Week 68 — The Great Commission
Matthew 28:16-20

We are almost to the end of our study, which began last January, going through the four Gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry week by week. This week, we will discuss Jesus’ final teaching before his ascension.  Our scripture is found in Matthew 28.

Matthew 28:16-20   “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. And 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, 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. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Look at verse 17: “They worshiped him, but some doubted.“  Does this verse bother you?  

It sure seems to bother a lot of Bible commentators.  Some feel uncomfortable attributing this ‘doubt’ to any of the eleven.   After all, this is not the first time they had encountered the risen Jesus.  He appeared on the evening of resurrection day to all but Thomas, and then all of them with Thomas 8 days later, specifically to solve Thomas’s issue of doubt.  They have had several weeks to get used to the idea of Jesus being alive again. So, some theologians have trouble attributing doubt to the eleven at this point.  Some are so troubled that they even try to force this appearance to be the one Paul referred to in 1 Corinthians 15:6, where he tells us Jesus appears to 500 people, just so someone besides the eleven could be the doubters. There is no evidence for that, and Matthew has specifically limited this encounter to the eleven.  So let’s ask the question that bothers them.  Why, at this point, would some of the 11 disciples have doubts?

We discussed doubt several weeks ago (if you missed it, check out “Doubting Thomas” — The Year of the Lord’s Favor #82).   But let me review:  Jesus is not bothered by the mental uncertainty we today describe as ‘doubt’.  He deals with uncertainty, like Thomas, by coming to him to resolve it.  To understand what bothers Jesus and what he defines as doubt, look again at his response to Peter’s episode of walking on the water and sinking in the waves in Matthew 14.  Jesus asks Peter, “Why did you doubt?”  But Jesus is really asking, “Why did you stop walking?”  For Jesus, the only problem with uncertainty is if it leads to a lack of obedience.   For the word our English Bibles translate as ‘doubt’ actually means to ‘hesitate or waver.”  Jesus is only concerned with mental uncertainty if it causes us to hesitate or waver in our obedience. 

Eleven disciples are worshipping Jesus.  They know he is alive and worthy of worship.  They have no uncertainty about this.  But some are hesitant or still wavering about what they should do now.  So, how does Jesus respond to this? The scripture says next:   And Jesus came and said to them….

Why does it say “Jesus came” if he is already standing before them being worshipped?

Jesus is drawing close to them.  This is my Jesus, responding in love and concern.   For those who feel that their doubts, wavering, or hesitation to act drives Jesus away, look closely.  Jesus is not offended by their doubt; he is compassionate and draws close to help them resolve their concerns.  When you have a problem, even if it is of your own making, Jesus will respond in love.  If we could only grasp how much he loves us and wants to help us with every part of our lives, even (as we discussed the past few weeks) in our doubts and failures.   Thomas is uncertain, Jesus comes to him in love and says, “Hey, if you need to see my hands and side, look here”.  Peter is at his lowest of lows, having failed miserably as a disciple and denied Jesus in his hour of need.  And how does Jesus respond?  He doesn’t come to chastise him; he comes to cook him breakfast and let him know he is forgiven and loved.  But these disciples have been through a lot.  Everything has changed for them after the crucifixion and resurrection, and they don’t know what they are supposed to do next.

“Oh, you have doubts?   You are not sure what you should do?  Let me tell you…..”

So Jesus comes and gives them directions.  We call those directions the Great Commission.

The disciples worshiped and doubted.  This describes a large percentage of the modern church.  They come to church once a week and worship Jesus.  They have no uncertainty about who Jesus is, and they are clear about what they believe. But no action follows the worship. They sing praises in the church on Sunday but have no idea what to do when they walk out the door.  They leave their churches the same way they walked in.  They have no clear plan for what to do next.  So they don’t do anything.  And like Peter, when he stopped obeying Jesus’ command to walk on the water, they sink.  They have heard Jesus’ command to be at work in the world, but they waver because they are unsure how to fulfill it.   And like he treated Peter after his denial, Jesus doesn’t come to punish them for their lack of obedience; He sticks out his hand to help.  Jesus wants to solve this hesitation and wavering, so like these disciples, He gives a task.  And that task, in general terms, is what we call the ‘Great Commission’. 

I am sure you have heard many sermons on the Great Commission.  I have listened to quite a few.  They are usually accompanied by a call for people to consider becoming a missionary to some foreign land.  I really wanted to become a foreign missionary.  I always thought that was what I would do.  I have done many short-term mission trips in Central America, South America, and Africa, but God never opened the door for me to become a foreign missionary full-time…yet.  (As my friend George says, “We’ll see what God gives.”)  As I study this scripture in Matthew 28, I have come to realize that it is not simply a call to me to go to the whole world.  The eleven disciples will indeed go to most of the known world then.  As we said last week, Thomas went as far as India (and perhaps China).  But some of them never left Israel.  And yet those who never left Israel fulfilled this verse right where they were.

Skip Moen says of this verse:
“The Evangelical world has enshrined this verse as Jesus’ Great Commission.  Over and over, we hear these words as a command to spread the good news.  So, we mount our campaigns, run our revivals, and make sure that there is an altar call at the end of every service, just in case someone in the audience hasn’t yet proclaimed faith.  From D. L. Moody to Billy Graham, we have become so accustomed to evangelism by appeal that we no longer read this verse the way it was written.”¹

Apparently, Dr. Moen thinks that our traditional reading of these verses may be off base.  Let’s take a look.

Go make disciples.    One of these three words is an imperative.  A command.  Can you guess which one?  … I’ll wait… Did you guess “Go”?  Then you are wrong.  “Go” is not an imperative.  It is not a command. In Greek, it is an aorist passive participle.   Now I know nothing is more boring than talking about Grammar.  But when you are translating, it is essential to understand verb tenses.  It makes a difference whether something has already happened, is happening, or will happen.  You may remember participles from your high school grammar class.  A participle is a verb turned into an adjective by adding the suffix “ing.”  For example, you take the verb “work” and add an “ing” suffix to make it “working,” and it then is an adjective that describes the noun “man.”  Working man — the participle ‘working’ modifies the noun “man”.    So, in this commission, it is not ‘go’ as a verb, but ‘going’ or ‘as you are going.’   But this is in the passive voice, not the active, which means someone else caused your going.  And for these disciples, it is God who caused them to be going people. (The primary action is also past tense, so God did something in the past that has caused you to now be going.).  So this word “Go” could be more clearly translated as “As God has led you to be going.”

Remember what is happening here.  They see Jesus and consider him worthy of worship. They worship him.  But they hesitate to do anything because they don’t know what to do.  So Jesus tells them,  Because you recognize me as worthy of worship, I have the authority to tell you how to walk in this world.  I write the rules for your life.

You don’t just go and live any old way you want to live.  You are expected to walk as Jesus walked.  And you don’t just go wherever you want to go.   You listen for your King to give directions, then go to that place.  But it doesn’t make sense if I say I will follow someone and then take off in a different direction without them.   Say I invite you to lunch at a new restaurant after church today.  I tell you to follow me in the car and I’ll lead you there.  But then you pull out in front of my car, even though you don’t know where we are going.  You are no longer following me.  We often say we will follow Jesus, but we don’t stop to see where Jesus is going before we start off to a different place.  If we are going to live life as Jesus asks us to, then we have to go the way he is going.  So the command is not the word go. 

Is “make” the command?  No, “make” is not the command either.  In fact, the word “make,” which you see in your English version, is not present in the Greek.  Our translators inserted this word so the sentence would make sense to them.  Unfortunately, however, it just clouded the issue.  We can’t ‘make’ disciples.  We can’t force someone to become a disciple, and we can’t produce disciples.  We can only be obedient in how we live our lives, and we have to trust Jesus for the results.  

So the command has to be the word ‘disciple.’  It is a noun in our English version, but in the original Greek, ‘disciple’ is not a noun but a verb. It is the Greek word, mathēteuō, which is the word for a disciple, but changed to be a verb.  The action in the sentence, the command, is to “Disciple!”  So we better translate the command, “As you are going through life, disciple!”  Go about your daily life, living as God commands, and you will disciple others.

So let me get this straight.  To help us understand the Greek phrase, our translators took a Greek participle and turned it into a verb, took a Greek verb and made it into a noun, and then added another verb that wasn’t even in the Greek.  Hmmm… I’ll give them credit, their “Go and make disciples” is much simpler than “As you are going through life, disciple!”  But I think they have missed Jesus’ meaning.

Discipling is not the same as teaching.  It is not about gathering information.  It is more like an apprenticeship.   An apprentice joins up with a master of a craft and learns to do everything by closely watching and imitating the master.  He spends many hours with the master.  He might even live with him for a time.  He watches closely every move and later tries to imitate what he has seen.  That is the way people learned trades for thousands of years.  And that is the way these eleven were discipled by Jesus.  The goal of a disciple is not to know everything the Rabbi knows but to be who the Rabbi is.  It is not informational, but transformational.  

Our command is to disciple as we walk through life.  Some will be called to go to foreign lands like the disciples, but not many.  Most of us will live life where we are, but live it in such a way that as we go about our daily lives, what we do disciples others.  Jesus chose 12 people to follow him for a year.  He poured into their life, and they watched him as he walked through life, following his every move. How does Jesus deal with frustration?  How does he deal with trouble?  How does he deal with sorrow?  What does he do at a party?  Jesus taught much more by how he lived life and how he dealt with people than how he preached.   On his last night with them before his crucifixion, he demonstrated an important aspect of how they should act as he took on the role of a servant and washed their feet.  He was discipling until the end.  

Paul said:         1 Corinthians 11:1. Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. 

Paul says this is discipling.   Obviously, you cannot disciple others unless you are a disciple yourself.   We are all still in the process of being disciples of Jesus.  So we study the scripture to see how Jesus acted in situations and how he treated people.  And we then try to imitate Jesus’ behavior.   I know “What would Jesus do?” became a trite saying because someone sold a bunch of plastic bracelets, but the idea is a valid one.`  We would all be better disciples if we asked ourselves that question a hundred times daily.

 If we recognize that Jesus is worthy of worship, we must acknowledge that he has the authority to tell us how to live. Then, we must be obedient to live that way.  Once we have truly become disciples, we must disciple others.  And Jesus says we do that simply by living as he taught us.  We have to be intentional about this discipling, though.  Like Jesus, we need to seek out people to share our lives with whom we can positively influence. We need to make time to be with them and have meaningful conversations.  We have to spend enough time with them so they can see how we live, as it reflects how Jesus taught us to live.  

Who have you sought out to have a positive influence on?  You have done it, but may not think of it this way.  The process of discipleship is demonstrated well with parenting.  You already know that your children learned more from watching how you lived life than they learned from your teaching or lectures.  You disciple your children.  If you are like me, you look back and want to apologize for those times you didn’t act in a way that reflected Jesus, and you taught the wrong lesson.  We have all failed at times, but the lesson of learning from your failures is an important one. They can learn that from us, also.  Even after your children have left your house, you still have opportunities to disciple.  They are still watching.  And then you have the blessing of grandchildren.   Another great opportunity to disciple.  What amazing benefits to the kingdom of God from just living life as God has told us to live.  You have already been discipling.  But don’t stop there.  You have friends and co-workers.  Have you considered that you might have a responsibility to disciple them?  They are already sharing part of your life.  They are already watching how you live life.  

Finally, don’t underestimate the effect you can have on people you happen to encounter every day. If we believe that God is sovereign, in charge of this world, and is active and working in our lives, then we have to realize that our lives are not a series of random events. We will discuss this more in a few weeks, but (spoiler alert) I will show you in scripture how God is arranging our encounters with others with much more intent than we realize.  

As you go about your daily life, see each person entering your life as if they were ushered into your presence by God Himself.  What would you say to someone, and how would you act differently if you knew God had specifically arranged for them to meet you that day? 

Think about it.  What if that person who happened to bump into you was put in that place by God so that you could have a moment of influence on them?  Would you act differently?  Would your conversation be different?   God is more intentional in the details of our lives than we often recognize.  I think most of what we see as “chance meetings” are divine appointments.   So, how can you demonstrate Jesus to that person God just dropped in your life today?   Every interaction we have is a chance to disciple, to reveal God to someone, as you just go about your life.  So as you live daily, live in a way that people will want to know the God you know, and demonstrate life lived the way Jesus demonstrated it to us.

Skip Moen was right about this.  We have focused too much on what he calls “evangelism by appeal” (Stadium Revivals, Crusades, Altar Calls, Witnessing programs).  We already know that most people who come to a church for the first time don’t come because the pastor invited them; they come because someone they know invited them.  Someone watched them live their life—someone who, by living life like Jesus, has been discipling them.  Many people make decisions at mass events, but never really commit to Jesus and never follow through.  

There is a place for “evangelism by appeal” in soul-winning campaigns, mass revivals, and door-to-door witnessing.  They can be important.   But they are not what Jesus is talking about in the Great Commission.   Jesus is talking about evangelism by discipleship..

As you are going through life, disciple!  Or as Eugene Peterson translates the Great Commission in The Message:

Matthew 28:19 Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life,

99% of Jesus’ followers today will never preach a sermon to thousands in a stadium.  But more people will enter the Kingdom of God because those 99 discipled their children, families, neighbors, or co-workers than will enter because of mass revivals.

You may be reading this, but not knowing how you should personally respond to Jesus’ command to disciple.  You may feel you are totally inadequate to disciple someone else.  But remember that Jesus is giving this instruction to a bunch of very young men, some teenagers.  We tend to think of the disciples as later in their lives, boldly ministering to everyone in the Book of Acts.  But when Jesus gave this command, they weren’t there yet.  They were young kids.  You have seen in the Gospels their immaturity in the faith, just a few months ago arguing over who gets to sit where in the kingdom of Heaven, having trouble understanding the simplest teachings, and then just a few weeks ago scattering and hiding, abandoning Jesus when things got hard.   If you feel inadequate and are unsure how or if you should be discipling anyone, then congratulations.  You are in the very same state of mind as these 11 young men.   They worshiped, but they doubted.

You don’t know how to disciple someone?  No problem, says Jesus.  Just go out the door and live life like I told you to.  Love your neighbor as yourself, follow me when you walk out that door.  I heard a preacher say the other day that too often we forget that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit and that we take God everywhere we go.  And he was right.  But I’ll add that we aren’t supposed to take God anywhere.  We aren’t the leaders, we are the followers.  We shouldn’t take God places; we should follow God to the places he wants us to go together.

Look again at what is happening in Matthew 28. Jesus tells these young men they are responsible for disciplining the whole world. These 11 very young men have only had a year with Jesus, and it has not been an easy year for them.  And now Jesus is turning over the responsibility of spreading the Gospel to these guys?  Is that crazy or what?  It would be crazy except for two things. First, they. go under His authority. Look at the verse in the middle of the passage that we haven’t discussed yet.  Right before he gives the Great Commission, he says this:

Matthew 28:18. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 

Why is that important?    God the Father has granted to Jesus all authority.  How much?  All.  The disciples are not their own authority; Jesus is.  They don’t have to decide on the best plan.  That is Jesus’ job.  He will make the decisions.  All they have to do is follow.  They don’t have to figure it out.  The pressure is off them to decide the best path.  They just need to be obedient to the path Jesus places them on.  In the military, there is a strict chain of command.  There are specified ranks that say who is in authority over whom.  Now, if someone is in authority over you, and they give you an order, then you don’t question it, you do it.   In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Jesus outranks you.  All we have to do is follow directions.  And because he is the supreme authority, he can grant us authority as needed.

Look at what Jesus is doing here. He did this several months ago when he sent the 12 out on a mission without him.

Matthew 10:1   And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction.

He gave them authority and sent them out.    He did it again later, sending out 72.  The scripture tells us they returned with great joy, reporting the great things they had seen done, healings, casting out demons, etc.  He is about to send them out again, reminding them of their previous “practice missions.”   I have all the authority, and  I am sending you out again.  

Not only do they go with his authority, but they go in His power.  In just a few days, Jesus leaves the eleven and ascends to heaven.  And he will tell them to sit and wait for 10 days. These are his last words:

Acts 1:8   But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

He just gave them this impossible task of changing the world. But they go under his authority—they don’t have to decide how to do it, they aren’t responsible for figuring it out, and they go in His Power—more about that in a few weeks.

The Great Commission:  As you are going through life, disciple!

It applies to us also.   When you stop reading this and stand up, you walk into a world desperately needing Jesus.   It is our job to disciple others.  We do it simply by living life the way Jesus instructed us to.  By following Him wherever he leads us.   And we can go confidently, because we go in His authority and His power.

1. Moen, Skip. “Osmosis Evangelism.” at skipmoen.com. February 15, 2008.