Sermon Tone Analysis

I pray that all of you have come prepared to be transformed by the power of God’s word.

I also pray that even though Easter is over, you are still in awe of the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior.

You might have assumed that last week was our final look at the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

But after Christ rose from the grave, He remained on earth for approximately forty more days, and during that forty days, He appeared to several different groups of His disciples.

And this morning, we are going to be looking at a time when Jesus gathered all of His disciples together, and officially sent them out to spread Christianity around the world.

And as most of you know, this message from Jesus is known as the “Great Commission.”

And if you are not already there, I invite you to turn to Matthew chapter twenty-eight, and we are going to be reading verses sixteen through the end of the book.

So again, Matthew 28, starting in verse 16.

“Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them.

And when they saw Him, they worshipped Him: but some doubted.

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, ‘All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

Amen.’”

As always, let’s begin our time of study with a word of prayer.

Who here can tell me what major event happened in Christian history in the 1500s?

That’s right, the Protestant Reformation.

And as Baptists, we claim those reformers as our fathers in the faith.

It was during this time that Martin Luther declared that it was only by faith that we are saved; not by confession, and Mass, and Hail Marys.

It was those reformers that boldly declared that the Bible is the sole source of our faith and practice, and not centuries of traditions.

And along those lines, I think we would all say, “Praise the Lord!”

And yet, reformers like Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli all shared in the same theological error.

They all said that the Great Commission only applied to the eleven disciples, and not to the world today.

So whenever the Catholic church was sending missionaries to Latin America, India, and China; the Protestants concluded that it was simply not their place to tell other people about Christ.

And this morning, as we study these short five verses, we are going to decide if they were right.

We will decide this by answering two questions.

First , we are going to answer the question, “What is the meaning of the Great Commission?”

And second, we are going to answer the question, “What does the Great Commission mean for us?” Sound good?

All right then, let’s begin.

Question #1: What is meaning of the Great Commission?

Before we actually look at the message of the Great Commission, I want you to notice three things about Christ in verses sixteen and seventeen.

But for right now, let’s read verse sixteen again.

“Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them.”

The first thing I want you to notice is that our Savior called His disciples to a mountain in Galilee.

While this may seem like an unimportant detail, Christ was very intentional in what He did.

You see, the disciples had made many memories with Christ while on mountains.

Remember the week that we studied the Lord’s Prayer?

That prayer was a section of the Sermon on the where?

The Sermon on the Mount!

As a matter of fact, many commentators believe that the Sermon on the Mount happened on the same mountain that the Great Commission occurred on.

And for Peter, James, and John; the mountaintop carried extra significance, because it was on the mountain top that Jesus was momentarily transfigured into His heavenly body.

Remember the agony of Christ in Gethsemane?

Yep, that happened on a mountaintop, as well.

For whatever reason, our Savior chose mountains as the location for some of the biggest moments in His time on earth.

And this event was no exception.

And while I don’t want to preach an entire sermon on mountains, it is also significant, because as Christ is telling them to preach the gospel to all people, they are high on a mountain; and from that mountain they would have had a great view of some of the towns and villages Christ was sending them to, and it would have begun to sink in what exactly He was telling them.

But another interesting thing to note is that there were probably many more than just the eleven disciples.

Verse sixteen tells us that the eleven disciples were up on the mountain that day, but that does not mean that there could not have been many more.

While I am not going to ask you to turn there, I am going to read 1 Corinthians 15:3-6.

“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

Then He appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.”

In that short passage, Paul is giving the Corinthian church some hard evidence of the reality of the Resurrection.

He does this by telling them that there were many eyewitnesses to the Resurrection, including one time when Christ was seen by more than 500 people.

Many commentators believe that this passage in Matthew was the time when Christ was seen by 500 people.

The reason they think that is because most of the times Christ was with people after the Resurrection; it was in a house, a garden, walking down a road, or eating breakfast on the beach.

Obviously, those locations would not be ideal for preaching to 500 people at once.

But right here, Christ is on a mountaintop, commissioning His church to take the gospel to the nations.

While we cannot know for sure, it is a very good guess to say that there were probably about 500 people on the mountain that day with Jesus.

And I hope that these two little details are not boring to you.

I just think that it helps us get a more accurate idea of what the Great Commission was like when we realize the significance of Christ preaching from the top of a mountain, and when we realize that He was probably speaking to a crowd of more than 500 people.

Look now at how this crowd reacted to the presence of Christ in verse seventeen.

“And when they saw Him, they worshipped Him: but some doubted.”

Last week, I mentioned how the worship of the two women in the garden showed that Jesus Christ was God in human form; because the Bible says to worship no one but God, and Jesus allowed people to worship Him.

And now, on top of this mountain, most of this crowd is worshipping the Jesus who they now realize is God incarnate.

But Matthew is starkly honest when He says that some people doubted the truth.

Ironically, the fact that Matthew mentions that some doubted is actually a great piece of evidence for the truth of the Bible.

And that seems somewhat illogical, doesn’t it?

How is the fact that some people doubted the Resurrection provide evidence that it really did happen?

Here’s how: Many critics say that Matthew simply made up the story of Jesus raising from the grave.

And I’m going to put someone on the spot this morning.

(person’s name), if you were writing a gospel, and you were making up the story about the Resurrection, what would you write in verse seventeen?

All right, thank you.

You see, if someone were making up the story, they would have said that everyone believed and worshipped.

But instead, Matthew’s blatant honesty shows that the biblical account is reliable.

And now that we have seen that Jesus was on a mountaintop, most likely preaching to more than 500 people, and we have seen that this account is historically reliable; let us now look at what Christ commanded His fledgling church.

Let’s read verses eighteen through twenty again.

“All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

Amen.”

Jesus begins His commission by telling them that all power in heaven and earth belongs to Him.

Why do you think it was important for Christ to say that?

It was important because Jesus was about to send this group on the most difficult mission the world had ever seen.

And Jesus did not want His followers to think that He would not help them on their mission.

On the contrary, He wanted them to know that He was all powerful, and that He was going to be with them as they began their mission.

As a matter of fact, Jesus ended the Great Commission with another encouragement to this group.

At the very end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus told His disciples that He would be with them, even until the end of the world.

The idea in the Greek is that Christ will not only be with us for all eternity, but He will be with us every step along the journey.

So for us here this morning, Christ is not only saying that He will be with you for the rest of your life, He is reminding us that He will be with us for every step of our life’s journey.

Isn’t that nice to know?

Now that we’ve looked at how Christ encourages them to accomplish His divine mission, let’s look at the mission itself.

I have already read the Great Commission in the King James Version, but to give you another interpretation, I will now read it out of the English Standard Version of the Bible.

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing 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.”

You will notice that within this commission, there are four distinct things that Jesus tells His followers to do.

First, He tells them to go.

Second, He tells them to make disciples.

Third, He tells them to baptize.

Fourth, He tells them to teach them.

One of the interesting things about the Greek language is that in Greek, it is very common for some verbs to be subordinated to other verbs.

In fact, in these two verses, three of the verbs all revolve around one dominant verb.

And that one dominant verb is the second one, “make disciples.”

So what does that mean for our understanding of the commission?