Great Commission

Let us pray.

Saints Simon and Jude, God called you and you responded, Though you struggled at first, once you received the Holy Spirit and embraced the mission entrusted to you at the Great Commission, you tirelessly brought Christ to the world, even to the point of laying down your lives.

Pray for me that I may faithfully continue your mission fueled by the same desire that all may come to know and embrace the saving message of the Gospel.

Saints Simon and Jude, pray for us.

19, Ye therefore, because I am Lord, because I have all authority, because I have all power, go ye therefore and teach 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 earth." You see, as we think about the Great Commission, here's the reality this evening.

That from the time that Jesus Christ gave this commission to His disciples, generation after generation after generation after generation of faithful servants have been obeying the Word of their Lord.

They have been taking that which the Lord has entrusted into their care, and they have been using it to get the good news of the Gospel to another generation, to another land, to another people, to another soul.

We have resources and technology like no one else in the history of mankind has ever had.

We have a complete Word of God in our hands.

We have opportunities to serve and to be involved in the Great Commission.

But are we faithful servants? Are we using that which God has entrusted into our care to fulfill His will, to obey His Word, and to do it His way.

But I do think there's a level of perk.

personal obedience, even like what you were saying, Manny, like there's a, there's just a joy you get from actually obeying the great commission yourself and getting to share.

And, and again, like the coaches that the trainers and the mobilizers who had never done it themselves, I felt like just had a less steady platform to stand on.

So even what we do in Thailand, we've actually, we actually mobilize the Thai church.

now with that being said there's a lot of challenges with seeing peruvians go to unreached people groups a big big challenge is the funding um so what i've been doing here in austin is working on this project with some north american churches with large amounts of financial resources large amounts of highly educated people seminarians and highly resourced evangelical churches.

They understand the challenges of the North American church in getting into a lot of these unreached and hard to reach places.

They're exploring ways that they can continue to engage in the Great Commission.

One of those initiatives we're working on with Ronald and Glenda Chunga is connecting them with these North American churches.

It's about missions.

It's about recalibrating or reforming how we view missions, what the Christians call the Great Commission of fulfilling Christ's mission.

mandate to preach the gospel and baptize all nations.

And that I discovered while I was writing this book so much about my hope and prayer for Japanese culture kind of inverted into this thought that Well, Japan is the most integrated culture in terms of nature and culture.

We have been conditioned by empire to read scripture quite narcissistically.

And so even texts like the Great Commission, Matthew 28, we forget that the original audience for Jesus was the apostles there.

and that the apostles went and fulfilled that great commission.

Thomas came to the ends of the earth.

So what's our job? It's the latter part of that verse, you know, obeying everything that Jesus has commanded.

But I get it.

Like, I wonder this, you know, I wonder if a lot of our staff's issues, listen to me, senior pastor, are direct reflection of us working our staff so hard that they're not fulfilling a great commission to make disciples because all they're around is disciples.

Like, I get it, we need bigger buildings, we need to grow, we need to, okay.

But how is that children's pastor living out the Great Commission when he's working 60, 70 hours a week? can't be in a small group, doesn't spend much time with his family, hasn't led anyone to Christ, lost the appetite of evangelism because he's working.

And I just wonder, I just wonder, I'm not...

It's a system, I get it.

It's mandated when we're baptized.

We're given the call of the Great Commission to go there for and make disciples of all nations.

We're live.

We realize a great need that exists to build a church, and it starts with the family, the fundamental unit of society.

And then Jesus begins telling us, as he goes on through his life as a man, he says, I will be with you.

At the end of the Great Commission, as we move with him in his purpose, we are united with him in that way.

In Jesus' final prayer at the commissioning of his disciples, he prays that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

You can be with God in this deep, intensely personal way, united in purpose, united in love, united in his presence.

But let's take it further.

The great commission is to go and make disciples of the nations.

So how do disciples live? Okay, I used to be a gambler.

I used to be an alcoholic.