WWUTT 2128 The Great Commission Given by Christ (Matthew 28:16-20)

The Great Commission as Christ’s Command

Jesus gave the great commission to his disciples to go out and make disciples of all the nations. It is not the great suggestion. It is not the grand idea. It is a command that comes from God when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of Christ. For he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com.

And once again, it's Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. And greetings, everyone. Well, today is the day that we bring to a close the study that we've been in for a year. I had to go back and find where our first episode was doing an introduction of the Gospel of Matthew.

And it was episode 1896, which was at the end of March of last year. So we've almost exactly a year, just a little over a year that we've been in the Gospel of Matthew. And here we come to a close. Of course, we had a month in there that we didn't do any episodes.

That was in July of last year. That was kind of beyond, that was outside of my control. And then there was a couple of weeks right after we moved to Arizona, I could not find all of my equipment. And so I couldn't continue to do the podcast then either.

So we would have finished in under a year. But by God's providence, we have completed our study of Matthew in just about a year and even done so right around the Easter holiday. Is that not amazing? I couldn't have planned that any better myself.

So here we are at the very end with Jesus appearing to his disciples and even giving them the great commission, the close of the Gospel of Matthew. So I'm going to begin reading here in chapter 28, verse 16, and we'll go through verse 20 out of the Legacy Standard Bible.

Hear the word of the Lord. But the 11 disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated. And when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all that I commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Now in reading that, I was doing some of that from memory and I have it memorized in the English Standard Version. So I got some words switched around from what is actually said here in the Legacy Standard.

In verse 18, Jesus says, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. In the English Standard, it says, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. So it kind of, it switches those things around, but nonetheless means the same.

Christ reigns over all that is seen and is unseen, the authority that has been given to him by the Father, because the faithful witness had accomplished all that the Father had given him to do. So now the God-man, he who is truly God and truly man, reigns over all seen and unseen.

He becomes the bridge. He is the access to God. The mediator between God and man is through Christ. He in his humanity has accomplished everything that humanity has failed at doing. Christ had lived a perfect life, becoming that perfect sacrifice, which he gave to the Father on our behalf, on behalf of those who would be given to the Son.

And then God shows that he receives that sacrifice by raising him from the dead. Hebrews 2 .9 testifies to that. And so now Christ Jesus, having done all to the glory of the Father, as said in Philippians 2, he has been given the name that is above every name.

So that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father. So that hymn of Christ, the Carmen Christi, as we refer to it, Philippians 2, verses 5 through 11, that also testifies to the authority that the Father has given to the Son, because the Son has been faithful in all things.

And so here the Son says to his disciples, all authority has been given to me in heaven.

And on earth.

That's the part of the Great Commission that we don't repeat most of the time. Now, by the way, all of this is the Great Commission. I'll go over that here in just a moment. But typically, the Great Commission is just verses 19 and 20.

That's what most people quote as the Great Commission. But it begins with Jesus' declaration of his authority, so that what he is saying will.

Be followed.

This is a commission that really it's an instruction and a command given by Christ, and so is therefore binding upon every person. But only those who are disciples of Jesus will actually follow it. And so he declares his authority and gives these instructions.

And here's our outline. And then we'll go through the different parts of the Great Commission here. So he, first of all, declares his authority. Then he secondly says, go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations.

That means they're going to go into all the nations, which was beyond the ministry that they've been doing up to this point. Remember, previously, Jesus had said to his disciples that he had only come to the house of Israel.

So don't go into the Gentile areas. But now he's telling them that's exactly where you're going to go. You're going to go beyond Judea and Samaria into the nations. And you are going to make disciples of them all.

You are going to call them all to follow Jesus. You are going to say, God commands people everywhere to repent, as Paul said at the Areopagus in Acts chapter 17. So all of the nations are going to be called to follow Christ.

And you're going to disciple them, not merely make converts of them. But you are going to essentially plant churches and grow Christians in a knowledge and understanding of Christ and his gospel. I'm doing more exposition right here than I was planning on doing.

I was just going to do an outline. So first of all, we have the exhortation to go and make disciples, then to baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and then to teach them all that Christ has commanded.

And then finally, Christ's declaration of assurance to them that he will be with them always, even to the very end of the age. Now, once again, we call this the Great Commission. That's kind of our common title for it.

The Bible doesn't call it that, but it's the title that we've used to summarize these instructions that Jesus gives to his disciples, which has become the mission statement of so many churches and parachurch ministries around the world.

I worked for a Christian radio station that put Matthew 28, 19 to 20 in the introduction to the staff handbook. The first church I pastored had this verse at the beginning of our confession of faith. These are the closing words of Matthew's gospel and the words that Matthew records as being among the last that Jesus said to his disciples before he ascended back to his Father in heaven.

Now, we have a commission given in other gospels as well, not worded exactly like this, but even in Acts 1, where Jesus says to his disciples, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

That in itself is also a Great Commission, Jesus exhorting his disciples to go into all the world and spread the Christian faith. No one knows exactly who coined the term the Great Commission, but it was made popular by Hudson Taylor, the famous Protestant missionary to China in the late 19th century.

Over the years, fewer Christians are familiar with this expression. As I'm talking about it, maybe you know exactly what I'm talking about, but fewer and fewer Christians are familiar with the term the Great Commission, and even fewer can tell you what it is.

This was a talking point at a Southern Baptist convention or annual meeting. Yeah, that's what we call them. When the Southern Baptist convention meets in June, it's called the SBC annual meeting. There was one annual meeting where this became a talking point.

The fact that so many people, so many professing Christians don't know what the Great Commission is, nor can they define it. So a survey that was presented to us found that 51 of churchgoers did not know the term.

25 said they had heard of it, but didn't know what it was. And only 17 knew the term and could define it. So once again, we have the commission given in three parts here. Go and make disciples, baptize them, and teach them.

Or as I've shared with my church before, evangelize, baptize, and disciple-ize. I take a little bit of liberty with that last one. So Matthew 28 begins with one of the greatest events in all of human history.

We started with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He had been put to death. He rose from the dead, conquering death itself. You have the women that have witnessed his resurrection. You even have the testimony that was given by Jesus, enemies to his resurrection.

The women went and told his disciples who then went to go see him on a mountain in Galilee. Now notice we have that here in verse 16. The 11 disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus designated.

This calls back to Matthew 5, when Jesus first addressed his disciples from where? A mountain in Galilee. That was where he was sitting when he preached the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7.

So we're ending. Jesus is ending with his disciples the same way he began with them, teaching them on a mountain in Galilee. And in order to see Jesus, they have to journey to go there. I mean, it wasn't an easy trip from Jerusalem to go into Galilee.

So Jesus is saying, you want to see the risen Lord? How much do you love me? How much are you going to be obedient to the commands that I have given to you? And calls them to a mountain in Galilee to see him there.

So they have come. And verse 17 says, when they saw him, they worshiped him. But some doubted, even though they saw him risen from the dead, they still did not understand what all of this meant. Now, all of the gospels testify to this.

It's in Luke 24, where right before Jesus is about to leave them and ascend into heaven, it says that he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. So even their own eyes did not convince them of Jesus having risen from the dead.

Didn't we see him die? We saw him buried. And here he is right here in front of us. It wasn't enough for them to see it or experience it with their own senses. They were most convinced when the spirit opened their minds to understand what had been written about him in the scriptures.

And my friends, it's the same for you and me. You'll hear many teachers out there that will say, you don't have to believe the stuff that's in the Bible. You just need to believe that there was a guy who died for our sins and rose again from the dead.

And it was seen by so many witnesses. You just need to believe that the resurrection story. Well, where do we know the resurrection story from? We know it from the Bible. So you can't just say, well, just believe the resurrection.

You can't believe the stuff that's in the Bible. I'm talking about Andy Stanley, by the way, because he preaches exactly that. The disciples saw it for themselves. And even they did not believe it. They could not believe their own eyes.

Not until Christ opened their mind to understand the scriptures. And so it's from here now, verse 18, that he says to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. That is the part of the great commission often left out.

The commission is preceded by this statement from Jesus that all authority has been given to him by his father in heaven. As R .C. Sproul has said, we have to understand that when we speak of the great commission, it is not the great suggestion.

It is not the grand idea. It is not an essay on manifest destiny. It is a mandate from the king of kings who possesses all authority in heaven and on earth. We say that Jesus is the Lord of the church and that we believe in him.

And that means we must obey this mandate that he has given to us. That command has been obeyed for two millennia. If the church was not all over the world making disciples and baptizing them, that would not speak much for the authority of Christ, would it?

We would have a powerless king whose own subjects do not obey him. But as Christ is commanded with all authority, as the sovereign ruler of heaven and earth has given this commission, so we obey it. And it is our delight to obey it.

To take part of this sovereign plan to reach the nations with the gospel of Jesus Christ, which has the power to rescue people out of this world, which is going to be destroyed. And they will be rescued into God's kingdom, which will last forever.

That's the power of the gospel of Christ. So, that said, we are given this command to evangelize. To preach the good news of the gospel of Christ to the nations. The word for nations doesn't mean countries with borders, but it is a reference rather to people groups.

The word evangelism comes from the Greek word evangelion, meaning I bring good news. That's the word gospel. It means good news. Romans 1 16 to 17 says, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. Now, what is the gospel? Taking nothing for granted here. Can you define what that is?

If somebody were to ask you, tell me what the gospel is. In a word, the gospel is Jesus. For there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved. Acts 4 12. Of course, there has to be more to the message than that when we tell somebody about Jesus.

The gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for sins and rose again from the dead so that whoever believes in him will not perish under the judgment of God that we all deserve because of our sin.

But we will be forgiven our sins and we have eternal life with him in glory. There's the gospel message in a single sentence. For the gospel to be good news, we have to understand the bad news. And the bad news is this.

You have sinned against a holy and righteous God. And what you deserve is judgment. Romans 1 18 says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

And what do we deserve for the unrighteous things that we have done against God? We deserve to be destroyed. But praise God that in his mercy and his grace, he didn't leave us to be destroyed, but he gave us his son to die on the cross for our sins so that whoever believes in him, we will not perish under the judgment of God, but we will have everlasting life.

And we are to turn from our sin, we are to turn from the ways of this world, and we are to follow Christ as a people who are from a different world. For as Jesus testified before Pilate, my kingdom is not of this world.

So in following Jesus, we will look less like the world and more like Christ being discipled. The next part of this, the next part of the Great Commission is to be baptized. Those who come to faith and believe are to be baptized.

Saying to make disciples of the nations doesn't mean that you're going to make them Christian nations. That's not up to us to decide whether or not that's going to happen. That is God. If so many people become Christians that this nation becomes Christianized, praise God for.

That.

But that's not the mission. That's not what we're out to do. We are out to make disciples. If more disciples are made so that a nation is filled with Christian people, that would be a wonderful place to live in.

And I would certainly pray for that. Pray for our leaders, as Paul instructed us to do in 1 Timothy 2, for God desires that all people would come to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. All kinds of people, whether they are in positions that are high and authoritative or whether they are lowly and poor, may we desire all people to hear the gospel and come to faith in Jesus Christ.

But it is not being commissioned for us here to turn nations into Christian nations. That's often a misreading of the Great Commission. But that's not the commission. We are to make disciples everywhere in the world.

And then those who come to faith and believe are to be baptized. Now, the word baptism comes from the Greek word baptizo, meaning to submerge or immerse in water. So you denominations out there that are sprinkling, you're doing it wrong.

Going under the water symbolizes being buried with Christ in our sins and coming up out of the water symbolizes that we have been raised again to new life. And it's more than just a gesture. But Christ is even with us in that baptism.

The Trinity is with us in that baptism. After all, Jesus says here to baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy.

Spirit.

The Trinity, all three persons of the Trinity were present at Jesus' baptism. Remember reading about that back in Matthew chapter 3? The Father saying, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.

The Holy Spirit descending upon the Son, Jesus, as a dove. You have the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit right there at Jesus' baptism. So just as all three persons were present at Jesus' baptism, so all three persons of the Trinity are present at your baptism.

Romans 6, 3 through 4 says, do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we were buried with him through baptism into death so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Baptism is an outward expression of an inward change. And to be baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit simply means we belong to God. The Christian is in subjection to and in communion with the whole Godhead, Father, Son and Holy.

Spirit.

The next part of the Great Commission, this last part here, is to teach them to observe all that Christ has commanded. The disciples were instructed that they may instruct others. And we read these instructions every time we open the New Testament.

Whatever you read from Matthew to Revelation is the instruction that has been given by Christ to his disciples that they are to be giving to more disciples that we may grow in discipleship as we are being discipled as disciples of Jesus Christ.

Can I say that word enough? We are to learn all that God teaches in his word, and we're to do it. Romans 15, 4 says, whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.

This commission and all of Matthew's gospel closes with these loving words, this assurance that Jesus gives to his disciples who are standing there, and it is a word of assurance that is given to us today.

Behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. And we're living in that age now, the age that started with Christ's ascension into heaven and will end with his eventual return. Christ is with us until the end of this age.

He doesn't send us out to do this work alone. In whatever we face, as we fulfilled a great commission, he who has been given all authority over heaven and earth is with us to the end. And this must be more than just reading a nice story here, folks.

We've been in the gospel of Matthew for a year, but it's more than just, you know, I read the historical account of Jesus who lived and died and rose again. There has to be a change that happens in you in light of everything that you have heard.

It's more than just giving mental assent to these things and saying, I know that they happen and I believe them. You will show that you believe them. When you obey what it is that Jesus has said, do you believe that he has all authority in heaven and on earth?

Therefore, go. Be disciples and make disciples, baptizing them, teaching them to observe all that Christ has commanded and remaining in fellowship with him to the end. I am with you always to the very end of the age.

In light of what we have read, let us hear the word of Christ, believe it and do what it says. And we likewise share the good news of Christ's death and resurrection with others so that they too may come to faith in Jesus Christ and live.

The Authority of Christ and the Scope of His Mission

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the year that we have spent here in the gospel of Matthew. And I pray as we leave this book and go on to the next and begin to study the gospel of Mark, that you will continue in our minds and our hearts to teach us the things that Jesus taught.

That we may be conformed to his image, that we may be made more like Christ, having the mind of Christ, Philippians 2, 5. And that is seen in the way that we live, keeping ourselves holy and unstained by the ways of the world.

And we would also love one another. We show our love to our neighbor and to our brethren, the church that we are a part of, the brothers and sisters in the Lord that we fellowship with, that we may build each other up in love as you are doing with us.

Teach us in these things as we go, giving all glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in whom we have been baptized. It is in the name of Jesus that we pray, Amen.