promise of God’s presence accompanied His call to service in the OT.
• Moses—Exodus 3:11-12: God said to Moses when He calls him to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt: “But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” He said, “But I will be with you.”
• Joshua—Joshua 1:5,9: God said to Joshua: “As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you…. Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”
• Jeremiah 1:19: “They will fight against you, but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, declares the Lord, to deliver you.”
• Haggai 1:13: Then Haggai, the messenger of the Lord, spoke to the people with the Lord’s message, “I am with you, declares the Lord.”
• Israel, Isaiah 41:8-10: But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend; you whom I took from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, “You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off”; fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
• Jesus’ promise to be with us reassures us in our mission!
• Matthew 1:21: Jesus is Immanuel, God with us! That would make a good name for a church. Immanuel!
• 28:18–20 link back with 1:23 to frame the entire Gospel with references to Immanuel—God with us (Blomberg).
• 18:20: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them.”
• Jesus is present for his church, in worship, holiness, and mission.
• OT theme of God dwelling among his people.

• I am with you.
  • The I is emphatic. Jesus is the covenant Lord, the God who promises to be with his people.
• I am with you.
  • Jesus does not say I was, I will be, but I am. Present.
• I am with
  • Not simply I know of you, I remember you, I am nearby if you need me. I am with you.
• I am with you.
  • I am with my people, my church, Jesus says.
• I am with you always.
  • Not sometimes, but all the time. There is not a second in your day that he is not with you. pasas tēs hēmeras, strictly “the whole of every day” (Moule, Idiom Book, p. 34). Not just the horizon is in view, but each day as we live it (Carson).
• I am with you always until the end of the age.
  • Not just in the good times, not just when you feel it, but from now until Jesus returns in victory and judgment.

• Matthew opens with Jesus is God’s presence with us (1:23), and it closes with the promise of Jesus’ presence.
• Jesus’ statements in 18 and 20 frame the heart of the commission.
  • “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
  • “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
• All authority is minegives you your warrant for such an outrageous mission. I am with you gives you hope that it can be done. I have total authority in this world, and I won’t leave you. I have total rights over all the peoples — everybody you ever will talk to — I have a right of ownership, and redemption to their souls. And no matter how they respond to you, or what they do to you, I will be with you. I, who loved you and gave myself for you — I, who chose you for myself and called you and sent you — I am always with you (Piper).

“All” dominates vv. 18–20: all authority, all nations, all things, all the days.

1. all power
2. all nations
3. to obey all things
4. always: I am with you always (literally, “all the days”)

Jesus is the beginning, middle, and end of this mission!

1. Jesus is the resurrected Lord and has all authority.
2. Jesus is on a mission of building his kingdom.
3. Jesus is the good news that we share.
4. Jesus is Lord over all and deserves worship from all peoples.
5. Jesus alone enables those who hear the gospel to have saving faith.
6. Jesus/Trinity is the name into which we are baptized, to whom we publicly declare our allegiance.
7. Jesus is the pattern we follow as we become and make disciples.
8. Jesus is the teacher we follow.
9. Jesus is the teacher whose teaching is equal to God’s Word, is authoritative, and enduring, true now and until the end of the age.
10. Jesus not only give commands for us to follow, but he enables us to obey his commands.
11. Jesus is present with us. You are not alone. You could not be alone if you tried. The resurrected Lord, who has all authority in heaven and on earth, loves you, is committed to you as your covenant Lord, and he is with you every step of the way.

Go and make disciples of all nations!

Prayer partners.

Guests, those new to Immanuel, I would love to meet you down front.