Famous
Last Words – Matthew 28:18-20
New Living Translation (NLT)
For two thousand years the words that Jesus said to his disciples
that day have been read and memorized and pondered and applied and obeyed and
discussed by Christians of every group, sect, organization and denomination. Matthew 28:18-20. This is the story of the famous last words of
Jesus Christ.
If you’re familiar with your Bible you know that the words are
called the Great Commission.
18 Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven
and on earth. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations,[a]
baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
20 Teach these new
disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am
with you always, even to the end of the age.”
These words are important to us for three reasons.
1st
, they are the last words of Jesus.
Last words are always important. When a loved one dies, one of our
questions is, Did he or she have any last words? We all realize that the
last words that people say represent that which is closest to their heart. So these words are important because they are the last words of
Jesus Christ recorded in Matthew’s gospel.
2nd
,because they explain what the followers of Jesus Christ are to do
In the long
period between his first coming and his second coming. Jesus knew it
would be a long time before he would come back.
Just before he departed for heaven, he gave them these last words
which are the marching orders of the Christian church. These verses
describe what you and I are to be doing during that long period of waiting.
3rd
, because they apply without exception to all Christians at all times, in all
places, in every possible situation.
4X times he uses “all” or
some form of the word “all.” Notice verse 18, “All authority has been given to me.” Verse 19, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations.” Verse 20, “Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you
and surely I will be with you always.” That’s very clear, isn’t it? All
authority, all nations, everything, always.
The words of Jesus Christ have a permanent and enduring and
universal validity for you and for me.
Now in these three verses we find three great things.
1. A great claim.
2.A great commission.
3. A great promise.
1. A Great
Claim. 18 ’All
authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” He has not only all power, he has all authority in heaven and on
earth. It means that Jesus Christ has all the authority that God has. In heaven he has authority over the angels. He has authority over men and nations. He even has all the authority under the earth. -Over Satan and the devil. And over all the demons and over all
the forces of darkness.
Jesus Christ has that kind of authority that he is able to give
the commission to the church to go to the ends of the earth. When we read this passage we tend to pass over verse 18 and just
get to verse 19—the marching orders of the church. But verse 19 makes no sense
without verse 18.
It is because he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords that he can
send his followers to all the nations with the gospel. It is because of who he is and what he has accomplished that we
can take his gospel to every nation and know that we will be protected as we do
so. It is because he has all authority that he can send us &t we
can dare to go.
That is the great claim that Jesus makes here. The claim worth considering in these uncertain days. All authority
has been given to him.
2. A Great
Commission 19-20a
Verses 19-20a say, “Therefore go and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”
This is the Great Commission of our Lord Jesus Christ.
1. What we are to do “ …make disciples….”
In the original Greek, there is only one verb. That’s important
because you could read this and it might seem as if there are two or three or
maybe four verbs. It’s translated with two words in English: make disciples. The other three words are participles. What is translated as “go” is really “going.” Baptizing is a
participle. Teaching is a participle. They’re all dependant on the action of the verb—make disciples.
Jesus in his last message to his followers, in his famous last
words, as he was about to bid farewell to them forever, said, “Gentlemen, after
I am gone I want you to do one thing and one thing above everything else. I want you to make disciples.” Or you could say, “ disciple the nations.”
What does this word disciple mean? It’s a word from the
classroom. It means to be a learner. A disciple is someone who is a learner from someone else. To be a disciple is to be a follower of someone else. And to make disciples is to go out and convert somebody who is an
(unbeliever) or bystander into an active follower.
This is what the church of Jesus Christ is to be about. We are to be about making disciples of other men and women,
turning them into followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is to be the central task of the Christian church.
If We Don’t Go They Won’t Come. We make a big mistake as a church if we believe the world is to
come to us. We make a big mistake if we think we can convert the world just by
staying here and being good. It will never, never, never
happen.
We think if we just dress up and make the service look nice enough
people will come running to join us. It’s not true.
It’s so easy to think that because we’ve got a beautiful sanctuary
and beautiful buildings and because we’ve got a large church and a large staff
and a large budget that we can just show up and that’s enough. Just being here
is not enough.
We are called by Jesus Christ to go out from this place into the
world and make disciples of all the nations. That is the great purpose
for which this church is in existence today. And that is what we are to be doing. It is the standing orders of
the gospel. We are to go and make disciples.
We are to be a disciple-making church. We are to be
disciple-making Christians. That is what we are to do.
2. Where we are to do it
Jesus said, “therefore go and make disciples of all nations" The Greek word translated “nations” is ethne. We get from it the
English word ethnic, a word often used to describe the various people groups
that dot the Sacramento area. When we read nations we think political boundaries. We think of
Iraq or Kuwait or Thailand or Bolivia or Venezuela or Brazil. But that’s not
what Jesus means when he talks about nations.
He means the ethnic groups of the world. The people groups. The language groups. The racial groups of the
world. He means that his church is
to be a church going out to all people groups of the world and all language
group and all racial groups of the world.
We draw from this fact 2 simple conclusions.
1. When Jesus said to his disciples, “Go and make disciples of all
nations,” he was indicating that Christianity from the first was to be a
world religion. That was a shocking thing
for his disciples to contemplate. These were eleven Jewish men who had been raised in Orthodox
Jewish homes.
You know what he’s saying? “Men, I want you to give up your
prejudice. I want you to give up your small vision. I want you to get over your
ethnocentrism. I want you to get over your small world and I want you to cross
over racial boundaries and I want you to cross over ethnic boundaries. I want you to cross over
color, religious, language, geographic
boundaries. I want you to take my gospel to the ends of the earth.”
2. It means that Jesus Christ from the very beginning was meant by
God to be the Savior of the whole world. Not just of Americans. Not just of the Jews. Not just of the
Gentiles. Jesus Christ is the Savior of the entire world. Do you know what else that means? That means that his church
is to be representative of the vast variety of people in the world. In his church there are to
be blacks and whites, rich and poor, young and old. People from the upper class and people from the lower class.
That’s the real rainbow coalition.
3. How we are to do it
This comes from the three participles Jesus used. Number one is going. Number two is baptizing. Number three is teaching. We are to do those three things. That is how we make disciples.
By going, and sharing the gospel. By baptizing—bringing them into the family of God and the
Christian church. By teaching them everything
Jesus has taught us.
Now, let me give you three words for this. Going is invitation. Baptizing is initiation and teaching is indoctri-nation. You know what indoctrination is, don’t you? It’s taking your
doctrine and putting it into somebody. You teach it to them. You
impart it to them.
We are to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with the whole wide
world. With everybody we can find. We are to bring them into the church. We are to baptize them and then… we are to teach them
everything Jesus has taught us, whatever
they need to know in order to follow Jesus Christ effectively.
Please understand some-thing. It is never the purpose of the Christian church merely to get more
church members. God forbid that our purpose would to be merely to get more church
members.
It is never the purpose of the Christian church to produce merely
intellectualized Christians. It is never the purpose of the Christian church to produce passive
pew sitters and casual onlookers.
4. What the result is supposed to be
So that brings me to the fourth thing that I find in this Great
Commission. We find out the result is supposed to be a spiritual
multiplication. The result is to be a church full of spiritual multipliers. A church full of people who can reproduce themselves. And so it is that we win one and we teach one and baptize one and
we bring them into the church and we equip them and send them back out.
And he brings his friends in and he wins them and he teaches them
and he sends them out and they win their friends and they come in and he
teaches them and we send them out. So it’s an unending cycle of spiritual
reproduction.
The real mark of the health of the church is not the size of the budget, the size of the staff, the beauty of the choir, the glory of the music, the wonder of the architecture, or any of the worldly measures we like to use.
The real mark of the church in Jesus’ eyes is a church that is 100
percent dedicated to fulfilling the Great Commission. That’s a good standard for evaluating all our ministries. Are they somehow involved in the disciple-making process.
If our ministries are not
doing that, we ought to change them or adjust them to bring them back into line
with what Jesus was talking about two thousand years ago.
We need this reminder. We may face war in Afghanistan. But Jesus
said, “I am with you always.” Some of us face the loss of a job. Some of us face financial
setbacks. Some of us face a marriage with apparently unsolvable problems. Some of us face sickness among our friends and family members. Some of us are scared to death about what tomorrow holds.
But Jesus said, “I am with you always.”
As you go, as you make disciples, as you follow Jesus Christ
through history, we have this promise. “I am with you for all time to the end of time no matter what
situation you find yourself in.”
Conclusion :
If this is the Great
Commission of Jesus Christ, then this ought to be our great commission as well.
If this is what was uppermost on Jesus’ mind, then this is what
ought to be uppermost on our minds. If this is what Jesus’ heart was beating for at the end of his
ministry, then this is what our heart ought to be beating for. Here is the bottom line: If
Jesus were to come back today, what do you think he would say to you?
“Jim, go and make disciples.”
“Betty, go and make disciples.” Or How
many have you discipled? This is what was on Jesus’ heart at the end of his ministry on the
earth. This is what he would say if he could speak to us today.I want to ask you a question. If this is so important, what are
you doing about it?
Now, please, don’t say,
“Pastor , I don’t want to be a missionary.”We don’t mean that. I am saying that what was most
important to Jesus must become most important to us. And lesser things must be swept away in the light of this great
purpose.
That which was top priority for Jesus Christ must become top
priority for us. We must become Great Commission Christians whose hearts are sold
out 100 per cent to being a discipler and bringing as many people with us as we
possibly can.
His last words must become our first words.
Application:
Where should we begin? I have two things to suggest to you. First, we need to get back and rediscover the heart of Jesus
Christ. One reason we’ve drifted away from what Jesus said is because
we’re far away from knowing Jesus and where his heart really is. I want to challenge each one of you to begin today to read through
the four gospels this year. Not just academically. Not just for head knowledge.
Not just so you can check off the boxes. But so, that when you are done you will come closer to
understanding the heartbeat of our Lord.
Second, we need to become personally involved in disciple-making. Take out a 3 x 5 card and write down the names of three people
that you would like to see come into the Kingdom of God during 2012-13. Then
ask the Lord Jesus to give you opportunities to reach them sometime this year
with the gospel. Let that be the beginning of your Great Commission prayer
list.
What a difference it would make this year if we dedicated
ourselves to knowing Jesus Christ better until we knew him so well that the
things that broke his heart would break our hearts as well.
What a difference it would make if the things that motivated him
motivated us. If that happened, we would see the world as he saw it and our
hearts would be moved to go into all the world and make disciples of all the
nations.
God grant that we should become——Great Commission Christians who
are fully dedicated to building a Great Commission church.
Adapted from the message of : Ray Pritchard
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