“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, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” -Matthew 28:19-20 (ESV)
Most of you know the passage above by heart. It is known as The Great Commission and, in many ways, is the purpose statement for the church. Here Jesus gives his disciples their task in one sentence: “Go” and “Make.” After the disciples have gone and made, they are to baptize new converts and teach them what it means to be a convert to Christianity. Although the sentence is packed with action verbs that seem distinct, it’s all part of one seamless pattern – the work of evangelism and discipleship that will continue until Christ returns.
Evangelism is fruitless if it is not followed by discipleship and training; and discipleship is meaningless if it is not preceded by evangelism. Moreover, the Great Commission is in many ways the continuation of the great commandment given by Jesus to love God, neighbor, and self. Without that love, evangelism would be cold and would tend to push people away from Christ rather than draw people to him. Discipleship, in turn, begins the hard work of teaching others what we’ve been taught, in itself an act of worship and love.
Here is our great task at hand – to make disciples and to teach disciples. God is still the center of this work, of course, because the making of disciples is God’s exclusive work (Jonah 2:9) by which we are the means – he draws, we tell – and even the work of discipleship is a partnership with the Holy Spirit who illumines as we teach.
Over the next three weeks we will focus on the call to bring light into a dark world. We call it our annual Missions Emphasis. We jump-start the short series “After Darkness…Light!” this coming Sunday with Pastor Tom Madon, our Pastor Emeritus and the founding pastor of LifePoint, as he brings us a message from Isaiah 49:6 entitled “The Light of Salvation to the Ends of the Earth.” I’m looking forward to sitting under Tom’s preaching again, as I’m sure are many of you who were blessed by Tom’s ministry. I will then follow up on September 20 and 27 with messages entitled “Glorious Light” from 1 Peter 2:9-10 and “The Light of Men” from John 1:1-5 respectively. We’ll take up our Faith Promise for missions in 2016 at the end of the service on September 27.
As October dawns and the cool winds blow (sounds like the start of a mystery novel), we’ll begin a two-month topical study we’ve entitled “Rooted,” in which we’ll address the call to discipleship and training. The goal will be to challenge all of us to see the biblical mandate for teaching and being taught, and to put that into practice, as we should do with all the teachings of Scripture.
The ultimate goal in evangelism and discipleship is not saving sinners and equipping saints, as important as both of those tasks are. And the most important of the missionary motives isn’t obedience to the Great Commission, as powerful and motivating as that commission is. The overarching goal and motive of evangelism, missions, and discipleship is to develop a passionate zeal for the glorious name of the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 1:5). This is why the earliest disciples went out into the dark world (3 John 7), and this is still why we go, make disciples, baptize and teach; that the name of Jesus might be named in every tribe, tongue, nation and people group in the world, and that it should be praised and honored, as it will be throughout eternity.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Jym