All Authority

The Kingdom’s Great Commission

INTRODUCTION

Let me ask you a question before we open Scripture this morning.

If someone walked into this sanctuary right now — a stranger, maybe someone who’d never been to church before, someone who’d heard we were a nice group of people and decided to take a chance — and they sat down and leaned over and whispered, “What exactly is this place about?” what would you tell them?

[Let the question breathe.]

I’ve been thinking about that question a lot over the last month. Because I’ve noticed something over the years. Most churches — and I say this with great affection, because I’ve spent my whole life in them — most churches can tell you what they do. We have worship services and small groups and Community Supper and committees, and a Food Pantry. We have a building and a budget and a church calendar.

What’s harder to answer is the question of who we are. What is the organizing story we’re living inside? What is the reality that sends us out of this room on Sunday morning and shapes the way we live on Monday through Saturday?

pause

Today is Trinity Sunday, and I want to suggest to you that the text we will read next, — are the very last words Jesus speaks in the Gospel of Matthew — they are the fullest, richest, most comprehensive answer to that question that exists anywhere in the Christian Bible.

This text is not primarily a to-do list. It is not a fundraising ask. It is not the scriptural equivalent of a church growth strategy.

It is a royal proclamation.

It is an announcement about who is in charge of the universe, who is in charge of all of creation.

And if we hear it right — really hear it, the way the first disciples heard it on that mountain in Galilee with the morning air around them and the risen Jesus in front of them — it has the power to change everything about how we understand ourselves, this church, and the world we’ve been sent into.

Let us pray.

THE TEXT: MATTHEW 28:16–20

Children of God listen to the Word of the Lord:

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 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 and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

This is the Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

PART ONE: “All Authority” — This Is Kingdom Language

The first thing I want you to notice is that Matthew doesn’t say Jesus stood before his disciples and gave them a mission strategy.

Matthew’s Gospel says, Jesus came to them and made a declaration. An announcement. And the announcement begins not with a command but with a claim:

“  —  All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

Now, if you had a first-century Jewish ear, those words would have stopped you cold. Because you’ve heard them before.

Two hundred years earlier, the prophet Daniel’s vision was written down. In that vision, he saw a figure he called one like a Son of Man coming before the Ancient of Days — before the throne of God himself. And the Ancient of Days gave to this figure dominion and glory and kingdom, so that all peoples and nations would serve him. Daniel 7:14 says his dominion would be everlasting, and his kingdom one that would never be destroyed.

This is not a motivational speech. This is a coronation.

The resurrection is not simply God’s way of reversing the injustice of the cross, though it is certainly that. It is the moment when God publicly declares that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth is the rightful King of everything. Not just King of Israel. Not just Lord of the church. King of everything that exists — every boardroom, every battlefield, every government, every galaxy.

The New Testament scholar N.T. Wright puts it this way: the resurrection is the decisive moment when heaven and earth overlap, when the Kingdom of God breaks into the present age with undeniable, irreversible force. The resurrection is the Kingdom’s inauguration.

Here is why this matters for us this morning:

The Great Commission doesn’t begin with a command. It begins with a fact.

Before Jesus says go, he says all authority is mine. Before he tells the disciples what to do, he tells them what is true. The mission of the church is not something we generate from our own energy and ambition and our five-year strategic plan. It flows from a reality that is already established, already in place, already reigning.

We don’t go in order to make Jesus King. We go because he already is.

[Pause.]

PART TWO: “Go Therefore” — The Most Important Word in the Sentence

Look at that little word: therefore.

"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”

The word therefore, is a connecting hinge in Greek language. It means: in light of what I just told you, here is what logically follows. Because all authority belongs to me… go. Because the Kingdom has been inaugurated… go. Because something irreversible has happened in the history of the universe… go.

The missionary theologian David Bosch, in his landmark work Transforming Mission, argues that the Great Commission reveals something stunning about the nature of God: God is not a deity who stays still, who waits in a temple for worshipers to come and pay tribute. God is a sending God. The very life of the Trinity is a life of sending and going — the Father sends the Son, the Father and Son send the Spirit, and the Triune God sends the church.

Theologians call this the missio Dei — the mission of God. And the revolutionary insight it contains is this: the church does not have a mission. The church is a mission. The church does not have a written mission statement, the church is the living, breathing, embodied, mission statement. The mission Christ sends us on is who we are.

[Pause.]

Most churches are organized around gathering. Come to the building. Come to the service. Come to the program. And gathering is good and holy and essential — we need it, we need each other, we need the table and the baptistery, and the word proclaimed. I’m not knocking gathering.

But Jesus doesn’t say “Stay therefore.”

[Wait for the laughter.]

He says “Go therefore.”The gathering exists to fuel the going. Our gathering is where we charge our batteries. We gather to have our battery charged for the energy we will need the rest of the week. The worship exists to orient the mission. We come in together in order to go out together — differently shaped, differently oriented, differently alive, transformed, to what’s happening in the world around us.

Now notice also where they are going: all nations, three communities, Clarksville, New Albany, Jeffersonville. Not just to people who might kind of be interested. Not all the people who seem like they’d be a good cultural fit. Not all the people who agree with us. Not all the people in a twenty-mile radius who match our existing demographic.

PART THREE: “Baptizing… Teaching…” — The Trinity We Live Inside

This is Trinity Sunday, and I need to be honest with you about something: Trinity Sunday is one of the most theologically treacherous Sundays of the year for preachers.

[Pause.]

But here’s the thing. Matthew 28 doesn’t ask us to explain the Trinity. It invites us to be baptized into the Trinity. To live inside it. To operate from within it.

“Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Notice: one name — singular — and then three identities. The early church theologians wrestled mightily with this formulation, and out of that wrestling came the Trinitarian faith we confess. But the point is not primarily conceptual. The point is relational and participatory.

And then Jesus says: “Teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”

Not teaching them everything I have told you. Not teaching them to know everything. Teaching them to obey everything. The pastor’s role is not to persuade people to think like he or she does, the pastor’s role is to encourage the people to seek after the Word of the Lord becoming a faithfully obedient people. That is why I will continually encourage you to join in the study of God’s Word. Not so you will understand the Word but so you can become the Word. Just as you need the Lord, the neighborhood needs you.

This is the Kingdom’s curriculum. And here’s the thing about the curriculum of Jesus — it is breathtakingly practical. Love your enemies. Forgive the person who wronged you. Don’t worry about tomorrow. Seek first the Kingdom of God. Welcome the child. Serve the poor. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Be a peacemaker. Hunger and thirst for righteousness. Be merciful.

This is the stuff Jesus commanded. And the Great Commission tells us that making disciples means helping people actually do these things — not just know about them, not just find them inspiring, but actually order their lives around them.

We proclaim the reign of Christ and we learn to live under it. We announce that Jesus is King and we let that announcement transform our lives from the inside out.

PART FOUR: “I Am With You Always” — The Promise That Changes Everything

I want to come back to the mountain for a moment. Because there is something in this passage that I think we too easily slide past.

Verse 17: “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.”

[Pause.]

Some doubted.

These are the eleven disciples. The ones who had been with Jesus for three years. The ones who had seen the healings and the feedings and the transfiguration. The ones who had received multiple resurrection appearances. They are standing on a mountain in Galilee, looking at the risen Jesus with their own eyes, and some of them are still doubting.

And Jesus does not wait for them to get their doubt sorted out before he speaks. He does not send the doubters to the back of the room and deliver the commission only to the fully convinced. He steps forward — he came to them, Matthew says, which is such a stunning detail — and he commissions all of them. Doubters included.

I find this one of the most comforting things in all of Matthew’s Gospel.

The Kingdom of God does not require that you have everything figured out before you can participate in it. It does not require certainty as a prerequisite for belonging. It doesn’t require that you have to agree with the pastor on everything she or he says. It requires only that you come to the mountain. That you show up. And when you show up, Jesus walks toward you.

And then he gives the promise that anchors everything:

“  —  I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Matthew 1:23. Matthew 28:20. The whole Gospel is held inside that promise: God with us.

Not God cheering us on from a safe distance. Not God sending us out into the world and wishing us luck. God with us. In the going. In the making of disciples. In the baptizing and the teaching and the doubting and the struggling and the showing up imperfectly and trying again.

The Kingdom of God is not a project the church carries alone. It is a movement that God is already leading, that has already broken decisively into the world in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and to which the church is invited to belong and bear witness.

All authority belongs to him.

And he is with us always.

Those two truths together change the way you walk into the coming week.

CONCLUSION

The church I want us to be — the church I believe Jesus is calling us to be — is not a church that is primarily known for its programs or its property or even a Sunday morning services.

It is a church that forms people in the actual way of Jesus, not just the information about Jesus.

And it is a church that goes about all of this with the quiet, deep, unshakeable confidence of people who know they are never alone.

If that is true — and I believe with everything in me that it is — then the life of this congregation is not a footnote in an otherwise secular story.

We are participants in the greatest story ever told.

The King has been crowned.

The Kingdom has come near.

And we have been sent.

Go therefore.

And remember: he is with you. Always.

Amen.