The Master's Mission - Matthew 28:16-20

A Word on Dobbs

At West Hills Church, we believe that every Sunday is a time of celebration as we come together to rejoice in resurrection of Jesus Christ. But today, there is particular cause of celebration.

As a direct answer to the fervent prayer of millions of Christians over the last 49 years, God saw fit through our Supreme Court to reverse the ruling of Roe vs Wade on Friday. This ruling does not necessarily ban abortion, but it does revert the legislation of such laws back to individual states, thus providing a much higher level of legislative autonomy to the state and ultimately to the voter. This means that as of today, 13 states have banned abortion, with 6 more slated to ban it within the next thirty days.

We are witnesses today of the miraculous work of God in answering prayer, and we have much reason to rejoice. Life, by the sovereign power of God, has prevailed in our nation today.

I want to take this moment in our time together this morning to read a portion of God’s Word, and then to pray, before we come before God’s Word.

Read Psalm 139

Praise

Oh great God of highest heaven, we praise you today. We praise you as the author of goodness, truth, and beauty. We praise you as the author, giver, and sustainer of life. We praise you as the only wise and sovereign ruler.

Confession

We confess before you the last 49 years of failure as a nation to honor the 7th commandment: Thou shalt not murder. We bring this sin before you with shame and we thank you humbly for your mercy in not destroying our nation for it’s sin, as you did Sodom and Gomorrah.

Thanksgiving

We thank you, Lord, that you have demonstrated your mercy to us, to our nation, and to our children. We thank You that you have confused, mocked, and destroyed the plans of Satan and his servants. We thank you for taking men and women who do not know you savingly, yet nevertheless in your common grace, have caused them to execute your will for the good of our nation. We thank you for the leadership of the states of Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, South Dakota, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan, who have banned child sacrifice. We thank you that 6 other states will ban child sacrifice within the next 30 days. We thank you for the conviction of millions of Christians in our country committed to serving women who have unplanned pregnancies through gospel proclamation, financial support, spiritual counsel, and through adoption, the picture of Your relationship to us. Most of all we thank you that you have answered the prayers of the saints as they have risen to you for 49 years.

Intercession

We pray now for the protection of the Supreme Court justices. We pray for the protection of churches. We pray for the protection of pregnancy centers that honor and promote the dignity of human life. We pray for the leadership of our state and the 30 others who have not yet banned this horrific practice. We ask that you destroy their wicked plans, and that you shine the light of your gospel into their hearts and cause them to repent of their sins and turn to you for salvation. We pray for our own church and for Christians in our state and in the other 30 where child sacrifice is still legal and still celebrated, that by the power of your indwelling spirit your church would faithfully oppose evil, tear down the strongholds of the enemy, and proclaim the saving gospel of the crucified, risen, and reigning Christ until your glory fills the earth.

We pray to you O Father, in the power of the Spirit and in the name of Christ Jesus our Savior, amen.

Introduction

Endings are important. The conclusion of the story bears great significance. Often a reader may lose details in the plot of the story as it develops, but a great story will wrap it up at the end in a way that’s meaningful and memorable. In preaching, we often talk about “landing the plane,” in other words, how to craft a great sermon ending that leaves people refreshed and encouraged.

Today then, we want to look closely at the ending of Jesus’ ministry, the conclusion of His earthly story as told by Matthew, the tax collector turned disciple turned Jewish Christological historian.

This is a famous passage, an often-preached passage, and an often-misunderstood passage. My aim for today is to provide you with clarity of understanding and conviction of action as we witness, with the disciples, the final command of Jesus.

I intend to demonstrate from the text today that discipling is the prevailing purpose of the church on earth.

The Mountain

In order to understand what’s actually happening here in Matthew 28 we need to zoom out really quickly and take a look at the big picture. Matthew is one of four gospel accounts. The gospel accounts are memoirs of significant portions of Jesus’ life and ministry on earth, recounted from four different perspectives. It’s important when you’re studying the gospels to understand that these accounts are not intended to be biographical or exhaustive. Each gospel writer includes specific details about the life of Christ that serve his overall purpose in writing. Matthew’s purpose is to prove that Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed one of the Hebrew Old Testament. Thus, Matthew’s gospel is deeply Jewish, and echoes the Old Testament not only in content but even in form.

There are dozens, if not hundreds of key ways that Matthew draws on the Old Testament and on Jewish history and culture to prove his point that Jesus is the better prophet, the better priest, and the better king promised in the Old Testament. Today we will examine 2 of those ways. Matthew’s presentation of Jesus in this way is key to understanding why Jesus says what he says in Matthew 28:16-20.

Jesus is the king of the Jews

The first chapter of Matthew’s gospel is a genealogy. Before you groan and go “booooring” let’s take a look at why Matthew includes this genealogy. He tells us in 1:1. He is trying to prove two things by this genealogy: (1) that Jesus is a descendant of Abraham, in other words, he is a Jew, and thus is the Savior of the Jews, and (2) that Jesus is a member of the royal line, an heir to the throne of David. Right off the bat then, Matthew is linking Jesus with two significant Old Testament covenants, one with Abraham, and one with David. In those two covenants God made significant promises to both Abraham and David.

For Abraham, God promised that He would make Abraham’s descendants into a great nation, that He would bring them to a land of peace and rest, and that He would both bless them and bless the world through them. What is particularly interesting about the Abrahamic covenant is that God actually states the terms of the covenant 7 times, and ratifies the covenant 3 times. Just so we’re clear, the statement of the covenant is God stating His promises, while the ratification is a ritual or ceremony performed by the parties of the covenant to signify that the covenant has been sealed. You might think of the statement as the terms of a contract, and the ratification as the signature at the bottom. In the Old Testament, the number 7 and the number 3 were extremely significant. Generally the number 7 is the number of completion or perfection, coming from the fact that God rested on the 7th day after completing His good and perfect creation. The number 3 has rhetorical significance. In the Hebrew language, if you repeat a word, it is the rough English equivalent of prefacing your statement with the word absolutely. A great Biblical example is when Jesus says “Truly, truly I say to you.” He is letting his hearers know that he is making an absolute, unequivocal truth statement. You might rephrase it as “What I’m saying to you is absolutely true.” What does it mean, then, if a word or phrase is repeated three times? A great example of this is Isaiah 6, when the angels surround the throne of God singing “Holy, holy, holy.” A triple repetition is hard to describe in English, but think of it as meaning “more than absolutely” or “beyond absolutely.”

So now that we understand the significance of repeating something three times, when we see that God ratifies the covenant with Abraham three times, that ought to mean something to us. This covenant is absolute. It will not fail. It will come to pass. It’s certainty is beyond absolute. Couple the threefold ratification with the sevenfold statement, and we see that when Moses was writing this account of Abraham’s life, he wanted us to learn something about God and something this covenant - namely that it’s fulfillment is beyond absolutely guaranteed, and it is also possesses the completion and perfection of God Himself. This covenant will not fail. All of this reaches its climax in Genesis 22, which records the near-sacrifice of Isaac. This is a highly important event in Genesis and indeed in the larger scope of all of redemptive history, and it’s depth and breadth are far beyond the scope of our study today, but allow me to just point out two facts about this event: (1) both the 7th statement of the covenant and the 3rd ratification of the covenant take place in this event. This signifies the perfection as well as the certainty of this covenant. (2) This event takes place on a mountain in Moriah.

For David, God promised David in 2 Samuel 7 that He would make David a great name, that He would appoint a place for Israel, that He would bring peace and rest for Israel, that He would raise up a descendant who will build a house for Him, and that descendant would rule over Israel forever. To simplify this all down, God promised David that from his line would come a king who would rule over all kings.

Before we move on, let’s take a look at a minor detail that has major significance for Matthew 28. Look at 2 Samuel 7:1-4. This episode with Nathan, David, and God takes place one evening while David is at his house. Okay great. It’s night time, where else would David be? But that’s the point. There’s no need for the author of the book of Samuel to tell us that David is at his house. So why does he tell us that? Because the location is significant. Just a few chapters earlier we see David ascend to the throne of Israel. In 5:6-10 we see David overtake the city of Jerusalem to establish the city as the capital of the kingdom of Israel. And what does he do when he takes Jerusalem? He gets Hiram of Tyre to send him a bunch of wood to build himself a house right there in Jerusalem. It makes sense. If you’re the king of a country, you ought to have a house in the capital city. So David has a house in Jerusalem, and Jerusalem, famously, is situated on top of a mountain. So when God gives David this covenant, He does it while David is in his house. Which is on a mountain. Interesting.

So when Matthew opens his gospel by telling us that Jesus is the son of Abraham and the son of David, he’s telling us three things.

He’s telling us that Jesus is not just a son but is in fact the son. Why is that significant? By using the definite rather than the indefinite article, he’s declaring that Jesus is the one who fulfills the covenants given to these two men. He is the one who will possess the gate of his enemies. He is the one who will bless the nations of the entire earth. He is the one who will build a house for the Lord. He is the one whose throne will be established forever. He is the one who is the Son of God.

He’s telling us that Jesus is truly a Jew because he is the son of Abraham.

He’s telling us that Jesus is truly a king because he is the son of David.

So in one simple phrase, Matthew sets the stage for the rest of his gospel. He establishes Jesus as king of the Jews, and if you understand the implications of the covenant with David, he is king of the entire earth. And understanding that kingship is absolutely critical if you want to understand the Great Commission.

But there is a second aspect of Matthew’s presentation of Jesus that requires our attention. It is to Moses that we will turn our attention next.

Jesus is the true and better Moses

Matthew, over the course of his entire gospel, also seeks to portray Christ as the true and better Moses. He does this both explicitly and also by way of analogy.

The explicit portrayal takes place in Matthew 17. For the typical Jewish person, the Old Testament could be summarized with the phrase “The Law and the Prophets.” Because of the numerous uses of that phrase in the New Testament, even today we are familiar with it. So then, for the Jewish person, Moses as the giver of the law and Elijah as the first great prophet, represent the law and the prophets, or even more succinctly, represent the entire Old Testament. So when this transfiguration occurs, it serves as a memorable and distinct visual explanation of this truth, a tassel if you will: Jesus fulfills the entire Old Testament. He is the true giver of the law. He is the true prophet. Incidentally, this episode takes place on a mountain.

But Matthew also present Christ as the true and better Moses by way of a typological analogy, a concerted effort to demonstrate parallels between Christ and Moses.

Moses was born in the midst of mass infanticide perpetrated by a paranoid king. Jesus’ birth prompted mass infanticide perpetrated by a paranoid king. Moses fled from Egypt and returned to lead his people out of bondage. Jesus fled to Egypt and returned to lead his people out of bondage. Moses went up on a mountain at the beginning of his ministry and received the law from it’s author, Jesus went up on a mountain at the beginning of his ministry and delivered the law as it’s author. At the end of his time on earth, Moses went up on a mountain again, this time to commission one man to lead the people of God into the promised land. At the end of Jesus’ time on earth, He went up on a mountain and commission 12 men to lead the people of God into their promised rest.

After all of this, having spent 28 chapters with Matthew showing us that Jesus fulfills the Old Testament, that He is the Messiah of the Hebrew Scriptures, it should come as no surprise that we should find Jesus on a mountain, the most important topographical and typological location in the Old Testament. Jesus, of course, knows this. The poetic irony is intentional on his part, in two ways. First, He is linking Himself to all of these significant episodes that have taken place on mountains throughout the course of redemptive history. Secondly, He wants to bring His disciples back to where it all started in Matthew 5:1. [Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.] Effectively, by bringing them to this mountain to tell them what is he is about to tell them, Jesus is saying “I have accomplished my mission on earth. I am going to the Father. It is your turn now.”

Everything that Matthew has been trying to show us for the last 28 chapters comes to it’s climax here in vs 16, with Jesus and the disciples on a mountain in Galilee.

The Master

After all that we’ve seen leading up to this point, the response of the disciples should not surprise us. As Matthew proves the identity of Christ over 28 chapters, he is also recording the disciples’ discovery of that proof as well. It would seem at this time, as they seen the risen Christ, that they finally begin to get it. They begin to understand that Jesus was not just their rabbi but was in fact their Lord and Master. Likewise, the first words out of Jesus’ mouth should come as no surprise to us either. He has established Himself as the son of Abraham, the son of David, and the true and better Moses. No figures in all of Jewish history hold more authority than those three. After all that Jesus has said and done throughout His life and ministry on earth, He brings them to the only place that is worthy of the significance of this statement. With echoes of Psalm 2 and Psalm 110 ringing in the ears of the disciples, Jesus utters this massive statement: All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. He declares Himself to be greater than Abraham, greater than David, greater than Moses. He declares himself to be the sovereign of the universe. He declares Himself to be God, very God.  This has massive implications for our understanding of who Christ is. He leaves no room for debate or discussion about His identity. He’s not a good teacher. He’s not a wise man. He’s not a picture of personal sacrifice for a cause you believe in. He is the lord of creation, and in the same breath also its savior. Just as He has power to command wind and wave, power to create galaxies and atoms, so also He has the power to forgive sin, the power to impart new life. His authority transcends time and space, matter and mind. We ought to pause for a moment and consider the implications of this statement first for the way we think and second for the way we live.

What do you confess about Jesus? Is he a nice guy who is a good voice to consider when you’re trying to live your best life now? Is he a good teacher who gave us some great moral instruction? Is he the key to the purpose-driven life? If that’s what you believe here today, with all gentleness and teaching, allow to tell you that your view of Christ has fallen short of the Scripture’s definition of Him and Christ’s own understanding of himself. The Apostle Paul is clear: you MUST confess Jesus as Lord. Because I love the Puritans and they are more theologically brilliant than I am, let’s let 121 of them, gathered at Westminster Abbey in 1648, summarize for us what we must confess about Jesus Christ.

“The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance, and equal with the Father, did, when the fulness of time was come, take upon him man’s nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin; being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, of her substance. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only Mediator between God and man.”

You either believe that, or you don’t. There’s no middle ground. And let me be clear with you this morning: your life depends on whether or not you believe that.

If this is true about Jesus, how do you live? Do you obey Him? Do you follow Him? Do you seek the fame of His name, the glory of His gospel, above your own comfort, your own wants, your own needs? Do you seek to love Christ’s church more than you love yourself? Do you serve Christ and His church with abandon? Just as this statement doesn’t allow for any middle ground on what you believe about Christ, it doesn’t allow any middle ground on how you must live if you actually believe it. If you believe that He possesses all authority in heaven on earth, you will do what He says. You can’t do anything else. His glory as the God-man compels you to fall prostrate before him, and His grace as the Mediator lifts you up to walk in newness of life.

The Mission

The burning core of our passage today is verses 19 and 20a. In these verses Jesus makes one of the most dense and most pressing commands of His entire ministry. There is a reason He saved this command for last. It may be the most important command that Jesus ever gave. Why? Because this is how the legacy of His gospel message is carried beyond His time on earth. This is the passing of the baton, from Jesus to the apostles, who in turn pass it on to faithful Christians, who will pass it on to other faithful Christians, add a few thousand years, and it has been passed on to you. Jesus is kickstarting the disciple cycle. Commissioning disciples to make disciples.

Unfortunately this is where many preachers and teachers get this passage wrong. The English translation muddies the waters because English works differently than Greek. Simply, word order in English is key for understanding meaning. When a series of verbs is presented in English, the word order determines the meaning. If I tell you to go to Walmart, buy a t-shirt, and put on the t-shirt, and I tell someone else to buy a t-shirt, go to Walmart, and put on the t-shirt, I’m saying the same words, but the order is different, and the different order changes the meaning. In Greek, the word order doesn’t equate to order or importance of events in the same way. Grammatical markers do that in Greek. So here, grammatically, the main idea isn’t “go,” even though that’s first. It’s “make disciples.”

So the basic outline here in Jesus’ statement is three steps in the process of making disciples: going, baptizing, and teaching. Let’s dig in to each part.

First let’s look at the main, overall command: make disciples. The word make is supplied in English, meaning it doesn’t actually exist in the original Greek. It literally says go and disciple all nations. So the word disciple can be both a noun and a verb. In the noun form, disciple simply means a follower of Christ. It was first used to refer to the 12 disciples, but it is also used 25 times in the book of Acts to refer generally to any followers of Christ, and in fact in Acts 11 Luke tells us explicitly that the followers of Christ, the disciples, were called Christians. A disciple in noun form is a follower of Christ. To disciple in verb form is to follow Christ.

But there are two layers to the verb meaning in Greek. One is personal, the other is relational. Some theologians have defined the two layers of the verb as discipleship and discipling. Discipleship is following Christ personally in our own lives. Discipling is helping others to follow Christ in their lives. Simply, discipleship is being a disciple, and discipling is making disciples. It is both a personal act and a relational act.

So here, in Jesus’ command, the noun form and the personal verb form are already implied by the use of the word disciple back in vs 16. They are disciples, by being followers of Christ, and they are discipling, by following Christ personally, as they physically follow Jesus to the mountain. So the third form is in view here, which is why the word make is supplied in the English. This is the relational verb meaning of the word disciple. To quote Mark Dever again, it means helping someone else follow Jesus. So what is Jesus saying here, in effect? You are followers of Me and  you are following me. Notice the statement of being and the statement of practice. You are a disciple, and you are engaging in discipleship. Now, go and disciple. Duplicate yourself. As you follow me, so help others to follow Me in the same way. But Jesus has some specific instructions for how we are to make disciples, how we are to help others follow Him. Let’s turn our attention to three specific steps we are to follow as we disciple others.

The first step to help others follow Christ is going. This is not the main point, contrary to popular belief. Grammatically, to make sense of the meaning here, the phrase is more accurately translated “having gone” or “as you go.” Put it all together. “Having gone, make disciples” or “as you go, make disciples.” The point is that the going aspect of disciple-making is kind of a foregone conclusion. When Jesus makes that statement, he is assuming that his disciples are already in the act of going, and by extension he assumes that all of us are going as well.

This blows up this notion that the Great Commission is a manifesto for overseas missions. That puts severe and unbiblical limits on the Great Commission. It’s really a call for all Christians, all disciples, all followers of Christ to make disciples wherever they might be going in life. Jesus is calling his disciples to duplicate themselves in whatever circumstances they find themselves. This makes the Great Commission a lot harder, and also a lot easier for us this morning. It’s easier because you don’t have to raise support or get a seminary degree to fulfill the Great Commission. But it’s harder because you can’t get away with excuses anymore. You can’t say “The Great Commission isn’t for me because I’m not called to full time ministry.” The Great Commission is for anyone who is a Christian, a disciple, a follower of Christ, and your mission field is wherever you go, in whatever you do.

The second step to helping others follow Christ is baptizing. We all know, by experience or by observation, what baptism is like, especially if you were with us last Sunday. Baptism, by its definition, is ceremonial immersion in water for religious purposes. Generally baptism is defined theologically as an external, physical ceremony that reflects an internal, spiritual reality. It’s important to note that this is one of only four times in the New Testament where baptism is expressly commanded. Peter commands it twice in the book of Acts, and Paul commands it once in Acts as well. This act symbolizes at least three things:

Cleansing of our iniquities by God the Father - Ezekiel 33:25, 33 -

Union with Christ in His life, death, and resurrection Romans 6:1-7 - What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin

The pouring out of the Holy Spirit resulting in regeneration - Titus 3:5-6 But when the goodness and loving kindness ofGod our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness,but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the HolySpirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that beingjustified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Notice the theme in these passages? Each one deals with some aspect of our new life as Christians, as disciples, as followers of Christ, and each one deals with the role of a specific member of the Trinity in the creation of that new life. That explains, then, why Jesus commands us to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Baptism pictures that moment of our salvation, when our sins are cleansed by the Father, when our dead souls are made alive together with Christ, and when the Holy Spirit is poured out on us as He causes us to be regenerated or born again. So baptism isn’t just some thing we do willy nilly, with no real intention or purpose behind it. We baptize for two reasons: first, because Christ commands it, and secondly, it paints a captivating picture of the new Trinitarian life we have in Him.

Why is this part of Jesus’ program for disciple making? He wants to make sure we are centered on what makes disciples truly disciples - that they actually have new life in Him. Too often churches jump straight into the third step of the disciple making process, teaching. But all that does is produce false disciples who do all the right things, and know all the right answers, but are dead inside because their sins haven’t been cleansed, they haven’t been unified with Christ, and they haven’t had the Spirit poured out on them for regeneration. In other words, you must receive the grace of Christ as savior before you can ever walk in the grace of Christ as Lord. You can’t miss this step. This is the gospel step.

When you are trying to make disciples, you have to start with what the Father, Son, and Spirit have done for the sinner, as it is displayed in baptism. You can’t follow, you can’t obey without those benefits of cleansing, union, and regeneration being applied to you. Being careful to baptize is the difference between producing hypocritical disciples who do the right things and say the right things, but do it for all the wrong reasons, and genuine disciples who follow Christ out of a sincere love for him that comes from a heart that has been cleansed and regenerated.

The third step in the disciple making process is teaching. Specifically, Jesus calls us to teach all that He has commanded. This has two senses. The first is simply those things that Jesus taught and commanded during his three years of ministry on earth. But in another sense all that Jesus, the living Word, commanded, is all that is contained in this, the written Word. So the final step in this charge is that we disciple by teaching others what the Bible says. After we’ve gone to our world, our mission field, and we’ve baptized someone with an understanding of all that baptism means, we proceed to teach them the statutes, the rules, the principles of God’s Word. That’s pretty simple.

A bit of clarification is appropriate here. Teaching isn’t just standing up front and giving a lecture or a sermon. That is what Paul calls public teaching and I venture that most in this room won’t ever engage in that type of teaching. However, the Apostle Paul also discusses private teaching, from house to house. This type of teaching is done in the book of Acts in small groups or one on one. And this is where each of you can thrive. Many of you may never ascend the pulpit or the lectern, but you certainly have ample opportunity to open the Word of God and discuss and teach its truth to those around you, whether that’s here at church, at work, at home with your family, or wherever you find yourself.

Another important reality to note here: no one ever masters the teaching of Christ. No one ever masters God’s Word. It is an infinite fountain of wisdom and knowledge, the depths of which cannot be plumbed. So this final step in the discipleship process lasts into eternity. We won’t ever know Christ or His Word perfectly, or follow Him perfectly in this life. But we are called to growth in our knowledge of him and love for him every day until he returns or calls us home. And we are called to help others in their growth and knowledge of him until he returns or calls us home.

Jesus has called you to make disciples. He has given you a three-step roadmap for how to do it in going to wherever it is we go, baptizing and teaching, and hopefully to a point where that disciple can go make disciples of his own. But how does that come home for us in our daily lives? How do we, at West Hills Church, in 2022, go about making disciples? How do we go about helping someone else follow Jesus better? Allow me to share some thoughts with you.

We all go somewhere. We wake up and we do something. Some of us go to work. Some of us go to school. Some of us stay home with kids. Some of us stay home with elderly parents. Look at the opportunity God has given you! Even if it’s just your spouse or your kids, are you making disciples of those souls? Are you baptizing them? Are you teaching them? Those people are the mission field God has given you. If you go to work or school, you have been given an even greater opportunity! Chances are most of the people you will encounter at those places don’t know Christ. They aren’t followers of him. Are you going to them?

Once you’ve gone to the people God has placed around you, you’ve got some thinking to do. Does this person know the Lord? Is he or she following Him? If the answer is no, then you have your work cut out for you. Do they know what God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit stand ready to do for them in cleansing, uniting, pouring out, and regenerating? Your responsibility is to tell them! Proclaim the good news to them! Tell them that there is a way that they can have true, lasting peace and joy! That they can know God! That by the perfect life, sacrificial death, and victorious resurrection of Jesus Christ, applied to us in our union with him, they gain right standing before God, peace with God, joy in God, and though they were once enemies of God, they might now walk with him as a Father and Friend.

What if these people, whom you are going among, do know Christ? They’ve been baptized and received all of the benefits of baptism? The third step still stands. They must be taught! This can be daunting. You can’t teach something that you don’t know. So you must learn it. Study it. Devote yourself to it daily. Ask the Lord with David in Psalm 119: Do not let me wander from your commandments! Teach me your statutes! Commit yourself to rejoicing in the word, to meditate on the word, to regard the word, to delight yourself the word, to not forget the word. That’s the starting point for many of us today. We can’t teach others the commands of Christ because we don’t know them ourselves because our Bibles sit and gather dust Monday to Saturday. But you don’t have to have seminary level knowledge of the Bible to be able to use to help someone follow Jesus better.

Let me be abundantly clear here. Discipling, helping others to follow Jesus, is not just evangelism, going out and sharing the gospel. It’s helping those who are already in the church, who already know Christ, to follow Him better. This commission to disciple is meant to be carried out in the local church. It is meant to be carried out in this local church. Ask yourself right now: Is West Hills Church a disciple-making church? Have you personally taken up the responsibility to help these people follow Christ better? You might be asking where that starts. What can I do in the next hour to be a better disciple-maker? The answer to that question is abundantly simple. All you need to do is ask two questions to one person in this room today: how can I help you follow Christ better? And will you help me follow Christ better? I want each of you right now to stop and to think back to the last time you asked someone else in this room how you can help them follow Christ better, and if they would help you follow Christ better. Be honest with yourself: have you ever asked anyone those questions or ones like them? Friends, this is where discipleship starts. This is where a healthy church starts. In his book Autopsy of a Deceased Church, Thom Rainer said that in each of the 12 dead churches he studied, every single one of them had failed to commit themselves to applying the Great Commission to their own members. To themselves. Failure to disciple each other will kill a church. And it won’t be a glorious death on a battlefield. It will be a long, slow, sickly, frail death. The church will slowly waste away as it becomes nothing more than a shell of what God has called it to be. But the flip side of this is that a commitment to obeying and fulfilling the Great Commission within these walls will cause revival. Revival doesn’t start in the pulpit. It starts in the pew. Growth doesn’t start in the pulpit. It starts in the pew. And if you commit yourself to this commission, there is no doubt that Christ will use each person in this room to fulfill His promise to build His church in such a way that the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

The Great Commission is a high and serious calling. I hope you feel crushed a little bit by the weight of it. It’s hard to be faithful to fulfilling the Great Commission. And that’s why I want to close by briefly discussing the means by which we fulfill the Great Commission.

The Means

Christ has called us to a great and lofty calling. He has called us to win souls, to help others follow Jesus, and then follow Him better. But He hasn’t left us alone. What are the last words of our Lord here in the book of Matthew. “Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” What a great comfort, that by His Spirit, Christ dwells in us, providing us with daily grace to fulfill this commission. Take heart then. Know that as you go, making disciples, baptizing them, teaching them, the power and presence of Christ guide and guard you, as He works in your work to make the gospel seed effectual, to draw His sheep to Himself, and to bring them home from grace to glory.

Friends, Christ is with you, always, to the end of the age.

Gracious Christ, we come to you as the disciples came to you on the mountain, in worship. We acknowledge you as the promised King of the Jews, and the true and better prophet. We ask for the help of your ever-present Spirit to make disciples as we go, to baptize them and to teach them. We rest now in the comfort that you are with us always, even to the end of the age.

We have been given no surer, no greater reminder of the benefits of Christ’s true and abiding presence with His people than the sacrament of communion.

The Belgic Confession of Faith teaches us this about the significance of the Lord’s Supper.

In order that He might represent unto us this spiritual and heavenly bread, Christ has instituted an earthly and visible bread as a sacrament of His body, and wine as a sacrament of His blood, to testify by them unto us that, as certainly as we receive and hold this sacrament in our hands and eat and drink the same with our mouths, by which our life is afterwards nourished, we also do as certainly receive by faith (which is the hand and mouth of our soul) the true body and blood of Christ our only Savior in our souls, for the support of our spiritual life.

Let us take a few moments to come before the Lord and prepare ourselves to receive the bread and the cup.

“Let this sacrament of the Lord’s supper be to us a sealing confirmation of the remission of sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the promise of eternal life. In view of all your blessings, let us lift high this symbolic cup of salvation, and praise your name as our Covenant Lord.”

The Apostle Paul writes:

1 Corinthians 11:23–24 NAS

For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”

Let us eat together, in remembrance of our Savior.

1 Corinthians 11:25 NAS

In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”

Let us drink together, in remembrance of our Savior.

Let’s stand together.

The blood of Christ, the worthy Lamb who was slain, has removed our sin from us as far as the east is from the west, so now we can a new song to him who sits on heaven’s mercy seat. Let’s sing that now.