Disciples Making Disciples
Mission: The Great Commission
Matthew 28:18-20 | Vince Miller
Good morning. If you're visiting with us I think this is a great morning to be here
because we want to give you a little bit of an update of what we've been doing.
Paul and I have been trying to help in a transition and that's really our responsibility.
Our responsibility is to help this congregation move from our last Senior Pastor to
our next Senior Pastor. During this time we
know that things can be a little unsettling, but we want to let you know that we've
been working hard behind the scenes to provide you with some things and with
some direction we believe will be helpful for the future. Paul Bishop has been
working specifically with the staff and giving them some direction in this interim
time, helping them to understand their roles as it relates to each other while we're
without a Senior Pastor and then giving them direction, moving forward. Also we've
been providing board development for our governing board here at this church,
and I’ve got to tell you that has been a fantastic time. Paul and I both have sat in
numerous meetings with the board talking with them about things like our
constitution, talking with them about theological challenges, working through issues
that they've faced in transition. We've talked about the vision of the church, the
history of the church, the mission of the church, strategy, future goals and values
that they would like to bring together to this body of believers in casting a vision for
the future. Now these have been really invigorating conversations where our board
has dug in deep to the history that Ridgewood has had over many years, and then
trying to figure
out how we can position ourselves as a congregation toward a new future.
Taking into consideration all of this as well as God's truth, I've looked out at an
incredible board of people who do deeply love God and are straining forward
together. Now all these meetings aren't perfect. There are some heated debates
sometimes and some deep discussions and some feelings
that come out. But I’ve got to tell you this board does genuinely look at each other
and love each other, and it's been fantastic for me to witness that over the last four
months that we've been here.
Now out of this time, the board has decided that they want to make some things
known to you. So over the next six weeks we're going to discuss these things
beginning with our mission and values. As they've been pondering over our history
and the new future that we would love to see together, they have designed for us
a mission and values that I believe are really truly biblical
and are going to lead us into a new season. Now the relationship between a
board and its congregation is a delicate one, and at times it can be very unsettling
as well. Obviously this church, as a non-profit organization and also one that falls
underneath the authority of Jesus Christ, believes that what we see in the New
Testament as a structure for an elder board in Timothy and Titus is the design. Not
only that, but we understand that it is our fiduciary responsibility in this world, in
this state, in this government that we have a relationship with the congregation as
well. And so in this there's this delicate balance that happens there, where we as
members vote to elect board members that then come together and by the Spirit
of God, under His truth, speak as one voice on behalf of this congregation, and that
we place ourselves underneath their authority including me. And that we engage
in a relationship of trust with them knowing that we selected them and that they
are designing a path forward into the future. This catalytic relationship is important
on both sides of the fence. Number one that we trust them and number two that
they fall underneath the authority and biblical leadership laid out in God's
Word. And we hope that they're making the very best decisions for this
congregation and for each one of us on behalf of God. Now that relationship can
feel uncomfortable at times, but today I have to tell you that over the past six weeks
there has been much thought, much prayer, many discussions, that have been very
thoughtful and meaningful, behind the scenes where today
we would like to reveal to you what we believe God's mission is for Ridgewood
church in this place in the coming years.
With that what I'd love to have you do is to turn to Matthew 28 this morning.
Matthew 28 beginning in verse 18, I'll read there through the end of the chapter.
And to set this context up while you're turning your bibles there and taking a look
at the text, we have to know that this is the very end of Jesus's life and there's
nothing more important than last words. We hang on them
for dear life. Those last words that someone will speak to us sometimes are the
most important words, and I believe that because this is Jesus Christ saying these
words knowing that He's departing from us, that they're probably some of the most
important words that Jesus Christ will ever say. For many of you these will be very
familiar but I want to take a fresh look at them this morning. It says this:
"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, the Son and 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".
Fantastic words. These words are so full of so much truth that you can speak them
for literally a month, but we're going to take one Sunday morning to make two very
important observations
before we share what we believe that the mission for Ridgewood church is.
Here's the first observation that I make about this text. It is this, that in times of
uncertainty and change it is important to lean on mission. In times of uncertainty
and change it is very, very important to lean on mission. I was imagining this week
what it would be like to be these dudes.
They're standing on a hillside, Jesus is looking down at them, and I'm wondering
in my mind what they're thinking. So back your mind up 22 months before. Just 22
months before, less than 2 years, Jesus called His first disciple, follow me. As He
begs him to come follow me, Jesus was going to turn twelve guys’ lives upside
down or we might say right side up. He preached a paradoxical gospel, a sense of
good news that was so different from the world, that we hear a small portion of in
the great Sermon on the Mount. This paradoxical change unraveled their lives, it
unraveled their family traditions, it unraveled the commerce of their lives, the
economy
on how they made money. It called them into deep challenge that was actually
going to cost each and every one of them their lives. And Jesus turns their world
upside down in a very short period of time. He spent day in, day out with each one
of these men, teaching them the secret ways of God and making known to them
that they were in a new season, that the Kingdom of Heaven had come.
But no one told them that He was leaving. He hinted at it, He talked about it from
time to time, but no one had any idea that He was going to be captured, beaten,
spit upon, crucified and die. I mean they weren't expecting that so they're lives had
been turned upside down, right side up then upside down again, and then all of a
sudden in three days we see Jesus Christ, the first man in history to get Himself up
from the grave, defeats death and darkness, defeats sin all by Himself, gets up out
of the grave and starts walking around for a period of about forty days. With this
there's new hope. Life turns right side up again or so we think, until He meets them
in this place,
looks out at them and says I'm leaving again. How might they feel? What's going
through their brains? How do they feel about the political climate, the emotional
climate, the future of their lives, the church, even the persecution that they're
enduring at the moment? Do they think in their minds that maybe the same end
that came to Jesus Christ would also come to them? Were
they concerned about their livelihood? You bet. We find them scared, hiding,
worried about the future and then Jesus brings them a mission. All authority in
heaven and on earth has been given to Me, and I now give it to you. And you know
what He does in this moment? He gives them a mission to lean on, an extraordinary
mission. It's fantastic.
Just a couple of days ago I took my son to a movie, and we saw this movie entitled
“The Walk". It's a story about Philippe Petit, who's a Frenchman, a young man who
came to America with a
mission. His mission was this, extraordinary. He wanted to walk a high wire
between the two tallest buildings in the world, the World Trade Center Towers. The
south tower was still being built, and he looked up at it one day while it was being
built and said, "I'm going to walk a high wire between two buildings". Fascinating
mission, consumed his life, absolutely consumed his life. The entire story talks about
this mission that he had, how he pulled what he called accomplices into this mission,
a group of people that helped him to spy out the building to help him to understand
all the little idiosyncrasies of what it might look to walk a high wire at the highest
point of all the world, thirteen hundred and twenty feet above the ground with no
safety equipment whatsoever, illegally. He called it the coup. And of course we
know that he did it. Just before the completion of the buildings for forty minutes he
passed eight times across these two buildings with no safety equipment
whatsoever at the age of twenty four. He still lives today in New York City,
accomplished his mission. Now I find that to be very fascinating, because in the
story that was told on this film you can see how mission-centric this young man
was
beginning about the age of twenty. He became so fascinated and so fixated on
this moment that he could think about nothing else. All he could think about was
this tiny little picture he saw in the newspaper one day about these two towers that
he was going to walk between and he couldn't
get it off his mind. It portrays him as almost going crazy about this thing. And for
me that is the depiction and the power of leaning on mission, the power of it.
I have a friend named Bob. Bob for a number of years has worked for GE Capital.
GE Capital just dissolved last week. Over the last nine months they've been selling
off portions of this massive billions of dollars industry to a bunch of other
companies. For the last nine months Bob has been wondering what am I going to
do, waiting to hear the news about what's happening,
what's going to happen. What's going to happen? Am I going to stay? Am I going
to go? Am I being let go? Am I going to move to another employer? What's it going
to look like? For nine months he heard nothing. Just stories about hold on, hold on,
hold on, hold on, hold on. But if you've worked in the fortune 500 company you
know what I'm talking about. The essence of the mystery of this moment, the pain
of this moment, wondering do you have a future. Bob is the most incredible
Christian man I've ever met, he's incredible. He loves God so deeply, but I've
watched over the last nine months his entire career just feels like it's coming
undone. All he did the last ten to fifteen years of his life was work with C-suite
individuals in big companies, and this guy feels like his entire life is coming undone.
On top of that, during those nine months, Bob got very, very sick multiple times;
knee problems, back problems, and then about a month ago took some medication
and now his vision is blurred and he cannot stand. He's been in a bed for the last
month and a half not knowing if he has a job or health. And he's been to the doctor
multiple times with multiple MRIs and multiple blood tests, and they can't figure out
what's
going on.
Talk about a man who's living in mystery right now. Bob is living in mystery and I
talk to him about once or twice a week trying to get him to anchor his soul into
mission. It may seem trite,
but it's the most important conversation I can have with him. And he is trying to
keep his life centered in the mission of Jesus Christ amid a very uncertain future,
and if you've been in a situation like this you understand exactly what I'm talking
about and how it feels.
Yet when you look at the Bible there were people down through time who hung on
to mission as an anchor in times of uncertainty. Look back to Moses, handing the
baton off to Joshua knowing that Joshua's going to have to do some things in the
land of Israel that no man has ever done.
Moses takes all of his intellect and wisdom from the land of Egypt and hands him
an understanding of God's history and of how to handle this land of Israel that he
is going to have to conquer without Moses. And so he gives Joshua a mission at
the end of Deuteronomy. It's this, be strong and courageous, do not be afraid for
the Lord your God is with you.
Those are powerful words. They were so powerful that you read them again at the
beginning of Joshua, be strong and courageous, do not be afraid for the Lord your
God is with you. And if you listen to the words carefully they're all about the
character of a human being following God. It's about the internal things that we
build that leads to the difference that we make in life. Moses handed this mission
to Joshua, but then hundreds of years later, David, who is not allowed to build the
temple of God, turns to his son Solomon with all of the resource that he had
gathered, millions and millions and hundreds of millions of resources that David
had gathered together, and because he wasn't allowed to build the temple he had
to build some courage into his son, and
guess what he said to him? Be strong, be courageous, do not be afraid for the
Lord your God is with you.
Let's talk about mission. There's nothing like it in unsettling times when we feel that
our soul is coming undone, our call is to lean on that mission and that higher
purpose. If you look at
Job 1, verse 21, you see some of the most incredible words that come out of a
God-fearing man's heart, mind and soul. Job says this after his entire family is
annihilated, all of his commerce is gone, all of his cattle killed, he says these words,
“Naked I came from my mother's womb and naked shall I return. The Lord gives
and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” Is that not a fantastic
mission or what? Blessed be the name of the Lord. I believe that for Job that was
his anchor in that time, to call upon God's name regardless of the circumstances of
his life, regardless of the issues he faced, regardless of his economy, regardless of
his relationships
that he had a mission that was a higher mission than any other mission.
I believe that Christians should live a life with more purpose and meaning that
anybody else on the face of this planet. With all my heart I believe that. Because
when I look out at the world and I look out at their fleeting mission, it always leaves
them empty and begging for more, more success and more money, more family,
more traditions, more behaviors, more retirement, more cabins, more boats,
whatever it is that we try to fill our life with. Even walking a high wire will leave you
empty one day, because it always begs for more. I believe Christians live life with
more purpose because their purpose is external to them. Because they've been
given purpose and mission by Creator God to the creation, and when the Creator
God speaks to the creation, He tells it where to go.
So for us who are sitting in this room that call Jesus Christ their Lord and Savior,
we are
designed to walk out into the world with more purpose and meaning than
anybody else in all creation. We should not deter our path from that, and in
uncertain times we lean on it. We lean on it for strength when we feel the season
is changing. And you know why? Because in that moment that we came to Christ,
where we decided to abdicate our ways, we actually laid down
our life's mission before Jesus Christ. And then in that moment we take up God's
mission. It's no longer our way of life and our vision and our future and our
retirement and our ways. It’s now God's way, and we become a slave to Jesus
Christ, abdicating our way, realizing our way is not best. Therefore we are created
for the first time with real purpose and meaning, and that we follow the Designer's
plan for each and every one of us.
I believe that that's what Jesus Christ is handing us here. He's handing us purpose
and meaning,
our design, our mission, clarity for the future. And He says this, "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, the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all I have commanded you and behold I am with you to
the very end of the age." And in this unique relationship that we have with God,
where our His purpose becomes ours, there's a synergy of the Spirit that happens
here, where He empowers us to live with meaning like we've never seen before.
And when we own this personally, when we truly personalize this, it can become
beautiful, absolutely beautiful, and then in uncertainty nothing matters.
We've been living through a changing season here a little bit at Ridgewood. I know
that it's not easy to transition from Joel who's been here for well over two decades,
who'd been a man of great commitment and authenticity and character and
leadership. And as he was called away and a transition time comes, it causes our
mind to wonder what does the future hold. But in those
moments we don't lean on our own heart. We lean on the truth of Jesus Christ.
We lean on what He wants, not what we want. And these times are not that hard
for us. When I look at what the church around the world suffers, these are very
insignificant moments where we're taught again
to lean on the mission of Jesus Christ. And the great part about it is He doesn't
conceal it from us, He tells us what it is.
Which brings me to my second observation here, and it is very important. It's the
words in this text. Make disciples. That's our mission. Make disciples. Now we see
that as two words in English when really it's just one word in the Greek; comes from
a root word in the Greek called mathetes, and mathetes is a word that means
student is what it means. It means student, learner,
and you put this action with it because there's an activity placed with it in the
Greek, make, so making students. The object here is the Holy Trinity, or we can say
Jesus Christ who has all authority. So the mission here is to make students, actively
making students of Jesus Christ. Now this is a very, very high and personal calling
to each and every person sitting in this room. If you call yourself a Christian I want
you to own this mission personally, personalize it that it is your and my job to make
disciples.
Jesus doesn't intend for this to be light. He intends for this to feel heavy and
important and critical to the future. He's not talking about simply sharing our faith,
although that's a component of what a student does and what a teacher does, it's
not the only component. Because if Jesus meant for us to just share our faith, He
would've used a Greek word euangelion, which means to share your faith, which
we transliterate evangelism. But Jesus isn't just talking about evangelism here.
He's talking about something more, something deeper, something more
meaningful, make
disciples, which infers so much. But Jesus doesn't just call us to do that without
actually doing it Himself. Jesus Christ did this. In fact I want to suggest to you this
morning that the most important thing that Jesus ever did as a human was He
made disciples.
Now let me convince you of that. Jesus Christ here on this earth did amazing
things. Every one of us probably believe that. Jesus Christ was incredible, He came
born of a virgin, and we celebrate a holiday around that it's so magnificent,
Christmas. He rose from the dead, we celebrate a holiday around that too, it's
called Easter. And between these two holidays He performed things that were
astounding, beginning with turning water to wine, healing people's sight, creating
limbs on people who hadn't walked ever in their life, healing a bleeding woman,
raising Lazarus from the dead and a number of other incredible things that Jesus
Christ did. By
the way, that only God could do. Now those were things that Jesus had to do to
prove to us that He was God in the flesh. But I believe that the most important thing
that Jesus Christ ever did was actually in His human flesh, and it was purely human,
it was call twelve men that were going to carry on the good news of Jesus Christ.
Because you know what, without them we would have never heard of a single one
of these things, ever in our entire life. In fact you're sitting in this room because
someone else poured into you.
The essence of this truth is so powerful but Jesus was methodical about it. Twenty
two months before His death, He said in Mark 1, “the Kingdom of God is at hand”
and then He really began calling followers. At that twenty two month point Jesus
Christ looked out at four men, called four fishermen and said "follow Me". In that
moment, the world was turned upside down. In that moment life changed as we
know it and Jesus, because He never did a single thing by accident, planned
methodically to do this because He knew that He was going to die and that if He
didn't
take the time to develop twelve men, eleven then it turned out to be, critical to
the foreign mission of the church, if He did not develop those twelve men the
gospel's not heard by you and I. Jesus Christ in this moment then becomes The
Discipler, the Chief Discipler, the One who's going to lead us into an understanding
of what it means to be in relationship with God. Now this
is profound, and the act of a disciple maker, making disciples, is very unique, it's
very unique, powerful and important.
I'll never forget my grandfather teaching me how to drive. In fact all those lessons
came back to me as I taught my oldest child how to drive in the recent past. I
learned to drive on a 1959 Chevy Apache pickup truck. Now I'm not that old, I just
learned to drive on this particular truck. It was my grandfather's. In fact we did a
complete renovation of I,t so that on my sixteenth birthday this
would be my car. My very first car was a pristine, nut and bolt restoration on a
1959 Chevy Apache truck, step side, big window in the back, and I got to tell you
there was nothing automatic on this vehicle, nothing, no power steering, no
automatic windows, manual transmission, starter on the floor, slide on the seat, so
seatbelts, no nothing and it was like driving a bus, ok. It was just heavy sheet metal,
heavy steel. I got in this truck for the very first time and I was just a little fifteen year
old kid and I had to sit all the way on the end of the seat because there were no
automatic seats that moved forward, and I literally had to stand up to push the
starter on the floor, had to learn what three on the tree meant and how to navigate
that, big bus like steering wheel. And my grandfather is trying to teach me how to
take off this truck that moves very, very, very slow in this non-sink road
transmission. I can't tell you how many times I grinded that thing into gear, helping
it to find first gear. Man what an incredible experience that was for me.
I'll never forget learning on San Francisco hills how to drive this 1959 Chevy
Apache pickup truck because it is very difficult to take off after you stopped at the
stop sign. I'll never forget the lesson my grandfather taught me about how you're
going to use all your appendages to get this truck going. I was sitting at this stop
sign for the very first time, we'd gone through it, we'd
practiced it. You put one hand on the steering wheel, you throw the non-sink road
transmission into first gear, you put your foot all the way down on the clutch, at
that moment you pull up on the emergency break. I'm using four appendages to
hold this truck from rolling backwards, and I know that I've got to work the gas at
just the right time, letting off the clutch and the emergency break at the same time,
then grab a hold of the steering wheel hoping that I don't hit the car behind me. Car
pulls up behind me, steep hill, all of a sudden I just start sweating. Grandfather looks
over at me, crosses his hands and he says to me you better not ding my truck. It's
funny it
was still his truck for some reason. I was thinking it was mine and he said you
know what, if you want you can go ahead, and some of you probably remember
these moments, you can go ahead and roll back into the car behind you, and I'm
thinking in my head what do you mean roll back into the car behind me? Why would
I ever do something like that? He's like well if you start rolling too fast you're going
to hit him and then you're going to ding their car too, and then I'm going to be twice
as mad at you. So I remember sweating through this moment, got it going, rev the
engine up, slipped everything out, moved forward. Whoo that was over.
I didn't get a beating that night, but my grandfather taught me fascinating lessons
about driving. Every weekend for six months on Saturday afternoons and Sunday
afternoons my grandfather taught me how to parallel park, for two hours twice
every weekend for six months, on San Francisco hills between cars in a non-power
steering vehicle that was very heavy. I'll never forget getting worked over by him
on that. Never hit a car but can I tell you this? I can parallel
park a car anywhere. I'll go out to dinner with my wife and she'll say you can't fit
in there and I'll say yeah I can fit in there. Just to show her how much of a man's
man I am I'll squeeze that little car in there, and I'll get it right the first time every
time within an inch of the curb, and you can ask her. But it's fascinating those six
months of training, discipleship, how much they have
poured into my life, so much so that every single time I parallel park a car I think
of my grandfather; every, single time.
Make disciples of Jesus Christ. I in that moment, was a student of my grandfather
because of his plan, his time, his energy, his thinking, his coaching and mentoring
over and over and over again, and I believe that that is what Jesus Christ is calling
us to here. He's calling us not to just lead people to Christ but to make disciples of
Jesus Christ. And He hangs His mission on the
whole thing, the essence that He calls us in a personal way to do that with other
people. The power of this mission is the future of the church. This is the future of
the church and it hangs on every one of us sitting in this room, as our responsibility
to disciple others for the Kingdom, for Jesus Christ in the authority that He gave us
and in a symbiotic, a catalytic, a synergetic relationship with Him so that He is with
us forever.
But this isn't a new plan, it's an old one. Deuteronomy 6 says this, "Hear O Israel,
the Lord our God, the Lord is one". Jews refer to this as the Sh'ma, which is the
Hebrew word for hear. "Hear O Israel the Lord thy God is one God. You shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind
and these words that I command you this day shall be on your heart, you shall
teach them diligently to your children, you shall talk of them when you sit in your
house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise,
you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, they shall be as frontlets between your
eyes, you shall
write them on the doorpost of your gates". Followers of God in the Old Testament
were so serious about this that devout followers of God would wear phylacteries
on their body. A phylactery is a small leather box that contained these words a few
other scriptures from the Old Testament, and they'd literally strap it to their head
and then bind it to their arm with a strap
wrapped seven times around their hand and then around their middle finger and
they would walk with this around. If you've been into a devout Jew's house, before
you walk in, notice their doorpost. There'll be a small little phylactery nailed to the
door post. They're tiny. You might miss it if you're not looking for it. But a Jew will
have that stapled to their door post because Jews understood that the hope of
God for the future and future generations rest upon the fact that they would take
this so seriously, the message of Christ, discipling those around them as the
hope for the world.
The means of accomplishing this mission has always been us, by us making
disciples. By making disciples of all nations underneath the authority of Jesus Christ
who goes with us in this. We carry the message of Jesus Christ forward, and this
is the mission that God gives to us so personally. It is not a choice, it is an obligation,
an obligation. We must needs do this as Jesus Christ's final words are delivered
from His mouth to us. Yet the statistics show that this is the gloomy season for the
church. Do you know over the last four years that every year four thousand
churches close their door, every year. That is astronomical. Fifty percent of
American churches this year will not add a single member to their congregation,
not one. Sixty one percent of Christians this year will not open their mouth once to
share their faith with another person, not once. And in light of this, your Board of
Stewards give you a mission. Here it is, disciples making disciples for the glory of
Jesus Christ. Amen. I couldn't find a more biblical, a more true, a more mainstay
mission that those words. And through much prayer, deliberation, searching,
they are asking that you join them in this mission so that we can see a new day
for this body and this congregation here. Let’s stand together and pray.
God we are so overjoyed that You brought salvation to our lives, God that You
saved us out of our wretchedness, out of our despair, out of our hopelessness and
gave us a mission, that God by the power of Your work on the cross and Your
resurrection from the dead that You give us hope for eternal life. The beauty of
that is absolutely astounding and God we look forward to the day that we get to
enjoy heaven. In the meantime because You saved us You called us into a beautiful
mission and we pray that we would live out this mission, that each and every one
of us would own it personally and deeply, that God we would embrace it together
as a force, as a force
for the gospel because we know that the gospel is not about building temples
made with hands, it's not about the building of this place, it's about building truth
into the heart of people around us. And God that You looked at the great temple
one day and You said not one stone would be standing upon another because You
knew there was going to be a time where buildings ceased and the temple of the
heart would begin. And God You've called us to be builders in that foundation. God
by sharing with people the truth that's in these scriptures, in parks, in homes, in
workplaces, out on the lakes with people that we know and love that we know need
to hear the truth of Jesus Christ. God this is not a temple made with hands, this is
a temple made out of Your love, grace, mercy and forgiveness spoken through the
truth that You've handed down to us for thousands of years. God I pray that today
that we'd each walk out of this room with a weight on our heart knowing that we
are partakers in the greatest mission of all time, something that gives us more
purpose in uncertain times and helps us to hang on to the future here at
Ridgewood
Church. We pray Lord Jesus that You would bring disciples into this building in
hoards and that God we can march out into these streets and impact the world for
You, knowing God that You still are wanting to redeem the world. We pray this in
relationship with You Father, Son and Spirit, amen. Have a great week