The Great Commission

You can say what you want, but you won't around me. Sheep among misfits. A misfit in the trailer park at night. A misprint with the sixth sense. Been sick ever since my brother died of an O .D. My two cents never made sense.

Either to me or anyone else inside of the sheep fence. My 9th Smith on my right side. Why you staring at your cop dot sign and my John Hancock on the dotted line? Tell me what's the bottom line. The bottom line is I'm not right.

I'm not left, but this elephant won't fight. There's nothing left but the spotlight. Hold my beer, you can find me in the moonlight.

Moonlight.

You can say what you want.

You can say what you want, but you won't around me.

You can say what you want.

You can say what you... I'm wits in the deep end and I can't find my assigned seat to sit in. My theology don't fit in. Black sheep of the Reformation sheep pen. To the Reformed, I'm just another Baptist baptized again.

The bastard child of Anabaptist. Host to child of Reformation society. We don't need your education. Give me a Bible and a bookshelf of dead men. Cigars, bourbons, and beer cans. Bow ties, tattoos, and bearded men.

Making Reformation great again.

You can say what you want.

You can say what you want, but you won't around me.

You can say what you want.

You can say what you want, but you won't around me. No, you won't around me.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are live. Welcome to the Open Air Theology Show. My name is Jeff. I am one of the pastor elders at Covenant Reformed Baptist Church in Tallahoma, Tennessee. If you're ever in the area, please come and say hi.

I'll pass it over to my co-host, Brayden Patterson.

It's a blessing to be here. I'm Brayden. I have the wonderful blessing and privilege to pastor a lovely little church in Hagerman, Idaho called Valley Baptist Church. If you live in the area, I'd highly encourage you and invite you to come and check us out and just hear the gospel preached every Sunday.

I also have a YouTube channel called Reformed Ex-Mormon. I'd love for you to go check that as well. I'm just super happy to be a part of Open Air Theology. I'll pass it over to Jamie now. I've got to point that way.

Yeah, Jamie Terry. I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reformed Baptist Church, New Lenox, Illinois. It's a suburb of Chicago. It's my first time on Open Air Theology. I'm looking forward to chatting about some important topics here.

Yeah, so me and Jamie met, what, how long ago? It would have been 2010 or 11.

I think 2011, I think. Might have been 2010.

Yeah, probably 2011. Yeah, somewhere around that area. So we've known each other a while. I was in your dad's Sunday school and answering questions. He said, you know what? I think you and my son need to meet.

Y 'all have very similar way of thinking. Then I saw who he was.

I was like, that little pudgy kid?

And so me and Jamie, we met. And then I think we had a meeting where we got together and was talking about witnessing. And so me and Jamie started doing 101 evangelism together. So how do we start that, Jamie?

That's a good question, brother. I don't know if you remember. So we had talked at church several times and got to know each other and kind of get along and became friends in my dad's Wednesday night Bible study class and Sunday school and stuff like that.

And we had talked about wanting to do evangelism. Around that time, I'd got a hold of Ray Comfort's ministry. And I was just converted recently through Paul Warsher's ministry and really wanted to communicate the gospel.

And I texted you one evening and said, hey, brother, I'm thinking about doing some door to door. What do you think? And you said, well, honestly, I've been thinking about doing some open air preaching.

And I texted you. Yeah, that's great. But inside, I was like, yeah, he's nuts. There's no way. This was right around the time that I'd actually as a young believer was reading Blackaby. I think his name is Blackaby.

I think I might be messing his name up. But it's experiencing God, which is not a good book. Don't read that. But, you know, at that point in time, I thought God was speaking to me and all kind of weird things.

And I was reading Acts chapter 8 that night after you texted me that. Philip's in Samaria, and he's proclaiming Christ to the crowds. And I thought, this is what the Lord wants us to do. And looking back, I know now it was my desire and the providence of God and all of that working itself out.

But, you know, that's kind of how it got started.

Yeah, so me and Jamie. So there was this pretty popular park in Madison, Tennessee, and they have a walking trail. And it was pretty busy walking trail, right? So me and Jamie would go and we'd have like a little, you know, like a little stand.

And we'd stand right by the walking trail. And as people walked by, we'd hand them a gospel track and try to witness to them. And we was doing that. So we was doing that and then was doing some other kind of evangelism to one on one.

And I remember Jamie one day saying, man, I don't think we're doing this right. I said, what do you mean? He says, we're not getting persecuted. And I said, well, let's just run up to the hospital real quick and witness to the people in the ICU.

So we went up there and got kicked out the hospital.

I said, are you happy, Jamie? You brought this on us.

Yeah.

And then we asked the Lord to shut the skies up of the rain. And yeah, the whole day didn't rain. We share the gospel and it started raining and pouring down the moment we left.

Yeah.

I mean, we had some pretty like close to Pentecostal stuff on the streets preaching. I mean, I mean, several times, man. And or we asked that the Lord would draw crowds to us. And the next thing you know, it started pouring down rain and everyone was under that little umbrella tent while we was preaching.

Yeah.

And I was on the box.

It was raining so hard. It was like sideways, almost knocking me off the box as we was preaching. So me and Jamie started in ministry together doing evangelism.

Right.

We met a guy by the name of John Coble. So so we do open air preaching, but we never did open air preaching until we met John Coble. So so we kind of Jamie and I kind of put John under our wing in the sense of a one on one witnessing, but he took us under his wing to for open air preaching.

So so because of him, we were able to to see it done in person and have the opportunity to stand on the box and proclaim God in the open air. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure if we would have ever made it to the box, if not for John.

I remember I remember going with him several times and he would get up and preach and I would tell myself I'm going to do it today, but I wouldn't get around to doing it. I was so scared. And then when I finally got on the box, he couldn't get me down and I became a box hog.

But that's all.

Yeah, definitely. I told John was about to tie a rope around your foot. And once it was time for you to get off, it was yank it.

Just wait for a bee to come around.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So Braden also is an open air preacher.

Yeah.

So he he does a lot of stuff in the open air and a lot of evangelism to Mormons at temples.

And so, yeah, I saw. It's interesting. So like five years ago, my wife and I, we moved from a bigger city to a smaller city. And so like the the population that you got to, like, actually have the opportunity to open air to a group of people like diminished a lot.

And then now we're even in this and we just moved to an even smaller town. And so like it's even more so. Right. Like and so it's it the times are few and far between, it seems like, unfortunately, just because the opportunity doesn't arise as often.

So it was cool living in Boise. Like you could literally just go downtown and there'd be 20 plus people that you just talk to everywhere. Like it was sweet. But that's not so much anymore.

But.

Yeah.

So I wanted to get Jamie on here because like like I haven't had the opportunity to be with Braden in witnessing, passing out tracks, one on one witnessing or in the open air. But me and Jamie has had many, many wonderful, glorious days together being able to do this.

And Jamie Terry is probably, in my opinion, one of the best that does it. I mean, just both for God. I mean, I've learned so much from him. Believe me, you can learn something from younger pudgy kids.

OK.

Always going to take a shot.

But I've learned so much from him. And again, he's one of the best to do it. If you haven't had the opportunity to watch his videos or anything like that, check out Jamie. I think he just needs a YouTube channel just for that purpose of him witnessing, teaching people how to do one on one witness and how to go about open air preaching.

So tonight I want to look at something very similar. And it's the Great Commission.

Right.

There's a lot of talk today about being obedient to God. We have this clear passage of Scripture from the mouth of Jesus Christ to his disciples. And we also are disciples of Jesus. So I would say that this applies directly to us.

And the scripture is found in Matthew chapter twenty eight. Brayden, would you mind reading that? The Great Commission from Matthew chapter twenty eight. I know you want to take every chance you can to read from that LSB.

I'm so like just just to excuse me, just to cuddle it is. So Matthew twenty eight, just verses sixteen to twenty. It says, but the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee to the mountain, which Jesus had designated.

And when they saw him, they worshiped him. But some doubted. And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. 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.

All right. So this is clear. It's direct. I hear an echo.

I don't think it's mine. I think so.

You just got to turn the. Did you look it up on your phone?

The life I don't have it on my phone.

No, sir. OK, well, I guess I can put up with it. It's clear. It's direct. It's from the mouth of Jesus. He tells us to go and make disciples. So this week at church, our deacon was supposed to teach Sunday school.

And as I'm going through my sermon, I get a text message that he's not feeling good. So by the time I get them with my sermon, I have five minutes to prepare for Sunday school. And so I went to this chapter and I was thinking, man, maybe I'll have 15 minutes of material.

Took me 50 minutes to get through it. Right. That's usually how it is. Right. And so I asked myself in the Great Commission, Jesus Christ gave to the church marching orders. And so the marching orders are what we are to do.

And I want to camp out here for a second. What we are to do is to make disciples, to baptize and to teach. And so practical questions. What does it look like, Jamie, to make disciples?

It's a fantastic question. Oh, you know, it's interesting about this passage is that there's a primary verb and it's make disciples. The participles tell you how to do that. You go, you baptize, you teach.

So you go into the world intentionally. It demands intentionality. We have to go as a church. We have to go as individual Christians into the world and we have to declare the good news. In fact, so it starts with evangelism.

Right. The word is euangelizo and it means to speak forth good news. You can't do it without words. You have to speak the good news. And the sinners are converted. We bring them into the church. We baptize them into membership and we teach them in the context of the church to obey everything that Christ has commanded.

So it's evangelism. It's church membership. It's discipleship. All in the context of covenant community. And, you know, unfortunately, a lot of churches are weak here, you know, for whatever reason, especially within the reformed community.

There's just not a lot of intentional outreach. You know, we want to do this personally. We want to evangelize everywhere we go. But I think if we're going to train our flocks to do that, we need to have intentional times of public outreach as a church.

Pastors ought to be leading these things. The fact that most pastors are just not very Pauline. They're not very apostolic. You know, in Acts chapter six, verse four, when Peter says, we're going to devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word.

We don't have time to wait on tables. I don't think Peter only meant he was spending tons of time in a study preparing sermons. I'm sure that was a part of it. He studied the word and he preached in the church.

But if you read the book of Acts, you know, Paul is there in the marketplace every day with those who happen to be present. They're in the, you know, the Areopagus. They're in the synagogues. They're going wherever nonbelievers are to intentionally communicate the gospel.

And one more thing I would say, you know, as a church, if you want a healthy discipleship ministry, you want to really disciple and equip the saints. One of the best ways to do that is to have an intentional outreach ministry.

Think of what Jesus did. Jesus went up on the mountain, spent an entire night in prayer to God, called to himself those whom he wanted and chose 12 of them to be his apostles so that they would be with him.

And then he would send them out to preach. They watched him proclaim the gospel. And then eventually he sent them out to proclaim the gospel. And so if we are wanting to have an effective and profound discipling impact on our disciples, I think we should intentionally do outreach with them.

And I think we'll accelerate their growth in a major way.

Amen. Man, that was good. What are you thinking there, Brayden?

Just amen and amen and amen. Absolutely. You know, pastors, I'm always fearful even of myself of doing something like this, but I do see it in other pastors as well. If you expect your church to go out and make disciples, but you aren't doing it, you are a hypocrite.

It should be that, yes, you don't need to do it all the time or not in the sense that you should be the only one doing it by any means. But you should be the one that's starting that. You should be the one that's lighting that fire underneath other people's butts.

You should be encouraging that. You should be fostering that. And you should be discipling people to go out and make disciples. And that starts with you going out and trying to make disciples as well.

Yeah.

So the pastor is supposed to lead the flock. The flock's not going to go where he's not leading. I mean, of course, you have some rebels like Jamie and I were, right? We weren't part of a church where the pastor was out leading.

But we had just this overwhelming, you know, want to go out into the community and to preach. Of course, Jamie and myself would probably say that we were disciples. You know, it was a part of a local body and stuff like that was going to the same church.

But we were discipling ourselves under the ministry of Ray Comfort, Paul Washer, and other men. And we were seeing them go out. And it would light a fire in us. And again, we'd sit there and talk about it.

We'd even practice witnessing on each other and stuff like that. Until we finally, you know, got the courage to go out and to explore this strange new world of evangelism. Right. Right. There's this one time we were evangelizing in Madison.

And then that evening we went to a store, a grocery store. We got permission to stand out in front of a grocery store right near some projects, probably about 30 minutes away if you were driving. And these two young black ladies come walking up.

And then they just started saying, hey, wasn't y 'all just in Madison? And we said, yeah. She said, I just got a phone call from my friend so that she saw two white boys evangelizing and preaching the gospel.

And now you're right here. I mean, I mean, like the word was catching on. Right. And so, you know, like we started to do something because we seen it. We were seeing this being done and we wanted to be a part of it.

And lo and behold, God has used evangelism in my life. Like if you were to sit down and have an interview with my wife, she would tell you that I she would say that my husband has to go evangelize. Like I literally start twitching if I don't get out there.

Like it's like a drug. Like I've done it so much in my life. Like I have to be out there evangelizing. I have to be talking to people about God. I have to be standing on a box preaching the gospel. It is a part of who I am.

And if and as a pastor, I can't expect my congregation to to be rebellious like I was and just to go out and start preaching. Because for the most part, that doesn't happen. But they need to see that the man that's standing in front of them lead the way when it comes to evangelism.

So I really like that point, Jamie. A very, very good point. It's definitely something that I hold to heart and soul.

You know, and I would even add like something along the lines that in every form of our ministry that we do as different individual local bodies of church, the backbone of it needs to be for the for the purpose of evangelism.

You know, you can't just say, OK, well, I'm just going to go do preaching the gospel on Monday. And then Tuesday, we're going to have a quilting club that comes into our church. And then this and this, this, this.

Right. Like right now, one thing our church is doing is that it's traditional in this town that we're in. There's this community baskets that comes and uses our church to hand out food to the community.

And it's a non-religious organization that does this. Right. It's just they want to use a building and they want to have people volunteer to come and participate in it. And so what I said was that, well, we as a church don't do anything that's not religious.

We're going to go about the sharing Jesus so much so that it's going to be religious. And everybody that comes into our door, they will hear the gospel every single time they will be told about who Jesus Christ is.

And not only that, but we want to do it in such a way so aggressively that there's a possibility we don't get invited back to participate in this. If being non-religious is so important to you, then I'm not going to be a part of it because that is what our job as the church is to do is to evangelize to our neighbors.

And that principle, I think, has shifted in our church where now everybody sees everything that we do in our church is primarily for that purpose is to go and make disciples. And we can't be involved in ministries that are not doing that.

Yeah, I love that. That's a good point because you talk about the mission of the church. Right. This is Matthew 28. This is the mission of the church. And as a church, we don't waste our time with secondary and peripheral issues.

We want to be focused on the main. Steve Lawson says, keep the main thing, the main thing. That's the main thing. And so, yeah, that's, you know, when we talk about evangelism, we're not just talking about open air preaching.

That's a good point. Pastors write blogs that people read and the gospels there. We preach sermons. And if we're not preaching Christ, as Spurgeon said, don't preach again. Don't ever preach another sermon.

You know, we're evangelistic in conversations with people who come into our church after the sermon. You know, in so many different ways. I'm thinking of members in a church that I pastor, you know, is making a mass during the pandemic for a woman who needed a mass to go into a place and put a gospel track in there.

You know, used her gift of sewing and to, you know, bring the gospel of this woman. And so, you know, the church, the Great Commission is the mission of the whole church. It's given to the apostles as the representatives of the church and then through them to the whole church.

And every believer has a role to play. Every believer has his part to do.

We're going to touch on that in just a minute. Don't jump ahead of me.

I read the agenda and decided not to skip ahead.

So we are to make disciples. So so so this is literally talking about, you know, people coming to faith. A disciple is a learner, someone that that that has placed their faith in Jesus Christ. Right. So we make disciples by preaching the gospel.

Those that receive Christ by faith, we baptize them. And then you would say that this teach part is them coming into the body of Christ, being a part of the church, sitting under the preaching week after week.

Of the word of God was correct. Am I following you correctly?

Yeah, I think I think that order is very important as well. And I would say that that is laid out for us specifically the way it is, because if we put teaching them about teaching them all that I've commanded you, you're putting what's going to be written in their heart before it's even in their heart.

Right. Like it's important that it's followed in those steps.

Yeah. Or if you put baptism in front of making disciples, then you're a Presbyterian.

Yep.

I have to throw a little punch in there at my brother.

You got to do it. I guess if you were to reform about this.

Yeah. And if I wasn't, I mean, that's just how I am. Right. I throw punches at everybody. I try not to miss anybody. Right. That's just how I am. All right. So next question is. Why are we to do this?

Why are we to do this? Now, I'm not talking about just pastors. But as disciples, why are we to do this?

You want to tackle it? Yeah, absolutely.

So, first of all, I think in the Great Commission, a lot of times there's things that people skip in that Great Commission. A lot of people immediately, a lot of people just read verse 19 and don't even always read all of verse 20.

A lot of times people will read verse 18. But I think to start with the Great Commission, it's first found in 17, in my opinion. It's really first found in 16 in the fact that it's coming through the 11 disciples and then going out from there.

But in verse 17, it says that when they saw him, they worshiped him. And so we first need to have the proper place of our worship abiding in what we do. Right. So we want to worship Jesus. Why? Because Jesus is God in flesh, truly God, truly man.

He's deserving of worship as God is the only one deserving of worship. Revelation chapter 21 somewhere and also chapter 18, I think. But regardless, Jesus is worthy of worship. And because he is worthy of worship, X, Y and Z things will follow here in just a moment.

But I would say that the first founding reason that I go about doing evangelism is because it worships God. It's how he wants it to be done. And he is worthy of such. He is worthy of that worship.

So you're saying even in our evangelizing, it's worship to God.

I think that's what he deserves. Yep. I think that's what Jesus, why he then tells them. Okay. And I, this is maybe adding to the text a little bit, but you're worshiping me. If you're worshiping me, then go, go and do this as the means of worship.

Right. That's what it's leading from. That is what's leading the conversation. That's Jesus telling, is telling these 11 disciples.

That's what John Piper said, right? Well, missions exist because worship does not. There's a place where he's not worshiped. There are people who do not worship the God whom they should worship. And so I agree.

Worship is a central part of evangelism. Not only is evangelism an act of worship on our part, but the chief end is that men and women might worship God. We who are worshipers would win more worshipers.

Yeah. And Psalm 96, I think, addresses that as well.

So let me quote real fast for you. A great theologian who isn't here right now with us, but there's elect out there that don't even know it yet. That comes from Habs Addison, right? And he's not even here with us right now.

I'm going to quote him on that. There's the elect of God out there who don't even know it yet. And that's what we as evangelists get the privilege of going to those people and telling them about the God they are going to worship.

Amen. All right.

Continue on, Jamie. I interrupted you on that one.

No, that was that was good enough. That suffices.

Oh, OK.

I apologize.

No, that's good.

So back to the question, why are we to do this? Why are we to make disciples? Why are we to baptize? And why are we to teach? Why are we to to present the gospel in such a way to compel man to to receive Christ, to to believe, to test us, to to grab hold of Christ, to be baptized, to take upon themselves the sign of the covenant and to sit in a building underneath the word of God.

And it's worship.

It's worship.

And the commandment of Jesus, he says it's because all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him. Right. Jesus is the king of kings. He is the Lord of Lords. He is Lord, whether you receive him or not.

Right. He is Lord. You don't make him Lord. He is Lord. And our Lord has given us marching orders and the marching orders for the church is to go and do these things. We do these things because he's commanded us to do so, because it worships him properly and because all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him.

When we go out, we don't go out in our own authority. Right. We cannot make people repent. We cannot make people believe. But we have been given the gospel call. We've been given the gospel to go out, proclaim, to herald and to call man to repent, to turn from that that wicked God that you look at in the mirror.

And to put your faith in the true God. And you do that by trusting in Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. All right. Next question. And we kind of allude to this, but I really want I'm asking this question so we can be more specific on what it is.

How are we to do this? We know the answer is by preaching the gospel. So, Jamie, right now, I just want to I want you to walk through the gospel. What is it? I know if you need to read a book about it real quick.

Give me a minute.

Yeah. So the sound for a second on the gospel of what it is and in the way of proclaiming it.

Yeah. Yeah. So the word gospel obviously means good news. It's the good news of First Corinthians 15, the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. First Corinthians 15 outlines the historical events of the gospel.

Jesus died. He was buried. He was raised. But the gospel includes the application of the gospel, how it applies to us. It includes the theological implications of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone and Christ alone.

Ephesians 2, 8, 9. Apart from which there is no other gospel. Galatians 1. And so when I communicate that message, there's usually a five point outline in my head when I'm open or preaching, engaging one on one.

And it's God, man, Christ, response, promises and warnings. God, they got to know who God is. That's where it starts. Romans 10, Paul. I think Paul really summarizes what the problem with all sinners really is.

And it's that they are ignorant of the righteousness of God. Naturally, sinners do not know who God is because they suppress the truth about him. And they therefore lower how holy he is. They lower how perfectly righteous his standards are.

They therefore think more highly of themselves and they think they can get to God by just being a good person. So it starts with God's holiness, his righteousness, his justice, man's sin, his original sin, his actual transgressions.

And then moving into the person of Christ, who Jesus is, fully God, fully man. What he did in his work to save us, his sinless life, fulfills the moral demands of the law. His substitutionary death satisfied the penal demand of the law.

His resurrection confirms his lordship and his deity. His exaltation to the right hand of the Father is another affirmation of his sovereign authority. He's coming again in judgment and then responds.

We have to repent and believe, turn from your sin, trust in Christ. And then promises forgiveness and salvation and eternal glory for those who believe. And then a twofold warning. There's a warning to those who reject the gospel that they're going to die and go to hell.

They do not receive Christ. They do not submit to Christ. And then there's a warning to those who even profess to believe that if they continue in their sin and their life is not changed and they continue practicing unrighteousness, that they've made a false profession and they're still in danger of those words, I never knew you.

And so that five point outline is what I like to use when I communicate the gospel. Mm hmm.

I was very good. Again, I have had the privilege of. I've been with Jamie in the open air, one on one witnessing to people, one on one hearing him proclaim the gospel, wishing I had a rope tied to his feet at times so I can yank them off the box.

Yeah, man, that was that was really good. Anything you'd like to add to that, Brayden?

No, I love that. I really like how you how you know the and I don't know what you call it right at the beginning that you mentioned it, that maybe the systematic way that you go about saying it is that it's God, man, Christ response.

Right. That that that literally is like I want to go into the other room to my Bible study room that we need in for that. And that is the four questions that are asked in every single Bible study. What does this teach us about God?

What does this teach us about man? How does this point us to Christ and what is the response in the application? And so it's that was just that was really cool to hear you say that, because that's the four things that we should be able to see in every single text, every single verse, every single sentence, all the way from Genesis to Revelation is what does this teach us about God?

What does this teach us about man? We see the great span that takes place there, that Christ, God is elevated so much farther than this lowly, lowly, lowly dust of the earth creature. And and yet this dust, the earth creature can never do anything to get to God.

But yet God is the one that spans that God is the one in this humility comes Christ cross. And what are you going to do about it? They repent and believe in the gospel. I love that. That was beautiful.

Yeah, I would also say in the Great Commission, Jamie, we talked about this. So for for those that don't know, Jamie, the church that Jamie was a pastor at previously is is is our sending church for Covenant Reformed Baptist Church.

And so whenever Jamie was talking with me like like I think he already knew the question, but he still had to ask the question because it's just who he is as an evangelist. But he wanted to make sure that the church that they were sending out was going to be a church that planet churches.

Right. That there was going to be a church that was that was in the streets, in the open air, being confronting people where they are and bringing the good news of Jesus Christ. Like, I know he knew the answer, but you have to ask the question.

So I would see a great way for us in fulfilling the Great Commission. And again, I feel like this is an area where a lot of churches fail, but it is planting churches. A church should be a churches should be churches that plant churches like churches should not just pop out of the woodwork.