Tally
Ho, The Fox!
Chapter
2
The
Commission That Determines Our Mandate Matthew
28:18-20 "All authority has been given to me in
heaven and on earth. Go ye, therefore,
and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things
whatsoever I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even unto the
end of the world." Matthew
28:18-20, KJV The ASSURANCE Behind the Commission
(v. 18, 20a) The
"authority" stated here is a: A. Divine
Authority Exousia ("authority"), literally means
"out of being." All of the necessary authority out of the very being of God is given
to us to fulfill this Commission. B. Delegated
Authority ". . . is given," on the basis of His accomplishment in His
Death and Resurrection. C. Deserved Authority ". . . unto Me." He alone
deserves it. We don't deserve it, but we get
it by our faith-association with Him. D. Defined Authority ". . . in heaven and on earth." The two worlds in which He operates and we operate. The ASSIGNMENT Within the Commission
(v.19, 20) The
Church's (Christian's) Only Marching Orders The
Great Commission constitutes the only "marching orders" Jesus
Christ ever gave to His Church. The
Great Commission is a mandate to soul-winning and missions, but it is far
more than that. There is a five-fold
account of the Great Commission of our Lord in the New Testament. It is stated in different ways in Matthew
28:18-20 (the most definitive statement), Mark 16:15 (the most concise form),
Luke 24:47, John 20:21, and Acts 1:8 (the most expansive interpretation). In
Matthew's account, the Church of Jesus Christ finds the basis of its
task. There is absolutely no question
in Matthew's statement about what Jesus intended His followers to do. It is not a matter of emotion or feeling. It is not a work to be carried on at our
convenience. Jesus left specific
instructions. His Commission contains
His command. The verbs of this Commission are words of action: Go, make disciples, baptize, and teach. Simply stated, the Church is under orders,
but the exact nature of the orders may surprise most believers. Division
of the Commission into Parts I
want to divide the Commission into seven parts. Here is the outline. First, we are responsible to EMPLOY ALL
AVAILABLE PERSONNEL (the word "ye" of verse 19 is plural). Then, we are to ENTER THE FIELD of service
("go"). Third, we are to
constantly ENLARGE OUR VISION ("all nations"). Fourth, we are to EVANGELIZE THE PROSPECTS
(make disciples"). Fifth, we are
to ENLIST THE EVANGELIZED (baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost").
Sixth, we are to EDUCATE AND EDIFY THE ENLISTED ("teaching them
to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you"). And finally, we are to EXPECT HIM TO WORK
("and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the
world"). So you see, there may be
a great deal more to our Lord's Commission than we have honored! As
we seriously and carefully investigate the Commission, we make a startling
discovery. We find that for
approximately two centuries, the Commission worked to perfection and rapidly
impacted the known world. But then a
peculiar thing happened. Something
went terribly wrong. In order to see
this, I want to look at each of the seven points I have outlined. Under each point, I want you to think of
two sub-headings. One is entitled
"The Savior's Strategy," and the other is called "Satan's
Substitute." We will do this with
each of the seven outline points in the Commission. 1. Employ the Personnel The
first point of the Commission is to
EMPLOY ALL THE PERSONNEL. In verse 19,
the word "ye" is plural, and literally means "all of
you." The
Savior's Strategy Someone
described Jesus' intention for the fulfillment of this Commission in these
words, "All believers are to be at it, and they are to be ALWAYS at
it." The one thing, apart from
the divine power, that made the Great Commission such a sweeping success at
the beginning was that it marshaled its total work force to the point of
service. The goal was that every
disciple be a soul-winning, disciple-making reproducer of the same king of
reproducers. They were all
propagandists and evangelists! In
fact, participation was so universal among them that rules had to be made to
avoid confusion (see I Cor. 14:31).
There were no mere spectators or observers among them. Adolph Harnack, a great church historian, said, "When the
church won its greatest victories in the early days of the Satan's
Substitute Now
look at Satan's substitute. The fact
is that the Commission worked. It
worked too well to suit Satan. It
worked so well that it took him 200 years to recover and regroup his
forces. Finally, he fought the
Commission with a substitute program of his own. It is not difficult to see that the
original Commission has been tampered with.
It has been amended, and for long centuries, the churches have fallen
for Satan's program. Satan's most
important blow against the Commission was directed at this first point, to
employ all the personnel. Early
in church history, Satan orchestrated a division of the Church into two
groups, and he over-emphasized the distinctions. The large majority he called "the
laity," and the small minority he began to call "the
clergy". And his selling point
was that laymen are not capable and gifted, and that they have no special
interest in the real vocation of the church, anyway. So Satan presided over
the creation of a hierarchy of professional religious men. These professional
men were to (1) fight all the spiritual battles, and (2) do all the spiritual
work. The business of the
"layman"? To support the
professional leader and to pay for his program to be fulfilled (in the New
Testament, the people are the program). So
a "ladder of dedication" was formed within the Church. From the top of the ladder, there was the
"missionary," then the pastor, then the other professional
religious workers, and at the very bottom was the lowly layman. Someone has described our age as "the
age of the spectator." Football
has 22 players at one time, but it may have several million spectators! Baseball has 18 players at one time,
basketball ten, boxing two, and some Olympic events only one. But all of these sports have millions of
fans. Comic Fred Allen said, "If
society continues the way it is going, we soon may have a world full of
people with eyes the size of saucers, and brains the size of an English
pea." The
Church's Unemployment and Underemployment Problems The
church has developed two (2) "unemployment" problems, and the two
problems constantly support each other, thus making the situation steadily
worse. There is the problem of the
UNEMPLOYMENT of the MEMBERS of the local church body. because the average church member in the
average church does not fulfill his Divinely-assigned job description, his
"paycheck" is reduced to a welfare, subsistence ration. His responsibility is unfulfilled, his
reward is forfeited, the world is left in darkness, and Satan is quite
satisfied. Then,
there is the closely related problem of the UNDEREMPLOYMENT of the
MINISTER. The typical pastor in
today's church is overworked, but underemployed! When Henry M. Stanley returned from Africa
and his renowned search for David Livingstone, a newsman asked him the
facetious question, "What bothered you the most while you were in Just
this week I received the report from a State Convention office that 300
Southern Baptist pastors per month are being forcibly ejected, dismissed, for
pulpits of Southern Baptist churches.
I cannot vouch for that number, but I do know that the problem is
EXTREMELY serious. I also heard the report
several years ago that over 1,000 Southern Baptist pastors a year are
abandoning the pulpits of Southern Baptist churches. Neither can I prove that number, but I do
know that THE PROBLEM IS EXTREMELY SERIOUS!
Perhaps the greatest reason for this attrition of called leadership is
that the leader is tragically unfulfilled by his "underemployment"
situation. Spectator
Christianity in the Church Inside
the church, we have developed a spectator Christianity in which few speak and
many listen. The church is filled with
a "fraternity of fans," fans of the faith. Imagine a wholesale house which had sales
manager whose business was to sell the goods and to lecture on the quality of
the goods and the mechanics of selling.
Suppose it also had a large "selling staff" whose only real
business was to enlist and encourage auditors to listen to the lectures of
the sales manager. What a monstrosity
it would be! How long would it stay in
business? James S. Stewart of Look
at the Christian community. ON WHICH
SIDE DOES THE TYPICAL CHURCH FALL, ON THE SIDE OF THE SAVIOR'S STRATEGY, OR
ON THE SIDE OF SATAN'S SUBSTITUTE? The
answer is tragically apparent. We must
re-examine our Marching Orders! 2. Enter The Field The
second point in our outline of the Commission is to ENTER ALL THE FIELD. The word "go" is an active,
aggressive word, a word which entails movement. The
Savior's Strategy The
Savior's strategy is obvious. In
Matthew 13:38, He said, "The field is the world." This is not the field for "the"
church, IT IS THE FIELD FOR YOUR LOCAL CHURCH! JESUS CHRIST FULLY EXPECTS YOU TO TAKE ON
THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD! The symbols
Jesus used for Christians and the Gospel are bound together by a common
denominator. They are all
characterized by the idea of penetration.
Jesus used such symbols as light, salt, keys, bread, and water. Light is worthless unless it penetrates and
disperses the darkness. Salt is no
good if it remains in the box or the salt-shaker; it must penetrate the salad or the
potatoes. One little boy said,
"Salt is the stuff that spoils the potatoes if you leave it
out." Keys are useless unless the
penetrate the lock. Bread has little
value outside the eater, and water doesn't meet the thirsty man's need unless
it penetrates into him. Even so,
Christians are to constantly (a present participle) penetrate the world. Someone
said, "You can't spell the word 'God' without the word 'go' in it."
and neither can you obey the Gospel and be a good servant of God unless you Go ON HIS TERMS. Every Christian is to live vocationally (as
a Christian) on a frontier of penetration, whether the frontier is a
scientific laboratory, a library, a factory, a fruit orchard, a delivery
route, an executive desk, a space-age jetliner, a psychiatrist's clinic, or a
pastor's study. Our "world"
is wherever we are with people. In
Luke 10:1-3, the Bible tells us that "the Lord appointed seventy, and
SENT THEM TWO BY TWO BEFORE HIS FACE INTO EVERY CITY AND PLACE WHITHER HE
HIMSELF WOULD COME. Therefore He said
unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few. PRAY THEREFORE THE LORD OF THE HARVEST that
HE WOULD SEND (THRUST) FORTH LABORERS INTO HIS HARVEST. Go your ways: behold, I SEND YOU FORTH AS
LAMBS AMONG WOLVES." Note
carefully the units of words which I
have emphasized. What a world is in
these verses! Every Christian is to be
a trailblazer, a forerunner, for the coming of Christ "into every place
whither He Himself would come."
Lambs‑among wolves can only hope to survive by a miracle! Incidentally,
the word "go" in the Commission is NOT a COMMAND. To regard it as a command is to advance
"the ladder of Christian dedication" concept. If it were a command, anyone who went to
some distant place to preach the Gospel or to witness for Christ would be
regarded as special. But the verb
means, "As you are going," or even, "Since you are
going." Jesus would never be so
senseless as to command us to do something that we are already doing! Where is your church on Tuesday afternoon
at three? Is it in the church
building? No, it is
"GOING." The issue is
not: Why doesn't the church get out into the world? It is rather: Is
the church performing its assignment as it penetrates? A
few years ago, I was in a large, beautiful city in a foreign country. I preached at the English‑speaking
church there on Sunday morning. I
arrived considerably early so I could visit with the people as they
arrived. I received quite a shock from
the people. Most of the Americans were
employees of an international oil company and had high‑salaried
jobs. When I asked how they were
enjoying their time there, to a person they all complained of monotony and boredom. Many of them were there for two‑year
assignments. In my message, I asked
why they didn't learn the language and/or arm themselves with Gospel tracts
printed in the language of the people and practice missions, evangelism, and soul‑winning while they were
there. They disregarded this possibility apparently without a
second thought! You see, someone has
sold us a "bill of goods" that leads to a radical betrayal of Jesus
and His Commission. They had
"gone" (even financed by an oil company), but they had no awareness
of their responsibility "as they were going." Satan's Substitute Satan
has intruded a subtle substitute into the mentality of the Church. Two of the greatest of Gospel words are
"come" and "go."
Once we have come to Christ (Matt. 11:28‑30, for example), we
are to "go and tell" all men what we have found in Christ. Satan is
a master manipulator and twister of words.
He induced a slow perversion in the Church from "go and
tell" to "come and hear."
One Socialist observer caricatured the Church in these words: "The motto of Christians seems to be,
'Come here, and get God's message, and go to heaven, or stay away, and go to
hell'!" Paul Little said,
"The problem is not that the GOSPEL has lost its POWER; the problem is
that the CHURCH has lost its AUDIENCE."
Another said, "The Holy Spirit cannot save saints and seats -‑
yet the Church is full of both!" Consider
a medical analogy. Suppose the
Department of Health feared an epidemic of scarlet fever. What would it do to stop the spread of the
disease? It would isolate the germ‑carriers. It would quarantine the infected, and thus
the fever would be contained. Suppose
the Department of HELL wanted to stop an epidemic of New Testament
Christianity. It would surely do
everything possible to isolate the "carriers," and thus stop the
spread. And that is precisely what has
happened in the Church at large. We
have developed a kind of "holy huddle" inside the Church. The team never seems to get "into the
trenches" at the line of scrimmage, where the game must be played if
victory is to be the result. And some
like the coziness and safety of this arrangement. After all, did you ever hear of a football
player getting hurt in the huddle? So
we plan our strategy, analyze the enemy, recite "chalk‑talks,"
and even criticize our own team members.
We worry about membership, programs, buildings and finances. We have weekly "dress parades,"
and our key command seems to be "as you were." Forgive the mixture of metaphors, but you
surely get the message. We are
constantly multiplying our religious activities, perfecting our
organizational programs, expanding and developing our denominational
institutions, and strengthening our ecclesiastical structures, and all in the
world we are doing in many, many church situations is MAINTAINING AND
ENTERTAINING OURSELVES! THE DEVIL MUST
BE AWFULLY HAPPY! The typical church
operates almost exclusively by his substitute instead of the Savior's
strategy. 3. Enlarge the Vision The
third point in our Lord's Commission is to constantly ENLARGE THE
VISION. "All nations" is the
field of activity in the Commission. The
Savior's Strategy Let
us remind ourselves again Jesus Christ is not playing games with us. He fully expects us to "take on"
the whole wide world! And He has given
us a Plan by which we can do it!
Christian, is it your intention to impact ALL NATIONS by "TURNING
MEN INTO DISCIPLES?" Nothing less
than this gigantic assignment is our Master's command. World impact is our mission. OUR GOAL MUST BE TO INFORM AND IMPACT THE
ENTIRE WORLD TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH UNTIL THE END OF TIME. This
third point in the Commission may well be the most important of all. It is from this point that the disciple‑making
motivation arises. I want to spend
some extra space at this point in order to assure that we recognize the
magnitude of the Commission in impacting the entire world. Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said in his book,
The Miracle of Grace, "I would not hesitate to say that finally
there is no more thorough test of our individual profession of faith than our
attitude toward the missionary enterprise of the Church." I might add to the words of this spiritual
giant that "the missionary enterprise of the Church" is not merely
the dispatching of specially burdened believers to distant foreign
countries. It begins in EACH
believer's heart and is carried out by each believer becoming a world‑conscious,
world‑consumed, world‑visionary disciple of Jesus Christ and building
other world‑visionary, world‑impacting reproducing disciples. Is
your personal vision a "God‑big" vision? How far does your intent to impact
reach? The measure of your
effectiveness as a disciple of Christ may be seen in answer to this question: How
far does your influence reach? How
large is your sphere of magnitude? Isaiah 54:2 says, "Enlarge the
place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine
habitations: spare not, lengthen thy
cords, and strengthen thy stakes."
This verse provides a perfect motto verse for disciple‑makers
(all true disciples of Christ), and it calls for an unceasing enlargement of
each believer's vision to impact the entire world. Again
I ask you to face the question: How large is your sphere of magnitude? Do you work under a HAT‑sized
vision, with the Christian life largely beginning and ending for the sake of
YOUR OWN survival and reward? Or is
your vision UMBRELLA‑big, taking in perhaps two people? Or PHONE BOOTH‑sized, covering at
most three or four? Or ROOM‑sized,
including a few friends? Or HOUSE‑sized,
accommodating maybe 25 or 50? Or DEPARTMENT STORE‑sized,
incorporating several hundred? Or MALL‑sized,
able to contain several thousand? Or
GYMNASIUM‑sized, enlarged to tens of thousands? OR do you aspire to a SKY‑sized
vision which would include EVERY HUMAN BEING ON EARTH AND ALL FUTURE
GENERATIONS TO COME? Remember that the
Commission entails a Jesus‑sized, God‑big vision, and we are
to increasingly become like Christ,
thus developing the very Character of God.
We became "partakers of His Divine Nature" (2 Peter 1:4) at
our conversion, and the remainder of our lives is to be spent cooperating
with the expansion of His Nature in us.
"He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30). A part of this enlargement necessarily
means a growing identification with the Divine Obsession‑informing and
impacting every person on earth with the Message of the Glorious Gospel of
Christ. It
is apparent even from a surface reading of the Gospels that Jesus was out to
invade, inform, and impact the whole wide world. He might have said, "I am the light of
It
is said that the soldiers of Napoleon's army carried in their knapsacks a map
of the world in the tri‑colors of Ponder
this question with your heart. Did the
Bible and Christianity originate in any of the fifty states of the John
Oxenham, in his volume, Bees in Amber, wrote: I hear a clear voice calling,
calling, Calling out in the night, O, you who live in the Light of
Life, Bring Us the Light! We
are bound in the chains of darkness, Our
eyes receive no sight, O,
you who have never been bond or blind, Bring us the Light! You cannot you shall not forget
us, Out here in the darkest night, We are drowning men, we are dying
men, Bring, O bring us the Light! Now,
Christian, don't pull theology or proof‑texts on me and tell me that
men without God are dead and cannot talk like that! I know that. Believe me, I know that! This is not the way Godless men live,
think, or speak but it is the way every believer must think! We can't describe death to dead people, nor
can we expect living impulses, activities, and speech from them. NOR CAN WE EXPECT THEM TO ARISE FROM THE
DEAD WITHOUT HEARING THE VOICE THAT RAISES THE DEAD! Romans 10 makes it quite clear: no PROCLAMATION to lost people without SENT‑ONES
to proclaim the message, no HEARING without such PROCLAMATION, no FAITH
without HEARING, and no SALVATION without FAITH (Romans 10:12‑17)! Where does it begin in practical
reality? With the sending and the
saying! Is your church in the sending
business? Is it spending to send so
the message can be spoken? THE
ONLY ALTERNATIVE IS RADICAL
DISOBEDIENCE TO THE COMMAND OF THE KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS. What will our feeling and thinking be at
the Judgment Seat of Christ if we spent our ministries focusing on the
"Killer Bees"
buildings, budgets, bodies, bulletins, boasts, etc.? Shortly
before the middle of the last century, Charles Kingsley visited the However,
there were others who necessarily disagreed with Kingsley's assessment. Among them was a devoted Christian named
John Paton of On
the very day that William
James, the Harvard psychologist, wrote of a house in Our
world has been shrinking in size like a balloon as the air is let out. The airplane makes it possible for a person
to fly in the rising sun from I
look back over my last pastorate of ten years and try to remember the ways we
sought to create world vision and world impact among the members of the Body: (1) We used a "save your change" plan. Each member was encouraged to empty his
pockets at the end of each day and put aside for missions all loose change
except one coin of each denomination a penny, nickel, dime, quarter, and half
dollar. In December, we had a
"missions march" in which we placed all these offerings before the
Lord for His multiplication to the ends of the earth. (2) We used a "Dollar‑a‑Week‑For‑Missions"
plan. We asked each member to give
an extra dollar a week (what American would miss that?) to world missions. (3) We used the "functional Missions Committee" plan. We appointed the members with the most
dominant world missionary spirit and vision, and asked them to "hold the
world in front of us" constantly.
We devoted quarterly services to a missions focus with missionary
speakers (including missionary wives and children), the reading of missionary
letters, special prayer for "our" missionaries, etc. (4) We used the "missionary home" plan. We owned two homes in which we regularly
housed furloughing missionaries, and asked them to "traffic" our
church with their information and influence. (5) We used the "research our world" plan. We asked for geographical, political,
economic, etc., informational reports about the many nations of the
world. We especially tried to study
the "ripe" areas, that is, the areas most responsive to the Gospel
(such as As an example, we employed such
rationale as this. Suppose you owned a
fruit orchard. In Field A, a worker
would harvest five bushels an hour. In
Field B it would take five hours to harvest just one bushel. In Field C nothing could be harvested
because the fruit is still green. If
you had thirty workers today, where would you send them? I think I would send twenty‑nine of
them to Field A so as not to lose the fruit there. I would send the other one to do what could
be done in Field B and also to keep an eye on Field C. The job description for that one would be
to let me know when those fields were ripe so I could reassign the
personnel. Jesus called Himself
"the Lord of the harvest" (Matthew 9:38). Has He mismanaged His business? Certainly not, but typically, His workers
have not been listening to Him. Have
YOU been praying the Lord of the harvest that He would "thrust forth
laborers into His harvest"?
Remember, "the field is the world" (Matthew 13:38). (6) We used the "send a missionary" plan. How could I as a pastor ever be satisfied if
God were not calling young people from the church I serve or my sphere of
influence to mission stations over the world?
I would certainly hold my ministry in suspicion. Just last week, we had a guest in our home
who is between stops in the Orient (in
a "closed" country), back in the United States only long enough to
enlist more support and to bolster his teaching skills so he can be an
"informal, amateur missionary" (that's a laugh; the vision
dominates him!) in that dark land.
Over a year ago now, he was instrumental in winning a young man to
Christ, and discipline him, and already, that young man has won ten others to
Christ! In a "closed"
country! This "missionary"
graduated from college with an electrical engineering degree, then returned
to college after four years in the military to learn computer science so that
he could get a teaching position in a university in the Oriental
country. As I write these words, he is
back in the states, sharpening his computer data and skills in order to be
better equipped as a college teacher.
Why? Because he has captured a
vision for disciple‑making that impacts the world. He told me again of
his pilgrimage through (and appreciation for) the disciple‑making
process and the world‑vision contagion of the church I was privileged
to serve as pastor. (7) We used the "dispatch temporary missionaries" plan. The
world is open now to brief missions penetrations by small teams of people
from churches in the states. The
Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board is one mission agency among many which
offer short trips overseas to anyone for the sake of evangelism and world
impact. The door to the world stands
ajar. A steady stream of growing,
happy, motivated, impacting Christians should be filing through it to the very
ends of the earth. Some "mega‑churches"
should be sending at least 1,000 people per year to world‑girdling
mission projects. I have personally
been on ten major missions trips while continuing a very busy schedule at
home. I have two trips on schedule for
the last half of l991one
to (8) We used the "study world religions" plan. This is self‑explanatory, and
included, when possible, testimonies from converts out of other world religions. (9) We used the "profile missions" plan. When the Great Commission explodes upon the
mind of a pastor as the dynamic of the Gospel, he will inevitably communicate
his obsession in every situation. He will
study the relationship of every major doctrine to this plan. He will "bleed" this passion
through every sermon and presentation of the Gospel. He will expose his
people to the missionary commitment of visionary believers. He himself will
go to as many mission fields as possible, and take as many of his fellow
Christians as possible with him. Christian,
are you "dreaming dreams" and "seeing visions" about
world impact? "Ta ethna" all
ethnic groups, all nations -‑ across the street and across the world. Has God hit you with an "Atlas
Attack" so that you "carry" the world for His sake? Are you pursuing the Savior's strategy, or
have you succumbed to Satan's subtle substitute? "Summit
III", a conference on the Person of Christ and His redemptive work, was held in When
Dr. Winter completed his response, the chairman of the session, himself an
outstanding and renowned Christian scholar, looked at Dr. Winter with a wry
smile and said, "Well, we should have known that you would refer to your
hobby sooner or later." Is world
impact to be the HOBBY of a few fanatical enthusiasts, or is it to be the
HEARTBEAT of every EVERY Christian?
CAN WE TRULY AFFIRM THE LORDSHIP OF JESUS CHRIST AND AT THE SAME TIME
IGNORE THE ONLY MANDATE HE
EVER GAVE TO
US AS OUR
MARCHING ORDERS? Furthermore,
could any group of Christians accurately or adequately discuss the Person and
Work of Christ without specifying His focus on the world? It is incumbent upon us to ponder these
questions all the way through to a satisfactory conclusion. The truth is that EVERY CHRISTIAN SHOULD BE
A WORLD CHRISTIAN. He should be
committed to infecting
others, interceding for missionaries, mission fields, and other
Christians, invading the world, ingesting information, and thus inviting God
to maximize his life for world impact. Friends,
our world is on fire; ablaze with change, turmoil, distress, revolution,
violence, war all the perfect raw materials for the Gospel. "Revolutions per minute" are
occurring. "Is it nothing to you,
all ye that pass by?" One
of the stories in Washington Irving's Sketch Book is the familiar story of a
whimsical character named "Rip Van Winkle." Rip, you will remember, went into a 20
years sleep to escape his own uselessness, boredom, and a vicious, bad‑dispositioned
wife. When he went to sleep, his home
state of Satan's
Substitute Meanwhile, back at Matthew 28:18‑20, point three
of the Commission! We have been
looking extensively at the Savior's strategy under the heading, "Enlarge
Your Vision." Now, let's
momentarily look at Satan's substitute at this point. Satan is constantly turning our attention
back to our own struggles, our own survival, the local institution in which
we serve (and its success), etc. He is
constantly seeking to shrink our vision to something traditional,
institutional, or personal, and thus the overwhelming masses of the world's
population never even hear of Christ and the Gospel. Jesus gave us a plan to impact the entire
world, but we settle for a frustrating, disillusioning, non‑productive
substitute. Which plan are you
following, the Savior's strategy by which you yes, YOU can actually impact
the world, or Satan's substitute which secures the constant reduction of the
Christian community and guarantees that billions will perish uninformed? 4. Evangelize the Prospects The
fourth point of the Great Commission is to Evangelize the Prospects. There are seven verb forms in the Great
Commission, but the only command (the only imperative mood verb) is to
"turn men into disciples."
This is a particular kind of evangelism, not to get "decisions
for Christ," but rather to get "disciples" who will
revolutionize the world. The
Savior's Strategy Think
carefully about this: since this is a command of Jesus His ONLY Marching
Orders to His Church it is impossible to truly BE a disciple unless you are
MAKING disciples. The "make
disciples" clause is not an ADDITION to Jesus' plan, but the very
command itself. The issue is not
"converts," but "disciples." So the Savior's strategy at this point is
not merely soul‑winning, but disciple‑making. We will examine the word
"disciple" more extensively in a later study. Satan's
Substitute What
is Satan's substitute for making disciples?
One part of his plan is to keep lost people lost, or to keep them from
being saved. A second part is to keep
believers from being world-visionary, world‑impacting disciples. Or, if believers become disciples, Satan's
purpose is to make them disciples of a pet idea, or a pet procedure; anything
to keep them from being true, Christlike, New Testament disciples. 5. Enlist the Evangelized The
fifth point of the Commission is to Enlist the Evangelized. "Baptizing them in the name of the
Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." The
Savior's Strategy The
Savior's strategy for each believer is an identification with Jesus Christ
that reveals death to everything the believer previously lived for, and a
resurrection that means that he now lives only unto Christ. By baptism, a believer in Christ
acknowledges death to his past his past sins, his past selfishness, his past
motivation, his past lifestyle, his
past thought patterns his entire past, and acknowledges that he now
has only one real focus for living the glorious Person and all‑consuming
Purpose of Jesus Christ. Baptism is a descent into a watery grave, a picture
of entering into Christ's death, and a rising again from that grave, a
picture of participation with Christ in His resurrection. So baptism reveals the believer's full
enlistment and total involvement in Christian discipleship. The fact that it is "in the Name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" means that the
believer is implicated in total involvement in the total Person and total
Plan of God. Nothing in one's life is
to be retained for his own purposes.
Death has erased that possibility.
Resurrection has secured another direction altogether for his
life. Now, every resource of personality
is devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ. Satan's
Substitute What
is Satan's substitute at this point of the Commission? Satan seeks to push the minds of men to two
extremes. On the one hand, he says
that baptism is a material, mechanical, ritualistic exercise, and thus it has
no importance at all. So Quakers don't
baptize at all for that reason. On the
other hand, Satan says that baptism is ALL‑important and that sinners
cannot have eternal life without it.
So Campbellites make baptism the great capstone of eternal
salvation. In the middle, holding the
extremely weak view that baptism is a "mere symbol," are Southern
Baptists and other church bodies. A
man came to work one day with two black eyes and a bruised and swollen
face. "What happened to
you?" a fellow workman asked.
"My wife beat me up," was the meek reply. "Do you mean you let a mere woman do
that to you?" His answer
was, "Listen! There is nothing 'mere' about by
wife!" Friends, when we say that
any commission of Jesus involves a "MERE picture," are we not on
the side of Satan's substitute?
Nothing Jesus ever SAID is "mere"! Have you seen how big your enlistment by
Jesus Christ and your involvement with Jesus Christ really are? 6. Educate and Edify the Enlisted The
sixth point of the Great Commission is to Educate and Edify all the
enlisted. "Teaching them to
observe (obey) all things whatsoever I have commanded you." Again, the lead verb is a present
participle. It indicates an ongoing,
unceasing, uninterrupted, continual activity. The
Savior's Strategy There
is never to be a moment of my life as a Christian when I am not
teaching! Whether by intentional
example, overt statement, specific planned curriculum, silent influence, structured
or unstructured settings, I am to be an indefatigable communicator of the One
Who is my Life. Every believer is to
be a teacher, whether he has the gift of teaching or not. The means of communication which are
available today are so many and so convincing that a Christian can hardly
offer a valid excuse for not teaching.
Cassette tapes on every conceivable Christian subject
and produced by
Godly, skilled Christian communicators; video
tapes of top quality and content; vast libraries of
books which may be obtained by loan or purchase; regular publications which
contain a variety of teaching articles and studies, etc., etc. Every Christian's residence should be a
repository and a circulation station for these teaching means. Every Christian Church should be a
disseminating station for Gospel truth, using every available means and every
available member to penetrate hearts, homes, community establishments, etc.,
with the total truth of the Gospel.
Each Christian should be a special target for endless discipleship and
disciple‑making teaching. World
vision and world ministries should be dynamically kept before each Christian
and each church. The goal? That every Christian and every church have
on his (its) heart what God has on His:
the impacting of the entire world
by building and deploying world‑visionary, world‑impacting
Christians. Satan's
Substitute What
is Satan's substitute at this point?
He first seeks to prevent the anointed teaching of the great truths of
the Bible at all. Then he seeks to
make "sermon‑tasters" out of Christians. In this manner, they will be immunized from
true Christianity by a mild inoculation of the real thing. Or he makes believers into analysts or sifters
of truth, presuming that they can discern and appreciate truth apart from the
Holy Spirit. Thus, they assume
superiority over the truth and over the teacher of the truth. The New Testament word for "obedience",
hupokonan, means "to hear
under," and it pictures a person listening to God's truth from a
consistent position of humility. James
M. Barrie said, "Life is one long lesson in humility," and this is
certainly true of the Christian life.
But Satan's strategy is to cancel this possibility of humble listening
to truth, and thus to turn the believer back into a self‑governed, self‑centered
life‑style. Satan's
plan for the believer is evident to a perceptive, sensitive Christian. Let me employ a word that shows the end
result of Satan's plan. It is the word
"reprobate." To
"bate" means to "suspend." The prefix "pro" means
"before" or "in front of." To "probate," then, is to suspend
in front of. When this action is
repeated, this is called "re‑probating," or repeated
probating. It is Satan's delight when
a believer parades to church Sunday after Sunday and allows the truth to pass
freely in front of him. The first time
he does this without humble reception of that truth into the broken soil of a
humble, sensitive, obedient heart, he "probates" that truth. The second time he does it, he
"reprobates" that truth. It
is quite easy to see that this is the weekly procedure of the average church
member, Sunday by Sunday, week after week, month after month, year after
year. He has become convinced that
attending church and listening to the sermon IS the Christian life. When this procedure has continued until the
person can actually no longer adjust to truth in the proper way by
brokenness, humility, and prayerful obedience, God steps into the picture and
turns the word "reprobate" back upon this regular listener. He becomes a lifeless, powerless, vision‑less
"pew potato" in a local church.
He may or may not cause overt trouble for the church and the pastor,
depending on the degree of his guilt over his diversion. You see, it was people who constantly went
to church and constantly "handled" truth and constantly analyzed it
who were guilty of the reprobate mind and the unpardonable sin. They were the scribes and Pharisees, the
best and most religious people of their day (see Matthew 12). So Satan wants us to be "cafeteria
line Christians," constantly appraising the truth, and picking and
choosing with regard to our favorite truths, our favorite preachers, and our
favorite sermons. Thus, point six in
the Great Commission is neutralized by Satan's substitute strategy. Christian,
on which side do you fall? Are you
pursuing the Savior's strategy with all the humble industry of your spirit,
or are you "trampling God's courts" as a regular auditor who is
completely non‑productive in fulfilling the Great Commission? 7. Expect Him to Work Point
seven of the Great Commission is to Expect Jesus Christ To Work. "And lo, I am with you all the days,
even to the end of the age."
Please note that the "lo" follows the "go". The promise of Christ's special Presence in
this verse belongs only to those who are pouring their lives into all the
prescribed activities to fulfill the Great Commission. In other words, you cannot validly claim
the PROMISE unless you follow the PLAN.
We will never have New Testament POWER until we follow New Testament
PATTERNS. So most of our prayers for
the Holy Spirit and His power are wasted prayers. What do we want that power for? Why do we seek His fullness? To secure God's approval on our plans? To enhance our reputations? To put a brand of success on our endeavors
for Him? Remember God's answer to the
great preacher's prayer: "My child,
WITH PLANS NO BIGGER THAN YOURS, YOU DON'T NEED MY POWER." The
Savior's Strategy What
is the Savior's strategy? It is to
personally attend the efforts of every disciple‑maker and anoint his
life and activity with the great power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, "And lo, I MYSELF (the
word is very emphatic) am with you all the days, even to the end of the
age." Every Christian is an
inadequate, incapable, insufficient, powerless representative of Jesus Christ
apart from this promise (actually, it is a FACT, not a mere promise). But every amateur in any field knows what
an encouragement, what an enablement it is to have the regular attending
presence of THE EXPERT with him. What
did Jesus mean when He said, "I Myself am with you?" He meant that the Holy Spirit may best be
understood as Christ's "alter ego," or His "other
self." The day will never come
when the Lord Jesus is not powerfully present in the life of His disciple‑making
saint. John
Wesley White said, "To be filled with the 'holy go' is to be filled with
the 'Holy Ghost'." People often
quote this promise out of its proper setting.
When they are in adversity, they use this verse to claim that the Lord
is always with them. But this verse
isn't a balm for adversity. There are
plenty of verses in Scripture which may be used for that purpose, but this
isn't one of them unless, of course, the adversity comes as a direct result
of fulfilling the Commission. This is
a verse for the disciple‑maker.
In other words, if you wonder where to find Jesus today, you must look
where disciples are being made. He by‑passes
many a church where sermons are preached (and even GOOD sermons), where
prayers are prayed (and even SINCERE prayers), and where crowds gather (and
they may even be BIG crowds), and goes to approve and anoint any person who
is making disciples ACCORDING TO HIS NEW TESTAMENT PATTERN. Do
you want to know where Jesus will be attending church next Sunday? Look for Him in a church where world‑visionary,
world‑impacting reproducers of world‑visionary, world‑impacting
reproducers are being made. Not merely
"good Christians", mind you, because that is usually merely a
humanistic brand of Christianity.
Jesus doesn't attend and anoint and approve many churches and many
believer's lives because they don't have on their hearts what God has on His
heart, to "turn men into disciples in all nations." On the other hand, when God sees a disciple‑making
church (building disciples after His pattern and fully depending upon Him in
this gigantic undertaking), He gets thoroughly involved there. He gets down‑right, in‑right,
up‑right, out‑right enthused and excited about it and He joins
that church right away. And He will
meet with the people of that church as long as He can enjoy Himself there. We
need no bigger proof of the bigness of the Commission than to see the
statements Jesus put before and after it.
"All authority is given unto Me in heaven and on
earth." He is the deserving,
delegated EXPERT: "And lo, I
Myself am with you all the days, even unto the very end of the
age." "All the days" in
days of peril or days of safety, in days of failure and of success, of
freedom or restriction, of peace or war, of sowing or reaping, of study or
action. There will never be a day when
this fact fails. When
Frety of Hansen, the great Norwegian explorer, set sail in 1896 to penetrate
the polar ice cap and study the flow of polar ice, everyone knew it was a
hazardous undertaking. He took with
him a cage of carrier pigeons. At each
stage of the perilous journey, he released one of the birds with a message
attached to its leg. Mrs. Nansen's
journal at home contained this entry: "I was overjoyed each time I found
one of the pigeons at my window. When I saw the bird, I knew my husband was
alive and thinking of me." Two
thousand years ago, the glorified Lord Jesus Christ released the Heavenly
Dove, the Holy Spirit, His Other Self, into the world on the Day of Pentecost
the full release of Divine Power for the fulfillment of the Divine Plan. When we obey Him and see the working of His
mighty Spirit, we know He is alive and well, thinking of us, and present and
active with us. It is His desire and
pleasure to act this way all the time.
This is His strategy. Satan's
Substitute What
is Satan's subtle substitute? He tries
to divert our attention to institution‑building and other reduced
activities, and thus preclude the involvement of the Holy Spirit with
us. Or, he tries to convince us that
we are all alone and that no one is listening when we pray. He tries to keep us ignorant of the Holy
Spirit or indifferent to His Person,
Presence, and power, or occupied with a self‑centered
counterfeit experience of Him. On
which side, dear Christians do you fall at this point? The
Great Commission or the Great Omission? We
have examined the Commission that determines our mandate. Remember, it is the only marching orders
Jesus ever gave to His church.
However, Satan keeps the Divine Plan hindered by keeping his own
program in operation. Wherever the
church is DIVERTED to institution‑building, or self‑survival, or merely making "good
Christians," Satan's hand is evident.
In that case, the Great Commission has become the "Great
Omission." Isn't it time that we
put the "see" back into the Commission? Years
ago, I taught this study on the Great Commission in a group of young married
couples. At the conclusion of the
session, a young housewife prayed this prayer which I copied from a cassette
tape later: "Father, I glory in the
fact that there is a man, a human being, in heaven for Us right now. And if He IS and REMAINS truly human, then
He must still have human emotions. He
can enjoy, appreciate, hurt, and suffer.
HOW HIS HEART MUST GRIEVE as He seeks to administrate His cause on
earth, but watches His earthly Body following a strategy that is generally
the EXACT OPPOSITE at every point to that strategy which He gave to His
disciples." Great
Commission or Great Omission? Friends,
isn't it time that we put the "see" back into the Great Commission?
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Ministries