SPEAKER_01 0:00

If I haven't had the joy of meeting you, my name is Kobe. I get to serve as our next gen director here. That means a little bit of kids' ministry, but mostly students in college. And I'm going to read our scripture for this morning. It is Matthew twenty-eight, verses sixteen through twenty. Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him. But some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. It's the word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Thank you, Kobe. Hey, good morning. Guys, we did it. This is our final sermon on the Gospel of Matthew. We have been in this. We didn't plan to take this long to go through Matthew, but it's been kind of awesome. We started last December, nine months, 1,071 verses. We are down to the very last five. I'm so excited to open that with you. I just want to um, I'm just curious. How many of you were here when we started the Gospel of Matthew? Can you wave your hand at me last December? Okay, awesome. All right. How many of you have come since we've started? That should be everybody else. Wave your hands. All right. That's awesome. There's a lot of hands up. Um hey, for those of you who've been with us from the very beginning, just curious, Pastor Phil wanted me to ask, how many of you still have your little Matthew journal? All right? Awesome. Props to you. Okay, we will keep doing that. Um, I am so excited to open up this passage and also kind of sad. Kind of sad because this time through Matthew has been like really just it's been so transformative. It's been good. Um one of the promises I made you when we started this book of the Bible was that if you understand the gospel of Matthew, you will understand the entire storyline of the Bible. It's because Matthew kind of sits as the bridge between the Old Testament and the New Testament, between the uh the what God did with the Old Testament people of God and his formation of the New Testament uh people of God. And um, we've seen that Matthew has this message that we've been calling the king and the kingdom. Okay. The message of the Gospel of Matthew is that God has sent his son Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, to be this king, and he came to inaugurate the kingdom of God, to establish the kingdom of God. And uh, we have spent nine months talking about that, and I was looking back on some of my other previous sermons, and I realized something I don't think I've ever yet defined for you what the kingdom of God is. So I made a promise that we were going to talk about it, and we have, but I haven't actually given you a definition. So can I do that uh before we get going right now? Okay. The kingdom of God is the rule of God through his king Jesus. Okay? The kingdom of God is the rule of God through his king Jesus. Wherever Jesus rules, there is the kingdom of God. Now, um, we, you know, I don't know about you, but if you um have been a part of a church for a while, or maybe you call yourself a Christian and you're here and you would say, I've, you know, I've been a Christian for a number of years. Um, here's what I've observed about Christianity, and particularly in the South, right? Um, we we have a past tense Christianity. You know what I mean when I say that? Like we we look backwards on what God has said in his word, uh, the work that Jesus has done on the cross, his death, his burial, and resurrection. And a lot of times when we think about what it means to be a Christian, it's believing in something that has already passed. And then sometimes we also have a future tense Christianity. We believe of what God is going to do in the future and sending his son Jesus to return again. And when we think about what it means to be a Christian, we think of it either as looking back on the past or sometimes preparing for the future. But don't you see there's a pretty big gap there? Because what do we do in the present? You ever thought about that? What does present tense Christianity mean? What should we be doing in the world? Is it more than just I'm receiving Jesus as my Savior and Lord and I'm living with integrity and preparation for his second coming? What should we be doing? Well, listen, our text today is this passage called The Great Commission, and it is the answer to that question. If you've ever wanted to know, as a Christian, what should I be doing now? What is the role of the church? What is God doing in the world? This passage is the answer to that question. So it is such a fitting passage for us to conclude our study on the gospel of Matthew. Okay, so let me go ahead and give you my sermon title. I don't always do this, but let me give you my sermon title. It's this It starts with you. That's my sermon title. It starts with you. Now, let me explain this a little bit, okay? We're going to talk about this passage called the Great Commission. I'll define what that means here in a little bit. And a lot of times we think about the Great Commission as something that somebody somewhere does overseas over there, or that some maybe a really gifted evangelist does somewhere in strategic cities. We think about the Great Commission as something that somebody somewhere else does. But what I want to tell you today is that the Great Commission starts with you. And I'm going to show you as we walk through these five different verses, what that means and how to put it into practice in your life. So the first thing I want to show you is that this text that we uh just read, that Kobe just read, is telling us the first thing that we need to do is to come to Jesus. Okay? It's to come to Jesus. All right, you might be like, okay, I kind of knew that. You know, we've covered that ground before. But let me explain what I mean by that. Before Jesus sends you, before Jesus commissions you, before Jesus tells you, go and make disciples, he has come for you. And so our response has to be to come to Jesus. Pick me up in verse 16, okay? Now, the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshiped him. But some doubted. And Jesus came and he said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Let me just stop right there. Look who Jesus calls back. Did you see how this text started? And the now the eleven disciples. See that word eleven? That's significant, isn't it? Because as we've been walking through the Gospel of Matthew, it hasn't been the eleven, it's been the twelve. Matthew wants to remind us one of the disciples followed Jesus. He's not there anymore. A few chapters back, we read that Judas, who betrayed Jesus, had this kind of this moment of remorse. He goes to the chief priest, he confesses what he did is wrong. They tell him, What is that to us? You see to it yourself. And he actually took that as a statement that he should go and take his own life. And most tragic events in all the Gospel of Matthew is that Jesus, that Judas goes and he takes his own life. He's gone. This this statement begins with some tragedy. The eleven disciples. And more than that, um in the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew arranges his content in such a way that he's showing us something. This this scene that we're about to see is the first time in the Gospel of Matthew that Jesus meets with his disciples again. Okay. Um we read Mark and Luke and John, and we know that Jesus appeared to the disciples in other times. Matthew isn't trying to make that point. He's trying to make a different point. This is the first time Matthew records Jesus appearing to the disciples after his resurrection. After what, church? After they abandoned him. Matter of fact, if you were to turn back in your Bible two chapters, go to Matthew chapter 26, verse 56. This was the last time we saw the disciples in the Gospel of Matthew. Then all the disciples left him and fled. So do you see we're picking up a scene right here that meets the disciples after their greatest failure. You guys with me? You see this? And Jesus is about to give them the great commission, this great assignment. But listen, before there is a great commission, there is a great reunion. So these eleven disciples are in Jerusalem. The Marys, Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, they come in. They begin to worship and some doubted. And so, uh, by the way, point this out to you real fast. Um, Matthew, as the gospel writer, he doesn't always name names of who some of the people were that did the thing that was bad. Okay, like earlier, a few chapters ago, there was one of the disciples who cut off the ear of one of the servants, the high priest's servants. And Matthew's like, it was one of the disciples. Um, John is the gospel writer who names names. John is a snitch, y'all. Like John's like, that was Peter. Peter cut his ear off. Um, Matthew's like, some of them doubted, right? And John, when he writes his gospel, John's like, you want to know who doubted it was? Thomas, right? He's like, Thomas is the one who's we're gonna call him doubting Thomas. You're gonna meet Thomas in heaven one day, and he's like, listen, it was just one time, and you've been referring to me as doubting Thomas all these years. So the text tells us that they begin to worship, and some doubted. And so as these 11 disciples are coming for this great reunion to meet Jesus, you've got to see Jesus here seeing the worship and the wavering going on at the same time. And yet it's Jesus who ends up taking the initiative, the action. The text tells us Jesus came and Jesus spoke and Jesus said. Don't you see that this is just a beautiful picture that where our sin, our failure separates us from Jesus. That Jesus does not wait for us to clean ourselves up to come to him, but Jesus comes to us. Isn't that good news? That's good news. That's the whole story of the Gospel of Matthew, is that God sent Jesus to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. He lived the life that we were supposed to live. He died the death that we deserved. And when he appears to his disciples that failed him, he doesn't reject them. He doesn't cast them away. Doesn't say you knew better. He comes to them. Our response, church, should be not to hold ourselves from coming to Jesus as at arm's length, but instead to come to him. Now listen, now as I say that, I know that sounds easy, it sounds right, it sounds spiritual, right? But also know that if you're like me, um, we have a reason that we don't do that. We have a reason that when we fail, we're not prone to run to the Savior. And it's because our lives have been teaching us a very different lesson most of our lives, hasn't it? Every time that you experience failure, isn't it like as soon as you experience failure, you also simultaneously experience rejection, you you mess up the project at work. Nobody wants anything to do with you. You sin or fall short of what your parents tell you, and all of a sudden you get the silent treatment, you get the stiff arm. I was thinking about this um personal story here real fast. Um when I was in high school, I got um I grew up in North Carolina. They did this thing, the American Legion did this thing called Boys' State. It was basically getting high school students, they bring them to a college campus for a weekend, and they recreate the federal government because they're trying to teach high school students how government works. Okay. I don't know why. Um me and a guy from my school, we got selected to go or whatever. And um I want to introduce you to 16-year-old Jonathan Linker. Okay, 16-year-old Jonathan Linker had uh the this beautiful ability to forget every time he fails. Okay. So he was always really confident because he could not remember any of the times that he made a mistake. And I was very bold, and it didn't matter if I didn't have any experience, I was I was gonna go for it. Okay. So we we go to this thing called Boys State, we're on a college campus, and it's this mock government, okay? And so you're setting up a um, you know, Congress, you're setting up a judicial system, you're setting up president, and I was like, oh. I looked around, this group is like 400 high school boys, and I was like, oh, one of us is gonna be president. I was like, it's gonna be me. And so in this like boys this weekend, I started you you kind of go do these different things where you start to campaign for president, and um I did it, and I actually got a little like momentum early on, and there are people like, oh, I think this guy can do it. And like, okay, there's there's there's like all these primaries and stuff that build towards a general election. And there came the time for me to get up and give a speech for why I should be uh the president. And um it just let's just say it did not go well at all. Um it's one of the it's still one of the most painful memories of my life. And all of a sudden, um, all the people who had like supported me and like, hey, you're gonna do great. All of a sudden, you know what happened when I failed? They all kind of melted away. Isn't it your life you experienced the same thing? Your whole life have you've been you've been taught that when you fail, people don't want anything to do with you. They want to reject you, they want to move further and further away. Isn't that so beautiful when you see how Jesus is so different? When we fail him, he draws nearer to us. That's what we're seeing right here in this passage. That even though these 11 disciples who are carrying their failure with them to Galilee, they see the Savior, they worship, and they waver, they doubt, and yet Jesus draws near to them. Here's my question Where right now in your life have you failed in your relationship with Jesus, and you are holding yourself at a distance from him when in reality you need to come to him because he comes to you. Number two, we don't just come to Jesus, we surrender to Jesus. Before you make disciples, you have to live as a disciple. Make sense? Right? Before you do anything, you gotta you gotta do the thing first, right? Nobody wants to go to a dentist with bad teeth, right? Before you make disciples, you have to become a disciple. And one of the ways that you do that is first surrendering to Jesus. Now follow along with me in the text, okay? Remember, Jesus came and said to them, and this is the first thing he says, everybody look with me. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. Let's walk through this little piece by little piece. Okay, first, we see this phrase all authority. Um, in preparing for the sermon, I was like, man, sometimes I want to get in the original languages. So we're looking at the Greek for what this meant for all authority, and I found out it means something really incredible. You want to know what it is? It means all authority. It means there's not a single bit of authority that does not belong to Jesus. That's what he's saying here. Did you see the phrase all authority where? Where, church? In heaven and on earth. You ever heard the Bible use those words before? In heaven and on earth? Yeah, you've heard it. The very first page, the very first verse, the very first chapter. In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth. In other words, you see what Jesus is saying? Every single thing God created, Jesus is saying, He has authority over. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. By the way, there's this, this is a little nerdy. You know, just follow me. Um, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. What is that phrase has been given to me? Who gave it? What's he talking about here? Okay. If if we've been following the Gospel of Matthew so far, you should you should know the answer to this, okay? It has to do with Jesus' favorite name for himself, the Son of Man. Remember, over and over in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is constantly referring to himself as the Son of Man, 30 times up to this point in Matthew 28. And so what Jesus is saying when he says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, what he's doing is he's calling the mind of the original. Remember, this was written to Jews, right? The original Jewish audience, first century Jews, would have would have thought back to Daniel chapter 7, the prophecy of the Son of Man, where the Son of Man comes to the ancient of days, God the Father, and he's given a kingdom and glory and dominion. Hear the word authority over all the earth that will never end. Do you see now what Jesus is saying? Jesus is saying what Daniel the prophet saw in Daniel chapter 7, verses 13 and 14 has happened. It is true. All authority in heaven and earth, Jesus is saying, has been given to me. Guys, this is the biggest. I don't know if Jesus can make a more powerful statement to a first century Jewish audience than saying that. Now, if Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth, it means that Jesus has all authority over you.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Follow?

SPEAKER_02 19:43

Sometimes we like to view ourselves as the exception to the rules, or at least my wife tells me that I like to do that about myself sometimes. Like we like to think Jesus has all authority in heaven and earth, and I might do what he tells me to do. But this statement is actually the foundation of everything that Jesus is about to say. He's about to give his disciples again. Let me explain this phrase, the Great Commission. Okay. Theologians call this passage the Great Commission. Think about that word commission. What is a mission? A mission is when you send a person to a place for a purpose. That's a mission. All right. What makes it a co-mission? Well, one, you don't do it by yourself. That's what the co-is. It's together. And then two, a commission is actually when someone gives you some of their authority. Did you know that? Like if you received a commission from the U.S. government to go and do a task, guess what? When you represent, when you show up to do that task, you represent all the authority that the U.S. government has given you if they have commissioned you. Does that make sense? So now do you see the Great Commission, this task that Jesus gives his disciples to go in all the world and make disciples? Is actually with the authority that Jesus claims. All authority has been given and heaven and earth has been given to me. Now therefore go. Do you see that? See how this connects? The Great Commission goes with the disciples, the eleven failures being now entrusted with a commission where they actually bear the authority of Jesus. Doesn't that blow you away? And then continues, go therefore and make disciples of all nations. Go and make disciples. By the way, the the the key the key verb here, commentators will point this out, is to make disciples. It's actually not the word go. Go, actually, go, baptize, and teach are all verbs that support what making disciples looks like. All right. So the command is to make disciples. All right, here at Harbor City, we talk about a disciple is someone who follows Jesus and helps other people find and follow Jesus. So if you're a disciple, it means you have found Jesus. Jesus has found you, that you're in a relationship with him, and you go and you help others find and follow Jesus. That's what we mean when we say disciples. And so when Jesus says, go therefore and make disciples, he also says to make disciples of, did you see this phrase? Of all nations. Using this phrase, and we saw this earlier, that the kingdom of heaven is like. And he'd tell a story. The kingdom of heaven is like. The kingdom of God is like, right? In other words, Jesus shows up on the scene, he says, I'm the son of God. And people are like, Oh, you're the son of God. He's like, Yeah, I'm the son of God. And they're like, Okay, well, if you're the son of God, tell me what life with your father is like. What is life like in the kingdom of heaven? And so what does Jesus do? He explains it. The kingdom of heaven is like. And then he explains it. Everything that comes out of Jesus' mouth is describing what the kingdom of God is like. And now, do you see when he says go and make disciples of all nations? Do you know what Jesus is saying the kingdom of God is like? The kingdom of heaven? He's saying the kingdom of God is a kingdom where everyone is welcome. All nations. That word there doesn't mean countries like we think of it, it means all ethnic groups. That the kingdom of God is open for all, for all people. Guess what? All people doesn't just mean all people, all people means you. Isn't that good news? You want to know what the kingdom of God is like? It's a kingdom that's not just for Israel, not just for Americans, it's for all people, all nations, all different types of people. It's almost like you think about this, the Great Commission, it's almost like, you know, you being in a group of people who are drowning, and a rescue boat from afar sees it, and the rescue boat comes and they rescue you, they pull you on the boat, they help resuscitate you, and they actually bring you back to a place of safety. And then you look back out and you say, you know what, there's still some more people out there. It's gonna take all of us. Are you ready to go back into this boat? And we're gonna go back to the place where you were drowning, but we're actually gonna go back and help rescue somebody else. That's what the Great Commission is like. It's being saved from our sin, saved from ourselves, our own self-rule, being made new. But then God doesn't just put us on his trophy shelf. He pulls us back into the rescue boat and sends us on a rescue mission to go and make disciples of all nations. By the way, I know that's a huge scope of all nations, right? I mean, these are 11 men pre-internet, pre-plane travel, pre-roads. Then they didn't even have a map of all the nations. But they knew that they were commissioned by the king who had all the authority. Let me tell you how the Great Commission happens. Again, when I say the word Great Commission or thinking about the idea of missions, if you've grown up in a church world, you probably think of something really far away over there that these missionaries are doing. But what I want you to see is that the Great Commission happens one person at a time. You don't have to cross an ocean to be a part of the Great Commission. Sometimes you might have to cross a room. So maybe think about it this way. Instead of thinking about making disciples of all nations, it's a group of people so far over there. What if it's like, what would it look like for me to be a part of making disciples? And what if, what if the people that God has sent me to actually already, He's already placed me in relationship with? Maybe where my street address, where my mail comes, isn't not there by accident. Maybe I'm there on purpose for a purpose. And part of that purpose is for somebody else on that street. What if that's true at your workplace? You don't just get this job because it's a stepping stone in your career, but God brought you to that place, that office, that site for somebody else. Go make disciples of all nations. Maybe that person that God is calling you to, that one more person that God is calling you to, you already have their contact number and your phone. The Great Commission, yeah, the scope is all nations, but it happens one person at a time. Then Jesus continues, he says, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Um, if you if you underline stuff in your Bible, I want you to underline that phrase in the name. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit. Now listen, we are a church that we practice baptism. Matter of fact, coming up in a couple weeks, September 13th, we are I have a baptism Sunday. If you are interested in getting baptized, we would love to have that conversation. Baptism, we've taught you, is going public with your faith, saying, I believe that Jesus has done everything necessary to save me. I'm only trusting in him for my salvation. I'm ready to go wherever he tells me to go, do whatever he tells me to do. That's what we say when we baptize someone. And then we baptize somebody in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Now, listen, this is something that we haven't taught a lot, but I want you to hear. Think about that phrase, baptized in the name of. It's like when you go and you're above the water, you have one name, but when you go under and you come back, you are a sudden bearing a different name. It's the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. By the way, this is a bit of a callback to Ezekiel chapter 36. Ezekiel, prophet, says to the people of Israel, he says, God speaking, you have profaned my name among the nations. And then God, speaking through the prophet, says, I will redeem my name. And I will redeem it among the nations. Now, do you see how that's happening, church? God is calling Jesus, Jesus, Son of God, is calling eleven disciples, and not just these eleven disciples, but the others who would become disciples to himself. He's reconciling them. They're redeemed, they're restored to him, and he gives them not just an assignment, he gives them a new name. And then he sends them out into all the world to bear the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. You know, we think about a name change ceremony, it's the most significant event often in people's lives. You think about the day you were born, you received a name. What that name signify, belonging. When we adopted our son MJ, we changed his name. He belonged to the Linker family. He had a different relationship with his father. When somebody gets married and they change their name, there's a changing of there's a message there, isn't there belonging? Think about what it means to bear the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. We're not just baptized, we're not just getting wet for Jesus. We are taking on his name and then representing it to the world. Um as we continue walking through verse 20, there's this uh phrase that some of us just wish wasn't here. Okay, here it is, ready? Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. Now, that the word observe there really means to obey. It's not just to see what Jesus commanded, okay? Um, you know, every parent in the room, you've probably had that experience with your child. It's like, you know, you don't want to hear your child say, Yeah, I saw what you said. No, are you obeying what you have been, what I've said. So Jesus here is teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. Um, you know, every if you grew up in a particular house, every house has a culture, right? Some of you grew up in a house where nobody talked about their problems. Some of you grew up in a house where everybody talked all at the same time. Some of you grew up in a house where if you're not 15 minutes early, you're late. And then you married someone who, when it's time for to be at the place, is the time they start putting on their shoes. All right, every every house has some different rules, but what Jesus is saying is if you want to know what the kingdom of God is like, you want to know it's like living in my father's house, we've got some different rules. And Jesus, all throughout the Gospel of Matthew, has been teaching what those house rules are. Jesus is saying, in my house, we forgive. And we don't just forgive the first time somebody wrongs us, but over and over and over and over again. In my house, we tell the truth. Even when it makes us look bad. In my house, Jesus says, We care for every single person. It's not just those who are in positions of prominence that we care for, but actually in my house, those who have the highest positions of prominence should live like servants to others. So when Jesus is telling the disciples to teach that they're to make disciples and to teach those that they make disciples to obey what he's commanding them, he's saying, You got to teach them the house rules. You got to teach them what life in the kingdom of God is like so they can know how to live as a citizen of the kingdom of God. Now, it's not just the disciples who need to hear this as they are making other disciples, it's actually us too, because it would be really nice for us if that word all wasn't there for us, right? Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. In other words, we are to obey all that Jesus has commanded us. Now, this is where we really wish like Jesus would grade on a curve. And he's like, man, couldn't you just say like 90%? Like if I just keep up not if I can forgive 90% of the people in my life, isn't that good enough? If I can tell the truth 90% of the time, we kind of want that for ourselves, but we'd never take that for anybody else. I was thinking about some examples of that this week. I mean, just think about in the world world of work. Um, if your Amazon driver gets the package 90% to your house, like thanks, but it didn't get there all the way, right? That's not not good enough. Like some things matter when it happens all the way, when it is fully complete, it happens all the way. Um, I think about this, like if you are going to the dentist to uh get a cavity taken care of, and you know, after they get you done with the procedure, they say, hey, get good news, we got 90% of the cavity. Like that that's not good news, right? If you're jumping on an airplane and you're trusting the pilot, you're trusting the pilot's gonna get you a whole lot more than just 90% to your destination, right? Well, in the same way, when Jesus says we're to obey all that he has commanded us, he means all that he has commanded us. Now that that doesn't mean there's not room for grace and forgiveness when we fail. We've talked about that. There absolutely is. But when we follow Jesus, we follow him 100%. My pastor back home would say, you know, either Jesus is Lord of all or not Lord at all. So here's my question to you. Where in your life have you been obeying Jesus just 90% of the way? Where do you need to be the one to observe all that he has commanded you? Um, by the way, uh, Harbor City, we're rolling out equipped classes this week. And one of the reasons we're rolling out these equip classes are men's Bible studies, women's Bible studies, a theology class is because check this out, it's really hard to obey what you don't know. Right? Like it's really, you know, sometimes we don't obey what we do know, but it's also really hard to obey what we don't know, right? Does it make sense? And so one of the things that we're doing as a church is we're rolling out Bible studies, uh, one for men, one for women, and a theology class. Let me see if I can get this right. All right, Monday, we alliterated this. Monday is for men, it's men's Bible study. Tuesday is theology class. Um, I'll be teaching that. And then Wednesday is women's Bible study. And why are we doing that? Because um, Pastor Phil and Pastor Tyler and I and some others, we just we just did not have enough to do on our calendars. And we know that y'all aren't busy, right? That's why we're doing clear, I'm I'm joking. The reason we're doing that is because we're trying to practice the Great Commission here. Um, to teach you, to teach us to obey all that Jesus has commanded. And if we're going to obey what he's commanded, we've got to know what he's commanded. Number three, don't just come to Jesus, don't just surrender to Jesus, but go make disciples with Jesus. I know all nations sounds like an enormous task, but the nations are reached one person at a time. Verse 19. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. That's a big task, right? But the Great Commission is followed with a great promise. And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. I don't know if you um will remember this far back, but when we started our series in Matthew, in Matthew chapter one, uh the angel prophesied that Jesus would have a particular name. We we studied it around Christmas. It's a name sometimes we say around Christmas. Do you remember the name that he will be called? Emmanuel, right? Do you remember what that means? Emmanuel means God with us. So at the beginning of Matthew's gospel, God is saying through this angel, I'm not holding myself off from you. I'm actually sending you my son, and he is he is God the Son, he is God with you. And then Jesus, when he's ascending, is like, I'm I'm not ceasing to be Emmanuel, God with you. In other words, the the ascension of Jesus, which is implied here, it's not Jesus ascending to the Father is not the end of Jesus' ministry. Um, I don't know if you think about this. If you ever thought about the Great Commission as the divine homework assignment, that Jesus is like, well, hey, um, don't you see all the stuff that I did? I'm tired. I was I was born in that nasty stable. I had to live with y'all. It's terrible. We had to walk everywhere. There's no air conditioning. Um, you know, it's uh didn't I was betrayed. I was beaten, I was crucified, I rose from the dead, and now that I've got this awesome body and I've done everything the Father's asked me to do, I'm gonna go up to heaven and I'm gonna rest for a while. Now it's y'all's turn. Y'all get to work, go make disciples, I'll be back when you're done. Bye.

unknown 36:19

Right?

SPEAKER_02 36:20

Isn't that sometimes kind of how we think about the Great Commission? That Jesus is just, how are they doing? When are they gonna wrap this up? They're taking a long time. The Great Commission is not God's divine homework assignment. It's actually something that Jesus promises that he will do with us. And did you see that phrase, I am with you how often? For how long? What's it say, church? Always, even to the end of the age. There's my question. Is it the end of the age? Some of you are like, well, it's soon, but no, like it's not the end of the age, right? That means this is still true. That means Jesus doesn't just send you to make disciples, but he goes with you. Listen, there's um there's something we can do in the church world that's really dangerous. We can take big like theological truths that the Bible teaches us and we can treat it as true as a fact, but we don't actually personalize it and believe it for ourselves. For example, we can think Jesus died for sinners. And that's true. But it act it won't actually become real until you believe that Jesus died for me. In the same way, it's not enough for us to sit here and say Jesus says that he will be with his disciples. You, Christian, you need to you need to hear this and say, No, Jesus has promised that he will be with me. So that this call that he has given me to go and make disciples is something that I don't for him, I do with him. That's why it's a co-mission, by the way. Did you catch that? It's a that word co-means together. It's a mission that's done together. I think that that has at least two meanings. One, it's something that we do together with Jesus. And two, it's something that the disciples do together. This isn't an assignment that's given to 11 individual disciples and say, all right, go get busy. But this is something given to the church together. Making disciples church is something we, Harbor City, that we do together. When someone comes to a service and they're welcomed in the name of Jesus and they are able to come and enter into a worship service and hear the good news, we are making disciples. When the word of God is preached and we're praying, there's a group of people that pray that the Holy Spirit would draw people to repentance and to himself, we are making disciples. When we gather together through corporate worship, we are making disciples. When kids are hearing the gospel and they're for their age and stage and Harbor City kids or Harbor City students, we are making disciples. When we give of our time and talent and treasure, when we give financially to support that, we are making disciples. When we go on mission trips to places like Nairobi, Kenya or across the street, we are making disciples. This call to make disciples church is not just something for you alone or you as an individual or just some missionary group overseas. This is something that is a co-mission. It is something that we do together. And I want you to know it starts with you. So all nations starts with one person, one step. I'm just curious. If I were to we at the beginning of the year, we asked this question who's your one more? Uh, who's one person this year that you would prayerfully consider pursuing that they would come to know and believe in Jesus? Who's your one more? Here's my suspicion. You already have their number in your phone. Maybe this week what it means to go and make disciples is a reach out. Say, hey, you wanna get coffee? You wanna get lunch?

SPEAKER_00 40:10

It starts with you.