In the Book of Revelation, we read this of God’s redeemed: “These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes” (Rev. 14:4). But what does it mean to bear His name and walk with Him “wherever He goes”? In this session, Scott Brown will explain that it means, first, to be truly born again and, thereafter, to be fully immersed in His disciple-making agenda in the home, in the church, and around the world.
Please open your bibles in Matthew chapter 28. Matthew chapter 28, find verse 19. This is the inerrant, all-sufficient, sweeter than honey Word of God. Matthew 28 verse 19. 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 The grass withers the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.
Let's pray. Father thank you for teaching us how to live. Thank you for showing us the ways in which we should go. Thank you for directing our lives. Thank you Lord for the perfections of your word and the delightfulness of all your ways.
We pray oh Lord that you would give us understanding for how we might walk with you in the fulfillment of such a great commission in the world. Lord, I pray that you would tenderize our hearts and help us to understand your will. Amen. Well, in the Gospel of Matthew, as I have just read, the Lord Jesus Christ delivers what we now call the Great Commission. And you find this really is the essence of Christian discipleship.
This is the heart of the Christian life. This is the greatest thing that a person can ever do with their lives to seek to fulfill such a great commission that the Lord Jesus Christ himself has called us to do. And at the same time, the fulfillment of the Great Commission in some ways is in a state of crisis. God is not worried, But the Church of Jesus Christ in many ways has set aside the commands of God for the sake of their traditions. And they seek to fulfill the Great Commission their own way.
And have sought to invent ways to fulfill the Great Commission, not looking primarily to the Word of God. And so the church in the 21st century is a church that is saturated with pragmatic, unbiblical solutions for how to fulfill it. And the church has suffered long at the hands of creative coolness technicians in the church. But God's ways never change. And he teaches us his ways in this passage.
I wanna say three things tonight, I'll tell you what they are. First, I wanna talk about disciple making in the next 20 years of your life I want you to be thinking about the next 20 years of your life secondly I want to make it clear that the greatest work on earth is the fulfillment of the Great Commission. And then finally, the two greatest institutions are dedicated to the fulfillment of the Great Commission. And what I want to encourage us to do is to just trust God in his plan, in the way that he has designed it. Here's what I want to say.
I'll tell you right up front. The greatness of the Great Commission is fulfilled through the two greatest institutions that God created. And of course those two institutions are the church and the family. So let's talk about disciple making in the next 20 years of your life cycle? What will you do with your life in the next 20 years?
What will you do to make disciples in your home? What will you do to be involved in the disciple making agenda of God in the Church of Jesus Christ. I want to encourage you to give your whole heart and soul for the next 20 years of your life to the building of these two great discipleship institutions, the church and the family. You know, to be a disciple is to be a follower. And we find this kind of language all through the New Testament and we have culminates in the book of Revelation where you find there's those who are in heaven they're singing they're praising God and they follow the Lamb wherever he goes.
That's the life of the disciple. The Lord Jesus Christ makes it very clear what a disciple is. He's a learner. This is why Jesus Christ said in Matthew 8 26, he said, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give them eternal life. And there really there is nothing better in the world than to know Jesus Christ.
There's nothing better in the world Than to know Jesus Christ There's nothing better in the world than to have such a good shepherd There's nothing better in the world to know that you're forgiven There's nothing better in the world to know that you have a righteousness that is not your own But it it is that you have been clothed in the righteous robes of Jesus Christ There's nothing better in the world than that. There's nothing better than to follow the lamb wherever he goes. That's the life of the disciple. In Matthew chapter four, verse 19, Jesus commissioned his disciples to the work of disciple making. And he said to them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men.
And they immediately left their nets and followed him. I want to, I want us to think about our lives in terms of the next 20 years. And I would like to just speak briefly about the Great Commission, the greatness of the Great Commission. It's often the great omission among disciples. But I want to just quickly walk through the Great Commission in Matthew 28 18 through 20 now many men will recite this passage and do a Deeper exposition of this passage.
I'm not going to do a deep exposition, but I want to do a flyover of it here in the next few moments. How will the Great Commission be fulfilled? I want to give you seven ways that the Great Commission will be fulfilled. First, it is fulfilled by God's authority. That's verse 18.
All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. God will win through his supreme, unimpeded, unquenchable, unstoppable, omnipotent authority, and the Great Commission will be fulfilled by his authority. Nobody has to worry about that. Second, it's fulfilled by doing something. The Great Commission is fulfilled by doing something in the language in verse 19 is go therefore.
You get up and you do something. You get up from what you were doing and you go do something that has to do with the fulfillment of the Great Commission. The third way that the Great Commission is fulfilled is by finding followers who will follow the Lamb wherever he goes. Make disciples. A disciple is a follower.
We make followers not collect decisions. The fourth way that the Great Commission is fulfilled, It's fulfilled through a physical sign of new life. That's baptism, that's verse 20. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. God has given this physical representative, symbolic, instructive, beautiful ordinance to make it clear what it means to receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
Fifth, it is fulfilled by teaching people to obey. Verse 20, teaching them to observe or to obey all things that I have commanded you. This means that in the fulfillment of the Great Commission we we should teach the whole counsel of God. And as we do that, we bring disciples into obedience. Church shepherds have a distinctive divine appointment from God to bring their churches into the obedience of Jesus Christ, to teach them everything that he has commanded and that doesn't mean just teaching them the New Testament every word of the Bible is a word of Jesus Christ from the very beginning to the very end to teach them all things that I have commanded.
A gospel without obedience is a false gospel. A.W. Tozer said it like this, It is my opinion that tens of thousands of people, if not millions, have been brought into some kind of religious experience by quote, accepting Christ. And they have not been saved. If your Christian conversion did not reverse the direction of your life.
If it did not transform it, then you are not converted at all. You are simply a victim of the accept Jesus heresy. Heresy. And this version of cheap grace fills the ocean with unbelievers and and hell itself. The sixth way that the Great Commission is fulfilled is by Jesus Christ's abiding presence.
Verse 20, Lo, I am with you always. Christ is in you, Christ is with you, Christ walks with you. You will never go anywhere in the world where Christ is not with you. It is fulfilled by the abiding, protective, comforting, emboldening presence of Jesus Christ. And then seventh and finally, it is fulfilled in a thrilling ending, even to the end of the age.
This thrilling, confirming, soul-satisfying eschatology, the end that he is with us until the end of the age. And the Lord will fulfill the Great Commission. So that that's sort of a flyover of the Great Commission. Here's a proposition that flows from these things. Fulfilling the Great Commission means that we order our lives according to the patterns and the commands of the word of God.
Acting in obedience to God's methodology for the fulfillment of the Great Commission is how believers become faithful followers of the Lamb wherever he goes. To follow the Lamb wherever he goes is not some nebulous, hyper-spiritual thing. It's actually something that you do. You actually follow his commands wherever he goes. Do you have a plan For how you will be making disciples in the next 20 years of your life Is it clear?
How you fit into that calling We have a young crowd here and I want to speak to you about the next 20 years of your life. And the first question you must ask is, am I a follower of the Lamb? Has my life been altered and changed by the power of Jesus Christ? That's the most important question. And frankly, you know, at Church and Family Life, We want to be a blessing to the adult singles, the young families, particularly in the next 20 years of their life cycle.
As they move into marriage, as they are married, as they are raising children, as they're involved in their local churches, as they finally usher their children into their own marriages the next 20 years of your life. What will it be like? And what is most earnest in the hearts of those who are executing the ministry of church and family life is what we can do to encourage young families for the next 20 years of their life cycle. And we so pray that they would be fortifying these two great institutions Because it's these two institutions that God has created for the making of disciples. And I believe we need an awakening of biblical patterns for making disciples in the church and in the home and around the world.
And in the next few minutes, I want to unfold the institutional contours of making disciples through these two great institutions. Because the greatest work that is ever done on earth is the fulfillment of the Great Commission. And you have these two great institutions. The greatest institutions that God created are dedicated to the fulfillment of the Great Commission. There are two, these two institutions.
They were created by the sovereign and triune God, the God of the heavens and the earth, the God who created all that there is. And he created these institutions specifically for the spread of the gospel of grace and the discipleship of his people. For the raising of the next generation and for spreading out into the world. And I've dedicated the last quarter of a century of my life to the proposition that these are the two most important institutions on the planet today and they deserve our whole heart and work. They are created for the making of disciples.
They have profound influence on everything. The reasons for the trouble in the world can be traced back to families and churches. Let me illustrate this power of the church and the family. In Genesis 1-16, we read that God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. I think that the moon and the Sun and the earth give us an illustration of how important these two institutions are.
God's universe is finely tuned so that the details of life to thrive on earth are dependent on very finely tuned motions and these two bodies the the moon and the sun it's It says there in Genesis that the greater light rules the day and the lesser light rules the night. The idea of in this word rule, it means to take dominion. It means that the sun and the moon exercise strength, literally like a military strength. It's a mighty force. The word has to do with something that controls, something that functions like force or forces.
And the sun and the moon alter life on Earth. The moon steadies the axis of the Earth to keep it from wobbling. The moon, if it was just a little bit closer, if it was just a little bit farther away, if it was just a little bit smaller, if it was just a little bit closer, if it was just a little bit farther away, if it was just a little bit smaller, if it was just a little bit larger, life as we know it would cease on the planet. If the tilt of the axis of the moon was just a little more one way or the other, life as we know it would not exist. The moon controls the oceans, the tides.
It moderates surface temperatures all over the world. The Sun keeps the Earth in its orbit. It provides light, it provides heat, it gives us energy to sustain life. It allows us to grow food and for animals to grow. Without the Sun, there would be no wind, there would be no ocean currents, and no clouds to carry water over the face of the earth the blue color of the sky the air we breathe the temperatures on the earth the surface winds and tides are constantly cleansing the waters of the world and the oceans tidal flow they transport heat from north to south poles.
You know all this to say that the moon and the sun have a profound influence on everything that happens on planet Earth. You know, we recently saw a solar eclipse where the moon eclipsed the sun. And it really is astonishing to think of what was happening in that eclipse. Here's why. The distance from the Earth to the Sun is 93 million miles away.
But the difference, the distance from the Earth to the Moon is only 240,000 miles away. There's a vast difference in the distance. The distance from the Earth to the Sun is exactly 400 times the distance of the Earth to the moon. And if you compare the diameter of the Sun, the Sun is almost 400 times larger than the diameter of the moon. And that's why when you witness an eclipse, even though the moon and the Sun are vastly different in size, vastly different in distance, they look like they're the same size from the earth because of the way that God has designed it.
The church and the family are like that. They are the institutional means for the sustenance of spiritual life in the earth. They are the institutional means for the fulfillment of the Great Commission. For what the church does the culture will become and what the family is the church will become. And this is why it's so critical that in in the hearts of Christians that they are dedicated to these transformational institutions.
They have the greatest influence on everything that goes on in the planet among human beings. These are the institutional means for the fulfillment of the Great Commission. It's through the church and the family that the gospel is delivered from one generation to another. Parents who teach their children and churches who faithfully proclaim the Word of God to all who are gathered. And frankly, what the Bible says about the centrality of the home and the centrality of the church exposes two very dangerous errors that often believers even commit.
The first error of modern families is that they neglect or they minimize the crucial role of the local church. What comes with this is the minimization of the doctrine of the church. The second error is the error of churches. Churches which neglect or they minimize the responsibility to teach the families how to be family. What is the biblical functionality of the family?
How does the family function within the church? How does the family raise up real men and real women in this culture? How the family functions to take dominion, turning the home into a spiritual vibrancy that actually changes, that stands as a beacon of light in the midst of a wicked culture. And as people look into it, they're convicted, sometimes enraged. But there's this little piece of heaven called a family, this institution that God has created.
But these errors are endangering our entire culture. What we've tried to do over the last two decades is try to recover the doctrine of the church and the doctrine of the family and To help the believer to understand the complementary roles of church and family life Because the church and the family are complementary in role and function We many years ago wrote what we call the Declaration for the complementary roles of church and family life. We tried to state what we believe about the church and what we believe about the family and how these complementary spheres work together to fulfill the Great Commission. You know, on the one hand, we deny the unscriptural concept of an autonomous family in isolation from the local church or in subordinate to the local church. On the other hand, we deny a tyrannical church that seeks to trample on or belittle the legitimate authority and exercise of the family.
The devil hates these two institutions. They wage an unrelenting war against the family and against the church. The governments of the world hate the biblical order of the church and they seek to dismantle it as they have in recent years here even in the United States. And so consequently Christians are obligated to defend the biblical order of the church and to defend the biblical order of the family by the way that they live. And Frank, and this conference really arises out of an era of spiritual warfare Where churches are embracing cultural norms they become a mirror of the world and they compromise critical elements of church life And it results in the widespread weakening of the church and a collapse of biblical family life We often regard the traditions of men greater than we regard the commandments of God.
Jesus said it like this, why do you set aside the commandment of God for the sake of your traditions? In Matthew 15 verse 3. And this has rendered the Church of Jesus Christ vulnerable to pragmatism and false teachings and humanism, sexual humanism and psychology and Darwinism and all kinds of unbiblical woke ideas that are really overtaking the great denominations of the world. And the earth wobbles when the church and the family are not functioning according to biblical patterns. The Great Commission falters when the church and the family are out of order, and they're not functioning according to biblical patterns.
The Great Commission falters when the church and the family are not operating according to God's design. One of the bitter fruits of this compromise is weak, generationally fragmented churches and families. And, of course, we believe the biblical solution to this problem is to confess our wrong practices and to repent of our errors and be reformed according to the word of God. And we must confess the unbiblical traditions of men and that the word of God ought not to be made of no effect but wholeheartedly believe and teach all that God has commanded in his word, and that includes the fulfillment of the Great Commission through these two great institutions. And our fervent prayer really is that God would raise up churches and families where the scriptures are honored, where they are proclaimed, where they are obeyed for their only rule of life and doctrine.
Well there's a deeper systemic problem. The most pressing issue in the Church of Jesus Christ today is the faithful communication of the true gospel of Jesus Christ, resulting in believers who obey as the scripture has said. But there's another problem. It's the modern-day rejection of scripture as fully sufficient for your family life and for your church life. The underlying matter, the underlying root causes of pragmatism and unbiblical practices is really either a rejection or a misunderstanding of the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture.
And we use this term the sufficiency of scripture to refer to our belief that the church only needs the word of God for her doctrine and for her practice. That all things should be governed by scripture and scripture alone. It is the one and only inspired and infallible standard for church life and family life and gender roles and work life and everything else. And we hold to what the historic confessions held to. And we urge the church to embrace the historic confessions, particularly the Baptist Confession of 1689 and the Westminster Confession of Faith.
The London Baptist Confession of 1689 affirms the Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. We deny that the Word of God is inadequate for the governing of a family and for the building of the church. You know many of you young people have grown up in a confessional church, in a family integrated church where the whole church worships God together, where you didn't experience the fragmentation of the generations as is so common in the worship of God. I don't want you to repeat the errors that your parents had to repent of in their unbiblical practices 20 and 25 years ago. As you look out around to the Pragmatic Church and it just looks so much fun and there's just so much, it's just so amazing.
But it really matters whether you believe scripture and scripture alone is sufficient. We really need an awakening for the making of disciples. One of the greatest dangers we have is a disciple-making institution. The greatest disciple-making institution in the world today is social media and entertainment. These are the great catechizing institutions of our day.
The algorithms are radicalizing us to their catechisms. Don't raise your children on social media. The church and the family are God's catechizing institutions. God created the family to bring forth godly seed, to make disciples. And you find the doctrine of the family beginning right at the very beginning.
What you find in Genesis is right after the fall you have a family worshiping God together. Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel are offering sacrifices. Worship began in families and you find the same pattern with Noah and Job and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. The worship of God began in families, and it ought to be sustained in families. When the Lord commanded Moses to build the tabernacle, what did they do?
They placed the twelve tribes of Israel all around the tabernacle, some in the north, some in the south, some in the east, and some in the west, and they were all pointed toward the worship of God in the tabernacle. That's how God has designed a family to function, that the family is a worshiping institution. In the last month of Moses's life, Moses commands the children of Israel to teach their children when they sit in the house, when they walk by the way, when they lie down, and when they rise up. That means everything in your life is for the worship of God. This is what a family reformation looks like.
And by the way, there is a family reformation in motion today. There are things happening in the last 10 and 20 years that did not happen in the 20th century. I was there. And you have men like Joel Beeke over here who's been publishing the Puritan family reformation documents. I've been doing the same for the last 15 years.
There was a family reformation in the Protestant Reformation, particularly with Luther and Calvin, and they were throwing off the traditions of men about the family. And then the Puritans picked it up and they just expanded on it and they published enormous amount of words for the reformation of families and I praise God for Joel Beeke and others Banner of Truth who have been publishing these great things, we need a family reformation. And we've got one going. So many of you have been operating in a way that none of the other people around you operate. When you start doing family worship, you stand against the whole tide of evangelicalism.
There's so much we could say about the doctrine of the family, we could we could walk through the New and the Old Testament. You have this profile of a courageous father in Jeremiah 24. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. The psalmist in Psalm 78, we will not hide them from their children, from their children. We will tell them the praises of God and his strength.
This is a picture of the family. In fact, the very last verses of the Old Testament predict, prophesy a family reformation. Malachi says, he says that when the gospel comes when Jesus Christ comes Jesus Christ himself He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse the very last Prophecy in the Old Testament is a prophecy of a family reformation. Where the hearts of everyone in the family are transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. A true family reformation is a fruit of the Great Commission, the power of the gospel.
There's so much we could say about family life. In the church, the church is essential for biblical family life. Every family needs the church. Every family needs the ordinary means of grace. Every family needs the authority that God invests in a church.
Every family needs the fellowship in the relationships in a church. Every family needs to do what they did in the book of Acts where they continued steadfastly in the Apostles doctrine and in fellowship in the breaking of bread and in prayers. The family needs the church. The family needs the problems in the church to sanctify it and strengthen it. The family needs an imperfect church.
I so desire that parents do all they can to squeeze the greatest amount of good out of their local church experience and I wrote a book about it. It's called The Family at Church, How Parents Are Tour Guides for Joy, 20 Days to Transform Your Local Church Experience. I wrote this book to help busy fathers and mothers to help their children experience the greatness of the Great Commission at work through the ordinary means of grace in a local church. It's so important that parents exercise tremendous energy to bring their children into the local church. The local church is the most important place you will ever take your children.
You'll take them a lot of places, but there's no place more precious to God than to a local church. And how will the local church be regulated? The Church of God ought to be regulated by Scripture and Scripture alone. What you have today are two different ways of operating a church. It's operated by what we call the regulative principle or the normative principle.
And these two methodologies have a profound impact on local church life. The regulative principle says that corporate worship must conform to the specific commands of the Bible. In other words, nothing should be done in the gathered worship of God unless there is a clear warrant from Scripture. You can't do whatever you want. You can only do what God commands.
The normative principle states that the church can do anything that's not prohibited in scripture. And according to this principle, the church can invent her own principles and methods for corporate worship as long as there's no explicit command in Scripture. Here's the problem with that. Once you embrace the normative principle, Now the church has become subject to the next creative, most persuasive person who can come up with really creative, interesting things to do. And God has given men such an ability.
In fact, you know, when I was in seminary, long time ago, you know, we were told that we should be very creative with the church. That was wrong. The biblical pattern of the worship of God is age integrated. And we believe that the church needs to wake up to the fact that there is a clear and consistent and explicit biblical pattern of Worship that is age integrated In the Bible on the other hand there is no clear no positive scriptural pattern or positive institution that would lead us to create distinct age-segregated cultures in the church, or age-segregated worship, or systematic, comprehensive, age-segregated discipleship. And it's high time for the church to actually return to the biblical pattern of biblically ordered, age-integrated, generational methodology for the worship and the instruction in the Church of Jesus Christ.
And we believe that's a critical matter. God has created a generational church where the older teach the younger, where the children are being preached to just like they were as it's recorded in in in Ephesus in the in the book of the Ephesians the children were there We're praying that the 21st century church will see more of church integrated families and family integrated churches. Where children grow up hearing the singing. Where the children grow up hear real preaching. Not kiddie sermons.
But preaching by godly men who have something to say. And the truth is, and I've been doing this for a quarter of a century, they learn a little bit and a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more And you end up with a more mature young person when you dismantle youth culture in a church. I realize that's probably difficult for some of you to hear. But what you find in the New Testament is a church that's continually daily with one accord breaking bread from house to house and they eat their food with gladness and sincerity of heart and all the generations are there. It's the only explicit pattern of scripture.
So these are some of the contours of making disciples in the church and the family. The ordinary means of grace, the preaching of qualified elders, the fellowship of the saints, the Lord's Supper, all the things that the church does in fellowship and personal evangelism, these are the things that God has called the church to do and They're very, very simple. Why? Scripture is sufficient for church life. These two institutions are the chief great commission institutions.
The moon and the sun, they provide health and beauty to the earth, and the church and the family are that way. As the moon steadies the earth, so the church steadies the family, and the family steadies the church. As the moon controls the oceans and the tides and moderates the surface temperatures throughout the earth so the church and the family moderates those who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. As the sun keeps the earth in its orbit so the church and the family keep God's people from spinning through space and time as they follow the Lamb wherever He goes. As the sun and the moon provide light and heat and energy so the church and the family provide light and heat to those who follow the Lamb wherever he goes and as the sun and the moon make things grow and provide food for man so does the church and the family make things grow to the ends of the earth for the glory of God.
And so. We're here to urge you to set your whole life of flame for these two great institutions to follow the Lamb wherever he goes. Will you leave the world and live differently? Will you abandon the worldly practices of discipleship? Will you plunge your life, your whole life into these two great commission institutions?
And I want to finally issue a five-fold call. First, preserve the true gospel from one generation to the next through biblically ordered gospel preaching, Christ exalting churches and families. Bring the generations together. Let them worship. Stop segmenting them like the public schools.
Stop the children's church and bring them into the true worship of God. Second, give your whole life to rely on Scripture alone for all things that pertain to life and godliness because the Word of God is fully sufficient for the ordering of your whole life. Third, make it your aim to focus churches and families on the Word of God by restoring the practice of teaching the whole counsel of God through exegetical preaching of Scripture by qualified elders. Fourth, in your own heart, in your own schedule, establish the central importance of the local church for the Great Commission. And finally, as a father, as a mother in your family, revive the biblically defined role and functionality of the family, where fathers teach their children when they sit in the house and when they walk by the way.
Asaph said it in one sentence, We will not hide them from their children telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. This is the greatness of the Great Commission. This Great Commission is fulfilled by the two greatest institutions that God has established. Would you pray with me? Father, I pray that you would give us such a heart within us to walk in all of your ways We praise you that you've not hidden them from them from us But you've disclosed them in your holy word.
Oh God give these families holy family save all of their children and give these families holy churches that stand against the tide of pragmatism and worldliness that seek to overtake them. Amen. Thanks for watching!