Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Evangelism in this address from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library
In a moment, we’re going to focus on Matthew, chapter 28, but first, a preliminary comment and then a response to a couple of questions. I would like to pay thanks to those who have organized the conference, not simply to the people in the front and people like Pat whom everyone will know, but anybody who does itinerant work and travels from place to place understands that even in a small conference like this one, there is a great deal of work behind the scenes.
It’s just astonishing how much work goes into even a small conference in terms of logistics and answering the mail and accounting and food and so on. For all those people behind the scenes who are unknown, it’s important to remember that 50 billion years from now, people will still be honoring those who give a cup of cold water in the name of the Lord. Isn’t that a nice thought?
Likewise, those who have made chocolate cake and put out Diet Coke and all kinds of things along those lines.… I’m sure in our churches, many times we need to remember what Paul says, that those who seem to be without honor are given more honor.
In discussion afterward, there were a couple of questions that were brought up to me that are probably worth making public before we turn to the text at hand. The first is this. Somebody said, “Look. You spoke of how a lot of the new postmodern generation hates hypocrisy and likes a certain kind of integrity and so forth, but isn’t that a bit inconsistent with moral relativism?”
Yes, that’s exactly the point. In other words, on the one hand, this is a generation which really does, on the whole, prove very suspicious of guff, of hypocrisy, of double standards and so on. They really don’t perceive until it’s pointed out to them how many double standards moral relativism leads them into. It’s why I can escape from a university campus unscathed when I give my lecture on the intolerance of tolerance.
What I do is point out that it is a kind of double standard. You say it lovingly with a smile, and people say, “Oh yeah. I hadn’t thought of that.” You know? Then suddenly you’ve opened up a corner for talking about the gospel and so on and who really is tolerant and who is really not. It’s one of those little corners that has to be opened up.
Having said that, although it’s important to show the inconsistency of it, it is, nevertheless, important to give credit where credit is due. This is not a generation by and large which is just panting to follow into a kind of legalistic sets of standards in order to sort of climb up on top of everybody else. It’s motivated differently. It is far more relational than my generation was. That’s something God can use, even if it’s something that can be twisted in all kinds of ways.
That’s just another way of saying my generation, which was still far more linear, far more rational, could turn the linear thinking and the logical coherence into all kinds of distorted philosophies. Just ask Hitler. Ask Nietzsche. We can twist anything. We can twist a good pursuit of relationships into perversity. We can twist a good pursuit of logic and consistency into ugliness. We can twist anything. That’s the nature of sin.
But having said that, it’s also important to see where the image of God is surfacing in all kinds of ways in human relationships, in human beings, in another generation, in another culture. It’s important to make use of these things and signal what is good or right about the whole thing, even if there’s a lot that’s wrong.
I think there too you have an example from Paul, don’t you, in that he can start with the Athenians and say, “I see that in every way you are very religious [or very spiritual].” Even though he himself is distressed by the idolatry, at least it’s better than being complete secularists as some people were in the first century. Ask Lucretius, for example, who was pretty close to what we would call a modern naturalist. It’s important to understand that there are some things we as Christians can latch into and make use of and appreciate and commend people for.
Then also there was a question just on the fly. Would I say a bit more about authenticity? By authenticity, I simply mean this. It’s related to the first question. We must ring true. You sometimes find a church with remarkably (I’m making no moral judgment) old-fashioned approaches to corporate worship and all this sort of thing that nevertheless attract a vast number of young people for the very simple reason that the church rings true. There’s authenticity.
The really crucial dividing line is not whether or not it’s this style or that style. I think that in due course, it is important to start recognizing not all hymnody ceased with Wesley or whatever. There is an ongoing thing to be said about contemporaneity. Having said that, contemporaneity without authenticity is no great advantage either. That can just sound phony and artificial, and it generates suspicions.
Likewise, in our speech, in our sermons.… I know a preacher who shall remain nameless because some of you know him. He is in his seventies now. He belongs to another generation, and the generation he belongs to is not his own generation. It’s a generation about two before him. As a result, he has a certain kind of florid style of exposition that I’m sure played very well in London in the 1880s, but I have some worries about.
“We have gathered together today, ladies and gentlemen, in order to …” See, for my ears, this sounds about as phony as a $3 bill. But if you knew the chap, you would also know that’s the way he talks around the dinner table. “Please pass the salt.” I mean, when you actually get to know the guy, this is the way he talks all the time.
He can’t help it. Once you get to know him well enough, you overlook that, and you listen, because the guy really is authentic. On the other hand, for somebody coming in off the street for the first time hearing him.… Well, a lot of my university friends, I wouldn’t take them to hear him. He’d be an embarrassment. He just sounds phony until you get to know the guy personally.
Then, you see, if you get all smarms and warms and all this sort of thing and then you discover that up close and personal, a husband and wife are fighting and they don’t really love their kids and they can talk a smooth line but they don’t really care about relationships, then all this stuff about love and Christ Jesus and forgiveness and forbearance smells phony as well.
Authenticity has to do with integrity … integrity of relationships, such that what you profess is what you are. Integrity is nothing other than aligning your private life and your public life. If there’s a double standard so that what you say and do in private is different from what you say and do in public, you’re lacking integrity. You’re lacking corporately authenticity. It is aligning these things together. Eventually, people snuff that out. They might not snuff it out right away, but eventually they do.
In that sense, because this generation is interested in relationships and integrity, a church that is characterized by personal and corporate alignment with what is being professed has a certain kind of powerful witness which cannot displace the actual articulation of the gospel but, nevertheless, is a great compliment to it and generates a certain kind of credibility which will otherwise be massively lacking. That is, of course, always true to some extent. I think it’s particularly true in this postmodern generation for whom relationships are so important. I hope that helps at least a little.
Now I want to turn to Matthew 28. We’re going to turn back to straightforward exposition of Scripture for this last 35 minutes. I shall read the whole chapter, but in fact, we’re going to focus on the last three verses.
“After the Sabbath at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: “He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.” Now I have told you.’ So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.
Suddenly Jesus met them. ‘Greetings,’ he said. And they came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’ While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened.
When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, ‘You are to say, “His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.” If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.’ So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.
Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’ ”
This is the Word of the Lord.
What is it that primarily motivates us in our evangelism? I suspect the answer to that is pretty diverse, and it might depend a bit on which church you come from. In some churches, what is stressed is the Great Commission. This is a command. It’s not a suggestion. It’s a command, the last command, the commission. Therefore, we’d better do it, because we’ve been told to do it.
For other people, it’s a kind of picture of the lostness of the world. Sometimes in missions conferences, that’s presented in pretty graphic terms. Look what sin does in terms of AIDS in Africa. Look what it does in terms of totalitarianism in communist China. Look what it does in terms of hatred in the Balkans. It is the gospel that brings solution to these things. We need missionaries. Look what it does in the world of Islam. What we need are really courageous missionaries to handle things in Muslim countries and so on and so on.
The need itself is sometimes ratcheted up to be seen as a great threat engulfing men and women into a lost eternity. What we need then is men and women who see the need. Sometimes it’s presented in terms of opportunities. Oh, I know there are always doors that are closed somewhere or other, but there are always other doors that are opened. So what are you going to do with your life? Get a job? Make a lot of money?
Why don’t you get a job and then use the job in Mainland China, learn some Mandarin, and help with the underground church? So you’re going to become a computer technologist. Why don’t you teach computer technology in one of the new universities in Kenya and help the church there? Maybe you’ll give up your small ambitions to become a nuclear physicist or a research microbiologist and become a Christian pastor instead.
The opportunities themselves, you see, become part of the play that is laid out on people sometimes too. Is that not correct? I suppose all of these have some legitimacy, and if it helps provide some motivation, it’s better than not being motivated. But one of the striking things about the book of Acts is that so far as Acts itself goes, not one of these motives is major in the multiplying sense of evangelism and mission that you get through its chapters.
For example you don’t find Christians, apostles, or others sitting around in a committee room somewhere saying, “Well, you know, the Lord has given us this commission. Because we have this commission, we’d better start figuring out how to do this. First step, I guess, is we’d better start evangelizing here and then figure out how we get to the next community.”
Do you get that sense? There’s Peter in chapter 10 having to be persuaded by this triple vision of the sheet that he really can go to Gentiles. You don’t get the impression that Peter and the rest of the apostles are having committee meetings about how to do it. They’re still thinking of all the theological reasons of why they can’t. When you get to Acts, chapter 13, it’s by a prophetic word that we’re told Barnabas and Saul are separated out for this special, short-term evangelistic work in the northeastern end of the Mediterranean.
Now I know Saul is doing a lot of evangelizing after he is converted and all of that, but you don’t sense there’s a kind of corporate church powerful obedience to something called the Great Commission, do you? Nor do you sense that the church in Acts is reflecting on all the glorious opportunities we have to take our gospel around the Mediterranean. How does it first get spread? Well, it first gets spread because there’s persecution in Jerusalem.
Because there’s persecution in Jerusalem, Christians scatter and go hither and yon, keep gossiping the gospel. As a result, it’s a bit like a blob of mercury. You hit it, and then you have a lot of globs of mercury. That’s the way it goes. You don’t sense again that this is in any sense out of strategy or sense of obligation or opportunity or career advancement or any such thing, do you?
Do not misunderstand me. A commission is still a commission, and there are opportunities. That’s why Paul elsewhere, for example, in his writings can say, “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.” He senses a certain kind of obligation in his own life, doesn’t he? Yes! He can speak of, “There are many opportunities, but there are many adversaries.” He can see opportunities that are opening up in front of them and some of the difficulties. So these sorts of reasons and so on are found somewhere or other at some layer or other of the New Testament writings. That’s true!
But you don’t sense that they are the very pulse of the church’s initial outreach and evangelism, do you? Strange, isn’t it? With this in mind, I want to revisit the Great Commission and think through exactly what it says and show you how it bears out in the early church and should bear out today as well. Let me list then some neglected features of the Great Commission. For our time’s sake, we’ll focus on the Great Commission as it is found in Matthew’s gospel, although somewhat similar things could be said elsewhere. Focusing on Matthew, then, here we are.
1. The Great Commission in Matthew is not something tacked on to the end of the book, but it’s part of a sustained theme.
You see, it’s not as if you’ve read through the whole book, and there you have your theology sorted out and your view on food and your view on the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament and your eschatology and the eschatological discourse and all about parables and on and on and on and on.
Then after you’ve read through the whole book and read the passion narrative, the resurrection narrative, then, “Oh, by the way. Now here’s your part. Here’s your job. Get to it, folks.” Begin with Matthew 1:1. “The origin of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham …” That’s the way it begins.
But everybody in New Testament times remembers the promise that was initially given to David and the promise initially given to Abraham. To Abraham, God said these words: “Through your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” That’s a theme Paul develops constantly. Moreover, it’s a theme that is developed actually in the following verses. Take a look at the genealogy; there are four women mentioned.
One of them, for example, is Ruth. She is a Moabitess. According to the law, no descendant of a Moabitess to the tenth generation could join the Jewish community. In three generations, you have King David who was the prototypical Davidic dynasty king from whose dynasty Jesus himself arises. Then you have Rahab, and you have Bathsheba, whose husband quite clearly is another Gentile (Uriah).
There are these connections all through the initial genealogy. Then you come to chapter 8, verses 10 and 11. The Lord Jesus says these words: “I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west [that is, from Gentile turf], and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.”
That is, an assumption that this mix of the people of God will include both Jew and Gentile. Earlier, John the Baptist had said the same thing. Chapter 3, verses 7 through 9. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ ” as if being a descendant of Abraham is sufficient, being an Israelite is enough. “I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.”
In other words, the figure of Abraham has become, in the teaching of John the Baptist, in the teaching of Jesus, in the teaching of Paul, in the teaching of the New Testament, and built into the very structure of Matthew, a sign that the gospel goes out not merely to the constraints of the old covenant people but, “Through this one seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed.”
The same sort of language is picked up in chapter 11, in chapter 15. You have, on the one hand, the feeding of the 5,000, which is in a Jewish context. Then the feeding of the 4,000, which is in the Decapolis in a Gentile context. It’s a way of saying the same God who provides wonderfully for the Jews also provides wonderfully for the Gentiles.
Then in chapter 24, verse 14, in the so-called Olivet Discourse, Jesus says, “This gospel of the kingdom must be preached to the whole world … and then the end will come.” In other words, what is at issue here is more than something that is tacked on that we call the Great Commission. It is a way of understanding mission theology throughout the whole Bible. There is a biblical theology of mission.
For those of you who are interested in tracking this out in much more detail, let me recommend a book to you. It’s by Peter T. O’Brien and Andreas J. Kostenberger. Salvation to the Ends of the Earth: A Biblical Theology of Mission. It’s in the NSBT series (New Studies in Biblical Theology), and it attempts to give you a whole biblical theology of mission.
Now the reason I’m saying this is you must see the command to evangelize, this business of reaching out to men and women, is not something that’s tacked on at the end of our Gospels as a commission which is sort of an optional extra to your whole Christian life. It is bound up with the whole coming and mission and teaching of Jesus. It is a deeply imbedded biblical theology.
It starts as soon as you have the fall as the grace of God, you see, begins to reach out to a lost Adam and Eve. It extends to Abraham and then to Nineveh in the time of Jonah and promises that on the last day, there will be people coming from Assyria and Egypt as well as from Israel. Each will be a third, and they will all gather around God’s holy hill. It is a deeply biblical theme.
Thus to try to excuse ourselves from mission and evangelism on the ground that it’s just one small commission and meanwhile we follow the other commands of Jesus is to fail to see that it is an integral part of what it means to be a Christian. It is an integral part of biblical thinking and outlook and perspective.
2. The Great Commission is bound up with the authority of Jesus.
“All authority is given to me,” Jesus says. “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations.” Now let me draw some implications from this authority.
A. This authority builds confidence.
“All authority is given to me. Therefore go and make disciples.” I was brought up in French Canada in the province of Quebec. My father was a church planter in French Canada at a time where it was not only hard but dangerous. Baptist ministers spent a total of eight years in jail between 1950 and 1952 when I was just a little gaffer. I used to get beaten up from time to time as a maudits Protestant.
Catholicism at the time in French Canada (it’s very different now) was medieval in its outlook, and you were charged with disturbing the peace and inciting to riot if you handed out any tracts or went door-to-door or any such matters. It was a dangerous and difficult time. No church was bigger than 30 people, and they were all supported by English Canadian dollars, just a handful of workers trying to work in this population of about 6.5 million French speakers.
Then at the late 50s, the Belgian Congo (as it was then) erupted and became the nation of Zaire, which later became the Congo, and then has now become the Republic of the Congo, I think, now. It’s changed its name two or three times. In the initial eruption that formed the nation of Zaire, there were hundreds of missionaries who left because it was just too bloody and too dangerous, including quite a few American missionaries who returned home.
In addition to tribal languages, they had also learned French, because French was the language of instruction in the Belgian Congo. Looking around for somewhere else to go in the francophone world, some of them cast their eyes northward to French Canada and moved up to Quebec. They might not have known Quebec particularly, but at least they knew French, and thus they knew some of the shared literature and heritage and so forth.
At the time, I recall it was a bit of an encouragement for some of the workers up there to have some fresh blood and fresh missionaries and all of that. Not one of them lasted more than six months. Not one. By this time, I was in high school, and high school students know a great deal. I said to my father, “What’s the matter with them? Are they all a bunch of quitters?”
My father, being the mildest and gentlest of men (unlike his son), said, “Well, Don, you have to understand. They’ve served in a part of the world where they’ve seen a great deal of fruit. They’ve built hospitals. They’ve built schools. They have seen hundreds … some of them thousands … of people come to know the Lord, whole movements of God.
They’ve seen a great deal of fruit and success. They come here, and they find everything very hard and difficult and slow, and they interpret that as not being in the center of God’s will, as somehow being outside the frame of where they ought to be. So they reconsider, and they go elsewhere.”
So I said to him as only a 15-year-old can, “Then why don’t you go somewhere else where you can make more of your life?” He wheeled on me, and he said, “I stay because I believe God has many people in this place.” He walked out of the room.
Do you see what he was saying? He was quoting the words given to Paul in Acts, chapter 18, where Paul has been beaten up and thrown in jail in Philippi and run out of town on a rail in Thessalonica and facing intellectual difficulties in Athens. He gets to Corinth, and quite frankly, he is scared. God says, “Preach on, Paul, because I have many people in this place.”
The doctrine of election that presupposes the sovereignty of God, functioning as an incentive to evangelism.… In other words, my dad didn’t stay in Quebec because he thought he was such a gifted orator. “Ah, just give it time. They’ll crack. I’ll win them.” No, because he believed God had many people in that place.
Samuel Zwemer preached the gospel for 40 years amongst the Muslims in the nineteenth century, translated the Bible into Arabic in a fresh work, saw 8 Muslims across 40 years profess faith, several of whom were killed by their peers. For 40 years work! When the saints go marching in, will he be at the back and George Whitefield and Billy Graham at the front maybe? I don’t think it works like that.
You see, what will stabilize you, what will give you courage, what will give you incentive to keep on is deep, deep assurance that Jesus is King. Jesus is Lord. “All authority is given to me.” This is the one who earlier in this book says, “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
If you think that ultimately all of God’s work depends on your cleverness or your methods or what course you’ve taken or what you’ve read, you’re going to face deep disillusionment at some point, or you’re going to scramble for the latest, cheap, faddish device merely to try to get some result somewhere.
Now don’t misunderstand me. We are obligated to try to do the best we can. Peter tells us to be ready to give an answer to every man for the hope that lies within us. Did you see the example of a Paul and of a Peter show us their flexibility, their ability to learn and to speak to different groups and so forth? Yes, yes, yes! All true! All true! But at the end of the day, if men and women are genuinely converted, it’s because God is doing the converting.
In this broken, twisted world, however much say the Devil has, however much oppression there may be, however many markers there may be, however many cultural rises and falls there may be, however many terrorists there may be, however much discouragement there may be, however there may be times when you’re green with envy because some other church is prospering and you’re not, at the end of the day, the head of the church is not you. It’s the one who said, “I will build my church” and then had the audacity to say, “All authority is given to me. Therefore go.”
In other words, our confidence should not be predicated on our results or fruitfulness or fame or fortune or the like, because some of us are called like the Zwemers of this world to live and serve in very difficult places. The gospel may be multiplying in parts of Indonesia, and the gospel may be multiplying in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and the gospel may be multiplying in parts of Latin America.
On the other hand, the gospel is not multiplying all that fast in Japan. It’s not multiplying all that fast in many parts of North Africa. It’s not multiplying all that fast in Saudi Arabia. Who cares? “I will build my church.” Jesus is Lord. All authority is given to him. That’s the incentive. That’s the courage. That’s the strength. Moreover, in the second place …
B. This authority is without geographical limit.
“All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth.” Jesus is seen as the great mediatorial King. This is one of the great themes of the New Testament. Perhaps it comes to clearest articulation in 1 Corinthians 15. All of God’s authority now is mediated exclusively through Jesus. All of God’s sovereignty for the whole world is mediated exclusively through Jesus.
He must reign, we’re told, until he brings all of his enemies under his feet, and the last enemy finally to be put down is death itself. Death will die. Then he has finished all of his mediatorial work, and as mediator, he offers the whole thing to his Father.
In other words, our mediatorial King, the one who died on the cross and rose again for our justification, is also the one who exercises every bit of God’s sovereignty throughout the entire universe. No distant God. This is the crucified and risen God. That means we need to look at history, at developments, so far as we are able through a glass darkly for a biblical stance.
I was in Britain in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. For those of you who are little older and remember 1989, you remember it was a pretty big deal over here. Nothing like how big a deal it was in Europe. The Sunday after the Berlin Wall fell, I remember what our preacher said in the church we went to. He began quoting large chunks from Isaiah 40 and following.
“Where are your gods? Can they tell the future? Can they bring it to pass? No, they’re formed by craftsman. You nail them up on a wall so they don’t tip over and fall. But I, I the Lord, I know the end from the beginning. All the nations of the earth are merely the dust of the fine balance in my eyes. I raise them up, and I put them down.
Where is your soothsayer? Where is your god to tell me what shall be? But I say it shall be, and it comes to pass. Where is your foreign office guru? Where is your State Department pundit who predicted this would come to pass? I, I the Lord, I raise up nations, and I put them down. I raise up walls, and I tear them down.”
How many of us believed in 1987 that we’d have ready access with the gospel and all kinds of things into Central and Eastern Europe and Russia and so on? Did you believe that? Oh, in hindsight, everybody started claiming how wonderfully far-sighted they were, but the fact of the matter is it was God alone who raises things up and puts them down.
There is a sense in which we need to start viewing things from a certain kind of global perspective. How should we be viewing 9/11? Oh, I would love to unpack that one for you a bit. In fact, I tried to in that book Love in Hard Places. I am saying the claim that Jesus is Lord has bearing on how we view history and, therefore, how we view our place in unfolding the gospel in this world.
C. This authority presupposes that Christ is worthy to be worshiped by all.
“All authority is given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all.” Do you see? What is presupposed is that Christ has the right to be acknowledged as Lord. He is to be worshiped by all, for this ultimately leads to the claim of Philippians, chapter 2.
One day every knee will bow. Whether in faith and obedience or in terror and dread, every mouth will confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Enough of that. The Great Commission in Matthew is bound up with the authority of Jesus.
3. The Great Commission in Matthew is bound up with discipleship.
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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.”
A few years ago, there was a study done by the Princeton Institute that examined sociological trends in religion. There they discovered that in the last 15 years or so, there has been either a steadying or a slight rise in people who are religiously observant. Not a decline. Steady or a slight rise in people who are religiously observant as measured by such observable neutral things as attendance at synagogue, church, mosque, whatever; people claiming to read their Bibles; people believing in a supreme being or whatever.
What they also remarked is that during the same period, there is a decline in the way people connect how they live their lives with their religious beliefs. In other words, you can be ever so religious. It just doesn’t matter. That’s like ancient paganism. In ancient paganism you could believe a whole lot of stuff, but it didn’t affect how you lived. We’re returning to a pagan view of religion.
Ethics was one domain; religion was another domain. But that’s not Christian religion at all. In the Christian religion, if you trust Jesus, then inevitably you are confessing him as Lord. To confess him as Lord has to be worked out in terms of submission to all he says and does. That is what basic biblical Christianity is about.
That is bound up then with how we go about this business of evangelism and growth. You see, if we are to teach people everything Jesus commanded.… That’s what the text says. “You make disciples of all nations teaching them to observe all that I have commanded.” One of the things he commanded is to go and make disciples.
How does the church grow? By making disciples. If you make disciples, then you’re teaching them all Jesus taught and commanded. One of the things he taught and commanded was to go and make disciples. Then as you make disciples, you teach them all Jesus taught. One of the things Jesus taught was to go and make disciples. That’s how the church grows. There is no other way. None.
This isn’t tacked on thus at the end. It’s bound up with our salvation. It’s bound up with what it means to be a Christian. It’s bound up with what it means to be a disciple. It’s bound up with what it means to say Jesus is Lord. If I had time, I would unpack this business of baptism here a wee bit too, but instead with time racing on, let me come to the last point, the fourth point.
4. The Great Commission in Matthew is bound up with Christ’s continued presence.
The passage ends, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” This is an extraordinarily interesting way to end not only the commission but the book. The easiest way to see its significance is to see carefully what the text does not say.
The text does not give out verse 20 as a condition. It does not say, “Go and make disciples and, provided you do, I will be with you to the very end of the age.” It’s not cast that way, is it? It’s not listed as a condition. “If you don’t make disciples, then I won’t be with you to the end of the age. You’re on your own.” It’s not cast that way, is it?
Nor is it listed quite as promised blessing. Less threat but more blessing. It’s still a condition but more a blessing. “Go ahead. Make disciples. When you make disciples, you will discover I am ever so close to you.” It’s not quite cast that way either. It’s just added on at the end. Why? Why? What’s going on?
I suspect that the entire final sentence is cast in a purposely ambiguous way precisely because Christ’s presence with us to the very end of the age is simultaneously our incentive in evangelism and our reward. You see, it’s those who are living in self-conscious obedience to Jesus Christ who most commonly gossip the gospel, talk about the gospel out of the overflow of their awareness of Christ, their consciousness of his presence.
Now you find some Christians for whom evangelism is merely an exercise in apologetics. They take all of the apologetics courses possible because they want to win every argument. It’s a question of winning debates, having answers, but you don’t sense that they’re talking out of the overflow of their knowledge of God. You sense they’re talking as a distanced party.
I know of a medical doctor in the Muslim world who has been extraordinarily fruitful over the years. I was told by a mutual friend not long ago that some months back he was treating a 10-year-old boy with a horrible gash in his leg. His mother brought him in, and this doctor put on some sort of painkiller and then began to clean out the wound and was carefully explaining what he was doing as he was cleaning out the wound preparatory to stitching it all back up.
It’s so important to clean it out so there would be no infection that would get in there and start to do a whole lot of damage. If there was any sign of infection in the weeks ahead, make sure the boy was brought back instantly. He was explaining everything very gently to the mother. She suddenly said, “Sometimes I think we have corruption and infection in our hearts.”
Now what do you say? “Well, that’s because you Muslims don’t really have a doctrine of the atonement, so you don’t really deal with sin, do you?” That’s the apologetic answer. Do you know what he answered? “Oh, I know just what you mean. My heart was so filthy and dirty and corrupted, and then one day someone came along and cleaned it out. Would you like me to tell you how he did it?”
Do you see the difference? One is an argument; the other is a testimony. In one, you’re out to win, to show the superiority of Christianity over Islam. In the other, you’re telling a testimony and exposing yourself, showing yourself to be a sinner like others, a dirty sinner telling other dirty sinners where there’s cleanliness, a poor beggar telling other poor beggars where there’s bread.
I suspect that for many of us (not least we men) who are often given to more linear thinking and don’t like to expose ourselves and much prefer to deal with abstract other thoughts rather than personal testimony, I suspect that’s one of the barriers we find hardest to cross (not least those of us who are a little older, like me). We don’t belong to the “let it all hang out” generation. Some of that “let it all hang out” generation is pretty grotesque. I acknowledge that.
But is there not a place in Christian witness for this personal testimony? “Once I was blind, but now I see.” We speak, we bear witness out of the overflow of the consciousness of Jesus’ abiding presence in our lives. “Lo, I am with you alway, to the very end of the age.” Out of our consciousness of that, we speak. But is it not also the case that as we speak, we become all the more aware of the conflict we’re in, of the rulers of darkness in high places, of the presence of Jesus to help us?
Those of you who have done evangelism, have you not very often sensed the presence of Christ in you and with you precisely in the context of evangelism, sometimes, in fact, when things are most difficult? You know full well some of those experiences of God’s grace in your life you would not have had if you kept your mouth shut. For some of you, Christ is essentially alien to your experience because you do never bear witness.
In fact, as we feed on Christ, as we grow in our awareness of him, as we acknowledge him, as we are aware of his presence, we speak out of the overflow of our hearts and lives of what it means to confess him as Lord. We discover that is also the context in which again and again he manifests himself to us most tellingly, most powerfully. It becomes the entire matrix of our thinking, our way of looking at all of reality.
“Lo, I am with you to the very end of the age.” That becomes for us our delight. The name Martyn Lloyd-Jones may mean something to some of you. He was probably the twentieth-century’s greatest preacher. He died in 1981 at the age of 81. His last two years were spent fighting cancer. A friend of mine who had ready access to him those last two years went to him one day nine months or so before he died and said “Dr. Lloyd-Jones, how are you coping?”
“What do you mean, ‘How am I coping’?”
“Well, there was a time when you preached around the world. Your books have been translated into I don’t know how many languages. Maybe 60 books of sermons. You’ve seen thousands of people converted, and you’ve built up entire institutions, the foundation of Tyndale House, the Puritan Conference for ministers, and the foundation of the Banner of Truth publications, and on and on and on and on and on. Now you’re basically on the shelf. It takes all of your energy to get from your bed to your easy chair.”
Still he would put on his three-piece suit and sit there in his easy chair and edit a manuscript before he could stagger back to bed. “How does it feel to be put on the shelf? How are you coping?” Lloyd-Jones quoted Luke 10 in response. “Do not rejoice that the demons are subject to you in my name, but rejoice that your name is written in heaven. I am perfectly content.”
Isn’t that a great answer? You see, his self-identity was not bound up with his fruitfulness. His self-identity was not bound up with his ministry. His self-identity was not bound up with his activity. His self-identity was not bound up with his popularity. His self-identity was not bound up with praise. His self-identity was bound up with the fact that he was known by God and loved by him, so he could remain perfectly content. “Lo, I am with you always to the very end of the age.” Let us pray.
We confess, Lord God, how easily we can be so devoured by the urgent agendas all around us that we sacrifice the important on the altar of the urgent. We confess too that sometimes we want intellectual answers that enable us to win arguments but are uncomfortable with approaches that expose us and disclose us. O Lord God, forgive us our sins.
Make us bolder, true, more knowledgeable, but also more compassionate to those who are outside, less concerned about what they will think of us, more concerned to him who we confess as Lord. O Lord God, help us to see the Great Commission is simply an integral part of what it means to be a Christian.
Grant that we may so grow in conformity to Christ and living with eternity’s values in view and knowledge of your Word that we will speak out of the overflow of our heart. Grant your comfort and presence through the person of your dear Son that we may live with eternity’s values in view and long achingly for that day when the Master himself will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in a few things. I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of the Lord.” For Jesus’ sake, amen.
