The Great Commission

Sermon Manuscript

Introduction When you became a Christian, you also became a missionary. Whether you walked an aisle, prayed a prayer, signed a card, raised your hand, no matter what outward form your decision to follow Christ took, on the day you did that, you also committed to a life of full-time missions. This is true for you whether or not you knew it at the time. You might not have been aware of it when you committed your life to Jesus Christ, but the life of a missionary is what each of us signed up for. That is your primary calling. You may be an office worker, you may be in public service, you may be in healthcare, you may be a stay-at-home mom, you may be a working parent, but no matter where you are, or what you do, being a missionary in that place of service and in that role is your primary calling. Before you are any of those things, you are on mission for Jesus Christ. This morning, our text is what Baptists call the Great Commission. If that’s the first time you’ve hard that term Great Commission, you need to file it away. This is the account of Jesus’ last instructions to His disciples. The earthly ministry – the teaching, the miracles, the healings, the journeys – all of that is now over. The betrayal, the arrest, the beatings, the sufferings, the insults, the pain – is all over. Jesus has risen in triumph over all of that, His resurrection has proven once and for all that He is who He said He is and He can do what He said He can do. Now, He is about to leave this earth and ascend back into heaven. But before He goes, He entrusts the mission He began to His disciples – and to us. He may have only originally spoken these words to His disciples then, but these words, this command is directed to us today too, just like everything else Jesus said and did and taught and commanded. “Go 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.” To us, to you, to every Christian in this room this morning the Lord Jesus issues this command, and He intends that we obey it. This morning the sermon has three points because there are three main components to the passage: 1) the church’s confidence, 2) the church’s calling, and 3) the church’s comfort. And all three of these come together in the main point of the sermon this morning: If you are a Christian, your primary calling is to follow Jesus yourself first, and then to help others follow Him as well. I pray I might be able to help you 1) why we can be confident that we will succeed, 2) what it really looks like to do it, and 3) what we can count on to strengthen us and motivate us for it. I pray you’ll see that this calling is the most fulfilling and most exhilarating and the most rewarding thing you can invest in. The church’s confidence – Christ’s authority (v. 18) Let’s get some context. Jesus has risen in power and victory over sin and death and Satan. Not long ago, Mary and Martha went to the tomb where Jesus was buried to anoint him and prepare His body for burial since the Romans hadn’t bothered to do any of that. Only there was no body for them to anoint – there was no corpse to prepare to be buried. There was nothing to oil or wrap or perfume. He was gone. The massive stone guarding the tomb had been rolled away and on it an angel was sitting. The angel had some news for Mary and Martha that terrified them just as much as it excited them. “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell the disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him” (Matt 28:4-7). So the women run back and tell the disciples and later Jesus appears to them and comforts them with His presence. You can read those accounts at the end of John’s gospel and Luke’s gospel. But Matthew’s gospel skips all of that and takes up right up to the very last moment Jesus has with His disciples. He told them to go to Galilee, so they did. Jesus promised to meet them there, and He did. Verse 17 tells us that some of the disciples, when they saw him there on that mountain in Galilee, were still a bit too astonished to believe that it was really Him. Maybe they were still too raw from the agony and disappointment of His death and they were afraid of being let down again. Matthew doesn’t tell us who they are. But others, Matthew tells us, “when they saw him, they worshiped.” They worshiped the risen King, they fell down to their knees in awe of the Resurrected Savior. This may have been because Jesus looked different in His glorified and risen body, or it may have been because, for those who believed, His resurrection had dispelled every doubt in their minds that Jesus was who He said He was. Either way, Jesus comes to them, Matthew tells us, and before giving them His Great Commission, first He prepares the way. He lays the groundwork for what He is about to ask them to do. He says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18). Before His resurrection, Jesus had this power, but He didn’t always use it. That was part of what it meant for Him to empty Himself and become human like us. But now that He has completed the work the Father had for Him, now that He has given Himself as an offering in our place for our sin out of love for us and for the Father, and now that He has come out the other side of the grave in triumph and victory over death, now He is given that authority and that power precisely as One who has stood in between us and God and has earned our salvation. Now, how is this our confidence in missions? It’s simple: Because Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth, we are guaranteed that it will be a success. It will not fail. Jesus knew how daunting the mission is that He gave us. He knows that we will look at the sheer awesomeness of it and without some supernatural confidence, we will look at it and say, “It’s just too much. We can’t do it.” That’s the voice of the flesh, not the Spirit. That’s the merely human part of us looking at a task that requires supernatural power and strength and wisdom and saying that it’s impossible, it’s not doable, because we don’t have the resources in ourselves to complete it. Our state Baptist convention has looked at the demographics of the entire state and they’ve identified 250 “pockets of lostness”. That’s their name for a geographical area with high percentages of people who are lost, who are without Christ. In a pocket of lostness, more than 70% of its population do not claim to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. 70%. 100 of those pockets of lostness are found in major population centers across the state – the Triangle, Triad, Unifour, Metro Charlotte, Asheville. Did you know that Hickory is home to four of the top 100 of the “pockets of lostness”?[1] Three of those four pockets of lostness are in our own Baptist association. The Unifour area has 33,370 total households. Of those 33,370 total households, 22,576 are unreached households. Many of these households are ethnic minorities – many are from Honduras, Mexico, Romania, Hmong, Arab-Palestinian, and Colombian. But 150 more pockets of lostness are found in non-urban areas across our state. And in total, our state, in the Bible Belt, is home to more than 5.8 million people who do not claim to know Jesus Christ. Probably many of them are here illegally. What’s your first reaction when you think about illegal immigrants? That they should be deported? That they need to get jobs and get off the government dime and support themselves and assimilate into our culture? All of that or none of that may be true, but here is one thing you and I know to be true, and it’s the most important thing – they are lost, they need Jesus, and God has brought them here to us. Are they a hassle? Are they an inconvenience? Are they an insult to your work ethic? I’ll let you answer those questions yourself, between you and the Lord. But the last question I’ll ask you is this: Are they people for whom Christ died, people made in God’s image? Yes. Are they an opportunity for the advancement of the gospel? Absolutely. Is it hopeless? No, because Jesus Christ has all authority in heaven and on earth. 250 pockets of lostness just in our state. And yet we are so small, and so limited in resources, and so weak. But when Jesus Christ declares that “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” He means that by His death and resurrection, He now lays claim to every inch of Cleveland County, every inch of North Carolina, every inch of the U.S. and every inch of the entire universe. When Jesus Christ dares to assert that “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” He means that every person – every man, woman, child, of every class, every race, every dialect – whether they’re different from us or just like us, whether they’re legal citizens or illegal aliens – every soul is now His. And because Jesus has the power to make it happen, we can have confidence that it will happen. Jesus is not standing by waiting on people to step up to the plate, as though He needs us or it won’t happen. We need to stop representing Him that way. A. W. Tozer said, “We commonly represent God as a busy, somewhat frustrated Father hurrying about seeking help to carry out His benevolent plan to bring peace and salvation to the world…Too many missionary appeals are based on the fancied frustration of almighty God.”[2] The fact that Jesus wants to use us to complete His mission does not mean that He is dependent on us to complete His mission. Regardless of our weakness or lack of resources or lack of enthusiasm or lack of willingness, Jesus Christ will complete His mission of making disciples of all nations. If it isn’t us, He’ll just use someone else, but our unwillingness will not deter Him. Why? Because all authority is His. That’s why Jesus can make promises like John 10:16, “And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” Or Matthew 16:18, “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” This means two things for you and I as we’re on mission. The first thing this means is we have to change how we present the gospel. We need to share the gospel in such a way that reflects the fact that Jesus is a merciful Savior and that He is the King of the Universe with absolute authority. I can’t say this any better than how it’s already been said by David Platt in his book Radical (which you should get and read if you haven’t already). He writes, “We have taken the infinitely glorious Son of God, who endured the infinitely terrible wrath of God and who now reigns as the infinitely worthy Lord of all, and we have reduced him to a poor, puny Savior who is just begging for us to accept him. Accept him? Do we really think Jesus needs our acceptance? Don’t we need him?...Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.”[3] The second thing this means is that it doesn’t depend on you! One author put it like this: “So wherever you go, to whomever you speak, Christ is Lord there, and he is Lord over that person. Since he is Lord, his truth is truth in every place and for every person. All persons…owe him obedience. The same Christ who rules over you, rules over those who oppose him. The fact that someone has not set Christ apart as Lord in his heart in no way detracts from or undermines the central point that is Lord over all.”[4] The person you’re working with, witnessing to, talking to, building a relationship with may have the hardest and most unbelieving heart you’ve ever seen. But Jesus Christ is in the business of breaking through our boundaries, shattering our hearts of stone, removing them, and replacing them with new hearts, hearts of flesh. That is the church’s confidence – the authority of Christ. The church’s calling (vv. 19-20a) Now that Jesus has given His disciples confidence by declaring His authority, He gives them His calling. I want you to look with me at verses 19-20 as we take them apart piece by piece, so we can see exactly what Jesus is calling us to. The very first word we see in the English translation is “go.” The Greek here is translated as a command – “Go and do it” – but it’s actually a participle, which is literally translated “going” or “having gone.” NT scholars spend a lot of time debating whether Jesus is really commanding the disciples to go, or whether he’s merely assuming they will go. The difference would be “Go and make disciples” versus “Having gone/as you are going, make disciples.” Either way, whether it’s a command or not, still the word for “go” is there and it reminds us of something very important about our church’s mission. Listen very carefully: Our church’s mission is not to wait for the unchurched and unreached and unsaved to come to us. Our church’s mission is to go to them. Our church’s mission is not to wait for the unchurched and unreached and unsaved to come to us. Our church’s mission is to go to them. Because when Jesus commands us to “go”, He’s not thinking only about us going overseas. He also intends, I think, for His church to go into their communities and share His love there. Church, we must go to them – into their neighborhoods, into their schools, into their communities, into their homes, if they will have us. Missions, friends, is not something that happens only in distant lands. You and I are missionaries right where we are – in our homes, with our families; in our workplaces, with our colleagues; in our communities with our neighbors; and in some cases, in our churches. And this is especially true in our time when God has literally brought the nations to us! Acts 17:26-27, “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.” Sunni Muslims, Romanians, Colombians, Hmong, Hispanics – the Lord Jesus has brought them literally to our backyard. That’s no accident. It’s not a mistake. It’s not a problem to be solved. It is an opportunity for the gospel. Ill. But we resist this, don’t we? Whether through pride or laziness or apathy or prejudice, we resist going to them. In fact, while Baptists today are at the forefront of mission work, that hasn’t always been the case. There was a time when many Baptists had nothing to do with missions. These Baptists went beyond indifference and apathy; they were blatantly resistant toward the very idea of missions. They wanted nothing to do with it and they even had a theological justification for their resistance. They believed that conversion, salvation, was a work of God, not man – which is right – and that because of that, there’s no point in doing any missions or evangelism because that’s God’s job – which is wrong. Some of these men were pastors. Any mention of an obligation to engage in missions was met with hostility. Ill2. Then God raised up a young man named William Carey. Carey was born in 1761, and at the age of 26, he went to a ministers conference, and when the floor was open he stood up and proposed a topic for discussion. The topic was, “whether the command given the apostles to teach all nations was not binding on all succeeding ministers to the end of the world.”[5] Carey was hoping for an open, honest debate about whether the Great Commission, Matt. 28:18-20, was limited only to the disciples who were there, or whether it applied to every Christian in every place and in every time. But that debate didn’t happen. Instead, a respected Baptist pastor named Dr. Ryland rebuked him. He said, “Sit down young man. You are an enthusiast! When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without consulting you or me.”[6] Ill3. But that didn’t stop him. Carey wrote a book which became very popular and very well-known, and the book convinced many who were resistant to missions that missions is something Christ expects every Christian to be part of. “It is true that whoever does go must put his life in his hand, and not consult with flesh and blood; but do not the goodness of the cause, the duties incumbent on us as the creatures of God, and Christians, and the perishing state of our fellow men, loudly call upon us to venture all and use every warrantable exertion for their benefit?”[7] Carey didn’t just write books, though. He practiced what he preached. That book, and Carey’s own work as a missionary in India later, kicked off what is now known as the modern missionary movement.[8] Christ commands us go, Carey went. May God raise up more William Careys – not just to go to India and the distant lands, but to follow Christ’s command to go into our communities where the lost and broken are, and not expect lost men and women who are in rebellion against God, who are rejecting Him through to unbelief, to darken our doors first. We must go. But “going” is not enough by itself. What do we do when we get there? And closer to home, if we’re called to be missionaries there, and in our workplaces and in our churches, what does that look like? What is our task? Jesus couldn’t be clearer in verse 19. He says “go and make disciples.” Make disciples. Now, note what Jesus didn’t say. Jesus didn’t say, “Go and make converts.” He didn’t say, “Go and evangelize the lost.” That’s part of it, but that’s not the whole picture. He calls us to go beyond making converts and evangelizing the lost. He commands us to “make disciples.” What is a disciple? A disciple is very simply someone who follows Jesus Christ, someone who is growing in knowledge of God’s word and in their obedience to God’s word. A disciple is someone who knows what Jesus taught, believes what Jesus promises, and obeys what Jesus commands. If that’s what a disciple is, then when Jesus commands us to make disciples, when Jesus says “go and make disciples of all nations”, He is commanding us to follow Him by helping others follow Him. And remember why Jesus is commanding this – He has all authority. “There is nothing outside the authority of Jesus. He has the right and the power to demand allegiance from every soul that exists. As the Lord of the universe, Jesus demands that everyone from every nation and every religion become his disciple. The way Jesus pursues this universal claim on every soul is by sending his followers to make disciples from all the nations.”[9] Friends, this is the primary calling of the local church - not benevolence, not community outreach, not primarily even preaching or teaching. All of those things are good and important, but they serve the fundamental mission and calling we have to make disciples. And not only is this the church’s primary calling. This is your primary calling and mine. Following Jesus yourself, and helping others follow Him, is your primary task in life. You still have your other roles and your other callings – as a parent, as a spouse, as an employee, etc. But those things are platforms for ministry. Those are opportunities for discipleship. As a parent, this means you’re reading Scripture and having gospel conversations with your kids. As an employee, this means you’re praying about who the Lord might want you to come alongside in your workplace, maybe go to lunch with them once a month, offer to read a Christian book with them and then talk about it together. As a student, this means you’re sitting and having lunch with that kid that nobody else sits with, and you’re getting to know them, maybe reading the Bible with them or sharing your testimony. As a church member, this means you’re building relationships with less mature Christians in the church and helping them follow Jesus better. Maybe it’s that struggling couple or that wayward teen. Either way, this is Christ’s calling on your life. This is God’s will for you. This is one of those things you don’t have to pray about! You may need to pray about whom to disciple, and how to disciple them, but you do not need to pray about whether you should get active in discipling someone. It is your calling. And church, I long for you to see that this is the absolute highest calling a person can have! Charles Spurgeon said, “If God has called you to be a missionary, don’t stoop to be a king.”[10] Imagine the transformation our church could effect in our community and our families if every member of this church embraced making disciples of others as their primary calling. We could transform our community if just five of us did this. Or even just one – “the Lord would rather have one person who is 100 percent committed to him than one hundred people who are only 75 percent committed.”[11] Jesus’ command here takes us beyond just those who are around us, though. Jesus’ desire is that we broaden our concern from merely those in our homes and workplaces to those who live half a world away. And so Jesus says “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.” Jesus’ desire is not only that Americans would come to a saving knowledge of Him, but also Haitians and Russians, Chinese and Japanese, Koreans and Moldovians. He desires to be known and worshiped by those in every people group. That’s what the Greek word here for “nations” means. It’s not a geopolitical nation he’s talking about. If it were, the missions task would be all but completed. He’s talking about what missionaries call people groups – smaller groupings of people, within nations, with different dialects and cultural customs. For example, within China there are the Dulong, the Li, Lisu, Shui, Salar and Yao people groups.[12] This means there is still a whole lot of work to do, because there are thousands of people groups that are unreached – who have no gospel witness, no missionaries, no scripture in their language, no church. And yet, Jesus is not okay with that. It is Jesus’ desire to have among His worshipers some from each and every one of those people groups. And because Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth, He will have His desire. In Psalm 2:8 the Father promises this to the Son: “Ask of me, and I shall make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.” Jesus is not a proponent of “America first” – His motto is “My kingdom first”, and His kingdom is a multi-racial kingdom. He desires the worship of all nations, because He deserves the worship of all nations. That is, after all, why missions exists in the first place. We have a passion for the greatness and glory of God. We find our highest joy and our deepest fulfillment in knowing and worshiping Him. And we will not rest until the nations find in Him the same joy and fulfillment we have found in Him. The whole goal of missions is the worship of the nations. The missionary prayer of the church is Psalm 67:3-4, “Let the peoples praise you, O God; let the peoples praise you! Let the nations be glad and sing for joy!” He means that it is His desire that every people on the face of the earth would not only come to saving faith in Him but that they would discover in Christ their highest treasure and find their deepest in joy in worshiping Him. Briefly there are two basic components of making disciples, and this is true whether you’re making disciples in Kyrgistan or in your own home. The first is “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Baptism is a disciple’s initiation into kingdom of God and into the church. In baptism, a disciple proclaims to the watching church that his first allegiance is now to Jesus Christ. Baptists believe true baptism is by immersion, dunking, being submerged completely under the water. You go down under the water, symbolizing that you are one with Christ in His death and burial, and then you come back out, showing that you are one with Christ in His resurrection and new life. Baptism by itself doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t save you, it doesn’t impart God’s forgiveness, even though some churches teach that. Christ saves you by your faith, but baptism is the outward sign that inward change that has taken place. You can think of baptism almost as a drama, as the gospel acted out before a watching world. That’s the first step in discipleship. The second step is teaching: “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” Baptism is a one-time thing, but teaching is ongoing, throughout the disciple’s entire life. Christ does not ever envision a time when you and I grow beyond our need for teaching. Even if we already know it. Even if we’ve heard it what seems like a million times. And note that teaching is practical. It’s not just teaching for learning’s sake. It’s going beyond learning to doing. Jesus said, “teaching them to observe, do, obey all that I have commanded.” And it’s comprehensive – “all that I have commanded” – even the parts that are out of step with the priorities of our culture, even those teachings of Jesus we might not like. It’s safe to say Jesus never envisioned a time when His teachings would be irrelevant or out of date. No matter what age we live in, Jesus means for His teachings to be not just studied but obeyed – even when it seems like obeying those commands won’t work or isn’t wise or won’t be beneficial. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” (Prov. 14:12). We are not wiser than Christ. So we’ve seen the confidence of the church in missions – Christ’s authority; we’ve seen the calling of the church in missions – make disciples; and now we see the comfort of the church in missions – Christ’s daily presence. The comfort of the church in missions – Christ’s daily presence (v. 20b) The book of Acts tells us about a critical moment in the life of Paul. Paul, as you know, was an apostle but he was also a missionary and was often whipped jailed or otherwise persecuted for his preaching and his work. One place where this happened was Philippi. Paul had come to Philippi because he had seen a vision in which a man was calling out for Paul’s help in the gospel work there. So Paul came and did his usual thing – He preached the gospel, people believed in Christ, he planted the church at Philippi out of those new converts, and trained and appointed leaders. But Paul did something to really anger the local businessmen there. There was a girl who was possessed by a demon and because of this demon-possession, she could read people their fortunes. Businessmen in Philippi used her to make money for themselves. Paul sees her, and what does he do? He casts the demon out of her. So the businessmen, seeing the Paul had stolen their livelihood, took them to court, where they were beaten and put in prison. Acts 16:25 opens up on Paul and Barnabas in prison that same night. “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.” Singing, in prison. These two things don’t normally go together, do they? And yet in the apostle Paul, they did. Singing together with imprisonment. Sorrow mingling with joy. Pain mixing with deep, deep fulfillment. How is this possible? This is possible only through a deep awareness that Jesus Christ was present with them in that prison cell, and not just with them in that cell, but in them, as well. That was the source of their joy. And it can be the source of ours. At the very last part of verse 20, Jesus makes a promise that forms the basis of our comfort as believers and as a church as we go about our mission: “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” He says “behold,” to draw their attention to what He’s about to say. He says, “I am with you,” and in the original language He emphasizes the word “I” – “I, none other than Jesus Christ[13], the Son of God with all authority in heaven and on earth, I am with you.” And He says “I am with you always” – literally it says “all the days” – every kind of day[14], up days and down days, happy days and sad days, days of success and days of failure, days of freedom and days of imprisonment, days of depression and anxiety and days of contentment and optimism – through them all, on every day, every kind of day, Jesus is our constant Helper and our faithful Companion. And this is a promise, church – meaning that He is with you even during the days or weeks or months when it feels like He isn’t. Jesus fulfills this promise by sending us His own Spirit. John 14:16 says, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever.” This isn’t someone other than Christ – this is Christ Himself, His very own Spirit! For the longest time I saw Jesus as a Lawgiver and Judge and nothing more. He seemed stern and His commands seemed impossible. But I was forgetting that Jesus is also my dearest Friend. “Until the end of the age,” Jesus says – until the Jesus Himself returns in power and glory, in other words, until the mission is done, Jesus will not leave our side. Conclusion and call for response So church, this is the church’s confidence in missions – Christ has all authority in heaven and on earth, so we know He’ll complete it. This is the church’s calling in missions – to make disciples of all nations, starting at home but looking abroad. And this is the church’s comfort in missions – the very presence of the risen Jesus on every sort of day, right up until the end. Let me conclude by asking you this one question for you to ponder now and over the course of the rest of today: How are you a part of this mission? If the mission of Jesus Christ for His church is leading others to faith in Christ and then helping them follow Him, are you involved in that? If not, what are your reasons for not being involved in it? Maybe you would say that you’re waiting for others in our church to get on board with this mission. When they do it, you’ll do it – right? But the thing is, you don’t have to wait until others get on board. You can start right now. Maybe you would say that the church doesn’t have enough money. But it doesn’t take any money to begin building relationships with others who need your help to follow Jesus better. Those are excuses and nothing more. Maybe some of you would more honestly say, “Pastor Dustin, I’m afraid – afraid of rejection, afraid of not knowing what to say.” If that’s you, remember our confidence in this: “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” It cannot fail. You can’t mess it up! Christ is sovereign, and He has already taken your mistakes and worked them into His plan. Isn’t that good news? Maybe others of you would honestly say that you’re tired. You’ve served and you’ve served and you’ve served and then you’ve served some more, and you’re just done. You’re tired of being among the few people in our church that seem to end up doing everything. May I comfort you this morning? Jesus has seen your labor. Hebrews 6:10 says, “For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do.” The Lord Jesus doesn’t overlook a single minute of the work you’ve done, and your reward is coming. But we can’t stop. We can’t give up. And we don’t have to, because Jesus says, “Behold, I am with you, all the days” – days of energy and days of fatigue, days of stress and days of frustration. His presence with us is not only a comforting presence; it is a strengthening presence. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13). Maybe others of you would even more honestly say, “Pastor Dustin, I’m just indifferent. I don’t feel like this is something I need to do. I already come to church on Sunday mornings, I give, I serve on a council. I think that’s enough.” But friend, it isn’t. Disciples of Jesus make disciples of Jesus, period. If you’re a disciple of Jesus, you must do this, or you aren’t truly a disciple. So if you’re not a part of this mission, change that today. Who is there in your own house that the Lord is calling you to disciple? How about at your job, your school, your Sunday School class? I promise you, they are there. May Christ strengthen us for this work through His presence in us. Will you stand with me as we pray?

[1] https://www.ncbaptist.org/index.php?id=1786 (accessed April 5, 2018).

[2] Quoted in John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad: The Supremacy of God in Missions, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010), p. 37.

[3] David Platt, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2010), pp. 37-39.

[4] K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles & Practice in Defense of Our Faith (Wheaton: Crossway, 2013), pp. 35-36.

[5] H. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1987), p. 185.

[6] Ibid.

[7] William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, in Ralph D Winter & Steven C. Hawthorne, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader, 3rd ed. (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 1999), pp. 297-98.

[8] Ibid.

[9] John Piper, What Jesus Demands From the World (Wheaton: Crossway, 2006), p. 365.

[10] Richard J. Morgan, Preacher’s Sourcebook of Creative Sermon Illustrations (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007), p. 562.

[11] Ibid., p. 818.

[12] Piper, What Jesus Demands From the World, p. 368.

[13] Hendriksen, p. 1003.

[14] John A. Broadus, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. An American Commentary on the New Testament (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1866), p. 597.