The Mission of the Church: To Love God and our Neighbour by Making Disciples

Morning, we are continuing our series on the church. Perfectly imperfect is the series title. Two weeks ago, we started looking at the church by looking firstly at the constitution of the church, how it's been formed. And we saw that the church is constituted by lost people, people far from God who have received peace with God. And through that peace with God, we have received peace with one another.

We're a group of unlikely fellows brought together by the gospel of peace. Ephesians 2:11-22. That's the first thing we saw. Secondly, we saw, yes, last week, the ethos of the church. So week one, the constitution of the church.

Week two, the ethos of the church. And we saw that love is the supreme ethic in the church. Love sits behind everything we do. We looked at the famous chapter on love, 1 Corinthians 13, as we came to understand that. So the constitution of the church is constituted of lost people receiving peace with God and peace with one another.

Secondly, love is the supreme ethic which binds us together to have peace with one another and peace with God. And this week, we asked a very important question: what is the purpose of the church? What is the mission of the church? Why has God put us together to have peace with Him and with one another? Well, we understand perhaps most clearly the mission of the church from a moment where a group of scared young men were turned into an unstoppable force of unwavering determination.

They heard a single command that day that became their life's purpose. It was only a single month after having been crucified and then raised from the dead that Jesus of Nazareth gave a final word to His disciples. It was through this parting message to them that imagine this, a group of fishermen, tax collectors, and blue-collared workers took on a mission which consumed their lives and made them willing to give up everything to see that a purpose was accomplished. What were these words that filled them with such passion and perseverance? We find those words this morning in Matthew 28.

Matthew 28, and we're going to read from verse 16. Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw Him, they worshipped Him, but some doubted. Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age." And that is how the gospel of Matthew finishes. This is the word of the Lord. In our passage, we see Jesus about to ascend to the throne of heaven, having accomplished His work on earth. But before He goes, He gives His disciples, the 11 remaining disciples, what is called the Great Commission.

This is a command for them to remain back on earth. He is leaving; He's not taking them with Him. They have a job to finish. Through this command, the disciples become apostles. Through this command, the disciples become the apostles. Apostle literally means "sent ones".

This is where Jesus sends them. They are sent to do what? To make disciples of the nations. So this morning, we're going to look at the various details contained in this final command, which shaped not only the apostles' work, but as we'll come to understand, the apostolic church that would come after them, i.e., the church today. But before we get to the Great Commission statement, we see Jesus telling the apostles this magnificent news first.

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Why is this magnificent news to the apostles? Well, it means that Jesus is king. For the apostles about to be sent into the world that has rejected Christ as the Son of God, they needed to know, first of all, that there wouldn't be a decision that they make, a choice that they take that could destroy the mission they were meant to accomplish. Do you understand that?

There wasn't something that they could do that would be such a horrendous mistake in the mission they receive that would overturn the mission and the purpose that God through Jesus was sending them. That is a massive reassurance for these 11 men standing on that lonely hill in Galilee. Jesus says to His disciples, all authority belongs to me. You don't go with your own authority. You go with mine, and my authority is supreme.

Everything under heaven and on earth belongs to me. Jesus says this because the disciples need to know that their work of making disciples will be successful, that their preaching will actually change lives. In other words, this commission will turn these 11 young disciples into apostles, and yet this commission doesn't die with them. Today, two thousand years later, Peter, John, Paul, they're all dead. Yet the words of Matthew 28 still stand because those words don't belong to the apostles, they belong to the church.

They belong to those who will carry on with the apostolic preaching that we have received from them. In other words, Matthew writes down these words in his gospel account, not simply as a historical record, he communicates them to us as the marching orders of the church. Just as the apostles needed to hear the assurance that all authority belongs to Jesus, so we, the church, need to hear it as well. All authority belongs to Him. Everything under heaven and on earth belongs to Him.

His purposes will be worked out, therefore, according to His plan and nothing can subvert that. This morning in thinking about what the church is supposed to do, the mission of the church, we need to first hear why we can do anything in the first place. And the reason is because Jesus is king. And we serve the king who would say in places like John 10:18, "No one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord, and I have the authority to take it back up again."

And so as Jesus sends out the 11 to win over literally the entire world, 11 people to win the entire world, He gives them the only thing that could instil any hope. I'm the one with the power, and I'm telling you to go and do this because my power is going with you. Everything, every single thing has come under the kingship of Christ. And it's therefore for this reason He begins the command: "Go therefore. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations."

It's critically important for us to see that it's only in light of Jesus' absolute authority in heaven and on earth that His disciples are told next to go and make disciples of the ends of the earth. Now it's very, very important to remember what Jesus' last words were before He ascended to heaven. These words aren't sentimental niceties. They're not sort of the nice things you might say to a friend as you say goodbye at the airport. You know, "I'm really going to miss you.

I hope things are going to go well for you over here. I'm sure we're going to be fine." His very last words are not niceties; they're commands. And the command starts with the first directive which is to go, to move. Mission and the proclamation of the gospel therefore define the nature, the purpose, and the activity of the church. Mission and the proclamation of the gospel is what defines us.

Mission and evangelism, evangelism meaning the sharing of the gospel, cannot be singular activities, therefore, that fit along all the other parts of the church. Proclamation of the gospel doesn't sit next to renovating the church building. Proclamation of the gospel doesn't sit with making sure we have enough car park spots for the church. Proclamation of the gospel is what the church exists for. The main purpose of the church is to make disciples.

So the renovation of the church and the painting of more car park spots is for the purpose of making more disciples. It's not a means; it's not an end in itself. Rather, Jesus' first command, the very first verb in that statement is to go. Now that word in the original Greek structure is actually what's called the leading verb for the whole sentence. In going, they will do all these other things, but they must first go.

And that command to go determines the things that follow it. It determines the making of disciples, the teaching of these disciples, and the obeying of these disciples. Why is that the first verb there? Well, obviously, if we don't go, then the rest won't follow. If the disciples don't go, they'll stay in Galilee.

If the disciples don't go, they stay in Jerusalem hunkered in that locked room. If the disciples didn't go, we in Australia on the other side of the earth would have never received the gospel. Jesus sends them away. The command to go is for the people in His church therefore to move, to lean into the work. For some of us, it may require us to literally move and become missionaries that go to Manipur, India to strengthen the persecuted Christians.

But for many, it won't. And yet what it always means is this: action is required. The command to go and make disciples requires commitment. Wherever we might find ourselves, whatever location, whatever community, whatever church you may go to in your life, our very existence as the church of God should drive us to intentionally deliver the message of Jesus. The purpose to go, Jesus says, is to make disciples.

Go, make disciples. And so the goal of this Great Commission is to win people to loving and adoring and serving God through Jesus. You could say therefore that the purpose of the Great Commission fulfils the other great purpose of the church. Remember, in actually three of the four gospel accounts, we find the same story being told, which means that this was very important. This was very important to the self-understanding of the early church.

In three of the four gospel accounts, we find this same story repeated. Someone comes to Jesus and asks the important question: "Lord, of all God's commandments, which is the most important?" In Matthew 22, Mark 12, and Luke 10, Jesus responds. He says the most important command is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, your strength. The second command is to love your neighbour as you would love yourself.

And so that's perhaps, you could say, the other purpose of the church, to love God, to love our neighbour. Every Christian needs to love God with everything we have and to love our neighbour in the way we would like to be loved. And yet, this teaching from Jesus, known as the Great Commandment, is seen here in the Great Commission, where we see the greatest loving act we could do to our neighbour is to bring them into a relationship where they can love God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. The mission of the church therefore is not social justice and to make someone's life comfortable here until they die and face eternity in hell. The greatest act you and I can do is to bring them into a relationship to love God with everything.

The greatest honour then also that we can show God, the greatest fulfilment of loving God with everything we have is by bringing other worshippers to Him so that they, in turn, may magnify Him, that there is more of us to praise God. It's why John Piper, in his book to missionaries, wrote this shocking statement. This is not the type of thing you would like to hear as a missionary. He says missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is.

He says missions exist because worship doesn't. Does that make sense? Because there's lost people out there. There's not enough worshippers. We have mission because there isn't worship completely over the face of the earth.

Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. As a pastor, I'll be out of a job in heaven. I should learn how to do some plumbing or something. It's a temporary necessity, he says.

Worship abides forever. Missions exist because worship doesn't. If we truly love God and want to see Him honoured to the infinite extent that He deserves, we will want the whole world to glorify Him as worshippers. And if we truly love our neighbour, we know that deep down, the best thing for them is to worship God with everything they have. So the Great Commission to go and make disciples is actually part of the fulfilment of the Great Commandments.

And so firstly, we see Jesus saying: go, move. But what do we do after we've gone? Jesus says: make disciples by baptising them into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Ask yourself the question: why baptism? Why is that here?

Well, baptism in the Bible has always meant incorporation. It's an initiating ritual. But Jesus doesn't say anything here about the church. This is not baptise them into the church, He says. It's baptism into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

What on earth does that mean? Well, as we probably know, Christianity is the only world faith that teaches that God is a Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is that God is one being who exists eternally in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But what that fundamentally tells us about God is that He is, in His very essence, relational. God is in His very essence relational.

God exists in three distinct persons continually in a community. The late great Tim Keller, in talking about the Trinity said that in life, when we delight and serve someone else, we enter into a dynamic orbit around them. We centre our interests on the desires of the other. And this is what the Bible tells us about our relationship with God. Each of the divine persons of the Trinity, we see centres on the other.

The Son lives to serve the Father. The Spirit serves to serve the Son and to each other. Each person in the Trinity voluntarily serves the other two, pouring love, delight, and adoration onto them, Keller writes. This creates a kind of dynamic that is pulsating with activity, joy, and love. C.S.

Lewis called it the dance of God. Now when Jesus commissions His followers to baptise others into the name, notice its name, not names of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One name, three persons. He tells us when He does this to bring others into that joyful living pulsating relationship of the Trinity. It's like we're a fourth being that's being dragged into this orbit.

The Great Commission gives us not a new world religion to start. The Great Commission doesn't give a new world order to begin. It's not even creating a school of disciples who will memorise and remember the lifestyles of Jesus. Making disciples means bringing people into an eternal relationship with God Himself. The thing that Jesus saves us from when He goes to the cross is this thing called sin. But what is sin?

Sin is the act of centring ourselves on anything other than God. Here, Jesus sends out His disciples to baptise people into the Trinity and essentially says to them: you are bringing them into God. Bring them into that joyful, delightful, self-giving nature of who I am, Jesus says. And so as a church, we baptise people into the name, and it means we invite them into the family of God. And once they are baptised into God, they are by extension baptised into the group of fellow baptised believers, baptised into God, i.e., the church.

So yes, you're baptised into the church, but only because you've been baptised into God. So that's in essence why we baptise. We are seeking to fulfil the Great Commission. This is the reason why there's only two sacraments in the Christian Bible, not seven, I think, the Catholic church holds to. There's only two.

Jesus said: do the Lord's Supper, eat and drink in remembrance of me. That's one. And Matthew 28, baptise people. Two things that we are told to do.

So after this, after baptising them into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, what do we do then? When Jesus says: teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. Do you know that babies are not just born into families and then left there? Turned one on Friday, which is hard to believe that it's been a year. But when Alida was born, and Erica was there to attest to the fact that it was hard work for Desiri to bring Alida into the world.

Sure, Desiri had carried Alida for nine months straight. Desiri will be very quick to point out that it was nine months and two weeks. Alida was very comfortable in her little unit up there. When Alida was born, that's not when the work ended. You don't say to a baby once you bring them back from the hospital: "Baby, welcome to our house.

Help yourself to the fridge. Bathroom's second door to the right. See you in the morning." When a Christian is brought into God's family, that's not when the story ends. God doesn't bring into His family those of us who have been baptised into the name of the Father and Son and then leave us to our own devices.

In a healthy family, babies are nurtured. They are prepared for adulthood. Jesus doesn't only come to set sinners free from their past brokenness, He wants to set sinners free from their future brokenness. Think about the short amount of time that Jesus was here on earth, three years only teaching His disciples. But the schooling that Jesus put His disciples through becomes the school that every one of us goes through.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they write their gospels to show that they understand what Jesus gave them as not simply relating to them. He's teaching all of us that will come after them. They understand that they, as His disciples, need to teach other disciples how to be disciples. God's goal for this church is maturing in Christ. If you are a parent to baptise children, as our elder Dani prayed for this morning, our job is to mature our children in the knowledge of God and bring them to obedience to Jesus Christ.

If you are a husband, you are a spiritual head of your family. Your concern is for your wife to grow into Christ. As a wife and a fellow believer, you are also concerned for your husband to grow in Christ. As church members, in fact, when we baptise people into this church, we make a promise that our work as a church is to be a teaching church to that child or that adult who has been baptised. A few months ago, we made a promise to Mali that we will teach him what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

We don't leave new Christians on the doorstep. We teach them to grow. We teach them to be established. We teach them to be equipped in how to live for Jesus. Jesus leaves His church with work to do.

He gives His apostles that work initially, but that work, we understand through the writings of the New Testament, continues to this day. Yet the hope of the disciples on that day, which is our hope today, that Jesus begins that commission of the church by saying: all authority is mine. Therefore, you can go. All authority is mine, and I'm telling you, you must go because all authority is mine. Jesus, the king of the universe, sends us out to do a job that only He is capable of doing, the job of winning over souls for the kingdom.

But He doesn't only begin with those words. He ends that commission in a similar way. Have a look at those final words, the final things. Just imagine that as Matthew finished his gospel, he would have been so encouraged. He says, quotes Jesus: "And behold, I am with you always to the ends of the age."

What is the purpose of the church? It is to love God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength and to love our neighbour as ourselves. But we fulfil those commands by fulfilling the Great Commission also given to us by Jesus. Jesus sends out His church to move, to go out with dynamic action, bringing people into the family of God, nurturing them in such a way that they also in turn become disciple-making disciples. But even in this, He finishes with the words, thankfully: "I am with you."

He won't ever let us do this on our own. This is His promise to us, but we the church have a job to do. There is a mission for us to commit our lives to. You may not feel like you know how your individual life fits into that great mission just yet, but I can also tell you that this morning, as you gave your money to the church, you gave it to this work. As you came this morning and said hello to a fellow believer and encouraged a visitor here this morning, you are participating in that work.

When you invest your time, when you invest your gifts, when you invest your energy like the ladies did yesterday, to keep this church thriving, alive, and doing its mission, you are working to fulfil the Great Commission of making disciples of all nations. We may not always think of it in those grand terms, but really, that is what we are doing. When you talk about Jesus with your neighbour, when you talk about Jesus to your coworkers, you are busy contributing towards this great mission. All authority, Jesus said, on earth and in heaven has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.

Baptise them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always till the very end of the age. Amen. Let's pray. Thank you, Lord, that you give us those final words, that you are with us in the mission you give us.

And Lord, we promise to give our lives to that. Really, it is that simple. It's to love you with everything we have. It's to love our neighbour as we would like to be loved ourselves. And ultimately, Lord, those things, the best things we could want in loving you and loving them is to see them as disciples of Jesus.

And so, Lord, help us to do that. Help us to believe that you have the authority to make this a success. When we fail, when our church seems so small and may feel under-resourced and there's just so much to do and so little time, help us to believe that you have the authority to make it work. Help us to believe that you are with us, and when we make mistakes, that you will correct us. Help us to believe that you will be with us until we don't need this Great Commission anymore, the day when we are finally with you and true worship will ultimately be yours.

Lord, we pray for open house. We pray that we will be successful in that. We pray for the preaching from this pulpit to do its work. We pray for the teaching of our elders, of those commissioned to teach in this church. They will be successful in accomplishing what they need to do.

We entrust our lives as those who need to be discipled, that we will learn, that we will give ourselves over to the teaching of your word, that we will be conformed into the image of the Son. And Lord, we pray for opportunities sovereignly given to us by your providence to reach those that you would give us, to draw those people towards yourself that are needing to be drawn. Help us to be faithful simply to that task. Help us to be intentional and to be obedient to this command. And Lord, help us to praise you for the success that we have because it is your success.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.