The Great Commission

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How are you fulfilling the Great Commissions

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You can say what you want, but you won't around me. Black sheep among misfits, a misfit in the trailer park at night.
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A misprint with the sixth sense, been sick ever since my brother died of an OD. My two cents never made sense, either to me or anyone else inside of the sheep fence.
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My 9th Smith on my right side. Why you staring at your cop dot sign and my
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John Hancock on the dotted line? Tell me what's the bottom line, the bottom line is
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I'm not right. I'm not left, but this elephant won't fight. There's nothing left but the spotlight.
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Hold my beer, you can find me in the moonlight. You can say what you want, but you won't around me.
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You can say what you want, but you won't around me. I'm within the deep end and I can't find my assigned seat to sit in.
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My theology don't fit in, black sheep of the reformation sheep pen. To the reformed,
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I'm just another Baptist, baptized again, the bastard child of Anabaptist.
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Posted child of reformation society, we don't need your education. Give me a
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Bible and a bookshelf of dead men, cigars, bourbons, and beer cans. Bow ties, tattoos, and bearded men, making reformation great again.
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You can say what you want, but you won't around me.
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You can say what you want, but you won't around me.
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No, you won't around me. Ladies and gentlemen, we are live.
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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.
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If you're ever in the area, please come and say hi. I'll pass it over to my co -host,
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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
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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
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Sunday. I also have a YouTube channel called Reformed Ex -Mormon. Love for you to go check that as well. I'm just super happy to be a part of Open Air Theology.
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So I'll pass it over to Jamie now. I got to point that way. Yeah. Yeah, Jamie Terry. I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reformed Baptist Church, New Lenox, Illinois.
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And it's a suburb of Chicago. And it's my first time on Open Air Theology. I'm looking forward to chatting about some important topics here.
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Yeah. So me and Jamie met what? How long ago? It would have been 2010 or 11.
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Like 2011, I think. It might've been 2010. Yeah. Probably 2011. Yeah.
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Yeah. Yes. Somewhere around that area. So we've known each other a while. I was in your dad's
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Sunday school and answering questions, and he said, you know what? I think you and my son need to meet.
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Y 'all have very similar way of thinking. And then I saw who he was.
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I was like, that little pudgy kid. And so me and Jamie, we met.
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I think we had a meeting where we got together and was talking about witnessing.
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And so me and Jamie started doing 101 evangelism together.
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So how did 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 hit it off and became friends.
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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.
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You know, around that time, I'd got ahold of Ray Comfort's ministry. And that was just converted recently through Paul Washer's ministry and really wanted to communicate the gospel.
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And I texted you one evening and said, hey, brother, I'm thinking about doing some door to door.
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What do you think? And you said, well, honestly, I've been thinking about doing some open air preaching. And I texted you.
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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
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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.
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Don't read that. But at that point in time, I thought God was speaking to me and all kind of weird things.
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And I was reading an Acts chapter eight that night after you texted me that. Philip. Philip's in Samaria and he's proclaiming
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Christ to the crowds. And I thought this is what the Lord wants us to do. And looking back,
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I know now it was my desire and the providence of God and all of that working itself out. And but, you know, that's kind of how it got started.
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And yes, so me and Jamie. So so so there was this pretty popular park in Madison, Tennessee, and they have a walking trail and it was pretty busy walking trail.
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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.
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And as people walk by, we'd hand them a gospel track and try to and try to witness to them. And we was doing that.
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And so we was doing that and then was doing some other kind of evangelism to one on one.
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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.
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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.
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I said, are you happy, Jamie? You brought this on us. Yeah. And then we asked the
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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 pouring down the moment we left it.
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Yeah. I mean, we had some pretty like close to Pentecostal stuff. On the streets preaching.
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I mean, I mean, several times, man. And or we asked that the
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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.
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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.
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So me and Jamie started in ministry together doing evangelism, right?
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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
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John Coble. So so we kind of Jamie and I kind of put John under our wing in the sense of one on one witnessing.
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But he took us under his wing. For open air preaching.
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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
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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.
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I remember I remember going with him several times and he would get up and preach and I would tell myself
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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.
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Yeah, definitely. I told John was about to tie a rope around your foot and once it's time for you to get off was yank it.
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Just wait for a bee to come around. Yeah. Yeah. So Braden also is an open air preacher.
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Yeah. So he he does a lot of stuff in the open air and a lot of evangelism to Mormons at temples and stuff.
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Yeah, I saw and I it's interesting. So like five years ago, my wife and I, we moved from a bigger city to a smaller city.
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And so like the the population that you got to like actually have the opportunity to do open air to a group of people like diminished a lot.
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And then now we're even in we just moved to an even smaller town. And so like it's even more so.
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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.
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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.
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Like it was sweet, but that's not so much anymore. But yeah, so I wanted to get
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Jamie on here because like it like I haven't had the opportunity to be with Brayden in witnessing, passing out tracks, one on one witnessing or in the open air.
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But me and Jamie has had many, many wonderful, glorious days together being able to do this.
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And Jamie Terry is probably, in my opinion, one of the best that does it.
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I mean, just bowed for God. I've learned so much from him. Believe me, you can learn something from younger, pudgy kids.
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OK, always going to take a shot. But I've learned so much from him.
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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
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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.
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So tonight I want to look at something very similar, and it's the Great Commission, right?
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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.
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So I would say that this applies directly to us, and the scripture is found in Matthew chapter twenty eight.
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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.
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I'm so like just just to excuse me, just to cuddle. Yeah, so Matthew twenty eight just verses sixteen to twenty.
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It says, but the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee to the mountain which Jesus had designated, and when they saw him, they worshipped him.
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But some doubted, and Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
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Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the
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Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all that I commanded you, and behold,
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I am with you always, even to the end of the age. All right, so this is clear.
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It's direct. I hear an echo. I don't think it's mine.
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I think so. Yeah, you just got to turn the. Did you look it up on your phone, the live feed?
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I don't have it on my phone. No, sir. OK, well, I guess I can put up with it.
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It's clear. It's direct. It's from the mouth of Jesus. He tells us to go and make disciples.
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So this week at church, our deacon was supposed to teach
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Sunday school, and as I'm going through my sermon, I get a text message that he's not feeling good.
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And so by the time I get done with my sermon, I have five minutes to prepare for Sunday school.
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And so I went to this chapter and I was thinking, man, maybe
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I'll have 15 minutes of material. It took me 50 minutes to get through it, right?
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That's usually how it is, right? Mm hmm. And so I asked myself, in the
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Great Commission, Jesus Christ gave to the church marching orders. And so the marching orders are what we are to do.
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And I want to camp out here for a second. What we are to do is to make disciples, to baptize, and to teach.
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And so practical questions. What does it look like,
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Jamie, to make disciples? It's a fantastic question. Well, you know, what's interesting about this passage is that there's a primary verb, and it's make disciples.
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The participles tell you how to do that. You go, you baptize, you teach.
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So you go into the world intentionally. It demands intentionality. We have to go as a church. We have to go as individual
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Christians into the world, and we have to declare the good news. In fact, so it starts with evangelism, right?
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The word is euangelizo, and it means to speak forth good news. You can't do it without words.
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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.
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So it's evangelism. It's church membership. It's discipleship. All in the context of covenant community.
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And, you know, unfortunately, a lot of churches are weak here. You know, for whatever reason, especially within the
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Reformed community, there's just not a lot of intentional outreach. You know, we want to do this personally.
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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.
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Pastors ought to be leading these things. The fact that most pastors are just not very
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Pauline. They're not very apostolic. You know, in Acts chapter 6, verse 4, when
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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.
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I don't think Peter only meant he was spending tons of time in his study preparing sermons. I'm sure that was a part of it. He studied the word and he preached in the church.
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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.
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They're in the, you know, the Areopagus. They're in the synagogues. They're going wherever nonbelievers are to intentionally communicate the gospel.
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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.
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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, chose 12 of them to be his apostles so that they would be with him, and then he would send them out to preach.
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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,
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I think we should intentionally do outreach with them, and I think we'll accelerate their growth in a major way.
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Amen. Man, that was good. What are you thinking there,
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Brayden? Just amen and amen and amen. Absolutely. You know, pastors,
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I'm always fearful, even of myself, of doing something like this, but I do see it in other pastors as well.
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If you expect your church to go out and make disciples, but you aren't doing it, you are a hypocrite.
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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, and you should be the one that's lighting that fire underneath other people's butts.
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You should be encouraging that, you should be fostering that, and you should be discipling people to go out and make disciples.
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And that starts with you going out and trying to make disciples as well. Yeah, so the pastor is supposed to lead the flock.
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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?
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We weren't part of a church where the pastor was out leading, but we had just this overwhelming want to go out into the community and to preach.
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Of course, Jamie and myself would probably say that we were a part of a local body and 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.
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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 got the courage to go out and to explore this strange new world of evangelism.
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There was this one time we were evangelizing in Madison, and then that evening we went to a store, a grocery store.
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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.
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And these two young black ladies come walking up, and then they just started saying, Hey, wasn't y 'all just in Madison?
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And we said, Yeah, how do you know? 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.
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I mean, the word was catching on, right? We started to do something because we were seeing this being done, and we wanted to be a part of it, and lo and behold,
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God has used evangelism in my life. If you were to sit down and have an interview with my wife, she would say that my husband has to go evangelize.
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I literally start twitching if I don't get out there. It's like a drug.
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I've done it so much in my life. I have to be out there evangelizing.
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I have to be talking to people about God. I have to be standing on a box preaching the gospel.
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It is a part of who I am, and as a pastor,
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I can't expect my congregation to be rebellious like I was and just to go out and start preaching because for the most part, that doesn't happen.
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But they need to see that the man that's standing in front of them lead the way when it comes to evangelism.
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I really like that point, Jamie. A very, very good point. It's definitely something that I owe to heart and soul.
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Jamie Tworkowski I would even add 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 purpose of evangelism.
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You can't just say, okay, 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.
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Right now, one thing that our church is doing is that it's traditional in this town that we're in that there's this community baskets that comes and uses our church to hand out food to the community.
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It's a non -religious organization that does this. It's just they want to use a building, and they want to have people volunteer to come and participate in it.
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And so what I said was that, well, we as a church don't do anything that's not religious.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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And we can't be involved in ministries that are not doing that. Yeah, I love that.
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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.
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And as a church, we don't want to waste our time with secondary and peripheral issues. We want to be focused on the main.
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Steve Lawson says, keep the main thing the main thing. That's the main thing. And so, yeah, that's when we talk about evangelism, we're not just talking about open air preaching.
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That's a good point. Pastors write blogs that people read and the gospels there.
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We preach sermons. And if we're not preaching Christ, as Spurgeon said, don't preach again, don't ever preach another sermon.
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You know, we're evangelistic in conversations with people who come into our church after the sermon.
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Absolutely. 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.
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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.
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And every believer has a role to play. Every believer has his part to do.
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And we're going to touch on that in just a minute. Don't don't jump ahead of me.
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So we are to make disciples. So so so this is literally talking about, you know, people coming to faith.
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A disciple is a learner, someone that that that has placed their faith in Jesus Christ.
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Right. So we make disciples by preaching the gospel. Those that receive Christ by faith, we baptize them.
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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.
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Correct. Does that fall on you correctly? Yeah, I think I think that order is very important as well.
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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.
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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
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Presbyterian. Yep. I have to throw a little punch in there at my brothers.
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You got to do it. If you were to reform Baptist. Yeah. And if I wasn't,
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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
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I am. All right. So next question is. Why are we to do this?
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Why are we to do this? Now, I'm not talking about just pastors. But as disciples, why are we to do this?
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Yeah, 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 the
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Great Commission. A lot of people immediately even a lot of people just read verse 19 and don't even always read all of verse 20.
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A lot of times people will read verse 18. But I think to start with the Great Commission, it's first found in 17.
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In my opinion, it's really first found in 16. And the fact that it's coming through the 11 disciples and then going out from there.
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But in verse 17, it says that when they saw him, they worshipped him. And so we first need to have the proper place of our worship abiding in what we do.
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Right. So we want to worship Jesus. Why? Because Jesus is God in flesh, truly God, truly man.
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He's deserving of worship as God is the only one deserving of worship. Revelation chapter 21 somewhere and also chapter 18,
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I think. But regardless, Jesus is worthy of worship. And because he is worthy of worship,
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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
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God. It's how he wants it to be done. And he is worthy of such. He is worthy of that worship.
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So you're saying even in our evangelizing, it's worship to God.
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I think that's what he deserves. Yep. I think that's what Jesus, why he then tells them, OK, and this is maybe adding to the text a little bit, but you're worshipping me.
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If you're worshipping me, then go. Go and do this as the means of worship. Right. That's what it's leading from.
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That is what's leading the conversation. That's Jesus telling us, telling these 11 disciples.
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It's what John Piper said, right? Well, missions exist because worship does not. There's a place where he's not worshipped.
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There are people who do not worship the God whom they should worship. And so I agree. Worship is a central part of evangelism.
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Not only is evangelism an act of worship on our part, but the chief end is that men and women might worship
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God. We who are worshippers would win more worshippers. Yeah. And Psalm 96,
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I think, addresses that as well. I would let me quote real fast for you. A great theologian who
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I'm who isn't here right now with us, but there is elect out there that don't even know it yet.
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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 there's the elect of God out there who don't even know it yet.
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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.
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Amen. Continue on,
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Jamie. I interrupted you on that one. No, that was that was good enough, brother. That suffices. Oh, OK.
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I apologize. No, that's good. So back to the question, why are we to do this?
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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
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Christ, to believe, to pest 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.
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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.
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Right. Jesus is the king of kings. He is the lord of lords. He is the lord, whether you receive him or not.
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Right. He is lord. You don't make him lord. He is lord and our lord has given us marching orders in the marching orders for the church is to go and do these things.
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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.
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When we go out, we don't go out in our own authority. Right. We cannot make people repent.
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We cannot make people believe. But we have been given the gospel call.
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We've been given the gospel to go out, proclaim to herald and to call man to repent, to turn from that that wicked
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God that you look at in the mirror and to put your faith in the true God.
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And you do that by trusting in Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.
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All right. Next question. And we kind of allude to this, but I really want
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I'm asking this question so we can be more specific on what it is.
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How are we to do this? We know the answer is by preaching the gospel. So, Jamie, right now,
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I just want to I want you to walk through the gospel. What is it?
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I know if you if you need to read a book about it real quick. Give me a minute. Yeah.
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So the sound for a second on the gospel of what it is and in the way of proclaiming it.
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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.
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First Corinthians 15 outlines the historical events of the gospel. Jesus died.
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He was buried. He was raised. But the gospel includes the application of the gospel, how it applies to us.
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It includes the theological implications of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone and Christ alone,
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Ephesians 2, 8, 9, apart from which there is no other gospel, Galatians 1. And so when
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I communicate that message, there's usually a five point outline in my head when I'm preaching, engaging one on one, and it's
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God, man, Christ, response, promises and warnings.
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God, they got to know who God is. That's where it starts. Romans 10, Paul, I think
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Paul really summarizes what the problem with all sinners really is, and it's that they are ignorant of the righteousness of God.
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Naturally, sinners do not know who God is because they suppress the truth about him and they therefore lower how holy he is.
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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.
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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
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Jesus is, fully God, fully man, what he did and his work to save us. His sinless life fulfills the moral demands of the law.
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His substitutionary death satisfied the penal demand of the law.
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His resurrection confirms his lordship and his deity. His exaltation to the right hand of the father is another affirmation of his sovereign authority.
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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.
32:48
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 if they do not receive
32:56
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,
33:11
I never knew you. And so that five -point outline is what I like to use when I communicate the gospel. That was very good.
33:22
Again, I have had the privilege of being with Jamie in the open air one -on -one, witnessing to people one -on -one, hearing him proclaim the gospel, wishing
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I had a rope tied to his feet at times so I can yank him off the box. Yeah, man, that was really good.
33:48
Anything you'd like to add to that, Brayden? No, I love that. I really liked how you, and I don't know what you called it right at the beginning that you mentioned it, that maybe the systematic way that you go about saying it is that it's
34:04
God, man, Christ response, right? That literally is like,
34:09
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
34:16
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?
34:22
And so 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?
34:36
What does this teach us about man? We see the great span that takes place there, that God is elevated so much farther than this lowly, lowly, lowly dust of the earth creature.
34:48
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
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Christ cross. And what are you going to do about it? They repent and believe in the gospel. I love that.
35:01
That was beautiful. Yeah, I would also see in the Great Commission, Jamie, we talked about this.
35:08
For those that don't know Jamie, the church that Jamie was a pastor at previously is our sending church for Covenant Reform Baptist Church.
35:20
And so whenever Jamie was talking with me, 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.
35:30
But he wanted to make sure that the church that they were sending out was going to be a church that planted churches, right?
35:40
That there was going to be a church that was in the streets, in the open air, confronting people where they are and bringing the good news of Jesus Christ.
35:55
I know he knew the answer, but you have to ask the question.
36:02
And so I would see a great way for us in fulfilling the Great Commission.
36:08
And then again, I feel like this is an area where a lot of churches fail, but it is planting churches.
36:18
Churches should be churches that plant churches. Like churches should not just pop out of the woodwork, right?
36:27
A church needs to be planted by a biblical church. So one way of fulfilling the
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Great Commission is, okay, so we make disciples. We preach the gospel.
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They receive Christ by faith. They're baptized. They are sitting under the word of God week after week.
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You're doing this because all authority in heaven and earth has been given to Jesus Christ. We do this because it is an act of worship.
36:55
We are trained in the gospel, right? And once we have trained someone in the gospel and our church is growing, but we don't want to be a church that has no intimacy.
37:09
We don't know everyone that comes. So what do we do? Men, faithful and able men who are called, we then plant that gospel seed in them to plant churches, right?
37:22
So this is a good way for the Great Commission to go forth, right?
37:28
If you're a church and you are in one particular place and time, one spot, so to me, it'd be 305
37:37
South Anderson Street. Well, if the Lord so chooses to bless us, we want to get a covenant reformed
37:44
Baptist church in Manchester and also in all the surrounding counties if the
37:49
Lord so wishes to do so with us, right? So we want to be a church that plants churches. And by doing so, we want to make sure that these churches that we're planting are churches that are actively getting involved in the community, that are confronting people in their sins, presenting
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Christ. And so planting churches, I think that this is something we don't want to leave out of the
38:09
Great Commission. But this is how we go into all nations, right?
38:15
If it started with 12, then it was 120, then it was 3 ,000 per se, and then another 5 ,000 and so on and so forth.
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I mean, years after years, and now here we are, there's Christians almost in every country.
38:32
But it happens that way because once the seed was planted, once the tree was growing, the fruit that came off of the trees rowed down hills and in turn, seeds were planted, trees grew, and it spreads, right?
38:48
Churches have to be cancerous in the sense of spreading. We want to make sure that this message is spreading and that we're properly training people up under the teaching.
38:59
And because of the authority that's given to us, we want to lay hands on called men and plant churches to get what we know out further.
39:08
Agree? Disagree? Fight about it? What are we doing? Brayden, go ahead, brother.
39:15
Oh, I completely agree. That is one great joy of mine is that one of our beloved brothers, his name is
39:23
Paul Thompson. He's the one that discipled me. And then the pastor before me who had just left, he sent me then and made sure that, hey, this is the right call for you.
39:34
You should go and apply for this, right? Like, and I know that that's a little bit different because it wasn't a church plant, but that's that same principle that we should be raising people up to send them out.
39:44
And we shouldn't have that mentality of, oh, I just need more and more numbers and I lose this connective relationship part of church, right?
39:54
Because the more members we get, the less we know each other. And it's okay to get large, but there comes a point where you're just going for numbers, right?
40:04
Like let's now, let's create this
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Christian community all around us. This shouldn't just be a localized thing. This should go out.
40:17
I'm not going to be as cool as Jeff and say that the church should be cancerous, but that is truly what it is.
40:23
It should be like a wildfire, right? It needs to spread, yep. Well, I had someone tell me one time that was like, yo, you know that Calvinism that's cancerous.
40:36
And I said, sir, you should consider me very deadly. Yeah, yeah, but I concur with you, brother.
40:47
I think one thing that a lot of individual Christians do with the
40:52
Great Commission is in our Western individualized culture is we think of it in terms of me personally, right?
40:59
We do the same thing with my personal relationship with Jesus. And then we think of, I need to share the gospel.
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I need to make disciples. And that's true. But the Great Commission is a local church centered mission.
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You don't baptize people all on your own. That's a local church ordinance that roots this mission in the local church.
41:19
And that demands the spread of local churches. That demands multiplication of local churches.
41:26
And as you pointed out, it's not individuals who plant churches. It's not people who plant churches.
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It's churches that plant churches. And churches are made up of people, but not people in general. They're made up of members and elders and deacons in particular.
41:43
A church has authority. A church has the keys of the kingdom. Individual Christians don't have those things. Churches plant churches.
41:50
And if you go to Acts 14, 21 to 23, you get to see how
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Paul carried out the Great Commission. And there are really three elements here that I think ooze out of the text.
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Verse 21 says, after they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples.
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So they made disciples by preaching the gospel. That's where it starts. They returned to Lystra and Iconium and Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith.
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Preach the gospel, people are saved, follow up, disciple them, teach them, encourage them. And then verse 23, when they had appointed elders for them in every church.
42:31
Church plant, right? You evangelize your disciple believers. The product of that, the result of that is church planting.
42:39
Yeah, that's very good, man. Very, very good. So one more question.
42:52
Are you ready? Always. All right. Now, again, this kind of follows in with what we're saying.
43:03
But who was to carry this out and how? So this is a two part question. Who was to carry this out?
43:09
And we know who, it's the church. But the follow up question for this, because we already know the answer is it's the church, is how can the everyday
43:20
Christian apply this in their life? Now, this is what I was telling you to be quiet about earlier.
43:26
You're going too far. So how can the everyday Christian apply this in their life?
43:32
We know we're supposed to go and make disciples, right? And if they're truly a disciple, they'll be a part of the local body where they're baptized and taught.
43:44
So we just want to focus real quick on the making the disciples. Like how is the everyday
43:51
Christian? They're not a pastor. They're just laymen. They're laymen, laywomen. I think that's whatever.
43:58
And they're, you know, they don't have a lot of time. They're house mothers. You know, they're mothers, fathers working 45, 50 hours a week.
44:08
Right, right. How, what does this look like in everyday life? Yeah. So there's two questions you're asking.
44:13
How and who? Well, first of all, how, how do we do this? The answer for who is the church, every
44:19
Christian. How do we do this? And the answer is different ways. Mothers do this. Stay -at -home mothers do this by teaching their children the gospel.
44:27
And I'm teaching right now on Titus 2, 1 through 10 on the Lord's day. Very slowly over several weeks.
44:33
And this week we're talking about younger women and their role in the home and the family and the church. And it's such a sad thing that in our culture, many women, young women in particular who have children, give up the glorious privilege
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God has given them to teach their children the gospel and send them off to Caesar, to government funded schools.
44:53
And so, you know, women teach their family, teach their children. Husbands and fathers lead your families in family worship.
44:58
You know, have gospel tracks and church invite cards. That's something
45:03
I use. Have them on you at all times. Give them out everywhere you go. Share the gospel with your family members, your friends.
45:11
A practical thing I've told people in the past is if you send out Christmas cards, type up a gospel written letter or a gospel training and send them to every person you know, send them to your neighbors, communicate the gospel.
45:26
And then, you know, the question of who? There's a sense in which right now we're kind of, we're kind of taking it for granted that every
45:33
Christian is called to do that. But so if someone is to say, how do you prove that?
45:40
I think there are several ways to do that. One is you go back to the Great Commission. You talk about the scope of the
45:46
Great Commission and you talk about the duration of the Great Commission. The scope is all nations.
45:52
And, you know, the apostles, the early church, the first century church didn't take the gospel to the whole world.
45:58
And, you know, in some sense they did in the Roman world. But I think the mission is larger than that. It's the whole world.
46:04
And then the duration is the end of the age. You know, that's the end of history.
46:09
The apostles didn't make it to the end of the age in my perspective, in my eschatological view. And so the church throughout.
46:16
You're getting closer, buddy. So the church throughout all of history has that responsibility. You think of the nature of salvation.
46:24
First Peter, he called you out of darkness into his marvelous light that you might proclaim his excellency.
46:30
You've been called out of darkness. It's to proclaim the gospel. So those are just some of the proofs
46:36
I would give for every member of ministry, every Christian evangelist. But I don't have the gift of evangelism.
46:44
You don't have the gift of singing either. I do your song, by the way.
46:50
Yeah. I know your wife did enjoy making fun of me. Yeah.
46:57
So, I mean, but you've heard that before, right? I mean, I think me and you've heard that together in the same place.
47:04
I don't have the, I can't do it because I don't have the gift of evangelism. I like to remind people that I don't have the gift of evangelism.
47:11
Amen. I don't. I know guys like, I think, you know,
47:16
Jamie would have a greater gift of evangelism than myself. I don't have it, but I do it.
47:24
And I was asked a question from a member of my congregation, which is a good question.
47:31
What if I mess up? And I said, oh, you will. And I still do.
47:40
Yeah, you do. That's why
47:48
I keep him on. Yeah. But it's not about having the gift.
47:55
There's no such thing as a gift of evangelism. I agree. There's no gift. In fact, you just do it.
48:01
If you read the passages where the spiritual gifts are delineated, and not to say that those are exhaustive lists, but never once do you ever read about the gift of evangelism.
48:12
And so to me, God gives these gifts in order to help us carry out the great commission.
48:18
You know, someone might have the gift of mercy in order to show mercy to someone and then communicate the gospel, or the gift of serving.
48:24
We might knock on someone's door in the neighborhood and offer to serve them by cutting an older person's yard for free and communicate the gospel to them.
48:31
And so God gives us these gifts to both communicate the gospel and to edify God's people.
48:37
And so I don't think evangelism is a gift. I think it's a purpose for which we're gifted is to communicate the gospel and evangelize.
48:42
Yeah, of course, there's some people that's more eloquent, gifted and speaking and stuff stuff like that.
48:48
Like I have a stutter problem, you know, and so like, it's like you can sometimes, and I know people that watch this show like, yeah, you do.
48:59
I trust me, I know. I can remember being a child and my dad telling me, boy, if you can't talk right, don't talk to me at all.
49:07
And it was years where I said anything else to him. I stutter, right?
49:13
And so like, even when I do this podcast, this show, like I'm not confident.
49:22
When I stand before the congregation in the pulpit, I'm not up there in my confidence. I'm up there broken and in weakness, relying on the power of the
49:31
Holy Spirit in me to do something that I am not capable of doing.
49:36
Right. I don't do it because I'm good at it. I do it because I don't know how not to.
49:43
I know this is what this is a clear. This is the clearest direction that scripture gives us, and it's to go and make disciples to baptize and to teach.
49:58
And again, I know it's probably a played out saying it's not the great suggestion.
50:05
It's the great commission. This is the command of God to believers, to disciples, to Christians.
50:14
We are to go and make what we are. Okay, so let's just look at.
50:22
Can anyone know offhand the passage in Genesis where they're told to go and multiply and fill the earth?
50:38
Genesis, what is it? Genesis one, twenty six and twenty seven.
50:46
Oh, it's yeah, I think it's twenty six. Yeah, I think it's twenty eight. And God bless them.
50:52
And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the living things that creep on the earth.
51:06
This was the commission by God to Adam. All right.
51:13
The great commission that we see here in Matthew twenty eight is the commission by God to the disciples.
51:21
All right. And we are to go and subdue. Right. Now, Jesus has hapitasa.
51:29
He has subdued. He's subdued in the world. But notice what it tells us to do to make disciples. This is by preaching that gospel.
51:35
We are to preach the gospel and through the gospel, Jesus Christ is hapitasa.
51:41
He's he's subduing the world and we are multiplying. We are making what we are.
51:48
Adam was to Adam and Eve were to make what they were human beings. They were to come together in intimacy and what does it say?
51:58
Multiply, multiply. That's what we are to do as Christians. And this is the commission. We're to do so by preaching the gospel and by preaching the gospel, we will multiply.
52:08
If you want to see a dying church, don't preach the gospel. If you don't want to win the world for Christ, don't preach the gospel.
52:17
If you hate everybody and you're just one of those Christians that don't care about anyone, don't preach the gospel.
52:24
But if you love your neighbor, like we're called today, we're to preach the gospel. We are to make what we are.
52:31
That's Christians. Agree? Yeah, absolutely. All right.
52:38
Well, Jamie, man, I really appreciate your time, brother. He's coming on here and. Absolutely, brother.
52:43
Thanks for having me. It's a joy to meet you, Brayden. Yeah, I was blessed. Amen. Amen. So I'm gonna let both y 'all, if y 'all have anything y 'all want to say to finish this.
52:58
Brayden will go to you first. If you want to give some last words and then, Jamie, I'll. Yeah, I'll try to make this as short as possible.
53:04
Just just running this in my mind. I'm really happy that, Jamie, you read that text from 1 Peter 2, verse 9.
53:11
I talked about being called out of darkness, right? A verse that I've had quoted to me several times and read here several times here recently is in the
53:20
Old Testament. And Isaiah, where's that here?
53:28
Excuse me. I thought I had it on. Oh, this is embarrassing.
53:36
I thought I had it right here. Apparently, I don't. Maybe. Oh, no. A couple chapters off. Need to read that Bible a little more.
53:41
I know, I know, dude. Yeah, I'm getting it. I'm still getting it marked up right now. Okay. Oh, man, where is it?
53:50
Okay. Well, okay. Yes, right here. So Isaiah chapter 42, verse 6. I am Yahweh.
53:56
I have called you in righteousness. I will also take hold of you by the hand and guard you.
54:01
And I will give you as a covenant to the people and as a light to the nations to open blind eyes.
54:08
And that's a common theme that's in these later chapters of Isaiah is this light unto the nations. And in John chapter 1, it says that Jesus is that light.
54:16
And so, you know, when we talk about evangelism, I think, yes, are we to live a holy life?
54:23
Are we supposed to go about bearing fruit? Yes. Is it supposed to be visible to all people around us?
54:29
Yes. I have my wife and she represents the church and I represent Christ. In my marriage,
54:35
I'm supposed to be representing the gospel itself to the world around me, right? So there is a sense of, yes, you are to live in a way that represents the gospel.
54:43
But that is not period after that. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't do more. Nor I think something that Christians often get in their mind is,
54:52
I'm going to go join that knitting club. I'm going to make friends. And after six weeks of being friends with my new friends, then
54:58
I'll share the gospel. I'll tell them about Jesus then. But that kind of thinking only discourages you about telling people about that light.
55:07
A couple different things on that, right? Because it makes it harder for you to tell somebody about Jesus if you've prolonged it.
55:14
It makes it more awkward. It makes it more difficult. You then get worried about ruining relationships because now you have them as a friend.
55:22
And so you go to that knitting club week after week after week forsaking the Christ that bought you.
55:29
Living in darkness, essentially. Being okay with your friend living in darkness. And so we, as the
55:34
Christian, need to remember that the light is the drawing factor. It's not because you do
55:41
X, Y, and Z things at church. You sing songs, you sing contemporary, you sing whatever you're saying.
55:48
That's not the drawing factor of the church. The church drawing factor is the light.
55:54
And that is what is to call those out of the darkness. And we are to be going forth telling people about that light and proclaiming it.
56:03
And so I'm just really happy that you read that text earlier. I was actually thinking of Isaiah as you read it.
56:09
Yeah, don't put relationships before sharing the light. The light always needs to be present in every one of our ways of living, conversation, worship, activities, whatever you want to do.
56:24
The light needs to be there. Yeah, I agree with you. I think there's this false dichotomy that gets created as the problem.
56:32
We live a godly life. We don't have to communicate the gospel verbally. No, the answer is we do both. And so, but then there are two distinct things.
56:40
Living godly isn't evangelism. It is what commends our evangelism. It is what adorns the gospel, to borrow
56:47
Paul's language in Titus 2. In fact, working through Titus 2 now, and the theme of Titus 2, 1 through 10, is the kind of conduct that is consistent with sound doctrine and that adorns the gospel.
57:01
And the thing is, your conduct can't adorn a message that you haven't declared with your mouth. So, it presupposes that you're using your mouth to speak forth the light, to declare the light.
57:12
And so, you know, a godly life can't commend a message that sinners don't know. And so, you know, those things go hand in hand.
57:19
And, you know, we're to declare the light, proclaim the good news. And if you don't do that, sinners are not going to be saved.
57:29
That's good, man. So, Jamie, this new church you've been pastoring, so how long have you been pastoring there?
57:37
Well, it's a good question. I started in the very end of August, driving up every weekend to preach and then come back.
57:44
And so, that was a tough couple of weeks. I did that until October, mid -October. So, I've been there officially their pastor since the end of August, and I've been living here since the middle of October.
57:55
So, four months or so. Four months. Are you enjoying it there? Yeah, it's going well.
58:01
It's good to have a couple of elders with me. We didn't have that in New York for a while, and that was a challenge. By God's grace,
58:07
I'm full time here. So, you know, I'm able to study the word, give myself full time to the ministry, and it's a joy.
58:15
And it's just always a privilege, you know, to study the word hours every week and feed God's people. So, yeah, it's going well.
58:21
That's good. I like to feel like I had a little hand in that. Yeah, they told me you gave a lot of good words about me.
58:29
So, I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, I made fun of you too. I already knew that.
58:35
Yeah, well, you already knew that, you know, what recommended me anyways. What was
58:44
I thinking? I was like, oh, you don't even know. But yeah, man.
58:54
So, I think the news kind of broke earlier. Jamie Terry has changed his eschatological position.
59:05
He is now an amillennialist, and we welcome him with a hug from above, an already, but not yet, right?
59:16
I know you feel it right now, Jamie. I know you feel it. Yeah, it's spiritual. So, Jamie, if people wanted to get in touch with you, what's a good,
59:25
I mean, are you reachable? Yeah, look me up on Facebook, Jamie Terry, email jterry7491 at gmail .com.
59:37
You can look up our church website. I have to look it up. Give me half a second here. The church name is
59:45
Hope Reform Baptist Church, New Lennox is what I would type in. And it's, oh, let me see here.
59:53
I'm close. It looks like it is hopereformbaptistchurch .org.
59:59
Okay, hopereformbaptistchurch .org. Yeah, and you can, we'd love to have you if you're in the neighborhood looking for a church that's biblical, reformed,
01:00:08
Christ -exalting, you know, regulative principle, we worship the way God regulates in the scripture, expository preaching, evangelistic, discipling.
01:00:17
If you're looking for a church like that, we'd love to have you visit with us. Amen. All right.
01:00:24
Well, as always, we want to thank everyone for tuning in, for checking us out. Go to our
01:00:30
Facebook page. I mean, our Facebook page, like our Facebook page. We have an
01:00:36
Open Earth Theology group that you can get a part of. But also we have a
01:00:42
YouTube channel. If you haven't followed, liked our YouTube channel and subscribed to it, we would really appreciate that.
01:00:50
And again, if you're ever in Tallahoma, Tennessee and you want to hang out, let me know, man.
01:00:58
I'd love nothing more than to meet you in person. I know that I interact with a lot of you online, but I'd love nothing more than to sit down and have a meal with you each and every week at a part of our church.
01:01:09
We sit down and we have a meal together. And so if you're ever in Tallahoma, Tennessee, please come and worship with us and have a meal, and it'd be good to get to know you that way.
01:01:20
Other than that, we love y 'all. Thanks for watching. Hallelujah. Jamie, don't hang up.