In this video message, Scott Brown discusses what the "Great Commission" involves and entails. One point he mentions is that it is important to ensure that our evangelism efforts are not shallow but that they are rooted in Scripture. We are called to teach all things that Christ commanded, not to try to make individuals feel good about themselves.

Matthew 28:19-20 (NKJV) - "'Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.' Amen."

Welcome to Ridgecrest. It is so good to be here. I was told the other day that Ridgecrest is the largest Christian conference center in the world. Now there are larger conference centers but not Christian ones and so we're here in a very special place and the people at Ridgecrest are such a blessing. I'm always so grateful for how they how they treat us and how they are so gracious to us in helping us to bring these things about.

They pray for us. They pray for people that come here and it really is a privilege to be here. I'm very grateful for the kindness of the Lord. And if there are any Ridgecrest staff people here, thank you so much for providing this for us. Well we're here to celebrate the love of God.

We're here to rejoice in the goodness of God that He would send His Son. And that not only would He send His Son, but He would also make sons and daughters. And He would send them as emissaries of light and hope and joy out into the world. Our entire gathering is really to celebrate the goodness of such a Savior, who would take sinners like we are and then actually send them into the world, imperfect as they are but yet carrying an eternal and a perfect message of eternal life. I just can't imagine a life better positioned than to live that kind of life.

And I pray that as we're here together, that this conference will be a source of encouragement to your heart, that it'll be a source of hope for you. I pray also that it will be a time of conviction, a time of meeting with Almighty God. We're here really to fulfill what God always desires to do when He gathers His people together, And that is to root out and to pull down, to destroy and to tear down, and to build up and to plant. This was the calling of the prophet Jeremiah. And in every age there is a need for this gift, this prophetic activity in the world, to call to repentance and to explain the beautiful colors of the kingdom of heaven and to show how good God is and That's why we are here.

And I pray that as we're here, that God would fall upon us. I'll pray that he'll fall upon me to help me to see what needs to be rooted out in my life, what needs to be pulled down, what needs to be destroyed, and then what needs to be planted, and what needs to come up as a fresh testimony of the love of God. I'd like to answer a few questions here in this introductory message. I'm just going to give you a few minutes of introduction to try to cast the vision for this conference. And then we'll pause, and then I'll come back right after that and I'm going to take us into the greatness of the Great Commission out of Matthew 28.

Everything that I will say, everything that is in that text will be applied by all the speakers. I will just be able to give the overview of it, but when you go to these sessions, you will see how everything that is in the Great Commission will be applied by these speakers that are there. And they'll bring out the detail in many of its rich colors. So the first question I want to ask is why are we doing this? Why would we expend so much energy?

Why would we work all year long to do something like this? And I want to give you seven reasons. And the first reason is that God uses preaching to change people's lives. And here we are. We have been sent here by Almighty God, and what He is going to do here is He's going to connect a messenger and a message and a human heart.

This is the way that God changes the world. And He pours out His Spirit on His people in that fashion. God has always gathered His people together. There have always been holy convocations. There have always been gatherings of God's people where He moves mightily, where He cares for His people, where He raises them up from the miry clay, where he puts a new song in their hearts, and he does it through the preaching of the word of God, and that's what we intend to do here, to have a time of being before the face of God, a consecrated meeting before God.

I pray that God gives us that as we gather together. I pray also that not only that we're here and that we're meeting face to face with God, but also that all of our fellowship is also Godward. That while we're speaking to our friend, at the same time we're beholding the face of Jesus Christ, and there's a holy fellowship, there's a true spiritual bond of love by the Holy Spirit in the face of Jesus Christ as we fellowship together here in this place. Now there are threats here, there are traps in a meeting like this. Here's perhaps one of the greatest ones.

We have, we love to come to these conferences. People have traveled for such long distances to come to this conference. One of the reasons that we gather is because of the sweetness of the fellowship, the bonds of love, the relationships that are bound together across the whole nation. And many of you have deep relationships with people all over this nation. And many of these things have happened because we've gathered together so many times.

And this is such a blessing. But there's a great trap in this mentality of our love for the fellowship. And that is that if we attend here, and we have great fellowship, and we miss the voice of God, if we're not before a message and a messenger with an open heart, ready to be broken by God, ready to be healed in our souls, ready to be spoken to, ready to be changed, then it'll all be just vain fellowship. And that's one of my great fears for our gathering, is that we would love the fellowship so much that we would miss a meeting with Almighty God. And we have people from time to time who miss many of the messages.

And they have such a glorious time fellowshipping in the halls. And what they say is, well I'll just listen to the messages later online or I'll buy the recordings. And I just want to appeal to you. While it is a wonderful thing to be able to digest things later on, don't miss the fact that the way that God works is that he brings people face to face with a preacher and with a message. That's how he changes hearts.

And it's not primarily done remotely through an internet connection. It's done through a face to face encounter with Almighty God. And I pray that God would give us that as we gather together here. I'm praying that God would break chains that are upon us. As we've come up to this conference, I've realized the chains that are upon my own life, the many missed opportunities in the sharing of the Gospel, the ways I've shrunk back, the ways that I have been so busy that I did not even care at all for that person who was before me because I had so many things to do.

How I've often feared man. And I pray that God will be, I will be able to meet with God as well as I hear these preachers come and deal with my soul. And I pray that that happens to all of us here. My prayer is that as we're gathering together, our fellowship will be a holy fellowship. It's a blessing to have fellowship, when at the same time, you're beholding the face of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I was speaking with Paul Washer a few days ago and I was telling him this burden in my soul and he explained it like this. He said, if you're more looking forward to meeting with the face of your friend than the face of God, then let that be a warning to your soul. So I pray that we have that kind of a meeting, and with God, that it's a time to root out, it's a time to pull down, it's a time to destroy, it's a time to throw down, it's a time to build and to plant as as we read in the prophet Jeremiah chapter 1 verse 10. Here's The second reason we're gathered here. That Jesus Christ came to save sinners.

That God made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf. That we might become the righteousness of God in him. This is why we are gathered. Because of this power that's working in the world, it's the power of God unto salvation where the Lord Jesus Christ was made sin for us and so that we would be here to declare the true gospel. I pray that souls would be saved.

I'm here to plead for the souls of men. I'm not assuming that everyone here is a Christian. I'm assuming that we are just like the great crowds that gather in the churches all over America who actually have heard a false gospel and that we too have embraced it and we have added many works to it. We've added outward deeds and righteousness. We've tried to fix our marriages.

We've tried to fix our families. We've tried to fix our churches you know by turning the dials to somehow get a righteous church. But where are our hearts? Have our hearts been broken by the Lord Jesus Christ? Have we really been born again?

That's a question that will be asked at this conference. And I pray that we will be so vigilantly before God, searching our own hearts, examining ourselves, to see if we are in the faith. Don't let anyone here rest on any past work, on any former baptism, or some assurance of your friend or your father that you are saved. There's no assurance of salvation in that. I know there have been many false baptisms.

There have been many good girls and good boys who say yes sir and no sir whose hearts have not been converted. I know that there are people in our churches who are actually living a double life. I know that there are people that seem to have no ability to fulfill the works of the Spirit of God. They cannot love their spouses. They cannot have mercy on their pastor.

They cannot have mercy on the person who disagrees with them. They cannot have love in their heart. And it's perhaps a sign that they have perhaps prayed a prayer or walked an aisle, but they've never really been changed and had the power of sin broken. And so we're here to proclaim that Jesus Christ has come to save sinners, that Jesus Christ became sin for us, and that we, as we consider all these things, that we would see what the Lord would have us to root out, what He would have us to pull down. What would He have you plant?

What would He have you build up? This is the question that I pray is upon our hearts here. Here's the third reason. There's a hunger. There really is a hunger for greater fruitfulness in the Great Commission among the churches that affiliate with this organization, the National Center for family integrated churches.

There is an urgency that is all over the land and it's a wonderful blessing to see it. And there are so many expressions of it, but there is a hunger among us that we would not neglect so great a commission that has been given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ. Here's another reason. There's a need. There's a need.

Whenever there's a Reformation, The pendulums always swing. It's just the nature of reformations. We have been participating in a revival, a reformation of family life and church life that really is initiated by that reformation principle that scripture is sufficient. And God has raised so many lives out of the ashes of pragmatism and making up your own life in your own way. But is it possible that we've reformed our family lives and we've begun to regulate our churches according to scripture as we should have, and at the same time neglected so great a commission?

For many years we've rightly said that the primary role of the evangelism and discipleship of children happens in the home. This is absolutely right. This has been lost in our culture. We must recover it. If you ever hope to have a holy church, you ought to have a holy family to pour into that church.

And So we have been proclaiming this message and we've been saying that perhaps the family is the greatest untapped evangelistic opportunity before the modern church. It's not the only evangelistic opportunity but it's a major one and it's a pivotal one and we have been attempting by the grace of God to recover the doctrine of the family and to restore the right functioning of family life because God has told us about that. And the question is, is it possible that churches have focused on the reformation of their families and their ordering that they've neglected the evangelization of their friends and they've neglected their communities and their families have been focused on themselves, and the lost have been left out of the equation. Have our homes become so pure that they can't tolerate an unbeliever with all the marks of the world. We have to remember the Lord Jesus Christ who is with the demonized in homes, in homes.

Look at the use of the home in the New Testament and you will see such a rich use of prayer, of all the things that really go into the fulfillment of the Great Commission. And so a family that is ignoring The Great Commission is not a well-ordered family. It's a twisted and truncated expression of an institution that was designed to be like a healing fountain in society. So this third matter is critical for us to understand. Fifth, there is a reality.

There is a reality. America is a mission field. America is a mission field today like it has never been. America is filling up with foreigners, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau just released earlier this year, there are nearly 40 million foreign-born people, 13 percent of the population.

America is changing dramatically. We just translated our website and many of our messages into Spanish because of this. We don't send these people home, we bring them the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Second, There's such a rapid secularization in America. America has lost a generation.

It is lost. But it can be recovered by the power of the Gospel and the Gospel alone. My generation—think about this for a minute—my generation, the rock and roll generation, the if it feels good, do it generation, the generation that threw off every biblical proposition. Fourteen percent of my generation had a biblical worldview. Today, one half of one percent of this rising generation has a biblical worldview.

We have to recognize what has happened in this nation. The only hope for our nation is the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ that transforms hearts and homes and communities and nations and civil governments. That is the only hope for this nation. And so we really are here to proclaim a reality. And that we would, as we proclaim it, to consider what we might root out, what we might pull down, what we might destroy, what we might tear down, what we might build and what we might plant.

This is the question that we ought to consider here. Here's another reason. This conference also exists because of a desire to acknowledge something that has happened and to consider the blessing of it. Over the past decade, there have been hundreds of churches that have been planted and who have been attempting to embrace the sufficiency of scripture. And there's been significant tumult in the lives of the people who have attempted to embrace the fact that scripture is sufficient for church life and family life.

And relationships are harmed. There's brokenness among us because People have spurned and rejected the message that scripture is sufficient. At the same time, churches have been planted. And I desired to bring a number of these pastors, elders, church leaders together to preach together, to come and celebrate what God has done, to get to know one another better. And while every single speaker here is not a family integrated church pastor, most of them are.

I'm so grateful for those who are here that aren't and the blessing and the benefit that we can receive from them. But at the same time, I'm so grateful that we have been able to gather men from all over the nation who are at least attempting to bring order to their families and to their churches. And then there's another reason, a seventh reason. This conference is really part of a strategic plan. It's part of a multi-year proposition or vision that has been in my soul, that I've been working on for many years.

And because of all these churches that have been planted, my greatest heart's desire is to do what I can to try to lay foundations and bring voices together to explain what local church life ought to look like and what family life ought to look like. And several years ago we held a conference called The Sufficiency of Scripture. This is the foundation of it all. And then the next year We did another national conference called Love the Church, where we desired to lay down the doctrine of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we did, all last year we worked on developing resources for sound doctrine, and moving through a confession of faith in order to equip families to understand how to apply a confession of faith in their family life.

And then we did that also with church leaders, and you'll see those resources out in our book table. We've been working, really criss-crossing this nation to encourage pastors to engage in expository preaching, to engage their men to recover the whole picture of biblical fatherhood, to find our way back to the old paths, to lay down foundations. And this conference is another one of those foundation stones that has been in my heart. And that is to explain in as many ways as we can in such a short period of time how a church and a family ought to fulfill the Great Commission. But it's part of a larger prayer that I have that these churches that are planted would not just be sort of the next new wave of hip, cool churches that are doing something different.

That would be the worst thing that could happen to us. But that our hearts love the word of God, and we're ordering our churches according to the word of God, and not according to something that we like, because it sort of fits our bent and our passion. And so this is part of a strategic plan. Next year, our national conference will be entitled The Worship of God. And I pray that if you look at the last page of your program, you'll see an explanation of it.

But we want to answer questions like, how does God want us to worship Him? How do you know when worship has become man-centered instead of God-centered? What are the great errors in modern approaches of worship in evangelicalism? How do you apply the regular principle of worship? How do you think about family worship?

How do you think about worship from the heart all day long? Every aspect of worship we want to try to explain during that conference. We're even going to ask the question, how we ought to discern what is right and pleasing to God in terms of music styles, a very, very difficult subject, but we hope to explain as best we can how that question ought to be answered. And then the second question I want to answer here in this introduction is what are we trying to accomplish? And we're trying to drive some stakes into the ground.

We want to establish some definitions for which the sufficiency of scripture is really the foundation of it all. And so we're going to be approaching the Great Commission from the perspective of a Reformed understanding of the sufficiency of scripture and what God has said regarding the spread of the Gospels. There's really nothing new here. We're also desiring to address many issues. There are over 60 messages that we hope to be delivering at this conference and I know you won't be able to go to all of them But go to as many of them as you possibly can and ask yourself, what is there that needs to be torn down?

What is there in my life that needs to be built? What is there that needs to be planted? That's the question that I hope you address each of these sessions and that you say Almighty God visit me meet with me change my life show me my sins help me Lord show me the path of life I know that some of the sessions won't have very many people in them because we're spreading you know a crowd you know across many sessions and I've just encouraged the speakers don't worry about that's preaches if you're preaching to five or ten thousand because you probably will be as this goes out into the internet and beyond our own borders. We've identified seven critical categories of messages that will be given. There are messages on doctrine, on the gospel, on personal evangelism, on the family, on the local church, on history, on the cultural mandate.

We have many messages under each one of those categories. And we really desire to define the greatness of the Great Commission. And It might surprise you that very few Christians have ever heard a word-by-word exposition on the Great Commission, and we'll start our conference with that. And I pray that God would come and visit us so mightily that He would come and bless us with understanding, that we would be standing in the presence of Him who knew no sin, but who has made sin for us, who loved us, who called us according to his purpose, and he still works in our lives so that he might show us what needs to be rooted out, what needs to be pulled down, what needs to be destroyed, what needs to be torn down, what needs to be built up, and what needs to be planted. And I pray that God would give us such a sense of his holy presence as we're together that he would bless us with his presence as we're here, that we would find ourselves in a situation where welling up within our hearts, there was a desire that drove us to hear a man and a message, and our hearts would be open before Almighty God so that he might come and instruct us and teach us in the way that we ought to go.

I pray that God would do that. Now we're going to have a brief break. We're going to sing a couple of songs and then I'm going to come back and please get your Bibles open to Matthew chapter 28 and we'll engage in that. Thank you. Please stand with me.

Please stand with me. This song is so fitting in light of the words that were just shared. Let's sing together, O Church Arise. Church arise and put your armor on. We can't say that they are strong in the strength that God has given.

We shield the faith and belt of truth. We'll stand against the devil's lies And our Lord, whose battle cries love Reaching out to those in darkness Our call to war, to love the captive soul but to rage against the capitan and with the sword that makes the wounded whole we will fight with faith and valor. When faced with trials on every side, we know the outcome is secure. The outcome is secure. And Christ will have the price for which he died, an inheritance of nations.

Come see the cross, all art and mercy eat, as the Son of God is stricken. My crush beneath his feet, for the conqueror has paid his earn. And as the storm is rolled away, and Christ emerges from the grave, emerges from the grave. His figs re-march, those in use till the day, every eye and heart shall see him. So, spear and clump, put strength in every shrine.

Give grace for every hurdle that we may run. With faith to win the prize of a servant good and faithful. The saints of old still blind away, Retelling triumphs of his grace. We hear the calls and hunger for the day, when with Christ we stand in glory. Amen.

You may be seated. So at White Under Harvest, it's our desire that the Lord would help us unpack the great commission as it applies to church life, family life, and to the culture. And so it's an honor for me to introduce and invite Paul Washer to come and begin this time this evening in prayer, seeking God's help, and then to invite Scott Brown for our first keynote message. Please welcome with me Paul Washer. We Desperately, desperately, desperately need the working of God through his spirit in this place.

The Great Commission is so great. The opposition is so strong that the arm of the flesh will not avail us in anything. We must have God. So please do not just listen to me pray. Pray with me, Pray earnestly, pray with faith.

Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father. I come before you in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Every petition. We can only give you one reason.

To give us an answer. And that is Christ. Do it for Him. All the righteousness of our most righteous days. Cannot move your arm except in judgment.

So we ask you to look to Christ. We pray, Father, for a great commission and we acknowledge. How much we lack. How apathetic our hearts have often been. How we have been distracted by so many things.

But we do know. That it is the Great Commission, We do know that it is our purpose, no matter how far we stray from it or how apathetic we have become toward it. Father, we ask you to enliven us. To burn into our minds the privilege that has been granted unto men to preach the gospel to every one of your children. And I pray, Lord, that you would stir in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

That you would give us greater and greater life, greater and greater outpourings of the Spirit of God, that we might take this Gospel to the ends of the earth. Regardless of how many times we failed, regardless of how weak we have been, we cry out in hope, a sure hope promised in your word that you're the covenant keeping God. And we pray, Lord, that every promise of the new covenant would be fulfilled in us as a people, that You would pour out Your Spirit. That we might receive power and that we might be witnesses to the ends of the earth. Father, all is vain.

All is vain. Unless the spirit of the living God Touch our speaker. And touch those who are listening. Lord, move in us. For his sake, for Christ's sake, In Jesus' name, amen.

Matthew 28, 16 through 20 declares that God is a missionary God and that Christianity is a missionary religion and that God's love moves in such a way that He sends people to be emissaries of His love. And what a great And what a great gift the Great Commission is. Think about it for a moment. Think of how many ways that God worked in order to send someone to you. Think of all the different sent ones from God that you needed.

He sent many prophets, he sent many friends, he sent many many things in order to rescue you. Over and over again, He spoke to you. You know, there are people who say, well, I never really heard the gospel. You know, many of them actually heard the gospel hundreds of times, they just didn't hear it because their hearts were so hard. How Many times did you hear the Gospel but your heart was so hard.

But God, God in His mercy, He just kept sending prophets to you to speak to you. What a blessing it is. What a gift this Great Commission is. Now this question, how many of you here have ever heard a word-by-word, line-by-line exposition on the Great Commission? Could you raise your hands?

Just a few of you. I can't see very many hands. This is very typical. It's amazing that something so pivotal is also something that is so little known in all of its details. People can kind of speak generally about the Great Commission, but its details we'll try to deal with here in this passage of scripture.

And my objective tonight is just to try to walk very slowly through each word and each phrase of the Great Commission in order to lay a foundation for all the other things that we're going to hear. And so let's read this Great Commission. Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had appointed for them. And when they saw Him, they worshipped Him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given unto me in heaven and on earth.

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." That is the Great Commission. And so just before his ascension, the Lord Jesus Christ delivers his last command. His last command ought to be our first priority and it's a life-altering commission. If you get involved with Jesus, the whole course of your life is shifted.

You are not your own. He puts a mission upon you to go out and make disciples of all the nations. He delivers you from the smallness of your own dreams. He delivers you from yourself, from wasting your life in the way that you think you would like to live it. And He changes your heart and He puts His mantle of authority upon you in the same way that He did Elijah and Elisha.

This is what the Great Commission is all about. And it is truly a Great Commission. And the Lord Jesus Christ, He saves and then He sends on a mission. It's the mission of the Great Commission. Now the Great Commission, as we'll find as we walk through it, is much broader than you ever thought.

It's much deeper. It covers far more categories of human life than most people think that it does. And, you know, many people think that the fulfillment of the Great Commission is in the sharing of the gospel message. But that is the essence of the fulfillment of the Great Commission. And of course it is assumed in the Great Commission, but there is far, far more.

Here's my question. Of the over 800 churches that affiliate with the National Center for Family Integrated Churches. What could happen in this nation if there is a white, hot devotion to the fulfillment of the Great Commission? What could God do in such a condition as that? And I pray that God would do something that would shake our nation and call people to cry out to God for salvation.

And yet this great commission is often our great omission and it falls in the priority system of our lives to almost nothing. And so we recognize that it is such a great commission. Now, There are seven demands of this great commission that I would like to speak of. And the first demand of this commission is a supreme authority. The Lord Jesus Christ says, all authority is given to me in heaven and on earth.

And here the Lord Jesus Christ establishes himself as the supreme authority in all of the universe. And here there's a disclosure of the Lord Jesus Christ's place in the universe. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, has unquenchable, undeniable, unopposable authority in the world in which we live. And the word that the Lord Jesus Christ uses is the word exousia for authority. And it really just means that you can do whatever you wish, that you have the rightful and willful independent power over all things.

This is the authority that Jesus Christ has and it's the same authority that he actually gives to his children in order to fulfill this Great Commission. This is one of the four Alls of the Great Commission. All power, all nations, all things, and all ways. And this one here explains the great and mighty power of God. That God sends us on an impossible mission that is possible because of his power and he desires that we know that his authority is with us that it protects us, it comforts us, that it is the authority with which we are bequeathed with, so that we understand that it doesn't depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy, that we who are sent out in the world understand the mighty power of God.

It is the most freeing power that a human being can know. To recognize that no one comes to the Father unless the Father draws him. That God is in control of all of these things. And it's an authority that dominates all things. And he identifies two specific areas of authority.

First of all, in heaven. This is the first area in which his authority reigns. And that means his authority reigns in all celestial bodies, all stars, all galaxies, all black holes, all light, angels and demons in heaven, even the space junk that is spinning through space is under the autocratic control of Almighty God. And then, its authority in heaven. All molecules, all DNA, all rocks, all rivers, all oceans, all lakes, all winds, all tornadoes, all hurricanes, all downpours, the synapses of every brain, all cancer, all back problems, all fathers, all mothers, all pastors, all brothers and sisters, all police, all politicians, all elections, every nanosecond, every single corner of the universe is under the autocratic domination of Jesus Christ.

And that's the authority that he's proclaiming. Now, in the Gospel of Matthew, the Lord Jesus Christ has already demonstrated his authority over everything. The authority over demons, the authority over sickness, the authority over winds and waves. And even the demons cry out and say, have you come to destroy us before the time? The whole spiritual universe understands the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the authority that goes with those who fulfill this Great Commission. That He has defeated the devil. Psalm 110 tells us that the foot of Jesus Christ is on the neck of all of His enemies right now. Because of the resurrection, Jesus Christ has His dominating, autocratic foot on the neck of all of His enemies. And this is the power of this great commission.

Now it is a much needed authority. All awakenings are characterized by a voice of authority. They happen when men and women become unafraid of the Word of God, that they love the Word of God. They rise up and they say, Oh how I love thy law, and they are not afraid of man at all. And they cease worrying about what people think or say.

When pastors have this, they're not afraid of who might leave their church. They're not afraid of the big giver that they might offend by preaching the Word of God. They're not afraid of anything because they understand there is an authority in Heaven. The fear of man is perhaps one of the greatest sins of our age, in this age of political correctness and of cowering before men, this perhaps might be the greatest obstacle in your life to fulfilling the Great Commission. I know it has been in my life many times.

How many times I've made some silly comment because I was afraid of what that man would think. How many times have I not said what I ought to have said to a leader in my community because I wanted to be the friend of every man. This fear of man is one of the greatest obstacles to the Great Commission. That we ought to just, with all of the joy in our hearts, say to that person, What do you think of Christ? That's all you have to say.

What do you think of Christ? And then move from there. But here, the voice of authority is needed. The voice of authority is needed in the pulpits today. The voice of authority is needed among fathers today and children and wives so that the voice of God would be alive in the world today.

Men emboldened by the Holy Spirit who say, Thus saith the Lord. When they do that, the foundations of the world are shaken, chains fall off, people are set free, happiness comes in, there's healing in his wings. That's what happens with this voice of authority. And when we cower out of the fear of man, we have to recognize what we have done in missing the power of God in the Great Commission. Christ's authority is perhaps the greatest declaration of freedom that you will ever have.

The knowledge of his absolute authority is the most freeing thing you can ever know. That you know that it's not your words, you know that it's not your arguments, you know that it's the Spirit of Almighty God working through His powerful word through the Holy Spirit. That is what converts, that is what saves, and we have no reason to fear. This is an authority that guarantees the success of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus has, with this statement, guaranteed the success of the Great Commission.

There is no place we cannot preach the Gospel. He will open doors that no one can open. He will soften hearts that no one can soften except by his authority. He will enlighten where there's nothing but darkness in the face of his authority. He will cleanse when there's only filthiness.

He will change direction when there's only headlong flight into destruction. He can make alive what is dead by his own authority. And one of the most wonderful things about this is that it is actually a bequeathed authority, very, very much like the mantle of authority that Elijah had that was given to Elisha, the prophet. His authority, his authority literally has been designed to work through your words, his voice, his person. Now the Bible actually teaches that when you are witnessing that it is Jesus Christ who is the evangelist and the disciple maker.

Did you know that Jesus Christ is the disciple maker? Did you know that He's the one that's calling to repentance? It's His voice, not yours. We see this in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 17 where we read, And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near. For through him we have our access into one spirit to the Father.

Here the apostle Paul is saying to the Ephesians that Jesus Christ came and preached to them. Now when did Jesus Christ ever go to Ephesus? I don't believe Jesus ever took his body into Ephesus to preach peace to the people in that city. He never went there. But he did go there through those who spoke his word.

And it was as if he was speaking through them. Jesus Christ was the one who preached the Gospel in Ephesus. He preached in Ephesus through someone who lived in Ephesus, even though he wasn't there himself. This is the power of the Great Commission that Jesus Christ has given to his disciples. It is a supreme authority, it is a vanquishing authority, it is an autocratic authority, and it is an authority that comes when you preach the Word of God.

It has in itself authority, and Jesus Christ is the great evangelist. He is the one who takes your words and breaks the heart. He's the one who takes your words and soothes the soul. He's the one that takes your words and convicts of sin. He's the one who saves.

And this is the authority that God has given to us to fulfill the Great Commission. And so this first great demand and blessing of the Great Commission is a supreme authority. And then secondly, it really is an exciting journey. In verse 19, go. Therefore, go.

This first principle here of go is very important that we understand. The Greek language is structured in such a way that when you have participles that are connected to a main verb, they take on the force of that main verb, of that command. In this case, this is a participle, go. And it takes on the force of the main verb, which is make disciples. So it actually becomes a command.

All of the participles in this sentence are actually commands. And this command, this word go, this participle, is actually a command. And we obey the command. Why? Because of His authority.

Go, therefore, we go because of His authority. And so we have this central command to make disciples, and then going and baptizing and teaching all of these take on the force of a command. Now, with this word go, something changes, something really dramatic changes in redemptive history. Now the disciples are commanded to go into the whole world. The disciples have been preaching the Gospel to the lost sheep of the House of Israel And now they're going to go far beyond the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

And this is the beginning of this expanding ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ in the world. This command to go launches the whole enterprise of the New Covenant and the caring of the Gospel to all the world. And it really, it explains a dynamic lifestyle. Life is not like an eddy, but like a river that's going somewhere. The sower went out to sow.

He went out. He got up from where he was. He went out. So often we just want people to come to us. We say, well, I'll encounter people just in the day.

When God sends me someone, I'll speak to them. But we often neglect to go, to go out, to get out of our chairs, to get on an airplane, to write a letter, to go and do something. Rather, we wait. I languish when I think of how often I've waited and not proactively and strategically gone out in order to fulfill the Great Commission. This is really fueled by love for lost humanity.

This is perhaps the second greatest sin that destroys the fulfillment of the Great Commission, and that is lack of love for people. We don't love them, so we don't pray for them, we don't strategize how we might find them, and go out to them. But here in the Great Commission, we are called to go out. This is the same kind of passion that John Knox had when he said, give me Scotland ere I die, or the same desperation of Charles Spurgeon who said, give me souls or take my soul. That's the kind of urgency to go that is loaded in this passage.

And so often we just want to sit and wait and in the normal course of our day to somehow bump into someone. We ought to We ought to pray for the normal course of the day, but here there is a command to go. This is why the Lord Jesus Christ said, Look at the fields, for they are white unto harvest. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray, pray the Lord of the harvest that he might send forth laborers into his harvest." Of course the book of Acts illustrates this.

We could spend several hours going from each chapter of the Book of Acts to explain how this worked out in the early church. And you can see how it applies. That The Gospel came to you and your children and for those who are far off. In other words, to everyone who lives in the world. And so the Lord Jesus Christ in His great commission, He would ask us to go, to pray for someone who is not where we are, to be strategic about it, and then to go in that direction and find them and preach the Gospel to them.

I pray that for us here, there are thousands of people who have come to mind here that you're thinking about people who you need to go to, that you need to go see, you need to go out of your way and preach the gospel to them. Would you consider that very carefully? Could it be that you're here tonight because This is one of the things that needs to be planted. So that you're no longer sitting and just waiting, but that you're ready to go. You know, I have a friend here that I went to seminary with, his name is Paul Robey, He's going to be giving a session on evangelizing Mormons.

And my dear friend had a conviction in his soul, I think it was about 15 or 18 years ago, to go to Salt Lake City and to preach the gospel to the Mormons. And he did. He packed up his family and he went to Salt Lake City and he didn't know a single person there. And he told me that he would go into a coffee shop and he would say, oh God, show me someone to speak to. And he would go into a store and walk down the aisle and he'd say, oh God, show me who I ought to speak to.

And he just cried out to God and now there are, you know, there are three churches with over 2, 000 converted Mormons there in Salt Lake City because a man decided that God had called him to go, to go away from his comfortable life and go to the place where there are really almost no Christians, 1% of the population. Some of us here need to board a plane, maybe get on a ship, maybe send a letter, get out of your living room, and go and preach the gospel. There are people here who ought to be recruited, maybe even tonight, to be missionaries. Who have said in their hearts many times, oh I need to go, but you've never done it because of the comfortable life, the fears, the difficulties that are before all those who would go into another culture. Are you one of those people tonight?

Hey, my prayers that God would use tonight and our sessions going forward to recruit missionaries who would go, who would leave this land. God knows how much this land needs the gospel of Jesus Christ, but the gospel is needed everywhere in the world. And the Lord Jesus, He is our example. He's the one that left His Father's heavenly glory, and he passed through the heavens to come and take on sinful flesh so that he might redeem mankind. Here's a question.

Is it enough just to preach the gospel in your family? No. It's not enough just to preach the gospel in your family. It is right to preach the gospel in your family. It is right to pour out your heart day by day to bring the Word of God, the sweetness of the testimonies from heaven into your family, and to do it day after day after day, it's right to do that.

But if you think that just teaching your children is fulfilling the Great Commission, You are fooling yourselves. God has called us to go and to find and to seek and to save the lost. Now this is very personal to me because Someone in the 17th and 18th century got on an old rickety boat and went and preached the gospel in a remote island in the Caribbean. And it just so happened that my wife's relatives were there. They were indentured servants, they were white slaves on the island of Barbados and somebody got on a ship and went to Barbados and preached the gospel to Deborah's relatives and they were saved.

They were genuinely saved. And since that time, on her side of the family, there's been one divorce in five generations. And it's because of the Gospel. It's because God saw to it that the Gospel would be passed down from one generation to the next. One of the greatest joys of my life this year was to take Deborah on our 30th wedding anniversary to the island of Barbados.

It's a little tiny island, so it's really easy to find everything, and the Anglican church documented everything so you can find who was baptized or when people were married and baptized and all these kinds of things. And we went to the place where they were converted. We went to the place where they in turn went and preached the gospel in the jungle areas where their family was. We went to the marketplace where on Saturdays they would go out and preach the Gospel. And my wife and I stood there and we saw the places that her ancestors were.

The blessings from heaven that are pouring down upon my family, upon my life. They all go back to the preaching of the gospel. They all go back to someone who went, who got in a ship and went to a remote island and found an unbeliever. And I now have a daughter of Zion who pours out blessing because the gospel was preached because someone got out of their uncomfortable chair in England and went to the island of Barbados and preached the gospel. What a blessing it is to consider how wonderful it is when people go.

How many people went to you now? Would you go? Would you go to that person that you're thinking of now? And then there's this wonderful work, this beneficial work to make disciples in verse 19. What is a disciple?

This work of the Great Commission is to make a disciple. A disciple is very simply a learner, a follower, someone who is following Christ. Now, it's not the same as making converts. It includes making converts. But making disciples is bigger than making converts.

I was in church the other day and I spoke with a young man who said he just got back from the Far East and he said that they had 30 decisions for Christ. He didn't understand that God did not send him for decisions. He had sent him to make disciples. And how easily that has been lost in all of our thinking regarding the fulfillment of the Great Commission. God has called us to make believing learners and learning believers, believing followers, following believers.

That is the command of the Great Commission. To go and preach the Gospel to them and then to see to it that they walk in the ways of the Lord. In fact, the Gospel is just assumed in the Great Commission. The result of the preaching of the Gospel is communicated, the making of a disciple, which begins with the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You know, modern evangelism, as we all know, is defined by getting decisions, while biblical discipleship is defined by making disciples whose hearts and minds are captivated by their shepherd and they follow him and they walk with him and they hate sin and they continue in his word.

That's what a disciple is. So the fulfillment of the Great Commission is way bigger than just witnessing. It's bigger than evangelistic campaigns, it's bigger than personal evangelism, it's bigger than street preaching, it's bigger than preaching in the church. It's part of a multifaceted discipleship that God calls his people to perform. And this discipleship is of all the nations.

Of all the nations. The Greek term, Ponta, Ta, Ethne. It's a very important term. There are those who are going to really dissect this matter of what does it mean to disciple a nation. Jeff Botkin is doing a session and there are others that speak of this really important issue and I pray that you'll understand what this means but the scope of this is important to understand is it just simply every person?

Or does it include cultures? Does it include people groups? Does it include nation states? Now if you look at the lexicons, and I consulted several lexicons which speak of this, and The bottom line is this, is that it means all of those things. All of those who dwell in nations, all of those who are in language groups, and all of the other people.

And it has to do with the reality that the Lord Jesus Christ desires to have authority over the nations and even the nation states. That his authority extends from sea to sea. His authority extends over all the nations. God's sovereign desire is to preach the gospel in all the nations so that the nations would be glad. How does a nation become glad?

How does that happen? There's a message about that that Michael Gobart will be giving, I encourage you to go listen to it. He came into my office a couple of days ago and I asked him to tell me about his message and he started preaching the message to me. And I thought I was just going to be blown out of my chair and I want to hear this message. But God desires to dominate the nations.

Here's an Old Testament example of this in Psalm 33 verse 12. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He has chosen as His own inheritance. This is the term that we get, our term goyim. It's the term that is used primarily in these contexts of the nations. And the phrase reflects the message of the Lord Jesus Christ in Psalm chapter 2 verse 8.

There's a context there in Psalm 2 of worldwide rebellion against Almighty God. And in that passage, there's a record of a really remarkable conversation between God the Father and His Son. There's an actual conversation between these two persons of the Trinity and the Lord Jesus Christ. The Father says to the Son, the Son says, ask of me, And the Father says, and I will surely give the nations as your inheritance and the very ends of the earth as your possession. The Father is going to give the Son all of the nations of the earth.

You think, how could that happen in our nation? How could that happen in any nation in the world? The Bible says that it will happen, that Jesus Christ will have all authority over the nations. This is why he says, now therefore be wise, O kings, and be instructed, you judges of the earth, serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the sun lest he be angry and you perish in the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little.

Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him. And so this is a commission that is so great that it includes all of the nations. Here's what John Adams said. Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts that are exhibited there. What a utopia, what a paradise would this religion be?

And this is the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ. And why? Because the nations have adopted belief systems and practices that are contrary to Jesus Christ, and Jesus desires to transform them. Their philosophies are bankrupt. Their philosophies of everything are bankrupt.

Of the family, of manhood and womanhood, of work, of economics, of politics. Their understanding of justice, their understanding of sovereignty is bankrupt and it's only the gospel that can come and do its work of healing to those broken cultures. Nations have been defiled from the beginning of the world to the present time. And this spirit of the devil is the same spirit that works in every nation in the world. I've traveled to Eastern Europe, to South America, to Africa, and to Mexico.

Everywhere I've ever been, the problems are the same. You go and the gospel is broken in the same places marriages are broken in the same place manhood and womanhood they're broken in the exact same places in every nation of the world. And all you have to do is hold this holy book and preach the word of God to it. And the spring will be cleansed as people turn to the Lord and amend their practices. Because the devil is not very creative.

And the problems in our nation, the devil has worked in every nation in the world and we have the Lord Jesus Christ so that every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God would be torn down. And you might ask, how do you disciple a nation? How does that happen? Well, it happens from the bottom up. It doesn't come from a government takeover.

He will save his people from their sin and from the bottom of their hearts to the top levels of the culture and practice. His authority will rule and reign. God works from the inside out. He works from the bottom up. He transforms a heart.

He makes a husband and a wife to be a preacher of the Gospel. And he uses children who will rise up and become preachers of the gospel in the same way that he did with Wilberforce in England, in the same way that he did with Patrick in Ireland. We ought to view these transformations as very important. People say, well, the transformation of the family is not that important. Well, it is very important because it is the beginning of the transformation of society that's necessary that prepares gospel preachers with transformed lives who will go and change their nations, who will rise up and boldly preach the gospel, and boldly stand for what is true and right in their nation.

This is how the nations are discipled. And It is for us to cry out to God persistently that He would be the disciple maker of our nation. And it will happen as we go and we seek and save the lost. And the lost rise up and they declare their voices in the market places. Now, how hard is this task?

Is anything- what an ominous task this is. How can you purify our nation? Have you given up hope for that? Well here's what Isaiah said, he said, Behold, the nations are as a drop in the bucket, and are counted as the small dust on the scales. Look, he lifts up the isles as a very little thing.

The nations before him are as nothing and they are counted by him less than nothing and they are worthless. We should never fear what our government will do because the nations are as a drop in the bucket. In Jeremiah 18 we learn that if that nation against whom God has spoken turns from its evil he will relent of the disaster that he was going to bring upon it. God is the absolute authority over all the nations. And God desires our nation.

He shall have, as Psalm 72 says, dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth, yes, all kings shall fall down before him, all nations shall serve him." Here's a fourth blessing, a fourth demand of the Great Commission, the physical sign of new life, baptism in verse 20. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. So, the disciple making process includes baptism. Baptism identifies the convert with Christ and the meaning of the word baptizo is to immerse in water. Baptism is a fruit of repentance.

It requires repentance. It requires the receiving of the Word of God. It's an outward sign of conversion. It's that ceremony where a Christian demonstrates his fidelity to Jesus Christ and his identification with him. And it is an expression of his true faith.

If you're reluctant to be baptized, then you ought to question your heart before God. God has desired that his disciples would be baptized. And it is a sign of ownership. It's a sign of new life. It's a sign of friendship with God and of sonship.

And the pattern in Scripture is to repent and to be baptized. So the question is, have you been baptized? If you've not been baptized, you should ask, have I bowed my knee to the Lord Jesus Christ? One of the most wonderful parts of this commission are some very simple words that we are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Now this is very wonderful.

We are baptized in or into one name. We are baptized into three persons. We are baptized into the very nature of the one true God. And what's so amazing about this is that a Christian is actually inserted into a family, into a community. It's a community of humility.

It's a community of love, as the Father loves the Son, as the Son delights to do the will of His Father. It's a community of delight. It's a community of divine pleasure. It's a community of relationship and communication. When you are baptized into Jesus Christ, you are baptized into a community of love.

You are baptized into a whole world of love, of which God is the sinner. So when you read these words baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, You are being introduced into a family. The most wonderful family that exists is the family of God. This community of beings who love one another. And you just consider what a blessing it is to be baptized into the name of the Father.

Think of the blessings and the benefits, the goodness of the Father and the Son. Think of the love and the mercy of the Son of God. Think of his authority. Think of his wisdom. Think of what he gives as bread of life, as waters of life, the spirit.

We are baptized into that name, this relationship of humility and love and service and presence. What a blessing it is to be baptized in that name. And it changes your whole behavior. You might ask yourself what were you baptized into. Were you baptized into that?

Maybe you were baptized into a cult and you haven't recognized that that was the nature of your baptism. Maybe you were baptized in one of those big youth group baptisms where everybody makes a profession of faith and they get wet that night, but you weren't really baptized into that name, into that community of love. You've never really known that community. You've never really tasted of His love. You've never really been nourished from heaven.

You've never really been comforted by him because the Spirit of God is the comforter. You're never really all that convicted of your sin. And you've not been baptized into that name. Perhaps you were baptized into moralism. You were baptized because you wanted to get your life together.

You wanted to fix up all the problems that were beating you to death. You were a mess as a husband and you figured you had to do something so you went and got baptized. You thought that might help you. You started going to church. Maybe you've been there for 10 or 20 years, but you were just baptized into moralism, and you've spent your whole life trying to clean the outside of the cup when in fact the inside of the cup is full of extortion and there's no life there because you weren't baptized into a community of love.

You've never really tasted and seen that the Lord is good. This is one of the critical marks of true conversion. You taste, you see that the Lord is good. But what were you baptized in? Were you baptized into that?

We have to ask that question. But The fulfillment of the Great Commission includes the performing of a physical, representative, and symbolic ordinance called baptism that signifies that you are now a child of God. And you have been inserted into this community of love and now you love. You know, there was a man that was converted in our church not very long ago and he was, you know, a theologian, he had a lot to say, was always involved in theological arguments and debates, but he actually ended up realizing he wasn't a Christian. He said, I realized that I was converted because I was sitting in church and I realized that I wasn't criticizing everything that pastor said.

My heart, my heart was, my heart loved him. My heart loved the word that was coming. He said, I looked at my wife and I realized I loved her because I hated her before. He had been baptized by the Spirit of God into a community of love. Who have you been baptized in?

What is the nature of this salvation that you claim? You must address that. And then there's this transforming influence in verse 20. A transforming influence. Teaching them to obey Christ.

Teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. That word observe is translated all over the New Testament as obey or keep. It's the same word, it's the word terreo, and it has to do with the changing of your life by obedience to Christ. And there are three things that are mentioned here. First, there's the activity teaching.

Second, the requirement to observe. And then thirdly, the content to observe all things that I have commanded. So there's this teaching. This Didasco, as the Greek language, has it. Teaching was always the central activity of Jesus Christ and he taught in synagogues, on roads, in a boat, on hillsides, he taught everywhere.

This is the ministry of the Great Commission. We teach, but what do we teach? We are involved in teaching all things that Christ has commanded. We know that the people were astonished at his teaching because he taught as one having authority, not as the Scribes and the Pharisees. We know that God requires fathers to teach their children.

We know that God requires saints to become teachers in the world. And this is the whole teaching ministry of the church. Here's a question. Why is it that churches who are known for evangelism are known for shallow doctrine and shallow teaching? Why is that?

Maybe you can tell me that. I'm not even going to attempt to answer that question with the shortness of time that we have. But God has called us to a teaching ministry. And then there's this requirement to observe, to obey. This occurs many times and this is about transformation, not, first of all, information.

And what we learn here is that Jesus Christ desires an obedient church. The problem with the church today, at least one of them, is that preaching obedience in the churches today has fallen on hard times. We live in a toleration generation and we want preachers to speak sweetly and the moment they make any demands we call them legalists. And we live in a generation where anyone who commands is called evil. This is the spirit of the Pharisees who killed the prophets and stoned those who were sent to her.

And the question we have to ask is, is calling for obedience legalism? Is it? And here the Lord Jesus declares that it's not because the disciples of Jesus are commanded to go and teach all things that Christ commanded. This is our work. When you find a shepherd who's not doing that, he's not a faithful shepherd.

People sometimes come and ask me, what's the vision that you have for the church there in Wake Forest? And of course, you know, my prayer for our church is that it is a Christ-centered church, it's a holy church, it's a praying church, it's a fearless church, it's a happy church, but I also pray that it is an obedient church. This is not a personal vision. This is Jesus Christ's vision for the church, and there's no better vision for the church than He has. I don't know if you've ever been on a committee to write a vision statement for your church.

Have you ever entered in obedience as one of the elements of your vision statement, to bring the congregation to the obedience of Jesus Christ, is that part of your agenda in your church. I know we have many church leaders here. Ask yourself, Is this part of your discipleship? We learn from Hebrews 5-9 that obedience is a sign of eternal salvation. We read, he became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him.

In Revelation 3, verses 3 and 4, we read that obedience is a fruit of repentance, where the writer says, Remember therefore how you have received and heard. Hold fast. It's the same word, obey. Hold fast and repent. Therefore, if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you.

We learn in John 14, 15 that obedience shows that you love Him. He said, if you love Me, you will keep My commandments. In John 14 21, we learn that obedience shows that you love Him and that you are loved by your Father. He who has My commandments and keeps them, It is He who loves me, and He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love Him and manifest myself to Him." Obedience is a condition to abiding in His love. John 15, 9-14, If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love.

Obedience is a sign that Christ is your friend. John 15, 14 says, You are my friends. If you do whatever I command you. Obedience is a mark of discipleship because the disciples kept His word. In John 17 verse 6, The Lord Jesus says, I manifested your name to the men you have given me out of this world.

They were yours, you gave them to me. And they have kept, they have obeyed your word. In John 8 51 we learn that obedience causes you never to see death. More assuredly I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he shall never see death." In 1 Corinthians 7, 19, we learn that obedience matters. Paul says circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing.

But keeping the commandments of God is what matters. And then the Bible ends with Revelation 22, 7, Behold, I am coming quickly. Blessed is he who obeys the words of the prophecy of this book. Obedience has fallen on hard times in the churches. We need to get it back.

God desires that there would be obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. Here the Lord Jesus Christ has declared that we ought to learn how to obey Him in every area of life. It is part of the fulfillment of the Great Commission. It is not an explicit part of the Gospel message, but it is a part of the fulfillment of the Great Commission because we are commanded to teach them to obey all things which I have commanded you. You know, there are many churches that support the work of the NCFIC and I view the support that we receive as really a Great Commission investment.

Because we are part of fulfilling an aspect of the Great Commission. We are declaring the sufficiency of scripture for church and family life. We're trying to teach families how to be families. We're trying to teach churches how to be churches. It is a Great Commission mission that we are on.

It is part of declaring these issues. God gives many callings to many different people. And thank Him that He has done that. There are many people who have such different focal points. And they have to do with the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

And then there is an abiding presence, an abiding presence in verse 20. He is with us always. Behold, I am with you always, even until the end of the age. This is such a precious promise here. He begins with that beautiful word, lo, to get your attention, to say behold, would you look at this, would you just pause on this, that I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

And so he commits his identification with you, he commits his attention upon you, and it means that you are never, never alone. And there are two ways to understand this. First of all, individualistically, that he walks with you, that he will never leave you or forsake you. But here in this text, Jesus uses the plural and he's talking about his church, that he will never leave or forsake his church. There's nothing that will destroy the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's such a wonderful assurance that my safety is secure, that he will never leave me or forsake me. You can go out on the mission field he will not let you rot. He may kill you but he will not let you rot. You can go out and witness to your friend and he will not leave you or forsake you. He may cause you to be hated.

He may cause you to be belittled and stoned, but He will never leave you or forsake you. And you will have the peace that passes all understanding. And then there is a thrilling ending in verse 20. Even to the end of the age, He is ruling until the end. What a wonderful thing this is that the history of the world and the history of my own life is that there is a wonderful and thrilling and happy ending.

That Jesus Christ ruling and reigning is there. That He is there and we are with Him for all eternity. And this is the meaning of life. This is the meaning of the resurrection. This is the purpose of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that there would be people from every tongue and tribe and nation before His throne And He, making them co-heirs of His kingdom, will rule and reign.

It's such a happy ending. This is the ending that God promises all of those who would be saved and who would fulfill the Great Commission. It's such a happy ending that God has promised. I'm so grateful for this passage of scripture. You know, we love happy endings, don't we?

We love the endings that conclude with such heartwarming change and freedom. This is the kind of ending that we have here. We love those endings because we long for that ending. And those who bow their knee to Jesus Christ will have that ending. And so here we have a supreme authority.

We have an exciting journey. We have a wonderful calling. We have a physical sign of new life being baptized in the name. We have a transforming influence to teach them to obey Christ. We have an abiding presence and we have a thrilling ending.

This is your Great Commission. This is the love of Jesus Christ for the world, that He would seek and save the lost through those that He would save, and He would send us out, that He would call us to go. Here's my advice. Number one, make your family a little missionary society that has this passage of Scripture as its vision statement. Secondly, make a list.

Make a list of people in your community that you need to go to. Go to them. Get out of your chair. Get out of your car. Or maybe get on a boat or board a plane, but go.

Thirdly, make a list of missionary biographies and read them as a family. This is one of the most helpful things that one can do to help them understand God's heart for the world and to destroy the grip of the world upon us. I pray that God would give us in these churches such a heartfelt love for Jesus Christ, such a fearless life in the world, such a vision for the transformation of society, such a true gospel. The gospel where we learn that he who knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. This is your great commission.

Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, I pray that you would fulfill each and every one of these elements in us and through us. Lord, that you would show us what to root out, what to pull down, what to destroy, what to tear down, what to build, and what to plant. And that now, O Holy Father, that you would come and work by your Spirit in all of our hearts to teach us these things. We thank you for such a great commission.

O Lord, let it not be our great omission. Amen. Our great mission. Amen. Thank you.

Thank you, Dan. So we're going to take a quick 15 minute break, actually a little more than 15 minutes, and we'll reconvene at 8.30. So let's begin making our way though in around 8.25 just so we can be seated and ready for Doug Phillips talk, so you're dismissed.