The Gospel Begins with “Go”

Nathan Schneider

On Mission • Sermon • Submitted 2 months ago • Presented a year ago

Matthew 28:19–20

Evangelism

Mission

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INTRODUCTION

During the summer months, I like many of you, enjoy taking my family on hikes. My two older boys are at that perfect age where we can take on some more challenging terrain and take in some pretty epic scenery in the process.

On one of these hikes a few summers ago—I believe we were heading up the draw toward little O’Malley peak—it wasn’t until we got to the top of the ridge and looked back that we really got to appreciate just how far and how high we had just climbed and how much the scenery had changed.

In the middle of the trail, it can be hard to get a sense of where you’re at and where you’ve come from. But when you get to the top of the peak and look back from where you came, it hits you in a way all its own.

That is a bit of a practical axiom for life. It’s good to look back sometimes and see where you’ve come from and what’s changed…to see how different it is now from what it used to be.

The more normal something becomes, the less and less we tend to appreciate it for how special it really is, and that’s true for a lot of things, and it’s certainly true when we talk about missions.

Matthew 28:19–20 “19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to keep all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.””

If you’ve been in church for any length time, you’ve heard that passage before. It’s been the basis for countless sermons in countless churches in countless regions of the globe.

In fact, the words we heard tonight in the waters of baptism—“I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”—come directly from this passage.

Our distinctive of “Making Disciples” comes from this text.

KEY: We are very familiar with this text—maybe too familiar.

We hear the account of the Great Commission and we think, “Yes, of course. That’s our call. That’s what the church is supposed to do.

We have missionaries. We give people money to go out and evangelize. We send people out. That’s all normal.”

And you know why you think that? Because you’re a 21st century Christian.

The Great Commission has been the functional mandate of God’s people for 20 centuries. That’s a long time! There’s a lot of history there. It’s become part of our culture and our Christian heritage.

But the disciples standing on that mountain in Galilee were hearing that Great Commission for the very first time. And it was anything but normal.

They were hearing Jesus call them to do something completely foreign to everything they knew as Jews.

I dare say that Matthew 28:18–20 constitutes one of the most pivotal moments in human history. Jesus—with all authority given to him by God—fundamentally changed the way God’s people were to operate in the world.

KEY: And if we’re going to take this mandate seriously and embrace the Great Commission with full conviction and full commitment, we need to understand why this is such a radical, paradigm-shifting command.

Now, in order to do that, we need to look back. We’ve been on the trail of New Testament Christianity for 2,000 years.

We need to stop and turn around and take a look behind us and see where we came from so we can appreciate where we’re at now.

1. STARTING AT THE BEGINNING

We need to start at the very beginning if we’re going to set the stage well for this. So if you have your Bibles, turn with me back to the book of Genesis.

Now, there’s a clear dividing line in the book of Genesis that divides Old Testament history, and that’s at chapter 12. The first eleven chapters of Genesis depict a time in ancient history where God dealt directly with humanity as a whole.

Genesis 1-2 obviously gives the account of God’s creation of the universe, zeroing in specifically man as the capstone of creation.

He is God’s image, created specifically to rule and to reign over God’s creation as his special representative.

Genesis 3 then tells the sad and shocking story of man’s fall into sin, and the injection of evil into God’s very good creation.

Once again, we’re so familiar with this story that it doesn’t hit us with the force that it should.

God’s own representative rebelled against him and committed high treason against the sovereign God of the universe.

The whole of humanity plunged into sin and experienced instant spiritual death and alienation from God.

“Sin in all its reality, satanic impact and consequences encounters man, and man consciously and deliberately sides with sin against God and the command of God. At the same time sin penetrates, permeates and overpowers man. Thus man becomes a willful sinner, entering into a state of rebellion against God and into a life of disobedience to the command of God. He also becomes an enslaved sinnerwho is guilty before God, defiled in his being, depraved in his personality constitution, separated from God, and destitute of divine purpose, mission and destiny. Man is lost, and life is rendered meaningless and empty. Man is at enmity with God. At the same time, man is fallen prey to the horribleness of death as a process and destiny This is the tragic story of Genesis 3. History is but a duplication, multiplication, expansion and intensification of man’s experience in that chapter” (George Peters, 16).

When we hear it put like that, I think the wonder of all wonders is that the story keeps going after Genesis 3. It doesn’t just end there!

And if you’re not shocked by that, then I don’t think you appreciate the true seriousness of sin.

So why does the story go on? Because God makes a promise.

Genesis 3:15 15 “And I will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

It’s a promise of hope—that God will provide a redeemer who would be a man—a “seed of the woman—who will reverse the curse, reconcile man to God, rescue man from the consequences of his sin, and deal a death blow to the author of evil, Satan himself.

Just one verse—that encapsulates the hope that God offers at perhaps the saddest moment in human history.

Just as the first humans leave paradise sorrowful and panged with guilt, they leave banished but with the hopeful yearning and assured anticipation that redemption is going to come and God will provide it.

2. SEARCHING FOR THE SEED

So as we continue in the book of Genesis, we find that one of the prominent themes floating around in the background of all the events in this books is the question—“who is this ‘seed of the woman’ going to be?”

In fact, you see it in the very next chapter when Eve gives birth to her firstborn, Cain, and exclaims, “I have gotten a man-child from Yahweh.”

There’s hope in those words. She knows the redeemer will be her offspring. She even knows he will be male. And so when she gives birth to a little boy, she sees this as the hopeful sign that God is realizing exactly what he said he would do.

But he’s not the one. Instead, he turns out to be a murder, killing his own brother because he was angry with God.

At the end of chapter 4, in verse 25, Seth is born. Eve even says, “God has appointed me another ‘seed’ instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.”

And there seems to be some hope here, too. Spiritual revival follows:

Genesis 4:26 “26 And to Seth, to him also, a son was born; and he called his name Enosh. Then men began to call upon the name of Yahweh.”

In fact, seven generations later, Enoch would walk so closely in fellowship with God that he was removed from the earth without suffering death.

By the end of chapter 5, a man named Lamech fathers a son and names him “Noah,” with the hopeful anticipation his son, according to 5:29, will be the one “who will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which Yahweh has cursed.”

Of course, we know what follows. The earth becomes filled with violence and evil. The thoughts of man’s hearts are continually on doing wicked.

And so God judges the earth with a massive flood that wipes out the entire human population with the exception of Noah and his immediate family.

And yet it’s clear following the flood that neither Noah nor his sons are the promised seed of the woman. And so that search continues.

The post-flood world introduces a host of changes:

We see the institution of human government in chapter 9.

We see the establishment of nations in chapter 10.

We see the introduction of languages in chapter 11.

All of this really is just muddying the waters. The seed is becoming increasingly more difficult to identify.

And so as we come to the end Genesis 11, we find a world that has undergone massive changes, and yet up to this point there’s been a continuity in the way God has dealt with humanity.

Chapters 1–11 are decidedly universal. From the promise of chapter 3 all the way to the confusion of languages in chapter 11, God has up to this point dealt with mankind as a whole.

But all that’s going to change beginning in chapter 12.

3. GOD GETS SPECIFIC

In Genesis 12, God completely changes his method. He begins to focus his dealings with humanity through a mediator. And that mediator is a man named Abram.

Chapter 12 opens with God’s call of Abram—an idolater from Ur of the Chaldeans, which is the ancient location of the Babylonian empire.

He calls Abram to leave his homeland, leave his family and his relatives, and embark on a great journey of faith.

God is going to bring him into a special land. He’s going to make him into a great nation. He’s going to bless him, and make his name great.

And it’s through him and through the nation that’s going to come from him that God is going to bless all the families of the earth.

NOTE: The goal of what God is doing is still universal. God hasn’t changed his plans. He hasn’t cancelled his original promise. He’s still going to provide a redeemer for humanity who will reverse the curse of the fall and reconcile man to God. “All the families of the earth” are going to be the beneficiaries. That hasn’t changed.

What has changed is that now, God’s is dealing with humanity through one man and the nation that is going to out of him. God’s inserted an intermediary—a nation.

The rest of Genesis is the history of how God worked out who that nation is going to be…

Isaac, not Ishmael

Jacob, not Esau

…and then how he prepared them and formed them and grew them from a family of tribes to a vast people.

We get into Exodus and find out how God redeemed this people from slavery in Egypt, brought them out of that land and entered into special relationship with them—a covenant relationship, where He would be their God and they would be his special people.

He gave them a law—almost like a national constitution. It gave them an identity. It framed what their life was to be like oriented around him and his purpose for them.

And that purpose is perhaps most clearly spelled out in Exodus 19:4–6…

Exodus 19:5–6 “5 ‘So now then, if you will indeed listen to My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My treasured possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; 6 and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel.””

That statement right there constitutes Israel’s identity.

They were a special people chosen by God for a special purpose: to be holy—that is, separate from all the nations—and to be a kingdom of priests—that is, an entire nation whose job was to stand as a mediator between God and the nations.

God was going to deal with the nations through one nation—Israel. And through this one nation he was going to accomplish what he promised to Abraham—to bless all the families of the earth.

The question is: How was he going to do that? By what method was Israel going to serve as the mediator of divine blessing to the world?

The answer: something we might call “sacred magnetism.”

4. SACRED MEGNETISM

What is “sacred magnetism?”

Israel’s relationship to the world was one in which they were to stay in their land, live faithfully according to God’s word, and the nations were to come to them.

Now, you might be asking, “How is God going to pull that off?” What’s going to attract all these nations to Israel?

There’s a four-fold answer:

A. Location

Of all the places God could have put his people, he put them in a land called Canaan—a very small piece of real estate on the southwest corner of the Fertile Crescent.

Now, in comparison to the rest of the Fertile Crescent, Canaan is perhaps the driest and least fertile part.

As far as size goes, it’s surprisingly small. From the southern-most point of Beer-Sheba to the northern-most city of Dan, it spans about 150 miles. Width-wise, at its widest point from the southern point of the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean coast it’s about 85 miles wide. And at its narrowest point between the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean coast, it measures only 25–30 miles wide.

All told, it’s roughly 6000-7000 square miles of total land area. Compare that with the Kenai peninsula which is about 16,000 square miles and you can maybe get an appreciation for how small this land is.

And yet this tiny little plot of ground has known an importance throughout history far outweighing its meager size.

You see, the land of Canaan is located between two natural geographical barriers. On its west is the Mediterranean Sea, and on the east is the vast mostly impassible Arabian and Syrian deserts.

And because of this geography, Canaan forms a land bridge linking the continents of Africa and Asia, and for that reason it has always been a coveted piece of real estate. All the major trade routes passed through Canaan, bringing much needed products from Egypt to Mesopotamia.

And because of that, every dominant international power—Assyria, Babylon, Egypt---attempted to assert its power in Canaan on a regular basis in order to control these trade routes.

So Canaan was a land of constant use. Nations, travelers, sojourners, and tradesmen constantly roamed the highways and byways of Canaan. Armies from Egypt and Mesopotamia regularly fought battles in the region.

KEY: And it was here that God decided to take his special nation—a nation he explicitly asserts in Deuteronomy 7:7 was “the fewest of all peoples”—and deliberately placed them in the land of Canaan.

Why? Sacred magnetism! He placed his kingdom of priests—the conduit through whom he would bring blessing to the nations—he placed them in the spot where nations had to come through.

Now, how was such a small and insignificant nation going to survive in this situation? Well—they couldn’t survive on their own. They were going to have to trust God to take care of them and protect them, and as they did, he promised that they would never have to worry about living in fear in that land.

B. Law

Now, in addition to their location, God was also going to use something else to draw the nations to Israel. He was going to use the law.

We saw in Exodus 19:6 that Israel was to be a “kingdom of priests” and a “holy nation.” And the law accomplished the latter purpose. The law set Israel apart from the rest of the world.

Holiness, after all, speaks of separation. Separation from sin, yes, but it has more than just a moral dimension. Israel was to be uniquely different from the world. That was how they were going to get the attention of the nations. Israel was to look different, act different, speak different, and be different, and all of that would excite the curiosity of the nations.

And the law was the means of making Israel holy. In fact, the law defined everything about Israel. It defined their worship. It defined their moral character. It defined their culture. It defined their dress. It defined their cuisine.

It made Israel look different, and by looking different they might entice the nations to wonder, “Why is this nation so different from us?”

C. Lifestyle

Now, that leads to a third and related point—blessing. This was the cream on the top that would push the nations over the edge. He had placed Israel in as strategic location where all the nations would have to go. He gave them the law which made them distinct from all the peoples around them.

What was left was for Israel to startle the nations with a level of peace, prosperity, productivity, and power that was unequalled to anything the other nations had.

Listen to Moses’ words:

Deuteronomy 28:1–10 “1 “Now it will be, if you diligently listen to the voice of Yahweh your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I am commanding you today, Yahweh your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. 2 “And all these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you listen to the voice of Yahweh your God: 3 “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. 4 “Blessed shall be the offspring of your body and the produce of your ground and the offspring of your beasts, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock. 5 “Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. 6 “Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. 7 “Yahweh shall cause your enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before you; they will come out against you one way and will flee before you seven ways. 8 “Yahweh will command the blessing upon you in your barns and in all that you send forth your hand to do, and He will bless…”

Now, the key section of that passage is verses 9–10: “Yahweh will establish you as a people holy to himself…and all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of Yahweh.”

George Peters puts it this way: “Israel, by living a life in the presence and fear of the Lord, was to experience the fullness of the blessing of God. In this way they were to startle the nations to attention, arouse their inquiry, and draw them like a magnet to Jerusalem and to the Lord” (p. 21).

D. Leadership

Now, capping all of this off was one final and critical element of God’s method of “attractional missions,” if you will, or what we’re calling “sacred magnetism.” The Davidic king.

God established the Davidic kingship. He made a special covenant with David, wherein he purposed to work through this one individual—this anointed king—to draw the nations to himself.

Eventually, this line will have a king arise who will be…

the son of David

will be the son of God

will bring peace to the earth

will build God’s temple

will rise from the dead

will possess a throne

will possess an eternal kingdom

will shepherd his people, and…

will be a light to the nations.

You hear this anticipation in Solomon’s prayer when he dedicates the temple:

1 Kings 8:41–43 “41 “Also concerning the foreigner who is not of Your people Israel, if he comes from a far country for Your name’s sake 42 (for they will hear of Your great name and Your strong hand, and of Your outstretched arm); so if he comes and prays toward this house, 43 listen in heaven Your dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to You, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know Your name to fear You, as do Your people Israel, and to know that Your name is called upon this house which I have built.”

Solomon rightly anticipated exactly what God had set Israel up to do.

A few chapters later in 1 Kings 10 we see this very thing happens when the Queen of Sheba travels to Jerusalem to engage with Solomon because she had heard about his great wisdom. That was sacred magnetism in action.

You see it when the Magi come from afar to find the Messiah when he was born.

God’s method of reaching the nations was a decidedly attractional model, divinely orchestrated through Israel’s location, Israel’s law, Israel’s lifestyle, and Israel’s leadership.

From the time of Abraham to the birth of the church in Acts 2, two-thousand years past by with this as the model. That’s 20 centuries of God working under a specific method. And this method was seared into the mindset and culture and national identity of every Jew.

They rightly saw Jerusalem as the center of the world, the place where all other nations were to stream for salvation and blessing.

They were well familiar with the words of Isaiah:

Isaiah 2:2–3 “2 Now it will be that In the last days The mountain of the house of Yahweh Will be established as the head of the mountains, And will be lifted up above the hills; And all the nations will stream to it. 3 And many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh, To the house of the God of Jacob, That He may instruct us from His ways And that we may walk in His paths.” For from Zion the law will go forth And the word of Yahweh from Jerusalem.”

For twenty centuries, Israel operated within the paradigm of sacred magnetism—that it was God’s method of blessing all the peoples of the earth through the chosen seed of Abraham by drawing the Gentiles to Jerusalem that they might encounter the God of Israel.

CONCLUSION

The disciples of Jesus standing on that mountain in Galilee had that very same mindset. Their entire concept of world missions was summed up in the idea that Israel was to stay and the nations would flow to them.

So when Jesus began his Great Commission with the word “Go,” the disciples were being confronted with a monumental shift in the method of God.

KEY: Everything they knew about God’s plan and how it would be accomplished was being turned completely upside down by Jesus.

“The ‘Come’ is replaced by a ‘Go!’ and the inviting voice of the priest at the altar is superseded by the herald rushing from place to place to call a people to God. The stationary and localized temple becomes a living and moving temple. The worship at a place and building becomes a worship in spirit and truth, bound neither by place nor building. Outgoing becomes the quality of the Christian gospel and of the Christian church, the temple of the Holy Spirit.” (George Peters, 300).

With the Great Commission, everything changed. And for these poor disciples, it’s understandable that it would take them a while to wrap their heads around this new paradigm of missions.

I think that’s perhaps why we see that it was the apostles who were the last to leave Jerusalem even after Saul’s persecution ramped up and scattered the believers throughout the region.

Acts 8:1 “1 Now Saul was in hearty agreement with putting him to death. And on that day a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.”

The call to “go” is perhaps the most significant and surprising element of the Great Commission. It’s so significant and so radical in nature that this command to “go” is found at the end of every gospel:

Mark 16:15–16 “15 And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. 16 “He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned.”

Luke 24:45–48 “45 Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and He said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, 47 and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 “You are witnesses of these things.”

John 20:21 “21 So Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.””

Going is a required component of making disciples. It’s not an option. Despite what some preachers have said, you can’t understand this to simply mean, “As you are going, make disciples.” For one it doesn’t fit Greek grammar. But even more, as we’ve seen, it doesn’t fit the theological and historical context.

There’s no option. No longer can you simply stay and make disciples. Now, the method has fundamentally shifted from “stay” to “go.”

In closing, let me read Romans 10:14–15 again. Jeff preached on this text last month, but I want you to hear it again, but this time hear it through the words of the radical nature of the Great Commission:

Romans 10:14–15 “14 How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? 15 And how will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, “HOW BEAUTIFUL ARE THE FEET OF THOSE WHO PROCLAIM GOOD NEWS OF GOOD THINGS!””

Well, my dear friends, God has sent us. We’re called to be agents of his gospel message, preaching that the nations might hear and believe and call on Christ’s name and be saved.

Not all of us individually are called to specifically to go out. But we’re called as a church to embrace this mission, and to mobilize the church to take the gospel to the world.

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